‘The human mortals want their winter here’—
namely, to set things right; and none of those editors who would alter the line seem to have been capable of understanding its import.”
“I think I understand you a little,” answered Wynnie. Then, changing her tone, “I told you, papa, you would have an answer ready; didn’t I?”
“Yes, my child; but with this difference—I found the answer to meet my own necessities, not yours.”
“And so you had it ready for me when I wanted it.”
“Just so. That is the only certainty you have in regard to what you give away. No one who has not tasted it and found it good has a right to offer any spiritual dish to his neighbour.”
Mr. Percivale took no part in our conversation. The moment I had presented him to Mrs. Walton and Connie, and he had paid his respects by a somewhat stately old-world obeisance, he merged the salutation into a farewell, and, either forgetting my offer of coffee, or having changed his mind, withdrew, a little to my disappointment, for, notwithstanding his lack of response where some things he said would have led me to expect it, I had begun to feel much interested in him.
He was scarcely beyond hearing, when Dora came up to me from her digging, with an eager look on her sunny face.
“Hasn’t he got nice boots, papa?”
“Indeed, my dear, I am unable to support you in that assertion, for I never saw his boots.”
“I did, then,” returned the child; “and I never saw such nice boots.”
“I accept the statement willingly,” I replied; and we heard no more of the boots, for his name was now substituted for his nickname. Nor did I see himself again for some days—not in fact till next Sunday—though why he should come to church at all was something of a puzzle to me, especially when I knew him better.
The next day I set out after breakfast to inquire about a blacksmith. It was not every or any blacksmith that would do. I must not fix on the first to do my work because he was the first. There was one in the village, I soon learned; but I found him an ordinary man, who, I have no doubt, could shoe a horse and avoid the quick, but from whom any greater delicacy of touch was not to be expected. Inquiring further, I heard of a young smith who had lately settled in a hamlet a couple of miles distant, but still within the parish. In the afternoon I set out to find him. To my surprise, he was a pale-faced, thoughtful-looking man, with a huge frame, which appeared worn rather than naturally thin, and large eyes that looked at the anvil as if it was the horizon of the world. He had got a horse-shoe in his tongs when I entered. Notwithstanding the fire that glowed on the hearth, and the sparks that flew like a nimbus in eruption from about his person, the place looked very dark to me entering from the glorious blaze of the almost noontide sun, and felt cool after the deep lane through which I had come, and which had seemed a very reservoir of sunbeams. I could see the smith by the glow of his horse-shoe; but all between me and the shoe was dark.
“Good-morning,” I said. “It is a good thing to find a man by his work. I heard you half a mile off or so, and now I see you, but only by the glow of your work. It is a grand thing to work in fire.”
He lifted his hammered hand to his forehead courteously, and as lightly as if the hammer had been the butt-end of a whip.
“I don’t know if you would say the same if you had to work at it in weather like this,” he answered.
“If I did not,” I returned, “that would be the fault of my weakness, and would not affect the assertion I have just made, that it is a fine thing to work in fire.”
“Well, you may be right,” he rejoined with a sigh, as, throwing the horse-shoe he had been fashioning from the tongs on the ground, he next let the hammer drop beside the anvil, and leaning against it held his head for a moment between his hands, and regarded the floor. “It does not much matter to me,” he went on, “if I only get through my work and have done with it. No man shall say I shirked what I’d got to do. And then when it’s over there won’t be a word to say agen me, or—”
He did not finish the sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in a somewhat dreary patch, if the worddrearycan be truly used with respect to any manifestation of sunlight, on the dark clay floor.
“I hope you are not ill,” I said.
He made no answer, but taking up his tongs caught with it from a beam one of a number of roughly-finished horse-shoes which hung there, and put it on the fire to be fashioned to a certain fit. While he turned it in the fire, and blew the bellows, I stood regarding him. “This man will do for my work,” I said to myself; “though I should not wonder from the look of him if it was the last piece of work he ever did under the New Jerusalem.” The smith’s words broke in on my meditations.
“When I was a little boy,” he said, “I once wanted to stay at home from school. I had, I believe, a little headache, but nothing worth minding. I told my mother that I had a headache, and she kept me, and I helped her at her spinning, which was what I liked best of anything. But in the afternoon the Methodist preacher came in to see my mother, and he asked me what was the matter with me, and my mother answered for me that I had a bad head, and he looked at me; and as my head was quite well by this time, I could not help feeling guilty. And he saw my look, I suppose, sir, for I can’t account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he said to me, solemn-like, ‘Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord Jesus to make you whole?’ I could not speak a word, partly from bashfulness, I suppose, for I was but ten years old. So he followed it up, as they say: ‘Then you ought to be at school,’ says he. I said nothing, because I couldn’t. But never since then have I given in as long as I could stand. And I can stand now, and lift my hammer, too,” he said, as he took the horse-shoe from the forge, laid it on the anvil, and again made a nimbus of coruscating iron.
“You are just the man I want,” I said. “I’ve got a job for you, down to Kilkhaven, as you say in these parts.”
“What is it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha’ thought the church was all spick and span by this time.”
“I see you know who I am,” I said.
“Of course I do,” he answered. “I don’t go to church myself, being brought up a Methodist; but anything that happens in the parish is known the next day all over it.”
“You won’t mind doing my job though you are a Methodist, will you?” I asked.
“Not I, sir. If I’ve read right, it’s the fault of the Church that we don’t pull all alongside. You turned us out, sir; we didn’t go out of ourselves. At least, if all they say is true, which I can’t be sure of, you know, in this world.”
“You are quite right there though,” I answered. “And in doing so, the Church had the worst of it—as all that judge and punish their neighbours have. But you have been the worse for it, too: all of which is to be laid to the charge of the Church. For there is not one clergyman I know—mind, I say, that I know—who would have made such a cruel speech to a boy as that the Methodist parson made to you.”
“But it did me good, sir?”
“Are you sure of that? I am not. Are you sure, first of all, it did not make you proud? Are you sure it has not made you work beyond your strength—I don’t mean your strength of arm, for clearly that is all that could be wished, but of your chest, your lungs? Is there not some danger of your leaving someone who is dependent on you too soon unprovided for? Is there not some danger of your having worked as if God were a hard master?—of your having worked fiercely, indignantly, as if he wronged you by not caring for you, not understanding you?”
He returned me no answer, but hammered momently on his anvil. Whether he felt what I meant, or was offended at my remark, I could not then tell. I thought it best to conclude the interview with business.
“I have a delicate little job that wants nice handling, and I fancy you are just the man to do it to my mind,” I said.
“What is it, sir?” he asked, in a friendly manner enough.
“If you will excuse me, I would rather show it to you than talk about it,” I returned.
“As you please, sir. When do you want me?”
“The first hour you can come.”
“To-morrow morning?”
“If you feel inclined.”
“For that matter, I’d rather go to bed.”
“Come to me instead: it’s light work.”
“I will, sir—at ten o’clock.”
“If you please.”
And so it was arranged.
The next day rose glorious. Indeed, early as the sun rose, I saw him rise—saw him, from the down above the house, over the land to the east and north, ascend triumphant into his own light, which had prepared the way for him; while the clouds that hung over the sea glowed out with a faint flush, as anticipating the hour when the west should clasp the declining glory in a richer though less dazzling splendour, and shine out the bride of the bridegroom east, which behold each other from afar across the intervening world, and never mingle but in the sight of the eyes. The clear pure light of the morning made me long for the truth in my heart, which alone could make me pure and clear as the morning, tune me up to the concert-pitch of the nature around me. And the wind that blew from the sunrise made me hope in the God who had first breathed into my nostrils the breath of life, that he would at length so fill me with his breath, his wind, his spirit, that I should think only his thoughts and live his life, finding therein my own life, only glorified infinitely.
After breakfast and prayers, I would go to the church to await the arrival of my new acquaintance the smith. In order to obtain entrance, I had, however, to go to the cottage of the sexton. This was not my first visit there, so that I may now venture to take my reader with me. To reach the door, I had to cross a hollow by a bridge, built, for the sake of the road, over what had once been the course of a rivulet from the heights above. Now it was a kind of little glen, or what would in Scotland be called a den, I think, grown with grass and wild flowers and ferns, some of them, rare and fine. The roof of the cottage came down to the road, and, until you came quite near, you could not but wonder where the body that supported this head could be. But you soon saw that the ground fell suddenly away, leaving a bank against which the cottage was built. Crossing a garden of the smallest, the principal flowers of which were the stonecrop on its walls, by a flag-paved path, you entered the building, and, to your surprise, found yourself, not in a little cottage kitchen, as you expected, but in a waste-looking space, that seemed to have forgotten the use for which it had been built. There was a sort of loft along one side of it, and it was heaped with indescribable lumber-looking stuff with here and there a hint at possible machinery. The place had been a mill for grinding corn, and its wheel had been driven by the stream which had run for ages in the hollow of which I have already spoken. But when the canal came to be constructed, the stream had to be turned aside from its former course, and indeed was now employed upon occasion to feed the canal; so that the mill of necessity had fallen into disuse and decay. Crossing this floor, you entered another door, and turning sharp to the left, went down a few steps of a ladder-sort of stair, and after knocking your hat against a beam, emerged in the comfortable quaint little cottage kitchen you had expected earlier. A cheerful though small fire burns in the grate—for even here the hearth-fire has vanished from the records of cottage-life—and is pleasant here even in the height of summer, though it is counted needful only for cooking purposes. The ceiling, which consists only of the joists and the boards that floor the bedroom above, is so low, that necessity, if not politeness, would compel you to take off your already-bruised hat. Some of these joists, you will find, are made further useful by supporting each a shelf, before which hangs a little curtain of printed cotton, concealing the few stores and postponed eatables of the house—forming, in fact, both store-room and larder of the family. On the walls hang several coloured prints, and within a deep glazed frame the figure of a ship in full dress, carved in rather high relief in sycamore.
As I now entered, Mrs. Coombes rose from a high-backed settle near the fire, and bade me good-morning with a courtesy.
“What a lovely day it is, Mrs. Coombes! It is so bright over the sea,” I said, going to the one little window which looked out on the great Atlantic, “that one almost expects a great merchant navy to come sailing into Kilkhaven—sunk to the water’s edge with silks, and ivory, and spices, and apes, and peacocks, like the ships of Solomon that we read about—just as the sun gets up to the noonstead.”
Before I record her answer, I turn to my reader, who in the spirit accompanies me, and have a little talk with him. I always make it a rule to speak freely with the less as with the more educated of my friends. I nevertalk downto them, except I be expressly explaining something to them. The law of the world is as the law of the family. Those children grow much the faster who hear all that is going on in the house. Reaching ever above themselves, they arrive at an understanding at fifteen, which, in the usual way of things, they would not reach before five-and-twenty or thirty; and this in a natural way, and without any necessary priggishness, except such as may belong to their parents. Therefore I always spoke to the poor and uneducated as to my own people,—freely, not much caring whether I should be quite understood or not; for I believed in influences not to be measured by the measure of the understanding.
But what was the old woman’s answer? It was this:
“I know, sir. And when I was as young as you”—I was not so very young, my reader may well think—“I thought like that about the sea myself. Everything come from the sea. For my boy Willie he du bring me home the beautifullest parrot and the talkingest you ever see, and the red shawl all worked over with flowers: I’ll show it to you some day, sir, when you have time. He made that ship you see in the frame there, sir, all with his own knife, out on a bit o’ wood that he got at the Marishes, as they calls it, sir—a bit of an island somewheres in the great sea. But the parrot’s gone dead like the rest of them, sir.—Where am I? and what am I talking about?” she added, looking down at her knitting as if she had dropped a stitch, or rather as if she had forgotten what she was making, and therefore what was to come next.
“You were telling me how you used to think of the sea—”
“When I was as young as you. I remember, sir. Well, that lasted a long time—lasted till my third boy fell asleep in the wide water; for it du call it falling asleep, don’t it, sir?”
“The Bible certainly does,” I answered.
“It’s the Bible I be meaning, of course,” she returned. “Well, after that, but I don’t know what began it, only I did begin to think about the sea as something that took away things and didn’t bring them no more. And somehow or other she never look so blue after that, and she give me the shivers. But now, sir, she always looks to me like one o’ the shining ones that come to fetch the pilgrims. You’ve heard tell of thePilgrim’s Progress, I daresay, sir, among the poor people; for they du say it was written by a tinker, though there be a power o’ good things in it that I think the gentlefolk would like if they knowed it.”
“I do know the book—nearly as well as I know the Bible,” I answered; “and the shining ones are very beautiful in it. I am glad you can think of the sea that way.”
“It’s looking in at the window all day as I go about the house,” she answered, “and all night too when I’m asleep; and if I hadn’t learned to think of it that way, it would have driven me mad, I du believe. I was forced to think that way about it, or not think at all. And that wouldn’t be easy, with the sound of it in your ears the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning.”
“The truth of things is indeed the only refuge from the look of things,” I replied. “But now I want the key of the church, if you will trust me with it, for I have something to do there this morning; and the key of the tower as well, if you please.”
With her old smile, ripened only by age, she reached the ponderous keys from the nail where they hung, and gave them into my hand. I left her in the shadow of her dwelling, and stepped forth into the sunlight. The first thing I observed was the blacksmith waiting for me at the church door.
Now that I saw him in the full light of day, and now that he wore his morning face upon which the blackness of labour had not yet gathered, I could see more plainly how far he was from well. There was a flush on his thin cheek by which the less used exercise of walking revealed his inward weakness, and the light in his eyes had something of the far-country in them—“the light that never was on sea or shore.” But his speech was cheerful, for he had been walking in the light of this world, and that had done something to make the light within him shine a little more freely.
“How do you find yourself to-day?” I asked.
“Quite well, sir, I thank you,” he answered. “A day like this does a man good. But,” he added, and his countenance fell, “the heart knoweth its own bitterness.”
“It may know it too much,” I returned, “just because it refuses to let a stranger intermeddle therewith.”
He made no reply. I turned the key in the great lock, and the iron-studded oak opened and let us into the solemn gloom.
It did not require many minutes to make the man understand what I wanted of him.
“We must begin at the bells and work down,” he said.
So we went up into the tower, where, with the help of a candle I fetched for him from the cottage, he made a good many minute measurements; found that carpenter’s work was necessary for the adjustment of the hammers and cranks and the leading of the rods, undertook the management of the whole, and in the course of an hour and a half went home to do what had to be done before any fixing could be commenced, assuring me that he had no doubt of bringing the job to a satisfactory conclusion, although the force of the blow on the bell would doubtless have to be regulated afterwards by repeated trials.
“In a fortnight, I hope you will be able to play a tune to the parish, sir,” he added, as he took his leave.
I resolved, if possible, to know more of the man, and find out his trouble, if haply I might be able to give him any comfort, for I was all but certain that there was a deeper cause for his gloom than the state of his health.
When he was gone I stood with the key of the church in my hand, and looked about me. Nature at least was in glorious health—sunshine in her eyes, light fantastic cloud-images passing through her brain, her breath coming and going in soft breezes perfumed with the scents of meadows and wild flowers, and her green robe shining in the motions of her gladness. I turned to lock the church door, though in my heart I greatly disapproved of locking the doors of churches, and only did so now because it was not my church, and I had no business to force my opinions upon other customs. But when I turned I received a kind of questioning shock. There was the fallen world, as men call it, shining in glory and gladness, because God was there; here was the way into the lost Paradise, yea, the door into an infinitely higher Eden than that ever had or ever could have been, iron-clamped and riveted, gloomy and low-browed like the entrance to a sepulchre, and surrounded with the grim heads of grotesque monsters of the deep. What did it mean? Here was contrast enough to require harmonising, or if that might not be, then accounting for. Perhaps it was enough to say that although God made both the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, yet the symbol of the latter was the work of man, and might not altogether correspond to God’s idea of the matter. I turned away thoughtful, and went through the churchyard with my eye on the graves.
As I left the churchyard, still looking to the earth, the sound of voices reached my ear. I looked up. There, down below me, at the foot of the high bank on which I stood, lay a gorgeous shining thing upon the bosom of the canal, full of men, and surrounded by men, women, and children, delighting in its beauty. I had never seen such a thing before, but I knew at once, as by instinct, which of course it could not have been, that it was the life-boat. But in its gorgeous colours, red and white and green, it looked more like the galley that bore Cleopatra to Actium. Nor, floating so light on the top of the water, and broad in the beam withal, curved upward and ornamented at stern and stem, did it look at all like a creature formed to battle with the fierce elements. A pleasure-boat for floating between river banks it seemed, drawn by swans mayhap, and regarded in its course by fair eyes from green terrace-walks, or oriel windows of ancient houses on verdant lawns. Ten men sat on the thwarts, and one in the stern by the yet useless rudder, while men and boys drew the showy thing by a rope downward to the lock-gates. The men in the boat, wore blue jerseys, but you could see little of the colour for strange unshapely things that they wore above them, like an armour cut out of a row of organ pipes. They were their cork-jackets; for every man had to be made into a life-boat himself. I descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near. Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock, so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because their weight under the water might prevent the boat from righting itself again, and the men could not come to the surface. Now they had a better chance in their freedom, though why they should not be loosely attached to the boat, I do not quite see.
They towed the shining thing through the upper gate of the lock, and slowly she sank from my sight, and for some moments was no more to be seen, for I had remained standing where first she passed me. All at once there she was beyond the covert of the lock-head, abroad and free, fleeting from the strokes of ten swift oars over the still waters of the bay towards the waves that roared further out where the ground-swell was broken by the rise of the sandy coast. There was no vessel in danger now, as the talk of the spectators informed me; it was only for exercise and show that they went out. It seemed all child’s play for a time; but when they got among the broken waves, then it looked quite another thing. The motion of the waters laid hold upon her, and soon tossed her fearfully, now revealing the whole of her capacity on the near side of one of their slopes, now hiding her whole bulk in one of their hollows beyond. She, careless as a child in the troubles of the world, floated about amongst them with what appeared too much buoyancy for the promise of a safe return. Again and again she was driven from her course towards the low rocks on the other side of the bay, and again and again, returned to disport herself, like a sea-animal, as it seemed, upon the backs of the wild, rolling, and bursting billows.
“Can she go no further?” I asked of the captain of the coastguard, whom I found standing by my side.
“Not without some danger,” he answered.
“What, then, must it be in a storm!” I remarked.
“Then of course,” he returned, “they must take their chance. But there is no good in running risks for nothing. That swell is quite enough for exercise.”
“But is it enough to accustom them to face the danger that will come?” I asked.
“With danger comes courage,” said the old sailor.
“Were you ever afraid?”
“No, sir. I don’t think I ever was afraid. Yes, I believe I was once for one moment, no more, when I fell from the maintop-gallant yard, and felt myself falling. But it was soon over, for I only fell into the maintop. I was expecting the smash on deck when I was brought up there. But,” he resumed, “I don’t care much about the life-boat. My rockets are worth a good deal more, as you may see, sir, before the winter is over; for seldom does a winter pass without at least two or three wrecks close by here on this coast. The full force of the Atlantic breaks here, sir. Ihaveseen a life-boat—not that one—she’sdone nothing yet—pitched stern over stem; not capsized, you know, sir, in the ordinary way, but struck by a wave behind while she was just hanging in the balance on the knife-edge of a wave, and flung a somerset, as I say, stern over stem, and four of her men lost.”
While we spoke I saw on the pier-head the tall figure of the painter looking earnestly at the boat. I thought he was regarding it chiefly from an artistic point of view, but I became aware before long that that would not have been consistent with the character of Charles Percivale. He had been, I learned afterwards, a crack oarsman at Oxford, and had belonged to the University boat, so that he had some almost class-sympathy with the doings of the crew.
In a little while the boat sped swiftly back, entered the lock, was lifted above the level of the storm-heaved ocean, and floated up the smooth canal calmly as if she had never known what trouble was. Away up to the pretty little Tudor-fashioned house in which she lay—one could almost fancy dreaming of storms to come—she went, as softly as if moved only by her “own sweet will,” in the calm consolation for her imprisonment of having tried her strength, and found therein good hope of success for the time when she should rush to the rescue of men from that to which, as a monster that begets monsters, she a watching Perseis, lay ready to offer battle. The poor little boat lying in her little house watching the ocean, was something signified in my eyes, and not less so after what came in the course of changing seasons and gathered storms.
All this time I had the keys in my hand, and now went back to the cottage to restore them to their place upon the wall. When I entered there was a young woman of a sweet interesting countenance talking to Mrs. Coombes. Now as it happened, I had never yet seen the daughter who lived with her, and thought this was she.
“I’ve found your daughter at last then?” I said, approaching them.
“Not yet, sir. She goes out to work, and her hands be pretty full at present. But this be almost my daughter, sir,” she added. “This is my next daughter, Mary Trehern, from the south. She’s got a place near by, to be near her mother that is to be, that’s me.”
Mary was hanging her head and blushing, as the old woman spoke.
“I understand,” I said. “And when are you going to get your new mother, Mary? Soon I hope.”
But she gave me no reply—only hung her head lower and blushed deeper.
Mrs. Coombes spoke for her.
“She’s shy, you see, sir. But if she was to speak her mind, she would ask you whether you wouldn’t marry her and Willie when he comes home from his next voyage.”
Mary’s hands were trembling now, and she turned half away.
“With all my heart,” I said.
The girl tried to turn towards me, but could not. I looked at her face a little more closely. Through all its tremor, there was a look of constancy that greatly pleased me. I tried to make her speak.
“When do you expect Willie home?” I said.
She made a little gasp and murmur, but no articulate words came.
“Don’t be frightened, Mary,” said her mother, as I found she always called her. “The gentleman won’t be sharp with you.”
She lifted a pair of soft brown eyes with one glance and a smile, and then sank them again.
“He’ll be home in about a month, we think,” answered the mother. “She’s a good ship he’s aboard of, and makes good voyages.”
“It is time to think about the bans, then,” I said.
“If you please, sir,” said the mother.
“Just come to me about it, and I will attend to it—when you think proper.”
I thought I could hear a murmured “Thank you, sir,” from the girl, but I could not be certain that she spoke. I shook hands with them, and went for a stroll on the other side of the bay.
When I reached home I found that Connie was already on her watch-tower. For while I was away, they had carried her out that she might see the life-boat. I followed her, and found the whole family about her couch, and with them Mr. Percivale, who was showing her some sketches that he had made in the neighbourhood. Connie knew nothing of drawing; but she seemed to me always to catch the feeling of a thing. Her remarks therefore were generally worth listening to, and Mr. Percivale was evidently interested in them. Wynnie stood behind Connie, looking over her shoulder at the drawing in her hand.
“How do you get that shade of green?” I heard her ask as I came up.
And then Mr. Percivale proceeded to tell her; from which beginning they went on to other things, till Mr. Percivale said—
“But it is hardly fair, Miss Walton; to criticise my work while you keep your own under cover.”
“I wasn’t criticising, Mr. Percivale; was I, Connie?”
“I didn’t hear her make a single remark, Mr. Percivale,” said Connie, taking her sister’s side.
To my surprise they were talking away with the young man as if they had known him for years, and my wife was seated at the foot of the couch, apparently taking no exception to the suddenness of the intimacy. I am afraid, when I think of it, that a good many springs would be missing from the world’s history if they might not flow till the papas gave their wise consideration to everything about the course they were to take.
“I think, though,” added Connie, “it is only fair that Mr. Percivaleshouldsee your work, Wynnie.”
“Then I will fetch my portfolio, if Mr. Percivale will promise to remember that I have no opinion of it. At the same time, if I could do what I wanted to do, I think I should not be ashamed of showing my drawings even to him.”
And now I was surprised to find how like grown women my daughters could talk. To me they always spoke like the children they were; but when I heard them now it seemed as if they had started all at once into ladies experienced in the ways of society. There they were chatting lightly, airily, and yet decidedly, a slight tone of badinage interwoven, with a young man of grace and dignity, whom they had only seen once before, and who had advanced no farther, with Connie at least, than a stately bow. They had, however, been a whole hour together before I arrived, and their mother had been with them all the while, which gives great courage to good girls, while, I am told, it shuts the mouths of those who are sly. But then it must be remembered that there are as great differences in mothers as in girls. And besides, I believe wise girls have an instinct about men that all the experience of other men cannot overtake. But yet again, there are many girls foolish enough to mistake a mere impulse for instinct, and vanity for insight.
As Wynnie spoke, she turned and went back to the house to fetch some of her work. Now, had she been going a message for me, she would have gone like the wind; but on this occasion she stepped along in a stately manner, far from devoid of grace, but equally free from frolic or eagerness. And I could not help noting as well that Mr. Percivale’s eyes followed her. What I felt or fancied is of no consequence to anybody. I do not think, even if I were writing an autobiography, I should be forced to tellallabout myself. But an autobiography is further from my fancy, however much I may have trenched upon its limits, than any other form of literature with which I am acquainted.
She was not long in returning, however, though she came back with the same dignified motion.
“There is nothing really worth either showing or concealing,” she said to Mr. Percivale, as she handed him the portfolio, to help himself, as it were. She then turned away, as if a little feeling of shyness had come over her, and began to look for something to do about Connie. I could see that, although she had hitherto been almost indifferent about the merit of her drawings, she had a new-born wish that they might not appear altogether contemptible in the eyes of Mr. Percivale. And I saw, too, that Connie’s wide eyes were taking in everything. It was wonderful how Connie’s deprivations had made her keen in observing. Now she hastened to her sister’s rescue even from such a slight inconvenience as the shadow of embarrassment in which she found herself—perhaps from having seen some unusual expression in my face, of which I was unconscious, though conscious enough of what might have occasioned such.
“Give me your hand, Wynnie,” said Connie, “and help me to move one inch further on my side.—I may move just that much on my side, mayn’t I, papa?”
“I think you had better not, my dear, if you can do without it,” I answered; for the doctor’s injunctions had been strong.
“Very well, papa; but I feel as if it would do me good.”
“Mr. Turner will be here next week, you know; and you must try to stick to his rules till he comes to see you. Perhaps he will let you relax a little.”
Connie smiled very sweetly and lay still, while Wynnie stood holding her hand.
Meantime Mr. Percivale, having received the drawings, had walked away with them towards what they called the storm tower—a little building standing square to the points of the compass, from little windows, in which the coastguard could see with their telescopes along the coast on both sides and far out to sea. This tower stood on the very edge of the cliff, but behind it there was a steep descent, to reach which apparently he went round the tower and disappeared. He evidently wanted to make a leisurely examination of the drawings—somewhat formidable for Wynnie, I thought. At the same time, it impressed me favourably with regard to the young man that he was not inclined to pay a set of stupid and untrue compliments the instant the portfolio was opened, but, on the contrary, in order to speak what was real about them, would take the trouble to make himself in some adequate measure acquainted with them. I therefore, to Wynnie’s relief, I fear, strolled after him, seeing no harm in taking a peep at his person, while he was taking a peep at my daughter’s mind. I went round the tower to the other side, and there saw him at a little distance below me, but further out on a great rock that overhung the sea, connected with the cliff by a long narrow isthmus, a few yards lower than the cliff itself, only just broad enough to admit of a footpath along its top, and on one side going sheer down with a smooth hard rock-face to the sands below. The other side was less steep, and had some grass upon it. But the path was too narrow, and the precipice too steep, for me to trust my head with the business of guiding my feet along it. So I stood and saw him from the mainland—saw his head at least bent over the drawings; saw how slowly he turned from one to the other; saw how, after having gone over them once, he turned to the beginning and went over them again, even more slowly than before; saw how he turned the third time to the first. Then, getting tired, I went back to the group on the down; caught sight of Charlie and Harry turning heels over head down the slope toward the house; found that my wife had gone home—in fact, that only Connie and Wynnie were left. The sun had disappeared under a cloud, and the sea had turned a little slaty; the yellow flowers in the short down-grass no longer caught the eye with their gold, and the wind that bent their tops had just the suspicion of an edge in it. And Wynnie’s face looked a little cloudy too, I thought, and I feared that it was my fault. I fancied there was just a tinge of beseeching in Connie’s eye, as I looked at her, thinking there might be danger for her in the sunlessness of the wind. But I do not know that all this, even the clouding of the sun, may not have come out of my own mind, the result of my not being quite satisfied with myself because of the mood I had been in. My feeling had altered considerably in the mean time.
“Run, Wynnie, and ask Mr. Percivale, with my compliments, to come and lunch with us,” I said—more to let her see I was not displeased, however I might have looked, than for any other reason. She went—sedately as before.
Almost as soon as she was gone, I saw that I had put her in a difficulty. For I had discovered, very soon after coming into these parts, that her head was no more steady than my own on high places, for she up had never been used to such in our own level country, except, indeed, on the stair that led down to the old quarry and the well, where, I can remember now, she always laid her hand on the balustrade with some degree of tremor, although she had been in the way of going up and down from childhood. But if she could not cross that narrow and really dangerous isthmus, still less could she call to a man she had never seen but once, across the intervening chasm. I therefore set off after her, leaving Connie lying there in loneliness, between the sea and the sky. But when I got to the other side of the little tower, instead of finding her standing hesitating on the brink of action, there she was on the rock beyond. Mr. Percivale had risen, and was evidently giving an answer to my invitation; at least, the next moment she turned to come back, and he followed. I stood trembling almost to see her cross the knife-back of that ledge. If I had not been almost fascinated, I should have turned and left them to come together, lest the evil fancy should cross her mind that I was watching them, for it was one thing to watch him with her drawings, and quite another to watch him with herself. But I stood and stared as she crossed. In the middle of the path, however—up to which point she had been walking with perfect steadiness and composure—she lifted her eyes—by what influence I cannot tell—saw me, looked as if she saw ghost, half lifted her arms, swayed as if she would fall, and, indeed, was falling over the precipice when Percivale, who was close behind her caught her in his arms, almost too late for both of them. So nearly down was she already, that her weight bent him over the rocky side, till it seemed as if he must yield, or his body snap. For he bent from the waist, and looked as if his feet only kept a hold on the ground. It was all over in a moment, but in that moment it made a sun-picture on my brain, which returns, ever and again, with such vivid agony that I cannot hope to get rid of it till I get rid of the brain itself in which lies the impress. In another moment they were at my side—she with a wan, terrified smile, he in a ruddy alarm. I was unable to speak, and could only, with trembling steps, lead the way from the dreadful spot. I reproached myself afterwards for my want of faith in God; but I had not had time to correct myself yet. Without a word on their side either, they followed me. Before we reached Connie, I recovered myself sufficiently to say, “Not a word to Connie,” and they understood me. I told Wynnie to run to the house, and send Walter to help me to carry Connie home. She went, and, until Walter came, I talked to Mr. Percivale as if nothing had happened. And what made me feel yet more friendly towards him was, that he did not do as some young men wishing to ingratiate themselves would have done: he did not offer to help me to carry Connie home. I saw that the offer rose in his mind, and that he repressed it. He understood that I must consider such a permission as a privilege not to be accorded to the acquaintance of a day; that I must know him better before I could allow the weight of my child to rest on his strength. I was even grateful to him for this knowledge of human nature. But he responded cordially to my invitation to lunch with us, and walked by my side as Walter and I bore the precious burden home.
During our meal, he made himself quite agreeable; talked well on the topics of the day, not altogether as a man who had made up his mind, but not the less, rather the more, as a man who had thought about them, and one who did not find it so easy to come to a conclusion as most people do—or possibly as not feeling the necessity of coming to a conclusion, and therefore preferring to allow the conclusion to grow instead of constructing one for immediate use. This I rather liked than otherwise. His behaviour, I need hardly say, after what I have told of him already, was entirely that of a gentleman; and his education was good. But what I did not like was, that as often as the conversation made a bend in the direction of religious matters, he was sure to bend it away in some other direction as soon as ever he laid his next hold upon it. This, however, might have various reasons to account for it, and I would wait.
After lunch, as we rose from the table, he took Wynnie’s portfolio from the side-table where he had laid it, and with no more than a bow and thanks returned it to her. She, I thought, looked a little disappointed, though she said as lightly as she could:
“I am afraid you have not found anything worthy of criticism in my poor attempts, Mr. Percivale?”
“On the contrary, I shall be most happy to tell you what I think of them if you would like to hear the impression they have made upon me,” he replied, holding out his hand to take the portfolio again.
“I shall be greatly obliged to you,” she said, returning it, “for I have had no one to help me since I left school, except a book calledModern Painters, which I think has the most beautiful things in it I ever read, but which I lay down every now and then with a kind of despair, as if I never could do anything worth doing. How long the next volume is in coming! Do you know the author, Mr. Percivale?”
“I wish I did. He has given me much help. I do not say I can agree with everything he writes; but when I do not, I have such a respect for him that I always feel as if he must be right whether he seems to me to be right or not. And if he is severe, it is with the severity of love that will speak only the truth.”
This last speech fell on my ear like the tone of a church bell. “That will do, my friend,” thought I. But I said nothing to interrupt.
By this time he had laid the portfolio open on the side-table, and placed a chair in front of it for my daughter. Then seating himself by her side, but without the least approach to familiarity, he began to talk to her about her drawings, praising, in general, the feeling, but finding fault with the want of nicety in the execution—at least so it appeared to me from what I could understand of the conversation.
“But,” said my daughter, “it seems to me that if you get the feeling right, that is the main thing.”
“No doubt,” returned Mr. Percivale; “so much the main thing that any imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it becomes of the greatest consequence.”
“But can it really interfere with the feeling?”
“Perhaps not with most people, simply because most people observe so badly that their recollections of nature are all blurred and blotted and indistinct, and therefore the imperfections we are speaking of do not affect them. But with the more cultivated it is otherwise. It is for them you ought to work, for you do not thereby lose the others. Besides, the feeling is always intensified by the finish, for that belongs to the feeling too, and must, I should think, have some influence even where it is not noted.”
“But is it not a hopeless thing to attempt the finish of nature?”
“Not at all; to the degree, that is, in which you can represent anything else of nature. But in this drawing now you have no representative of, nothing to hint at or recall the feeling of the exquisiteness of nature’s finish. Why should you not at least have drawn a true horizon-line there? Has the absolute truth of the meeting of sea and sky nothing to do with the feeling which such a landscape produces? I should have thought you would have learned that, if anything, from Mr. Ruskin.”
Mr. Percivale spoke earnestly. Wynnie, either from disappointment or despair, probably from a mixture of both, apparently fancied that, or rather felt as if, he was scolding her, and got cross. This was anything but dignified, especially with a stranger, and one who was doing his best to help her. And yet, somehow, I must with shame confess I was not altogether sorry to see it. In fact, my reader, I must just uncover my sin, and say that I felt a little jealous of Mr. Percivale. The negative reason was that I had not yet learned to love him. The only cure for jealousy is love. But I was ashamed too of Wynnie’s behaving so childishly. Her face flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose, saying, with a little choke in her voice—
“I see it’s no use trying. I won’t intrude any more into things I am incapable of. I am much obliged to you, Mr. Percivale, for showing me how presumptuous I have been.”
The painter rose as she rose, looking greatly concerned. But he did not attempt to answer her. Indeed she gave him no time. He could only spring after her to open the door for her. A more than respectful bow as she left the room was his only adieu. But when he turned his face again towards me, it expressed even a degree of consternation.
“I fear,” he said, approaching me with an almost military step, much at variance with the shadow upon his countenance, “I fear I have been rude to Miss Walton, but nothing was farther—”
“You mistake entirely, Mr. Percivale. I heard all you were saying, and you were not in the least rude. On the contrary, I consider you were very kind to take the trouble with her you did. Allow me to make the apology for my daughter which I am sure she will wish made when she recovers from the disappointment of finding more obstacles in the way of her favourite pursuit than she had previously supposed. She is only too ready to lose heart, and she paid too little attention to your approbation and too much—in proportion, I mean—to your—criticism. She felt discouraged and lost her temper, but more with herself and her poor attempts, I venture to assure you, than with your remarks upon them. She is too much given to despising her own efforts.”
“But I must have been to blame if I caused any such feeling with regard to those drawings, for I assure you they contain great promise.”
“I am glad you think so. That I should myself be of the same opinion can be of no consequence.”
“Miss Walton at least sees what ought to be represented. All she needs is greater severity in the quality of representation. And that would have grown without any remark from onlookers. Only a friendly criticism is sometimes a great help. It opens the eyes a little sooner than they would have opened of themselves. And time,” he added, with a half sigh and with an appeal in his tone, as if he would justify himself to my conscience, “is half the battle in this world. It is over so soon.”
“No sooner than it ought to be,” I rejoined.
“So it may appear to you,” he returned; “for you, I presume to conjecture, have worked hard and done much. I may or may not have worked hard—sometimes I think I have, sometimes I think I have not—but I certainly have done little. Here I am nearly thirty, and have made no mark on the world yet.”
“I don’t know that that is of so much consequence,” I said. “I have never hoped for more than to rub out a few of the marks already made.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he returned. “Every man has something he can do, and more, I suppose, that he can’t do. But I have no right to turn a visit into a visitation. Will you please tell Miss Walton that I am very sorry I presumed on the privileges of a drawing-master, and gave her pain. It was so far from my intention that it will be a lesson to me for the future.”
With these words he took his leave, and I could not help being greatly pleased both with them and with his bearing. He was clearly anything but a common man.