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 be 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 I 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.
The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than in our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the ocean, the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there, indeed, so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the winter through, compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness of the season is almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against furious storms of wind and rain.
Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another visit. I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away so soon again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find time for a holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what I knew of him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.
He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir was working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have got a man to take my place better.
He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I was sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one side to the other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner encouraged her in making gentle and frequent use of her strength, impressing it upon her, however, that everything depended on avoiding everything like a jerk or twist of any sort. I was with them when he said this. She looked up at him with a happy smile.
"I will do all I can, Mr. Turner," she said, "to get out of people's way as soon as possible."
Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add—
"I know you don't mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and not be helped—more than other people—as soon as possible. I will therefore be as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we don't get well, Mr. Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next summer.—I do," she added, nodding her pretty head up from the pillow, when she saw the glance the doctor and I exchanged. "Look here," she went on, poking the eider-down quilt up with her foot.
"Magnificent!" said Turner; "but mind, you must do nothing out of bravado. That won't do at all."
"I have done," said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.
That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down, for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or farther from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for many weeks. Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was only because of the weather, not because of her health.
One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs. Stokes. She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her mental health was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very different, and the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband especially, was changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified, and I had good hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding down the hill of difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.
It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage to return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of light gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was blowing fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from the east. The clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose fringes—disreputable, troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like mischief. They reminded me of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," in which he compares the "loose clouds" to hair, and calls them "the locks of the approaching storm." Away to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a luminous yellow, covered all the sea-horizon, extending north and south as far as the eye could reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed to lie in its bosom. Now and then I could discern the dim ghost of a vessel through it, as tacking for north or south it came near enough to the edge of the fog to show itself for a few moments, ere it retreated again into its bosom. There was exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air, notwithstanding the coolness of the wind, and I was glad when I found myself comfortably seated by the drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie bestirring herself to make the tea.
"It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie," I said.
Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.
"You seem to like the idea of it," I added.
"You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea of it too."
"Per se, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a world without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman's idea of the perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a trim-shaven lawn, rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on the shore only in wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget which. But the older you grow, the more sides of a thing will present themselves to your contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in itself, but you cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think for a moment of the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are gathered within the skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the toils of the storm are around them. Look at the barometer in the hall, my dear, and tell me what it says."
She went and returned.
"It was not very low, papa—only at rain; but the moment I touched it, the hand dropped an inch."
"Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here, however."
"That doesn't make much difference though, does it, papa?"
"No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think of things from our own standpoint."
"But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let nurse teach us Dr. Watts's hymns for children, because you said they tended to encourage selfishness."
"Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast between the misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the apparent—mind, I only say apparent—ground of thankfulness, that they are not fit for teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to the question, he would abjure any such intention, saying that only he meant to heighten the sense of our obligation. But it does tend to selfishness and, what is worse, self-righteousness, and is very dangerous therefore. What right have I to thank God that I am not as other men are in anything? I have to thank God for the good things he has given to me; but how dare I suppose that he is not doing the same for other people in proportion to their capacity? I don't like to appear to condemn Dr. Watts's hymns. Certainly he has written the very worst hymns I know; but he has likewise written the best—for public worship, I mean."
"Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that comes of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the idea of a storm, I cannot help it coming."
"I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older, other things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to us, and impress us more."
Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.
"But," said Wynnie, "you say everybody is in God's hands as well as we."
"Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the fire."
"Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a storm, ought we?"
"No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the very persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to rescue them from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn't the tea ready?"
"Yes, papa. I'll just go and tell mamma."
When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us, Wynnie resumed the talk.
"I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don't see my way out of it—logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use of taking any trouble about them if they are in God's hands? Why should we try to take them out of God's hands?"
"Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or whatever you call it. Take them out of God's hands! If you could do that, it would be perdition indeed. God's hands is the only safe place in the universe; and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God's hands on the shore because we say they are in his hands who go down to the sea in ships? If we draw them on shore, surely they are not out of God's hands."
"I see—I see. But God could save them without us."
"Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we must work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father lets his little child help him a little, that the child may learn to be and to do, so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our fellows, because we would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we could. He requires us to do our best."
"But God may not mean to save them."
"He may mean them to be drowned—we do not know. But we know that we must try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God's great and good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that best."
"But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, 'by the mercy of God.' They don't say it is by the mercy of God when he is drowned."
"Butpeoplecannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not feel. Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death would break out in a 'thank God,' and therefore they say it is God's mercy when another is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider it God's mercy when a man is drowned, that is just the sin of the world—the want of faith. But the man who creeps out of the drowning, choking billows into the glory of the new heavens and the new earth—do you think his thanksgiving for the mercy of God which has delivered him is less than that of the man who creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the waves on to the dreary, surf-beaten shore? In nothing do we show less faith than the way in which we think and speak about death. 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?' says the apostle. 'Here, here, here,' cry the Christian people, 'everywhere. It is an awful sting, a fearful victory. But God keeps it away from us many a time when we ask him—to let it pierce us to the heart, at last, to be sure; but that can't be helped.' I mean this is how they feel in their hearts who do not believe that God is as merciful when he sends death as when he sends life; who, Christian people as they are, yet look upon death as an evil thing which cannot be avoided, and would, if they might live always, be content to live always. Death or Life—each is God's; for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: there are no dead, for all live to him."
"But don't you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?" said my wife.
"There can be no doubt about that, my dear."
"Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so."
"Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child's sole desire is for food—the very best possible to begin with. But how would it be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse to share this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the man who never so far rises above the desire for food thatnothingcould make him forget his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians should be strong enough to overcome the fear of death. We ought to love and believe him so much, that when he says we shall not die, we should at least believe that death must be something very different from what it looks to us to be—so different, that what we mean by the word does not apply to the reality at all; and so Jesus cannot use the word, because it would seem to us that he meant what we mean by it, which he, seeing it all round, cannot mean."
"That does seem quite reasonable," said Ethelwyn.
Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.
"She looks uneasy, does she not?" I said.
"You mean the Atlantic?" he returned, looking round. "Yes, I think so. I am glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very feverish, probably delirious before morning. She won't sleep much, and will talk rather loud when the tide comes in."
"Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?"
"Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again before they vanish."
"It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to me that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little more regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the evening; in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is lowest again while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain at night has such an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps all a fancy."
"There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke to me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even six hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!"
"Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care to go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to Connie's room and have some Shakspere?"
"I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?"
"Let us have theMidsummer Night's Dream,"said Ethelwyn.
"You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you're quite right. It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer. I suspect that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written in the winter. It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full value upon what we lack."
"There is one reason," said Wynnie with a roguish look, "why I like that play."
"I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie."
"But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn't it, papa?"
"I'm not sure of that. But what is your reason?"
"That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women.Theyare true throughout."
"I might choose to say that was because they were not tried."
"And I might venture to answer that Shakspere—being true to nature always, as you say, papa—knew very well how absurd it would be to represent a woman's feelings as under the influence of the juice of a paltry flower."
"Capital, Wynnie!" said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our approbation.
"Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?" said Turner. "It is the common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the night."
"But," said Ethelwyn, "he was wrong after all. What is the use of common sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted to this, that he would only believe his own eyes."
"I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner," I said. "For my part, I have more admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more weight to the consistency of the various testimony than could be altogether counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now I will tell you what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling power of the poet. He brings together such marvellous contrasts, without a single shock or jar to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the conjunction. Think for a moment—the ordinary commonplace courtiers; the lovers, men and women in the condition of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a hold of them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their courtiers, Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the ignorant, clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,—fairies and clowns, lovers and courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony, clothed with a night of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the king and queen. But I have talked enough about it. Let us get our books."
As we sat in Connie's room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of the poet's fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. "Musk roses," said Titania; and the first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the window. "Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow," said Bottom; and the roar of the waters was in our ears. "So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist," said Titania; and the blast poured the rain in a spout against the window. "Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells," said Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the chinks of the bark-house opening from the room. We drew the curtains closer, made up the fire higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere we had done; and when we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it was with the hope that, through all the rising storm, she would dream of breeze-haunted summer woods.
I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house, and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear it save in therallentondopassages of the wind; but through all the wind I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not wake my wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to Connie's room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were, she would be frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the same room. I opened the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was burning, for Wynnie was an admirable stoker, and could generally keep the fire in all night. I crept to the bedside: there was just light enough to see that Connie was fast asleep, and that her dreams were not of storms. It was a marvel how well the child always slept. But, as I turned to leave the room, Wynnie's voice called me in a whisper. Approaching her bed, I saw her wide eyes, like the eyes of the darkness, for I could scarcely see anything of her face.
"Awake, darling?" I said.
"Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn't Connie sleeping delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for her."
"It is the best thing for us all, next to God's spirit, I sometimes think, my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps you awake?"
"I don't think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house shakes so that I do feel a little nervous. I don't know how it is. I never felt afraid of anything natural before."
"What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only hurt the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think about him, dear."
"I do try, papa. Don't you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful storm, is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there now!"
"There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment, I suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of dying. Mind, they are all in God's hands."
"Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand is over them, making them dark with his care."
"And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so beautifully, 'And now with darkness closest weary eyes,' he adds:
Thus in thy ebony boxThou dost enclose us, till the dayPut our amendment in our way,And give new wheels to our disordered clocks."
"He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a good clock of God's making; but you want new wheels, according to our beloved brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night."
This was tiresome talk—was it—in the middle of the night, reader? Well, but my child did not think so, I know.
Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and sky. The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled a little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again, and the wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible human hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into the village. The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I passed: not a man or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if nobody had crossed their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open. One child came out of the baker's with a big loaf in her apron. The wind threatened to blow the hair off her head, if not herself first into the canal. I took her by the hand and led her, or rather, let her lead me home, while I kept her from being carried away by the wind. Having landed her safely inside her mother's door, I went on, climbed the heights above the village, and looked abroad over the Atlantic. What a waste of aimless tossing to and fro! Gray mist above, full of falling rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and bursting as billow broke upon billow. The tide was ebbing now, but almost every other wave swept the breakwater. They burst on the rocks at the end of it, and rushed in shattered spouts and clouds of spray far into the air over their heads. "Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall be able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing, out on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it could be that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even in her most uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was right; it was Percivale.
"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere in Coleridge's Remorse. "They are but water-drops, after all, that make this great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."
"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail, close-reefed—that is all I can see—away in the mist there? As soon as you think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know that hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no more. It is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules have to fight for the mastery, or at least for freedom."
"Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort that gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of human feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much of its awe; although, as we were saying the other day, it is onlya pictureof the troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are with the elements, and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I will go home and change my clothes."
"I have hardly had enough of it yet," returned Percivale. "I shall have a stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little way from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch awhile there."
"Well, you're a younger man than I am; but I've seen the day, as Lear says. What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we would be judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of the strength that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it still. But I am not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking."
"I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take my way along the downs for a mile or two; I don't mind being wet."
"I didn't once."
"Don't you think," resumed Percivale, "that in some sense the old man—not that I can allowyouthat dignity yet, Mr. Walton—has a right to regard the past as his own?"
"That would be scanned," I answered, as we walked towards the village. "Surely the results of the past are the man's own. Any action of the man's, upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a man had done a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation upon which to build more good, grew so vain of it that he became incapable of doing anything more of the same sort, you could not say that the action belonged to him still. Therein he has severed his connection with the past. Again, what has never in any deep sense been a man's own, cannot surely continue to be his afterwards. Thus the things that a man has merely possessed once, the very people who most admired him for their sakes when he had them, give him no credit for after he has lost them. Riches that have taken to themselves wings leave with the poor man only a surpassing poverty. Strength, likewise, which can so little depend on any exercise of the will in man, passes from him with the years. It was not his all the time; it was but lent him, and had nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble man may put forth a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the eyes of his neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for what he could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was his own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to have been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a great measure with intellect."
"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can in any way be called his own?"
"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own—to will the truth. This, too, is as much God's gift as everything else: I ought to say is more God's gift than anything else, for he gives it to be the man's own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth, he has God himself. Mancanpossess God: all other things follow as necessary results. What poor creatures we should have been if God had not made us to do something—to look heavenwards—to lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this was in the mind of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense of a far higher life in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the root of all our false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves. We cannot commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves. We have little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of will, and therefore we talk of our strength of body, worship the riches we have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part with all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of God which the wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which the growing luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even possible for any man."