The Seaboard Parish Volume 2 / MacDonald, George, 1824-1905

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Title: The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2

Author: George MacDonald

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8552]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 22, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH VOL. 2 ***




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




THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. II.






CONTENTS OF VOL. II.





   I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
  II. NICEBOOTS
 III. THE BLACKSMITH
  IV. THE LIFE-BOAT
   V. MR. PERCIVALE
  VI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH
 VII. AT THE FARM
VIII. THE KEEVE
  IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH
   X. THE OLD CASTLE
  XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE
 XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE
XIII. THE HARVEST






CHAPTER I.

ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.





In the evening we met in Connie's room, as usual, to have our talk. And
this is what came out of it.

The window was open. The sun was in the west. We sat a little aside out
of the course of his radiance, and let him look full into the room. Only
Wynnie sat back in a dark corner, as if she would get out of his way. Below
him the sea lay bluer than you could believe even when you saw it--blue
with a delicate yet deep silky blue, the exquisiteness of which was thrown
up by the brilliant white lines of its lapping on the high coast, to the
northward. We had just sat down, when Dora broke out with--

"I saw Niceboots at church. He did stare at you, papa, as if he had never
heard a sermon before."

"I daresay he never heard such a sermon before!" said Connie, with the
perfect confidence of inexperience and partiality--not to say ignorance,
seeing she had not heard the sermon herself.

Here Wynnie spoke from her dark corner, apparently forcing herself to
speak, and thereby giving what seemed an unpleasant tone to what she said.

"Well, papa, I don't know what to think. You are always telling us to trust
in Him; but how can we, if we are not good?"

"The first good thing you can do is to look up to him. That is the
beginning of trust in him, and the most sensible thing that it is possible
for us to do. That is faith."

"But it's no use sometimes."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you--I mean I--can't feel good, or care about it at all."

"But is that any ground for saying that it is no use--that he does not heed
you? that he disregards the look cast up to him? that, till the heart goes
with the will, he who made himself strong to be the helper of the weak, who
pities most those who are most destitute--and who so destitute as those who
do not love what they want to love--except, indeed, those who don't want to
love?--that, till you are well on towards all right by earnestly
seeking it, he won't help you? You are to judge him from yourself, are
you?--forgetting that all the misery in you is just because you have not
got his grand presence with you?"

I spoke so earnestly as to be somewhat incoherent in words. But my reader
will understand. Wynnie was silent. Connie, as if partly to help her
sister, followed on the same side.

"I don't know exactly how to say what I mean, papa, but I wish I could get
this lovely afternoon, all full of sunshine and blue, into unity with all
that you teach us about Jesus Christ. I wish this beautiful day came in
with my thought of him, like the frame--gold and red and blue--that you
have to that picture of him at home. Why doesn't it?"

"Just because you have not enough of faith in him, my dear. You do not know
him well enough yet. You do not yet believe that he means you all gladness,
heartily, honestly, thoroughly."

"And no suffering, papa?"

"I did not say that, my dear. There you are on your couch and can't move.
But he does mean you such gladness, such a full sunny air and blue sea of
blessedness that this suffering shall count for little in it; nay more,
shall be taken in for part, and, like the rocks that interfere with the
roll of the sea, flash out the white that glorifies and intensifies the
whole--to pass away by and by, I trust, none the less. What a chance you
have, my Connie, of believing in him, of offering upon his altar!"

"But," said my wife, "are not these feelings in a great measure dependent
upon the state of one's health? I find it so different when the sunshine is
inside me as well as outside me."

"Not a doubt of it, my dear. But that is only the more reason for rising
above all that. From the way some people speak of physical difficulties--I
don't mean you, wife--you would think that they were not merely the
inevitable which they are, but the insurmountable which they are not. That
they are physical and not spiritual is not only a great consolation, but a
strong argument for overcoming them. For all that is physical is put, or
is in the process of being put, under the feet of the spiritual. Do not
mistake me. I do not say you can make yourself feel merry or happy when you
are in a physical condition which is contrary to such mental condition. But
you can withdraw from it--not all at once; but by practice and effort you
can learn to withdraw from it, refusing to allow your judgments and actions
to be ruled by it. You can climb up out of the fogs, and sit quiet in the
sunlight on the hillside of faith. You cannot be merry down below in the
fog, for there is the fog; but you can every now and then fly with the
dove-wings of the soul up into the clear, to remind yourself that all this
passes away, is but an accident, and that the sun shines always, although
it may not at any given moment be shining on you. 'What does that matter?'
you will learn to say. 'It is enough for me to know that the sun does
shine, and that this is only a weary fog that is round about me for
the moment. I shall come out into the light beyond presently.' This is
faith--faith in God, who is the light, and is all in all. I believe that
the most glorious instances of calmness in suffering are thus achieved;
that the sufferers really do not suffer what one of us would if thrown into
their physical condition without the refuge of their spiritual condition as
well; for they have taken refuge in the inner chamber. Out of the spring of
their life a power goes forth that quenches the flames of the furnace of
their suffering, so far at least that it does not touch the deep life,
cannot make them miserable, does not drive them from the possession of
their soul in patience, which is the divine citadel of the suffering. Do
you understand me, Connie?"

"I do, papa. I think perfectly."

"Still less, then, is the fact that the difficulty is physical to be used
as an excuse for giving way to ill-temper, and, in fact, leaving ourselves
to be tossed and shaken by every tremble of our nerves. That is as if a
man should give himself into the hands and will and caprice of an
organ-grinder, to work upon him, not with the music of the spheres, but
with the wretched growling of the streets."

"But," said Wynnie, "I have heard you yourself, papa, make excuse for
people's ill-temper on this very ground, that they were out of health.
Indeed," she went on, half-crying, "I have heard you do so for myself, when
you did not know that I was within hearing."

"Yes, my dear, most assuredly. It is no fiction, but a real difference that
lies between excusing ourselves and excusing other people. No doubt the
same excuse is just for ourselves that is just for other people. But we can
do something to put ourselves right upon a higher principle, and therefore
we should not waste our time in excusing, or even in condemning ourselves,
but make haste up the hill. Where we cannot work--that is, in the life of
another--we have time to make all the excuse we can. Nay more; it is only
justice there. We are not bound to insist on our own rights, even of
excuse; the wisest thing often is to forego them. But we are bound by
heaven, earth, and hell to give them to other people. And, besides, what
a comfort to ourselves to be able to say, 'It is true So-and-so was cross
to-day. But it wasn't in the least that he wasn't friendly, or didn't like
me; it was only that he had eaten something that hadn't agreed with him.
I could see it in his eye. He had one of his headaches.' Thus, you see,
justice to our neighbour, and comfort to ourselves, is one and the same
thing. But it would be a sad thing to have to think that when we found
ourselves in the same ungracious condition, from whatever cause, we had
only to submit to it, saying, 'It is a law of nature,' as even those who
talk most about laws will not do, when those laws come between them and
their own comfort. They are ready enough then to call in the aid of higher
laws, which, so far from being contradictory, overrule the lower to get
things into something like habitable, endurable condition. It may be a law
of nature; but what has the Law of the Spirit of Life to _propound anent_
it? as the Scotch lawyers would say."

A little pause followed, during which I hope some of us were thinking. That
Wynnie, at least, was, her next question made evident.

"What you say about a law of nature and a law of the Spirit makes me think
again how that walking on the water has always been a puzzle to me."

"It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand it," I
answered.

"But I find it so hard to believe. Can't you say something, papa, to help
me to believe it?"

"I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing
against reason in the story."

"Tell me, please, what you mean."

"If all things were made by Jesus, the Word of God, would it be reasonable
that the water that he had created should be able to drown him?"

"It might drown his body."

"It would if he had not the power over it still, to prevent it from laying
hold of him. But just think for a moment. God is a Spirit. Spirit is
greater than matter. Spirit makes matter. Think what it was for a human
body to have such a divine creative power dwelling in it as that which
dwelt in the human form of Jesus! What power, and influence, and utter rule
that spirit must have over the body in which it dwells! We cannot imagine
how much; but if we have so much power over our bodies, how much more must
the pure, divine Jesus, have had over his! I suspect this miracle was
wrought, not through anything done to the water, but through the power of
the spirit over the body of Jesus, which was all obedient thereto. I am not
explaining the miracle, for that I cannot do. One day I think it will be
plain common sense to us. But now I am only showing you what seems to me to
bring us a step nearer to the essential region of the miracle, and so far
make it easier to believe. If we look at the history of our Lord, we shall
find that, true real human body as his was, it was yet used by his spirit
after a fashion in which we cannot yet use our bodies. And this is only
reasonable. Let me give you an instance. You remember how, on the Mount of
Transfiguration, that body shone so that the light of it illuminated
all his garments. You do not surely suppose that this shine was
external--physical light, as we say, _merely?_ No doubt it was physical
light, for how else would their eyes have seen it? But where did it come
from? What was its source? I think it was a natural outburst of glory from
the mind of Jesus, filled with the perfect life of communion with his
Father--the light of his divine blessedness taking form in physical
radiance that permeated and glorified all that surrounded him. As the
body is the expression of the soul, as the face of Jesus himself was the
expression of the being, the thought, the love of Jesus in like manner this
radiance was the natural expression of his gladness, even in the face of
that of which they had been talking--Moses, Elias, and he--namely,
the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Again, after his
resurrection, he convinced the hands, as well as eyes, of doubting Thomas,
that he was indeed there in the body; and yet that body could appear and
disappear as the Lord willed. All this is full of marvel, I grant you; but
probably far more intelligible to us in a further state of existence than
some of the most simple facts with regard to our own bodies are to us now,
only that we are so used to them that we never think how unintelligible
they really are."

"But then about Peter, papa? What you have been saying will not apply to
Peter's body, you know."

"I confess there is more difficulty there. But if you can suppose that such
power were indwelling in Jesus, you cannot limit the sphere of its action.
As he is the head of the body, his church, in all spiritual things, so I
firmly believe, however little we can understand about it, is he in all
natural things as well. Peter's faith in him brought even Peter's body
within the sphere of the outgoing power of the Master. Do you suppose that
because Peter ceased to be brave and trusting, therefore Jesus withdrew
from him some sustaining power, and allowed him to sink? I do not believe
it. I believe Peter's sinking followed naturally upon his loss of
confidence. Thus he fell away from the life of the Master; was no longer,
in that way I mean, connected with the Head, was instantly under the
dominion of the natural law of gravitation, as we call it, and began to
sink. Therefore the Lord must take other means to save him. He must draw
nigh to him in a bodily manner. The pride of Peter had withdrawn him from
the immediate spiritual influence of Christ, conquering his matter; and
therefore the Lord must come over the stormy space between, come nearer to
him in the body, and from his own height of safety above the sphere of the
natural law, stretch out to him the arm of physical aid, lift him up, lead
him to the boat. The whole salvation of the human race is figured in this
story. It is all Christ, my love.--Does this help you to believe at all?"

"I think it does, papa. But it wants thinking over a good deal. I always
find as I think, that lighter bits shine out here and there in a thing I
have no hope of understanding altogether. That always helps me to believe
that the rest might be understood too, if I were only clever enough."

"Simple enough, not clever enough, my dear."

"But there's one thing," said my wife, "that is more interesting to me than
what you have been talking about. It is the other instances in the life of
St. Peter in which you said he failed in a similar manner from pride or
self-satisfaction."

"One, at least, seems to me very clear. You have often remarked to me,
Ethel, how little praise servants can stand; how almost invariably after
you have commended the diligence or skill of any of your household, as you
felt bound to do, one of the first visible results was either a falling
away in the performance by which she had gained the praise, or a more
or less violent access, according to the nature of the individual, of
self-conceit, soon breaking out in bad temper or impertinence. Now you will
see precisely the same kind of thing in Peter."

Here I opened my New Testament, and read fragmentarily, "'But whom say ye
that I am?... Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.... Blessed
art thou, Simon.... My Father hath revealed that unto thee. I will give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.... I must suffer many things,
and be killed, and be raised again the third day.... Be it far from thee,
Lord. This shall not be unto thee.... Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art
an offence unto me.' Just contemplate the change here in the words of our
Lord. 'Blessed art thou.' 'Thou art an offence unto me.' Think what change
has passed on Peter's mood before the second of these words could be
addressed to him to whom the first had just been spoken. The Lord had
praised him. Peter grew self-sufficient, even to the rebuking of him whose
praise had so uplifted him. But it is ever so. A man will gain a great
moral victory: glad first, then uplifted, he will fall before a paltry
temptation. I have sometimes wondered, too, whether his denial of our Lord
had anything to do with his satisfaction with himself for making that
onslaught upon the high priest's servant. It was a brave thing and a
faithful to draw a single sword against a multitude. In his fiery eagerness
and inexperience, the blow, well meant to cleave Malchus's head, missed,
and only cut off his ear; but Peter had herein justified his confident
saying that he would not deny him. He was not one to deny his Lord who had
been the first to confess him! Yet ere the cock had crowed, ere the morning
had dawned, the vulgar grandeur of the palace of the high priest (for let
it be art itself, it was vulgar grandeur beside that grandeur which it
caused Peter to deny), and the accusing tone of a maid-servant, were enough
to make him quail whom the crowd with lanterns, and torches, and weapons,
had only roused to fight. True, he was excited then, and now he was cold in
the middle of the night, with Jesus gone from his sight a prisoner, and for
the faces of friends that had there surrounded him and strengthened him
with their sympathy, now only the faces of those who were, or whom at least
Peter thought to be on the other side, looking at him curiously, as a
strange intruder into their domains. Alas, that the courage which led him
to follow the Lord should have thus led him, not to deny him, but into the
denial of him! Yet why should I say _alas?_ If the denial of our Lord
lay in his heart a possible thing, only prevented by his being kept in
favourable circumstances for confessing him, it was a thousand times better
that he should deny him, and thus know what a poor weak thing that heart of
his was, trust it no more, and give it up to the Master to make it strong,
and pure, and grand. For such an end the Lord was willing to bear all the
pain of Peter's denial. O, the love of that Son of Man, who in the midst of
all the wretched weaknesses of those who surrounded him, loved the best in
them, and looked forward to his own victory for them that they might become
all that they were meant to be--like him; that the lovely glimmerings of
truth and love that were in them now--the breakings forth of the light that
lighteneth every man--might grow into the perfect human day; loving them
even the more that they were so helpless, so oppressed, so far from that
ideal which was their life, and which all their dim desires were reaching
after!"

Here I ceased, and a little overcome with the great picture in my soul
to which I had been able only to give the poorest expression, rose, and
retired to my own room. There I could only fall on my knees and pray that
the Lord Christ, who had died for me, might have his own way with me--that
it might be worth his while to have done what he did and what he was doing
now for me. To my Elder Brother, my Lord, and my God, I gave myself yet
again, confidently, because he cared to have me, and my very breath was
his. I _would_ be what he wanted, who knew all about it, and had done
everything that I might be a son of God--a living glory of gladness.






CHAPTER II.

NICEBOOTS.





The next morning the captain of the lost vessel called upon me early to
thank me for himself and his men. He was a fine honest-looking burly
fellow, dressed in blue from head to heel. He might have sat for a portrait
of Chaucer's shipman, as far as his hue and the first look of him went. It
was clear that "in many a tempest had his beard be shake," and certainly
"the hote somer had made his hew all broun;" but farther the likeness would
hardly go, for the "good fellow" which Chaucer applies with such irony to
the shipman of his time, who would filch wine, and drown all the captives
he made in a sea-fight, was clearly applicable in good earnest to this
shipman. Still, I thought I had something to bring against him, and
therefore before we parted I said to him--

"They tell me, captain, that your vessel was not seaworthy, and that you
could not but have known that."

"She was my own craft, sir, and I judged her fit for several voyages more.
If she had been A 1 she couldn't have been mine; and a man must do what he
can for his family."

"But you were risking your life, you know."

"A few chances more or less don't much signify to a sailor, sir. There
ain't nothing to be done without risk. You'll find an old tub go voyage
after voyage, and she beyond bail, and a clipper fresh off the stocks go
down in the harbour. It's all in the luck, sir, I assure you."

"Well, if it were your own life I should have nothing to say, seeing you
have a family to look after; but what about the poor fellows who made the
voyage with you? Did they know what kind of a vessel they were embarking
in?"

"Wherever the captain's ready to go he'll always find men ready to follow
him. Bless you, sir, they never asks no questions. If a sailor was always
to be thinking of the chances, he'd never set his foot off shore."

"Still, I don't think it's right they shouldn't know."

"I daresay they knowed all about the old brig as well as I did myself. You
gets to know all about a craft just as you do about her captain. She's got
a character of her own, and she can't hide it long, any more than you can
hide yours, sir, begging your pardon."

"I daresay that's all correct, but still I shouldn't like anyone to say to
me, 'You ought to have told me, captain.' Therefore, you see, I'm telling
you, captain, and now I'm clear.--Have a glass of wine before you go," I
concluded, ringing the bell.

"Thank you, sir. I'll turn over what you've been saying, and anyhow I take
it kind of you."

So we parted. I have never seen him since, and shall not, most likely,
in this world. But he looked like a man that could understand why and
wherefore I spoke as I did. And I had the advantage of having had a chance
of doing something for him first of all. Let no man who wants to do
anything for the soul of a man lose a chance of doing something for his
body. He ought to be willing, and ready, which is more than willing, to do
that whether or not; but there are those who need this reminder. Of many a
soul Jesus laid hold by healing the suffering the body brought upon it. No
one but himself can tell how much the nucleus of the church was composed of
and by those who had received health from his hands, loving-kindness from
the word of his mouth. My own opinion is that herein lay the very germ of
the kernel of what is now the ancient, was then the infant church; that
from them, next to the disciples themselves, went forth the chief power of
life in love, for they too had seen the Lord, and in their own humble way
could preach and teach concerning him. What memories of him theirs must
have been!

Things went on very quietly, that is, as I mean now, from the view-point of
a historian, without much to record bearing notably upon after events,
for the greater part of the next week. I wandered about my parish, making
acquaintance with different people in an outside sort of way, only now
and then finding an opportunity of seeing into their souls except by
conclusion. But I enjoyed endlessly the aspects of the country. It was not
picturesque except in parts. There was little wood and there were no
hills, only undulations, though many of them were steep enough even from a
pedestrian's point of view. Neither, however, were there any plains except
high moorland tracts. But the impression of the whole country was large,
airy, sunshiny, and it was clasped in the arms of the infinite, awful, yet
how bountiful sea--if one will look at the ocean in its world-wide, not to
say its eternal aspects, and not out of the fears of a hidebound love of
life! The sea and the sky, I must confess, dwarfed the earth, made it of
small account beside them; but who could complain of such an influence? At
least, not I.

My children bathed in this sea every day, and gathered strength and
knowledge from it. It was, as I have indicated, a dangerous coast to bathe
upon. The sweep of the tides varied with the varying sands that were cast
up. There was now in one place, now in another, a strong _undertow_, as
they called it--a reflux, that is, of the inflowing waters, which was quite
sufficient to carry those who could not swim out into the great deep, and
rendered much exertion necessary, even in those who could, to regain the
shore. But there was a fine strong Cornish woman to take charge of the
ladies and the little boys, and she, watching the ways of the wild monster,
knew the when and the where, and all about it.

Connie got out upon the downs every day. She improved in health certainly,
and we thought a little even in her powers of motion. The weather continued
superb. What rain there was fell at night, just enough for Nature to wash
her face with and so look quite fresh in the morning. We contrived a dinner
on the sands on the other side of the bay, for the Friday of this same
week.

The morning rose gloriously. Harry and Charlie were turning the house
upside down, to judge by their noise, long before I was in the humour to
get up, for I had been reading late the night before. I never made much
objection to mere noise, knowing that I could stop it the moment I pleased,
and knowing, which was of more consequence, that so far from there being
anything wrong in making a noise, the sea would make noise enough in our
ears before we left Kilkhaven. The moment, however, that I heard a
thread of whining or a burst of anger in the noise, I would interfere at
once--treating these just as things that must be dismissed at once. Harry
and Charlie were, I say, to use their own form of speech, making such a row
that morning, however, that I was afraid of some injury to the house or
furniture, which were not our own. So I opened my door and called out--

"Harry! Charlie! What on earth are you about?"

"Nothing, papa," answered Charlie. "Only it's so jolly!"

"What is jolly, my boy?" I asked.

"O, I don't know, papa! It's _so_ jolly!"

"Is it the sunshine?" thought I; "and the wind? God's world all over? The
God of gladness in the hearts of the lads? Is it that? No wonder, then,
that they cannot tell yet what it is!"

I withdrew into my room; and so far from seeking to put an end to the
noise--I knew Connie did not mind it--listened to it with a kind of
reverence, as the outcome of a gladness which the God of joy had kindled
in their hearts. Soon after, however, I heard certain dim growls of
expostulation from Harry, and having, from experience, ground for believing
that the elder was tyrannising over the younger, I stopped that and the
noise together, sending Charlie to find out where the tide would be between
one and two o'clock, and Harry to run to the top of the hill, and find out
the direction of the wind. Before I was dressed, Charlie was knocking at my
door with the news that it would he half-tide about one; and Harry speedily
followed with the discovery that the wind was north-east by south-west,
which of course determined that the sun would shine all day.

As the dinner-hour drew near, the servants went over, with Walter at their
head, to choose a rock convenient for a table, under the shelter of the
rocks on the sands across the bay. Thither, when Walter returned, we bore
our Connie, carrying her litter close by the edge of the retreating tide,
which sometimes broke in a ripple of music under her, wetting our feet with
innocuous rush. The child's delight was extreme, as she thus skimmed the
edge of the ocean, with the little ones gambolling about her, and her mamma
and Wynnie walking quietly on the landward side, for she wished to have no
one between her and the sea.

After scrambling with difficulty over some rocky ledges, and stopping at
Connie's request, to let her look into a deep pool in the sand, which
somehow or other retained the water after the rest had retreated, we set
her down near the mouth of a cave, in the shadow of a rock. And there was
our dinner nicely laid for us on a flat rock in front of the cave. The
cliffs rose behind us, with curiously curved and variously angled strata.
The sun in his full splendour threw dark shadows on the brilliant yellow
sand, more and more of which appeared as the bright blue water withdrew
itself, now rippling over it as if it meant to hide it all up again, now
uncovering more as it withdrew for another rush. Before we had finished our
dinner, the foremost wavelets appeared so far away over the plain of the
sand, that it seemed a long walk to the edge that had been almost at
our feet a little while ago. Between us and it lay a lovely desert of
glittering sand.

When even Charlie and Harry had arrived at the conclusion that it was time
to stop eating, we left the shadow and went out into the sun, carrying
Connie and laying her down in the midst of "the ribbed sea-sand," which
was very ribby to-day. On a shawl a little way off from her lay her baby,
crowing and kicking with the same jollity that had possessed the boys ever
since the morning. I wandered about with Wynnie on the sands, picking
up amongst other things strange creatures in thin shells ending in
vegetable-like tufts, if I remember rightly. My wife sat on the end of
Connie's litter, and Dora and the boys, a little way off, were trying how
far the full force of three wooden spades could, in digging a hole, keep
ahead of the water which was ever tumbling in the sand from the sides of
the same. Behind, the servants were busy washing the plates in a pool, and
burying the fragments of the feast; for I made it a rule wherever we went
that the fair face of nature was not to be defiled. I have always taken the
part of excursionists in these latter days of running to and fro, against
those who complain that the loveliest places are being destroyed by their
inroads. But there is one most offensive, even disgusting habit amongst
them--that of leaving bones, fragments of meat pies, and worse than all,
pieces of greasy paper about the place, which I cannot excuse, or at least
defend. Even the surface of Cumberland and Westmoreland lakes will be
defiled with these floating abominations--not abominations at all if they
are decently burned or buried when done with, but certainly abominations
when left to be cast hither and thither in the wind, over the grass, or on
the eddy and ripple of the pure water, for days after those who have thus
left their shame behind them have returned to their shops or factories. I
forgive them for trampling down the grass and the ferns. That cannot be
helped, and in comparison of the good they get, is not to be considered at
all. But why should they leave such a savage trail behind them as this,
forgetting too that though they have done with the spot, there are others
coming after them to whom these remnants must be an offence?

At length in our roaming, Wynnie and I approached a long low ridge of rock,
rising towards the sea into which it ran. Crossing this, we came suddenly
upon the painter whom Dora had called Niceboots, sitting with a small easel
before him. We were right above him ere we knew. He had his back towards
us, so that we saw at once what he was painting.

"O, papa!" cried Wynnie involuntarily, and the painter looked round.

"I beg your pardon," I said. "We came over from the other side, and did not
see you before. I hope we have not disturbed you much."

"Not in the least," he answered courteously, and rose as he spoke.

I saw that the subject on his easel suggested that of which Wynnie had been
making a sketch at the same time, on the day when Connie first lay on
the top of the opposite cliff. But he was not even looking in the same
direction now.

"Do you mind having your work seen before it is finished?"

"Not in the least, if the spectators will do me the favour to remember that
most processes have to go through a seemingly chaotic stage," he answered.

I was struck with the mode and tone of the remark.

"Here is no common man," I said to myself, and responded to him in
something of a similar style.

"I wish we could always keep that in mind with regard to human beings
themselves, as well as their works," I said aloud.

The painter looked at me, and I looked at him.

"We speak each from the experience of his own profession, I presume," he
said.

"But," I returned, glancing at the little picture in oils upon his easel,
"your work here, though my knowledge of painting is next to nothing--
perhaps I ought to say nothing at all--this picture must have long ago
passed the chaotic stage."

"It is nearly as much finished as I care to make it," he returned. "I
hardly count this work at all. I am chiefly amusing, or rather pleasing, my
own fancy at present."

"Apparently," I remarked, "you had the conical rock outside the hay for
your model, and now you are finishing it with your back turned towards it.
How is that?"

"I will soon explain," he answered. "The moment I saw this rock, it
reminded me of Dante's Purgatory."

"Ah, you are a reader of Dante?" I said. "In the original, I hope."

"Yes. A friend of mine, a brother painter, an Italian, set me going with
that, and once going with Dante, nobody could well stop. I never knew what
intensity _per se_ was till I began to read Dante."

"That is quite my own feeling. Now, to return to your picture."

"Without departing at all from natural forms, I thought to make it suggest
the Purgatorio to anyone who remembered the description given of the place
_ab extra_ by Ulysses, in the end of the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno.
Of course, that thing there is a mere rock, yet it has certain mountain
forms about it. I have put it at a much greater distance, you see, and have
sought to make it look a solitary mountain in the midst of a great water.
You will discover even now that the circles of the Purgatory are suggested
without any approach, I think, to artificial structure; and there are
occasional hints at figures, which you cannot definitely detach from the
rocks--which, by the way, you must remember, were in one part full of
sculptures. I have kept the mountain near enough, however, to indicate
the great expanse of wild flowers on the top, which Matilda was so busy
gathering. I want to indicate too the wind up there in the terrestrial
paradise, ever and always blowing one way. You remember, Mr. Walton?"--
for the young man, getting animated, began to talk as if we had known each
other for some time--and here he repeated the purport of Dante's words in
English:

  "An air of sweetness, changeless in its flow,
  With no more strength than in a soft wind lies,
  Smote peacefully against me on the brow.
  By which the leaves all trembling, level-wise,
  Did every one bend thitherward to where
  The high mount throws its shadow at sunrise."

"I thought you said you did not use translations?"

"I thought it possible that--Miss Walton (?)" interrogatively this--"might
not follow the Italian so easily, and I feared to seem pedantic."

"She won't lag far behind, I flatter myself," I returned. "Whose
translation do you quote?"

He hesitated a moment; then said carelessly:

"I have cobbled a few passages after that fashion myself."

"It has the merit of being near the original at least," I returned; "and
that seems to me one of the chief merits a translation can possess."

"Then," the painter resumed, rather hastily, as if to avoid any further
remark upon his verses, "you see those white things in the air above?" Here
he turned to Wynnie. "Miss Walton will remember--I think she was making a
drawing of the rock at the same time I was--how the seagulls, or some such
birds--only two or three of them--kept flitting about the top of it?"

"I remember quite well," answered Wynnie, with a look of appeal to me.

"Yes," I interposed; "my daughter, in describing what she had been
attempting to draw, spoke especially of the birds over the rock. For she
said the white lapping of the waves looked like spirits trying to get
loose, and the white birds like foam that had broken its chains, and risen
in triumph into the air."

Here Mr. Niceboots, for as yet I did not know what else to call him, looked
at Wynnie almost with a start.

"How wonderfully that falls in with my fancy about the rock!" he said.
"Purgatory indeed! with imprisoned souls lapping at its foot, and the free
souls winging their way aloft in ether. Well, this world is a kind of
purgatory anyhow--is it not, Mr. Walton?"

"Certainly it is. We are here tried as by fire, to see what our work
is--whether wood, hay, and stubble, or gold and silver and precious
stones."

"You see," resumed the painter, "if anybody only glanced at my little
picture, he would take those for sea-birds; but if he looked into it, and
began to suspect me, he would find out that they were Dante and Beatrice on
their way to the sphere of the moon."

"In one respect at least, then, your picture has the merit of corresponding
to fact; for what thing is there in the world, or what group of things, in
which the natural man will not see merely the things of nature, but the
spiritual man the things of the spirit?"

"I am no theologian," said the painter, turning away, I thought somewhat
coldly.

But I could see that Wynnie was greatly interested in him. Perhaps she
thought that here was some enlightenment of the riddle of the world for
her, if she could but get at what he was thinking. She was used to my way
of it: here might be something new.

"If I can be of any service to Miss Walton with her drawing, I shall be
happy," he said, turning again towards me.

But his last gesture had made me a little distrustful of him, and I
received his advances on this point with a coldness which I did not wish to
make more marked than his own towards my last observation.

"You are very kind," I said; "but Miss Walton does not presume to be an
artist."

I saw a slight shade pass over Wynnie's countenance. When I turned to
Mr. Niceboots, a shade of a different sort was on his. Surely I had said
something wrong to cast a gloom on two young faces. I made haste to make
amends.

"We are just going to have some coffee," I said, "for my servants, I see,
have managed to kindle a fire. Will you come and allow me to introduce you
to Mrs. Walton?"

"With much pleasure," he answered, rising from the rock whereon, as he
spoke about his picture, he had again seated himself. He was a fine-built,
black-bearded, sunburnt fellow, with clear gray eyes notwithstanding, a
rather Roman nose, and good features generally. But there was an air of
suppression, if not of sadness, about him, however, did not in the least
interfere with the manliness of his countenance, or of its expression.

"But," I said, "how am I to effect an introduction, seeing I do not yet
know your name."

I had had to keep a sharp look-out on myself lest I should call him Mr.
Niceboots. He smiled very graciously and replied,

"My name is Percivale--Charles Percivale."

"A descendant of Sir Percivale of King Arthur's Round Table?"

"I cannot count quite so far back," he answered, "as that--not quite to the
Conquest," he added, with a slight deepening of his sunburnt hue. "I do
come of a fighting race, but I cannot claim Sir Percivale."

We were now walking along the edge of the still retreating waves towards
the group upon the sands, Mr. Percivale and I foremost, and Wynnie
lingering behind.

"O, do look here papa!" she cried, from some little distance.

We turned and saw her gazing at something on the sand at her feet.
Hastening back, we found it to be a little narrow line of foam-bubbles,
which the water had left behind it on the sand, slowly breaking and passing
out of sight. Why there should be foam-bubbles there then, and not always,
I do not know. But there they were--and such colours! deep rose and grassy
green and ultramarine blue; and, above all, one dark, yet brilliant and
intensely-burnished, metallic gold. All of them were of a solid-looking
burnished colour, like opaque body-colour laid on behind translucent
crystal. Those little ocean bubbles were well worth turning to see; and so
I said to Wynnie. But, as we gazed, they went on vanishing, one by one.
Every moment a heavenly glory of hue burst, and was nowhere.

We walked away again towards the rest of our party.

"Don't you think those bubbles more beautiful than any precious stones you
ever saw, papa?"

"Yes, my love, I think they are, except it be the opal. In the opal, God
seems to have fixed the evanescent and made the vanishing eternal."

"And flowers are more beautiful things than jewels?' she said
interrogatively.

"Many--perhaps most flowers are," I granted. "And did you ever see such
curves and delicate textures anywhere else as in the clouds, papa?"

"I think not--in the cirrhous clouds at least--the frozen ones. But what
are you putting me to my catechism for in this way, my child?"

"O, papa, I could go on a long time with that catechism; but I will end
with one question more, which you will perhaps find a little harder to
answer. Only I daresay you have had an answer ready for years lest one of
us should ask you some day."

"No, my love. I never got an answer ready for anything lest one of my
children should ask me. But it is not surprising either that children
should be puzzled about the things that have puzzled their father, or that
by the time they are able to put the questions, he should have found out
some sort of an answer to most of them. Go on with your catechism, Wynnie.
Now for your puzzle!"

"It's not a funny question, papa; it's a very serious one. I can't think
why the unchanging God should have made all the most beautiful things
wither and grow ugly, or burst and vanish, or die somehow and be no more.
Mamma is not so beautiful as she once was, is she?"

"In one way, no; but in another and better way, much more so. But we will
not talk about her kind of beauty just now; we will keep to the more
material loveliness of which you have been speaking--though, in truth, no
loveliness can be only material. Well, then, for my answer; it is, I think,
because God loves the beauty so much that he makes all beautiful things
vanish quickly."

"I do not understand you, papa."

"I daresay not, my dear. But I will explain to you a little, if Mr.
Percivale will excuse me."

"On the contrary, I am greatly interested, both in the question and the
answer."

"Well, then, Wynnie; everything has a soul and a body, or something like
them. By the body we know the soul. But we are always ready to love the
body instead of the soul. Therefore, God makes the body die continually,
that we may learn to love the soul indeed. The world is full of beautiful
things, but God has saved many men from loving the mere bodies of them, by
making them poor; and more still by reminding them that if they be as rich
as Croesus all their lives, they will be as poor as Diogenes--poorer,
without even a tub--when this world, with all its pictures, scenery, books,
and--alas for some Christians!--bibles even, shall have vanished away."

"Why do you say _alas_, papa--if they are Christians especially?"

"I say _alas_ only from their point of view, not from mine. I mean such as
are always talking and arguing from the Bible, and never giving themselves
any trouble to do what it tells them. They insist on the anise and cummin,
and forget the judgment, mercy, and faith. These worship the body of the
truth, and forget the soul of it. If the flowers were not perishable, we
should cease to contemplate their beauty, either blinded by the passion for
hoarding the bodies of them, or dulled by the hebetude of commonplaceness
that the constant presence of them would occasion. To compare great things
with small, the flowers wither, the bubbles break, the clouds and sunsets
pass, for the very same holy reason, in the degree of its application to
them, for which the Lord withdrew from his disciples and ascended again to
his Father--that the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, the Soul of things,
might come to them and abide with them, and so the Son return, and the
Father be revealed. The flower is not its loveliness, and its loveliness
we must love, else we shall only treat them as flower-greedy children,
who gather and gather, and fill hands and baskets, from a mere desire
of acquisition, excusable enough in them, but the same in kind, however
harmless in mode, and degree, and object, as the avarice of the miser.
Therefore God, that we may always have them, and ever learn to love their
beauty, and yet more their truth, sends the beneficent winter that we may
think about what we have lost, and welcome them when they come again with
greater tenderness and love, with clearer eyes to see, and purer hearts
to understand, the spirit that dwells in them. We cannot do without the
'winter of our discontent.' Shakspere surely saw that when he makes Titania
say, in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_:

  'The human mortals want their winter here'--

namely, to set things right; and none of those editors who would alter the
line seem to have been capable of understanding its import."

"I think I understand you a little," answered Wynnie. Then, changing her
tone, "I told you, papa, you would have an answer ready; didn't I?"

"Yes, my child; but with this difference--I found the answer to meet my own
necessities, not yours."

"And so you had it ready for me when I wanted it."

"Just so. That is the only certainty you have in regard to what you give
away. No one who has not tasted it and found it good has a right to offer
any spiritual dish to his neighbour."

Mr. Percivale took no part in our conversation. The moment I had presented
him to Mrs. Walton and Connie, and he had paid his respects by a somewhat
stately old-world obeisance, he merged the salutation into a farewell, and,
either forgetting my offer of coffee, or having changed his mind, withdrew,
a little to my disappointment, for, notwithstanding his lack of response
where some things he said would have led me to expect it, I had begun to
feel much interested in him.

He was scarcely beyond hearing, when Dora came up to me from her digging,
with an eager look on her sunny face.

"Hasn't he got nice boots, papa?"

"Indeed, my dear, I am unable to support you in that assertion, for I never
saw his boots."

"I did, then," returned the child; "and I never saw such nice boots."

"I accept the statement willingly," I replied; and we heard no more of the
boots, for his name was now substituted for his nickname. Nor did I see
himself again for some days--not in fact till next Sunday--though why he
should come to church at all was something of a puzzle to me, especially
when I knew him better.






CHAPTER III.

THE BLACKSMITH.





The next day I set out after breakfast to inquire about a blacksmith. It
was not every or any blacksmith that would do. I must not fix on the first
to do my work because he was the first. There was one in the village, I
soon learned; but I found him an ordinary man, who, I have no doubt, could
shoe a horse and avoid the quick, but from whom any greater delicacy of
touch was not to be expected. Inquiring further, I heard of a young smith
who had lately settled in a hamlet a couple of miles distant, but still
within the parish. In the afternoon I set out to find him. To my surprise,
he was a pale-faced, thoughtful-looking man, with a huge frame, which
appeared worn rather than naturally thin, and large eyes that looked at the
anvil as if it was the horizon of the world. He had got a horse-shoe in his
tongs when I entered. Notwithstanding the fire that glowed on the hearth,
and the sparks that flew like a nimbus in eruption from about his person,
the place looked very dark to me entering from the glorious blaze of the
almost noontide sun, and felt cool after the deep lane through which I had
come, and which had seemed a very reservoir of sunbeams. I could see the
smith by the glow of his horse-shoe; but all between me and the shoe was
dark.

"Good-morning," I said. "It is a good thing to find a man by his work. I
heard you half a mile off or so, and now I see you, but only by the glow of
your work. It is a grand thing to work in fire."

He lifted his hammered hand to his forehead courteously, and as lightly as
if the hammer had been the butt-end of a whip.

"I don't know if you would say the same if you had to work at it in weather
like this," he answered.

"If I did not," I returned, "that would be the fault of my weakness, and
would not affect the assertion I have just made, that it is a fine thing to
work in fire."

"Well, you may be right," he rejoined with a sigh, as, throwing the
horse-shoe he had been fashioning from the tongs on the ground, he next let
the hammer drop beside the anvil, and leaning against it held his head
for a moment between his hands, and regarded the floor. "It does not much
matter to me," he went on, "if I only get through my work and have done
with it. No man shall say I shirked what I'd got to do. And then when it's
over there won't be a word to say agen me, or--"

He did not finish the sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in a
somewhat dreary patch, if the word _dreary_ can be truly used with respect
to any manifestation of sunlight, on the dark clay floor.

"I hope you are not ill," I said.

He made no answer, but taking up his tongs caught with it from a beam one
of a number of roughly-finished horse-shoes which hung there, and put it on
the fire to be fashioned to a certain fit. While he turned it in the fire,
and blew the bellows, I stood regarding him. "This man will do for my
work," I said to myself; "though I should not wonder from the look of him
if it was the last piece of work he ever did under the New Jerusalem." The
smith's words broke in on my meditations.

"When I was a little boy," he said, "I once wanted to stay at home from
school. I had, I believe, a little headache, but nothing worth minding. I
told my mother that I had a headache, and she kept me, and I helped her at
her spinning, which was what I liked best of anything. But in the afternoon
the Methodist preacher came in to see my mother, and he asked me what was
the matter with me, and my mother answered for me that I had a bad head,
and he looked at me; and as my head was quite well by this time, I could
not help feeling guilty. And he saw my look, I suppose, sir, for I can't
account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he said to
me, solemn-like, 'Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord Jesus
to make you whole?' I could not speak a word, partly from bashfulness, I
suppose, for I was but ten years old. So he followed it up, as they say:
'Then you ought to be at school,' says he. I said nothing, because I
couldn't. But never since then have I given in as long as I could stand.
And I can stand now, and lift my hammer, too," he said, as he took the
horse-shoe from the forge, laid it on the anvil, and again made a nimbus of
coruscating iron.

"You are just the man I want," I said. "I've got a job for you, down to
Kilkhaven, as you say in these parts."

"What is it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha' thought the
church was all spick and span by this time."

"I see you know who I am," I said.

"Of course I do," he answered. "I don't go to church myself, being brought
up a Methodist; but anything that happens in the parish is known the next
day all over it."

"You won't mind doing my job though you are a Methodist, will you?" I
asked.

"Not I, sir. If I've read right, it's the fault of the Church that we don't
pull all alongside. You turned us out, sir; we didn't go out of ourselves.
At least, if all they say is true, which I can't be sure of, you know, in
this world."

"You are quite right there though," I answered. "And in doing so, the
Church had the worst of it--as all that judge and punish their neighbours
have. But you have been the worse for it, too: all of which is to be laid
to the charge of the Church. For there is not one clergyman I know--mind, I
say, that I know--who would have made such a cruel speech to a boy as that
the Methodist parson made to you."

"But it did me good, sir?"

"Are you sure of that? I am not. Are you sure, first of all, it did
not make you proud? Are you sure it has not made you work beyond your
strength--I don't mean your strength of arm, for clearly that is all that
could be wished, but of your chest, your lungs? Is there not some danger of
your leaving someone who is dependent on you too soon unprovided for? Is
there not some danger of your having worked as if God were a hard master?
--of your having worked fiercely, indignantly, as if he wronged you by not
caring for you, not understanding you?"

He returned me no answer, but hammered momently on his anvil. Whether he
felt what I meant, or was offended at my remark, I could not then tell. I
thought it best to conclude the interview with business.

"I have a delicate little job that wants nice handling, and I fancy you are
just the man to do it to my mind," I said.

"What is it, sir?" he asked, in a friendly manner enough.

"If you will excuse me, I would rather show it to you than talk about it,"
I returned.

"As you please, sir. When do you want me?"

"The first hour you can come."

"To-morrow morning?"

"If you feel inclined."

"For that matter, I'd rather go to bed."

"Come to me instead: it's light work."

"I will, sir--at ten o'clock."

"If you please."

And so it was arranged.






CHAPTER IV.

THE LIFE-BOAT.





The next day rose glorious. Indeed, early as the sun rose, I saw him
rise--saw him, from the down above the house, over the land to the east and
north, ascend triumphant into his own light, which had prepared the way for
him; while the clouds that hung over the sea glowed out with a faint flush,
as anticipating the hour when the west should clasp the declining glory in
a richer though less dazzling splendour, and shine out the bride of the
bridegroom east, which behold each other from afar across the intervening
world, and never mingle but in the sight of the eyes. The clear pure light
of the morning made me long for the truth in my heart, which alone could
make me pure and clear as the morning, tune me up to the concert-pitch of
the nature around me. And the wind that blew from the sunrise made me hope
in the God who had first breathed into my nostrils the breath of life, that
he would at length so fill me with his breath, his wind, his spirit, that
I should think only his thoughts and live his life, finding therein my own
life, only glorified infinitely.

After breakfast and prayers, I would go to the church to await the arrival
of my new acquaintance the smith. In order to obtain entrance, I had,
however, to go to the cottage of the sexton. This was not my first visit
there, so that I may now venture to take my reader with me. To reach the
door, I had to cross a hollow by a bridge, built, for the sake of the
road, over what had once been the course of a rivulet from the heights
above. Now it was a kind of little glen, or what would in Scotland be
called a den, I think, grown with grass and wild flowers and ferns, some
of them, rare and fine. The roof of the cottage came down to the road,
and, until you came quite near, you could not but wonder where the body
that supported this head could be. But you soon saw that the ground fell
suddenly away, leaving a bank against which the cottage was built.
Crossing a garden of the smallest, the principal flowers of which were the
stonecrop on its walls, by a flag-paved path, you entered the building,
and, to your surprise, found yourself, not in a little cottage kitchen, as
you expected, but in a waste-looking space, that seemed to have forgotten
the use for which it had been built. There was a sort of loft along one
side of it, and it was heaped with indescribable lumber-looking stuff with
here and there a hint at possible machinery. The place had been a mill for
grinding corn, and its wheel had been driven by the stream which had run
for ages in the hollow of which I have already spoken. But when the canal
came to be constructed, the stream had to be turned aside from its former
course, and indeed was now employed upon occasion to feed the canal; so
that the mill of necessity had fallen into disuse and decay. Crossing this
floor, you entered another door, and turning sharp to the left, went down
a few steps of a ladder-sort of stair, and after knocking your hat against
a beam, emerged in the comfortable quaint little cottage kitchen you had
expected earlier. A cheerful though small fire burns in the grate--for
even here the hearth-fire has vanished from the records of cottage-life--
and is pleasant here even in the height of summer, though it is counted
needful only for cooking purposes. The ceiling, which consists only of the
joists and the boards that floor the bedroom above, is so low, that
necessity, if not politeness, would compel you to take off your already-
bruised hat. Some of these joists, you will find, are made further useful
by supporting each a shelf, before which hangs a little curtain of printed
cotton, concealing the few stores and postponed eatables of the house--
forming, in fact, both store-room and larder of the family. On the walls
hang several coloured prints, and within a deep glazed frame the figure of
a ship in full dress, carved in rather high relief in sycamore.

As I now entered, Mrs. Coombes rose from a high-backed settle near the
fire, and bade me good-morning with a courtesy.

"What a lovely day it is, Mrs. Coombes! It is so bright over the sea,"
I said, going to the one little window which looked out on the great
Atlantic, "that one almost expects a great merchant navy to come sailing
into Kilkhaven--sunk to the water's edge with silks, and ivory, and spices,
and apes, and peacocks, like the ships of Solomon that we read about--just
as the sun gets up to the noonstead."

Before I record her answer, I turn to my reader, who in the spirit
accompanies me, and have a little talk with him. I always make it a rule to
speak freely with the less as with the more educated of my friends. I never
_talk down_ to them, except I be expressly explaining something to them.
The law of the world is as the law of the family. Those children grow much
the faster who hear all that is going on in the house. Reaching ever above
themselves, they arrive at an understanding at fifteen, which, in the usual
way of things, they would not reach before five-and-twenty or thirty; and
this in a natural way, and without any necessary priggishness, except such
as may belong to their parents. Therefore I always spoke to the poor and
uneducated as to my own people,--freely, not much caring whether I should
be quite understood or not; for I believed in influences not to be measured
by the measure of the understanding.

But what was the old woman's answer? It was this:

"I know, sir. And when I was as young as you"--I was not so very young,
my reader may well think--"I thought like that about the sea myself.
Everything come from the sea. For my boy Willie he du bring me home the
beautifullest parrot and the talkingest you ever see, and the red shawl all
worked over with flowers: I'll show it to you some day, sir, when you have
time. He made that ship you see in the frame there, sir, all with his own
knife, out on a bit o' wood that he got at the Marishes, as they calls it,
sir--a bit of an island somewheres in the great sea. But the parrot's
gone dead like the rest of them, sir.--Where am I? and what am I talking
about?" she added, looking down at her knitting as if she had dropped
a stitch, or rather as if she had forgotten what she was making, and
therefore what was to come next.

"You were telling me how you used to think of the sea--"

"When I was as young as you. I remember, sir. Well, that lasted a long
time--lasted till my third boy fell asleep in the wide water; for it du
call it falling asleep, don't it, sir?"

"The Bible certainly does," I answered.

"It's the Bible I be meaning, of course," she returned. "Well, after that,
but I don't know what began it, only I did begin to think about the sea as
something that took away things and didn't bring them no more. And somehow
or other she never look so blue after that, and she give me the shivers.
But now, sir, she always looks to me like one o' the shining ones that come
to fetch the pilgrims. You've heard tell of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, I
daresay, sir, among the poor people; for they du say it was written by
a tinker, though there be a power o' good things in it that I think the
gentlefolk would like if they knowed it."

"I do know the book--nearly as well as I know the Bible," I answered; "and
the shining ones are very beautiful in it. I am glad you can think of the
sea that way."

"It's looking in at the window all day as I go about the house," she
answered, "and all night too when I'm asleep; and if I hadn't learned to
think of it that way, it would have driven me mad, I du believe. I was
forced to think that way about it, or not think at all. And that wouldn't
be easy, with the sound of it in your ears the last thing at night and the
first thing in the morning."

"The truth of things is indeed the only refuge from the look of things," I
replied. "But now I want the key of the church, if you will trust me with
it, for I have something to do there this morning; and the key of the tower
as well, if you please."

With her old smile, ripened only by age, she reached the ponderous keys
from the nail where they hung, and gave them into my hand. I left her in
the shadow of her dwelling, and stepped forth into the sunlight. The first
thing I observed was the blacksmith waiting for me at the church door.

Now that I saw him in the full light of day, and now that he wore his
morning face upon which the blackness of labour had not yet gathered, I
could see more plainly how far he was from well. There was a flush on his
thin cheek by which the less used exercise of walking revealed his inward
weakness, and the light in his eyes had something of the far-country in
them--"the light that never was on sea or shore." But his speech was
cheerful, for he had been walking in the light of this world, and that had
done something to make the light within him shine a little more freely.

"How do you find yourself to-day?" I asked.

"Quite well, sir, I thank you," he answered. "A day like this does a man
good. But," he added, and his countenance fell, "the heart knoweth its own
bitterness."

"It may know it too much," I returned, "just because it refuses to let a
stranger intermeddle therewith."

He made no reply. I turned the key in the great lock, and the iron-studded
oak opened and let us into the solemn gloom.

It did not require many minutes to make the man understand what I wanted of
him.

"We must begin at the bells and work down," he said.

So we went up into the tower, where, with the help of a candle I fetched
for him from the cottage, he made a good many minute measurements; found
that carpenter's work was necessary for the adjustment of the hammers and
cranks and the leading of the rods, undertook the management of the whole,
and in the course of an hour and a half went home to do what had to be done
before any fixing could be commenced, assuring me that he had no doubt of
bringing the job to a satisfactory conclusion, although the force of
the blow on the bell would doubtless have to be regulated afterwards by
repeated trials.

"In a fortnight, I hope you will be able to play a tune to the parish,
sir," he added, as he took his leave.

I resolved, if possible, to know more of the man, and find out his trouble,
if haply I might be able to give him any comfort, for I was all but certain
that there was a deeper cause for his gloom than the state of his health.

When he was gone I stood with the key of the church in my hand, and looked
about me. Nature at least was in glorious health--sunshine in her eyes,
light fantastic cloud-images passing through her brain, her breath coming
and going in soft breezes perfumed with the scents of meadows and wild
flowers, and her green robe shining in the motions of her gladness. I
turned to lock the church door, though in my heart I greatly disapproved of
locking the doors of churches, and only did so now because it was not my
church, and I had no business to force my opinions upon other customs. But
when I turned I received a kind of questioning shock. There was the fallen
world, as men call it, shining in glory and gladness, because God was
there; here was the way into the lost Paradise, yea, the door into an
infinitely higher Eden than that ever had or ever could have been,
iron-clamped and riveted, gloomy and low-browed like the entrance to a
sepulchre, and surrounded with the grim heads of grotesque monsters of the
deep. What did it mean? Here was contrast enough to require harmonising,
or if that might not be, then accounting for. Perhaps it was enough to say
that although God made both the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace,
yet the symbol of the latter was the work of man, and might not altogether
correspond to God's idea of the matter. I turned away thoughtful, and went
through the churchyard with my eye on the graves.

As I left the churchyard, still looking to the earth, the sound of voices
reached my ear. I looked up. There, down below me, at the foot of the high
bank on which I stood, lay a gorgeous shining thing upon the bosom of the
canal, full of men, and surrounded by men, women, and children, delighting
in its beauty. I had never seen such a thing before, but I knew at once,
as by instinct, which of course it could not have been, that it was the
life-boat. But in its gorgeous colours, red and white and green, it looked
more like the galley that bore Cleopatra to Actium. Nor, floating so light
on the top of the water, and broad in the beam withal, curved upward and
ornamented at stern and stem, did it look at all like a creature formed to
battle with the fierce elements. A pleasure-boat for floating between river
banks it seemed, drawn by swans mayhap, and regarded in its course by
fair eyes from green terrace-walks, or oriel windows of ancient houses on
verdant lawns. Ten men sat on the thwarts, and one in the stern by the yet
useless rudder, while men and boys drew the showy thing by a rope downward
to the lock-gates. The men in the boat, wore blue jerseys, but you could
see little of the colour for strange unshapely things that they wore above
them, like an armour cut out of a row of organ pipes. They were their
cork-jackets; for every man had to be made into a life-boat himself. I
descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near.
Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock,
so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay
sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the
gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier
custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because
their weight under the water might prevent the boat from righting itself
again, and the men could not come to the surface. Now they had a better
chance in their freedom, though why they should not be loosely attached to
the boat, I do not quite see.

They towed the shining thing through the upper gate of the lock, and slowly
she sank from my sight, and for some moments was no more to be seen, for I
had remained standing where first she passed me. All at once there she was
beyond the covert of the lock-head, abroad and free, fleeting from the
strokes of ten swift oars over the still waters of the bay towards the
waves that roared further out where the ground-swell was broken by the rise
of the sandy coast. There was no vessel in danger now, as the talk of the
spectators informed me; it was only for exercise and show that they went
out. It seemed all child's play for a time; but when they got among the
broken waves, then it looked quite another thing. The motion of the waters
laid hold upon her, and soon tossed her fearfully, now revealing the whole
of her capacity on the near side of one of their slopes, now hiding her
whole bulk in one of their hollows beyond. She, careless as a child in the
troubles of the world, floated about amongst them with what appeared too
much buoyancy for the promise of a safe return. Again and again she was
driven from her course towards the low rocks on the other side of the bay,
and again and again, returned to disport herself, like a sea-animal, as it
seemed, upon the backs of the wild, rolling, and bursting billows.

"Can she go no further?" I asked of the captain of the coastguard, whom I
found standing by my side.

"Not without some danger," he answered.

"What, then, must it be in a storm!" I remarked.

"Then of course," he returned, "they must take their chance. But there
is no good in running risks for nothing. That swell is quite enough for
exercise."

"But is it enough to accustom them to face the danger that will come?" I
asked.

"With danger comes courage," said the old sailor.

"Were you ever afraid?"

"No, sir. I don't think I ever was afraid. Yes, I believe I was once for
one moment, no more, when I fell from the maintop-gallant yard, and felt
myself falling. But it was soon over, for I only fell into the maintop.
I was expecting the smash on deck when I was brought up there. But," he
resumed, "I don't care much about the life-boat. My rockets are worth a
good deal more, as you may see, sir, before the winter is over; for seldom
does a winter pass without at least two or three wrecks close by here on
this coast. The full force of the Atlantic breaks here, sir. I _have_ seen
a life-boat--not that one--_she's_ done nothing yet--pitched stern over
stem; not capsized, you know, sir, in the ordinary way, but struck by a
wave behind while she was just hanging in the balance on the knife-edge of
a wave, and flung a somerset, as I say, stern over stem, and four of her
men lost."

While we spoke I saw on the pier-head the tall figure of the painter
looking earnestly at the boat. I thought he was regarding it chiefly from
an artistic point of view, but I became aware before long that that would
not have been consistent with the character of Charles Percivale. He had
been, I learned afterwards, a crack oarsman at Oxford, and had belonged to
the University boat, so that he had some almost class-sympathy with the
doings of the crew.

In a little while the boat sped swiftly back, entered the lock, was lifted
above the level of the storm-heaved ocean, and floated up the smooth canal
calmly as if she had never known what trouble was. Away up to the pretty
little Tudor-fashioned house in which she lay--one could almost fancy
dreaming of storms to come--she went, as softly as if moved only by her
"own sweet will," in the calm consolation for her imprisonment of having
tried her strength, and found therein good hope of success for the time
when she should rush to the rescue of men from that to which, as a monster
that begets monsters, she a watching Perseis, lay ready to offer battle.
The poor little boat lying in her little house watching the ocean, was
something signified in my eyes, and not less so after what came in the
course of changing seasons and gathered storms.

All this time I had the keys in my hand, and now went back to the cottage
to restore them to their place upon the wall. When I entered there was a
young woman of a sweet interesting countenance talking to Mrs. Coombes. Now
as it happened, I had never yet seen the daughter who lived with her, and
thought this was she.

"I've found your daughter at last then?" I said, approaching them.

"Not yet, sir. She goes out to work, and her hands be pretty full at
present. But this be almost my daughter, sir," she added. "This is my next
daughter, Mary Trehern, from the south. She's got a place near by, to be
near her mother that is to be, that's me."

Mary was hanging her head and blushing, as the old woman spoke.

"I understand," I said. "And when are you going to get your new mother,
Mary? Soon I hope."

But she gave me no reply--only hung her head lower and blushed deeper.

Mrs. Coombes spoke for her.

"She's shy, you see, sir. But if she was to speak her mind, she would ask
you whether you wouldn't marry her and Willie when he comes home from his
next voyage."

Mary's hands were trembling now, and she turned half away.

"With all my heart," I said.

The girl tried to turn towards me, but could not. I looked at her face a
little more closely. Through all its tremor, there was a look of constancy
that greatly pleased me. I tried to make her speak.

"When do you expect Willie home?" I said.

She made a little gasp and murmur, but no articulate words came.

"Don't be frightened, Mary," said her mother, as I found she always called
her. "The gentleman won't be sharp with you."

She lifted a pair of soft brown eyes with one glance and a smile, and then
sank them again.

"He'll be home in about a month, we think," answered the mother. "She's a
good ship he's aboard of, and makes good voyages."

"It is time to think about the bans, then," I said.

"If you please, sir," said the mother.

"Just come to me about it, and I will attend to it--when you think proper."

I thought I could hear a murmured "Thank you, sir," from the girl, but I
could not be certain that she spoke. I shook hands with them, and went for
a stroll on the other side of the bay.






CHAPTER V.

MR. PERCIVALE.





When I reached home I found that Connie was already on her watch-tower.
For while I was away, they had carried her out that she might see the
life-boat. I followed her, and found the whole family about her couch, and
with them Mr. Percivale, who was showing her some sketches that he had made
in the neighbourhood. Connie knew nothing of drawing; but she seemed to
me always to catch the feeling of a thing. Her remarks therefore were
generally worth listening to, and Mr. Percivale was evidently interested in
them. Wynnie stood behind Connie, looking over her shoulder at the drawing
in her hand.

"How do you get that shade of green?" I heard her ask as I came up.

And then Mr. Percivale proceeded to tell her; from which beginning they
went on to other things, till Mr. Percivale said--

"But it is hardly fair, Miss Walton; to criticise my work while you keep
your own under cover."

"I wasn't criticising, Mr. Percivale; was I, Connie?"

"I didn't hear her make a single remark, Mr. Percivale," said Connie,
taking her sister's side.

To my surprise they were talking away with the young man as if they had
known him for years, and my wife was seated at the foot of the couch,
apparently taking no exception to the suddenness of the intimacy. I am
afraid, when I think of it, that a good many springs would be missing from
the world's history if they might not flow till the papas gave their wise
consideration to everything about the course they were to take.

"I think, though," added Connie, "it is only fair that Mr. Percivale
_should_ see your work, Wynnie."

"Then I will fetch my portfolio, if Mr. Percivale will promise to remember
that I have no opinion of it. At the same time, if I could do what I wanted
to do, I think I should not be ashamed of showing my drawings even to him."

And now I was surprised to find how like grown women my daughters could
talk. To me they always spoke like the children they were; but when I
heard them now it seemed as if they had started all at once into ladies
experienced in the ways of society. There they were chatting lightly,
airily, and yet decidedly, a slight tone of badinage interwoven, with a
young man of grace and dignity, whom they had only seen once before, and
who had advanced no farther, with Connie at least, than a stately bow. They
had, however, been a whole hour together before I arrived, and their mother
had been with them all the while, which gives great courage to good girls,
while, I am told, it shuts the mouths of those who are sly. But then it
must be remembered that there are as great differences in mothers as in
girls. And besides, I believe wise girls have an instinct about men that
all the experience of other men cannot overtake. But yet again, there are
many girls foolish enough to mistake a mere impulse for instinct, and
vanity for insight.

As Wynnie spoke, she turned and went back to the house to fetch some of her
work. Now, had she been going a message for me, she would have gone like
the wind; but on this occasion she stepped along in a stately manner, far
from devoid of grace, but equally free from frolic or eagerness. And I
could not help noting as well that Mr. Percivale's eyes followed her. What
I felt or fancied is of no consequence to anybody. I do not think, even if
I were writing an autobiography, I should be forced to tell _all_ about
myself. But an autobiography is further from my fancy, however much I may
have trenched upon its limits, than any other form of literature with which
I am acquainted.

She was not long in returning, however, though she came back with the same
dignified motion.

"There is nothing really worth either showing or concealing," she said to
Mr. Percivale, as she handed him the portfolio, to help himself, as it
were. She then turned away, as if a little feeling of shyness had come over
her, and began to look for something to do about Connie. I could see that,
although she had hitherto been almost indifferent about the merit of her
drawings, she had a new-born wish that they might not appear altogether
contemptible in the eyes of Mr. Percivale. And I saw, too, that Connie's
wide eyes were taking in everything. It was wonderful how Connie's
deprivations had made her keen in observing. Now she hastened to her
sister's rescue even from such a slight inconvenience as the shadow of
embarrassment in which she found herself--perhaps from having seen some
unusual expression in my face, of which I was unconscious, though conscious
enough of what might have occasioned such.

"Give me your hand, Wynnie," said Connie, "and help me to move one inch
further on my side.--I may move just that much on my side, mayn't I, papa?"

"I think you had better not, my dear, if you can do without it," I
answered; for the doctor's injunctions had been strong.

"Very well, papa; but I feel as if it would do me good."

"Mr. Turner will be here next week, you know; and you must try to stick
to his rules till he comes to see you. Perhaps he will let you relax a
little."

Connie smiled very sweetly and lay still, while Wynnie stood holding her
hand.

Meantime Mr. Percivale, having received the drawings, had walked away with
them towards what they called the storm tower--a little building standing
square to the points of the compass, from little windows, in which the
coastguard could see with their telescopes along the coast on both sides
and far out to sea. This tower stood on the very edge of the cliff, but
behind it there was a steep descent, to reach which apparently he went
round the tower and disappeared. He evidently wanted to make a leisurely
examination of the drawings--somewhat formidable for Wynnie, I thought. At
the same time, it impressed me favourably with regard to the young man
that he was not inclined to pay a set of stupid and untrue compliments the
instant the portfolio was opened, but, on the contrary, in order to speak
what was real about them, would take the trouble to make himself in some
adequate measure acquainted with them. I therefore, to Wynnie's relief, I
fear, strolled after him, seeing no harm in taking a peep at his person,
while he was taking a peep at my daughter's mind. I went round the tower
to the other side, and there saw him at a little distance below me, but
further out on a great rock that overhung the sea, connected with the cliff
by a long narrow isthmus, a few yards lower than the cliff itself, only
just broad enough to admit of a footpath along its top, and on one side
going sheer down with a smooth hard rock-face to the sands below. The other
side was less steep, and had some grass upon it. But the path was too
narrow, and the precipice too steep, for me to trust my head with the
business of guiding my feet along it. So I stood and saw him from the
mainland--saw his head at least bent over the drawings; saw how slowly he
turned from one to the other; saw how, after having gone over them once,
he turned to the beginning and went over them again, even more slowly than
before; saw how he turned the third time to the first. Then, getting tired,
I went back to the group on the down; caught sight of Charlie and Harry
turning heels over head down the slope toward the house; found that my wife
had gone home--in fact, that only Connie and Wynnie were left. The sun
had disappeared under a cloud, and the sea had turned a little slaty; the
yellow flowers in the short down-grass no longer caught the eye with their
gold, and the wind that bent their tops had just the suspicion of an edge
in it. And Wynnie's face looked a little cloudy too, I thought, and I
feared that it was my fault. I fancied there was just a tinge of beseeching
in Connie's eye, as I looked at her, thinking there might be danger for her
in the sunlessness of the wind. But I do not know that all this, even the
clouding of the sun, may not have come out of my own mind, the result of my
not being quite satisfied with myself because of the mood I had been in. My
feeling had altered considerably in the mean time.

"Run, Wynnie, and ask Mr. Percivale, with my compliments, to come and lunch
with us," I said--more to let her see I was not displeased, however I might
have looked, than for any other reason. She went--sedately as before.

Almost as soon as she was gone, I saw that I had put her in a difficulty.
For I had discovered, very soon after coming into these parts, that her
head was no more steady than my own on high places, for she up had never
been used to such in our own level country, except, indeed, on the stair
that led down to the old quarry and the well, where, I can remember now,
she always laid her hand on the balustrade with some degree of tremor,
although she had been in the way of going up and down from childhood. But
if she could not cross that narrow and really dangerous isthmus, still less
could she call to a man she had never seen but once, across the intervening
chasm. I therefore set off after her, leaving Connie lying there in
loneliness, between the sea and the sky. But when I got to the other side
of the little tower, instead of finding her standing hesitating on the
brink of action, there she was on the rock beyond. Mr. Percivale had risen,
and was evidently giving an answer to my invitation; at least, the next
moment she turned to come back, and he followed. I stood trembling almost
to see her cross the knife-back of that ledge. If I had not been almost
fascinated, I should have turned and left them to come together, lest the
evil fancy should cross her mind that I was watching them, for it was one
thing to watch him with her drawings, and quite another to watch him with
herself. But I stood and stared as she crossed. In the middle of the path,
however--up to which point she had been walking with perfect steadiness and
composure--she lifted her eyes--by what influence I cannot tell--saw me,
looked as if she saw ghost, half lifted her arms, swayed as if she would
fall, and, indeed, was falling over the precipice when Percivale, who was
close behind her caught her in his arms, almost too late for both of them.
So nearly down was she already, that her weight bent him over the rocky
side, till it seemed as if he must yield, or his body snap. For he bent
from the waist, and looked as if his feet only kept a hold on the ground.
It was all over in a moment, but in that moment it made a sun-picture on my
brain, which returns, ever and again, with such vivid agony that I cannot
hope to get rid of it till I get rid of the brain itself in which lies the
impress. In another moment they were at my side--she with a wan, terrified
smile, he in a ruddy alarm. I was unable to speak, and could only, with
trembling steps, lead the way from the dreadful spot. I reproached myself
afterwards for my want of faith in God; but I had not had time to correct
myself yet. Without a word on their side either, they followed me. Before
we reached Connie, I recovered myself sufficiently to say, "Not a word to
Connie," and they understood me. I told Wynnie to run to the house, and
send Walter to help me to carry Connie home. She went, and, until Walter
came, I talked to Mr. Percivale as if nothing had happened. And what made
me feel yet more friendly towards him was, that he did not do as some young
men wishing to ingratiate themselves would have done: he did not offer to
help me to carry Connie home. I saw that the offer rose in his mind, and
that he repressed it. He understood that I must consider such a permission
as a privilege not to be accorded to the acquaintance of a day; that I must
know him better before I could allow the weight of my child to rest on his
strength. I was even grateful to him for this knowledge of human nature.
But he responded cordially to my invitation to lunch with us, and walked by
my side as Walter and I bore the precious burden home.

During our meal, he made himself quite agreeable; talked well on the topics
of the day, not altogether as a, man who had made up his mind, but not the
less, rather the more, as a man who had thought about them, and one who did
not find it so easy to come to a conclusion as most people do--or possibly
as not feeling the necessity of coming to a conclusion, and therefore
preferring to allow the conclusion to grow instead of constructing one for
immediate use. This I rather liked than otherwise. His behaviour, I need
hardly say, after what I have told of him already, was entirely that of a
gentleman; and his education was good. But what I did not like was, that
as often as the conversation made a bend in the direction of religious
matters, he was sure to bend it away in some other direction as soon as
ever he laid his next hold upon it. This, however, might have various
reasons to account for it, and I would wait.

After lunch, as we rose from the table, he took Wynnie's portfolio from the
side-table where he had laid it, and with no more than a bow and thanks
returned it to her. She, I thought, looked a little disappointed, though
she said as lightly as she could:

"I am afraid you have not found anything worthy of criticism in my poor
attempts, Mr. Percivale?"

"On the contrary, I shall be most happy to tell you what I think of them if
you would like to hear the impression they have made upon me," he replied,
holding out his hand to take the portfolio again.

"I shall be greatly obliged to you," she said, returning it, "for I have
had no one to help me since I left school, except a book called _Modern
Painters_, which I think has the most beautiful things in it I ever read,
but which I lay down every now and then with a kind of despair, as if I
never could do anything worth doing. How long the next volume is in coming!
Do you know the author, Mr. Percivale?"

"I wish I did. He has given me much help. I do not say I can agree with
everything he writes; but when I do not, I have such a respect for him that
I always feel as if he must be right whether he seems to me to be right or
not. And if he is severe, it is with the severity of love that will speak
only the truth."

This last speech fell on my ear like the tone of a church bell. "That will
do, my friend" thought I. But I said nothing to interrupt.

By this time he had laid the portfolio open on the side-table, and placed a
chair in front of it for my daughter. Then seating himself by her side, but
without the least approach to familiarity, he began to talk to her about
her drawings, praising, in general, the feeling, but finding fault with the
want of nicety in the execution--at least so it appeared to me from what I
could understand of the conversation.

"But," said my daughter, "it seems to me that if you get the feeling right,
that is the main thing."

"No doubt," returned Mr. Percivale; "so much the main thing that any
imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it becomes of
the greatest consequence."

"But can it really interfere with the feeling?"

"Perhaps not with most people, simply because most people observe so
badly that their recollections of nature are all blurred and blotted and
indistinct, and therefore the imperfections we are speaking of do not
affect them. But with the more cultivated it is otherwise. It is for them
you ought to work, for you do not thereby lose the others. Besides, the
feeling is always intensified by the finish, for that belongs to the
feeling too, and must, I should think, have some influence even where it is
not noted."

"But is it not a hopeless thing to attempt the finish of nature?"

"Not at all; to the degree, that is, in which you can represent anything
else of nature. But in this drawing now you have no representative of,
nothing to hint at or recall the feeling of the exquisiteness of nature's
finish. Why should you not at least have drawn a true horizon-line there?
Has the absolute truth of the meeting of sea and sky nothing to do with the
feeling which such a landscape produces? I should have thought you would
have learned that, if anything, from Mr. Ruskin."

Mr. Percivale spoke earnestly. Wynnie, either from disappointment or
despair, probably from a mixture of both, apparently fancied that, or
rather felt as if, he was scolding her, and got cross. This was anything
but dignified, especially with a stranger, and one who was doing his
best to help her. And yet, somehow, I must with shame confess I was not
altogether sorry to see it. In fact, my reader, I must just uncover my sin,
and say that I felt a little jealous of Mr. Percivale. The negative reason
was that I had not yet learned to love him. The only cure for jealousy is
love. But I was ashamed too of Wynnie's behaving so childishly. Her face
flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose, saying, with a little
choke in her voice--

"I see it's no use trying. I won't intrude any more into things I am
incapable of. I am much obliged to you, Mr. Percivale, for showing me how
presumptuous I have been."

The painter rose as she rose, looking greatly concerned. But he did not
attempt to answer her. Indeed she gave him no time. He could only spring
after her to open the door for her. A more than respectful bow as she left
the room was his only adieu. But when he turned his face again towards me,
it expressed even a degree of consternation.

"I fear," he said, approaching me with an almost military step, much at
variance with the shadow upon his countenance, "I fear I have been rude to
Miss Walton, but nothing was farther--"

"You mistake entirely, Mr. Percivale. I heard all you were saying, and you
were not in the least rude. On the contrary, I consider you were very kind
to take the trouble with her you did. Allow me to make the apology for my
daughter which I am sure she will wish made when she recovers from the
disappointment of finding more obstacles in the way of her favourite
pursuit than she had previously supposed. She is only too ready to lose
heart, and she paid too little attention to your approbation and too
much--in proportion, I mean--to your--criticism. She felt discouraged and
lost her temper, but more with herself and her poor attempts, I venture
to assure you, than with your remarks upon them. She is too much given to
despising her own efforts."

"But I must have been to blame if I caused any such feeling with regard to
those drawings, for I assure you they contain great promise."

"I am glad you think so. That I should myself be of the same opinion can be
of no consequence."

"Miss Walton at least sees what ought to be represented. All she needs is
greater severity in the quality of representation. And that would have
grown without any remark from onlookers. Only a friendly criticism is
sometimes a great help. It opens the eyes a little sooner than they would
have opened of themselves. And time," he added, with a half sigh and with
an appeal in his tone, as if he would justify himself to my conscience, "is
half the battle in this world. It is over so soon."

"No sooner than it ought to be," I rejoined.

"So it may appear to you," he returned; "for you, I presume to
conjecture, have worked hard and done much. I may or may not have worked
hard--sometimes I think I have, sometimes I think I have not--but I
certainly have done little. Here I am nearly thirty, and have made no mark
on the world yet."

"I don't know that that is of so much consequence," I said. "I have never
hoped for more than to rub out a few of the marks already made."

"Perhaps you are right," he returned. "Every man has something he can do,
and more, I suppose, that he can't do. But I have no right to turn a visit
into a visitation. Will you please tell Miss Walton that I am very sorry I
presumed on the privileges of a drawing-master, and gave her pain. It was
so far from my intention that it will be a lesson to me for the future."

With these words he took his leave, and I could not help being greatly
pleased both with them and with his bearing. He was clearly anything but a
common man.






CHAPTER VI.

THE SHADOW OP DEATH.





When Wynnie appeared at dinner she looked ashamed of herself, and her face
betrayed that she had been crying. But I said nothing, for I had confidence
that all she needed was time to come to herself, that the voice that speaks
louder than any thunder might make its stillness heard. And when I came
home from my walk the next morning I found Mr. Percivale once more in the
group about Connie, and evidently on the best possible terms with all. The
same afternoon Wynnie went out sketching with Dora. I had no doubt that
she had made some sort of apology to Mr. Percivale; but I did not make the
slightest attempt to discover what had passed between them, for though it
is of all things desirable that children should be quite open with their
parents, I was most anxious to lay upon them no burden of obligation. For
such burden lies against the door of utterance, and makes it the more
difficult to open. It paralyses the speech of the soul. What I desired was
that they should trust me so that faith should overcome all difficulty that
might lie in the way of their being open with me. That end is not to he
gained by any urging of admonition. Against such, growing years at least,
if nothing else, will bring a strong reaction. Nor even, if so gained would
the gain be at all of the right sort. The openness would not be faith.
Besides, a parent must respect the spiritual person of his child, and
approach it with reverence, for that too looks the Father in the face, and
has an audience with him into which no earthly parent can enter even if he
dared to desire it. Therefore I trusted my child. And when I saw that she
looked at me a little shyly when we next met, I only sought to show her the
more tenderness and confidence, telling her all about my plans with the
bells, and my talks with the smith and Mrs. Coombes. She listened with just
such interest as I had always been accustomed to see in her, asking such
questions, and making such remarks as I might have expected, but I still
felt that there was the thread of a little uneasiness through the web of
our intercourse,--such a thread of a false colour as one may sometimes find
wandering through the labour of the loom, and seek with pains to draw from
the woven stuff. But it was for Wynnie to take it out, not for me. And she
did not leave it long. For as she bade me good-night in my study, she said
suddenly, yet with hesitating openness,

"Papa, I told Mr. Percivale that I was sorry I had behaved so badly about
the drawings."

"You did right, my child," I replied. At the same moment a pang of anxiety
passed through me lest under the influence of her repentance she should
have said anything more than becoming. But I banished the doubt instantly
as faithlessness in the womanly instincts of my child. For we men are
always so ready and anxious to keep women right, like the wretched
creature, Laertes, in _Hamlet_, who reads his sister such a lesson on her
maidenly duties, but declines almost with contempt to listen to a word from
her as to any co-relative obligation on his side!

And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the
day--the rights of women--that what women demand it is not for men to
withhold. It is not their business to lay the law for women. That women
must lay down for themselves. I confess that, although I must herein seem
to many of my readers old-fashioned and conservative, I should not like to
see any woman I cared much for either in parliament or in an anatomical
class-room; but on the other hand I feel that women must be left free to
settle that matter. If it is not good, good women will find it out and
recoil from it. If it is good then God give them good speed. One thing they
_have_ a right to--a far wider and more valuable education than they
have been in the way of receiving. When the mothers are well taught the
generations will grow in knowledge at a fourfold rate. But still the
teaching of life is better than all the schools, and common sense than all
learning. This common sense is a rare gift, scantier in none than in those
who lay claim to it on the ground of following commonplace, worldly, and
prudential maxims. But I must return to my Wynnie.

"And what did Mr. Percivale say?" I resumed, for she was silent.

"He took the blame all on himself, papa."

"Like a gentleman," I said.

"But I could not leave it so, you know, papa, because that was not the
truth."

"Well?"

"I told him that I had lost my temper from disappointment; that I had
thought I did not care for my drawings because I was so far from satisfied
with them, but when he made me feel that they were worth nothing, then I
found from the vexation I felt that I had cared for them. But I do think,
papa, I was more ashamed of having shown them, and vexed with myself, than
cross with him. But I was very silly."

"Well, and what did he say?"

"He began to praise them then. But you know I could not take much of that,
for what could he do?"

"You might give him credit for a little honesty, at least."

"Yes; but things may be true in a way, you know, and not mean much."

"He seems to have succeeded in reconciling you to the prosecution of your
efforts, however; for I saw you go out with your sketching apparatus this
afternoon."

"Yes," she answered shyly. "He was so kind that somehow I got heart to try
again. He's very nice, isn't he?"

My answer was not quite ready.

"Don't you like him, papa?"

"Well--I like him--yes. But we must not be in haste with our judgments, you
know. I have had very little opportunity of seeing into him. There is much
in him that I like, but--"

"But what? please, papa."

"To tell the truth then, Wynnie, for I can speak my mind to you, my child,
there is a certain shyness of approaching the subject of religion; so that
I have my fears lest he should belong to any of these new schools of
a fragmentary philosophy which acknowledge no source of truth but
the testimony of the senses and the deductions made therefrom by the
intellect."

"But is not that a hasty conclusion, papa?"

"That is a hasty question, my dear. I have come to no conclusion. I was
only speaking confidentially about my fears."

"Perhaps, papa, it's only that he's not sure enough, and is afraid of
appearing to profess more than he believes. I'm sure, if that's it, I have
the greatest sympathy with him."

I looked at her, and saw the tears gathering fast in her eyes.

"Pray to God on the chance of his hearing you, my darling, and go to
sleep," I said. "I will not think hardly of you because you cannot be so
sure as I am. How could you be? You have not had my experience. Perhaps you
are right about Mr. Percivale too. But it would be an awkward thing to get
intimate with him, you know, and then find out that we did not like him
after all. You couldn't like a man much, could you, who did not believe
in anything greater than himself, anything marvellous, grand, beyond our
understanding--who thought that he had come out of the dirt and was going
back to the dirt?"

"I could, papa, if he tried to do his duty notwithstanding--for I'm sure I
couldn't. I should cry myself to death."

"You are right, my child. I should honour him too. But I should be very
sorry for him. For he would be so disappointed in himself."

I do not know whether this was the best answer to make, but I had little
time to think.

"But you don't know that he's like that."

"I do not, my dear. And more, I will not associate the idea with him till I
know for certain. We will leave it to ignorant old ladies who lay claim to
an instinct for theology to jump at conclusions, and reserve ours--as even
such a man as we have been supposing might well teach us--till we have
sufficient facts from which to draw them. Now go to bed, my child."

"Good-night then, dear papa," she said, and left me with a kiss.

I was not altogether comfortable after this conversation. I had tried to be
fair to the young man both in word and thought, but I could not relish the
idea of my daughter falling in love with him, which looked likely enough,
before I knew more about him, and found that _more_ good and hope-giving.
There was but one rational thing left to do, and that was to cast my care
on him that careth for us--on the Father who loved my child more than even
I could love her--and loved the young man too, and regarded my anxiety, and
would take its cause upon himself. After I had lifted up my heart to him I
was at ease, read a canto of Dante's _Paradise_, and then went to bed. The
prematurity of a conversation with my wife, in which I found that she was
very favourably impressed with Mr. Percivale, must be pardoned to the
forecasting hearts of fathers and mothers.

As I went out for my walk the next morning, I caught sight of the sexton,
with whom as yet I had had but little communication, busily trimming some
of the newer graves in the churchyard. I turned in through the nearer gate,
which was fashioned like a lych-gate, with seats on the sides and a stone
table in the centre, but had no roof. The one on the other side of the
church was roofed, but probably they had found that here no roof could
resist the sea-blasts in winter. The top of the wall where the roof should
have rested, was simply covered with flat slates to protect it from the
rain.

"Good-morning, Coombes," I said.

He turned up a wizened, humorous old face, the very type of a
gravedigger's, and with one hand leaning on the edge of the green mound,
upon which he had been cropping with a pair of shears the too long and
too thin grass, touched his cap with the other, and bade me a cheerful
good-morning in return.

"You're making things tidy," I said.

"It take time to make them all comfortable, you see, sir," he returned,
taking up his shears again and clipping away at the top and sides of the
mound.

"You mean the dead, Coombes?"

"Yes, sir; to be sure, sir."

"You don't think it makes much difference to their comfort, do you, whether
the grass is one length or another upon their graves?"

"Well no, sir. I don't suppose it makes _much_ difference to them. But it
look more comfortable, you know. And I like things to look comfortable.
Don't you, sir?"

"To be sure I do, Coombes. And you are quite right. The resting-place
of the body, although the person it belonged to be far away, should be
respected."

"That's what I think, though I don't get no credit for it. I du believe the
people hereabouts thinks me only a single hair better than a Jack Ketch.
But I'm sure I du my best to make the poor things comfortable."

He seemed unable to rid his mind of the idea that the comfort of the
departed was dependent upon his ministrations.

"The trouble I have with them sometimes! There's now this same one as lies
here, old Jonathan Giles. He have the gout so bad! and just as I come
within a couple o' inches o' the right depth, out come the edge of a great
stone in the near corner at the foot of the bed. Thinks I, he'll never lie
comfortable with that same under his gouty toe. But the trouble I had
to get out that stone! I du assure you, sir, it took me nigh half the
day.--But this be one of the nicest places to lie in all up and down the
coast--a nice gravelly soil, you see, sir; dry, and warm, and comfortable.
Them poor things as comes out of the sea must quite enjoy the change, sir."

There was something grotesque in the man's persistence in regarding the
objects of his interest from this point of view. It was a curious way for
the humanity that was in him to find expression; but I did not like to let
him go on thus. It was so much opposed to all that I believed and felt
about the change from this world to the next!

"But, Coombes," I said, "why will you go on talking as if it made an atom
of difference to the dead bodies where they were buried? They care no more
about it than your old coat would care where it was thrown after you had
done with it."

He turned and regarded his coat where it hung beside him on the headstone
of the same grave at which he was working, shook his head with a smile that
seemed to hint a doubt whether the said old coat would be altogether so
indifferent to its treatment when, it was past use as I had implied. Then
he turned again to his work, and after a moment's silence began to approach
me from another side. I confess he had the better of me before I was aware
of what he was about.

"The church of Boscastle stands high on the cliff. You've been to
Boscastle, sir?"

I told him I had not yet, but hoped to go before the summer was over.

"Ah, you should see Boscastle, sir. It's a wonderful place. That's where I
was born, sir. When I was a by that church was haunted, sir. It's a damp
place, and the wind in it awful. I du believe it stand higher than any
church in the country, and have got more wind in it of a stormy night than
any church whatsomever. Well, they said it was haunted; and sure enough
every now and then there was a knocking heard down below. And this always
took place of a stormy night, as if there was some poor thing down in the
low wouts (_vaults_), and he wasn't comfortable and wanted to get out.
Well, one night it was so plain and so fearful it was that the sexton he
went and took the blacksmith and a ship's carpenter down to the harbour,
and they go up together, and they hearken all over the floor, and they open
one of the old family wouts that belongs to the Penhaligans, and they go
down with a light. Now the wind it was a-blowing all as usual, only worse
than common. And there to be sure what do they see but the wout half-full
of sea-water, and nows and thens a great spout coming in through a hole in
the rock; for it was high-water and a wind off the sea, as I tell you.
And there was a coffin afloat on the water, and every time the spout come
through, it set it knocking agen the side o' the wout, and that was the
ghost."

"What a horrible idea!" I said, with a half-shudder at the unrest of the
dead.

The old man uttered a queer long-drawn sound,--neither a chuckle, a crow,
nor a laugh, but a mixture of all three,--and turned himself yet again
to the work which, as he approached the end of his narration, he had
suspended, that he might make his story _tell_, I suppose, by looking me
in the face. And as he turned he said, "I thought you would like to be
comfortable then as well as other people, sir."

I could not help laughing to see how the cunning old fellow had caught me.
I have not yet been able to find out how much of truth there was in his
story. From the twinkle of his eye I cannot help suspecting that if he did
not invent the tale, he embellished it, at least, in order to produce the
effect which he certainly did produce. Humour was clearly his predominant
disposition, the reflex of which was to be seen, after a mild lunar
fashion, on the countenance of his wife. Neither could I help thinking
with pleasure, as I turned away, how the merry little old man would enjoy
telling his companions how he had posed the new parson. Very welcome was
he to his laugh for my part. Yet I gladly left the churchyard, with its
sunshine above and its darkness below. Indeed I had to look up to the
glittering vanes on the four pinnacles of the church-tower, dwelling aloft
in the clean sunny air, to get the feeling of the dark vault, and the
floating coffin, and the knocking heard in the windy church, out of my
brain. But the thing that did free me was the reflection with what
supreme disregard the disincarcerated spirit would look upon any possible
vicissitudes of its abandoned vault. For in proportion as the body of man's
revelation ceases to be in harmony with the spirit that dwells therein,
it becomes a vault, a prison, from which it must be freedom to escape at
length. The house we like best would be a prison of awful sort if doors and
windows were built up. Man's abode, as age begins to draw nigh, fares thus.
Age is in fact the mason that builds up the doors and the windows, and
death is the angel that breaks the prison-house and lets the captives free.
Thus I got something out of the sexton's horrible story.

But before the week was over, death came near indeed--in far other fashion
than any funereal tale could have brought it.

One day, after lunch, I had retired to my study, and was dozing in my
chair, for the day was hot, when I was waked by Charlie rushing into the
room with the cry, "Papa, papa, there's a man drowning."

I started up, and hurried down to the drawing-room, which looked out over
the bay. I could see nothing but people running about on the edge of the
quiet waves. No sign of human being was on--the water. But the one boat
belonging to the pilot was coming out from the shelter of the lock of the
canal where it usually lay, and my friend of the coastguard was running
down from the tower on the cliff with ropes in his hand. He would not stop
the boat even for the moment it would need to take him on board, but threw
them in and urged to haste. I stood at the window and watched. Every now
and then I fancied I saw something white heaved up on the swell of a wave,
and as often was satisfied that I had but fancied it. The boat seemed to be
floating about lazily, if not idly. The eagerness to help made it appear as
if nothing was going on. Could it, after all, have been a false alarm? Was
there, after all, no insensible form swinging about in the sweep of those
waves, with life gradually oozing away? Long, long as it seemed to me, I
watched, and still the boat kept moving from place to place, so far out
that I could see nothing distinctly of the motions of its crew. At length I
saw something. Yes; a long white thing rose from the water slowly, and was
drawn into the boat. It rowed swiftly to the shore. There was but one place
fit to land upon,--a little patch of sand, nearly covered at high-water,
but now lying yellow in the sun, under the window at which I stood, and
immediately under our garden-wall. Thither the boat shot along; and there
my friend of the coastguard, earnest and sad, was waiting to use, though
without hope, every appliance so well known to him from the frequent
occurrence of such necessity in the course of his watchful duties along
miles and miles of stormy coast.

I will not linger over the sad details of vain endeavour. The honoured head
of a family, he had departed and left a good name behind him. But even in
the midst of my poor attentions to the quiet, speechless, pale-faced wife,
who sat at the head of the corpse, I could not help feeling anxious about
the effect on my Connie. It was impossible to keep the matter concealed
from her. The undoubted concern on the faces of the two boys was enough to
reveal that something serious and painful had occurred; while my wife and
Wynnie, and indeed the whole household, were busy in attending to every
remotest suggestion of aid that reached them from the little crowd gathered
about the body. At length it was concluded, on the verdict of the medical
man who had been sent for, that all further effort was useless. The body
was borne away, and I led the poor lady to her lodging, and remained there
with her till I found that, as she lay on the sofa, the sleep that so
often dogs the steps of sorrow had at length thrown its veil over her
consciousness, and put her for the time to rest. There is a gentle
consolation in the firmness of the grasp of the inevitable, known but to
those who are led through the valley of the shadow. I left her with her son
and daughter, and returned to my own family. They too were of course in the
skirts of the cloud. Had they only heard of the occurrence, it would have
had little effect; but death had appeared to them. Everyone but Connie had
seen the dead lying there; and before the day was over, I wished that she
too had seen the dead. For I found from what she said at intervals, and
from the shudder that now and then passed through her, that her imagination
was at work, showing but the horrors that belong to death; for the
enfolding peace that accompanies it can be known but by sight of the dead.
When I spoke to her, she seemed, and I suppose for the time felt tolerably
quiet and comfortable; but I could see that the words she had heard fall in
the going and coming, and the communications of Charlie and Harry to each
other, had made as it were an excoriation on her fancy, to which her
consciousness was ever returning. And now I became more grateful than I
had yet been for the gift of that gipsy-child. For I felt no anxiety about
Connie so long as she was with her. The presence even of her mother could
not relieve her, for she and Wynnie were both clouded with the same
awe, and its reflex in Connie was distorted by her fancy. But the sweet
ignorance of the baby, which rightly considered is more than a type or
symbol of faith, operated most healingly; for she appeared in her sweet
merry ways--no baby was ever more filled with the mere gladness of life
than Connie's baby--to the mood in which they all were, like a little sunny
window in a cathedral crypt, telling of a whole universe of sunshine and
motion beyond those oppressed pillars and low-groined arches. And why
should not the baby know best? I believe the babies do know best. I
therefore favoured her having the child more than I might otherwise have
thought good for her, being anxious to get the dreary, unhealthy impression
healed as soon as possible, lest it should, in the delicate physical
condition in which she was, turn to a sore.

But my wife suffered for a time nearly as much as Connie. As long as she
was going about the house or attending to the wants of her family, she was
free; but no sooner did she lay her head on the pillow than in rushed the
cry of the sea, fierce, unkind, craving like a wild beast. Again and again
she spoke of it to me, for it came to her mingled with the voice of the
tempter, saying, "_Cruel chance_," over and over again. For although the
two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its turn
would assert itself.

A great part of the doubt in the world comes from the fact that there are
in it so many more of the impressible as compared with the originating
minds. Where the openness to impression is balanced by the power of
production, the painful questions of the world are speedily met by their
answers; where such is not the case, there are often long periods of
suffering till the child-answer of truth is brought to the birth. Hence the
need for every impressible mind to be, by reading or speech, held in living
association with an original mind able to combat those suggestions of doubt
and even unbelief, which the look of things must often occasion--a look
which comes from our inability to gain other than fragmentary visions of
the work that the Father worketh hitherto. When the kingdom of heaven is at
hand, one sign thereof will be that all clergymen will be more or less of
the latter sort, and mere receptive goodness, no more than education and
moral character, will be considered sufficient reason for a man's occupying
the high position of an instructor of his fellows. But even now this
possession of original power is not by any means to be limited to those
who make public show of the same. In many a humble parish priest it shows
itself at the bedside of the suffering, or in the admonition of the closet,
although as yet there are many of the clergy who, so far from being able to
console wisely, are incapable of understanding the condition of those that
need consolation.

"It is all a fancy, my dear," I said to her. "There is nothing more
terrible in this than in any other death. On the contrary, I can hardly
imagine a less fearful one. A big wave falls on the man's head and stuns
him, and without further suffering he floats gently out on the sea of the
unknown."

"But it is so terrible for those left behind!"

"Had you seen the face of his widow, so gentle, so loving, so resigned in
its pallor, you would not have thought it so _terrible_."

But though she always seemed satisfied, and no doubt felt nearly so, after
any conversation of the sort, yet every night she would call out once and
again, "O, that sea, out there!" I was very glad indeed when Mr. Turner,
who had arranged to spend a short holiday with us, arrived.

He was concerned at the news I gave him of the shock both Connie and her
mother had received, and counselled an immediate change, that time might,
in the absence of surrounding associations, obliterate something of the
impression that had been made. The consequence was, that we resolved to
remove our household, for a short time, to some place not too far off to
permit of my attending to my duties at Kilkhaven, but out of the sight and
sound of the sea. It was Thursday when Mr. Turner arrived, and he spent the
next two days in inquiring and looking about for a suitable spot to which
we might repair as early in the week as possible.

On the Saturday the blacksmith was busy in the church-tower, and I went in
to see how he was getting on.

"You had a sad business here the last week, sir," he said, after we had
done talking about the repairs.

"A very sad business indeed," I answered.

"It was a warning to us all," he said.

"We may well take it so," I returned. "But it seems to me that we are too
ready to think of such remarkable things only by themselves, instead of
being roused by them to regard everything, common and uncommon, as ordered
by the same care and wisdom."

"One of our local preachers made a grand use of it."

I made no reply. He resumed.

"They tell me you took no notice of it last Sunday, sir."

"I made no immediate allusion to it, certainly. But I preached under the
influence of it. And I thought it better that those who could reflect on
the matter should be thus led to think for themselves than that they should
be subjected to the reception of my thoughts and feelings about it; for in
the main it is life and not death that we have to preach."

"I don't quite understand you, sir. But then you don't care much for
preaching in your church."

"I confess," I answered, "that there has been much indifference on that
point. I could, however, mention to you many and grand exceptions. Still
there is, even in some of the best in the church, a great amount of
disbelief in the efficacy of preaching. And I allow that a great deal of
what is called preaching, partakes of its nature only in the remotest
degree. But, while I hold a strong opinion of its value--that is, where it
is genuine--I venture just to suggest that the nature of the preaching to
which the body you belong to has resorted, has had something to do, by way
of a reaction, in driving the church to the other extreme."

"How do you mean that, sir?"

"You try to work upon people's feelings without reference to their
judgment. Anyone who can preach what you call rousing sermons is considered
a grand preacher amongst you, and there is a great danger of his being led
thereby to talk more nonsense than sense. And then when the excitement
goes off, there is no seed left in the soil to grow in peace, and they are
always craving after more excitement."

"Well, there is the preacher to rouse them up again."

"And the consequence is that they continue like children--the good ones, I
mean--and have hardly a chance of making a calm, deliberate choice of that
which is good; while those who have been only excited and nothing more, are
hardened and seared by the recurrence of such feeling as is neither aroused
by truth nor followed by action."

"You daren't talk like that if you knew the kind of people in this country
that the Methodists, as you call them, have got a hold of. They tell me it
was like hell itself down in those mines before Wesley come among them."

"I should be a fool or a bigot to doubt that the Wesleyans have done
incalculable good in the country. And that not alone to the people who
never went to church. The whole Church of England is under obligations to
Methodism such as no words can overstate."

"I wonder you can say such things against them, then."

"Now there you show the evil of thinking too much about the party you
belong to. It makes a man touchy; and then he fancies when another is
merely, it may be, analysing a difference, or insisting strongly on some
great truth, that he is talking against his party."

"But you said, sir, that our clergy don't care about moving our judgments,
only our feelings. Now I know preachers amongst us of whom that would be
anything but true."

"Of course there must be. But there is what I say--your party-feeling makes
you touchy. A man can't always be saying in the press of utterance, '_Of
course there are exceptions_.' That is understood. I confess I do not know
much about your clergy, for I have not had the opportunity. But I do know
this, that some of the best and most liberal people I have ever known have
belonged to your community."

"They do gather a deal of money for good purposes."

"Yes. But that was not what I meant by _liberal_. It is far easier to give
money than to be generous in judgment. I meant by _liberal_, able to see
the good and true in people that differ from you--glad to be roused to the
reception of truth in God's name from whatever quarter it may come, and not
readily finding offence where a remark may have chanced to be too sweeping
or unguarded. But I see that I ought to be more careful, for I have made
you, who certainly are not one of the quarrelsome people I have been
speaking of, misunderstand me."

"I beg your pardon, sir. I was hasty. But I do think I am more ready to
lose my temper since--"

Here he stopped. A fit of coughing came on, and, to my concern, was
followed by what I saw plainly could be the result only of a rupture in the
lungs. I insisted on his dropping his work and coming home with me, where I
made him rest the remainder of the day and all Sunday, sending word to
his mother that I could not let him go home. When we left on the Monday
morning, we took him with us in the carriage hired for the journey, and set
him down at his mother's, apparently no worse than usual.






CHAPTER VII.

AT THE FARM.





Leaving the younger members of the family at home with the servants, we set
out for a farmhouse, some twenty miles off, which Turner had discovered
for us. Connie had stood the journey down so well, and was now so much
stronger, that we had no anxiety about her so far as regarded the
travelling. Through deep lanes with many cottages, and here and there a
very ugly little chapel, over steep hills, up which Turner and Wynnie and
I walked, and along sterile moors we drove, stopping at roadside inns, and
often besides to raise Connie and let her look about upon the extended
prospect, so that it was drawing towards evening before we arrived at our
destination. On the way Turner had warned us that we were not to expect a
beautiful country, although the place was within reach of much that was
remarkable. Therefore we were not surprised when we drew up at the door of
a bare-looking, shelterless house, with scarcely a tree in sight, and a
stretch of undulating fields on every side.

"A dreary place in winter, Turner," I said, after we had seen Connie
comfortably deposited in the nice white-curtained parlour, smelling of
dried roses even in the height of the fresh ones, and had strolled out
while our tea--dinner was being got ready for us.

"Not a doubt of it; but just the place I wanted for Miss Connie," he
replied. "We are high above the sea, and the air is very bracing, and not,
at this season, too cold. A month later I should not on any account have
brought her here."

"I think even now there is a certain freshness in the wind that calls up a
kind of will in the nerves to meet it."

"That is precisely what I wanted for you all. You observe there is no rasp
in its touch, however. There are regions in this island of ours where
even in the hottest day in summer you would frequently discover a certain
unfriendly edge in the air, that would set you wondering whether the
seasons had not changed since you were a boy, and used to lie on the grass
half the idle day."

"I often do wonder whether it may not