The Seaboard Parish Part 29

"I do not, my dear. And more, I will not a.s.sociate the idea with him till I know for certain. We will leave it to ignorant old ladies who lay claim to an instinct for theology to jump at conclusions, and reserve ours--as even such a man as we have been supposing might well teach us--till we have sufficient facts from which to draw them. Now go to bed, my child."

"Good-night then, dear papa," she said, and left me with a kiss.

I was not altogether comfortable after this conversation. I had tried to be fair to the young man both in word and thought, but I could not relish the idea of my daughter falling in love with him, which looked likely enough, before I knew more about him, and found that _more_ good and hope-giving. There was but one rational thing left to do, and that was to cast my care on him that careth for us--on the Father who loved my child more than even I could love her--and loved the young man too, and regarded my anxiety, and would take its cause upon himself. After I had lifted up my heart to him I was at ease, read a canto of Dante's _Paradise_, and then went to bed. The prematurity of a conversation with my wife, in which I found that she was very favourably impressed with Mr. Percivale, must be pardoned to the forecasting hearts of fathers and mothers.

As I went out for my walk the next morning, I caught sight of the s.e.xton, with whom as yet I had had but little communication, busily tr.i.m.m.i.n.g some of the newer graves in the churchyard. I turned in through the nearer gate, which was fas.h.i.+oned like a lych-gate, with seats on the sides and a stone table in the centre, but had no roof. The one on the other side of the church was roofed, but probably they had found that here no roof could resist the sea-blasts in winter. The top of the wall where the roof should have rested, was simply covered with flat slates to protect it from the rain.

"Good-morning, Coombes," I said.

He turned up a wizened, humorous old face, the very type of a gravedigger's, and with one hand leaning on the edge of the green mound, upon which he had been cropping with a pair of shears the too long and too thin gra.s.s, touched his cap with the other, and bade me a cheerful good-morning in return.

"You're making things tidy," I said.

"It take time to make them all comfortable, you see, sir," he returned, taking up his shears again and clipping away at the top and sides of the mound.

"You mean the dead, Coombes?"

"Yes, sir; to be sure, sir."

"You don't think it makes much difference to their comfort, do you, whether the gra.s.s is one length or another upon their graves?"

"Well no, sir. I don't suppose it makes _much_ difference to them.

But it look more comfortable, you know. And I like things to look comfortable. Don't you, sir?"

"To be sure I do, Coombes. And you are quite right. The resting-place of the body, although the person it belonged to be far away, should be respected."

"That's what I think, though I don't get no credit for it. I du believe the people hereabouts thinks me only a single hair better than a Jack Ketch. But I'm sure I du my best to make the poor things comfortable."

He seemed unable to rid his mind of the idea that the comfort of the departed was dependent upon his ministrations.

"The trouble I have with them sometimes! There's now this same one as lies here, old Jonathan Giles. He have the gout so bad! and just as I come within a couple o' inches o' the right depth, out come the edge of a great stone in the near corner at the foot of the bed. Thinks I, he'll never lie comfortable with that same under his gouty toe. But the trouble I had to get out that stone! I du a.s.sure you, sir, it took me nigh half the day.--But this be one of the nicest places to lie in all up and down the coast--a nice gravelly soil, you see, sir; dry, and warm, and comfortable. Them poor things as comes out of the sea must quite enjoy the change, sir."

There was something grotesque in the man's persistence in regarding the objects of his interest from this point of view. It was a curious way for the humanity that was in him to find expression; but I did not like to let him go on thus. It was so much opposed to all that I believed and felt about the change from this world to the next!

"But, Coombes," I said, "why will you go on talking as if it made an atom of difference to the dead bodies where they were buried? They care no more about it than your old coat would care where it was thrown after you had done with it."

He turned and regarded his coat where it hung beside him on the headstone of the same grave at which he was working, shook his head with a smile that seemed to hint a doubt whether the said old coat would be altogether so indifferent to its treatment when, it was past use as I had implied. Then he turned again to his work, and after a moment's silence began to approach me from another side. I confess he had the better of me before I was aware of what he was about.

"The church of Boscastle stands high on the cliff. You've been to Boscastle, sir?"

I told him I had not yet, but hoped to go before the summer was over.

"Ah, you should see Boscastle, sir. It's a wonderful place. That's where I was born, sir. When I was a by that church was haunted, sir. It's a damp place, and the wind in it awful. I du believe it stand higher than any church in the country, and have got more wind in it of a stormy night than any church whatsomever. Well, they said it was haunted; and sure enough every now and then there was a knocking heard down below.

And this always took place of a stormy night, as if there was some poor thing down in the low wouts (_vaults_), and he wasn't comfortable and wanted to get out. Well, one night it was so plain and so fearful it was that the s.e.xton he went and took the blacksmith and a s.h.i.+p's carpenter down to the harbour, and they go up together, and they hearken all over the floor, and they open one of the old family wouts that belongs to the Penhaligans, and they go down with a light. Now the wind it was a-blowing all as usual, only worse than common. And there to be sure what do they see but the wout half-full of sea-water, and nows and thens a great spout coming in through a hole in the rock; for it was high-water and a wind off the sea, as I tell you. And there was a coffin afloat on the water, and every time the spout come through, it set it knocking agen the side o' the wout, and that was the ghost."

"What a horrible idea!" I said, with a half-shudder at the unrest of the dead.

The old man uttered a queer long-drawn sound,--neither a chuckle, a crow, nor a laugh, but a mixture of all three,--and turned himself yet again to the work which, as he approached the end of his narration, he had suspended, that he might make his story _tell_, I suppose, by looking me in the face. And as he turned he said, "I thought you would like to be comfortable then as well as other people, sir."

I could not help laughing to see how the cunning old fellow had caught me. I have not yet been able to find out how much of truth there was in his story. From the twinkle of his eye I cannot help suspecting that if he did not invent the tale, he embellished it, at least, in order to produce the effect which he certainly did produce. Humour was clearly his predominant disposition, the reflex of which was to be seen, after a mild lunar fas.h.i.+on, on the countenance of his wife. Neither could I help thinking with pleasure, as I turned away, how the merry little old man would enjoy telling his companions how he had posed the new parson.

Very welcome was he to his laugh for my part. Yet I gladly left the churchyard, with its suns.h.i.+ne above and its darkness below. Indeed I had to look up to the glittering vanes on the four pinnacles of the church-tower, dwelling aloft in the clean sunny air, to get the feeling of the dark vault, and the floating coffin, and the knocking heard in the windy church, out of my brain. But the thing that did free me was the reflection with what supreme disregard the disincarcerated spirit would look upon any possible vicissitudes of its abandoned vault. For in proportion as the body of man's revelation ceases to be in harmony with the spirit that dwells therein, it becomes a vault, a prison, from which it must be freedom to escape at length. The house we like best would be a prison of awful sort if doors and windows were built up. Man's abode, as age begins to draw nigh, fares thus. Age is in fact the mason that builds up the doors and the windows, and death is the angel that breaks the prison-house and lets the captives free. Thus I got something out of the s.e.xton's horrible story.

But before the week was over, death came near indeed--in far other fas.h.i.+on than any funereal tale could have brought it.

One day, after lunch, I had retired to my study, and was dozing in my chair, for the day was hot, when I was waked by Charlie rus.h.i.+ng into the room with the cry, "Papa, papa, there's a man drowning."

I started up, and hurried down to the drawing-room, which looked out over the bay. I could see nothing but people running about on the edge of the quiet waves. No sign of human being was on--the water. But the one boat belonging to the pilot was coming out from the shelter of the lock of the ca.n.a.l where it usually lay, and my friend of the coastguard was running down from the tower on the cliff with ropes in his hand. He would not stop the boat even for the moment it would need to take him on board, but threw them in and urged to haste. I stood at the window and watched. Every now and then I fancied I saw something white heaved up on the swell of a wave, and as often was satisfied that I had but fancied it. The boat seemed to be floating about lazily, if not idly. The eagerness to help made it appear as if nothing was going on. Could it, after all, have been a false alarm? Was there, after all, no insensible form swinging about in the sweep of those waves, with life gradually oozing away? Long, long as it seemed to me, I watched, and still the boat kept moving from place to place, so far out that I could see nothing distinctly of the motions of its crew. At length I saw something. Yes; a long white thing rose from the water slowly, and was drawn into the boat. It rowed swiftly to the sh.o.r.e. There was but one place fit to land upon,--a little patch of sand, nearly covered at high-water, but now lying yellow in the sun, under the window at which I stood, and immediately under our garden-wall. Thither the boat shot along; and there my friend of the coastguard, earnest and sad, was waiting to use, though without hope, every appliance so well known to him from the frequent occurrence of such necessity in the course of his watchful duties along miles and miles of stormy coast.

I will not linger over the sad details of vain endeavour. The honoured head of a family, he had departed and left a good name behind him.

But even in the midst of my poor attentions to the quiet, speechless, pale-faced wife, who sat at the head of the corpse, I could not help feeling anxious about the effect on my Connie. It was impossible to keep the matter concealed from her. The undoubted concern on the faces of the two boys was enough to reveal that something serious and painful had occurred; while my wife and Wynnie, and indeed the whole household, were busy in attending to every remotest suggestion of aid that reached them from the little crowd gathered about the body. At length it was concluded, on the verdict of the medical man who had been sent for, that all further effort was useless. The body was borne away, and I led the poor lady to her lodging, and remained there with her till I found that, as she lay on the sofa, the sleep that so often dogs the steps of sorrow had at length thrown its veil over her consciousness, and put her for the time to rest. There is a gentle consolation in the firmness of the grasp of the inevitable, known but to those who are led through the valley of the shadow. I left her with her son and daughter, and returned to my own family. They too were of course in the skirts of the cloud.

Had they only heard of the occurrence, it would have had little effect; but death had appeared to them. Everyone but Connie had seen the dead lying there; and before the day was over, I wished that she too had seen the dead. For I found from what she said at intervals, and from the shudder that now and then pa.s.sed through her, that her imagination was at work, showing but the horrors that belong to death; for the enfolding peace that accompanies it can be known but by sight of the dead. When I spoke to her, she seemed, and I suppose for the time felt tolerably quiet and comfortable; but I could see that the words she had heard fall in the going and coming, and the communications of Charlie and Harry to each other, had made as it were an excoriation on her fancy, to which her consciousness was ever returning. And now I became more grateful than I had yet been for the gift of that gipsy-child. For I felt no anxiety about Connie so long as she was with her. The presence even of her mother could not relieve her, for she and Wynnie were both clouded with the same awe, and its reflex in Connie was distorted by her fancy.

But the sweet ignorance of the baby, which rightly considered is more than a type or symbol of faith, operated most healingly; for she appeared in her sweet merry ways--no baby was ever more filled with the mere gladness of life than Connie's baby--to the mood in which they all were, like a little sunny window in a cathedral crypt, telling of a whole universe of suns.h.i.+ne and motion beyond those oppressed pillars and low-groined arches. And why should not the baby know best? I believe the babies do know best. I therefore favoured her having the child more than I might otherwise have thought good for her, being anxious to get the dreary, unhealthy impression healed as soon as possible, lest it should, in the delicate physical condition in which she was, turn to a sore.

But my wife suffered for a time nearly as much as Connie. As long as she was going about the house or attending to the wants of her family, she was free; but no sooner did she lay her head on the pillow than in rushed the cry of the sea, fierce, unkind, craving like a wild beast.

Again and again she spoke of it to me, for it came to her mingled with the voice of the tempter, saying, "_Cruel chance_," over and over again.

For although the two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its turn would a.s.sert itself.

A great part of the doubt in the world comes from the fact that there are in it so many more of the impressible as compared with the originating minds. Where the openness to impression is balanced by the power of production, the painful questions of the world are speedily met by their answers; where such is not the case, there are often long periods of suffering till the child-answer of truth is brought to the birth. Hence the need for every impressible mind to be, by reading or speech, held in living a.s.sociation with an original mind able to combat those suggestions of doubt and even unbelief, which the look of things must often occasion--a look which comes from our inability to gain other than fragmentary visions of the work that the Father worketh hitherto.

When the kingdom of heaven is at hand, one sign thereof will be that all clergymen will be more or less of the latter sort, and mere receptive goodness, no more than education and moral character, will be considered sufficient reason for a man's occupying the high position of an instructor of his fellows. But even now this possession of original power is not by any means to be limited to those who make public show of the same. In many a humble parish priest it shows itself at the bedside of the suffering, or in the admonition of the closet, although as yet there are many of the clergy who, so far from being able to console wisely, are incapable of understanding the condition of those that need consolation.

"It is all a fancy, my dear," I said to her. "There is nothing more terrible in this than in any other death. On the contrary, I can hardly imagine a less fearful one. A big wave falls on the man's head and stuns him, and without further suffering he floats gently out on the sea of the unknown."

"But it is so terrible for those left behind!"

"Had you seen the face of his widow, so gentle, so loving, so resigned in its pallor, you would not have thought it so _terrible_."

But though she always seemed satisfied, and no doubt felt nearly so, after any conversation of the sort, yet every night she would call out once and again, "O, that sea, out there!" I was very glad indeed when Mr. Turner, who had arranged to spend a short holiday with us, arrived.

He was concerned at the news I gave him of the shock both Connie and her mother had received, and counselled an immediate change, that time might, in the absence of surrounding a.s.sociations, obliterate something of the impression that had been made. The consequence was, that we resolved to remove our household, for a short time, to some place not too far off to permit of my attending to my duties at Kilkhaven, but out of the sight and sound of the sea. It was Thursday when Mr. Turner arrived, and he spent the next two days in inquiring and looking about for a suitable spot to which we might repair as early in the week as possible.

On the Sat.u.r.day the blacksmith was busy in the church-tower, and I went in to see how he was getting on.

"You had a sad business here the last week, sir," he said, after we had done talking about the repairs.

"A very sad business indeed," I answered.

"It was a warning to us all," he said.

"We may well take it so," I returned. "But it seems to me that we are too ready to think of such remarkable things only by themselves, instead of being roused by them to regard everything, common and uncommon, as ordered by the same care and wisdom."

"One of our local preachers made a grand use of it."

I made no reply. He resumed.

"They tell me you took no notice of it last Sunday, sir."

"I made no immediate allusion to it, certainly. But I preached under the influence of it. And I thought it better that those who could reflect on the matter should be thus led to think for themselves than that they should be subjected to the reception of my thoughts and feelings about it; for in the main it is life and not death that we have to preach."

"I don't quite understand you, sir. But then you don't care much for preaching in your church."