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+Project Gutenberg’s The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Seaboard Parish, Complete
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8562]
+This file was first posted on July 23, 2003
+[Last updated: July 16, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+By George MacDonald, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+   I. HOMILETIC
+  II. CONSTANCE’S BIRTHDAY
+ III. THE SICK CHAMBER
+  IV. A SUNDAY EVENING
+   V. MY DREAM
+  VI. THE KEW BABY
+ VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
+VIII. THEODORA’S DOOM  IX. A SPRING CHAPTER
+   X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER
+  XI. CONNIE’S DREAM
+ XII. THE JOURNEY
+XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN
+  XV. THE OLD CHURCH
+ XVI. CONNIE’S WATCH-TOWER
+XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+HOMILETIC.
+
+
+Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
+know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I
+say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you
+had not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you
+would not have wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not
+think you would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But
+I am seated once again at my writing-table, to write for you--with a
+strange feeling, however, that I am in the heart of some curious, rather
+awful acoustic contrivance, by means of which the words which I have a
+habit of whispering over to myself as I write them, are heard aloud by
+multitudes of people whom I cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy,
+that, by a sense of your presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to
+man.
+
+But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that
+you have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually
+happens in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a
+more puzzled mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the
+holes and corners of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one,
+peeping out at me like a rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me
+almost at the same instant the tail-end of it, and vanishing with a
+contemptuous _thud_ of its hind feet on the ground. For I must have
+suitable regard to the desires of my children. It is a fine thing to
+be able to give people what they want, if at the same time you can give
+them what you want. To give people what they want, would sometimes be to
+give them only dirt and poison. To give them what you want, might be to
+set before them something of which they could not eat a mouthful. What
+both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a dish of good wholesome
+venison. Now I suppose my children around me are neither young enough
+nor old enough to care about a fairy tale. So that will not do. What
+they want is, I believe, something that I know about--that has happened
+to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of thing I like best to
+hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me something that has
+happened to himself, especially if he will give me a peep into how his
+heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the closed door,
+and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has something
+true and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old people
+that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them; but
+that only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to
+disentangle confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at
+the time appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light
+that was in them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they
+are far enough off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything
+that we know best what it is. How I should like to write a story for old
+people! The young are always having stories written for them. Why should
+not the old people come in for a share? A story without a young person
+in it at all! Nobody under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy
+tale, could it? Or a love story either? I am not so sure about that. The
+worst of it would be, however, that hardly a young person would read it.
+Now, we old people would not like that. We can read young people’s
+books and enjoy them: they would not try to read old men’s books or old
+women’s books; they would be so sure of their being dry. My dear old
+brothers and sisters, we know better, do we not? We have nice old
+jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot see the fun. We have
+strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look more and more
+marvellous every time we turn them over again; only somehow they do not
+belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say _week_,--and so
+the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have had one
+pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother’s feet, and
+listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his
+mother’s wedding-gown was as old as Eve’s coat of skins. But then he was
+young enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common
+to the young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men,
+old women, to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the
+future. Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed; for,
+however your souls may be at peace, however your quietness and
+confidence may give you strength, in the decay of your earthly
+tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in the weakening of its
+stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars, you have yet your
+share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But the one thing I
+should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would be, “Friends,
+let us not grow old.” Old age is but a mask; let us not call the mask
+the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it from its
+hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth? Then
+only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
+young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
+dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
+always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
+we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog
+to enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and
+perhaps whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any
+necessity for putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the
+privilege, or if we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have
+the duty, of enjoying their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a
+measure from sociable relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise
+creatures that creep aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves
+by that their wings may grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming
+resurrection. Such a withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it
+is pleasant--no one knows how pleasant except him who experiences it--to
+sit apart and see the drama of life going on around him, while
+his feelings are calm and free, his vision clear, and his judgment
+righteous, the old man must ever be ready, should the sweep of action
+catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering old legs, and go with
+brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the less true that his
+hands tremble, and that he would gladly return to his chimney-corner. If
+he is never thus called out, let him examine himself, lest he should be
+falling into the number of those that say, “I go, sir,” and go not;
+who are content with thinking beautiful things in an Atlantis, Oceana,
+Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of their fingers to
+work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the man who, using
+just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never has a
+thought of his own.
+
+I have been talking--to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
+grandchildren? I remember--to my companions in old age. It is time I
+returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side
+of the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one
+word: We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never
+do aright after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the
+men, neither shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his
+people because the young ones do not think just as the old ones choose.
+The Lord has something fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to
+receive his message. When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I
+think our work in this world is over. It might end more honourably.
+
+Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
+about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
+myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of
+which I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite
+elderly, yet active man--young still, in fact, to what I am now. But
+even then, though my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder,
+and needed all my stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces,
+and the trials of them that are dear, will make even those that look for
+a better country both for themselves and their friends, sad, though it
+will be with a preponderance of the first meaning of the word _sad_,
+which was _settled_, _thoughtful_.
+
+I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my
+study because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover
+over every foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the
+pleasanter to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none
+the worse, for anyone who prefers it to books.
+
+I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the
+history of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend’s
+parish, while my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my
+curate, took the entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will
+soon appear. I will try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my
+story interesting, although it will cost me suffering to recall some of
+the incidents I have to narrate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CONSTANCE’S BIRTHDAY.
+
+
+
+
+
+Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature,
+or from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents
+Nature’s mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in
+his drama? I know I have so often found Nature’s mood in harmony with my
+own, even when she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in
+looking back I have wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some
+self-deception about it. At all events, on the morning of my Constance’s
+eighteenth birthday, a lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of
+golden foliage about the ways, and an air that seemed filled with the
+ether of an _aurum potabile_, there came yet an occasional blast of
+wind, which, without being absolutely cold, smelt of winter, and made
+one draw one’s shoulders together with the sense of an unfriendly
+presence. I do not think Constance felt it at all, however, as she stood
+on the steps in her riding-habit, waiting till the horses made their
+appearance. It had somehow grown into a custom with us that each of the
+children, as his or her birthday came round, should be king or queen
+for that day, and, subject to the veto of father and mother, should have
+everything his or her own way. Let me say for them, however, that in the
+matter of choosing the dinner, which of course was included in the royal
+prerogative, I came to see that it was almost invariably the favourite
+dishes of others of the family that were chosen, and not those
+especially agreeable to the royal palate. Members of families where
+children have not been taught from their earliest years that the great
+privilege of possession is the right to bestow, may regard this as an
+improbable assertion; but others will know that it might well enough
+be true, even if I did not say that so it was. But there was always
+the choice of some individual treat, which was determined solely by the
+preference of the individual in authority. Constance had chosen “a long
+ride with papa.”
+
+I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration
+of his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be
+determined by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people’s
+children. However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that
+Constance did look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young
+day: we were early people--breakfast and prayers were over, and it was
+nine o’clock as she stood on the steps and I approached her from the
+lawn.
+
+“O, papa! isn’t it jolly?” she said merrily.
+
+“Very jolly indeed, my dear,” I answered, delighted to hear the word
+from the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word,
+and when she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was
+like? Ah! you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I
+will, however, try to give you a general idea, just in order that you
+and I should not be picturing to ourselves two very different persons
+while I speak of her.
+
+She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
+observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion,
+and has nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in
+complexion, with her mother’s blue eyes, and her mother’s long dark wavy
+hair. She was generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than
+any of the others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she
+knew instinctively when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her
+playfulness there seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if
+she felt that the present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance
+to the eternal sunlight. And the appearance was not in the least a
+deceptive one. The eternal was not far from her--none the farther that
+she enjoyed life like a bird, that her laugh was merry, that her heart
+was careless, and that her voice rang through the house--a sweet soprano
+voice--singing snatches of songs (now a street tune she had caught from
+a London organ, now an air from Handel or Mozart), or that she would
+sometimes tease her elder sister about her solemn and anxious looks; for
+Wynnie, the eldest, had to suffer for her grandmother’s sins against her
+daughter, and came into the world with a troubled little heart, that was
+soon compelled to flee for refuge to the rock that was higher than she.
+Ah! my Constance! But God was good to you and to us in you.
+
+“Where shall we go, Connie?” I said, and the same moment the sound of
+the horses’ hoofs reached us.
+
+“Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?” she returned.
+
+“It is a long ride,” I answered.
+
+“Too much for the pony?”
+
+“O dear, no--not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony.”
+
+“I’m quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want
+to get something for Wynnie. Do let us go.”
+
+“Very well, my dear,” I said, and raised her to the saddle--if I may say
+_raised_, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another
+than she sprung from the ground on her pony’s back.
+
+In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
+
+The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders’ webs,
+as we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards
+the high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we
+turned from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a
+gallop to begin with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been
+used to the saddle longer than she could remember. She was now riding a
+tall well-bred pony, with plenty of life--rather too much, I sometimes
+thought, when I was out with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I
+was with Constance. Another field or two sufficiently quieted both
+animals--I did not want to have all our time taken up with their
+frolics--and then we began to talk.
+
+“You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear,” I said.
+
+“Quite an old grannie, papa,” she answered.
+
+“Old enough to think about what’s coming next,” I said gravely.
+
+“O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about
+the morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that’s in the pulpit,” she
+added, with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her
+pretty hat.
+
+“You know very well what I mean, you puss,” I answered. “And I don’t say
+one thing in the pulpit and another out of it.”
+
+She was at my horse’s shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had
+been of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended
+me. She looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon
+Wynnie.
+
+“O, thank you, papa!” she said when I smiled. “I thought I had been
+rude. I didn’t mean it, indeed I didn’t. But I do wish you would make
+it a little plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you
+would hardly believe it.”
+
+“What do you want made plainer, my child?” I asked.
+
+“When we’re to think, and when we’re not to think,” she answered.
+
+I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
+
+“If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day,” I
+answered, “if it cannot be done right except you think about it and
+lay your plans for it, then that thought is to-day’s business, not
+to-morrow’s.”
+
+“Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
+themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?” she asked
+suddenly, again looking up in my face.
+
+We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse’s mane, so as to
+keep her pony close up.
+
+“Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind.”
+
+“Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn’t explain things so much. I
+seem to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try
+the text afterwards by myself, I can’t make anything of it, and I’ve
+forgotten every word you said about it.”
+
+“Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it.”
+
+“I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
+Bible,” she returned.
+
+“If they can,” I rejoined. “But last Sunday, for instance, I did not
+expect anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except
+your mamma and Thomas Weir.”
+
+“How funny! What part of it was that?”
+
+“O! I’m not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But
+most likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to
+you, in consequence, very commonplace.”
+
+“In consequence of what?”
+
+“In consequence of your thinking you understood it.”
+
+“O, papa dear! you’re getting worse and worse. It’s not often I ask
+you anything--and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to
+bewilder my poor little brains in this way.”
+
+“I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea
+that you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If
+you had never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of
+remark, would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is
+this the case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of
+the heart. Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything,
+or thanked God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant
+in one of his worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be
+beyond him. If you have never known what it is to have care of any kind
+upon you, you cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to
+take no thought for the morrow.”
+
+“But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
+about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?”
+
+“Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
+perhaps I can help you.”
+
+“You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
+idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at
+work every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that
+women any more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do?
+What have I been sent into the world for? I don’t see it; and I feel
+very useless and wrong sometimes.”
+
+“I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
+Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish.
+You take much off your mother’s hands too. And you do a good deal for
+the poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you
+are learning yourselves.”
+
+“Yes, but that’s not work.”
+
+“It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
+you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not
+that I have anything to complain of.”
+
+“But I don’t want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life,
+when there are so many to help everywhere in the world.”
+
+“Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed
+you, than in doing it where he has placed you?”
+
+“No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do
+at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You
+won’t think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?”
+
+“No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
+now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
+referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
+yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do,
+you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible
+preparation for what he may want you to do next. If people would but do
+what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what
+came next. And I do not believe that those who follow this rule are ever
+left floundering on the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find
+water enough to swim in.”
+
+“Thank you, dear papa. That’s a little sermon all to myself, and I think
+I shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let’s
+have a trot.”
+
+“There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is
+not your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make
+yourself as worth God’s making as you possibly can. Now I am a little
+doubtful whether you keep up your studies at all.”
+
+She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face
+again.
+
+“I don’t like dry things, papa.”
+
+“Nobody does.”
+
+“Nobody!” she exclaimed. “How do the grammars and history-books come to
+be written then?”
+
+In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
+than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection
+in it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding
+old father?
+
+“No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make
+them. Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to
+care for them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what
+you have to learn.”
+
+“What must I do then?” she asked with a sigh. “Must I go all over my
+French Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!”
+
+“If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something
+you don’t like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you
+are fond of?” I continued, finding that she remained silent.
+
+“I don’t know anything in particular--that is, I don’t know anything in
+the way of school-work that I really liked. I don’t mean that I didn’t
+try to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I
+liked--the poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen
+count that silly--don’t they?”
+
+“On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the
+foundation of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing
+God has given us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree about
+what poetry was poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God.
+Now, what poetry do you like best?”
+
+“Mrs. Hemans’s, I think, papa.”
+
+“Well, very well, to begin with. ‘There is,’ as Mr. Carlyle said to a
+friend of mine--‘There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.’
+But it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be.
+Most people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and
+they expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand
+myself, and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable
+enough creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with
+admiration of what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained
+at the cost of expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs.
+Hemans. She is simple enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that
+whatever mental food you take should be just a little too strong for
+you. That implies trouble, necessitates growth, and involves delight.”
+
+“I sha’n’t mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
+anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
+about.”
+
+I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two
+years, and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account
+for my knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on
+talking a little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young
+people only, I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the
+account of what we said to each other; for it might help some of them to
+see that the thing they like best should, circumstances and conscience
+permitting, be made the centre from which they start to learn; that they
+should go on enlarging their knowledge all round from that one point at
+which God intended them to begin. But at length we fell into a silence,
+a very happy one on my part; for I was more than delighted to find that
+this one too of my children was following after the truth--wanting to
+do what was right, namely, to obey the word of the Lord, whether openly
+spoken to all, or to herself in the voice of her own conscience and the
+light of that understanding which is the candle of the Lord. I had often
+said to myself in past years, when I had found myself in the company of
+young ladies who announced their opinions--probably of no deeper origin
+than the prejudices of their nurses--as if these distinguished them from
+all the world besides; who were profound upon passion and ignorant of
+grace; who had not a notion whether a dress was beautiful, but only
+whether it was of the newest cut--I had often said to myself: “What
+shall I do if my daughters come to talk and think like that--if thinking
+it can be called?” but being confident that instruction for which the
+mind is not prepared only lies in a rotting heap, producing all kinds
+of mental evils correspondent to the results of successive loads of
+food which the system cannot assimilate, my hope had been to rouse wise
+questions in the minds of my children, in place of overwhelming their
+digestions with what could be of no instruction or edification without
+the foregoing appetite. Now my Constance had begun to ask me questions,
+and it made me very happy. We had thus come a long way nearer to each
+other; for however near the affection of human animals may bring them,
+there are abysses between soul and soul--the souls even of father and
+daughter--over which they must pass to meet. And I do not believe that
+any two human beings alive know yet what it is to love as love is in the
+glorious will of the Father of lights.
+
+I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
+
+We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path--a brown,
+soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering
+about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of
+underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place.
+There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and
+there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been
+struck by lightning, and had stood till the frosts and rains had bared
+it of its bark. Now it lay white as a skeleton by the side of the path,
+and was, I think, the cause of what followed. All at once my daughter’s
+pony sprang to the other side of the road, shying sideways; unsettled
+her so, I presume; then rearing and plunging, threw her from the saddle
+across one of the logs of which I have spoken. I was by her side in a
+moment. To my horror she lay motionless. Her eyes were closed, and when
+I took her up in my arms she did not open them. I laid her on the moss,
+and got some water and sprinkled her face. Then she revived a little;
+but seemed in much pain, and all at once went off into another faint. I
+was in terrible perplexity.
+
+Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance,
+had seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what
+he could do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had
+thrown over the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask
+Mrs. Walton to come with the carriage as quickly as possible. “Tell
+her,” I said, “that her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is
+rather shaken. Ride as hard as you can go.”
+
+The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child, for
+what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage arrived.
+She had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in her back;
+and, to my distress, I found that she could not move herself enough to
+make the least change of her position. She evidently tried to keep up
+as well as she could; but her face expressed great suffering: it was
+dreadfully pale, and looked worn with a month’s illness. All my fear was
+for her spine.
+
+At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as
+fast as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing the
+coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as Constance,
+but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to determination. I had
+never seen her look like that before. She asked no questions: there was
+time enough for that afterwards. She had brought plenty of cushions
+and pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy couch for the poor
+girl; but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her into the carriage. We
+did our best to keep her from being shaken; but those few miles were the
+longest journey I ever made in my life.
+
+When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
+called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie--for she was named
+after her mother--had got a room on the ground-floor, usually given to
+visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to have to
+carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the groom
+off to Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who had
+settled at Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before,
+was waiting for us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a
+mattress in the position in which she felt the least pain. But why
+should I linger over the sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor
+child’s spine was seriously injured, and that probably years of
+suffering were before her. Everything was done that could be done; but
+she was not moved from that room for nine months, during which, though
+her pain certainly grew less by degrees, her want of power to move
+herself remained almost the same.
+
+When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated
+by her bedside, I called my other two daughters--Wynnie, the eldest, and
+Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside, one
+on each side of the door, weeping--into my study, and said to them: “My
+darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God’s will;
+and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen to your
+lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your sister’s
+part to endure.”
+
+“O, papa! poor Connie!” cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.
+
+Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon
+it.
+
+“Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the
+room?” I asked.
+
+“Please do, papa.”
+
+“She whispered, ‘You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you
+can. I don’t mind it very much, only for you.’ So, you see, if you want
+to make her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick
+people like to see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie
+will not suffer nearly so much if she finds that she does not make the
+household gloomy.”
+
+This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my
+marriage. My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had found
+that it was quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my flock
+who were ill without putting on a long face when I went to see them.
+Of course, I do not mean that I could, or that it was desirable that I
+should, look cheerful when any were in great pain or mental distress.
+But in ordinary conditions of illness a cheerful countenance is as a
+message of _all’s well_, which may surely be carried into a sick chamber
+by the man who believes that the heart of a loving Father is at the
+centre of things, that he is light all about the darkness, and that
+he will not only bring good out of evil at last, but will be with the
+sufferer all the time, making endurance possible, and pain tolerable.
+There are a thousand alleviations that people do not often think of,
+coming from God himself. Would you not say, for instance, that time must
+pass very slowly in pain? But have you never observed, or has no one
+ever made the remark to you, how strangely fast, even in severe pain,
+the time passes after all?
+
+“We will do all we can, will we not,” I went on, “to make her as
+comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little brothers,
+that your mother may not have too much to think about now that she will
+have Connie to nurse.”
+
+They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving
+me to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I
+then returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child had
+fallen asleep.
+
+My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the pain
+had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we could
+allow Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of giving
+her over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the night.
+Her chief suffering came from its being necessary that she should
+keep nearly one position on her back, because of her spine, while the
+external bruise and the swelling of the muscles were in consequence
+so painful, that it needed all that mechanical contrivance could do to
+render the position endurable. But these outward conditions were greatly
+ameliorated before many days were over.
+
+This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
+kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes
+to let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at
+unawares, either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were
+not a good thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before
+I have done my readers will not be sorry that my tale began so gloomily.
+The sickness in Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, or
+thereabouts, has no small part in the story of him who came to put all
+things under our feet. Praise be to him for evermore!
+
+It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more
+sacred heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest
+corners; but soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the gloom.
+I could see that bits of news were carried from it to the servants
+in the kitchen, in the garden, in the stable, and over the way to the
+home-farm. Even in the village, and everywhere over the parish, I was
+received more kindly, and listened to more willingly, because of the
+trouble I and my family were in; while in the house, although we had
+never been anything else than a loving family, it was easy to discover
+that we all drew more closely together in consequence of our common
+anxiety. Previous to this, it had been no unusual thing to see Wynnie
+and Dora impatient with each other; for Dora was none the less a wild,
+somewhat lawless child, that she was a profoundly affectionate one. She
+rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact--whom she called Aunt Judy,
+and with whom she was naturally a great favourite. Wynnie, on the other
+hand, was sedate, and rather severe--more severe, I must in justice say,
+with herself than with anyone else. I had sometimes wished, it is true,
+that her mother, in regard to the younger children, were more like her;
+but there I was wrong. For one of the great goods that come of having
+two parents, is that the one balances and rectifies the motions of the
+other. No one is good but God. No one holds the truth, or can hold it,
+in one and the same thought, but God. Our human life is often, at best,
+but an oscillation between the extremes which together make the truth;
+and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the pendulums of father and
+mother should differ in movement so far, that when the one is at one
+extremity of the swing, the other should be at the other, so that
+they meet only in the point of _indifference_, in the middle; that the
+predominant tendency of the one should not be the predominant tendency
+of the other. I was a very strict disciplinarian--too much so, perhaps,
+sometimes: Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was too much inclined, I
+thought, to excuse everything. I was law, she was grace. But grace often
+yielded to law, and law sometimes yielded to grace. Yet she represented
+the higher; for in the ultimate triumph of grace, in the glad
+performance of the command from love of what is commanded, the law is
+fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. I must say
+this for myself, however, that, although obedience was the one thing
+I enforced, believing it the one thing upon which all family economy
+primarily depends, yet my object always was to set my children free from
+my law as soon as possible; in a word, to help them to become, as soon
+as it might be, a law unto themselves. Then they would need no more of
+mine. Then I would go entirely over to the mother’s higher side, and
+become to them, as much as in me lay, no longer law and truth, but grace
+and truth. But to return to my children--it was soon evident not only
+that Wynnie had grown more indulgent to Dora’s vagaries, but that Dora
+was more submissive to Wynnie, while the younger children began to
+obey their eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their
+effervescence within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in
+the out-houses.
+
+When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
+chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a
+yet stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of
+gentle light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came
+within the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my
+lovely child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He
+cannot regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his.
+A man’s child is his because God has said to him, “Take this child and
+nurse it for me.” She is God’s making; God’s marvellous invention, to be
+tended and cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things;
+a young angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make
+her wings grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other
+children in the same light, and will not dare to set up his own against
+others of God’s brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart
+of truth will thus rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling
+towards one’s own; and the man who is most free from poor partisanship
+in regard to his own family, will feel the most individual tenderness
+for the lovely human creatures whom God has given into his own especial
+care and responsibility. Show me the man who is tender, reverential,
+gracious towards the children of other men, and I will show you the man
+who will love and tend his own best, to whose heart his own will flee
+for their first refuge after God, when they catch sight of the cloud in
+the wind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE SICK CHAMBER.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the
+smile with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the
+morning. Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs
+had not yet even begun to show itself.
+
+One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen
+upon her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and
+said, “Papa,” with a lingering on the last syllable.
+
+“What is it, my pet?” I asked.
+
+“I am so happy!”
+
+“What makes you so happy?” I asked again.
+
+“I don’t know,” she answered. “I haven’t thought about it yet. But
+everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa?
+I’ve forgotten all about how the time has been going.”
+
+“It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the
+trees--just two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away
+down to the rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break
+away, but they can’t.”
+
+“That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get
+away, papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be
+in everybody’s way.--I am afraid I shall not get well, after all,” she
+added, and the light clouded on her sweet face.
+
+“Well, my darling, we are in God’s hands. We shall never get tired of
+you, and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing
+me, if I were ill?”
+
+“O, papa!” And the tears began to gather in her eyes.
+
+“Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you.”
+
+“I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never
+think so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was.”
+
+“There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
+useless. You’ve got plenty to do there.”
+
+“But what have I got to do? I don’t feel able for anything,” she said;
+and again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to
+get up and she could not.
+
+“A great deal of our work,” I answered, “we do without knowing what it
+is. But I’ll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe
+in God, and in everybody in this house.”
+
+“I do, I do. But that is easy to do,” she returned.
+
+“And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
+says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to
+do God’s work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they
+cannot believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad
+pride in it: it may be because they think that there is little or no
+honour to be got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again
+accept it with half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however
+easy any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought
+about it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work,
+generally take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done
+any more than in yesterday. The Holy Present!--I think I must make one
+more sermon about it--although you, Connie,” I said, meaning it for a
+little joke, “do think that I have said too much about it already.”
+
+“Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to
+you as I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was
+impertinent.”
+
+“You silly darling!” I said. “A judgment! God be angry with you for
+that! Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think
+God has no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much
+more likely. You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something
+to do.”
+
+“Lying in bed and doing nothing!”
+
+“Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will.”
+
+“If I could but feel that I was doing his will!”
+
+“When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it.”
+
+“I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my
+back is getting so bad.”
+
+“I’ve tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you
+the rest another time,” I said, rising.
+
+“No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now.”
+
+“Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won’t be long. In
+the time of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant
+children to do something for him in that way, poor people were told to
+bring, not a bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get,
+but a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw
+the poet says, ‘Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.’ God wanted
+to teach people to offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you
+cannot offer yourself in great things done for your fellow-men, which
+was the way Jesus did. But you must remember that the two young pigeons
+of the poor were just as acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the
+rich. Therefore you must say to God something like this:--‘O heavenly
+Father, I have nothing to offer thee but my patience. I will bear thy
+will, and so offer my will a burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as
+useless as thou pleasest.’ Depend upon it, my darling, in the midst of
+all the science about the world and its ways, and all the ignorance of
+God and his greatness, the man or woman who can thus say, _Thy will be
+done_, with the true heart of giving up is nearer the secret of things
+than the geologist and theologian. And now, my darling, be quiet in
+God’s name.”
+
+She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
+sent Dora to sit with her.
+
+In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
+parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
+Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them
+in her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we
+must cram her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the
+commonwealth sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving
+messages in return. I might call her the brain of the house; but I have
+used similes enough for a while.
+
+After I had done talking, she said--
+
+“And you have been to the school too, papa?”
+
+“Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as
+ours the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I
+had made a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home.”
+
+“I heard of that, papa. You won’t let any of the little ones go to
+school on the Sunday.”
+
+“No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
+necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
+something direct for the little ones.”
+
+“And you’ll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know,
+papa--just before Sprite threw me.”
+
+“As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again.”
+
+“O, you must begin before that, please.--You could spare time to read a
+little to me, couldn’t you?” she said doubtfully, as if she feared she
+was asking too much.
+
+“Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once.”
+
+It was in part the result of this wish of my child’s that it became the
+custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable
+for any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her,
+but I used to take something to read to her every now and then, and
+always after our early tea on Sundays.
+
+What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find
+out and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good!
+Such a centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and
+imaginations! It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ
+for the centre of humanity.
+
+In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
+following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed
+at some of these assemblies in my child’s room, in the hope that it may
+give my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God
+has so made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must
+be more or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the
+gift of setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.
+
+I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am
+about to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say,
+to teach them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will
+share in the delight it will give me to write about what I love most.
+
+As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class
+began. I was sitting by Constance’s bed. The fire was burning brightly,
+and the twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected
+back from the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was
+no light in the room but that of the fire.
+
+Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night
+it was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she.
+Her heart seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world
+around her. To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and
+news of poetic interest too. “What is it like?” she would often say,
+without any more definite shaping of the question. This same evening she
+said:
+
+“What is it like, papa?”
+
+“It is growing dark,” I answered, “as you can see. It is a still
+evening, and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as
+still as if they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere
+if the wind were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were
+of cast iron. A gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were
+something upon its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars
+are coming out one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake
+soon. A strange thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The
+life of owlets, and mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars,” I
+said, with no very categorical arrangement, “and dreams, and flowers
+that don’t go to sleep like the rest, but send out their scent all night
+long. Only those are gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of
+the earth in such a frost as this.”
+
+“Don’t you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on
+the world, or went farther away from it for a while?”
+
+“Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie.”
+
+“Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
+been describing to me, isn’t like God at all--is it?”
+
+“No, it is not. I see what you mean now.”
+
+“It is just as if he had gone away and said, ‘Now you shall see what you
+can do without me.’
+
+“Something like that. But do you know that English people--at least I
+think so--enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon
+the whole than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is
+not enough to satisfy God’s goodness that he should give us all things
+richly to enjoy, but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he
+gives them. He has to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of
+the gift. He has to make us able to take the gift and make it our own,
+as well as to give us the gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the
+full, that is, the divine, meaning of giving, without it. He has to give
+us to the gift as well as give the gift to us. Now for this, a break,
+an interruption is good, is invaluable, for then we begin to think about
+the thing, and do something in the matter ourselves. The wonder of God’s
+teaching is that, in great part, he makes us not merely learn, but teach
+ourselves, and that is far grander than if he only made our minds as he
+makes our bodies.”
+
+“I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
+wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the
+world out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I
+could go about in it just as I liked.”
+
+“It wouldn’t do that, though, you know, if you hadn’t had the other
+first. The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my
+news.”
+
+“I see that, papa.”
+
+“Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
+saying?”
+
+“I don’t know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes
+into my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about
+Milton’s blindness.”
+
+“Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
+wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that
+he might be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the
+point--given him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread
+of a single day, only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys;
+then placed him at Cromwell’s side, in the midst of the tumultuous
+movement of public affairs, into which the late student entered with all
+his heart and soul; and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine
+darkness over him, sent him into a chamber far more retired than that in
+which he laboured at Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing
+darkling. The blackness about him was just the great canvas which God
+gave him to cover with forms of light and music. Deep wells of memory
+burst upwards from below; the windows of heaven were opened from above;
+from both rushed the deluge of song which flooded his soul, and which he
+has poured out in a great river to us.”
+
+“It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn’t it, papa?”
+
+“Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
+sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
+undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with _such_ blindness
+as Milton’s?”
+
+“Those that do not care about his poetry, papa,” answered Constance,
+with a deprecatory smile.
+
+“Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
+God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can’t love one
+you know nothing about.”
+
+“I have tried to read him a little.”
+
+“Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you
+had never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But
+you and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of
+what we had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?”
+
+“Not the least, papa. You don’t mind what I said about Milton?”
+
+“Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much
+if you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him
+was more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him.”
+
+“O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him.”
+
+“There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of
+appreciating him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen.
+You think of him as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry
+things. Now he is not dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry
+things. You have a figure before you in your fancy, which is dry, and
+which you call Milton. But it is no more Milton than your dull-faced
+Dutch doll, which you called after her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But
+here comes your mamma; and I haven’t said what I wanted to say yet.”
+
+“But surely, husband, you can say it all the same,” said my wife. “I
+will go away if you can’t.”
+
+“I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me.
+I was trying to show Connie--”
+
+“You did show me, papa.”
+
+“Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
+again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right.”
+
+Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
+Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
+
+“And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
+history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
+him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too
+much revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long
+enough. They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as
+soon as he said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that
+he had not come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over
+again after their own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own
+worldly notions of grandeur and command, that they could not receive
+into their souls the gift of God present before their eyes. Therefore he
+was taken away, that his Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily
+presence, might come into them--that they might receive the gift of God
+into their innermost being. After he had gone out of their sight, and
+they might look all around and down in the grave and up in the air, and
+not see him anywhere--when they thought they had lost him, he began to
+come to them again from the other side--from the inside. They found that
+the image of him which his presence with them had printed in light upon
+their souls, began to revive in the dark of his absence; and not that
+only, but that in looking at it without the overwhelming of his bodily
+presence, lines and forms and meanings began to dawn out of it which
+they had never seen before. And his words came back to them, no longer
+as they had received them, but as he meant them. The spirit of Christ
+filling their hearts and giving them new power, made them remember, by
+making them able to understand, all that he had said to them. They were
+then always saying to each other, ‘You remember how;’ whereas before,
+they had been always staring at each other with astonishment and
+something very near incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after
+he had gone away, he was really nearer to them than he had been before.
+The meaning of anything is more than its visible presence. There is a
+soul in everything, and that soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the
+world and all its beauty has come nearer to you, my dear, just because
+you are separated from it for a time.”
+
+“Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself
+now and then. That is another good of being ill.”
+
+“You don’t mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?” said my
+wife, smiling at her daughter’s pleasure.
+
+“O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say
+by this time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to
+yourself.”
+
+“Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful
+of sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I
+should be sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say
+by this time next year.”
+
+“Well, papa, I wish I could be sure of knowing more next year.”
+
+“Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of
+learning is very different in the two cases.”
+
+“But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should
+not know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him--as
+he came to the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long
+ago.”
+
+“As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
+thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
+understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer
+that if he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I
+believe we should be further off it.”
+
+“Do you think, then,” said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if
+I were the prophet of great evil, “that we shall never, never, never see
+him?”
+
+“That is _quite_ another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my hopes
+by day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to me
+the one thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for;
+but I think it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as
+ever we are capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I
+think, what is meant by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a
+consequence of his spirit in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us.
+The pure in heart shall see God. The seeing of him will be the sign that
+we are like him, for only by being like him can we see him as he is. All
+the time that he was with them, the disciples never saw him as he was.
+You must understand a man before you can see and read his face aright;
+and as the disciples did not understand our Lord’s heart, they could
+neither see nor read his face aright. But when we shall be fit to look
+that man in the face, God only knows.”
+
+“Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know
+him better than the disciples? I don’t mean, of course, better than they
+knew him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew
+him while he was still with them?”
+
+“Certainly I do, my dear.”
+
+“O, papa! Is it possible? Why don’t we all, then?”
+
+“Because we won’t take the trouble; that is the reason.”
+
+“O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living--worth being
+ill for. But how? how? Can’t you help me? Mayn’t one human being help
+another?”
+
+“It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever
+wants to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey--that is
+simply, do what Jesus says.”
+
+There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing.
+And the tears stood in; my wife’s eyes--tears of gladness to hear her
+daughter’s sobs.
+
+“I will try, papa,” Constance said at last. “But you _will_ help me?”
+
+“That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying
+to tell you what I have heard and learned about him--heard and learned
+of the Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time when
+he was born;--but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to bear
+to-night.”
+
+“No, no, papa. Do go on.”
+
+“No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
+truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday--you
+have plenty to think about till then--I will talk to you about the baby
+Jesus; and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that time,
+besides what I have got to say now.”
+
+“But,” said my wife, “don’t you think, Connie, this is too good to keep
+all to ourselves? Don’t you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?”
+
+“Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too.”
+
+“I fear they are rather young yet,” I said. “Perhaps it might do them
+harm.”
+
+“It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow,” said Ethelwyn,
+smiling.
+
+“How do you mean, my dear?”
+
+“Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you.
+Besides, you always say such things to children as delight grown people,
+though they could never get them out of you.”
+
+It was a wife’s speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
+
+“Well,” I said, “I don’t mind them coming in, but I don’t promise to say
+anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
+wish it.”
+
+“Certainly,” answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
+church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took
+care to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might
+be quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my
+Bible in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a
+glorious fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on
+the rug before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the
+further side of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she
+thought another might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner,
+leaving the space between the fire and my chair open that I might see
+and share the glow.
+
+“The wind is very high, papa,” said Constance, as I seated myself beside
+her.
+
+“Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has
+blown harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?”
+
+“I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
+shakes the windows with a great rush as if it _would_ get into the house
+and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
+grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us
+with fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very
+jaws of danger.”
+
+“Why, you are quite poetic, Connie,” said Wynnie.
+
+“Don’t laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I’m an invalid, and I can’t bear to be
+laughed at,” returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more
+than a quarter crying.
+
+Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her
+laugh outright, and then sat down again.
+
+“But tell me, Connie,” I said, “why you are _afraid_ you enjoy hearing
+the wind about the house.”
+
+“Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it.”
+
+“Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
+forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out
+in the wind.”
+
+“But if we thought like that, papa,” said Wynnie, “shouldn’t we come to
+feel that their sufferings were none of our business?”
+
+“If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we,
+it will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie.”
+
+“Of course, I could not think that,” she returned.
+
+“Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God’s name,
+think hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing
+in his kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God
+intended that there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If
+he did not intend it--for similar reasons to those for which he allows
+all sorts of evils--then there is nothing between but that we should
+sell everything that we have and give it away to the poor.”
+
+“Then why don’t we?” said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.
+
+“Because that is not God’s way, and we should do no end of harm by so
+doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
+who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We
+are not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object--not
+to save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more
+danger than God meant for them.”
+
+“It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa,” said Wynnie.
+
+“Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
+kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the
+one thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course
+everyone ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading
+of in the papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without
+making the least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her
+labour for the coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death,
+would hug his own selfishness on hearing my words, and say, ‘All right,
+parson! Every man for himself! I made my own money, and they may make
+theirs!’ _You_ know that is not exactly the way I should think or act
+with regard to my neighbour. But if it were only that I have seen such
+noble characters cast in the mould of poverty, I should be compelled
+to regard poverty as one of God’s powers in the world for raising the
+children of the kingdom, and to believe that it was not because it could
+not be helped that our Lord said, ‘The poor ye have always with you.’
+But what I wanted to say was, that there can be no reason why Connie
+should not enjoy what God has given her, although he has not thought
+fit to give as much to everybody; and above all, that we shall not help
+those right whom God gives us to help, if we do not believe that God is
+caring for every one of them as much as he is caring for every one of
+us. There was once a baby born in a stable, because his poor mother
+could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay I can hardly think.
+They must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in the stall, for we
+know the baby’s cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken them? or would
+they not have been more _comfortable_, if that was the main thing,
+somewhere else? Ah! if the disciples, who were being born about the same
+time of fisher-fathers and cottage-mothers, to get ready for him to call
+and teach by the time he should be thirty years of age--if they had only
+been old enough, and had known that he was coming--would they not have
+got everything ready for him? They would have clubbed their little
+savings together, and worked day and night, and some rich women would
+have helped them, and they would have dressed the baby in fine linen,
+and got him the richest room their money would get, and they would have
+made the gold that the wise men brought into a crown for his little
+head, and would have burnt the frankincense before him. And so our
+little manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No more the
+stable-born Saviour--no more the poor Son of God born for us all, as
+strong, as noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor!
+And we should not have learned that God does not care for money; that
+if he does not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or
+that he is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent
+his own son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of
+a little village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need
+not suppose because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison
+for it next day, that God does not care for him.”
+
+“But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?”
+
+“That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished
+by this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
+mother’s love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
+first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie
+not in these external things at all--that the poorest little one, born
+in the meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God’s own and
+God’s care as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all
+about him. Had Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been
+more worshipped than ever. See how so many that count themselves good
+Christians honour possession and family and social rank, and I doubt
+hardly get rid of them when they are all swept away from them. The
+furthest most of such reach is to count Jesus an exception, and
+therefore not despise him. See how, even in the services of the church,
+as they call them, they will accumulate gorgeousness and cost. Had I
+my way, though I will never seek to rouse men’s thoughts about such
+external things, I would never have any vessel used in the eucharist but
+wooden platters and wooden cups.”
+
+“But are we not to serve him with our best?” said my wife.
+
+“Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
+being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of
+his revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth
+in homely fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that
+enforces and commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on
+the other side from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent
+houses for God’s poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of
+silver and gold and precious stones--stealing from the significance of
+the _content_ by the meretricious grandeur of the _continent_. I would
+send all the church-plate to fight the devil with his own weapons in our
+overcrowded cities, and in our villages where the husbandmen are housed
+like swine, by giving them room to be clean and decent air from heaven
+to breathe. When the people find the clergy thus in earnest, they will
+follow them fast enough, and the money will come in like salt and oil
+upon the sacrifice. I would there were a few of our dignitaries that
+could think grandly about things, even as Jesus thought--even as God
+thought when he sent him. There are many of them willing to stand any
+amount of persecution about trifles: the same enthusiasm directed by
+high thoughts about the kingdom of heaven as within men and not around
+them, would redeem a vast region from that indifference which comes of
+judging the gospel of God by the church of Christ with its phylacteries
+and hems.”
+
+“There is one thing,” said Wynnie, after a pause, “that I have often
+thought about--why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he
+could not do anything for so long.”
+
+“First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
+necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary
+for me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I
+would say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long?
+Does a baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the
+mother lifts up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her
+knee? Is it nothing that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost
+all the hearts around? Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to
+do with the saving of the world--the saving of it from selfishness, and
+folly, and greed. And for Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign
+of love in the earth? How could he do better than begin from babyhood?
+He had to lay hold of the heart of the world. How could he do better
+than begin with his mother’s--the best one in it. Through his mother’s
+love first, he grew into the world. It was first by the door of all the
+holy relations of the family that he entered the human world, laying
+hold of mother, father, brothers, sisters, all his friends; then by the
+door of labour, for he took his share of his father’s work; then, when
+he was thirty years of age, by the door of teaching; by kind deeds, and
+sufferings, and through all by obedience unto the death. You must not
+think little of the grand thirty years wherein he got ready for
+the chief work to follow. You must not think that while he was thus
+preparing for his public ministrations, he was not all the time saving
+the world even by that which he was in the midst of it, ever laying hold
+of it more and more. These were things not so easy to tell. And you must
+remember that our records are very scanty. It is a small biography we
+have of a man who became--to say nothing more--the Man of the world--the
+Son of Man. No doubt it is enough, or God would have told us more; but
+surely we are not to suppose that there was nothing significant, nothing
+of saving power in that which we are not told.--Charlie, wouldn’t you
+have liked to see the little baby Jesus?”
+
+“Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
+eyes.”
+
+“That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for
+he has painted him playing with a white rabbit,--not such a pretty one
+as yours.”
+
+“I would have carried him about all day,” said Dora, “as little Henny
+Parsons does her baby-brother.”
+
+“Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?” asked
+Harry.
+
+“No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he
+carried about his brothers and sisters that came after him.”
+
+“Wouldn’t he take care of them, just!” said Charlie.
+
+“I wish I had been one of them,” said Constance.
+
+“You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that
+he can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom.”
+
+Then we sung a child’s hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
+the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her
+with Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
+
+About midnight my wife and I awoke together--at least neither knew which
+waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with lulls
+between its charges.
+
+“There’s a child crying!” said my wife, starting up.
+
+I sat up too, and listened.
+
+“There is some creature,” I granted.
+
+“It is an infant,” insisted my wife. “It can’t be either of the boys.”
+
+I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried
+on some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so.
+We seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in
+the lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night
+was pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house
+till I came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it,
+but not so clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the
+direction of the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only
+a few yards around me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through
+every chink, and threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my
+side before I knew she was coming.
+
+“My dear!” I said, “it is not fit for you to be out.”
+
+“It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow,” she said. “Do listen.”
+
+It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
+Ethelwyn’s bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though
+she was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
+
+Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner
+of the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much
+nearer to it. Searching and searching we went.
+
+“There it is!” Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the
+lantern fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at
+it. It gave another pitiful wail--the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up
+in a dirty, ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it
+had been a parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house,
+and I followed, much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and
+fall. I could hardly get up with her, so eager was she to save the
+child. She darted up to her own room, where the fire was not yet out.
+
+“Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
+there--you can empty them in the sink: you won’t know where to find
+anything. There will be plenty in the boiler.”
+
+By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child’s
+covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before
+the fire. The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and
+motionless. We had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as
+if I had been a nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
+
+“Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child.”
+
+“You made me throw away the cold water,” I said, laughing.
+
+“There’s some in the bottles,” she returned. “Make haste.”
+
+I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
+Ethelwyn.
+
+“The child will be dead,” she cried, “before we get it in the water.”
+
+She had its rags off in a moment--there was very little to remove after
+the shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully neglected!
+It was a girl--not more than a few weeks old, we agreed. Her little
+heart was still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made, apparently
+healthy infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we were not
+disappointed. She began to move her little legs and arms with short,
+convulsive motions.
+
+“Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?” asked my wife, with no great
+compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
+were beyond the average in development.
+
+“I think I do,” I answered.
+
+“Could you tell which was this night’s milk, now?”
+
+“There will be less cream on it,” I answered.
+
+“Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I’ve got some sugar
+here. I wish we had a bottle.”
+
+I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
+lying on her lap clean and dry--a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went on
+talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
+specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got
+her to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing
+fell fast asleep.
+
+Ethelwyn’s nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know
+where her baby’s clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a
+wardrobe in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on.
+I could not understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be
+indued with little chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not
+know what all, requiring a world of nice care, and a hundred turnings
+to and fro, now on its little stomach, now on its back, now sitting up,
+now lying down, when it would have slept just as well, and I venture to
+think much more comfortably, if laid in blankets and well covered over.
+But I had never ventured to interfere with any of my own children,
+devoutly believing up to this moment, though in a dim unquestioning way,
+that there must be some hidden feminine wisdom in the whole process;
+and now that I had begun to question it, I found that my opportunity
+had long gone by, if I had ever had one. And after all there may be some
+reason for it, though I confess I do strongly suspect that all these
+matters are so wonderfully complicated in order that the girl left in
+the woman may have her heart’s content of playing with her doll; just
+as the woman hid in the girl expends no end of lovely affection upon
+the dull stupidity of wooden cheeks and a body of sawdust. But it was a
+delight to my heart to see how Ethelwyn could not be satisfied without
+treating the foundling in precisely the same fashion as one of her own.
+And if this was a necessary preparation for what, should follow, I would
+be the very last to complain of it.
+
+We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal
+mother, now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in
+my Ethelwyn’s bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it
+would have been very painful to me had she shown it possible for her
+to treat the baby otherwise, especially after what we had been talking
+about that same evening.
+
+So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about
+it but ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the
+going and coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good
+laugh over the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
+
+“Pray for the poor thing, Harry,” she sobbed, “before you come to bed.”
+
+I knelt down, and said:
+
+“O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to
+us as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee.
+Take thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to
+order our ways towards her.”
+
+Then I said to Ethelwyn,
+
+“We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
+sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
+sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother.
+Mind you go to sleep.”
+
+“I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night,” she returned.
+
+I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I
+had a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell
+or not. We slept soundly--God’s baby and all.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MY DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
+beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those
+who are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when
+they can associate it with something else with which they are familiar.
+Such do not care to see that the thing with which they associate it
+may be as mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys
+marvel, it cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is
+just as wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
+
+In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
+clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
+another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an
+old man’s prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked
+about for a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams
+there is an immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow
+stone lying a few yards from me. I wondered how it could have come
+there, for there were no mountains or rocks near: the field was part of
+a level country. Carelessly, I sat down upon it astride, and watched the
+setting of the sun. Somehow I fancied that his light was more sorrowful
+than the light of the setting sun should be, and I began to feel very
+heavy at the heart. No sooner had the last brilliant spark of his
+light vanished, than I felt the stone under me begin to move. With the
+inactivity of a dreamer, however, I did not care to rise, but wondered
+only what would come next. My seat, after several strange tumbling
+motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and then I found that
+I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse--a skeleton horse almost, only he
+had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain, as if his joints
+were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the direction in
+which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, I never thought of
+dismounting. I was going on to meet what might come. Slowly, feebly,
+trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and as he went his
+joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little faster. All at
+once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that we were on
+the borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me, and the
+moor grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always
+recovering himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise
+no more, but as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface
+became a little smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted
+till he reached a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell
+into what was plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were
+low and covered with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the
+place of mounds. Gravestones lay in every position except the level or
+the upright, and broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My
+horse bore me into the midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he
+had risen, he lay down again. Once more I was astride of a long narrow
+stone. And now I found that it was an ancient gravestone which I knew
+well in a certain Sussex churchyard, the top of it carved into the rough
+resemblance of a human skeleton--that of a man, tradition said, who had
+been killed by a serpent that came out of a bottomless pool in the next
+field. How long I sat there I do not know; but at last I saw the faint
+gray light of morning begin to appear in front of me. The horse of death
+had carried me eastward. The dawn grew over the top of a hill that here
+rose against the horizon. But it was a wild dreary dawn--a blot of gray
+first, which then stretched into long lines of dreary yellow and gray,
+looking more like a blasted and withered sunset than a fresh sunrise.
+And well it suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if churchyard
+I ought to call it where no church was to be seen--only a vast hideous
+square of graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the flat
+stone of which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat
+with my eyes fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the
+middle closed, then widened again as the two halves of the stone were
+lifted up, and flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door.
+From the grave rose a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as
+if he had just come from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung
+the stones apart, and as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me,
+they remained outspread from the action for a moment, as if blessing the
+sleeping people. Then he came towards me with the same smile, and took
+my hand. I rose, and he led me away over another broken wall towards the
+hill that lay before us. And as we went the sun came nearer, the pale
+yellow bars flushed into orange and rosy red, till at length the edges
+of the clouds were swept with an agony of golden light, which even my
+dreamy eyes could not endure, and I awoke weeping for joy.
+
+This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:
+
+“What is the matter, husband?”
+
+So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.
+
+“It was this little darling that set you dreaming so,” she said, and
+turning, put the baby in my arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE NEW BABY.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
+household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie
+was heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
+
+“Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn’t it jolly?”
+
+“Where did she get it?” cried Harry in return.
+
+“In the parsley-bed, I suppose,” answered Charlie, and was nearer right
+than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had
+no doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
+
+But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of
+the family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their
+curiosity being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was
+exemplified that confusion of the intellectual being which is produced
+by the witness of incontestable truth to a thing incredible--in which
+case the probability always is, that the incredibility results from
+something in the mind of the hearer falsely associated with and
+disturbing the true perception of the thing to which witness is borne.
+
+Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
+parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had.
+And seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met
+with from everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked
+questions. And that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good
+gift of God. Ask what questions you will, but when you see that the gift
+is a good one, make sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for
+you to ask questions afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the
+more ready you will be to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
+
+The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
+began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
+frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was
+not Ethelwyn’s baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
+
+“Of course, you’ll give information to the police,” said, I am sorry to
+say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to
+be a magistrate as well.
+
+“Why?” I asked.
+
+“Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure.”
+
+“Wouldn’t it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
+easy to suspect it?” I asked. “And just think what it would be to give
+the baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her
+mother. But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don’t say I would
+refuse her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had
+once abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don’t
+want the parents.”
+
+“But you don’t want the child.”
+
+“How do you know that?” I returned--rather rudely, I am afraid, for I
+am easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless--about children
+especially.
+
+“O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one
+has a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people.”
+
+“That is just what I thought I was doing,” I answered; but he went on
+without heeding my reply--
+
+“We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not
+so fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother’s keeper.”
+
+“And my sister’s too,” I answered. “And if the question lies between
+keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that,
+I venture to choose for myself.”
+
+“She ought to go to the workhouse,” said the magistrate--a friendly,
+good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and
+departed.
+
+
+This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame.
+Which? _I_ say the latter.
+
+Some of Ethelwyn’s friends were no less positive about her duty in the
+affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one
+of them--Miss Bowdler.
+
+“But, my dear Mrs. Walton,” she was saying, “you’ll be having all the
+tramps in England leaving their babies at your door.”
+
+“The better for the babies,” interposed I, laughing.
+
+“But you don’t think of your wife, Mr. Walton.”
+
+“Don’t I? I thought I did,” I returned dryly.
+
+“Depend upon it, you’ll repent it.”
+
+“I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad.”
+
+“Ah! but, really! it’s not a thing to be made game of.”
+
+“Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
+house.”
+
+“What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough.”
+
+“As well as I choose to know--certainly,” I answered.
+
+This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for
+which she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating
+belief in the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head
+can be counted as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a
+half-comic, half-anxious look, and said:
+
+“But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
+we couldn’t go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
+stepping on a baby on the door-step.”
+
+“You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, ‘If God
+should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?’ He who sent us
+this one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come.
+All that we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of
+doing right. But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that
+wandering mothers have not even the attachment of animals to their
+offspring. There are not so many that are willing to part with babies as
+all that would come to. If you believe that God sent this one, that is
+enough for the present. If he should send another, we should know by
+that that we had to take it in.”
+
+My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
+well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
+babies--that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and nurses
+and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for what
+I believed than what I saw--that was all I could pretend to discover.
+But even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to allow
+before three months were over that little Theodora--for we turned the
+name of my youngest daughter upside down for her--“was a proper child.”
+ To none, however, did she seem to bring so much delight as to our dear
+Constance. Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I found the
+sleepy, useless little thing lying beside her on the bed, and her
+staring at it with such loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but it
+came at last to be called Connie’s Dora, or Miss Connie’s baby, all over
+the house, and nothing pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this did
+her old nurse take quite kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as
+an interloper, who had no right to the tenderness which was lavished
+upon her. But she had no sooner given in than the baby began to grow
+dear to her as well as to the rest. In fact, the house was ere long
+full of nurses. The staff included everyone but myself, who only
+occasionally, at the entreaty of some one or other of the younger ones,
+took her in my arms.
+
+But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude,
+all centering round the question in what manner the child was to
+be brought up. Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as
+Ethelwyn constantly reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I
+could not discover the principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can
+tell how soon a principle in such a case will begin, even unconsciously,
+to operate; and the danger was that the moment when it ought to begin to
+operate would be long past before the principle was discovered, except
+I did what I could now to find it out. I had again and again to remind
+myself that there was no cause for anxiety; for that I might certainly
+claim the enlightenment which all who want to do right are sure to
+receive; but still I continued uneasy just from feeling a vacancy where
+a principle ought to have been.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress--in the
+recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
+remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
+regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
+interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how
+I came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to
+keep before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
+remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
+from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might
+be turned aside would not trouble me.
+
+We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
+Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east,
+and the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the
+children to rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and,
+believing that the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the
+faculties for aiding the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them
+questions as to what they thought he might have said or done in ordinary
+family occurrences, thus giving a reality in their minds to this part
+of his history, and trying to rouse in them a habit of referring their
+conduct to the standard of his. If we do not thus employ our imagination
+on sacred things, his example can be of no use to us except in exactly
+corresponding circumstances--and when can such occur from one end to
+another of our lives? The very effort to think how he would have done,
+is a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and, even if the conclusion
+arrived at should not be correct from lack of sufficient knowledge of
+his character and principles, it will be better than any that can be
+arrived at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking of such questions
+gave me good opportunity, through the answers they returned, of seeing
+what their notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus of discovering
+how to help the dawn of the light in their growing minds. Nor let anyone
+fear that such employment of the divine gift of imagination will lead to
+foolish vagaries and useless inventions; while the object is to discover
+the right way--the truth--there is little danger of that. Besides, there
+I was to help hereby in the actual training of their imaginations to
+truth and wisdom. To aid in this, I told them some of the stories that
+were circulated about him in the early centuries of the church, but
+which the church has rejected as of no authority; and I showed them how
+some of them could not be true, because they were so unlike those words
+and actions which we had the best of reasons for receiving as true; and
+how one or two of them might be true--though, considering the company in
+which we found them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them.
+And such wise things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous
+how children can reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances
+are sometimes entirely concordant with the results arrived at through
+years of thought by the earnest mind--results which no mind would ever
+arrive at save by virtue of the child-like in it.
+
+Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus
+in the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by
+dwelling a little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from
+group to group of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem
+and asking every fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy,
+till at length they were in great trouble when they could not find him
+even in Jerusalem. Then came the delight of his mother when she did find
+him at last, and his answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered
+over the simple story, my children had put many questions to me about
+Jesus being a boy, and not seeming to know things which, if he was God,
+he must have known, they thought. To some of these I had just to reply
+that I did not understand myself, and therefore could not teach them; to
+others, that I could explain them, but that they were not yet, some of
+them, old enough to receive and understand my explanation; while others
+I did my best to answer as simply as I could. But at this point we
+arrived at a question put by Wynnie, to answer which aright I considered
+of the greatest importance. Wynnie said:
+
+“That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled
+me, papa.”
+
+“What is, my dear?” I said; for although I thought I knew well enough
+what she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for
+her own sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand
+the difficulty much better if she presented it herself.
+
+“I mean that he spoke to his mother--”
+
+“Why don’t you say _mamma_, Wynnie?” said Charlie. “She was his own
+mamma, wasn’t she, papa?”
+
+“Yes, my dear; but don’t you know that the shoemaker’s children down in
+the village always call their mamma _mother_?”
+
+“Yes; but they are shoemaker’s children.”
+
+“Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
+carpenter. He called his mamma, _mother_. But, Charlie, _mother_ is the
+more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. _Lady_ is a
+very pretty word; but _woman_ is a very beautiful word. Just so with
+_mamma_ and _mother_. _Mamma_ is pretty, but _mother_ is beautiful.”
+
+“Why don’t we always say _mother_ then?”
+
+“Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for
+Sundays--that is, for the more solemn times of life. We don’t want it to
+get common to us with too much use. We may think it as much as we
+like; thinking does not spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and
+especially beautiful words. Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was
+saying.”
+
+“I was saying, papa, that I can’t help feeling as if--I know it can’t be
+true--but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he said
+that to her.”
+
+I looked at the page and read the words, “How is it that ye sought me?
+wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” And I sat silent
+for a while.
+
+“Why don’t you speak, papa?” said Harry.
+
+“I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry,” I said. “Long after I was
+your age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as
+they now trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me
+so lovely that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact
+that they troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall.
+I can hardly see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me.
+And why is that? Simply because I understand them now, and I did not
+understand them then. I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof;
+now I hear them as uttered with a tone of loving surprise. But really I
+cannot feel sure what it was that I did not like. And I am confident
+it is so with a great many things that we reject. We reject them simply
+because we do not understand them. Therefore, indeed, we cannot with
+truth be said to reject them at all. It is some false appearance that
+we reject. Some of the grandest things in the whole realm of truth
+look repellent to us, and we turn away from them, simply because we are
+not--to use a familiar phrase--we are not up to them. They appear to us,
+therefore, to be what they are not. Instruction sounds to the proud
+man like reproof; illumination comes on the vain man like scorn; the
+manifestation of a higher condition of motive and action than his own,
+falls on the self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is consciousness
+and conscience working together that produce this impression; the result
+is from the man himself, not from the higher source. From the truth
+comes the power, but the shape it assumes to the man is from the man
+himself.”
+
+“You are quite beyond me now, papa,” said Wynnie.
+
+“Well, my dear,” I answered, “I will return to the words of the boy
+Jesus, instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you
+what they mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about
+them is all and altogether an illusion.”
+
+“There is one thing first,” said Connie, “that I want to understand. You
+said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
+surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything.”
+
+“He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
+even _he_ did not know one thing--only the Father knew it.”
+
+“But how could that be if he was God?”
+
+“My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I
+should understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have
+been perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in
+the Father. And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect
+knowledge was not necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute
+obedience, utter holiness. There is a great tendency in our sinful
+natures to put knowledge and power on a level with goodness. It was one
+of the lessons of our Lord’s life that they are not so; that the one
+grand thing in humanity is faith in God; that the highest in God is his
+truth, his goodness, his rightness. But if Jesus was a real man, and no
+mere appearance of a man, is it any wonder that, with a heart full to
+the brim of the love of God, he should be for a moment surprised that
+his mother, whom he loved so dearly, the best human being he knew,
+should not have taken it as a matter of course that if he was not with
+her, he must be doing something his Father wanted him to do? For this is
+just what his answer means. To turn it into the ordinary speech of our
+day, it is just this: ‘Why did you look for me? Didn’t you know that I
+must of course be doing something my Father had given me to do?’ Just
+think of the quiet sweetness of confidence in this. And think what a
+life his must have been up to that twelfth year of his, that such an
+expostulation with his mother was justified. It must have had reference
+to a good many things that had passed before then, which ought to have
+been sufficient to make Mary conclude that her missing boy must be about
+God’s business somewhere. If her heart had been as full of God and God’s
+business as his, she would not have been in the least uneasy about
+him. And here is the lesson of his whole life: it was all his Father’s
+business. The boy’s mind and hands were full of it. The man’s mind and
+hands were full of it. And the risen conqueror was full of it still. For
+the Father’s business is everything, and includes all work that is worth
+doing. We may say in a full grand sense, that there is nothing but the
+Father and his business.”
+
+“But we have so many things to do that are not his business,” said
+Wynnie, with a sigh of oppression.
+
+“Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
+not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want
+of spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things--the
+will of God in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so
+irksome to us. Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination
+and deep thought, to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with
+some slight remark, thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is
+because he is commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so
+little of the divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise
+the spiritual meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will
+of God, in the things required of us, though they are full of it. But
+if we do them we shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see
+what is in them. The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in
+its heart.”
+
+“I wish he would tell me something to do,” said Charlie. “Wouldn’t I do
+it!”
+
+I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure
+was at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.
+
+“But look here, Wynnie; listen to this,” I said, “‘And he went down with
+them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.’ Was that not
+doing his Father’s business too? Was it not doing the business of his
+Father in heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he
+knew that his days would not be long in that land? Did not his whole
+teaching, his whole doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the
+Father and surely it was doing his Father’s business then to obey his
+parents--to serve them, to be subject to them. It is true that the
+business God gives a man to do may be said to be the peculiar walk in
+life into which he is led, but that is only as distinguishing it from
+another man’s peculiar business. God gives us all our business, and the
+business which is common to humanity is more peculiarly God’s business
+than that which is one man’s and not another’s--because it lies nearer
+the root, and is essential. It does not matter whether a man is a farmer
+or a physician, but it greatly matters whether he is a good son, a good
+husband, and so on. O my children!” I said, “if the world could but be
+brought to believe--the world did I say?--if the best men in the world
+could only see, as God sees it, that service is in itself the noblest
+exercise of human powers, if they could see that God is the hardest
+worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do the most service,
+surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church. Menial offices,
+for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that contempt
+which shows that there is no true recognition of the fact that the same
+principle runs through the highest duty and the lowest--that the
+lowest work which God gives a man to do must be in its nature noble, as
+certainly noble as the highest. This would destroy condescension, which
+is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the higher, as it would destroy
+insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower. He who recognised the
+dignity of his own lower office, would thereby recognise the superiority
+of the higher office, and would be the last either to envy or degrade
+it. He would see in it his own--only higher, only better, and revere it.
+But I am afraid I have wearied you, my children.”
+
+“O, no, papa!” said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
+nothing.
+
+“I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this
+subject: it has such a hold of my heart and mind!--Now, Charlie, my boy,
+go to bed.”
+
+But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did
+not want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the
+corners of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did
+not move to go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the
+black frost still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to
+him. When he was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting
+out of temper, and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to
+behold; and to cure him of this, I used to make him carry a little
+mirror about his neck, that the means might be always at hand of
+showing himself to him: it was a sort of artificial conscience which,
+by enabling him to see the picture of his own condition, which the
+face always is, was not unfrequently operative in rousing his real
+conscience, and making him ashamed of himself. But now the mirror I
+wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in the light of which the
+present would show what it was.
+
+“Charlie,” I said, “a little while ago you were wishing that God would
+give you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once,
+without even thinking about it.”
+
+“How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?” said Charlie, with
+something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at
+once because there was some sense along with the impudence.
+
+“I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it
+pleasantly. Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as
+that--I wish I had the little mirror to show it to you--when his mother
+told him it was time to go to bed?”
+
+And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in
+him, because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have
+compelled him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law.
+But now that his own better self, the self enlightened of the light that
+lighteneth every man that cometh into the world, was working, time might
+well be afforded it to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the
+others. In the space of not more than one minute, he rose and came to
+me, looking both good and ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me,
+saying, “Goodnight, papa.” I bade him good-night, and kissed him more
+tenderly than usual, that he might know that it was all right between
+us. I required no formal apology, no begging of my pardon, as some
+parents think right. It seemed enough to me that his heart was turned.
+It is a terrible thing to run the risk of changing humility into
+humiliation. Humiliation is one of the proudest conditions in the human
+world. When he felt that it would be a relief to say more explicitly,
+“Father, I have sinned,” then let him say it; but not till then. To
+compel manifestation is one surest way to check feeling.
+
+My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy’s unwillingness to go
+to bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them
+are guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important
+than this, only those things happen to be _their_ wish at the moment,
+and not Charlie’s, and so gain their superiority.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THEODORA’S DOOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
+most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
+practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise
+you more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be
+allowed to take very much his own way--go his own pace, I should have
+said. I am afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this
+chapter.
+
+On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
+severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last
+severe frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth.
+The sun was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up
+in the air hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field
+close by a hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass.
+A short distance from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost.
+There alone was there any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of
+the loveliest tenderest green. I will not say the figure was such an
+exact resemblance as a photograph would have been; still it was an
+indubitable likeness. It appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch
+not a knot of the upper side of the tree at least was left unrepresented
+in shining and glittering whiteness upon the green grass. It was very
+pretty, and, I confess, at first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating
+on the phenomenon, till at length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost
+had been all over the field in the morning. The sun had been shining for
+a time, and had melted the frost away, except where he could only cast
+a shadow. As he rose and rose, the shadow of the tree had shortened and
+come nearer and nearer to its original, growing more and more like as
+it came nearer, while the frost kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew
+its protection. When the shadow extended only to a little way from
+the tree, the clouds came and covered the sun, and there were no more
+shadows, only one great one of the clouds. Then the frost shone out in
+the shape of the vanished shadow. It lay at a little distance from the
+tree, because the tree having been only partially lopped, some great
+stumps of boughs held it up from the ground, and thus, when the sun was
+low, his light had shone a little way through beneath, as well as over
+the trunk.
+
+My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to “moralise this
+spectacle with a thousand similes.” I only tell it him as a very pretty
+phenomenon. But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in
+nature--I mean new in regard to my knowledge, of course--always made me
+happy; and I was full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the
+thoughts it had brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom
+should I see in the next field, coming along the footpath, but the
+lady who had made herself so disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was
+rather a discord in my feeling at that moment; perhaps it would have
+been so at any moment. But I prepared myself to meet her in the strength
+of the good humour which nature had just bestowed upon me. For I fear
+the failing will go with me to the grave that I am very ready to be
+annoyed, even to the loss of my temper, at the urgings of ignoble
+prudence.
+
+“Good-morning, Miss Bowdler,” I said.
+
+“Good-morning, Mr. Walton,” she returned “I am afraid you thought me
+impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my
+way.”
+
+“As such I take it,” I answered with a smile.
+
+She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
+accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she
+went on to repeat the offence by way of justification.
+
+“It was all for Mrs. Walton’s sake. You ought to consider her, Mr.
+Walton. She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is
+likely to be an invalid all her days--too much to take the trouble of a
+beggar’s brat as well.”
+
+“Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?” I
+asked.
+
+“O dear, no!” she answered. “She is far too good to complain of
+anything. That’s just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr.
+Walton.”
+
+“Then I beg you won’t speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora.”
+
+“O dear me! no. Not at all. I don’t speak disrespectfully of her.”
+
+“Even amongst the class of which she comes, ‘a beggar’s brat’ would be
+regarded as bad language.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, I’m sure, Mr. Walton! If you _will_ take offence--”
+
+“I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
+warning against offending the little ones.”
+
+Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure--let me hope in conviction
+of sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two Sundays.
+Then she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after this,
+and I believe my wife was not sorry.
+
+Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my
+wife’s trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell;
+but, before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something
+like the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When
+I went into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her
+about it; but, indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got
+home. I found her in Connie’s room as I had expected. Now although we
+were never in the habit of making mysteries of things in which there was
+no mystery, and talked openly before our children, and the more openly
+the older they grew, yet there were times when we wanted to have our
+talks quite alone, especially when we had not made up our minds about
+something. So I asked Ethelwyn to walk out with me.
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t just this moment, husband,” she answered. She was in
+the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
+without saying it aloud. “I can’t just this moment, for there is no one
+at liberty to stay with Connie.”
+
+“O, never mind me, mamma,” said Connie cheerfully. “Theodora will take
+care of me,” and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her
+side fast asleep.
+
+“There!” I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what
+I meant. “I will tell you afterwards,” I said, laughing. “Come along,
+Ethel.”
+
+“You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything,
+or your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won’t want me long,
+will you, husband?”
+
+“I’m not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell.”
+
+Susan was the old nurse.
+
+Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her
+across to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not
+shone out, and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it
+had gladdened mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his
+direct rays, had melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do
+with other shadows, without the mind knowing any more than the grass how
+the shadow departed. There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about
+it before you knew what I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see
+it only through my eyes and words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler,
+and what she had said. Ethel was very angry at her impertinence in
+speaking so to me. That was a wife’s feeling, you know, and perhaps
+excusable in the first impression of the thing.
+
+“She seems to think,” she said, “that she was sent into the world to
+keep other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her
+down, as the maids say.”
+
+“O, I don’t think there’s much harm in her,” I returned, which was easy
+generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. “Indeed, I am not sure
+that we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I
+met her that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with
+Theodora.”
+
+“Still troubling yourself about that, husband?”
+
+“The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it
+should be met,” I answered. “Our measures must begin sometime, and when,
+who can tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never
+begin at all.”
+
+“Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at
+present--belonging to humanity rather than the individual, as you would
+say--consisting chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe,
+varied with lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our
+measures than our heads, aren’t they?”
+
+“Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there’s no fear about your heart. I’m
+not quite so sure about your head.”
+
+“Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn’t matter, does
+it?”
+
+“I don’t know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for
+no chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger
+than its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head
+nearly, though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business.
+There’s one thing we have both made up our minds about--that there is
+to be no concealment with the child. God’s fact must be known by her. It
+would be cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to
+come upon her with a terrible shock some day. She must know from
+the first, by hearing it talked of--not by solemn and private
+communication--that she came out of the shrubbery. That’s settled, is it
+not?”
+
+“Certainly. I see that to be the right way,” responded Ethelwyn.
+
+“Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?”
+
+“We are bound to do as well for her as for our own.”
+
+“Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the
+facts being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?”
+
+“I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
+done.”
+
+“That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
+that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding
+or neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it
+would be a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good
+for herself, knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it
+not be kinder to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for
+her to relieve the gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our
+sakes--I hope we are above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude
+which will be given for it, and which is so often far beyond the worth
+of the thing done--”
+
+  “Alas! the gratitude of men
+  Hath oftener left me mourning,”
+
+said Ethel.
+
+“Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!”
+
+“Yes, thank you, I do.”
+
+“But we must wish for gratitude for others’ sake, though we may be
+willing to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as
+painful as Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes
+us think how much more we _might_ have done; how lovely a thing it is to
+give in return for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman
+must be in whom a trifle awakes so much emotion.”
+
+“Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
+doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
+which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they
+can’t show the difference in their thanks.”
+
+“And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet,
+the same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But
+to return to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be
+recognisant of whence she came, and how she had been brought thence,
+might it not be better for her? Would it not be building on the truth?
+Would she not be happier for it?”
+
+
+“You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
+something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair
+to my place in the conference,” said Ethel. “In fact, you think you
+are trying to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not
+say _wheedle_, me into something. It’s a good thing you have the
+harmlessness of the dove, Harry, for you’ve got the other thing.”
+
+“Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that
+what you call the cunning of the serpent--”
+
+“Wisdom, Harry, not cunning.”
+
+“Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But
+here it is--bare and defenceless, only--let me warn you--with a whole
+battery behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to
+Constance.”
+
+My wife laughed.
+
+“Well,” she said, “for one who says so much about not thinking of the
+morrow, you do look rather far forward.”
+
+“Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right.”
+
+“But just think: the child is about three months old.”
+
+“Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her.
+I don’t say that she is to commence her duties at once.”
+
+“But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that.”
+
+“The training won’t be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my
+love, that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it.
+And Turner does not give much hope.”
+
+“O Harry, Harry, don’t say so! I can’t bear it. To think of the darling
+child lying like that all her life!”
+
+“It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven’t
+you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child’s nature since her
+accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying
+there such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her
+bonnets inside instead of outside her head.”
+
+“Yes, but she needn’t have been like that. Wynnie never will.”
+
+“Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
+But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid
+that had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to
+toddle after something to fetch it for her.”
+
+“Won’t it be like making a slave of her?”
+
+“Won’t it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack
+of service is the ruin of humanity.”
+
+“But we can’t train her then like one of our own.”
+
+“Why not? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?”
+
+“Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and
+then make a servant of her.”
+
+“You forget that the service would be part of her training from the
+first; and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her
+that she was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent
+her to take care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have
+perfect service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of
+service as the essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not
+education that unfits for service: it is the want of it.”
+
+“Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served
+me worse than the rest.”
+
+“Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they
+had been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than
+nine-tenths of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember
+that they had never been taught service--the highest accomplishment of
+all. To that everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there.
+But for service of this high sort, the education must begin with the
+beginning of the dawn of will. How often have you wished that you had
+servants who would believe in you, and serve you with the same truth
+with which you regarded them! The servants born in a man’s house in
+the old times were more like his children than his servants. Here is a
+chance for you, as it were of a servant born in your own house. Connie
+loves the child: the child will love Connie, and find her delight in
+serving her like a little cherub. Not one of the maids to whom you have
+referred had ever been taught to think service other than an unavoidable
+necessity, the end of life being to serve yourself, not to serve others;
+and hence most of them would escape from it by any marriage almost that
+they had a chance of making. I don’t say all servants are like that; but
+I do think that most of them are. I know very well that most mistresses
+are as much to blame for this result as the servants are; but we are not
+talking about them. Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are forced
+to do it--a most degrading condition to be in. But they would not be in
+any better condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises
+work is in as bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them
+free is to get them to regard service not only as their duty, but as
+therefore honourable, and besides and beyond this, in its own
+nature divine. In America, the very name of servant is repudiated as
+inconsistent with human dignity. There is _no_ dignity but of service.
+How different the whole notion of training is now from what it was in
+the middle ages! Service was honourable then. No doubt we have made
+progress as a whole, but in some things we have degenerated sadly.
+The first thing taught then was how to serve. No man could rise to the
+honour of knighthood without service. A nobleman’s son even had to wait
+on his father, or to go into the family of another nobleman, and wait
+upon him as a page, standing behind his chair at dinner. This was an
+honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was a necessary step to
+higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To be set free from
+service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field; to be a squire
+to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his armour, to see
+that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap strong; to
+ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one attacked him,
+to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable because it was
+harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And what was this
+higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this knighthood consist?
+The very word means simply _service_. And for what was the knight thus
+waited upon by his squire? That he might be free to do as he pleased?
+No, but that he might be free to be the servant of all. By being a
+squire first, the servant of one, he learned to rise to the higher rank,
+that of servant of all. His horse was tended, this armour observed,
+his sword and spear and shield held to his hand, that he might have no
+trouble looking after himself, but might be free, strong, unwearied, to
+shoot like an arrow to the rescue of any and every one who needed his
+ready aid. There was a grand heart of Christianity in that old chivalry,
+notwithstanding all its abuses which must be no more laid to its charge
+than the burning of Jews and heretics to Christianity. It was the lack
+of it, not the presence of it that occasioned the abuses that coexisted
+with it. Train our Theodora as a holy child-servant, and there will be
+no need to restrain any impulse of wise affection from pouring itself
+forth upon her. My firm belief is that we should then love and honour
+her far more than if we made her just like one of our own.”
+
+“But what if she should turn out utterly unfit for it?”
+
+“Ah! then would come an obstacle. But it will not come till that
+discovery is made.”
+
+“But if we should be going wrong all the time?”
+
+“Now, there comes the kind of care that never troubles me, and which I
+so strongly object to. It won’t hurt her anyhow. And we ought always
+to act upon the ideal; it is the only safe ground of action. When that
+which contradicts and resists, and would ruin our ideal, opposes us,
+then we must take measures; but not till then can we take measures, or
+know what measures it may be necessary to take. But the ideal itself
+is the only thing worth striving after. Remember what our Lord himself
+said: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven
+is perfect.’”
+
+“Well, I will think about it, Harry. There is time enough.”
+
+“Plenty. No time only not to think about it. The more you think about it
+the better. If a thing be a good thing, the more you think about it
+the better it will look; for its real nature will go on coming out and
+showing itself. I cannot doubt that you will soon see how good it is.”
+
+We then went home. It was only two days after that my wife said to me--
+
+“I am more than reconciled to your plan, husband. It seems to me
+delightful.”
+
+When we reentered Connie’s room, we found that her baby had just waked,
+and she had managed to get one arm under her, and was trying to comfort
+her, for she was crying.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A SPRING CHAPTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+More especially now in my old age, I find myself “to a lingering motion
+bound.” I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
+following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons.
+This may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a
+spring chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why I
+have called my story “The Seaboard Parish.”
+
+I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things:
+one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was
+a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so
+could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
+about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
+and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
+have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
+seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
+justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my
+greed as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves
+and all, with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my
+little woman--a present from the outside world which she loved so much.
+And as I went there dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror
+in which, if I could find it, she would see it still more lovely than
+in a direct looking at itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay
+in fragments in the drawers and cabinets of my memory. And before I got
+home I had found all the pieces and put them together; and then it was
+a lovely little sonnet which a friend of mine had written and allowed me
+to see many years before. I was in the way of writing verses myself; but
+I should have been proud to have written this one. I never could have
+done that. Yet, as far as I knew, it had never seen the light through
+the windows of print. It was with some difficulty that I got it all
+right; but I thought I had succeeded very nearly, if not absolutely, and
+I said it over and over, till I was sure I should not spoil its music or
+its meaning by halting in the delivery of it.
+
+“Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you,” I said.
+
+She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
+been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
+eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her
+two hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said
+what I have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to
+her. Here it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend
+had found the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he told me that
+there was a tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:
+
+  “I know not what among the grass thou art,
+    Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
+    Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
+  To send thine image through them to the heart;
+  But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
+    And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
+    Thou growest up within me from that hour,
+  And through the snow I with the spring depart.
+
+  I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
+    Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
+  There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
+    But thou a life immortal dost begin,
+  Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
+  Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!”
+
+“Will you say it again, papa?” said Connie; “I do not quite understand
+it.”
+
+“I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
+write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
+have brought.”
+
+“Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I
+may read it quite easily.”
+
+I promised, and repeated the poem.
+
+“I understand it a little better,” she said; “but the meaning is just
+like the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give
+it me in writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what
+else you have brought me.”
+
+I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the
+plant and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only
+expressed satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat
+down with us.
+
+“I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning,” I said. “She feels the
+loss of her mother very much, poor thing.”
+
+“How old was she, papa?” asked Connie.
+
+“She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself,
+and her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old
+lady, you know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat on
+the tablecloth. ‘Mr. Shafton,’ she said, ‘was one of the old school; he
+would never have done that. I don’t know what the world is coming to.’”
+
+My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
+manners.
+
+“What did you say, papa?” they asked.
+
+“I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. ‘O, it’s all right now,
+my dear,’ she said, ‘when you’ve taken it up again. But I like good
+manners, though I live in a cottage now.’”
+
+“Had she seen better days, then?” asked Wynnie.
+
+“She was a farmer’s daughter, and a farmer’s widow. I suppose the chief
+difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead
+of a good-sized farmhouse.”
+
+“But what is the story you have to tell us?”
+
+“I’m coming to that when you have done with your questions.”
+
+“We have done, papa.”
+
+“After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the
+cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good
+deal of her mother’s sense of dignity about her,--but I want your mother
+to hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie.”
+
+“O, do make haste, Wynnie,” said Connie.
+
+When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
+
+“Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
+rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, ‘Here it
+is, at last!’ She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother’s, and
+was holding it in one hand, while with the other she drew from the
+pocket--what do you think?”
+
+Various guesses were hazarded.
+
+“No, no--nothing like it. I know you _could_ never guess. Therefore it
+would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe. The
+old woman of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was
+wearing at the very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an
+iron horseshoe.”
+
+“What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?”
+
+“That she proceeded at once to do. ‘Do you remember, sir,’ she said,
+‘how that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?’ ‘I
+do remember having observed it there,’ I answered; ‘for once when I
+took notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, “I hope you are not
+afraid of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?” And she looked a little offended, and
+assured me to the contrary.’ ‘Well,’ her daughter went on, ‘about three
+months ago, I missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it.
+And here it is! I can hardly think she can have carried it about all
+that time without me finding it out, but I don’t know. Here it is,
+anyhow. Perhaps when she felt death drawing nearer, she took it from
+somewhere where she had hidden it, and put it in her pocket. If I had
+found it in time, I would have put it in her coffin.’ ‘But why?’ I
+asked. ‘Do tell me the story about it, if you know it.’ ‘I know it quite
+well, for she told me all about it once. It is the shoe of a favourite
+mare of my father’s--one he used to ride when he went courting my
+mother. My grandfather did not like to have a young man coming about the
+house, and so he came after the old folks were gone to bed. But he had a
+long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had to go over some stones
+to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread straw there, for it
+was under the window of my grandfather’s room, that her shoes mightn’t
+make a noise and wake him. And that’s one of the shoes,’ she said,
+holding it up to me. ‘When the mare died, my mother begged my father for
+the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often stood and patted
+her neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.’”
+
+“But it was very naughty of her, wasn’t it,” said Wynnie, “to do that
+without her father’s knowledge?”
+
+“I don’t say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
+ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might
+find that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn’t
+a father, we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a
+child. The father’s part has to come first, and teach the child’s part.
+Now, if I might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably
+it was much softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning,
+and unreasonable man--such that it scarcely ever came into the
+daughter’s head that she had anything else to do with regard to him than
+beware of the consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The
+whole thing, I allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to
+blame, and far more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more
+likely from the high character of the old dame, and the romantic way in
+which she clung to the memory of the courtship. A true heart only does
+not grow old. And I have, therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a
+happy one. Besides, I daresay it was very much the custom of the country
+where they were, and that makes some difference.”
+
+“Well, I’m sure, papa, you wouldn’t like any of us to go and do like
+that,” said Wynnie.
+
+“Assuredly not, my dear,” I answered, laughing. “Nor have I any fear of
+it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things
+to trouble me if you did?”
+
+“If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an _if_”
+ said Wynnie.
+
+“It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to
+you as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all
+possible for you to do such a thing.”
+
+“It’s too dreadful to talk about, papa,” said Wynnie; and the subject
+was dropped.
+
+She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
+danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
+whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
+wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If
+the perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked
+into her own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that
+she was the doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if
+she had been deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of
+the house. This came of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general
+dissatisfaction with herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith
+in the divine sympathy, or sufficient confidence of final purification.
+She never spared herself; and if she was a little severe on the younger
+ones sometimes, no one was yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all
+their hard crusts for them, always give them the best and take the worst
+for herself. If there was any part in the dish that she was helping that
+she thought nobody would like, she invariably assigned it to her own
+share. It looked like a determined self-mortification sometimes; but
+that was not it. She did not care for her own comfort enough to feel it
+any mortification; though I observed that when her mother or I helped
+her to anything nice, she ate it with as much relish as the youngest
+of the party. And her sweet smile was always ready to meet the least
+kindness that was offered her. Her obedience was perfect, and had been
+so for very many years, as far as we could see. Indeed, not since she
+was the merest child had there been any contest between us. Now, of
+course, there was no demand of obedience: she was simply the best
+earthly friend that her father and mother had. It often caused me some
+passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as well as her devotion
+to her home, might cause her great suffering some day; but when those
+thoughts came, I just gave her to God to take care of. Her mother
+sometimes said to her that she would make an excellent wife for a poor
+man. She would brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a compliment
+of the best sort. And she did not forget it, as the sequel will show.
+She would choose to sit with one candle lit when there were two on the
+table, wasting her eyes to save the candles. “Which will you have for
+dinner to-day, papa, roast beef or boiled?” she asked me once, when her
+mother was too unwell to attend to the housekeeping. And when I replied
+that I would have whichever she liked best--“The boiled beef lasts
+longest, I think,” she said. Yet she was not only as liberal and kind as
+any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer, and perhaps more important
+for the final formation of a character, carefully just to everyone with
+whom she had any dealings. Her sense of law was very strong. Law with
+her was something absolute, and not to be questioned. In her childhood
+there was one lady to whom for years she showed a decided aversion,
+and we could not understand it, for it was the most inoffensive Miss
+Boulderstone. When she was nearly grown up, one of us happening to
+allude to the fact, she volunteered an explanation. Miss Boulderstone
+had happened to call one day when Wynnie, then between three and four
+was in disgrace--_in the corner_, in fact. Miss Boulderstone interceded
+for her; and this was the whole front of her offending.
+
+“I _was_ so angry!” she said. “‘As if my papa did not know best when I
+ought to come out of the corner!’ I said to myself. And I couldn’t bear
+her for ever so long after that.”
+
+Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
+favourite before she died. She left Wynnie--for she and her brother
+were the last of their race--a death’s-head watch, which had been in
+the family she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen
+Elizabeth’s time. I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as
+well repaired as its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since,
+though not with the greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an
+old death’s-head, the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears it
+to this day, and wouldn’t part with it for the best watch in the world.
+
+I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more
+able to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as
+yet my story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I
+will fulfil them, and I shall be content.
+
+Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old couple,
+for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they were not
+born old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a decaying family
+that had not left the land on which they were born for a great many
+generations--though the old people had not, of what the French call
+sentiments, one between them, they were yet capable of a stronger and,
+I had almost said, more romantic attachment, than many couples who have
+married from love; for the lady’s sole trouble in dying was what her
+brother _would_ do without her; and from the day of her death, he grew
+more and more dull and seemingly stupid. Nothing gave him any pleasure
+but having Wynnie to dinner with him. I knew that it must be very dull
+for her, but she went often, and I never heard her complain of it,
+though she certainly did look fagged--not _bored_, observe, but
+fagged--showing that she had been exerting herself to meet the
+difficulties of the situation. When the good man died, we found that he
+had left all his money in my hands, in trust for the poor of the parish,
+to be applied in any way I thought best. This involved me in much
+perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to make money useful to
+the poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.
+
+My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property
+my wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private
+fortune, and the income of several years (not my income from the church,
+it may be as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the encumbrances.
+But even then there remained much to be done, if I would be the good
+steward that was not to be ashamed at his Lord’s coming. First of all
+there were many cottages to be built for the labourers on the estate. If
+the farmers would not, or could not, help, I must do it; for to provide
+decent dwellings for them, was clearly one of the divine conditions in
+the righteous tenure of property, whatever the human might be; for it
+was not for myself alone, or for myself chiefly, that this property was
+given to me; it was for those who lived upon it. Therefore I laid out
+what money I could, not only in getting all the land clearly in its
+right relation to its owner, but in doing the best I could for those
+attached to it who could not help themselves. And when I hint to my
+reader that I had some conscience in paying my curate, though, as they
+had no children, they did not require so much as I should otherwise have
+felt compelled to give them, he will easily see that as my family grew
+up I could not have so much to give away of my own as I should have
+liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr. Boulderstone was the more
+acceptable to me.
+
+One word more ere I finish this chapter.--I should not like my friends
+to think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because I
+have made no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the
+first time, because of my daughter’s illness. It was much easier to give
+them now than when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty of room
+in the old hall. But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar gathering
+there every Easter.
+
+Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not
+mentioned him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie’s
+accident. The fact was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him,
+a long holiday. Martha had had several disappointing illnesses, and her
+general health had suffered so much in consequence that there was even
+some fear of her lungs, and a winter in the south of France had
+been strongly recommended. Upon this I came in with more than a
+recommendation, and insisted that they should go. They had started in
+the beginning of October, and had not returned up to the time of which I
+am now about to write--somewhere in the beginning of the month of April.
+But my sister was now almost quite well, and I was not sorry to think
+that I should soon have a little more leisure for such small literary
+pursuits as I delighted in--to my own enrichment, and consequently to
+the good of my parishioners and friends.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+AN IMPORTANT LETTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was, then, in the beginning of April that I received one morning an
+epistle from an old college friend of mine, with whom I had renewed my
+acquaintance of late, through the pleasure which he was kind enough to
+say he had derived from reading a little book of mine upon the relation
+of the mind of St. Paul to the gospel story. His name was Shepherd--a
+good name for a clergyman. In his case both Christian name and
+patronymic might remind him well of his duty. David Shepherd ought to be
+a good clergyman.
+
+As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find
+my wife.
+
+“Here is Shepherd,” I said, “with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to
+give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as
+he understands I have a curate as good as myself--that is what the old
+fellow says--it might not suit me to take my family to his place for
+the summer. He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all
+good. His house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I
+should not like to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the
+letter for yourself, and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back
+so fresh and active that it will be no oppression to him to take the
+whole of the duty here. I will run and ask Turner whether it would be
+safe to move Connie, and whether the sea-air would be good for her.”
+
+“One would think you were only twenty, husband--you make up your mind so
+quickly, and are in such a hurry.”
+
+The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many
+years since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once
+more, in its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing
+between us and America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited
+me so that my wife’s reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary
+to bring me to my usually quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old
+grannie’s pardon, and set off to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her
+to read and ponder Shepherd’s letter.
+
+“What do you think, Turner?” I said, and told him the case. He looked
+rather grave.
+
+“When would you think of going?” he asked.
+
+“About the beginning of June.”
+
+“Nearly two months,” he said, thoughtfully. “And Miss Connie was not the
+worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?”
+
+“The better, I do think.”
+
+“Has she had any increase of pain since?”
+
+“None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that.”
+
+He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.
+
+“It is a long journey.”
+
+“She could make it by easy stages.”
+
+“It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such
+a thorough change in every way--if only it could be managed without
+fatigue and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between
+this and that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner
+you get her out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit
+for that yet.”
+
+“A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose.”
+
+“Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid’s
+instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than
+those of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to
+anything involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must
+not judge that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two
+patients, who considered themselves _bedlars_, as you will find the
+common people in the part you are going to, call them--bedridden, that
+is. One of them I persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although
+her sense of inability was anything but feigned, and she will be a
+sufferer to the end of her days, yet she goes about the house without
+much inconvenience, and I suspect is not only physically but morally the
+better for it. The other would not consent to try, and I believe lies
+there still.”
+
+“The will has more to do with most things than people generally
+suppose,” I said. “Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we
+resolve to make the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?”
+
+“It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot
+tell beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a
+respecter of persons, you know.”
+
+I returned to my wife. She was in Connie’s room.
+
+“Well, my dear,” I said, “what do you think of it?”
+
+“Of what?” she asked.
+
+“Why, of Shepherd’s letter, of course,” I answered.
+
+“I’ve been ordering the dinner since, Harry.”
+
+“The dinner!” I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife
+was only teasing me. “What’s the dinner to the Atlantic?”
+
+“What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?” said Connie, from whose
+roguish eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and
+that _she_ was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.
+
+“The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters
+of the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the
+Universal Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject.”
+
+“O papa!” laughed Connie; “you know what I mean.”
+
+“Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!”
+
+“But do you really mean, papa,” she said “that you will take me to the
+Atlantic?”
+
+“If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as
+possible.”
+
+The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan,
+which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.
+
+“My darling! You have hurt yourself!”
+
+“O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But
+I soon found that I hadn’t any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to
+you!”
+
+“On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One
+always knows where to find you.”
+
+She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very
+bewitching whole.
+
+“But,” I went on, “I mean to try whether my dolly won’t bear moving. One
+thing is clear, I can’t go without it. Do you think you could be got on
+the sofa to-day without hurting you?”
+
+“I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet.
+Mamma, do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner.”
+
+When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the
+conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the
+lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips,
+and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face
+showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had
+had to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.
+
+“I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn,” she said.
+
+“What a sharp sight you must have, child!”
+
+“I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before
+me.”
+
+I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are.
+Neither did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.
+
+“But,” she went on, “I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets
+in my feet.”
+
+“You don’t say so!” I exclaimed.
+
+She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only
+making a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.
+
+“Yes. Isn’t it a wonderful fact?” she said.
+
+“It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank
+God for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning
+to recover a little. But we mustn’t make too much of it, lest I should
+be mistaken,” I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too
+much.
+
+But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in
+her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both silent,--
+
+“O papa!” she said, “to think of ever walking out with you again, and
+feeling the wind on my face! I can hardly believe it possible.”
+
+“It is so mild, I think you might have half that pleasure at once,” I
+answered..
+
+And I opened the window, let the spring air gently move her hair for one
+moment, and then shut it again. Connie breathed deep, and said after a
+little pause,--
+
+“I had no idea how delightful it was. To think that I have been in the
+way of breathing that every moment for so many years and never thought
+about it!”
+
+“It is not always just like that in this climate. But I ought not to
+have made that remark when I wanted to make this other: that I suspect
+we shall find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists
+chiefly in the closing of the human eyes; that at least far more of it
+than people think remains about us still, only we are so filled with
+foolish desires and evil cares, that we cannot see or hear, cannot even
+smell or taste the pleasant things round about us. We have need to
+pray in regard to the right receiving of the things of the senses even,
+‘Lord, open thou our hearts to understand thy word;’ for each of these
+things is as certainly a word of God as Jesus is the Word of God. He
+has made nothing in vain. All is for our teaching. Shall I tell you what
+such a breath of fresh air makes me think of?”
+
+“It comes to me,” said Connie, “like forgiveness when I was a little
+girl and was naughty. I used to feel just like that.”
+
+“It is the same kind of thing I feel,” I said--“as if life from the
+Spirit of God were coming into my soul: I think of the wind that bloweth
+where it listeth. Wind and spirit are the same word in the Greek; and
+the Latin word _spirit_ comes even nearer to what we are saying, for
+it is the wind as _breathed_. And now, Connie, I will tell you--and
+you will see how I am growing able to talk to you like quite an old
+friend--what put me in such a delight with Mr. Shepherd’s letter and so
+exposed me to be teased by mamma and you. As I read it, there rose up
+before me a vision of one sight of the sea which I had when I was a
+young man, long before I saw your mamma. I had gone out for a walk along
+some high downs. But I ought to tell you that I had been working rather
+hard at Cambridge, and the life seemed to be all gone out of me. Though
+my holidays had come, they did not feel quite like holidays--not as
+holidays used to feel when I was a boy. Even when walking along those
+downs with the scents of sixteen grasses or so in my brain, like a
+melody with the odour of the earth for the accompaniment upon which it
+floated, and with just enough of wind to stir them up and set them in
+motion, I could not feel at all. I remembered something of what I had
+used to feel in such places, but instead of believing in that, I doubted
+now whether it had not been all a trick that I played myself--a fancied
+pleasure only. I was walking along, then, with the sea behind me. It was
+a warm, cloudy day--I had had no sunshine since I came out. All at once
+I turned--I don’t know why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had
+seen it last, not all gray. It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all
+over with drops, pools, and lakes of light, of all shades of depth, from
+a light shimmer of tremulous gray, through a half light that turned the
+prevailing lead colour into translucent green that seemed to grow out
+of its depths--through this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and
+deepening till my very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity
+of its molten silver. There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks
+in the clouds over the sea, through which, the air being filled with
+vapour, I could see the long lines of the sun-rays descending on the
+waters like rain--so like a rain of light that the water seemed to plash
+up in light under their fall. I questioned the past no more; the present
+seized upon me, and I knew that the past was true, and that nature was
+more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I could grasp. It was a
+lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the God that made the
+glory and my soul.”
+
+While I spoke Connie’s tears had been flowing quietly.
+
+“And mamma and I were making fun while you were seeing such things as
+those!” she said pitifully.
+
+“You didn’t hurt them one bit, my darling--neither mamma nor you. If I
+had been the least cross about it, as I should have been when I was as
+young as at the time of which I was thinking, that would have ruined the
+vision entirely. But your merriment only made me enjoy it more. And, my
+Connie, I hope you will see the Atlantic before long; and if one vision
+should come as brilliant as that, we shall be fortunate indeed, if we
+went all the way to the west to see that only.”
+
+“O papa! I dare hardly think of it--it is too delightful. But do you
+think we shall really go?”
+
+“I do. Here comes your mamma--I am going to say to Shepherd, my dear,
+that I will take his parish in hand, and if I cannot, after all, go
+myself, will find some one, so that he need be in no anxiety from the
+uncertainty which must hang over our movements even till the experiment
+itself is made.”
+
+“Very well, husband. I am quite satisfied.”
+
+And as I watched Connie, I saw that hope and expectation did much to
+prepare her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONNIE’S DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Turner, being a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to
+invent, and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of
+litter, which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our
+own carriage for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without
+disturbing her, and placed in a similar manner in the railway carriage.
+He had laid Connie repeatedly upon it before he was satisfied that
+the arrangement of the springs, &c., was successful. But at length she
+declared that it was perfect, and that she would not mind being carried
+across the Arabian desert on a camel’s back with that under her.
+
+As the season advanced, she continued to improve. I shall never forget
+the first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an
+infant coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of
+a child of eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received
+the new impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much
+for her at first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a
+wild thing on a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more
+than she could bear. After she was laid down she closed her eyes, and
+the smile that flickered about her mouth was of a sort that harmonised
+entirely with the two great tears that crept softly out from under her
+eyelids, and sank, rather than ran, down her cheeks. She lay so that she
+faced a rich tract of gently receding upland, plentifully wooded to the
+horizon’s edge, and through the wood peeped the white and red houses of
+a little hamlet, with the square tower of its church just rising above
+the trees. A kind of frame was made to the whole picture by the nearer
+trees of our own woods, through an opening in which, evidently made or
+left for its sake, the distant prospect was visible. It was a morning in
+early summer, when the leaves were not quite full-grown but almost, and
+their green was shining and pure as the blue of the sky, when the air
+had no touch of bitterness or of lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and
+yet filled the lungs with the reviving as of a draught of cold water. We
+had fastened the carriage umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade
+her perfectly without obscuring her prospect; and behind this we all
+crept, leaving her to come to herself without being looked at, for
+emotion is a shy and sacred thing and should be tenderly hidden by those
+who are near. The bees kept very _beesy_ all about us. To see one huge
+fellow, as big as three ordinary ones with pieces of red and yellow
+about him, as if he were the beadle of all bee-dom, and overgrown in
+consequence--to see him, I say, down in a little tuft of white clover,
+rolling about in it, hardly able to move for fatness, yet bumming away
+as if his business was to express the delight of the whole creation--was
+a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so light that they seemed
+to tumble up into the air, and get down again with difficulty. They
+bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of purpose. “If I could
+but see once, for an hour, into the mind of a butterfly,” I thought, “it
+would be to me worth all the natural history I ever read. If I could but
+see why he changes his mind so often and so suddenly--what he saw about
+that flower to make him seek it--then why, on a nearer approach, he
+should decline further acquaintance with it, and go rocking away through
+the air, to do the same fifty times over again--it would give me an
+insight into all animal and vegetable life that ages of study could not
+bring me up to.” I was thinking all this behind my daughter’s umbrella,
+while a lark, whose body had melted quite away in the heavenly spaces,
+was scattering bright beads of ringing melody straight down upon our
+heads; while a cock was crowing like a clarion from the home-farm, as if
+in defiance of the golden glitter of his silent brother on the roof of
+the stable; while a little stream that scampered down the same slope
+as the lawn lay upon, from a well in the stable-yard, mingled its
+sweet undertone of contentment with the jubilation of the lark and the
+business-like hum of the bees; and while white clouds floated in the
+majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the heavens. The air was so
+full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the crude substance that
+God might take to make babies’ souls of--only the very simile smells of
+materialism, and therefore I do not like it.
+
+“Papa,” said Connie at length, and I was beside her in a moment. Her
+face looked almost glorified with delight: there was a hush of that awe
+upon it which is perhaps one of the deepest kinds of delight. She put
+out her thin white hand, took hold of a button of my coat, drew me down
+towards her, and said in a whisper:
+
+“Don’t you think God is here, papa?”
+
+“Yes, I do, my darling,” I answered.
+
+“Doesn’t _he_ enjoy this?”
+
+“Yes, my dear. He wouldn’t make us enjoy it if he did not enjoy it. It
+would be to deceive us to make us glad and blessed, while our Father
+did not care about it, or how it came to us. At least it would amount to
+making us no longer his children.”
+
+“I am so glad you think so. I do. And I shall enjoy it so much more
+now.”
+
+She could hardly finish her sentence, but burst out sobbing so that I
+was afraid she would hurt herself. I saw, however, that it was best to
+leave her to quiet herself, and motioned to the rest to keep back and
+let her recover as she could. The emotion passed off in a summer shower,
+and when I went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet
+landscape after the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle
+game of her own past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry--merrier,
+notwithstanding her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.
+
+“Look at that comical sparrow,” she said. “Look how he cocks his head
+first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is
+he bumptious, or what?”
+
+“I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys;
+and I suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
+understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either.”
+
+“Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to
+school,” said Connie.
+
+“It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the
+sparrows,” I answered. “Look at them now,” I exclaimed, as a little
+crowd of them suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment
+before, and exploded in objurgation and general unintelligible
+excitement. After some obscure fluttering of wings and pecking, they all
+vanished except two, which walked about in a dignified manner, trying
+apparently to seem quite unconscious each of the other’s presence.
+
+“I think it was a political meeting of some sort,” said Connie, laughing
+merrily.
+
+“Well, they have this advantage over us,” I answered, “that they get
+through their business whatever it may be, with considerably greater
+expedition than we get through ours.”
+
+A short silence followed, during which Connie lay contemplating
+everything.
+
+“What do you think we girls are like, then, papa?” she asked at length.
+“Don’t say you don’t know, now.”
+
+“I ought to know something more about you than I do about schoolboys.
+And I think I do know a little about girls--not much though. They puzzle
+me a good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie.”
+
+“You can’t help doing that, papa,” interrupted Connie, adding with her
+old roguishness, “You mustn’t pass yourself off for very knowing for
+that. By the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried.”
+
+“I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie.”
+
+A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us,
+passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:
+
+“I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at
+best--a creature you can’t understand.”
+
+“On the contrary, Connie, I think I understand you almost as well as
+mamma. But there isn’t so much to understand yet, you know, as there
+will be.”
+
+Her merriment returned.
+
+“Tell me what girls are like, then, or I shall sulk all day because you
+say there isn’t so much in me as in mamma.”
+
+“Well, I think, if the boys are like sparrows, the girls are like
+swallows. Did you ever watch them before rain, Connie, skimming about
+over the lawn as if it were water, low towards its surface, but never
+alighting? You never see them grubbing after worms. Nothing less than
+things with wings like themselves will satisfy them. They will be
+obliged to the earth only for a little mud to build themselves nests
+with. For the rest, they live in the air, and on the creatures of the
+air. And then, when they fancy the air begins to be uncivil, sending
+little shoots of cold through their warm feathers, they vanish. They
+won’t stand it. They’re off to a warmer climate, and you never know till
+you find they’re not there any more. There, Connie!”
+
+“I don’t know, papa, whether you are making game of us or not. If you
+are not, then I wish all you say were quite true of us. If you are then
+I think it is not quite like you to be satirical.”
+
+“I am no believer in satire, Connie. And I didn’t mean any. The swallows
+are lovely creatures, and there would be no harm if the girls were
+a little steadier than the swallows. Further satire than that I am
+innocent of.”
+
+“I don’t mind that much, papa. Only I’m steady enough, and no thanks to
+me for it,” she added with a sigh.
+
+“Connie,” I said, “it’s all for the sake of your wings that you’re kept
+in your nest.”
+
+She did not stay out long this first day, for the life the air gave
+her soon tired her weak body. But the next morning she was brighter and
+better, and longing to get up and go out again. When she was once more
+laid on her couch on the lawn, in the midst of the world of light and
+busy-ness, in which the light was the busiest of all, she said to me:
+
+“Papa, I had such a strange dream last night: shall I tell it you?”
+
+“If you please, my dear. I am very fond of dreams that have any sense
+in them--or even of any that have good nonsense in them. I woke
+this morning, saying to myself, ‘Dante, the poet, must have been a
+respectable man, for he was permitted by the council of Florence to
+carry the Nicene Creed and the Multiplication Table in his coat of
+arms.’ Now tell me your dream.”
+
+Connie laughed. All the household tried to make Connie laugh, and
+generally succeeded. It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was
+sure to be recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in
+making Connie laugh.
+
+“Mine wasn’t a dream to make me laugh. It was too dreadful at first, and
+too delightful afterwards. I suppose it was getting out for the first
+time yesterday that made me dream it. I thought I was lying quite still,
+without breathing even, with my hands straight down by my sides and my
+eyes closed. I did not choose to open them, for I knew that if I did
+I should see nothing but the inside of the lid of my coffin. I did not
+mind it much at first, for I was very quiet, and not uncomfortable.
+Everything was as silent as it should be, for I was ten feet and a half
+under the surface of the earth in the churchyard. Old Sogers was not far
+from me on one side, and that was a comfort; only there was a thick wall
+of earth between. But as the time went on, I began to get uncomfortable.
+I could not help thinking how long I should have to wait for the
+resurrection. Somehow I had forgotten all that you teach us about that.
+Perhaps it was a punishment--the dream--for forgetting it.”
+
+“Silly child! Your dream is far better than your reflections.”
+
+“Well, I’ll go on with my dream. I lay a long time till I got very
+tired, and wanted to get up, O, so much! But still I lay, and although I
+tried, I could not move hand or foot. At last I burst out crying. I was
+ashamed of crying in my coffin, but I couldn’t bear it any longer.
+I thought I was quite disgraced, for everybody was expected to be
+perfectly quiet and patient down there. But the moment I began to cry,
+I heard a sound. And when I listened it was the sound of spades and
+pickaxes. It went on and on, and came nearer and nearer. And then--it
+was so strange--I was dreadfully frightened at the idea of the light and
+the wind, and of the people seeing me in my coffin and my night-dress,
+and tried to persuade myself that it was somebody else they were digging
+for, or that they were only going to lay another coffin over mine. And I
+thought that if it was you, papa, I shouldn’t mind how long I lay there,
+for I shouldn’t feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word
+to each other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer,
+and at last a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through,
+upon the lid of the coffin, right over my head.
+
+“‘Here she is, poor thing!’ I heard a sweet voice say.
+
+“‘I’m so glad we’ve found her,’ said another voice.
+
+“‘She couldn’t bear it any longer,’ said a third more pitiful voice than
+either of the others. ‘I heard her first,’ it went on. ‘I was away up in
+Orion, when I thought I heard a woman crying that oughtn’t to be crying.
+And I stopped and listened. And I heard her again. Then I knew that it
+was one of the buried ones, and that she had been buried long enough,
+and was ready for the resurrection. So as any business can wait except
+that, I flew here and there till I fell in with the rest of you.’
+
+“I think, papa, that this must have been because of what you were
+saying the other evening about the mysticism of St. Paul; that while he
+defended with all his might the actual resurrection of Christ and the
+resurrection of those he came to save, he used it as meaning something
+more yet, as a symbol for our coming out of the death of sin into the
+life of truth. Isn’t that right, papa?”
+
+“Yes, my dear; I believe so. But I want to hear your dream first, and
+then your way of accounting for it.”
+
+“There isn’t much more of it now.”
+
+“There must be the best of it.”
+
+“Yes; I allow that. Well, while they spoke--it was a wonderfully clear
+and connected dream: I never had one like it for that, or for anything
+else--they were clearing away the earth and stones from the top of my
+coffin. And I lay trembling and expecting to be looked at, like a thing
+in a box as I was, every moment. But they lifted me, coffin and all, out
+of the grave, for I felt the motion of it up. Then they set it down, and
+I heard them taking the lid off. But after the lid was off, it did not
+seem to make much difference to me. I could not open my eyes. I saw no
+light, and felt no wind blowing upon me. But I heard whispering about
+me. Then I felt warm, soft hands washing my face, and then I felt wafts
+of wind coming on my face, and thought they came from the waving of
+wings. And when they had washed my eyes, the air came upon them so sweet
+and cool! and I opened them, I thought, and here I was lying on this
+couch, with butterflies and bees flitting and buzzing about me, the
+brook singing somewhere near me, and a lark up in the sky. But there
+were no angels--only plenty of light and wind and living creatures.
+And I don’t think I ever knew before what happiness meant. Wasn’t it a
+resurrection, papa, to come out of the grave into such a world as this?”
+
+“Indeed it was, my darling--and a very beautiful and true dream. There
+is no need for me to moralise it to you, for you have done so for
+yourself already. But not only do I think that the coming out of sin
+into goodness, out of unbelief into faith in God, is like your dream;
+but I do expect that no dream of such delight can come up to the sense
+of fresh life and being that we shall have when we get on the higher
+body after this one won’t serve our purpose any longer, and is worn out
+and cast aside. The very ability of the mind, whether of itself, or by
+some inspiration of the Almighty, to dream such things, is a proof of
+our capacity for such things, a proof, I think, that for such things we
+were made. Here comes in the chance for faith in God--the confidence in
+his being and perfection that he would not have made us capable without
+meaning to fill that capacity. If he is able to make us capable, that is
+the harder half done already. The other he can easily do. And if he is
+love he will do it. You should thank God for that dream, Connie.”
+
+“I was afraid to do that, papa.”
+
+“That is as much as to fear that there is one place to which David
+might have fled, where God would not find him--the most terrible of all
+thoughts.”
+
+“Where do you mean, papa?”
+
+“Dreamland, my dear. If it is right to thank God for a beautiful
+thought--I mean a thought of strength and grace giving you fresh life
+and hope--why should you be less bold to thank him when such thoughts
+arise in plainer shape--take such vivid forms to your mind that they
+seem to come through the doors of the eyes into the vestibule of the
+brain, and thence into the inner chambers of the soul?”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+
+
+
+
+For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
+journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
+prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the
+sojourn. First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer,
+consisting, as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground
+ginger, and cold water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge,
+exhausted and renewed about twelve times before the day of departure
+arrived; and when at last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered
+with dismay that they had drunk the last drop two days before, and
+there was none in stock. Then there was a wonderful and more successful
+hoarding of marbles, of a variety so great that my memory refuses to
+bear the names of the different kinds, which, I think, must have greatly
+increased since the time when I too was a boy, when some marbles--one
+of real, white marble with red veins especially--produced in my mind
+something of the delight that a work of art produces now. These
+were carefully deposited in one of the many divisions of a huge old
+hair-trunk, which they had got their uncle Weir, who could use his
+father’s tools with pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them with
+a multiplicity of boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and
+slides, that was quite bewildering. In this same box was stowed also
+a quantity of hair, the gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the
+premises. This was for making fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on
+the part of Harry that it was to be employed in catching whales and
+crocodiles. Then all their favourite books were stowed away in the same
+chest, in especial a packet of a dozen penny books, of which I think I
+could give a complete list now. For one afternoon as I searched about in
+the lumber-room after a set of old library steps, which I wanted to get
+repaired, I came upon the chest, and opening it, discovered my boys’
+hoard, and in it this packet of books. I sat down on the top of the
+chest and read them all through, from Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop
+o’ my Thumb without rising, and this in the broad daylight, with the
+yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the rose-coloured silken seat,
+richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair with three golden legs.
+Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say the names of them,
+over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding now that they
+had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something in potency,
+they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these, and Charlie
+not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding, in
+virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
+sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
+string; a rabbit’s skin; a Noah’s ark; an American clock, that
+refused to go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of
+lead-soldiers, and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt
+ball having an eagle of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
+
+Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this
+magazine could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to
+follow us to the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent
+on before us, but the boys had intended the precious box to go with
+themselves. Knowing well, however, how little they would miss it, and
+with what shouts of south-sea discovery they would greet the forgotten
+treasure when they returned, I insisted on the lumbering article being
+left in peace. So that, as man goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever
+he may have accumulated before the fatal moment, they had to set off for
+the far country without chest or ginger-beer--not therefore altogether
+so desolate and unprovided for as they imagined. The abandoned treasure
+was forgotten the moment the few tears it had occasioned were wiped
+away.
+
+It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
+sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows
+were twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the
+dear old house.
+
+“I’m sorry to leave the swallows behind,” said Wynnie, as she stepped
+into the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already
+there, eager and strong-hearted for the journey.
+
+We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
+forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed
+to enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of
+the meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we
+met bravely diligent at their day’s work, as they trudged along the road
+with wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I
+could see her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its
+expression that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a
+brown-faced gipsy family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the
+passing carriage. A fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under
+the convoy of the parent duck, next attracted her.
+
+“Look; look. Isn’t that delicious?” she cried.
+
+“I don’t think I should like it though,” said Wynnie.
+
+“What shouldn’t you like, Wynnie?” asked her mother.
+
+“To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!”
+
+“They feel it with their legs and their webby toes,” said Connie.
+
+“Yes, that is some consolation,” answered Wynnie.
+
+“And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
+winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning.”
+
+I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie’s illness had
+not in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had
+rather, as it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and
+sympathetic, so that the things around her could enter her soul even
+more easily than before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in
+reality brought her into closer contact with the movements of all
+vitality.
+
+We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station.
+Everybody almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for
+Connie’s sake chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had
+forgotten to say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak
+to him. The same instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie
+was the centre of all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother
+or sister. Had she been a martyr who had stood the test and received her
+aureole, she could hardly have been more regarded. The common use of
+the word martyr is a curious instance of how words get degraded. The
+sufferings involved in martyrdom, and not the pure will giving occasion
+to that suffering, is fixed upon by the common mind as the martyrdom.
+The witness-bearing is lost sight of, except we can suppose that “a
+martyr to the toothache” means a witness of the fact of the toothache
+and its tortures. But while _martyrdom_ really means a bearing for the
+sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any suffering, even that
+we have brought upon ourselves, may become martyrdom. When it is so
+borne that the sufferer therein bears witness to the presence and
+fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to his will, in gentle
+endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which is not seldom to be
+seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than all, perhaps, and
+rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and merciful consequence
+of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with righteous shame, as the
+cleansing of the Father’s hand, indicating that repentance unto life
+which lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes him such that the
+holiest men of old would talk to him with gladness and respect, then
+indeed it may be called a martyrdom. This latter could not be Connie’s
+case, but the former was hers, and so far she might be called a martyr,
+even as the old women of the village designated her.
+
+After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
+post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
+abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
+exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
+trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
+do with Miss Connie’s baby to heed what the young gentlemen were
+about, so long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the
+man-servant, who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of
+the establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to
+everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the
+wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we
+could not possibly get on without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise
+beside the driver from the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than
+otherwise at the noise of the youngsters.
+
+“Good-bye, Marshmallows,” they were shouting at the top of their voices,
+as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
+wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody’s ears on the
+open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
+condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that
+there was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them
+as much liberty as could be afforded them.
+
+At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now
+in wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany
+us a good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us
+in moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
+skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and
+only at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times
+on the way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the
+streets delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the
+children and servants, all but my wife’s maid, on before us, under the
+charge of Walter. This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped
+only the night, for Connie found herself quite able to go on the next
+morning. Here Turner left us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked
+a little out of spirits after his departure, but soon recovered herself.
+The next night we spent at a small town on the borders of Devonshire,
+which was the limit of our railway travelling. Here we remained for
+another whole day, for the remnant of the journey across part of
+Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be posted, and was a good five
+hours’ work. We started about eleven o’clock, full of spirits at
+the thought that we had all but accomplished the only part of the
+undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness. Connie was quite
+merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open carriage with a hood.
+Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the maid in the rumble,
+and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we had four horses;
+and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and thankfulness,
+who would not be happy?
+
+There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I
+altogether understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment
+has something to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion,
+the change of scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the
+next turn in the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the
+pine-trees especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the
+harness as you pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses,
+the glitter and the shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy
+faces, the scent of burning wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a
+thousand other things combine to make such a journey delightful. But I
+believe it needs something more than this--something even closer to the
+human life--to account for the pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect
+it is its living symbolism; the hidden relations which it bears to the
+eternal soul in its aspirations and longings--ever following after, ever
+attaining, never satisfied. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. A man,
+you will allow, perhaps, may be content although he is not and cannot be
+happy: I feel inclined to turn all this the other way, saying that a man
+ought always to be happy, never to be content. You will see I do not say
+_contented_; I say _content_. Here comes in his faith: his life is
+hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded. All things are his, to
+become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as his being enlarges
+to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary incompleteness
+falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God’s idea he is
+complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God the
+Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
+gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch
+as he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I
+leave it, however.
+
+I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt
+I was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with
+full confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man
+be happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the
+feeble knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill?
+True, the fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp
+of life; but if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth;
+if less of fire, more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light.
+Verily, youth is good, but old age is better--to the man who forsakes
+not his youth when his youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature
+do not depend upon youth or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose
+meekness inherits the earth. The smell of that field of beans gives me
+more delight now than ever it could have given me when I was a youth.
+And if I ask myself why I find it is simply because I have more faith
+now than I had then. It came to me then as an accident of nature--a
+passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs’ share of the crumbs. Now
+I believe that God _means_ that odour of the bean-field; that when Jesus
+smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in Galilee, he thought of his
+Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if I should never smell it
+again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age should make me deaf
+as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope you are too, or
+will be before you have done with this same beautiful mystical life
+of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God’s books of
+poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest, perhaps.
+
+And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
+I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
+describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
+countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off
+in a word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn’s face was bright with the
+brightness of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a
+little weary, lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping
+towards the earth. Wynnie’s face was bright with the brightness of the
+morning star, ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that
+brightens at the sun’s approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its
+light, and somewhat sad because severe. Connie’s face was bright with
+the brightness of a lake in the rosy evening, the sound of the river
+flowing in and the sound of the river flowing forth just audible, but
+itself still, and content to be still and mirror the sunset. Dora’s was
+bright with the brightness of a marigold that follows the sun without
+knowing it; and Eliza’s was bright with the brightness of a half-blown
+cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This last is not a good simile, but
+I cannot find a better. I confess failure, and go on.
+
+After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
+carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
+figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they
+were, where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her
+to carry her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads
+through which were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches
+of heather all about were showing their bells, though not yet in
+their autumnal outburst of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded
+of Scotland, in which I had travelled a good deal between the ages of
+twenty and five-and-twenty. The further I went the stronger I felt the
+resemblance. The look of the fields, the stone fences that divided them,
+the shape and colour and materials of the houses, the aspect of the
+people, the feeling of the air, and of the earth and sky generally, made
+me imagine myself in a milder and more favoured Scotland. The west wind
+was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge which one can so often detect
+in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot sun. Though she had already
+travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up within a few minutes after
+we got on this moor; and we had not gone much farther before a shout
+from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little Dora had discovered
+the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue and bright. We
+soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie’s eyes it seemed to
+linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them seemed the
+reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors. Ethelwyn’s eyes,
+too, were full of it, and a flush on her generally pale cheek showed
+that she too expected the ocean. After a few miles along this breezy
+expanse, we began to descend towards the sea-level. Down the winding of
+a gradual slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new
+chapter in our history. We came again upon a few trees here and there,
+all with their tops cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the
+sea. For the sea-winds, like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away
+towards the land, and keep their tops mown with their sharp rushing,
+keen with salt spray off the crests of the broken waves. Then we passed
+through some ancient villages, with streets narrow, and steep and
+sharp-angled, that needed careful driving and the frequent pressure
+of the break upon the wheel. And now the sea shone upon us with nearer
+greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear its talk with the shore.
+At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the last level, drove over
+a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw the land vanish in the
+sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden drawbridge, and along
+the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops and schooners. Then
+came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an ascent, and ere we
+reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by loud shouts, and
+the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top of a stone wall
+to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept quiet, knowing
+that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing about the evil
+it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch, leading through
+the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The journey was
+over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the county of
+Cornwall.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.
+
+
+
+
+
+We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which
+nurse had fixed upon for her--the best in the house, of course, again.
+She did seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at once, and
+in half an hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very glad. After
+dinner I went up to Connie’s room. There I found her fast asleep on the
+sofa, and Wynnie as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The drive and
+the sea air had had the same effect on both of them. But pleased as I
+was to see Connie sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see
+Wynnie asleep on the floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give
+to a father and mother to see this or that child asleep! It is when
+her kittens are asleep that the cat creeps away to look after her own
+comforts. Our cat chose to have her kittens in my study once, and as I
+would not have her further disturbed than to give them another cushion
+to lie on in place of that which belonged to my sofa, I had many
+opportunities of watching them as I wrote, or prepared my sermons. But I
+must not talk about the cat and her kittens now. When parents see their
+children asleep, especially if they have been suffering in any way,
+they breathe more freely; a load is lifted off their minds; their
+responsibility seems over; the children have gone back to their Father,
+and he alone is looking after them for a while. Now, I had not been
+comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially during our
+journey, and still more especially during the last part of our journey.
+There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or less
+dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much for
+her, although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had not
+quite enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without
+much thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do
+not seem to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them;
+while for others a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is
+necessary for the health of both body and mind, and when the matter or
+occasion for so much is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous
+to what follows when a healthy physical system is not supplied with
+sufficient food: the oxygen, the source of life, begins to consume the
+life itself; it tears up the timbers of the house to burn against the
+cold. Or, to use a different simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance
+does not strike the rock and make the waters flow, such a mind--one that
+must think to live--will go digging into itself, and is in danger of
+injuring the very fountain of thought, by drawing away its living water
+into ditches and stagnant pools. This was, I say, the case in part with
+my Wynnie, although I did not understand it at that moment. She did
+not look quite happy, did not always meet a smile with a smile, looked
+almost reprovingly upon the frolics of the little brother-imps, and
+though kindness itself when any real hurt or grief befell them, had
+reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner, of which I have
+already spoken as interrupted by Connie’s accident. To her mother and me
+she was service itself, only service without the smile which is as
+the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a little
+uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
+had seemed almost annoyed at Connie’s ecstasies, and said to Dora many
+times: “Do be quiet, Dora;” although there was not a single creature but
+ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
+child’s explosions. So I was--but although I say _so_, I hardly know why
+I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief in the
+anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I
+stood regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her
+uncomfortable, she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with
+the words, “I beg your pardon, papa,” looking almost guiltily round
+her, and putting up her hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an
+impropriety in being caught untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition
+of mind that was not healthy.
+
+“My dear,” I said, “what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to
+see you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold
+you.”
+
+“O papa,” she said, laying her head on my shoulder, “I am afraid I must
+be very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong,
+or rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure
+there must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly
+know what it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected
+something, and you had come to find fault with me. _Is_ there anything,
+papa?”
+
+“Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
+that.”
+
+“I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day!
+Why shouldn’t I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked,
+papa.”
+
+Here Connie woke up.
+
+“There now! I’ve waked Connie,” Wynnie resumed. “I’m always doing
+something I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take
+that sin off my poor conscience.”
+
+“What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?” asked Connie.
+
+“It isn’t nonsense, Connie. You know I am.”
+
+“I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don’t
+_feel_ wicked.”
+
+“My dear children,” I said, “we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
+then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say
+to himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one
+man to say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case
+to do as St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing--to judge our own
+selves, which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do
+what our Lord has told us expressly we are not to do--to judge other
+people. You get your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going
+to explore a little of this desert island upon which we have been cast
+away. And you, Connie, just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep
+again.”
+
+Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to
+talk seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.
+
+Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what
+we talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported
+it to Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies
+who went to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news
+of nature, to her who could not go to gather them for herself. I think
+it will be the best plan to take part of both plans.
+
+When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
+leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed _in_, the rocks,
+buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life for a
+big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still blew
+from the west, both warm and strong--I mean strength-giving--and the
+wind was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was
+green and soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright
+flowers, chiefly yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the
+downs, the shadows of whose unequal surface were now beginning to be
+thrown east, for the sun was going seawards. I stood up, stretched out
+my arms, threw back my shoulders and my head, and filled my chest with a
+draught of the delicious wind, feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed
+with wine. Wynnie stood apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar,
+thoughtful, and turning her eyes hither and thither.
+
+“That makes me feel young again,” I said.
+
+“I wish it would make me feel old then,” said Wynnie.
+
+“What do you mean, my child?”
+
+“Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
+young,” she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were
+walking up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the
+down-turf was indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we
+had reached the top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight.
+The top of the hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun
+was hanging on the face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea
+stretched for visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand,
+its wide blue mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land,
+and scalloped into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the
+nether fires which had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as
+they bore the rising tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for
+the whole. Ear and eye, touch and smell, were alike invaded with
+blessedness. I ought to have kept this to give my reader in Connie’s
+room; but he shall share with her presently. The sense of space--of
+mighty room for life and growth--filled my soul, and I thanked God in
+my heart. The wind seemed to bear that growth into my soul, even as the
+wind of God first breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and
+the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment of every aspiration. I turned
+and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but listless amidst that which
+lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.
+
+“Don’t you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?”
+
+“I told you I was very wicked, papa.”
+
+“And I told you not to say so, Wynnie.”
+
+“You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is.”
+
+“I suspect it is because you haven’t room, Wynnie.”
+
+“I know you mean something more than I know, papa.”
+
+“I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you
+do not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only
+live in him, is ‘cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.’ It is only in
+him that the soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The
+secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who
+knows its secret. Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth.
+You do not feel them, and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would
+be both useless and absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for
+a moment, and then tell me whether it must not be a blessed life that
+creates such a glory as this All.”
+
+She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
+earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
+eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling,
+or sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to
+speak again.
+
+“As this world of delight surrounds and enters your bodily frame, so
+does God surround your soul and live in it. To be at home with the awful
+source of your being, through the child-like faith which he not only
+permits, but requires, and is ever teaching you, or rather seeking
+to rouse up in you, is the only cure for such feelings as those that
+trouble you. Do not say it is too high for you. God made you in his own
+image, therefore capable of understanding him. For this final end he
+sent his Son, that the Father might with him come into you, and dwell
+with you. Till he does so, the temple of your soul is vacant; there is
+no light behind the veil, no cloudy pillar over it; and the priests,
+your thoughts, feelings, loves, and desires, moan, and are troubled--for
+where is the work of the priest when the God is not there? When He comes
+to you, no mystery, no unknown feeling, will any longer distress you.
+You will say, ‘He knows, though I do not.’ And you will be at the secret
+of the things he has made. You will feel what they are, and that which
+his will created in gladness you will receive in joy. One glimmer of the
+present God in this glory would send you home singing. But do not think
+I blame you, Wynnie, for feeling sad. I take it rather as the sign of a
+large life in you, that will not be satisfied with little things. I do
+not know when or how it may please God to give you the quiet of mind
+that you need; but I tell you that I believe it is to be had; and in
+the mean time, you must go on doing your work, trusting in God even for
+this. Tell him to look at your sorrow, ask him to come and set it right,
+making the joy go up in your heart by his presence. I do not know when
+this may be, I say, but you must have patience, and till he lays his
+hand on your head, you must be content to wash his feet with your tears.
+Only he will be better pleased if your faith keep you from weeping and
+from going about your duties mournful. Try to be brave and cheerful for
+the sake of Christ, and for the sake of your confidence in the beautiful
+teaching of God, whose course and scope you cannot yet understand.
+Trust, my daughter, and let that give you courage and strength.”
+
+Now the sky and the sea and the earth must have made me able to say
+these things to her; but I knew that, whatever the immediate occasion of
+her sadness, such was its only real cure. Other things might, in virtue
+of the will of God that was in them, give her occupation and interest
+enough for a time, but nothing would do finally, but God himself. Here
+I was sure I was safe; here I knew lay the hunger of humanity. Humanity
+may, like other vital forms, diseased systems, fix on this or that as
+the object not merely of its desire but of its need: it can never
+be stilled by less than the bread of life--the very presence in the
+innermost nature of the Father and the Son.
+
+We walked on together. Wynnie made me no reply, but, weeping silently,
+clung to my arm. We walked a long way by the edge of the cliffs, beheld
+the sun go down, and then turned and went home. When we reached the
+house, Wynnie left me, saying only, “Thank you, papa. I think it is all
+true. I will try to be a better girl.”
+
+I went straight to Connie’s room: she was lying as I saw her last,
+looking out of her window.
+
+“Connie,” I said, “Wynnie and I have had such a treat--such a sunset!”
+
+“I’ve seen a little of the light of it on the waves in the bay there,
+but the high ground kept me from seeing the sunset itself. Did it set in
+the sea?”
+
+“You do want the General Gazetteer, after all, Connie. Is that water the
+Atlantic, or is it not? And if it be, where on earth could the sun set
+but in it?”
+
+“Of course, papa. What a goose I am! But don’t make game of
+me--_please_. I am too deliciously happy to be made game of to-night.”
+
+“I won’t make game of you, my darling. I will tell you about the
+sunset--the colours of it, at least. This must be one of the best places
+in the whole world to see sunsets.”
+
+“But you have had no tea, papa. I thought you would come and have your
+tea with me. But you were so long, that mamma would not let me wait any
+longer.”
+
+“O, never mind the tea, my dear. But Wynnie has had none. You’ve got a
+tea-caddy of your own, haven’t you?”
+
+“Yes, and a teapot; and there’s the kettle on the hob--for I can’t do
+without a little fire in the evenings.”
+
+“Then I’ll make some tea for Wynnie and myself, and tell you at the same
+time about the sunset. I never saw such colours. I cannot tell you what
+it was like while the sun was yet going down, for the glory of it has
+burned the memory of it out of me. But after the sun was down, the sky
+remained thinking about him; and the thought of the sky was in
+delicate translucent green on the horizon, just the colour of the earth
+etherealised and glorified--a broad band; then came another broad band
+of pale rose-colour; and above that came the sky’s own eternal blue,
+pale likewise, but so sure and changeless. I never saw the green and
+the blue divided and harmonised by the rose-colour before. It was a
+wonderful sight. If it is warm enough to-morrow, we will carry you out
+on the height, that you may see what the evening will bring.”
+
+“There is one thing about sunsets,” returned Connie--“two things, that
+make me rather sad--about themselves, not about anything else. Shall I
+tell you them?”
+
+“Do, my love. There are few things more precious to learn than the
+effects of Nature upon individual minds. And there is not a feeling of
+yours, my child, that is not of value to me.”
+
+“You are so kind, papa! I am so glad of my accident. I think I should
+never have known how good you are but for that. But my thoughts seem so
+little worth after you say so much about them.”
+
+“Let me be judge of that, my dear.”
+
+“Well, one thing is, that we shall never, never, never, see the same
+sunset again.”
+
+“That is true. But why should we? God does not care to do the same
+thing over again. When it is once done, it is done, and he goes on doing
+something new. For, to all eternity, he never will have done showing
+himself by new, fresh things. It would be a loss to do the same thing
+again.”
+
+“But that just brings me to my second trouble. The thing is lost. I
+forget it. Do what I can, I cannot remember sunsets. I try to fix them
+fast in my memory, that I may recall them when I want them; but just as
+they fade out of the sky, all into blue or gray, so they fade out of my
+mind and leave it as if they had never been there--except perhaps two
+or three. Now, though I did not see this one, yet, after you have talked
+about it, I shall never forget _it_.”
+
+“It is not, and never will be, as if they had never been. They have
+their influence, and leave that far deeper than your memory--in your
+very being, Connie. But I have more to say about it, although it is
+only an idea, hardly an assurance. Our brain is necessarily an imperfect
+instrument. For its right work, perhaps it is needful that it should
+forget in part. But there are grounds for believing that nothing is ever
+really forgotten. I think that, when we have a higher existence than we
+have now, when we are clothed with that spiritual body of which St. Paul
+speaks, you will be able to recall any sunset you have ever seen with an
+intensity proportioned to the degree of regard and attention you gave
+it when it was present to you. But here comes Wynnie to see how you
+are.--I’ve been making some tea for you, Wynnie, my love.”
+
+“O, thank you, papa--I shall be so glad of some tea!” said Wynnie, the
+paleness of whose face showed the red rims of her eyes the more plainly.
+She had had what girls call a good cry, and was clearly the better for
+it.
+
+The same moment my wife came in. “Why didn’t you send for me, Harry, to
+get your tea?” she said.
+
+“I did not deserve any, seeing I had disregarded proper times and
+seasons. But I knew you must be busy.”
+
+“I have been superintending the arrangement of bedrooms, and the
+unpacking, and twenty different things,” said Ethelwyn. “We shall be so
+comfortable! It is such a curious house! Have you had a nice walk?”
+
+“Mamma, I never had such a walk in my life,” returned Wynnie. “You would
+think the shore had been built for the sake of the show--just for a
+platform to see sunsets from. And the sea! Only the cliffs will be
+rather dangerous for the children.”
+
+“I have just been telling Connie about the sunset. She could see
+something of the colours on the water, but not much more.”
+
+“O, Connie, it will be so delightful to get you out here! Everything is
+so big! There is such room everywhere! But it must be awfully windy in
+winter,” said Wynnie, whose nature was always a little prospective, if
+not apprehensive.
+
+But I must not keep my reader longer upon mere family chat.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+Our dining-room was one story below the level at which we had entered
+the parsonage; for, as I have said, the house was built into the face of
+the cliff, just where it sunk nearly to the level of the shores of the
+bay. While at dinner, on the evening of our arrival, I kept looking
+from the window, of course, and I saw before me, first a little bit of
+garden, mostly in turf, then a low stone wall; beyond, over the top of
+the wall, the blue water of the bay; then beyond the water, all alive
+with light and motion, the rocks and sand-hills of the opposite side
+of the little bay, not a quarter of a mile across. I could likewise see
+where the shore went sweeping out and away to the north, with rock after
+rock standing far into the water, as if gazing over the awful wild,
+where there was nothing to break the deathly waste between Cornwall and
+Newfoundland. But for the moment I did not regard the huge power lying
+outside so much as the merry blue bay between me and those rocks and
+sand-hills. If I moved my head a little to the right, I saw, over the
+top of the low wall already mentioned, and apparently quite close to it
+the slender yellow masts of a schooner, her mainsail hanging loose from
+the gaff, whose peak was lowered. We must, I thought, be on the very
+harbour-quay. When I went out for my walk with Wynnie, I had turned from
+the bay, and gone to the brow of the cliffs overhanging the open sea on
+our own side of it.
+
+When I came down to breakfast in the same room next morning, I stared.
+The blue had changed to yellow. The life of the water was gone. Nothing
+met my eyes but a wide expanse of dead sand. You could walk straight
+across the bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from
+the perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking,
+concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was
+high-water, or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was
+over a long reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe
+of the waves was visible, as if there was their _hitherto_, and further
+towards us they could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of
+the Atlantic. To add to my confusion, when I looked to the right, that
+is, up the bay towards the land, there was no schooner there. I went out
+at the window, which opened from the room upon the little lawn, to look,
+and then saw in a moment how it was.
+
+“Do you know, my dear,” I said to my wife, “we are just at the mouth
+of that canal we saw as we came along? There are gates and a lock just
+outside there. The schooner that was under this window last night must
+have gone in with the tide. She is lying in the basin above now.”
+
+“O, yes, papa,” Charlie and Harry broke in together. “We saw it go up
+this morning. We’ve been out ever so long. It was so funny,” Charlie
+went on--everything was _funny_ with Charlie--“to see it rise up like
+a Jack-in-the-box, and then slip into the quiet water through the other
+gates!”
+
+And when I thought about the waves tumbling and breaking away out there,
+and the wide yellow sands between, it was wonderful--which was what
+Charlie meant by funny--to see the little vessel lying so many feet
+above it all, in a still plenty of repose, gathering strength, one
+might fancy to rush out again, when its time was come, into the turmoil
+beyond, and dash its way through the breasts of the billows.
+
+After breakfast we had prayers, as usual, and after a visit to Connie,
+whom I found tired, but wonderfully well, I went out for a walk by
+myself, to explore the neighbourhood, find the church, and, in a word,
+do something to shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious.
+I wandered along a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk
+the evening before, with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of
+feathery tamarisks on my left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply
+to a lower road, where stood a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner,
+I came suddenly in sight of the church, on the green down above me--a
+sheltered yet commanding situation; for, while the hill rose above it,
+protecting it from the east, it looked down the bay, and the Atlantic
+lay open before it. All the earth seemed to lie behind it, and all its
+gaze to be fixed on the symbol of the infinite. It stood as the church
+ought to stand, leading men up the mount of vision, to the verge of the
+eternal, to send them back with their hearts full of the strength that
+springs from hope, by which alone the true work of the world can
+be done. And when I saw it I rejoiced to think that once more I was
+favoured with a church that had a history. Of course it is a happy thing
+to see new churches built wherever there is need of such; but to the
+full idea of the building it is necessary that it should be one in which
+the hopes and fears, the cares and consolations, the loves and desires
+of our forefathers should have been roofed; where the hearts of those
+through whom our country has become that which it is--from whom not
+merely the life-blood of our bodies, but the life-blood of our spirits,
+has come down to us, whose existence and whose efforts have made it
+possible for us to be that which we are--have before us worshipped that
+Spirit from whose fountain the whole torrent of being flows, who ever
+pours fresh streams into the wearying waters of humanity, so ready to
+settle down into a stagnant repose. Therefore I would far rather, when
+I may, worship in an old church, whose very stones are a history of how
+men strove to realise the infinite, compelling even the powers of nature
+into the task--as I soon found on the very doorway of this church, where
+the ripples of the outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the
+monsters of its deeps, fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave
+a distorted reflex, from the little mirror of the artist’s mind, of that
+mighty water, so awful, so significant to the human eye, which yet lies
+in the hollow of the Father’s palm, like the handful that the weary
+traveller lifts from the brook by the way. It is in virtue of the truth
+that went forth in such and such like attempts that we are able to hold
+our portion of the infinite reality which God only knows. They have
+founded our Church for us, and such a church as this will stand for the
+symbol of it; for here we too can worship the God of Abraham, of Isaac,
+and of Jacob--the God of Sidney, of Hooker, of Herbert. This church of
+Kilkhaven, old and worn, rose before me a history in stone--so beaten
+and swept about by the “wild west wind,”
+
+  “For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
+  Cleave themselves into chasms,”
+
+and so streamed upon, and washed, and dissolved, by the waters lifted
+from the sea and borne against it on the upper tide of the wind, that
+you could almost fancy it one of those churches that have been buried
+for ages beneath the encroaching waters, lifted again, by some mighty
+revulsion of nature’s heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to
+stand marked for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world--scooped,
+and hollowed, and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for
+ever, responded to the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from
+the most troublous of times, will the Church of our land arise, in
+virtue of what truth she holds, and in spite, if she rises at all,
+of the worldliness of those who, instead of seeking her service, have
+sought and gained the dignities which, if it be good that she have it
+in her power to bestow them, need the corrective of a sharply wholesome
+persecution which of late times she has not known. But God knows, and
+the fire will come in its course--first in the form of just indignation,
+it may be, against her professed servants, and then in the form of the
+furnace seven times heated, in which the true builders shall yet walk
+unhurt save as to their mortal part.
+
+I looked about for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to
+live, and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a
+little distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before
+I reached it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She
+was dressed in a white cap and a dark-coloured gown. On her face lay a
+certain repose which attracted me. She looked as if she had suffered but
+had consented to it, and therefore could smile. Her smile lay near the
+surface. A kind word was enough to draw it up from the well where it lay
+shimmering: you could always see the smile there, whether it was born or
+not. But even when she smiled, in the very glimmering of that moonbeam,
+you could see the deep, still, perhaps dark, waters under. O! if one
+could but understand what goes on in the souls that have no words,
+perhaps no inclination, to set it forth! What had she endured? How had
+she learned to have that smile always near? What had consoled her, and
+yet left her her grief--turned it, perhaps, into hope? Should I ever
+know?
+
+She drew near me, as if she would have passed me, as she would have
+done, had I not spoken. I think she came towards me to give me the
+opportunity of speaking if I wished, but she would not address me.
+
+“Good morning,” I said. “Can you tell me where to find the sexton?”
+
+“Well, sir,” she answered, with a gleam of the smile brightening
+underneath her old skin, as it were, “I be all the sexton you be likely
+to find this mornin’, sir. My husband, he be gone out to see one o’
+Squire Tregarva’s hounds as was took ill last night. So if you want to
+see the old church, sir, you’ll have to be content with an old woman to
+show you, sir.”
+
+“I shall be quite content, I assure you,” I answered. “Will you go and
+get the key?”
+
+“I have the key in my pocket, sir; for I thought that would be what
+you’d be after, sir. And by the time you come to my age, sir, you’ll
+learn to think of your old bones, sir. I beg your pardon for making so
+free. For mayhap, says I to myself, he be the gentleman as be come to
+take Mr. Shepherd’s duty for him. Be ye now, sir?”
+
+All this was said in a slow sweet subdued tone, nearly of one pitch.
+You would have felt that she claimed the privilege of age with a kind of
+mournful gaiety, but was careful, and anxious even, not to presume upon
+it, and, therefore, gentle as a young girl.
+
+“Yes,” I answered. “My name is Walton I have come to take the place of
+my friend Mr. Shepherd; and, of course, I want to see the church.”
+
+“Well, she be a bee-utiful old church. Some things, I think, sir, grows
+more beautiful the older they grows. But it ain’t us, sir.”
+
+“I’m not so sure of that,” I said. “What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, sir, there’s my little grandson in the cottage there: he’ll never
+be so beautiful again. Them children du be the loves. But we all grows
+uglier as we grows older. Churches don’t seem to, sir.”
+
+“I’m not so sure about all that,” I said again.
+
+“They did say, sir, that I was a pretty girl once. I’m not much to look
+at now.”
+
+And she smiled with such a gracious amusement, that I felt at once that
+if there was any vanity left in this memory of her past loveliness,
+it was sweet as the memory of their old fragrance left in the withered
+leaves of the roses.
+
+“But it du not matter, du it, sir? Beauty is only skin-deep.”
+
+“I don’t believe that,” I answered. “Beauty is as deep as the heart at
+least.”
+
+“Well to be sure, my old husband du say I be as handsome in his eyes
+as ever I be. But I beg your pardon, sir, for talkin’ about myself. I
+believe it was the old church--she set us on to it.”
+
+“The old church didn’t lead you into any harm then,” I answered. “The
+beauty that is in the heart will shine out of the face again some
+day--be sure of that. And after all, there is just the same kind of
+beauty in a good old face that there is in an old church. You can’t say
+the church is so trim and neat as it was the day that the first blast of
+the organ filled it as with, a living soul. The carving is not quite so
+sharp, the timbers are not quite so clean. There is a good deal of mould
+and worm-eating and cobwebs about the old place. Yet both you and I
+think it more beautiful now than it was then. Well, I believe it is, as
+nearly as possible, the same with an old face. It has got stained, and
+weather-beaten, and worn; but if the organ of truth has been playing on
+inside the temple of the Lord, which St. Paul says our bodies are, there
+is in the old face, though both form and complexion are gone, just the
+beauty of the music inside. The wrinkles and the brownness can’t spoil
+it. A light shines through it all--that of the indwelling spirit. I wish
+we all grew old like the old churches.”
+
+She did not reply, but I thought I saw in her face that she understood
+my mysticism. We had been walking very slowly, had passed through the
+quaint lych-gate, and now the old woman had got the key in the lock of
+the door, whose archway was figured and fashioned as I have described
+above, with a dozen mouldings or more, most of them “carved so
+curiously.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE OLD CHURCH.
+
+
+
+
+
+The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the
+threshold--an awe I never fail to feel--heightened in many cases, no
+doubt, by the sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I
+have felt all the same in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan
+conventicle, as the place where men worship and have worshipped the God
+of their fathers, although for art there was only the science of common
+bricklaying, and for beauty staring ugliness. To the involuntary fancy,
+the air of petition and of holy need seems to linger in the place, and
+the uncovered head acknowledges the sacred symbols of human inspiration
+and divine revealing. But this was no ordinary church into which I
+followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As entering I turned my eyes
+eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them from the chancel, all
+the windows of which were of richly stained glass, and the roof of
+carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this chancel, and
+thence about chancels generally which may appear in another part of my
+story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the cogitations
+to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with even what I
+could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles and modes of
+architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of contesting
+human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature brings into
+harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive intrusions upon
+her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of the word,
+so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that which in
+itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture of this
+building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand of
+Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one
+could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at
+work _informing_ the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the
+sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was
+but the gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its
+self-assertion vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the
+worm. True, the hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought
+lovingly and gently, and wherein it had erred, the same influences of
+nature, though as yet their effects were invisible, were already at
+work--of the many making one. I will not trouble my reader, I say, with
+any architectural description, which, possibly even more than a detailed
+description of natural beauty dissociated from human feeling, would only
+weary him, even if it were not unintelligible. When we are reading a
+poem, we do not first of all examine the construction and dwell on
+the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after, if we find that the poem
+itself is so good that its parts are therefore worth examining, as being
+probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of the main work. There
+were carvings on the ends of the benches all along the aisle on both
+sides, well worth examination, and some of them even of description;
+but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the columns: they
+supported arches of different fashion on the opposite sides, but they
+were themselves similar in matter and construction, both remarkable.
+They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very far
+from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was a single stone with
+chamfered sides.
+
+Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many
+thoughts that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length
+into the tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body
+of the church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above,
+for bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend
+Shepherd. And as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful
+it would be if in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was
+precious; so that when it came to the minister of his people--a fresh
+vision of his glory, a discovery of his meaning--he might make haste to
+the church, and into the tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the
+deepest-toned bell of all, and constrain it by the force of strong arms
+to utter its voice of call, “Come hither, come hear, my people, for God
+hath spoken;” and from the streets or the lanes would troop the eager
+folk; the plough be left in the furrow, the cream in the churn; and the
+crowding people bring faces into the church, all with one question upon
+them--“What hath the Lord spoken?” But now it would be answer sufficient
+to such a call to say, “But what will become of the butter?” or, “An
+hour’s ploughing will be lost.” And the clergy--how would they bring
+about such a time? They do not even believe that God has a word to his
+people through them. They think that his word is petrified for use in
+the Bible and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old heard so much of the
+word of God, and have so set it down, that there is no need for any more
+words of the Lord coming to the prophets of a land; therefore they look
+down upon the prophesying--that is, the preaching of the word--make
+light of it, the best of them, say these prayers are everything, or all
+but everything: _their_ hearts are not set upon hearing what God the
+Lord will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people again.
+Therefore it is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to the
+clock, are no longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have
+nothing to do in telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little
+of this part of their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must
+remain such as they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers
+which are the word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when
+the prophets see no vision, how should they have any word to speak?
+
+These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my
+guide. She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I
+thought, or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had
+taken her stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting
+busily. How her needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however,
+but, fixed on the slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from
+her feet, seemed to be gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite
+objectless outlook. To try her, I took for the moment the position of an
+accuser.
+
+“So you don’t mind working in church?” I said.
+
+When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far
+sea-waves to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she
+answered--
+
+“The church knows me, sir.”
+
+“But what has that to do with it?”
+
+“I don’t think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
+know, sir.”
+
+“Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
+diligent somewhere else, couldn’t you?”
+
+As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But
+she only smiled and said, “It won’t hurt she, sir; and my good man, who
+does all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I
+don’t keep he warm he’ll be laid up, and then the church won’t be kep’
+nice, sir, till he’s up again.”
+
+I was tempted to go on.
+
+“But you could have sat down outside--there are some nice gravestones
+near--and waited till I came out.”
+
+“But what’s the church for, sir? The sun’s werry hot to-day, sir; and
+Mr. Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a
+great rock in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the
+sun, instead of comin’ in here to the cool o’ the shadow, I wouldn’t be
+takin’ the church at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old
+church, sir. There’s a something do seem to come out o’ the old walls
+and settle down like the cool o’ the day upon my old heart that’s nearly
+tired o’ crying, and would fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o’ the
+journey. My old man’s stockin’ won’t hurt the church, sir, and, bein’
+a good deed as I suppose it is, it’s none the worse for the place. I
+think, if He was to come by wi’ the whip o’ small cords, I wouldn’t be
+afeared of his layin’ it upo’ my old back. Do you think he would, sir?”
+
+Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
+with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.
+
+“Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
+ill-done work that the church’s Master drives away. All our work ought
+to be done in the shadow of the church.”
+
+“I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir,” she said, smiling
+her sweet old smile. “Nobody knows what this old church is to me.”
+
+Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
+left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
+thought.
+
+“You have had a family?” I said, interrogatively.
+
+“I’ve had thirteen,” she answered. “Six bys and seven maidens.”
+
+“Why, you are rich!” I returned. “And where are they all?”
+
+“Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one
+be down in the mill, there.”
+
+“And your boys?”
+
+“One of them be lyin’ beside his sisters--drownded afore my eyes, sir.
+Three o’ them be at sea, and two o’ them in it, sir.”
+
+At sea! I thought. What a wide _where_! As vague to the imagination,
+almost, as _in the other world_. How a mother’s thoughts must go roaming
+about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find them!
+
+As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.
+
+“It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with
+my knitting. Many’s the stormy night, when my husband couldn’t keep
+still, but would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good
+in life, but just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see
+by the white of them, with the balls o’ foam flying in his face in the
+dark--many’s the such a night that I have left the house after he was
+gone, with this blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church
+here, and sat down where I’m sittin’ now--leastways where I was sittin’
+when your reverence spoke to me--and hearkened to the wind howling
+about the place. The church windows never rattle, sir--like the cottage
+windows, as I suppose you know, sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the
+church.”
+
+“But if you had sons at sea,” said I, again wishing to draw her out, “it
+would not be of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
+were in danger.”
+
+“O! yes, it be, sir. What’s the good of feeling safe yourself but it
+let you know other people be safe too? It’s when you don’t feel safe
+yourself that you feel other people ben’t safe.”
+
+“But,” I said--and such confidence I had from what she had already
+uttered, that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one--“some of
+your sons _were_ drowned for all that you say about their safety.”
+
+“Well, sir,” she answered, with a sigh, “I trust they’re none the less
+safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me,
+well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being
+drownded. Why, they might ha’ been cast on a desert island, and wasted
+to skin an’ bone, and got home again wi’ the loss of half the wits they
+set out with. Wouldn’t that ha’ been worse than being drownded right
+off? And that wouldn’t ha’ been the worst, either. The church she seem
+to tell me all the time, that for all the roaring outside, there be
+really no danger after all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What
+is the bottom of the sea, sir? You bein’ a clergyman can tell that, sir.
+I shouldn’t ha’ known it if I hadn’t had bys o’ my own at sea, sir. But
+you can tell, sir, though you ain’t got none there.”
+
+And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
+returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to
+his instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.
+
+“The hollow of his hand,” I said, and said no more.
+
+“I thought you would know it, sir,” she returned, with a little glow of
+triumph in her tone. “Well, then, that’s just what the church tells me
+when I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too,
+sir, for I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when
+they come home, if they do come home, they’re none the worse that I went
+to the old church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them
+poor dears, all out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone
+almost in the quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come
+across me, sir, that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing
+all the noise and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about
+in the world, watching it all, letting it drown some o’ them and take
+them back to him, and keeping it from going too far with others of them
+that are not quite ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see,
+sir, though I be an old woman; and not nice to look at.”
+
+I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
+Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
+there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
+to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert
+would leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life
+is God’s school, and they that will listen to the Master there will
+learn at God’s speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious
+of Shepherd, and repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such
+glorious old stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal
+upon my light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling
+lasted but for a moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed
+and the true light shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it.
+Why should not Shepherd have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd
+was more of what would now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought
+my doctrine simpler and therefore better than his; but was this any
+reason why I should have all the grand people to minister to in my
+parish! Recovering myself, I found her last words still in my ears.
+
+“You are very nice to look at,” I said. “You must not find fault with
+the work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty
+than to be as you now are. Time and time’s rents and furrows are all his
+making and his doing. God makes nothing ugly.”
+
+“Are you quite sure of that, sir?”
+
+I paused. Such a question from such a woman “must give us pause.” And,
+as I paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I
+could not insist that God had never made anything ugly.
+
+“No. I am not sure of it,” I answered. For of all things my soul
+recoiled from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know
+seemed to me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master,
+whose servants we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and
+self-seeking. “But if he does,” I went on to say, “it must be that we
+may see what it is like, and therefore not like it.”
+
+Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
+question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
+had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of
+stool or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was
+some kind of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much
+like the ends of the benches and book-boards.
+
+“What is that you were sitting on?” I asked. “A chest or what?”
+
+“It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
+agone, sir. But what it be, you’ll be better able to tell than I be,
+sir.”
+
+“Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time,” I said.
+“But how should it then come to be banished to the tower?”
+
+“No, sir; it can’t be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I
+be thinking.”
+
+I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ.
+With some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of
+huge keys, fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one
+after another, but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and
+once down, so they mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there
+was any sign of a bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive
+kind of reed-instrument, like what we call a seraphine or harmonium
+now-a-days. But there was no hole through which there could have been
+any communication with or from a bellows, although there might have been
+a small one inside. There were, however, a dozen little round holes in
+the fixed part of the top, which might afford some clue to the mystery
+of its former life. I could not find any way of reaching the inside of
+it, so strongly was it put together; therefore I was left, I thought,
+to the efforts of my imagination alone for any hope of discovery with
+regard to the instrument, seeing further observation was impossible.
+But here I found that I was mistaken in two important conclusions, the
+latter of which depended on the former. The first of these was that
+it was an instrument: it was only one end of an instrument; therefore,
+secondly, there might be room for observation still. But I found this
+out by accident, which has had a share in most discoveries, and which,
+meaning a something that falls into our hands unlocked for, is so far an
+unobjectionable word even to the man who does not believe in chance.
+I had for the time given up the question as insoluble, and was gazing
+about the place, when, glancing up at the holes in the ceiling through
+which the bell-ropes went, I spied two or three thick wires hanging
+through the same ceiling close to the wall, and right over the box with
+the keys. The vague suspicion of a discovery dawned upon me.
+
+“Have you got the key of the tower?” I asked.
+
+“No, sir. But I’ll run home for it at once,” she answered. And rising,
+she went out in haste.
+
+“Run!” thought I, looking after her. “It is a word of the will and the
+feeling, not of the body.” But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had
+no sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she
+felt that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I
+was on the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her
+from hurting herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to
+be as good as mine in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her
+seat, awaited her reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either
+saw or imagined I saw signs of openings corresponding in number and
+position with those in the lid under me. In about three minutes the old
+woman returned, panting but not distressed, with a great crooked old key
+in her hand. Why are all the keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask
+her that question, though. What I said to her, was--
+
+“You shouldn’t run like that. I am in no hurry.”
+
+“Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
+longing to get a-top o’ the tower, and see all about you like. For you
+see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if
+she’d smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top
+of the old tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun,
+and what with the fresh air which there always be up there, sir,--it du
+always be fresh up there, sir,” she repeated, “I come back down again
+blessing the old church for its tower.”
+
+As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where
+there was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning
+themselves a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high,
+but she kept up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was
+no stranger to them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of
+her, but of what she had said. Strange to tell, the significance of
+the towers or spires of our churches had never been clear to me before.
+True, I was quite awake to their significance, at least to that of the
+spires, as fingers pointing ever upwards to
+
+  “regions mild of calm and serene air,
+  Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
+  Which men call Earth;”
+
+but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
+church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord
+God almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
+
+Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men
+up into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived
+pervaded with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We
+need the church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church
+below are from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the
+church, worshipping over the graves and believing in death--or at least
+in the material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the
+church, even in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending
+us up her towers and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the
+air of truth: that her form too must pass away, while the truth that is
+embodied in her lives beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining
+as the stars for ever and ever. He whom the church does not lift up
+above the church is not worthy to be a doorkeeper therein.
+
+Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
+that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord--not for his
+church-tower, but for his sexton’s wife. The old woman was a jewel. If
+her husband was like her, which was too much to expect--if he believed
+in her, it would be enough, quite--then indeed the little child, who
+answered on being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would say, that
+the three orders of ministers in the church were the parson, clerk, and
+sexton, might not be so far wrong in respect of this individual case. So
+in the ascent, and the thinking associated therewith, I forgot all about
+the special object for which I had requested the key of the tower, and
+led the way myself up to the summit, where stepping out of a little
+door, which being turned only heavenwards had no pretence for, or claim
+upon a curiously crooked key, but opened to the hand laid upon the
+latch, I thought of the words of the judicious Hooker, that “the
+assembling of the church to learn” was “the receiving of angels
+descended from above;” and in such a whimsical turn as our thoughts will
+often take when we are not heeding them, I wondered for a moment whether
+that was why the upper door was left on the latch, forgetting that that
+could not be of much use, if the door in the basement was kept locked
+with the crooked key. But the whole suggested something true about my
+own heart and that of my fellows, if not about the church: Revelation is
+not enough, the open trap-door is not enough, if the door of the heart
+is not open likewise.
+
+As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
+again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
+filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
+hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the
+other side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of
+green, its heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales--there was
+not much wood--its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted
+and shadowed by the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of
+Dartmoor. And over all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the
+life-bearing spirit of the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman
+stood beside me, silently enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that
+seemed to say in kindly triumph, “Was I not right about the tower and
+the wind that dwells among its pinnacles?” I drank deep of the universal
+flood, the outspread peace, the glory of the sun, and the haunting
+shadow of the sea that lay beyond like the visual image of the eternal
+silence--as it looks to us--that rounds our little earthly life.
+
+There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down,
+the tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly
+below me, except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in
+the leaves, which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the
+top of the tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few
+flowers she had gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that
+rose from the four pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned
+to the eastern side, and looked over upon the church roof. It lay far
+below--looking very narrow and small, but long, with the four ridges of
+four steep roofs stretching away to the eastern end. It was in excellent
+repair, for the parish was almost all in one lord’s possession, and he
+was proud of his church: between them he and Mr. Shepherd had made it
+beautiful to behold and strong to endure.
+
+When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
+fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
+nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And
+when I looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird,
+rounding the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up
+the little channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out
+of the circling waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but
+hardly the less welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for
+her signal from the barrier rock.
+
+Reentering by the angels’ door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair,
+so dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light
+that came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny
+maiden-hair fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old
+woman--
+
+“I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn’t rob your tower of this
+lovely little thing.”
+
+“Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take
+it home to miss. It’ll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear
+you’ve got a sick maiden. She ben’t a bedlar, be she, sir?”
+
+I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without
+hurting them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner’s using
+the word.
+
+“Not quite that,” I answered, “but she can’t even sit up, and must be
+carried everywhere.”
+
+“Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea’s been mine.”
+
+She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
+down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
+observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in
+ascending the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging
+in silent power in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully,
+for there were only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one’s feet
+from going through the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself
+that my conjecture about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods
+I had seen from beneath hung down from this place. There were more
+of them hanging shorter above, and there was yet enough of a further
+mechanism remaining to prove that those keys, by means of the looped and
+cranked rods, had been in connection with hammers, one of them indeed
+remaining also, which struck the bells, so that a tune could be played
+upon them as upon any other keyed instrument. This was the first
+contrivance of the kind I had ever seen, though I have heard of it in
+other churches since.
+
+“If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now,” I
+said to myself, “I would get this all repaired, so that it should not
+interfere with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and
+yet Shepherd could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he
+pleased.” For Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of
+time to the organ. “It’s a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in
+the gloom, with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence
+he sends forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people,
+while they are mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad
+over the stormy ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. ‘There’s the parson
+at his bells,’ they would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase
+might sink into their hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to
+some hope or faint aspiration. I will see what can be done.” Having
+come to this conclusion, I left the abode of the bells, descended to the
+church, bade my conductress good morning, saying I would visit her soon
+in her own house, and bore home to my child the spoil which, without
+kirk-rapine, I had torn from the wall of the sanctuary. By this time the
+stormy veil had lifted from the horizon, and the sun was shining in full
+power without one darkening cloud.
+
+Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
+seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was
+the only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the
+tower. It recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been
+married fifty years, concluding with the couplet--
+
+“A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we.”
+
+The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was
+not good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life
+probably without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten
+them, and I daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had
+put into their dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of
+quarrel with the poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the
+verses in when he made his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having
+learnt this one by heart, I went about looking for anything more in
+the shape of sepulchral flora that might interest or amuse my crippled
+darling; nor had I searched long before I found one, the sole but
+triumphant recommendation of which was the thorough “puzzle-headedness”
+ of its construction. I quite reckoned on seeing Connie trying to make
+it out, looking as bewildered over its excellent grammar, as the poet
+of the other ought to have looked over his rhymes, ere he gave in to the
+use of the nominative after a preposition.
+
+  “If you could view the heavenly shore,
+  Where heart’s content you hope to find,
+  You would not murmur were you gone before,
+  But grieve that you are left behind.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CONNIE’S WATCH-TOWER.
+
+
+
+
+
+As I walked home, the rush of the rising tide was in my ears. To my
+fancy, the ocean, awaking from a swoon in which its life had ebbed to
+its heart, was sending that life abroad to its extremities, and waves
+breaking in white were the beats of its reviving pulse, the flashes of
+returning light. But so gentle was its motion, and so lovely its hue,
+that I could not help contrasting it with its reflex in the mind of her
+who took refuge from the tumult of its noises in the hollow of the
+old church. To her, let it look as blue as the sky, as peaceful and as
+moveless, it was a wild, reckless, false, devouring creature, a prey
+to its own moods, and to that of the blind winds which, careless of
+consequences, urged it to raving fury. Only, while the sea took this
+form to her imagination, she believed in that which held the sea, and
+knew that, when it pleased God to part his confining fingers, there
+would be no more sea.
+
+When I reached home, I went straight to Connie’s room. Now the house was
+one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
+shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure
+of the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings
+consists of the houses that have _grown_. They have not been, built
+after a straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or
+money-loving pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or
+indifferent, as the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they
+have left far behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions
+of succeeding possessors, until the fact that they have a history is
+as plainly written on their aspect as on that of any son or daughter of
+Adam. These are the houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there
+is any truth in ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt;
+and hence perhaps the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when
+we cross their thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast
+a glance about the hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best
+bedroom are. You have got it all to find out, just as the character of a
+man; and thus had I to find out this house of my friend Shepherd. It had
+formerly been a kind of manor-house, though altogether unlike any
+other manor-house I ever saw; for after exercising all my constructive
+ingenuity reversed in pulling it to pieces in my mind, I came to the
+conclusion that the germ-cell of it was a cottage of the simplest sort
+which had grown by the addition of other cells, till it had reached the
+development in which we found it.
+
+I have said that the dining-room was almost on the level of the shore.
+Certainly some of the flat stones that coped the low wall in front of
+it were thrown into the garden before the next winter by the waves. But
+Connie’s room looked out on a little flower-garden almost on the downs,
+only sheltered a little by the rise of a short grassy slope above it.
+This, however, left the prospect, from her window down the bay and
+out to sea, almost open. To reach this room I had now to go up but one
+simple cottage stair; for the door of the house entered on the first
+floor, that is, as regards the building, midway between heaven and
+earth. It had a large bay-window; and in this window Connie was lying
+on her couch, with the lower sash wide open, through which the breeze
+entered, smelling of sea-weed tempered with sweet grasses and the
+wall-flowers and stocks that were in the little plot under it. I thought
+I could see an improvement in her already. Certainly she looked very
+happy.
+
+“O, papa!” she said, “isn’t it delightful?”
+
+“What is, my dear?”
+
+“O, everything. The wind, and the sky, and the sea, and the smell of
+the flowers. Do look at that sea-bird. His wings are like the barb of a
+terrible arrow. How he goes undulating, neck and body, up and down as he
+flies. I never felt before that a bird moves his wings. It always looked
+as if the wings flew with the bird. But I see the effort in him.”
+
+“An easy effort, though, I should certainly think.”
+
+“No doubt. But I see that he chooses and means to fly, and so does it.
+It makes one almost reconciled to the idea of wings. Do angels really
+have wings, papa?”
+
+“It is generally so represented, I think, in the Bible. But whether it
+is meant as a natural fact about them, is more than I take upon me
+to decide. For one thing, I should have to examine whether in simple
+narrative they are ever represented with them, as, I think, in records
+of visions they are never represented without them. But wings are
+very beautiful things, and I do not exactly see why you should need
+reconciling to them.”
+
+Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
+
+“I don’t like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
+however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
+they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and
+if you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of
+them. You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don’t think
+I could bear to touch the things--I don’t mean the feathers, but the
+skinny, folding-up bits of them.”
+
+I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
+
+“You want to fly, I suppose?” I said.
+
+“O, yes; I should like that.”
+
+“And you don’t want to have wings?”
+
+“Well, I shouldn’t mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able
+to keep them nice?”
+
+“There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
+already. When you can’t answer one thing, off to another, and, from
+your new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost
+branch of the lilac!”
+
+“O, yes, papa! That’s what I’ve heard you say to mamma twenty times.”
+
+“And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you
+either, you puss?”
+
+I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
+always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to
+relieve her.
+
+“When women have wings,” I said, “their logic will be good.”
+
+“How do you make that out, papa?” she asked, a little re-assured.
+
+“Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside
+from the straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole
+utterance will be instinct not only with the meaning of what you
+are thinking, but with the reflex of the forces in you that make the
+utterance take this or that shape; just as to a perfect palate, the
+source and course of a stream would be revealed in every draught of its
+water.
+
+“I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
+wings?”
+
+“I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like
+a horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is
+to be got without doing any of them.”
+
+“I know what you mean now, but I can’t put it in words.”
+
+“I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things:
+what it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably
+leave to him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of
+knowing our fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and
+out of their worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home
+in them.--But I am talking what the people who do not understand such
+things lump all together as mysticism, which is their name for a kind
+of spiritual ash-pit, whither they consign dust and stones, never asking
+whether they may not be gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.--You had
+better begin to think about getting out, Connie.”
+
+“Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since
+daylight.”
+
+“I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready
+to go out with us.”
+
+In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or
+two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I--finding
+that the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for
+which there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds
+in winter, the other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise
+provided--lifted the sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill, and
+then there was only a little door in the garden-wall to get her through
+before we found ourselves upon the down. I think the ascent of this hill
+was the first experience I had--a little to my humiliation, nothing to
+my sorrow--that I was descending another hill. I had to set down the
+precious burden rather oftener before we reached the brow of the cliffs
+than would have been necessary ten years before. But this was all right,
+and the newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the power which
+carries me about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I shall be
+stronger by and by.
+
+We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying
+many feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging
+their undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have
+a chance of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what
+the marvel of flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please,
+borne up, as far as eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own
+will alone. This Connie, quicker than I in her observation of nature,
+had already observed. Seated on the warm grass by her side, while
+neither talked, but both regarded the blue spaces, I saw one of those
+same barb-winged birds rest over my head, regarding me from above, as
+if doubtful whether I did not afford some claim to his theory of
+treasure-trove. I knew at once that what Connie had been saying to me
+just before was true.
+
+She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.
+
+“Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?”
+
+“No, papa; not a bit. I don’t know how it is, but I don’t think I
+ever wished much for anything I knew I could not have. I am enjoying
+everything more than I can tell you. I wish Wynnie were as happy as I
+am.”
+
+“Why? Do you think she’s not happy, my dear?”
+
+“That doesn’t want any thinking, papa. You can see that.”
+
+“I am afraid you’re right, Connie. What do you think is the cause of
+it?”
+
+“I think it is because she can’t wait. She’s always going out to meet
+things; and then when they’re not there waiting for her, she thinks
+they’re nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If
+everybody were like me, there wouldn’t be much done in the world, would
+there, papa?”
+
+“At all events, my dear, your way is wise for you, and I am glad you do
+not judge your sister.”
+
+“Judge Wynnie, papa! That would be cool impudence. She’s worth ten of
+me. Don’t you think, papa,” she added, after a pause, “that if Mary had
+said the smallest word against Martha, as Martha did against Mary, Jesus
+would have had a word to say on Martha’s side next?”
+
+“Indeed I do, my dear. And I think that Mary did not sit very long without
+asking Jesus if she mightn’t go and help her sister. There is but one
+thing needful--that is, the will of God; and when people love that above
+everything, they soon come to see that to everything else there are two
+sides, and that only the will of God gives fair play, as we call it, to
+both of them.”
+
+Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.
+
+“Is it not strange, papa, that the only time here that makes me want to
+get up to look, is nothing of all the grand things round about me? I am
+just lying like the convex mirror in the school-room at home, letting
+them all paint themselves in me.”
+
+“What is it then that makes you wish to get up and go and see?” I asked
+with real curiosity.
+
+“Do you see down there--away across the bay--amongst the rocks at the
+other side, a man sitting sketching?”
+
+I looked for some time before I could discover him.
+
+“Your sight is good, Connie: I see the man, but I could not tell what he
+was doing.”
+
+“Don’t you see him lifting his head every now and then for a moment, and
+then keeping it down for a longer while?”
+
+“I cannot distinguish that. But then I am shortsighted rather, you
+know.”
+
+“I wonder how you see so many little things that nobody else seems to
+notice, then, papa.”
+
+“That is because I have trained myself to observe. The degree of power
+in the sight is of less consequence than the habit of seeing. But you
+have not yet told me what it is that makes you desirous of getting up.”
+
+“I want to look over his shoulder, and see what he is doing. Is it not
+strange that in the midst of all this plenty of beautifulness, I should
+want to rise to look at a few lines and scratches, or smears of colour,
+upon a bit of paper?”
+
+“No, my dear; I don’t think it is strange. There a new element of
+interest is introduced--the human. No doubt there is deep humanity in
+all this around us. No doubt all the world, in all its moods, is human,
+as those for whose abode and instruction it was made. No doubt, it would
+be void of both beauty and significance to our eyes, were it not that
+it is one crowd of pictures of the human mind, blended in one living
+fluctuating whole. But these meanings are there in solution as it were.
+The individual is a centre of crystallisation to this solution. Around
+him meanings gather, are separated from other meanings; and if he be an
+artist, by which I mean true painter, true poet, or true musician,
+as the case may be he so isolates and represents them, that we see
+them--not what nature shows to us, but what nature has shown, to him,
+determined by his nature and choice. With it is mingled therefore
+so much of his own individuality, manifested both in this choice and
+certain modifications determined by his way of working, that you have
+not only a representation of an aspect of nature, as far as that may
+be with limited powers and materials, but a revelation of the man’s own
+mind and nature. Consequently there is a human interest in every true
+attempt to reproduce nature, an interest of individuality which does not
+belong to nature herself, who is for all and every man. You have just
+been saying that you were lying there like a convex mirror reflecting
+all nature around you. Every man is such a convex mirror; and his
+drawing, if he can make one, is an attempt to show what is in this
+little mirror of his, kindled there by the grand world outside. And the
+human mirrors being all differently formed, vary infinitely in what they
+would thus represent of the same scene. I have been greatly interested
+in looking alternately over the shoulders of two artists, both sketching
+in colour the same, absolutely the same scene, both trying to represent
+it with all the truth in their power. How different, notwithstanding,
+the two representations came out!”
+
+“I think I understand you, papa. But look a little farther off. Don’t
+you see over the top of another rock a lady’s bonnet. I do believe
+that’s Wynnie. I know she took her box of water-colours out with her
+this morning, just before you came home. Dora went with her.”
+
+“Can’t you tell by her ribbons, Connie? You seem sharp-sighted enough
+to see her face if she would show it. I don’t even see the bonnet. If
+I were like some people I know, I should feel justified in denying its
+presence, attributing the whole to your fancy, and refusing anything to
+superiority of vision.”
+
+“That wouldn’t be like you, papa.”
+
+“I hope not; for I have no fancy for being shut up in my own blindness,
+when other people offer me their eyes to eke out the defects of my own
+with. But here comes mamma at last.”
+
+Connie’s face brightened as if she had not seen her mother for a
+fortnight. My Ethelwyn always brought the home gladness that her name
+signified with her. She was a centre of radiating peace.
+
+“Mamma, don’t you think that’s Wynnie’s bonnet over that black rock
+there, just beyond where you see that man drawing?”
+
+“You absurd child! How should I know Wynnie’s bonnet at this distance?”
+
+“Can’t you see the little white feather you gave her out of your
+wardrobe just before we left? She put it in this morning before she went
+out.”
+
+“I think I do see something white. But I want you to look out there,
+towards what they call the Chapel Rock, at the other end of that long
+mound they call the breakwater. You will soon see a boat appear full of
+the coast-guard. I saw them going on board just as I left the house to
+come up to you. Their officer came down with his sword, and each of the
+men had a cutlass. I wonder what it can mean.”
+
+We looked. But before the boat made its appearance, Connie cried out--
+
+“Look there! What a big boat that is rowing for the land, away
+northwards there!”
+
+I turned my eyes in the direction she indicated, and saw a long boat
+with some half-dozen oars, full of men, rowing hard, apparently for some
+spot on the shore at a considerable distance to the north of our bay.
+
+“Ah!” I said, “that boat has something to do with the coast-guard and
+their cutlasses. You’ll see that, as soon as they get out of the bay,
+they will row in the same direction.”
+
+So it was. Our boat appeared presently from under the concealment of the
+heights on which we were, and made at full speed after the other boat.
+
+“Surely they can’t be smugglers,” I said. “I thought all that was over
+and done with.”
+
+In the course of another twenty minutes, during which we watched
+their progress, both boats had disappeared behind the headland to the
+northward. Then, thinking Connie had had nearly enough of the sea air
+for her first experience of its influences, I went and fetched Walter,
+and we carried her back as we had brought her. She had not been in the
+shadow of her own room for five minutes before she was fast asleep.
+
+It was now nearly time for our early dinner. We always dined early
+when we could, that we might eat along with our children. We were
+both convinced that the only way to make them behave like ladies and
+gentlemen was to have them always with us at meals. We had seen very
+unpleasant results in the children of those who allowed them to dine
+with no other supervision than the nursery afforded: they were
+a constant anxiety and occasional horror to those whom they
+visited--snatching like monkeys, and devouring like jackals, as
+selfishly as if they were mere animals.
+
+“O! we’ve seen such a nice gentleman!” said Dora, becoming lively under
+the influence of her soup.
+
+“Have you, Dora? Where?”
+
+“Sitting on the rocks, taking a portrait of the sea.”
+
+“What makes you say he was a nice gentleman?”
+
+“He had such beautiful boots!” answered Dora, at which there was a great
+laugh about the table.
+
+“O! we must run and tell Connie that,” said Harry. “It will make her
+laugh.”
+
+“What will you tell Connie, then, Harry?”
+
+“O! what was it, Charlie? I’ve forgotten.”
+
+Another laugh followed at Harry’s expense now, and we were all very
+merry, when Dora, who sat opposite to the window, called out, clapping
+her hands--
+
+“There’s Niceboots again! There’s Niceboots again!”
+
+The same moment the head of a young man appeared over the wall that
+separated the garden from the little beach that lay by the entrance of
+the canal. I saw at once that he must be more than ordinarily tall
+to show his face, for he was not close to the wall. It was a dark
+countenance, with a long beard, which few at that time wore, though now
+it is getting not uncommon, even in my own profession--a noble, handsome
+face, a little sad, with downbent eyes, which, released from their more
+immediate duty towards nature, had now bent themselves upon the earth.
+
+“Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought.”
+
+“I suppose he’s contemplating his boots,” said Wynnie, with apparent
+maliciousness.
+
+“That’s too bad of you, Wynnie,” I said, and the child blushed.
+
+“I didn’t mean anything, papa. It was only following up Dora’s wise
+discrimination,” said Wynnie.
+
+“He is a fine-looking fellow,” said I, “and ought, with that face and
+head, to be able to paint good pictures.”
+
+“I should like to see what he has done,” said Wynnie; “for, by the way
+we were sitting, I should think we were attempting the same thing.”
+
+“And what was that then, Wynnie?” I asked.
+
+“A rock,” she answered, “that you could not see from where you were
+sitting. I saw you on the top of the cliff.”
+
+“Connie said it was you, by your bonnet. She, too, was wishing she could
+look over the shoulder of the artist at work beside you.”
+
+“Not beside me. There were yards and yards of solid rock between us.”
+
+“Space, you see, in removing things from the beholder, seems always
+to bring them nearer to each other, and the most differing things are
+classed under one name by the man who knows nothing about them. But what
+sort of a rock was it you were trying to draw?”
+
+“A strange-looking, conical rock, that stands alone in front of one of
+the ridges that project from the shore into the water. Three sea-birds,
+with long white wings, were flying about it, and the little waves of
+the rising tide were beating themselves against it and breaking in white
+plashes. So the rock stood between the blue and white below and the blue
+and white above; for, though there were no clouds, the birds gave the
+touches of white to the upper sea.”
+
+“Now, Dora,” I said, “I don’t know if you are old enough to understand
+me; but sometimes little people are long in understanding, just because
+the older people think they can’t, and don’t try them.--Do you see,
+Dora, why I want you to learn to draw? Look how Wynnie sees things.
+That is, in a great measure, because she draws things, and has, by that,
+learned to watch in order to find out. It is a great thing to have your
+eyes open.”
+
+Dora’s eyes were large, and she opened them to their full width, as
+if she would take in the universe at their little doors. Whether that
+indicated that she did not in the least understand what I had been
+saying, or that she was in sympathy with it, I cannot tell.
+
+“Now let us go up to Connie, and tell her about the rock and everything
+else you have seen since you went out. We are all her messengers sent
+out to discover things, and bring back news of them.”
+
+After a little talk with Connie, I retired to the study, which was on
+the same floor as her room completing, indeed, the whole of that part
+of the house, which, seen from without, looked like a separate building;
+for it had a roof of its own, and stood higher up the rock than the rest
+of the dwelling. Here I began to glance over the books. To have the
+run of another man’s library, especially if it has all been gathered
+by himself, is like having a pass-key into the chambers of his thought.
+Only, one must be wary, when he opens them, what marks on the books
+he takes for those of the present owner. A mistake here would breed
+considerable confusion and falsehood in any judgment formed from the
+library. I found, however, one thing plain enough, that Shepherd had
+kept up that love for an older English literature, which had been one of
+the cords to draw us towards each other when we were students together.
+There had been one point on which we especially agreed--that a true
+knowledge of the present, in literature, as in everything else, could
+only be founded upon a knowledge of what had gone before; therefore,
+that any judgment, in regard to the literature of the present day, was
+of no value which was not guided and influenced by a real acquaintance
+with the best of what had gone before, being liable to be dazzled and
+misled by novelty of form and other qualities which, whatever might be
+the real worth of the substance, were, in themselves, purely ephemeral.
+I had taken down a last-century edition of the poems of the brothers
+Fletcher, and, having begun to read a lovely passage in “Christ’s
+Victory and Triumph,” had gone into what I can only call an intellectual
+rage, at the impudence of the editor, who had altered innumerable words
+and phrases to suit the degenerate taste of his own time,--when a knock
+came to the door, and Charlie entered, breathless with eagerness.
+
+“There’s the boat with the men with the swords in it, and another boat
+behind them, twice as big.”
+
+I hurried out upon the road, and there, close under our windows, were
+the two boats we had seen in the morning, landing their crews on the
+little beach. The second boat was full of weather-beaten men, in all
+kinds of attire, some in blue jerseys, some in red shirts, some in
+ragged coats. One man, who looked their superior, was dressed in blue
+from head to foot.
+
+“What’s the matter?” I asked the officer of the coast-guard, a sedate,
+thoughtful-looking man.
+
+“Vessel foundered, sir,” he answered. “Sprung a leak on Sunday morning.
+She was laden with iron, and in a heavy ground swell it shifted and
+knocked a hole in her. The poor fellows are worn out with the pump and
+rowing, upon little or nothing to eat.”
+
+They were trooping past us by this time, looking rather dismal, though
+not by any means abject.
+
+“What are you going to do with them now?”
+
+“They’ll be taken in by the people. We’ll get up a little subscription
+for them, but they all belong to the society the sailors have for
+sending the shipwrecked to their homes, or where they want to go.”
+
+“Well, here’s something to help,” I said.
+
+“Thank you, sir. They’ll be very glad of it.”
+
+“And if there’s anything wanted that I can do for them, you must let me
+know.”
+
+“I will, sir. But I don’t think there will be any occasion to trouble
+you. You are our new clergyman, I believe.”
+
+“Not exactly that. Only for a little while, till my friend Mr. Shepherd
+is able to come back to you.”
+
+“We don’t want to lose Mr. Shepherd, sir. He’s what they call high
+in these parts, but he’s a great favourite with all the poor people,
+because you see he understands them as if he was of the same flesh and
+blood with themselves--as, for that matter, I suppose we all are.”
+
+“If we weren’t there would be nothing to say at all. Will any of these
+men be at church to-morrow, do you suppose? I am afraid sailors are not
+much in the way of going to church?”
+
+“I am afraid not. You see they are all anxious to get home. Most likely
+they’ll be all travelling to-morrow. It’s a pity. It would be a good
+chance for saying something to them that they might think of again. But
+I often think that, perhaps--it’s only my own fancy, and I don’t set it
+up for anything--that sailors won’t be judged exactly like other people.
+They’re so knocked about, you see, sir.”
+
+“Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
+Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon
+it, God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any
+sailor of them all. But that’s not exactly the question. It seems to me
+the question is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is
+because we know what God is like, who can trust in him with all our
+hearts because he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend
+of sinners, shall we not try all we can to let them, too, know the
+blessedness of trusting in their Father in heaven? If we could only get
+them to say the Lord’s prayer, _meaning_ it, think what that would be!
+Look here! This can’t be called bribery, for they are in want of it, and
+it will show them I am friendly. Here’s another sovereign. Give them
+my compliments, and say that if any of them happen to be in Kilkhaven
+tomorrow, I shall be quite pleased to welcome them to church. Tell them
+I will give them of my best there if they will come. Make the invitation
+merrily, you know. No long faces and solemn speech. I will give them the
+solemn speech when they come to church. But even there I hope God will
+keep the long face far from me. That is fittest for fear and suffering.
+And the house of God is the casket that holds the antidote against
+all fear and most suffering. But I am preaching my sermon on Saturday
+instead of Sunday, and keeping you from your ministration to the poor
+fellows. Good-bye.”
+
+“I will give them your message as near as I can,” he said, and we shook
+hands and parted.
+
+This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the
+ocean. To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning
+there had been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday
+morning, home come the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a
+mock she takes all they have, and flings them on shore again, with her
+weeds, and her shells, and her sand. Before the winter was over we had
+learned--how much more of that awful power that surrounds the habitable
+earth! By slow degrees the sense of its might grew upon us, first by the
+vision of its many aspects and moods, and then by more awful things that
+followed; for there are few coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as
+upon this, the whole force of the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when
+there is no storm within perhaps hundreds of miles, when all is still as
+a church on the land, the storm that raves somewhere out upon the vast
+waste, will drive the waves in upon the shore with such fury that not
+even a lifeboat could make its way through their yawning hollows, and
+their fierce, shattered, and tumbling crests.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in
+the church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning’s sermon for
+the occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time
+that it should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors
+were there or not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought,
+for instance, of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready
+all about our island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or
+symbol of two other oceans, one very still, the other very awful and
+fierce; in fact, that three oceans surrounded us: one of the known
+world; one of the unseen world, that is, of death; one of the
+spirit--the devouring ocean of evil--and might I not have added yet
+another, encompassing and silencing all the rest--that of truth!
+The visible ocean seemed to make war upon the land, and the dwellers
+thereon. Restrained by the will of God and by him made subject more and
+more to the advancing knowledge of those who were created to rule over
+it, it was yet like a half-tamed beast ever ready to break loose and
+devour its masters. Of course this would have been but one aspect or
+appearance of it--for it was in truth all service; but this was the
+aspect I knew it must bear to those, seafaring themselves or not, to
+whom I had to speak. Then I thought I might show, that its power, like
+that of all things that man is ready to fear, had one barrier over which
+no commotion, no might of driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its
+loudest waves were dumb--the barrier of death. Hitherto and no further
+could its power reach. It could kill the body. It could dash in pieces
+the last little cock-boat to which the man clung, but thus it swept the
+man beyond its own region into the second sea of stillness, which we
+call death, out upon which the thoughts of those that are left behind
+can follow him only in great longings, vague conjectures, and mighty
+faith. Then I thought I could show them how, raving in fear, or lying
+still in calm deceit, there lay about the life of man a far more fearful
+ocean than that which threatened his body; for this would cast, could it
+but get a hold of him, both body and soul into hell--the sea of evil,
+of vice, of sin, of wrong-doing--they might call it by what name they
+pleased. This made war against the very essence of life, against God
+who is the truth, against love, against fairness, against fatherhood,
+motherhood, sisterhood, brotherhood, manhood, womanhood, against
+tenderness and grace and beauty, gathering into one pulp of festering
+death all that is noble, lovely, worshipful in the human nature made so
+divine that the one fearless man, the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it with
+us. This, I thought I might make them understand, was the only terrible
+sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose awful shore we must shrink and
+flee, the end of every voyage upon whose bosom was the bottom of its
+filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is thought or spoken in the
+light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that reaches down from the
+upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of men. I thought, I
+say, for a while, that I could make this, not definite, but very real to
+them. But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might they not in the
+symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the symbol itself
+be ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return only in the
+vaguest shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more excellent
+way. For the power of the truth lies of course in its revelation to the
+mind, and while for this there are a thousand means, none are so mighty
+as its embodiment in human beings and human life. There it is itself
+alive and active. And amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that
+in him who was perfect man in virtue of being at the root of the secret
+of humanity, in virtue of being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons
+in time: he is his Son in eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken
+sparkle. Therefore, I would talk to them about--but I will treat my
+reader now as if he were not my reader, but one of my congregation
+on that bright Sunday, my first in the Seaboard Parish, with the sea
+outside the church, flashing in the sunlight.
+
+While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen,
+I could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level
+with them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts
+upon that which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the
+pulpit; then I felt, as usual with me, that I was personally present for
+personal influence with my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure,
+that one long bench nearly in the middle of the church was full of such
+sunburnt men as could not be mistaken for any but mariners, even if
+their torn and worn garments had not revealed that they must be the
+very men about whom we had been so much interested. Not only were they
+behaving with perfect decorum, but their rough faces wore an aspect of
+solemnity which I do not suppose was by any means their usual aspect.
+
+I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing.
+They should have it by and by.
+
+“Once upon a time,” I said, “a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
+till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a
+mountain as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes
+haste to get down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun
+was going down, and, as I say, continued there for a good long while
+after it was dark. You will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished
+to be alone. He hadn’t a house of his own. He never had all the time he
+lived. He hadn’t even a room of his own into which he could go, and bolt
+the door of it. True, he had kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they
+were all poor people, and their houses were small, and very likely they
+had large families, and he could not always find a quiet place to go
+into. And I dare say, if he had had a room, he would have been a little
+troubled with the children constantly coming to find him; for however
+much he loved them--and no man was ever so fond of children as he
+was--he needed to be left quiet sometimes. So, upon this occasion, he
+went up the mountain just to be quiet. He had been all day with a crowd
+of people, and he felt that it was time to be alone. For he had been
+talking with men all day, which tires and sometimes confuses a man’s
+thoughts, and now he wanted to talk with God--for that makes a man
+strong, and puts all the confusion in order again, and lets a man know
+what he is about. So he went to the top of the hill. That was his secret
+chamber. It had no door; but that did not matter--no one could see him
+but God. There he stayed for hours--sometimes, I suppose, kneeling in
+his prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with his own thinking, on
+a stone; sometimes walking about, looking forward to what would come
+next--not anxious about it, but contemplating it. For just before he
+came up here, some of the people who had been with him wanted to make
+him a king; and this would not do--this was not what God wanted of him,
+and therefore he got rid of them, and came up here to talk to God. It
+was so quiet up here! The earth had almost vanished. He could see just
+the bare hilltop beneath him, a glimmer below, and the sky and the stars
+over his head. The people had all gone away to their own homes, and
+perhaps next day would hardly think about him at all, busy catching
+fish, or digging their gardens, or making things for their houses. But
+he knew that God would not forget him the next day any more than this
+day, and that God had sent him not to be the king that these people
+wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make his heart strong, I
+say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk with his Father.
+How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had been down
+there a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as much
+as he was in the quiet now--the only difference being that he could not
+then be alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was--it was the
+king of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting
+son of our Father in heaven.
+
+“Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot
+of it--that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not
+wanting even his usual companions to be with him this evening--partly, I
+presume, because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take
+him by force and make him a king--he had sent them away in their boat,
+to go across this water to the other side, where were their homes and
+their families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top or
+on the water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would have
+been keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle
+of the lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their
+teeth. But he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was
+talking to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and
+finding it--watching it on its way across to the other side. You must
+remember that it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous
+storms upon these small lakes with great mountains about them. For the
+wind will come all at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden
+a squall as ever overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is
+no sea-room. If the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore
+in a few minutes, whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out
+at the oar, toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So
+the time for loneliness and prayer was over, and the time to go down out
+of his secret chamber and help his brethren was come. He did not need to
+turn and say good-bye to his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top
+alone: his Father was down there on the lake as well. He went straight
+down. Could not his Father, if he too was down on the lake, help them
+without him? Yes. But he wanted him to do it, that they might see that
+he did it. Otherwise they would only have thought that the wind fell and
+the waves lay down, without supposing for a moment that their Master or
+his Father had had anything to do with it. They would have done just as
+people do now-a-days: they think that the help comes of itself, instead
+of by the will of him who determined from the first that men should be
+helped. So the Master went down the hill. When he reached the border
+of the lake, the wind being from the other side, he must have found the
+waves breaking furiously upon the rocks. But that made no difference to
+him. He looked out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the rushing wind
+and the noise of the water, out over the waves under the clear, starry
+sky, saw where the tiny boat was tossed about like a nutshell, and set
+out.”
+
+The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
+their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are
+of tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson’s yarn a
+good one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than
+the others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not
+returned, and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea
+of what was coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how
+Jesus had come by a boat.
+
+“The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave
+him behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been
+with them--not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only
+that somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at.
+They had seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn
+water into wine--some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand
+people the day before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one
+of their number suggested that if he had been with them, they would have
+been safe from the storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about
+the laws of nature, not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they
+would have said that was quite a different thing--altogether too much to
+expect or believe: _nobody_ could make the wind mind what it was about,
+or keep the water from drowning you if you fell into it and couldn’t
+swim; or such-like.
+
+“At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
+strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
+their oars in it up to the handles--as they rose on the crest of a huge
+wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
+leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray
+which the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before
+it like dust, they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat,
+something standing up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move
+towards them. It was a shape like a man. They all cried out with fear,
+as was natural, for they thought it must be a ghost.”
+
+How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the
+story! I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting
+up to speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.
+
+“But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
+knew so well. It said, ‘Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.’ I
+should think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some
+moments where they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to
+recover himself apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt
+strong and full of courage. ‘Lord, if it be thou,’ he said, ‘bid me come
+unto thee on the water.’ Jesus just said, ‘Come;’ and Peter unshipped
+his oar, and scrambled over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let
+go his hold of the boat, and began to look about him, and saw how the
+wind was tearing the water, and how it tossed and raved between him and
+Jesus, he began to be afraid. And as soon as he began to be afraid he
+began to sink; but he had, notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough
+to do the one sensible thing; he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’ And Jesus
+put out his hand, and took hold of him, and lifted him up out of the
+water, and said to him, ‘O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou
+doubt? And then they got into the boat, and the wind fell all at once,
+and altogether.
+
+“Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn’t
+that he hadn’t courage, but that he hadn’t enough of it. And why was it
+that he hadn’t enough of it? Because he hadn’t faith enough. Peter was
+always very easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn’t at all
+likely that a man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter
+found himself standing on the water: you would have thought that when
+once he found himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of
+the wind and the waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked
+so ugly that the fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his
+courage went. You would have thought that the greatest trial of his
+courage was over when he got out of the boat, and that there was
+comparatively little more ahead of him. Yet the sight of the waves and
+the blast of the boisterous wind were too much for him. I will tell you
+how I fancy it was; and I think there are several instances of the same
+kind of thing in Peter’s life. When he got out of the boat, and found
+himself standing on the water, he began to think much of himself for
+being able to do so, and fancy himself better and greater than his
+companions, and an especial favourite of God above them. Now, there is
+nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two are directly against
+each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and began to think about
+himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose his faith, and
+then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink--and that brought him to
+his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his Master, and
+then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the Lord gently
+rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, ‘Wherefore
+didst thou doubt?’ I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart
+sufficiently well to answer that _wherefore_. I do not think it likely
+at this period of his history. But God has immeasurable patience, and
+before he had done teaching Peter, even in this life, he had made him
+know quite well that pride and conceit were at the root of all his
+failures. Jesus did not point it out to him now. Faith was the only
+thing that would reveal that to him, as well as cure him of it; and was,
+therefore, the only thing he required of him in his rebuke. I suspect
+Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager hands of his companions
+already in a humbler state of mind than when he left it; but before
+his pride would be quite overcome, it would need that same voice of
+loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock to bring to
+his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the voice
+of one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet a
+readier disciple than he--the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him because
+he dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even he
+gained the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the
+cross like his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach
+us to distrust ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and
+endless patience with other people. But to return to the story and what
+the story itself teaches us.
+
+“If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
+mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
+frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they
+were only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own
+question”--I went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with
+an audible answer hovering on their lips--“I don’t know that, as they
+then were, it would have made so much difference to them; for none of
+them had risen much above the look of the things nearest them yet. But
+supposing you, who know something about him, were alone on the sea, and
+expecting your boat to be swamped every moment--if you found out all
+at once, that he was looking down at you from some lofty hilltop, and
+seeing all round about you in time and space too, would you be afraid?
+He might mean you to go to the bottom, you know. Would you mind going
+to the bottom with him looking at you? I do not think I should mind it
+myself. But I must take care lest I be boastful like Peter.
+
+“Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
+Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not
+believe that he is what he says he is--the Saviour of men. We do not
+believe what he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and
+therefore continue slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you
+do believe in him. I am not going to say that you do not believe in him;
+but I hope I am going to make you say to yourselves that you too deserve
+to have those words of the Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to
+Peter, ‘O ye of little faith!’ Floating on the sea of your troubles,
+all kinds of fears and anxieties assailing you, is He not on the
+mountain-top? Sees he not the little boat of your fortunes tossed with
+the waves and the contrary wind? Assuredly he will come to you walking
+on the waters. It may not be in the way you wish, but if not, you will
+say at last, ‘This is better.’ It may be that he will come in a form
+that will make you cry out for fear in the weakness of your faith, as
+the disciples cried out--not believing any more than they did, that it
+can be he. But will not each of you arouse his courage that to you also
+he may say, as to the woman with the sick daughter whose confidence he
+so sorely tried, ‘Great is thy faith’? Will you not rouse yourself, I
+say, that you may do him justice, and cast off the slavery of your own
+dread? O ye of little faith, wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that
+the Lord sees and will not come. Down the mountain assuredly he will
+come, and you are now as safe in your troubles as the disciples were in
+theirs with Jesus looking on. They did not know it, but it was so: the
+Lord was watching them. And when you look back upon your past lives,
+cannot you see some instances of the same kind--when you felt and acted
+as if the Lord had forgotten you, and found afterwards that he had been
+watching you all the time?
+
+“But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
+little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
+soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
+envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah!
+trust him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean
+and beautiful in heart.
+
+“O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
+watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt,
+and wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this
+globe, though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake
+on which you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you,
+and watch over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful
+to him? Will you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things,
+lie, and delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you,
+watching your ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves
+to help you? It is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would
+be far finer to fear nothing _because_ he is above all, and over all,
+and in you all. For his sake and for his love, give up everything bad,
+and take him for your captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you,
+and steer you safe into the port of glory. Now to God the Father,” &c.
+
+This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
+followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOLUME 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 be 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 be 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? 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!
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOLUME III.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+   I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE
+  II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER
+ III. A PASTORAL VISIT.
+  IV. THE ART OF NATURE
+   V. THE SORE SPOT
+  VI. THE GATHERING STORM.
+ VII. THE GATHERED STORM.
+VIII. THE SHIPWRECK  IX. THE FUNERAL
+   X. THE SERMON.
+  XI. CHANGED PLANS.
+ XII. THE STUDIO.
+XIII. HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A WALK WITH MY WIFE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its
+skirts behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer,
+I must write a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my
+wife. It had rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down
+the air began to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she
+walked the heavens, not “like one that hath been led astray,” but as
+“queen and huntress, chaste and fair.”
+
+“What a lovely night it is!” said Ethelwyn, who had come into my
+study--where I always sat with unblinded windows, that the night and her
+creatures might look in upon me--and had stood gazing out for a moment.
+
+“Shall we go for a little turn?” I said.
+
+“I should like it very much,” she answered. “I will go and put on my
+bonnet at once.”
+
+In a minute or two she looked in again, all ready. I rose, laid aside
+my Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the
+down, and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon
+the same spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and
+Agnes. What a different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as
+if it could not move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over
+it was so mighty in its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was
+afraid to toss itself even with the motions of its natural unrest. The
+moon was like the face of a saint before which the stormy people has
+grown dumb. The rocks stood up solid and dark in the universal aether,
+and the pulse of the ocean throbbed against them with a lapping gush,
+soft as the voice of a passionate child soothed into shame of its
+vanished petulance. But the sky was the glory. Although no breath moved
+below, there was a gentle wind abroad in the upper regions. The air was
+full of masses of cloud, the vanishing fragments of the one great vapour
+which had been pouring down in rain the most of the day. These masses
+were all setting with one steady motion eastward into the abysses of
+space; now obscuring the fair moon, now solemnly sweeping away from
+before her. As they departed, out shone her marvellous radiance, as
+calm as ever. It was plain that she knew nothing of what we called her
+covering, her obscuration, the dimming of her glory. She had been busy
+all the time weaving her lovely opaline damask on the other side of the
+mass in which we said she was swallowed up.
+
+“Have you ever noticed, wifie,” I said, “how the eyes of our
+minds--almost our bodily eyes--are opened sometimes to the cubicalness
+of nature, as it were?”
+
+“I don’t know, Harry, for I don’t understand your question,” she
+answered.
+
+“Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being
+could have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a
+moment, though. Sometimes--perhaps generally--we see the sky as a flat
+dome, spangled with star-points, and painted blue. _Now_ I see it as an
+awful depth of blue air, depth within depth; and the clouds before me
+are not passing away to the left, but sinking away from the front of me
+into the marvellous unknown regions, which, let philosophers say what
+they will about time and space,--and I daresay they are right,--are yet
+very awful to me. Thank God, my dear,” I said, catching hold of her arm,
+as the terror of mere space grew upon me, “for himself. He is deeper
+than space, deeper than time; he is the heart of all the cube of
+history.”
+
+“I understand you now, husband,” said my wife.
+
+“I knew you would,” I answered.
+
+“But,” she said again, “is it not something the same with the things
+inside us? I can’t put it in words as you do. Do you understand me now?”
+
+“I am not sure that I do. You must try again.”
+
+“You understand me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where
+you can talk,” said my wife, putting her hand in mine. “But I will try.
+Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to
+a conclusion about it, and you think you have settled it plain and clear
+to yourself, for ever and a day. You hang it upon your wall, like a
+picture, and are satisfied for a fortnight. But some day, when you
+happen to cast a look at it, you find that instead of hanging flat on
+the wall, your picture has gone through it--opens out into some region
+you don’t know where--shows you far-receding distances of air and
+sea--in short, where you thought one question was settled for ever, a
+hundred are opened up for the present hour.”
+
+“Bravo, wife!” I cried in true delight. “I do indeed understand you
+now. You have said it better than I could ever have done. That’s the
+plague of you women! You have been taught for centuries and centuries
+that there is little or nothing to be expected of you, and so you won’t
+try. Therefore we men know no more than you do whether it is in you or
+not. And when you do try, instead of trying to think, you want to be in
+Parliament all at once.”
+
+“Do you apply that remark to me, sir?” demanded Ethelwyn.
+
+“You must submit to bear the sins of your kind upon occasion,” I
+answered.
+
+“I am content to do that, so long as yours will help mine,” she replied.
+
+“Then I may go on?” I said, with interrogation.
+
+“Till sunrise if you like. We were talking of the cubicalness--I believe
+you called it--of nature.”
+
+“And you capped it with the cubicalness of thought. And quite right
+too. There are people, as a dear friend of mine used to say, who are
+so accustomed to regard everything in the _flat_, as dogma cut and--not
+_always_ dried my moral olfactories aver--that if you prove to them the
+very thing they believe, but after another mode than that they have been
+accustomed to, they are offended, and count you a heretic. There is no
+help for it. Even St. Paul’s chief opposition came from the Judaizing
+Christians of his time, who did not believe that God _could_ love the
+Gentiles, and therefore regarded him as a teacher of falsehood. We must
+not be fierce with them. Who knows what wickedness of their ancestors
+goes to account for their stupidity? For that there are stupid people,
+and that they are, in very consequence of their stupidity, conceited,
+who can deny? The worst of it is, that no man who is conceited can be
+convinced of the fact.”
+
+“Don’t say that, Harry. That is to deny conversion.”
+
+“You are right, Ethelwyn. The moment a man is convinced of his folly,
+he ceases to be a fool. The moment a man is convinced of his conceit,
+he ceases to be conceited. But there _must_ be a final judgment, and the
+true man will welcome it, even if he is to appear a convicted fool. A
+man’s business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool,
+and next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take
+heed likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their
+brother’s eye. But there are even societies established and supported
+by good people for the express purpose of pulling out motes.--‘The
+Mote-Pulling Society!’--That ought to take with a certain part of the
+public.”
+
+“Come, come, Harry. You are absurd. Such people don’t come near you.”
+
+“They can’t touch me. No. But they come near good people whom I know,
+brandishing the long pins with which they pull the motes out, and
+threatening them with judgment before their time. They are but pins, to
+be sure--not daggers.”
+
+“But you have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty
+ways, and have forgotten all about ‘the cubicalness of nature.’”
+
+“You are right, my love, as you generally are,” I answered, laughing.
+“Look at that great antlered elk, or moose--fit quarry for Diana of the
+silver bow. Look how it glides solemnly away into the unpastured depths
+of the aerial deserts. Look again at that reclining giant, half raised
+upon his arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What eyes
+they must be under those huge brows! On what message to the nations is
+he borne as by the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?”
+
+“Stop, stop, Harry,” said my wife. “It makes me unhappy to hear grand
+words clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about
+the truth, and the truth only.”
+
+“If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
+degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
+or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
+counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds
+of the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy
+giant yields, and is ‘shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,’ so is each
+of us borne onward to an unseen destiny--a glorious one if we will but
+yield to the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth--with a grand
+listing--coming whence we know not, and going whither we know not. The
+very clouds of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the thoughts and
+history of man.”
+
+“I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take
+the clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that
+what you were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which
+the clouds assume. I see I was wrong, though.”
+
+“The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
+make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all
+for? They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and
+they go nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving
+symbols of the motions of man’s spirit and destiny.”
+
+A pause followed, during which we sat and watched the marvellous depth
+of the heavens, deep as I do not think I ever saw them before or since,
+covered with a stately procession of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing
+forms--great sculpturesque blocks of a shattered storm--the icebergs
+of the upper sea. These were not far off against a blue background, but
+floating near us in the heart of a blue-black space, gloriously lighted
+by a golden rather than silvery moon. At length my wife spoke.
+
+“I hope Mr. Percivale is out to-night,” she said. “How he must be
+enjoying it if he is!”
+
+“I wonder the young man is not returning to his professional labours,” I
+said. “Few artists can afford such long holidays as he is taking.”
+
+“He is laying in stock, though, I suppose,” answered my wife.
+
+“I doubt that, my dear. He said not, on one occasion, you may remember.”
+
+“Yes, I remember. But still he must paint better the more familiar he
+gets with the things God cares to fashion.”
+
+“Doubtless. But I am afraid the work of God he is chiefly studying at
+present is our Wynnie.”
+
+“Well, is she not a worthy object of his study?” returned Ethelwyn,
+looking up in my face with an arch expression.
+
+“Doubtless again, Ethel; but I hope she is not studying him quite so
+much in her turn. I have seen her eyes following him about.”
+
+My wife made no answer for a moment. Then she said,
+
+“Don’t you like him, Harry?”
+
+“Yes. I like him very much.”
+
+“Then why should you not like Wynnie to like him?”
+
+“I should like to be surer of his principles, for one thing.”
+
+“I should like to be surer of Wynnie’s.”
+
+I was silent. Ethelwyn resumed.
+
+“Don’t you think they might do each other good?”
+
+Still I could not reply.
+
+“They both love the truth, I am sure; only they don’t perhaps know what
+it is yet. I think if they were to fall in love with each other, it
+would very likely make them both more desirous of finding it still.”
+
+“Perhaps,” I said at last. “But you are talking about awfully serious
+things, Ethelwyn.”
+
+“Yes, as serious as life,” she answered.
+
+“You make me very anxious,” I said. “The young man has not, I fear, any
+means of gaining a livelihood for more than himself.”
+
+“Why should he before he wanted it? I like to see a man who can be
+content with an art and a living by it.”
+
+“I hope I have not been to blame in allowing them to see so much of each
+other,” I said, hardly heeding my wife’s words.
+
+“It came about quite naturally,” she rejoined. “If you had opposed
+their meeting, you would have been interfering just as if you had been
+Providence. And you would have only made them think more about each
+other.”
+
+“He hasn’t said anything--has he?” I asked in positive alarm.
+
+“O dear no. It may be all my fancy. I am only looking a little ahead.
+I confess I should like him for a son-in-law. I approve of him,” she
+added, with a sweet laugh.
+
+“Well,” I said, “I suppose sons-in-law are possible, however
+disagreeable, results of having daughters.”
+
+I tried to laugh, but hardly succeeded.
+
+“Harry,” said my wife, “I don’t like you in such a mood. It is not like
+you at all. It is unworthy of you.”
+
+“How can I help being anxious when you speak of such dreadful things as
+the possibility of having to give away my daughter, my precious wonder
+that came to me through you, out of the infinite--the tender little
+darling!”
+
+“‘Out of the heart of God,’ you used to say, Henry. Yes, and with a
+destiny he had ordained. It is strange to me how you forget your best
+and noblest teaching sometimes. You are always telling us to trust in
+God. Surely it is a poor creed that will only allow us to trust in
+God for ourselves--a very selfish creed. There must be something wrong
+there. I should say that the man who can only trust God for himself is
+not half a Christian. Either he is so selfish that that satisfies him,
+or he has such a poor notion of God that he cannot trust him with what
+most concerns him. The former is not your case, Harry: is the latter,
+then?--You see I must take my turn at the preaching sometimes. Mayn’t I,
+dearest?”
+
+She took my hand in both of hers. The truth arose in my heart. I never
+loved my wife more than at that moment. And now I could not speak for
+other reasons. I saw that I had been faithless to my God, and the moment
+I could command my speech, I hastened to confess it.
+
+“You are right, my dear,” I said, “quite right. I have been wicked, for
+I have been denying my God. I have been putting my providence in the
+place of his--trying, like an anxious fool, to count the hairs on
+Wynnie’s head, instead of being content that the grand loving Father
+should count them. My love, let us pray for Wynnie; for what is prayer
+but giving her to God and his holy, blessed will?”
+
+We sat hand in hand. Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we
+spoke in our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose
+together, and walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand
+clung to my wife as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of
+the prison of my faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was
+glorious again. It had faded from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma,
+uninteresting as “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;” the
+moon had been but a round thing with the sun shining upon it, and the
+stars were only minding their own business. But now the solemn march
+towards an unseen, unimagined goal had again begun. Wynnie’s life was
+hid with Christ in God. Away strode the cloudy pageant with its banners
+blowing in the wind, which blew where it grandly listed, marching as to
+a solemn triumphal music that drew them from afar towards the gates of
+pearl by which the morning walks out of the New Jerusalem to gladden the
+nations of the earth. Solitary stars, with all their sparkles drawn in,
+shone, quiet as human eyes, in the deep solemn clefts of dark blue air.
+They looked restrained and still, as if they knew all about it--all
+about the secret of this midnight march. For the moon--she saw the sun,
+and therefore made the earth glad.
+
+“You have been a moon to me this night, my wife,” I said. “You were
+looking full at the truth, while I was dark. I saw its light in your
+face, and believed, and turned my soul to the sun. And now I am both
+ashamed and glad. God keep me from sinning so again.”
+
+“My dear husband, it was only a mood--a passing mood,” said Ethelwyn,
+seeking to comfort me.
+
+“It was a mood, and thank God it is now past; but it was a wicked one.
+It was a mood in which the Lord might have called me a devil, as he did
+St. Peter. Such moods have to be grappled with and fought the moment
+they appear. They must not have their way for a single thought even.”
+
+“But we can’t help it always, can we, husband?”
+
+“We can’t help it out and out, because our wills are not yet free with
+the freedom God is giving us as fast as we will let him. When we are
+able to will thoroughly, then we shall do what we will. At least, I
+think we shall. But there is a mystery in it God only understands.
+All we know is, that we can struggle and pray. But a mood is an awful
+oppression sometimes when you least believe in it and most wish to get
+rid of it. It is like a headache in the soul.”
+
+“What do the people do that don’t believe in God?” said Ethelwyn.
+
+The same moment Wynnie, who had seen us pass the window, opened the door
+of the bark-house for us, and we passed into Connie’s chamber and found
+her lying in the moonlight, gazing at the same heavens as her father and
+mother had been revelling in.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day was very lovely. I think it is the last of the kind of
+which I shall have occasion to write in my narrative of the Seaboard
+Parish. I wonder if my readers are tired of so much about the common
+things of Nature. I reason about it something in this way: We are so
+easily affected by the smallest things that are of the unpleasant kind,
+that we ought to train ourselves to the influence of those that are of
+an opposite nature. The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make
+themselves felt as we scramble--for we often do scramble in a very
+undignified manner--through the thickets of life; and, feeling the
+thorns, we grumble, and are blind to all but the thorns. The flowers,
+and the lovely leaves, and the red berries, and the clusters of
+filberts, and the birds’-nests do not force themselves upon our
+attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us forget to look for
+them. But a scratch would be forgotten--and that in mental hurts is
+often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on the mind or heart
+will never fester--if we but allowed our being a moment’s repose upon
+any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that lie around the
+half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I think how,
+not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but admirable
+when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very paltriness of
+which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself to a noble
+endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would gladly
+help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of the
+apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
+for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one
+of the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about
+me, from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of
+truth been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even
+a lingering shadow--not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
+rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
+over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
+memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader,
+for therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the
+recording of them.
+
+This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
+enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean--of knowing a few
+yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It
+was to be low water about two o’clock, and we resolved to dine upon
+the sands. But all the morning the children were out playing on the
+threshold of old Neptune’s palace; for in his quieter mood he will, like
+a fierce mastiff, let children do with him what they will. I gave myself
+a whole holiday--sometimes the most precious part of my life both for
+myself and those for whom I labour--and wandered about on the shore, now
+passing the children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties
+to look at this one’s castle and that one’s ditch, now leaving them
+behind, with what in its ungraduated flatness might well enough
+personate an endless desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I
+could imagine them disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint
+occasional cry of excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea
+was so calm, and the shore so gently sloping, that you could hardly tell
+where the sand ceased and the sea began--the water sloped to such a thin
+pellicle, thinner than any knife-edge, upon the shining brown sand, and
+you saw the sand underneath the water to such a distance out. Yet this
+depth, which would not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I
+followed that bed of shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and
+out, till I was lost in an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and
+mountain-peaks, in whose caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his
+breath of pestilence; the kraken, with “his skaly rind,” may there be
+sleeping
+
+  “His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep,”
+
+while
+
+    “faintest sunlights flee
+  About his shadowy sides,”
+
+as he lies
+
+  “Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep.”
+
+There may lie all the horrors that Schiller’s diver encountered--the
+frightful Molch, and that worst of all, to which he gives no name,
+which came creeping with a hundred knots at once; but here are only the
+gracious rainbow-woven shells, an evanescent jelly or two, and the queer
+baby-crabs that crawl out from the holes of the bordering rocks. What
+awful gradations of gentleness lead from such as these down to those
+cabins where wallow the inventions of Nature’s infancy, when, like
+a child of untutored imagination, she drew on the slate of her fancy
+creations in which flitting shadows of beauty serve only to heighten the
+shuddering, gruesome horror. The sweet sun and air, the hand of man, and
+the growth of the ages, have all but swept such from the upper plains
+of the earth. What hunter’s bow has twanged, what adventurer’s rifle has
+cracked in those leagues of mountain-waste, vaster than all the upper
+world can show, where the beasts of the ocean “graze the sea-weed, their
+pasture”! Diana of the silver bow herself, when she descends into
+the interlunar caves of hell, sends no such monsters fleeing from
+her spells. Yet if such there be, such horrors too must lie in the
+undiscovered caves of man’s nature, of which all this outer world is but
+a typical analysis. By equally slow gradations may the inner eye descend
+from the truth of a Cordelia to the falsehood of an Iago. As these
+golden sands slope from the sunlight into the wallowing abyss of
+darkness, even so from the love of the child to his holy mother slopes
+the inclined plane of humanity to the hell of the sensualist. “But with
+one difference in the moral world,” I said aloud, as I paced up and down
+on the shimmering margin, “that everywhere in the scale the eye of the
+all-seeing Father can detect the first quiver of the eyelid that would
+raise itself heavenward, responsive to his waking spirit.” I lifted my
+eyes in the relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn
+hung above the waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away
+to the left a man who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible
+save in such a tide, gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and
+swam ashore; above his head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air;
+the sea glittered and shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which
+to choose, the balmy air or the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads
+through the one, now alighting eagerly upon the other, to forsake it
+anew for the thinner element. I thanked God for his glory.
+
+“O, papa, it’s so jolly--so jolly!” shouted the children as I passed
+them again.
+
+“What is it that’s so jolly, Charlie?” I asked.
+
+“My castle,” screeched Harry in reply; “only it’s tumbled down. The
+water _would_ keep coming in underneath.”
+
+“I tried to stop it with a newspaper,” cried Charlie, “but it wouldn’t.
+So we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch.”
+
+“We blew it up rather than surrender,” said Dora. “We did; only Harry
+always forgets, and says it was the water did it.”
+
+I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from
+this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was
+flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark
+hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been
+dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over
+my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed
+quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on
+the sands to seaward of the breakwater, which lay above, looking dry
+and weary, and worn with years of contest with the waves, which had at
+length withdrawn defeated to their own country, and left it as if to
+victory and a useless age of peace. How different was the scene when a
+raving mountain of water filled all the hollow where I now wandered,
+and rushed over the top of that mole now so high above me; and I had
+to cling to its stones to keep me from being carried off like a bit
+of floating sea-weed! This was the loveliest and strangest part of the
+shore. Several long low ridges of rock, of whose existence I scarcely
+knew, worn to a level with the sand, hollowed and channelled with the
+terrible run of the tide across them, and looking like the old and
+outworn cheek-teeth of some awful beast of prey, stretched out seawards.
+Here and there amongst them rose a well-known rock, but now so changed
+in look by being lifted all the height between the base on the waters,
+and the second base in the sand, that I wondered at each, walking round
+and viewing it on all sides. It seemed almost a fresh growth out of the
+garden of the shore, with uncouth hollows around its fungous root, and
+a forsaken air about its brows as it stood in the dry sand and looked
+seaward. But what made the chief delight of the spot, closed in by
+rocks from the open sands, was the multitude of fairy rivers that
+flowed across it to the sea. The gladness these streams gave me I cannot
+communicate. The tide had filled thousands of hollows in the breakwater,
+hundreds of cracked basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand; from all
+of which--from cranny and crack, and oozing sponge--the water flowed in
+restricted haste back, back to the sea, tumbling in tiny cataracts
+down the faces of the rocks, bubbling from their roots as from wells,
+gathering in tanks of sand, and overflowing in broad shallow streams,
+curving and sweeping in their sandy channels, just like, the great
+rivers of a continent;--here spreading into smooth silent lakes and
+reaches, here babbling along in ripples and waves innumerable--flowing,
+flowing, to lose their small beings in the same ocean that met on the
+other side the waters of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the Amazon. All
+their channels were of golden sand, and the golden sunlight was above
+and through and in them all: gold and gold met, with the waters between.
+And what gave an added life to their motion was, that all the ripples
+made shadows on the clear yellow below them. The eye could not see
+the rippling on the surface; but the sun saw it, and drew it in
+multitudinous shadowy motion upon the sand, with the play of a thousand
+fancies of gold burnished and dead, of sunlight and yellow, trembling,
+melting, curving, blending, vanishing ever, ever renewed. It was as if
+all the water-marks upon a web of golden silk had been set in wildest
+yet most graceful curvilinear motion by the breath of a hundred playful
+zephyrs. My eye could not be filled with seeing. I stood in speechless
+delight for a while, gazing at the “endless ending” which was “the
+humour of the game,” and thinking how in all God’s works the laws of
+beauty are wrought out in evanishment, in birth and death. There, there
+is no hoarding, but an ever-fresh creating, an eternal flow of life
+from the heart of the All-beautiful. Hence even the heart of man cannot
+hoard. His brain or his hand may gather into its box and hoard; but the
+moment the thing has passed into the box, the heart has lost it and is
+hungry again. If man would _have,_ it is the giver he must have; the
+eternal, the original, the ever-outpouring is alone within his reach;
+the everlasting _creation_ is his heritage. Therefore all that he makes
+must be free to come and go through the heart of his child; he can enjoy
+it only as it passes, can enjoy only its life, its soul, its vision,
+its meaning, not itself. To hoard rubies and sapphires is as useless and
+hopeless for the heart, as if I were to attempt to hoard this marvel of
+sand and water and sunlight in the same iron chest with the musty deeds
+of my wife’s inheritance.
+
+“Father,” I murmured half aloud, “thou alone art, and I am because thou
+art. Thy will shall be mine.”
+
+I know that I must have spoken aloud, because I remember the start of
+consciousness and discomposure occasioned by the voice of Percivale
+greeting me.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he added; “I did not mean to startle you, Mr.
+Walton. I thought you were only looking at Nature’s childplay--not
+thinking.”
+
+“I know few things _more_ fit to set one thinking than what you have
+very well called Nature’s childplay,” I returned. “Is Nature very
+heartless now, do you think, to go on with this kind of thing at our
+feet, when away up yonder lies the awful London, with so many sores
+festering in her heart?”
+
+“You must answer your own question, Mr. Walton. You know I cannot. I
+confess I feel the difficulty deeply. I will go further, and confess
+that the discrepancy makes me doubt many things I would gladly believe.
+I know _you_ are able to distinguish between a glad unbelief and a
+sorrowful doubt.”
+
+“Else were I unworthy of the humblest place in the kingdom--unworthy to
+be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,” I answered, and recoiled from
+the sound of my own words; for they seemed to imply that I believed
+myself worthy of the position I occupied. I hastened to correct them:
+“But do not mistake my thoughts,” I said; “I do not dream of worthiness
+in the way of honour--only of fitness for the work to be done. For that
+I think God has fitted me in some measure. The doorkeeper’s office may
+be given him, not because he has done some great deed worthy of the
+honour, but because he can sweep the porch and scour the threshold, and
+will, in the main, try to keep them clean. That is all the worthiness I
+dare to claim, even to hope that I possess.”
+
+“No one who knows you can mistake your words, except wilfully,” returned
+Percivale courteously.
+
+“Thank you,” I said. “Now I will just ask you, in reference to the
+contrast between human life and nature, how you will go back to your
+work in London, after seeing all this child’s and other play of Nature?
+Suppose you had had nothing here but rain and high winds and sea-fogs,
+would you have been better fitted for doing something to comfort those
+who know nothing of such influences than you will be now? One of the
+most important qualifications of a sick-nurse is a ready smile. A
+long-faced nurse in a sickroom is a visible embodiment and presence of
+the disease against which the eager life of the patient is fighting in
+agony. Such ought to be banished, with their black dresses and their
+mourning-shop looks, from every sick-chamber, and permitted to minister
+only to the dead, who do not mind looks. With what a power of life
+and hope does a woman--young or old I do not care--with a face of the
+morning, a dress like the spring, a bunch of wild flowers in her hand,
+with the dew upon them, and perhaps in her eyes too (I don’t object
+to that--that is sympathy, not the worship of darkness),--with what a
+message from nature and life does she, looking death in the face with a
+smile, dawn upon the vision of the invalid! She brings a little health,
+a little strength to fight, a little hope to endure, actually lapt in
+the folds of her gracious garments; for the soul itself can do more than
+any medicine, if it be fed with the truth of life.”
+
+“But are you not--I beg your pardon for interposing on your eloquence
+with dull objection,” said Percivale--“are you not begging all the
+question? _Is_ life such an affair of sunshine and gladness?”
+
+“If life is not, then I confess all this show of nature is worse than
+vanity--it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in
+it that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the
+mistake. If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow,
+against which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We
+recognise it as death--the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow
+but for a recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must
+be life. It is of the nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is
+nothing until the light comes. This very childplay, as you call it, of
+Nature, is her assertion of the secret that life is the deepest, that
+life shall conquer death. Those who believe this must bear the good
+news to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Our Lord has
+conquered death--yea, the moral death that he called the world; and now,
+having sown the seed of light, the harvest is springing in human hearts,
+is springing in this dance of radiance, and will grow and grow until the
+hearts of the children of the kingdom shall frolic in the sunlight
+of the Father’s presence. Nature has God at her heart; she is but the
+garment of the Invisible. God wears his singing robes in a day like
+this, and says to his children, ‘Be not afraid: your brothers and
+sisters up there in London are in my hands; go and help them. I am with
+you. Bear to them the message of joy. Tell them to be of good cheer:
+I have overcome the world. Tell them to endure hunger, and not sin; to
+endure passion, and not yield; to admire, and not desire. Sorrow and
+pain are serving my ends; for by them will I slay sin; and save my
+children.’”
+
+“I wish I could believe as you do, Mr. Walton.”
+
+“I wish you could. But God will teach you, if you are willing to be
+taught.”
+
+“I desire the truth, Mr. Walton.”
+
+“God bless you! God is blessing you,” I said.
+
+“Amen,” returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in
+silence towards the cliffs.
+
+The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the
+face of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the
+inch-deep wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet
+defiant, the wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of
+the shore.
+
+“Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide
+lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy
+pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before
+us bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of
+stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that
+is at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind
+you, at your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents,
+caves, and hollows of those rocks.”
+
+“I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton,” he said.
+
+“I wish I were,” I returned. “At least I know I should rejoice in it, if
+it had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?”
+
+“Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which
+would give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and
+individuality to your representation of her.”
+
+“I know what you mean,” I answered; “but I have no gift whatever in that
+direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects
+of light and shade; though I think I have a little notion of
+colour--perhaps about as much as the little London boy, who stopped a
+friend of mine once to ask the way to the field where the buttercups
+grew, had of nature.”
+
+“I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures.”
+
+“That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they
+made me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of
+looking at them.”
+
+“May I offer you my address?” he said, and took a card from his
+pocket-book. “It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of
+me when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a
+visit.”
+
+“I shall be most happy,” I returned, taking his card.--“Did it ever
+occur to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes
+ago, how little you can do without shadow in making a picture?”
+
+“Little indeed,” answered Percivale. “In fact, it would be no picture at
+all.”
+
+“I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows.”
+
+“But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God,
+to be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes.”
+
+“It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think
+of his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but
+upon the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think
+a great part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which
+oppresses you will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin
+is possible to him. Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God
+that in order that sin should become impossible he should allow sin
+to come? that, in order that his creatures should choose the good and
+refuse the evil, in order that they might become such, with their
+whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to turn from sin with a perfect
+repugnance of the will, he should allow them to fall? that, in order
+that, from being sweet childish children, they should become noble,
+child-like men and women, he should let them try to walk alone?
+Why should he not allow the possible in order that it should become
+impossible? for possible it would ever have been, even in the midst of
+all the blessedness, until it had been, and had been thus destroyed.
+Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever exist, it seems to
+me, where there is creation still going on. How could I be content to
+guard my children so that they should never have temptation, knowing
+that in all probability they would fail if at any moment it should cross
+their path? Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be
+possible between us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long
+as it was possible it should be there developed. And if this can be said
+for the existence of moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes
+a comparative trifle; nay, a positive good, for by this the other is
+combated.”
+
+“I think I understand you,” returned Percivale. “I will think over what
+you have said. These are very difficult questions.”
+
+“Very. I don’t think argument is of much use about them, except as it
+may help to quiet a man’s uneasiness a little, and so give his mind
+peace to think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no
+question, once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest--in
+very fact, the only way into the light.”
+
+As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the
+salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came
+a little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the
+preparations for our dinner--over the gates of the lock, down the sides
+of the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the direction
+of the children, who were still playing merrily.
+
+“Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you
+see, somewhere hereabout on the sands?” I said.
+
+“I shall be delighted,” he answered, “if you will let me be of some use
+first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out.”
+
+“Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will.”
+
+“That is what I hoped,” said Percivale; and we went together towards the
+parsonage.
+
+As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but
+when we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.
+
+“Where is Wynnie?” I asked.
+
+“She saw you coming,” she answered, “and went to get Connie ready; for I
+guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out.”
+
+But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie’s
+disappearance. “What if she should have fallen in love with him,” I
+thought, “and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be
+dreadful for us all.”
+
+They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was
+compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each
+other it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently
+a great mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help
+sympathising with each other’s peculiarities. And anyone could see what
+a fine couple they would make.
+
+Wynnie was much taller than Connie--almost the height of her mother.
+She had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise,
+thoughtful, often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on
+which a smile seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled
+like water when she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why
+should not two such walk together along the path to the gates of the
+light? And yet I could not help some anxiety. I did not know anything
+of his history. I had no testimony concerning him from anyone that knew
+him. His past life was a blank to me; his means of livelihood probably
+insufficient--certainly, I judged, precarious; and his position in
+society--but there I checked myself: I had had enough of that kind of
+thing already. I would not willingly offend in that worldliness again.
+The God of the whole earth could not choose that I should look at
+such works of his hands after that fashion. And I was his servant--not
+Mammon’s or Belial’s.
+
+All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the
+winnowing-fan of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife,
+who took no pains to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and
+I went upstairs, almost unconsciously, to Connie’s room.
+
+When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to
+have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie’s arm round her
+waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk
+thus occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but
+turned it again at Connie’s cry, and I saw a tear on her face.
+
+“My darlings, I beg your pardon,” I said. “It was very stupid of me not
+to knock at the door.”
+
+Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said--
+
+“It’s nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn’t
+want you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all.
+It didn’t hurt me much, only I’m such a goose! I’m in terror before the
+pain comes. Look at me,” she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation
+on my countenance, “I’m all right now.” And she smiled in my face
+perfectly.
+
+I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the
+room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me
+with her eyes, but Wynnie’s were hidden in her handkerchief.
+
+I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to
+announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came
+to say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to
+give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her
+message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.
+
+“Come, Mr. Percivale,” I said; and he followed me up to Connie’s room.
+
+Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for
+going. We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for
+the easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater,
+along its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before
+we reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us.
+We stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted
+to take breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I
+wanted Wynnie to hear without its being addressed to her.
+
+“Do you see, Connie,” I said, “how far off the water is?”
+
+“Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to
+it.”
+
+“You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that
+sand, will be covered before sunset.”
+
+“I know it will be. But it doesn’t _look_ likely, does it, papa!”
+
+“Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I
+came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?”
+
+“Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind
+blowing when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to
+wake myself up’ quite to get rid of the thought.”
+
+“Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and
+sand at the bottom of it, stretching far away.”
+
+“Yes, papa.”
+
+“Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about
+between the stones?”
+
+“Yes, papa.”
+
+“Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the
+great gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed
+across this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry
+regiment off its back.”
+
+“Papa!” exclaimed Connie, turning pale.
+
+Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.
+
+“Then I _was_ right in being frightened, papa!” cried Connie, bursting
+into tears; for since her accident she could not well command her
+feelings.
+
+“You were right in trusting in God, Connie.”
+
+“But you might have been drowned, papa!” she sobbed.
+
+“Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what
+has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but
+that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking
+of things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is _our_
+department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what
+a change--from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of
+sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away
+there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles
+will come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the
+storm look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning
+cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort
+of Nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose,
+for God is Peace.”
+
+“But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton,” said Percivale, “you can hardly
+expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It
+seems to me that its influences cannot be imparted.”
+
+“That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are
+offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another;
+for it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in
+the person who has experienced can draw over or derive--to use an old
+Italian word--some of its benefits to him who has the faith. Experience
+may thus, in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh
+experience of our own. At least I can hope that the experience of a
+father may take the form of hope in the minds of his daughters.
+Hope never hurt anyone, never yet interfered with duty; nay, always
+strengthens to the performance of duty, gives courage, and clears the
+judgment. St. Paul says we are saved by hope. Hope is the most rational
+thing in the universe. Even the ancient poets, who believed it was
+delusive, yet regarded it as an antidote given by the mercy of the gods
+against some, at least, of the ills of life.”
+
+“But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded.”
+
+“Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a
+false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could
+give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for
+what were the gods in whom they believed--I cannot say in whom they
+trusted? Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of
+doing for men when they gave them the _illusion_ of hope. But I see
+they are waiting for us below. One thing I repeat--the waves that
+foamed across the spot where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and
+vanished.”
+
+“But they will come again, papa,” faltered Wynnie.
+
+“And God will come with them, my love,” I said, as we lifted the litter.
+
+In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a
+table-cloth spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the
+light outside and in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope
+the others too, that afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were
+creeping up over the level, soundless almost as thought; but it would
+be time to go home long before they had reached us. The sun was in the
+western half of the sky, and now and then a breath of wind came from the
+sea, with a slight saw-edge in it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could
+stand much more in that way now. And when I saw how she could move
+herself on her couch, and thought how much she had improved since first
+she was laid upon it, hope for her kept fluttering joyously in my heart.
+I could not help fancying even that I saw her move her legs a little;
+but I could not be in the least sure; and she, if she did move them,
+was clearly unconscious of it. Charles and Harry were every now and then
+starting up from their dinner and running off with a shout, to return
+with apparently increased appetite for the rest of it; and neither their
+mother nor I cared to interfere with the indecorum. Dora alone took
+it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very silent, but looked more
+cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My wife’s face was a
+picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking about with the
+baby, occasionally with one hand helping the other servants to wait upon
+us. They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the hour, and,
+like Ariel, did their spiriting gently.
+
+“This is the will of God,” I said, after the things were removed, and we
+had sat for a few moments in silence.
+
+“What is the will of God, husband?” asked Ethelwyn.
+
+“Why, this, my love,” I answered; “this living air, and wind, and sea,
+and light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of
+Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such
+visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the
+face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes.
+Yes, but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the
+harmony. When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was
+for Lazarus himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That
+could not be, seeing he had the power to call him back when he would.
+The grief was for the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was
+so dreadful because they had not faith enough in his Father, the God
+of life and love, who was looking after it all, full of tenderness and
+grace, with whom Lazarus was present and blessed. It was the aching,
+loving heart of humanity for which he wept, that needed God so awfully,
+and could not yet trust in him. Their brother was only hidden in the
+skirts of their Father’s garment, but they could not believe that: they
+said he was dead--lost--away--all gone, as the children say. And it was
+so sad to think of a whole world full of the grief of death, that he
+could not bear it without the human tears to help his heart, as they
+help ours. It was for our dark sorrows that he wept. But the peace could
+be no less plain on the face that saw God. Did you ever think of that
+wonderful saying: ‘Again a little while, and ye shall see me, because I
+go to the Father’? The heart of man would have joined the ‘because I go
+to the Father’ with the former result--the not seeing of him. The heart
+of man is not able, without more and more light, to understand that all
+vision is in the light of the Father. Because Jesus went to the Father,
+therefore the disciples saw him tenfold more. His body no longer in
+their eyes, his very being, his very self was in their hearts--not in
+their affections only--in their spirits, their heavenly consciousness.”
+
+As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial
+affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I
+repeated it:
+
+      “If I Him but have,
+    If he be but mine,
+      If my heart, hence to the grave,
+    Ne’er forgets his love divine--
+  Know I nought of sadness,
+  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.
+
+      If I Him but have,
+    Glad with all I part;
+      Follow on my pilgrim staff
+    My Lord only, with true heart;
+  Leave them, nothing saying,
+  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Glad I fall asleep;
+        Aye the flood that his heart gave
+      Strength within my heart shall keep,
+  And with soft compelling
+  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Mine the world I hail!
+        Glad as cherub smiling grave,
+      Holding back the virgin’s veil.
+  Sunk and lost in seeing,
+  Earthly fears have died from all my being.
+
+        Where I have but Him
+      Is my Fatherland;
+        And all gifts and graces come
+      Heritage into my hand:
+  Brothers long deplored
+  I in his disciples find restored.”
+
+“What a lovely hymn, papa!” exclaimed Connie. She could always speak
+more easily than either her mother or sister. “Who wrote it?”
+
+“Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis.”
+
+“But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?”
+
+“Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and
+feeling, however I may have failed in making an English poem of it.”
+
+“O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?”
+
+“Years before you were born, Connie.”
+
+“To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!” she
+returned. “Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?”
+
+“No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don’t think he
+belonged to any section of the church in particular.”
+
+“But oughtn’t he, papa?”
+
+“Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is
+the use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?”
+
+“O, I didn’t think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I
+wanted to know more about him.”
+
+The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant
+what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider
+Christianity as associated of necessity with this or that form of
+it, instead of as simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more
+repulsive to me as I had grown myself, for it always seemed like an
+insult to my brethren in Christ; hence the least hint of it in my
+children I was too ready to be down upon like a most unchristian ogre.
+I took her hand in mine, and she was comforted, for she saw in my face
+that I was sorry, and yet she could see that there was reason at the
+root of my haste.
+
+“But,” said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened
+herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far
+she was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a
+barrier between him and me--“But,” she said, “the lovely feeling in that
+poem seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to
+the New Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about
+us. These things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and
+being glad in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and
+solemn things. As soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of
+them.”
+
+“That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to
+the rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with
+their conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with
+art it was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of
+its history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to
+make Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we
+are beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either
+the whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the
+human soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is
+the heart not only of theology so called, but of history, politics,
+science, and art. The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him,
+and therefore by him only can be revealed. This will interpret all
+things, or it has not yet been. Teachers of men have not taught this,
+because they have not seen it. If we do not find him in nature, we may
+conclude either that we do not understand the expression of nature, or
+have mistaken ideas or poor feelings about him. It is one great business
+in our life to find the interpretation which will render this harmony
+visible. Till we find it, we have not seen him to be all in all.
+Recognising a discord when they touched the notes of nature and society,
+the hermits forsook the instrument altogether, and contented themselves
+with a partial symphony--lofty, narrow, and weak. Their example, more or
+less, has been followed by almost all Christians. Exclusion is so much
+the easier way of getting harmony in the orchestra than study, insight,
+and interpretation, that most have adopted it. It is for us, and all who
+have hope in the infinite God, to widen its basis as we may, to search
+and find the true tone and right idea, place, and combination of
+instruments, until to our enraptured ear they all, with one voice of
+multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare the glory of God and of his
+Christ.”
+
+“A grand idea,” said Percivale.
+
+“Therefore likely to be a true one,” I returned. “People find it hard
+to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely
+everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is
+shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and
+troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of
+eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God
+will yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs.”
+
+I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring
+holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look
+my familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there
+I sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs.
+As I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast
+from the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide
+had crept up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk
+down over the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured
+the half of the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain
+veil as of the commonplace, like that which so often settles down over
+the spirit of man after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had
+dropped over the face of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts
+across the dull waters. It was time to lift Connie and take her home.
+
+This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A PASTORAL VISIT.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next morning rose neither “cherchef’t in a comely cloud” nor “roab’d
+in flames and amber light,” but covered all in a rainy mist, which the
+wind mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now
+and then the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of
+my study with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out
+and meet its ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows
+anywhere. The sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth,
+sea, and sky were possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The
+breakfast-bell rang, and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who
+was always down first to make the tea, standing at the window with a
+sad face, giving fit response to the aspect of nature without, her soul
+talking with the gray spirit. I did find her at the window, looking out
+upon the restless tossing of the waters, but with no despondent answer
+to the trouble of nature. On the contrary, her cheek, though neither
+rosy nor radiant, looked luminous, and her eyes were flashing out upon
+the ebb-tide which was sinking away into the troubled ocean beyond. Does
+my girl-reader expect me to tell her next that something had happened?
+that Percivale had said something to her? or that, at least, he had just
+passed the window, and given her a look which she might interpret as she
+pleased? I must disappoint her. It was nothing of the sort. I knew
+the heart and feeling of my child. It was only that kind nature was in
+sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more peaceful in storm than
+in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of life instantly began
+in her when the obligation of gladness had departed with the light. Her
+own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could smile now when
+nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I could not
+help saying to myself, “She must marry a poor man some day; she is a
+creature of the north, and not of the south; the hot sun of prosperity
+would wither her up. Give her a bleak hill-side, and a glint or two of
+sunshine between the hailstorms, and she will live and grow; give her
+poverty and love, and life will be interesting to her as a romance; give
+her money and position, and she will grow dull and haughty. She will
+believe in nothing that poet can sing or architect build. She will, like
+Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved to smile at anything.”
+
+I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came
+forward with her usual morning greeting.
+
+“I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter.”
+
+“I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love.”
+
+“Don’t think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you.
+But I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind
+and a complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome
+it.”
+
+“It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the
+moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well,
+and that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think
+about some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have
+banished if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as
+you never felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which
+at least you haven’t enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you
+yesterday, and I won’t go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to
+comfort you. Come and give me my breakfast.”
+
+“You do comfort me, papa,” she answered, approaching the table. “I know
+I don’t show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don’t
+you like a day like this, papa?”
+
+“I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as
+you do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so
+well.”
+
+“Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me
+so well?” she asked, brightening up.
+
+“I know I do,” I returned, replying to her last question.
+
+“Better than I do myself?” she asked with an arch smile.
+
+“Considerably, if I mistake not,” I answered.
+
+“How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don’t
+understand myself!”
+
+“But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life
+is that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from
+God, that hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease.
+It is the sight of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are
+both, by mutual confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you
+say to going out with me? I have to visit a sick woman.”
+
+“You don’t mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?”
+
+“No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill.”
+
+“O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was
+in bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort.”
+
+“We’ll call and inquire as we pass,--that is, if you are inclined to go
+with me.”
+
+“How can you put an _if_ to that, papa?”
+
+“I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on
+the corner of Mr. Barton’s farm--over the cliff, you know--that the
+woman is ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the
+better.”
+
+“I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here’s
+mamma!--Mamma, I’m going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won’t
+mind, will you?”
+
+“I don’t think it will do you any harm, my dear. That’s all I mind, you
+know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected
+to it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people are _glad_ to
+stay in-doors when it rains.”
+
+“And it does blow so delightfully!” said Wynnie, as she left the room to
+put on her long cloak and her bonnet.
+
+We called at the sexton’s cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the
+low window, looking seaward.
+
+“I hope your wife is not _very_ poorly, Coombes,” I said.
+
+“No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed’s not a bad place to be in
+in such weather,” he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the
+Atlantic. “Poor things!”
+
+“What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about,
+do you think?”
+
+“I suppose I was made so, sir.”
+
+“To be sure you were. God made you so.”
+
+“Surely, sir. Who else?”
+
+“Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people
+like to be comfortable.”
+
+“It du look likely enough, sir.”
+
+“Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn’t think he doesn’t
+look after the people you would make comfortable if you could.”
+
+“I must mind my work, you know, sir.”
+
+“Yes, surely. And you mustn’t want to take his out of his hands, and go
+grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you
+get _your_ hand to it.”
+
+“I daresay you be right, sir,” he said. “I must just go and have a look
+about, though. Here’s Agnes. She’ll tell you about mother.”
+
+He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his
+tools into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over
+with the names of the people he had buried.
+
+“Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her,
+if she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is
+very poorly, I hear.”
+
+“Let us go through the churchyard, papa,” said Wynnie, “and see what the
+old man is doing.”
+
+“Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round.”
+
+“Why do you humour the sexton’s foolish fancy so much, papa? It is
+such nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
+resurrection?”
+
+“Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out
+of his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction.
+To get people’s hearts right is of much more importance than convincing
+their judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should
+be encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the
+outsides of their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for
+the dead more than he does, and _therefore_ it is unreasonable for him
+to be anxious about them.”
+
+When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave
+before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death’s-head and
+cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his
+pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows
+of the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked
+past with a nod.
+
+“You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only
+thing in Dante’s grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it
+without a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry
+now as I am that ever he could have written it. When, in the _Inferno,_
+he reaches the lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice,
+he finds the lost plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember
+rightly, entirely submerged, and visible only through the ice,
+transparent as crystal, like the insects found in amber. One man with
+his head only above the ice, appeals to him as condemned to the same
+punishment to take pity on him, and remove the lumps of frozen tears
+from his eyes, that he may weep a little before they freeze again and
+stop the relief once more. Dante says to him, ‘Tell me who you are,
+and if I do not assist you, I deserve to lie at the bottom of the ice
+myself.’ The man tells him who he is, and explains to him one awful
+mystery of these regions. Then he says, ‘Now stretch forth thy hand,
+and open my eyes.’ ‘And,’ says Dante, I did not open them for him; and
+rudeness to him was courtesy.’”
+
+“But he promised, you said.”
+
+“He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him
+together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that
+Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and
+may teach us many things.”
+
+“But what made you think of that now?”
+
+“Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was
+scooping the green moss out of the eyes of the death’s-head on the
+gravestone.”
+
+By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting
+us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie
+drew her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and
+struggled on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the
+rain must carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one
+of the stone fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments
+to recover our breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like
+conversation was out of the question. At length we dropped into a
+hollow, which gave us a little repose. Down below the sea was dashing
+into the mouth of the glen, or coomb, as they call it there. On the
+opposite side of the hollow, the little house to which we were going
+stood up against the gray sky.
+
+“I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was
+thoughtless of me; I don’t mean for your sake, but because your presence
+may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may
+prefer seeing me alone.”
+
+“I will go back, papa. I sha’n’t mind it a bit.”
+
+“No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We
+may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?”
+
+“Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside.”
+
+“Come along, then. We shall soon be there.”
+
+When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way.
+I left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where
+Mrs. Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the
+moment I saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was
+a hard-featured woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled
+restlessly about. She lay on her back, moving her head from side to
+side. When I entered she only looked at me, and turned her eyes away
+towards the wall. I approached the bedside, and seated myself by it.
+I always do so at once; for the patient feels more at rest than if you
+stand tall up before her. I laid my hand on hers.
+
+“Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?” I said.
+
+“Yes, very,” she answered with a groan. “It be come to the last with
+me.”
+
+“I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It’s not come to the last with us, so
+long as we have a Father in heaven.”
+
+“Ah! but it be with me. He can’t take any notice of the like of me.”
+
+“But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of
+every thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit.”
+
+I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than
+usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I
+therefore went on.
+
+“Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long
+as their children don’t bother them, let them do anything they like. He
+will not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that.”
+
+“He won’t look at me,” she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so
+that I could hardly, hear what she said.
+
+“It is because he _is_ looking at you that you are feeling
+uncomfortable,” I answered. “He wants you to confess your sins. I
+don’t mean to me, but to himself; though if you would like to tell me
+anything, and I can help you, I shall be _very_ glad. You know Jesus
+Christ came to save us from our sins; and that’s why we call him our
+Saviour. But he can’t save us from our sins if we won’t confess that we
+have any.”
+
+“I’m sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other
+people.”
+
+“You don’t suppose that’s confessing your sins?” I said. “I once knew a
+woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner;
+but when I said, ‘Yes, you have done so and so,’ she would not allow one
+of those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When
+I asked her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these
+counted for nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a
+great sinner, like other people, as you have just been saying.”
+
+“I hope you don’t be thinking I ha’ done anything of that sort,” she
+said with wakening energy. “No man or woman dare say I’ve done anything
+to be ashamed of.”
+
+“Then you’ve committed no sins?” I returned. “But why did you send for
+me? You must have something to say to me.”
+
+“I never did send for you. It must ha’ been my husband.”
+
+“Ah, then I’m afraid I’ve no business here!” I returned, rising. “I
+thought you had sent for me.”
+
+She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her
+thinking, and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I
+think clergymen may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad
+mood, as if they had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at
+all. I bade her good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned
+to Wynnie.
+
+As we walked home together, I said:
+
+“Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the
+sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented
+my appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are
+over.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ART OF NATURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study
+and in Connie’s room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused
+to hold any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it
+folded itself in its mantle and lay still.
+
+What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we
+cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She
+is busy with every human mood in turn--sometimes with ten of them
+at once--picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see,
+understand, develop, reform it.
+
+I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora
+knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that
+mamma was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.
+
+“Not in the least, my dear,” I answered; “I shall be very glad to see
+him.”
+
+“Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale,” I said as he
+entered. “I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it
+would be much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her
+portrait?”
+
+“Not quite so bad as that,” said Percivale.
+
+“Surely the human face is more than nature.”
+
+“Nature is never stupid.”
+
+“The woman might be pretty.”
+
+“Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such
+a woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would
+feel the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you
+would never think of making upon Nature.”
+
+“I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with
+moral causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame.”
+
+“Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be
+lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you
+rise into animal nature that you find ugliness.”
+
+“True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn
+in nature. I have seen ugly flowers.”
+
+“I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without
+beauty.”
+
+“Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I
+grant you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just
+because the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in
+its repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face.”
+
+A pause followed.
+
+“I presume,” I said, “you are thinking of returning to London now, there
+seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins
+to show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the
+change, even through the winter, will be good for my daughter.”
+
+“I must be going soon,” he answered; “but it would be too bad to take
+offence at the old lady’s first touch of temper. I mean to wait and
+see whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin’s summer, as
+Shakspere calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and--”
+
+“And what?” I asked, seeing he hesitated.
+
+“‘And soap,’ I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the
+worst of things, Mr. Walton.”
+
+“No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by
+anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it.”
+
+We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to
+tell me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.
+
+I went down to see him, and found her husband.
+
+“My wife be very bad, sir,” he said. “I wish you could come and see
+her.”
+
+“Does she want to see me?’ I asked.
+
+“She’s been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last,” he
+said.
+
+“But,” I repeated, “has she said she would like to see me?”
+
+“I can’t say it, sir,” answered the man.
+
+“Then it is you who want me to see her?”
+
+“Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you
+see, sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would
+always leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir.”
+
+“And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?”
+
+“No, never, sir. She be peculiar--my wife; she always be.”
+
+“Does she know that you have come to ask me now?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Have you courage to tell her?”
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+“If you haven’t courage to tell her,” I resumed, “I have nothing more to
+say. I can’t go; or, rather, I will not go.”
+
+“I will tell her, sir.”
+
+“Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me
+herself.”
+
+“Ben’t that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?”
+
+“I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she
+will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your
+wife’s peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes.”
+
+“Well, I _will_ tell her, sir. It’s time to speak my own mind.”
+
+“I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in
+the middle of the night, I shall be with her at once.”
+
+He left me and I returned to Percivale.
+
+“I was just thinking before you came,” I said, “about the relation of
+Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but
+I often think about the truths that lie at the root of it.”
+
+“I am greatly obliged to you,” he said, “for talking about these things.
+I assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I
+always think the professions should not herd together so much as they
+do; they want to be shone upon from other quarters.”
+
+“I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself
+could give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the
+reflective power of the airy particles through which he shines.
+But anything I know I have found out merely by foraging for my own
+necessities.”
+
+“That is just what makes the result valuable,” he replied. “Tell me what
+you were thinking.”
+
+“I was thinking,” I answered, “how everyone likes to see his own
+thoughts set outside of him, that he may contemplate them _objectively,_
+as the philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as
+it were.”
+
+“Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art
+at all.”
+
+“Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the
+question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however
+they may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will
+satisfy themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in
+which they have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet
+utter their ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only
+be good, they shall have this power some day; for I do think that many
+things we call differences in kind, may in God’s grand scale prove to be
+only differences in degree. And indeed the artist--by artist, I mean,
+of course, architect, musician, painter, poet, sculptor--in many things
+requires it just as much as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren,
+seeing in proportion to the things that he can do, he is aware of the
+things he cannot do, the thoughts he cannot express. Hence arises the
+enthusiasm with which people hail the work of an artist; they rejoice,
+namely, in seeing their own thoughts, or feelings, or something like
+them, expressed; and hence it comes that of those who have money, some
+hang their walls with pictures of their own choice, others--”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Percivale, interrupting; “but most people, I
+fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people’s choice, for they
+don’t buy them at all till the artist has got a name.”
+
+“That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they
+won’t at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity
+may be only what first attracted their attention--not determined their
+choice.”
+
+“But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market.”
+
+“‘Of such is not the talk,’ as the Germans would say. In as far as your
+description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
+considered now.”
+
+“Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
+deserve, if you have lost your thread.”
+
+“I don’t think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
+their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of
+their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
+unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
+to what is in themselves--the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own
+feelings outside of themselves.”
+
+“Is there not another possible motive--that the pictures teach them
+something?”
+
+“That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the
+other, but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us
+already that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the
+germ, else nothing from without would wake it up.”
+
+“I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
+influences.”
+
+“One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the
+pictures and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the
+house he has chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little
+to do with the education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not
+aware of it, they are working upon him,--for good, if he has chosen what
+is good, which alone shall be our supposition.”
+
+“Certainly; that is clear.”
+
+“Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our
+needs--not as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for
+himself. For our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for
+us all the otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even
+when he speaks of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the
+forms or pictures of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen
+world turned inside out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house
+that he has built for us, God has hung up the pictures--ever-living,
+ever-changing pictures--of all that passes in our souls. Form and colour
+and motion are there,--ever-modelling, ever-renewing, never wearying.
+Without this living portraiture from within, we should have no word to
+utter that should represent a single act of the inner world. Metaphysics
+could have no existence, not to speak of poetry, not to speak of the
+commonest language of affection. But all is done in such spiritual
+suggestion, portrait and definition are so avoided, the whole is in
+such fluent evanescence, that the producing mind is only aided, never
+overwhelmed. It never amounts to representation. It affords but the
+material which the thinking, feeling soul can use, interpret, and apply
+for its own purposes of speech. It is, as it were, the forms of thought
+cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior laws of matter, thence to be
+withdrawn by what we call the creative genius that God has given to men,
+and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and built up to its own shapes
+and its own purposes.”
+
+“Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the
+word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist.”
+
+“It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help
+seeing nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees
+no meaning in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will
+represent only her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance.”
+
+“Then artists ought to interpret nature?”
+
+“Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves--something
+of humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or
+not. If to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed
+they may claim to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect
+they may be in their powers of representing--however lowly, therefore,
+their position may be in that order.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SORE SPOT.
+
+
+We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the
+dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message
+that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help
+smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling
+too.
+
+“My wife do send me for you this time, sir,” he said. “Between you and
+me, I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to
+tell you, sir.”
+
+“Why shouldn’t she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And
+then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am.”
+
+“She don’t think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay
+she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done
+talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir.”
+
+“Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn’t given in quite so
+much. It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right.”
+
+“But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile.”
+
+“Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been
+surer--_sometimes;_ I don’t say _always.”_
+
+“But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don’t think she’ll behave to
+you as she did before. Do come, sir.”
+
+“Of course I will--instantly.”
+
+I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with
+me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was
+hardly kind to ask him.
+
+“Well, perhaps it is better not,” I said; “for I do not know how long I
+may have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take
+my place at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should
+return before the meal is over.”
+
+He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my
+wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me--I would take my
+chance--and joined Mr. Stokes.
+
+“You have no idea, then,” I said, after we had gone about half-way,
+“what makes your wife so uneasy?”
+
+“No, I haven’t,” he answered; “except it be,” he resumed, “that she was
+too hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath
+her, as wife thought.”
+
+“How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?”
+
+“She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother’s temper, you see,
+and she would take her own way.”
+
+“Ah, there’s a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their
+own way, they mustn’t give their own temper to their daughters.”
+
+“But how are they to help it, sir?”
+
+“Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter’s husband?”
+
+“A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone.”
+
+“But you have worked on Mr. Barton’s farm for many years, if I don’t
+mistake?”
+
+“I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see.”
+
+“But you weren’t so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his
+way up or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs.
+Stokes?”
+
+“True as you say, sir; and it’s not me that has anything to say about
+it. I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do
+be wanting to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the
+shopkeeping--”
+
+“The shopkeeping!” I said, with some surprise; “I didn’t know that.”
+
+“Well, you see, sir, it’s only for a quarter or so of the year. You know
+it’s a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing--past
+our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a
+bit of a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window,
+and--”
+
+“A bad place for the ginger-beer,” I said.
+
+“They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My
+wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the
+sun. But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a
+farm-labourer, as they call them, was none good enough for her
+daughter.”
+
+“And hasn’t she been kind to her since she married, then?”
+
+“She’s never done her no harm, sir.”
+
+“But she hasn’t gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see
+you very often, I suppose?”
+
+“There’s ne’er a one o’ them crossed the door of the other,” he
+answered, with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.
+
+“Ah; but you don’t approve of that yourself, Stokes?”
+
+“Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do
+want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother,
+she do. I don’t know which of the two it is as does it, but there’s no
+coming and going between Carpstone and this.”
+
+We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know
+I was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late
+for me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she
+was still very anxious to see me.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?” I asked, by way of opening
+the conversation. “I don’t think you look much worse.”
+
+“I he much worse, sir. You don’t know what I suffer, or you wouldn’t
+make so little of it. I be very bad.”
+
+“I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me
+why you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I
+suppose.”
+
+With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more
+with herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her.
+The drops stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to
+help her, if I might, I said--
+
+“Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?”
+
+“No,” she muttered. “I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my
+own. I could do as I pleased with her.”
+
+I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but
+meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she
+feels.
+
+“Then,” I said, “you want to tell me about something that was not your
+own?”
+
+“Who said I ever took what was not my own?” she returned fiercely. “Did
+Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn’t my own?”
+
+“No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from
+your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause
+of your misery.”
+
+“It is very hard that the parson should think such things,” she muttered
+again.
+
+“My poor woman,” I said, “you sent for me because you had something to
+confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to
+confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does
+you harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me,
+confess to God.”
+
+“God knows it, I suppose, without that.”
+
+“Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it.
+How is he to forgive you, if you won’t allow that you have done wrong?”
+
+“It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had
+took something that wasn’t your own?”
+
+“Well, I shouldn’t like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I
+should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it.”
+
+“But that’s the worst of it; I can’t get rid of it.”
+
+“But,” I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly
+as I could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly
+repulsive but for her evidently great suffering, “you have now all but
+confessed taking something that did not belong to you. Why don’t you
+summon courage and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the
+trouble as easily as ever I can; but I can’t if you don’t tell me what
+you’ve got that isn’t yours.”
+
+“I haven’t got anything,” she muttered.
+
+“You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now.”
+
+She was again silent.
+
+“What did you do with it?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold
+of me, with a cry.
+
+“Stop, stop. I’ll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That’s the
+worst of it. I got no good of it.”
+
+“What was it?”
+
+“A sovereign,” she said, with a groan. “And now I’m a thief, I suppose.”
+
+“No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you
+think it would have been any better for you if you hadn’t lost it, and
+had got some good of it, as you say?”
+
+She was silent yet again.
+
+“If you hadn’t lost it you would most likely have been a great deal
+worse for it than you are--a more wicked woman altogether.”
+
+“I’m not a wicked woman.”
+
+“It is wicked to steal, is it not?”
+
+“I didn’t steal it.”
+
+“How did you come by it, then?”
+
+“I found it.”
+
+“Did you try to find out the owner?”
+
+“No. I knew whose it was.”
+
+“Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you
+had not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked
+woman than you are.”
+
+“It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I
+wouldn’t have lost my character as I have done this day.”
+
+“Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would.”
+
+“I would.”
+
+“Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?”
+
+“Yes, that I would,” she said, looking me so full in the face that I was
+sure she meant it.
+
+“How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?”
+
+“No; I wouldn’t trust him.”
+
+“With the story, you mean? You do not wish to imply that he would not
+restore it?”
+
+“I don’t mean that. He would do what I told him.”
+
+“How would you return it, then?”
+
+“I should make a parcel of it, and send it.”
+
+“Without saying anything about it?”
+
+“Yes. Where’s the good? The man would have his own.”
+
+“No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have
+wronged him. That would never do.”
+
+“You are too hard upon me,” she said, beginning to weep angrily.
+
+“Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?” I said.
+
+“Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!”
+
+“Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the
+weight of it will stick there.”
+
+“But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?”
+
+“Of course. That is only reasonable.”
+
+“But I haven’t got it, I tell you. I have lost it.”
+
+“Have you not a sovereign in your possession?”
+
+“No, not one.”
+
+“Can’t you ask your husband to let you have one?”
+
+“There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse.
+I do wish I had never seen that wicked money.”
+
+“You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish
+that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it
+now. Has your husband got a sovereign?”
+
+“No. He may ha’ got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him
+about it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in
+that way, poor man.”
+
+“Well, I’ll tell him, and we’ll manage it somehow.”
+
+I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she
+hid her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.
+
+I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the
+room-door and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did
+not look up, but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this
+humiliation before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.
+
+“Your wife, poor woman,” I said, “is in great distress because--I do not
+know when or how--she picked up a sovereign that did not belong to her,
+and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This is
+what is making her so miserable.”
+
+“Deary me!” said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to
+a sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet
+from her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight
+hold of it, and he could not. “Deary me!” he went on; “we’ll soon put
+that all to rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?”
+
+“When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon
+return it,” she sobbed from under the sheet.
+
+“Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?”
+
+“I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got
+for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha’ given it
+back at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was
+very nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it.”
+
+“You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then,” I said.
+
+“My old man won’t be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him
+first.”
+
+“I would wish that too,” I said, “were it not that I am afraid you might
+have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable
+and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be
+paid. Have you got it?”
+
+The poor man looked blank.
+
+“She will never be at ease till this money is paid,” I insisted.
+
+“Well, sir, I ain’t got it, but I’ll borrow it of someone; I’ll go to
+master, and ask him.”
+
+“No, my good fellow, that won’t do. Your master would want to know what
+you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn’t let more people
+know about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no
+occasion for that. I’ll tell you what: I’ll give you the money, and you
+must take it; or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell
+him all about it. Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?”
+
+“Please, sir. It’s very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again,
+if it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to
+you, sir; but I couldn’t bear the disgrace of it.”
+
+She said all this from under the bed-clothes.
+
+“Well, I’ll go,” I said; “and as soon as I’ve had my dinner I’ll get
+a horse and ride over to Squire Tresham’s. I’ll come back to-night and
+tell you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for
+forgiving you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but
+confess it clean out to him, you know.”
+
+She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.
+
+I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse
+which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.
+
+When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to
+dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my
+return was uncertain.
+
+“But, my love,” said my wife, “why should you not let us please
+ourselves sometimes? Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us.”
+
+“I am very glad you think so,” I answered. “But there are the children:
+it is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their
+meals.”
+
+“You see there are no children; they have had their dinner.”
+
+“Always in the right, wife; but there’s Mr. Percivale.”
+
+“I never dine till seven o’clock, to save daylight,” he said.
+
+“Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine.”
+
+During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale’s eyes
+followed Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her
+face. That she was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt.
+One glance at her satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle
+kept coming again and again into my mind; for they were winged words
+those, and even when they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my
+window: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” And I kept reminding myself
+that I must heave the load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs.
+Stokes to do; for God was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not
+without my help, for that would be to do me more harm than good by
+taking the one thing in which I was like him away from me--my action.
+Therefore I must have faith in him, and not be afraid; for surely all
+fear is sin, and one of the most oppressive sins from which the Lord
+came to save us.
+
+Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out
+for Squire Tresham’s.
+
+
+I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him
+the story of the poor woman’s misery, he was quite concerned at her
+suffering. When I produced the sovereign he would not receive it at
+first, but requested me to take it back to her and say she must keep it
+by way of an apology for his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took
+care to tell him the whole story, thinking it might be a lesson to him
+too. But I begged him to take it; for it would, I thought, not only
+relieve her mind more thoroughly, but help to keep her from coming to
+think lightly of the affair afterwards. Of course I could not tell him
+that I had advanced the money, for that would have quite prevented him
+from receiving it. I then got on my horse again, and rode straight to
+the cottage.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Stokes,” I said, “it’s all over now. That’s one good thing
+done. How do you feel yourself now?”
+
+“I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me.”
+
+“God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness
+for. It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all
+our sins, you know. They’re not nice things, are they, to keep in
+our hearts? It is just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead
+carcasses, under lock and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they
+were precious jewels.”
+
+“I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn’t made so. There’s
+my husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But
+then, you see, he would let a child take him in.”
+
+“And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is
+no harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in.”
+
+She did not reply, and I went on:
+
+“I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for
+your daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially
+seeing you are so ill.”
+
+“I will, sir. I will directly. I’m tired of having my own way. But I was
+made so.”
+
+“You weren’t made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the
+necessary strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now;
+only you must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you.
+I think very likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink
+yourself, and feel that you had done wrong.”
+
+“I have been feeling that for many a year.”
+
+“That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling
+your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know
+Jesus came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off
+our hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us.
+Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere,
+and he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband,
+and when you have done that you will think of something else to set
+right that’s wrong.”
+
+“But there would be no end to that way of it, sir.”
+
+“Certainly not, till everything was put right.”
+
+“But a body might have nothing else to do, that way.”
+
+“Well, that’s the very first thing that has to be done. It is our
+business in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and
+try to enjoy ourselves.”
+
+“That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread.”
+
+“To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God’s
+way. But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would
+just take his way, you would find that he would take care you should
+enjoy your life.”
+
+“I’m sure I haven’t had much enjoyment in mine.”
+
+“That was just because you would not trust him with his own business,
+but must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will
+take care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for.
+And the longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must
+leave you now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and
+get a sleep. I will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like.”
+
+“Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful.”
+
+As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart
+was like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from
+every heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one’s own soul must be a
+pledge of renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again
+of what St. Paul had said somewhere, “whatsoever is not of faith is
+sin,” I thought what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth,
+and how blessed it might be. But what could I do for it? I could just
+begin with myself, and pray God for that inward light which is his
+Spirit, that so I might see him in everything and rejoice in everything
+as his gift, and then all things would be holy, for whatsoever is of
+faith must be the opposite of sin; and that was my part towards heaving
+the weight of sin, which, like myriads of gravestones, was pressing
+the life out of us men, off the whole world. Faith in God is life and
+righteousness--the faith that trusts so that it will obey--none
+other. Lord, lift the people thou hast made into holy obedience and
+thanksgiving, that they may be glad in this thy world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GATHERING STORM.
+
+
+
+
+
+The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
+lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than
+in our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the
+ocean, the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there,
+indeed, so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the
+winter through, compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness
+of the season is almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against
+furious storms of wind and rain.
+
+Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another
+visit. I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away
+so soon again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find
+time for a holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what
+I knew of him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.
+
+He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir
+was working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have
+got a man to take my place better.
+
+He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I
+was sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one
+side to the other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner
+encouraged her in making gentle and frequent use of her strength,
+impressing it upon her, however, that everything depended on avoiding
+everything like a jerk or twist of any sort. I was with them when he
+said this. She looked up at him with a happy smile.
+
+“I will do all I can, Mr. Turner,” she said, “to get out of people’s way
+as soon as possible.”
+
+Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add--
+
+“I know you don’t mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and
+not be helped--more than other people--as soon as possible. I will
+therefore be as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we
+don’t get well, Mr. Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next
+summer.--I do,” she added, nodding her pretty head up from the pillow,
+when she saw the glance the doctor and I exchanged. “Look here,” she
+went on, poking the eider-down quilt up with her foot.
+
+“Magnificent!” said Turner; “but mind, you must do nothing out of
+bravado. That won’t do at all.”
+
+“I have done,” said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.
+
+That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
+for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or
+farther from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for
+many weeks. Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was
+only because of the weather, not because of her health.
+
+One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs.
+Stokes. She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her
+mental health was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very
+different, and the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband
+especially, was changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified,
+and I had good hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding
+down the hill of difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.
+
+It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
+tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage
+to return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of
+light gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was
+blowing fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from
+the east. The clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose
+fringes--disreputable, troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like
+mischief. They reminded me of Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” in which
+he compares the “loose clouds” to hair, and calls them “the locks of the
+approaching storm.” Away to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a
+luminous yellow, covered all the sea-horizon, extending north and south
+as far as the eye could reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed
+to lie in its bosom. Now and then I could discern the dim ghost of a
+vessel through it, as tacking for north or south it came near enough to
+the edge of the fog to show itself for a few moments, ere it retreated
+again into its bosom. There was exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air,
+notwithstanding the coolness of the wind, and I was glad when I found
+myself comfortably seated by the drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie
+bestirring herself to make the tea.
+
+“It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie,” I said.
+
+Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.
+
+“You seem to like the idea of it,” I added.
+
+“You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea
+of it too.”
+
+“_Per se_, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a
+world without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman’s
+idea of the perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a
+trim-shaven lawn, rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on
+the shore only in wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget
+which. But the older you grow, the more sides of a thing will present
+themselves to your contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in
+itself, but you cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think
+for a moment of the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are
+gathered within the skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the
+toils of the storm are around them. Look at the barometer in the hall,
+my dear, and tell me what it says.”
+
+She went and returned.
+
+“It was not very low, papa--only at rain; but the moment I touched it,
+the hand dropped an inch.”
+
+“Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
+however.”
+
+“That doesn’t make much difference though, does it, papa?”
+
+“No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think
+of things from our own standpoint.”
+
+“But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
+nurse teach us Dr. Watts’s hymns for children, because you said they
+tended to encourage selfishness.”
+
+“Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast
+between the misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the
+apparent--mind, I only say apparent--ground of thankfulness, that they
+are not fit for teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to
+the question, he would abjure any such intention, saying that only
+he meant to heighten the sense of our obligation. But it does tend
+to selfishness and, what is worse, self-righteousness, and is very
+dangerous therefore. What right have I to thank God that I am not as
+other men are in anything? I have to thank God for the good things he
+has given to me; but how dare I suppose that he is not doing the same
+for other people in proportion to their capacity? I don’t like to appear
+to condemn Dr. Watts’s hymns. Certainly he has written the very worst
+hymns I know; but he has likewise written the best--for public worship,
+I mean.”
+
+“Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that
+comes of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the
+idea of a storm, I cannot help it coming.”
+
+“I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older,
+other things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to
+us, and impress us more.”
+
+Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
+their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.
+
+“But,” said Wynnie, “you say everybody is in God’s hands as well as we.”
+
+“Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
+fire.”
+
+“Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a
+storm, ought we?”
+
+“No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the
+very persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to
+rescue them from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn’t the tea ready?”
+
+“Yes, papa. I’ll just go and tell mamma.”
+
+When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us,
+Wynnie resumed the talk.
+
+“I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don’t see my
+way out of it--logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use
+of taking any trouble about them if they are in God’s hands? Why should
+we try to take them out of God’s hands?”
+
+“Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or
+whatever you call it. Take them out of God’s hands! If you could do
+that, it would be perdition indeed. God’s hands is the only safe place
+in the universe; and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God’s
+hands on the shore because we say they are in his hands who go down to
+the sea in ships? If we draw them on shore, surely they are not out of
+God’s hands.”
+
+“I see--I see. But God could save them without us.”
+
+“Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we
+must work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father
+lets his little child help him a little, that the child may learn to
+be and to do, so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our
+fellows, because we would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we
+could. He requires us to do our best.”
+
+“But God may not mean to save them.”
+
+“He may mean them to be drowned--we do not know. But we know that we
+must try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God’s
+great and good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that
+best.”
+
+“But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, ‘by
+the mercy of God.’ They don’t say it is by the mercy of God when he is
+drowned.”
+
+“But _people_ cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not
+feel. Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death
+would break out in a ‘thank God,’ and therefore they say it is God’s
+mercy when another is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider
+it God’s mercy when a man is drowned, that is just the sin of the
+world--the want of faith. But the man who creeps out of the drowning,
+choking billows into the glory of the new heavens and the new earth--do
+you think his thanksgiving for the mercy of God which has delivered him
+is less than that of the man who creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the
+waves on to the dreary, surf-beaten shore? In nothing do we show less
+faith than the way in which we think and speak about death. ‘O Death,
+where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?’ says the apostle.
+‘Here, here, here,’ cry the Christian people, ‘everywhere. It is an
+awful sting, a fearful victory. But God keeps it away from us many a
+time when we ask him--to let it pierce us to the heart, at last, to be
+sure; but that can’t be helped.’ I mean this is how they feel in their
+hearts who do not believe that God is as merciful when he sends death
+as when he sends life; who, Christian people as they are, yet look upon
+death as an evil thing which cannot be avoided, and would, if they might
+live always, be content to live always. Death or Life--each is God’s;
+for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: there are no dead,
+for all live to him.”
+
+“But don’t you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?” said my
+wife.
+
+“There can be no doubt about that, my dear.”
+
+“Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so.”
+
+“Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child’s
+sole desire is for food--the very best possible to begin with. But how
+would it be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse
+to share this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the
+man who never so far rises above the desire for food that _nothing_
+could make him forget his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians
+should be strong enough to overcome the fear of death. We ought to love
+and believe him so much, that when he says we shall not die, we should
+at least believe that death must be something very different from what
+it looks to us to be--so different, that what we mean by the word does
+not apply to the reality at all; and so Jesus cannot use the word,
+because it would seem to us that he meant what we mean by it, which he,
+seeing it all round, cannot mean.”
+
+“That does seem quite reasonable,” said Ethelwyn.
+
+Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
+from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.
+
+“She looks uneasy, does she not?” I said.
+
+“You mean the Atlantic?” he returned, looking round. “Yes, I think so.
+I am glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very
+feverish, probably delirious before morning. She won’t sleep much, and
+will talk rather loud when the tide comes in.”
+
+“Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?”
+
+“Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
+blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again
+before they vanish.”
+
+“It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
+disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to
+me that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little
+more regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the
+evening; in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is
+lowest again while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain
+at night has such an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps
+all a fancy.”
+
+“There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke
+to me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even
+six hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
+relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
+and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!”
+
+“Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
+human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care
+to go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to
+Connie’s room and have some Shakspere?”
+
+“I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?”
+
+“Let us have the _Midsummer Night’s Dream,”_ said Ethelwyn.
+
+“You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you’re quite
+right. It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer.
+I suspect that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written
+in the winter. It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full
+value upon what we lack.”
+
+“There is one reason,” said Wynnie with a roguish look, “why I like that
+play.”
+
+“I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie.”
+
+“But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn’t it, papa?”
+
+“I’m not sure of that. But what is your reason?”
+
+“That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women.
+_They_ are true throughout.”
+
+“I might choose to say that was because they were not tried.”
+
+“And I might venture to answer that Shakspere--being true to nature
+always, as you say, papa--knew very well how absurd it would be to
+represent a woman’s feelings as under the influence of the juice of a
+paltry flower.”
+
+“Capital, Wynnie!” said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
+approbation.
+
+“Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?” said Turner. “It is the
+common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
+night.”
+
+“But,” said Ethelwyn, “he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
+sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted
+to this, that he would only believe his own eyes.”
+
+“I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner,” I said. “For my part, I have
+more admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more
+weight to the consistency of the various testimony than could be
+altogether counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now
+I will tell you what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling
+power of the poet. He brings together such marvellous contrasts, without
+a single shock or jar to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the
+conjunction. Think for a moment--the ordinary commonplace courtiers;
+the lovers, men and women in the condition of all conditions in which
+fairy-powers might get a hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of
+Fairyland, with their courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the
+court-jester, Puck; the ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their
+play,--fairies and clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one
+exquisite harmony, clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by
+the wedding of the king and queen. But I have talked enough about it.
+Let us get our books.”
+
+As we sat in Connie’s room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of
+the poet’s fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
+fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. “Musk roses,” said Titania;
+and the first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the
+window. “Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow,” said Bottom; and the
+roar of the waters was in our ears. “So doth the woodbine the sweet
+honeysuckle Gently entwist,” said Titania; and the blast poured the rain
+in a spout against the window. “Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth
+like bells,” said Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the
+chinks of the bark-house opening from the room. We drew the curtains
+closer, made up the fire higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere
+we had done; and when we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it
+was with the hope that, through all the rising storm, she would dream of
+breeze-haunted summer woods.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE GATHERED STORM.
+
+
+
+
+
+I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
+howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
+and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear
+it save in the _rallentondo_ passages of the wind; but through all the
+wind I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not
+wake my wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to
+Connie’s room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were,
+she would be frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the
+same room. I opened the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was
+burning, for Wynnie was an admirable stoker, and could generally keep
+the fire in all night. I crept to the bedside: there was just light
+enough to see that Connie was fast asleep, and that her dreams were not
+of storms. It was a marvel how well the child always slept. But, as
+I turned to leave the room, Wynnie’s voice called me in a whisper.
+Approaching her bed, I saw her wide eyes, like the eyes of the darkness,
+for I could scarcely see anything of her face.
+
+“Awake, darling?” I said.
+
+“Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn’t Connie sleeping
+delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for
+her.”
+
+“It is the best thing for us all, next to God’s spirit, I sometimes
+think, my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps
+you awake?”
+
+“I don’t think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house
+shakes so that I do feel a little nervous. I don’t know how it is. I
+never felt afraid of anything natural before.”
+
+“What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only
+hurt the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think
+about him, dear.”
+
+“I do try, papa. Don’t you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful
+storm, is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there
+now!”
+
+“There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment,
+I suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of
+dying. Mind, they are all in God’s hands.”
+
+“Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand
+is over them, making them dark with his care.”
+
+“And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those
+odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
+beautifully, ‘And now with darkness closest weary eyes,’ he adds:
+
+  Thus in thy ebony box
+  Thou dost enclose us, till the day
+  Put our amendment in our way,
+  And give new wheels to our disordered clocks.”
+
+“He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a
+good clock of God’s making; but you want new wheels, according to our
+beloved brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night.”
+
+This was tiresome talk--was it--in the middle of the night, reader?
+Well, but my child did not think so, I know.
+
+Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and
+sky. The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled
+a little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again,
+and the wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible
+human hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into
+the village. The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I
+passed: not a man or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if
+nobody had crossed their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open.
+One child came out of the baker’s with a big loaf in her apron. The wind
+threatened to blow the hair off her head, if not herself first into the
+canal. I took her by the hand and led her, or rather, let her lead
+me home, while I kept her from being carried away by the wind. Having
+landed her safely inside her mother’s door, I went on, climbed the
+heights above the village, and looked abroad over the Atlantic. What a
+waste of aimless tossing to and fro! Gray mist above, full of falling
+rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and bursting as billow
+broke upon billow. The tide was ebbing now, but almost every other wave
+swept the breakwater. They burst on the rocks at the end of it, and
+rushed in shattered spouts and clouds of spray far into the air over
+their heads. “Will the time ever come,” I thought, “when man shall be
+able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?” The
+solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing,
+out on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it
+could be that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even
+in her most uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was
+right; it was Percivale.
+
+“What a clashing of water-drops!” I said, thinking of a line somewhere
+in Coleridge’s Remorse. “They are but water-drops, after all, that make
+this great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them.”
+
+“Yes,” said Percivale. “But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
+close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as
+you think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know
+that hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no
+more. It is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules
+have to fight for the mastery, or at least for freedom.”
+
+“Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort
+that gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of
+human feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much
+of its awe; although, as we were saying the other day, it is only _a
+picture_ of the troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are
+with the elements, and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I
+will go home and change my clothes.”
+
+“I have hardly had enough of it yet,” returned Percivale. “I shall have
+a stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little
+way from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch
+awhile there.”
+
+“Well, you’re a younger man than I am; but I’ve seen the day, as Lear
+says. What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we
+would be judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of
+the strength that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it
+still. But I am not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking.”
+
+“I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take
+my way along the downs for a mile or two; I don’t mind being wet.”
+
+“I didn’t once.”
+
+“Don’t you think,” resumed Percivale, “that in some sense the old
+man--not that I can allow _you_ that dignity yet, Mr. Walton--has a right
+to regard the past as his own?”
+
+“That would be scanned,” I answered, as we walked towards the village.
+“Surely the results of the past are the man’s own. Any action of the
+man’s, upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a
+man had done a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation
+upon which to build more good, grew so vain of it that he became
+incapable of doing anything more of the same sort, you could not say
+that the action belonged to him still. Therein he has severed his
+connection with the past. Again, what has never in any deep sense been a
+man’s own, cannot surely continue to be his afterwards. Thus the things
+that a man has merely possessed once, the very people who most admired
+him for their sakes when he had them, give him no credit for after he
+has lost them. Riches that have taken to themselves wings leave with
+the poor man only a surpassing poverty. Strength, likewise, which can so
+little depend on any exercise of the will in man, passes from him with
+the years. It was not his all the time; it was but lent him, and had
+nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble man may put forth
+a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the eyes of his
+neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for what he
+could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was his
+own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his
+own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to
+have been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a
+great measure with intellect.”
+
+“But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that
+can in any way be called his own?”
+
+“Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to
+will the truth. This, too, is as much God’s gift as everything else: I
+ought to say is more God’s gift than anything else, for he gives it to
+be the man’s own more than anything else can be. And when he wills
+the truth, he has God himself. Man _can_ possess God: all other things
+follow as necessary results. What poor creatures we should have been if
+God had not made us to do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the
+hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees! Something like
+this was in the mind of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, ‘Thus saith
+the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
+mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches;
+but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and
+knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment,
+and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the
+Lord.’ My own conviction is, that a vague sense of a far higher life
+in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the root of all our
+false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves. We cannot
+commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves. We have
+little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of will,
+and therefore we talk of our strength of body, worship the riches we
+have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual
+successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius
+must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part
+with all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of God
+which the wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which
+the growing luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even
+possible for any man.”
+
+We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce
+blast of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the
+streets did look!--how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no
+living creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that
+seemed to have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which,
+forgetful of its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging
+to it against a window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a
+mimic storm within its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down
+the kennels like a long brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide
+from the tormenting wind, and every now and then the rain came in full
+rout before the conquering blast.
+
+When I got home, I peeped in at Connie’s door the first thing, and saw
+that she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of
+the conch against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was
+sitting staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she
+could see over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately
+looked. Her face was paler and keener than usual.
+
+“Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?”
+
+“Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He
+says I am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as
+I like.”
+
+“But you look too tired for it. Hadn’t you better lie down again?”
+
+“It’s only the storm, papa.”
+
+“The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so.”
+
+“It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is
+going to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow.”
+
+“You didn’t hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The
+storm was raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its
+reach--fast asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down.”
+
+“Very well, papa.”
+
+I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
+she was already looking much better.
+
+After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went
+out again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and
+his wife, were faring. The wind had already increased in violence.
+It threatened to blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was
+coming in with great rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as
+I passed through it to reach the lower part where they lived. When I
+peeped in from the bottom of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the
+steps of someone overhead, I called out.
+
+Agnes’s voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to
+the bedrooms above--
+
+“Mother’s gone to church, sir.”
+
+“Gone to church!” I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
+whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled
+what the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church
+during a storm.
+
+“O yes, Agnes, I remember!” I said; “your mother thinks the weather bad
+enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
+Where is your husband?”
+
+“He’ll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don’t mind the wet. You see,
+we don’t like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the
+sailors call ‘great guns.’”
+
+“And what becomes of his mother then?”
+
+“There don’t be any sea out there, sir. Leastways,” she added with a
+quiet smile, and stopped.
+
+“You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
+elements out there?”
+
+She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe’s
+mother was proverbial.
+
+“But really, sir,” she said, “she don’t mind the weather a bit; and
+though we don’t live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn’t hear
+of that, we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know.”
+
+“I’m sure it’s quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
+now?”
+
+She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow
+complexion, that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought
+a reply.
+
+“I don’t think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He’s been working
+very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him.”
+
+“And how are you?”
+
+“Quite well, thank you, sir.”
+
+I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very
+different thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the
+church.
+
+When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
+gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling.
+A certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the
+southern transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of
+the stone, on the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a
+considerable crack between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut
+some sod from another part of the churchyard, and was now standing,
+with the rain pouring on him from the roof, beating this sod down in the
+crack. He was sheltered from the wind by the church, but he was as
+wet as he could be. I may mention that he never appeared in the least
+disconcerted when I came upon him in the discharge of his functions: he
+was so content with his own feeling in the matter, that no difference of
+opinion could disturb him.
+
+“This will never do, Coombes,” I said. “You will get your death of cold.
+You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there’s rheumatism in
+the world!”
+
+“It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha’ done now for a night. I
+think he’ll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at
+him through that hole.”
+
+“Do go home, then,” I said, “and change your clothes. Is your wife in
+the church?”
+
+“She be, sir. This door, sir--this door,” he added, as he saw me going
+round to the usual entrance. “You’ll find her in there.”
+
+I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first,
+for it was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there
+somehow, although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters.
+Mrs. Coombes was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for
+her first, for the wind blew down the tower in many currents and
+draughts--how it did roar up there--as if the louvres had been
+a windsail to catch the wind and send it down to ventilate the
+church!--she was sitting at the foot of the chancel-rail, with her
+stocking as usual.
+
+The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I
+drew near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but
+only sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret
+place of the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to
+say much, however.
+
+“How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?” I asked. “Not all
+night?”
+
+“No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn’t thought o’ going yet for a
+bit.”
+
+“Why there’s Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I’m afraid he’ll
+go on pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as
+full of rheumatism as they can hold.”
+
+“Deary me! I didn’t know as my old man was there. He tould me he had
+them all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there’s
+always some mendin’ to do.”
+
+I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
+church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.
+
+“You be comin’ home with me, mother. This will never do. Father’s as wet
+as a mop. I ha’ brought something for your supper, and Aggy’s a-cookin’
+of it; and we’re going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a
+chapter or two of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea.
+There! Come along.”
+
+The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully
+in her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.
+
+“No, no,” I said; “I’m the shepherd and you’re the sheep, so I’ll drive
+you before me--at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended if I
+take on me to say I am _his_ shepherd.”
+
+
+“Nay, nay, don’t say that, sir. You’ve been a good shepherd to me when
+I was a very sulky sheep. But if you’ll please to go, sir, I’ll lock the
+door behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the
+sheep follow the shepherd. And I’ll follow like a good sheep,” he added,
+laughing.
+
+“You’re right, Joe,” I said, and took the lead without more ado.
+
+I was struck by his saying _them parts_, which seemed to indicate
+a habit of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the
+gospel-story. The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his
+cottage, Joe taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I
+could of Coombes by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared
+I had done ill in that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought
+the thin feeble little man would have got on better if he had been more
+heavily weighted against it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and
+so we got in. The old man took his tools from me and set them down
+in the mill, for the roof of which I felt some anxiety as we passed
+through, so full of wind was the whole space. But when we opened the
+inner door the welcome of a glowing fire burst up the stair as if
+that had been a well of warmth and light below. I went down with them.
+Coombes departed to change his clothes, and the rest of us stood round
+the fire, where Agnes was busy cooking something like white puddings for
+their supper.
+
+“Did you hear, sir,” said Joe, “that the coastguard is off to the
+Goose-pot? There’s a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the
+road with the rocket-cart.”
+
+“How far off is that, Joe?”
+
+“Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor’ards.”
+
+“What sort of a vessel is she?”
+
+“That I don’t know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
+coast-guard didn’t know themselves.”
+
+“Poor things!” said Mrs. Coombes. “If any of them comes ashore, they’ll
+be sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this.”
+
+She had caught a little infection of her husband’s mode of thought.
+
+“It’s not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?”
+
+“I don’t think so, sir. There’s no likelihood.”
+
+“Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?” said
+the old woman.
+
+“There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another
+time with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with
+my own people. They will be more uneasy if I am away.”
+
+“Of coorse, of coorse, sir.”
+
+“So I’ll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over.”
+
+I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out.
+It was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There
+would be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do
+much while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore
+was terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their
+breaking, but they filled the earth and the air with their furious
+noises. The wind roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the
+land, only to the one had been set a hitherto--to the other none. Ere
+the night was far gone, however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean
+itself had not broken its bars.
+
+I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept
+pressing their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of
+will, through the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there
+was doing. They could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and
+dismay, with a soul in it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie’s
+room, and found that she was left alone. She looked restless, pale, and
+frightened. The house quivered, and still the wind howled and whistled
+through the adjoining bark-hut.
+
+“Connie, darling, have they left you alone?” I said.
+
+“Only for a few minutes, papa. I don’t mind it.”
+
+“Don’t he frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the
+sea of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the
+Atlantic just as well. Jeremiah says he ‘divideth the sea when the waves
+thereof roar.’”
+
+The same moment Dora came running into the room.
+
+“Papa,” she cried, “the spray--such a lot of it--came dashing on the
+windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?”
+
+“I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down.”
+
+“O, papa! I do want to see.”
+
+“What do you want to see, Dora?”
+
+“The storm, papa.”
+
+“It is as black as pitch. You can’t see anything.”
+
+“O, but I want to--to--be beside it.”
+
+“Well, you sha’n’t stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along.
+Ask Wynnie to come here.”
+
+The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not
+seem even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
+presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
+and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on
+to the little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The
+dining-room was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might
+see better from the windows. The children and some of the servants were
+there looking out. I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength
+of two of the women to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great
+sheet of spray rushed over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The
+rain had ceased, and it was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could
+see the gleaming whiteness all before me. The next moment a wave rolled
+over the low wall in front of me, breaking on it and wrapping me round
+in a sheet of water. Something hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found,
+on searching, that one of the large flat stones that lay for coping
+on the top of the wall was on the grass beside me. If it had struck me
+straight, it must have broken my leg.
+
+There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into
+the house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but
+heard nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned
+and tapped at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me
+within. When I went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had
+joined our party. He and Turner were talking together at one of the
+windows.
+
+“Did you hear a gun?” I asked them.
+
+“No. Was there one?”
+
+“I’m not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
+will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast.”
+
+“I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready,” said Turner.
+
+“No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea,” I said,
+remembering what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.
+
+“They would try, though, I suppose,” said Turner.
+
+“I do not know,” said Percivale. “I don’t know the people. But I have
+seen a life-boat out in as bad a night--whether in as bad a sea, I
+cannot tell: that depends on the coast, I suppose.”
+
+We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had
+fared with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.
+
+“How is Connie, now, my dear?”
+
+“Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
+didn’t mind, I wish he would go up and see her.”
+
+“Of course--instantly,” said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.
+
+But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear,
+so shrill was it, we heard Connie’s voice shrieking, “Papa, papa!
+There’s a great ship ashore down there. Come, come!”
+
+Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. “How? What? Where
+could the voice come from?” was the unformed movement of our thoughts.
+But the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though
+not the less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and
+thought only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that
+is afar! Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.
+
+A little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so
+that it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door
+at the top of it was open. The door that led from Connie’s room into
+the bark-hut was likewise open, and light shone through it into the
+place--enough to show a figure standing by the furthest window with face
+pressed against the glass. And from this figure came the cry, “Papa,
+papa! Quick, quick! The waves will knock her to pieces!”
+
+In very truth it was Connie standing there.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE SHIPWRECK.
+
+
+
+
+
+Things that happen altogether have to be told one after the other.
+Turner and I both rushed at the narrow stair. There was not room for
+more than one upon it. I was first, but stumbled on the lowest step
+and fell. Turner put his foot on my back, jumped over me, sprang up the
+stair, and when I reached the top of it after him, he was meeting me
+with Connie in his arms, carrying her back to her room. But the girl
+kept crying--“Papa, papa, the ship, the ship!”
+
+My duty woke in me. Turner could attend to Connie far better than I
+could. I made one spring to the window. The moon was not to be seen, but
+the clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to
+show a wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that
+one moment in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of
+the wind, cutting through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the
+house. When or how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew
+straight to the sexton’s, snatched the key from the wall, crying only
+“ship ashore!” and rushed to the church.
+
+I remember my hand trembled so that I could hardly get the key into the
+lock. I made myself quieter, opened the door, and feeling my way to the
+tower, knelt before the keys of the bell-hammers, opened the chest, and
+struck them wildly, fiercely. An awful jangling, out of tune and harsh,
+burst into monstrous being in the storm-vexed air. Music itself was
+untuned, corrupted, and returning to chaos. I struck and struck at the
+keys. I knew nothing of their normal use. Noise, outcry, _reveillé_ was
+all I meant.
+
+In a few minutes I heard voices and footsteps. From some parts of
+the village, out of sight of the shore, men and women gathered to the
+summons. Through the door of the church, which I had left open, came
+voices in hurried question. “Ship ashore!” was all I could answer, for
+what was to be done I was helpless to think.
+
+I wondered that so few appeared at the cry of the bells. After those
+first nobody came for what seemed a long time. I believe, however, I was
+beating the alarum for only a few minutes altogether, though when I look
+back upon the time in the dark church, it looks like half-an-hour at
+least. But indeed I feel so confused about all the doings of that
+night that in attempting to describe them in order, I feel as if I were
+walking in a dream. Still, from comparing mine with the recollected
+impressions of others, I think I am able to give a tolerably correct
+result. Most of the incidents seem burnt into my memory so that nothing
+could destroy the depth of the impression; but the order in which they
+took place is none the less doubtful.
+
+A hand was laid on my shoulder.
+
+“Who is there?” I said; for it was far too dark to know anyone.
+
+“Percivale. What is to be done? The coastguard is away. Nobody seems to
+know about anything. It is of no use to go on ringing more. Everybody
+is out, even to the maid-servants. Come down to the shore, and you will
+see.”
+
+“But is there not the life-boat?”
+
+“Nobody seems to know anything about it, except ‘it’s no manner of use
+to go trying of that with such a sea on.’”
+
+“But there must be someone in command of it,” I said.
+
+“Yes,” returned Percivale; “but there doesn’t seem to be one of the
+crew amongst the crowd. All the sailor-like fellows are going about with
+their hands in their pockets.”
+
+“Let us make haste, then,” I said; “perhaps we can find out. Are you
+sure the coastguard have nothing to do with the life-boat?”
+
+“I believe not. They have enough to do with their rockets.”
+
+“I remember now that Roxton told me he had far more confidence in
+his rockets than in anything a life-boat could do, upon this coast at
+least.”
+
+While we spoke we came to the bank of the canal. This we had to cross,
+in order to reach that part of the shore opposite which the wreck lay.
+To my surprise the canal itself was in a storm, heaving and tossing and
+dashing over its banks.
+
+“Percivale,” I exclaimed, “the gates are gone; the sea has torn them
+away.”
+
+“Yes, I suppose so. Would God I could get half-a-dozen men to help me. I
+have been doing what I could; but I have no influence amongst them.”
+
+“What do you mean?” I asked. “What could you do if you had a thousand
+men at your command?”
+
+He made me no answer for a few moments, during which we were hurrying on
+for the bridge over the canal. Then he said:
+
+“They regard me only as a meddling stranger, I suppose; for I have been
+able to get no useful answer. They are all excited; but nobody is doing
+anything.”
+
+“They must know about it a great deal better than we,” I returned; “and
+we must take care not to do them the injustice of supposing they are not
+ready to do all that can be done.”
+
+Percivale was silent yet again.
+
+The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had
+been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving
+in my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind
+us. The wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased,
+and when we reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast
+at what she had at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she
+might see. Awe and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal,
+we turned to the shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had
+rushed up almost to the village. The sand and the roads, every garden
+wall, every window that looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it
+was a wonderfully quiet crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of
+the wind and the waves filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was
+heard only in the ear to which it was spoken. When we came amongst them
+we heard only a murmur as of more articulated confusion. One turn, and
+we saw the centre of strife and anxiety--the heart of the storm that
+filled heaven and earth, upon which all the blasts and the billows broke
+and raved.
+
+Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was
+discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was
+far above low-water mark--lay nearer the village by a furlong than the
+spot where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange to
+think that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many
+men and women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for
+the cry of women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to
+save them. It was terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about
+hurriedly, talking to this one and that one, as if he still thought
+something might be done. He turned to me.
+
+“Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the
+life-boat is.”
+
+I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.
+
+“It’s no use, I assure you, sir,” he answered; “no boat could live in
+such a sea. It would be throwing away the men’s lives.”
+
+“Do you know where the captain lives?” Percivale asked.
+
+“If I did, I tell you it is of no use.”
+
+“Are you the captain yourself?” returned Percivale.
+
+“What is that to you?” he answered, surly now. “I know my own business.”
+
+The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made
+a simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as
+they returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was
+the body of a woman--alive or dead I could not tell. I could just
+see the long hair hanging from the head, which itself hung backward
+helplessly as they bore her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I
+can recall no more.
+
+“Run, Percivale,” I said, “and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet.”
+
+“I can’t,” answered Percivale. “You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton.”
+
+He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so
+abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one
+of the most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they
+walked away together.
+
+I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the
+moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught,
+and that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for
+the marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and
+her mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could
+sleep; but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however,
+occasioned by what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking
+about the ship.
+
+We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we
+went up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The
+clouds had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we
+could not at first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed
+itself a body of men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat,
+afloat on the troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own
+place, his hands quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him,
+his feet out before him, ready to pull the moment they should pass
+beyond the broken gates of the lock out on the awful tossing of the
+waves. They sat very silent, and the men on the path towed them swiftly
+along. The moon uncovered her face for a moment, and shone upon the
+faces of two of the rowers.
+
+“Percivale! Joe!” I cried.
+
+“All right, sir!” said Joe.
+
+“Does your wife know of it, Joe?” I almost gasped.
+
+“To be sure,” answered Joe. “It’s the first chance I’ve had of returning
+thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night.”
+
+“That’s good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim.”
+
+“Ay, ay, sir!” they answered as one man.
+
+“This is your doing, Percivale,” I said, turning and walking alongside
+of the boat for a little way.
+
+“It’s more Jim Allen’s,” said Percivale. “If I hadn’t got a hold of him
+I couldn’t have done anything.”
+
+“God bless you, Jim Allen!” I said. “You’ll be a better man after this,
+I think.”
+
+“Donnow, sir,” returned Jim cheerily. “It’s harder work than pulling an
+oar.”
+
+The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen,
+the two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully
+short space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking
+up another or more; till at length the captain, protesting against
+the folly of it, gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true
+Englishman, as much in earnest as any of them. The places of two who
+were missing were supplied by Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom
+would listen to no remonstrance.
+
+“I’ve nothing to lose,” Percivale had said. “You have a young wife,
+Joe.”
+
+“I’ve everything to win,” Joe had returned. “The only thing that makes
+me feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I’m afraid it’s not my duty
+that drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What
+would Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my
+bed and sleep? I must go.”
+
+“Very well, Joe,” returned Percivale, “I daresay you are right. You can
+row, of course?”
+
+“I can row hard, and do as I’m told,” said Joe.
+
+“All right,” said Percivale; “come along.”
+
+This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards
+the mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The
+critical moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some
+parts of which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty
+there, as I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my
+post, and turned again to follow the doctor.
+
+“God bless you, my men!” I said, and left them.
+
+They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner
+in the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman
+was quite dead.
+
+“I fear it is an emigrant vessel,” he said.
+
+“Why do you think so?” I asked, in some consternation.
+
+“Come and look at the body,” he said.
+
+It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face
+was very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to
+prove that she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their
+bread.
+
+“What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America
+or Australia--to her lover, perhaps,” said Turner. “You see she has
+a locket on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some
+of these people are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a
+Godsend.”
+
+A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the
+house. They were bringing another body--that of an elderly woman--dead,
+quite dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out
+together, when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce
+hiss, vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up,
+seawards, something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the
+right side of the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.
+
+“Thank God! that’s the coastguard,” I cried.
+
+We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
+planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the
+sea looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering
+in the mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw
+down below the great mass, of the vessel’s hulk, with the waves breaking
+every moment upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and
+then there would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling
+waters, and then I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on
+the bottom. Her masts had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos
+of cordage floated and swung in the waves that broke over her. But her
+bowsprit remained entire, and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with
+human beings. The first rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire
+another. Roxton stood with his telescope in his hand, ready to watch the
+result.
+
+“This is a terrible job, sir,” he said when I approached him; “I doubt
+if we shall save one of them.”
+
+“There’s the life-boat!” I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
+approaching the vessel from the other side.
+
+“The life-boat!” he returned with contempt. “You don’t mean to say
+they’ve got _her_ out! She’ll only add to the mischief. We’ll have to
+save her too.”
+
+She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth
+water. But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the
+billows rode over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some
+invisible prey. Another hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second
+rocket was shooting its parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised
+his telescope to his eye the same moment.
+
+“Over her starn!” he cried. “There’s a fellow getting down from the
+cat-head to run aft.--Stop, stop!” he shouted involuntarily. “There’s an
+awful wave on your quarter.”
+
+His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
+distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But
+the huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed--so
+coolly as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar
+things without discomposure--
+
+“He’s gone! I said so. The next’ll have better luck, I hope.”
+
+That man came ashore alive, though.
+
+All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
+Roxton’s telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then
+a single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed
+on the life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at
+one moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam
+on the knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the
+waves delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no
+water. I am here drawing upon the information I have since received;
+but I did see how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on
+which she floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon
+the life-boat with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough
+to show this with tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next
+moment, there she was, floating helplessly about, like a living thing
+stunned by the blow of the falling wave. The struggle was over. As far
+as I could see, every man was in his place; but the boat drifted away
+before the storm shore-wards, and the men let her drift. Were they all
+killed as they sat? I thought of my Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.
+
+“That wave has done for them,” he said. “I told you it was no use. There
+they go.”
+
+“But what is the matter?” I asked. “The men are sitting every man in his
+place.”
+
+“I think so,” he answered. “Two were swept overboard, but they caught
+the ropes and got in again. But don’t you see they have no oars?”
+
+That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they
+were as helpless as a sponge.
+
+I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket
+was fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with
+fresh fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say--“She’s breaking up.
+It’s no use. That last did for her;” but I hurried off for the other
+side of the bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great
+cry from the vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a
+parting glance. The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing
+at will over the space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many
+were running, like myself, towards the other side, anxious about the
+life-boat. I hastened after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.
+
+They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would
+be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the
+only spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.
+
+There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion
+of speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered
+about the crew of the life-boat,--which already lay, as if it knew of
+nothing but repose, on the grass within.
+
+“Percivale!” I cried, making my way through the crowd.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+“Joe Harper!” I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew,
+to whom everybody was talking.
+
+Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I
+could gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall,
+despair in her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I
+could not look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking
+to old Coombes. I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his
+attention.
+
+“Where is Mr. Percivale?” I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.
+
+He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the
+waves, and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had
+fallen considerably, else there would not have been standing-room,
+narrow as it was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the
+direction of the Castle-rock.
+
+“If you mean the stranger gentleman--”
+
+“And Joe Harper, the blacksmith,” I interposed.
+
+“They’re there, sir.”
+
+“You don’t mean those two--just those two--are drowned?” I said.
+
+“No, sir; I don’t say that; but God knows they have little chance.”
+
+I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the
+smallest danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.
+
+“Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?”
+
+“No,” I answered; “I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am
+always ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can’t
+say I see it.”
+
+“I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I
+believe, on board of that schooner.”
+
+“Is she aground?”
+
+“O dear no, sir. She’s a light craft, and can swim there well enough.
+If she’d been aground, she’d ha’ been ashore in pieces hours ago. But
+whether she’ll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore.”
+
+“How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights
+opposite.”
+
+“You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don’t
+make much show in this light. But there she is, and they’re aboard of
+her. And this is how it was.”
+
+He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the
+whole of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.
+
+Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said--one of them was
+Percivale--but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless, with
+the rest--now in a windless valley--now aloft on a tempest-swept hill of
+water--away towards a goal they knew not, neither had chosen, and which
+yet they could by no means avoid.
+
+A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the
+channel of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across
+the sands nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little
+schooner, belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which,
+caught in the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost
+dark, some considerable time before the great ship. The master, however,
+knew the ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind,
+and would have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop
+anchor just in time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner
+hung in the skirts of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks
+within an arrow flight. In the excitement of the great wreck, no one had
+observed the danger of the little coasting bird. If the cable held till
+the tide went down, and the anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if
+not, she must be dashed to pieces.
+
+In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed
+overboard an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had
+dropped their anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they
+were so worn out that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor,
+and were holding on only by their best bower. Had they not been a good
+deal out of the wind, this would have been useless. Even if it held she
+was in danger of having her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands
+as the tide went out. But that they had not to think of yet. The moment
+they lay down they fell fast asleep in the middle of the storm. While
+they slept it increased in violence.
+
+Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For
+over his head faces looked down upon him from the air--that is, from the
+top of a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the angels
+dropped on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels were
+Percivale and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time,
+as all angels do--never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the
+schooner _was_ dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the less
+experienced eyes of the said angels.
+
+But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest
+anchor, and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to
+come.
+
+One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was
+engaged to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth
+chapter in the second volume.
+
+Percivale’s account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that
+as they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge
+wave the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the
+rigging. The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the
+schooner.
+
+Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out “Aboard!” The
+captain said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must
+have meant it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat.
+Percivale, however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say
+Christian?) notion of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to
+board the schooner, sprang at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave
+sweeping them along the schooner’s side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds,
+and they dropped on the deck together.
+
+But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the
+affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of
+the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.
+
+When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by
+staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was
+nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which
+was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was
+Agnes Harper.
+
+The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds
+were breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved
+out its business, and was departing into the past.
+
+“Agnes,” I said.
+
+“Yes, sir,” she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command.
+There was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips--at least it seemed so
+in the moonlight--only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She
+was leaning against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging
+quietly down before her.
+
+“The storm is breaking-up, Agnes,” I said.
+
+“Yes, sir,” she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a
+moment’s pause, she spoke out of her heart.
+
+“Joe’s at his duty, sir?”
+
+I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant
+that point I am not quite sure.
+
+“Indubitably,” I returned. “I have such faith in Joe, that I should be
+sure of that in any case. At all events, he’s not taking care of his own
+life. And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err
+on that side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else.”
+
+“Then there’s nothing to be said, sir, is there?” she returned, with a
+sigh that sounded as of relief.
+
+I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job’s
+comfort by blaming her husband.
+
+“Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she
+reproached him with having left her and his father?”
+
+“I can’t remember anything at this moment, sir,” was her touching
+answer.
+
+“Then I will tell you. He said, ‘Why did you look for me? Didn’t you
+know that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?’ Now,
+Joe was and is about his Father’s business, and you must not be anxious
+about him. There could be no better reason for not being anxious.”
+
+Agnes was a very quiet woman. When without a word she took my hand and
+kissed it, I felt what a depth there was in the feeling she could not
+utter. I did not withdraw my hand, for I knew that would be to rebuke
+her love for Joe.
+
+“Will you come in and wait?” I said indefinitely.
+
+“No, thank you, sir. I must go to my mother. God will look after Joe,
+won’t he, sir?”
+
+“As sure as there is a God, Agnes,” I said; and she went away without
+another word.
+
+I put my hand on the top of the wall and jumped over. I started back
+with terror, for I had almost alighted on the body of a woman lying
+there. The first insane suggestion was that it had been cast ashore; but
+the next moment I knew that it was my own Wynnie.
+
+She had not even fainted. She was lying with her handkerchief stuffed
+into her mouth to keep her from screaming. When I uttered her name
+she rose, and, without looking at me, walked away towards the house. I
+followed. She went straight to her own room and shut the door. I went to
+find her mother. She was with Connie, who was now awake, lying pale and
+frightened. I told Ethelwyn that Percivale and Joe were on board the
+little schooner, which was holding on by her anchor, that Wynnie was in
+terror about Percivale, that I had found her lying on the wet grass, and
+that she must get her into a warm bath and to bed. We went together to
+her room.
+
+She was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands pressed
+against her temples.
+
+“Wynnie,” I said, “our friends are not drowned. I think you will see
+them quite safe in the morning. Pray to God for them.”
+
+She did not hear a word.
+
+“Leave her with me,” said Ethelwyn, proceeding to undress her; “and tell
+nurse to bring up the large bath. There is plenty of hot water in the
+boiler. I gave orders to that effect, not knowing what might happen.”
+
+Wynnie shuddered as her mother said this; but I waited no longer, for
+when Ethelwyn spoke everyone felt her authority. I obeyed her, and then
+went to Connie’s room.
+
+“Do you mind being left alone a little while?” I asked her.
+
+“No, papa; only--are they all drowned?” she said with a shudder.
+
+“I hope not, my dear; but be sure of the mercy of God, whatever you
+fear. You must rest in him, my love; for he is life, and will conquer
+death both in the soul and in the body.”
+
+“I was not thinking of myself, papa.”
+
+“I know that, my dear. But God is thinking of you and every creature
+that he has made. And for our sakes you must be quiet in heart, that you
+may get better, and be able to help us.”
+
+“I will try, papa,” she said; and, turning slowly on her side, she lay
+quite still.
+
+Dora and the boys were all fast asleep, for it was very late. I cannot,
+however, say what hour it was.
+
+Telling nurse to be on the watch because Connie was alone, I went again
+to the beach. I called first, however, to inquire after Agnes. I found
+her quite composed, sitting with her parents by the fire, none of them
+doing anything, scarcely speaking, only listening intently to the sounds
+of the storm now beginning to die away.
+
+I next went to the place where I had left Turner. Five bodies lay there,
+and he was busy with a sixth. The surgeon of the place was with him, and
+they quite expected to recover this man.
+
+I then went down to the sands. An officer of the revenue was taking
+charge of all that came ashore--chests, and bales, and everything. For
+a week the sea went on casting out the fragments of that which she had
+destroyed. I have heard that, for years after, the shifting of the sands
+would now and then discover things buried that night by the waves.
+
+All the next day the bodies kept coming ashore, some peaceful as in
+sleep, others broken and mutilated. Many were cast upon other parts
+of the coast. Some four or five only, all men, were recovered. It was
+strange to me how I got used to it. The first horror over, the cry that
+yet another body had come awoke only a gentle pity--no more dismay or
+shuddering. But, finding I could be of no use, I did not wait longer
+than just till the morning began to dawn with a pale ghastly light over
+the seething raging sea; for the sea raged on, although the wind had
+gone down. There were many strong men about, with two surgeons and all
+the coastguard, who were well accustomed to similar though not such
+extensive destruction. The houses along the shore were at the disposal
+of any who wanted aid; the Parsonage was at some distance; and I confess
+that when I thought of the state of my daughters, as well as remembered
+former influences upon my wife, I was very glad to think there was no
+necessity for carrying thither any of those whom the waves cast on the
+shore.
+
+When I reached home, and found Wynnie quieter and Connie again asleep, I
+walked out along our own downs till I came whence I could see the little
+schooner still safe at anchor. From her position I concluded--correctly
+as I found afterwards--that they had let out her cable far enough to
+allow her to reach the bed of the little stream, where the tide would
+leave her more gently. She was clearly out of all danger now; and if
+Percivale and Joe had got safe on board of her, we might confidently
+expect to see them before many hours were passed. I went home with the
+good news.
+
+For a few moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could
+not know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But
+presently I recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no
+right to modify God’s facts for fear of what may be to come. A little
+hope founded on a present appearance, even if that hope should never be
+realised, may be the very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of
+a sorrow past the point at which it would otherwise break down. I would
+therefore tell Wynnie, and let her share my expectation of deliverance.
+
+I think she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she
+started up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to
+her head.
+
+“I have brought you good news, Wynnie,” I said. “I have been out on the
+downs, and there is light enough now to see that the little schooner is
+quite safe.”
+
+“What schooner?” she asked listlessly, and lay down again, her eyes
+still staring, awfully unappeased.
+
+“Why the schooner they say Percivale got on board.”
+
+“He isn’t drowned then!” she cried with a choking voice, and put her
+hands to her face and burst into tears and sobs.
+
+“Wynnie,” I said, “look what your faithlessness brings upon you.
+Everybody but you has known all night that Percivale and Joe Harper are
+probably quite safe. They may be ashore in a couple of hours.”
+
+“But you don’t know it. He may be drowned yet.”
+
+“Of course there is room for doubt, but none for despair. See what a
+poor helpless creature hopelessness makes you.”
+
+“But how can I help it, papa?” she asked piteously. “I am made so.”
+
+But as she spoke the dawn was clear upon the height of her forehead.
+
+“You are not made yet, as I am always telling you; and God has ordained
+that you shall have a hand in your own making. You have to consent, to
+desire that what you know for a fault shall be set right by his loving
+will and spirit.”
+
+“I don’t know God, papa.”
+
+“Ah, my dear, that is where it all lies. You do not know him, or you
+would never be without hope.”
+
+“But what am I to do to know him!” she asked, rising on her elbow.
+
+The saving power of hope was already working in her. She was once more
+turning her face towards the Life.
+
+“Read as you have never read before about Christ Jesus, my love. Read
+with the express object of finding out what God is like, that you may
+know him and may trust him. And now give yourself to him, and he will
+give you sleep.”
+
+“What are we to do,” I said to my wife, “if Percivale continue silent?
+For even if he be in love with her, I doubt if he will speak.”
+
+“We must leave all that, Harry,” she answered.
+
+She was turning on myself the counsel I had been giving Wynnie. It is
+strange how easily we can tell our brother what he ought to do, and yet,
+when the case comes to be our own, do precisely as we had rebuked him
+for doing. I lay down and fell fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE FUNERAL.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back
+from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as
+if it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The
+madness of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the
+world was rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded
+the best outlook over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the
+sands, her two cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her;
+but half way between the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something
+shapeless, drifted over with sand. It was all that remained together of
+the great ship that had the day before swept over the waters like a live
+thing with wings--of all the works of man’s hands the nearest to the
+shape and sign of life. The wind had ceased altogether, only now and
+then a little breeze arose which murmured “I am very sorry,” and lay
+down again. And I knew that in the houses on the shore dead men and
+women were lying.
+
+I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their
+breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I
+made a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into
+the events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale,
+looking very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his
+hand warmly.
+
+“Thank God,” I said, “that you are returned to us, Percivale.”
+
+“I doubt if that is much to give thanks for,” he said.
+
+“We are the judges of that,” I rejoined. “Tell me all about it.”
+
+While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie
+entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+“Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale,” I said.
+
+Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with
+an emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed--why, I could not
+easily have told, for she looked most charming in the act,--more lovely
+than I had ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising God, and
+her heart would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest man, and
+I think attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in danger in
+the way of duty,--a fact sufficient to move the heart of any good woman.
+
+She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand
+trembled. I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he
+evidently enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.
+
+I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into
+the village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.
+
+As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of
+the sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn
+business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his
+tools lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.
+
+“Ah, Coombes! you’ll want them,” I said.
+
+“A good many o’ my people be come all at once, you see, sir,” he
+returned. “I shall have enough ado to make ‘em all comfortable like.”
+
+“But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all
+comfortable yourself alone.”
+
+“We’ll see what I can do,” he returned. “I ben’t a bit willin’ to let no
+one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir.”
+
+“How many are there wanting your services?” I asked.
+
+“There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don’t doubt, on the
+way.”
+
+“But you won’t think of making separate graves for them all,” I said.
+“They died together: let them lie together.”
+
+The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with
+indignation. The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had
+deserved it, I yet felt the rebuke.
+
+“How would you like, sir,” he said, at length, “to be put in the same
+bed with a lot of people you didn’t know nothing about?”
+
+I knew the old man’s way, and that any argument which denied the premiss
+of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore
+ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.
+
+“That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn’t think of it after they’d
+been down awhile--six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can’t be
+comfortable for ‘em, poor things. One on ‘em be a baby: I daresay he’d
+rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o’ the women be a
+mother. I don’t know,” he went on reflectively, “whether she be the
+baby’s own mother, but I daresay neither o’ them ‘ll mind it if I take
+it for granted, and lay ‘em down together. So that’s one bed less.”
+
+One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves
+within the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in
+the church, having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties
+to perfection. He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended
+the stair, thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old
+woman.
+
+“Where are Joe and Agnes?” I asked.
+
+“You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day,
+and so he couldn’t stop. He did say Agnes needn’t go with him; but she
+thought she couldn’t part with him so soon, you see, sir.”
+
+“She had received him from the dead--raised to life again,” I said; “it
+was most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him
+neglect his work!”
+
+“I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last
+night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the
+tire put on Farmer Wheatstone’s cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was
+his business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy
+wouldn’t stay behind.”
+
+“Fine fellow, Joe!” I said, and took my leave.
+
+As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing,
+and apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were
+making the coffins in the joiners’ shops, of which there were two in the
+place.
+
+I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my
+way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth,
+and so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have
+it vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world
+of form, as soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding,
+life-giving mould, seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy
+that will sometimes emerge from the froth of reverie--I mean, of
+subdued consciousness remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is
+altogether and vilely repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even
+the shadow of sentiment, though some of my readers, who may not yet have
+learned to distinguish between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I
+dare to utter such a barbarism.
+
+I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought
+something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that
+he had sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers,
+requesting those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies
+to appear within four days at Kilkhaven.
+
+This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was
+clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore
+arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.
+
+On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each
+other, arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the
+last of their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the
+shadow left behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any
+object remains a moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the
+object itself has gone, so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body,
+lingers a moment upon the earth after the object itself has gone to
+the “high countries.” It was well to see with what a sober sorrow the
+dignified little old man bore his grief. It was as if he felt that the
+loss of his son was only for a moment. But the young woman had taken on
+the hue of the corpse she came to seek. Her eyes were sunken as if with
+the weight of the light she cared not for, and her cheeks had already
+pined away as if to be ready for the grave. A being thus emptied of its
+glory seized and possessed my thoughts. She never even told us whom she
+came seeking, and after one involuntary question, which simply received
+no answer, I was very careful not even to approach another. I do not
+think the form she sought was there; and she may have gone home with
+the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a doubtful dawn over her
+coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.
+
+On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had
+all the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others
+on stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the
+evening these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old
+man soon found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows
+of the dead. He turned to me and said quietly--
+
+“That’s him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He’s with his
+mother; and if I’m sorry, she’s glad.”
+
+With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his
+arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked
+out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a
+new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God
+only knew--certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest thoughts
+are of more awful significance than the most serious of us can imagine.
+
+For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light
+in her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there
+could no more justify her than Milton in letting her
+
+  “frail thoughts dally with false surmise.”
+
+With him, too, she might well add--
+
+  “Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away.”
+
+But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them
+to be my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over.
+To this they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received
+them like herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her,
+to which no doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations
+of humanity and destroys its distinctions.
+
+The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from
+Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of
+his daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me
+first. I went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man,
+with long arms and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow
+ponderous utterance, which I had some difficulty in understanding. He
+treated the object of his visit with a certain hardness, and at the same
+time lightness, which also I had some difficulty in understanding.
+
+“You want to see the--” I said, and hesitated.
+
+“Ow ay--the boadies,” he answered. “She winna be there, I daursay, but I
+wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be ‘at
+she was there, wi’oot biddin’ her good-bye like.”
+
+When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell
+upon me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn,
+grand, ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace
+before her altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a
+sea of troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when
+the churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed
+away, when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and
+no man shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, “Know
+the Lord”? The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my
+companion up to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on.
+He had looked at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the
+beautiful form which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the
+white cheeks, taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the
+brown hair tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was
+dead--
+
+“Eh, Maggie! hoo cam _ye_ here, lass?”
+
+Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he
+put his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was
+shaken with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe
+and reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief
+with yellow spots on it--I see it now--from his pocket, rubbed his face
+with it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said,
+without looking at me, “I’ll awa’ hame.”
+
+“Wouldn’t you like a piece of her hair?” I asked.
+
+“Gin ye please,” he answered gently, as if his daughter’s form had been
+mine now, and her hair were mine to give.
+
+By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet
+solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.
+
+“Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, to be sure, sir,” she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by
+the string suspending them from her waist.
+
+“Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair,” I said.
+
+She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed
+it respectfully to the father.
+
+He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the
+communion-rail, and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky
+gold. It was, indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it
+must be a yard long. He passed his big fingers through and through it,
+but tenderly, as if it had been still growing on the live lovely head,
+stopping every moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and
+shake out the sand that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for
+nearly half-an-hour, and we stood looking on with something closely akin
+to awe. At length he folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black
+leather book, laid it carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led
+the way from the church, and he followed me.
+
+Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with
+his other hand in his trousers-pocket--
+
+“She’ll hae putten ye to some expense--for the coffin an’ sic like.”
+
+“We’ll talk about that afterwards,” I answered. “Come home with me now,
+and have some refreshment.”
+
+“Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o’ tribble already. I’ll jist
+awa’ hame.”
+
+“We are going to lay them down this evening. You won’t go before the
+funeral. Indeed, I think you can’t get away till Monday morning. My wife
+and I will be glad of your company till then.”
+
+“I’m no company for gentle-fowk, sir.”
+
+“Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her
+laid,” I said.
+
+He yielded and followed me.
+
+Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain
+enough--that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But
+there was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring
+farms. Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at
+work. The brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard--the mole-heaps
+of burrowing Death.
+
+The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a
+little hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said--
+
+“I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk
+there--i’ that neuk, I wad tak’ it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam’
+aboot that I cam’ here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get
+a sma’ bit heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi’ ye to pay
+for’t.”
+
+“To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?”
+
+“Ow jist--let me see--Maggie Jamieson--nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She
+was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It’s the last
+thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o’ Scripter aneath’t, ye
+ken.”
+
+“What verse would you like?”
+
+He thought for a little.
+
+“Isna there a text that says, ‘The deid shall hear his voice’?”
+
+“Yes: ‘The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.’”
+
+“Ay. That’s it. Weel, jist put that on.--They canna do better than hear
+his voice,” he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.
+
+I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or
+apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for
+the day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could
+not talk to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs
+of sorrow in their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill
+in whose unseen bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a
+subterranean torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling
+down hidden precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could
+still. This daughter _might_, though from her face I did not think it,
+have gone away against her father’s will. That son _might_ have been a
+ne’er-do-well at home--how could I tell? The woman _might_ be looking
+for the lover that had forsaken her--I could not divine. I would speak
+no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort to
+his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the
+forefront of humanity; I would read some of the words he spoke. From
+them the human nature in each would draw what comfort it could. I took
+my New Testament from my pocket, and said, without any preamble,
+
+“When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved
+him enough to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be
+overwhelmed for a time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not
+believe the glad end of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful
+death that awaited him--a death to which that of our friends in the
+wreck was ease itself. I will just read to you what he said.”
+
+I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s
+Gospel. I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I
+could hardly hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the
+best things are just those from which the humble will draw the truth
+they are capable of seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left
+it to them to hear for themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment,
+fearful of darkening counsel by words without knowledge. For the Bible
+is awfully set against what is not wise.
+
+When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked
+towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I
+talked of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us.
+But little of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing
+nothing of the sorrow it had caused.
+
+We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at
+seven o’clock.
+
+“I have an invalid to visit out in this direction,” I said; “would you
+mind walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we
+shall get back just in time for tea.”
+
+They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard
+a little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy,
+and point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our
+aid. I may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I
+have had two of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us
+there.
+
+The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed
+themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed
+hour. I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the
+Christian, the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church
+received it, as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the
+earth.
+
+As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be
+carried out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began
+to read, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
+believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever
+liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
+
+I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before
+the dead. There I read the Psalm, “Lord, thou hast been our refuge,” and
+the glorious lesson, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
+first-fruits of them that slept.” Then the men of the neighbourhood
+came forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the
+church, each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, “Man
+that is born of a woman;” then went from one to another of the graves,
+and read over each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, “Forasmuch as
+it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy.” Then again, I went
+back to the church-door and read, “I heard a voice from heaven;” and so
+to the end of the service.
+
+Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my
+canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had
+already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.
+
+A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie’s
+remaining in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face--pale
+and worn; but it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the
+fresh power called forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.
+
+Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant _secret_
+light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the
+house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
+wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short
+of the impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come,
+however, I could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully
+painful to all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual
+child-gift of forgetting. The servants--even Walter--looked thin and
+anxious.
+
+That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
+before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because
+I did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had
+again and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended
+itself to me so that I could say “I must take that;” nothing said
+plainly, “This is what you have to speak of.”
+
+As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind
+had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion,
+or rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to
+justify me in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole
+justification, in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I
+cared heartily in my own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness
+I was dumb. And I do think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman
+ought to be at liberty upon occasion to say, “My friends, I cannot
+preach to-day.” What a riddance it would be for the Church, I do not say
+if every priest were to speak sense, but only if every priest were to
+abstain from speaking of that in which, at the moment, he feels little
+or no interest!
+
+I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for
+sleep will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can
+compass. I have read somewhere--I will verify it by present search--that
+Luther’s translation, of the verse in the psalm, “So he giveth to his
+beloved sleep,” is, “He giveth his beloved sleeping,” or while asleep.
+Yes, so it is, literally, in English, “It is in vain that ye rise early,
+and then sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he
+gives it sleeping.” This was my experience in the present instance; for
+the thought of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, “Why should
+I talk about death? Every man’s heart is now full of death. We have
+enough of that--even the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the
+tempest. What I have to do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to
+speak of life.” It flashed in on my mind: “Death is over and gone. The
+resurrection comes next. I will speak of the raising of Lazarus.”
+
+The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
+give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of
+them would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them
+with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought
+to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would
+have called a _caput mortuum_, or death’s head, namely, a lifeless lump
+of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the
+living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the
+hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative,
+attempted to give a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to
+present the substance of it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat
+cleared of the unavoidable, let me say necessary--yes, I will
+say _valuable_--repetitions and enforcements by which the various
+considerations are pressed upon the minds of the hearers. These are
+entirely wearisome in print--useless too, for the reader may ponder over
+every phrase till he finds out the purport of it--if indeed there be
+such readers nowadays.
+
+I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical
+ablution, and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged
+as if myself newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the
+downs full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep
+in my mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be
+not only ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but
+able to send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time
+of the soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of
+the body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to
+comfort the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of
+kings hath conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith
+that cannot laugh at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array
+of defiant appearances. The fresh breeze of the morning visited me. “O
+God,” I said in my heart, “would that when the dark day comes, in which
+I can feel nothing, I may be able to front it with the memory of this
+day’s strength, and so help myself to trust in the Father! I would call
+to mind the days of old, with David the king.”
+
+When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had
+been cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and
+found him very pale and worn.
+
+“I think I am going, sir,” he said; “and I wanted to see you before I
+die.”
+
+“Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid,” I returned.
+
+“I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I
+wasn’t afraid then, I’m not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my
+bed. But just look here, sir.”
+
+He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded
+the envelope, and showed a lump of something--I could not at first tell
+what. He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible,
+with nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly
+in a state of pulp.
+
+“That’s the bible my mother gave me when I left home first,” he said. “I
+don’t know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that
+cut through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a’most have cut
+through my ribs if it hadn’t been for it.”
+
+“Very likely,” I returned. “The body of the Bible has saved your bodily
+life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life.”
+
+“I think I know what you mean, sir,” he panted out. “My mother was a
+good woman, and I know she prayed to God for me.”
+
+“Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?”
+
+“If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He’s nearly as bad as I am.”
+
+“We won’t forget you,” I said. “I will come in after church and see how
+you are.”
+
+I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I
+did not think the poor fellow was going to die.
+
+I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since.
+We took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and
+stables, and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his
+health continues delicate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE SERMON.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
+chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
+proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare
+to say that he makes his own commonest speech?
+
+“When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother,
+was going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers
+and sisters, there was one family he loved especially--a family of two
+sisters and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they
+can be loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only
+God is always trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more.
+There are several stories--O, such lovely stories!--about that family
+and Jesus; and we have to do with one of them now.
+
+“They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village
+they called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord,
+when he was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of
+the city, to go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of
+Lazarus’s house, where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet
+than at any news that could come to them.
+
+“They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem--taking up
+stones to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with
+anger as they were--and all because he told them the truth--that he had
+gone away to the other side of the great river that divided the country,
+and taught the people in that quiet place. While he was there his friend
+Lazarus was taken ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a
+messenger to him, to say to him, ‘Lord, your friend is very ill.’ Only
+they said it more beautifully than that: ‘Lord, behold, he whom thou
+lovest is sick.’ You know, when anyone is ill, we always want the person
+whom he loves most to come to him. This is very wonderful. In the worst
+things that can come to us the first thought is of love. People, like
+the Scribes and Pharisees, might say, ‘What good can that do him?’ And
+we may not in the least suppose that the person we want knows any secret
+that can cure his pain; yet love is the first thing we think of. And
+here we are more right than we know; for, at the long last, love will
+cure everything: which truth, indeed, this story will set forth to us.
+No doubt the heart of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed after his friend;
+and, very likely, even the sight of Jesus might have given him such
+strength that the life in him could have driven out the death which had
+already got one foot across the threshold. But the sisters expected
+more than this: they believed that Jesus, whom they knew to have driven
+disease and death out of so many hearts, had only to come and touch
+him--nay, only to speak a word, to look at him, and their brother was
+saved. Do you think they presumed in thus expecting? The fact was, they
+did not believe enough; they had not yet learned to believe that he
+could cure him all the same whether he came to them or not, because he
+was always with them. We cannot understand this; but our understanding
+is never a measure of what is true.
+
+“Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot
+tell. Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel
+certain upon. One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know
+everything beforehand, for he said so himself. It is infinitely more
+valuable to us, because more beautiful and godlike in him, that he
+should trust his Father than that he should foresee everything. At all
+events he knew that his Father did not want him to go to his friends
+yet. So he sent them a message to the effect that there was a particular
+reason for this sickness--that the end of it was not the death of
+Lazarus, but the glory of God. This, I think, he told them by the same
+messenger they sent to him; and then, instead of going to them, he
+remained where he was.
+
+“But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think
+of being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory
+of God! of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the
+fear, the broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God?
+What kind of a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely
+good, that the things that look least like it are only the means of
+clearing our eyes to let us see how good he is. For he is so good that
+he is not satisfied with _being_ good. He loves his children, so that
+except he can make them good like himself, make them blessed by seeing
+how good he is, and desiring the same goodness in themselves, he is not
+satisfied. He is not like a fine proud benefactor, who is content with
+doing that which will satisfy his sense of his own glory, but like a
+mother who puts her arm round her child, and whose heart is sore
+till she can make her child see the love which is her glory. The
+glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the human
+race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is love.
+Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that glory!
+
+“The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
+seem typical of all the perplexities of God’s dealings. The old painters
+and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand
+a cup of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted
+Faith! she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she
+is not repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for
+the type of the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not
+understood. The wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the
+supreme Fate put that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good
+too,--harmless, at least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine.
+But let us read the verses.
+
+“‘Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard
+therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place
+where he was.’
+
+“Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But
+remember what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely
+more for the final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life
+he could have, would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere
+presence of the Son of God. I say _mere_ presence, for, compared with
+the glory of God, the very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is
+nothing. He abode where he was that the glory of God, the final cure of
+humanity, the love that triumphs over death, might shine out and redeem
+the hearts of men, so that death could not touch them.
+
+“After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples,
+‘Let us go back to Judæa.’ They expostulated, because of the danger,
+saying, ‘Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou
+thither again?’ The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I
+can thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear
+on the same region of life--the will of God. I think what he means by
+walking in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole,
+the all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means
+that now he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not
+see that the Father wanted him to go back to Judæa, and yet went, that
+would be to go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve
+hours in the day--one time to act--a time of light and the clear call of
+duty; there is a night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must
+be content to rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he
+must have intended; but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough
+to be sure that I am right. I do think, further, that it points at a
+clearer condition of human vision and conviction than I am good enough
+to understand; though I hope one day to rise into this upper stratum of
+light.
+
+“Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know.
+It looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had
+from the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he
+was going to wake him. You would think they might have understood
+this. The idea of going so many miles to wake a man might have surely
+suggested death. But the disciples were sorely perplexed with many
+of his words. Sometimes they looked far away for the meaning when the
+meaning lay in their very hearts; sometimes they looked into their hands
+for it when it was lost in the grandeur of the ages. But he meant them
+to see into all that he said by and by, although they could not see into
+it now. When they understood him better, then they would understand what
+he said better. And to understand him better they must be more like
+him; and to make them more like him he must go away and give them his
+spirit--awful mystery which no man but himself can understand.
+
+“Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
+thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
+Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
+other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
+weary two days’ journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
+sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
+say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures
+is simply a lie.
+
+“They set out to go back to Judæa. Here we have a glimpse of the faith
+of Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very
+fact that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone
+hard upon doubters, I always doubt the _quality_ of his faith. It is of
+little use to have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks
+like the painter of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing
+chiefly consisted in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what
+fine sort a faith must be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in
+indifference to the truth and the mere desire to get out of hell! That
+is not a grand belief in the Son of God, the radiation of the Father.
+Thomas’s want of faith was shown in the grumbling, self-pitying way in
+which he said, ‘Let us also go that we may die with him.’ His Master had
+said that he was going to wake him. Thomas said, ‘that we may die with
+him.’ You may say, ‘He did not understand him.’ True, it may be, but his
+unbelief was the cause of his not understanding him. I suppose Thomas
+meant this as a reproach to Jesus for putting them all in danger by
+going back to Judæa; if not, it was only a poor piece of sentimentality.
+So much for Thomas’s unbelief. But he had good and true faith
+notwithstanding; for _he went with his Master_.
+
+“By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
+dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
+was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him.
+It might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
+behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
+their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the
+man dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we
+have no inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death
+and grief bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as
+in the dead.
+
+“When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith
+by almost attributing her brother’s death to Jesus’ absence. But even
+in the moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new
+budding of faith, began in her soul. She thought--‘What if, after all,
+he were to bring him to life again!’ O, trusting heart, how thou leavest
+the dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect
+is reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith
+beholds it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith,
+granting her half-born prayer, says, ‘Thy brother shall rise again;’ not
+meaning the general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all
+but the Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but
+meaning, ‘Be it unto thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.’ For
+there is no steering for a fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these
+words are too good for Martha to take them as he meant them. Her faith
+is not quite equal to the belief that he actually will do it. The thing
+she could hope for afar off she could hardly believe when it came to her
+very door. ‘O, yes,’ she said, her mood falling again to the level of
+the commonplace, ‘of course, at the last day.’ Then the Lord turns away
+her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith to himself, the Life, saying,
+‘I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he
+were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me,
+shall never die. Believest thou this?’ Martha, without understanding
+what he said more than in a very poor part, answered in words which
+preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked, and a
+thousandfold more than she could yet believe: ‘Yea, Lord; I believe that
+thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.’
+
+“I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth
+of Jesus’ words ‘shall never die;’ but I am pretty sure that when Martha
+came to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had
+meant when she used the ghastly word _death_, and said with her first
+new breath, ‘Verily, Lord, I am not dead.’
+
+“But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
+upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the
+Lord would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she
+went to find Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother,
+straightway will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The
+family feeling blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal.
+Martha wants Mary to go to Jesus too.
+
+“Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she
+went to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to
+him, the woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but
+the same words to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and
+troubled sister had uttered a few minutes before. How often during those
+four days had not the self-same words passed between them! ‘Ah, if he
+had been here, our brother had not died!’ She said so to himself now,
+and wept, and her friends who had followed her wept likewise. A moment
+more, and the Master groaned; yet a moment, and he too wept. ‘Sorrow is
+catching;’ but this was not the mere infection of sorrow. It went deeper
+than mere sympathy; for he groaned in his spirit and was troubled. What
+made him weep? It was when he saw them weeping that he wept. But why
+should he weep, when he knew how soon their weeping would be turned into
+rejoicing? It was not for their weeping, so soon to be over, that he
+wept, but for the human heart everywhere swollen with tears, yea, with
+griefs that can find no such relief as tears; for these, and for all his
+brothers and sisters tormented with pain for lack of faith in his Father
+in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw the blessed well-being of Lazarus on the
+one side, and on the other the streaming eyes from whose sight he had
+vanished. The veil between was so thin! yet the sight of those eyes
+could not pierce it: their hearts must go on weeping--without cause, for
+his Father was so good. I think it was the helplessness he felt in the
+impossibility of at once sweeping away the phantasm death from their
+imagination that drew the tears from the eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was
+not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for these his friends--save as they
+represented the humanity which he would help, but could not help even as
+he was about to help them.
+
+“The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little
+thought it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they
+despised, that his tears were now flowing--that the love which pressed
+the fountains of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam
+on through the ages.
+
+“Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters,
+saying, ‘Could he not have kept the man from dying?’ But it was such
+a poor thing, after all, that they thought he might have done. They
+regarded merely this unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay
+Lazarus was not much older than Jesus. They did not think that, after
+all, Lazarus must die some time; that the beloved could be saved, at
+best, only for a little while. Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for
+he again groaned in himself.
+
+“Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was
+a hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose
+the bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they
+are in many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round
+and round with linen.
+
+“When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, ‘Take away
+the stone.’ The nature of Martha’s reply--the realism of it, as they
+would say now-a-days--would seem to indicate that her dawning faith had
+sunk again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of
+death, her faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he
+saw around him the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and
+helpless. Jesus answered--O, what an answer!--To meet the corruption
+and the stink which filled her poor human fancy, ‘the glory of God’ came
+from his lips: human fear; horror speaking from the lips of a woman in
+the very jaws of the devouring death; and the ‘said I not unto thee?’
+from the mouth of him who was so soon to pass worn and bloodless through
+such a door! ‘He stinketh,’ said Martha. ‘The glory of God,’ said Jesus.
+‘Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest
+see the glory of God?’
+
+“Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his
+Father aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely
+while he groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted
+him, and given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will
+be true to the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father;
+therefore he tells why he said the word of thanks aloud--a thing not
+usual with him, for his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it
+for the people, he would say that it was for the people.
+
+“The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him--a
+far grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave;
+for he is the life of men.
+
+“‘Lazarus, come forth!”
+
+“And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
+linen-bound limbs. ‘Ha, ha! brother, sister!’ cries the human heart. The
+Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
+grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the
+womb--new-born, and in him all the human race new-born from the grave!
+‘Loose him and let him go,’ and the work is done. The sorrow is over,
+and the joy is come. Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too
+will go with you, the Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready,
+Martha! Prepare the food for him who comes hungry from the grave,
+for him who has called him thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a
+household will yours be! What wondrous speech will pass between the dead
+come to life and the living come to die!
+
+“But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
+Martha’s cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale
+eyes of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes,
+he will come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus--yea,
+come for the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the
+Lord: he knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the
+words he spoke, ‘He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die’?
+Perhaps she does, and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns
+the smile of her Lord.
+
+“This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth.
+What is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon
+to believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which
+lies buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon
+to believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What
+is it to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?--Is it nothing to know that
+our Brother is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the
+first-fruits? If he tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our
+vanished love to-day, or to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to
+come, shall we not mingle the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow
+of present loss, and walk diligently waiting? That he called forth
+Lazarus showed that he was in his keeping, that he is Lord of the
+living, and that all live to him, that he has a hold of them, and can
+draw them forth when he will. If this is not true, then the raising
+of Lazarus is false; I do not mean merely false in fact, but false in
+meaning. If we believe in him, then in his name, both for ourselves and
+for our friends, we must deny death and believe in life. Lord Christ,
+fill our hearts with thy Life!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CHANGED PLANS.
+
+
+
+
+
+In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once
+more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be
+so much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful.
+As they carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the
+ground. Turner yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He
+was satisfied, however, that she could have stood upright for a moment
+at least. He would not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her
+down.
+
+The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious
+the nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her
+smile, though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much
+of its light. I noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window
+constantly so arranged as to shut out the sea. I said something to her
+about it once. Her reply was:
+
+“Papa, I can’t bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make
+you understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down;
+it seemed to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me
+every morning when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith,
+but I can’t help it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had
+failed me, that I would rather not see it.”
+
+I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that
+the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had
+been driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed
+to venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon
+nature. I could not help thinking that the good of our visit to
+Kilkhaven had come, and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet
+escape, was following. I left her, and sought Turner.
+
+“It strikes me, Turner,” I said, “that the sooner we get out of this the
+better for Connie.”
+
+“I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the
+place would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now,
+think what it will be in the many winter nights at hand.”
+
+“Do you think it would be safe to move her?”
+
+“Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better
+than when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and
+see how she will take it.”
+
+“Well, I sha’n’t like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all
+go, except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don’t know how her
+mother would get on without her.”
+
+“I don’t see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad
+to come as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr.
+Shepherd.”
+
+It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it
+was a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no
+such reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her
+to avoid the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner,
+and went back to Connie’s room.
+
+The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was
+sitting so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in
+the matter without any preamble.
+
+“Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?” I asked.
+
+Her countenance flashed into light.
+
+“O, dear papa, do let us go,” she said; “that would be delightful.”
+
+“Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger
+for the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came
+down.”
+
+“No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then.”
+
+The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home
+again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand
+to the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea,
+and did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find
+Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie’s sake, and
+said that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a
+certain troubled look above her eyes, however.
+
+“You are thinking of Wynnie,” I said.
+
+“Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest.”
+
+“True. But it is one of the world’s recognised necessities.”
+
+“No doubt.”
+
+“Besides, you don’t suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter.
+They must part some time.”
+
+“Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon.”
+
+But here my wife was mistaken.
+
+I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter
+when Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him
+to show him in.
+
+“I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places
+with me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie
+had better go home.”
+
+“You will all go, then, I presume?” returned Percivale.
+
+“Yes, yes; of course.”
+
+“Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to
+tell you that I must leave to-morrow.”
+
+“Ah! Going to London?”
+
+“Yes. I don’t know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made
+my summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it
+would otherwise have been.”
+
+“We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all
+glad to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale.”
+
+He made no answer.
+
+“We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all
+probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some
+of your pictures then?”
+
+His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere
+pleasure. There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at
+once:
+
+“I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care
+for them.”
+
+Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it
+would; but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and
+countenance before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from
+a visit.
+
+He began to search for a card.
+
+“O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you
+will dine with us to-day, of course?” I said.
+
+“I shall have much pleasure,” he answered; and took his leave.
+
+I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.
+
+I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that
+walk memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly
+by virtue of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere
+outside things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not
+so readily pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward
+circumstance returns; for a man’s life is where the kingdom of heaven
+is--within him. There are people who, if you ask the story of their
+lives, have nothing to tell you but the course of the outward events
+that have constituted, as it were, the clothes of their history. But I
+know, at the same time, that some of the most important crises in my
+own history (by which word _history_ I mean my growth towards the right
+conditions of existence) have been beyond the grasp and interpretation
+of my intellect. They have passed, as it were, without my consciousness
+being awake enough to lay hold of their phenomena. The wind had been
+blowing; I had heard the sound of it, but knew not whence it came
+nor whither it went; only, when it was gone, I found myself more
+responsible, more eager than before.
+
+I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change
+hanging over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and
+that change which so many would escape if they could, but which will let
+no man pass, had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon
+of the future. Death looks so far away to the young, that while they
+acknowledge it unavoidable, the path stretches on in such vanishing
+perspective before them, that they see no necessity for thinking about
+the end of it yet; and far would I be from saying they ought to think
+of it. Life is the true object of a man’s care: there is no occasion to
+make himself think about death. But when the vision of the inevitable
+draws nigh, when it appears plainly on the horizon, though but as a
+cloud the size of a man’s hand, then it is equally foolish to meet it
+by refusing to meet it, to answer the questions that will arise by
+declining to think about them. Indeed, it is a question of life then,
+and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of our life, and, in the
+strength of that, to look the threatening death in the face. But to my
+walk that morning.
+
+I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
+stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape
+of a monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and
+looked out over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as
+if all the sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the
+fogs of the coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when
+first from these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and
+colour.
+
+“What,” I said to myself at length, “has she done since then? Where is
+her work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
+destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
+exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
+our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
+generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before
+us like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work.”
+
+Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a
+mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and
+that I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing
+as a state of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual
+dreaming in sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself
+like a child tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till,
+all at once, “a little pipling wind” blew on my cheek. The morning was
+very still: what roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that
+little wind roused I will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek,
+something within me began to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory
+of a certain glorious sunset of red and green and gold and blue, which
+I had beheld from these same heights, dawned within me. I knew that the
+glory of my youth had not departed, that the very power of recalling
+with delight that which I had once felt in seeing, was proof enough of
+that; I knew that I could believe in God all the night long, even if the
+night were long. And the next moment I thought how I had been reviling
+in my fancy God’s servant, the sea. To how many vessels had she not
+opened a bounteous highway through the waters, with labour, and food,
+and help, and ministration, glad breezes and swelling sails, healthful
+struggle, cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and friendly death! Because
+she had been commissioned to carry this one or that one, this hundred or
+that thousand of his own creatures from one world to another, was I to
+revile the servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was blameless in
+Connie to feel the late trouble so deeply that she could not be glad:
+she had not had the experience of life, yea, of God, that I had had;
+she must be helped from without. But for me, it was shameful that I, who
+knew the heart of my Master, to whom at least he had so often shown
+his truth, should ever be doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now
+helped from within. The glory of existence as the child of the Infinite
+had again dawned upon me. The first hour of the evening of my life had
+indeed arrived; the shadows had begun to grow long--so long that I had
+begun to mark their length; this last little portion of my history had
+vanished, leaving its few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life;
+and the final evening must come, when all my life would lie behind me,
+and all the memory of it return, with its mornings of gold and red,
+with its evenings of purple and green; with its dashes of storm, and its
+foggy glooms; with its white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions,
+its creeping envies in brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all
+the accusations of my conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he
+was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins. Then
+I thought what a grand gift it would be to give his people the power
+hereafter to fight the consequences of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust
+the Father, who loved me with a perfect love, to lead the soul he had
+made, had compelled to be, through the gates of the death-birth, into
+the light of life beyond. I would cast on him the care, humbly challenge
+him with the responsibility he had himself undertaken, praying only for
+perfect confidence in him, absolute submission to his will.
+
+I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought
+of seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave
+those I had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught
+them something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be
+no end to our relation to each other--it could not be broken, for it was
+_in the Lord_, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not,
+therefore, sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.
+
+I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them
+often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even
+this parting said that I must “sit loose to the world”--an old Puritan
+phrase, I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its
+best things, and must let all the rest go; that those things I
+called mine--earth, sky, and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of
+friends--had all to leave me, belong to others, and help to educate
+them. I should not need them. I should have my people, my souls, my
+beloved faces tenfold more, and could well afford to part with these.
+Why should I mind this chain passing to my eldest boy, when it was only
+his mother’s hair, and I should have his mother still?
+
+So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded
+passively to their flow.
+
+I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room.
+Her mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody
+party. They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before
+dinner was over we were all chatting together merrily.
+
+“How is Connie?” I asked Ethelwyn.
+
+“Wonderfully better already,” she answered.
+
+“I think everybody seems better,” I said. “The very idea of home seems
+reviving to us all.”
+
+Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than
+she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at
+Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged
+instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle
+in his eye.
+
+“Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?” he asked.
+
+“No,” I answered. “She does not want much visiting now; she is going
+about her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not
+like the same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one,
+though I do not choose to ask him any questions about his wife.”
+
+I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after
+this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.
+Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by
+the coach--early. Turner went with him.
+
+Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the
+prospect of meeting him again in London kept her up.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE STUDIO.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
+ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had
+wanted to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber,
+now wanted to take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great
+oystershells, and sea-weed.
+
+Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An
+early day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of
+service to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he
+came, I had gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my
+reasons for leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a
+little about my successor, that he might not appear among them quite as
+a stranger. He was much gratified with their reception of him, and had
+no fear of not finding himself quite at home with them. I promised, if
+I could comfortably manage it, to pay them a short visit the following
+summer, and as the weather was now getting quite cold, hastened our
+preparations for departure.
+
+I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but
+he had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience
+would permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us,
+and we had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel
+much anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong
+enough as we went along, to go right through to London, making a few
+days there the only break in the transit.
+
+It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now
+bear the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had
+we occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
+pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and
+before we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie
+looked a little dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the
+change in the weather.
+
+“Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear,” I said.
+
+“No, papa,” she answered; “but we are going home, you know.”
+
+_Going home._ It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking
+before, always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky
+of hope. I lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog
+this evening in London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to
+go through on the way _home._ A. shadow like this would fall upon me;
+the world would grow dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was
+the last of the way home.
+
+Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted.
+I knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness,
+more or less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as
+the thought of water to the thirsty _soul_, for it is the soul far more
+than the body that thirsts even for the material water, such is the
+thought of home to the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul
+pines for sleep, and every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so
+my heart and soul had often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked
+myself, where or what that home was? It could consist in no change of
+place or of circumstance; no mere absence of care; no accumulation of
+repose; no blessed communion even with those whom my soul loved; in the
+midst of it all I should be longing for a homelier home--one into which
+I might enter with a sense of infinitely more absolute peace, than a
+conscious child could know in the arms, upon the bosom of his mother.
+In the closest contact of human soul with human soul, when all the
+atmosphere of thought was rosy with love, again and yet again on the far
+horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest shoot for a moment through
+the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that not yet had she reached
+her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and saw those of my wife
+and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching me for saying in
+my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then I said in my
+heart, “Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for us all.
+When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall we be
+gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries of
+pictures--wells of water.”
+
+Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his
+love, his judgment, are man’s home. To think his thoughts, to choose his
+will, to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that
+he is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley
+of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all
+changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of
+God, so this greatest of all outward changes--for it is but an outward
+change--will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh
+possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father
+of us. It is the father, the mother, that make for the child his home.
+Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the parents of a family
+themselves, when they remember that their fathers and mothers have
+vanished.
+
+At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.
+
+“Won’t it be delightful, wife,” I began, “to see our fathers and mothers
+such a long way back in heaven?”
+
+But Ethelwyn’s face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
+dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do
+not know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder
+how anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How
+dreadful not to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is
+not good, every mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to
+believe in God as it can be made. But he is our one good Father,
+and does not leave us, even should our fathers and mothers have thus
+forsaken us, and left him without a witness.
+
+Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew
+that London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station,
+where a carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.
+
+Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to
+the fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she
+had slept for a good many nights before.
+
+After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,
+
+“I am going to see Mr. Percivale’s studio, my dear: have you any
+objection to going with me?”
+
+“No, papa,” she answered, blushing. “I have never seen an artist’s
+studio in my life.”
+
+“Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take
+a cab, and it won’t matter.”
+
+She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver
+directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped
+at the door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking
+street, in which no man could possibly identify his own door except by
+the number. I knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the
+former probably the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare
+assent to my question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her
+den with the words “second-floor,” and left us to find our own way up
+the two flights of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty.
+We knocked at the door of the front room. A well-known voice cried,
+“Come in,” and we entered.
+
+Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb,
+advanced to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which
+I attributed solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in
+receiving us in such a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round
+the room. Any romantic notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the
+marvels of a studio, must have paled considerably at the first glance
+around Percivale’s room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of
+self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet
+save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece
+of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of
+the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair
+chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and
+papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently
+for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished
+oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room.
+With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one chair for Wynnie and
+another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
+
+“This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is
+all I have got.”
+
+“A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he
+possesses,” I ventured to say.
+
+“Thank you,” said Percivale. “I hope not. It is well for me it should
+not.”
+
+“It is well for the richest man in England that it should not,” I
+returned. “If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the
+most blessed.”
+
+“There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think
+it does.”
+
+“No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
+themselves.”
+
+“Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?” asked
+Wynnie.
+
+“Tolerably,” he answered. “But I have not much to show for it. That on
+the easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though.”
+
+“Why?” asked Wynnie.
+
+“First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so
+unfinished that none but a painter could do it justice.”
+
+“But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look
+at?”
+
+“I very much want people to look at them.”
+
+“Why not us, then?” said Wynnie.
+
+“Because you do not need to be pained.”
+
+“Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?” I said.
+
+“Good is done by pain--is it not?” he asked.
+
+“Undoubtedly. But whether _we_ are wise enough to know when and where
+and how much, is the question.”
+
+“Of course I do not make the pain my object.”
+
+“If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the
+matter greatly,” I said. “But still I am not sure that anything in which
+the pain predominates can be useful in the best way.”
+
+“Perhaps not,” he returned.--“Will you look at the daub?”
+
+“With much pleasure,” I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
+Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture
+meant. Nor had I long to look before I understood it--in a measure at
+least.
+
+It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The
+plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths
+in one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man
+dying. A woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face,
+though she held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the
+gloom you could just see the struggles of two undertaker’s men to get
+the coffin past the turn of the landing towards the door. Through the
+window there was one peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight
+fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the
+window-sill outside.
+
+“I do not wonder you did not like to show it,” I said. “How can you bear
+to paint such a dreadful picture?”
+
+“It is a true one. It only represents a fact.”
+
+“All facts have not a right to be represented.”
+
+“Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
+sight?”
+
+“No; nor yet by gloating upon them.”
+
+“You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to
+paint such pictures--as far as the subject goes,” he said with some
+discomposure.
+
+“Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no
+one could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or
+grow callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you
+propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had
+come into my possession, I would--”
+
+“Put it in the fire,” suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
+
+“No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain
+before it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was
+in danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and
+forgetting that they need the Saviour.”
+
+“I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end.”
+
+“Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
+such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
+one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn’t buy it. I would
+rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I
+am certain you cannot do people good by showing them _only_ the painful.
+Make it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it--something
+to show that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering
+people will turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it,
+without hinting at some door of escape, only urges them to forget it
+all. Why should they be pained if it can do no good?”
+
+“For the sake of sympathy, I should say,” answered Percivale.
+
+“They would rejoin, ‘It is only a picture. Come along.’ No; give people
+hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything.”
+
+“I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You
+see there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet
+in the window.”
+
+He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+
+“I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
+you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
+make the other look more terrible.”
+
+“Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have
+failed otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the
+picture, I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read
+your own meaning into it.”
+
+Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw
+that she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or
+the freedom with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes
+falling on a little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope
+of finding something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment,
+however, that it was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler
+and more poetic mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her
+hand. A torrent of summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a
+lake of glory upon the floor. I turned away.
+
+“You like that better, don’t you, papa?” said Wynnie tremulously.
+
+“It is beautiful, certainly,” I answered. “And if it were only one, I
+should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the
+same thing more weakly embodied.”
+
+I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in
+Percivale, for his own sake as well as for my daughter’s, and I had
+expected better things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale,” I said.
+
+“I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am
+a clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the
+praise which I have little doubt your art at least deserves.”
+
+“I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may
+pain me.”
+
+“But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you
+have at hand to show me.”
+
+“Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see.”
+
+He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were
+leaning against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these
+he chose one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that
+stood beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will
+describe it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which
+broke from me after I had regarded it for a time.
+
+A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few
+thin pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore
+a dying knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm,
+and another led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture.
+The head and countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many
+a battle, and ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained,
+for one might read victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party
+had just reached the edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the
+valley beneath, with the last of the harvest just being reaped, while
+the shocks stood all about in the fields, under the place of the sunset.
+The sun had been down for some little time. There was no gold left in
+the sky, only a little dull saffron, but plenty of that lovely liquid
+green of the autumn sky, divided with a few streaks of pale rose. The
+depth of the sky overhead, which you could not see for the arrangement
+of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a piece of water that lay in
+the centre of the valley.
+
+“My dear fellow,” I cried, “why did you not show me this first, and save
+me from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart;
+it is glorious. Look here, Wynnie,” I went on; “you see it is evening;
+the sun’s work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name
+behind him in a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight’s work is done
+too; his day has set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the
+coming peace. They are bearing him home to his couch and his grave.
+Look at their faces in the dusky light. They are all mourning for
+and honouring the life that is ebbing away. But he is gathered to his
+fathers like a shock of corn fully ripe; and so the harvest stands
+golden in the valley beneath. The picture would not be complete,
+however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven overhead, the symbol
+of that heaven whither he who has done his work is bound. What a lovely
+idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven embodying itself
+in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe how that dusky
+hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines, with that
+sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward towards
+that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a picture
+and a parable.”
+
+[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted
+by Arthur Hughes.]
+
+I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth
+by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale’s work
+appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.
+
+“I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it,” she said.
+
+“Like it!” I returned; “I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
+express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it,
+I should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most
+public wall I have.”
+
+“Then,” said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, “you
+confess--don’t you, papa?--that you were _too_ hard on Mr. Percivale at
+first?”
+
+“Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given
+me to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not
+bound to disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can
+be no sense of duty.”
+
+“But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has _some_ sense of duty,” said Wynnie
+in an almost angry tone.
+
+“Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and
+therefore, again, that he has no right to publish such a picture.”
+
+At the word _publish_ Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
+defence:
+
+“But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures
+only. Look at the other.”
+
+“Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in
+the same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of
+these might go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of
+Avalon; but even then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the
+poem, whatever position it stood in, that had _nothing_--positively
+nothing--of the aurora in it.”
+
+Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by
+a remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from
+the pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to
+judge, will continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is
+only a little song, “I stood on a tower in the wet.” I have found few
+men who, whether from the influence of those prints which are always on
+the outlook for something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not
+laugh at the poem. I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am
+not quite sure of the transposition of words in the last two lines. But
+I do not _approve_ of the poem, just because there is no hope in it.
+It lacks that touch or hint of _red_ which is as essential, I think, to
+every poem as to every picture--the life-blood--the one pure colour. In
+his hopeful moods, let a man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud
+the words of gladness--or of grief, I care not which--to his fellows;
+in his hours of hopelessness, let him utter his thoughts only to his
+inarticulate violin, or in the evanescent sounds of any his other
+stringed instrument; let him commune with his own heart on his bed, and
+be still; let him speak to God face to face if he may--only he cannot
+do that and continue hopeless; but let him not sing aloud in such a mood
+into the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot do them much good thereby.
+If it were a fact that there is no hope, it would not be a _truth_. No
+doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known; but who will dare be
+confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let the hopeless
+moods, at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.
+
+“He could refuse to let the one go without the other,” said Wynnie.
+
+“Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do
+at the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part
+them.--If you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again
+to-morrow.”
+
+Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at
+any more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should
+dine with us in the evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not detain my readers with the record of the few days we spent in
+London. In writing the account of it, as in the experience of the time
+itself, I feel that I am near home, and grow the more anxious to reach
+it. Ah! I am growing a little anxious after another home, too; for the
+house of my tabernacle is falling to ruins about me. What a word _home_
+is! To think that God has made the world so that you have only to be
+born in a certain place, and live long enough in it to get at the
+secret of it, and henceforth that place is to you a _home_ with all the
+wonderful meaning in the word. Thus the whole earth is a home to the
+race; for every spot of it shares in the feeling: some one of the family
+loves it as _his_ home. How rich the earth seems when we so regard
+it--crowded with the loves of home! Yet I am now getting ready to _go
+home_--to leave this world of homes and go home. When I reach that home,
+shall I even then seek yet to go home? Even then, I believe, I shall
+seek a yet warmer, deeper, truer home in the deeper knowledge of God--in
+the truer love of my fellow-man. Eternity will be, my heart and my faith
+tell me, a travelling homeward, but in jubilation and confidence and the
+vision of the beloved.
+
+When we had laid Connie once more in her own room, at least the room
+which since her illness had come to be called hers, I went up to my
+study. The familiar faces of my books welcomed me. I threw myself in my
+reading-chair, and gazed around me with pleasure. I felt it so homely
+here. All my old friends--whom somehow I hoped to see some day--present
+there in the spirit ready to talk with me any moment when I was in the
+mood, making no claim upon my attention when I was not! I felt as if I
+should like, when the hour should come, to die in that chair, and pass
+into the society of the witnesses in the presence of the tokens they had
+left behind them.
+
+I heard shouts on the stair, and in rushed the two boys.
+
+“Papa, papa!” they were crying together.
+
+“What is the matter?”
+
+“We’ve found the big chest just where we left it.”
+
+“Well, did you expect it would have taken itself off?”
+
+“But there’s everything in it just as we left it.”
+
+“Were you afraid, then, that the moment you left it it would turn itself
+upside down, and empty itself of all its contents on the floor?”
+
+They laughed, but apparently with no very keen appreciation of the
+attempt at a joke.
+
+“Well, papa, I did not think anything about it; but--but--but--there
+everything is as we left it.”
+
+With this triumphant answer they turned and hurried, a little abashed,
+out of the room; but not many moments elapsed before the sounds that
+arose from them were sufficiently reassuring as to the state of their
+spirits. When they were gone, I forgot my books in the attempt to
+penetrate and understand the condition of my boys’ thoughts; and I soon
+came to see that they were right and I was wrong. It was the movement
+of that undeveloped something in us which makes it possible for us in
+everything to give thanks. It was the wonder of the discovery of the
+existence of law. There was nothing that they could understand, _à
+priori_, to necessitate the remaining of the things where they had left
+them. No doubt there was a reason in the nature of God, why all things
+should hold together, whence springs the law of gravitation, as we call
+it; but as far as the boys could understand of this, all things might as
+well have been arranged for flying asunder, so that no one could expect
+to find anything where he had left it. I began to see yet further into
+the truth that in everything we must give thanks, and whatever is not of
+faith is sin. Even the laws of nature reveal the character of God,
+not merely as regards their ends, but as regards their kind, being of
+necessity fashioned after ideal facts of his own being and will.
+
+I rose and went down to see if everybody was getting settled, and how
+the place looked. I found Ethel already going about the house as if
+she had never left it, and as if we all had just returned from a long
+absence and she had to show us home-hospitality. Wynnie had vanished;
+but I found her by and by in the favourite haunt of her mother before
+her marriage--beside the little pond called the Bishop’s Basin, of which
+I do not think I have ever told my readers the legend. But why should I
+mention it, for I cannot tell it now? The frost lay thick in the hollow
+when I went down there to find her; the branches, lately clothed
+with leaves, stood bare and icy around her. Ethelwyn and I had almost
+forgotten that there was anything out of the common in connection with
+the house. The horror of this mysterious spot had laid hold upon Wynnie.
+I resolved that that night I would, in her mother’s presence, tell
+her all the legend of the place, and the whole story of how I won her
+mother. I did so; and I think it made her trust us more. But now I left
+her there, and went to Connie. She lay in her bed; for her mother had
+got her thither at once, a perfect picture of blessed comfort. There was
+no occasion to be uneasy about her. I was so pleased to be at home
+again with such good hopes, that I could not rest, but went wandering
+everywhere--into places even which I had not entered for ten years at
+least, and found fresh interest in everything; for this was home, and
+here I was.
+
+Now I fancy my readers, looking forward to the end, and seeing what
+a small amount of print is left, blaming me; some, that I have roused
+curiosity without satisfying it; others, that I have kept them so long
+over a dull book and a lame conclusion. But out of a life one cannot
+always cut complete portions, and serve them up in nice shapes. I am
+well aware that I have not told them the _fate_, as some of them would
+call it, of either of my daughters. This I cannot develop now, even as
+far as it is known to me; but, if it is any satisfaction to them to
+know this much--and it will be all that some of them mean by _fate_, I
+fear--I may as well tell them now that Wynnie has been Mrs. Percivale
+for many years, with a history well worth recounting; and that Connie
+has had a quiet, happy life for nearly as long, as Mrs. Turner. She has
+never got strong, but has very tolerable health. Her husband watches her
+with the utmost care and devotion. My Ethelwyn is still with me. Harry
+is gone home. Charlie is a barrister of the Middle Temple. And Dora--I
+must not forget Dora--well, I will say nothing about her _fate_, for
+good reasons--it is not quite determined yet. Meantime she puts up with
+the society of her old father and mother, and is something else than
+unhappy, I fully believe.
+
+“And Connie’s baby?” asks some one out of ten thousand readers. I have
+no time to tell you about her now; but as you know her so little, it
+cannot be such a trial to remain, for a time at least, unenlightened
+with regard to her _fate._
+
+The only other part of my history which could contain anything like
+incident enough to make it interesting in print, is a period I spent in
+London some few years after the time of which I have now been writing.
+But I am getting too old to regard the commencement of another history
+with composure. The labour of thinking into sequences, even the bodily
+labour of writing, grows more and more severe. I fancy I can think
+correctly still; but the effort necessary to express myself with
+corresponding correctness becomes, in prospect, at least, sometimes
+almost appalling. I must therefore take leave of my patient reader--for
+surely every one who has followed me through all that I have here
+written, well deserves the epithet--as if the probability that I shall
+write no more were a certainty, bidding him farewell with one word:
+_“Friend, hope thou in God,”_ and for a parting gift offering him a
+new, and, I think, a true rendering of the first verse of the eleventh
+chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews:
+
+“Now faith is the essence of hopes, the trying of things unseen.”
+
+Good-bye.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
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+Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Seaboard Parish, Complete
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8562]
+This file was first posted on July 23, 2003
+Last Updated: April 18, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+By George MacDonald, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+   I. HOMILETIC
+  II. CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY
+ III. THE SICK CHAMBER
+  IV. A SUNDAY EVENING
+   V. MY DREAM
+  VI. THE KEW BABY
+ VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
+VIII. THEODORA'S DOOM  IX. A SPRING CHAPTER
+   X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER
+  XI. CONNIE'S DREAM
+ XII. THE JOURNEY
+XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN
+  XV. THE OLD CHURCH
+ XVI. CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER
+XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+HOMILETIC.
+
+
+Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
+know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I
+say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you
+had not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you
+would not have wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not
+think you would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But
+I am seated once again at my writing-table, to write for you--with a
+strange feeling, however, that I am in the heart of some curious, rather
+awful acoustic contrivance, by means of which the words which I have a
+habit of whispering over to myself as I write them, are heard aloud by
+multitudes of people whom I cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy,
+that, by a sense of your presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to
+man.
+
+But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that
+you have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually
+happens in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a
+more puzzled mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the
+holes and corners of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one,
+peeping out at me like a rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me
+almost at the same instant the tail-end of it, and vanishing with a
+contemptuous _thud_ of its hind feet on the ground. For I must have
+suitable regard to the desires of my children. It is a fine thing to
+be able to give people what they want, if at the same time you can give
+them what you want. To give people what they want, would sometimes be to
+give them only dirt and poison. To give them what you want, might be to
+set before them something of which they could not eat a mouthful. What
+both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a dish of good wholesome
+venison. Now I suppose my children around me are neither young enough
+nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go that will not do. What
+they want is, I believe, something that I know about--that has happened
+to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of thing I like best to
+hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me something that has
+happened to himself, especially if he will give me a peep into how his
+heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the closed door,
+and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has something
+true and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old people
+that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them; but
+that only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to
+disentangle confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at
+the time appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light
+that was in them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they
+are far enough off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything
+that we know best what it is. How I should like to write a story for old
+people! The young are always having stories written for them. Why should
+not the old people come in for a share? A story without a young person
+in it at all! Nobody under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy
+tale, could it? Or a love story either? I am not so sure about that. The
+worst of it would be, however, that hardly a young person would read it.
+Now, we old people would not like that. We can read young people's
+books and enjoy them: they would not try to read old men's books or old
+women's books; they would be so sure of their being dry. My dear old
+brothers and sisters, we know better, do we not? We have nice old
+jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot see the fun. We have
+strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look more and more
+marvellous every time we turn them over again; only somehow they do not
+belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say _week_,--and so
+the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have had one
+pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother's feet, and
+listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his
+mother's wedding-gown was as old as Eve's coat of skins. But then he was
+young enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common
+to the young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men,
+old women, to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the
+future. Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed; for,
+however your souls may be at peace, however your quietness and
+confidence may give you strength, in the decay of your earthly
+tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in the weakening of its
+stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars, you have yet your
+share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But the one thing I
+should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would be, "Friends,
+let us not grow old." Old age is but a mask; let us not call the mask
+the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it from its
+hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth? Then
+only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
+young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
+dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
+always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
+we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog
+to enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and
+perhaps whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any
+necessity for putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the
+privilege, or if we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have
+the duty, of enjoying their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a
+measure from sociable relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise
+creatures that creep aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves
+by that their wings may grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming
+resurrection. Such a withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it
+is pleasant--no one knows how pleasant except him who experiences it--to
+sit apart and see the drama of life going on around him, while
+his feelings are calm and free, his vision clear, and his judgment
+righteous, the old man must ever be ready, should the sweep of action
+catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering old legs, and go with
+brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the less true that his
+hands tremble, and that he would gladly return to his chimney-corner. If
+he is never thus called out, let him examine himself, lest he should be
+falling into the number of those that say, "I go, sir," and go not;
+who are content with thinking beautiful things in an Atlantis, Oceana,
+Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of their fingers to
+work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the man who, using
+just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never has a
+thought of his own.
+
+I have been talking--to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
+grandchildren? I remember--to my companions in old age. It is time I
+returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side
+of the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one
+word: We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never
+do aright after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the
+men, neither shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his
+people because the young ones do not think just as the old ones choose.
+The Lord has something fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to
+receive his message. When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I
+think our work in this world is over. It might end more honourably.
+
+Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
+about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
+myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of
+which I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite
+elderly, yet active man--young still, in fact, to what I am now. But
+even then, though my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder,
+and needed all my stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces,
+and the trials of them that are dear, will make even those that look for
+a better country both for themselves and their friends, sad, though it
+will be with a preponderance of the first meaning of the word _sad_,
+which was _settled_, _thoughtful_.
+
+I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my
+study because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover
+over every foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the
+pleasanter to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none
+the worse, for anyone who prefers it to books.
+
+I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the
+history of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend's
+parish, while my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my
+curate, took the entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will
+soon appear. I will try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my
+story interesting, although it will cost me suffering to recall some of
+the incidents I have to narrate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+
+
+
+
+Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature,
+or from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents
+Nature's mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in
+his drama? I know I have so often found Nature's mood in harmony with my
+own, even when she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in
+looking back I have wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some
+self-deception about it. At all events, on the morning of my Constance's
+eighteenth birthday, a lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of
+golden foliage about the ways, and an air that seemed filled with the
+ether of an _aurum potabile_, there came yet an occasional blast of
+wind, which, without being absolutely cold, smelt of winter, and made
+one draw one's shoulders together with the sense of an unfriendly
+presence. I do not think Constance felt it at all, however, as she stood
+on the steps in her riding-habit, waiting till the horses made their
+appearance. It had somehow grown into a custom with us that each of the
+children, as his or her birthday came round, should be king or queen
+for that day, and, subject to the veto of father and mother, should have
+everything his or her own way. Let me say for them, however, that in the
+matter of choosing the dinner, which of course was included in the royal
+prerogative, I came to see that it was almost invariably the favourite
+dishes of others of the family that were chosen, and not those
+especially agreeable to the royal palate. Members of families where
+children have not been taught from their earliest years that the great
+privilege of possession is the right to bestow, may regard this as an
+improbable assertion; but others will know that it might well enough
+be true, even if I did not say that so it was. But there was always
+the choice of some individual treat, which was determined solely by the
+preference of the individual in authority. Constance had chosen "a long
+ride with papa."
+
+I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration
+of his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be
+determined by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people's
+children. However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that
+Constance did look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young
+day: we were early people--breakfast and prayers were over, and it was
+nine o'clock as she stood on the steps and I approached her from the
+lawn.
+
+"O, papa! isn't it jolly?" she said merrily.
+
+"Very jolly indeed, my dear," I answered, delighted to hear the word
+from the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word,
+and when she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was
+like? Ah! you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I
+will, however, try to give you a general idea, just in order that you
+and I should not be picturing to ourselves two very different persons
+while I speak of her.
+
+She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
+observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion,
+and has nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in
+complexion, with her mother's blue eyes, and her mother's long dark wavy
+hair. She was generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than
+any of the others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she
+knew instinctively when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her
+playfulness there seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if
+she felt that the present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance
+to the eternal sunlight. And the appearance was not in the least a
+deceptive one. The eternal was not far from her--none the farther that
+she enjoyed life like a bird, that her laugh was merry, that her heart
+was careless, and that her voice rang through the house--a sweet soprano
+voice--singing snatches of songs (now a street tune she had caught from
+a London organ, now an air from Handel or Mozart), or that she would
+sometimes tease her elder sister about her solemn and anxious looks; for
+Wynnie, the eldest, had to suffer for her grandmother's sins against her
+daughter, and came into the world with a troubled little heart, that was
+soon compelled to flee for refuge to the rock that was higher than she.
+Ah! my Constance! But God was good to you and to us in you.
+
+"Where shall we go, Connie?" I said, and the same moment the sound of
+the horses' hoofs reached us.
+
+"Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?" she returned.
+
+"It is a long ride," I answered.
+
+"Too much for the pony?"
+
+"O dear, no--not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony."
+
+"I'm quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want
+to get something for Wynnie. Do let us go."
+
+"Very well, my dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle--if I may say
+_raised_, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another
+than she sprung from the ground on her pony's back.
+
+In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
+
+The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders' webs,
+as we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards
+the high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we
+turned from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a
+gallop to begin with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been
+used to the saddle longer than she could remember. She was now riding a
+tall well-bred pony, with plenty of life--rather too much, I sometimes
+thought, when I was out with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I
+was with Constance. Another field or two sufficiently quieted both
+animals--I did not want to have all our time taken up with their
+frolics--and then we began to talk.
+
+"You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear," I said.
+
+"Quite an old grannie, papa," she answered.
+
+"Old enough to think about what's coming next," I said gravely.
+
+"O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about
+the morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that's in the pulpit," she
+added, with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her
+pretty hat.
+
+"You know very well what I mean, you puss," I answered. "And I don't say
+one thing in the pulpit and another out of it."
+
+She was at my horse's shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had
+been of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended
+me. She looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon
+Wynnie.
+
+"O, thank you, papa!" she said when I smiled. "I thought I had been
+rude. I didn't mean it, indeed I didn't. But I do wish you would make
+it a little plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you
+would hardly believe it."
+
+"What do you want made plainer, my child?" I asked.
+
+"When we're to think, and when we're not to think," she answered.
+
+I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
+
+"If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day," I
+answered, "if it cannot be done right except you think about it and
+lay your plans for it, then that thought is to-day's business, not
+to-morrow's."
+
+"Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
+themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?" she asked
+suddenly, again looking up in my face.
+
+We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse's mane, so as to
+keep her pony close up.
+
+"Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind."
+
+"Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn't explain things so much. I
+seem to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try
+the text afterwards by myself, I can't make anything of it, and I've
+forgotten every word you said about it."
+
+"Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it."
+
+"I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
+Bible," she returned.
+
+"If they can," I rejoined. "But last Sunday, for instance, I did not
+expect anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except
+your mamma and Thomas Weir."
+
+"How funny! What part of it was that?"
+
+"O! I'm not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But
+most likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to
+you, in consequence, very commonplace."
+
+"In consequence of what?"
+
+"In consequence of your thinking you understood it."
+
+"O, papa dear! you're getting worse and worse. It's not often I ask
+you anything--and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to
+bewilder my poor little brains in this way."
+
+"I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea
+that you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If
+you had never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of
+remark, would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is
+this the case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of
+the heart. Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything,
+or thanked God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant
+in one of his worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be
+beyond him. If you have never known what it is to have care of any kind
+upon you, you cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to
+take no thought for the morrow."
+
+"But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
+about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?"
+
+"Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
+perhaps I can help you."
+
+"You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
+idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at
+work every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that
+women any more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do?
+What have I been sent into the world for? I don't see it; and I feel
+very useless and wrong sometimes."
+
+"I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
+Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish.
+You take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal for
+the poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you
+are learning yourselves."
+
+"Yes, but that's not work."
+
+"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
+you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not
+that I have anything to complain of."
+
+"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life,
+when there are so many to help everywhere in the world."
+
+"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed
+you, than in doing it where he has placed you?"
+
+"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do
+at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You
+won't think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?"
+
+"No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
+now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
+referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
+yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do,
+you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible
+preparation for what he may want you to do next. If people would but do
+what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what
+came next. And I do not believe that those who follow this rule are ever
+left floundering on the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find
+water enough to swim in."
+
+"Thank you, dear papa. That's a little sermon all to myself, and I think
+I shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let's
+have a trot."
+
+"There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is
+not your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make
+yourself as worth God's making as you possibly can. Now I am a little
+doubtful whether you keep up your studies at all."
+
+She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face
+again.
+
+"I don't like dry things, papa."
+
+"Nobody does."
+
+"Nobody!" she exclaimed. "How do the grammars and history-books come to
+be written then?"
+
+In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
+than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection
+in it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding
+old father?
+
+"No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make
+them. Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to
+care for them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what
+you have to learn."
+
+"What must I do then?" she asked with a sigh. "Must I go all over my
+French Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!"
+
+"If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something
+you don't like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you
+are fond of?" I continued, finding that she remained silent.
+
+"I don't know anything in particular--that is, I don't know anything in
+the way of school-work that I really liked. I don't mean that I didn't
+try to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I
+liked--the poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen
+count that silly--don't they?"
+
+"On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the
+foundation of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing
+God has given us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree about
+what poetry was poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God.
+Now, what poetry do you like best?"
+
+"Mrs. Hemans's, I think, papa."
+
+"Well, very well, to begin with. 'There is,' as Mr. Carlyle said to a
+friend of mine--'There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.'
+But it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be.
+Most people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and
+they expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand
+myself, and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable
+enough creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with
+admiration of what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained
+at the cost of expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs.
+Hemans. She is simple enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that
+whatever mental food you take should be just a little too strong for
+you. That implies trouble, necessitates growth, and involves delight."
+
+"I sha'n't mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
+anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
+about."
+
+I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two
+years, and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account
+for my knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on
+talking a little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young
+people only, I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the
+account of what we said to each other; for it might help some of them to
+see that the thing they like best should, circumstances and conscience
+permitting, be made the centre from which they start to learn; that they
+should go on enlarging their knowledge all round from that one point at
+which God intended them to begin. But at length we fell into a silence,
+a very happy one on my part; for I was more than delighted to find that
+this one too of my children was following after the truth--wanting to
+do what was right, namely, to obey the word of the Lord, whether openly
+spoken to all, or to herself in the voice of her own conscience and the
+light of that understanding which is the candle of the Lord. I had often
+said to myself in past years, when I had found myself in the company of
+young ladies who announced their opinions--probably of no deeper origin
+than the prejudices of their nurses--as if these distinguished them from
+all the world besides; who were profound upon passion and ignorant of
+grace; who had not a notion whether a dress was beautiful, but only
+whether it was of the newest cut--I had often said to myself: "What
+shall I do if my daughters come to talk and think like that--if thinking
+it can be called?" but being confident that instruction for which the
+mind is not prepared only lies in a rotting heap, producing all kinds
+of mental evils correspondent to the results of successive loads of
+food which the system cannot assimilate, my hope had been to rouse wise
+questions in the minds of my children, in place of overwhelming their
+digestions with what could be of no instruction or edification without
+the foregoing appetite. Now my Constance had begun to ask me questions,
+and it made me very happy. We had thus come a long way nearer to each
+other; for however near the affection of human animals may bring them,
+there are abysses between soul and soul--the souls even of father and
+daughter--over which they must pass to meet. And I do not believe that
+any two human beings alive know yet what it is to love as love is in the
+glorious will of the Father of lights.
+
+I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
+
+We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path--a brown,
+soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering
+about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of
+underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place.
+There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and
+there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been
+struck by lightning, and had stood till the frosts and rains had bared
+it of its bark. Now it lay white as a skeleton by the side of the path,
+and was, I think, the cause of what followed. All at once my daughter's
+pony sprang to the other side of the road, shying sideways; unsettled
+her so, I presume; then rearing and plunging, threw her from the saddle
+across one of the logs of which I have spoken. I was by her side in a
+moment. To my horror she lay motionless. Her eyes were closed, and when
+I took her up in my arms she did not open them. I laid her on the moss,
+and got some water and sprinkled her face. Then she revived a little;
+but seemed in much pain, and all at once went off into another faint. I
+was in terrible perplexity.
+
+Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance,
+had seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what
+he could do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had
+thrown over the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask
+Mrs. Walton to come with the carriage as quickly as possible. "Tell
+her," I said, "that her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is
+rather shaken. Ride as hard as you can go."
+
+The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child, for
+what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage arrived.
+She had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in her back;
+and, to my distress, I found that she could not move herself enough to
+make the least change of her position. She evidently tried to keep up
+as well as she could; but her face expressed great suffering: it was
+dreadfully pale, and looked worn with a month's illness. All my fear was
+for her spine.
+
+At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as
+fast as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing the
+coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as Constance,
+but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to determination. I had
+never seen her look like that before. She asked no questions: there was
+time enough for that afterwards. She had brought plenty of cushions
+and pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy couch for the poor
+girl; but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her into the carriage. We
+did our best to keep her from being shaken; but those few miles were the
+longest journey I ever made in my life.
+
+When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
+called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie--for she was named
+after her mother--had got a room on the ground-floor, usually given to
+visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to have to
+carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the groom
+off to Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who had
+settled at Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before,
+was waiting for us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a
+mattress in the position in which she felt the least pain. But why
+should I linger over the sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor
+child's spine was seriously injured, and that probably years of
+suffering were before her. Everything was done that could be done; but
+she was not moved from that room for nine months, during which, though
+her pain certainly grew less by degrees, her want of power to move
+herself remained almost the same.
+
+When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated
+by her bedside, I called my other two daughters--Wynnie, the eldest, and
+Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside, one
+on each side of the door, weeping--into my study, and said to them: "My
+darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God's will;
+and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen to your
+lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your sister's
+part to endure."
+
+"O, papa! poor Connie!" cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.
+
+Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon
+it.
+
+"Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the
+room?" I asked.
+
+"Please do, papa."
+
+"She whispered, 'You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you
+can. I don't mind it very much, only for you.' So, you see, if you want
+to make her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick
+people like to see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie
+will not suffer nearly so much if she finds that she does not make the
+household gloomy."
+
+This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my
+marriage. My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had found
+that it was quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my flock
+who were ill without putting on a long face when I went to see them.
+Of course, I do not mean that I could, or that it was desirable that I
+should, look cheerful when any were in great pain or mental distress.
+But in ordinary conditions of illness a cheerful countenance is as a
+message of _all's well_, which may surely be carried into a sick chamber
+by the man who believes that the heart of a loving Father is at the
+centre of things, that he is light all about the darkness, and that
+he will not only bring good out of evil at last, but will be with the
+sufferer all the time, making endurance possible, and pain tolerable.
+There are a thousand alleviations that people do not often think of,
+coming from God himself. Would you not say, for instance, that time must
+pass very slowly in pain? But have you never observed, or has no one
+ever made the remark to you, how strangely fast, even in severe pain,
+the time passes after all?
+
+"We will do all we can, will we not," I went on, "to make her as
+comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little brothers,
+that your mother may not have too much to think about now that she will
+have Connie to nurse."
+
+They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving
+me to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I
+then returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child had
+fallen asleep.
+
+My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the pain
+had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we could
+allow Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of giving
+her over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the night.
+Her chief suffering came from its being necessary that she should
+keep nearly one position on her back, because of her spine, while the
+external bruise and the swelling of the muscles were in consequence
+so painful, that it needed all that mechanical contrivance could do to
+render the position endurable. But these outward conditions were greatly
+ameliorated before many days were over.
+
+This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
+kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes
+to let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at
+unawares, either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were
+not a good thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before
+I have done my readers will not be sorry that my tale began so gloomily.
+The sickness in Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, or
+thereabouts, has no small part in the story of him who came to put all
+things under our feet. Praise be to him for evermore!
+
+It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more
+sacred heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest
+corners; but soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the gloom.
+I could see that bits of news were carried from it to the servants
+in the kitchen, in the garden, in the stable, and over the way to the
+home-farm. Even in the village, and everywhere over the parish, I was
+received more kindly, and listened to more willingly, because of the
+trouble I and my family were in; while in the house, although we had
+never been anything else than a loving family, it was easy to discover
+that we all drew more closely together in consequence of our common
+anxiety. Previous to this, it had been no unusual thing to see Wynnie
+and Dora impatient with each other; for Dora was none the less a wild,
+somewhat lawless child, that she was a profoundly affectionate one. She
+rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact--whom she called Aunt Judy,
+and with whom she was naturally a great favourite. Wynnie, on the other
+hand, was sedate, and rather severe--more severe, I must in justice say,
+with herself than with anyone else. I had sometimes wished, it is true,
+that her mother, in regard to the younger children, were more like her;
+but there I was wrong. For one of the great goods that come of having
+two parents, is that the one balances and rectifies the motions of the
+other. No one is good but God. No one holds the truth, or can hold it,
+in one and the same thought, but God. Our human life is often, at best,
+but an oscillation between the extremes which together make the truth;
+and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the pendulums of father and
+mother should differ in movement so far, that when the one is at one
+extremity of the swing, the other should be at the other, so that
+they meet only in the point of _indifference_, in the middle; that the
+predominant tendency of the one should not be the predominant tendency
+of the other. I was a very strict disciplinarian--too much so, perhaps,
+sometimes: Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was too much inclined, I
+thought, to excuse everything. I was law, she was grace. But grace often
+yielded to law, and law sometimes yielded to grace. Yet she represented
+the higher; for in the ultimate triumph of grace, in the glad
+performance of the command from love of what is commanded, the law is
+fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. I must say
+this for myself, however, that, although obedience was the one thing
+I enforced, believing it the one thing upon which all family economy
+primarily depends, yet my object always was to set my children free from
+my law as soon as possible; in a word, to help them to become, as soon
+as it might be, a law unto themselves. Then they would need no more of
+mine. Then I would go entirely over to the mother's higher side, and
+become to them, as much as in me lay, no longer law and truth, but grace
+and truth. But to return to my children--it was soon evident not only
+that Wynnie had grown more indulgent to Dora's vagaries, but that Dora
+was more submissive to Wynnie, while the younger children began to
+obey their eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their
+effervescence within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in
+the out-houses.
+
+When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
+chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a
+yet stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of
+gentle light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came
+within the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my
+lovely child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He
+cannot regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his.
+A man's child is his because God has said to him, "Take this child and
+nurse it for me." She is God's making; God's marvellous invention, to be
+tended and cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things;
+a young angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make
+her wings grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other
+children in the same light, and will not dare to set up his own against
+others of God's brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart
+of truth will thus rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling
+towards one's own; and the man who is most free from poor partisanship
+in regard to his own family, will feel the most individual tenderness
+for the lovely human creatures whom God has given into his own especial
+care and responsibility. Show me the man who is tender, reverential,
+gracious towards the children of other men, and I will show you the man
+who will love and tend his own best, to whose heart his own will flee
+for their first refuge after God, when they catch sight of the cloud in
+the wind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE SICK CHAMBER.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the
+smile with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the
+morning. Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs
+had not yet even begun to show itself.
+
+One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen
+upon her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and
+said, "Papa," with a lingering on the last syllable.
+
+"What is it, my pet?" I asked.
+
+"I am so happy!"
+
+"What makes you so happy?" I asked again.
+
+"I don't know," she answered. "I haven't thought about it yet. But
+everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa?
+I've forgotten all about how the time has been going."
+
+"It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the
+trees--just two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away
+down to the rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break
+away, but they can't."
+
+"That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get
+away, papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be
+in everybody's way.--I am afraid I shall not get well, after all," she
+added, and the light clouded on her sweet face.
+
+"Well, my darling, we are in God's hands. We shall never get tired of
+you, and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing
+me, if I were ill?"
+
+"O, papa!" And the tears began to gather in her eyes.
+
+"Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you."
+
+"I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never
+think so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was."
+
+"There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
+useless. You've got plenty to do there."
+
+"But what have I got to do? I don't feel able for anything," she said;
+and again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to
+get up and she could not.
+
+"A great deal of our work," I answered, "we do without knowing what it
+is. But I'll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe
+in God, and in everybody in this house."
+
+"I do, I do. But that is easy to do," she returned.
+
+"And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
+says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to
+do God's work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they
+cannot believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad
+pride in it: it may be because they think that there is little or no
+honour to be got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again
+accept it with half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however
+easy any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought
+about it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work,
+generally take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done
+any more than in yesterday. The Holy Present!--I think I must make one
+more sermon about it--although you, Connie," I said, meaning it for a
+little joke, "do think that I have said too much about it already."
+
+"Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to
+you as I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was
+impertinent."
+
+"You silly darling!" I said. "A judgment! God be angry with you for
+that! Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think
+God has no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much
+more likely. You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something
+to do."
+
+"Lying in bed and doing nothing!"
+
+"Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will."
+
+"If I could but feel that I was doing his will!"
+
+"When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it."
+
+"I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my
+back is getting so bad."
+
+"I've tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you
+the rest another time," I said, rising.
+
+"No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now."
+
+"Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won't be long. In
+the time of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant
+children to do something for him in that way, poor people were told to
+bring, not a bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get,
+but a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw
+the poet says, 'Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.' God wanted
+to teach people to offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you
+cannot offer yourself in great things done for your fellow-men, which
+was the way Jesus did. But you must remember that the two young pigeons
+of the poor were just as acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the
+rich. Therefore you must say to God something like this:--'O heavenly
+Father, I have nothing to offer thee but my patience. I will bear thy
+will, and so offer my will a burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as
+useless as thou pleasest.' Depend upon it, my darling, in the midst of
+all the science about the world and its ways, and all the ignorance of
+God and his greatness, the man or woman who can thus say, _Thy will be
+done_, with the true heart of giving up is nearer the secret of things
+than the geologist and theologian. And now, my darling, be quiet in
+God's name."
+
+She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
+sent Dora to sit with her.
+
+In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
+parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
+Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them
+in her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we
+must cram her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the
+commonwealth sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving
+messages in return. I might call her the brain of the house; but I have
+used similes enough for a while.
+
+After I had done talking, she said--
+
+"And you have been to the school too, papa?"
+
+"Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as
+ours the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I
+had made a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home."
+
+"I heard of that, papa. You won't let any of the little ones go to
+school on the Sunday."
+
+"No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
+necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
+something direct for the little ones."
+
+"And you'll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know,
+papa--just before Sprite threw me."
+
+"As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again."
+
+"O, you must begin before that, please.--You could spare time to read a
+little to me, couldn't you?" she said doubtfully, as if she feared she
+was asking too much.
+
+"Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once."
+
+It was in part the result of this wish of my child's that it became the
+custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable
+for any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her,
+but I used to take something to read to her every now and then, and
+always after our early tea on Sundays.
+
+What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find
+out and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good!
+Such a centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and
+imaginations! It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ
+for the centre of humanity.
+
+In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
+following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed
+at some of these assemblies in my child's room, in the hope that it may
+give my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God
+has so made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must
+be more or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the
+gift of setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.
+
+I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am
+about to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say,
+to teach them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will
+share in the delight it will give me to write about what I love most.
+
+As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class
+began. I was sitting by Constance's bed. The fire was burning brightly,
+and the twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected
+back from the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was
+no light in the room but that of the fire.
+
+Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night
+it was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she.
+Her heart seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world
+around her. To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and
+news of poetic interest too. "What is it like?" she would often say,
+without any more definite shaping of the question. This same evening she
+said:
+
+"What is it like, papa?"
+
+"It is growing dark," I answered, "as you can see. It is a still
+evening, and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as
+still as if they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere
+if the wind were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were
+of cast iron. A gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were
+something upon its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars
+are coming out one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake
+soon. A strange thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The
+life of owlets, and mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars," I
+said, with no very categorical arrangement, "and dreams, and flowers
+that don't go to sleep like the rest, but send out their scent all night
+long. Only those are gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of
+the earth in such a frost as this."
+
+"Don't you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on
+the world, or went farther away from it for a while?"
+
+"Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie."
+
+"Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
+been describing to me, isn't like God at all--is it?"
+
+"No, it is not. I see what you mean now."
+
+"It is just as if he had gone away and said, 'Now you shall see what you
+can do without me.'
+
+"Something like that. But do you know that English people--at least I
+think so--enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon
+the whole than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is
+not enough to satisfy God's goodness that he should give us all things
+richly to enjoy, but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he
+gives them. He has to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of
+the gift. He has to make us able to take the gift and make it our own,
+as well as to give us the gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the
+full, that is, the divine, meaning of giving, without it. He has to give
+us to the gift as well as give the gift to us. Now for this, a break,
+an interruption is good, is invaluable, for then we begin to think about
+the thing, and do something in the matter ourselves. The wonder of God's
+teaching is that, in great part, he makes us not merely learn, but teach
+ourselves, and that is far grander than if he only made our minds as he
+makes our bodies."
+
+"I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
+wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the
+world out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I
+could go about in it just as I liked."
+
+"It wouldn't do that, though, you know, if you hadn't had the other
+first. The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my
+news."
+
+"I see that, papa."
+
+"Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
+saying?"
+
+"I don't know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes
+into my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about
+Milton's blindness."
+
+"Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
+wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that
+he might be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the
+point--given him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread
+of a single day, only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys;
+then placed him at Cromwell's side, in the midst of the tumultuous
+movement of public affairs, into which the late student entered with all
+his heart and soul; and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine
+darkness over him, sent him into a chamber far more retired than that in
+which he laboured at Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing
+darkling. The blackness about him was just the great canvas which God
+gave him to cover with forms of light and music. Deep wells of memory
+burst upwards from below; the windows of heaven were opened from above;
+from both rushed the deluge of song which flooded his soul, and which he
+has poured out in a great river to us."
+
+"It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn't it, papa?"
+
+"Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
+sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
+undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with _such_ blindness
+as Milton's?"
+
+"Those that do not care about his poetry, papa," answered Constance,
+with a deprecatory smile.
+
+"Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
+God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can't love one
+you know nothing about."
+
+"I have tried to read him a little."
+
+"Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you
+had never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But
+you and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of
+what we had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?"
+
+"Not the least, papa. You don't mind what I said about Milton?"
+
+"Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much
+if you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him
+was more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him."
+
+"O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him."
+
+"There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of
+appreciating him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen.
+You think of him as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry
+things. Now he is not dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry
+things. You have a figure before you in your fancy, which is dry, and
+which you call Milton. But it is no more Milton than your dull-faced
+Dutch doll, which you called after her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But
+here comes your mamma; and I haven't said what I wanted to say yet."
+
+"But surely, husband, you can say it all the same," said my wife. "I
+will go away if you can't."
+
+"I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me.
+I was trying to show Connie--"
+
+"You did show me, papa."
+
+"Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
+again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right."
+
+Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
+Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
+
+"And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
+history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
+him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too
+much revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long
+enough. They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as
+soon as he said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that
+he had not come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over
+again after their own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own
+worldly notions of grandeur and command, that they could not receive
+into their souls the gift of God present before their eyes. Therefore he
+was taken away, that his Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily
+presence, might come into them--that they might receive the gift of God
+into their innermost being. After he had gone out of their sight, and
+they might look all around and down in the grave and up in the air, and
+not see him anywhere--when they thought they had lost him, he began to
+come to them again from the other side--from the inside. They found that
+the image of him which his presence with them had printed in light upon
+their souls, began to revive in the dark of his absence; and not that
+only, but that in looking at it without the overwhelming of his bodily
+presence, lines and forms and meanings began to dawn out of it which
+they had never seen before. And his words came back to them, no longer
+as they had received them, but as he meant them. The spirit of Christ
+filling their hearts and giving them new power, made them remember, by
+making them able to understand, all that he had said to them. They were
+then always saying to each other, 'You remember how;' whereas before,
+they had been always staring at each other with astonishment and
+something very near incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after
+he had gone away, he was really nearer to them than he had been before.
+The meaning of anything is more than its visible presence. There is a
+soul in everything, and that soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the
+world and all its beauty has come nearer to you, my dear, just because
+you are separated from it for a time."
+
+"Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself
+now and then. That is another good of being ill."
+
+"You don't mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?" said my
+wife, smiling at her daughter's pleasure.
+
+"O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say
+by this time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to
+yourself."
+
+"Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful
+of sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I
+should be sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say
+by this time next year."
+
+"Well, papa, I wish I could be sure of knowing more next year."
+
+"Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of
+learning is very different in the two cases."
+
+"But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should
+not know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him--as
+he came to the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long
+ago."
+
+"As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
+thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
+understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer
+that if he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I
+believe we should be further off it."
+
+"Do you think, then," said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if
+I were the prophet of great evil, "that we shall never, never, never see
+him?"
+
+"That is _quite_ another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my hopes
+by day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to me
+the one thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for;
+but I think it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as
+ever we are capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I
+think, what is meant by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a
+consequence of his spirit in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us.
+The pure in heart shall see God. The seeing of him will be the sign that
+we are like him, for only by being like him can we see him as he is. All
+the time that he was with them, the disciples never saw him as he was.
+You must understand a man before you can see and read his face aright;
+and as the disciples did not understand our Lord's heart, they could
+neither see nor read his face aright. But when we shall be fit to look
+that man in the face, God only knows."
+
+"Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know
+him better than the disciples? I don't mean, of course, better than they
+knew him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew
+him while he was still with them?"
+
+"Certainly I do, my dear."
+
+"O, papa! Is it possible? Why don't we all, then?"
+
+"Because we won't take the trouble; that is the reason."
+
+"O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living--worth being
+ill for. But how? how? Can't you help me? Mayn't one human being help
+another?"
+
+"It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever
+wants to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey--that is
+simply, do what Jesus says."
+
+There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing.
+And the tears stood in; my wife's eyes--tears of gladness to hear her
+daughter's sobs.
+
+"I will try, papa," Constance said at last. "But you _will_ help me?"
+
+"That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying
+to tell you what I have heard and learned about him--heard and learned
+of the Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time when
+he was born;--but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to bear
+to-night."
+
+"No, no, papa. Do go on."
+
+"No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
+truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday--you
+have plenty to think about till then--I will talk to you about the baby
+Jesus; and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that time,
+besides what I have got to say now."
+
+"But," said my wife, "don't you think, Connie, this is too good to keep
+all to ourselves? Don't you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?"
+
+"Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too."
+
+"I fear they are rather young yet," I said. "Perhaps it might do them
+harm."
+
+"It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow," said Ethelwyn,
+smiling.
+
+"How do you mean, my dear?"
+
+"Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you.
+Besides, you always say such things to children as delight grown people,
+though they could never get them out of you."
+
+It was a wife's speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
+
+"Well," I said, "I don't mind them coming in, but I don't promise to say
+anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
+wish it."
+
+"Certainly," answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
+church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took
+care to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might
+be quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my
+Bible in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a
+glorious fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on
+the rug before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the
+further side of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she
+thought another might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner,
+leaving the space between the fire and my chair open that I might see
+and share the glow.
+
+"The wind is very high, papa," said Constance, as I seated myself beside
+her.
+
+"Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has
+blown harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?"
+
+"I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
+shakes the windows with a great rush as if it _would_ get into the house
+and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
+grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us
+with fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very
+jaws of danger."
+
+"Why, you are quite poetic, Connie," said Wynnie.
+
+"Don't laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I'm an invalid, and I can't bear to be
+laughed at," returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more
+than a quarter crying.
+
+Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her
+laugh outright, and then sat down again.
+
+"But tell me, Connie," I said, "why you are _afraid_ you enjoy hearing
+the wind about the house."
+
+"Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it."
+
+"Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
+forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out
+in the wind."
+
+"But if we thought like that, papa," said Wynnie, "shouldn't we come to
+feel that their sufferings were none of our business?"
+
+"If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we,
+it will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie."
+
+"Of course, I could not think that," she returned.
+
+"Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God's name,
+think hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing
+in his kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God
+intended that there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If
+he did not intend it--for similar reasons to those for which he allows
+all sorts of evils--then there is nothing between but that we should
+sell everything that we have and give it away to the poor."
+
+"Then why don't we?" said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.
+
+"Because that is not God's way, and we should do no end of harm by so
+doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
+who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We
+are not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object--not
+to save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more
+danger than God meant for them."
+
+"It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa," said Wynnie.
+
+"Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
+kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the
+one thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course
+everyone ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading
+of in the papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without
+making the least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her
+labour for the coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death,
+would hug his own selfishness on hearing my words, and say, 'All right,
+parson! Every man for himself! I made my own money, and they may make
+theirs!' _You_ know that is not exactly the way I should think or act
+with regard to my neighbour. But if it were only that I have seen such
+noble characters cast in the mould of poverty, I should be compelled
+to regard poverty as one of God's powers in the world for raising the
+children of the kingdom, and to believe that it was not because it could
+not be helped that our Lord said, 'The poor ye have always with you.'
+But what I wanted to say was, that there can be no reason why Connie
+should not enjoy what God has given her, although he has not thought
+fit to give as much to everybody; and above all, that we shall not help
+those right whom God gives us to help, if we do not believe that God is
+caring for every one of them as much as he is caring for every one of
+us. There was once a baby born in a stable, because his poor mother
+could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay I can hardly think.
+They must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in the stall, for we
+know the baby's cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken them? or would
+they not have been more _comfortable_, if that was the main thing,
+somewhere else? Ah! if the disciples, who were being born about the same
+time of fisher-fathers and cottage-mothers, to get ready for him to call
+and teach by the time he should be thirty years of age--if they had only
+been old enough, and had known that he was coming--would they not have
+got everything ready for him? They would have clubbed their little
+savings together, and worked day and night, and some rich women would
+have helped them, and they would have dressed the baby in fine linen,
+and got him the richest room their money would get, and they would have
+made the gold that the wise men brought into a crown for his little
+head, and would have burnt the frankincense before him. And so our
+little manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No more the
+stable-born Saviour--no more the poor Son of God born for us all, as
+strong, as noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor!
+And we should not have learned that God does not care for money; that
+if he does not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or
+that he is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent
+his own son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of
+a little village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need
+not suppose because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison
+for it next day, that God does not care for him."
+
+"But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?"
+
+"That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished
+by this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
+mother's love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
+first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie
+not in these external things at all--that the poorest little one, born
+in the meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God's own and
+God's care as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all
+about him. Had Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been
+more worshipped than ever. See how so many that count themselves good
+Christians honour possession and family and social rank, and I doubt
+hardly get rid of them when they are all swept away from them. The
+furthest most of such reach is to count Jesus an exception, and
+therefore not despise him. See how, even in the services of the church,
+as they call them, they will accumulate gorgeousness and cost. Had I
+my way, though I will never seek to rouse men's thoughts about such
+external things, I would never have any vessel used in the eucharist but
+wooden platters and wooden cups."
+
+"But are we not to serve him with our best?" said my wife.
+
+"Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
+being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of
+his revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth
+in homely fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that
+enforces and commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on
+the other side from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent
+houses for God's poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of
+silver and gold and precious stones--stealing from the significance of
+the _content_ by the meretricious grandeur of the _continent_. I would
+send all the church-plate to fight the devil with his own weapons in our
+overcrowded cities, and in our villages where the husbandmen are housed
+like swine, by giving them room to be clean and decent air from heaven
+to breathe. When the people find the clergy thus in earnest, they will
+follow them fast enough, and the money will come in like salt and oil
+upon the sacrifice. I would there were a few of our dignitaries that
+could think grandly about things, even as Jesus thought--even as God
+thought when he sent him. There are many of them willing to stand any
+amount of persecution about trifles: the same enthusiasm directed by
+high thoughts about the kingdom of heaven as within men and not around
+them, would redeem a vast region from that indifference which comes of
+judging the gospel of God by the church of Christ with its phylacteries
+and hems."
+
+"There is one thing," said Wynnie, after a pause, "that I have often
+thought about--why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he
+could not do anything for so long."
+
+"First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
+necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary
+for me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I
+would say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long?
+Does a baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the
+mother lifts up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her
+knee? Is it nothing that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost
+all the hearts around? Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to
+do with the saving of the world--the saving of it from selfishness, and
+folly, and greed. And for Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign
+of love in the earth? How could he do better than begin from babyhood?
+He had to lay hold of the heart of the world. How could he do better
+than begin with his mother's--the best one in it. Through his mother's
+love first, he grew into the world. It was first by the door of all the
+holy relations of the family that he entered the human world, laying
+hold of mother, father, brothers, sisters, all his friends; then by the
+door of labour, for he took his share of his father's work; then, when
+he was thirty years of age, by the door of teaching; by kind deeds, and
+sufferings, and through all by obedience unto the death. You must not
+think little of the grand thirty years wherein he got ready for
+the chief work to follow. You must not think that while he was thus
+preparing for his public ministrations, he was not all the time saving
+the world even by that which he was in the midst of it, ever laying hold
+of it more and more. These were things not so easy to tell. And you must
+remember that our records are very scanty. It is a small biography we
+have of a man who became--to say nothing more--the Man of the world--the
+Son of Man. No doubt it is enough, or God would have told us more; but
+surely we are not to suppose that there was nothing significant, nothing
+of saving power in that which we are not told.--Charlie, wouldn't you
+have liked to see the little baby Jesus?"
+
+"Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
+eyes."
+
+"That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for
+he has painted him playing with a white rabbit,--not such a pretty one
+as yours."
+
+"I would have carried him about all day," said Dora, "as little Henny
+Parsons does her baby-brother."
+
+"Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?" asked
+Harry.
+
+"No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he
+carried about his brothers and sisters that came after him."
+
+"Wouldn't he take care of them, just!" said Charlie.
+
+"I wish I had been one of them," said Constance.
+
+"You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that
+he can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom."
+
+Then we sung a child's hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
+the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her
+with Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
+
+About midnight my wife and I awoke together--at least neither knew which
+waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with lulls
+between its charges.
+
+"There's a child crying!" said my wife, starting up.
+
+I sat up too, and listened.
+
+"There is some creature," I granted.
+
+"It is an infant," insisted my wife. "It can't be either of the boys."
+
+I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried
+on some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so.
+We seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in
+the lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night
+was pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house
+till I came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it,
+but not so clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the
+direction of the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only
+a few yards around me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through
+every chink, and threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my
+side before I knew she was coming.
+
+"My dear!" I said, "it is not fit for you to be out."
+
+"It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow," she said. "Do listen."
+
+It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
+Ethelwyn's bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though
+she was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
+
+Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner
+of the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much
+nearer to it. Searching and searching we went.
+
+"There it is!" Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the
+lantern fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at
+it. It gave another pitiful wail--the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up
+in a dirty, ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it
+had been a parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house,
+and I followed, much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and
+fall. I could hardly get up with her, so eager was she to save the
+child. She darted up to her own room, where the fire was not yet out.
+
+"Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
+there--you can empty them in the sink: you won't know where to find
+anything. There will be plenty in the boiler."
+
+By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child's
+covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before
+the fire. The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and
+motionless. We had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as
+if I had been a nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
+
+"Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child."
+
+"You made me throw away the cold water," I said, laughing.
+
+"There's some in the bottles," she returned. "Make haste."
+
+I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
+Ethelwyn.
+
+"The child will be dead," she cried, "before we get it in the water."
+
+She had its rags off in a moment--there was very little to remove after
+the shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully neglected!
+It was a girl--not more than a few weeks old, we agreed. Her little
+heart was still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made, apparently
+healthy infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we were not
+disappointed. She began to move her little legs and arms with short,
+convulsive motions.
+
+"Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?" asked my wife, with no great
+compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
+were beyond the average in development.
+
+"I think I do," I answered.
+
+"Could you tell which was this night's milk, now?"
+
+"There will be less cream on it," I answered.
+
+"Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I've got some sugar
+here. I wish we had a bottle."
+
+I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
+lying on her lap clean and dry--a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went on
+talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
+specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got
+her to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing
+fell fast asleep.
+
+Ethelwyn's nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know
+where her baby's clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a
+wardrobe in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on.
+I could not understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be
+indued with little chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not
+know what all, requiring a world of nice care, and a hundred turnings
+to and fro, now on its little stomach, now on its back, now sitting up,
+now lying down, when it would have slept just as well, and I venture to
+think much more comfortably, if laid in blankets and well covered over.
+But I had never ventured to interfere with any of my own children,
+devoutly believing up to this moment, though in a dim unquestioning way,
+that there must be some hidden feminine wisdom in the whole process;
+and now that I had begun to question it, I found that my opportunity
+had long gone by, if I had ever had one. And after all there may be some
+reason for it, though I confess I do strongly suspect that all these
+matters are so wonderfully complicated in order that the girl left in
+the woman may have her heart's content of playing with her doll; just
+as the woman hid in the girl expends no end of lovely affection upon
+the dull stupidity of wooden cheeks and a body of sawdust. But it was a
+delight to my heart to see how Ethelwyn could not be satisfied without
+treating the foundling in precisely the same fashion as one of her own.
+And if this was a necessary preparation for what, should follow, I would
+be the very last to complain of it.
+
+We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal
+mother, now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in
+my Ethelwyn's bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it
+would have been very painful to me had she shown it possible for her
+to treat the baby otherwise, especially after what we had been talking
+about that same evening.
+
+So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about
+it but ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the
+going and coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good
+laugh over the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
+
+"Pray for the poor thing, Harry," she sobbed, "before you come to bed."
+
+I knelt down, and said:
+
+"O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to
+us as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee.
+Take thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to
+order our ways towards her."
+
+Then I said to Ethelwyn,
+
+"We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
+sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
+sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother.
+Mind you go to sleep."
+
+"I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night," she returned.
+
+I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I
+had a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell
+or not. We slept soundly--God's baby and all.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MY DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
+beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those
+who are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when
+they can associate it with something else with which they are familiar.
+Such do not care to see that the thing with which they associate it
+may be as mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys
+marvel, it cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is
+just as wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
+
+In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
+clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
+another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an
+old man's prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked
+about for a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams
+there is an immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow
+stone lying a few yards from me. I wondered how it could have come
+there, for there were no mountains or rocks near: the field was part of
+a level country. Carelessly, I sat down upon it astride, and watched the
+setting of the sun. Somehow I fancied that his light was more sorrowful
+than the light of the setting sun should be, and I began to feel very
+heavy at the heart. No sooner had the last brilliant spark of his
+light vanished, than I felt the stone under me begin to move. With the
+inactivity of a dreamer, however, I did not care to rise, but wondered
+only what would come next. My seat, after several strange tumbling
+motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and then I found that
+I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse--a skeleton horse almost, only he
+had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain, as if his joints
+were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the direction in
+which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, I never thought of
+dismounting. I was going on to meet what might come. Slowly, feebly,
+trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and as he went his
+joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little faster. All at
+once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that we were on
+the borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me, and the
+moor grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always
+recovering himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise
+no more, but as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface
+became a little smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted
+till he reached a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell
+into what was plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were
+low and covered with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the
+place of mounds. Gravestones lay in every position except the level or
+the upright, and broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My
+horse bore me into the midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he
+had risen, he lay down again. Once more I was astride of a long narrow
+stone. And now I found that it was an ancient gravestone which I knew
+well in a certain Sussex churchyard, the top of it carved into the rough
+resemblance of a human skeleton--that of a man, tradition said, who had
+been killed by a serpent that came out of a bottomless pool in the next
+field. How long I sat there I do not know; but at last I saw the faint
+gray light of morning begin to appear in front of me. The horse of death
+had carried me eastward. The dawn grew over the top of a hill that here
+rose against the horizon. But it was a wild dreary dawn--a blot of gray
+first, which then stretched into long lines of dreary yellow and gray,
+looking more like a blasted and withered sunset than a fresh sunrise.
+And well it suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if churchyard
+I ought to call it where no church was to be seen--only a vast hideous
+square of graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the flat
+stone of which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat
+with my eyes fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the
+middle closed, then widened again as the two halves of the stone were
+lifted up, and flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door.
+From the grave rose a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as
+if he had just come from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung
+the stones apart, and as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me,
+they remained outspread from the action for a moment, as if blessing the
+sleeping people. Then he came towards me with the same smile, and took
+my hand. I rose, and he led me away over another broken wall towards the
+hill that lay before us. And as we went the sun came nearer, the pale
+yellow bars flushed into orange and rosy red, till at length the edges
+of the clouds were swept with an agony of golden light, which even my
+dreamy eyes could not endure, and I awoke weeping for joy.
+
+This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:
+
+"What is the matter, husband?"
+
+So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.
+
+"It was this little darling that set you dreaming so," she said, and
+turning, put the baby in my arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE NEW BABY.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
+household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie
+was heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
+
+"Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn't it jolly?"
+
+"Where did she get it?" cried Harry in return.
+
+"In the parsley-bed, I suppose," answered Charlie, and was nearer right
+than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had
+no doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
+
+But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of
+the family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their
+curiosity being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was
+exemplified that confusion of the intellectual being which is produced
+by the witness of incontestable truth to a thing incredible--in which
+case the probability always is, that the incredibility results from
+something in the mind of the hearer falsely associated with and
+disturbing the true perception of the thing to which witness is borne.
+
+Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
+parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had.
+And seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met
+with from everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked
+questions. And that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good
+gift of God. Ask what questions you will, but when you see that the gift
+is a good one, make sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for
+you to ask questions afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the
+more ready you will be to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
+
+The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
+began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
+frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was
+not Ethelwyn's baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
+
+"Of course, you'll give information to the police," said, I am sorry to
+say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to
+be a magistrate as well.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure."
+
+"Wouldn't it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
+easy to suspect it?" I asked. "And just think what it would be to give
+the baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her
+mother. But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don't say I would
+refuse her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had
+once abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don't
+want the parents."
+
+"But you don't want the child."
+
+"How do you know that?" I returned--rather rudely, I am afraid, for I
+am easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless--about children
+especially.
+
+"O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one
+has a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people."
+
+"That is just what I thought I was doing," I answered; but he went on
+without heeding my reply--
+
+"We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not
+so fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother's keeper."
+
+"And my sister's too," I answered. "And if the question lies between
+keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that,
+I venture to choose for myself."
+
+"She ought to go to the workhouse," said the magistrate--a friendly,
+good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and
+departed.
+
+
+This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame.
+Which? _I_ say the latter.
+
+Some of Ethelwyn's friends were no less positive about her duty in the
+affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one
+of them--Miss Bowdler.
+
+"But, my dear Mrs. Walton," she was saying, "you'll be having all the
+tramps in England leaving their babies at your door."
+
+"The better for the babies," interposed I, laughing.
+
+"But you don't think of your wife, Mr. Walton."
+
+"Don't I? I thought I did," I returned dryly.
+
+"Depend upon it, you'll repent it."
+
+"I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad."
+
+"Ah! but, really! it's not a thing to be made game of."
+
+"Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
+house."
+
+"What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough."
+
+"As well as I choose to know--certainly," I answered.
+
+This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for
+which she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating
+belief in the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head
+can be counted as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a
+half-comic, half-anxious look, and said:
+
+"But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
+we couldn't go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
+stepping on a baby on the door-step."
+
+"You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, 'If God
+should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?' He who sent us
+this one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come.
+All that we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of
+doing right. But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that
+wandering mothers have not even the attachment of animals to their
+offspring. There are not so many that are willing to part with babies as
+all that would come to. If you believe that God sent this one, that is
+enough for the present. If he should send another, we should know by
+that that we had to take it in."
+
+My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
+well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
+babies--that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and nurses
+and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for what
+I believed than what I saw--that was all I could pretend to discover.
+But even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to allow
+before three months were over that little Theodora--for we turned the
+name of my youngest daughter upside down for her--"was a proper child."
+To none, however, did she seem to bring so much delight as to our dear
+Constance. Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I found the
+sleepy, useless little thing lying beside her on the bed, and her
+staring at it with such loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but it
+came at last to be called Connie's Dora, or Miss Connie's baby, all over
+the house, and nothing pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this did
+her old nurse take quite kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as
+an interloper, who had no right to the tenderness which was lavished
+upon her. But she had no sooner given in than the baby began to grow
+dear to her as well as to the rest. In fact, the house was ere long
+full of nurses. The staff included everyone but myself, who only
+occasionally, at the entreaty of some one or other of the younger ones,
+took her in my arms.
+
+But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude,
+all centering round the question in what manner the child was to
+be brought up. Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as
+Ethelwyn constantly reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I
+could not discover the principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can
+tell how soon a principle in such a case will begin, even unconsciously,
+to operate; and the danger was that the moment when it ought to begin to
+operate would be long past before the principle was discovered, except
+I did what I could now to find it out. I had again and again to remind
+myself that there was no cause for anxiety; for that I might certainly
+claim the enlightenment which all who want to do right are sure to
+receive; but still I continued uneasy just from feeling a vacancy where
+a principle ought to have been.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress--in the
+recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
+remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
+regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
+interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how
+I came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to
+keep before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
+remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
+from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might
+be turned aside would not trouble me.
+
+We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
+Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east,
+and the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the
+children to rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and,
+believing that the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the
+faculties for aiding the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them
+questions as to what they thought he might have said or done in ordinary
+family occurrences, thus giving a reality in their minds to this part
+of his history, and trying to rouse in them a habit of referring their
+conduct to the standard of his. If we do not thus employ our imagination
+on sacred things, his example can be of no use to us except in exactly
+corresponding circumstances--and when can such occur from one end to
+another of our lives? The very effort to think how he would have done,
+is a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and, even if the conclusion
+arrived at should not be correct from lack of sufficient knowledge of
+his character and principles, it will be better than any that can be
+arrived at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking of such questions
+gave me good opportunity, through the answers they returned, of seeing
+what their notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus of discovering
+how to help the dawn of the light in their growing minds. Nor let anyone
+fear that such employment of the divine gift of imagination will lead to
+foolish vagaries and useless inventions; while the object is to discover
+the right way--the truth--there is little danger of that. Besides, there
+I was to help hereby in the actual training of their imaginations to
+truth and wisdom. To aid in this, I told them some of the stories that
+were circulated about him in the early centuries of the church, but
+which the church has rejected as of no authority; and I showed them how
+some of them could not be true, because they were so unlike those words
+and actions which we had the best of reasons for receiving as true; and
+how one or two of them might be true--though, considering the company in
+which we found them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them.
+And such wise things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous
+how children can reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances
+are sometimes entirely concordant with the results arrived at through
+years of thought by the earnest mind--results which no mind would ever
+arrive at save by virtue of the child-like in it.
+
+Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus
+in the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by
+dwelling a little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from
+group to group of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem
+and asking every fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy,
+till at length they were in great trouble when they could not find him
+even in Jerusalem. Then came the delight of his mother when she did find
+him at last, and his answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered
+over the simple story, my children had put many questions to me about
+Jesus being a boy, and not seeming to know things which, if he was God,
+he must have known, they thought. To some of these I had just to reply
+that I did not understand myself, and therefore could not teach them; to
+others, that I could explain them, but that they were not yet, some of
+them, old enough to receive and understand my explanation; while others
+I did my best to answer as simply as I could. But at this point we
+arrived at a question put by Wynnie, to answer which aright I considered
+of the greatest importance. Wynnie said:
+
+"That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled
+me, papa."
+
+"What is, my dear?" I said; for although I thought I knew well enough
+what she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for
+her own sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand
+the difficulty much better if she presented it herself.
+
+"I mean that he spoke to his mother--"
+
+"Why don't you say _mamma_, Wynnie?" said Charlie. "She was his own
+mamma, wasn't she, papa?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; but don't you know that the shoemaker's children down in
+the village always call their mamma _mother_?"
+
+"Yes; but they are shoemaker's children."
+
+"Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
+carpenter. He called his mamma, _mother_. But, Charlie, _mother_ is the
+more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. _Lady_ is a
+very pretty word; but _woman_ is a very beautiful word. Just so with
+_mamma_ and _mother_. _Mamma_ is pretty, but _mother_ is beautiful."
+
+"Why don't we always say _mother_ then?"
+
+"Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for
+Sundays--that is, for the more solemn times of life. We don't want it to
+get common to us with too much use. We may think it as much as we
+like; thinking does not spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and
+especially beautiful words. Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was
+saying."
+
+"I was saying, papa, that I can't help feeling as if--I know it can't be
+true--but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he said
+that to her."
+
+I looked at the page and read the words, "How is it that ye sought me?
+wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And I sat silent
+for a while.
+
+"Why don't you speak, papa?" said Harry.
+
+"I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry," I said. "Long after I was
+your age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as
+they now trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me
+so lovely that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact
+that they troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall.
+I can hardly see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me.
+And why is that? Simply because I understand them now, and I did not
+understand them then. I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof;
+now I hear them as uttered with a tone of loving surprise. But really I
+cannot feel sure what it was that I did not like. And I am confident
+it is so with a great many things that we reject. We reject them simply
+because we do not understand them. Therefore, indeed, we cannot with
+truth be said to reject them at all. It is some false appearance that
+we reject. Some of the grandest things in the whole realm of truth
+look repellent to us, and we turn away from them, simply because we are
+not--to use a familiar phrase--we are not up to them. They appear to us,
+therefore, to be what they are not. Instruction sounds to the proud
+man like reproof; illumination comes on the vain man like scorn; the
+manifestation of a higher condition of motive and action than his own,
+falls on the self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is consciousness
+and conscience working together that produce this impression; the result
+is from the man himself, not from the higher source. From the truth
+comes the power, but the shape it assumes to the man is from the man
+himself."
+
+"You are quite beyond me now, papa," said Wynnie.
+
+"Well, my dear," I answered, "I will return to the words of the boy
+Jesus, instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you
+what they mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about
+them is all and altogether an illusion."
+
+"There is one thing first," said Connie, "that I want to understand. You
+said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
+surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything."
+
+"He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
+even _he_ did not know one thing--only the Father knew it."
+
+"But how could that be if he was God?"
+
+"My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I
+should understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have
+been perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in
+the Father. And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect
+knowledge was not necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute
+obedience, utter holiness. There is a great tendency in our sinful
+natures to put knowledge and power on a level with goodness. It was one
+of the lessons of our Lord's life that they are not so; that the one
+grand thing in humanity is faith in God; that the highest in God is his
+truth, his goodness, his rightness. But if Jesus was a real man, and no
+mere appearance of a man, is it any wonder that, with a heart full to
+the brim of the love of God, he should be for a moment surprised that
+his mother, whom he loved so dearly, the best human being he knew,
+should not have taken it as a matter of course that if he was not with
+her, he must be doing something his Father wanted him to do? For this is
+just what his answer means. To turn it into the ordinary speech of our
+day, it is just this: 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you know that I
+must of course be doing something my Father had given me to do?' Just
+think of the quiet sweetness of confidence in this. And think what a
+life his must have been up to that twelfth year of his, that such an
+expostulation with his mother was justified. It must have had reference
+to a good many things that had passed before then, which ought to have
+been sufficient to make Mary conclude that her missing boy must be about
+God's business somewhere. If her heart had been as full of God and God's
+business as his, she would not have been in the least uneasy about
+him. And here is the lesson of his whole life: it was all his Father's
+business. The boy's mind and hands were full of it. The man's mind and
+hands were full of it. And the risen conqueror was full of it still. For
+the Father's business is everything, and includes all work that is worth
+doing. We may say in a full grand sense, that there is nothing but the
+Father and his business."
+
+"But we have so many things to do that are not his business," said
+Wynnie, with a sigh of oppression.
+
+"Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
+not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want
+of spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things--the
+will of God in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so
+irksome to us. Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination
+and deep thought, to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with
+some slight remark, thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is
+because he is commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so
+little of the divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise
+the spiritual meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will
+of God, in the things required of us, though they are full of it. But
+if we do them we shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see
+what is in them. The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in
+its heart."
+
+"I wish he would tell me something to do," said Charlie. "Wouldn't I do
+it!"
+
+I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure
+was at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.
+
+"But look here, Wynnie; listen to this," I said, "'And he went down with
+them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.' Was that not
+doing his Father's business too? Was it not doing the business of his
+Father in heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he
+knew that his days would not be long in that land? Did not his whole
+teaching, his whole doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the
+Father and surely it was doing his Father's business then to obey his
+parents--to serve them, to be subject to them. It is true that the
+business God gives a man to do may be said to be the peculiar walk in
+life into which he is led, but that is only as distinguishing it from
+another man's peculiar business. God gives us all our business, and the
+business which is common to humanity is more peculiarly God's business
+than that which is one man's and not another's--because it lies nearer
+the root, and is essential. It does not matter whether a man is a farmer
+or a physician, but it greatly matters whether he is a good son, a good
+husband, and so on. O my children!" I said, "if the world could but be
+brought to believe--the world did I say?--if the best men in the world
+could only see, as God sees it, that service is in itself the noblest
+exercise of human powers, if they could see that God is the hardest
+worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do the most service,
+surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church. Menial offices,
+for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that contempt
+which shows that there is no true recognition of the fact that the same
+principle runs through the highest duty and the lowest--that the
+lowest work which God gives a man to do must be in its nature noble, as
+certainly noble as the highest. This would destroy condescension, which
+is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the higher, as it would destroy
+insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower. He who recognised the
+dignity of his own lower office, would thereby recognise the superiority
+of the higher office, and would be the last either to envy or degrade
+it. He would see in it his own--only higher, only better, and revere it.
+But I am afraid I have wearied you, my children."
+
+"O, no, papa!" said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
+nothing.
+
+"I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this
+subject: it has such a hold of my heart and mind!--Now, Charlie, my boy,
+go to bed."
+
+But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did
+not want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the
+corners of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did
+not move to go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the
+black frost still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to
+him. When he was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting
+out of temper, and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to
+behold; and to cure him of this, I used to make him carry a little
+mirror about his neck, that the means might be always at hand of
+showing himself to him: it was a sort of artificial conscience which,
+by enabling him to see the picture of his own condition, which the
+face always is, was not unfrequently operative in rousing his real
+conscience, and making him ashamed of himself. But now the mirror I
+wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in the light of which the
+present would show what it was.
+
+"Charlie," I said, "a little while ago you were wishing that God would
+give you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once,
+without even thinking about it."
+
+"How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?" said Charlie, with
+something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at
+once because there was some sense along with the impudence.
+
+"I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it
+pleasantly. Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as
+that--I wish I had the little mirror to show it to you--when his mother
+told him it was time to go to bed?"
+
+And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in
+him, because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have
+compelled him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law.
+But now that his own better self, the self enlightened of the light that
+lighteneth every man that cometh into the world, was working, time might
+well be afforded it to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the
+others. In the space of not more than one minute, he rose and came to
+me, looking both good and ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me,
+saying, "Goodnight, papa." I bade him good-night, and kissed him more
+tenderly than usual, that he might know that it was all right between
+us. I required no formal apology, no begging of my pardon, as some
+parents think right. It seemed enough to me that his heart was turned.
+It is a terrible thing to run the risk of changing humility into
+humiliation. Humiliation is one of the proudest conditions in the human
+world. When he felt that it would be a relief to say more explicitly,
+"Father, I have sinned," then let him say it; but not till then. To
+compel manifestation is one surest way to check feeling.
+
+My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy's unwillingness to go
+to bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them
+are guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important
+than this, only those things happen to be _their_ wish at the moment,
+and not Charlie's, and so gain their superiority.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THEODORA'S DOOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
+most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
+practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise
+you more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be
+allowed to take very much his own way--go his own pace, I should have
+said. I am afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this
+chapter.
+
+On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
+severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last
+severe frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth.
+The sun was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up
+in the air hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field
+close by a hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass.
+A short distance from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost.
+There alone was there any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of
+the loveliest tenderest green. I will not say the figure was such an
+exact resemblance as a photograph would have been; still it was an
+indubitable likeness. It appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch
+not a knot of the upper side of the tree at least was left unrepresented
+in shining and glittering whiteness upon the green grass. It was very
+pretty, and, I confess, at first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating
+on the phenomenon, till at length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost
+had been all over the field in the morning. The sun had been shining for
+a time, and had melted the frost away, except where he could only cast
+a shadow. As he rose and rose, the shadow of the tree had shortened and
+come nearer and nearer to its original, growing more and more like as
+it came nearer, while the frost kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew
+its protection. When the shadow extended only to a little way from
+the tree, the clouds came and covered the sun, and there were no more
+shadows, only one great one of the clouds. Then the frost shone out in
+the shape of the vanished shadow. It lay at a little distance from the
+tree, because the tree having been only partially lopped, some great
+stumps of boughs held it up from the ground, and thus, when the sun was
+low, his light had shone a little way through beneath, as well as over
+the trunk.
+
+My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to "moralise this
+spectacle with a thousand similes." I only tell it him as a very pretty
+phenomenon. But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in
+nature--I mean new in regard to my knowledge, of course--always made me
+happy; and I was full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the
+thoughts it had brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom
+should I see in the next field, coming along the footpath, but the
+lady who had made herself so disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was
+rather a discord in my feeling at that moment; perhaps it would have
+been so at any moment. But I prepared myself to meet her in the strength
+of the good humour which nature had just bestowed upon me. For I fear
+the failing will go with me to the grave that I am very ready to be
+annoyed, even to the loss of my temper, at the urgings of ignoble
+prudence.
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Bowdler," I said.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Walton," she returned "I am afraid you thought me
+impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my
+way."
+
+"As such I take it," I answered with a smile.
+
+She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
+accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she
+went on to repeat the offence by way of justification.
+
+"It was all for Mrs. Walton's sake. You ought to consider her, Mr.
+Walton. She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is
+likely to be an invalid all her days--too much to take the trouble of a
+beggar's brat as well."
+
+"Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?" I
+asked.
+
+"O dear, no!" she answered. "She is far too good to complain of
+anything. That's just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr.
+Walton."
+
+"Then I beg you won't speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora."
+
+"O dear me! no. Not at all. I don't speak disrespectfully of her."
+
+"Even amongst the class of which she comes, 'a beggar's brat' would be
+regarded as bad language."
+
+"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Mr. Walton! If you _will_ take offence--"
+
+"I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
+warning against offending the little ones."
+
+Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure--let me hope in conviction
+of sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two Sundays.
+Then she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after this,
+and I believe my wife was not sorry.
+
+Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my
+wife's trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell;
+but, before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something
+like the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When
+I went into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her
+about it; but, indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got
+home. I found her in Connie's room as I had expected. Now although we
+were never in the habit of making mysteries of things in which there was
+no mystery, and talked openly before our children, and the more openly
+the older they grew, yet there were times when we wanted to have our
+talks quite alone, especially when we had not made up our minds about
+something. So I asked Ethelwyn to walk out with me.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't just this moment, husband," she answered. She was in
+the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
+without saying it aloud. "I can't just this moment, for there is no one
+at liberty to stay with Connie."
+
+"O, never mind me, mamma," said Connie cheerfully. "Theodora will take
+care of me," and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her
+side fast asleep.
+
+"There!" I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what
+I meant. "I will tell you afterwards," I said, laughing. "Come along,
+Ethel."
+
+"You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything,
+or your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won't want me long,
+will you, husband?"
+
+"I'm not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell."
+
+Susan was the old nurse.
+
+Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her
+across to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not
+shone out, and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it
+had gladdened mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his
+direct rays, had melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do
+with other shadows, without the mind knowing any more than the grass how
+the shadow departed. There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about
+it before you knew what I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see
+it only through my eyes and words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler,
+and what she had said. Ethel was very angry at her impertinence in
+speaking so to me. That was a wife's feeling, you know, and perhaps
+excusable in the first impression of the thing.
+
+"She seems to think," she said, "that she was sent into the world to
+keep other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her
+down, as the maids say."
+
+"O, I don't think there's much harm in her," I returned, which was easy
+generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. "Indeed, I am not sure
+that we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I
+met her that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with
+Theodora."
+
+"Still troubling yourself about that, husband?"
+
+"The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it
+should be met," I answered. "Our measures must begin sometime, and when,
+who can tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never
+begin at all."
+
+"Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at
+present--belonging to humanity rather than the individual, as you would
+say--consisting chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe,
+varied with lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our
+measures than our heads, aren't they?"
+
+"Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there's no fear about your heart. I'm
+not quite so sure about your head."
+
+"Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn't matter, does
+it?"
+
+"I don't know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for
+no chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger
+than its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head
+nearly, though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business.
+There's one thing we have both made up our minds about--that there is
+to be no concealment with the child. God's fact must be known by her. It
+would be cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to
+come upon her with a terrible shock some day. She must know from
+the first, by hearing it talked of--not by solemn and private
+communication--that she came out of the shrubbery. That's settled, is it
+not?"
+
+"Certainly. I see that to be the right way," responded Ethelwyn.
+
+"Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?"
+
+"We are bound to do as well for her as for our own."
+
+"Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the
+facts being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?"
+
+"I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
+done."
+
+"That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
+that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding
+or neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it
+would be a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good
+for herself, knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it
+not be kinder to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for
+her to relieve the gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our
+sakes--I hope we are above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude
+which will be given for it, and which is so often far beyond the worth
+of the thing done--"
+
+  "Alas! the gratitude of men
+  Hath oftener left me mourning,"
+
+said Ethel.
+
+"Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!"
+
+"Yes, thank you, I do."
+
+"But we must wish for gratitude for others' sake, though we may be
+willing to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as
+painful as Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes
+us think how much more we _might_ have done; how lovely a thing it is to
+give in return for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman
+must be in whom a trifle awakes so much emotion."
+
+"Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
+doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
+which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they
+can't show the difference in their thanks."
+
+"And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet,
+the same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But
+to return to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be
+recognisant of whence she came, and how she had been brought thence,
+might it not be better for her? Would it not be building on the truth?
+Would she not be happier for it?"
+
+
+"You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
+something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair
+to my place in the conference," said Ethel. "In fact, you think you
+are trying to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not
+say _wheedle_, me into something. It's a good thing you have the
+harmlessness of the dove, Harry, for you've got the other thing."
+
+"Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that
+what you call the cunning of the serpent--"
+
+"Wisdom, Harry, not cunning."
+
+"Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But
+here it is--bare and defenceless, only--let me warn you--with a whole
+battery behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to
+Constance."
+
+My wife laughed.
+
+"Well," she said, "for one who says so much about not thinking of the
+morrow, you do look rather far forward."
+
+"Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right."
+
+"But just think: the child is about three months old."
+
+"Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her.
+I don't say that she is to commence her duties at once."
+
+"But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that."
+
+"The training won't be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my
+love, that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it.
+And Turner does not give much hope."
+
+"O Harry, Harry, don't say so! I can't bear it. To think of the darling
+child lying like that all her life!"
+
+"It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven't
+you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child's nature since her
+accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying
+there such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her
+bonnets inside instead of outside her head."
+
+"Yes, but she needn't have been like that. Wynnie never will."
+
+"Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
+But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid
+that had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to
+toddle after something to fetch it for her."
+
+"Won't it be like making a slave of her?"
+
+"Won't it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack
+of service is the ruin of humanity."
+
+"But we can't train her then like one of our own."
+
+"Why not? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?"
+
+"Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and
+then make a servant of her."
+
+"You forget that the service would be part of her training from the
+first; and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her
+that she was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent
+her to take care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have
+perfect service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of
+service as the essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not
+education that unfits for service: it is the want of it."
+
+"Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served
+me worse than the rest."
+
+"Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they
+had been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than
+nine-tenths of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember
+that they had never been taught service--the highest accomplishment of
+all. To that everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there.
+But for service of this high sort, the education must begin with the
+beginning of the dawn of will. How often have you wished that you had
+servants who would believe in you, and serve you with the same truth
+with which you regarded them! The servants born in a man's house in
+the old times were more like his children than his servants. Here is a
+chance for you, as it were of a servant born in your own house. Connie
+loves the child: the child will love Connie, and find her delight in
+serving her like a little cherub. Not one of the maids to whom you have
+referred had ever been taught to think service other than an unavoidable
+necessity, the end of life being to serve yourself, not to serve others;
+and hence most of them would escape from it by any marriage almost that
+they had a chance of making. I don't say all servants are like that; but
+I do think that most of them are. I know very well that most mistresses
+are as much to blame for this result as the servants are; but we are not
+talking about them. Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are forced
+to do it--a most degrading condition to be in. But they would not be in
+any better condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises
+work is in as bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them
+free is to get them to regard service not only as their duty, but as
+therefore honourable, and besides and beyond this, in its own
+nature divine. In America, the very name of servant is repudiated as
+inconsistent with human dignity. There is _no_ dignity but of service.
+How different the whole notion of training is now from what it was in
+the middle ages! Service was honourable then. No doubt we have made
+progress as a whole, but in some things we have degenerated sadly.
+The first thing taught then was how to serve. No man could rise to the
+honour of knighthood without service. A nobleman's son even had to wait
+on his father, or to go into the family of another nobleman, and wait
+upon him as a page, standing behind his chair at dinner. This was an
+honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was a necessary step to
+higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To be set free from
+service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field; to be a squire
+to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his armour, to see
+that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap strong; to
+ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one attacked him,
+to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable because it was
+harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And what was this
+higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this knighthood consist?
+The very word means simply _service_. And for what was the knight thus
+waited upon by his squire? That he might be free to do as he pleased?
+No, but that he might be free to be the servant of all. By being a
+squire first, the servant of one, he learned to rise to the higher rank,
+that of servant of all. His horse was tended, this armour observed,
+his sword and spear and shield held to his hand, that he might have no
+trouble looking after himself, but might be free, strong, unwearied, to
+shoot like an arrow to the rescue of any and every one who needed his
+ready aid. There was a grand heart of Christianity in that old chivalry,
+notwithstanding all its abuses which must be no more laid to its charge
+than the burning of Jews and heretics to Christianity. It was the lack
+of it, not the presence of it that occasioned the abuses that coexisted
+with it. Train our Theodora as a holy child-servant, and there will be
+no need to restrain any impulse of wise affection from pouring itself
+forth upon her. My firm belief is that we should then love and honour
+her far more than if we made her just like one of our own."
+
+"But what if she should turn out utterly unfit for it?"
+
+"Ah! then would come an obstacle. But it will not come till that
+discovery is made."
+
+"But if we should be going wrong all the time?"
+
+"Now, there comes the kind of care that never troubles me, and which I
+so strongly object to. It won't hurt her anyhow. And we ought always
+to act upon the ideal; it is the only safe ground of action. When that
+which contradicts and resists, and would ruin our ideal, opposes us,
+then we must take measures; but not till then can we take measures, or
+know what measures it may be necessary to take. But the ideal itself
+is the only thing worth striving after. Remember what our Lord himself
+said: 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven
+is perfect.'"
+
+"Well, I will think about it, Harry. There is time enough."
+
+"Plenty. No time only not to think about it. The more you think about it
+the better. If a thing be a good thing, the more you think about it
+the better it will look; for its real nature will go on coming out and
+showing itself. I cannot doubt that you will soon see how good it is."
+
+We then went home. It was only two days after that my wife said to me--
+
+"I am more than reconciled to your plan, husband. It seems to me
+delightful."
+
+When we reentered Connie's room, we found that her baby had just waked,
+and she had managed to get one arm under her, and was trying to comfort
+her, for she was crying.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A SPRING CHAPTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+More especially now in my old age, I find myself "to a lingering motion
+bound." I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
+following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons.
+This may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a
+spring chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why I
+have called my story "The Seaboard Parish."
+
+I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things:
+one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was
+a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so
+could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
+about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
+and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
+have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
+seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
+justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my
+greed as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves
+and all, with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my
+little woman--a present from the outside world which she loved so much.
+And as I went there dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror
+in which, if I could find it, she would see it still more lovely than
+in a direct looking at itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay
+in fragments in the drawers and cabinets of my memory. And before I got
+home I had found all the pieces and put them together; and then it was
+a lovely little sonnet which a friend of mine had written and allowed me
+to see many years before. I was in the way of writing verses myself; but
+I should have been proud to have written this one. I never could have
+done that. Yet, as far as I knew, it had never seen the light through
+the windows of print. It was with some difficulty that I got it all
+right; but I thought I had succeeded very nearly, if not absolutely, and
+I said it over and over, till I was sure I should not spoil its music or
+its meaning by halting in the delivery of it.
+
+"Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you," I said.
+
+She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
+been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
+eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her
+two hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said
+what I have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to
+her. Here it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend
+had found the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he told me that
+there was a tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:
+
+  "I know not what among the grass thou art,
+    Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
+    Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
+  To send thine image through them to the heart;
+  But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
+    And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
+    Thou growest up within me from that hour,
+  And through the snow I with the spring depart.
+
+  I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
+    Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
+  There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
+    But thou a life immortal dost begin,
+  Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
+  Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!"
+
+"Will you say it again, papa?" said Connie; "I do not quite understand
+it."
+
+"I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
+write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
+have brought."
+
+"Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I
+may read it quite easily."
+
+I promised, and repeated the poem.
+
+"I understand it a little better," she said; "but the meaning is just
+like the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give
+it me in writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what
+else you have brought me."
+
+I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the
+plant and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only
+expressed satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat
+down with us.
+
+"I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning," I said. "She feels the
+loss of her mother very much, poor thing."
+
+"How old was she, papa?" asked Connie.
+
+"She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself,
+and her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old
+lady, you know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat on
+the tablecloth. 'Mr. Shafton,' she said, 'was one of the old school; he
+would never have done that. I don't know what the world is coming to.'"
+
+My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
+manners.
+
+"What did you say, papa?" they asked.
+
+"I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. 'O, it's all right now,
+my dear,' she said, 'when you've taken it up again. But I like good
+manners, though I live in a cottage now.'"
+
+"Had she seen better days, then?" asked Wynnie.
+
+"She was a farmer's daughter, and a farmer's widow. I suppose the chief
+difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead
+of a good-sized farmhouse."
+
+"But what is the story you have to tell us?"
+
+"I'm coming to that when you have done with your questions."
+
+"We have done, papa."
+
+"After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the
+cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good
+deal of her mother's sense of dignity about her,--but I want your mother
+to hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie."
+
+"O, do make haste, Wynnie," said Connie.
+
+When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
+
+"Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
+rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, 'Here it
+is, at last!' She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother's, and
+was holding it in one hand, while with the other she drew from the
+pocket--what do you think?"
+
+Various guesses were hazarded.
+
+"No, no--nothing like it. I know you _could_ never guess. Therefore it
+would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe. The
+old woman of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was
+wearing at the very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an
+iron horseshoe."
+
+"What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?"
+
+"That she proceeded at once to do. 'Do you remember, sir,' she said,
+'how that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?' 'I
+do remember having observed it there,' I answered; 'for once when I
+took notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, "I hope you are not
+afraid of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?" And she looked a little offended, and
+assured me to the contrary.' 'Well,' her daughter went on, 'about three
+months ago, I missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it.
+And here it is! I can hardly think she can have carried it about all
+that time without me finding it out, but I don't know. Here it is,
+anyhow. Perhaps when she felt death drawing nearer, she took it from
+somewhere where she had hidden it, and put it in her pocket. If I had
+found it in time, I would have put it in her coffin.' 'But why?' I
+asked. 'Do tell me the story about it, if you know it.' 'I know it quite
+well, for she told me all about it once. It is the shoe of a favourite
+mare of my father's--one he used to ride when he went courting my
+mother. My grandfather did not like to have a young man coming about the
+house, and so he came after the old folks were gone to bed. But he had a
+long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had to go over some stones
+to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread straw there, for it
+was under the window of my grandfather's room, that her shoes mightn't
+make a noise and wake him. And that's one of the shoes,' she said,
+holding it up to me. 'When the mare died, my mother begged my father for
+the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often stood and patted
+her neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.'"
+
+"But it was very naughty of her, wasn't it," said Wynnie, "to do that
+without her father's knowledge?"
+
+"I don't say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
+ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might
+find that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn't
+a father, we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a
+child. The father's part has to come first, and teach the child's part.
+Now, if I might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably
+it was much softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning,
+and unreasonable man--such that it scarcely ever came into the
+daughter's head that she had anything else to do with regard to him than
+beware of the consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The
+whole thing, I allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to
+blame, and far more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more
+likely from the high character of the old dame, and the romantic way in
+which she clung to the memory of the courtship. A true heart only does
+not grow old. And I have, therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a
+happy one. Besides, I daresay it was very much the custom of the country
+where they were, and that makes some difference."
+
+"Well, I'm sure, papa, you wouldn't like any of us to go and do like
+that," said Wynnie.
+
+"Assuredly not, my dear," I answered, laughing. "Nor have I any fear of
+it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things
+to trouble me if you did?"
+
+"If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an _if_"
+said Wynnie.
+
+"It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to
+you as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all
+possible for you to do such a thing."
+
+"It's too dreadful to talk about, papa," said Wynnie; and the subject
+was dropped.
+
+She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
+danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
+whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
+wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If
+the perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked
+into her own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that
+she was the doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if
+she had been deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of
+the house. This came of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general
+dissatisfaction with herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith
+in the divine sympathy, or sufficient confidence of final purification.
+She never spared herself; and if she was a little severe on the younger
+ones sometimes, no one was yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all
+their hard crusts for them, always give them the best and take the worst
+for herself. If there was any part in the dish that she was helping that
+she thought nobody would like, she invariably assigned it to her own
+share. It looked like a determined self-mortification sometimes; but
+that was not it. She did not care for her own comfort enough to feel it
+any mortification; though I observed that when her mother or I helped
+her to anything nice, she ate it with as much relish as the youngest
+of the party. And her sweet smile was always ready to meet the least
+kindness that was offered her. Her obedience was perfect, and had been
+so for very many years, as far as we could see. Indeed, not since she
+was the merest child had there been any contest between us. Now, of
+course, there was no demand of obedience: she was simply the best
+earthly friend that her father and mother had. It often caused me some
+passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as well as her devotion
+to her home, might cause her great suffering some day; but when those
+thoughts came, I just gave her to God to take care of. Her mother
+sometimes said to her that she would make an excellent wife for a poor
+man. She would brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a compliment
+of the best sort. And she did not forget it, as the sequel will show.
+She would choose to sit with one candle lit when there were two on the
+table, wasting her eyes to save the candles. "Which will you have for
+dinner to-day, papa, roast beef or boiled?" she asked me once, when her
+mother was too unwell to attend to the housekeeping. And when I replied
+that I would have whichever she liked best--"The boiled beef lasts
+longest, I think," she said. Yet she was not only as liberal and kind as
+any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer, and perhaps more important
+for the final formation of a character, carefully just to everyone with
+whom she had any dealings. Her sense of law was very strong. Law with
+her was something absolute, and not to be questioned. In her childhood
+there was one lady to whom for years she showed a decided aversion,
+and we could not understand it, for it was the most inoffensive Miss
+Boulderstone. When she was nearly grown up, one of us happening to
+allude to the fact, she volunteered an explanation. Miss Boulderstone
+had happened to call one day when Wynnie, then between three and four
+was in disgrace--_in the corner_, in fact. Miss Boulderstone interceded
+for her; and this was the whole front of her offending.
+
+"I _was_ so angry!" she said. "'As if my papa did not know best when I
+ought to come out of the corner!' I said to myself. And I couldn't bear
+her for ever so long after that."
+
+Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
+favourite before she died. She left Wynnie--for she and her brother
+were the last of their race--a death's-head watch, which had been in
+the family she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen
+Elizabeth's time. I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as
+well repaired as its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since,
+though not with the greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an
+old death's-head, the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears it
+to this day, and wouldn't part with it for the best watch in the world.
+
+I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more
+able to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as
+yet my story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I
+will fulfil them, and I shall be content.
+
+Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old couple,
+for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they were not
+born old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a decaying family
+that had not left the land on which they were born for a great many
+generations--though the old people had not, of what the French call
+sentiments, one between them, they were yet capable of a stronger and,
+I had almost said, more romantic attachment, than many couples who have
+married from love; for the lady's sole trouble in dying was what her
+brother _would_ do without her; and from the day of her death, he grew
+more and more dull and seemingly stupid. Nothing gave him any pleasure
+but having Wynnie to dinner with him. I knew that it must be very dull
+for her, but she went often, and I never heard her complain of it,
+though she certainly did look fagged--not _bored_, observe, but
+fagged--showing that she had been exerting herself to meet the
+difficulties of the situation. When the good man died, we found that he
+had left all his money in my hands, in trust for the poor of the parish,
+to be applied in any way I thought best. This involved me in much
+perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to make money useful to
+the poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.
+
+My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property
+my wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private
+fortune, and the income of several years (not my income from the church,
+it may be as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the encumbrances.
+But even then there remained much to be done, if I would be the good
+steward that was not to be ashamed at his Lord's coming. First of all
+there were many cottages to be built for the labourers on the estate. If
+the farmers would not, or could not, help, I must do it; for to provide
+decent dwellings for them, was clearly one of the divine conditions in
+the righteous tenure of property, whatever the human might be; for it
+was not for myself alone, or for myself chiefly, that this property was
+given to me; it was for those who lived upon it. Therefore I laid out
+what money I could, not only in getting all the land clearly in its
+right relation to its owner, but in doing the best I could for those
+attached to it who could not help themselves. And when I hint to my
+reader that I had some conscience in paying my curate, though, as they
+had no children, they did not require so much as I should otherwise have
+felt compelled to give them, he will easily see that as my family grew
+up I could not have so much to give away of my own as I should have
+liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr. Boulderstone was the more
+acceptable to me.
+
+One word more ere I finish this chapter.--I should not like my friends
+to think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because I
+have made no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the
+first time, because of my daughter's illness. It was much easier to give
+them now than when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty of room
+in the old hall. But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar gathering
+there every Easter.
+
+Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not
+mentioned him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie's
+accident. The fact was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him,
+a long holiday. Martha had had several disappointing illnesses, and her
+general health had suffered so much in consequence that there was even
+some fear of her lungs, and a winter in the south of France had
+been strongly recommended. Upon this I came in with more than a
+recommendation, and insisted that they should go. They had started in
+the beginning of October, and had not returned up to the time of which I
+am now about to write--somewhere in the beginning of the month of April.
+But my sister was now almost quite well, and I was not sorry to think
+that I should soon have a little more leisure for such small literary
+pursuits as I delighted in--to my own enrichment, and consequently to
+the good of my parishioners and friends.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+AN IMPORTANT LETTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was, then, in the beginning of April that I received one morning an
+epistle from an old college friend of mine, with whom I had renewed my
+acquaintance of late, through the pleasure which he was kind enough to
+say he had derived from reading a little book of mine upon the relation
+of the mind of St. Paul to the gospel story. His name was Shepherd--a
+good name for a clergyman. In his case both Christian name and
+patronymic might remind him well of his duty. David Shepherd ought to be
+a good clergyman.
+
+As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find
+my wife.
+
+"Here is Shepherd," I said, "with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to
+give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as
+he understands I have a curate as good as myself--that is what the old
+fellow says--it might not suit me to take my family to his place for
+the summer. He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all
+good. His house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I
+should not like to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the
+letter for yourself, and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back
+so fresh and active that it will be no oppression to him to take the
+whole of the duty here. I will run and ask Turner whether it would be
+safe to move Connie, and whether the sea-air would be good for her."
+
+"One would think you were only twenty, husband--you make up your mind so
+quickly, and are in such a hurry."
+
+The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many
+years since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once
+more, in its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing
+between us and America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited
+me so that my wife's reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary
+to bring me to my usually quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old
+grannie's pardon, and set off to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her
+to read and ponder Shepherd's letter.
+
+"What do you think, Turner?" I said, and told him the case. He looked
+rather grave.
+
+"When would you think of going?" he asked.
+
+"About the beginning of June."
+
+"Nearly two months," he said, thoughtfully. "And Miss Connie was not the
+worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?"
+
+"The better, I do think."
+
+"Has she had any increase of pain since?"
+
+"None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that."
+
+He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.
+
+"It is a long journey."
+
+"She could make it by easy stages."
+
+"It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such
+a thorough change in every way--if only it could be managed without
+fatigue and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between
+this and that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner
+you get her out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit
+for that yet."
+
+"A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose."
+
+"Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid's
+instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than
+those of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to
+anything involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must
+not judge that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two
+patients, who considered themselves _bedlars_, as you will find the
+common people in the part you are going to, call them--bedridden, that
+is. One of them I persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although
+her sense of inability was anything but feigned, and she will be a
+sufferer to the end of her days, yet she goes about the house without
+much inconvenience, and I suspect is not only physically but morally the
+better for it. The other would not consent to try, and I believe lies
+there still."
+
+"The will has more to do with most things than people generally
+suppose," I said. "Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we
+resolve to make the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?"
+
+"It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot
+tell beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a
+respecter of persons, you know."
+
+I returned to my wife. She was in Connie's room.
+
+"Well, my dear," I said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of what?" she asked.
+
+"Why, of Shepherd's letter, of course," I answered.
+
+"I've been ordering the dinner since, Harry."
+
+"The dinner!" I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife
+was only teasing me. "What's the dinner to the Atlantic?"
+
+"What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?" said Connie, from whose
+roguish eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and
+that _she_ was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.
+
+"The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters
+of the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the
+Universal Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject."
+
+"O papa!" laughed Connie; "you know what I mean."
+
+"Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!"
+
+"But do you really mean, papa," she said "that you will take me to the
+Atlantic?"
+
+"If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as
+possible."
+
+The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan,
+which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.
+
+"My darling! You have hurt yourself!"
+
+"O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But
+I soon found that I hadn't any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to
+you!"
+
+"On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One
+always knows where to find you."
+
+She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very
+bewitching whole.
+
+"But," I went on, "I mean to try whether my dolly won't bear moving. One
+thing is clear, I can't go without it. Do you think you could be got on
+the sofa to-day without hurting you?"
+
+"I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet.
+Mamma, do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner."
+
+When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the
+conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the
+lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips,
+and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face
+showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had
+had to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.
+
+"I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn," she said.
+
+"What a sharp sight you must have, child!"
+
+"I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before
+me."
+
+I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are.
+Neither did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.
+
+"But," she went on, "I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets
+in my feet."
+
+"You don't say so!" I exclaimed.
+
+She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only
+making a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.
+
+"Yes. Isn't it a wonderful fact?" she said.
+
+"It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank
+God for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning
+to recover a little. But we mustn't make too much of it, lest I should
+be mistaken," I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too
+much.
+
+But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in
+her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both silent,--
+
+"O papa!" she said, "to think of ever walking out with you again, and
+feeling the wind on my face! I can hardly believe it possible."
+
+"It is so mild, I think you might have half that pleasure at once," I
+answered..
+
+And I opened the window, let the spring air gently move her hair for one
+moment, and then shut it again. Connie breathed deep, and said after a
+little pause,--
+
+"I had no idea how delightful it was. To think that I have been in the
+way of breathing that every moment for so many years and never thought
+about it!"
+
+"It is not always just like that in this climate. But I ought not to
+have made that remark when I wanted to make this other: that I suspect
+we shall find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists
+chiefly in the closing of the human eyes; that at least far more of it
+than people think remains about us still, only we are so filled with
+foolish desires and evil cares, that we cannot see or hear, cannot even
+smell or taste the pleasant things round about us. We have need to
+pray in regard to the right receiving of the things of the senses even,
+'Lord, open thou our hearts to understand thy word;' for each of these
+things is as certainly a word of God as Jesus is the Word of God. He
+has made nothing in vain. All is for our teaching. Shall I tell you what
+such a breath of fresh air makes me think of?"
+
+"It comes to me," said Connie, "like forgiveness when I was a little
+girl and was naughty. I used to feel just like that."
+
+"It is the same kind of thing I feel," I said--"as if life from the
+Spirit of God were coming into my soul: I think of the wind that bloweth
+where it listeth. Wind and spirit are the same word in the Greek; and
+the Latin word _spirit_ comes even nearer to what we are saying, for
+it is the wind as _breathed_. And now, Connie, I will tell you--and
+you will see how I am growing able to talk to you like quite an old
+friend--what put me in such a delight with Mr. Shepherd's letter and so
+exposed me to be teased by mamma and you. As I read it, there rose up
+before me a vision of one sight of the sea which I had when I was a
+young man, long before I saw your mamma. I had gone out for a walk along
+some high downs. But I ought to tell you that I had been working rather
+hard at Cambridge, and the life seemed to be all gone out of me. Though
+my holidays had come, they did not feel quite like holidays--not as
+holidays used to feel when I was a boy. Even when walking along those
+downs with the scents of sixteen grasses or so in my brain, like a
+melody with the odour of the earth for the accompaniment upon which it
+floated, and with just enough of wind to stir them up and set them in
+motion, I could not feel at all. I remembered something of what I had
+used to feel in such places, but instead of believing in that, I doubted
+now whether it had not been all a trick that I played myself--a fancied
+pleasure only. I was walking along, then, with the sea behind me. It was
+a warm, cloudy day--I had had no sunshine since I came out. All at once
+I turned--I don't know why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had
+seen it last, not all gray. It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all
+over with drops, pools, and lakes of light, of all shades of depth, from
+a light shimmer of tremulous gray, through a half light that turned the
+prevailing lead colour into translucent green that seemed to grow out
+of its depths--through this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and
+deepening till my very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity
+of its molten silver. There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks
+in the clouds over the sea, through which, the air being filled with
+vapour, I could see the long lines of the sun-rays descending on the
+waters like rain--so like a rain of light that the water seemed to plash
+up in light under their fall. I questioned the past no more; the present
+seized upon me, and I knew that the past was true, and that nature was
+more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I could grasp. It was a
+lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the God that made the
+glory and my soul."
+
+While I spoke Connie's tears had been flowing quietly.
+
+"And mamma and I were making fun while you were seeing such things as
+those!" she said pitifully.
+
+"You didn't hurt them one bit, my darling--neither mamma nor you. If I
+had been the least cross about it, as I should have been when I was as
+young as at the time of which I was thinking, that would have ruined the
+vision entirely. But your merriment only made me enjoy it more. And, my
+Connie, I hope you will see the Atlantic before long; and if one vision
+should come as brilliant as that, we shall be fortunate indeed, if we
+went all the way to the west to see that only."
+
+"O papa! I dare hardly think of it--it is too delightful. But do you
+think we shall really go?"
+
+"I do. Here comes your mamma--I am going to say to Shepherd, my dear,
+that I will take his parish in hand, and if I cannot, after all, go
+myself, will find some one, so that he need be in no anxiety from the
+uncertainty which must hang over our movements even till the experiment
+itself is made."
+
+"Very well, husband. I am quite satisfied."
+
+And as I watched Connie, I saw that hope and expectation did much to
+prepare her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONNIE'S DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Turner, being a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to
+invent, and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of
+litter, which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our
+own carriage for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without
+disturbing her, and placed in a similar manner in the railway carriage.
+He had laid Connie repeatedly upon it before he was satisfied that
+the arrangement of the springs, &c., was successful. But at length she
+declared that it was perfect, and that she would not mind being carried
+across the Arabian desert on a camel's back with that under her.
+
+As the season advanced, she continued to improve. I shall never forget
+the first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an
+infant coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of
+a child of eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received
+the new impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much
+for her at first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a
+wild thing on a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more
+than she could bear. After she was laid down she closed her eyes, and
+the smile that flickered about her mouth was of a sort that harmonised
+entirely with the two great tears that crept softly out from under her
+eyelids, and sank, rather than ran, down her cheeks. She lay so that she
+faced a rich tract of gently receding upland, plentifully wooded to the
+horizon's edge, and through the wood peeped the white and red houses of
+a little hamlet, with the square tower of its church just rising above
+the trees. A kind of frame was made to the whole picture by the nearer
+trees of our own woods, through an opening in which, evidently made or
+left for its sake, the distant prospect was visible. It was a morning in
+early summer, when the leaves were not quite full-grown but almost, and
+their green was shining and pure as the blue of the sky, when the air
+had no touch of bitterness or of lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and
+yet filled the lungs with the reviving as of a draught of cold water. We
+had fastened the carriage umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade
+her perfectly without obscuring her prospect; and behind this we all
+crept, leaving her to come to herself without being looked at, for
+emotion is a shy and sacred thing and should be tenderly hidden by those
+who are near. The bees kept very _beesy_ all about us. To see one huge
+fellow, as big as three ordinary ones with pieces of red and yellow
+about him, as if he were the beadle of all bee-dom, and overgrown in
+consequence--to see him, I say, down in a little tuft of white clover,
+rolling about in it, hardly able to move for fatness, yet bumming away
+as if his business was to express the delight of the whole creation--was
+a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so light that they seemed
+to tumble up into the air, and get down again with difficulty. They
+bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of purpose. "If I could
+but see once, for an hour, into the mind of a butterfly," I thought, "it
+would be to me worth all the natural history I ever read. If I could but
+see why he changes his mind so often and so suddenly--what he saw about
+that flower to make him seek it--then why, on a nearer approach, he
+should decline further acquaintance with it, and go rocking away through
+the air, to do the same fifty times over again--it would give me an
+insight into all animal and vegetable life that ages of study could not
+bring me up to." I was thinking all this behind my daughter's umbrella,
+while a lark, whose body had melted quite away in the heavenly spaces,
+was scattering bright beads of ringing melody straight down upon our
+heads; while a cock was crowing like a clarion from the home-farm, as if
+in defiance of the golden glitter of his silent brother on the roof of
+the stable; while a little stream that scampered down the same slope
+as the lawn lay upon, from a well in the stable-yard, mingled its
+sweet undertone of contentment with the jubilation of the lark and the
+business-like hum of the bees; and while white clouds floated in the
+majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the heavens. The air was so
+full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the crude substance that
+God might take to make babies' souls of--only the very simile smells of
+materialism, and therefore I do not like it.
+
+"Papa," said Connie at length, and I was beside her in a moment. Her
+face looked almost glorified with delight: there was a hush of that awe
+upon it which is perhaps one of the deepest kinds of delight. She put
+out her thin white hand, took hold of a button of my coat, drew me down
+towards her, and said in a whisper:
+
+"Don't you think God is here, papa?"
+
+"Yes, I do, my darling," I answered.
+
+"Doesn't _he_ enjoy this?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. He wouldn't make us enjoy it if he did not enjoy it. It
+would be to deceive us to make us glad and blessed, while our Father
+did not care about it, or how it came to us. At least it would amount to
+making us no longer his children."
+
+"I am so glad you think so. I do. And I shall enjoy it so much more
+now."
+
+She could hardly finish her sentence, but burst out sobbing so that I
+was afraid she would hurt herself. I saw, however, that it was best to
+leave her to quiet herself, and motioned to the rest to keep back and
+let her recover as she could. The emotion passed off in a summer shower,
+and when I went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet
+landscape after the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle
+game of her own past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry--merrier,
+notwithstanding her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.
+
+"Look at that comical sparrow," she said. "Look how he cocks his head
+first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is
+he bumptious, or what?"
+
+"I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys;
+and I suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
+understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either."
+
+"Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to
+school," said Connie.
+
+"It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the
+sparrows," I answered. "Look at them now," I exclaimed, as a little
+crowd of them suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment
+before, and exploded in objurgation and general unintelligible
+excitement. After some obscure fluttering of wings and pecking, they all
+vanished except two, which walked about in a dignified manner, trying
+apparently to seem quite unconscious each of the other's presence.
+
+"I think it was a political meeting of some sort," said Connie, laughing
+merrily.
+
+"Well, they have this advantage over us," I answered, "that they get
+through their business whatever it may be, with considerably greater
+expedition than we get through ours."
+
+A short silence followed, during which Connie lay contemplating
+everything.
+
+"What do you think we girls are like, then, papa?" she asked at length.
+"Don't say you don't know, now."
+
+"I ought to know something more about you than I do about schoolboys.
+And I think I do know a little about girls--not much though. They puzzle
+me a good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie."
+
+"You can't help doing that, papa," interrupted Connie, adding with her
+old roguishness, "You mustn't pass yourself off for very knowing for
+that. By the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried."
+
+"I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie."
+
+A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us,
+passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:
+
+"I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at
+best--a creature you can't understand."
+
+"On the contrary, Connie, I think I understand you almost as well as
+mamma. But there isn't so much to understand yet, you know, as there
+will be."
+
+Her merriment returned.
+
+"Tell me what girls are like, then, or I shall sulk all day because you
+say there isn't so much in me as in mamma."
+
+"Well, I think, if the boys are like sparrows, the girls are like
+swallows. Did you ever watch them before rain, Connie, skimming about
+over the lawn as if it were water, low towards its surface, but never
+alighting? You never see them grubbing after worms. Nothing less than
+things with wings like themselves will satisfy them. They will be
+obliged to the earth only for a little mud to build themselves nests
+with. For the rest, they live in the air, and on the creatures of the
+air. And then, when they fancy the air begins to be uncivil, sending
+little shoots of cold through their warm feathers, they vanish. They
+won't stand it. They're off to a warmer climate, and you never know till
+you find they're not there any more. There, Connie!"
+
+"I don't know, papa, whether you are making game of us or not. If you
+are not, then I wish all you say were quite true of us. If you are then
+I think it is not quite like you to be satirical."
+
+"I am no believer in satire, Connie. And I didn't mean any. The swallows
+are lovely creatures, and there would be no harm if the girls were
+a little steadier than the swallows. Further satire than that I am
+innocent of."
+
+"I don't mind that much, papa. Only I'm steady enough, and no thanks to
+me for it," she added with a sigh.
+
+"Connie," I said, "it's all for the sake of your wings that you're kept
+in your nest."
+
+She did not stay out long this first day, for the life the air gave
+her soon tired her weak body. But the next morning she was brighter and
+better, and longing to get up and go out again. When she was once more
+laid on her couch on the lawn, in the midst of the world of light and
+busy-ness, in which the light was the busiest of all, she said to me:
+
+"Papa, I had such a strange dream last night: shall I tell it you?"
+
+"If you please, my dear. I am very fond of dreams that have any sense
+in them--or even of any that have good nonsense in them. I woke
+this morning, saying to myself, 'Dante, the poet, must have been a
+respectable man, for he was permitted by the council of Florence to
+carry the Nicene Creed and the Multiplication Table in his coat of
+arms.' Now tell me your dream."
+
+Connie laughed. All the household tried to make Connie laugh, and
+generally succeeded. It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was
+sure to be recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in
+making Connie laugh.
+
+"Mine wasn't a dream to make me laugh. It was too dreadful at first, and
+too delightful afterwards. I suppose it was getting out for the first
+time yesterday that made me dream it. I thought I was lying quite still,
+without breathing even, with my hands straight down by my sides and my
+eyes closed. I did not choose to open them, for I knew that if I did
+I should see nothing but the inside of the lid of my coffin. I did not
+mind it much at first, for I was very quiet, and not uncomfortable.
+Everything was as silent as it should be, for I was ten feet and a half
+under the surface of the earth in the churchyard. Old Sogers was not far
+from me on one side, and that was a comfort; only there was a thick wall
+of earth between. But as the time went on, I began to get uncomfortable.
+I could not help thinking how long I should have to wait for the
+resurrection. Somehow I had forgotten all that you teach us about that.
+Perhaps it was a punishment--the dream--for forgetting it."
+
+"Silly child! Your dream is far better than your reflections."
+
+"Well, I'll go on with my dream. I lay a long time till I got very
+tired, and wanted to get up, O, so much! But still I lay, and although I
+tried, I could not move hand or foot. At last I burst out crying. I was
+ashamed of crying in my coffin, but I couldn't bear it any longer.
+I thought I was quite disgraced, for everybody was expected to be
+perfectly quiet and patient down there. But the moment I began to cry,
+I heard a sound. And when I listened it was the sound of spades and
+pickaxes. It went on and on, and came nearer and nearer. And then--it
+was so strange--I was dreadfully frightened at the idea of the light and
+the wind, and of the people seeing me in my coffin and my night-dress,
+and tried to persuade myself that it was somebody else they were digging
+for, or that they were only going to lay another coffin over mine. And I
+thought that if it was you, papa, I shouldn't mind how long I lay there,
+for I shouldn't feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word
+to each other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer,
+and at last a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through,
+upon the lid of the coffin, right over my head.
+
+"'Here she is, poor thing!' I heard a sweet voice say.
+
+"'I'm so glad we've found her,' said another voice.
+
+"'She couldn't bear it any longer,' said a third more pitiful voice than
+either of the others. 'I heard her first,' it went on. 'I was away up in
+Orion, when I thought I heard a woman crying that oughtn't to be crying.
+And I stopped and listened. And I heard her again. Then I knew that it
+was one of the buried ones, and that she had been buried long enough,
+and was ready for the resurrection. So as any business can wait except
+that, I flew here and there till I fell in with the rest of you.'
+
+"I think, papa, that this must have been because of what you were
+saying the other evening about the mysticism of St. Paul; that while he
+defended with all his might the actual resurrection of Christ and the
+resurrection of those he came to save, he used it as meaning something
+more yet, as a symbol for our coming out of the death of sin into the
+life of truth. Isn't that right, papa?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; I believe so. But I want to hear your dream first, and
+then your way of accounting for it."
+
+"There isn't much more of it now."
+
+"There must be the best of it."
+
+"Yes; I allow that. Well, while they spoke--it was a wonderfully clear
+and connected dream: I never had one like it for that, or for anything
+else--they were clearing away the earth and stones from the top of my
+coffin. And I lay trembling and expecting to be looked at, like a thing
+in a box as I was, every moment. But they lifted me, coffin and all, out
+of the grave, for I felt the motion of it up. Then they set it down, and
+I heard them taking the lid off. But after the lid was off, it did not
+seem to make much difference to me. I could not open my eyes. I saw no
+light, and felt no wind blowing upon me. But I heard whispering about
+me. Then I felt warm, soft hands washing my face, and then I felt wafts
+of wind coming on my face, and thought they came from the waving of
+wings. And when they had washed my eyes, the air came upon them so sweet
+and cool! and I opened them, I thought, and here I was lying on this
+couch, with butterflies and bees flitting and buzzing about me, the
+brook singing somewhere near me, and a lark up in the sky. But there
+were no angels--only plenty of light and wind and living creatures.
+And I don't think I ever knew before what happiness meant. Wasn't it a
+resurrection, papa, to come out of the grave into such a world as this?"
+
+"Indeed it was, my darling--and a very beautiful and true dream. There
+is no need for me to moralise it to you, for you have done so for
+yourself already. But not only do I think that the coming out of sin
+into goodness, out of unbelief into faith in God, is like your dream;
+but I do expect that no dream of such delight can come up to the sense
+of fresh life and being that we shall have when we get on the higher
+body after this one won't serve our purpose any longer, and is worn out
+and cast aside. The very ability of the mind, whether of itself, or by
+some inspiration of the Almighty, to dream such things, is a proof of
+our capacity for such things, a proof, I think, that for such things we
+were made. Here comes in the chance for faith in God--the confidence in
+his being and perfection that he would not have made us capable without
+meaning to fill that capacity. If he is able to make us capable, that is
+the harder half done already. The other he can easily do. And if he is
+love he will do it. You should thank God for that dream, Connie."
+
+"I was afraid to do that, papa."
+
+"That is as much as to fear that there is one place to which David
+might have fled, where God would not find him--the most terrible of all
+thoughts."
+
+"Where do you mean, papa?"
+
+"Dreamland, my dear. If it is right to thank God for a beautiful
+thought--I mean a thought of strength and grace giving you fresh life
+and hope--why should you be less bold to thank him when such thoughts
+arise in plainer shape--take such vivid forms to your mind that they
+seem to come through the doors of the eyes into the vestibule of the
+brain, and thence into the inner chambers of the soul?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+
+
+
+
+For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
+journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
+prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the
+sojourn. First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer,
+consisting, as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground
+ginger, and cold water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge,
+exhausted and renewed about twelve times before the day of departure
+arrived; and when at last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered
+with dismay that they had drunk the last drop two days before, and
+there was none in stock. Then there was a wonderful and more successful
+hoarding of marbles, of a variety so great that my memory refuses to
+bear the names of the different kinds, which, I think, must have greatly
+increased since the time when I too was a boy, when some marbles--one
+of real, white marble with red veins especially--produced in my mind
+something of the delight that a work of art produces now. These
+were carefully deposited in one of the many divisions of a huge old
+hair-trunk, which they had got their uncle Weir, who could use his
+father's tools with pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them with
+a multiplicity of boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and
+slides, that was quite bewildering. In this same box was stowed also
+a quantity of hair, the gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the
+premises. This was for making fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on
+the part of Harry that it was to be employed in catching whales and
+crocodiles. Then all their favourite books were stowed away in the same
+chest, in especial a packet of a dozen penny books, of which I think I
+could give a complete list now. For one afternoon as I searched about in
+the lumber-room after a set of old library steps, which I wanted to get
+repaired, I came upon the chest, and opening it, discovered my boys'
+hoard, and in it this packet of books. I sat down on the top of the
+chest and read them all through, from Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop
+o' my Thumb without rising, and this in the broad daylight, with the
+yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the rose-coloured silken seat,
+richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair with three golden legs.
+Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say the names of them,
+over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding now that they
+had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something in potency,
+they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these, and Charlie
+not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding, in
+virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
+sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
+string; a rabbit's skin; a Noah's ark; an American clock, that
+refused to go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of
+lead-soldiers, and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt
+ball having an eagle of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
+
+Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this
+magazine could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to
+follow us to the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent
+on before us, but the boys had intended the precious box to go with
+themselves. Knowing well, however, how little they would miss it, and
+with what shouts of south-sea discovery they would greet the forgotten
+treasure when they returned, I insisted on the lumbering article being
+left in peace. So that, as man goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever
+he may have accumulated before the fatal moment, they had to set off for
+the far country without chest or ginger-beer--not therefore altogether
+so desolate and unprovided for as they imagined. The abandoned treasure
+was forgotten the moment the few tears it had occasioned were wiped
+away.
+
+It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
+sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows
+were twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the
+dear old house.
+
+"I'm sorry to leave the swallows behind," said Wynnie, as she stepped
+into the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already
+there, eager and strong-hearted for the journey.
+
+We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
+forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed
+to enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of
+the meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we
+met bravely diligent at their day's work, as they trudged along the road
+with wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I
+could see her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its
+expression that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a
+brown-faced gipsy family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the
+passing carriage. A fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under
+the convoy of the parent duck, next attracted her.
+
+"Look; look. Isn't that delicious?" she cried.
+
+"I don't think I should like it though," said Wynnie.
+
+"What shouldn't you like, Wynnie?" asked her mother.
+
+"To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!"
+
+"They feel it with their legs and their webby toes," said Connie.
+
+"Yes, that is some consolation," answered Wynnie.
+
+"And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
+winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning."
+
+I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie's illness had
+not in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had
+rather, as it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and
+sympathetic, so that the things around her could enter her soul even
+more easily than before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in
+reality brought her into closer contact with the movements of all
+vitality.
+
+We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station.
+Everybody almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for
+Connie's sake chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had
+forgotten to say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak
+to him. The same instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie
+was the centre of all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother
+or sister. Had she been a martyr who had stood the test and received her
+aureole, she could hardly have been more regarded. The common use of
+the word martyr is a curious instance of how words get degraded. The
+sufferings involved in martyrdom, and not the pure will giving occasion
+to that suffering, is fixed upon by the common mind as the martyrdom.
+The witness-bearing is lost sight of, except we can suppose that "a
+martyr to the toothache" means a witness of the fact of the toothache
+and its tortures. But while _martyrdom_ really means a bearing for the
+sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any suffering, even that
+we have brought upon ourselves, may become martyrdom. When it is so
+borne that the sufferer therein bears witness to the presence and
+fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to his will, in gentle
+endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which is not seldom to be
+seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than all, perhaps, and
+rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and merciful consequence
+of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with righteous shame, as the
+cleansing of the Father's hand, indicating that repentance unto life
+which lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes him such that the
+holiest men of old would talk to him with gladness and respect, then
+indeed it may be called a martyrdom. This latter could not be Connie's
+case, but the former was hers, and so far she might be called a martyr,
+even as the old women of the village designated her.
+
+After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
+post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
+abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
+exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
+trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
+do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were
+about, so long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the
+man-servant, who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of
+the establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to
+everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the
+wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we
+could not possibly get on without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise
+beside the driver from the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than
+otherwise at the noise of the youngsters.
+
+"Good-bye, Marshmallows," they were shouting at the top of their voices,
+as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
+wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody's ears on the
+open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
+condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that
+there was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them
+as much liberty as could be afforded them.
+
+At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now
+in wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany
+us a good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us
+in moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
+skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and
+only at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times
+on the way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the
+streets delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the
+children and servants, all but my wife's maid, on before us, under the
+charge of Walter. This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped
+only the night, for Connie found herself quite able to go on the next
+morning. Here Turner left us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked
+a little out of spirits after his departure, but soon recovered herself.
+The next night we spent at a small town on the borders of Devonshire,
+which was the limit of our railway travelling. Here we remained for
+another whole day, for the remnant of the journey across part of
+Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be posted, and was a good five
+hours' work. We started about eleven o'clock, full of spirits at
+the thought that we had all but accomplished the only part of the
+undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness. Connie was quite
+merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open carriage with a hood.
+Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the maid in the rumble,
+and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we had four horses;
+and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and thankfulness,
+who would not be happy?
+
+There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I
+altogether understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment
+has something to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion,
+the change of scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the
+next turn in the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the
+pine-trees especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the
+harness as you pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses,
+the glitter and the shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy
+faces, the scent of burning wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a
+thousand other things combine to make such a journey delightful. But I
+believe it needs something more than this--something even closer to the
+human life--to account for the pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect
+it is its living symbolism; the hidden relations which it bears to the
+eternal soul in its aspirations and longings--ever following after, ever
+attaining, never satisfied. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. A man,
+you will allow, perhaps, may be content although he is not and cannot be
+happy: I feel inclined to turn all this the other way, saying that a man
+ought always to be happy, never to be content. You will see I do not say
+_contented_; I say _content_. Here comes in his faith: his life is
+hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded. All things are his, to
+become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as his being enlarges
+to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary incompleteness
+falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God's idea he is
+complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God the
+Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
+gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch
+as he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I
+leave it, however.
+
+I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt
+I was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with
+full confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man
+be happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the
+feeble knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill?
+True, the fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp
+of life; but if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth;
+if less of fire, more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light.
+Verily, youth is good, but old age is better--to the man who forsakes
+not his youth when his youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature
+do not depend upon youth or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose
+meekness inherits the earth. The smell of that field of beans gives me
+more delight now than ever it could have given me when I was a youth.
+And if I ask myself why I find it is simply because I have more faith
+now than I had then. It came to me then as an accident of nature--a
+passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs' share of the crumbs. Now
+I believe that God _means_ that odour of the bean-field; that when Jesus
+smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in Galilee, he thought of his
+Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if I should never smell it
+again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age should make me deaf
+as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope you are too, or
+will be before you have done with this same beautiful mystical life
+of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's books of
+poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest, perhaps.
+
+And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
+I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
+describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
+countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off
+in a word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the
+brightness of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a
+little weary, lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping
+towards the earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the brightness of the
+morning star, ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that
+brightens at the sun's approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its
+light, and somewhat sad because severe. Connie's face was bright with
+the brightness of a lake in the rosy evening, the sound of the river
+flowing in and the sound of the river flowing forth just audible, but
+itself still, and content to be still and mirror the sunset. Dora's was
+bright with the brightness of a marigold that follows the sun without
+knowing it; and Eliza's was bright with the brightness of a half-blown
+cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This last is not a good simile, but
+I cannot find a better. I confess failure, and go on.
+
+After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
+carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
+figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they
+were, where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her
+to carry her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads
+through which were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches
+of heather all about were showing their bells, though not yet in
+their autumnal outburst of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded
+of Scotland, in which I had travelled a good deal between the ages of
+twenty and five-and-twenty. The further I went the stronger I felt the
+resemblance. The look of the fields, the stone fences that divided them,
+the shape and colour and materials of the houses, the aspect of the
+people, the feeling of the air, and of the earth and sky generally, made
+me imagine myself in a milder and more favoured Scotland. The west wind
+was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge which one can so often detect
+in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot sun. Though she had already
+travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up within a few minutes after
+we got on this moor; and we had not gone much farther before a shout
+from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little Dora had discovered
+the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue and bright. We
+soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie's eyes it seemed to
+linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them seemed the
+reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors. Ethelwyn's eyes,
+too, were full of it, and a flush on her generally pale cheek showed
+that she too expected the ocean. After a few miles along this breezy
+expanse, we began to descend towards the sea-level. Down the winding of
+a gradual slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new
+chapter in our history. We came again upon a few trees here and there,
+all with their tops cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the
+sea. For the sea-winds, like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away
+towards the land, and keep their tops mown with their sharp rushing,
+keen with salt spray off the crests of the broken waves. Then we passed
+through some ancient villages, with streets narrow, and steep and
+sharp-angled, that needed careful driving and the frequent pressure
+of the break upon the wheel. And now the sea shone upon us with nearer
+greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear its talk with the shore.
+At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the last level, drove over
+a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw the land vanish in the
+sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden drawbridge, and along
+the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops and schooners. Then
+came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an ascent, and ere we
+reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by loud shouts, and
+the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top of a stone wall
+to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept quiet, knowing
+that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing about the evil
+it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch, leading through
+the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The journey was
+over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the county of
+Cornwall.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.
+
+
+
+
+
+We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which
+nurse had fixed upon for her--the best in the house, of course, again.
+She did seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at once, and
+in half an hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very glad. After
+dinner I went up to Connie's room. There I found her fast asleep on the
+sofa, and Wynnie as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The drive and
+the sea air had had the same effect on both of them. But pleased as I
+was to see Connie sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see
+Wynnie asleep on the floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give
+to a father and mother to see this or that child asleep! It is when
+her kittens are asleep that the cat creeps away to look after her own
+comforts. Our cat chose to have her kittens in my study once, and as I
+would not have her further disturbed than to give them another cushion
+to lie on in place of that which belonged to my sofa, I had many
+opportunities of watching them as I wrote, or prepared my sermons. But I
+must not talk about the cat and her kittens now. When parents see their
+children asleep, especially if they have been suffering in any way,
+they breathe more freely; a load is lifted off their minds; their
+responsibility seems over; the children have gone back to their Father,
+and he alone is looking after them for a while. Now, I had not been
+comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially during our
+journey, and still more especially during the last part of our journey.
+There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or less
+dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much for
+her, although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had not
+quite enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without
+much thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do
+not seem to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them;
+while for others a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is
+necessary for the health of both body and mind, and when the matter or
+occasion for so much is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous
+to what follows when a healthy physical system is not supplied with
+sufficient food: the oxygen, the source of life, begins to consume the
+life itself; it tears up the timbers of the house to burn against the
+cold. Or, to use a different simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance
+does not strike the rock and make the waters flow, such a mind--one that
+must think to live--will go digging into itself, and is in danger of
+injuring the very fountain of thought, by drawing away its living water
+into ditches and stagnant pools. This was, I say, the case in part with
+my Wynnie, although I did not understand it at that moment. She did
+not look quite happy, did not always meet a smile with a smile, looked
+almost reprovingly upon the frolics of the little brother-imps, and
+though kindness itself when any real hurt or grief befell them, had
+reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner, of which I have
+already spoken as interrupted by Connie's accident. To her mother and me
+she was service itself, only service without the smile which is as
+the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a little
+uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
+had seemed almost annoyed at Connie's ecstasies, and said to Dora many
+times: "Do be quiet, Dora;" although there was not a single creature but
+ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
+child's explosions. So I was--but although I say _so_, I hardly know why
+I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief in the
+anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I
+stood regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her
+uncomfortable, she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with
+the words, "I beg your pardon, papa," looking almost guiltily round
+her, and putting up her hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an
+impropriety in being caught untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition
+of mind that was not healthy.
+
+"My dear," I said, "what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to
+see you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold
+you."
+
+"O papa," she said, laying her head on my shoulder, "I am afraid I must
+be very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong,
+or rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure
+there must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly
+know what it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected
+something, and you had come to find fault with me. _Is_ there anything,
+papa?"
+
+"Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
+that."
+
+"I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day!
+Why shouldn't I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked,
+papa."
+
+Here Connie woke up.
+
+"There now! I've waked Connie," Wynnie resumed. "I'm always doing
+something I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take
+that sin off my poor conscience."
+
+"What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?" asked Connie.
+
+"It isn't nonsense, Connie. You know I am."
+
+"I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don't
+_feel_ wicked."
+
+"My dear children," I said, "we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
+then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say
+to himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one
+man to say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case
+to do as St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing--to judge our own
+selves, which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do
+what our Lord has told us expressly we are not to do--to judge other
+people. You get your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going
+to explore a little of this desert island upon which we have been cast
+away. And you, Connie, just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep
+again."
+
+Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to
+talk seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.
+
+Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what
+we talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported
+it to Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies
+who went to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news
+of nature, to her who could not go to gather them for herself. It think
+it will be the best plan to take part of both plans.
+
+When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
+leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed _in_, the rocks,
+buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life for a
+big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still blew
+from the west, both warm and strong--I mean strength-giving--and the
+wind was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was
+green and soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright
+flowers, chiefly yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the
+downs, the shadows of whose unequal surface were now beginning to be
+thrown east, for the sun was going seawards. I stood up, stretched out
+my arms, threw back my shoulders and my head, and filled my chest with a
+draught of the delicious wind, feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed
+with wine. Wynnie stood apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar,
+thoughtful, and turning her eyes hither and thither.
+
+"That makes me feel young again," I said.
+
+"I wish it would make me feel old then," said Wynnie.
+
+"What do you mean, my child?"
+
+"Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
+young," she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were
+walking up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the
+down-turf was indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we
+had reached the top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight.
+The top of the hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun
+was hanging on the face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea
+stretched for visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand,
+its wide blue mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land,
+and scalloped into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the
+nether fires which had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as
+they bore the rising tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for
+the whole. Ear and eye, touch and smell, were alike invaded with
+blessedness. I ought to have kept this to give my reader in Connie's
+room; but he shall share with her presently. The sense of space--of
+mighty room for life and growth--filled my soul, and I thanked God in
+my heart. The wind seemed to bear that growth into my soul, even as the
+wind of God first breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and
+the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment of every aspiration. I turned
+and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but listless amidst that which
+lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.
+
+"Don't you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?"
+
+"I told you I was very wicked, papa."
+
+"And I told you not to say so, Wynnie."
+
+"You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is."
+
+"I suspect it is because you haven't room, Wynnie."
+
+"I know you mean something more than I know, papa."
+
+"I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you
+do not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only
+live in him, is 'cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.' It is only in
+him that the soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The
+secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who
+knows its secret. Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth.
+You do not feel them, and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would
+be both useless and absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for
+a moment, and then tell me whether it must not be a blessed life that
+creates such a glory as this All."
+
+She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
+earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
+eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling,
+or sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to
+speak again.
+
+"As this world of delight surrounds and enters your bodily frame, so
+does God surround your soul and live in it. To be at home with the awful
+source of your being, through the child-like faith which he not only
+permits, but requires, and is ever teaching you, or rather seeking
+to rouse up in you, is the only cure for such feelings as those that
+trouble you. Do not say it is too high for you. God made you in his own
+image, therefore capable of understanding him. For this final end he
+sent his Son, that the Father might with him come into you, and dwell
+with you. Till he does so, the temple of your soul is vacant; there is
+no light behind the veil, no cloudy pillar over it; and the priests,
+your thoughts, feelings, loves, and desires, moan, and are troubled--for
+where is the work of the priest when the God is not there? When He comes
+to you, no mystery, no unknown feeling, will any longer distress you.
+You will say, 'He knows, though I do not.' And you will be at the secret
+of the things he has made. You will feel what they are, and that which
+his will created in gladness you will receive in joy. One glimmer of the
+present God in this glory would send you home singing. But do not think
+I blame you, Wynnie, for feeling sad. I take it rather as the sign of a
+large life in you, that will not be satisfied with little things. I do
+not know when or how it may please God to give you the quiet of mind
+that you need; but I tell you that I believe it is to be had; and in
+the mean time, you must go on doing your work, trusting in God even for
+this. Tell him to look at your sorrow, ask him to come and set it right,
+making the joy go up in your heart by his presence. I do not know when
+this may be, I say, but you must have patience, and till he lays his
+hand on your head, you must be content to wash his feet with your tears.
+Only he will be better pleased if your faith keep you from weeping and
+from going about your duties mournful. Try to be brave and cheerful for
+the sake of Christ, and for the sake of your confidence in the beautiful
+teaching of God, whose course and scope you cannot yet understand.
+Trust, my daughter, and let that give you courage and strength."
+
+Now the sky and the sea and the earth must have made me able to say
+these things to her; but I knew that, whatever the immediate occasion of
+her sadness, such was its only real cure. Other things might, in virtue
+of the will of God that was in them, give her occupation and interest
+enough for a time, but nothing would do finally, but God himself. Here
+I was sure I was safe; here I knew lay the hunger of humanity. Humanity
+may, like other vital forms, diseased systems, fix on this or that as
+the object not merely of its desire but of its need: it can never
+be stilled by less than the bread of life--the very presence in the
+innermost nature of the Father and the Son.
+
+We walked on together. Wynnie made me no reply, but, weeping silently,
+clung to my arm. We walked a long way by the edge of the cliffs, beheld
+the sun go down, and then turned and went home. When we reached the
+house, Wynnie left me, saying only, "Thank you, papa. I think it is all
+true. I will try to be a better girl."
+
+I went straight to Connie's room: she was lying as I saw her last,
+looking out of her window.
+
+"Connie," I said, "Wynnie and I have had such a treat--such a sunset!"
+
+"I've seen a little of the light of it on the waves in the bay there,
+but the high ground kept me from seeing the sunset itself. Did it set in
+the sea?"
+
+"You do want the General Gazetteer, after all, Connie. Is that water the
+Atlantic, or is it not? And if it be, where on earth could the sun set
+but in it?"
+
+"Of course, papa. What a goose I am! But don't make game of
+me--_please_. I am too deliciously happy to be made game of to-night."
+
+"I won't make game of you, my darling. I will tell you about the
+sunset--the colours of it, at least. This must be one of the best places
+in the whole world to see sunsets."
+
+"But you have had no tea, papa. I thought you would come and have your
+tea with me. But you were so long, that mamma would not let me wait any
+longer."
+
+"O, never mind the tea, my dear. But Wynnie has had none. You've got a
+tea-caddy of your own, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, and a teapot; and there's the kettle on the hob--for I can't do
+without a little fire in the evenings."
+
+"Then I'll make some tea for Wynnie and myself, and tell you at the same
+time about the sunset. I never saw such colours. I cannot tell you what
+it was like while the sun was yet going down, for the glory of it has
+burned the memory of it out of me. But after the sun was down, the sky
+remained thinking about him; and the thought of the sky was in
+delicate translucent green on the horizon, just the colour of the earth
+etherealised and glorified--a broad band; then came another broad band
+of pale rose-colour; and above that came the sky's own eternal blue,
+pale likewise, but so sure and changeless. I never saw the green and
+the blue divided and harmonised by the rose-colour before. It was a
+wonderful sight. If it is warm enough to-morrow, we will carry you out
+on the height, that you may see what the evening will bring."
+
+"There is one thing about sunsets," returned Connie--"two things, that
+make me rather sad--about themselves, not about anything else. Shall I
+tell you them?"
+
+"Do, my love. There are few things more precious to learn than the
+effects of Nature upon individual minds. And there is not a feeling of
+yours, my child, that is not of value to me."
+
+"You are so kind, papa! I am so glad of my accident. I think I should
+never have known how good you are but for that. But my thoughts seem so
+little worth after you say so much about them."
+
+"Let me be judge of that, my dear."
+
+"Well, one thing is, that we shall never, never, never, see the same
+sunset again."
+
+"That is true. But why should we? God does not care to do the same
+thing over again. When it is once done, it is done, and he goes on doing
+something new. For, to all eternity, he never will have done showing
+himself by new, fresh things. It would be a loss to do the same thing
+again."
+
+"But that just brings me to my second trouble. The thing is lost. I
+forget it. Do what I can, I cannot remember sunsets. I try to fix them
+fast in my memory, that I may recall them when I want them; but just as
+they fade out of the sky, all into blue or gray, so they fade out of my
+mind and leave it as if they had never been there--except perhaps two
+or three. Now, though I did not see this one, yet, after you have talked
+about it, I shall never forget _it_."
+
+"It is not, and never will be, as if they had never been. They have
+their influence, and leave that far deeper than your memory--in your
+very being, Connie. But I have more to say about it, although it is
+only an idea, hardly an assurance. Our brain is necessarily an imperfect
+instrument. For its right work, perhaps it is needful that it should
+forget in part. But there are grounds for believing that nothing is ever
+really forgotten. I think that, when we have a higher existence than we
+have now, when we are clothed with that spiritual body of which St. Paul
+speaks, you will be able to recall any sunset you have ever seen with an
+intensity proportioned to the degree of regard and attention you gave
+it when it was present to you. But here comes Wynnie to see how you
+are.--I've been making some tea for you, Wynnie, my love."
+
+"O, thank you, papa--I shall be so glad of some tea!" said Wynnie, the
+paleness of whose face showed the red rims of her eyes the more plainly.
+She had had what girls call a good cry, and was clearly the better for
+it.
+
+The same moment my wife came in. "Why didn't you send for me, Harry, to
+get your tea?" she said.
+
+"I did not deserve any, seeing I had disregarded proper times and
+seasons. But I knew you must be busy."
+
+"I have been superintending the arrangement of bedrooms, and the
+unpacking, and twenty different things," said Ethelwyn. "We shall be so
+comfortable! It is such a curious house! Have you had a nice walk?"
+
+"Mamma, I never had such a walk in my life," returned Wynnie. "You would
+think the shore had been built for the sake of the show--just for a
+platform to see sunsets from. And the sea! Only the cliffs will be
+rather dangerous for the children."
+
+"I have just been telling Connie about the sunset. She could see
+something of the colours on the water, but not much more."
+
+"O, Connie, it will be so delightful to get you out here! Everything is
+so big! There is such room everywhere! But it must be awfully windy in
+winter," said Wynnie, whose nature was always a little prospective, if
+not apprehensive.
+
+But I must not keep my reader longer upon mere family chat.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+Our dining-room was one story below the level at which we had entered
+the parsonage; for, as I have said, the house was built into the face of
+the cliff, just where it sunk nearly to the level of the shores of the
+bay. While at dinner, on the evening of our arrival, I kept looking
+from the window, of course, and I saw before me, first a little bit of
+garden, mostly in turf, then a low stone wall; beyond, over the top of
+the wall, the blue water of the bay; then beyond the water, all alive
+with light and motion, the rocks and sand-hills of the opposite side
+of the little bay, not a quarter of a mile across. I could likewise see
+where the shore went sweeping out and away to the north, with rock after
+rock standing far into the water, as if gazing over the awful wild,
+where there was nothing to break the deathly waste between Cornwall and
+Newfoundland. But for the moment I did not regard the huge power lying
+outside so much as the merry blue bay between me and those rocks and
+sand-hills. If I moved my head a little to the right, I saw, over the
+top of the low wall already mentioned, and apparently quite close to it
+the slender yellow masts of a schooner, her mainsail hanging loose from
+the gaff, whose peak was lowered. We must, I thought, be on the very
+harbour-quay. When I went out for my walk with Wynnie, I had turned from
+the bay, and gone to the brow of the cliffs overhanging the open sea on
+our own side of it.
+
+When I came down to breakfast in the same room next morning, I stared.
+The blue had changed to yellow. The life of the water was gone. Nothing
+met my eyes but a wide expanse of dead sand. You could walk straight
+across the bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from
+the perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking,
+concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was
+high-water, or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was
+over a long reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe
+of the waves was visible, as if there was their _hitherto_, and further
+towards us they could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of
+the Atlantic. To add to my confusion, when I looked to the right, that
+is, up the bay towards the land, there was no schooner there. I went out
+at the window, which opened from the room upon the little lawn, to look,
+and then saw in a moment how it was.
+
+"Do you know, my dear," I said to my wife, "we are just at the mouth
+of that canal we saw as we came along? There are gates and a lock just
+outside there. The schooner that was under this window last night must
+have gone in with the tide. She is lying in the basin above now."
+
+"O, yes, papa," Charlie and Harry broke in together. "We saw it go up
+this morning. We've been out ever so long. It was so funny," Charlie
+went on--everything was _funny_ with Charlie--"to see it rise up like
+a Jack-in-the-box, and then slip into the quiet water through the other
+gates!"
+
+And when I thought about the waves tumbling and breaking away out there,
+and the wide yellow sands between, it was wonderful--which was what
+Charlie meant by funny--to see the little vessel lying so many feet
+above it all, in a still plenty of repose, gathering strength, one
+might fancy to rush out again, when its time was come, into the turmoil
+beyond, and dash its way through the breasts of the billows.
+
+After breakfast we had prayers, as usual, and after a visit to Connie,
+whom I found tired, but wonderfully well, I went out for a walk by
+myself, to explore the neighbourhood, find the church, and, in a word,
+do something to shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious.
+I wandered along a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk
+the evening before, with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of
+feathery tamarisks on my left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply
+to a lower road, where stood a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner,
+I came suddenly in sight of the church, on the green down above me--a
+sheltered yet commanding situation; for, while the hill rose above it,
+protecting it from the east, it looked down the bay, and the Atlantic
+lay open before it. All the earth seemed to lie behind it, and all its
+gaze to be fixed on the symbol of the infinite. It stood as the church
+ought to stand, leading men up the mount of vision, to the verge of the
+eternal, to send them back with their hearts full of the strength that
+springs from hope, by which alone the true work of the world can
+be done. And when I saw it I rejoiced to think that once more I was
+favoured with a church that had a history. Of course it is a happy thing
+to see new churches built wherever there is need of such; but to the
+full idea of the building it is necessary that it should be one in which
+the hopes and fears, the cares and consolations, the loves and desires
+of our forefathers should have been roofed; where the hearts of those
+through whom our country has become that which it is--from whom not
+merely the life-blood of our bodies, but the life-blood of our spirits,
+has come down to us, whose existence and whose efforts have made it
+possible for us to be that which we are--have before us worshipped that
+Spirit from whose fountain the whole torrent of being flows, who ever
+pours fresh streams into the wearying waters of humanity, so ready to
+settle down into a stagnant repose. Therefore I would far rather, when
+I may, worship in an old church, whose very stones are a history of how
+men strove to realise the infinite, compelling even the powers of nature
+into the task--as I soon found on the very doorway of this church, where
+the ripples of the outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the
+monsters of its deeps, fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave
+a distorted reflex, from the little mirror of the artist's mind, of that
+mighty water, so awful, so significant to the human eye, which yet lies
+in the hollow of the Father's palm, like the handful that the weary
+traveller lifts from the brook by the way. It is in virtue of the truth
+that went forth in such and such like attempts that we are able to hold
+our portion of the infinite reality which God only knows. They have
+founded our Church for us, and such a church as this will stand for the
+symbol of it; for here we too can worship the God of Abraham, of Isaac,
+and of Jacob--the God of Sidney, of Hooker, of Herbert. This church of
+Kilkhaven, old and worn, rose before me a history in stone--so beaten
+and swept about by the "wild west wind,"
+
+  "For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
+  Cleave themselves into chasms,"
+
+and so streamed upon, and washed, and dissolved, by the waters lifted
+from the sea and borne against it on the upper tide of the wind, that
+you could almost fancy it one of those churches that have been buried
+for ages beneath the encroaching waters, lifted again, by some mighty
+revulsion of nature's heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to
+stand marked for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world--scooped,
+and hollowed, and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for
+ever, responded to the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from
+the most troublous of times, will the Church of our land arise, in
+virtue of what truth she holds, and in spite, if she rises at all,
+of the worldliness of those who, instead of seeking her service, have
+sought and gained the dignities which, if it be good that she have it
+in her power to bestow them, need the corrective of a sharply wholesome
+persecution which of late times she has not known. But God knows, and
+the fire will come in its course--first in the form of just indignation,
+it may be, against her professed servants, and then in the form of the
+furnace seven times heated, in which the true builders shall yet walk
+unhurt save as to their mortal part.
+
+I looked about for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to
+live, and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a
+little distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before
+I reached it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She
+was dressed in a white cap and a dark-coloured gown. On her face lay a
+certain repose which attracted me. She looked as if she had suffered but
+had consented to it, and therefore could smile. Her smile lay near the
+surface. A kind word was enough to draw it up from the well where it lay
+shimmering: you could always see the smile there, whether it was born or
+not. But even when she smiled, in the very glimmering of that moonbeam,
+you could see the deep, still, perhaps dark, waters under. O! if one
+could but understand what goes on in the souls that have no words,
+perhaps no inclination, to set it forth! What had she endured? How had
+she learned to have that smile always near? What had consoled her, and
+yet left her her grief--turned it, perhaps, into hope? Should I ever
+know?
+
+She drew near me, as if she would have passed me, as she would have
+done, had I not spoken. I think she came towards me to give me the
+opportunity of speaking if I wished, but she would not address me.
+
+"Good morning," I said. "Can you tell me where to find the sexton?"
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with a gleam of the smile brightening
+underneath her old skin, as it were, "I be all the sexton you be likely
+to find this mornin', sir. My husband, he be gone out to see one o'
+Squire Tregarva's hounds as was took ill last night. So if you want to
+see the old church, sir, you'll have to be content with an old woman to
+show you, sir."
+
+"I shall be quite content, I assure you," I answered. "Will you go and
+get the key?"
+
+"I have the key in my pocket, sir; for I thought that would be what
+you'd be after, sir. And by the time you come to my age, sir, you'll
+learn to think of your old bones, sir. I beg your pardon for making so
+free. For mayhap, says I to myself, he be the gentleman as be come to
+take Mr. Shepherd's duty for him. Be ye now, sir?"
+
+All this was said in a slow sweet subdued tone, nearly of one pitch.
+You would have felt that she claimed the privilege of age with a kind of
+mournful gaiety, but was careful, and anxious even, not to presume upon
+it, and, therefore, gentle as a young girl.
+
+"Yes," I answered. "My name is Walton I have come to take the place of
+my friend Mr. Shepherd; and, of course, I want to see the church."
+
+"Well, she be a bee-utiful old church. Some things, I think, sir, grows
+more beautiful the older they grows. But it ain't us, sir."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," I said. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, sir, there's my little grandson in the cottage there: he'll never
+be so beautiful again. Them children du be the loves. But we all grows
+uglier as we grows older. Churches don't seem to, sir."
+
+"I'm not so sure about all that," I said again.
+
+"They did say, sir, that I was a pretty girl once. I'm not much to look
+at now."
+
+And she smiled with such a gracious amusement, that I felt at once that
+if there was any vanity left in this memory of her past loveliness,
+it was sweet as the memory of their old fragrance left in the withered
+leaves of the roses.
+
+"But it du not matter, du it, sir? Beauty is only skin-deep."
+
+"I don't believe that," I answered. "Beauty is as deep as the heart at
+least."
+
+"Well to be sure, my old husband du say I be as handsome in his eyes
+as ever I be. But I beg your pardon, sir, for talkin' about myself. I
+believe it was the old church--she set us on to it."
+
+"The old church didn't lead you into any harm then," I answered. "The
+beauty that is in the heart will shine out of the face again some
+day--be sure of that. And after all, there is just the same kind of
+beauty in a good old face that there is in an old church. You can't say
+the church is so trim and neat as it was the day that the first blast of
+the organ filled it as with, a living soul. The carving is not quite so
+sharp, the timbers are not quite so clean. There is a good deal of mould
+and worm-eating and cobwebs about the old place. Yet both you and I
+think it more beautiful now than it was then. Well, I believe it is, as
+nearly as possible, the same with an old face. It has got stained, and
+weather-beaten, and worn; but if the organ of truth has been playing on
+inside the temple of the Lord, which St. Paul says our bodies are, there
+is in the old face, though both form and complexion are gone, just the
+beauty of the music inside. The wrinkles and the brownness can't spoil
+it. A light shines through it all--that of the indwelling spirit. I wish
+we all grew old like the old churches."
+
+She did not reply, but I thought I saw in her face that she understood
+my mysticism. We had been walking very slowly, had passed through the
+quaint lych-gate, and now the old woman had got the key in the lock of
+the door, whose archway was figured and fashioned as I have described
+above, with a dozen mouldings or more, most of them "carved so
+curiously."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE OLD CHURCH.
+
+
+
+
+
+The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the
+threshold--an awe I never fail to feel--heightened in many cases, no
+doubt, by the sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I
+have felt all the same in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan
+conventicle, as the place where men worship and have worshipped the God
+of their fathers, although for art there was only the science of common
+bricklaying, and for beauty staring ugliness. To the involuntary fancy,
+the air of petition and of holy need seems to linger in the place, and
+the uncovered head acknowledges the sacred symbols of human inspiration
+and divine revealing. But this was no ordinary church into which I
+followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As entering I turned my eyes
+eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them from the chancel, all
+the windows of which were of richly stained glass, and the roof of
+carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this chancel, and
+thence about chancels generally which may appear in another part of my
+story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the cogitations
+to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with even what I
+could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles and modes of
+architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of contesting
+human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature brings into
+harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive intrusions upon
+her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of the word,
+so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that which in
+itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture of this
+building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand of
+Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one
+could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at
+work _informing_ the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the
+sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was
+but the gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its
+self-assertion vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the
+worm. True, the hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought
+lovingly and gently, and wherein it had erred, the same influences of
+nature, though as yet their effects were invisible, were already at
+work--of the many making one. I will not trouble my reader, I say, with
+any architectural description, which, possibly even more than a detailed
+description of natural beauty dissociated from human feeling, would only
+weary him, even if it were not unintelligible. When we are reading a
+poem, we do not first of all examine the construction and dwell on
+the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after, if we find that the poem
+itself is so good that its parts are therefore worth examining, as being
+probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of the main work. There
+were carvings on the ends of the benches all along the aisle on both
+sides, well worth examination, and some of them even of description;
+but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the columns: they
+supported arches of different fashion on the opposite sides, but they
+were themselves similar in matter and construction, both remarkable.
+They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very far
+from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was a single stone with
+chamfered sides.
+
+Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many
+thoughts that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length
+into the tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body
+of the church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above,
+for bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend
+Shepherd. And as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful
+it would be if in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was
+precious; so that when it came to the minister of his people--a fresh
+vision of his glory, a discovery of his meaning--he might make haste to
+the church, and into the tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the
+deepest-toned bell of all, and constrain it by the force of strong arms
+to utter its voice of call, "Come hither, come hear, my people, for God
+hath spoken;" and from the streets or the lanes would troop the eager
+folk; the plough be left in the furrow, the cream in the churn; and the
+crowding people bring faces into the church, all with one question upon
+them--"What hath the Lord spoken?" But now it would be answer sufficient
+to such a call to say, "But what will become of the butter?" or, "An
+hour's ploughing will be lost." And the clergy--how would they bring
+about such a time? They do not even believe that God has a word to his
+people through them. They think that his word is petrified for use in
+the Bible and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old heard so much of the
+word of God, and have so set it down, that there is no need for any more
+words of the Lord coming to the prophets of a land; therefore they look
+down upon the prophesying--that is, the preaching of the word--make
+light of it, the best of them, say these prayers are everything, or all
+but everything: _their_ hearts are not set upon hearing what God the
+Lord will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people again.
+Therefore it is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to the
+clock, are no longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have
+nothing to do in telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little
+of this part of their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must
+remain such as they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers
+which are the word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when
+the prophets see no vision, how should they have any word to speak?
+
+These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my
+guide. She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I
+thought, or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had
+taken her stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting
+busily. How her needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however,
+but, fixed on the slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from
+her feet, seemed to be gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite
+objectless outlook. To try her, I took for the moment the position of an
+accuser.
+
+"So you don't mind working in church?" I said.
+
+When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far
+sea-waves to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she
+answered--
+
+"The church knows me, sir."
+
+"But what has that to do with it?"
+
+"I don't think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
+know, sir."
+
+"Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
+diligent somewhere else, couldn't you?"
+
+As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But
+she only smiled and said, "It won't hurt she, sir; and my good man, who
+does all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I
+don't keep he warm he'll be laid up, and then the church won't be kep'
+nice, sir, till he's up again."
+
+I was tempted to go on.
+
+"But you could have sat down outside--there are some nice gravestones
+near--and waited till I came out."
+
+"But what's the church for, sir? The sun's werry hot to-day, sir; and
+Mr. Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a
+great rock in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the
+sun, instead of comin' in here to the cool o' the shadow, I wouldn't be
+takin' the church at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old
+church, sir. There's a something do seem to come out o' the old walls
+and settle down like the cool o' the day upon my old heart that's nearly
+tired o' crying, and would fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o' the
+journey. My old man's stockin' won't hurt the church, sir, and, bein'
+a good deed as I suppose it is, it's none the worse for the place. I
+think, if He was to come by wi' the whip o' small cords, I wouldn't be
+afeared of his layin' it upo' my old back. Do you think he would, sir?"
+
+Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
+with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.
+
+"Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
+ill-done work that the church's Master drives away. All our work ought
+to be done in the shadow of the church."
+
+"I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir," she said, smiling
+her sweet old smile. "Nobody knows what this old church is to me."
+
+Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
+left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
+thought.
+
+"You have had a family?" I said, interrogatively.
+
+"I've had thirteen," she answered. "Six bys and seven maidens."
+
+"Why, you are rich!" I returned. "And where are they all?"
+
+"Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one
+be down in the mill, there."
+
+"And your boys?"
+
+"One of them be lyin' beside his sisters--drownded afore my eyes, sir.
+Three o' them be at sea, and two o' them in it, sir."
+
+At sea! I thought. What a wide _where_! As vague to the imagination,
+almost, as _in the other world_. How a mother's thoughts must go roaming
+about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find them!
+
+As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.
+
+"It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with
+my knitting. Many's the stormy night, when my husband couldn't keep
+still, but would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good
+in life, but just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see
+by the white of them, with the balls o' foam flying in his face in the
+dark--many's the such a night that I have left the house after he was
+gone, with this blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church
+here, and sat down where I'm sittin' now--leastways where I was sittin'
+when your reverence spoke to me--and hearkened to the wind howling
+about the place. The church windows never rattle, sir--like the cottage
+windows, as I suppose you know, sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the
+church."
+
+"But if you had sons at sea," said I, again wishing to draw her out, "it
+would not be of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
+were in danger."
+
+"O! yes, it be, sir. What's the good of feeling safe yourself but it
+let you know other people be safe too? It's when you don't feel safe
+yourself that you feel other people ben't safe."
+
+"But," I said--and such confidence I had from what she had already
+uttered, that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one--"some of
+your sons _were_ drowned for all that you say about their safety."
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less
+safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me,
+well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being
+drownded. Why, they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted
+to skin an' bone, and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they
+set out with. Wouldn't that ha' been worse than being drownded right
+off? And that wouldn't ha' been the worst, either. The church she seem
+to tell me all the time, that for all the roaring outside, there be
+really no danger after all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What
+is the bottom of the sea, sir? You bein' a clergyman can tell that, sir.
+I shouldn't ha' known it if I hadn't had bys o' my own at sea, sir. But
+you can tell, sir, though you ain't got none there."
+
+And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
+returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to
+his instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.
+
+"The hollow of his hand," I said, and said no more.
+
+"I thought you would know it, sir," she returned, with a little glow of
+triumph in her tone. "Well, then, that's just what the church tells me
+when I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too,
+sir, for I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when
+they come home, if they do come home, they're none the worse that I went
+to the old church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them
+poor dears, all out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone
+almost in the quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come
+across me, sir, that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing
+all the noise and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about
+in the world, watching it all, letting it drown some o' them and take
+them back to him, and keeping it from going too far with others of them
+that are not quite ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see,
+sir, though I be an old woman; and not nice to look at."
+
+I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
+Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
+there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
+to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert
+would leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life
+is God's school, and they that will listen to the Master there will
+learn at God's speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious
+of Shepherd, and repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such
+glorious old stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal
+upon my light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling
+lasted but for a moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed
+and the true light shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it.
+Why should not Shepherd have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd
+was more of what would now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought
+my doctrine simpler and therefore better than his; but was this any
+reason why I should have all the grand people to minister to in my
+parish! Recovering myself, I found her last words still in my ears.
+
+"You are very nice to look at," I said. "You must not find fault with
+the work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty
+than to be as you now are. Time and time's rents and furrows are all his
+making and his doing. God makes nothing ugly."
+
+"Are you quite sure of that, sir?"
+
+I paused. Such a question from such a woman "must give us pause." And,
+as I paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I
+could not insist that God had never made anything ugly.
+
+"No. I am not sure of it," I answered. For of all things my soul
+recoiled from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know
+seemed to me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master,
+whose servants we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and
+self-seeking. "But if he does," I went on to say, "it must be that we
+may see what it is like, and therefore not like it."
+
+Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
+question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
+had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of
+stool or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was
+some kind of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much
+like the ends of the benches and book-boards.
+
+"What is that you were sitting on?" I asked. "A chest or what?"
+
+"It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
+agone, sir. But what it be, you'll be better able to tell than I be,
+sir."
+
+"Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time," I said.
+"But how should it then come to be banished to the tower?"
+
+"No, sir; it can't be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I
+be thinking."
+
+I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ.
+With some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of
+huge keys, fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one
+after another, but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and
+once down, so they mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there
+was any sign of a bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive
+kind of reed-instrument, like what we call a seraphine or harmonium
+now-a-days. But there was no hole through which there could have been
+any communication with or from a bellows, although there might have been
+a small one inside. There were, however, a dozen little round holes in
+the fixed part of the top, which might afford some clue to the mystery
+of its former life. I could not find any way of reaching the inside of
+it, so strongly was it put together; therefore I was left, I thought,
+to the efforts of my imagination alone for any hope of discovery with
+regard to the instrument, seeing further observation was impossible.
+But here I found that I was mistaken in two important conclusions, the
+latter of which depended on the former. The first of these was that
+it was an instrument: it was only one end of an instrument; therefore,
+secondly, there might be room for observation still. But I found this
+out by accident, which has had a share in most discoveries, and which,
+meaning a something that falls into our hands unlocked for, is so far an
+unobjectionable word even to the man who does not believe in chance.
+I had for the time given up the question as insoluble, and was gazing
+about the place, when, glancing up at the holes in the ceiling through
+which the bell-ropes went, I spied two or three thick wires hanging
+through the same ceiling close to the wall, and right over the box with
+the keys. The vague suspicion of a discovery dawned upon me.
+
+"Have you got the key of the tower?" I asked.
+
+"No, sir. But I'll run home for it at once," she answered. And rising,
+she went out in haste.
+
+"Run!" thought I, looking after her. "It is a word of the will and the
+feeling, not of the body." But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had
+no sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she
+felt that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I
+was on the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her
+from hurting herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to
+be as good as mine in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her
+seat, awaited her reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either
+saw or imagined I saw signs of openings corresponding in number and
+position with those in the lid under me. In about three minutes the old
+woman returned, panting but not distressed, with a great crooked old key
+in her hand. Why are all the keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask
+her that question, though. What I said to her, was--
+
+"You shouldn't run like that. I am in no hurry."
+
+"Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
+longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you
+see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if
+she'd smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top
+of the old tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun,
+and what with the fresh air which there always be up there, sir,--it du
+always be fresh up there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again
+blessing the old church for its tower."
+
+As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where
+there was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning
+themselves a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high,
+but she kept up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was
+no stranger to them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of
+her, but of what she had said. Strange to tell, the significance of
+the towers or spires of our churches had never been clear to me before.
+True, I was quite awake to their significance, at least to that of the
+spires, as fingers pointing ever upwards to
+
+  "regions mild of calm and serene air,
+  Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
+  Which men call Earth;"
+
+but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
+church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord
+God almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
+
+Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men
+up into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived
+pervaded with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We
+need the church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church
+below are from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the
+church, worshipping over the graves and believing in death--or at least
+in the material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the
+church, even in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending
+us up her towers and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the
+air of truth: that her form too must pass away, while the truth that is
+embodied in her lives beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining
+as the stars for ever and ever. He whom the church does not lift up
+above the church is not worthy to be a doorkeeper therein.
+
+Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
+that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord--not for his
+church-tower, but for his sexton's wife. The old woman was a jewel. If
+her husband was like her, which was too much to expect--if he believed
+in her, it would be enough, quite--then indeed the little child, who
+answered on being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would say, that
+the three orders of ministers in the church were the parson, clerk, and
+sexton, might not be so far wrong in respect of this individual case. So
+in the ascent, and the thinking associated therewith, I forgot all about
+the special object for which I had requested the key of the tower, and
+led the way myself up to the summit, where stepping out of a little
+door, which being turned only heavenwards had no pretence for, or claim
+upon a curiously crooked key, but opened to the hand laid upon the
+latch, I thought of the words of the judicious Hooker, that "the
+assembling of the church to learn" was "the receiving of angels
+descended from above;" and in such a whimsical turn as our thoughts will
+often take when we are not heeding them, I wondered for a moment whether
+that was why the upper door was left on the latch, forgetting that that
+could not be of much use, if the door in the basement was kept locked
+with the crooked key. But the whole suggested something true about my
+own heart and that of my fellows, if not about the church: Revelation is
+not enough, the open trap-door is not enough, if the door of the heart
+is not open likewise.
+
+As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
+again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
+filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
+hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the
+other side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of
+green, its heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales--there was
+not much wood--its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted
+and shadowed by the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of
+Dartmoor. And over all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the
+life-bearing spirit of the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman
+stood beside me, silently enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that
+seemed to say in kindly triumph, "Was I not right about the tower and
+the wind that dwells among its pinnacles?" I drank deep of the universal
+flood, the outspread peace, the glory of the sun, and the haunting
+shadow of the sea that lay beyond like the visual image of the eternal
+silence--as it looks to us--that rounds our little earthly life.
+
+There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down,
+the tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly
+below me, except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in
+the leaves, which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the
+top of the tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few
+flowers she had gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that
+rose from the four pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned
+to the eastern side, and looked over upon the church roof. It lay far
+below--looking very narrow and small, but long, with the four ridges of
+four steep roofs stretching away to the eastern end. It was in excellent
+repair, for the parish was almost all in one lord's possession, and he
+was proud of his church: between them he and Mr. Shepherd had made it
+beautiful to behold and strong to endure.
+
+When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
+fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
+nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And
+when I looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird,
+rounding the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up
+the little channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out
+of the circling waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but
+hardly the less welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for
+her signal from the barrier rock.
+
+Reentering by the angels' door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair,
+so dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light
+that came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny
+maiden-hair fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old
+woman--
+
+"I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn't rob your tower of this
+lovely little thing."
+
+"Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take
+it home to miss. It'll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear
+you've got a sick maiden. She ben't a bedlar, be she, sir?"
+
+I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without
+hurting them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner's using
+the word.
+
+"Not quite that," I answered, "but she can't even sit up, and must be
+carried everywhere."
+
+"Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea's been mine."
+
+She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
+down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
+observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in
+ascending the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging
+in silent power in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully,
+for there were only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one's feet
+from going through the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself
+that my conjecture about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods
+I had seen from beneath hung down from this place. There were more
+of them hanging shorter above, and there was yet enough of a further
+mechanism remaining to prove that those keys, by means of the looped and
+cranked rods, had been in connection with hammers, one of them indeed
+remaining also, which struck the bells, so that a tune could be played
+upon them as upon any other keyed instrument. This was the first
+contrivance of the kind I had ever seen, though I have heard of it in
+other churches since.
+
+"If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now," I
+said to myself, "I would get this all repaired, so that it should not
+interfere with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and
+yet Shepherd could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he
+pleased." For Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of
+time to the organ. "It's a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in
+the gloom, with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence
+he sends forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people,
+while they are mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad
+over the stormy ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. 'There's the parson
+at his bells,' they would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase
+might sink into their hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to
+some hope or faint aspiration. I will see what can be done." Having
+come to this conclusion, I left the abode of the bells, descended to the
+church, bade my conductress good morning, saying I would visit her soon
+in her own house, and bore home to my child the spoil which, without
+kirk-rapine, I had torn from the wall of the sanctuary. By this time the
+stormy veil had lifted from the horizon, and the sun was shining in full
+power without one darkening cloud.
+
+Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
+seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was
+the only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the
+tower. It recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been
+married fifty years, concluding with the couplet--
+
+"A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we."
+
+The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was
+not good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life
+probably without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten
+them, and I daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had
+put into their dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of
+quarrel with the poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the
+verses in when he made his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having
+learnt this one by heart, I went about looking for anything more in
+the shape of sepulchral flora that might interest or amuse my crippled
+darling; nor had I searched long before I found one, the sole but
+triumphant recommendation of which was the thorough "puzzle-headedness"
+of its construction. I quite reckoned on seeing Connie trying to make
+it out, looking as bewildered over its excellent grammar, as the poet
+of the other ought to have looked over his rhymes, ere he gave in to the
+use of the nominative after a preposition.
+
+  "If you could view the heavenly shore,
+  Where heart's content you hope to find,
+  You would not murmur were you gone before,
+  But grieve that you are left behind."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER.
+
+
+
+
+
+As I walked home, the rush of the rising tide was in my ears. To my
+fancy, the ocean, awaking from a swoon in which its life had ebbed to
+its heart, was sending that life abroad to its extremities, and waves
+breaking in white were the beats of its reviving pulse, the flashes of
+returning light. But so gentle was its motion, and so lovely its hue,
+that I could not help contrasting it with its reflex in the mind of her
+who took refuge from the tumult of its noises in the hollow of the
+old church. To her, let it look as blue as the sky, as peaceful and as
+moveless, it was a wild, reckless, false, devouring creature, a prey
+to its own moods, and to that of the blind winds which, careless of
+consequences, urged it to raving fury. Only, while the sea took this
+form to her imagination, she believed in that which held the sea, and
+knew that, when it pleased God to part his confining fingers, there
+would be no more sea.
+
+When I reached home, I went straight to Connie's room. Now the house was
+one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
+shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure
+of the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings
+consists of the houses that have _grown_. They have not been, built
+after a straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or
+money-loving pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or
+indifferent, as the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they
+have left far behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions
+of succeeding possessors, until the fact that they have a history is
+as plainly written on their aspect as on that of any you or daughter of
+Adam. These are the houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there
+is any truth in ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt;
+and hence perhaps the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when
+we cross their thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast
+a glance about the hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best
+bedroom are. You have got it all to find out, just as the character of a
+man; and thus had I to find out this house of my friend Shepherd. It had
+formerly been a kind of manor-house, though altogether unlike any
+other manor-house I ever saw; for after exercising all my constructive
+ingenuity reversed in pulling it to pieces in my mind, I came to the
+conclusion that the germ-cell of it was a cottage of the simplest sort
+which had grown by the addition of other cells, till it had reached the
+development in which we found it.
+
+I have said that the dining-room was almost on the level of the shore.
+Certainly some of the flat stones that coped the low wall in front of
+it were thrown into the garden before the next winter by the waves. But
+Connie's room looked out on a little flower-garden almost on the downs,
+only sheltered a little by the rise of a short grassy slope above it.
+This, however, left the prospect, from her window down the bay and
+out to sea, almost open. To reach this room I had now to go up but one
+simple cottage stair; for the door of the house entered on the first
+floor, that is, as regards the building, midway between heaven and
+earth. It had a large bay-window; and in this window Connie was lying
+on her couch, with the lower sash wide open, through which the breeze
+entered, smelling of sea-weed tempered with sweet grasses and the
+wall-flowers and stocks that were in the little plot under it. I thought
+I could see an improvement in her already. Certainly she looked very
+happy.
+
+"O, papa!" she said, "isn't it delightful?"
+
+"What is, my dear?"
+
+"O, everything. The wind, and the sky, and the sea, and the smell of
+the flowers. Do look at that sea-bird. His wings are like the barb of a
+terrible arrow. How he goes undulating, neck and body, up and down as he
+flies. I never felt before that a bird moves his wings. It always looked
+as if the wings flew with the bird. But I see the effort in him."
+
+"An easy effort, though, I should certainly think."
+
+"No doubt. But I see that he chooses and means to fly, and so does it.
+It makes one almost reconciled to the idea of wings. Do angels really
+have wings, papa?"
+
+"It is generally so represented, I think, in the Bible. But whether it
+is meant as a natural fact about them, is more than I take upon me
+to decide. For one thing, I should have to examine whether in simple
+narrative they are ever represented with them, as, I think, in records
+of visions they are never represented without them. But wings are
+very beautiful things, and I do not exactly see why you should need
+reconciling to them."
+
+Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
+
+"I don't like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
+however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
+they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and
+if you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of
+them. You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think
+I could bear to touch the things--I don't mean the feathers, but the
+skinny, folding-up bits of them."
+
+I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
+
+"You want to fly, I suppose?" I said.
+
+"O, yes; I should like that."
+
+"And you don't want to have wings?"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able
+to keep them nice?"
+
+"There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
+already. When you can't answer one thing, off to another, and, from
+your new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost
+branch of the lilac!"
+
+"O, yes, papa! That's what I've heard you say to mamma twenty times."
+
+"And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you
+either, you puss?"
+
+I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
+always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to
+relieve her.
+
+"When women have wings," I said, "their logic will be good."
+
+"How do you make that out, papa?" she asked, a little re-assured.
+
+"Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside
+from the straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole
+utterance will be instinct not only with the meaning of what you
+are thinking, but with the reflex of the forces in you that make the
+utterance take this or that shape; just as to a perfect palate, the
+source and course of a stream would be revealed in every draught of its
+water.
+
+"I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
+wings?"
+
+"I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like
+a horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is
+to be got without doing any of them."
+
+"I know what you mean now, but I can't put it in words."
+
+"I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things:
+what it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably
+leave to him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of
+knowing our fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and
+out of their worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home
+in them.--But I am talking what the people who do not understand such
+things lump all together as mysticism, which is their name for a kind
+of spiritual ash-pit, whither they consign dust and stones, never asking
+whether they may not be gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.--You had
+better begin to think about getting out, Connie."
+
+"Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since
+daylight."
+
+"I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready
+to go out with us."
+
+In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or
+two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I--finding
+that the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for
+which there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds
+in winter, the other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise
+provided--lifted the sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill, and
+then there was only a little door in the garden-wall to get her through
+before we found ourselves upon the down. I think the ascent of this hill
+was the first experience I had--a little to my humiliation, nothing to
+my sorrow--that I was descending another hill. I had to set down the
+precious burden rather oftener before we reached the brow of the cliffs
+than would have been necessary ten years before. But this was all right,
+and the newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the power which
+carries me about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I shall be
+stronger by and by.
+
+We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying
+many feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging
+their undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have
+a chance of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what
+the marvel of flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please,
+borne up, as far as eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own
+will alone. This Connie, quicker than I in her observation of nature,
+had already observed. Seated on the warm grass by her side, while
+neither talked, but both regarded the blue spaces, I saw one of those
+same barb-winged birds rest over my head, regarding me from above, as
+if doubtful whether I did not afford some claim to his theory of
+treasure-trove. I knew at once that what Connie had been saying to me
+just before was true.
+
+She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.
+
+"Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?"
+
+"No, papa; not a bit. I don't know how it is, but I don't think I
+ever wished much for anything I knew I could not have. I am enjoying
+everything more than I can tell you. I wish Wynnie were as happy as I
+am."
+
+"Why? Do you think she's not happy, my dear?"
+
+"That doesn't want any thinking, papa. You can see that."
+
+"I am afraid you're right, Connie. What do you think is the cause of
+it?"
+
+"I think it is because she can't wait. She's always going out to meet
+things; and then when they're not there waiting for her, she thinks
+they're nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If
+everybody were like me, there wouldn't be much done in the world, would
+there, papa?"
+
+"At all events, my dear, your way is wise for you, and I am glad you do
+not judge your sister."
+
+"Judge Wynnie, papa! That would be cool impudence. She's worth ten of
+me. Don't you think, papa," she added, after a pause, "that if Mary had
+said the smallest word against Martha, as Martha did against Mary, Jesus
+would have had a word to say on Martha's side next?"
+
+"Indeed I do, my dear. And I think that did not sit very long without
+asking Jesus if she mightn't go and help her sister. There is but one
+thing needful--that is, the will of God; and when people love that above
+everything, they soon come to see that to everything else there are two
+sides, and that only the will of God gives fair play, as we call it, to
+both of them."
+
+Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.
+
+"Is it not strange, papa, that the only thine here that makes me want to
+get up to look, is nothing of all the grand things round about me? I am
+just lying like the convex mirror in the school-room at home, letting
+them all paint themselves in me."
+
+"What is it then that makes you wish to get up and go and see?" I asked
+with real curiosity.
+
+"Do you see down there--away across the bay--amongst the rocks at the
+other side, a man sitting sketching?"
+
+I looked for some time before I could discover him.
+
+"Your sight is good, Connie: I see the man, but I could not tell what he
+was doing."
+
+"Don't you see him lifting his head every now and then for a moment, and
+then keeping it down for a longer while?"
+
+"I cannot distinguish that. But then I am shortsighted rather, you
+know."
+
+"I wonder how you see so many little things that nobody else seems to
+notice, then, papa."
+
+"That is because I have trained myself to observe. The degree of power
+in the sight is of less consequence than the habit of seeing. But you
+have not yet told me what it is that makes you desirous of getting up."
+
+"I want to look over his shoulder, and see what he is doing. Is it not
+strange that in the midst of all this plenty of beautifulness, I should
+want to rise to look at a few lines and scratches, or smears of colour,
+upon a bit of paper?"
+
+"No, my dear; I don't think it is strange. There a new element of
+interest is introduced--the human. No doubt there is deep humanity in
+all this around us. No doubt all the world, in all its moods, is human,
+as those for whose abode and instruction it was made. No doubt, it would
+be void of both beauty and significance to our eyes, were it not that
+it is one crowd of pictures of the human mind, blended in one living
+fluctuating whole. But these meanings are there in solution as it were.
+The individual is a centre of crystallisation to this solution. Around
+him meanings gather, are separated from other meanings; and if he be an
+artist, by which I mean true painter, true poet, or true musician,
+as the case may be he so isolates and represents them, that we see
+them--not what nature shows to us, but what nature has shown, to him,
+determined by his nature and choice. With it is mingled therefore
+so much of his own individuality, manifested both in this choice and
+certain modifications determined by his way of working, that you have
+not only a representation of an aspect of nature, as far as that may
+be with limited powers and materials, but a revelation of the man's own
+mind and nature. Consequently there is a human interest in every true
+attempt to reproduce nature, an interest of individuality which does not
+belong to nature herself, who is for all and every man. You have just
+been saying that you were lying there like a convex mirror reflecting
+all nature around you. Every man is such a convex mirror; and his
+drawing, if he can make one, is an attempt to show what is in this
+little mirror of his, kindled there by the grand world outside. And the
+human mirrors being all differently formed, vary infinitely in what they
+would thus represent of the same scene. I have been greatly interested
+in looking alternately over the shoulders of two artists, both sketching
+in colour the same, absolutely the same scene, both trying to represent
+it with all the truth in their power. How different, notwithstanding,
+the two representations came out!"
+
+"I think I understand you, papa. But look a little farther off. Don't
+you see over the top of another rock a lady's bonnet. I do believe
+that's Wynnie. I know she took her box of water-colours out with her
+this morning, just before you came home. Dora went with her."
+
+"Can't you tell by her ribbons, Connie? You seem sharp-sighted enough
+to see her face if she would show it. I don't even see the bonnet. If
+I were like some people I know, I should feel justified in denying its
+presence, attributing the whole to your fancy, and refusing anything to
+superiority of vision."
+
+"That wouldn't be like you, papa."
+
+"I hope not; for I have no fancy for being shut up in my own blindness,
+when other people offer me their eyes to eke out the defects of my own
+with. But here comes mamma at last."
+
+Connie's face brightened as if she had not seen her mother for a
+fortnight. My Ethelwyn always brought the home gladness that her name
+signified with her. She was a centre of radiating peace.
+
+"Mamma, don't you think that's Wynnie's bonnet over that black rock
+there, just beyond where you see that man drawing?"
+
+"You absurd child! How should I know Wynnie's bonnet at this distance?"
+
+"Can't you see the little white feather you gave her out of your
+wardrobe just before we left? She put it in this morning before she went
+out."
+
+"I think I do see something white. But I want you to look out there,
+towards what they call the Chapel Rock, at the other end of that long
+mound they call the breakwater. You will soon see a boat appear full of
+the coast-guard. I saw them going on board just as I left the house to
+come up to you. Their officer came down with his sword, and each of the
+men had a cutlass. I wonder what it can mean."
+
+We looked. But before the boat made its appearance, Connie cried out--
+
+"Look there! What a big boat that is rowing for the land, away
+northwards there!"
+
+I turned my eyes in the direction she indicated, and saw a long boat
+with some half-dozen oars, full of men, rowing hard, apparently for some
+spot on the shore at a considerable distance to the north of our bay.
+
+"Ah!" I said, "that boat has something to do with the coast-guard and
+their cutlasses. You'll see that, as soon as they get out of the bay,
+they will row in the same direction."
+
+So it was. Our boat appeared presently from under the concealment of the
+heights on which we were, and made at full speed after the other boat.
+
+"Surely they can't be smugglers," I said. "I thought all that was over
+and done with."
+
+In the course of another twenty minutes, during which we watched
+their progress, both boats had disappeared behind the headland to the
+northward. Then, thinking Connie had had nearly enough of the sea air
+for her first experience of its influences, I went and fetched Walter,
+and we carried her back as we had brought her. She had not been in the
+shadow of her own room for five minutes before she was fast asleep.
+
+It was now nearly time for our early dinner. We always dined early
+when we could, that we might eat along with our children. We were
+both convinced that the only way to make them behave like ladies and
+gentlemen was to have them always with us at meals. We had seen very
+unpleasant results in the children of those who allowed them to dine
+with no other supervision than the nursery afforded: they were
+a constant anxiety and occasional horror to those whom they
+visited--snatching like monkeys, and devouring like jackals, as
+selfishly as if they were mere animals.
+
+"O! we've seen such a nice gentleman!" said Dora, becoming lively under
+the influence of her soup.
+
+"Have you, Dora? Where?"
+
+"Sitting on the rocks, taking a portrait of the sea."
+
+"What makes you say he was a nice gentleman?"
+
+"He had such beautiful boots!" answered Dora, at which there was a great
+laugh about the table.
+
+"O! we must run and tell Connie that," said Harry. "It will make her
+laugh."
+
+"What will you tell Connie, then, Harry?"
+
+"O! what was it, Charlie? I've forgotten."
+
+Another laugh followed at Harry's expense now, and we were all very
+merry, when Dora, who sat opposite to the window, called out, clapping
+her hands--
+
+"There's Niceboots again! There's Niceboots again!"
+
+The same moment the head of a young man appeared over the wall that
+separated the garden from the little beach that lay by the entrance of
+the canal. I saw at once that he must be more than ordinarily tall
+to show his face, for he was not close to the wall. It was a dark
+countenance, with a long beard, which few at that time wore, though now
+it is getting not uncommon, even in my own profession--a noble, handsome
+face, a little sad, with downbent eyes, which, released from their more
+immediate duty towards nature, had now bent themselves upon the earth.
+
+"Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought."
+
+"I suppose he's contemplating his boots," said Wynnie, with apparent
+maliciousness.
+
+"That's too bad of you, Wynnie," I said, and the child blushed.
+
+"I didn't mean anything, papa. It was only following up Dora's wise
+discrimination," said Wynnie.
+
+"He is a fine-looking fellow," said I, "and ought, with that face and
+head, to be able to paint good pictures."
+
+"I should like to see what he has done," said Wynnie; "for, by the way
+we were sitting, I should think we were attempting the same thing."
+
+"And what was that then, Wynnie?" I asked.
+
+"A rock," she answered, "that you could not see from where you were
+sitting. I saw you on the top of the cliff."
+
+"Connie said it was you, by your bonnet. She, too, was wishing she could
+look over the shoulder of the artist at work beside you."
+
+"Not beside me. There were yards and yards of solid rock between us."
+
+"Space, you see, in removing things from the beholder, seems always
+to bring them nearer to each other, and the most differing things are
+classed under one name by the man who knows nothing about them. But what
+sort of a rock was it you were trying to draw?"
+
+"A strange-looking, conical rock, that stands alone in front of one of
+the ridges that project from the shore into the water. Three sea-birds,
+with long white wings, were flying about it, and the little waves of
+the rising tide were beating themselves against it and breaking in white
+plashes. So the rock stood between the blue and white below and the blue
+and white above; for, though there were no clouds, the birds gave the
+touches of white to the upper sea."
+
+"Now, Dora," I said, "I don't know if you are old enough to understand
+me; but sometimes little people are long in understanding, just because
+the older people think they can't, and don't try them.--Do you see,
+Dora, why I want you to learn to draw? Look how Wynnie sees things.
+That is, in a great measure, because she draws things, and has, by that,
+learned to watch in order to find out. It is a great thing to have your
+eyes open."
+
+Dora's eyes were large, and she opened them to their full width, as
+if she would take in the universe at their little doors. Whether that
+indicated that she did not in the least understand what I had been
+saying, or that she was in sympathy with it, I cannot tell.
+
+"Now let us go up to Connie, and tell her about the rock and everything
+else you have seen since you went out. We are all her messengers sent
+out to discover things, and bring back news of them."
+
+After a little talk with Connie, I retired to the study, which was on
+the same floor as her room completing, indeed, the whole of that part
+of the house, which, seen from without, looked like a separate building;
+for it had a roof of its own, and stood higher up the rock than the rest
+of the dwelling. Here I began to glance over the books. To have the
+run of another man's library, especially if it has all been gathered
+by himself, is like having a pass-key into the chambers of his thought.
+Only, one must be wary, when he opens them, what marks on the books
+he takes for those of the present owner. A mistake here would breed
+considerable confusion and falsehood in any judgment formed from the
+library. I found, however, one thing plain enough, that Shepherd had
+kept up that love for an older English literature, which had been one of
+the cords to draw us towards each other when we were students together.
+There had been one point on which we especially agreed--that a true
+knowledge of the present, in literature, as in everything else, could
+only be founded upon a knowledge of what had gone before; therefore,
+that any judgment, in regard to the literature of the present day, was
+of no value which was not guided and influenced by a real acquaintance
+with the best of what had gone before, being liable to be dazzled and
+misled by novelty of form and other qualities which, whatever might be
+the real worth of the substance, were, in themselves, purely ephemeral.
+I had taken down a last-century edition of the poems of the brothers
+Fletcher, and, having begun to read a lovely passage in "Christ's
+Victory and Triumph," had gone into what I can only call an intellectual
+rage, at the impudence of the editor, who had altered innumerable words
+and phrases to suit the degenerate taste of his own time,--when a knock
+came to the door, and Charlie entered, breathless with eagerness.
+
+"There's the boat with the men with the swords in it, and another boat
+behind them, twice as big."
+
+I hurried out upon the road, and there, close under our windows, were
+the two boats we had seen in the morning, landing their crews on the
+little beach. The second boat was full of weather-beaten men, in all
+kinds of attire, some in blue jerseys, some in red shirts, some in
+ragged coats. One man, who looked their superior, was dressed in blue
+from head to foot.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked the officer of the coast-guard, a sedate,
+thoughtful-looking man.
+
+"Vessel foundered, sir," he answered. "Sprung a leak on Sunday morning.
+She was laden with iron, and in a heavy ground swell it shifted and
+knocked a hole in her. The poor fellows are worn out with the pump and
+rowing, upon little or nothing to eat."
+
+They were trooping past us by this time, looking rather dismal, though
+not by any means abject.
+
+"What are you going to do with them now?"
+
+"They'll be taken in by the people. We'll get up a little subscription
+for them, but they all belong to the society the sailors have for
+sending the shipwrecked to their homes, or where they want to go."
+
+"Well, here's something to help," I said.
+
+"Thank you, sir. They'll be very glad of it."
+
+"And if there's anything wanted that I can do for them, you must let me
+know."
+
+"I will, sir. But I don't think there will be any occasion to trouble
+you. You are our new clergyman, I believe."
+
+"Not exactly that. Only for a little while, till my friend Mr. Shepherd
+is able to come back to you."
+
+"We don't want to lose Mr. Shepherd, sir. He's what they call high
+in these parts, but he's a great favourite with all the poor people,
+because you see he understands them as if he was of the same flesh and
+blood with themselves--as, for that matter, I suppose we all are."
+
+"If we weren't there would be nothing to say at all. Will any of these
+men be at church to-morrow, do you suppose? I am afraid sailors are not
+much in the way of going to church?"
+
+"I am afraid not. You see they are all anxious to get home. Most likely
+they'll be all travelling to-morrow. It's a pity. It would be a good
+chance for saying something to them that they might think of again. But
+I often think that, perhaps--it's only my own fancy, and I don't set it
+up for anything--that sailors won't be judged exactly like other people.
+They're so knocked about, you see, sir."
+
+"Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
+Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon
+it, God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any
+sailor of them all. But that's not exactly the question. It seems to me
+the question is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is
+because we know what God is like, who can trust in him with all our
+hearts because he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend
+of sinners, shall we not try all we can to let them, too, know the
+blessedness of trusting in their Father in heaven? If we could only get
+them to say the Lord's prayer, _meaning_ it, think what that would be!
+Look here! This can't be called bribery, for they are in want of it, and
+it will show them I am friendly. Here's another sovereign. Give them
+my compliments, and say that if any of them happen to be in Kilkhaven
+tomorrow, I shall be quite pleased to welcome them to church. Tell them
+I will give them of my best there if they will come. Make the invitation
+merrily, you know. No long faces and solemn speech. I will give them the
+solemn speech when they come to church. But even there I hope God will
+keep the long face far from me. That is fittest for fear and suffering.
+And the house of God is the casket that holds the antidote against
+all fear and most suffering. But I am preaching my sermon on Saturday
+instead of Sunday, and keeping you from your ministration to the poor
+fellows. Good-bye."
+
+"I will give them your message as near as I can," he said, and we shook
+hands and parted.
+
+This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the
+ocean. To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning
+there had been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday
+morning, home come the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a
+mock she takes all they have, and flings them on shore again, with her
+weeds, and her shells, and her sand. Before the winter was over we had
+learned--how much more of that awful power that surrounds the habitable
+earth! By slow degrees the sense of its might grew upon us, first by the
+vision of its many aspects and moods, and then by more awful things that
+followed; for there are few coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as
+upon this, the whole force of the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when
+there is no storm within perhaps hundreds of miles, when all is still as
+a church on the land, the storm that raves somewhere out upon the vast
+waste, will drive the waves in upon the shore with such fury that not
+even a lifeboat could make its way through their yawning hollows, and
+their fierce, shattered, and tumbling crests.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in
+the church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning's sermon for
+the occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time
+that it should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors
+were there or not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought,
+for instance, of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready
+all about our island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or
+symbol of two other oceans, one very still, the other very awful and
+fierce; in fact, that three oceans surrounded us: one of the known
+world; one of the unseen world, that is, of death; one of the
+spirit--the devouring ocean of evil--and might I not have added yet
+another, encompassing and silencing all the rest--that of truth!
+The visible ocean seemed to make war upon the land, and the dwellers
+thereon. Restrained by the will of God and by him made subject more and
+more to the advancing knowledge of those who were created to rule over
+it, it was yet like a half-tamed beast ever ready to break loose and
+devour its masters. Of course this would have been but one aspect or
+appearance of it--for it was in truth all service; but this was the
+aspect I knew it must bear to those, seafaring themselves or not, to
+whom I had to speak. Then I thought I might show, that its power, like
+that of all things that man is ready to fear, had one barrier over which
+no commotion, no might of driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its
+loudest waves were dumb--the barrier of death. Hitherto and no further
+could its power reach. It could kill the body. It could dash in pieces
+the last little cock-boat to which the man clung, but thus it swept the
+man beyond its own region into the second sea of stillness, which we
+call death, out upon which the thoughts of those that are left behind
+can follow him only in great longings, vague conjectures, and mighty
+faith. Then I thought I could show them how, raving in fear, or lying
+still in calm deceit, there lay about the life of man a far more fearful
+ocean than that which threatened his body; for this would cast, could it
+but get a hold of him, both body and soul into hell--the sea of evil,
+of vice, of sin, of wrong-doing--they might call it by what name they
+pleased. This made war against the very essence of life, against God
+who is the truth, against love, against fairness, against fatherhood,
+motherhood, sisterhood, brotherhood, manhood, womanhood, against
+tenderness and grace and beauty, gathering into one pulp of festering
+death all that is noble, lovely, worshipful in the human nature made so
+divine that the one fearless man, the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it with
+us. This, I thought I might make them understand, was the only terrible
+sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose awful shore we must shrink and
+flee, the end of every voyage upon whose bosom was the bottom of its
+filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is thought or spoken in the
+light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that reaches down from the
+upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of men. I thought, I
+say, for a while, that I could make this, not definite, but very real to
+them. But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might they not in the
+symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the symbol itself
+be ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return only in the
+vaguest shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more excellent
+way. For the power of the truth lies of course in its revelation to the
+mind, and while for this there are a thousand means, none are so mighty
+as its embodiment in human beings and human life. There it is itself
+alive and active. And amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that
+in him who was perfect man in virtue of being at the root of the secret
+of humanity, in virtue of being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons
+in time: he is his Son in eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken
+sparkle. Therefore, I would talk to them about--but I will treat my
+reader now as if he were not my reader, but one of my congregation
+on that bright Sunday, my first in the Seaboard Parish, with the sea
+outside the church, flashing in the sunlight.
+
+While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen,
+I could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level
+with them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts
+upon that which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the
+pulpit; then I felt, as usual with me, that I was personally present for
+personal influence with my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure,
+that one long bench nearly in the middle of the church was full of such
+sunburnt men as could not be mistaken for any but mariners, even if
+their torn and worn garments had not revealed that they must be the
+very men about whom we had been so much interested. Not only were they
+behaving with perfect decorum, but their rough faces wore an aspect of
+solemnity which I do not suppose was by any means their usual aspect.
+
+I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing.
+They should have it by and by.
+
+"Once upon a time," I said, "a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
+till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a
+mountain as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes
+haste to get down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun
+was going down, and, as I say, continued there for a good long while
+after it was dark. You will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished
+to be alone. He hadn't a house of his own. He never had all the time he
+lived. He hadn't even a room of his own into which he could go, and bolt
+the door of it. True, he had kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they
+were all poor people, and their houses were small, and very likely they
+had large families, and he could not always find a quiet place to go
+into. And I dare say, if he had had a room, he would have been a little
+troubled with the children constantly coming to find him; for however
+much he loved them--and no man was ever so fond of children as he
+was--he needed to be left quiet sometimes. So, upon this occasion, he
+went up the mountain just to be quiet. He had been all day with a crowd
+of people, and he felt that it was time to be alone. For he had been
+talking with men all day, which tires and sometimes confuses a man's
+thoughts, and now he wanted to talk with God--for that makes a man
+strong, and puts all the confusion in order again, and lets a man know
+what he is about. So he went to the top of the hill. That was his secret
+chamber. It had no door; but that did not matter--no one could see him
+but God. There he stayed for hours--sometimes, I suppose, kneeling in
+his prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with his own thinking, on
+a stone; sometimes walking about, looking forward to what would come
+next--not anxious about it, but contemplating it. For just before he
+came up here, some of the people who had been with him wanted to make
+him a king; and this would not do--this was not what God wanted of him,
+and therefore he got rid of them, and came up here to talk to God. It
+was so quiet up here! The earth had almost vanished. He could see just
+the bare hilltop beneath him, a glimmer below, and the sky and the stars
+over his head. The people had all gone away to their own homes, and
+perhaps next day would hardly think about him at all, busy catching
+fish, or digging their gardens, or making things for their houses. But
+he knew that God would not forget him the next day any more than this
+day, and that God had sent him not to be the king that these people
+wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make his heart strong, I
+say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk with his Father.
+How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had been down
+there a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as much
+as he was in the quiet now--the only difference being that he could not
+then be alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was--it was the
+king of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting
+son of our Father in heaven.
+
+"Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot
+of it--that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not
+wanting even his usual companions to be with him this evening--partly, I
+presume, because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take
+him by force and make him a king--he had sent them away in their boat,
+to go across this water to the other side, where were their homes and
+their families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top or
+on the water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would have
+been keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle
+of the lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their
+teeth. But he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was
+talking to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and
+finding it--watching it on its way across to the other side. You must
+remember that it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous
+storms upon these small lakes with great mountains about them. For the
+wind will come all at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden
+a squall as ever overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is
+no sea-room. If the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore
+in a few minutes, whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out
+at the oar, toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So
+the time for loneliness and prayer was over, and the time to go down out
+of his secret chamber and help his brethren was come. He did not need to
+turn and say good-bye to his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top
+alone: his Father was down there on the lake as well. He went straight
+down. Could not his Father, if he too was down on the lake, help them
+without him? Yes. But he wanted him to do it, that they might see that
+he did it. Otherwise they would only have thought that the wind fell and
+the waves lay down, without supposing for a moment that their Master or
+his Father had had anything to do with it. They would have done just as
+people do now-a-days: they think that the help comes of itself, instead
+of by the will of him who determined from the first that men should be
+helped. So the Master went down the hill. When he reached the border
+of the lake, the wind being from the other side, he must have found the
+waves breaking furiously upon the rocks. But that made no difference to
+him. He looked out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the rushing wind
+and the noise of the water, out over the waves under the clear, starry
+sky, saw where the tiny boat was tossed about like a nutshell, and set
+out."
+
+The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
+their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are
+of tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson's yarn a
+good one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than
+the others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not
+returned, and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea
+of what was coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how
+Jesus had come by a boat.
+
+"The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave
+him behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been
+with them--not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only
+that somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at.
+They had seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn
+water into wine--some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand
+people the day before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one
+of their number suggested that if he had been with them, they would have
+been safe from the storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about
+the laws of nature, not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they
+would have said that was quite a different thing--altogether too much to
+expect or believe: _nobody_ could make the wind mind what it was about,
+or keep the water from drowning you if you fell into it and couldn't
+swim; or such-like.
+
+"At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
+strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
+their oars in it up to the handles--as they rose on the crest of a huge
+wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
+leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray
+which the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before
+it like dust, they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat,
+something standing up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move
+towards them. It was a shape like a man. They all cried out with fear,
+as was natural, for they thought it must be a ghost."
+
+How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the
+story! I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting
+up to speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.
+
+"But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
+knew so well. It said, 'Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.' I
+should think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some
+moments where they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to
+recover himself apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt
+strong and full of courage. 'Lord, if it be thou,' he said, 'bid me come
+unto thee on the water.' Jesus just said, 'Come;' and Peter unshipped
+his oar, and scrambled over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let
+go his hold of the boat, and began to look about him, and saw how the
+wind was tearing the water, and how it tossed and raved between him and
+Jesus, he began to be afraid. And as soon as he began to be afraid he
+began to sink; but he had, notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough
+to do the one sensible thing; he cried out, 'Lord, save me.' And Jesus
+put out his hand, and took hold of him, and lifted him up out of the
+water, and said to him, 'O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou
+doubt? And then they got into the boat, and the wind fell all at once,
+and altogether.
+
+"Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn't
+that he hadn't courage, but that he hadn't enough of it. And why was it
+that he hadn't enough of it? Because he hadn't faith enough. Peter was
+always very easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn't at all
+likely that a man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter
+found himself standing on the water: you would have thought that when
+once he found himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of
+the wind and the waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked
+so ugly that the fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his
+courage went. You would have thought that the greatest trial of his
+courage was over when he got out of the boat, and that there was
+comparatively little more ahead of him. Yet the sight of the waves and
+the blast of the boisterous wind were too much for him. I will tell you
+how I fancy it was; and I think there are several instances of the same
+kind of thing in Peter's life. When he got out of the boat, and found
+himself standing on the water, he began to think much of himself for
+being able to do so, and fancy himself better and greater than his
+companions, and an especial favourite of God above them. Now, there is
+nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two are directly against
+each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and began to think about
+himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose his faith, and
+then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink--and that brought him to
+his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his Master, and
+then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the Lord gently
+rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, 'Wherefore
+didst thou doubt?' I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart
+sufficiently well to answer that _wherefore_. I do not think it likely
+at this period of his history. But God has immeasurable patience, and
+before he had done teaching Peter, even in this life, he had made him
+know quite well that pride and conceit were at the root of all his
+failures. Jesus did not point it out to him now. Faith was the only
+thing that would reveal that to him, as well as cure him of it; and was,
+therefore, the only thing he required of him in his rebuke. I suspect
+Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager hands of his companions
+already in a humbler state of mind than when he left it; but before
+his pride would be quite overcome, it would need that same voice of
+loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock to bring to
+his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the voice
+of one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet a
+readier disciple than he--the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him because
+he dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even he
+gained the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the
+cross like his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach
+us to distrust ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and
+endless patience with other people. But to return to the story and what
+the story itself teaches us.
+
+"If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
+mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
+frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they
+were only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own
+question"--I went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with
+an audible answer hovering on their lips--"I don't know that, as they
+then were, it would have made so much difference to them; for none of
+them had risen much above the look of the things nearest them yet. But
+supposing you, who know something about him, were alone on the sea, and
+expecting your boat to be swamped every moment--if you found out all
+at once, that he was looking down at you from some lofty hilltop, and
+seeing all round about you in time and space too, would you be afraid?
+He might mean you to go to the bottom, you know. Would you mind going
+to the bottom with him looking at you? I do not think I should mind it
+myself. But I must take care lest I be boastful like Peter.
+
+"Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
+Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not
+believe that he is what he says he is--the Saviour of men. We do not
+believe what he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and
+therefore continue slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you
+do believe in him. I am not going to say that you do not believe in him;
+but I hope I am going to make you say to yourselves that you too deserve
+to have those words of the Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to
+Peter, 'O ye of little faith!' Floating on the sea of your troubles,
+all kinds of fears and anxieties assailing you, is He not on the
+mountain-top? Sees he not the little boat of your fortunes tossed with
+the waves and the contrary wind? Assuredly he will come to you walking
+on the waters. It may not be in the way you wish, but if not, you will
+say at last, 'This is better.' It may be that he will come in a form
+that will make you cry out for fear in the weakness of your faith, as
+the disciples cried out--not believing any more than they did, that it
+can be he. But will not each of you arouse his courage that to you also
+he may say, as to the woman with the sick daughter whose confidence he
+so sorely tried, 'Great is thy faith'? Will you not rouse yourself, I
+say, that you may do him justice, and cast off the slavery of your own
+dread? O ye of little faith, wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that
+the Lord sees and will not come. Down the mountain assuredly he will
+come, and you are now as safe in your troubles as the disciples were in
+theirs with Jesus looking on. They did not know it, but it was so: the
+Lord was watching them. And when you look back upon your past lives,
+cannot you see some instances of the same kind--when you felt and acted
+as if the Lord had forgotten you, and found afterwards that he had been
+watching you all the time?
+
+"But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
+little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
+soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
+envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah!
+trust him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean
+and beautiful in heart.
+
+"O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
+watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt,
+and wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this
+globe, though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake
+on which you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you,
+and watch over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful
+to him? Will you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things,
+lie, and delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you,
+watching your ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves
+to help you? It is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would
+be far finer to fear nothing _because_ he is above all, and over all,
+and in you all. For his sake and for his love, give up everything bad,
+and take him for your captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you,
+and steer you safe into the port of glory. Now to God the Father," &c.
+
+This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
+followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOLUME 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 be 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 be 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, _n�e_
+island, upon which the keep of Tintagel stands. There we set Connie
+down, to take breath and ease our arms before we began the arduous way.
+
+"Now, now!" said Connie eagerly, lifting her hands in the belief that we
+were on the point of undoing the bandage from her eyes.
+
+"No, no, my love, not yet," I said, and she lay still again, only she
+looked more eager than before.
+
+"I am afraid I have tired out you and Mr. Percivale, papa," she said.
+
+Percivale laughed so amusedly, that she rejoined roguishly--
+
+"O yes! I know every gentleman is a Hercules--at least, he chooses to be
+considered one! But, notwithstanding my firm faith in the fact, I have a
+little womanly conscience left that is hard to hoodwink."
+
+There was a speech for my wee Connie to make! The best answer and the
+best revenge was to lift her and go on. This we did, trying as well as
+we might to prevent the difference of level between us from tilting the
+litter too much for her comfort.
+
+"Where _are_ you going, papa?" she said once, but without a sign of
+fear in her voice, as a little slip I made lowered my end of the litter
+suddenly. "You must be going up a steep place. Don't hurt yourself, dear
+papa."
+
+We had changed our positions, and were now carrying her, head foremost,
+up the hill. Percivale led, and I followed. Now I could see every change
+on her lovely face, and it made me strong to endure; for I did find
+it hard work, I confess, to get to the top. It lay like a little sunny
+pool, on which all the cloudy thoughts that moved in some unseen heaven
+cast exquisitely delicate changes of light and shade as they floated
+over it. Percivale strode on as if he bore a feather behind him. I did
+wish we were at the top, for my arms began to feel like iron-cables,
+stiff and stark--only I was afraid of my fingers giving way. My heart
+was beating uncomfortably too. But Percivale, I felt almost inclined
+to quarrel with him before it was over, he strode on so unconcernedly,
+turning every corner of the zigzag where I expected him to propose a
+halt, and striding on again, as if there could be no pretence for any
+change of procedure. But I held out, strengthened by the play on my
+daughter's face, delicate as the play on an opal--one that inclines more
+to the milk than the fire.
+
+When at length we turned in through the gothic door in the battlemented
+wall, and set our lovely burden down upon the grass--
+
+"Percivale," I said, forgetting the proprieties in the affected humour
+of being angry with him, so glad was I that we had her at length on the
+mount of glory, "why did you go on walking like a castle, and pay no
+heed to me?"
+
+"You didn't speak, did you, Mr. Walton," he returned, with just a shadow
+of solicitude in the question.
+
+"No. Of course not," I rejoined.
+
+"O, then," he returned, in a tone of relief, "how could I? You were my
+captain: how could I give in so long as you were holding on?"
+
+I am afraid the _Percivale_, without the _Mister_, came again and
+again after this, though I pulled myself up for it as often as I caught
+myself.
+
+"Now, papa!" said Connie from the grass.
+
+"Not yet, my dear. Wait till your mamma and Wynnie come. Let us go and
+meet them, Mr. Percivale."
+
+"O yes, do, papa. Leave me alone here without knowing where I am or
+what kind of a place I am in. I should like to know how it feels. I have
+never been alone in all my life."
+
+"Very well, my dear," I said; and Percivale and I left her alone in the
+ruins.
+
+We found Ethelwyn toiling up with Wynnie helping her all she could.
+
+"Dear Harry," she said, "how could you think of bringing Connie up such
+an awful place? I wonder you dared to do it."
+
+"It's done you see, wife," I answered, "thanks to Mr. Percivale, who has
+nearly torn the breath out of me. But now we must get you up, and you
+will say that to see Connie's delight, not to mention your own, is quite
+wages for the labour."
+
+"Isn't she afraid to find herself so high up?"
+
+"She knows nothing about it yet."
+
+"You do not mean you have left the child there with her eyes tied up."
+
+"To be sure. We could not uncover them before you came. It would spoil
+half the pleasure."
+
+"Do let us make haste then. It is surely dangerous to leave her so."
+
+"Not in the least; but she must be getting tired of the darkness. Take
+my arm now."
+
+"Don't you think Mrs. Walton had better take my arm," said Percivale,
+"and then you can put your hand on her back, and help her a little that
+way."
+
+We tried the plan, found it a good one, and soon reached the top. The
+moment our eyes fell upon Connie, we could see that she had found the
+place neither fearful nor lonely. The sweetest ghost of a smile hovered
+on her pale face, which shone in the shadow of the old gateway of the
+keep, with light from within her own sunny soul. She lay in such still
+expectation, that you would have thought she had just fallen asleep
+after receiving an answer to a prayer, reminding me of a little-known
+sonnet of Wordsworth's, in which he describes as the type of Death--
+
+  "the face of one
+  Sleeping alone within a mossy cave
+  With her face up to heaven; that seemed to have
+  Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone;
+  A lovely beauty in a summer grave."
+
+[Footnote: _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, part i.28.]
+
+But she heard our steps, and her face awoke.
+
+"Is mamma come?"
+
+"Yes, my darling. I am here," said her mother. "How do you feel?"
+
+"Perfectly well, mamma, thank you. Now, papa!"
+
+"One moment more, my love. Now, Percivale."
+
+We carried her to the spot we had agreed upon, and while we held her
+a little inclined that she might see the better, her mother undid the
+bandage from her head.
+
+"Hold your hands over her eyes, a little way from them," I said to
+her as she untied the handkerchief, "that the light may reach them by
+degrees, and not blind her."
+
+Ethelwyn did so for a few moments, then removed them. Still for a moment
+or two more, it was plain from her look of utter bewilderment, that all
+was a confused mass of light and colour. Then she gave a little cry,
+and to my astonishment, almost fear, half rose to a sitting posture. One
+moment more and she laid herself gently back, and wept and sobbed.
+
+And now I may admit my reader to a share, though at best but a dim
+reflex in my poor words, of the glory that made her weep.
+
+Through the gothic-arched door in the battlemented wall, which stood on
+the very edge of the precipitous descent, so that nothing of the descent
+was seen, and the door was as a framework to the picture, Connie saw
+a great gulf at her feet, full to the brim of a splendour of light and
+colour. Before her rose the great ruins of rock and castle, the ruin of
+rock with castle; rough stone below, clear green happy grass above, even
+to the verge of the abrupt and awful precipice; over it the summer sky
+so clear that it must have been clarified by sorrow and thought; at the
+foot of the rocks, hundreds of feet below, the blue waters breaking
+in white upon the dark gray sands; all full of the gladness of the sun
+overflowing in speechless delight, and reflected in fresh gladness from
+stone and water and flower, like new springs of light rippling forth
+from the earth itself to swell the universal tide of glory--all this
+seen through the narrow gothic archway of a door in a wall--up--down--on
+either hand. But the main marvel was the look sheer below into the abyss
+full of light and air and colour, its sides lined with rock and grass,
+and its bottom lined with blue ripples and sand. Was it any wonder that
+my Connie should cry aloud when the vision dawned upon her, and then
+weep to ease a heart ready to burst with delight? "O Lord God," I said,
+almost involuntarily, "thou art very rich. Thou art the one poet, the
+one maker. We worship thee. Make but our souls as full of glory in thy
+sight as this chasm is to our eyes glorious with the forms which thou
+hast cloven and carved out of nothingness, and we shall be worthy to
+worship thee, O Lord, our God." For I was carried beyond myself with
+delight, and with sympathy with Connie's delight and with the calm
+worship of gladness in my wife's countenance. But when my eye fell on
+Wynnie, I saw a trouble mingled with her admiration, a self-accusation,
+I think, that she did not and could not enjoy it more; and when I turned
+from her, there were the eyes of Percivale fixed on me in wonderment;
+and for the moment I felt as David must have felt when, in his dance
+of undignified delight that he had got the ark home again, he saw the
+contemptuous eyes of Michal fixed on him from the window. But I could
+not leave it so. I said to him--coldly I daresay:
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Percivale; I forgot for the moment that I was not
+amongst my own family."
+
+Percivale took his hat off.
+
+"Forgive my seeming rudeness, Mr. Walton. I was half-envying and
+half-wondering. You would not be surprised at my unconscious behaviour
+if you had seen as much of the wrong side of the stuff as I have seen in
+London."
+
+I had some idea of what he meant; but this was no time to enter upon a
+discussion. I could only say--
+
+"My heart was full, Mr. Percivale, and I let it overflow."
+
+"Let me at least share in its overflow," he rejoined, and nothing more
+passed on the subject.
+
+For the next ten minutes we stood in absolute silence. We had set Connie
+down on the grass again, but propped up so that she could see through
+the doorway. And she lay in still ecstasy. But there was more to be seen
+ere we descended. There was the rest of the little islet with its crop
+of down-grass, on which the horses of all the knights of King Arthur's
+round table might have fed for a week--yes, for a fortnight, without, by
+any means, encountering the short commons of war. There were the ruins
+of the castle so built of plates of the laminated stone of the rocks on
+which they stood, and so woven in or more properly incorporated with the
+outstanding rocks themselves, that in some parts I found it impossible
+to tell which was building and which was rock--the walls themselves
+seeming like a growth out of the island itself, so perfectly were they
+in harmony with, and in kind the same as, the natural ground upon which
+and of which they had been constructed. And this would seem to me to be
+the perfection of architecture. The work of man's hands should be so in
+harmony with the place where it stands that it must look as if it had
+grown out of the soil. But the walls were in some parts so thin that one
+wondered how they could have stood so long. They must have been built
+before the time of any formidable artillery--enough only for defence
+from arrows. But then the island was nowhere commanded, and its own
+steep cliffs would be more easily defended than any erections upon it.
+Clearly the intention was that no enemy should thereon find rest for the
+sole of his foot; for if he was able to land, farewell to the notion
+of any further defence. Then there was outside the walls the little
+chapel--such a tiny chapel! of which little more than the foundation
+remained, with the ruins of the altar still standing, and outside the
+chancel, nestling by its wall, a coffin hollowed in the rock; then the
+churchyard a little way off full of graves, which, I presume, would have
+vanished long ago were it not that the very graves were founded on the
+rock. There still stood old worn-out headstones of thin slate, but
+no memorials were left. Then there was the fragment of arched passage
+underground laid open to the air in the centre of the islet; and last,
+and grandest of all, the awful edges of the rock, broken by time, and
+carved by the winds and the waters into grotesque shapes and threatening
+forms. Over all the surface of the islet we carried Connie, and from
+three sides of this sea-fortress she looked abroad over "the Atlantic's
+level powers." It blew a gentle ethereal breeze on the top; but had
+there been such a wind as I have since stood against on that fearful
+citadel of nature, I should have been in terror lest we should all be
+blown, into the deep. Over the edge she peeped at the strange fantastic
+needle-rock, and round the corner she peeped to see Wynnie and her
+mother seated in what they call Arthur's chair--a canopied hollow
+wrought in the plated rock by the mightiest of all solvents--air and
+water; till at length it was time that we should take our leave of the
+few sheep that fed over the place, and issuing by the gothic door, wind
+away down the dangerous path to the safe ground below.
+
+"I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?" I said.
+
+"Why?" she asked, in wonderment. "There's nothing higher yet, is there?"
+
+"No, my love. If there were, you would hardly be able for it to-day,
+I should think. It is only to keep you from being frightened at the
+precipice as you go down."
+
+"But I sha'n't be frightened, papa."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Because you are going to carry me."
+
+"But what if I should slip? I might, you know."
+
+"I don't mind. I sha'n't mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you
+do it. I sha'n't be to blame, and I'm sure you won't, papa." Then she
+drew my head down and whispered in my ear, "If I get as much more by
+being killed, as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I'm sure it
+will be well worth it."
+
+I tried to smile a reply, for I could not speak one. We took her just as
+she was, and with some tremor on my part, but not a single slip, we bore
+her down the winding path, her face showing all the time that, instead
+of being afraid, she was in a state of ecstatic delight. My wife, I
+could see, was nervous, however; and she breathed a sigh of relief when
+we were once more at the foot.
+
+"Well, I'm glad that's over," she said.
+
+"So am I," I returned, as we set down the litter.
+
+"Poor papa! I've pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale's too!"
+
+Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then
+turning towards her, he said, "Look here, Miss Connie;" and flung it far
+out from the isthmus on which we were resting. We heard it strike on
+a rock below, and then fall in a shower of fragments. "My arms are all
+right, you see," he said.
+
+Meantime, Wynnie had scrambled down to the shore, where we had not yet
+been. In a few minutes, we still lingering, she came running back to us
+out of breath with the news:
+
+"Papa! Mr. Percivale! there's such a grand cave down there! It goes
+right through under the island."
+
+Connie looked so eager, that Percivale and I glanced at each other, and
+without a word, lifted her, and followed Wynnie. It was a little way
+that we had to carry her down, but it was very broken, and insomuch
+more difficult than the other. At length we stood in the cavern. What a
+contrast to the vision overhead!--nothing to be seen but the cool, dark
+vault of the cave, long and winding, with the fresh seaweed lying on
+its pebbly floor, and its walls wet with the last tide, for every tide
+rolled through in rising and falling--the waters on the opposite sides
+of the islet greeting through this cave; the blue shimmer of the rising
+sea, and the forms of huge outlying rocks, looking in at the further
+end, where the roof rose like a grand cathedral arch; and the green
+gleam of veins rich with copper, dashing and streaking the darkness in
+gloomy little chapels, where the floor of heaped-up pebbles rose and
+rose within till it met the descending roof. It was like a going-down
+from Paradise into the grave--but a cool, friendly, brown-lighted grave,
+which even in its darkest recesses bore some witness to the wind of God
+outside, in the occasional ripple of shadowed light, from the play of
+the sun on the waves, that, fleeted and reflected, wandered across its
+jagged roof. But we dared not keep Connie long in the damp coolness;
+and I have given my reader quite enough of description for one hour's
+reading. He can scarcely be equal to more.
+
+My invalids had now beheld the sea in such a different aspect, that I no
+longer feared to go back to Kilkhaven. Thither we went three days after,
+and at my invitation, Percivale took Turner's place in the carriage.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JOE AND HIS TROUBLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+How bright the yellow shores of Kilkhaven looked after the dark sands
+of Tintagel! But how low and tame its highest cliffs after the mighty
+rampart of rocks which there face the sea like a cordon of fierce
+guardians! It was pleasant to settle down again in what had begun to
+look like home, and was indeed made such by the boisterous welcome of
+Dora and the boys. Connie's baby crowed aloud, and stretched forth her
+chubby arms at sight of her. The wind blew gently around us, full both
+of the freshness of the clean waters and the scents of the down-grasses,
+to welcome us back. And the dread vision of the shore had now receded so
+far into the past, that it was no longer able to hurt.
+
+We had called at the blacksmith's house on our way home, and found that
+he was so far better as to be working at his forge again. His mother
+said he was used to such attacks, and soon got over them. I, however,
+feared that they indicated an approaching break-down.
+
+"Indeed, sir," she said, "Joe might be well enough if he liked. It's all
+his own fault."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked. "I cannot believe that your son is in any
+way guilty of his own illness."
+
+"He's a well-behaved lad, my Joe," she answered; "but he hasn't learned
+what I had to learn long ago."
+
+"What is that?" I asked.
+
+"To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other."
+
+She was a woman with a long upper lip and a judicial face, and as she
+spoke, her lip grew longer and longer; and when she closed her mouth in
+mark of her own resolution, that lip seemed to occupy two-thirds of all
+her face under the nose.
+
+"And what is it he won't do?"
+
+"I don't mind whether he does it or not, if he would only
+make--up--his--mind--and--stick--to--it."
+
+"What is it you want him to do, then?"
+
+"I don't want him to do it, I'm sure. It's no good to me--and wouldn't
+be much to him, that I'll be bound. Howsomever, he must please himself."
+
+I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was
+no more sunshine for him at home than his mother's face indicated. Few
+things can make a man so strong and able for his work as a sun indoors,
+whose rays are smiles, ever ready to shine upon him when he opens the
+door,--the face of wife or mother or sister. Now his mother's face
+certainly was not sunny. No doubt it must have shone upon him when he
+was a baby. God has made that provision for babies, who need sunshine
+so much that a mother's face cannot help being sunny to them: why should
+the sunshine depart as the child grows older?
+
+"Well, I suppose I must not ask. But I fear your son is very far
+from well. Such attacks do not often occur without serious mischief
+somewhere. And if there is anything troubling him, he is less likely to
+get over it."
+
+"If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to
+it--"
+
+"O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind."
+
+"That's just what he won't do."
+
+All the time she looked naughty, only after a self-righteous fashion. It
+was evident that whatever was the cause of it, she was not in sympathy
+with her son, and therefore could not help him out of any difficulty he
+might be in. I made no further attempt to learn from her the cause
+of her son's discomfort, clearly a deeper cause than his illness. In
+passing his workshop, we stopped for a moment, and I made an arrangement
+to meet him at the church the next day.
+
+I was there before him, and found that he had done a good deal since we
+left. Little remained except to get the keys put to rights, and the rods
+attached to the cranks in the box. To-day he was to bring a carpenter, a
+cousin of his own, with him.
+
+They soon arrived, and a small consultation followed. The cousin was a
+bright-eyed, cheruby-cheeked little man, with a ready smile and white
+teeth: I thought he might help me to understand what was amiss in
+Joseph's affairs. But I would not make the attempt except openly. I
+therefore said half in a jocular fashion, as with gloomy, self-withdrawn
+countenance the smith was fitting one loop into another in two of his
+iron rods,--
+
+"I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more
+cheerful. You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine."
+
+The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.
+
+"Well, sir, if you'll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the
+rest of us. He's a religious man, is Joe."
+
+"But I don't see how that should make him miserable. It hasn't made me
+miserable. I hope I'm a religious man myself. It makes me happy every
+day of my life."
+
+"Ah, well," returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked
+away gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it,
+"I don't say it's the religion, for I don't know; but perhaps it's the
+way he takes it up. He don't look after hisself enough; he's always
+thinking about other people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that
+if you don't look after yourself, why, who is to look after you? That's
+common sense, _I_ think."
+
+It was a curious contrast--the merry friendly face, which shone
+good-fellowship to all mankind, accusing the sombre, pale, sad, severe,
+even somewhat bitter countenance beside him, of thinking too much
+about other people, and too little about himself. Of course it might
+be correct in a way. There is all the difference between a comfortable,
+healthy inclination, and a pained, conscientious principle. It was
+a smile very unlike his cousin's with which Joe heard his remarks on
+himself.
+
+"But," I said, "you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take
+Joe's way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of
+yourself."
+
+"I don't see why, sir."
+
+"Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else."
+
+"Not so well, I doubt, sir."
+
+"Yes, and a great deal better."
+
+"At any rate, that's a long way off; and mean time, _who's_ to take care
+of the odd man like Joe there, that don't look after hisself?"
+
+"Why, God, of course."
+
+"Well, there's just where I'm out. I don't know nothing about that
+branch, sir."
+
+I saw a grateful light mount up in Joe's gloomy eyes as I spoke thus
+upon his side of the question. He said nothing, however; and his cousin
+volunteering no further information, I did not push any advantage I
+might have gained.
+
+At noon I made them leave their work, and come home with me to have
+their dinner; they hoped to finish the job before dusk. Harry Cobb and
+I dropped behind, and Joe Harper walked on in front, apparently sunk in
+meditation.
+
+Scarcely were we out of the churchyard, and on the road leading to the
+rectory, when I saw the sexton's daughter meeting us. She had almost
+come up to Joe before he saw her, for his gaze was bent on the
+ground, and he started. They shook hands in what seemed to me an odd,
+constrained, yet familiar fashion, and then stood as if they wanted
+to talk, but without speaking. Harry and I passed, both with a nod of
+recognition to the young woman, but neither of us had the ill-manners to
+look behind. I glanced at Harry, and he answered me with a queer look.
+When we reached the turning that would hide them from our view, I looked
+back almost involuntarily, and there they were still standing. But
+before we reached the door of the rectory, Joe got up with us.
+
+There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the
+sexton's daughter. She was about six-and-twenty, I should imagine,
+the youngest of the family, with a sallow, rather sickly complexion,
+somewhat sorrowful eyes, a smile rare and sweet, a fine figure, tall
+and slender, and a graceful gait. I now saw, I thought, a good
+hair's-breadth further into the smith's affairs. Beyond the
+hair's-breadth, however, all was dark. But I saw likewise that the well
+of truth, whence I might draw the whole business, must be the girl's
+mother.
+
+After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back
+to the church, and I went to the sexton's cottage. I found the old man
+seated at the window, with his pot of beer on the sill, and an empty
+plate beside it.
+
+"Come in, sir," he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. "The
+mis'ess ben't in, but she'll be here in a few minutes."
+
+"O, it's of no consequence," I said. "Are they all well?"
+
+"All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It be
+in winter it be worst for them."
+
+"But it's a snug enough shelter you've got here. It seems such, anyhow;
+though, to be sure, it is the blasts of winter that find out the weak
+places both in house and body."
+
+"It ben't the wind touch _them_" he said; "they be safe enough from the
+wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben't much snow in these parts; but when
+it du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!"
+
+Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?
+
+"But at least this cottage keeps out the wet," I said. "If not, we must
+have it seen to."
+
+"This cottage du well enough, sir. It'll last my time, anyhow."
+
+"Then why are you pitying your family for having to live in it?"
+
+"Bless your heart, sir! It's not them. They du well enough. It's my
+people out yonder. You've got the souls to look after, and I've got the
+bodies. That's what it be, sir. To be sure!"
+
+The last exclamation was uttered in a tone of impatient surprise at my
+stupidity in giving all my thoughts and sympathies to the living, and
+none to the dead. I pursued the subject no further, but as I lay in bed
+that night, it began to dawn upon me as a lovable kind of hallucination
+in which the man indulged. He too had an office in the Church of God,
+and he would magnify that office. He could not bear that there should
+be no further outcome of his labour; that the burying of the dead out
+of sight should be "the be-all and the end-all." He was God's vicar,
+the gardener in God's Acre, as the Germans call the churchyard. When all
+others had forsaken the dead, he remained their friend, caring for what
+little comfort yet remained possible to them. Hence in all changes of
+air and sky above, he attributed to them some knowledge of the same, and
+some share in their consequences even down in the darkness of the tomb.
+It was his way of keeping up the relation between the living and the
+dead. Finding I made him no reply, he took up the word again.
+
+"You've got your part, sir, and I've got mine. You up into the pulpit,
+and I down into the grave. But it'll be all the same by and by."
+
+"I hope it will," I answered. "But when you do go down into your own
+grave, you'll know a good deal less about it than you do now. You'll
+find you've got other things to think about. But here comes your wife.
+She'll talk about the living rather than the dead."
+
+"That's natural, sir. She brought 'em to life, and I buried 'em--at
+least, best part of 'em. If only I had the other two safe down with the
+rest!"
+
+I remembered what the old woman had told me--that she had two boys _in_
+the sea; and I knew therefore what he meant. He regarded his drowned
+boys as still tossed about in the weary wet cold ocean, and would have
+gladly laid them to rest in the warm dry churchyard.
+
+He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand,
+and saying, "Well, I must be off to my gardening," left me with his
+wife. I saw then that, humorist as the old man might be, his humour,
+like that of all true humorists, lay close about the wells of weeping.
+
+"The old man seems a little out of sorts," I said to his wife.
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with her usual gentleness, a gentleness which
+obedient suffering had perfected, "this be the day he buried our Nancy,
+this day two years; and to-day Agnes be come home from her work poorly;
+and the two things together they've upset him a bit."
+
+"I met Agnes coming this way. Where is she?"
+
+"I believe she be in the churchyard, sir. I've been to the doctor about
+her."
+
+"I hope it's nothing serious."
+
+"I hope not, sir; but you see--four on 'em, sir!"
+
+"Well, she's in God's hands, you know."
+
+"That she be, sir."
+
+"I want to ask you about something, Mrs. Coombes."
+
+"What be that, sir? If I can tell, I will, you may be sure, sir."
+
+"I want to know what's the matter with Joe Harper, the blacksmith."
+
+"They du say it be a consumption, sir."
+
+"But what has he got on his mind?"
+
+"He's got nothing on his mind, sir. He be as good a by as ever stepped,
+I assure you, sir."
+
+"But I am sure there is something or other on his mind. He's not so
+happy as he should be. He's not the man, it seems to me, to be unhappy
+because he's ill. A man like him would not be miserable because he was
+going to die. It might make him look sad sometimes, but not gloomy as he
+looks."
+
+"Well, sir, I believe you be right, and perhaps I know summat. But it's
+part guessing.--I believe my Agnes and Joe Harper are as fond upon one
+another as any two in the county."
+
+"Are they not going to be married then?"
+
+"There be the pint, sir. I don't believe Joe ever said a word o' the
+sort to Aggy. She never could ha' kep it from me, sir."
+
+"Why doesn't he then?"
+
+"That's the pint again, sir. All as knows him says it's because he be in
+such bad health, and he thinks he oughtn't to go marrying with one foot
+in the grave. He never said so to me; but I think very likely that be
+it."
+
+"For that matter, Mrs. Coombes, we've all got one foot in the grave, I
+think."
+
+"That be very true, sir."
+
+"And what does your daughter think?"
+
+"I believe she thinks the same. And so they go on talking to each other,
+quiet-like, like old married folks, not like lovers at all, sir. But I
+can't help fancying it have something to do with my Aggy's pale face."
+
+"And something to do with Joe's pale face too, Mrs. Coombes," I said.
+"Thank you. You've told me more than I expected. It explains everything.
+I must have it out with Joe now."
+
+"O deary me! sir, don't go and tell him I said anything, as if I wanted
+him to marry my daughter."
+
+"Don't you be afraid. I'll take good care of that. And don't fancy I'm
+fond of meddling with other people's affairs. But this is a case in
+which I ought to do something. Joe's a fine fellow."
+
+"That he be, sir. I couldn't wish a better for a son-in-law."
+
+I put on my hat.
+
+"You won't get me into no trouble with Joe, will ye, sir!"
+
+"Indeed I will not, Mrs. Coombes. I should be doing a great deal more
+harm than good if I said a word to make him doubt you."
+
+I went straight to the church. There were the two men working away in
+the shadowy tower, and there was Agnes standing beside, knitting like
+her mother, so quiet, so solemn even, that it did indeed look as if she
+were a long-married wife, hovering about her husband at his work. Harry
+was saying something to her as I went in, but when they saw me they were
+silent, and Agnes gently withdrew.
+
+"Do you think you will get through to-night?" I asked.
+
+"Sure of it, sir," answered Harry.
+
+"You shouldn't be sure of anything, Harry. We are told in the New
+Testament that we ought to say _If the Lord will_," said Joe.
+
+"Now, Joe, you're too hard upon Harry," I said. "You don't think that
+the Bible means to pull a man up every step like that, till he's afraid
+to speak a word. It was about a long journey and a year's residence that
+the Apostle James was speaking."
+
+"No doubt, sir. But the principle's the same. Harry can no more be sure
+of finishing his work before it be dark, than those people could be of
+going their long journey."
+
+"That is perfectly true. But you are taking the letter for the spirit,
+and that, I suspect, in more ways than one. The religion does not lie in
+not being sure about anything, but in a loving desire that the will of
+God in the matter, whatever it be, may be done. And if Harry has not
+learned yet to care about the will of God, what is the good of coming
+down upon him that way, as if that would teach him in the least. When
+he loves God, then, and not till then, will he care about his will. Nor
+does the religion lie in saying, _if the Lord will_, every time anything
+is to be done. It is a most dangerous thing to use sacred words often.
+It makes them so common to our ear that at length, when used most
+solemnly, they have not half the effect they ought to have, and that is
+a serious loss. What the Apostle means is, that we should always be in
+the mood of looking up to God and having regard to his will, not
+always writing D.V. for instance, as so many do--most irreverently, I
+think--using a Latin contraction for the beautiful words, just as if
+they were a charm, or as if God would take offence if they did not make
+the salvo of acknowledgment. It seems to me quite heathenish. Our hearts
+ought ever to be in the spirit of those words; our lips ought to utter
+them rarely. Besides, there are some things a man might be pretty sure
+the Lord wills."
+
+"It sounds fine, sir; but I'm not sure that I understand what you mean
+to say. It sounds to me like a darkening of wisdom."
+
+I saw that I had irritated him, and so had in some measure lost ground.
+But Harry struck in--
+
+"How _can_ you say that now, Joe? _I_ know what the parson means well
+enough, and everybody knows I ain't got half the brains you've got."
+
+"The reason is, Harry, that he's got something in his head that stands
+in the way."
+
+"And there's nothing in my head _to_ stand in the way!" returned Harry,
+laughing.
+
+This made me laugh too, and even Joe could not help a sympathetic grin.
+By this time it was getting dark.
+
+"I'm afraid, Harry, after all, you won't get through to-night."
+
+"I begin to think so too, sir. And there's Joe saying, 'I told you so,'
+over and over to himself, though he won't say it out like a man."
+
+Joe answered only with another grin.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Harry," I said--"you must come again on Monday.
+And on your way home, just look in and tell Joe's mother that I have
+kept him over to-morrow. The change will do him good."
+
+"No, sir, that can't he. I haven't got a clean shirt."
+
+"You can have a shirt of mine," I said. "But I'm afraid you'll want your
+Sunday clothes."
+
+"I'll bring them for you, Joe--before you're up," interposed Harry. "And
+then you can go to church with Aggy Coombes, you know."
+
+Here was just what I wanted.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Harry," said Joe angrily. "You're talking of what you
+don't know anything about."
+
+"Well, Joe, I ben't a fool, if I ben't so religious as you be. You ben't
+a bad fellow, though you be a Methodist, and I ben't a fool, though I be
+Harry Cobb."
+
+"What do you mean, Harry? Do hold your tongue."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what I mean first, and then I'll hold my tongue.
+I mean this--that nobody with two eyes, or one eye, for that matter, in
+his head, could help seeing the eyes you and Aggy make at each other,
+and why you don't port your helm and board her--I won't say it's more
+than I know, but I du say it to be more than I think be fair to the
+young woman."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Harry."
+
+"I said I would when I'd answered you as to what I meaned. So no more
+at present; but I'll be over with your clothes afore you're up in the
+morning."
+
+As Harry spoke he was busy gathering his tools.
+
+"They won't be in the way, will they, sir?" he said, as he heaped them
+together in the furthest corner of the tower.
+
+"Not in the least," I returned. "If I had my way, all the tools used in
+building the church should be carved on the posts and pillars of it, to
+indicate the sacredness of labour, and the worship of God that lies,
+not in building the church merely, but in every honest trade honestly
+pursued for the good of mankind and the need of the workman. For a
+necessity of God is laid upon every workman as well as on St. Paul. Only
+St. Paul saw it, and every workman doesn't, Harry."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I like that way of it. I almost think I could be a
+little bit religious after your way of it, sir."
+
+"Almost, Harry!" growled Joe--not unkindly.
+
+"Now, you hold your tongue, Joe," I said. "Leave Harry to me. You may
+take him, if you like, after I've done with him."
+
+Laughing merrily, but making no other reply than a hearty good-night,
+Harry strode away out of the church, and Joe and I went home together.
+
+When he had had his tea, I asked him to go out with me for a walk.
+
+The sun was shining aslant upon the downs from over the sea. We rose out
+of the shadowy hollow to the sunlit brow. I was a little in advance of
+Joe. Happening to turn, I saw the light full on his head and face, while
+the rest of his body had not yet emerged from the shadow.
+
+"Stop, Joe," I said. "I want to see you so for a moment."
+
+He stood--a little surprised.
+
+"You look just like a man rising from the dead, Joe," I said.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir," he returned.
+
+"I will describe yourself to you. Your head and face are full of
+sunlight, the rest of your body is still buried in the shadow. Look; I
+will stand where you are now; and you come here. You will soon see what
+I mean."
+
+We changed places. Joe stared for a moment. Then his face brightened.
+
+"I see what you mean, sir," he said. "I fancy you don't mean the
+resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of righteousness."
+
+"I do, Joe. Did it ever strike you that the whole history of the
+Christian life is a series of such resurrections? Every time a man
+bethinks himself that he is not walking in the light, that he has been
+forgetting himself, and must repent, that he has been asleep and must
+awake, that he has been letting his garments trail, and must gird up the
+loins of his mind--every time this takes place, there is a resurrection
+in the world. Yes, Joe; and every time that a man finds that his heart
+is troubled, that he is not rejoicing in God, a resurrection must
+follow--a resurrection out of the night of troubled thoughts into the
+gladness of the truth. For the truth is, and ever was, and ever must be,
+gladness, however much the souls on which it shines may be obscured by
+the clouds of sorrow, troubled by the thunders of fear, or shot through
+with the lightnings of pain. Now, Joe, will you let me tell you what you
+are like--I do not know your thoughts; I am only judging from your words
+and looks?"
+
+"You may if you like, sir," answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was
+not to be repelled.
+
+I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the
+sun's disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.
+
+"What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?"
+
+"Just the top of your head," answered he.
+
+"There, then," I returned, "that is just what you are like--a man with
+the light on his head, but not on his face. And why not on your face?
+Because you hold your head down."
+
+"Isn't it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as
+you put it, by doing his duty?"
+
+"That is a difficult question," I replied. "I must think before I answer
+it."
+
+"I mean," added Joe--"mightn't his duty be a painful one?"
+
+"Yes. But I think that would rather etherealise than destroy the light.
+Behind the sorrow would spring a yet greater light from the very duty
+itself. I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I mean.--To
+be frank with you, Joe, I do not see that light in your face. Therefore
+I think something must be wrong with you. Remember a good man is not
+necessarily in the right. St. Peter was a good man, yet our Lord called
+him Satan--and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not
+mean."
+
+"How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my
+duty--nothing else, as far as I know?"
+
+"Then," I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, "I doubt
+whether what you suppose to be your duty can be your duty. If it were,
+I do not think it would make you so miserable. At least--I may be wrong,
+but I venture to think so."
+
+"What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he
+not to do it?"
+
+"Most assuredly--until he knows better. But it is of the greatest
+consequence whether the supposed duty be the will of God or the
+invention of one's own fancy or mistaken judgment. A real duty is always
+something right in itself. The duty a man makes his for the time, by
+supposing it to be a duty, may be something quite wrong in itself. The
+duty of a Hindoo widow is to burn herself on the body of her husband.
+But that duty lasts no longer than till she sees that, not being the
+will of God, it is not her duty. A real duty, on the other hand, is a
+necessity of the human nature, without seeing and doing which a man can
+never attain to the truth and blessedness of his own being. It was the
+duty of the early hermits to encourage the growth of vermin upon their
+bodies, for they supposed that was pleasing to God; but they could not
+fare so well as if they had seen the truth that the will of God was
+cleanliness. And there may be far more serious things done by Christian
+people against the will of God, in the fancy of doing their duty, than
+such a trifle as swarming with worms. In a word, thinking a thing is
+your duty makes it your duty only till you know better. And the prime
+duty of every man is to seek and find, that he may do, the will of God."
+
+"But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought
+not, if he is doing what he don't like?"
+
+"Not so likely, I allow. But there may be ambition in it. A man must
+not want to be better than the right. That is the delusion of the
+anchorite--a delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for
+the sake of his own sanctity."
+
+"It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person's
+own sake at all."
+
+"It might be; but except it were the will of God for that other person,
+it would be doing him or her a real injury."
+
+We were coming gradually towards what I wanted to make the point in
+question. I wished him to tell me all about it himself, however, for
+I knew that while advice given on request is generally disregarded, to
+offer advice unasked is worthy only of a fool.
+
+"But how are you to know the will of God in every case?" asked Joe.
+
+"By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them--except there
+be anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher
+law."
+
+"Ah! but that be just what there is here."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, that may be; but the special conduct may not be
+right for the special case for all that. The speciality of the case may
+not be even sufficient to take it from under the ordinary rule. But it
+is of no use talking generals. Let us come to particulars. If you can
+trust me, tell me all about it, and we may be able to let some light in.
+I am sure there is darkness somewhere."
+
+"I will turn it over in my mind, sir; and if I can bring myself to talk
+about it, I will. I would rather tell you than anyone else."
+
+I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset--there never was a grander
+place for sunsets--and went home.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A SMALL ADVENTURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next morning Harry came with the clothes. But Joe did not go to
+church. Neither did Agnes make her appearance that morning. They were
+both present at the evening service, however.
+
+When we came out of church, it was cloudy and dark, and the wind was
+blowing cold from the sea. The sky was covered with one cloud, but the
+waves tossing themselves against the rocks, flashed whiteness out of the
+general gloom. As the tide rose the wind increased. It was a night of
+surly temper--hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above--there
+was no blue; and the wind was _gurly_; I once heard that word in
+Scotland, and never forgot it.
+
+After one of our usual gatherings in Connie's room, which were much
+shorter here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till
+supper should be ready.
+
+Now I have always had, as I think I have incidentally stated before, a
+certain peculiar pleasure in the surly aspects of nature. When I was a
+young man this took form in opposition and defiance; since I had begun
+to grow old the form had changed into a sense of safety. I welcomed such
+aspects, partly at least, because they roused my faith to look through
+and beyond the small region of human conditions in which alone the storm
+can be and blow, and thus induced a feeling like that of the child who
+lies in his warm crib and listens to the howling of one of these same
+storms outside the strong-built house which yet trembles at its fiercer
+onsets: the house is not in danger; or, if it be, that is his father's
+business, not his. Hence it came that, after supper, I put on my
+great-coat and travelling-cap, and went out into the ill-tempered
+night--speaking of it in its human symbolism.
+
+I meant to have a stroll down to the breakwater, of which I have yet
+said little, but which was a favourite resort, both of myself and my
+children. At the further end of it, always covered at high water, was
+an outlying cluster of low rocks, in the heart of which the lord of
+the manor, a noble-hearted Christian gentleman of the old school, had
+constructed a bath of graduated depth--an open-air swimming-pool--the
+only really safe place for men who were swimmers to bathe in. Thither I
+was in the habit of taking my two little men every morning, and bathing
+with them, that I might develop the fish that was in them; for, as
+George Herbert says:
+
+  "Man is everything,
+  And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
+  A beast, yet is, or should be, more;"
+
+and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as
+well.
+
+It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my
+Connie's room, that the nearest way to the breakwater should be through
+that room; but so it was. I mention the fact because I want my readers
+to understand a certain peculiarity of the room. By the side of
+the window which looked out upon the breakwater was a narrow door,
+apparently of a closet or cupboard, which communicated, however, with a
+narrow, curving, wood-built passage, leading into a little wooden hut,
+the walls of which were by no means impervious to the wind, for they
+were formed of outside-planks, with the bark still upon them. From this
+hut one or two little windows looked seaward, and a door led out on the
+bit of sward in which lay the flower-bed under Connie's window. From
+this spot again a door in the low wall and thick hedge led out on the
+downs, where a path wound along the cliffs that formed the side of the
+bay, till, descending under the storm-tower, it brought you to the root
+of the breakwater.
+
+This mole stretched its long strong low back to a rock a good way out,
+breaking the force of the waves, and rendering the channel of a small
+river, that here flowed into the sea across the sands from the mouth of
+the canal, a refuge from the Atlantic. But it was a roadway often hard
+to reach. In fair weather even, the wind falling as the vessel rounded
+the point of the breakwater into the calm of the projecting headlands,
+the under-current would sometimes dash her helpless on the rocks. During
+all this heavenly summer there had been no thought or fear of any such
+disaster. The present night was a hint of what weather would yet come.
+
+When I went into Connie's room, I found her lying in bed a very picture
+of peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.
+
+"Papa," she said, "why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not
+going out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully."
+
+"Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your
+baby."
+
+"But it is very dark."
+
+"I allow that; but there is a glimmer from the sea. I am only going on
+the breakwater for a few minutes. You know I like a stormy night quite
+as much as a fine one."
+
+"I shall be miserable till you come home, papa."
+
+"Nonsense, Connie. You don't think your father hasn't sense to take
+care of himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of
+comfort, you don't think I can go anywhere without my Father to take
+care of me?"
+
+"But there is no occasion--is there, papa?"
+
+"Do you think I should be better pleased with my boys if they shrunk
+from everything involving the least possibility of danger because there
+was no occasion for it? That is just the way to make cowards. And I
+am certain God would not like his children to indulge in such moods of
+self-preservation as that. He might well be ashamed of them. The fearful
+are far more likely to meet with accidents than the courageous. But
+really, Connie, I am almost ashamed of talking so. It is all your fault.
+There is positively no ground for apprehension, and I hope you won't
+spoil my walk by the thought that my foolish little girl is frightened."
+
+"I will be good--indeed I will, papa," she said, holding up her mouth to
+kiss me.
+
+I left her room, and went through the wooden passage into the bark hut.
+The wind roared about it, shook it, and pawed it, and sung and whistled
+in the chinks of the planks. I went out and shut the door. That moment
+the wind seized upon me, and I had to fight with it. When I got on the
+path leading along the edge of the downs, I felt something lighter than
+any feather fly in my face. When I put up my hand, I found my cheek wet.
+Again and again I was thus assailed, but when I got to the breakwater
+I found what it was. They were flakes of foam, bubbles worked up into
+little masses of adhering thousands, which the wind blew off the waters
+and across the downs, carrying some of them miles inland. When I reached
+the breakwater, and looked along its ridge through the darkness of the
+night, I was bewildered to see a whiteness lying here and there in
+a great patch upon its top. They were but accumulations of these
+foam-flakes, like soap-suds, lying so thick that I expected to have to
+wade through them, only they vanished at the touch of my feet. Till then
+I had almost believed it was snow I saw. On the edge of the waves, in
+quieter spots, they lay like yeast, foaming and working. Now and then a
+little rush of water from a higher wave swept over the top of the broad
+breakwater, as with head bowed sideways against the wind, I struggled
+along towards the rock at its end; but I said to myself, "The tide is
+falling fast, and salt water hurts nobody," and struggled on over the
+huge rough stones of the mighty heap, outside which the waves were white
+with wrath, inside which they had fallen asleep, only heaving with the
+memory of their late unrest. I reached the tall rock at length, climbed
+the rude stair leading up to the flagstaff, and looked abroad, if
+looking it could be called, into the thick dark. But the wind blew so
+strong on the top that I was glad to descend. Between me and the basin
+where yesterday morning I had bathed in still water and sunshine with my
+boys, rolled the deathly waves. I wandered on the rough narrow space yet
+uncovered, stumbling over the stones and the rocky points between which
+they lay, stood here and there half-meditating, and at length, finding
+a sheltered nook in a mass of rock, sat with the wind howling and
+the waves bursting around me. There I fell into a sort of brown
+study--almost a half-sleep.
+
+But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices,
+low and earnest. One I recognised as Joe's voice. The other was a
+woman's. I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore
+felt no immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat
+debating with myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length,
+in a lull of the wind, I heard the woman say--I could fancy with a
+sigh--
+
+"I'm sure you'll du what is right, Joe. Don't 'e think o' me, Joe."
+
+"It's just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben't for my sake.
+Surely you know that?"
+
+There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best
+do--go away quietly or let them know I was there--when she spoke again.
+There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and
+I heard what she said well enough.
+
+"It ben't for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don't think you be going
+to die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?"
+
+It flashed across me how once before, a stormy night and darkness had
+brought me close to a soul in agony. Then I was in agony myself; now
+the world was all fair and hopeful around me--the portals of the world
+beyond ever opening wider as I approached them, and letting out more of
+their glory to gladden the path to their threshold. But here were two
+souls straying in a mist which faith might roll away, and leave them
+walking in the light. The moment was come. I must speak.
+
+"Joe!" I called out.
+
+"Who's there?" he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.
+
+"Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?"
+
+"We can't be very far off," he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure
+at finding me so nigh.
+
+I rose, and peering about through the darkness, found that they were a
+little higher up on the same rock by which I was sheltered.
+
+"You mustn't think," I said, "that I have been eavesdropping. I had no
+idea anyone was near me till I heard your voices, and I did not hear a
+word till just the last sentence or two."
+
+"I saw someone go up the Castle-rock," said Joe; "but I thought he was
+gone away again. It will be a lesson to me."
+
+"I'm no tell-tale, Joe," I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. "You
+will have no cause to regret that I happened to overhear a little. I am
+sure, Joe, you will never say anything you need be ashamed of. But what
+I heard was sufficient to let me into the secret of your trouble. Will
+you let me talk to Joe, Agnes? I've been young myself, and, to tell the
+truth, I don't think I'm old yet."
+
+"I am sure, sir," she answered, "you won't be hard on Joe and me. I
+don't suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we
+can't be--married."
+
+She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was
+a certain womanly composure in her utterance. "I'm sure it's very bold
+of me to talk so," she added, "but Joe will tell you all about it."
+
+I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the
+motion of her hand stealing into his.
+
+"Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted," I said. "A woman can be braver
+than a big smith sometimes. Agnes has done her part. Now you do yours,
+and tell me all about it."
+
+No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.
+
+"I think I know how the matter lies, Joe. You think you are not going to
+live long, and that therefore you ought not to marry. Am I right?"
+
+"Not far off it, sir," he answered.
+
+"Now, Joe," I said, "can't we talk as friends about this matter? I have
+no right to intrude into your affairs--none in the least--except what
+friendship gives me. If you say I am not to talk about it, I shall be
+silent. To force advice upon you would be as impertinent as useless."
+
+"It's all the same, I'm afraid, sir. My mind has been made up for a long
+time. What right have I to bring other people into trouble? But I take
+it kind of you, sir, though I mayn't look over-pleased. Agnes wants to
+hear your way of it. I'm agreeable."
+
+This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for
+proceeding.
+
+"I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is
+the will of God?"
+
+"Surely, sir."
+
+"Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each
+other, they should marry?"
+
+"Certainly, sir--where there be no reasons against it."
+
+"Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you
+would?"
+
+"I do see that a man should not bring a woman into trouble for the sake
+of being comfortable himself for the rest of a few weary days."
+
+Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she
+would be Joe's wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.
+
+"Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But
+listen to me. In the first place, you don't know, and you are not
+required to know, when you are going to die. In fact, you have nothing
+to do with it. Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation
+of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation
+for the night is to work while the day lasts, diligently. The best
+preparation for death is life. Besides, I have known delicate people
+who have outlived all their strong relations, and been left alone in the
+earth--because they had possibly taken too much care of themselves.
+But marriage is God's will, and death is God's will, and you have no
+business to set the one over against, as antagonistic to, the other.
+For anything you know, the gladness and the peace of marriage may be
+the very means intended for your restoration to health and strength. I
+suspect your desire to marry, fighting against the fancy that you ought
+not to marry, has a good deal to do with the state of health in which
+you now find yourself. A man would get over many things if he were
+happy, that he cannot get over when he is miserable."
+
+"But it's for Aggy. You forget that."
+
+"I do not forget it. What right have you to seek for her another kind
+of welfare than you would have yourself? Are you to treat her as if
+she were worldly when you are not--to provide for her a comfort which
+yourself you would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to
+die soon?--if you _are_ thus doomed, which to me is by no means clear.
+Why not have what happiness you may for the rest of your sojourn? If you
+find at the end of twenty years that here you are after all, you will be
+rather sorry you did not do as I say."
+
+"And if I find myself dying at the end of six months'?"
+
+"You will thank God for those six months. The whole thing, my dear
+fellow, is a want of faith in God. I do not doubt you think you are
+doing right, but, I repeat, the whole thing comes from want of faith in
+God. You will take things into your own hands, and order them after a
+preventive and self-protective fashion, lest God should have ordained
+the worst for you, which worst, after all, would be best met by doing
+his will without inquiry into the future; and which worst is no evil.
+Death is no more an evil than marriage is."
+
+"But you don't see it as I do," persisted the blacksmith.
+
+"Of course I don't. I think you see it as it is not."
+
+He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He
+started.
+
+"What a wave!" he cried. "That spray came over the top of the rock. We
+shall have to run for it."
+
+I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.
+
+"There's no hurry," I said. "It was high water an hour and a half ago."
+
+"You don't know this coast, sir," returned he, "or you wouldn't talk
+like that."
+
+As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock,
+looked along.
+
+"For God's sake, Aggy!" he cried in terror, "come at once. Every other
+wave be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level."
+
+So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw
+her along.
+
+"Hadn't we better stay where we are?" I suggested.
+
+"If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and
+I don't care about being out all night. It's not the tide, sir; it's
+a ground swell--from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no
+questions about tide or no tide."
+
+"Come along, then," I said. "But just wait one minute more. It is better
+to be ready for the worst."
+
+For I remembered that the day before I had seen a crowbar lying among
+the stones, and I thought it might be useful. In a moment or two I
+had found it, and returning, gave it to Joe. Then I took the girl's
+disengaged hand. She thanked me in a voice perfectly calm and firm. Joe
+took the bar in haste, and drew Agnes towards the breakwater.
+
+Any real thought of danger had not yet crossed my mind. But when I
+looked along the outstretched back of the mole, and saw a dim sheet of
+white sweep across it, I felt that there was ground for his anxiety, and
+prepared myself for a struggle.
+
+"Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?" I said, grasping my own
+stout oak-stick more firmly.
+
+"Perfectly," answered Joe. "To stick between the stones and hold on. We
+must watch our time between the waves."
+
+"You take the command, then, Joe," I returned. "You see better than I
+do, and you know the ways of that raging wild beast there better than I
+do. I will obey orders--one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or
+sea to lose hold of Agnes--eh, Joe?"
+
+Joe gave a grim enough laugh in reply, and we started, he carrying his
+crowbar in his right hand towards the advancing sea, and I my oak-stick
+in my left towards the still water within.
+
+"Quick march!" said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.
+
+Now the back of the breakwater was very rugged, for it was formed of
+huge stones, with wide gaps between, where the waters had washed out the
+cement, and worn their edges. But what impeded our progress secured our
+safety.
+
+"Halt!" cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter
+of the rocks. "There's a topper coming."
+
+We halted at the word of command, as a huge wave, with combing crest,
+rushed against the far out-sloping base of the mole, and flung its heavy
+top right over the middle of the mass, a score or two of yards in front
+of us.
+
+"Now for it!" cried Joe. "Run!"
+
+We did run. In my mind there was just sense enough of danger to add to
+the pleasure of the excitement. I did not know how much danger there
+was. Over the rough worn stones we sped stumbling.
+
+"Halt!" cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it
+turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.
+
+"God be with us!" I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself
+through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar
+between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw
+the other arm round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed,
+held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes. It took but
+a moment.
+
+"Now then!" cried Joe. "Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!"
+
+But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the
+sloping side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, "Down, Joe! Down on
+your face, and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!"
+
+They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to
+the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the
+power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave,
+floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave
+passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.
+
+"Now, now!" cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the
+water pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and
+arrived, panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept
+the surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back
+over the danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the
+breakwater from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without
+speaking.
+
+"I believe, sir," said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, "if
+you hadn't taken the command at that moment we should all have been
+lost."
+
+"It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was
+not sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it
+low down."
+
+"We were awfully near death," said Joe.
+
+"Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don't
+go all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as
+foresight--believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the
+future, and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is
+the man most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and
+ready. Our Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should
+be brought before kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what
+answer they should make, for it would be given them when the time came."
+
+We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my
+companions spoke.
+
+"You have escaped one death together," I said at length: "dare another."
+
+Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the
+parsonage, I said, "Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I
+will take Agnes home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?"
+
+Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: "As you please, sir. Good
+night, Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can."
+
+When I returned from giving Agnes over to her parents, I made haste
+to change my clothes, and put on my warm dressing-gown. I may as well
+mention at once, that not one of us was the worse for our ducking. I
+then went up to Connie's room.
+
+"Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe."
+
+"I've been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out,
+papa. But all I could do was to trust in God."
+
+"Do you call that _all_, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in that
+than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed _all_."
+
+I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were
+well into another month before I told Connie.
+
+When I left her, I went to Joe's room to see how he was, and found him
+having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,
+
+"Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won't be the
+worse for it."
+
+"I don't much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon."
+
+"But you ought to care what comes of you, Joe. I will tell you why.
+You are an instrument out of which ought to come praise to God, and,
+therefore, you ought to care for the instrument."
+
+"That way, yes, sir, I ought."
+
+"And you have no business to be like some children who say, 'Mamma won't
+give me so and so,' instead of asking her to give it them."
+
+"I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young
+woman. I couldn't say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir,
+there was to come a family. It might be, you know."
+
+"Of course. What else would you have?"
+
+"But if I was to die, where would she be then?"
+
+"In God's hands; just as she is now."
+
+"But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that
+to provide for."
+
+"O, Joe! how little you know a woman's heart! It would just be the
+greatest comfort she could have for losing you--that's all. Many a woman
+has married a man she did not care enough for, just that she might have
+a child of her own to let out her heart upon. I don't say that is right,
+you know. Such love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her child
+because it is her husband's more than because it is her own, and because
+it is God's more than either's. I saw in the papers the other day, that
+a woman was brought before the Recorder of London for stealing a baby,
+when the judge himself said that there was no imaginable motive for her
+action but a motherly passion to possess the child. It is the need of
+a child that makes so many women take to poor miserable, broken-nosed
+lap-dogs; for they are self-indulgent, and cannot face the troubles and
+dangers of adopting a child. They would if they might get one of a good
+family, or from a respectable home; but they dare not take an orphan
+out of the dirt, lest it should spoil their silken chairs. But that
+has nothing to do with our argument. What I mean is this, that if Agnes
+really loves you, as no one can look in her face and doubt, she will be
+far happier if you leave her a child--yes, she will be happier if you
+only leave her your name for hers--than if you died without calling her
+your wife."
+
+I took Joe's basin from him, and he lay down. He turned his face to the
+wall. I waited a moment, but finding him silent, bade him good-night,
+and left the room.
+
+A month after, I married them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE HARVEST.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was some time before we got the bells to work to our mind, but at
+last we succeeded. The worst of it was to get the cranks, which at first
+required strong pressure on the keys, to work easily enough. But neither
+Joe nor his cousin spared any pains to perfect the attempt, and, as I
+say, at length we succeeded. I took Wynnie down to the instrument and
+made her try whether she could not do something, and she succeeded in
+making the old tower discourse loudly and eloquently.
+
+By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the
+morning of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers
+with the sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to
+the God of the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that
+part of the country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid
+plentifully on the benches. What with the calling of the bells, like
+voices in the highway, and the solemn meditation of the organ within to
+bear aloft the thoughts of those who heard, and came to the prayer and
+thanksgiving in common, and the message which God had given me to utter
+to them, I hoped that we should indeed keep holiday.
+
+Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft,
+dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and
+cottage, calling aloud--for who could dissociate the words from the
+music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?--written none the
+less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with
+laughing at their quaintness--calling aloud,
+
+  "All people that on earth do dwell
+  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
+  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell--
+  Come ye before him and rejoice."
+
+Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the
+name of the Lord to serve him with _mirth_ as in the old version, and
+not with the _fear_ with which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed
+to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had
+prepared--a proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history
+of the church while she was not only able to number singers amongst her
+clergy, but those singers were capable of influencing the whole heart
+and judgment of the nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ.
+The song I had prepared was this:
+
+  "We praise the Life of All;
+  From buried seeds so small
+  Who makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand;
+  Who stores the corn
+  In rick and barn
+  To feed the winter of the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Light!
+  Who from the brooding night
+  Draws out the morning holy, calm, and grand;
+  Veils up the moon,
+  Sends out the sun,
+  To glad the face of all the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Work,
+  Who from sleep's lonely dark
+  Leads forth his children to arise and stand,
+  Then go their way,
+  The live-long day,
+  To trust and labour in the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Good,
+  Who breaks sin's lazy mood,
+  Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.
+  The furrowed waste
+  They leave, and haste
+  Home, home, to till their Father's land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Life,
+  Who in this soil of strife
+  Casts us at birth, like seed from sower's hand;
+  To die and so
+  Like corn to grow
+  A golden harvest in his land."
+
+After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the
+versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, "If by any means
+I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had
+already attained, either were already perfect." And this is something
+like what I said to them:
+
+"The world, my friends, is full of resurrections, and it is not always
+of the same resurrection that St. Paul speaks. Every night that folds us
+up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early and
+have seen the first of the dawn, will know it--the day rises out of the
+night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life. That
+you may feel that the sunrise is a resurrection--the word resurrection
+just means a rising again--I will read you a little description of it
+from a sermon by a great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor.
+Listen. 'But as when the sun approaching towards the gates of the
+morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven and sends away the
+spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to
+matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the
+eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked
+the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself
+had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the
+sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and
+then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping
+great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man's reason and his
+life.' Is not this a resurrection of the day out of the night? Or hear
+how Milton makes his Adam and Eve praise God in the morning,--
+
+  'Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
+  From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
+  Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
+  In honour to the world's great Author rise,
+  Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
+  Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
+  Rising or falling still advance his praise.'
+
+But it is yet more of a resurrection to you. Think of your own condition
+through the night and in the morning. You die, as it were, every night.
+The death of darkness comes down over the earth; but a deeper death, the
+death of sleep, descends on you. A power overshadows you; your eyelids
+close, you cannot keep them open if you would; your limbs lie moveless;
+the day is gone; your whole life is gone; you have forgotten everything;
+an evil man might come and do with your goods as he pleased; you
+are helpless. But the God of the Resurrection is awake all the time,
+watching his sleeping men and women, even as a mother who watches her
+sleeping baby, only with larger eyes and more full of love than hers;
+and so, you know not how, all at once you know that you are what you
+are; that there is a world that wants you outside of you, and a God that
+wants you inside of you; you rise from the death of sleep, not by your
+own power, for you knew nothing about it; God put his hand over your
+eyes, and you were dead; he lifted his hand and breathed light on you
+and you rose from the dead, thanked the God who raised you up, and went
+forth to do your work. From darkness to light; from blindness to
+seeing; from knowing nothing to looking abroad on the mighty world; from
+helpless submission to willing obedience,--is not this a resurrection
+indeed? That St. Paul saw it to be such may be shown from his using
+the two things with the same meaning when he says, 'Awake, thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.'
+No doubt he meant a great deal more. No man who understands what he is
+speaking about can well mean only one thing at a time.
+
+"But to return to the resurrections we see around us in nature. Look at
+the death that falls upon the world in winter. And look how it revives
+when the sun draws near enough in the spring to wile the life in it once
+more out of its grave. See how the pale, meek snowdrops come up with
+their bowed heads, as if full of the memory of the fierce winds they
+encountered last spring, and yet ready in the strength of their weakness
+to encounter them again. Up comes the crocus, bringing its gold safe
+from the dark of its colourless grave into the light of its parent gold.
+Primroses, and anemones, and blue-bells, and a thousand other children
+of the spring, hear the resurrection-trumpet of the wind from the west
+and south, obey, and leave their graves behind to breathe the air of the
+sweet heavens. Up and up they come till the year is glorious with the
+rose and the lily, till the trees are not only clothed upon with new
+garments of loveliest green, but the fruit-tree bringeth forth its
+fruit, and the little children of men are made glad with apples, and
+cherries, and hazel-nuts. The earth laughs out in green and gold. The
+sky shares in the grand resurrection. The garments of its mourning,
+wherewith it made men sad, its clouds of snow and hail and stormy
+vapours, are swept away, have sunk indeed to the earth, and are now
+humbly feeding the roots of the flowers whose dead stalks they beat upon
+all the winter long. Instead, the sky has put on the garments of praise.
+Her blue, coloured after the sapphire-floor on which stands the throne
+of him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is dashed and glorified
+with the pure white of sailing clouds, and at morning and evening
+prayer, puts on colours in which the human heart drowns itself with
+delight--green and gold and purple and rose. Even the icebergs floating
+about in the lonely summer seas of the north are flashing all the
+glories of the rainbow. But, indeed, is not this whole world itself a
+monument of the Resurrection? The earth was without form and void. The
+wind of God moved on the face of the waters, and up arose this fair
+world. Darkness was on the face of the deep: God said, 'Let there be
+light,' and there was light.
+
+"In the animal world as well, you behold the goings of the Resurrection.
+Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly--so plain that the
+pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name--Psyche. Psyche meant
+with them a butterfly or the soul, either. Look how the creeping thing,
+ugly to our eyes, so that we can hardly handle it without a shudder,
+finding itself growing sick with age, straightway falls a spinning and
+weaving at its own shroud, coffin, and grave, all in one--to prepare, in
+fact, for its resurrection; for it is for the sake of the resurrection
+that death exists. Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life,
+away, folds itself up decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the
+new body is formed within it; and at length when the appointed hour has
+arrived, out of the body of this crawling thing breaks forth the winged
+splendour of the butterfly--not the same body--a new one built out of
+the ruins of the old--even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same
+body _we_ have in the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves,
+with all the imperfect and evil thing taken away. No more creeping for
+the butterfly; wings of splendour now. Neither yet has it lost the feet
+wherewith to alight on all that is lovely and sweet. Think of it--up
+from the toilsome journey over the low ground, exposed to the foot of
+every passer-by, destroying the lovely leaves upon which it fed, and the
+fruit which they should shelter, up to the path at will through the air,
+and a gathering of food which hurts not the source of it, a food which
+is but as a tribute from the loveliness of the flowers to the yet higher
+loveliness of the flower-angel: is not this a resurrection? Its children
+too shall pass through the same process, to wing the air of a summer
+noon, and rejoice in the ethereal and the pure.
+
+"To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of
+the butterfly"--
+
+Here let me pause for a moment--and there was a corresponding pause,
+though but momentary, in the sermon as I spoke it--to mention a curious,
+and to me at the moment an interesting fact. At this point of my
+address, I caught sight of a white butterfly, a belated one, flitting
+about the church. Absorbed for a moment, my eye wandered after it.
+It was near the bench where my own people sat, and, for one flash of
+thought, I longed that the butterfly would alight on my Wynnie, for I
+was more anxious about her resurrection at the time than about anything
+else. But the butterfly would not. And then I told myself that God
+would, and that the butterfly was only the symbol of a grand truth, and
+of no private interpretation, to make which of it was both selfishness
+and superstition. But all this passed in a flash, and I resumed my
+discourse.
+
+--"I come now naturally to speak of what we commonly call the
+Resurrection. Some say: 'How can the same dust be raised again, when it
+may be scattered to the winds of heaven?' It is a question I hardly care
+to answer. The mere difficulty can in reason stand for nothing with God;
+but the apparent worthlessness of the supposition renders the question
+uninteresting to me. What is of import is, that I should stand clothed
+upon, with a body which is _my_ body because it serves my ends,
+justifies my consciousness of identity by being, in all that was good
+in it, like that which I had before, while now it is tenfold capable of
+expressing the thoughts and feelings that move within me. How can I care
+whether the atoms that form a certain inch of bone should be the same as
+those which formed that bone when I died? All my life-time I never felt
+or thought of the existence of such a bone! On the other hand, I object
+to having the same worn muscles, the same shrivelled skin with which I
+may happen to die. Why give me the same body as that? Why not rather my
+youthful body, which was strong, and facile, and capable? The matter in
+the muscle of my arm at death would not serve to make half the muscle I
+had when young. But I thank God that St. Paul says it will _not_ be the
+same body. That body dies--up springs another body. I suspect myself
+that those are right who say that this body being the seed, the moment
+it dies in the soil of this world, that moment is the resurrection of
+the new body. The life in it rises out of it in a new body. This is not
+after it is put in the mere earth; for it is dead then, and the germ of
+life gone out of it. If a seed rots, no new body comes of it. The seed
+dies into a new life, and so does man. Dying and rotting are two very
+different things.--But I am not sure by any means. As I say, the whole
+question is rather uninteresting to me. What do I care about my old
+clothes after I have done with them? What is it to me to know what
+becomes of an old coat or an old pulpit gown? I have no such clinging
+to the flesh. It seems to me that people believe their bodies to be
+themselves, and are therefore very anxious about them--and no wonder
+then. Enough for me that I shall have eyes to see my friends, a face
+that they shall know me by, and a mouth to praise God withal. I leave
+the matter with one remark, that I am well content to rise as Jesus
+rose, however that was. For me the will of God is so good that I would
+rather have his will done than my own choice given me.
+
+"But I now come to the last, because infinitely the most important part
+of my subject--the resurrection for the sake of which all the other
+resurrections exist--the resurrection unto Life. This is the one
+of which St. Paul speaks in my text. This is the one I am most
+anxious--indeed, the only one I am anxious to set forth, and impress
+upon you.
+
+"Think, then, of all the deaths you know; the death of the night, when
+the sun is gone, when friend says not a word to friend, but both lie
+drowned and parted in the sea of sleep; the death of the year, when
+winter lies heavy on the graves of the children of summer, when the
+leafless trees moan in the blasts from the ocean, when the beasts even
+look dull and oppressed, when the children go about shivering with cold,
+when the poor and improvident are miserable with suffering or think of
+such a death of disease as befalls us at times, when the man who says,
+'Would God it were morning!' changes but his word, and not his tune,
+when the morning comes, crying, 'Would God it were evening!' when what
+life is left is known to us only by suffering, and hope is amongst the
+things that were once and are no more--think of all these, think of them
+all together, and you will have but the dimmest, faintest picture of the
+death from which the resurrection of which I have now to speak, is the
+rising. I shrink from the attempt, knowing how weak words are to set
+forth _the_ death, set forth _the_ resurrection. Were I to sit down to
+yonder organ, and crash out the most horrible dissonances that ever took
+shape in sound, I should give you but a weak figure of this death; were
+I capable of drawing from many a row of pipes an exhalation of dulcet
+symphonies and voices sweet, such as Milton himself could have
+invaded our ears withal, I could give you but a faint figure of this
+resurrection. Nevertheless, I must try what I can do in my own way.
+
+"If into the face of the dead body, lying on the bed, waiting for its
+burial, the soul of the man should begin to dawn again, drawing near
+from afar to look out once more at those eyes, to smile once again
+through those lips, the change on that face would be indeed great and
+wondrous, but nothing for marvel or greatness to that which passes on
+the countenance, the very outward bodily face of the man who wakes from
+his sleep, arises from the dead and receives light from Christ. Too
+often indeed, the reposeful look on the face of the dead body would be
+troubled, would vanish away at the revisiting of the restless ghost; but
+when a man's own right true mind, which God made in him, is restored
+to him again, and he wakes from the death of sin, then comes the repose
+without the death. It may take long for the new spirit to complete
+the visible change, but it begins at once, and will be perfected. The
+bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman,
+the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of
+the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder
+with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The
+mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind;
+the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words
+of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent, self-satisfied
+face begins to look thoughtful and doubtful, as if searching for some
+treasure of whose whereabouts it had no certain sign. The face anxious,
+wrinkled, peering, troubled, on whose lines you read the dread of
+hunger, poverty, and nakedness, thaws into a smile; the eyes reflect in
+courage the light of the Father's care, the back grows erect under its
+burden with the assurance that the hairs of its head are all numbered.
+But the face can with all its changes set but dimly forth the rising
+from the dead which passes within. The heart, which cared but for
+itself, becomes aware of surrounding thousands like itself, in the love
+and care of which it feels a dawning blessedness undreamt of before.
+From selfishness to love--is not this a rising from the dead? The man
+whose ambition declares that his way in the world would be to subject
+everything to his desires, to bring every human care, affection, power,
+and aspiration to his feet--such a world it would be, and such a king
+it would have, if individual ambition might work its will! if a
+man's opinion of himself could be made out in the world, degrading,
+compelling, oppressing, doing everything for his own glory!--and such a
+glory!--but a pang of light strikes this man to the heart; an arrow of
+truth, feathered with suffering and loss and dismay, finds out--the open
+joint in his armour, I was going to say--no, finds out the joint in the
+coffin where his heart lies festering in a death so dead that itself
+calls it life. He trembles, he awakes, he rises from the dead. No more
+he seeks the slavery of all: where can he find whom to serve? how can he
+become if but a threshold in the temple of Christ, where all serve all,
+and no man thinks first of himself? He to whom the mass of his fellows,
+as he massed them, was common and unclean, bows before every human
+sign of the presence of the making God. The sun, which was to him but
+a candle with which to search after his own ends, wealth, power, place,
+praise--the world, which was but the cavern where he thus searched--are
+now full of the mystery of loveliness, full of the truth of which sun
+and wind and land and sea are symbols and signs. From a withered old age
+of unbelief, the dim eyes of which refuse the glory of things a passage
+to the heart, he is raised up a child full of admiration, wonder, and
+gladness. Everything is glorious to him; he can believe, and therefore
+he sees. It is from the grave into the sunshine, from the night into
+the morning, from death into life. To come out of the ugly into the
+beautiful; out of the mean and selfish into the noble and loving; out
+of the paltry into the great; out of the false into the true; out of the
+filthy into the clean; out of the commonplace into the glorious; out of
+the corruption of disease into the fine vigour and gracious movements
+of health; in a word, out of evil into good--is not this a resurrection
+indeed--_the_ resurrection of all, the resurrection of Life? God grant
+that with St. Paul we may attain to this resurrection of the dead.
+
+"This rising from the dead is often a long and a painful process. Even
+after he had preached the gospel to the Gentiles, and suffered much for
+the sake of his Master, Paul sees the resurrection of the dead
+towering grandly before him, not yet climbed, not yet attained unto--a
+mountainous splendour and marvel, still shining aloft in the air of
+existence, still, thank God, to be attained, but ever growing in height
+and beauty as, forgetting those things that are behind, he presses
+towards the mark, if by any means he may attain to the resurrection of
+the dead. Every blessed moment in which a man bethinks himself that
+he has been forgetting his high calling, and sends up to the Father a
+prayer for aid; every time a man resolves that what he has been doing he
+will do no more; every time that the love of God, or the feeling of
+the truth, rouses a man to look first up at the light, then down at the
+skirts of his own garments--that moment a divine resurrection is wrought
+in the earth. Yea, every time that a man passes from resentment to
+forgiveness, from cruelty to compassion, from hardness to tenderness,
+from indifference to carefulness, from selfishness to honesty, from
+honesty to generosity, from generosity to love,--a resurrection, the
+bursting of a fresh bud of life out of the grave of evil, gladdens
+the eye of the Father watching his children. Awake, then, thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give thee light. As
+the harvest rises from the wintry earth, so rise thou up from the trials
+of this world a full ear in the harvest of Him who sowed thee in the
+soil that thou mightest rise above it. As the summer rises from the
+winter, so rise thou from the cares of eating and drinking and clothing
+into the fearless sunshine of confidence in the Father. As the morning
+rises out of the night, so rise thou from the darkness of ignorance
+to do the will of God in the daylight; and as a man feels that he is
+himself when he wakes from the troubled and grotesque visions of the
+night into the glory of the sunrise, even so wilt thou feel that then
+first thou knowest what thy life, the gladness of thy being, is. As from
+painful tossing in disease, rise into the health of well-being. As from
+the awful embrace of thy own dead body, burst forth in thy spiritual
+body. Arise thou, responsive to the indwelling will of the Father, even
+as thy body will respond to thy indwelling soul.
+
+  'White wings are crossing;
+  Glad waves are tossing;
+  The earth flames out in crimson and green:
+
+  Spring is appearing,
+  Summer is nearing--
+  Where hast thou been?
+
+  Down in some cavern,
+  Death's sleepy tavern,
+  Housing, carousing with spectres of night?
+  The trumpet is pealing
+  Sunshine and healing--
+  Spring to the light.'"
+
+With this quotation from a friend's poem, I closed my sermon, oppressed
+with a sense of failure; for ever the marvel of simple awaking, the mere
+type of the resurrection eluded all my efforts to fix it in words. I
+had to comfort myself with the thought that God is so strong that he can
+work even with our failures.
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOLUME III.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+   I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE
+  II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER
+ III. A PASTORAL VISIT.
+  IV. THE ART OF NATURE
+   V. THE SORE SPOT
+  VI. THE GATHERING STORM.
+ VII. THE GATHERED STORM.
+VIII. THE SHIPWRECK  IX. THE FUNERAL
+   X. THE SERMON.
+  XI. CHANGED PLANS.
+ XII. THE STUDIO.
+XIII. HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A WALK WITH MY WIFE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its
+skirts behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer,
+I must write a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my
+wife. It had rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down
+the air began to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she
+walked the heavens, not "like one that hath been led astray," but as
+"queen and huntress, chaste and fair."
+
+"What a lovely night it is!" said Ethelwyn, who had come into my
+study--where I always sat with unblinded windows, that the night and her
+creatures might look in upon me--and had stood gazing out for a moment.
+
+"Shall we go for a little turn?" I said.
+
+"I should like it very much," she answered. "I will go and put on my
+bonnet at once."
+
+In a minute or two she looked in again, all ready. I rose, laid aside
+my Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the
+down, and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon
+the same spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and
+Agnes. What a different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as
+if it could not move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over
+it was so mighty in its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was
+afraid to toss itself even with the motions of its natural unrest. The
+moon was like the face of a saint before which the stormy people has
+grown dumb. The rocks stood up solid and dark in the universal aether,
+and the pulse of the ocean throbbed against them with a lapping gush,
+soft as the voice of a passionate child soothed into shame of its
+vanished petulance. But the sky was the glory. Although no breath moved
+below, there was a gentle wind abroad in the upper regions. The air was
+full of masses of cloud, the vanishing fragments of the one great vapour
+which had been pouring down in rain the most of the day. These masses
+were all setting with one steady motion eastward into the abysses of
+space; now obscuring the fair moon, now solemnly sweeping away from
+before her. As they departed, out shone her marvellous radiance, as
+calm as ever. It was plain that she knew nothing of what we called her
+covering, her obscuration, the dimming of her glory. She had been busy
+all the time weaving her lovely opaline damask on the other side of the
+mass in which we said she was swallowed up.
+
+"Have you ever noticed, wifie," I said, "how the eyes of our
+minds--almost our bodily eyes--are opened sometimes to the cubicalness
+of nature, as it were?"
+
+"I don't know, Harry, for I don't understand your question," she
+answered.
+
+"Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being
+could have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a
+moment, though. Sometimes--perhaps generally--we see the sky as a flat
+dome, spangled with star-points, and painted blue. _Now_ I see it as an
+awful depth of blue air, depth within depth; and the clouds before me
+are not passing away to the left, but sinking away from the front of me
+into the marvellous unknown regions, which, let philosophers say what
+they will about time and space,--and I daresay they are right,--are yet
+very awful to me. Thank God, my dear," I said, catching hold of her arm,
+as the terror of mere space grew upon me, "for himself. He is deeper
+than space, deeper than time; he is the heart of all the cube of
+history."
+
+"I understand you now, husband," said my wife.
+
+"I knew you would," I answered.
+
+"But," she said again, "is it not something the same with the things
+inside us? I can't put it in words as you do. Do you understand me now?"
+
+"I am not sure that I do. You must try again."
+
+"You understand me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where
+you can talk," said my wife, putting her hand in mine. "But I will try.
+Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to
+a conclusion about it, and you think you have settled it plain and clear
+to yourself, for ever and a day. You hang it upon your wall, like a
+picture, and are satisfied for a fortnight. But some day, when you
+happen to cast a look at it, you find that instead of hanging flat on
+the wall, your picture has gone through it--opens out into some region
+you don't know where--shows you far-receding distances of air and
+sea--in short, where you thought one question was settled for ever, a
+hundred are opened up for the present hour."
+
+"Bravo, wife!" I cried in true delight. "I do indeed understand you
+now. You have said it better than I could ever have done. That's the
+plague of you women! You have been taught for centuries and centuries
+that there is little or nothing to be expected of you, and so you won't
+try. Therefore we men know no more than you do whether it is in you or
+not. And when you do try, instead of trying to think, you want to be in
+Parliament all at once."
+
+"Do you apply that remark to me, sir?" demanded Ethelwyn.
+
+"You must submit to bear the sins of your kind upon occasion," I
+answered.
+
+"I am content to do that, so long as yours will help mine," she replied.
+
+"Then I may go on?" I said, with interrogation.
+
+"Till sunrise if you like. We were talking of the cubicalness--I believe
+you called it--of nature."
+
+"And you capped it with the cubicalness of thought. And quite right
+too. There are people, as a dear friend of mine used to say, who are
+so accustomed to regard everything in the _flat_, as dogma cut and--not
+_always_ dried my moral olfactories aver--that if you prove to them the
+very thing they believe, but after another mode than that they have been
+accustomed to, they are offended, and count you a heretic. There is no
+help for it. Even St. Paul's chief opposition came from the Judaizing
+Christians of his time, who did not believe that God _could_ love the
+Gentiles, and therefore regarded him as a teacher of falsehood. We must
+not be fierce with them. Who knows what wickedness of their ancestors
+goes to account for their stupidity? For that there are stupid people,
+and that they are, in very consequence of their stupidity, conceited,
+who can deny? The worst of it is, that no man who is conceited can be
+convinced of the fact."
+
+"Don't say that, Harry. That is to deny conversion."
+
+"You are right, Ethelwyn. The moment a man is convinced of his folly,
+he ceases to be a fool. The moment a man is convinced of his conceit,
+he ceases to be conceited. But there _must_ be a final judgment, and the
+true man will welcome it, even if he is to appear a convicted fool. A
+man's business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool,
+and next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take
+heed likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their
+brother's eye. But there are even societies established and supported
+by good people for the express purpose of pulling out motes.--'The
+Mote-Pulling Society!'--That ought to take with a certain part of the
+public."
+
+"Come, come, Harry. You are absurd. Such people don't come near you."
+
+"They can't touch me. No. But they come near good people whom I know,
+brandishing the long pins with which they pull the motes out, and
+threatening them with judgment before their time. They are but pins, to
+be sure--not daggers."
+
+"But you have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty
+ways, and have forgotten all about 'the cubicalness of nature.'"
+
+"You are right, my love, as you generally are," I answered, laughing.
+"Look at that great antlered elk, or moose--fit quarry for Diana of the
+silver bow. Look how it glides solemnly away into the unpastured depths
+of the aerial deserts. Look again at that reclining giant, half raised
+upon his arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What eyes
+they must be under those huge brows! On what message to the nations is
+he borne as by the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?"
+
+"Stop, stop, Harry," said my wife. "It makes me unhappy to hear grand
+words clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about
+the truth, and the truth only."
+
+"If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
+degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
+or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
+counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds
+of the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy
+giant yields, and is 'shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,' so is each
+of us borne onward to an unseen destiny--a glorious one if we will but
+yield to the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth--with a grand
+listing--coming whence we know not, and going whither we know not. The
+very clouds of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the thoughts and
+history of man."
+
+"I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take
+the clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that
+what you were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which
+the clouds assume. I see I was wrong, though."
+
+"The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
+make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all
+for? They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and
+they go nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving
+symbols of the motions of man's spirit and destiny."
+
+A pause followed, during which we sat and watched the marvellous depth
+of the heavens, deep as I do not think I ever saw them before or since,
+covered with a stately procession of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing
+forms--great sculpturesque blocks of a shattered storm--the icebergs
+of the upper sea. These were not far off against a blue background, but
+floating near us in the heart of a blue-black space, gloriously lighted
+by a golden rather than silvery moon. At length my wife spoke.
+
+"I hope Mr. Percivale is out to-night," she said. "How he must be
+enjoying it if he is!"
+
+"I wonder the young man is not returning to his professional labours," I
+said. "Few artists can afford such long holidays as he is taking."
+
+"He is laying in stock, though, I suppose," answered my wife.
+
+"I doubt that, my dear. He said not, on one occasion, you may remember."
+
+"Yes, I remember. But still he must paint better the more familiar he
+gets with the things God cares to fashion."
+
+"Doubtless. But I am afraid the work of God he is chiefly studying at
+present is our Wynnie."
+
+"Well, is she not a worthy object of his study?" returned Ethelwyn,
+looking up in my face with an arch expression.
+
+"Doubtless again, Ethel; but I hope she is not studying him quite so
+much in her turn. I have seen her eyes following him about."
+
+My wife made no answer for a moment. Then she said,
+
+"Don't you like him, Harry?"
+
+"Yes. I like him very much."
+
+"Then why should you not like Wynnie to like him?"
+
+"I should like to be surer of his principles, for one thing."
+
+"I should like to be surer of Wynnie's."
+
+I was silent. Ethelwyn resumed.
+
+"Don't you think they might do each other good?"
+
+Still I could not reply.
+
+"They both love the truth, I am sure; only they don't perhaps know what
+it is yet. I think if they were to fall in love with each other, it
+would very likely make them both more desirous of finding it still."
+
+"Perhaps," I said at last. "But you are talking about awfully serious
+things, Ethelwyn."
+
+"Yes, as serious as life," she answered.
+
+"You make me very anxious," I said. "The young man has not, I fear, any
+means of gaining a livelihood for more than himself."
+
+"Why should he before he wanted it? I like to see a man who can be
+content with an art and a living by it."
+
+"I hope I have not been to blame in allowing them to see so much of each
+other," I said, hardly heeding my wife's words.
+
+"It came about quite naturally," she rejoined. "If you had opposed
+their meeting, you would have been interfering just as if you had been
+Providence. And you would have only made them think more about each
+other."
+
+"He hasn't said anything--has he?" I asked in positive alarm.
+
+"O dear no. It may be all my fancy. I am only looking a little ahead.
+I confess I should like him for a son-in-law. I approve of him," she
+added, with a sweet laugh.
+
+"Well," I said, "I suppose sons-in-law are possible, however
+disagreeable, results of having daughters."
+
+I tried to laugh, but hardly succeeded.
+
+"Harry," said my wife, "I don't like you in such a mood. It is not like
+you at all. It is unworthy of you."
+
+"How can I help being anxious when you speak of such dreadful things as
+the possibility of having to give away my daughter, my precious wonder
+that came to me through you, out of the infinite--the tender little
+darling!"
+
+"'Out of the heart of God,' you used to say, Henry. Yes, and with a
+destiny he had ordained. It is strange to me how you forget your best
+and noblest teaching sometimes. You are always telling us to trust in
+God. Surely it is a poor creed that will only allow us to trust in
+God for ourselves--a very selfish creed. There must be something wrong
+there. I should say that the man who can only trust God for himself is
+not half a Christian. Either he is so selfish that that satisfies him,
+or he has such a poor notion of God that he cannot trust him with what
+most concerns him. The former is not your case, Harry: is the latter,
+then?--You see I must take my turn at the preaching sometimes. Mayn't I,
+dearest?"
+
+She took my hand in both of hers. The truth arose in my heart. I never
+loved my wife more than at that moment. And now I could not speak for
+other reasons. I saw that I had been faithless to my God, and the moment
+I could command my speech, I hastened to confess it.
+
+"You are right, my dear," I said, "quite right. I have been wicked, for
+I have been denying my God. I have been putting my providence in the
+place of his--trying, like an anxious fool, to count the hairs on
+Wynnie's head, instead of being content that the grand loving Father
+should count them. My love, let us pray for Wynnie; for what is prayer
+but giving her to God and his holy, blessed will?"
+
+We sat hand in hand. Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we
+spoke in our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose
+together, and walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand
+clung to my wife as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of
+the prison of my faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was
+glorious again. It had faded from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma,
+uninteresting as "a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;" the
+moon had been but a round thing with the sun shining upon it, and the
+stars were only minding their own business. But now the solemn march
+towards an unseen, unimagined goal had again begun. Wynnie's life was
+hid with Christ in God. Away strode the cloudy pageant with its banners
+blowing in the wind, which blew where it grandly listed, marching as to
+a solemn triumphal music that drew them from afar towards the gates of
+pearl by which the morning walks out of the New Jerusalem to gladden the
+nations of the earth. Solitary stars, with all their sparkles drawn in,
+shone, quiet as human eyes, in the deep solemn clefts of dark blue air.
+They looked restrained and still, as if they knew all about it--all
+about the secret of this midnight march. For the moon--she saw the sun,
+and therefore made the earth glad.
+
+"You have been a moon to me this night, my wife," I said. "You were
+looking full at the truth, while I was dark. I saw its light in your
+face, and believed, and turned my soul to the sun. And now I am both
+ashamed and glad. God keep me from sinning so again."
+
+"My dear husband, it was only a mood--a passing mood," said Ethelwyn,
+seeking to comfort me.
+
+"It was a mood, and thank God it is now past; but it was a wicked one.
+It was a mood in which the Lord might have called me a devil, as he did
+St. Peter. Such moods have to be grappled with and fought the moment
+they appear. They must not have their way for a single thought even."
+
+"But we can't help it always, can we, husband?"
+
+"We can't help it out and out, because our wills are not yet free with
+the freedom God is giving us as fast as we will let him. When we are
+able to will thoroughly, then we shall do what we will. At least, I
+think we shall. But there is a mystery in it God only understands.
+All we know is, that we can struggle and pray. But a mood is an awful
+oppression sometimes when you least believe in it and most wish to get
+rid of it. It is like a headache in the soul."
+
+"What do the people do that don't believe in God?" said Ethelwyn.
+
+The same moment Wynnie, who had seen us pass the window, opened the door
+of the bark-house for us, and we passed into Connie's chamber and found
+her lying in the moonlight, gazing at the same heavens as her father and
+mother had been revelling in.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day was very lovely. I think it is the last of the kind of
+which I shall have occasion to write in my narrative of the Seaboard
+Parish. I wonder if my readers are tired of so much about the common
+things of Nature. I reason about it something in this way: We are so
+easily affected by the smallest things that are of the unpleasant kind,
+that we ought to train ourselves to the influence of those that are of
+an opposite nature. The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make
+themselves felt as we scramble--for we often do scramble in a very
+undignified manner--through the thickets of life; and, feeling the
+thorns, we grumble, and are blind to all but the thorns. The flowers,
+and the lovely leaves, and the red berries, and the clusters of
+filberts, and the birds'-nests do not force themselves upon our
+attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us forget to look for
+them. But a scratch would be forgotten--and that in mental hurts is
+often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on the mind or heart
+will never fester--if we but allowed our being a moment's repose upon
+any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that lie around the
+half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I think how,
+not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but admirable
+when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very paltriness of
+which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself to a noble
+endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would gladly
+help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of the
+apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
+for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one
+of the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about
+me, from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of
+truth been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even
+a lingering shadow--not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
+rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
+over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
+memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader,
+for therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the
+recording of them.
+
+This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
+enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean--of knowing a few
+yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It
+was to be low water about two o'clock, and we resolved to dine upon
+the sands. But all the morning the children were out playing on the
+threshold of old Neptune's palace; for in his quieter mood he will, like
+a fierce mastiff, let children do with him what they will. I gave myself
+a whole holiday--sometimes the most precious part of my life both for
+myself and those for whom I labour--and wandered about on the shore, now
+passing the children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties
+to look at this one's castle and that one's ditch, now leaving them
+behind, with what in its ungraduated flatness might well enough
+personate an endless desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I
+could imagine them disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint
+occasional cry of excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea
+was so calm, and the shore so gently sloping, that you could hardly tell
+where the sand ceased and the sea began--the water sloped to such a thin
+pellicle, thinner than any knife-edge, upon the shining brown sand, and
+you saw the sand underneath the water to such a distance out. Yet this
+depth, which would not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I
+followed that bed of shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and
+out, till I was lost in an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and
+mountain-peaks, in whose caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his
+breath of pestilence; the kraken, with "his skaly rind," may there be
+sleeping
+
+  "His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep,"
+
+while
+
+    "faintest sunlights flee
+  About his shadowy sides,"
+
+as he lies
+
+  "Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep."
+
+There may lie all the horrors that Schiller's diver encountered--the
+frightful Molch, and that worst of all, to which he gives no name,
+which came creeping with a hundred knots at once; but here are only the
+gracious rainbow-woven shells, an evanescent jelly or two, and the queer
+baby-crabs that crawl out from the holes of the bordering rocks. What
+awful gradations of gentleness lead from such as these down to those
+cabins where wallow the inventions of Nature's infancy, when, like
+a child of untutored imagination, she drew on the slate of her fancy
+creations in which flitting shadows of beauty serve only to heighten the
+shuddering, gruesome horror. The sweet sun and air, the hand of man, and
+the growth of the ages, have all but swept such from the upper plains
+of the earth. What hunter's bow has twanged, what adventurer's rifle has
+cracked in those leagues of mountain-waste, vaster than all the upper
+world can show, where the beasts of the ocean "graze the sea-weed, their
+pasture"! Diana of the silver bow herself, when she descends into
+the interlunar caves of hell, sends no such monsters fleeing from
+her spells. Yet if such there be, such horrors too must lie in the
+undiscovered caves of man's nature, of which all this outer world is but
+a typical analysis. By equally slow gradations may the inner eye descend
+from the truth of a Cordelia to the falsehood of an Iago. As these
+golden sands slope from the sunlight into the wallowing abyss of
+darkness, even so from the love of the child to his holy mother slopes
+the inclined plane of humanity to the hell of the sensualist. "But with
+one difference in the moral world," I said aloud, as I paced up and down
+on the shimmering margin, "that everywhere in the scale the eye of the
+all-seeing Father can detect the first quiver of the eyelid that would
+raise itself heavenward, responsive to his waking spirit." I lifted my
+eyes in the relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn
+hung above the waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away
+to the left a man who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible
+save in such a tide, gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and
+swam ashore; above his head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air;
+the sea glittered and shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which
+to choose, the balmy air or the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads
+through the one, now alighting eagerly upon the other, to forsake it
+anew for the thinner element. I thanked God for his glory.
+
+"O, papa, it's so jolly--so jolly!" shouted the children as I passed
+them again.
+
+"What is it that's so jolly, Charlie?" I asked.
+
+"My castle," screeched Harry in reply; "only it's tumbled down. The
+water _would_ keep coming in underneath."
+
+"I tried to stop it with a newspaper," cried Charlie, "but it wouldn't.
+So we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch."
+
+"We blew it up rather than surrender," said Dora. "We did; only Harry
+always forgets, and says it was the water did it."
+
+I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from
+this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was
+flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark
+hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been
+dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over
+my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed
+quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on
+the sands to seaward of the breakwater, which lay above, looking dry
+and weary, and worn with years of contest with the waves, which had at
+length withdrawn defeated to their own country, and left it as if to
+victory and a useless age of peace. How different was the scene when a
+raving mountain of water filled all the hollow where I now wandered,
+and rushed over the top of that mole now so high above me; and I had
+to cling to its stones to keep me from being carried off like a bit
+of floating sea-weed! This was the loveliest and strangest part of the
+shore. Several long low ridges of rock, of whose existence I scarcely
+knew, worn to a level with the sand, hollowed and channelled with the
+terrible run of the tide across them, and looking like the old and
+outworn cheek-teeth of some awful beast of prey, stretched out seawards.
+Here and there amongst them rose a well-known rock, but now so changed
+in look by being lifted all the height between the base on the waters,
+and the second base in the sand, that I wondered at each, walking round
+and viewing it on all sides. It seemed almost a fresh growth out of the
+garden of the shore, with uncouth hollows around its fungous root, and
+a forsaken air about its brows as it stood in the dry sand and looked
+seaward. But what made the chief delight of the spot, closed in by
+rocks from the open sands, was the multitude of fairy rivers that
+flowed across it to the sea. The gladness these streams gave me I cannot
+communicate. The tide had filled thousands of hollows in the breakwater,
+hundreds of cracked basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand; from all
+of which--from cranny and crack, and oozing sponge--the water flowed in
+restricted haste back, back to the sea, tumbling in tiny cataracts
+down the faces of the rocks, bubbling from their roots as from wells,
+gathering in tanks of sand, and overflowing in broad shallow streams,
+curving and sweeping in their sandy channels, just like, the great
+rivers of a continent;--here spreading into smooth silent lakes and
+reaches, here babbling along in ripples and waves innumerable--flowing,
+flowing, to lose their small beings in the same ocean that met on the
+other side the waters of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the Amazon. All
+their channels were of golden sand, and the golden sunlight was above
+and through and in them all: gold and gold met, with the waters between.
+And what gave an added life to their motion was, that all the ripples
+made shadows on the clear yellow below them. The eye could not see
+the rippling on the surface; but the sun saw it, and drew it in
+multitudinous shadowy motion upon the sand, with the play of a thousand
+fancies of gold burnished and dead, of sunlight and yellow, trembling,
+melting, curving, blending, vanishing ever, ever renewed. It was as if
+all the water-marks upon a web of golden silk had been set in wildest
+yet most graceful curvilinear motion by the breath of a hundred playful
+zephyrs. My eye could not be filled with seeing. I stood in speechless
+delight for a while, gazing at the "endless ending" which was "the
+humour of the game," and thinking how in all God's works the laws of
+beauty are wrought out in evanishment, in birth and death. There, there
+is no hoarding, but an ever-fresh creating, an eternal flow of life
+from the heart of the All-beautiful. Hence even the heart of man cannot
+hoard. His brain or his hand may gather into its box and hoard; but the
+moment the thing has passed into the box, the heart has lost it and is
+hungry again. If man would _have,_ it is the giver he must have; the
+eternal, the original, the ever-outpouring is alone within his reach;
+the everlasting _creation_ is his heritage. Therefore all that he makes
+must be free to come and go through the heart of his child; he can enjoy
+it only as it passes, can enjoy only its life, its soul, its vision,
+its meaning, not itself. To hoard rubies and sapphires is as useless and
+hopeless for the heart, as if I were to attempt to hoard this marvel of
+sand and water and sunlight in the same iron chest with the musty deeds
+of my wife's inheritance.
+
+"Father," I murmured half aloud, "thou alone art, and I am because thou
+art. Thy will shall be mine."
+
+I know that I must have spoken aloud, because I remember the start of
+consciousness and discomposure occasioned by the voice of Percivale
+greeting me.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he added; "I did not mean to startle you, Mr.
+Walton. I thought you were only looking at Nature's childplay--not
+thinking."
+
+"I know few things _more_ fit to set one thinking than what you have
+very well called Nature's childplay," I returned. "Is Nature very
+heartless now, do you think, to go on with this kind of thing at our
+feet, when away up yonder lies the awful London, with so many sores
+festering in her heart?"
+
+"You must answer your own question, Mr. Walton. You know I cannot. I
+confess I feel the difficulty deeply. I will go further, and confess
+that the discrepancy makes me doubt many things I would gladly believe.
+I know _you_ are able to distinguish between a glad unbelief and a
+sorrowful doubt."
+
+"Else were I unworthy of the humblest place in the kingdom--unworthy to
+be a doorkeeper in the house of my God," I answered, and recoiled from
+the sound of my own words; for they seemed to imply that I believed
+myself worthy of the position I occupied. I hastened to correct them:
+"But do not mistake my thoughts," I said; "I do not dream of worthiness
+in the way of honour--only of fitness for the work to be done. For that
+I think God has fitted me in some measure. The doorkeeper's office may
+be given him, not because he has done some great deed worthy of the
+honour, but because he can sweep the porch and scour the threshold, and
+will, in the main, try to keep them clean. That is all the worthiness I
+dare to claim, even to hope that I possess."
+
+"No one who knows you can mistake your words, except wilfully," returned
+Percivale courteously.
+
+"Thank you," I said. "Now I will just ask you, in reference to the
+contrast between human life and nature, how you will go back to your
+work in London, after seeing all this child's and other play of Nature?
+Suppose you had had nothing here but rain and high winds and sea-fogs,
+would you have been better fitted for doing something to comfort those
+who know nothing of such influences than you will be now? One of the
+most important qualifications of a sick-nurse is a ready smile. A
+long-faced nurse in a sickroom is a visible embodiment and presence of
+the disease against which the eager life of the patient is fighting in
+agony. Such ought to be banished, with their black dresses and their
+mourning-shop looks, from every sick-chamber, and permitted to minister
+only to the dead, who do not mind looks. With what a power of life
+and hope does a woman--young or old I do not care--with a face of the
+morning, a dress like the spring, a bunch of wild flowers in her hand,
+with the dew upon them, and perhaps in her eyes too (I don't object
+to that--that is sympathy, not the worship of darkness),--with what a
+message from nature and life does she, looking death in the face with a
+smile, dawn upon the vision of the invalid! She brings a little health,
+a little strength to fight, a little hope to endure, actually lapt in
+the folds of her gracious garments; for the soul itself can do more than
+any medicine, if it be fed with the truth of life."
+
+"But are you not--I beg your pardon for interposing on your eloquence
+with dull objection," said Percivale--"are you not begging all the
+question? _Is_ life such an affair of sunshine and gladness?"
+
+"If life is not, then I confess all this show of nature is worse than
+vanity--it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in
+it that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the
+mistake. If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow,
+against which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We
+recognise it as death--the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow
+but for a recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must
+be life. It is of the nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is
+nothing until the light comes. This very childplay, as you call it, of
+Nature, is her assertion of the secret that life is the deepest, that
+life shall conquer death. Those who believe this must bear the good
+news to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Our Lord has
+conquered death--yea, the moral death that he called the world; and now,
+having sown the seed of light, the harvest is springing in human hearts,
+is springing in this dance of radiance, and will grow and grow until the
+hearts of the children of the kingdom shall frolic in the sunlight
+of the Father's presence. Nature has God at her heart; she is but the
+garment of the Invisible. God wears his singing robes in a day like
+this, and says to his children, 'Be not afraid: your brothers and
+sisters up there in London are in my hands; go and help them. I am with
+you. Bear to them the message of joy. Tell them to be of good cheer:
+I have overcome the world. Tell them to endure hunger, and not sin; to
+endure passion, and not yield; to admire, and not desire. Sorrow and
+pain are serving my ends; for by them will I slay sin; and save my
+children.'"
+
+"I wish I could believe as you do, Mr. Walton."
+
+"I wish you could. But God will teach you, if you are willing to be
+taught."
+
+"I desire the truth, Mr. Walton."
+
+"God bless you! God is blessing you," I said.
+
+"Amen," returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in
+silence towards the cliffs.
+
+The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the
+face of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the
+inch-deep wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet
+defiant, the wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of
+the shore.
+
+"Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide
+lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy
+pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before
+us bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of
+stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that
+is at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind
+you, at your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents,
+caves, and hollows of those rocks."
+
+"I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton," he said.
+
+"I wish I were," I returned. "At least I know I should rejoice in it, if
+it had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?"
+
+"Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which
+would give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and
+individuality to your representation of her."
+
+"I know what you mean," I answered; "but I have no gift whatever in that
+direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects
+of light and shade; though I think I have a little notion of
+colour--perhaps about as much as the little London boy, who stopped a
+friend of mine once to ask the way to the field where the buttercups
+grew, had of nature."
+
+"I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures."
+
+"That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they
+made me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of
+looking at them."
+
+"May I offer you my address?" he said, and took a card from his
+pocket-book. "It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of
+me when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a
+visit."
+
+"I shall be most happy," I returned, taking his card.--"Did it ever
+occur to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes
+ago, how little you can do without shadow in making a picture?"
+
+"Little indeed," answered Percivale. "In fact, it would be no picture at
+all."
+
+"I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows."
+
+"But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God,
+to be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes."
+
+"It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think
+of his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but
+upon the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think
+a great part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which
+oppresses you will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin
+is possible to him. Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God
+that in order that sin should become impossible he should allow sin
+to come? that, in order that his creatures should choose the good and
+refuse the evil, in order that they might become such, with their
+whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to turn from sin with a perfect
+repugnance of the will, he should allow them to fall? that, in order
+that, from being sweet childish children, they should become noble,
+child-like men and women, he should let them try to walk alone?
+Why should he not allow the possible in order that it should become
+impossible? for possible it would ever have been, even in the midst of
+all the blessedness, until it had been, and had been thus destroyed.
+Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever exist, it seems to
+me, where there is creation still going on. How could I be content to
+guard my children so that they should never have temptation, knowing
+that in all probability they would fail if at any moment it should cross
+their path? Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be
+possible between us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long
+as it was possible it should be there developed. And if this can be said
+for the existence of moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes
+a comparative trifle; nay, a positive good, for by this the other is
+combated."
+
+"I think I understand you," returned Percivale. "I will think over what
+you have said. These are very difficult questions."
+
+"Very. I don't think argument is of much use about them, except as it
+may help to quiet a man's uneasiness a little, and so give his mind
+peace to think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no
+question, once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest--in
+very fact, the only way into the light."
+
+As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the
+salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came
+a little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the
+preparations for our dinner--over the gates of the lock, down the sides
+of the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the direction
+of the children, who were still playing merrily.
+
+"Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you
+see, somewhere hereabout on the sands?" I said.
+
+"I shall be delighted," he answered, "if you will let me be of some use
+first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out."
+
+"Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will."
+
+"That is what I hoped," said Percivale; and we went together towards the
+parsonage.
+
+As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but
+when we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.
+
+"Where is Wynnie?" I asked.
+
+"She saw you coming," she answered, "and went to get Connie ready; for I
+guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out."
+
+But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie's
+disappearance. "What if she should have fallen in love with him," I
+thought, "and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be
+dreadful for us all."
+
+They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was
+compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each
+other it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently
+a great mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help
+sympathising with each other's peculiarities. And anyone could see what
+a fine couple they would make.
+
+Wynnie was much taller than Connie--almost the height of her mother.
+She had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise,
+thoughtful, often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on
+which a smile seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled
+like water when she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why
+should not two such walk together along the path to the gates of the
+light? And yet I could not help some anxiety. I did not know anything
+of his history. I had no testimony concerning him from anyone that knew
+him. His past life was a blank to me; his means of livelihood probably
+insufficient--certainly, I judged, precarious; and his position in
+society--but there I checked myself: I had had enough of that kind of
+thing already. I would not willingly offend in that worldliness again.
+The God of the whole earth could not choose that I should look at
+such works of his hands after that fashion. And I was his servant--not
+Mammon's or Belial's.
+
+All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the
+winnowing-fan of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife,
+who took no pains to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and
+I went upstairs, almost unconsciously, to Connie's room.
+
+When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to
+have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie's arm round her
+waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk
+thus occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but
+turned it again at Connie's cry, and I saw a tear on her face.
+
+"My darlings, I beg your pardon," I said. "It was very stupid of me not
+to knock at the door."
+
+Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said--
+
+"It's nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn't
+want you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all.
+It didn't hurt me much, only I'm such a goose! I'm in terror before the
+pain comes. Look at me," she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation
+on my countenance, "I'm all right now." And she smiled in my face
+perfectly.
+
+I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the
+room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me
+with her eyes, but Wynnie's were hidden in her handkerchief.
+
+I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to
+announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came
+to say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to
+give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her
+message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.
+
+"Come, Mr. Percivale," I said; and he followed me up to Connie's room.
+
+Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for
+going. We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for
+the easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater,
+along its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before
+we reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us.
+We stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted
+to take breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I
+wanted Wynnie to hear without its being addressed to her.
+
+"Do you see, Connie," I said, "how far off the water is?"
+
+"Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to
+it."
+
+"You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that
+sand, will be covered before sunset."
+
+"I know it will be. But it doesn't _look_ likely, does it, papa!"
+
+"Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I
+came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?"
+
+"Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind
+blowing when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to
+wake myself up' quite to get rid of the thought."
+
+"Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and
+sand at the bottom of it, stretching far away."
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about
+between the stones?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the
+great gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed
+across this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry
+regiment off its back."
+
+"Papa!" exclaimed Connie, turning pale.
+
+Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.
+
+"Then I _was_ right in being frightened, papa!" cried Connie, bursting
+into tears; for since her accident she could not well command her
+feelings.
+
+"You were right in trusting in God, Connie."
+
+"But you might have been drowned, papa!" she sobbed.
+
+"Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what
+has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but
+that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking
+of things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is _our_
+department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what
+a change--from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of
+sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away
+there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles
+will come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the
+storm look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning
+cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort
+of Nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose,
+for God is Peace."
+
+"But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton," said Percivale, "you can hardly
+expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It
+seems to me that its influences cannot be imparted."
+
+"That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are
+offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another;
+for it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in
+the person who has experienced can draw over or derive--to use an old
+Italian word--some of its benefits to him who has the faith. Experience
+may thus, in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh
+experience of our own. At least I can hope that the experience of a
+father may take the form of hope in the minds of his daughters.
+Hope never hurt anyone, never yet interfered with duty; nay, always
+strengthens to the performance of duty, gives courage, and clears the
+judgment. St. Paul says we are saved by hope. Hope is the most rational
+thing in the universe. Even the ancient poets, who believed it was
+delusive, yet regarded it as an antidote given by the mercy of the gods
+against some, at least, of the ills of life."
+
+"But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded."
+
+"Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a
+false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could
+give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for
+what were the gods in whom they believed--I cannot say in whom they
+trusted? Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of
+doing for men when they gave them the _illusion_ of hope. But I see
+they are waiting for us below. One thing I repeat--the waves that
+foamed across the spot where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and
+vanished."
+
+"But they will come again, papa," faltered Wynnie.
+
+"And God will come with them, my love," I said, as we lifted the litter.
+
+In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a
+table-cloth spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the
+light outside and in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope
+the others too, that afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were
+creeping up over the level, soundless almost as thought; but it would
+be time to go home long before they had reached us. The sun was in the
+western half of the sky, and now and then a breath of wind came from the
+sea, with a slight saw-edge in it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could
+stand much more in that way now. And when I saw how she could move
+herself on her couch, and thought how much she had improved since first
+she was laid upon it, hope for her kept fluttering joyously in my heart.
+I could not help fancying even that I saw her move her legs a little;
+but I could not be in the least sure; and she, if she did move them,
+was clearly unconscious of it. Charles and Harry were every now and then
+starting up from their dinner and running off with a shout, to return
+with apparently increased appetite for the rest of it; and neither their
+mother nor I cared to interfere with the indecorum. Dora alone took
+it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very silent, but looked more
+cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My wife's face was a
+picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking about with the
+baby, occasionally with one hand helping the other servants to wait upon
+us. They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the hour, and,
+like Ariel, did their spiriting gently.
+
+"This is the will of God," I said, after the things were removed, and we
+had sat for a few moments in silence.
+
+"What is the will of God, husband?" asked Ethelwyn.
+
+"Why, this, my love," I answered; "this living air, and wind, and sea,
+and light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of
+Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such
+visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the
+face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes.
+Yes, but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the
+harmony. When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was
+for Lazarus himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That
+could not be, seeing he had the power to call him back when he would.
+The grief was for the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was
+so dreadful because they had not faith enough in his Father, the God
+of life and love, who was looking after it all, full of tenderness and
+grace, with whom Lazarus was present and blessed. It was the aching,
+loving heart of humanity for which he wept, that needed God so awfully,
+and could not yet trust in him. Their brother was only hidden in the
+skirts of their Father's garment, but they could not believe that: they
+said he was dead--lost--away--all gone, as the children say. And it was
+so sad to think of a whole world full of the grief of death, that he
+could not bear it without the human tears to help his heart, as they
+help ours. It was for our dark sorrows that he wept. But the peace could
+be no less plain on the face that saw God. Did you ever think of that
+wonderful saying: 'Again a little while, and ye shall see me, because I
+go to the Father'? The heart of man would have joined the 'because I go
+to the Father' with the former result--the not seeing of him. The heart
+of man is not able, without more and more light, to understand that all
+vision is in the light of the Father. Because Jesus went to the Father,
+therefore the disciples saw him tenfold more. His body no longer in
+their eyes, his very being, his very self was in their hearts--not in
+their affections only--in their spirits, their heavenly consciousness."
+
+As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial
+affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I
+repeated it:
+
+      "If I Him but have,
+    If he be but mine,
+      If my heart, hence to the grave,
+    Ne'er forgets his love divine--
+  Know I nought of sadness,
+  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.
+
+      If I Him but have,
+    Glad with all I part;
+      Follow on my pilgrim staff
+    My Lord only, with true heart;
+  Leave them, nothing saying,
+  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Glad I fall asleep;
+        Aye the flood that his heart gave
+      Strength within my heart shall keep,
+  And with soft compelling
+  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Mine the world I hail!
+        Glad as cherub smiling grave,
+      Holding back the virgin's veil.
+  Sunk and lost in seeing,
+  Earthly fears have died from all my being.
+
+        Where I have but Him
+      Is my Fatherland;
+        And all gifts and graces come
+      Heritage into my hand:
+  Brothers long deplored
+  I in his disciples find restored."
+
+"What a lovely hymn, papa!" exclaimed Connie. She could always speak
+more easily than either her mother or sister. "Who wrote it?"
+
+"Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis."
+
+"But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?"
+
+"Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and
+feeling, however I may have failed in making an English poem of it."
+
+"O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?"
+
+"Years before you were born, Connie."
+
+"To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!" she
+returned. "Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?"
+
+"No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don't think he
+belonged to any section of the church in particular."
+
+"But oughtn't he, papa?"
+
+"Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is
+the use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?"
+
+"O, I didn't think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I
+wanted to know more about him."
+
+The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant
+what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider
+Christianity as associated of necessity with this or that form of
+it, instead of as simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more
+repulsive to me as I had grown myself, for it always seemed like an
+insult to my brethren in Christ; hence the least hint of it in my
+children I was too ready to be down upon like a most unchristian ogre.
+I took her hand in mine, and she was comforted, for she saw in my face
+that I was sorry, and yet she could see that there was reason at the
+root of my haste.
+
+"But," said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened
+herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far
+she was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a
+barrier between him and me--"But," she said, "the lovely feeling in that
+poem seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to
+the New Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about
+us. These things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and
+being glad in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and
+solemn things. As soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of
+them."
+
+"That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to
+the rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with
+their conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with
+art it was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of
+its history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to
+make Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we
+are beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either
+the whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the
+human soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is
+the heart not only of theology so called, but of history, politics,
+science, and art. The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him,
+and therefore by him only can be revealed. This will interpret all
+things, or it has not yet been. Teachers of men have not taught this,
+because they have not seen it. If we do not find him in nature, we may
+conclude either that we do not understand the expression of nature, or
+have mistaken ideas or poor feelings about him. It is one great business
+in our life to find the interpretation which will render this harmony
+visible. Till we find it, we have not seen him to be all in all.
+Recognising a discord when they touched the notes of nature and society,
+the hermits forsook the instrument altogether, and contented themselves
+with a partial symphony--lofty, narrow, and weak. Their example, more or
+less, has been followed by almost all Christians. Exclusion is so much
+the easier way of getting harmony in the orchestra than study, insight,
+and interpretation, that most have adopted it. It is for us, and all who
+have hope in the infinite God, to widen its basis as we may, to search
+and find the true tone and right idea, place, and combination of
+instruments, until to our enraptured ear they all, with one voice of
+multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare the glory of God and of his
+Christ."
+
+"A grand idea," said Percivale.
+
+"Therefore likely to be a true one," I returned. "People find it hard
+to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely
+everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is
+shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and
+troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of
+eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God
+will yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs."
+
+I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring
+holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look
+my familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there
+I sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs.
+As I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast
+from the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide
+had crept up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk
+down over the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured
+the half of the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain
+veil as of the commonplace, like that which so often settles down over
+the spirit of man after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had
+dropped over the face of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts
+across the dull waters. It was time to lift Connie and take her home.
+
+This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A PASTORAL VISIT.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next morning rose neither "cherchef't in a comely cloud" nor "roab'd
+in flames and amber light," but covered all in a rainy mist, which the
+wind mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now
+and then the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of
+my study with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out
+and meet its ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows
+anywhere. The sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth,
+sea, and sky were possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The
+breakfast-bell rang, and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who
+was always down first to make the tea, standing at the window with a
+sad face, giving fit response to the aspect of nature without, her soul
+talking with the gray spirit. I did find her at the window, looking out
+upon the restless tossing of the waters, but with no despondent answer
+to the trouble of nature. On the contrary, her cheek, though neither
+rosy nor radiant, looked luminous, and her eyes were flashing out upon
+the ebb-tide which was sinking away into the troubled ocean beyond. Does
+my girl-reader expect me to tell her next that something had happened?
+that Percivale had said something to her? or that, at least, he had just
+passed the window, and given her a look which she might interpret as she
+pleased? I must disappoint her. It was nothing of the sort. I knew
+the heart and feeling of my child. It was only that kind nature was in
+sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more peaceful in storm than
+in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of life instantly began
+in her when the obligation of gladness had departed with the light. Her
+own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could smile now when
+nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I could not
+help saying to myself, "She must marry a poor man some day; she is a
+creature of the north, and not of the south; the hot sun of prosperity
+would wither her up. Give her a bleak hill-side, and a glint or two of
+sunshine between the hailstorms, and she will live and grow; give her
+poverty and love, and life will be interesting to her as a romance; give
+her money and position, and she will grow dull and haughty. She will
+believe in nothing that poet can sing or architect build. She will, like
+Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved to smile at anything."
+
+I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came
+forward with her usual morning greeting.
+
+"I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter."
+
+"I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love."
+
+"Don't think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you.
+But I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind
+and a complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome
+it."
+
+"It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the
+moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well,
+and that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think
+about some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have
+banished if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as
+you never felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which
+at least you haven't enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you
+yesterday, and I won't go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to
+comfort you. Come and give me my breakfast."
+
+"You do comfort me, papa," she answered, approaching the table. "I know
+I don't show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don't
+you like a day like this, papa?"
+
+"I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as
+you do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so
+well."
+
+"Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me
+so well?" she asked, brightening up.
+
+"I know I do," I returned, replying to her last question.
+
+"Better than I do myself?" she asked with an arch smile.
+
+"Considerably, if I mistake not," I answered.
+
+"How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don't
+understand myself!"
+
+"But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life
+is that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from
+God, that hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease.
+It is the sight of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are
+both, by mutual confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you
+say to going out with me? I have to visit a sick woman."
+
+"You don't mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?"
+
+"No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill."
+
+"O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was
+in bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort."
+
+"We'll call and inquire as we pass,--that is, if you are inclined to go
+with me."
+
+"How can you put an _if_ to that, papa?"
+
+"I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on
+the corner of Mr. Barton's farm--over the cliff, you know--that the
+woman is ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the
+better."
+
+"I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here's
+mamma!--Mamma, I'm going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won't
+mind, will you?"
+
+"I don't think it will do you any harm, my dear. That's all I mind, you
+know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected
+to it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people are _glad_ to
+stay in-doors when it rains."
+
+"And it does blow so delightfully!" said Wynnie, as she left the room to
+put on her long cloak and her bonnet.
+
+We called at the sexton's cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the
+low window, looking seaward.
+
+"I hope your wife is not _very_ poorly, Coombes," I said.
+
+"No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed's not a bad place to be in
+in such weather," he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the
+Atlantic. "Poor things!"
+
+"What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about,
+do you think?"
+
+"I suppose I was made so, sir."
+
+"To be sure you were. God made you so."
+
+"Surely, sir. Who else?"
+
+"Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people
+like to be comfortable."
+
+"It du look likely enough, sir."
+
+"Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn't think he doesn't
+look after the people you would make comfortable if you could."
+
+"I must mind my work, you know, sir."
+
+"Yes, surely. And you mustn't want to take his out of his hands, and go
+grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you
+get _your_ hand to it."
+
+"I daresay you be right, sir," he said. "I must just go and have a look
+about, though. Here's Agnes. She'll tell you about mother."
+
+He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his
+tools into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over
+with the names of the people he had buried.
+
+"Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her,
+if she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is
+very poorly, I hear."
+
+"Let us go through the churchyard, papa," said Wynnie, "and see what the
+old man is doing."
+
+"Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round."
+
+"Why do you humour the sexton's foolish fancy so much, papa? It is
+such nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
+resurrection?"
+
+"Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out
+of his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction.
+To get people's hearts right is of much more importance than convincing
+their judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should
+be encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the
+outsides of their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for
+the dead more than he does, and _therefore_ it is unreasonable for him
+to be anxious about them."
+
+When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave
+before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death's-head and
+cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his
+pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows
+of the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked
+past with a nod.
+
+"You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only
+thing in Dante's grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it
+without a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry
+now as I am that ever he could have written it. When, in the _Inferno,_
+he reaches the lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice,
+he finds the lost plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember
+rightly, entirely submerged, and visible only through the ice,
+transparent as crystal, like the insects found in amber. One man with
+his head only above the ice, appeals to him as condemned to the same
+punishment to take pity on him, and remove the lumps of frozen tears
+from his eyes, that he may weep a little before they freeze again and
+stop the relief once more. Dante says to him, 'Tell me who you are,
+and if I do not assist you, I deserve to lie at the bottom of the ice
+myself.' The man tells him who he is, and explains to him one awful
+mystery of these regions. Then he says, 'Now stretch forth thy hand,
+and open my eyes.' 'And,' says Dante, I did not open them for him; and
+rudeness to him was courtesy.'"
+
+"But he promised, you said."
+
+"He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him
+together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that
+Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and
+may teach us many things."
+
+"But what made you think of that now?"
+
+"Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was
+scooping the green moss out of the eyes of the death's-head on the
+gravestone."
+
+By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting
+us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie
+drew her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and
+struggled on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the
+rain must carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one
+of the stone fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments
+to recover our breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like
+conversation was out of the question. At length we dropped into a
+hollow, which gave us a little repose. Down below the sea was dashing
+into the mouth of the glen, or coomb, as they call it there. On the
+opposite side of the hollow, the little house to which we were going
+stood up against the gray sky.
+
+"I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was
+thoughtless of me; I don't mean for your sake, but because your presence
+may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may
+prefer seeing me alone."
+
+"I will go back, papa. I sha'n't mind it a bit."
+
+"No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We
+may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?"
+
+"Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside."
+
+"Come along, then. We shall soon be there."
+
+When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way.
+I left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where
+Mrs. Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the
+moment I saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was
+a hard-featured woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled
+restlessly about. She lay on her back, moving her head from side to
+side. When I entered she only looked at me, and turned her eyes away
+towards the wall. I approached the bedside, and seated myself by it.
+I always do so at once; for the patient feels more at rest than if you
+stand tall up before her. I laid my hand on hers.
+
+"Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?" I said.
+
+"Yes, very," she answered with a groan. "It be come to the last with
+me."
+
+"I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It's not come to the last with us, so
+long as we have a Father in heaven."
+
+"Ah! but it be with me. He can't take any notice of the like of me."
+
+"But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of
+every thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit."
+
+I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than
+usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I
+therefore went on.
+
+"Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long
+as their children don't bother them, let them do anything they like. He
+will not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that."
+
+"He won't look at me," she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so
+that I could hardly, hear what she said.
+
+"It is because he _is_ looking at you that you are feeling
+uncomfortable," I answered. "He wants you to confess your sins. I
+don't mean to me, but to himself; though if you would like to tell me
+anything, and I can help you, I shall be _very_ glad. You know Jesus
+Christ came to save us from our sins; and that's why we call him our
+Saviour. But he can't save us from our sins if we won't confess that we
+have any."
+
+"I'm sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other
+people."
+
+"You don't suppose that's confessing your sins?" I said. "I once knew a
+woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner;
+but when I said, 'Yes, you have done so and so,' she would not allow one
+of those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When
+I asked her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these
+counted for nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a
+great sinner, like other people, as you have just been saying."
+
+"I hope you don't be thinking I ha' done anything of that sort," she
+said with wakening energy. "No man or woman dare say I've done anything
+to be ashamed of."
+
+"Then you've committed no sins?" I returned. "But why did you send for
+me? You must have something to say to me."
+
+"I never did send for you. It must ha' been my husband."
+
+"Ah, then I'm afraid I've no business here!" I returned, rising. "I
+thought you had sent for me."
+
+She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her
+thinking, and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I
+think clergymen may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad
+mood, as if they had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at
+all. I bade her good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned
+to Wynnie.
+
+As we walked home together, I said:
+
+"Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the
+sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented
+my appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are
+over."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ART OF NATURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study
+and in Connie's room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused
+to hold any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it
+folded itself in its mantle and lay still.
+
+What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we
+cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She
+is busy with every human mood in turn--sometimes with ten of them
+at once--picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see,
+understand, develop, reform it.
+
+I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora
+knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that
+mamma was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.
+
+"Not in the least, my dear," I answered; "I shall be very glad to see
+him."
+
+"Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale," I said as he
+entered. "I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it
+would be much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her
+portrait?"
+
+"Not quite so bad as that," said Percivale.
+
+"Surely the human face is more than nature."
+
+"Nature is never stupid."
+
+"The woman might be pretty."
+
+"Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such
+a woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would
+feel the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you
+would never think of making upon Nature."
+
+"I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with
+moral causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame."
+
+"Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be
+lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you
+rise into animal nature that you find ugliness."
+
+"True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn
+in nature. I have seen ugly flowers."
+
+"I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without
+beauty."
+
+"Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I
+grant you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just
+because the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in
+its repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face."
+
+A pause followed.
+
+"I presume," I said, "you are thinking of returning to London now, there
+seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins
+to show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the
+change, even through the winter, will be good for my daughter."
+
+"I must be going soon," he answered; "but it would be too bad to take
+offence at the old lady's first touch of temper. I mean to wait and
+see whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin's summer, as
+Shakspere calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and--"
+
+"And what?" I asked, seeing he hesitated.
+
+"'And soap,' I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the
+worst of things, Mr. Walton."
+
+"No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by
+anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it."
+
+We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to
+tell me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.
+
+I went down to see him, and found her husband.
+
+"My wife be very bad, sir," he said. "I wish you could come and see
+her."
+
+"Does she want to see me?' I asked.
+
+"She's been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last," he
+said.
+
+"But," I repeated, "has she said she would like to see me?"
+
+"I can't say it, sir," answered the man.
+
+"Then it is you who want me to see her?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you
+see, sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would
+always leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir."
+
+"And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?"
+
+"No, never, sir. She be peculiar--my wife; she always be."
+
+"Does she know that you have come to ask me now?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Have you courage to tell her?"
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"If you haven't courage to tell her," I resumed, "I have nothing more to
+say. I can't go; or, rather, I will not go."
+
+"I will tell her, sir."
+
+"Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me
+herself."
+
+"Ben't that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?"
+
+"I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she
+will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your
+wife's peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes."
+
+"Well, I _will_ tell her, sir. It's time to speak my own mind."
+
+"I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in
+the middle of the night, I shall be with her at once."
+
+He left me and I returned to Percivale.
+
+"I was just thinking before you came," I said, "about the relation of
+Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but
+I often think about the truths that lie at the root of it."
+
+"I am greatly obliged to you," he said, "for talking about these things.
+I assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I
+always think the professions should not herd together so much as they
+do; they want to be shone upon from other quarters."
+
+"I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself
+could give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the
+reflective power of the airy particles through which he shines.
+But anything I know I have found out merely by foraging for my own
+necessities."
+
+"That is just what makes the result valuable," he replied. "Tell me what
+you were thinking."
+
+"I was thinking," I answered, "how everyone likes to see his own
+thoughts set outside of him, that he may contemplate them _objectively,_
+as the philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as
+it were."
+
+"Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art
+at all."
+
+"Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the
+question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however
+they may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will
+satisfy themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in
+which they have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet
+utter their ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only
+be good, they shall have this power some day; for I do think that many
+things we call differences in kind, may in God's grand scale prove to be
+only differences in degree. And indeed the artist--by artist, I mean,
+of course, architect, musician, painter, poet, sculptor--in many things
+requires it just as much as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren,
+seeing in proportion to the things that he can do, he is aware of the
+things he cannot do, the thoughts he cannot express. Hence arises the
+enthusiasm with which people hail the work of an artist; they rejoice,
+namely, in seeing their own thoughts, or feelings, or something like
+them, expressed; and hence it comes that of those who have money, some
+hang their walls with pictures of their own choice, others--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Percivale, interrupting; "but most people, I
+fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people's choice, for they
+don't buy them at all till the artist has got a name."
+
+"That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they
+won't at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity
+may be only what first attracted their attention--not determined their
+choice."
+
+"But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market."
+
+"'Of such is not the talk,' as the Germans would say. In as far as your
+description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
+considered now."
+
+"Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
+deserve, if you have lost your thread."
+
+"I don't think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
+their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of
+their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
+unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
+to what is in themselves--the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own
+feelings outside of themselves."
+
+"Is there not another possible motive--that the pictures teach them
+something?"
+
+"That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the
+other, but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us
+already that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the
+germ, else nothing from without would wake it up."
+
+"I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
+influences."
+
+"One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the
+pictures and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the
+house he has chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little
+to do with the education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not
+aware of it, they are working upon him,--for good, if he has chosen what
+is good, which alone shall be our supposition."
+
+"Certainly; that is clear."
+
+"Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our
+needs--not as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for
+himself. For our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for
+us all the otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even
+when he speaks of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the
+forms or pictures of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen
+world turned inside out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house
+that he has built for us, God has hung up the pictures--ever-living,
+ever-changing pictures--of all that passes in our souls. Form and colour
+and motion are there,--ever-modelling, ever-renewing, never wearying.
+Without this living portraiture from within, we should have no word to
+utter that should represent a single act of the inner world. Metaphysics
+could have no existence, not to speak of poetry, not to speak of the
+commonest language of affection. But all is done in such spiritual
+suggestion, portrait and definition are so avoided, the whole is in
+such fluent evanescence, that the producing mind is only aided, never
+overwhelmed. It never amounts to representation. It affords but the
+material which the thinking, feeling soul can use, interpret, and apply
+for its own purposes of speech. It is, as it were, the forms of thought
+cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior laws of matter, thence to be
+withdrawn by what we call the creative genius that God has given to men,
+and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and built up to its own shapes
+and its own purposes."
+
+"Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the
+word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist."
+
+"It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help
+seeing nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees
+no meaning in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will
+represent only her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance."
+
+"Then artists ought to interpret nature?"
+
+"Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves--something
+of humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or
+not. If to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed
+they may claim to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect
+they may be in their powers of representing--however lowly, therefore,
+their position may be in that order."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SORE SPOT.
+
+
+We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the
+dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message
+that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help
+smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling
+too.
+
+"My wife do send me for you this time, sir," he said. "Between you and
+me, I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to
+tell you, sir."
+
+"Why shouldn't she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And
+then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am."
+
+"She don't think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay
+she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done
+talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir."
+
+"Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn't given in quite so
+much. It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right."
+
+"But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile."
+
+"Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been
+surer--_sometimes;_ I don't say _always."_
+
+"But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don't think she'll behave to
+you as she did before. Do come, sir."
+
+"Of course I will--instantly."
+
+I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with
+me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was
+hardly kind to ask him.
+
+"Well, perhaps it is better not," I said; "for I do not know how long I
+may have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take
+my place at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should
+return before the meal is over."
+
+He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my
+wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me--I would take my
+chance--and joined Mr. Stokes.
+
+"You have no idea, then," I said, after we had gone about half-way,
+"what makes your wife so uneasy?"
+
+"No, I haven't," he answered; "except it be," he resumed, "that she was
+too hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath
+her, as wife thought."
+
+"How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?"
+
+"She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother's temper, you see,
+and she would take her own way."
+
+"Ah, there's a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their
+own way, they mustn't give their own temper to their daughters."
+
+"But how are they to help it, sir?"
+
+"Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter's husband?"
+
+"A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone."
+
+"But you have worked on Mr. Barton's farm for many years, if I don't
+mistake?"
+
+"I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see."
+
+"But you weren't so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his
+way up or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs.
+Stokes?"
+
+"True as you say, sir; and it's not me that has anything to say about
+it. I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do
+be wanting to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the
+shopkeeping--"
+
+"The shopkeeping!" I said, with some surprise; "I didn't know that."
+
+"Well, you see, sir, it's only for a quarter or so of the year. You know
+it's a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing--past
+our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a
+bit of a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window,
+and--"
+
+"A bad place for the ginger-beer," I said.
+
+"They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My
+wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the
+sun. But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a
+farm-labourer, as they call them, was none good enough for her
+daughter."
+
+"And hasn't she been kind to her since she married, then?"
+
+"She's never done her no harm, sir."
+
+"But she hasn't gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see
+you very often, I suppose?"
+
+"There's ne'er a one o' them crossed the door of the other," he
+answered, with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.
+
+"Ah; but you don't approve of that yourself, Stokes?"
+
+"Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do
+want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother,
+she do. I don't know which of the two it is as does it, but there's no
+coming and going between Carpstone and this."
+
+We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know
+I was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late
+for me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she
+was still very anxious to see me.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?" I asked, by way of opening
+the conversation. "I don't think you look much worse."
+
+"I he much worse, sir. You don't know what I suffer, or you wouldn't
+make so little of it. I be very bad."
+
+"I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me
+why you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I
+suppose."
+
+With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more
+with herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her.
+The drops stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to
+help her, if I might, I said--
+
+"Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?"
+
+"No," she muttered. "I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my
+own. I could do as I pleased with her."
+
+I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but
+meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she
+feels.
+
+"Then," I said, "you want to tell me about something that was not your
+own?"
+
+"Who said I ever took what was not my own?" she returned fiercely. "Did
+Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn't my own?"
+
+"No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from
+your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause
+of your misery."
+
+"It is very hard that the parson should think such things," she muttered
+again.
+
+"My poor woman," I said, "you sent for me because you had something to
+confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to
+confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does
+you harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me,
+confess to God."
+
+"God knows it, I suppose, without that."
+
+"Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it.
+How is he to forgive you, if you won't allow that you have done wrong?"
+
+"It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had
+took something that wasn't your own?"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I
+should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it."
+
+"But that's the worst of it; I can't get rid of it."
+
+"But," I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly
+as I could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly
+repulsive but for her evidently great suffering, "you have now all but
+confessed taking something that did not belong to you. Why don't you
+summon courage and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the
+trouble as easily as ever I can; but I can't if you don't tell me what
+you've got that isn't yours."
+
+"I haven't got anything," she muttered.
+
+"You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now."
+
+She was again silent.
+
+"What did you do with it?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold
+of me, with a cry.
+
+"Stop, stop. I'll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That's the
+worst of it. I got no good of it."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"A sovereign," she said, with a groan. "And now I'm a thief, I suppose."
+
+"No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you
+think it would have been any better for you if you hadn't lost it, and
+had got some good of it, as you say?"
+
+She was silent yet again.
+
+"If you hadn't lost it you would most likely have been a great deal
+worse for it than you are--a more wicked woman altogether."
+
+"I'm not a wicked woman."
+
+"It is wicked to steal, is it not?"
+
+"I didn't steal it."
+
+"How did you come by it, then?"
+
+"I found it."
+
+"Did you try to find out the owner?"
+
+"No. I knew whose it was."
+
+"Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you
+had not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked
+woman than you are."
+
+"It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I
+wouldn't have lost my character as I have done this day."
+
+"Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would."
+
+"I would."
+
+"Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?"
+
+"Yes, that I would," she said, looking me so full in the face that I was
+sure she meant it.
+
+"How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?"
+
+"No; I wouldn't trust him."
+
+"With the story, you mean I You do not wish to imply that he would not
+restore it?"
+
+"I don't mean that. He would do what I told him."
+
+"How would you return it, then?"
+
+"I should make a parcel of it, and send it."
+
+"Without saying anything about it?"
+
+"Yes. Where's the good? The man would have his own."
+
+"No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have
+wronged him. That would never do."
+
+"You are too hard upon me," she said, beginning to weep angrily.
+
+"Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?" I said.
+
+"Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!"
+
+"Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the
+weight of it will stick there."
+
+"But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?"
+
+"Of course. That is only reasonable."
+
+"But I haven't got it, I tell you. I have lost it."
+
+"Have you not a sovereign in your possession?"
+
+"No, not one."
+
+"Can't you ask your husband to let you have one?"
+
+"There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse.
+I do wish I had never seen that wicked money."
+
+"You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish
+that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it
+now. Has your husband got a sovereign?"
+
+"No. He may ha' got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him
+about it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in
+that way, poor man."
+
+"Well, I'll tell him, and we'll manage it somehow."
+
+I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she
+hid her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.
+
+I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the
+room-door and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did
+not look up, but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this
+humiliation before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.
+
+"Your wife, poor woman," I said, "is in great distress because--I do not
+know when or how--she picked up a sovereign that did not belong to her,
+and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This is
+what is making her so miserable."
+
+"Deary me!" said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to
+a sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet
+from her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight
+hold of it, and he could not. "Deary me!" he went on; "we'll soon put
+that all to rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?"
+
+"When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon
+return it," she sobbed from under the sheet.
+
+"Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?"
+
+"I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got
+for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha' given it
+back at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was
+very nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it."
+
+"You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then," I said.
+
+"My old man won't be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him
+first."
+
+"I would wish that too," I said, "were it not that I am afraid you might
+have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable
+and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be
+paid. Have you got it?"
+
+The poor man looked blank.
+
+"She will never be at ease till this money is paid," I insisted.
+
+"Well, sir, I ain't got it, but I'll borrow it of someone; I'll go to
+master, and ask him."
+
+"No, my good fellow, that won't do. Your master would want to know what
+you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn't let more people
+know about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no
+occasion for that. I'll tell you what: I'll give you the money, and you
+must take it; or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell
+him all about it. Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?"
+
+"Please, sir. It's very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again,
+if it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to
+you, sir; but I couldn't bear the disgrace of it."
+
+She said all this from under the bed-clothes.
+
+"Well, I'll go," I said; "and as soon as I've had my dinner I'll get
+a horse and ride over to Squire Tresham's. I'll come back to-night and
+tell you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for
+forgiving you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but
+confess it clean out to him, you know."
+
+She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.
+
+I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse
+which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.
+
+When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to
+dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my
+return was uncertain.
+
+"But, my love," said my wife, "why should you not let us please
+ourselves sometimes? Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us."
+
+"I am very glad you think so," I answered. "But there are the children:
+it is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their
+meals."
+
+"You see there are no children; they have had their dinner."
+
+"Always in the right, wife; but there's Mr. Percivale."
+
+"I never dine till seven o'clock, to save daylight," he said.
+
+"Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine."
+
+During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale's eyes
+followed Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her
+face. That she was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt.
+One glance at her satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle
+kept coming again and again into my mind; for they were winged words
+those, and even when they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my
+window: "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." And I kept reminding myself
+that I must heave the load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs.
+Stokes to do; for God was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not
+without my help, for that would be to do me more harm than good by
+taking the one thing in which I was like him away from me--my action.
+Therefore I must have faith in him, and not be afraid; for surely all
+fear is sin, and one of the most oppressive sins from which the Lord
+came to save us.
+
+Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out
+for Squire Tresham's.
+
+
+I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him
+the story of the poor woman's misery, he was quite concerned at her
+suffering. When I produced the sovereign he would not receive it at
+first, but requested me to take it back to her and say she must keep it
+by way of an apology for his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took
+care to tell him the whole story, thinking it might be a lesson to him
+too. But I begged him to take it; for it would, I thought, not only
+relieve her mind more thoroughly, but help to keep her from coming to
+think lightly of the affair afterwards. Of course I could not tell him
+that I had advanced the money, for that would have quite prevented him
+from receiving it. I then got on my horse again, and rode straight to
+the cottage.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Stokes," I said, "it's all over now. That's one good thing
+done. How do you feel yourself now?"
+
+"I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me."
+
+"God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness
+for. It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all
+our sins, you know. They're not nice things, are they, to keep in
+our hearts? It is just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead
+carcasses, under lock and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they
+were precious jewels."
+
+"I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn't made so. There's
+my husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But
+then, you see, he would let a child take him in."
+
+"And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is
+no harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in."
+
+She did not reply, and I went on:
+
+"I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for
+your daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially
+seeing you are so ill."
+
+"I will, sir. I will directly. I'm tired of having my own way. But I was
+made so."
+
+"You weren't made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the
+necessary strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now;
+only you must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you.
+I think very likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink
+yourself, and feel that you had done wrong."
+
+"I have been feeling that for many a year."
+
+"That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling
+your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know
+Jesus came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off
+our hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us.
+Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere,
+and he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband,
+and when you have done that you will think of something else to set
+right that's wrong."
+
+"But there would be no end to that way of it, sir."
+
+"Certainly not, till everything was put right."
+
+"But a body might have nothing else to do, that way."
+
+"Well, that's the very first thing that has to be done. It is our
+business in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and
+try to enjoy ourselves."
+
+"That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread."
+
+"To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God's
+way. But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would
+just take his way, you would find that he would take care you should
+enjoy your life."
+
+"I'm sure I haven't had much enjoyment in mine."
+
+"That was just because you would not trust him with his own business,
+but must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will
+take care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for.
+And the longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must
+leave you now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and
+get a sleep. I will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like."
+
+"Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful."
+
+As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart
+was like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from
+every heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one's own soul must be a
+pledge of renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again
+of what St. Paul had said somewhere, "whatsoever is not of faith is
+sin," I thought what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth,
+and how blessed it might be. But what could I do for it? I could just
+begin with myself, and pray God for that inward light which is his
+Spirit, that so I might see him in everything and rejoice in everything
+as his gift, and then all things would be holy, for whatsoever is of
+faith must be the opposite of sin; and that was my part towards heaving
+the weight of sin, which, like myriads of gravestones, was pressing
+the life out of us men, off the whole world. Faith in God is life and
+righteousness--the faith that trusts so that it will obey--none
+other. Lord, lift the people thou hast made into holy obedience and
+thanksgiving, that they may be glad in this thy world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GATHERING STORM.
+
+
+
+
+
+The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
+lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than
+in our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the
+ocean, the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there,
+indeed, so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the
+winter through, compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness
+of the season is almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against
+furious storms of wind and rain.
+
+Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another
+visit. I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away
+so soon again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find
+time for a holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what
+I knew of him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.
+
+He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir
+was working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have
+got a man to take my place better.
+
+He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I
+was sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one
+side to the other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner
+encouraged her in making gentle and frequent use of her strength,
+impressing it upon her, however, that everything depended on avoiding
+everything like a jerk or twist of any sort. I was with them when he
+said this. She looked up at him with a happy smile.
+
+"I will do all I can, Mr. Turner," she said, "to get out of people's way
+as soon as possible."
+
+Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add--
+
+"I know you don't mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and
+not be helped--more than other people--as soon as possible. I will
+therefore be as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we
+don't get well, Mr. Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next
+summer.--I do," she added, nodding her pretty head up from the pillow,
+when she saw the glance the doctor and I exchanged. "Look here," she
+went on, poking the eider-down quilt up with her foot.
+
+"Magnificent!" said Turner; "but mind, you must do nothing out of
+bravado. That won't do at all."
+
+"I have done," said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.
+
+That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
+for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or
+farther from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for
+many weeks. Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was
+only because of the weather, not because of her health.
+
+One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs.
+Stokes. She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her
+mental health was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very
+different, and the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband
+especially, was changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified,
+and I had good hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding
+down the hill of difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.
+
+It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
+tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage
+to return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of
+light gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was
+blowing fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from
+the east. The clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose
+fringes--disreputable, troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like
+mischief. They reminded me of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," in which
+he compares the "loose clouds" to hair, and calls them "the locks of the
+approaching storm." Away to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a
+luminous yellow, covered all the sea-horizon, extending north and south
+as far as the eye could reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed
+to lie in its bosom. Now and then I could discern the dim ghost of a
+vessel through it, as tacking for north or south it came near enough to
+the edge of the fog to show itself for a few moments, ere it retreated
+again into its bosom. There was exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air,
+notwithstanding the coolness of the wind, and I was glad when I found
+myself comfortably seated by the drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie
+bestirring herself to make the tea.
+
+"It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie," I said.
+
+Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.
+
+"You seem to like the idea of it," I added.
+
+"You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea
+of it too."
+
+"_Per se_, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a
+world without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman's
+idea of the perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a
+trim-shaven lawn, rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on
+the shore only in wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget
+which. But the older you grow, the more sides of a thing will present
+themselves to your contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in
+itself, but you cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think
+for a moment of the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are
+gathered within the skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the
+toils of the storm are around them. Look at the barometer in the hall,
+my dear, and tell me what it says."
+
+She went and returned.
+
+"It was not very low, papa--only at rain; but the moment I touched it,
+the hand dropped an inch."
+
+"Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
+however."
+
+"That doesn't make much difference though, does it, papa?"
+
+"No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think
+of things from our own standpoint."
+
+"But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
+nurse teach us Dr. Watts's hymns for children, because you said they
+tended to encourage selfishness."
+
+"Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast
+between the misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the
+apparent--mind, I only say apparent--ground of thankfulness, that they
+are not fit for teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to
+the question, he would abjure any such intention, saying that only
+he meant to heighten the sense of our obligation. But it does tend
+to selfishness and, what is worse, self-righteousness, and is very
+dangerous therefore. What right have I to thank God that I am not as
+other men are in anything? I have to thank God for the good things he
+has given to me; but how dare I suppose that he is not doing the same
+for other people in proportion to their capacity? I don't like to appear
+to condemn Dr. Watts's hymns. Certainly he has written the very worst
+hymns I know; but he has likewise written the best--for public worship,
+I mean."
+
+"Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that
+comes of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the
+idea of a storm, I cannot help it coming."
+
+"I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older,
+other things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to
+us, and impress us more."
+
+Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
+their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.
+
+"But," said Wynnie, "you say everybody is in God's hands as well as we."
+
+"Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
+fire."
+
+"Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a
+storm, ought we?"
+
+"No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the
+very persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to
+rescue them from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn't the tea ready?"
+
+"Yes, papa. I'll just go and tell mamma."
+
+When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us,
+Wynnie resumed the talk.
+
+"I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don't see my
+way out of it--logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use
+of taking any trouble about them if they are in God's hands? Why should
+we try to take them out of God's hands?"
+
+"Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or
+whatever you call it. Take them out of God's hands! If you could do
+that, it would be perdition indeed. God's hands is the only safe place
+in the universe; and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God's
+hands on the shore because we say they are in his hands who go down to
+the sea in ships? If we draw them on shore, surely they are not out of
+God's hands."
+
+"I see--I see. But God could save them without us."
+
+"Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we
+must work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father
+lets his little child help him a little, that the child may learn to
+be and to do, so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our
+fellows, because we would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we
+could. He requires us to do our best."
+
+"But God may not mean to save them."
+
+"He may mean them to be drowned--we do not know. But we know that we
+must try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God's
+great and good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that
+best."
+
+"But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, 'by
+the mercy of God.' They don't say it is by the mercy of God when he is
+drowned."
+
+"But _people_ cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not
+feel. Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death
+would break out in a 'thank God,' and therefore they say it is God's
+mercy when another is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider
+it God's mercy when a man is drowned, that is just the sin of the
+world--the want of faith. But the man who creeps out of the drowning,
+choking billows into the glory of the new heavens and the new earth--do
+you think his thanksgiving for the mercy of God which has delivered him
+is less than that of the man who creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the
+waves on to the dreary, surf-beaten shore? In nothing do we show less
+faith than the way in which we think and speak about death. 'O Death,
+where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?' says the apostle.
+'Here, here, here,' cry the Christian people, 'everywhere. It is an
+awful sting, a fearful victory. But God keeps it away from us many a
+time when we ask him--to let it pierce us to the heart, at last, to be
+sure; but that can't be helped.' I mean this is how they feel in their
+hearts who do not believe that God is as merciful when he sends death
+as when he sends life; who, Christian people as they are, yet look upon
+death as an evil thing which cannot be avoided, and would, if they might
+live always, be content to live always. Death or Life--each is God's;
+for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: there are no dead,
+for all live to him."
+
+"But don't you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?" said my
+wife.
+
+"There can be no doubt about that, my dear."
+
+"Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so."
+
+"Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child's
+sole desire is for food--the very best possible to begin with. But how
+would it be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse
+to share this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the
+man who never so far rises above the desire for food that _nothing_
+could make him forget his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians
+should be strong enough to overcome the fear of death. We ought to love
+and believe him so much, that when he says we shall not die, we should
+at least believe that death must be something very different from what
+it looks to us to be--so different, that what we mean by the word does
+not apply to the reality at all; and so Jesus cannot use the word,
+because it would seem to us that he meant what we mean by it, which he,
+seeing it all round, cannot mean."
+
+"That does seem quite reasonable," said Ethelwyn.
+
+Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
+from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.
+
+"She looks uneasy, does she not?" I said.
+
+"You mean the Atlantic?" he returned, looking round. "Yes, I think so.
+I am glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very
+feverish, probably delirious before morning. She won't sleep much, and
+will talk rather loud when the tide comes in."
+
+"Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?"
+
+"Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
+blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again
+before they vanish."
+
+"It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
+disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to
+me that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little
+more regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the
+evening; in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is
+lowest again while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain
+at night has such an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps
+all a fancy."
+
+"There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke
+to me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even
+six hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
+relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
+and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!"
+
+"Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
+human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care
+to go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to
+Connie's room and have some Shakspere?"
+
+"I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?"
+
+"Let us have the _Midsummer Night's Dream,"_ said Ethelwyn.
+
+"You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you're quite
+right. It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer.
+I suspect that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written
+in the winter. It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full
+value upon what we lack."
+
+"There is one reason," said Wynnie with a roguish look, "why I like that
+play."
+
+"I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie."
+
+"But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn't it, papa?"
+
+"I'm not sure of that. But what is your reason?"
+
+"That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women.
+_They_ are true throughout."
+
+"I might choose to say that was because they were not tried."
+
+"And I might venture to answer that Shakspere--being true to nature
+always, as you say, papa--knew very well how absurd it would be to
+represent a woman's feelings as under the influence of the juice of a
+paltry flower."
+
+"Capital, Wynnie!" said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
+approbation.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?" said Turner. "It is the
+common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
+night."
+
+"But," said Ethelwyn, "he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
+sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted
+to this, that he would only believe his own eyes."
+
+"I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner," I said. "For my part, I have
+more admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more
+weight to the consistency of the various testimony than could be
+altogether counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now
+I will tell you what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling
+power of the poet. He brings together such marvellous contrasts, without
+a single shock or jar to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the
+conjunction. Think for a moment--the ordinary commonplace courtiers;
+the lovers, men and women in the condition of all conditions in which
+fairy-powers might get a hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of
+Fairyland, with their courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the
+court-jester, Puck; the ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their
+play,--fairies and clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one
+exquisite harmony, clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by
+the wedding of the king and queen. But I have talked enough about it.
+Let us get our books."
+
+As we sat in Connie's room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of
+the poet's fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
+fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. "Musk roses," said Titania;
+and the first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the
+window. "Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow," said Bottom; and the
+roar of the waters was in our ears. "So doth the woodbine the sweet
+honeysuckle Gently entwist," said Titania; and the blast poured the rain
+in a spout against the window. "Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth
+like bells," said Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the
+chinks of the bark-house opening from the room. We drew the curtains
+closer, made up the fire higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere
+we had done; and when we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it
+was with the hope that, through all the rising storm, she would dream of
+breeze-haunted summer woods.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE GATHERED STORM.
+
+
+
+
+
+I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
+howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
+and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear
+it save in the _rallentondo_ passages of the wind; but through all the
+wind I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not
+wake my wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to
+Connie's room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were,
+she would be frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the
+same room. I opened the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was
+burning, for Wynnie was an admirable stoker, and could generally keep
+the fire in all night. I crept to the bedside: there was just light
+enough to see that Connie was fast asleep, and that her dreams were not
+of storms. It was a marvel how well the child always slept. But, as
+I turned to leave the room, Wynnie's voice called me in a whisper.
+Approaching her bed, I saw her wide eyes, like the eyes of the darkness,
+for I could scarcely see anything of her face.
+
+"Awake, darling?" I said.
+
+"Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn't Connie sleeping
+delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for
+her."
+
+"It is the best thing for us all, next to God's spirit, I sometimes
+think, my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps
+you awake?"
+
+"I don't think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house
+shakes so that I do feel a little nervous. I don't know how it is. I
+never felt afraid of anything natural before."
+
+"What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only
+hurt the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think
+about him, dear."
+
+"I do try, papa. Don't you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful
+storm, is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there
+now!"
+
+"There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment,
+I suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of
+dying. Mind, they are all in God's hands."
+
+"Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand
+is over them, making them dark with his care."
+
+"And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those
+odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
+beautifully, 'And now with darkness closest weary eyes,' he adds:
+
+  Thus in thy ebony box
+  Thou dost enclose us, till the day
+  Put our amendment in our way,
+  And give new wheels to our disordered clocks."
+
+"He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a
+good clock of God's making; but you want new wheels, according to our
+beloved brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night."
+
+This was tiresome talk--was it--in the middle of the night, reader?
+Well, but my child did not think so, I know.
+
+Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and
+sky. The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled
+a little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again,
+and the wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible
+human hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into
+the village. The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I
+passed: not a man or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if
+nobody had crossed their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open.
+One child came out of the baker's with a big loaf in her apron. The wind
+threatened to blow the hair off her head, if not herself first into the
+canal. I took her by the hand and led her, or rather, let her lead
+me home, while I kept her from being carried away by the wind. Having
+landed her safely inside her mother's door, I went on, climbed the
+heights above the village, and looked abroad over the Atlantic. What a
+waste of aimless tossing to and fro! Gray mist above, full of falling
+rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and bursting as billow
+broke upon billow. The tide was ebbing now, but almost every other wave
+swept the breakwater. They burst on the rocks at the end of it, and
+rushed in shattered spouts and clouds of spray far into the air over
+their heads. "Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall be
+able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The
+solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing,
+out on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it
+could be that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even
+in her most uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was
+right; it was Percivale.
+
+"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere
+in Coleridge's Remorse. "They are but water-drops, after all, that make
+this great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."
+
+"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
+close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as
+you think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know
+that hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no
+more. It is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules
+have to fight for the mastery, or at least for freedom."
+
+"Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort
+that gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of
+human feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much
+of its awe; although, as we were saying the other day, it is only _a
+picture_ of the troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are
+with the elements, and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I
+will go home and change my clothes."
+
+"I have hardly had enough of it yet," returned Percivale. "I shall have
+a stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little
+way from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch
+awhile there."
+
+"Well, you're a younger man than I am; but I've seen the day, as Lear
+says. What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we
+would be judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of
+the strength that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it
+still. But I am not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking."
+
+"I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take
+my way along the downs for a mile or two; I don't mind being wet."
+
+"I didn't once."
+
+"Don't you think," resumed Percivale, "that in some sense the old
+man--not that I can allow _you_ that dignity yet, Mr. Walton--has a right
+to regard the past as his own?"
+
+"That would be scanned," I answered, as we walked towards the village.
+"Surely the results of the past are the man's own. Any action of the
+man's, upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a
+man had done a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation
+upon which to build more good, grew so vain of it that he became
+incapable of doing anything more of the same sort, you could not say
+that the action belonged to him still. Therein he has severed his
+connection with the past. Again, what has never in any deep sense been a
+man's own, cannot surely continue to be his afterwards. Thus the things
+that a man has merely possessed once, the very people who most admired
+him for their sakes when he had them, give him no credit for after he
+has lost them. Riches that have taken to themselves wings leave with
+the poor man only a surpassing poverty. Strength, likewise, which can so
+little depend on any exercise of the will in man, passes from him with
+the years. It was not his all the time; it was but lent him, and had
+nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble man may put forth
+a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the eyes of his
+neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for what he
+could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was his
+own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his
+own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to
+have been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a
+great measure with intellect."
+
+"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that
+can in any way be called his own?"
+
+"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to
+will the truth. This, too, is as much God's gift as everything else: I
+ought to say is more God's gift than anything else, for he gives it to
+be the man's own more than anything else can be. And when he wills
+the truth, he has God himself. Man _can_ possess God: all other things
+follow as necessary results. What poor creatures we should have been if
+God had not made us to do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the
+hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees! Something like
+this was in the mind of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith
+the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
+mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches;
+but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and
+knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment,
+and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the
+Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense of a far higher life
+in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the root of all our
+false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves. We cannot
+commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves. We have
+little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of will,
+and therefore we talk of our strength of body, worship the riches we
+have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual
+successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius
+must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part
+with all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of God
+which the wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which
+the growing luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even
+possible for any man."
+
+We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce
+blast of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the
+streets did look!--how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no
+living creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that
+seemed to have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which,
+forgetful of its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging
+to it against a window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a
+mimic storm within its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down
+the kennels like a long brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide
+from the tormenting wind, and every now and then the rain came in full
+rout before the conquering blast.
+
+When I got home, I peeped in at Connie's door the first thing, and saw
+that she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of
+the conch against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was
+sitting staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she
+could see over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately
+looked. Her face was paler and keener than usual.
+
+"Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?"
+
+"Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He
+says I am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as
+I like."
+
+"But you look too tired for it. Hadn't you better lie down again?"
+
+"It's only the storm, papa."
+
+"The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so."
+
+"It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is
+going to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow."
+
+"You didn't hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The
+storm was raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its
+reach--fast asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down."
+
+"Very well, papa."
+
+I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
+she was already looking much better.
+
+After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went
+out again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and
+his wife, were faring. The wind had already increased in violence.
+It threatened to blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was
+coming in with great rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as
+I passed through it to reach the lower part where they lived. When I
+peeped in from the bottom of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the
+steps of someone overhead, I called out.
+
+Agnes's voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to
+the bedrooms above--
+
+"Mother's gone to church, sir."
+
+"Gone to church!" I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
+whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled
+what the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church
+during a storm.
+
+"O yes, Agnes, I remember!" I said; "your mother thinks the weather bad
+enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
+Where is your husband?"
+
+"He'll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don't mind the wet. You see,
+we don't like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the
+sailors call 'great guns.'"
+
+"And what becomes of his mother then?"
+
+"There don't be any sea out there, sir. Leastways," she added with a
+quiet smile, and stopped.
+
+"You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
+elements out there?"
+
+She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe's
+mother was proverbial.
+
+"But really, sir," she said, "she don't mind the weather a bit; and
+though we don't live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn't hear
+of that, we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know."
+
+"I'm sure it's quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
+now?"
+
+She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow
+complexion, that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought
+a reply.
+
+"I don't think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He's been working
+very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him."
+
+"And how are you?"
+
+"Quite well, thank you, sir."
+
+I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very
+different thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the
+church.
+
+When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
+gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling.
+A certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the
+southern transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of
+the stone, on the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a
+considerable crack between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut
+some sod from another part of the churchyard, and was now standing,
+with the rain pouring on him from the roof, beating this sod down in the
+crack. He was sheltered from the wind by the church, but he was as
+wet as he could be. I may mention that he never appeared in the least
+disconcerted when I came upon him in the discharge of his functions: he
+was so content with his own feeling in the matter, that no difference of
+opinion could disturb him.
+
+"This will never do, Coombes," I said. "You will get your death of cold.
+You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there's rheumatism in
+the world!"
+
+"It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha' done now for a night. I
+think he'll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at
+him through that hole."
+
+"Do go home, then," I said, "and change your clothes. Is your wife in
+the church?"
+
+"She be, sir. This door, sir--this door," he added, as he saw me going
+round to the usual entrance. "You'll find her in there."
+
+I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first,
+for it was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there
+somehow, although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters.
+Mrs. Coombes was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for
+her first, for the wind blew down the tower in many currents and
+draughts--how it did roar up there--as if the louvres had been
+a windsail to catch the wind and send it down to ventilate the
+church!--she was sitting at the foot of the chancel-rail, with her
+stocking as usual.
+
+The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I
+drew near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but
+only sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret
+place of the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to
+say much, however.
+
+"How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked. "Not all
+night?"
+
+"No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn't thought o' going yet for a
+bit."
+
+"Why there's Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I'm afraid he'll
+go on pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as
+full of rheumatism as they can hold."
+
+"Deary me! I didn't know as my old man was there. He tould me he had
+them all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there's
+always some mendin' to do."
+
+I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
+church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.
+
+"You be comin' home with me, mother. This will never do. Father's as wet
+as a mop. I ha' brought something for your supper, and Aggy's a-cookin'
+of it; and we're going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a
+chapter or two of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea.
+There! Come along."
+
+The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully
+in her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.
+
+"No, no," I said; "I'm the shepherd and you're the sheep, so I'll drive
+you before me--at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended if I
+take on me to say I am _his_ shepherd."
+
+
+"Nay, nay, don't say that, sir. You've been a good shepherd to me when
+I was a very sulky sheep. But if you'll please to go, sir, I'll lock the
+door behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the
+sheep follow the shepherd. And I'll follow like a good sheep," he added,
+laughing.
+
+"You're right, Joe," I said, and took the lead without more ado.
+
+I was struck by his saying _them parts_, which seemed to indicate
+a habit of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the
+gospel-story. The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his
+cottage, Joe taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I
+could of Coombes by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared
+I had done ill in that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought
+the thin feeble little man would have got on better if he had been more
+heavily weighted against it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and
+so we got in. The old man took his tools from me and set them down
+in the mill, for the roof of which I felt some anxiety as we passed
+through, so full of wind was the whole space. But when we opened the
+inner door the welcome of a glowing fire burst up the stair as if
+that had been a well of warmth and light below. I went down with them.
+Coombes departed to change his clothes, and the rest of us stood round
+the fire, where Agnes was busy cooking something like white puddings for
+their supper.
+
+"Did you hear, sir," said Joe, "that the coastguard is off to the
+Goose-pot? There's a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the
+road with the rocket-cart."
+
+"How far off is that, Joe?"
+
+"Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor'ards."
+
+"What sort of a vessel is she?"
+
+"That I don't know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
+coast-guard didn't know themselves."
+
+"Poor things!" said Mrs. Coombes. "If any of them comes ashore, they'll
+be sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this."
+
+She had caught a little infection of her husband's mode of thought.
+
+"It's not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?"
+
+"I don't think so, sir. There's no likelihood."
+
+"Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?" said
+the old woman.
+
+"There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another
+time with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with
+my own people. They will be more uneasy if I am away."
+
+"Of coorse, of coorse, sir."
+
+"So I'll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over."
+
+I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out.
+It was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There
+would be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do
+much while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore
+was terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their
+breaking, but they filled the earth and the air with their furious
+noises. The wind roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the
+land, only to the one had been set a hitherto--to the other none. Ere
+the night was far gone, however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean
+itself had not broken its bars.
+
+I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept
+pressing their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of
+will, through the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there
+was doing. They could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and
+dismay, with a soul in it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie's
+room, and found that she was left alone. She looked restless, pale, and
+frightened. The house quivered, and still the wind howled and whistled
+through the adjoining bark-hut.
+
+"Connie, darling, have they left you alone?" I said.
+
+"Only for a few minutes, papa. I don't mind it."
+
+"Don't he frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the
+sea of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the
+Atlantic just as well. Jeremiah says he 'divideth the sea when the waves
+thereof roar.'"
+
+The same moment Dora came running into the room.
+
+"Papa," she cried, "the spray--such a lot of it--came dashing on the
+windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?"
+
+"I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down."
+
+"O, papa! I do want to see."
+
+"What do you want to see, Dora?"
+
+"The storm, papa."
+
+"It is as black as pitch. You can't see anything."
+
+"O, but I want to--to--be beside it."
+
+"Well, you sha'n't stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along.
+Ask Wynnie to come here."
+
+The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not
+seem even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
+presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
+and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on
+to the little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The
+dining-room was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might
+see better from the windows. The children and some of the servants were
+there looking out. I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength
+of two of the women to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great
+sheet of spray rushed over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The
+rain had ceased, and it was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could
+see the gleaming whiteness all before me. The next moment a wave rolled
+over the low wall in front of me, breaking on it and wrapping me round
+in a sheet of water. Something hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found,
+on searching, that one of the large flat stones that lay for coping
+on the top of the wall was on the grass beside me. If it had struck me
+straight, it must have broken my leg.
+
+There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into
+the house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but
+heard nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned
+and tapped at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me
+within. When I went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had
+joined our party. He and Turner were talking together at one of the
+windows.
+
+"Did you hear a gun?" I asked them.
+
+"No. Was there one?"
+
+"I'm not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
+will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast."
+
+"I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready," said Turner.
+
+"No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea," I said,
+remembering what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.
+
+"They would try, though, I suppose," said Turner.
+
+"I do not know," said Percivale. "I don't know the people. But I have
+seen a life-boat out in as bad a night--whether in as bad a sea, I
+cannot tell: that depends on the coast, I suppose."
+
+We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had
+fared with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.
+
+"How is Connie, now, my dear?"
+
+"Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
+didn't mind, I wish he would go up and see her."
+
+"Of course--instantly," said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.
+
+But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear,
+so shrill was it, we heard Connie's voice shrieking, "Papa, papa!
+There's a great ship ashore down there. Come, come!"
+
+Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. "How? What? Where
+could the voice come from?" was the unformed movement of our thoughts.
+But the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though
+not the less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and
+thought only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that
+is afar! Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.
+
+A little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so
+that it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door
+at the top of it was open. The door that led from Connie's room into
+the bark-hut was likewise open, and light shone through it into the
+place--enough to show a figure standing by the furthest window with face
+pressed against the glass. And from this figure came the cry, "Papa,
+papa! Quick, quick! The waves will knock her to pieces!"
+
+In very truth it was Connie standing there.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE SHIPWRECK.
+
+
+
+
+
+Things that happen altogether have to be told one after the other.
+Turner and I both rushed at the narrow stair. There was not room for
+more than one upon it. I was first, but stumbled on the lowest step
+and fell. Turner put his foot on my back, jumped over me, sprang up the
+stair, and when I reached the top of it after him, he was meeting me
+with Connie in his arms, carrying her back to her room. But the girl
+kept crying--"Papa, papa, the ship, the ship!"
+
+My duty woke in me. Turner could attend to Connie far better than I
+could. I made one spring to the window. The moon was not to be seen, but
+the clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to
+show a wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that
+one moment in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of
+the wind, cutting through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the
+house. When or how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew
+straight to the sexton's, snatched the key from the wall, crying only
+"ship ashore!" and rushed to the church.
+
+I remember my hand trembled so that I could hardly get the key into the
+lock. I made myself quieter, opened the door, and feeling my way to the
+tower, knelt before the keys of the bell-hammers, opened the chest, and
+struck them wildly, fiercely. An awful jangling, out of tune and harsh,
+burst into monstrous being in the storm-vexed air. Music itself was
+untuned, corrupted, and returning to chaos. I struck and struck at the
+keys. I knew nothing of their normal use. Noise, outcry, _reveill�_ was
+all I meant.
+
+In a few minutes I heard voices and footsteps. From some parts of
+the village, out of sight of the shore, men and women gathered to the
+summons. Through the door of the church, which I had left open, came
+voices in hurried question. "Ship ashore!" was all I could answer, for
+what was to be done I was helpless to think.
+
+I wondered that so few appeared at the cry of the bells. After those
+first nobody came for what seemed a long time. I believe, however, I was
+beating the alarum for only a few minutes altogether, though when I look
+back upon the time in the dark church, it looks like half-an-hour at
+least. But indeed I feel so confused about all the doings of that
+night that in attempting to describe them in order, I feel as if I were
+walking in a dream. Still, from comparing mine with the recollected
+impressions of others, I think I am able to give a tolerably correct
+result. Most of the incidents seem burnt into my memory so that nothing
+could destroy the depth of the impression; but the order in which they
+took place is none the less doubtful.
+
+A hand was laid on my shoulder.
+
+"Who is there?" I said; for it was far too dark to know anyone.
+
+"Percivale. What is to be done? The coastguard is away. Nobody seems to
+know about anything. It is of no use to go on ringing more. Everybody
+is out, even to the maid-servants. Come down to the shore, and you will
+see."
+
+"But is there not the life-boat?"
+
+"Nobody seems to know anything about it, except 'it's no manner of use
+to go trying of that with such a sea on.'"
+
+"But there must be someone in command of it," I said.
+
+"Yes," returned Percivale; "but there doesn't seem to be one of the
+crew amongst the crowd. All the sailor-like fellows are going about with
+their hands in their pockets."
+
+"Let us make haste, then," I said; "perhaps we can find out. Are you
+sure the coastguard have nothing to do with the life-boat?"
+
+"I believe not. They have enough to do with their rockets."
+
+"I remember now that Roxton told me he had far more confidence in
+his rockets than in anything a life-boat could do, upon this coast at
+least."
+
+While we spoke we came to the bank of the canal. This we had to cross,
+in order to reach that part of the shore opposite which the wreck lay.
+To my surprise the canal itself was in a storm, heaving and tossing and
+dashing over its banks.
+
+"Percivale," I exclaimed, "the gates are gone; the sea has torn them
+away."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. Would God I could get half-a-dozen men to help me. I
+have been doing what I could; but I have no influence amongst them."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked. "What could you do if you had a thousand
+men at your command?"
+
+He made me no answer for a few moments, during which we were hurrying on
+for the bridge over the canal. Then he said:
+
+"They regard me only as a meddling stranger, I suppose; for I have been
+able to get no useful answer. They are all excited; but nobody is doing
+anything."
+
+"They must know about it a great deal better than we," I returned; "and
+we must take care not to do them the injustice of supposing they are not
+ready to do all that can be done."
+
+Percivale was silent yet again.
+
+The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had
+been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving
+in my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind
+us. The wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased,
+and when we reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast
+at what she had at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she
+might see. Awe and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal,
+we turned to the shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had
+rushed up almost to the village. The sand and the roads, every garden
+wall, every window that looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it
+was a wonderfully quiet crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of
+the wind and the waves filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was
+heard only in the ear to which it was spoken. When we came amongst them
+we heard only a murmur as of more articulated confusion. One turn, and
+we saw the centre of strife and anxiety--the heart of the storm that
+filled heaven and earth, upon which all the blasts and the billows broke
+and raved.
+
+Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was
+discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was
+far above low-water mark--lay nearer the village by a furlong than the
+spot where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange to
+think that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many
+men and women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for
+the cry of women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to
+save them. It was terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about
+hurriedly, talking to this one and that one, as if he still thought
+something might be done. He turned to me.
+
+"Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the
+life-boat is."
+
+I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.
+
+"It's no use, I assure you, sir," he answered; "no boat could live in
+such a sea. It would be throwing away the men's lives."
+
+"Do you know where the captain lives?" Percivale asked.
+
+"If I did, I tell you it is of no use."
+
+"Are you the captain yourself?" returned Percivale.
+
+"What is that to you?" he answered, surly now. "I know my own business."
+
+The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made
+a simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as
+they returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was
+the body of a woman--alive or dead I could not tell. I could just
+see the long hair hanging from the head, which itself hung backward
+helplessly as they bore her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I
+can recall no more.
+
+"Run, Percivale," I said, "and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet."
+
+"I can't," answered Percivale. "You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton."
+
+He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so
+abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one
+of the most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they
+walked away together.
+
+I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the
+moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught,
+and that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for
+the marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and
+her mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could
+sleep; but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however,
+occasioned by what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking
+about the ship.
+
+We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we
+went up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The
+clouds had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we
+could not at first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed
+itself a body of men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat,
+afloat on the troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own
+place, his hands quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him,
+his feet out before him, ready to pull the moment they should pass
+beyond the broken gates of the lock out on the awful tossing of the
+waves. They sat very silent, and the men on the path towed them swiftly
+along. The moon uncovered her face for a moment, and shone upon the
+faces of two of the rowers.
+
+"Percivale! Joe!" I cried.
+
+"All right, sir!" said Joe.
+
+"Does your wife know of it, Joe?" I almost gasped.
+
+"To be sure," answered Joe. "It's the first chance I've had of returning
+thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night."
+
+"That's good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" they answered as one man.
+
+"This is your doing, Percivale," I said, turning and walking alongside
+of the boat for a little way.
+
+"It's more Jim Allen's," said Percivale. "If I hadn't got a hold of him
+I couldn't have done anything."
+
+"God bless you, Jim Allen!" I said. "You'll be a better man after this,
+I think."
+
+"Donnow, sir," returned Jim cheerily. "It's harder work than pulling an
+oar."
+
+The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen,
+the two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully
+short space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking
+up another or more; till at length the captain, protesting against
+the folly of it, gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true
+Englishman, as much in earnest as any of them. The places of two who
+were missing were supplied by Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom
+would listen to no remonstrance.
+
+"I've nothing to lose," Percivale had said. "You have a young wife,
+Joe."
+
+"I've everything to win," Joe had returned. "The only thing that makes
+me feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I'm afraid it's not my duty
+that drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What
+would Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my
+bed and sleep? I must go."
+
+"Very well, Joe," returned Percivale, "I daresay you are right. You can
+row, of course?"
+
+"I can row hard, and do as I'm told," said Joe.
+
+"All right," said Percivale; "come along."
+
+This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards
+the mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The
+critical moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some
+parts of which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty
+there, as I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my
+post, and turned again to follow the doctor.
+
+"God bless you, my men!" I said, and left them.
+
+They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner
+in the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman
+was quite dead.
+
+"I fear it is an emigrant vessel," he said.
+
+"Why do you think so?" I asked, in some consternation.
+
+"Come and look at the body," he said.
+
+It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face
+was very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to
+prove that she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their
+bread.
+
+"What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America
+or Australia--to her lover, perhaps," said Turner. "You see she has
+a locket on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some
+of these people are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a
+Godsend."
+
+A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the
+house. They were bringing another body--that of an elderly woman--dead,
+quite dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out
+together, when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce
+hiss, vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up,
+seawards, something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the
+right side of the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.
+
+"Thank God! that's the coastguard," I cried.
+
+We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
+planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the
+sea looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering
+in the mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw
+down below the great mass, of the vessel's hulk, with the waves breaking
+every moment upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and
+then there would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling
+waters, and then I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on
+the bottom. Her masts had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos
+of cordage floated and swung in the waves that broke over her. But her
+bowsprit remained entire, and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with
+human beings. The first rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire
+another. Roxton stood with his telescope in his hand, ready to watch the
+result.
+
+"This is a terrible job, sir," he said when I approached him; "I doubt
+if we shall save one of them."
+
+"There's the life-boat!" I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
+approaching the vessel from the other side.
+
+"The life-boat!" he returned with contempt. "You don't mean to say
+they've got _her_ out! She'll only add to the mischief. We'll have to
+save her too."
+
+She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth
+water. But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the
+billows rode over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some
+invisible prey. Another hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second
+rocket was shooting its parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised
+his telescope to his eye the same moment.
+
+"Over her starn!" he cried. "There's a fellow getting down from the
+cat-head to run aft.--Stop, stop!" he shouted involuntarily. "There's an
+awful wave on your quarter."
+
+His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
+distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But
+the huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed--so
+coolly as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar
+things without discomposure--
+
+"He's gone! I said so. The next'll have better luck, I hope."
+
+That man came ashore alive, though.
+
+All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
+Roxton's telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then
+a single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed
+on the life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at
+one moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam
+on the knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the
+waves delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no
+water. I am here drawing upon the information I have since received;
+but I did see how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on
+which she floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon
+the life-boat with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough
+to show this with tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next
+moment, there she was, floating helplessly about, like a living thing
+stunned by the blow of the falling wave. The struggle was over. As far
+as I could see, every man was in his place; but the boat drifted away
+before the storm shore-wards, and the men let her drift. Were they all
+killed as they sat? I thought of my Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.
+
+"That wave has done for them," he said. "I told you it was no use. There
+they go."
+
+"But what is the matter?" I asked. "The men are sitting every man in his
+place."
+
+"I think so," he answered. "Two were swept overboard, but they caught
+the ropes and got in again. But don't you see they have no oars?"
+
+That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they
+were as helpless as a sponge.
+
+I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket
+was fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with
+fresh fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say--"She's breaking up.
+It's no use. That last did for her;" but I hurried off for the other
+side of the bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great
+cry from the vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a
+parting glance. The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing
+at will over the space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many
+were running, like myself, towards the other side, anxious about the
+life-boat. I hastened after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.
+
+They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would
+be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the
+only spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.
+
+There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion
+of speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered
+about the crew of the life-boat,--which already lay, as if it knew of
+nothing but repose, on the grass within.
+
+"Percivale!" I cried, making my way through the crowd.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Joe Harper!" I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew,
+to whom everybody was talking.
+
+Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I
+could gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall,
+despair in her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I
+could not look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking
+to old Coombes. I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his
+attention.
+
+"Where is Mr. Percivale?" I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.
+
+He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the
+waves, and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had
+fallen considerably, else there would not have been standing-room,
+narrow as it was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the
+direction of the Castle-rock.
+
+"If you mean the stranger gentleman--"
+
+"And Joe Harper, the blacksmith," I interposed.
+
+"They're there, sir."
+
+"You don't mean those two--just those two--are drowned?" I said.
+
+"No, sir; I don't say that; but God knows they have little chance."
+
+I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the
+smallest danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.
+
+"Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?"
+
+"No," I answered; "I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am
+always ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can't
+say I see it."
+
+"I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I
+believe, on board of that schooner."
+
+"Is she aground?"
+
+"O dear no, sir. She's a light craft, and can swim there well enough.
+If she'd been aground, she'd ha' been ashore in pieces hours ago. But
+whether she'll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore."
+
+"How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights
+opposite."
+
+"You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don't
+make much show in this light. But there she is, and they're aboard of
+her. And this is how it was."
+
+He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the
+whole of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.
+
+Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said--one of them was
+Percivale--but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless, with
+the rest--now in a windless valley--now aloft on a tempest-swept hill of
+water--away towards a goal they knew not, neither had chosen, and which
+yet they could by no means avoid.
+
+A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the
+channel of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across
+the sands nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little
+schooner, belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which,
+caught in the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost
+dark, some considerable time before the great ship. The master, however,
+knew the ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind,
+and would have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop
+anchor just in time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner
+hung in the skirts of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks
+within an arrow flight. In the excitement of the great wreck, no one had
+observed the danger of the little coasting bird. If the cable held till
+the tide went down, and the anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if
+not, she must be dashed to pieces.
+
+In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed
+overboard an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had
+dropped their anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they
+were so worn out that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor,
+and were holding on only by their best bower. Had they not been a good
+deal out of the wind, this would have been useless. Even if it held she
+was in danger of having her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands
+as the tide went out. But that they had not to think of yet. The moment
+they lay down they fell fast asleep in the middle of the storm. While
+they slept it increased in violence.
+
+Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For
+over his head faces looked down upon him from the air--that is, from the
+top of a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the angels
+dropped on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels were
+Percivale and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time,
+as all angels do--never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the
+schooner _was_ dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the less
+experienced eyes of the said angels.
+
+But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest
+anchor, and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to
+come.
+
+One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was
+engaged to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth
+chapter in the second volume.
+
+Percivale's account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that
+as they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge
+wave the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the
+rigging. The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the
+schooner.
+
+Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out "Aboard!" The
+captain said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must
+have meant it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat.
+Percivale, however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say
+Christian?) notion of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to
+board the schooner, sprang at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave
+sweeping them along the schooner's side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds,
+and they dropped on the deck together.
+
+But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the
+affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of
+the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.
+
+When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by
+staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was
+nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which
+was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was
+Agnes Harper.
+
+The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds
+were breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved
+out its business, and was departing into the past.
+
+"Agnes," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir," she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command.
+There was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips--at least it seemed so
+in the moonlight--only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She
+was leaning against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging
+quietly down before her.
+
+"The storm is breaking-up, Agnes," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir," she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a
+moment's pause, she spoke out of her heart.
+
+"Joe's at his duty, sir?"
+
+I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant
+that point I am not quite sure.
+
+"Indubitably," I returned. "I have such faith in Joe, that I should be
+sure of that in any case. At all events, he's not taking care of his own
+life. And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err
+on that side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else."
+
+"Then there's nothing to be said, sir, is there?" she returned, with a
+sigh that sounded as of relief.
+
+I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job's
+comfort by blaming her husband.
+
+"Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she
+reproached him with having left her and his father?"
+
+"I can't remember anything at this moment, sir," was her touching
+answer.
+
+"Then I will tell you. He said, 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you
+know that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?' Now,
+Joe was and is about his Father's business, and you must not be anxious
+about him. There could be no better reason for not being anxious."
+
+Agnes was a very quiet woman. When without a word she took my hand and
+kissed it, I felt what a depth there was in the feeling she could not
+utter. I did not withdraw my hand, for I knew that would be to rebuke
+her love for Joe.
+
+"Will you come in and wait?" I said indefinitely.
+
+"No, thank you, sir. I must go to my mother. God will look after Joe,
+won't he, sir?"
+
+"As sure as there is a God, Agnes," I said; and she went away without
+another word.
+
+I put my hand on the top of the wall and jumped over. I started back
+with terror, for I had almost alighted on the body of a woman lying
+there. The first insane suggestion was that it had been cast ashore; but
+the next moment I knew that it was my own Wynnie.
+
+She had not even fainted. She was lying with her handkerchief stuffed
+into her mouth to keep her from screaming. When I uttered her name
+she rose, and, without looking at me, walked away towards the house. I
+followed. She went straight to her own room and shut the door. I went to
+find her mother. She was with Connie, who was now awake, lying pale and
+frightened. I told Ethelwyn that Percivale and Joe were on board the
+little schooner, which was holding on by her anchor, that Wynnie was in
+terror about Percivale, that I had found her lying on the wet grass, and
+that she must get her into a warm bath and to bed. We went together to
+her room.
+
+She was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands pressed
+against her temples.
+
+"Wynnie," I said, "our friends are not drowned. I think you will see
+them quite safe in the morning. Pray to God for them."
+
+She did not hear a word.
+
+"Leave her with me," said Ethelwyn, proceeding to undress her; "and tell
+nurse to bring up the large bath. There is plenty of hot water in the
+boiler. I gave orders to that effect, not knowing what might happen."
+
+Wynnie shuddered as her mother said this; but I waited no longer, for
+when Ethelwyn spoke everyone felt her authority. I obeyed her, and then
+went to Connie's room.
+
+"Do you mind being left alone a little while?" I asked her.
+
+"No, papa; only--are they all drowned?" she said with a shudder.
+
+"I hope not, my dear; but be sure of the mercy of God, whatever you
+fear. You must rest in him, my love; for he is life, and will conquer
+death both in the soul and in the body."
+
+"I was not thinking of myself, papa."
+
+"I know that, my dear. But God is thinking of you and every creature
+that he has made. And for our sakes you must be quiet in heart, that you
+may get better, and be able to help us."
+
+"I will try, papa," she said; and, turning slowly on her side, she lay
+quite still.
+
+Dora and the boys were all fast asleep, for it was very late. I cannot,
+however, say what hour it was.
+
+Telling nurse to be on the watch because Connie was alone, I went again
+to the beach. I called first, however, to inquire after Agnes. I found
+her quite composed, sitting with her parents by the fire, none of them
+doing anything, scarcely speaking, only listening intently to the sounds
+of the storm now beginning to die away.
+
+I next went to the place where I had left Turner. Five bodies lay there,
+and he was busy with a sixth. The surgeon of the place was with him, and
+they quite expected to recover this man.
+
+I then went down to the sands. An officer of the revenue was taking
+charge of all that came ashore--chests, and bales, and everything. For
+a week the sea went on casting out the fragments of that which she had
+destroyed. I have heard that, for years after, the shifting of the sands
+would now and then discover things buried that night by the waves.
+
+All the next day the bodies kept coming ashore, some peaceful as in
+sleep, others broken and mutilated. Many were cast upon other parts
+of the coast. Some four or five only, all men, were recovered. It was
+strange to me how I got used to it. The first horror over, the cry that
+yet another body had come awoke only a gentle pity--no more dismay or
+shuddering. But, finding I could be of no use, I did not wait longer
+than just till the morning began to dawn with a pale ghastly light over
+the seething raging sea; for the sea raged on, although the wind had
+gone down. There were many strong men about, with two surgeons and all
+the coastguard, who were well accustomed to similar though not such
+extensive destruction. The houses along the shore were at the disposal
+of any who wanted aid; the Parsonage was at some distance; and I confess
+that when I thought of the state of my daughters, as well as remembered
+former influences upon my wife, I was very glad to think there was no
+necessity for carrying thither any of those whom the waves cast on the
+shore.
+
+When I reached home, and found Wynnie quieter and Connie again asleep, I
+walked out along our own downs till I came whence I could see the little
+schooner still safe at anchor. From her position I concluded--correctly
+as I found afterwards--that they had let out her cable far enough to
+allow her to reach the bed of the little stream, where the tide would
+leave her more gently. She was clearly out of all danger now; and if
+Percivale and Joe had got safe on board of her, we might confidently
+expect to see them before many hours were passed. I went home with the
+good news.
+
+For a few moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could
+not know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But
+presently I recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no
+right to modify God's facts for fear of what may be to come. A little
+hope founded on a present appearance, even if that hope should never be
+realised, may be the very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of
+a sorrow past the point at which it would otherwise break down. I would
+therefore tell Wynnie, and let her share my expectation of deliverance.
+
+I think she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she
+started up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to
+her head.
+
+"I have brought you good news, Wynnie," I said. "I have been out on the
+downs, and there is light enough now to see that the little schooner is
+quite safe."
+
+"What schooner?" she asked listlessly, and lay down again, her eyes
+still staring, awfully unappeased.
+
+"Why the schooner they say Percivale got on board."
+
+"He isn't drowned then!" she cried with a choking voice, and put her
+hands to her face and burst into tears and sobs.
+
+"Wynnie," I said, "look what your faithlessness brings upon you.
+Everybody but you has known all night that Percivale and Joe Harper are
+probably quite safe. They may be ashore in a couple of hours."
+
+"But you don't know it. He may be drowned yet."
+
+"Of course there is room for doubt, but none for despair. See what a
+poor helpless creature hopelessness makes you."
+
+"But how can I help it, papa?" she asked piteously. "I am made so."
+
+But as she spoke the dawn was clear upon the height of her forehead.
+
+"You are not made yet, as I am always telling you; and God has ordained
+that you shall have a hand in your own making. You have to consent, to
+desire that what you know for a fault shall be set right by his loving
+will and spirit."
+
+"I don't know God, papa."
+
+"Ah, my dear, that is where it all lies. You do not know him, or you
+would never be without hope."
+
+"But what am I to do to know him!" she asked, rising on her elbow.
+
+The saving power of hope was already working in her. She was once more
+turning her face towards the Life.
+
+"Read as you have never read before about Christ Jesus, my love. Read
+with the express object of finding out what God is like, that you may
+know him and may trust him. And now give yourself to him, and he will
+give you sleep."
+
+"What are we to do," I said to my wife, "if Percivale continue silent?
+For even if he be in love with her, I doubt if he will speak."
+
+"We must leave all that, Harry," she answered.
+
+She was turning on myself the counsel I had been giving Wynnie. It is
+strange how easily we can tell our brother what he ought to do, and yet,
+when the case comes to be our own, do precisely as we had rebuked him
+for doing. I lay down and fell fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE FUNERAL.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back
+from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as
+if it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The
+madness of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the
+world was rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded
+the best outlook over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the
+sands, her two cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her;
+but half way between the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something
+shapeless, drifted over with sand. It was all that remained together of
+the great ship that had the day before swept over the waters like a live
+thing with wings--of all the works of man's hands the nearest to the
+shape and sign of life. The wind had ceased altogether, only now and
+then a little breeze arose which murmured "I am very sorry," and lay
+down again. And I knew that in the houses on the shore dead men and
+women were lying.
+
+I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their
+breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I
+made a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into
+the events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale,
+looking very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his
+hand warmly.
+
+"Thank God," I said, "that you are returned to us, Percivale."
+
+"I doubt if that is much to give thanks for," he said.
+
+"We are the judges of that," I rejoined. "Tell me all about it."
+
+While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie
+entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+"Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale," I said.
+
+Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with
+an emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed--why, I could not
+easily have told, for she looked most charming in the act,--more lovely
+than I had ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising God, and
+her heart would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest man, and
+I think attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in danger in
+the way of duty,--a fact sufficient to move the heart of any good woman.
+
+She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand
+trembled. I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he
+evidently enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.
+
+I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into
+the village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.
+
+As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of
+the sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn
+business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his
+tools lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.
+
+"Ah, Coombes! you'll want them," I said.
+
+"A good many o' my people be come all at once, you see, sir," he
+returned. "I shall have enough ado to make 'em all comfortable like."
+
+"But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all
+comfortable yourself alone."
+
+"We'll see what I can do," he returned. "I ben't a bit willin' to let no
+one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir."
+
+"How many are there wanting your services?" I asked.
+
+"There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don't doubt, on the
+way."
+
+"But you won't think of making separate graves for them all," I said.
+"They died together: let them lie together."
+
+The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with
+indignation. The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had
+deserved it, I yet felt the rebuke.
+
+"How would you like, sir," he said, at length, "to be put in the same
+bed with a lot of people you didn't know nothing about?"
+
+I knew the old man's way, and that any argument which denied the premiss
+of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore
+ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.
+
+"That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn't think of it after they'd
+been down awhile--six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can't be
+comfortable for 'em, poor things. One on 'em be a baby: I daresay he'd
+rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o' the women be a
+mother. I don't know," he went on reflectively, "whether she be the
+baby's own mother, but I daresay neither o' them 'll mind it if I take
+it for granted, and lay 'em down together. So that's one bed less."
+
+One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves
+within the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in
+the church, having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties
+to perfection. He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended
+the stair, thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old
+woman.
+
+"Where are Joe and Agnes?" I asked.
+
+"You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day,
+and so he couldn't stop. He did say Agnes needn't go with him; but she
+thought she couldn't part with him so soon, you see, sir."
+
+"She had received him from the dead--raised to life again," I said; "it
+was most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him
+neglect his work!"
+
+"I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last
+night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the
+tire put on Farmer Wheatstone's cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was
+his business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy
+wouldn't stay behind."
+
+"Fine fellow, Joe!" I said, and took my leave.
+
+As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing,
+and apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were
+making the coffins in the joiners' shops, of which there were two in the
+place.
+
+I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my
+way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth,
+and so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have
+it vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world
+of form, as soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding,
+life-giving mould, seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy
+that will sometimes emerge from the froth of reverie--I mean, of
+subdued consciousness remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is
+altogether and vilely repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even
+the shadow of sentiment, though some of my readers, who may not yet have
+learned to distinguish between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I
+dare to utter such a barbarism.
+
+I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought
+something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that
+he had sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers,
+requesting those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies
+to appear within four days at Kilkhaven.
+
+This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was
+clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore
+arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.
+
+On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each
+other, arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the
+last of their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the
+shadow left behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any
+object remains a moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the
+object itself has gone, so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body,
+lingers a moment upon the earth after the object itself has gone to
+the "high countries." It was well to see with what a sober sorrow the
+dignified little old man bore his grief. It was as if he felt that the
+loss of his son was only for a moment. But the young woman had taken on
+the hue of the corpse she came to seek. Her eyes were sunken as if with
+the weight of the light she cared not for, and her cheeks had already
+pined away as if to be ready for the grave. A being thus emptied of its
+glory seized and possessed my thoughts. She never even told us whom she
+came seeking, and after one involuntary question, which simply received
+no answer, I was very careful not even to approach another. I do not
+think the form she sought was there; and she may have gone home with
+the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a doubtful dawn over her
+coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.
+
+On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had
+all the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others
+on stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the
+evening these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old
+man soon found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows
+of the dead. He turned to me and said quietly--
+
+"That's him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He's with his
+mother; and if I'm sorry, she's glad."
+
+With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his
+arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked
+out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a
+new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God
+only knew--certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest thoughts
+are of more awful significance than the most serious of us can imagine.
+
+For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light
+in her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there
+could no more justify her than Milton in letting her
+
+  "frail thoughts dally with false surmise."
+
+With him, too, she might well add--
+
+  "Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away."
+
+But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them
+to be my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over.
+To this they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received
+them like herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her,
+to which no doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations
+of humanity and destroys its distinctions.
+
+The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from
+Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of
+his daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me
+first. I went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man,
+with long arms and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow
+ponderous utterance, which I had some difficulty in understanding. He
+treated the object of his visit with a certain hardness, and at the same
+time lightness, which also I had some difficulty in understanding.
+
+"You want to see the--" I said, and hesitated.
+
+"Ow ay--the boadies," he answered. "She winna be there, I daursay, but I
+wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be 'at
+she was there, wi'oot biddin' her good-bye like."
+
+When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell
+upon me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn,
+grand, ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace
+before her altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a
+sea of troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when
+the churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed
+away, when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and
+no man shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, "Know
+the Lord"? The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my
+companion up to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on.
+He had looked at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the
+beautiful form which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the
+white cheeks, taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the
+brown hair tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was
+dead--
+
+"Eh, Maggie! hoo cam _ye_ here, lass?"
+
+Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he
+put his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was
+shaken with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe
+and reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief
+with yellow spots on it--I see it now--from his pocket, rubbed his face
+with it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said,
+without looking at me, "I'll awa' hame."
+
+"Wouldn't you like a piece of her hair?" I asked.
+
+"Gin ye please," he answered gently, as if his daughter's form had been
+mine now, and her hair were mine to give.
+
+By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet
+solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.
+
+"Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, to be sure, sir," she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by
+the string suspending them from her waist.
+
+"Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair," I said.
+
+She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed
+it respectfully to the father.
+
+He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the
+communion-rail, and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky
+gold. It was, indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it
+must be a yard long. He passed his big fingers through and through it,
+but tenderly, as if it had been still growing on the live lovely head,
+stopping every moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and
+shake out the sand that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for
+nearly half-an-hour, and we stood looking on with something closely akin
+to awe. At length he folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black
+leather book, laid it carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led
+the way from the church, and he followed me.
+
+Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with
+his other hand in his trousers-pocket--
+
+"She'll hae putten ye to some expense--for the coffin an' sic like."
+
+"We'll talk about that afterwards," I answered. "Come home with me now,
+and have some refreshment."
+
+"Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o' tribble already. I'll jist
+awa' hame."
+
+"We are going to lay them down this evening. You won't go before the
+funeral. Indeed, I think you can't get away till Monday morning. My wife
+and I will be glad of your company till then."
+
+"I'm no company for gentle-fowk, sir."
+
+"Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her
+laid," I said.
+
+He yielded and followed me.
+
+Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain
+enough--that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But
+there was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring
+farms. Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at
+work. The brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard--the mole-heaps
+of burrowing Death.
+
+The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a
+little hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said--
+
+"I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk
+there--i' that neuk, I wad tak' it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam'
+aboot that I cam' here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get
+a sma' bit heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi' ye to pay
+for't."
+
+"To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?"
+
+"Ow jist--let me see--Maggie Jamieson--nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She
+was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It's the last
+thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o' Scripter aneath't, ye
+ken."
+
+"What verse would you like?"
+
+He thought for a little.
+
+"Isna there a text that says, 'The deid shall hear his voice'?"
+
+"Yes: 'The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.'"
+
+"Ay. That's it. Weel, jist put that on.--They canna do better than hear
+his voice," he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.
+
+I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or
+apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for
+the day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could
+not talk to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs
+of sorrow in their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill
+in whose unseen bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a
+subterranean torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling
+down hidden precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could
+still. This daughter _might_, though from her face I did not think it,
+have gone away against her father's will. That son _might_ have been a
+ne'er-do-well at home--how could I tell? The woman _might_ be looking
+for the lover that had forsaken her--I could not divine. I would speak
+no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort to
+his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the
+forefront of humanity; I would read some of the words he spoke. From
+them the human nature in each would draw what comfort it could. I took
+my New Testament from my pocket, and said, without any preamble,
+
+"When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved
+him enough to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be
+overwhelmed for a time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not
+believe the glad end of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful
+death that awaited him--a death to which that of our friends in the
+wreck was ease itself. I will just read to you what he said."
+
+I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John's
+Gospel. I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I
+could hardly hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the
+best things are just those from which the humble will draw the truth
+they are capable of seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left
+it to them to hear for themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment,
+fearful of darkening counsel by words without knowledge. For the Bible
+is awfully set against what is not wise.
+
+When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked
+towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I
+talked of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us.
+But little of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing
+nothing of the sorrow it had caused.
+
+We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at
+seven o'clock.
+
+"I have an invalid to visit out in this direction," I said; "would you
+mind walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we
+shall get back just in time for tea."
+
+They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard
+a little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy,
+and point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our
+aid. I may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I
+have had two of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us
+there.
+
+The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed
+themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed
+hour. I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the
+Christian, the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church
+received it, as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the
+earth.
+
+As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be
+carried out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began
+to read, "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
+believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever
+liveth and believeth in me shall never die."
+
+I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before
+the dead. There I read the Psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our refuge," and
+the glorious lesson, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
+first-fruits of them that slept." Then the men of the neighbourhood
+came forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the
+church, each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, "Man
+that is born of a woman;" then went from one to another of the graves,
+and read over each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, "Forasmuch as
+it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy." Then again, I went
+back to the church-door and read, "I heard a voice from heaven;" and so
+to the end of the service.
+
+Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my
+canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had
+already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.
+
+A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie's
+remaining in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face--pale
+and worn; but it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the
+fresh power called forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.
+
+Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant _secret_
+light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the
+house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
+wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short
+of the impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come,
+however, I could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully
+painful to all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual
+child-gift of forgetting. The servants--even Walter--looked thin and
+anxious.
+
+That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
+before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because
+I did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had
+again and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended
+itself to me so that I could say "I must take that;" nothing said
+plainly, "This is what you have to speak of."
+
+As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind
+had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion,
+or rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to
+justify me in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole
+justification, in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I
+cared heartily in my own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness
+I was dumb. And I do think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman
+ought to be at liberty upon occasion to say, "My friends, I cannot
+preach to-day." What a riddance it would be for the Church, I do not say
+if every priest were to speak sense, but only if every priest were to
+abstain from speaking of that in which, at the moment, he feels little
+or no interest!
+
+I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for
+sleep will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can
+compass. I have read somewhere--I will verify it by present search--that
+Luther's translation, of the verse in the psalm, "So he giveth to his
+beloved sleep," is, "He giveth his beloved sleeping," or while asleep.
+Yes, so it is, literally, in English, "It is in vain that ye rise early,
+and then sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he
+gives it sleeping." This was my experience in the present instance; for
+the thought of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, "Why should
+I talk about death? Every man's heart is now full of death. We have
+enough of that--even the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the
+tempest. What I have to do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to
+speak of life." It flashed in on my mind: "Death is over and gone. The
+resurrection comes next. I will speak of the raising of Lazarus."
+
+The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
+give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of
+them would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them
+with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought
+to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would
+have called a _caput mortuum_, or death's head, namely, a lifeless lump
+of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the
+living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the
+hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative,
+attempted to give a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to
+present the substance of it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat
+cleared of the unavoidable, let me say necessary--yes, I will
+say _valuable_--repetitions and enforcements by which the various
+considerations are pressed upon the minds of the hearers. These are
+entirely wearisome in print--useless too, for the reader may ponder over
+every phrase till he finds out the purport of it--if indeed there be
+such readers nowadays.
+
+I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical
+ablution, and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged
+as if myself newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the
+downs full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep
+in my mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be
+not only ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but
+able to send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time
+of the soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of
+the body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to
+comfort the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of
+kings hath conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith
+that cannot laugh at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array
+of defiant appearances. The fresh breeze of the morning visited me. "O
+God," I said in my heart, "would that when the dark day comes, in which
+I can feel nothing, I may be able to front it with the memory of this
+day's strength, and so help myself to trust in the Father! I would call
+to mind the days of old, with David the king."
+
+When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had
+been cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and
+found him very pale and worn.
+
+"I think I am going, sir," he said; "and I wanted to see you before I
+die."
+
+"Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid," I returned.
+
+"I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I
+wasn't afraid then, I'm not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my
+bed. But just look here, sir."
+
+He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded
+the envelope, and showed a lump of something--I could not at first tell
+what. He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible,
+with nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly
+in a state of pulp.
+
+"That's the bible my mother gave me when I left home first," he said. "I
+don't know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that
+cut through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a'most have cut
+through my ribs if it hadn't been for it."
+
+"Very likely," I returned. "The body of the Bible has saved your bodily
+life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life."
+
+"I think I know what you mean, sir," he panted out. "My mother was a
+good woman, and I know she prayed to God for me."
+
+"Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?"
+
+"If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He's nearly as bad as I am."
+
+"We won't forget you," I said. "I will come in after church and see how
+you are."
+
+I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I
+did not think the poor fellow was going to die.
+
+I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since.
+We took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and
+stables, and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his
+health continues delicate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE SERMON.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
+chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
+proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare
+to say that he makes his own commonest speech?
+
+"When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother,
+was going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers
+and sisters, there was one family he loved especially--a family of two
+sisters and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they
+can be loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only
+God is always trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more.
+There are several stories--O, such lovely stories!--about that family
+and Jesus; and we have to do with one of them now.
+
+"They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village
+they called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord,
+when he was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of
+the city, to go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of
+Lazarus's house, where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet
+than at any news that could come to them.
+
+"They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem--taking up
+stones to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with
+anger as they were--and all because he told them the truth--that he had
+gone away to the other side of the great river that divided the country,
+and taught the people in that quiet place. While he was there his friend
+Lazarus was taken ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a
+messenger to him, to say to him, 'Lord, your friend is very ill.' Only
+they said it more beautifully than that: 'Lord, behold, he whom thou
+lovest is sick.' You know, when anyone is ill, we always want the person
+whom he loves most to come to him. This is very wonderful. In the worst
+things that can come to us the first thought is of love. People, like
+the Scribes and Pharisees, might say, 'What good can that do him?' And
+we may not in the least suppose that the person we want knows any secret
+that can cure his pain; yet love is the first thing we think of. And
+here we are more right than we know; for, at the long last, love will
+cure everything: which truth, indeed, this story will set forth to us.
+No doubt the heart of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed after his friend;
+and, very likely, even the sight of Jesus might have given him such
+strength that the life in him could have driven out the death which had
+already got one foot across the threshold. But the sisters expected
+more than this: they believed that Jesus, whom they knew to have driven
+disease and death out of so many hearts, had only to come and touch
+him--nay, only to speak a word, to look at him, and their brother was
+saved. Do you think they presumed in thus expecting? The fact was, they
+did not believe enough; they had not yet learned to believe that he
+could cure him all the same whether he came to them or not, because he
+was always with them. We cannot understand this; but our understanding
+is never a measure of what is true.
+
+"Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot
+tell. Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel
+certain upon. One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know
+everything beforehand, for he said so himself. It is infinitely more
+valuable to us, because more beautiful and godlike in him, that he
+should trust his Father than that he should foresee everything. At all
+events he knew that his Father did not want him to go to his friends
+yet. So he sent them a message to the effect that there was a particular
+reason for this sickness--that the end of it was not the death of
+Lazarus, but the glory of God. This, I think, he told them by the same
+messenger they sent to him; and then, instead of going to them, he
+remained where he was.
+
+"But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think
+of being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory
+of God! of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the
+fear, the broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God?
+What kind of a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely
+good, that the things that look least like it are only the means of
+clearing our eyes to let us see how good he is. For he is so good that
+he is not satisfied with _being_ good. He loves his children, so that
+except he can make them good like himself, make them blessed by seeing
+how good he is, and desiring the same goodness in themselves, he is not
+satisfied. He is not like a fine proud benefactor, who is content with
+doing that which will satisfy his sense of his own glory, but like a
+mother who puts her arm round her child, and whose heart is sore
+till she can make her child see the love which is her glory. The
+glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the human
+race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is love.
+Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that glory!
+
+"The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
+seem typical of all the perplexities of God's dealings. The old painters
+and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand
+a cup of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted
+Faith! she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she
+is not repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for
+the type of the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not
+understood. The wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the
+supreme Fate put that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good
+too,--harmless, at least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine.
+But let us read the verses.
+
+"'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard
+therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place
+where he was.'
+
+"Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But
+remember what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely
+more for the final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life
+he could have, would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere
+presence of the Son of God. I say _mere_ presence, for, compared with
+the glory of God, the very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is
+nothing. He abode where he was that the glory of God, the final cure of
+humanity, the love that triumphs over death, might shine out and redeem
+the hearts of men, so that death could not touch them.
+
+"After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples,
+'Let us go back to Jud�a.' They expostulated, because of the danger,
+saying, 'Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou
+thither again?' The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I
+can thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear
+on the same region of life--the will of God. I think what he means by
+walking in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole,
+the all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means
+that now he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not
+see that the Father wanted him to go back to Jud�a, and yet went, that
+would be to go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve
+hours in the day--one time to act--a time of light and the clear call of
+duty; there is a night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must
+be content to rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he
+must have intended; but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough
+to be sure that I am right. I do think, further, that it points at a
+clearer condition of human vision and conviction than I am good enough
+to understand; though I hope one day to rise into this upper stratum of
+light.
+
+"Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know.
+It looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had
+from the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he
+was going to wake him. You would think they might have understood
+this. The idea of going so many miles to wake a man might have surely
+suggested death. But the disciples were sorely perplexed with many
+of his words. Sometimes they looked far away for the meaning when the
+meaning lay in their very hearts; sometimes they looked into their hands
+for it when it was lost in the grandeur of the ages. But he meant them
+to see into all that he said by and by, although they could not see into
+it now. When they understood him better, then they would understand what
+he said better. And to understand him better they must be more like
+him; and to make them more like him he must go away and give them his
+spirit--awful mystery which no man but himself can understand.
+
+"Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
+thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
+Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
+other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
+weary two days' journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
+sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
+say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures
+is simply a lie.
+
+"They set out to go back to Jud�a. Here we have a glimpse of the faith
+of Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very
+fact that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone
+hard upon doubters, I always doubt the _quality_ of his faith. It is of
+little use to have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks
+like the painter of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing
+chiefly consisted in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what
+fine sort a faith must be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in
+indifference to the truth and the mere desire to get out of hell! That
+is not a grand belief in the Son of God, the radiation of the Father.
+Thomas's want of faith was shown in the grumbling, self-pitying way in
+which he said, 'Let us also go that we may die with him.' His Master had
+said that he was going to wake him. Thomas said, 'that we may die with
+him.' You may say, 'He did not understand him.' True, it may be, but his
+unbelief was the cause of his not understanding him. I suppose Thomas
+meant this as a reproach to Jesus for putting them all in danger by
+going back to Jud�a; if not, it was only a poor piece of sentimentality.
+So much for Thomas's unbelief. But he had good and true faith
+notwithstanding; for _he went with his Master_.
+
+"By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
+dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
+was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him.
+It might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
+behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
+their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the
+man dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we
+have no inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death
+and grief bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as
+in the dead.
+
+"When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith
+by almost attributing her brother's death to Jesus' absence. But even
+in the moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new
+budding of faith, began in her soul. She thought--'What if, after all,
+he were to bring him to life again!' O, trusting heart, how thou leavest
+the dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect
+is reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith
+beholds it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith,
+granting her half-born prayer, says, 'Thy brother shall rise again;' not
+meaning the general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all
+but the Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but
+meaning, 'Be it unto thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.' For
+there is no steering for a fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these
+words are too good for Martha to take them as he meant them. Her faith
+is not quite equal to the belief that he actually will do it. The thing
+she could hope for afar off she could hardly believe when it came to her
+very door. 'O, yes,' she said, her mood falling again to the level of
+the commonplace, 'of course, at the last day.' Then the Lord turns away
+her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith to himself, the Life, saying,
+'I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he
+were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me,
+shall never die. Believest thou this?' Martha, without understanding
+what he said more than in a very poor part, answered in words which
+preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked, and a
+thousandfold more than she could yet believe: 'Yea, Lord; I believe that
+thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.'
+
+"I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth
+of Jesus' words 'shall never die;' but I am pretty sure that when Martha
+came to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had
+meant when she used the ghastly word _death_, and said with her first
+new breath, 'Verily, Lord, I am not dead.'
+
+"But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
+upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the
+Lord would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she
+went to find Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother,
+straightway will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The
+family feeling blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal.
+Martha wants Mary to go to Jesus too.
+
+"Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she
+went to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to
+him, the woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but
+the same words to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and
+troubled sister had uttered a few minutes before. How often during those
+four days had not the self-same words passed between them! 'Ah, if he
+had been here, our brother had not died!' She said so to himself now,
+and wept, and her friends who had followed her wept likewise. A moment
+more, and the Master groaned; yet a moment, and he too wept. 'Sorrow is
+catching;' but this was not the mere infection of sorrow. It went deeper
+than mere sympathy; for he groaned in his spirit and was troubled. What
+made him weep? It was when he saw them weeping that he wept. But why
+should he weep, when he knew how soon their weeping would be turned into
+rejoicing? It was not for their weeping, so soon to be over, that he
+wept, but for the human heart everywhere swollen with tears, yea, with
+griefs that can find no such relief as tears; for these, and for all his
+brothers and sisters tormented with pain for lack of faith in his Father
+in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw the blessed well-being of Lazarus on the
+one side, and on the other the streaming eyes from whose sight he had
+vanished. The veil between was so thin! yet the sight of those eyes
+could not pierce it: their hearts must go on weeping--without cause, for
+his Father was so good. I think it was the helplessness he felt in the
+impossibility of at once sweeping away the phantasm death from their
+imagination that drew the tears from the eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was
+not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for these his friends--save as they
+represented the humanity which he would help, but could not help even as
+he was about to help them.
+
+"The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little
+thought it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they
+despised, that his tears were now flowing--that the love which pressed
+the fountains of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam
+on through the ages.
+
+"Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters,
+saying, 'Could he not have kept the man from dying?' But it was such
+a poor thing, after all, that they thought he might have done. They
+regarded merely this unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay
+Lazarus was not much older than Jesus. They did not think that, after
+all, Lazarus must die some time; that the beloved could be saved, at
+best, only for a little while. Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for
+he again groaned in himself.
+
+"Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was
+a hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose
+the bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they
+are in many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round
+and round with linen.
+
+"When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, 'Take away
+the stone.' The nature of Martha's reply--the realism of it, as they
+would say now-a-days--would seem to indicate that her dawning faith had
+sunk again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of
+death, her faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he
+saw around him the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and
+helpless. Jesus answered--O, what an answer!--To meet the corruption
+and the stink which filled her poor human fancy, 'the glory of God' came
+from his lips: human fear; horror speaking from the lips of a woman in
+the very jaws of the devouring death; and the 'said I not unto thee?'
+from the mouth of him who was so soon to pass worn and bloodless through
+such a door! 'He stinketh,' said Martha. 'The glory of God,' said Jesus.
+'Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest
+see the glory of God?'
+
+"Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his
+Father aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely
+while he groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted
+him, and given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will
+be true to the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father;
+therefore he tells why he said the word of thanks aloud--a thing not
+usual with him, for his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it
+for the people, he would say that it was for the people.
+
+"The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him--a
+far grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave;
+for he is the life of men.
+
+"'Lazarus, come forth!"
+
+"And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
+linen-bound limbs. 'Ha, ha! brother, sister!' cries the human heart. The
+Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
+grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the
+womb--new-born, and in him all the human race new-born from the grave!
+'Loose him and let him go,' and the work is done. The sorrow is over,
+and the joy is come. Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too
+will go with you, the Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready,
+Martha! Prepare the food for him who comes hungry from the grave,
+for him who has called him thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a
+household will yours be! What wondrous speech will pass between the dead
+come to life and the living come to die!
+
+"But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
+Martha's cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale
+eyes of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes,
+he will come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus--yea,
+come for the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the
+Lord: he knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the
+words he spoke, 'He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die'?
+Perhaps she does, and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns
+the smile of her Lord.
+
+"This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth.
+What is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon
+to believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which
+lies buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon
+to believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What
+is it to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?--Is it nothing to know that
+our Brother is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the
+first-fruits? If he tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our
+vanished love to-day, or to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to
+come, shall we not mingle the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow
+of present loss, and walk diligently waiting? That he called forth
+Lazarus showed that he was in his keeping, that he is Lord of the
+living, and that all live to him, that he has a hold of them, and can
+draw them forth when he will. If this is not true, then the raising
+of Lazarus is false; I do not mean merely false in fact, but false in
+meaning. If we believe in him, then in his name, both for ourselves and
+for our friends, we must deny death and believe in life. Lord Christ,
+fill our hearts with thy Life!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CHANGED PLANS.
+
+
+
+
+
+In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once
+more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be
+so much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful.
+As they carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the
+ground. Turner yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He
+was satisfied, however, that she could have stood upright for a moment
+at least. He would not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her
+down.
+
+The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious
+the nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her
+smile, though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much
+of its light. I noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window
+constantly so arranged as to shut out the sea. I said something to her
+about it once. Her reply was:
+
+"Papa, I can't bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make
+you understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down;
+it seemed to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me
+every morning when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith,
+but I can't help it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had
+failed me, that I would rather not see it."
+
+I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that
+the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had
+been driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed
+to venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon
+nature. I could not help thinking that the good of our visit to
+Kilkhaven had come, and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet
+escape, was following. I left her, and sought Turner.
+
+"It strikes me, Turner," I said, "that the sooner we get out of this the
+better for Connie."
+
+"I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the
+place would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now,
+think what it will be in the many winter nights at hand."
+
+"Do you think it would be safe to move her?"
+
+"Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better
+than when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and
+see how she will take it."
+
+"Well, I sha'n't like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all
+go, except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don't know how her
+mother would get on without her."
+
+"I don't see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad
+to come as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr.
+Shepherd."
+
+It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it
+was a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no
+such reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her
+to avoid the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner,
+and went back to Connie's room.
+
+The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was
+sitting so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in
+the matter without any preamble.
+
+"Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?" I asked.
+
+Her countenance flashed into light.
+
+"O, dear papa, do let us go," she said; "that would be delightful."
+
+"Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger
+for the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came
+down."
+
+"No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then."
+
+The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home
+again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand
+to the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea,
+and did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find
+Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie's sake, and
+said that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a
+certain troubled look above her eyes, however.
+
+"You are thinking of Wynnie," I said.
+
+"Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest."
+
+"True. But it is one of the world's recognised necessities."
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"Besides, you don't suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter.
+They must part some time."
+
+"Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon."
+
+But here my wife was mistaken.
+
+I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter
+when Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him
+to show him in.
+
+"I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places
+with me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie
+had better go home."
+
+"You will all go, then, I presume?" returned Percivale.
+
+"Yes, yes; of course."
+
+"Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to
+tell you that I must leave to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! Going to London?"
+
+"Yes. I don't know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made
+my summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it
+would otherwise have been."
+
+"We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all
+glad to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale."
+
+He made no answer.
+
+"We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all
+probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some
+of your pictures then?"
+
+His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere
+pleasure. There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at
+once:
+
+"I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care
+for them."
+
+Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it
+would; but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and
+countenance before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from
+a visit.
+
+He began to search for a card.
+
+"O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you
+will dine with us to-day, of course?" I said.
+
+"I shall have much pleasure," he answered; and took his leave.
+
+I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.
+
+I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that
+walk memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly
+by virtue of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere
+outside things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not
+so readily pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward
+circumstance returns; for a man's life is where the kingdom of heaven
+is--within him. There are people who, if you ask the story of their
+lives, have nothing to tell you but the course of the outward events
+that have constituted, as it were, the clothes of their history. But I
+know, at the same time, that some of the most important crises in my
+own history (by which word _history_ I mean my growth towards the right
+conditions of existence) have been beyond the grasp and interpretation
+of my intellect. They have passed, as it were, without my consciousness
+being awake enough to lay hold of their phenomena. The wind had been
+blowing; I had heard the sound of it, but knew not whence it came
+nor whither it went; only, when it was gone, I found myself more
+responsible, more eager than before.
+
+I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change
+hanging over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and
+that change which so many would escape if they could, but which will let
+no man pass, had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon
+of the future. Death looks so far away to the young, that while they
+acknowledge it unavoidable, the path stretches on in such vanishing
+perspective before them, that they see no necessity for thinking about
+the end of it yet; and far would I be from saying they ought to think
+of it. Life is the true object of a man's care: there is no occasion to
+make himself think about death. But when the vision of the inevitable
+draws nigh, when it appears plainly on the horizon, though but as a
+cloud the size of a man's hand, then it is equally foolish to meet it
+by refusing to meet it, to answer the questions that will arise by
+declining to think about them. Indeed, it is a question of life then,
+and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of our life, and, in the
+strength of that, to look the threatening death in the face. But to my
+walk that morning.
+
+I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
+stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape
+of a monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and
+looked out over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as
+if all the sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the
+fogs of the coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when
+first from these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and
+colour.
+
+"What," I said to myself at length, "has she done since then? Where is
+her work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
+destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
+exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
+our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
+generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before
+us like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work."
+
+Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a
+mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and
+that I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing
+as a state of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual
+dreaming in sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself
+like a child tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till,
+all at once, "a little pipling wind" blew on my cheek. The morning was
+very still: what roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that
+little wind roused I will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek,
+something within me began to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory
+of a certain glorious sunset of red and green and gold and blue, which
+I had beheld from these same heights, dawned within me. I knew that the
+glory of my youth had not departed, that the very power of recalling
+with delight that which I had once felt in seeing, was proof enough of
+that; I knew that I could believe in God all the night long, even if the
+night were long. And the next moment I thought how I had been reviling
+in my fancy God's servant, the sea. To how many vessels had she not
+opened a bounteous highway through the waters, with labour, and food,
+and help, and ministration, glad breezes and swelling sails, healthful
+struggle, cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and friendly death! Because
+she had been commissioned to carry this one or that one, this hundred or
+that thousand of his own creatures from one world to another, was I to
+revile the servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was blameless in
+Connie to feel the late trouble so deeply that she could not be glad:
+she had not had the experience of life, yea, of God, that I had had;
+she must be helped from without. But for me, it was shameful that I, who
+knew the heart of my Master, to whom at least he had so often shown
+his truth, should ever be doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now
+helped from within. The glory of existence as the child of the Infinite
+had again dawned upon me. The first hour of the evening of my life had
+indeed arrived; the shadows had begun to grow long--so long that I had
+begun to mark their length; this last little portion of my history had
+vanished, leaving its few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life;
+and the final evening must come, when all my life would lie behind me,
+and all the memory of it return, with its mornings of gold and red,
+with its evenings of purple and green; with its dashes of storm, and its
+foggy glooms; with its white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions,
+its creeping envies in brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all
+the accusations of my conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he
+was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins. Then
+I thought what a grand gift it would be to give his people the power
+hereafter to fight the consequences of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust
+the Father, who loved me with a perfect love, to lead the soul he had
+made, had compelled to be, through the gates of the death-birth, into
+the light of life beyond. I would cast on him the care, humbly challenge
+him with the responsibility he had himself undertaken, praying only for
+perfect confidence in him, absolute submission to his will.
+
+I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought
+of seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave
+those I had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught
+them something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be
+no end to our relation to each other--it could not be broken, for it was
+_in the Lord_, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not,
+therefore, sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.
+
+I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them
+often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even
+this parting said that I must "sit loose to the world"--an old Puritan
+phrase, I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its
+best things, and must let all the rest go; that those things I
+called mine--earth, sky, and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of
+friends--had all to leave me, belong to others, and help to educate
+them. I should not need them. I should have my people, my souls, my
+beloved faces tenfold more, and could well afford to part with these.
+Why should I mind this chain passing to my eldest boy, when it was only
+his mother's hair, and I should have his mother still?
+
+So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded
+passively to their flow.
+
+I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room.
+Her mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody
+party. They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before
+dinner was over we were all chatting together merrily.
+
+"How is Connie?" I asked Ethelwyn.
+
+"Wonderfully better already," she answered.
+
+"I think everybody seems better," I said. "The very idea of home seems
+reviving to us all."
+
+Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than
+she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at
+Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged
+instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle
+in his eye.
+
+"Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?" he asked.
+
+"No," I answered. "She does not want much visiting now; she is going
+about her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not
+like the same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one,
+though I do not choose to ask him any questions about his wife."
+
+I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after
+this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.
+Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by
+the coach--early. Turner went with him.
+
+Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the
+prospect of meeting him again in London kept her up.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE STUDIO.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
+ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had
+wanted to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber,
+now wanted to take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great
+oystershells, and sea-weed.
+
+Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An
+early day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of
+service to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he
+came, I had gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my
+reasons for leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a
+little about my successor, that he might not appear among them quite as
+a stranger. He was much gratified with their reception of him, and had
+no fear of not finding himself quite at home with them. I promised, if
+I could comfortably manage it, to pay them a short visit the following
+summer, and as the weather was now getting quite cold, hastened our
+preparations for departure.
+
+I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but
+he had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience
+would permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us,
+and we had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel
+much anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong
+enough as we went along, to go right through to London, making a few
+days there the only break in the transit.
+
+It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now
+bear the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had
+we occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
+pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and
+before we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie
+looked a little dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the
+change in the weather.
+
+"Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear," I said.
+
+"No, papa," she answered; "but we are going home, you know."
+
+_Going home._ It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking
+before, always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky
+of hope. I lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog
+this evening in London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to
+go through on the way _home._ A. shadow like this would fall upon me;
+the world would grow dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was
+the last of the way home.
+
+Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted.
+I knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness,
+more or less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as
+the thought of water to the thirsty _soul_, for it is the soul far more
+than the body that thirsts even for the material water, such is the
+thought of home to the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul
+pines for sleep, and every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so
+my heart and soul had often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked
+myself, where or what that home was? It could consist in no change of
+place or of circumstance; no mere absence of care; no accumulation of
+repose; no blessed communion even with those whom my soul loved; in the
+midst of it all I should be longing for a homelier home--one into which
+I might enter with a sense of infinitely more absolute peace, than a
+conscious child could know in the arms, upon the bosom of his mother.
+In the closest contact of human soul with human soul, when all the
+atmosphere of thought was rosy with love, again and yet again on the far
+horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest shoot for a moment through
+the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that not yet had she reached
+her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and saw those of my wife
+and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching me for saying in
+my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then I said in my
+heart, "Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for us all.
+When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall we be
+gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries of
+pictures--wells of water."
+
+Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his
+love, his judgment, are man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his
+will, to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that
+he is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley
+of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all
+changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of
+God, so this greatest of all outward changes--for it is but an outward
+change--will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh
+possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father
+of us. It is the father, the mother, that make for the child his home.
+Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the parents of a family
+themselves, when they remember that their fathers and mothers have
+vanished.
+
+At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.
+
+"Won't it be delightful, wife," I began, "to see our fathers and mothers
+such a long way back in heaven?"
+
+But Ethelwyn's face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
+dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do
+not know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder
+how anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How
+dreadful not to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is
+not good, every mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to
+believe in God as it can be made. But he is our one good Father,
+and does not leave us, even should our fathers and mothers have thus
+forsaken us, and left him without a witness.
+
+Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew
+that London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station,
+where a carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.
+
+Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to
+the fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she
+had slept for a good many nights before.
+
+After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,
+
+"I am going to see Mr. Percivale's studio, my dear: have you any
+objection to going with me?"
+
+"No, papa," she answered, blushing. "I have never seen an artist's
+studio in my life."
+
+"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take
+a cab, and it won't matter."
+
+She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver
+directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped
+at the door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking
+street, in which no man could possibly identify his own door except by
+the number. I knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the
+former probably the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare
+assent to my question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her
+den with the words "second-floor," and left us to find our own way up
+the two flights of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty.
+We knocked at the door of the front room. A well-known voice cried,
+"Come in," and we entered.
+
+Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb,
+advanced to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which
+I attributed solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in
+receiving us in such a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round
+the room. Any romantic notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the
+marvels of a studio, must have paled considerably at the first glance
+around Percivale's room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of
+self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet
+save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece
+of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of
+the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair
+chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and
+papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently
+for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished
+oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room.
+With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one chair for Wynnie and
+another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
+
+"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is
+all I have got."
+
+"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he
+possesses," I ventured to say.
+
+"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should
+not."
+
+"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I
+returned. "If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the
+most blessed."
+
+"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think
+it does."
+
+"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
+themselves."
+
+"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked
+Wynnie.
+
+"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on
+the easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."
+
+"Why?" asked Wynnie.
+
+"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so
+unfinished that none but a painter could do it justice."
+
+"But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look
+at?"
+
+"I very much want people to look at them."
+
+"Why not us, then?" said Wynnie.
+
+"Because you do not need to be pained."
+
+"Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?" I said.
+
+"Good is done by pain--is it not?" he asked.
+
+"Undoubtedly. But whether _we_ are wise enough to know when and where
+and how much, is the question."
+
+"Of course I do not make the pain my object."
+
+"If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the
+matter greatly," I said. "But still I am not sure that anything in which
+the pain predominates can be useful in the best way."
+
+"Perhaps not," he returned.--"Will you look at the daub?"
+
+"With much pleasure," I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
+Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture
+meant. Nor had I long to look before I understood it--in a measure at
+least.
+
+It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The
+plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths
+in one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man
+dying. A woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face,
+though she held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the
+gloom you could just see the struggles of two undertaker's men to get
+the coffin past the turn of the landing towards the door. Through the
+window there was one peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight
+fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the
+window-sill outside.
+
+"I do not wonder you did not like to show it," I said. "How can you bear
+to paint such a dreadful picture?"
+
+"It is a true one. It only represents a fact."
+
+"All facts have not a right to be represented."
+
+"Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
+sight?"
+
+"No; nor yet by gloating upon them."
+
+"You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to
+paint such pictures--as far as the subject goes," he said with some
+discomposure.
+
+"Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no
+one could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or
+grow callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you
+propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had
+come into my possession, I would--"
+
+"Put it in the fire," suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
+
+"No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain
+before it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was
+in danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and
+forgetting that they need the Saviour."
+
+"I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end."
+
+"Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
+such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
+one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn't buy it. I would
+rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I
+am certain you cannot do people good by showing them _only_ the painful.
+Make it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it--something
+to show that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering
+people will turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it,
+without hinting at some door of escape, only urges them to forget it
+all. Why should they be pained if it can do no good?"
+
+"For the sake of sympathy, I should say," answered Percivale.
+
+"They would rejoin, 'It is only a picture. Come along.' No; give people
+hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything."
+
+"I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You
+see there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet
+in the window."
+
+He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+
+"I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
+you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
+make the other look more terrible."
+
+"Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have
+failed otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the
+picture, I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read
+your own meaning into it."
+
+Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw
+that she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or
+the freedom with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes
+falling on a little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope
+of finding something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment,
+however, that it was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler
+and more poetic mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her
+hand. A torrent of summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a
+lake of glory upon the floor. I turned away.
+
+"You like that better, don't you, papa?" said Wynnie tremulously.
+
+"It is beautiful, certainly," I answered. "And if it were only one, I
+should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the
+same thing more weakly embodied."
+
+I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in
+Percivale, for his own sake as well as for my daughter's, and I had
+expected better things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale," I said.
+
+"I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am
+a clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the
+praise which I have little doubt your art at least deserves."
+
+"I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may
+pain me."
+
+"But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you
+have at hand to show me."
+
+"Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see."
+
+He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were
+leaning against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these
+he chose one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that
+stood beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will
+describe it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which
+broke from me after I had regarded it for a time.
+
+A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few
+thin pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore
+a dying knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm,
+and another led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture.
+The head and countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many
+a battle, and ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained,
+for one might read victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party
+had just reached the edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the
+valley beneath, with the last of the harvest just being reaped, while
+the shocks stood all about in the fields, under the place of the sunset.
+The sun had been down for some little time. There was no gold left in
+the sky, only a little dull saffron, but plenty of that lovely liquid
+green of the autumn sky, divided with a few streaks of pale rose. The
+depth of the sky overhead, which you could not see for the arrangement
+of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a piece of water that lay in
+the centre of the valley.
+
+"My dear fellow," I cried, "why did you not show me this first, and save
+me from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart;
+it is glorious. Look here, Wynnie," I went on; "you see it is evening;
+the sun's work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name
+behind him in a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight's work is done
+too; his day has set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the
+coming peace. They are bearing him home to his couch and his grave.
+Look at their faces in the dusky light. They are all mourning for
+and honouring the life that is ebbing away. But he is gathered to his
+fathers like a shock of corn fully ripe; and so the harvest stands
+golden in the valley beneath. The picture would not be complete,
+however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven overhead, the symbol
+of that heaven whither he who has done his work is bound. What a lovely
+idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven embodying itself
+in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe how that dusky
+hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines, with that
+sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward towards
+that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a picture
+and a parable."
+
+[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted
+by Arthur Hughes.]
+
+I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth
+by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale's work
+appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.
+
+"I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it," she said.
+
+"Like it!" I returned; "I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
+express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it,
+I should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most
+public wall I have."
+
+"Then," said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, "you
+confess--don't you, papa?--that you were _too_ hard on Mr. Percivale at
+first?"
+
+"Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given
+me to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not
+bound to disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can
+be no sense of duty."
+
+"But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has _some_ sense of duty," said Wynnie
+in an almost angry tone.
+
+"Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and
+therefore, again, that he has no right to publish such a picture."
+
+At the word _publish_ Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
+defence:
+
+"But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures
+only. Look at the other."
+
+"Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in
+the same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of
+these might go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of
+Avalon; but even then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the
+poem, whatever position it stood in, that had _nothing_--positively
+nothing--of the aurora in it."
+
+Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by
+a remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from
+the pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to
+judge, will continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is
+only a little song, "I stood on a tower in the wet." I have found few
+men who, whether from the influence of those prints which are always on
+the outlook for something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not
+laugh at the poem. I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am
+not quite sure of the transposition of words in the last two lines. But
+I do not _approve_ of the poem, just because there is no hope in it.
+It lacks that touch or hint of _red_ which is as essential, I think, to
+every poem as to every picture--the life-blood--the one pure colour. In
+his hopeful moods, let a man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud
+the words of gladness--or of grief, I care not which--to his fellows;
+in his hours of hopelessness, let him utter his thoughts only to his
+inarticulate violin, or in the evanescent sounds of any his other
+stringed instrument; let him commune with his own heart on his bed, and
+be still; let him speak to God face to face if he may--only he cannot
+do that and continue hopeless; but let him not sing aloud in such a mood
+into the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot do them much good thereby.
+If it were a fact that there is no hope, it would not be a _truth_. No
+doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known; but who will dare be
+confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let the hopeless
+moods, at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.
+
+"He could refuse to let the one go without the other," said Wynnie.
+
+"Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do
+at the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part
+them.--If you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again
+to-morrow."
+
+Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at
+any more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should
+dine with us in the evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not detain my readers with the record of the few days we spent in
+London. In writing the account of it, as in the experience of the time
+itself, I feel that I am near home, and grow the more anxious to reach
+it. Ah! I am growing a little anxious after another home, too; for the
+house of my tabernacle is falling to ruins about me. What a word _home_
+is! To think that God has made the world so that you have only to be
+born in a certain place, and live long enough in it to get at the
+secret of it, and henceforth that place is to you a _home_ with all the
+wonderful meaning in the word. Thus the whole earth is a home to the
+race; for every spot of it shares in the feeling: some one of the family
+loves it as _his_ home. How rich the earth seems when we so regard
+it--crowded with the loves of home! Yet I am now getting ready to _go
+home_--to leave this world of homes and go home. When I reach that home,
+shall I even then seek yet to go home? Even then, I believe, I shall
+seek a yet warmer, deeper, truer home in the deeper knowledge of God--in
+the truer love of my fellow-man. Eternity will be, my heart and my faith
+tell me, a travelling homeward, but in jubilation and confidence and the
+vision of the beloved.
+
+When we had laid Connie once more in her own room, at least the room
+which since her illness had come to be called hers, I went up to my
+study. The familiar faces of my books welcomed me. I threw myself in my
+reading-chair, and gazed around me with pleasure. I felt it so homely
+here. All my old friends--whom somehow I hoped to see some day--present
+there in the spirit ready to talk with me any moment when I was in the
+mood, making no claim upon my attention when I was not! I felt as if I
+should like, when the hour should come, to die in that chair, and pass
+into the society of the witnesses in the presence of the tokens they had
+left behind them.
+
+I heard shouts on the stair, and in rushed the two boys.
+
+"Papa, papa!" they were crying together.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"We've found the big chest just where we left it."
+
+"Well, did you expect it would have taken itself off?"
+
+"But there's everything in it just as we left it."
+
+"Were you afraid, then, that the moment you left it it would turn itself
+upside down, and empty itself of all its contents on the floor?"
+
+They laughed, but apparently with no very keen appreciation of the
+attempt at a joke.
+
+"Well, papa, I did not think anything about it; but--but--but--there
+everything is as we left it."
+
+With this triumphant answer they turned and hurried, a little abashed,
+out of the room; but not many moments elapsed before the sounds that
+arose from them were sufficiently reassuring as to the state of their
+spirits. When they were gone, I forgot my books in the attempt to
+penetrate and understand the condition of my boys' thoughts; and I soon
+came to see that they were right and I was wrong. It was the movement
+of that undeveloped something in us which makes it possible for us in
+everything to give thanks. It was the wonder of the discovery of the
+existence of law. There was nothing that they could understand, _�
+priori_, to necessitate the remaining of the things where they had left
+them. No doubt there was a reason in the nature of God, why all things
+should hold together, whence springs the law of gravitation, as we call
+it; but as far as the boys could understand of this, all things might as
+well have been arranged for flying asunder, so that no one could expect
+to find anything where he had left it. I began to see yet further into
+the truth that in everything we must give thanks, and whatever is not of
+faith is sin. Even the laws of nature reveal the character of God,
+not merely as regards their ends, but as regards their kind, being of
+necessity fashioned after ideal facts of his own being and will.
+
+I rose and went down to see if everybody was getting settled, and how
+the place looked. I found Ethel already going about the house as if
+she had never left it, and as if we all had just returned from a long
+absence and she had to show us home-hospitality. Wynnie had vanished;
+but I found her by and by in the favourite haunt of her mother before
+her marriage--beside the little pond called the Bishop's Basin, of which
+I do not think I have ever told my readers the legend. But why should I
+mention it, for I cannot tell it now? The frost lay thick in the hollow
+when I went down there to find her; the branches, lately clothed
+with leaves, stood bare and icy around her. Ethelwyn and I had almost
+forgotten that there was anything out of the common in connection with
+the house. The horror of this mysterious spot had laid hold upon Wynnie.
+I resolved that that night I would, in her mother's presence, tell
+her all the legend of the place, and the whole story of how I won her
+mother. I did so; and I think it made her trust us more. But now I left
+her there, and went to Connie. She lay in her bed; for her mother had
+got her thither at once, a perfect picture of blessed comfort. There was
+no occasion to be uneasy about her. I was so pleased to be at home
+again with such good hopes, that I could not rest, but went wandering
+everywhere--into places even which I had not entered for ten years at
+least, and found fresh interest in everything; for this was home, and
+here I was.
+
+Now I fancy my readers, looking forward to the end, and seeing what
+a small amount of print is left, blaming me; some, that I have roused
+curiosity without satisfying it; others, that I have kept them so long
+over a dull book and a lame conclusion. But out of a life one cannot
+always cut complete portions, and serve them up in nice shapes. I am
+well aware that I have not told them the _fate_, as some of them would
+call it, of either of my daughters. This I cannot develop now, even as
+far as it is known to me; but, if it is any satisfaction to them to
+know this much--and it will be all that some of them mean by _fate_, I
+fear--I may as well tell them now that Wynnie has been Mrs. Percivale
+for many years, with a history well worth recounting; and that Connie
+has had a quiet, happy life for nearly as long, as Mrs. Turner. She has
+never got strong, but has very tolerable health. Her husband watches her
+with the utmost care and devotion. My Ethelwyn is still with me. Harry
+is gone home. Charlie is a barrister of the Middle Temple. And Dora--I
+must not forget Dora--well, I will say nothing about her _fate_, for
+good reasons--it is not quite determined yet. Meantime she puts up with
+the society of her old father and mother, and is something else than
+unhappy, I fully believe.
+
+"And Connie's baby?" asks some one out of ten thousand readers. I have
+no time to tell you about her now; but as you know her so little, it
+cannot be such a trial to remain, for a time at least, unenlightened
+with regard to her _fate._
+
+The only other part of my history which could contain anything like
+incident enough to make it interesting in print, is a period I spent in
+London some few years after the time of which I have now been writing.
+But I am getting too old to regard the commencement of another history
+with composure. The labour of thinking into sequences, even the bodily
+labour of writing, grows more and more severe. I fancy I can think
+correctly still; but the effort necessary to express myself with
+corresponding correctness becomes, in prospect, at least, sometimes
+almost appalling. I must therefore take leave of my patient reader--for
+surely every one who has followed me through all that I have here
+written, well deserves the epithet--as if the probability that I shall
+write no more were a certainty, bidding him farewell with one word:
+_"Friend, hope thou in God,"_ and for a parting gift offering him a
+new, and, I think, a true rendering of the first verse of the eleventh
+chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews:
+
+"Now faith is the essence of hopes, the trying of things unseen."
+
+Good-bye.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Seaboard Parish, by George Macdonald, Ll.d.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Seaboard Parish, Complete
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8562]
+This file was first posted on July 23, 2003
+[Last updated: July 16, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE SEABOARD PARISH
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By George MacDonald, LL.D.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>VOLUME I.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. HOMILETIC. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. CONSTANCE&rsquo;S BIRTHDAY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. THE SICK CHAMBER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. A SUNDAY EVENING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. MY DREAM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. THE NEW BABY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. THEODORA&rsquo;S DOOM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. A SPRING CHAPTER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. CONNIE&rsquo;S DREAM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. THE JOURNEY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. THE OLD CHURCH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. CONNIE&rsquo;S WATCH-TOWER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD
+      PARISH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> <b>VOLUME II.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER II. NICEBOOTS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER III. THE BLACKSMITH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER IV. THE LIFE-BOAT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER V. MR. PERCIVALE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER VI. THE SHADOW OP DEATH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER VII. AT THE FARM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER VIII. THE KEEVE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER X. THE OLD CASTLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XIII. THE HARVEST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> <b>VOLUME III.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER III. A PASTORAL VISIT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER IV. THE ART OF NATURE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER V. THE SORE SPOT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER VI. THE GATHERING STORM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER VII. THE GATHERED STORM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER VIII. THE SHIPWRECK. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER IX. THE FUNERAL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER X. THE SERMON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER XI. CHANGED PLANS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER XII. THE STUDIO. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER XIII. HOME AGAIN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      VOLUME I.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. HOMILETIC.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Dear Friends,&mdash;I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as
+      you know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I
+      say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had
+      not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not
+      have wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you
+      would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated
+      once again at my writing-table, to write for you&mdash;with a strange
+      feeling, however, that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful
+      acoustic contrivance, by means of which the words which I have a habit of
+      whispering over to myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes
+      of people whom I cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a
+      sense of your presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that you
+      have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually happens
+      in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a more puzzled
+      mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners
+      of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one, peeping out at me like a
+      rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me almost at the same instant the
+      tail-end of it, and vanishing with a contemptuous <i>thud</i> of its hind
+      feet on the ground. For I must have suitable regard to the desires of my
+      children. It is a fine thing to be able to give people what they want, if
+      at the same time you can give them what you want. To give people what they
+      want, would sometimes be to give them only dirt and poison. To give them
+      what you want, might be to set before them something of which they could
+      not eat a mouthful. What both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a
+      dish of good wholesome venison. Now I suppose my children around me are
+      neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy tale. So that
+      will not do. What they want is, I believe, something that I know about&mdash;that
+      has happened to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of thing I like
+      best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me something that
+      has happened to himself, especially if he will give me a peep into how his
+      heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the closed door, and
+      that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has something true
+      and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old people that
+      can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them; but that
+      only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to disentangle
+      confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at the time
+      appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light that was in
+      them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they are far enough
+      off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know
+      best what it is. How I should like to write a story for old people! The
+      young are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old
+      people come in for a share? A story without a young person in it at all!
+      Nobody under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy tale, could it? Or
+      a love story either? I am not so sure about that. The worst of it would
+      be, however, that hardly a young person would read it. Now, we old people
+      would not like that. We can read young people&rsquo;s books and enjoy them: they
+      would not try to read old men&rsquo;s books or old women&rsquo;s books; they would be
+      so sure of their being dry. My dear old brothers and sisters, we know
+      better, do we not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them;
+      only they cannot see the fun. We have strange tales, that we know to be
+      true, and which look more and more marvellous every time we turn them over
+      again; only somehow they do not belong to the ways of this year&mdash;I
+      was going to say <i>week</i>,&mdash;and so the young people generally do
+      not care to hear them. I have had one pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will
+      sit at his mother&rsquo;s feet, and listen for hours to what took place before
+      he was born. To him his mother&rsquo;s wedding-gown was as old as Eve&rsquo;s coat of
+      skins. But then he was young enough not yet to have had a chance of losing
+      the childhood common to the young and the old. Ah! I should like to write
+      for you, old men, old women, to help you to read the past, to help you to
+      look for the future. Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed;
+      for, however your souls may be at peace, however your quietness and
+      confidence may give you strength, in the decay of your earthly tabernacle,
+      in the shortening of its cords, in the weakening of its stakes, in the
+      rents through which you see the stars, you have yet your share in the cry
+      of the creation after the sonship. But the one thing I should keep saying
+      to you, my companions in old age, would be, &ldquo;Friends, let us not grow
+      old.&rdquo; Old age is but a mask; let us not call the mask the face. Is the
+      acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it from its hold&mdash;because
+      its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth? Then only is a man
+      growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the young. That is a sign
+      that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a dreadful kind of old
+      age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should always be growing
+      younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when we were nine or
+      ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to enjoy the game.
+      There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps whose duty it
+      would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for putting the
+      matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if we will not
+      accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying their
+      leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a measure from sociable relations
+      with our fellows, let it be as the wise creatures that creep aside and
+      wrap themselves up and lay themselves by that their wings may grow and put
+      on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a withdrawing is in
+      the name of youth. And while it is pleasant&mdash;no one knows how
+      pleasant except him who experiences it&mdash;to sit apart and see the
+      drama of life going on around him, while his feelings are calm and free,
+      his vision clear, and his judgment righteous, the old man must ever be
+      ready, should the sweep of action catch him in its skirts, to get on his
+      tottering old legs, and go with brave heart to do the work of a true man,
+      none the less true that his hands tremble, and that he would gladly return
+      to his chimney-corner. If he is never thus called out, let him examine
+      himself, lest he should be falling into the number of those that say, &ldquo;I
+      go, sir,&rdquo; and go not; who are content with thinking beautiful things in an
+      Atlantis, Oceana, Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of
+      their fingers to work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the
+      man who, using just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and
+      never has a thought of his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been talking&mdash;to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
+      grandchildren? I remember&mdash;to my companions in old age. It is time I
+      returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side of
+      the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one
+      word: We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never do
+      aright after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the men,
+      neither shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his people
+      because the young ones do not think just as the old ones choose. The Lord
+      has something fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to receive his
+      message. When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work
+      in this world is over. It might end more honourably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
+      about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
+      myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of which
+      I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite elderly, yet
+      active man&mdash;young still, in fact, to what I am now. But even then,
+      though my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder, and needed all
+      my stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces, and the trials of
+      them that are dear, will make even those that look for a better country
+      both for themselves and their friends, sad, though it will be with a
+      preponderance of the first meaning of the word <i>sad</i>, which was <i>settled</i>,
+      <i>thoughtful</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my study
+      because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover over
+      every foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the
+      pleasanter to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none the
+      worse, for anyone who prefers it to books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the history
+      of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend&rsquo;s parish, while
+      my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my curate, took the
+      entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will soon appear. I will
+      try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my story interesting,
+      although it will cost me suffering to recall some of the incidents I have
+      to narrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. CONSTANCE&rsquo;S BIRTHDAY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature, or
+      from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents Nature&rsquo;s
+      mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in his drama? I
+      know I have so often found Nature&rsquo;s mood in harmony with my own, even when
+      she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in looking back I have
+      wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some self-deception about it.
+      At all events, on the morning of my Constance&rsquo;s eighteenth birthday, a
+      lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of golden foliage about the
+      ways, and an air that seemed filled with the ether of an <i>aurum potabile</i>,
+      there came yet an occasional blast of wind, which, without being
+      absolutely cold, smelt of winter, and made one draw one&rsquo;s shoulders
+      together with the sense of an unfriendly presence. I do not think
+      Constance felt it at all, however, as she stood on the steps in her
+      riding-habit, waiting till the horses made their appearance. It had
+      somehow grown into a custom with us that each of the children, as his or
+      her birthday came round, should be king or queen for that day, and,
+      subject to the veto of father and mother, should have everything his or
+      her own way. Let me say for them, however, that in the matter of choosing
+      the dinner, which of course was included in the royal prerogative, I came
+      to see that it was almost invariably the favourite dishes of others of the
+      family that were chosen, and not those especially agreeable to the royal
+      palate. Members of families where children have not been taught from their
+      earliest years that the great privilege of possession is the right to
+      bestow, may regard this as an improbable assertion; but others will know
+      that it might well enough be true, even if I did not say that so it was.
+      But there was always the choice of some individual treat, which was
+      determined solely by the preference of the individual in authority.
+      Constance had chosen &ldquo;a long ride with papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration
+      of his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be
+      determined by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people&rsquo;s
+      children. However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that
+      Constance did look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young
+      day: we were early people&mdash;breakfast and prayers were over, and it
+      was nine o&rsquo;clock as she stood on the steps and I approached her from the
+      lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! isn&rsquo;t it jolly?&rdquo; she said merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very jolly indeed, my dear,&rdquo; I answered, delighted to hear the word from
+      the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word, and
+      when she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was like?
+      Ah! you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I will,
+      however, try to give you a general idea, just in order that you and I
+      should not be picturing to ourselves two very different persons while I
+      speak of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
+      observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion, and has
+      nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in complexion,
+      with her mother&rsquo;s blue eyes, and her mother&rsquo;s long dark wavy hair. She was
+      generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than any of the
+      others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she knew instinctively
+      when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her playfulness there
+      seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if she felt that the
+      present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance to the eternal
+      sunlight. And the appearance was not in the least a deceptive one. The
+      eternal was not far from her&mdash;none the farther that she enjoyed life
+      like a bird, that her laugh was merry, that her heart was careless, and
+      that her voice rang through the house&mdash;a sweet soprano voice&mdash;singing
+      snatches of songs (now a street tune she had caught from a London organ,
+      now an air from Handel or Mozart), or that she would sometimes tease her
+      elder sister about her solemn and anxious looks; for Wynnie, the eldest,
+      had to suffer for her grandmother&rsquo;s sins against her daughter, and came
+      into the world with a troubled little heart, that was soon compelled to
+      flee for refuge to the rock that was higher than she. Ah! my Constance!
+      But God was good to you and to us in you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where shall we go, Connie?&rdquo; I said, and the same moment the sound of the
+      horses&rsquo; hoofs reached us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long ride,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much for the pony?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear, no&mdash;not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want to
+      get something for Wynnie. Do let us go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, my dear,&rdquo; I said, and raised her to the saddle&mdash;if I may
+      say <i>raised</i>, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to
+      another than she sprung from the ground on her pony&rsquo;s back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders&rsquo; webs, as
+      we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards the
+      high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we turned
+      from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a gallop to
+      begin with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been used to the
+      saddle longer than she could remember. She was now riding a tall well-bred
+      pony, with plenty of life&mdash;rather too much, I sometimes thought, when
+      I was out with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I was with Constance.
+      Another field or two sufficiently quieted both animals&mdash;I did not
+      want to have all our time taken up with their frolics&mdash;and then we
+      began to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite an old grannie, papa,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old enough to think about what&rsquo;s coming next,&rdquo; I said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about the
+      morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that&rsquo;s in the pulpit,&rdquo; she
+      added, with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her
+      pretty hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know very well what I mean, you puss,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t say
+      one thing in the pulpit and another out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was at my horse&rsquo;s shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had
+      been of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended
+      me. She looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon
+      Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, thank you, papa!&rdquo; she said when I smiled. &ldquo;I thought I had been rude.
+      I didn&rsquo;t mean it, indeed I didn&rsquo;t. But I do wish you would make it a
+      little plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you would
+      hardly believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want made plainer, my child?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we&rsquo;re to think, and when we&rsquo;re not to think,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day,&rdquo; I
+      answered, &ldquo;if it cannot be done right except you think about it and lay
+      your plans for it, then that thought is to-day&rsquo;s business, not
+      to-morrow&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
+      themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?&rdquo; she asked
+      suddenly, again looking up in my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse&rsquo;s mane, so as to keep
+      her pony close up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like&mdash;not an atom more, mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn&rsquo;t explain things so much. I seem
+      to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try the text
+      afterwards by myself, I can&rsquo;t make anything of it, and I&rsquo;ve forgotten
+      every word you said about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
+      Bible,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they can,&rdquo; I rejoined. &ldquo;But last Sunday, for instance, I did not
+      expect anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except your
+      mamma and Thomas Weir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How funny! What part of it was that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! I&rsquo;m not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But
+      most likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to
+      you, in consequence, very commonplace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In consequence of what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In consequence of your thinking you understood it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa dear! you&rsquo;re getting worse and worse. It&rsquo;s not often I ask you
+      anything&mdash;and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to
+      bewilder my poor little brains in this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea
+      that you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If
+      you had never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of
+      remark, would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is
+      this the case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of
+      the heart. Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything, or
+      thanked God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant in one
+      of his worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be beyond
+      him. If you have never known what it is to have care of any kind upon you,
+      you cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to take no
+      thought for the morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
+      about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
+      perhaps I can help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
+      idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at work
+      every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that women
+      any more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do? What
+      have I been sent into the world for? I don&rsquo;t see it; and I feel very
+      useless and wrong sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
+      Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish. You
+      take much off your mother&rsquo;s hands too. And you do a good deal for the
+      poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you are
+      learning yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but that&rsquo;s not work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
+      you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not
+      that I have anything to complain of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life, when
+      there are so many to help everywhere in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed you,
+      than in doing it where he has placed you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do
+      at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You
+      won&rsquo;t think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And now
+      comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
+      referring:&mdash;What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
+      yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do, you must
+      do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for
+      what he may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to
+      do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next. And I do
+      not believe that those who follow this rule are ever left floundering on
+      the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find water enough to swim
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, dear papa. That&rsquo;s a little sermon all to myself, and I think I
+      shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let&rsquo;s have
+      a trot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is not
+      your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make yourself
+      as worth God&rsquo;s making as you possibly can. Now I am a little doubtful
+      whether you keep up your studies at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like dry things, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;How do the grammars and history-books come to be
+      written then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
+      than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection
+      in it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding
+      old father?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make them.
+      Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to care for
+      them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what you have to
+      learn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What must I do then?&rdquo; she asked with a sigh. &ldquo;Must I go all over my
+      French Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something you
+      don&rsquo;t like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you are
+      fond of?&rdquo; I continued, finding that she remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything in particular&mdash;that is, I don&rsquo;t know anything
+      in the way of school-work that I really liked. I don&rsquo;t mean that I didn&rsquo;t
+      try to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I liked&mdash;the
+      poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen count that
+      silly&mdash;don&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the
+      foundation of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing
+      God has given us&mdash;though perhaps you and I might not quite agree
+      about what poetry was poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God.
+      Now, what poetry do you like best?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Hemans&rsquo;s, I think, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, very well, to begin with. &lsquo;There is,&rsquo; as Mr. Carlyle said to a
+      friend of mine&mdash;&lsquo;There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.&rsquo; 
+      But it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be.
+      Most people never get beyond spoon-meat&mdash;in this world, at least, and
+      they expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand
+      myself, and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable
+      enough creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with
+      admiration of what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained at
+      the cost of expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs. Hemans.
+      She is simple enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that whatever
+      mental food you take should be just a little too strong for you. That
+      implies trouble, necessitates growth, and involves delight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
+      anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
+      about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two years,
+      and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account for my
+      knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on talking
+      a little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young people
+      only, I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the account of
+      what we said to each other; for it might help some of them to see that the
+      thing they like best should, circumstances and conscience permitting, be
+      made the centre from which they start to learn; that they should go on
+      enlarging their knowledge all round from that one point at which God
+      intended them to begin. But at length we fell into a silence, a very happy
+      one on my part; for I was more than delighted to find that this one too of
+      my children was following after the truth&mdash;wanting to do what was
+      right, namely, to obey the word of the Lord, whether openly spoken to all,
+      or to herself in the voice of her own conscience and the light of that
+      understanding which is the candle of the Lord. I had often said to myself
+      in past years, when I had found myself in the company of young ladies who
+      announced their opinions&mdash;probably of no deeper origin than the
+      prejudices of their nurses&mdash;as if these distinguished them from all
+      the world besides; who were profound upon passion and ignorant of grace;
+      who had not a notion whether a dress was beautiful, but only whether it
+      was of the newest cut&mdash;I had often said to myself: &ldquo;What shall I do
+      if my daughters come to talk and think like that&mdash;if thinking it can
+      be called?&rdquo; but being confident that instruction for which the mind is not
+      prepared only lies in a rotting heap, producing all kinds of mental evils
+      correspondent to the results of successive loads of food which the system
+      cannot assimilate, my hope had been to rouse wise questions in the minds
+      of my children, in place of overwhelming their digestions with what could
+      be of no instruction or edification without the foregoing appetite. Now my
+      Constance had begun to ask me questions, and it made me very happy. We had
+      thus come a long way nearer to each other; for however near the affection
+      of human animals may bring them, there are abysses between soul and soul&mdash;the
+      souls even of father and daughter&mdash;over which they must pass to meet.
+      And I do not believe that any two human beings alive know yet what it is
+      to love as love is in the glorious will of the Father of lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path&mdash;a
+      brown, soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses
+      scattering about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal
+      of underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place.
+      There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and
+      there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been
+      struck by lightning, and had stood till the frosts and rains had bared it
+      of its bark. Now it lay white as a skeleton by the side of the path, and
+      was, I think, the cause of what followed. All at once my daughter&rsquo;s pony
+      sprang to the other side of the road, shying sideways; unsettled her so, I
+      presume; then rearing and plunging, threw her from the saddle across one
+      of the logs of which I have spoken. I was by her side in a moment. To my
+      horror she lay motionless. Her eyes were closed, and when I took her up in
+      my arms she did not open them. I laid her on the moss, and got some water
+      and sprinkled her face. Then she revived a little; but seemed in much
+      pain, and all at once went off into another faint. I was in terrible
+      perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance, had
+      seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what he could
+      do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had thrown over
+      the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask Mrs. Walton to
+      come with the carriage as quickly as possible. &ldquo;Tell her,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that
+      her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is rather shaken. Ride as
+      hard as you can go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child, for
+      what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage arrived. She
+      had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in her back; and,
+      to my distress, I found that she could not move herself enough to make the
+      least change of her position. She evidently tried to keep up as well as
+      she could; but her face expressed great suffering: it was dreadfully pale,
+      and looked worn with a month&rsquo;s illness. All my fear was for her spine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as fast
+      as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing the
+      coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as Constance,
+      but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to determination. I had
+      never seen her look like that before. She asked no questions: there was
+      time enough for that afterwards. She had brought plenty of cushions and
+      pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy couch for the poor girl;
+      but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her into the carriage. We did our
+      best to keep her from being shaken; but those few miles were the longest
+      journey I ever made in my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
+      called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie&mdash;for she was
+      named after her mother&mdash;had got a room on the ground-floor, usually
+      given to visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to
+      have to carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the
+      groom off to Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who
+      had settled at Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before,
+      was waiting for us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a
+      mattress in the position in which she felt the least pain. But why should
+      I linger over the sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor child&rsquo;s spine
+      was seriously injured, and that probably years of suffering were before
+      her. Everything was done that could be done; but she was not moved from
+      that room for nine months, during which, though her pain certainly grew
+      less by degrees, her want of power to move herself remained almost the
+      same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated by
+      her bedside, I called my other two daughters&mdash;Wynnie, the eldest, and
+      Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside, one on
+      each side of the door, weeping&mdash;into my study, and said to them: &ldquo;My
+      darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God&rsquo;s will;
+      and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen to your
+      lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your sister&rsquo;s
+      part to endure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! poor Connie!&rdquo; cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the room?&rdquo;
+       I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She whispered, &lsquo;You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you can.
+      I don&rsquo;t mind it very much, only for you.&rsquo; So, you see, if you want to make
+      her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick people like
+      to see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie will not suffer
+      nearly so much if she finds that she does not make the household gloomy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my marriage.
+      My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had found that it was
+      quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my flock who were ill
+      without putting on a long face when I went to see them. Of course, I do
+      not mean that I could, or that it was desirable that I should, look
+      cheerful when any were in great pain or mental distress. But in ordinary
+      conditions of illness a cheerful countenance is as a message of <i>all&rsquo;s
+      well</i>, which may surely be carried into a sick chamber by the man who
+      believes that the heart of a loving Father is at the centre of things,
+      that he is light all about the darkness, and that he will not only bring
+      good out of evil at last, but will be with the sufferer all the time,
+      making endurance possible, and pain tolerable. There are a thousand
+      alleviations that people do not often think of, coming from God himself.
+      Would you not say, for instance, that time must pass very slowly in pain?
+      But have you never observed, or has no one ever made the remark to you,
+      how strangely fast, even in severe pain, the time passes after all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will do all we can, will we not,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;to make her as
+      comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little brothers,
+      that your mother may not have too much to think about now that she will
+      have Connie to nurse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving me
+      to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I then
+      returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child had fallen
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the pain
+      had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we could allow
+      Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of giving her
+      over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the night. Her chief
+      suffering came from its being necessary that she should keep nearly one
+      position on her back, because of her spine, while the external bruise and
+      the swelling of the muscles were in consequence so painful, that it needed
+      all that mechanical contrivance could do to render the position endurable.
+      But these outward conditions were greatly ameliorated before many days
+      were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
+      kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes to
+      let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at unawares,
+      either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were not a good
+      thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before I have done
+      my readers will not be sorry that my tale began so gloomily. The sickness
+      in Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, or thereabouts, has
+      no small part in the story of him who came to put all things under our
+      feet. Praise be to him for evermore!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more sacred
+      heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest corners;
+      but soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the gloom. I could
+      see that bits of news were carried from it to the servants in the kitchen,
+      in the garden, in the stable, and over the way to the home-farm. Even in
+      the village, and everywhere over the parish, I was received more kindly,
+      and listened to more willingly, because of the trouble I and my family
+      were in; while in the house, although we had never been anything else than
+      a loving family, it was easy to discover that we all drew more closely
+      together in consequence of our common anxiety. Previous to this, it had
+      been no unusual thing to see Wynnie and Dora impatient with each other;
+      for Dora was none the less a wild, somewhat lawless child, that she was a
+      profoundly affectionate one. She rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact&mdash;whom
+      she called Aunt Judy, and with whom she was naturally a great favourite.
+      Wynnie, on the other hand, was sedate, and rather severe&mdash;more
+      severe, I must in justice say, with herself than with anyone else. I had
+      sometimes wished, it is true, that her mother, in regard to the younger
+      children, were more like her; but there I was wrong. For one of the great
+      goods that come of having two parents, is that the one balances and
+      rectifies the motions of the other. No one is good but God. No one holds
+      the truth, or can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God. Our human
+      life is often, at best, but an oscillation between the extremes which
+      together make the truth; and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the
+      pendulums of father and mother should differ in movement so far, that when
+      the one is at one extremity of the swing, the other should be at the
+      other, so that they meet only in the point of <i>indifference</i>, in the
+      middle; that the predominant tendency of the one should not be the
+      predominant tendency of the other. I was a very strict disciplinarian&mdash;too
+      much so, perhaps, sometimes: Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was too much
+      inclined, I thought, to excuse everything. I was law, she was grace. But
+      grace often yielded to law, and law sometimes yielded to grace. Yet she
+      represented the higher; for in the ultimate triumph of grace, in the glad
+      performance of the command from love of what is commanded, the law is
+      fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. I must say
+      this for myself, however, that, although obedience was the one thing I
+      enforced, believing it the one thing upon which all family economy
+      primarily depends, yet my object always was to set my children free from
+      my law as soon as possible; in a word, to help them to become, as soon as
+      it might be, a law unto themselves. Then they would need no more of mine.
+      Then I would go entirely over to the mother&rsquo;s higher side, and become to
+      them, as much as in me lay, no longer law and truth, but grace and truth.
+      But to return to my children&mdash;it was soon evident not only that
+      Wynnie had grown more indulgent to Dora&rsquo;s vagaries, but that Dora was more
+      submissive to Wynnie, while the younger children began to obey their
+      eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their effervescence
+      within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in the out-houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
+      chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a yet
+      stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of gentle
+      light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came within
+      the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my lovely
+      child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He cannot
+      regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his. A man&rsquo;s
+      child is his because God has said to him, &ldquo;Take this child and nurse it
+      for me.&rdquo; She is God&rsquo;s making; God&rsquo;s marvellous invention, to be tended and
+      cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things; a young
+      angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make her wings
+      grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other children in the
+      same light, and will not dare to set up his own against others of God&rsquo;s
+      brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart of truth will thus
+      rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling towards one&rsquo;s own;
+      and the man who is most free from poor partisanship in regard to his own
+      family, will feel the most individual tenderness for the lovely human
+      creatures whom God has given into his own especial care and
+      responsibility. Show me the man who is tender, reverential, gracious
+      towards the children of other men, and I will show you the man who will
+      love and tend his own best, to whose heart his own will flee for their
+      first refuge after God, when they catch sight of the cloud in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE SICK CHAMBER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the smile
+      with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the morning.
+      Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs had not yet
+      even begun to show itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen
+      upon her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and
+      said, &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; with a lingering on the last syllable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, my pet?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so happy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you so happy?&rdquo; I asked again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t thought about it yet. But
+      everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa? I&rsquo;ve
+      forgotten all about how the time has been going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the trees&mdash;just
+      two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away down to the
+      rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break away, but they
+      can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get away,
+      papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be in
+      everybody&rsquo;s way.&mdash;I am afraid I shall not get well, after all,&rdquo; she
+      added, and the light clouded on her sweet face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my darling, we are in God&rsquo;s hands. We shall never get tired of you,
+      and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing me, if I
+      were ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; And the tears began to gather in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never think
+      so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
+      useless. You&rsquo;ve got plenty to do there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what have I got to do? I don&rsquo;t feel able for anything,&rdquo; she said; and
+      again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to get up
+      and she could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great deal of our work,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;we do without knowing what it is.
+      But I&rsquo;ll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe in God,
+      and in everybody in this house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, I do. But that is easy to do,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
+      says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do
+      God&rsquo;s work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they
+      cannot believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad
+      pride in it: it may be because they think that there is little or no
+      honour to be got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again
+      accept it with half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however easy
+      any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought about it.
+      And such people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally
+      take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than
+      in yesterday. The Holy Present!&mdash;I think I must make one more sermon
+      about it&mdash;although you, Connie,&rdquo; I said, meaning it for a little
+      joke, &ldquo;do think that I have said too much about it already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to you as
+      I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was impertinent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You silly darling!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;A judgment! God be angry with you for that!
+      Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think God has
+      no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much more
+      likely. You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lying in bed and doing nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could but feel that I was doing his will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my back
+      is getting so bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you
+      the rest another time,&rdquo; I said, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won&rsquo;t be long. In the time
+      of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant children to do
+      something for him in that way, poor people were told to bring, not a
+      bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get, but a pair of
+      turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw the poet says,
+      &lsquo;Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.&rsquo; God wanted to teach people to
+      offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you cannot offer yourself
+      in great things done for your fellow-men, which was the way Jesus did. But
+      you must remember that the two young pigeons of the poor were just as
+      acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the rich. Therefore you must say
+      to God something like this:&mdash;&lsquo;O heavenly Father, I have nothing to
+      offer thee but my patience. I will bear thy will, and so offer my will a
+      burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as useless as thou pleasest.&rsquo; Depend
+      upon it, my darling, in the midst of all the science about the world and
+      its ways, and all the ignorance of God and his greatness, the man or woman
+      who can thus say, <i>Thy will be done</i>, with the true heart of giving
+      up is nearer the secret of things than the geologist and theologian. And
+      now, my darling, be quiet in God&rsquo;s name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
+      sent Dora to sit with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
+      parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
+      Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them in
+      her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we must cram
+      her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the commonwealth
+      sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving messages in return.
+      I might call her the brain of the house; but I have used similes enough
+      for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I had done talking, she said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have been to the school too, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as
+      ours the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I had
+      made a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard of that, papa. You won&rsquo;t let any of the little ones go to school
+      on the Sunday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
+      necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
+      something direct for the little ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know, papa&mdash;just
+      before Sprite threw me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, you must begin before that, please.&mdash;You could spare time to read
+      a little to me, couldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she said doubtfully, as if she feared she
+      was asking too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in part the result of this wish of my child&rsquo;s that it became the
+      custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable for
+      any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her, but I
+      used to take something to read to her every now and then, and always after
+      our early tea on Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find
+      out and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good! Such
+      a centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and
+      imaginations! It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ
+      for the centre of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
+      following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed at
+      some of these assemblies in my child&rsquo;s room, in the hope that it may give
+      my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God has so
+      made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must be more
+      or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the gift of
+      setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am about
+      to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say, to teach
+      them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will share in the
+      delight it will give me to write about what I love most.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class began.
+      I was sitting by Constance&rsquo;s bed. The fire was burning brightly, and the
+      twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected back from
+      the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was no light in
+      the room but that of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night it
+      was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she. Her heart
+      seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world around her.
+      To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and news of poetic
+      interest too. &ldquo;What is it like?&rdquo; she would often say, without any more
+      definite shaping of the question. This same evening she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it like, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is growing dark,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;as you can see. It is a still evening,
+      and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as still as if
+      they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere if the wind
+      were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were of cast iron.
+      A gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were something upon
+      its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars are coming out
+      one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake soon. A strange
+      thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The life of owlets, and
+      mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars,&rdquo; I said, with no very
+      categorical arrangement, &ldquo;and dreams, and flowers that don&rsquo;t go to sleep
+      like the rest, but send out their scent all night long. Only those are
+      gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of the earth in such a
+      frost as this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on
+      the world, or went farther away from it for a while?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
+      been describing to me, isn&rsquo;t like God at all&mdash;is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is not. I see what you mean now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is just as if he had gone away and said, &lsquo;Now you shall see what you
+      can do without me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something like that. But do you know that English people&mdash;at least I
+      think so&mdash;enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon
+      the whole than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is not
+      enough to satisfy God&rsquo;s goodness that he should give us all things richly
+      to enjoy, but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he gives
+      them. He has to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of the gift.
+      He has to make us able to take the gift and make it our own, as well as to
+      give us the gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the full, that is,
+      the divine, meaning of giving, without it. He has to give us to the gift
+      as well as give the gift to us. Now for this, a break, an interruption is
+      good, is invaluable, for then we begin to think about the thing, and do
+      something in the matter ourselves. The wonder of God&rsquo;s teaching is that,
+      in great part, he makes us not merely learn, but teach ourselves, and that
+      is far grander than if he only made our minds as he makes our bodies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
+      wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the
+      world out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I
+      could go about in it just as I liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t do that, though, you know, if you hadn&rsquo;t had the other first.
+      The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see that, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
+      saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes into
+      my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about Milton&rsquo;s
+      blindness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
+      wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that he might
+      be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the point&mdash;given
+      him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread of a single day,
+      only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys; then placed him at
+      Cromwell&rsquo;s side, in the midst of the tumultuous movement of public
+      affairs, into which the late student entered with all his heart and soul;
+      and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine darkness over him, sent
+      him into a chamber far more retired than that in which he laboured at
+      Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing darkling. The
+      blackness about him was just the great canvas which God gave him to cover
+      with forms of light and music. Deep wells of memory burst upwards from
+      below; the windows of heaven were opened from above; from both rushed the
+      deluge of song which flooded his soul, and which he has poured out in a
+      great river to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn&rsquo;t it, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
+      sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
+      undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with <i>such</i>
+      blindness as Milton&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those that do not care about his poetry, papa,&rdquo; answered Constance, with
+      a deprecatory smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
+      God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can&rsquo;t love one
+      you know nothing about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried to read him a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you had
+      never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But you
+      and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of what
+      we had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the least, papa. You don&rsquo;t mind what I said about Milton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much if
+      you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him was
+      more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of appreciating
+      him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen. You think of him
+      as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry things. Now he is not
+      dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry things. You have a figure
+      before you in your fancy, which is dry, and which you call Milton. But it
+      is no more Milton than your dull-faced Dutch doll, which you called after
+      her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But here comes your mamma; and I haven&rsquo;t
+      said what I wanted to say yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely, husband, you can say it all the same,&rdquo; said my wife. &ldquo;I will
+      go away if you can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me. I
+      was trying to show Connie&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did show me, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
+      again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
+      Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
+      history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
+      him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too much
+      revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long enough.
+      They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as soon as he
+      said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that he had not
+      come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over again after their
+      own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own worldly notions of
+      grandeur and command, that they could not receive into their souls the
+      gift of God present before their eyes. Therefore he was taken away, that
+      his Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily presence, might come
+      into them&mdash;that they might receive the gift of God into their
+      innermost being. After he had gone out of their sight, and they might look
+      all around and down in the grave and up in the air, and not see him
+      anywhere&mdash;when they thought they had lost him, he began to come to
+      them again from the other side&mdash;from the inside. They found that the
+      image of him which his presence with them had printed in light upon their
+      souls, began to revive in the dark of his absence; and not that only, but
+      that in looking at it without the overwhelming of his bodily presence,
+      lines and forms and meanings began to dawn out of it which they had never
+      seen before. And his words came back to them, no longer as they had
+      received them, but as he meant them. The spirit of Christ filling their
+      hearts and giving them new power, made them remember, by making them able
+      to understand, all that he had said to them. They were then always saying
+      to each other, &lsquo;You remember how;&rsquo; whereas before, they had been always
+      staring at each other with astonishment and something very near
+      incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after he had gone away, he
+      was really nearer to them than he had been before. The meaning of anything
+      is more than its visible presence. There is a soul in everything, and that
+      soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the world and all its beauty has
+      come nearer to you, my dear, just because you are separated from it for a
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself now
+      and then. That is another good of being ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?&rdquo; said my
+      wife, smiling at her daughter&rsquo;s pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say by this
+      time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful
+      of sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I
+      should be sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say
+      by this time next year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I wish I could be sure of knowing more next year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of learning
+      is very different in the two cases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should not
+      know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him&mdash;as he
+      came to the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
+      thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
+      understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer that
+      if he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I believe
+      we should be further off it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think, then,&rdquo; said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if I
+      were the prophet of great evil, &ldquo;that we shall never, never, never see
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is <i>quite</i> another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my
+      hopes by day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to
+      me the one thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for;
+      but I think it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as
+      ever we are capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I think,
+      what is meant by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a consequence
+      of his spirit in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us. The pure in
+      heart shall see God. The seeing of him will be the sign that we are like
+      him, for only by being like him can we see him as he is. All the time that
+      he was with them, the disciples never saw him as he was. You must
+      understand a man before you can see and read his face aright; and as the
+      disciples did not understand our Lord&rsquo;s heart, they could neither see nor
+      read his face aright. But when we shall be fit to look that man in the
+      face, God only knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know him
+      better than the disciples? I don&rsquo;t mean, of course, better than they knew
+      him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew him while
+      he was still with them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I do, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! Is it possible? Why don&rsquo;t we all, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because we won&rsquo;t take the trouble; that is the reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living&mdash;worth
+      being ill for. But how? how? Can&rsquo;t you help me? Mayn&rsquo;t one human being
+      help another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever wants
+      to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey&mdash;that is simply,
+      do what Jesus says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing. And
+      the tears stood in; my wife&rsquo;s eyes&mdash;tears of gladness to hear her
+      daughter&rsquo;s sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try, papa,&rdquo; Constance said at last. &ldquo;But you <i>will</i> help me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying
+      to tell you what I have heard and learned about him&mdash;heard and
+      learned of the Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time
+      when he was born;&mdash;but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to
+      bear to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, papa. Do go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
+      truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday&mdash;you
+      have plenty to think about till then&mdash;I will talk to you about the
+      baby Jesus; and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that
+      time, besides what I have got to say now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you think, Connie, this is too good to keep
+      all to ourselves? Don&rsquo;t you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear they are rather young yet,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Perhaps it might do them
+      harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn,
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you. Besides,
+      you always say such things to children as delight grown people, though
+      they could never get them out of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wife&rsquo;s speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind them coming in, but I don&rsquo;t promise to say
+      anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
+      wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. A SUNDAY EVENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
+      church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took care
+      to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might be
+      quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my Bible
+      in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a glorious
+      fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on the rug
+      before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the further
+      side of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she thought
+      another might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner, leaving
+      the space between the fire and my chair open that I might see and share
+      the glow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wind is very high, papa,&rdquo; said Constance, as I seated myself beside
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has blown
+      harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
+      shakes the windows with a great rush as if it <i>would</i> get into the
+      house and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
+      grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us
+      with fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very
+      jaws of danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you are quite poetic, Connie,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I&rsquo;m an invalid, and I can&rsquo;t bear to be
+      laughed at,&rdquo; returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more
+      than a quarter crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her
+      laugh outright, and then sat down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But tell me, Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;why you are <i>afraid</i> you enjoy
+      hearing the wind about the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
+      forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out
+      in the wind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if we thought like that, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;shouldn&rsquo;t we come to
+      feel that their sufferings were none of our business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we,
+      it will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, I could not think that,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God&rsquo;s name, think
+      hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing in his
+      kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God intended
+      that there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If he did not
+      intend it&mdash;for similar reasons to those for which he allows all sorts
+      of evils&mdash;then there is nothing between but that we should sell
+      everything that we have and give it away to the poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t we?&rdquo; said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because that is not God&rsquo;s way, and we should do no end of harm by so
+      doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
+      who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We
+      are not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object&mdash;not
+      to save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more danger
+      than God meant for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
+      kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the one
+      thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course everyone
+      ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading of in the
+      papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without making the
+      least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her labour for the
+      coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death, would hug his own
+      selfishness on hearing my words, and say, &lsquo;All right, parson! Every man
+      for himself! I made my own money, and they may make theirs!&rsquo; <i>You</i>
+      know that is not exactly the way I should think or act with regard to my
+      neighbour. But if it were only that I have seen such noble characters cast
+      in the mould of poverty, I should be compelled to regard poverty as one of
+      God&rsquo;s powers in the world for raising the children of the kingdom, and to
+      believe that it was not because it could not be helped that our Lord said,
+      &lsquo;The poor ye have always with you.&rsquo; But what I wanted to say was, that
+      there can be no reason why Connie should not enjoy what God has given her,
+      although he has not thought fit to give as much to everybody; and above
+      all, that we shall not help those right whom God gives us to help, if we
+      do not believe that God is caring for every one of them as much as he is
+      caring for every one of us. There was once a baby born in a stable,
+      because his poor mother could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay
+      I can hardly think. They must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in
+      the stall, for we know the baby&rsquo;s cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken
+      them? or would they not have been more <i>comfortable</i>, if that was the
+      main thing, somewhere else? Ah! if the disciples, who were being born
+      about the same time of fisher-fathers and cottage-mothers, to get ready
+      for him to call and teach by the time he should be thirty years of age&mdash;if
+      they had only been old enough, and had known that he was coming&mdash;would
+      they not have got everything ready for him? They would have clubbed their
+      little savings together, and worked day and night, and some rich women
+      would have helped them, and they would have dressed the baby in fine
+      linen, and got him the richest room their money would get, and they would
+      have made the gold that the wise men brought into a crown for his little
+      head, and would have burnt the frankincense before him. And so our little
+      manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No more the stable-born
+      Saviour&mdash;no more the poor Son of God born for us all, as strong, as
+      noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor! And we
+      should not have learned that God does not care for money; that if he does
+      not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or that he is
+      unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent his own son
+      to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of a little
+      village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need not
+      suppose because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison for it
+      next day, that God does not care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished by
+      this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
+      mother&rsquo;s love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
+      first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie not
+      in these external things at all&mdash;that the poorest little one, born in
+      the meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God&rsquo;s own and God&rsquo;s
+      care as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all about him.
+      Had Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been more worshipped
+      than ever. See how so many that count themselves good Christians honour
+      possession and family and social rank, and I doubt hardly get rid of them
+      when they are all swept away from them. The furthest most of such reach is
+      to count Jesus an exception, and therefore not despise him. See how, even
+      in the services of the church, as they call them, they will accumulate
+      gorgeousness and cost. Had I my way, though I will never seek to rouse
+      men&rsquo;s thoughts about such external things, I would never have any vessel
+      used in the eucharist but wooden platters and wooden cups.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are we not to serve him with our best?&rdquo; said my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
+      being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of his
+      revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth in homely
+      fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that enforces and
+      commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on the other side
+      from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent houses for God&rsquo;s
+      poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of silver and gold and
+      precious stones&mdash;stealing from the significance of the <i>content</i>
+      by the meretricious grandeur of the <i>continent</i>. I would send all the
+      church-plate to fight the devil with his own weapons in our overcrowded
+      cities, and in our villages where the husbandmen are housed like swine, by
+      giving them room to be clean and decent air from heaven to breathe. When
+      the people find the clergy thus in earnest, they will follow them fast
+      enough, and the money will come in like salt and oil upon the sacrifice. I
+      would there were a few of our dignitaries that could think grandly about
+      things, even as Jesus thought&mdash;even as God thought when he sent him.
+      There are many of them willing to stand any amount of persecution about
+      trifles: the same enthusiasm directed by high thoughts about the kingdom
+      of heaven as within men and not around them, would redeem a vast region
+      from that indifference which comes of judging the gospel of God by the
+      church of Christ with its phylacteries and hems.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing,&rdquo; said Wynnie, after a pause, &ldquo;that I have often
+      thought about&mdash;why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he
+      could not do anything for so long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
+      necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary for
+      me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I would
+      say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long? Does a
+      baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the mother lifts
+      up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her knee? Is it nothing
+      that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost all the hearts
+      around? Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to do with the saving
+      of the world&mdash;the saving of it from selfishness, and folly, and
+      greed. And for Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign of love in
+      the earth? How could he do better than begin from babyhood? He had to lay
+      hold of the heart of the world. How could he do better than begin with his
+      mother&rsquo;s&mdash;the best one in it. Through his mother&rsquo;s love first, he
+      grew into the world. It was first by the door of all the holy relations of
+      the family that he entered the human world, laying hold of mother, father,
+      brothers, sisters, all his friends; then by the door of labour, for he
+      took his share of his father&rsquo;s work; then, when he was thirty years of
+      age, by the door of teaching; by kind deeds, and sufferings, and through
+      all by obedience unto the death. You must not think little of the grand
+      thirty years wherein he got ready for the chief work to follow. You must
+      not think that while he was thus preparing for his public ministrations,
+      he was not all the time saving the world even by that which he was in the
+      midst of it, ever laying hold of it more and more. These were things not
+      so easy to tell. And you must remember that our records are very scanty.
+      It is a small biography we have of a man who became&mdash;to say nothing
+      more&mdash;the Man of the world&mdash;the Son of Man. No doubt it is
+      enough, or God would have told us more; but surely we are not to suppose
+      that there was nothing significant, nothing of saving power in that which
+      we are not told.&mdash;Charlie, wouldn&rsquo;t you have liked to see the little
+      baby Jesus?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
+      eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for he
+      has painted him playing with a white rabbit,&mdash;not such a pretty one
+      as yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would have carried him about all day,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;as little Henny
+      Parsons does her baby-brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?&rdquo; asked Harry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he carried
+      about his brothers and sisters that came after him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t he take care of them, just!&rdquo; said Charlie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I had been one of them,&rdquo; said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that he
+      can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we sung a child&rsquo;s hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
+      the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her with
+      Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midnight my wife and I awoke together&mdash;at least neither knew
+      which waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with
+      lulls between its charges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a child crying!&rdquo; said my wife, starting up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat up too, and listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is some creature,&rdquo; I granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an infant,&rdquo; insisted my wife. &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be either of the boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried on
+      some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so. We
+      seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in the
+      lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night was
+      pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house till
+      I came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it, but not
+      so clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the direction
+      of the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only a few yards
+      around me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through every chink,
+      and threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my side before I
+      knew she was coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear!&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it is not fit for you to be out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Do listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
+      Ethelwyn&rsquo;s bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though she
+      was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner of
+      the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much nearer
+      to it. Searching and searching we went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There it is!&rdquo; Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the
+      lantern fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at it.
+      It gave another pitiful wail&mdash;the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up
+      in a dirty, ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it
+      had been a parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house, and
+      I followed, much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and fall. I
+      could hardly get up with her, so eager was she to save the child. She
+      darted up to her own room, where the fire was not yet out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
+      there&mdash;you can empty them in the sink: you won&rsquo;t know where to find
+      anything. There will be plenty in the boiler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child&rsquo;s
+      covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before the fire.
+      The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and motionless. We
+      had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as if I had been a
+      nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You made me throw away the cold water,&rdquo; I said, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s some in the bottles,&rdquo; she returned. &ldquo;Make haste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
+      Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child will be dead,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;before we get it in the water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had its rags off in a moment&mdash;there was very little to remove
+      after the shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully
+      neglected! It was a girl&mdash;not more than a few weeks old, we agreed.
+      Her little heart was still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made,
+      apparently healthy infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we
+      were not disappointed. She began to move her little legs and arms with
+      short, convulsive motions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?&rdquo; asked my wife, with no great
+      compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
+      were beyond the average in development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you tell which was this night&rsquo;s milk, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be less cream on it,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I&rsquo;ve got some sugar here.
+      I wish we had a bottle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
+      lying on her lap clean and dry&mdash;a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went
+      on talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
+      specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got her
+      to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing fell
+      fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ethelwyn&rsquo;s nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know
+      where her baby&rsquo;s clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a
+      wardrobe in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on. I
+      could not understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be indued
+      with little chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not know what
+      all, requiring a world of nice care, and a hundred turnings to and fro,
+      now on its little stomach, now on its back, now sitting up, now lying
+      down, when it would have slept just as well, and I venture to think much
+      more comfortably, if laid in blankets and well covered over. But I had
+      never ventured to interfere with any of my own children, devoutly
+      believing up to this moment, though in a dim unquestioning way, that there
+      must be some hidden feminine wisdom in the whole process; and now that I
+      had begun to question it, I found that my opportunity had long gone by, if
+      I had ever had one. And after all there may be some reason for it, though
+      I confess I do strongly suspect that all these matters are so wonderfully
+      complicated in order that the girl left in the woman may have her heart&rsquo;s
+      content of playing with her doll; just as the woman hid in the girl
+      expends no end of lovely affection upon the dull stupidity of wooden
+      cheeks and a body of sawdust. But it was a delight to my heart to see how
+      Ethelwyn could not be satisfied without treating the foundling in
+      precisely the same fashion as one of her own. And if this was a necessary
+      preparation for what, should follow, I would be the very last to complain
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal mother,
+      now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in my Ethelwyn&rsquo;s
+      bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it would have been
+      very painful to me had she shown it possible for her to treat the baby
+      otherwise, especially after what we had been talking about that same
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about it
+      but ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the going
+      and coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good laugh
+      over the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray for the poor thing, Harry,&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;before you come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knelt down, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to us
+      as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee. Take
+      thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to order
+      our ways towards her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I said to Ethelwyn,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
+      sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
+      sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother. Mind
+      you go to sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I
+      had a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell or
+      not. We slept soundly&mdash;God&rsquo;s baby and all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. MY DREAM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
+      beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those who
+      are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when they
+      can associate it with something else with which they are familiar. Such do
+      not care to see that the thing with which they associate it may be as
+      mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys marvel, it
+      cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is just as
+      wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
+      clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
+      another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an old
+      man&rsquo;s prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked about for
+      a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams there is an
+      immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow stone lying a few
+      yards from me. I wondered how it could have come there, for there were no
+      mountains or rocks near: the field was part of a level country.
+      Carelessly, I sat down upon it astride, and watched the setting of the
+      sun. Somehow I fancied that his light was more sorrowful than the light of
+      the setting sun should be, and I began to feel very heavy at the heart. No
+      sooner had the last brilliant spark of his light vanished, than I felt the
+      stone under me begin to move. With the inactivity of a dreamer, however, I
+      did not care to rise, but wondered only what would come next. My seat,
+      after several strange tumbling motions, seemed to rise into the air a
+      little way, and then I found that I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse&mdash;a
+      skeleton horse almost, only he had a gray skin on him. He began,
+      apparently with pain, as if his joints were all but too stiff to move, to
+      go forward in the direction in which he found himself. I kept my seat.
+      Indeed, I never thought of dismounting. I was going on to meet what might
+      come. Slowly, feebly, trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and
+      as he went his joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little
+      faster. All at once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that
+      we were on the borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me,
+      and the moor grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always
+      recovering himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise no
+      more, but as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface became a
+      little smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted till he
+      reached a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell into what
+      was plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were low and
+      covered with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the place of
+      mounds. Gravestones lay in every position except the level or the upright,
+      and broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My horse bore me into
+      the midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he had risen, he lay down
+      again. Once more I was astride of a long narrow stone. And now I found
+      that it was an ancient gravestone which I knew well in a certain Sussex
+      churchyard, the top of it carved into the rough resemblance of a human
+      skeleton&mdash;that of a man, tradition said, who had been killed by a
+      serpent that came out of a bottomless pool in the next field. How long I
+      sat there I do not know; but at last I saw the faint gray light of morning
+      begin to appear in front of me. The horse of death had carried me
+      eastward. The dawn grew over the top of a hill that here rose against the
+      horizon. But it was a wild dreary dawn&mdash;a blot of gray first, which
+      then stretched into long lines of dreary yellow and gray, looking more
+      like a blasted and withered sunset than a fresh sunrise. And well it
+      suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if churchyard I ought to
+      call it where no church was to be seen&mdash;only a vast hideous square of
+      graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the flat stone of
+      which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat with my eyes
+      fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the middle closed,
+      then widened again as the two halves of the stone were lifted up, and
+      flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door. From the grave rose
+      a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as if he had just come
+      from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung the stones apart, and
+      as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me, they remained outspread
+      from the action for a moment, as if blessing the sleeping people. Then he
+      came towards me with the same smile, and took my hand. I rose, and he led
+      me away over another broken wall towards the hill that lay before us. And
+      as we went the sun came nearer, the pale yellow bars flushed into orange
+      and rosy red, till at length the edges of the clouds were swept with an
+      agony of golden light, which even my dreamy eyes could not endure, and I
+      awoke weeping for joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was this little darling that set you dreaming so,&rdquo; she said, and
+      turning, put the baby in my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE NEW BABY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
+      household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie
+      was heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn&rsquo;t it jolly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did she get it?&rdquo; cried Harry in return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the parsley-bed, I suppose,&rdquo; answered Charlie, and was nearer right
+      than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had no
+      doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of the
+      family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their curiosity
+      being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was exemplified
+      that confusion of the intellectual being which is produced by the witness
+      of incontestable truth to a thing incredible&mdash;in which case the
+      probability always is, that the incredibility results from something in
+      the mind of the hearer falsely associated with and disturbing the true
+      perception of the thing to which witness is borne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
+      parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had. And
+      seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met with
+      from everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked
+      questions. And that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good gift
+      of God. Ask what questions you will, but when you see that the gift is a
+      good one, make sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for you to
+      ask questions afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the more
+      ready you will be to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
+      began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
+      frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was not
+      Ethelwyn&rsquo;s baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, you&rsquo;ll give information to the police,&rdquo; said, I am sorry to
+      say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to be
+      a magistrate as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
+      easy to suspect it?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;And just think what it would be to give the
+      baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her mother.
+      But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don&rsquo;t say I would refuse
+      her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had once
+      abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don&rsquo;t want the
+      parents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t want the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo; I returned&mdash;rather rudely, I am afraid, for I
+      am easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless&mdash;about
+      children especially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one
+      has a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what I thought I was doing,&rdquo; I answered; but he went on
+      without heeding my reply&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not
+      so fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother&rsquo;s keeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my sister&rsquo;s too,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And if the question lies between
+      keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that, I
+      venture to choose for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ought to go to the workhouse,&rdquo; said the magistrate&mdash;a friendly,
+      good-natured man enough in ordinary&mdash;and rising, he took his hat and
+      departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man had no children. So he was&mdash;or was not, so much to blame.
+      Which? <i>I</i> say the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of Ethelwyn&rsquo;s friends were no less positive about her duty in the
+      affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one of
+      them&mdash;Miss Bowdler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear Mrs. Walton,&rdquo; she was saying, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll be having all the
+      tramps in England leaving their babies at your door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The better for the babies,&rdquo; interposed I, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t think of your wife, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I? I thought I did,&rdquo; I returned dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Depend upon it, you&rsquo;ll repent it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but, really! it&rsquo;s not a thing to be made game of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As well as I choose to know&mdash;certainly,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which
+      she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in
+      the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted
+      as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic,
+      half-anxious look, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
+      we couldn&rsquo;t go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
+      stepping on a baby on the door-step.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, &lsquo;If God
+      should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?&rsquo; He who sent us this
+      one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come. All
+      that we have to think of is to do right&mdash;not the consequences of
+      doing right. But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that
+      wandering mothers have not even the attachment of animals to their
+      offspring. There are not so many that are willing to part with babies as
+      all that would come to. If you believe that God sent this one, that is
+      enough for the present. If he should send another, we should know by that
+      that we had to take it in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
+      well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
+      babies&mdash;that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and
+      nurses and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for
+      what I believed than what I saw&mdash;that was all I could pretend to
+      discover. But even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to
+      allow before three months were over that little Theodora&mdash;for we
+      turned the name of my youngest daughter upside down for her&mdash;&ldquo;was a
+      proper child.&rdquo; To none, however, did she seem to bring so much delight as
+      to our dear Constance. Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I
+      found the sleepy, useless little thing lying beside her on the bed, and
+      her staring at it with such loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but
+      it came at last to be called Connie&rsquo;s Dora, or Miss Connie&rsquo;s baby, all
+      over the house, and nothing pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this
+      did her old nurse take quite kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as
+      an interloper, who had no right to the tenderness which was lavished upon
+      her. But she had no sooner given in than the baby began to grow dear to
+      her as well as to the rest. In fact, the house was ere long full of
+      nurses. The staff included everyone but myself, who only occasionally, at
+      the entreaty of some one or other of the younger ones, took her in my
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude,
+      all centering round the question in what manner the child was to be
+      brought up. Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as Ethelwyn
+      constantly reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I could not
+      discover the principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can tell how
+      soon a principle in such a case will begin, even unconsciously, to
+      operate; and the danger was that the moment when it ought to begin to
+      operate would be long past before the principle was discovered, except I
+      did what I could now to find it out. I had again and again to remind
+      myself that there was no cause for anxiety; for that I might certainly
+      claim the enlightenment which all who want to do right are sure to
+      receive; but still I continued uneasy just from feeling a vacancy where a
+      principle ought to have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress&mdash;in the
+      recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
+      remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
+      regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
+      interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how I
+      came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to keep
+      before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
+      remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
+      from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might be
+      turned aside would not trouble me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
+      Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east,
+      and the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the
+      children to rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and,
+      believing that the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the
+      faculties for aiding the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them
+      questions as to what they thought he might have said or done in ordinary
+      family occurrences, thus giving a reality in their minds to this part of
+      his history, and trying to rouse in them a habit of referring their
+      conduct to the standard of his. If we do not thus employ our imagination
+      on sacred things, his example can be of no use to us except in exactly
+      corresponding circumstances&mdash;and when can such occur from one end to
+      another of our lives? The very effort to think how he would have done, is
+      a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and, even if the conclusion
+      arrived at should not be correct from lack of sufficient knowledge of his
+      character and principles, it will be better than any that can be arrived
+      at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking of such questions gave me
+      good opportunity, through the answers they returned, of seeing what their
+      notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus of discovering how to help the
+      dawn of the light in their growing minds. Nor let anyone fear that such
+      employment of the divine gift of imagination will lead to foolish vagaries
+      and useless inventions; while the object is to discover the right way&mdash;the
+      truth&mdash;there is little danger of that. Besides, there I was to help
+      hereby in the actual training of their imaginations to truth and wisdom.
+      To aid in this, I told them some of the stories that were circulated about
+      him in the early centuries of the church, but which the church has
+      rejected as of no authority; and I showed them how some of them could not
+      be true, because they were so unlike those words and actions which we had
+      the best of reasons for receiving as true; and how one or two of them
+      might be true&mdash;though, considering the company in which we found
+      them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them. And such wise
+      things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous how children can
+      reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances are sometimes
+      entirely concordant with the results arrived at through years of thought
+      by the earnest mind&mdash;results which no mind would ever arrive at save
+      by virtue of the child-like in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus in
+      the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by dwelling
+      a little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from group to
+      group of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem and asking
+      every fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy, till at length
+      they were in great trouble when they could not find him even in Jerusalem.
+      Then came the delight of his mother when she did find him at last, and his
+      answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered over the simple story,
+      my children had put many questions to me about Jesus being a boy, and not
+      seeming to know things which, if he was God, he must have known, they
+      thought. To some of these I had just to reply that I did not understand
+      myself, and therefore could not teach them; to others, that I could
+      explain them, but that they were not yet, some of them, old enough to
+      receive and understand my explanation; while others I did my best to
+      answer as simply as I could. But at this point we arrived at a question
+      put by Wynnie, to answer which aright I considered of the greatest
+      importance. Wynnie said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled me,
+      papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is, my dear?&rdquo; I said; for although I thought I knew well enough what
+      she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for her own
+      sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand the
+      difficulty much better if she presented it herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that he spoke to his mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you say <i>mamma</i>, Wynnie?&rdquo; said Charlie. &ldquo;She was his own
+      mamma, wasn&rsquo;t she, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear; but don&rsquo;t you know that the shoemaker&rsquo;s children down in
+      the village always call their mamma <i>mother</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but they are shoemaker&rsquo;s children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
+      carpenter. He called his mamma, <i>mother</i>. But, Charlie, <i>mother</i>
+      is the more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. <i>Lady</i>
+      is a very pretty word; but <i>woman</i> is a very beautiful word. Just so
+      with <i>mamma</i> and <i>mother</i>. <i>Mamma</i> is pretty, but <i>mother</i>
+      is beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t we always say <i>mother</i> then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for Sundays&mdash;that
+      is, for the more solemn times of life. We don&rsquo;t want it to get common to
+      us with too much use. We may think it as much as we like; thinking does
+      not spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and especially beautiful
+      words. Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was saying, papa, that I can&rsquo;t help feeling as if&mdash;I know it can&rsquo;t
+      be true&mdash;but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he
+      said that to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at the page and read the words, &ldquo;How is it that ye sought me?
+      wist ye not that I must be about my Father&rsquo;s business?&rdquo; And I sat silent
+      for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you speak, papa?&rdquo; said Harry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Long after I was your
+      age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as they
+      now trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me so
+      lovely that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact that
+      they troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall. I can
+      hardly see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me. And why
+      is that? Simply because I understand them now, and I did not understand
+      them then. I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof; now I hear them
+      as uttered with a tone of loving surprise. But really I cannot feel sure
+      what it was that I did not like. And I am confident it is so with a great
+      many things that we reject. We reject them simply because we do not
+      understand them. Therefore, indeed, we cannot with truth be said to reject
+      them at all. It is some false appearance that we reject. Some of the
+      grandest things in the whole realm of truth look repellent to us, and we
+      turn away from them, simply because we are not&mdash;to use a familiar
+      phrase&mdash;we are not up to them. They appear to us, therefore, to be
+      what they are not. Instruction sounds to the proud man like reproof;
+      illumination comes on the vain man like scorn; the manifestation of a
+      higher condition of motive and action than his own, falls on the
+      self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is consciousness and conscience
+      working together that produce this impression; the result is from the man
+      himself, not from the higher source. From the truth comes the power, but
+      the shape it assumes to the man is from the man himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite beyond me now, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;I will return to the words of the boy Jesus,
+      instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you what they
+      mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about them is all
+      and altogether an illusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing first,&rdquo; said Connie, &ldquo;that I want to understand. You
+      said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
+      surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
+      even <i>he</i> did not know one thing&mdash;only the Father knew it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how could that be if he was God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I
+      should understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have
+      been perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in the
+      Father. And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect
+      knowledge was not necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute obedience,
+      utter holiness. There is a great tendency in our sinful natures to put
+      knowledge and power on a level with goodness. It was one of the lessons of
+      our Lord&rsquo;s life that they are not so; that the one grand thing in humanity
+      is faith in God; that the highest in God is his truth, his goodness, his
+      rightness. But if Jesus was a real man, and no mere appearance of a man,
+      is it any wonder that, with a heart full to the brim of the love of God,
+      he should be for a moment surprised that his mother, whom he loved so
+      dearly, the best human being he knew, should not have taken it as a matter
+      of course that if he was not with her, he must be doing something his
+      Father wanted him to do? For this is just what his answer means. To turn
+      it into the ordinary speech of our day, it is just this: &lsquo;Why did you look
+      for me? Didn&rsquo;t you know that I must of course be doing something my Father
+      had given me to do?&rsquo; Just think of the quiet sweetness of confidence in
+      this. And think what a life his must have been up to that twelfth year of
+      his, that such an expostulation with his mother was justified. It must
+      have had reference to a good many things that had passed before then,
+      which ought to have been sufficient to make Mary conclude that her missing
+      boy must be about God&rsquo;s business somewhere. If her heart had been as full
+      of God and God&rsquo;s business as his, she would not have been in the least
+      uneasy about him. And here is the lesson of his whole life: it was all his
+      Father&rsquo;s business. The boy&rsquo;s mind and hands were full of it. The man&rsquo;s
+      mind and hands were full of it. And the risen conqueror was full of it
+      still. For the Father&rsquo;s business is everything, and includes all work that
+      is worth doing. We may say in a full grand sense, that there is nothing
+      but the Father and his business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we have so many things to do that are not his business,&rdquo; said Wynnie,
+      with a sigh of oppression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
+      not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want of
+      spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things&mdash;the will
+      of God in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so irksome
+      to us. Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination and deep
+      thought, to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with some slight
+      remark, thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is because he is
+      commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so little of the
+      divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise the spiritual
+      meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will of God, in the
+      things required of us, though they are full of it. But if we do them we
+      shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see what is in them.
+      The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in its heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish he would tell me something to do,&rdquo; said Charlie. &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t I do
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure was
+      at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look here, Wynnie; listen to this,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;&lsquo;And he went down with
+      them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.&rsquo; Was that not doing
+      his Father&rsquo;s business too? Was it not doing the business of his Father in
+      heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he knew that his days
+      would not be long in that land? Did not his whole teaching, his whole
+      doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the Father and surely it was
+      doing his Father&rsquo;s business then to obey his parents&mdash;to serve them,
+      to be subject to them. It is true that the business God gives a man to do
+      may be said to be the peculiar walk in life into which he is led, but that
+      is only as distinguishing it from another man&rsquo;s peculiar business. God
+      gives us all our business, and the business which is common to humanity is
+      more peculiarly God&rsquo;s business than that which is one man&rsquo;s and not
+      another&rsquo;s&mdash;because it lies nearer the root, and is essential. It does
+      not matter whether a man is a farmer or a physician, but it greatly
+      matters whether he is a good son, a good husband, and so on. O my
+      children!&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;if the world could but be brought to believe&mdash;the
+      world did I say?&mdash;if the best men in the world could only see, as God
+      sees it, that service is in itself the noblest exercise of human powers,
+      if they could see that God is the hardest worker of all, and that his
+      nobility are those who do the most service, surely it would alter the
+      whole aspect of the church. Menial offices, for instance, would soon cease
+      to be talked of with that contempt which shows that there is no true
+      recognition of the fact that the same principle runs through the highest
+      duty and the lowest&mdash;that the lowest work which God gives a man to do
+      must be in its nature noble, as certainly noble as the highest. This would
+      destroy condescension, which is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the
+      higher, as it would destroy insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower.
+      He who recognised the dignity of his own lower office, would thereby
+      recognise the superiority of the higher office, and would be the last
+      either to envy or degrade it. He would see in it his own&mdash;only
+      higher, only better, and revere it. But I am afraid I have wearied you, my
+      children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, no, papa!&rdquo; said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this subject:
+      it has such a hold of my heart and mind!&mdash;Now, Charlie, my boy, go to
+      bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did not
+      want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the
+      corners of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did not
+      move to go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the black
+      frost still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to him.
+      When he was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting out of
+      temper, and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to behold; and to
+      cure him of this, I used to make him carry a little mirror about his neck,
+      that the means might be always at hand of showing himself to him: it was a
+      sort of artificial conscience which, by enabling him to see the picture of
+      his own condition, which the face always is, was not unfrequently
+      operative in rousing his real conscience, and making him ashamed of
+      himself. But now the mirror I wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in
+      the light of which the present would show what it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charlie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;a little while ago you were wishing that God would
+      give you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once,
+      without even thinking about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?&rdquo; said Charlie, with
+      something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at once
+      because there was some sense along with the impudence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it pleasantly.
+      Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as that&mdash;I
+      wish I had the little mirror to show it to you&mdash;when his mother told
+      him it was time to go to bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in him,
+      because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have compelled
+      him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law. But now that
+      his own better self, the self enlightened of the light that lighteneth
+      every man that cometh into the world, was working, time might well be
+      afforded it to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the others. In
+      the space of not more than one minute, he rose and came to me, looking
+      both good and ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me, saying,
+      &ldquo;Goodnight, papa.&rdquo; I bade him good-night, and kissed him more tenderly
+      than usual, that he might know that it was all right between us. I
+      required no formal apology, no begging of my pardon, as some parents think
+      right. It seemed enough to me that his heart was turned. It is a terrible
+      thing to run the risk of changing humility into humiliation. Humiliation
+      is one of the proudest conditions in the human world. When he felt that it
+      would be a relief to say more explicitly, &ldquo;Father, I have sinned,&rdquo; then
+      let him say it; but not till then. To compel manifestation is one surest
+      way to check feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy&rsquo;s unwillingness to go
+      to bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them
+      are guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important
+      than this, only those things happen to be <i>their</i> wish at the moment,
+      and not Charlie&rsquo;s, and so gain their superiority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. THEODORA&rsquo;S DOOM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
+      most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
+      practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise you
+      more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be allowed
+      to take very much his own way&mdash;go his own pace, I should have said. I
+      am afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
+      severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last
+      severe frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth.
+      The sun was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up in
+      the air hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field
+      close by a hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass. A
+      short distance from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost. There
+      alone was there any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of the
+      loveliest tenderest green. I will not say the figure was such an exact
+      resemblance as a photograph would have been; still it was an indubitable
+      likeness. It appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch not a knot of
+      the upper side of the tree at least was left unrepresented in shining and
+      glittering whiteness upon the green grass. It was very pretty, and, I
+      confess, at first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating on the
+      phenomenon, till at length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost had been
+      all over the field in the morning. The sun had been shining for a time,
+      and had melted the frost away, except where he could only cast a shadow.
+      As he rose and rose, the shadow of the tree had shortened and come nearer
+      and nearer to its original, growing more and more like as it came nearer,
+      while the frost kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew its protection.
+      When the shadow extended only to a little way from the tree, the clouds
+      came and covered the sun, and there were no more shadows, only one great
+      one of the clouds. Then the frost shone out in the shape of the vanished
+      shadow. It lay at a little distance from the tree, because the tree having
+      been only partially lopped, some great stumps of boughs held it up from
+      the ground, and thus, when the sun was low, his light had shone a little
+      way through beneath, as well as over the trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to &ldquo;moralise this spectacle
+      with a thousand similes.&rdquo; I only tell it him as a very pretty phenomenon.
+      But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in nature&mdash;I
+      mean new in regard to my knowledge, of course&mdash;always made me happy;
+      and I was full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the thoughts
+      it had brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom should I see
+      in the next field, coming along the footpath, but the lady who had made
+      herself so disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was rather a discord in
+      my feeling at that moment; perhaps it would have been so at any moment.
+      But I prepared myself to meet her in the strength of the good humour which
+      nature had just bestowed upon me. For I fear the failing will go with me
+      to the grave that I am very ready to be annoyed, even to the loss of my
+      temper, at the urgings of ignoble prudence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Miss Bowdler,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; she returned &ldquo;I am afraid you thought me
+      impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As such I take it,&rdquo; I answered with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
+      accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she
+      went on to repeat the offence by way of justification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all for Mrs. Walton&rsquo;s sake. You ought to consider her, Mr. Walton.
+      She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is likely to be an
+      invalid all her days&mdash;too much to take the trouble of a beggar&rsquo;s brat
+      as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear, no!&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;She is far too good to complain of anything.
+      That&rsquo;s just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I beg you won&rsquo;t speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear me! no. Not at all. I don&rsquo;t speak disrespectfully of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even amongst the class of which she comes, &lsquo;a beggar&rsquo;s brat&rsquo; would be
+      regarded as bad language.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, I&rsquo;m sure, Mr. Walton! If you <i>will</i> take offence&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
+      warning against offending the little ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure&mdash;let me hope in
+      conviction of sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two
+      Sundays. Then she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after
+      this, and I believe my wife was not sorry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my
+      wife&rsquo;s trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell;
+      but, before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something
+      like the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When I
+      went into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her about
+      it; but, indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got home. I
+      found her in Connie&rsquo;s room as I had expected. Now although we were never
+      in the habit of making mysteries of things in which there was no mystery,
+      and talked openly before our children, and the more openly the older they
+      grew, yet there were times when we wanted to have our talks quite alone,
+      especially when we had not made up our minds about something. So I asked
+      Ethelwyn to walk out with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I can&rsquo;t just this moment, husband,&rdquo; she answered. She was in
+      the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
+      without saying it aloud. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t just this moment, for there is no one at
+      liberty to stay with Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, never mind me, mamma,&rdquo; said Connie cheerfully. &ldquo;Theodora will take
+      care of me,&rdquo; and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her side
+      fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what I
+      meant. &ldquo;I will tell you afterwards,&rdquo; I said, laughing. &ldquo;Come along,
+      Ethel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything, or
+      your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won&rsquo;t want me long, will
+      you, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susan was the old nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her across
+      to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not shone out,
+      and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it had gladdened
+      mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his direct rays, had
+      melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do with other shadows,
+      without the mind knowing any more than the grass how the shadow departed.
+      There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about it before you knew
+      what I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see it only through my
+      eyes and words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler, and what she had said.
+      Ethel was very angry at her impertinence in speaking so to me. That was a
+      wife&rsquo;s feeling, you know, and perhaps excusable in the first impression of
+      the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems to think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that she was sent into the world to keep
+      other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her down, as
+      the maids say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much harm in her,&rdquo; I returned, which was easy
+      generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. &ldquo;Indeed, I am not sure that
+      we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I met her
+      that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with Theodora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still troubling yourself about that, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it should
+      be met,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Our measures must begin sometime, and when, who can
+      tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never begin at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at present&mdash;belonging
+      to humanity rather than the individual, as you would say&mdash;consisting
+      chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe, varied with
+      lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our measures than our
+      heads, aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there&rsquo;s no fear about your heart. I&rsquo;m
+      not quite so sure about your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn&rsquo;t matter, does it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for
+      no chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger than
+      its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head nearly,
+      though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business. There&rsquo;s
+      one thing we have both made up our minds about&mdash;that there is to be
+      no concealment with the child. God&rsquo;s fact must be known by her. It would
+      be cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to come upon
+      her with a terrible shock some day. She must know from the first, by
+      hearing it talked of&mdash;not by solemn and private communication&mdash;that
+      she came out of the shrubbery. That&rsquo;s settled, is it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. I see that to be the right way,&rdquo; responded Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are bound to do as well for her as for our own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the
+      facts being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
+      done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
+      that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding or
+      neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it would be
+      a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good for herself,
+      knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it not be kinder
+      to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for her to relieve the
+      gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our sakes&mdash;I hope we
+      are above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude which will be given
+      for it, and which is so often far beyond the worth of the thing done&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Alas! the gratitude of men
+  Hath oftener left me mourning,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      said Ethel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank you, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we must wish for gratitude for others&rsquo; sake, though we may be willing
+      to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as painful
+      as Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes us think
+      how much more we <i>might</i> have done; how lovely a thing it is to give
+      in return for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman must
+      be in whom a trifle awakes so much emotion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
+      doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
+      which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they can&rsquo;t
+      show the difference in their thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet,
+      the same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But to
+      return to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be
+      recognisant of whence she came, and how she had been brought thence, might
+      it not be better for her? Would it not be building on the truth? Would she
+      not be happier for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
+      something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair
+      to my place in the conference,&rdquo; said Ethel. &ldquo;In fact, you think you are
+      trying to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not say <i>wheedle</i>,
+      me into something. It&rsquo;s a good thing you have the harmlessness of the
+      dove, Harry, for you&rsquo;ve got the other thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that what
+      you call the cunning of the serpent&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wisdom, Harry, not cunning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But here
+      it is&mdash;bare and defenceless, only&mdash;let me warn you&mdash;with a
+      whole battery behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant
+      to Constance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for one who says so much about not thinking of the
+      morrow, you do look rather far forward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But just think: the child is about three months old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her. I
+      don&rsquo;t say that she is to commence her duties at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The training won&rsquo;t be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my love,
+      that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it. And
+      Turner does not give much hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Harry, Harry, don&rsquo;t say so! I can&rsquo;t bear it. To think of the darling
+      child lying like that all her life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven&rsquo;t
+      you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child&rsquo;s nature since her
+      accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying
+      there such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her
+      bonnets inside instead of outside her head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but she needn&rsquo;t have been like that. Wynnie never will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
+      But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid that
+      had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to toddle
+      after something to fetch it for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it be like making a slave of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack of
+      service is the ruin of humanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t train her then like one of our own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and
+      then make a servant of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget that the service would be part of her training from the first;
+      and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her that she
+      was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent her to take
+      care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have perfect
+      service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of service as
+      the essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not education that
+      unfits for service: it is the want of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served
+      me worse than the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they had
+      been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than
+      nine-tenths of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember
+      that they had never been taught service&mdash;the highest accomplishment
+      of all. To that everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there. But
+      for service of this high sort, the education must begin with the beginning
+      of the dawn of will. How often have you wished that you had servants who
+      would believe in you, and serve you with the same truth with which you
+      regarded them! The servants born in a man&rsquo;s house in the old times were
+      more like his children than his servants. Here is a chance for you, as it
+      were of a servant born in your own house. Connie loves the child: the
+      child will love Connie, and find her delight in serving her like a little
+      cherub. Not one of the maids to whom you have referred had ever been
+      taught to think service other than an unavoidable necessity, the end of
+      life being to serve yourself, not to serve others; and hence most of them
+      would escape from it by any marriage almost that they had a chance of
+      making. I don&rsquo;t say all servants are like that; but I do think that most
+      of them are. I know very well that most mistresses are as much to blame
+      for this result as the servants are; but we are not talking about them.
+      Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are forced to do it&mdash;a most
+      degrading condition to be in. But they would not be in any better
+      condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises work is in as
+      bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them free is to get them
+      to regard service not only as their duty, but as therefore honourable, and
+      besides and beyond this, in its own nature divine. In America, the very
+      name of servant is repudiated as inconsistent with human dignity. There is
+      <i>no</i> dignity but of service. How different the whole notion of
+      training is now from what it was in the middle ages! Service was
+      honourable then. No doubt we have made progress as a whole, but in some
+      things we have degenerated sadly. The first thing taught then was how to
+      serve. No man could rise to the honour of knighthood without service. A
+      nobleman&rsquo;s son even had to wait on his father, or to go into the family of
+      another nobleman, and wait upon him as a page, standing behind his chair
+      at dinner. This was an honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was
+      a necessary step to higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To
+      be set free from service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field;
+      to be a squire to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his
+      armour, to see that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap
+      strong; to ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one
+      attacked him, to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable
+      because it was harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And
+      what was this higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this
+      knighthood consist? The very word means simply <i>service</i>. And for
+      what was the knight thus waited upon by his squire? That he might be free
+      to do as he pleased? No, but that he might be free to be the servant of
+      all. By being a squire first, the servant of one, he learned to rise to
+      the higher rank, that of servant of all. His horse was tended, this armour
+      observed, his sword and spear and shield held to his hand, that he might
+      have no trouble looking after himself, but might be free, strong,
+      unwearied, to shoot like an arrow to the rescue of any and every one who
+      needed his ready aid. There was a grand heart of Christianity in that old
+      chivalry, notwithstanding all its abuses which must be no more laid to its
+      charge than the burning of Jews and heretics to Christianity. It was the
+      lack of it, not the presence of it that occasioned the abuses that
+      coexisted with it. Train our Theodora as a holy child-servant, and there
+      will be no need to restrain any impulse of wise affection from pouring
+      itself forth upon her. My firm belief is that we should then love and
+      honour her far more than if we made her just like one of our own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what if she should turn out utterly unfit for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! then would come an obstacle. But it will not come till that discovery
+      is made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if we should be going wrong all the time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, there comes the kind of care that never troubles me, and which I so
+      strongly object to. It won&rsquo;t hurt her anyhow. And we ought always to act
+      upon the ideal; it is the only safe ground of action. When that which
+      contradicts and resists, and would ruin our ideal, opposes us, then we
+      must take measures; but not till then can we take measures, or know what
+      measures it may be necessary to take. But the ideal itself is the only
+      thing worth striving after. Remember what our Lord himself said: &lsquo;Be ye
+      therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will think about it, Harry. There is time enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty. No time only not to think about it. The more you think about it
+      the better. If a thing be a good thing, the more you think about it the
+      better it will look; for its real nature will go on coming out and showing
+      itself. I cannot doubt that you will soon see how good it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We then went home. It was only two days after that my wife said to me&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am more than reconciled to your plan, husband. It seems to me
+      delightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reentered Connie&rsquo;s room, we found that her baby had just waked,
+      and she had managed to get one arm under her, and was trying to comfort
+      her, for she was crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. A SPRING CHAPTER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      More especially now in my old age, I find myself &ldquo;to a lingering motion
+      bound.&rdquo; I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
+      following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons. This
+      may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a spring
+      chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why I have
+      called my story &ldquo;The Seaboard Parish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things: one,
+      a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was a
+      pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so
+      could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
+      about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
+      and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
+      have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
+      seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
+      justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my greed
+      as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves and
+      all, with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my little
+      woman&mdash;a present from the outside world which she loved so much. And
+      as I went there dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror in
+      which, if I could find it, she would see it still more lovely than in a
+      direct looking at itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay in
+      fragments in the drawers and cabinets of my memory. And before I got home
+      I had found all the pieces and put them together; and then it was a lovely
+      little sonnet which a friend of mine had written and allowed me to see
+      many years before. I was in the way of writing verses myself; but I should
+      have been proud to have written this one. I never could have done that.
+      Yet, as far as I knew, it had never seen the light through the windows of
+      print. It was with some difficulty that I got it all right; but I thought
+      I had succeeded very nearly, if not absolutely, and I said it over and
+      over, till I was sure I should not spoil its music or its meaning by
+      halting in the delivery of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
+      been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
+      eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her two
+      hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said what I
+      have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to her.
+      Here it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend had
+      found the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he told me that there
+      was a tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;I know not what among the grass thou art,
+    Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
+    Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
+  To send thine image through them to the heart;
+  But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
+    And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
+    Thou growest up within me from that hour,
+  And through the snow I with the spring depart.
+
+  I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
+    Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
+  There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
+    But thou a life immortal dost begin,
+  Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
+  Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you say it again, papa?&rdquo; said Connie; &ldquo;I do not quite understand
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
+      write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
+      have brought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I may
+      read it quite easily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I promised, and repeated the poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand it a little better,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but the meaning is just like
+      the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give it me in
+      writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what else you
+      have brought me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the plant
+      and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only expressed
+      satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat down with
+      us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;She feels the
+      loss of her mother very much, poor thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old was she, papa?&rdquo; asked Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself, and
+      her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old lady, you
+      know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat on the
+      tablecloth. &lsquo;Mr. Shafton,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;was one of the old school; he would
+      never have done that. I don&rsquo;t know what the world is coming to.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
+      manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say, papa?&rdquo; they asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. &lsquo;O, it&rsquo;s all right now, my
+      dear,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;when you&rsquo;ve taken it up again. But I like good manners,
+      though I live in a cottage now.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she seen better days, then?&rdquo; asked Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a farmer&rsquo;s daughter, and a farmer&rsquo;s widow. I suppose the chief
+      difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead of
+      a good-sized farmhouse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is the story you have to tell us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m coming to that when you have done with your questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have done, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the
+      cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good
+      deal of her mother&rsquo;s sense of dignity about her,&mdash;but I want your
+      mother to hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, do make haste, Wynnie,&rdquo; said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
+      rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, &lsquo;Here it is, at
+      last!&rsquo; She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother&rsquo;s, and was holding it
+      in one hand, while with the other she drew from the pocket&mdash;what do
+      you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Various guesses were hazarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no&mdash;nothing like it. I know you <i>could</i> never guess.
+      Therefore it would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe.
+      The old woman of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was
+      wearing at the very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an
+      iron horseshoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she proceeded at once to do. &lsquo;Do you remember, sir,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;how
+      that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?&rsquo; &lsquo;I do
+      remember having observed it there,&rsquo; I answered; &lsquo;for once when I took
+      notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, &ldquo;I hope you are not afraid
+      of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?&rdquo; And she looked a little offended, and assured me
+      to the contrary.&rsquo; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; her daughter went on, &lsquo;about three months ago, I
+      missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it. And here it is!
+      I can hardly think she can have carried it about all that time without me
+      finding it out, but I don&rsquo;t know. Here it is, anyhow. Perhaps when she
+      felt death drawing nearer, she took it from somewhere where she had hidden
+      it, and put it in her pocket. If I had found it in time, I would have put
+      it in her coffin.&rsquo; &lsquo;But why?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;Do tell me the story about it, if
+      you know it.&rsquo; &lsquo;I know it quite well, for she told me all about it once. It
+      is the shoe of a favourite mare of my father&rsquo;s&mdash;one he used to ride
+      when he went courting my mother. My grandfather did not like to have a
+      young man coming about the house, and so he came after the old folks were
+      gone to bed. But he had a long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had
+      to go over some stones to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread
+      straw there, for it was under the window of my grandfather&rsquo;s room, that
+      her shoes mightn&rsquo;t make a noise and wake him. And that&rsquo;s one of the
+      shoes,&rsquo; she said, holding it up to me. &lsquo;When the mare died, my mother
+      begged my father for the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often
+      stood and patted her neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it was very naughty of her, wasn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;to do that
+      without her father&rsquo;s knowledge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
+      ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might find
+      that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn&rsquo;t a father,
+      we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a child. The
+      father&rsquo;s part has to come first, and teach the child&rsquo;s part. Now, if I
+      might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably it was much
+      softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning, and
+      unreasonable man&mdash;such that it scarcely ever came into the daughter&rsquo;s
+      head that she had anything else to do with regard to him than beware of
+      the consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The whole
+      thing, I allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to blame,
+      and far more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more likely from
+      the high character of the old dame, and the romantic way in which she
+      clung to the memory of the courtship. A true heart only does not grow old.
+      And I have, therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a happy one.
+      Besides, I daresay it was very much the custom of the country where they
+      were, and that makes some difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sure, papa, you wouldn&rsquo;t like any of us to go and do like
+      that,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly not, my dear,&rdquo; I answered, laughing. &ldquo;Nor have I any fear of
+      it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things to
+      trouble me if you did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an <i>if</i>&rdquo;
+       said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to you
+      as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all
+      possible for you to do such a thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too dreadful to talk about, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie; and the subject was
+      dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
+      danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
+      whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
+      wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If the
+      perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked into her
+      own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that she was the
+      doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if she had been
+      deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of the house. This
+      came of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general dissatisfaction
+      with herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith in the divine
+      sympathy, or sufficient confidence of final purification. She never spared
+      herself; and if she was a little severe on the younger ones sometimes, no
+      one was yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all their hard crusts
+      for them, always give them the best and take the worst for herself. If
+      there was any part in the dish that she was helping that she thought
+      nobody would like, she invariably assigned it to her own share. It looked
+      like a determined self-mortification sometimes; but that was not it. She
+      did not care for her own comfort enough to feel it any mortification;
+      though I observed that when her mother or I helped her to anything nice,
+      she ate it with as much relish as the youngest of the party. And her sweet
+      smile was always ready to meet the least kindness that was offered her.
+      Her obedience was perfect, and had been so for very many years, as far as
+      we could see. Indeed, not since she was the merest child had there been
+      any contest between us. Now, of course, there was no demand of obedience:
+      she was simply the best earthly friend that her father and mother had. It
+      often caused me some passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as
+      well as her devotion to her home, might cause her great suffering some
+      day; but when those thoughts came, I just gave her to God to take care of.
+      Her mother sometimes said to her that she would make an excellent wife for
+      a poor man. She would brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a
+      compliment of the best sort. And she did not forget it, as the sequel will
+      show. She would choose to sit with one candle lit when there were two on
+      the table, wasting her eyes to save the candles. &ldquo;Which will you have for
+      dinner to-day, papa, roast beef or boiled?&rdquo; she asked me once, when her
+      mother was too unwell to attend to the housekeeping. And when I replied
+      that I would have whichever she liked best&mdash;&ldquo;The boiled beef lasts
+      longest, I think,&rdquo; she said. Yet she was not only as liberal and kind as
+      any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer, and perhaps more important
+      for the final formation of a character, carefully just to everyone with
+      whom she had any dealings. Her sense of law was very strong. Law with her
+      was something absolute, and not to be questioned. In her childhood there
+      was one lady to whom for years she showed a decided aversion, and we could
+      not understand it, for it was the most inoffensive Miss Boulderstone. When
+      she was nearly grown up, one of us happening to allude to the fact, she
+      volunteered an explanation. Miss Boulderstone had happened to call one day
+      when Wynnie, then between three and four was in disgrace&mdash;<i>in the
+      corner</i>, in fact. Miss Boulderstone interceded for her; and this was
+      the whole front of her offending.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>was</i> so angry!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;&lsquo;As if my papa did not know best when
+      I ought to come out of the corner!&rsquo; I said to myself. And I couldn&rsquo;t bear
+      her for ever so long after that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
+      favourite before she died. She left Wynnie&mdash;for she and her brother
+      were the last of their race&mdash;a death&rsquo;s-head watch, which had been in
+      the family she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen
+      Elizabeth&rsquo;s time. I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as well
+      repaired as its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since, though not
+      with the greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an old
+      death&rsquo;s-head, the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears it to
+      this day, and wouldn&rsquo;t part with it for the best watch in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more able
+      to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as yet my
+      story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I will fulfil
+      them, and I shall be content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old couple,
+      for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they were not born
+      old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a decaying family that
+      had not left the land on which they were born for a great many generations&mdash;though
+      the old people had not, of what the French call sentiments, one between
+      them, they were yet capable of a stronger and, I had almost said, more
+      romantic attachment, than many couples who have married from love; for the
+      lady&rsquo;s sole trouble in dying was what her brother <i>would</i> do without
+      her; and from the day of her death, he grew more and more dull and
+      seemingly stupid. Nothing gave him any pleasure but having Wynnie to
+      dinner with him. I knew that it must be very dull for her, but she went
+      often, and I never heard her complain of it, though she certainly did look
+      fagged&mdash;not <i>bored</i>, observe, but fagged&mdash;showing that she
+      had been exerting herself to meet the difficulties of the situation. When
+      the good man died, we found that he had left all his money in my hands, in
+      trust for the poor of the parish, to be applied in any way I thought best.
+      This involved me in much perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to
+      make money useful to the poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property my
+      wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private fortune,
+      and the income of several years (not my income from the church, it may be
+      as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the encumbrances. But even
+      then there remained much to be done, if I would be the good steward that
+      was not to be ashamed at his Lord&rsquo;s coming. First of all there were many
+      cottages to be built for the labourers on the estate. If the farmers would
+      not, or could not, help, I must do it; for to provide decent dwellings for
+      them, was clearly one of the divine conditions in the righteous tenure of
+      property, whatever the human might be; for it was not for myself alone, or
+      for myself chiefly, that this property was given to me; it was for those
+      who lived upon it. Therefore I laid out what money I could, not only in
+      getting all the land clearly in its right relation to its owner, but in
+      doing the best I could for those attached to it who could not help
+      themselves. And when I hint to my reader that I had some conscience in
+      paying my curate, though, as they had no children, they did not require so
+      much as I should otherwise have felt compelled to give them, he will
+      easily see that as my family grew up I could not have so much to give away
+      of my own as I should have liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr.
+      Boulderstone was the more acceptable to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One word more ere I finish this chapter.&mdash;I should not like my
+      friends to think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because
+      I have made no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the
+      first time, because of my daughter&rsquo;s illness. It was much easier to give
+      them now than when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty of room
+      in the old hall. But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar gathering
+      there every Easter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not mentioned
+      him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie&rsquo;s accident. The
+      fact was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him, a long holiday.
+      Martha had had several disappointing illnesses, and her general health had
+      suffered so much in consequence that there was even some fear of her
+      lungs, and a winter in the south of France had been strongly recommended.
+      Upon this I came in with more than a recommendation, and insisted that
+      they should go. They had started in the beginning of October, and had not
+      returned up to the time of which I am now about to write&mdash;somewhere
+      in the beginning of the month of April. But my sister was now almost quite
+      well, and I was not sorry to think that I should soon have a little more
+      leisure for such small literary pursuits as I delighted in&mdash;to my own
+      enrichment, and consequently to the good of my parishioners and friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was, then, in the beginning of April that I received one morning an
+      epistle from an old college friend of mine, with whom I had renewed my
+      acquaintance of late, through the pleasure which he was kind enough to say
+      he had derived from reading a little book of mine upon the relation of the
+      mind of St. Paul to the gospel story. His name was Shepherd&mdash;a good
+      name for a clergyman. In his case both Christian name and patronymic might
+      remind him well of his duty. David Shepherd ought to be a good clergyman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find
+      my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is Shepherd,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to
+      give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as he
+      understands I have a curate as good as myself&mdash;that is what the old
+      fellow says&mdash;it might not suit me to take my family to his place for
+      the summer. He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all
+      good. His house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I
+      should not like to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the
+      letter for yourself, and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back so
+      fresh and active that it will be no oppression to him to take the whole of
+      the duty here. I will run and ask Turner whether it would be safe to move
+      Connie, and whether the sea-air would be good for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would think you were only twenty, husband&mdash;you make up your mind
+      so quickly, and are in such a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many years
+      since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once more, in
+      its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing between us and
+      America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited me so that my
+      wife&rsquo;s reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary to bring me to my
+      usually quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old grannie&rsquo;s pardon,
+      and set off to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her to read and ponder
+      Shepherd&rsquo;s letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think, Turner?&rdquo; I said, and told him the case. He looked
+      rather grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When would you think of going?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the beginning of June.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nearly two months,&rdquo; he said, thoughtfully. &ldquo;And Miss Connie was not the
+      worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The better, I do think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has she had any increase of pain since?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She could make it by easy stages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such a
+      thorough change in every way&mdash;if only it could be managed without
+      fatigue and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between
+      this and that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner you
+      get her out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit for
+      that yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid&rsquo;s
+      instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than
+      those of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to
+      anything involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must
+      not judge that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two
+      patients, who considered themselves <i>bedlars</i>, as you will find the
+      common people in the part you are going to, call them&mdash;bedridden,
+      that is. One of them I persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although
+      her sense of inability was anything but feigned, and she will be a
+      sufferer to the end of her days, yet she goes about the house without much
+      inconvenience, and I suspect is not only physically but morally the better
+      for it. The other would not consent to try, and I believe lies there
+      still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The will has more to do with most things than people generally suppose,&rdquo;
+       I said. &ldquo;Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we resolve to make
+      the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot
+      tell beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a
+      respecter of persons, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned to my wife. She was in Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what do you think of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of Shepherd&rsquo;s letter, of course,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been ordering the dinner since, Harry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dinner!&rdquo; I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife
+      was only teasing me. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the dinner to the Atlantic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?&rdquo; said Connie, from whose roguish
+      eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and that <i>she</i>
+      was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters of
+      the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the
+      Universal Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa!&rdquo; laughed Connie; &ldquo;you know what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you really mean, papa,&rdquo; she said &ldquo;that you will take me to the
+      Atlantic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as
+      possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan,
+      which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling! You have hurt yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But I
+      soon found that I hadn&rsquo;t any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One
+      always knows where to find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very bewitching
+      whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;I mean to try whether my dolly won&rsquo;t bear moving. One
+      thing is clear, I can&rsquo;t go without it. Do you think you could be got on
+      the sofa to-day without hurting you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet. Mamma,
+      do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the
+      conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the
+      lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips,
+      and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face
+      showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had had
+      to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a sharp sight you must have, child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are. Neither
+      did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets in
+      my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t say so!&rdquo; I exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only making
+      a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Isn&rsquo;t it a wonderful fact?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank God
+      for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning to
+      recover a little. But we mustn&rsquo;t make too much of it, lest I should be
+      mistaken,&rdquo; I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in
+      her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both silent,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to think of ever walking out with you again, and
+      feeling the wind on my face! I can hardly believe it possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so mild, I think you might have half that pleasure at once,&rdquo; I
+      answered..
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I opened the window, let the spring air gently move her hair for one
+      moment, and then shut it again. Connie breathed deep, and said after a
+      little pause,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea how delightful it was. To think that I have been in the way
+      of breathing that every moment for so many years and never thought about
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not always just like that in this climate. But I ought not to have
+      made that remark when I wanted to make this other: that I suspect we shall
+      find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists chiefly in the
+      closing of the human eyes; that at least far more of it than people think
+      remains about us still, only we are so filled with foolish desires and
+      evil cares, that we cannot see or hear, cannot even smell or taste the
+      pleasant things round about us. We have need to pray in regard to the
+      right receiving of the things of the senses even, &lsquo;Lord, open thou our
+      hearts to understand thy word;&rsquo; for each of these things is as certainly a
+      word of God as Jesus is the Word of God. He has made nothing in vain. All
+      is for our teaching. Shall I tell you what such a breath of fresh air
+      makes me think of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It comes to me,&rdquo; said Connie, &ldquo;like forgiveness when I was a little girl
+      and was naughty. I used to feel just like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the same kind of thing I feel,&rdquo; I said&mdash;&ldquo;as if life from the
+      Spirit of God were coming into my soul: I think of the wind that bloweth
+      where it listeth. Wind and spirit are the same word in the Greek; and the
+      Latin word <i>spirit</i> comes even nearer to what we are saying, for it
+      is the wind as <i>breathed</i>. And now, Connie, I will tell you&mdash;and
+      you will see how I am growing able to talk to you like quite an old friend&mdash;what
+      put me in such a delight with Mr. Shepherd&rsquo;s letter and so exposed me to
+      be teased by mamma and you. As I read it, there rose up before me a vision
+      of one sight of the sea which I had when I was a young man, long before I
+      saw your mamma. I had gone out for a walk along some high downs. But I
+      ought to tell you that I had been working rather hard at Cambridge, and
+      the life seemed to be all gone out of me. Though my holidays had come,
+      they did not feel quite like holidays&mdash;not as holidays used to feel
+      when I was a boy. Even when walking along those downs with the scents of
+      sixteen grasses or so in my brain, like a melody with the odour of the
+      earth for the accompaniment upon which it floated, and with just enough of
+      wind to stir them up and set them in motion, I could not feel at all. I
+      remembered something of what I had used to feel in such places, but
+      instead of believing in that, I doubted now whether it had not been all a
+      trick that I played myself&mdash;a fancied pleasure only. I was walking
+      along, then, with the sea behind me. It was a warm, cloudy day&mdash;I had
+      had no sunshine since I came out. All at once I turned&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know
+      why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had seen it last, not all gray.
+      It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all over with drops, pools, and lakes
+      of light, of all shades of depth, from a light shimmer of tremulous gray,
+      through a half light that turned the prevailing lead colour into
+      translucent green that seemed to grow out of its depths&mdash;through
+      this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and deepening till my very soul
+      was stung by the triumph of the intensity of its molten silver. There was
+      no sun upon me. But there were breaks in the clouds over the sea, through
+      which, the air being filled with vapour, I could see the long lines of the
+      sun-rays descending on the waters like rain&mdash;so like a rain of light
+      that the water seemed to plash up in light under their fall. I questioned
+      the past no more; the present seized upon me, and I knew that the past was
+      true, and that nature was more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I
+      could grasp. It was a lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the
+      God that made the glory and my soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While I spoke Connie&rsquo;s tears had been flowing quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mamma and I were making fun while you were seeing such things as
+      those!&rdquo; she said pitifully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t hurt them one bit, my darling&mdash;neither mamma nor you. If
+      I had been the least cross about it, as I should have been when I was as
+      young as at the time of which I was thinking, that would have ruined the
+      vision entirely. But your merriment only made me enjoy it more. And, my
+      Connie, I hope you will see the Atlantic before long; and if one vision
+      should come as brilliant as that, we shall be fortunate indeed, if we went
+      all the way to the west to see that only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa! I dare hardly think of it&mdash;it is too delightful. But do you
+      think we shall really go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do. Here comes your mamma&mdash;I am going to say to Shepherd, my dear,
+      that I will take his parish in hand, and if I cannot, after all, go
+      myself, will find some one, so that he need be in no anxiety from the
+      uncertainty which must hang over our movements even till the experiment
+      itself is made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, husband. I am quite satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as I watched Connie, I saw that hope and expectation did much to
+      prepare her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. CONNIE&rsquo;S DREAM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Turner, being a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to invent,
+      and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of litter,
+      which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our own carriage
+      for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without disturbing her, and
+      placed in a similar manner in the railway carriage. He had laid Connie
+      repeatedly upon it before he was satisfied that the arrangement of the
+      springs, &amp;c., was successful. But at length she declared that it was
+      perfect, and that she would not mind being carried across the Arabian
+      desert on a camel&rsquo;s back with that under her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the season advanced, she continued to improve. I shall never forget the
+      first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an infant
+      coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of a child of
+      eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received the new
+      impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much for her at
+      first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a wild thing
+      on a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more than she
+      could bear. After she was laid down she closed her eyes, and the smile
+      that flickered about her mouth was of a sort that harmonised entirely with
+      the two great tears that crept softly out from under her eyelids, and
+      sank, rather than ran, down her cheeks. She lay so that she faced a rich
+      tract of gently receding upland, plentifully wooded to the horizon&rsquo;s edge,
+      and through the wood peeped the white and red houses of a little hamlet,
+      with the square tower of its church just rising above the trees. A kind of
+      frame was made to the whole picture by the nearer trees of our own woods,
+      through an opening in which, evidently made or left for its sake, the
+      distant prospect was visible. It was a morning in early summer, when the
+      leaves were not quite full-grown but almost, and their green was shining
+      and pure as the blue of the sky, when the air had no touch of bitterness
+      or of lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and yet filled the lungs with
+      the reviving as of a draught of cold water. We had fastened the carriage
+      umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade her perfectly without
+      obscuring her prospect; and behind this we all crept, leaving her to come
+      to herself without being looked at, for emotion is a shy and sacred thing
+      and should be tenderly hidden by those who are near. The bees kept very <i>beesy</i>
+      all about us. To see one huge fellow, as big as three ordinary ones with
+      pieces of red and yellow about him, as if he were the beadle of all
+      bee-dom, and overgrown in consequence&mdash;to see him, I say, down in a
+      little tuft of white clover, rolling about in it, hardly able to move for
+      fatness, yet bumming away as if his business was to express the delight of
+      the whole creation&mdash;was a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so
+      light that they seemed to tumble up into the air, and get down again with
+      difficulty. They bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of
+      purpose. &ldquo;If I could but see once, for an hour, into the mind of a
+      butterfly,&rdquo; I thought, &ldquo;it would be to me worth all the natural history I
+      ever read. If I could but see why he changes his mind so often and so
+      suddenly&mdash;what he saw about that flower to make him seek it&mdash;then
+      why, on a nearer approach, he should decline further acquaintance with it,
+      and go rocking away through the air, to do the same fifty times over again&mdash;it
+      would give me an insight into all animal and vegetable life that ages of
+      study could not bring me up to.&rdquo; I was thinking all this behind my
+      daughter&rsquo;s umbrella, while a lark, whose body had melted quite away in the
+      heavenly spaces, was scattering bright beads of ringing melody straight
+      down upon our heads; while a cock was crowing like a clarion from the
+      home-farm, as if in defiance of the golden glitter of his silent brother
+      on the roof of the stable; while a little stream that scampered down the
+      same slope as the lawn lay upon, from a well in the stable-yard, mingled
+      its sweet undertone of contentment with the jubilation of the lark and the
+      business-like hum of the bees; and while white clouds floated in the
+      majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the heavens. The air was so
+      full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the crude substance that
+      God might take to make babies&rsquo; souls of&mdash;only the very simile smells
+      of materialism, and therefore I do not like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; said Connie at length, and I was beside her in a moment. Her face
+      looked almost glorified with delight: there was a hush of that awe upon it
+      which is perhaps one of the deepest kinds of delight. She put out her thin
+      white hand, took hold of a button of my coat, drew me down towards her,
+      and said in a whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think God is here, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do, my darling,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t <i>he</i> enjoy this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear. He wouldn&rsquo;t make us enjoy it if he did not enjoy it. It
+      would be to deceive us to make us glad and blessed, while our Father did
+      not care about it, or how it came to us. At least it would amount to
+      making us no longer his children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad you think so. I do. And I shall enjoy it so much more now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could hardly finish her sentence, but burst out sobbing so that I was
+      afraid she would hurt herself. I saw, however, that it was best to leave
+      her to quiet herself, and motioned to the rest to keep back and let her
+      recover as she could. The emotion passed off in a summer shower, and when
+      I went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet landscape
+      after the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle game of her
+      own past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry&mdash;merrier,
+      notwithstanding her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at that comical sparrow,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Look how he cocks his head
+      first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is he
+      bumptious, or what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys; and I
+      suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
+      understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to school,&rdquo;
+       said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the sparrows,&rdquo;
+       I answered. &ldquo;Look at them now,&rdquo; I exclaimed, as a little crowd of them
+      suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment before, and exploded
+      in objurgation and general unintelligible excitement. After some obscure
+      fluttering of wings and pecking, they all vanished except two, which
+      walked about in a dignified manner, trying apparently to seem quite
+      unconscious each of the other&rsquo;s presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it was a political meeting of some sort,&rdquo; said Connie, laughing
+      merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they have this advantage over us,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;that they get
+      through their business whatever it may be, with considerably greater
+      expedition than we get through ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A short silence followed, during which Connie lay contemplating
+      everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think we girls are like, then, papa?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say you don&rsquo;t know, now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to know something more about you than I do about schoolboys. And
+      I think I do know a little about girls&mdash;not much though. They puzzle
+      me a good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t help doing that, papa,&rdquo; interrupted Connie, adding with her old
+      roguishness, &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t pass yourself off for very knowing for that. By
+      the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us,
+      passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at best&mdash;a
+      creature you can&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, Connie, I think I understand you almost as well as
+      mamma. But there isn&rsquo;t so much to understand yet, you know, as there will
+      be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her merriment returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me what girls are like, then, or I shall sulk all day because you
+      say there isn&rsquo;t so much in me as in mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think, if the boys are like sparrows, the girls are like
+      swallows. Did you ever watch them before rain, Connie, skimming about over
+      the lawn as if it were water, low towards its surface, but never
+      alighting? You never see them grubbing after worms. Nothing less than
+      things with wings like themselves will satisfy them. They will be obliged
+      to the earth only for a little mud to build themselves nests with. For the
+      rest, they live in the air, and on the creatures of the air. And then,
+      when they fancy the air begins to be uncivil, sending little shoots of
+      cold through their warm feathers, they vanish. They won&rsquo;t stand it.
+      They&rsquo;re off to a warmer climate, and you never know till you find they&rsquo;re
+      not there any more. There, Connie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, papa, whether you are making game of us or not. If you are
+      not, then I wish all you say were quite true of us. If you are then I
+      think it is not quite like you to be satirical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no believer in satire, Connie. And I didn&rsquo;t mean any. The swallows
+      are lovely creatures, and there would be no harm if the girls were a
+      little steadier than the swallows. Further satire than that I am innocent
+      of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind that much, papa. Only I&rsquo;m steady enough, and no thanks to me
+      for it,&rdquo; she added with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all for the sake of your wings that you&rsquo;re kept in
+      your nest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not stay out long this first day, for the life the air gave her
+      soon tired her weak body. But the next morning she was brighter and
+      better, and longing to get up and go out again. When she was once more
+      laid on her couch on the lawn, in the midst of the world of light and
+      busy-ness, in which the light was the busiest of all, she said to me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, I had such a strange dream last night: shall I tell it you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, my dear. I am very fond of dreams that have any sense in
+      them&mdash;or even of any that have good nonsense in them. I woke this
+      morning, saying to myself, &lsquo;Dante, the poet, must have been a respectable
+      man, for he was permitted by the council of Florence to carry the Nicene
+      Creed and the Multiplication Table in his coat of arms.&rsquo; Now tell me your
+      dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie laughed. All the household tried to make Connie laugh, and
+      generally succeeded. It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was
+      sure to be recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in
+      making Connie laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine wasn&rsquo;t a dream to make me laugh. It was too dreadful at first, and
+      too delightful afterwards. I suppose it was getting out for the first time
+      yesterday that made me dream it. I thought I was lying quite still,
+      without breathing even, with my hands straight down by my sides and my
+      eyes closed. I did not choose to open them, for I knew that if I did I
+      should see nothing but the inside of the lid of my coffin. I did not mind
+      it much at first, for I was very quiet, and not uncomfortable. Everything
+      was as silent as it should be, for I was ten feet and a half under the
+      surface of the earth in the churchyard. Old Sogers was not far from me on
+      one side, and that was a comfort; only there was a thick wall of earth
+      between. But as the time went on, I began to get uncomfortable. I could
+      not help thinking how long I should have to wait for the resurrection.
+      Somehow I had forgotten all that you teach us about that. Perhaps it was a
+      punishment&mdash;the dream&mdash;for forgetting it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silly child! Your dream is far better than your reflections.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll go on with my dream. I lay a long time till I got very tired,
+      and wanted to get up, O, so much! But still I lay, and although I tried, I
+      could not move hand or foot. At last I burst out crying. I was ashamed of
+      crying in my coffin, but I couldn&rsquo;t bear it any longer. I thought I was
+      quite disgraced, for everybody was expected to be perfectly quiet and
+      patient down there. But the moment I began to cry, I heard a sound. And
+      when I listened it was the sound of spades and pickaxes. It went on and
+      on, and came nearer and nearer. And then&mdash;it was so strange&mdash;I
+      was dreadfully frightened at the idea of the light and the wind, and of
+      the people seeing me in my coffin and my night-dress, and tried to
+      persuade myself that it was somebody else they were digging for, or that
+      they were only going to lay another coffin over mine. And I thought that
+      if it was you, papa, I shouldn&rsquo;t mind how long I lay there, for I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word to each
+      other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer, and at last
+      a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through, upon the lid of
+      the coffin, right over my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Here she is, poor thing!&rsquo; I heard a sweet voice say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;m so glad we&rsquo;ve found her,&rsquo; said another voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;She couldn&rsquo;t bear it any longer,&rsquo; said a third more pitiful voice than
+      either of the others. &lsquo;I heard her first,&rsquo; it went on. &lsquo;I was away up in
+      Orion, when I thought I heard a woman crying that oughtn&rsquo;t to be crying.
+      And I stopped and listened. And I heard her again. Then I knew that it was
+      one of the buried ones, and that she had been buried long enough, and was
+      ready for the resurrection. So as any business can wait except that, I
+      flew here and there till I fell in with the rest of you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, papa, that this must have been because of what you were saying
+      the other evening about the mysticism of St. Paul; that while he defended
+      with all his might the actual resurrection of Christ and the resurrection
+      of those he came to save, he used it as meaning something more yet, as a
+      symbol for our coming out of the death of sin into the life of truth.
+      Isn&rsquo;t that right, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear; I believe so. But I want to hear your dream first, and then
+      your way of accounting for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t much more of it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be the best of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I allow that. Well, while they spoke&mdash;it was a wonderfully
+      clear and connected dream: I never had one like it for that, or for
+      anything else&mdash;they were clearing away the earth and stones from the
+      top of my coffin. And I lay trembling and expecting to be looked at, like
+      a thing in a box as I was, every moment. But they lifted me, coffin and
+      all, out of the grave, for I felt the motion of it up. Then they set it
+      down, and I heard them taking the lid off. But after the lid was off, it
+      did not seem to make much difference to me. I could not open my eyes. I
+      saw no light, and felt no wind blowing upon me. But I heard whispering
+      about me. Then I felt warm, soft hands washing my face, and then I felt
+      wafts of wind coming on my face, and thought they came from the waving of
+      wings. And when they had washed my eyes, the air came upon them so sweet
+      and cool! and I opened them, I thought, and here I was lying on this
+      couch, with butterflies and bees flitting and buzzing about me, the brook
+      singing somewhere near me, and a lark up in the sky. But there were no
+      angels&mdash;only plenty of light and wind and living creatures. And I
+      don&rsquo;t think I ever knew before what happiness meant. Wasn&rsquo;t it a
+      resurrection, papa, to come out of the grave into such a world as this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed it was, my darling&mdash;and a very beautiful and true dream.
+      There is no need for me to moralise it to you, for you have done so for
+      yourself already. But not only do I think that the coming out of sin into
+      goodness, out of unbelief into faith in God, is like your dream; but I do
+      expect that no dream of such delight can come up to the sense of fresh
+      life and being that we shall have when we get on the higher body after
+      this one won&rsquo;t serve our purpose any longer, and is worn out and cast
+      aside. The very ability of the mind, whether of itself, or by some
+      inspiration of the Almighty, to dream such things, is a proof of our
+      capacity for such things, a proof, I think, that for such things we were
+      made. Here comes in the chance for faith in God&mdash;the confidence in
+      his being and perfection that he would not have made us capable without
+      meaning to fill that capacity. If he is able to make us capable, that is
+      the harder half done already. The other he can easily do. And if he is
+      love he will do it. You should thank God for that dream, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid to do that, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is as much as to fear that there is one place to which David might
+      have fled, where God would not find him&mdash;the most terrible of all
+      thoughts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you mean, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dreamland, my dear. If it is right to thank God for a beautiful thought&mdash;I
+      mean a thought of strength and grace giving you fresh life and hope&mdash;why
+      should you be less bold to thank him when such thoughts arise in plainer
+      shape&mdash;take such vivid forms to your mind that they seem to come
+      through the doors of the eyes into the vestibule of the brain, and thence
+      into the inner chambers of the soul?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. THE JOURNEY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
+      journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
+      prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the sojourn.
+      First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer,
+      consisting, as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground
+      ginger, and cold water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge,
+      exhausted and renewed about twelve times before the day of departure
+      arrived; and when at last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered
+      with dismay that they had drunk the last drop two days before, and there
+      was none in stock. Then there was a wonderful and more successful hoarding
+      of marbles, of a variety so great that my memory refuses to bear the names
+      of the different kinds, which, I think, must have greatly increased since
+      the time when I too was a boy, when some marbles&mdash;one of real, white
+      marble with red veins especially&mdash;produced in my mind something of
+      the delight that a work of art produces now. These were carefully
+      deposited in one of the many divisions of a huge old hair-trunk, which
+      they had got their uncle Weir, who could use his father&rsquo;s tools with
+      pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them with a multiplicity of
+      boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and slides, that was quite
+      bewildering. In this same box was stowed also a quantity of hair, the
+      gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the premises. This was for making
+      fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on the part of Harry that it was to be
+      employed in catching whales and crocodiles. Then all their favourite books
+      were stowed away in the same chest, in especial a packet of a dozen penny
+      books, of which I think I could give a complete list now. For one
+      afternoon as I searched about in the lumber-room after a set of old
+      library steps, which I wanted to get repaired, I came upon the chest, and
+      opening it, discovered my boys&rsquo; hoard, and in it this packet of books. I
+      sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through, from Jack the
+      Giant-killer down to Hop o&rsquo; my Thumb without rising, and this in the broad
+      daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the rose-coloured
+      silken seat, richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair with three
+      golden legs. Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say the names
+      of them, over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding now that
+      they had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something in
+      potency, they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these, and
+      Charlie not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding, in
+      virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
+      sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
+      string; a rabbit&rsquo;s skin; a Noah&rsquo;s ark; an American clock, that refused to
+      go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of lead-soldiers,
+      and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt ball having an
+      eagle of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this
+      magazine could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to
+      follow us to the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent on
+      before us, but the boys had intended the precious box to go with
+      themselves. Knowing well, however, how little they would miss it, and with
+      what shouts of south-sea discovery they would greet the forgotten treasure
+      when they returned, I insisted on the lumbering article being left in
+      peace. So that, as man goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever he may
+      have accumulated before the fatal moment, they had to set off for the far
+      country without chest or ginger-beer&mdash;not therefore altogether so
+      desolate and unprovided for as they imagined. The abandoned treasure was
+      forgotten the moment the few tears it had occasioned were wiped away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The sun
+      shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows were
+      twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the dear
+      old house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to leave the swallows behind,&rdquo; said Wynnie, as she stepped into
+      the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already there, eager
+      and strong-hearted for the journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
+      forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed to
+      enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of the
+      meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we met
+      bravely diligent at their day&rsquo;s work, as they trudged along the road with
+      wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I could see
+      her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its expression
+      that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a brown-faced gipsy
+      family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the passing carriage. A
+      fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under the convoy of the
+      parent duck, next attracted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look; look. Isn&rsquo;t that delicious?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I should like it though,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shouldn&rsquo;t you like, Wynnie?&rdquo; asked her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They feel it with their legs and their webby toes,&rdquo; said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is some consolation,&rdquo; answered Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
+      winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie&rsquo;s illness had not
+      in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies&mdash;had
+      rather, as it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and
+      sympathetic, so that the things around her could enter her soul even more
+      easily than before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in reality
+      brought her into closer contact with the movements of all vitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station. Everybody
+      almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for Connie&rsquo;s sake
+      chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had forgotten to say
+      to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak to him. The same
+      instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie was the centre of
+      all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother or sister. Had she
+      been a martyr who had stood the test and received her aureole, she could
+      hardly have been more regarded. The common use of the word martyr is a
+      curious instance of how words get degraded. The sufferings involved in
+      martyrdom, and not the pure will giving occasion to that suffering, is
+      fixed upon by the common mind as the martyrdom. The witness-bearing is
+      lost sight of, except we can suppose that &ldquo;a martyr to the toothache&rdquo;
+       means a witness of the fact of the toothache and its tortures. But while
+      <i>martyrdom</i> really means a bearing for the sake of the truth, yet
+      there is a way in which any suffering, even that we have brought upon
+      ourselves, may become martyrdom. When it is so borne that the sufferer
+      therein bears witness to the presence and fatherhood of God, in quiet,
+      hopeful submission to his will, in gentle endurance, and that effort after
+      cheerfulness which is not seldom to be seen where the effort is hardest to
+      make; more than all, perhaps, and rarest of all, when it is accepted as
+      the just and merciful consequence of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly,
+      and with righteous shame, as the cleansing of the Father&rsquo;s hand,
+      indicating that repentance unto life which lifts the sinner out of his
+      sins, and makes him such that the holiest men of old would talk to him
+      with gladness and respect, then indeed it may be called a martyrdom. This
+      latter could not be Connie&rsquo;s case, but the former was hers, and so far she
+      might be called a martyr, even as the old women of the village designated
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
+      post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
+      abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
+      exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
+      trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
+      do with Miss Connie&rsquo;s baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so
+      long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant,
+      who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the
+      establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to
+      everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the
+      wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could
+      not possibly get on without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise beside
+      the driver from the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than otherwise at
+      the noise of the youngsters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Marshmallows,&rdquo; they were shouting at the top of their voices,
+      as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
+      wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody&rsquo;s ears on the
+      open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
+      condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that there
+      was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them as much
+      liberty as could be afforded them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now in
+      wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany us a
+      good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us in
+      moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
+      skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and only
+      at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times on the
+      way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the streets
+      delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the children and
+      servants, all but my wife&rsquo;s maid, on before us, under the charge of
+      Walter. This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped only the
+      night, for Connie found herself quite able to go on the next morning. Here
+      Turner left us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked a little out of
+      spirits after his departure, but soon recovered herself. The next night we
+      spent at a small town on the borders of Devonshire, which was the limit of
+      our railway travelling. Here we remained for another whole day, for the
+      remnant of the journey across part of Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore
+      must be posted, and was a good five hours&rsquo; work. We started about eleven
+      o&rsquo;clock, full of spirits at the thought that we had all but accomplished
+      the only part of the undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness.
+      Connie was quite merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open
+      carriage with a hood. Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the
+      maid in the rumble, and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we
+      had four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and
+      thankfulness, who would not be happy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I
+      altogether understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment has
+      something to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion, the
+      change of scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the next
+      turn in the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the
+      pine-trees especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the
+      harness as you pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses, the
+      glitter and the shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy faces, the
+      scent of burning wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a thousand
+      other things combine to make such a journey delightful. But I believe it
+      needs something more than this&mdash;something even closer to the human
+      life&mdash;to account for the pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect it
+      is its living symbolism; the hidden relations which it bears to the
+      eternal soul in its aspirations and longings&mdash;ever following after,
+      ever attaining, never satisfied. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. A
+      man, you will allow, perhaps, may be content although he is not and cannot
+      be happy: I feel inclined to turn all this the other way, saying that a
+      man ought always to be happy, never to be content. You will see I do not
+      say <i>contented</i>; I say <i>content</i>. Here comes in his faith: his
+      life is hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded. All things are
+      his, to become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as his being
+      enlarges to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary
+      incompleteness falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God&rsquo;s
+      idea he is complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God
+      the Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
+      gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch as
+      he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I leave
+      it, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt I
+      was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with
+      full confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man
+      be happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the
+      feeble knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill?
+      True, the fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp of
+      life; but if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth; if
+      less of fire, more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light.
+      Verily, youth is good, but old age is better&mdash;to the man who forsakes
+      not his youth when his youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature
+      do not depend upon youth or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose
+      meekness inherits the earth. The smell of that field of beans gives me
+      more delight now than ever it could have given me when I was a youth. And
+      if I ask myself why I find it is simply because I have more faith now than
+      I had then. It came to me then as an accident of nature&mdash;a passing
+      pleasure flung to me only as the dogs&rsquo; share of the crumbs. Now I believe
+      that God <i>means</i> that odour of the bean-field; that when Jesus
+      smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in Galilee, he thought of his
+      Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if I should never smell it
+      again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age should make me deaf as
+      the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope you are too, or will
+      be before you have done with this same beautiful mystical life of ours.
+      More and more nature becomes to me one of God&rsquo;s books of poetry&mdash;not
+      his grandest&mdash;that is history&mdash;but his loveliest, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy? I
+      will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
+      describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
+      countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in
+      a word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn&rsquo;s face was bright with the
+      brightness of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a
+      little weary, lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping
+      towards the earth. Wynnie&rsquo;s face was bright with the brightness of the
+      morning star, ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that
+      brightens at the sun&rsquo;s approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its
+      light, and somewhat sad because severe. Connie&rsquo;s face was bright with the
+      brightness of a lake in the rosy evening, the sound of the river flowing
+      in and the sound of the river flowing forth just audible, but itself
+      still, and content to be still and mirror the sunset. Dora&rsquo;s was bright
+      with the brightness of a marigold that follows the sun without knowing it;
+      and Eliza&rsquo;s was bright with the brightness of a half-blown cabbage rose,
+      radiating good-humour. This last is not a good simile, but I cannot find a
+      better. I confess failure, and go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
+      carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
+      figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they were,
+      where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her to carry
+      her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads through
+      which were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches of heather
+      all about were showing their bells, though not yet in their autumnal
+      outburst of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded of Scotland, in which
+      I had travelled a good deal between the ages of twenty and
+      five-and-twenty. The further I went the stronger I felt the resemblance.
+      The look of the fields, the stone fences that divided them, the shape and
+      colour and materials of the houses, the aspect of the people, the feeling
+      of the air, and of the earth and sky generally, made me imagine myself in
+      a milder and more favoured Scotland. The west wind was fresh, but had none
+      of that sharp edge which one can so often detect in otherwise warm winds
+      blowing under a hot sun. Though she had already travelled so many miles,
+      Connie brightened up within a few minutes after we got on this moor; and
+      we had not gone much farther before a shout from the rumble informed us
+      that keen-eyed little Dora had discovered the Atlantic: a dip in the high
+      coast revealed it blue and bright. We soon lost sight of it again, but in
+      Connie&rsquo;s eyes it seemed to linger still. As often as I looked round, the
+      blue of them seemed the reflection of the sea in their little convex
+      mirrors. Ethelwyn&rsquo;s eyes, too, were full of it, and a flush on her
+      generally pale cheek showed that she too expected the ocean. After a few
+      miles along this breezy expanse, we began to descend towards the
+      sea-level. Down the winding of a gradual slope, interrupted by steep
+      descents, we approached this new chapter in our history. We came again
+      upon a few trees here and there, all with their tops cut off in a plane
+      inclined upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds, like a sweeping
+      scythe, bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep their tops mown
+      with their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the crests of the
+      broken waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages, with streets
+      narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, that needed careful driving and the
+      frequent pressure of the break upon the wheel. And now the sea shone upon
+      us with nearer greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear its talk with
+      the shore. At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the last level,
+      drove over a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw the land vanish
+      in the sea&mdash;a wide bay; then drove over another wooden drawbridge,
+      and along the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops and
+      schooners. Then came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an ascent,
+      and ere we reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by loud
+      shouts, and the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top of a
+      stone wall to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept quiet,
+      knowing that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing about
+      the evil it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch, leading
+      through the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The journey was
+      over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the county of
+      Cornwall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which
+      nurse had fixed upon for her&mdash;the best in the house, of course,
+      again. She did seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at
+      once, and in half an hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very
+      glad. After dinner I went up to Connie&rsquo;s room. There I found her fast
+      asleep on the sofa, and Wynnie as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The
+      drive and the sea air had had the same effect on both of them. But pleased
+      as I was to see Connie sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see
+      Wynnie asleep on the floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give to a
+      father and mother to see this or that child asleep! It is when her kittens
+      are asleep that the cat creeps away to look after her own comforts. Our
+      cat chose to have her kittens in my study once, and as I would not have
+      her further disturbed than to give them another cushion to lie on in place
+      of that which belonged to my sofa, I had many opportunities of watching
+      them as I wrote, or prepared my sermons. But I must not talk about the cat
+      and her kittens now. When parents see their children asleep, especially if
+      they have been suffering in any way, they breathe more freely; a load is
+      lifted off their minds; their responsibility seems over; the children have
+      gone back to their Father, and he alone is looking after them for a while.
+      Now, I had not been comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially
+      during our journey, and still more especially during the last part of our
+      journey. There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or
+      less dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much
+      for her, although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had
+      not quite enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without
+      much thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do not
+      seem to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them; while for
+      others a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is necessary for
+      the health of both body and mind, and when the matter or occasion for so
+      much is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous to what follows
+      when a healthy physical system is not supplied with sufficient food: the
+      oxygen, the source of life, begins to consume the life itself; it tears up
+      the timbers of the house to burn against the cold. Or, to use a different
+      simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance does not strike the rock and
+      make the waters flow, such a mind&mdash;one that must think to live&mdash;will
+      go digging into itself, and is in danger of injuring the very fountain of
+      thought, by drawing away its living water into ditches and stagnant pools.
+      This was, I say, the case in part with my Wynnie, although I did not
+      understand it at that moment. She did not look quite happy, did not always
+      meet a smile with a smile, looked almost reprovingly upon the frolics of
+      the little brother-imps, and though kindness itself when any real hurt or
+      grief befell them, had reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner,
+      of which I have already spoken as interrupted by Connie&rsquo;s accident. To her
+      mother and me she was service itself, only service without the smile which
+      is as the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a
+      little uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
+      had seemed almost annoyed at Connie&rsquo;s ecstasies, and said to Dora many
+      times: &ldquo;Do be quiet, Dora;&rdquo; although there was not a single creature but
+      ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
+      child&rsquo;s explosions. So I was&mdash;but although I say <i>so</i>, I hardly
+      know why I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief
+      in the anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I
+      stood regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her
+      uncomfortable, she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with the
+      words, &ldquo;I beg your pardon, papa,&rdquo; looking almost guiltily round her, and
+      putting up her hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an impropriety in
+      being caught untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition of mind that was
+      not healthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to see
+      you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa,&rdquo; she said, laying her head on my shoulder, &ldquo;I am afraid I must be
+      very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong, or
+      rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure there
+      must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly know
+      what it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected something,
+      and you had come to find fault with me. <i>Is</i> there anything, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day! Why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Connie woke up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now! I&rsquo;ve waked Connie,&rdquo; Wynnie resumed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always doing
+      something I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take
+      that sin off my poor conscience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?&rdquo; asked Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t nonsense, Connie. You know I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don&rsquo;t <i>feel</i>
+      wicked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear children,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
+      then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say
+      to himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one
+      man to say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case to
+      do as St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing&mdash;to judge our own
+      selves, which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do what
+      our Lord has told us expressly we are not to do&mdash;to judge other
+      people. You get your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going to
+      explore a little of this desert island upon which we have been cast away.
+      And you, Connie, just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to
+      talk seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what
+      we talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported it
+      to Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies who
+      went to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news of
+      nature, to her who could not go to gather them for herself. I think it
+      will be the best plan to take part of both plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
+      leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed <i>in</i>, the
+      rocks, buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life
+      for a big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still
+      blew from the west, both warm and strong&mdash;I mean strength-giving&mdash;and
+      the wind was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was
+      green and soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright
+      flowers, chiefly yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the downs,
+      the shadows of whose unequal surface were now beginning to be thrown east,
+      for the sun was going seawards. I stood up, stretched out my arms, threw
+      back my shoulders and my head, and filled my chest with a draught of the
+      delicious wind, feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed with wine.
+      Wynnie stood apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar, thoughtful, and
+      turning her eyes hither and thither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That makes me feel young again,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish it would make me feel old then,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, my child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
+      young,&rdquo; she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were
+      walking up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the down-turf
+      was indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we had reached
+      the top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight. The top of
+      the hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun was hanging on
+      the face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea stretched for
+      visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand, its wide blue
+      mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land, and scalloped
+      into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the nether fires which
+      had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as they bore the rising
+      tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for the whole. Ear and eye,
+      touch and smell, were alike invaded with blessedness. I ought to have kept
+      this to give my reader in Connie&rsquo;s room; but he shall share with her
+      presently. The sense of space&mdash;of mighty room for life and growth&mdash;filled
+      my soul, and I thanked God in my heart. The wind seemed to bear that
+      growth into my soul, even as the wind of God first breathed into man&rsquo;s
+      nostrils the breath of life, and the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment
+      of every aspiration. I turned and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but
+      listless amidst that which lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you I was very wicked, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I told you not to say so, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect it is because you haven&rsquo;t room, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you mean something more than I know, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you
+      do not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only live
+      in him, is &lsquo;cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.&rsquo; It is only in him that
+      the soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The secret of
+      your own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who knows its
+      secret. Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth. You do not
+      feel them, and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would be both
+      useless and absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for a moment,
+      and then tell me whether it must not be a blessed life that creates such a
+      glory as this All.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
+      earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
+      eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling, or
+      sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to speak
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As this world of delight surrounds and enters your bodily frame, so does
+      God surround your soul and live in it. To be at home with the awful source
+      of your being, through the child-like faith which he not only permits, but
+      requires, and is ever teaching you, or rather seeking to rouse up in you,
+      is the only cure for such feelings as those that trouble you. Do not say
+      it is too high for you. God made you in his own image, therefore capable
+      of understanding him. For this final end he sent his Son, that the Father
+      might with him come into you, and dwell with you. Till he does so, the
+      temple of your soul is vacant; there is no light behind the veil, no
+      cloudy pillar over it; and the priests, your thoughts, feelings, loves,
+      and desires, moan, and are troubled&mdash;for where is the work of the
+      priest when the God is not there? When He comes to you, no mystery, no
+      unknown feeling, will any longer distress you. You will say, &lsquo;He knows,
+      though I do not.&rsquo; And you will be at the secret of the things he has made.
+      You will feel what they are, and that which his will created in gladness
+      you will receive in joy. One glimmer of the present God in this glory
+      would send you home singing. But do not think I blame you, Wynnie, for
+      feeling sad. I take it rather as the sign of a large life in you, that
+      will not be satisfied with little things. I do not know when or how it may
+      please God to give you the quiet of mind that you need; but I tell you
+      that I believe it is to be had; and in the mean time, you must go on doing
+      your work, trusting in God even for this. Tell him to look at your sorrow,
+      ask him to come and set it right, making the joy go up in your heart by
+      his presence. I do not know when this may be, I say, but you must have
+      patience, and till he lays his hand on your head, you must be content to
+      wash his feet with your tears. Only he will be better pleased if your
+      faith keep you from weeping and from going about your duties mournful. Try
+      to be brave and cheerful for the sake of Christ, and for the sake of your
+      confidence in the beautiful teaching of God, whose course and scope you
+      cannot yet understand. Trust, my daughter, and let that give you courage
+      and strength.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the sky and the sea and the earth must have made me able to say these
+      things to her; but I knew that, whatever the immediate occasion of her
+      sadness, such was its only real cure. Other things might, in virtue of the
+      will of God that was in them, give her occupation and interest enough for
+      a time, but nothing would do finally, but God himself. Here I was sure I
+      was safe; here I knew lay the hunger of humanity. Humanity may, like other
+      vital forms, diseased systems, fix on this or that as the object not
+      merely of its desire but of its need: it can never be stilled by less than
+      the bread of life&mdash;the very presence in the innermost nature of the
+      Father and the Son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked on together. Wynnie made me no reply, but, weeping silently,
+      clung to my arm. We walked a long way by the edge of the cliffs, beheld
+      the sun go down, and then turned and went home. When we reached the house,
+      Wynnie left me, saying only, &ldquo;Thank you, papa. I think it is all true. I
+      will try to be a better girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I went straight to Connie&rsquo;s room: she was lying as I saw her last, looking
+      out of her window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;Wynnie and I have had such a treat&mdash;such a
+      sunset!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen a little of the light of it on the waves in the bay there, but
+      the high ground kept me from seeing the sunset itself. Did it set in the
+      sea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do want the General Gazetteer, after all, Connie. Is that water the
+      Atlantic, or is it not? And if it be, where on earth could the sun set but
+      in it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, papa. What a goose I am! But don&rsquo;t make game of me&mdash;<i>please</i>.
+      I am too deliciously happy to be made game of to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t make game of you, my darling. I will tell you about the sunset&mdash;the
+      colours of it, at least. This must be one of the best places in the whole
+      world to see sunsets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have had no tea, papa. I thought you would come and have your tea
+      with me. But you were so long, that mamma would not let me wait any
+      longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, never mind the tea, my dear. But Wynnie has had none. You&rsquo;ve got a
+      tea-caddy of your own, haven&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and a teapot; and there&rsquo;s the kettle on the hob&mdash;for I can&rsquo;t do
+      without a little fire in the evenings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll make some tea for Wynnie and myself, and tell you at the same
+      time about the sunset. I never saw such colours. I cannot tell you what it
+      was like while the sun was yet going down, for the glory of it has burned
+      the memory of it out of me. But after the sun was down, the sky remained
+      thinking about him; and the thought of the sky was in delicate translucent
+      green on the horizon, just the colour of the earth etherealised and
+      glorified&mdash;a broad band; then came another broad band of pale
+      rose-colour; and above that came the sky&rsquo;s own eternal blue, pale
+      likewise, but so sure and changeless. I never saw the green and the blue
+      divided and harmonised by the rose-colour before. It was a wonderful
+      sight. If it is warm enough to-morrow, we will carry you out on the
+      height, that you may see what the evening will bring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing about sunsets,&rdquo; returned Connie&mdash;&ldquo;two things,
+      that make me rather sad&mdash;about themselves, not about anything else.
+      Shall I tell you them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, my love. There are few things more precious to learn than the effects
+      of Nature upon individual minds. And there is not a feeling of yours, my
+      child, that is not of value to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are so kind, papa! I am so glad of my accident. I think I should
+      never have known how good you are but for that. But my thoughts seem so
+      little worth after you say so much about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me be judge of that, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one thing is, that we shall never, never, never, see the same
+      sunset again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true. But why should we? God does not care to do the same thing
+      over again. When it is once done, it is done, and he goes on doing
+      something new. For, to all eternity, he never will have done showing
+      himself by new, fresh things. It would be a loss to do the same thing
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that just brings me to my second trouble. The thing is lost. I forget
+      it. Do what I can, I cannot remember sunsets. I try to fix them fast in my
+      memory, that I may recall them when I want them; but just as they fade out
+      of the sky, all into blue or gray, so they fade out of my mind and leave
+      it as if they had never been there&mdash;except perhaps two or three. Now,
+      though I did not see this one, yet, after you have talked about it, I
+      shall never forget <i>it</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not, and never will be, as if they had never been. They have their
+      influence, and leave that far deeper than your memory&mdash;in your very
+      being, Connie. But I have more to say about it, although it is only an
+      idea, hardly an assurance. Our brain is necessarily an imperfect
+      instrument. For its right work, perhaps it is needful that it should
+      forget in part. But there are grounds for believing that nothing is ever
+      really forgotten. I think that, when we have a higher existence than we
+      have now, when we are clothed with that spiritual body of which St. Paul
+      speaks, you will be able to recall any sunset you have ever seen with an
+      intensity proportioned to the degree of regard and attention you gave it
+      when it was present to you. But here comes Wynnie to see how you are.&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      been making some tea for you, Wynnie, my love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, thank you, papa&mdash;I shall be so glad of some tea!&rdquo; said Wynnie,
+      the paleness of whose face showed the red rims of her eyes the more
+      plainly. She had had what girls call a good cry, and was clearly the
+      better for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment my wife came in. &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you send for me, Harry, to
+      get your tea?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not deserve any, seeing I had disregarded proper times and seasons.
+      But I knew you must be busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been superintending the arrangement of bedrooms, and the
+      unpacking, and twenty different things,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn. &ldquo;We shall be so
+      comfortable! It is such a curious house! Have you had a nice walk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, I never had such a walk in my life,&rdquo; returned Wynnie. &ldquo;You would
+      think the shore had been built for the sake of the show&mdash;just for a
+      platform to see sunsets from. And the sea! Only the cliffs will be rather
+      dangerous for the children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just been telling Connie about the sunset. She could see something
+      of the colours on the water, but not much more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Connie, it will be so delightful to get you out here! Everything is so
+      big! There is such room everywhere! But it must be awfully windy in
+      winter,&rdquo; said Wynnie, whose nature was always a little prospective, if not
+      apprehensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I must not keep my reader longer upon mere family chat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our dining-room was one story below the level at which we had entered the
+      parsonage; for, as I have said, the house was built into the face of the
+      cliff, just where it sunk nearly to the level of the shores of the bay.
+      While at dinner, on the evening of our arrival, I kept looking from the
+      window, of course, and I saw before me, first a little bit of garden,
+      mostly in turf, then a low stone wall; beyond, over the top of the wall,
+      the blue water of the bay; then beyond the water, all alive with light and
+      motion, the rocks and sand-hills of the opposite side of the little bay,
+      not a quarter of a mile across. I could likewise see where the shore went
+      sweeping out and away to the north, with rock after rock standing far into
+      the water, as if gazing over the awful wild, where there was nothing to
+      break the deathly waste between Cornwall and Newfoundland. But for the
+      moment I did not regard the huge power lying outside so much as the merry
+      blue bay between me and those rocks and sand-hills. If I moved my head a
+      little to the right, I saw, over the top of the low wall already
+      mentioned, and apparently quite close to it the slender yellow masts of a
+      schooner, her mainsail hanging loose from the gaff, whose peak was
+      lowered. We must, I thought, be on the very harbour-quay. When I went out
+      for my walk with Wynnie, I had turned from the bay, and gone to the brow
+      of the cliffs overhanging the open sea on our own side of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I came down to breakfast in the same room next morning, I stared. The
+      blue had changed to yellow. The life of the water was gone. Nothing met my
+      eyes but a wide expanse of dead sand. You could walk straight across the
+      bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from the
+      perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking,
+      concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was
+      high-water, or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was
+      over a long reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe of
+      the waves was visible, as if there was their <i>hitherto</i>, and further
+      towards us they could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of the
+      Atlantic. To add to my confusion, when I looked to the right, that is, up
+      the bay towards the land, there was no schooner there. I went out at the
+      window, which opened from the room upon the little lawn, to look, and then
+      saw in a moment how it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, my dear,&rdquo; I said to my wife, &ldquo;we are just at the mouth of
+      that canal we saw as we came along? There are gates and a lock just
+      outside there. The schooner that was under this window last night must
+      have gone in with the tide. She is lying in the basin above now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes, papa,&rdquo; Charlie and Harry broke in together. &ldquo;We saw it go up this
+      morning. We&rsquo;ve been out ever so long. It was so funny,&rdquo; Charlie went on&mdash;everything
+      was <i>funny</i> with Charlie&mdash;&ldquo;to see it rise up like a
+      Jack-in-the-box, and then slip into the quiet water through the other
+      gates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when I thought about the waves tumbling and breaking away out there,
+      and the wide yellow sands between, it was wonderful&mdash;which was what
+      Charlie meant by funny&mdash;to see the little vessel lying so many feet
+      above it all, in a still plenty of repose, gathering strength, one might
+      fancy to rush out again, when its time was come, into the turmoil beyond,
+      and dash its way through the breasts of the billows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast we had prayers, as usual, and after a visit to Connie,
+      whom I found tired, but wonderfully well, I went out for a walk by myself,
+      to explore the neighbourhood, find the church, and, in a word, do
+      something to shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious. I
+      wandered along a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk the
+      evening before, with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of feathery
+      tamarisks on my left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply to a lower
+      road, where stood a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner, I came suddenly
+      in sight of the church, on the green down above me&mdash;a sheltered yet
+      commanding situation; for, while the hill rose above it, protecting it
+      from the east, it looked down the bay, and the Atlantic lay open before
+      it. All the earth seemed to lie behind it, and all its gaze to be fixed on
+      the symbol of the infinite. It stood as the church ought to stand, leading
+      men up the mount of vision, to the verge of the eternal, to send them back
+      with their hearts full of the strength that springs from hope, by which
+      alone the true work of the world can be done. And when I saw it I rejoiced
+      to think that once more I was favoured with a church that had a history.
+      Of course it is a happy thing to see new churches built wherever there is
+      need of such; but to the full idea of the building it is necessary that it
+      should be one in which the hopes and fears, the cares and consolations,
+      the loves and desires of our forefathers should have been roofed; where
+      the hearts of those through whom our country has become that which it is&mdash;from
+      whom not merely the life-blood of our bodies, but the life-blood of our
+      spirits, has come down to us, whose existence and whose efforts have made
+      it possible for us to be that which we are&mdash;have before us worshipped
+      that Spirit from whose fountain the whole torrent of being flows, who ever
+      pours fresh streams into the wearying waters of humanity, so ready to
+      settle down into a stagnant repose. Therefore I would far rather, when I
+      may, worship in an old church, whose very stones are a history of how men
+      strove to realise the infinite, compelling even the powers of nature into
+      the task&mdash;as I soon found on the very doorway of this church, where
+      the ripples of the outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the
+      monsters of its deeps, fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave a
+      distorted reflex, from the little mirror of the artist&rsquo;s mind, of that
+      mighty water, so awful, so significant to the human eye, which yet lies in
+      the hollow of the Father&rsquo;s palm, like the handful that the weary traveller
+      lifts from the brook by the way. It is in virtue of the truth that went
+      forth in such and such like attempts that we are able to hold our portion
+      of the infinite reality which God only knows. They have founded our Church
+      for us, and such a church as this will stand for the symbol of it; for
+      here we too can worship the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob&mdash;the
+      God of Sidney, of Hooker, of Herbert. This church of Kilkhaven, old and
+      worn, rose before me a history in stone&mdash;so beaten and swept about by
+      the &ldquo;wild west wind,&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;For whose path the Atlantic&rsquo;s level powers
+  Cleave themselves into chasms,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      and so streamed upon, and washed, and dissolved, by the waters lifted from
+      the sea and borne against it on the upper tide of the wind, that you could
+      almost fancy it one of those churches that have been buried for ages
+      beneath the encroaching waters, lifted again, by some mighty revulsion of
+      nature&rsquo;s heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to stand marked
+      for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world&mdash;scooped, and
+      hollowed, and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for ever,
+      responded to the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from the most
+      troublous of times, will the Church of our land arise, in virtue of what
+      truth she holds, and in spite, if she rises at all, of the worldliness of
+      those who, instead of seeking her service, have sought and gained the
+      dignities which, if it be good that she have it in her power to bestow
+      them, need the corrective of a sharply wholesome persecution which of late
+      times she has not known. But God knows, and the fire will come in its
+      course&mdash;first in the form of just indignation, it may be, against her
+      professed servants, and then in the form of the furnace seven times
+      heated, in which the true builders shall yet walk unhurt save as to their
+      mortal part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked about for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to
+      live, and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a
+      little distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before I
+      reached it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She was
+      dressed in a white cap and a dark-coloured gown. On her face lay a certain
+      repose which attracted me. She looked as if she had suffered but had
+      consented to it, and therefore could smile. Her smile lay near the
+      surface. A kind word was enough to draw it up from the well where it lay
+      shimmering: you could always see the smile there, whether it was born or
+      not. But even when she smiled, in the very glimmering of that moonbeam,
+      you could see the deep, still, perhaps dark, waters under. O! if one could
+      but understand what goes on in the souls that have no words, perhaps no
+      inclination, to set it forth! What had she endured? How had she learned to
+      have that smile always near? What had consoled her, and yet left her her
+      grief&mdash;turned it, perhaps, into hope? Should I ever know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew near me, as if she would have passed me, as she would have done,
+      had I not spoken. I think she came towards me to give me the opportunity
+      of speaking if I wished, but she would not address me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Can you tell me where to find the sexton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; she answered, with a gleam of the smile brightening
+      underneath her old skin, as it were, &ldquo;I be all the sexton you be likely to
+      find this mornin&rsquo;, sir. My husband, he be gone out to see one o&rsquo; Squire
+      Tregarva&rsquo;s hounds as was took ill last night. So if you want to see the
+      old church, sir, you&rsquo;ll have to be content with an old woman to show you,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be quite content, I assure you,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Will you go and get
+      the key?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the key in my pocket, sir; for I thought that would be what you&rsquo;d
+      be after, sir. And by the time you come to my age, sir, you&rsquo;ll learn to
+      think of your old bones, sir. I beg your pardon for making so free. For
+      mayhap, says I to myself, he be the gentleman as be come to take Mr.
+      Shepherd&rsquo;s duty for him. Be ye now, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was said in a slow sweet subdued tone, nearly of one pitch. You
+      would have felt that she claimed the privilege of age with a kind of
+      mournful gaiety, but was careful, and anxious even, not to presume upon
+      it, and, therefore, gentle as a young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;My name is Walton I have come to take the place of my
+      friend Mr. Shepherd; and, of course, I want to see the church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she be a bee-utiful old church. Some things, I think, sir, grows
+      more beautiful the older they grows. But it ain&rsquo;t us, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure of that,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, there&rsquo;s my little grandson in the cottage there: he&rsquo;ll never
+      be so beautiful again. Them children du be the loves. But we all grows
+      uglier as we grows older. Churches don&rsquo;t seem to, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure about all that,&rdquo; I said again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They did say, sir, that I was a pretty girl once. I&rsquo;m not much to look at
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she smiled with such a gracious amusement, that I felt at once that if
+      there was any vanity left in this memory of her past loveliness, it was
+      sweet as the memory of their old fragrance left in the withered leaves of
+      the roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it du not matter, du it, sir? Beauty is only skin-deep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Beauty is as deep as the heart at
+      least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well to be sure, my old husband du say I be as handsome in his eyes as
+      ever I be. But I beg your pardon, sir, for talkin&rsquo; about myself. I believe
+      it was the old church&mdash;she set us on to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old church didn&rsquo;t lead you into any harm then,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;The
+      beauty that is in the heart will shine out of the face again some day&mdash;be
+      sure of that. And after all, there is just the same kind of beauty in a
+      good old face that there is in an old church. You can&rsquo;t say the church is
+      so trim and neat as it was the day that the first blast of the organ
+      filled it as with, a living soul. The carving is not quite so sharp, the
+      timbers are not quite so clean. There is a good deal of mould and
+      worm-eating and cobwebs about the old place. Yet both you and I think it
+      more beautiful now than it was then. Well, I believe it is, as nearly as
+      possible, the same with an old face. It has got stained, and
+      weather-beaten, and worn; but if the organ of truth has been playing on
+      inside the temple of the Lord, which St. Paul says our bodies are, there
+      is in the old face, though both form and complexion are gone, just the
+      beauty of the music inside. The wrinkles and the brownness can&rsquo;t spoil it.
+      A light shines through it all&mdash;that of the indwelling spirit. I wish
+      we all grew old like the old churches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not reply, but I thought I saw in her face that she understood my
+      mysticism. We had been walking very slowly, had passed through the quaint
+      lych-gate, and now the old woman had got the key in the lock of the door,
+      whose archway was figured and fashioned as I have described above, with a
+      dozen mouldings or more, most of them &ldquo;carved so curiously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. THE OLD CHURCH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold&mdash;an
+      awe I never fail to feel&mdash;heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the
+      sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same
+      in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place
+      where men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although
+      for art there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty
+      staring ugliness. To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of
+      holy need seems to linger in the place, and the uncovered head
+      acknowledges the sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing.
+      But this was no ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who
+      was my guide. As entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued
+      glory invaded them from the chancel, all the windows of which were of
+      richly stained glass, and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my
+      thoughts about this chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may
+      appear in another part of my story. Now I have to do only with the church,
+      not with the cogitations to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my
+      reader with even what I could tell him of the blending and contradicting
+      of styles and modes of architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the
+      work of contesting human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As
+      nature brings into harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive
+      intrusions upon her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense
+      of the word, so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of
+      that which in itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various
+      architecture of this building had been gone over after the builders by the
+      musical hand of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key,
+      that one could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at
+      work <i>informing</i> the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the
+      sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the
+      gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion
+      vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the
+      hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and
+      gently, and wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as
+      yet their effects were invisible, were already at work&mdash;of the many
+      making one. I will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural
+      description, which, possibly even more than a detailed description of
+      natural beauty dissociated from human feeling, would only weary him, even
+      if it were not unintelligible. When we are reading a poem, we do not first
+      of all examine the construction and dwell on the rhymes and rhythms; all
+      that comes after, if we find that the poem itself is so good that its
+      parts are therefore worth examining, as being probably good in themselves,
+      and elucidatory of the main work. There were carvings on the ends of the
+      benches all along the aisle on both sides, well worth examination, and
+      some of them even of description; but I shall not linger on these. A word
+      only about the columns: they supported arches of different fashion on the
+      opposite sides, but they were themselves similar in matter and
+      construction, both remarkable. They were of coarse granite of the country,
+      chiselled, but very far from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was
+      a single stone with chamfered sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many thoughts
+      that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length into the
+      tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body of the
+      church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above, for
+      bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend Shepherd.
+      And as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful it would be
+      if in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was precious; so
+      that when it came to the minister of his people&mdash;a fresh vision of
+      his glory, a discovery of his meaning&mdash;he might make haste to the
+      church, and into the tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the
+      deepest-toned bell of all, and constrain it by the force of strong arms to
+      utter its voice of call, &ldquo;Come hither, come hear, my people, for God hath
+      spoken;&rdquo; and from the streets or the lanes would troop the eager folk; the
+      plough be left in the furrow, the cream in the churn; and the crowding
+      people bring faces into the church, all with one question upon them&mdash;&ldquo;What
+      hath the Lord spoken?&rdquo; But now it would be answer sufficient to such a
+      call to say, &ldquo;But what will become of the butter?&rdquo; or, &ldquo;An hour&rsquo;s
+      ploughing will be lost.&rdquo; And the clergy&mdash;how would they bring about
+      such a time? They do not even believe that God has a word to his people
+      through them. They think that his word is petrified for use in the Bible
+      and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old heard so much of the word of
+      God, and have so set it down, that there is no need for any more words of
+      the Lord coming to the prophets of a land; therefore they look down upon
+      the prophesying&mdash;that is, the preaching of the word&mdash;make light
+      of it, the best of them, say these prayers are everything, or all but
+      everything: <i>their</i> hearts are not set upon hearing what God the Lord
+      will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people again. Therefore it
+      is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to the clock, are no
+      longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have nothing to do in
+      telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little of this part of
+      their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must remain such as
+      they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers which are the
+      word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when the prophets see
+      no vision, how should they have any word to speak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my
+      guide. She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I
+      thought, or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had
+      taken her stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting
+      busily. How her needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however,
+      but, fixed on the slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from her
+      feet, seemed to be gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite
+      objectless outlook. To try her, I took for the moment the position of an
+      accuser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you don&rsquo;t mind working in church?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far sea-waves
+      to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she answered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The church knows me, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what has that to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
+      know, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
+      diligent somewhere else, couldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But
+      she only smiled and said, &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t hurt she, sir; and my good man, who
+      does all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I don&rsquo;t
+      keep he warm he&rsquo;ll be laid up, and then the church won&rsquo;t be kep&rsquo; nice,
+      sir, till he&rsquo;s up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was tempted to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you could have sat down outside&mdash;there are some nice gravestones
+      near&mdash;and waited till I came out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what&rsquo;s the church for, sir? The sun&rsquo;s werry hot to-day, sir; and Mr.
+      Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a great rock
+      in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the sun, instead of
+      comin&rsquo; in here to the cool o&rsquo; the shadow, I wouldn&rsquo;t be takin&rsquo; the church
+      at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old church, sir. There&rsquo;s
+      a something do seem to come out o&rsquo; the old walls and settle down like the
+      cool o&rsquo; the day upon my old heart that&rsquo;s nearly tired o&rsquo; crying, and would
+      fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o&rsquo; the journey. My old man&rsquo;s stockin&rsquo; 
+      won&rsquo;t hurt the church, sir, and, bein&rsquo; a good deed as I suppose it is,
+      it&rsquo;s none the worse for the place. I think, if He was to come by wi&rsquo; the
+      whip o&rsquo; small cords, I wouldn&rsquo;t be afeared of his layin&rsquo; it upo&rsquo; my old
+      back. Do you think he would, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
+      with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
+      ill-done work that the church&rsquo;s Master drives away. All our work ought to
+      be done in the shadow of the church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir,&rdquo; she said, smiling her
+      sweet old smile. &ldquo;Nobody knows what this old church is to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
+      left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have had a family?&rdquo; I said, interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had thirteen,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Six bys and seven maidens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you are rich!&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;And where are they all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one be
+      down in the mill, there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your boys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of them be lyin&rsquo; beside his sisters&mdash;drownded afore my eyes,
+      sir. Three o&rsquo; them be at sea, and two o&rsquo; them in it, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At sea! I thought. What a wide <i>where</i>! As vague to the imagination,
+      almost, as <i>in the other world</i>. How a mother&rsquo;s thoughts must go
+      roaming about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find
+      them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with my
+      knitting. Many&rsquo;s the stormy night, when my husband couldn&rsquo;t keep still,
+      but would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good in life,
+      but just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see by the white
+      of them, with the balls o&rsquo; foam flying in his face in the dark&mdash;many&rsquo;s
+      the such a night that I have left the house after he was gone, with this
+      blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church here, and sat down
+      where I&rsquo;m sittin&rsquo; now&mdash;leastways where I was sittin&rsquo; when your
+      reverence spoke to me&mdash;and hearkened to the wind howling about the
+      place. The church windows never rattle, sir&mdash;like the cottage
+      windows, as I suppose you know, sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you had sons at sea,&rdquo; said I, again wishing to draw her out, &ldquo;it
+      would not be of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
+      were in danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! yes, it be, sir. What&rsquo;s the good of feeling safe yourself but it let
+      you know other people be safe too? It&rsquo;s when you don&rsquo;t feel safe yourself
+      that you feel other people ben&rsquo;t safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said&mdash;and such confidence I had from what she had already
+      uttered, that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one&mdash;&ldquo;some of
+      your sons <i>were</i> drowned for all that you say about their safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; she answered, with a sigh, &ldquo;I trust they&rsquo;re none the less
+      safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me,
+      well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being
+      drownded. Why, they might ha&rsquo; been cast on a desert island, and wasted to
+      skin an&rsquo; bone, and got home again wi&rsquo; the loss of half the wits they set
+      out with. Wouldn&rsquo;t that ha&rsquo; been worse than being drownded right off? And
+      that wouldn&rsquo;t ha&rsquo; been the worst, either. The church she seem to tell me
+      all the time, that for all the roaring outside, there be really no danger
+      after all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What is the bottom of the
+      sea, sir? You bein&rsquo; a clergyman can tell that, sir. I shouldn&rsquo;t ha&rsquo; known
+      it if I hadn&rsquo;t had bys o&rsquo; my own at sea, sir. But you can tell, sir,
+      though you ain&rsquo;t got none there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
+      returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to
+      his instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hollow of his hand,&rdquo; I said, and said no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you would know it, sir,&rdquo; she returned, with a little glow of
+      triumph in her tone. &ldquo;Well, then, that&rsquo;s just what the church tells me
+      when I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too,
+      sir, for I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when
+      they come home, if they do come home, they&rsquo;re none the worse that I went
+      to the old church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them poor
+      dears, all out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone almost
+      in the quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come across me,
+      sir, that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing all the noise
+      and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about in the world,
+      watching it all, letting it drown some o&rsquo; them and take them back to him,
+      and keeping it from going too far with others of them that are not quite
+      ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see, sir, though I be an old
+      woman; and not nice to look at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
+      Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
+      there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
+      to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert would
+      leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life is God&rsquo;s
+      school, and they that will listen to the Master there will learn at God&rsquo;s
+      speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious of Shepherd, and
+      repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such glorious old
+      stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal upon my
+      light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling lasted but for
+      a moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed and the true
+      light shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it. Why should not
+      Shepherd have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd was more of what
+      would now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought my doctrine
+      simpler and therefore better than his; but was this any reason why I
+      should have all the grand people to minister to in my parish! Recovering
+      myself, I found her last words still in my ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very nice to look at,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You must not find fault with the
+      work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty than to
+      be as you now are. Time and time&rsquo;s rents and furrows are all his making
+      and his doing. God makes nothing ugly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you quite sure of that, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I paused. Such a question from such a woman &ldquo;must give us pause.&rdquo; And, as
+      I paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I could
+      not insist that God had never made anything ugly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I am not sure of it,&rdquo; I answered. For of all things my soul recoiled
+      from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know seemed to
+      me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master, whose servants
+      we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and self-seeking.
+      &ldquo;But if he does,&rdquo; I went on to say, &ldquo;it must be that we may see what it is
+      like, and therefore not like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
+      question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
+      had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of
+      stool or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was
+      some kind of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much
+      like the ends of the benches and book-boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that you were sitting on?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;A chest or what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
+      agone, sir. But what it be, you&rsquo;ll be better able to tell than I be, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;But how should it then come to be banished to the tower?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; it can&rsquo;t be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I be
+      thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ. With
+      some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of huge
+      keys, fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one after
+      another, but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and once
+      down, so they mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there was
+      any sign of a bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive kind of
+      reed-instrument, like what we call a seraphine or harmonium now-a-days.
+      But there was no hole through which there could have been any
+      communication with or from a bellows, although there might have been a
+      small one inside. There were, however, a dozen little round holes in the
+      fixed part of the top, which might afford some clue to the mystery of its
+      former life. I could not find any way of reaching the inside of it, so
+      strongly was it put together; therefore I was left, I thought, to the
+      efforts of my imagination alone for any hope of discovery with regard to
+      the instrument, seeing further observation was impossible. But here I
+      found that I was mistaken in two important conclusions, the latter of
+      which depended on the former. The first of these was that it was an
+      instrument: it was only one end of an instrument; therefore, secondly,
+      there might be room for observation still. But I found this out by
+      accident, which has had a share in most discoveries, and which, meaning a
+      something that falls into our hands unlocked for, is so far an
+      unobjectionable word even to the man who does not believe in chance. I had
+      for the time given up the question as insoluble, and was gazing about the
+      place, when, glancing up at the holes in the ceiling through which the
+      bell-ropes went, I spied two or three thick wires hanging through the same
+      ceiling close to the wall, and right over the box with the keys. The vague
+      suspicion of a discovery dawned upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you got the key of the tower?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. But I&rsquo;ll run home for it at once,&rdquo; she answered. And rising, she
+      went out in haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run!&rdquo; thought I, looking after her. &ldquo;It is a word of the will and the
+      feeling, not of the body.&rdquo; But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had
+      no sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she
+      felt that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I was
+      on the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her from
+      hurting herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to be as good
+      as mine in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her seat, awaited
+      her reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either saw or imagined I
+      saw signs of openings corresponding in number and position with those in
+      the lid under me. In about three minutes the old woman returned, panting
+      but not distressed, with a great crooked old key in her hand. Why are all
+      the keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask her that question, though.
+      What I said to her, was&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t run like that. I am in no hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
+      longing to get a-top o&rsquo; the tower, and see all about you like. For you
+      see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she&rsquo;d
+      smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old
+      tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the
+      fresh air which there always be up there, sir,&mdash;it du always be fresh
+      up there, sir,&rdquo; she repeated, &ldquo;I come back down again blessing the old
+      church for its tower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where
+      there was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning
+      themselves a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high, but
+      she kept up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was no
+      stranger to them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of her, but
+      of what she had said. Strange to tell, the significance of the towers or
+      spires of our churches had never been clear to me before. True, I was
+      quite awake to their significance, at least to that of the spires, as
+      fingers pointing ever upwards to
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;regions mild of calm and serene air,
+  Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
+  Which men call Earth;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
+      church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord God
+      almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men up
+      into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived pervaded
+      with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We need the
+      church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church below are
+      from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the church,
+      worshipping over the graves and believing in death&mdash;or at least in
+      the material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the church,
+      even in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending us up her
+      towers and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the air of
+      truth: that her form too must pass away, while the truth that is embodied
+      in her lives beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining as the stars
+      for ever and ever. He whom the church does not lift up above the church is
+      not worthy to be a doorkeeper therein.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
+      that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord&mdash;not for
+      his church-tower, but for his sexton&rsquo;s wife. The old woman was a jewel. If
+      her husband was like her, which was too much to expect&mdash;if he
+      believed in her, it would be enough, quite&mdash;then indeed the little
+      child, who answered on being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would
+      say, that the three orders of ministers in the church were the parson,
+      clerk, and sexton, might not be so far wrong in respect of this individual
+      case. So in the ascent, and the thinking associated therewith, I forgot
+      all about the special object for which I had requested the key of the
+      tower, and led the way myself up to the summit, where stepping out of a
+      little door, which being turned only heavenwards had no pretence for, or
+      claim upon a curiously crooked key, but opened to the hand laid upon the
+      latch, I thought of the words of the judicious Hooker, that &ldquo;the
+      assembling of the church to learn&rdquo; was &ldquo;the receiving of angels descended
+      from above;&rdquo; and in such a whimsical turn as our thoughts will often take
+      when we are not heeding them, I wondered for a moment whether that was why
+      the upper door was left on the latch, forgetting that that could not be of
+      much use, if the door in the basement was kept locked with the crooked
+      key. But the whole suggested something true about my own heart and that of
+      my fellows, if not about the church: Revelation is not enough, the open
+      trap-door is not enough, if the door of the heart is not open likewise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
+      again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
+      filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
+      hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the other
+      side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of green, its
+      heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales&mdash;there was not much
+      wood&mdash;its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted and
+      shadowed by the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of
+      Dartmoor. And over all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the
+      life-bearing spirit of the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman
+      stood beside me, silently enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that
+      seemed to say in kindly triumph, &ldquo;Was I not right about the tower and the
+      wind that dwells among its pinnacles?&rdquo; I drank deep of the universal
+      flood, the outspread peace, the glory of the sun, and the haunting shadow
+      of the sea that lay beyond like the visual image of the eternal silence&mdash;as
+      it looks to us&mdash;that rounds our little earthly life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down, the
+      tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly below
+      me, except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in the
+      leaves, which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the top
+      of the tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few flowers
+      she had gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that rose from
+      the four pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned to the eastern
+      side, and looked over upon the church roof. It lay far below&mdash;looking
+      very narrow and small, but long, with the four ridges of four steep roofs
+      stretching away to the eastern end. It was in excellent repair, for the
+      parish was almost all in one lord&rsquo;s possession, and he was proud of his
+      church: between them he and Mr. Shepherd had made it beautiful to behold
+      and strong to endure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
+      fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
+      nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And when I
+      looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird, rounding
+      the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up the little
+      channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out of the circling
+      waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but hardly the less
+      welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for her signal from the
+      barrier rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reentering by the angels&rsquo; door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair, so
+      dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light that
+      came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny maiden-hair
+      fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old woman&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn&rsquo;t rob your tower of this
+      lovely little thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take it
+      home to miss. It&rsquo;ll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear you&rsquo;ve
+      got a sick maiden. She ben&rsquo;t a bedlar, be she, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without hurting
+      them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner&rsquo;s using the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite that,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;but she can&rsquo;t even sit up, and must be
+      carried everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea&rsquo;s been mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
+      down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
+      observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in ascending
+      the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging in silent
+      power in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully, for there
+      were only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one&rsquo;s feet from going
+      through the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my
+      conjecture about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had
+      seen from beneath hung down from this place. There were more of them
+      hanging shorter above, and there was yet enough of a further mechanism
+      remaining to prove that those keys, by means of the looped and cranked
+      rods, had been in connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining
+      also, which struck the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as
+      upon any other keyed instrument. This was the first contrivance of the
+      kind I had ever seen, though I have heard of it in other churches since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now,&rdquo; I said to
+      myself, &ldquo;I would get this all repaired, so that it should not interfere
+      with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and yet Shepherd
+      could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he pleased.&rdquo; For
+      Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of time to the
+      organ. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in the gloom,
+      with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence he sends
+      forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people, while they are
+      mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad over the stormy
+      ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s the parson at his bells,&rsquo; they
+      would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase might sink into their
+      hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to some hope or faint
+      aspiration. I will see what can be done.&rdquo; Having come to this conclusion,
+      I left the abode of the bells, descended to the church, bade my
+      conductress good morning, saying I would visit her soon in her own house,
+      and bore home to my child the spoil which, without kirk-rapine, I had torn
+      from the wall of the sanctuary. By this time the stormy veil had lifted
+      from the horizon, and the sun was shining in full power without one
+      darkening cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
+      seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was the
+      only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the tower. It
+      recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been married fifty
+      years, concluding with the couplet&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was not
+      good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life probably
+      without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten them, and I
+      daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had put into their
+      dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of quarrel with the
+      poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the verses in when he made
+      his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having learnt this one by heart,
+      I went about looking for anything more in the shape of sepulchral flora
+      that might interest or amuse my crippled darling; nor had I searched long
+      before I found one, the sole but triumphant recommendation of which was
+      the thorough &ldquo;puzzle-headedness&rdquo; of its construction. I quite reckoned on
+      seeing Connie trying to make it out, looking as bewildered over its
+      excellent grammar, as the poet of the other ought to have looked over his
+      rhymes, ere he gave in to the use of the nominative after a preposition.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;If you could view the heavenly shore,
+  Where heart&rsquo;s content you hope to find,
+  You would not murmur were you gone before,
+  But grieve that you are left behind.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. CONNIE&rsquo;S WATCH-TOWER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As I walked home, the rush of the rising tide was in my ears. To my fancy,
+      the ocean, awaking from a swoon in which its life had ebbed to its heart,
+      was sending that life abroad to its extremities, and waves breaking in
+      white were the beats of its reviving pulse, the flashes of returning
+      light. But so gentle was its motion, and so lovely its hue, that I could
+      not help contrasting it with its reflex in the mind of her who took refuge
+      from the tumult of its noises in the hollow of the old church. To her, let
+      it look as blue as the sky, as peaceful and as moveless, it was a wild,
+      reckless, false, devouring creature, a prey to its own moods, and to that
+      of the blind winds which, careless of consequences, urged it to raving
+      fury. Only, while the sea took this form to her imagination, she believed
+      in that which held the sea, and knew that, when it pleased God to part his
+      confining fingers, there would be no more sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I reached home, I went straight to Connie&rsquo;s room. Now the house was
+      one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
+      shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure of
+      the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings consists of
+      the houses that have <i>grown</i>. They have not been, built after a
+      straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or money-loving
+      pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or indifferent, as
+      the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they have left far
+      behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions of succeeding
+      possessors, until the fact that they have a history is as plainly written
+      on their aspect as on that of any son or daughter of Adam. These are the
+      houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there is any truth in
+      ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt; and hence perhaps
+      the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when we cross their
+      thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast a glance about the
+      hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best bedroom are. You have
+      got it all to find out, just as the character of a man; and thus had I to
+      find out this house of my friend Shepherd. It had formerly been a kind of
+      manor-house, though altogether unlike any other manor-house I ever saw;
+      for after exercising all my constructive ingenuity reversed in pulling it
+      to pieces in my mind, I came to the conclusion that the germ-cell of it
+      was a cottage of the simplest sort which had grown by the addition of
+      other cells, till it had reached the development in which we found it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have said that the dining-room was almost on the level of the shore.
+      Certainly some of the flat stones that coped the low wall in front of it
+      were thrown into the garden before the next winter by the waves. But
+      Connie&rsquo;s room looked out on a little flower-garden almost on the downs,
+      only sheltered a little by the rise of a short grassy slope above it.
+      This, however, left the prospect, from her window down the bay and out to
+      sea, almost open. To reach this room I had now to go up but one simple
+      cottage stair; for the door of the house entered on the first floor, that
+      is, as regards the building, midway between heaven and earth. It had a
+      large bay-window; and in this window Connie was lying on her couch, with
+      the lower sash wide open, through which the breeze entered, smelling of
+      sea-weed tempered with sweet grasses and the wall-flowers and stocks that
+      were in the little plot under it. I thought I could see an improvement in
+      her already. Certainly she looked very happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t it delightful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, everything. The wind, and the sky, and the sea, and the smell of the
+      flowers. Do look at that sea-bird. His wings are like the barb of a
+      terrible arrow. How he goes undulating, neck and body, up and down as he
+      flies. I never felt before that a bird moves his wings. It always looked
+      as if the wings flew with the bird. But I see the effort in him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An easy effort, though, I should certainly think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt. But I see that he chooses and means to fly, and so does it. It
+      makes one almost reconciled to the idea of wings. Do angels really have
+      wings, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is generally so represented, I think, in the Bible. But whether it is
+      meant as a natural fact about them, is more than I take upon me to decide.
+      For one thing, I should have to examine whether in simple narrative they
+      are ever represented with them, as, I think, in records of visions they
+      are never represented without them. But wings are very beautiful things,
+      and I do not exactly see why you should need reconciling to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
+      however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
+      they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if
+      you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them.
+      You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don&rsquo;t think I could
+      bear to touch the things&mdash;I don&rsquo;t mean the feathers, but the skinny,
+      folding-up bits of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want to fly, I suppose?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes; I should like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t want to have wings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shouldn&rsquo;t mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able
+      to keep them nice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
+      already. When you can&rsquo;t answer one thing, off to another, and, from your
+      new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost branch
+      of the lilac!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes, papa! That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve heard you say to mamma twenty times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you
+      either, you puss?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
+      always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to
+      relieve her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When women have wings,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;their logic will be good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you make that out, papa?&rdquo; she asked, a little re-assured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside from
+      the straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole utterance
+      will be instinct not only with the meaning of what you are thinking, but
+      with the reflex of the forces in you that make the utterance take this or
+      that shape; just as to a perfect palate, the source and course of a stream
+      would be revealed in every draught of its water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
+      wings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like a
+      horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is to
+      be got without doing any of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean now, but I can&rsquo;t put it in words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things:
+      what it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably
+      leave to him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of
+      knowing our fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and out
+      of their worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home in them.&mdash;But
+      I am talking what the people who do not understand such things lump all
+      together as mysticism, which is their name for a kind of spiritual
+      ash-pit, whither they consign dust and stones, never asking whether they
+      may not be gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.&mdash;You had better begin
+      to think about getting out, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since daylight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready to
+      go out with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or
+      two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I&mdash;finding
+      that the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for
+      which there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds in
+      winter, the other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise
+      provided&mdash;lifted the sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill,
+      and then there was only a little door in the garden-wall to get her
+      through before we found ourselves upon the down. I think the ascent of
+      this hill was the first experience I had&mdash;a little to my humiliation,
+      nothing to my sorrow&mdash;that I was descending another hill. I had to
+      set down the precious burden rather oftener before we reached the brow of
+      the cliffs than would have been necessary ten years before. But this was
+      all right, and the newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the
+      power which carries me about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I
+      shall be stronger by and by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying many
+      feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging their
+      undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have a
+      chance of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what the
+      marvel of flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please, borne up,
+      as far as eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own will alone.
+      This Connie, quicker than I in her observation of nature, had already
+      observed. Seated on the warm grass by her side, while neither talked, but
+      both regarded the blue spaces, I saw one of those same barb-winged birds
+      rest over my head, regarding me from above, as if doubtful whether I did
+      not afford some claim to his theory of treasure-trove. I knew at once that
+      what Connie had been saying to me just before was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa; not a bit. I don&rsquo;t know how it is, but I don&rsquo;t think I ever
+      wished much for anything I knew I could not have. I am enjoying everything
+      more than I can tell you. I wish Wynnie were as happy as I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? Do you think she&rsquo;s not happy, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t want any thinking, papa. You can see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid you&rsquo;re right, Connie. What do you think is the cause of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is because she can&rsquo;t wait. She&rsquo;s always going out to meet
+      things; and then when they&rsquo;re not there waiting for her, she thinks
+      they&rsquo;re nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If
+      everybody were like me, there wouldn&rsquo;t be much done in the world, would
+      there, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At all events, my dear, your way is wise for you, and I am glad you do
+      not judge your sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge Wynnie, papa! That would be cool impudence. She&rsquo;s worth ten of me.
+      Don&rsquo;t you think, papa,&rdquo; she added, after a pause, &ldquo;that if Mary had said
+      the smallest word against Martha, as Martha did against Mary, Jesus would
+      have had a word to say on Martha&rsquo;s side next?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I do, my dear. And I think that Mary did not sit very long without
+      asking Jesus if she mightn&rsquo;t go and help her sister. There is but one
+      thing needful&mdash;that is, the will of God; and when people love that
+      above everything, they soon come to see that to everything else there are
+      two sides, and that only the will of God gives fair play, as we call it,
+      to both of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not strange, papa, that the only time here that makes me want to
+      get up to look, is nothing of all the grand things round about me? I am
+      just lying like the convex mirror in the school-room at home, letting them
+      all paint themselves in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it then that makes you wish to get up and go and see?&rdquo; I asked
+      with real curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see down there&mdash;away across the bay&mdash;amongst the rocks
+      at the other side, a man sitting sketching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked for some time before I could discover him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sight is good, Connie: I see the man, but I could not tell what he
+      was doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see him lifting his head every now and then for a moment, and
+      then keeping it down for a longer while?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot distinguish that. But then I am shortsighted rather, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how you see so many little things that nobody else seems to
+      notice, then, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is because I have trained myself to observe. The degree of power in
+      the sight is of less consequence than the habit of seeing. But you have
+      not yet told me what it is that makes you desirous of getting up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to look over his shoulder, and see what he is doing. Is it not
+      strange that in the midst of all this plenty of beautifulness, I should
+      want to rise to look at a few lines and scratches, or smears of colour,
+      upon a bit of paper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear; I don&rsquo;t think it is strange. There a new element of interest
+      is introduced&mdash;the human. No doubt there is deep humanity in all this
+      around us. No doubt all the world, in all its moods, is human, as those
+      for whose abode and instruction it was made. No doubt, it would be void of
+      both beauty and significance to our eyes, were it not that it is one crowd
+      of pictures of the human mind, blended in one living fluctuating whole.
+      But these meanings are there in solution as it were. The individual is a
+      centre of crystallisation to this solution. Around him meanings gather,
+      are separated from other meanings; and if he be an artist, by which I mean
+      true painter, true poet, or true musician, as the case may be he so
+      isolates and represents them, that we see them&mdash;not what nature shows
+      to us, but what nature has shown, to him, determined by his nature and
+      choice. With it is mingled therefore so much of his own individuality,
+      manifested both in this choice and certain modifications determined by his
+      way of working, that you have not only a representation of an aspect of
+      nature, as far as that may be with limited powers and materials, but a
+      revelation of the man&rsquo;s own mind and nature. Consequently there is a human
+      interest in every true attempt to reproduce nature, an interest of
+      individuality which does not belong to nature herself, who is for all and
+      every man. You have just been saying that you were lying there like a
+      convex mirror reflecting all nature around you. Every man is such a convex
+      mirror; and his drawing, if he can make one, is an attempt to show what is
+      in this little mirror of his, kindled there by the grand world outside.
+      And the human mirrors being all differently formed, vary infinitely in
+      what they would thus represent of the same scene. I have been greatly
+      interested in looking alternately over the shoulders of two artists, both
+      sketching in colour the same, absolutely the same scene, both trying to
+      represent it with all the truth in their power. How different,
+      notwithstanding, the two representations came out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you, papa. But look a little farther off. Don&rsquo;t you
+      see over the top of another rock a lady&rsquo;s bonnet. I do believe that&rsquo;s
+      Wynnie. I know she took her box of water-colours out with her this
+      morning, just before you came home. Dora went with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you tell by her ribbons, Connie? You seem sharp-sighted enough to
+      see her face if she would show it. I don&rsquo;t even see the bonnet. If I were
+      like some people I know, I should feel justified in denying its presence,
+      attributing the whole to your fancy, and refusing anything to superiority
+      of vision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wouldn&rsquo;t be like you, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not; for I have no fancy for being shut up in my own blindness,
+      when other people offer me their eyes to eke out the defects of my own
+      with. But here comes mamma at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie&rsquo;s face brightened as if she had not seen her mother for a
+      fortnight. My Ethelwyn always brought the home gladness that her name
+      signified with her. She was a centre of radiating peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, don&rsquo;t you think that&rsquo;s Wynnie&rsquo;s bonnet over that black rock there,
+      just beyond where you see that man drawing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You absurd child! How should I know Wynnie&rsquo;s bonnet at this distance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you see the little white feather you gave her out of your wardrobe
+      just before we left? She put it in this morning before she went out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do see something white. But I want you to look out there,
+      towards what they call the Chapel Rock, at the other end of that long
+      mound they call the breakwater. You will soon see a boat appear full of
+      the coast-guard. I saw them going on board just as I left the house to
+      come up to you. Their officer came down with his sword, and each of the
+      men had a cutlass. I wonder what it can mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We looked. But before the boat made its appearance, Connie cried out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look there! What a big boat that is rowing for the land, away northwards
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned my eyes in the direction she indicated, and saw a long boat with
+      some half-dozen oars, full of men, rowing hard, apparently for some spot
+      on the shore at a considerable distance to the north of our bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that boat has something to do with the coast-guard and
+      their cutlasses. You&rsquo;ll see that, as soon as they get out of the bay, they
+      will row in the same direction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was. Our boat appeared presently from under the concealment of the
+      heights on which we were, and made at full speed after the other boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely they can&rsquo;t be smugglers,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I thought all that was over and
+      done with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of another twenty minutes, during which we watched their
+      progress, both boats had disappeared behind the headland to the northward.
+      Then, thinking Connie had had nearly enough of the sea air for her first
+      experience of its influences, I went and fetched Walter, and we carried
+      her back as we had brought her. She had not been in the shadow of her own
+      room for five minutes before she was fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now nearly time for our early dinner. We always dined early when we
+      could, that we might eat along with our children. We were both convinced
+      that the only way to make them behave like ladies and gentlemen was to
+      have them always with us at meals. We had seen very unpleasant results in
+      the children of those who allowed them to dine with no other supervision
+      than the nursery afforded: they were a constant anxiety and occasional
+      horror to those whom they visited&mdash;snatching like monkeys, and
+      devouring like jackals, as selfishly as if they were mere animals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! we&rsquo;ve seen such a nice gentleman!&rdquo; said Dora, becoming lively under
+      the influence of her soup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you, Dora? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sitting on the rocks, taking a portrait of the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you say he was a nice gentleman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had such beautiful boots!&rdquo; answered Dora, at which there was a great
+      laugh about the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! we must run and tell Connie that,&rdquo; said Harry. &ldquo;It will make her
+      laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you tell Connie, then, Harry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! what was it, Charlie? I&rsquo;ve forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another laugh followed at Harry&rsquo;s expense now, and we were all very merry,
+      when Dora, who sat opposite to the window, called out, clapping her hands&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s Niceboots again! There&rsquo;s Niceboots again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment the head of a young man appeared over the wall that
+      separated the garden from the little beach that lay by the entrance of the
+      canal. I saw at once that he must be more than ordinarily tall to show his
+      face, for he was not close to the wall. It was a dark countenance, with a
+      long beard, which few at that time wore, though now it is getting not
+      uncommon, even in my own profession&mdash;a noble, handsome face, a little
+      sad, with downbent eyes, which, released from their more immediate duty
+      towards nature, had now bent themselves upon the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose he&rsquo;s contemplating his boots,&rdquo; said Wynnie, with apparent
+      maliciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s too bad of you, Wynnie,&rdquo; I said, and the child blushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean anything, papa. It was only following up Dora&rsquo;s wise
+      discrimination,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a fine-looking fellow,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and ought, with that face and
+      head, to be able to paint good pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see what he has done,&rdquo; said Wynnie; &ldquo;for, by the way we
+      were sitting, I should think we were attempting the same thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what was that then, Wynnie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rock,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;that you could not see from where you were
+      sitting. I saw you on the top of the cliff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie said it was you, by your bonnet. She, too, was wishing she could
+      look over the shoulder of the artist at work beside you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not beside me. There were yards and yards of solid rock between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Space, you see, in removing things from the beholder, seems always to
+      bring them nearer to each other, and the most differing things are classed
+      under one name by the man who knows nothing about them. But what sort of a
+      rock was it you were trying to draw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A strange-looking, conical rock, that stands alone in front of one of the
+      ridges that project from the shore into the water. Three sea-birds, with
+      long white wings, were flying about it, and the little waves of the rising
+      tide were beating themselves against it and breaking in white plashes. So
+      the rock stood between the blue and white below and the blue and white
+      above; for, though there were no clouds, the birds gave the touches of
+      white to the upper sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Dora,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if you are old enough to understand me;
+      but sometimes little people are long in understanding, just because the
+      older people think they can&rsquo;t, and don&rsquo;t try them.&mdash;Do you see, Dora,
+      why I want you to learn to draw? Look how Wynnie sees things. That is, in
+      a great measure, because she draws things, and has, by that, learned to
+      watch in order to find out. It is a great thing to have your eyes open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora&rsquo;s eyes were large, and she opened them to their full width, as if she
+      would take in the universe at their little doors. Whether that indicated
+      that she did not in the least understand what I had been saying, or that
+      she was in sympathy with it, I cannot tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now let us go up to Connie, and tell her about the rock and everything
+      else you have seen since you went out. We are all her messengers sent out
+      to discover things, and bring back news of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little talk with Connie, I retired to the study, which was on the
+      same floor as her room completing, indeed, the whole of that part of the
+      house, which, seen from without, looked like a separate building; for it
+      had a roof of its own, and stood higher up the rock than the rest of the
+      dwelling. Here I began to glance over the books. To have the run of
+      another man&rsquo;s library, especially if it has all been gathered by himself,
+      is like having a pass-key into the chambers of his thought. Only, one must
+      be wary, when he opens them, what marks on the books he takes for those of
+      the present owner. A mistake here would breed considerable confusion and
+      falsehood in any judgment formed from the library. I found, however, one
+      thing plain enough, that Shepherd had kept up that love for an older
+      English literature, which had been one of the cords to draw us towards
+      each other when we were students together. There had been one point on
+      which we especially agreed&mdash;that a true knowledge of the present, in
+      literature, as in everything else, could only be founded upon a knowledge
+      of what had gone before; therefore, that any judgment, in regard to the
+      literature of the present day, was of no value which was not guided and
+      influenced by a real acquaintance with the best of what had gone before,
+      being liable to be dazzled and misled by novelty of form and other
+      qualities which, whatever might be the real worth of the substance, were,
+      in themselves, purely ephemeral. I had taken down a last-century edition
+      of the poems of the brothers Fletcher, and, having begun to read a lovely
+      passage in &ldquo;Christ&rsquo;s Victory and Triumph,&rdquo; had gone into what I can only
+      call an intellectual rage, at the impudence of the editor, who had altered
+      innumerable words and phrases to suit the degenerate taste of his own
+      time,&mdash;when a knock came to the door, and Charlie entered, breathless
+      with eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the boat with the men with the swords in it, and another boat
+      behind them, twice as big.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hurried out upon the road, and there, close under our windows, were the
+      two boats we had seen in the morning, landing their crews on the little
+      beach. The second boat was full of weather-beaten men, in all kinds of
+      attire, some in blue jerseys, some in red shirts, some in ragged coats.
+      One man, who looked their superior, was dressed in blue from head to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; I asked the officer of the coast-guard, a sedate,
+      thoughtful-looking man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vessel foundered, sir,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Sprung a leak on Sunday morning.
+      She was laden with iron, and in a heavy ground swell it shifted and
+      knocked a hole in her. The poor fellows are worn out with the pump and
+      rowing, upon little or nothing to eat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were trooping past us by this time, looking rather dismal, though not
+      by any means abject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do with them now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll be taken in by the people. We&rsquo;ll get up a little subscription for
+      them, but they all belong to the society the sailors have for sending the
+      shipwrecked to their homes, or where they want to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, here&rsquo;s something to help,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir. They&rsquo;ll be very glad of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if there&rsquo;s anything wanted that I can do for them, you must let me
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, sir. But I don&rsquo;t think there will be any occasion to trouble you.
+      You are our new clergyman, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly that. Only for a little while, till my friend Mr. Shepherd is
+      able to come back to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want to lose Mr. Shepherd, sir. He&rsquo;s what they call high in
+      these parts, but he&rsquo;s a great favourite with all the poor people, because
+      you see he understands them as if he was of the same flesh and blood with
+      themselves&mdash;as, for that matter, I suppose we all are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we weren&rsquo;t there would be nothing to say at all. Will any of these men
+      be at church to-morrow, do you suppose? I am afraid sailors are not much
+      in the way of going to church?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid not. You see they are all anxious to get home. Most likely
+      they&rsquo;ll be all travelling to-morrow. It&rsquo;s a pity. It would be a good
+      chance for saying something to them that they might think of again. But I
+      often think that, perhaps&mdash;it&rsquo;s only my own fancy, and I don&rsquo;t set it
+      up for anything&mdash;that sailors won&rsquo;t be judged exactly like other
+      people. They&rsquo;re so knocked about, you see, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
+      Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon
+      it, God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any
+      sailor of them all. But that&rsquo;s not exactly the question. It seems to me
+      the question is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is
+      because we know what God is like, who can trust in him with all our hearts
+      because he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners,
+      shall we not try all we can to let them, too, know the blessedness of
+      trusting in their Father in heaven? If we could only get them to say the
+      Lord&rsquo;s prayer, <i>meaning</i> it, think what that would be! Look here!
+      This can&rsquo;t be called bribery, for they are in want of it, and it will show
+      them I am friendly. Here&rsquo;s another sovereign. Give them my compliments,
+      and say that if any of them happen to be in Kilkhaven tomorrow, I shall be
+      quite pleased to welcome them to church. Tell them I will give them of my
+      best there if they will come. Make the invitation merrily, you know. No
+      long faces and solemn speech. I will give them the solemn speech when they
+      come to church. But even there I hope God will keep the long face far from
+      me. That is fittest for fear and suffering. And the house of God is the
+      casket that holds the antidote against all fear and most suffering. But I
+      am preaching my sermon on Saturday instead of Sunday, and keeping you from
+      your ministration to the poor fellows. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will give them your message as near as I can,&rdquo; he said, and we shook
+      hands and parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the ocean.
+      To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning there
+      had been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday morning, home
+      come the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a mock she takes all
+      they have, and flings them on shore again, with her weeds, and her shells,
+      and her sand. Before the winter was over we had learned&mdash;how much
+      more of that awful power that surrounds the habitable earth! By slow
+      degrees the sense of its might grew upon us, first by the vision of its
+      many aspects and moods, and then by more awful things that followed; for
+      there are few coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as upon this, the
+      whole force of the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when there is no storm
+      within perhaps hundreds of miles, when all is still as a church on the
+      land, the storm that raves somewhere out upon the vast waste, will drive
+      the waves in upon the shore with such fury that not even a lifeboat could
+      make its way through their yawning hollows, and their fierce, shattered,
+      and tumbling crests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in the
+      church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning&rsquo;s sermon for the
+      occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time that it
+      should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors were there
+      or not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought, for
+      instance, of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready all
+      about our island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or symbol of
+      two other oceans, one very still, the other very awful and fierce; in
+      fact, that three oceans surrounded us: one of the known world; one of the
+      unseen world, that is, of death; one of the spirit&mdash;the devouring
+      ocean of evil&mdash;and might I not have added yet another, encompassing
+      and silencing all the rest&mdash;that of truth! The visible ocean seemed
+      to make war upon the land, and the dwellers thereon. Restrained by the
+      will of God and by him made subject more and more to the advancing
+      knowledge of those who were created to rule over it, it was yet like a
+      half-tamed beast ever ready to break loose and devour its masters. Of
+      course this would have been but one aspect or appearance of it&mdash;for
+      it was in truth all service; but this was the aspect I knew it must bear
+      to those, seafaring themselves or not, to whom I had to speak. Then I
+      thought I might show, that its power, like that of all things that man is
+      ready to fear, had one barrier over which no commotion, no might of
+      driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its loudest waves were dumb&mdash;the
+      barrier of death. Hitherto and no further could its power reach. It could
+      kill the body. It could dash in pieces the last little cock-boat to which
+      the man clung, but thus it swept the man beyond its own region into the
+      second sea of stillness, which we call death, out upon which the thoughts
+      of those that are left behind can follow him only in great longings, vague
+      conjectures, and mighty faith. Then I thought I could show them how,
+      raving in fear, or lying still in calm deceit, there lay about the life of
+      man a far more fearful ocean than that which threatened his body; for this
+      would cast, could it but get a hold of him, both body and soul into hell&mdash;the
+      sea of evil, of vice, of sin, of wrong-doing&mdash;they might call it by
+      what name they pleased. This made war against the very essence of life,
+      against God who is the truth, against love, against fairness, against
+      fatherhood, motherhood, sisterhood, brotherhood, manhood, womanhood,
+      against tenderness and grace and beauty, gathering into one pulp of
+      festering death all that is noble, lovely, worshipful in the human nature
+      made so divine that the one fearless man, the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it
+      with us. This, I thought I might make them understand, was the only
+      terrible sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose awful shore we must
+      shrink and flee, the end of every voyage upon whose bosom was the bottom
+      of its filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is thought or spoken in
+      the light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that reaches down from the
+      upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of men. I thought, I say,
+      for a while, that I could make this, not definite, but very real to them.
+      But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might they not in the
+      symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the symbol itself be
+      ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return only in the vaguest
+      shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more excellent way. For the
+      power of the truth lies of course in its revelation to the mind, and while
+      for this there are a thousand means, none are so mighty as its embodiment
+      in human beings and human life. There it is itself alive and active. And
+      amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that in him who was perfect
+      man in virtue of being at the root of the secret of humanity, in virtue of
+      being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons in time: he is his Son in
+      eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken sparkle. Therefore, I would
+      talk to them about&mdash;but I will treat my reader now as if he were not
+      my reader, but one of my congregation on that bright Sunday, my first in
+      the Seaboard Parish, with the sea outside the church, flashing in the
+      sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen, I
+      could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level with
+      them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts upon that
+      which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the pulpit; then I
+      felt, as usual with me, that I was personally present for personal
+      influence with my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure, that one
+      long bench nearly in the middle of the church was full of such sunburnt
+      men as could not be mistaken for any but mariners, even if their torn and
+      worn garments had not revealed that they must be the very men about whom
+      we had been so much interested. Not only were they behaving with perfect
+      decorum, but their rough faces wore an aspect of solemnity which I do not
+      suppose was by any means their usual aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing. They
+      should have it by and by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once upon a time,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
+      till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a
+      mountain as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes haste
+      to get down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun was going
+      down, and, as I say, continued there for a good long while after it was
+      dark. You will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished to be alone.
+      He hadn&rsquo;t a house of his own. He never had all the time he lived. He
+      hadn&rsquo;t even a room of his own into which he could go, and bolt the door of
+      it. True, he had kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they were all poor
+      people, and their houses were small, and very likely they had large
+      families, and he could not always find a quiet place to go into. And I
+      dare say, if he had had a room, he would have been a little troubled with
+      the children constantly coming to find him; for however much he loved them&mdash;and
+      no man was ever so fond of children as he was&mdash;he needed to be left
+      quiet sometimes. So, upon this occasion, he went up the mountain just to
+      be quiet. He had been all day with a crowd of people, and he felt that it
+      was time to be alone. For he had been talking with men all day, which
+      tires and sometimes confuses a man&rsquo;s thoughts, and now he wanted to talk
+      with God&mdash;for that makes a man strong, and puts all the confusion in
+      order again, and lets a man know what he is about. So he went to the top
+      of the hill. That was his secret chamber. It had no door; but that did not
+      matter&mdash;no one could see him but God. There he stayed for hours&mdash;sometimes,
+      I suppose, kneeling in his prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with
+      his own thinking, on a stone; sometimes walking about, looking forward to
+      what would come next&mdash;not anxious about it, but contemplating it. For
+      just before he came up here, some of the people who had been with him
+      wanted to make him a king; and this would not do&mdash;this was not what
+      God wanted of him, and therefore he got rid of them, and came up here to
+      talk to God. It was so quiet up here! The earth had almost vanished. He
+      could see just the bare hilltop beneath him, a glimmer below, and the sky
+      and the stars over his head. The people had all gone away to their own
+      homes, and perhaps next day would hardly think about him at all, busy
+      catching fish, or digging their gardens, or making things for their
+      houses. But he knew that God would not forget him the next day any more
+      than this day, and that God had sent him not to be the king that these
+      people wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make his heart strong,
+      I say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk with his Father.
+      How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had been down there
+      a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as much as he was
+      in the quiet now&mdash;the only difference being that he could not then be
+      alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was&mdash;it was the king
+      of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting son of
+      our Father in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot of
+      it&mdash;that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not
+      wanting even his usual companions to be with him this evening&mdash;partly,
+      I presume, because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take
+      him by force and make him a king&mdash;he had sent them away in their
+      boat, to go across this water to the other side, where were their homes
+      and their families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top
+      or on the water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would
+      have been keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle
+      of the lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their
+      teeth. But he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was
+      talking to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and
+      finding it&mdash;watching it on its way across to the other side. You must
+      remember that it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous storms
+      upon these small lakes with great mountains about them. For the wind will
+      come all at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden a squall as
+      ever overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is no sea-room.
+      If the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore in a few
+      minutes, whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out at the oar,
+      toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So the time for
+      loneliness and prayer was over, and the time to go down out of his secret
+      chamber and help his brethren was come. He did not need to turn and say
+      good-bye to his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top alone: his
+      Father was down there on the lake as well. He went straight down. Could
+      not his Father, if he too was down on the lake, help them without him?
+      Yes. But he wanted him to do it, that they might see that he did it.
+      Otherwise they would only have thought that the wind fell and the waves
+      lay down, without supposing for a moment that their Master or his Father
+      had had anything to do with it. They would have done just as people do
+      now-a-days: they think that the help comes of itself, instead of by the
+      will of him who determined from the first that men should be helped. So
+      the Master went down the hill. When he reached the border of the lake, the
+      wind being from the other side, he must have found the waves breaking
+      furiously upon the rocks. But that made no difference to him. He looked
+      out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the rushing wind and the noise of
+      the water, out over the waves under the clear, starry sky, saw where the
+      tiny boat was tossed about like a nutshell, and set out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
+      their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are
+      of tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson&rsquo;s yarn a
+      good one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than the
+      others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not returned,
+      and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea of what was
+      coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how Jesus had come
+      by a boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave him
+      behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been with
+      them&mdash;not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only
+      that somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at.
+      They had seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn
+      water into wine&mdash;some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand
+      people the day before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one
+      of their number suggested that if he had been with them, they would have
+      been safe from the storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about
+      the laws of nature, not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they
+      would have said that was quite a different thing&mdash;altogether too much
+      to expect or believe: <i>nobody</i> could make the wind mind what it was
+      about, or keep the water from drowning you if you fell into it and
+      couldn&rsquo;t swim; or such-like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
+      strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
+      their oars in it up to the handles&mdash;as they rose on the crest of a
+      huge wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
+      leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray which
+      the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before it like
+      dust, they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat, something
+      standing up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move towards them.
+      It was a shape like a man. They all cried out with fear, as was natural,
+      for they thought it must be a ghost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the
+      story! I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting up
+      to speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
+      knew so well. It said, &lsquo;Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.&rsquo; I
+      should think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some
+      moments where they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to
+      recover himself apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt
+      strong and full of courage. &lsquo;Lord, if it be thou,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;bid me come
+      unto thee on the water.&rsquo; Jesus just said, &lsquo;Come;&rsquo; and Peter unshipped his
+      oar, and scrambled over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let go his
+      hold of the boat, and began to look about him, and saw how the wind was
+      tearing the water, and how it tossed and raved between him and Jesus, he
+      began to be afraid. And as soon as he began to be afraid he began to sink;
+      but he had, notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough to do the one
+      sensible thing; he cried out, &lsquo;Lord, save me.&rsquo; And Jesus put out his hand,
+      and took hold of him, and lifted him up out of the water, and said to him,
+      &lsquo;O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And then they got
+      into the boat, and the wind fell all at once, and altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn&rsquo;t that
+      he hadn&rsquo;t courage, but that he hadn&rsquo;t enough of it. And why was it that he
+      hadn&rsquo;t enough of it? Because he hadn&rsquo;t faith enough. Peter was always very
+      easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn&rsquo;t at all likely that a
+      man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter found himself
+      standing on the water: you would have thought that when once he found
+      himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of the wind and the
+      waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked so ugly that the
+      fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his courage went. You
+      would have thought that the greatest trial of his courage was over when he
+      got out of the boat, and that there was comparatively little more ahead of
+      him. Yet the sight of the waves and the blast of the boisterous wind were
+      too much for him. I will tell you how I fancy it was; and I think there
+      are several instances of the same kind of thing in Peter&rsquo;s life. When he
+      got out of the boat, and found himself standing on the water, he began to
+      think much of himself for being able to do so, and fancy himself better
+      and greater than his companions, and an especial favourite of God above
+      them. Now, there is nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two
+      are directly against each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and
+      began to think about himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose
+      his faith, and then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink&mdash;and
+      that brought him to his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his
+      Master, and then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the
+      Lord gently rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, &lsquo;Wherefore
+      didst thou doubt?&rsquo; I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart
+      sufficiently well to answer that <i>wherefore</i>. I do not think it
+      likely at this period of his history. But God has immeasurable patience,
+      and before he had done teaching Peter, even in this life, he had made him
+      know quite well that pride and conceit were at the root of all his
+      failures. Jesus did not point it out to him now. Faith was the only thing
+      that would reveal that to him, as well as cure him of it; and was,
+      therefore, the only thing he required of him in his rebuke. I suspect
+      Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager hands of his companions
+      already in a humbler state of mind than when he left it; but before his
+      pride would be quite overcome, it would need that same voice of
+      loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock to bring to
+      his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the voice of
+      one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet a
+      readier disciple than he&mdash;the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him
+      because he dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even
+      he gained the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the
+      cross like his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach us to
+      distrust ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and endless
+      patience with other people. But to return to the story and what the story
+      itself teaches us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
+      mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
+      frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they were
+      only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own question&rdquo;&mdash;I
+      went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with an audible
+      answer hovering on their lips&mdash;&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that, as they then were,
+      it would have made so much difference to them; for none of them had risen
+      much above the look of the things nearest them yet. But supposing you, who
+      know something about him, were alone on the sea, and expecting your boat
+      to be swamped every moment&mdash;if you found out all at once, that he was
+      looking down at you from some lofty hilltop, and seeing all round about
+      you in time and space too, would you be afraid? He might mean you to go to
+      the bottom, you know. Would you mind going to the bottom with him looking
+      at you? I do not think I should mind it myself. But I must take care lest
+      I be boastful like Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
+      Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not
+      believe that he is what he says he is&mdash;the Saviour of men. We do not
+      believe what he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and
+      therefore continue slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you do
+      believe in him. I am not going to say that you do not believe in him; but
+      I hope I am going to make you say to yourselves that you too deserve to
+      have those words of the Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to Peter,
+      &lsquo;O ye of little faith!&rsquo; Floating on the sea of your troubles, all kinds of
+      fears and anxieties assailing you, is He not on the mountain-top? Sees he
+      not the little boat of your fortunes tossed with the waves and the
+      contrary wind? Assuredly he will come to you walking on the waters. It may
+      not be in the way you wish, but if not, you will say at last, &lsquo;This is
+      better.&rsquo; It may be that he will come in a form that will make you cry out
+      for fear in the weakness of your faith, as the disciples cried out&mdash;not
+      believing any more than they did, that it can be he. But will not each of
+      you arouse his courage that to you also he may say, as to the woman with
+      the sick daughter whose confidence he so sorely tried, &lsquo;Great is thy
+      faith&rsquo;? Will you not rouse yourself, I say, that you may do him justice,
+      and cast off the slavery of your own dread? O ye of little faith,
+      wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that the Lord sees and will not
+      come. Down the mountain assuredly he will come, and you are now as safe in
+      your troubles as the disciples were in theirs with Jesus looking on. They
+      did not know it, but it was so: the Lord was watching them. And when you
+      look back upon your past lives, cannot you see some instances of the same
+      kind&mdash;when you felt and acted as if the Lord had forgotten you, and
+      found afterwards that he had been watching you all the time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
+      little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
+      soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
+      envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah! trust
+      him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean and
+      beautiful in heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
+      watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt, and
+      wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe,
+      though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which
+      you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch
+      over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will
+      you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and
+      delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your
+      ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves to help you? It
+      is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would be far finer to
+      fear nothing <i>because</i> he is above all, and over all, and in you all.
+      For his sake and for his love, give up everything bad, and take him for
+      your captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you, and steer you safe
+      into the port of glory. Now to God the Father,&rdquo; &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
+      followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      END OF VOL. I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      VOLUME II.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the evening we met in Connie&rsquo;s room, as usual, to have our talk. And
+      this is what came out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw Niceboots at church. He did stare at you, papa, as if he had never
+      heard a sermon before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay he never heard such a sermon before!&rdquo; said Connie, with the
+      perfect confidence of inexperience and partiality&mdash;not to say
+      ignorance, seeing she had not heard the sermon herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Wynnie spoke from her dark corner, apparently forcing herself to
+      speak, and thereby giving what seemed an unpleasant tone to what she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I don&rsquo;t know what to think. You are always telling us to
+      trust in Him; but how can we, if we are not good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s no use sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you&mdash;I mean I&mdash;can&rsquo;t feel good, or care about it at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is that any ground for saying that it is no use&mdash;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&mdash;and who so
+      destitute as those who do not love what they want to love&mdash;except,
+      indeed, those who don&rsquo;t want to love?&mdash;that, till you are well on
+      towards all right by earnestly seeking it, he won&rsquo;t help you? You are to
+      judge him from yourself, are you?&mdash;forgetting that all the misery in
+      you is just because you have not got his grand presence with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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&mdash;gold and red and blue&mdash;that
+      you have to that picture of him at home. Why doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no suffering, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not say that, my dear. There you are on your couch and can&rsquo;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&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;are not these feelings in a great measure dependent
+      upon the state of one&rsquo;s health? I find it so different when the sunshine
+      is inside me as well as outside me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t mean you, wife&mdash;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&mdash;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. &lsquo;What does that matter?&rsquo; you will learn to say. &lsquo;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.&rsquo; This is faith&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, papa. I think perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;I have heard you yourself, papa, make excuse for
+      people&rsquo;s ill-temper on this very ground, that they were out of health.
+      Indeed,&rdquo; she went on, half-crying, &ldquo;I have heard you do so for myself,
+      when you did not know that I was within hearing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;that is,
+      in the life of another&mdash;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, &lsquo;It is true
+      So-and-so was cross to-day. But it wasn&rsquo;t in the least that he wasn&rsquo;t
+      friendly, or didn&rsquo;t like me; it was only that he had eaten something that
+      hadn&rsquo;t agreed with him. I could see it in his eye. He had one of his
+      headaches.&rsquo; 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, &lsquo;It is a law of
+      nature,&rsquo; 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 <i>propound anent</i> it? as the Scotch lawyers would say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little pause followed, during which I hope some of us were thinking.
+      That Wynnie, at least, was, her next question made evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand it,&rdquo;
+       I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I find it so hard to believe. Can&rsquo;t you say something, papa, to help
+      me to believe it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing
+      against reason in the story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, please, what you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might drown his body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;physical light, as we say, <i>merely?</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;Moses, Elias, and
+      he&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then about Peter, papa? What you have been saying will not apply to
+      Peter&rsquo;s body, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s faith in him brought even
+      Peter&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&mdash;Does this help
+      you to believe at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simple enough, not clever enough, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s one thing,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I opened my New Testament, and read fragmentarily, &ldquo;&lsquo;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.&rsquo; Just contemplate the change here in the words of our
+      Lord. &lsquo;Blessed art thou.&rsquo; &lsquo;Thou art an offence unto me.&rsquo; Think what change
+      has passed on Peter&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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
+      <i>alas?</i> 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&rsquo;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&mdash;like him; that the lovely glimmerings of
+      truth and love that were in them now&mdash;the breakings forth of the
+      light that lighteneth every man&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 <i>would</i> be what he wanted, who knew all about it, and had done
+      everything that I might be a son of God&mdash;a living glory of gladness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. NICEBOOTS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s shipman, as far as his hue and the first look of him
+      went. It was clear that &ldquo;in many a tempest had his beard be shake,&rdquo; and
+      certainly &ldquo;the hote somer had made his hew all broun;&rdquo; but farther the
+      likeness would hardly go, for the &ldquo;good fellow&rdquo; 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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me, captain, that your vessel was not seaworthy, and that you
+      could not but have known that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was my own craft, sir, and I judged her fit for several voyages more.
+      If she had been A 1 she couldn&rsquo;t have been mine; and a man must do what he
+      can for his family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you were risking your life, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A few chances more or less don&rsquo;t much signify to a sailor, sir. There
+      ain&rsquo;t nothing to be done without risk. You&rsquo;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&rsquo;s all in the luck, sir, I assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever the captain&rsquo;s ready to go he&rsquo;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&rsquo;d never set his foot off shore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s right they shouldn&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s got
+      a character of her own, and she can&rsquo;t hide it long, any more than you can
+      hide yours, sir, begging your pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay that&rsquo;s all correct, but still I shouldn&rsquo;t like anyone to say to
+      me, &lsquo;You ought to have told me, captain.&rsquo; Therefore, you see, I&rsquo;m telling
+      you, captain, and now I&rsquo;m clear.&mdash;Have a glass of wine before you
+      go,&rdquo; I concluded, ringing the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir. I&rsquo;ll turn over what you&rsquo;ve been saying, and anyhow I take
+      it kind of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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 <i>undertow</i>, as they called it&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry! Charlie! What on earth are you about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, papa,&rdquo; answered Charlie. &ldquo;Only it&rsquo;s so jolly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is jolly, my boy?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I don&rsquo;t know, papa! It&rsquo;s <i>so</i> jolly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the sunshine?&rdquo; thought I; &ldquo;and the wind? God&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I withdrew into my room; and so far from seeking to put an end to the
+      noise&mdash;I knew Connie did not mind it&mdash;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&rsquo;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 be 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After scrambling with difficulty over some rocky ledges, and stopping at
+      Connie&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the ribbed sea-sand,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; cried Wynnie involuntarily, and the painter looked round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;We came over from the other side, and did
+      not see you before. I hope we have not disturbed you much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; he answered courteously, and rose as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind having your work seen before it is finished?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was struck with the mode and tone of the remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is no common man,&rdquo; I said to myself, and responded to him in
+      something of a similar style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish we could always keep that in mind with regard to human beings
+      themselves, as well as their works,&rdquo; I said aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter looked at me, and I looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We speak each from the experience of his own profession, I presume,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I returned, glancing at the little picture in oils upon his easel,
+      &ldquo;your work here, though my knowledge of painting is next to nothing&mdash;perhaps
+      I ought to say nothing at all&mdash;this picture must have long ago passed
+      the chaotic stage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is nearly as much finished as I care to make it,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I
+      hardly count this work at all. I am chiefly amusing, or rather pleasing,
+      my own fancy at present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apparently,&rdquo; I remarked, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will soon explain,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;The moment I saw this rock, it
+      reminded me of Dante&rsquo;s Purgatory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are a reader of Dante?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;In the original, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>per se</i> was till I began to read Dante.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is quite my own feeling. Now, to return to your picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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
+      <i>ab extra</i> 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&mdash;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?&rdquo;&mdash;for the young man, getting animated, began to talk as if we
+      had known each other for some time&mdash;and here he repeated the purport
+      of Dante&rsquo;s words in English:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you said you did not use translations?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it possible that&mdash;Miss Walton (?)&rdquo; interrogatively this&mdash;&ldquo;might
+      not follow the Italian so easily, and I feared to seem pedantic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won&rsquo;t lag far behind, I flatter myself,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;Whose
+      translation do you quote?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated a moment; then said carelessly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have cobbled a few passages after that fashion myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has the merit of being near the original at least,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;and
+      that seems to me one of the chief merits a translation can possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; the painter resumed, rather hastily, as if to avoid any further
+      remark upon his verses, &ldquo;you see those white things in the air above?&rdquo;
+       Here he turned to Wynnie. &ldquo;Miss Walton will remember&mdash;I think she was
+      making a drawing of the rock at the same time I was&mdash;how the
+      seagulls, or some such birds&mdash;only two or three of them&mdash;kept
+      flitting about the top of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember quite well,&rdquo; answered Wynnie, with a look of appeal to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I interposed; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mr. Niceboots, for as yet I did not know what else to call him,
+      looked at Wynnie almost with a start.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How wonderfully that falls in with my fancy about the rock!&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;is it not, Mr. Walton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly it is. We are here tried as by fire, to see what our work is&mdash;whether
+      wood, hay, and stubble, or gold and silver and precious stones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; resumed the painter, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no theologian,&rdquo; said the painter, turning away, I thought somewhat
+      coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can be of any service to Miss Walton with her drawing, I shall be
+      happy,&rdquo; he said, turning again towards me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very kind,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but Miss Walton does not presume to be an
+      artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw a slight shade pass over Wynnie&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are just going to have some coffee,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;for my servants, I see,
+      have managed to kindle a fire. Will you come and allow me to introduce you
+      to Mrs. Walton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With much pleasure,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;how am I to effect an introduction, seeing I do not yet
+      know your name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had had to keep a sharp look-out on myself lest I should call him Mr.
+      Niceboots. He smiled very graciously and replied,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Percivale&mdash;Charles Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A descendant of Sir Percivale of King Arthur&rsquo;s Round Table?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot count quite so far back,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;as that&mdash;not quite
+      to the Conquest,&rdquo; he added, with a slight deepening of his sunburnt hue.
+      &ldquo;I do come of a fighting race, but I cannot claim Sir Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, do look here papa!&rdquo; she cried, from some little distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked away again towards the rest of our party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think those bubbles more beautiful than any precious stones you
+      ever saw, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And flowers are more beautiful things than jewels?&rsquo; she said
+      interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Many&mdash;perhaps most flowers are,&rdquo; I granted. &ldquo;And did you ever see
+      such curves and delicate textures anywhere else as in the clouds, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not&mdash;in the cirrhous clouds at least&mdash;the frozen ones.
+      But what are you putting me to my catechism for in this way, my child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a funny question, papa; it&rsquo;s a very serious one. I can&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand you, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay not, my dear. But I will explain to you a little, if Mr.
+      Percivale will excuse me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I am greatly interested, both in the question and the
+      answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;poorer,
+      without even a tub&mdash;when this world, with all its pictures, scenery,
+      books, and&mdash;alas for some Christians!&mdash;bibles even, shall have
+      vanished away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you say <i>alas</i>, papa&mdash;if they are Christians
+      especially?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say <i>alas</i> 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&mdash;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 &lsquo;winter of our discontent.&rsquo; Shakspere
+      surely saw that when he makes Titania say, in <i>A Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream</i>:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;The human mortals want their winter here&rsquo;&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      namely, to set things right; and none of those editors who would alter the
+      line seem to have been capable of understanding its import.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you a little,&rdquo; answered Wynnie. Then, changing her
+      tone, &ldquo;I told you, papa, you would have an answer ready; didn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my child; but with this difference&mdash;I found the answer to meet
+      my own necessities, not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you had it ready for me when I wanted it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was scarcely beyond hearing, when Dora came up to me from her digging,
+      with an eager look on her sunny face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he got nice boots, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, my dear, I am unable to support you in that assertion, for I
+      never saw his boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did, then,&rdquo; returned the child; &ldquo;and I never saw such nice boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I accept the statement willingly,&rdquo; 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&mdash;not in fact till next Sunday&mdash;though
+      why he should come to church at all was something of a puzzle to me,
+      especially when I knew him better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE BLACKSMITH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his hammered hand to his forehead courteously, and as lightly as
+      if the hammer had been the butt-end of a whip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if you would say the same if you had to work at it in
+      weather like this,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not,&rdquo; I returned, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you may be right,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;It does not much
+      matter to me,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;if I only get through my work and have done
+      with it. No man shall say I shirked what I&rsquo;d got to do. And then when it&rsquo;s
+      over there won&rsquo;t be a word to say agen me, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not finish the sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in
+      a somewhat dreary patch, if the word <i>dreary</i> can be truly used with
+      respect to any manifestation of sunlight, on the dark clay floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you are not ill,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;This man will do for
+      my work,&rdquo; I said to myself; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+       The smith&rsquo;s words broke in on my meditations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a little boy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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&rsquo;t account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he
+      said to me, solemn-like, &lsquo;Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord
+      Jesus to make you whole?&rsquo; 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: &lsquo;Then you ought to be at school,&rsquo; says he. I said nothing,
+      because I couldn&rsquo;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,&rdquo; he said, as he
+      took the horse-shoe from the forge, laid it on the anvil, and again made a
+      nimbus of coruscating iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are just the man I want,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a job for you, down to
+      Kilkhaven, as you say in these parts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha&rsquo; thought the
+      church was all spick and span by this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you know who I am,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t mind doing my job though you are a Methodist, will you?&rdquo; I
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I, sir. If I&rsquo;ve read right, it&rsquo;s the fault of the Church that we
+      don&rsquo;t pull all alongside. You turned us out, sir; we didn&rsquo;t go out of
+      ourselves. At least, if all they say is true, which I can&rsquo;t be sure of,
+      you know, in this world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite right there though,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And in doing so, the
+      Church had the worst of it&mdash;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&mdash;mind, I say, that I know&mdash;who would have made such a cruel
+      speech to a boy as that the Methodist parson made to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it did me good, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;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?&mdash;of
+      your having worked fiercely, indignantly, as if he wronged you by not
+      caring for you, not understanding you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a delicate little job that wants nice handling, and I fancy you
+      are just the man to do it to my mind,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, sir?&rdquo; he asked, in a friendly manner enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will excuse me, I would rather show it to you than talk about it,&rdquo;
+       I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you please, sir. When do you want me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first hour you can come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you feel inclined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that matter, I&rsquo;d rather go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to me instead: it&rsquo;s light work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, sir&mdash;at ten o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. THE LIFE-BOAT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day rose glorious. Indeed, early as the sun rose, I saw him rise&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for
+      even here the hearth-fire has vanished from the records of cottage-life&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I now entered, Mrs. Coombes rose from a high-backed settle near the
+      fire, and bade me good-morning with a courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a lovely day it is, Mrs. Coombes! It is so bright over the sea,&rdquo; I
+      said, going to the one little window which looked out on the great
+      Atlantic, &ldquo;that one almost expects a great merchant navy to come sailing
+      into Kilkhaven&mdash;sunk to the water&rsquo;s edge with silks, and ivory, and
+      spices, and apes, and peacocks, like the ships of Solomon that we read
+      about&mdash;just as the sun gets up to the noonstead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>talk down</i> 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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what was the old woman&rsquo;s answer? It was this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, sir. And when I was as young as you&rdquo;&mdash;I was not so very
+      young, my reader may well think&mdash;&ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo; wood that he got at the Marishes, as
+      they calls it, sir&mdash;a bit of an island somewheres in the great sea.
+      But the parrot&rsquo;s gone dead like the rest of them, sir.&mdash;Where am I?
+      and what am I talking about?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were telling me how you used to think of the sea&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was as young as you. I remember, sir. Well, that lasted a long
+      time&mdash;lasted till my third boy fell asleep in the wide water; for it
+      du call it falling asleep, don&rsquo;t it, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bible certainly does,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the Bible I be meaning, of course,&rdquo; she returned. &ldquo;Well, after that,
+      but I don&rsquo;t know what began it, only I did begin to think about the sea as
+      something that took away things and didn&rsquo;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&rsquo; the shining ones that
+      come to fetch the pilgrims. You&rsquo;ve heard tell of the <i>Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress</i>,
+      I daresay, sir, among the poor people; for they du say it was written by a
+      tinker, though there be a power o&rsquo; good things in it that I think the
+      gentlefolk would like if they knowed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know the book&mdash;nearly as well as I know the Bible,&rdquo; I answered;
+      &ldquo;and the shining ones are very beautiful in it. I am glad you can think of
+      the sea that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s looking in at the window all day as I go about the house,&rdquo; she
+      answered, &ldquo;and all night too when I&rsquo;m asleep; and if I hadn&rsquo;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&rsquo;t
+      be easy, with the sound of it in your ears the last thing at night and the
+      first thing in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth of things is indeed the only refuge from the look of things,&rdquo; I
+      replied. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;&ldquo;the light that never was on sea or shore.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you find yourself to-day?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite well, sir, I thank you,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;A day like this does a man
+      good. But,&rdquo; he added, and his countenance fell, &ldquo;the heart knoweth its own
+      bitterness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may know it too much,&rdquo; I returned, &ldquo;just because it refuses to let a
+      stranger intermeddle therewith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not require many minutes to make the man understand what I wanted
+      of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must begin at the bells and work down,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a fortnight, I hope you will be able to play a tune to the parish,
+      sir,&rdquo; he added, as he took his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;s idea of the matter. I turned away
+      thoughtful, and went through the churchyard with my eye on the graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can she go no further?&rdquo; I asked of the captain of the coastguard, whom I
+      found standing by my side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not without some danger,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, then, must it be in a storm!&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then of course,&rdquo; he returned, &ldquo;they must take their chance. But there is
+      no good in running risks for nothing. That swell is quite enough for
+      exercise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is it enough to accustom them to face the danger that will come?&rdquo; I
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With danger comes courage,&rdquo; said the old sailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you ever afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. I don&rsquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      resumed, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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 <i>have</i>
+      seen a life-boat&mdash;not that one&mdash;<i>she&rsquo;s</i> done nothing yet&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;one could almost fancy
+      dreaming of storms to come&mdash;she went, as softly as if moved only by
+      her &ldquo;own sweet will,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve found your daughter at last then?&rdquo; I said, approaching them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, sir. She goes out to work, and her hands be pretty full at
+      present. But this be almost my daughter, sir,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;This is my next
+      daughter, Mary Trehern, from the south. She&rsquo;s got a place near by, to be
+      near her mother that is to be, that&rsquo;s me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was hanging her head and blushing, as the old woman spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;And when are you going to get your new mother,
+      Mary? Soon I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she gave me no reply&mdash;only hung her head lower and blushed
+      deeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Coombes spoke for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s shy, you see, sir. But if she was to speak her mind, she would ask
+      you whether you wouldn&rsquo;t marry her and Willie when he comes home from his
+      next voyage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary&rsquo;s hands were trembling now, and she turned half away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you expect Willie home?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a little gasp and murmur, but no articulate words came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be frightened, Mary,&rdquo; said her mother, as I found she always called
+      her. &ldquo;The gentleman won&rsquo;t be sharp with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted a pair of soft brown eyes with one glance and a smile, and then
+      sank them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be home in about a month, we think,&rdquo; answered the mother. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a
+      good ship he&rsquo;s aboard of, and makes good voyages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is time to think about the bans, then,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, sir,&rdquo; said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just come to me about it, and I will attend to it&mdash;when you think
+      proper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought I could hear a murmured &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. MR. PERCIVALE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you get that shade of green?&rdquo; I heard her ask as I came up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Mr. Percivale proceeded to tell her; from which beginning they
+      went on to other things, till Mr. Percivale said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is hardly fair, Miss Walton; to criticise my work while you keep
+      your own under cover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t criticising, Mr. Percivale; was I, Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t hear her make a single remark, Mr. Percivale,&rdquo; said Connie,
+      taking her sister&rsquo;s side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s history if they might not flow till the papas gave their wise
+      consideration to everything about the course they were to take.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, though,&rdquo; added Connie, &ldquo;it is only fair that Mr. Percivale <i>should</i>
+      see your work, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>all</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not long in returning, however, though she came back with the same
+      dignified motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing really worth either showing or concealing,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s wide eyes were taking in everything. It was wonderful how
+      Connie&rsquo;s deprivations had made her keen in observing. Now she hastened to
+      her sister&rsquo;s rescue even from such a slight inconvenience as the shadow of
+      embarrassment in which she found herself&mdash;perhaps from having seen
+      some unusual expression in my face, of which I was unconscious, though
+      conscious enough of what might have occasioned such.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me your hand, Wynnie,&rdquo; said Connie, &ldquo;and help me to move one inch
+      further on my side.&mdash;I may move just that much on my side, mayn&rsquo;t I,
+      papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you had better not, my dear, if you can do without it,&rdquo; I
+      answered; for the doctor&rsquo;s injunctions had been strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, papa; but I feel as if it would do me good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie smiled very sweetly and lay still, while Wynnie stood holding her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Mr. Percivale, having received the drawings, had walked away with
+      them towards what they called the storm tower&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run, Wynnie, and ask Mr. Percivale, with my compliments, to come and
+      lunch with us,&rdquo; I said&mdash;more to let her see I was not displeased,
+      however I might have looked, than for any other reason. She went&mdash;sedately
+      as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;up to which point she had been
+      walking with perfect steadiness and composure&mdash;she lifted her eyes&mdash;by
+      what influence I cannot tell&mdash;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&mdash;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, &ldquo;Not a word to Connie,&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After lunch, as we rose from the table, he took Wynnie&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid you have not found anything worthy of criticism in my poor
+      attempts, Mr. Percivale?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      replied, holding out his hand to take the portfolio again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be greatly obliged to you,&rdquo; she said, returning it, &ldquo;for I have
+      had no one to help me since I left school, except a book called <i>Modern
+      Painters</i>, 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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last speech fell on my ear like the tone of a church bell. &ldquo;That will
+      do, my friend,&rdquo; thought I. But I said nothing to interrupt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;at least so it appeared to
+      me from what I could understand of the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said my daughter, &ldquo;it seems to me that if you get the feeling
+      right, that is the main thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; returned Mr. Percivale; &ldquo;so much the main thing that any
+      imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it becomes of
+      the greatest consequence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But can it really interfere with the feeling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is it not a hopeless thing to attempt the finish of nature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s behaving so
+      childishly. Her face flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose,
+      saying, with a little choke in her voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see it&rsquo;s no use trying. I won&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear,&rdquo; he said, approaching me with an almost military step, much at
+      variance with the shadow upon his countenance, &ldquo;I fear I have been rude to
+      Miss Walton, but nothing was farther&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;in
+      proportion, I mean&mdash;to your&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you think so. That I should myself be of the same opinion can
+      be of no consequence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he added, with a half sigh and with
+      an appeal in his tone, as if he would justify himself to my conscience,
+      &ldquo;is half the battle in this world. It is over so soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No sooner than it ought to be,&rdquo; I rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it may appear to you,&rdquo; he returned; &ldquo;for you, I presume to conjecture,
+      have worked hard and done much. I may or may not have worked hard&mdash;sometimes
+      I think I have, sometimes I think I have not&mdash;but I certainly have
+      done little. Here I am nearly thirty, and have made no mark on the world
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that that is of so much consequence,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I have never
+      hoped for more than to rub out a few of the marks already made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you are right,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;Every man has something he can do,
+      and more, I suppose, that he can&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE SHADOW OP DEATH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 be 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,&mdash;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,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, I told Mr. Percivale that I was sorry I had behaved so badly about
+      the drawings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did right, my child,&rdquo; 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 <i>Hamlet</i>, 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the day&mdash;the
+      rights of women&mdash;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 <i>have</i> a right to&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what did Mr. Percivale say?&rdquo; I resumed, for she was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He took the blame all on himself, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a gentleman,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I could not leave it so, you know, papa, because that was not the
+      truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and what did he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He began to praise them then. But you know I could not take much of that,
+      for what could he do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might give him credit for a little honesty, at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but things may be true in a way, you know, and not mean much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered shyly. &ldquo;He was so kind that somehow I got heart to try
+      again. He&rsquo;s very nice, isn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My answer was not quite ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like him, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I like him&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what? please, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is not that a hasty conclusion, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a hasty question, my dear. I have come to no conclusion. I was
+      only speaking confidentially about my fears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, papa, it&rsquo;s only that he&rsquo;s not sure enough, and is afraid of
+      appearing to profess more than he believes. I&rsquo;m sure, if that&rsquo;s it, I have
+      the greatest sympathy with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at her, and saw the tears gathering fast in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray to God on the chance of his hearing you, my darling, and go to
+      sleep,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t like a man much, could you, who did not
+      believe in anything greater than himself, anything marvellous, grand,
+      beyond our understanding&mdash;who thought that he had come out of the
+      dirt and was going back to the dirt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could, papa, if he tried to do his duty notwithstanding&mdash;for I&rsquo;m
+      sure I couldn&rsquo;t. I should cry myself to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know whether this was the best answer to make, but I had little
+      time to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t know that he&rsquo;s like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;as
+      even such a man as we have been supposing might well teach us&mdash;till
+      we have sufficient facts from which to draw them. Now go to bed, my
+      child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night then, dear papa,&rdquo; she said, and left me with a kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>more</i> 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&mdash;on the Father who loved my
+      child more than even I could love her&mdash;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&rsquo;s <i>Paradise</i>,
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Coombes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned up a wizened, humorous old face, the very type of a
+      gravedigger&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re making things tidy,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It take time to make them all comfortable, you see, sir,&rdquo; he returned,
+      taking up his shears again and clipping away at the top and sides of the
+      mound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the dead, Coombes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; to be sure, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think it makes much difference to their comfort, do you,
+      whether the grass is one length or another upon their graves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well no, sir. I don&rsquo;t suppose it makes <i>much</i> difference to them.
+      But it look more comfortable, you know. And I like things to look
+      comfortable. Don&rsquo;t you, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I think, though I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;m sure I du my best to make the poor things comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed unable to rid his mind of the idea that the comfort of the
+      departed was dependent upon his ministrations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trouble I have with them sometimes! There&rsquo;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&rsquo; inches o&rsquo; the right depth, out come the edge of a great
+      stone in the near corner at the foot of the bed. Thinks I, he&rsquo;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.&mdash;But
+      this be one of the nicest places to lie in all up and down the coast&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something grotesque in the man&rsquo;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Coombes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The church of Boscastle stands high on the cliff. You&rsquo;ve been to
+      Boscastle, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him I had not yet, but hoped to go before the summer was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you should see Boscastle, sir. It&rsquo;s a wonderful place. That&rsquo;s where I
+      was born, sir. When I was a by that church was haunted, sir. It&rsquo;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 (<i>vaults</i>), and he wasn&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo; the wout, and that
+      was the ghost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a horrible idea!&rdquo; I said, with a half-shudder at the unrest of the
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man uttered a queer long-drawn sound,&mdash;neither a chuckle, a
+      crow, nor a laugh, but a mixture of all three,&mdash;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 <i>tell</i>, I suppose, by
+      looking me in the face. And as he turned he said, &ldquo;I thought you would
+      like to be comfortable then as well as other people, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s horrible
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before the week was over, death came near indeed&mdash;in far other
+      fashion than any funereal tale could have brought it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Papa, papa, there&rsquo;s a man drowning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;no baby was ever
+      more filled with the mere gladness of life than Connie&rsquo;s baby&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;<i>Cruel chance</i>,&rdquo; over and over again. For although
+      the two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its
+      turn would assert itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all a fancy, my dear,&rdquo; I said to her. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s head and stuns
+      him, and without further suffering he floats gently out on the sea of the
+      unknown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is so terrible for those left behind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you seen the face of his widow, so gentle, so loving, so resigned in
+      its pallor, you would not have thought it so <i>terrible</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;O, that sea, out there!&rdquo; I was very glad indeed when Mr. Turner,
+      who had arranged to spend a short holiday with us, arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Saturday the blacksmith was busy in the church-tower, and I went in
+      to see how he was getting on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had a sad business here the last week, sir,&rdquo; he said, after we had
+      done talking about the repairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very sad business indeed,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a warning to us all,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may well take it so,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of our local preachers made a grand use of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I made no reply. He resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you took no notice of it last Sunday, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite understand you, sir. But then you don&rsquo;t care much for
+      preaching in your church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I confess,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;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&mdash;that is,
+      where it is genuine&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean that, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You try to work upon people&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there is the preacher to rouse them up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the consequence is that they continue like children&mdash;the good
+      ones, I mean&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You daren&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder you can say such things against them, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said, sir, that our clergy don&rsquo;t care about moving our judgments,
+      only our feelings. Now I know preachers amongst us of whom that would be
+      anything but true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there must be. But there is what I say&mdash;your party-feeling
+      makes you touchy. A man can&rsquo;t always be saying in the press of utterance,
+      &lsquo;<i>Of course there are exceptions</i>.&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do gather a deal of money for good purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But that was not what I meant by <i>liberal</i>. It is far easier to
+      give money than to be generous in judgment. I meant by <i>liberal</i>,
+      able to see the good and true in people that differ from you&mdash;glad to
+      be roused to the reception of truth in God&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I was hasty. But I do think I am more ready to
+      lose my temper since&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, apparently no worse than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. AT THE FARM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dreary place in winter, Turner,&rdquo; 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&mdash;dinner was being got ready for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a doubt of it; but just the place I wanted for Miss Connie,&rdquo; he
+      replied. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean perfectly,&rdquo; answered Turner. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;returns when he is conscious of so much that is evil and so
+      much that is unsatisfied in him,&mdash;it brings with it a longing after
+      the high clear air of moral well-being.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think, then, that it is only by association that nature thus
+      impresses us? that she has no power of meaning these things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>is</i> purity and state in that sky. There <i>is</i>
+      a peace now in this wide still earth&mdash;not so very beautiful, you own&mdash;and
+      in that overhanging blue, which my heart cries out that it needs and
+      cannot be well till it gains&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; said Turner, after a pause. &ldquo;I must think more about such things.
+      The science the present day is going wild about will not give us that
+      rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you have been saying,&rdquo; resumed Turner, after another pause, &ldquo;reminds
+      me much of one of Wordsworth&rsquo;s poems. I do not mean the famous ode.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the &lsquo;Ninth Evening Voluntary,&rsquo; I know&mdash;one of his finest
+      and truest and deepest poems. It begins, &lsquo;Had this effulgence
+      disappeared.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is the one I mean. I shall read it again when I go home. But
+      you don&rsquo;t agree with Wordsworth, do you, about our having had an existence
+      previous to this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a little laugh as he asked the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t think much of Shelley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think his <i>feeling</i> most valuable; his <i>opinion</i> nearly
+      worthless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps I had no business to laugh, at it; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>something</i>
+      good in it, else they could not have held it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you able then to sympathise with that ode of Wordsworth&rsquo;s? Does it
+      not depend for all its worth on the admission of this theory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;But trailing clouds of glory do we come
+  From God who is our home&rsquo;?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s books, with which I had made no acquaintance
+      before&mdash;Henry Vaughan&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;who ministers to the miserable necessities of his
+      fellows has even more need than another to believe in the light and the
+      gladness&mdash;else a poor Job&rsquo;s comforter will he be. <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t want
+      to be treated like a musical snuff-box.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man can <i>prove</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;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 <i>don&rsquo;t</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A law with more exceptions than instances, I fear,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt that,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew this; and when Turner and I set out that morning to explore, I
+      expected to light upon some instance of it&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. THE KEEVE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my dear! now, Wynnie!&rdquo; I said, after prayers the next morning, &ldquo;you
+      must come out for a walk as soon as ever you can get your bonnets on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t leave Connie, papa,&rdquo; objected Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes, you can, quite well. There&rsquo;s nursie to look after her. What do
+      you say, Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am entirely independent of help from my family,&rdquo; returned Connie
+      grandiloquently. &ldquo;I am a woman of independent means,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;If you
+      say another word, I will rise and leave the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;threw herself back on
+      her pillows, and laughed delightedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care, papa,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I carry a terrible club for rebellious
+      people.&rdquo; Then, her mood changing, she added, as if to suppress the tears
+      gathering in her eyes, &ldquo;I am the queen&mdash;of luxury and self-will&mdash;and
+      I won&rsquo;t have anybody come near me till dinner-time. I mean to enjoy
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;that is,
+      not, I fear, so much as my wife and daughter, but quite enough
+      notwithstanding&mdash;but I do not quite enjoy being pulled up like a fern
+      at every turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my dear, what is the use of stopping to torture that harmless
+      vegetable?&rdquo; I say, but say in vain. &ldquo;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 <i>always</i> die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us have a rest here, Ethel,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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&mdash;without choice or wish of
+      our own&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know what you mean,&rdquo; was all Turner&rsquo;s reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; I resumed, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that in the grass?&rdquo; cried Wynnie, in a tone of alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked where she indicated, and saw a slow-worm, or blind-worm, lying
+      basking in the sun. I rose and went towards it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s your stick,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Why should I kill it? It is perfectly harmless, and,
+      to my mind, beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took it in my hands, and brought it to my wife. She gave an involuntary
+      shudder as it came near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you it is harmless,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;though it has a forked tongue.&rdquo;
+       And I opened its mouth as I spoke. &ldquo;I do not think the serpent form is
+      essentially ugly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me feel ugly,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I allow I do not quite understand the mystery of it,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how it can look after its tail, it is so far off,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does though&mdash;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&mdash;&lsquo;On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust.&rsquo; But it is better
+      to talk of beautiful things. <i>My</i> soul at least has dropped from its
+      world apex. Let us go on. Come, wife. Come, Turner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that in the course of ever so many ages wings and feet
+      should be both lost?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;that is, into
+      the simplicity of God&rsquo;s will concerning me. The only hope for ourselves
+      and for others lies in him&mdash;in the power the creating spirit has over
+      the spirits he has made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;not more than about a hundred and fifty feet in
+      height&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought we were quite alone, papa,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but I see a gentleman
+      sketching.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen your party for some time, Mr. Walton&mdash;since you crossed
+      the stream; but I would not break in upon your enjoyment with the surprise
+      which my presence here must cause you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been here almost a week. I certainly had no expectation of the
+      pleasure of seeing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will excuse me, I will return to my work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I felt as if I must say something, for I had shown him no courtesy
+      during the interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be a great pleasure to carry away such talismans with you&mdash;capable
+      of bringing the place back to your mental vision at any moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To tell the truth,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very beautiful here,&rdquo; I said, in a tone of contravention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very pretty,&rdquo; he answered&mdash;&ldquo;very lovely, if you will&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;to me not very
+      interesting, save for its single lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then, do you sketch the place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very fair question,&rdquo; he returned, with a smile. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would like to put a skylark in it, wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>therefore</i> they are good for me. I
+      am not working now; I am only playing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With a view to working better afterwards, I have no doubt,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right there, I hope,&rdquo; was his quiet reply, as he turned and
+      walked back to the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you quarrelled with our new friend, Harry?&rdquo; said my wife, as I came
+      up to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting on a stone. Turner and Wynnie were farther off towards the
+      foot of the fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; I answered, slightly outraged&mdash;I did not at first
+      know why&mdash;by the question. &ldquo;He is only gone to his work, which is a
+      duty belonging both to the first and second tables of the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you have asked him to come home to our early dinner, then,&rdquo; she
+      rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not. That remains for you to do. Come, I will take you to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; answered Percivale. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not send you anyone I thought unworthy of the honour,&rdquo; answered
+      my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale bowed&mdash;one of his stately, old-world bows, which I greatly
+      liked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any friend of yours&mdash;that is guarantee sufficient,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was this peculiarity about any compliment that Percivale paid, that
+      you had not a doubt of its being genuine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come and take an early dinner with us?&rdquo; said my wife. &ldquo;My
+      invalid daughter will be very pleased to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will with pleasure,&rdquo; he answered, but in a tone of some hesitation, as
+      he glanced from Ethelwyn to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife speaks for us all,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It will give us all pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am only afraid it will break in upon your morning&rsquo;s work,&rdquo; remarked
+      Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, that is not of the least consequence,&rdquo; he rejoined. &ldquo;In fact, as I
+      have just been saying to Mr. Walton, I am not working at all at present.
+      This is pure recreation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he turned towards his easel, and began hastily to bundle up
+      his things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not quite ready to go yet,&rdquo; said my wife, loath to leave the lovely
+      spot. &ldquo;What a curious flat stone this is!&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then was there a monastery here?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. The ruins of the chapel, one of the smallest, are on the top,
+      just above the fall&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s impression
+      of Connie&rsquo;s condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is certainly better,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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. &lsquo;Do you think you could?&rsquo; I
+      asked.&mdash;&lsquo;I think so,&rsquo; she answered. &lsquo;At any rate, I have often a
+      great inclination to try; only papa said I had better wait till you came.&rsquo; 
+      I do think she might be allowed a little more change of posture now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have really some hope of her final recovery?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have <i>hope</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am thankful for the hope,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you would show me a poem of&mdash;Vaughan, I think you said, was
+      the name of the writer. I am too ignorant of our older literature,&rdquo; said
+      Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have only just made acquaintance with him,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;But I think I
+      can repeat the poem. You shall judge whether it is not like Wordsworth&rsquo;s
+      Ode.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;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&mdash;&mdash;&lsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But here I broke down, for I could not remember the rest with even
+      approximate accuracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did this Vaughan live?&rdquo; asked Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was born, I find, in 1621&mdash;five years, that is, after Shakspere&rsquo;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&mdash;an
+      M.D. We&rsquo;ll have a glance at the little book when we go back. Don&rsquo;t let me
+      forget to show it you. A good many of your profession have distinguished
+      themselves in literature, and as profound believers too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought the profession had been chiefly remarkable for such
+      as believe only in the evidence of the senses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;not
+      such as he of whom Chaucer says,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;His study was but little on the Bible;&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Wynnie spoke, though with some tremor in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember a time, Wynnie, when the things about you&mdash;the
+      sky and the earth, say&mdash;seemed to you much grander than they seem
+      now? You are old enough to have lost something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought for a little while before she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dreams were, I know. I cannot say so of anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and
+      perhaps, after all, it was the best thing I could have said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must make a good use of your dreams, my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because they are the only memorials of childhood you have left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I to make a good use of them? I don&rsquo;t know what to do with my
+      silly old dreams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she gave a sigh as she spoke that testified her silly old dreams had a
+      charm for her still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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 &lsquo;I am&rsquo;&mdash;yea,
+      of what doubts and says &lsquo;Am I?&rsquo; and therefore is reasonable to creatures
+      who cannot even doubt save in that they live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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? 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;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&mdash;one of the
+      most sacred influences when <i>pure</i>, that is, un-mingled with
+      non-essentials&mdash;just by the feeling that he <i>must</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After an early dinner, I said to Turner&mdash;&ldquo;Come out with me, and we
+      will read that poem of Vaughan&rsquo;s in which I broke down today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; said Connie, in a tone of injury, from the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, my dear?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be as good for us as for Mr. Turner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For I had thrown into my bag as I left the rectory a copy of <i>The
+      Clergyman&rsquo;s Vade Mecum</i>&mdash;a treatise occupied with the externals of
+      the churchman&rsquo;s relations&mdash;in which I soon came upon the following
+      passage:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the part of the clergyman, you see, Turner,&rdquo; I said, when I had
+      finished reading the whole passage to him. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that I can quite agree with you there,&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;If the
+      form is better, no one should hesitate to advocate the change. If it is
+      worse, then slowness is not sufficient&mdash;utter obstinacy is the right
+      condition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Turner. For the right must be the rule, and where <i>the
+      right</i> is beyond our understanding or our reach, then <i>the better</i>,
+      as indeed not only right compared with the other, but the sole ascent
+      towards the right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening I took Henry Vaughan&rsquo;s poems into the common sitting-room,
+      and to Connie&rsquo;s great delight read the whole of the lovely, though unequal
+      little poem, called &ldquo;The Retreat,&rdquo; in recalling which I had failed in the
+      morning. She was especially delighted with the &ldquo;white celestial thought,&rdquo;
+       and the &ldquo;bright shoots of everlastingness.&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  CHILDHOOD.
+
+  &ldquo;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.
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  And yet the practice worldlings call
+  Business and weighty action all,
+  Checking the poor child for his play,
+  But gravely cast themselves away.
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  An age of mysteries! which he
+  Must live twice that would God&rsquo;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!
+  O for thy centre and midday!
+  For sure that is the <i>narrow way!</i>&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For of such is the kingdom of heaven.&rdquo; said my wife softly, as I closed
+      the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I have the book, papa?&rdquo; said Connie, holding out her thin white cloud
+      of a hand to take it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. THE OLD CASTLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa! I moved my big toe! I did indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were all about her in a moment. But I saw that she was excited, and
+      fearing a reaction I sought to calm her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear,&rdquo; I said, as quietly as I could, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke out in the merriest laugh. A pause followed in which her face
+      wore a puzzled expression. Then she said all at once, &ldquo;Papa, it is very
+      odd, but I can&rsquo;t tell which of them,&rdquo; and burst into tears. I was afraid
+      that I had done more harm than good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not of the slightest consequence, my child,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mounts of vision upon which we
+      stood. The thought, &ldquo;O that Connie could see this!&rdquo; was swelling in my
+      heart, when Percivale broke the silence&mdash;not with any remark on the
+      glory around us, but with the commonplace question&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t got your man with you, I think, Mr. Walton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;we thought it better to leave him to look after the
+      boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a few minutes, while I gazed in delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it would be possible to bring Miss Constance
+      up here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I almost started at the idea, and had not replied before he resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be something for her to recur to with delight all the rest of
+      her life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would indeed. But it is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think so&mdash;if you would allow me the honour to assist you. I
+      think we could do it perfectly between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was again silent for a while. Looking down on the way we had come, it
+      seemed an almost dreadful undertaking. Percivale spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There can be no objection to that,&rdquo; I answered, as a little hope, and
+      courage with it, began to dawn in my heart. &ldquo;But you must allow it does
+      not look very practicable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True; and now I will go down with the descent in my head as well as under
+      my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there can be no harm in reconnoitring it at least. Let us go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know we can rest almost as often as we please,&rdquo; said Percivale, and
+      turned to lead the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>will</i> 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mischief have you two been about?&rdquo; said my wife, as we entered our
+      room in the inn, where the cloth was already laid for dinner. &ldquo;You look
+      just like two schoolboys that have been laying some plot, and can hardly
+      hold their tongues about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have been enjoying our little walk amazingly,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;So much
+      so, that we mean to set out for another the moment dinner is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will take Wynnie with you then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or you, my love,&rdquo; I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I will stay with Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife replied only with a loving look, and dinner appearing at this
+      moment, we sat down a happy party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When that was over&mdash;and a very good dinner it was, just what I like,
+      homely in material but admirable in cooking&mdash;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&rsquo;s offered arm. I led the way, therefore, and
+      left them to follow&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of things do you like best to paint, Mr. Percivale?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated for several seconds, which between a question and an answer
+      look so long, that most people would call them minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather you should see some of my pictures&mdash;I should prefer
+      that to answering your question,&rdquo; he said, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have seen some of your pictures,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me. Indeed you have not, Miss Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least I have seen some of your sketches and studies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of my sketches&mdash;none of my studies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you make use of your sketches for your pictures, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never of such as you have seen. They are only a slight antidote to my
+      pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wonder at that. But I would rather, I repeat, say nothing about
+      my pictures till you see some of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how am I to have that pleasure, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go to London sometimes, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very rarely. More rarely still when the Royal Academy is open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does not matter much. My pictures are seldom to be found there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not care to send them there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I send one, at least, every year. But they are rarely accepted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hardly for me to say why,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;but I cannot wonder much
+      at it, considering the subjects I choose.&mdash;But I daresay,&rdquo; he added,
+      in a lighter tone, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so. You understand me quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said no more in explanation of his rejection by the Academy. Till we
+      reached the church, nothing more of significance passed between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s wardrobe, came forth to receive the
+      garment they restored&mdash;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&mdash;sad, even in the sunset&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That church is oppressive,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;It looks like a great
+      sepulchre, a place built only for the dead&mdash;the church of the dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is only that it partakes with the living,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;suffers with
+      them the buffetings of life, outlasts them, but shows, like the shield of
+      the Red-Cross Knight, the &lsquo;old dints of deep wounds.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, is it not a dreary place to choose for a church to stand in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;you saw the grave of some of them on the other side&mdash;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 &lsquo;Lycidas.&rsquo;&rdquo; Then I told them the
+      conversation I had had with the sexton at Kilkhaven. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I went on,
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time we were back once more at the inn. We gave Connie a
+      description of what we had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a brave old church!&rdquo; said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s litter, and see that it was quite sound. Satisfied
+      of this, I rejoiced in the contemplation of its lightness and strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast I went to Connie&rsquo;s room, and told her that Mr. Percivale
+      and I had devised a treat for her. Her face shone at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we want to do it our own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, papa,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let us tie your eyes up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and my ears and my hands too. It would be no good tying my feet,
+      when I don&rsquo;t know one big toe from the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she laughed merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll try to keep up the talk all the way, so that you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t weary of
+      the journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;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!&mdash;Getting
+      tired!&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Even the wind on my face would be pleasure enough
+      for half a day. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t get tired so soon as you will&mdash;you dear,
+      kind papa! I am afraid I shall be dreadfully heavy. But I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t jerk
+      your arms much. I will lie so still!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you won&rsquo;t mind letting Mr. Percivale help me to carry you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Why should I, if he doesn&rsquo;t mind it? He looks strong enough; and I am
+      sure he is nice, and won&rsquo;t think me heavier than I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;through all parts diffused,
+  That she might look at will through every pore.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never stopped till we reached the foot of the peninsula, <i>née</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now!&rdquo; said Connie eagerly, lifting her hands in the belief that we
+      were on the point of undoing the bandage from her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, my love, not yet,&rdquo; I said, and she lay still again, only she
+      looked more eager than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I have tired out you and Mr. Percivale, papa,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale laughed so amusedly, that she rejoined roguishly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O yes! I know every gentleman is a Hercules&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where <i>are</i> you going, papa?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You must be going up a steep place. Don&rsquo;t hurt yourself, dear
+      papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;s face, delicate as the play on an
+      opal&mdash;one that inclines more to the milk than the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at length we turned in through the gothic door in the battlemented
+      wall, and set our lovely burden down upon the grass&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;why did you go on walking like a castle, and pay no heed to
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t speak, did you, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; he returned, with just a shadow
+      of solicitude in the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Of course not,&rdquo; I rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, then,&rdquo; he returned, in a tone of relief, &ldquo;how could I? You were my
+      captain: how could I give in so long as you were holding on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am afraid the <i>Percivale</i>, without the <i>Mister</i>, came again
+      and again after this, though I pulled myself up for it as often as I
+      caught myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, papa!&rdquo; said Connie from the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, my dear. Wait till your mamma and Wynnie come. Let us go and
+      meet them, Mr. Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, my dear,&rdquo; I said; and Percivale and I left her alone in the
+      ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We found Ethelwyn toiling up with Wynnie helping her all she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Harry,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;how could you think of bringing Connie up such an
+      awful place? I wonder you dared to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s done you see, wife,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s delight, not to mention your own, is quite wages
+      for the labour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t she afraid to find herself so high up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows nothing about it yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not mean you have left the child there with her eyes tied up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure. We could not uncover them before you came. It would spoil
+      half the pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let us make haste then. It is surely dangerous to leave her so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least; but she must be getting tired of the darkness. Take my
+      arm now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think Mrs. Walton had better take my arm,&rdquo; said Percivale, &ldquo;and
+      then you can put your hand on her back, and help her a little that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, in which he describes as the type of Death&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: <i>Miscellaneous Sonnets</i>, part i.28.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she heard our steps, and her face awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is mamma come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my darling. I am here,&rdquo; said her mother. &ldquo;How do you feel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly well, mamma, thank you. Now, papa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment more, my love. Now, Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your hands over her eyes, a little way from them,&rdquo; I said to her as
+      she untied the handkerchief, &ldquo;that the light may reach them by degrees,
+      and not blind her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;all this seen through
+      the narrow gothic archway of a door in a wall&mdash;up&mdash;down&mdash;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? &ldquo;O Lord God,&rdquo; I said, almost
+      involuntarily, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; For I was carried beyond myself with delight, and with sympathy
+      with Connie&rsquo;s delight and with the calm worship of gladness in my wife&rsquo;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&mdash;coldly I
+      daresay:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, Mr. Percivale; I forgot for the moment that I was not amongst
+      my own family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale took his hat off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had some idea of what he meant; but this was no time to enter upon a
+      discussion. I could only say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My heart was full, Mr. Percivale, and I let it overflow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me at least share in its overflow,&rdquo; he rejoined, and nothing more
+      passed on the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s round
+      table might have fed for a week&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;the Atlantic&rsquo;s level powers.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s chair&mdash;a
+      canopied hollow wrought in the plated rock by the mightiest of all
+      solvents&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; she asked, in wonderment. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing higher yet, is there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be frightened, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are going to carry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what if I should slip? I might, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you do
+      it. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be to blame, and I&rsquo;m sure you won&rsquo;t, papa.&rdquo; Then she drew my
+      head down and whispered in my ear, &ldquo;If I get as much more by being killed,
+      as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I&rsquo;m sure it will be well worth
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m glad that&rsquo;s over,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; I returned, as we set down the litter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor papa! I&rsquo;ve pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale&rsquo;s too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then turning
+      towards her, he said, &ldquo;Look here, Miss Connie;&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;My arms are all right, you see,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa! Mr. Percivale! there&rsquo;s such a grand cave down there! It goes right
+      through under the island.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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!&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s reading. He can
+      scarcely be equal to more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s place in the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had called at the blacksmith&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, sir,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Joe might be well enough if he liked. It&rsquo;s all
+      his own fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;I cannot believe that your son is in any way
+      guilty of his own illness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a well-behaved lad, my Joe,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but he hasn&rsquo;t learned
+      what I had to learn long ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is it he won&rsquo;t do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind whether he does it or not, if he would only make&mdash;up&mdash;his&mdash;mind&mdash;and&mdash;stick&mdash;to&mdash;it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you want him to do, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want him to do it, I&rsquo;m sure. It&rsquo;s no good to me&mdash;and
+      wouldn&rsquo;t be much to him, that I&rsquo;ll be bound. Howsomever, he must please
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was no
+      more sunshine for him at home than his mother&rsquo;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,&mdash;the
+      face of wife or mother or sister. Now his mother&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+      face cannot help being sunny to them: why should the sunshine depart as
+      the child grows older?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what he won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more cheerful.
+      You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, if you&rsquo;ll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the
+      rest of us. He&rsquo;s a religious man, is Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t see how that should make him miserable. It hasn&rsquo;t made me
+      miserable. I hope I&rsquo;m a religious man myself. It makes me happy every day
+      of my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked
+      away gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it, &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t say it&rsquo;s the religion, for I don&rsquo;t know; but perhaps it&rsquo;s the way he
+      takes it up. He don&rsquo;t look after hisself enough; he&rsquo;s always thinking
+      about other people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that if you
+      don&rsquo;t look after yourself, why, who is to look after you? That&rsquo;s common
+      sense, <i>I</i> think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious contrast&mdash;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&rsquo;s with which Joe heard his remarks on himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take
+      Joe&rsquo;s way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so well, I doubt, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and a great deal better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate, that&rsquo;s a long way off; and mean time, <i>who&rsquo;s</i> to take
+      care of the odd man like Joe there, that don&rsquo;t look after hisself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, God, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s just where I&rsquo;m out. I don&rsquo;t know nothing about that branch,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw a grateful light mount up in Joe&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were we out of the churchyard, and on the road leading to the
+      rectory, when I saw the sexton&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the
+      sexton&rsquo;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&rsquo;s-breadth further
+      into the smith&rsquo;s affairs. Beyond the hair&rsquo;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&rsquo;s mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back to
+      the church, and I went to the sexton&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, sir,&rdquo; he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. &ldquo;The
+      mis&rsquo;ess ben&rsquo;t in, but she&rsquo;ll be here in a few minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, it&rsquo;s of no consequence,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Are they all well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It be
+      in winter it be worst for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s a snug enough shelter you&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ben&rsquo;t the wind touch <i>them</i>&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;they be safe enough from
+      the wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben&rsquo;t much snow in these parts; but
+      when it du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But at least this cottage keeps out the wet,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;If not, we must
+      have it seen to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This cottage du well enough, sir. It&rsquo;ll last my time, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why are you pitying your family for having to live in it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless your heart, sir! It&rsquo;s not them. They du well enough. It&rsquo;s my people
+      out yonder. You&rsquo;ve got the souls to look after, and I&rsquo;ve got the bodies.
+      That&rsquo;s what it be, sir. To be sure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the be-all and the end-all.&rdquo; He was God&rsquo;s vicar, the gardener
+      in God&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got your part, sir, and I&rsquo;ve got mine. You up into the pulpit, and
+      I down into the grave. But it&rsquo;ll be all the same by and by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it will,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;But when you do go down into your own
+      grave, you&rsquo;ll know a good deal less about it than you do now. You&rsquo;ll find
+      you&rsquo;ve got other things to think about. But here comes your wife. She&rsquo;ll
+      talk about the living rather than the dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s natural, sir. She brought &lsquo;em to life, and I buried &lsquo;em&mdash;at
+      least, best part of &lsquo;em. If only I had the other two safe down with the
+      rest!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I remembered what the old woman had told me&mdash;that she had two boys <i>in</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, and
+      saying, &ldquo;Well, I must be off to my gardening,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old man seems a little out of sorts,&rdquo; I said to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; she answered, with her usual gentleness, a gentleness which
+      obedient suffering had perfected, &ldquo;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&rsquo;ve upset him a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I met Agnes coming this way. Where is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe she be in the churchyard, sir. I&rsquo;ve been to the doctor about
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it&rsquo;s nothing serious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, sir; but you see&mdash;four on &lsquo;em, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s in God&rsquo;s hands, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she be, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to ask you about something, Mrs. Coombes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What be that, sir? If I can tell, I will, you may be sure, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what&rsquo;s the matter with Joe Harper, the blacksmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They du say it be a consumption, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what has he got on his mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s got nothing on his mind, sir. He be as good a by as ever stepped, I
+      assure you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am sure there is something or other on his mind. He&rsquo;s not so happy
+      as he should be. He&rsquo;s not the man, it seems to me, to be unhappy because
+      he&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I believe you be right, and perhaps I know summat. But it&rsquo;s
+      part guessing.&mdash;I believe my Agnes and Joe Harper are as fond upon
+      one another as any two in the county.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they not going to be married then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There be the pint, sir. I don&rsquo;t believe Joe ever said a word o&rsquo; the sort
+      to Aggy. She never could ha&rsquo; kep it from me, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why doesn&rsquo;t he then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the pint again, sir. All as knows him says it&rsquo;s because he be in
+      such bad health, and he thinks he oughtn&rsquo;t to go marrying with one foot in
+      the grave. He never said so to me; but I think very likely that be it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that matter, Mrs. Coombes, we&rsquo;ve all got one foot in the grave, I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That be very true, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what does your daughter think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t help fancying it have something to do with my Aggy&rsquo;s pale face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And something to do with Joe&rsquo;s pale face too, Mrs. Coombes,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;Thank you. You&rsquo;ve told me more than I expected. It explains everything. I
+      must have it out with Joe now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O deary me! sir, don&rsquo;t go and tell him I said anything, as if I wanted
+      him to marry my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you be afraid. I&rsquo;ll take good care of that. And don&rsquo;t fancy I&rsquo;m
+      fond of meddling with other people&rsquo;s affairs. But this is a case in which
+      I ought to do something. Joe&rsquo;s a fine fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he be, sir. I couldn&rsquo;t wish a better for a son-in-law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put on my hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t get me into no trouble with Joe, will ye, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you will get through to-night?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure of it, sir,&rdquo; answered Harry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t be sure of anything, Harry. We are told in the New
+      Testament that we ought to say <i>If the Lord will</i>,&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Joe, you&rsquo;re too hard upon Harry,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think that the
+      Bible means to pull a man up every step like that, till he&rsquo;s afraid to
+      speak a word. It was about a long journey and a year&rsquo;s residence that the
+      Apostle James was speaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt, sir. But the principle&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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, <i>if the Lord will</i>, 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&mdash;most irreverently, I think&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds fine, sir; but I&rsquo;m not sure that I understand what you mean to
+      say. It sounds to me like a darkening of wisdom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw that I had irritated him, and so had in some measure lost ground.
+      But Harry struck in&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How <i>can</i> you say that now, Joe? <i>I</i> know what the parson means
+      well enough, and everybody knows I ain&rsquo;t got half the brains you&rsquo;ve got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reason is, Harry, that he&rsquo;s got something in his head that stands in
+      the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there&rsquo;s nothing in my head <i>to</i> stand in the way!&rdquo; returned
+      Harry, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This made me laugh too, and even Joe could not help a sympathetic grin. By
+      this time it was getting dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid, Harry, after all, you won&rsquo;t get through to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to think so too, sir. And there&rsquo;s Joe saying, &lsquo;I told you so,&rsquo; 
+      over and over to himself, though he won&rsquo;t say it out like a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe answered only with another grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you what it is, Harry,&rdquo; I said&mdash;&ldquo;you must come again on
+      Monday. And on your way home, just look in and tell Joe&rsquo;s mother that I
+      have kept him over to-morrow. The change will do him good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, that can&rsquo;t he. I haven&rsquo;t got a clean shirt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have a shirt of mine,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;ll want your
+      Sunday clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bring them for you, Joe&mdash;before you&rsquo;re up,&rdquo; interposed Harry.
+      &ldquo;And then you can go to church with Aggy Coombes, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was just what I wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your tongue, Harry,&rdquo; said Joe angrily. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re talking of what you
+      don&rsquo;t know anything about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Joe, I ben&rsquo;t a fool, if I ben&rsquo;t so religious as you be. You ben&rsquo;t a
+      bad fellow, though you be a Methodist, and I ben&rsquo;t a fool, though I be
+      Harry Cobb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Harry? Do hold your tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll tell you what I mean first, and then I&rsquo;ll hold my tongue. I
+      mean this&mdash;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&rsquo;t port your helm and board her&mdash;I won&rsquo;t say it&rsquo;s more
+      than I know, but I du say it to be more than I think be fair to the young
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your tongue, Harry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said I would when I&rsquo;d answered you as to what I meaned. So no more at
+      present; but I&rsquo;ll be over with your clothes afore you&rsquo;re up in the
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Harry spoke he was busy gathering his tools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t be in the way, will they, sir?&rdquo; he said, as he heaped them
+      together in the furthest corner of the tower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t, Harry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost, Harry!&rdquo; growled Joe&mdash;not unkindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you hold your tongue, Joe,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Leave Harry to me. You may take
+      him, if you like, after I&rsquo;ve done with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had had his tea, I asked him to go out with me for a walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, Joe,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I want to see you so for a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood&mdash;a little surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look just like a man rising from the dead, Joe,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean, sir,&rdquo; he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We changed places. Joe stared for a moment. Then his face brightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see what you mean, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I fancy you don&rsquo;t mean the
+      resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of righteousness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;I do not know your
+      thoughts; I am only judging from your words and looks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may if you like, sir,&rdquo; answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was not
+      to be repelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the
+      sun&rsquo;s disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the top of your head,&rdquo; answered he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, then,&rdquo; I returned, &ldquo;that is just what you are like&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as
+      you put it, by doing his duty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a difficult question,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;I must think before I answer
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; added Joe&mdash;&ldquo;mightn&rsquo;t his duty be a painful one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&mdash;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&mdash;and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my duty&mdash;nothing
+      else, as far as I know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, &ldquo;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&mdash;I may be wrong, but I
+      venture to think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he not
+      to do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most assuredly&mdash;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought
+      not, if he is doing what he don&rsquo;t like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;a
+      delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for the sake of his
+      own sanctity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person&rsquo;s own
+      sake at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how are you to know the will of God in every case?&rdquo; asked Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them&mdash;except
+      there be anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher
+      law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but that be just what there is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset&mdash;there never was a
+      grander place for sunsets&mdash;and went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above&mdash;there
+      was no blue; and the wind was <i>gurly</i>; I once heard that word in
+      Scotland, and never forgot it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After one of our usual gatherings in Connie&rsquo;s room, which were much
+      shorter here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till
+      supper should be ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;speaking of
+      it in its human symbolism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;an open-air swimming-pool&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Man is everything,
+  And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
+  A beast, yet is, or should be, more;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my
+      Connie&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went into Connie&rsquo;s room, I found her lying in bed a very picture of
+      peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not going
+      out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your
+      baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is very dark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be miserable till you come home, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Connie. You don&rsquo;t think your father hasn&rsquo;t sense to take care
+      of himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of comfort,
+      you don&rsquo;t think I can go anywhere without my Father to take care of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is no occasion&mdash;is there, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t spoil
+      my walk by the thought that my foolish little girl is frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be good&mdash;indeed I will, papa,&rdquo; she said, holding up her mouth
+      to kiss me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;The tide is falling fast, and salt
+      water hurts nobody,&rdquo; 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&mdash;almost a half-sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low
+      and earnest. One I recognised as Joe&rsquo;s voice. The other was a woman&rsquo;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&mdash;I could fancy with a sigh&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll du what is right, Joe. Don&rsquo;t &lsquo;e think o&rsquo; me, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben&rsquo;t for my sake.
+      Surely you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best do&mdash;go
+      away quietly or let them know I was there&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ben&rsquo;t for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don&rsquo;t think you be going to
+      die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe!&rdquo; I called out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t be very far off,&rdquo; he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure at
+      finding me so nigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw someone go up the Castle-rock,&rdquo; said Joe; &ldquo;but I thought he was
+      gone away again. It will be a lesson to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m no tell-tale, Joe,&rdquo; I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. &ldquo;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&rsquo;ve been young myself, and, to tell the truth, I
+      don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m old yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure, sir,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t be hard on Joe and me. I don&rsquo;t
+      suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we can&rsquo;t be&mdash;married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was a
+      certain womanly composure in her utterance. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s very bold of me
+      to talk so,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;but Joe will tell you all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the motion
+      of her hand stealing into his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not far off it, sir,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Joe,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;can&rsquo;t we talk as friends about this matter? I have no
+      right to intrude into your affairs&mdash;none in the least&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the same, I&rsquo;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&rsquo;t look over-pleased. Agnes wants to hear
+      your way of it. I&rsquo;m agreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for
+      proceeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is the
+      will of God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each
+      other, they should marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, sir&mdash;where there be no reasons against it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you
+      would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she
+      would be Joe&rsquo;s wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But
+      listen to me. In the first place, you don&rsquo;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&mdash;because they had
+      possibly taken too much care of themselves. But marriage is God&rsquo;s will,
+      and death is God&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s for Aggy. You forget that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;to provide for her a comfort which yourself
+      you would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to die soon?&mdash;if
+      you <i>are</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I find myself dying at the end of six months&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t see it as I do,&rdquo; persisted the blacksmith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I don&rsquo;t. I think you see it as it is not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He
+      started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a wave!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That spray came over the top of the rock. We
+      shall have to run for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no hurry,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It was high water an hour and a half ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know this coast, sir,&rdquo; returned he, &ldquo;or you wouldn&rsquo;t talk like
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock, looked
+      along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, Aggy!&rdquo; he cried in terror, &ldquo;come at once. Every other
+      wave be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw her
+      along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t we better stay where we are?&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and I
+      don&rsquo;t care about being out all night. It&rsquo;s not the tide, sir; it&rsquo;s a
+      ground swell&mdash;from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no
+      questions about tide or no tide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But just wait one minute more. It is better
+      to be ready for the worst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?&rdquo; I said, grasping my own
+      stout oak-stick more firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; answered Joe. &ldquo;To stick between the stones and hold on. We
+      must watch our time between the waves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take the command, then, Joe,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;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&mdash;one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or
+      sea to lose hold of Agnes&mdash;eh, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick march!&rdquo; said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo; cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter of
+      the rocks. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a topper coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for it!&rdquo; cried Joe. &ldquo;Run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo; cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it
+      turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be with us!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then!&rdquo; cried Joe. &ldquo;Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Down, Joe! Down on your face,
+      and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe, sir,&rdquo; said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, &ldquo;if you
+      hadn&rsquo;t taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were awfully near death,&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don&rsquo;t go all
+      as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as foresight&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions
+      spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have escaped one death together,&rdquo; I said at length: &ldquo;dare another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage,
+      I said, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: &ldquo;As you please, sir. Good night,
+      Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out,
+      papa. But all I could do was to trust in God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call that <i>all</i>, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in
+      that than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed <i>all</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were well
+      into another month before I told Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I left her, I went to Joe&rsquo;s room to see how he was, and found him
+      having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won&rsquo;t be the worse
+      for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That way, yes, sir, I ought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have no business to be like some children who say, &lsquo;Mamma won&rsquo;t
+      give me so and so,&rsquo; instead of asking her to give it them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young
+      woman. I couldn&rsquo;t say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir,
+      there was to come a family. It might be, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. What else would you have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I was to die, where would she be then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In God&rsquo;s hands; just as she is now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that to
+      provide for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Joe! how little you know a woman&rsquo;s heart! It would just be the
+      greatest comfort she could have for losing you&mdash;that&rsquo;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&rsquo;t say that is
+      right, you know. Such love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her
+      child because it is her husband&rsquo;s more than because it is her own, and
+      because it is God&rsquo;s more than either&rsquo;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&mdash;yes, she will be happier if you
+      only leave her your name for hers&mdash;than if you died without calling
+      her your wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took Joe&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month after, I married them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. THE HARVEST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for who could dissociate the words from the
+      music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?&mdash;written none the
+      less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with
+      laughing at their quaintness&mdash;calling aloud,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;All people that on earth do dwell
+  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
+  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell&mdash;
+  Come ye before him and rejoice.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the
+      name of the Lord to serve him with <i>mirth</i> as in the old version, and
+      not with the <i>fear</i> with which some editor, weak in faith, has
+      presumed to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had
+      prepared&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s lazy mood,
+  Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.
+  The furrowed waste
+  They leave, and haste
+  Home, home, to till their Father&rsquo;s land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Life,
+  Who in this soil of strife
+  Casts us at birth, like seed from sower&rsquo;s hand;
+  To die and so
+  Like corn to grow
+  A golden harvest in his land.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the
+      versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, &ldquo;If by any means I
+      might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had
+      already attained, either were already perfect.&rdquo; And this is something like
+      what I said to them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;the word resurrection
+      just means a rising again&mdash;I will read you a little description of it
+      from a sermon by a great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor.
+      Listen. &lsquo;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&rsquo;s reason and his life.&rsquo; 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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;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&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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, &lsquo;Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
+      and Christ shall give thee light.&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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, &lsquo;Let there be light,&rsquo; and
+      there was light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the animal world as well, you behold the goings of the Resurrection.
+      Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly&mdash;so plain that
+      the pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;not the same body&mdash;a new one
+      built out of the ruins of the old&mdash;even as St. Paul tells us that it
+      is not the same body <i>we</i> 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of
+      the butterfly&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here let me pause for a moment&mdash;and there was a corresponding pause,
+      though but momentary, in the sermon as I spoke it&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;&ldquo;I come now naturally to speak of what we commonly call the
+      Resurrection. Some say: &lsquo;How can the same dust be raised again, when it
+      may be scattered to the winds of heaven?&rsquo; 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 <i>my</i> 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 <i>not</i> be
+      the same body. That body dies&mdash;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.&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I now come to the last, because infinitely the most important part of
+      my subject&mdash;the resurrection for the sake of which all the other
+      resurrections exist&mdash;the resurrection unto Life. This is the one of
+      which St. Paul speaks in my text. This is the one I am most anxious&mdash;indeed,
+      the only one I am anxious to set forth, and impress upon you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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, &lsquo;Would God it were
+      morning!&rsquo; changes but his word, and not his tune, when the morning comes,
+      crying, &lsquo;Would God it were evening!&rsquo; 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&mdash;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 <i>the</i> death, set
+      forth <i>the</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;such a world it would be, and such a king
+      it would have, if individual ambition might work its will! if a man&rsquo;s
+      opinion of himself could be made out in the world, degrading, compelling,
+      oppressing, doing everything for his own glory!&mdash;and such a glory!&mdash;but
+      a pang of light strikes this man to the heart; an arrow of truth,
+      feathered with suffering and loss and dismay, finds out&mdash;the open
+      joint in his armour, I was going to say&mdash;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&mdash;the
+      world, which was but the cavern where he thus searched&mdash;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&mdash;is not this a resurrection indeed&mdash;<i>the</i>
+      resurrection of all, the resurrection of Life? God grant that with St.
+      Paul we may attain to this resurrection of the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;White wings are crossing;
+  Glad waves are tossing;
+  The earth flames out in crimson and green:
+
+  Spring is appearing,
+  Summer is nearing&mdash;
+  Where hast thou been?
+
+  Down in some cavern,
+  Death&rsquo;s sleepy tavern,
+  Housing, carousing with spectres of night?
+  The trumpet is pealing
+  Sunshine and healing&mdash;
+  Spring to the light.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      With this quotation from a friend&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      END OF VOL. II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      VOLUME III.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its skirts
+      behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer, I must write
+      a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my wife. It had
+      rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down the air began
+      to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she walked the
+      heavens, not &ldquo;like one that hath been led astray,&rdquo; but as &ldquo;queen and
+      huntress, chaste and fair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a lovely night it is!&rdquo; said Ethelwyn, who had come into my study&mdash;where
+      I always sat with unblinded windows, that the night and her creatures
+      might look in upon me&mdash;and had stood gazing out for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we go for a little turn?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it very much,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I will go and put on my
+      bonnet at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a minute or two she looked in again, all ready. I rose, laid aside my
+      Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the down,
+      and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon the same
+      spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and Agnes. What a
+      different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as if it could not
+      move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over it was so mighty
+      in its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was afraid to toss
+      itself even with the motions of its natural unrest. The moon was like the
+      face of a saint before which the stormy people has grown dumb. The rocks
+      stood up solid and dark in the universal aether, and the pulse of the
+      ocean throbbed against them with a lapping gush, soft as the voice of a
+      passionate child soothed into shame of its vanished petulance. But the sky
+      was the glory. Although no breath moved below, there was a gentle wind
+      abroad in the upper regions. The air was full of masses of cloud, the
+      vanishing fragments of the one great vapour which had been pouring down in
+      rain the most of the day. These masses were all setting with one steady
+      motion eastward into the abysses of space; now obscuring the fair moon,
+      now solemnly sweeping away from before her. As they departed, out shone
+      her marvellous radiance, as calm as ever. It was plain that she knew
+      nothing of what we called her covering, her obscuration, the dimming of
+      her glory. She had been busy all the time weaving her lovely opaline
+      damask on the other side of the mass in which we said she was swallowed
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever noticed, wifie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;how the eyes of our minds&mdash;almost
+      our bodily eyes&mdash;are opened sometimes to the cubicalness of nature,
+      as it were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, Harry, for I don&rsquo;t understand your question,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being
+      could have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a
+      moment, though. Sometimes&mdash;perhaps generally&mdash;we see the sky as
+      a flat dome, spangled with star-points, and painted blue. <i>Now</i> I see
+      it as an awful depth of blue air, depth within depth; and the clouds
+      before me are not passing away to the left, but sinking away from the
+      front of me into the marvellous unknown regions, which, let philosophers
+      say what they will about time and space,&mdash;and I daresay they are
+      right,&mdash;are yet very awful to me. Thank God, my dear,&rdquo; I said,
+      catching hold of her arm, as the terror of mere space grew upon me, &ldquo;for
+      himself. He is deeper than space, deeper than time; he is the heart of all
+      the cube of history.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand you now, husband,&rdquo; said my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you would,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said again, &ldquo;is it not something the same with the things
+      inside us? I can&rsquo;t put it in words as you do. Do you understand me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure that I do. You must try again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where you
+      can talk,&rdquo; said my wife, putting her hand in mine. &ldquo;But I will try.
+      Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to a
+      conclusion about it, and you think you have settled it plain and clear to
+      yourself, for ever and a day. You hang it upon your wall, like a picture,
+      and are satisfied for a fortnight. But some day, when you happen to cast a
+      look at it, you find that instead of hanging flat on the wall, your
+      picture has gone through it&mdash;opens out into some region you don&rsquo;t
+      know where&mdash;shows you far-receding distances of air and sea&mdash;in
+      short, where you thought one question was settled for ever, a hundred are
+      opened up for the present hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, wife!&rdquo; I cried in true delight. &ldquo;I do indeed understand you now.
+      You have said it better than I could ever have done. That&rsquo;s the plague of
+      you women! You have been taught for centuries and centuries that there is
+      little or nothing to be expected of you, and so you won&rsquo;t try. Therefore
+      we men know no more than you do whether it is in you or not. And when you
+      do try, instead of trying to think, you want to be in Parliament all at
+      once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you apply that remark to me, sir?&rdquo; demanded Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must submit to bear the sins of your kind upon occasion,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am content to do that, so long as yours will help mine,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I may go on?&rdquo; I said, with interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till sunrise if you like. We were talking of the cubicalness&mdash;I
+      believe you called it&mdash;of nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you capped it with the cubicalness of thought. And quite right too.
+      There are people, as a dear friend of mine used to say, who are so
+      accustomed to regard everything in the <i>flat</i>, as dogma cut and&mdash;not
+      <i>always</i> dried my moral olfactories aver&mdash;that if you prove to
+      them the very thing they believe, but after another mode than that they
+      have been accustomed to, they are offended, and count you a heretic. There
+      is no help for it. Even St. Paul&rsquo;s chief opposition came from the
+      Judaizing Christians of his time, who did not believe that God <i>could</i>
+      love the Gentiles, and therefore regarded him as a teacher of falsehood.
+      We must not be fierce with them. Who knows what wickedness of their
+      ancestors goes to account for their stupidity? For that there are stupid
+      people, and that they are, in very consequence of their stupidity,
+      conceited, who can deny? The worst of it is, that no man who is conceited
+      can be convinced of the fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that, Harry. That is to deny conversion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Ethelwyn. The moment a man is convinced of his folly, he
+      ceases to be a fool. The moment a man is convinced of his conceit, he
+      ceases to be conceited. But there <i>must</i> be a final judgment, and the
+      true man will welcome it, even if he is to appear a convicted fool. A
+      man&rsquo;s business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool,
+      and next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take heed
+      likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their brother&rsquo;s
+      eye. But there are even societies established and supported by good people
+      for the express purpose of pulling out motes.&mdash;&lsquo;The Mote-Pulling
+      Society!&rsquo;&mdash;That ought to take with a certain part of the public.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, Harry. You are absurd. Such people don&rsquo;t come near you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t touch me. No. But they come near good people whom I know,
+      brandishing the long pins with which they pull the motes out, and
+      threatening them with judgment before their time. They are but pins, to be
+      sure&mdash;not daggers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty ways,
+      and have forgotten all about &lsquo;the cubicalness of nature.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, my love, as you generally are,&rdquo; I answered, laughing.
+      &ldquo;Look at that great antlered elk, or moose&mdash;fit quarry for Diana of
+      the silver bow. Look how it glides solemnly away into the unpastured
+      depths of the aerial deserts. Look again at that reclining giant, half
+      raised upon his arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What
+      eyes they must be under those huge brows! On what message to the nations
+      is he borne as by the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, stop, Harry,&rdquo; said my wife. &ldquo;It makes me unhappy to hear grand
+      words clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about the
+      truth, and the truth only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
+      degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
+      or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
+      counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds
+      of the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy
+      giant yields, and is &lsquo;shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,&rsquo; so is each
+      of us borne onward to an unseen destiny&mdash;a glorious one if we will
+      but yield to the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth&mdash;with a
+      grand listing&mdash;coming whence we know not, and going whither we know
+      not. The very clouds of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the
+      thoughts and history of man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take the
+      clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that what you
+      were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which the clouds
+      assume. I see I was wrong, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
+      make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all for?
+      They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and they go
+      nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving symbols of the
+      motions of man&rsquo;s spirit and destiny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause followed, during which we sat and watched the marvellous depth of
+      the heavens, deep as I do not think I ever saw them before or since,
+      covered with a stately procession of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing
+      forms&mdash;great sculpturesque blocks of a shattered storm&mdash;the
+      icebergs of the upper sea. These were not far off against a blue
+      background, but floating near us in the heart of a blue-black space,
+      gloriously lighted by a golden rather than silvery moon. At length my wife
+      spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope Mr. Percivale is out to-night,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How he must be enjoying
+      it if he is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder the young man is not returning to his professional labours,&rdquo; I
+      said. &ldquo;Few artists can afford such long holidays as he is taking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is laying in stock, though, I suppose,&rdquo; answered my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt that, my dear. He said not, on one occasion, you may remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember. But still he must paint better the more familiar he gets
+      with the things God cares to fashion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless. But I am afraid the work of God he is chiefly studying at
+      present is our Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, is she not a worthy object of his study?&rdquo; returned Ethelwyn,
+      looking up in my face with an arch expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless again, Ethel; but I hope she is not studying him quite so much
+      in her turn. I have seen her eyes following him about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife made no answer for a moment. Then she said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like him, Harry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I like him very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why should you not like Wynnie to like him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to be surer of his principles, for one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to be surer of Wynnie&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was silent. Ethelwyn resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think they might do each other good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still I could not reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They both love the truth, I am sure; only they don&rsquo;t perhaps know what it
+      is yet. I think if they were to fall in love with each other, it would
+      very likely make them both more desirous of finding it still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; I said at last. &ldquo;But you are talking about awfully serious
+      things, Ethelwyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, as serious as life,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make me very anxious,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;The young man has not, I fear, any
+      means of gaining a livelihood for more than himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he before he wanted it? I like to see a man who can be content
+      with an art and a living by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I have not been to blame in allowing them to see so much of each
+      other,&rdquo; I said, hardly heeding my wife&rsquo;s words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It came about quite naturally,&rdquo; she rejoined. &ldquo;If you had opposed their
+      meeting, you would have been interfering just as if you had been
+      Providence. And you would have only made them think more about each
+      other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t said anything&mdash;has he?&rdquo; I asked in positive alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear no. It may be all my fancy. I am only looking a little ahead. I
+      confess I should like him for a son-in-law. I approve of him,&rdquo; she added,
+      with a sweet laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I suppose sons-in-law are possible, however disagreeable,
+      results of having daughters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I tried to laugh, but hardly succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like you in such a mood. It is not like
+      you at all. It is unworthy of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I help being anxious when you speak of such dreadful things as
+      the possibility of having to give away my daughter, my precious wonder
+      that came to me through you, out of the infinite&mdash;the tender little
+      darling!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Out of the heart of God,&rsquo; you used to say, Henry. Yes, and with a
+      destiny he had ordained. It is strange to me how you forget your best and
+      noblest teaching sometimes. You are always telling us to trust in God.
+      Surely it is a poor creed that will only allow us to trust in God for
+      ourselves&mdash;a very selfish creed. There must be something wrong there.
+      I should say that the man who can only trust God for himself is not half a
+      Christian. Either he is so selfish that that satisfies him, or he has such
+      a poor notion of God that he cannot trust him with what most concerns him.
+      The former is not your case, Harry: is the latter, then?&mdash;You see I
+      must take my turn at the preaching sometimes. Mayn&rsquo;t I, dearest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took my hand in both of hers. The truth arose in my heart. I never
+      loved my wife more than at that moment. And now I could not speak for
+      other reasons. I saw that I had been faithless to my God, and the moment I
+      could command my speech, I hastened to confess it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, my dear,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;quite right. I have been wicked, for I
+      have been denying my God. I have been putting my providence in the place
+      of his&mdash;trying, like an anxious fool, to count the hairs on Wynnie&rsquo;s
+      head, instead of being content that the grand loving Father should count
+      them. My love, let us pray for Wynnie; for what is prayer but giving her
+      to God and his holy, blessed will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat hand in hand. Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we spoke in
+      our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose together, and
+      walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand clung to my wife
+      as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of the prison of my
+      faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was glorious again. It had
+      faded from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma, uninteresting as &ldquo;a foul
+      and pestilent congregation of vapours;&rdquo; the moon had been but a round
+      thing with the sun shining upon it, and the stars were only minding their
+      own business. But now the solemn march towards an unseen, unimagined goal
+      had again begun. Wynnie&rsquo;s life was hid with Christ in God. Away strode the
+      cloudy pageant with its banners blowing in the wind, which blew where it
+      grandly listed, marching as to a solemn triumphal music that drew them
+      from afar towards the gates of pearl by which the morning walks out of the
+      New Jerusalem to gladden the nations of the earth. Solitary stars, with
+      all their sparkles drawn in, shone, quiet as human eyes, in the deep
+      solemn clefts of dark blue air. They looked restrained and still, as if
+      they knew all about it&mdash;all about the secret of this midnight march.
+      For the moon&mdash;she saw the sun, and therefore made the earth glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been a moon to me this night, my wife,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You were
+      looking full at the truth, while I was dark. I saw its light in your face,
+      and believed, and turned my soul to the sun. And now I am both ashamed and
+      glad. God keep me from sinning so again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear husband, it was only a mood&mdash;a passing mood,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn,
+      seeking to comfort me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a mood, and thank God it is now past; but it was a wicked one. It
+      was a mood in which the Lord might have called me a devil, as he did St.
+      Peter. Such moods have to be grappled with and fought the moment they
+      appear. They must not have their way for a single thought even.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t help it always, can we, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t help it out and out, because our wills are not yet free with the
+      freedom God is giving us as fast as we will let him. When we are able to
+      will thoroughly, then we shall do what we will. At least, I think we
+      shall. But there is a mystery in it God only understands. All we know is,
+      that we can struggle and pray. But a mood is an awful oppression sometimes
+      when you least believe in it and most wish to get rid of it. It is like a
+      headache in the soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do the people do that don&rsquo;t believe in God?&rdquo; said Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment Wynnie, who had seen us pass the window, opened the door
+      of the bark-house for us, and we passed into Connie&rsquo;s chamber and found
+      her lying in the moonlight, gazing at the same heavens as her father and
+      mother had been revelling in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day was very lovely. I think it is the last of the kind of which
+      I shall have occasion to write in my narrative of the Seaboard Parish. I
+      wonder if my readers are tired of so much about the common things of
+      Nature. I reason about it something in this way: We are so easily affected
+      by the smallest things that are of the unpleasant kind, that we ought to
+      train ourselves to the influence of those that are of an opposite nature.
+      The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make themselves felt as we
+      scramble&mdash;for we often do scramble in a very undignified manner&mdash;through
+      the thickets of life; and, feeling the thorns, we grumble, and are blind
+      to all but the thorns. The flowers, and the lovely leaves, and the red
+      berries, and the clusters of filberts, and the birds&rsquo;-nests do not force
+      themselves upon our attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us
+      forget to look for them. But a scratch would be forgotten&mdash;and that
+      in mental hurts is often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on
+      the mind or heart will never fester&mdash;if we but allowed our being a
+      moment&rsquo;s repose upon any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that
+      lie around the half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I
+      think how, not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but
+      admirable when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very
+      paltriness of which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself
+      to a noble endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would
+      gladly help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of
+      the apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
+      for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one of
+      the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about me,
+      from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of truth
+      been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even a
+      lingering shadow&mdash;not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
+      rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
+      over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
+      memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader, for
+      therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the recording of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
+      enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean&mdash;of knowing a
+      few yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It
+      was to be low water about two o&rsquo;clock, and we resolved to dine upon the
+      sands. But all the morning the children were out playing on the threshold
+      of old Neptune&rsquo;s palace; for in his quieter mood he will, like a fierce
+      mastiff, let children do with him what they will. I gave myself a whole
+      holiday&mdash;sometimes the most precious part of my life both for myself
+      and those for whom I labour&mdash;and wandered about on the shore, now
+      passing the children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties
+      to look at this one&rsquo;s castle and that one&rsquo;s ditch, now leaving them
+      behind, with what in its ungraduated flatness might well enough personate
+      an endless desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I could
+      imagine them disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint
+      occasional cry of excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea was
+      so calm, and the shore so gently sloping, that you could hardly tell where
+      the sand ceased and the sea began&mdash;the water sloped to such a thin
+      pellicle, thinner than any knife-edge, upon the shining brown sand, and
+      you saw the sand underneath the water to such a distance out. Yet this
+      depth, which would not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I
+      followed that bed of shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and
+      out, till I was lost in an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and
+      mountain-peaks, in whose caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his
+      breath of pestilence; the kraken, with &ldquo;his skaly rind,&rdquo; may there be
+      sleeping
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      while
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;faintest sunlights flee
+  About his shadowy sides,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      as he lies
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      There may lie all the horrors that Schiller&rsquo;s diver encountered&mdash;the
+      frightful Molch, and that worst of all, to which he gives no name, which
+      came creeping with a hundred knots at once; but here are only the gracious
+      rainbow-woven shells, an evanescent jelly or two, and the queer baby-crabs
+      that crawl out from the holes of the bordering rocks. What awful
+      gradations of gentleness lead from such as these down to those cabins
+      where wallow the inventions of Nature&rsquo;s infancy, when, like a child of
+      untutored imagination, she drew on the slate of her fancy creations in
+      which flitting shadows of beauty serve only to heighten the shuddering,
+      gruesome horror. The sweet sun and air, the hand of man, and the growth of
+      the ages, have all but swept such from the upper plains of the earth. What
+      hunter&rsquo;s bow has twanged, what adventurer&rsquo;s rifle has cracked in those
+      leagues of mountain-waste, vaster than all the upper world can show, where
+      the beasts of the ocean &ldquo;graze the sea-weed, their pasture&rdquo;! Diana of the
+      silver bow herself, when she descends into the interlunar caves of hell,
+      sends no such monsters fleeing from her spells. Yet if such there be, such
+      horrors too must lie in the undiscovered caves of man&rsquo;s nature, of which
+      all this outer world is but a typical analysis. By equally slow gradations
+      may the inner eye descend from the truth of a Cordelia to the falsehood of
+      an Iago. As these golden sands slope from the sunlight into the wallowing
+      abyss of darkness, even so from the love of the child to his holy mother
+      slopes the inclined plane of humanity to the hell of the sensualist. &ldquo;But
+      with one difference in the moral world,&rdquo; I said aloud, as I paced up and
+      down on the shimmering margin, &ldquo;that everywhere in the scale the eye of
+      the all-seeing Father can detect the first quiver of the eyelid that would
+      raise itself heavenward, responsive to his waking spirit.&rdquo; I lifted my
+      eyes in the relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn hung
+      above the waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away to the
+      left a man who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible save in
+      such a tide, gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and swam
+      ashore; above his head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air; the sea
+      glittered and shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which to choose,
+      the balmy air or the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads through the
+      one, now alighting eagerly upon the other, to forsake it anew for the
+      thinner element. I thanked God for his glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa, it&rsquo;s so jolly&mdash;so jolly!&rdquo; shouted the children as I passed
+      them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that&rsquo;s so jolly, Charlie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My castle,&rdquo; screeched Harry in reply; &ldquo;only it&rsquo;s tumbled down. The water
+      <i>would</i> keep coming in underneath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried to stop it with a newspaper,&rdquo; cried Charlie, &ldquo;but it wouldn&rsquo;t. So
+      we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We blew it up rather than surrender,&rdquo; said Dora. &ldquo;We did; only Harry
+      always forgets, and says it was the water did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from
+      this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was
+      flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark
+      hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been
+      dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over
+      my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed
+      quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on
+      the sands to seaward of the breakwater, which lay above, looking dry and
+      weary, and worn with years of contest with the waves, which had at length
+      withdrawn defeated to their own country, and left it as if to victory and
+      a useless age of peace. How different was the scene when a raving mountain
+      of water filled all the hollow where I now wandered, and rushed over the
+      top of that mole now so high above me; and I had to cling to its stones to
+      keep me from being carried off like a bit of floating sea-weed! This was
+      the loveliest and strangest part of the shore. Several long low ridges of
+      rock, of whose existence I scarcely knew, worn to a level with the sand,
+      hollowed and channelled with the terrible run of the tide across them, and
+      looking like the old and outworn cheek-teeth of some awful beast of prey,
+      stretched out seawards. Here and there amongst them rose a well-known
+      rock, but now so changed in look by being lifted all the height between
+      the base on the waters, and the second base in the sand, that I wondered
+      at each, walking round and viewing it on all sides. It seemed almost a
+      fresh growth out of the garden of the shore, with uncouth hollows around
+      its fungous root, and a forsaken air about its brows as it stood in the
+      dry sand and looked seaward. But what made the chief delight of the spot,
+      closed in by rocks from the open sands, was the multitude of fairy rivers
+      that flowed across it to the sea. The gladness these streams gave me I
+      cannot communicate. The tide had filled thousands of hollows in the
+      breakwater, hundreds of cracked basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand;
+      from all of which&mdash;from cranny and crack, and oozing sponge&mdash;the
+      water flowed in restricted haste back, back to the sea, tumbling in tiny
+      cataracts down the faces of the rocks, bubbling from their roots as from
+      wells, gathering in tanks of sand, and overflowing in broad shallow
+      streams, curving and sweeping in their sandy channels, just like, the
+      great rivers of a continent;&mdash;here spreading into smooth silent lakes
+      and reaches, here babbling along in ripples and waves innumerable&mdash;flowing,
+      flowing, to lose their small beings in the same ocean that met on the
+      other side the waters of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the Amazon. All
+      their channels were of golden sand, and the golden sunlight was above and
+      through and in them all: gold and gold met, with the waters between. And
+      what gave an added life to their motion was, that all the ripples made
+      shadows on the clear yellow below them. The eye could not see the rippling
+      on the surface; but the sun saw it, and drew it in multitudinous shadowy
+      motion upon the sand, with the play of a thousand fancies of gold
+      burnished and dead, of sunlight and yellow, trembling, melting, curving,
+      blending, vanishing ever, ever renewed. It was as if all the water-marks
+      upon a web of golden silk had been set in wildest yet most graceful
+      curvilinear motion by the breath of a hundred playful zephyrs. My eye
+      could not be filled with seeing. I stood in speechless delight for a
+      while, gazing at the &ldquo;endless ending&rdquo; which was &ldquo;the humour of the game,&rdquo;
+       and thinking how in all God&rsquo;s works the laws of beauty are wrought out in
+      evanishment, in birth and death. There, there is no hoarding, but an
+      ever-fresh creating, an eternal flow of life from the heart of the
+      All-beautiful. Hence even the heart of man cannot hoard. His brain or his
+      hand may gather into its box and hoard; but the moment the thing has
+      passed into the box, the heart has lost it and is hungry again. If man
+      would <i>have,</i> it is the giver he must have; the eternal, the
+      original, the ever-outpouring is alone within his reach; the everlasting
+      <i>creation</i> is his heritage. Therefore all that he makes must be free
+      to come and go through the heart of his child; he can enjoy it only as it
+      passes, can enjoy only its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, not
+      itself. To hoard rubies and sapphires is as useless and hopeless for the
+      heart, as if I were to attempt to hoard this marvel of sand and water and
+      sunlight in the same iron chest with the musty deeds of my wife&rsquo;s
+      inheritance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; I murmured half aloud, &ldquo;thou alone art, and I am because thou
+      art. Thy will shall be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I know that I must have spoken aloud, because I remember the start of
+      consciousness and discomposure occasioned by the voice of Percivale
+      greeting me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;I did not mean to startle you, Mr. Walton.
+      I thought you were only looking at Nature&rsquo;s childplay&mdash;not thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know few things <i>more</i> fit to set one thinking than what you have
+      very well called Nature&rsquo;s childplay,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;Is Nature very
+      heartless now, do you think, to go on with this kind of thing at our feet,
+      when away up yonder lies the awful London, with so many sores festering in
+      her heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must answer your own question, Mr. Walton. You know I cannot. I
+      confess I feel the difficulty deeply. I will go further, and confess that
+      the discrepancy makes me doubt many things I would gladly believe. I know
+      <i>you</i> are able to distinguish between a glad unbelief and a sorrowful
+      doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Else were I unworthy of the humblest place in the kingdom&mdash;unworthy
+      to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,&rdquo; I answered, and recoiled from
+      the sound of my own words; for they seemed to imply that I believed myself
+      worthy of the position I occupied. I hastened to correct them: &ldquo;But do not
+      mistake my thoughts,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I do not dream of worthiness in the way of
+      honour&mdash;only of fitness for the work to be done. For that I think God
+      has fitted me in some measure. The doorkeeper&rsquo;s office may be given him,
+      not because he has done some great deed worthy of the honour, but because
+      he can sweep the porch and scour the threshold, and will, in the main, try
+      to keep them clean. That is all the worthiness I dare to claim, even to
+      hope that I possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one who knows you can mistake your words, except wilfully,&rdquo; returned
+      Percivale courteously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Now I will just ask you, in reference to the
+      contrast between human life and nature, how you will go back to your work
+      in London, after seeing all this child&rsquo;s and other play of Nature? Suppose
+      you had had nothing here but rain and high winds and sea-fogs, would you
+      have been better fitted for doing something to comfort those who know
+      nothing of such influences than you will be now? One of the most important
+      qualifications of a sick-nurse is a ready smile. A long-faced nurse in a
+      sickroom is a visible embodiment and presence of the disease against which
+      the eager life of the patient is fighting in agony. Such ought to be
+      banished, with their black dresses and their mourning-shop looks, from
+      every sick-chamber, and permitted to minister only to the dead, who do not
+      mind looks. With what a power of life and hope does a woman&mdash;young or
+      old I do not care&mdash;with a face of the morning, a dress like the
+      spring, a bunch of wild flowers in her hand, with the dew upon them, and
+      perhaps in her eyes too (I don&rsquo;t object to that&mdash;that is sympathy,
+      not the worship of darkness),&mdash;with what a message from nature and
+      life does she, looking death in the face with a smile, dawn upon the
+      vision of the invalid! She brings a little health, a little strength to
+      fight, a little hope to endure, actually lapt in the folds of her gracious
+      garments; for the soul itself can do more than any medicine, if it be fed
+      with the truth of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you not&mdash;I beg your pardon for interposing on your eloquence
+      with dull objection,&rdquo; said Percivale&mdash;&ldquo;are you not begging all the
+      question? <i>Is</i> life such an affair of sunshine and gladness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If life is not, then I confess all this show of nature is worse than
+      vanity&mdash;it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in it
+      that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the mistake.
+      If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow, against
+      which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We recognise it
+      as death&mdash;the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow but for a
+      recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must be life. It
+      is of the nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is nothing until the
+      light comes. This very childplay, as you call it, of Nature, is her
+      assertion of the secret that life is the deepest, that life shall conquer
+      death. Those who believe this must bear the good news to them that sit in
+      darkness and the shadow of death. Our Lord has conquered death&mdash;yea,
+      the moral death that he called the world; and now, having sown the seed of
+      light, the harvest is springing in human hearts, is springing in this
+      dance of radiance, and will grow and grow until the hearts of the children
+      of the kingdom shall frolic in the sunlight of the Father&rsquo;s presence.
+      Nature has God at her heart; she is but the garment of the Invisible. God
+      wears his singing robes in a day like this, and says to his children, &lsquo;Be
+      not afraid: your brothers and sisters up there in London are in my hands;
+      go and help them. I am with you. Bear to them the message of joy. Tell
+      them to be of good cheer: I have overcome the world. Tell them to endure
+      hunger, and not sin; to endure passion, and not yield; to admire, and not
+      desire. Sorrow and pain are serving my ends; for by them will I slay sin;
+      and save my children.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could believe as you do, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you could. But God will teach you, if you are willing to be
+      taught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I desire the truth, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you! God is blessing you,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in
+      silence towards the cliffs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the face
+      of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the inch-deep
+      wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet defiant, the
+      wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide
+      lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy
+      pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before us
+      bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of
+      stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that is
+      at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind you, at
+      your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents, caves, and
+      hollows of those rocks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I were,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;At least I know I should rejoice in it, if
+      it had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which would
+      give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and
+      individuality to your representation of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;but I have no gift whatever in that
+      direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects of light
+      and shade; though I think I have a little notion of colour&mdash;perhaps
+      about as much as the little London boy, who stopped a friend of mine once
+      to ask the way to the field where the buttercups grew, had of nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they made
+      me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of
+      looking at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I offer you my address?&rdquo; he said, and took a card from his
+      pocket-book. &ldquo;It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of me
+      when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a
+      visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be most happy,&rdquo; I returned, taking his card.&mdash;&ldquo;Did it ever
+      occur to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes ago,
+      how little you can do without shadow in making a picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little indeed,&rdquo; answered Percivale. &ldquo;In fact, it would be no picture at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God, to
+      be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think
+      of his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but
+      upon the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think a
+      great part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which
+      oppresses you will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin is
+      possible to him. Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God that
+      in order that sin should become impossible he should allow sin to come?
+      that, in order that his creatures should choose the good and refuse the
+      evil, in order that they might become such, with their whole nature
+      infinitely enlarged, as to turn from sin with a perfect repugnance of the
+      will, he should allow them to fall? that, in order that, from being sweet
+      childish children, they should become noble, child-like men and women, he
+      should let them try to walk alone? Why should he not allow the possible in
+      order that it should become impossible? for possible it would ever have
+      been, even in the midst of all the blessedness, until it had been, and had
+      been thus destroyed. Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever
+      exist, it seems to me, where there is creation still going on. How could I
+      be content to guard my children so that they should never have temptation,
+      knowing that in all probability they would fail if at any moment it should
+      cross their path? Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be
+      possible between us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long as
+      it was possible it should be there developed. And if this can be said for
+      the existence of moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes a
+      comparative trifle; nay, a positive good, for by this the other is
+      combated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you,&rdquo; returned Percivale. &ldquo;I will think over what
+      you have said. These are very difficult questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very. I don&rsquo;t think argument is of much use about them, except as it may
+      help to quiet a man&rsquo;s uneasiness a little, and so give his mind peace to
+      think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no question,
+      once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest&mdash;in very fact,
+      the only way into the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the
+      salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came a
+      little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the
+      preparations for our dinner&mdash;over the gates of the lock, down the
+      sides of the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the
+      direction of the children, who were still playing merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you see,
+      somewhere hereabout on the sands?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be delighted,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;if you will let me be of some use
+      first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I hoped,&rdquo; said Percivale; and we went together towards the
+      parsonage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but
+      when we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Wynnie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She saw you coming,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;and went to get Connie ready; for I
+      guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie&rsquo;s
+      disappearance. &ldquo;What if she should have fallen in love with him,&rdquo; I
+      thought, &ldquo;and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be
+      dreadful for us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was
+      compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each other
+      it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently a great
+      mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help sympathising
+      with each other&rsquo;s peculiarities. And anyone could see what a fine couple
+      they would make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie was much taller than Connie&mdash;almost the height of her mother.
+      She had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise,
+      thoughtful, often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on which
+      a smile seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled like
+      water when she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why should
+      not two such walk together along the path to the gates of the light? And
+      yet I could not help some anxiety. I did not know anything of his history.
+      I had no testimony concerning him from anyone that knew him. His past life
+      was a blank to me; his means of livelihood probably insufficient&mdash;certainly,
+      I judged, precarious; and his position in society&mdash;but there I
+      checked myself: I had had enough of that kind of thing already. I would
+      not willingly offend in that worldliness again. The God of the whole earth
+      could not choose that I should look at such works of his hands after that
+      fashion. And I was his servant&mdash;not Mammon&rsquo;s or Belial&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the winnowing-fan
+      of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife, who took no pains
+      to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and I went upstairs,
+      almost unconsciously, to Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to
+      have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie&rsquo;s arm round her
+      waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk
+      thus occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but turned
+      it again at Connie&rsquo;s cry, and I saw a tear on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darlings, I beg your pardon,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It was very stupid of me not to
+      knock at the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn&rsquo;t want
+      you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all. It didn&rsquo;t
+      hurt me much, only I&rsquo;m such a goose! I&rsquo;m in terror before the pain comes.
+      Look at me,&rdquo; she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation on my
+      countenance, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right now.&rdquo; And she smiled in my face perfectly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the
+      room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me
+      with her eyes, but Wynnie&rsquo;s were hidden in her handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to
+      announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came
+      to say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to
+      give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her
+      message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Mr. Percivale,&rdquo; I said; and he followed me up to Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for going.
+      We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for the
+      easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater, along
+      its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before we
+      reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us. We
+      stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted to take
+      breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I wanted
+      Wynnie to hear without its being addressed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see, Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;how far off the water is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that
+      sand, will be covered before sunset.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it will be. But it doesn&rsquo;t <i>look</i> likely, does it, papa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I
+      came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind blowing
+      when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to wake
+      myself up&rsquo; quite to get rid of the thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and sand
+      at the bottom of it, stretching far away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about
+      between the stones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the great
+      gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed across
+      this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry regiment off
+      its back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa!&rdquo; exclaimed Connie, turning pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I <i>was</i> right in being frightened, papa!&rdquo; cried Connie,
+      bursting into tears; for since her accident she could not well command her
+      feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were right in trusting in God, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you might have been drowned, papa!&rdquo; she sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what
+      has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but
+      that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking of
+      things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is <i>our</i>
+      department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what a
+      change&mdash;from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of
+      sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away
+      there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles will
+      come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the storm
+      look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning cannot
+      be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of
+      Nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for
+      God is Peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; said Percivale, &ldquo;you can hardly
+      expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It seems
+      to me that its influences cannot be imparted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are
+      offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another; for
+      it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in the
+      person who has experienced can draw over or derive&mdash;to use an old
+      Italian word&mdash;some of its benefits to him who has the faith.
+      Experience may thus, in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh
+      experience of our own. At least I can hope that the experience of a father
+      may take the form of hope in the minds of his daughters. Hope never hurt
+      anyone, never yet interfered with duty; nay, always strengthens to the
+      performance of duty, gives courage, and clears the judgment. St. Paul says
+      we are saved by hope. Hope is the most rational thing in the universe.
+      Even the ancient poets, who believed it was delusive, yet regarded it as
+      an antidote given by the mercy of the gods against some, at least, of the
+      ills of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a
+      false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could
+      give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for
+      what were the gods in whom they believed&mdash;I cannot say in whom they
+      trusted? Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of
+      doing for men when they gave them the <i>illusion</i> of hope. But I see
+      they are waiting for us below. One thing I repeat&mdash;the waves that
+      foamed across the spot where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and
+      vanished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they will come again, papa,&rdquo; faltered Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And God will come with them, my love,&rdquo; I said, as we lifted the litter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a table-cloth
+      spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the light outside and
+      in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope the others too, that
+      afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were creeping up over the
+      level, soundless almost as thought; but it would be time to go home long
+      before they had reached us. The sun was in the western half of the sky,
+      and now and then a breath of wind came from the sea, with a slight
+      saw-edge in it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could stand much more in
+      that way now. And when I saw how she could move herself on her couch, and
+      thought how much she had improved since first she was laid upon it, hope
+      for her kept fluttering joyously in my heart. I could not help fancying
+      even that I saw her move her legs a little; but I could not be in the
+      least sure; and she, if she did move them, was clearly unconscious of it.
+      Charles and Harry were every now and then starting up from their dinner
+      and running off with a shout, to return with apparently increased appetite
+      for the rest of it; and neither their mother nor I cared to interfere with
+      the indecorum. Dora alone took it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very
+      silent, but looked more cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My
+      wife&rsquo;s face was a picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking
+      about with the baby, occasionally with one hand helping the other servants
+      to wait upon us. They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the
+      hour, and, like Ariel, did their spiriting gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the will of God,&rdquo; I said, after the things were removed, and we
+      had sat for a few moments in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the will of God, husband?&rdquo; asked Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, this, my love,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;this living air, and wind, and sea, and
+      light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of
+      Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such
+      visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the
+      face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes. Yes,
+      but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the harmony.
+      When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was for Lazarus
+      himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That could not be,
+      seeing he had the power to call him back when he would. The grief was for
+      the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was so dreadful because
+      they had not faith enough in his Father, the God of life and love, who was
+      looking after it all, full of tenderness and grace, with whom Lazarus was
+      present and blessed. It was the aching, loving heart of humanity for which
+      he wept, that needed God so awfully, and could not yet trust in him. Their
+      brother was only hidden in the skirts of their Father&rsquo;s garment, but they
+      could not believe that: they said he was dead&mdash;lost&mdash;away&mdash;all
+      gone, as the children say. And it was so sad to think of a whole world
+      full of the grief of death, that he could not bear it without the human
+      tears to help his heart, as they help ours. It was for our dark sorrows
+      that he wept. But the peace could be no less plain on the face that saw
+      God. Did you ever think of that wonderful saying: &lsquo;Again a little while,
+      and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father&rsquo;? The heart of man would
+      have joined the &lsquo;because I go to the Father&rsquo; with the former result&mdash;the
+      not seeing of him. The heart of man is not able, without more and more
+      light, to understand that all vision is in the light of the Father.
+      Because Jesus went to the Father, therefore the disciples saw him tenfold
+      more. His body no longer in their eyes, his very being, his very self was
+      in their hearts&mdash;not in their affections only&mdash;in their spirits,
+      their heavenly consciousness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial
+      affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I
+      repeated it:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      &ldquo;If I Him but have,
+    If he be but mine,
+      If my heart, hence to the grave,
+    Ne&rsquo;er forgets his love divine&mdash;
+  Know I nought of sadness,
+  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.
+
+      If I Him but have,
+    Glad with all I part;
+      Follow on my pilgrim staff
+    My Lord only, with true heart;
+  Leave them, nothing saying,
+  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Glad I fall asleep;
+        Aye the flood that his heart gave
+      Strength within my heart shall keep,
+  And with soft compelling
+  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Mine the world I hail!
+        Glad as cherub smiling grave,
+      Holding back the virgin&rsquo;s veil.
+  Sunk and lost in seeing,
+  Earthly fears have died from all my being.
+
+        Where I have but Him
+      Is my Fatherland;
+        And all gifts and graces come
+      Heritage into my hand:
+  Brothers long deplored
+  I in his disciples find restored.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a lovely hymn, papa!&rdquo; exclaimed Connie. She could always speak more
+      easily than either her mother or sister. &ldquo;Who wrote it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and feeling,
+      however I may have failed in making an English poem of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years before you were born, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!&rdquo; she returned.
+      &ldquo;Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don&rsquo;t think he
+      belonged to any section of the church in particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But oughtn&rsquo;t he, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is the
+      use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I didn&rsquo;t think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I
+      wanted to know more about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant
+      what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider Christianity
+      as associated of necessity with this or that form of it, instead of as
+      simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more repulsive to me as I
+      had grown myself, for it always seemed like an insult to my brethren in
+      Christ; hence the least hint of it in my children I was too ready to be
+      down upon like a most unchristian ogre. I took her hand in mine, and she
+      was comforted, for she saw in my face that I was sorry, and yet she could
+      see that there was reason at the root of my haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened
+      herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far she
+      was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a barrier
+      between him and me&mdash;&ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the lovely feeling in that poem
+      seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to the New
+      Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about us. These
+      things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and being glad
+      in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and solemn things.
+      As soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to the
+      rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with their
+      conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with art it
+      was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of its
+      history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to make
+      Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we are
+      beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either the
+      whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the human
+      soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is the heart
+      not only of theology so called, but of history, politics, science, and
+      art. The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him, and therefore by
+      him only can be revealed. This will interpret all things, or it has not
+      yet been. Teachers of men have not taught this, because they have not seen
+      it. If we do not find him in nature, we may conclude either that we do not
+      understand the expression of nature, or have mistaken ideas or poor
+      feelings about him. It is one great business in our life to find the
+      interpretation which will render this harmony visible. Till we find it, we
+      have not seen him to be all in all. Recognising a discord when they
+      touched the notes of nature and society, the hermits forsook the
+      instrument altogether, and contented themselves with a partial symphony&mdash;lofty,
+      narrow, and weak. Their example, more or less, has been followed by almost
+      all Christians. Exclusion is so much the easier way of getting harmony in
+      the orchestra than study, insight, and interpretation, that most have
+      adopted it. It is for us, and all who have hope in the infinite God, to
+      widen its basis as we may, to search and find the true tone and right
+      idea, place, and combination of instruments, until to our enraptured ear
+      they all, with one voice of multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare
+      the glory of God and of his Christ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A grand idea,&rdquo; said Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Therefore likely to be a true one,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;People find it hard to
+      believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely
+      everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is
+      shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and
+      troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of
+      eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God
+      will yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring
+      holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look my
+      familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there I
+      sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs. As
+      I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast from
+      the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide had crept
+      up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk down over
+      the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured the half of
+      the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain veil as of the
+      commonplace, like that which so often settles down over the spirit of man
+      after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had dropped over the face
+      of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts across the dull waters. It
+      was time to lift Connie and take her home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. A PASTORAL VISIT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next morning rose neither &ldquo;cherchef&rsquo;t in a comely cloud&rdquo; nor &ldquo;roab&rsquo;d
+      in flames and amber light,&rdquo; but covered all in a rainy mist, which the
+      wind mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now
+      and then the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of my
+      study with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out and meet
+      its ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows anywhere.
+      The sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth, sea, and sky
+      were possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The breakfast-bell
+      rang, and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who was always down
+      first to make the tea, standing at the window with a sad face, giving fit
+      response to the aspect of nature without, her soul talking with the gray
+      spirit. I did find her at the window, looking out upon the restless
+      tossing of the waters, but with no despondent answer to the trouble of
+      nature. On the contrary, her cheek, though neither rosy nor radiant,
+      looked luminous, and her eyes were flashing out upon the ebb-tide which
+      was sinking away into the troubled ocean beyond. Does my girl-reader
+      expect me to tell her next that something had happened? that Percivale had
+      said something to her? or that, at least, he had just passed the window,
+      and given her a look which she might interpret as she pleased? I must
+      disappoint her. It was nothing of the sort. I knew the heart and feeling
+      of my child. It was only that kind nature was in sympathy with her mood.
+      The girl was always more peaceful in storm than in sunshine. I remembered
+      that now. A movement of life instantly began in her when the obligation of
+      gladness had departed with the light. Her own being arose to provide for
+      its own needs. She could smile now when nature required from her no smile
+      in response to hers. And I could not help saying to myself, &ldquo;She must
+      marry a poor man some day; she is a creature of the north, and not of the
+      south; the hot sun of prosperity would wither her up. Give her a bleak
+      hill-side, and a glint or two of sunshine between the hailstorms, and she
+      will live and grow; give her poverty and love, and life will be
+      interesting to her as a romance; give her money and position, and she will
+      grow dull and haughty. She will believe in nothing that poet can sing or
+      architect build. She will, like Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved
+      to smile at anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came
+      forward with her usual morning greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you. But
+      I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind and a
+      complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the
+      moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well, and
+      that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think about
+      some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have
+      banished if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as
+      you never felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which at
+      least you haven&rsquo;t enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you
+      yesterday, and I won&rsquo;t go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to
+      comfort you. Come and give me my breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do comfort me, papa,&rdquo; she answered, approaching the table. &ldquo;I know I
+      don&rsquo;t show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don&rsquo;t you
+      like a day like this, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as
+      you do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me so
+      well?&rdquo; she asked, brightening up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I do,&rdquo; I returned, replying to her last question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better than I do myself?&rdquo; she asked with an arch smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Considerably, if I mistake not,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don&rsquo;t
+      understand myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life
+      is that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from God,
+      that hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease. It is the
+      sight of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are both, by
+      mutual confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you say to going
+      out with me? I have to visit a sick woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was
+      in bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll call and inquire as we pass,&mdash;that is, if you are inclined to
+      go with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you put an <i>if</i> to that, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on the
+      corner of Mr. Barton&rsquo;s farm&mdash;over the cliff, you know&mdash;that the
+      woman is ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here&rsquo;s mamma!&mdash;Mamma,
+      I&rsquo;m going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won&rsquo;t mind, will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it will do you any harm, my dear. That&rsquo;s all I mind, you
+      know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected to
+      it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people are <i>glad</i> to
+      stay in-doors when it rains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it does blow so delightfully!&rdquo; said Wynnie, as she left the room to
+      put on her long cloak and her bonnet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We called at the sexton&rsquo;s cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the
+      low window, looking seaward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope your wife is not <i>very</i> poorly, Coombes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed&rsquo;s not a bad place to be in
+      in such weather,&rdquo; he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the
+      Atlantic. &ldquo;Poor things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about,
+      do you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I was made so, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure you were. God made you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, sir. Who else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people like
+      to be comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It du look likely enough, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn&rsquo;t think he doesn&rsquo;t
+      look after the people you would make comfortable if you could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must mind my work, you know, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, surely. And you mustn&rsquo;t want to take his out of his hands, and go
+      grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you
+      get <i>your</i> hand to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay you be right, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I must just go and have a look
+      about, though. Here&rsquo;s Agnes. She&rsquo;ll tell you about mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his
+      tools into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over
+      with the names of the people he had buried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her, if
+      she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is very
+      poorly, I hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go through the churchyard, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;and see what the
+      old man is doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you humour the sexton&rsquo;s foolish fancy so much, papa? It is such
+      nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
+      resurrection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out
+      of his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction. To
+      get people&rsquo;s hearts right is of much more importance than convincing their
+      judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should be
+      encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the outsides
+      of their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for the dead
+      more than he does, and <i>therefore</i> it is unreasonable for him to be
+      anxious about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave
+      before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death&rsquo;s-head and
+      cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his
+      pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows of
+      the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked past
+      with a nod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only
+      thing in Dante&rsquo;s grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it without
+      a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry now as I am
+      that ever he could have written it. When, in the <i>Inferno,</i> he
+      reaches the lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice, he
+      finds the lost plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember
+      rightly, entirely submerged, and visible only through the ice, transparent
+      as crystal, like the insects found in amber. One man with his head only
+      above the ice, appeals to him as condemned to the same punishment to take
+      pity on him, and remove the lumps of frozen tears from his eyes, that he
+      may weep a little before they freeze again and stop the relief once more.
+      Dante says to him, &lsquo;Tell me who you are, and if I do not assist you, I
+      deserve to lie at the bottom of the ice myself.&rsquo; The man tells him who he
+      is, and explains to him one awful mystery of these regions. Then he says,
+      &lsquo;Now stretch forth thy hand, and open my eyes.&rsquo; &lsquo;And,&rsquo; says Dante, I did
+      not open them for him; and rudeness to him was courtesy.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he promised, you said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him
+      together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that
+      Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and
+      may teach us many things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what made you think of that now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was scooping
+      the green moss out of the eyes of the death&rsquo;s-head on the gravestone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting
+      us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie drew
+      her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and struggled
+      on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the rain must
+      carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one of the stone
+      fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments to recover our
+      breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like conversation was out of
+      the question. At length we dropped into a hollow, which gave us a little
+      repose. Down below the sea was dashing into the mouth of the glen, or
+      coomb, as they call it there. On the opposite side of the hollow, the
+      little house to which we were going stood up against the gray sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was
+      thoughtless of me; I don&rsquo;t mean for your sake, but because your presence
+      may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may
+      prefer seeing me alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go back, papa. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t mind it a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We
+      may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then. We shall soon be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way. I
+      left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where
+      Mrs. Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the
+      moment I saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was a
+      hard-featured woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled
+      restlessly about. She lay on her back, moving her head from side to side.
+      When I entered she only looked at me, and turned her eyes away towards the
+      wall. I approached the bedside, and seated myself by it. I always do so at
+      once; for the patient feels more at rest than if you stand tall up before
+      her. I laid my hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, very,&rdquo; she answered with a groan. &ldquo;It be come to the last with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It&rsquo;s not come to the last with us, so
+      long as we have a Father in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but it be with me. He can&rsquo;t take any notice of the like of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of every
+      thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than
+      usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I
+      therefore went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long as
+      their children don&rsquo;t bother them, let them do anything they like. He will
+      not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t look at me,&rdquo; she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so
+      that I could hardly, hear what she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is because he <i>is</i> looking at you that you are feeling
+      uncomfortable,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;He wants you to confess your sins. I don&rsquo;t
+      mean to me, but to himself; though if you would like to tell me anything,
+      and I can help you, I shall be <i>very</i> glad. You know Jesus Christ
+      came to save us from our sins; and that&rsquo;s why we call him our Saviour. But
+      he can&rsquo;t save us from our sins if we won&rsquo;t confess that we have any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other
+      people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t suppose that&rsquo;s confessing your sins?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I once knew a
+      woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner; but
+      when I said, &lsquo;Yes, you have done so and so,&rsquo; she would not allow one of
+      those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When I asked
+      her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these counted for
+      nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a great sinner,
+      like other people, as you have just been saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you don&rsquo;t be thinking I ha&rsquo; done anything of that sort,&rdquo; she said
+      with wakening energy. &ldquo;No man or woman dare say I&rsquo;ve done anything to be
+      ashamed of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve committed no sins?&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;But why did you send for me?
+      You must have something to say to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never did send for you. It must ha&rsquo; been my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, then I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;ve no business here!&rdquo; I returned, rising. &ldquo;I
+      thought you had sent for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her
+      thinking, and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I
+      think clergymen may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad
+      mood, as if they had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at
+      all. I bade her good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned to
+      Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we walked home together, I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the
+      sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented my
+      appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. THE ART OF NATURE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study
+      and in Connie&rsquo;s room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused to
+      hold any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it folded
+      itself in its mantle and lay still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we
+      cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She is
+      busy with every human mood in turn&mdash;sometimes with ten of them at
+      once&mdash;picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see,
+      understand, develop, reform it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora
+      knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that mamma
+      was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least, my dear,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;I shall be very glad to see
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale,&rdquo; I said as he
+      entered. &ldquo;I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it would
+      be much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her
+      portrait?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite so bad as that,&rdquo; said Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely the human face is more than nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature is never stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The woman might be pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such a
+      woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would feel
+      the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you would
+      never think of making upon Nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with moral
+      causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be
+      lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you rise
+      into animal nature that you find ugliness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn in
+      nature. I have seen ugly flowers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without
+      beauty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I grant
+      you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just because
+      the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in its
+      repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you are thinking of returning to London now, there
+      seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins
+      to show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the
+      change, even through the winter, will be good for my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must be going soon,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;but it would be too bad to take
+      offence at the old lady&rsquo;s first touch of temper. I mean to wait and see
+      whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin&rsquo;s summer, as
+      Shakspere calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what?&rdquo; I asked, seeing he hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And soap,&rsquo; I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the
+      worst of things, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by
+      anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to tell
+      me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went down to see him, and found her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife be very bad, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish you could come and see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she want to see me?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I repeated, &ldquo;has she said she would like to see me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say it, sir,&rdquo; answered the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is you who want me to see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you see,
+      sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would always
+      leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, never, sir. She be peculiar&mdash;my wife; she always be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she know that you have come to ask me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you courage to tell her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you haven&rsquo;t courage to tell her,&rdquo; I resumed, &ldquo;I have nothing more to
+      say. I can&rsquo;t go; or, rather, I will not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell her, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me
+      herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ben&rsquo;t that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she
+      will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your
+      wife&rsquo;s peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I <i>will</i> tell her, sir. It&rsquo;s time to speak my own mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the
+      middle of the night, I shall be with her at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left me and I returned to Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just thinking before you came,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;about the relation of
+      Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but I
+      often think about the truths that lie at the root of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am greatly obliged to you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for talking about these things. I
+      assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I
+      always think the professions should not herd together so much as they do;
+      they want to be shone upon from other quarters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself
+      could give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the
+      reflective power of the airy particles through which he shines. But
+      anything I know I have found out merely by foraging for my own
+      necessities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what makes the result valuable,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Tell me what
+      you were thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;how everyone likes to see his own thoughts
+      set outside of him, that he may contemplate them <i>objectively,</i> as
+      the philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as it
+      were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the
+      question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however they
+      may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will satisfy
+      themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in which they
+      have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet utter their
+      ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only be good, they
+      shall have this power some day; for I do think that many things we call
+      differences in kind, may in God&rsquo;s grand scale prove to be only differences
+      in degree. And indeed the artist&mdash;by artist, I mean, of course,
+      architect, musician, painter, poet, sculptor&mdash;in many things requires
+      it just as much as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren, seeing in
+      proportion to the things that he can do, he is aware of the things he
+      cannot do, the thoughts he cannot express. Hence arises the enthusiasm
+      with which people hail the work of an artist; they rejoice, namely, in
+      seeing their own thoughts, or feelings, or something like them, expressed;
+      and hence it comes that of those who have money, some hang their walls
+      with pictures of their own choice, others&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Percivale, interrupting; &ldquo;but most people, I
+      fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people&rsquo;s choice, for they
+      don&rsquo;t buy them at all till the artist has got a name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they
+      won&rsquo;t at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity
+      may be only what first attracted their attention&mdash;not determined
+      their choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Of such is not the talk,&rsquo; as the Germans would say. In as far as your
+      description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
+      considered now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
+      deserve, if you have lost your thread.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
+      their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &amp;c., of
+      their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
+      unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
+      to what is in themselves&mdash;the buyers, I mean. They like to see their
+      own feelings outside of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there not another possible motive&mdash;that the pictures teach them
+      something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the other,
+      but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us already that
+      makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the germ, else
+      nothing from without would wake it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
+      influences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the pictures
+      and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the house he has
+      chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little to do with the
+      education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not aware of it,
+      they are working upon him,&mdash;for good, if he has chosen what is good,
+      which alone shall be our supposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; that is clear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our needs&mdash;not
+      as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for himself. For
+      our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for us all the
+      otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even when he speaks
+      of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the forms or pictures
+      of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen world turned inside
+      out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house that he has built for
+      us, God has hung up the pictures&mdash;ever-living, ever-changing pictures&mdash;of
+      all that passes in our souls. Form and colour and motion are there,&mdash;ever-modelling,
+      ever-renewing, never wearying. Without this living portraiture from
+      within, we should have no word to utter that should represent a single act
+      of the inner world. Metaphysics could have no existence, not to speak of
+      poetry, not to speak of the commonest language of affection. But all is
+      done in such spiritual suggestion, portrait and definition are so avoided,
+      the whole is in such fluent evanescence, that the producing mind is only
+      aided, never overwhelmed. It never amounts to representation. It affords
+      but the material which the thinking, feeling soul can use, interpret, and
+      apply for its own purposes of speech. It is, as it were, the forms of
+      thought cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior laws of matter, thence to
+      be withdrawn by what we call the creative genius that God has given to
+      men, and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and built up to its own
+      shapes and its own purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the
+      word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help seeing
+      nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees no meaning
+      in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will represent only
+      her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then artists ought to interpret nature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves&mdash;something
+      of humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or
+      not. If to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed they
+      may claim to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect they may
+      be in their powers of representing&mdash;however lowly, therefore, their
+      position may be in that order.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. THE SORE SPOT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the
+      dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message
+      that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help
+      smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling
+      too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife do send me for you this time, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Between you and me,
+      I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to tell
+      you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And
+      then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She don&rsquo;t think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay
+      she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done
+      talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn&rsquo;t given in quite so
+      much. It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been surer&mdash;<i>sometimes;</i>
+      I don&rsquo;t say <i>always.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don&rsquo;t think she&rsquo;ll behave to you
+      as she did before. Do come, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I will&mdash;instantly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with
+      me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was
+      hardly kind to ask him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps it is better not,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;for I do not know how long I
+      may have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take my
+      place at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should return
+      before the meal is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my
+      wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me&mdash;I would take
+      my chance&mdash;and joined Mr. Stokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have no idea, then,&rdquo; I said, after we had gone about half-way, &ldquo;what
+      makes your wife so uneasy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I haven&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;except it be,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;that she was
+      too hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath
+      her, as wife thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother&rsquo;s temper, you see,
+      and she would take her own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there&rsquo;s a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their
+      own way, they mustn&rsquo;t give their own temper to their daughters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how are they to help it, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter&rsquo;s husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have worked on Mr. Barton&rsquo;s farm for many years, if I don&rsquo;t
+      mistake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you weren&rsquo;t so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his way
+      up or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs.
+      Stokes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True as you say, sir; and it&rsquo;s not me that has anything to say about it.
+      I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do be wanting
+      to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the shopkeeping&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The shopkeeping!&rdquo; I said, with some surprise; &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, sir, it&rsquo;s only for a quarter or so of the year. You know
+      it&rsquo;s a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing&mdash;past
+      our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a bit of
+      a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bad place for the ginger-beer,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My
+      wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the sun.
+      But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a farm-labourer,
+      as they call them, was none good enough for her daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And hasn&rsquo;t she been kind to her since she married, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s never done her no harm, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she hasn&rsquo;t gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see
+      you very often, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s ne&rsquo;er a one o&rsquo; them crossed the door of the other,&rdquo; he answered,
+      with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah; but you don&rsquo;t approve of that yourself, Stokes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do
+      want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother,
+      she do. I don&rsquo;t know which of the two it is as does it, but there&rsquo;s no
+      coming and going between Carpstone and this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I
+      was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for
+      me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was
+      still very anxious to see me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?&rdquo; I asked, by way of opening
+      the conversation. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you look much worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I he much worse, sir. You don&rsquo;t know what I suffer, or you wouldn&rsquo;t make
+      so little of it. I be very bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me why
+      you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I
+      suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more
+      with herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her. The
+      drops stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to help her,
+      if I might, I said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she muttered. &ldquo;I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my
+      own. I could do as I pleased with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but
+      meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she
+      feels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you want to tell me about something that was not your
+      own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who said I ever took what was not my own?&rdquo; she returned fiercely. &ldquo;Did
+      Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn&rsquo;t my own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from
+      your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause of
+      your misery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very hard that the parson should think such things,&rdquo; she muttered
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor woman,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you sent for me because you had something to
+      confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to
+      confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does
+      you harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me,
+      confess to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows it, I suppose, without that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it. How
+      is he to forgive you, if you won&rsquo;t allow that you have done wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had
+      took something that wasn&rsquo;t your own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shouldn&rsquo;t like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I
+      should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s the worst of it; I can&rsquo;t get rid of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly as I
+      could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly repulsive
+      but for her evidently great suffering, &ldquo;you have now all but confessed
+      taking something that did not belong to you. Why don&rsquo;t you summon courage
+      and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the trouble as easily
+      as ever I can; but I can&rsquo;t if you don&rsquo;t tell me what you&rsquo;ve got that isn&rsquo;t
+      yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got anything,&rdquo; she muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was again silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold
+      of me, with a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, stop. I&rsquo;ll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That&rsquo;s the worst
+      of it. I got no good of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sovereign,&rdquo; she said, with a groan. &ldquo;And now I&rsquo;m a thief, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you
+      think it would have been any better for you if you hadn&rsquo;t lost it, and had
+      got some good of it, as you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent yet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t lost it you would most likely have been a great deal worse
+      for it than you are&mdash;a more wicked woman altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a wicked woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is wicked to steal, is it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t steal it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you come by it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you try to find out the owner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I knew whose it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you
+      had not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked
+      woman than you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have lost my character as I have done this day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that I would,&rdquo; she said, looking me so full in the face that I was
+      sure she meant it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I wouldn&rsquo;t trust him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the story, you mean? You do not wish to imply that he would not
+      restore it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean that. He would do what I told him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you return it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should make a parcel of it, and send it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without saying anything about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Where&rsquo;s the good? The man would have his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have wronged
+      him. That would never do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too hard upon me,&rdquo; she said, beginning to weep angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the
+      weight of it will stick there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. That is only reasonable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t got it, I tell you. I have lost it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not a sovereign in your possession?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you ask your husband to let you have one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse. I
+      do wish I had never seen that wicked money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish
+      that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it
+      now. Has your husband got a sovereign?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He may ha&rsquo; got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him about
+      it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in that
+      way, poor man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll tell him, and we&rsquo;ll manage it somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she hid
+      her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the room-door
+      and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did not look up,
+      but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this humiliation
+      before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your wife, poor woman,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is in great distress because&mdash;I do
+      not know when or how&mdash;she picked up a sovereign that did not belong
+      to her, and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This
+      is what is making her so miserable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deary me!&rdquo; said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to a
+      sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet
+      from her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight hold
+      of it, and he could not. &ldquo;Deary me!&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll soon put that all
+      to rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon
+      return it,&rdquo; she sobbed from under the sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got
+      for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha&rsquo; given it back
+      at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was very
+      nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My old man won&rsquo;t be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would wish that too,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;were it not that I am afraid you might
+      have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable
+      and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be
+      paid. Have you got it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor man looked blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will never be at ease till this money is paid,&rdquo; I insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I ain&rsquo;t got it, but I&rsquo;ll borrow it of someone; I&rsquo;ll go to
+      master, and ask him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my good fellow, that won&rsquo;t do. Your master would want to know what
+      you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn&rsquo;t let more people know
+      about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no occasion for
+      that. I&rsquo;ll tell you what: I&rsquo;ll give you the money, and you must take it;
+      or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell him all about it.
+      Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, sir. It&rsquo;s very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again, if
+      it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to you,
+      sir; but I couldn&rsquo;t bear the disgrace of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said all this from under the bed-clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll go,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;and as soon as I&rsquo;ve had my dinner I&rsquo;ll get a
+      horse and ride over to Squire Tresham&rsquo;s. I&rsquo;ll come back to-night and tell
+      you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for forgiving
+      you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but confess it clean
+      out to him, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse
+      which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to
+      dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my
+      return was uncertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my love,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;why should you not let us please ourselves
+      sometimes? Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very glad you think so,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;But there are the children: it
+      is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their meals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see there are no children; they have had their dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always in the right, wife; but there&rsquo;s Mr. Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never dine till seven o&rsquo;clock, to save daylight,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale&rsquo;s eyes
+      followed Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her
+      face. That she was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt. One
+      glance at her satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle kept
+      coming again and again into my mind; for they were winged words those, and
+      even when they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my window:
+      &ldquo;Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.&rdquo; And I kept reminding myself that I
+      must heave the load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs. Stokes
+      to do; for God was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not without my
+      help, for that would be to do me more harm than good by taking the one
+      thing in which I was like him away from me&mdash;my action. Therefore I
+      must have faith in him, and not be afraid; for surely all fear is sin, and
+      one of the most oppressive sins from which the Lord came to save us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out
+      for Squire Tresham&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him the
+      story of the poor woman&rsquo;s misery, he was quite concerned at her suffering.
+      When I produced the sovereign he would not receive it at first, but
+      requested me to take it back to her and say she must keep it by way of an
+      apology for his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took care to tell
+      him the whole story, thinking it might be a lesson to him too. But I
+      begged him to take it; for it would, I thought, not only relieve her mind
+      more thoroughly, but help to keep her from coming to think lightly of the
+      affair afterwards. Of course I could not tell him that I had advanced the
+      money, for that would have quite prevented him from receiving it. I then
+      got on my horse again, and rode straight to the cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Stokes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all over now. That&rsquo;s one good thing
+      done. How do you feel yourself now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness for.
+      It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all our sins,
+      you know. They&rsquo;re not nice things, are they, to keep in our hearts? It is
+      just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead carcasses, under lock
+      and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they were precious jewels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn&rsquo;t made so. There&rsquo;s
+      my husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But
+      then, you see, he would let a child take him in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is no
+      harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not reply, and I went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for your
+      daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially seeing
+      you are so ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, sir. I will directly. I&rsquo;m tired of having my own way. But I was
+      made so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You weren&rsquo;t made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the
+      necessary strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now;
+      only you must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you. I
+      think very likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink
+      yourself, and feel that you had done wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been feeling that for many a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling
+      your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know Jesus
+      came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off our
+      hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us.
+      Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere, and
+      he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband, and
+      when you have done that you will think of something else to set right
+      that&rsquo;s wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there would be no end to that way of it, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not, till everything was put right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a body might have nothing else to do, that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s the very first thing that has to be done. It is our business
+      in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and try to enjoy
+      ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God&rsquo;s way.
+      But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would just take
+      his way, you would find that he would take care you should enjoy your
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I haven&rsquo;t had much enjoyment in mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was just because you would not trust him with his own business, but
+      must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will take
+      care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for. And
+      the longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must leave
+      you now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and get a
+      sleep. I will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart
+      was like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from
+      every heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one&rsquo;s own soul must be a
+      pledge of renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again
+      of what St. Paul had said somewhere, &ldquo;whatsoever is not of faith is sin,&rdquo;
+       I thought what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth, and how
+      blessed it might be. But what could I do for it? I could just begin with
+      myself, and pray God for that inward light which is his Spirit, that so I
+      might see him in everything and rejoice in everything as his gift, and
+      then all things would be holy, for whatsoever is of faith must be the
+      opposite of sin; and that was my part towards heaving the weight of sin,
+      which, like myriads of gravestones, was pressing the life out of us men,
+      off the whole world. Faith in God is life and righteousness&mdash;the
+      faith that trusts so that it will obey&mdash;none other. Lord, lift the
+      people thou hast made into holy obedience and thanksgiving, that they may
+      be glad in this thy world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE GATHERING STORM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
+      lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than
+      in our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the
+      ocean, the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there,
+      indeed, so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the winter
+      through, compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness of the
+      season is almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against furious
+      storms of wind and rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another visit.
+      I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away so soon
+      again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find time for a
+      holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what I knew of
+      him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir was
+      working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have got a
+      man to take my place better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I
+      was sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one side
+      to the other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner encouraged
+      her in making gentle and frequent use of her strength, impressing it upon
+      her, however, that everything depended on avoiding everything like a jerk
+      or twist of any sort. I was with them when he said this. She looked up at
+      him with a happy smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will do all I can, Mr. Turner,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to get out of people&rsquo;s way
+      as soon as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you don&rsquo;t mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and not
+      be helped&mdash;more than other people&mdash;as soon as possible. I will
+      therefore be as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we don&rsquo;t
+      get well, Mr. Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next summer.&mdash;I
+      do,&rdquo; she added, nodding her pretty head up from the pillow, when she saw
+      the glance the doctor and I exchanged. &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; she went on, poking
+      the eider-down quilt up with her foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magnificent!&rdquo; said Turner; &ldquo;but mind, you must do nothing out of bravado.
+      That won&rsquo;t do at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done,&rdquo; said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
+      for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or
+      farther from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for
+      many weeks. Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was
+      only because of the weather, not because of her health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs. Stokes.
+      She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her mental
+      health was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very
+      different, and the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband
+      especially, was changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified, and
+      I had good hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding down
+      the hill of difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
+      tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage to
+      return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of light
+      gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was blowing
+      fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from the east. The
+      clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose fringes&mdash;disreputable,
+      troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like mischief. They reminded me
+      of Shelley&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ode to the West Wind,&rdquo; in which he compares the &ldquo;loose
+      clouds&rdquo; to hair, and calls them &ldquo;the locks of the approaching storm.&rdquo; Away
+      to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a luminous yellow, covered
+      all the sea-horizon, extending north and south as far as the eye could
+      reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed to lie in its bosom. Now
+      and then I could discern the dim ghost of a vessel through it, as tacking
+      for north or south it came near enough to the edge of the fog to show
+      itself for a few moments, ere it retreated again into its bosom. There was
+      exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air, notwithstanding the coolness of
+      the wind, and I was glad when I found myself comfortably seated by the
+      drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie bestirring herself to make the tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to like the idea of it,&rdquo; I added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea
+      of it too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Per se</i>, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a
+      world without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman&rsquo;s idea of
+      the perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a trim-shaven
+      lawn, rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on the shore only
+      in wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget which. But the older you
+      grow, the more sides of a thing will present themselves to your
+      contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in itself, but you
+      cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think for a moment of
+      the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are gathered within the
+      skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the toils of the storm are
+      around them. Look at the barometer in the hall, my dear, and tell me what
+      it says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went and returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not very low, papa&mdash;only at rain; but the moment I touched
+      it, the hand dropped an inch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
+      however.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t make much difference though, does it, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think of
+      things from our own standpoint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
+      nurse teach us Dr. Watts&rsquo;s hymns for children, because you said they
+      tended to encourage selfishness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast between the
+      misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the apparent&mdash;mind,
+      I only say apparent&mdash;ground of thankfulness, that they are not fit
+      for teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to the question,
+      he would abjure any such intention, saying that only he meant to heighten
+      the sense of our obligation. But it does tend to selfishness and, what is
+      worse, self-righteousness, and is very dangerous therefore. What right
+      have I to thank God that I am not as other men are in anything? I have to
+      thank God for the good things he has given to me; but how dare I suppose
+      that he is not doing the same for other people in proportion to their
+      capacity? I don&rsquo;t like to appear to condemn Dr. Watts&rsquo;s hymns. Certainly
+      he has written the very worst hymns I know; but he has likewise written
+      the best&mdash;for public worship, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that comes
+      of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the idea of a
+      storm, I cannot help it coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older, other
+      things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to us, and
+      impress us more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
+      their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;you say everybody is in God&rsquo;s hands as well as we.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
+      fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a
+      storm, ought we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the very
+      persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to rescue
+      them from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn&rsquo;t the tea ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa. I&rsquo;ll just go and tell mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us, Wynnie
+      resumed the talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don&rsquo;t see my way
+      out of it&mdash;logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use of
+      taking any trouble about them if they are in God&rsquo;s hands? Why should we
+      try to take them out of God&rsquo;s hands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or whatever
+      you call it. Take them out of God&rsquo;s hands! If you could do that, it would
+      be perdition indeed. God&rsquo;s hands is the only safe place in the universe;
+      and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God&rsquo;s hands on the shore
+      because we say they are in his hands who go down to the sea in ships? If
+      we draw them on shore, surely they are not out of God&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see&mdash;I see. But God could save them without us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we must
+      work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father lets his
+      little child help him a little, that the child may learn to be and to do,
+      so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our fellows, because we
+      would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we could. He requires us to
+      do our best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But God may not mean to save them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may mean them to be drowned&mdash;we do not know. But we know that we
+      must try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God&rsquo;s
+      great and good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that
+      best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, &lsquo;by
+      the mercy of God.&rsquo; They don&rsquo;t say it is by the mercy of God when he is
+      drowned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>people</i> cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not
+      feel. Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death would
+      break out in a &lsquo;thank God,&rsquo; and therefore they say it is God&rsquo;s mercy when
+      another is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider it God&rsquo;s
+      mercy when a man is drowned, that is just the sin of the world&mdash;the
+      want of faith. But the man who creeps out of the drowning, choking billows
+      into the glory of the new heavens and the new earth&mdash;do you think his
+      thanksgiving for the mercy of God which has delivered him is less than
+      that of the man who creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the waves on to the
+      dreary, surf-beaten shore? In nothing do we show less faith than the way
+      in which we think and speak about death. &lsquo;O Death, where is thy sting? O
+      Grave, where is thy victory?&rsquo; says the apostle. &lsquo;Here, here, here,&rsquo; cry
+      the Christian people, &lsquo;everywhere. It is an awful sting, a fearful
+      victory. But God keeps it away from us many a time when we ask him&mdash;to
+      let it pierce us to the heart, at last, to be sure; but that can&rsquo;t be
+      helped.&rsquo; I mean this is how they feel in their hearts who do not believe
+      that God is as merciful when he sends death as when he sends life; who,
+      Christian people as they are, yet look upon death as an evil thing which
+      cannot be avoided, and would, if they might live always, be content to
+      live always. Death or Life&mdash;each is God&rsquo;s; for he is not the God of
+      the dead, but of the living: there are no dead, for all live to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?&rdquo; said my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There can be no doubt about that, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child&rsquo;s sole
+      desire is for food&mdash;the very best possible to begin with. But how
+      would it be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse
+      to share this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the man
+      who never so far rises above the desire for food that <i>nothing</i> could
+      make him forget his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians should be
+      strong enough to overcome the fear of death. We ought to love and believe
+      him so much, that when he says we shall not die, we should at least
+      believe that death must be something very different from what it looks to
+      us to be&mdash;so different, that what we mean by the word does not apply
+      to the reality at all; and so Jesus cannot use the word, because it would
+      seem to us that he meant what we mean by it, which he, seeing it all
+      round, cannot mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does seem quite reasonable,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
+      from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks uneasy, does she not?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the Atlantic?&rdquo; he returned, looking round. &ldquo;Yes, I think so. I
+      am glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very
+      feverish, probably delirious before morning. She won&rsquo;t sleep much, and
+      will talk rather loud when the tide comes in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
+      blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again
+      before they vanish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
+      disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to me
+      that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little more
+      regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the evening;
+      in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is lowest again
+      while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain at night has
+      such an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps all a fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke to
+      me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even six
+      hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
+      relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
+      and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
+      human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care to
+      go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to Connie&rsquo;s
+      room and have some Shakspere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us have the <i>Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream,&rdquo;</i> said Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you&rsquo;re quite right.
+      It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer. I
+      suspect that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written in the
+      winter. It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full value upon
+      what we lack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one reason,&rdquo; said Wynnie with a roguish look, &ldquo;why I like that
+      play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn&rsquo;t it, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure of that. But what is your reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women. <i>They</i>
+      are true throughout.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might choose to say that was because they were not tried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I might venture to answer that Shakspere&mdash;being true to nature
+      always, as you say, papa&mdash;knew very well how absurd it would be to
+      represent a woman&rsquo;s feelings as under the influence of the juice of a
+      paltry flower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capital, Wynnie!&rdquo; said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
+      approbation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;It is the
+      common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn, &ldquo;he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
+      sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted
+      to this, that he would only believe his own eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;For my part, I have more
+      admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more weight to
+      the consistency of the various testimony than could be altogether
+      counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now I will tell you
+      what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling power of the poet.
+      He brings together such marvellous contrasts, without a single shock or
+      jar to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the conjunction. Think for
+      a moment&mdash;the ordinary commonplace courtiers; the lovers, men and
+      women in the condition of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a
+      hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their
+      courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the
+      ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,&mdash;fairies and
+      clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony,
+      clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the
+      king and queen. But I have talked enough about it. Let us get our books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As we sat in Connie&rsquo;s room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of the
+      poet&rsquo;s fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
+      fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. &ldquo;Musk roses,&rdquo; said Titania; and the
+      first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the window.
+      &ldquo;Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow,&rdquo; said Bottom; and the roar of the
+      waters was in our ears. &ldquo;So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently
+      entwist,&rdquo; said Titania; and the blast poured the rain in a spout against
+      the window. &ldquo;Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,&rdquo; said
+      Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the chinks of the bark-house
+      opening from the room. We drew the curtains closer, made up the fire
+      higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere we had done; and when we
+      left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it was with the hope that,
+      through all the rising storm, she would dream of breeze-haunted summer
+      woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. THE GATHERED STORM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
+      howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
+      and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear
+      it save in the <i>rallentondo</i> passages of the wind; but through all
+      the wind I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not
+      wake my wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to
+      Connie&rsquo;s room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were,
+      she would be frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the same
+      room. I opened the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was burning,
+      for Wynnie was an admirable stoker, and could generally keep the fire in
+      all night. I crept to the bedside: there was just light enough to see that
+      Connie was fast asleep, and that her dreams were not of storms. It was a
+      marvel how well the child always slept. But, as I turned to leave the
+      room, Wynnie&rsquo;s voice called me in a whisper. Approaching her bed, I saw
+      her wide eyes, like the eyes of the darkness, for I could scarcely see
+      anything of her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awake, darling?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn&rsquo;t Connie sleeping
+      delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the best thing for us all, next to God&rsquo;s spirit, I sometimes think,
+      my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps you
+      awake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house shakes
+      so that I do feel a little nervous. I don&rsquo;t know how it is. I never felt
+      afraid of anything natural before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only
+      hurt the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think
+      about him, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do try, papa. Don&rsquo;t you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful
+      storm, is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment, I
+      suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of dying.
+      Mind, they are all in God&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand is
+      over them, making them dark with his care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those odd
+      but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
+      beautifully, &lsquo;And now with darkness closest weary eyes,&rsquo; he adds:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Thus in thy ebony box
+  Thou dost enclose us, till the day
+  Put our amendment in our way,
+  And give new wheels to our disordered clocks.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a
+      good clock of God&rsquo;s making; but you want new wheels, according to our
+      beloved brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was tiresome talk&mdash;was it&mdash;in the middle of the night,
+      reader? Well, but my child did not think so, I know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and sky.
+      The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled a
+      little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again, and the
+      wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible human
+      hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into the village.
+      The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I passed: not a man
+      or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if nobody had crossed
+      their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open. One child came out of
+      the baker&rsquo;s with a big loaf in her apron. The wind threatened to blow the
+      hair off her head, if not herself first into the canal. I took her by the
+      hand and led her, or rather, let her lead me home, while I kept her from
+      being carried away by the wind. Having landed her safely inside her
+      mother&rsquo;s door, I went on, climbed the heights above the village, and
+      looked abroad over the Atlantic. What a waste of aimless tossing to and
+      fro! Gray mist above, full of falling rain; gray, wrathful waters
+      underneath, foaming and bursting as billow broke upon billow. The tide was
+      ebbing now, but almost every other wave swept the breakwater. They burst
+      on the rocks at the end of it, and rushed in shattered spouts and clouds
+      of spray far into the air over their heads. &ldquo;Will the time ever come,&rdquo; I
+      thought, &ldquo;when man shall be able to store up even this force for his own
+      ends? Who can tell?&rdquo; The solitary form of a man stood at some distance
+      gazing, as I was gazing, out on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking
+      with myself who it could be that loved Nature so well that he did not
+      shrink from her even in her most uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and
+      soon found I was right; it was Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a clashing of water-drops!&rdquo; I said, thinking of a line somewhere in
+      Coleridge&rsquo;s Remorse. &ldquo;They are but water-drops, after all, that make this
+      great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
+      close-reefed&mdash;that is all I can see&mdash;away in the mist there? As
+      soon as you think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you
+      know that hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops
+      no more. It is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules
+      have to fight for the mastery, or at least for freedom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort that
+      gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of human
+      feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much of its awe;
+      although, as we were saying the other day, it is only <i>a picture</i> of
+      the troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are with the
+      elements, and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I will go home
+      and change my clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have hardly had enough of it yet,&rdquo; returned Percivale. &ldquo;I shall have a
+      stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little way
+      from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch awhile
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;re a younger man than I am; but I&rsquo;ve seen the day, as Lear
+      says. What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we would
+      be judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of the strength
+      that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it still. But I am
+      not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take
+      my way along the downs for a mile or two; I don&rsquo;t mind being wet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; resumed Percivale, &ldquo;that in some sense the old man&mdash;not
+      that I can allow <i>you</i> that dignity yet, Mr. Walton&mdash;has a right
+      to regard the past as his own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be scanned,&rdquo; I answered, as we walked towards the village.
+      &ldquo;Surely the results of the past are the man&rsquo;s own. Any action of the
+      man&rsquo;s, upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a man
+      had done a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation upon
+      which to build more good, grew so vain of it that he became incapable of
+      doing anything more of the same sort, you could not say that the action
+      belonged to him still. Therein he has severed his connection with the
+      past. Again, what has never in any deep sense been a man&rsquo;s own, cannot
+      surely continue to be his afterwards. Thus the things that a man has
+      merely possessed once, the very people who most admired him for their
+      sakes when he had them, give him no credit for after he has lost them.
+      Riches that have taken to themselves wings leave with the poor man only a
+      surpassing poverty. Strength, likewise, which can so little depend on any
+      exercise of the will in man, passes from him with the years. It was not
+      his all the time; it was but lent him, and had nothing to do with his
+      inward force. A bodily feeble man may put forth a mighty life-strength in
+      effort, and show nothing to the eyes of his neighbour; while the strong
+      man gains endless admiration for what he could hardly help. But the effort
+      of the one remains, for it was his own; the strength of the other passes
+      from him, for it was never his own. So with beauty, which the commonest
+      woman acknowledges never to have been hers in seeking to restore it by
+      deception. So, likewise, in a great measure with intellect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can
+      in any way be called his own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own&mdash;to
+      will the truth. This, too, is as much God&rsquo;s gift as everything else: I
+      ought to say is more God&rsquo;s gift than anything else, for he gives it to be
+      the man&rsquo;s own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth,
+      he has God himself. Man <i>can</i> possess God: all other things follow as
+      necessary results. What poor creatures we should have been if God had not
+      made us to do something&mdash;to look heavenwards&mdash;to lift up the
+      hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this
+      was in the mind of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, &lsquo;Thus saith the
+      Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man
+      glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him
+      that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I
+      am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in
+      the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.&rsquo; My own
+      conviction is, that a vague sense of a far higher life in ourselves than
+      we yet know anything about is at the root of all our false efforts to be
+      able to think something of ourselves. We cannot commend ourselves, and
+      therefore we set about priding ourselves. We have little or no strength of
+      mind, faculty of operation, or worth of will, and therefore we talk of our
+      strength of body, worship the riches we have, or have not, it is all one,
+      and boast of our paltry intellectual successes. The man most ambitious of
+      being considered a universal genius must at last confess himself a
+      conceited dabbler, and be ready to part with all he knows for one glimpse
+      more of that understanding of God which the wise men of old held to be
+      essential to every man, but which the growing luminaries of the present
+      day will not allow to be even possible for any man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce blast
+      of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the streets
+      did look!&mdash;how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no living
+      creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that seemed to
+      have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which, forgetful of
+      its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging to it against
+      a window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a mimic storm
+      within its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down the kennels
+      like a long brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide from the
+      tormenting wind, and every now and then the rain came in full rout before
+      the conquering blast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I got home, I peeped in at Connie&rsquo;s door the first thing, and saw
+      that she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of the
+      conch against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was sitting
+      staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she could see
+      over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately looked. Her
+      face was paler and keener than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He says
+      I am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as I
+      like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you look too tired for it. Hadn&rsquo;t you better lie down again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only the storm, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is going
+      to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The storm was
+      raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its reach&mdash;fast
+      asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
+      she was already looking much better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went out
+      again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and his wife,
+      were faring. The wind had already increased in violence. It threatened to
+      blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was coming in with great
+      rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as I passed through it to
+      reach the lower part where they lived. When I peeped in from the bottom of
+      the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the steps of someone overhead, I
+      called out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agnes&rsquo;s voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to
+      the bedrooms above&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s gone to church, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone to church!&rdquo; I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
+      whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled what
+      the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church during
+      a storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O yes, Agnes, I remember!&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;your mother thinks the weather bad
+      enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
+      Where is your husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don&rsquo;t mind the wet. You see, we
+      don&rsquo;t like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the sailors
+      call &lsquo;great guns.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what becomes of his mother then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There don&rsquo;t be any sea out there, sir. Leastways,&rdquo; she added with a quiet
+      smile, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
+      elements out there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe&rsquo;s mother
+      was proverbial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But really, sir,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;she don&rsquo;t mind the weather a bit; and though
+      we don&rsquo;t live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn&rsquo;t hear of that,
+      we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
+      now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow
+      complexion, that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought a
+      reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He&rsquo;s been working
+      very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite well, thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very
+      different thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the
+      church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
+      gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling. A
+      certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the southern
+      transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of the stone, on
+      the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a considerable crack
+      between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut some sod from another
+      part of the churchyard, and was now standing, with the rain pouring on him
+      from the roof, beating this sod down in the crack. He was sheltered from
+      the wind by the church, but he was as wet as he could be. I may mention
+      that he never appeared in the least disconcerted when I came upon him in
+      the discharge of his functions: he was so content with his own feeling in
+      the matter, that no difference of opinion could disturb him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will never do, Coombes,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You will get your death of cold.
+      You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there&rsquo;s rheumatism in
+      the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha&rsquo; done now for a night. I
+      think he&rsquo;ll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at him
+      through that hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do go home, then,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and change your clothes. Is your wife in the
+      church?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She be, sir. This door, sir&mdash;this door,&rdquo; he added, as he saw me
+      going round to the usual entrance. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find her in there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first, for it
+      was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there somehow,
+      although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters. Mrs. Coombes
+      was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the
+      wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts&mdash;how it did
+      roar up there&mdash;as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the
+      wind and send it down to ventilate the church!&mdash;she was sitting at
+      the foot of the chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I drew
+      near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but only
+      sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret place of
+      the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to say much,
+      however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Not all
+      night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn&rsquo;t thought o&rsquo; going yet for a
+      bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why there&rsquo;s Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I&rsquo;m afraid he&rsquo;ll go
+      on pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as full
+      of rheumatism as they can hold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deary me! I didn&rsquo;t know as my old man was there. He tould me he had them
+      all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there&rsquo;s always
+      some mendin&rsquo; to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
+      church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You be comin&rsquo; home with me, mother. This will never do. Father&rsquo;s as wet
+      as a mop. I ha&rsquo; brought something for your supper, and Aggy&rsquo;s a-cookin&rsquo; of
+      it; and we&rsquo;re going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a chapter or
+      two of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea. There! Come
+      along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully in
+      her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m the shepherd and you&rsquo;re the sheep, so I&rsquo;ll drive
+      you before me&mdash;at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended
+      if I take on me to say I am <i>his</i> shepherd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, nay, don&rsquo;t say that, sir. You&rsquo;ve been a good shepherd to me when I
+      was a very sulky sheep. But if you&rsquo;ll please to go, sir, I&rsquo;ll lock the
+      door behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the
+      sheep follow the shepherd. And I&rsquo;ll follow like a good sheep,&rdquo; he added,
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right, Joe,&rdquo; I said, and took the lead without more ado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was struck by his saying <i>them parts</i>, which seemed to indicate a
+      habit of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the
+      gospel-story. The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his
+      cottage, Joe taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I
+      could of Coombes by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared I
+      had done ill in that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought the
+      thin feeble little man would have got on better if he had been more
+      heavily weighted against it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and so
+      we got in. The old man took his tools from me and set them down in the
+      mill, for the roof of which I felt some anxiety as we passed through, so
+      full of wind was the whole space. But when we opened the inner door the
+      welcome of a glowing fire burst up the stair as if that had been a well of
+      warmth and light below. I went down with them. Coombes departed to change
+      his clothes, and the rest of us stood round the fire, where Agnes was busy
+      cooking something like white puddings for their supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear, sir,&rdquo; said Joe, &ldquo;that the coastguard is off to the
+      Goose-pot? There&rsquo;s a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the road
+      with the rocket-cart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How far off is that, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor&rsquo;ards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of a vessel is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I don&rsquo;t know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
+      coast-guard didn&rsquo;t know themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor things!&rdquo; said Mrs. Coombes. &ldquo;If any of them comes ashore, they&rsquo;ll be
+      sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had caught a little infection of her husband&rsquo;s mode of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so, sir. There&rsquo;s no likelihood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?&rdquo; said the
+      old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another
+      time with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with my
+      own people. They will be more uneasy if I am away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of coorse, of coorse, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;ll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out. It
+      was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There
+      would be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do
+      much while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore was
+      terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their breaking,
+      but they filled the earth and the air with their furious noises. The wind
+      roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the land, only to the one
+      had been set a hitherto&mdash;to the other none. Ere the night was far
+      gone, however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean itself had not
+      broken its bars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept pressing
+      their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of will, through
+      the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there was doing. They
+      could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and dismay, with a soul
+      in it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie&rsquo;s room, and found that she
+      was left alone. She looked restless, pale, and frightened. The house
+      quivered, and still the wind howled and whistled through the adjoining
+      bark-hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie, darling, have they left you alone?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only for a few minutes, papa. I don&rsquo;t mind it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t he frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the sea
+      of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the Atlantic
+      just as well. Jeremiah says he &lsquo;divideth the sea when the waves thereof
+      roar.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment Dora came running into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;the spray&mdash;such a lot of it&mdash;came dashing on
+      the windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! I do want to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want to see, Dora?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The storm, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is as black as pitch. You can&rsquo;t see anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, but I want to&mdash;to&mdash;be beside it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along. Ask
+      Wynnie to come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not seem
+      even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
+      presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
+      and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on to the
+      little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The
+      dining-room was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might see
+      better from the windows. The children and some of the servants were there
+      looking out. I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength of two
+      of the women to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great sheet of
+      spray rushed over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The rain had
+      ceased, and it was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could see the
+      gleaming whiteness all before me. The next moment a wave rolled over the
+      low wall in front of me, breaking on it and wrapping me round in a sheet
+      of water. Something hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found, on searching,
+      that one of the large flat stones that lay for coping on the top of the
+      wall was on the grass beside me. If it had struck me straight, it must
+      have broken my leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into the
+      house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but heard
+      nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned and tapped
+      at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me within. When I
+      went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had joined our party.
+      He and Turner were talking together at one of the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear a gun?&rdquo; I asked them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Was there one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
+      will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea,&rdquo; I said, remembering
+      what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would try, though, I suppose,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know the people. But I have seen
+      a life-boat out in as bad a night&mdash;whether in as bad a sea, I cannot
+      tell: that depends on the coast, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had fared
+      with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Connie, now, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
+      didn&rsquo;t mind, I wish he would go up and see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;instantly,&rdquo; said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear, so
+      shrill was it, we heard Connie&rsquo;s voice shrieking, &ldquo;Papa, papa! There&rsquo;s a
+      great ship ashore down there. Come, come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. &ldquo;How? What? Where
+      could the voice come from?&rdquo; was the unformed movement of our thoughts. But
+      the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though not the
+      less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and thought
+      only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that is afar!
+      Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so that
+      it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door at the
+      top of it was open. The door that led from Connie&rsquo;s room into the bark-hut
+      was likewise open, and light shone through it into the place&mdash;enough
+      to show a figure standing by the furthest window with face pressed against
+      the glass. And from this figure came the cry, &ldquo;Papa, papa! Quick, quick!
+      The waves will knock her to pieces!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In very truth it was Connie standing there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. THE SHIPWRECK.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Things that happen altogether have to be told one after the other. Turner
+      and I both rushed at the narrow stair. There was not room for more than
+      one upon it. I was first, but stumbled on the lowest step and fell. Turner
+      put his foot on my back, jumped over me, sprang up the stair, and when I
+      reached the top of it after him, he was meeting me with Connie in his
+      arms, carrying her back to her room. But the girl kept crying&mdash;&ldquo;Papa,
+      papa, the ship, the ship!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My duty woke in me. Turner could attend to Connie far better than I could.
+      I made one spring to the window. The moon was not to be seen, but the
+      clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to show a
+      wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that one moment
+      in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of the wind,
+      cutting through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the house. When
+      or how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew straight to
+      the sexton&rsquo;s, snatched the key from the wall, crying only &ldquo;ship ashore!&rdquo;
+       and rushed to the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember my hand trembled so that I could hardly get the key into the
+      lock. I made myself quieter, opened the door, and feeling my way to the
+      tower, knelt before the keys of the bell-hammers, opened the chest, and
+      struck them wildly, fiercely. An awful jangling, out of tune and harsh,
+      burst into monstrous being in the storm-vexed air. Music itself was
+      untuned, corrupted, and returning to chaos. I struck and struck at the
+      keys. I knew nothing of their normal use. Noise, outcry, <i>reveillé</i>
+      was all I meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes I heard voices and footsteps. From some parts of the
+      village, out of sight of the shore, men and women gathered to the summons.
+      Through the door of the church, which I had left open, came voices in
+      hurried question. &ldquo;Ship ashore!&rdquo; was all I could answer, for what was to
+      be done I was helpless to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered that so few appeared at the cry of the bells. After those first
+      nobody came for what seemed a long time. I believe, however, I was beating
+      the alarum for only a few minutes altogether, though when I look back upon
+      the time in the dark church, it looks like half-an-hour at least. But
+      indeed I feel so confused about all the doings of that night that in
+      attempting to describe them in order, I feel as if I were walking in a
+      dream. Still, from comparing mine with the recollected impressions of
+      others, I think I am able to give a tolerably correct result. Most of the
+      incidents seem burnt into my memory so that nothing could destroy the
+      depth of the impression; but the order in which they took place is none
+      the less doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hand was laid on my shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo; I said; for it was far too dark to know anyone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale. What is to be done? The coastguard is away. Nobody seems to
+      know about anything. It is of no use to go on ringing more. Everybody is
+      out, even to the maid-servants. Come down to the shore, and you will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is there not the life-boat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody seems to know anything about it, except &lsquo;it&rsquo;s no manner of use to
+      go trying of that with such a sea on.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there must be someone in command of it,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; returned Percivale; &ldquo;but there doesn&rsquo;t seem to be one of the crew
+      amongst the crowd. All the sailor-like fellows are going about with their
+      hands in their pockets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us make haste, then,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;perhaps we can find out. Are you sure
+      the coastguard have nothing to do with the life-boat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe not. They have enough to do with their rockets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember now that Roxton told me he had far more confidence in his
+      rockets than in anything a life-boat could do, upon this coast at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While we spoke we came to the bank of the canal. This we had to cross, in
+      order to reach that part of the shore opposite which the wreck lay. To my
+      surprise the canal itself was in a storm, heaving and tossing and dashing
+      over its banks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale,&rdquo; I exclaimed, &ldquo;the gates are gone; the sea has torn them
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I suppose so. Would God I could get half-a-dozen men to help me. I
+      have been doing what I could; but I have no influence amongst them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;What could you do if you had a thousand men
+      at your command?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made me no answer for a few moments, during which we were hurrying on
+      for the bridge over the canal. Then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They regard me only as a meddling stranger, I suppose; for I have been
+      able to get no useful answer. They are all excited; but nobody is doing
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must know about it a great deal better than we,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;and we
+      must take care not to do them the injustice of supposing they are not
+      ready to do all that can be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale was silent yet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had
+      been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving in
+      my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind us. The
+      wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased, and when
+      we reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast at what she
+      had at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she might see.
+      Awe and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal, we turned to
+      the shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had rushed up almost
+      to the village. The sand and the roads, every garden wall, every window
+      that looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it was a wonderfully
+      quiet crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of the wind and the
+      waves filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was heard only in the
+      ear to which it was spoken. When we came amongst them we heard only a
+      murmur as of more articulated confusion. One turn, and we saw the centre
+      of strife and anxiety&mdash;the heart of the storm that filled heaven and
+      earth, upon which all the blasts and the billows broke and raved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was
+      discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was
+      far above low-water mark&mdash;lay nearer the village by a furlong than
+      the spot where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange
+      to think that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many
+      men and women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for the
+      cry of women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to save them.
+      It was terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about hurriedly,
+      talking to this one and that one, as if he still thought something might
+      be done. He turned to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the
+      life-boat is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use, I assure you, sir,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;no boat could live in such
+      a sea. It would be throwing away the men&rsquo;s lives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know where the captain lives?&rdquo; Percivale asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did, I tell you it is of no use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you the captain yourself?&rdquo; returned Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that to you?&rdquo; he answered, surly now. &ldquo;I know my own business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made a
+      simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as
+      they returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was
+      the body of a woman&mdash;alive or dead I could not tell. I could just see
+      the long hair hanging from the head, which itself hung backward helplessly
+      as they bore her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I can recall
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run, Percivale,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; answered Percivale. &ldquo;You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so
+      abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one of the
+      most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they walked away
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the
+      moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught, and
+      that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for the
+      marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and her
+      mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could sleep;
+      but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however, occasioned by
+      what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking about the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we went
+      up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The clouds
+      had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we could not at
+      first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed itself a body of
+      men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat, afloat on the
+      troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own place, his hands
+      quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him, his feet out before
+      him, ready to pull the moment they should pass beyond the broken gates of
+      the lock out on the awful tossing of the waves. They sat very silent, and
+      the men on the path towed them swiftly along. The moon uncovered her face
+      for a moment, and shone upon the faces of two of the rowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale! Joe!&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir!&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does your wife know of it, Joe?&rdquo; I almost gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure,&rdquo; answered Joe. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first chance I&rsquo;ve had of returning
+      thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay, sir!&rdquo; they answered as one man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is your doing, Percivale,&rdquo; I said, turning and walking alongside of
+      the boat for a little way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more Jim Allen&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;If I hadn&rsquo;t got a hold of him I
+      couldn&rsquo;t have done anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you, Jim Allen!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a better man after this, I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donnow, sir,&rdquo; returned Jim cheerily. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s harder work than pulling an
+      oar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen,
+      the two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully
+      short space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking up
+      another or more; till at length the captain, protesting against the folly
+      of it, gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true Englishman, as
+      much in earnest as any of them. The places of two who were missing were
+      supplied by Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom would listen to no
+      remonstrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing to lose,&rdquo; Percivale had said. &ldquo;You have a young wife, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve everything to win,&rdquo; Joe had returned. &ldquo;The only thing that makes me
+      feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s not my duty that
+      drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What would
+      Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my bed and
+      sleep? I must go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Joe,&rdquo; returned Percivale, &ldquo;I daresay you are right. You can
+      row, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can row hard, and do as I&rsquo;m told,&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Percivale; &ldquo;come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards the
+      mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The critical
+      moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some parts of
+      which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty there, as
+      I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my post, and turned
+      again to follow the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you, my men!&rdquo; I said, and left them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner
+      in the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman
+      was quite dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear it is an emigrant vessel,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you think so?&rdquo; I asked, in some consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and look at the body,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face was
+      very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to prove that
+      she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America
+      or Australia&mdash;to her lover, perhaps,&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;You see she has a
+      locket on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some of these
+      people are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a Godsend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the house.
+      They were bringing another body&mdash;that of an elderly woman&mdash;dead,
+      quite dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out
+      together, when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce
+      hiss, vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up, seawards,
+      something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the right side
+      of the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God! that&rsquo;s the coastguard,&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
+      planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the
+      sea looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering in
+      the mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw down
+      below the great mass, of the vessel&rsquo;s hulk, with the waves breaking every
+      moment upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and then there
+      would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then
+      I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts
+      had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and
+      swung in the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire,
+      and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first
+      rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with
+      his telescope in his hand, ready to watch the result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a terrible job, sir,&rdquo; he said when I approached him; &ldquo;I doubt if
+      we shall save one of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the life-boat!&rdquo; I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
+      approaching the vessel from the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The life-boat!&rdquo; he returned with contempt. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say they&rsquo;ve
+      got <i>her</i> out! She&rsquo;ll only add to the mischief. We&rsquo;ll have to save
+      her too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth water.
+      But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the billows rode
+      over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some invisible prey. Another
+      hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second rocket was shooting its
+      parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised his telescope to his eye the
+      same moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over her starn!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a fellow getting down from the
+      cat-head to run aft.&mdash;Stop, stop!&rdquo; he shouted involuntarily. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+      an awful wave on your quarter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
+      distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But
+      the huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed&mdash;so
+      coolly as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar
+      things without discomposure&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s gone! I said so. The next&rsquo;ll have better luck, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That man came ashore alive, though.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
+      Roxton&rsquo;s telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then a
+      single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed on
+      the life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at one
+      moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam on the
+      knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the waves
+      delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no water. I
+      am here drawing upon the information I have since received; but I did see
+      how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on which she
+      floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon the life-boat
+      with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough to show this with
+      tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next moment, there she was,
+      floating helplessly about, like a living thing stunned by the blow of the
+      falling wave. The struggle was over. As far as I could see, every man was
+      in his place; but the boat drifted away before the storm shore-wards, and
+      the men let her drift. Were they all killed as they sat? I thought of my
+      Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wave has done for them,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I told you it was no use. There
+      they go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is the matter?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;The men are sitting every man in his
+      place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Two were swept overboard, but they caught the
+      ropes and got in again. But don&rsquo;t you see they have no oars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they
+      were as helpless as a sponge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket was
+      fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with fresh
+      fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say&mdash;&ldquo;She&rsquo;s breaking up. It&rsquo;s
+      no use. That last did for her;&rdquo; but I hurried off for the other side of
+      the bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great cry from the
+      vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a parting glance.
+      The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing at will over the
+      space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many were running, like
+      myself, towards the other side, anxious about the life-boat. I hastened
+      after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would
+      be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the only
+      spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion of
+      speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered about
+      the crew of the life-boat,&mdash;which already lay, as if it knew of
+      nothing but repose, on the grass within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale!&rdquo; I cried, making my way through the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe Harper!&rdquo; I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew,
+      to whom everybody was talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I
+      could gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall,
+      despair in her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I
+      could not look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking to
+      old Coombes. I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Mr. Percivale?&rdquo; I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the waves,
+      and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had fallen
+      considerably, else there would not have been standing-room, narrow as it
+      was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the direction of the
+      Castle-rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean the stranger gentleman&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Joe Harper, the blacksmith,&rdquo; I interposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;re there, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean those two&mdash;just those two&mdash;are drowned?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; I don&rsquo;t say that; but God knows they have little chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the
+      smallest danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am always
+      ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can&rsquo;t say I see
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I
+      believe, on board of that schooner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she aground?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear no, sir. She&rsquo;s a light craft, and can swim there well enough. If
+      she&rsquo;d been aground, she&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; been ashore in pieces hours ago. But whether
+      she&rsquo;ll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights
+      opposite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don&rsquo;t
+      make much show in this light. But there she is, and they&rsquo;re aboard of her.
+      And this is how it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the whole
+      of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said&mdash;one of them was
+      Percivale&mdash;but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless,
+      with the rest&mdash;now in a windless valley&mdash;now aloft on a
+      tempest-swept hill of water&mdash;away towards a goal they knew not,
+      neither had chosen, and which yet they could by no means avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the
+      channel of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across
+      the sands nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little
+      schooner, belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which,
+      caught in the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost dark,
+      some considerable time before the great ship. The master, however, knew
+      the ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind, and
+      would have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop anchor
+      just in time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner hung in
+      the skirts of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks within an
+      arrow flight. In the excitement of the great wreck, no one had observed
+      the danger of the little coasting bird. If the cable held till the tide
+      went down, and the anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if not, she
+      must be dashed to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed overboard
+      an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had dropped their
+      anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they were so worn out
+      that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor, and were holding on
+      only by their best bower. Had they not been a good deal out of the wind,
+      this would have been useless. Even if it held she was in danger of having
+      her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands as the tide went out. But
+      that they had not to think of yet. The moment they lay down they fell fast
+      asleep in the middle of the storm. While they slept it increased in
+      violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For
+      over his head faces looked down upon him from the air&mdash;that is, from
+      the top of a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the
+      angels dropped on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels
+      were Percivale and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time,
+      as all angels do&mdash;never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the
+      schooner <i>was</i> dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the
+      less experienced eyes of the said angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest anchor,
+      and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was engaged
+      to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth chapter in the
+      second volume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale&rsquo;s account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that
+      as they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge
+      wave the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the
+      rigging. The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the
+      schooner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out &ldquo;Aboard!&rdquo; The
+      captain said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must have
+      meant it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat.
+      Percivale, however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say
+      Christian?) notion of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to board
+      the schooner, sprang at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave sweeping them
+      along the schooner&rsquo;s side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds, and they
+      dropped on the deck together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the
+      affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of
+      the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by
+      staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was
+      nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which
+      was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was
+      Agnes Harper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds
+      were breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved
+      out its business, and was departing into the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Agnes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command. There
+      was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips&mdash;at least it seemed so in
+      the moonlight&mdash;only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She was
+      leaning against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging quietly
+      down before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The storm is breaking-up, Agnes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a
+      moment&rsquo;s pause, she spoke out of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe&rsquo;s at his duty, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant
+      that point I am not quite sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indubitably,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;I have such faith in Joe, that I should be
+      sure of that in any case. At all events, he&rsquo;s not taking care of his own
+      life. And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err on
+      that side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s nothing to be said, sir, is there?&rdquo; she returned, with a
+      sigh that sounded as of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job&rsquo;s
+      comfort by blaming her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she
+      reproached him with having left her and his father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t remember anything at this moment, sir,&rdquo; was her touching answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will tell you. He said, &lsquo;Why did you look for me? Didn&rsquo;t you know
+      that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?&rsquo; Now, Joe was
+      and is about his Father&rsquo;s business, and you must not be anxious about him.
+      There could be no better reason for not being anxious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agnes was a very quiet woman. When without a word she took my hand and
+      kissed it, I felt what a depth there was in the feeling she could not
+      utter. I did not withdraw my hand, for I knew that would be to rebuke her
+      love for Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come in and wait?&rdquo; I said indefinitely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you, sir. I must go to my mother. God will look after Joe,
+      won&rsquo;t he, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As sure as there is a God, Agnes,&rdquo; I said; and she went away without
+      another word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I put my hand on the top of the wall and jumped over. I started back with
+      terror, for I had almost alighted on the body of a woman lying there. The
+      first insane suggestion was that it had been cast ashore; but the next
+      moment I knew that it was my own Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not even fainted. She was lying with her handkerchief stuffed into
+      her mouth to keep her from screaming. When I uttered her name she rose,
+      and, without looking at me, walked away towards the house. I followed. She
+      went straight to her own room and shut the door. I went to find her
+      mother. She was with Connie, who was now awake, lying pale and frightened.
+      I told Ethelwyn that Percivale and Joe were on board the little schooner,
+      which was holding on by her anchor, that Wynnie was in terror about
+      Percivale, that I had found her lying on the wet grass, and that she must
+      get her into a warm bath and to bed. We went together to her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands pressed
+      against her temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynnie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;our friends are not drowned. I think you will see them
+      quite safe in the morning. Pray to God for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not hear a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave her with me,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn, proceeding to undress her; &ldquo;and tell
+      nurse to bring up the large bath. There is plenty of hot water in the
+      boiler. I gave orders to that effect, not knowing what might happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie shuddered as her mother said this; but I waited no longer, for when
+      Ethelwyn spoke everyone felt her authority. I obeyed her, and then went to
+      Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind being left alone a little while?&rdquo; I asked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa; only&mdash;are they all drowned?&rdquo; she said with a shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, my dear; but be sure of the mercy of God, whatever you fear.
+      You must rest in him, my love; for he is life, and will conquer death both
+      in the soul and in the body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not thinking of myself, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, my dear. But God is thinking of you and every creature that
+      he has made. And for our sakes you must be quiet in heart, that you may
+      get better, and be able to help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try, papa,&rdquo; she said; and, turning slowly on her side, she lay
+      quite still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora and the boys were all fast asleep, for it was very late. I cannot,
+      however, say what hour it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Telling nurse to be on the watch because Connie was alone, I went again to
+      the beach. I called first, however, to inquire after Agnes. I found her
+      quite composed, sitting with her parents by the fire, none of them doing
+      anything, scarcely speaking, only listening intently to the sounds of the
+      storm now beginning to die away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I next went to the place where I had left Turner. Five bodies lay there,
+      and he was busy with a sixth. The surgeon of the place was with him, and
+      they quite expected to recover this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I then went down to the sands. An officer of the revenue was taking charge
+      of all that came ashore&mdash;chests, and bales, and everything. For a
+      week the sea went on casting out the fragments of that which she had
+      destroyed. I have heard that, for years after, the shifting of the sands
+      would now and then discover things buried that night by the waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the next day the bodies kept coming ashore, some peaceful as in sleep,
+      others broken and mutilated. Many were cast upon other parts of the coast.
+      Some four or five only, all men, were recovered. It was strange to me how
+      I got used to it. The first horror over, the cry that yet another body had
+      come awoke only a gentle pity&mdash;no more dismay or shuddering. But,
+      finding I could be of no use, I did not wait longer than just till the
+      morning began to dawn with a pale ghastly light over the seething raging
+      sea; for the sea raged on, although the wind had gone down. There were
+      many strong men about, with two surgeons and all the coastguard, who were
+      well accustomed to similar though not such extensive destruction. The
+      houses along the shore were at the disposal of any who wanted aid; the
+      Parsonage was at some distance; and I confess that when I thought of the
+      state of my daughters, as well as remembered former influences upon my
+      wife, I was very glad to think there was no necessity for carrying thither
+      any of those whom the waves cast on the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I reached home, and found Wynnie quieter and Connie again asleep, I
+      walked out along our own downs till I came whence I could see the little
+      schooner still safe at anchor. From her position I concluded&mdash;correctly
+      as I found afterwards&mdash;that they had let out her cable far enough to
+      allow her to reach the bed of the little stream, where the tide would
+      leave her more gently. She was clearly out of all danger now; and if
+      Percivale and Joe had got safe on board of her, we might confidently
+      expect to see them before many hours were passed. I went home with the
+      good news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could not
+      know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But presently
+      I recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no right to
+      modify God&rsquo;s facts for fear of what may be to come. A little hope founded
+      on a present appearance, even if that hope should never be realised, may
+      be the very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of a sorrow past
+      the point at which it would otherwise break down. I would therefore tell
+      Wynnie, and let her share my expectation of deliverance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she started
+      up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought you good news, Wynnie,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I have been out on the
+      downs, and there is light enough now to see that the little schooner is
+      quite safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What schooner?&rdquo; she asked listlessly, and lay down again, her eyes still
+      staring, awfully unappeased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why the schooner they say Percivale got on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t drowned then!&rdquo; she cried with a choking voice, and put her hands
+      to her face and burst into tears and sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynnie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;look what your faithlessness brings upon you. Everybody
+      but you has known all night that Percivale and Joe Harper are probably
+      quite safe. They may be ashore in a couple of hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t know it. He may be drowned yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there is room for doubt, but none for despair. See what a poor
+      helpless creature hopelessness makes you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can I help it, papa?&rdquo; she asked piteously. &ldquo;I am made so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she spoke the dawn was clear upon the height of her forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not made yet, as I am always telling you; and God has ordained
+      that you shall have a hand in your own making. You have to consent, to
+      desire that what you know for a fault shall be set right by his loving
+      will and spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know God, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, that is where it all lies. You do not know him, or you would
+      never be without hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what am I to do to know him!&rdquo; she asked, rising on her elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The saving power of hope was already working in her. She was once more
+      turning her face towards the Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read as you have never read before about Christ Jesus, my love. Read with
+      the express object of finding out what God is like, that you may know him
+      and may trust him. And now give yourself to him, and he will give you
+      sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are we to do,&rdquo; I said to my wife, &ldquo;if Percivale continue silent? For
+      even if he be in love with her, I doubt if he will speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must leave all that, Harry,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was turning on myself the counsel I had been giving Wynnie. It is
+      strange how easily we can tell our brother what he ought to do, and yet,
+      when the case comes to be our own, do precisely as we had rebuked him for
+      doing. I lay down and fell fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. THE FUNERAL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back
+      from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as if
+      it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The
+      madness of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the
+      world was rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded the
+      best outlook over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the
+      sands, her two cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her; but
+      half way between the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something
+      shapeless, drifted over with sand. It was all that remained together of
+      the great ship that had the day before swept over the waters like a live
+      thing with wings&mdash;of all the works of man&rsquo;s hands the nearest to the
+      shape and sign of life. The wind had ceased altogether, only now and then
+      a little breeze arose which murmured &ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; and lay down
+      again. And I knew that in the houses on the shore dead men and women were
+      lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their
+      breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I
+      made a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into
+      the events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale,
+      looking very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his
+      hand warmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that you are returned to us, Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if that is much to give thanks for,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are the judges of that,&rdquo; I rejoined. &ldquo;Tell me all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie
+      entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment
+      hesitated in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with
+      an emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed&mdash;why, I could
+      not easily have told, for she looked most charming in the act,&mdash;more
+      lovely than I had ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising
+      God, and her heart would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest
+      man, and I think attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in
+      danger in the way of duty,&mdash;a fact sufficient to move the heart of
+      any good woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand trembled.
+      I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he evidently
+      enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into the
+      village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of the
+      sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn
+      business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his tools
+      lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Coombes! you&rsquo;ll want them,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good many o&rsquo; my people be come all at once, you see, sir,&rdquo; he returned.
+      &ldquo;I shall have enough ado to make &lsquo;em all comfortable like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all comfortable
+      yourself alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll see what I can do,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I ben&rsquo;t a bit willin&rsquo; to let no
+      one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many are there wanting your services?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don&rsquo;t doubt, on the
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you won&rsquo;t think of making separate graves for them all,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;They died together: let them lie together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with
+      indignation. The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had
+      deserved it, I yet felt the rebuke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you like, sir,&rdquo; he said, at length, &ldquo;to be put in the same bed
+      with a lot of people you didn&rsquo;t know nothing about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew the old man&rsquo;s way, and that any argument which denied the premiss
+      of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore
+      ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn&rsquo;t think of it after they&rsquo;d
+      been down awhile&mdash;six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can&rsquo;t be
+      comfortable for &lsquo;em, poor things. One on &lsquo;em be a baby: I daresay he&rsquo;d
+      rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o&rsquo; the women be a
+      mother. I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he went on reflectively, &ldquo;whether she be the baby&rsquo;s
+      own mother, but I daresay neither o&rsquo; them &lsquo;ll mind it if I take it for
+      granted, and lay &lsquo;em down together. So that&rsquo;s one bed less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves within
+      the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in the church,
+      having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties to perfection.
+      He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended the stair,
+      thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are Joe and Agnes?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day,
+      and so he couldn&rsquo;t stop. He did say Agnes needn&rsquo;t go with him; but she
+      thought she couldn&rsquo;t part with him so soon, you see, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had received him from the dead&mdash;raised to life again,&rdquo; I said;
+      &ldquo;it was most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him
+      neglect his work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last
+      night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the tire
+      put on Farmer Wheatstone&rsquo;s cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was his
+      business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy
+      wouldn&rsquo;t stay behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine fellow, Joe!&rdquo; I said, and took my leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing, and
+      apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were making the
+      coffins in the joiners&rsquo; shops, of which there were two in the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my
+      way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth, and
+      so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have it
+      vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world of form,
+      as soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding, life-giving
+      mould, seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy that will
+      sometimes emerge from the froth of reverie&mdash;I mean, of subdued
+      consciousness remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is altogether
+      and vilely repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even the shadow of
+      sentiment, though some of my readers, who may not yet have learned to
+      distinguish between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I dare to utter
+      such a barbarism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought
+      something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that he
+      had sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers,
+      requesting those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies to
+      appear within four days at Kilkhaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was
+      clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore
+      arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each
+      other, arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the last
+      of their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the shadow left
+      behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any object remains a
+      moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the object itself has gone,
+      so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body, lingers a moment upon the
+      earth after the object itself has gone to the &ldquo;high countries.&rdquo; It was
+      well to see with what a sober sorrow the dignified little old man bore his
+      grief. It was as if he felt that the loss of his son was only for a
+      moment. But the young woman had taken on the hue of the corpse she came to
+      seek. Her eyes were sunken as if with the weight of the light she cared
+      not for, and her cheeks had already pined away as if to be ready for the
+      grave. A being thus emptied of its glory seized and possessed my thoughts.
+      She never even told us whom she came seeking, and after one involuntary
+      question, which simply received no answer, I was very careful not even to
+      approach another. I do not think the form she sought was there; and she
+      may have gone home with the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a
+      doubtful dawn over her coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had all
+      the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others on
+      stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the evening
+      these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old man soon
+      found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows of the
+      dead. He turned to me and said quietly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He&rsquo;s with his
+      mother; and if I&rsquo;m sorry, she&rsquo;s glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his
+      arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked
+      out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a
+      new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God
+      only knew&mdash;certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest
+      thoughts are of more awful significance than the most serious of us can
+      imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light in
+      her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there
+      could no more justify her than Milton in letting her
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;frail thoughts dally with false surmise.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      With him, too, she might well add&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them to be
+      my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over. To this
+      they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received them like
+      herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her, to which no
+      doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations of humanity
+      and destroys its distinctions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from
+      Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of his
+      daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me first.
+      I went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man, with long
+      arms and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow ponderous
+      utterance, which I had some difficulty in understanding. He treated the
+      object of his visit with a certain hardness, and at the same time
+      lightness, which also I had some difficulty in understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want to see the&mdash;&rdquo; I said, and hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ow ay&mdash;the boadies,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;She winna be there, I daursay,
+      but I wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be
+      &lsquo;at she was there, wi&rsquo;oot biddin&rsquo; her good-bye like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell
+      upon me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn,
+      grand, ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace before
+      her altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a sea of
+      troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when the
+      churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed away,
+      when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and no man
+      shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, &ldquo;Know the Lord&rdquo;?
+      The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my companion up
+      to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on. He had looked
+      at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the beautiful form
+      which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the white cheeks,
+      taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the brown hair
+      tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was dead&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, Maggie! hoo cam <i>ye</i> here, lass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he
+      put his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was
+      shaken with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe
+      and reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief with
+      yellow spots on it&mdash;I see it now&mdash;from his pocket, rubbed his
+      face with it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said,
+      without looking at me, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll awa&rsquo; hame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you like a piece of her hair?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gin ye please,&rdquo; he answered gently, as if his daughter&rsquo;s form had been
+      mine now, and her hair were mine to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet
+      solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to be sure, sir,&rdquo; she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by
+      the string suspending them from her waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed it
+      respectfully to the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the communion-rail,
+      and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky gold. It was,
+      indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it must be a yard
+      long. He passed his big fingers through and through it, but tenderly, as
+      if it had been still growing on the live lovely head, stopping every
+      moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and shake out the sand
+      that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for nearly half-an-hour,
+      and we stood looking on with something closely akin to awe. At length he
+      folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black leather book, laid it
+      carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led the way from the
+      church, and he followed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with his
+      other hand in his trousers-pocket&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll hae putten ye to some expense&mdash;for the coffin an&rsquo; sic like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll talk about that afterwards,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Come home with me now,
+      and have some refreshment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o&rsquo; tribble already. I&rsquo;ll jist
+      awa&rsquo; hame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going to lay them down this evening. You won&rsquo;t go before the
+      funeral. Indeed, I think you can&rsquo;t get away till Monday morning. My wife
+      and I will be glad of your company till then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m no company for gentle-fowk, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her
+      laid,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He yielded and followed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain
+      enough&mdash;that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But
+      there was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring
+      farms. Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at
+      work. The brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard&mdash;the
+      mole-heaps of burrowing Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a
+      little hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk there&mdash;i&rsquo; 
+      that neuk, I wad tak&rsquo; it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam&rsquo; aboot that I
+      cam&rsquo; here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get a sma&rsquo; bit
+      heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi&rsquo; ye to pay for&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ow jist&mdash;let me see&mdash;Maggie Jamieson&mdash;nae Marget, but jist
+      Maggie. She was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It&rsquo;s
+      the last thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o&rsquo; Scripter
+      aneath&rsquo;t, ye ken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What verse would you like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought for a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isna there a text that says, &lsquo;The deid shall hear his voice&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: &lsquo;The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay. That&rsquo;s it. Weel, jist put that on.&mdash;They canna do better than
+      hear his voice,&rdquo; he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or
+      apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for
+      the day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could not
+      talk to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs of
+      sorrow in their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill in whose
+      unseen bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a subterranean
+      torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling down hidden
+      precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This
+      daughter <i>might</i>, though from her face I did not think it, have gone
+      away against her father&rsquo;s will. That son <i>might</i> have been a
+      ne&rsquo;er-do-well at home&mdash;how could I tell? The woman <i>might</i> be
+      looking for the lover that had forsaken her&mdash;I could not divine. I
+      would speak no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort
+      to his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the
+      forefront of humanity; I would read some of the words he spoke. From them
+      the human nature in each would draw what comfort it could. I took my New
+      Testament from my pocket, and said, without any preamble,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved him enough
+      to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be overwhelmed for a
+      time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not believe the glad end
+      of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful death that awaited him&mdash;a
+      death to which that of our friends in the wreck was ease itself. I will
+      just read to you what he said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John&rsquo;s
+      Gospel. I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I
+      could hardly hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the
+      best things are just those from which the humble will draw the truth they
+      are capable of seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left it to them
+      to hear for themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment, fearful of
+      darkening counsel by words without knowledge. For the Bible is awfully set
+      against what is not wise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked
+      towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I
+      talked of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us.
+      But little of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing
+      nothing of the sorrow it had caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at seven
+      o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have an invalid to visit out in this direction,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;would you
+      mind walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we
+      shall get back just in time for tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard a
+      little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy, and
+      point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our aid. I
+      may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I have had
+      two of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed
+      themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed hour.
+      I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the Christian,
+      the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church received it,
+      as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be
+      carried out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began to
+      read, &ldquo;I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
+      believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever
+      liveth and believeth in me shall never die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before the
+      dead. There I read the Psalm, &ldquo;Lord, thou hast been our refuge,&rdquo; and the
+      glorious lesson, &ldquo;Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
+      first-fruits of them that slept.&rdquo; Then the men of the neighbourhood came
+      forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the church,
+      each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, &ldquo;Man that is born
+      of a woman;&rdquo; then went from one to another of the graves, and read over
+      each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, &ldquo;Forasmuch as it hath pleased
+      Almighty God, of his great mercy.&rdquo; Then again, I went back to the
+      church-door and read, &ldquo;I heard a voice from heaven;&rdquo; and so to the end of
+      the service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my
+      canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had
+      already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie&rsquo;s remaining
+      in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face&mdash;pale and
+      worn; but it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the fresh
+      power called forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant <i>secret</i>
+      light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the house
+      every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
+      wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short of the
+      impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come, however, I
+      could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully painful to all
+      but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual child-gift of
+      forgetting. The servants&mdash;even Walter&mdash;looked thin and anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
+      before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because I
+      did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had again
+      and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended itself
+      to me so that I could say &ldquo;I must take that;&rdquo; nothing said plainly, &ldquo;This
+      is what you have to speak of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind had
+      turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion, or
+      rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to justify me
+      in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole justification,
+      in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I cared heartily in
+      my own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness I was dumb. And I
+      do think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman ought to be at
+      liberty upon occasion to say, &ldquo;My friends, I cannot preach to-day.&rdquo; What a
+      riddance it would be for the Church, I do not say if every priest were to
+      speak sense, but only if every priest were to abstain from speaking of
+      that in which, at the moment, he feels little or no interest!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for sleep
+      will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can compass.
+      I have read somewhere&mdash;I will verify it by present search&mdash;that
+      Luther&rsquo;s translation, of the verse in the psalm, &ldquo;So he giveth to his
+      beloved sleep,&rdquo; is, &ldquo;He giveth his beloved sleeping,&rdquo; or while asleep.
+      Yes, so it is, literally, in English, &ldquo;It is in vain that ye rise early,
+      and then sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he
+      gives it sleeping.&rdquo; This was my experience in the present instance; for
+      the thought of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, &ldquo;Why should I
+      talk about death? Every man&rsquo;s heart is now full of death. We have enough
+      of that&mdash;even the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the
+      tempest. What I have to do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to
+      speak of life.&rdquo; It flashed in on my mind: &ldquo;Death is over and gone. The
+      resurrection comes next. I will speak of the raising of Lazarus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
+      give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of
+      them would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them
+      with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought
+      to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would
+      have called a <i>caput mortuum</i>, or death&rsquo;s head, namely, a lifeless
+      lump of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer
+      the living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the
+      hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative,
+      attempted to give a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to present
+      the substance of it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat cleared of
+      the unavoidable, let me say necessary&mdash;yes, I will say <i>valuable</i>&mdash;repetitions
+      and enforcements by which the various considerations are pressed upon the
+      minds of the hearers. These are entirely wearisome in print&mdash;useless
+      too, for the reader may ponder over every phrase till he finds out the
+      purport of it&mdash;if indeed there be such readers nowadays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical
+      ablution, and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged as
+      if myself newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the downs
+      full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep in my
+      mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be not only
+      ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to
+      send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the
+      soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the
+      body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort
+      the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath
+      conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith that cannot laugh
+      at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array of defiant appearances.
+      The fresh breeze of the morning visited me. &ldquo;O God,&rdquo; I said in my heart,
+      &ldquo;would that when the dark day comes, in which I can feel nothing, I may be
+      able to front it with the memory of this day&rsquo;s strength, and so help
+      myself to trust in the Father! I would call to mind the days of old, with
+      David the king.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had
+      been cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and
+      found him very pale and worn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I am going, sir,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and I wanted to see you before I
+      die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid,&rdquo; I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I
+      wasn&rsquo;t afraid then, I&rsquo;m not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my
+      bed. But just look here, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded the
+      envelope, and showed a lump of something&mdash;I could not at first tell
+      what. He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible,
+      with nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly in
+      a state of pulp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the bible my mother gave me when I left home first,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that
+      cut through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a&rsquo;most have cut
+      through my ribs if it hadn&rsquo;t been for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;The body of the Bible has saved your bodily
+      life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know what you mean, sir,&rdquo; he panted out. &ldquo;My mother was a good
+      woman, and I know she prayed to God for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He&rsquo;s nearly as bad as I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We won&rsquo;t forget you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I will come in after church and see how
+      you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I
+      did not think the poor fellow was going to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since. We
+      took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and
+      stables, and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his
+      health continues delicate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. THE SERMON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
+      chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
+      proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare to
+      say that he makes his own commonest speech?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother, was
+      going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers and
+      sisters, there was one family he loved especially&mdash;a family of two
+      sisters and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they
+      can be loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only God
+      is always trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more. There
+      are several stories&mdash;O, such lovely stories!&mdash;about that family
+      and Jesus; and we have to do with one of them now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village they
+      called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord, when he
+      was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of the city, to
+      go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of Lazarus&rsquo;s house,
+      where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet than at any news
+      that could come to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem&mdash;taking up
+      stones to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with
+      anger as they were&mdash;and all because he told them the truth&mdash;that
+      he had gone away to the other side of the great river that divided the
+      country, and taught the people in that quiet place. While he was there his
+      friend Lazarus was taken ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a
+      messenger to him, to say to him, &lsquo;Lord, your friend is very ill.&rsquo; Only
+      they said it more beautifully than that: &lsquo;Lord, behold, he whom thou
+      lovest is sick.&rsquo; You know, when anyone is ill, we always want the person
+      whom he loves most to come to him. This is very wonderful. In the worst
+      things that can come to us the first thought is of love. People, like the
+      Scribes and Pharisees, might say, &lsquo;What good can that do him?&rsquo; And we may
+      not in the least suppose that the person we want knows any secret that can
+      cure his pain; yet love is the first thing we think of. And here we are
+      more right than we know; for, at the long last, love will cure everything:
+      which truth, indeed, this story will set forth to us. No doubt the heart
+      of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed after his friend; and, very likely, even
+      the sight of Jesus might have given him such strength that the life in him
+      could have driven out the death which had already got one foot across the
+      threshold. But the sisters expected more than this: they believed that
+      Jesus, whom they knew to have driven disease and death out of so many
+      hearts, had only to come and touch him&mdash;nay, only to speak a word, to
+      look at him, and their brother was saved. Do you think they presumed in
+      thus expecting? The fact was, they did not believe enough; they had not
+      yet learned to believe that he could cure him all the same whether he came
+      to them or not, because he was always with them. We cannot understand
+      this; but our understanding is never a measure of what is true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot
+      tell. Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel
+      certain upon. One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know
+      everything beforehand, for he said so himself. It is infinitely more
+      valuable to us, because more beautiful and godlike in him, that he should
+      trust his Father than that he should foresee everything. At all events he
+      knew that his Father did not want him to go to his friends yet. So he sent
+      them a message to the effect that there was a particular reason for this
+      sickness&mdash;that the end of it was not the death of Lazarus, but the
+      glory of God. This, I think, he told them by the same messenger they sent
+      to him; and then, instead of going to them, he remained where he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think
+      of being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory of
+      God! of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the
+      fear, the broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God?
+      What kind of a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely
+      good, that the things that look least like it are only the means of
+      clearing our eyes to let us see how good he is. For he is so good that he
+      is not satisfied with <i>being</i> good. He loves his children, so that
+      except he can make them good like himself, make them blessed by seeing how
+      good he is, and desiring the same goodness in themselves, he is not
+      satisfied. He is not like a fine proud benefactor, who is content with
+      doing that which will satisfy his sense of his own glory, but like a
+      mother who puts her arm round her child, and whose heart is sore till she
+      can make her child see the love which is her glory. The glorification of
+      the Son of God is the glorification of the human race; for the glory of
+      God is the glory of man, and that glory is love. Welcome sickness, welcome
+      sorrow, welcome death, revealing that glory!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
+      seem typical of all the perplexities of God&rsquo;s dealings. The old painters
+      and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand a
+      cup of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted Faith!
+      she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she is not
+      repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for the type
+      of the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not understood.
+      The wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the supreme Fate
+      put that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good too,&mdash;harmless,
+      at least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine. But let us read the
+      verses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard
+      therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place
+      where he was.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But
+      remember what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely more
+      for the final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life he could
+      have, would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere presence
+      of the Son of God. I say <i>mere</i> presence, for, compared with the
+      glory of God, the very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is nothing. He
+      abode where he was that the glory of God, the final cure of humanity, the
+      love that triumphs over death, might shine out and redeem the hearts of
+      men, so that death could not touch them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples, &lsquo;Let
+      us go back to Judæa.&rsquo; They expostulated, because of the danger, saying,
+      &lsquo;Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither
+      again?&rsquo; The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I can
+      thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear on the
+      same region of life&mdash;the will of God. I think what he means by
+      walking in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole, the
+      all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means that now
+      he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not see that
+      the Father wanted him to go back to Judæa, and yet went, that would be to
+      go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve hours in the day&mdash;one
+      time to act&mdash;a time of light and the clear call of duty; there is a
+      night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must be content to
+      rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he must have
+      intended; but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough to be sure
+      that I am right. I do think, further, that it points at a clearer
+      condition of human vision and conviction than I am good enough to
+      understand; though I hope one day to rise into this upper stratum of
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know. It
+      looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had from
+      the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he was
+      going to wake him. You would think they might have understood this. The
+      idea of going so many miles to wake a man might have surely suggested
+      death. But the disciples were sorely perplexed with many of his words.
+      Sometimes they looked far away for the meaning when the meaning lay in
+      their very hearts; sometimes they looked into their hands for it when it
+      was lost in the grandeur of the ages. But he meant them to see into all
+      that he said by and by, although they could not see into it now. When they
+      understood him better, then they would understand what he said better. And
+      to understand him better they must be more like him; and to make them more
+      like him he must go away and give them his spirit&mdash;awful mystery
+      which no man but himself can understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
+      thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
+      Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
+      other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
+      weary two days&rsquo; journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
+      sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
+      say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures is
+      simply a lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They set out to go back to Judæa. Here we have a glimpse of the faith of
+      Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very fact
+      that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone hard upon
+      doubters, I always doubt the <i>quality</i> of his faith. It is of little
+      use to have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks like the
+      painter of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing chiefly
+      consisted in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what fine sort a
+      faith must be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in indifference
+      to the truth and the mere desire to get out of hell! That is not a grand
+      belief in the Son of God, the radiation of the Father. Thomas&rsquo;s want of
+      faith was shown in the grumbling, self-pitying way in which he said, &lsquo;Let
+      us also go that we may die with him.&rsquo; His Master had said that he was
+      going to wake him. Thomas said, &lsquo;that we may die with him.&rsquo; You may say,
+      &lsquo;He did not understand him.&rsquo; True, it may be, but his unbelief was the
+      cause of his not understanding him. I suppose Thomas meant this as a
+      reproach to Jesus for putting them all in danger by going back to Judæa;
+      if not, it was only a poor piece of sentimentality. So much for Thomas&rsquo;s
+      unbelief. But he had good and true faith notwithstanding; for <i>he went
+      with his Master</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
+      dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
+      was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him. It
+      might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
+      behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
+      their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the man
+      dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we have no
+      inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death and grief
+      bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as in the
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith by
+      almost attributing her brother&rsquo;s death to Jesus&rsquo; absence. But even in the
+      moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of
+      faith, began in her soul. She thought&mdash;&lsquo;What if, after all, he were
+      to bring him to life again!&rsquo; O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the
+      dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is
+      reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds
+      it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her
+      half-born prayer, says, &lsquo;Thy brother shall rise again;&rsquo; not meaning the
+      general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all but the
+      Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but meaning, &lsquo;Be
+      it unto thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.&rsquo; For there is no
+      steering for a fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these words are too
+      good for Martha to take them as he meant them. Her faith is not quite
+      equal to the belief that he actually will do it. The thing she could hope
+      for afar off she could hardly believe when it came to her very door. &lsquo;O,
+      yes,&rsquo; she said, her mood falling again to the level of the commonplace,
+      &lsquo;of course, at the last day.&rsquo; Then the Lord turns away her thoughts from
+      the dogmas of her faith to himself, the Life, saying, &lsquo;I am the
+      resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead,
+      yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never
+      die. Believest thou this?&rsquo; Martha, without understanding what he said more
+      than in a very poor part, answered in words which preserved her honesty
+      entire, and yet included all he asked, and a thousandfold more than she
+      could yet believe: &lsquo;Yea, Lord; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son
+      of God, which should come into the world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth of
+      Jesus&rsquo; words &lsquo;shall never die;&rsquo; but I am pretty sure that when Martha came
+      to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had meant
+      when she used the ghastly word <i>death</i>, and said with her first new
+      breath, &lsquo;Verily, Lord, I am not dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
+      upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the Lord
+      would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she went to
+      find Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother, straightway
+      will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The family feeling
+      blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal. Martha wants Mary
+      to go to Jesus too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she
+      went to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to
+      him, the woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but the
+      same words to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and troubled
+      sister had uttered a few minutes before. How often during those four days
+      had not the self-same words passed between them! &lsquo;Ah, if he had been here,
+      our brother had not died!&rsquo; She said so to himself now, and wept, and her
+      friends who had followed her wept likewise. A moment more, and the Master
+      groaned; yet a moment, and he too wept. &lsquo;Sorrow is catching;&rsquo; but this was
+      not the mere infection of sorrow. It went deeper than mere sympathy; for
+      he groaned in his spirit and was troubled. What made him weep? It was when
+      he saw them weeping that he wept. But why should he weep, when he knew how
+      soon their weeping would be turned into rejoicing? It was not for their
+      weeping, so soon to be over, that he wept, but for the human heart
+      everywhere swollen with tears, yea, with griefs that can find no such
+      relief as tears; for these, and for all his brothers and sisters tormented
+      with pain for lack of faith in his Father in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw
+      the blessed well-being of Lazarus on the one side, and on the other the
+      streaming eyes from whose sight he had vanished. The veil between was so
+      thin! yet the sight of those eyes could not pierce it: their hearts must
+      go on weeping&mdash;without cause, for his Father was so good. I think it
+      was the helplessness he felt in the impossibility of at once sweeping away
+      the phantasm death from their imagination that drew the tears from the
+      eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for
+      these his friends&mdash;save as they represented the humanity which he
+      would help, but could not help even as he was about to help them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little thought
+      it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they despised,
+      that his tears were now flowing&mdash;that the love which pressed the
+      fountains of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam on
+      through the ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters, saying,
+      &lsquo;Could he not have kept the man from dying?&rsquo; But it was such a poor thing,
+      after all, that they thought he might have done. They regarded merely this
+      unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay Lazarus was not much
+      older than Jesus. They did not think that, after all, Lazarus must die
+      some time; that the beloved could be saved, at best, only for a little
+      while. Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for he again groaned in
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was a
+      hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose the
+      bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they are in
+      many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round and round
+      with linen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, &lsquo;Take away
+      the stone.&rsquo; The nature of Martha&rsquo;s reply&mdash;the realism of it, as they
+      would say now-a-days&mdash;would seem to indicate that her dawning faith
+      had sunk again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of
+      death, her faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he
+      saw around him the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and
+      helpless. Jesus answered&mdash;O, what an answer!&mdash;To meet the
+      corruption and the stink which filled her poor human fancy, &lsquo;the glory of
+      God&rsquo; came from his lips: human fear; horror speaking from the lips of a
+      woman in the very jaws of the devouring death; and the &lsquo;said I not unto
+      thee?&rsquo; from the mouth of him who was so soon to pass worn and bloodless
+      through such a door! &lsquo;He stinketh,&rsquo; said Martha. &lsquo;The glory of God,&rsquo; said
+      Jesus. &lsquo;Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou
+      shouldest see the glory of God?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his
+      Father aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely while
+      he groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted him,
+      and given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will be true
+      to the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father; therefore
+      he tells why he said the word of thanks aloud&mdash;a thing not usual with
+      him, for his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it for the
+      people, he would say that it was for the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him&mdash;a
+      far grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave; for
+      he is the life of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Lazarus, come forth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
+      linen-bound limbs. &lsquo;Ha, ha! brother, sister!&rsquo; cries the human heart. The
+      Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
+      grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the womb&mdash;new-born,
+      and in him all the human race new-born from the grave! &lsquo;Loose him and let
+      him go,&rsquo; and the work is done. The sorrow is over, and the joy is come.
+      Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too will go with you, the
+      Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready, Martha! Prepare the food
+      for him who comes hungry from the grave, for him who has called him
+      thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a household will yours be! What
+      wondrous speech will pass between the dead come to life and the living
+      come to die!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
+      Martha&rsquo;s cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale
+      eyes of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes, he
+      will come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus&mdash;yea,
+      come for the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the
+      Lord: he knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the words
+      he spoke, &lsquo;He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die&rsquo;? Perhaps
+      she does, and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns the smile of
+      her Lord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth. What
+      is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon to
+      believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which lies
+      buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon to
+      believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What is it
+      to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?&mdash;Is it nothing to know that our
+      Brother is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the
+      first-fruits? If he tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our
+      vanished love to-day, or to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to
+      come, shall we not mingle the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow of
+      present loss, and walk diligently waiting? That he called forth Lazarus
+      showed that he was in his keeping, that he is Lord of the living, and that
+      all live to him, that he has a hold of them, and can draw them forth when
+      he will. If this is not true, then the raising of Lazarus is false; I do
+      not mean merely false in fact, but false in meaning. If we believe in him,
+      then in his name, both for ourselves and for our friends, we must deny
+      death and believe in life. Lord Christ, fill our hearts with thy Life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. CHANGED PLANS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once
+      more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be so
+      much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful. As they
+      carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the ground.
+      Turner yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He was
+      satisfied, however, that she could have stood upright for a moment at
+      least. He would not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious the
+      nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her smile,
+      though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much of its light.
+      I noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window constantly so
+      arranged as to shut out the sea. I said something to her about it once.
+      Her reply was:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, I can&rsquo;t bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make
+      you understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down; it
+      seemed to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me every
+      morning when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith, but I
+      can&rsquo;t help it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had failed me,
+      that I would rather not see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that
+      the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had been
+      driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed to
+      venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon nature. I
+      could not help thinking that the good of our visit to Kilkhaven had come,
+      and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet escape, was following. I
+      left her, and sought Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It strikes me, Turner,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that the sooner we get out of this the
+      better for Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the
+      place would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now,
+      think what it will be in the many winter nights at hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think it would be safe to move her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better
+      than when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and
+      see how she will take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all go,
+      except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don&rsquo;t know how her mother
+      would get on without her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad to come
+      as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr. Shepherd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it was
+      a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no such
+      reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her to
+      avoid the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner, and
+      went back to Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was sitting
+      so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in the matter
+      without any preamble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her countenance flashed into light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, dear papa, do let us go,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;that would be delightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger
+      for the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home
+      again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand
+      to the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea,
+      and did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find
+      Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie&rsquo;s sake, and
+      said that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a
+      certain troubled look above her eyes, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are thinking of Wynnie,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True. But it is one of the world&rsquo;s recognised necessities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, you don&rsquo;t suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter. They
+      must part some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But here my wife was mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter when
+      Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him to show
+      him in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places with
+      me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie had
+      better go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will all go, then, I presume?&rdquo; returned Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes; of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to tell
+      you that I must leave to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Going to London?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I don&rsquo;t know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made
+      my summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it
+      would otherwise have been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all glad
+      to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all
+      probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some of
+      your pictures then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere
+      pleasure. There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at
+      once:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care
+      for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it would;
+      but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and countenance
+      before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from a visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to search for a card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you will
+      dine with us to-day, of course?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have much pleasure,&rdquo; he answered; and took his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that walk
+      memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly by virtue
+      of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere outside
+      things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not so readily
+      pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward circumstance
+      returns; for a man&rsquo;s life is where the kingdom of heaven is&mdash;within
+      him. There are people who, if you ask the story of their lives, have
+      nothing to tell you but the course of the outward events that have
+      constituted, as it were, the clothes of their history. But I know, at the
+      same time, that some of the most important crises in my own history (by
+      which word <i>history</i> I mean my growth towards the right conditions of
+      existence) have been beyond the grasp and interpretation of my intellect.
+      They have passed, as it were, without my consciousness being awake enough
+      to lay hold of their phenomena. The wind had been blowing; I had heard the
+      sound of it, but knew not whence it came nor whither it went; only, when
+      it was gone, I found myself more responsible, more eager than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change
+      hanging over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and
+      that change which so many would escape if they could, but which will let
+      no man pass, had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon of the
+      future. Death looks so far away to the young, that while they acknowledge
+      it unavoidable, the path stretches on in such vanishing perspective before
+      them, that they see no necessity for thinking about the end of it yet; and
+      far would I be from saying they ought to think of it. Life is the true
+      object of a man&rsquo;s care: there is no occasion to make himself think about
+      death. But when the vision of the inevitable draws nigh, when it appears
+      plainly on the horizon, though but as a cloud the size of a man&rsquo;s hand,
+      then it is equally foolish to meet it by refusing to meet it, to answer
+      the questions that will arise by declining to think about them. Indeed, it
+      is a question of life then, and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of
+      our life, and, in the strength of that, to look the threatening death in
+      the face. But to my walk that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
+      stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape of a
+      monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and looked
+      out over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as if all
+      the sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the fogs of
+      the coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when first from
+      these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; I said to myself at length, &ldquo;has she done since then? Where is her
+      work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
+      destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
+      exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
+      our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
+      generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before us
+      like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a
+      mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and
+      that I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing as a
+      state of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual dreaming
+      in sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself like a
+      child tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till, all at
+      once, &ldquo;a little pipling wind&rdquo; blew on my cheek. The morning was very
+      still: what roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that little
+      wind roused I will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek, something
+      within me began to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory of a certain
+      glorious sunset of red and green and gold and blue, which I had beheld
+      from these same heights, dawned within me. I knew that the glory of my
+      youth had not departed, that the very power of recalling with delight that
+      which I had once felt in seeing, was proof enough of that; I knew that I
+      could believe in God all the night long, even if the night were long. And
+      the next moment I thought how I had been reviling in my fancy God&rsquo;s
+      servant, the sea. To how many vessels had she not opened a bounteous
+      highway through the waters, with labour, and food, and help, and
+      ministration, glad breezes and swelling sails, healthful struggle,
+      cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and friendly death! Because she had been
+      commissioned to carry this one or that one, this hundred or that thousand
+      of his own creatures from one world to another, was I to revile the
+      servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was blameless in Connie to feel
+      the late trouble so deeply that she could not be glad: she had not had the
+      experience of life, yea, of God, that I had had; she must be helped from
+      without. But for me, it was shameful that I, who knew the heart of my
+      Master, to whom at least he had so often shown his truth, should ever be
+      doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now helped from within. The
+      glory of existence as the child of the Infinite had again dawned upon me.
+      The first hour of the evening of my life had indeed arrived; the shadows
+      had begun to grow long&mdash;so long that I had begun to mark their
+      length; this last little portion of my history had vanished, leaving its
+      few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life; and the final evening
+      must come, when all my life would lie behind me, and all the memory of it
+      return, with its mornings of gold and red, with its evenings of purple and
+      green; with its dashes of storm, and its foggy glooms; with its
+      white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions, its creeping envies in
+      brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all the accusations of my
+      conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he was called Jesus because
+      he should save his people from their sins. Then I thought what a grand
+      gift it would be to give his people the power hereafter to fight the
+      consequences of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust the Father, who loved me
+      with a perfect love, to lead the soul he had made, had compelled to be,
+      through the gates of the death-birth, into the light of life beyond. I
+      would cast on him the care, humbly challenge him with the responsibility
+      he had himself undertaken, praying only for perfect confidence in him,
+      absolute submission to his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought of
+      seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave those I
+      had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught them
+      something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be no end to
+      our relation to each other&mdash;it could not be broken, for it was <i>in
+      the Lord</i>, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not,
+      therefore, sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them
+      often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even this
+      parting said that I must &ldquo;sit loose to the world&rdquo;&mdash;an old Puritan
+      phrase, I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its best
+      things, and must let all the rest go; that those things I called mine&mdash;earth,
+      sky, and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of friends&mdash;had all to
+      leave me, belong to others, and help to educate them. I should not need
+      them. I should have my people, my souls, my beloved faces tenfold more,
+      and could well afford to part with these. Why should I mind this chain
+      passing to my eldest boy, when it was only his mother&rsquo;s hair, and I should
+      have his mother still?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded
+      passively to their flow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room. Her
+      mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody party.
+      They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before dinner was
+      over we were all chatting together merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Connie?&rdquo; I asked Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderfully better already,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think everybody seems better,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;The very idea of home seems
+      reviving to us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than
+      she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at
+      Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged
+      instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle in
+      his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;She does not want much visiting now; she is going about
+      her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not like the
+      same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one, though I do
+      not choose to ask him any questions about his wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after
+      this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.
+      Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by the
+      coach&mdash;early. Turner went with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the
+      prospect of meeting him again in London kept her up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. THE STUDIO.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
+      ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had
+      wanted to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber, now
+      wanted to take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great
+      oystershells, and sea-weed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An early
+      day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of service
+      to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he came, I had
+      gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my reasons for
+      leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a little about
+      my successor, that he might not appear among them quite as a stranger. He
+      was much gratified with their reception of him, and had no fear of not
+      finding himself quite at home with them. I promised, if I could
+      comfortably manage it, to pay them a short visit the following summer, and
+      as the weather was now getting quite cold, hastened our preparations for
+      departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but he
+      had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience would
+      permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us, and we
+      had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel much
+      anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong enough as
+      we went along, to go right through to London, making a few days there the
+      only break in the transit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now bear
+      the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had we
+      occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
+      pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and before
+      we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie looked a
+      little dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the change in
+      the weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but we are going home, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Going home.</i> It set me thinking&mdash;as I had often been set
+      thinking before, always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the
+      dawning sky of hope. I lay back in the carriage and thought how the
+      November fog this evening in London, was the valley of the shadow of death
+      we had to go through on the way <i>home.</i> A. shadow like this would
+      fall upon me; the world would grow dark and life grow weary; but I should
+      know it was the last of the way home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted. I
+      knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness, more or
+      less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as the thought
+      of water to the thirsty <i>soul</i>, for it is the soul far more than the
+      body that thirsts even for the material water, such is the thought of home
+      to the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul pines for sleep,
+      and every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so my heart and soul
+      had often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked myself, where or what
+      that home was? It could consist in no change of place or of circumstance;
+      no mere absence of care; no accumulation of repose; no blessed communion
+      even with those whom my soul loved; in the midst of it all I should be
+      longing for a homelier home&mdash;one into which I might enter with a
+      sense of infinitely more absolute peace, than a conscious child could know
+      in the arms, upon the bosom of his mother. In the closest contact of human
+      soul with human soul, when all the atmosphere of thought was rosy with
+      love, again and yet again on the far horizon would the dun, lurid flame of
+      unrest shoot for a moment through the enchanted air, and Psyche would know
+      that not yet had she reached her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes,
+      and saw those of my wife and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were
+      reproaching me for saying in my soul that I could not be quite at home
+      with them. Then I said in my heart, &ldquo;Come home with me, beloved&mdash;there
+      is but one home for us all. When we find&mdash;in proportion as each of us
+      finds&mdash;that home, shall we be gardens of delight to each other&mdash;little
+      chambers of rest&mdash;galleries of pictures&mdash;wells of water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his love,
+      his judgment, are man&rsquo;s home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will,
+      to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in
+      us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the
+      shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have
+      hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this
+      greatest of all outward changes&mdash;for it is but an outward change&mdash;will
+      surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of
+      drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us. It is the
+      father, the mother, that make for the child his home. Indeed, I doubt if
+      the home-idea is complete to the parents of a family themselves, when they
+      remember that their fathers and mothers have vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it be delightful, wife,&rdquo; I began, &ldquo;to see our fathers and mothers
+      such a long way back in heaven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ethelwyn&rsquo;s face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
+      dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not
+      know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how
+      anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not
+      to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every
+      mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in God as
+      it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even
+      should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without
+      a witness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that
+      London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a
+      carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to the
+      fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had
+      slept for a good many nights before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to see Mr. Percivale&rsquo;s studio, my dear: have you any objection
+      to going with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa,&rdquo; she answered, blushing. &ldquo;I have never seen an artist&rsquo;s studio
+      in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a
+      cab, and it won&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver
+      directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the
+      door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in
+      which no man could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I
+      knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably
+      the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my
+      question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the
+      words &ldquo;second-floor,&rdquo; and left us to find our own way up the two flights
+      of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the
+      door of the front room. A well-known voice cried, &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; and we
+      entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced
+      to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed
+      solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such
+      a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic
+      notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio,
+      must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale&rsquo;s room&mdash;plainly
+      the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I suspected
+      both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the
+      fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed
+      flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from
+      upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a
+      corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the
+      present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which
+      stood a half-finished oil-painting&mdash;these constituted almost the
+      whole furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted
+      one chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all
+      I have got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man&rsquo;s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses,&rdquo;
+       I ventured to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;I hope not. It is well for me it should
+      not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well for the richest man in England that it should not,&rdquo; I
+      returned. &ldquo;If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most
+      blessed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it
+      does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
+      themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?&rdquo; asked Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tolerably,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;But I have not much to show for it. That on the
+      easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished
+      that none but a painter could do it justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I very much want people to look at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not us, then?&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you do not need to be pained.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good is done by pain&mdash;is it not?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly. But whether <i>we</i> are wise enough to know when and where
+      and how much, is the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do not make the pain my object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the matter
+      greatly,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But still I am not sure that anything in which the pain
+      predominates can be useful in the best way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; he returned.&mdash;&ldquo;Will you look at the daub?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With much pleasure,&rdquo; I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
+      Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture meant.
+      Nor had I long to look before I understood it&mdash;in a measure at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The
+      plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths in
+      one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A
+      woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she
+      held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could
+      just see the struggles of two undertaker&rsquo;s men to get the coffin past the
+      turn of the landing towards the door. Through the window there was one
+      peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet
+      blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wonder you did not like to show it,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;How can you bear
+      to paint such a dreadful picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a true one. It only represents a fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All facts have not a right to be represented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
+      sight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; nor yet by gloating upon them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such
+      pictures&mdash;as far as the subject goes,&rdquo; he said with some
+      discomposure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one
+      could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow
+      callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you
+      propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come
+      into my possession, I would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put it in the fire,&rdquo; suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before
+      it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in
+      danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and
+      forgetting that they need the Saviour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
+      such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
+      one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn&rsquo;t buy it. I would
+      rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I am
+      certain you cannot do people good by showing them <i>only</i> the painful.
+      Make it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it&mdash;something
+      to show that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering
+      people will turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it,
+      without hinting at some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all.
+      Why should they be pained if it can do no good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the sake of sympathy, I should say,&rdquo; answered Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would rejoin, &lsquo;It is only a picture. Come along.&rsquo; No; give people
+      hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You
+      see there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in
+      the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
+      you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
+      make the other look more terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed
+      otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture, I
+      almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own
+      meaning into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw that
+      she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or the
+      freedom with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes falling
+      on a little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope of finding
+      something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment, however, that it
+      was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler and more poetic
+      mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her hand. A torrent of
+      summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a lake of glory upon the
+      floor. I turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like that better, don&rsquo;t you, papa?&rdquo; said Wynnie tremulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is beautiful, certainly,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And if it were only one, I
+      should enjoy it&mdash;as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but
+      the same thing more weakly embodied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in
+      Percivale, for his own sake as well as for my daughter&rsquo;s, and I had
+      expected better things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am a
+      clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the praise
+      which I have little doubt your art at least deserves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may
+      pain me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you
+      have at hand to show me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were
+      leaning against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these
+      he chose one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that
+      stood beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will
+      describe it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which broke
+      from me after I had regarded it for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few thin
+      pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore a dying
+      knight&mdash;a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm, and
+      another led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture. The
+      head and countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many a
+      battle, and ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained, for
+      one might read victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party had
+      just reached the edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the valley
+      beneath, with the last of the harvest just being reaped, while the shocks
+      stood all about in the fields, under the place of the sunset. The sun had
+      been down for some little time. There was no gold left in the sky, only a
+      little dull saffron, but plenty of that lovely liquid green of the autumn
+      sky, divided with a few streaks of pale rose. The depth of the sky
+      overhead, which you could not see for the arrangement of the picture, was
+      mirrored lovelily in a piece of water that lay in the centre of the
+      valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; I cried, &ldquo;why did you not show me this first, and save
+      me from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart;
+      it is glorious. Look here, Wynnie,&rdquo; I went on; &ldquo;you see it is evening; the
+      sun&rsquo;s work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name behind
+      him in a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight&rsquo;s work is done too; his
+      day has set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the coming
+      peace. They are bearing him home to his couch and his grave. Look at their
+      faces in the dusky light. They are all mourning for and honouring the life
+      that is ebbing away. But he is gathered to his fathers like a shock of
+      corn fully ripe; and so the harvest stands golden in the valley beneath.
+      The picture would not be complete, however, if it did not tell us of the
+      deep heaven overhead, the symbol of that heaven whither he who has done
+      his work is bound. What a lovely idea to represent it by means of the
+      water, the heaven embodying itself in the earth, as it were, that we may
+      see it! And observe how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender
+      mournful-looking pines, with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and
+      point the heart upward towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture,
+      full of feeling&mdash;a picture and a parable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted
+      by Arthur Hughes.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth by
+      the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale&rsquo;s work
+      appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like it!&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
+      express&mdash;so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it,
+      I should not mind hanging that other&mdash;that hopeless garret&mdash;on
+      the most public wall I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, &ldquo;you confess&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+      you, papa?&mdash;that you were <i>too</i> hard on Mr. Percivale at first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given
+      me to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not bound
+      to disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can be no
+      sense of duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has <i>some</i> sense of duty,&rdquo; said
+      Wynnie in an almost angry tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and
+      therefore, again, that he has no right to publish such a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the word <i>publish</i> Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
+      defence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures only.
+      Look at the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in the
+      same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of these
+      might go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of Avalon; but
+      even then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the poem, whatever
+      position it stood in, that had <i>nothing</i>&mdash;positively nothing&mdash;of
+      the aurora in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by a
+      remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from the
+      pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to judge, will
+      continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is only a little
+      song, &ldquo;I stood on a tower in the wet.&rdquo; I have found few men who, whether
+      from the influence of those prints which are always on the outlook for
+      something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not laugh at the
+      poem. I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am not quite sure
+      of the transposition of words in the last two lines. But I do not <i>approve</i>
+      of the poem, just because there is no hope in it. It lacks that touch or
+      hint of <i>red</i> which is as essential, I think, to every poem as to
+      every picture&mdash;the life-blood&mdash;the one pure colour. In his
+      hopeful moods, let a man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud the
+      words of gladness&mdash;or of grief, I care not which&mdash;to his
+      fellows; in his hours of hopelessness, let him utter his thoughts only to
+      his inarticulate violin, or in the evanescent sounds of any his other
+      stringed instrument; let him commune with his own heart on his bed, and be
+      still; let him speak to God face to face if he may&mdash;only he cannot do
+      that and continue hopeless; but let him not sing aloud in such a mood into
+      the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot do them much good thereby. If it
+      were a fact that there is no hope, it would not be a <i>truth</i>. No
+      doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known; but who will dare be
+      confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let the hopeless moods,
+      at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could refuse to let the one go without the other,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do at
+      the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part them.&mdash;If
+      you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at any
+      more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should dine
+      with us in the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. HOME AGAIN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I will not detain my readers with the record of the few days we spent in
+      London. In writing the account of it, as in the experience of the time
+      itself, I feel that I am near home, and grow the more anxious to reach it.
+      Ah! I am growing a little anxious after another home, too; for the house
+      of my tabernacle is falling to ruins about me. What a word <i>home</i> is!
+      To think that God has made the world so that you have only to be born in a
+      certain place, and live long enough in it to get at the secret of it, and
+      henceforth that place is to you a <i>home</i> with all the wonderful
+      meaning in the word. Thus the whole earth is a home to the race; for every
+      spot of it shares in the feeling: some one of the family loves it as <i>his</i>
+      home. How rich the earth seems when we so regard it&mdash;crowded with the
+      loves of home! Yet I am now getting ready to <i>go home</i>&mdash;to leave
+      this world of homes and go home. When I reach that home, shall I even then
+      seek yet to go home? Even then, I believe, I shall seek a yet warmer,
+      deeper, truer home in the deeper knowledge of God&mdash;in the truer love
+      of my fellow-man. Eternity will be, my heart and my faith tell me, a
+      travelling homeward, but in jubilation and confidence and the vision of
+      the beloved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we had laid Connie once more in her own room, at least the room which
+      since her illness had come to be called hers, I went up to my study. The
+      familiar faces of my books welcomed me. I threw myself in my
+      reading-chair, and gazed around me with pleasure. I felt it so homely
+      here. All my old friends&mdash;whom somehow I hoped to see some day&mdash;present
+      there in the spirit ready to talk with me any moment when I was in the
+      mood, making no claim upon my attention when I was not! I felt as if I
+      should like, when the hour should come, to die in that chair, and pass
+      into the society of the witnesses in the presence of the tokens they had
+      left behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard shouts on the stair, and in rushed the two boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa!&rdquo; they were crying together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve found the big chest just where we left it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, did you expect it would have taken itself off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s everything in it just as we left it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you afraid, then, that the moment you left it it would turn itself
+      upside down, and empty itself of all its contents on the floor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They laughed, but apparently with no very keen appreciation of the attempt
+      at a joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I did not think anything about it; but&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;there
+      everything is as we left it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this triumphant answer they turned and hurried, a little abashed, out
+      of the room; but not many moments elapsed before the sounds that arose
+      from them were sufficiently reassuring as to the state of their spirits.
+      When they were gone, I forgot my books in the attempt to penetrate and
+      understand the condition of my boys&rsquo; thoughts; and I soon came to see that
+      they were right and I was wrong. It was the movement of that undeveloped
+      something in us which makes it possible for us in everything to give
+      thanks. It was the wonder of the discovery of the existence of law. There
+      was nothing that they could understand, <i>à priori</i>, to necessitate
+      the remaining of the things where they had left them. No doubt there was a
+      reason in the nature of God, why all things should hold together, whence
+      springs the law of gravitation, as we call it; but as far as the boys
+      could understand of this, all things might as well have been arranged for
+      flying asunder, so that no one could expect to find anything where he had
+      left it. I began to see yet further into the truth that in everything we
+      must give thanks, and whatever is not of faith is sin. Even the laws of
+      nature reveal the character of God, not merely as regards their ends, but
+      as regards their kind, being of necessity fashioned after ideal facts of
+      his own being and will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose and went down to see if everybody was getting settled, and how the
+      place looked. I found Ethel already going about the house as if she had
+      never left it, and as if we all had just returned from a long absence and
+      she had to show us home-hospitality. Wynnie had vanished; but I found her
+      by and by in the favourite haunt of her mother before her marriage&mdash;beside
+      the little pond called the Bishop&rsquo;s Basin, of which I do not think I have
+      ever told my readers the legend. But why should I mention it, for I cannot
+      tell it now? The frost lay thick in the hollow when I went down there to
+      find her; the branches, lately clothed with leaves, stood bare and icy
+      around her. Ethelwyn and I had almost forgotten that there was anything
+      out of the common in connection with the house. The horror of this
+      mysterious spot had laid hold upon Wynnie. I resolved that that night I
+      would, in her mother&rsquo;s presence, tell her all the legend of the place, and
+      the whole story of how I won her mother. I did so; and I think it made her
+      trust us more. But now I left her there, and went to Connie. She lay in
+      her bed; for her mother had got her thither at once, a perfect picture of
+      blessed comfort. There was no occasion to be uneasy about her. I was so
+      pleased to be at home again with such good hopes, that I could not rest,
+      but went wandering everywhere&mdash;into places even which I had not
+      entered for ten years at least, and found fresh interest in everything;
+      for this was home, and here I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I fancy my readers, looking forward to the end, and seeing what a
+      small amount of print is left, blaming me; some, that I have roused
+      curiosity without satisfying it; others, that I have kept them so long
+      over a dull book and a lame conclusion. But out of a life one cannot
+      always cut complete portions, and serve them up in nice shapes. I am well
+      aware that I have not told them the <i>fate</i>, as some of them would
+      call it, of either of my daughters. This I cannot develop now, even as far
+      as it is known to me; but, if it is any satisfaction to them to know this
+      much&mdash;and it will be all that some of them mean by <i>fate</i>, I
+      fear&mdash;I may as well tell them now that Wynnie has been Mrs. Percivale
+      for many years, with a history well worth recounting; and that Connie has
+      had a quiet, happy life for nearly as long, as Mrs. Turner. She has never
+      got strong, but has very tolerable health. Her husband watches her with
+      the utmost care and devotion. My Ethelwyn is still with me. Harry is gone
+      home. Charlie is a barrister of the Middle Temple. And Dora&mdash;I must
+      not forget Dora&mdash;well, I will say nothing about her <i>fate</i>, for
+      good reasons&mdash;it is not quite determined yet. Meantime she puts up
+      with the society of her old father and mother, and is something else than
+      unhappy, I fully believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Connie&rsquo;s baby?&rdquo; asks some one out of ten thousand readers. I have no
+      time to tell you about her now; but as you know her so little, it cannot
+      be such a trial to remain, for a time at least, unenlightened with regard
+      to her <i>fate.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only other part of my history which could contain anything like
+      incident enough to make it interesting in print, is a period I spent in
+      London some few years after the time of which I have now been writing. But
+      I am getting too old to regard the commencement of another history with
+      composure. The labour of thinking into sequences, even the bodily labour
+      of writing, grows more and more severe. I fancy I can think correctly
+      still; but the effort necessary to express myself with corresponding
+      correctness becomes, in prospect, at least, sometimes almost appalling. I
+      must therefore take leave of my patient reader&mdash;for surely every one
+      who has followed me through all that I have here written, well deserves
+      the epithet&mdash;as if the probability that I shall write no more were a
+      certainty, bidding him farewell with one word: <i>&ldquo;Friend, hope thou in
+      God,&rdquo;</i> and for a parting gift offering him a new, and, I think, a true
+      rendering of the first verse of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the
+      Hebrews:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now faith is the essence of hopes, the trying of things unseen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END.
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
+
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+</pre>
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+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/8562.txt b/8562.txt
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+Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Seaboard Parish, Complete
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8562]
+This file was first posted on July 23, 2003
+Last Updated: April 18, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+By George MacDonald, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+   I. HOMILETIC
+  II. CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY
+ III. THE SICK CHAMBER
+  IV. A SUNDAY EVENING
+   V. MY DREAM
+  VI. THE KEW BABY
+ VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
+VIII. THEODORA'S DOOM  IX. A SPRING CHAPTER
+   X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER
+  XI. CONNIE'S DREAM
+ XII. THE JOURNEY
+XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN
+  XV. THE OLD CHURCH
+ XVI. CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER
+XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+HOMILETIC.
+
+
+Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
+know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I
+say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you
+had not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you
+would not have wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not
+think you would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But
+I am seated once again at my writing-table, to write for you--with a
+strange feeling, however, that I am in the heart of some curious, rather
+awful acoustic contrivance, by means of which the words which I have a
+habit of whispering over to myself as I write them, are heard aloud by
+multitudes of people whom I cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy,
+that, by a sense of your presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to
+man.
+
+But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that
+you have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually
+happens in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a
+more puzzled mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the
+holes and corners of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one,
+peeping out at me like a rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me
+almost at the same instant the tail-end of it, and vanishing with a
+contemptuous _thud_ of its hind feet on the ground. For I must have
+suitable regard to the desires of my children. It is a fine thing to
+be able to give people what they want, if at the same time you can give
+them what you want. To give people what they want, would sometimes be to
+give them only dirt and poison. To give them what you want, might be to
+set before them something of which they could not eat a mouthful. What
+both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a dish of good wholesome
+venison. Now I suppose my children around me are neither young enough
+nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go that will not do. What
+they want is, I believe, something that I know about--that has happened
+to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of thing I like best to
+hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me something that has
+happened to himself, especially if he will give me a peep into how his
+heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the closed door,
+and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has something
+true and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old people
+that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them; but
+that only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to
+disentangle confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at
+the time appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light
+that was in them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they
+are far enough off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything
+that we know best what it is. How I should like to write a story for old
+people! The young are always having stories written for them. Why should
+not the old people come in for a share? A story without a young person
+in it at all! Nobody under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy
+tale, could it? Or a love story either? I am not so sure about that. The
+worst of it would be, however, that hardly a young person would read it.
+Now, we old people would not like that. We can read young people's
+books and enjoy them: they would not try to read old men's books or old
+women's books; they would be so sure of their being dry. My dear old
+brothers and sisters, we know better, do we not? We have nice old
+jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot see the fun. We have
+strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look more and more
+marvellous every time we turn them over again; only somehow they do not
+belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say _week_,--and so
+the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have had one
+pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother's feet, and
+listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his
+mother's wedding-gown was as old as Eve's coat of skins. But then he was
+young enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common
+to the young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men,
+old women, to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the
+future. Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed; for,
+however your souls may be at peace, however your quietness and
+confidence may give you strength, in the decay of your earthly
+tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in the weakening of its
+stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars, you have yet your
+share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But the one thing I
+should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would be, "Friends,
+let us not grow old." Old age is but a mask; let us not call the mask
+the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it from its
+hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth? Then
+only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
+young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
+dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
+always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
+we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog
+to enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and
+perhaps whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any
+necessity for putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the
+privilege, or if we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have
+the duty, of enjoying their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a
+measure from sociable relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise
+creatures that creep aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves
+by that their wings may grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming
+resurrection. Such a withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it
+is pleasant--no one knows how pleasant except him who experiences it--to
+sit apart and see the drama of life going on around him, while
+his feelings are calm and free, his vision clear, and his judgment
+righteous, the old man must ever be ready, should the sweep of action
+catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering old legs, and go with
+brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the less true that his
+hands tremble, and that he would gladly return to his chimney-corner. If
+he is never thus called out, let him examine himself, lest he should be
+falling into the number of those that say, "I go, sir," and go not;
+who are content with thinking beautiful things in an Atlantis, Oceana,
+Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of their fingers to
+work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the man who, using
+just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never has a
+thought of his own.
+
+I have been talking--to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
+grandchildren? I remember--to my companions in old age. It is time I
+returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side
+of the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one
+word: We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never
+do aright after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the
+men, neither shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his
+people because the young ones do not think just as the old ones choose.
+The Lord has something fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to
+receive his message. When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I
+think our work in this world is over. It might end more honourably.
+
+Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
+about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
+myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of
+which I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite
+elderly, yet active man--young still, in fact, to what I am now. But
+even then, though my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder,
+and needed all my stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces,
+and the trials of them that are dear, will make even those that look for
+a better country both for themselves and their friends, sad, though it
+will be with a preponderance of the first meaning of the word _sad_,
+which was _settled_, _thoughtful_.
+
+I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my
+study because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover
+over every foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the
+pleasanter to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none
+the worse, for anyone who prefers it to books.
+
+I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the
+history of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend's
+parish, while my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my
+curate, took the entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will
+soon appear. I will try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my
+story interesting, although it will cost me suffering to recall some of
+the incidents I have to narrate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+
+
+
+
+Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature,
+or from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents
+Nature's mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in
+his drama? I know I have so often found Nature's mood in harmony with my
+own, even when she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in
+looking back I have wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some
+self-deception about it. At all events, on the morning of my Constance's
+eighteenth birthday, a lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of
+golden foliage about the ways, and an air that seemed filled with the
+ether of an _aurum potabile_, there came yet an occasional blast of
+wind, which, without being absolutely cold, smelt of winter, and made
+one draw one's shoulders together with the sense of an unfriendly
+presence. I do not think Constance felt it at all, however, as she stood
+on the steps in her riding-habit, waiting till the horses made their
+appearance. It had somehow grown into a custom with us that each of the
+children, as his or her birthday came round, should be king or queen
+for that day, and, subject to the veto of father and mother, should have
+everything his or her own way. Let me say for them, however, that in the
+matter of choosing the dinner, which of course was included in the royal
+prerogative, I came to see that it was almost invariably the favourite
+dishes of others of the family that were chosen, and not those
+especially agreeable to the royal palate. Members of families where
+children have not been taught from their earliest years that the great
+privilege of possession is the right to bestow, may regard this as an
+improbable assertion; but others will know that it might well enough
+be true, even if I did not say that so it was. But there was always
+the choice of some individual treat, which was determined solely by the
+preference of the individual in authority. Constance had chosen "a long
+ride with papa."
+
+I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration
+of his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be
+determined by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people's
+children. However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that
+Constance did look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young
+day: we were early people--breakfast and prayers were over, and it was
+nine o'clock as she stood on the steps and I approached her from the
+lawn.
+
+"O, papa! isn't it jolly?" she said merrily.
+
+"Very jolly indeed, my dear," I answered, delighted to hear the word
+from the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word,
+and when she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was
+like? Ah! you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I
+will, however, try to give you a general idea, just in order that you
+and I should not be picturing to ourselves two very different persons
+while I speak of her.
+
+She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
+observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion,
+and has nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in
+complexion, with her mother's blue eyes, and her mother's long dark wavy
+hair. She was generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than
+any of the others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she
+knew instinctively when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her
+playfulness there seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if
+she felt that the present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance
+to the eternal sunlight. And the appearance was not in the least a
+deceptive one. The eternal was not far from her--none the farther that
+she enjoyed life like a bird, that her laugh was merry, that her heart
+was careless, and that her voice rang through the house--a sweet soprano
+voice--singing snatches of songs (now a street tune she had caught from
+a London organ, now an air from Handel or Mozart), or that she would
+sometimes tease her elder sister about her solemn and anxious looks; for
+Wynnie, the eldest, had to suffer for her grandmother's sins against her
+daughter, and came into the world with a troubled little heart, that was
+soon compelled to flee for refuge to the rock that was higher than she.
+Ah! my Constance! But God was good to you and to us in you.
+
+"Where shall we go, Connie?" I said, and the same moment the sound of
+the horses' hoofs reached us.
+
+"Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?" she returned.
+
+"It is a long ride," I answered.
+
+"Too much for the pony?"
+
+"O dear, no--not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony."
+
+"I'm quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want
+to get something for Wynnie. Do let us go."
+
+"Very well, my dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle--if I may say
+_raised_, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another
+than she sprung from the ground on her pony's back.
+
+In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
+
+The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders' webs,
+as we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards
+the high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we
+turned from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a
+gallop to begin with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been
+used to the saddle longer than she could remember. She was now riding a
+tall well-bred pony, with plenty of life--rather too much, I sometimes
+thought, when I was out with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I
+was with Constance. Another field or two sufficiently quieted both
+animals--I did not want to have all our time taken up with their
+frolics--and then we began to talk.
+
+"You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear," I said.
+
+"Quite an old grannie, papa," she answered.
+
+"Old enough to think about what's coming next," I said gravely.
+
+"O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about
+the morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that's in the pulpit," she
+added, with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her
+pretty hat.
+
+"You know very well what I mean, you puss," I answered. "And I don't say
+one thing in the pulpit and another out of it."
+
+She was at my horse's shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had
+been of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended
+me. She looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon
+Wynnie.
+
+"O, thank you, papa!" she said when I smiled. "I thought I had been
+rude. I didn't mean it, indeed I didn't. But I do wish you would make
+it a little plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you
+would hardly believe it."
+
+"What do you want made plainer, my child?" I asked.
+
+"When we're to think, and when we're not to think," she answered.
+
+I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
+
+"If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day," I
+answered, "if it cannot be done right except you think about it and
+lay your plans for it, then that thought is to-day's business, not
+to-morrow's."
+
+"Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
+themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?" she asked
+suddenly, again looking up in my face.
+
+We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse's mane, so as to
+keep her pony close up.
+
+"Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind."
+
+"Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn't explain things so much. I
+seem to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try
+the text afterwards by myself, I can't make anything of it, and I've
+forgotten every word you said about it."
+
+"Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it."
+
+"I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
+Bible," she returned.
+
+"If they can," I rejoined. "But last Sunday, for instance, I did not
+expect anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except
+your mamma and Thomas Weir."
+
+"How funny! What part of it was that?"
+
+"O! I'm not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But
+most likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to
+you, in consequence, very commonplace."
+
+"In consequence of what?"
+
+"In consequence of your thinking you understood it."
+
+"O, papa dear! you're getting worse and worse. It's not often I ask
+you anything--and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to
+bewilder my poor little brains in this way."
+
+"I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea
+that you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If
+you had never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of
+remark, would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is
+this the case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of
+the heart. Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything,
+or thanked God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant
+in one of his worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be
+beyond him. If you have never known what it is to have care of any kind
+upon you, you cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to
+take no thought for the morrow."
+
+"But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
+about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?"
+
+"Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
+perhaps I can help you."
+
+"You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
+idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at
+work every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that
+women any more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do?
+What have I been sent into the world for? I don't see it; and I feel
+very useless and wrong sometimes."
+
+"I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
+Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish.
+You take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal for
+the poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you
+are learning yourselves."
+
+"Yes, but that's not work."
+
+"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
+you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not
+that I have anything to complain of."
+
+"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life,
+when there are so many to help everywhere in the world."
+
+"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed
+you, than in doing it where he has placed you?"
+
+"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do
+at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You
+won't think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?"
+
+"No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
+now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
+referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
+yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do,
+you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible
+preparation for what he may want you to do next. If people would but do
+what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what
+came next. And I do not believe that those who follow this rule are ever
+left floundering on the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find
+water enough to swim in."
+
+"Thank you, dear papa. That's a little sermon all to myself, and I think
+I shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let's
+have a trot."
+
+"There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is
+not your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make
+yourself as worth God's making as you possibly can. Now I am a little
+doubtful whether you keep up your studies at all."
+
+She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face
+again.
+
+"I don't like dry things, papa."
+
+"Nobody does."
+
+"Nobody!" she exclaimed. "How do the grammars and history-books come to
+be written then?"
+
+In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
+than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection
+in it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding
+old father?
+
+"No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make
+them. Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to
+care for them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what
+you have to learn."
+
+"What must I do then?" she asked with a sigh. "Must I go all over my
+French Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!"
+
+"If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something
+you don't like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you
+are fond of?" I continued, finding that she remained silent.
+
+"I don't know anything in particular--that is, I don't know anything in
+the way of school-work that I really liked. I don't mean that I didn't
+try to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I
+liked--the poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen
+count that silly--don't they?"
+
+"On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the
+foundation of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing
+God has given us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree about
+what poetry was poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God.
+Now, what poetry do you like best?"
+
+"Mrs. Hemans's, I think, papa."
+
+"Well, very well, to begin with. 'There is,' as Mr. Carlyle said to a
+friend of mine--'There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.'
+But it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be.
+Most people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and
+they expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand
+myself, and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable
+enough creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with
+admiration of what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained
+at the cost of expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs.
+Hemans. She is simple enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that
+whatever mental food you take should be just a little too strong for
+you. That implies trouble, necessitates growth, and involves delight."
+
+"I sha'n't mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
+anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
+about."
+
+I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two
+years, and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account
+for my knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on
+talking a little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young
+people only, I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the
+account of what we said to each other; for it might help some of them to
+see that the thing they like best should, circumstances and conscience
+permitting, be made the centre from which they start to learn; that they
+should go on enlarging their knowledge all round from that one point at
+which God intended them to begin. But at length we fell into a silence,
+a very happy one on my part; for I was more than delighted to find that
+this one too of my children was following after the truth--wanting to
+do what was right, namely, to obey the word of the Lord, whether openly
+spoken to all, or to herself in the voice of her own conscience and the
+light of that understanding which is the candle of the Lord. I had often
+said to myself in past years, when I had found myself in the company of
+young ladies who announced their opinions--probably of no deeper origin
+than the prejudices of their nurses--as if these distinguished them from
+all the world besides; who were profound upon passion and ignorant of
+grace; who had not a notion whether a dress was beautiful, but only
+whether it was of the newest cut--I had often said to myself: "What
+shall I do if my daughters come to talk and think like that--if thinking
+it can be called?" but being confident that instruction for which the
+mind is not prepared only lies in a rotting heap, producing all kinds
+of mental evils correspondent to the results of successive loads of
+food which the system cannot assimilate, my hope had been to rouse wise
+questions in the minds of my children, in place of overwhelming their
+digestions with what could be of no instruction or edification without
+the foregoing appetite. Now my Constance had begun to ask me questions,
+and it made me very happy. We had thus come a long way nearer to each
+other; for however near the affection of human animals may bring them,
+there are abysses between soul and soul--the souls even of father and
+daughter--over which they must pass to meet. And I do not believe that
+any two human beings alive know yet what it is to love as love is in the
+glorious will of the Father of lights.
+
+I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
+
+We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path--a brown,
+soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering
+about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of
+underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place.
+There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and
+there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been
+struck by lightning, and had stood till the frosts and rains had bared
+it of its bark. Now it lay white as a skeleton by the side of the path,
+and was, I think, the cause of what followed. All at once my daughter's
+pony sprang to the other side of the road, shying sideways; unsettled
+her so, I presume; then rearing and plunging, threw her from the saddle
+across one of the logs of which I have spoken. I was by her side in a
+moment. To my horror she lay motionless. Her eyes were closed, and when
+I took her up in my arms she did not open them. I laid her on the moss,
+and got some water and sprinkled her face. Then she revived a little;
+but seemed in much pain, and all at once went off into another faint. I
+was in terrible perplexity.
+
+Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance,
+had seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what
+he could do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had
+thrown over the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask
+Mrs. Walton to come with the carriage as quickly as possible. "Tell
+her," I said, "that her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is
+rather shaken. Ride as hard as you can go."
+
+The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child, for
+what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage arrived.
+She had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in her back;
+and, to my distress, I found that she could not move herself enough to
+make the least change of her position. She evidently tried to keep up
+as well as she could; but her face expressed great suffering: it was
+dreadfully pale, and looked worn with a month's illness. All my fear was
+for her spine.
+
+At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as
+fast as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing the
+coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as Constance,
+but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to determination. I had
+never seen her look like that before. She asked no questions: there was
+time enough for that afterwards. She had brought plenty of cushions
+and pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy couch for the poor
+girl; but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her into the carriage. We
+did our best to keep her from being shaken; but those few miles were the
+longest journey I ever made in my life.
+
+When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
+called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie--for she was named
+after her mother--had got a room on the ground-floor, usually given to
+visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to have to
+carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the groom
+off to Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who had
+settled at Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before,
+was waiting for us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a
+mattress in the position in which she felt the least pain. But why
+should I linger over the sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor
+child's spine was seriously injured, and that probably years of
+suffering were before her. Everything was done that could be done; but
+she was not moved from that room for nine months, during which, though
+her pain certainly grew less by degrees, her want of power to move
+herself remained almost the same.
+
+When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated
+by her bedside, I called my other two daughters--Wynnie, the eldest, and
+Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside, one
+on each side of the door, weeping--into my study, and said to them: "My
+darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God's will;
+and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen to your
+lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your sister's
+part to endure."
+
+"O, papa! poor Connie!" cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.
+
+Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon
+it.
+
+"Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the
+room?" I asked.
+
+"Please do, papa."
+
+"She whispered, 'You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you
+can. I don't mind it very much, only for you.' So, you see, if you want
+to make her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick
+people like to see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie
+will not suffer nearly so much if she finds that she does not make the
+household gloomy."
+
+This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my
+marriage. My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had found
+that it was quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my flock
+who were ill without putting on a long face when I went to see them.
+Of course, I do not mean that I could, or that it was desirable that I
+should, look cheerful when any were in great pain or mental distress.
+But in ordinary conditions of illness a cheerful countenance is as a
+message of _all's well_, which may surely be carried into a sick chamber
+by the man who believes that the heart of a loving Father is at the
+centre of things, that he is light all about the darkness, and that
+he will not only bring good out of evil at last, but will be with the
+sufferer all the time, making endurance possible, and pain tolerable.
+There are a thousand alleviations that people do not often think of,
+coming from God himself. Would you not say, for instance, that time must
+pass very slowly in pain? But have you never observed, or has no one
+ever made the remark to you, how strangely fast, even in severe pain,
+the time passes after all?
+
+"We will do all we can, will we not," I went on, "to make her as
+comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little brothers,
+that your mother may not have too much to think about now that she will
+have Connie to nurse."
+
+They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving
+me to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I
+then returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child had
+fallen asleep.
+
+My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the pain
+had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we could
+allow Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of giving
+her over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the night.
+Her chief suffering came from its being necessary that she should
+keep nearly one position on her back, because of her spine, while the
+external bruise and the swelling of the muscles were in consequence
+so painful, that it needed all that mechanical contrivance could do to
+render the position endurable. But these outward conditions were greatly
+ameliorated before many days were over.
+
+This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
+kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes
+to let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at
+unawares, either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were
+not a good thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before
+I have done my readers will not be sorry that my tale began so gloomily.
+The sickness in Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, or
+thereabouts, has no small part in the story of him who came to put all
+things under our feet. Praise be to him for evermore!
+
+It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more
+sacred heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest
+corners; but soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the gloom.
+I could see that bits of news were carried from it to the servants
+in the kitchen, in the garden, in the stable, and over the way to the
+home-farm. Even in the village, and everywhere over the parish, I was
+received more kindly, and listened to more willingly, because of the
+trouble I and my family were in; while in the house, although we had
+never been anything else than a loving family, it was easy to discover
+that we all drew more closely together in consequence of our common
+anxiety. Previous to this, it had been no unusual thing to see Wynnie
+and Dora impatient with each other; for Dora was none the less a wild,
+somewhat lawless child, that she was a profoundly affectionate one. She
+rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact--whom she called Aunt Judy,
+and with whom she was naturally a great favourite. Wynnie, on the other
+hand, was sedate, and rather severe--more severe, I must in justice say,
+with herself than with anyone else. I had sometimes wished, it is true,
+that her mother, in regard to the younger children, were more like her;
+but there I was wrong. For one of the great goods that come of having
+two parents, is that the one balances and rectifies the motions of the
+other. No one is good but God. No one holds the truth, or can hold it,
+in one and the same thought, but God. Our human life is often, at best,
+but an oscillation between the extremes which together make the truth;
+and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the pendulums of father and
+mother should differ in movement so far, that when the one is at one
+extremity of the swing, the other should be at the other, so that
+they meet only in the point of _indifference_, in the middle; that the
+predominant tendency of the one should not be the predominant tendency
+of the other. I was a very strict disciplinarian--too much so, perhaps,
+sometimes: Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was too much inclined, I
+thought, to excuse everything. I was law, she was grace. But grace often
+yielded to law, and law sometimes yielded to grace. Yet she represented
+the higher; for in the ultimate triumph of grace, in the glad
+performance of the command from love of what is commanded, the law is
+fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. I must say
+this for myself, however, that, although obedience was the one thing
+I enforced, believing it the one thing upon which all family economy
+primarily depends, yet my object always was to set my children free from
+my law as soon as possible; in a word, to help them to become, as soon
+as it might be, a law unto themselves. Then they would need no more of
+mine. Then I would go entirely over to the mother's higher side, and
+become to them, as much as in me lay, no longer law and truth, but grace
+and truth. But to return to my children--it was soon evident not only
+that Wynnie had grown more indulgent to Dora's vagaries, but that Dora
+was more submissive to Wynnie, while the younger children began to
+obey their eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their
+effervescence within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in
+the out-houses.
+
+When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
+chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a
+yet stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of
+gentle light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came
+within the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my
+lovely child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He
+cannot regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his.
+A man's child is his because God has said to him, "Take this child and
+nurse it for me." She is God's making; God's marvellous invention, to be
+tended and cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things;
+a young angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make
+her wings grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other
+children in the same light, and will not dare to set up his own against
+others of God's brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart
+of truth will thus rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling
+towards one's own; and the man who is most free from poor partisanship
+in regard to his own family, will feel the most individual tenderness
+for the lovely human creatures whom God has given into his own especial
+care and responsibility. Show me the man who is tender, reverential,
+gracious towards the children of other men, and I will show you the man
+who will love and tend his own best, to whose heart his own will flee
+for their first refuge after God, when they catch sight of the cloud in
+the wind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE SICK CHAMBER.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the
+smile with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the
+morning. Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs
+had not yet even begun to show itself.
+
+One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen
+upon her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and
+said, "Papa," with a lingering on the last syllable.
+
+"What is it, my pet?" I asked.
+
+"I am so happy!"
+
+"What makes you so happy?" I asked again.
+
+"I don't know," she answered. "I haven't thought about it yet. But
+everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa?
+I've forgotten all about how the time has been going."
+
+"It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the
+trees--just two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away
+down to the rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break
+away, but they can't."
+
+"That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get
+away, papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be
+in everybody's way.--I am afraid I shall not get well, after all," she
+added, and the light clouded on her sweet face.
+
+"Well, my darling, we are in God's hands. We shall never get tired of
+you, and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing
+me, if I were ill?"
+
+"O, papa!" And the tears began to gather in her eyes.
+
+"Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you."
+
+"I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never
+think so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was."
+
+"There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
+useless. You've got plenty to do there."
+
+"But what have I got to do? I don't feel able for anything," she said;
+and again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to
+get up and she could not.
+
+"A great deal of our work," I answered, "we do without knowing what it
+is. But I'll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe
+in God, and in everybody in this house."
+
+"I do, I do. But that is easy to do," she returned.
+
+"And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
+says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to
+do God's work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they
+cannot believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad
+pride in it: it may be because they think that there is little or no
+honour to be got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again
+accept it with half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however
+easy any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought
+about it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work,
+generally take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done
+any more than in yesterday. The Holy Present!--I think I must make one
+more sermon about it--although you, Connie," I said, meaning it for a
+little joke, "do think that I have said too much about it already."
+
+"Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to
+you as I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was
+impertinent."
+
+"You silly darling!" I said. "A judgment! God be angry with you for
+that! Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think
+God has no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much
+more likely. You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something
+to do."
+
+"Lying in bed and doing nothing!"
+
+"Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will."
+
+"If I could but feel that I was doing his will!"
+
+"When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it."
+
+"I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my
+back is getting so bad."
+
+"I've tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you
+the rest another time," I said, rising.
+
+"No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now."
+
+"Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won't be long. In
+the time of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant
+children to do something for him in that way, poor people were told to
+bring, not a bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get,
+but a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw
+the poet says, 'Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.' God wanted
+to teach people to offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you
+cannot offer yourself in great things done for your fellow-men, which
+was the way Jesus did. But you must remember that the two young pigeons
+of the poor were just as acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the
+rich. Therefore you must say to God something like this:--'O heavenly
+Father, I have nothing to offer thee but my patience. I will bear thy
+will, and so offer my will a burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as
+useless as thou pleasest.' Depend upon it, my darling, in the midst of
+all the science about the world and its ways, and all the ignorance of
+God and his greatness, the man or woman who can thus say, _Thy will be
+done_, with the true heart of giving up is nearer the secret of things
+than the geologist and theologian. And now, my darling, be quiet in
+God's name."
+
+She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
+sent Dora to sit with her.
+
+In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
+parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
+Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them
+in her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we
+must cram her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the
+commonwealth sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving
+messages in return. I might call her the brain of the house; but I have
+used similes enough for a while.
+
+After I had done talking, she said--
+
+"And you have been to the school too, papa?"
+
+"Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as
+ours the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I
+had made a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home."
+
+"I heard of that, papa. You won't let any of the little ones go to
+school on the Sunday."
+
+"No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
+necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
+something direct for the little ones."
+
+"And you'll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know,
+papa--just before Sprite threw me."
+
+"As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again."
+
+"O, you must begin before that, please.--You could spare time to read a
+little to me, couldn't you?" she said doubtfully, as if she feared she
+was asking too much.
+
+"Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once."
+
+It was in part the result of this wish of my child's that it became the
+custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable
+for any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her,
+but I used to take something to read to her every now and then, and
+always after our early tea on Sundays.
+
+What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find
+out and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good!
+Such a centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and
+imaginations! It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ
+for the centre of humanity.
+
+In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
+following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed
+at some of these assemblies in my child's room, in the hope that it may
+give my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God
+has so made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must
+be more or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the
+gift of setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.
+
+I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am
+about to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say,
+to teach them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will
+share in the delight it will give me to write about what I love most.
+
+As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class
+began. I was sitting by Constance's bed. The fire was burning brightly,
+and the twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected
+back from the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was
+no light in the room but that of the fire.
+
+Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night
+it was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she.
+Her heart seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world
+around her. To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and
+news of poetic interest too. "What is it like?" she would often say,
+without any more definite shaping of the question. This same evening she
+said:
+
+"What is it like, papa?"
+
+"It is growing dark," I answered, "as you can see. It is a still
+evening, and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as
+still as if they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere
+if the wind were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were
+of cast iron. A gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were
+something upon its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars
+are coming out one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake
+soon. A strange thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The
+life of owlets, and mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars," I
+said, with no very categorical arrangement, "and dreams, and flowers
+that don't go to sleep like the rest, but send out their scent all night
+long. Only those are gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of
+the earth in such a frost as this."
+
+"Don't you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on
+the world, or went farther away from it for a while?"
+
+"Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie."
+
+"Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
+been describing to me, isn't like God at all--is it?"
+
+"No, it is not. I see what you mean now."
+
+"It is just as if he had gone away and said, 'Now you shall see what you
+can do without me.'
+
+"Something like that. But do you know that English people--at least I
+think so--enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon
+the whole than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is
+not enough to satisfy God's goodness that he should give us all things
+richly to enjoy, but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he
+gives them. He has to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of
+the gift. He has to make us able to take the gift and make it our own,
+as well as to give us the gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the
+full, that is, the divine, meaning of giving, without it. He has to give
+us to the gift as well as give the gift to us. Now for this, a break,
+an interruption is good, is invaluable, for then we begin to think about
+the thing, and do something in the matter ourselves. The wonder of God's
+teaching is that, in great part, he makes us not merely learn, but teach
+ourselves, and that is far grander than if he only made our minds as he
+makes our bodies."
+
+"I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
+wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the
+world out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I
+could go about in it just as I liked."
+
+"It wouldn't do that, though, you know, if you hadn't had the other
+first. The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my
+news."
+
+"I see that, papa."
+
+"Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
+saying?"
+
+"I don't know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes
+into my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about
+Milton's blindness."
+
+"Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
+wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that
+he might be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the
+point--given him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread
+of a single day, only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys;
+then placed him at Cromwell's side, in the midst of the tumultuous
+movement of public affairs, into which the late student entered with all
+his heart and soul; and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine
+darkness over him, sent him into a chamber far more retired than that in
+which he laboured at Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing
+darkling. The blackness about him was just the great canvas which God
+gave him to cover with forms of light and music. Deep wells of memory
+burst upwards from below; the windows of heaven were opened from above;
+from both rushed the deluge of song which flooded his soul, and which he
+has poured out in a great river to us."
+
+"It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn't it, papa?"
+
+"Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
+sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
+undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with _such_ blindness
+as Milton's?"
+
+"Those that do not care about his poetry, papa," answered Constance,
+with a deprecatory smile.
+
+"Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
+God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can't love one
+you know nothing about."
+
+"I have tried to read him a little."
+
+"Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you
+had never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But
+you and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of
+what we had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?"
+
+"Not the least, papa. You don't mind what I said about Milton?"
+
+"Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much
+if you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him
+was more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him."
+
+"O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him."
+
+"There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of
+appreciating him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen.
+You think of him as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry
+things. Now he is not dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry
+things. You have a figure before you in your fancy, which is dry, and
+which you call Milton. But it is no more Milton than your dull-faced
+Dutch doll, which you called after her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But
+here comes your mamma; and I haven't said what I wanted to say yet."
+
+"But surely, husband, you can say it all the same," said my wife. "I
+will go away if you can't."
+
+"I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me.
+I was trying to show Connie--"
+
+"You did show me, papa."
+
+"Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
+again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right."
+
+Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
+Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
+
+"And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
+history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
+him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too
+much revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long
+enough. They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as
+soon as he said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that
+he had not come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over
+again after their own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own
+worldly notions of grandeur and command, that they could not receive
+into their souls the gift of God present before their eyes. Therefore he
+was taken away, that his Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily
+presence, might come into them--that they might receive the gift of God
+into their innermost being. After he had gone out of their sight, and
+they might look all around and down in the grave and up in the air, and
+not see him anywhere--when they thought they had lost him, he began to
+come to them again from the other side--from the inside. They found that
+the image of him which his presence with them had printed in light upon
+their souls, began to revive in the dark of his absence; and not that
+only, but that in looking at it without the overwhelming of his bodily
+presence, lines and forms and meanings began to dawn out of it which
+they had never seen before. And his words came back to them, no longer
+as they had received them, but as he meant them. The spirit of Christ
+filling their hearts and giving them new power, made them remember, by
+making them able to understand, all that he had said to them. They were
+then always saying to each other, 'You remember how;' whereas before,
+they had been always staring at each other with astonishment and
+something very near incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after
+he had gone away, he was really nearer to them than he had been before.
+The meaning of anything is more than its visible presence. There is a
+soul in everything, and that soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the
+world and all its beauty has come nearer to you, my dear, just because
+you are separated from it for a time."
+
+"Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself
+now and then. That is another good of being ill."
+
+"You don't mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?" said my
+wife, smiling at her daughter's pleasure.
+
+"O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say
+by this time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to
+yourself."
+
+"Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful
+of sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I
+should be sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say
+by this time next year."
+
+"Well, papa, I wish I could be sure of knowing more next year."
+
+"Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of
+learning is very different in the two cases."
+
+"But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should
+not know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him--as
+he came to the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long
+ago."
+
+"As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
+thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
+understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer
+that if he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I
+believe we should be further off it."
+
+"Do you think, then," said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if
+I were the prophet of great evil, "that we shall never, never, never see
+him?"
+
+"That is _quite_ another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my hopes
+by day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to me
+the one thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for;
+but I think it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as
+ever we are capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I
+think, what is meant by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a
+consequence of his spirit in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us.
+The pure in heart shall see God. The seeing of him will be the sign that
+we are like him, for only by being like him can we see him as he is. All
+the time that he was with them, the disciples never saw him as he was.
+You must understand a man before you can see and read his face aright;
+and as the disciples did not understand our Lord's heart, they could
+neither see nor read his face aright. But when we shall be fit to look
+that man in the face, God only knows."
+
+"Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know
+him better than the disciples? I don't mean, of course, better than they
+knew him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew
+him while he was still with them?"
+
+"Certainly I do, my dear."
+
+"O, papa! Is it possible? Why don't we all, then?"
+
+"Because we won't take the trouble; that is the reason."
+
+"O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living--worth being
+ill for. But how? how? Can't you help me? Mayn't one human being help
+another?"
+
+"It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever
+wants to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey--that is
+simply, do what Jesus says."
+
+There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing.
+And the tears stood in; my wife's eyes--tears of gladness to hear her
+daughter's sobs.
+
+"I will try, papa," Constance said at last. "But you _will_ help me?"
+
+"That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying
+to tell you what I have heard and learned about him--heard and learned
+of the Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time when
+he was born;--but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to bear
+to-night."
+
+"No, no, papa. Do go on."
+
+"No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
+truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday--you
+have plenty to think about till then--I will talk to you about the baby
+Jesus; and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that time,
+besides what I have got to say now."
+
+"But," said my wife, "don't you think, Connie, this is too good to keep
+all to ourselves? Don't you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?"
+
+"Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too."
+
+"I fear they are rather young yet," I said. "Perhaps it might do them
+harm."
+
+"It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow," said Ethelwyn,
+smiling.
+
+"How do you mean, my dear?"
+
+"Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you.
+Besides, you always say such things to children as delight grown people,
+though they could never get them out of you."
+
+It was a wife's speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
+
+"Well," I said, "I don't mind them coming in, but I don't promise to say
+anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
+wish it."
+
+"Certainly," answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
+church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took
+care to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might
+be quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my
+Bible in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a
+glorious fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on
+the rug before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the
+further side of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she
+thought another might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner,
+leaving the space between the fire and my chair open that I might see
+and share the glow.
+
+"The wind is very high, papa," said Constance, as I seated myself beside
+her.
+
+"Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has
+blown harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?"
+
+"I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
+shakes the windows with a great rush as if it _would_ get into the house
+and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
+grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us
+with fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very
+jaws of danger."
+
+"Why, you are quite poetic, Connie," said Wynnie.
+
+"Don't laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I'm an invalid, and I can't bear to be
+laughed at," returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more
+than a quarter crying.
+
+Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her
+laugh outright, and then sat down again.
+
+"But tell me, Connie," I said, "why you are _afraid_ you enjoy hearing
+the wind about the house."
+
+"Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it."
+
+"Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
+forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out
+in the wind."
+
+"But if we thought like that, papa," said Wynnie, "shouldn't we come to
+feel that their sufferings were none of our business?"
+
+"If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we,
+it will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie."
+
+"Of course, I could not think that," she returned.
+
+"Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God's name,
+think hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing
+in his kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God
+intended that there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If
+he did not intend it--for similar reasons to those for which he allows
+all sorts of evils--then there is nothing between but that we should
+sell everything that we have and give it away to the poor."
+
+"Then why don't we?" said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.
+
+"Because that is not God's way, and we should do no end of harm by so
+doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
+who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We
+are not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object--not
+to save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more
+danger than God meant for them."
+
+"It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa," said Wynnie.
+
+"Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
+kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the
+one thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course
+everyone ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading
+of in the papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without
+making the least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her
+labour for the coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death,
+would hug his own selfishness on hearing my words, and say, 'All right,
+parson! Every man for himself! I made my own money, and they may make
+theirs!' _You_ know that is not exactly the way I should think or act
+with regard to my neighbour. But if it were only that I have seen such
+noble characters cast in the mould of poverty, I should be compelled
+to regard poverty as one of God's powers in the world for raising the
+children of the kingdom, and to believe that it was not because it could
+not be helped that our Lord said, 'The poor ye have always with you.'
+But what I wanted to say was, that there can be no reason why Connie
+should not enjoy what God has given her, although he has not thought
+fit to give as much to everybody; and above all, that we shall not help
+those right whom God gives us to help, if we do not believe that God is
+caring for every one of them as much as he is caring for every one of
+us. There was once a baby born in a stable, because his poor mother
+could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay I can hardly think.
+They must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in the stall, for we
+know the baby's cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken them? or would
+they not have been more _comfortable_, if that was the main thing,
+somewhere else? Ah! if the disciples, who were being born about the same
+time of fisher-fathers and cottage-mothers, to get ready for him to call
+and teach by the time he should be thirty years of age--if they had only
+been old enough, and had known that he was coming--would they not have
+got everything ready for him? They would have clubbed their little
+savings together, and worked day and night, and some rich women would
+have helped them, and they would have dressed the baby in fine linen,
+and got him the richest room their money would get, and they would have
+made the gold that the wise men brought into a crown for his little
+head, and would have burnt the frankincense before him. And so our
+little manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No more the
+stable-born Saviour--no more the poor Son of God born for us all, as
+strong, as noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor!
+And we should not have learned that God does not care for money; that
+if he does not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or
+that he is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent
+his own son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of
+a little village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need
+not suppose because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison
+for it next day, that God does not care for him."
+
+"But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?"
+
+"That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished
+by this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
+mother's love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
+first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie
+not in these external things at all--that the poorest little one, born
+in the meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God's own and
+God's care as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all
+about him. Had Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been
+more worshipped than ever. See how so many that count themselves good
+Christians honour possession and family and social rank, and I doubt
+hardly get rid of them when they are all swept away from them. The
+furthest most of such reach is to count Jesus an exception, and
+therefore not despise him. See how, even in the services of the church,
+as they call them, they will accumulate gorgeousness and cost. Had I
+my way, though I will never seek to rouse men's thoughts about such
+external things, I would never have any vessel used in the eucharist but
+wooden platters and wooden cups."
+
+"But are we not to serve him with our best?" said my wife.
+
+"Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
+being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of
+his revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth
+in homely fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that
+enforces and commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on
+the other side from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent
+houses for God's poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of
+silver and gold and precious stones--stealing from the significance of
+the _content_ by the meretricious grandeur of the _continent_. I would
+send all the church-plate to fight the devil with his own weapons in our
+overcrowded cities, and in our villages where the husbandmen are housed
+like swine, by giving them room to be clean and decent air from heaven
+to breathe. When the people find the clergy thus in earnest, they will
+follow them fast enough, and the money will come in like salt and oil
+upon the sacrifice. I would there were a few of our dignitaries that
+could think grandly about things, even as Jesus thought--even as God
+thought when he sent him. There are many of them willing to stand any
+amount of persecution about trifles: the same enthusiasm directed by
+high thoughts about the kingdom of heaven as within men and not around
+them, would redeem a vast region from that indifference which comes of
+judging the gospel of God by the church of Christ with its phylacteries
+and hems."
+
+"There is one thing," said Wynnie, after a pause, "that I have often
+thought about--why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he
+could not do anything for so long."
+
+"First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
+necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary
+for me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I
+would say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long?
+Does a baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the
+mother lifts up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her
+knee? Is it nothing that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost
+all the hearts around? Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to
+do with the saving of the world--the saving of it from selfishness, and
+folly, and greed. And for Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign
+of love in the earth? How could he do better than begin from babyhood?
+He had to lay hold of the heart of the world. How could he do better
+than begin with his mother's--the best one in it. Through his mother's
+love first, he grew into the world. It was first by the door of all the
+holy relations of the family that he entered the human world, laying
+hold of mother, father, brothers, sisters, all his friends; then by the
+door of labour, for he took his share of his father's work; then, when
+he was thirty years of age, by the door of teaching; by kind deeds, and
+sufferings, and through all by obedience unto the death. You must not
+think little of the grand thirty years wherein he got ready for
+the chief work to follow. You must not think that while he was thus
+preparing for his public ministrations, he was not all the time saving
+the world even by that which he was in the midst of it, ever laying hold
+of it more and more. These were things not so easy to tell. And you must
+remember that our records are very scanty. It is a small biography we
+have of a man who became--to say nothing more--the Man of the world--the
+Son of Man. No doubt it is enough, or God would have told us more; but
+surely we are not to suppose that there was nothing significant, nothing
+of saving power in that which we are not told.--Charlie, wouldn't you
+have liked to see the little baby Jesus?"
+
+"Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
+eyes."
+
+"That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for
+he has painted him playing with a white rabbit,--not such a pretty one
+as yours."
+
+"I would have carried him about all day," said Dora, "as little Henny
+Parsons does her baby-brother."
+
+"Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?" asked
+Harry.
+
+"No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he
+carried about his brothers and sisters that came after him."
+
+"Wouldn't he take care of them, just!" said Charlie.
+
+"I wish I had been one of them," said Constance.
+
+"You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that
+he can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom."
+
+Then we sung a child's hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
+the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her
+with Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
+
+About midnight my wife and I awoke together--at least neither knew which
+waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with lulls
+between its charges.
+
+"There's a child crying!" said my wife, starting up.
+
+I sat up too, and listened.
+
+"There is some creature," I granted.
+
+"It is an infant," insisted my wife. "It can't be either of the boys."
+
+I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried
+on some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so.
+We seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in
+the lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night
+was pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house
+till I came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it,
+but not so clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the
+direction of the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only
+a few yards around me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through
+every chink, and threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my
+side before I knew she was coming.
+
+"My dear!" I said, "it is not fit for you to be out."
+
+"It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow," she said. "Do listen."
+
+It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
+Ethelwyn's bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though
+she was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
+
+Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner
+of the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much
+nearer to it. Searching and searching we went.
+
+"There it is!" Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the
+lantern fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at
+it. It gave another pitiful wail--the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up
+in a dirty, ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it
+had been a parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house,
+and I followed, much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and
+fall. I could hardly get up with her, so eager was she to save the
+child. She darted up to her own room, where the fire was not yet out.
+
+"Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
+there--you can empty them in the sink: you won't know where to find
+anything. There will be plenty in the boiler."
+
+By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child's
+covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before
+the fire. The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and
+motionless. We had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as
+if I had been a nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
+
+"Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child."
+
+"You made me throw away the cold water," I said, laughing.
+
+"There's some in the bottles," she returned. "Make haste."
+
+I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
+Ethelwyn.
+
+"The child will be dead," she cried, "before we get it in the water."
+
+She had its rags off in a moment--there was very little to remove after
+the shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully neglected!
+It was a girl--not more than a few weeks old, we agreed. Her little
+heart was still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made, apparently
+healthy infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we were not
+disappointed. She began to move her little legs and arms with short,
+convulsive motions.
+
+"Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?" asked my wife, with no great
+compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
+were beyond the average in development.
+
+"I think I do," I answered.
+
+"Could you tell which was this night's milk, now?"
+
+"There will be less cream on it," I answered.
+
+"Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I've got some sugar
+here. I wish we had a bottle."
+
+I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
+lying on her lap clean and dry--a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went on
+talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
+specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got
+her to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing
+fell fast asleep.
+
+Ethelwyn's nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know
+where her baby's clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a
+wardrobe in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on.
+I could not understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be
+indued with little chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not
+know what all, requiring a world of nice care, and a hundred turnings
+to and fro, now on its little stomach, now on its back, now sitting up,
+now lying down, when it would have slept just as well, and I venture to
+think much more comfortably, if laid in blankets and well covered over.
+But I had never ventured to interfere with any of my own children,
+devoutly believing up to this moment, though in a dim unquestioning way,
+that there must be some hidden feminine wisdom in the whole process;
+and now that I had begun to question it, I found that my opportunity
+had long gone by, if I had ever had one. And after all there may be some
+reason for it, though I confess I do strongly suspect that all these
+matters are so wonderfully complicated in order that the girl left in
+the woman may have her heart's content of playing with her doll; just
+as the woman hid in the girl expends no end of lovely affection upon
+the dull stupidity of wooden cheeks and a body of sawdust. But it was a
+delight to my heart to see how Ethelwyn could not be satisfied without
+treating the foundling in precisely the same fashion as one of her own.
+And if this was a necessary preparation for what, should follow, I would
+be the very last to complain of it.
+
+We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal
+mother, now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in
+my Ethelwyn's bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it
+would have been very painful to me had she shown it possible for her
+to treat the baby otherwise, especially after what we had been talking
+about that same evening.
+
+So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about
+it but ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the
+going and coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good
+laugh over the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
+
+"Pray for the poor thing, Harry," she sobbed, "before you come to bed."
+
+I knelt down, and said:
+
+"O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to
+us as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee.
+Take thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to
+order our ways towards her."
+
+Then I said to Ethelwyn,
+
+"We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
+sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
+sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother.
+Mind you go to sleep."
+
+"I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night," she returned.
+
+I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I
+had a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell
+or not. We slept soundly--God's baby and all.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MY DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
+beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those
+who are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when
+they can associate it with something else with which they are familiar.
+Such do not care to see that the thing with which they associate it
+may be as mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys
+marvel, it cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is
+just as wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
+
+In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
+clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
+another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an
+old man's prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked
+about for a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams
+there is an immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow
+stone lying a few yards from me. I wondered how it could have come
+there, for there were no mountains or rocks near: the field was part of
+a level country. Carelessly, I sat down upon it astride, and watched the
+setting of the sun. Somehow I fancied that his light was more sorrowful
+than the light of the setting sun should be, and I began to feel very
+heavy at the heart. No sooner had the last brilliant spark of his
+light vanished, than I felt the stone under me begin to move. With the
+inactivity of a dreamer, however, I did not care to rise, but wondered
+only what would come next. My seat, after several strange tumbling
+motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and then I found that
+I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse--a skeleton horse almost, only he
+had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain, as if his joints
+were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the direction in
+which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, I never thought of
+dismounting. I was going on to meet what might come. Slowly, feebly,
+trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and as he went his
+joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little faster. All at
+once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that we were on
+the borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me, and the
+moor grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always
+recovering himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise
+no more, but as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface
+became a little smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted
+till he reached a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell
+into what was plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were
+low and covered with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the
+place of mounds. Gravestones lay in every position except the level or
+the upright, and broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My
+horse bore me into the midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he
+had risen, he lay down again. Once more I was astride of a long narrow
+stone. And now I found that it was an ancient gravestone which I knew
+well in a certain Sussex churchyard, the top of it carved into the rough
+resemblance of a human skeleton--that of a man, tradition said, who had
+been killed by a serpent that came out of a bottomless pool in the next
+field. How long I sat there I do not know; but at last I saw the faint
+gray light of morning begin to appear in front of me. The horse of death
+had carried me eastward. The dawn grew over the top of a hill that here
+rose against the horizon. But it was a wild dreary dawn--a blot of gray
+first, which then stretched into long lines of dreary yellow and gray,
+looking more like a blasted and withered sunset than a fresh sunrise.
+And well it suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if churchyard
+I ought to call it where no church was to be seen--only a vast hideous
+square of graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the flat
+stone of which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat
+with my eyes fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the
+middle closed, then widened again as the two halves of the stone were
+lifted up, and flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door.
+From the grave rose a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as
+if he had just come from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung
+the stones apart, and as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me,
+they remained outspread from the action for a moment, as if blessing the
+sleeping people. Then he came towards me with the same smile, and took
+my hand. I rose, and he led me away over another broken wall towards the
+hill that lay before us. And as we went the sun came nearer, the pale
+yellow bars flushed into orange and rosy red, till at length the edges
+of the clouds were swept with an agony of golden light, which even my
+dreamy eyes could not endure, and I awoke weeping for joy.
+
+This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:
+
+"What is the matter, husband?"
+
+So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.
+
+"It was this little darling that set you dreaming so," she said, and
+turning, put the baby in my arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE NEW BABY.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
+household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie
+was heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
+
+"Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn't it jolly?"
+
+"Where did she get it?" cried Harry in return.
+
+"In the parsley-bed, I suppose," answered Charlie, and was nearer right
+than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had
+no doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
+
+But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of
+the family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their
+curiosity being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was
+exemplified that confusion of the intellectual being which is produced
+by the witness of incontestable truth to a thing incredible--in which
+case the probability always is, that the incredibility results from
+something in the mind of the hearer falsely associated with and
+disturbing the true perception of the thing to which witness is borne.
+
+Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
+parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had.
+And seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met
+with from everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked
+questions. And that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good
+gift of God. Ask what questions you will, but when you see that the gift
+is a good one, make sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for
+you to ask questions afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the
+more ready you will be to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
+
+The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
+began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
+frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was
+not Ethelwyn's baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
+
+"Of course, you'll give information to the police," said, I am sorry to
+say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to
+be a magistrate as well.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure."
+
+"Wouldn't it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
+easy to suspect it?" I asked. "And just think what it would be to give
+the baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her
+mother. But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don't say I would
+refuse her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had
+once abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don't
+want the parents."
+
+"But you don't want the child."
+
+"How do you know that?" I returned--rather rudely, I am afraid, for I
+am easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless--about children
+especially.
+
+"O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one
+has a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people."
+
+"That is just what I thought I was doing," I answered; but he went on
+without heeding my reply--
+
+"We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not
+so fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother's keeper."
+
+"And my sister's too," I answered. "And if the question lies between
+keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that,
+I venture to choose for myself."
+
+"She ought to go to the workhouse," said the magistrate--a friendly,
+good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and
+departed.
+
+
+This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame.
+Which? _I_ say the latter.
+
+Some of Ethelwyn's friends were no less positive about her duty in the
+affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one
+of them--Miss Bowdler.
+
+"But, my dear Mrs. Walton," she was saying, "you'll be having all the
+tramps in England leaving their babies at your door."
+
+"The better for the babies," interposed I, laughing.
+
+"But you don't think of your wife, Mr. Walton."
+
+"Don't I? I thought I did," I returned dryly.
+
+"Depend upon it, you'll repent it."
+
+"I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad."
+
+"Ah! but, really! it's not a thing to be made game of."
+
+"Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
+house."
+
+"What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough."
+
+"As well as I choose to know--certainly," I answered.
+
+This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for
+which she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating
+belief in the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head
+can be counted as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a
+half-comic, half-anxious look, and said:
+
+"But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
+we couldn't go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
+stepping on a baby on the door-step."
+
+"You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, 'If God
+should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?' He who sent us
+this one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come.
+All that we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of
+doing right. But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that
+wandering mothers have not even the attachment of animals to their
+offspring. There are not so many that are willing to part with babies as
+all that would come to. If you believe that God sent this one, that is
+enough for the present. If he should send another, we should know by
+that that we had to take it in."
+
+My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
+well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
+babies--that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and nurses
+and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for what
+I believed than what I saw--that was all I could pretend to discover.
+But even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to allow
+before three months were over that little Theodora--for we turned the
+name of my youngest daughter upside down for her--"was a proper child."
+To none, however, did she seem to bring so much delight as to our dear
+Constance. Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I found the
+sleepy, useless little thing lying beside her on the bed, and her
+staring at it with such loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but it
+came at last to be called Connie's Dora, or Miss Connie's baby, all over
+the house, and nothing pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this did
+her old nurse take quite kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as
+an interloper, who had no right to the tenderness which was lavished
+upon her. But she had no sooner given in than the baby began to grow
+dear to her as well as to the rest. In fact, the house was ere long
+full of nurses. The staff included everyone but myself, who only
+occasionally, at the entreaty of some one or other of the younger ones,
+took her in my arms.
+
+But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude,
+all centering round the question in what manner the child was to
+be brought up. Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as
+Ethelwyn constantly reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I
+could not discover the principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can
+tell how soon a principle in such a case will begin, even unconsciously,
+to operate; and the danger was that the moment when it ought to begin to
+operate would be long past before the principle was discovered, except
+I did what I could now to find it out. I had again and again to remind
+myself that there was no cause for anxiety; for that I might certainly
+claim the enlightenment which all who want to do right are sure to
+receive; but still I continued uneasy just from feeling a vacancy where
+a principle ought to have been.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress--in the
+recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
+remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
+regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
+interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how
+I came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to
+keep before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
+remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
+from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might
+be turned aside would not trouble me.
+
+We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
+Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east,
+and the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the
+children to rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and,
+believing that the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the
+faculties for aiding the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them
+questions as to what they thought he might have said or done in ordinary
+family occurrences, thus giving a reality in their minds to this part
+of his history, and trying to rouse in them a habit of referring their
+conduct to the standard of his. If we do not thus employ our imagination
+on sacred things, his example can be of no use to us except in exactly
+corresponding circumstances--and when can such occur from one end to
+another of our lives? The very effort to think how he would have done,
+is a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and, even if the conclusion
+arrived at should not be correct from lack of sufficient knowledge of
+his character and principles, it will be better than any that can be
+arrived at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking of such questions
+gave me good opportunity, through the answers they returned, of seeing
+what their notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus of discovering
+how to help the dawn of the light in their growing minds. Nor let anyone
+fear that such employment of the divine gift of imagination will lead to
+foolish vagaries and useless inventions; while the object is to discover
+the right way--the truth--there is little danger of that. Besides, there
+I was to help hereby in the actual training of their imaginations to
+truth and wisdom. To aid in this, I told them some of the stories that
+were circulated about him in the early centuries of the church, but
+which the church has rejected as of no authority; and I showed them how
+some of them could not be true, because they were so unlike those words
+and actions which we had the best of reasons for receiving as true; and
+how one or two of them might be true--though, considering the company in
+which we found them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them.
+And such wise things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous
+how children can reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances
+are sometimes entirely concordant with the results arrived at through
+years of thought by the earnest mind--results which no mind would ever
+arrive at save by virtue of the child-like in it.
+
+Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus
+in the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by
+dwelling a little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from
+group to group of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem
+and asking every fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy,
+till at length they were in great trouble when they could not find him
+even in Jerusalem. Then came the delight of his mother when she did find
+him at last, and his answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered
+over the simple story, my children had put many questions to me about
+Jesus being a boy, and not seeming to know things which, if he was God,
+he must have known, they thought. To some of these I had just to reply
+that I did not understand myself, and therefore could not teach them; to
+others, that I could explain them, but that they were not yet, some of
+them, old enough to receive and understand my explanation; while others
+I did my best to answer as simply as I could. But at this point we
+arrived at a question put by Wynnie, to answer which aright I considered
+of the greatest importance. Wynnie said:
+
+"That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled
+me, papa."
+
+"What is, my dear?" I said; for although I thought I knew well enough
+what she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for
+her own sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand
+the difficulty much better if she presented it herself.
+
+"I mean that he spoke to his mother--"
+
+"Why don't you say _mamma_, Wynnie?" said Charlie. "She was his own
+mamma, wasn't she, papa?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; but don't you know that the shoemaker's children down in
+the village always call their mamma _mother_?"
+
+"Yes; but they are shoemaker's children."
+
+"Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
+carpenter. He called his mamma, _mother_. But, Charlie, _mother_ is the
+more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. _Lady_ is a
+very pretty word; but _woman_ is a very beautiful word. Just so with
+_mamma_ and _mother_. _Mamma_ is pretty, but _mother_ is beautiful."
+
+"Why don't we always say _mother_ then?"
+
+"Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for
+Sundays--that is, for the more solemn times of life. We don't want it to
+get common to us with too much use. We may think it as much as we
+like; thinking does not spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and
+especially beautiful words. Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was
+saying."
+
+"I was saying, papa, that I can't help feeling as if--I know it can't be
+true--but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he said
+that to her."
+
+I looked at the page and read the words, "How is it that ye sought me?
+wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And I sat silent
+for a while.
+
+"Why don't you speak, papa?" said Harry.
+
+"I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry," I said. "Long after I was
+your age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as
+they now trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me
+so lovely that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact
+that they troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall.
+I can hardly see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me.
+And why is that? Simply because I understand them now, and I did not
+understand them then. I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof;
+now I hear them as uttered with a tone of loving surprise. But really I
+cannot feel sure what it was that I did not like. And I am confident
+it is so with a great many things that we reject. We reject them simply
+because we do not understand them. Therefore, indeed, we cannot with
+truth be said to reject them at all. It is some false appearance that
+we reject. Some of the grandest things in the whole realm of truth
+look repellent to us, and we turn away from them, simply because we are
+not--to use a familiar phrase--we are not up to them. They appear to us,
+therefore, to be what they are not. Instruction sounds to the proud
+man like reproof; illumination comes on the vain man like scorn; the
+manifestation of a higher condition of motive and action than his own,
+falls on the self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is consciousness
+and conscience working together that produce this impression; the result
+is from the man himself, not from the higher source. From the truth
+comes the power, but the shape it assumes to the man is from the man
+himself."
+
+"You are quite beyond me now, papa," said Wynnie.
+
+"Well, my dear," I answered, "I will return to the words of the boy
+Jesus, instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you
+what they mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about
+them is all and altogether an illusion."
+
+"There is one thing first," said Connie, "that I want to understand. You
+said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
+surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything."
+
+"He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
+even _he_ did not know one thing--only the Father knew it."
+
+"But how could that be if he was God?"
+
+"My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I
+should understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have
+been perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in
+the Father. And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect
+knowledge was not necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute
+obedience, utter holiness. There is a great tendency in our sinful
+natures to put knowledge and power on a level with goodness. It was one
+of the lessons of our Lord's life that they are not so; that the one
+grand thing in humanity is faith in God; that the highest in God is his
+truth, his goodness, his rightness. But if Jesus was a real man, and no
+mere appearance of a man, is it any wonder that, with a heart full to
+the brim of the love of God, he should be for a moment surprised that
+his mother, whom he loved so dearly, the best human being he knew,
+should not have taken it as a matter of course that if he was not with
+her, he must be doing something his Father wanted him to do? For this is
+just what his answer means. To turn it into the ordinary speech of our
+day, it is just this: 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you know that I
+must of course be doing something my Father had given me to do?' Just
+think of the quiet sweetness of confidence in this. And think what a
+life his must have been up to that twelfth year of his, that such an
+expostulation with his mother was justified. It must have had reference
+to a good many things that had passed before then, which ought to have
+been sufficient to make Mary conclude that her missing boy must be about
+God's business somewhere. If her heart had been as full of God and God's
+business as his, she would not have been in the least uneasy about
+him. And here is the lesson of his whole life: it was all his Father's
+business. The boy's mind and hands were full of it. The man's mind and
+hands were full of it. And the risen conqueror was full of it still. For
+the Father's business is everything, and includes all work that is worth
+doing. We may say in a full grand sense, that there is nothing but the
+Father and his business."
+
+"But we have so many things to do that are not his business," said
+Wynnie, with a sigh of oppression.
+
+"Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
+not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want
+of spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things--the
+will of God in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so
+irksome to us. Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination
+and deep thought, to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with
+some slight remark, thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is
+because he is commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so
+little of the divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise
+the spiritual meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will
+of God, in the things required of us, though they are full of it. But
+if we do them we shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see
+what is in them. The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in
+its heart."
+
+"I wish he would tell me something to do," said Charlie. "Wouldn't I do
+it!"
+
+I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure
+was at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.
+
+"But look here, Wynnie; listen to this," I said, "'And he went down with
+them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.' Was that not
+doing his Father's business too? Was it not doing the business of his
+Father in heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he
+knew that his days would not be long in that land? Did not his whole
+teaching, his whole doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the
+Father and surely it was doing his Father's business then to obey his
+parents--to serve them, to be subject to them. It is true that the
+business God gives a man to do may be said to be the peculiar walk in
+life into which he is led, but that is only as distinguishing it from
+another man's peculiar business. God gives us all our business, and the
+business which is common to humanity is more peculiarly God's business
+than that which is one man's and not another's--because it lies nearer
+the root, and is essential. It does not matter whether a man is a farmer
+or a physician, but it greatly matters whether he is a good son, a good
+husband, and so on. O my children!" I said, "if the world could but be
+brought to believe--the world did I say?--if the best men in the world
+could only see, as God sees it, that service is in itself the noblest
+exercise of human powers, if they could see that God is the hardest
+worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do the most service,
+surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church. Menial offices,
+for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that contempt
+which shows that there is no true recognition of the fact that the same
+principle runs through the highest duty and the lowest--that the
+lowest work which God gives a man to do must be in its nature noble, as
+certainly noble as the highest. This would destroy condescension, which
+is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the higher, as it would destroy
+insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower. He who recognised the
+dignity of his own lower office, would thereby recognise the superiority
+of the higher office, and would be the last either to envy or degrade
+it. He would see in it his own--only higher, only better, and revere it.
+But I am afraid I have wearied you, my children."
+
+"O, no, papa!" said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
+nothing.
+
+"I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this
+subject: it has such a hold of my heart and mind!--Now, Charlie, my boy,
+go to bed."
+
+But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did
+not want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the
+corners of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did
+not move to go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the
+black frost still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to
+him. When he was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting
+out of temper, and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to
+behold; and to cure him of this, I used to make him carry a little
+mirror about his neck, that the means might be always at hand of
+showing himself to him: it was a sort of artificial conscience which,
+by enabling him to see the picture of his own condition, which the
+face always is, was not unfrequently operative in rousing his real
+conscience, and making him ashamed of himself. But now the mirror I
+wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in the light of which the
+present would show what it was.
+
+"Charlie," I said, "a little while ago you were wishing that God would
+give you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once,
+without even thinking about it."
+
+"How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?" said Charlie, with
+something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at
+once because there was some sense along with the impudence.
+
+"I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it
+pleasantly. Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as
+that--I wish I had the little mirror to show it to you--when his mother
+told him it was time to go to bed?"
+
+And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in
+him, because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have
+compelled him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law.
+But now that his own better self, the self enlightened of the light that
+lighteneth every man that cometh into the world, was working, time might
+well be afforded it to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the
+others. In the space of not more than one minute, he rose and came to
+me, looking both good and ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me,
+saying, "Goodnight, papa." I bade him good-night, and kissed him more
+tenderly than usual, that he might know that it was all right between
+us. I required no formal apology, no begging of my pardon, as some
+parents think right. It seemed enough to me that his heart was turned.
+It is a terrible thing to run the risk of changing humility into
+humiliation. Humiliation is one of the proudest conditions in the human
+world. When he felt that it would be a relief to say more explicitly,
+"Father, I have sinned," then let him say it; but not till then. To
+compel manifestation is one surest way to check feeling.
+
+My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy's unwillingness to go
+to bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them
+are guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important
+than this, only those things happen to be _their_ wish at the moment,
+and not Charlie's, and so gain their superiority.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THEODORA'S DOOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
+most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
+practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise
+you more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be
+allowed to take very much his own way--go his own pace, I should have
+said. I am afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this
+chapter.
+
+On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
+severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last
+severe frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth.
+The sun was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up
+in the air hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field
+close by a hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass.
+A short distance from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost.
+There alone was there any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of
+the loveliest tenderest green. I will not say the figure was such an
+exact resemblance as a photograph would have been; still it was an
+indubitable likeness. It appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch
+not a knot of the upper side of the tree at least was left unrepresented
+in shining and glittering whiteness upon the green grass. It was very
+pretty, and, I confess, at first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating
+on the phenomenon, till at length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost
+had been all over the field in the morning. The sun had been shining for
+a time, and had melted the frost away, except where he could only cast
+a shadow. As he rose and rose, the shadow of the tree had shortened and
+come nearer and nearer to its original, growing more and more like as
+it came nearer, while the frost kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew
+its protection. When the shadow extended only to a little way from
+the tree, the clouds came and covered the sun, and there were no more
+shadows, only one great one of the clouds. Then the frost shone out in
+the shape of the vanished shadow. It lay at a little distance from the
+tree, because the tree having been only partially lopped, some great
+stumps of boughs held it up from the ground, and thus, when the sun was
+low, his light had shone a little way through beneath, as well as over
+the trunk.
+
+My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to "moralise this
+spectacle with a thousand similes." I only tell it him as a very pretty
+phenomenon. But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in
+nature--I mean new in regard to my knowledge, of course--always made me
+happy; and I was full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the
+thoughts it had brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom
+should I see in the next field, coming along the footpath, but the
+lady who had made herself so disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was
+rather a discord in my feeling at that moment; perhaps it would have
+been so at any moment. But I prepared myself to meet her in the strength
+of the good humour which nature had just bestowed upon me. For I fear
+the failing will go with me to the grave that I am very ready to be
+annoyed, even to the loss of my temper, at the urgings of ignoble
+prudence.
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Bowdler," I said.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Walton," she returned "I am afraid you thought me
+impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my
+way."
+
+"As such I take it," I answered with a smile.
+
+She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
+accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she
+went on to repeat the offence by way of justification.
+
+"It was all for Mrs. Walton's sake. You ought to consider her, Mr.
+Walton. She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is
+likely to be an invalid all her days--too much to take the trouble of a
+beggar's brat as well."
+
+"Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?" I
+asked.
+
+"O dear, no!" she answered. "She is far too good to complain of
+anything. That's just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr.
+Walton."
+
+"Then I beg you won't speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora."
+
+"O dear me! no. Not at all. I don't speak disrespectfully of her."
+
+"Even amongst the class of which she comes, 'a beggar's brat' would be
+regarded as bad language."
+
+"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Mr. Walton! If you _will_ take offence--"
+
+"I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
+warning against offending the little ones."
+
+Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure--let me hope in conviction
+of sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two Sundays.
+Then she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after this,
+and I believe my wife was not sorry.
+
+Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my
+wife's trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell;
+but, before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something
+like the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When
+I went into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her
+about it; but, indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got
+home. I found her in Connie's room as I had expected. Now although we
+were never in the habit of making mysteries of things in which there was
+no mystery, and talked openly before our children, and the more openly
+the older they grew, yet there were times when we wanted to have our
+talks quite alone, especially when we had not made up our minds about
+something. So I asked Ethelwyn to walk out with me.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't just this moment, husband," she answered. She was in
+the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
+without saying it aloud. "I can't just this moment, for there is no one
+at liberty to stay with Connie."
+
+"O, never mind me, mamma," said Connie cheerfully. "Theodora will take
+care of me," and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her
+side fast asleep.
+
+"There!" I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what
+I meant. "I will tell you afterwards," I said, laughing. "Come along,
+Ethel."
+
+"You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything,
+or your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won't want me long,
+will you, husband?"
+
+"I'm not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell."
+
+Susan was the old nurse.
+
+Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her
+across to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not
+shone out, and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it
+had gladdened mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his
+direct rays, had melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do
+with other shadows, without the mind knowing any more than the grass how
+the shadow departed. There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about
+it before you knew what I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see
+it only through my eyes and words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler,
+and what she had said. Ethel was very angry at her impertinence in
+speaking so to me. That was a wife's feeling, you know, and perhaps
+excusable in the first impression of the thing.
+
+"She seems to think," she said, "that she was sent into the world to
+keep other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her
+down, as the maids say."
+
+"O, I don't think there's much harm in her," I returned, which was easy
+generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. "Indeed, I am not sure
+that we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I
+met her that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with
+Theodora."
+
+"Still troubling yourself about that, husband?"
+
+"The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it
+should be met," I answered. "Our measures must begin sometime, and when,
+who can tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never
+begin at all."
+
+"Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at
+present--belonging to humanity rather than the individual, as you would
+say--consisting chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe,
+varied with lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our
+measures than our heads, aren't they?"
+
+"Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there's no fear about your heart. I'm
+not quite so sure about your head."
+
+"Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn't matter, does
+it?"
+
+"I don't know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for
+no chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger
+than its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head
+nearly, though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business.
+There's one thing we have both made up our minds about--that there is
+to be no concealment with the child. God's fact must be known by her. It
+would be cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to
+come upon her with a terrible shock some day. She must know from
+the first, by hearing it talked of--not by solemn and private
+communication--that she came out of the shrubbery. That's settled, is it
+not?"
+
+"Certainly. I see that to be the right way," responded Ethelwyn.
+
+"Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?"
+
+"We are bound to do as well for her as for our own."
+
+"Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the
+facts being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?"
+
+"I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
+done."
+
+"That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
+that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding
+or neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it
+would be a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good
+for herself, knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it
+not be kinder to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for
+her to relieve the gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our
+sakes--I hope we are above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude
+which will be given for it, and which is so often far beyond the worth
+of the thing done--"
+
+  "Alas! the gratitude of men
+  Hath oftener left me mourning,"
+
+said Ethel.
+
+"Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!"
+
+"Yes, thank you, I do."
+
+"But we must wish for gratitude for others' sake, though we may be
+willing to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as
+painful as Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes
+us think how much more we _might_ have done; how lovely a thing it is to
+give in return for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman
+must be in whom a trifle awakes so much emotion."
+
+"Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
+doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
+which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they
+can't show the difference in their thanks."
+
+"And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet,
+the same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But
+to return to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be
+recognisant of whence she came, and how she had been brought thence,
+might it not be better for her? Would it not be building on the truth?
+Would she not be happier for it?"
+
+
+"You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
+something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair
+to my place in the conference," said Ethel. "In fact, you think you
+are trying to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not
+say _wheedle_, me into something. It's a good thing you have the
+harmlessness of the dove, Harry, for you've got the other thing."
+
+"Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that
+what you call the cunning of the serpent--"
+
+"Wisdom, Harry, not cunning."
+
+"Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But
+here it is--bare and defenceless, only--let me warn you--with a whole
+battery behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to
+Constance."
+
+My wife laughed.
+
+"Well," she said, "for one who says so much about not thinking of the
+morrow, you do look rather far forward."
+
+"Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right."
+
+"But just think: the child is about three months old."
+
+"Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her.
+I don't say that she is to commence her duties at once."
+
+"But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that."
+
+"The training won't be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my
+love, that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it.
+And Turner does not give much hope."
+
+"O Harry, Harry, don't say so! I can't bear it. To think of the darling
+child lying like that all her life!"
+
+"It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven't
+you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child's nature since her
+accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying
+there such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her
+bonnets inside instead of outside her head."
+
+"Yes, but she needn't have been like that. Wynnie never will."
+
+"Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
+But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid
+that had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to
+toddle after something to fetch it for her."
+
+"Won't it be like making a slave of her?"
+
+"Won't it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack
+of service is the ruin of humanity."
+
+"But we can't train her then like one of our own."
+
+"Why not? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?"
+
+"Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and
+then make a servant of her."
+
+"You forget that the service would be part of her training from the
+first; and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her
+that she was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent
+her to take care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have
+perfect service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of
+service as the essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not
+education that unfits for service: it is the want of it."
+
+"Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served
+me worse than the rest."
+
+"Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they
+had been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than
+nine-tenths of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember
+that they had never been taught service--the highest accomplishment of
+all. To that everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there.
+But for service of this high sort, the education must begin with the
+beginning of the dawn of will. How often have you wished that you had
+servants who would believe in you, and serve you with the same truth
+with which you regarded them! The servants born in a man's house in
+the old times were more like his children than his servants. Here is a
+chance for you, as it were of a servant born in your own house. Connie
+loves the child: the child will love Connie, and find her delight in
+serving her like a little cherub. Not one of the maids to whom you have
+referred had ever been taught to think service other than an unavoidable
+necessity, the end of life being to serve yourself, not to serve others;
+and hence most of them would escape from it by any marriage almost that
+they had a chance of making. I don't say all servants are like that; but
+I do think that most of them are. I know very well that most mistresses
+are as much to blame for this result as the servants are; but we are not
+talking about them. Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are forced
+to do it--a most degrading condition to be in. But they would not be in
+any better condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises
+work is in as bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them
+free is to get them to regard service not only as their duty, but as
+therefore honourable, and besides and beyond this, in its own
+nature divine. In America, the very name of servant is repudiated as
+inconsistent with human dignity. There is _no_ dignity but of service.
+How different the whole notion of training is now from what it was in
+the middle ages! Service was honourable then. No doubt we have made
+progress as a whole, but in some things we have degenerated sadly.
+The first thing taught then was how to serve. No man could rise to the
+honour of knighthood without service. A nobleman's son even had to wait
+on his father, or to go into the family of another nobleman, and wait
+upon him as a page, standing behind his chair at dinner. This was an
+honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was a necessary step to
+higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To be set free from
+service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field; to be a squire
+to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his armour, to see
+that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap strong; to
+ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one attacked him,
+to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable because it was
+harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And what was this
+higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this knighthood consist?
+The very word means simply _service_. And for what was the knight thus
+waited upon by his squire? That he might be free to do as he pleased?
+No, but that he might be free to be the servant of all. By being a
+squire first, the servant of one, he learned to rise to the higher rank,
+that of servant of all. His horse was tended, this armour observed,
+his sword and spear and shield held to his hand, that he might have no
+trouble looking after himself, but might be free, strong, unwearied, to
+shoot like an arrow to the rescue of any and every one who needed his
+ready aid. There was a grand heart of Christianity in that old chivalry,
+notwithstanding all its abuses which must be no more laid to its charge
+than the burning of Jews and heretics to Christianity. It was the lack
+of it, not the presence of it that occasioned the abuses that coexisted
+with it. Train our Theodora as a holy child-servant, and there will be
+no need to restrain any impulse of wise affection from pouring itself
+forth upon her. My firm belief is that we should then love and honour
+her far more than if we made her just like one of our own."
+
+"But what if she should turn out utterly unfit for it?"
+
+"Ah! then would come an obstacle. But it will not come till that
+discovery is made."
+
+"But if we should be going wrong all the time?"
+
+"Now, there comes the kind of care that never troubles me, and which I
+so strongly object to. It won't hurt her anyhow. And we ought always
+to act upon the ideal; it is the only safe ground of action. When that
+which contradicts and resists, and would ruin our ideal, opposes us,
+then we must take measures; but not till then can we take measures, or
+know what measures it may be necessary to take. But the ideal itself
+is the only thing worth striving after. Remember what our Lord himself
+said: 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven
+is perfect.'"
+
+"Well, I will think about it, Harry. There is time enough."
+
+"Plenty. No time only not to think about it. The more you think about it
+the better. If a thing be a good thing, the more you think about it
+the better it will look; for its real nature will go on coming out and
+showing itself. I cannot doubt that you will soon see how good it is."
+
+We then went home. It was only two days after that my wife said to me--
+
+"I am more than reconciled to your plan, husband. It seems to me
+delightful."
+
+When we reentered Connie's room, we found that her baby had just waked,
+and she had managed to get one arm under her, and was trying to comfort
+her, for she was crying.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A SPRING CHAPTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+More especially now in my old age, I find myself "to a lingering motion
+bound." I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
+following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons.
+This may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a
+spring chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why I
+have called my story "The Seaboard Parish."
+
+I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things:
+one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was
+a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so
+could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
+about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
+and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
+have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
+seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
+justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my
+greed as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves
+and all, with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my
+little woman--a present from the outside world which she loved so much.
+And as I went there dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror
+in which, if I could find it, she would see it still more lovely than
+in a direct looking at itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay
+in fragments in the drawers and cabinets of my memory. And before I got
+home I had found all the pieces and put them together; and then it was
+a lovely little sonnet which a friend of mine had written and allowed me
+to see many years before. I was in the way of writing verses myself; but
+I should have been proud to have written this one. I never could have
+done that. Yet, as far as I knew, it had never seen the light through
+the windows of print. It was with some difficulty that I got it all
+right; but I thought I had succeeded very nearly, if not absolutely, and
+I said it over and over, till I was sure I should not spoil its music or
+its meaning by halting in the delivery of it.
+
+"Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you," I said.
+
+She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
+been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
+eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her
+two hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said
+what I have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to
+her. Here it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend
+had found the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he told me that
+there was a tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:
+
+  "I know not what among the grass thou art,
+    Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
+    Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
+  To send thine image through them to the heart;
+  But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
+    And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
+    Thou growest up within me from that hour,
+  And through the snow I with the spring depart.
+
+  I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
+    Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
+  There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
+    But thou a life immortal dost begin,
+  Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
+  Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!"
+
+"Will you say it again, papa?" said Connie; "I do not quite understand
+it."
+
+"I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
+write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
+have brought."
+
+"Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I
+may read it quite easily."
+
+I promised, and repeated the poem.
+
+"I understand it a little better," she said; "but the meaning is just
+like the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give
+it me in writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what
+else you have brought me."
+
+I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the
+plant and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only
+expressed satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat
+down with us.
+
+"I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning," I said. "She feels the
+loss of her mother very much, poor thing."
+
+"How old was she, papa?" asked Connie.
+
+"She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself,
+and her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old
+lady, you know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat on
+the tablecloth. 'Mr. Shafton,' she said, 'was one of the old school; he
+would never have done that. I don't know what the world is coming to.'"
+
+My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
+manners.
+
+"What did you say, papa?" they asked.
+
+"I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. 'O, it's all right now,
+my dear,' she said, 'when you've taken it up again. But I like good
+manners, though I live in a cottage now.'"
+
+"Had she seen better days, then?" asked Wynnie.
+
+"She was a farmer's daughter, and a farmer's widow. I suppose the chief
+difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead
+of a good-sized farmhouse."
+
+"But what is the story you have to tell us?"
+
+"I'm coming to that when you have done with your questions."
+
+"We have done, papa."
+
+"After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the
+cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good
+deal of her mother's sense of dignity about her,--but I want your mother
+to hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie."
+
+"O, do make haste, Wynnie," said Connie.
+
+When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
+
+"Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
+rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, 'Here it
+is, at last!' She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother's, and
+was holding it in one hand, while with the other she drew from the
+pocket--what do you think?"
+
+Various guesses were hazarded.
+
+"No, no--nothing like it. I know you _could_ never guess. Therefore it
+would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe. The
+old woman of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was
+wearing at the very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an
+iron horseshoe."
+
+"What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?"
+
+"That she proceeded at once to do. 'Do you remember, sir,' she said,
+'how that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?' 'I
+do remember having observed it there,' I answered; 'for once when I
+took notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, "I hope you are not
+afraid of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?" And she looked a little offended, and
+assured me to the contrary.' 'Well,' her daughter went on, 'about three
+months ago, I missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it.
+And here it is! I can hardly think she can have carried it about all
+that time without me finding it out, but I don't know. Here it is,
+anyhow. Perhaps when she felt death drawing nearer, she took it from
+somewhere where she had hidden it, and put it in her pocket. If I had
+found it in time, I would have put it in her coffin.' 'But why?' I
+asked. 'Do tell me the story about it, if you know it.' 'I know it quite
+well, for she told me all about it once. It is the shoe of a favourite
+mare of my father's--one he used to ride when he went courting my
+mother. My grandfather did not like to have a young man coming about the
+house, and so he came after the old folks were gone to bed. But he had a
+long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had to go over some stones
+to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread straw there, for it
+was under the window of my grandfather's room, that her shoes mightn't
+make a noise and wake him. And that's one of the shoes,' she said,
+holding it up to me. 'When the mare died, my mother begged my father for
+the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often stood and patted
+her neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.'"
+
+"But it was very naughty of her, wasn't it," said Wynnie, "to do that
+without her father's knowledge?"
+
+"I don't say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
+ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might
+find that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn't
+a father, we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a
+child. The father's part has to come first, and teach the child's part.
+Now, if I might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably
+it was much softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning,
+and unreasonable man--such that it scarcely ever came into the
+daughter's head that she had anything else to do with regard to him than
+beware of the consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The
+whole thing, I allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to
+blame, and far more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more
+likely from the high character of the old dame, and the romantic way in
+which she clung to the memory of the courtship. A true heart only does
+not grow old. And I have, therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a
+happy one. Besides, I daresay it was very much the custom of the country
+where they were, and that makes some difference."
+
+"Well, I'm sure, papa, you wouldn't like any of us to go and do like
+that," said Wynnie.
+
+"Assuredly not, my dear," I answered, laughing. "Nor have I any fear of
+it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things
+to trouble me if you did?"
+
+"If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an _if_"
+said Wynnie.
+
+"It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to
+you as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all
+possible for you to do such a thing."
+
+"It's too dreadful to talk about, papa," said Wynnie; and the subject
+was dropped.
+
+She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
+danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
+whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
+wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If
+the perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked
+into her own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that
+she was the doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if
+she had been deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of
+the house. This came of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general
+dissatisfaction with herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith
+in the divine sympathy, or sufficient confidence of final purification.
+She never spared herself; and if she was a little severe on the younger
+ones sometimes, no one was yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all
+their hard crusts for them, always give them the best and take the worst
+for herself. If there was any part in the dish that she was helping that
+she thought nobody would like, she invariably assigned it to her own
+share. It looked like a determined self-mortification sometimes; but
+that was not it. She did not care for her own comfort enough to feel it
+any mortification; though I observed that when her mother or I helped
+her to anything nice, she ate it with as much relish as the youngest
+of the party. And her sweet smile was always ready to meet the least
+kindness that was offered her. Her obedience was perfect, and had been
+so for very many years, as far as we could see. Indeed, not since she
+was the merest child had there been any contest between us. Now, of
+course, there was no demand of obedience: she was simply the best
+earthly friend that her father and mother had. It often caused me some
+passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as well as her devotion
+to her home, might cause her great suffering some day; but when those
+thoughts came, I just gave her to God to take care of. Her mother
+sometimes said to her that she would make an excellent wife for a poor
+man. She would brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a compliment
+of the best sort. And she did not forget it, as the sequel will show.
+She would choose to sit with one candle lit when there were two on the
+table, wasting her eyes to save the candles. "Which will you have for
+dinner to-day, papa, roast beef or boiled?" she asked me once, when her
+mother was too unwell to attend to the housekeeping. And when I replied
+that I would have whichever she liked best--"The boiled beef lasts
+longest, I think," she said. Yet she was not only as liberal and kind as
+any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer, and perhaps more important
+for the final formation of a character, carefully just to everyone with
+whom she had any dealings. Her sense of law was very strong. Law with
+her was something absolute, and not to be questioned. In her childhood
+there was one lady to whom for years she showed a decided aversion,
+and we could not understand it, for it was the most inoffensive Miss
+Boulderstone. When she was nearly grown up, one of us happening to
+allude to the fact, she volunteered an explanation. Miss Boulderstone
+had happened to call one day when Wynnie, then between three and four
+was in disgrace--_in the corner_, in fact. Miss Boulderstone interceded
+for her; and this was the whole front of her offending.
+
+"I _was_ so angry!" she said. "'As if my papa did not know best when I
+ought to come out of the corner!' I said to myself. And I couldn't bear
+her for ever so long after that."
+
+Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
+favourite before she died. She left Wynnie--for she and her brother
+were the last of their race--a death's-head watch, which had been in
+the family she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen
+Elizabeth's time. I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as
+well repaired as its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since,
+though not with the greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an
+old death's-head, the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears it
+to this day, and wouldn't part with it for the best watch in the world.
+
+I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more
+able to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as
+yet my story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I
+will fulfil them, and I shall be content.
+
+Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old couple,
+for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they were not
+born old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a decaying family
+that had not left the land on which they were born for a great many
+generations--though the old people had not, of what the French call
+sentiments, one between them, they were yet capable of a stronger and,
+I had almost said, more romantic attachment, than many couples who have
+married from love; for the lady's sole trouble in dying was what her
+brother _would_ do without her; and from the day of her death, he grew
+more and more dull and seemingly stupid. Nothing gave him any pleasure
+but having Wynnie to dinner with him. I knew that it must be very dull
+for her, but she went often, and I never heard her complain of it,
+though she certainly did look fagged--not _bored_, observe, but
+fagged--showing that she had been exerting herself to meet the
+difficulties of the situation. When the good man died, we found that he
+had left all his money in my hands, in trust for the poor of the parish,
+to be applied in any way I thought best. This involved me in much
+perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to make money useful to
+the poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.
+
+My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property
+my wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private
+fortune, and the income of several years (not my income from the church,
+it may be as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the encumbrances.
+But even then there remained much to be done, if I would be the good
+steward that was not to be ashamed at his Lord's coming. First of all
+there were many cottages to be built for the labourers on the estate. If
+the farmers would not, or could not, help, I must do it; for to provide
+decent dwellings for them, was clearly one of the divine conditions in
+the righteous tenure of property, whatever the human might be; for it
+was not for myself alone, or for myself chiefly, that this property was
+given to me; it was for those who lived upon it. Therefore I laid out
+what money I could, not only in getting all the land clearly in its
+right relation to its owner, but in doing the best I could for those
+attached to it who could not help themselves. And when I hint to my
+reader that I had some conscience in paying my curate, though, as they
+had no children, they did not require so much as I should otherwise have
+felt compelled to give them, he will easily see that as my family grew
+up I could not have so much to give away of my own as I should have
+liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr. Boulderstone was the more
+acceptable to me.
+
+One word more ere I finish this chapter.--I should not like my friends
+to think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because I
+have made no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the
+first time, because of my daughter's illness. It was much easier to give
+them now than when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty of room
+in the old hall. But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar gathering
+there every Easter.
+
+Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not
+mentioned him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie's
+accident. The fact was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him,
+a long holiday. Martha had had several disappointing illnesses, and her
+general health had suffered so much in consequence that there was even
+some fear of her lungs, and a winter in the south of France had
+been strongly recommended. Upon this I came in with more than a
+recommendation, and insisted that they should go. They had started in
+the beginning of October, and had not returned up to the time of which I
+am now about to write--somewhere in the beginning of the month of April.
+But my sister was now almost quite well, and I was not sorry to think
+that I should soon have a little more leisure for such small literary
+pursuits as I delighted in--to my own enrichment, and consequently to
+the good of my parishioners and friends.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+AN IMPORTANT LETTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was, then, in the beginning of April that I received one morning an
+epistle from an old college friend of mine, with whom I had renewed my
+acquaintance of late, through the pleasure which he was kind enough to
+say he had derived from reading a little book of mine upon the relation
+of the mind of St. Paul to the gospel story. His name was Shepherd--a
+good name for a clergyman. In his case both Christian name and
+patronymic might remind him well of his duty. David Shepherd ought to be
+a good clergyman.
+
+As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find
+my wife.
+
+"Here is Shepherd," I said, "with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to
+give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as
+he understands I have a curate as good as myself--that is what the old
+fellow says--it might not suit me to take my family to his place for
+the summer. He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all
+good. His house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I
+should not like to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the
+letter for yourself, and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back
+so fresh and active that it will be no oppression to him to take the
+whole of the duty here. I will run and ask Turner whether it would be
+safe to move Connie, and whether the sea-air would be good for her."
+
+"One would think you were only twenty, husband--you make up your mind so
+quickly, and are in such a hurry."
+
+The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many
+years since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once
+more, in its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing
+between us and America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited
+me so that my wife's reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary
+to bring me to my usually quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old
+grannie's pardon, and set off to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her
+to read and ponder Shepherd's letter.
+
+"What do you think, Turner?" I said, and told him the case. He looked
+rather grave.
+
+"When would you think of going?" he asked.
+
+"About the beginning of June."
+
+"Nearly two months," he said, thoughtfully. "And Miss Connie was not the
+worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?"
+
+"The better, I do think."
+
+"Has she had any increase of pain since?"
+
+"None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that."
+
+He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.
+
+"It is a long journey."
+
+"She could make it by easy stages."
+
+"It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such
+a thorough change in every way--if only it could be managed without
+fatigue and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between
+this and that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner
+you get her out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit
+for that yet."
+
+"A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose."
+
+"Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid's
+instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than
+those of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to
+anything involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must
+not judge that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two
+patients, who considered themselves _bedlars_, as you will find the
+common people in the part you are going to, call them--bedridden, that
+is. One of them I persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although
+her sense of inability was anything but feigned, and she will be a
+sufferer to the end of her days, yet she goes about the house without
+much inconvenience, and I suspect is not only physically but morally the
+better for it. The other would not consent to try, and I believe lies
+there still."
+
+"The will has more to do with most things than people generally
+suppose," I said. "Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we
+resolve to make the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?"
+
+"It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot
+tell beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a
+respecter of persons, you know."
+
+I returned to my wife. She was in Connie's room.
+
+"Well, my dear," I said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of what?" she asked.
+
+"Why, of Shepherd's letter, of course," I answered.
+
+"I've been ordering the dinner since, Harry."
+
+"The dinner!" I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife
+was only teasing me. "What's the dinner to the Atlantic?"
+
+"What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?" said Connie, from whose
+roguish eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and
+that _she_ was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.
+
+"The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters
+of the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the
+Universal Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject."
+
+"O papa!" laughed Connie; "you know what I mean."
+
+"Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!"
+
+"But do you really mean, papa," she said "that you will take me to the
+Atlantic?"
+
+"If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as
+possible."
+
+The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan,
+which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.
+
+"My darling! You have hurt yourself!"
+
+"O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But
+I soon found that I hadn't any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to
+you!"
+
+"On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One
+always knows where to find you."
+
+She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very
+bewitching whole.
+
+"But," I went on, "I mean to try whether my dolly won't bear moving. One
+thing is clear, I can't go without it. Do you think you could be got on
+the sofa to-day without hurting you?"
+
+"I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet.
+Mamma, do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner."
+
+When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the
+conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the
+lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips,
+and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face
+showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had
+had to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.
+
+"I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn," she said.
+
+"What a sharp sight you must have, child!"
+
+"I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before
+me."
+
+I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are.
+Neither did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.
+
+"But," she went on, "I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets
+in my feet."
+
+"You don't say so!" I exclaimed.
+
+She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only
+making a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.
+
+"Yes. Isn't it a wonderful fact?" she said.
+
+"It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank
+God for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning
+to recover a little. But we mustn't make too much of it, lest I should
+be mistaken," I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too
+much.
+
+But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in
+her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both silent,--
+
+"O papa!" she said, "to think of ever walking out with you again, and
+feeling the wind on my face! I can hardly believe it possible."
+
+"It is so mild, I think you might have half that pleasure at once," I
+answered..
+
+And I opened the window, let the spring air gently move her hair for one
+moment, and then shut it again. Connie breathed deep, and said after a
+little pause,--
+
+"I had no idea how delightful it was. To think that I have been in the
+way of breathing that every moment for so many years and never thought
+about it!"
+
+"It is not always just like that in this climate. But I ought not to
+have made that remark when I wanted to make this other: that I suspect
+we shall find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists
+chiefly in the closing of the human eyes; that at least far more of it
+than people think remains about us still, only we are so filled with
+foolish desires and evil cares, that we cannot see or hear, cannot even
+smell or taste the pleasant things round about us. We have need to
+pray in regard to the right receiving of the things of the senses even,
+'Lord, open thou our hearts to understand thy word;' for each of these
+things is as certainly a word of God as Jesus is the Word of God. He
+has made nothing in vain. All is for our teaching. Shall I tell you what
+such a breath of fresh air makes me think of?"
+
+"It comes to me," said Connie, "like forgiveness when I was a little
+girl and was naughty. I used to feel just like that."
+
+"It is the same kind of thing I feel," I said--"as if life from the
+Spirit of God were coming into my soul: I think of the wind that bloweth
+where it listeth. Wind and spirit are the same word in the Greek; and
+the Latin word _spirit_ comes even nearer to what we are saying, for
+it is the wind as _breathed_. And now, Connie, I will tell you--and
+you will see how I am growing able to talk to you like quite an old
+friend--what put me in such a delight with Mr. Shepherd's letter and so
+exposed me to be teased by mamma and you. As I read it, there rose up
+before me a vision of one sight of the sea which I had when I was a
+young man, long before I saw your mamma. I had gone out for a walk along
+some high downs. But I ought to tell you that I had been working rather
+hard at Cambridge, and the life seemed to be all gone out of me. Though
+my holidays had come, they did not feel quite like holidays--not as
+holidays used to feel when I was a boy. Even when walking along those
+downs with the scents of sixteen grasses or so in my brain, like a
+melody with the odour of the earth for the accompaniment upon which it
+floated, and with just enough of wind to stir them up and set them in
+motion, I could not feel at all. I remembered something of what I had
+used to feel in such places, but instead of believing in that, I doubted
+now whether it had not been all a trick that I played myself--a fancied
+pleasure only. I was walking along, then, with the sea behind me. It was
+a warm, cloudy day--I had had no sunshine since I came out. All at once
+I turned--I don't know why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had
+seen it last, not all gray. It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all
+over with drops, pools, and lakes of light, of all shades of depth, from
+a light shimmer of tremulous gray, through a half light that turned the
+prevailing lead colour into translucent green that seemed to grow out
+of its depths--through this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and
+deepening till my very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity
+of its molten silver. There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks
+in the clouds over the sea, through which, the air being filled with
+vapour, I could see the long lines of the sun-rays descending on the
+waters like rain--so like a rain of light that the water seemed to plash
+up in light under their fall. I questioned the past no more; the present
+seized upon me, and I knew that the past was true, and that nature was
+more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I could grasp. It was a
+lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the God that made the
+glory and my soul."
+
+While I spoke Connie's tears had been flowing quietly.
+
+"And mamma and I were making fun while you were seeing such things as
+those!" she said pitifully.
+
+"You didn't hurt them one bit, my darling--neither mamma nor you. If I
+had been the least cross about it, as I should have been when I was as
+young as at the time of which I was thinking, that would have ruined the
+vision entirely. But your merriment only made me enjoy it more. And, my
+Connie, I hope you will see the Atlantic before long; and if one vision
+should come as brilliant as that, we shall be fortunate indeed, if we
+went all the way to the west to see that only."
+
+"O papa! I dare hardly think of it--it is too delightful. But do you
+think we shall really go?"
+
+"I do. Here comes your mamma--I am going to say to Shepherd, my dear,
+that I will take his parish in hand, and if I cannot, after all, go
+myself, will find some one, so that he need be in no anxiety from the
+uncertainty which must hang over our movements even till the experiment
+itself is made."
+
+"Very well, husband. I am quite satisfied."
+
+And as I watched Connie, I saw that hope and expectation did much to
+prepare her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONNIE'S DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Turner, being a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to
+invent, and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of
+litter, which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our
+own carriage for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without
+disturbing her, and placed in a similar manner in the railway carriage.
+He had laid Connie repeatedly upon it before he was satisfied that
+the arrangement of the springs, &c., was successful. But at length she
+declared that it was perfect, and that she would not mind being carried
+across the Arabian desert on a camel's back with that under her.
+
+As the season advanced, she continued to improve. I shall never forget
+the first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an
+infant coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of
+a child of eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received
+the new impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much
+for her at first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a
+wild thing on a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more
+than she could bear. After she was laid down she closed her eyes, and
+the smile that flickered about her mouth was of a sort that harmonised
+entirely with the two great tears that crept softly out from under her
+eyelids, and sank, rather than ran, down her cheeks. She lay so that she
+faced a rich tract of gently receding upland, plentifully wooded to the
+horizon's edge, and through the wood peeped the white and red houses of
+a little hamlet, with the square tower of its church just rising above
+the trees. A kind of frame was made to the whole picture by the nearer
+trees of our own woods, through an opening in which, evidently made or
+left for its sake, the distant prospect was visible. It was a morning in
+early summer, when the leaves were not quite full-grown but almost, and
+their green was shining and pure as the blue of the sky, when the air
+had no touch of bitterness or of lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and
+yet filled the lungs with the reviving as of a draught of cold water. We
+had fastened the carriage umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade
+her perfectly without obscuring her prospect; and behind this we all
+crept, leaving her to come to herself without being looked at, for
+emotion is a shy and sacred thing and should be tenderly hidden by those
+who are near. The bees kept very _beesy_ all about us. To see one huge
+fellow, as big as three ordinary ones with pieces of red and yellow
+about him, as if he were the beadle of all bee-dom, and overgrown in
+consequence--to see him, I say, down in a little tuft of white clover,
+rolling about in it, hardly able to move for fatness, yet bumming away
+as if his business was to express the delight of the whole creation--was
+a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so light that they seemed
+to tumble up into the air, and get down again with difficulty. They
+bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of purpose. "If I could
+but see once, for an hour, into the mind of a butterfly," I thought, "it
+would be to me worth all the natural history I ever read. If I could but
+see why he changes his mind so often and so suddenly--what he saw about
+that flower to make him seek it--then why, on a nearer approach, he
+should decline further acquaintance with it, and go rocking away through
+the air, to do the same fifty times over again--it would give me an
+insight into all animal and vegetable life that ages of study could not
+bring me up to." I was thinking all this behind my daughter's umbrella,
+while a lark, whose body had melted quite away in the heavenly spaces,
+was scattering bright beads of ringing melody straight down upon our
+heads; while a cock was crowing like a clarion from the home-farm, as if
+in defiance of the golden glitter of his silent brother on the roof of
+the stable; while a little stream that scampered down the same slope
+as the lawn lay upon, from a well in the stable-yard, mingled its
+sweet undertone of contentment with the jubilation of the lark and the
+business-like hum of the bees; and while white clouds floated in the
+majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the heavens. The air was so
+full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the crude substance that
+God might take to make babies' souls of--only the very simile smells of
+materialism, and therefore I do not like it.
+
+"Papa," said Connie at length, and I was beside her in a moment. Her
+face looked almost glorified with delight: there was a hush of that awe
+upon it which is perhaps one of the deepest kinds of delight. She put
+out her thin white hand, took hold of a button of my coat, drew me down
+towards her, and said in a whisper:
+
+"Don't you think God is here, papa?"
+
+"Yes, I do, my darling," I answered.
+
+"Doesn't _he_ enjoy this?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. He wouldn't make us enjoy it if he did not enjoy it. It
+would be to deceive us to make us glad and blessed, while our Father
+did not care about it, or how it came to us. At least it would amount to
+making us no longer his children."
+
+"I am so glad you think so. I do. And I shall enjoy it so much more
+now."
+
+She could hardly finish her sentence, but burst out sobbing so that I
+was afraid she would hurt herself. I saw, however, that it was best to
+leave her to quiet herself, and motioned to the rest to keep back and
+let her recover as she could. The emotion passed off in a summer shower,
+and when I went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet
+landscape after the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle
+game of her own past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry--merrier,
+notwithstanding her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.
+
+"Look at that comical sparrow," she said. "Look how he cocks his head
+first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is
+he bumptious, or what?"
+
+"I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys;
+and I suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
+understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either."
+
+"Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to
+school," said Connie.
+
+"It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the
+sparrows," I answered. "Look at them now," I exclaimed, as a little
+crowd of them suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment
+before, and exploded in objurgation and general unintelligible
+excitement. After some obscure fluttering of wings and pecking, they all
+vanished except two, which walked about in a dignified manner, trying
+apparently to seem quite unconscious each of the other's presence.
+
+"I think it was a political meeting of some sort," said Connie, laughing
+merrily.
+
+"Well, they have this advantage over us," I answered, "that they get
+through their business whatever it may be, with considerably greater
+expedition than we get through ours."
+
+A short silence followed, during which Connie lay contemplating
+everything.
+
+"What do you think we girls are like, then, papa?" she asked at length.
+"Don't say you don't know, now."
+
+"I ought to know something more about you than I do about schoolboys.
+And I think I do know a little about girls--not much though. They puzzle
+me a good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie."
+
+"You can't help doing that, papa," interrupted Connie, adding with her
+old roguishness, "You mustn't pass yourself off for very knowing for
+that. By the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried."
+
+"I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie."
+
+A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us,
+passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:
+
+"I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at
+best--a creature you can't understand."
+
+"On the contrary, Connie, I think I understand you almost as well as
+mamma. But there isn't so much to understand yet, you know, as there
+will be."
+
+Her merriment returned.
+
+"Tell me what girls are like, then, or I shall sulk all day because you
+say there isn't so much in me as in mamma."
+
+"Well, I think, if the boys are like sparrows, the girls are like
+swallows. Did you ever watch them before rain, Connie, skimming about
+over the lawn as if it were water, low towards its surface, but never
+alighting? You never see them grubbing after worms. Nothing less than
+things with wings like themselves will satisfy them. They will be
+obliged to the earth only for a little mud to build themselves nests
+with. For the rest, they live in the air, and on the creatures of the
+air. And then, when they fancy the air begins to be uncivil, sending
+little shoots of cold through their warm feathers, they vanish. They
+won't stand it. They're off to a warmer climate, and you never know till
+you find they're not there any more. There, Connie!"
+
+"I don't know, papa, whether you are making game of us or not. If you
+are not, then I wish all you say were quite true of us. If you are then
+I think it is not quite like you to be satirical."
+
+"I am no believer in satire, Connie. And I didn't mean any. The swallows
+are lovely creatures, and there would be no harm if the girls were
+a little steadier than the swallows. Further satire than that I am
+innocent of."
+
+"I don't mind that much, papa. Only I'm steady enough, and no thanks to
+me for it," she added with a sigh.
+
+"Connie," I said, "it's all for the sake of your wings that you're kept
+in your nest."
+
+She did not stay out long this first day, for the life the air gave
+her soon tired her weak body. But the next morning she was brighter and
+better, and longing to get up and go out again. When she was once more
+laid on her couch on the lawn, in the midst of the world of light and
+busy-ness, in which the light was the busiest of all, she said to me:
+
+"Papa, I had such a strange dream last night: shall I tell it you?"
+
+"If you please, my dear. I am very fond of dreams that have any sense
+in them--or even of any that have good nonsense in them. I woke
+this morning, saying to myself, 'Dante, the poet, must have been a
+respectable man, for he was permitted by the council of Florence to
+carry the Nicene Creed and the Multiplication Table in his coat of
+arms.' Now tell me your dream."
+
+Connie laughed. All the household tried to make Connie laugh, and
+generally succeeded. It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was
+sure to be recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in
+making Connie laugh.
+
+"Mine wasn't a dream to make me laugh. It was too dreadful at first, and
+too delightful afterwards. I suppose it was getting out for the first
+time yesterday that made me dream it. I thought I was lying quite still,
+without breathing even, with my hands straight down by my sides and my
+eyes closed. I did not choose to open them, for I knew that if I did
+I should see nothing but the inside of the lid of my coffin. I did not
+mind it much at first, for I was very quiet, and not uncomfortable.
+Everything was as silent as it should be, for I was ten feet and a half
+under the surface of the earth in the churchyard. Old Sogers was not far
+from me on one side, and that was a comfort; only there was a thick wall
+of earth between. But as the time went on, I began to get uncomfortable.
+I could not help thinking how long I should have to wait for the
+resurrection. Somehow I had forgotten all that you teach us about that.
+Perhaps it was a punishment--the dream--for forgetting it."
+
+"Silly child! Your dream is far better than your reflections."
+
+"Well, I'll go on with my dream. I lay a long time till I got very
+tired, and wanted to get up, O, so much! But still I lay, and although I
+tried, I could not move hand or foot. At last I burst out crying. I was
+ashamed of crying in my coffin, but I couldn't bear it any longer.
+I thought I was quite disgraced, for everybody was expected to be
+perfectly quiet and patient down there. But the moment I began to cry,
+I heard a sound. And when I listened it was the sound of spades and
+pickaxes. It went on and on, and came nearer and nearer. And then--it
+was so strange--I was dreadfully frightened at the idea of the light and
+the wind, and of the people seeing me in my coffin and my night-dress,
+and tried to persuade myself that it was somebody else they were digging
+for, or that they were only going to lay another coffin over mine. And I
+thought that if it was you, papa, I shouldn't mind how long I lay there,
+for I shouldn't feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word
+to each other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer,
+and at last a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through,
+upon the lid of the coffin, right over my head.
+
+"'Here she is, poor thing!' I heard a sweet voice say.
+
+"'I'm so glad we've found her,' said another voice.
+
+"'She couldn't bear it any longer,' said a third more pitiful voice than
+either of the others. 'I heard her first,' it went on. 'I was away up in
+Orion, when I thought I heard a woman crying that oughtn't to be crying.
+And I stopped and listened. And I heard her again. Then I knew that it
+was one of the buried ones, and that she had been buried long enough,
+and was ready for the resurrection. So as any business can wait except
+that, I flew here and there till I fell in with the rest of you.'
+
+"I think, papa, that this must have been because of what you were
+saying the other evening about the mysticism of St. Paul; that while he
+defended with all his might the actual resurrection of Christ and the
+resurrection of those he came to save, he used it as meaning something
+more yet, as a symbol for our coming out of the death of sin into the
+life of truth. Isn't that right, papa?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; I believe so. But I want to hear your dream first, and
+then your way of accounting for it."
+
+"There isn't much more of it now."
+
+"There must be the best of it."
+
+"Yes; I allow that. Well, while they spoke--it was a wonderfully clear
+and connected dream: I never had one like it for that, or for anything
+else--they were clearing away the earth and stones from the top of my
+coffin. And I lay trembling and expecting to be looked at, like a thing
+in a box as I was, every moment. But they lifted me, coffin and all, out
+of the grave, for I felt the motion of it up. Then they set it down, and
+I heard them taking the lid off. But after the lid was off, it did not
+seem to make much difference to me. I could not open my eyes. I saw no
+light, and felt no wind blowing upon me. But I heard whispering about
+me. Then I felt warm, soft hands washing my face, and then I felt wafts
+of wind coming on my face, and thought they came from the waving of
+wings. And when they had washed my eyes, the air came upon them so sweet
+and cool! and I opened them, I thought, and here I was lying on this
+couch, with butterflies and bees flitting and buzzing about me, the
+brook singing somewhere near me, and a lark up in the sky. But there
+were no angels--only plenty of light and wind and living creatures.
+And I don't think I ever knew before what happiness meant. Wasn't it a
+resurrection, papa, to come out of the grave into such a world as this?"
+
+"Indeed it was, my darling--and a very beautiful and true dream. There
+is no need for me to moralise it to you, for you have done so for
+yourself already. But not only do I think that the coming out of sin
+into goodness, out of unbelief into faith in God, is like your dream;
+but I do expect that no dream of such delight can come up to the sense
+of fresh life and being that we shall have when we get on the higher
+body after this one won't serve our purpose any longer, and is worn out
+and cast aside. The very ability of the mind, whether of itself, or by
+some inspiration of the Almighty, to dream such things, is a proof of
+our capacity for such things, a proof, I think, that for such things we
+were made. Here comes in the chance for faith in God--the confidence in
+his being and perfection that he would not have made us capable without
+meaning to fill that capacity. If he is able to make us capable, that is
+the harder half done already. The other he can easily do. And if he is
+love he will do it. You should thank God for that dream, Connie."
+
+"I was afraid to do that, papa."
+
+"That is as much as to fear that there is one place to which David
+might have fled, where God would not find him--the most terrible of all
+thoughts."
+
+"Where do you mean, papa?"
+
+"Dreamland, my dear. If it is right to thank God for a beautiful
+thought--I mean a thought of strength and grace giving you fresh life
+and hope--why should you be less bold to thank him when such thoughts
+arise in plainer shape--take such vivid forms to your mind that they
+seem to come through the doors of the eyes into the vestibule of the
+brain, and thence into the inner chambers of the soul?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+
+
+
+
+For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
+journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
+prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the
+sojourn. First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer,
+consisting, as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground
+ginger, and cold water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge,
+exhausted and renewed about twelve times before the day of departure
+arrived; and when at last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered
+with dismay that they had drunk the last drop two days before, and
+there was none in stock. Then there was a wonderful and more successful
+hoarding of marbles, of a variety so great that my memory refuses to
+bear the names of the different kinds, which, I think, must have greatly
+increased since the time when I too was a boy, when some marbles--one
+of real, white marble with red veins especially--produced in my mind
+something of the delight that a work of art produces now. These
+were carefully deposited in one of the many divisions of a huge old
+hair-trunk, which they had got their uncle Weir, who could use his
+father's tools with pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them with
+a multiplicity of boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and
+slides, that was quite bewildering. In this same box was stowed also
+a quantity of hair, the gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the
+premises. This was for making fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on
+the part of Harry that it was to be employed in catching whales and
+crocodiles. Then all their favourite books were stowed away in the same
+chest, in especial a packet of a dozen penny books, of which I think I
+could give a complete list now. For one afternoon as I searched about in
+the lumber-room after a set of old library steps, which I wanted to get
+repaired, I came upon the chest, and opening it, discovered my boys'
+hoard, and in it this packet of books. I sat down on the top of the
+chest and read them all through, from Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop
+o' my Thumb without rising, and this in the broad daylight, with the
+yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the rose-coloured silken seat,
+richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair with three golden legs.
+Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say the names of them,
+over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding now that they
+had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something in potency,
+they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these, and Charlie
+not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding, in
+virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
+sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
+string; a rabbit's skin; a Noah's ark; an American clock, that
+refused to go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of
+lead-soldiers, and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt
+ball having an eagle of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
+
+Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this
+magazine could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to
+follow us to the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent
+on before us, but the boys had intended the precious box to go with
+themselves. Knowing well, however, how little they would miss it, and
+with what shouts of south-sea discovery they would greet the forgotten
+treasure when they returned, I insisted on the lumbering article being
+left in peace. So that, as man goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever
+he may have accumulated before the fatal moment, they had to set off for
+the far country without chest or ginger-beer--not therefore altogether
+so desolate and unprovided for as they imagined. The abandoned treasure
+was forgotten the moment the few tears it had occasioned were wiped
+away.
+
+It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
+sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows
+were twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the
+dear old house.
+
+"I'm sorry to leave the swallows behind," said Wynnie, as she stepped
+into the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already
+there, eager and strong-hearted for the journey.
+
+We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
+forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed
+to enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of
+the meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we
+met bravely diligent at their day's work, as they trudged along the road
+with wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I
+could see her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its
+expression that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a
+brown-faced gipsy family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the
+passing carriage. A fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under
+the convoy of the parent duck, next attracted her.
+
+"Look; look. Isn't that delicious?" she cried.
+
+"I don't think I should like it though," said Wynnie.
+
+"What shouldn't you like, Wynnie?" asked her mother.
+
+"To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!"
+
+"They feel it with their legs and their webby toes," said Connie.
+
+"Yes, that is some consolation," answered Wynnie.
+
+"And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
+winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning."
+
+I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie's illness had
+not in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had
+rather, as it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and
+sympathetic, so that the things around her could enter her soul even
+more easily than before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in
+reality brought her into closer contact with the movements of all
+vitality.
+
+We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station.
+Everybody almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for
+Connie's sake chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had
+forgotten to say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak
+to him. The same instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie
+was the centre of all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother
+or sister. Had she been a martyr who had stood the test and received her
+aureole, she could hardly have been more regarded. The common use of
+the word martyr is a curious instance of how words get degraded. The
+sufferings involved in martyrdom, and not the pure will giving occasion
+to that suffering, is fixed upon by the common mind as the martyrdom.
+The witness-bearing is lost sight of, except we can suppose that "a
+martyr to the toothache" means a witness of the fact of the toothache
+and its tortures. But while _martyrdom_ really means a bearing for the
+sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any suffering, even that
+we have brought upon ourselves, may become martyrdom. When it is so
+borne that the sufferer therein bears witness to the presence and
+fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to his will, in gentle
+endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which is not seldom to be
+seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than all, perhaps, and
+rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and merciful consequence
+of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with righteous shame, as the
+cleansing of the Father's hand, indicating that repentance unto life
+which lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes him such that the
+holiest men of old would talk to him with gladness and respect, then
+indeed it may be called a martyrdom. This latter could not be Connie's
+case, but the former was hers, and so far she might be called a martyr,
+even as the old women of the village designated her.
+
+After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
+post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
+abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
+exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
+trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
+do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were
+about, so long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the
+man-servant, who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of
+the establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to
+everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the
+wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we
+could not possibly get on without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise
+beside the driver from the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than
+otherwise at the noise of the youngsters.
+
+"Good-bye, Marshmallows," they were shouting at the top of their voices,
+as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
+wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody's ears on the
+open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
+condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that
+there was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them
+as much liberty as could be afforded them.
+
+At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now
+in wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany
+us a good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us
+in moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
+skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and
+only at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times
+on the way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the
+streets delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the
+children and servants, all but my wife's maid, on before us, under the
+charge of Walter. This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped
+only the night, for Connie found herself quite able to go on the next
+morning. Here Turner left us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked
+a little out of spirits after his departure, but soon recovered herself.
+The next night we spent at a small town on the borders of Devonshire,
+which was the limit of our railway travelling. Here we remained for
+another whole day, for the remnant of the journey across part of
+Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be posted, and was a good five
+hours' work. We started about eleven o'clock, full of spirits at
+the thought that we had all but accomplished the only part of the
+undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness. Connie was quite
+merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open carriage with a hood.
+Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the maid in the rumble,
+and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we had four horses;
+and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and thankfulness,
+who would not be happy?
+
+There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I
+altogether understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment
+has something to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion,
+the change of scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the
+next turn in the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the
+pine-trees especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the
+harness as you pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses,
+the glitter and the shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy
+faces, the scent of burning wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a
+thousand other things combine to make such a journey delightful. But I
+believe it needs something more than this--something even closer to the
+human life--to account for the pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect
+it is its living symbolism; the hidden relations which it bears to the
+eternal soul in its aspirations and longings--ever following after, ever
+attaining, never satisfied. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. A man,
+you will allow, perhaps, may be content although he is not and cannot be
+happy: I feel inclined to turn all this the other way, saying that a man
+ought always to be happy, never to be content. You will see I do not say
+_contented_; I say _content_. Here comes in his faith: his life is
+hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded. All things are his, to
+become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as his being enlarges
+to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary incompleteness
+falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God's idea he is
+complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God the
+Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
+gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch
+as he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I
+leave it, however.
+
+I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt
+I was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with
+full confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man
+be happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the
+feeble knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill?
+True, the fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp
+of life; but if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth;
+if less of fire, more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light.
+Verily, youth is good, but old age is better--to the man who forsakes
+not his youth when his youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature
+do not depend upon youth or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose
+meekness inherits the earth. The smell of that field of beans gives me
+more delight now than ever it could have given me when I was a youth.
+And if I ask myself why I find it is simply because I have more faith
+now than I had then. It came to me then as an accident of nature--a
+passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs' share of the crumbs. Now
+I believe that God _means_ that odour of the bean-field; that when Jesus
+smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in Galilee, he thought of his
+Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if I should never smell it
+again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age should make me deaf
+as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope you are too, or
+will be before you have done with this same beautiful mystical life
+of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's books of
+poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest, perhaps.
+
+And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
+I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
+describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
+countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off
+in a word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the
+brightness of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a
+little weary, lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping
+towards the earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the brightness of the
+morning star, ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that
+brightens at the sun's approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its
+light, and somewhat sad because severe. Connie's face was bright with
+the brightness of a lake in the rosy evening, the sound of the river
+flowing in and the sound of the river flowing forth just audible, but
+itself still, and content to be still and mirror the sunset. Dora's was
+bright with the brightness of a marigold that follows the sun without
+knowing it; and Eliza's was bright with the brightness of a half-blown
+cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This last is not a good simile, but
+I cannot find a better. I confess failure, and go on.
+
+After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
+carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
+figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they
+were, where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her
+to carry her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads
+through which were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches
+of heather all about were showing their bells, though not yet in
+their autumnal outburst of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded
+of Scotland, in which I had travelled a good deal between the ages of
+twenty and five-and-twenty. The further I went the stronger I felt the
+resemblance. The look of the fields, the stone fences that divided them,
+the shape and colour and materials of the houses, the aspect of the
+people, the feeling of the air, and of the earth and sky generally, made
+me imagine myself in a milder and more favoured Scotland. The west wind
+was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge which one can so often detect
+in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot sun. Though she had already
+travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up within a few minutes after
+we got on this moor; and we had not gone much farther before a shout
+from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little Dora had discovered
+the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue and bright. We
+soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie's eyes it seemed to
+linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them seemed the
+reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors. Ethelwyn's eyes,
+too, were full of it, and a flush on her generally pale cheek showed
+that she too expected the ocean. After a few miles along this breezy
+expanse, we began to descend towards the sea-level. Down the winding of
+a gradual slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new
+chapter in our history. We came again upon a few trees here and there,
+all with their tops cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the
+sea. For the sea-winds, like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away
+towards the land, and keep their tops mown with their sharp rushing,
+keen with salt spray off the crests of the broken waves. Then we passed
+through some ancient villages, with streets narrow, and steep and
+sharp-angled, that needed careful driving and the frequent pressure
+of the break upon the wheel. And now the sea shone upon us with nearer
+greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear its talk with the shore.
+At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the last level, drove over
+a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw the land vanish in the
+sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden drawbridge, and along
+the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops and schooners. Then
+came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an ascent, and ere we
+reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by loud shouts, and
+the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top of a stone wall
+to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept quiet, knowing
+that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing about the evil
+it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch, leading through
+the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The journey was
+over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the county of
+Cornwall.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.
+
+
+
+
+
+We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which
+nurse had fixed upon for her--the best in the house, of course, again.
+She did seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at once, and
+in half an hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very glad. After
+dinner I went up to Connie's room. There I found her fast asleep on the
+sofa, and Wynnie as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The drive and
+the sea air had had the same effect on both of them. But pleased as I
+was to see Connie sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see
+Wynnie asleep on the floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give
+to a father and mother to see this or that child asleep! It is when
+her kittens are asleep that the cat creeps away to look after her own
+comforts. Our cat chose to have her kittens in my study once, and as I
+would not have her further disturbed than to give them another cushion
+to lie on in place of that which belonged to my sofa, I had many
+opportunities of watching them as I wrote, or prepared my sermons. But I
+must not talk about the cat and her kittens now. When parents see their
+children asleep, especially if they have been suffering in any way,
+they breathe more freely; a load is lifted off their minds; their
+responsibility seems over; the children have gone back to their Father,
+and he alone is looking after them for a while. Now, I had not been
+comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially during our
+journey, and still more especially during the last part of our journey.
+There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or less
+dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much for
+her, although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had not
+quite enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without
+much thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do
+not seem to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them;
+while for others a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is
+necessary for the health of both body and mind, and when the matter or
+occasion for so much is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous
+to what follows when a healthy physical system is not supplied with
+sufficient food: the oxygen, the source of life, begins to consume the
+life itself; it tears up the timbers of the house to burn against the
+cold. Or, to use a different simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance
+does not strike the rock and make the waters flow, such a mind--one that
+must think to live--will go digging into itself, and is in danger of
+injuring the very fountain of thought, by drawing away its living water
+into ditches and stagnant pools. This was, I say, the case in part with
+my Wynnie, although I did not understand it at that moment. She did
+not look quite happy, did not always meet a smile with a smile, looked
+almost reprovingly upon the frolics of the little brother-imps, and
+though kindness itself when any real hurt or grief befell them, had
+reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner, of which I have
+already spoken as interrupted by Connie's accident. To her mother and me
+she was service itself, only service without the smile which is as
+the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a little
+uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
+had seemed almost annoyed at Connie's ecstasies, and said to Dora many
+times: "Do be quiet, Dora;" although there was not a single creature but
+ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
+child's explosions. So I was--but although I say _so_, I hardly know why
+I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief in the
+anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I
+stood regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her
+uncomfortable, she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with
+the words, "I beg your pardon, papa," looking almost guiltily round
+her, and putting up her hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an
+impropriety in being caught untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition
+of mind that was not healthy.
+
+"My dear," I said, "what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to
+see you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold
+you."
+
+"O papa," she said, laying her head on my shoulder, "I am afraid I must
+be very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong,
+or rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure
+there must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly
+know what it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected
+something, and you had come to find fault with me. _Is_ there anything,
+papa?"
+
+"Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
+that."
+
+"I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day!
+Why shouldn't I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked,
+papa."
+
+Here Connie woke up.
+
+"There now! I've waked Connie," Wynnie resumed. "I'm always doing
+something I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take
+that sin off my poor conscience."
+
+"What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?" asked Connie.
+
+"It isn't nonsense, Connie. You know I am."
+
+"I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don't
+_feel_ wicked."
+
+"My dear children," I said, "we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
+then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say
+to himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one
+man to say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case
+to do as St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing--to judge our own
+selves, which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do
+what our Lord has told us expressly we are not to do--to judge other
+people. You get your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going
+to explore a little of this desert island upon which we have been cast
+away. And you, Connie, just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep
+again."
+
+Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to
+talk seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.
+
+Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what
+we talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported
+it to Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies
+who went to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news
+of nature, to her who could not go to gather them for herself. It think
+it will be the best plan to take part of both plans.
+
+When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
+leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed _in_, the rocks,
+buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life for a
+big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still blew
+from the west, both warm and strong--I mean strength-giving--and the
+wind was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was
+green and soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright
+flowers, chiefly yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the
+downs, the shadows of whose unequal surface were now beginning to be
+thrown east, for the sun was going seawards. I stood up, stretched out
+my arms, threw back my shoulders and my head, and filled my chest with a
+draught of the delicious wind, feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed
+with wine. Wynnie stood apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar,
+thoughtful, and turning her eyes hither and thither.
+
+"That makes me feel young again," I said.
+
+"I wish it would make me feel old then," said Wynnie.
+
+"What do you mean, my child?"
+
+"Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
+young," she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were
+walking up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the
+down-turf was indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we
+had reached the top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight.
+The top of the hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun
+was hanging on the face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea
+stretched for visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand,
+its wide blue mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land,
+and scalloped into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the
+nether fires which had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as
+they bore the rising tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for
+the whole. Ear and eye, touch and smell, were alike invaded with
+blessedness. I ought to have kept this to give my reader in Connie's
+room; but he shall share with her presently. The sense of space--of
+mighty room for life and growth--filled my soul, and I thanked God in
+my heart. The wind seemed to bear that growth into my soul, even as the
+wind of God first breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and
+the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment of every aspiration. I turned
+and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but listless amidst that which
+lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.
+
+"Don't you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?"
+
+"I told you I was very wicked, papa."
+
+"And I told you not to say so, Wynnie."
+
+"You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is."
+
+"I suspect it is because you haven't room, Wynnie."
+
+"I know you mean something more than I know, papa."
+
+"I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you
+do not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only
+live in him, is 'cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.' It is only in
+him that the soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The
+secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who
+knows its secret. Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth.
+You do not feel them, and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would
+be both useless and absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for
+a moment, and then tell me whether it must not be a blessed life that
+creates such a glory as this All."
+
+She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
+earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
+eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling,
+or sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to
+speak again.
+
+"As this world of delight surrounds and enters your bodily frame, so
+does God surround your soul and live in it. To be at home with the awful
+source of your being, through the child-like faith which he not only
+permits, but requires, and is ever teaching you, or rather seeking
+to rouse up in you, is the only cure for such feelings as those that
+trouble you. Do not say it is too high for you. God made you in his own
+image, therefore capable of understanding him. For this final end he
+sent his Son, that the Father might with him come into you, and dwell
+with you. Till he does so, the temple of your soul is vacant; there is
+no light behind the veil, no cloudy pillar over it; and the priests,
+your thoughts, feelings, loves, and desires, moan, and are troubled--for
+where is the work of the priest when the God is not there? When He comes
+to you, no mystery, no unknown feeling, will any longer distress you.
+You will say, 'He knows, though I do not.' And you will be at the secret
+of the things he has made. You will feel what they are, and that which
+his will created in gladness you will receive in joy. One glimmer of the
+present God in this glory would send you home singing. But do not think
+I blame you, Wynnie, for feeling sad. I take it rather as the sign of a
+large life in you, that will not be satisfied with little things. I do
+not know when or how it may please God to give you the quiet of mind
+that you need; but I tell you that I believe it is to be had; and in
+the mean time, you must go on doing your work, trusting in God even for
+this. Tell him to look at your sorrow, ask him to come and set it right,
+making the joy go up in your heart by his presence. I do not know when
+this may be, I say, but you must have patience, and till he lays his
+hand on your head, you must be content to wash his feet with your tears.
+Only he will be better pleased if your faith keep you from weeping and
+from going about your duties mournful. Try to be brave and cheerful for
+the sake of Christ, and for the sake of your confidence in the beautiful
+teaching of God, whose course and scope you cannot yet understand.
+Trust, my daughter, and let that give you courage and strength."
+
+Now the sky and the sea and the earth must have made me able to say
+these things to her; but I knew that, whatever the immediate occasion of
+her sadness, such was its only real cure. Other things might, in virtue
+of the will of God that was in them, give her occupation and interest
+enough for a time, but nothing would do finally, but God himself. Here
+I was sure I was safe; here I knew lay the hunger of humanity. Humanity
+may, like other vital forms, diseased systems, fix on this or that as
+the object not merely of its desire but of its need: it can never
+be stilled by less than the bread of life--the very presence in the
+innermost nature of the Father and the Son.
+
+We walked on together. Wynnie made me no reply, but, weeping silently,
+clung to my arm. We walked a long way by the edge of the cliffs, beheld
+the sun go down, and then turned and went home. When we reached the
+house, Wynnie left me, saying only, "Thank you, papa. I think it is all
+true. I will try to be a better girl."
+
+I went straight to Connie's room: she was lying as I saw her last,
+looking out of her window.
+
+"Connie," I said, "Wynnie and I have had such a treat--such a sunset!"
+
+"I've seen a little of the light of it on the waves in the bay there,
+but the high ground kept me from seeing the sunset itself. Did it set in
+the sea?"
+
+"You do want the General Gazetteer, after all, Connie. Is that water the
+Atlantic, or is it not? And if it be, where on earth could the sun set
+but in it?"
+
+"Of course, papa. What a goose I am! But don't make game of
+me--_please_. I am too deliciously happy to be made game of to-night."
+
+"I won't make game of you, my darling. I will tell you about the
+sunset--the colours of it, at least. This must be one of the best places
+in the whole world to see sunsets."
+
+"But you have had no tea, papa. I thought you would come and have your
+tea with me. But you were so long, that mamma would not let me wait any
+longer."
+
+"O, never mind the tea, my dear. But Wynnie has had none. You've got a
+tea-caddy of your own, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, and a teapot; and there's the kettle on the hob--for I can't do
+without a little fire in the evenings."
+
+"Then I'll make some tea for Wynnie and myself, and tell you at the same
+time about the sunset. I never saw such colours. I cannot tell you what
+it was like while the sun was yet going down, for the glory of it has
+burned the memory of it out of me. But after the sun was down, the sky
+remained thinking about him; and the thought of the sky was in
+delicate translucent green on the horizon, just the colour of the earth
+etherealised and glorified--a broad band; then came another broad band
+of pale rose-colour; and above that came the sky's own eternal blue,
+pale likewise, but so sure and changeless. I never saw the green and
+the blue divided and harmonised by the rose-colour before. It was a
+wonderful sight. If it is warm enough to-morrow, we will carry you out
+on the height, that you may see what the evening will bring."
+
+"There is one thing about sunsets," returned Connie--"two things, that
+make me rather sad--about themselves, not about anything else. Shall I
+tell you them?"
+
+"Do, my love. There are few things more precious to learn than the
+effects of Nature upon individual minds. And there is not a feeling of
+yours, my child, that is not of value to me."
+
+"You are so kind, papa! I am so glad of my accident. I think I should
+never have known how good you are but for that. But my thoughts seem so
+little worth after you say so much about them."
+
+"Let me be judge of that, my dear."
+
+"Well, one thing is, that we shall never, never, never, see the same
+sunset again."
+
+"That is true. But why should we? God does not care to do the same
+thing over again. When it is once done, it is done, and he goes on doing
+something new. For, to all eternity, he never will have done showing
+himself by new, fresh things. It would be a loss to do the same thing
+again."
+
+"But that just brings me to my second trouble. The thing is lost. I
+forget it. Do what I can, I cannot remember sunsets. I try to fix them
+fast in my memory, that I may recall them when I want them; but just as
+they fade out of the sky, all into blue or gray, so they fade out of my
+mind and leave it as if they had never been there--except perhaps two
+or three. Now, though I did not see this one, yet, after you have talked
+about it, I shall never forget _it_."
+
+"It is not, and never will be, as if they had never been. They have
+their influence, and leave that far deeper than your memory--in your
+very being, Connie. But I have more to say about it, although it is
+only an idea, hardly an assurance. Our brain is necessarily an imperfect
+instrument. For its right work, perhaps it is needful that it should
+forget in part. But there are grounds for believing that nothing is ever
+really forgotten. I think that, when we have a higher existence than we
+have now, when we are clothed with that spiritual body of which St. Paul
+speaks, you will be able to recall any sunset you have ever seen with an
+intensity proportioned to the degree of regard and attention you gave
+it when it was present to you. But here comes Wynnie to see how you
+are.--I've been making some tea for you, Wynnie, my love."
+
+"O, thank you, papa--I shall be so glad of some tea!" said Wynnie, the
+paleness of whose face showed the red rims of her eyes the more plainly.
+She had had what girls call a good cry, and was clearly the better for
+it.
+
+The same moment my wife came in. "Why didn't you send for me, Harry, to
+get your tea?" she said.
+
+"I did not deserve any, seeing I had disregarded proper times and
+seasons. But I knew you must be busy."
+
+"I have been superintending the arrangement of bedrooms, and the
+unpacking, and twenty different things," said Ethelwyn. "We shall be so
+comfortable! It is such a curious house! Have you had a nice walk?"
+
+"Mamma, I never had such a walk in my life," returned Wynnie. "You would
+think the shore had been built for the sake of the show--just for a
+platform to see sunsets from. And the sea! Only the cliffs will be
+rather dangerous for the children."
+
+"I have just been telling Connie about the sunset. She could see
+something of the colours on the water, but not much more."
+
+"O, Connie, it will be so delightful to get you out here! Everything is
+so big! There is such room everywhere! But it must be awfully windy in
+winter," said Wynnie, whose nature was always a little prospective, if
+not apprehensive.
+
+But I must not keep my reader longer upon mere family chat.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+Our dining-room was one story below the level at which we had entered
+the parsonage; for, as I have said, the house was built into the face of
+the cliff, just where it sunk nearly to the level of the shores of the
+bay. While at dinner, on the evening of our arrival, I kept looking
+from the window, of course, and I saw before me, first a little bit of
+garden, mostly in turf, then a low stone wall; beyond, over the top of
+the wall, the blue water of the bay; then beyond the water, all alive
+with light and motion, the rocks and sand-hills of the opposite side
+of the little bay, not a quarter of a mile across. I could likewise see
+where the shore went sweeping out and away to the north, with rock after
+rock standing far into the water, as if gazing over the awful wild,
+where there was nothing to break the deathly waste between Cornwall and
+Newfoundland. But for the moment I did not regard the huge power lying
+outside so much as the merry blue bay between me and those rocks and
+sand-hills. If I moved my head a little to the right, I saw, over the
+top of the low wall already mentioned, and apparently quite close to it
+the slender yellow masts of a schooner, her mainsail hanging loose from
+the gaff, whose peak was lowered. We must, I thought, be on the very
+harbour-quay. When I went out for my walk with Wynnie, I had turned from
+the bay, and gone to the brow of the cliffs overhanging the open sea on
+our own side of it.
+
+When I came down to breakfast in the same room next morning, I stared.
+The blue had changed to yellow. The life of the water was gone. Nothing
+met my eyes but a wide expanse of dead sand. You could walk straight
+across the bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from
+the perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking,
+concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was
+high-water, or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was
+over a long reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe
+of the waves was visible, as if there was their _hitherto_, and further
+towards us they could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of
+the Atlantic. To add to my confusion, when I looked to the right, that
+is, up the bay towards the land, there was no schooner there. I went out
+at the window, which opened from the room upon the little lawn, to look,
+and then saw in a moment how it was.
+
+"Do you know, my dear," I said to my wife, "we are just at the mouth
+of that canal we saw as we came along? There are gates and a lock just
+outside there. The schooner that was under this window last night must
+have gone in with the tide. She is lying in the basin above now."
+
+"O, yes, papa," Charlie and Harry broke in together. "We saw it go up
+this morning. We've been out ever so long. It was so funny," Charlie
+went on--everything was _funny_ with Charlie--"to see it rise up like
+a Jack-in-the-box, and then slip into the quiet water through the other
+gates!"
+
+And when I thought about the waves tumbling and breaking away out there,
+and the wide yellow sands between, it was wonderful--which was what
+Charlie meant by funny--to see the little vessel lying so many feet
+above it all, in a still plenty of repose, gathering strength, one
+might fancy to rush out again, when its time was come, into the turmoil
+beyond, and dash its way through the breasts of the billows.
+
+After breakfast we had prayers, as usual, and after a visit to Connie,
+whom I found tired, but wonderfully well, I went out for a walk by
+myself, to explore the neighbourhood, find the church, and, in a word,
+do something to shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious.
+I wandered along a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk
+the evening before, with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of
+feathery tamarisks on my left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply
+to a lower road, where stood a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner,
+I came suddenly in sight of the church, on the green down above me--a
+sheltered yet commanding situation; for, while the hill rose above it,
+protecting it from the east, it looked down the bay, and the Atlantic
+lay open before it. All the earth seemed to lie behind it, and all its
+gaze to be fixed on the symbol of the infinite. It stood as the church
+ought to stand, leading men up the mount of vision, to the verge of the
+eternal, to send them back with their hearts full of the strength that
+springs from hope, by which alone the true work of the world can
+be done. And when I saw it I rejoiced to think that once more I was
+favoured with a church that had a history. Of course it is a happy thing
+to see new churches built wherever there is need of such; but to the
+full idea of the building it is necessary that it should be one in which
+the hopes and fears, the cares and consolations, the loves and desires
+of our forefathers should have been roofed; where the hearts of those
+through whom our country has become that which it is--from whom not
+merely the life-blood of our bodies, but the life-blood of our spirits,
+has come down to us, whose existence and whose efforts have made it
+possible for us to be that which we are--have before us worshipped that
+Spirit from whose fountain the whole torrent of being flows, who ever
+pours fresh streams into the wearying waters of humanity, so ready to
+settle down into a stagnant repose. Therefore I would far rather, when
+I may, worship in an old church, whose very stones are a history of how
+men strove to realise the infinite, compelling even the powers of nature
+into the task--as I soon found on the very doorway of this church, where
+the ripples of the outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the
+monsters of its deeps, fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave
+a distorted reflex, from the little mirror of the artist's mind, of that
+mighty water, so awful, so significant to the human eye, which yet lies
+in the hollow of the Father's palm, like the handful that the weary
+traveller lifts from the brook by the way. It is in virtue of the truth
+that went forth in such and such like attempts that we are able to hold
+our portion of the infinite reality which God only knows. They have
+founded our Church for us, and such a church as this will stand for the
+symbol of it; for here we too can worship the God of Abraham, of Isaac,
+and of Jacob--the God of Sidney, of Hooker, of Herbert. This church of
+Kilkhaven, old and worn, rose before me a history in stone--so beaten
+and swept about by the "wild west wind,"
+
+  "For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
+  Cleave themselves into chasms,"
+
+and so streamed upon, and washed, and dissolved, by the waters lifted
+from the sea and borne against it on the upper tide of the wind, that
+you could almost fancy it one of those churches that have been buried
+for ages beneath the encroaching waters, lifted again, by some mighty
+revulsion of nature's heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to
+stand marked for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world--scooped,
+and hollowed, and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for
+ever, responded to the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from
+the most troublous of times, will the Church of our land arise, in
+virtue of what truth she holds, and in spite, if she rises at all,
+of the worldliness of those who, instead of seeking her service, have
+sought and gained the dignities which, if it be good that she have it
+in her power to bestow them, need the corrective of a sharply wholesome
+persecution which of late times she has not known. But God knows, and
+the fire will come in its course--first in the form of just indignation,
+it may be, against her professed servants, and then in the form of the
+furnace seven times heated, in which the true builders shall yet walk
+unhurt save as to their mortal part.
+
+I looked about for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to
+live, and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a
+little distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before
+I reached it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She
+was dressed in a white cap and a dark-coloured gown. On her face lay a
+certain repose which attracted me. She looked as if she had suffered but
+had consented to it, and therefore could smile. Her smile lay near the
+surface. A kind word was enough to draw it up from the well where it lay
+shimmering: you could always see the smile there, whether it was born or
+not. But even when she smiled, in the very glimmering of that moonbeam,
+you could see the deep, still, perhaps dark, waters under. O! if one
+could but understand what goes on in the souls that have no words,
+perhaps no inclination, to set it forth! What had she endured? How had
+she learned to have that smile always near? What had consoled her, and
+yet left her her grief--turned it, perhaps, into hope? Should I ever
+know?
+
+She drew near me, as if she would have passed me, as she would have
+done, had I not spoken. I think she came towards me to give me the
+opportunity of speaking if I wished, but she would not address me.
+
+"Good morning," I said. "Can you tell me where to find the sexton?"
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with a gleam of the smile brightening
+underneath her old skin, as it were, "I be all the sexton you be likely
+to find this mornin', sir. My husband, he be gone out to see one o'
+Squire Tregarva's hounds as was took ill last night. So if you want to
+see the old church, sir, you'll have to be content with an old woman to
+show you, sir."
+
+"I shall be quite content, I assure you," I answered. "Will you go and
+get the key?"
+
+"I have the key in my pocket, sir; for I thought that would be what
+you'd be after, sir. And by the time you come to my age, sir, you'll
+learn to think of your old bones, sir. I beg your pardon for making so
+free. For mayhap, says I to myself, he be the gentleman as be come to
+take Mr. Shepherd's duty for him. Be ye now, sir?"
+
+All this was said in a slow sweet subdued tone, nearly of one pitch.
+You would have felt that she claimed the privilege of age with a kind of
+mournful gaiety, but was careful, and anxious even, not to presume upon
+it, and, therefore, gentle as a young girl.
+
+"Yes," I answered. "My name is Walton I have come to take the place of
+my friend Mr. Shepherd; and, of course, I want to see the church."
+
+"Well, she be a bee-utiful old church. Some things, I think, sir, grows
+more beautiful the older they grows. But it ain't us, sir."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," I said. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, sir, there's my little grandson in the cottage there: he'll never
+be so beautiful again. Them children du be the loves. But we all grows
+uglier as we grows older. Churches don't seem to, sir."
+
+"I'm not so sure about all that," I said again.
+
+"They did say, sir, that I was a pretty girl once. I'm not much to look
+at now."
+
+And she smiled with such a gracious amusement, that I felt at once that
+if there was any vanity left in this memory of her past loveliness,
+it was sweet as the memory of their old fragrance left in the withered
+leaves of the roses.
+
+"But it du not matter, du it, sir? Beauty is only skin-deep."
+
+"I don't believe that," I answered. "Beauty is as deep as the heart at
+least."
+
+"Well to be sure, my old husband du say I be as handsome in his eyes
+as ever I be. But I beg your pardon, sir, for talkin' about myself. I
+believe it was the old church--she set us on to it."
+
+"The old church didn't lead you into any harm then," I answered. "The
+beauty that is in the heart will shine out of the face again some
+day--be sure of that. And after all, there is just the same kind of
+beauty in a good old face that there is in an old church. You can't say
+the church is so trim and neat as it was the day that the first blast of
+the organ filled it as with, a living soul. The carving is not quite so
+sharp, the timbers are not quite so clean. There is a good deal of mould
+and worm-eating and cobwebs about the old place. Yet both you and I
+think it more beautiful now than it was then. Well, I believe it is, as
+nearly as possible, the same with an old face. It has got stained, and
+weather-beaten, and worn; but if the organ of truth has been playing on
+inside the temple of the Lord, which St. Paul says our bodies are, there
+is in the old face, though both form and complexion are gone, just the
+beauty of the music inside. The wrinkles and the brownness can't spoil
+it. A light shines through it all--that of the indwelling spirit. I wish
+we all grew old like the old churches."
+
+She did not reply, but I thought I saw in her face that she understood
+my mysticism. We had been walking very slowly, had passed through the
+quaint lych-gate, and now the old woman had got the key in the lock of
+the door, whose archway was figured and fashioned as I have described
+above, with a dozen mouldings or more, most of them "carved so
+curiously."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE OLD CHURCH.
+
+
+
+
+
+The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the
+threshold--an awe I never fail to feel--heightened in many cases, no
+doubt, by the sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I
+have felt all the same in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan
+conventicle, as the place where men worship and have worshipped the God
+of their fathers, although for art there was only the science of common
+bricklaying, and for beauty staring ugliness. To the involuntary fancy,
+the air of petition and of holy need seems to linger in the place, and
+the uncovered head acknowledges the sacred symbols of human inspiration
+and divine revealing. But this was no ordinary church into which I
+followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As entering I turned my eyes
+eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them from the chancel, all
+the windows of which were of richly stained glass, and the roof of
+carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this chancel, and
+thence about chancels generally which may appear in another part of my
+story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the cogitations
+to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with even what I
+could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles and modes of
+architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of contesting
+human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature brings into
+harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive intrusions upon
+her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of the word,
+so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that which in
+itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture of this
+building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand of
+Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one
+could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at
+work _informing_ the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the
+sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was
+but the gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its
+self-assertion vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the
+worm. True, the hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought
+lovingly and gently, and wherein it had erred, the same influences of
+nature, though as yet their effects were invisible, were already at
+work--of the many making one. I will not trouble my reader, I say, with
+any architectural description, which, possibly even more than a detailed
+description of natural beauty dissociated from human feeling, would only
+weary him, even if it were not unintelligible. When we are reading a
+poem, we do not first of all examine the construction and dwell on
+the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after, if we find that the poem
+itself is so good that its parts are therefore worth examining, as being
+probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of the main work. There
+were carvings on the ends of the benches all along the aisle on both
+sides, well worth examination, and some of them even of description;
+but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the columns: they
+supported arches of different fashion on the opposite sides, but they
+were themselves similar in matter and construction, both remarkable.
+They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very far
+from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was a single stone with
+chamfered sides.
+
+Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many
+thoughts that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length
+into the tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body
+of the church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above,
+for bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend
+Shepherd. And as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful
+it would be if in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was
+precious; so that when it came to the minister of his people--a fresh
+vision of his glory, a discovery of his meaning--he might make haste to
+the church, and into the tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the
+deepest-toned bell of all, and constrain it by the force of strong arms
+to utter its voice of call, "Come hither, come hear, my people, for God
+hath spoken;" and from the streets or the lanes would troop the eager
+folk; the plough be left in the furrow, the cream in the churn; and the
+crowding people bring faces into the church, all with one question upon
+them--"What hath the Lord spoken?" But now it would be answer sufficient
+to such a call to say, "But what will become of the butter?" or, "An
+hour's ploughing will be lost." And the clergy--how would they bring
+about such a time? They do not even believe that God has a word to his
+people through them. They think that his word is petrified for use in
+the Bible and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old heard so much of the
+word of God, and have so set it down, that there is no need for any more
+words of the Lord coming to the prophets of a land; therefore they look
+down upon the prophesying--that is, the preaching of the word--make
+light of it, the best of them, say these prayers are everything, or all
+but everything: _their_ hearts are not set upon hearing what God the
+Lord will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people again.
+Therefore it is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to the
+clock, are no longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have
+nothing to do in telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little
+of this part of their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must
+remain such as they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers
+which are the word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when
+the prophets see no vision, how should they have any word to speak?
+
+These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my
+guide. She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I
+thought, or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had
+taken her stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting
+busily. How her needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however,
+but, fixed on the slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from
+her feet, seemed to be gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite
+objectless outlook. To try her, I took for the moment the position of an
+accuser.
+
+"So you don't mind working in church?" I said.
+
+When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far
+sea-waves to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she
+answered--
+
+"The church knows me, sir."
+
+"But what has that to do with it?"
+
+"I don't think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
+know, sir."
+
+"Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
+diligent somewhere else, couldn't you?"
+
+As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But
+she only smiled and said, "It won't hurt she, sir; and my good man, who
+does all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I
+don't keep he warm he'll be laid up, and then the church won't be kep'
+nice, sir, till he's up again."
+
+I was tempted to go on.
+
+"But you could have sat down outside--there are some nice gravestones
+near--and waited till I came out."
+
+"But what's the church for, sir? The sun's werry hot to-day, sir; and
+Mr. Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a
+great rock in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the
+sun, instead of comin' in here to the cool o' the shadow, I wouldn't be
+takin' the church at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old
+church, sir. There's a something do seem to come out o' the old walls
+and settle down like the cool o' the day upon my old heart that's nearly
+tired o' crying, and would fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o' the
+journey. My old man's stockin' won't hurt the church, sir, and, bein'
+a good deed as I suppose it is, it's none the worse for the place. I
+think, if He was to come by wi' the whip o' small cords, I wouldn't be
+afeared of his layin' it upo' my old back. Do you think he would, sir?"
+
+Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
+with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.
+
+"Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
+ill-done work that the church's Master drives away. All our work ought
+to be done in the shadow of the church."
+
+"I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir," she said, smiling
+her sweet old smile. "Nobody knows what this old church is to me."
+
+Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
+left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
+thought.
+
+"You have had a family?" I said, interrogatively.
+
+"I've had thirteen," she answered. "Six bys and seven maidens."
+
+"Why, you are rich!" I returned. "And where are they all?"
+
+"Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one
+be down in the mill, there."
+
+"And your boys?"
+
+"One of them be lyin' beside his sisters--drownded afore my eyes, sir.
+Three o' them be at sea, and two o' them in it, sir."
+
+At sea! I thought. What a wide _where_! As vague to the imagination,
+almost, as _in the other world_. How a mother's thoughts must go roaming
+about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find them!
+
+As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.
+
+"It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with
+my knitting. Many's the stormy night, when my husband couldn't keep
+still, but would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good
+in life, but just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see
+by the white of them, with the balls o' foam flying in his face in the
+dark--many's the such a night that I have left the house after he was
+gone, with this blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church
+here, and sat down where I'm sittin' now--leastways where I was sittin'
+when your reverence spoke to me--and hearkened to the wind howling
+about the place. The church windows never rattle, sir--like the cottage
+windows, as I suppose you know, sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the
+church."
+
+"But if you had sons at sea," said I, again wishing to draw her out, "it
+would not be of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
+were in danger."
+
+"O! yes, it be, sir. What's the good of feeling safe yourself but it
+let you know other people be safe too? It's when you don't feel safe
+yourself that you feel other people ben't safe."
+
+"But," I said--and such confidence I had from what she had already
+uttered, that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one--"some of
+your sons _were_ drowned for all that you say about their safety."
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less
+safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me,
+well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being
+drownded. Why, they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted
+to skin an' bone, and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they
+set out with. Wouldn't that ha' been worse than being drownded right
+off? And that wouldn't ha' been the worst, either. The church she seem
+to tell me all the time, that for all the roaring outside, there be
+really no danger after all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What
+is the bottom of the sea, sir? You bein' a clergyman can tell that, sir.
+I shouldn't ha' known it if I hadn't had bys o' my own at sea, sir. But
+you can tell, sir, though you ain't got none there."
+
+And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
+returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to
+his instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.
+
+"The hollow of his hand," I said, and said no more.
+
+"I thought you would know it, sir," she returned, with a little glow of
+triumph in her tone. "Well, then, that's just what the church tells me
+when I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too,
+sir, for I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when
+they come home, if they do come home, they're none the worse that I went
+to the old church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them
+poor dears, all out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone
+almost in the quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come
+across me, sir, that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing
+all the noise and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about
+in the world, watching it all, letting it drown some o' them and take
+them back to him, and keeping it from going too far with others of them
+that are not quite ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see,
+sir, though I be an old woman; and not nice to look at."
+
+I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
+Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
+there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
+to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert
+would leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life
+is God's school, and they that will listen to the Master there will
+learn at God's speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious
+of Shepherd, and repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such
+glorious old stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal
+upon my light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling
+lasted but for a moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed
+and the true light shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it.
+Why should not Shepherd have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd
+was more of what would now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought
+my doctrine simpler and therefore better than his; but was this any
+reason why I should have all the grand people to minister to in my
+parish! Recovering myself, I found her last words still in my ears.
+
+"You are very nice to look at," I said. "You must not find fault with
+the work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty
+than to be as you now are. Time and time's rents and furrows are all his
+making and his doing. God makes nothing ugly."
+
+"Are you quite sure of that, sir?"
+
+I paused. Such a question from such a woman "must give us pause." And,
+as I paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I
+could not insist that God had never made anything ugly.
+
+"No. I am not sure of it," I answered. For of all things my soul
+recoiled from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know
+seemed to me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master,
+whose servants we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and
+self-seeking. "But if he does," I went on to say, "it must be that we
+may see what it is like, and therefore not like it."
+
+Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
+question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
+had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of
+stool or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was
+some kind of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much
+like the ends of the benches and book-boards.
+
+"What is that you were sitting on?" I asked. "A chest or what?"
+
+"It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
+agone, sir. But what it be, you'll be better able to tell than I be,
+sir."
+
+"Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time," I said.
+"But how should it then come to be banished to the tower?"
+
+"No, sir; it can't be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I
+be thinking."
+
+I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ.
+With some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of
+huge keys, fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one
+after another, but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and
+once down, so they mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there
+was any sign of a bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive
+kind of reed-instrument, like what we call a seraphine or harmonium
+now-a-days. But there was no hole through which there could have been
+any communication with or from a bellows, although there might have been
+a small one inside. There were, however, a dozen little round holes in
+the fixed part of the top, which might afford some clue to the mystery
+of its former life. I could not find any way of reaching the inside of
+it, so strongly was it put together; therefore I was left, I thought,
+to the efforts of my imagination alone for any hope of discovery with
+regard to the instrument, seeing further observation was impossible.
+But here I found that I was mistaken in two important conclusions, the
+latter of which depended on the former. The first of these was that
+it was an instrument: it was only one end of an instrument; therefore,
+secondly, there might be room for observation still. But I found this
+out by accident, which has had a share in most discoveries, and which,
+meaning a something that falls into our hands unlocked for, is so far an
+unobjectionable word even to the man who does not believe in chance.
+I had for the time given up the question as insoluble, and was gazing
+about the place, when, glancing up at the holes in the ceiling through
+which the bell-ropes went, I spied two or three thick wires hanging
+through the same ceiling close to the wall, and right over the box with
+the keys. The vague suspicion of a discovery dawned upon me.
+
+"Have you got the key of the tower?" I asked.
+
+"No, sir. But I'll run home for it at once," she answered. And rising,
+she went out in haste.
+
+"Run!" thought I, looking after her. "It is a word of the will and the
+feeling, not of the body." But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had
+no sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she
+felt that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I
+was on the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her
+from hurting herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to
+be as good as mine in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her
+seat, awaited her reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either
+saw or imagined I saw signs of openings corresponding in number and
+position with those in the lid under me. In about three minutes the old
+woman returned, panting but not distressed, with a great crooked old key
+in her hand. Why are all the keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask
+her that question, though. What I said to her, was--
+
+"You shouldn't run like that. I am in no hurry."
+
+"Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
+longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you
+see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if
+she'd smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top
+of the old tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun,
+and what with the fresh air which there always be up there, sir,--it du
+always be fresh up there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again
+blessing the old church for its tower."
+
+As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where
+there was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning
+themselves a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high,
+but she kept up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was
+no stranger to them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of
+her, but of what she had said. Strange to tell, the significance of
+the towers or spires of our churches had never been clear to me before.
+True, I was quite awake to their significance, at least to that of the
+spires, as fingers pointing ever upwards to
+
+  "regions mild of calm and serene air,
+  Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
+  Which men call Earth;"
+
+but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
+church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord
+God almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
+
+Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men
+up into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived
+pervaded with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We
+need the church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church
+below are from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the
+church, worshipping over the graves and believing in death--or at least
+in the material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the
+church, even in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending
+us up her towers and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the
+air of truth: that her form too must pass away, while the truth that is
+embodied in her lives beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining
+as the stars for ever and ever. He whom the church does not lift up
+above the church is not worthy to be a doorkeeper therein.
+
+Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
+that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord--not for his
+church-tower, but for his sexton's wife. The old woman was a jewel. If
+her husband was like her, which was too much to expect--if he believed
+in her, it would be enough, quite--then indeed the little child, who
+answered on being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would say, that
+the three orders of ministers in the church were the parson, clerk, and
+sexton, might not be so far wrong in respect of this individual case. So
+in the ascent, and the thinking associated therewith, I forgot all about
+the special object for which I had requested the key of the tower, and
+led the way myself up to the summit, where stepping out of a little
+door, which being turned only heavenwards had no pretence for, or claim
+upon a curiously crooked key, but opened to the hand laid upon the
+latch, I thought of the words of the judicious Hooker, that "the
+assembling of the church to learn" was "the receiving of angels
+descended from above;" and in such a whimsical turn as our thoughts will
+often take when we are not heeding them, I wondered for a moment whether
+that was why the upper door was left on the latch, forgetting that that
+could not be of much use, if the door in the basement was kept locked
+with the crooked key. But the whole suggested something true about my
+own heart and that of my fellows, if not about the church: Revelation is
+not enough, the open trap-door is not enough, if the door of the heart
+is not open likewise.
+
+As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
+again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
+filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
+hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the
+other side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of
+green, its heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales--there was
+not much wood--its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted
+and shadowed by the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of
+Dartmoor. And over all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the
+life-bearing spirit of the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman
+stood beside me, silently enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that
+seemed to say in kindly triumph, "Was I not right about the tower and
+the wind that dwells among its pinnacles?" I drank deep of the universal
+flood, the outspread peace, the glory of the sun, and the haunting
+shadow of the sea that lay beyond like the visual image of the eternal
+silence--as it looks to us--that rounds our little earthly life.
+
+There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down,
+the tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly
+below me, except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in
+the leaves, which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the
+top of the tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few
+flowers she had gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that
+rose from the four pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned
+to the eastern side, and looked over upon the church roof. It lay far
+below--looking very narrow and small, but long, with the four ridges of
+four steep roofs stretching away to the eastern end. It was in excellent
+repair, for the parish was almost all in one lord's possession, and he
+was proud of his church: between them he and Mr. Shepherd had made it
+beautiful to behold and strong to endure.
+
+When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
+fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
+nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And
+when I looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird,
+rounding the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up
+the little channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out
+of the circling waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but
+hardly the less welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for
+her signal from the barrier rock.
+
+Reentering by the angels' door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair,
+so dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light
+that came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny
+maiden-hair fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old
+woman--
+
+"I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn't rob your tower of this
+lovely little thing."
+
+"Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take
+it home to miss. It'll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear
+you've got a sick maiden. She ben't a bedlar, be she, sir?"
+
+I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without
+hurting them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner's using
+the word.
+
+"Not quite that," I answered, "but she can't even sit up, and must be
+carried everywhere."
+
+"Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea's been mine."
+
+She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
+down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
+observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in
+ascending the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging
+in silent power in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully,
+for there were only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one's feet
+from going through the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself
+that my conjecture about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods
+I had seen from beneath hung down from this place. There were more
+of them hanging shorter above, and there was yet enough of a further
+mechanism remaining to prove that those keys, by means of the looped and
+cranked rods, had been in connection with hammers, one of them indeed
+remaining also, which struck the bells, so that a tune could be played
+upon them as upon any other keyed instrument. This was the first
+contrivance of the kind I had ever seen, though I have heard of it in
+other churches since.
+
+"If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now," I
+said to myself, "I would get this all repaired, so that it should not
+interfere with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and
+yet Shepherd could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he
+pleased." For Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of
+time to the organ. "It's a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in
+the gloom, with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence
+he sends forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people,
+while they are mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad
+over the stormy ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. 'There's the parson
+at his bells,' they would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase
+might sink into their hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to
+some hope or faint aspiration. I will see what can be done." Having
+come to this conclusion, I left the abode of the bells, descended to the
+church, bade my conductress good morning, saying I would visit her soon
+in her own house, and bore home to my child the spoil which, without
+kirk-rapine, I had torn from the wall of the sanctuary. By this time the
+stormy veil had lifted from the horizon, and the sun was shining in full
+power without one darkening cloud.
+
+Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
+seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was
+the only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the
+tower. It recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been
+married fifty years, concluding with the couplet--
+
+"A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we."
+
+The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was
+not good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life
+probably without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten
+them, and I daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had
+put into their dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of
+quarrel with the poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the
+verses in when he made his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having
+learnt this one by heart, I went about looking for anything more in
+the shape of sepulchral flora that might interest or amuse my crippled
+darling; nor had I searched long before I found one, the sole but
+triumphant recommendation of which was the thorough "puzzle-headedness"
+of its construction. I quite reckoned on seeing Connie trying to make
+it out, looking as bewildered over its excellent grammar, as the poet
+of the other ought to have looked over his rhymes, ere he gave in to the
+use of the nominative after a preposition.
+
+  "If you could view the heavenly shore,
+  Where heart's content you hope to find,
+  You would not murmur were you gone before,
+  But grieve that you are left behind."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER.
+
+
+
+
+
+As I walked home, the rush of the rising tide was in my ears. To my
+fancy, the ocean, awaking from a swoon in which its life had ebbed to
+its heart, was sending that life abroad to its extremities, and waves
+breaking in white were the beats of its reviving pulse, the flashes of
+returning light. But so gentle was its motion, and so lovely its hue,
+that I could not help contrasting it with its reflex in the mind of her
+who took refuge from the tumult of its noises in the hollow of the
+old church. To her, let it look as blue as the sky, as peaceful and as
+moveless, it was a wild, reckless, false, devouring creature, a prey
+to its own moods, and to that of the blind winds which, careless of
+consequences, urged it to raving fury. Only, while the sea took this
+form to her imagination, she believed in that which held the sea, and
+knew that, when it pleased God to part his confining fingers, there
+would be no more sea.
+
+When I reached home, I went straight to Connie's room. Now the house was
+one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
+shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure
+of the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings
+consists of the houses that have _grown_. They have not been, built
+after a straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or
+money-loving pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or
+indifferent, as the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they
+have left far behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions
+of succeeding possessors, until the fact that they have a history is
+as plainly written on their aspect as on that of any you or daughter of
+Adam. These are the houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there
+is any truth in ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt;
+and hence perhaps the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when
+we cross their thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast
+a glance about the hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best
+bedroom are. You have got it all to find out, just as the character of a
+man; and thus had I to find out this house of my friend Shepherd. It had
+formerly been a kind of manor-house, though altogether unlike any
+other manor-house I ever saw; for after exercising all my constructive
+ingenuity reversed in pulling it to pieces in my mind, I came to the
+conclusion that the germ-cell of it was a cottage of the simplest sort
+which had grown by the addition of other cells, till it had reached the
+development in which we found it.
+
+I have said that the dining-room was almost on the level of the shore.
+Certainly some of the flat stones that coped the low wall in front of
+it were thrown into the garden before the next winter by the waves. But
+Connie's room looked out on a little flower-garden almost on the downs,
+only sheltered a little by the rise of a short grassy slope above it.
+This, however, left the prospect, from her window down the bay and
+out to sea, almost open. To reach this room I had now to go up but one
+simple cottage stair; for the door of the house entered on the first
+floor, that is, as regards the building, midway between heaven and
+earth. It had a large bay-window; and in this window Connie was lying
+on her couch, with the lower sash wide open, through which the breeze
+entered, smelling of sea-weed tempered with sweet grasses and the
+wall-flowers and stocks that were in the little plot under it. I thought
+I could see an improvement in her already. Certainly she looked very
+happy.
+
+"O, papa!" she said, "isn't it delightful?"
+
+"What is, my dear?"
+
+"O, everything. The wind, and the sky, and the sea, and the smell of
+the flowers. Do look at that sea-bird. His wings are like the barb of a
+terrible arrow. How he goes undulating, neck and body, up and down as he
+flies. I never felt before that a bird moves his wings. It always looked
+as if the wings flew with the bird. But I see the effort in him."
+
+"An easy effort, though, I should certainly think."
+
+"No doubt. But I see that he chooses and means to fly, and so does it.
+It makes one almost reconciled to the idea of wings. Do angels really
+have wings, papa?"
+
+"It is generally so represented, I think, in the Bible. But whether it
+is meant as a natural fact about them, is more than I take upon me
+to decide. For one thing, I should have to examine whether in simple
+narrative they are ever represented with them, as, I think, in records
+of visions they are never represented without them. But wings are
+very beautiful things, and I do not exactly see why you should need
+reconciling to them."
+
+Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
+
+"I don't like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
+however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
+they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and
+if you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of
+them. You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think
+I could bear to touch the things--I don't mean the feathers, but the
+skinny, folding-up bits of them."
+
+I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
+
+"You want to fly, I suppose?" I said.
+
+"O, yes; I should like that."
+
+"And you don't want to have wings?"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able
+to keep them nice?"
+
+"There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
+already. When you can't answer one thing, off to another, and, from
+your new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost
+branch of the lilac!"
+
+"O, yes, papa! That's what I've heard you say to mamma twenty times."
+
+"And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you
+either, you puss?"
+
+I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
+always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to
+relieve her.
+
+"When women have wings," I said, "their logic will be good."
+
+"How do you make that out, papa?" she asked, a little re-assured.
+
+"Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside
+from the straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole
+utterance will be instinct not only with the meaning of what you
+are thinking, but with the reflex of the forces in you that make the
+utterance take this or that shape; just as to a perfect palate, the
+source and course of a stream would be revealed in every draught of its
+water.
+
+"I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
+wings?"
+
+"I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like
+a horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is
+to be got without doing any of them."
+
+"I know what you mean now, but I can't put it in words."
+
+"I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things:
+what it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably
+leave to him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of
+knowing our fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and
+out of their worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home
+in them.--But I am talking what the people who do not understand such
+things lump all together as mysticism, which is their name for a kind
+of spiritual ash-pit, whither they consign dust and stones, never asking
+whether they may not be gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.--You had
+better begin to think about getting out, Connie."
+
+"Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since
+daylight."
+
+"I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready
+to go out with us."
+
+In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or
+two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I--finding
+that the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for
+which there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds
+in winter, the other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise
+provided--lifted the sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill, and
+then there was only a little door in the garden-wall to get her through
+before we found ourselves upon the down. I think the ascent of this hill
+was the first experience I had--a little to my humiliation, nothing to
+my sorrow--that I was descending another hill. I had to set down the
+precious burden rather oftener before we reached the brow of the cliffs
+than would have been necessary ten years before. But this was all right,
+and the newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the power which
+carries me about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I shall be
+stronger by and by.
+
+We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying
+many feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging
+their undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have
+a chance of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what
+the marvel of flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please,
+borne up, as far as eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own
+will alone. This Connie, quicker than I in her observation of nature,
+had already observed. Seated on the warm grass by her side, while
+neither talked, but both regarded the blue spaces, I saw one of those
+same barb-winged birds rest over my head, regarding me from above, as
+if doubtful whether I did not afford some claim to his theory of
+treasure-trove. I knew at once that what Connie had been saying to me
+just before was true.
+
+She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.
+
+"Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?"
+
+"No, papa; not a bit. I don't know how it is, but I don't think I
+ever wished much for anything I knew I could not have. I am enjoying
+everything more than I can tell you. I wish Wynnie were as happy as I
+am."
+
+"Why? Do you think she's not happy, my dear?"
+
+"That doesn't want any thinking, papa. You can see that."
+
+"I am afraid you're right, Connie. What do you think is the cause of
+it?"
+
+"I think it is because she can't wait. She's always going out to meet
+things; and then when they're not there waiting for her, she thinks
+they're nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If
+everybody were like me, there wouldn't be much done in the world, would
+there, papa?"
+
+"At all events, my dear, your way is wise for you, and I am glad you do
+not judge your sister."
+
+"Judge Wynnie, papa! That would be cool impudence. She's worth ten of
+me. Don't you think, papa," she added, after a pause, "that if Mary had
+said the smallest word against Martha, as Martha did against Mary, Jesus
+would have had a word to say on Martha's side next?"
+
+"Indeed I do, my dear. And I think that did not sit very long without
+asking Jesus if she mightn't go and help her sister. There is but one
+thing needful--that is, the will of God; and when people love that above
+everything, they soon come to see that to everything else there are two
+sides, and that only the will of God gives fair play, as we call it, to
+both of them."
+
+Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.
+
+"Is it not strange, papa, that the only thine here that makes me want to
+get up to look, is nothing of all the grand things round about me? I am
+just lying like the convex mirror in the school-room at home, letting
+them all paint themselves in me."
+
+"What is it then that makes you wish to get up and go and see?" I asked
+with real curiosity.
+
+"Do you see down there--away across the bay--amongst the rocks at the
+other side, a man sitting sketching?"
+
+I looked for some time before I could discover him.
+
+"Your sight is good, Connie: I see the man, but I could not tell what he
+was doing."
+
+"Don't you see him lifting his head every now and then for a moment, and
+then keeping it down for a longer while?"
+
+"I cannot distinguish that. But then I am shortsighted rather, you
+know."
+
+"I wonder how you see so many little things that nobody else seems to
+notice, then, papa."
+
+"That is because I have trained myself to observe. The degree of power
+in the sight is of less consequence than the habit of seeing. But you
+have not yet told me what it is that makes you desirous of getting up."
+
+"I want to look over his shoulder, and see what he is doing. Is it not
+strange that in the midst of all this plenty of beautifulness, I should
+want to rise to look at a few lines and scratches, or smears of colour,
+upon a bit of paper?"
+
+"No, my dear; I don't think it is strange. There a new element of
+interest is introduced--the human. No doubt there is deep humanity in
+all this around us. No doubt all the world, in all its moods, is human,
+as those for whose abode and instruction it was made. No doubt, it would
+be void of both beauty and significance to our eyes, were it not that
+it is one crowd of pictures of the human mind, blended in one living
+fluctuating whole. But these meanings are there in solution as it were.
+The individual is a centre of crystallisation to this solution. Around
+him meanings gather, are separated from other meanings; and if he be an
+artist, by which I mean true painter, true poet, or true musician,
+as the case may be he so isolates and represents them, that we see
+them--not what nature shows to us, but what nature has shown, to him,
+determined by his nature and choice. With it is mingled therefore
+so much of his own individuality, manifested both in this choice and
+certain modifications determined by his way of working, that you have
+not only a representation of an aspect of nature, as far as that may
+be with limited powers and materials, but a revelation of the man's own
+mind and nature. Consequently there is a human interest in every true
+attempt to reproduce nature, an interest of individuality which does not
+belong to nature herself, who is for all and every man. You have just
+been saying that you were lying there like a convex mirror reflecting
+all nature around you. Every man is such a convex mirror; and his
+drawing, if he can make one, is an attempt to show what is in this
+little mirror of his, kindled there by the grand world outside. And the
+human mirrors being all differently formed, vary infinitely in what they
+would thus represent of the same scene. I have been greatly interested
+in looking alternately over the shoulders of two artists, both sketching
+in colour the same, absolutely the same scene, both trying to represent
+it with all the truth in their power. How different, notwithstanding,
+the two representations came out!"
+
+"I think I understand you, papa. But look a little farther off. Don't
+you see over the top of another rock a lady's bonnet. I do believe
+that's Wynnie. I know she took her box of water-colours out with her
+this morning, just before you came home. Dora went with her."
+
+"Can't you tell by her ribbons, Connie? You seem sharp-sighted enough
+to see her face if she would show it. I don't even see the bonnet. If
+I were like some people I know, I should feel justified in denying its
+presence, attributing the whole to your fancy, and refusing anything to
+superiority of vision."
+
+"That wouldn't be like you, papa."
+
+"I hope not; for I have no fancy for being shut up in my own blindness,
+when other people offer me their eyes to eke out the defects of my own
+with. But here comes mamma at last."
+
+Connie's face brightened as if she had not seen her mother for a
+fortnight. My Ethelwyn always brought the home gladness that her name
+signified with her. She was a centre of radiating peace.
+
+"Mamma, don't you think that's Wynnie's bonnet over that black rock
+there, just beyond where you see that man drawing?"
+
+"You absurd child! How should I know Wynnie's bonnet at this distance?"
+
+"Can't you see the little white feather you gave her out of your
+wardrobe just before we left? She put it in this morning before she went
+out."
+
+"I think I do see something white. But I want you to look out there,
+towards what they call the Chapel Rock, at the other end of that long
+mound they call the breakwater. You will soon see a boat appear full of
+the coast-guard. I saw them going on board just as I left the house to
+come up to you. Their officer came down with his sword, and each of the
+men had a cutlass. I wonder what it can mean."
+
+We looked. But before the boat made its appearance, Connie cried out--
+
+"Look there! What a big boat that is rowing for the land, away
+northwards there!"
+
+I turned my eyes in the direction she indicated, and saw a long boat
+with some half-dozen oars, full of men, rowing hard, apparently for some
+spot on the shore at a considerable distance to the north of our bay.
+
+"Ah!" I said, "that boat has something to do with the coast-guard and
+their cutlasses. You'll see that, as soon as they get out of the bay,
+they will row in the same direction."
+
+So it was. Our boat appeared presently from under the concealment of the
+heights on which we were, and made at full speed after the other boat.
+
+"Surely they can't be smugglers," I said. "I thought all that was over
+and done with."
+
+In the course of another twenty minutes, during which we watched
+their progress, both boats had disappeared behind the headland to the
+northward. Then, thinking Connie had had nearly enough of the sea air
+for her first experience of its influences, I went and fetched Walter,
+and we carried her back as we had brought her. She had not been in the
+shadow of her own room for five minutes before she was fast asleep.
+
+It was now nearly time for our early dinner. We always dined early
+when we could, that we might eat along with our children. We were
+both convinced that the only way to make them behave like ladies and
+gentlemen was to have them always with us at meals. We had seen very
+unpleasant results in the children of those who allowed them to dine
+with no other supervision than the nursery afforded: they were
+a constant anxiety and occasional horror to those whom they
+visited--snatching like monkeys, and devouring like jackals, as
+selfishly as if they were mere animals.
+
+"O! we've seen such a nice gentleman!" said Dora, becoming lively under
+the influence of her soup.
+
+"Have you, Dora? Where?"
+
+"Sitting on the rocks, taking a portrait of the sea."
+
+"What makes you say he was a nice gentleman?"
+
+"He had such beautiful boots!" answered Dora, at which there was a great
+laugh about the table.
+
+"O! we must run and tell Connie that," said Harry. "It will make her
+laugh."
+
+"What will you tell Connie, then, Harry?"
+
+"O! what was it, Charlie? I've forgotten."
+
+Another laugh followed at Harry's expense now, and we were all very
+merry, when Dora, who sat opposite to the window, called out, clapping
+her hands--
+
+"There's Niceboots again! There's Niceboots again!"
+
+The same moment the head of a young man appeared over the wall that
+separated the garden from the little beach that lay by the entrance of
+the canal. I saw at once that he must be more than ordinarily tall
+to show his face, for he was not close to the wall. It was a dark
+countenance, with a long beard, which few at that time wore, though now
+it is getting not uncommon, even in my own profession--a noble, handsome
+face, a little sad, with downbent eyes, which, released from their more
+immediate duty towards nature, had now bent themselves upon the earth.
+
+"Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought."
+
+"I suppose he's contemplating his boots," said Wynnie, with apparent
+maliciousness.
+
+"That's too bad of you, Wynnie," I said, and the child blushed.
+
+"I didn't mean anything, papa. It was only following up Dora's wise
+discrimination," said Wynnie.
+
+"He is a fine-looking fellow," said I, "and ought, with that face and
+head, to be able to paint good pictures."
+
+"I should like to see what he has done," said Wynnie; "for, by the way
+we were sitting, I should think we were attempting the same thing."
+
+"And what was that then, Wynnie?" I asked.
+
+"A rock," she answered, "that you could not see from where you were
+sitting. I saw you on the top of the cliff."
+
+"Connie said it was you, by your bonnet. She, too, was wishing she could
+look over the shoulder of the artist at work beside you."
+
+"Not beside me. There were yards and yards of solid rock between us."
+
+"Space, you see, in removing things from the beholder, seems always
+to bring them nearer to each other, and the most differing things are
+classed under one name by the man who knows nothing about them. But what
+sort of a rock was it you were trying to draw?"
+
+"A strange-looking, conical rock, that stands alone in front of one of
+the ridges that project from the shore into the water. Three sea-birds,
+with long white wings, were flying about it, and the little waves of
+the rising tide were beating themselves against it and breaking in white
+plashes. So the rock stood between the blue and white below and the blue
+and white above; for, though there were no clouds, the birds gave the
+touches of white to the upper sea."
+
+"Now, Dora," I said, "I don't know if you are old enough to understand
+me; but sometimes little people are long in understanding, just because
+the older people think they can't, and don't try them.--Do you see,
+Dora, why I want you to learn to draw? Look how Wynnie sees things.
+That is, in a great measure, because she draws things, and has, by that,
+learned to watch in order to find out. It is a great thing to have your
+eyes open."
+
+Dora's eyes were large, and she opened them to their full width, as
+if she would take in the universe at their little doors. Whether that
+indicated that she did not in the least understand what I had been
+saying, or that she was in sympathy with it, I cannot tell.
+
+"Now let us go up to Connie, and tell her about the rock and everything
+else you have seen since you went out. We are all her messengers sent
+out to discover things, and bring back news of them."
+
+After a little talk with Connie, I retired to the study, which was on
+the same floor as her room completing, indeed, the whole of that part
+of the house, which, seen from without, looked like a separate building;
+for it had a roof of its own, and stood higher up the rock than the rest
+of the dwelling. Here I began to glance over the books. To have the
+run of another man's library, especially if it has all been gathered
+by himself, is like having a pass-key into the chambers of his thought.
+Only, one must be wary, when he opens them, what marks on the books
+he takes for those of the present owner. A mistake here would breed
+considerable confusion and falsehood in any judgment formed from the
+library. I found, however, one thing plain enough, that Shepherd had
+kept up that love for an older English literature, which had been one of
+the cords to draw us towards each other when we were students together.
+There had been one point on which we especially agreed--that a true
+knowledge of the present, in literature, as in everything else, could
+only be founded upon a knowledge of what had gone before; therefore,
+that any judgment, in regard to the literature of the present day, was
+of no value which was not guided and influenced by a real acquaintance
+with the best of what had gone before, being liable to be dazzled and
+misled by novelty of form and other qualities which, whatever might be
+the real worth of the substance, were, in themselves, purely ephemeral.
+I had taken down a last-century edition of the poems of the brothers
+Fletcher, and, having begun to read a lovely passage in "Christ's
+Victory and Triumph," had gone into what I can only call an intellectual
+rage, at the impudence of the editor, who had altered innumerable words
+and phrases to suit the degenerate taste of his own time,--when a knock
+came to the door, and Charlie entered, breathless with eagerness.
+
+"There's the boat with the men with the swords in it, and another boat
+behind them, twice as big."
+
+I hurried out upon the road, and there, close under our windows, were
+the two boats we had seen in the morning, landing their crews on the
+little beach. The second boat was full of weather-beaten men, in all
+kinds of attire, some in blue jerseys, some in red shirts, some in
+ragged coats. One man, who looked their superior, was dressed in blue
+from head to foot.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked the officer of the coast-guard, a sedate,
+thoughtful-looking man.
+
+"Vessel foundered, sir," he answered. "Sprung a leak on Sunday morning.
+She was laden with iron, and in a heavy ground swell it shifted and
+knocked a hole in her. The poor fellows are worn out with the pump and
+rowing, upon little or nothing to eat."
+
+They were trooping past us by this time, looking rather dismal, though
+not by any means abject.
+
+"What are you going to do with them now?"
+
+"They'll be taken in by the people. We'll get up a little subscription
+for them, but they all belong to the society the sailors have for
+sending the shipwrecked to their homes, or where they want to go."
+
+"Well, here's something to help," I said.
+
+"Thank you, sir. They'll be very glad of it."
+
+"And if there's anything wanted that I can do for them, you must let me
+know."
+
+"I will, sir. But I don't think there will be any occasion to trouble
+you. You are our new clergyman, I believe."
+
+"Not exactly that. Only for a little while, till my friend Mr. Shepherd
+is able to come back to you."
+
+"We don't want to lose Mr. Shepherd, sir. He's what they call high
+in these parts, but he's a great favourite with all the poor people,
+because you see he understands them as if he was of the same flesh and
+blood with themselves--as, for that matter, I suppose we all are."
+
+"If we weren't there would be nothing to say at all. Will any of these
+men be at church to-morrow, do you suppose? I am afraid sailors are not
+much in the way of going to church?"
+
+"I am afraid not. You see they are all anxious to get home. Most likely
+they'll be all travelling to-morrow. It's a pity. It would be a good
+chance for saying something to them that they might think of again. But
+I often think that, perhaps--it's only my own fancy, and I don't set it
+up for anything--that sailors won't be judged exactly like other people.
+They're so knocked about, you see, sir."
+
+"Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
+Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon
+it, God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any
+sailor of them all. But that's not exactly the question. It seems to me
+the question is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is
+because we know what God is like, who can trust in him with all our
+hearts because he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend
+of sinners, shall we not try all we can to let them, too, know the
+blessedness of trusting in their Father in heaven? If we could only get
+them to say the Lord's prayer, _meaning_ it, think what that would be!
+Look here! This can't be called bribery, for they are in want of it, and
+it will show them I am friendly. Here's another sovereign. Give them
+my compliments, and say that if any of them happen to be in Kilkhaven
+tomorrow, I shall be quite pleased to welcome them to church. Tell them
+I will give them of my best there if they will come. Make the invitation
+merrily, you know. No long faces and solemn speech. I will give them the
+solemn speech when they come to church. But even there I hope God will
+keep the long face far from me. That is fittest for fear and suffering.
+And the house of God is the casket that holds the antidote against
+all fear and most suffering. But I am preaching my sermon on Saturday
+instead of Sunday, and keeping you from your ministration to the poor
+fellows. Good-bye."
+
+"I will give them your message as near as I can," he said, and we shook
+hands and parted.
+
+This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the
+ocean. To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning
+there had been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday
+morning, home come the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a
+mock she takes all they have, and flings them on shore again, with her
+weeds, and her shells, and her sand. Before the winter was over we had
+learned--how much more of that awful power that surrounds the habitable
+earth! By slow degrees the sense of its might grew upon us, first by the
+vision of its many aspects and moods, and then by more awful things that
+followed; for there are few coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as
+upon this, the whole force of the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when
+there is no storm within perhaps hundreds of miles, when all is still as
+a church on the land, the storm that raves somewhere out upon the vast
+waste, will drive the waves in upon the shore with such fury that not
+even a lifeboat could make its way through their yawning hollows, and
+their fierce, shattered, and tumbling crests.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in
+the church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning's sermon for
+the occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time
+that it should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors
+were there or not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought,
+for instance, of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready
+all about our island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or
+symbol of two other oceans, one very still, the other very awful and
+fierce; in fact, that three oceans surrounded us: one of the known
+world; one of the unseen world, that is, of death; one of the
+spirit--the devouring ocean of evil--and might I not have added yet
+another, encompassing and silencing all the rest--that of truth!
+The visible ocean seemed to make war upon the land, and the dwellers
+thereon. Restrained by the will of God and by him made subject more and
+more to the advancing knowledge of those who were created to rule over
+it, it was yet like a half-tamed beast ever ready to break loose and
+devour its masters. Of course this would have been but one aspect or
+appearance of it--for it was in truth all service; but this was the
+aspect I knew it must bear to those, seafaring themselves or not, to
+whom I had to speak. Then I thought I might show, that its power, like
+that of all things that man is ready to fear, had one barrier over which
+no commotion, no might of driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its
+loudest waves were dumb--the barrier of death. Hitherto and no further
+could its power reach. It could kill the body. It could dash in pieces
+the last little cock-boat to which the man clung, but thus it swept the
+man beyond its own region into the second sea of stillness, which we
+call death, out upon which the thoughts of those that are left behind
+can follow him only in great longings, vague conjectures, and mighty
+faith. Then I thought I could show them how, raving in fear, or lying
+still in calm deceit, there lay about the life of man a far more fearful
+ocean than that which threatened his body; for this would cast, could it
+but get a hold of him, both body and soul into hell--the sea of evil,
+of vice, of sin, of wrong-doing--they might call it by what name they
+pleased. This made war against the very essence of life, against God
+who is the truth, against love, against fairness, against fatherhood,
+motherhood, sisterhood, brotherhood, manhood, womanhood, against
+tenderness and grace and beauty, gathering into one pulp of festering
+death all that is noble, lovely, worshipful in the human nature made so
+divine that the one fearless man, the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it with
+us. This, I thought I might make them understand, was the only terrible
+sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose awful shore we must shrink and
+flee, the end of every voyage upon whose bosom was the bottom of its
+filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is thought or spoken in the
+light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that reaches down from the
+upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of men. I thought, I
+say, for a while, that I could make this, not definite, but very real to
+them. But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might they not in the
+symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the symbol itself
+be ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return only in the
+vaguest shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more excellent
+way. For the power of the truth lies of course in its revelation to the
+mind, and while for this there are a thousand means, none are so mighty
+as its embodiment in human beings and human life. There it is itself
+alive and active. And amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that
+in him who was perfect man in virtue of being at the root of the secret
+of humanity, in virtue of being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons
+in time: he is his Son in eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken
+sparkle. Therefore, I would talk to them about--but I will treat my
+reader now as if he were not my reader, but one of my congregation
+on that bright Sunday, my first in the Seaboard Parish, with the sea
+outside the church, flashing in the sunlight.
+
+While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen,
+I could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level
+with them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts
+upon that which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the
+pulpit; then I felt, as usual with me, that I was personally present for
+personal influence with my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure,
+that one long bench nearly in the middle of the church was full of such
+sunburnt men as could not be mistaken for any but mariners, even if
+their torn and worn garments had not revealed that they must be the
+very men about whom we had been so much interested. Not only were they
+behaving with perfect decorum, but their rough faces wore an aspect of
+solemnity which I do not suppose was by any means their usual aspect.
+
+I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing.
+They should have it by and by.
+
+"Once upon a time," I said, "a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
+till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a
+mountain as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes
+haste to get down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun
+was going down, and, as I say, continued there for a good long while
+after it was dark. You will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished
+to be alone. He hadn't a house of his own. He never had all the time he
+lived. He hadn't even a room of his own into which he could go, and bolt
+the door of it. True, he had kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they
+were all poor people, and their houses were small, and very likely they
+had large families, and he could not always find a quiet place to go
+into. And I dare say, if he had had a room, he would have been a little
+troubled with the children constantly coming to find him; for however
+much he loved them--and no man was ever so fond of children as he
+was--he needed to be left quiet sometimes. So, upon this occasion, he
+went up the mountain just to be quiet. He had been all day with a crowd
+of people, and he felt that it was time to be alone. For he had been
+talking with men all day, which tires and sometimes confuses a man's
+thoughts, and now he wanted to talk with God--for that makes a man
+strong, and puts all the confusion in order again, and lets a man know
+what he is about. So he went to the top of the hill. That was his secret
+chamber. It had no door; but that did not matter--no one could see him
+but God. There he stayed for hours--sometimes, I suppose, kneeling in
+his prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with his own thinking, on
+a stone; sometimes walking about, looking forward to what would come
+next--not anxious about it, but contemplating it. For just before he
+came up here, some of the people who had been with him wanted to make
+him a king; and this would not do--this was not what God wanted of him,
+and therefore he got rid of them, and came up here to talk to God. It
+was so quiet up here! The earth had almost vanished. He could see just
+the bare hilltop beneath him, a glimmer below, and the sky and the stars
+over his head. The people had all gone away to their own homes, and
+perhaps next day would hardly think about him at all, busy catching
+fish, or digging their gardens, or making things for their houses. But
+he knew that God would not forget him the next day any more than this
+day, and that God had sent him not to be the king that these people
+wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make his heart strong, I
+say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk with his Father.
+How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had been down
+there a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as much
+as he was in the quiet now--the only difference being that he could not
+then be alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was--it was the
+king of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting
+son of our Father in heaven.
+
+"Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot
+of it--that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not
+wanting even his usual companions to be with him this evening--partly, I
+presume, because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take
+him by force and make him a king--he had sent them away in their boat,
+to go across this water to the other side, where were their homes and
+their families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top or
+on the water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would have
+been keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle
+of the lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their
+teeth. But he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was
+talking to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and
+finding it--watching it on its way across to the other side. You must
+remember that it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous
+storms upon these small lakes with great mountains about them. For the
+wind will come all at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden
+a squall as ever overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is
+no sea-room. If the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore
+in a few minutes, whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out
+at the oar, toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So
+the time for loneliness and prayer was over, and the time to go down out
+of his secret chamber and help his brethren was come. He did not need to
+turn and say good-bye to his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top
+alone: his Father was down there on the lake as well. He went straight
+down. Could not his Father, if he too was down on the lake, help them
+without him? Yes. But he wanted him to do it, that they might see that
+he did it. Otherwise they would only have thought that the wind fell and
+the waves lay down, without supposing for a moment that their Master or
+his Father had had anything to do with it. They would have done just as
+people do now-a-days: they think that the help comes of itself, instead
+of by the will of him who determined from the first that men should be
+helped. So the Master went down the hill. When he reached the border
+of the lake, the wind being from the other side, he must have found the
+waves breaking furiously upon the rocks. But that made no difference to
+him. He looked out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the rushing wind
+and the noise of the water, out over the waves under the clear, starry
+sky, saw where the tiny boat was tossed about like a nutshell, and set
+out."
+
+The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
+their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are
+of tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson's yarn a
+good one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than
+the others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not
+returned, and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea
+of what was coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how
+Jesus had come by a boat.
+
+"The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave
+him behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been
+with them--not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only
+that somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at.
+They had seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn
+water into wine--some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand
+people the day before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one
+of their number suggested that if he had been with them, they would have
+been safe from the storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about
+the laws of nature, not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they
+would have said that was quite a different thing--altogether too much to
+expect or believe: _nobody_ could make the wind mind what it was about,
+or keep the water from drowning you if you fell into it and couldn't
+swim; or such-like.
+
+"At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
+strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
+their oars in it up to the handles--as they rose on the crest of a huge
+wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
+leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray
+which the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before
+it like dust, they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat,
+something standing up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move
+towards them. It was a shape like a man. They all cried out with fear,
+as was natural, for they thought it must be a ghost."
+
+How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the
+story! I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting
+up to speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.
+
+"But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
+knew so well. It said, 'Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.' I
+should think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some
+moments where they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to
+recover himself apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt
+strong and full of courage. 'Lord, if it be thou,' he said, 'bid me come
+unto thee on the water.' Jesus just said, 'Come;' and Peter unshipped
+his oar, and scrambled over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let
+go his hold of the boat, and began to look about him, and saw how the
+wind was tearing the water, and how it tossed and raved between him and
+Jesus, he began to be afraid. And as soon as he began to be afraid he
+began to sink; but he had, notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough
+to do the one sensible thing; he cried out, 'Lord, save me.' And Jesus
+put out his hand, and took hold of him, and lifted him up out of the
+water, and said to him, 'O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou
+doubt? And then they got into the boat, and the wind fell all at once,
+and altogether.
+
+"Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn't
+that he hadn't courage, but that he hadn't enough of it. And why was it
+that he hadn't enough of it? Because he hadn't faith enough. Peter was
+always very easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn't at all
+likely that a man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter
+found himself standing on the water: you would have thought that when
+once he found himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of
+the wind and the waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked
+so ugly that the fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his
+courage went. You would have thought that the greatest trial of his
+courage was over when he got out of the boat, and that there was
+comparatively little more ahead of him. Yet the sight of the waves and
+the blast of the boisterous wind were too much for him. I will tell you
+how I fancy it was; and I think there are several instances of the same
+kind of thing in Peter's life. When he got out of the boat, and found
+himself standing on the water, he began to think much of himself for
+being able to do so, and fancy himself better and greater than his
+companions, and an especial favourite of God above them. Now, there is
+nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two are directly against
+each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and began to think about
+himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose his faith, and
+then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink--and that brought him to
+his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his Master, and
+then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the Lord gently
+rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, 'Wherefore
+didst thou doubt?' I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart
+sufficiently well to answer that _wherefore_. I do not think it likely
+at this period of his history. But God has immeasurable patience, and
+before he had done teaching Peter, even in this life, he had made him
+know quite well that pride and conceit were at the root of all his
+failures. Jesus did not point it out to him now. Faith was the only
+thing that would reveal that to him, as well as cure him of it; and was,
+therefore, the only thing he required of him in his rebuke. I suspect
+Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager hands of his companions
+already in a humbler state of mind than when he left it; but before
+his pride would be quite overcome, it would need that same voice of
+loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock to bring to
+his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the voice
+of one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet a
+readier disciple than he--the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him because
+he dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even he
+gained the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the
+cross like his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach
+us to distrust ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and
+endless patience with other people. But to return to the story and what
+the story itself teaches us.
+
+"If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
+mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
+frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they
+were only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own
+question"--I went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with
+an audible answer hovering on their lips--"I don't know that, as they
+then were, it would have made so much difference to them; for none of
+them had risen much above the look of the things nearest them yet. But
+supposing you, who know something about him, were alone on the sea, and
+expecting your boat to be swamped every moment--if you found out all
+at once, that he was looking down at you from some lofty hilltop, and
+seeing all round about you in time and space too, would you be afraid?
+He might mean you to go to the bottom, you know. Would you mind going
+to the bottom with him looking at you? I do not think I should mind it
+myself. But I must take care lest I be boastful like Peter.
+
+"Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
+Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not
+believe that he is what he says he is--the Saviour of men. We do not
+believe what he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and
+therefore continue slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you
+do believe in him. I am not going to say that you do not believe in him;
+but I hope I am going to make you say to yourselves that you too deserve
+to have those words of the Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to
+Peter, 'O ye of little faith!' Floating on the sea of your troubles,
+all kinds of fears and anxieties assailing you, is He not on the
+mountain-top? Sees he not the little boat of your fortunes tossed with
+the waves and the contrary wind? Assuredly he will come to you walking
+on the waters. It may not be in the way you wish, but if not, you will
+say at last, 'This is better.' It may be that he will come in a form
+that will make you cry out for fear in the weakness of your faith, as
+the disciples cried out--not believing any more than they did, that it
+can be he. But will not each of you arouse his courage that to you also
+he may say, as to the woman with the sick daughter whose confidence he
+so sorely tried, 'Great is thy faith'? Will you not rouse yourself, I
+say, that you may do him justice, and cast off the slavery of your own
+dread? O ye of little faith, wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that
+the Lord sees and will not come. Down the mountain assuredly he will
+come, and you are now as safe in your troubles as the disciples were in
+theirs with Jesus looking on. They did not know it, but it was so: the
+Lord was watching them. And when you look back upon your past lives,
+cannot you see some instances of the same kind--when you felt and acted
+as if the Lord had forgotten you, and found afterwards that he had been
+watching you all the time?
+
+"But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
+little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
+soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
+envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah!
+trust him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean
+and beautiful in heart.
+
+"O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
+watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt,
+and wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this
+globe, though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake
+on which you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you,
+and watch over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful
+to him? Will you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things,
+lie, and delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you,
+watching your ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves
+to help you? It is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would
+be far finer to fear nothing _because_ he is above all, and over all,
+and in you all. For his sake and for his love, give up everything bad,
+and take him for your captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you,
+and steer you safe into the port of glory. Now to God the Father," &c.
+
+This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
+followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOLUME 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 be 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 be 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, _nee_
+island, upon which the keep of Tintagel stands. There we set Connie
+down, to take breath and ease our arms before we began the arduous way.
+
+"Now, now!" said Connie eagerly, lifting her hands in the belief that we
+were on the point of undoing the bandage from her eyes.
+
+"No, no, my love, not yet," I said, and she lay still again, only she
+looked more eager than before.
+
+"I am afraid I have tired out you and Mr. Percivale, papa," she said.
+
+Percivale laughed so amusedly, that she rejoined roguishly--
+
+"O yes! I know every gentleman is a Hercules--at least, he chooses to be
+considered one! But, notwithstanding my firm faith in the fact, I have a
+little womanly conscience left that is hard to hoodwink."
+
+There was a speech for my wee Connie to make! The best answer and the
+best revenge was to lift her and go on. This we did, trying as well as
+we might to prevent the difference of level between us from tilting the
+litter too much for her comfort.
+
+"Where _are_ you going, papa?" she said once, but without a sign of
+fear in her voice, as a little slip I made lowered my end of the litter
+suddenly. "You must be going up a steep place. Don't hurt yourself, dear
+papa."
+
+We had changed our positions, and were now carrying her, head foremost,
+up the hill. Percivale led, and I followed. Now I could see every change
+on her lovely face, and it made me strong to endure; for I did find
+it hard work, I confess, to get to the top. It lay like a little sunny
+pool, on which all the cloudy thoughts that moved in some unseen heaven
+cast exquisitely delicate changes of light and shade as they floated
+over it. Percivale strode on as if he bore a feather behind him. I did
+wish we were at the top, for my arms began to feel like iron-cables,
+stiff and stark--only I was afraid of my fingers giving way. My heart
+was beating uncomfortably too. But Percivale, I felt almost inclined
+to quarrel with him before it was over, he strode on so unconcernedly,
+turning every corner of the zigzag where I expected him to propose a
+halt, and striding on again, as if there could be no pretence for any
+change of procedure. But I held out, strengthened by the play on my
+daughter's face, delicate as the play on an opal--one that inclines more
+to the milk than the fire.
+
+When at length we turned in through the gothic door in the battlemented
+wall, and set our lovely burden down upon the grass--
+
+"Percivale," I said, forgetting the proprieties in the affected humour
+of being angry with him, so glad was I that we had her at length on the
+mount of glory, "why did you go on walking like a castle, and pay no
+heed to me?"
+
+"You didn't speak, did you, Mr. Walton," he returned, with just a shadow
+of solicitude in the question.
+
+"No. Of course not," I rejoined.
+
+"O, then," he returned, in a tone of relief, "how could I? You were my
+captain: how could I give in so long as you were holding on?"
+
+I am afraid the _Percivale_, without the _Mister_, came again and
+again after this, though I pulled myself up for it as often as I caught
+myself.
+
+"Now, papa!" said Connie from the grass.
+
+"Not yet, my dear. Wait till your mamma and Wynnie come. Let us go and
+meet them, Mr. Percivale."
+
+"O yes, do, papa. Leave me alone here without knowing where I am or
+what kind of a place I am in. I should like to know how it feels. I have
+never been alone in all my life."
+
+"Very well, my dear," I said; and Percivale and I left her alone in the
+ruins.
+
+We found Ethelwyn toiling up with Wynnie helping her all she could.
+
+"Dear Harry," she said, "how could you think of bringing Connie up such
+an awful place? I wonder you dared to do it."
+
+"It's done you see, wife," I answered, "thanks to Mr. Percivale, who has
+nearly torn the breath out of me. But now we must get you up, and you
+will say that to see Connie's delight, not to mention your own, is quite
+wages for the labour."
+
+"Isn't she afraid to find herself so high up?"
+
+"She knows nothing about it yet."
+
+"You do not mean you have left the child there with her eyes tied up."
+
+"To be sure. We could not uncover them before you came. It would spoil
+half the pleasure."
+
+"Do let us make haste then. It is surely dangerous to leave her so."
+
+"Not in the least; but she must be getting tired of the darkness. Take
+my arm now."
+
+"Don't you think Mrs. Walton had better take my arm," said Percivale,
+"and then you can put your hand on her back, and help her a little that
+way."
+
+We tried the plan, found it a good one, and soon reached the top. The
+moment our eyes fell upon Connie, we could see that she had found the
+place neither fearful nor lonely. The sweetest ghost of a smile hovered
+on her pale face, which shone in the shadow of the old gateway of the
+keep, with light from within her own sunny soul. She lay in such still
+expectation, that you would have thought she had just fallen asleep
+after receiving an answer to a prayer, reminding me of a little-known
+sonnet of Wordsworth's, in which he describes as the type of Death--
+
+  "the face of one
+  Sleeping alone within a mossy cave
+  With her face up to heaven; that seemed to have
+  Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone;
+  A lovely beauty in a summer grave."
+
+[Footnote: _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, part i.28.]
+
+But she heard our steps, and her face awoke.
+
+"Is mamma come?"
+
+"Yes, my darling. I am here," said her mother. "How do you feel?"
+
+"Perfectly well, mamma, thank you. Now, papa!"
+
+"One moment more, my love. Now, Percivale."
+
+We carried her to the spot we had agreed upon, and while we held her
+a little inclined that she might see the better, her mother undid the
+bandage from her head.
+
+"Hold your hands over her eyes, a little way from them," I said to
+her as she untied the handkerchief, "that the light may reach them by
+degrees, and not blind her."
+
+Ethelwyn did so for a few moments, then removed them. Still for a moment
+or two more, it was plain from her look of utter bewilderment, that all
+was a confused mass of light and colour. Then she gave a little cry,
+and to my astonishment, almost fear, half rose to a sitting posture. One
+moment more and she laid herself gently back, and wept and sobbed.
+
+And now I may admit my reader to a share, though at best but a dim
+reflex in my poor words, of the glory that made her weep.
+
+Through the gothic-arched door in the battlemented wall, which stood on
+the very edge of the precipitous descent, so that nothing of the descent
+was seen, and the door was as a framework to the picture, Connie saw
+a great gulf at her feet, full to the brim of a splendour of light and
+colour. Before her rose the great ruins of rock and castle, the ruin of
+rock with castle; rough stone below, clear green happy grass above, even
+to the verge of the abrupt and awful precipice; over it the summer sky
+so clear that it must have been clarified by sorrow and thought; at the
+foot of the rocks, hundreds of feet below, the blue waters breaking
+in white upon the dark gray sands; all full of the gladness of the sun
+overflowing in speechless delight, and reflected in fresh gladness from
+stone and water and flower, like new springs of light rippling forth
+from the earth itself to swell the universal tide of glory--all this
+seen through the narrow gothic archway of a door in a wall--up--down--on
+either hand. But the main marvel was the look sheer below into the abyss
+full of light and air and colour, its sides lined with rock and grass,
+and its bottom lined with blue ripples and sand. Was it any wonder that
+my Connie should cry aloud when the vision dawned upon her, and then
+weep to ease a heart ready to burst with delight? "O Lord God," I said,
+almost involuntarily, "thou art very rich. Thou art the one poet, the
+one maker. We worship thee. Make but our souls as full of glory in thy
+sight as this chasm is to our eyes glorious with the forms which thou
+hast cloven and carved out of nothingness, and we shall be worthy to
+worship thee, O Lord, our God." For I was carried beyond myself with
+delight, and with sympathy with Connie's delight and with the calm
+worship of gladness in my wife's countenance. But when my eye fell on
+Wynnie, I saw a trouble mingled with her admiration, a self-accusation,
+I think, that she did not and could not enjoy it more; and when I turned
+from her, there were the eyes of Percivale fixed on me in wonderment;
+and for the moment I felt as David must have felt when, in his dance
+of undignified delight that he had got the ark home again, he saw the
+contemptuous eyes of Michal fixed on him from the window. But I could
+not leave it so. I said to him--coldly I daresay:
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Percivale; I forgot for the moment that I was not
+amongst my own family."
+
+Percivale took his hat off.
+
+"Forgive my seeming rudeness, Mr. Walton. I was half-envying and
+half-wondering. You would not be surprised at my unconscious behaviour
+if you had seen as much of the wrong side of the stuff as I have seen in
+London."
+
+I had some idea of what he meant; but this was no time to enter upon a
+discussion. I could only say--
+
+"My heart was full, Mr. Percivale, and I let it overflow."
+
+"Let me at least share in its overflow," he rejoined, and nothing more
+passed on the subject.
+
+For the next ten minutes we stood in absolute silence. We had set Connie
+down on the grass again, but propped up so that she could see through
+the doorway. And she lay in still ecstasy. But there was more to be seen
+ere we descended. There was the rest of the little islet with its crop
+of down-grass, on which the horses of all the knights of King Arthur's
+round table might have fed for a week--yes, for a fortnight, without, by
+any means, encountering the short commons of war. There were the ruins
+of the castle so built of plates of the laminated stone of the rocks on
+which they stood, and so woven in or more properly incorporated with the
+outstanding rocks themselves, that in some parts I found it impossible
+to tell which was building and which was rock--the walls themselves
+seeming like a growth out of the island itself, so perfectly were they
+in harmony with, and in kind the same as, the natural ground upon which
+and of which they had been constructed. And this would seem to me to be
+the perfection of architecture. The work of man's hands should be so in
+harmony with the place where it stands that it must look as if it had
+grown out of the soil. But the walls were in some parts so thin that one
+wondered how they could have stood so long. They must have been built
+before the time of any formidable artillery--enough only for defence
+from arrows. But then the island was nowhere commanded, and its own
+steep cliffs would be more easily defended than any erections upon it.
+Clearly the intention was that no enemy should thereon find rest for the
+sole of his foot; for if he was able to land, farewell to the notion
+of any further defence. Then there was outside the walls the little
+chapel--such a tiny chapel! of which little more than the foundation
+remained, with the ruins of the altar still standing, and outside the
+chancel, nestling by its wall, a coffin hollowed in the rock; then the
+churchyard a little way off full of graves, which, I presume, would have
+vanished long ago were it not that the very graves were founded on the
+rock. There still stood old worn-out headstones of thin slate, but
+no memorials were left. Then there was the fragment of arched passage
+underground laid open to the air in the centre of the islet; and last,
+and grandest of all, the awful edges of the rock, broken by time, and
+carved by the winds and the waters into grotesque shapes and threatening
+forms. Over all the surface of the islet we carried Connie, and from
+three sides of this sea-fortress she looked abroad over "the Atlantic's
+level powers." It blew a gentle ethereal breeze on the top; but had
+there been such a wind as I have since stood against on that fearful
+citadel of nature, I should have been in terror lest we should all be
+blown, into the deep. Over the edge she peeped at the strange fantastic
+needle-rock, and round the corner she peeped to see Wynnie and her
+mother seated in what they call Arthur's chair--a canopied hollow
+wrought in the plated rock by the mightiest of all solvents--air and
+water; till at length it was time that we should take our leave of the
+few sheep that fed over the place, and issuing by the gothic door, wind
+away down the dangerous path to the safe ground below.
+
+"I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?" I said.
+
+"Why?" she asked, in wonderment. "There's nothing higher yet, is there?"
+
+"No, my love. If there were, you would hardly be able for it to-day,
+I should think. It is only to keep you from being frightened at the
+precipice as you go down."
+
+"But I sha'n't be frightened, papa."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Because you are going to carry me."
+
+"But what if I should slip? I might, you know."
+
+"I don't mind. I sha'n't mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you
+do it. I sha'n't be to blame, and I'm sure you won't, papa." Then she
+drew my head down and whispered in my ear, "If I get as much more by
+being killed, as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I'm sure it
+will be well worth it."
+
+I tried to smile a reply, for I could not speak one. We took her just as
+she was, and with some tremor on my part, but not a single slip, we bore
+her down the winding path, her face showing all the time that, instead
+of being afraid, she was in a state of ecstatic delight. My wife, I
+could see, was nervous, however; and she breathed a sigh of relief when
+we were once more at the foot.
+
+"Well, I'm glad that's over," she said.
+
+"So am I," I returned, as we set down the litter.
+
+"Poor papa! I've pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale's too!"
+
+Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then
+turning towards her, he said, "Look here, Miss Connie;" and flung it far
+out from the isthmus on which we were resting. We heard it strike on
+a rock below, and then fall in a shower of fragments. "My arms are all
+right, you see," he said.
+
+Meantime, Wynnie had scrambled down to the shore, where we had not yet
+been. In a few minutes, we still lingering, she came running back to us
+out of breath with the news:
+
+"Papa! Mr. Percivale! there's such a grand cave down there! It goes
+right through under the island."
+
+Connie looked so eager, that Percivale and I glanced at each other, and
+without a word, lifted her, and followed Wynnie. It was a little way
+that we had to carry her down, but it was very broken, and insomuch
+more difficult than the other. At length we stood in the cavern. What a
+contrast to the vision overhead!--nothing to be seen but the cool, dark
+vault of the cave, long and winding, with the fresh seaweed lying on
+its pebbly floor, and its walls wet with the last tide, for every tide
+rolled through in rising and falling--the waters on the opposite sides
+of the islet greeting through this cave; the blue shimmer of the rising
+sea, and the forms of huge outlying rocks, looking in at the further
+end, where the roof rose like a grand cathedral arch; and the green
+gleam of veins rich with copper, dashing and streaking the darkness in
+gloomy little chapels, where the floor of heaped-up pebbles rose and
+rose within till it met the descending roof. It was like a going-down
+from Paradise into the grave--but a cool, friendly, brown-lighted grave,
+which even in its darkest recesses bore some witness to the wind of God
+outside, in the occasional ripple of shadowed light, from the play of
+the sun on the waves, that, fleeted and reflected, wandered across its
+jagged roof. But we dared not keep Connie long in the damp coolness;
+and I have given my reader quite enough of description for one hour's
+reading. He can scarcely be equal to more.
+
+My invalids had now beheld the sea in such a different aspect, that I no
+longer feared to go back to Kilkhaven. Thither we went three days after,
+and at my invitation, Percivale took Turner's place in the carriage.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JOE AND HIS TROUBLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+How bright the yellow shores of Kilkhaven looked after the dark sands
+of Tintagel! But how low and tame its highest cliffs after the mighty
+rampart of rocks which there face the sea like a cordon of fierce
+guardians! It was pleasant to settle down again in what had begun to
+look like home, and was indeed made such by the boisterous welcome of
+Dora and the boys. Connie's baby crowed aloud, and stretched forth her
+chubby arms at sight of her. The wind blew gently around us, full both
+of the freshness of the clean waters and the scents of the down-grasses,
+to welcome us back. And the dread vision of the shore had now receded so
+far into the past, that it was no longer able to hurt.
+
+We had called at the blacksmith's house on our way home, and found that
+he was so far better as to be working at his forge again. His mother
+said he was used to such attacks, and soon got over them. I, however,
+feared that they indicated an approaching break-down.
+
+"Indeed, sir," she said, "Joe might be well enough if he liked. It's all
+his own fault."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked. "I cannot believe that your son is in any
+way guilty of his own illness."
+
+"He's a well-behaved lad, my Joe," she answered; "but he hasn't learned
+what I had to learn long ago."
+
+"What is that?" I asked.
+
+"To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other."
+
+She was a woman with a long upper lip and a judicial face, and as she
+spoke, her lip grew longer and longer; and when she closed her mouth in
+mark of her own resolution, that lip seemed to occupy two-thirds of all
+her face under the nose.
+
+"And what is it he won't do?"
+
+"I don't mind whether he does it or not, if he would only
+make--up--his--mind--and--stick--to--it."
+
+"What is it you want him to do, then?"
+
+"I don't want him to do it, I'm sure. It's no good to me--and wouldn't
+be much to him, that I'll be bound. Howsomever, he must please himself."
+
+I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was
+no more sunshine for him at home than his mother's face indicated. Few
+things can make a man so strong and able for his work as a sun indoors,
+whose rays are smiles, ever ready to shine upon him when he opens the
+door,--the face of wife or mother or sister. Now his mother's face
+certainly was not sunny. No doubt it must have shone upon him when he
+was a baby. God has made that provision for babies, who need sunshine
+so much that a mother's face cannot help being sunny to them: why should
+the sunshine depart as the child grows older?
+
+"Well, I suppose I must not ask. But I fear your son is very far
+from well. Such attacks do not often occur without serious mischief
+somewhere. And if there is anything troubling him, he is less likely to
+get over it."
+
+"If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to
+it--"
+
+"O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind."
+
+"That's just what he won't do."
+
+All the time she looked naughty, only after a self-righteous fashion. It
+was evident that whatever was the cause of it, she was not in sympathy
+with her son, and therefore could not help him out of any difficulty he
+might be in. I made no further attempt to learn from her the cause
+of her son's discomfort, clearly a deeper cause than his illness. In
+passing his workshop, we stopped for a moment, and I made an arrangement
+to meet him at the church the next day.
+
+I was there before him, and found that he had done a good deal since we
+left. Little remained except to get the keys put to rights, and the rods
+attached to the cranks in the box. To-day he was to bring a carpenter, a
+cousin of his own, with him.
+
+They soon arrived, and a small consultation followed. The cousin was a
+bright-eyed, cheruby-cheeked little man, with a ready smile and white
+teeth: I thought he might help me to understand what was amiss in
+Joseph's affairs. But I would not make the attempt except openly. I
+therefore said half in a jocular fashion, as with gloomy, self-withdrawn
+countenance the smith was fitting one loop into another in two of his
+iron rods,--
+
+"I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more
+cheerful. You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine."
+
+The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.
+
+"Well, sir, if you'll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the
+rest of us. He's a religious man, is Joe."
+
+"But I don't see how that should make him miserable. It hasn't made me
+miserable. I hope I'm a religious man myself. It makes me happy every
+day of my life."
+
+"Ah, well," returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked
+away gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it,
+"I don't say it's the religion, for I don't know; but perhaps it's the
+way he takes it up. He don't look after hisself enough; he's always
+thinking about other people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that
+if you don't look after yourself, why, who is to look after you? That's
+common sense, _I_ think."
+
+It was a curious contrast--the merry friendly face, which shone
+good-fellowship to all mankind, accusing the sombre, pale, sad, severe,
+even somewhat bitter countenance beside him, of thinking too much
+about other people, and too little about himself. Of course it might
+be correct in a way. There is all the difference between a comfortable,
+healthy inclination, and a pained, conscientious principle. It was
+a smile very unlike his cousin's with which Joe heard his remarks on
+himself.
+
+"But," I said, "you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take
+Joe's way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of
+yourself."
+
+"I don't see why, sir."
+
+"Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else."
+
+"Not so well, I doubt, sir."
+
+"Yes, and a great deal better."
+
+"At any rate, that's a long way off; and mean time, _who's_ to take care
+of the odd man like Joe there, that don't look after hisself?"
+
+"Why, God, of course."
+
+"Well, there's just where I'm out. I don't know nothing about that
+branch, sir."
+
+I saw a grateful light mount up in Joe's gloomy eyes as I spoke thus
+upon his side of the question. He said nothing, however; and his cousin
+volunteering no further information, I did not push any advantage I
+might have gained.
+
+At noon I made them leave their work, and come home with me to have
+their dinner; they hoped to finish the job before dusk. Harry Cobb and
+I dropped behind, and Joe Harper walked on in front, apparently sunk in
+meditation.
+
+Scarcely were we out of the churchyard, and on the road leading to the
+rectory, when I saw the sexton's daughter meeting us. She had almost
+come up to Joe before he saw her, for his gaze was bent on the
+ground, and he started. They shook hands in what seemed to me an odd,
+constrained, yet familiar fashion, and then stood as if they wanted
+to talk, but without speaking. Harry and I passed, both with a nod of
+recognition to the young woman, but neither of us had the ill-manners to
+look behind. I glanced at Harry, and he answered me with a queer look.
+When we reached the turning that would hide them from our view, I looked
+back almost involuntarily, and there they were still standing. But
+before we reached the door of the rectory, Joe got up with us.
+
+There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the
+sexton's daughter. She was about six-and-twenty, I should imagine,
+the youngest of the family, with a sallow, rather sickly complexion,
+somewhat sorrowful eyes, a smile rare and sweet, a fine figure, tall
+and slender, and a graceful gait. I now saw, I thought, a good
+hair's-breadth further into the smith's affairs. Beyond the
+hair's-breadth, however, all was dark. But I saw likewise that the well
+of truth, whence I might draw the whole business, must be the girl's
+mother.
+
+After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back
+to the church, and I went to the sexton's cottage. I found the old man
+seated at the window, with his pot of beer on the sill, and an empty
+plate beside it.
+
+"Come in, sir," he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. "The
+mis'ess ben't in, but she'll be here in a few minutes."
+
+"O, it's of no consequence," I said. "Are they all well?"
+
+"All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It be
+in winter it be worst for them."
+
+"But it's a snug enough shelter you've got here. It seems such, anyhow;
+though, to be sure, it is the blasts of winter that find out the weak
+places both in house and body."
+
+"It ben't the wind touch _them_" he said; "they be safe enough from the
+wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben't much snow in these parts; but when
+it du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!"
+
+Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?
+
+"But at least this cottage keeps out the wet," I said. "If not, we must
+have it seen to."
+
+"This cottage du well enough, sir. It'll last my time, anyhow."
+
+"Then why are you pitying your family for having to live in it?"
+
+"Bless your heart, sir! It's not them. They du well enough. It's my
+people out yonder. You've got the souls to look after, and I've got the
+bodies. That's what it be, sir. To be sure!"
+
+The last exclamation was uttered in a tone of impatient surprise at my
+stupidity in giving all my thoughts and sympathies to the living, and
+none to the dead. I pursued the subject no further, but as I lay in bed
+that night, it began to dawn upon me as a lovable kind of hallucination
+in which the man indulged. He too had an office in the Church of God,
+and he would magnify that office. He could not bear that there should
+be no further outcome of his labour; that the burying of the dead out
+of sight should be "the be-all and the end-all." He was God's vicar,
+the gardener in God's Acre, as the Germans call the churchyard. When all
+others had forsaken the dead, he remained their friend, caring for what
+little comfort yet remained possible to them. Hence in all changes of
+air and sky above, he attributed to them some knowledge of the same, and
+some share in their consequences even down in the darkness of the tomb.
+It was his way of keeping up the relation between the living and the
+dead. Finding I made him no reply, he took up the word again.
+
+"You've got your part, sir, and I've got mine. You up into the pulpit,
+and I down into the grave. But it'll be all the same by and by."
+
+"I hope it will," I answered. "But when you do go down into your own
+grave, you'll know a good deal less about it than you do now. You'll
+find you've got other things to think about. But here comes your wife.
+She'll talk about the living rather than the dead."
+
+"That's natural, sir. She brought 'em to life, and I buried 'em--at
+least, best part of 'em. If only I had the other two safe down with the
+rest!"
+
+I remembered what the old woman had told me--that she had two boys _in_
+the sea; and I knew therefore what he meant. He regarded his drowned
+boys as still tossed about in the weary wet cold ocean, and would have
+gladly laid them to rest in the warm dry churchyard.
+
+He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand,
+and saying, "Well, I must be off to my gardening," left me with his
+wife. I saw then that, humorist as the old man might be, his humour,
+like that of all true humorists, lay close about the wells of weeping.
+
+"The old man seems a little out of sorts," I said to his wife.
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with her usual gentleness, a gentleness which
+obedient suffering had perfected, "this be the day he buried our Nancy,
+this day two years; and to-day Agnes be come home from her work poorly;
+and the two things together they've upset him a bit."
+
+"I met Agnes coming this way. Where is she?"
+
+"I believe she be in the churchyard, sir. I've been to the doctor about
+her."
+
+"I hope it's nothing serious."
+
+"I hope not, sir; but you see--four on 'em, sir!"
+
+"Well, she's in God's hands, you know."
+
+"That she be, sir."
+
+"I want to ask you about something, Mrs. Coombes."
+
+"What be that, sir? If I can tell, I will, you may be sure, sir."
+
+"I want to know what's the matter with Joe Harper, the blacksmith."
+
+"They du say it be a consumption, sir."
+
+"But what has he got on his mind?"
+
+"He's got nothing on his mind, sir. He be as good a by as ever stepped,
+I assure you, sir."
+
+"But I am sure there is something or other on his mind. He's not so
+happy as he should be. He's not the man, it seems to me, to be unhappy
+because he's ill. A man like him would not be miserable because he was
+going to die. It might make him look sad sometimes, but not gloomy as he
+looks."
+
+"Well, sir, I believe you be right, and perhaps I know summat. But it's
+part guessing.--I believe my Agnes and Joe Harper are as fond upon one
+another as any two in the county."
+
+"Are they not going to be married then?"
+
+"There be the pint, sir. I don't believe Joe ever said a word o' the
+sort to Aggy. She never could ha' kep it from me, sir."
+
+"Why doesn't he then?"
+
+"That's the pint again, sir. All as knows him says it's because he be in
+such bad health, and he thinks he oughtn't to go marrying with one foot
+in the grave. He never said so to me; but I think very likely that be
+it."
+
+"For that matter, Mrs. Coombes, we've all got one foot in the grave, I
+think."
+
+"That be very true, sir."
+
+"And what does your daughter think?"
+
+"I believe she thinks the same. And so they go on talking to each other,
+quiet-like, like old married folks, not like lovers at all, sir. But I
+can't help fancying it have something to do with my Aggy's pale face."
+
+"And something to do with Joe's pale face too, Mrs. Coombes," I said.
+"Thank you. You've told me more than I expected. It explains everything.
+I must have it out with Joe now."
+
+"O deary me! sir, don't go and tell him I said anything, as if I wanted
+him to marry my daughter."
+
+"Don't you be afraid. I'll take good care of that. And don't fancy I'm
+fond of meddling with other people's affairs. But this is a case in
+which I ought to do something. Joe's a fine fellow."
+
+"That he be, sir. I couldn't wish a better for a son-in-law."
+
+I put on my hat.
+
+"You won't get me into no trouble with Joe, will ye, sir!"
+
+"Indeed I will not, Mrs. Coombes. I should be doing a great deal more
+harm than good if I said a word to make him doubt you."
+
+I went straight to the church. There were the two men working away in
+the shadowy tower, and there was Agnes standing beside, knitting like
+her mother, so quiet, so solemn even, that it did indeed look as if she
+were a long-married wife, hovering about her husband at his work. Harry
+was saying something to her as I went in, but when they saw me they were
+silent, and Agnes gently withdrew.
+
+"Do you think you will get through to-night?" I asked.
+
+"Sure of it, sir," answered Harry.
+
+"You shouldn't be sure of anything, Harry. We are told in the New
+Testament that we ought to say _If the Lord will_," said Joe.
+
+"Now, Joe, you're too hard upon Harry," I said. "You don't think that
+the Bible means to pull a man up every step like that, till he's afraid
+to speak a word. It was about a long journey and a year's residence that
+the Apostle James was speaking."
+
+"No doubt, sir. But the principle's the same. Harry can no more be sure
+of finishing his work before it be dark, than those people could be of
+going their long journey."
+
+"That is perfectly true. But you are taking the letter for the spirit,
+and that, I suspect, in more ways than one. The religion does not lie in
+not being sure about anything, but in a loving desire that the will of
+God in the matter, whatever it be, may be done. And if Harry has not
+learned yet to care about the will of God, what is the good of coming
+down upon him that way, as if that would teach him in the least. When
+he loves God, then, and not till then, will he care about his will. Nor
+does the religion lie in saying, _if the Lord will_, every time anything
+is to be done. It is a most dangerous thing to use sacred words often.
+It makes them so common to our ear that at length, when used most
+solemnly, they have not half the effect they ought to have, and that is
+a serious loss. What the Apostle means is, that we should always be in
+the mood of looking up to God and having regard to his will, not
+always writing D.V. for instance, as so many do--most irreverently, I
+think--using a Latin contraction for the beautiful words, just as if
+they were a charm, or as if God would take offence if they did not make
+the salvo of acknowledgment. It seems to me quite heathenish. Our hearts
+ought ever to be in the spirit of those words; our lips ought to utter
+them rarely. Besides, there are some things a man might be pretty sure
+the Lord wills."
+
+"It sounds fine, sir; but I'm not sure that I understand what you mean
+to say. It sounds to me like a darkening of wisdom."
+
+I saw that I had irritated him, and so had in some measure lost ground.
+But Harry struck in--
+
+"How _can_ you say that now, Joe? _I_ know what the parson means well
+enough, and everybody knows I ain't got half the brains you've got."
+
+"The reason is, Harry, that he's got something in his head that stands
+in the way."
+
+"And there's nothing in my head _to_ stand in the way!" returned Harry,
+laughing.
+
+This made me laugh too, and even Joe could not help a sympathetic grin.
+By this time it was getting dark.
+
+"I'm afraid, Harry, after all, you won't get through to-night."
+
+"I begin to think so too, sir. And there's Joe saying, 'I told you so,'
+over and over to himself, though he won't say it out like a man."
+
+Joe answered only with another grin.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Harry," I said--"you must come again on Monday.
+And on your way home, just look in and tell Joe's mother that I have
+kept him over to-morrow. The change will do him good."
+
+"No, sir, that can't he. I haven't got a clean shirt."
+
+"You can have a shirt of mine," I said. "But I'm afraid you'll want your
+Sunday clothes."
+
+"I'll bring them for you, Joe--before you're up," interposed Harry. "And
+then you can go to church with Aggy Coombes, you know."
+
+Here was just what I wanted.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Harry," said Joe angrily. "You're talking of what you
+don't know anything about."
+
+"Well, Joe, I ben't a fool, if I ben't so religious as you be. You ben't
+a bad fellow, though you be a Methodist, and I ben't a fool, though I be
+Harry Cobb."
+
+"What do you mean, Harry? Do hold your tongue."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what I mean first, and then I'll hold my tongue.
+I mean this--that nobody with two eyes, or one eye, for that matter, in
+his head, could help seeing the eyes you and Aggy make at each other,
+and why you don't port your helm and board her--I won't say it's more
+than I know, but I du say it to be more than I think be fair to the
+young woman."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Harry."
+
+"I said I would when I'd answered you as to what I meaned. So no more
+at present; but I'll be over with your clothes afore you're up in the
+morning."
+
+As Harry spoke he was busy gathering his tools.
+
+"They won't be in the way, will they, sir?" he said, as he heaped them
+together in the furthest corner of the tower.
+
+"Not in the least," I returned. "If I had my way, all the tools used in
+building the church should be carved on the posts and pillars of it, to
+indicate the sacredness of labour, and the worship of God that lies,
+not in building the church merely, but in every honest trade honestly
+pursued for the good of mankind and the need of the workman. For a
+necessity of God is laid upon every workman as well as on St. Paul. Only
+St. Paul saw it, and every workman doesn't, Harry."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I like that way of it. I almost think I could be a
+little bit religious after your way of it, sir."
+
+"Almost, Harry!" growled Joe--not unkindly.
+
+"Now, you hold your tongue, Joe," I said. "Leave Harry to me. You may
+take him, if you like, after I've done with him."
+
+Laughing merrily, but making no other reply than a hearty good-night,
+Harry strode away out of the church, and Joe and I went home together.
+
+When he had had his tea, I asked him to go out with me for a walk.
+
+The sun was shining aslant upon the downs from over the sea. We rose out
+of the shadowy hollow to the sunlit brow. I was a little in advance of
+Joe. Happening to turn, I saw the light full on his head and face, while
+the rest of his body had not yet emerged from the shadow.
+
+"Stop, Joe," I said. "I want to see you so for a moment."
+
+He stood--a little surprised.
+
+"You look just like a man rising from the dead, Joe," I said.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir," he returned.
+
+"I will describe yourself to you. Your head and face are full of
+sunlight, the rest of your body is still buried in the shadow. Look; I
+will stand where you are now; and you come here. You will soon see what
+I mean."
+
+We changed places. Joe stared for a moment. Then his face brightened.
+
+"I see what you mean, sir," he said. "I fancy you don't mean the
+resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of righteousness."
+
+"I do, Joe. Did it ever strike you that the whole history of the
+Christian life is a series of such resurrections? Every time a man
+bethinks himself that he is not walking in the light, that he has been
+forgetting himself, and must repent, that he has been asleep and must
+awake, that he has been letting his garments trail, and must gird up the
+loins of his mind--every time this takes place, there is a resurrection
+in the world. Yes, Joe; and every time that a man finds that his heart
+is troubled, that he is not rejoicing in God, a resurrection must
+follow--a resurrection out of the night of troubled thoughts into the
+gladness of the truth. For the truth is, and ever was, and ever must be,
+gladness, however much the souls on which it shines may be obscured by
+the clouds of sorrow, troubled by the thunders of fear, or shot through
+with the lightnings of pain. Now, Joe, will you let me tell you what you
+are like--I do not know your thoughts; I am only judging from your words
+and looks?"
+
+"You may if you like, sir," answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was
+not to be repelled.
+
+I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the
+sun's disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.
+
+"What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?"
+
+"Just the top of your head," answered he.
+
+"There, then," I returned, "that is just what you are like--a man with
+the light on his head, but not on his face. And why not on your face?
+Because you hold your head down."
+
+"Isn't it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as
+you put it, by doing his duty?"
+
+"That is a difficult question," I replied. "I must think before I answer
+it."
+
+"I mean," added Joe--"mightn't his duty be a painful one?"
+
+"Yes. But I think that would rather etherealise than destroy the light.
+Behind the sorrow would spring a yet greater light from the very duty
+itself. I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I mean.--To
+be frank with you, Joe, I do not see that light in your face. Therefore
+I think something must be wrong with you. Remember a good man is not
+necessarily in the right. St. Peter was a good man, yet our Lord called
+him Satan--and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not
+mean."
+
+"How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my
+duty--nothing else, as far as I know?"
+
+"Then," I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, "I doubt
+whether what you suppose to be your duty can be your duty. If it were,
+I do not think it would make you so miserable. At least--I may be wrong,
+but I venture to think so."
+
+"What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he
+not to do it?"
+
+"Most assuredly--until he knows better. But it is of the greatest
+consequence whether the supposed duty be the will of God or the
+invention of one's own fancy or mistaken judgment. A real duty is always
+something right in itself. The duty a man makes his for the time, by
+supposing it to be a duty, may be something quite wrong in itself. The
+duty of a Hindoo widow is to burn herself on the body of her husband.
+But that duty lasts no longer than till she sees that, not being the
+will of God, it is not her duty. A real duty, on the other hand, is a
+necessity of the human nature, without seeing and doing which a man can
+never attain to the truth and blessedness of his own being. It was the
+duty of the early hermits to encourage the growth of vermin upon their
+bodies, for they supposed that was pleasing to God; but they could not
+fare so well as if they had seen the truth that the will of God was
+cleanliness. And there may be far more serious things done by Christian
+people against the will of God, in the fancy of doing their duty, than
+such a trifle as swarming with worms. In a word, thinking a thing is
+your duty makes it your duty only till you know better. And the prime
+duty of every man is to seek and find, that he may do, the will of God."
+
+"But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought
+not, if he is doing what he don't like?"
+
+"Not so likely, I allow. But there may be ambition in it. A man must
+not want to be better than the right. That is the delusion of the
+anchorite--a delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for
+the sake of his own sanctity."
+
+"It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person's
+own sake at all."
+
+"It might be; but except it were the will of God for that other person,
+it would be doing him or her a real injury."
+
+We were coming gradually towards what I wanted to make the point in
+question. I wished him to tell me all about it himself, however, for
+I knew that while advice given on request is generally disregarded, to
+offer advice unasked is worthy only of a fool.
+
+"But how are you to know the will of God in every case?" asked Joe.
+
+"By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them--except there
+be anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher
+law."
+
+"Ah! but that be just what there is here."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, that may be; but the special conduct may not be
+right for the special case for all that. The speciality of the case may
+not be even sufficient to take it from under the ordinary rule. But it
+is of no use talking generals. Let us come to particulars. If you can
+trust me, tell me all about it, and we may be able to let some light in.
+I am sure there is darkness somewhere."
+
+"I will turn it over in my mind, sir; and if I can bring myself to talk
+about it, I will. I would rather tell you than anyone else."
+
+I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset--there never was a grander
+place for sunsets--and went home.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A SMALL ADVENTURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next morning Harry came with the clothes. But Joe did not go to
+church. Neither did Agnes make her appearance that morning. They were
+both present at the evening service, however.
+
+When we came out of church, it was cloudy and dark, and the wind was
+blowing cold from the sea. The sky was covered with one cloud, but the
+waves tossing themselves against the rocks, flashed whiteness out of the
+general gloom. As the tide rose the wind increased. It was a night of
+surly temper--hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above--there
+was no blue; and the wind was _gurly_; I once heard that word in
+Scotland, and never forgot it.
+
+After one of our usual gatherings in Connie's room, which were much
+shorter here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till
+supper should be ready.
+
+Now I have always had, as I think I have incidentally stated before, a
+certain peculiar pleasure in the surly aspects of nature. When I was a
+young man this took form in opposition and defiance; since I had begun
+to grow old the form had changed into a sense of safety. I welcomed such
+aspects, partly at least, because they roused my faith to look through
+and beyond the small region of human conditions in which alone the storm
+can be and blow, and thus induced a feeling like that of the child who
+lies in his warm crib and listens to the howling of one of these same
+storms outside the strong-built house which yet trembles at its fiercer
+onsets: the house is not in danger; or, if it be, that is his father's
+business, not his. Hence it came that, after supper, I put on my
+great-coat and travelling-cap, and went out into the ill-tempered
+night--speaking of it in its human symbolism.
+
+I meant to have a stroll down to the breakwater, of which I have yet
+said little, but which was a favourite resort, both of myself and my
+children. At the further end of it, always covered at high water, was
+an outlying cluster of low rocks, in the heart of which the lord of
+the manor, a noble-hearted Christian gentleman of the old school, had
+constructed a bath of graduated depth--an open-air swimming-pool--the
+only really safe place for men who were swimmers to bathe in. Thither I
+was in the habit of taking my two little men every morning, and bathing
+with them, that I might develop the fish that was in them; for, as
+George Herbert says:
+
+  "Man is everything,
+  And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
+  A beast, yet is, or should be, more;"
+
+and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as
+well.
+
+It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my
+Connie's room, that the nearest way to the breakwater should be through
+that room; but so it was. I mention the fact because I want my readers
+to understand a certain peculiarity of the room. By the side of
+the window which looked out upon the breakwater was a narrow door,
+apparently of a closet or cupboard, which communicated, however, with a
+narrow, curving, wood-built passage, leading into a little wooden hut,
+the walls of which were by no means impervious to the wind, for they
+were formed of outside-planks, with the bark still upon them. From this
+hut one or two little windows looked seaward, and a door led out on the
+bit of sward in which lay the flower-bed under Connie's window. From
+this spot again a door in the low wall and thick hedge led out on the
+downs, where a path wound along the cliffs that formed the side of the
+bay, till, descending under the storm-tower, it brought you to the root
+of the breakwater.
+
+This mole stretched its long strong low back to a rock a good way out,
+breaking the force of the waves, and rendering the channel of a small
+river, that here flowed into the sea across the sands from the mouth of
+the canal, a refuge from the Atlantic. But it was a roadway often hard
+to reach. In fair weather even, the wind falling as the vessel rounded
+the point of the breakwater into the calm of the projecting headlands,
+the under-current would sometimes dash her helpless on the rocks. During
+all this heavenly summer there had been no thought or fear of any such
+disaster. The present night was a hint of what weather would yet come.
+
+When I went into Connie's room, I found her lying in bed a very picture
+of peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.
+
+"Papa," she said, "why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not
+going out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully."
+
+"Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your
+baby."
+
+"But it is very dark."
+
+"I allow that; but there is a glimmer from the sea. I am only going on
+the breakwater for a few minutes. You know I like a stormy night quite
+as much as a fine one."
+
+"I shall be miserable till you come home, papa."
+
+"Nonsense, Connie. You don't think your father hasn't sense to take
+care of himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of
+comfort, you don't think I can go anywhere without my Father to take
+care of me?"
+
+"But there is no occasion--is there, papa?"
+
+"Do you think I should be better pleased with my boys if they shrunk
+from everything involving the least possibility of danger because there
+was no occasion for it? That is just the way to make cowards. And I
+am certain God would not like his children to indulge in such moods of
+self-preservation as that. He might well be ashamed of them. The fearful
+are far more likely to meet with accidents than the courageous. But
+really, Connie, I am almost ashamed of talking so. It is all your fault.
+There is positively no ground for apprehension, and I hope you won't
+spoil my walk by the thought that my foolish little girl is frightened."
+
+"I will be good--indeed I will, papa," she said, holding up her mouth to
+kiss me.
+
+I left her room, and went through the wooden passage into the bark hut.
+The wind roared about it, shook it, and pawed it, and sung and whistled
+in the chinks of the planks. I went out and shut the door. That moment
+the wind seized upon me, and I had to fight with it. When I got on the
+path leading along the edge of the downs, I felt something lighter than
+any feather fly in my face. When I put up my hand, I found my cheek wet.
+Again and again I was thus assailed, but when I got to the breakwater
+I found what it was. They were flakes of foam, bubbles worked up into
+little masses of adhering thousands, which the wind blew off the waters
+and across the downs, carrying some of them miles inland. When I reached
+the breakwater, and looked along its ridge through the darkness of the
+night, I was bewildered to see a whiteness lying here and there in
+a great patch upon its top. They were but accumulations of these
+foam-flakes, like soap-suds, lying so thick that I expected to have to
+wade through them, only they vanished at the touch of my feet. Till then
+I had almost believed it was snow I saw. On the edge of the waves, in
+quieter spots, they lay like yeast, foaming and working. Now and then a
+little rush of water from a higher wave swept over the top of the broad
+breakwater, as with head bowed sideways against the wind, I struggled
+along towards the rock at its end; but I said to myself, "The tide is
+falling fast, and salt water hurts nobody," and struggled on over the
+huge rough stones of the mighty heap, outside which the waves were white
+with wrath, inside which they had fallen asleep, only heaving with the
+memory of their late unrest. I reached the tall rock at length, climbed
+the rude stair leading up to the flagstaff, and looked abroad, if
+looking it could be called, into the thick dark. But the wind blew so
+strong on the top that I was glad to descend. Between me and the basin
+where yesterday morning I had bathed in still water and sunshine with my
+boys, rolled the deathly waves. I wandered on the rough narrow space yet
+uncovered, stumbling over the stones and the rocky points between which
+they lay, stood here and there half-meditating, and at length, finding
+a sheltered nook in a mass of rock, sat with the wind howling and
+the waves bursting around me. There I fell into a sort of brown
+study--almost a half-sleep.
+
+But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices,
+low and earnest. One I recognised as Joe's voice. The other was a
+woman's. I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore
+felt no immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat
+debating with myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length,
+in a lull of the wind, I heard the woman say--I could fancy with a
+sigh--
+
+"I'm sure you'll du what is right, Joe. Don't 'e think o' me, Joe."
+
+"It's just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben't for my sake.
+Surely you know that?"
+
+There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best
+do--go away quietly or let them know I was there--when she spoke again.
+There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and
+I heard what she said well enough.
+
+"It ben't for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don't think you be going
+to die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?"
+
+It flashed across me how once before, a stormy night and darkness had
+brought me close to a soul in agony. Then I was in agony myself; now
+the world was all fair and hopeful around me--the portals of the world
+beyond ever opening wider as I approached them, and letting out more of
+their glory to gladden the path to their threshold. But here were two
+souls straying in a mist which faith might roll away, and leave them
+walking in the light. The moment was come. I must speak.
+
+"Joe!" I called out.
+
+"Who's there?" he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.
+
+"Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?"
+
+"We can't be very far off," he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure
+at finding me so nigh.
+
+I rose, and peering about through the darkness, found that they were a
+little higher up on the same rock by which I was sheltered.
+
+"You mustn't think," I said, "that I have been eavesdropping. I had no
+idea anyone was near me till I heard your voices, and I did not hear a
+word till just the last sentence or two."
+
+"I saw someone go up the Castle-rock," said Joe; "but I thought he was
+gone away again. It will be a lesson to me."
+
+"I'm no tell-tale, Joe," I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. "You
+will have no cause to regret that I happened to overhear a little. I am
+sure, Joe, you will never say anything you need be ashamed of. But what
+I heard was sufficient to let me into the secret of your trouble. Will
+you let me talk to Joe, Agnes? I've been young myself, and, to tell the
+truth, I don't think I'm old yet."
+
+"I am sure, sir," she answered, "you won't be hard on Joe and me. I
+don't suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we
+can't be--married."
+
+She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was
+a certain womanly composure in her utterance. "I'm sure it's very bold
+of me to talk so," she added, "but Joe will tell you all about it."
+
+I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the
+motion of her hand stealing into his.
+
+"Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted," I said. "A woman can be braver
+than a big smith sometimes. Agnes has done her part. Now you do yours,
+and tell me all about it."
+
+No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.
+
+"I think I know how the matter lies, Joe. You think you are not going to
+live long, and that therefore you ought not to marry. Am I right?"
+
+"Not far off it, sir," he answered.
+
+"Now, Joe," I said, "can't we talk as friends about this matter? I have
+no right to intrude into your affairs--none in the least--except what
+friendship gives me. If you say I am not to talk about it, I shall be
+silent. To force advice upon you would be as impertinent as useless."
+
+"It's all the same, I'm afraid, sir. My mind has been made up for a long
+time. What right have I to bring other people into trouble? But I take
+it kind of you, sir, though I mayn't look over-pleased. Agnes wants to
+hear your way of it. I'm agreeable."
+
+This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for
+proceeding.
+
+"I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is
+the will of God?"
+
+"Surely, sir."
+
+"Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each
+other, they should marry?"
+
+"Certainly, sir--where there be no reasons against it."
+
+"Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you
+would?"
+
+"I do see that a man should not bring a woman into trouble for the sake
+of being comfortable himself for the rest of a few weary days."
+
+Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she
+would be Joe's wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.
+
+"Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But
+listen to me. In the first place, you don't know, and you are not
+required to know, when you are going to die. In fact, you have nothing
+to do with it. Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation
+of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation
+for the night is to work while the day lasts, diligently. The best
+preparation for death is life. Besides, I have known delicate people
+who have outlived all their strong relations, and been left alone in the
+earth--because they had possibly taken too much care of themselves.
+But marriage is God's will, and death is God's will, and you have no
+business to set the one over against, as antagonistic to, the other.
+For anything you know, the gladness and the peace of marriage may be
+the very means intended for your restoration to health and strength. I
+suspect your desire to marry, fighting against the fancy that you ought
+not to marry, has a good deal to do with the state of health in which
+you now find yourself. A man would get over many things if he were
+happy, that he cannot get over when he is miserable."
+
+"But it's for Aggy. You forget that."
+
+"I do not forget it. What right have you to seek for her another kind
+of welfare than you would have yourself? Are you to treat her as if
+she were worldly when you are not--to provide for her a comfort which
+yourself you would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to
+die soon?--if you _are_ thus doomed, which to me is by no means clear.
+Why not have what happiness you may for the rest of your sojourn? If you
+find at the end of twenty years that here you are after all, you will be
+rather sorry you did not do as I say."
+
+"And if I find myself dying at the end of six months'?"
+
+"You will thank God for those six months. The whole thing, my dear
+fellow, is a want of faith in God. I do not doubt you think you are
+doing right, but, I repeat, the whole thing comes from want of faith in
+God. You will take things into your own hands, and order them after a
+preventive and self-protective fashion, lest God should have ordained
+the worst for you, which worst, after all, would be best met by doing
+his will without inquiry into the future; and which worst is no evil.
+Death is no more an evil than marriage is."
+
+"But you don't see it as I do," persisted the blacksmith.
+
+"Of course I don't. I think you see it as it is not."
+
+He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He
+started.
+
+"What a wave!" he cried. "That spray came over the top of the rock. We
+shall have to run for it."
+
+I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.
+
+"There's no hurry," I said. "It was high water an hour and a half ago."
+
+"You don't know this coast, sir," returned he, "or you wouldn't talk
+like that."
+
+As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock,
+looked along.
+
+"For God's sake, Aggy!" he cried in terror, "come at once. Every other
+wave be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level."
+
+So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw
+her along.
+
+"Hadn't we better stay where we are?" I suggested.
+
+"If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and
+I don't care about being out all night. It's not the tide, sir; it's
+a ground swell--from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no
+questions about tide or no tide."
+
+"Come along, then," I said. "But just wait one minute more. It is better
+to be ready for the worst."
+
+For I remembered that the day before I had seen a crowbar lying among
+the stones, and I thought it might be useful. In a moment or two I
+had found it, and returning, gave it to Joe. Then I took the girl's
+disengaged hand. She thanked me in a voice perfectly calm and firm. Joe
+took the bar in haste, and drew Agnes towards the breakwater.
+
+Any real thought of danger had not yet crossed my mind. But when I
+looked along the outstretched back of the mole, and saw a dim sheet of
+white sweep across it, I felt that there was ground for his anxiety, and
+prepared myself for a struggle.
+
+"Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?" I said, grasping my own
+stout oak-stick more firmly.
+
+"Perfectly," answered Joe. "To stick between the stones and hold on. We
+must watch our time between the waves."
+
+"You take the command, then, Joe," I returned. "You see better than I
+do, and you know the ways of that raging wild beast there better than I
+do. I will obey orders--one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or
+sea to lose hold of Agnes--eh, Joe?"
+
+Joe gave a grim enough laugh in reply, and we started, he carrying his
+crowbar in his right hand towards the advancing sea, and I my oak-stick
+in my left towards the still water within.
+
+"Quick march!" said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.
+
+Now the back of the breakwater was very rugged, for it was formed of
+huge stones, with wide gaps between, where the waters had washed out the
+cement, and worn their edges. But what impeded our progress secured our
+safety.
+
+"Halt!" cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter
+of the rocks. "There's a topper coming."
+
+We halted at the word of command, as a huge wave, with combing crest,
+rushed against the far out-sloping base of the mole, and flung its heavy
+top right over the middle of the mass, a score or two of yards in front
+of us.
+
+"Now for it!" cried Joe. "Run!"
+
+We did run. In my mind there was just sense enough of danger to add to
+the pleasure of the excitement. I did not know how much danger there
+was. Over the rough worn stones we sped stumbling.
+
+"Halt!" cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it
+turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.
+
+"God be with us!" I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself
+through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar
+between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw
+the other arm round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed,
+held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes. It took but
+a moment.
+
+"Now then!" cried Joe. "Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!"
+
+But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the
+sloping side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, "Down, Joe! Down on
+your face, and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!"
+
+They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to
+the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the
+power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave,
+floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave
+passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.
+
+"Now, now!" cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the
+water pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and
+arrived, panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept
+the surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back
+over the danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the
+breakwater from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without
+speaking.
+
+"I believe, sir," said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, "if
+you hadn't taken the command at that moment we should all have been
+lost."
+
+"It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was
+not sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it
+low down."
+
+"We were awfully near death," said Joe.
+
+"Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don't
+go all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as
+foresight--believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the
+future, and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is
+the man most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and
+ready. Our Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should
+be brought before kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what
+answer they should make, for it would be given them when the time came."
+
+We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my
+companions spoke.
+
+"You have escaped one death together," I said at length: "dare another."
+
+Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the
+parsonage, I said, "Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I
+will take Agnes home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?"
+
+Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: "As you please, sir. Good
+night, Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can."
+
+When I returned from giving Agnes over to her parents, I made haste
+to change my clothes, and put on my warm dressing-gown. I may as well
+mention at once, that not one of us was the worse for our ducking. I
+then went up to Connie's room.
+
+"Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe."
+
+"I've been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out,
+papa. But all I could do was to trust in God."
+
+"Do you call that _all_, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in that
+than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed _all_."
+
+I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were
+well into another month before I told Connie.
+
+When I left her, I went to Joe's room to see how he was, and found him
+having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,
+
+"Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won't be the
+worse for it."
+
+"I don't much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon."
+
+"But you ought to care what comes of you, Joe. I will tell you why.
+You are an instrument out of which ought to come praise to God, and,
+therefore, you ought to care for the instrument."
+
+"That way, yes, sir, I ought."
+
+"And you have no business to be like some children who say, 'Mamma won't
+give me so and so,' instead of asking her to give it them."
+
+"I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young
+woman. I couldn't say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir,
+there was to come a family. It might be, you know."
+
+"Of course. What else would you have?"
+
+"But if I was to die, where would she be then?"
+
+"In God's hands; just as she is now."
+
+"But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that
+to provide for."
+
+"O, Joe! how little you know a woman's heart! It would just be the
+greatest comfort she could have for losing you--that's all. Many a woman
+has married a man she did not care enough for, just that she might have
+a child of her own to let out her heart upon. I don't say that is right,
+you know. Such love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her child
+because it is her husband's more than because it is her own, and because
+it is God's more than either's. I saw in the papers the other day, that
+a woman was brought before the Recorder of London for stealing a baby,
+when the judge himself said that there was no imaginable motive for her
+action but a motherly passion to possess the child. It is the need of
+a child that makes so many women take to poor miserable, broken-nosed
+lap-dogs; for they are self-indulgent, and cannot face the troubles and
+dangers of adopting a child. They would if they might get one of a good
+family, or from a respectable home; but they dare not take an orphan
+out of the dirt, lest it should spoil their silken chairs. But that
+has nothing to do with our argument. What I mean is this, that if Agnes
+really loves you, as no one can look in her face and doubt, she will be
+far happier if you leave her a child--yes, she will be happier if you
+only leave her your name for hers--than if you died without calling her
+your wife."
+
+I took Joe's basin from him, and he lay down. He turned his face to the
+wall. I waited a moment, but finding him silent, bade him good-night,
+and left the room.
+
+A month after, I married them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE HARVEST.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was some time before we got the bells to work to our mind, but at
+last we succeeded. The worst of it was to get the cranks, which at first
+required strong pressure on the keys, to work easily enough. But neither
+Joe nor his cousin spared any pains to perfect the attempt, and, as I
+say, at length we succeeded. I took Wynnie down to the instrument and
+made her try whether she could not do something, and she succeeded in
+making the old tower discourse loudly and eloquently.
+
+By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the
+morning of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers
+with the sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to
+the God of the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that
+part of the country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid
+plentifully on the benches. What with the calling of the bells, like
+voices in the highway, and the solemn meditation of the organ within to
+bear aloft the thoughts of those who heard, and came to the prayer and
+thanksgiving in common, and the message which God had given me to utter
+to them, I hoped that we should indeed keep holiday.
+
+Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft,
+dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and
+cottage, calling aloud--for who could dissociate the words from the
+music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?--written none the
+less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with
+laughing at their quaintness--calling aloud,
+
+  "All people that on earth do dwell
+  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
+  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell--
+  Come ye before him and rejoice."
+
+Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the
+name of the Lord to serve him with _mirth_ as in the old version, and
+not with the _fear_ with which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed
+to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had
+prepared--a proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history
+of the church while she was not only able to number singers amongst her
+clergy, but those singers were capable of influencing the whole heart
+and judgment of the nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ.
+The song I had prepared was this:
+
+  "We praise the Life of All;
+  From buried seeds so small
+  Who makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand;
+  Who stores the corn
+  In rick and barn
+  To feed the winter of the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Light!
+  Who from the brooding night
+  Draws out the morning holy, calm, and grand;
+  Veils up the moon,
+  Sends out the sun,
+  To glad the face of all the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Work,
+  Who from sleep's lonely dark
+  Leads forth his children to arise and stand,
+  Then go their way,
+  The live-long day,
+  To trust and labour in the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Good,
+  Who breaks sin's lazy mood,
+  Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.
+  The furrowed waste
+  They leave, and haste
+  Home, home, to till their Father's land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Life,
+  Who in this soil of strife
+  Casts us at birth, like seed from sower's hand;
+  To die and so
+  Like corn to grow
+  A golden harvest in his land."
+
+After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the
+versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, "If by any means
+I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had
+already attained, either were already perfect." And this is something
+like what I said to them:
+
+"The world, my friends, is full of resurrections, and it is not always
+of the same resurrection that St. Paul speaks. Every night that folds us
+up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early and
+have seen the first of the dawn, will know it--the day rises out of the
+night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life. That
+you may feel that the sunrise is a resurrection--the word resurrection
+just means a rising again--I will read you a little description of it
+from a sermon by a great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor.
+Listen. 'But as when the sun approaching towards the gates of the
+morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven and sends away the
+spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to
+matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the
+eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked
+the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself
+had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the
+sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and
+then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping
+great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man's reason and his
+life.' Is not this a resurrection of the day out of the night? Or hear
+how Milton makes his Adam and Eve praise God in the morning,--
+
+  'Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
+  From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
+  Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
+  In honour to the world's great Author rise,
+  Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
+  Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
+  Rising or falling still advance his praise.'
+
+But it is yet more of a resurrection to you. Think of your own condition
+through the night and in the morning. You die, as it were, every night.
+The death of darkness comes down over the earth; but a deeper death, the
+death of sleep, descends on you. A power overshadows you; your eyelids
+close, you cannot keep them open if you would; your limbs lie moveless;
+the day is gone; your whole life is gone; you have forgotten everything;
+an evil man might come and do with your goods as he pleased; you
+are helpless. But the God of the Resurrection is awake all the time,
+watching his sleeping men and women, even as a mother who watches her
+sleeping baby, only with larger eyes and more full of love than hers;
+and so, you know not how, all at once you know that you are what you
+are; that there is a world that wants you outside of you, and a God that
+wants you inside of you; you rise from the death of sleep, not by your
+own power, for you knew nothing about it; God put his hand over your
+eyes, and you were dead; he lifted his hand and breathed light on you
+and you rose from the dead, thanked the God who raised you up, and went
+forth to do your work. From darkness to light; from blindness to
+seeing; from knowing nothing to looking abroad on the mighty world; from
+helpless submission to willing obedience,--is not this a resurrection
+indeed? That St. Paul saw it to be such may be shown from his using
+the two things with the same meaning when he says, 'Awake, thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.'
+No doubt he meant a great deal more. No man who understands what he is
+speaking about can well mean only one thing at a time.
+
+"But to return to the resurrections we see around us in nature. Look at
+the death that falls upon the world in winter. And look how it revives
+when the sun draws near enough in the spring to wile the life in it once
+more out of its grave. See how the pale, meek snowdrops come up with
+their bowed heads, as if full of the memory of the fierce winds they
+encountered last spring, and yet ready in the strength of their weakness
+to encounter them again. Up comes the crocus, bringing its gold safe
+from the dark of its colourless grave into the light of its parent gold.
+Primroses, and anemones, and blue-bells, and a thousand other children
+of the spring, hear the resurrection-trumpet of the wind from the west
+and south, obey, and leave their graves behind to breathe the air of the
+sweet heavens. Up and up they come till the year is glorious with the
+rose and the lily, till the trees are not only clothed upon with new
+garments of loveliest green, but the fruit-tree bringeth forth its
+fruit, and the little children of men are made glad with apples, and
+cherries, and hazel-nuts. The earth laughs out in green and gold. The
+sky shares in the grand resurrection. The garments of its mourning,
+wherewith it made men sad, its clouds of snow and hail and stormy
+vapours, are swept away, have sunk indeed to the earth, and are now
+humbly feeding the roots of the flowers whose dead stalks they beat upon
+all the winter long. Instead, the sky has put on the garments of praise.
+Her blue, coloured after the sapphire-floor on which stands the throne
+of him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is dashed and glorified
+with the pure white of sailing clouds, and at morning and evening
+prayer, puts on colours in which the human heart drowns itself with
+delight--green and gold and purple and rose. Even the icebergs floating
+about in the lonely summer seas of the north are flashing all the
+glories of the rainbow. But, indeed, is not this whole world itself a
+monument of the Resurrection? The earth was without form and void. The
+wind of God moved on the face of the waters, and up arose this fair
+world. Darkness was on the face of the deep: God said, 'Let there be
+light,' and there was light.
+
+"In the animal world as well, you behold the goings of the Resurrection.
+Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly--so plain that the
+pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name--Psyche. Psyche meant
+with them a butterfly or the soul, either. Look how the creeping thing,
+ugly to our eyes, so that we can hardly handle it without a shudder,
+finding itself growing sick with age, straightway falls a spinning and
+weaving at its own shroud, coffin, and grave, all in one--to prepare, in
+fact, for its resurrection; for it is for the sake of the resurrection
+that death exists. Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life,
+away, folds itself up decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the
+new body is formed within it; and at length when the appointed hour has
+arrived, out of the body of this crawling thing breaks forth the winged
+splendour of the butterfly--not the same body--a new one built out of
+the ruins of the old--even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same
+body _we_ have in the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves,
+with all the imperfect and evil thing taken away. No more creeping for
+the butterfly; wings of splendour now. Neither yet has it lost the feet
+wherewith to alight on all that is lovely and sweet. Think of it--up
+from the toilsome journey over the low ground, exposed to the foot of
+every passer-by, destroying the lovely leaves upon which it fed, and the
+fruit which they should shelter, up to the path at will through the air,
+and a gathering of food which hurts not the source of it, a food which
+is but as a tribute from the loveliness of the flowers to the yet higher
+loveliness of the flower-angel: is not this a resurrection? Its children
+too shall pass through the same process, to wing the air of a summer
+noon, and rejoice in the ethereal and the pure.
+
+"To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of
+the butterfly"--
+
+Here let me pause for a moment--and there was a corresponding pause,
+though but momentary, in the sermon as I spoke it--to mention a curious,
+and to me at the moment an interesting fact. At this point of my
+address, I caught sight of a white butterfly, a belated one, flitting
+about the church. Absorbed for a moment, my eye wandered after it.
+It was near the bench where my own people sat, and, for one flash of
+thought, I longed that the butterfly would alight on my Wynnie, for I
+was more anxious about her resurrection at the time than about anything
+else. But the butterfly would not. And then I told myself that God
+would, and that the butterfly was only the symbol of a grand truth, and
+of no private interpretation, to make which of it was both selfishness
+and superstition. But all this passed in a flash, and I resumed my
+discourse.
+
+--"I come now naturally to speak of what we commonly call the
+Resurrection. Some say: 'How can the same dust be raised again, when it
+may be scattered to the winds of heaven?' It is a question I hardly care
+to answer. The mere difficulty can in reason stand for nothing with God;
+but the apparent worthlessness of the supposition renders the question
+uninteresting to me. What is of import is, that I should stand clothed
+upon, with a body which is _my_ body because it serves my ends,
+justifies my consciousness of identity by being, in all that was good
+in it, like that which I had before, while now it is tenfold capable of
+expressing the thoughts and feelings that move within me. How can I care
+whether the atoms that form a certain inch of bone should be the same as
+those which formed that bone when I died? All my life-time I never felt
+or thought of the existence of such a bone! On the other hand, I object
+to having the same worn muscles, the same shrivelled skin with which I
+may happen to die. Why give me the same body as that? Why not rather my
+youthful body, which was strong, and facile, and capable? The matter in
+the muscle of my arm at death would not serve to make half the muscle I
+had when young. But I thank God that St. Paul says it will _not_ be the
+same body. That body dies--up springs another body. I suspect myself
+that those are right who say that this body being the seed, the moment
+it dies in the soil of this world, that moment is the resurrection of
+the new body. The life in it rises out of it in a new body. This is not
+after it is put in the mere earth; for it is dead then, and the germ of
+life gone out of it. If a seed rots, no new body comes of it. The seed
+dies into a new life, and so does man. Dying and rotting are two very
+different things.--But I am not sure by any means. As I say, the whole
+question is rather uninteresting to me. What do I care about my old
+clothes after I have done with them? What is it to me to know what
+becomes of an old coat or an old pulpit gown? I have no such clinging
+to the flesh. It seems to me that people believe their bodies to be
+themselves, and are therefore very anxious about them--and no wonder
+then. Enough for me that I shall have eyes to see my friends, a face
+that they shall know me by, and a mouth to praise God withal. I leave
+the matter with one remark, that I am well content to rise as Jesus
+rose, however that was. For me the will of God is so good that I would
+rather have his will done than my own choice given me.
+
+"But I now come to the last, because infinitely the most important part
+of my subject--the resurrection for the sake of which all the other
+resurrections exist--the resurrection unto Life. This is the one
+of which St. Paul speaks in my text. This is the one I am most
+anxious--indeed, the only one I am anxious to set forth, and impress
+upon you.
+
+"Think, then, of all the deaths you know; the death of the night, when
+the sun is gone, when friend says not a word to friend, but both lie
+drowned and parted in the sea of sleep; the death of the year, when
+winter lies heavy on the graves of the children of summer, when the
+leafless trees moan in the blasts from the ocean, when the beasts even
+look dull and oppressed, when the children go about shivering with cold,
+when the poor and improvident are miserable with suffering or think of
+such a death of disease as befalls us at times, when the man who says,
+'Would God it were morning!' changes but his word, and not his tune,
+when the morning comes, crying, 'Would God it were evening!' when what
+life is left is known to us only by suffering, and hope is amongst the
+things that were once and are no more--think of all these, think of them
+all together, and you will have but the dimmest, faintest picture of the
+death from which the resurrection of which I have now to speak, is the
+rising. I shrink from the attempt, knowing how weak words are to set
+forth _the_ death, set forth _the_ resurrection. Were I to sit down to
+yonder organ, and crash out the most horrible dissonances that ever took
+shape in sound, I should give you but a weak figure of this death; were
+I capable of drawing from many a row of pipes an exhalation of dulcet
+symphonies and voices sweet, such as Milton himself could have
+invaded our ears withal, I could give you but a faint figure of this
+resurrection. Nevertheless, I must try what I can do in my own way.
+
+"If into the face of the dead body, lying on the bed, waiting for its
+burial, the soul of the man should begin to dawn again, drawing near
+from afar to look out once more at those eyes, to smile once again
+through those lips, the change on that face would be indeed great and
+wondrous, but nothing for marvel or greatness to that which passes on
+the countenance, the very outward bodily face of the man who wakes from
+his sleep, arises from the dead and receives light from Christ. Too
+often indeed, the reposeful look on the face of the dead body would be
+troubled, would vanish away at the revisiting of the restless ghost; but
+when a man's own right true mind, which God made in him, is restored
+to him again, and he wakes from the death of sin, then comes the repose
+without the death. It may take long for the new spirit to complete
+the visible change, but it begins at once, and will be perfected. The
+bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman,
+the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of
+the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder
+with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The
+mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind;
+the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words
+of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent, self-satisfied
+face begins to look thoughtful and doubtful, as if searching for some
+treasure of whose whereabouts it had no certain sign. The face anxious,
+wrinkled, peering, troubled, on whose lines you read the dread of
+hunger, poverty, and nakedness, thaws into a smile; the eyes reflect in
+courage the light of the Father's care, the back grows erect under its
+burden with the assurance that the hairs of its head are all numbered.
+But the face can with all its changes set but dimly forth the rising
+from the dead which passes within. The heart, which cared but for
+itself, becomes aware of surrounding thousands like itself, in the love
+and care of which it feels a dawning blessedness undreamt of before.
+From selfishness to love--is not this a rising from the dead? The man
+whose ambition declares that his way in the world would be to subject
+everything to his desires, to bring every human care, affection, power,
+and aspiration to his feet--such a world it would be, and such a king
+it would have, if individual ambition might work its will! if a
+man's opinion of himself could be made out in the world, degrading,
+compelling, oppressing, doing everything for his own glory!--and such a
+glory!--but a pang of light strikes this man to the heart; an arrow of
+truth, feathered with suffering and loss and dismay, finds out--the open
+joint in his armour, I was going to say--no, finds out the joint in the
+coffin where his heart lies festering in a death so dead that itself
+calls it life. He trembles, he awakes, he rises from the dead. No more
+he seeks the slavery of all: where can he find whom to serve? how can he
+become if but a threshold in the temple of Christ, where all serve all,
+and no man thinks first of himself? He to whom the mass of his fellows,
+as he massed them, was common and unclean, bows before every human
+sign of the presence of the making God. The sun, which was to him but
+a candle with which to search after his own ends, wealth, power, place,
+praise--the world, which was but the cavern where he thus searched--are
+now full of the mystery of loveliness, full of the truth of which sun
+and wind and land and sea are symbols and signs. From a withered old age
+of unbelief, the dim eyes of which refuse the glory of things a passage
+to the heart, he is raised up a child full of admiration, wonder, and
+gladness. Everything is glorious to him; he can believe, and therefore
+he sees. It is from the grave into the sunshine, from the night into
+the morning, from death into life. To come out of the ugly into the
+beautiful; out of the mean and selfish into the noble and loving; out
+of the paltry into the great; out of the false into the true; out of the
+filthy into the clean; out of the commonplace into the glorious; out of
+the corruption of disease into the fine vigour and gracious movements
+of health; in a word, out of evil into good--is not this a resurrection
+indeed--_the_ resurrection of all, the resurrection of Life? God grant
+that with St. Paul we may attain to this resurrection of the dead.
+
+"This rising from the dead is often a long and a painful process. Even
+after he had preached the gospel to the Gentiles, and suffered much for
+the sake of his Master, Paul sees the resurrection of the dead
+towering grandly before him, not yet climbed, not yet attained unto--a
+mountainous splendour and marvel, still shining aloft in the air of
+existence, still, thank God, to be attained, but ever growing in height
+and beauty as, forgetting those things that are behind, he presses
+towards the mark, if by any means he may attain to the resurrection of
+the dead. Every blessed moment in which a man bethinks himself that
+he has been forgetting his high calling, and sends up to the Father a
+prayer for aid; every time a man resolves that what he has been doing he
+will do no more; every time that the love of God, or the feeling of
+the truth, rouses a man to look first up at the light, then down at the
+skirts of his own garments--that moment a divine resurrection is wrought
+in the earth. Yea, every time that a man passes from resentment to
+forgiveness, from cruelty to compassion, from hardness to tenderness,
+from indifference to carefulness, from selfishness to honesty, from
+honesty to generosity, from generosity to love,--a resurrection, the
+bursting of a fresh bud of life out of the grave of evil, gladdens
+the eye of the Father watching his children. Awake, then, thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give thee light. As
+the harvest rises from the wintry earth, so rise thou up from the trials
+of this world a full ear in the harvest of Him who sowed thee in the
+soil that thou mightest rise above it. As the summer rises from the
+winter, so rise thou from the cares of eating and drinking and clothing
+into the fearless sunshine of confidence in the Father. As the morning
+rises out of the night, so rise thou from the darkness of ignorance
+to do the will of God in the daylight; and as a man feels that he is
+himself when he wakes from the troubled and grotesque visions of the
+night into the glory of the sunrise, even so wilt thou feel that then
+first thou knowest what thy life, the gladness of thy being, is. As from
+painful tossing in disease, rise into the health of well-being. As from
+the awful embrace of thy own dead body, burst forth in thy spiritual
+body. Arise thou, responsive to the indwelling will of the Father, even
+as thy body will respond to thy indwelling soul.
+
+  'White wings are crossing;
+  Glad waves are tossing;
+  The earth flames out in crimson and green:
+
+  Spring is appearing,
+  Summer is nearing--
+  Where hast thou been?
+
+  Down in some cavern,
+  Death's sleepy tavern,
+  Housing, carousing with spectres of night?
+  The trumpet is pealing
+  Sunshine and healing--
+  Spring to the light.'"
+
+With this quotation from a friend's poem, I closed my sermon, oppressed
+with a sense of failure; for ever the marvel of simple awaking, the mere
+type of the resurrection eluded all my efforts to fix it in words. I
+had to comfort myself with the thought that God is so strong that he can
+work even with our failures.
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOLUME III.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+   I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE
+  II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER
+ III. A PASTORAL VISIT.
+  IV. THE ART OF NATURE
+   V. THE SORE SPOT
+  VI. THE GATHERING STORM.
+ VII. THE GATHERED STORM.
+VIII. THE SHIPWRECK  IX. THE FUNERAL
+   X. THE SERMON.
+  XI. CHANGED PLANS.
+ XII. THE STUDIO.
+XIII. HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A WALK WITH MY WIFE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its
+skirts behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer,
+I must write a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my
+wife. It had rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down
+the air began to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she
+walked the heavens, not "like one that hath been led astray," but as
+"queen and huntress, chaste and fair."
+
+"What a lovely night it is!" said Ethelwyn, who had come into my
+study--where I always sat with unblinded windows, that the night and her
+creatures might look in upon me--and had stood gazing out for a moment.
+
+"Shall we go for a little turn?" I said.
+
+"I should like it very much," she answered. "I will go and put on my
+bonnet at once."
+
+In a minute or two she looked in again, all ready. I rose, laid aside
+my Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the
+down, and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon
+the same spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and
+Agnes. What a different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as
+if it could not move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over
+it was so mighty in its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was
+afraid to toss itself even with the motions of its natural unrest. The
+moon was like the face of a saint before which the stormy people has
+grown dumb. The rocks stood up solid and dark in the universal aether,
+and the pulse of the ocean throbbed against them with a lapping gush,
+soft as the voice of a passionate child soothed into shame of its
+vanished petulance. But the sky was the glory. Although no breath moved
+below, there was a gentle wind abroad in the upper regions. The air was
+full of masses of cloud, the vanishing fragments of the one great vapour
+which had been pouring down in rain the most of the day. These masses
+were all setting with one steady motion eastward into the abysses of
+space; now obscuring the fair moon, now solemnly sweeping away from
+before her. As they departed, out shone her marvellous radiance, as
+calm as ever. It was plain that she knew nothing of what we called her
+covering, her obscuration, the dimming of her glory. She had been busy
+all the time weaving her lovely opaline damask on the other side of the
+mass in which we said she was swallowed up.
+
+"Have you ever noticed, wifie," I said, "how the eyes of our
+minds--almost our bodily eyes--are opened sometimes to the cubicalness
+of nature, as it were?"
+
+"I don't know, Harry, for I don't understand your question," she
+answered.
+
+"Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being
+could have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a
+moment, though. Sometimes--perhaps generally--we see the sky as a flat
+dome, spangled with star-points, and painted blue. _Now_ I see it as an
+awful depth of blue air, depth within depth; and the clouds before me
+are not passing away to the left, but sinking away from the front of me
+into the marvellous unknown regions, which, let philosophers say what
+they will about time and space,--and I daresay they are right,--are yet
+very awful to me. Thank God, my dear," I said, catching hold of her arm,
+as the terror of mere space grew upon me, "for himself. He is deeper
+than space, deeper than time; he is the heart of all the cube of
+history."
+
+"I understand you now, husband," said my wife.
+
+"I knew you would," I answered.
+
+"But," she said again, "is it not something the same with the things
+inside us? I can't put it in words as you do. Do you understand me now?"
+
+"I am not sure that I do. You must try again."
+
+"You understand me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where
+you can talk," said my wife, putting her hand in mine. "But I will try.
+Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to
+a conclusion about it, and you think you have settled it plain and clear
+to yourself, for ever and a day. You hang it upon your wall, like a
+picture, and are satisfied for a fortnight. But some day, when you
+happen to cast a look at it, you find that instead of hanging flat on
+the wall, your picture has gone through it--opens out into some region
+you don't know where--shows you far-receding distances of air and
+sea--in short, where you thought one question was settled for ever, a
+hundred are opened up for the present hour."
+
+"Bravo, wife!" I cried in true delight. "I do indeed understand you
+now. You have said it better than I could ever have done. That's the
+plague of you women! You have been taught for centuries and centuries
+that there is little or nothing to be expected of you, and so you won't
+try. Therefore we men know no more than you do whether it is in you or
+not. And when you do try, instead of trying to think, you want to be in
+Parliament all at once."
+
+"Do you apply that remark to me, sir?" demanded Ethelwyn.
+
+"You must submit to bear the sins of your kind upon occasion," I
+answered.
+
+"I am content to do that, so long as yours will help mine," she replied.
+
+"Then I may go on?" I said, with interrogation.
+
+"Till sunrise if you like. We were talking of the cubicalness--I believe
+you called it--of nature."
+
+"And you capped it with the cubicalness of thought. And quite right
+too. There are people, as a dear friend of mine used to say, who are
+so accustomed to regard everything in the _flat_, as dogma cut and--not
+_always_ dried my moral olfactories aver--that if you prove to them the
+very thing they believe, but after another mode than that they have been
+accustomed to, they are offended, and count you a heretic. There is no
+help for it. Even St. Paul's chief opposition came from the Judaizing
+Christians of his time, who did not believe that God _could_ love the
+Gentiles, and therefore regarded him as a teacher of falsehood. We must
+not be fierce with them. Who knows what wickedness of their ancestors
+goes to account for their stupidity? For that there are stupid people,
+and that they are, in very consequence of their stupidity, conceited,
+who can deny? The worst of it is, that no man who is conceited can be
+convinced of the fact."
+
+"Don't say that, Harry. That is to deny conversion."
+
+"You are right, Ethelwyn. The moment a man is convinced of his folly,
+he ceases to be a fool. The moment a man is convinced of his conceit,
+he ceases to be conceited. But there _must_ be a final judgment, and the
+true man will welcome it, even if he is to appear a convicted fool. A
+man's business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool,
+and next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take
+heed likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their
+brother's eye. But there are even societies established and supported
+by good people for the express purpose of pulling out motes.--'The
+Mote-Pulling Society!'--That ought to take with a certain part of the
+public."
+
+"Come, come, Harry. You are absurd. Such people don't come near you."
+
+"They can't touch me. No. But they come near good people whom I know,
+brandishing the long pins with which they pull the motes out, and
+threatening them with judgment before their time. They are but pins, to
+be sure--not daggers."
+
+"But you have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty
+ways, and have forgotten all about 'the cubicalness of nature.'"
+
+"You are right, my love, as you generally are," I answered, laughing.
+"Look at that great antlered elk, or moose--fit quarry for Diana of the
+silver bow. Look how it glides solemnly away into the unpastured depths
+of the aerial deserts. Look again at that reclining giant, half raised
+upon his arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What eyes
+they must be under those huge brows! On what message to the nations is
+he borne as by the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?"
+
+"Stop, stop, Harry," said my wife. "It makes me unhappy to hear grand
+words clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about
+the truth, and the truth only."
+
+"If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
+degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
+or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
+counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds
+of the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy
+giant yields, and is 'shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,' so is each
+of us borne onward to an unseen destiny--a glorious one if we will but
+yield to the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth--with a grand
+listing--coming whence we know not, and going whither we know not. The
+very clouds of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the thoughts and
+history of man."
+
+"I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take
+the clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that
+what you were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which
+the clouds assume. I see I was wrong, though."
+
+"The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
+make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all
+for? They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and
+they go nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving
+symbols of the motions of man's spirit and destiny."
+
+A pause followed, during which we sat and watched the marvellous depth
+of the heavens, deep as I do not think I ever saw them before or since,
+covered with a stately procession of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing
+forms--great sculpturesque blocks of a shattered storm--the icebergs
+of the upper sea. These were not far off against a blue background, but
+floating near us in the heart of a blue-black space, gloriously lighted
+by a golden rather than silvery moon. At length my wife spoke.
+
+"I hope Mr. Percivale is out to-night," she said. "How he must be
+enjoying it if he is!"
+
+"I wonder the young man is not returning to his professional labours," I
+said. "Few artists can afford such long holidays as he is taking."
+
+"He is laying in stock, though, I suppose," answered my wife.
+
+"I doubt that, my dear. He said not, on one occasion, you may remember."
+
+"Yes, I remember. But still he must paint better the more familiar he
+gets with the things God cares to fashion."
+
+"Doubtless. But I am afraid the work of God he is chiefly studying at
+present is our Wynnie."
+
+"Well, is she not a worthy object of his study?" returned Ethelwyn,
+looking up in my face with an arch expression.
+
+"Doubtless again, Ethel; but I hope she is not studying him quite so
+much in her turn. I have seen her eyes following him about."
+
+My wife made no answer for a moment. Then she said,
+
+"Don't you like him, Harry?"
+
+"Yes. I like him very much."
+
+"Then why should you not like Wynnie to like him?"
+
+"I should like to be surer of his principles, for one thing."
+
+"I should like to be surer of Wynnie's."
+
+I was silent. Ethelwyn resumed.
+
+"Don't you think they might do each other good?"
+
+Still I could not reply.
+
+"They both love the truth, I am sure; only they don't perhaps know what
+it is yet. I think if they were to fall in love with each other, it
+would very likely make them both more desirous of finding it still."
+
+"Perhaps," I said at last. "But you are talking about awfully serious
+things, Ethelwyn."
+
+"Yes, as serious as life," she answered.
+
+"You make me very anxious," I said. "The young man has not, I fear, any
+means of gaining a livelihood for more than himself."
+
+"Why should he before he wanted it? I like to see a man who can be
+content with an art and a living by it."
+
+"I hope I have not been to blame in allowing them to see so much of each
+other," I said, hardly heeding my wife's words.
+
+"It came about quite naturally," she rejoined. "If you had opposed
+their meeting, you would have been interfering just as if you had been
+Providence. And you would have only made them think more about each
+other."
+
+"He hasn't said anything--has he?" I asked in positive alarm.
+
+"O dear no. It may be all my fancy. I am only looking a little ahead.
+I confess I should like him for a son-in-law. I approve of him," she
+added, with a sweet laugh.
+
+"Well," I said, "I suppose sons-in-law are possible, however
+disagreeable, results of having daughters."
+
+I tried to laugh, but hardly succeeded.
+
+"Harry," said my wife, "I don't like you in such a mood. It is not like
+you at all. It is unworthy of you."
+
+"How can I help being anxious when you speak of such dreadful things as
+the possibility of having to give away my daughter, my precious wonder
+that came to me through you, out of the infinite--the tender little
+darling!"
+
+"'Out of the heart of God,' you used to say, Henry. Yes, and with a
+destiny he had ordained. It is strange to me how you forget your best
+and noblest teaching sometimes. You are always telling us to trust in
+God. Surely it is a poor creed that will only allow us to trust in
+God for ourselves--a very selfish creed. There must be something wrong
+there. I should say that the man who can only trust God for himself is
+not half a Christian. Either he is so selfish that that satisfies him,
+or he has such a poor notion of God that he cannot trust him with what
+most concerns him. The former is not your case, Harry: is the latter,
+then?--You see I must take my turn at the preaching sometimes. Mayn't I,
+dearest?"
+
+She took my hand in both of hers. The truth arose in my heart. I never
+loved my wife more than at that moment. And now I could not speak for
+other reasons. I saw that I had been faithless to my God, and the moment
+I could command my speech, I hastened to confess it.
+
+"You are right, my dear," I said, "quite right. I have been wicked, for
+I have been denying my God. I have been putting my providence in the
+place of his--trying, like an anxious fool, to count the hairs on
+Wynnie's head, instead of being content that the grand loving Father
+should count them. My love, let us pray for Wynnie; for what is prayer
+but giving her to God and his holy, blessed will?"
+
+We sat hand in hand. Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we
+spoke in our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose
+together, and walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand
+clung to my wife as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of
+the prison of my faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was
+glorious again. It had faded from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma,
+uninteresting as "a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;" the
+moon had been but a round thing with the sun shining upon it, and the
+stars were only minding their own business. But now the solemn march
+towards an unseen, unimagined goal had again begun. Wynnie's life was
+hid with Christ in God. Away strode the cloudy pageant with its banners
+blowing in the wind, which blew where it grandly listed, marching as to
+a solemn triumphal music that drew them from afar towards the gates of
+pearl by which the morning walks out of the New Jerusalem to gladden the
+nations of the earth. Solitary stars, with all their sparkles drawn in,
+shone, quiet as human eyes, in the deep solemn clefts of dark blue air.
+They looked restrained and still, as if they knew all about it--all
+about the secret of this midnight march. For the moon--she saw the sun,
+and therefore made the earth glad.
+
+"You have been a moon to me this night, my wife," I said. "You were
+looking full at the truth, while I was dark. I saw its light in your
+face, and believed, and turned my soul to the sun. And now I am both
+ashamed and glad. God keep me from sinning so again."
+
+"My dear husband, it was only a mood--a passing mood," said Ethelwyn,
+seeking to comfort me.
+
+"It was a mood, and thank God it is now past; but it was a wicked one.
+It was a mood in which the Lord might have called me a devil, as he did
+St. Peter. Such moods have to be grappled with and fought the moment
+they appear. They must not have their way for a single thought even."
+
+"But we can't help it always, can we, husband?"
+
+"We can't help it out and out, because our wills are not yet free with
+the freedom God is giving us as fast as we will let him. When we are
+able to will thoroughly, then we shall do what we will. At least, I
+think we shall. But there is a mystery in it God only understands.
+All we know is, that we can struggle and pray. But a mood is an awful
+oppression sometimes when you least believe in it and most wish to get
+rid of it. It is like a headache in the soul."
+
+"What do the people do that don't believe in God?" said Ethelwyn.
+
+The same moment Wynnie, who had seen us pass the window, opened the door
+of the bark-house for us, and we passed into Connie's chamber and found
+her lying in the moonlight, gazing at the same heavens as her father and
+mother had been revelling in.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day was very lovely. I think it is the last of the kind of
+which I shall have occasion to write in my narrative of the Seaboard
+Parish. I wonder if my readers are tired of so much about the common
+things of Nature. I reason about it something in this way: We are so
+easily affected by the smallest things that are of the unpleasant kind,
+that we ought to train ourselves to the influence of those that are of
+an opposite nature. The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make
+themselves felt as we scramble--for we often do scramble in a very
+undignified manner--through the thickets of life; and, feeling the
+thorns, we grumble, and are blind to all but the thorns. The flowers,
+and the lovely leaves, and the red berries, and the clusters of
+filberts, and the birds'-nests do not force themselves upon our
+attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us forget to look for
+them. But a scratch would be forgotten--and that in mental hurts is
+often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on the mind or heart
+will never fester--if we but allowed our being a moment's repose upon
+any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that lie around the
+half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I think how,
+not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but admirable
+when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very paltriness of
+which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself to a noble
+endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would gladly
+help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of the
+apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
+for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one
+of the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about
+me, from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of
+truth been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even
+a lingering shadow--not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
+rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
+over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
+memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader,
+for therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the
+recording of them.
+
+This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
+enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean--of knowing a few
+yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It
+was to be low water about two o'clock, and we resolved to dine upon
+the sands. But all the morning the children were out playing on the
+threshold of old Neptune's palace; for in his quieter mood he will, like
+a fierce mastiff, let children do with him what they will. I gave myself
+a whole holiday--sometimes the most precious part of my life both for
+myself and those for whom I labour--and wandered about on the shore, now
+passing the children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties
+to look at this one's castle and that one's ditch, now leaving them
+behind, with what in its ungraduated flatness might well enough
+personate an endless desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I
+could imagine them disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint
+occasional cry of excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea
+was so calm, and the shore so gently sloping, that you could hardly tell
+where the sand ceased and the sea began--the water sloped to such a thin
+pellicle, thinner than any knife-edge, upon the shining brown sand, and
+you saw the sand underneath the water to such a distance out. Yet this
+depth, which would not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I
+followed that bed of shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and
+out, till I was lost in an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and
+mountain-peaks, in whose caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his
+breath of pestilence; the kraken, with "his skaly rind," may there be
+sleeping
+
+  "His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep,"
+
+while
+
+    "faintest sunlights flee
+  About his shadowy sides,"
+
+as he lies
+
+  "Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep."
+
+There may lie all the horrors that Schiller's diver encountered--the
+frightful Molch, and that worst of all, to which he gives no name,
+which came creeping with a hundred knots at once; but here are only the
+gracious rainbow-woven shells, an evanescent jelly or two, and the queer
+baby-crabs that crawl out from the holes of the bordering rocks. What
+awful gradations of gentleness lead from such as these down to those
+cabins where wallow the inventions of Nature's infancy, when, like
+a child of untutored imagination, she drew on the slate of her fancy
+creations in which flitting shadows of beauty serve only to heighten the
+shuddering, gruesome horror. The sweet sun and air, the hand of man, and
+the growth of the ages, have all but swept such from the upper plains
+of the earth. What hunter's bow has twanged, what adventurer's rifle has
+cracked in those leagues of mountain-waste, vaster than all the upper
+world can show, where the beasts of the ocean "graze the sea-weed, their
+pasture"! Diana of the silver bow herself, when she descends into
+the interlunar caves of hell, sends no such monsters fleeing from
+her spells. Yet if such there be, such horrors too must lie in the
+undiscovered caves of man's nature, of which all this outer world is but
+a typical analysis. By equally slow gradations may the inner eye descend
+from the truth of a Cordelia to the falsehood of an Iago. As these
+golden sands slope from the sunlight into the wallowing abyss of
+darkness, even so from the love of the child to his holy mother slopes
+the inclined plane of humanity to the hell of the sensualist. "But with
+one difference in the moral world," I said aloud, as I paced up and down
+on the shimmering margin, "that everywhere in the scale the eye of the
+all-seeing Father can detect the first quiver of the eyelid that would
+raise itself heavenward, responsive to his waking spirit." I lifted my
+eyes in the relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn
+hung above the waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away
+to the left a man who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible
+save in such a tide, gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and
+swam ashore; above his head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air;
+the sea glittered and shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which
+to choose, the balmy air or the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads
+through the one, now alighting eagerly upon the other, to forsake it
+anew for the thinner element. I thanked God for his glory.
+
+"O, papa, it's so jolly--so jolly!" shouted the children as I passed
+them again.
+
+"What is it that's so jolly, Charlie?" I asked.
+
+"My castle," screeched Harry in reply; "only it's tumbled down. The
+water _would_ keep coming in underneath."
+
+"I tried to stop it with a newspaper," cried Charlie, "but it wouldn't.
+So we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch."
+
+"We blew it up rather than surrender," said Dora. "We did; only Harry
+always forgets, and says it was the water did it."
+
+I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from
+this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was
+flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark
+hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been
+dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over
+my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed
+quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on
+the sands to seaward of the breakwater, which lay above, looking dry
+and weary, and worn with years of contest with the waves, which had at
+length withdrawn defeated to their own country, and left it as if to
+victory and a useless age of peace. How different was the scene when a
+raving mountain of water filled all the hollow where I now wandered,
+and rushed over the top of that mole now so high above me; and I had
+to cling to its stones to keep me from being carried off like a bit
+of floating sea-weed! This was the loveliest and strangest part of the
+shore. Several long low ridges of rock, of whose existence I scarcely
+knew, worn to a level with the sand, hollowed and channelled with the
+terrible run of the tide across them, and looking like the old and
+outworn cheek-teeth of some awful beast of prey, stretched out seawards.
+Here and there amongst them rose a well-known rock, but now so changed
+in look by being lifted all the height between the base on the waters,
+and the second base in the sand, that I wondered at each, walking round
+and viewing it on all sides. It seemed almost a fresh growth out of the
+garden of the shore, with uncouth hollows around its fungous root, and
+a forsaken air about its brows as it stood in the dry sand and looked
+seaward. But what made the chief delight of the spot, closed in by
+rocks from the open sands, was the multitude of fairy rivers that
+flowed across it to the sea. The gladness these streams gave me I cannot
+communicate. The tide had filled thousands of hollows in the breakwater,
+hundreds of cracked basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand; from all
+of which--from cranny and crack, and oozing sponge--the water flowed in
+restricted haste back, back to the sea, tumbling in tiny cataracts
+down the faces of the rocks, bubbling from their roots as from wells,
+gathering in tanks of sand, and overflowing in broad shallow streams,
+curving and sweeping in their sandy channels, just like, the great
+rivers of a continent;--here spreading into smooth silent lakes and
+reaches, here babbling along in ripples and waves innumerable--flowing,
+flowing, to lose their small beings in the same ocean that met on the
+other side the waters of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the Amazon. All
+their channels were of golden sand, and the golden sunlight was above
+and through and in them all: gold and gold met, with the waters between.
+And what gave an added life to their motion was, that all the ripples
+made shadows on the clear yellow below them. The eye could not see
+the rippling on the surface; but the sun saw it, and drew it in
+multitudinous shadowy motion upon the sand, with the play of a thousand
+fancies of gold burnished and dead, of sunlight and yellow, trembling,
+melting, curving, blending, vanishing ever, ever renewed. It was as if
+all the water-marks upon a web of golden silk had been set in wildest
+yet most graceful curvilinear motion by the breath of a hundred playful
+zephyrs. My eye could not be filled with seeing. I stood in speechless
+delight for a while, gazing at the "endless ending" which was "the
+humour of the game," and thinking how in all God's works the laws of
+beauty are wrought out in evanishment, in birth and death. There, there
+is no hoarding, but an ever-fresh creating, an eternal flow of life
+from the heart of the All-beautiful. Hence even the heart of man cannot
+hoard. His brain or his hand may gather into its box and hoard; but the
+moment the thing has passed into the box, the heart has lost it and is
+hungry again. If man would _have,_ it is the giver he must have; the
+eternal, the original, the ever-outpouring is alone within his reach;
+the everlasting _creation_ is his heritage. Therefore all that he makes
+must be free to come and go through the heart of his child; he can enjoy
+it only as it passes, can enjoy only its life, its soul, its vision,
+its meaning, not itself. To hoard rubies and sapphires is as useless and
+hopeless for the heart, as if I were to attempt to hoard this marvel of
+sand and water and sunlight in the same iron chest with the musty deeds
+of my wife's inheritance.
+
+"Father," I murmured half aloud, "thou alone art, and I am because thou
+art. Thy will shall be mine."
+
+I know that I must have spoken aloud, because I remember the start of
+consciousness and discomposure occasioned by the voice of Percivale
+greeting me.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he added; "I did not mean to startle you, Mr.
+Walton. I thought you were only looking at Nature's childplay--not
+thinking."
+
+"I know few things _more_ fit to set one thinking than what you have
+very well called Nature's childplay," I returned. "Is Nature very
+heartless now, do you think, to go on with this kind of thing at our
+feet, when away up yonder lies the awful London, with so many sores
+festering in her heart?"
+
+"You must answer your own question, Mr. Walton. You know I cannot. I
+confess I feel the difficulty deeply. I will go further, and confess
+that the discrepancy makes me doubt many things I would gladly believe.
+I know _you_ are able to distinguish between a glad unbelief and a
+sorrowful doubt."
+
+"Else were I unworthy of the humblest place in the kingdom--unworthy to
+be a doorkeeper in the house of my God," I answered, and recoiled from
+the sound of my own words; for they seemed to imply that I believed
+myself worthy of the position I occupied. I hastened to correct them:
+"But do not mistake my thoughts," I said; "I do not dream of worthiness
+in the way of honour--only of fitness for the work to be done. For that
+I think God has fitted me in some measure. The doorkeeper's office may
+be given him, not because he has done some great deed worthy of the
+honour, but because he can sweep the porch and scour the threshold, and
+will, in the main, try to keep them clean. That is all the worthiness I
+dare to claim, even to hope that I possess."
+
+"No one who knows you can mistake your words, except wilfully," returned
+Percivale courteously.
+
+"Thank you," I said. "Now I will just ask you, in reference to the
+contrast between human life and nature, how you will go back to your
+work in London, after seeing all this child's and other play of Nature?
+Suppose you had had nothing here but rain and high winds and sea-fogs,
+would you have been better fitted for doing something to comfort those
+who know nothing of such influences than you will be now? One of the
+most important qualifications of a sick-nurse is a ready smile. A
+long-faced nurse in a sickroom is a visible embodiment and presence of
+the disease against which the eager life of the patient is fighting in
+agony. Such ought to be banished, with their black dresses and their
+mourning-shop looks, from every sick-chamber, and permitted to minister
+only to the dead, who do not mind looks. With what a power of life
+and hope does a woman--young or old I do not care--with a face of the
+morning, a dress like the spring, a bunch of wild flowers in her hand,
+with the dew upon them, and perhaps in her eyes too (I don't object
+to that--that is sympathy, not the worship of darkness),--with what a
+message from nature and life does she, looking death in the face with a
+smile, dawn upon the vision of the invalid! She brings a little health,
+a little strength to fight, a little hope to endure, actually lapt in
+the folds of her gracious garments; for the soul itself can do more than
+any medicine, if it be fed with the truth of life."
+
+"But are you not--I beg your pardon for interposing on your eloquence
+with dull objection," said Percivale--"are you not begging all the
+question? _Is_ life such an affair of sunshine and gladness?"
+
+"If life is not, then I confess all this show of nature is worse than
+vanity--it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in
+it that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the
+mistake. If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow,
+against which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We
+recognise it as death--the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow
+but for a recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must
+be life. It is of the nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is
+nothing until the light comes. This very childplay, as you call it, of
+Nature, is her assertion of the secret that life is the deepest, that
+life shall conquer death. Those who believe this must bear the good
+news to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Our Lord has
+conquered death--yea, the moral death that he called the world; and now,
+having sown the seed of light, the harvest is springing in human hearts,
+is springing in this dance of radiance, and will grow and grow until the
+hearts of the children of the kingdom shall frolic in the sunlight
+of the Father's presence. Nature has God at her heart; she is but the
+garment of the Invisible. God wears his singing robes in a day like
+this, and says to his children, 'Be not afraid: your brothers and
+sisters up there in London are in my hands; go and help them. I am with
+you. Bear to them the message of joy. Tell them to be of good cheer:
+I have overcome the world. Tell them to endure hunger, and not sin; to
+endure passion, and not yield; to admire, and not desire. Sorrow and
+pain are serving my ends; for by them will I slay sin; and save my
+children.'"
+
+"I wish I could believe as you do, Mr. Walton."
+
+"I wish you could. But God will teach you, if you are willing to be
+taught."
+
+"I desire the truth, Mr. Walton."
+
+"God bless you! God is blessing you," I said.
+
+"Amen," returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in
+silence towards the cliffs.
+
+The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the
+face of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the
+inch-deep wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet
+defiant, the wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of
+the shore.
+
+"Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide
+lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy
+pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before
+us bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of
+stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that
+is at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind
+you, at your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents,
+caves, and hollows of those rocks."
+
+"I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton," he said.
+
+"I wish I were," I returned. "At least I know I should rejoice in it, if
+it had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?"
+
+"Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which
+would give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and
+individuality to your representation of her."
+
+"I know what you mean," I answered; "but I have no gift whatever in that
+direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects
+of light and shade; though I think I have a little notion of
+colour--perhaps about as much as the little London boy, who stopped a
+friend of mine once to ask the way to the field where the buttercups
+grew, had of nature."
+
+"I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures."
+
+"That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they
+made me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of
+looking at them."
+
+"May I offer you my address?" he said, and took a card from his
+pocket-book. "It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of
+me when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a
+visit."
+
+"I shall be most happy," I returned, taking his card.--"Did it ever
+occur to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes
+ago, how little you can do without shadow in making a picture?"
+
+"Little indeed," answered Percivale. "In fact, it would be no picture at
+all."
+
+"I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows."
+
+"But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God,
+to be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes."
+
+"It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think
+of his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but
+upon the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think
+a great part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which
+oppresses you will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin
+is possible to him. Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God
+that in order that sin should become impossible he should allow sin
+to come? that, in order that his creatures should choose the good and
+refuse the evil, in order that they might become such, with their
+whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to turn from sin with a perfect
+repugnance of the will, he should allow them to fall? that, in order
+that, from being sweet childish children, they should become noble,
+child-like men and women, he should let them try to walk alone?
+Why should he not allow the possible in order that it should become
+impossible? for possible it would ever have been, even in the midst of
+all the blessedness, until it had been, and had been thus destroyed.
+Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever exist, it seems to
+me, where there is creation still going on. How could I be content to
+guard my children so that they should never have temptation, knowing
+that in all probability they would fail if at any moment it should cross
+their path? Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be
+possible between us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long
+as it was possible it should be there developed. And if this can be said
+for the existence of moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes
+a comparative trifle; nay, a positive good, for by this the other is
+combated."
+
+"I think I understand you," returned Percivale. "I will think over what
+you have said. These are very difficult questions."
+
+"Very. I don't think argument is of much use about them, except as it
+may help to quiet a man's uneasiness a little, and so give his mind
+peace to think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no
+question, once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest--in
+very fact, the only way into the light."
+
+As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the
+salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came
+a little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the
+preparations for our dinner--over the gates of the lock, down the sides
+of the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the direction
+of the children, who were still playing merrily.
+
+"Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you
+see, somewhere hereabout on the sands?" I said.
+
+"I shall be delighted," he answered, "if you will let me be of some use
+first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out."
+
+"Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will."
+
+"That is what I hoped," said Percivale; and we went together towards the
+parsonage.
+
+As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but
+when we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.
+
+"Where is Wynnie?" I asked.
+
+"She saw you coming," she answered, "and went to get Connie ready; for I
+guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out."
+
+But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie's
+disappearance. "What if she should have fallen in love with him," I
+thought, "and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be
+dreadful for us all."
+
+They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was
+compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each
+other it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently
+a great mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help
+sympathising with each other's peculiarities. And anyone could see what
+a fine couple they would make.
+
+Wynnie was much taller than Connie--almost the height of her mother.
+She had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise,
+thoughtful, often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on
+which a smile seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled
+like water when she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why
+should not two such walk together along the path to the gates of the
+light? And yet I could not help some anxiety. I did not know anything
+of his history. I had no testimony concerning him from anyone that knew
+him. His past life was a blank to me; his means of livelihood probably
+insufficient--certainly, I judged, precarious; and his position in
+society--but there I checked myself: I had had enough of that kind of
+thing already. I would not willingly offend in that worldliness again.
+The God of the whole earth could not choose that I should look at
+such works of his hands after that fashion. And I was his servant--not
+Mammon's or Belial's.
+
+All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the
+winnowing-fan of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife,
+who took no pains to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and
+I went upstairs, almost unconsciously, to Connie's room.
+
+When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to
+have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie's arm round her
+waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk
+thus occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but
+turned it again at Connie's cry, and I saw a tear on her face.
+
+"My darlings, I beg your pardon," I said. "It was very stupid of me not
+to knock at the door."
+
+Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said--
+
+"It's nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn't
+want you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all.
+It didn't hurt me much, only I'm such a goose! I'm in terror before the
+pain comes. Look at me," she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation
+on my countenance, "I'm all right now." And she smiled in my face
+perfectly.
+
+I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the
+room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me
+with her eyes, but Wynnie's were hidden in her handkerchief.
+
+I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to
+announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came
+to say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to
+give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her
+message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.
+
+"Come, Mr. Percivale," I said; and he followed me up to Connie's room.
+
+Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for
+going. We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for
+the easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater,
+along its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before
+we reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us.
+We stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted
+to take breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I
+wanted Wynnie to hear without its being addressed to her.
+
+"Do you see, Connie," I said, "how far off the water is?"
+
+"Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to
+it."
+
+"You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that
+sand, will be covered before sunset."
+
+"I know it will be. But it doesn't _look_ likely, does it, papa!"
+
+"Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I
+came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?"
+
+"Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind
+blowing when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to
+wake myself up' quite to get rid of the thought."
+
+"Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and
+sand at the bottom of it, stretching far away."
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about
+between the stones?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the
+great gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed
+across this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry
+regiment off its back."
+
+"Papa!" exclaimed Connie, turning pale.
+
+Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.
+
+"Then I _was_ right in being frightened, papa!" cried Connie, bursting
+into tears; for since her accident she could not well command her
+feelings.
+
+"You were right in trusting in God, Connie."
+
+"But you might have been drowned, papa!" she sobbed.
+
+"Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what
+has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but
+that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking
+of things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is _our_
+department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what
+a change--from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of
+sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away
+there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles
+will come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the
+storm look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning
+cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort
+of Nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose,
+for God is Peace."
+
+"But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton," said Percivale, "you can hardly
+expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It
+seems to me that its influences cannot be imparted."
+
+"That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are
+offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another;
+for it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in
+the person who has experienced can draw over or derive--to use an old
+Italian word--some of its benefits to him who has the faith. Experience
+may thus, in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh
+experience of our own. At least I can hope that the experience of a
+father may take the form of hope in the minds of his daughters.
+Hope never hurt anyone, never yet interfered with duty; nay, always
+strengthens to the performance of duty, gives courage, and clears the
+judgment. St. Paul says we are saved by hope. Hope is the most rational
+thing in the universe. Even the ancient poets, who believed it was
+delusive, yet regarded it as an antidote given by the mercy of the gods
+against some, at least, of the ills of life."
+
+"But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded."
+
+"Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a
+false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could
+give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for
+what were the gods in whom they believed--I cannot say in whom they
+trusted? Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of
+doing for men when they gave them the _illusion_ of hope. But I see
+they are waiting for us below. One thing I repeat--the waves that
+foamed across the spot where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and
+vanished."
+
+"But they will come again, papa," faltered Wynnie.
+
+"And God will come with them, my love," I said, as we lifted the litter.
+
+In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a
+table-cloth spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the
+light outside and in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope
+the others too, that afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were
+creeping up over the level, soundless almost as thought; but it would
+be time to go home long before they had reached us. The sun was in the
+western half of the sky, and now and then a breath of wind came from the
+sea, with a slight saw-edge in it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could
+stand much more in that way now. And when I saw how she could move
+herself on her couch, and thought how much she had improved since first
+she was laid upon it, hope for her kept fluttering joyously in my heart.
+I could not help fancying even that I saw her move her legs a little;
+but I could not be in the least sure; and she, if she did move them,
+was clearly unconscious of it. Charles and Harry were every now and then
+starting up from their dinner and running off with a shout, to return
+with apparently increased appetite for the rest of it; and neither their
+mother nor I cared to interfere with the indecorum. Dora alone took
+it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very silent, but looked more
+cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My wife's face was a
+picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking about with the
+baby, occasionally with one hand helping the other servants to wait upon
+us. They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the hour, and,
+like Ariel, did their spiriting gently.
+
+"This is the will of God," I said, after the things were removed, and we
+had sat for a few moments in silence.
+
+"What is the will of God, husband?" asked Ethelwyn.
+
+"Why, this, my love," I answered; "this living air, and wind, and sea,
+and light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of
+Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such
+visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the
+face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes.
+Yes, but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the
+harmony. When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was
+for Lazarus himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That
+could not be, seeing he had the power to call him back when he would.
+The grief was for the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was
+so dreadful because they had not faith enough in his Father, the God
+of life and love, who was looking after it all, full of tenderness and
+grace, with whom Lazarus was present and blessed. It was the aching,
+loving heart of humanity for which he wept, that needed God so awfully,
+and could not yet trust in him. Their brother was only hidden in the
+skirts of their Father's garment, but they could not believe that: they
+said he was dead--lost--away--all gone, as the children say. And it was
+so sad to think of a whole world full of the grief of death, that he
+could not bear it without the human tears to help his heart, as they
+help ours. It was for our dark sorrows that he wept. But the peace could
+be no less plain on the face that saw God. Did you ever think of that
+wonderful saying: 'Again a little while, and ye shall see me, because I
+go to the Father'? The heart of man would have joined the 'because I go
+to the Father' with the former result--the not seeing of him. The heart
+of man is not able, without more and more light, to understand that all
+vision is in the light of the Father. Because Jesus went to the Father,
+therefore the disciples saw him tenfold more. His body no longer in
+their eyes, his very being, his very self was in their hearts--not in
+their affections only--in their spirits, their heavenly consciousness."
+
+As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial
+affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I
+repeated it:
+
+      "If I Him but have,
+    If he be but mine,
+      If my heart, hence to the grave,
+    Ne'er forgets his love divine--
+  Know I nought of sadness,
+  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.
+
+      If I Him but have,
+    Glad with all I part;
+      Follow on my pilgrim staff
+    My Lord only, with true heart;
+  Leave them, nothing saying,
+  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Glad I fall asleep;
+        Aye the flood that his heart gave
+      Strength within my heart shall keep,
+  And with soft compelling
+  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Mine the world I hail!
+        Glad as cherub smiling grave,
+      Holding back the virgin's veil.
+  Sunk and lost in seeing,
+  Earthly fears have died from all my being.
+
+        Where I have but Him
+      Is my Fatherland;
+        And all gifts and graces come
+      Heritage into my hand:
+  Brothers long deplored
+  I in his disciples find restored."
+
+"What a lovely hymn, papa!" exclaimed Connie. She could always speak
+more easily than either her mother or sister. "Who wrote it?"
+
+"Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis."
+
+"But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?"
+
+"Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and
+feeling, however I may have failed in making an English poem of it."
+
+"O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?"
+
+"Years before you were born, Connie."
+
+"To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!" she
+returned. "Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?"
+
+"No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don't think he
+belonged to any section of the church in particular."
+
+"But oughtn't he, papa?"
+
+"Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is
+the use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?"
+
+"O, I didn't think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I
+wanted to know more about him."
+
+The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant
+what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider
+Christianity as associated of necessity with this or that form of
+it, instead of as simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more
+repulsive to me as I had grown myself, for it always seemed like an
+insult to my brethren in Christ; hence the least hint of it in my
+children I was too ready to be down upon like a most unchristian ogre.
+I took her hand in mine, and she was comforted, for she saw in my face
+that I was sorry, and yet she could see that there was reason at the
+root of my haste.
+
+"But," said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened
+herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far
+she was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a
+barrier between him and me--"But," she said, "the lovely feeling in that
+poem seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to
+the New Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about
+us. These things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and
+being glad in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and
+solemn things. As soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of
+them."
+
+"That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to
+the rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with
+their conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with
+art it was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of
+its history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to
+make Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we
+are beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either
+the whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the
+human soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is
+the heart not only of theology so called, but of history, politics,
+science, and art. The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him,
+and therefore by him only can be revealed. This will interpret all
+things, or it has not yet been. Teachers of men have not taught this,
+because they have not seen it. If we do not find him in nature, we may
+conclude either that we do not understand the expression of nature, or
+have mistaken ideas or poor feelings about him. It is one great business
+in our life to find the interpretation which will render this harmony
+visible. Till we find it, we have not seen him to be all in all.
+Recognising a discord when they touched the notes of nature and society,
+the hermits forsook the instrument altogether, and contented themselves
+with a partial symphony--lofty, narrow, and weak. Their example, more or
+less, has been followed by almost all Christians. Exclusion is so much
+the easier way of getting harmony in the orchestra than study, insight,
+and interpretation, that most have adopted it. It is for us, and all who
+have hope in the infinite God, to widen its basis as we may, to search
+and find the true tone and right idea, place, and combination of
+instruments, until to our enraptured ear they all, with one voice of
+multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare the glory of God and of his
+Christ."
+
+"A grand idea," said Percivale.
+
+"Therefore likely to be a true one," I returned. "People find it hard
+to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely
+everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is
+shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and
+troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of
+eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God
+will yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs."
+
+I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring
+holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look
+my familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there
+I sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs.
+As I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast
+from the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide
+had crept up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk
+down over the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured
+the half of the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain
+veil as of the commonplace, like that which so often settles down over
+the spirit of man after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had
+dropped over the face of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts
+across the dull waters. It was time to lift Connie and take her home.
+
+This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A PASTORAL VISIT.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next morning rose neither "cherchef't in a comely cloud" nor "roab'd
+in flames and amber light," but covered all in a rainy mist, which the
+wind mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now
+and then the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of
+my study with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out
+and meet its ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows
+anywhere. The sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth,
+sea, and sky were possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The
+breakfast-bell rang, and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who
+was always down first to make the tea, standing at the window with a
+sad face, giving fit response to the aspect of nature without, her soul
+talking with the gray spirit. I did find her at the window, looking out
+upon the restless tossing of the waters, but with no despondent answer
+to the trouble of nature. On the contrary, her cheek, though neither
+rosy nor radiant, looked luminous, and her eyes were flashing out upon
+the ebb-tide which was sinking away into the troubled ocean beyond. Does
+my girl-reader expect me to tell her next that something had happened?
+that Percivale had said something to her? or that, at least, he had just
+passed the window, and given her a look which she might interpret as she
+pleased? I must disappoint her. It was nothing of the sort. I knew
+the heart and feeling of my child. It was only that kind nature was in
+sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more peaceful in storm than
+in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of life instantly began
+in her when the obligation of gladness had departed with the light. Her
+own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could smile now when
+nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I could not
+help saying to myself, "She must marry a poor man some day; she is a
+creature of the north, and not of the south; the hot sun of prosperity
+would wither her up. Give her a bleak hill-side, and a glint or two of
+sunshine between the hailstorms, and she will live and grow; give her
+poverty and love, and life will be interesting to her as a romance; give
+her money and position, and she will grow dull and haughty. She will
+believe in nothing that poet can sing or architect build. She will, like
+Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved to smile at anything."
+
+I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came
+forward with her usual morning greeting.
+
+"I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter."
+
+"I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love."
+
+"Don't think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you.
+But I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind
+and a complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome
+it."
+
+"It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the
+moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well,
+and that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think
+about some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have
+banished if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as
+you never felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which
+at least you haven't enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you
+yesterday, and I won't go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to
+comfort you. Come and give me my breakfast."
+
+"You do comfort me, papa," she answered, approaching the table. "I know
+I don't show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don't
+you like a day like this, papa?"
+
+"I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as
+you do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so
+well."
+
+"Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me
+so well?" she asked, brightening up.
+
+"I know I do," I returned, replying to her last question.
+
+"Better than I do myself?" she asked with an arch smile.
+
+"Considerably, if I mistake not," I answered.
+
+"How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don't
+understand myself!"
+
+"But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life
+is that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from
+God, that hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease.
+It is the sight of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are
+both, by mutual confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you
+say to going out with me? I have to visit a sick woman."
+
+"You don't mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?"
+
+"No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill."
+
+"O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was
+in bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort."
+
+"We'll call and inquire as we pass,--that is, if you are inclined to go
+with me."
+
+"How can you put an _if_ to that, papa?"
+
+"I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on
+the corner of Mr. Barton's farm--over the cliff, you know--that the
+woman is ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the
+better."
+
+"I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here's
+mamma!--Mamma, I'm going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won't
+mind, will you?"
+
+"I don't think it will do you any harm, my dear. That's all I mind, you
+know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected
+to it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people are _glad_ to
+stay in-doors when it rains."
+
+"And it does blow so delightfully!" said Wynnie, as she left the room to
+put on her long cloak and her bonnet.
+
+We called at the sexton's cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the
+low window, looking seaward.
+
+"I hope your wife is not _very_ poorly, Coombes," I said.
+
+"No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed's not a bad place to be in
+in such weather," he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the
+Atlantic. "Poor things!"
+
+"What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about,
+do you think?"
+
+"I suppose I was made so, sir."
+
+"To be sure you were. God made you so."
+
+"Surely, sir. Who else?"
+
+"Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people
+like to be comfortable."
+
+"It du look likely enough, sir."
+
+"Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn't think he doesn't
+look after the people you would make comfortable if you could."
+
+"I must mind my work, you know, sir."
+
+"Yes, surely. And you mustn't want to take his out of his hands, and go
+grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you
+get _your_ hand to it."
+
+"I daresay you be right, sir," he said. "I must just go and have a look
+about, though. Here's Agnes. She'll tell you about mother."
+
+He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his
+tools into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over
+with the names of the people he had buried.
+
+"Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her,
+if she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is
+very poorly, I hear."
+
+"Let us go through the churchyard, papa," said Wynnie, "and see what the
+old man is doing."
+
+"Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round."
+
+"Why do you humour the sexton's foolish fancy so much, papa? It is
+such nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
+resurrection?"
+
+"Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out
+of his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction.
+To get people's hearts right is of much more importance than convincing
+their judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should
+be encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the
+outsides of their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for
+the dead more than he does, and _therefore_ it is unreasonable for him
+to be anxious about them."
+
+When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave
+before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death's-head and
+cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his
+pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows
+of the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked
+past with a nod.
+
+"You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only
+thing in Dante's grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it
+without a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry
+now as I am that ever he could have written it. When, in the _Inferno,_
+he reaches the lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice,
+he finds the lost plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember
+rightly, entirely submerged, and visible only through the ice,
+transparent as crystal, like the insects found in amber. One man with
+his head only above the ice, appeals to him as condemned to the same
+punishment to take pity on him, and remove the lumps of frozen tears
+from his eyes, that he may weep a little before they freeze again and
+stop the relief once more. Dante says to him, 'Tell me who you are,
+and if I do not assist you, I deserve to lie at the bottom of the ice
+myself.' The man tells him who he is, and explains to him one awful
+mystery of these regions. Then he says, 'Now stretch forth thy hand,
+and open my eyes.' 'And,' says Dante, I did not open them for him; and
+rudeness to him was courtesy.'"
+
+"But he promised, you said."
+
+"He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him
+together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that
+Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and
+may teach us many things."
+
+"But what made you think of that now?"
+
+"Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was
+scooping the green moss out of the eyes of the death's-head on the
+gravestone."
+
+By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting
+us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie
+drew her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and
+struggled on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the
+rain must carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one
+of the stone fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments
+to recover our breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like
+conversation was out of the question. At length we dropped into a
+hollow, which gave us a little repose. Down below the sea was dashing
+into the mouth of the glen, or coomb, as they call it there. On the
+opposite side of the hollow, the little house to which we were going
+stood up against the gray sky.
+
+"I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was
+thoughtless of me; I don't mean for your sake, but because your presence
+may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may
+prefer seeing me alone."
+
+"I will go back, papa. I sha'n't mind it a bit."
+
+"No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We
+may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?"
+
+"Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside."
+
+"Come along, then. We shall soon be there."
+
+When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way.
+I left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where
+Mrs. Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the
+moment I saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was
+a hard-featured woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled
+restlessly about. She lay on her back, moving her head from side to
+side. When I entered she only looked at me, and turned her eyes away
+towards the wall. I approached the bedside, and seated myself by it.
+I always do so at once; for the patient feels more at rest than if you
+stand tall up before her. I laid my hand on hers.
+
+"Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?" I said.
+
+"Yes, very," she answered with a groan. "It be come to the last with
+me."
+
+"I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It's not come to the last with us, so
+long as we have a Father in heaven."
+
+"Ah! but it be with me. He can't take any notice of the like of me."
+
+"But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of
+every thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit."
+
+I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than
+usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I
+therefore went on.
+
+"Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long
+as their children don't bother them, let them do anything they like. He
+will not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that."
+
+"He won't look at me," she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so
+that I could hardly, hear what she said.
+
+"It is because he _is_ looking at you that you are feeling
+uncomfortable," I answered. "He wants you to confess your sins. I
+don't mean to me, but to himself; though if you would like to tell me
+anything, and I can help you, I shall be _very_ glad. You know Jesus
+Christ came to save us from our sins; and that's why we call him our
+Saviour. But he can't save us from our sins if we won't confess that we
+have any."
+
+"I'm sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other
+people."
+
+"You don't suppose that's confessing your sins?" I said. "I once knew a
+woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner;
+but when I said, 'Yes, you have done so and so,' she would not allow one
+of those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When
+I asked her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these
+counted for nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a
+great sinner, like other people, as you have just been saying."
+
+"I hope you don't be thinking I ha' done anything of that sort," she
+said with wakening energy. "No man or woman dare say I've done anything
+to be ashamed of."
+
+"Then you've committed no sins?" I returned. "But why did you send for
+me? You must have something to say to me."
+
+"I never did send for you. It must ha' been my husband."
+
+"Ah, then I'm afraid I've no business here!" I returned, rising. "I
+thought you had sent for me."
+
+She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her
+thinking, and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I
+think clergymen may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad
+mood, as if they had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at
+all. I bade her good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned
+to Wynnie.
+
+As we walked home together, I said:
+
+"Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the
+sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented
+my appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are
+over."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ART OF NATURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study
+and in Connie's room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused
+to hold any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it
+folded itself in its mantle and lay still.
+
+What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we
+cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She
+is busy with every human mood in turn--sometimes with ten of them
+at once--picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see,
+understand, develop, reform it.
+
+I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora
+knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that
+mamma was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.
+
+"Not in the least, my dear," I answered; "I shall be very glad to see
+him."
+
+"Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale," I said as he
+entered. "I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it
+would be much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her
+portrait?"
+
+"Not quite so bad as that," said Percivale.
+
+"Surely the human face is more than nature."
+
+"Nature is never stupid."
+
+"The woman might be pretty."
+
+"Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such
+a woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would
+feel the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you
+would never think of making upon Nature."
+
+"I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with
+moral causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame."
+
+"Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be
+lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you
+rise into animal nature that you find ugliness."
+
+"True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn
+in nature. I have seen ugly flowers."
+
+"I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without
+beauty."
+
+"Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I
+grant you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just
+because the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in
+its repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face."
+
+A pause followed.
+
+"I presume," I said, "you are thinking of returning to London now, there
+seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins
+to show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the
+change, even through the winter, will be good for my daughter."
+
+"I must be going soon," he answered; "but it would be too bad to take
+offence at the old lady's first touch of temper. I mean to wait and
+see whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin's summer, as
+Shakspere calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and--"
+
+"And what?" I asked, seeing he hesitated.
+
+"'And soap,' I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the
+worst of things, Mr. Walton."
+
+"No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by
+anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it."
+
+We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to
+tell me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.
+
+I went down to see him, and found her husband.
+
+"My wife be very bad, sir," he said. "I wish you could come and see
+her."
+
+"Does she want to see me?' I asked.
+
+"She's been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last," he
+said.
+
+"But," I repeated, "has she said she would like to see me?"
+
+"I can't say it, sir," answered the man.
+
+"Then it is you who want me to see her?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you
+see, sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would
+always leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir."
+
+"And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?"
+
+"No, never, sir. She be peculiar--my wife; she always be."
+
+"Does she know that you have come to ask me now?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Have you courage to tell her?"
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"If you haven't courage to tell her," I resumed, "I have nothing more to
+say. I can't go; or, rather, I will not go."
+
+"I will tell her, sir."
+
+"Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me
+herself."
+
+"Ben't that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?"
+
+"I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she
+will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your
+wife's peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes."
+
+"Well, I _will_ tell her, sir. It's time to speak my own mind."
+
+"I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in
+the middle of the night, I shall be with her at once."
+
+He left me and I returned to Percivale.
+
+"I was just thinking before you came," I said, "about the relation of
+Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but
+I often think about the truths that lie at the root of it."
+
+"I am greatly obliged to you," he said, "for talking about these things.
+I assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I
+always think the professions should not herd together so much as they
+do; they want to be shone upon from other quarters."
+
+"I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself
+could give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the
+reflective power of the airy particles through which he shines.
+But anything I know I have found out merely by foraging for my own
+necessities."
+
+"That is just what makes the result valuable," he replied. "Tell me what
+you were thinking."
+
+"I was thinking," I answered, "how everyone likes to see his own
+thoughts set outside of him, that he may contemplate them _objectively,_
+as the philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as
+it were."
+
+"Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art
+at all."
+
+"Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the
+question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however
+they may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will
+satisfy themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in
+which they have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet
+utter their ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only
+be good, they shall have this power some day; for I do think that many
+things we call differences in kind, may in God's grand scale prove to be
+only differences in degree. And indeed the artist--by artist, I mean,
+of course, architect, musician, painter, poet, sculptor--in many things
+requires it just as much as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren,
+seeing in proportion to the things that he can do, he is aware of the
+things he cannot do, the thoughts he cannot express. Hence arises the
+enthusiasm with which people hail the work of an artist; they rejoice,
+namely, in seeing their own thoughts, or feelings, or something like
+them, expressed; and hence it comes that of those who have money, some
+hang their walls with pictures of their own choice, others--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Percivale, interrupting; "but most people, I
+fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people's choice, for they
+don't buy them at all till the artist has got a name."
+
+"That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they
+won't at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity
+may be only what first attracted their attention--not determined their
+choice."
+
+"But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market."
+
+"'Of such is not the talk,' as the Germans would say. In as far as your
+description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
+considered now."
+
+"Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
+deserve, if you have lost your thread."
+
+"I don't think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
+their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of
+their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
+unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
+to what is in themselves--the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own
+feelings outside of themselves."
+
+"Is there not another possible motive--that the pictures teach them
+something?"
+
+"That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the
+other, but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us
+already that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the
+germ, else nothing from without would wake it up."
+
+"I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
+influences."
+
+"One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the
+pictures and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the
+house he has chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little
+to do with the education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not
+aware of it, they are working upon him,--for good, if he has chosen what
+is good, which alone shall be our supposition."
+
+"Certainly; that is clear."
+
+"Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our
+needs--not as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for
+himself. For our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for
+us all the otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even
+when he speaks of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the
+forms or pictures of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen
+world turned inside out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house
+that he has built for us, God has hung up the pictures--ever-living,
+ever-changing pictures--of all that passes in our souls. Form and colour
+and motion are there,--ever-modelling, ever-renewing, never wearying.
+Without this living portraiture from within, we should have no word to
+utter that should represent a single act of the inner world. Metaphysics
+could have no existence, not to speak of poetry, not to speak of the
+commonest language of affection. But all is done in such spiritual
+suggestion, portrait and definition are so avoided, the whole is in
+such fluent evanescence, that the producing mind is only aided, never
+overwhelmed. It never amounts to representation. It affords but the
+material which the thinking, feeling soul can use, interpret, and apply
+for its own purposes of speech. It is, as it were, the forms of thought
+cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior laws of matter, thence to be
+withdrawn by what we call the creative genius that God has given to men,
+and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and built up to its own shapes
+and its own purposes."
+
+"Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the
+word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist."
+
+"It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help
+seeing nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees
+no meaning in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will
+represent only her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance."
+
+"Then artists ought to interpret nature?"
+
+"Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves--something
+of humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or
+not. If to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed
+they may claim to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect
+they may be in their powers of representing--however lowly, therefore,
+their position may be in that order."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SORE SPOT.
+
+
+We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the
+dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message
+that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help
+smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling
+too.
+
+"My wife do send me for you this time, sir," he said. "Between you and
+me, I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to
+tell you, sir."
+
+"Why shouldn't she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And
+then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am."
+
+"She don't think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay
+she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done
+talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir."
+
+"Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn't given in quite so
+much. It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right."
+
+"But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile."
+
+"Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been
+surer--_sometimes;_ I don't say _always."_
+
+"But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don't think she'll behave to
+you as she did before. Do come, sir."
+
+"Of course I will--instantly."
+
+I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with
+me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was
+hardly kind to ask him.
+
+"Well, perhaps it is better not," I said; "for I do not know how long I
+may have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take
+my place at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should
+return before the meal is over."
+
+He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my
+wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me--I would take my
+chance--and joined Mr. Stokes.
+
+"You have no idea, then," I said, after we had gone about half-way,
+"what makes your wife so uneasy?"
+
+"No, I haven't," he answered; "except it be," he resumed, "that she was
+too hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath
+her, as wife thought."
+
+"How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?"
+
+"She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother's temper, you see,
+and she would take her own way."
+
+"Ah, there's a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their
+own way, they mustn't give their own temper to their daughters."
+
+"But how are they to help it, sir?"
+
+"Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter's husband?"
+
+"A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone."
+
+"But you have worked on Mr. Barton's farm for many years, if I don't
+mistake?"
+
+"I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see."
+
+"But you weren't so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his
+way up or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs.
+Stokes?"
+
+"True as you say, sir; and it's not me that has anything to say about
+it. I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do
+be wanting to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the
+shopkeeping--"
+
+"The shopkeeping!" I said, with some surprise; "I didn't know that."
+
+"Well, you see, sir, it's only for a quarter or so of the year. You know
+it's a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing--past
+our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a
+bit of a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window,
+and--"
+
+"A bad place for the ginger-beer," I said.
+
+"They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My
+wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the
+sun. But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a
+farm-labourer, as they call them, was none good enough for her
+daughter."
+
+"And hasn't she been kind to her since she married, then?"
+
+"She's never done her no harm, sir."
+
+"But she hasn't gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see
+you very often, I suppose?"
+
+"There's ne'er a one o' them crossed the door of the other," he
+answered, with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.
+
+"Ah; but you don't approve of that yourself, Stokes?"
+
+"Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do
+want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother,
+she do. I don't know which of the two it is as does it, but there's no
+coming and going between Carpstone and this."
+
+We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know
+I was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late
+for me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she
+was still very anxious to see me.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?" I asked, by way of opening
+the conversation. "I don't think you look much worse."
+
+"I he much worse, sir. You don't know what I suffer, or you wouldn't
+make so little of it. I be very bad."
+
+"I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me
+why you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I
+suppose."
+
+With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more
+with herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her.
+The drops stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to
+help her, if I might, I said--
+
+"Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?"
+
+"No," she muttered. "I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my
+own. I could do as I pleased with her."
+
+I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but
+meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she
+feels.
+
+"Then," I said, "you want to tell me about something that was not your
+own?"
+
+"Who said I ever took what was not my own?" she returned fiercely. "Did
+Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn't my own?"
+
+"No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from
+your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause
+of your misery."
+
+"It is very hard that the parson should think such things," she muttered
+again.
+
+"My poor woman," I said, "you sent for me because you had something to
+confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to
+confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does
+you harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me,
+confess to God."
+
+"God knows it, I suppose, without that."
+
+"Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it.
+How is he to forgive you, if you won't allow that you have done wrong?"
+
+"It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had
+took something that wasn't your own?"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I
+should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it."
+
+"But that's the worst of it; I can't get rid of it."
+
+"But," I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly
+as I could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly
+repulsive but for her evidently great suffering, "you have now all but
+confessed taking something that did not belong to you. Why don't you
+summon courage and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the
+trouble as easily as ever I can; but I can't if you don't tell me what
+you've got that isn't yours."
+
+"I haven't got anything," she muttered.
+
+"You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now."
+
+She was again silent.
+
+"What did you do with it?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold
+of me, with a cry.
+
+"Stop, stop. I'll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That's the
+worst of it. I got no good of it."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"A sovereign," she said, with a groan. "And now I'm a thief, I suppose."
+
+"No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you
+think it would have been any better for you if you hadn't lost it, and
+had got some good of it, as you say?"
+
+She was silent yet again.
+
+"If you hadn't lost it you would most likely have been a great deal
+worse for it than you are--a more wicked woman altogether."
+
+"I'm not a wicked woman."
+
+"It is wicked to steal, is it not?"
+
+"I didn't steal it."
+
+"How did you come by it, then?"
+
+"I found it."
+
+"Did you try to find out the owner?"
+
+"No. I knew whose it was."
+
+"Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you
+had not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked
+woman than you are."
+
+"It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I
+wouldn't have lost my character as I have done this day."
+
+"Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would."
+
+"I would."
+
+"Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?"
+
+"Yes, that I would," she said, looking me so full in the face that I was
+sure she meant it.
+
+"How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?"
+
+"No; I wouldn't trust him."
+
+"With the story, you mean I You do not wish to imply that he would not
+restore it?"
+
+"I don't mean that. He would do what I told him."
+
+"How would you return it, then?"
+
+"I should make a parcel of it, and send it."
+
+"Without saying anything about it?"
+
+"Yes. Where's the good? The man would have his own."
+
+"No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have
+wronged him. That would never do."
+
+"You are too hard upon me," she said, beginning to weep angrily.
+
+"Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?" I said.
+
+"Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!"
+
+"Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the
+weight of it will stick there."
+
+"But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?"
+
+"Of course. That is only reasonable."
+
+"But I haven't got it, I tell you. I have lost it."
+
+"Have you not a sovereign in your possession?"
+
+"No, not one."
+
+"Can't you ask your husband to let you have one?"
+
+"There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse.
+I do wish I had never seen that wicked money."
+
+"You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish
+that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it
+now. Has your husband got a sovereign?"
+
+"No. He may ha' got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him
+about it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in
+that way, poor man."
+
+"Well, I'll tell him, and we'll manage it somehow."
+
+I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she
+hid her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.
+
+I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the
+room-door and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did
+not look up, but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this
+humiliation before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.
+
+"Your wife, poor woman," I said, "is in great distress because--I do not
+know when or how--she picked up a sovereign that did not belong to her,
+and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This is
+what is making her so miserable."
+
+"Deary me!" said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to
+a sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet
+from her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight
+hold of it, and he could not. "Deary me!" he went on; "we'll soon put
+that all to rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?"
+
+"When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon
+return it," she sobbed from under the sheet.
+
+"Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?"
+
+"I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got
+for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha' given it
+back at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was
+very nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it."
+
+"You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then," I said.
+
+"My old man won't be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him
+first."
+
+"I would wish that too," I said, "were it not that I am afraid you might
+have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable
+and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be
+paid. Have you got it?"
+
+The poor man looked blank.
+
+"She will never be at ease till this money is paid," I insisted.
+
+"Well, sir, I ain't got it, but I'll borrow it of someone; I'll go to
+master, and ask him."
+
+"No, my good fellow, that won't do. Your master would want to know what
+you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn't let more people
+know about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no
+occasion for that. I'll tell you what: I'll give you the money, and you
+must take it; or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell
+him all about it. Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?"
+
+"Please, sir. It's very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again,
+if it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to
+you, sir; but I couldn't bear the disgrace of it."
+
+She said all this from under the bed-clothes.
+
+"Well, I'll go," I said; "and as soon as I've had my dinner I'll get
+a horse and ride over to Squire Tresham's. I'll come back to-night and
+tell you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for
+forgiving you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but
+confess it clean out to him, you know."
+
+She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.
+
+I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse
+which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.
+
+When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to
+dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my
+return was uncertain.
+
+"But, my love," said my wife, "why should you not let us please
+ourselves sometimes? Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us."
+
+"I am very glad you think so," I answered. "But there are the children:
+it is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their
+meals."
+
+"You see there are no children; they have had their dinner."
+
+"Always in the right, wife; but there's Mr. Percivale."
+
+"I never dine till seven o'clock, to save daylight," he said.
+
+"Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine."
+
+During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale's eyes
+followed Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her
+face. That she was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt.
+One glance at her satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle
+kept coming again and again into my mind; for they were winged words
+those, and even when they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my
+window: "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." And I kept reminding myself
+that I must heave the load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs.
+Stokes to do; for God was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not
+without my help, for that would be to do me more harm than good by
+taking the one thing in which I was like him away from me--my action.
+Therefore I must have faith in him, and not be afraid; for surely all
+fear is sin, and one of the most oppressive sins from which the Lord
+came to save us.
+
+Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out
+for Squire Tresham's.
+
+
+I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him
+the story of the poor woman's misery, he was quite concerned at her
+suffering. When I produced the sovereign he would not receive it at
+first, but requested me to take it back to her and say she must keep it
+by way of an apology for his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took
+care to tell him the whole story, thinking it might be a lesson to him
+too. But I begged him to take it; for it would, I thought, not only
+relieve her mind more thoroughly, but help to keep her from coming to
+think lightly of the affair afterwards. Of course I could not tell him
+that I had advanced the money, for that would have quite prevented him
+from receiving it. I then got on my horse again, and rode straight to
+the cottage.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Stokes," I said, "it's all over now. That's one good thing
+done. How do you feel yourself now?"
+
+"I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me."
+
+"God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness
+for. It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all
+our sins, you know. They're not nice things, are they, to keep in
+our hearts? It is just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead
+carcasses, under lock and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they
+were precious jewels."
+
+"I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn't made so. There's
+my husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But
+then, you see, he would let a child take him in."
+
+"And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is
+no harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in."
+
+She did not reply, and I went on:
+
+"I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for
+your daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially
+seeing you are so ill."
+
+"I will, sir. I will directly. I'm tired of having my own way. But I was
+made so."
+
+"You weren't made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the
+necessary strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now;
+only you must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you.
+I think very likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink
+yourself, and feel that you had done wrong."
+
+"I have been feeling that for many a year."
+
+"That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling
+your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know
+Jesus came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off
+our hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us.
+Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere,
+and he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband,
+and when you have done that you will think of something else to set
+right that's wrong."
+
+"But there would be no end to that way of it, sir."
+
+"Certainly not, till everything was put right."
+
+"But a body might have nothing else to do, that way."
+
+"Well, that's the very first thing that has to be done. It is our
+business in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and
+try to enjoy ourselves."
+
+"That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread."
+
+"To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God's
+way. But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would
+just take his way, you would find that he would take care you should
+enjoy your life."
+
+"I'm sure I haven't had much enjoyment in mine."
+
+"That was just because you would not trust him with his own business,
+but must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will
+take care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for.
+And the longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must
+leave you now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and
+get a sleep. I will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like."
+
+"Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful."
+
+As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart
+was like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from
+every heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one's own soul must be a
+pledge of renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again
+of what St. Paul had said somewhere, "whatsoever is not of faith is
+sin," I thought what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth,
+and how blessed it might be. But what could I do for it? I could just
+begin with myself, and pray God for that inward light which is his
+Spirit, that so I might see him in everything and rejoice in everything
+as his gift, and then all things would be holy, for whatsoever is of
+faith must be the opposite of sin; and that was my part towards heaving
+the weight of sin, which, like myriads of gravestones, was pressing
+the life out of us men, off the whole world. Faith in God is life and
+righteousness--the faith that trusts so that it will obey--none
+other. Lord, lift the people thou hast made into holy obedience and
+thanksgiving, that they may be glad in this thy world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GATHERING STORM.
+
+
+
+
+
+The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
+lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than
+in our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the
+ocean, the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there,
+indeed, so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the
+winter through, compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness
+of the season is almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against
+furious storms of wind and rain.
+
+Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another
+visit. I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away
+so soon again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find
+time for a holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what
+I knew of him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.
+
+He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir
+was working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have
+got a man to take my place better.
+
+He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I
+was sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one
+side to the other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner
+encouraged her in making gentle and frequent use of her strength,
+impressing it upon her, however, that everything depended on avoiding
+everything like a jerk or twist of any sort. I was with them when he
+said this. She looked up at him with a happy smile.
+
+"I will do all I can, Mr. Turner," she said, "to get out of people's way
+as soon as possible."
+
+Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add--
+
+"I know you don't mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and
+not be helped--more than other people--as soon as possible. I will
+therefore be as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we
+don't get well, Mr. Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next
+summer.--I do," she added, nodding her pretty head up from the pillow,
+when she saw the glance the doctor and I exchanged. "Look here," she
+went on, poking the eider-down quilt up with her foot.
+
+"Magnificent!" said Turner; "but mind, you must do nothing out of
+bravado. That won't do at all."
+
+"I have done," said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.
+
+That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
+for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or
+farther from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for
+many weeks. Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was
+only because of the weather, not because of her health.
+
+One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs.
+Stokes. She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her
+mental health was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very
+different, and the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband
+especially, was changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified,
+and I had good hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding
+down the hill of difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.
+
+It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
+tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage
+to return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of
+light gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was
+blowing fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from
+the east. The clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose
+fringes--disreputable, troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like
+mischief. They reminded me of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," in which
+he compares the "loose clouds" to hair, and calls them "the locks of the
+approaching storm." Away to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a
+luminous yellow, covered all the sea-horizon, extending north and south
+as far as the eye could reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed
+to lie in its bosom. Now and then I could discern the dim ghost of a
+vessel through it, as tacking for north or south it came near enough to
+the edge of the fog to show itself for a few moments, ere it retreated
+again into its bosom. There was exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air,
+notwithstanding the coolness of the wind, and I was glad when I found
+myself comfortably seated by the drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie
+bestirring herself to make the tea.
+
+"It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie," I said.
+
+Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.
+
+"You seem to like the idea of it," I added.
+
+"You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea
+of it too."
+
+"_Per se_, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a
+world without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman's
+idea of the perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a
+trim-shaven lawn, rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on
+the shore only in wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget
+which. But the older you grow, the more sides of a thing will present
+themselves to your contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in
+itself, but you cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think
+for a moment of the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are
+gathered within the skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the
+toils of the storm are around them. Look at the barometer in the hall,
+my dear, and tell me what it says."
+
+She went and returned.
+
+"It was not very low, papa--only at rain; but the moment I touched it,
+the hand dropped an inch."
+
+"Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
+however."
+
+"That doesn't make much difference though, does it, papa?"
+
+"No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think
+of things from our own standpoint."
+
+"But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
+nurse teach us Dr. Watts's hymns for children, because you said they
+tended to encourage selfishness."
+
+"Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast
+between the misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the
+apparent--mind, I only say apparent--ground of thankfulness, that they
+are not fit for teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to
+the question, he would abjure any such intention, saying that only
+he meant to heighten the sense of our obligation. But it does tend
+to selfishness and, what is worse, self-righteousness, and is very
+dangerous therefore. What right have I to thank God that I am not as
+other men are in anything? I have to thank God for the good things he
+has given to me; but how dare I suppose that he is not doing the same
+for other people in proportion to their capacity? I don't like to appear
+to condemn Dr. Watts's hymns. Certainly he has written the very worst
+hymns I know; but he has likewise written the best--for public worship,
+I mean."
+
+"Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that
+comes of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the
+idea of a storm, I cannot help it coming."
+
+"I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older,
+other things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to
+us, and impress us more."
+
+Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
+their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.
+
+"But," said Wynnie, "you say everybody is in God's hands as well as we."
+
+"Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
+fire."
+
+"Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a
+storm, ought we?"
+
+"No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the
+very persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to
+rescue them from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn't the tea ready?"
+
+"Yes, papa. I'll just go and tell mamma."
+
+When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us,
+Wynnie resumed the talk.
+
+"I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don't see my
+way out of it--logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use
+of taking any trouble about them if they are in God's hands? Why should
+we try to take them out of God's hands?"
+
+"Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or
+whatever you call it. Take them out of God's hands! If you could do
+that, it would be perdition indeed. God's hands is the only safe place
+in the universe; and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God's
+hands on the shore because we say they are in his hands who go down to
+the sea in ships? If we draw them on shore, surely they are not out of
+God's hands."
+
+"I see--I see. But God could save them without us."
+
+"Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we
+must work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father
+lets his little child help him a little, that the child may learn to
+be and to do, so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our
+fellows, because we would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we
+could. He requires us to do our best."
+
+"But God may not mean to save them."
+
+"He may mean them to be drowned--we do not know. But we know that we
+must try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God's
+great and good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that
+best."
+
+"But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, 'by
+the mercy of God.' They don't say it is by the mercy of God when he is
+drowned."
+
+"But _people_ cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not
+feel. Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death
+would break out in a 'thank God,' and therefore they say it is God's
+mercy when another is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider
+it God's mercy when a man is drowned, that is just the sin of the
+world--the want of faith. But the man who creeps out of the drowning,
+choking billows into the glory of the new heavens and the new earth--do
+you think his thanksgiving for the mercy of God which has delivered him
+is less than that of the man who creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the
+waves on to the dreary, surf-beaten shore? In nothing do we show less
+faith than the way in which we think and speak about death. 'O Death,
+where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?' says the apostle.
+'Here, here, here,' cry the Christian people, 'everywhere. It is an
+awful sting, a fearful victory. But God keeps it away from us many a
+time when we ask him--to let it pierce us to the heart, at last, to be
+sure; but that can't be helped.' I mean this is how they feel in their
+hearts who do not believe that God is as merciful when he sends death
+as when he sends life; who, Christian people as they are, yet look upon
+death as an evil thing which cannot be avoided, and would, if they might
+live always, be content to live always. Death or Life--each is God's;
+for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: there are no dead,
+for all live to him."
+
+"But don't you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?" said my
+wife.
+
+"There can be no doubt about that, my dear."
+
+"Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so."
+
+"Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child's
+sole desire is for food--the very best possible to begin with. But how
+would it be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse
+to share this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the
+man who never so far rises above the desire for food that _nothing_
+could make him forget his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians
+should be strong enough to overcome the fear of death. We ought to love
+and believe him so much, that when he says we shall not die, we should
+at least believe that death must be something very different from what
+it looks to us to be--so different, that what we mean by the word does
+not apply to the reality at all; and so Jesus cannot use the word,
+because it would seem to us that he meant what we mean by it, which he,
+seeing it all round, cannot mean."
+
+"That does seem quite reasonable," said Ethelwyn.
+
+Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
+from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.
+
+"She looks uneasy, does she not?" I said.
+
+"You mean the Atlantic?" he returned, looking round. "Yes, I think so.
+I am glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very
+feverish, probably delirious before morning. She won't sleep much, and
+will talk rather loud when the tide comes in."
+
+"Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?"
+
+"Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
+blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again
+before they vanish."
+
+"It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
+disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to
+me that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little
+more regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the
+evening; in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is
+lowest again while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain
+at night has such an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps
+all a fancy."
+
+"There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke
+to me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even
+six hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
+relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
+and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!"
+
+"Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
+human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care
+to go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to
+Connie's room and have some Shakspere?"
+
+"I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?"
+
+"Let us have the _Midsummer Night's Dream,"_ said Ethelwyn.
+
+"You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you're quite
+right. It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer.
+I suspect that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written
+in the winter. It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full
+value upon what we lack."
+
+"There is one reason," said Wynnie with a roguish look, "why I like that
+play."
+
+"I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie."
+
+"But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn't it, papa?"
+
+"I'm not sure of that. But what is your reason?"
+
+"That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women.
+_They_ are true throughout."
+
+"I might choose to say that was because they were not tried."
+
+"And I might venture to answer that Shakspere--being true to nature
+always, as you say, papa--knew very well how absurd it would be to
+represent a woman's feelings as under the influence of the juice of a
+paltry flower."
+
+"Capital, Wynnie!" said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
+approbation.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?" said Turner. "It is the
+common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
+night."
+
+"But," said Ethelwyn, "he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
+sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted
+to this, that he would only believe his own eyes."
+
+"I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner," I said. "For my part, I have
+more admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more
+weight to the consistency of the various testimony than could be
+altogether counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now
+I will tell you what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling
+power of the poet. He brings together such marvellous contrasts, without
+a single shock or jar to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the
+conjunction. Think for a moment--the ordinary commonplace courtiers;
+the lovers, men and women in the condition of all conditions in which
+fairy-powers might get a hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of
+Fairyland, with their courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the
+court-jester, Puck; the ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their
+play,--fairies and clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one
+exquisite harmony, clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by
+the wedding of the king and queen. But I have talked enough about it.
+Let us get our books."
+
+As we sat in Connie's room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of
+the poet's fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
+fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. "Musk roses," said Titania;
+and the first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the
+window. "Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow," said Bottom; and the
+roar of the waters was in our ears. "So doth the woodbine the sweet
+honeysuckle Gently entwist," said Titania; and the blast poured the rain
+in a spout against the window. "Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth
+like bells," said Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the
+chinks of the bark-house opening from the room. We drew the curtains
+closer, made up the fire higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere
+we had done; and when we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it
+was with the hope that, through all the rising storm, she would dream of
+breeze-haunted summer woods.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE GATHERED STORM.
+
+
+
+
+
+I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
+howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
+and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear
+it save in the _rallentondo_ passages of the wind; but through all the
+wind I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not
+wake my wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to
+Connie's room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were,
+she would be frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the
+same room. I opened the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was
+burning, for Wynnie was an admirable stoker, and could generally keep
+the fire in all night. I crept to the bedside: there was just light
+enough to see that Connie was fast asleep, and that her dreams were not
+of storms. It was a marvel how well the child always slept. But, as
+I turned to leave the room, Wynnie's voice called me in a whisper.
+Approaching her bed, I saw her wide eyes, like the eyes of the darkness,
+for I could scarcely see anything of her face.
+
+"Awake, darling?" I said.
+
+"Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn't Connie sleeping
+delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for
+her."
+
+"It is the best thing for us all, next to God's spirit, I sometimes
+think, my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps
+you awake?"
+
+"I don't think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house
+shakes so that I do feel a little nervous. I don't know how it is. I
+never felt afraid of anything natural before."
+
+"What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only
+hurt the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think
+about him, dear."
+
+"I do try, papa. Don't you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful
+storm, is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there
+now!"
+
+"There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment,
+I suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of
+dying. Mind, they are all in God's hands."
+
+"Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand
+is over them, making them dark with his care."
+
+"And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those
+odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
+beautifully, 'And now with darkness closest weary eyes,' he adds:
+
+  Thus in thy ebony box
+  Thou dost enclose us, till the day
+  Put our amendment in our way,
+  And give new wheels to our disordered clocks."
+
+"He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a
+good clock of God's making; but you want new wheels, according to our
+beloved brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night."
+
+This was tiresome talk--was it--in the middle of the night, reader?
+Well, but my child did not think so, I know.
+
+Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and
+sky. The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled
+a little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again,
+and the wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible
+human hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into
+the village. The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I
+passed: not a man or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if
+nobody had crossed their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open.
+One child came out of the baker's with a big loaf in her apron. The wind
+threatened to blow the hair off her head, if not herself first into the
+canal. I took her by the hand and led her, or rather, let her lead
+me home, while I kept her from being carried away by the wind. Having
+landed her safely inside her mother's door, I went on, climbed the
+heights above the village, and looked abroad over the Atlantic. What a
+waste of aimless tossing to and fro! Gray mist above, full of falling
+rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and bursting as billow
+broke upon billow. The tide was ebbing now, but almost every other wave
+swept the breakwater. They burst on the rocks at the end of it, and
+rushed in shattered spouts and clouds of spray far into the air over
+their heads. "Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall be
+able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The
+solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing,
+out on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it
+could be that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even
+in her most uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was
+right; it was Percivale.
+
+"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere
+in Coleridge's Remorse. "They are but water-drops, after all, that make
+this great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."
+
+"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
+close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as
+you think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know
+that hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no
+more. It is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules
+have to fight for the mastery, or at least for freedom."
+
+"Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort
+that gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of
+human feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much
+of its awe; although, as we were saying the other day, it is only _a
+picture_ of the troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are
+with the elements, and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I
+will go home and change my clothes."
+
+"I have hardly had enough of it yet," returned Percivale. "I shall have
+a stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little
+way from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch
+awhile there."
+
+"Well, you're a younger man than I am; but I've seen the day, as Lear
+says. What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we
+would be judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of
+the strength that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it
+still. But I am not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking."
+
+"I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take
+my way along the downs for a mile or two; I don't mind being wet."
+
+"I didn't once."
+
+"Don't you think," resumed Percivale, "that in some sense the old
+man--not that I can allow _you_ that dignity yet, Mr. Walton--has a right
+to regard the past as his own?"
+
+"That would be scanned," I answered, as we walked towards the village.
+"Surely the results of the past are the man's own. Any action of the
+man's, upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a
+man had done a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation
+upon which to build more good, grew so vain of it that he became
+incapable of doing anything more of the same sort, you could not say
+that the action belonged to him still. Therein he has severed his
+connection with the past. Again, what has never in any deep sense been a
+man's own, cannot surely continue to be his afterwards. Thus the things
+that a man has merely possessed once, the very people who most admired
+him for their sakes when he had them, give him no credit for after he
+has lost them. Riches that have taken to themselves wings leave with
+the poor man only a surpassing poverty. Strength, likewise, which can so
+little depend on any exercise of the will in man, passes from him with
+the years. It was not his all the time; it was but lent him, and had
+nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble man may put forth
+a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the eyes of his
+neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for what he
+could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was his
+own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his
+own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to
+have been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a
+great measure with intellect."
+
+"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that
+can in any way be called his own?"
+
+"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to
+will the truth. This, too, is as much God's gift as everything else: I
+ought to say is more God's gift than anything else, for he gives it to
+be the man's own more than anything else can be. And when he wills
+the truth, he has God himself. Man _can_ possess God: all other things
+follow as necessary results. What poor creatures we should have been if
+God had not made us to do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the
+hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees! Something like
+this was in the mind of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith
+the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
+mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches;
+but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and
+knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment,
+and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the
+Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense of a far higher life
+in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the root of all our
+false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves. We cannot
+commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves. We have
+little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of will,
+and therefore we talk of our strength of body, worship the riches we
+have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual
+successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius
+must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part
+with all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of God
+which the wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which
+the growing luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even
+possible for any man."
+
+We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce
+blast of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the
+streets did look!--how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no
+living creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that
+seemed to have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which,
+forgetful of its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging
+to it against a window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a
+mimic storm within its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down
+the kennels like a long brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide
+from the tormenting wind, and every now and then the rain came in full
+rout before the conquering blast.
+
+When I got home, I peeped in at Connie's door the first thing, and saw
+that she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of
+the conch against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was
+sitting staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she
+could see over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately
+looked. Her face was paler and keener than usual.
+
+"Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?"
+
+"Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He
+says I am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as
+I like."
+
+"But you look too tired for it. Hadn't you better lie down again?"
+
+"It's only the storm, papa."
+
+"The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so."
+
+"It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is
+going to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow."
+
+"You didn't hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The
+storm was raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its
+reach--fast asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down."
+
+"Very well, papa."
+
+I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
+she was already looking much better.
+
+After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went
+out again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and
+his wife, were faring. The wind had already increased in violence.
+It threatened to blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was
+coming in with great rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as
+I passed through it to reach the lower part where they lived. When I
+peeped in from the bottom of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the
+steps of someone overhead, I called out.
+
+Agnes's voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to
+the bedrooms above--
+
+"Mother's gone to church, sir."
+
+"Gone to church!" I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
+whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled
+what the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church
+during a storm.
+
+"O yes, Agnes, I remember!" I said; "your mother thinks the weather bad
+enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
+Where is your husband?"
+
+"He'll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don't mind the wet. You see,
+we don't like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the
+sailors call 'great guns.'"
+
+"And what becomes of his mother then?"
+
+"There don't be any sea out there, sir. Leastways," she added with a
+quiet smile, and stopped.
+
+"You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
+elements out there?"
+
+She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe's
+mother was proverbial.
+
+"But really, sir," she said, "she don't mind the weather a bit; and
+though we don't live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn't hear
+of that, we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know."
+
+"I'm sure it's quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
+now?"
+
+She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow
+complexion, that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought
+a reply.
+
+"I don't think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He's been working
+very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him."
+
+"And how are you?"
+
+"Quite well, thank you, sir."
+
+I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very
+different thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the
+church.
+
+When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
+gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling.
+A certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the
+southern transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of
+the stone, on the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a
+considerable crack between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut
+some sod from another part of the churchyard, and was now standing,
+with the rain pouring on him from the roof, beating this sod down in the
+crack. He was sheltered from the wind by the church, but he was as
+wet as he could be. I may mention that he never appeared in the least
+disconcerted when I came upon him in the discharge of his functions: he
+was so content with his own feeling in the matter, that no difference of
+opinion could disturb him.
+
+"This will never do, Coombes," I said. "You will get your death of cold.
+You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there's rheumatism in
+the world!"
+
+"It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha' done now for a night. I
+think he'll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at
+him through that hole."
+
+"Do go home, then," I said, "and change your clothes. Is your wife in
+the church?"
+
+"She be, sir. This door, sir--this door," he added, as he saw me going
+round to the usual entrance. "You'll find her in there."
+
+I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first,
+for it was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there
+somehow, although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters.
+Mrs. Coombes was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for
+her first, for the wind blew down the tower in many currents and
+draughts--how it did roar up there--as if the louvres had been
+a windsail to catch the wind and send it down to ventilate the
+church!--she was sitting at the foot of the chancel-rail, with her
+stocking as usual.
+
+The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I
+drew near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but
+only sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret
+place of the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to
+say much, however.
+
+"How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked. "Not all
+night?"
+
+"No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn't thought o' going yet for a
+bit."
+
+"Why there's Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I'm afraid he'll
+go on pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as
+full of rheumatism as they can hold."
+
+"Deary me! I didn't know as my old man was there. He tould me he had
+them all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there's
+always some mendin' to do."
+
+I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
+church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.
+
+"You be comin' home with me, mother. This will never do. Father's as wet
+as a mop. I ha' brought something for your supper, and Aggy's a-cookin'
+of it; and we're going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a
+chapter or two of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea.
+There! Come along."
+
+The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully
+in her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.
+
+"No, no," I said; "I'm the shepherd and you're the sheep, so I'll drive
+you before me--at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended if I
+take on me to say I am _his_ shepherd."
+
+
+"Nay, nay, don't say that, sir. You've been a good shepherd to me when
+I was a very sulky sheep. But if you'll please to go, sir, I'll lock the
+door behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the
+sheep follow the shepherd. And I'll follow like a good sheep," he added,
+laughing.
+
+"You're right, Joe," I said, and took the lead without more ado.
+
+I was struck by his saying _them parts_, which seemed to indicate
+a habit of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the
+gospel-story. The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his
+cottage, Joe taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I
+could of Coombes by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared
+I had done ill in that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought
+the thin feeble little man would have got on better if he had been more
+heavily weighted against it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and
+so we got in. The old man took his tools from me and set them down
+in the mill, for the roof of which I felt some anxiety as we passed
+through, so full of wind was the whole space. But when we opened the
+inner door the welcome of a glowing fire burst up the stair as if
+that had been a well of warmth and light below. I went down with them.
+Coombes departed to change his clothes, and the rest of us stood round
+the fire, where Agnes was busy cooking something like white puddings for
+their supper.
+
+"Did you hear, sir," said Joe, "that the coastguard is off to the
+Goose-pot? There's a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the
+road with the rocket-cart."
+
+"How far off is that, Joe?"
+
+"Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor'ards."
+
+"What sort of a vessel is she?"
+
+"That I don't know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
+coast-guard didn't know themselves."
+
+"Poor things!" said Mrs. Coombes. "If any of them comes ashore, they'll
+be sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this."
+
+She had caught a little infection of her husband's mode of thought.
+
+"It's not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?"
+
+"I don't think so, sir. There's no likelihood."
+
+"Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?" said
+the old woman.
+
+"There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another
+time with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with
+my own people. They will be more uneasy if I am away."
+
+"Of coorse, of coorse, sir."
+
+"So I'll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over."
+
+I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out.
+It was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There
+would be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do
+much while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore
+was terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their
+breaking, but they filled the earth and the air with their furious
+noises. The wind roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the
+land, only to the one had been set a hitherto--to the other none. Ere
+the night was far gone, however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean
+itself had not broken its bars.
+
+I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept
+pressing their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of
+will, through the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there
+was doing. They could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and
+dismay, with a soul in it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie's
+room, and found that she was left alone. She looked restless, pale, and
+frightened. The house quivered, and still the wind howled and whistled
+through the adjoining bark-hut.
+
+"Connie, darling, have they left you alone?" I said.
+
+"Only for a few minutes, papa. I don't mind it."
+
+"Don't he frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the
+sea of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the
+Atlantic just as well. Jeremiah says he 'divideth the sea when the waves
+thereof roar.'"
+
+The same moment Dora came running into the room.
+
+"Papa," she cried, "the spray--such a lot of it--came dashing on the
+windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?"
+
+"I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down."
+
+"O, papa! I do want to see."
+
+"What do you want to see, Dora?"
+
+"The storm, papa."
+
+"It is as black as pitch. You can't see anything."
+
+"O, but I want to--to--be beside it."
+
+"Well, you sha'n't stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along.
+Ask Wynnie to come here."
+
+The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not
+seem even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
+presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
+and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on
+to the little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The
+dining-room was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might
+see better from the windows. The children and some of the servants were
+there looking out. I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength
+of two of the women to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great
+sheet of spray rushed over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The
+rain had ceased, and it was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could
+see the gleaming whiteness all before me. The next moment a wave rolled
+over the low wall in front of me, breaking on it and wrapping me round
+in a sheet of water. Something hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found,
+on searching, that one of the large flat stones that lay for coping
+on the top of the wall was on the grass beside me. If it had struck me
+straight, it must have broken my leg.
+
+There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into
+the house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but
+heard nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned
+and tapped at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me
+within. When I went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had
+joined our party. He and Turner were talking together at one of the
+windows.
+
+"Did you hear a gun?" I asked them.
+
+"No. Was there one?"
+
+"I'm not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
+will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast."
+
+"I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready," said Turner.
+
+"No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea," I said,
+remembering what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.
+
+"They would try, though, I suppose," said Turner.
+
+"I do not know," said Percivale. "I don't know the people. But I have
+seen a life-boat out in as bad a night--whether in as bad a sea, I
+cannot tell: that depends on the coast, I suppose."
+
+We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had
+fared with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.
+
+"How is Connie, now, my dear?"
+
+"Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
+didn't mind, I wish he would go up and see her."
+
+"Of course--instantly," said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.
+
+But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear,
+so shrill was it, we heard Connie's voice shrieking, "Papa, papa!
+There's a great ship ashore down there. Come, come!"
+
+Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. "How? What? Where
+could the voice come from?" was the unformed movement of our thoughts.
+But the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though
+not the less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and
+thought only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that
+is afar! Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.
+
+A little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so
+that it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door
+at the top of it was open. The door that led from Connie's room into
+the bark-hut was likewise open, and light shone through it into the
+place--enough to show a figure standing by the furthest window with face
+pressed against the glass. And from this figure came the cry, "Papa,
+papa! Quick, quick! The waves will knock her to pieces!"
+
+In very truth it was Connie standing there.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE SHIPWRECK.
+
+
+
+
+
+Things that happen altogether have to be told one after the other.
+Turner and I both rushed at the narrow stair. There was not room for
+more than one upon it. I was first, but stumbled on the lowest step
+and fell. Turner put his foot on my back, jumped over me, sprang up the
+stair, and when I reached the top of it after him, he was meeting me
+with Connie in his arms, carrying her back to her room. But the girl
+kept crying--"Papa, papa, the ship, the ship!"
+
+My duty woke in me. Turner could attend to Connie far better than I
+could. I made one spring to the window. The moon was not to be seen, but
+the clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to
+show a wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that
+one moment in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of
+the wind, cutting through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the
+house. When or how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew
+straight to the sexton's, snatched the key from the wall, crying only
+"ship ashore!" and rushed to the church.
+
+I remember my hand trembled so that I could hardly get the key into the
+lock. I made myself quieter, opened the door, and feeling my way to the
+tower, knelt before the keys of the bell-hammers, opened the chest, and
+struck them wildly, fiercely. An awful jangling, out of tune and harsh,
+burst into monstrous being in the storm-vexed air. Music itself was
+untuned, corrupted, and returning to chaos. I struck and struck at the
+keys. I knew nothing of their normal use. Noise, outcry, _reveille_ was
+all I meant.
+
+In a few minutes I heard voices and footsteps. From some parts of
+the village, out of sight of the shore, men and women gathered to the
+summons. Through the door of the church, which I had left open, came
+voices in hurried question. "Ship ashore!" was all I could answer, for
+what was to be done I was helpless to think.
+
+I wondered that so few appeared at the cry of the bells. After those
+first nobody came for what seemed a long time. I believe, however, I was
+beating the alarum for only a few minutes altogether, though when I look
+back upon the time in the dark church, it looks like half-an-hour at
+least. But indeed I feel so confused about all the doings of that
+night that in attempting to describe them in order, I feel as if I were
+walking in a dream. Still, from comparing mine with the recollected
+impressions of others, I think I am able to give a tolerably correct
+result. Most of the incidents seem burnt into my memory so that nothing
+could destroy the depth of the impression; but the order in which they
+took place is none the less doubtful.
+
+A hand was laid on my shoulder.
+
+"Who is there?" I said; for it was far too dark to know anyone.
+
+"Percivale. What is to be done? The coastguard is away. Nobody seems to
+know about anything. It is of no use to go on ringing more. Everybody
+is out, even to the maid-servants. Come down to the shore, and you will
+see."
+
+"But is there not the life-boat?"
+
+"Nobody seems to know anything about it, except 'it's no manner of use
+to go trying of that with such a sea on.'"
+
+"But there must be someone in command of it," I said.
+
+"Yes," returned Percivale; "but there doesn't seem to be one of the
+crew amongst the crowd. All the sailor-like fellows are going about with
+their hands in their pockets."
+
+"Let us make haste, then," I said; "perhaps we can find out. Are you
+sure the coastguard have nothing to do with the life-boat?"
+
+"I believe not. They have enough to do with their rockets."
+
+"I remember now that Roxton told me he had far more confidence in
+his rockets than in anything a life-boat could do, upon this coast at
+least."
+
+While we spoke we came to the bank of the canal. This we had to cross,
+in order to reach that part of the shore opposite which the wreck lay.
+To my surprise the canal itself was in a storm, heaving and tossing and
+dashing over its banks.
+
+"Percivale," I exclaimed, "the gates are gone; the sea has torn them
+away."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. Would God I could get half-a-dozen men to help me. I
+have been doing what I could; but I have no influence amongst them."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked. "What could you do if you had a thousand
+men at your command?"
+
+He made me no answer for a few moments, during which we were hurrying on
+for the bridge over the canal. Then he said:
+
+"They regard me only as a meddling stranger, I suppose; for I have been
+able to get no useful answer. They are all excited; but nobody is doing
+anything."
+
+"They must know about it a great deal better than we," I returned; "and
+we must take care not to do them the injustice of supposing they are not
+ready to do all that can be done."
+
+Percivale was silent yet again.
+
+The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had
+been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving
+in my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind
+us. The wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased,
+and when we reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast
+at what she had at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she
+might see. Awe and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal,
+we turned to the shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had
+rushed up almost to the village. The sand and the roads, every garden
+wall, every window that looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it
+was a wonderfully quiet crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of
+the wind and the waves filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was
+heard only in the ear to which it was spoken. When we came amongst them
+we heard only a murmur as of more articulated confusion. One turn, and
+we saw the centre of strife and anxiety--the heart of the storm that
+filled heaven and earth, upon which all the blasts and the billows broke
+and raved.
+
+Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was
+discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was
+far above low-water mark--lay nearer the village by a furlong than the
+spot where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange to
+think that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many
+men and women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for
+the cry of women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to
+save them. It was terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about
+hurriedly, talking to this one and that one, as if he still thought
+something might be done. He turned to me.
+
+"Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the
+life-boat is."
+
+I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.
+
+"It's no use, I assure you, sir," he answered; "no boat could live in
+such a sea. It would be throwing away the men's lives."
+
+"Do you know where the captain lives?" Percivale asked.
+
+"If I did, I tell you it is of no use."
+
+"Are you the captain yourself?" returned Percivale.
+
+"What is that to you?" he answered, surly now. "I know my own business."
+
+The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made
+a simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as
+they returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was
+the body of a woman--alive or dead I could not tell. I could just
+see the long hair hanging from the head, which itself hung backward
+helplessly as they bore her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I
+can recall no more.
+
+"Run, Percivale," I said, "and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet."
+
+"I can't," answered Percivale. "You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton."
+
+He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so
+abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one
+of the most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they
+walked away together.
+
+I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the
+moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught,
+and that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for
+the marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and
+her mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could
+sleep; but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however,
+occasioned by what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking
+about the ship.
+
+We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we
+went up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The
+clouds had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we
+could not at first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed
+itself a body of men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat,
+afloat on the troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own
+place, his hands quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him,
+his feet out before him, ready to pull the moment they should pass
+beyond the broken gates of the lock out on the awful tossing of the
+waves. They sat very silent, and the men on the path towed them swiftly
+along. The moon uncovered her face for a moment, and shone upon the
+faces of two of the rowers.
+
+"Percivale! Joe!" I cried.
+
+"All right, sir!" said Joe.
+
+"Does your wife know of it, Joe?" I almost gasped.
+
+"To be sure," answered Joe. "It's the first chance I've had of returning
+thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night."
+
+"That's good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" they answered as one man.
+
+"This is your doing, Percivale," I said, turning and walking alongside
+of the boat for a little way.
+
+"It's more Jim Allen's," said Percivale. "If I hadn't got a hold of him
+I couldn't have done anything."
+
+"God bless you, Jim Allen!" I said. "You'll be a better man after this,
+I think."
+
+"Donnow, sir," returned Jim cheerily. "It's harder work than pulling an
+oar."
+
+The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen,
+the two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully
+short space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking
+up another or more; till at length the captain, protesting against
+the folly of it, gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true
+Englishman, as much in earnest as any of them. The places of two who
+were missing were supplied by Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom
+would listen to no remonstrance.
+
+"I've nothing to lose," Percivale had said. "You have a young wife,
+Joe."
+
+"I've everything to win," Joe had returned. "The only thing that makes
+me feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I'm afraid it's not my duty
+that drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What
+would Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my
+bed and sleep? I must go."
+
+"Very well, Joe," returned Percivale, "I daresay you are right. You can
+row, of course?"
+
+"I can row hard, and do as I'm told," said Joe.
+
+"All right," said Percivale; "come along."
+
+This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards
+the mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The
+critical moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some
+parts of which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty
+there, as I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my
+post, and turned again to follow the doctor.
+
+"God bless you, my men!" I said, and left them.
+
+They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner
+in the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman
+was quite dead.
+
+"I fear it is an emigrant vessel," he said.
+
+"Why do you think so?" I asked, in some consternation.
+
+"Come and look at the body," he said.
+
+It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face
+was very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to
+prove that she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their
+bread.
+
+"What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America
+or Australia--to her lover, perhaps," said Turner. "You see she has
+a locket on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some
+of these people are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a
+Godsend."
+
+A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the
+house. They were bringing another body--that of an elderly woman--dead,
+quite dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out
+together, when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce
+hiss, vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up,
+seawards, something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the
+right side of the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.
+
+"Thank God! that's the coastguard," I cried.
+
+We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
+planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the
+sea looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering
+in the mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw
+down below the great mass, of the vessel's hulk, with the waves breaking
+every moment upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and
+then there would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling
+waters, and then I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on
+the bottom. Her masts had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos
+of cordage floated and swung in the waves that broke over her. But her
+bowsprit remained entire, and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with
+human beings. The first rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire
+another. Roxton stood with his telescope in his hand, ready to watch the
+result.
+
+"This is a terrible job, sir," he said when I approached him; "I doubt
+if we shall save one of them."
+
+"There's the life-boat!" I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
+approaching the vessel from the other side.
+
+"The life-boat!" he returned with contempt. "You don't mean to say
+they've got _her_ out! She'll only add to the mischief. We'll have to
+save her too."
+
+She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth
+water. But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the
+billows rode over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some
+invisible prey. Another hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second
+rocket was shooting its parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised
+his telescope to his eye the same moment.
+
+"Over her starn!" he cried. "There's a fellow getting down from the
+cat-head to run aft.--Stop, stop!" he shouted involuntarily. "There's an
+awful wave on your quarter."
+
+His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
+distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But
+the huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed--so
+coolly as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar
+things without discomposure--
+
+"He's gone! I said so. The next'll have better luck, I hope."
+
+That man came ashore alive, though.
+
+All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
+Roxton's telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then
+a single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed
+on the life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at
+one moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam
+on the knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the
+waves delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no
+water. I am here drawing upon the information I have since received;
+but I did see how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on
+which she floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon
+the life-boat with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough
+to show this with tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next
+moment, there she was, floating helplessly about, like a living thing
+stunned by the blow of the falling wave. The struggle was over. As far
+as I could see, every man was in his place; but the boat drifted away
+before the storm shore-wards, and the men let her drift. Were they all
+killed as they sat? I thought of my Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.
+
+"That wave has done for them," he said. "I told you it was no use. There
+they go."
+
+"But what is the matter?" I asked. "The men are sitting every man in his
+place."
+
+"I think so," he answered. "Two were swept overboard, but they caught
+the ropes and got in again. But don't you see they have no oars?"
+
+That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they
+were as helpless as a sponge.
+
+I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket
+was fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with
+fresh fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say--"She's breaking up.
+It's no use. That last did for her;" but I hurried off for the other
+side of the bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great
+cry from the vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a
+parting glance. The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing
+at will over the space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many
+were running, like myself, towards the other side, anxious about the
+life-boat. I hastened after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.
+
+They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would
+be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the
+only spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.
+
+There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion
+of speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered
+about the crew of the life-boat,--which already lay, as if it knew of
+nothing but repose, on the grass within.
+
+"Percivale!" I cried, making my way through the crowd.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Joe Harper!" I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew,
+to whom everybody was talking.
+
+Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I
+could gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall,
+despair in her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I
+could not look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking
+to old Coombes. I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his
+attention.
+
+"Where is Mr. Percivale?" I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.
+
+He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the
+waves, and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had
+fallen considerably, else there would not have been standing-room,
+narrow as it was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the
+direction of the Castle-rock.
+
+"If you mean the stranger gentleman--"
+
+"And Joe Harper, the blacksmith," I interposed.
+
+"They're there, sir."
+
+"You don't mean those two--just those two--are drowned?" I said.
+
+"No, sir; I don't say that; but God knows they have little chance."
+
+I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the
+smallest danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.
+
+"Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?"
+
+"No," I answered; "I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am
+always ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can't
+say I see it."
+
+"I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I
+believe, on board of that schooner."
+
+"Is she aground?"
+
+"O dear no, sir. She's a light craft, and can swim there well enough.
+If she'd been aground, she'd ha' been ashore in pieces hours ago. But
+whether she'll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore."
+
+"How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights
+opposite."
+
+"You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don't
+make much show in this light. But there she is, and they're aboard of
+her. And this is how it was."
+
+He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the
+whole of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.
+
+Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said--one of them was
+Percivale--but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless, with
+the rest--now in a windless valley--now aloft on a tempest-swept hill of
+water--away towards a goal they knew not, neither had chosen, and which
+yet they could by no means avoid.
+
+A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the
+channel of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across
+the sands nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little
+schooner, belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which,
+caught in the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost
+dark, some considerable time before the great ship. The master, however,
+knew the ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind,
+and would have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop
+anchor just in time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner
+hung in the skirts of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks
+within an arrow flight. In the excitement of the great wreck, no one had
+observed the danger of the little coasting bird. If the cable held till
+the tide went down, and the anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if
+not, she must be dashed to pieces.
+
+In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed
+overboard an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had
+dropped their anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they
+were so worn out that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor,
+and were holding on only by their best bower. Had they not been a good
+deal out of the wind, this would have been useless. Even if it held she
+was in danger of having her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands
+as the tide went out. But that they had not to think of yet. The moment
+they lay down they fell fast asleep in the middle of the storm. While
+they slept it increased in violence.
+
+Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For
+over his head faces looked down upon him from the air--that is, from the
+top of a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the angels
+dropped on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels were
+Percivale and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time,
+as all angels do--never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the
+schooner _was_ dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the less
+experienced eyes of the said angels.
+
+But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest
+anchor, and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to
+come.
+
+One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was
+engaged to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth
+chapter in the second volume.
+
+Percivale's account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that
+as they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge
+wave the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the
+rigging. The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the
+schooner.
+
+Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out "Aboard!" The
+captain said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must
+have meant it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat.
+Percivale, however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say
+Christian?) notion of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to
+board the schooner, sprang at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave
+sweeping them along the schooner's side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds,
+and they dropped on the deck together.
+
+But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the
+affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of
+the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.
+
+When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by
+staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was
+nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which
+was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was
+Agnes Harper.
+
+The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds
+were breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved
+out its business, and was departing into the past.
+
+"Agnes," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir," she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command.
+There was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips--at least it seemed so
+in the moonlight--only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She
+was leaning against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging
+quietly down before her.
+
+"The storm is breaking-up, Agnes," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir," she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a
+moment's pause, she spoke out of her heart.
+
+"Joe's at his duty, sir?"
+
+I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant
+that point I am not quite sure.
+
+"Indubitably," I returned. "I have such faith in Joe, that I should be
+sure of that in any case. At all events, he's not taking care of his own
+life. And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err
+on that side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else."
+
+"Then there's nothing to be said, sir, is there?" she returned, with a
+sigh that sounded as of relief.
+
+I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job's
+comfort by blaming her husband.
+
+"Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she
+reproached him with having left her and his father?"
+
+"I can't remember anything at this moment, sir," was her touching
+answer.
+
+"Then I will tell you. He said, 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you
+know that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?' Now,
+Joe was and is about his Father's business, and you must not be anxious
+about him. There could be no better reason for not being anxious."
+
+Agnes was a very quiet woman. When without a word she took my hand and
+kissed it, I felt what a depth there was in the feeling she could not
+utter. I did not withdraw my hand, for I knew that would be to rebuke
+her love for Joe.
+
+"Will you come in and wait?" I said indefinitely.
+
+"No, thank you, sir. I must go to my mother. God will look after Joe,
+won't he, sir?"
+
+"As sure as there is a God, Agnes," I said; and she went away without
+another word.
+
+I put my hand on the top of the wall and jumped over. I started back
+with terror, for I had almost alighted on the body of a woman lying
+there. The first insane suggestion was that it had been cast ashore; but
+the next moment I knew that it was my own Wynnie.
+
+She had not even fainted. She was lying with her handkerchief stuffed
+into her mouth to keep her from screaming. When I uttered her name
+she rose, and, without looking at me, walked away towards the house. I
+followed. She went straight to her own room and shut the door. I went to
+find her mother. She was with Connie, who was now awake, lying pale and
+frightened. I told Ethelwyn that Percivale and Joe were on board the
+little schooner, which was holding on by her anchor, that Wynnie was in
+terror about Percivale, that I had found her lying on the wet grass, and
+that she must get her into a warm bath and to bed. We went together to
+her room.
+
+She was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands pressed
+against her temples.
+
+"Wynnie," I said, "our friends are not drowned. I think you will see
+them quite safe in the morning. Pray to God for them."
+
+She did not hear a word.
+
+"Leave her with me," said Ethelwyn, proceeding to undress her; "and tell
+nurse to bring up the large bath. There is plenty of hot water in the
+boiler. I gave orders to that effect, not knowing what might happen."
+
+Wynnie shuddered as her mother said this; but I waited no longer, for
+when Ethelwyn spoke everyone felt her authority. I obeyed her, and then
+went to Connie's room.
+
+"Do you mind being left alone a little while?" I asked her.
+
+"No, papa; only--are they all drowned?" she said with a shudder.
+
+"I hope not, my dear; but be sure of the mercy of God, whatever you
+fear. You must rest in him, my love; for he is life, and will conquer
+death both in the soul and in the body."
+
+"I was not thinking of myself, papa."
+
+"I know that, my dear. But God is thinking of you and every creature
+that he has made. And for our sakes you must be quiet in heart, that you
+may get better, and be able to help us."
+
+"I will try, papa," she said; and, turning slowly on her side, she lay
+quite still.
+
+Dora and the boys were all fast asleep, for it was very late. I cannot,
+however, say what hour it was.
+
+Telling nurse to be on the watch because Connie was alone, I went again
+to the beach. I called first, however, to inquire after Agnes. I found
+her quite composed, sitting with her parents by the fire, none of them
+doing anything, scarcely speaking, only listening intently to the sounds
+of the storm now beginning to die away.
+
+I next went to the place where I had left Turner. Five bodies lay there,
+and he was busy with a sixth. The surgeon of the place was with him, and
+they quite expected to recover this man.
+
+I then went down to the sands. An officer of the revenue was taking
+charge of all that came ashore--chests, and bales, and everything. For
+a week the sea went on casting out the fragments of that which she had
+destroyed. I have heard that, for years after, the shifting of the sands
+would now and then discover things buried that night by the waves.
+
+All the next day the bodies kept coming ashore, some peaceful as in
+sleep, others broken and mutilated. Many were cast upon other parts
+of the coast. Some four or five only, all men, were recovered. It was
+strange to me how I got used to it. The first horror over, the cry that
+yet another body had come awoke only a gentle pity--no more dismay or
+shuddering. But, finding I could be of no use, I did not wait longer
+than just till the morning began to dawn with a pale ghastly light over
+the seething raging sea; for the sea raged on, although the wind had
+gone down. There were many strong men about, with two surgeons and all
+the coastguard, who were well accustomed to similar though not such
+extensive destruction. The houses along the shore were at the disposal
+of any who wanted aid; the Parsonage was at some distance; and I confess
+that when I thought of the state of my daughters, as well as remembered
+former influences upon my wife, I was very glad to think there was no
+necessity for carrying thither any of those whom the waves cast on the
+shore.
+
+When I reached home, and found Wynnie quieter and Connie again asleep, I
+walked out along our own downs till I came whence I could see the little
+schooner still safe at anchor. From her position I concluded--correctly
+as I found afterwards--that they had let out her cable far enough to
+allow her to reach the bed of the little stream, where the tide would
+leave her more gently. She was clearly out of all danger now; and if
+Percivale and Joe had got safe on board of her, we might confidently
+expect to see them before many hours were passed. I went home with the
+good news.
+
+For a few moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could
+not know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But
+presently I recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no
+right to modify God's facts for fear of what may be to come. A little
+hope founded on a present appearance, even if that hope should never be
+realised, may be the very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of
+a sorrow past the point at which it would otherwise break down. I would
+therefore tell Wynnie, and let her share my expectation of deliverance.
+
+I think she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she
+started up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to
+her head.
+
+"I have brought you good news, Wynnie," I said. "I have been out on the
+downs, and there is light enough now to see that the little schooner is
+quite safe."
+
+"What schooner?" she asked listlessly, and lay down again, her eyes
+still staring, awfully unappeased.
+
+"Why the schooner they say Percivale got on board."
+
+"He isn't drowned then!" she cried with a choking voice, and put her
+hands to her face and burst into tears and sobs.
+
+"Wynnie," I said, "look what your faithlessness brings upon you.
+Everybody but you has known all night that Percivale and Joe Harper are
+probably quite safe. They may be ashore in a couple of hours."
+
+"But you don't know it. He may be drowned yet."
+
+"Of course there is room for doubt, but none for despair. See what a
+poor helpless creature hopelessness makes you."
+
+"But how can I help it, papa?" she asked piteously. "I am made so."
+
+But as she spoke the dawn was clear upon the height of her forehead.
+
+"You are not made yet, as I am always telling you; and God has ordained
+that you shall have a hand in your own making. You have to consent, to
+desire that what you know for a fault shall be set right by his loving
+will and spirit."
+
+"I don't know God, papa."
+
+"Ah, my dear, that is where it all lies. You do not know him, or you
+would never be without hope."
+
+"But what am I to do to know him!" she asked, rising on her elbow.
+
+The saving power of hope was already working in her. She was once more
+turning her face towards the Life.
+
+"Read as you have never read before about Christ Jesus, my love. Read
+with the express object of finding out what God is like, that you may
+know him and may trust him. And now give yourself to him, and he will
+give you sleep."
+
+"What are we to do," I said to my wife, "if Percivale continue silent?
+For even if he be in love with her, I doubt if he will speak."
+
+"We must leave all that, Harry," she answered.
+
+She was turning on myself the counsel I had been giving Wynnie. It is
+strange how easily we can tell our brother what he ought to do, and yet,
+when the case comes to be our own, do precisely as we had rebuked him
+for doing. I lay down and fell fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE FUNERAL.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back
+from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as
+if it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The
+madness of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the
+world was rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded
+the best outlook over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the
+sands, her two cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her;
+but half way between the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something
+shapeless, drifted over with sand. It was all that remained together of
+the great ship that had the day before swept over the waters like a live
+thing with wings--of all the works of man's hands the nearest to the
+shape and sign of life. The wind had ceased altogether, only now and
+then a little breeze arose which murmured "I am very sorry," and lay
+down again. And I knew that in the houses on the shore dead men and
+women were lying.
+
+I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their
+breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I
+made a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into
+the events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale,
+looking very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his
+hand warmly.
+
+"Thank God," I said, "that you are returned to us, Percivale."
+
+"I doubt if that is much to give thanks for," he said.
+
+"We are the judges of that," I rejoined. "Tell me all about it."
+
+While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie
+entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+"Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale," I said.
+
+Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with
+an emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed--why, I could not
+easily have told, for she looked most charming in the act,--more lovely
+than I had ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising God, and
+her heart would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest man, and
+I think attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in danger in
+the way of duty,--a fact sufficient to move the heart of any good woman.
+
+She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand
+trembled. I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he
+evidently enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.
+
+I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into
+the village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.
+
+As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of
+the sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn
+business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his
+tools lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.
+
+"Ah, Coombes! you'll want them," I said.
+
+"A good many o' my people be come all at once, you see, sir," he
+returned. "I shall have enough ado to make 'em all comfortable like."
+
+"But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all
+comfortable yourself alone."
+
+"We'll see what I can do," he returned. "I ben't a bit willin' to let no
+one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir."
+
+"How many are there wanting your services?" I asked.
+
+"There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don't doubt, on the
+way."
+
+"But you won't think of making separate graves for them all," I said.
+"They died together: let them lie together."
+
+The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with
+indignation. The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had
+deserved it, I yet felt the rebuke.
+
+"How would you like, sir," he said, at length, "to be put in the same
+bed with a lot of people you didn't know nothing about?"
+
+I knew the old man's way, and that any argument which denied the premiss
+of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore
+ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.
+
+"That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn't think of it after they'd
+been down awhile--six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can't be
+comfortable for 'em, poor things. One on 'em be a baby: I daresay he'd
+rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o' the women be a
+mother. I don't know," he went on reflectively, "whether she be the
+baby's own mother, but I daresay neither o' them 'll mind it if I take
+it for granted, and lay 'em down together. So that's one bed less."
+
+One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves
+within the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in
+the church, having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties
+to perfection. He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended
+the stair, thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old
+woman.
+
+"Where are Joe and Agnes?" I asked.
+
+"You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day,
+and so he couldn't stop. He did say Agnes needn't go with him; but she
+thought she couldn't part with him so soon, you see, sir."
+
+"She had received him from the dead--raised to life again," I said; "it
+was most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him
+neglect his work!"
+
+"I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last
+night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the
+tire put on Farmer Wheatstone's cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was
+his business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy
+wouldn't stay behind."
+
+"Fine fellow, Joe!" I said, and took my leave.
+
+As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing,
+and apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were
+making the coffins in the joiners' shops, of which there were two in the
+place.
+
+I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my
+way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth,
+and so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have
+it vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world
+of form, as soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding,
+life-giving mould, seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy
+that will sometimes emerge from the froth of reverie--I mean, of
+subdued consciousness remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is
+altogether and vilely repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even
+the shadow of sentiment, though some of my readers, who may not yet have
+learned to distinguish between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I
+dare to utter such a barbarism.
+
+I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought
+something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that
+he had sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers,
+requesting those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies
+to appear within four days at Kilkhaven.
+
+This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was
+clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore
+arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.
+
+On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each
+other, arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the
+last of their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the
+shadow left behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any
+object remains a moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the
+object itself has gone, so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body,
+lingers a moment upon the earth after the object itself has gone to
+the "high countries." It was well to see with what a sober sorrow the
+dignified little old man bore his grief. It was as if he felt that the
+loss of his son was only for a moment. But the young woman had taken on
+the hue of the corpse she came to seek. Her eyes were sunken as if with
+the weight of the light she cared not for, and her cheeks had already
+pined away as if to be ready for the grave. A being thus emptied of its
+glory seized and possessed my thoughts. She never even told us whom she
+came seeking, and after one involuntary question, which simply received
+no answer, I was very careful not even to approach another. I do not
+think the form she sought was there; and she may have gone home with
+the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a doubtful dawn over her
+coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.
+
+On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had
+all the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others
+on stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the
+evening these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old
+man soon found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows
+of the dead. He turned to me and said quietly--
+
+"That's him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He's with his
+mother; and if I'm sorry, she's glad."
+
+With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his
+arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked
+out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a
+new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God
+only knew--certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest thoughts
+are of more awful significance than the most serious of us can imagine.
+
+For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light
+in her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there
+could no more justify her than Milton in letting her
+
+  "frail thoughts dally with false surmise."
+
+With him, too, she might well add--
+
+  "Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away."
+
+But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them
+to be my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over.
+To this they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received
+them like herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her,
+to which no doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations
+of humanity and destroys its distinctions.
+
+The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from
+Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of
+his daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me
+first. I went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man,
+with long arms and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow
+ponderous utterance, which I had some difficulty in understanding. He
+treated the object of his visit with a certain hardness, and at the same
+time lightness, which also I had some difficulty in understanding.
+
+"You want to see the--" I said, and hesitated.
+
+"Ow ay--the boadies," he answered. "She winna be there, I daursay, but I
+wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be 'at
+she was there, wi'oot biddin' her good-bye like."
+
+When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell
+upon me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn,
+grand, ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace
+before her altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a
+sea of troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when
+the churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed
+away, when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and
+no man shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, "Know
+the Lord"? The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my
+companion up to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on.
+He had looked at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the
+beautiful form which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the
+white cheeks, taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the
+brown hair tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was
+dead--
+
+"Eh, Maggie! hoo cam _ye_ here, lass?"
+
+Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he
+put his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was
+shaken with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe
+and reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief
+with yellow spots on it--I see it now--from his pocket, rubbed his face
+with it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said,
+without looking at me, "I'll awa' hame."
+
+"Wouldn't you like a piece of her hair?" I asked.
+
+"Gin ye please," he answered gently, as if his daughter's form had been
+mine now, and her hair were mine to give.
+
+By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet
+solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.
+
+"Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, to be sure, sir," she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by
+the string suspending them from her waist.
+
+"Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair," I said.
+
+She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed
+it respectfully to the father.
+
+He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the
+communion-rail, and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky
+gold. It was, indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it
+must be a yard long. He passed his big fingers through and through it,
+but tenderly, as if it had been still growing on the live lovely head,
+stopping every moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and
+shake out the sand that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for
+nearly half-an-hour, and we stood looking on with something closely akin
+to awe. At length he folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black
+leather book, laid it carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led
+the way from the church, and he followed me.
+
+Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with
+his other hand in his trousers-pocket--
+
+"She'll hae putten ye to some expense--for the coffin an' sic like."
+
+"We'll talk about that afterwards," I answered. "Come home with me now,
+and have some refreshment."
+
+"Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o' tribble already. I'll jist
+awa' hame."
+
+"We are going to lay them down this evening. You won't go before the
+funeral. Indeed, I think you can't get away till Monday morning. My wife
+and I will be glad of your company till then."
+
+"I'm no company for gentle-fowk, sir."
+
+"Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her
+laid," I said.
+
+He yielded and followed me.
+
+Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain
+enough--that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But
+there was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring
+farms. Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at
+work. The brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard--the mole-heaps
+of burrowing Death.
+
+The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a
+little hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said--
+
+"I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk
+there--i' that neuk, I wad tak' it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam'
+aboot that I cam' here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get
+a sma' bit heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi' ye to pay
+for't."
+
+"To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?"
+
+"Ow jist--let me see--Maggie Jamieson--nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She
+was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It's the last
+thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o' Scripter aneath't, ye
+ken."
+
+"What verse would you like?"
+
+He thought for a little.
+
+"Isna there a text that says, 'The deid shall hear his voice'?"
+
+"Yes: 'The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.'"
+
+"Ay. That's it. Weel, jist put that on.--They canna do better than hear
+his voice," he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.
+
+I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or
+apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for
+the day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could
+not talk to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs
+of sorrow in their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill
+in whose unseen bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a
+subterranean torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling
+down hidden precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could
+still. This daughter _might_, though from her face I did not think it,
+have gone away against her father's will. That son _might_ have been a
+ne'er-do-well at home--how could I tell? The woman _might_ be looking
+for the lover that had forsaken her--I could not divine. I would speak
+no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort to
+his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the
+forefront of humanity; I would read some of the words he spoke. From
+them the human nature in each would draw what comfort it could. I took
+my New Testament from my pocket, and said, without any preamble,
+
+"When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved
+him enough to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be
+overwhelmed for a time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not
+believe the glad end of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful
+death that awaited him--a death to which that of our friends in the
+wreck was ease itself. I will just read to you what he said."
+
+I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John's
+Gospel. I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I
+could hardly hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the
+best things are just those from which the humble will draw the truth
+they are capable of seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left
+it to them to hear for themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment,
+fearful of darkening counsel by words without knowledge. For the Bible
+is awfully set against what is not wise.
+
+When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked
+towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I
+talked of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us.
+But little of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing
+nothing of the sorrow it had caused.
+
+We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at
+seven o'clock.
+
+"I have an invalid to visit out in this direction," I said; "would you
+mind walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we
+shall get back just in time for tea."
+
+They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard
+a little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy,
+and point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our
+aid. I may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I
+have had two of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us
+there.
+
+The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed
+themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed
+hour. I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the
+Christian, the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church
+received it, as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the
+earth.
+
+As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be
+carried out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began
+to read, "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
+believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever
+liveth and believeth in me shall never die."
+
+I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before
+the dead. There I read the Psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our refuge," and
+the glorious lesson, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
+first-fruits of them that slept." Then the men of the neighbourhood
+came forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the
+church, each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, "Man
+that is born of a woman;" then went from one to another of the graves,
+and read over each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, "Forasmuch as
+it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy." Then again, I went
+back to the church-door and read, "I heard a voice from heaven;" and so
+to the end of the service.
+
+Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my
+canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had
+already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.
+
+A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie's
+remaining in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face--pale
+and worn; but it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the
+fresh power called forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.
+
+Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant _secret_
+light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the
+house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
+wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short
+of the impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come,
+however, I could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully
+painful to all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual
+child-gift of forgetting. The servants--even Walter--looked thin and
+anxious.
+
+That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
+before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because
+I did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had
+again and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended
+itself to me so that I could say "I must take that;" nothing said
+plainly, "This is what you have to speak of."
+
+As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind
+had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion,
+or rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to
+justify me in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole
+justification, in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I
+cared heartily in my own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness
+I was dumb. And I do think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman
+ought to be at liberty upon occasion to say, "My friends, I cannot
+preach to-day." What a riddance it would be for the Church, I do not say
+if every priest were to speak sense, but only if every priest were to
+abstain from speaking of that in which, at the moment, he feels little
+or no interest!
+
+I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for
+sleep will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can
+compass. I have read somewhere--I will verify it by present search--that
+Luther's translation, of the verse in the psalm, "So he giveth to his
+beloved sleep," is, "He giveth his beloved sleeping," or while asleep.
+Yes, so it is, literally, in English, "It is in vain that ye rise early,
+and then sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he
+gives it sleeping." This was my experience in the present instance; for
+the thought of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, "Why should
+I talk about death? Every man's heart is now full of death. We have
+enough of that--even the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the
+tempest. What I have to do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to
+speak of life." It flashed in on my mind: "Death is over and gone. The
+resurrection comes next. I will speak of the raising of Lazarus."
+
+The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
+give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of
+them would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them
+with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought
+to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would
+have called a _caput mortuum_, or death's head, namely, a lifeless lump
+of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the
+living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the
+hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative,
+attempted to give a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to
+present the substance of it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat
+cleared of the unavoidable, let me say necessary--yes, I will
+say _valuable_--repetitions and enforcements by which the various
+considerations are pressed upon the minds of the hearers. These are
+entirely wearisome in print--useless too, for the reader may ponder over
+every phrase till he finds out the purport of it--if indeed there be
+such readers nowadays.
+
+I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical
+ablution, and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged
+as if myself newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the
+downs full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep
+in my mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be
+not only ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but
+able to send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time
+of the soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of
+the body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to
+comfort the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of
+kings hath conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith
+that cannot laugh at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array
+of defiant appearances. The fresh breeze of the morning visited me. "O
+God," I said in my heart, "would that when the dark day comes, in which
+I can feel nothing, I may be able to front it with the memory of this
+day's strength, and so help myself to trust in the Father! I would call
+to mind the days of old, with David the king."
+
+When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had
+been cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and
+found him very pale and worn.
+
+"I think I am going, sir," he said; "and I wanted to see you before I
+die."
+
+"Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid," I returned.
+
+"I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I
+wasn't afraid then, I'm not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my
+bed. But just look here, sir."
+
+He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded
+the envelope, and showed a lump of something--I could not at first tell
+what. He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible,
+with nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly
+in a state of pulp.
+
+"That's the bible my mother gave me when I left home first," he said. "I
+don't know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that
+cut through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a'most have cut
+through my ribs if it hadn't been for it."
+
+"Very likely," I returned. "The body of the Bible has saved your bodily
+life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life."
+
+"I think I know what you mean, sir," he panted out. "My mother was a
+good woman, and I know she prayed to God for me."
+
+"Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?"
+
+"If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He's nearly as bad as I am."
+
+"We won't forget you," I said. "I will come in after church and see how
+you are."
+
+I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I
+did not think the poor fellow was going to die.
+
+I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since.
+We took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and
+stables, and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his
+health continues delicate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE SERMON.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
+chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
+proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare
+to say that he makes his own commonest speech?
+
+"When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother,
+was going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers
+and sisters, there was one family he loved especially--a family of two
+sisters and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they
+can be loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only
+God is always trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more.
+There are several stories--O, such lovely stories!--about that family
+and Jesus; and we have to do with one of them now.
+
+"They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village
+they called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord,
+when he was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of
+the city, to go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of
+Lazarus's house, where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet
+than at any news that could come to them.
+
+"They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem--taking up
+stones to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with
+anger as they were--and all because he told them the truth--that he had
+gone away to the other side of the great river that divided the country,
+and taught the people in that quiet place. While he was there his friend
+Lazarus was taken ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a
+messenger to him, to say to him, 'Lord, your friend is very ill.' Only
+they said it more beautifully than that: 'Lord, behold, he whom thou
+lovest is sick.' You know, when anyone is ill, we always want the person
+whom he loves most to come to him. This is very wonderful. In the worst
+things that can come to us the first thought is of love. People, like
+the Scribes and Pharisees, might say, 'What good can that do him?' And
+we may not in the least suppose that the person we want knows any secret
+that can cure his pain; yet love is the first thing we think of. And
+here we are more right than we know; for, at the long last, love will
+cure everything: which truth, indeed, this story will set forth to us.
+No doubt the heart of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed after his friend;
+and, very likely, even the sight of Jesus might have given him such
+strength that the life in him could have driven out the death which had
+already got one foot across the threshold. But the sisters expected
+more than this: they believed that Jesus, whom they knew to have driven
+disease and death out of so many hearts, had only to come and touch
+him--nay, only to speak a word, to look at him, and their brother was
+saved. Do you think they presumed in thus expecting? The fact was, they
+did not believe enough; they had not yet learned to believe that he
+could cure him all the same whether he came to them or not, because he
+was always with them. We cannot understand this; but our understanding
+is never a measure of what is true.
+
+"Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot
+tell. Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel
+certain upon. One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know
+everything beforehand, for he said so himself. It is infinitely more
+valuable to us, because more beautiful and godlike in him, that he
+should trust his Father than that he should foresee everything. At all
+events he knew that his Father did not want him to go to his friends
+yet. So he sent them a message to the effect that there was a particular
+reason for this sickness--that the end of it was not the death of
+Lazarus, but the glory of God. This, I think, he told them by the same
+messenger they sent to him; and then, instead of going to them, he
+remained where he was.
+
+"But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think
+of being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory
+of God! of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the
+fear, the broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God?
+What kind of a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely
+good, that the things that look least like it are only the means of
+clearing our eyes to let us see how good he is. For he is so good that
+he is not satisfied with _being_ good. He loves his children, so that
+except he can make them good like himself, make them blessed by seeing
+how good he is, and desiring the same goodness in themselves, he is not
+satisfied. He is not like a fine proud benefactor, who is content with
+doing that which will satisfy his sense of his own glory, but like a
+mother who puts her arm round her child, and whose heart is sore
+till she can make her child see the love which is her glory. The
+glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the human
+race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is love.
+Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that glory!
+
+"The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
+seem typical of all the perplexities of God's dealings. The old painters
+and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand
+a cup of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted
+Faith! she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she
+is not repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for
+the type of the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not
+understood. The wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the
+supreme Fate put that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good
+too,--harmless, at least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine.
+But let us read the verses.
+
+"'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard
+therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place
+where he was.'
+
+"Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But
+remember what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely
+more for the final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life
+he could have, would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere
+presence of the Son of God. I say _mere_ presence, for, compared with
+the glory of God, the very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is
+nothing. He abode where he was that the glory of God, the final cure of
+humanity, the love that triumphs over death, might shine out and redeem
+the hearts of men, so that death could not touch them.
+
+"After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples,
+'Let us go back to Judaea.' They expostulated, because of the danger,
+saying, 'Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou
+thither again?' The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I
+can thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear
+on the same region of life--the will of God. I think what he means by
+walking in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole,
+the all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means
+that now he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not
+see that the Father wanted him to go back to Judaea, and yet went, that
+would be to go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve
+hours in the day--one time to act--a time of light and the clear call of
+duty; there is a night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must
+be content to rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he
+must have intended; but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough
+to be sure that I am right. I do think, further, that it points at a
+clearer condition of human vision and conviction than I am good enough
+to understand; though I hope one day to rise into this upper stratum of
+light.
+
+"Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know.
+It looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had
+from the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he
+was going to wake him. You would think they might have understood
+this. The idea of going so many miles to wake a man might have surely
+suggested death. But the disciples were sorely perplexed with many
+of his words. Sometimes they looked far away for the meaning when the
+meaning lay in their very hearts; sometimes they looked into their hands
+for it when it was lost in the grandeur of the ages. But he meant them
+to see into all that he said by and by, although they could not see into
+it now. When they understood him better, then they would understand what
+he said better. And to understand him better they must be more like
+him; and to make them more like him he must go away and give them his
+spirit--awful mystery which no man but himself can understand.
+
+"Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
+thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
+Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
+other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
+weary two days' journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
+sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
+say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures
+is simply a lie.
+
+"They set out to go back to Judaea. Here we have a glimpse of the faith
+of Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very
+fact that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone
+hard upon doubters, I always doubt the _quality_ of his faith. It is of
+little use to have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks
+like the painter of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing
+chiefly consisted in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what
+fine sort a faith must be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in
+indifference to the truth and the mere desire to get out of hell! That
+is not a grand belief in the Son of God, the radiation of the Father.
+Thomas's want of faith was shown in the grumbling, self-pitying way in
+which he said, 'Let us also go that we may die with him.' His Master had
+said that he was going to wake him. Thomas said, 'that we may die with
+him.' You may say, 'He did not understand him.' True, it may be, but his
+unbelief was the cause of his not understanding him. I suppose Thomas
+meant this as a reproach to Jesus for putting them all in danger by
+going back to Judaea; if not, it was only a poor piece of sentimentality.
+So much for Thomas's unbelief. But he had good and true faith
+notwithstanding; for _he went with his Master_.
+
+"By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
+dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
+was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him.
+It might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
+behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
+their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the
+man dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we
+have no inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death
+and grief bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as
+in the dead.
+
+"When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith
+by almost attributing her brother's death to Jesus' absence. But even
+in the moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new
+budding of faith, began in her soul. She thought--'What if, after all,
+he were to bring him to life again!' O, trusting heart, how thou leavest
+the dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect
+is reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith
+beholds it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith,
+granting her half-born prayer, says, 'Thy brother shall rise again;' not
+meaning the general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all
+but the Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but
+meaning, 'Be it unto thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.' For
+there is no steering for a fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these
+words are too good for Martha to take them as he meant them. Her faith
+is not quite equal to the belief that he actually will do it. The thing
+she could hope for afar off she could hardly believe when it came to her
+very door. 'O, yes,' she said, her mood falling again to the level of
+the commonplace, 'of course, at the last day.' Then the Lord turns away
+her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith to himself, the Life, saying,
+'I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he
+were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me,
+shall never die. Believest thou this?' Martha, without understanding
+what he said more than in a very poor part, answered in words which
+preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked, and a
+thousandfold more than she could yet believe: 'Yea, Lord; I believe that
+thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.'
+
+"I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth
+of Jesus' words 'shall never die;' but I am pretty sure that when Martha
+came to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had
+meant when she used the ghastly word _death_, and said with her first
+new breath, 'Verily, Lord, I am not dead.'
+
+"But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
+upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the
+Lord would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she
+went to find Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother,
+straightway will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The
+family feeling blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal.
+Martha wants Mary to go to Jesus too.
+
+"Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she
+went to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to
+him, the woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but
+the same words to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and
+troubled sister had uttered a few minutes before. How often during those
+four days had not the self-same words passed between them! 'Ah, if he
+had been here, our brother had not died!' She said so to himself now,
+and wept, and her friends who had followed her wept likewise. A moment
+more, and the Master groaned; yet a moment, and he too wept. 'Sorrow is
+catching;' but this was not the mere infection of sorrow. It went deeper
+than mere sympathy; for he groaned in his spirit and was troubled. What
+made him weep? It was when he saw them weeping that he wept. But why
+should he weep, when he knew how soon their weeping would be turned into
+rejoicing? It was not for their weeping, so soon to be over, that he
+wept, but for the human heart everywhere swollen with tears, yea, with
+griefs that can find no such relief as tears; for these, and for all his
+brothers and sisters tormented with pain for lack of faith in his Father
+in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw the blessed well-being of Lazarus on the
+one side, and on the other the streaming eyes from whose sight he had
+vanished. The veil between was so thin! yet the sight of those eyes
+could not pierce it: their hearts must go on weeping--without cause, for
+his Father was so good. I think it was the helplessness he felt in the
+impossibility of at once sweeping away the phantasm death from their
+imagination that drew the tears from the eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was
+not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for these his friends--save as they
+represented the humanity which he would help, but could not help even as
+he was about to help them.
+
+"The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little
+thought it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they
+despised, that his tears were now flowing--that the love which pressed
+the fountains of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam
+on through the ages.
+
+"Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters,
+saying, 'Could he not have kept the man from dying?' But it was such
+a poor thing, after all, that they thought he might have done. They
+regarded merely this unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay
+Lazarus was not much older than Jesus. They did not think that, after
+all, Lazarus must die some time; that the beloved could be saved, at
+best, only for a little while. Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for
+he again groaned in himself.
+
+"Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was
+a hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose
+the bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they
+are in many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round
+and round with linen.
+
+"When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, 'Take away
+the stone.' The nature of Martha's reply--the realism of it, as they
+would say now-a-days--would seem to indicate that her dawning faith had
+sunk again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of
+death, her faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he
+saw around him the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and
+helpless. Jesus answered--O, what an answer!--To meet the corruption
+and the stink which filled her poor human fancy, 'the glory of God' came
+from his lips: human fear; horror speaking from the lips of a woman in
+the very jaws of the devouring death; and the 'said I not unto thee?'
+from the mouth of him who was so soon to pass worn and bloodless through
+such a door! 'He stinketh,' said Martha. 'The glory of God,' said Jesus.
+'Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest
+see the glory of God?'
+
+"Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his
+Father aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely
+while he groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted
+him, and given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will
+be true to the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father;
+therefore he tells why he said the word of thanks aloud--a thing not
+usual with him, for his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it
+for the people, he would say that it was for the people.
+
+"The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him--a
+far grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave;
+for he is the life of men.
+
+"'Lazarus, come forth!"
+
+"And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
+linen-bound limbs. 'Ha, ha! brother, sister!' cries the human heart. The
+Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
+grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the
+womb--new-born, and in him all the human race new-born from the grave!
+'Loose him and let him go,' and the work is done. The sorrow is over,
+and the joy is come. Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too
+will go with you, the Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready,
+Martha! Prepare the food for him who comes hungry from the grave,
+for him who has called him thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a
+household will yours be! What wondrous speech will pass between the dead
+come to life and the living come to die!
+
+"But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
+Martha's cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale
+eyes of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes,
+he will come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus--yea,
+come for the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the
+Lord: he knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the
+words he spoke, 'He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die'?
+Perhaps she does, and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns
+the smile of her Lord.
+
+"This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth.
+What is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon
+to believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which
+lies buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon
+to believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What
+is it to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?--Is it nothing to know that
+our Brother is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the
+first-fruits? If he tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our
+vanished love to-day, or to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to
+come, shall we not mingle the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow
+of present loss, and walk diligently waiting? That he called forth
+Lazarus showed that he was in his keeping, that he is Lord of the
+living, and that all live to him, that he has a hold of them, and can
+draw them forth when he will. If this is not true, then the raising
+of Lazarus is false; I do not mean merely false in fact, but false in
+meaning. If we believe in him, then in his name, both for ourselves and
+for our friends, we must deny death and believe in life. Lord Christ,
+fill our hearts with thy Life!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CHANGED PLANS.
+
+
+
+
+
+In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once
+more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be
+so much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful.
+As they carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the
+ground. Turner yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He
+was satisfied, however, that she could have stood upright for a moment
+at least. He would not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her
+down.
+
+The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious
+the nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her
+smile, though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much
+of its light. I noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window
+constantly so arranged as to shut out the sea. I said something to her
+about it once. Her reply was:
+
+"Papa, I can't bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make
+you understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down;
+it seemed to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me
+every morning when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith,
+but I can't help it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had
+failed me, that I would rather not see it."
+
+I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that
+the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had
+been driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed
+to venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon
+nature. I could not help thinking that the good of our visit to
+Kilkhaven had come, and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet
+escape, was following. I left her, and sought Turner.
+
+"It strikes me, Turner," I said, "that the sooner we get out of this the
+better for Connie."
+
+"I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the
+place would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now,
+think what it will be in the many winter nights at hand."
+
+"Do you think it would be safe to move her?"
+
+"Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better
+than when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and
+see how she will take it."
+
+"Well, I sha'n't like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all
+go, except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don't know how her
+mother would get on without her."
+
+"I don't see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad
+to come as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr.
+Shepherd."
+
+It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it
+was a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no
+such reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her
+to avoid the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner,
+and went back to Connie's room.
+
+The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was
+sitting so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in
+the matter without any preamble.
+
+"Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?" I asked.
+
+Her countenance flashed into light.
+
+"O, dear papa, do let us go," she said; "that would be delightful."
+
+"Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger
+for the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came
+down."
+
+"No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then."
+
+The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home
+again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand
+to the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea,
+and did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find
+Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie's sake, and
+said that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a
+certain troubled look above her eyes, however.
+
+"You are thinking of Wynnie," I said.
+
+"Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest."
+
+"True. But it is one of the world's recognised necessities."
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"Besides, you don't suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter.
+They must part some time."
+
+"Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon."
+
+But here my wife was mistaken.
+
+I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter
+when Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him
+to show him in.
+
+"I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places
+with me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie
+had better go home."
+
+"You will all go, then, I presume?" returned Percivale.
+
+"Yes, yes; of course."
+
+"Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to
+tell you that I must leave to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! Going to London?"
+
+"Yes. I don't know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made
+my summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it
+would otherwise have been."
+
+"We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all
+glad to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale."
+
+He made no answer.
+
+"We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all
+probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some
+of your pictures then?"
+
+His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere
+pleasure. There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at
+once:
+
+"I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care
+for them."
+
+Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it
+would; but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and
+countenance before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from
+a visit.
+
+He began to search for a card.
+
+"O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you
+will dine with us to-day, of course?" I said.
+
+"I shall have much pleasure," he answered; and took his leave.
+
+I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.
+
+I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that
+walk memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly
+by virtue of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere
+outside things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not
+so readily pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward
+circumstance returns; for a man's life is where the kingdom of heaven
+is--within him. There are people who, if you ask the story of their
+lives, have nothing to tell you but the course of the outward events
+that have constituted, as it were, the clothes of their history. But I
+know, at the same time, that some of the most important crises in my
+own history (by which word _history_ I mean my growth towards the right
+conditions of existence) have been beyond the grasp and interpretation
+of my intellect. They have passed, as it were, without my consciousness
+being awake enough to lay hold of their phenomena. The wind had been
+blowing; I had heard the sound of it, but knew not whence it came
+nor whither it went; only, when it was gone, I found myself more
+responsible, more eager than before.
+
+I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change
+hanging over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and
+that change which so many would escape if they could, but which will let
+no man pass, had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon
+of the future. Death looks so far away to the young, that while they
+acknowledge it unavoidable, the path stretches on in such vanishing
+perspective before them, that they see no necessity for thinking about
+the end of it yet; and far would I be from saying they ought to think
+of it. Life is the true object of a man's care: there is no occasion to
+make himself think about death. But when the vision of the inevitable
+draws nigh, when it appears plainly on the horizon, though but as a
+cloud the size of a man's hand, then it is equally foolish to meet it
+by refusing to meet it, to answer the questions that will arise by
+declining to think about them. Indeed, it is a question of life then,
+and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of our life, and, in the
+strength of that, to look the threatening death in the face. But to my
+walk that morning.
+
+I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
+stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape
+of a monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and
+looked out over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as
+if all the sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the
+fogs of the coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when
+first from these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and
+colour.
+
+"What," I said to myself at length, "has she done since then? Where is
+her work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
+destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
+exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
+our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
+generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before
+us like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work."
+
+Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a
+mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and
+that I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing
+as a state of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual
+dreaming in sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself
+like a child tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till,
+all at once, "a little pipling wind" blew on my cheek. The morning was
+very still: what roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that
+little wind roused I will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek,
+something within me began to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory
+of a certain glorious sunset of red and green and gold and blue, which
+I had beheld from these same heights, dawned within me. I knew that the
+glory of my youth had not departed, that the very power of recalling
+with delight that which I had once felt in seeing, was proof enough of
+that; I knew that I could believe in God all the night long, even if the
+night were long. And the next moment I thought how I had been reviling
+in my fancy God's servant, the sea. To how many vessels had she not
+opened a bounteous highway through the waters, with labour, and food,
+and help, and ministration, glad breezes and swelling sails, healthful
+struggle, cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and friendly death! Because
+she had been commissioned to carry this one or that one, this hundred or
+that thousand of his own creatures from one world to another, was I to
+revile the servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was blameless in
+Connie to feel the late trouble so deeply that she could not be glad:
+she had not had the experience of life, yea, of God, that I had had;
+she must be helped from without. But for me, it was shameful that I, who
+knew the heart of my Master, to whom at least he had so often shown
+his truth, should ever be doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now
+helped from within. The glory of existence as the child of the Infinite
+had again dawned upon me. The first hour of the evening of my life had
+indeed arrived; the shadows had begun to grow long--so long that I had
+begun to mark their length; this last little portion of my history had
+vanished, leaving its few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life;
+and the final evening must come, when all my life would lie behind me,
+and all the memory of it return, with its mornings of gold and red,
+with its evenings of purple and green; with its dashes of storm, and its
+foggy glooms; with its white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions,
+its creeping envies in brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all
+the accusations of my conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he
+was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins. Then
+I thought what a grand gift it would be to give his people the power
+hereafter to fight the consequences of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust
+the Father, who loved me with a perfect love, to lead the soul he had
+made, had compelled to be, through the gates of the death-birth, into
+the light of life beyond. I would cast on him the care, humbly challenge
+him with the responsibility he had himself undertaken, praying only for
+perfect confidence in him, absolute submission to his will.
+
+I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought
+of seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave
+those I had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught
+them something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be
+no end to our relation to each other--it could not be broken, for it was
+_in the Lord_, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not,
+therefore, sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.
+
+I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them
+often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even
+this parting said that I must "sit loose to the world"--an old Puritan
+phrase, I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its
+best things, and must let all the rest go; that those things I
+called mine--earth, sky, and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of
+friends--had all to leave me, belong to others, and help to educate
+them. I should not need them. I should have my people, my souls, my
+beloved faces tenfold more, and could well afford to part with these.
+Why should I mind this chain passing to my eldest boy, when it was only
+his mother's hair, and I should have his mother still?
+
+So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded
+passively to their flow.
+
+I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room.
+Her mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody
+party. They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before
+dinner was over we were all chatting together merrily.
+
+"How is Connie?" I asked Ethelwyn.
+
+"Wonderfully better already," she answered.
+
+"I think everybody seems better," I said. "The very idea of home seems
+reviving to us all."
+
+Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than
+she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at
+Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged
+instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle
+in his eye.
+
+"Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?" he asked.
+
+"No," I answered. "She does not want much visiting now; she is going
+about her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not
+like the same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one,
+though I do not choose to ask him any questions about his wife."
+
+I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after
+this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.
+Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by
+the coach--early. Turner went with him.
+
+Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the
+prospect of meeting him again in London kept her up.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE STUDIO.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
+ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had
+wanted to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber,
+now wanted to take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great
+oystershells, and sea-weed.
+
+Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An
+early day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of
+service to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he
+came, I had gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my
+reasons for leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a
+little about my successor, that he might not appear among them quite as
+a stranger. He was much gratified with their reception of him, and had
+no fear of not finding himself quite at home with them. I promised, if
+I could comfortably manage it, to pay them a short visit the following
+summer, and as the weather was now getting quite cold, hastened our
+preparations for departure.
+
+I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but
+he had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience
+would permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us,
+and we had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel
+much anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong
+enough as we went along, to go right through to London, making a few
+days there the only break in the transit.
+
+It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now
+bear the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had
+we occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
+pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and
+before we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie
+looked a little dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the
+change in the weather.
+
+"Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear," I said.
+
+"No, papa," she answered; "but we are going home, you know."
+
+_Going home._ It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking
+before, always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky
+of hope. I lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog
+this evening in London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to
+go through on the way _home._ A. shadow like this would fall upon me;
+the world would grow dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was
+the last of the way home.
+
+Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted.
+I knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness,
+more or less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as
+the thought of water to the thirsty _soul_, for it is the soul far more
+than the body that thirsts even for the material water, such is the
+thought of home to the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul
+pines for sleep, and every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so
+my heart and soul had often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked
+myself, where or what that home was? It could consist in no change of
+place or of circumstance; no mere absence of care; no accumulation of
+repose; no blessed communion even with those whom my soul loved; in the
+midst of it all I should be longing for a homelier home--one into which
+I might enter with a sense of infinitely more absolute peace, than a
+conscious child could know in the arms, upon the bosom of his mother.
+In the closest contact of human soul with human soul, when all the
+atmosphere of thought was rosy with love, again and yet again on the far
+horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest shoot for a moment through
+the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that not yet had she reached
+her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and saw those of my wife
+and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching me for saying in
+my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then I said in my
+heart, "Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for us all.
+When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall we be
+gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries of
+pictures--wells of water."
+
+Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his
+love, his judgment, are man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his
+will, to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that
+he is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley
+of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all
+changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of
+God, so this greatest of all outward changes--for it is but an outward
+change--will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh
+possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father
+of us. It is the father, the mother, that make for the child his home.
+Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the parents of a family
+themselves, when they remember that their fathers and mothers have
+vanished.
+
+At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.
+
+"Won't it be delightful, wife," I began, "to see our fathers and mothers
+such a long way back in heaven?"
+
+But Ethelwyn's face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
+dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do
+not know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder
+how anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How
+dreadful not to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is
+not good, every mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to
+believe in God as it can be made. But he is our one good Father,
+and does not leave us, even should our fathers and mothers have thus
+forsaken us, and left him without a witness.
+
+Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew
+that London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station,
+where a carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.
+
+Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to
+the fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she
+had slept for a good many nights before.
+
+After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,
+
+"I am going to see Mr. Percivale's studio, my dear: have you any
+objection to going with me?"
+
+"No, papa," she answered, blushing. "I have never seen an artist's
+studio in my life."
+
+"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take
+a cab, and it won't matter."
+
+She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver
+directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped
+at the door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking
+street, in which no man could possibly identify his own door except by
+the number. I knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the
+former probably the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare
+assent to my question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her
+den with the words "second-floor," and left us to find our own way up
+the two flights of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty.
+We knocked at the door of the front room. A well-known voice cried,
+"Come in," and we entered.
+
+Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb,
+advanced to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which
+I attributed solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in
+receiving us in such a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round
+the room. Any romantic notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the
+marvels of a studio, must have paled considerably at the first glance
+around Percivale's room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of
+self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet
+save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece
+of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of
+the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair
+chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and
+papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently
+for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished
+oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room.
+With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one chair for Wynnie and
+another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
+
+"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is
+all I have got."
+
+"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he
+possesses," I ventured to say.
+
+"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should
+not."
+
+"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I
+returned. "If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the
+most blessed."
+
+"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think
+it does."
+
+"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
+themselves."
+
+"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked
+Wynnie.
+
+"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on
+the easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."
+
+"Why?" asked Wynnie.
+
+"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so
+unfinished that none but a painter could do it justice."
+
+"But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look
+at?"
+
+"I very much want people to look at them."
+
+"Why not us, then?" said Wynnie.
+
+"Because you do not need to be pained."
+
+"Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?" I said.
+
+"Good is done by pain--is it not?" he asked.
+
+"Undoubtedly. But whether _we_ are wise enough to know when and where
+and how much, is the question."
+
+"Of course I do not make the pain my object."
+
+"If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the
+matter greatly," I said. "But still I am not sure that anything in which
+the pain predominates can be useful in the best way."
+
+"Perhaps not," he returned.--"Will you look at the daub?"
+
+"With much pleasure," I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
+Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture
+meant. Nor had I long to look before I understood it--in a measure at
+least.
+
+It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The
+plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths
+in one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man
+dying. A woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face,
+though she held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the
+gloom you could just see the struggles of two undertaker's men to get
+the coffin past the turn of the landing towards the door. Through the
+window there was one peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight
+fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the
+window-sill outside.
+
+"I do not wonder you did not like to show it," I said. "How can you bear
+to paint such a dreadful picture?"
+
+"It is a true one. It only represents a fact."
+
+"All facts have not a right to be represented."
+
+"Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
+sight?"
+
+"No; nor yet by gloating upon them."
+
+"You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to
+paint such pictures--as far as the subject goes," he said with some
+discomposure.
+
+"Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no
+one could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or
+grow callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you
+propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had
+come into my possession, I would--"
+
+"Put it in the fire," suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
+
+"No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain
+before it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was
+in danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and
+forgetting that they need the Saviour."
+
+"I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end."
+
+"Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
+such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
+one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn't buy it. I would
+rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I
+am certain you cannot do people good by showing them _only_ the painful.
+Make it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it--something
+to show that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering
+people will turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it,
+without hinting at some door of escape, only urges them to forget it
+all. Why should they be pained if it can do no good?"
+
+"For the sake of sympathy, I should say," answered Percivale.
+
+"They would rejoin, 'It is only a picture. Come along.' No; give people
+hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything."
+
+"I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You
+see there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet
+in the window."
+
+He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+
+"I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
+you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
+make the other look more terrible."
+
+"Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have
+failed otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the
+picture, I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read
+your own meaning into it."
+
+Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw
+that she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or
+the freedom with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes
+falling on a little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope
+of finding something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment,
+however, that it was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler
+and more poetic mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her
+hand. A torrent of summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a
+lake of glory upon the floor. I turned away.
+
+"You like that better, don't you, papa?" said Wynnie tremulously.
+
+"It is beautiful, certainly," I answered. "And if it were only one, I
+should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the
+same thing more weakly embodied."
+
+I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in
+Percivale, for his own sake as well as for my daughter's, and I had
+expected better things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale," I said.
+
+"I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am
+a clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the
+praise which I have little doubt your art at least deserves."
+
+"I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may
+pain me."
+
+"But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you
+have at hand to show me."
+
+"Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see."
+
+He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were
+leaning against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these
+he chose one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that
+stood beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will
+describe it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which
+broke from me after I had regarded it for a time.
+
+A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few
+thin pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore
+a dying knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm,
+and another led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture.
+The head and countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many
+a battle, and ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained,
+for one might read victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party
+had just reached the edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the
+valley beneath, with the last of the harvest just being reaped, while
+the shocks stood all about in the fields, under the place of the sunset.
+The sun had been down for some little time. There was no gold left in
+the sky, only a little dull saffron, but plenty of that lovely liquid
+green of the autumn sky, divided with a few streaks of pale rose. The
+depth of the sky overhead, which you could not see for the arrangement
+of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a piece of water that lay in
+the centre of the valley.
+
+"My dear fellow," I cried, "why did you not show me this first, and save
+me from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart;
+it is glorious. Look here, Wynnie," I went on; "you see it is evening;
+the sun's work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name
+behind him in a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight's work is done
+too; his day has set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the
+coming peace. They are bearing him home to his couch and his grave.
+Look at their faces in the dusky light. They are all mourning for
+and honouring the life that is ebbing away. But he is gathered to his
+fathers like a shock of corn fully ripe; and so the harvest stands
+golden in the valley beneath. The picture would not be complete,
+however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven overhead, the symbol
+of that heaven whither he who has done his work is bound. What a lovely
+idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven embodying itself
+in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe how that dusky
+hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines, with that
+sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward towards
+that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a picture
+and a parable."
+
+[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted
+by Arthur Hughes.]
+
+I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth
+by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale's work
+appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.
+
+"I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it," she said.
+
+"Like it!" I returned; "I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
+express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it,
+I should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most
+public wall I have."
+
+"Then," said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, "you
+confess--don't you, papa?--that you were _too_ hard on Mr. Percivale at
+first?"
+
+"Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given
+me to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not
+bound to disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can
+be no sense of duty."
+
+"But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has _some_ sense of duty," said Wynnie
+in an almost angry tone.
+
+"Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and
+therefore, again, that he has no right to publish such a picture."
+
+At the word _publish_ Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
+defence:
+
+"But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures
+only. Look at the other."
+
+"Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in
+the same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of
+these might go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of
+Avalon; but even then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the
+poem, whatever position it stood in, that had _nothing_--positively
+nothing--of the aurora in it."
+
+Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by
+a remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from
+the pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to
+judge, will continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is
+only a little song, "I stood on a tower in the wet." I have found few
+men who, whether from the influence of those prints which are always on
+the outlook for something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not
+laugh at the poem. I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am
+not quite sure of the transposition of words in the last two lines. But
+I do not _approve_ of the poem, just because there is no hope in it.
+It lacks that touch or hint of _red_ which is as essential, I think, to
+every poem as to every picture--the life-blood--the one pure colour. In
+his hopeful moods, let a man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud
+the words of gladness--or of grief, I care not which--to his fellows;
+in his hours of hopelessness, let him utter his thoughts only to his
+inarticulate violin, or in the evanescent sounds of any his other
+stringed instrument; let him commune with his own heart on his bed, and
+be still; let him speak to God face to face if he may--only he cannot
+do that and continue hopeless; but let him not sing aloud in such a mood
+into the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot do them much good thereby.
+If it were a fact that there is no hope, it would not be a _truth_. No
+doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known; but who will dare be
+confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let the hopeless
+moods, at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.
+
+"He could refuse to let the one go without the other," said Wynnie.
+
+"Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do
+at the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part
+them.--If you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again
+to-morrow."
+
+Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at
+any more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should
+dine with us in the evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not detain my readers with the record of the few days we spent in
+London. In writing the account of it, as in the experience of the time
+itself, I feel that I am near home, and grow the more anxious to reach
+it. Ah! I am growing a little anxious after another home, too; for the
+house of my tabernacle is falling to ruins about me. What a word _home_
+is! To think that God has made the world so that you have only to be
+born in a certain place, and live long enough in it to get at the
+secret of it, and henceforth that place is to you a _home_ with all the
+wonderful meaning in the word. Thus the whole earth is a home to the
+race; for every spot of it shares in the feeling: some one of the family
+loves it as _his_ home. How rich the earth seems when we so regard
+it--crowded with the loves of home! Yet I am now getting ready to _go
+home_--to leave this world of homes and go home. When I reach that home,
+shall I even then seek yet to go home? Even then, I believe, I shall
+seek a yet warmer, deeper, truer home in the deeper knowledge of God--in
+the truer love of my fellow-man. Eternity will be, my heart and my faith
+tell me, a travelling homeward, but in jubilation and confidence and the
+vision of the beloved.
+
+When we had laid Connie once more in her own room, at least the room
+which since her illness had come to be called hers, I went up to my
+study. The familiar faces of my books welcomed me. I threw myself in my
+reading-chair, and gazed around me with pleasure. I felt it so homely
+here. All my old friends--whom somehow I hoped to see some day--present
+there in the spirit ready to talk with me any moment when I was in the
+mood, making no claim upon my attention when I was not! I felt as if I
+should like, when the hour should come, to die in that chair, and pass
+into the society of the witnesses in the presence of the tokens they had
+left behind them.
+
+I heard shouts on the stair, and in rushed the two boys.
+
+"Papa, papa!" they were crying together.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"We've found the big chest just where we left it."
+
+"Well, did you expect it would have taken itself off?"
+
+"But there's everything in it just as we left it."
+
+"Were you afraid, then, that the moment you left it it would turn itself
+upside down, and empty itself of all its contents on the floor?"
+
+They laughed, but apparently with no very keen appreciation of the
+attempt at a joke.
+
+"Well, papa, I did not think anything about it; but--but--but--there
+everything is as we left it."
+
+With this triumphant answer they turned and hurried, a little abashed,
+out of the room; but not many moments elapsed before the sounds that
+arose from them were sufficiently reassuring as to the state of their
+spirits. When they were gone, I forgot my books in the attempt to
+penetrate and understand the condition of my boys' thoughts; and I soon
+came to see that they were right and I was wrong. It was the movement
+of that undeveloped something in us which makes it possible for us in
+everything to give thanks. It was the wonder of the discovery of the
+existence of law. There was nothing that they could understand, _a
+priori_, to necessitate the remaining of the things where they had left
+them. No doubt there was a reason in the nature of God, why all things
+should hold together, whence springs the law of gravitation, as we call
+it; but as far as the boys could understand of this, all things might as
+well have been arranged for flying asunder, so that no one could expect
+to find anything where he had left it. I began to see yet further into
+the truth that in everything we must give thanks, and whatever is not of
+faith is sin. Even the laws of nature reveal the character of God,
+not merely as regards their ends, but as regards their kind, being of
+necessity fashioned after ideal facts of his own being and will.
+
+I rose and went down to see if everybody was getting settled, and how
+the place looked. I found Ethel already going about the house as if
+she had never left it, and as if we all had just returned from a long
+absence and she had to show us home-hospitality. Wynnie had vanished;
+but I found her by and by in the favourite haunt of her mother before
+her marriage--beside the little pond called the Bishop's Basin, of which
+I do not think I have ever told my readers the legend. But why should I
+mention it, for I cannot tell it now? The frost lay thick in the hollow
+when I went down there to find her; the branches, lately clothed
+with leaves, stood bare and icy around her. Ethelwyn and I had almost
+forgotten that there was anything out of the common in connection with
+the house. The horror of this mysterious spot had laid hold upon Wynnie.
+I resolved that that night I would, in her mother's presence, tell
+her all the legend of the place, and the whole story of how I won her
+mother. I did so; and I think it made her trust us more. But now I left
+her there, and went to Connie. She lay in her bed; for her mother had
+got her thither at once, a perfect picture of blessed comfort. There was
+no occasion to be uneasy about her. I was so pleased to be at home
+again with such good hopes, that I could not rest, but went wandering
+everywhere--into places even which I had not entered for ten years at
+least, and found fresh interest in everything; for this was home, and
+here I was.
+
+Now I fancy my readers, looking forward to the end, and seeing what
+a small amount of print is left, blaming me; some, that I have roused
+curiosity without satisfying it; others, that I have kept them so long
+over a dull book and a lame conclusion. But out of a life one cannot
+always cut complete portions, and serve them up in nice shapes. I am
+well aware that I have not told them the _fate_, as some of them would
+call it, of either of my daughters. This I cannot develop now, even as
+far as it is known to me; but, if it is any satisfaction to them to
+know this much--and it will be all that some of them mean by _fate_, I
+fear--I may as well tell them now that Wynnie has been Mrs. Percivale
+for many years, with a history well worth recounting; and that Connie
+has had a quiet, happy life for nearly as long, as Mrs. Turner. She has
+never got strong, but has very tolerable health. Her husband watches her
+with the utmost care and devotion. My Ethelwyn is still with me. Harry
+is gone home. Charlie is a barrister of the Middle Temple. And Dora--I
+must not forget Dora--well, I will say nothing about her _fate_, for
+good reasons--it is not quite determined yet. Meantime she puts up with
+the society of her old father and mother, and is something else than
+unhappy, I fully believe.
+
+"And Connie's baby?" asks some one out of ten thousand readers. I have
+no time to tell you about her now; but as you know her so little, it
+cannot be such a trial to remain, for a time at least, unenlightened
+with regard to her _fate._
+
+The only other part of my history which could contain anything like
+incident enough to make it interesting in print, is a period I spent in
+London some few years after the time of which I have now been writing.
+But I am getting too old to regard the commencement of another history
+with composure. The labour of thinking into sequences, even the bodily
+labour of writing, grows more and more severe. I fancy I can think
+correctly still; but the effort necessary to express myself with
+corresponding correctness becomes, in prospect, at least, sometimes
+almost appalling. I must therefore take leave of my patient reader--for
+surely every one who has followed me through all that I have here
+written, well deserves the epithet--as if the probability that I shall
+write no more were a certainty, bidding him farewell with one word:
+_"Friend, hope thou in God,"_ and for a parting gift offering him a
+new, and, I think, a true rendering of the first verse of the eleventh
+chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews:
+
+"Now faith is the essence of hopes, the trying of things unseen."
+
+Good-bye.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Seaboard Parish, by George Macdonald, Ll.d.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
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+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+  <body>
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Seaboard Parish, Complete
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8562]
+This file was first posted on July 23, 2003
+Last Updated: October 10, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE SEABOARD PARISH
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By George MacDonald, LL.D.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>VOLUME I.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. HOMILETIC. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. CONSTANCE&rsquo;S BIRTHDAY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. THE SICK CHAMBER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. A SUNDAY EVENING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. MY DREAM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. THE NEW BABY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. THEODORA&rsquo;S DOOM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. A SPRING CHAPTER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. CONNIE&rsquo;S DREAM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. THE JOURNEY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. THE OLD CHURCH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. CONNIE&rsquo;S WATCH-TOWER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD
+      PARISH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> <b>VOLUME II.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER II. NICEBOOTS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER III. THE BLACKSMITH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER IV. THE LIFE-BOAT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER V. MR. PERCIVALE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER VI. THE SHADOW OP DEATH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER VII. AT THE FARM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER VIII. THE KEEVE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER X. THE OLD CASTLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XIII. THE HARVEST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> <b>VOLUME III.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER III. A PASTORAL VISIT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER IV. THE ART OF NATURE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER V. THE SORE SPOT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER VI. THE GATHERING STORM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER VII. THE GATHERED STORM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER VIII. THE SHIPWRECK. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER IX. THE FUNERAL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER X. THE SERMON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER XI. CHANGED PLANS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER XII. THE STUDIO. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER XIII. HOME AGAIN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      VOLUME I.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. HOMILETIC.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Dear Friends,&mdash;I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as
+      you know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I
+      say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had
+      not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not
+      have wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you
+      would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated
+      once again at my writing-table, to write for you&mdash;with a strange
+      feeling, however, that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful
+      acoustic contrivance, by means of which the words which I have a habit of
+      whispering over to myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes
+      of people whom I cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a
+      sense of your presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that you
+      have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually happens
+      in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a more puzzled
+      mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners
+      of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one, peeping out at me like a
+      rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me almost at the same instant the
+      tail-end of it, and vanishing with a contemptuous <i>thud</i> of its hind
+      feet on the ground. For I must have suitable regard to the desires of my
+      children. It is a fine thing to be able to give people what they want, if
+      at the same time you can give them what you want. To give people what they
+      want, would sometimes be to give them only dirt and poison. To give them
+      what you want, might be to set before them something of which they could
+      not eat a mouthful. What both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a
+      dish of good wholesome venison. Now I suppose my children around me are
+      neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go that
+      will not do. What they want is, I believe, something that I know about&mdash;that
+      has happened to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of thing I like
+      best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me something that
+      has happened to himself, especially if he will give me a peep into how his
+      heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the closed door, and
+      that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has something true
+      and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old people that
+      can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them; but that
+      only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to disentangle
+      confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at the time
+      appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light that was in
+      them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they are far enough
+      off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know
+      best what it is. How I should like to write a story for old people! The
+      young are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old
+      people come in for a share? A story without a young person in it at all!
+      Nobody under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy tale, could it? Or
+      a love story either? I am not so sure about that. The worst of it would
+      be, however, that hardly a young person would read it. Now, we old people
+      would not like that. We can read young people&rsquo;s books and enjoy them: they
+      would not try to read old men&rsquo;s books or old women&rsquo;s books; they would be
+      so sure of their being dry. My dear old brothers and sisters, we know
+      better, do we not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them;
+      only they cannot see the fun. We have strange tales, that we know to be
+      true, and which look more and more marvellous every time we turn them over
+      again; only somehow they do not belong to the ways of this year&mdash;I
+      was going to say <i>week</i>,&mdash;and so the young people generally do
+      not care to hear them. I have had one pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will
+      sit at his mother&rsquo;s feet, and listen for hours to what took place before
+      he was born. To him his mother&rsquo;s wedding-gown was as old as Eve&rsquo;s coat of
+      skins. But then he was young enough not yet to have had a chance of losing
+      the childhood common to the young and the old. Ah! I should like to write
+      for you, old men, old women, to help you to read the past, to help you to
+      look for the future. Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed;
+      for, however your souls may be at peace, however your quietness and
+      confidence may give you strength, in the decay of your earthly tabernacle,
+      in the shortening of its cords, in the weakening of its stakes, in the
+      rents through which you see the stars, you have yet your share in the cry
+      of the creation after the sonship. But the one thing I should keep saying
+      to you, my companions in old age, would be, &ldquo;Friends, let us not grow
+      old.&rdquo; Old age is but a mask; let us not call the mask the face. Is the
+      acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it from its hold&mdash;because
+      its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth? Then only is a man
+      growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the young. That is a sign
+      that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a dreadful kind of old
+      age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should always be growing
+      younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when we were nine or
+      ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to enjoy the game.
+      There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps whose duty it
+      would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for putting the
+      matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if we will not
+      accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying their
+      leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a measure from sociable relations
+      with our fellows, let it be as the wise creatures that creep aside and
+      wrap themselves up and lay themselves by that their wings may grow and put
+      on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a withdrawing is in
+      the name of youth. And while it is pleasant&mdash;no one knows how
+      pleasant except him who experiences it&mdash;to sit apart and see the
+      drama of life going on around him, while his feelings are calm and free,
+      his vision clear, and his judgment righteous, the old man must ever be
+      ready, should the sweep of action catch him in its skirts, to get on his
+      tottering old legs, and go with brave heart to do the work of a true man,
+      none the less true that his hands tremble, and that he would gladly return
+      to his chimney-corner. If he is never thus called out, let him examine
+      himself, lest he should be falling into the number of those that say, &ldquo;I
+      go, sir,&rdquo; and go not; who are content with thinking beautiful things in an
+      Atlantis, Oceana, Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of
+      their fingers to work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the
+      man who, using just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and
+      never has a thought of his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been talking&mdash;to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
+      grandchildren? I remember&mdash;to my companions in old age. It is time I
+      returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side of
+      the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one
+      word: We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never do
+      aright after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the men,
+      neither shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his people
+      because the young ones do not think just as the old ones choose. The Lord
+      has something fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to receive his
+      message. When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work
+      in this world is over. It might end more honourably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
+      about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
+      myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of which
+      I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite elderly, yet
+      active man&mdash;young still, in fact, to what I am now. But even then,
+      though my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder, and needed all
+      my stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces, and the trials of
+      them that are dear, will make even those that look for a better country
+      both for themselves and their friends, sad, though it will be with a
+      preponderance of the first meaning of the word <i>sad</i>, which was <i>settled</i>,
+      <i>thoughtful</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my study
+      because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover over
+      every foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the
+      pleasanter to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none the
+      worse, for anyone who prefers it to books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the history
+      of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend&rsquo;s parish, while
+      my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my curate, took the
+      entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will soon appear. I will
+      try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my story interesting,
+      although it will cost me suffering to recall some of the incidents I have
+      to narrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. CONSTANCE&rsquo;S BIRTHDAY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature, or
+      from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents Nature&rsquo;s
+      mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in his drama? I
+      know I have so often found Nature&rsquo;s mood in harmony with my own, even when
+      she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in looking back I have
+      wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some self-deception about it.
+      At all events, on the morning of my Constance&rsquo;s eighteenth birthday, a
+      lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of golden foliage about the
+      ways, and an air that seemed filled with the ether of an <i>aurum potabile</i>,
+      there came yet an occasional blast of wind, which, without being
+      absolutely cold, smelt of winter, and made one draw one&rsquo;s shoulders
+      together with the sense of an unfriendly presence. I do not think
+      Constance felt it at all, however, as she stood on the steps in her
+      riding-habit, waiting till the horses made their appearance. It had
+      somehow grown into a custom with us that each of the children, as his or
+      her birthday came round, should be king or queen for that day, and,
+      subject to the veto of father and mother, should have everything his or
+      her own way. Let me say for them, however, that in the matter of choosing
+      the dinner, which of course was included in the royal prerogative, I came
+      to see that it was almost invariably the favourite dishes of others of the
+      family that were chosen, and not those especially agreeable to the royal
+      palate. Members of families where children have not been taught from their
+      earliest years that the great privilege of possession is the right to
+      bestow, may regard this as an improbable assertion; but others will know
+      that it might well enough be true, even if I did not say that so it was.
+      But there was always the choice of some individual treat, which was
+      determined solely by the preference of the individual in authority.
+      Constance had chosen &ldquo;a long ride with papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration
+      of his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be
+      determined by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people&rsquo;s
+      children. However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that
+      Constance did look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young
+      day: we were early people&mdash;breakfast and prayers were over, and it
+      was nine o&rsquo;clock as she stood on the steps and I approached her from the
+      lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! isn&rsquo;t it jolly?&rdquo; she said merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very jolly indeed, my dear,&rdquo; I answered, delighted to hear the word from
+      the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word, and
+      when she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was like?
+      Ah! you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I will,
+      however, try to give you a general idea, just in order that you and I
+      should not be picturing to ourselves two very different persons while I
+      speak of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
+      observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion, and has
+      nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in complexion,
+      with her mother&rsquo;s blue eyes, and her mother&rsquo;s long dark wavy hair. She was
+      generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than any of the
+      others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she knew instinctively
+      when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her playfulness there
+      seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if she felt that the
+      present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance to the eternal
+      sunlight. And the appearance was not in the least a deceptive one. The
+      eternal was not far from her&mdash;none the farther that she enjoyed life
+      like a bird, that her laugh was merry, that her heart was careless, and
+      that her voice rang through the house&mdash;a sweet soprano voice&mdash;singing
+      snatches of songs (now a street tune she had caught from a London organ,
+      now an air from Handel or Mozart), or that she would sometimes tease her
+      elder sister about her solemn and anxious looks; for Wynnie, the eldest,
+      had to suffer for her grandmother&rsquo;s sins against her daughter, and came
+      into the world with a troubled little heart, that was soon compelled to
+      flee for refuge to the rock that was higher than she. Ah! my Constance!
+      But God was good to you and to us in you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where shall we go, Connie?&rdquo; I said, and the same moment the sound of the
+      horses&rsquo; hoofs reached us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long ride,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much for the pony?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear, no&mdash;not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want to
+      get something for Wynnie. Do let us go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, my dear,&rdquo; I said, and raised her to the saddle&mdash;if I may
+      say <i>raised</i>, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to
+      another than she sprung from the ground on her pony&rsquo;s back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders&rsquo; webs, as
+      we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards the
+      high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we turned
+      from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a gallop to
+      begin with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been used to the
+      saddle longer than she could remember. She was now riding a tall well-bred
+      pony, with plenty of life&mdash;rather too much, I sometimes thought, when
+      I was out with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I was with Constance.
+      Another field or two sufficiently quieted both animals&mdash;I did not
+      want to have all our time taken up with their frolics&mdash;and then we
+      began to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite an old grannie, papa,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old enough to think about what&rsquo;s coming next,&rdquo; I said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about the
+      morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that&rsquo;s in the pulpit,&rdquo; she
+      added, with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her
+      pretty hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know very well what I mean, you puss,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t say
+      one thing in the pulpit and another out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was at my horse&rsquo;s shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had
+      been of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended
+      me. She looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon
+      Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, thank you, papa!&rdquo; she said when I smiled. &ldquo;I thought I had been rude.
+      I didn&rsquo;t mean it, indeed I didn&rsquo;t. But I do wish you would make it a
+      little plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you would
+      hardly believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want made plainer, my child?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we&rsquo;re to think, and when we&rsquo;re not to think,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day,&rdquo; I
+      answered, &ldquo;if it cannot be done right except you think about it and lay
+      your plans for it, then that thought is to-day&rsquo;s business, not
+      to-morrow&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
+      themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?&rdquo; she asked
+      suddenly, again looking up in my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse&rsquo;s mane, so as to keep
+      her pony close up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like&mdash;not an atom more, mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn&rsquo;t explain things so much. I seem
+      to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try the text
+      afterwards by myself, I can&rsquo;t make anything of it, and I&rsquo;ve forgotten
+      every word you said about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
+      Bible,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they can,&rdquo; I rejoined. &ldquo;But last Sunday, for instance, I did not
+      expect anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except your
+      mamma and Thomas Weir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How funny! What part of it was that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! I&rsquo;m not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But
+      most likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to
+      you, in consequence, very commonplace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In consequence of what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In consequence of your thinking you understood it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa dear! you&rsquo;re getting worse and worse. It&rsquo;s not often I ask you
+      anything&mdash;and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to
+      bewilder my poor little brains in this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea
+      that you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If
+      you had never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of
+      remark, would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is
+      this the case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of
+      the heart. Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything, or
+      thanked God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant in one
+      of his worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be beyond
+      him. If you have never known what it is to have care of any kind upon you,
+      you cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to take no
+      thought for the morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
+      about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
+      perhaps I can help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
+      idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at work
+      every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that women
+      any more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do? What
+      have I been sent into the world for? I don&rsquo;t see it; and I feel very
+      useless and wrong sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
+      Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish. You
+      take much off your mother&rsquo;s hands too. And you do a good deal for the
+      poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you are
+      learning yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but that&rsquo;s not work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
+      you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not
+      that I have anything to complain of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life, when
+      there are so many to help everywhere in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed you,
+      than in doing it where he has placed you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do
+      at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You
+      won&rsquo;t think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And now
+      comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
+      referring:&mdash;What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
+      yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do, you must
+      do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for
+      what he may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to
+      do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next. And I do
+      not believe that those who follow this rule are ever left floundering on
+      the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find water enough to swim
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, dear papa. That&rsquo;s a little sermon all to myself, and I think I
+      shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let&rsquo;s have
+      a trot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is not
+      your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make yourself
+      as worth God&rsquo;s making as you possibly can. Now I am a little doubtful
+      whether you keep up your studies at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like dry things, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;How do the grammars and history-books come to be
+      written then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
+      than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection
+      in it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding
+      old father?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make them.
+      Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to care for
+      them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what you have to
+      learn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What must I do then?&rdquo; she asked with a sigh. &ldquo;Must I go all over my
+      French Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something you
+      don&rsquo;t like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you are
+      fond of?&rdquo; I continued, finding that she remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything in particular&mdash;that is, I don&rsquo;t know anything
+      in the way of school-work that I really liked. I don&rsquo;t mean that I didn&rsquo;t
+      try to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I liked&mdash;the
+      poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen count that
+      silly&mdash;don&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the
+      foundation of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing
+      God has given us&mdash;though perhaps you and I might not quite agree
+      about what poetry was poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God.
+      Now, what poetry do you like best?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Hemans&rsquo;s, I think, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, very well, to begin with. &lsquo;There is,&rsquo; as Mr. Carlyle said to a
+      friend of mine&mdash;&lsquo;There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.&rsquo; 
+      But it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be.
+      Most people never get beyond spoon-meat&mdash;in this world, at least, and
+      they expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand
+      myself, and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable
+      enough creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with
+      admiration of what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained at
+      the cost of expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs. Hemans.
+      She is simple enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that whatever
+      mental food you take should be just a little too strong for you. That
+      implies trouble, necessitates growth, and involves delight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
+      anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
+      about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two years,
+      and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account for my
+      knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on talking
+      a little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young people
+      only, I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the account of
+      what we said to each other; for it might help some of them to see that the
+      thing they like best should, circumstances and conscience permitting, be
+      made the centre from which they start to learn; that they should go on
+      enlarging their knowledge all round from that one point at which God
+      intended them to begin. But at length we fell into a silence, a very happy
+      one on my part; for I was more than delighted to find that this one too of
+      my children was following after the truth&mdash;wanting to do what was
+      right, namely, to obey the word of the Lord, whether openly spoken to all,
+      or to herself in the voice of her own conscience and the light of that
+      understanding which is the candle of the Lord. I had often said to myself
+      in past years, when I had found myself in the company of young ladies who
+      announced their opinions&mdash;probably of no deeper origin than the
+      prejudices of their nurses&mdash;as if these distinguished them from all
+      the world besides; who were profound upon passion and ignorant of grace;
+      who had not a notion whether a dress was beautiful, but only whether it
+      was of the newest cut&mdash;I had often said to myself: &ldquo;What shall I do
+      if my daughters come to talk and think like that&mdash;if thinking it can
+      be called?&rdquo; but being confident that instruction for which the mind is not
+      prepared only lies in a rotting heap, producing all kinds of mental evils
+      correspondent to the results of successive loads of food which the system
+      cannot assimilate, my hope had been to rouse wise questions in the minds
+      of my children, in place of overwhelming their digestions with what could
+      be of no instruction or edification without the foregoing appetite. Now my
+      Constance had begun to ask me questions, and it made me very happy. We had
+      thus come a long way nearer to each other; for however near the affection
+      of human animals may bring them, there are abysses between soul and soul&mdash;the
+      souls even of father and daughter&mdash;over which they must pass to meet.
+      And I do not believe that any two human beings alive know yet what it is
+      to love as love is in the glorious will of the Father of lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path&mdash;a
+      brown, soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses
+      scattering about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal
+      of underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place.
+      There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and
+      there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been
+      struck by lightning, and had stood till the frosts and rains had bared it
+      of its bark. Now it lay white as a skeleton by the side of the path, and
+      was, I think, the cause of what followed. All at once my daughter&rsquo;s pony
+      sprang to the other side of the road, shying sideways; unsettled her so, I
+      presume; then rearing and plunging, threw her from the saddle across one
+      of the logs of which I have spoken. I was by her side in a moment. To my
+      horror she lay motionless. Her eyes were closed, and when I took her up in
+      my arms she did not open them. I laid her on the moss, and got some water
+      and sprinkled her face. Then she revived a little; but seemed in much
+      pain, and all at once went off into another faint. I was in terrible
+      perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance, had
+      seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what he could
+      do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had thrown over
+      the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask Mrs. Walton to
+      come with the carriage as quickly as possible. &ldquo;Tell her,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that
+      her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is rather shaken. Ride as
+      hard as you can go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child, for
+      what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage arrived. She
+      had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in her back; and,
+      to my distress, I found that she could not move herself enough to make the
+      least change of her position. She evidently tried to keep up as well as
+      she could; but her face expressed great suffering: it was dreadfully pale,
+      and looked worn with a month&rsquo;s illness. All my fear was for her spine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as fast
+      as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing the
+      coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as Constance,
+      but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to determination. I had
+      never seen her look like that before. She asked no questions: there was
+      time enough for that afterwards. She had brought plenty of cushions and
+      pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy couch for the poor girl;
+      but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her into the carriage. We did our
+      best to keep her from being shaken; but those few miles were the longest
+      journey I ever made in my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
+      called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie&mdash;for she was
+      named after her mother&mdash;had got a room on the ground-floor, usually
+      given to visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to
+      have to carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the
+      groom off to Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who
+      had settled at Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before,
+      was waiting for us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a
+      mattress in the position in which she felt the least pain. But why should
+      I linger over the sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor child&rsquo;s spine
+      was seriously injured, and that probably years of suffering were before
+      her. Everything was done that could be done; but she was not moved from
+      that room for nine months, during which, though her pain certainly grew
+      less by degrees, her want of power to move herself remained almost the
+      same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated by
+      her bedside, I called my other two daughters&mdash;Wynnie, the eldest, and
+      Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside, one on
+      each side of the door, weeping&mdash;into my study, and said to them: &ldquo;My
+      darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God&rsquo;s will;
+      and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen to your
+      lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your sister&rsquo;s
+      part to endure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! poor Connie!&rdquo; cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the room?&rdquo;
+       I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She whispered, &lsquo;You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you can.
+      I don&rsquo;t mind it very much, only for you.&rsquo; So, you see, if you want to make
+      her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick people like
+      to see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie will not suffer
+      nearly so much if she finds that she does not make the household gloomy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my marriage.
+      My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had found that it was
+      quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my flock who were ill
+      without putting on a long face when I went to see them. Of course, I do
+      not mean that I could, or that it was desirable that I should, look
+      cheerful when any were in great pain or mental distress. But in ordinary
+      conditions of illness a cheerful countenance is as a message of <i>all&rsquo;s
+      well</i>, which may surely be carried into a sick chamber by the man who
+      believes that the heart of a loving Father is at the centre of things,
+      that he is light all about the darkness, and that he will not only bring
+      good out of evil at last, but will be with the sufferer all the time,
+      making endurance possible, and pain tolerable. There are a thousand
+      alleviations that people do not often think of, coming from God himself.
+      Would you not say, for instance, that time must pass very slowly in pain?
+      But have you never observed, or has no one ever made the remark to you,
+      how strangely fast, even in severe pain, the time passes after all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will do all we can, will we not,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;to make her as
+      comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little brothers,
+      that your mother may not have too much to think about now that she will
+      have Connie to nurse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving me
+      to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I then
+      returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child had fallen
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the pain
+      had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we could allow
+      Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of giving her
+      over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the night. Her chief
+      suffering came from its being necessary that she should keep nearly one
+      position on her back, because of her spine, while the external bruise and
+      the swelling of the muscles were in consequence so painful, that it needed
+      all that mechanical contrivance could do to render the position endurable.
+      But these outward conditions were greatly ameliorated before many days
+      were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
+      kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes to
+      let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at unawares,
+      either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were not a good
+      thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before I have done
+      my readers will not be sorry that my tale began so gloomily. The sickness
+      in Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, or thereabouts, has
+      no small part in the story of him who came to put all things under our
+      feet. Praise be to him for evermore!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more sacred
+      heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest corners;
+      but soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the gloom. I could
+      see that bits of news were carried from it to the servants in the kitchen,
+      in the garden, in the stable, and over the way to the home-farm. Even in
+      the village, and everywhere over the parish, I was received more kindly,
+      and listened to more willingly, because of the trouble I and my family
+      were in; while in the house, although we had never been anything else than
+      a loving family, it was easy to discover that we all drew more closely
+      together in consequence of our common anxiety. Previous to this, it had
+      been no unusual thing to see Wynnie and Dora impatient with each other;
+      for Dora was none the less a wild, somewhat lawless child, that she was a
+      profoundly affectionate one. She rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact&mdash;whom
+      she called Aunt Judy, and with whom she was naturally a great favourite.
+      Wynnie, on the other hand, was sedate, and rather severe&mdash;more
+      severe, I must in justice say, with herself than with anyone else. I had
+      sometimes wished, it is true, that her mother, in regard to the younger
+      children, were more like her; but there I was wrong. For one of the great
+      goods that come of having two parents, is that the one balances and
+      rectifies the motions of the other. No one is good but God. No one holds
+      the truth, or can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God. Our human
+      life is often, at best, but an oscillation between the extremes which
+      together make the truth; and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the
+      pendulums of father and mother should differ in movement so far, that when
+      the one is at one extremity of the swing, the other should be at the
+      other, so that they meet only in the point of <i>indifference</i>, in the
+      middle; that the predominant tendency of the one should not be the
+      predominant tendency of the other. I was a very strict disciplinarian&mdash;too
+      much so, perhaps, sometimes: Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was too much
+      inclined, I thought, to excuse everything. I was law, she was grace. But
+      grace often yielded to law, and law sometimes yielded to grace. Yet she
+      represented the higher; for in the ultimate triumph of grace, in the glad
+      performance of the command from love of what is commanded, the law is
+      fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. I must say
+      this for myself, however, that, although obedience was the one thing I
+      enforced, believing it the one thing upon which all family economy
+      primarily depends, yet my object always was to set my children free from
+      my law as soon as possible; in a word, to help them to become, as soon as
+      it might be, a law unto themselves. Then they would need no more of mine.
+      Then I would go entirely over to the mother&rsquo;s higher side, and become to
+      them, as much as in me lay, no longer law and truth, but grace and truth.
+      But to return to my children&mdash;it was soon evident not only that
+      Wynnie had grown more indulgent to Dora&rsquo;s vagaries, but that Dora was more
+      submissive to Wynnie, while the younger children began to obey their
+      eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their effervescence
+      within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in the out-houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
+      chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a yet
+      stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of gentle
+      light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came within
+      the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my lovely
+      child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He cannot
+      regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his. A man&rsquo;s
+      child is his because God has said to him, &ldquo;Take this child and nurse it
+      for me.&rdquo; She is God&rsquo;s making; God&rsquo;s marvellous invention, to be tended and
+      cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things; a young
+      angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make her wings
+      grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other children in the
+      same light, and will not dare to set up his own against others of God&rsquo;s
+      brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart of truth will thus
+      rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling towards one&rsquo;s own;
+      and the man who is most free from poor partisanship in regard to his own
+      family, will feel the most individual tenderness for the lovely human
+      creatures whom God has given into his own especial care and
+      responsibility. Show me the man who is tender, reverential, gracious
+      towards the children of other men, and I will show you the man who will
+      love and tend his own best, to whose heart his own will flee for their
+      first refuge after God, when they catch sight of the cloud in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE SICK CHAMBER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the smile
+      with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the morning.
+      Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs had not yet
+      even begun to show itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen
+      upon her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and
+      said, &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; with a lingering on the last syllable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, my pet?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so happy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you so happy?&rdquo; I asked again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t thought about it yet. But
+      everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa? I&rsquo;ve
+      forgotten all about how the time has been going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the trees&mdash;just
+      two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away down to the
+      rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break away, but they
+      can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get away,
+      papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be in
+      everybody&rsquo;s way.&mdash;I am afraid I shall not get well, after all,&rdquo; she
+      added, and the light clouded on her sweet face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my darling, we are in God&rsquo;s hands. We shall never get tired of you,
+      and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing me, if I
+      were ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; And the tears began to gather in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never think
+      so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
+      useless. You&rsquo;ve got plenty to do there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what have I got to do? I don&rsquo;t feel able for anything,&rdquo; she said; and
+      again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to get up
+      and she could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great deal of our work,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;we do without knowing what it is.
+      But I&rsquo;ll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe in God,
+      and in everybody in this house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, I do. But that is easy to do,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
+      says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do
+      God&rsquo;s work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they
+      cannot believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad
+      pride in it: it may be because they think that there is little or no
+      honour to be got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again
+      accept it with half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however easy
+      any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought about it.
+      And such people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally
+      take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than
+      in yesterday. The Holy Present!&mdash;I think I must make one more sermon
+      about it&mdash;although you, Connie,&rdquo; I said, meaning it for a little
+      joke, &ldquo;do think that I have said too much about it already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to you as
+      I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was impertinent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You silly darling!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;A judgment! God be angry with you for that!
+      Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think God has
+      no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much more
+      likely. You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lying in bed and doing nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could but feel that I was doing his will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my back
+      is getting so bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you
+      the rest another time,&rdquo; I said, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won&rsquo;t be long. In the time
+      of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant children to do
+      something for him in that way, poor people were told to bring, not a
+      bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get, but a pair of
+      turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw the poet says,
+      &lsquo;Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.&rsquo; God wanted to teach people to
+      offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you cannot offer yourself
+      in great things done for your fellow-men, which was the way Jesus did. But
+      you must remember that the two young pigeons of the poor were just as
+      acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the rich. Therefore you must say
+      to God something like this:&mdash;&lsquo;O heavenly Father, I have nothing to
+      offer thee but my patience. I will bear thy will, and so offer my will a
+      burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as useless as thou pleasest.&rsquo; Depend
+      upon it, my darling, in the midst of all the science about the world and
+      its ways, and all the ignorance of God and his greatness, the man or woman
+      who can thus say, <i>Thy will be done</i>, with the true heart of giving
+      up is nearer the secret of things than the geologist and theologian. And
+      now, my darling, be quiet in God&rsquo;s name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
+      sent Dora to sit with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
+      parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
+      Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them in
+      her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we must cram
+      her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the commonwealth
+      sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving messages in return.
+      I might call her the brain of the house; but I have used similes enough
+      for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I had done talking, she said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have been to the school too, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as
+      ours the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I had
+      made a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard of that, papa. You won&rsquo;t let any of the little ones go to school
+      on the Sunday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
+      necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
+      something direct for the little ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know, papa&mdash;just
+      before Sprite threw me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, you must begin before that, please.&mdash;You could spare time to read
+      a little to me, couldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she said doubtfully, as if she feared she
+      was asking too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in part the result of this wish of my child&rsquo;s that it became the
+      custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable for
+      any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her, but I
+      used to take something to read to her every now and then, and always after
+      our early tea on Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find
+      out and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good! Such
+      a centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and
+      imaginations! It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ
+      for the centre of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
+      following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed at
+      some of these assemblies in my child&rsquo;s room, in the hope that it may give
+      my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God has so
+      made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must be more
+      or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the gift of
+      setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am about
+      to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say, to teach
+      them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will share in the
+      delight it will give me to write about what I love most.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class began.
+      I was sitting by Constance&rsquo;s bed. The fire was burning brightly, and the
+      twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected back from
+      the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was no light in
+      the room but that of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night it
+      was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she. Her heart
+      seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world around her.
+      To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and news of poetic
+      interest too. &ldquo;What is it like?&rdquo; she would often say, without any more
+      definite shaping of the question. This same evening she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it like, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is growing dark,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;as you can see. It is a still evening,
+      and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as still as if
+      they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere if the wind
+      were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were of cast iron.
+      A gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were something upon
+      its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars are coming out
+      one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake soon. A strange
+      thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The life of owlets, and
+      mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars,&rdquo; I said, with no very
+      categorical arrangement, &ldquo;and dreams, and flowers that don&rsquo;t go to sleep
+      like the rest, but send out their scent all night long. Only those are
+      gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of the earth in such a
+      frost as this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on
+      the world, or went farther away from it for a while?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
+      been describing to me, isn&rsquo;t like God at all&mdash;is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is not. I see what you mean now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is just as if he had gone away and said, &lsquo;Now you shall see what you
+      can do without me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something like that. But do you know that English people&mdash;at least I
+      think so&mdash;enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon
+      the whole than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is not
+      enough to satisfy God&rsquo;s goodness that he should give us all things richly
+      to enjoy, but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he gives
+      them. He has to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of the gift.
+      He has to make us able to take the gift and make it our own, as well as to
+      give us the gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the full, that is,
+      the divine, meaning of giving, without it. He has to give us to the gift
+      as well as give the gift to us. Now for this, a break, an interruption is
+      good, is invaluable, for then we begin to think about the thing, and do
+      something in the matter ourselves. The wonder of God&rsquo;s teaching is that,
+      in great part, he makes us not merely learn, but teach ourselves, and that
+      is far grander than if he only made our minds as he makes our bodies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
+      wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the
+      world out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I
+      could go about in it just as I liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t do that, though, you know, if you hadn&rsquo;t had the other first.
+      The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see that, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
+      saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes into
+      my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about Milton&rsquo;s
+      blindness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
+      wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that he might
+      be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the point&mdash;given
+      him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread of a single day,
+      only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys; then placed him at
+      Cromwell&rsquo;s side, in the midst of the tumultuous movement of public
+      affairs, into which the late student entered with all his heart and soul;
+      and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine darkness over him, sent
+      him into a chamber far more retired than that in which he laboured at
+      Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing darkling. The
+      blackness about him was just the great canvas which God gave him to cover
+      with forms of light and music. Deep wells of memory burst upwards from
+      below; the windows of heaven were opened from above; from both rushed the
+      deluge of song which flooded his soul, and which he has poured out in a
+      great river to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn&rsquo;t it, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
+      sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
+      undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with <i>such</i>
+      blindness as Milton&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those that do not care about his poetry, papa,&rdquo; answered Constance, with
+      a deprecatory smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
+      God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can&rsquo;t love one
+      you know nothing about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried to read him a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you had
+      never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But you
+      and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of what
+      we had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the least, papa. You don&rsquo;t mind what I said about Milton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much if
+      you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him was
+      more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of appreciating
+      him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen. You think of him
+      as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry things. Now he is not
+      dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry things. You have a figure
+      before you in your fancy, which is dry, and which you call Milton. But it
+      is no more Milton than your dull-faced Dutch doll, which you called after
+      her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But here comes your mamma; and I haven&rsquo;t
+      said what I wanted to say yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely, husband, you can say it all the same,&rdquo; said my wife. &ldquo;I will
+      go away if you can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me. I
+      was trying to show Connie&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did show me, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
+      again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
+      Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
+      history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
+      him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too much
+      revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long enough.
+      They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as soon as he
+      said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that he had not
+      come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over again after their
+      own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own worldly notions of
+      grandeur and command, that they could not receive into their souls the
+      gift of God present before their eyes. Therefore he was taken away, that
+      his Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily presence, might come
+      into them&mdash;that they might receive the gift of God into their
+      innermost being. After he had gone out of their sight, and they might look
+      all around and down in the grave and up in the air, and not see him
+      anywhere&mdash;when they thought they had lost him, he began to come to
+      them again from the other side&mdash;from the inside. They found that the
+      image of him which his presence with them had printed in light upon their
+      souls, began to revive in the dark of his absence; and not that only, but
+      that in looking at it without the overwhelming of his bodily presence,
+      lines and forms and meanings began to dawn out of it which they had never
+      seen before. And his words came back to them, no longer as they had
+      received them, but as he meant them. The spirit of Christ filling their
+      hearts and giving them new power, made them remember, by making them able
+      to understand, all that he had said to them. They were then always saying
+      to each other, &lsquo;You remember how;&rsquo; whereas before, they had been always
+      staring at each other with astonishment and something very near
+      incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after he had gone away, he
+      was really nearer to them than he had been before. The meaning of anything
+      is more than its visible presence. There is a soul in everything, and that
+      soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the world and all its beauty has
+      come nearer to you, my dear, just because you are separated from it for a
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself now
+      and then. That is another good of being ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?&rdquo; said my
+      wife, smiling at her daughter&rsquo;s pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say by this
+      time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful
+      of sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I
+      should be sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say
+      by this time next year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I wish I could be sure of knowing more next year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of learning
+      is very different in the two cases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should not
+      know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him&mdash;as he
+      came to the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
+      thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
+      understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer that
+      if he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I believe
+      we should be further off it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think, then,&rdquo; said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if I
+      were the prophet of great evil, &ldquo;that we shall never, never, never see
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is <i>quite</i> another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my
+      hopes by day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to
+      me the one thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for;
+      but I think it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as
+      ever we are capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I think,
+      what is meant by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a consequence
+      of his spirit in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us. The pure in
+      heart shall see God. The seeing of him will be the sign that we are like
+      him, for only by being like him can we see him as he is. All the time that
+      he was with them, the disciples never saw him as he was. You must
+      understand a man before you can see and read his face aright; and as the
+      disciples did not understand our Lord&rsquo;s heart, they could neither see nor
+      read his face aright. But when we shall be fit to look that man in the
+      face, God only knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know him
+      better than the disciples? I don&rsquo;t mean, of course, better than they knew
+      him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew him while
+      he was still with them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I do, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! Is it possible? Why don&rsquo;t we all, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because we won&rsquo;t take the trouble; that is the reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living&mdash;worth
+      being ill for. But how? how? Can&rsquo;t you help me? Mayn&rsquo;t one human being
+      help another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever wants
+      to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey&mdash;that is simply,
+      do what Jesus says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing. And
+      the tears stood in; my wife&rsquo;s eyes&mdash;tears of gladness to hear her
+      daughter&rsquo;s sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try, papa,&rdquo; Constance said at last. &ldquo;But you <i>will</i> help me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying
+      to tell you what I have heard and learned about him&mdash;heard and
+      learned of the Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time
+      when he was born;&mdash;but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to
+      bear to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, papa. Do go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
+      truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday&mdash;you
+      have plenty to think about till then&mdash;I will talk to you about the
+      baby Jesus; and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that
+      time, besides what I have got to say now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you think, Connie, this is too good to keep
+      all to ourselves? Don&rsquo;t you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear they are rather young yet,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Perhaps it might do them
+      harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn,
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you. Besides,
+      you always say such things to children as delight grown people, though
+      they could never get them out of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wife&rsquo;s speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind them coming in, but I don&rsquo;t promise to say
+      anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
+      wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. A SUNDAY EVENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
+      church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took care
+      to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might be
+      quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my Bible
+      in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a glorious
+      fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on the rug
+      before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the further
+      side of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she thought
+      another might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner, leaving
+      the space between the fire and my chair open that I might see and share
+      the glow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wind is very high, papa,&rdquo; said Constance, as I seated myself beside
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has blown
+      harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
+      shakes the windows with a great rush as if it <i>would</i> get into the
+      house and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
+      grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us
+      with fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very
+      jaws of danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you are quite poetic, Connie,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I&rsquo;m an invalid, and I can&rsquo;t bear to be
+      laughed at,&rdquo; returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more
+      than a quarter crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her
+      laugh outright, and then sat down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But tell me, Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;why you are <i>afraid</i> you enjoy
+      hearing the wind about the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
+      forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out
+      in the wind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if we thought like that, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;shouldn&rsquo;t we come to
+      feel that their sufferings were none of our business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we,
+      it will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, I could not think that,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God&rsquo;s name, think
+      hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing in his
+      kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God intended
+      that there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If he did not
+      intend it&mdash;for similar reasons to those for which he allows all sorts
+      of evils&mdash;then there is nothing between but that we should sell
+      everything that we have and give it away to the poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t we?&rdquo; said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because that is not God&rsquo;s way, and we should do no end of harm by so
+      doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
+      who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We
+      are not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object&mdash;not
+      to save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more danger
+      than God meant for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
+      kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the one
+      thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course everyone
+      ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading of in the
+      papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without making the
+      least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her labour for the
+      coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death, would hug his own
+      selfishness on hearing my words, and say, &lsquo;All right, parson! Every man
+      for himself! I made my own money, and they may make theirs!&rsquo; <i>You</i>
+      know that is not exactly the way I should think or act with regard to my
+      neighbour. But if it were only that I have seen such noble characters cast
+      in the mould of poverty, I should be compelled to regard poverty as one of
+      God&rsquo;s powers in the world for raising the children of the kingdom, and to
+      believe that it was not because it could not be helped that our Lord said,
+      &lsquo;The poor ye have always with you.&rsquo; But what I wanted to say was, that
+      there can be no reason why Connie should not enjoy what God has given her,
+      although he has not thought fit to give as much to everybody; and above
+      all, that we shall not help those right whom God gives us to help, if we
+      do not believe that God is caring for every one of them as much as he is
+      caring for every one of us. There was once a baby born in a stable,
+      because his poor mother could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay
+      I can hardly think. They must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in
+      the stall, for we know the baby&rsquo;s cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken
+      them? or would they not have been more <i>comfortable</i>, if that was the
+      main thing, somewhere else? Ah! if the disciples, who were being born
+      about the same time of fisher-fathers and cottage-mothers, to get ready
+      for him to call and teach by the time he should be thirty years of age&mdash;if
+      they had only been old enough, and had known that he was coming&mdash;would
+      they not have got everything ready for him? They would have clubbed their
+      little savings together, and worked day and night, and some rich women
+      would have helped them, and they would have dressed the baby in fine
+      linen, and got him the richest room their money would get, and they would
+      have made the gold that the wise men brought into a crown for his little
+      head, and would have burnt the frankincense before him. And so our little
+      manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No more the stable-born
+      Saviour&mdash;no more the poor Son of God born for us all, as strong, as
+      noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor! And we
+      should not have learned that God does not care for money; that if he does
+      not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or that he is
+      unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent his own son
+      to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of a little
+      village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need not
+      suppose because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison for it
+      next day, that God does not care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished by
+      this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
+      mother&rsquo;s love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
+      first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie not
+      in these external things at all&mdash;that the poorest little one, born in
+      the meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God&rsquo;s own and God&rsquo;s
+      care as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all about him.
+      Had Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been more worshipped
+      than ever. See how so many that count themselves good Christians honour
+      possession and family and social rank, and I doubt hardly get rid of them
+      when they are all swept away from them. The furthest most of such reach is
+      to count Jesus an exception, and therefore not despise him. See how, even
+      in the services of the church, as they call them, they will accumulate
+      gorgeousness and cost. Had I my way, though I will never seek to rouse
+      men&rsquo;s thoughts about such external things, I would never have any vessel
+      used in the eucharist but wooden platters and wooden cups.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are we not to serve him with our best?&rdquo; said my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
+      being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of his
+      revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth in homely
+      fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that enforces and
+      commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on the other side
+      from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent houses for God&rsquo;s
+      poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of silver and gold and
+      precious stones&mdash;stealing from the significance of the <i>content</i>
+      by the meretricious grandeur of the <i>continent</i>. I would send all the
+      church-plate to fight the devil with his own weapons in our overcrowded
+      cities, and in our villages where the husbandmen are housed like swine, by
+      giving them room to be clean and decent air from heaven to breathe. When
+      the people find the clergy thus in earnest, they will follow them fast
+      enough, and the money will come in like salt and oil upon the sacrifice. I
+      would there were a few of our dignitaries that could think grandly about
+      things, even as Jesus thought&mdash;even as God thought when he sent him.
+      There are many of them willing to stand any amount of persecution about
+      trifles: the same enthusiasm directed by high thoughts about the kingdom
+      of heaven as within men and not around them, would redeem a vast region
+      from that indifference which comes of judging the gospel of God by the
+      church of Christ with its phylacteries and hems.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing,&rdquo; said Wynnie, after a pause, &ldquo;that I have often
+      thought about&mdash;why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he
+      could not do anything for so long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
+      necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary for
+      me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I would
+      say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long? Does a
+      baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the mother lifts
+      up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her knee? Is it nothing
+      that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost all the hearts
+      around? Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to do with the saving
+      of the world&mdash;the saving of it from selfishness, and folly, and
+      greed. And for Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign of love in
+      the earth? How could he do better than begin from babyhood? He had to lay
+      hold of the heart of the world. How could he do better than begin with his
+      mother&rsquo;s&mdash;the best one in it. Through his mother&rsquo;s love first, he
+      grew into the world. It was first by the door of all the holy relations of
+      the family that he entered the human world, laying hold of mother, father,
+      brothers, sisters, all his friends; then by the door of labour, for he
+      took his share of his father&rsquo;s work; then, when he was thirty years of
+      age, by the door of teaching; by kind deeds, and sufferings, and through
+      all by obedience unto the death. You must not think little of the grand
+      thirty years wherein he got ready for the chief work to follow. You must
+      not think that while he was thus preparing for his public ministrations,
+      he was not all the time saving the world even by that which he was in the
+      midst of it, ever laying hold of it more and more. These were things not
+      so easy to tell. And you must remember that our records are very scanty.
+      It is a small biography we have of a man who became&mdash;to say nothing
+      more&mdash;the Man of the world&mdash;the Son of Man. No doubt it is
+      enough, or God would have told us more; but surely we are not to suppose
+      that there was nothing significant, nothing of saving power in that which
+      we are not told.&mdash;Charlie, wouldn&rsquo;t you have liked to see the little
+      baby Jesus?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
+      eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for he
+      has painted him playing with a white rabbit,&mdash;not such a pretty one
+      as yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would have carried him about all day,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;as little Henny
+      Parsons does her baby-brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?&rdquo; asked Harry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he carried
+      about his brothers and sisters that came after him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t he take care of them, just!&rdquo; said Charlie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I had been one of them,&rdquo; said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that he
+      can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we sung a child&rsquo;s hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
+      the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her with
+      Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midnight my wife and I awoke together&mdash;at least neither knew
+      which waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with
+      lulls between its charges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a child crying!&rdquo; said my wife, starting up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat up too, and listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is some creature,&rdquo; I granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an infant,&rdquo; insisted my wife. &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be either of the boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried on
+      some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so. We
+      seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in the
+      lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night was
+      pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house till
+      I came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it, but not
+      so clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the direction
+      of the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only a few yards
+      around me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through every chink,
+      and threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my side before I
+      knew she was coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear!&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it is not fit for you to be out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Do listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
+      Ethelwyn&rsquo;s bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though she
+      was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner of
+      the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much nearer
+      to it. Searching and searching we went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There it is!&rdquo; Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the
+      lantern fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at it.
+      It gave another pitiful wail&mdash;the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up
+      in a dirty, ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it
+      had been a parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house, and
+      I followed, much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and fall. I
+      could hardly get up with her, so eager was she to save the child. She
+      darted up to her own room, where the fire was not yet out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
+      there&mdash;you can empty them in the sink: you won&rsquo;t know where to find
+      anything. There will be plenty in the boiler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child&rsquo;s
+      covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before the fire.
+      The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and motionless. We
+      had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as if I had been a
+      nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You made me throw away the cold water,&rdquo; I said, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s some in the bottles,&rdquo; she returned. &ldquo;Make haste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
+      Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child will be dead,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;before we get it in the water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had its rags off in a moment&mdash;there was very little to remove
+      after the shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully
+      neglected! It was a girl&mdash;not more than a few weeks old, we agreed.
+      Her little heart was still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made,
+      apparently healthy infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we
+      were not disappointed. She began to move her little legs and arms with
+      short, convulsive motions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?&rdquo; asked my wife, with no great
+      compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
+      were beyond the average in development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you tell which was this night&rsquo;s milk, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be less cream on it,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I&rsquo;ve got some sugar here.
+      I wish we had a bottle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
+      lying on her lap clean and dry&mdash;a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went
+      on talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
+      specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got her
+      to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing fell
+      fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ethelwyn&rsquo;s nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know
+      where her baby&rsquo;s clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a
+      wardrobe in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on. I
+      could not understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be indued
+      with little chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not know what
+      all, requiring a world of nice care, and a hundred turnings to and fro,
+      now on its little stomach, now on its back, now sitting up, now lying
+      down, when it would have slept just as well, and I venture to think much
+      more comfortably, if laid in blankets and well covered over. But I had
+      never ventured to interfere with any of my own children, devoutly
+      believing up to this moment, though in a dim unquestioning way, that there
+      must be some hidden feminine wisdom in the whole process; and now that I
+      had begun to question it, I found that my opportunity had long gone by, if
+      I had ever had one. And after all there may be some reason for it, though
+      I confess I do strongly suspect that all these matters are so wonderfully
+      complicated in order that the girl left in the woman may have her heart&rsquo;s
+      content of playing with her doll; just as the woman hid in the girl
+      expends no end of lovely affection upon the dull stupidity of wooden
+      cheeks and a body of sawdust. But it was a delight to my heart to see how
+      Ethelwyn could not be satisfied without treating the foundling in
+      precisely the same fashion as one of her own. And if this was a necessary
+      preparation for what, should follow, I would be the very last to complain
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal mother,
+      now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in my Ethelwyn&rsquo;s
+      bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it would have been
+      very painful to me had she shown it possible for her to treat the baby
+      otherwise, especially after what we had been talking about that same
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about it
+      but ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the going
+      and coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good laugh
+      over the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray for the poor thing, Harry,&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;before you come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knelt down, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to us
+      as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee. Take
+      thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to order
+      our ways towards her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I said to Ethelwyn,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
+      sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
+      sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother. Mind
+      you go to sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I
+      had a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell or
+      not. We slept soundly&mdash;God&rsquo;s baby and all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. MY DREAM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
+      beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those who
+      are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when they
+      can associate it with something else with which they are familiar. Such do
+      not care to see that the thing with which they associate it may be as
+      mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys marvel, it
+      cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is just as
+      wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
+      clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
+      another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an old
+      man&rsquo;s prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked about for
+      a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams there is an
+      immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow stone lying a few
+      yards from me. I wondered how it could have come there, for there were no
+      mountains or rocks near: the field was part of a level country.
+      Carelessly, I sat down upon it astride, and watched the setting of the
+      sun. Somehow I fancied that his light was more sorrowful than the light of
+      the setting sun should be, and I began to feel very heavy at the heart. No
+      sooner had the last brilliant spark of his light vanished, than I felt the
+      stone under me begin to move. With the inactivity of a dreamer, however, I
+      did not care to rise, but wondered only what would come next. My seat,
+      after several strange tumbling motions, seemed to rise into the air a
+      little way, and then I found that I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse&mdash;a
+      skeleton horse almost, only he had a gray skin on him. He began,
+      apparently with pain, as if his joints were all but too stiff to move, to
+      go forward in the direction in which he found himself. I kept my seat.
+      Indeed, I never thought of dismounting. I was going on to meet what might
+      come. Slowly, feebly, trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and
+      as he went his joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little
+      faster. All at once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that
+      we were on the borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me,
+      and the moor grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always
+      recovering himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise no
+      more, but as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface became a
+      little smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted till he
+      reached a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell into what
+      was plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were low and
+      covered with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the place of
+      mounds. Gravestones lay in every position except the level or the upright,
+      and broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My horse bore me into
+      the midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he had risen, he lay down
+      again. Once more I was astride of a long narrow stone. And now I found
+      that it was an ancient gravestone which I knew well in a certain Sussex
+      churchyard, the top of it carved into the rough resemblance of a human
+      skeleton&mdash;that of a man, tradition said, who had been killed by a
+      serpent that came out of a bottomless pool in the next field. How long I
+      sat there I do not know; but at last I saw the faint gray light of morning
+      begin to appear in front of me. The horse of death had carried me
+      eastward. The dawn grew over the top of a hill that here rose against the
+      horizon. But it was a wild dreary dawn&mdash;a blot of gray first, which
+      then stretched into long lines of dreary yellow and gray, looking more
+      like a blasted and withered sunset than a fresh sunrise. And well it
+      suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if churchyard I ought to
+      call it where no church was to be seen&mdash;only a vast hideous square of
+      graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the flat stone of
+      which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat with my eyes
+      fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the middle closed,
+      then widened again as the two halves of the stone were lifted up, and
+      flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door. From the grave rose
+      a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as if he had just come
+      from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung the stones apart, and
+      as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me, they remained outspread
+      from the action for a moment, as if blessing the sleeping people. Then he
+      came towards me with the same smile, and took my hand. I rose, and he led
+      me away over another broken wall towards the hill that lay before us. And
+      as we went the sun came nearer, the pale yellow bars flushed into orange
+      and rosy red, till at length the edges of the clouds were swept with an
+      agony of golden light, which even my dreamy eyes could not endure, and I
+      awoke weeping for joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was this little darling that set you dreaming so,&rdquo; she said, and
+      turning, put the baby in my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE NEW BABY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
+      household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie
+      was heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn&rsquo;t it jolly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did she get it?&rdquo; cried Harry in return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the parsley-bed, I suppose,&rdquo; answered Charlie, and was nearer right
+      than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had no
+      doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of the
+      family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their curiosity
+      being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was exemplified
+      that confusion of the intellectual being which is produced by the witness
+      of incontestable truth to a thing incredible&mdash;in which case the
+      probability always is, that the incredibility results from something in
+      the mind of the hearer falsely associated with and disturbing the true
+      perception of the thing to which witness is borne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
+      parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had. And
+      seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met with
+      from everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked
+      questions. And that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good gift
+      of God. Ask what questions you will, but when you see that the gift is a
+      good one, make sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for you to
+      ask questions afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the more
+      ready you will be to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
+      began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
+      frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was not
+      Ethelwyn&rsquo;s baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, you&rsquo;ll give information to the police,&rdquo; said, I am sorry to
+      say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to be
+      a magistrate as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
+      easy to suspect it?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;And just think what it would be to give the
+      baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her mother.
+      But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don&rsquo;t say I would refuse
+      her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had once
+      abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don&rsquo;t want the
+      parents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t want the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo; I returned&mdash;rather rudely, I am afraid, for I
+      am easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless&mdash;about
+      children especially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one
+      has a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what I thought I was doing,&rdquo; I answered; but he went on
+      without heeding my reply&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not
+      so fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother&rsquo;s keeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my sister&rsquo;s too,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And if the question lies between
+      keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that, I
+      venture to choose for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ought to go to the workhouse,&rdquo; said the magistrate&mdash;a friendly,
+      good-natured man enough in ordinary&mdash;and rising, he took his hat and
+      departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man had no children. So he was&mdash;or was not, so much to blame.
+      Which? <i>I</i> say the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of Ethelwyn&rsquo;s friends were no less positive about her duty in the
+      affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one of
+      them&mdash;Miss Bowdler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear Mrs. Walton,&rdquo; she was saying, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll be having all the
+      tramps in England leaving their babies at your door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The better for the babies,&rdquo; interposed I, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t think of your wife, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I? I thought I did,&rdquo; I returned dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Depend upon it, you&rsquo;ll repent it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but, really! it&rsquo;s not a thing to be made game of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As well as I choose to know&mdash;certainly,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which
+      she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in
+      the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted
+      as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic,
+      half-anxious look, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
+      we couldn&rsquo;t go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
+      stepping on a baby on the door-step.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, &lsquo;If God
+      should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?&rsquo; He who sent us this
+      one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come. All
+      that we have to think of is to do right&mdash;not the consequences of
+      doing right. But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that
+      wandering mothers have not even the attachment of animals to their
+      offspring. There are not so many that are willing to part with babies as
+      all that would come to. If you believe that God sent this one, that is
+      enough for the present. If he should send another, we should know by that
+      that we had to take it in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
+      well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
+      babies&mdash;that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and
+      nurses and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for
+      what I believed than what I saw&mdash;that was all I could pretend to
+      discover. But even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to
+      allow before three months were over that little Theodora&mdash;for we
+      turned the name of my youngest daughter upside down for her&mdash;&ldquo;was a
+      proper child.&rdquo; To none, however, did she seem to bring so much delight as
+      to our dear Constance. Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I
+      found the sleepy, useless little thing lying beside her on the bed, and
+      her staring at it with such loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but
+      it came at last to be called Connie&rsquo;s Dora, or Miss Connie&rsquo;s baby, all
+      over the house, and nothing pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this
+      did her old nurse take quite kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as
+      an interloper, who had no right to the tenderness which was lavished upon
+      her. But she had no sooner given in than the baby began to grow dear to
+      her as well as to the rest. In fact, the house was ere long full of
+      nurses. The staff included everyone but myself, who only occasionally, at
+      the entreaty of some one or other of the younger ones, took her in my
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude,
+      all centering round the question in what manner the child was to be
+      brought up. Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as Ethelwyn
+      constantly reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I could not
+      discover the principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can tell how
+      soon a principle in such a case will begin, even unconsciously, to
+      operate; and the danger was that the moment when it ought to begin to
+      operate would be long past before the principle was discovered, except I
+      did what I could now to find it out. I had again and again to remind
+      myself that there was no cause for anxiety; for that I might certainly
+      claim the enlightenment which all who want to do right are sure to
+      receive; but still I continued uneasy just from feeling a vacancy where a
+      principle ought to have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress&mdash;in the
+      recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
+      remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
+      regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
+      interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how I
+      came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to keep
+      before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
+      remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
+      from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might be
+      turned aside would not trouble me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
+      Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east,
+      and the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the
+      children to rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and,
+      believing that the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the
+      faculties for aiding the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them
+      questions as to what they thought he might have said or done in ordinary
+      family occurrences, thus giving a reality in their minds to this part of
+      his history, and trying to rouse in them a habit of referring their
+      conduct to the standard of his. If we do not thus employ our imagination
+      on sacred things, his example can be of no use to us except in exactly
+      corresponding circumstances&mdash;and when can such occur from one end to
+      another of our lives? The very effort to think how he would have done, is
+      a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and, even if the conclusion
+      arrived at should not be correct from lack of sufficient knowledge of his
+      character and principles, it will be better than any that can be arrived
+      at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking of such questions gave me
+      good opportunity, through the answers they returned, of seeing what their
+      notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus of discovering how to help the
+      dawn of the light in their growing minds. Nor let anyone fear that such
+      employment of the divine gift of imagination will lead to foolish vagaries
+      and useless inventions; while the object is to discover the right way&mdash;the
+      truth&mdash;there is little danger of that. Besides, there I was to help
+      hereby in the actual training of their imaginations to truth and wisdom.
+      To aid in this, I told them some of the stories that were circulated about
+      him in the early centuries of the church, but which the church has
+      rejected as of no authority; and I showed them how some of them could not
+      be true, because they were so unlike those words and actions which we had
+      the best of reasons for receiving as true; and how one or two of them
+      might be true&mdash;though, considering the company in which we found
+      them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them. And such wise
+      things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous how children can
+      reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances are sometimes
+      entirely concordant with the results arrived at through years of thought
+      by the earnest mind&mdash;results which no mind would ever arrive at save
+      by virtue of the child-like in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus in
+      the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by dwelling
+      a little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from group to
+      group of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem and asking
+      every fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy, till at length
+      they were in great trouble when they could not find him even in Jerusalem.
+      Then came the delight of his mother when she did find him at last, and his
+      answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered over the simple story,
+      my children had put many questions to me about Jesus being a boy, and not
+      seeming to know things which, if he was God, he must have known, they
+      thought. To some of these I had just to reply that I did not understand
+      myself, and therefore could not teach them; to others, that I could
+      explain them, but that they were not yet, some of them, old enough to
+      receive and understand my explanation; while others I did my best to
+      answer as simply as I could. But at this point we arrived at a question
+      put by Wynnie, to answer which aright I considered of the greatest
+      importance. Wynnie said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled me,
+      papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is, my dear?&rdquo; I said; for although I thought I knew well enough what
+      she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for her own
+      sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand the
+      difficulty much better if she presented it herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that he spoke to his mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you say <i>mamma</i>, Wynnie?&rdquo; said Charlie. &ldquo;She was his own
+      mamma, wasn&rsquo;t she, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear; but don&rsquo;t you know that the shoemaker&rsquo;s children down in
+      the village always call their mamma <i>mother</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but they are shoemaker&rsquo;s children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
+      carpenter. He called his mamma, <i>mother</i>. But, Charlie, <i>mother</i>
+      is the more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. <i>Lady</i>
+      is a very pretty word; but <i>woman</i> is a very beautiful word. Just so
+      with <i>mamma</i> and <i>mother</i>. <i>Mamma</i> is pretty, but <i>mother</i>
+      is beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t we always say <i>mother</i> then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for Sundays&mdash;that
+      is, for the more solemn times of life. We don&rsquo;t want it to get common to
+      us with too much use. We may think it as much as we like; thinking does
+      not spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and especially beautiful
+      words. Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was saying, papa, that I can&rsquo;t help feeling as if&mdash;I know it can&rsquo;t
+      be true&mdash;but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he
+      said that to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at the page and read the words, &ldquo;How is it that ye sought me?
+      wist ye not that I must be about my Father&rsquo;s business?&rdquo; And I sat silent
+      for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you speak, papa?&rdquo; said Harry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Long after I was your
+      age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as they
+      now trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me so
+      lovely that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact that
+      they troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall. I can
+      hardly see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me. And why
+      is that? Simply because I understand them now, and I did not understand
+      them then. I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof; now I hear them
+      as uttered with a tone of loving surprise. But really I cannot feel sure
+      what it was that I did not like. And I am confident it is so with a great
+      many things that we reject. We reject them simply because we do not
+      understand them. Therefore, indeed, we cannot with truth be said to reject
+      them at all. It is some false appearance that we reject. Some of the
+      grandest things in the whole realm of truth look repellent to us, and we
+      turn away from them, simply because we are not&mdash;to use a familiar
+      phrase&mdash;we are not up to them. They appear to us, therefore, to be
+      what they are not. Instruction sounds to the proud man like reproof;
+      illumination comes on the vain man like scorn; the manifestation of a
+      higher condition of motive and action than his own, falls on the
+      self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is consciousness and conscience
+      working together that produce this impression; the result is from the man
+      himself, not from the higher source. From the truth comes the power, but
+      the shape it assumes to the man is from the man himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite beyond me now, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;I will return to the words of the boy Jesus,
+      instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you what they
+      mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about them is all
+      and altogether an illusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing first,&rdquo; said Connie, &ldquo;that I want to understand. You
+      said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
+      surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
+      even <i>he</i> did not know one thing&mdash;only the Father knew it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how could that be if he was God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I
+      should understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have
+      been perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in the
+      Father. And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect
+      knowledge was not necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute obedience,
+      utter holiness. There is a great tendency in our sinful natures to put
+      knowledge and power on a level with goodness. It was one of the lessons of
+      our Lord&rsquo;s life that they are not so; that the one grand thing in humanity
+      is faith in God; that the highest in God is his truth, his goodness, his
+      rightness. But if Jesus was a real man, and no mere appearance of a man,
+      is it any wonder that, with a heart full to the brim of the love of God,
+      he should be for a moment surprised that his mother, whom he loved so
+      dearly, the best human being he knew, should not have taken it as a matter
+      of course that if he was not with her, he must be doing something his
+      Father wanted him to do? For this is just what his answer means. To turn
+      it into the ordinary speech of our day, it is just this: &lsquo;Why did you look
+      for me? Didn&rsquo;t you know that I must of course be doing something my Father
+      had given me to do?&rsquo; Just think of the quiet sweetness of confidence in
+      this. And think what a life his must have been up to that twelfth year of
+      his, that such an expostulation with his mother was justified. It must
+      have had reference to a good many things that had passed before then,
+      which ought to have been sufficient to make Mary conclude that her missing
+      boy must be about God&rsquo;s business somewhere. If her heart had been as full
+      of God and God&rsquo;s business as his, she would not have been in the least
+      uneasy about him. And here is the lesson of his whole life: it was all his
+      Father&rsquo;s business. The boy&rsquo;s mind and hands were full of it. The man&rsquo;s
+      mind and hands were full of it. And the risen conqueror was full of it
+      still. For the Father&rsquo;s business is everything, and includes all work that
+      is worth doing. We may say in a full grand sense, that there is nothing
+      but the Father and his business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we have so many things to do that are not his business,&rdquo; said Wynnie,
+      with a sigh of oppression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
+      not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want of
+      spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things&mdash;the will
+      of God in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so irksome
+      to us. Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination and deep
+      thought, to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with some slight
+      remark, thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is because he is
+      commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so little of the
+      divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise the spiritual
+      meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will of God, in the
+      things required of us, though they are full of it. But if we do them we
+      shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see what is in them.
+      The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in its heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish he would tell me something to do,&rdquo; said Charlie. &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t I do
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure was
+      at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look here, Wynnie; listen to this,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;&lsquo;And he went down with
+      them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.&rsquo; Was that not doing
+      his Father&rsquo;s business too? Was it not doing the business of his Father in
+      heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he knew that his days
+      would not be long in that land? Did not his whole teaching, his whole
+      doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the Father and surely it was
+      doing his Father&rsquo;s business then to obey his parents&mdash;to serve them,
+      to be subject to them. It is true that the business God gives a man to do
+      may be said to be the peculiar walk in life into which he is led, but that
+      is only as distinguishing it from another man&rsquo;s peculiar business. God
+      gives us all our business, and the business which is common to humanity is
+      more peculiarly God&rsquo;s business than that which is one man&rsquo;s and not
+      another&rsquo;s&mdash;because it lies nearer the root, and is essential. It does
+      not matter whether a man is a farmer or a physician, but it greatly
+      matters whether he is a good son, a good husband, and so on. O my
+      children!&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;if the world could but be brought to believe&mdash;the
+      world did I say?&mdash;if the best men in the world could only see, as God
+      sees it, that service is in itself the noblest exercise of human powers,
+      if they could see that God is the hardest worker of all, and that his
+      nobility are those who do the most service, surely it would alter the
+      whole aspect of the church. Menial offices, for instance, would soon cease
+      to be talked of with that contempt which shows that there is no true
+      recognition of the fact that the same principle runs through the highest
+      duty and the lowest&mdash;that the lowest work which God gives a man to do
+      must be in its nature noble, as certainly noble as the highest. This would
+      destroy condescension, which is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the
+      higher, as it would destroy insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower.
+      He who recognised the dignity of his own lower office, would thereby
+      recognise the superiority of the higher office, and would be the last
+      either to envy or degrade it. He would see in it his own&mdash;only
+      higher, only better, and revere it. But I am afraid I have wearied you, my
+      children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, no, papa!&rdquo; said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this subject:
+      it has such a hold of my heart and mind!&mdash;Now, Charlie, my boy, go to
+      bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did not
+      want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the
+      corners of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did not
+      move to go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the black
+      frost still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to him.
+      When he was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting out of
+      temper, and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to behold; and to
+      cure him of this, I used to make him carry a little mirror about his neck,
+      that the means might be always at hand of showing himself to him: it was a
+      sort of artificial conscience which, by enabling him to see the picture of
+      his own condition, which the face always is, was not unfrequently
+      operative in rousing his real conscience, and making him ashamed of
+      himself. But now the mirror I wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in
+      the light of which the present would show what it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charlie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;a little while ago you were wishing that God would
+      give you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once,
+      without even thinking about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?&rdquo; said Charlie, with
+      something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at once
+      because there was some sense along with the impudence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it pleasantly.
+      Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as that&mdash;I
+      wish I had the little mirror to show it to you&mdash;when his mother told
+      him it was time to go to bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in him,
+      because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have compelled
+      him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law. But now that
+      his own better self, the self enlightened of the light that lighteneth
+      every man that cometh into the world, was working, time might well be
+      afforded it to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the others. In
+      the space of not more than one minute, he rose and came to me, looking
+      both good and ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me, saying,
+      &ldquo;Goodnight, papa.&rdquo; I bade him good-night, and kissed him more tenderly
+      than usual, that he might know that it was all right between us. I
+      required no formal apology, no begging of my pardon, as some parents think
+      right. It seemed enough to me that his heart was turned. It is a terrible
+      thing to run the risk of changing humility into humiliation. Humiliation
+      is one of the proudest conditions in the human world. When he felt that it
+      would be a relief to say more explicitly, &ldquo;Father, I have sinned,&rdquo; then
+      let him say it; but not till then. To compel manifestation is one surest
+      way to check feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy&rsquo;s unwillingness to go
+      to bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them
+      are guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important
+      than this, only those things happen to be <i>their</i> wish at the moment,
+      and not Charlie&rsquo;s, and so gain their superiority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. THEODORA&rsquo;S DOOM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
+      most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
+      practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise you
+      more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be allowed
+      to take very much his own way&mdash;go his own pace, I should have said. I
+      am afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
+      severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last
+      severe frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth.
+      The sun was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up in
+      the air hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field
+      close by a hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass. A
+      short distance from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost. There
+      alone was there any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of the
+      loveliest tenderest green. I will not say the figure was such an exact
+      resemblance as a photograph would have been; still it was an indubitable
+      likeness. It appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch not a knot of
+      the upper side of the tree at least was left unrepresented in shining and
+      glittering whiteness upon the green grass. It was very pretty, and, I
+      confess, at first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating on the
+      phenomenon, till at length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost had been
+      all over the field in the morning. The sun had been shining for a time,
+      and had melted the frost away, except where he could only cast a shadow.
+      As he rose and rose, the shadow of the tree had shortened and come nearer
+      and nearer to its original, growing more and more like as it came nearer,
+      while the frost kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew its protection.
+      When the shadow extended only to a little way from the tree, the clouds
+      came and covered the sun, and there were no more shadows, only one great
+      one of the clouds. Then the frost shone out in the shape of the vanished
+      shadow. It lay at a little distance from the tree, because the tree having
+      been only partially lopped, some great stumps of boughs held it up from
+      the ground, and thus, when the sun was low, his light had shone a little
+      way through beneath, as well as over the trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to &ldquo;moralise this spectacle
+      with a thousand similes.&rdquo; I only tell it him as a very pretty phenomenon.
+      But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in nature&mdash;I
+      mean new in regard to my knowledge, of course&mdash;always made me happy;
+      and I was full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the thoughts
+      it had brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom should I see
+      in the next field, coming along the footpath, but the lady who had made
+      herself so disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was rather a discord in
+      my feeling at that moment; perhaps it would have been so at any moment.
+      But I prepared myself to meet her in the strength of the good humour which
+      nature had just bestowed upon me. For I fear the failing will go with me
+      to the grave that I am very ready to be annoyed, even to the loss of my
+      temper, at the urgings of ignoble prudence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Miss Bowdler,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; she returned &ldquo;I am afraid you thought me
+      impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As such I take it,&rdquo; I answered with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
+      accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she
+      went on to repeat the offence by way of justification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all for Mrs. Walton&rsquo;s sake. You ought to consider her, Mr. Walton.
+      She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is likely to be an
+      invalid all her days&mdash;too much to take the trouble of a beggar&rsquo;s brat
+      as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear, no!&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;She is far too good to complain of anything.
+      That&rsquo;s just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I beg you won&rsquo;t speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear me! no. Not at all. I don&rsquo;t speak disrespectfully of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even amongst the class of which she comes, &lsquo;a beggar&rsquo;s brat&rsquo; would be
+      regarded as bad language.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, I&rsquo;m sure, Mr. Walton! If you <i>will</i> take offence&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
+      warning against offending the little ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure&mdash;let me hope in
+      conviction of sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two
+      Sundays. Then she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after
+      this, and I believe my wife was not sorry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my
+      wife&rsquo;s trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell;
+      but, before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something
+      like the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When I
+      went into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her about
+      it; but, indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got home. I
+      found her in Connie&rsquo;s room as I had expected. Now although we were never
+      in the habit of making mysteries of things in which there was no mystery,
+      and talked openly before our children, and the more openly the older they
+      grew, yet there were times when we wanted to have our talks quite alone,
+      especially when we had not made up our minds about something. So I asked
+      Ethelwyn to walk out with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I can&rsquo;t just this moment, husband,&rdquo; she answered. She was in
+      the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
+      without saying it aloud. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t just this moment, for there is no one at
+      liberty to stay with Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, never mind me, mamma,&rdquo; said Connie cheerfully. &ldquo;Theodora will take
+      care of me,&rdquo; and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her side
+      fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what I
+      meant. &ldquo;I will tell you afterwards,&rdquo; I said, laughing. &ldquo;Come along,
+      Ethel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything, or
+      your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won&rsquo;t want me long, will
+      you, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susan was the old nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her across
+      to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not shone out,
+      and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it had gladdened
+      mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his direct rays, had
+      melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do with other shadows,
+      without the mind knowing any more than the grass how the shadow departed.
+      There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about it before you knew
+      what I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see it only through my
+      eyes and words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler, and what she had said.
+      Ethel was very angry at her impertinence in speaking so to me. That was a
+      wife&rsquo;s feeling, you know, and perhaps excusable in the first impression of
+      the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems to think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that she was sent into the world to keep
+      other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her down, as
+      the maids say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much harm in her,&rdquo; I returned, which was easy
+      generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. &ldquo;Indeed, I am not sure that
+      we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I met her
+      that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with Theodora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still troubling yourself about that, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it should
+      be met,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Our measures must begin sometime, and when, who can
+      tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never begin at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at present&mdash;belonging
+      to humanity rather than the individual, as you would say&mdash;consisting
+      chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe, varied with
+      lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our measures than our
+      heads, aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there&rsquo;s no fear about your heart. I&rsquo;m
+      not quite so sure about your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn&rsquo;t matter, does it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for
+      no chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger than
+      its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head nearly,
+      though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business. There&rsquo;s
+      one thing we have both made up our minds about&mdash;that there is to be
+      no concealment with the child. God&rsquo;s fact must be known by her. It would
+      be cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to come upon
+      her with a terrible shock some day. She must know from the first, by
+      hearing it talked of&mdash;not by solemn and private communication&mdash;that
+      she came out of the shrubbery. That&rsquo;s settled, is it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. I see that to be the right way,&rdquo; responded Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are bound to do as well for her as for our own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the
+      facts being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
+      done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
+      that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding or
+      neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it would be
+      a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good for herself,
+      knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it not be kinder
+      to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for her to relieve the
+      gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our sakes&mdash;I hope we
+      are above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude which will be given
+      for it, and which is so often far beyond the worth of the thing done&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Alas! the gratitude of men
+  Hath oftener left me mourning,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      said Ethel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank you, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we must wish for gratitude for others&rsquo; sake, though we may be willing
+      to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as painful
+      as Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes us think
+      how much more we <i>might</i> have done; how lovely a thing it is to give
+      in return for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman must
+      be in whom a trifle awakes so much emotion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
+      doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
+      which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they can&rsquo;t
+      show the difference in their thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet,
+      the same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But to
+      return to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be
+      recognisant of whence she came, and how she had been brought thence, might
+      it not be better for her? Would it not be building on the truth? Would she
+      not be happier for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
+      something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair
+      to my place in the conference,&rdquo; said Ethel. &ldquo;In fact, you think you are
+      trying to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not say <i>wheedle</i>,
+      me into something. It&rsquo;s a good thing you have the harmlessness of the
+      dove, Harry, for you&rsquo;ve got the other thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that what
+      you call the cunning of the serpent&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wisdom, Harry, not cunning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But here
+      it is&mdash;bare and defenceless, only&mdash;let me warn you&mdash;with a
+      whole battery behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant
+      to Constance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for one who says so much about not thinking of the
+      morrow, you do look rather far forward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But just think: the child is about three months old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her. I
+      don&rsquo;t say that she is to commence her duties at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The training won&rsquo;t be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my love,
+      that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it. And
+      Turner does not give much hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Harry, Harry, don&rsquo;t say so! I can&rsquo;t bear it. To think of the darling
+      child lying like that all her life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven&rsquo;t
+      you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child&rsquo;s nature since her
+      accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying
+      there such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her
+      bonnets inside instead of outside her head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but she needn&rsquo;t have been like that. Wynnie never will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
+      But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid that
+      had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to toddle
+      after something to fetch it for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it be like making a slave of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack of
+      service is the ruin of humanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t train her then like one of our own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and
+      then make a servant of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget that the service would be part of her training from the first;
+      and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her that she
+      was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent her to take
+      care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have perfect
+      service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of service as
+      the essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not education that
+      unfits for service: it is the want of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served
+      me worse than the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they had
+      been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than
+      nine-tenths of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember
+      that they had never been taught service&mdash;the highest accomplishment
+      of all. To that everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there. But
+      for service of this high sort, the education must begin with the beginning
+      of the dawn of will. How often have you wished that you had servants who
+      would believe in you, and serve you with the same truth with which you
+      regarded them! The servants born in a man&rsquo;s house in the old times were
+      more like his children than his servants. Here is a chance for you, as it
+      were of a servant born in your own house. Connie loves the child: the
+      child will love Connie, and find her delight in serving her like a little
+      cherub. Not one of the maids to whom you have referred had ever been
+      taught to think service other than an unavoidable necessity, the end of
+      life being to serve yourself, not to serve others; and hence most of them
+      would escape from it by any marriage almost that they had a chance of
+      making. I don&rsquo;t say all servants are like that; but I do think that most
+      of them are. I know very well that most mistresses are as much to blame
+      for this result as the servants are; but we are not talking about them.
+      Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are forced to do it&mdash;a most
+      degrading condition to be in. But they would not be in any better
+      condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises work is in as
+      bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them free is to get them
+      to regard service not only as their duty, but as therefore honourable, and
+      besides and beyond this, in its own nature divine. In America, the very
+      name of servant is repudiated as inconsistent with human dignity. There is
+      <i>no</i> dignity but of service. How different the whole notion of
+      training is now from what it was in the middle ages! Service was
+      honourable then. No doubt we have made progress as a whole, but in some
+      things we have degenerated sadly. The first thing taught then was how to
+      serve. No man could rise to the honour of knighthood without service. A
+      nobleman&rsquo;s son even had to wait on his father, or to go into the family of
+      another nobleman, and wait upon him as a page, standing behind his chair
+      at dinner. This was an honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was
+      a necessary step to higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To
+      be set free from service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field;
+      to be a squire to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his
+      armour, to see that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap
+      strong; to ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one
+      attacked him, to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable
+      because it was harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And
+      what was this higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this
+      knighthood consist? The very word means simply <i>service</i>. And for
+      what was the knight thus waited upon by his squire? That he might be free
+      to do as he pleased? No, but that he might be free to be the servant of
+      all. By being a squire first, the servant of one, he learned to rise to
+      the higher rank, that of servant of all. His horse was tended, this armour
+      observed, his sword and spear and shield held to his hand, that he might
+      have no trouble looking after himself, but might be free, strong,
+      unwearied, to shoot like an arrow to the rescue of any and every one who
+      needed his ready aid. There was a grand heart of Christianity in that old
+      chivalry, notwithstanding all its abuses which must be no more laid to its
+      charge than the burning of Jews and heretics to Christianity. It was the
+      lack of it, not the presence of it that occasioned the abuses that
+      coexisted with it. Train our Theodora as a holy child-servant, and there
+      will be no need to restrain any impulse of wise affection from pouring
+      itself forth upon her. My firm belief is that we should then love and
+      honour her far more than if we made her just like one of our own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what if she should turn out utterly unfit for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! then would come an obstacle. But it will not come till that discovery
+      is made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if we should be going wrong all the time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, there comes the kind of care that never troubles me, and which I so
+      strongly object to. It won&rsquo;t hurt her anyhow. And we ought always to act
+      upon the ideal; it is the only safe ground of action. When that which
+      contradicts and resists, and would ruin our ideal, opposes us, then we
+      must take measures; but not till then can we take measures, or know what
+      measures it may be necessary to take. But the ideal itself is the only
+      thing worth striving after. Remember what our Lord himself said: &lsquo;Be ye
+      therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will think about it, Harry. There is time enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty. No time only not to think about it. The more you think about it
+      the better. If a thing be a good thing, the more you think about it the
+      better it will look; for its real nature will go on coming out and showing
+      itself. I cannot doubt that you will soon see how good it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We then went home. It was only two days after that my wife said to me&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am more than reconciled to your plan, husband. It seems to me
+      delightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reentered Connie&rsquo;s room, we found that her baby had just waked,
+      and she had managed to get one arm under her, and was trying to comfort
+      her, for she was crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. A SPRING CHAPTER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      More especially now in my old age, I find myself &ldquo;to a lingering motion
+      bound.&rdquo; I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
+      following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons. This
+      may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a spring
+      chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why I have
+      called my story &ldquo;The Seaboard Parish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things: one,
+      a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was a
+      pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so
+      could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
+      about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
+      and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
+      have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
+      seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
+      justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my greed
+      as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves and
+      all, with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my little
+      woman&mdash;a present from the outside world which she loved so much. And
+      as I went there dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror in
+      which, if I could find it, she would see it still more lovely than in a
+      direct looking at itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay in
+      fragments in the drawers and cabinets of my memory. And before I got home
+      I had found all the pieces and put them together; and then it was a lovely
+      little sonnet which a friend of mine had written and allowed me to see
+      many years before. I was in the way of writing verses myself; but I should
+      have been proud to have written this one. I never could have done that.
+      Yet, as far as I knew, it had never seen the light through the windows of
+      print. It was with some difficulty that I got it all right; but I thought
+      I had succeeded very nearly, if not absolutely, and I said it over and
+      over, till I was sure I should not spoil its music or its meaning by
+      halting in the delivery of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
+      been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
+      eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her two
+      hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said what I
+      have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to her.
+      Here it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend had
+      found the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he told me that there
+      was a tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;I know not what among the grass thou art,
+    Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
+    Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
+  To send thine image through them to the heart;
+  But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
+    And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
+    Thou growest up within me from that hour,
+  And through the snow I with the spring depart.
+
+  I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
+    Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
+  There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
+    But thou a life immortal dost begin,
+  Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
+  Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you say it again, papa?&rdquo; said Connie; &ldquo;I do not quite understand
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
+      write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
+      have brought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I may
+      read it quite easily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I promised, and repeated the poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand it a little better,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but the meaning is just like
+      the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give it me in
+      writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what else you
+      have brought me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the plant
+      and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only expressed
+      satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat down with
+      us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;She feels the
+      loss of her mother very much, poor thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old was she, papa?&rdquo; asked Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself, and
+      her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old lady, you
+      know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat on the
+      tablecloth. &lsquo;Mr. Shafton,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;was one of the old school; he would
+      never have done that. I don&rsquo;t know what the world is coming to.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
+      manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say, papa?&rdquo; they asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. &lsquo;O, it&rsquo;s all right now, my
+      dear,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;when you&rsquo;ve taken it up again. But I like good manners,
+      though I live in a cottage now.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she seen better days, then?&rdquo; asked Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a farmer&rsquo;s daughter, and a farmer&rsquo;s widow. I suppose the chief
+      difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead of
+      a good-sized farmhouse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is the story you have to tell us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m coming to that when you have done with your questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have done, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the
+      cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good
+      deal of her mother&rsquo;s sense of dignity about her,&mdash;but I want your
+      mother to hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, do make haste, Wynnie,&rdquo; said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
+      rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, &lsquo;Here it is, at
+      last!&rsquo; She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother&rsquo;s, and was holding it
+      in one hand, while with the other she drew from the pocket&mdash;what do
+      you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Various guesses were hazarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no&mdash;nothing like it. I know you <i>could</i> never guess.
+      Therefore it would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe.
+      The old woman of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was
+      wearing at the very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an
+      iron horseshoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she proceeded at once to do. &lsquo;Do you remember, sir,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;how
+      that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?&rsquo; &lsquo;I do
+      remember having observed it there,&rsquo; I answered; &lsquo;for once when I took
+      notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, &ldquo;I hope you are not afraid
+      of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?&rdquo; And she looked a little offended, and assured me
+      to the contrary.&rsquo; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; her daughter went on, &lsquo;about three months ago, I
+      missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it. And here it is!
+      I can hardly think she can have carried it about all that time without me
+      finding it out, but I don&rsquo;t know. Here it is, anyhow. Perhaps when she
+      felt death drawing nearer, she took it from somewhere where she had hidden
+      it, and put it in her pocket. If I had found it in time, I would have put
+      it in her coffin.&rsquo; &lsquo;But why?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;Do tell me the story about it, if
+      you know it.&rsquo; &lsquo;I know it quite well, for she told me all about it once. It
+      is the shoe of a favourite mare of my father&rsquo;s&mdash;one he used to ride
+      when he went courting my mother. My grandfather did not like to have a
+      young man coming about the house, and so he came after the old folks were
+      gone to bed. But he had a long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had
+      to go over some stones to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread
+      straw there, for it was under the window of my grandfather&rsquo;s room, that
+      her shoes mightn&rsquo;t make a noise and wake him. And that&rsquo;s one of the
+      shoes,&rsquo; she said, holding it up to me. &lsquo;When the mare died, my mother
+      begged my father for the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often
+      stood and patted her neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it was very naughty of her, wasn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;to do that
+      without her father&rsquo;s knowledge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
+      ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might find
+      that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn&rsquo;t a father,
+      we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a child. The
+      father&rsquo;s part has to come first, and teach the child&rsquo;s part. Now, if I
+      might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably it was much
+      softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning, and
+      unreasonable man&mdash;such that it scarcely ever came into the daughter&rsquo;s
+      head that she had anything else to do with regard to him than beware of
+      the consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The whole
+      thing, I allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to blame,
+      and far more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more likely from
+      the high character of the old dame, and the romantic way in which she
+      clung to the memory of the courtship. A true heart only does not grow old.
+      And I have, therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a happy one.
+      Besides, I daresay it was very much the custom of the country where they
+      were, and that makes some difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sure, papa, you wouldn&rsquo;t like any of us to go and do like
+      that,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly not, my dear,&rdquo; I answered, laughing. &ldquo;Nor have I any fear of
+      it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things to
+      trouble me if you did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an <i>if</i>&rdquo;
+       said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to you
+      as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all
+      possible for you to do such a thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too dreadful to talk about, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie; and the subject was
+      dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
+      danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
+      whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
+      wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If the
+      perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked into her
+      own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that she was the
+      doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if she had been
+      deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of the house. This
+      came of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general dissatisfaction
+      with herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith in the divine
+      sympathy, or sufficient confidence of final purification. She never spared
+      herself; and if she was a little severe on the younger ones sometimes, no
+      one was yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all their hard crusts
+      for them, always give them the best and take the worst for herself. If
+      there was any part in the dish that she was helping that she thought
+      nobody would like, she invariably assigned it to her own share. It looked
+      like a determined self-mortification sometimes; but that was not it. She
+      did not care for her own comfort enough to feel it any mortification;
+      though I observed that when her mother or I helped her to anything nice,
+      she ate it with as much relish as the youngest of the party. And her sweet
+      smile was always ready to meet the least kindness that was offered her.
+      Her obedience was perfect, and had been so for very many years, as far as
+      we could see. Indeed, not since she was the merest child had there been
+      any contest between us. Now, of course, there was no demand of obedience:
+      she was simply the best earthly friend that her father and mother had. It
+      often caused me some passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as
+      well as her devotion to her home, might cause her great suffering some
+      day; but when those thoughts came, I just gave her to God to take care of.
+      Her mother sometimes said to her that she would make an excellent wife for
+      a poor man. She would brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a
+      compliment of the best sort. And she did not forget it, as the sequel will
+      show. She would choose to sit with one candle lit when there were two on
+      the table, wasting her eyes to save the candles. &ldquo;Which will you have for
+      dinner to-day, papa, roast beef or boiled?&rdquo; she asked me once, when her
+      mother was too unwell to attend to the housekeeping. And when I replied
+      that I would have whichever she liked best&mdash;&ldquo;The boiled beef lasts
+      longest, I think,&rdquo; she said. Yet she was not only as liberal and kind as
+      any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer, and perhaps more important
+      for the final formation of a character, carefully just to everyone with
+      whom she had any dealings. Her sense of law was very strong. Law with her
+      was something absolute, and not to be questioned. In her childhood there
+      was one lady to whom for years she showed a decided aversion, and we could
+      not understand it, for it was the most inoffensive Miss Boulderstone. When
+      she was nearly grown up, one of us happening to allude to the fact, she
+      volunteered an explanation. Miss Boulderstone had happened to call one day
+      when Wynnie, then between three and four was in disgrace&mdash;<i>in the
+      corner</i>, in fact. Miss Boulderstone interceded for her; and this was
+      the whole front of her offending.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>was</i> so angry!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;&lsquo;As if my papa did not know best when
+      I ought to come out of the corner!&rsquo; I said to myself. And I couldn&rsquo;t bear
+      her for ever so long after that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
+      favourite before she died. She left Wynnie&mdash;for she and her brother
+      were the last of their race&mdash;a death&rsquo;s-head watch, which had been in
+      the family she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen
+      Elizabeth&rsquo;s time. I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as well
+      repaired as its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since, though not
+      with the greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an old
+      death&rsquo;s-head, the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears it to
+      this day, and wouldn&rsquo;t part with it for the best watch in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more able
+      to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as yet my
+      story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I will fulfil
+      them, and I shall be content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old couple,
+      for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they were not born
+      old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a decaying family that
+      had not left the land on which they were born for a great many generations&mdash;though
+      the old people had not, of what the French call sentiments, one between
+      them, they were yet capable of a stronger and, I had almost said, more
+      romantic attachment, than many couples who have married from love; for the
+      lady&rsquo;s sole trouble in dying was what her brother <i>would</i> do without
+      her; and from the day of her death, he grew more and more dull and
+      seemingly stupid. Nothing gave him any pleasure but having Wynnie to
+      dinner with him. I knew that it must be very dull for her, but she went
+      often, and I never heard her complain of it, though she certainly did look
+      fagged&mdash;not <i>bored</i>, observe, but fagged&mdash;showing that she
+      had been exerting herself to meet the difficulties of the situation. When
+      the good man died, we found that he had left all his money in my hands, in
+      trust for the poor of the parish, to be applied in any way I thought best.
+      This involved me in much perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to
+      make money useful to the poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property my
+      wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private fortune,
+      and the income of several years (not my income from the church, it may be
+      as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the encumbrances. But even
+      then there remained much to be done, if I would be the good steward that
+      was not to be ashamed at his Lord&rsquo;s coming. First of all there were many
+      cottages to be built for the labourers on the estate. If the farmers would
+      not, or could not, help, I must do it; for to provide decent dwellings for
+      them, was clearly one of the divine conditions in the righteous tenure of
+      property, whatever the human might be; for it was not for myself alone, or
+      for myself chiefly, that this property was given to me; it was for those
+      who lived upon it. Therefore I laid out what money I could, not only in
+      getting all the land clearly in its right relation to its owner, but in
+      doing the best I could for those attached to it who could not help
+      themselves. And when I hint to my reader that I had some conscience in
+      paying my curate, though, as they had no children, they did not require so
+      much as I should otherwise have felt compelled to give them, he will
+      easily see that as my family grew up I could not have so much to give away
+      of my own as I should have liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr.
+      Boulderstone was the more acceptable to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One word more ere I finish this chapter.&mdash;I should not like my
+      friends to think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because
+      I have made no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the
+      first time, because of my daughter&rsquo;s illness. It was much easier to give
+      them now than when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty of room
+      in the old hall. But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar gathering
+      there every Easter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not mentioned
+      him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie&rsquo;s accident. The
+      fact was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him, a long holiday.
+      Martha had had several disappointing illnesses, and her general health had
+      suffered so much in consequence that there was even some fear of her
+      lungs, and a winter in the south of France had been strongly recommended.
+      Upon this I came in with more than a recommendation, and insisted that
+      they should go. They had started in the beginning of October, and had not
+      returned up to the time of which I am now about to write&mdash;somewhere
+      in the beginning of the month of April. But my sister was now almost quite
+      well, and I was not sorry to think that I should soon have a little more
+      leisure for such small literary pursuits as I delighted in&mdash;to my own
+      enrichment, and consequently to the good of my parishioners and friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was, then, in the beginning of April that I received one morning an
+      epistle from an old college friend of mine, with whom I had renewed my
+      acquaintance of late, through the pleasure which he was kind enough to say
+      he had derived from reading a little book of mine upon the relation of the
+      mind of St. Paul to the gospel story. His name was Shepherd&mdash;a good
+      name for a clergyman. In his case both Christian name and patronymic might
+      remind him well of his duty. David Shepherd ought to be a good clergyman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find
+      my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is Shepherd,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to
+      give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as he
+      understands I have a curate as good as myself&mdash;that is what the old
+      fellow says&mdash;it might not suit me to take my family to his place for
+      the summer. He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all
+      good. His house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I
+      should not like to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the
+      letter for yourself, and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back so
+      fresh and active that it will be no oppression to him to take the whole of
+      the duty here. I will run and ask Turner whether it would be safe to move
+      Connie, and whether the sea-air would be good for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would think you were only twenty, husband&mdash;you make up your mind
+      so quickly, and are in such a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many years
+      since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once more, in
+      its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing between us and
+      America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited me so that my
+      wife&rsquo;s reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary to bring me to my
+      usually quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old grannie&rsquo;s pardon,
+      and set off to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her to read and ponder
+      Shepherd&rsquo;s letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think, Turner?&rdquo; I said, and told him the case. He looked
+      rather grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When would you think of going?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the beginning of June.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nearly two months,&rdquo; he said, thoughtfully. &ldquo;And Miss Connie was not the
+      worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The better, I do think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has she had any increase of pain since?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She could make it by easy stages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such a
+      thorough change in every way&mdash;if only it could be managed without
+      fatigue and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between
+      this and that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner you
+      get her out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit for
+      that yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid&rsquo;s
+      instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than
+      those of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to
+      anything involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must
+      not judge that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two
+      patients, who considered themselves <i>bedlars</i>, as you will find the
+      common people in the part you are going to, call them&mdash;bedridden,
+      that is. One of them I persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although
+      her sense of inability was anything but feigned, and she will be a
+      sufferer to the end of her days, yet she goes about the house without much
+      inconvenience, and I suspect is not only physically but morally the better
+      for it. The other would not consent to try, and I believe lies there
+      still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The will has more to do with most things than people generally suppose,&rdquo;
+       I said. &ldquo;Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we resolve to make
+      the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot
+      tell beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a
+      respecter of persons, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned to my wife. She was in Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what do you think of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of Shepherd&rsquo;s letter, of course,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been ordering the dinner since, Harry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dinner!&rdquo; I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife
+      was only teasing me. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the dinner to the Atlantic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?&rdquo; said Connie, from whose roguish
+      eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and that <i>she</i>
+      was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters of
+      the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the
+      Universal Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa!&rdquo; laughed Connie; &ldquo;you know what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you really mean, papa,&rdquo; she said &ldquo;that you will take me to the
+      Atlantic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as
+      possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan,
+      which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling! You have hurt yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But I
+      soon found that I hadn&rsquo;t any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One
+      always knows where to find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very bewitching
+      whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;I mean to try whether my dolly won&rsquo;t bear moving. One
+      thing is clear, I can&rsquo;t go without it. Do you think you could be got on
+      the sofa to-day without hurting you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet. Mamma,
+      do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the
+      conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the
+      lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips,
+      and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face
+      showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had had
+      to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a sharp sight you must have, child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are. Neither
+      did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets in
+      my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t say so!&rdquo; I exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only making
+      a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Isn&rsquo;t it a wonderful fact?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank God
+      for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning to
+      recover a little. But we mustn&rsquo;t make too much of it, lest I should be
+      mistaken,&rdquo; I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in
+      her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both silent,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to think of ever walking out with you again, and
+      feeling the wind on my face! I can hardly believe it possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so mild, I think you might have half that pleasure at once,&rdquo; I
+      answered..
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I opened the window, let the spring air gently move her hair for one
+      moment, and then shut it again. Connie breathed deep, and said after a
+      little pause,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea how delightful it was. To think that I have been in the way
+      of breathing that every moment for so many years and never thought about
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not always just like that in this climate. But I ought not to have
+      made that remark when I wanted to make this other: that I suspect we shall
+      find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists chiefly in the
+      closing of the human eyes; that at least far more of it than people think
+      remains about us still, only we are so filled with foolish desires and
+      evil cares, that we cannot see or hear, cannot even smell or taste the
+      pleasant things round about us. We have need to pray in regard to the
+      right receiving of the things of the senses even, &lsquo;Lord, open thou our
+      hearts to understand thy word;&rsquo; for each of these things is as certainly a
+      word of God as Jesus is the Word of God. He has made nothing in vain. All
+      is for our teaching. Shall I tell you what such a breath of fresh air
+      makes me think of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It comes to me,&rdquo; said Connie, &ldquo;like forgiveness when I was a little girl
+      and was naughty. I used to feel just like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the same kind of thing I feel,&rdquo; I said&mdash;&ldquo;as if life from the
+      Spirit of God were coming into my soul: I think of the wind that bloweth
+      where it listeth. Wind and spirit are the same word in the Greek; and the
+      Latin word <i>spirit</i> comes even nearer to what we are saying, for it
+      is the wind as <i>breathed</i>. And now, Connie, I will tell you&mdash;and
+      you will see how I am growing able to talk to you like quite an old friend&mdash;what
+      put me in such a delight with Mr. Shepherd&rsquo;s letter and so exposed me to
+      be teased by mamma and you. As I read it, there rose up before me a vision
+      of one sight of the sea which I had when I was a young man, long before I
+      saw your mamma. I had gone out for a walk along some high downs. But I
+      ought to tell you that I had been working rather hard at Cambridge, and
+      the life seemed to be all gone out of me. Though my holidays had come,
+      they did not feel quite like holidays&mdash;not as holidays used to feel
+      when I was a boy. Even when walking along those downs with the scents of
+      sixteen grasses or so in my brain, like a melody with the odour of the
+      earth for the accompaniment upon which it floated, and with just enough of
+      wind to stir them up and set them in motion, I could not feel at all. I
+      remembered something of what I had used to feel in such places, but
+      instead of believing in that, I doubted now whether it had not been all a
+      trick that I played myself&mdash;a fancied pleasure only. I was walking
+      along, then, with the sea behind me. It was a warm, cloudy day&mdash;I had
+      had no sunshine since I came out. All at once I turned&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know
+      why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had seen it last, not all gray.
+      It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all over with drops, pools, and lakes
+      of light, of all shades of depth, from a light shimmer of tremulous gray,
+      through a half light that turned the prevailing lead colour into
+      translucent green that seemed to grow out of its depths&mdash;through
+      this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and deepening till my very soul
+      was stung by the triumph of the intensity of its molten silver. There was
+      no sun upon me. But there were breaks in the clouds over the sea, through
+      which, the air being filled with vapour, I could see the long lines of the
+      sun-rays descending on the waters like rain&mdash;so like a rain of light
+      that the water seemed to plash up in light under their fall. I questioned
+      the past no more; the present seized upon me, and I knew that the past was
+      true, and that nature was more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I
+      could grasp. It was a lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the
+      God that made the glory and my soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While I spoke Connie&rsquo;s tears had been flowing quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mamma and I were making fun while you were seeing such things as
+      those!&rdquo; she said pitifully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t hurt them one bit, my darling&mdash;neither mamma nor you. If
+      I had been the least cross about it, as I should have been when I was as
+      young as at the time of which I was thinking, that would have ruined the
+      vision entirely. But your merriment only made me enjoy it more. And, my
+      Connie, I hope you will see the Atlantic before long; and if one vision
+      should come as brilliant as that, we shall be fortunate indeed, if we went
+      all the way to the west to see that only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa! I dare hardly think of it&mdash;it is too delightful. But do you
+      think we shall really go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do. Here comes your mamma&mdash;I am going to say to Shepherd, my dear,
+      that I will take his parish in hand, and if I cannot, after all, go
+      myself, will find some one, so that he need be in no anxiety from the
+      uncertainty which must hang over our movements even till the experiment
+      itself is made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, husband. I am quite satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as I watched Connie, I saw that hope and expectation did much to
+      prepare her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. CONNIE&rsquo;S DREAM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Turner, being a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to invent,
+      and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of litter,
+      which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our own carriage
+      for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without disturbing her, and
+      placed in a similar manner in the railway carriage. He had laid Connie
+      repeatedly upon it before he was satisfied that the arrangement of the
+      springs, &amp;c., was successful. But at length she declared that it was
+      perfect, and that she would not mind being carried across the Arabian
+      desert on a camel&rsquo;s back with that under her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the season advanced, she continued to improve. I shall never forget the
+      first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an infant
+      coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of a child of
+      eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received the new
+      impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much for her at
+      first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a wild thing
+      on a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more than she
+      could bear. After she was laid down she closed her eyes, and the smile
+      that flickered about her mouth was of a sort that harmonised entirely with
+      the two great tears that crept softly out from under her eyelids, and
+      sank, rather than ran, down her cheeks. She lay so that she faced a rich
+      tract of gently receding upland, plentifully wooded to the horizon&rsquo;s edge,
+      and through the wood peeped the white and red houses of a little hamlet,
+      with the square tower of its church just rising above the trees. A kind of
+      frame was made to the whole picture by the nearer trees of our own woods,
+      through an opening in which, evidently made or left for its sake, the
+      distant prospect was visible. It was a morning in early summer, when the
+      leaves were not quite full-grown but almost, and their green was shining
+      and pure as the blue of the sky, when the air had no touch of bitterness
+      or of lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and yet filled the lungs with
+      the reviving as of a draught of cold water. We had fastened the carriage
+      umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade her perfectly without
+      obscuring her prospect; and behind this we all crept, leaving her to come
+      to herself without being looked at, for emotion is a shy and sacred thing
+      and should be tenderly hidden by those who are near. The bees kept very <i>beesy</i>
+      all about us. To see one huge fellow, as big as three ordinary ones with
+      pieces of red and yellow about him, as if he were the beadle of all
+      bee-dom, and overgrown in consequence&mdash;to see him, I say, down in a
+      little tuft of white clover, rolling about in it, hardly able to move for
+      fatness, yet bumming away as if his business was to express the delight of
+      the whole creation&mdash;was a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so
+      light that they seemed to tumble up into the air, and get down again with
+      difficulty. They bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of
+      purpose. &ldquo;If I could but see once, for an hour, into the mind of a
+      butterfly,&rdquo; I thought, &ldquo;it would be to me worth all the natural history I
+      ever read. If I could but see why he changes his mind so often and so
+      suddenly&mdash;what he saw about that flower to make him seek it&mdash;then
+      why, on a nearer approach, he should decline further acquaintance with it,
+      and go rocking away through the air, to do the same fifty times over again&mdash;it
+      would give me an insight into all animal and vegetable life that ages of
+      study could not bring me up to.&rdquo; I was thinking all this behind my
+      daughter&rsquo;s umbrella, while a lark, whose body had melted quite away in the
+      heavenly spaces, was scattering bright beads of ringing melody straight
+      down upon our heads; while a cock was crowing like a clarion from the
+      home-farm, as if in defiance of the golden glitter of his silent brother
+      on the roof of the stable; while a little stream that scampered down the
+      same slope as the lawn lay upon, from a well in the stable-yard, mingled
+      its sweet undertone of contentment with the jubilation of the lark and the
+      business-like hum of the bees; and while white clouds floated in the
+      majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the heavens. The air was so
+      full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the crude substance that
+      God might take to make babies&rsquo; souls of&mdash;only the very simile smells
+      of materialism, and therefore I do not like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; said Connie at length, and I was beside her in a moment. Her face
+      looked almost glorified with delight: there was a hush of that awe upon it
+      which is perhaps one of the deepest kinds of delight. She put out her thin
+      white hand, took hold of a button of my coat, drew me down towards her,
+      and said in a whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think God is here, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do, my darling,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t <i>he</i> enjoy this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear. He wouldn&rsquo;t make us enjoy it if he did not enjoy it. It
+      would be to deceive us to make us glad and blessed, while our Father did
+      not care about it, or how it came to us. At least it would amount to
+      making us no longer his children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad you think so. I do. And I shall enjoy it so much more now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could hardly finish her sentence, but burst out sobbing so that I was
+      afraid she would hurt herself. I saw, however, that it was best to leave
+      her to quiet herself, and motioned to the rest to keep back and let her
+      recover as she could. The emotion passed off in a summer shower, and when
+      I went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet landscape
+      after the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle game of her
+      own past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry&mdash;merrier,
+      notwithstanding her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at that comical sparrow,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Look how he cocks his head
+      first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is he
+      bumptious, or what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys; and I
+      suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
+      understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to school,&rdquo;
+       said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the sparrows,&rdquo;
+       I answered. &ldquo;Look at them now,&rdquo; I exclaimed, as a little crowd of them
+      suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment before, and exploded
+      in objurgation and general unintelligible excitement. After some obscure
+      fluttering of wings and pecking, they all vanished except two, which
+      walked about in a dignified manner, trying apparently to seem quite
+      unconscious each of the other&rsquo;s presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it was a political meeting of some sort,&rdquo; said Connie, laughing
+      merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they have this advantage over us,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;that they get
+      through their business whatever it may be, with considerably greater
+      expedition than we get through ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A short silence followed, during which Connie lay contemplating
+      everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think we girls are like, then, papa?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say you don&rsquo;t know, now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to know something more about you than I do about schoolboys. And
+      I think I do know a little about girls&mdash;not much though. They puzzle
+      me a good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t help doing that, papa,&rdquo; interrupted Connie, adding with her old
+      roguishness, &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t pass yourself off for very knowing for that. By
+      the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us,
+      passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at best&mdash;a
+      creature you can&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, Connie, I think I understand you almost as well as
+      mamma. But there isn&rsquo;t so much to understand yet, you know, as there will
+      be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her merriment returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me what girls are like, then, or I shall sulk all day because you
+      say there isn&rsquo;t so much in me as in mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think, if the boys are like sparrows, the girls are like
+      swallows. Did you ever watch them before rain, Connie, skimming about over
+      the lawn as if it were water, low towards its surface, but never
+      alighting? You never see them grubbing after worms. Nothing less than
+      things with wings like themselves will satisfy them. They will be obliged
+      to the earth only for a little mud to build themselves nests with. For the
+      rest, they live in the air, and on the creatures of the air. And then,
+      when they fancy the air begins to be uncivil, sending little shoots of
+      cold through their warm feathers, they vanish. They won&rsquo;t stand it.
+      They&rsquo;re off to a warmer climate, and you never know till you find they&rsquo;re
+      not there any more. There, Connie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, papa, whether you are making game of us or not. If you are
+      not, then I wish all you say were quite true of us. If you are then I
+      think it is not quite like you to be satirical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no believer in satire, Connie. And I didn&rsquo;t mean any. The swallows
+      are lovely creatures, and there would be no harm if the girls were a
+      little steadier than the swallows. Further satire than that I am innocent
+      of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind that much, papa. Only I&rsquo;m steady enough, and no thanks to me
+      for it,&rdquo; she added with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all for the sake of your wings that you&rsquo;re kept in
+      your nest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not stay out long this first day, for the life the air gave her
+      soon tired her weak body. But the next morning she was brighter and
+      better, and longing to get up and go out again. When she was once more
+      laid on her couch on the lawn, in the midst of the world of light and
+      busy-ness, in which the light was the busiest of all, she said to me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, I had such a strange dream last night: shall I tell it you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, my dear. I am very fond of dreams that have any sense in
+      them&mdash;or even of any that have good nonsense in them. I woke this
+      morning, saying to myself, &lsquo;Dante, the poet, must have been a respectable
+      man, for he was permitted by the council of Florence to carry the Nicene
+      Creed and the Multiplication Table in his coat of arms.&rsquo; Now tell me your
+      dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie laughed. All the household tried to make Connie laugh, and
+      generally succeeded. It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was
+      sure to be recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in
+      making Connie laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine wasn&rsquo;t a dream to make me laugh. It was too dreadful at first, and
+      too delightful afterwards. I suppose it was getting out for the first time
+      yesterday that made me dream it. I thought I was lying quite still,
+      without breathing even, with my hands straight down by my sides and my
+      eyes closed. I did not choose to open them, for I knew that if I did I
+      should see nothing but the inside of the lid of my coffin. I did not mind
+      it much at first, for I was very quiet, and not uncomfortable. Everything
+      was as silent as it should be, for I was ten feet and a half under the
+      surface of the earth in the churchyard. Old Sogers was not far from me on
+      one side, and that was a comfort; only there was a thick wall of earth
+      between. But as the time went on, I began to get uncomfortable. I could
+      not help thinking how long I should have to wait for the resurrection.
+      Somehow I had forgotten all that you teach us about that. Perhaps it was a
+      punishment&mdash;the dream&mdash;for forgetting it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silly child! Your dream is far better than your reflections.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll go on with my dream. I lay a long time till I got very tired,
+      and wanted to get up, O, so much! But still I lay, and although I tried, I
+      could not move hand or foot. At last I burst out crying. I was ashamed of
+      crying in my coffin, but I couldn&rsquo;t bear it any longer. I thought I was
+      quite disgraced, for everybody was expected to be perfectly quiet and
+      patient down there. But the moment I began to cry, I heard a sound. And
+      when I listened it was the sound of spades and pickaxes. It went on and
+      on, and came nearer and nearer. And then&mdash;it was so strange&mdash;I
+      was dreadfully frightened at the idea of the light and the wind, and of
+      the people seeing me in my coffin and my night-dress, and tried to
+      persuade myself that it was somebody else they were digging for, or that
+      they were only going to lay another coffin over mine. And I thought that
+      if it was you, papa, I shouldn&rsquo;t mind how long I lay there, for I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word to each
+      other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer, and at last
+      a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through, upon the lid of
+      the coffin, right over my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Here she is, poor thing!&rsquo; I heard a sweet voice say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;m so glad we&rsquo;ve found her,&rsquo; said another voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;She couldn&rsquo;t bear it any longer,&rsquo; said a third more pitiful voice than
+      either of the others. &lsquo;I heard her first,&rsquo; it went on. &lsquo;I was away up in
+      Orion, when I thought I heard a woman crying that oughtn&rsquo;t to be crying.
+      And I stopped and listened. And I heard her again. Then I knew that it was
+      one of the buried ones, and that she had been buried long enough, and was
+      ready for the resurrection. So as any business can wait except that, I
+      flew here and there till I fell in with the rest of you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, papa, that this must have been because of what you were saying
+      the other evening about the mysticism of St. Paul; that while he defended
+      with all his might the actual resurrection of Christ and the resurrection
+      of those he came to save, he used it as meaning something more yet, as a
+      symbol for our coming out of the death of sin into the life of truth.
+      Isn&rsquo;t that right, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear; I believe so. But I want to hear your dream first, and then
+      your way of accounting for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t much more of it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be the best of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I allow that. Well, while they spoke&mdash;it was a wonderfully
+      clear and connected dream: I never had one like it for that, or for
+      anything else&mdash;they were clearing away the earth and stones from the
+      top of my coffin. And I lay trembling and expecting to be looked at, like
+      a thing in a box as I was, every moment. But they lifted me, coffin and
+      all, out of the grave, for I felt the motion of it up. Then they set it
+      down, and I heard them taking the lid off. But after the lid was off, it
+      did not seem to make much difference to me. I could not open my eyes. I
+      saw no light, and felt no wind blowing upon me. But I heard whispering
+      about me. Then I felt warm, soft hands washing my face, and then I felt
+      wafts of wind coming on my face, and thought they came from the waving of
+      wings. And when they had washed my eyes, the air came upon them so sweet
+      and cool! and I opened them, I thought, and here I was lying on this
+      couch, with butterflies and bees flitting and buzzing about me, the brook
+      singing somewhere near me, and a lark up in the sky. But there were no
+      angels&mdash;only plenty of light and wind and living creatures. And I
+      don&rsquo;t think I ever knew before what happiness meant. Wasn&rsquo;t it a
+      resurrection, papa, to come out of the grave into such a world as this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed it was, my darling&mdash;and a very beautiful and true dream.
+      There is no need for me to moralise it to you, for you have done so for
+      yourself already. But not only do I think that the coming out of sin into
+      goodness, out of unbelief into faith in God, is like your dream; but I do
+      expect that no dream of such delight can come up to the sense of fresh
+      life and being that we shall have when we get on the higher body after
+      this one won&rsquo;t serve our purpose any longer, and is worn out and cast
+      aside. The very ability of the mind, whether of itself, or by some
+      inspiration of the Almighty, to dream such things, is a proof of our
+      capacity for such things, a proof, I think, that for such things we were
+      made. Here comes in the chance for faith in God&mdash;the confidence in
+      his being and perfection that he would not have made us capable without
+      meaning to fill that capacity. If he is able to make us capable, that is
+      the harder half done already. The other he can easily do. And if he is
+      love he will do it. You should thank God for that dream, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid to do that, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is as much as to fear that there is one place to which David might
+      have fled, where God would not find him&mdash;the most terrible of all
+      thoughts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you mean, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dreamland, my dear. If it is right to thank God for a beautiful thought&mdash;I
+      mean a thought of strength and grace giving you fresh life and hope&mdash;why
+      should you be less bold to thank him when such thoughts arise in plainer
+      shape&mdash;take such vivid forms to your mind that they seem to come
+      through the doors of the eyes into the vestibule of the brain, and thence
+      into the inner chambers of the soul?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. THE JOURNEY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
+      journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
+      prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the sojourn.
+      First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer,
+      consisting, as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground
+      ginger, and cold water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge,
+      exhausted and renewed about twelve times before the day of departure
+      arrived; and when at last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered
+      with dismay that they had drunk the last drop two days before, and there
+      was none in stock. Then there was a wonderful and more successful hoarding
+      of marbles, of a variety so great that my memory refuses to bear the names
+      of the different kinds, which, I think, must have greatly increased since
+      the time when I too was a boy, when some marbles&mdash;one of real, white
+      marble with red veins especially&mdash;produced in my mind something of
+      the delight that a work of art produces now. These were carefully
+      deposited in one of the many divisions of a huge old hair-trunk, which
+      they had got their uncle Weir, who could use his father&rsquo;s tools with
+      pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them with a multiplicity of
+      boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and slides, that was quite
+      bewildering. In this same box was stowed also a quantity of hair, the
+      gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the premises. This was for making
+      fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on the part of Harry that it was to be
+      employed in catching whales and crocodiles. Then all their favourite books
+      were stowed away in the same chest, in especial a packet of a dozen penny
+      books, of which I think I could give a complete list now. For one
+      afternoon as I searched about in the lumber-room after a set of old
+      library steps, which I wanted to get repaired, I came upon the chest, and
+      opening it, discovered my boys&rsquo; hoard, and in it this packet of books. I
+      sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through, from Jack the
+      Giant-killer down to Hop o&rsquo; my Thumb without rising, and this in the broad
+      daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the rose-coloured
+      silken seat, richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair with three
+      golden legs. Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say the names
+      of them, over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding now that
+      they had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something in
+      potency, they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these, and
+      Charlie not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding, in
+      virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
+      sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
+      string; a rabbit&rsquo;s skin; a Noah&rsquo;s ark; an American clock, that refused to
+      go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of lead-soldiers,
+      and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt ball having an
+      eagle of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this
+      magazine could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to
+      follow us to the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent on
+      before us, but the boys had intended the precious box to go with
+      themselves. Knowing well, however, how little they would miss it, and with
+      what shouts of south-sea discovery they would greet the forgotten treasure
+      when they returned, I insisted on the lumbering article being left in
+      peace. So that, as man goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever he may
+      have accumulated before the fatal moment, they had to set off for the far
+      country without chest or ginger-beer&mdash;not therefore altogether so
+      desolate and unprovided for as they imagined. The abandoned treasure was
+      forgotten the moment the few tears it had occasioned were wiped away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The sun
+      shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows were
+      twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the dear
+      old house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to leave the swallows behind,&rdquo; said Wynnie, as she stepped into
+      the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already there, eager
+      and strong-hearted for the journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
+      forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed to
+      enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of the
+      meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we met
+      bravely diligent at their day&rsquo;s work, as they trudged along the road with
+      wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I could see
+      her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its expression
+      that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a brown-faced gipsy
+      family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the passing carriage. A
+      fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under the convoy of the
+      parent duck, next attracted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look; look. Isn&rsquo;t that delicious?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I should like it though,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shouldn&rsquo;t you like, Wynnie?&rdquo; asked her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They feel it with their legs and their webby toes,&rdquo; said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is some consolation,&rdquo; answered Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
+      winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie&rsquo;s illness had not
+      in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies&mdash;had
+      rather, as it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and
+      sympathetic, so that the things around her could enter her soul even more
+      easily than before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in reality
+      brought her into closer contact with the movements of all vitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station. Everybody
+      almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for Connie&rsquo;s sake
+      chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had forgotten to say
+      to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak to him. The same
+      instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie was the centre of
+      all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother or sister. Had she
+      been a martyr who had stood the test and received her aureole, she could
+      hardly have been more regarded. The common use of the word martyr is a
+      curious instance of how words get degraded. The sufferings involved in
+      martyrdom, and not the pure will giving occasion to that suffering, is
+      fixed upon by the common mind as the martyrdom. The witness-bearing is
+      lost sight of, except we can suppose that &ldquo;a martyr to the toothache&rdquo;
+       means a witness of the fact of the toothache and its tortures. But while
+      <i>martyrdom</i> really means a bearing for the sake of the truth, yet
+      there is a way in which any suffering, even that we have brought upon
+      ourselves, may become martyrdom. When it is so borne that the sufferer
+      therein bears witness to the presence and fatherhood of God, in quiet,
+      hopeful submission to his will, in gentle endurance, and that effort after
+      cheerfulness which is not seldom to be seen where the effort is hardest to
+      make; more than all, perhaps, and rarest of all, when it is accepted as
+      the just and merciful consequence of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly,
+      and with righteous shame, as the cleansing of the Father&rsquo;s hand,
+      indicating that repentance unto life which lifts the sinner out of his
+      sins, and makes him such that the holiest men of old would talk to him
+      with gladness and respect, then indeed it may be called a martyrdom. This
+      latter could not be Connie&rsquo;s case, but the former was hers, and so far she
+      might be called a martyr, even as the old women of the village designated
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
+      post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
+      abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
+      exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
+      trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
+      do with Miss Connie&rsquo;s baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so
+      long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant,
+      who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the
+      establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to
+      everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the
+      wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could
+      not possibly get on without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise beside
+      the driver from the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than otherwise at
+      the noise of the youngsters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Marshmallows,&rdquo; they were shouting at the top of their voices,
+      as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
+      wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody&rsquo;s ears on the
+      open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
+      condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that there
+      was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them as much
+      liberty as could be afforded them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now in
+      wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany us a
+      good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us in
+      moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
+      skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and only
+      at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times on the
+      way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the streets
+      delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the children and
+      servants, all but my wife&rsquo;s maid, on before us, under the charge of
+      Walter. This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped only the
+      night, for Connie found herself quite able to go on the next morning. Here
+      Turner left us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked a little out of
+      spirits after his departure, but soon recovered herself. The next night we
+      spent at a small town on the borders of Devonshire, which was the limit of
+      our railway travelling. Here we remained for another whole day, for the
+      remnant of the journey across part of Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore
+      must be posted, and was a good five hours&rsquo; work. We started about eleven
+      o&rsquo;clock, full of spirits at the thought that we had all but accomplished
+      the only part of the undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness.
+      Connie was quite merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open
+      carriage with a hood. Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the
+      maid in the rumble, and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we
+      had four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and
+      thankfulness, who would not be happy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I
+      altogether understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment has
+      something to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion, the
+      change of scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the next
+      turn in the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the
+      pine-trees especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the
+      harness as you pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses, the
+      glitter and the shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy faces, the
+      scent of burning wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a thousand
+      other things combine to make such a journey delightful. But I believe it
+      needs something more than this&mdash;something even closer to the human
+      life&mdash;to account for the pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect it
+      is its living symbolism; the hidden relations which it bears to the
+      eternal soul in its aspirations and longings&mdash;ever following after,
+      ever attaining, never satisfied. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. A
+      man, you will allow, perhaps, may be content although he is not and cannot
+      be happy: I feel inclined to turn all this the other way, saying that a
+      man ought always to be happy, never to be content. You will see I do not
+      say <i>contented</i>; I say <i>content</i>. Here comes in his faith: his
+      life is hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded. All things are
+      his, to become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as his being
+      enlarges to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary
+      incompleteness falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God&rsquo;s
+      idea he is complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God
+      the Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
+      gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch as
+      he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I leave
+      it, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt I
+      was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with
+      full confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man
+      be happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the
+      feeble knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill?
+      True, the fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp of
+      life; but if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth; if
+      less of fire, more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light.
+      Verily, youth is good, but old age is better&mdash;to the man who forsakes
+      not his youth when his youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature
+      do not depend upon youth or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose
+      meekness inherits the earth. The smell of that field of beans gives me
+      more delight now than ever it could have given me when I was a youth. And
+      if I ask myself why I find it is simply because I have more faith now than
+      I had then. It came to me then as an accident of nature&mdash;a passing
+      pleasure flung to me only as the dogs&rsquo; share of the crumbs. Now I believe
+      that God <i>means</i> that odour of the bean-field; that when Jesus
+      smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in Galilee, he thought of his
+      Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if I should never smell it
+      again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age should make me deaf as
+      the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope you are too, or will
+      be before you have done with this same beautiful mystical life of ours.
+      More and more nature becomes to me one of God&rsquo;s books of poetry&mdash;not
+      his grandest&mdash;that is history&mdash;but his loveliest, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy? I
+      will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
+      describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
+      countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in
+      a word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn&rsquo;s face was bright with the
+      brightness of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a
+      little weary, lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping
+      towards the earth. Wynnie&rsquo;s face was bright with the brightness of the
+      morning star, ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that
+      brightens at the sun&rsquo;s approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its
+      light, and somewhat sad because severe. Connie&rsquo;s face was bright with the
+      brightness of a lake in the rosy evening, the sound of the river flowing
+      in and the sound of the river flowing forth just audible, but itself
+      still, and content to be still and mirror the sunset. Dora&rsquo;s was bright
+      with the brightness of a marigold that follows the sun without knowing it;
+      and Eliza&rsquo;s was bright with the brightness of a half-blown cabbage rose,
+      radiating good-humour. This last is not a good simile, but I cannot find a
+      better. I confess failure, and go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
+      carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
+      figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they were,
+      where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her to carry
+      her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads through
+      which were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches of heather
+      all about were showing their bells, though not yet in their autumnal
+      outburst of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded of Scotland, in which
+      I had travelled a good deal between the ages of twenty and
+      five-and-twenty. The further I went the stronger I felt the resemblance.
+      The look of the fields, the stone fences that divided them, the shape and
+      colour and materials of the houses, the aspect of the people, the feeling
+      of the air, and of the earth and sky generally, made me imagine myself in
+      a milder and more favoured Scotland. The west wind was fresh, but had none
+      of that sharp edge which one can so often detect in otherwise warm winds
+      blowing under a hot sun. Though she had already travelled so many miles,
+      Connie brightened up within a few minutes after we got on this moor; and
+      we had not gone much farther before a shout from the rumble informed us
+      that keen-eyed little Dora had discovered the Atlantic: a dip in the high
+      coast revealed it blue and bright. We soon lost sight of it again, but in
+      Connie&rsquo;s eyes it seemed to linger still. As often as I looked round, the
+      blue of them seemed the reflection of the sea in their little convex
+      mirrors. Ethelwyn&rsquo;s eyes, too, were full of it, and a flush on her
+      generally pale cheek showed that she too expected the ocean. After a few
+      miles along this breezy expanse, we began to descend towards the
+      sea-level. Down the winding of a gradual slope, interrupted by steep
+      descents, we approached this new chapter in our history. We came again
+      upon a few trees here and there, all with their tops cut off in a plane
+      inclined upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds, like a sweeping
+      scythe, bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep their tops mown
+      with their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the crests of the
+      broken waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages, with streets
+      narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, that needed careful driving and the
+      frequent pressure of the break upon the wheel. And now the sea shone upon
+      us with nearer greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear its talk with
+      the shore. At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the last level,
+      drove over a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw the land vanish
+      in the sea&mdash;a wide bay; then drove over another wooden drawbridge,
+      and along the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops and
+      schooners. Then came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an ascent,
+      and ere we reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by loud
+      shouts, and the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top of a
+      stone wall to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept quiet,
+      knowing that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing about
+      the evil it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch, leading
+      through the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The journey was
+      over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the county of
+      Cornwall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which
+      nurse had fixed upon for her&mdash;the best in the house, of course,
+      again. She did seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at
+      once, and in half an hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very
+      glad. After dinner I went up to Connie&rsquo;s room. There I found her fast
+      asleep on the sofa, and Wynnie as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The
+      drive and the sea air had had the same effect on both of them. But pleased
+      as I was to see Connie sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see
+      Wynnie asleep on the floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give to a
+      father and mother to see this or that child asleep! It is when her kittens
+      are asleep that the cat creeps away to look after her own comforts. Our
+      cat chose to have her kittens in my study once, and as I would not have
+      her further disturbed than to give them another cushion to lie on in place
+      of that which belonged to my sofa, I had many opportunities of watching
+      them as I wrote, or prepared my sermons. But I must not talk about the cat
+      and her kittens now. When parents see their children asleep, especially if
+      they have been suffering in any way, they breathe more freely; a load is
+      lifted off their minds; their responsibility seems over; the children have
+      gone back to their Father, and he alone is looking after them for a while.
+      Now, I had not been comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially
+      during our journey, and still more especially during the last part of our
+      journey. There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or
+      less dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much
+      for her, although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had
+      not quite enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without
+      much thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do not
+      seem to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them; while for
+      others a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is necessary for
+      the health of both body and mind, and when the matter or occasion for so
+      much is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous to what follows
+      when a healthy physical system is not supplied with sufficient food: the
+      oxygen, the source of life, begins to consume the life itself; it tears up
+      the timbers of the house to burn against the cold. Or, to use a different
+      simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance does not strike the rock and
+      make the waters flow, such a mind&mdash;one that must think to live&mdash;will
+      go digging into itself, and is in danger of injuring the very fountain of
+      thought, by drawing away its living water into ditches and stagnant pools.
+      This was, I say, the case in part with my Wynnie, although I did not
+      understand it at that moment. She did not look quite happy, did not always
+      meet a smile with a smile, looked almost reprovingly upon the frolics of
+      the little brother-imps, and though kindness itself when any real hurt or
+      grief befell them, had reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner,
+      of which I have already spoken as interrupted by Connie&rsquo;s accident. To her
+      mother and me she was service itself, only service without the smile which
+      is as the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a
+      little uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
+      had seemed almost annoyed at Connie&rsquo;s ecstasies, and said to Dora many
+      times: &ldquo;Do be quiet, Dora;&rdquo; although there was not a single creature but
+      ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
+      child&rsquo;s explosions. So I was&mdash;but although I say <i>so</i>, I hardly
+      know why I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief
+      in the anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I
+      stood regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her
+      uncomfortable, she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with the
+      words, &ldquo;I beg your pardon, papa,&rdquo; looking almost guiltily round her, and
+      putting up her hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an impropriety in
+      being caught untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition of mind that was
+      not healthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to see
+      you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O papa,&rdquo; she said, laying her head on my shoulder, &ldquo;I am afraid I must be
+      very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong, or
+      rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure there
+      must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly know
+      what it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected something,
+      and you had come to find fault with me. <i>Is</i> there anything, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day! Why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Connie woke up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now! I&rsquo;ve waked Connie,&rdquo; Wynnie resumed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always doing
+      something I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take
+      that sin off my poor conscience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?&rdquo; asked Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t nonsense, Connie. You know I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don&rsquo;t <i>feel</i>
+      wicked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear children,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
+      then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say
+      to himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one
+      man to say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case to
+      do as St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing&mdash;to judge our own
+      selves, which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do what
+      our Lord has told us expressly we are not to do&mdash;to judge other
+      people. You get your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going to
+      explore a little of this desert island upon which we have been cast away.
+      And you, Connie, just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to
+      talk seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what
+      we talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported it
+      to Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies who
+      went to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news of
+      nature, to her who could not go to gather them for herself. It think it
+      will be the best plan to take part of both plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
+      leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed <i>in</i>, the
+      rocks, buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life
+      for a big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still
+      blew from the west, both warm and strong&mdash;I mean strength-giving&mdash;and
+      the wind was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was
+      green and soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright
+      flowers, chiefly yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the downs,
+      the shadows of whose unequal surface were now beginning to be thrown east,
+      for the sun was going seawards. I stood up, stretched out my arms, threw
+      back my shoulders and my head, and filled my chest with a draught of the
+      delicious wind, feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed with wine.
+      Wynnie stood apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar, thoughtful, and
+      turning her eyes hither and thither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That makes me feel young again,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish it would make me feel old then,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, my child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
+      young,&rdquo; she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were
+      walking up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the down-turf
+      was indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we had reached
+      the top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight. The top of
+      the hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun was hanging on
+      the face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea stretched for
+      visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand, its wide blue
+      mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land, and scalloped
+      into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the nether fires which
+      had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as they bore the rising
+      tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for the whole. Ear and eye,
+      touch and smell, were alike invaded with blessedness. I ought to have kept
+      this to give my reader in Connie&rsquo;s room; but he shall share with her
+      presently. The sense of space&mdash;of mighty room for life and growth&mdash;filled
+      my soul, and I thanked God in my heart. The wind seemed to bear that
+      growth into my soul, even as the wind of God first breathed into man&rsquo;s
+      nostrils the breath of life, and the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment
+      of every aspiration. I turned and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but
+      listless amidst that which lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you I was very wicked, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I told you not to say so, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect it is because you haven&rsquo;t room, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you mean something more than I know, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you
+      do not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only live
+      in him, is &lsquo;cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.&rsquo; It is only in him that
+      the soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The secret of
+      your own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who knows its
+      secret. Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth. You do not
+      feel them, and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would be both
+      useless and absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for a moment,
+      and then tell me whether it must not be a blessed life that creates such a
+      glory as this All.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
+      earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
+      eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling, or
+      sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to speak
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As this world of delight surrounds and enters your bodily frame, so does
+      God surround your soul and live in it. To be at home with the awful source
+      of your being, through the child-like faith which he not only permits, but
+      requires, and is ever teaching you, or rather seeking to rouse up in you,
+      is the only cure for such feelings as those that trouble you. Do not say
+      it is too high for you. God made you in his own image, therefore capable
+      of understanding him. For this final end he sent his Son, that the Father
+      might with him come into you, and dwell with you. Till he does so, the
+      temple of your soul is vacant; there is no light behind the veil, no
+      cloudy pillar over it; and the priests, your thoughts, feelings, loves,
+      and desires, moan, and are troubled&mdash;for where is the work of the
+      priest when the God is not there? When He comes to you, no mystery, no
+      unknown feeling, will any longer distress you. You will say, &lsquo;He knows,
+      though I do not.&rsquo; And you will be at the secret of the things he has made.
+      You will feel what they are, and that which his will created in gladness
+      you will receive in joy. One glimmer of the present God in this glory
+      would send you home singing. But do not think I blame you, Wynnie, for
+      feeling sad. I take it rather as the sign of a large life in you, that
+      will not be satisfied with little things. I do not know when or how it may
+      please God to give you the quiet of mind that you need; but I tell you
+      that I believe it is to be had; and in the mean time, you must go on doing
+      your work, trusting in God even for this. Tell him to look at your sorrow,
+      ask him to come and set it right, making the joy go up in your heart by
+      his presence. I do not know when this may be, I say, but you must have
+      patience, and till he lays his hand on your head, you must be content to
+      wash his feet with your tears. Only he will be better pleased if your
+      faith keep you from weeping and from going about your duties mournful. Try
+      to be brave and cheerful for the sake of Christ, and for the sake of your
+      confidence in the beautiful teaching of God, whose course and scope you
+      cannot yet understand. Trust, my daughter, and let that give you courage
+      and strength.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the sky and the sea and the earth must have made me able to say these
+      things to her; but I knew that, whatever the immediate occasion of her
+      sadness, such was its only real cure. Other things might, in virtue of the
+      will of God that was in them, give her occupation and interest enough for
+      a time, but nothing would do finally, but God himself. Here I was sure I
+      was safe; here I knew lay the hunger of humanity. Humanity may, like other
+      vital forms, diseased systems, fix on this or that as the object not
+      merely of its desire but of its need: it can never be stilled by less than
+      the bread of life&mdash;the very presence in the innermost nature of the
+      Father and the Son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked on together. Wynnie made me no reply, but, weeping silently,
+      clung to my arm. We walked a long way by the edge of the cliffs, beheld
+      the sun go down, and then turned and went home. When we reached the house,
+      Wynnie left me, saying only, &ldquo;Thank you, papa. I think it is all true. I
+      will try to be a better girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I went straight to Connie&rsquo;s room: she was lying as I saw her last, looking
+      out of her window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;Wynnie and I have had such a treat&mdash;such a
+      sunset!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen a little of the light of it on the waves in the bay there, but
+      the high ground kept me from seeing the sunset itself. Did it set in the
+      sea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do want the General Gazetteer, after all, Connie. Is that water the
+      Atlantic, or is it not? And if it be, where on earth could the sun set but
+      in it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, papa. What a goose I am! But don&rsquo;t make game of me&mdash;<i>please</i>.
+      I am too deliciously happy to be made game of to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t make game of you, my darling. I will tell you about the sunset&mdash;the
+      colours of it, at least. This must be one of the best places in the whole
+      world to see sunsets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have had no tea, papa. I thought you would come and have your tea
+      with me. But you were so long, that mamma would not let me wait any
+      longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, never mind the tea, my dear. But Wynnie has had none. You&rsquo;ve got a
+      tea-caddy of your own, haven&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and a teapot; and there&rsquo;s the kettle on the hob&mdash;for I can&rsquo;t do
+      without a little fire in the evenings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll make some tea for Wynnie and myself, and tell you at the same
+      time about the sunset. I never saw such colours. I cannot tell you what it
+      was like while the sun was yet going down, for the glory of it has burned
+      the memory of it out of me. But after the sun was down, the sky remained
+      thinking about him; and the thought of the sky was in delicate translucent
+      green on the horizon, just the colour of the earth etherealised and
+      glorified&mdash;a broad band; then came another broad band of pale
+      rose-colour; and above that came the sky&rsquo;s own eternal blue, pale
+      likewise, but so sure and changeless. I never saw the green and the blue
+      divided and harmonised by the rose-colour before. It was a wonderful
+      sight. If it is warm enough to-morrow, we will carry you out on the
+      height, that you may see what the evening will bring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing about sunsets,&rdquo; returned Connie&mdash;&ldquo;two things,
+      that make me rather sad&mdash;about themselves, not about anything else.
+      Shall I tell you them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, my love. There are few things more precious to learn than the effects
+      of Nature upon individual minds. And there is not a feeling of yours, my
+      child, that is not of value to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are so kind, papa! I am so glad of my accident. I think I should
+      never have known how good you are but for that. But my thoughts seem so
+      little worth after you say so much about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me be judge of that, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one thing is, that we shall never, never, never, see the same
+      sunset again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true. But why should we? God does not care to do the same thing
+      over again. When it is once done, it is done, and he goes on doing
+      something new. For, to all eternity, he never will have done showing
+      himself by new, fresh things. It would be a loss to do the same thing
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that just brings me to my second trouble. The thing is lost. I forget
+      it. Do what I can, I cannot remember sunsets. I try to fix them fast in my
+      memory, that I may recall them when I want them; but just as they fade out
+      of the sky, all into blue or gray, so they fade out of my mind and leave
+      it as if they had never been there&mdash;except perhaps two or three. Now,
+      though I did not see this one, yet, after you have talked about it, I
+      shall never forget <i>it</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not, and never will be, as if they had never been. They have their
+      influence, and leave that far deeper than your memory&mdash;in your very
+      being, Connie. But I have more to say about it, although it is only an
+      idea, hardly an assurance. Our brain is necessarily an imperfect
+      instrument. For its right work, perhaps it is needful that it should
+      forget in part. But there are grounds for believing that nothing is ever
+      really forgotten. I think that, when we have a higher existence than we
+      have now, when we are clothed with that spiritual body of which St. Paul
+      speaks, you will be able to recall any sunset you have ever seen with an
+      intensity proportioned to the degree of regard and attention you gave it
+      when it was present to you. But here comes Wynnie to see how you are.&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      been making some tea for you, Wynnie, my love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, thank you, papa&mdash;I shall be so glad of some tea!&rdquo; said Wynnie,
+      the paleness of whose face showed the red rims of her eyes the more
+      plainly. She had had what girls call a good cry, and was clearly the
+      better for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment my wife came in. &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you send for me, Harry, to
+      get your tea?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not deserve any, seeing I had disregarded proper times and seasons.
+      But I knew you must be busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been superintending the arrangement of bedrooms, and the
+      unpacking, and twenty different things,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn. &ldquo;We shall be so
+      comfortable! It is such a curious house! Have you had a nice walk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, I never had such a walk in my life,&rdquo; returned Wynnie. &ldquo;You would
+      think the shore had been built for the sake of the show&mdash;just for a
+      platform to see sunsets from. And the sea! Only the cliffs will be rather
+      dangerous for the children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just been telling Connie about the sunset. She could see something
+      of the colours on the water, but not much more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Connie, it will be so delightful to get you out here! Everything is so
+      big! There is such room everywhere! But it must be awfully windy in
+      winter,&rdquo; said Wynnie, whose nature was always a little prospective, if not
+      apprehensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I must not keep my reader longer upon mere family chat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our dining-room was one story below the level at which we had entered the
+      parsonage; for, as I have said, the house was built into the face of the
+      cliff, just where it sunk nearly to the level of the shores of the bay.
+      While at dinner, on the evening of our arrival, I kept looking from the
+      window, of course, and I saw before me, first a little bit of garden,
+      mostly in turf, then a low stone wall; beyond, over the top of the wall,
+      the blue water of the bay; then beyond the water, all alive with light and
+      motion, the rocks and sand-hills of the opposite side of the little bay,
+      not a quarter of a mile across. I could likewise see where the shore went
+      sweeping out and away to the north, with rock after rock standing far into
+      the water, as if gazing over the awful wild, where there was nothing to
+      break the deathly waste between Cornwall and Newfoundland. But for the
+      moment I did not regard the huge power lying outside so much as the merry
+      blue bay between me and those rocks and sand-hills. If I moved my head a
+      little to the right, I saw, over the top of the low wall already
+      mentioned, and apparently quite close to it the slender yellow masts of a
+      schooner, her mainsail hanging loose from the gaff, whose peak was
+      lowered. We must, I thought, be on the very harbour-quay. When I went out
+      for my walk with Wynnie, I had turned from the bay, and gone to the brow
+      of the cliffs overhanging the open sea on our own side of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I came down to breakfast in the same room next morning, I stared. The
+      blue had changed to yellow. The life of the water was gone. Nothing met my
+      eyes but a wide expanse of dead sand. You could walk straight across the
+      bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from the
+      perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking,
+      concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was
+      high-water, or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was
+      over a long reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe of
+      the waves was visible, as if there was their <i>hitherto</i>, and further
+      towards us they could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of the
+      Atlantic. To add to my confusion, when I looked to the right, that is, up
+      the bay towards the land, there was no schooner there. I went out at the
+      window, which opened from the room upon the little lawn, to look, and then
+      saw in a moment how it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, my dear,&rdquo; I said to my wife, &ldquo;we are just at the mouth of
+      that canal we saw as we came along? There are gates and a lock just
+      outside there. The schooner that was under this window last night must
+      have gone in with the tide. She is lying in the basin above now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes, papa,&rdquo; Charlie and Harry broke in together. &ldquo;We saw it go up this
+      morning. We&rsquo;ve been out ever so long. It was so funny,&rdquo; Charlie went on&mdash;everything
+      was <i>funny</i> with Charlie&mdash;&ldquo;to see it rise up like a
+      Jack-in-the-box, and then slip into the quiet water through the other
+      gates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when I thought about the waves tumbling and breaking away out there,
+      and the wide yellow sands between, it was wonderful&mdash;which was what
+      Charlie meant by funny&mdash;to see the little vessel lying so many feet
+      above it all, in a still plenty of repose, gathering strength, one might
+      fancy to rush out again, when its time was come, into the turmoil beyond,
+      and dash its way through the breasts of the billows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast we had prayers, as usual, and after a visit to Connie,
+      whom I found tired, but wonderfully well, I went out for a walk by myself,
+      to explore the neighbourhood, find the church, and, in a word, do
+      something to shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious. I
+      wandered along a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk the
+      evening before, with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of feathery
+      tamarisks on my left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply to a lower
+      road, where stood a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner, I came suddenly
+      in sight of the church, on the green down above me&mdash;a sheltered yet
+      commanding situation; for, while the hill rose above it, protecting it
+      from the east, it looked down the bay, and the Atlantic lay open before
+      it. All the earth seemed to lie behind it, and all its gaze to be fixed on
+      the symbol of the infinite. It stood as the church ought to stand, leading
+      men up the mount of vision, to the verge of the eternal, to send them back
+      with their hearts full of the strength that springs from hope, by which
+      alone the true work of the world can be done. And when I saw it I rejoiced
+      to think that once more I was favoured with a church that had a history.
+      Of course it is a happy thing to see new churches built wherever there is
+      need of such; but to the full idea of the building it is necessary that it
+      should be one in which the hopes and fears, the cares and consolations,
+      the loves and desires of our forefathers should have been roofed; where
+      the hearts of those through whom our country has become that which it is&mdash;from
+      whom not merely the life-blood of our bodies, but the life-blood of our
+      spirits, has come down to us, whose existence and whose efforts have made
+      it possible for us to be that which we are&mdash;have before us worshipped
+      that Spirit from whose fountain the whole torrent of being flows, who ever
+      pours fresh streams into the wearying waters of humanity, so ready to
+      settle down into a stagnant repose. Therefore I would far rather, when I
+      may, worship in an old church, whose very stones are a history of how men
+      strove to realise the infinite, compelling even the powers of nature into
+      the task&mdash;as I soon found on the very doorway of this church, where
+      the ripples of the outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the
+      monsters of its deeps, fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave a
+      distorted reflex, from the little mirror of the artist&rsquo;s mind, of that
+      mighty water, so awful, so significant to the human eye, which yet lies in
+      the hollow of the Father&rsquo;s palm, like the handful that the weary traveller
+      lifts from the brook by the way. It is in virtue of the truth that went
+      forth in such and such like attempts that we are able to hold our portion
+      of the infinite reality which God only knows. They have founded our Church
+      for us, and such a church as this will stand for the symbol of it; for
+      here we too can worship the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob&mdash;the
+      God of Sidney, of Hooker, of Herbert. This church of Kilkhaven, old and
+      worn, rose before me a history in stone&mdash;so beaten and swept about by
+      the &ldquo;wild west wind,&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;For whose path the Atlantic&rsquo;s level powers
+  Cleave themselves into chasms,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      and so streamed upon, and washed, and dissolved, by the waters lifted from
+      the sea and borne against it on the upper tide of the wind, that you could
+      almost fancy it one of those churches that have been buried for ages
+      beneath the encroaching waters, lifted again, by some mighty revulsion of
+      nature&rsquo;s heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to stand marked
+      for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world&mdash;scooped, and
+      hollowed, and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for ever,
+      responded to the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from the most
+      troublous of times, will the Church of our land arise, in virtue of what
+      truth she holds, and in spite, if she rises at all, of the worldliness of
+      those who, instead of seeking her service, have sought and gained the
+      dignities which, if it be good that she have it in her power to bestow
+      them, need the corrective of a sharply wholesome persecution which of late
+      times she has not known. But God knows, and the fire will come in its
+      course&mdash;first in the form of just indignation, it may be, against her
+      professed servants, and then in the form of the furnace seven times
+      heated, in which the true builders shall yet walk unhurt save as to their
+      mortal part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked about for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to
+      live, and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a
+      little distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before I
+      reached it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She was
+      dressed in a white cap and a dark-coloured gown. On her face lay a certain
+      repose which attracted me. She looked as if she had suffered but had
+      consented to it, and therefore could smile. Her smile lay near the
+      surface. A kind word was enough to draw it up from the well where it lay
+      shimmering: you could always see the smile there, whether it was born or
+      not. But even when she smiled, in the very glimmering of that moonbeam,
+      you could see the deep, still, perhaps dark, waters under. O! if one could
+      but understand what goes on in the souls that have no words, perhaps no
+      inclination, to set it forth! What had she endured? How had she learned to
+      have that smile always near? What had consoled her, and yet left her her
+      grief&mdash;turned it, perhaps, into hope? Should I ever know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew near me, as if she would have passed me, as she would have done,
+      had I not spoken. I think she came towards me to give me the opportunity
+      of speaking if I wished, but she would not address me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Can you tell me where to find the sexton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; she answered, with a gleam of the smile brightening
+      underneath her old skin, as it were, &ldquo;I be all the sexton you be likely to
+      find this mornin&rsquo;, sir. My husband, he be gone out to see one o&rsquo; Squire
+      Tregarva&rsquo;s hounds as was took ill last night. So if you want to see the
+      old church, sir, you&rsquo;ll have to be content with an old woman to show you,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be quite content, I assure you,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Will you go and get
+      the key?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the key in my pocket, sir; for I thought that would be what you&rsquo;d
+      be after, sir. And by the time you come to my age, sir, you&rsquo;ll learn to
+      think of your old bones, sir. I beg your pardon for making so free. For
+      mayhap, says I to myself, he be the gentleman as be come to take Mr.
+      Shepherd&rsquo;s duty for him. Be ye now, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was said in a slow sweet subdued tone, nearly of one pitch. You
+      would have felt that she claimed the privilege of age with a kind of
+      mournful gaiety, but was careful, and anxious even, not to presume upon
+      it, and, therefore, gentle as a young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;My name is Walton I have come to take the place of my
+      friend Mr. Shepherd; and, of course, I want to see the church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she be a bee-utiful old church. Some things, I think, sir, grows
+      more beautiful the older they grows. But it ain&rsquo;t us, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure of that,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, there&rsquo;s my little grandson in the cottage there: he&rsquo;ll never
+      be so beautiful again. Them children du be the loves. But we all grows
+      uglier as we grows older. Churches don&rsquo;t seem to, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure about all that,&rdquo; I said again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They did say, sir, that I was a pretty girl once. I&rsquo;m not much to look at
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she smiled with such a gracious amusement, that I felt at once that if
+      there was any vanity left in this memory of her past loveliness, it was
+      sweet as the memory of their old fragrance left in the withered leaves of
+      the roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it du not matter, du it, sir? Beauty is only skin-deep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Beauty is as deep as the heart at
+      least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well to be sure, my old husband du say I be as handsome in his eyes as
+      ever I be. But I beg your pardon, sir, for talkin&rsquo; about myself. I believe
+      it was the old church&mdash;she set us on to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old church didn&rsquo;t lead you into any harm then,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;The
+      beauty that is in the heart will shine out of the face again some day&mdash;be
+      sure of that. And after all, there is just the same kind of beauty in a
+      good old face that there is in an old church. You can&rsquo;t say the church is
+      so trim and neat as it was the day that the first blast of the organ
+      filled it as with, a living soul. The carving is not quite so sharp, the
+      timbers are not quite so clean. There is a good deal of mould and
+      worm-eating and cobwebs about the old place. Yet both you and I think it
+      more beautiful now than it was then. Well, I believe it is, as nearly as
+      possible, the same with an old face. It has got stained, and
+      weather-beaten, and worn; but if the organ of truth has been playing on
+      inside the temple of the Lord, which St. Paul says our bodies are, there
+      is in the old face, though both form and complexion are gone, just the
+      beauty of the music inside. The wrinkles and the brownness can&rsquo;t spoil it.
+      A light shines through it all&mdash;that of the indwelling spirit. I wish
+      we all grew old like the old churches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not reply, but I thought I saw in her face that she understood my
+      mysticism. We had been walking very slowly, had passed through the quaint
+      lych-gate, and now the old woman had got the key in the lock of the door,
+      whose archway was figured and fashioned as I have described above, with a
+      dozen mouldings or more, most of them &ldquo;carved so curiously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. THE OLD CHURCH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold&mdash;an
+      awe I never fail to feel&mdash;heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the
+      sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same
+      in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place
+      where men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although
+      for art there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty
+      staring ugliness. To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of
+      holy need seems to linger in the place, and the uncovered head
+      acknowledges the sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing.
+      But this was no ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who
+      was my guide. As entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued
+      glory invaded them from the chancel, all the windows of which were of
+      richly stained glass, and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my
+      thoughts about this chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may
+      appear in another part of my story. Now I have to do only with the church,
+      not with the cogitations to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my
+      reader with even what I could tell him of the blending and contradicting
+      of styles and modes of architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the
+      work of contesting human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As
+      nature brings into harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive
+      intrusions upon her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense
+      of the word, so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of
+      that which in itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various
+      architecture of this building had been gone over after the builders by the
+      musical hand of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key,
+      that one could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at
+      work <i>informing</i> the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the
+      sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the
+      gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion
+      vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the
+      hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and
+      gently, and wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as
+      yet their effects were invisible, were already at work&mdash;of the many
+      making one. I will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural
+      description, which, possibly even more than a detailed description of
+      natural beauty dissociated from human feeling, would only weary him, even
+      if it were not unintelligible. When we are reading a poem, we do not first
+      of all examine the construction and dwell on the rhymes and rhythms; all
+      that comes after, if we find that the poem itself is so good that its
+      parts are therefore worth examining, as being probably good in themselves,
+      and elucidatory of the main work. There were carvings on the ends of the
+      benches all along the aisle on both sides, well worth examination, and
+      some of them even of description; but I shall not linger on these. A word
+      only about the columns: they supported arches of different fashion on the
+      opposite sides, but they were themselves similar in matter and
+      construction, both remarkable. They were of coarse granite of the country,
+      chiselled, but very far from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was
+      a single stone with chamfered sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many thoughts
+      that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length into the
+      tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body of the
+      church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above, for
+      bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend Shepherd.
+      And as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful it would be
+      if in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was precious; so
+      that when it came to the minister of his people&mdash;a fresh vision of
+      his glory, a discovery of his meaning&mdash;he might make haste to the
+      church, and into the tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the
+      deepest-toned bell of all, and constrain it by the force of strong arms to
+      utter its voice of call, &ldquo;Come hither, come hear, my people, for God hath
+      spoken;&rdquo; and from the streets or the lanes would troop the eager folk; the
+      plough be left in the furrow, the cream in the churn; and the crowding
+      people bring faces into the church, all with one question upon them&mdash;&ldquo;What
+      hath the Lord spoken?&rdquo; But now it would be answer sufficient to such a
+      call to say, &ldquo;But what will become of the butter?&rdquo; or, &ldquo;An hour&rsquo;s
+      ploughing will be lost.&rdquo; And the clergy&mdash;how would they bring about
+      such a time? They do not even believe that God has a word to his people
+      through them. They think that his word is petrified for use in the Bible
+      and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old heard so much of the word of
+      God, and have so set it down, that there is no need for any more words of
+      the Lord coming to the prophets of a land; therefore they look down upon
+      the prophesying&mdash;that is, the preaching of the word&mdash;make light
+      of it, the best of them, say these prayers are everything, or all but
+      everything: <i>their</i> hearts are not set upon hearing what God the Lord
+      will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people again. Therefore it
+      is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to the clock, are no
+      longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have nothing to do in
+      telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little of this part of
+      their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must remain such as
+      they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers which are the
+      word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when the prophets see
+      no vision, how should they have any word to speak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my
+      guide. She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I
+      thought, or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had
+      taken her stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting
+      busily. How her needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however,
+      but, fixed on the slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from her
+      feet, seemed to be gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite
+      objectless outlook. To try her, I took for the moment the position of an
+      accuser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you don&rsquo;t mind working in church?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far sea-waves
+      to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she answered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The church knows me, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what has that to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
+      know, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
+      diligent somewhere else, couldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But
+      she only smiled and said, &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t hurt she, sir; and my good man, who
+      does all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I don&rsquo;t
+      keep he warm he&rsquo;ll be laid up, and then the church won&rsquo;t be kep&rsquo; nice,
+      sir, till he&rsquo;s up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was tempted to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you could have sat down outside&mdash;there are some nice gravestones
+      near&mdash;and waited till I came out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what&rsquo;s the church for, sir? The sun&rsquo;s werry hot to-day, sir; and Mr.
+      Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a great rock
+      in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the sun, instead of
+      comin&rsquo; in here to the cool o&rsquo; the shadow, I wouldn&rsquo;t be takin&rsquo; the church
+      at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old church, sir. There&rsquo;s
+      a something do seem to come out o&rsquo; the old walls and settle down like the
+      cool o&rsquo; the day upon my old heart that&rsquo;s nearly tired o&rsquo; crying, and would
+      fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o&rsquo; the journey. My old man&rsquo;s stockin&rsquo; 
+      won&rsquo;t hurt the church, sir, and, bein&rsquo; a good deed as I suppose it is,
+      it&rsquo;s none the worse for the place. I think, if He was to come by wi&rsquo; the
+      whip o&rsquo; small cords, I wouldn&rsquo;t be afeared of his layin&rsquo; it upo&rsquo; my old
+      back. Do you think he would, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
+      with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
+      ill-done work that the church&rsquo;s Master drives away. All our work ought to
+      be done in the shadow of the church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir,&rdquo; she said, smiling her
+      sweet old smile. &ldquo;Nobody knows what this old church is to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
+      left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have had a family?&rdquo; I said, interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had thirteen,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Six bys and seven maidens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you are rich!&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;And where are they all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one be
+      down in the mill, there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your boys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of them be lyin&rsquo; beside his sisters&mdash;drownded afore my eyes,
+      sir. Three o&rsquo; them be at sea, and two o&rsquo; them in it, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At sea! I thought. What a wide <i>where</i>! As vague to the imagination,
+      almost, as <i>in the other world</i>. How a mother&rsquo;s thoughts must go
+      roaming about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find
+      them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with my
+      knitting. Many&rsquo;s the stormy night, when my husband couldn&rsquo;t keep still,
+      but would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good in life,
+      but just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see by the white
+      of them, with the balls o&rsquo; foam flying in his face in the dark&mdash;many&rsquo;s
+      the such a night that I have left the house after he was gone, with this
+      blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church here, and sat down
+      where I&rsquo;m sittin&rsquo; now&mdash;leastways where I was sittin&rsquo; when your
+      reverence spoke to me&mdash;and hearkened to the wind howling about the
+      place. The church windows never rattle, sir&mdash;like the cottage
+      windows, as I suppose you know, sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you had sons at sea,&rdquo; said I, again wishing to draw her out, &ldquo;it
+      would not be of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
+      were in danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! yes, it be, sir. What&rsquo;s the good of feeling safe yourself but it let
+      you know other people be safe too? It&rsquo;s when you don&rsquo;t feel safe yourself
+      that you feel other people ben&rsquo;t safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said&mdash;and such confidence I had from what she had already
+      uttered, that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one&mdash;&ldquo;some of
+      your sons <i>were</i> drowned for all that you say about their safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; she answered, with a sigh, &ldquo;I trust they&rsquo;re none the less
+      safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me,
+      well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being
+      drownded. Why, they might ha&rsquo; been cast on a desert island, and wasted to
+      skin an&rsquo; bone, and got home again wi&rsquo; the loss of half the wits they set
+      out with. Wouldn&rsquo;t that ha&rsquo; been worse than being drownded right off? And
+      that wouldn&rsquo;t ha&rsquo; been the worst, either. The church she seem to tell me
+      all the time, that for all the roaring outside, there be really no danger
+      after all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What is the bottom of the
+      sea, sir? You bein&rsquo; a clergyman can tell that, sir. I shouldn&rsquo;t ha&rsquo; known
+      it if I hadn&rsquo;t had bys o&rsquo; my own at sea, sir. But you can tell, sir,
+      though you ain&rsquo;t got none there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
+      returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to
+      his instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hollow of his hand,&rdquo; I said, and said no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you would know it, sir,&rdquo; she returned, with a little glow of
+      triumph in her tone. &ldquo;Well, then, that&rsquo;s just what the church tells me
+      when I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too,
+      sir, for I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when
+      they come home, if they do come home, they&rsquo;re none the worse that I went
+      to the old church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them poor
+      dears, all out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone almost
+      in the quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come across me,
+      sir, that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing all the noise
+      and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about in the world,
+      watching it all, letting it drown some o&rsquo; them and take them back to him,
+      and keeping it from going too far with others of them that are not quite
+      ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see, sir, though I be an old
+      woman; and not nice to look at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
+      Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
+      there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
+      to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert would
+      leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life is God&rsquo;s
+      school, and they that will listen to the Master there will learn at God&rsquo;s
+      speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious of Shepherd, and
+      repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such glorious old
+      stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal upon my
+      light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling lasted but for
+      a moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed and the true
+      light shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it. Why should not
+      Shepherd have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd was more of what
+      would now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought my doctrine
+      simpler and therefore better than his; but was this any reason why I
+      should have all the grand people to minister to in my parish! Recovering
+      myself, I found her last words still in my ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very nice to look at,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You must not find fault with the
+      work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty than to
+      be as you now are. Time and time&rsquo;s rents and furrows are all his making
+      and his doing. God makes nothing ugly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you quite sure of that, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I paused. Such a question from such a woman &ldquo;must give us pause.&rdquo; And, as
+      I paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I could
+      not insist that God had never made anything ugly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I am not sure of it,&rdquo; I answered. For of all things my soul recoiled
+      from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know seemed to
+      me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master, whose servants
+      we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and self-seeking.
+      &ldquo;But if he does,&rdquo; I went on to say, &ldquo;it must be that we may see what it is
+      like, and therefore not like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
+      question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
+      had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of
+      stool or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was
+      some kind of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much
+      like the ends of the benches and book-boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that you were sitting on?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;A chest or what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
+      agone, sir. But what it be, you&rsquo;ll be better able to tell than I be, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;But how should it then come to be banished to the tower?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; it can&rsquo;t be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I be
+      thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ. With
+      some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of huge
+      keys, fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one after
+      another, but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and once
+      down, so they mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there was
+      any sign of a bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive kind of
+      reed-instrument, like what we call a seraphine or harmonium now-a-days.
+      But there was no hole through which there could have been any
+      communication with or from a bellows, although there might have been a
+      small one inside. There were, however, a dozen little round holes in the
+      fixed part of the top, which might afford some clue to the mystery of its
+      former life. I could not find any way of reaching the inside of it, so
+      strongly was it put together; therefore I was left, I thought, to the
+      efforts of my imagination alone for any hope of discovery with regard to
+      the instrument, seeing further observation was impossible. But here I
+      found that I was mistaken in two important conclusions, the latter of
+      which depended on the former. The first of these was that it was an
+      instrument: it was only one end of an instrument; therefore, secondly,
+      there might be room for observation still. But I found this out by
+      accident, which has had a share in most discoveries, and which, meaning a
+      something that falls into our hands unlocked for, is so far an
+      unobjectionable word even to the man who does not believe in chance. I had
+      for the time given up the question as insoluble, and was gazing about the
+      place, when, glancing up at the holes in the ceiling through which the
+      bell-ropes went, I spied two or three thick wires hanging through the same
+      ceiling close to the wall, and right over the box with the keys. The vague
+      suspicion of a discovery dawned upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you got the key of the tower?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. But I&rsquo;ll run home for it at once,&rdquo; she answered. And rising, she
+      went out in haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run!&rdquo; thought I, looking after her. &ldquo;It is a word of the will and the
+      feeling, not of the body.&rdquo; But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had
+      no sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she
+      felt that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I was
+      on the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her from
+      hurting herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to be as good
+      as mine in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her seat, awaited
+      her reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either saw or imagined I
+      saw signs of openings corresponding in number and position with those in
+      the lid under me. In about three minutes the old woman returned, panting
+      but not distressed, with a great crooked old key in her hand. Why are all
+      the keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask her that question, though.
+      What I said to her, was&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t run like that. I am in no hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
+      longing to get a-top o&rsquo; the tower, and see all about you like. For you
+      see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she&rsquo;d
+      smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old
+      tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the
+      fresh air which there always be up there, sir,&mdash;it du always be fresh
+      up there, sir,&rdquo; she repeated, &ldquo;I come back down again blessing the old
+      church for its tower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where
+      there was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning
+      themselves a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high, but
+      she kept up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was no
+      stranger to them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of her, but
+      of what she had said. Strange to tell, the significance of the towers or
+      spires of our churches had never been clear to me before. True, I was
+      quite awake to their significance, at least to that of the spires, as
+      fingers pointing ever upwards to
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;regions mild of calm and serene air,
+  Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
+  Which men call Earth;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
+      church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord God
+      almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men up
+      into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived pervaded
+      with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We need the
+      church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church below are
+      from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the church,
+      worshipping over the graves and believing in death&mdash;or at least in
+      the material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the church,
+      even in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending us up her
+      towers and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the air of
+      truth: that her form too must pass away, while the truth that is embodied
+      in her lives beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining as the stars
+      for ever and ever. He whom the church does not lift up above the church is
+      not worthy to be a doorkeeper therein.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
+      that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord&mdash;not for
+      his church-tower, but for his sexton&rsquo;s wife. The old woman was a jewel. If
+      her husband was like her, which was too much to expect&mdash;if he
+      believed in her, it would be enough, quite&mdash;then indeed the little
+      child, who answered on being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would
+      say, that the three orders of ministers in the church were the parson,
+      clerk, and sexton, might not be so far wrong in respect of this individual
+      case. So in the ascent, and the thinking associated therewith, I forgot
+      all about the special object for which I had requested the key of the
+      tower, and led the way myself up to the summit, where stepping out of a
+      little door, which being turned only heavenwards had no pretence for, or
+      claim upon a curiously crooked key, but opened to the hand laid upon the
+      latch, I thought of the words of the judicious Hooker, that &ldquo;the
+      assembling of the church to learn&rdquo; was &ldquo;the receiving of angels descended
+      from above;&rdquo; and in such a whimsical turn as our thoughts will often take
+      when we are not heeding them, I wondered for a moment whether that was why
+      the upper door was left on the latch, forgetting that that could not be of
+      much use, if the door in the basement was kept locked with the crooked
+      key. But the whole suggested something true about my own heart and that of
+      my fellows, if not about the church: Revelation is not enough, the open
+      trap-door is not enough, if the door of the heart is not open likewise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
+      again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
+      filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
+      hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the other
+      side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of green, its
+      heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales&mdash;there was not much
+      wood&mdash;its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted and
+      shadowed by the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of
+      Dartmoor. And over all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the
+      life-bearing spirit of the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman
+      stood beside me, silently enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that
+      seemed to say in kindly triumph, &ldquo;Was I not right about the tower and the
+      wind that dwells among its pinnacles?&rdquo; I drank deep of the universal
+      flood, the outspread peace, the glory of the sun, and the haunting shadow
+      of the sea that lay beyond like the visual image of the eternal silence&mdash;as
+      it looks to us&mdash;that rounds our little earthly life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down, the
+      tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly below
+      me, except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in the
+      leaves, which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the top
+      of the tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few flowers
+      she had gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that rose from
+      the four pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned to the eastern
+      side, and looked over upon the church roof. It lay far below&mdash;looking
+      very narrow and small, but long, with the four ridges of four steep roofs
+      stretching away to the eastern end. It was in excellent repair, for the
+      parish was almost all in one lord&rsquo;s possession, and he was proud of his
+      church: between them he and Mr. Shepherd had made it beautiful to behold
+      and strong to endure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
+      fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
+      nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And when I
+      looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird, rounding
+      the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up the little
+      channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out of the circling
+      waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but hardly the less
+      welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for her signal from the
+      barrier rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reentering by the angels&rsquo; door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair, so
+      dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light that
+      came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny maiden-hair
+      fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old woman&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn&rsquo;t rob your tower of this
+      lovely little thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take it
+      home to miss. It&rsquo;ll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear you&rsquo;ve
+      got a sick maiden. She ben&rsquo;t a bedlar, be she, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without hurting
+      them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner&rsquo;s using the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite that,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;but she can&rsquo;t even sit up, and must be
+      carried everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea&rsquo;s been mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
+      down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
+      observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in ascending
+      the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging in silent
+      power in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully, for there
+      were only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one&rsquo;s feet from going
+      through the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my
+      conjecture about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had
+      seen from beneath hung down from this place. There were more of them
+      hanging shorter above, and there was yet enough of a further mechanism
+      remaining to prove that those keys, by means of the looped and cranked
+      rods, had been in connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining
+      also, which struck the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as
+      upon any other keyed instrument. This was the first contrivance of the
+      kind I had ever seen, though I have heard of it in other churches since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now,&rdquo; I said to
+      myself, &ldquo;I would get this all repaired, so that it should not interfere
+      with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and yet Shepherd
+      could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he pleased.&rdquo; For
+      Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of time to the
+      organ. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in the gloom,
+      with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence he sends
+      forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people, while they are
+      mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad over the stormy
+      ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s the parson at his bells,&rsquo; they
+      would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase might sink into their
+      hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to some hope or faint
+      aspiration. I will see what can be done.&rdquo; Having come to this conclusion,
+      I left the abode of the bells, descended to the church, bade my
+      conductress good morning, saying I would visit her soon in her own house,
+      and bore home to my child the spoil which, without kirk-rapine, I had torn
+      from the wall of the sanctuary. By this time the stormy veil had lifted
+      from the horizon, and the sun was shining in full power without one
+      darkening cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
+      seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was the
+      only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the tower. It
+      recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been married fifty
+      years, concluding with the couplet&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was not
+      good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life probably
+      without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten them, and I
+      daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had put into their
+      dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of quarrel with the
+      poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the verses in when he made
+      his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having learnt this one by heart,
+      I went about looking for anything more in the shape of sepulchral flora
+      that might interest or amuse my crippled darling; nor had I searched long
+      before I found one, the sole but triumphant recommendation of which was
+      the thorough &ldquo;puzzle-headedness&rdquo; of its construction. I quite reckoned on
+      seeing Connie trying to make it out, looking as bewildered over its
+      excellent grammar, as the poet of the other ought to have looked over his
+      rhymes, ere he gave in to the use of the nominative after a preposition.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;If you could view the heavenly shore,
+  Where heart&rsquo;s content you hope to find,
+  You would not murmur were you gone before,
+  But grieve that you are left behind.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. CONNIE&rsquo;S WATCH-TOWER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As I walked home, the rush of the rising tide was in my ears. To my fancy,
+      the ocean, awaking from a swoon in which its life had ebbed to its heart,
+      was sending that life abroad to its extremities, and waves breaking in
+      white were the beats of its reviving pulse, the flashes of returning
+      light. But so gentle was its motion, and so lovely its hue, that I could
+      not help contrasting it with its reflex in the mind of her who took refuge
+      from the tumult of its noises in the hollow of the old church. To her, let
+      it look as blue as the sky, as peaceful and as moveless, it was a wild,
+      reckless, false, devouring creature, a prey to its own moods, and to that
+      of the blind winds which, careless of consequences, urged it to raving
+      fury. Only, while the sea took this form to her imagination, she believed
+      in that which held the sea, and knew that, when it pleased God to part his
+      confining fingers, there would be no more sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I reached home, I went straight to Connie&rsquo;s room. Now the house was
+      one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
+      shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure of
+      the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings consists of
+      the houses that have <i>grown</i>. They have not been, built after a
+      straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or money-loving
+      pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or indifferent, as
+      the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they have left far
+      behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions of succeeding
+      possessors, until the fact that they have a history is as plainly written
+      on their aspect as on that of any you or daughter of Adam. These are the
+      houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there is any truth in
+      ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt; and hence perhaps
+      the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when we cross their
+      thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast a glance about the
+      hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best bedroom are. You have
+      got it all to find out, just as the character of a man; and thus had I to
+      find out this house of my friend Shepherd. It had formerly been a kind of
+      manor-house, though altogether unlike any other manor-house I ever saw;
+      for after exercising all my constructive ingenuity reversed in pulling it
+      to pieces in my mind, I came to the conclusion that the germ-cell of it
+      was a cottage of the simplest sort which had grown by the addition of
+      other cells, till it had reached the development in which we found it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have said that the dining-room was almost on the level of the shore.
+      Certainly some of the flat stones that coped the low wall in front of it
+      were thrown into the garden before the next winter by the waves. But
+      Connie&rsquo;s room looked out on a little flower-garden almost on the downs,
+      only sheltered a little by the rise of a short grassy slope above it.
+      This, however, left the prospect, from her window down the bay and out to
+      sea, almost open. To reach this room I had now to go up but one simple
+      cottage stair; for the door of the house entered on the first floor, that
+      is, as regards the building, midway between heaven and earth. It had a
+      large bay-window; and in this window Connie was lying on her couch, with
+      the lower sash wide open, through which the breeze entered, smelling of
+      sea-weed tempered with sweet grasses and the wall-flowers and stocks that
+      were in the little plot under it. I thought I could see an improvement in
+      her already. Certainly she looked very happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t it delightful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, everything. The wind, and the sky, and the sea, and the smell of the
+      flowers. Do look at that sea-bird. His wings are like the barb of a
+      terrible arrow. How he goes undulating, neck and body, up and down as he
+      flies. I never felt before that a bird moves his wings. It always looked
+      as if the wings flew with the bird. But I see the effort in him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An easy effort, though, I should certainly think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt. But I see that he chooses and means to fly, and so does it. It
+      makes one almost reconciled to the idea of wings. Do angels really have
+      wings, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is generally so represented, I think, in the Bible. But whether it is
+      meant as a natural fact about them, is more than I take upon me to decide.
+      For one thing, I should have to examine whether in simple narrative they
+      are ever represented with them, as, I think, in records of visions they
+      are never represented without them. But wings are very beautiful things,
+      and I do not exactly see why you should need reconciling to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
+      however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
+      they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if
+      you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them.
+      You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don&rsquo;t think I could
+      bear to touch the things&mdash;I don&rsquo;t mean the feathers, but the skinny,
+      folding-up bits of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want to fly, I suppose?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes; I should like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t want to have wings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shouldn&rsquo;t mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able
+      to keep them nice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
+      already. When you can&rsquo;t answer one thing, off to another, and, from your
+      new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost branch
+      of the lilac!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes, papa! That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve heard you say to mamma twenty times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you
+      either, you puss?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
+      always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to
+      relieve her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When women have wings,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;their logic will be good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you make that out, papa?&rdquo; she asked, a little re-assured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside from
+      the straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole utterance
+      will be instinct not only with the meaning of what you are thinking, but
+      with the reflex of the forces in you that make the utterance take this or
+      that shape; just as to a perfect palate, the source and course of a stream
+      would be revealed in every draught of its water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
+      wings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like a
+      horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is to
+      be got without doing any of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean now, but I can&rsquo;t put it in words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things:
+      what it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably
+      leave to him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of
+      knowing our fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and out
+      of their worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home in them.&mdash;But
+      I am talking what the people who do not understand such things lump all
+      together as mysticism, which is their name for a kind of spiritual
+      ash-pit, whither they consign dust and stones, never asking whether they
+      may not be gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.&mdash;You had better begin
+      to think about getting out, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since daylight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready to
+      go out with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or
+      two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I&mdash;finding
+      that the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for
+      which there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds in
+      winter, the other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise
+      provided&mdash;lifted the sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill,
+      and then there was only a little door in the garden-wall to get her
+      through before we found ourselves upon the down. I think the ascent of
+      this hill was the first experience I had&mdash;a little to my humiliation,
+      nothing to my sorrow&mdash;that I was descending another hill. I had to
+      set down the precious burden rather oftener before we reached the brow of
+      the cliffs than would have been necessary ten years before. But this was
+      all right, and the newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the
+      power which carries me about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I
+      shall be stronger by and by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying many
+      feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging their
+      undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have a
+      chance of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what the
+      marvel of flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please, borne up,
+      as far as eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own will alone.
+      This Connie, quicker than I in her observation of nature, had already
+      observed. Seated on the warm grass by her side, while neither talked, but
+      both regarded the blue spaces, I saw one of those same barb-winged birds
+      rest over my head, regarding me from above, as if doubtful whether I did
+      not afford some claim to his theory of treasure-trove. I knew at once that
+      what Connie had been saying to me just before was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa; not a bit. I don&rsquo;t know how it is, but I don&rsquo;t think I ever
+      wished much for anything I knew I could not have. I am enjoying everything
+      more than I can tell you. I wish Wynnie were as happy as I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? Do you think she&rsquo;s not happy, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t want any thinking, papa. You can see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid you&rsquo;re right, Connie. What do you think is the cause of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is because she can&rsquo;t wait. She&rsquo;s always going out to meet
+      things; and then when they&rsquo;re not there waiting for her, she thinks
+      they&rsquo;re nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If
+      everybody were like me, there wouldn&rsquo;t be much done in the world, would
+      there, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At all events, my dear, your way is wise for you, and I am glad you do
+      not judge your sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge Wynnie, papa! That would be cool impudence. She&rsquo;s worth ten of me.
+      Don&rsquo;t you think, papa,&rdquo; she added, after a pause, &ldquo;that if Mary had said
+      the smallest word against Martha, as Martha did against Mary, Jesus would
+      have had a word to say on Martha&rsquo;s side next?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I do, my dear. And I think that did not sit very long without
+      asking Jesus if she mightn&rsquo;t go and help her sister. There is but one
+      thing needful&mdash;that is, the will of God; and when people love that
+      above everything, they soon come to see that to everything else there are
+      two sides, and that only the will of God gives fair play, as we call it,
+      to both of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not strange, papa, that the only thine here that makes me want to
+      get up to look, is nothing of all the grand things round about me? I am
+      just lying like the convex mirror in the school-room at home, letting them
+      all paint themselves in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it then that makes you wish to get up and go and see?&rdquo; I asked
+      with real curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see down there&mdash;away across the bay&mdash;amongst the rocks
+      at the other side, a man sitting sketching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked for some time before I could discover him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sight is good, Connie: I see the man, but I could not tell what he
+      was doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see him lifting his head every now and then for a moment, and
+      then keeping it down for a longer while?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot distinguish that. But then I am shortsighted rather, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how you see so many little things that nobody else seems to
+      notice, then, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is because I have trained myself to observe. The degree of power in
+      the sight is of less consequence than the habit of seeing. But you have
+      not yet told me what it is that makes you desirous of getting up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to look over his shoulder, and see what he is doing. Is it not
+      strange that in the midst of all this plenty of beautifulness, I should
+      want to rise to look at a few lines and scratches, or smears of colour,
+      upon a bit of paper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear; I don&rsquo;t think it is strange. There a new element of interest
+      is introduced&mdash;the human. No doubt there is deep humanity in all this
+      around us. No doubt all the world, in all its moods, is human, as those
+      for whose abode and instruction it was made. No doubt, it would be void of
+      both beauty and significance to our eyes, were it not that it is one crowd
+      of pictures of the human mind, blended in one living fluctuating whole.
+      But these meanings are there in solution as it were. The individual is a
+      centre of crystallisation to this solution. Around him meanings gather,
+      are separated from other meanings; and if he be an artist, by which I mean
+      true painter, true poet, or true musician, as the case may be he so
+      isolates and represents them, that we see them&mdash;not what nature shows
+      to us, but what nature has shown, to him, determined by his nature and
+      choice. With it is mingled therefore so much of his own individuality,
+      manifested both in this choice and certain modifications determined by his
+      way of working, that you have not only a representation of an aspect of
+      nature, as far as that may be with limited powers and materials, but a
+      revelation of the man&rsquo;s own mind and nature. Consequently there is a human
+      interest in every true attempt to reproduce nature, an interest of
+      individuality which does not belong to nature herself, who is for all and
+      every man. You have just been saying that you were lying there like a
+      convex mirror reflecting all nature around you. Every man is such a convex
+      mirror; and his drawing, if he can make one, is an attempt to show what is
+      in this little mirror of his, kindled there by the grand world outside.
+      And the human mirrors being all differently formed, vary infinitely in
+      what they would thus represent of the same scene. I have been greatly
+      interested in looking alternately over the shoulders of two artists, both
+      sketching in colour the same, absolutely the same scene, both trying to
+      represent it with all the truth in their power. How different,
+      notwithstanding, the two representations came out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you, papa. But look a little farther off. Don&rsquo;t you
+      see over the top of another rock a lady&rsquo;s bonnet. I do believe that&rsquo;s
+      Wynnie. I know she took her box of water-colours out with her this
+      morning, just before you came home. Dora went with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you tell by her ribbons, Connie? You seem sharp-sighted enough to
+      see her face if she would show it. I don&rsquo;t even see the bonnet. If I were
+      like some people I know, I should feel justified in denying its presence,
+      attributing the whole to your fancy, and refusing anything to superiority
+      of vision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wouldn&rsquo;t be like you, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not; for I have no fancy for being shut up in my own blindness,
+      when other people offer me their eyes to eke out the defects of my own
+      with. But here comes mamma at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie&rsquo;s face brightened as if she had not seen her mother for a
+      fortnight. My Ethelwyn always brought the home gladness that her name
+      signified with her. She was a centre of radiating peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, don&rsquo;t you think that&rsquo;s Wynnie&rsquo;s bonnet over that black rock there,
+      just beyond where you see that man drawing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You absurd child! How should I know Wynnie&rsquo;s bonnet at this distance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you see the little white feather you gave her out of your wardrobe
+      just before we left? She put it in this morning before she went out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do see something white. But I want you to look out there,
+      towards what they call the Chapel Rock, at the other end of that long
+      mound they call the breakwater. You will soon see a boat appear full of
+      the coast-guard. I saw them going on board just as I left the house to
+      come up to you. Their officer came down with his sword, and each of the
+      men had a cutlass. I wonder what it can mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We looked. But before the boat made its appearance, Connie cried out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look there! What a big boat that is rowing for the land, away northwards
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned my eyes in the direction she indicated, and saw a long boat with
+      some half-dozen oars, full of men, rowing hard, apparently for some spot
+      on the shore at a considerable distance to the north of our bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that boat has something to do with the coast-guard and
+      their cutlasses. You&rsquo;ll see that, as soon as they get out of the bay, they
+      will row in the same direction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was. Our boat appeared presently from under the concealment of the
+      heights on which we were, and made at full speed after the other boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely they can&rsquo;t be smugglers,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I thought all that was over and
+      done with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of another twenty minutes, during which we watched their
+      progress, both boats had disappeared behind the headland to the northward.
+      Then, thinking Connie had had nearly enough of the sea air for her first
+      experience of its influences, I went and fetched Walter, and we carried
+      her back as we had brought her. She had not been in the shadow of her own
+      room for five minutes before she was fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now nearly time for our early dinner. We always dined early when we
+      could, that we might eat along with our children. We were both convinced
+      that the only way to make them behave like ladies and gentlemen was to
+      have them always with us at meals. We had seen very unpleasant results in
+      the children of those who allowed them to dine with no other supervision
+      than the nursery afforded: they were a constant anxiety and occasional
+      horror to those whom they visited&mdash;snatching like monkeys, and
+      devouring like jackals, as selfishly as if they were mere animals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! we&rsquo;ve seen such a nice gentleman!&rdquo; said Dora, becoming lively under
+      the influence of her soup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you, Dora? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sitting on the rocks, taking a portrait of the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you say he was a nice gentleman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had such beautiful boots!&rdquo; answered Dora, at which there was a great
+      laugh about the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! we must run and tell Connie that,&rdquo; said Harry. &ldquo;It will make her
+      laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you tell Connie, then, Harry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O! what was it, Charlie? I&rsquo;ve forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another laugh followed at Harry&rsquo;s expense now, and we were all very merry,
+      when Dora, who sat opposite to the window, called out, clapping her hands&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s Niceboots again! There&rsquo;s Niceboots again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment the head of a young man appeared over the wall that
+      separated the garden from the little beach that lay by the entrance of the
+      canal. I saw at once that he must be more than ordinarily tall to show his
+      face, for he was not close to the wall. It was a dark countenance, with a
+      long beard, which few at that time wore, though now it is getting not
+      uncommon, even in my own profession&mdash;a noble, handsome face, a little
+      sad, with downbent eyes, which, released from their more immediate duty
+      towards nature, had now bent themselves upon the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose he&rsquo;s contemplating his boots,&rdquo; said Wynnie, with apparent
+      maliciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s too bad of you, Wynnie,&rdquo; I said, and the child blushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean anything, papa. It was only following up Dora&rsquo;s wise
+      discrimination,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a fine-looking fellow,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and ought, with that face and
+      head, to be able to paint good pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see what he has done,&rdquo; said Wynnie; &ldquo;for, by the way we
+      were sitting, I should think we were attempting the same thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what was that then, Wynnie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rock,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;that you could not see from where you were
+      sitting. I saw you on the top of the cliff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie said it was you, by your bonnet. She, too, was wishing she could
+      look over the shoulder of the artist at work beside you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not beside me. There were yards and yards of solid rock between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Space, you see, in removing things from the beholder, seems always to
+      bring them nearer to each other, and the most differing things are classed
+      under one name by the man who knows nothing about them. But what sort of a
+      rock was it you were trying to draw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A strange-looking, conical rock, that stands alone in front of one of the
+      ridges that project from the shore into the water. Three sea-birds, with
+      long white wings, were flying about it, and the little waves of the rising
+      tide were beating themselves against it and breaking in white plashes. So
+      the rock stood between the blue and white below and the blue and white
+      above; for, though there were no clouds, the birds gave the touches of
+      white to the upper sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Dora,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if you are old enough to understand me;
+      but sometimes little people are long in understanding, just because the
+      older people think they can&rsquo;t, and don&rsquo;t try them.&mdash;Do you see, Dora,
+      why I want you to learn to draw? Look how Wynnie sees things. That is, in
+      a great measure, because she draws things, and has, by that, learned to
+      watch in order to find out. It is a great thing to have your eyes open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora&rsquo;s eyes were large, and she opened them to their full width, as if she
+      would take in the universe at their little doors. Whether that indicated
+      that she did not in the least understand what I had been saying, or that
+      she was in sympathy with it, I cannot tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now let us go up to Connie, and tell her about the rock and everything
+      else you have seen since you went out. We are all her messengers sent out
+      to discover things, and bring back news of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little talk with Connie, I retired to the study, which was on the
+      same floor as her room completing, indeed, the whole of that part of the
+      house, which, seen from without, looked like a separate building; for it
+      had a roof of its own, and stood higher up the rock than the rest of the
+      dwelling. Here I began to glance over the books. To have the run of
+      another man&rsquo;s library, especially if it has all been gathered by himself,
+      is like having a pass-key into the chambers of his thought. Only, one must
+      be wary, when he opens them, what marks on the books he takes for those of
+      the present owner. A mistake here would breed considerable confusion and
+      falsehood in any judgment formed from the library. I found, however, one
+      thing plain enough, that Shepherd had kept up that love for an older
+      English literature, which had been one of the cords to draw us towards
+      each other when we were students together. There had been one point on
+      which we especially agreed&mdash;that a true knowledge of the present, in
+      literature, as in everything else, could only be founded upon a knowledge
+      of what had gone before; therefore, that any judgment, in regard to the
+      literature of the present day, was of no value which was not guided and
+      influenced by a real acquaintance with the best of what had gone before,
+      being liable to be dazzled and misled by novelty of form and other
+      qualities which, whatever might be the real worth of the substance, were,
+      in themselves, purely ephemeral. I had taken down a last-century edition
+      of the poems of the brothers Fletcher, and, having begun to read a lovely
+      passage in &ldquo;Christ&rsquo;s Victory and Triumph,&rdquo; had gone into what I can only
+      call an intellectual rage, at the impudence of the editor, who had altered
+      innumerable words and phrases to suit the degenerate taste of his own
+      time,&mdash;when a knock came to the door, and Charlie entered, breathless
+      with eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the boat with the men with the swords in it, and another boat
+      behind them, twice as big.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hurried out upon the road, and there, close under our windows, were the
+      two boats we had seen in the morning, landing their crews on the little
+      beach. The second boat was full of weather-beaten men, in all kinds of
+      attire, some in blue jerseys, some in red shirts, some in ragged coats.
+      One man, who looked their superior, was dressed in blue from head to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; I asked the officer of the coast-guard, a sedate,
+      thoughtful-looking man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vessel foundered, sir,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Sprung a leak on Sunday morning.
+      She was laden with iron, and in a heavy ground swell it shifted and
+      knocked a hole in her. The poor fellows are worn out with the pump and
+      rowing, upon little or nothing to eat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were trooping past us by this time, looking rather dismal, though not
+      by any means abject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do with them now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll be taken in by the people. We&rsquo;ll get up a little subscription for
+      them, but they all belong to the society the sailors have for sending the
+      shipwrecked to their homes, or where they want to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, here&rsquo;s something to help,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir. They&rsquo;ll be very glad of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if there&rsquo;s anything wanted that I can do for them, you must let me
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, sir. But I don&rsquo;t think there will be any occasion to trouble you.
+      You are our new clergyman, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly that. Only for a little while, till my friend Mr. Shepherd is
+      able to come back to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want to lose Mr. Shepherd, sir. He&rsquo;s what they call high in
+      these parts, but he&rsquo;s a great favourite with all the poor people, because
+      you see he understands them as if he was of the same flesh and blood with
+      themselves&mdash;as, for that matter, I suppose we all are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we weren&rsquo;t there would be nothing to say at all. Will any of these men
+      be at church to-morrow, do you suppose? I am afraid sailors are not much
+      in the way of going to church?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid not. You see they are all anxious to get home. Most likely
+      they&rsquo;ll be all travelling to-morrow. It&rsquo;s a pity. It would be a good
+      chance for saying something to them that they might think of again. But I
+      often think that, perhaps&mdash;it&rsquo;s only my own fancy, and I don&rsquo;t set it
+      up for anything&mdash;that sailors won&rsquo;t be judged exactly like other
+      people. They&rsquo;re so knocked about, you see, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
+      Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon
+      it, God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any
+      sailor of them all. But that&rsquo;s not exactly the question. It seems to me
+      the question is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is
+      because we know what God is like, who can trust in him with all our hearts
+      because he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners,
+      shall we not try all we can to let them, too, know the blessedness of
+      trusting in their Father in heaven? If we could only get them to say the
+      Lord&rsquo;s prayer, <i>meaning</i> it, think what that would be! Look here!
+      This can&rsquo;t be called bribery, for they are in want of it, and it will show
+      them I am friendly. Here&rsquo;s another sovereign. Give them my compliments,
+      and say that if any of them happen to be in Kilkhaven tomorrow, I shall be
+      quite pleased to welcome them to church. Tell them I will give them of my
+      best there if they will come. Make the invitation merrily, you know. No
+      long faces and solemn speech. I will give them the solemn speech when they
+      come to church. But even there I hope God will keep the long face far from
+      me. That is fittest for fear and suffering. And the house of God is the
+      casket that holds the antidote against all fear and most suffering. But I
+      am preaching my sermon on Saturday instead of Sunday, and keeping you from
+      your ministration to the poor fellows. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will give them your message as near as I can,&rdquo; he said, and we shook
+      hands and parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the ocean.
+      To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning there
+      had been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday morning, home
+      come the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a mock she takes all
+      they have, and flings them on shore again, with her weeds, and her shells,
+      and her sand. Before the winter was over we had learned&mdash;how much
+      more of that awful power that surrounds the habitable earth! By slow
+      degrees the sense of its might grew upon us, first by the vision of its
+      many aspects and moods, and then by more awful things that followed; for
+      there are few coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as upon this, the
+      whole force of the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when there is no storm
+      within perhaps hundreds of miles, when all is still as a church on the
+      land, the storm that raves somewhere out upon the vast waste, will drive
+      the waves in upon the shore with such fury that not even a lifeboat could
+      make its way through their yawning hollows, and their fierce, shattered,
+      and tumbling crests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in the
+      church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning&rsquo;s sermon for the
+      occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time that it
+      should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors were there
+      or not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought, for
+      instance, of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready all
+      about our island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or symbol of
+      two other oceans, one very still, the other very awful and fierce; in
+      fact, that three oceans surrounded us: one of the known world; one of the
+      unseen world, that is, of death; one of the spirit&mdash;the devouring
+      ocean of evil&mdash;and might I not have added yet another, encompassing
+      and silencing all the rest&mdash;that of truth! The visible ocean seemed
+      to make war upon the land, and the dwellers thereon. Restrained by the
+      will of God and by him made subject more and more to the advancing
+      knowledge of those who were created to rule over it, it was yet like a
+      half-tamed beast ever ready to break loose and devour its masters. Of
+      course this would have been but one aspect or appearance of it&mdash;for
+      it was in truth all service; but this was the aspect I knew it must bear
+      to those, seafaring themselves or not, to whom I had to speak. Then I
+      thought I might show, that its power, like that of all things that man is
+      ready to fear, had one barrier over which no commotion, no might of
+      driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its loudest waves were dumb&mdash;the
+      barrier of death. Hitherto and no further could its power reach. It could
+      kill the body. It could dash in pieces the last little cock-boat to which
+      the man clung, but thus it swept the man beyond its own region into the
+      second sea of stillness, which we call death, out upon which the thoughts
+      of those that are left behind can follow him only in great longings, vague
+      conjectures, and mighty faith. Then I thought I could show them how,
+      raving in fear, or lying still in calm deceit, there lay about the life of
+      man a far more fearful ocean than that which threatened his body; for this
+      would cast, could it but get a hold of him, both body and soul into hell&mdash;the
+      sea of evil, of vice, of sin, of wrong-doing&mdash;they might call it by
+      what name they pleased. This made war against the very essence of life,
+      against God who is the truth, against love, against fairness, against
+      fatherhood, motherhood, sisterhood, brotherhood, manhood, womanhood,
+      against tenderness and grace and beauty, gathering into one pulp of
+      festering death all that is noble, lovely, worshipful in the human nature
+      made so divine that the one fearless man, the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it
+      with us. This, I thought I might make them understand, was the only
+      terrible sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose awful shore we must
+      shrink and flee, the end of every voyage upon whose bosom was the bottom
+      of its filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is thought or spoken in
+      the light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that reaches down from the
+      upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of men. I thought, I say,
+      for a while, that I could make this, not definite, but very real to them.
+      But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might they not in the
+      symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the symbol itself be
+      ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return only in the vaguest
+      shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more excellent way. For the
+      power of the truth lies of course in its revelation to the mind, and while
+      for this there are a thousand means, none are so mighty as its embodiment
+      in human beings and human life. There it is itself alive and active. And
+      amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that in him who was perfect
+      man in virtue of being at the root of the secret of humanity, in virtue of
+      being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons in time: he is his Son in
+      eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken sparkle. Therefore, I would
+      talk to them about&mdash;but I will treat my reader now as if he were not
+      my reader, but one of my congregation on that bright Sunday, my first in
+      the Seaboard Parish, with the sea outside the church, flashing in the
+      sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen, I
+      could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level with
+      them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts upon that
+      which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the pulpit; then I
+      felt, as usual with me, that I was personally present for personal
+      influence with my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure, that one
+      long bench nearly in the middle of the church was full of such sunburnt
+      men as could not be mistaken for any but mariners, even if their torn and
+      worn garments had not revealed that they must be the very men about whom
+      we had been so much interested. Not only were they behaving with perfect
+      decorum, but their rough faces wore an aspect of solemnity which I do not
+      suppose was by any means their usual aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing. They
+      should have it by and by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once upon a time,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
+      till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a
+      mountain as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes haste
+      to get down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun was going
+      down, and, as I say, continued there for a good long while after it was
+      dark. You will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished to be alone.
+      He hadn&rsquo;t a house of his own. He never had all the time he lived. He
+      hadn&rsquo;t even a room of his own into which he could go, and bolt the door of
+      it. True, he had kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they were all poor
+      people, and their houses were small, and very likely they had large
+      families, and he could not always find a quiet place to go into. And I
+      dare say, if he had had a room, he would have been a little troubled with
+      the children constantly coming to find him; for however much he loved them&mdash;and
+      no man was ever so fond of children as he was&mdash;he needed to be left
+      quiet sometimes. So, upon this occasion, he went up the mountain just to
+      be quiet. He had been all day with a crowd of people, and he felt that it
+      was time to be alone. For he had been talking with men all day, which
+      tires and sometimes confuses a man&rsquo;s thoughts, and now he wanted to talk
+      with God&mdash;for that makes a man strong, and puts all the confusion in
+      order again, and lets a man know what he is about. So he went to the top
+      of the hill. That was his secret chamber. It had no door; but that did not
+      matter&mdash;no one could see him but God. There he stayed for hours&mdash;sometimes,
+      I suppose, kneeling in his prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with
+      his own thinking, on a stone; sometimes walking about, looking forward to
+      what would come next&mdash;not anxious about it, but contemplating it. For
+      just before he came up here, some of the people who had been with him
+      wanted to make him a king; and this would not do&mdash;this was not what
+      God wanted of him, and therefore he got rid of them, and came up here to
+      talk to God. It was so quiet up here! The earth had almost vanished. He
+      could see just the bare hilltop beneath him, a glimmer below, and the sky
+      and the stars over his head. The people had all gone away to their own
+      homes, and perhaps next day would hardly think about him at all, busy
+      catching fish, or digging their gardens, or making things for their
+      houses. But he knew that God would not forget him the next day any more
+      than this day, and that God had sent him not to be the king that these
+      people wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make his heart strong,
+      I say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk with his Father.
+      How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had been down there
+      a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as much as he was
+      in the quiet now&mdash;the only difference being that he could not then be
+      alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was&mdash;it was the king
+      of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting son of
+      our Father in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot of
+      it&mdash;that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not
+      wanting even his usual companions to be with him this evening&mdash;partly,
+      I presume, because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take
+      him by force and make him a king&mdash;he had sent them away in their
+      boat, to go across this water to the other side, where were their homes
+      and their families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top
+      or on the water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would
+      have been keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle
+      of the lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their
+      teeth. But he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was
+      talking to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and
+      finding it&mdash;watching it on its way across to the other side. You must
+      remember that it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous storms
+      upon these small lakes with great mountains about them. For the wind will
+      come all at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden a squall as
+      ever overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is no sea-room.
+      If the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore in a few
+      minutes, whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out at the oar,
+      toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So the time for
+      loneliness and prayer was over, and the time to go down out of his secret
+      chamber and help his brethren was come. He did not need to turn and say
+      good-bye to his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top alone: his
+      Father was down there on the lake as well. He went straight down. Could
+      not his Father, if he too was down on the lake, help them without him?
+      Yes. But he wanted him to do it, that they might see that he did it.
+      Otherwise they would only have thought that the wind fell and the waves
+      lay down, without supposing for a moment that their Master or his Father
+      had had anything to do with it. They would have done just as people do
+      now-a-days: they think that the help comes of itself, instead of by the
+      will of him who determined from the first that men should be helped. So
+      the Master went down the hill. When he reached the border of the lake, the
+      wind being from the other side, he must have found the waves breaking
+      furiously upon the rocks. But that made no difference to him. He looked
+      out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the rushing wind and the noise of
+      the water, out over the waves under the clear, starry sky, saw where the
+      tiny boat was tossed about like a nutshell, and set out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
+      their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are
+      of tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson&rsquo;s yarn a
+      good one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than the
+      others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not returned,
+      and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea of what was
+      coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how Jesus had come
+      by a boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave him
+      behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been with
+      them&mdash;not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only
+      that somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at.
+      They had seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn
+      water into wine&mdash;some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand
+      people the day before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one
+      of their number suggested that if he had been with them, they would have
+      been safe from the storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about
+      the laws of nature, not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they
+      would have said that was quite a different thing&mdash;altogether too much
+      to expect or believe: <i>nobody</i> could make the wind mind what it was
+      about, or keep the water from drowning you if you fell into it and
+      couldn&rsquo;t swim; or such-like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
+      strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
+      their oars in it up to the handles&mdash;as they rose on the crest of a
+      huge wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
+      leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray which
+      the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before it like
+      dust, they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat, something
+      standing up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move towards them.
+      It was a shape like a man. They all cried out with fear, as was natural,
+      for they thought it must be a ghost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the
+      story! I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting up
+      to speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
+      knew so well. It said, &lsquo;Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.&rsquo; I
+      should think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some
+      moments where they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to
+      recover himself apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt
+      strong and full of courage. &lsquo;Lord, if it be thou,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;bid me come
+      unto thee on the water.&rsquo; Jesus just said, &lsquo;Come;&rsquo; and Peter unshipped his
+      oar, and scrambled over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let go his
+      hold of the boat, and began to look about him, and saw how the wind was
+      tearing the water, and how it tossed and raved between him and Jesus, he
+      began to be afraid. And as soon as he began to be afraid he began to sink;
+      but he had, notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough to do the one
+      sensible thing; he cried out, &lsquo;Lord, save me.&rsquo; And Jesus put out his hand,
+      and took hold of him, and lifted him up out of the water, and said to him,
+      &lsquo;O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And then they got
+      into the boat, and the wind fell all at once, and altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn&rsquo;t that
+      he hadn&rsquo;t courage, but that he hadn&rsquo;t enough of it. And why was it that he
+      hadn&rsquo;t enough of it? Because he hadn&rsquo;t faith enough. Peter was always very
+      easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn&rsquo;t at all likely that a
+      man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter found himself
+      standing on the water: you would have thought that when once he found
+      himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of the wind and the
+      waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked so ugly that the
+      fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his courage went. You
+      would have thought that the greatest trial of his courage was over when he
+      got out of the boat, and that there was comparatively little more ahead of
+      him. Yet the sight of the waves and the blast of the boisterous wind were
+      too much for him. I will tell you how I fancy it was; and I think there
+      are several instances of the same kind of thing in Peter&rsquo;s life. When he
+      got out of the boat, and found himself standing on the water, he began to
+      think much of himself for being able to do so, and fancy himself better
+      and greater than his companions, and an especial favourite of God above
+      them. Now, there is nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two
+      are directly against each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and
+      began to think about himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose
+      his faith, and then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink&mdash;and
+      that brought him to his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his
+      Master, and then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the
+      Lord gently rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, &lsquo;Wherefore
+      didst thou doubt?&rsquo; I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart
+      sufficiently well to answer that <i>wherefore</i>. I do not think it
+      likely at this period of his history. But God has immeasurable patience,
+      and before he had done teaching Peter, even in this life, he had made him
+      know quite well that pride and conceit were at the root of all his
+      failures. Jesus did not point it out to him now. Faith was the only thing
+      that would reveal that to him, as well as cure him of it; and was,
+      therefore, the only thing he required of him in his rebuke. I suspect
+      Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager hands of his companions
+      already in a humbler state of mind than when he left it; but before his
+      pride would be quite overcome, it would need that same voice of
+      loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock to bring to
+      his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the voice of
+      one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet a
+      readier disciple than he&mdash;the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him
+      because he dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even
+      he gained the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the
+      cross like his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach us to
+      distrust ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and endless
+      patience with other people. But to return to the story and what the story
+      itself teaches us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
+      mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
+      frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they were
+      only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own question&rdquo;&mdash;I
+      went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with an audible
+      answer hovering on their lips&mdash;&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that, as they then were,
+      it would have made so much difference to them; for none of them had risen
+      much above the look of the things nearest them yet. But supposing you, who
+      know something about him, were alone on the sea, and expecting your boat
+      to be swamped every moment&mdash;if you found out all at once, that he was
+      looking down at you from some lofty hilltop, and seeing all round about
+      you in time and space too, would you be afraid? He might mean you to go to
+      the bottom, you know. Would you mind going to the bottom with him looking
+      at you? I do not think I should mind it myself. But I must take care lest
+      I be boastful like Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
+      Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not
+      believe that he is what he says he is&mdash;the Saviour of men. We do not
+      believe what he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and
+      therefore continue slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you do
+      believe in him. I am not going to say that you do not believe in him; but
+      I hope I am going to make you say to yourselves that you too deserve to
+      have those words of the Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to Peter,
+      &lsquo;O ye of little faith!&rsquo; Floating on the sea of your troubles, all kinds of
+      fears and anxieties assailing you, is He not on the mountain-top? Sees he
+      not the little boat of your fortunes tossed with the waves and the
+      contrary wind? Assuredly he will come to you walking on the waters. It may
+      not be in the way you wish, but if not, you will say at last, &lsquo;This is
+      better.&rsquo; It may be that he will come in a form that will make you cry out
+      for fear in the weakness of your faith, as the disciples cried out&mdash;not
+      believing any more than they did, that it can be he. But will not each of
+      you arouse his courage that to you also he may say, as to the woman with
+      the sick daughter whose confidence he so sorely tried, &lsquo;Great is thy
+      faith&rsquo;? Will you not rouse yourself, I say, that you may do him justice,
+      and cast off the slavery of your own dread? O ye of little faith,
+      wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that the Lord sees and will not
+      come. Down the mountain assuredly he will come, and you are now as safe in
+      your troubles as the disciples were in theirs with Jesus looking on. They
+      did not know it, but it was so: the Lord was watching them. And when you
+      look back upon your past lives, cannot you see some instances of the same
+      kind&mdash;when you felt and acted as if the Lord had forgotten you, and
+      found afterwards that he had been watching you all the time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
+      little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
+      soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
+      envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah! trust
+      him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean and
+      beautiful in heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
+      watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt, and
+      wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe,
+      though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which
+      you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch
+      over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will
+      you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and
+      delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your
+      ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves to help you? It
+      is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would be far finer to
+      fear nothing <i>because</i> he is above all, and over all, and in you all.
+      For his sake and for his love, give up everything bad, and take him for
+      your captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you, and steer you safe
+      into the port of glory. Now to God the Father,&rdquo; &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
+      followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      END OF VOL. I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      VOLUME II.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the evening we met in Connie&rsquo;s room, as usual, to have our talk. And
+      this is what came out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw Niceboots at church. He did stare at you, papa, as if he had never
+      heard a sermon before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay he never heard such a sermon before!&rdquo; said Connie, with the
+      perfect confidence of inexperience and partiality&mdash;not to say
+      ignorance, seeing she had not heard the sermon herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Wynnie spoke from her dark corner, apparently forcing herself to
+      speak, and thereby giving what seemed an unpleasant tone to what she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I don&rsquo;t know what to think. You are always telling us to
+      trust in Him; but how can we, if we are not good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s no use sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you&mdash;I mean I&mdash;can&rsquo;t feel good, or care about it at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is that any ground for saying that it is no use&mdash;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&mdash;and who so
+      destitute as those who do not love what they want to love&mdash;except,
+      indeed, those who don&rsquo;t want to love?&mdash;that, till you are well on
+      towards all right by earnestly seeking it, he won&rsquo;t help you? You are to
+      judge him from yourself, are you?&mdash;forgetting that all the misery in
+      you is just because you have not got his grand presence with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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&mdash;gold and red and blue&mdash;that
+      you have to that picture of him at home. Why doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no suffering, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not say that, my dear. There you are on your couch and can&rsquo;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&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;are not these feelings in a great measure dependent
+      upon the state of one&rsquo;s health? I find it so different when the sunshine
+      is inside me as well as outside me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t mean you, wife&mdash;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&mdash;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. &lsquo;What does that matter?&rsquo; you will learn to say. &lsquo;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.&rsquo; This is faith&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, papa. I think perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;I have heard you yourself, papa, make excuse for
+      people&rsquo;s ill-temper on this very ground, that they were out of health.
+      Indeed,&rdquo; she went on, half-crying, &ldquo;I have heard you do so for myself,
+      when you did not know that I was within hearing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;that is,
+      in the life of another&mdash;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, &lsquo;It is true
+      So-and-so was cross to-day. But it wasn&rsquo;t in the least that he wasn&rsquo;t
+      friendly, or didn&rsquo;t like me; it was only that he had eaten something that
+      hadn&rsquo;t agreed with him. I could see it in his eye. He had one of his
+      headaches.&rsquo; 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, &lsquo;It is a law of
+      nature,&rsquo; 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 <i>propound anent</i> it? as the Scotch lawyers would say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little pause followed, during which I hope some of us were thinking.
+      That Wynnie, at least, was, her next question made evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand it,&rdquo;
+       I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I find it so hard to believe. Can&rsquo;t you say something, papa, to help
+      me to believe it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing
+      against reason in the story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, please, what you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might drown his body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;physical light, as we say, <i>merely?</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;Moses, Elias, and
+      he&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then about Peter, papa? What you have been saying will not apply to
+      Peter&rsquo;s body, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s faith in him brought even
+      Peter&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&mdash;Does this help
+      you to believe at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simple enough, not clever enough, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s one thing,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I opened my New Testament, and read fragmentarily, &ldquo;&lsquo;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.&rsquo; Just contemplate the change here in the words of our
+      Lord. &lsquo;Blessed art thou.&rsquo; &lsquo;Thou art an offence unto me.&rsquo; Think what change
+      has passed on Peter&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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
+      <i>alas?</i> 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&rsquo;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&mdash;like him; that the lovely glimmerings of
+      truth and love that were in them now&mdash;the breakings forth of the
+      light that lighteneth every man&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 <i>would</i> be what he wanted, who knew all about it, and had done
+      everything that I might be a son of God&mdash;a living glory of gladness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. NICEBOOTS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s shipman, as far as his hue and the first look of him
+      went. It was clear that &ldquo;in many a tempest had his beard be shake,&rdquo; and
+      certainly &ldquo;the hote somer had made his hew all broun;&rdquo; but farther the
+      likeness would hardly go, for the &ldquo;good fellow&rdquo; 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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me, captain, that your vessel was not seaworthy, and that you
+      could not but have known that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was my own craft, sir, and I judged her fit for several voyages more.
+      If she had been A 1 she couldn&rsquo;t have been mine; and a man must do what he
+      can for his family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you were risking your life, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A few chances more or less don&rsquo;t much signify to a sailor, sir. There
+      ain&rsquo;t nothing to be done without risk. You&rsquo;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&rsquo;s all in the luck, sir, I assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever the captain&rsquo;s ready to go he&rsquo;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&rsquo;d never set his foot off shore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s right they shouldn&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s got
+      a character of her own, and she can&rsquo;t hide it long, any more than you can
+      hide yours, sir, begging your pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay that&rsquo;s all correct, but still I shouldn&rsquo;t like anyone to say to
+      me, &lsquo;You ought to have told me, captain.&rsquo; Therefore, you see, I&rsquo;m telling
+      you, captain, and now I&rsquo;m clear.&mdash;Have a glass of wine before you
+      go,&rdquo; I concluded, ringing the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir. I&rsquo;ll turn over what you&rsquo;ve been saying, and anyhow I take
+      it kind of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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 <i>undertow</i>, as they called it&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry! Charlie! What on earth are you about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, papa,&rdquo; answered Charlie. &ldquo;Only it&rsquo;s so jolly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is jolly, my boy?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I don&rsquo;t know, papa! It&rsquo;s <i>so</i> jolly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the sunshine?&rdquo; thought I; &ldquo;and the wind? God&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I withdrew into my room; and so far from seeking to put an end to the
+      noise&mdash;I knew Connie did not mind it&mdash;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&rsquo;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 be 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After scrambling with difficulty over some rocky ledges, and stopping at
+      Connie&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the ribbed sea-sand,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; cried Wynnie involuntarily, and the painter looked round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;We came over from the other side, and did
+      not see you before. I hope we have not disturbed you much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; he answered courteously, and rose as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind having your work seen before it is finished?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was struck with the mode and tone of the remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is no common man,&rdquo; I said to myself, and responded to him in
+      something of a similar style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish we could always keep that in mind with regard to human beings
+      themselves, as well as their works,&rdquo; I said aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter looked at me, and I looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We speak each from the experience of his own profession, I presume,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I returned, glancing at the little picture in oils upon his easel,
+      &ldquo;your work here, though my knowledge of painting is next to nothing&mdash;perhaps
+      I ought to say nothing at all&mdash;this picture must have long ago passed
+      the chaotic stage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is nearly as much finished as I care to make it,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I
+      hardly count this work at all. I am chiefly amusing, or rather pleasing,
+      my own fancy at present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apparently,&rdquo; I remarked, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will soon explain,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;The moment I saw this rock, it
+      reminded me of Dante&rsquo;s Purgatory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are a reader of Dante?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;In the original, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>per se</i> was till I began to read Dante.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is quite my own feeling. Now, to return to your picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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
+      <i>ab extra</i> 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&mdash;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?&rdquo;&mdash;for the young man, getting animated, began to talk as if we
+      had known each other for some time&mdash;and here he repeated the purport
+      of Dante&rsquo;s words in English:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you said you did not use translations?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it possible that&mdash;Miss Walton (?)&rdquo; interrogatively this&mdash;&ldquo;might
+      not follow the Italian so easily, and I feared to seem pedantic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won&rsquo;t lag far behind, I flatter myself,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;Whose
+      translation do you quote?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated a moment; then said carelessly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have cobbled a few passages after that fashion myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has the merit of being near the original at least,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;and
+      that seems to me one of the chief merits a translation can possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; the painter resumed, rather hastily, as if to avoid any further
+      remark upon his verses, &ldquo;you see those white things in the air above?&rdquo;
+       Here he turned to Wynnie. &ldquo;Miss Walton will remember&mdash;I think she was
+      making a drawing of the rock at the same time I was&mdash;how the
+      seagulls, or some such birds&mdash;only two or three of them&mdash;kept
+      flitting about the top of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember quite well,&rdquo; answered Wynnie, with a look of appeal to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I interposed; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mr. Niceboots, for as yet I did not know what else to call him,
+      looked at Wynnie almost with a start.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How wonderfully that falls in with my fancy about the rock!&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;is it not, Mr. Walton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly it is. We are here tried as by fire, to see what our work is&mdash;whether
+      wood, hay, and stubble, or gold and silver and precious stones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; resumed the painter, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no theologian,&rdquo; said the painter, turning away, I thought somewhat
+      coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can be of any service to Miss Walton with her drawing, I shall be
+      happy,&rdquo; he said, turning again towards me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very kind,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but Miss Walton does not presume to be an
+      artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw a slight shade pass over Wynnie&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are just going to have some coffee,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;for my servants, I see,
+      have managed to kindle a fire. Will you come and allow me to introduce you
+      to Mrs. Walton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With much pleasure,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;how am I to effect an introduction, seeing I do not yet
+      know your name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had had to keep a sharp look-out on myself lest I should call him Mr.
+      Niceboots. He smiled very graciously and replied,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Percivale&mdash;Charles Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A descendant of Sir Percivale of King Arthur&rsquo;s Round Table?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot count quite so far back,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;as that&mdash;not quite
+      to the Conquest,&rdquo; he added, with a slight deepening of his sunburnt hue.
+      &ldquo;I do come of a fighting race, but I cannot claim Sir Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, do look here papa!&rdquo; she cried, from some little distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked away again towards the rest of our party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think those bubbles more beautiful than any precious stones you
+      ever saw, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And flowers are more beautiful things than jewels?&rsquo; she said
+      interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Many&mdash;perhaps most flowers are,&rdquo; I granted. &ldquo;And did you ever see
+      such curves and delicate textures anywhere else as in the clouds, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not&mdash;in the cirrhous clouds at least&mdash;the frozen ones.
+      But what are you putting me to my catechism for in this way, my child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a funny question, papa; it&rsquo;s a very serious one. I can&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand you, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay not, my dear. But I will explain to you a little, if Mr.
+      Percivale will excuse me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I am greatly interested, both in the question and the
+      answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;poorer,
+      without even a tub&mdash;when this world, with all its pictures, scenery,
+      books, and&mdash;alas for some Christians!&mdash;bibles even, shall have
+      vanished away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you say <i>alas</i>, papa&mdash;if they are Christians
+      especially?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say <i>alas</i> 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&mdash;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 &lsquo;winter of our discontent.&rsquo; Shakspere
+      surely saw that when he makes Titania say, in <i>A Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream</i>:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;The human mortals want their winter here&rsquo;&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      namely, to set things right; and none of those editors who would alter the
+      line seem to have been capable of understanding its import.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you a little,&rdquo; answered Wynnie. Then, changing her
+      tone, &ldquo;I told you, papa, you would have an answer ready; didn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my child; but with this difference&mdash;I found the answer to meet
+      my own necessities, not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you had it ready for me when I wanted it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was scarcely beyond hearing, when Dora came up to me from her digging,
+      with an eager look on her sunny face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he got nice boots, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, my dear, I am unable to support you in that assertion, for I
+      never saw his boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did, then,&rdquo; returned the child; &ldquo;and I never saw such nice boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I accept the statement willingly,&rdquo; 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&mdash;not in fact till next Sunday&mdash;though
+      why he should come to church at all was something of a puzzle to me,
+      especially when I knew him better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE BLACKSMITH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his hammered hand to his forehead courteously, and as lightly as
+      if the hammer had been the butt-end of a whip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if you would say the same if you had to work at it in
+      weather like this,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not,&rdquo; I returned, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you may be right,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;It does not much
+      matter to me,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;if I only get through my work and have done
+      with it. No man shall say I shirked what I&rsquo;d got to do. And then when it&rsquo;s
+      over there won&rsquo;t be a word to say agen me, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not finish the sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in
+      a somewhat dreary patch, if the word <i>dreary</i> can be truly used with
+      respect to any manifestation of sunlight, on the dark clay floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you are not ill,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;This man will do for
+      my work,&rdquo; I said to myself; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+       The smith&rsquo;s words broke in on my meditations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a little boy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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&rsquo;t account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he
+      said to me, solemn-like, &lsquo;Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord
+      Jesus to make you whole?&rsquo; 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: &lsquo;Then you ought to be at school,&rsquo; says he. I said nothing,
+      because I couldn&rsquo;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,&rdquo; he said, as he
+      took the horse-shoe from the forge, laid it on the anvil, and again made a
+      nimbus of coruscating iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are just the man I want,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a job for you, down to
+      Kilkhaven, as you say in these parts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha&rsquo; thought the
+      church was all spick and span by this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you know who I am,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t mind doing my job though you are a Methodist, will you?&rdquo; I
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I, sir. If I&rsquo;ve read right, it&rsquo;s the fault of the Church that we
+      don&rsquo;t pull all alongside. You turned us out, sir; we didn&rsquo;t go out of
+      ourselves. At least, if all they say is true, which I can&rsquo;t be sure of,
+      you know, in this world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite right there though,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And in doing so, the
+      Church had the worst of it&mdash;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&mdash;mind, I say, that I know&mdash;who would have made such a cruel
+      speech to a boy as that the Methodist parson made to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it did me good, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;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?&mdash;of
+      your having worked fiercely, indignantly, as if he wronged you by not
+      caring for you, not understanding you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a delicate little job that wants nice handling, and I fancy you
+      are just the man to do it to my mind,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, sir?&rdquo; he asked, in a friendly manner enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will excuse me, I would rather show it to you than talk about it,&rdquo;
+       I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you please, sir. When do you want me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first hour you can come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you feel inclined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that matter, I&rsquo;d rather go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to me instead: it&rsquo;s light work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, sir&mdash;at ten o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. THE LIFE-BOAT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day rose glorious. Indeed, early as the sun rose, I saw him rise&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for
+      even here the hearth-fire has vanished from the records of cottage-life&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I now entered, Mrs. Coombes rose from a high-backed settle near the
+      fire, and bade me good-morning with a courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a lovely day it is, Mrs. Coombes! It is so bright over the sea,&rdquo; I
+      said, going to the one little window which looked out on the great
+      Atlantic, &ldquo;that one almost expects a great merchant navy to come sailing
+      into Kilkhaven&mdash;sunk to the water&rsquo;s edge with silks, and ivory, and
+      spices, and apes, and peacocks, like the ships of Solomon that we read
+      about&mdash;just as the sun gets up to the noonstead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>talk down</i> 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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what was the old woman&rsquo;s answer? It was this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, sir. And when I was as young as you&rdquo;&mdash;I was not so very
+      young, my reader may well think&mdash;&ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo; wood that he got at the Marishes, as
+      they calls it, sir&mdash;a bit of an island somewheres in the great sea.
+      But the parrot&rsquo;s gone dead like the rest of them, sir.&mdash;Where am I?
+      and what am I talking about?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were telling me how you used to think of the sea&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was as young as you. I remember, sir. Well, that lasted a long
+      time&mdash;lasted till my third boy fell asleep in the wide water; for it
+      du call it falling asleep, don&rsquo;t it, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bible certainly does,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the Bible I be meaning, of course,&rdquo; she returned. &ldquo;Well, after that,
+      but I don&rsquo;t know what began it, only I did begin to think about the sea as
+      something that took away things and didn&rsquo;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&rsquo; the shining ones that
+      come to fetch the pilgrims. You&rsquo;ve heard tell of the <i>Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress</i>,
+      I daresay, sir, among the poor people; for they du say it was written by a
+      tinker, though there be a power o&rsquo; good things in it that I think the
+      gentlefolk would like if they knowed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know the book&mdash;nearly as well as I know the Bible,&rdquo; I answered;
+      &ldquo;and the shining ones are very beautiful in it. I am glad you can think of
+      the sea that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s looking in at the window all day as I go about the house,&rdquo; she
+      answered, &ldquo;and all night too when I&rsquo;m asleep; and if I hadn&rsquo;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&rsquo;t
+      be easy, with the sound of it in your ears the last thing at night and the
+      first thing in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth of things is indeed the only refuge from the look of things,&rdquo; I
+      replied. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;&ldquo;the light that never was on sea or shore.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you find yourself to-day?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite well, sir, I thank you,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;A day like this does a man
+      good. But,&rdquo; he added, and his countenance fell, &ldquo;the heart knoweth its own
+      bitterness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may know it too much,&rdquo; I returned, &ldquo;just because it refuses to let a
+      stranger intermeddle therewith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not require many minutes to make the man understand what I wanted
+      of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must begin at the bells and work down,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a fortnight, I hope you will be able to play a tune to the parish,
+      sir,&rdquo; he added, as he took his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;s idea of the matter. I turned away
+      thoughtful, and went through the churchyard with my eye on the graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can she go no further?&rdquo; I asked of the captain of the coastguard, whom I
+      found standing by my side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not without some danger,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, then, must it be in a storm!&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then of course,&rdquo; he returned, &ldquo;they must take their chance. But there is
+      no good in running risks for nothing. That swell is quite enough for
+      exercise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is it enough to accustom them to face the danger that will come?&rdquo; I
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With danger comes courage,&rdquo; said the old sailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you ever afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. I don&rsquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      resumed, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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 <i>have</i>
+      seen a life-boat&mdash;not that one&mdash;<i>she&rsquo;s</i> done nothing yet&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;one could almost fancy
+      dreaming of storms to come&mdash;she went, as softly as if moved only by
+      her &ldquo;own sweet will,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve found your daughter at last then?&rdquo; I said, approaching them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, sir. She goes out to work, and her hands be pretty full at
+      present. But this be almost my daughter, sir,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;This is my next
+      daughter, Mary Trehern, from the south. She&rsquo;s got a place near by, to be
+      near her mother that is to be, that&rsquo;s me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was hanging her head and blushing, as the old woman spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;And when are you going to get your new mother,
+      Mary? Soon I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she gave me no reply&mdash;only hung her head lower and blushed
+      deeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Coombes spoke for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s shy, you see, sir. But if she was to speak her mind, she would ask
+      you whether you wouldn&rsquo;t marry her and Willie when he comes home from his
+      next voyage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary&rsquo;s hands were trembling now, and she turned half away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you expect Willie home?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a little gasp and murmur, but no articulate words came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be frightened, Mary,&rdquo; said her mother, as I found she always called
+      her. &ldquo;The gentleman won&rsquo;t be sharp with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted a pair of soft brown eyes with one glance and a smile, and then
+      sank them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be home in about a month, we think,&rdquo; answered the mother. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a
+      good ship he&rsquo;s aboard of, and makes good voyages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is time to think about the bans, then,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, sir,&rdquo; said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just come to me about it, and I will attend to it&mdash;when you think
+      proper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought I could hear a murmured &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. MR. PERCIVALE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you get that shade of green?&rdquo; I heard her ask as I came up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Mr. Percivale proceeded to tell her; from which beginning they
+      went on to other things, till Mr. Percivale said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is hardly fair, Miss Walton; to criticise my work while you keep
+      your own under cover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t criticising, Mr. Percivale; was I, Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t hear her make a single remark, Mr. Percivale,&rdquo; said Connie,
+      taking her sister&rsquo;s side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s history if they might not flow till the papas gave their wise
+      consideration to everything about the course they were to take.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, though,&rdquo; added Connie, &ldquo;it is only fair that Mr. Percivale <i>should</i>
+      see your work, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>all</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not long in returning, however, though she came back with the same
+      dignified motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing really worth either showing or concealing,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s wide eyes were taking in everything. It was wonderful how
+      Connie&rsquo;s deprivations had made her keen in observing. Now she hastened to
+      her sister&rsquo;s rescue even from such a slight inconvenience as the shadow of
+      embarrassment in which she found herself&mdash;perhaps from having seen
+      some unusual expression in my face, of which I was unconscious, though
+      conscious enough of what might have occasioned such.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me your hand, Wynnie,&rdquo; said Connie, &ldquo;and help me to move one inch
+      further on my side.&mdash;I may move just that much on my side, mayn&rsquo;t I,
+      papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you had better not, my dear, if you can do without it,&rdquo; I
+      answered; for the doctor&rsquo;s injunctions had been strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, papa; but I feel as if it would do me good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie smiled very sweetly and lay still, while Wynnie stood holding her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Mr. Percivale, having received the drawings, had walked away with
+      them towards what they called the storm tower&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run, Wynnie, and ask Mr. Percivale, with my compliments, to come and
+      lunch with us,&rdquo; I said&mdash;more to let her see I was not displeased,
+      however I might have looked, than for any other reason. She went&mdash;sedately
+      as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;up to which point she had been
+      walking with perfect steadiness and composure&mdash;she lifted her eyes&mdash;by
+      what influence I cannot tell&mdash;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&mdash;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, &ldquo;Not a word to Connie,&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After lunch, as we rose from the table, he took Wynnie&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid you have not found anything worthy of criticism in my poor
+      attempts, Mr. Percivale?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      replied, holding out his hand to take the portfolio again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be greatly obliged to you,&rdquo; she said, returning it, &ldquo;for I have
+      had no one to help me since I left school, except a book called <i>Modern
+      Painters</i>, 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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last speech fell on my ear like the tone of a church bell. &ldquo;That will
+      do, my friend,&rdquo; thought I. But I said nothing to interrupt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;at least so it appeared to
+      me from what I could understand of the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said my daughter, &ldquo;it seems to me that if you get the feeling
+      right, that is the main thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; returned Mr. Percivale; &ldquo;so much the main thing that any
+      imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it becomes of
+      the greatest consequence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But can it really interfere with the feeling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is it not a hopeless thing to attempt the finish of nature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s behaving so
+      childishly. Her face flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose,
+      saying, with a little choke in her voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see it&rsquo;s no use trying. I won&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear,&rdquo; he said, approaching me with an almost military step, much at
+      variance with the shadow upon his countenance, &ldquo;I fear I have been rude to
+      Miss Walton, but nothing was farther&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;in
+      proportion, I mean&mdash;to your&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you think so. That I should myself be of the same opinion can
+      be of no consequence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he added, with a half sigh and with
+      an appeal in his tone, as if he would justify himself to my conscience,
+      &ldquo;is half the battle in this world. It is over so soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No sooner than it ought to be,&rdquo; I rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it may appear to you,&rdquo; he returned; &ldquo;for you, I presume to conjecture,
+      have worked hard and done much. I may or may not have worked hard&mdash;sometimes
+      I think I have, sometimes I think I have not&mdash;but I certainly have
+      done little. Here I am nearly thirty, and have made no mark on the world
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that that is of so much consequence,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I have never
+      hoped for more than to rub out a few of the marks already made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you are right,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;Every man has something he can do,
+      and more, I suppose, that he can&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE SHADOW OP DEATH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 be 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,&mdash;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,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, I told Mr. Percivale that I was sorry I had behaved so badly about
+      the drawings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did right, my child,&rdquo; 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 <i>Hamlet</i>, 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the day&mdash;the
+      rights of women&mdash;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 <i>have</i> a right to&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what did Mr. Percivale say?&rdquo; I resumed, for she was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He took the blame all on himself, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a gentleman,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I could not leave it so, you know, papa, because that was not the
+      truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and what did he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He began to praise them then. But you know I could not take much of that,
+      for what could he do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might give him credit for a little honesty, at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but things may be true in a way, you know, and not mean much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered shyly. &ldquo;He was so kind that somehow I got heart to try
+      again. He&rsquo;s very nice, isn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My answer was not quite ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like him, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I like him&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what? please, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is not that a hasty conclusion, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a hasty question, my dear. I have come to no conclusion. I was
+      only speaking confidentially about my fears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, papa, it&rsquo;s only that he&rsquo;s not sure enough, and is afraid of
+      appearing to profess more than he believes. I&rsquo;m sure, if that&rsquo;s it, I have
+      the greatest sympathy with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at her, and saw the tears gathering fast in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray to God on the chance of his hearing you, my darling, and go to
+      sleep,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t like a man much, could you, who did not
+      believe in anything greater than himself, anything marvellous, grand,
+      beyond our understanding&mdash;who thought that he had come out of the
+      dirt and was going back to the dirt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could, papa, if he tried to do his duty notwithstanding&mdash;for I&rsquo;m
+      sure I couldn&rsquo;t. I should cry myself to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know whether this was the best answer to make, but I had little
+      time to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t know that he&rsquo;s like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;as
+      even such a man as we have been supposing might well teach us&mdash;till
+      we have sufficient facts from which to draw them. Now go to bed, my
+      child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night then, dear papa,&rdquo; she said, and left me with a kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>more</i> 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&mdash;on the Father who loved my
+      child more than even I could love her&mdash;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&rsquo;s <i>Paradise</i>,
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Coombes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned up a wizened, humorous old face, the very type of a
+      gravedigger&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re making things tidy,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It take time to make them all comfortable, you see, sir,&rdquo; he returned,
+      taking up his shears again and clipping away at the top and sides of the
+      mound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the dead, Coombes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; to be sure, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think it makes much difference to their comfort, do you,
+      whether the grass is one length or another upon their graves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well no, sir. I don&rsquo;t suppose it makes <i>much</i> difference to them.
+      But it look more comfortable, you know. And I like things to look
+      comfortable. Don&rsquo;t you, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I think, though I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;m sure I du my best to make the poor things comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed unable to rid his mind of the idea that the comfort of the
+      departed was dependent upon his ministrations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trouble I have with them sometimes! There&rsquo;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&rsquo; inches o&rsquo; the right depth, out come the edge of a great
+      stone in the near corner at the foot of the bed. Thinks I, he&rsquo;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.&mdash;But
+      this be one of the nicest places to lie in all up and down the coast&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something grotesque in the man&rsquo;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Coombes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The church of Boscastle stands high on the cliff. You&rsquo;ve been to
+      Boscastle, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him I had not yet, but hoped to go before the summer was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you should see Boscastle, sir. It&rsquo;s a wonderful place. That&rsquo;s where I
+      was born, sir. When I was a by that church was haunted, sir. It&rsquo;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 (<i>vaults</i>), and he wasn&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo; the wout, and that
+      was the ghost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a horrible idea!&rdquo; I said, with a half-shudder at the unrest of the
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man uttered a queer long-drawn sound,&mdash;neither a chuckle, a
+      crow, nor a laugh, but a mixture of all three,&mdash;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 <i>tell</i>, I suppose, by
+      looking me in the face. And as he turned he said, &ldquo;I thought you would
+      like to be comfortable then as well as other people, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s horrible
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before the week was over, death came near indeed&mdash;in far other
+      fashion than any funereal tale could have brought it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Papa, papa, there&rsquo;s a man drowning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;no baby was ever
+      more filled with the mere gladness of life than Connie&rsquo;s baby&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;<i>Cruel chance</i>,&rdquo; over and over again. For although
+      the two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its
+      turn would assert itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all a fancy, my dear,&rdquo; I said to her. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s head and stuns
+      him, and without further suffering he floats gently out on the sea of the
+      unknown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is so terrible for those left behind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you seen the face of his widow, so gentle, so loving, so resigned in
+      its pallor, you would not have thought it so <i>terrible</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;O, that sea, out there!&rdquo; I was very glad indeed when Mr. Turner,
+      who had arranged to spend a short holiday with us, arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Saturday the blacksmith was busy in the church-tower, and I went in
+      to see how he was getting on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had a sad business here the last week, sir,&rdquo; he said, after we had
+      done talking about the repairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very sad business indeed,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a warning to us all,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may well take it so,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of our local preachers made a grand use of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I made no reply. He resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you took no notice of it last Sunday, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite understand you, sir. But then you don&rsquo;t care much for
+      preaching in your church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I confess,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;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&mdash;that is,
+      where it is genuine&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean that, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You try to work upon people&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there is the preacher to rouse them up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the consequence is that they continue like children&mdash;the good
+      ones, I mean&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You daren&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder you can say such things against them, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said, sir, that our clergy don&rsquo;t care about moving our judgments,
+      only our feelings. Now I know preachers amongst us of whom that would be
+      anything but true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there must be. But there is what I say&mdash;your party-feeling
+      makes you touchy. A man can&rsquo;t always be saying in the press of utterance,
+      &lsquo;<i>Of course there are exceptions</i>.&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do gather a deal of money for good purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But that was not what I meant by <i>liberal</i>. It is far easier to
+      give money than to be generous in judgment. I meant by <i>liberal</i>,
+      able to see the good and true in people that differ from you&mdash;glad to
+      be roused to the reception of truth in God&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I was hasty. But I do think I am more ready to
+      lose my temper since&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, apparently no worse than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. AT THE FARM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dreary place in winter, Turner,&rdquo; 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&mdash;dinner was being got ready for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a doubt of it; but just the place I wanted for Miss Connie,&rdquo; he
+      replied. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean perfectly,&rdquo; answered Turner. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;returns when he is conscious of so much that is evil and so
+      much that is unsatisfied in him,&mdash;it brings with it a longing after
+      the high clear air of moral well-being.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think, then, that it is only by association that nature thus
+      impresses us? that she has no power of meaning these things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>is</i> purity and state in that sky. There <i>is</i>
+      a peace now in this wide still earth&mdash;not so very beautiful, you own&mdash;and
+      in that overhanging blue, which my heart cries out that it needs and
+      cannot be well till it gains&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; said Turner, after a pause. &ldquo;I must think more about such things.
+      The science the present day is going wild about will not give us that
+      rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you have been saying,&rdquo; resumed Turner, after another pause, &ldquo;reminds
+      me much of one of Wordsworth&rsquo;s poems. I do not mean the famous ode.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the &lsquo;Ninth Evening Voluntary,&rsquo; I know&mdash;one of his finest
+      and truest and deepest poems. It begins, &lsquo;Had this effulgence
+      disappeared.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is the one I mean. I shall read it again when I go home. But
+      you don&rsquo;t agree with Wordsworth, do you, about our having had an existence
+      previous to this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a little laugh as he asked the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t think much of Shelley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think his <i>feeling</i> most valuable; his <i>opinion</i> nearly
+      worthless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps I had no business to laugh, at it; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>something</i>
+      good in it, else they could not have held it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you able then to sympathise with that ode of Wordsworth&rsquo;s? Does it
+      not depend for all its worth on the admission of this theory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;But trailing clouds of glory do we come
+  From God who is our home&rsquo;?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s books, with which I had made no acquaintance
+      before&mdash;Henry Vaughan&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;who ministers to the miserable necessities of his
+      fellows has even more need than another to believe in the light and the
+      gladness&mdash;else a poor Job&rsquo;s comforter will he be. <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t want
+      to be treated like a musical snuff-box.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man can <i>prove</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;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 <i>don&rsquo;t</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A law with more exceptions than instances, I fear,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt that,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew this; and when Turner and I set out that morning to explore, I
+      expected to light upon some instance of it&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. THE KEEVE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my dear! now, Wynnie!&rdquo; I said, after prayers the next morning, &ldquo;you
+      must come out for a walk as soon as ever you can get your bonnets on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t leave Connie, papa,&rdquo; objected Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, yes, you can, quite well. There&rsquo;s nursie to look after her. What do
+      you say, Connie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am entirely independent of help from my family,&rdquo; returned Connie
+      grandiloquently. &ldquo;I am a woman of independent means,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;If you
+      say another word, I will rise and leave the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;threw herself back on
+      her pillows, and laughed delightedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care, papa,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I carry a terrible club for rebellious
+      people.&rdquo; Then, her mood changing, she added, as if to suppress the tears
+      gathering in her eyes, &ldquo;I am the queen&mdash;of luxury and self-will&mdash;and
+      I won&rsquo;t have anybody come near me till dinner-time. I mean to enjoy
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;that is,
+      not, I fear, so much as my wife and daughter, but quite enough
+      notwithstanding&mdash;but I do not quite enjoy being pulled up like a fern
+      at every turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my dear, what is the use of stopping to torture that harmless
+      vegetable?&rdquo; I say, but say in vain. &ldquo;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 <i>always</i> die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us have a rest here, Ethel,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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&mdash;without choice or wish of
+      our own&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know what you mean,&rdquo; was all Turner&rsquo;s reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; I resumed, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that in the grass?&rdquo; cried Wynnie, in a tone of alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked where she indicated, and saw a slow-worm, or blind-worm, lying
+      basking in the sun. I rose and went towards it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s your stick,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Why should I kill it? It is perfectly harmless, and,
+      to my mind, beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took it in my hands, and brought it to my wife. She gave an involuntary
+      shudder as it came near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you it is harmless,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;though it has a forked tongue.&rdquo;
+       And I opened its mouth as I spoke. &ldquo;I do not think the serpent form is
+      essentially ugly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me feel ugly,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I allow I do not quite understand the mystery of it,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how it can look after its tail, it is so far off,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does though&mdash;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&mdash;&lsquo;On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust.&rsquo; But it is better
+      to talk of beautiful things. <i>My</i> soul at least has dropped from its
+      world apex. Let us go on. Come, wife. Come, Turner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that in the course of ever so many ages wings and feet
+      should be both lost?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;that is, into
+      the simplicity of God&rsquo;s will concerning me. The only hope for ourselves
+      and for others lies in him&mdash;in the power the creating spirit has over
+      the spirits he has made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;not more than about a hundred and fifty feet in
+      height&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought we were quite alone, papa,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but I see a gentleman
+      sketching.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen your party for some time, Mr. Walton&mdash;since you crossed
+      the stream; but I would not break in upon your enjoyment with the surprise
+      which my presence here must cause you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been here almost a week. I certainly had no expectation of the
+      pleasure of seeing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will excuse me, I will return to my work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I felt as if I must say something, for I had shown him no courtesy
+      during the interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be a great pleasure to carry away such talismans with you&mdash;capable
+      of bringing the place back to your mental vision at any moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To tell the truth,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very beautiful here,&rdquo; I said, in a tone of contravention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very pretty,&rdquo; he answered&mdash;&ldquo;very lovely, if you will&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;to me not very
+      interesting, save for its single lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then, do you sketch the place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very fair question,&rdquo; he returned, with a smile. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would like to put a skylark in it, wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>therefore</i> they are good for me. I
+      am not working now; I am only playing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With a view to working better afterwards, I have no doubt,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right there, I hope,&rdquo; was his quiet reply, as he turned and
+      walked back to the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you quarrelled with our new friend, Harry?&rdquo; said my wife, as I came
+      up to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting on a stone. Turner and Wynnie were farther off towards the
+      foot of the fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; I answered, slightly outraged&mdash;I did not at first
+      know why&mdash;by the question. &ldquo;He is only gone to his work, which is a
+      duty belonging both to the first and second tables of the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you have asked him to come home to our early dinner, then,&rdquo; she
+      rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not. That remains for you to do. Come, I will take you to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; answered Percivale. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not send you anyone I thought unworthy of the honour,&rdquo; answered
+      my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale bowed&mdash;one of his stately, old-world bows, which I greatly
+      liked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any friend of yours&mdash;that is guarantee sufficient,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was this peculiarity about any compliment that Percivale paid, that
+      you had not a doubt of its being genuine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come and take an early dinner with us?&rdquo; said my wife. &ldquo;My
+      invalid daughter will be very pleased to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will with pleasure,&rdquo; he answered, but in a tone of some hesitation, as
+      he glanced from Ethelwyn to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife speaks for us all,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It will give us all pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am only afraid it will break in upon your morning&rsquo;s work,&rdquo; remarked
+      Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, that is not of the least consequence,&rdquo; he rejoined. &ldquo;In fact, as I
+      have just been saying to Mr. Walton, I am not working at all at present.
+      This is pure recreation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he turned towards his easel, and began hastily to bundle up
+      his things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not quite ready to go yet,&rdquo; said my wife, loath to leave the lovely
+      spot. &ldquo;What a curious flat stone this is!&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then was there a monastery here?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. The ruins of the chapel, one of the smallest, are on the top,
+      just above the fall&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s impression
+      of Connie&rsquo;s condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is certainly better,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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. &lsquo;Do you think you could?&rsquo; I
+      asked.&mdash;&lsquo;I think so,&rsquo; she answered. &lsquo;At any rate, I have often a
+      great inclination to try; only papa said I had better wait till you came.&rsquo; 
+      I do think she might be allowed a little more change of posture now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have really some hope of her final recovery?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have <i>hope</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am thankful for the hope,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you would show me a poem of&mdash;Vaughan, I think you said, was
+      the name of the writer. I am too ignorant of our older literature,&rdquo; said
+      Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have only just made acquaintance with him,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;But I think I
+      can repeat the poem. You shall judge whether it is not like Wordsworth&rsquo;s
+      Ode.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;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&mdash;&mdash;&lsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But here I broke down, for I could not remember the rest with even
+      approximate accuracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did this Vaughan live?&rdquo; asked Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was born, I find, in 1621&mdash;five years, that is, after Shakspere&rsquo;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&mdash;an
+      M.D. We&rsquo;ll have a glance at the little book when we go back. Don&rsquo;t let me
+      forget to show it you. A good many of your profession have distinguished
+      themselves in literature, and as profound believers too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought the profession had been chiefly remarkable for such
+      as believe only in the evidence of the senses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;not
+      such as he of whom Chaucer says,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;His study was but little on the Bible;&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Wynnie spoke, though with some tremor in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember a time, Wynnie, when the things about you&mdash;the
+      sky and the earth, say&mdash;seemed to you much grander than they seem
+      now? You are old enough to have lost something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought for a little while before she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dreams were, I know. I cannot say so of anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and
+      perhaps, after all, it was the best thing I could have said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must make a good use of your dreams, my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because they are the only memorials of childhood you have left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I to make a good use of them? I don&rsquo;t know what to do with my
+      silly old dreams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she gave a sigh as she spoke that testified her silly old dreams had a
+      charm for her still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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 &lsquo;I am&rsquo;&mdash;yea,
+      of what doubts and says &lsquo;Am I?&rsquo; and therefore is reasonable to creatures
+      who cannot even doubt save in that they live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;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&mdash;one of the
+      most sacred influences when <i>pure</i>, that is, un-mingled with
+      non-essentials&mdash;just by the feeling that he <i>must</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After an early dinner, I said to Turner&mdash;&ldquo;Come out with me, and we
+      will read that poem of Vaughan&rsquo;s in which I broke down today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa!&rdquo; said Connie, in a tone of injury, from the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, my dear?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be as good for us as for Mr. Turner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For I had thrown into my bag as I left the rectory a copy of <i>The
+      Clergyman&rsquo;s Vade Mecum</i>&mdash;a treatise occupied with the externals of
+      the churchman&rsquo;s relations&mdash;in which I soon came upon the following
+      passage:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the part of the clergyman, you see, Turner,&rdquo; I said, when I had
+      finished reading the whole passage to him. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that I can quite agree with you there,&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;If the
+      form is better, no one should hesitate to advocate the change. If it is
+      worse, then slowness is not sufficient&mdash;utter obstinacy is the right
+      condition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Turner. For the right must be the rule, and where <i>the
+      right</i> is beyond our understanding or our reach, then <i>the better</i>,
+      as indeed not only right compared with the other, but the sole ascent
+      towards the right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening I took Henry Vaughan&rsquo;s poems into the common sitting-room,
+      and to Connie&rsquo;s great delight read the whole of the lovely, though unequal
+      little poem, called &ldquo;The Retreat,&rdquo; in recalling which I had failed in the
+      morning. She was especially delighted with the &ldquo;white celestial thought,&rdquo;
+       and the &ldquo;bright shoots of everlastingness.&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  CHILDHOOD.
+
+  &ldquo;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.
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  And yet the practice worldlings call
+  Business and weighty action all,
+  Checking the poor child for his play,
+  But gravely cast themselves away.
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  An age of mysteries! which he
+  Must live twice that would God&rsquo;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 <i>narrow way!</i>&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For of such is the kingdom of heaven.&rdquo; said my wife softly, as I closed
+      the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I have the book, papa?&rdquo; said Connie, holding out her thin white cloud
+      of a hand to take it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. THE OLD CASTLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa! I moved my big toe! I did indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were all about her in a moment. But I saw that she was excited, and
+      fearing a reaction I sought to calm her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear,&rdquo; I said, as quietly as I could, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke out in the merriest laugh. A pause followed in which her face
+      wore a puzzled expression. Then she said all at once, &ldquo;Papa, it is very
+      odd, but I can&rsquo;t tell which of them,&rdquo; and burst into tears. I was afraid
+      that I had done more harm than good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not of the slightest consequence, my child,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mounts of vision upon which we
+      stood. The thought, &ldquo;O that Connie could see this!&rdquo; was swelling in my
+      heart, when Percivale broke the silence&mdash;not with any remark on the
+      glory around us, but with the commonplace question&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t got your man with you, I think, Mr. Walton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;we thought it better to leave him to look after the
+      boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a few minutes, while I gazed in delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it would be possible to bring Miss Constance
+      up here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I almost started at the idea, and had not replied before he resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be something for her to recur to with delight all the rest of
+      her life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would indeed. But it is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think so&mdash;if you would allow me the honour to assist you. I
+      think we could do it perfectly between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was again silent for a while. Looking down on the way we had come, it
+      seemed an almost dreadful undertaking. Percivale spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There can be no objection to that,&rdquo; I answered, as a little hope, and
+      courage with it, began to dawn in my heart. &ldquo;But you must allow it does
+      not look very practicable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True; and now I will go down with the descent in my head as well as under
+      my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there can be no harm in reconnoitring it at least. Let us go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know we can rest almost as often as we please,&rdquo; said Percivale, and
+      turned to lead the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>will</i> 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mischief have you two been about?&rdquo; said my wife, as we entered our
+      room in the inn, where the cloth was already laid for dinner. &ldquo;You look
+      just like two schoolboys that have been laying some plot, and can hardly
+      hold their tongues about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have been enjoying our little walk amazingly,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;So much
+      so, that we mean to set out for another the moment dinner is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will take Wynnie with you then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or you, my love,&rdquo; I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I will stay with Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife replied only with a loving look, and dinner appearing at this
+      moment, we sat down a happy party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When that was over&mdash;and a very good dinner it was, just what I like,
+      homely in material but admirable in cooking&mdash;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&rsquo;s offered arm. I led the way, therefore, and
+      left them to follow&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of things do you like best to paint, Mr. Percivale?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated for several seconds, which between a question and an answer
+      look so long, that most people would call them minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather you should see some of my pictures&mdash;I should prefer
+      that to answering your question,&rdquo; he said, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have seen some of your pictures,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me. Indeed you have not, Miss Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least I have seen some of your sketches and studies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of my sketches&mdash;none of my studies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you make use of your sketches for your pictures, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never of such as you have seen. They are only a slight antidote to my
+      pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wonder at that. But I would rather, I repeat, say nothing about
+      my pictures till you see some of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how am I to have that pleasure, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go to London sometimes, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very rarely. More rarely still when the Royal Academy is open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does not matter much. My pictures are seldom to be found there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not care to send them there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I send one, at least, every year. But they are rarely accepted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hardly for me to say why,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;but I cannot wonder much
+      at it, considering the subjects I choose.&mdash;But I daresay,&rdquo; he added,
+      in a lighter tone, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so. You understand me quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said no more in explanation of his rejection by the Academy. Till we
+      reached the church, nothing more of significance passed between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s wardrobe, came forth to receive the
+      garment they restored&mdash;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&mdash;sad, even in the sunset&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That church is oppressive,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;It looks like a great
+      sepulchre, a place built only for the dead&mdash;the church of the dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is only that it partakes with the living,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;suffers with
+      them the buffetings of life, outlasts them, but shows, like the shield of
+      the Red-Cross Knight, the &lsquo;old dints of deep wounds.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, is it not a dreary place to choose for a church to stand in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;you saw the grave of some of them on the other side&mdash;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 &lsquo;Lycidas.&rsquo;&rdquo; Then I told them the
+      conversation I had had with the sexton at Kilkhaven. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I went on,
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time we were back once more at the inn. We gave Connie a
+      description of what we had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a brave old church!&rdquo; said Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s litter, and see that it was quite sound. Satisfied
+      of this, I rejoiced in the contemplation of its lightness and strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast I went to Connie&rsquo;s room, and told her that Mr. Percivale
+      and I had devised a treat for her. Her face shone at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we want to do it our own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, papa,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let us tie your eyes up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and my ears and my hands too. It would be no good tying my feet,
+      when I don&rsquo;t know one big toe from the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she laughed merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll try to keep up the talk all the way, so that you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t weary of
+      the journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;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!&mdash;Getting
+      tired!&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Even the wind on my face would be pleasure enough
+      for half a day. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t get tired so soon as you will&mdash;you dear,
+      kind papa! I am afraid I shall be dreadfully heavy. But I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t jerk
+      your arms much. I will lie so still!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you won&rsquo;t mind letting Mr. Percivale help me to carry you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Why should I, if he doesn&rsquo;t mind it? He looks strong enough; and I am
+      sure he is nice, and won&rsquo;t think me heavier than I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;through all parts diffused,
+  That she might look at will through every pore.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never stopped till we reached the foot of the peninsula, <i>née</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now!&rdquo; said Connie eagerly, lifting her hands in the belief that we
+      were on the point of undoing the bandage from her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, my love, not yet,&rdquo; I said, and she lay still again, only she
+      looked more eager than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I have tired out you and Mr. Percivale, papa,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale laughed so amusedly, that she rejoined roguishly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O yes! I know every gentleman is a Hercules&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where <i>are</i> you going, papa?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You must be going up a steep place. Don&rsquo;t hurt yourself, dear
+      papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;s face, delicate as the play on an
+      opal&mdash;one that inclines more to the milk than the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at length we turned in through the gothic door in the battlemented
+      wall, and set our lovely burden down upon the grass&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;why did you go on walking like a castle, and pay no heed to
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t speak, did you, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; he returned, with just a shadow
+      of solicitude in the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Of course not,&rdquo; I rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, then,&rdquo; he returned, in a tone of relief, &ldquo;how could I? You were my
+      captain: how could I give in so long as you were holding on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am afraid the <i>Percivale</i>, without the <i>Mister</i>, came again
+      and again after this, though I pulled myself up for it as often as I
+      caught myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, papa!&rdquo; said Connie from the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, my dear. Wait till your mamma and Wynnie come. Let us go and
+      meet them, Mr. Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, my dear,&rdquo; I said; and Percivale and I left her alone in the
+      ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We found Ethelwyn toiling up with Wynnie helping her all she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Harry,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;how could you think of bringing Connie up such an
+      awful place? I wonder you dared to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s done you see, wife,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s delight, not to mention your own, is quite wages
+      for the labour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t she afraid to find herself so high up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows nothing about it yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not mean you have left the child there with her eyes tied up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure. We could not uncover them before you came. It would spoil
+      half the pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let us make haste then. It is surely dangerous to leave her so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least; but she must be getting tired of the darkness. Take my
+      arm now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think Mrs. Walton had better take my arm,&rdquo; said Percivale, &ldquo;and
+      then you can put your hand on her back, and help her a little that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, in which he describes as the type of Death&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: <i>Miscellaneous Sonnets</i>, part i.28.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she heard our steps, and her face awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is mamma come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my darling. I am here,&rdquo; said her mother. &ldquo;How do you feel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly well, mamma, thank you. Now, papa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment more, my love. Now, Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your hands over her eyes, a little way from them,&rdquo; I said to her as
+      she untied the handkerchief, &ldquo;that the light may reach them by degrees,
+      and not blind her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;all this seen through
+      the narrow gothic archway of a door in a wall&mdash;up&mdash;down&mdash;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? &ldquo;O Lord God,&rdquo; I said, almost
+      involuntarily, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; For I was carried beyond myself with delight, and with sympathy
+      with Connie&rsquo;s delight and with the calm worship of gladness in my wife&rsquo;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&mdash;coldly I
+      daresay:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, Mr. Percivale; I forgot for the moment that I was not amongst
+      my own family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale took his hat off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had some idea of what he meant; but this was no time to enter upon a
+      discussion. I could only say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My heart was full, Mr. Percivale, and I let it overflow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me at least share in its overflow,&rdquo; he rejoined, and nothing more
+      passed on the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s round
+      table might have fed for a week&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;the Atlantic&rsquo;s level powers.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s chair&mdash;a
+      canopied hollow wrought in the plated rock by the mightiest of all
+      solvents&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; she asked, in wonderment. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing higher yet, is there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be frightened, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are going to carry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what if I should slip? I might, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you do
+      it. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be to blame, and I&rsquo;m sure you won&rsquo;t, papa.&rdquo; Then she drew my
+      head down and whispered in my ear, &ldquo;If I get as much more by being killed,
+      as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I&rsquo;m sure it will be well worth
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m glad that&rsquo;s over,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; I returned, as we set down the litter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor papa! I&rsquo;ve pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale&rsquo;s too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then turning
+      towards her, he said, &ldquo;Look here, Miss Connie;&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;My arms are all right, you see,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa! Mr. Percivale! there&rsquo;s such a grand cave down there! It goes right
+      through under the island.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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!&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s reading. He can
+      scarcely be equal to more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s place in the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had called at the blacksmith&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, sir,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Joe might be well enough if he liked. It&rsquo;s all
+      his own fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;I cannot believe that your son is in any way
+      guilty of his own illness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a well-behaved lad, my Joe,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but he hasn&rsquo;t learned
+      what I had to learn long ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is it he won&rsquo;t do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind whether he does it or not, if he would only make&mdash;up&mdash;his&mdash;mind&mdash;and&mdash;stick&mdash;to&mdash;it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you want him to do, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want him to do it, I&rsquo;m sure. It&rsquo;s no good to me&mdash;and
+      wouldn&rsquo;t be much to him, that I&rsquo;ll be bound. Howsomever, he must please
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was no
+      more sunshine for him at home than his mother&rsquo;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,&mdash;the
+      face of wife or mother or sister. Now his mother&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+      face cannot help being sunny to them: why should the sunshine depart as
+      the child grows older?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what he won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more cheerful.
+      You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, if you&rsquo;ll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the
+      rest of us. He&rsquo;s a religious man, is Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t see how that should make him miserable. It hasn&rsquo;t made me
+      miserable. I hope I&rsquo;m a religious man myself. It makes me happy every day
+      of my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked
+      away gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it, &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t say it&rsquo;s the religion, for I don&rsquo;t know; but perhaps it&rsquo;s the way he
+      takes it up. He don&rsquo;t look after hisself enough; he&rsquo;s always thinking
+      about other people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that if you
+      don&rsquo;t look after yourself, why, who is to look after you? That&rsquo;s common
+      sense, <i>I</i> think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious contrast&mdash;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&rsquo;s with which Joe heard his remarks on himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take
+      Joe&rsquo;s way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so well, I doubt, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and a great deal better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate, that&rsquo;s a long way off; and mean time, <i>who&rsquo;s</i> to take
+      care of the odd man like Joe there, that don&rsquo;t look after hisself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, God, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s just where I&rsquo;m out. I don&rsquo;t know nothing about that branch,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw a grateful light mount up in Joe&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were we out of the churchyard, and on the road leading to the
+      rectory, when I saw the sexton&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the
+      sexton&rsquo;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&rsquo;s-breadth further
+      into the smith&rsquo;s affairs. Beyond the hair&rsquo;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&rsquo;s mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back to
+      the church, and I went to the sexton&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, sir,&rdquo; he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. &ldquo;The
+      mis&rsquo;ess ben&rsquo;t in, but she&rsquo;ll be here in a few minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, it&rsquo;s of no consequence,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Are they all well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It be
+      in winter it be worst for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s a snug enough shelter you&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ben&rsquo;t the wind touch <i>them</i>&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;they be safe enough from
+      the wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben&rsquo;t much snow in these parts; but
+      when it du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But at least this cottage keeps out the wet,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;If not, we must
+      have it seen to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This cottage du well enough, sir. It&rsquo;ll last my time, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why are you pitying your family for having to live in it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless your heart, sir! It&rsquo;s not them. They du well enough. It&rsquo;s my people
+      out yonder. You&rsquo;ve got the souls to look after, and I&rsquo;ve got the bodies.
+      That&rsquo;s what it be, sir. To be sure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the be-all and the end-all.&rdquo; He was God&rsquo;s vicar, the gardener
+      in God&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got your part, sir, and I&rsquo;ve got mine. You up into the pulpit, and
+      I down into the grave. But it&rsquo;ll be all the same by and by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it will,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;But when you do go down into your own
+      grave, you&rsquo;ll know a good deal less about it than you do now. You&rsquo;ll find
+      you&rsquo;ve got other things to think about. But here comes your wife. She&rsquo;ll
+      talk about the living rather than the dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s natural, sir. She brought &lsquo;em to life, and I buried &lsquo;em&mdash;at
+      least, best part of &lsquo;em. If only I had the other two safe down with the
+      rest!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I remembered what the old woman had told me&mdash;that she had two boys <i>in</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, and
+      saying, &ldquo;Well, I must be off to my gardening,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old man seems a little out of sorts,&rdquo; I said to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; she answered, with her usual gentleness, a gentleness which
+      obedient suffering had perfected, &ldquo;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&rsquo;ve upset him a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I met Agnes coming this way. Where is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe she be in the churchyard, sir. I&rsquo;ve been to the doctor about
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it&rsquo;s nothing serious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, sir; but you see&mdash;four on &lsquo;em, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s in God&rsquo;s hands, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she be, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to ask you about something, Mrs. Coombes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What be that, sir? If I can tell, I will, you may be sure, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what&rsquo;s the matter with Joe Harper, the blacksmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They du say it be a consumption, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what has he got on his mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s got nothing on his mind, sir. He be as good a by as ever stepped, I
+      assure you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am sure there is something or other on his mind. He&rsquo;s not so happy
+      as he should be. He&rsquo;s not the man, it seems to me, to be unhappy because
+      he&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I believe you be right, and perhaps I know summat. But it&rsquo;s
+      part guessing.&mdash;I believe my Agnes and Joe Harper are as fond upon
+      one another as any two in the county.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they not going to be married then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There be the pint, sir. I don&rsquo;t believe Joe ever said a word o&rsquo; the sort
+      to Aggy. She never could ha&rsquo; kep it from me, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why doesn&rsquo;t he then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the pint again, sir. All as knows him says it&rsquo;s because he be in
+      such bad health, and he thinks he oughtn&rsquo;t to go marrying with one foot in
+      the grave. He never said so to me; but I think very likely that be it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that matter, Mrs. Coombes, we&rsquo;ve all got one foot in the grave, I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That be very true, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what does your daughter think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t help fancying it have something to do with my Aggy&rsquo;s pale face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And something to do with Joe&rsquo;s pale face too, Mrs. Coombes,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;Thank you. You&rsquo;ve told me more than I expected. It explains everything. I
+      must have it out with Joe now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O deary me! sir, don&rsquo;t go and tell him I said anything, as if I wanted
+      him to marry my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you be afraid. I&rsquo;ll take good care of that. And don&rsquo;t fancy I&rsquo;m
+      fond of meddling with other people&rsquo;s affairs. But this is a case in which
+      I ought to do something. Joe&rsquo;s a fine fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he be, sir. I couldn&rsquo;t wish a better for a son-in-law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put on my hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t get me into no trouble with Joe, will ye, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you will get through to-night?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure of it, sir,&rdquo; answered Harry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t be sure of anything, Harry. We are told in the New
+      Testament that we ought to say <i>If the Lord will</i>,&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Joe, you&rsquo;re too hard upon Harry,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think that the
+      Bible means to pull a man up every step like that, till he&rsquo;s afraid to
+      speak a word. It was about a long journey and a year&rsquo;s residence that the
+      Apostle James was speaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt, sir. But the principle&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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, <i>if the Lord will</i>, 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&mdash;most irreverently, I think&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds fine, sir; but I&rsquo;m not sure that I understand what you mean to
+      say. It sounds to me like a darkening of wisdom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw that I had irritated him, and so had in some measure lost ground.
+      But Harry struck in&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How <i>can</i> you say that now, Joe? <i>I</i> know what the parson means
+      well enough, and everybody knows I ain&rsquo;t got half the brains you&rsquo;ve got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reason is, Harry, that he&rsquo;s got something in his head that stands in
+      the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there&rsquo;s nothing in my head <i>to</i> stand in the way!&rdquo; returned
+      Harry, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This made me laugh too, and even Joe could not help a sympathetic grin. By
+      this time it was getting dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid, Harry, after all, you won&rsquo;t get through to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to think so too, sir. And there&rsquo;s Joe saying, &lsquo;I told you so,&rsquo; 
+      over and over to himself, though he won&rsquo;t say it out like a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe answered only with another grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you what it is, Harry,&rdquo; I said&mdash;&ldquo;you must come again on
+      Monday. And on your way home, just look in and tell Joe&rsquo;s mother that I
+      have kept him over to-morrow. The change will do him good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, that can&rsquo;t he. I haven&rsquo;t got a clean shirt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have a shirt of mine,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;ll want your
+      Sunday clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bring them for you, Joe&mdash;before you&rsquo;re up,&rdquo; interposed Harry.
+      &ldquo;And then you can go to church with Aggy Coombes, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was just what I wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your tongue, Harry,&rdquo; said Joe angrily. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re talking of what you
+      don&rsquo;t know anything about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Joe, I ben&rsquo;t a fool, if I ben&rsquo;t so religious as you be. You ben&rsquo;t a
+      bad fellow, though you be a Methodist, and I ben&rsquo;t a fool, though I be
+      Harry Cobb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Harry? Do hold your tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll tell you what I mean first, and then I&rsquo;ll hold my tongue. I
+      mean this&mdash;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&rsquo;t port your helm and board her&mdash;I won&rsquo;t say it&rsquo;s more
+      than I know, but I du say it to be more than I think be fair to the young
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your tongue, Harry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said I would when I&rsquo;d answered you as to what I meaned. So no more at
+      present; but I&rsquo;ll be over with your clothes afore you&rsquo;re up in the
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Harry spoke he was busy gathering his tools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t be in the way, will they, sir?&rdquo; he said, as he heaped them
+      together in the furthest corner of the tower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t, Harry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost, Harry!&rdquo; growled Joe&mdash;not unkindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you hold your tongue, Joe,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Leave Harry to me. You may take
+      him, if you like, after I&rsquo;ve done with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had had his tea, I asked him to go out with me for a walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, Joe,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I want to see you so for a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood&mdash;a little surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look just like a man rising from the dead, Joe,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean, sir,&rdquo; he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We changed places. Joe stared for a moment. Then his face brightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see what you mean, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I fancy you don&rsquo;t mean the
+      resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of righteousness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;I do not know your
+      thoughts; I am only judging from your words and looks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may if you like, sir,&rdquo; answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was not
+      to be repelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the
+      sun&rsquo;s disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the top of your head,&rdquo; answered he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, then,&rdquo; I returned, &ldquo;that is just what you are like&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as
+      you put it, by doing his duty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a difficult question,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;I must think before I answer
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; added Joe&mdash;&ldquo;mightn&rsquo;t his duty be a painful one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&mdash;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&mdash;and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my duty&mdash;nothing
+      else, as far as I know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, &ldquo;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&mdash;I may be wrong, but I
+      venture to think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he not
+      to do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most assuredly&mdash;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought
+      not, if he is doing what he don&rsquo;t like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;a
+      delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for the sake of his
+      own sanctity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person&rsquo;s own
+      sake at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how are you to know the will of God in every case?&rdquo; asked Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them&mdash;except
+      there be anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher
+      law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but that be just what there is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset&mdash;there never was a
+      grander place for sunsets&mdash;and went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above&mdash;there
+      was no blue; and the wind was <i>gurly</i>; I once heard that word in
+      Scotland, and never forgot it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After one of our usual gatherings in Connie&rsquo;s room, which were much
+      shorter here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till
+      supper should be ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;speaking of
+      it in its human symbolism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;an open-air swimming-pool&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Man is everything,
+  And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
+  A beast, yet is, or should be, more;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my
+      Connie&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went into Connie&rsquo;s room, I found her lying in bed a very picture of
+      peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not going
+      out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your
+      baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is very dark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be miserable till you come home, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Connie. You don&rsquo;t think your father hasn&rsquo;t sense to take care
+      of himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of comfort,
+      you don&rsquo;t think I can go anywhere without my Father to take care of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is no occasion&mdash;is there, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t spoil
+      my walk by the thought that my foolish little girl is frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be good&mdash;indeed I will, papa,&rdquo; she said, holding up her mouth
+      to kiss me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;The tide is falling fast, and salt
+      water hurts nobody,&rdquo; 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&mdash;almost a half-sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low
+      and earnest. One I recognised as Joe&rsquo;s voice. The other was a woman&rsquo;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&mdash;I could fancy with a sigh&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll du what is right, Joe. Don&rsquo;t &lsquo;e think o&rsquo; me, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben&rsquo;t for my sake.
+      Surely you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best do&mdash;go
+      away quietly or let them know I was there&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ben&rsquo;t for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don&rsquo;t think you be going to
+      die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe!&rdquo; I called out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t be very far off,&rdquo; he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure at
+      finding me so nigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw someone go up the Castle-rock,&rdquo; said Joe; &ldquo;but I thought he was
+      gone away again. It will be a lesson to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m no tell-tale, Joe,&rdquo; I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. &ldquo;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&rsquo;ve been young myself, and, to tell the truth, I
+      don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m old yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure, sir,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t be hard on Joe and me. I don&rsquo;t
+      suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we can&rsquo;t be&mdash;married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was a
+      certain womanly composure in her utterance. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s very bold of me
+      to talk so,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;but Joe will tell you all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the motion
+      of her hand stealing into his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not far off it, sir,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Joe,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;can&rsquo;t we talk as friends about this matter? I have no
+      right to intrude into your affairs&mdash;none in the least&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the same, I&rsquo;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&rsquo;t look over-pleased. Agnes wants to hear
+      your way of it. I&rsquo;m agreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for
+      proceeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is the
+      will of God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each
+      other, they should marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, sir&mdash;where there be no reasons against it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you
+      would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she
+      would be Joe&rsquo;s wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But
+      listen to me. In the first place, you don&rsquo;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&mdash;because they had
+      possibly taken too much care of themselves. But marriage is God&rsquo;s will,
+      and death is God&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s for Aggy. You forget that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;to provide for her a comfort which yourself
+      you would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to die soon?&mdash;if
+      you <i>are</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I find myself dying at the end of six months&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t see it as I do,&rdquo; persisted the blacksmith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I don&rsquo;t. I think you see it as it is not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He
+      started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a wave!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That spray came over the top of the rock. We
+      shall have to run for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no hurry,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It was high water an hour and a half ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know this coast, sir,&rdquo; returned he, &ldquo;or you wouldn&rsquo;t talk like
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock, looked
+      along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, Aggy!&rdquo; he cried in terror, &ldquo;come at once. Every other
+      wave be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw her
+      along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t we better stay where we are?&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and I
+      don&rsquo;t care about being out all night. It&rsquo;s not the tide, sir; it&rsquo;s a
+      ground swell&mdash;from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no
+      questions about tide or no tide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But just wait one minute more. It is better
+      to be ready for the worst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?&rdquo; I said, grasping my own
+      stout oak-stick more firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; answered Joe. &ldquo;To stick between the stones and hold on. We
+      must watch our time between the waves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take the command, then, Joe,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;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&mdash;one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or
+      sea to lose hold of Agnes&mdash;eh, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick march!&rdquo; said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo; cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter of
+      the rocks. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a topper coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for it!&rdquo; cried Joe. &ldquo;Run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo; cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it
+      turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be with us!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then!&rdquo; cried Joe. &ldquo;Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Down, Joe! Down on your face,
+      and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe, sir,&rdquo; said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, &ldquo;if you
+      hadn&rsquo;t taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were awfully near death,&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don&rsquo;t go all
+      as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as foresight&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions
+      spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have escaped one death together,&rdquo; I said at length: &ldquo;dare another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage,
+      I said, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: &ldquo;As you please, sir. Good night,
+      Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out,
+      papa. But all I could do was to trust in God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call that <i>all</i>, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in
+      that than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed <i>all</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were well
+      into another month before I told Connie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I left her, I went to Joe&rsquo;s room to see how he was, and found him
+      having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won&rsquo;t be the worse
+      for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That way, yes, sir, I ought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have no business to be like some children who say, &lsquo;Mamma won&rsquo;t
+      give me so and so,&rsquo; instead of asking her to give it them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young
+      woman. I couldn&rsquo;t say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir,
+      there was to come a family. It might be, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. What else would you have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I was to die, where would she be then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In God&rsquo;s hands; just as she is now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that to
+      provide for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Joe! how little you know a woman&rsquo;s heart! It would just be the
+      greatest comfort she could have for losing you&mdash;that&rsquo;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&rsquo;t say that is
+      right, you know. Such love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her
+      child because it is her husband&rsquo;s more than because it is her own, and
+      because it is God&rsquo;s more than either&rsquo;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&mdash;yes, she will be happier if you
+      only leave her your name for hers&mdash;than if you died without calling
+      her your wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took Joe&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month after, I married them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. THE HARVEST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for who could dissociate the words from the
+      music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?&mdash;written none the
+      less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with
+      laughing at their quaintness&mdash;calling aloud,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;All people that on earth do dwell
+  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
+  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell&mdash;
+  Come ye before him and rejoice.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the
+      name of the Lord to serve him with <i>mirth</i> as in the old version, and
+      not with the <i>fear</i> with which some editor, weak in faith, has
+      presumed to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had
+      prepared&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s lazy mood,
+  Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.
+  The furrowed waste
+  They leave, and haste
+  Home, home, to till their Father&rsquo;s land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Life,
+  Who in this soil of strife
+  Casts us at birth, like seed from sower&rsquo;s hand;
+  To die and so
+  Like corn to grow
+  A golden harvest in his land.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the
+      versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, &ldquo;If by any means I
+      might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had
+      already attained, either were already perfect.&rdquo; And this is something like
+      what I said to them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;the word resurrection
+      just means a rising again&mdash;I will read you a little description of it
+      from a sermon by a great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor.
+      Listen. &lsquo;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&rsquo;s reason and his life.&rsquo; 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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;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&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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, &lsquo;Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
+      and Christ shall give thee light.&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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, &lsquo;Let there be light,&rsquo; and
+      there was light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the animal world as well, you behold the goings of the Resurrection.
+      Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly&mdash;so plain that
+      the pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;not the same body&mdash;a new one
+      built out of the ruins of the old&mdash;even as St. Paul tells us that it
+      is not the same body <i>we</i> 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of
+      the butterfly&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here let me pause for a moment&mdash;and there was a corresponding pause,
+      though but momentary, in the sermon as I spoke it&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;&ldquo;I come now naturally to speak of what we commonly call the
+      Resurrection. Some say: &lsquo;How can the same dust be raised again, when it
+      may be scattered to the winds of heaven?&rsquo; 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 <i>my</i> 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 <i>not</i> be
+      the same body. That body dies&mdash;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.&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I now come to the last, because infinitely the most important part of
+      my subject&mdash;the resurrection for the sake of which all the other
+      resurrections exist&mdash;the resurrection unto Life. This is the one of
+      which St. Paul speaks in my text. This is the one I am most anxious&mdash;indeed,
+      the only one I am anxious to set forth, and impress upon you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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, &lsquo;Would God it were
+      morning!&rsquo; changes but his word, and not his tune, when the morning comes,
+      crying, &lsquo;Would God it were evening!&rsquo; 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&mdash;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 <i>the</i> death, set
+      forth <i>the</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;such a world it would be, and such a king
+      it would have, if individual ambition might work its will! if a man&rsquo;s
+      opinion of himself could be made out in the world, degrading, compelling,
+      oppressing, doing everything for his own glory!&mdash;and such a glory!&mdash;but
+      a pang of light strikes this man to the heart; an arrow of truth,
+      feathered with suffering and loss and dismay, finds out&mdash;the open
+      joint in his armour, I was going to say&mdash;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&mdash;the
+      world, which was but the cavern where he thus searched&mdash;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&mdash;is not this a resurrection indeed&mdash;<i>the</i>
+      resurrection of all, the resurrection of Life? God grant that with St.
+      Paul we may attain to this resurrection of the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;White wings are crossing;
+  Glad waves are tossing;
+  The earth flames out in crimson and green:
+
+  Spring is appearing,
+  Summer is nearing&mdash;
+  Where hast thou been?
+
+  Down in some cavern,
+  Death&rsquo;s sleepy tavern,
+  Housing, carousing with spectres of night?
+  The trumpet is pealing
+  Sunshine and healing&mdash;
+  Spring to the light.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      With this quotation from a friend&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      END OF VOL. II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      VOLUME III.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its skirts
+      behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer, I must write
+      a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my wife. It had
+      rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down the air began
+      to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she walked the
+      heavens, not &ldquo;like one that hath been led astray,&rdquo; but as &ldquo;queen and
+      huntress, chaste and fair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a lovely night it is!&rdquo; said Ethelwyn, who had come into my study&mdash;where
+      I always sat with unblinded windows, that the night and her creatures
+      might look in upon me&mdash;and had stood gazing out for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we go for a little turn?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it very much,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I will go and put on my
+      bonnet at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a minute or two she looked in again, all ready. I rose, laid aside my
+      Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the down,
+      and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon the same
+      spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and Agnes. What a
+      different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as if it could not
+      move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over it was so mighty
+      in its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was afraid to toss
+      itself even with the motions of its natural unrest. The moon was like the
+      face of a saint before which the stormy people has grown dumb. The rocks
+      stood up solid and dark in the universal aether, and the pulse of the
+      ocean throbbed against them with a lapping gush, soft as the voice of a
+      passionate child soothed into shame of its vanished petulance. But the sky
+      was the glory. Although no breath moved below, there was a gentle wind
+      abroad in the upper regions. The air was full of masses of cloud, the
+      vanishing fragments of the one great vapour which had been pouring down in
+      rain the most of the day. These masses were all setting with one steady
+      motion eastward into the abysses of space; now obscuring the fair moon,
+      now solemnly sweeping away from before her. As they departed, out shone
+      her marvellous radiance, as calm as ever. It was plain that she knew
+      nothing of what we called her covering, her obscuration, the dimming of
+      her glory. She had been busy all the time weaving her lovely opaline
+      damask on the other side of the mass in which we said she was swallowed
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever noticed, wifie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;how the eyes of our minds&mdash;almost
+      our bodily eyes&mdash;are opened sometimes to the cubicalness of nature,
+      as it were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, Harry, for I don&rsquo;t understand your question,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being
+      could have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a
+      moment, though. Sometimes&mdash;perhaps generally&mdash;we see the sky as
+      a flat dome, spangled with star-points, and painted blue. <i>Now</i> I see
+      it as an awful depth of blue air, depth within depth; and the clouds
+      before me are not passing away to the left, but sinking away from the
+      front of me into the marvellous unknown regions, which, let philosophers
+      say what they will about time and space,&mdash;and I daresay they are
+      right,&mdash;are yet very awful to me. Thank God, my dear,&rdquo; I said,
+      catching hold of her arm, as the terror of mere space grew upon me, &ldquo;for
+      himself. He is deeper than space, deeper than time; he is the heart of all
+      the cube of history.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand you now, husband,&rdquo; said my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you would,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said again, &ldquo;is it not something the same with the things
+      inside us? I can&rsquo;t put it in words as you do. Do you understand me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure that I do. You must try again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where you
+      can talk,&rdquo; said my wife, putting her hand in mine. &ldquo;But I will try.
+      Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to a
+      conclusion about it, and you think you have settled it plain and clear to
+      yourself, for ever and a day. You hang it upon your wall, like a picture,
+      and are satisfied for a fortnight. But some day, when you happen to cast a
+      look at it, you find that instead of hanging flat on the wall, your
+      picture has gone through it&mdash;opens out into some region you don&rsquo;t
+      know where&mdash;shows you far-receding distances of air and sea&mdash;in
+      short, where you thought one question was settled for ever, a hundred are
+      opened up for the present hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, wife!&rdquo; I cried in true delight. &ldquo;I do indeed understand you now.
+      You have said it better than I could ever have done. That&rsquo;s the plague of
+      you women! You have been taught for centuries and centuries that there is
+      little or nothing to be expected of you, and so you won&rsquo;t try. Therefore
+      we men know no more than you do whether it is in you or not. And when you
+      do try, instead of trying to think, you want to be in Parliament all at
+      once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you apply that remark to me, sir?&rdquo; demanded Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must submit to bear the sins of your kind upon occasion,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am content to do that, so long as yours will help mine,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I may go on?&rdquo; I said, with interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till sunrise if you like. We were talking of the cubicalness&mdash;I
+      believe you called it&mdash;of nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you capped it with the cubicalness of thought. And quite right too.
+      There are people, as a dear friend of mine used to say, who are so
+      accustomed to regard everything in the <i>flat</i>, as dogma cut and&mdash;not
+      <i>always</i> dried my moral olfactories aver&mdash;that if you prove to
+      them the very thing they believe, but after another mode than that they
+      have been accustomed to, they are offended, and count you a heretic. There
+      is no help for it. Even St. Paul&rsquo;s chief opposition came from the
+      Judaizing Christians of his time, who did not believe that God <i>could</i>
+      love the Gentiles, and therefore regarded him as a teacher of falsehood.
+      We must not be fierce with them. Who knows what wickedness of their
+      ancestors goes to account for their stupidity? For that there are stupid
+      people, and that they are, in very consequence of their stupidity,
+      conceited, who can deny? The worst of it is, that no man who is conceited
+      can be convinced of the fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that, Harry. That is to deny conversion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Ethelwyn. The moment a man is convinced of his folly, he
+      ceases to be a fool. The moment a man is convinced of his conceit, he
+      ceases to be conceited. But there <i>must</i> be a final judgment, and the
+      true man will welcome it, even if he is to appear a convicted fool. A
+      man&rsquo;s business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool,
+      and next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take heed
+      likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their brother&rsquo;s
+      eye. But there are even societies established and supported by good people
+      for the express purpose of pulling out motes.&mdash;&lsquo;The Mote-Pulling
+      Society!&rsquo;&mdash;That ought to take with a certain part of the public.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, Harry. You are absurd. Such people don&rsquo;t come near you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t touch me. No. But they come near good people whom I know,
+      brandishing the long pins with which they pull the motes out, and
+      threatening them with judgment before their time. They are but pins, to be
+      sure&mdash;not daggers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty ways,
+      and have forgotten all about &lsquo;the cubicalness of nature.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, my love, as you generally are,&rdquo; I answered, laughing.
+      &ldquo;Look at that great antlered elk, or moose&mdash;fit quarry for Diana of
+      the silver bow. Look how it glides solemnly away into the unpastured
+      depths of the aerial deserts. Look again at that reclining giant, half
+      raised upon his arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What
+      eyes they must be under those huge brows! On what message to the nations
+      is he borne as by the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, stop, Harry,&rdquo; said my wife. &ldquo;It makes me unhappy to hear grand
+      words clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about the
+      truth, and the truth only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
+      degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
+      or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
+      counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds
+      of the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy
+      giant yields, and is &lsquo;shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,&rsquo; so is each
+      of us borne onward to an unseen destiny&mdash;a glorious one if we will
+      but yield to the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth&mdash;with a
+      grand listing&mdash;coming whence we know not, and going whither we know
+      not. The very clouds of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the
+      thoughts and history of man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take the
+      clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that what you
+      were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which the clouds
+      assume. I see I was wrong, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
+      make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all for?
+      They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and they go
+      nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving symbols of the
+      motions of man&rsquo;s spirit and destiny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause followed, during which we sat and watched the marvellous depth of
+      the heavens, deep as I do not think I ever saw them before or since,
+      covered with a stately procession of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing
+      forms&mdash;great sculpturesque blocks of a shattered storm&mdash;the
+      icebergs of the upper sea. These were not far off against a blue
+      background, but floating near us in the heart of a blue-black space,
+      gloriously lighted by a golden rather than silvery moon. At length my wife
+      spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope Mr. Percivale is out to-night,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How he must be enjoying
+      it if he is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder the young man is not returning to his professional labours,&rdquo; I
+      said. &ldquo;Few artists can afford such long holidays as he is taking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is laying in stock, though, I suppose,&rdquo; answered my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt that, my dear. He said not, on one occasion, you may remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember. But still he must paint better the more familiar he gets
+      with the things God cares to fashion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless. But I am afraid the work of God he is chiefly studying at
+      present is our Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, is she not a worthy object of his study?&rdquo; returned Ethelwyn,
+      looking up in my face with an arch expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless again, Ethel; but I hope she is not studying him quite so much
+      in her turn. I have seen her eyes following him about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife made no answer for a moment. Then she said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like him, Harry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I like him very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why should you not like Wynnie to like him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to be surer of his principles, for one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to be surer of Wynnie&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was silent. Ethelwyn resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think they might do each other good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still I could not reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They both love the truth, I am sure; only they don&rsquo;t perhaps know what it
+      is yet. I think if they were to fall in love with each other, it would
+      very likely make them both more desirous of finding it still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; I said at last. &ldquo;But you are talking about awfully serious
+      things, Ethelwyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, as serious as life,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make me very anxious,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;The young man has not, I fear, any
+      means of gaining a livelihood for more than himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he before he wanted it? I like to see a man who can be content
+      with an art and a living by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I have not been to blame in allowing them to see so much of each
+      other,&rdquo; I said, hardly heeding my wife&rsquo;s words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It came about quite naturally,&rdquo; she rejoined. &ldquo;If you had opposed their
+      meeting, you would have been interfering just as if you had been
+      Providence. And you would have only made them think more about each
+      other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t said anything&mdash;has he?&rdquo; I asked in positive alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear no. It may be all my fancy. I am only looking a little ahead. I
+      confess I should like him for a son-in-law. I approve of him,&rdquo; she added,
+      with a sweet laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I suppose sons-in-law are possible, however disagreeable,
+      results of having daughters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I tried to laugh, but hardly succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like you in such a mood. It is not like
+      you at all. It is unworthy of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I help being anxious when you speak of such dreadful things as
+      the possibility of having to give away my daughter, my precious wonder
+      that came to me through you, out of the infinite&mdash;the tender little
+      darling!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Out of the heart of God,&rsquo; you used to say, Henry. Yes, and with a
+      destiny he had ordained. It is strange to me how you forget your best and
+      noblest teaching sometimes. You are always telling us to trust in God.
+      Surely it is a poor creed that will only allow us to trust in God for
+      ourselves&mdash;a very selfish creed. There must be something wrong there.
+      I should say that the man who can only trust God for himself is not half a
+      Christian. Either he is so selfish that that satisfies him, or he has such
+      a poor notion of God that he cannot trust him with what most concerns him.
+      The former is not your case, Harry: is the latter, then?&mdash;You see I
+      must take my turn at the preaching sometimes. Mayn&rsquo;t I, dearest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took my hand in both of hers. The truth arose in my heart. I never
+      loved my wife more than at that moment. And now I could not speak for
+      other reasons. I saw that I had been faithless to my God, and the moment I
+      could command my speech, I hastened to confess it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, my dear,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;quite right. I have been wicked, for I
+      have been denying my God. I have been putting my providence in the place
+      of his&mdash;trying, like an anxious fool, to count the hairs on Wynnie&rsquo;s
+      head, instead of being content that the grand loving Father should count
+      them. My love, let us pray for Wynnie; for what is prayer but giving her
+      to God and his holy, blessed will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat hand in hand. Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we spoke in
+      our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose together, and
+      walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand clung to my wife
+      as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of the prison of my
+      faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was glorious again. It had
+      faded from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma, uninteresting as &ldquo;a foul
+      and pestilent congregation of vapours;&rdquo; the moon had been but a round
+      thing with the sun shining upon it, and the stars were only minding their
+      own business. But now the solemn march towards an unseen, unimagined goal
+      had again begun. Wynnie&rsquo;s life was hid with Christ in God. Away strode the
+      cloudy pageant with its banners blowing in the wind, which blew where it
+      grandly listed, marching as to a solemn triumphal music that drew them
+      from afar towards the gates of pearl by which the morning walks out of the
+      New Jerusalem to gladden the nations of the earth. Solitary stars, with
+      all their sparkles drawn in, shone, quiet as human eyes, in the deep
+      solemn clefts of dark blue air. They looked restrained and still, as if
+      they knew all about it&mdash;all about the secret of this midnight march.
+      For the moon&mdash;she saw the sun, and therefore made the earth glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been a moon to me this night, my wife,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You were
+      looking full at the truth, while I was dark. I saw its light in your face,
+      and believed, and turned my soul to the sun. And now I am both ashamed and
+      glad. God keep me from sinning so again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear husband, it was only a mood&mdash;a passing mood,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn,
+      seeking to comfort me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a mood, and thank God it is now past; but it was a wicked one. It
+      was a mood in which the Lord might have called me a devil, as he did St.
+      Peter. Such moods have to be grappled with and fought the moment they
+      appear. They must not have their way for a single thought even.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t help it always, can we, husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t help it out and out, because our wills are not yet free with the
+      freedom God is giving us as fast as we will let him. When we are able to
+      will thoroughly, then we shall do what we will. At least, I think we
+      shall. But there is a mystery in it God only understands. All we know is,
+      that we can struggle and pray. But a mood is an awful oppression sometimes
+      when you least believe in it and most wish to get rid of it. It is like a
+      headache in the soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do the people do that don&rsquo;t believe in God?&rdquo; said Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment Wynnie, who had seen us pass the window, opened the door
+      of the bark-house for us, and we passed into Connie&rsquo;s chamber and found
+      her lying in the moonlight, gazing at the same heavens as her father and
+      mother had been revelling in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day was very lovely. I think it is the last of the kind of which
+      I shall have occasion to write in my narrative of the Seaboard Parish. I
+      wonder if my readers are tired of so much about the common things of
+      Nature. I reason about it something in this way: We are so easily affected
+      by the smallest things that are of the unpleasant kind, that we ought to
+      train ourselves to the influence of those that are of an opposite nature.
+      The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make themselves felt as we
+      scramble&mdash;for we often do scramble in a very undignified manner&mdash;through
+      the thickets of life; and, feeling the thorns, we grumble, and are blind
+      to all but the thorns. The flowers, and the lovely leaves, and the red
+      berries, and the clusters of filberts, and the birds&rsquo;-nests do not force
+      themselves upon our attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us
+      forget to look for them. But a scratch would be forgotten&mdash;and that
+      in mental hurts is often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on
+      the mind or heart will never fester&mdash;if we but allowed our being a
+      moment&rsquo;s repose upon any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that
+      lie around the half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I
+      think how, not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but
+      admirable when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very
+      paltriness of which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself
+      to a noble endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would
+      gladly help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of
+      the apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
+      for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one of
+      the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about me,
+      from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of truth
+      been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even a
+      lingering shadow&mdash;not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
+      rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
+      over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
+      memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader, for
+      therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the recording of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
+      enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean&mdash;of knowing a
+      few yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It
+      was to be low water about two o&rsquo;clock, and we resolved to dine upon the
+      sands. But all the morning the children were out playing on the threshold
+      of old Neptune&rsquo;s palace; for in his quieter mood he will, like a fierce
+      mastiff, let children do with him what they will. I gave myself a whole
+      holiday&mdash;sometimes the most precious part of my life both for myself
+      and those for whom I labour&mdash;and wandered about on the shore, now
+      passing the children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties
+      to look at this one&rsquo;s castle and that one&rsquo;s ditch, now leaving them
+      behind, with what in its ungraduated flatness might well enough personate
+      an endless desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I could
+      imagine them disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint
+      occasional cry of excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea was
+      so calm, and the shore so gently sloping, that you could hardly tell where
+      the sand ceased and the sea began&mdash;the water sloped to such a thin
+      pellicle, thinner than any knife-edge, upon the shining brown sand, and
+      you saw the sand underneath the water to such a distance out. Yet this
+      depth, which would not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I
+      followed that bed of shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and
+      out, till I was lost in an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and
+      mountain-peaks, in whose caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his
+      breath of pestilence; the kraken, with &ldquo;his skaly rind,&rdquo; may there be
+      sleeping
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      while
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;faintest sunlights flee
+  About his shadowy sides,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      as he lies
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      There may lie all the horrors that Schiller&rsquo;s diver encountered&mdash;the
+      frightful Molch, and that worst of all, to which he gives no name, which
+      came creeping with a hundred knots at once; but here are only the gracious
+      rainbow-woven shells, an evanescent jelly or two, and the queer baby-crabs
+      that crawl out from the holes of the bordering rocks. What awful
+      gradations of gentleness lead from such as these down to those cabins
+      where wallow the inventions of Nature&rsquo;s infancy, when, like a child of
+      untutored imagination, she drew on the slate of her fancy creations in
+      which flitting shadows of beauty serve only to heighten the shuddering,
+      gruesome horror. The sweet sun and air, the hand of man, and the growth of
+      the ages, have all but swept such from the upper plains of the earth. What
+      hunter&rsquo;s bow has twanged, what adventurer&rsquo;s rifle has cracked in those
+      leagues of mountain-waste, vaster than all the upper world can show, where
+      the beasts of the ocean &ldquo;graze the sea-weed, their pasture&rdquo;! Diana of the
+      silver bow herself, when she descends into the interlunar caves of hell,
+      sends no such monsters fleeing from her spells. Yet if such there be, such
+      horrors too must lie in the undiscovered caves of man&rsquo;s nature, of which
+      all this outer world is but a typical analysis. By equally slow gradations
+      may the inner eye descend from the truth of a Cordelia to the falsehood of
+      an Iago. As these golden sands slope from the sunlight into the wallowing
+      abyss of darkness, even so from the love of the child to his holy mother
+      slopes the inclined plane of humanity to the hell of the sensualist. &ldquo;But
+      with one difference in the moral world,&rdquo; I said aloud, as I paced up and
+      down on the shimmering margin, &ldquo;that everywhere in the scale the eye of
+      the all-seeing Father can detect the first quiver of the eyelid that would
+      raise itself heavenward, responsive to his waking spirit.&rdquo; I lifted my
+      eyes in the relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn hung
+      above the waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away to the
+      left a man who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible save in
+      such a tide, gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and swam
+      ashore; above his head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air; the sea
+      glittered and shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which to choose,
+      the balmy air or the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads through the
+      one, now alighting eagerly upon the other, to forsake it anew for the
+      thinner element. I thanked God for his glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa, it&rsquo;s so jolly&mdash;so jolly!&rdquo; shouted the children as I passed
+      them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that&rsquo;s so jolly, Charlie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My castle,&rdquo; screeched Harry in reply; &ldquo;only it&rsquo;s tumbled down. The water
+      <i>would</i> keep coming in underneath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried to stop it with a newspaper,&rdquo; cried Charlie, &ldquo;but it wouldn&rsquo;t. So
+      we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We blew it up rather than surrender,&rdquo; said Dora. &ldquo;We did; only Harry
+      always forgets, and says it was the water did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from
+      this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was
+      flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark
+      hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been
+      dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over
+      my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed
+      quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on
+      the sands to seaward of the breakwater, which lay above, looking dry and
+      weary, and worn with years of contest with the waves, which had at length
+      withdrawn defeated to their own country, and left it as if to victory and
+      a useless age of peace. How different was the scene when a raving mountain
+      of water filled all the hollow where I now wandered, and rushed over the
+      top of that mole now so high above me; and I had to cling to its stones to
+      keep me from being carried off like a bit of floating sea-weed! This was
+      the loveliest and strangest part of the shore. Several long low ridges of
+      rock, of whose existence I scarcely knew, worn to a level with the sand,
+      hollowed and channelled with the terrible run of the tide across them, and
+      looking like the old and outworn cheek-teeth of some awful beast of prey,
+      stretched out seawards. Here and there amongst them rose a well-known
+      rock, but now so changed in look by being lifted all the height between
+      the base on the waters, and the second base in the sand, that I wondered
+      at each, walking round and viewing it on all sides. It seemed almost a
+      fresh growth out of the garden of the shore, with uncouth hollows around
+      its fungous root, and a forsaken air about its brows as it stood in the
+      dry sand and looked seaward. But what made the chief delight of the spot,
+      closed in by rocks from the open sands, was the multitude of fairy rivers
+      that flowed across it to the sea. The gladness these streams gave me I
+      cannot communicate. The tide had filled thousands of hollows in the
+      breakwater, hundreds of cracked basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand;
+      from all of which&mdash;from cranny and crack, and oozing sponge&mdash;the
+      water flowed in restricted haste back, back to the sea, tumbling in tiny
+      cataracts down the faces of the rocks, bubbling from their roots as from
+      wells, gathering in tanks of sand, and overflowing in broad shallow
+      streams, curving and sweeping in their sandy channels, just like, the
+      great rivers of a continent;&mdash;here spreading into smooth silent lakes
+      and reaches, here babbling along in ripples and waves innumerable&mdash;flowing,
+      flowing, to lose their small beings in the same ocean that met on the
+      other side the waters of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the Amazon. All
+      their channels were of golden sand, and the golden sunlight was above and
+      through and in them all: gold and gold met, with the waters between. And
+      what gave an added life to their motion was, that all the ripples made
+      shadows on the clear yellow below them. The eye could not see the rippling
+      on the surface; but the sun saw it, and drew it in multitudinous shadowy
+      motion upon the sand, with the play of a thousand fancies of gold
+      burnished and dead, of sunlight and yellow, trembling, melting, curving,
+      blending, vanishing ever, ever renewed. It was as if all the water-marks
+      upon a web of golden silk had been set in wildest yet most graceful
+      curvilinear motion by the breath of a hundred playful zephyrs. My eye
+      could not be filled with seeing. I stood in speechless delight for a
+      while, gazing at the &ldquo;endless ending&rdquo; which was &ldquo;the humour of the game,&rdquo;
+       and thinking how in all God&rsquo;s works the laws of beauty are wrought out in
+      evanishment, in birth and death. There, there is no hoarding, but an
+      ever-fresh creating, an eternal flow of life from the heart of the
+      All-beautiful. Hence even the heart of man cannot hoard. His brain or his
+      hand may gather into its box and hoard; but the moment the thing has
+      passed into the box, the heart has lost it and is hungry again. If man
+      would <i>have,</i> it is the giver he must have; the eternal, the
+      original, the ever-outpouring is alone within his reach; the everlasting
+      <i>creation</i> is his heritage. Therefore all that he makes must be free
+      to come and go through the heart of his child; he can enjoy it only as it
+      passes, can enjoy only its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, not
+      itself. To hoard rubies and sapphires is as useless and hopeless for the
+      heart, as if I were to attempt to hoard this marvel of sand and water and
+      sunlight in the same iron chest with the musty deeds of my wife&rsquo;s
+      inheritance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; I murmured half aloud, &ldquo;thou alone art, and I am because thou
+      art. Thy will shall be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I know that I must have spoken aloud, because I remember the start of
+      consciousness and discomposure occasioned by the voice of Percivale
+      greeting me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;I did not mean to startle you, Mr. Walton.
+      I thought you were only looking at Nature&rsquo;s childplay&mdash;not thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know few things <i>more</i> fit to set one thinking than what you have
+      very well called Nature&rsquo;s childplay,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;Is Nature very
+      heartless now, do you think, to go on with this kind of thing at our feet,
+      when away up yonder lies the awful London, with so many sores festering in
+      her heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must answer your own question, Mr. Walton. You know I cannot. I
+      confess I feel the difficulty deeply. I will go further, and confess that
+      the discrepancy makes me doubt many things I would gladly believe. I know
+      <i>you</i> are able to distinguish between a glad unbelief and a sorrowful
+      doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Else were I unworthy of the humblest place in the kingdom&mdash;unworthy
+      to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,&rdquo; I answered, and recoiled from
+      the sound of my own words; for they seemed to imply that I believed myself
+      worthy of the position I occupied. I hastened to correct them: &ldquo;But do not
+      mistake my thoughts,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I do not dream of worthiness in the way of
+      honour&mdash;only of fitness for the work to be done. For that I think God
+      has fitted me in some measure. The doorkeeper&rsquo;s office may be given him,
+      not because he has done some great deed worthy of the honour, but because
+      he can sweep the porch and scour the threshold, and will, in the main, try
+      to keep them clean. That is all the worthiness I dare to claim, even to
+      hope that I possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one who knows you can mistake your words, except wilfully,&rdquo; returned
+      Percivale courteously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Now I will just ask you, in reference to the
+      contrast between human life and nature, how you will go back to your work
+      in London, after seeing all this child&rsquo;s and other play of Nature? Suppose
+      you had had nothing here but rain and high winds and sea-fogs, would you
+      have been better fitted for doing something to comfort those who know
+      nothing of such influences than you will be now? One of the most important
+      qualifications of a sick-nurse is a ready smile. A long-faced nurse in a
+      sickroom is a visible embodiment and presence of the disease against which
+      the eager life of the patient is fighting in agony. Such ought to be
+      banished, with their black dresses and their mourning-shop looks, from
+      every sick-chamber, and permitted to minister only to the dead, who do not
+      mind looks. With what a power of life and hope does a woman&mdash;young or
+      old I do not care&mdash;with a face of the morning, a dress like the
+      spring, a bunch of wild flowers in her hand, with the dew upon them, and
+      perhaps in her eyes too (I don&rsquo;t object to that&mdash;that is sympathy,
+      not the worship of darkness),&mdash;with what a message from nature and
+      life does she, looking death in the face with a smile, dawn upon the
+      vision of the invalid! She brings a little health, a little strength to
+      fight, a little hope to endure, actually lapt in the folds of her gracious
+      garments; for the soul itself can do more than any medicine, if it be fed
+      with the truth of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you not&mdash;I beg your pardon for interposing on your eloquence
+      with dull objection,&rdquo; said Percivale&mdash;&ldquo;are you not begging all the
+      question? <i>Is</i> life such an affair of sunshine and gladness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If life is not, then I confess all this show of nature is worse than
+      vanity&mdash;it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in it
+      that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the mistake.
+      If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow, against
+      which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We recognise it
+      as death&mdash;the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow but for a
+      recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must be life. It
+      is of the nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is nothing until the
+      light comes. This very childplay, as you call it, of Nature, is her
+      assertion of the secret that life is the deepest, that life shall conquer
+      death. Those who believe this must bear the good news to them that sit in
+      darkness and the shadow of death. Our Lord has conquered death&mdash;yea,
+      the moral death that he called the world; and now, having sown the seed of
+      light, the harvest is springing in human hearts, is springing in this
+      dance of radiance, and will grow and grow until the hearts of the children
+      of the kingdom shall frolic in the sunlight of the Father&rsquo;s presence.
+      Nature has God at her heart; she is but the garment of the Invisible. God
+      wears his singing robes in a day like this, and says to his children, &lsquo;Be
+      not afraid: your brothers and sisters up there in London are in my hands;
+      go and help them. I am with you. Bear to them the message of joy. Tell
+      them to be of good cheer: I have overcome the world. Tell them to endure
+      hunger, and not sin; to endure passion, and not yield; to admire, and not
+      desire. Sorrow and pain are serving my ends; for by them will I slay sin;
+      and save my children.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could believe as you do, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you could. But God will teach you, if you are willing to be
+      taught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I desire the truth, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you! God is blessing you,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in
+      silence towards the cliffs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the face
+      of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the inch-deep
+      wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet defiant, the
+      wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide
+      lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy
+      pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before us
+      bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of
+      stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that is
+      at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind you, at
+      your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents, caves, and
+      hollows of those rocks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I were,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;At least I know I should rejoice in it, if
+      it had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which would
+      give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and
+      individuality to your representation of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;but I have no gift whatever in that
+      direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects of light
+      and shade; though I think I have a little notion of colour&mdash;perhaps
+      about as much as the little London boy, who stopped a friend of mine once
+      to ask the way to the field where the buttercups grew, had of nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they made
+      me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of
+      looking at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I offer you my address?&rdquo; he said, and took a card from his
+      pocket-book. &ldquo;It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of me
+      when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a
+      visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be most happy,&rdquo; I returned, taking his card.&mdash;&ldquo;Did it ever
+      occur to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes ago,
+      how little you can do without shadow in making a picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little indeed,&rdquo; answered Percivale. &ldquo;In fact, it would be no picture at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God, to
+      be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think
+      of his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but
+      upon the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think a
+      great part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which
+      oppresses you will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin is
+      possible to him. Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God that
+      in order that sin should become impossible he should allow sin to come?
+      that, in order that his creatures should choose the good and refuse the
+      evil, in order that they might become such, with their whole nature
+      infinitely enlarged, as to turn from sin with a perfect repugnance of the
+      will, he should allow them to fall? that, in order that, from being sweet
+      childish children, they should become noble, child-like men and women, he
+      should let them try to walk alone? Why should he not allow the possible in
+      order that it should become impossible? for possible it would ever have
+      been, even in the midst of all the blessedness, until it had been, and had
+      been thus destroyed. Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever
+      exist, it seems to me, where there is creation still going on. How could I
+      be content to guard my children so that they should never have temptation,
+      knowing that in all probability they would fail if at any moment it should
+      cross their path? Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be
+      possible between us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long as
+      it was possible it should be there developed. And if this can be said for
+      the existence of moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes a
+      comparative trifle; nay, a positive good, for by this the other is
+      combated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you,&rdquo; returned Percivale. &ldquo;I will think over what
+      you have said. These are very difficult questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very. I don&rsquo;t think argument is of much use about them, except as it may
+      help to quiet a man&rsquo;s uneasiness a little, and so give his mind peace to
+      think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no question,
+      once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest&mdash;in very fact,
+      the only way into the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the
+      salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came a
+      little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the
+      preparations for our dinner&mdash;over the gates of the lock, down the
+      sides of the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the
+      direction of the children, who were still playing merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you see,
+      somewhere hereabout on the sands?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be delighted,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;if you will let me be of some use
+      first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I hoped,&rdquo; said Percivale; and we went together towards the
+      parsonage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but
+      when we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Wynnie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She saw you coming,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;and went to get Connie ready; for I
+      guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie&rsquo;s
+      disappearance. &ldquo;What if she should have fallen in love with him,&rdquo; I
+      thought, &ldquo;and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be
+      dreadful for us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was
+      compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each other
+      it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently a great
+      mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help sympathising
+      with each other&rsquo;s peculiarities. And anyone could see what a fine couple
+      they would make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie was much taller than Connie&mdash;almost the height of her mother.
+      She had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise,
+      thoughtful, often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on which
+      a smile seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled like
+      water when she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why should
+      not two such walk together along the path to the gates of the light? And
+      yet I could not help some anxiety. I did not know anything of his history.
+      I had no testimony concerning him from anyone that knew him. His past life
+      was a blank to me; his means of livelihood probably insufficient&mdash;certainly,
+      I judged, precarious; and his position in society&mdash;but there I
+      checked myself: I had had enough of that kind of thing already. I would
+      not willingly offend in that worldliness again. The God of the whole earth
+      could not choose that I should look at such works of his hands after that
+      fashion. And I was his servant&mdash;not Mammon&rsquo;s or Belial&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the winnowing-fan
+      of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife, who took no pains
+      to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and I went upstairs,
+      almost unconsciously, to Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to
+      have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie&rsquo;s arm round her
+      waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk
+      thus occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but turned
+      it again at Connie&rsquo;s cry, and I saw a tear on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darlings, I beg your pardon,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It was very stupid of me not to
+      knock at the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn&rsquo;t want
+      you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all. It didn&rsquo;t
+      hurt me much, only I&rsquo;m such a goose! I&rsquo;m in terror before the pain comes.
+      Look at me,&rdquo; she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation on my
+      countenance, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right now.&rdquo; And she smiled in my face perfectly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the
+      room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me
+      with her eyes, but Wynnie&rsquo;s were hidden in her handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to
+      announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came
+      to say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to
+      give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her
+      message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Mr. Percivale,&rdquo; I said; and he followed me up to Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for going.
+      We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for the
+      easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater, along
+      its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before we
+      reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us. We
+      stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted to take
+      breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I wanted
+      Wynnie to hear without its being addressed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see, Connie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;how far off the water is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that
+      sand, will be covered before sunset.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it will be. But it doesn&rsquo;t <i>look</i> likely, does it, papa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I
+      came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind blowing
+      when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to wake
+      myself up&rsquo; quite to get rid of the thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and sand
+      at the bottom of it, stretching far away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about
+      between the stones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the great
+      gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed across
+      this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry regiment off
+      its back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa!&rdquo; exclaimed Connie, turning pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I <i>was</i> right in being frightened, papa!&rdquo; cried Connie,
+      bursting into tears; for since her accident she could not well command her
+      feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were right in trusting in God, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you might have been drowned, papa!&rdquo; she sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what
+      has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but
+      that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking of
+      things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is <i>our</i>
+      department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what a
+      change&mdash;from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of
+      sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away
+      there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles will
+      come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the storm
+      look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning cannot
+      be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of
+      Nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for
+      God is Peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton,&rdquo; said Percivale, &ldquo;you can hardly
+      expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It seems
+      to me that its influences cannot be imparted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are
+      offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another; for
+      it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in the
+      person who has experienced can draw over or derive&mdash;to use an old
+      Italian word&mdash;some of its benefits to him who has the faith.
+      Experience may thus, in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh
+      experience of our own. At least I can hope that the experience of a father
+      may take the form of hope in the minds of his daughters. Hope never hurt
+      anyone, never yet interfered with duty; nay, always strengthens to the
+      performance of duty, gives courage, and clears the judgment. St. Paul says
+      we are saved by hope. Hope is the most rational thing in the universe.
+      Even the ancient poets, who believed it was delusive, yet regarded it as
+      an antidote given by the mercy of the gods against some, at least, of the
+      ills of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a
+      false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could
+      give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for
+      what were the gods in whom they believed&mdash;I cannot say in whom they
+      trusted? Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of
+      doing for men when they gave them the <i>illusion</i> of hope. But I see
+      they are waiting for us below. One thing I repeat&mdash;the waves that
+      foamed across the spot where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and
+      vanished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they will come again, papa,&rdquo; faltered Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And God will come with them, my love,&rdquo; I said, as we lifted the litter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a table-cloth
+      spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the light outside and
+      in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope the others too, that
+      afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were creeping up over the
+      level, soundless almost as thought; but it would be time to go home long
+      before they had reached us. The sun was in the western half of the sky,
+      and now and then a breath of wind came from the sea, with a slight
+      saw-edge in it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could stand much more in
+      that way now. And when I saw how she could move herself on her couch, and
+      thought how much she had improved since first she was laid upon it, hope
+      for her kept fluttering joyously in my heart. I could not help fancying
+      even that I saw her move her legs a little; but I could not be in the
+      least sure; and she, if she did move them, was clearly unconscious of it.
+      Charles and Harry were every now and then starting up from their dinner
+      and running off with a shout, to return with apparently increased appetite
+      for the rest of it; and neither their mother nor I cared to interfere with
+      the indecorum. Dora alone took it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very
+      silent, but looked more cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My
+      wife&rsquo;s face was a picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking
+      about with the baby, occasionally with one hand helping the other servants
+      to wait upon us. They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the
+      hour, and, like Ariel, did their spiriting gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the will of God,&rdquo; I said, after the things were removed, and we
+      had sat for a few moments in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the will of God, husband?&rdquo; asked Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, this, my love,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;this living air, and wind, and sea, and
+      light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of
+      Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such
+      visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the
+      face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes. Yes,
+      but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the harmony.
+      When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was for Lazarus
+      himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That could not be,
+      seeing he had the power to call him back when he would. The grief was for
+      the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was so dreadful because
+      they had not faith enough in his Father, the God of life and love, who was
+      looking after it all, full of tenderness and grace, with whom Lazarus was
+      present and blessed. It was the aching, loving heart of humanity for which
+      he wept, that needed God so awfully, and could not yet trust in him. Their
+      brother was only hidden in the skirts of their Father&rsquo;s garment, but they
+      could not believe that: they said he was dead&mdash;lost&mdash;away&mdash;all
+      gone, as the children say. And it was so sad to think of a whole world
+      full of the grief of death, that he could not bear it without the human
+      tears to help his heart, as they help ours. It was for our dark sorrows
+      that he wept. But the peace could be no less plain on the face that saw
+      God. Did you ever think of that wonderful saying: &lsquo;Again a little while,
+      and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father&rsquo;? The heart of man would
+      have joined the &lsquo;because I go to the Father&rsquo; with the former result&mdash;the
+      not seeing of him. The heart of man is not able, without more and more
+      light, to understand that all vision is in the light of the Father.
+      Because Jesus went to the Father, therefore the disciples saw him tenfold
+      more. His body no longer in their eyes, his very being, his very self was
+      in their hearts&mdash;not in their affections only&mdash;in their spirits,
+      their heavenly consciousness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial
+      affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I
+      repeated it:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      &ldquo;If I Him but have,
+    If he be but mine,
+      If my heart, hence to the grave,
+    Ne&rsquo;er forgets his love divine&mdash;
+  Know I nought of sadness,
+  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.
+
+      If I Him but have,
+    Glad with all I part;
+      Follow on my pilgrim staff
+    My Lord only, with true heart;
+  Leave them, nothing saying,
+  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Glad I fall asleep;
+        Aye the flood that his heart gave
+      Strength within my heart shall keep,
+  And with soft compelling
+  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.
+
+        If I Him but have,
+      Mine the world I hail!
+        Glad as cherub smiling grave,
+      Holding back the virgin&rsquo;s veil.
+  Sunk and lost in seeing,
+  Earthly fears have died from all my being.
+
+        Where I have but Him
+      Is my Fatherland;
+        And all gifts and graces come
+      Heritage into my hand:
+  Brothers long deplored
+  I in his disciples find restored.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a lovely hymn, papa!&rdquo; exclaimed Connie. She could always speak more
+      easily than either her mother or sister. &ldquo;Who wrote it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and feeling,
+      however I may have failed in making an English poem of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years before you were born, Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!&rdquo; she returned.
+      &ldquo;Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don&rsquo;t think he
+      belonged to any section of the church in particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But oughtn&rsquo;t he, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is the
+      use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I didn&rsquo;t think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I
+      wanted to know more about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant
+      what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider Christianity
+      as associated of necessity with this or that form of it, instead of as
+      simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more repulsive to me as I
+      had grown myself, for it always seemed like an insult to my brethren in
+      Christ; hence the least hint of it in my children I was too ready to be
+      down upon like a most unchristian ogre. I took her hand in mine, and she
+      was comforted, for she saw in my face that I was sorry, and yet she could
+      see that there was reason at the root of my haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened
+      herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far she
+      was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a barrier
+      between him and me&mdash;&ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the lovely feeling in that poem
+      seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to the New
+      Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about us. These
+      things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and being glad
+      in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and solemn things.
+      As soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to the
+      rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with their
+      conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with art it
+      was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of its
+      history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to make
+      Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we are
+      beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either the
+      whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the human
+      soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is the heart
+      not only of theology so called, but of history, politics, science, and
+      art. The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him, and therefore by
+      him only can be revealed. This will interpret all things, or it has not
+      yet been. Teachers of men have not taught this, because they have not seen
+      it. If we do not find him in nature, we may conclude either that we do not
+      understand the expression of nature, or have mistaken ideas or poor
+      feelings about him. It is one great business in our life to find the
+      interpretation which will render this harmony visible. Till we find it, we
+      have not seen him to be all in all. Recognising a discord when they
+      touched the notes of nature and society, the hermits forsook the
+      instrument altogether, and contented themselves with a partial symphony&mdash;lofty,
+      narrow, and weak. Their example, more or less, has been followed by almost
+      all Christians. Exclusion is so much the easier way of getting harmony in
+      the orchestra than study, insight, and interpretation, that most have
+      adopted it. It is for us, and all who have hope in the infinite God, to
+      widen its basis as we may, to search and find the true tone and right
+      idea, place, and combination of instruments, until to our enraptured ear
+      they all, with one voice of multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare
+      the glory of God and of his Christ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A grand idea,&rdquo; said Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Therefore likely to be a true one,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;People find it hard to
+      believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely
+      everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is
+      shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and
+      troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of
+      eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God
+      will yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring
+      holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look my
+      familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there I
+      sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs. As
+      I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast from
+      the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide had crept
+      up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk down over
+      the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured the half of
+      the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain veil as of the
+      commonplace, like that which so often settles down over the spirit of man
+      after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had dropped over the face
+      of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts across the dull waters. It
+      was time to lift Connie and take her home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. A PASTORAL VISIT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next morning rose neither &ldquo;cherchef&rsquo;t in a comely cloud&rdquo; nor &ldquo;roab&rsquo;d
+      in flames and amber light,&rdquo; but covered all in a rainy mist, which the
+      wind mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now
+      and then the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of my
+      study with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out and meet
+      its ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows anywhere.
+      The sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth, sea, and sky
+      were possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The breakfast-bell
+      rang, and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who was always down
+      first to make the tea, standing at the window with a sad face, giving fit
+      response to the aspect of nature without, her soul talking with the gray
+      spirit. I did find her at the window, looking out upon the restless
+      tossing of the waters, but with no despondent answer to the trouble of
+      nature. On the contrary, her cheek, though neither rosy nor radiant,
+      looked luminous, and her eyes were flashing out upon the ebb-tide which
+      was sinking away into the troubled ocean beyond. Does my girl-reader
+      expect me to tell her next that something had happened? that Percivale had
+      said something to her? or that, at least, he had just passed the window,
+      and given her a look which she might interpret as she pleased? I must
+      disappoint her. It was nothing of the sort. I knew the heart and feeling
+      of my child. It was only that kind nature was in sympathy with her mood.
+      The girl was always more peaceful in storm than in sunshine. I remembered
+      that now. A movement of life instantly began in her when the obligation of
+      gladness had departed with the light. Her own being arose to provide for
+      its own needs. She could smile now when nature required from her no smile
+      in response to hers. And I could not help saying to myself, &ldquo;She must
+      marry a poor man some day; she is a creature of the north, and not of the
+      south; the hot sun of prosperity would wither her up. Give her a bleak
+      hill-side, and a glint or two of sunshine between the hailstorms, and she
+      will live and grow; give her poverty and love, and life will be
+      interesting to her as a romance; give her money and position, and she will
+      grow dull and haughty. She will believe in nothing that poet can sing or
+      architect build. She will, like Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved
+      to smile at anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came
+      forward with her usual morning greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you. But
+      I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind and a
+      complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the
+      moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well, and
+      that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think about
+      some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have
+      banished if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as
+      you never felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which at
+      least you haven&rsquo;t enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you
+      yesterday, and I won&rsquo;t go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to
+      comfort you. Come and give me my breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do comfort me, papa,&rdquo; she answered, approaching the table. &ldquo;I know I
+      don&rsquo;t show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don&rsquo;t you
+      like a day like this, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as
+      you do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me so
+      well?&rdquo; she asked, brightening up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I do,&rdquo; I returned, replying to her last question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better than I do myself?&rdquo; she asked with an arch smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Considerably, if I mistake not,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don&rsquo;t
+      understand myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life
+      is that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from God,
+      that hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease. It is the
+      sight of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are both, by
+      mutual confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you say to going
+      out with me? I have to visit a sick woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was
+      in bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll call and inquire as we pass,&mdash;that is, if you are inclined to
+      go with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you put an <i>if</i> to that, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on the
+      corner of Mr. Barton&rsquo;s farm&mdash;over the cliff, you know&mdash;that the
+      woman is ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here&rsquo;s mamma!&mdash;Mamma,
+      I&rsquo;m going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won&rsquo;t mind, will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it will do you any harm, my dear. That&rsquo;s all I mind, you
+      know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected to
+      it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people are <i>glad</i> to
+      stay in-doors when it rains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it does blow so delightfully!&rdquo; said Wynnie, as she left the room to
+      put on her long cloak and her bonnet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We called at the sexton&rsquo;s cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the
+      low window, looking seaward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope your wife is not <i>very</i> poorly, Coombes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed&rsquo;s not a bad place to be in
+      in such weather,&rdquo; he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the
+      Atlantic. &ldquo;Poor things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about,
+      do you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I was made so, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure you were. God made you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, sir. Who else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people like
+      to be comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It du look likely enough, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn&rsquo;t think he doesn&rsquo;t
+      look after the people you would make comfortable if you could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must mind my work, you know, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, surely. And you mustn&rsquo;t want to take his out of his hands, and go
+      grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you
+      get <i>your</i> hand to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay you be right, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I must just go and have a look
+      about, though. Here&rsquo;s Agnes. She&rsquo;ll tell you about mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his
+      tools into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over
+      with the names of the people he had buried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her, if
+      she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is very
+      poorly, I hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go through the churchyard, papa,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;and see what the
+      old man is doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you humour the sexton&rsquo;s foolish fancy so much, papa? It is such
+      nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
+      resurrection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out
+      of his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction. To
+      get people&rsquo;s hearts right is of much more importance than convincing their
+      judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should be
+      encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the outsides
+      of their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for the dead
+      more than he does, and <i>therefore</i> it is unreasonable for him to be
+      anxious about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave
+      before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death&rsquo;s-head and
+      cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his
+      pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows of
+      the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked past
+      with a nod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only
+      thing in Dante&rsquo;s grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it without
+      a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry now as I am
+      that ever he could have written it. When, in the <i>Inferno,</i> he
+      reaches the lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice, he
+      finds the lost plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember
+      rightly, entirely submerged, and visible only through the ice, transparent
+      as crystal, like the insects found in amber. One man with his head only
+      above the ice, appeals to him as condemned to the same punishment to take
+      pity on him, and remove the lumps of frozen tears from his eyes, that he
+      may weep a little before they freeze again and stop the relief once more.
+      Dante says to him, &lsquo;Tell me who you are, and if I do not assist you, I
+      deserve to lie at the bottom of the ice myself.&rsquo; The man tells him who he
+      is, and explains to him one awful mystery of these regions. Then he says,
+      &lsquo;Now stretch forth thy hand, and open my eyes.&rsquo; &lsquo;And,&rsquo; says Dante, I did
+      not open them for him; and rudeness to him was courtesy.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he promised, you said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him
+      together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that
+      Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and
+      may teach us many things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what made you think of that now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was scooping
+      the green moss out of the eyes of the death&rsquo;s-head on the gravestone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting
+      us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie drew
+      her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and struggled
+      on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the rain must
+      carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one of the stone
+      fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments to recover our
+      breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like conversation was out of
+      the question. At length we dropped into a hollow, which gave us a little
+      repose. Down below the sea was dashing into the mouth of the glen, or
+      coomb, as they call it there. On the opposite side of the hollow, the
+      little house to which we were going stood up against the gray sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was
+      thoughtless of me; I don&rsquo;t mean for your sake, but because your presence
+      may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may
+      prefer seeing me alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go back, papa. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t mind it a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We
+      may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then. We shall soon be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way. I
+      left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where
+      Mrs. Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the
+      moment I saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was a
+      hard-featured woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled
+      restlessly about. She lay on her back, moving her head from side to side.
+      When I entered she only looked at me, and turned her eyes away towards the
+      wall. I approached the bedside, and seated myself by it. I always do so at
+      once; for the patient feels more at rest than if you stand tall up before
+      her. I laid my hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, very,&rdquo; she answered with a groan. &ldquo;It be come to the last with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It&rsquo;s not come to the last with us, so
+      long as we have a Father in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but it be with me. He can&rsquo;t take any notice of the like of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of every
+      thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than
+      usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I
+      therefore went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long as
+      their children don&rsquo;t bother them, let them do anything they like. He will
+      not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t look at me,&rdquo; she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so
+      that I could hardly, hear what she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is because he <i>is</i> looking at you that you are feeling
+      uncomfortable,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;He wants you to confess your sins. I don&rsquo;t
+      mean to me, but to himself; though if you would like to tell me anything,
+      and I can help you, I shall be <i>very</i> glad. You know Jesus Christ
+      came to save us from our sins; and that&rsquo;s why we call him our Saviour. But
+      he can&rsquo;t save us from our sins if we won&rsquo;t confess that we have any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other
+      people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t suppose that&rsquo;s confessing your sins?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I once knew a
+      woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner; but
+      when I said, &lsquo;Yes, you have done so and so,&rsquo; she would not allow one of
+      those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When I asked
+      her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these counted for
+      nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a great sinner,
+      like other people, as you have just been saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you don&rsquo;t be thinking I ha&rsquo; done anything of that sort,&rdquo; she said
+      with wakening energy. &ldquo;No man or woman dare say I&rsquo;ve done anything to be
+      ashamed of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve committed no sins?&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;But why did you send for me?
+      You must have something to say to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never did send for you. It must ha&rsquo; been my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, then I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;ve no business here!&rdquo; I returned, rising. &ldquo;I
+      thought you had sent for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her
+      thinking, and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I
+      think clergymen may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad
+      mood, as if they had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at
+      all. I bade her good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned to
+      Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we walked home together, I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the
+      sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented my
+      appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. THE ART OF NATURE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study
+      and in Connie&rsquo;s room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused to
+      hold any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it folded
+      itself in its mantle and lay still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we
+      cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She is
+      busy with every human mood in turn&mdash;sometimes with ten of them at
+      once&mdash;picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see,
+      understand, develop, reform it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora
+      knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that mamma
+      was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least, my dear,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;I shall be very glad to see
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale,&rdquo; I said as he
+      entered. &ldquo;I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it would
+      be much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her
+      portrait?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite so bad as that,&rdquo; said Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely the human face is more than nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature is never stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The woman might be pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such a
+      woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would feel
+      the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you would
+      never think of making upon Nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with moral
+      causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be
+      lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you rise
+      into animal nature that you find ugliness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn in
+      nature. I have seen ugly flowers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without
+      beauty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I grant
+      you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just because
+      the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in its
+      repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you are thinking of returning to London now, there
+      seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins
+      to show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the
+      change, even through the winter, will be good for my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must be going soon,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;but it would be too bad to take
+      offence at the old lady&rsquo;s first touch of temper. I mean to wait and see
+      whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin&rsquo;s summer, as
+      Shakspere calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what?&rdquo; I asked, seeing he hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And soap,&rsquo; I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the
+      worst of things, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by
+      anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to tell
+      me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went down to see him, and found her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife be very bad, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish you could come and see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she want to see me?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I repeated, &ldquo;has she said she would like to see me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say it, sir,&rdquo; answered the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is you who want me to see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you see,
+      sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would always
+      leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, never, sir. She be peculiar&mdash;my wife; she always be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she know that you have come to ask me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you courage to tell her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you haven&rsquo;t courage to tell her,&rdquo; I resumed, &ldquo;I have nothing more to
+      say. I can&rsquo;t go; or, rather, I will not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell her, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me
+      herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ben&rsquo;t that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she
+      will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your
+      wife&rsquo;s peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I <i>will</i> tell her, sir. It&rsquo;s time to speak my own mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the
+      middle of the night, I shall be with her at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left me and I returned to Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just thinking before you came,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;about the relation of
+      Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but I
+      often think about the truths that lie at the root of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am greatly obliged to you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for talking about these things. I
+      assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I
+      always think the professions should not herd together so much as they do;
+      they want to be shone upon from other quarters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself
+      could give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the
+      reflective power of the airy particles through which he shines. But
+      anything I know I have found out merely by foraging for my own
+      necessities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what makes the result valuable,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Tell me what
+      you were thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;how everyone likes to see his own thoughts
+      set outside of him, that he may contemplate them <i>objectively,</i> as
+      the philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as it
+      were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the
+      question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however they
+      may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will satisfy
+      themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in which they
+      have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet utter their
+      ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only be good, they
+      shall have this power some day; for I do think that many things we call
+      differences in kind, may in God&rsquo;s grand scale prove to be only differences
+      in degree. And indeed the artist&mdash;by artist, I mean, of course,
+      architect, musician, painter, poet, sculptor&mdash;in many things requires
+      it just as much as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren, seeing in
+      proportion to the things that he can do, he is aware of the things he
+      cannot do, the thoughts he cannot express. Hence arises the enthusiasm
+      with which people hail the work of an artist; they rejoice, namely, in
+      seeing their own thoughts, or feelings, or something like them, expressed;
+      and hence it comes that of those who have money, some hang their walls
+      with pictures of their own choice, others&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Percivale, interrupting; &ldquo;but most people, I
+      fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people&rsquo;s choice, for they
+      don&rsquo;t buy them at all till the artist has got a name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they
+      won&rsquo;t at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity
+      may be only what first attracted their attention&mdash;not determined
+      their choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Of such is not the talk,&rsquo; as the Germans would say. In as far as your
+      description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
+      considered now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
+      deserve, if you have lost your thread.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
+      their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &amp;c., of
+      their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
+      unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
+      to what is in themselves&mdash;the buyers, I mean. They like to see their
+      own feelings outside of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there not another possible motive&mdash;that the pictures teach them
+      something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the other,
+      but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us already that
+      makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the germ, else
+      nothing from without would wake it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
+      influences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the pictures
+      and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the house he has
+      chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little to do with the
+      education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not aware of it,
+      they are working upon him,&mdash;for good, if he has chosen what is good,
+      which alone shall be our supposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; that is clear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our needs&mdash;not
+      as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for himself. For
+      our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for us all the
+      otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even when he speaks
+      of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the forms or pictures
+      of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen world turned inside
+      out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house that he has built for
+      us, God has hung up the pictures&mdash;ever-living, ever-changing pictures&mdash;of
+      all that passes in our souls. Form and colour and motion are there,&mdash;ever-modelling,
+      ever-renewing, never wearying. Without this living portraiture from
+      within, we should have no word to utter that should represent a single act
+      of the inner world. Metaphysics could have no existence, not to speak of
+      poetry, not to speak of the commonest language of affection. But all is
+      done in such spiritual suggestion, portrait and definition are so avoided,
+      the whole is in such fluent evanescence, that the producing mind is only
+      aided, never overwhelmed. It never amounts to representation. It affords
+      but the material which the thinking, feeling soul can use, interpret, and
+      apply for its own purposes of speech. It is, as it were, the forms of
+      thought cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior laws of matter, thence to
+      be withdrawn by what we call the creative genius that God has given to
+      men, and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and built up to its own
+      shapes and its own purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the
+      word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help seeing
+      nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees no meaning
+      in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will represent only
+      her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then artists ought to interpret nature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves&mdash;something
+      of humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or
+      not. If to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed they
+      may claim to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect they may
+      be in their powers of representing&mdash;however lowly, therefore, their
+      position may be in that order.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. THE SORE SPOT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the
+      dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message
+      that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help
+      smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling
+      too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife do send me for you this time, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Between you and me,
+      I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to tell
+      you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And
+      then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She don&rsquo;t think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay
+      she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done
+      talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn&rsquo;t given in quite so
+      much. It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been surer&mdash;<i>sometimes;</i>
+      I don&rsquo;t say <i>always.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don&rsquo;t think she&rsquo;ll behave to you
+      as she did before. Do come, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I will&mdash;instantly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with
+      me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was
+      hardly kind to ask him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps it is better not,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;for I do not know how long I
+      may have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take my
+      place at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should return
+      before the meal is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my
+      wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me&mdash;I would take
+      my chance&mdash;and joined Mr. Stokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have no idea, then,&rdquo; I said, after we had gone about half-way, &ldquo;what
+      makes your wife so uneasy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I haven&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;except it be,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;that she was
+      too hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath
+      her, as wife thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother&rsquo;s temper, you see,
+      and she would take her own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there&rsquo;s a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their
+      own way, they mustn&rsquo;t give their own temper to their daughters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how are they to help it, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter&rsquo;s husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have worked on Mr. Barton&rsquo;s farm for many years, if I don&rsquo;t
+      mistake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you weren&rsquo;t so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his way
+      up or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs.
+      Stokes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True as you say, sir; and it&rsquo;s not me that has anything to say about it.
+      I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do be wanting
+      to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the shopkeeping&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The shopkeeping!&rdquo; I said, with some surprise; &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, sir, it&rsquo;s only for a quarter or so of the year. You know
+      it&rsquo;s a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing&mdash;past
+      our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a bit of
+      a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bad place for the ginger-beer,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My
+      wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the sun.
+      But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a farm-labourer,
+      as they call them, was none good enough for her daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And hasn&rsquo;t she been kind to her since she married, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s never done her no harm, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she hasn&rsquo;t gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see
+      you very often, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s ne&rsquo;er a one o&rsquo; them crossed the door of the other,&rdquo; he answered,
+      with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah; but you don&rsquo;t approve of that yourself, Stokes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do
+      want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother,
+      she do. I don&rsquo;t know which of the two it is as does it, but there&rsquo;s no
+      coming and going between Carpstone and this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I
+      was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for
+      me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was
+      still very anxious to see me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?&rdquo; I asked, by way of opening
+      the conversation. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you look much worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I he much worse, sir. You don&rsquo;t know what I suffer, or you wouldn&rsquo;t make
+      so little of it. I be very bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me why
+      you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I
+      suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more
+      with herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her. The
+      drops stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to help her,
+      if I might, I said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she muttered. &ldquo;I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my
+      own. I could do as I pleased with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but
+      meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she
+      feels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you want to tell me about something that was not your
+      own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who said I ever took what was not my own?&rdquo; she returned fiercely. &ldquo;Did
+      Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn&rsquo;t my own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from
+      your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause of
+      your misery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very hard that the parson should think such things,&rdquo; she muttered
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor woman,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you sent for me because you had something to
+      confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to
+      confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does
+      you harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me,
+      confess to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows it, I suppose, without that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it. How
+      is he to forgive you, if you won&rsquo;t allow that you have done wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had
+      took something that wasn&rsquo;t your own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shouldn&rsquo;t like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I
+      should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s the worst of it; I can&rsquo;t get rid of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly as I
+      could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly repulsive
+      but for her evidently great suffering, &ldquo;you have now all but confessed
+      taking something that did not belong to you. Why don&rsquo;t you summon courage
+      and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the trouble as easily
+      as ever I can; but I can&rsquo;t if you don&rsquo;t tell me what you&rsquo;ve got that isn&rsquo;t
+      yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got anything,&rdquo; she muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was again silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold
+      of me, with a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, stop. I&rsquo;ll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That&rsquo;s the worst
+      of it. I got no good of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sovereign,&rdquo; she said, with a groan. &ldquo;And now I&rsquo;m a thief, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you
+      think it would have been any better for you if you hadn&rsquo;t lost it, and had
+      got some good of it, as you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent yet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t lost it you would most likely have been a great deal worse
+      for it than you are&mdash;a more wicked woman altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a wicked woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is wicked to steal, is it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t steal it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you come by it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you try to find out the owner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I knew whose it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you
+      had not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked
+      woman than you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have lost my character as I have done this day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that I would,&rdquo; she said, looking me so full in the face that I was
+      sure she meant it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I wouldn&rsquo;t trust him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the story, you mean I You do not wish to imply that he would not
+      restore it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean that. He would do what I told him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you return it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should make a parcel of it, and send it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without saying anything about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Where&rsquo;s the good? The man would have his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have wronged
+      him. That would never do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too hard upon me,&rdquo; she said, beginning to weep angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the
+      weight of it will stick there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. That is only reasonable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t got it, I tell you. I have lost it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not a sovereign in your possession?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you ask your husband to let you have one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse. I
+      do wish I had never seen that wicked money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish
+      that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it
+      now. Has your husband got a sovereign?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He may ha&rsquo; got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him about
+      it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in that
+      way, poor man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll tell him, and we&rsquo;ll manage it somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she hid
+      her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the room-door
+      and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did not look up,
+      but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this humiliation
+      before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your wife, poor woman,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is in great distress because&mdash;I do
+      not know when or how&mdash;she picked up a sovereign that did not belong
+      to her, and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This
+      is what is making her so miserable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deary me!&rdquo; said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to a
+      sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet
+      from her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight hold
+      of it, and he could not. &ldquo;Deary me!&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll soon put that all
+      to rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon
+      return it,&rdquo; she sobbed from under the sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got
+      for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha&rsquo; given it back
+      at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was very
+      nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My old man won&rsquo;t be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would wish that too,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;were it not that I am afraid you might
+      have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable
+      and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be
+      paid. Have you got it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor man looked blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will never be at ease till this money is paid,&rdquo; I insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I ain&rsquo;t got it, but I&rsquo;ll borrow it of someone; I&rsquo;ll go to
+      master, and ask him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my good fellow, that won&rsquo;t do. Your master would want to know what
+      you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn&rsquo;t let more people know
+      about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no occasion for
+      that. I&rsquo;ll tell you what: I&rsquo;ll give you the money, and you must take it;
+      or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell him all about it.
+      Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, sir. It&rsquo;s very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again, if
+      it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to you,
+      sir; but I couldn&rsquo;t bear the disgrace of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said all this from under the bed-clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll go,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;and as soon as I&rsquo;ve had my dinner I&rsquo;ll get a
+      horse and ride over to Squire Tresham&rsquo;s. I&rsquo;ll come back to-night and tell
+      you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for forgiving
+      you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but confess it clean
+      out to him, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse
+      which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to
+      dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my
+      return was uncertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my love,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;why should you not let us please ourselves
+      sometimes? Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very glad you think so,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;But there are the children: it
+      is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their meals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see there are no children; they have had their dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always in the right, wife; but there&rsquo;s Mr. Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never dine till seven o&rsquo;clock, to save daylight,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale&rsquo;s eyes
+      followed Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her
+      face. That she was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt. One
+      glance at her satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle kept
+      coming again and again into my mind; for they were winged words those, and
+      even when they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my window:
+      &ldquo;Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.&rdquo; And I kept reminding myself that I
+      must heave the load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs. Stokes
+      to do; for God was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not without my
+      help, for that would be to do me more harm than good by taking the one
+      thing in which I was like him away from me&mdash;my action. Therefore I
+      must have faith in him, and not be afraid; for surely all fear is sin, and
+      one of the most oppressive sins from which the Lord came to save us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out
+      for Squire Tresham&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him the
+      story of the poor woman&rsquo;s misery, he was quite concerned at her suffering.
+      When I produced the sovereign he would not receive it at first, but
+      requested me to take it back to her and say she must keep it by way of an
+      apology for his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took care to tell
+      him the whole story, thinking it might be a lesson to him too. But I
+      begged him to take it; for it would, I thought, not only relieve her mind
+      more thoroughly, but help to keep her from coming to think lightly of the
+      affair afterwards. Of course I could not tell him that I had advanced the
+      money, for that would have quite prevented him from receiving it. I then
+      got on my horse again, and rode straight to the cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Stokes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all over now. That&rsquo;s one good thing
+      done. How do you feel yourself now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness for.
+      It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all our sins,
+      you know. They&rsquo;re not nice things, are they, to keep in our hearts? It is
+      just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead carcasses, under lock
+      and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they were precious jewels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn&rsquo;t made so. There&rsquo;s
+      my husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But
+      then, you see, he would let a child take him in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is no
+      harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not reply, and I went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for your
+      daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially seeing
+      you are so ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, sir. I will directly. I&rsquo;m tired of having my own way. But I was
+      made so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You weren&rsquo;t made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the
+      necessary strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now;
+      only you must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you. I
+      think very likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink
+      yourself, and feel that you had done wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been feeling that for many a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling
+      your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know Jesus
+      came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off our
+      hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us.
+      Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere, and
+      he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband, and
+      when you have done that you will think of something else to set right
+      that&rsquo;s wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there would be no end to that way of it, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not, till everything was put right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a body might have nothing else to do, that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s the very first thing that has to be done. It is our business
+      in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and try to enjoy
+      ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God&rsquo;s way.
+      But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would just take
+      his way, you would find that he would take care you should enjoy your
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I haven&rsquo;t had much enjoyment in mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was just because you would not trust him with his own business, but
+      must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will take
+      care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for. And
+      the longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must leave
+      you now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and get a
+      sleep. I will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart
+      was like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from
+      every heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one&rsquo;s own soul must be a
+      pledge of renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again
+      of what St. Paul had said somewhere, &ldquo;whatsoever is not of faith is sin,&rdquo;
+       I thought what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth, and how
+      blessed it might be. But what could I do for it? I could just begin with
+      myself, and pray God for that inward light which is his Spirit, that so I
+      might see him in everything and rejoice in everything as his gift, and
+      then all things would be holy, for whatsoever is of faith must be the
+      opposite of sin; and that was my part towards heaving the weight of sin,
+      which, like myriads of gravestones, was pressing the life out of us men,
+      off the whole world. Faith in God is life and righteousness&mdash;the
+      faith that trusts so that it will obey&mdash;none other. Lord, lift the
+      people thou hast made into holy obedience and thanksgiving, that they may
+      be glad in this thy world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE GATHERING STORM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
+      lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than
+      in our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the
+      ocean, the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there,
+      indeed, so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the winter
+      through, compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness of the
+      season is almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against furious
+      storms of wind and rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another visit.
+      I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away so soon
+      again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find time for a
+      holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what I knew of
+      him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir was
+      working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have got a
+      man to take my place better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I
+      was sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one side
+      to the other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner encouraged
+      her in making gentle and frequent use of her strength, impressing it upon
+      her, however, that everything depended on avoiding everything like a jerk
+      or twist of any sort. I was with them when he said this. She looked up at
+      him with a happy smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will do all I can, Mr. Turner,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to get out of people&rsquo;s way
+      as soon as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you don&rsquo;t mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and not
+      be helped&mdash;more than other people&mdash;as soon as possible. I will
+      therefore be as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we don&rsquo;t
+      get well, Mr. Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next summer.&mdash;I
+      do,&rdquo; she added, nodding her pretty head up from the pillow, when she saw
+      the glance the doctor and I exchanged. &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; she went on, poking
+      the eider-down quilt up with her foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magnificent!&rdquo; said Turner; &ldquo;but mind, you must do nothing out of bravado.
+      That won&rsquo;t do at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done,&rdquo; said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
+      for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or
+      farther from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for
+      many weeks. Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was
+      only because of the weather, not because of her health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs. Stokes.
+      She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her mental
+      health was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very
+      different, and the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband
+      especially, was changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified, and
+      I had good hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding down
+      the hill of difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
+      tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage to
+      return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of light
+      gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was blowing
+      fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from the east. The
+      clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose fringes&mdash;disreputable,
+      troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like mischief. They reminded me
+      of Shelley&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ode to the West Wind,&rdquo; in which he compares the &ldquo;loose
+      clouds&rdquo; to hair, and calls them &ldquo;the locks of the approaching storm.&rdquo; Away
+      to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a luminous yellow, covered
+      all the sea-horizon, extending north and south as far as the eye could
+      reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed to lie in its bosom. Now
+      and then I could discern the dim ghost of a vessel through it, as tacking
+      for north or south it came near enough to the edge of the fog to show
+      itself for a few moments, ere it retreated again into its bosom. There was
+      exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air, notwithstanding the coolness of
+      the wind, and I was glad when I found myself comfortably seated by the
+      drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie bestirring herself to make the tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to like the idea of it,&rdquo; I added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea
+      of it too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Per se</i>, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a
+      world without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman&rsquo;s idea of
+      the perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a trim-shaven
+      lawn, rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on the shore only
+      in wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget which. But the older you
+      grow, the more sides of a thing will present themselves to your
+      contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in itself, but you
+      cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think for a moment of
+      the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are gathered within the
+      skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the toils of the storm are
+      around them. Look at the barometer in the hall, my dear, and tell me what
+      it says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went and returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not very low, papa&mdash;only at rain; but the moment I touched
+      it, the hand dropped an inch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
+      however.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t make much difference though, does it, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think of
+      things from our own standpoint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
+      nurse teach us Dr. Watts&rsquo;s hymns for children, because you said they
+      tended to encourage selfishness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast between the
+      misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the apparent&mdash;mind,
+      I only say apparent&mdash;ground of thankfulness, that they are not fit
+      for teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to the question,
+      he would abjure any such intention, saying that only he meant to heighten
+      the sense of our obligation. But it does tend to selfishness and, what is
+      worse, self-righteousness, and is very dangerous therefore. What right
+      have I to thank God that I am not as other men are in anything? I have to
+      thank God for the good things he has given to me; but how dare I suppose
+      that he is not doing the same for other people in proportion to their
+      capacity? I don&rsquo;t like to appear to condemn Dr. Watts&rsquo;s hymns. Certainly
+      he has written the very worst hymns I know; but he has likewise written
+      the best&mdash;for public worship, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that comes
+      of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the idea of a
+      storm, I cannot help it coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older, other
+      things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to us, and
+      impress us more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
+      their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Wynnie, &ldquo;you say everybody is in God&rsquo;s hands as well as we.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
+      fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a
+      storm, ought we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the very
+      persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to rescue
+      them from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn&rsquo;t the tea ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa. I&rsquo;ll just go and tell mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us, Wynnie
+      resumed the talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don&rsquo;t see my way
+      out of it&mdash;logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use of
+      taking any trouble about them if they are in God&rsquo;s hands? Why should we
+      try to take them out of God&rsquo;s hands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or whatever
+      you call it. Take them out of God&rsquo;s hands! If you could do that, it would
+      be perdition indeed. God&rsquo;s hands is the only safe place in the universe;
+      and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God&rsquo;s hands on the shore
+      because we say they are in his hands who go down to the sea in ships? If
+      we draw them on shore, surely they are not out of God&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see&mdash;I see. But God could save them without us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we must
+      work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father lets his
+      little child help him a little, that the child may learn to be and to do,
+      so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our fellows, because we
+      would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we could. He requires us to
+      do our best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But God may not mean to save them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may mean them to be drowned&mdash;we do not know. But we know that we
+      must try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God&rsquo;s
+      great and good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that
+      best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, &lsquo;by
+      the mercy of God.&rsquo; They don&rsquo;t say it is by the mercy of God when he is
+      drowned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>people</i> cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not
+      feel. Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death would
+      break out in a &lsquo;thank God,&rsquo; and therefore they say it is God&rsquo;s mercy when
+      another is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider it God&rsquo;s
+      mercy when a man is drowned, that is just the sin of the world&mdash;the
+      want of faith. But the man who creeps out of the drowning, choking billows
+      into the glory of the new heavens and the new earth&mdash;do you think his
+      thanksgiving for the mercy of God which has delivered him is less than
+      that of the man who creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the waves on to the
+      dreary, surf-beaten shore? In nothing do we show less faith than the way
+      in which we think and speak about death. &lsquo;O Death, where is thy sting? O
+      Grave, where is thy victory?&rsquo; says the apostle. &lsquo;Here, here, here,&rsquo; cry
+      the Christian people, &lsquo;everywhere. It is an awful sting, a fearful
+      victory. But God keeps it away from us many a time when we ask him&mdash;to
+      let it pierce us to the heart, at last, to be sure; but that can&rsquo;t be
+      helped.&rsquo; I mean this is how they feel in their hearts who do not believe
+      that God is as merciful when he sends death as when he sends life; who,
+      Christian people as they are, yet look upon death as an evil thing which
+      cannot be avoided, and would, if they might live always, be content to
+      live always. Death or Life&mdash;each is God&rsquo;s; for he is not the God of
+      the dead, but of the living: there are no dead, for all live to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?&rdquo; said my wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There can be no doubt about that, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child&rsquo;s sole
+      desire is for food&mdash;the very best possible to begin with. But how
+      would it be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse
+      to share this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the man
+      who never so far rises above the desire for food that <i>nothing</i> could
+      make him forget his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians should be
+      strong enough to overcome the fear of death. We ought to love and believe
+      him so much, that when he says we shall not die, we should at least
+      believe that death must be something very different from what it looks to
+      us to be&mdash;so different, that what we mean by the word does not apply
+      to the reality at all; and so Jesus cannot use the word, because it would
+      seem to us that he meant what we mean by it, which he, seeing it all
+      round, cannot mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does seem quite reasonable,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
+      from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks uneasy, does she not?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the Atlantic?&rdquo; he returned, looking round. &ldquo;Yes, I think so. I
+      am glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very
+      feverish, probably delirious before morning. She won&rsquo;t sleep much, and
+      will talk rather loud when the tide comes in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
+      blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again
+      before they vanish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
+      disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to me
+      that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little more
+      regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the evening;
+      in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is lowest again
+      while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain at night has
+      such an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps all a fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke to
+      me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even six
+      hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
+      relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
+      and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
+      human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care to
+      go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to Connie&rsquo;s
+      room and have some Shakspere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us have the <i>Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream,&rdquo;</i> said Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you&rsquo;re quite right.
+      It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer. I
+      suspect that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written in the
+      winter. It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full value upon
+      what we lack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one reason,&rdquo; said Wynnie with a roguish look, &ldquo;why I like that
+      play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn&rsquo;t it, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure of that. But what is your reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women. <i>They</i>
+      are true throughout.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might choose to say that was because they were not tried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I might venture to answer that Shakspere&mdash;being true to nature
+      always, as you say, papa&mdash;knew very well how absurd it would be to
+      represent a woman&rsquo;s feelings as under the influence of the juice of a
+      paltry flower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capital, Wynnie!&rdquo; said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
+      approbation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;It is the
+      common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn, &ldquo;he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
+      sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted
+      to this, that he would only believe his own eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;For my part, I have more
+      admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more weight to
+      the consistency of the various testimony than could be altogether
+      counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now I will tell you
+      what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling power of the poet.
+      He brings together such marvellous contrasts, without a single shock or
+      jar to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the conjunction. Think for
+      a moment&mdash;the ordinary commonplace courtiers; the lovers, men and
+      women in the condition of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a
+      hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their
+      courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the
+      ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,&mdash;fairies and
+      clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony,
+      clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the
+      king and queen. But I have talked enough about it. Let us get our books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As we sat in Connie&rsquo;s room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of the
+      poet&rsquo;s fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
+      fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. &ldquo;Musk roses,&rdquo; said Titania; and the
+      first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the window.
+      &ldquo;Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow,&rdquo; said Bottom; and the roar of the
+      waters was in our ears. &ldquo;So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently
+      entwist,&rdquo; said Titania; and the blast poured the rain in a spout against
+      the window. &ldquo;Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,&rdquo; said
+      Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the chinks of the bark-house
+      opening from the room. We drew the curtains closer, made up the fire
+      higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere we had done; and when we
+      left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it was with the hope that,
+      through all the rising storm, she would dream of breeze-haunted summer
+      woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. THE GATHERED STORM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
+      howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
+      and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear
+      it save in the <i>rallentondo</i> passages of the wind; but through all
+      the wind I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not
+      wake my wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to
+      Connie&rsquo;s room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were,
+      she would be frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the same
+      room. I opened the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was burning,
+      for Wynnie was an admirable stoker, and could generally keep the fire in
+      all night. I crept to the bedside: there was just light enough to see that
+      Connie was fast asleep, and that her dreams were not of storms. It was a
+      marvel how well the child always slept. But, as I turned to leave the
+      room, Wynnie&rsquo;s voice called me in a whisper. Approaching her bed, I saw
+      her wide eyes, like the eyes of the darkness, for I could scarcely see
+      anything of her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awake, darling?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn&rsquo;t Connie sleeping
+      delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the best thing for us all, next to God&rsquo;s spirit, I sometimes think,
+      my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps you
+      awake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house shakes
+      so that I do feel a little nervous. I don&rsquo;t know how it is. I never felt
+      afraid of anything natural before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only
+      hurt the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think
+      about him, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do try, papa. Don&rsquo;t you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful
+      storm, is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment, I
+      suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of dying.
+      Mind, they are all in God&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand is
+      over them, making them dark with his care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those odd
+      but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
+      beautifully, &lsquo;And now with darkness closest weary eyes,&rsquo; he adds:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Thus in thy ebony box
+  Thou dost enclose us, till the day
+  Put our amendment in our way,
+  And give new wheels to our disordered clocks.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a
+      good clock of God&rsquo;s making; but you want new wheels, according to our
+      beloved brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was tiresome talk&mdash;was it&mdash;in the middle of the night,
+      reader? Well, but my child did not think so, I know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and sky.
+      The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled a
+      little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again, and the
+      wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible human
+      hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into the village.
+      The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I passed: not a man
+      or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if nobody had crossed
+      their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open. One child came out of
+      the baker&rsquo;s with a big loaf in her apron. The wind threatened to blow the
+      hair off her head, if not herself first into the canal. I took her by the
+      hand and led her, or rather, let her lead me home, while I kept her from
+      being carried away by the wind. Having landed her safely inside her
+      mother&rsquo;s door, I went on, climbed the heights above the village, and
+      looked abroad over the Atlantic. What a waste of aimless tossing to and
+      fro! Gray mist above, full of falling rain; gray, wrathful waters
+      underneath, foaming and bursting as billow broke upon billow. The tide was
+      ebbing now, but almost every other wave swept the breakwater. They burst
+      on the rocks at the end of it, and rushed in shattered spouts and clouds
+      of spray far into the air over their heads. &ldquo;Will the time ever come,&rdquo; I
+      thought, &ldquo;when man shall be able to store up even this force for his own
+      ends? Who can tell?&rdquo; The solitary form of a man stood at some distance
+      gazing, as I was gazing, out on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking
+      with myself who it could be that loved Nature so well that he did not
+      shrink from her even in her most uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and
+      soon found I was right; it was Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a clashing of water-drops!&rdquo; I said, thinking of a line somewhere in
+      Coleridge&rsquo;s Remorse. &ldquo;They are but water-drops, after all, that make this
+      great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
+      close-reefed&mdash;that is all I can see&mdash;away in the mist there? As
+      soon as you think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you
+      know that hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops
+      no more. It is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules
+      have to fight for the mastery, or at least for freedom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort that
+      gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of human
+      feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much of its awe;
+      although, as we were saying the other day, it is only <i>a picture</i> of
+      the troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are with the
+      elements, and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I will go home
+      and change my clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have hardly had enough of it yet,&rdquo; returned Percivale. &ldquo;I shall have a
+      stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little way
+      from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch awhile
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;re a younger man than I am; but I&rsquo;ve seen the day, as Lear
+      says. What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we would
+      be judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of the strength
+      that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it still. But I am
+      not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take
+      my way along the downs for a mile or two; I don&rsquo;t mind being wet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; resumed Percivale, &ldquo;that in some sense the old man&mdash;not
+      that I can allow <i>you</i> that dignity yet, Mr. Walton&mdash;has a right
+      to regard the past as his own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be scanned,&rdquo; I answered, as we walked towards the village.
+      &ldquo;Surely the results of the past are the man&rsquo;s own. Any action of the
+      man&rsquo;s, upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a man
+      had done a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation upon
+      which to build more good, grew so vain of it that he became incapable of
+      doing anything more of the same sort, you could not say that the action
+      belonged to him still. Therein he has severed his connection with the
+      past. Again, what has never in any deep sense been a man&rsquo;s own, cannot
+      surely continue to be his afterwards. Thus the things that a man has
+      merely possessed once, the very people who most admired him for their
+      sakes when he had them, give him no credit for after he has lost them.
+      Riches that have taken to themselves wings leave with the poor man only a
+      surpassing poverty. Strength, likewise, which can so little depend on any
+      exercise of the will in man, passes from him with the years. It was not
+      his all the time; it was but lent him, and had nothing to do with his
+      inward force. A bodily feeble man may put forth a mighty life-strength in
+      effort, and show nothing to the eyes of his neighbour; while the strong
+      man gains endless admiration for what he could hardly help. But the effort
+      of the one remains, for it was his own; the strength of the other passes
+      from him, for it was never his own. So with beauty, which the commonest
+      woman acknowledges never to have been hers in seeking to restore it by
+      deception. So, likewise, in a great measure with intellect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can
+      in any way be called his own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own&mdash;to
+      will the truth. This, too, is as much God&rsquo;s gift as everything else: I
+      ought to say is more God&rsquo;s gift than anything else, for he gives it to be
+      the man&rsquo;s own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth,
+      he has God himself. Man <i>can</i> possess God: all other things follow as
+      necessary results. What poor creatures we should have been if God had not
+      made us to do something&mdash;to look heavenwards&mdash;to lift up the
+      hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this
+      was in the mind of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, &lsquo;Thus saith the
+      Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man
+      glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him
+      that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I
+      am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in
+      the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.&rsquo; My own
+      conviction is, that a vague sense of a far higher life in ourselves than
+      we yet know anything about is at the root of all our false efforts to be
+      able to think something of ourselves. We cannot commend ourselves, and
+      therefore we set about priding ourselves. We have little or no strength of
+      mind, faculty of operation, or worth of will, and therefore we talk of our
+      strength of body, worship the riches we have, or have not, it is all one,
+      and boast of our paltry intellectual successes. The man most ambitious of
+      being considered a universal genius must at last confess himself a
+      conceited dabbler, and be ready to part with all he knows for one glimpse
+      more of that understanding of God which the wise men of old held to be
+      essential to every man, but which the growing luminaries of the present
+      day will not allow to be even possible for any man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce blast
+      of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the streets
+      did look!&mdash;how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no living
+      creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that seemed to
+      have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which, forgetful of
+      its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging to it against
+      a window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a mimic storm
+      within its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down the kennels
+      like a long brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide from the
+      tormenting wind, and every now and then the rain came in full rout before
+      the conquering blast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I got home, I peeped in at Connie&rsquo;s door the first thing, and saw
+      that she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of the
+      conch against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was sitting
+      staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she could see
+      over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately looked. Her
+      face was paler and keener than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He says
+      I am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as I
+      like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you look too tired for it. Hadn&rsquo;t you better lie down again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only the storm, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is going
+      to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The storm was
+      raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its reach&mdash;fast
+      asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
+      she was already looking much better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went out
+      again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and his wife,
+      were faring. The wind had already increased in violence. It threatened to
+      blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was coming in with great
+      rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as I passed through it to
+      reach the lower part where they lived. When I peeped in from the bottom of
+      the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the steps of someone overhead, I
+      called out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agnes&rsquo;s voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to
+      the bedrooms above&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s gone to church, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone to church!&rdquo; I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
+      whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled what
+      the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church during
+      a storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O yes, Agnes, I remember!&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;your mother thinks the weather bad
+      enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
+      Where is your husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don&rsquo;t mind the wet. You see, we
+      don&rsquo;t like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the sailors
+      call &lsquo;great guns.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what becomes of his mother then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There don&rsquo;t be any sea out there, sir. Leastways,&rdquo; she added with a quiet
+      smile, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
+      elements out there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe&rsquo;s mother
+      was proverbial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But really, sir,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;she don&rsquo;t mind the weather a bit; and though
+      we don&rsquo;t live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn&rsquo;t hear of that,
+      we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
+      now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow
+      complexion, that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought a
+      reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He&rsquo;s been working
+      very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite well, thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very
+      different thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the
+      church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
+      gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling. A
+      certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the southern
+      transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of the stone, on
+      the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a considerable crack
+      between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut some sod from another
+      part of the churchyard, and was now standing, with the rain pouring on him
+      from the roof, beating this sod down in the crack. He was sheltered from
+      the wind by the church, but he was as wet as he could be. I may mention
+      that he never appeared in the least disconcerted when I came upon him in
+      the discharge of his functions: he was so content with his own feeling in
+      the matter, that no difference of opinion could disturb him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will never do, Coombes,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You will get your death of cold.
+      You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there&rsquo;s rheumatism in
+      the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha&rsquo; done now for a night. I
+      think he&rsquo;ll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at him
+      through that hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do go home, then,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and change your clothes. Is your wife in the
+      church?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She be, sir. This door, sir&mdash;this door,&rdquo; he added, as he saw me
+      going round to the usual entrance. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find her in there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first, for it
+      was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there somehow,
+      although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters. Mrs. Coombes
+      was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the
+      wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts&mdash;how it did
+      roar up there&mdash;as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the
+      wind and send it down to ventilate the church!&mdash;she was sitting at
+      the foot of the chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I drew
+      near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but only
+      sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret place of
+      the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to say much,
+      however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Not all
+      night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn&rsquo;t thought o&rsquo; going yet for a
+      bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why there&rsquo;s Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I&rsquo;m afraid he&rsquo;ll go
+      on pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as full
+      of rheumatism as they can hold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deary me! I didn&rsquo;t know as my old man was there. He tould me he had them
+      all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there&rsquo;s always
+      some mendin&rsquo; to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
+      church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You be comin&rsquo; home with me, mother. This will never do. Father&rsquo;s as wet
+      as a mop. I ha&rsquo; brought something for your supper, and Aggy&rsquo;s a-cookin&rsquo; of
+      it; and we&rsquo;re going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a chapter or
+      two of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea. There! Come
+      along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully in
+      her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m the shepherd and you&rsquo;re the sheep, so I&rsquo;ll drive
+      you before me&mdash;at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended
+      if I take on me to say I am <i>his</i> shepherd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, nay, don&rsquo;t say that, sir. You&rsquo;ve been a good shepherd to me when I
+      was a very sulky sheep. But if you&rsquo;ll please to go, sir, I&rsquo;ll lock the
+      door behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the
+      sheep follow the shepherd. And I&rsquo;ll follow like a good sheep,&rdquo; he added,
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right, Joe,&rdquo; I said, and took the lead without more ado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was struck by his saying <i>them parts</i>, which seemed to indicate a
+      habit of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the
+      gospel-story. The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his
+      cottage, Joe taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I
+      could of Coombes by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared I
+      had done ill in that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought the
+      thin feeble little man would have got on better if he had been more
+      heavily weighted against it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and so
+      we got in. The old man took his tools from me and set them down in the
+      mill, for the roof of which I felt some anxiety as we passed through, so
+      full of wind was the whole space. But when we opened the inner door the
+      welcome of a glowing fire burst up the stair as if that had been a well of
+      warmth and light below. I went down with them. Coombes departed to change
+      his clothes, and the rest of us stood round the fire, where Agnes was busy
+      cooking something like white puddings for their supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear, sir,&rdquo; said Joe, &ldquo;that the coastguard is off to the
+      Goose-pot? There&rsquo;s a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the road
+      with the rocket-cart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How far off is that, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor&rsquo;ards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of a vessel is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I don&rsquo;t know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
+      coast-guard didn&rsquo;t know themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor things!&rdquo; said Mrs. Coombes. &ldquo;If any of them comes ashore, they&rsquo;ll be
+      sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had caught a little infection of her husband&rsquo;s mode of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so, sir. There&rsquo;s no likelihood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?&rdquo; said the
+      old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another
+      time with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with my
+      own people. They will be more uneasy if I am away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of coorse, of coorse, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;ll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out. It
+      was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There
+      would be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do
+      much while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore was
+      terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their breaking,
+      but they filled the earth and the air with their furious noises. The wind
+      roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the land, only to the one
+      had been set a hitherto&mdash;to the other none. Ere the night was far
+      gone, however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean itself had not
+      broken its bars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept pressing
+      their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of will, through
+      the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there was doing. They
+      could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and dismay, with a soul
+      in it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie&rsquo;s room, and found that she
+      was left alone. She looked restless, pale, and frightened. The house
+      quivered, and still the wind howled and whistled through the adjoining
+      bark-hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Connie, darling, have they left you alone?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only for a few minutes, papa. I don&rsquo;t mind it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t he frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the sea
+      of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the Atlantic
+      just as well. Jeremiah says he &lsquo;divideth the sea when the waves thereof
+      roar.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment Dora came running into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;the spray&mdash;such a lot of it&mdash;came dashing on
+      the windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, papa! I do want to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want to see, Dora?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The storm, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is as black as pitch. You can&rsquo;t see anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, but I want to&mdash;to&mdash;be beside it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along. Ask
+      Wynnie to come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not seem
+      even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
+      presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
+      and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on to the
+      little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The
+      dining-room was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might see
+      better from the windows. The children and some of the servants were there
+      looking out. I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength of two
+      of the women to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great sheet of
+      spray rushed over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The rain had
+      ceased, and it was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could see the
+      gleaming whiteness all before me. The next moment a wave rolled over the
+      low wall in front of me, breaking on it and wrapping me round in a sheet
+      of water. Something hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found, on searching,
+      that one of the large flat stones that lay for coping on the top of the
+      wall was on the grass beside me. If it had struck me straight, it must
+      have broken my leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into the
+      house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but heard
+      nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned and tapped
+      at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me within. When I
+      went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had joined our party.
+      He and Turner were talking together at one of the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear a gun?&rdquo; I asked them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Was there one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
+      will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea,&rdquo; I said, remembering
+      what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would try, though, I suppose,&rdquo; said Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know the people. But I have seen
+      a life-boat out in as bad a night&mdash;whether in as bad a sea, I cannot
+      tell: that depends on the coast, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had fared
+      with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Connie, now, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
+      didn&rsquo;t mind, I wish he would go up and see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;instantly,&rdquo; said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear, so
+      shrill was it, we heard Connie&rsquo;s voice shrieking, &ldquo;Papa, papa! There&rsquo;s a
+      great ship ashore down there. Come, come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. &ldquo;How? What? Where
+      could the voice come from?&rdquo; was the unformed movement of our thoughts. But
+      the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though not the
+      less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and thought
+      only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that is afar!
+      Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so that
+      it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door at the
+      top of it was open. The door that led from Connie&rsquo;s room into the bark-hut
+      was likewise open, and light shone through it into the place&mdash;enough
+      to show a figure standing by the furthest window with face pressed against
+      the glass. And from this figure came the cry, &ldquo;Papa, papa! Quick, quick!
+      The waves will knock her to pieces!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In very truth it was Connie standing there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. THE SHIPWRECK.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Things that happen altogether have to be told one after the other. Turner
+      and I both rushed at the narrow stair. There was not room for more than
+      one upon it. I was first, but stumbled on the lowest step and fell. Turner
+      put his foot on my back, jumped over me, sprang up the stair, and when I
+      reached the top of it after him, he was meeting me with Connie in his
+      arms, carrying her back to her room. But the girl kept crying&mdash;&ldquo;Papa,
+      papa, the ship, the ship!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My duty woke in me. Turner could attend to Connie far better than I could.
+      I made one spring to the window. The moon was not to be seen, but the
+      clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to show a
+      wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that one moment
+      in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of the wind,
+      cutting through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the house. When
+      or how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew straight to
+      the sexton&rsquo;s, snatched the key from the wall, crying only &ldquo;ship ashore!&rdquo;
+       and rushed to the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember my hand trembled so that I could hardly get the key into the
+      lock. I made myself quieter, opened the door, and feeling my way to the
+      tower, knelt before the keys of the bell-hammers, opened the chest, and
+      struck them wildly, fiercely. An awful jangling, out of tune and harsh,
+      burst into monstrous being in the storm-vexed air. Music itself was
+      untuned, corrupted, and returning to chaos. I struck and struck at the
+      keys. I knew nothing of their normal use. Noise, outcry, <i>reveillé</i>
+      was all I meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes I heard voices and footsteps. From some parts of the
+      village, out of sight of the shore, men and women gathered to the summons.
+      Through the door of the church, which I had left open, came voices in
+      hurried question. &ldquo;Ship ashore!&rdquo; was all I could answer, for what was to
+      be done I was helpless to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered that so few appeared at the cry of the bells. After those first
+      nobody came for what seemed a long time. I believe, however, I was beating
+      the alarum for only a few minutes altogether, though when I look back upon
+      the time in the dark church, it looks like half-an-hour at least. But
+      indeed I feel so confused about all the doings of that night that in
+      attempting to describe them in order, I feel as if I were walking in a
+      dream. Still, from comparing mine with the recollected impressions of
+      others, I think I am able to give a tolerably correct result. Most of the
+      incidents seem burnt into my memory so that nothing could destroy the
+      depth of the impression; but the order in which they took place is none
+      the less doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hand was laid on my shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo; I said; for it was far too dark to know anyone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale. What is to be done? The coastguard is away. Nobody seems to
+      know about anything. It is of no use to go on ringing more. Everybody is
+      out, even to the maid-servants. Come down to the shore, and you will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is there not the life-boat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody seems to know anything about it, except &lsquo;it&rsquo;s no manner of use to
+      go trying of that with such a sea on.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there must be someone in command of it,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; returned Percivale; &ldquo;but there doesn&rsquo;t seem to be one of the crew
+      amongst the crowd. All the sailor-like fellows are going about with their
+      hands in their pockets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us make haste, then,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;perhaps we can find out. Are you sure
+      the coastguard have nothing to do with the life-boat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe not. They have enough to do with their rockets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember now that Roxton told me he had far more confidence in his
+      rockets than in anything a life-boat could do, upon this coast at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While we spoke we came to the bank of the canal. This we had to cross, in
+      order to reach that part of the shore opposite which the wreck lay. To my
+      surprise the canal itself was in a storm, heaving and tossing and dashing
+      over its banks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale,&rdquo; I exclaimed, &ldquo;the gates are gone; the sea has torn them
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I suppose so. Would God I could get half-a-dozen men to help me. I
+      have been doing what I could; but I have no influence amongst them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;What could you do if you had a thousand men
+      at your command?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made me no answer for a few moments, during which we were hurrying on
+      for the bridge over the canal. Then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They regard me only as a meddling stranger, I suppose; for I have been
+      able to get no useful answer. They are all excited; but nobody is doing
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must know about it a great deal better than we,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;and we
+      must take care not to do them the injustice of supposing they are not
+      ready to do all that can be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale was silent yet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had
+      been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving in
+      my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind us. The
+      wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased, and when
+      we reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast at what she
+      had at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she might see.
+      Awe and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal, we turned to
+      the shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had rushed up almost
+      to the village. The sand and the roads, every garden wall, every window
+      that looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it was a wonderfully
+      quiet crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of the wind and the
+      waves filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was heard only in the
+      ear to which it was spoken. When we came amongst them we heard only a
+      murmur as of more articulated confusion. One turn, and we saw the centre
+      of strife and anxiety&mdash;the heart of the storm that filled heaven and
+      earth, upon which all the blasts and the billows broke and raved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was
+      discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was
+      far above low-water mark&mdash;lay nearer the village by a furlong than
+      the spot where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange
+      to think that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many
+      men and women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for the
+      cry of women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to save them.
+      It was terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about hurriedly,
+      talking to this one and that one, as if he still thought something might
+      be done. He turned to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the
+      life-boat is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use, I assure you, sir,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;no boat could live in such
+      a sea. It would be throwing away the men&rsquo;s lives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know where the captain lives?&rdquo; Percivale asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did, I tell you it is of no use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you the captain yourself?&rdquo; returned Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that to you?&rdquo; he answered, surly now. &ldquo;I know my own business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made a
+      simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as
+      they returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was
+      the body of a woman&mdash;alive or dead I could not tell. I could just see
+      the long hair hanging from the head, which itself hung backward helplessly
+      as they bore her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I can recall
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run, Percivale,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; answered Percivale. &ldquo;You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so
+      abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one of the
+      most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they walked away
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the
+      moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught, and
+      that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for the
+      marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and her
+      mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could sleep;
+      but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however, occasioned by
+      what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking about the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we went
+      up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The clouds
+      had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we could not at
+      first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed itself a body of
+      men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat, afloat on the
+      troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own place, his hands
+      quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him, his feet out before
+      him, ready to pull the moment they should pass beyond the broken gates of
+      the lock out on the awful tossing of the waves. They sat very silent, and
+      the men on the path towed them swiftly along. The moon uncovered her face
+      for a moment, and shone upon the faces of two of the rowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale! Joe!&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir!&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does your wife know of it, Joe?&rdquo; I almost gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure,&rdquo; answered Joe. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first chance I&rsquo;ve had of returning
+      thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay, sir!&rdquo; they answered as one man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is your doing, Percivale,&rdquo; I said, turning and walking alongside of
+      the boat for a little way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more Jim Allen&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;If I hadn&rsquo;t got a hold of him I
+      couldn&rsquo;t have done anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you, Jim Allen!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a better man after this, I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donnow, sir,&rdquo; returned Jim cheerily. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s harder work than pulling an
+      oar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen,
+      the two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully
+      short space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking up
+      another or more; till at length the captain, protesting against the folly
+      of it, gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true Englishman, as
+      much in earnest as any of them. The places of two who were missing were
+      supplied by Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom would listen to no
+      remonstrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing to lose,&rdquo; Percivale had said. &ldquo;You have a young wife, Joe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve everything to win,&rdquo; Joe had returned. &ldquo;The only thing that makes me
+      feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s not my duty that
+      drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What would
+      Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my bed and
+      sleep? I must go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Joe,&rdquo; returned Percivale, &ldquo;I daresay you are right. You can
+      row, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can row hard, and do as I&rsquo;m told,&rdquo; said Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Percivale; &ldquo;come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards the
+      mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The critical
+      moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some parts of
+      which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty there, as
+      I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my post, and turned
+      again to follow the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you, my men!&rdquo; I said, and left them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner
+      in the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman
+      was quite dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear it is an emigrant vessel,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you think so?&rdquo; I asked, in some consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and look at the body,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face was
+      very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to prove that
+      she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America
+      or Australia&mdash;to her lover, perhaps,&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;You see she has a
+      locket on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some of these
+      people are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a Godsend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the house.
+      They were bringing another body&mdash;that of an elderly woman&mdash;dead,
+      quite dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out
+      together, when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce
+      hiss, vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up, seawards,
+      something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the right side
+      of the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God! that&rsquo;s the coastguard,&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
+      planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the
+      sea looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering in
+      the mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw down
+      below the great mass, of the vessel&rsquo;s hulk, with the waves breaking every
+      moment upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and then there
+      would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then
+      I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts
+      had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and
+      swung in the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire,
+      and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first
+      rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with
+      his telescope in his hand, ready to watch the result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a terrible job, sir,&rdquo; he said when I approached him; &ldquo;I doubt if
+      we shall save one of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the life-boat!&rdquo; I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
+      approaching the vessel from the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The life-boat!&rdquo; he returned with contempt. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say they&rsquo;ve
+      got <i>her</i> out! She&rsquo;ll only add to the mischief. We&rsquo;ll have to save
+      her too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth water.
+      But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the billows rode
+      over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some invisible prey. Another
+      hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second rocket was shooting its
+      parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised his telescope to his eye the
+      same moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over her starn!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a fellow getting down from the
+      cat-head to run aft.&mdash;Stop, stop!&rdquo; he shouted involuntarily. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+      an awful wave on your quarter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
+      distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But
+      the huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed&mdash;so
+      coolly as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar
+      things without discomposure&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s gone! I said so. The next&rsquo;ll have better luck, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That man came ashore alive, though.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
+      Roxton&rsquo;s telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then a
+      single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed on
+      the life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at one
+      moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam on the
+      knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the waves
+      delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no water. I
+      am here drawing upon the information I have since received; but I did see
+      how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on which she
+      floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon the life-boat
+      with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough to show this with
+      tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next moment, there she was,
+      floating helplessly about, like a living thing stunned by the blow of the
+      falling wave. The struggle was over. As far as I could see, every man was
+      in his place; but the boat drifted away before the storm shore-wards, and
+      the men let her drift. Were they all killed as they sat? I thought of my
+      Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wave has done for them,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I told you it was no use. There
+      they go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is the matter?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;The men are sitting every man in his
+      place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Two were swept overboard, but they caught the
+      ropes and got in again. But don&rsquo;t you see they have no oars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they
+      were as helpless as a sponge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket was
+      fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with fresh
+      fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say&mdash;&ldquo;She&rsquo;s breaking up. It&rsquo;s
+      no use. That last did for her;&rdquo; but I hurried off for the other side of
+      the bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great cry from the
+      vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a parting glance.
+      The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing at will over the
+      space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many were running, like
+      myself, towards the other side, anxious about the life-boat. I hastened
+      after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would
+      be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the only
+      spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion of
+      speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered about
+      the crew of the life-boat,&mdash;which already lay, as if it knew of
+      nothing but repose, on the grass within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Percivale!&rdquo; I cried, making my way through the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe Harper!&rdquo; I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew,
+      to whom everybody was talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I
+      could gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall,
+      despair in her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I
+      could not look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking to
+      old Coombes. I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Mr. Percivale?&rdquo; I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the waves,
+      and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had fallen
+      considerably, else there would not have been standing-room, narrow as it
+      was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the direction of the
+      Castle-rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean the stranger gentleman&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Joe Harper, the blacksmith,&rdquo; I interposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;re there, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean those two&mdash;just those two&mdash;are drowned?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; I don&rsquo;t say that; but God knows they have little chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the
+      smallest danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am always
+      ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can&rsquo;t say I see
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I
+      believe, on board of that schooner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she aground?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O dear no, sir. She&rsquo;s a light craft, and can swim there well enough. If
+      she&rsquo;d been aground, she&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; been ashore in pieces hours ago. But whether
+      she&rsquo;ll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights
+      opposite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don&rsquo;t
+      make much show in this light. But there she is, and they&rsquo;re aboard of her.
+      And this is how it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the whole
+      of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said&mdash;one of them was
+      Percivale&mdash;but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless,
+      with the rest&mdash;now in a windless valley&mdash;now aloft on a
+      tempest-swept hill of water&mdash;away towards a goal they knew not,
+      neither had chosen, and which yet they could by no means avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the
+      channel of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across
+      the sands nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little
+      schooner, belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which,
+      caught in the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost dark,
+      some considerable time before the great ship. The master, however, knew
+      the ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind, and
+      would have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop anchor
+      just in time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner hung in
+      the skirts of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks within an
+      arrow flight. In the excitement of the great wreck, no one had observed
+      the danger of the little coasting bird. If the cable held till the tide
+      went down, and the anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if not, she
+      must be dashed to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed overboard
+      an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had dropped their
+      anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they were so worn out
+      that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor, and were holding on
+      only by their best bower. Had they not been a good deal out of the wind,
+      this would have been useless. Even if it held she was in danger of having
+      her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands as the tide went out. But
+      that they had not to think of yet. The moment they lay down they fell fast
+      asleep in the middle of the storm. While they slept it increased in
+      violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For
+      over his head faces looked down upon him from the air&mdash;that is, from
+      the top of a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the
+      angels dropped on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels
+      were Percivale and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time,
+      as all angels do&mdash;never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the
+      schooner <i>was</i> dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the
+      less experienced eyes of the said angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest anchor,
+      and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was engaged
+      to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth chapter in the
+      second volume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale&rsquo;s account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that
+      as they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge
+      wave the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the
+      rigging. The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the
+      schooner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out &ldquo;Aboard!&rdquo; The
+      captain said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must have
+      meant it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat.
+      Percivale, however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say
+      Christian?) notion of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to board
+      the schooner, sprang at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave sweeping them
+      along the schooner&rsquo;s side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds, and they
+      dropped on the deck together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the
+      affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of
+      the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by
+      staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was
+      nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which
+      was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was
+      Agnes Harper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds
+      were breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved
+      out its business, and was departing into the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Agnes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command. There
+      was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips&mdash;at least it seemed so in
+      the moonlight&mdash;only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She was
+      leaning against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging quietly
+      down before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The storm is breaking-up, Agnes,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a
+      moment&rsquo;s pause, she spoke out of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe&rsquo;s at his duty, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant
+      that point I am not quite sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indubitably,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;I have such faith in Joe, that I should be
+      sure of that in any case. At all events, he&rsquo;s not taking care of his own
+      life. And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err on
+      that side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s nothing to be said, sir, is there?&rdquo; she returned, with a
+      sigh that sounded as of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job&rsquo;s
+      comfort by blaming her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she
+      reproached him with having left her and his father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t remember anything at this moment, sir,&rdquo; was her touching answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will tell you. He said, &lsquo;Why did you look for me? Didn&rsquo;t you know
+      that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?&rsquo; Now, Joe was
+      and is about his Father&rsquo;s business, and you must not be anxious about him.
+      There could be no better reason for not being anxious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agnes was a very quiet woman. When without a word she took my hand and
+      kissed it, I felt what a depth there was in the feeling she could not
+      utter. I did not withdraw my hand, for I knew that would be to rebuke her
+      love for Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come in and wait?&rdquo; I said indefinitely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you, sir. I must go to my mother. God will look after Joe,
+      won&rsquo;t he, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As sure as there is a God, Agnes,&rdquo; I said; and she went away without
+      another word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I put my hand on the top of the wall and jumped over. I started back with
+      terror, for I had almost alighted on the body of a woman lying there. The
+      first insane suggestion was that it had been cast ashore; but the next
+      moment I knew that it was my own Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not even fainted. She was lying with her handkerchief stuffed into
+      her mouth to keep her from screaming. When I uttered her name she rose,
+      and, without looking at me, walked away towards the house. I followed. She
+      went straight to her own room and shut the door. I went to find her
+      mother. She was with Connie, who was now awake, lying pale and frightened.
+      I told Ethelwyn that Percivale and Joe were on board the little schooner,
+      which was holding on by her anchor, that Wynnie was in terror about
+      Percivale, that I had found her lying on the wet grass, and that she must
+      get her into a warm bath and to bed. We went together to her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands pressed
+      against her temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynnie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;our friends are not drowned. I think you will see them
+      quite safe in the morning. Pray to God for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not hear a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave her with me,&rdquo; said Ethelwyn, proceeding to undress her; &ldquo;and tell
+      nurse to bring up the large bath. There is plenty of hot water in the
+      boiler. I gave orders to that effect, not knowing what might happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie shuddered as her mother said this; but I waited no longer, for when
+      Ethelwyn spoke everyone felt her authority. I obeyed her, and then went to
+      Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind being left alone a little while?&rdquo; I asked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa; only&mdash;are they all drowned?&rdquo; she said with a shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, my dear; but be sure of the mercy of God, whatever you fear.
+      You must rest in him, my love; for he is life, and will conquer death both
+      in the soul and in the body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not thinking of myself, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, my dear. But God is thinking of you and every creature that
+      he has made. And for our sakes you must be quiet in heart, that you may
+      get better, and be able to help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try, papa,&rdquo; she said; and, turning slowly on her side, she lay
+      quite still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora and the boys were all fast asleep, for it was very late. I cannot,
+      however, say what hour it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Telling nurse to be on the watch because Connie was alone, I went again to
+      the beach. I called first, however, to inquire after Agnes. I found her
+      quite composed, sitting with her parents by the fire, none of them doing
+      anything, scarcely speaking, only listening intently to the sounds of the
+      storm now beginning to die away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I next went to the place where I had left Turner. Five bodies lay there,
+      and he was busy with a sixth. The surgeon of the place was with him, and
+      they quite expected to recover this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I then went down to the sands. An officer of the revenue was taking charge
+      of all that came ashore&mdash;chests, and bales, and everything. For a
+      week the sea went on casting out the fragments of that which she had
+      destroyed. I have heard that, for years after, the shifting of the sands
+      would now and then discover things buried that night by the waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the next day the bodies kept coming ashore, some peaceful as in sleep,
+      others broken and mutilated. Many were cast upon other parts of the coast.
+      Some four or five only, all men, were recovered. It was strange to me how
+      I got used to it. The first horror over, the cry that yet another body had
+      come awoke only a gentle pity&mdash;no more dismay or shuddering. But,
+      finding I could be of no use, I did not wait longer than just till the
+      morning began to dawn with a pale ghastly light over the seething raging
+      sea; for the sea raged on, although the wind had gone down. There were
+      many strong men about, with two surgeons and all the coastguard, who were
+      well accustomed to similar though not such extensive destruction. The
+      houses along the shore were at the disposal of any who wanted aid; the
+      Parsonage was at some distance; and I confess that when I thought of the
+      state of my daughters, as well as remembered former influences upon my
+      wife, I was very glad to think there was no necessity for carrying thither
+      any of those whom the waves cast on the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I reached home, and found Wynnie quieter and Connie again asleep, I
+      walked out along our own downs till I came whence I could see the little
+      schooner still safe at anchor. From her position I concluded&mdash;correctly
+      as I found afterwards&mdash;that they had let out her cable far enough to
+      allow her to reach the bed of the little stream, where the tide would
+      leave her more gently. She was clearly out of all danger now; and if
+      Percivale and Joe had got safe on board of her, we might confidently
+      expect to see them before many hours were passed. I went home with the
+      good news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could not
+      know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But presently
+      I recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no right to
+      modify God&rsquo;s facts for fear of what may be to come. A little hope founded
+      on a present appearance, even if that hope should never be realised, may
+      be the very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of a sorrow past
+      the point at which it would otherwise break down. I would therefore tell
+      Wynnie, and let her share my expectation of deliverance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she started
+      up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought you good news, Wynnie,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I have been out on the
+      downs, and there is light enough now to see that the little schooner is
+      quite safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What schooner?&rdquo; she asked listlessly, and lay down again, her eyes still
+      staring, awfully unappeased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why the schooner they say Percivale got on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t drowned then!&rdquo; she cried with a choking voice, and put her hands
+      to her face and burst into tears and sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynnie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;look what your faithlessness brings upon you. Everybody
+      but you has known all night that Percivale and Joe Harper are probably
+      quite safe. They may be ashore in a couple of hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t know it. He may be drowned yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there is room for doubt, but none for despair. See what a poor
+      helpless creature hopelessness makes you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can I help it, papa?&rdquo; she asked piteously. &ldquo;I am made so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she spoke the dawn was clear upon the height of her forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not made yet, as I am always telling you; and God has ordained
+      that you shall have a hand in your own making. You have to consent, to
+      desire that what you know for a fault shall be set right by his loving
+      will and spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know God, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, that is where it all lies. You do not know him, or you would
+      never be without hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what am I to do to know him!&rdquo; she asked, rising on her elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The saving power of hope was already working in her. She was once more
+      turning her face towards the Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read as you have never read before about Christ Jesus, my love. Read with
+      the express object of finding out what God is like, that you may know him
+      and may trust him. And now give yourself to him, and he will give you
+      sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are we to do,&rdquo; I said to my wife, &ldquo;if Percivale continue silent? For
+      even if he be in love with her, I doubt if he will speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must leave all that, Harry,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was turning on myself the counsel I had been giving Wynnie. It is
+      strange how easily we can tell our brother what he ought to do, and yet,
+      when the case comes to be our own, do precisely as we had rebuked him for
+      doing. I lay down and fell fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. THE FUNERAL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back
+      from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as if
+      it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The
+      madness of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the
+      world was rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded the
+      best outlook over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the
+      sands, her two cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her; but
+      half way between the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something
+      shapeless, drifted over with sand. It was all that remained together of
+      the great ship that had the day before swept over the waters like a live
+      thing with wings&mdash;of all the works of man&rsquo;s hands the nearest to the
+      shape and sign of life. The wind had ceased altogether, only now and then
+      a little breeze arose which murmured &ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; and lay down
+      again. And I knew that in the houses on the shore dead men and women were
+      lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their
+      breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I
+      made a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into
+      the events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale,
+      looking very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his
+      hand warmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that you are returned to us, Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if that is much to give thanks for,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are the judges of that,&rdquo; I rejoined. &ldquo;Tell me all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie
+      entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment
+      hesitated in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with
+      an emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed&mdash;why, I could
+      not easily have told, for she looked most charming in the act,&mdash;more
+      lovely than I had ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising
+      God, and her heart would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest
+      man, and I think attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in
+      danger in the way of duty,&mdash;a fact sufficient to move the heart of
+      any good woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand trembled.
+      I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he evidently
+      enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into the
+      village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of the
+      sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn
+      business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his tools
+      lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Coombes! you&rsquo;ll want them,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good many o&rsquo; my people be come all at once, you see, sir,&rdquo; he returned.
+      &ldquo;I shall have enough ado to make &lsquo;em all comfortable like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all comfortable
+      yourself alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll see what I can do,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I ben&rsquo;t a bit willin&rsquo; to let no
+      one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many are there wanting your services?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don&rsquo;t doubt, on the
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you won&rsquo;t think of making separate graves for them all,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;They died together: let them lie together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with
+      indignation. The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had
+      deserved it, I yet felt the rebuke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you like, sir,&rdquo; he said, at length, &ldquo;to be put in the same bed
+      with a lot of people you didn&rsquo;t know nothing about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew the old man&rsquo;s way, and that any argument which denied the premiss
+      of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore
+      ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn&rsquo;t think of it after they&rsquo;d
+      been down awhile&mdash;six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can&rsquo;t be
+      comfortable for &lsquo;em, poor things. One on &lsquo;em be a baby: I daresay he&rsquo;d
+      rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o&rsquo; the women be a
+      mother. I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he went on reflectively, &ldquo;whether she be the baby&rsquo;s
+      own mother, but I daresay neither o&rsquo; them &lsquo;ll mind it if I take it for
+      granted, and lay &lsquo;em down together. So that&rsquo;s one bed less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves within
+      the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in the church,
+      having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties to perfection.
+      He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended the stair,
+      thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are Joe and Agnes?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day,
+      and so he couldn&rsquo;t stop. He did say Agnes needn&rsquo;t go with him; but she
+      thought she couldn&rsquo;t part with him so soon, you see, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had received him from the dead&mdash;raised to life again,&rdquo; I said;
+      &ldquo;it was most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him
+      neglect his work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last
+      night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the tire
+      put on Farmer Wheatstone&rsquo;s cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was his
+      business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy
+      wouldn&rsquo;t stay behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine fellow, Joe!&rdquo; I said, and took my leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing, and
+      apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were making the
+      coffins in the joiners&rsquo; shops, of which there were two in the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my
+      way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth, and
+      so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have it
+      vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world of form,
+      as soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding, life-giving
+      mould, seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy that will
+      sometimes emerge from the froth of reverie&mdash;I mean, of subdued
+      consciousness remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is altogether
+      and vilely repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even the shadow of
+      sentiment, though some of my readers, who may not yet have learned to
+      distinguish between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I dare to utter
+      such a barbarism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought
+      something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that he
+      had sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers,
+      requesting those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies to
+      appear within four days at Kilkhaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was
+      clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore
+      arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each
+      other, arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the last
+      of their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the shadow left
+      behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any object remains a
+      moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the object itself has gone,
+      so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body, lingers a moment upon the
+      earth after the object itself has gone to the &ldquo;high countries.&rdquo; It was
+      well to see with what a sober sorrow the dignified little old man bore his
+      grief. It was as if he felt that the loss of his son was only for a
+      moment. But the young woman had taken on the hue of the corpse she came to
+      seek. Her eyes were sunken as if with the weight of the light she cared
+      not for, and her cheeks had already pined away as if to be ready for the
+      grave. A being thus emptied of its glory seized and possessed my thoughts.
+      She never even told us whom she came seeking, and after one involuntary
+      question, which simply received no answer, I was very careful not even to
+      approach another. I do not think the form she sought was there; and she
+      may have gone home with the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a
+      doubtful dawn over her coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had all
+      the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others on
+      stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the evening
+      these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old man soon
+      found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows of the
+      dead. He turned to me and said quietly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He&rsquo;s with his
+      mother; and if I&rsquo;m sorry, she&rsquo;s glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his
+      arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked
+      out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a
+      new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God
+      only knew&mdash;certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest
+      thoughts are of more awful significance than the most serious of us can
+      imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light in
+      her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there
+      could no more justify her than Milton in letting her
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;frail thoughts dally with false surmise.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      With him, too, she might well add&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them to be
+      my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over. To this
+      they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received them like
+      herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her, to which no
+      doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations of humanity
+      and destroys its distinctions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from
+      Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of his
+      daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me first.
+      I went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man, with long
+      arms and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow ponderous
+      utterance, which I had some difficulty in understanding. He treated the
+      object of his visit with a certain hardness, and at the same time
+      lightness, which also I had some difficulty in understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want to see the&mdash;&rdquo; I said, and hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ow ay&mdash;the boadies,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;She winna be there, I daursay,
+      but I wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be
+      &lsquo;at she was there, wi&rsquo;oot biddin&rsquo; her good-bye like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell
+      upon me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn,
+      grand, ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace before
+      her altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a sea of
+      troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when the
+      churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed away,
+      when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and no man
+      shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, &ldquo;Know the Lord&rdquo;?
+      The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my companion up
+      to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on. He had looked
+      at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the beautiful form
+      which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the white cheeks,
+      taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the brown hair
+      tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was dead&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, Maggie! hoo cam <i>ye</i> here, lass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he
+      put his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was
+      shaken with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe
+      and reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief with
+      yellow spots on it&mdash;I see it now&mdash;from his pocket, rubbed his
+      face with it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said,
+      without looking at me, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll awa&rsquo; hame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you like a piece of her hair?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gin ye please,&rdquo; he answered gently, as if his daughter&rsquo;s form had been
+      mine now, and her hair were mine to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet
+      solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to be sure, sir,&rdquo; she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by
+      the string suspending them from her waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed it
+      respectfully to the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the communion-rail,
+      and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky gold. It was,
+      indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it must be a yard
+      long. He passed his big fingers through and through it, but tenderly, as
+      if it had been still growing on the live lovely head, stopping every
+      moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and shake out the sand
+      that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for nearly half-an-hour,
+      and we stood looking on with something closely akin to awe. At length he
+      folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black leather book, laid it
+      carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led the way from the
+      church, and he followed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with his
+      other hand in his trousers-pocket&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll hae putten ye to some expense&mdash;for the coffin an&rsquo; sic like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll talk about that afterwards,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Come home with me now,
+      and have some refreshment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o&rsquo; tribble already. I&rsquo;ll jist
+      awa&rsquo; hame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going to lay them down this evening. You won&rsquo;t go before the
+      funeral. Indeed, I think you can&rsquo;t get away till Monday morning. My wife
+      and I will be glad of your company till then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m no company for gentle-fowk, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her
+      laid,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He yielded and followed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain
+      enough&mdash;that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But
+      there was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring
+      farms. Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at
+      work. The brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard&mdash;the
+      mole-heaps of burrowing Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a
+      little hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk there&mdash;i&rsquo; 
+      that neuk, I wad tak&rsquo; it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam&rsquo; aboot that I
+      cam&rsquo; here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get a sma&rsquo; bit
+      heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi&rsquo; ye to pay for&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ow jist&mdash;let me see&mdash;Maggie Jamieson&mdash;nae Marget, but jist
+      Maggie. She was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It&rsquo;s
+      the last thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o&rsquo; Scripter
+      aneath&rsquo;t, ye ken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What verse would you like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought for a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isna there a text that says, &lsquo;The deid shall hear his voice&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: &lsquo;The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay. That&rsquo;s it. Weel, jist put that on.&mdash;They canna do better than
+      hear his voice,&rdquo; he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or
+      apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for
+      the day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could not
+      talk to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs of
+      sorrow in their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill in whose
+      unseen bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a subterranean
+      torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling down hidden
+      precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This
+      daughter <i>might</i>, though from her face I did not think it, have gone
+      away against her father&rsquo;s will. That son <i>might</i> have been a
+      ne&rsquo;er-do-well at home&mdash;how could I tell? The woman <i>might</i> be
+      looking for the lover that had forsaken her&mdash;I could not divine. I
+      would speak no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort
+      to his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the
+      forefront of humanity; I would read some of the words he spoke. From them
+      the human nature in each would draw what comfort it could. I took my New
+      Testament from my pocket, and said, without any preamble,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved him enough
+      to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be overwhelmed for a
+      time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not believe the glad end
+      of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful death that awaited him&mdash;a
+      death to which that of our friends in the wreck was ease itself. I will
+      just read to you what he said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John&rsquo;s
+      Gospel. I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I
+      could hardly hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the
+      best things are just those from which the humble will draw the truth they
+      are capable of seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left it to them
+      to hear for themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment, fearful of
+      darkening counsel by words without knowledge. For the Bible is awfully set
+      against what is not wise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked
+      towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I
+      talked of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us.
+      But little of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing
+      nothing of the sorrow it had caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at seven
+      o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have an invalid to visit out in this direction,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;would you
+      mind walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we
+      shall get back just in time for tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard a
+      little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy, and
+      point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our aid. I
+      may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I have had
+      two of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed
+      themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed hour.
+      I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the Christian,
+      the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church received it,
+      as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be
+      carried out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began to
+      read, &ldquo;I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
+      believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever
+      liveth and believeth in me shall never die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before the
+      dead. There I read the Psalm, &ldquo;Lord, thou hast been our refuge,&rdquo; and the
+      glorious lesson, &ldquo;Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
+      first-fruits of them that slept.&rdquo; Then the men of the neighbourhood came
+      forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the church,
+      each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, &ldquo;Man that is born
+      of a woman;&rdquo; then went from one to another of the graves, and read over
+      each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, &ldquo;Forasmuch as it hath pleased
+      Almighty God, of his great mercy.&rdquo; Then again, I went back to the
+      church-door and read, &ldquo;I heard a voice from heaven;&rdquo; and so to the end of
+      the service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my
+      canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had
+      already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie&rsquo;s remaining
+      in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face&mdash;pale and
+      worn; but it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the fresh
+      power called forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant <i>secret</i>
+      light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the house
+      every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
+      wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short of the
+      impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come, however, I
+      could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully painful to all
+      but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual child-gift of
+      forgetting. The servants&mdash;even Walter&mdash;looked thin and anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
+      before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because I
+      did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had again
+      and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended itself
+      to me so that I could say &ldquo;I must take that;&rdquo; nothing said plainly, &ldquo;This
+      is what you have to speak of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind had
+      turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion, or
+      rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to justify me
+      in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole justification,
+      in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I cared heartily in
+      my own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness I was dumb. And I
+      do think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman ought to be at
+      liberty upon occasion to say, &ldquo;My friends, I cannot preach to-day.&rdquo; What a
+      riddance it would be for the Church, I do not say if every priest were to
+      speak sense, but only if every priest were to abstain from speaking of
+      that in which, at the moment, he feels little or no interest!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for sleep
+      will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can compass.
+      I have read somewhere&mdash;I will verify it by present search&mdash;that
+      Luther&rsquo;s translation, of the verse in the psalm, &ldquo;So he giveth to his
+      beloved sleep,&rdquo; is, &ldquo;He giveth his beloved sleeping,&rdquo; or while asleep.
+      Yes, so it is, literally, in English, &ldquo;It is in vain that ye rise early,
+      and then sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he
+      gives it sleeping.&rdquo; This was my experience in the present instance; for
+      the thought of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, &ldquo;Why should I
+      talk about death? Every man&rsquo;s heart is now full of death. We have enough
+      of that&mdash;even the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the
+      tempest. What I have to do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to
+      speak of life.&rdquo; It flashed in on my mind: &ldquo;Death is over and gone. The
+      resurrection comes next. I will speak of the raising of Lazarus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
+      give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of
+      them would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them
+      with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought
+      to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would
+      have called a <i>caput mortuum</i>, or death&rsquo;s head, namely, a lifeless
+      lump of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer
+      the living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the
+      hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative,
+      attempted to give a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to present
+      the substance of it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat cleared of
+      the unavoidable, let me say necessary&mdash;yes, I will say <i>valuable</i>&mdash;repetitions
+      and enforcements by which the various considerations are pressed upon the
+      minds of the hearers. These are entirely wearisome in print&mdash;useless
+      too, for the reader may ponder over every phrase till he finds out the
+      purport of it&mdash;if indeed there be such readers nowadays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical
+      ablution, and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged as
+      if myself newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the downs
+      full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep in my
+      mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be not only
+      ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to
+      send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the
+      soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the
+      body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort
+      the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath
+      conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith that cannot laugh
+      at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array of defiant appearances.
+      The fresh breeze of the morning visited me. &ldquo;O God,&rdquo; I said in my heart,
+      &ldquo;would that when the dark day comes, in which I can feel nothing, I may be
+      able to front it with the memory of this day&rsquo;s strength, and so help
+      myself to trust in the Father! I would call to mind the days of old, with
+      David the king.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had
+      been cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and
+      found him very pale and worn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I am going, sir,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and I wanted to see you before I
+      die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid,&rdquo; I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I
+      wasn&rsquo;t afraid then, I&rsquo;m not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my
+      bed. But just look here, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded the
+      envelope, and showed a lump of something&mdash;I could not at first tell
+      what. He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible,
+      with nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly in
+      a state of pulp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the bible my mother gave me when I left home first,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that
+      cut through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a&rsquo;most have cut
+      through my ribs if it hadn&rsquo;t been for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;The body of the Bible has saved your bodily
+      life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know what you mean, sir,&rdquo; he panted out. &ldquo;My mother was a good
+      woman, and I know she prayed to God for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He&rsquo;s nearly as bad as I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We won&rsquo;t forget you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I will come in after church and see how
+      you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I
+      did not think the poor fellow was going to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since. We
+      took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and
+      stables, and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his
+      health continues delicate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. THE SERMON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
+      chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
+      proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare to
+      say that he makes his own commonest speech?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother, was
+      going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers and
+      sisters, there was one family he loved especially&mdash;a family of two
+      sisters and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they
+      can be loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only God
+      is always trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more. There
+      are several stories&mdash;O, such lovely stories!&mdash;about that family
+      and Jesus; and we have to do with one of them now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village they
+      called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord, when he
+      was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of the city, to
+      go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of Lazarus&rsquo;s house,
+      where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet than at any news
+      that could come to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem&mdash;taking up
+      stones to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with
+      anger as they were&mdash;and all because he told them the truth&mdash;that
+      he had gone away to the other side of the great river that divided the
+      country, and taught the people in that quiet place. While he was there his
+      friend Lazarus was taken ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a
+      messenger to him, to say to him, &lsquo;Lord, your friend is very ill.&rsquo; Only
+      they said it more beautifully than that: &lsquo;Lord, behold, he whom thou
+      lovest is sick.&rsquo; You know, when anyone is ill, we always want the person
+      whom he loves most to come to him. This is very wonderful. In the worst
+      things that can come to us the first thought is of love. People, like the
+      Scribes and Pharisees, might say, &lsquo;What good can that do him?&rsquo; And we may
+      not in the least suppose that the person we want knows any secret that can
+      cure his pain; yet love is the first thing we think of. And here we are
+      more right than we know; for, at the long last, love will cure everything:
+      which truth, indeed, this story will set forth to us. No doubt the heart
+      of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed after his friend; and, very likely, even
+      the sight of Jesus might have given him such strength that the life in him
+      could have driven out the death which had already got one foot across the
+      threshold. But the sisters expected more than this: they believed that
+      Jesus, whom they knew to have driven disease and death out of so many
+      hearts, had only to come and touch him&mdash;nay, only to speak a word, to
+      look at him, and their brother was saved. Do you think they presumed in
+      thus expecting? The fact was, they did not believe enough; they had not
+      yet learned to believe that he could cure him all the same whether he came
+      to them or not, because he was always with them. We cannot understand
+      this; but our understanding is never a measure of what is true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot
+      tell. Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel
+      certain upon. One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know
+      everything beforehand, for he said so himself. It is infinitely more
+      valuable to us, because more beautiful and godlike in him, that he should
+      trust his Father than that he should foresee everything. At all events he
+      knew that his Father did not want him to go to his friends yet. So he sent
+      them a message to the effect that there was a particular reason for this
+      sickness&mdash;that the end of it was not the death of Lazarus, but the
+      glory of God. This, I think, he told them by the same messenger they sent
+      to him; and then, instead of going to them, he remained where he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think
+      of being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory of
+      God! of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the
+      fear, the broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God?
+      What kind of a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely
+      good, that the things that look least like it are only the means of
+      clearing our eyes to let us see how good he is. For he is so good that he
+      is not satisfied with <i>being</i> good. He loves his children, so that
+      except he can make them good like himself, make them blessed by seeing how
+      good he is, and desiring the same goodness in themselves, he is not
+      satisfied. He is not like a fine proud benefactor, who is content with
+      doing that which will satisfy his sense of his own glory, but like a
+      mother who puts her arm round her child, and whose heart is sore till she
+      can make her child see the love which is her glory. The glorification of
+      the Son of God is the glorification of the human race; for the glory of
+      God is the glory of man, and that glory is love. Welcome sickness, welcome
+      sorrow, welcome death, revealing that glory!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
+      seem typical of all the perplexities of God&rsquo;s dealings. The old painters
+      and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand a
+      cup of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted Faith!
+      she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she is not
+      repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for the type
+      of the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not understood.
+      The wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the supreme Fate
+      put that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good too,&mdash;harmless,
+      at least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine. But let us read the
+      verses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard
+      therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place
+      where he was.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But
+      remember what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely more
+      for the final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life he could
+      have, would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere presence
+      of the Son of God. I say <i>mere</i> presence, for, compared with the
+      glory of God, the very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is nothing. He
+      abode where he was that the glory of God, the final cure of humanity, the
+      love that triumphs over death, might shine out and redeem the hearts of
+      men, so that death could not touch them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples, &lsquo;Let
+      us go back to Judæa.&rsquo; They expostulated, because of the danger, saying,
+      &lsquo;Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither
+      again?&rsquo; The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I can
+      thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear on the
+      same region of life&mdash;the will of God. I think what he means by
+      walking in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole, the
+      all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means that now
+      he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not see that
+      the Father wanted him to go back to Judæa, and yet went, that would be to
+      go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve hours in the day&mdash;one
+      time to act&mdash;a time of light and the clear call of duty; there is a
+      night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must be content to
+      rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he must have
+      intended; but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough to be sure
+      that I am right. I do think, further, that it points at a clearer
+      condition of human vision and conviction than I am good enough to
+      understand; though I hope one day to rise into this upper stratum of
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know. It
+      looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had from
+      the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he was
+      going to wake him. You would think they might have understood this. The
+      idea of going so many miles to wake a man might have surely suggested
+      death. But the disciples were sorely perplexed with many of his words.
+      Sometimes they looked far away for the meaning when the meaning lay in
+      their very hearts; sometimes they looked into their hands for it when it
+      was lost in the grandeur of the ages. But he meant them to see into all
+      that he said by and by, although they could not see into it now. When they
+      understood him better, then they would understand what he said better. And
+      to understand him better they must be more like him; and to make them more
+      like him he must go away and give them his spirit&mdash;awful mystery
+      which no man but himself can understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
+      thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
+      Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
+      other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
+      weary two days&rsquo; journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
+      sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
+      say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures is
+      simply a lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They set out to go back to Judæa. Here we have a glimpse of the faith of
+      Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very fact
+      that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone hard upon
+      doubters, I always doubt the <i>quality</i> of his faith. It is of little
+      use to have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks like the
+      painter of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing chiefly
+      consisted in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what fine sort a
+      faith must be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in indifference
+      to the truth and the mere desire to get out of hell! That is not a grand
+      belief in the Son of God, the radiation of the Father. Thomas&rsquo;s want of
+      faith was shown in the grumbling, self-pitying way in which he said, &lsquo;Let
+      us also go that we may die with him.&rsquo; His Master had said that he was
+      going to wake him. Thomas said, &lsquo;that we may die with him.&rsquo; You may say,
+      &lsquo;He did not understand him.&rsquo; True, it may be, but his unbelief was the
+      cause of his not understanding him. I suppose Thomas meant this as a
+      reproach to Jesus for putting them all in danger by going back to Judæa;
+      if not, it was only a poor piece of sentimentality. So much for Thomas&rsquo;s
+      unbelief. But he had good and true faith notwithstanding; for <i>he went
+      with his Master</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
+      dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
+      was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him. It
+      might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
+      behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
+      their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the man
+      dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we have no
+      inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death and grief
+      bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as in the
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith by
+      almost attributing her brother&rsquo;s death to Jesus&rsquo; absence. But even in the
+      moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of
+      faith, began in her soul. She thought&mdash;&lsquo;What if, after all, he were
+      to bring him to life again!&rsquo; O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the
+      dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is
+      reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds
+      it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her
+      half-born prayer, says, &lsquo;Thy brother shall rise again;&rsquo; not meaning the
+      general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all but the
+      Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but meaning, &lsquo;Be
+      it unto thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.&rsquo; For there is no
+      steering for a fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these words are too
+      good for Martha to take them as he meant them. Her faith is not quite
+      equal to the belief that he actually will do it. The thing she could hope
+      for afar off she could hardly believe when it came to her very door. &lsquo;O,
+      yes,&rsquo; she said, her mood falling again to the level of the commonplace,
+      &lsquo;of course, at the last day.&rsquo; Then the Lord turns away her thoughts from
+      the dogmas of her faith to himself, the Life, saying, &lsquo;I am the
+      resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead,
+      yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never
+      die. Believest thou this?&rsquo; Martha, without understanding what he said more
+      than in a very poor part, answered in words which preserved her honesty
+      entire, and yet included all he asked, and a thousandfold more than she
+      could yet believe: &lsquo;Yea, Lord; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son
+      of God, which should come into the world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth of
+      Jesus&rsquo; words &lsquo;shall never die;&rsquo; but I am pretty sure that when Martha came
+      to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had meant
+      when she used the ghastly word <i>death</i>, and said with her first new
+      breath, &lsquo;Verily, Lord, I am not dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
+      upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the Lord
+      would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she went to
+      find Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother, straightway
+      will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The family feeling
+      blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal. Martha wants Mary
+      to go to Jesus too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she
+      went to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to
+      him, the woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but the
+      same words to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and troubled
+      sister had uttered a few minutes before. How often during those four days
+      had not the self-same words passed between them! &lsquo;Ah, if he had been here,
+      our brother had not died!&rsquo; She said so to himself now, and wept, and her
+      friends who had followed her wept likewise. A moment more, and the Master
+      groaned; yet a moment, and he too wept. &lsquo;Sorrow is catching;&rsquo; but this was
+      not the mere infection of sorrow. It went deeper than mere sympathy; for
+      he groaned in his spirit and was troubled. What made him weep? It was when
+      he saw them weeping that he wept. But why should he weep, when he knew how
+      soon their weeping would be turned into rejoicing? It was not for their
+      weeping, so soon to be over, that he wept, but for the human heart
+      everywhere swollen with tears, yea, with griefs that can find no such
+      relief as tears; for these, and for all his brothers and sisters tormented
+      with pain for lack of faith in his Father in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw
+      the blessed well-being of Lazarus on the one side, and on the other the
+      streaming eyes from whose sight he had vanished. The veil between was so
+      thin! yet the sight of those eyes could not pierce it: their hearts must
+      go on weeping&mdash;without cause, for his Father was so good. I think it
+      was the helplessness he felt in the impossibility of at once sweeping away
+      the phantasm death from their imagination that drew the tears from the
+      eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for
+      these his friends&mdash;save as they represented the humanity which he
+      would help, but could not help even as he was about to help them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little thought
+      it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they despised,
+      that his tears were now flowing&mdash;that the love which pressed the
+      fountains of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam on
+      through the ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters, saying,
+      &lsquo;Could he not have kept the man from dying?&rsquo; But it was such a poor thing,
+      after all, that they thought he might have done. They regarded merely this
+      unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay Lazarus was not much
+      older than Jesus. They did not think that, after all, Lazarus must die
+      some time; that the beloved could be saved, at best, only for a little
+      while. Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for he again groaned in
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was a
+      hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose the
+      bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they are in
+      many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round and round
+      with linen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, &lsquo;Take away
+      the stone.&rsquo; The nature of Martha&rsquo;s reply&mdash;the realism of it, as they
+      would say now-a-days&mdash;would seem to indicate that her dawning faith
+      had sunk again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of
+      death, her faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he
+      saw around him the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and
+      helpless. Jesus answered&mdash;O, what an answer!&mdash;To meet the
+      corruption and the stink which filled her poor human fancy, &lsquo;the glory of
+      God&rsquo; came from his lips: human fear; horror speaking from the lips of a
+      woman in the very jaws of the devouring death; and the &lsquo;said I not unto
+      thee?&rsquo; from the mouth of him who was so soon to pass worn and bloodless
+      through such a door! &lsquo;He stinketh,&rsquo; said Martha. &lsquo;The glory of God,&rsquo; said
+      Jesus. &lsquo;Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou
+      shouldest see the glory of God?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his
+      Father aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely while
+      he groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted him,
+      and given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will be true
+      to the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father; therefore
+      he tells why he said the word of thanks aloud&mdash;a thing not usual with
+      him, for his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it for the
+      people, he would say that it was for the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him&mdash;a
+      far grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave; for
+      he is the life of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Lazarus, come forth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
+      linen-bound limbs. &lsquo;Ha, ha! brother, sister!&rsquo; cries the human heart. The
+      Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
+      grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the womb&mdash;new-born,
+      and in him all the human race new-born from the grave! &lsquo;Loose him and let
+      him go,&rsquo; and the work is done. The sorrow is over, and the joy is come.
+      Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too will go with you, the
+      Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready, Martha! Prepare the food
+      for him who comes hungry from the grave, for him who has called him
+      thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a household will yours be! What
+      wondrous speech will pass between the dead come to life and the living
+      come to die!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
+      Martha&rsquo;s cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale
+      eyes of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes, he
+      will come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus&mdash;yea,
+      come for the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the
+      Lord: he knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the words
+      he spoke, &lsquo;He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die&rsquo;? Perhaps
+      she does, and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns the smile of
+      her Lord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth. What
+      is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon to
+      believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which lies
+      buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon to
+      believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What is it
+      to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?&mdash;Is it nothing to know that our
+      Brother is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the
+      first-fruits? If he tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our
+      vanished love to-day, or to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to
+      come, shall we not mingle the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow of
+      present loss, and walk diligently waiting? That he called forth Lazarus
+      showed that he was in his keeping, that he is Lord of the living, and that
+      all live to him, that he has a hold of them, and can draw them forth when
+      he will. If this is not true, then the raising of Lazarus is false; I do
+      not mean merely false in fact, but false in meaning. If we believe in him,
+      then in his name, both for ourselves and for our friends, we must deny
+      death and believe in life. Lord Christ, fill our hearts with thy Life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. CHANGED PLANS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once
+      more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be so
+      much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful. As they
+      carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the ground.
+      Turner yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He was
+      satisfied, however, that she could have stood upright for a moment at
+      least. He would not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious the
+      nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her smile,
+      though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much of its light.
+      I noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window constantly so
+      arranged as to shut out the sea. I said something to her about it once.
+      Her reply was:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, I can&rsquo;t bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make
+      you understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down; it
+      seemed to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me every
+      morning when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith, but I
+      can&rsquo;t help it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had failed me,
+      that I would rather not see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that
+      the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had been
+      driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed to
+      venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon nature. I
+      could not help thinking that the good of our visit to Kilkhaven had come,
+      and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet escape, was following. I
+      left her, and sought Turner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It strikes me, Turner,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that the sooner we get out of this the
+      better for Connie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the
+      place would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now,
+      think what it will be in the many winter nights at hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think it would be safe to move her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better
+      than when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and
+      see how she will take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all go,
+      except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don&rsquo;t know how her mother
+      would get on without her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad to come
+      as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr. Shepherd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it was
+      a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no such
+      reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her to
+      avoid the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner, and
+      went back to Connie&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was sitting
+      so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in the matter
+      without any preamble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her countenance flashed into light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, dear papa, do let us go,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;that would be delightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger
+      for the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home
+      again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand
+      to the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea,
+      and did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find
+      Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie&rsquo;s sake, and
+      said that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a
+      certain troubled look above her eyes, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are thinking of Wynnie,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True. But it is one of the world&rsquo;s recognised necessities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, you don&rsquo;t suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter. They
+      must part some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But here my wife was mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter when
+      Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him to show
+      him in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places with
+      me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie had
+      better go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will all go, then, I presume?&rdquo; returned Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes; of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to tell
+      you that I must leave to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Going to London?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I don&rsquo;t know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made
+      my summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it
+      would otherwise have been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all glad
+      to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all
+      probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some of
+      your pictures then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere
+      pleasure. There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at
+      once:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care
+      for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it would;
+      but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and countenance
+      before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from a visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to search for a card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you will
+      dine with us to-day, of course?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have much pleasure,&rdquo; he answered; and took his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that walk
+      memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly by virtue
+      of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere outside
+      things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not so readily
+      pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward circumstance
+      returns; for a man&rsquo;s life is where the kingdom of heaven is&mdash;within
+      him. There are people who, if you ask the story of their lives, have
+      nothing to tell you but the course of the outward events that have
+      constituted, as it were, the clothes of their history. But I know, at the
+      same time, that some of the most important crises in my own history (by
+      which word <i>history</i> I mean my growth towards the right conditions of
+      existence) have been beyond the grasp and interpretation of my intellect.
+      They have passed, as it were, without my consciousness being awake enough
+      to lay hold of their phenomena. The wind had been blowing; I had heard the
+      sound of it, but knew not whence it came nor whither it went; only, when
+      it was gone, I found myself more responsible, more eager than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change
+      hanging over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and
+      that change which so many would escape if they could, but which will let
+      no man pass, had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon of the
+      future. Death looks so far away to the young, that while they acknowledge
+      it unavoidable, the path stretches on in such vanishing perspective before
+      them, that they see no necessity for thinking about the end of it yet; and
+      far would I be from saying they ought to think of it. Life is the true
+      object of a man&rsquo;s care: there is no occasion to make himself think about
+      death. But when the vision of the inevitable draws nigh, when it appears
+      plainly on the horizon, though but as a cloud the size of a man&rsquo;s hand,
+      then it is equally foolish to meet it by refusing to meet it, to answer
+      the questions that will arise by declining to think about them. Indeed, it
+      is a question of life then, and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of
+      our life, and, in the strength of that, to look the threatening death in
+      the face. But to my walk that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
+      stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape of a
+      monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and looked
+      out over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as if all
+      the sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the fogs of
+      the coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when first from
+      these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; I said to myself at length, &ldquo;has she done since then? Where is her
+      work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
+      destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
+      exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
+      our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
+      generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before us
+      like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a
+      mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and
+      that I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing as a
+      state of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual dreaming
+      in sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself like a
+      child tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till, all at
+      once, &ldquo;a little pipling wind&rdquo; blew on my cheek. The morning was very
+      still: what roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that little
+      wind roused I will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek, something
+      within me began to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory of a certain
+      glorious sunset of red and green and gold and blue, which I had beheld
+      from these same heights, dawned within me. I knew that the glory of my
+      youth had not departed, that the very power of recalling with delight that
+      which I had once felt in seeing, was proof enough of that; I knew that I
+      could believe in God all the night long, even if the night were long. And
+      the next moment I thought how I had been reviling in my fancy God&rsquo;s
+      servant, the sea. To how many vessels had she not opened a bounteous
+      highway through the waters, with labour, and food, and help, and
+      ministration, glad breezes and swelling sails, healthful struggle,
+      cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and friendly death! Because she had been
+      commissioned to carry this one or that one, this hundred or that thousand
+      of his own creatures from one world to another, was I to revile the
+      servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was blameless in Connie to feel
+      the late trouble so deeply that she could not be glad: she had not had the
+      experience of life, yea, of God, that I had had; she must be helped from
+      without. But for me, it was shameful that I, who knew the heart of my
+      Master, to whom at least he had so often shown his truth, should ever be
+      doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now helped from within. The
+      glory of existence as the child of the Infinite had again dawned upon me.
+      The first hour of the evening of my life had indeed arrived; the shadows
+      had begun to grow long&mdash;so long that I had begun to mark their
+      length; this last little portion of my history had vanished, leaving its
+      few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life; and the final evening
+      must come, when all my life would lie behind me, and all the memory of it
+      return, with its mornings of gold and red, with its evenings of purple and
+      green; with its dashes of storm, and its foggy glooms; with its
+      white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions, its creeping envies in
+      brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all the accusations of my
+      conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he was called Jesus because
+      he should save his people from their sins. Then I thought what a grand
+      gift it would be to give his people the power hereafter to fight the
+      consequences of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust the Father, who loved me
+      with a perfect love, to lead the soul he had made, had compelled to be,
+      through the gates of the death-birth, into the light of life beyond. I
+      would cast on him the care, humbly challenge him with the responsibility
+      he had himself undertaken, praying only for perfect confidence in him,
+      absolute submission to his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought of
+      seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave those I
+      had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught them
+      something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be no end to
+      our relation to each other&mdash;it could not be broken, for it was <i>in
+      the Lord</i>, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not,
+      therefore, sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them
+      often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even this
+      parting said that I must &ldquo;sit loose to the world&rdquo;&mdash;an old Puritan
+      phrase, I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its best
+      things, and must let all the rest go; that those things I called mine&mdash;earth,
+      sky, and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of friends&mdash;had all to
+      leave me, belong to others, and help to educate them. I should not need
+      them. I should have my people, my souls, my beloved faces tenfold more,
+      and could well afford to part with these. Why should I mind this chain
+      passing to my eldest boy, when it was only his mother&rsquo;s hair, and I should
+      have his mother still?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded
+      passively to their flow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room. Her
+      mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody party.
+      They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before dinner was
+      over we were all chatting together merrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Connie?&rdquo; I asked Ethelwyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderfully better already,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think everybody seems better,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;The very idea of home seems
+      reviving to us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than
+      she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at
+      Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged
+      instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle in
+      his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;She does not want much visiting now; she is going about
+      her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not like the
+      same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one, though I do
+      not choose to ask him any questions about his wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after
+      this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.
+      Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by the
+      coach&mdash;early. Turner went with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the
+      prospect of meeting him again in London kept her up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. THE STUDIO.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
+      ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had
+      wanted to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber, now
+      wanted to take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great
+      oystershells, and sea-weed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An early
+      day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of service
+      to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he came, I had
+      gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my reasons for
+      leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a little about
+      my successor, that he might not appear among them quite as a stranger. He
+      was much gratified with their reception of him, and had no fear of not
+      finding himself quite at home with them. I promised, if I could
+      comfortably manage it, to pay them a short visit the following summer, and
+      as the weather was now getting quite cold, hastened our preparations for
+      departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but he
+      had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience would
+      permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us, and we
+      had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel much
+      anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong enough as
+      we went along, to go right through to London, making a few days there the
+      only break in the transit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now bear
+      the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had we
+      occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
+      pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and before
+      we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie looked a
+      little dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the change in
+      the weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but we are going home, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Going home.</i> It set me thinking&mdash;as I had often been set
+      thinking before, always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the
+      dawning sky of hope. I lay back in the carriage and thought how the
+      November fog this evening in London, was the valley of the shadow of death
+      we had to go through on the way <i>home.</i> A. shadow like this would
+      fall upon me; the world would grow dark and life grow weary; but I should
+      know it was the last of the way home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted. I
+      knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness, more or
+      less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as the thought
+      of water to the thirsty <i>soul</i>, for it is the soul far more than the
+      body that thirsts even for the material water, such is the thought of home
+      to the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul pines for sleep,
+      and every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so my heart and soul
+      had often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked myself, where or what
+      that home was? It could consist in no change of place or of circumstance;
+      no mere absence of care; no accumulation of repose; no blessed communion
+      even with those whom my soul loved; in the midst of it all I should be
+      longing for a homelier home&mdash;one into which I might enter with a
+      sense of infinitely more absolute peace, than a conscious child could know
+      in the arms, upon the bosom of his mother. In the closest contact of human
+      soul with human soul, when all the atmosphere of thought was rosy with
+      love, again and yet again on the far horizon would the dun, lurid flame of
+      unrest shoot for a moment through the enchanted air, and Psyche would know
+      that not yet had she reached her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes,
+      and saw those of my wife and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were
+      reproaching me for saying in my soul that I could not be quite at home
+      with them. Then I said in my heart, &ldquo;Come home with me, beloved&mdash;there
+      is but one home for us all. When we find&mdash;in proportion as each of us
+      finds&mdash;that home, shall we be gardens of delight to each other&mdash;little
+      chambers of rest&mdash;galleries of pictures&mdash;wells of water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his love,
+      his judgment, are man&rsquo;s home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will,
+      to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in
+      us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the
+      shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have
+      hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this
+      greatest of all outward changes&mdash;for it is but an outward change&mdash;will
+      surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of
+      drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us. It is the
+      father, the mother, that make for the child his home. Indeed, I doubt if
+      the home-idea is complete to the parents of a family themselves, when they
+      remember that their fathers and mothers have vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it be delightful, wife,&rdquo; I began, &ldquo;to see our fathers and mothers
+      such a long way back in heaven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ethelwyn&rsquo;s face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
+      dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not
+      know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how
+      anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not
+      to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every
+      mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in God as
+      it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even
+      should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without
+      a witness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that
+      London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a
+      carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to the
+      fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had
+      slept for a good many nights before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to see Mr. Percivale&rsquo;s studio, my dear: have you any objection
+      to going with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, papa,&rdquo; she answered, blushing. &ldquo;I have never seen an artist&rsquo;s studio
+      in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a
+      cab, and it won&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver
+      directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the
+      door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in
+      which no man could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I
+      knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably
+      the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my
+      question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the
+      words &ldquo;second-floor,&rdquo; and left us to find our own way up the two flights
+      of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the
+      door of the front room. A well-known voice cried, &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; and we
+      entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced
+      to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed
+      solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such
+      a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic
+      notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio,
+      must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale&rsquo;s room&mdash;plainly
+      the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I suspected
+      both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the
+      fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed
+      flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from
+      upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a
+      corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the
+      present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which
+      stood a half-finished oil-painting&mdash;these constituted almost the
+      whole furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted
+      one chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all
+      I have got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man&rsquo;s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses,&rdquo;
+       I ventured to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Percivale. &ldquo;I hope not. It is well for me it should
+      not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well for the richest man in England that it should not,&rdquo; I
+      returned. &ldquo;If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most
+      blessed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it
+      does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
+      themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?&rdquo; asked Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tolerably,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;But I have not much to show for it. That on the
+      easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished
+      that none but a painter could do it justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I very much want people to look at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not us, then?&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you do not need to be pained.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good is done by pain&mdash;is it not?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly. But whether <i>we</i> are wise enough to know when and where
+      and how much, is the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do not make the pain my object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the matter
+      greatly,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But still I am not sure that anything in which the pain
+      predominates can be useful in the best way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; he returned.&mdash;&ldquo;Will you look at the daub?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With much pleasure,&rdquo; I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
+      Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture meant.
+      Nor had I long to look before I understood it&mdash;in a measure at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The
+      plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths in
+      one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A
+      woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she
+      held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could
+      just see the struggles of two undertaker&rsquo;s men to get the coffin past the
+      turn of the landing towards the door. Through the window there was one
+      peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet
+      blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wonder you did not like to show it,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;How can you bear
+      to paint such a dreadful picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a true one. It only represents a fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All facts have not a right to be represented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
+      sight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; nor yet by gloating upon them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such
+      pictures&mdash;as far as the subject goes,&rdquo; he said with some
+      discomposure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one
+      could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow
+      callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you
+      propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come
+      into my possession, I would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put it in the fire,&rdquo; suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before
+      it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in
+      danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and
+      forgetting that they need the Saviour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
+      such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
+      one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn&rsquo;t buy it. I would
+      rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I am
+      certain you cannot do people good by showing them <i>only</i> the painful.
+      Make it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it&mdash;something
+      to show that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering
+      people will turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it,
+      without hinting at some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all.
+      Why should they be pained if it can do no good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the sake of sympathy, I should say,&rdquo; answered Percivale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would rejoin, &lsquo;It is only a picture. Come along.&rsquo; No; give people
+      hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You
+      see there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in
+      the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
+      you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
+      make the other look more terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed
+      otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture, I
+      almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own
+      meaning into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw that
+      she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or the
+      freedom with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes falling
+      on a little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope of finding
+      something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment, however, that it
+      was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler and more poetic
+      mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her hand. A torrent of
+      summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a lake of glory upon the
+      floor. I turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like that better, don&rsquo;t you, papa?&rdquo; said Wynnie tremulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is beautiful, certainly,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;And if it were only one, I
+      should enjoy it&mdash;as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but
+      the same thing more weakly embodied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in
+      Percivale, for his own sake as well as for my daughter&rsquo;s, and I had
+      expected better things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am a
+      clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the praise
+      which I have little doubt your art at least deserves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may
+      pain me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you
+      have at hand to show me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were
+      leaning against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these
+      he chose one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that
+      stood beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will
+      describe it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which broke
+      from me after I had regarded it for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few thin
+      pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore a dying
+      knight&mdash;a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm, and
+      another led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture. The
+      head and countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many a
+      battle, and ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained, for
+      one might read victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party had
+      just reached the edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the valley
+      beneath, with the last of the harvest just being reaped, while the shocks
+      stood all about in the fields, under the place of the sunset. The sun had
+      been down for some little time. There was no gold left in the sky, only a
+      little dull saffron, but plenty of that lovely liquid green of the autumn
+      sky, divided with a few streaks of pale rose. The depth of the sky
+      overhead, which you could not see for the arrangement of the picture, was
+      mirrored lovelily in a piece of water that lay in the centre of the
+      valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; I cried, &ldquo;why did you not show me this first, and save
+      me from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart;
+      it is glorious. Look here, Wynnie,&rdquo; I went on; &ldquo;you see it is evening; the
+      sun&rsquo;s work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name behind
+      him in a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight&rsquo;s work is done too; his
+      day has set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the coming
+      peace. They are bearing him home to his couch and his grave. Look at their
+      faces in the dusky light. They are all mourning for and honouring the life
+      that is ebbing away. But he is gathered to his fathers like a shock of
+      corn fully ripe; and so the harvest stands golden in the valley beneath.
+      The picture would not be complete, however, if it did not tell us of the
+      deep heaven overhead, the symbol of that heaven whither he who has done
+      his work is bound. What a lovely idea to represent it by means of the
+      water, the heaven embodying itself in the earth, as it were, that we may
+      see it! And observe how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender
+      mournful-looking pines, with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and
+      point the heart upward towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture,
+      full of feeling&mdash;a picture and a parable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted
+      by Arthur Hughes.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth by
+      the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale&rsquo;s work
+      appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like it!&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
+      express&mdash;so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it,
+      I should not mind hanging that other&mdash;that hopeless garret&mdash;on
+      the most public wall I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, &ldquo;you confess&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+      you, papa?&mdash;that you were <i>too</i> hard on Mr. Percivale at first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given
+      me to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not bound
+      to disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can be no
+      sense of duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has <i>some</i> sense of duty,&rdquo; said
+      Wynnie in an almost angry tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and
+      therefore, again, that he has no right to publish such a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the word <i>publish</i> Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
+      defence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures only.
+      Look at the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in the
+      same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of these
+      might go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of Avalon; but
+      even then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the poem, whatever
+      position it stood in, that had <i>nothing</i>&mdash;positively nothing&mdash;of
+      the aurora in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by a
+      remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from the
+      pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to judge, will
+      continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is only a little
+      song, &ldquo;I stood on a tower in the wet.&rdquo; I have found few men who, whether
+      from the influence of those prints which are always on the outlook for
+      something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not laugh at the
+      poem. I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am not quite sure
+      of the transposition of words in the last two lines. But I do not <i>approve</i>
+      of the poem, just because there is no hope in it. It lacks that touch or
+      hint of <i>red</i> which is as essential, I think, to every poem as to
+      every picture&mdash;the life-blood&mdash;the one pure colour. In his
+      hopeful moods, let a man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud the
+      words of gladness&mdash;or of grief, I care not which&mdash;to his
+      fellows; in his hours of hopelessness, let him utter his thoughts only to
+      his inarticulate violin, or in the evanescent sounds of any his other
+      stringed instrument; let him commune with his own heart on his bed, and be
+      still; let him speak to God face to face if he may&mdash;only he cannot do
+      that and continue hopeless; but let him not sing aloud in such a mood into
+      the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot do them much good thereby. If it
+      were a fact that there is no hope, it would not be a <i>truth</i>. No
+      doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known; but who will dare be
+      confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let the hopeless moods,
+      at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could refuse to let the one go without the other,&rdquo; said Wynnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do at
+      the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part them.&mdash;If
+      you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at any
+      more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should dine
+      with us in the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. HOME AGAIN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I will not detain my readers with the record of the few days we spent in
+      London. In writing the account of it, as in the experience of the time
+      itself, I feel that I am near home, and grow the more anxious to reach it.
+      Ah! I am growing a little anxious after another home, too; for the house
+      of my tabernacle is falling to ruins about me. What a word <i>home</i> is!
+      To think that God has made the world so that you have only to be born in a
+      certain place, and live long enough in it to get at the secret of it, and
+      henceforth that place is to you a <i>home</i> with all the wonderful
+      meaning in the word. Thus the whole earth is a home to the race; for every
+      spot of it shares in the feeling: some one of the family loves it as <i>his</i>
+      home. How rich the earth seems when we so regard it&mdash;crowded with the
+      loves of home! Yet I am now getting ready to <i>go home</i>&mdash;to leave
+      this world of homes and go home. When I reach that home, shall I even then
+      seek yet to go home? Even then, I believe, I shall seek a yet warmer,
+      deeper, truer home in the deeper knowledge of God&mdash;in the truer love
+      of my fellow-man. Eternity will be, my heart and my faith tell me, a
+      travelling homeward, but in jubilation and confidence and the vision of
+      the beloved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we had laid Connie once more in her own room, at least the room which
+      since her illness had come to be called hers, I went up to my study. The
+      familiar faces of my books welcomed me. I threw myself in my
+      reading-chair, and gazed around me with pleasure. I felt it so homely
+      here. All my old friends&mdash;whom somehow I hoped to see some day&mdash;present
+      there in the spirit ready to talk with me any moment when I was in the
+      mood, making no claim upon my attention when I was not! I felt as if I
+      should like, when the hour should come, to die in that chair, and pass
+      into the society of the witnesses in the presence of the tokens they had
+      left behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard shouts on the stair, and in rushed the two boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa!&rdquo; they were crying together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve found the big chest just where we left it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, did you expect it would have taken itself off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s everything in it just as we left it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you afraid, then, that the moment you left it it would turn itself
+      upside down, and empty itself of all its contents on the floor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They laughed, but apparently with no very keen appreciation of the attempt
+      at a joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, papa, I did not think anything about it; but&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;there
+      everything is as we left it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this triumphant answer they turned and hurried, a little abashed, out
+      of the room; but not many moments elapsed before the sounds that arose
+      from them were sufficiently reassuring as to the state of their spirits.
+      When they were gone, I forgot my books in the attempt to penetrate and
+      understand the condition of my boys&rsquo; thoughts; and I soon came to see that
+      they were right and I was wrong. It was the movement of that undeveloped
+      something in us which makes it possible for us in everything to give
+      thanks. It was the wonder of the discovery of the existence of law. There
+      was nothing that they could understand, <i>à priori</i>, to necessitate
+      the remaining of the things where they had left them. No doubt there was a
+      reason in the nature of God, why all things should hold together, whence
+      springs the law of gravitation, as we call it; but as far as the boys
+      could understand of this, all things might as well have been arranged for
+      flying asunder, so that no one could expect to find anything where he had
+      left it. I began to see yet further into the truth that in everything we
+      must give thanks, and whatever is not of faith is sin. Even the laws of
+      nature reveal the character of God, not merely as regards their ends, but
+      as regards their kind, being of necessity fashioned after ideal facts of
+      his own being and will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose and went down to see if everybody was getting settled, and how the
+      place looked. I found Ethel already going about the house as if she had
+      never left it, and as if we all had just returned from a long absence and
+      she had to show us home-hospitality. Wynnie had vanished; but I found her
+      by and by in the favourite haunt of her mother before her marriage&mdash;beside
+      the little pond called the Bishop&rsquo;s Basin, of which I do not think I have
+      ever told my readers the legend. But why should I mention it, for I cannot
+      tell it now? The frost lay thick in the hollow when I went down there to
+      find her; the branches, lately clothed with leaves, stood bare and icy
+      around her. Ethelwyn and I had almost forgotten that there was anything
+      out of the common in connection with the house. The horror of this
+      mysterious spot had laid hold upon Wynnie. I resolved that that night I
+      would, in her mother&rsquo;s presence, tell her all the legend of the place, and
+      the whole story of how I won her mother. I did so; and I think it made her
+      trust us more. But now I left her there, and went to Connie. She lay in
+      her bed; for her mother had got her thither at once, a perfect picture of
+      blessed comfort. There was no occasion to be uneasy about her. I was so
+      pleased to be at home again with such good hopes, that I could not rest,
+      but went wandering everywhere&mdash;into places even which I had not
+      entered for ten years at least, and found fresh interest in everything;
+      for this was home, and here I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I fancy my readers, looking forward to the end, and seeing what a
+      small amount of print is left, blaming me; some, that I have roused
+      curiosity without satisfying it; others, that I have kept them so long
+      over a dull book and a lame conclusion. But out of a life one cannot
+      always cut complete portions, and serve them up in nice shapes. I am well
+      aware that I have not told them the <i>fate</i>, as some of them would
+      call it, of either of my daughters. This I cannot develop now, even as far
+      as it is known to me; but, if it is any satisfaction to them to know this
+      much&mdash;and it will be all that some of them mean by <i>fate</i>, I
+      fear&mdash;I may as well tell them now that Wynnie has been Mrs. Percivale
+      for many years, with a history well worth recounting; and that Connie has
+      had a quiet, happy life for nearly as long, as Mrs. Turner. She has never
+      got strong, but has very tolerable health. Her husband watches her with
+      the utmost care and devotion. My Ethelwyn is still with me. Harry is gone
+      home. Charlie is a barrister of the Middle Temple. And Dora&mdash;I must
+      not forget Dora&mdash;well, I will say nothing about her <i>fate</i>, for
+      good reasons&mdash;it is not quite determined yet. Meantime she puts up
+      with the society of her old father and mother, and is something else than
+      unhappy, I fully believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Connie&rsquo;s baby?&rdquo; asks some one out of ten thousand readers. I have no
+      time to tell you about her now; but as you know her so little, it cannot
+      be such a trial to remain, for a time at least, unenlightened with regard
+      to her <i>fate.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only other part of my history which could contain anything like
+      incident enough to make it interesting in print, is a period I spent in
+      London some few years after the time of which I have now been writing. But
+      I am getting too old to regard the commencement of another history with
+      composure. The labour of thinking into sequences, even the bodily labour
+      of writing, grows more and more severe. I fancy I can think correctly
+      still; but the effort necessary to express myself with corresponding
+      correctness becomes, in prospect, at least, sometimes almost appalling. I
+      must therefore take leave of my patient reader&mdash;for surely every one
+      who has followed me through all that I have here written, well deserves
+      the epithet&mdash;as if the probability that I shall write no more were a
+      certainty, bidding him farewell with one word: <i>&ldquo;Friend, hope thou in
+      God,&rdquo;</i> and for a parting gift offering him a new, and, I think, a true
+      rendering of the first verse of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the
+      Hebrews:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now faith is the essence of hopes, the trying of things unseen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END.
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s The Seaboard Parish, Complete, by George MacDonald
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+</pre>
+
+  </body>
+</html>
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