“If I Him but have,If he be but mine,If my heart, hence to the grave,Ne’er forgets his love divine—Know I nought of sadness,Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.If I Him but have,Glad with all I part;Follow on my pilgrim staffMy Lord only, with true heart;Leave them, nothing saying,On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.If I Him but have,Glad I fall asleep;Aye the flood that his heart gaveStrength within my heart shall keep,And with soft compellingMake it tender, through and through it swelling.If I Him but have,Mine the world I hail!Glad as cherub smiling grave,Holding back the virgin’s veil.Sunk and lost in seeing,Earthly fears have died from all my being.Where I have but HimIs my Fatherland;And all gifts and graces comeHeritage into my hand:Brothers long deploredI in his disciples find restored.”
“What a lovely hymn, papa!” exclaimed Connie. She could always speak more easily than either her mother or sister. “Who wrote it?”
“Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis.”
“But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?”
“Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and feeling, however I may have failed in making an English poem of it.”
“O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?”
“Years before you were born, Connie.”
“To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!” she returned. “Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?”
“No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don’t think he belonged to any section of the church in particular.”
“But oughtn’t he, papa?”
“Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is the use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?”
“O, I didn’t think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I wanted to know more about him.”
The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider Christianity as associated of necessity with this or that form of it, instead of as simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more repulsive to me as I had grown myself, for it always seemed like an insult to my brethren in Christ; hence the least hint of it in my children I was too ready to be down upon like a most unchristian ogre. I took her hand in mine, and she was comforted, for she saw in my face that I was sorry, and yet she could see that there was reason at the root of my haste.
“But,” said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far she was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a barrier between him and me—“But,” she said, “the lovely feeling in that poem seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to the New Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about us. These things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and being glad in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and solemn things. As soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of them.”
“That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to the rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with their conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with art it was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of its history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to make Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we are beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either the whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the human soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is the heart not only of theology so called, but of history, politics, science, and art. The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him, and therefore by him only can be revealed. This will interpret all things, or it has not yet been. Teachers of men have not taught this, because they have not seen it. If we do not find him in nature, we may conclude either that we do not understand the expression of nature, or have mistaken ideas or poor feelings about him. It is one great business in our life to find the interpretation which will render this harmony visible. Till we find it, we have not seen him to be all in all. Recognising a discord when they touched the notes of nature and society, the hermits forsook the instrument altogether, and contented themselves with a partial symphony—lofty, narrow, and weak. Their example, more or less, has been followed by almost all Christians. Exclusion is so much the easier way of getting harmony in the orchestra than study, insight, and interpretation, that most have adopted it. It is for us, and all who have hope in the infinite God, to widen its basis as we may, to search and find the true tone and right idea, place, and combination of instruments, until to our enraptured ear they all, with one voice of multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare the glory of God and of his Christ.”
“A grand idea,” said Percivale.
“Therefore likely to be a true one,” I returned. “People find it hard to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God will yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs.”
I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look my familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there I sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs. As I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast from the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide had crept up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk down over the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured the half of the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain veil as of the commonplace, like that which so often settles down over the spirit of man after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had dropped over the face of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts across the dull waters. It was time to lift Connie and take her home.
This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.
The next morning rose neither “cherchef’t in a comely cloud” nor “roab’d in flames and amber light,” but covered all in a rainy mist, which the wind mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now and then the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of my study with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out and meet its ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows anywhere. The sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth, sea, and sky were possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The breakfast-bell rang, and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who was always down first to make the tea, standing at the window with a sad face, giving fit response to the aspect of nature without, her soul talking with the gray spirit. I did find her at the window, looking out upon the restless tossing of the waters, but with no despondent answer to the trouble of nature. On the contrary, her cheek, though neither rosy nor radiant, looked luminous, and her eyes were flashing out upon the ebb-tide which was sinking away into the troubled ocean beyond. Does my girl-reader expect me to tell her next that something had happened? that Percivale had said something to her? or that, at least, he had just passed the window, and given her a look which she might interpret as she pleased? I must disappoint her. It was nothing of the sort. I knew the heart and feeling of my child. It was only that kind nature was in sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more peaceful in storm than in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of life instantly began in her when the obligation of gladness had departed with the light. Her own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could smile now when nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I could not help saying to myself, “She must marry a poor man some day; she is a creature of the north, and not of the south; the hot sun of prosperity would wither her up. Give her a bleak hill-side, and a glint or two of sunshine between the hailstorms, and she will live and grow; give her poverty and love, and life will be interesting to her as a romance; give her money and position, and she will grow dull and haughty. She will believe in nothing that poet can sing or architect build. She will, like Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved to smile at anything.”
I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came forward with her usual morning greeting.
“I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter.”
“I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love.”
“Don’t think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you. But I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind and a complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome it.”
“It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well, and that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think about some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have banished if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as you never felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which at least you haven’t enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you yesterday, and I won’t go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to comfort you. Come and give me my breakfast.”
“You do comfort me, papa,” she answered, approaching the table. “I know I don’t show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don’t you like a day like this, papa?”
“I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as you do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so well.”
“Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me so well?” she asked, brightening up.
“I know I do,” I returned, replying to her last question.
“Better than I do myself?” she asked with an arch smile.
“Considerably, if I mistake not,” I answered.
“How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don’t understand myself!”
“But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life is that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from God, that hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease. It is the sight of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are both, by mutual confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you say to going out with me? I have to visit a sick woman.”
“You don’t mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?”
“No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill.”
“O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was in bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort.”
“We’ll call and inquire as we pass,—that is, if you are inclined to go with me.”
“How can you put anifto that, papa?”
“I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on the corner of Mr. Barton’s farm—over the cliff, you know—that the woman is ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the better.”
“I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here’s mamma!—Mamma, I’m going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won’t mind, will you?”
“I don’t think it will do you any harm, my dear. That’s all I mind, you know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected to it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people aregladto stay in-doors when it rains.”
“And it does blow so delightfully!” said Wynnie, as she left the room to put on her long cloak and her bonnet.
We called at the sexton’s cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the low window, looking seaward.
“I hope your wife is notverypoorly, Coombes,” I said.
“No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed’s not a bad place to be in in such weather,” he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the Atlantic. “Poor things!”
“What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about, do you think?”
“I suppose I was made so, sir.”
“To be sure you were. God made you so.”
“Surely, sir. Who else?”
“Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people like to be comfortable.”
“It du look likely enough, sir.”
“Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn’t think he doesn’t look after the people you would make comfortable if you could.”
“I must mind my work, you know, sir.”
“Yes, surely. And you mustn’t want to take his out of his hands, and go grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you getyourhand to it.”
“I daresay you be right, sir,” he said. “I must just go and have a look about, though. Here’s Agnes. She’ll tell you about mother.”
He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his tools into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over with the names of the people he had buried.
“Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her, if she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is very poorly, I hear.”
“Let us go through the churchyard, papa,” said Wynnie, “and see what the old man is doing.”
“Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round.”
“Why do you humour the sexton’s foolish fancy so much, papa? It is such nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the resurrection?”
“Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out of his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction. To get people’s hearts right is of much more importance than convincing their judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should be encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the outsides of their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for the dead more than he does, andthereforeit is unreasonable for him to be anxious about them.”
When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death’s-head and cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows of the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked past with a nod.
“You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only thing in Dante’s grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it without a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry now as I am that ever he could have written it. When, in theInferno,he reaches the lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice, he finds the lost plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember rightly, entirely submerged, and visible only through the ice, transparent as crystal, like the insects found in amber. One man with his head only above the ice, appeals to him as condemned to the same punishment to take pity on him, and remove the lumps of frozen tears from his eyes, that he may weep a little before they freeze again and stop the relief once more. Dante says to him, ‘Tell me who you are, and if I do not assist you, I deserve to lie at the bottom of the ice myself.’ The man tells him who he is, and explains to him one awful mystery of these regions. Then he says, ‘Now stretch forth thy hand, and open my eyes.’ ‘And,’ says Dante, I did not open them for him; and rudeness to him was courtesy.’”
“But he promised, you said.”
“He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and may teach us many things.”
“But what made you think of that now?”
“Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was scooping the green moss out of the eyes of the death’s-head on the gravestone.”
By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie drew her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and struggled on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the rain must carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one of the stone fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments to recover our breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like conversation was out of the question. At length we dropped into a hollow, which gave us a little repose. Down below the sea was dashing into the mouth of the glen, or coomb, as they call it there. On the opposite side of the hollow, the little house to which we were going stood up against the gray sky.
“I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was thoughtless of me; I don’t mean for your sake, but because your presence may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may prefer seeing me alone.”
“I will go back, papa. I sha’n’t mind it a bit.”
“No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?”
“Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside.”
“Come along, then. We shall soon be there.”
When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way. I left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where Mrs. Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the moment I saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was a hard-featured woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled restlessly about. She lay on her back, moving her head from side to side. When I entered she only looked at me, and turned her eyes away towards the wall. I approached the bedside, and seated myself by it. I always do so at once; for the patient feels more at rest than if you stand tall up before her. I laid my hand on hers.
“Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?” I said.
“Yes, very,” she answered with a groan. “It be come to the last with me.”
“I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It’s not come to the last with us, so long as we have a Father in heaven.”
“Ah! but it be with me. He can’t take any notice of the like of me.”
“But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of every thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit.”
I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I therefore went on.
“Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long as their children don’t bother them, let them do anything they like. He will not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that.”
“He won’t look at me,” she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so that I could hardly, hear what she said.
“It is because heislooking at you that you are feeling uncomfortable,” I answered. “He wants you to confess your sins. I don’t mean to me, but to himself; though if you would like to tell me anything, and I can help you, I shall beveryglad. You know Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins; and that’s why we call him our Saviour. But he can’t save us from our sins if we won’t confess that we have any.”
“I’m sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other people.”
“You don’t suppose that’s confessing your sins?” I said. “I once knew a woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner; but when I said, ‘Yes, you have done so and so,’ she would not allow one of those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When I asked her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these counted for nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a great sinner, like other people, as you have just been saying.”
“I hope you don’t be thinking I ha’ done anything of that sort,” she said with wakening energy. “No man or woman dare say I’ve done anything to be ashamed of.”
“Then you’ve committed no sins?” I returned. “But why did you send for me? You must have something to say to me.”
“I never did send for you. It must ha’ been my husband.”
“Ah, then I’m afraid I’ve no business here!” I returned, rising. “I thought you had sent for me.”
She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her thinking, and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I think clergymen may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad mood, as if they had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at all. I bade her good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned to Wynnie.
As we walked home together, I said:
“Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented my appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are over.”
We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study and in Connie’s room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused to hold any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it folded itself in its mantle and lay still.
What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She is busy with every human mood in turn—sometimes with ten of them at once—picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see, understand, develop, reform it.
I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that mamma was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.
“Not in the least, my dear,” I answered; “I shall be very glad to see him.”
“Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale,” I said as he entered. “I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it would be much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her portrait?”
“Not quite so bad as that,” said Percivale.
“Surely the human face is more than nature.”
“Nature is never stupid.”
“The woman might be pretty.”
“Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such a woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would feel the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you would never think of making upon Nature.”
“I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with moral causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame.”
“Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you rise into animal nature that you find ugliness.”
“True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn in nature. I have seen ugly flowers.”
“I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without beauty.”
“Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I grant you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just because the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in its repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face.”
A pause followed.
“I presume,” I said, “you are thinking of returning to London now, there seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins to show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the change, even through the winter, will be good for my daughter.”
“I must be going soon,” he answered; “but it would be too bad to take offence at the old lady’s first touch of temper. I mean to wait and see whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin’s summer, as Shakspere calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and—”
“And what?” I asked, seeing he hesitated.
“‘And soap,’ I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the worst of things, Mr. Walton.”
“No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it.”
We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to tell me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.
I went down to see him, and found her husband.
“My wife be very bad, sir,” he said. “I wish you could come and see her.”
“Does she want to see me?’ I asked.
“She’s been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last,” he said.
“But,” I repeated, “has she said she would like to see me?”
“I can’t say it, sir,” answered the man.
“Then it is you who want me to see her?”
“Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you see, sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would always leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir.”
“And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?”
“No, never, sir. She be peculiar—my wife; she always be.”
“Does she know that you have come to ask me now?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you courage to tell her?”
The man hesitated.
“If you haven’t courage to tell her,” I resumed, “I have nothing more to say. I can’t go; or, rather, I will not go.”
“I will tell her, sir.”
“Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me herself.”
“Ben’t that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?”
“I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your wife’s peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes.”
“Well, Iwilltell her, sir. It’s time to speak my own mind.”
“I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the middle of the night, I shall be with her at once.”
He left me and I returned to Percivale.
“I was just thinking before you came,” I said, “about the relation of Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but I often think about the truths that lie at the root of it.”
“I am greatly obliged to you,” he said, “for talking about these things. I assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I always think the professions should not herd together so much as they do; they want to be shone upon from other quarters.”
“I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself could give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the reflective power of the airy particles through which he shines. But anything I know I have found out merely by foraging for my own necessities.”
“That is just what makes the result valuable,” he replied. “Tell me what you were thinking.”
“I was thinking,” I answered, “how everyone likes to see his own thoughts set outside of him, that he may contemplate themobjectively,as the philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as it were.”
“Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art at all.”
“Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however they may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will satisfy themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in which they have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet utter their ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only be good, they shall have this power some day; for I do think that many things we call differences in kind, may in God’s grand scale prove to be only differences in degree. And indeed the artist—by artist, I mean, of course, architect, musician, painter, poet, sculptor—in many things requires it just as much as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren, seeing in proportion to the things that he can do, he is aware of the things he cannot do, the thoughts he cannot express. Hence arises the enthusiasm with which people hail the work of an artist; they rejoice, namely, in seeing their own thoughts, or feelings, or something like them, expressed; and hence it comes that of those who have money, some hang their walls with pictures of their own choice, others—”
“I beg your pardon,” said Percivale, interrupting; “but most people, I fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people’s choice, for they don’t buy them at all till the artist has got a name.”
“That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they won’t at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity may be only what first attracted their attention—not determined their choice.”
“But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market.”
“‘Of such is not the talk,’ as the Germans would say. In as far as your description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be considered now.”
“Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I deserve, if you have lost your thread.”
“I don’t think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give to what is in themselves—the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own feelings outside of themselves.”
“Is there not another possible motive—that the pictures teach them something?”
“That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the other, but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us already that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the germ, else nothing from without would wake it up.”
“I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her influences.”
“One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the pictures and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the house he has chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little to do with the education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not aware of it, they are working upon him,—for good, if he has chosen what is good, which alone shall be our supposition.”
“Certainly; that is clear.”
“Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our needs—not as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for himself. For our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for us all the otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even when he speaks of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the forms or pictures of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen world turned inside out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house that he has built for us, God has hung up the pictures—ever-living, ever-changing pictures—of all that passes in our souls. Form and colour and motion are there,—ever-modelling, ever-renewing, never wearying. Without this living portraiture from within, we should have no word to utter that should represent a single act of the inner world. Metaphysics could have no existence, not to speak of poetry, not to speak of the commonest language of affection. But all is done in such spiritual suggestion, portrait and definition are so avoided, the whole is in such fluent evanescence, that the producing mind is only aided, never overwhelmed. It never amounts to representation. It affords but the material which the thinking, feeling soul can use, interpret, and apply for its own purposes of speech. It is, as it were, the forms of thought cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior laws of matter, thence to be withdrawn by what we call the creative genius that God has given to men, and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and built up to its own shapes and its own purposes.”
“Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist.”
“It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help seeing nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees no meaning in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will represent only her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance.”
“Then artists ought to interpret nature?”
“Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves—something of humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or not. If to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed they may claim to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect they may be in their powers of representing—however lowly, therefore, their position may be in that order.”
We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling too.
“My wife do send me for you this time, sir,” he said. “Between you and me, I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to tell you, sir.”
“Why shouldn’t she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am.”
“She don’t think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir.”
“Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn’t given in quite so much. It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right.”
“But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile.”
“Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been surer—sometimes;I don’t sayalways.”
“But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don’t think she’ll behave to you as she did before. Do come, sir.”
“Of course I will—instantly.”
I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was hardly kind to ask him.
“Well, perhaps it is better not,” I said; “for I do not know how long I may have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take my place at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should return before the meal is over.”
He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me—I would take my chance—and joined Mr. Stokes.
“You have no idea, then,” I said, after we had gone about half-way, “what makes your wife so uneasy?”
“No, I haven’t,” he answered; “except it be,” he resumed, “that she was too hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath her, as wife thought.”
“How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?”
“She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother’s temper, you see, and she would take her own way.”
“Ah, there’s a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their own way, they mustn’t give their own temper to their daughters.”
“But how are they to help it, sir?”
“Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter’s husband?”
“A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone.”
“But you have worked on Mr. Barton’s farm for many years, if I don’t mistake?”
“I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see.”
“But you weren’t so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his way up or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs. Stokes?”
“True as you say, sir; and it’s not me that has anything to say about it. I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do be wanting to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the shopkeeping—”
“The shopkeeping!” I said, with some surprise; “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, you see, sir, it’s only for a quarter or so of the year. You know it’s a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing—past our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a bit of a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window, and—”
“A bad place for the ginger-beer,” I said.
“They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the sun. But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a farm-labourer, as they call them, was none good enough for her daughter.”
“And hasn’t she been kind to her since she married, then?”
“She’s never done her no harm, sir.”
“But she hasn’t gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see you very often, I suppose?”
“There’s ne’er a one o’ them crossed the door of the other,” he answered, with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.
“Ah; but you don’t approve of that yourself, Stokes?”
“Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother, she do. I don’t know which of the two it is as does it, but there’s no coming and going between Carpstone and this.”
We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was still very anxious to see me.
“Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?” I asked, by way of opening the conversation. “I don’t think you look much worse.”
“I he much worse, sir. You don’t know what I suffer, or you wouldn’t make so little of it. I be very bad.”
“I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me why you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I suppose.”
With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more with herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her. The drops stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to help her, if I might, I said—
“Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?”
“No,” she muttered. “I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my own. I could do as I pleased with her.”
I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she feels.
“Then,” I said, “you want to tell me about something that was not your own?”
“Who said I ever took what was not my own?” she returned fiercely. “Did Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn’t my own?”
“No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause of your misery.”
“It is very hard that the parson should think such things,” she muttered again.
“My poor woman,” I said, “you sent for me because you had something to confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does you harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me, confess to God.”
“God knows it, I suppose, without that.”
“Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it. How is he to forgive you, if you won’t allow that you have done wrong?”
“It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had took something that wasn’t your own?”
“Well, I shouldn’t like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it.”
“But that’s the worst of it; I can’t get rid of it.”
“But,” I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly as I could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly repulsive but for her evidently great suffering, “you have now all but confessed taking something that did not belong to you. Why don’t you summon courage and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the trouble as easily as ever I can; but I can’t if you don’t tell me what you’ve got that isn’t yours.”
“I haven’t got anything,” she muttered.
“You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now.”
She was again silent.
“What did you do with it?”
“Nothing.”
I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold of me, with a cry.
“Stop, stop. I’ll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That’s the worst of it. I got no good of it.”
“What was it?”
“A sovereign,” she said, with a groan. “And now I’m a thief, I suppose.”
“No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you think it would have been any better for you if you hadn’t lost it, and had got some good of it, as you say?”
She was silent yet again.
“If you hadn’t lost it you would most likely have been a great deal worse for it than you are—a more wicked woman altogether.”
“I’m not a wicked woman.”
“It is wicked to steal, is it not?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“How did you come by it, then?”
“I found it.”
“Did you try to find out the owner?”
“No. I knew whose it was.”
“Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you had not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked woman than you are.”
“It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I wouldn’t have lost my character as I have done this day.”
“Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would.”
“I would.”
“Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?”
“Yes, that I would,” she said, looking me so full in the face that I was sure she meant it.
“How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?”
“No; I wouldn’t trust him.”
“With the story, you mean? You do not wish to imply that he would not restore it?”
“I don’t mean that. He would do what I told him.”
“How would you return it, then?”
“I should make a parcel of it, and send it.”
“Without saying anything about it?”
“Yes. Where’s the good? The man would have his own.”
“No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have wronged him. That would never do.”
“You are too hard upon me,” she said, beginning to weep angrily.
“Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?” I said.
“Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!”
“Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the weight of it will stick there.”
“But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?”
“Of course. That is only reasonable.”
“But I haven’t got it, I tell you. I have lost it.”
“Have you not a sovereign in your possession?”
“No, not one.”
“Can’t you ask your husband to let you have one?”
“There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse. I do wish I had never seen that wicked money.”
“You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it now. Has your husband got a sovereign?”
“No. He may ha’ got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him about it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in that way, poor man.”
“Well, I’ll tell him, and we’ll manage it somehow.”
I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she hid her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.
I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the room-door and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did not look up, but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this humiliation before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.
“Your wife, poor woman,” I said, “is in great distress because—I do not know when or how—she picked up a sovereign that did not belong to her, and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This is what is making her so miserable.”
“Deary me!” said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to a sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet from her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight hold of it, and he could not. “Deary me!” he went on; “we’ll soon put that all to rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?”
“When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon return it,” she sobbed from under the sheet.
“Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?”
“I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha’ given it back at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was very nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it.”
“You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then,” I said.
“My old man won’t be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him first.”
“I would wish that too,” I said, “were it not that I am afraid you might have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be paid. Have you got it?”
The poor man looked blank.
“She will never be at ease till this money is paid,” I insisted.
“Well, sir, I ain’t got it, but I’ll borrow it of someone; I’ll go to master, and ask him.”
“No, my good fellow, that won’t do. Your master would want to know what you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn’t let more people know about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no occasion for that. I’ll tell you what: I’ll give you the money, and you must take it; or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell him all about it. Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?”
“Please, sir. It’s very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again, if it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to you, sir; but I couldn’t bear the disgrace of it.”
She said all this from under the bed-clothes.
“Well, I’ll go,” I said; “and as soon as I’ve had my dinner I’ll get a horse and ride over to Squire Tresham’s. I’ll come back to-night and tell you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for forgiving you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but confess it clean out to him, you know.”
She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.
I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.
When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my return was uncertain.
“But, my love,” said my wife, “why should you not let us please ourselves sometimes? Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us.”
“I am very glad you think so,” I answered. “But there are the children: it is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their meals.”
“You see there are no children; they have had their dinner.”
“Always in the right, wife; but there’s Mr. Percivale.”
“I never dine till seven o’clock, to save daylight,” he said.
“Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine.”
During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale’s eyes followed Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her face. That she was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt. One glance at her satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle kept coming again and again into my mind; for they were winged words those, and even when they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my window: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” And I kept reminding myself that I must heave the load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs. Stokes to do; for God was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not without my help, for that would be to do me more harm than good by taking the one thing in which I was like him away from me—my action. Therefore I must have faith in him, and not be afraid; for surely all fear is sin, and one of the most oppressive sins from which the Lord came to save us.
Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out for Squire Tresham’s.
I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him the story of the poor woman’s misery, he was quite concerned at her suffering. When I produced the sovereign he would not receive it at first, but requested me to take it back to her and say she must keep it by way of an apology for his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took care to tell him the whole story, thinking it might be a lesson to him too. But I begged him to take it; for it would, I thought, not only relieve her mind more thoroughly, but help to keep her from coming to think lightly of the affair afterwards. Of course I could not tell him that I had advanced the money, for that would have quite prevented him from receiving it. I then got on my horse again, and rode straight to the cottage.
“Well, Mrs. Stokes,” I said, “it’s all over now. That’s one good thing done. How do you feel yourself now?”
“I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me.”
“God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness for. It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all our sins, you know. They’re not nice things, are they, to keep in our hearts? It is just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead carcasses, under lock and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they were precious jewels.”
“I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn’t made so. There’s my husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But then, you see, he would let a child take him in.”
“And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is no harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in.”
She did not reply, and I went on:
“I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for your daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially seeing you are so ill.”
“I will, sir. I will directly. I’m tired of having my own way. But I was made so.”
“You weren’t made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the necessary strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now; only you must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you. I think very likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink yourself, and feel that you had done wrong.”
“I have been feeling that for many a year.”
“That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know Jesus came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off our hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us. Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere, and he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband, and when you have done that you will think of something else to set right that’s wrong.”
“But there would be no end to that way of it, sir.”
“Certainly not, till everything was put right.”
“But a body might have nothing else to do, that way.”
“Well, that’s the very first thing that has to be done. It is our business in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and try to enjoy ourselves.”
“That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread.”
“To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God’s way. But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would just take his way, you would find that he would take care you should enjoy your life.”
“I’m sure I haven’t had much enjoyment in mine.”
“That was just because you would not trust him with his own business, but must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will take care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for. And the longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must leave you now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and get a sleep. I will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like.”
“Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful.”
As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart was like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from every heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one’s own soul must be a pledge of renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again of what St. Paul had said somewhere, “whatsoever is not of faith is sin,” I thought what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth, and how blessed it might be. But what could I do for it? I could just begin with myself, and pray God for that inward light which is his Spirit, that so I might see him in everything and rejoice in everything as his gift, and then all things would be holy, for whatsoever is of faith must be the opposite of sin; and that was my part towards heaving the weight of sin, which, like myriads of gravestones, was pressing the life out of us men, off the whole world. Faith in God is life and righteousness—the faith that trusts so that it will obey—none other. Lord, lift the people thou hast made into holy obedience and thanksgiving, that they may be glad in this thy world.