EVE THE SEVENTH.
BEING A GOOD-NIGHT CHAPTER CONTAINING A BUNDLE OF OLD MEMORIES BY A LONELY CLERGYMAN.
BEING A GOOD-NIGHT CHAPTER CONTAINING A BUNDLE OF OLD MEMORIES BY A LONELY CLERGYMAN.
BEING A GOOD-NIGHT CHAPTER CONTAINING A BUNDLE OF OLD MEMORIES BY A LONELY CLERGYMAN.
By CLEMENT SCOTT.
By CLEMENT SCOTT.
By CLEMENT SCOTT.
IHAVEoften heard it said, that a drowning man, before he sinks, never to rise again in this world, sees mirrored instantly in the dreamy mist, the dramatic moments and episodes of his life.
I can well believe it. Your hard-fisted sour-minded Puritan will tell you, that he only sees written in letters of blood the sins he has committed, the hearts he has broken, and the things which he has left undone.
A more beautiful belief in an all-merciful Providence persuades me, that something of the music and the melody of his life is not forgotten even then, and that, if there be such music and melody, even in the lives of the worst of us, they are allowed mercifully to alleviate the agonies of our last moments, to help us through the darkness of that interminable valley which lives in the future for all of us, and whose end no one knows.
I felt exactly in the position of that typical drowning man, when I walked alone—as I shall ever walk alone whilst life lasts—between North Repps Cottage and my house at TheHighlands, in the village of Syderstrand in Norfolk, one memorable Christmas Eve.
It is not a long walk, as you all know, within shelter of wood and sound of everlasting sea.
A ruined church, lovingly mantled in dark ivy; a fisher village modernized out of all recognition; two or three scattered farms, sturdy and flinty and grim, laughing to scorn the modern gimcrack red houses that offend the landscape—this is all I passed, from the moment the hospitable door closed behind me, and I had said a “Good night, God bless you†to the old Cheevers who went up the hill to their pretty home in the North Repps almshouses.
The Christmas Eve was over. I had pressed the hand of my old friend and patron, Samuel Barkston, now the owner of North Repps Hall, who was sleeping that Christmas Eve under the roof of North Repps Cottage,now the house of dear old Nick and ever beautiful Nan, and I had made an appointment for all of them on the morrow after Christmas service to “take pot-luck†with the lonely old parson, happy and contented in the care of the simple souls, who dwell in the seaside cottages of Overstrand and its sister parish Syderstrand.
What were the unexpected words that rang in my ears that Christmas Eve, when I had toasted them all, a glass of excellently brewed punch in my hand, in the simple phrase, “God bless us all� It came from the pipy, crooning voice of old Cheevers, who spoke with his good old wife’s hand locked in his own, and thus he spoke:—
“Well, this ’ere is wonderful! wery wonderful, my dear.â€
And then Mrs. Cheevers gave a little convulsive sob, and shed another tear.
“Only to think of our little Nick and Nan,and me and you standing ’ere and drinking their ’earty good ’ealth, and the ’ealth of them dear little ones, and a wishing of ’em ‘A Merry Christmas,’ which we does with all our ’eart, and God’s blessing.â€
This is what I heard, with my very own ears, before the hospitable door closed behind me, and I turned my back on the lights and glowing Christmas fire, and walked out among the snow-covered rhododendrons, a lonely and neglected clergyman.
It was then that, under the starry heavens, the keen wind whistling about my ears, the boughs of the leafless trees shrieking, as if they were in pain, and the sea moaning its eternal dull chant in the distance, that my life was mirrored before me, as it must and ever shall be, until time ends, to the drowning or the dying man.
All my days at Oxford, their wild hopes and ambitions, all my trials of athleticismand strength, in the old days when port and sherry wine at the University were thought more of than any Olympian games.
Flash! flash! flash! went the memories across my brain.
The day, oh! memorable day of days, when I was stroke of the Oxford eight, and we beat Cambridge with seven oars.
The day when I won the silver sculls, and helped to win the silver pair oars, that rest under a glass case in my East Anglian rectory.
The day when I determined, God willing, to devote my life to the poor, and found that a dandified Christ Church student, who wore his long hair in a net—as they did in those days—was changed into an East-end curate with two daily services to attend to, several sermons to write, and loathsome, unventilated hovels to visit day by day.
The day when I fell in love, and the day when love’s paradise was closed to me forever. That one supremely delicious moment, in years gone by, when with tears in her eyes she came across the room, where we were alone together, and kissing me purely on the forehead, looked into my eyes and whispered “Be a friend to me!â€
The day—ah!nefasti dies—when in my arms she breathed her last, and trying to divide her crucifix with me, that we might part in soul no more for ever, she whispered, “Love, be good!†and I was alone for evermore.
The day when, distracted with grief, hungry and eager for work, I became a prison chaplain, in order to bury my grief in comforting others in their hour of sorrow.
Flash! flash! flash! went the memories, and still the night wind whistled through the trees, still the great sea moaned its eternal song under the cliffs that lead to the Garden of Sleep.
Now I was in Australia, whither I had wandered in my despair, standing white-robed before the altar, where I had made our Nick and Nan man and wife. Now back again in England, where I fell in with Samuel Barkston, theMascotteof my strange, wandering and lonely life.
Why is it, that I look upon this good fellow as the best friend man ever had on earth? Has he not done everything that one Christian man can do for another? Has he not well deserved the love of every one of the villagers round about, and become part of the heart’s life of those who just now, on this Christmas Eve, at my bidding, said “God bless us all�
Have you ever seen the modest, picturesque almshouses, that dear old Barkston built in the village of North Repps, near Cromer? Have you never passed them in warm midsummer covered with roses, embraced bydark purple clematis, smelling of new-mown hay, and decked round with old stocks and golden marigold?
I call it a harbour of refuge. Was it not Samuel Barkston who, at my simple suggestion, brought down the dear old Cheevers, man and wife, my old world parishioners, to exchange the dark roar and riot of London, the dirt, the care, and unrest, where they would have decayed into the workhouse, to weather their last years out in God’s country, in a haven of rest, built by man in God’s eternal honour?
Why do they pooh-pooh and ridicule the men of wealth who build these harbours of refuge for the poor? Surely they do a noble work.
What ignominy is it, to live in this peaceful and blessed dependence? What disgrace, to accept the hand-clasp of such beautiful charity? I never pass one of these hospitalsof old England, from that of St. Cross at Winchester down to the most modern building dedicated, “Ad majorem Dei gloriam,†without taking off my hat and saying a prayer for the rest of the souls of such pious benefactors.
What, indeed, has not my excellent patron and chosen friend done, for the dear ones who love him so well?
His son mercifully restored to him, he has placed at North Repps Cottage, one of the ideal love nests of this beautiful old England of ours, and there he dwells, when he can be spared from his splendid philanthropic labours, and from Parliament, and from countless duties, with the beautiful, dark-eyed, whole-souled, handsome Nan, who is the Lady Bountiful of the villagers for miles and miles around.
And if, after their wandering life, great sorrows and bitter trials, the cottage in thewood seems rather a new and restricted sort of domain after the gold-fields and mighty distances of Australia, their children, at any rate, have no such ideas or contrasts whatever.
Here, by these primrose woods and bluebell carpets, in this enchanted district, more than one of the youngsters, who own Nick and Nan as best of fathers and mothers, were born.
Here they have played since infancy, under the famous copper beeches, hedged round in June time with rhododendron bloom, and here their sharp ears have often heard Nick and Nan discuss and compare the varied beauties of England and Australia. And though Nick would say he loved Australia best, because there he became the lord and master of the sweetest woman in the world, still Nan will ever keep on insisting that there is no place like home, after all, and emphasize the truth of it with a kiss on her husband’s honest face and faithful lips.
And if Samuel Barkston has done all these things to others, what has he not done for me—for me, who had no claim upon him, but that of friendship loyal and sincere?
Did he not discover, in that marvellous way that generous men discover all that we want and secretly pray for, that this corner of the earth was the one that I best loved?
Did he not know that, from almost boyhood I had said that if I coveted my neighbour’s house—which was a very wrong thing to do—it was The Highlands in the village of Syderstrand that I alone coveted? And why?
Not only because it commands a glorious view of sea and pasture; not only that the blue of the sky is continued in the sea, or that the gold of the sun is repeated in the corn; not only that the air, we breathe here, is life and the atmosphere exhilaration; not only that here the wicked seem to ceasefrom troubling and that the weary are at rest; not only that the villagers hereabouts seem the kindliest people in the world, thankful for every gentle act of thought and proof of sympathy; not only that I have lived the greatest part of my life amidst these associations—but there was another reason that influenced my friend in his greatest act of kindness.
Under the chancel wall of the little village church of Syderstrand, hidden from the road, in full sight of the sea and the poppy-covered corn, you may have observed a simple white marble cross.
There, in everlasting peace, rests the only woman who ever had any influence on my life. We met and loved within a few yards of the spot where I left her for ever, by the sea that was her delight and the fields that were the scene of our daily wanderings.
What a gift from man to man! To bepresented with the care of these faithful souls; to preach to them, to pray for them, to visit them in their sickness, to advise them in their sorrows, to hear their heartfelt blessings when my feet cross their threshold; to love our fellow-creatures and to be loved again; to feel one has found a mission upon earth; to exchange the cares of a long and restless life for one of profound peace; to be able to retire to rest every night in true thankfulness of heart; and to be the appointed guardian of the grave of a woman, one has loved with surpassing love—these have been the gifts showered undeservedly on the head of the lonely clergyman who, strange to say, has all his life long been hovering about the homes and the destinies of nearly all the actors in this strange and eventful drama.
But, as I think over these last fifty years of a tolerably restless life, the strangestcircumstance of all is this—that I have been made to-day a kind of Peacemaker, and a witness on the most eventful Christmas Eve of my life of what may be called “Good will towards men.â€
It was quite half a century ago, when I came across good, honest, kind-hearted Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, who, as you know, were so intimately connected with the baby lives of poor neglected Nick and Nan. I came up from Oxford to my parochial work in the East-end of London, fired with enthusiasm, and settled down determined to do my best for the poor, who were not so well looked after, in those days, as they are now. My first curacy was in the New North-road, Hoxton—the long, new thoroughfare, that led in a pretty straight line from the heart of the City to the green and delightful suburbs of Highbury and Canonbury.
But what a difference between the oldLondon of those days and the new London of to-day! Within an easy walk of my lodgings in Brudenell Place I could pick may off the country hedges.
Mr. Rydon had not commenced his building operations, and the North Pole Gardens were a rustic retreat for the citizens among the fields. Highbury and Hornsey were fairly out in the country; Islington was like the provincial hamlet of to-day; Canonbury was embowered in greenery.
I could walk across fields all the way to Dalston and Hackney; I played cricket in the Cat and Mutton Fields; and there was still something of an old-world romance in the Shepherdess Walk!
Yes! it was quite true Samuel Phelps was playing Shakespeare at Sadler’s Wells in those days, and gathering round him the intelligent playgoers of his time; and I have often handled a racket at the dear old opencourt at the “Belvedere†on Pentonville Hill, which was one of the last of the roadside ale-houses with green benches and trim gardens facing the road, inns that were dotted about the coach road between the “Angel†at Islington and the “Yorkshire Stingo†in Marylebone.
Why, we passed through a turnpike between Hoxton and the City, and in those days the River Lea and the New River flowed through summer fields and hay meadows, and skirted houses, as romantically situated as any that can be found in the Warwickshire of to-day.
I often chat of old times with Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, and have a friendly pipe with the old man in the almshouse garden; and, though now they are spending the winter of their content in a peaceful paradise, I trust they have still a warm corner in their hearts for many scenes in the London of fifty years ago.
And as you may know also, it was my blessing and great privilege to be of some comfort to poor Nick in the dreadful London prison.
Never for a moment did I doubt his innocence, for there is a ring in a good man’s voice, a warmth in his hand-clasp, and honesty in his eyes that are absolutely convincing to those who have made a study of criminal life.
But what can a prison chaplain do, after all, towards establishing justice and right? He can listen to the heartfelt confession, can comfort the innocent or the penitent, but he can do little more than pray that right in the end will overmaster wrong, and that true love, like truth, will ultimately prevail.
Assuredly they did so in the case of Nick and Nan, for they were my hands that joined their hands at the altar, and it was I, who put to them that solemn oath of mutual fidelity which they have never broken to this hour.
Out of the darkness comes the light, out of the cloud comes the sunshine, and it is my experience, that those who suffer most, and that those who “have patience and endure†have some of their reward in this world as well as in the next.
Whatever the sorrows of my life have been—and they have been many and bitter ones—I have had the comfort to-day of seeing gathered together the happiest family in all the land.
I never shall forget the scene this Christmas Eve, in the cosy sitting-room of their lovely cottage by the sea.
Outside, the sparkling snow covered the garden, and rested softly on the tree branches and the evergreens.
Inside, the Yule logs sparkled on the hearth, the old oak parlour was decorated with holly and laurel and arbutus and mistletoe. The table was laden with the good things of thisworld, as it should be at Christmas time. The wine that, honestly and temperately enjoyed, is as much man’s possession as the corn in the fields or the fruit on the garden trees, sparkled in every glass. Each face seemed radiant with joy.
There sat old Barkston with his chaplain, as I call myself, at his right hand, and his youngest girl grandchild on his knee, an auburn-haired darling of some six summers, who delights the old gentleman by her shrewd observations and her curious ways.
There sat young Barkston, the Nick of old days, with a girl child on his knee, “dangling the grapes,†but with the disengaged hand clasped in that of beautiful and radiant Nan, who, like most fond mothers, had the best place in her honest heart for her only boy—young Nick, as he is familiarly called.
A little lower down, a little shy perhaps,but alternately garrulous and tearful, sat Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, who were placed at the hospitable table as amongst the most favoured guests.
But before the party broke up and the evening ended, there came that old Christmas ceremony that, I regret to say, is falling into disuse and neglect.
At the command of our excellent host the tables were cleared away, and the butler brought in a splendid old china bowl of steaming punch, decorated with holly and flowers, and then all the servants trooped into the room and were made welcome as part of a united family. On this day of the year they were no mere masters and mistresses and servants and dependants, but friends heart and soul.
But before the punch was handed round, there was to be an old-fashioned country dance. Old Barkston, to her great delight,led out Mrs. Cheevers, who was great at her steps as her grandmother, so she said, had been before her.
The hand of Nan was claimed both by old Cheevers and the venerable butler, but she decided that age should decide the matter, promising an extra turn to the rejected old gentleman.
Nick had to dance with all the girls in the household, who enjoyed the joke keenly, particularly when he set the example of kissing his partners under the mistletoe—an example that the young men were very slow and shy to follow.
“And pray that the parting may not be eternal.†(Page264)
“And pray that the parting may not be eternal.†(Page264)
“And pray that the parting may not be eternal.†(Page264)
And then, when the dancing and romping were over, came the punch bowl, with glasses all round and healths and tears and good wishes. Then it was that old Cheevers delivered himself, in reply to the universal toast, “God bless us all,†of the words that still ring in my ears, now that the doors of thathappy home are closed behind me, and I walk dreaming of the past towards my solitary home.
“Well, this ’ere is wery wonderful, wery wonderful, my dear! Just to think of our little Nick and Nan, and me and you a standing ’ere and drinking of their ’earty good ’ealth, and the ’ealth of them dear little ones, and a wishing of ’em a Merry Christmas!â€
Good, honest souls, they had been present at the two most eventful moments of the lives of Nick and Nan.
And for me, on this never-to-be-forgotten Christmas Eve, there will be but one ceremony more, a faithful and pious pilgrimage, that I have never forgotten since the dead and the living were united on that wind-swept hill within sound of the sea.
When all the lights are out, and the embers are dying down on the hearth, whensilence reigns about this land of love, and the peace is profound, I shall go in at the gates of the Garden of Sleep, and I shall kneel down on a grave, that is my dearest possession, and I shall kiss the marble cross above it, and pray that the parting may not be eternal, and that we may meet again to part no more for ever!
And then, perhaps, before the prayer is ended, and another day is born, the Christmas joy bells will answer one another across the frosty hills, and love and charity will be in all the air, and the words will come home to me, which will be the text of my Christmas sermon:—
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.â€
A Lonely Clergyman.
THE END.
THE END.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes:Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.Typographical errors were silently corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.