Two Years Ago, Volume I

Tom had approached unheard, across the farm-yard straw. He stood and looked his fill. The attitude of the two girls was so graceful, that he was loth to disturb it; and loth, too, to disturb a certain sunny calm which warmed at once and softened his stout heart.

He wished, too—he scarce knew why—to hear what Grace was saying; and as he listened, her voice was so distinct and delicate in its modulations, that every word came clearly to his ear.

It was the beautiful old legend of St. Dorothea:—

"So they did all sorts of dreadful things to her, and then led her away to die; and they stood laughing there. But after a little time there came a boy, the prettiest boy that ever was seen on earth, and in his hand a basket full of fruits and flowers, more beautiful than tongue can tell. And he said, 'Dorothea sends you these, out of the heavenly garden which she told you of—will you believe her now?' And then, before they could reply, he vanished away. And Theophilus looked at the flowers, and tasted the fruit—and a new heart grew up within him; and he said, 'Dorothea's God shall be my God, and I will die for him like her.'

"So you see, darling, there are sweeter fruits than these, and gayer flowers, in the place to which you go; and all the lovely things in this world here will seem quite poor and worthless beside the glory of that better land which He will show you: and yet you will not care to look at them; for the sight of Him will be enough, and you will care to think of nothing else."

"And you are sure He will accept me, after all?" asked the sick girl, opening her eyes, and looking up at Grace. She saw Thurnall standing in the doorway, and gave a little scream.

Tom came forward, bowing. "I am very sorry to have disturbed you. I suspect Miss Harvey was giving you better medicine than I can give."

Now why did Tom say that, to whom the legend of St. Dorothea, and, indeed, that whole belief in a better land, was as a dream fit only for girls?

Not altogether because he must need say something civil. True, he felt, on the whole, about the future state as Goethe did—"To the able man this world is not dumb: why should he ramble off into eternity? Such incomprehensible subjects lie too far off, and only disturb our thoughts, if made the subject of daily meditation." That there was a future state he had no doubt. Our having been born once, he used to say, is the strongest possible presumption in favour of our being born again; and probably, as nature always works upward and develops higher forms, in some higher state. Indeed, for aught he knew, the old ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs might be alive now, as lions—or as men. He himself, indeed, he had said, ere now, had been probably a pterodactyle of the Lias, neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring, but crocodile and bat in one, able alike to swim, or run, or fly, eat anything, and live in any element. Still it was no concern of his. He was here; and here was his business. He had not thought of this life before he came into it; and it would be time enough to think of the next life when he got into it. Besides, he had all a doctor's dislike of those terrors of the unseen world, with which some men are wont to oppress still more failing nature, and break the bruised reed. His business was to cure his patients' bodies; and if he could not do that, at least to see that life was not shortened in them by nervous depression and anxiety. Accustomed to see men of every character die under every possible circumstance, he had come to the conclusion that the "safety of a man's soul" could by no possibility be inferred from his death-bed temper. The vast majority, good or bad, died in peace: why not let them die so? If nature kindly took off the edge of sorrow, by blunting the nervous system, what right had man to interfere with so merciful an arrangement? Every man, he held in his easy optimism, would go where he ought to go: and it could be no possible good to him—indeed, it might be a very bad thing for him, as in this life—to go where he ought not to go. So he used to argue, with three-fourths of mankind, mingling truth and falsehood: and would, on these grounds, have done his best to turn the dissenting preacher out of that house, had he found him in it. But to-day he was in a more lenient, perhaps in a more human, and therefore more spiritual mood. It was all very well for him, full of life, and power, and hope, to look on death in that cold, careless way; but for that poor young thing, cut off just as life opened from all that made life lovely—was not death for her a painful, ugly anomaly? Could she be blamed, if she shuddered at going forth into the unknown blank, she knew not whither? All very well for the old emperor of Rome, who had lived his life and done his work, to play with the dreary question—

"Animula, vagula, blandula,Hospes comesque corporis,Quae nunc abibis in loca,Rigidula, nudula, pallida?—"

But she, who had lived no life, and done no work—only had pined through weary years of hideous suffering; crippled and ulcerated with scrofula, now dying of consumption: was it not a merciful dream, a beautiful dream, a just dream—so beautiful and just, that perhaps it might be true,—that in some fairer world, all this, and more, might be made up to her? If not, was it not a mistake and an injustice, that she should ever have come into the world at all? And was not Grace doing a rational as well as a loving work, in telling her, under whatsoever symbols, that such a home of rest and beauty awaited her? It was not the sort of place to which he expected, perhaps even wished, to go: but it fitted well enough with a young girl's hopes, a young girl's powers of enjoyment. Let it be; perhaps there was such a place,—why not?—fitted for St. Dorothea, and those cut off in youth like her; and other places fit for such as he. And he spoke more tenderly than usual (though he was never untender), as he said,—

"And you feel better to-day? I am sure you must, with such a kind friend, to tell you such sweet tales."

"I do not feel better, thank you. And why should I wish to do so? You all take too much trouble about me; why do you want to keep me here?"

"We are loth to lose you; and besides, while you can be kept here, it is a sign that you ought to be here."

"So Grace tells me. Yes, I will be patient, and wait till He has done His work. I am more patient now; am I not, Grace?" And she fondled Grace's hand, and looked up in her face.

"Yes," said Grace, who was standing near, with downcast face, trying to avoid Tom's eye. "Yes, you are very good; but you must not talk:" but the girl went on, with kindling eye,—

"Ah—I was very fretful at first, because I could not go to heaven at once: but Grace showed me how it was good to be here, as well as there, as long as He thought that I might be made perfect by sufferings. And since then, my pain has become quite pleasant to me, and I am ready to wait and bear—wait and bear."

"You must not talk,—see, you are beginning to cough," said Tom, who wished somehow to stop a form of thought which so utterly puzzled him. Not that he had not heard it before; commonplace enough indeed it is, thank God: but that day the words came home to him with spirit and power, all the more solemnly from their contrast with the scene around—without, all sunshine, joy, and glory: all which could tempt a human being to linger here: and within, that young girl longing to leave it all, and yet content to stay and suffer. What mysteries there were in the human spirit—mysteries to which that knowledge of mankind on which he prided himself gave him no key!

"What if I were laid on my back to-morrow for life, by a fall, a blow, as I have seen many a better man than me;—should I not wish to have one to talk to me, as she was talking to that child?" And for a moment a yearning after Grace came over him, as it had done before, and swept from his mind the dark cloud of suspicion.

"Now I must talk with your mother," said he; "for you have better company than mine; and I hear her just coming in."

He settled little matters for his patient's comfort with the farmer's wife. When he returned to bid her good-bye Grace was gone.

"I hope I have not driven her away."

"Oh no; she had been here an hour, and she must go back now, to get her mother's supper."

"That is a good girl," said Tom, looking after her as she went down the field.

"She's an angel from heaven, sir. Not a three days go over without her walking up here all this way after her work, to comfort my poor maid—and all of us as well. It's like the dew of heaven upon us. Pity, sir, you didn't see her home."

"I should have liked it well enough; but folks might talk, if two young people were seen walking together Sunday evening."

"Oh, sir, they know her too well by now, for miles round: and you too, sir, I'll make bold to say."

"Well, at least I'll go after her."

So Tom went, and kept Grace in sight, till she had crossed the little moor, and disappeared in the wood below.

He had gone about a hundred yards into the wood, when he heard voices and laughter—then a loud shriek. He hurried forward. In another minute, Grace rushed up to him, her eyes wide with terror and indignation.

"What is it?" cried he, trying to stop her: but, not seeming to see him, she dashed past him, and ran on. Another moment, and a man appeared in full pursuit.

It was Trebooze of Trebooze, an evil laugh upon his face.

Tom planted himself across the narrow path in an attitude which there was no mistaking.

Not a word passed between them. Silently and instinctively, like two fierce dogs, the two men flew upon each other; Tom full of righteous wrath, and Trebooze of half-drunken passion, turned to fury by the interruption.

He was a far taller and heavier man than Thurnall, and, as the bully of the neighbourhood, counted on an easy victory. But he was mistaken. After the first rush was over, he found it impossible to close with his foe, and saw in the doctor's face, now grown cool and business-like as usual, the wily smile of superior science and expected triumph.

"Brandy-and-water in the morning ought not to improve the wind," said Tom to himself, as his left hand countered provokingly, while his right rattled again and again upon Trebooze's watch-chain. "Justice will overtake you in the offending part, which I take to be the epigastric region."

In a few minutes more the scuffle ended shamefully enough for the sottish squireen.

Tom stood over him for a minute, as he sat grovelling and groaning among the long grass. "I may as well see that I have not killed him. No, he will do as well as ever—which is not saying much…. Now, sir! Go home quietly, and ask Mrs. Trebooze for a little rhubarb and salvolatile. I'll call up in the course of to-morrow to see how you are."

"I'll kill you, if I catch you!"

"As a man, I am open of course to be killed by any fair means; but as a doctor, I am still bound to see after my patient's health." And Tom bowed civilly, and walked back up the path to find Grace, after washing face and hands in the brook.

He found her up at Tolchard's farm, trembling and thankful.

"I cannot do less than see Miss Harvey safe home."

Grace hesitated.

"Mrs. Tolchard, I am sure, will walk with us; it would be safer, in case you felt faint again."

But Mrs. Tolchard would not come to save Grace's notions of propriety; so Tom passed Grace's arm through his own. She offered to withdraw it.

"No; you will require it. You do not know yet how much you have gone through. My fear is, that you will feel it all the more painfully when the excitement is past. I shall send you up a cordial; and you must promise me to take it. You owe me a little debt you know, to-day; you must pay it by taking my medicines."

Grace looked up at him sidelong; for there was a playful tenderness in his voice which was new to her, and which thrilled her through and through.

"I will indeed, I promise you. But I am so much better now. Really, I can walk alone!" And she withdrew her arm from his, but not hastily.

After that they walked on awhile in silence. Grace kept her veil down, for her eyes were full of tears. She loved that man intensely, utterly. She did not seek to deny it to herself. God had given him to her, and hers he was. The very sea, the devourer whom she hated, who hungered to swallow up all young fair life, the very sea had yielded him up to her, alive from the dead. And yet that man, she knew, suspected her of a base and hateful crime. It was too dreadful! She could not exculpate herself, save by blank denial—and what would that avail? The large hot drops ran down her cheeks. She had need of all her strength to prevent sobbing.

She looked round. In the bright summer evening, all things were full of joy and love. The hedge-banks were gay as flower gardens; the swifts chased each other, screaming harsh delight; the ring-dove murmured in the wood beneath his world-old song, which she had taught the children a hundred times—

"Curuckity coo, curuck coo;You love me, and I love you!"

The woods slept golden in the evening sunlight; and over head brooded, like one great smile of God, the everlasting blue.

"He will right me!" she said. "'Hold thee still in the Lord, and abide patiently, and He will make thy righteousness clear as the light, and thy just dealing as the noon-day!'" And after that thought she wept no more.

Was it as a reward for her faith that Tom began to talk to her? He had paced on by her side, serious, but not sad. True, he had suspected her; he suspected her still. But that scene with the dying child had been no sham. There, at least, there was nothing to suspect, nothing to sneer at. The calm purity, self-sacrifice, hope, which was contained in it, had softened his world-hardened spirit, and woke up in him feelings which were always pleasant, feelings which the sight of his father, or the writing to his father, could only awaken. Quaintly enough, the thought of Grace and of his father seemed intertwined, inextricable. If the old man had but such a nurse as she! And for a moment he felt a glow of tenderness toward her, because he thought she would be tender to his father. She had stolen his money, certainly; or if not, she knew where it was, and would not tell him. Well, what matter just then? He did not want the money at that minute. How much pleasanter and wiser to take things as they came, and enjoy himself while he could; and fancy that she was always what he had seen her that day. After all, it was much more pleasant to trust people than to suspect them: "Handsome is who handsome does! And besides, she did me the kindness of saving my life; so it would but be civil to talk to her a little."

He began to talk to her about the lovely scene around; and found, to his surprise, that she saw as much of it as he, and saw a great deal more in it than he. Her answers were short, modest, faltering; but each one of them suggestive; and Tom soon found that he had met with a mind which contained all the elements of poetry, and needed only education to develop them.

"What a blue stocking, pre-Raphaelite seventh-heavenarian she would have been, if she had had the misfortune to be born in that station of life!" But where a clever man is talking to a beautiful woman, talk he will, and must, for the mere sake of showing off, though she be but a village schoolmistress; and Tom soon found himself, with a secret sneer at his own vanity, displaying before her all the much finer things that he had seen in his travels; and as he talked, she answered, with quiet expressions of wonder, sympathy, regret at her own narrow sphere of experience, till, as if the truth was not enough, he found himself running to the very edge of exaggeration, and a little over it, in the enjoyment of calling out her passion for the marvellous, especially when called out in honour of himself.

And she, simple creature, drank it all in as sparkling wine, and only dreaded lest the stream should cease. Adventures with noble savages in palm-fringed coral-islands, with greedy robbers amid the fragrant hills of Greece, with fierce Indians beneath the snow-peaks of the Far West, with coward Mexicans among tunals of cactus and agave, beneath the burning tropic sun—What a man he was! Where had he not been? and what had he not seen? And how he had been preserved—for her? And his image seemed to her utterly beautiful and glorious, clothed as it was in the beauty and glory of all that he had seen, and done, and suffered. Oh Love, Love, Love, the same in peasant and in peer! The more honour to you, then, old Love, to be the same thing in this world which is common to peasant and to peer. They say that you are blind; a dreamer, an exaggerator—a liar, in short. They know just nothing about you, then. You will not see people as they seem, and as they have become, no doubt: but why? because you see them as they ought to be, and are, in some deep way, eternally, in the sight of Him who conceived and created them.

At last she started, as if waking from a pleasant dream, and spoke, half to herself—

"Oh, how foolish of me—to be idling away this opportunity; the only one, perhaps, which I may have! Oh, Mr. Thurnall, tell me about this cholera!"

"What about it?"

"Everything. Ever since I heard of what you have been saying to the people, ever since Mr. Headley's sermon, it has been like fire in my ears!"

"I am truly glad to hear it. If all parsons had preached about it for the last fifteen years as Mr. Headley did last Sunday, if they had told people plainly that, if the cholera was God's judgment at all, it was His judgment of the sin of dirt, and that the repentance which He required was to wash and be clean in literal earnest, the cholera would be impossible in England by now."

"Oh, Mr. Thurnall: but is it not God's doing? and can we stop His hand?"

"I know nothing about that, Miss Harvey. I only know that wheresoever cholera breaks out, it is some one's fault; and if deaths occur, some one ought to be tried for manslaughter—I had almost said murder, and transported for life."

"Someone? Who?"

"That will be settled in the next generation, when men have common sense enough to make laws for the preservation of their own lives, against the dirt, and covetousness, and idleness, of a set of human hogs."

Grace was silent for awhile.

"But can nothing be done to keep it off now? Must it come?"

"I believe it must. Still one may do enough to save many lives in the meanwhile."

"Enough to save many lives—lives?—immortal souls, too! Oh, what could I do?"

"A great deal, Miss Harvey," said Tom, across whom the recollection of Grace's influence flashed for the first time. What a help she might be to him!

And he talked on and on to her, and found that she entered into his plans with all her wild enthusiasm, but also with sound practical common sense; and Tom began to respect her intellect as well as her heart.

At last, however, she faltered—

"Oh, if I could but believe all this! Is it not fighting against God?"

"I do not know what sort of God yours is, Miss Harvey. I believe in some One who made all that!" and he pointed round him to the glorious woods and glorious sky; "I should have fancied from your speech to that poor girl, that you believed in Him also. You may, however, only believe in the same being in whom the Methodist parson believes, one who intends to hurl into endless agony every human being who has not had a chance of hearing the said preacher's nostrum for delivering men out of the hands of Him who made them!"

"What do you mean?" asked Grace, startled alike by Tom's words, and the intense scorn and bitterness of his tone.

"That matters little. What do you mean in turn? What did you mean by saying, that saving lives is saving immortal souls?"

"Oh, is it not giving them time to repent? What will become of them, if they are cut off in the midst of their sins?"

"If you had a son whom it was not convenient to you to keep at home, would his being a bad fellow—the greatest scoundrel on the earth—be a reason for your turning him into the streets to live by thieving, and end by going to the dogs for ever and a day?"

"No; but what do you mean?"

"That I do not think that God, when He sends a human being out of this world, is more cruel than you or I would be. If we transport a man because he is too bad to be in England, and he shows any signs of mending, we give him a fresh chance in the colonies, and let him start again, to try if he cannot do better next time. And do you fancy that God, when He transports a man out of this world, never gives him a fresh chance in another—especially when nine out of ten poor rascals have never had a fair chance yet?"

Grace looked up in his face astonished.

"Oh, if I could but believe that! Oh! it would give me some gleam of hope for my two!—But no—it's not in Scripture. Where the tree falls there it lies."

"And as the fool dies, so dies the wise man; and there is one account to the righteous and to the wicked. And a man has no pre-eminence over a beast, for both turn alike to dust; and Solomon does not know, he says, or any one else, anything about the whole matter, or even whether there be any life after death at all; and so, he says, the only wise thing is to leave such deep questions alone, for Him who made us to settle in His own way, and just to fear God and keep His commandments, and do the work which lies nearest us with all our might."

Grace was silent.

"You are surprised to hear me quote Scripture, and well you may be: but that same book of Ecclesiastes is a very old favourite with me; for I am no Christian, but a worlding, if ever there was one. But it does puzzle me why you, who are a Christian, should talk one half-hour as you have been talking to that poor girl, and the next go for information about the next life to poor old disappointed, broken-hearted Solomon, with his three hundred and odd idolatrous wives, who confesses fairly that this life is a failure, and that he does not know whether there is any next life at all."

Whether Tom was altogether right or not, is not the question here; the novelist's business is to represent the real thoughts of mankind, when they are not absolutely unfit to be told; and certainly Tom spoke the doubts of thousands when he spoke his own.

Grace was silent still.

"Well," he said, "beyond that I can't go, being no theologian. But when a preacher tells people in one breath of a God who so loves men that He gave His own Son to save them, and in the next, that the same God so hates men that He will cast nine-tenths of them into hopeless torture for ever,—(and if that is not hating, I don't know what is),—unless he, the preacher, gets a chance of talking to them for a few minutes—Why, I should like, Miss Harvey, to put that gentleman upon a real fire for ten minutes, instead of his comfortable Sunday's dinner, which stands ready frying for him, and which he was going home to eat, as jolly as if all the world was not going to destruction; and there let him feel what fire was like, and reconsider his statements."

Grace looked up at him no more; but walked on in silence, pondering many things.

"Howsoever that may be, sir, tell me what to do in this cholera, and I will do it, if I kill myself with work or infection!"

"You shan't do that. We cannot spare you from Aberalva, Grace," said Tom; "you must save a few more poor creatures ere you die, out of the hands of that Good Being who made little children, and love, and happiness, and the flowers, and the sunshine, and the fruitful earth; and who, you say, redeemed them all again, when they were lost, by an act of love which passes all human dreams."

"Do not talk so!" cried Grace. "It frightens me; it puzzles me, and makes me miserable. Oh, if you would but become a Christian!"

"And listen to the Gospel?"

"Yes—oh yes!"

"A gospel means good news, I thought. When you have any to tell me, I will listen. Meanwhile, the news that three out of four of those poor fellows down town are going to a certain place, seems to me such terribly bad news, that I can't help fancying that it is not the Gospel at all; and so get on the best way I can, listening to the good news about God which this grand old world, and my microscope, and my books, tell me. No, Grace, I have more good news than that, and I'll confess it to you."

He paused, and his voice softened.

"Say what the preacher may. He must be a good God who makes such creatures as you, and sends them into the world to comfort poor wretches. Follow your own sweet heart, Grace, and torment yourself no more with these dark dreams!"