The next morning, Juliet, walking listlessly up and down the garden, turned the corner of a yew hedge, and came suddenly upon a figure that might well have appeared one of the kobolds of German legend. He was digging slowly but steadily, crooning a strange song—so low that, until she saw him she did not hear him.
She started back in dismay. The kobold neither raised his head nor showed other sign than the ceasing of his song that he was aware of her presence. Slowly and steadily he went on with his work. He was trenching the ground deep, still throwing the earth from the bottom to the top. Juliet, concluding he was deaf, and the ceasing of his song accidental, turned softly, and would have retreated. But Polwarth, so far from being deaf, heard better than most people. His senses, indeed, had been sharpened by his infirmities—all but those of taste and smell, which were fitful, now dull and now exquisitely keen. At the first movement breaking the stillness into which consternation had cast her, he spoke.
"Can you guess what I am doing, Mrs. Faber?" he said, throwing up a spadeful and a glance together, like a man who could spare no time from his work.
Juliet's heart got in the way, and she could not answer him. She felt much as a ghost, wandering through a house, might feel, if suddenly addressed by the name she had borne in the old days, while yet she was clothed in the garments of the flesh. Could it be that this man led such a retired life that, although living so near Glaston, and seeing so many at his gate, he had yet never heard that she had passed from the ken of the living? Or could it be that Dorothy had betrayed her? She stood quaking. The situation was strange. Before her was a man who did not seem to know that what he knew concerning her was a secret from all the world besides! And with that she had a sudden insight into the consequence of the fact of her existence coming to her husband's knowledge: would it not add to his contempt and scorn to know that she was not even dead? Would he not at once conclude that she had been contriving to work on his feelings, that she had been speculating on his repentance, counting upon and awaiting such a return of his old fondness, as would make him forget all her faults, and prepare him to receive her again with delight?—But she must answer the creature! Ill could she afford to offend him! But what was she to say? She had utterly forgotten what he had said to her. She stood staring at him, unable to speak. It was but for a few moments, but they were long as minutes. And as she gazed, it seemed as if the strange being in the trench had dug his way up from the lower parts of the earth, bringing her secret with him, and come to ask her questions. What an earthy yet unearthly look he had! Almost for the moment she believed the ancient rumors of other races than those of mankind, that shared the earth with them, but led such differently conditioned lives, that, in the course of ages, only a scanty few of the unblending natures crossed each other's path, to stand astare in mutual astonishment.
Polwarth went on digging, nor once looked up. After a little while he resumed, in the most natural way, speaking as if he had known her well:
"Mr. Drake and I were talking, some weeks ago, about a certain curious little old-fashioned flower in my garden at the back of the lodge. He asked me if I could spare him a root of it. I told him I could spare him any thing he would like to have, but that I would gladly give him every flower in my garden, roots and all, if he would but let me dig three yards square in his garden at the Old House, and have all that came up of itself for a year."
He paused again. Juliet neither spoke nor moved. He dug rather feebly for a gnome, with panting, asthmatic breath.
"Perhaps you are not aware, ma'am," he began again, and ceasing his labor stood up leaning on the spade, which was nearly as high as himself, "that many of the seeds which fall upon the ground do not grow, yet, strange to tell, retain the power of growth. I suspect myself, but have not had opportunity of testing the conjecture, that such fall in their pods, or shells, and that before these are sufficiently decayed to allow the sun and moisture and air to reach them, they have got covered up in the soil too deep for those same influences. They say fishes a long time bedded in ice will come to life again: I can not tell about that, but it is well enough known that if you dig deep in any old garden, such as this, ancient, perhaps forgotten flowers, will appear. The fashion has changed, they have been neglected or uprooted, but all the time their life is hid below. And the older they are, the nearer perhaps to their primary idea!"
By this time she was far more composed, though not yet had she made up her mind what to say, or how to treat the dilemma in which she found herself.
After a brief pause therefore, he resumed again:
"I don't fancy," he said, with a low, asthmatic laugh, "that we shall have many forgotten weeds come up. They all, I suspect, keep pretty well in the sun. But just think how the fierce digging of the crisis to which the great Husbandman every now and then leads a nation, brings back to the surface its old forgotten flowers. What virtues, for instance, the Revolution brought to light as even yet in the nature of the corrupted nobility of France!"
"What a peculiar goblin it is!" thought Juliet, beginning to forget herself a little in watching and listening to the strange creature. She had often seen him before, but had always turned from him with a kind of sympathetic shame: of course the poor creature could not bear to be looked at; he must know himself improper!
"I have sometimes wondered," Polwarth yet again resumed, "whether the troubles without end that some people seem born to—I do not mean those they bring upon themselves—may not be as subsoil plows, tearing deep into the family mold, that the seeds of the lost virtues of their race may in them be once more brought within reach of sun and air and dew. It would be a pleasant, hopeful thought if one might hold it. Would it not, ma'am?"
"It would indeed," answered Juliet with a sigh, which rose from an undefined feeling that if some hidden virtue would come up in her, it would be welcome. How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of Heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it! They do not know that it is goodness all the time their very being is pining after, and that they are starving their nature of its necessary food. Then Polwarth's idea turned itself round in Juliet's mind, and grew clearer, but assumed reference to weeds only, and not flowers. She thought how that fault of hers had, like the seed of a poison-plant, been buried for years, unknown to one alive, and forgotten almost by herself—so diligently forgotten indeed, that it seemed to have gradually slipped away over the horizon of her existence; and now here it was at the surface again in all its horror and old reality! nor that merely, for already it had blossomed and borne its rightful fruit of dismay—an evil pod, filled with a sickening juice, and swarming with gray flies.—But she must speak, and, if possible, prevent the odd creature from going and publishing in Glaston that he had seen Mrs. Faber, and she was at the Old House.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked abruptly.
"How do you know that I knew, ma'am?" returned Polwarth, in a tone which took from the words all appearance of rudeness.
"You were not in the least surprised to see me," she answered.
"A man," returned the dwarf, "who keeps his eyes open may almost cease to be surprised at any thing. In my time I have seen so much that is wonderful—in fact every thing seems to me so wonderful that I hardly expect to be surprised any more."
He said this, desiring to provoke conversation. But Juliet took the answer for an evasive one, and it strengthened her suspicion of Dorothy. She was getting tired of her! Then there was only one thing left!—The minor prophet had betaken himself again to his work, delving deeper, and throwing slow spadeful after spadeful to the surface.
"Miss Drake told you I was here!" said Juliet.
"No, indeed, Mrs. Faber. No one told me," answered Polwarth. "I learned it for myself. I could hardly help finding it out."
"Then—then—does every body know it?" she faltered, her heart sinking within her at the thought.
"Indeed, ma'am, so far as I know, not a single person is aware you are alive except Miss Drake and myself. I have not even told my niece who lives with me, and who can keep a secret as well as myself."
Juliet breathed a great sigh of relief.
"Will you tell me why you have kept it so secret?" she asked.
"Because it was your secret, ma'am, not mine."
"But you were under no obligation to keep my secret."
"How do you justify such a frightful statement as that, ma'am?"
"Why, what could it matter to you?"
"Every thing."
"I do not understand. You have no interest in me. You could have no inducement."
"On the contrary, I had the strongest inducement: I saw that an opportunity might come of serving you."
"But that is just the unintelligible thing to me. There is no reason why you should wish to serve me!" said Juliet, thinking to get at the bottom of some design.
"There you mistake, ma'am. I am under the most absolute and imperative obligation to serve you—the greatest under which any being can find himself."
"What a ridiculous, crooked little monster!" said Juliet to herself. But she began the same moment to think whether she might not turn the creature's devotion to good account. She might at all events insure his silence.
"Would you be kind enough to explain yourself?" she said, now also interested in the continuance of the conversation.
"I would at once," replied Polwarth, "had I sufficient ground for hoping you would understand my explanation."
"I do not know that I am particularly stupid," she returned, with a wan smile.
"I have heard to the contrary," said Polwarth. "Yet I can not help greatly doubting whether you will understand what I am now going to tell you. For I will tell you—on the chance: I have no secrets—that is, of my own.—I am one of those, Mrs. Faber," he went on after a moment's pause, but his voice neither became more solemn in tone, nor did he cease his digging, although it got slower, "who, against thenon-evidenceof their senses, believe there is a Master of men, the one Master, a right perfect Man, who demands of them, and lets them know in themselves the rectitude of the demand that they also shall be right and true men, that is, true brothers to their brothers and sisters of mankind. It is recorded too, and I believe it, that this Master said that any service rendered to one of His people was rendered to Himself. Therefore, for love of His will, even if I had no sympathy with you, Mrs. Faber, I should feel bound to help you. As you can not believe me interested in yourself, I must tell you that to betray your secret for the satisfaction of a love of gossip, would be to sin against my highest joy, against my own hope, against the heart of God, from which your being and mine draws the life of its every moment."
Juliet's heart seemed to turn sick at the thought of such a creature claiming brotherhood with her. That it gave ground for such a claim, seemed for the moment an irresistible argument against the existence of a God.
In her countenance Polwarth read at once that he had blundered, and a sad, noble, humble smile irradiated his. It had its effect on Juliet. She would be generous and forgive his presumption: she knew dwarfs were always conceited—that wise Nature had provided them with high thoughts wherewith to add the missing cubit to their stature. What repulsive things Christianity taught! Her very flesh recoiled from the poor ape!
"I trust you are satisfied, ma'am," the kobold added, after a moment's vain expectation of a word from Juliet, "that your secret is safe with me."
"I am," answered Juliet, with a condescending motion of her stately neck, saying to herself in feeling if not in conscious thought,—"After all he is hardly human! I may accept his devotion as I would that of a dog!"
The moment she had thus far yielded, she began to long to speak of her husband. Perhaps he can tell her something of him! At least he could talk about him. She would have been eager to look on his reflection, had it been possible, in the mind of a dog that loved him. She would turn the conversation in a direction that might find him.
"But I do not see," she went on, "how you, Mr. Polwarth—I think that is your name—how you can, consistently with your principles,—"
"Excuse me, ma'am: I can not even, by silence, seem to admit that you know any thing whatever of my principles."
"Oh!" she returned, with a smile of generous confession, "I was brought up to believe as you do."
"That but satisfies me that for the present you are incapable of knowing any thing of my principles."
"I do not wonder at your thinking so," she returned, with the condescension of superior education, as she supposed, and yet with the first motion of an unconscious respect for the odd little monster.—He, with wheezing chest, went on throwing up the deep, damp, fresh earth, to him smelling of marvelous things. Ruth would have ached all over to see him working so hard!—"Still," Juliet went on, "supposing your judgment of me correct, that only makes it the stranger you should imagine that in serving such a one, you are pleasing Him you call your Master. He says whosoever denies Him before men He will deny before the angels of God."
"What my Lord says He will do, He will do, as He meant it when He said it: what He tells me to do, I try to understand and do. Now He has told me of all things not to say that good comes of evil. He condemned that in the Pharisees as the greatest of crimes. When, therefore, I see a man like your husband, helping his neighbors near and far, being kind, indeed loving, and good-hearted to all men,"—Here a great sigh, checked and broken into many little ones, came in a tremulous chain from the bosom of the wife—"I am bound to say that man is not scattering his Master abroad. He is indeed opposing Him in words: he speaks against the Son of Man; but that the Son of Man Himself says shall be forgiven him. If I mistake in this, to my own Master I stand or fall."
"How can He be his Master if he does not acknowledge Him?"
"Because the very tongue with which he denies Him is yet His. I am the master of the flowers that will now grow by my labor, though not one of them will know me—how much more must He be the Master of the men He has called into being, though they do not acknowledge Him! If the story of the gospel be a true one, as with my heart and soul and all that is in me I believe it is, then Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and Master of Mr. Faber, and for him not to acknowledge it is to fall from the summit of his being. To deny one's Master, is to be a slave."
"You are very polite!" said Mrs. Faber, and turned away. She recalled her imaginary danger, however, and turning again, said, "But though I differ from you in opinion, Mr. Polwarth, I quite recognize you as no common man, and put you upon your honor with regard to my secret."
"Had you entrusted me with your secret, ma'am, the phrase would have had more significance. But, obeying my Master, I do not require to think of my own honor. Those who do not acknowledge their Master, can not afford to forget it. But if they do not learn to obey Him, they will find by the time they have got through what they call life, they have left themselves little honor to boast of."
"He has guessed my real secret!" thought poor Juliet, and turning away in confusion, without a word of farewell, went straight into the house. But before Dorothy, who had been on the watch at the top of the slope, came in, she had begun to hope that the words of the forward, disagreeable, conceited dwarf had in them nothing beyond a general remark.
When Dorothy entered, she instantly accused her of treachery. Dorothy, repressing her indignation, begged she would go with her to Polwarth. But when they reached the spot, the gnome had vanished.
He had been digging only for the sake of the flowers buried in Juliet, and had gone home to lie down. His bodily strength was exhausted, but will and faith and purpose never forsook the soul cramped up in that distorted frame. When greatly suffering, he would yet suffer with his will—not merely resigning himself to the will of God, but desiring the suffering that God willed. When the wearied soul could no longer keep the summit of the task, when not strength merely, but the consciousness of faith and duty failed him, he would cast faith and strength and duty, all his being, into the gulf of the Father's will, and simply suffer, no longer trying to feel any thing—waiting only until the Life should send him light.
Dorothy turned to Juliet.
"You might have asked Mr. Polwarth, Juliet, whether I had betrayed you," she said.
"Now I think of it, he did say you had not told him. But how was I to take the word of a creature like that?"
"Juliet," said Dorothy, very angry, "I begin to doubt if you were worth taking the trouble for!"
She turned from her, and walked toward the house. Juliet rushed after her and caught her in her arms.
"Forgive me, Dorothy," she cried. "I am not in my right senses, I do believe. Whatisto be done now this—man knows it?"
"Things are no worse than they were," said Dorothy, as quickly appeased as angered. "On the contrary, I believe we have the only one to help us who is able to do it. Why, Juliet, why what am I to do with you when my father sends the carpenters and bricklayers to the house? They will be into every corner! He talks of commencing next week, and I am at my wits' end."
"Oh! don't forsake me, Dorothy, after all you have done for me," cried Juliet. "If you turn me out, there never was creature in the world so forlorn as I shall be—absolutely helpless, Dorothy!"
"I will do all I can for you, my poor Juliet; but if Mr. Polwarth do not think of some way, I don't know what will become of us. You don't know what you are guilty of in despising him. Mr. Wingfold speaks of him as far the first man in Glaston."
Certainly Mr. Wingfold, Mr. Drew, and some others of the best men in the place, did think him, of those they knew, the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. Glaston was altogether of a different opinion. Which was the right opinion, must be left to the measuring rod that shall finally be applied to the statures of men.
The history of the kingdom of Heaven—need I say I mean a very different thing from what is calledchurch-history?—is the only history that will ever be able to show itself a history—that can ever come to be thoroughly written, or to be read with a clear understanding; for it alone will prove able to explain itself, while in doing so it will explain all other attempted histories as well. Many of those who will then be found first in the eternal record, may have been of little regard in the eyes of even their religious contemporaries, may have been absolutely unknown to generations that came after, and were yet the men of life and potency, working as light, as salt, as leaven, in the world. When the real worth of things is, over all, the measure of their estimation, then is the kingdom of our God and His Christ.
It had been a very dry autumn, and the periodical rains had been long delayed, so that the minister had been able to do much for the houses he had bought, called the Pottery. There had been but just rain enough to reveal the advantage of the wall he had built to compel the water to keep the wider street. Thoroughly dry and healthy it was impossible to make them, at least in the time; but it is one thing to have the water all about the place you stand on, and another to be up to the knees in it. Not at that point only, however, but at every spot where the water could enter freely, he had done what he could provisionally for the defense of his poor colony—for alas! how much among the well-to-do, in town or city, are the poor like colonists only!—and he had great hopes of the result. Stone and brick and cement he had used freely, and one or two of the people about began to have a glimmering idea of the use of money after a gospel fashion—that is, for thorough work where andbecauseit was needed. The curate was full of admiration and sympathy. But the whole thing gave great dissatisfaction to others not a few. For, as the currents of inundation would be somewhat altered in direction and increased in force by his obstructions, it became necessary for several others also to add to the defenses of their property, and this of course was felt to be a grievance. Their personal inconveniences were like the shilling that hides the moon, and, in the resentment they occasioned, blinded their hearts to the seriousness of the evils from which their merely temporary annoyance was the deliverance of their neighbors. A fancy of prescriptive right in their own comforts outweighed all the long and heavy sufferings of the others. Why should not their neighbors continue miserable, when they had been miserable all their lives hitherto? Those who, on the contrary, had been comfortable all their lives, and liked it so much, ought to continue comfortable—even at their expense. Why not let well alone? Or if people would be so unreasonable as to want to be comfortable too, when nobody cared a straw about them, let them make themselves comfortable without annoying those superior beings who had been comfortable all the time!—Persons who, consciously or unconsciously, reason thus, would do well to read with a little attention the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, wherein it seems recognized that a man's having been used to a thing may be just the reason, not for the continuance, but for the alteration of his condition. In the present case the person who most found himself aggrieved, was the dishonest butcher. A piece of brick wall which the minister had built in contact with the wall of his yard, would indubitably cause such a rise in the water at the descent into the area of his cellar, that, in order to its protection in a moderate flood—in a great one the cellar was always filled—the addition to its defense of two or three more rows of bricks would be required, carrying a correspondent diminution of air and light. It is one of the punishments overtaking those who wrong their neighbors, that not only do they feel more keenly than others any injury done to themselves, but they take many things for injuries that do not belong to the category. It was but a matter of a few shillings at the most, but the man who did not scruple to charge the less careful of his customers for undelivered ounces, gathering to pounds and pounds of meat, resented bitterly the necessity of the outlay. He knew, or ought to have known, that he had but to acquaint the minister with the fact, to have the thing set right at once; but the minister had found him out, and he therefore much preferred the possession of his grievance to its removal. To his friends he regretted that a minister of the gospel should be so corrupted by the mammon of unrighteousness as to use it against members of his own church: that, he said, was not the way to make friends with it. But on the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided showing Mr. Drake any sign of his resentment; for the face of his neighbors shames a man whose heart condemns him but shames him not. He restricted himself to grumbling, and brooded to counterplot the mischiefs of the minister. What right had he to injure him for the sake of the poor? Was it not written in the Bible: Thou shall not favor the poor man in his cause? Was it not written also: For every man shall bear his own burden? That was common sense! He did his share in supporting the poor that were church-members, but was he to suffer for improvements on Drake's property for the sake of a pack of roughs! Let him be charitable at his own cost! etc., etc. Self is prolific in argument.
It suited Mr. Drake well, notwithstanding his church republican theories, against which, in the abstract, I could ill object, seeing the whole current of Bible teaching is toward the God-inspired ideal commonwealth—it suited a man like Mr. Drake well, I say, to be an autocrat, and was a most happy thing for his tenants, for certainly no other system of government than a wise autocracy will serve in regard to the dwellings of the poor. And already, I repeat, he had effected not a little. Several new cottages had been built, and one incorrigible old one pulled down. But it had dawned upon him that, however desirable it might be on a dry hill-side, on such a foundation as this a cottage was the worst form of human dwelling that could be built. For when the whole soil was in time of rain like a full sponge, every room upon it was little better than a hollow in a cloud, and the right thing must be to reduce contact with the soil as much as possible. One high house, therefore, with many stories, and stone feet to stand upon, must be the proper kind of building for such a situation. He must lift the first house from the water, and set as many more houses as convenient upon it.
He had therefore already so far prepared for the building of such a house as should lift a good many families far above all deluge; that is, he had dug the foundation, and deep, to get at the more solid ground. In this he had been precipitate, as not unfrequently in his life; for while he was yet meditating whether he should not lay the foundation altogether solid, of the unporous stone of the neighborhood, the rains began, and there was the great hole, to stand all the winter full of water, in the middle of the cottages!
The weather cleared again, but after a St. Martin's summer unusually prolonged, the rain came down in terrible earnest. Day after day, the clouds condensed, grew water, and poured like a squeezed sponge. A wet November indeed it was—wet overhead—wet underfoot—wet all round! and the rivers rose rapidly.
When the Lythe rose beyond a certain point, it overflowed into a hollow, hardly a valley, and thereby a portion of it descended almost straight to Glaston. Hence it came that in a flood the town was invaded both by the rise of the river from below, and by this current from above, on its way to rejoin the main body of it, and the streets were soon turned into canals. The currents of the slowly swelling river and of its temporary branch then met in Pine street, and formed not a very rapid, but a heavy run at ebb tide; for Glaston, though at some distance from the mouth of the river, measuring by its course, was not far from the sea, which was visible across the green flats, a silvery line on the horizon. Landward, beyond the flats, high ground rose on all sides, and hence it was that the floods came down so deep upon Glaston.
On a certain Saturday it rained all the morning heavily, but toward the afternoon cleared a little, so that many hoped the climax had been reached, while the more experienced looked for worse. After sunset the clouds gathered thicker than before, and the rain of the day was as nothing to the torrent descending with a steady clash all night. When the slow, dull morning came Glaston stood in the middle of a brown lake, into which water was rushing from the sky in straight, continuous lines. The prospect was discomposing. Some, too confident in the apparent change, had omitted needful precautions, in most parts none were now possible, and in many more none would have been of use. Most cellars were full, and the water was rising on the ground-floors. It was a very different affair from a flood in a mountainous country, but serious enough, though without immediate danger to life. Many a person that morning stepped out of bed up to the knee in muddy water.
With the first of the dawn the curate stood peering from the window of his dressing-room, through the water that coursed down the pane, to discover the state of the country; for the window looked inland from the skirt of the town. All was gray mist, brown water, and sheeting rain. The only things clear were that not a soul would be at church that morning, and that, though he could do nothing to divide them the bread needful for their souls, he might do something for some of their bodies. It was a happy thing it was Sunday, for, having laid in their stock of bread the day before, people were not so dependent on the bakers, half whose ovens must now be full of water. But most of the kitchens must be flooded, he reasoned, the fire-wood soaking, and the coal in some cellars inaccessible. The very lucifer-matches in many houses would be as useless as the tinderbox of a shipwrecked sailor. And if the rain were to cease at once the water would yet keep rising for many hours. He turned from the window, took his bath in homoeopathic preparation, and then went to wake his wife.
She was one of those blessed women who always open their eyes smiling. She owed very little of her power of sympathy to personal suffering; the perfection of her health might have made one who was too anxious for her spiritual growth even a little regretful. Her husband therefore had seldom to think of sparing her when any thing had to be done. She could lose a night's sleep without the smallest injury, and stand fatigue better than most men; and in the requirements of the present necessity there would be mingled a large element of adventure, almost of frolic, full of delight to a vigorous organization.
"What a good time of it the angels of wind and flame must have!" said the curate to himself as he went to wake her. "What a delight to be embodied as a wind, or a flame, or a rushing sea!—Come, Helen, my help! Glaston wants you," he said softly in her ear.
She started up.
"What is it, Thomas?" she said, holding her eyes wider open than was needful, to show him she was capable.
"Nothing to frighten you, darling," he answered, "but plenty to be done. The river is out, and the people are all asleep. Most of them will have to wait for their breakfast, I fear. We shall have no prayers this morning."
"But plenty of divine service," rejoined Helen, with a smile for what her aunt called one of his whims, as she got up and seized some of her garments.
"Take time for your bath, dear," said her husband.
"There will be time for that afterward," she replied. "What shall I do first?"
"Wake the servants, and tell them to light the kitchen fire, and make all the tea and coffee they can. But tell them to make it good. We shall get more of every thing as soon as it is light. I'll go and bring the boat. I had it drawn up and moored in the ruins ready to float yesterday. I wish I hadn't put on my shirt though: I shall have to swim for it, I fear."
"I shall have one aired before you come back," said Helen.
"Aired!" returned her husband: "you had better say watered. In five minutes neither of us will have a dry stitch on. I'll take it off again, and be content with my blue jersey."
He hurried out into the rain. Happily there was no wind.
Helen waked the servants. Before they appeared she had the fire lighted, and as many utensils as it would accommodate set upon it with water. When Wingfold returned, he found her in the midst of her household, busily preparing every kind of eatable and drinkable they could lay hands upon.
He had brought his boat to the church yard and moored it between two headstones: they would have their breakfast first, for there was no saying when they might get any lunch, and food is work. Besides, there was little to be gained by rousing people out of their good sleep: there was no danger yet.
"It is a great comfort," said the curate, as he drank his coffee, "to see how Drake goes in heart and soul for his tenants. He is pompous—a little, and something of a fine gentleman, but what is that beside his great truth! That work of his is the simplest act of Christianity of a public kind I have ever seen!"
"But is there not a great change on him since he had his money?" said Helen. "He seems to me so much humbler in his carriage and simpler in his manners than before."
"It is quite true," replied her husband. "It is mortifying to think," he went on after a little pause, "how many of our clergy, from mere beggarly pride, holding their rank superior—as better accredited servants of the Carpenter of Nazareth, I suppose—would look down on that man as a hedge-parson. The world they court looked down upon themselves from a yet greater height once, and may come to do so again. Perhaps the sooner the better, for then they will know which to choose. Now they serve Mammon and think they serve God."
"It is not quite so bad as that, surely!" said Helen.
"If it is not worldly pride, what is it? I do not think it is spiritual pride. Few get on far enough to be much in danger of that worst of all vices. It must then be church-pride, and that is the worst form of worldly pride, for it is a carrying into the kingdom of Heaven of the habits and judgments of the kingdom of Satan. I am wrong! such things can not be imported into the kingdom of Heaven: they can only be imported into the Church, which is bad enough. Helen, the churchman's pride is a thing to turn a saint sick with disgust, so utterly is it at discord with the lovely human harmony he imagines himself the minister of. He is the Pharisee, it may be the good Pharisee, of the kingdom of Heaven; but if the proud churchman be in the kingdom at all, it must be as one of the least in it. I don't believe one in ten who is guilty of this pride is aware of the sin of it. Only the other evening I heard a worthy canon say, it may have been more in joke than appeared, that he would have all dissenters burned. Now the canon would not hang one of them—but he does look down on them all with contempt. Such miserable paltry weaknesses and wickednesses, for in a servant of the Kingdom the feeling which suggests such a speech is wicked, are the moth holes in the garments of the Church, the teredo in its piles, the dry rot in its floors, the scaling and crumbling of its buttresses. They do more to ruin what such men call the Church, even in outward respects, than any of the rude attacks of those whom they thus despise. He who, in the name of Christ, pushes his neighbor from him, is a schismatic, and that of the worst and only dangerous type! But we had better be going. It's of no use telling you to take your waterproof; you'd only be giving it to the first poor woman we picked up."
"I may as well have the good of it till then," said Helen, and ran to fetch it, while the curate went to bring his boat to the house.
When he opened the door, there was no longer a spot of earth or of sky to be seen—only water, and the gray sponge filling the upper air, through which coursed multitudinous perpendicular runnels of water. Clad in a pair of old trowsers and a jersey, he went wading, and where the ground dipped, swimming, to the western gate of the churchyard. In a few minutes he was at the kitchen window, holding the boat in a long painter, for the water, although quite up to the rectory walls, was not yet deep enough there to float the boat with any body in it. The servants handed him out the great cans they used at school-teas, full of hot coffee, and baskets of bread, and he placed them in the boat, covering them with a tarpaulin. Then Helen appeared at the door, in her waterproof, with a great fur-cloak—to throw over him, she said, when she took the oars, for she meant to have her share of the fun: it was so seldom there was any going on a Sunday!—How she would have shocked her aunt, and better women than she!
"To-day," said the curate, "we shall praise God with themirthof the good old hundredth psalm, and not with thefearof the more modern version."
As he spoke he bent to his oars, and through a narrow lane the boat soon shot into Pine-street—now a wide canal, banked with houses dreary and dead, save where, from an upper window, peeped out here and there a sleepy, dismayed countenance. In silence, except for the sounds of the oars, and the dull rush of water everywhere, they slipped along.
"Thisisfun!" said Helen, where she sat and steered.
"Very quiet fun as yet," answered the curate. "But it will get faster by and by."
As often as he saw any one at a window, he called out that tea and coffee would be wanted for many a poor creature's breakfast. But here they were all big houses, and he rowed swiftly past them, for his business lay, not where there were servants and well-stocked larders, but where there were mothers and children and old people, and little but water besides. Nor had they left Pine street by many houses before they came where help was right welcome. Down the first turning a miserable cottage stood three feet deep in the water. Out jumped the curate with the painter in his hand, and opened the door.
On the bed, over the edge of which the water was lapping, sat a sickly young woman in her night-dress, holding her baby to her bosom. She stared for a moment with big eyes, then looked down, and said nothing; but a rose-tinge mounted from her heart to her pale cheek.
"Good morning, Martha!" said the curate cheerily. "Rather damp—ain't it? Where's your husband?"
"Away looking for work, sir," answered Martha, in a hopeless tone.
"Then he won't miss you. Come along. Give me the baby."
"I can't come like this, sir. I ain't got no clothes on."
"Take them with you. You can't put them on: they're all wet. Mrs. Wingfold is in the boat: she'll see to every thing you want. The door's hardly wide enough to let the boat through, or I'd pull it close up to the bed for you to get in."
She hesitated.
"Come along," he repeated. "I won't look at you. Or wait—I'll take the baby, and come back for you. Then you won't get so wet."
He took the baby from her arms, and turned to the door.
"It ain't you as I mind, sir," said Martha, getting into the water at once and following him, "—no more'n my own people; but all the town'll be at the windows by this time."
"Never mind; we'll see to you," he returned.
In half a minute more, with the help of the windowsill, she was in the boat, the fur-cloak wrapped about her and the baby, drinking the first cup of the hot coffee.
"We must take her home at once," said the curate.
"You said we should have fun!" said Helen, the tears rushing into her eyes.
She had left the tiller, and, while the mother drank her coffee, was patting the baby under the cloak. But she had to betake herself to the tiller again, for the curate was not rowing straight.
When they reached the rectory, the servants might all have been grandmothers from the way they received the woman and her child.
"Give them a warm bath together," said Helen, "as quickly as possible.—And stay, let me out, Thomas—I must go and get Martha some clothes. I shan't be a minute."
The next time they returned, Wingfold, looking into the kitchen, could hardly believe the sweet face he saw by the fire, so refined in its comforted sadness, could be that of Martha. He thought whether the fine linen, clean and white, may not help the righteousness even of the saints a little.
Their next take was a boat-load of children and an old grandmother. Most of the houses had a higher story, and they took only those who had no refuge. Many more, however, drank of their coffee and ate of their bread. The whole of the morning they spent thus, calling, on their passages, wherever they thought they could get help or find accommodation. By noon a score of boats were out rendering similar assistance. The water was higher than it had been for many years, and was still rising. Faber had laid hands upon an old tub of a salmon-coble, and was the first out after the curate. But there was no fun in the poor doctor's boat. Once the curate's and his met in the middle of Pine street—both as full of people as they could carry. Wingfold and Helen greeted Faber frankly and kindly. He returned their greeting with solemn courtesy, rowing heavily past.
By lunch-time, Helen had her house almost full, and did not want to go again: there was so much to be done! But her husband persuaded her to give him one hour more: the servants were doing so well! he said. She yielded. He rowed her to the church, taking up the sexton and his boy on their way. There the crypts and vaults were full of water. Old wood-carvings and bits of ancient coffins were floating about in them. But the floor of the church was above the water: he landed Helen dry in the porch, and led her to the organ-loft. Now the organ was one of great power; seldom indeed, large as the church was, did they venture its full force: he requested her to pull out every stop, and send the voice of the church, in full blast, into every corner of Glaston. He would come back for her in half an hour and take her home. He desired the sexton to leave all the doors open, and remember that the instrument would want every breath of wind he and his boy could raise.
He had just laid hold of his oars, when out of the porch rushed a roar of harmony that seemed to seize his boat and blow it away upon its mission like a feather—for in the delight of the music the curate never felt the arms that urged it swiftly along. After him it came pursuing, and wafted him mightily on. Over the brown waters it went rolling, a grand billow of innumerable involving and involved waves. He thought of the spirit of God that moved on the face of the primeval waters, and out of a chaos wrought a cosmos. "Would," he said to himself, "that ever from the church door went forth such a spirit of harmony and healing of peace and life! But the church's foes are they of her own household, who with the axes and hammers of pride and exclusiveness and vulgar priestliness, break the carved work of her numberless chapels, yea, build doorless screens from floor to roof, dividing nave and choir and chancel and transepts and aisles into sections numberless, and, with the evil dust they raise, darken for ages the windows of her clerestory!"
The curate was thinking of no party, but of individual spirit. Of the priestliness I have encountered, I can not determine whether the worse belonged to the Church of England or a certain body of Dissenters.
Mr Bevis had his horses put to, then taken away again, and an old hunter saddled. But half-way from home he came to a burst bridge, and had to return, much to the relief of his wife, who, when she had him in the house again, could enjoy the rain, she said: it was so cosey and comfortable to feel you could not go out, or any body call. I presume she therein seemed to take a bond of fate, and doubly assure the every-day dullness of her existence. Well, she was a good creature, and doubtless a corner would be found for her up above, where a little more work would probably be required of her.
Polwarth and his niece Ruth rose late, for neither had slept well. When they had breakfasted, they read together from the Bible: first the uncle read the passage he had last got light upon—he was always getting light upon passages, and then the niece the passage she had last been gladdened by; after which they sat and chatted a long time by the kitchen fire.
"I am afraid your asthma was bad last night, uncle dear," said Ruth. "I heard your breathing every time I woke."
"It was, rather," answered the little man, "but I took my revenge, and had a good crow over it."
"I know what you mean, uncle: do let me hear the crow."
He rose, and slowly climbing the stair to his chamber, returned with a half sheet of paper in his hand, resumed his seat, and read the following lines, which he had written in pencil when the light came:
Satan, avaunt!Nay, take thine hour;Thou canst not daunt,Thou hast no power;Be welcome to thy nest,Though it be in my breast.
Burrow amain;Dig like a mole;Fill every veinWith half-burned coal;Puff the keen dust about,And all to choke me out.
Fill music's waysWith creaking cries,That no loud praiseMay climb the skies;And on my laboring chestLay mountains of unrest.
My slumber steepIn dreams of haste,That only sleep,No rest I taste—With stiflings, rimes of rote,And fingers on the throat.
Satan, thy mightI do defy;Live core of night,I patient lie:A wind comes up the grayWill blow thee clean away.
Christ's angel, Death,All radiant white,With one cold breathWill scare thee quite,And give my lungs an airAs fresh as answered prayer.
So, Satan, doThy worst with me,Until the TrueShall set me free,And end what He began,By making me a man.
"It is not much of poetry, Ruth!" he said, raising his eyes from the paper; "—no song of thrush or blackbird! I am ashamed that I called it a cock-crow—for that is one of the finest things in the world—a clarion defiance to darkness and sin—far too good a name for my poor jingle—except, indeed, you call it a Cochin-china-cock-crow—from out a very wheezy chest!"
"'My strength is made perfect in weakness,'" said Ruth solemnly, heedless of the depreciation. To her the verses were as full of meaning as if she had made them herself.
"I think I like the older reading better—that is, without theMy," said Polwarth: "'Strength is made perfect in weakness.' Somehow—I can not explain the feeling—to hear a grand aphorism, spoken in widest application, as a fact of more than humanity, of all creation, from the mouth of the human God, the living Wisdom, seems to bring me close to the very heart of the universe. Strength—strength itself—all over—is made perfect in weakness;—a law of being, you see, Ruth! not a law of Christian growth only, but a law of growth, even all the growth leading up to the Christian, which growth is the highest kind of creation. The Master's own strength was thus perfected, and so must be that of His brothers and sisters. Ah, what a strength must be his!—how patient in endurance—how gentle in exercise—how mighty in devotion—how fine in its issues,-perfected by such suffering! Ah, my child, you suffer sorely sometimes—I know it well! but shall we not let patience have her perfect work, that we may—one day, Ruth, one day, my child—be perfect and entire, wanting nothing?"
Led by the climax of his tone, Ruth slipped from her stool on her knees.Polwarth kneeled beside her, and said:
"O Father of life, we praise Thee that one day Thou wilt take Thy poor crooked creatures, and give them bodies like Christ's, perfect as His, and full of Thy light. Help us to grow faster—as fast as Thou canst help us to grow. Help us to keep our eyes on the opening of Thy hand, that we may know the manna when it comes. O Lord, we rejoice that we are Thy making, though Thy handiwork is not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain! Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum and grind of his wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how we love Thee. Fashion the clay to Thy beautiful will. To the eyes of men we are vessels of dishonor, but we know Thou dost not despise us, for Thou hast made us, and Thou dwellest with us. Thou hast made us love Thee, and hope in Thee, and in Thy love we will be brave and endure. All in good time, O Lord. Amen."
While they thus prayed, kneeling on the stone floor of the little kitchen, dark under the universal canopy of cloud, the rain went on clashing and murmuring all around, rushing from the eaves, and exploding with sharp hisses in the fire, and in the mingled noise they had neither heard a low tap, several times repeated, nor the soft opening of the door that followed. When they rose from their knees, it was therefore with astonishment they saw a woman standing motionless in the doorway, without cloak or bonnet, her dank garments clinging to her form and dripping with rain.
When Juliet woke that morning, she cared little that the sky was dull and the earth dark. A selfish sorrow, a selfish love even, makes us stupid, and Juliet had been growing more and more stupid. Many people, it seems to me, through sorrow endured perforce and without a gracious submission, slowly sink in the scale of existence. Such are some of those middle-aged women, who might be the very strength of social well-being, but have no aspiration, and hope only downward—after rich husbands for their daughters, it may be—a new bonnet or an old coronet—the devil knows what.
Bad as the weather had been the day before, Dorothy had yet contrived to visit her, and see that she was provided with every necessary; and Juliet never doubted she would come that day also. She thought of Dorothy's ministrations as we so often do of God's—as of things that come of themselves, for which there is no occasion to be thankful.
When she had finished the other little house-work required for her comfort, a labor in which she found some little respite from the gnawings of memory and the blankness of anticipation, she ended by making up a good fire, though without a thought of Dorothy's being wet when she arrived, and sitting down by the window, stared out at the pools, spreading wider and wider on the gravel walks beneath her. She sat till she grew chilly, then rose and dropped into an easy chair by the fire, and fell fast asleep.
She slept a long time, and woke in a terror, seeming to have waked herself with a cry. The fire was out, and the hearth cold. She shivered and drew her shawl about her. Then suddenly she remembered the frightful dream she had had.
She dreamed that she had just fled from her husband and gained the park, when, the moment she entered it, something seized her from behind, and bore her swiftly, as in the arms of a man—only she seemed to hear the rush of wings behind her—the way she had been going. She struggled in terror, but in vain; the power bore her swiftly on, and she knew whither. Her very being recoiled from the horrible depth of the motionless pool, in which, as she now seemed to know, lived one of the loathsome creatures of the semi-chaotic era of the world, which had survived its kind as well as its coevals, and was ages older than the human race. The pool appeared—but not as she had known it, for it boiled and heaved, bubbled and rose. From its lowest depths it was moved to meet and receive her! Coil upon coil it lifted itself into the air, towering like a waterspout, then stretched out a long, writhing, shivering neck to take her from the invisible arms that bore her to her doom. The neck shot out a head, and the head shot out the tongue of a water-snake. She shrieked and woke, bathed in terror.
With the memory of the dream not a little of its horror returned; she rose to shake it off, and went to the window. What did she see there? The fearsome pool had entered the garden, had come half-way to the house, and was plainly rising every moment. More or less the pool had haunted her ever since she came; she had seldom dared go nearer it than half-way down the garden. But for the dulling influence of her misery, it would have been an unendurable horror to her, now it was coming to fetch her as she had seen it in her warning dream! Her brain reeled; for a moment she gazed paralyzed with horror, then turned from the window, and, with almost the conviction that the fiend of her vision was pursuing her, fled from the house, and across the park, through the sheets of rain, to the gate-lodge, nor stopped until, all unaware of having once thought of him in her terror, she stood at the door of Polwarth's cottage.
Ruth was darting toward her with outstretched hands, when her uncle stopped her.
"Ruth, my child," he said, "run and light a fire in the parlor. I will welcome our visitor."
She turned instantly, and left the room. Then Polwarth went up to Juliet, who stood trembling, unable to utter a word, and said, with perfect old-fashioned courtesy, "You are heartily welcome, ma'am. I sent Ruth away that I might first assure you that you are as safe with her as with me. Sit here a moment, ma'am. You are so wet, I dare not place you nearer to the fire.—Ruth!"
She came instantly.
"Ruth," he repeated, "this lady is Mrs. Faber. She is come to visit us for a while. Nobody must know of it.—You need not be at all uneasy, Mrs. Faber. Not a soul will come near us to-day. But I will lock the door, to secure time, if any one should.—You will get Mrs. Faber's room ready at once, Ruth. I will come and help you. But a spoonful of brandy in hot water first, please.—Let me move your chair a little, ma'am—out of the draught."
Juliet in silence did every thing she was told, received the prescribed antidote from Ruth, and was left alone in the kitchen.
But the moment she was freed from one dread, she was seized by another; suspicion took the place of terror; and as soon as she heard the toiling of the goblins up the creaking staircase, she crept to the foot of it after them, and with no more compunction than a princess in a fairy-tale, set herself to listen. It was not difficult, for the little inclosed staircase carried every word to the bottom of it.
"Ithoughtshe wasn't dead!" she heard Ruth exclaim joyfully; and the words and tone set her wondering.
"I saw you did not seem greatly astonished at the sight of her; but what made you think such an unlikely thing?" rejoined her uncle.
"I saw you did not believe she was dead. That was enough for me."
"You are a witch, Ruth! I never said a word one way or the other."
"Which showed that you were thinking, and made me think. You had something in your mind which you did not choose to tell me yet."
"Ah, child!" rejoined her uncle, in a solemn tone, "how difficult it is to hide any thing! I don't think God wants any thing hidden. The light is His region, His kingdom, His palace-home. It can only be evil, outside or in, that makes us turn from the fullest light of the universe. Truly one must be born again to enter into the kingdom!"
Juliet heard every word, heard and was bewildered. The place in which she had sought refuge was plainly little better than a kobold-cave, yet merely from listening to the talk of the kobolds without half understanding it, she had begun already to feel a sense of safety stealing over her, such as she had never been for an instant aware of in the Old House, even with Dorothy beside her.
They went on talking, and she went on listening. They were so much her inferiors there could be no impropriety in doing so!
"The poor lady," she heard the man-goblin say, "has had some difference with her husband; but whether she wants to hide from him or from the whole world or from both, she only can tell. Our business is to take care of her, and do for her what God may lay to our hand. What she desires to hide, is sacred to us. We have no secrets of our own, Ruth, and have the more room for those of other people who are unhappy enough to have any. Let God reveal what He pleases: there are many who have no right to know what they most desire to know. She needs nursing, poor thing! We will pray to God for her."
"But how shall we make her comfortable in such a poor little house?" returned Ruth. "It is the dearest place in the world to me—but how will she feel in it?"
"We will keep her warm and clean," answered her uncle, "and that is all an angel would require."
"An angel!—yes," answered Ruth: "for angels don't eat; or, at least, if they do, for I doubt if you will grant that they don't, I am certain that they are not so hard to please as some people down here. The poor, dear lady is delicate—you know she has always been—and I am not much of a cook."
"You are a very good cook, my dear. Perhaps you do not know a great many dishes, but you are a dainty cook of those you do know. Few people can have more need than we to be careful what they eat,—we have got such a pair of troublesome cranky little bodies; and if you can suit them, I feel sure you will be able to suit any invalid that is not fastidious by nature rather than necessity."
"I will do my best," said Ruth cheerily, comforted by her uncle's confidence. "The worst is that, for her own sake, I must not get a girl to help me."
"The lady will help you with her own room," said Polwarth. "I have a shrewd notion that it is only thefineladies, those that are so little of ladies that they make so much of being ladies, who mind doing things with their own hands. Now you must go and make her some tea, while she gets in bed. She is sure to like tea best."
Juliet retreated noiselessly, and when the woman-gnome entered the kitchen, there sat the disconsolate lady where she had left her, still like the outcast princess of a fairy-tale: she had walked in at the door, and they had immediately begun to arrange for her stay, and the strangest thing to Juliet was that she hardly felt it strange. It was only as if she had come a day sooner than she was expected—which indeed was very much the case, for Polwarth had been looking forward to the possibility, and latterly to the likelihood of her becoming their guest.
"Your room is ready now," said Ruth, approaching her timidly, and looking up at her with her woman's childlike face on the body of a child. "Will you come?"
Juliet rose and followed her to the garret-room with the dormer window, in which Ruth slept.
"Will you please get into bed as fast as you can," she said, "and when you knock on the floor I will come and take away your clothes and get them dried. Please to wrap this new blanket round you, lest the cold sheets should give you a chill. They are well aired, though. I will bring you a hot bottle, and some tea. Dinner will be ready soon."
So saying she left the chamber softly. The creak of the door as she closed it, and the white curtains of the bed and window, reminded Juliet of a certain room she once occupied at the house of an old nurse, where she had been happier than ever since in all her life, until her brief bliss with Faber: she burst into tears, and weeping undressed and got into bed. There the dryness and the warmth and the sense of safety soothed her speedily; and with the comfort crept in the happy thought that here she lay on the very edge of the high road to Glaston, and that nothing could be more probable than that she would soon see her husband ride past. With that one hope she could sit at a window watching for centuries! "O Paul! Paul! my Paul!" she moaned. "If I could but be made clean again for you! I would willingly be burned at the stake, if the fire would only make me clean, for the chance of seeing you again in the other world!" But as the comfort into her brain, so the peace of her new surroundings stole into her heart. The fancy grew upon her that she was in a fairy-tale, in which she must take every thing as it came, for she could not alter the text. Fear vanished; neither staring eyes nor creeping pool could find her in the guardianship of the benevolent goblins. She fell fast asleep; and the large, clear, gray eyes of the little woman gnome came and looked at her as she slept, and their gaze did not rouse her. Softly she went, and came again; but, although dinner was then ready, Ruth knew better than to wake her. She knew that sleep is the chief nourisher in life's feast, and would not withdraw the sacred dish. Her uncle said sleep was God's contrivance for giving man the help he could not get into him while he was awake. So the loving gnomes had their dinner together, putting aside the best portions of it against the waking of the beautiful lady lying fast asleep above.
All that same Sunday morning, the minister and Dorothy had of course plenty of work to their hand, for their more immediate neighbors were all of the poor. Their own house, although situated on the very bank of the river, was in no worse plight than most of the houses in the town, for it stood upon an artificial elevation; and before long, while it had its lower parts full of water like the rest, its upper rooms were filled with people from the lanes around. But Mr. Drake's heart was in the Pottery, for he was anxious as to the sufficiency of his measures. Many of the neighbors, driven from their homes, had betaken themselves to his inclosure, and when he went, he found the salmon-fishers still carrying families thither. He set out at once to get what bread he could from the baker's, a quantity of meat from the butcher, cheese, coffee, and tins of biscuits and preserved meat from the grocers: all within his bounds were either his own people or his guests, and he must do what he could to feed them. For the first time he felt rich, and heartily glad and grateful that he was. He could please God, his neighbor, and himself all at once, getting no end of good out of the slave of which the unrighteous make a god.
He took Dorothy with him, for he would have felt helpless on such an expedition without her judgment; and, as Lisbeth's hands were more than full, they agreed it was better to take Amanda. Dorothy was far from comfortable at having to leave Juliet alone all day, but the possibility of her being compelled to omit her customary visit had been contemplated between them, and she could not fail to understand it on this the first occasion. Anyhow, better could not be, for the duty at home was far the more pressing. That day she showed an energy which astonished even her father. Nor did she fail of her reward. She received insights into humanity which grew to real knowledge. I was going to say that, next to an insight into the heart of God, an insight into the heart of a human being is the most precious of things; but when I think of it—what is the latter but the former? I will say this at least, that no one reads the human heart well, to whom the reading reveals nothing of the heart of the Father. The wire-gauze of sobering trouble over the flaming flower of humanity, enabled Dorothy to see right down into its fire-heart, and distinguish there the loveliest hues and shades. Where the struggle for own life is in abeyance, and the struggle for other life active, there the heart that God thought out and means to perfect, the pure love-heart of His humans, reveals itself truly, and is gracious to behold. For then the will of the individual sides divinely with his divine impulse, and his heart is unified in good. When the will of the man sides perfectly with the holy impulses in him, then all is well; for then his mind is one with the mind of his Maker; God and man are one.
Amanda shrieked with delight when she was carried to the boat, and went on shrieking as she floated over flower-beds and box-borders, caught now and then in bushes and overhanging branches. But the great fierce current, ridging the middle of the brown lake as it followed the tide out to the ocean, frightened her a little. The features of the flat country were all but obliterated; trees only and houses and corn-stacks stood out of the water, while in the direction of the sea where were only meadows, all indication of land had vanished; one wide, brown level was everywhere, with a great rushing serpent of water in the middle of it. Amanda clapped her little hands in ecstasy. Never was there such a child for exuberance of joy! her aunt thought. Or, if there were others as glad, where were any who let the light of their gladness so shine before men, invading, conquering them as she did with the rush of her joy! Dorothy held fast to the skirt of her frock, fearing every instant the explosive creature would jump overboard in elemental sympathy. But, poled carefully along by Mr. Drake, they reached in safety a certain old shed, and getting in at the door of the loft where a cow-keeper stored his hay and straw, through that descended into the heart of the Pottery, which its owner was delighted to find—not indeed dry under foot with such a rain falling, but free from lateral invasion.
His satisfaction, however, was of short duration. Dorothy went into one of the nearer dwellings, and he was crossing an open space with Amanda, to get help from a certain cottage in unloading the boat and distributing its cargo, when he caught sight of a bubbling pool in the middle of it. Alas! it was from a drain, whose covering had burst with the pressure from within. He shouted for help. Out hurried men, women and children on all sides. For a few moments he was entirely occupied in giving orders, and let Amanda's hand go: every body knew her, and there seemed no worse mischief within reach for her than dabbling in the pools, to which she was still devoted.
Two or three spades were soon plying busily, to make the breach a little wider, while men ran to bring clay and stones from one of the condemned cottages. Suddenly arose a great cry, and the crowd scattered in all directions. The wall of defense at the corner of the butcher's shop had given away, and a torrent was galloping across the Pottery, straight for the spot where the water was rising from the drain. Amanda, gazing in wonder at the fight of the people about her, stood right in its course, but took no heed of it, or never saw it coming. It caught her, swept her away, and tumbled with her, foaming and roaring, into the deep foundation of which I have spoken. Her father had just missed her, and was looking a little anxiously round, when a shriek of horror and fear burst from the people, and they rushed to the hole. Without a word spoken he knew Amanda was in it. He darted through them, scattering men and women in all directions, but pulling off his coat as he ran.
Though getting old, he was far from feeble, and had been a strong swimmer in his youth. But he plunged heedlessly, and the torrent, still falling some little height, caught him, and carried him almost to the bottom. When he came to the top, he looked in vain for any sign of the child. The crowd stood breathless on the brink. No one had seen her, though all eyes were staring into the tumult. He dived, swam about beneath, groping in the frightful opacity, but still in vain. Then down through the water came a shout, and he shot to the surface—to see only something white vanish. But the recoil of the torrent from below caught her, and just as he was diving again, brought her up almost within arm's-length of him. He darted to her, clasped her, and gained the brink. He could not have got out, though the cavity was now brimful, but ready hands had him in safety in a moment. Fifty arms were stretched to take the child, but not even to Dorothy would he yield her. Ready to fall at every step, he blundered through the water, which now spread over the whole place, and followed by Dorothy in mute agony, was making for the shed behind which lay his boat, when one of the salmon fishers, who had brought his coble in at the gap, crossed them, and took them up. Mr. Drake dropped into the bottom of the boat, with the child pressed to his bosom. He could not speak.
"To Doctor Faber's! For the child's life!" said Dorothy, and the fisher rowed like a madman.
Faber had just come in. He undressed the child with his own hands, rubbed her dry, and did every thing to initiate respiration. For a long time all seemed useless, but he persisted beyond the utmost verge of hope. Mr. Drake and Dorothy stood in mute dismay. Neither was quite achildof God yet, and in the old man a rebellious spirit murmured: it was hard that he should have evil for good! that his endeavors for his people should be the loss of his child!
Faber was on the point of ceasing his efforts in utter despair, when he thought he felt a slight motion of the diaphragm, and renewed them eagerly. She began to breathe. Suddenly she opened her eyes, looked at him for a moment, then with a smile closed them again. To the watchers heaven itself seemed to open in that smile. But Faber dropped the tiny form, started a pace backward from the bed, and stood staring aghast. The next moment he threw the blankets over the child, turned away, and almost staggered from the room. In his surgery he poured himself out a glass of brandy, swallowed it neat, sat down and held his head in his hands. An instant after, he was by the child's side again, feeling her pulse, and rubbing her limbs under the blankets.
The minister's hands had turned blue, and he had begun to shiver, but a smile of sweetest delight was on his face.
"God bless me!" cried the doctor, "you've got no coat on! and you are drenched! I never saw any thing but the child!"
"He plunged into the horrible hole after her," said Dorothy. "How wicked of me to forget him for any child under the sun! He got her out all by himself, Mr. Faber!—Come home, father dear.—I will come back and see to Amanda as soon as I have got him to bed."
"Yes, Dorothy; let us go," said the minister, and put his hand on her shoulder. His teeth chattered and his hand shook.
The doctor rang the bell violently.
"Neither of you shall leave this house to-night.—Take a hot bath to the spare bedroom, and remove the sheets," he said to the housekeeper, who had answered the summons. "My dear sir," he went on, turning again to the minister, "you must get into the blankets at once. How careless of me! The child's life will be dear at the cost of yours."