Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

“But it’s not the will of God, Mrs Tomkins.”

“Ain’t it, sir? Sure I thought it was.”

“You believe in Jesus Christ, don’t you, Mrs Tomkins?”

“That I do, sir, with all my heart and soul.”

“Well, He says that whosoever liveth and believeth in Him shall never die.”

“But, you know, sir, everybody dies. I MUST die, and be laid in the churchyard, sir. And that’s what I don’t like.”

“But I say that is all a mistake. YOU won’t die. Your body will die, and be laid away out of sight; but you will be awake, alive, more alive than you are now, a great deal.”

And here let me interrupt the conversation to remark upon the great mistake of teaching children that they have souls. The consequence is, that they think of their souls as of something which is not themselves. For what a man HAS cannot be himself. Hence, when they are told that their souls go to heaven, they think of their SELVES as lying in the grave. They ought to be taught that they have bodies; and that their bodies die; while they themselves live on. Then they will not think, as old Mrs Tomkins did, that THEY will be laid in the grave. It is making altogether too much of the body, and is indicative of an evil tendency to materialism, that we talk as if we POSSESSED souls, instead of BEING souls. We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies when dead than they do of their hair when it is cut off, or of their old clothes when they have done with them.

“Do you really think so, sir?”

“Indeed I do. I don’t know anything about where you will be. But you will be with God—in your Father’s house, you know. And that is enough, is it not?”

“Yes, surely, sir. But I wish you was to be there by the bedside of me when I was a-dyin’. I can’t help bein’ summat skeered at it. It don’t come nat’ral to me, like. I ha’ got used to this old bed here, cold as it has been—many’s the night—wi’ my good man there by the side of me.”

“Send for me, Mrs Tomkins, any moment, day or night, and I’ll be with you directly.”

“I think, sir, if I had a hold ov you i’ the one hand, and my man there, the Lord bless him, i’ the other, I could go comfortable.”

“I’ll come the minute you send for me—just to keep you in mind that a better friend than I am is holding you all the time, though you mayn’t feel His hands. If it is some comfort to have hold of a human friend, think that a friend who is more than man, a divine friend, has a hold of you, who knows all your fears and pains, and sees how natural they are, and can just with a word, or a touch, or a look into your soul, keep them from going one hair’s-breadth too far. He loves us up to all out need, just because we need it, and He is all love to give.”

“But I can’t help thinking, sir, that I wouldn’t be troublesome. He has such a deal to look after! And I don’t see how He can think of everybody, at every minute, like. I don’t mean that He will let anything go wrong. But He might forget an old body like me for a minute, like.”

“You would need to be as wise as He is before you could see how He does it. But you must believe more than you can understand. It is only common sense to do so. Think how nonsensical it would be to suppose that one who could make everything, and keep the whole going as He does, shouldn’t be able to help forgetting. It would be unreasonable to think that He must forget because you couldn’t understand how He could remember. I think it is as hard for Him to forget anything as it is for us to remember everything; for forgetting comes of weakness, and from our not being finished yet, and He is all strength and all perfection.”

“Then you think, sir, He never forgets anything?”

I knew by the trouble that gathered on the old woman’s brow what kind of thought was passing through her mind. But I let her go on, thinking so to help her the better. She paused for one moment only, and then resumed—much interrupted by the shortness of her breathing.

“When I was brought to bed first,” she said, “it was o’ twins, sir. And oh! sir, it was VERY hard. As I said to my man after I got my head up a bit, ‘Tomkins,’ says I, ‘you don’t know what it is to have TWO on ‘em cryin’ and cryin’, and you next to nothin’ to give ‘em; till their cryin’ sticks to your brain, and ye hear ‘em when they’re fast asleep, one on each side o’ you.’ Well, sir, I’m ashamed to confess it even to you; and what the Lord can think of me, I don’t know.”

“I would rather confess to Him than to the best friend I ever had,” I said; “I am so sure that He will make every excuse for me that ought to be made. And a friend can’t always do that. He can’t know all about it. And you can’t tell him all, because you don’t know all yourself. He does.”

“But I would like to tell YOU, sir. Would you believe it, sir, I wished ‘em dead? Just to get the wailin’ of them out o’ my head, I wished ‘em dead. In the courtyard o’ the squire’s house, where my Tomkins worked on the home-farm, there was an old draw-well. It wasn’t used, and there was a lid to it, with a hole in it, through which you could put a good big stone. And Tomkins once took me to it, and, without tellin’ me what it was, he put a stone in, and told me to hearken. And I hearkened, but I heard nothing,—as I told him so. ‘But,’ says he, ‘hearken, lass.’ And in a little while there come a blast o’ noise like from somewheres. ‘What’s that, Tomkins?’ I said. ‘That’s the ston’,’ says he, ‘a strikin’ on the water down that there well.’ And I turned sick at the thought of it. And it’s down there that I wished the darlin’s that God had sent me; for there they’d be quiet.”

“Mothers are often a little out of their minds at such times, Mrs Tomkins. And so were you.”

“I don’t know, sir. But I must tell you another thing. The Sunday afore that, the parson had been preachin’ about ‘Suffer little children,’ you know, sir, ‘to come unto me.’ I suppose that was what put it in my head; but I fell asleep wi’ nothin’ else in my head but the cries o’ the infants and the sound o’ the ston’ in the draw-well. And I dreamed that I had one o’ them under each arm, cryin’ dreadful, and was walkin’ across the court the way to the draw-well; when all at once a man come up to me and held out his two hands, and said, ‘Gie me my childer.’ And I was in a terrible fear. And I gave him first one and then the t’other, and he took them, and one laid its head on one shoulder of him, and t’other upon t’other, and they stopped their cryin’, and fell fast asleep; and away he walked wi’ them into the dark, and I saw him no more. And then I awoke cryin’, I didn’t know why. And I took my twins to me, and my breasts was full, if ye ‘ll excuse me, sir. And my heart was as full o’ love to them. And they hardly cried worth mentionin’ again. But afore they was two year old, they both died o’ the brown chytis, sir. And I think that He took them.”

“He did take them, Mrs Tomkins; and you’ll see them again soon.”

“But, if He never forgets anything–”

“I didn’t say that. I think He can do what He pleases. And if He pleases to forget anything, then He can forget it. And I think that is what He does with our sins—that is, after He has got them away from us, once we are clean from them altogether. It would be a dreadful thing if He forgot them before that, and left them sticking fast to us and defiling us. How then should we ever be made clean?—What else does the prophet Isaiah mean when he says, ‘Thou hast cast my sins behind Thy back?’ Is not that where He does not choose to see them any more? They are not pleasant to Him to think of any more than to us. It is as if He said—‘I will not think of that any more, for my sister will never do it again,’ and so He throws it behind His back.”

“They ARE good words, sir. I could not bear Him to think of me and my sins both at once.”

I could not help thinking of the words of Macbeth, “To know my deed, ‘twere best not know myself.”

The old woman lay quiet after this, relieved in mind, though not in body, by the communication she had made with so much difficulty, and I hastened home to send some coals and other things, and then call upon Dr Duncan, lest he should not know that his patient was so much worse as I had found her.

From Dr Duncan’s I went to see old Samuel Weir, who likewise was ailing. The bitter weather was telling chiefly upon the aged. I found him in bed, under the old embroidery. No one was in the room with him. He greeted me with a withered smile, sweet and true, although no flash of white teeth broke forth to light up the welcome of the aged head.

“Are you not lonely, Mr Weir?”

“No, sir. I don’t know as ever I was less lonely. I’ve got my stick, you see, sir,” he said, pointing to a thorn stick which lay beside him.

“I do not quite understand you,” I returned, knowing that the old man’s gently humorous sayings always meant something.

“You see, sir, when I want anything, I’ve only got to knock on the floor, and up comes my son out of the shop. And then again, when I knock at the door of the house up there, my Father opens it and looks out. So I have both my son on earth and my Father in heaven, and what can an old man want more?”

“What, indeed, could any one want more?”

“It’s very strange,” the old man resumed after a pause, “but as I lie here, after I’ve had my tea, and it is almost dark, I begin to feel as if I was a child again.—They say old age is a second childhood; but before I grew so old, I used to think that meant only that a man was helpless and silly again, as he used to be when he was a child: I never thought it meant that a man felt like a child again, as light-hearted and untroubled as I do now.”

“Well, I suspect that is not what people do mean when they say so. But I am very glad—you don’t know how pleased it makes me to hear that you feel so. I will hope to fare in the same way when my time comes.”

“Indeed, I hope you will, sir; for I am main and happy. Just before you came in now, I had really forgotten that I was a toothless old man, and thought I was lying here waiting for my mother to come in and say good-night to me before I went to sleep. Wasn’t that curious, when I never saw my mother, as I told you before, sir?”

“It was very curious.”

“But I have no end of fancies. Only when I begin to think about it, I can always tell when they are fancies, and they never put me out. There’s one I see often—a man down on his knees at that cupboard nigh the floor there, searching and searching for somewhat. And I wish he would just turn round his face once for a moment that I might see him. I have a notion always it’s my own father.”

“How do you account for that fancy, now, Mr Weir?”

“I’ve often thought about it, sir, but I never could account for it. I’m none willing to think it’s a ghost; for what’s the good of it? I’ve turned out that cupboard over and over, and there’s nothing there I don’t know.”

“You’re not afraid of it, are you?”

“No, sir. Why should I be? I never did it no harm. And God can surely take care of me from all sorts.”

My readers must not think anything is going to come out of this strange illusion of the old man’s brain. I questioned him a little more about it, and came simply to the conclusion, that when he was a child he had found the door open and had wandered into the house, at the time uninhabited, had peeped in at the door of the same room where he now lay, and had actually seen a man in the position he described, half in the cupboard, searching for something. His mind had kept the impression after the conscious memory had lost its hold of the circumstance, and now revived it under certain physical conditions. It was a glimpse out of one of the many stories which haunted the old mansion. But there he lay like a child, as he said, fearless even of such usurpations upon his senses.

I think instances of quiet unSELFconscious faith are more common than is generally supposed. Few have along with it the genial communicative impulse of old Samuel Weir, which gives the opportunity of seeing into their hidden world. He seemed to have been, and to have remained, a child, in the best sense of the word. He had never had much trouble with himself, for he was of a kindly, gentle, trusting nature; and his will had never been called upon to exercise any strong effort to enable him to walk in the straight path. Nor had his intellect, on the other hand, while capable enough, ever been so active as to suggest difficulties to his faith, leaving him, even theoretically, far nearer the truth than those who start objections for their own sakes, liking to feel themselves in a position of supposed antagonism to the generally acknowledged sources of illumination. For faith is in itself a light that lightens even the intellect, and hence the shield of the complete soldier of God, the shield of faith, is represented by Spenser as “framed all of diamond, perfect, pure, and clean,” (the power of the diamond to absorb and again radiate light being no poetic fiction, but a well-known scientific fact,) whose light falling upon any enchantment or false appearance, destroys it utterly: for

   “all that was not such as seemed in sight.    Before that shield did fade, and suddaine fall.”

Old Rogers had passed through a very much larger experience. Many more difficulties had come to him, and he had met them in his own fashion and overcome them. For while there is such a thing as truth, the mind that can honestly beget a difficulty must at the same time be capable of receiving that light of the truth which annihilates the difficulty, or at least of receiving enough to enable it to foresee vaguely some solution, for a full perception of which the intellect may not be as yet competent. By every such victory Old Rogers had enlarged his being, ever becoming more childlike and faithful; so that, while the childlikeness of Weir was the childlikeness of a child, that of Old Rogers was the childlikeness of a man, in which submission to God is not only a gladness, but a conscious will and choice. But as the safety of neither depended on his own feelings, but on the love of God who was working in him, we may well leave all such differences of nature and education to the care of Him who first made the men different, and then brought different conditions out of them. The one thing is, whether we are letting God have His own way with us, following where He leads, learning the lessons He gives us.

I wished that Mr Stoddart had been with me during these two visits. Perhaps he might have seen that the education of life was a marvellous thing, and, even in the poorest intellectual results, far more full of poetry and wonder than the outcome of that constant watering with the watering-pot of self-education which, dissociated from the duties of life and the influences of his fellows, had made of him what he was. But I doubt if he would have seen it.

A week had elapsed from the night I had sat up with Gerard Weir, and his mother had not risen from her bed, nor did it seem likely she would ever rise again. On a Friday I went to see her, just as the darkness was beginning to gather. The fire of life was burning itself out fast. It glowed on her cheeks, it burned in her hands, it blazed in her eyes. But the fever had left her mind. That was cool, oh, so cool, now! Those fierce tropical storms of passion had passed away, and nothing of life was lost. Revenge had passed away, but revenge is of death, and deadly. Forgiveness had taken its place, and forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving of life. Gerard, his dear little head starred with sticking-plaster, sat on her bed, looking as quietly happy as child could look, over a wooden horse with cylindrical body and jointless legs, covered with an eruption of red and black spots.—Is it the ignorance or the imagination of children that makes them so easily pleased with the merest hint at representation? I suspect the one helps the other towards that most desirable result, satisfaction.—But he dropped it when he saw me, in a way so abandoning that—comparing small things with great—it called to my mind those lines of Milton:—

   “From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve,    Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed.”

The quiet child FLUNG himself upon my neck, and the mother’s face gleamed with pleasure.

“Dear boy!” I said, “I am very glad to see you so much better.”

For this was the first time he had shown such a revival of energy. He had been quite sweet when he saw me, but, until this evening, listless.

“Yes,” he said, “I am quite well now.” And he put his hand up to his head.

“Does it ache?”

“Not much now. The doctor says I had a bad fall.”

“So you had, my child. But you will soon be well again.”

The mother’s face was turned aside, yet I could see one tear forcing its way from under her closed eyelid.

“Oh, I don’t mind it,” he answered. “Mammy is so kind to me! She lets me sit on her bed as long as I like.”

“That IS nice. But just run to auntie in the next room. I think your mammy would like to talk to me for a little while.”

The child hurried off the bed, and ran with overflowing obedience.

“I can even think of HIM now,” said the mother, “without going into a passion. I hope God will forgive him. I do. I think He will forgive me.”

“Did you ever hear,” I asked, “of Jesus refusing anybody that wanted kindness from Him? He wouldn’t always do exactly what they asked Him, because that would sometimes be of no use, and sometimes would even be wrong; but He never pushed them away from Him, never repulsed their approach to Him. For the sake of His disciples, He made the Syrophenician woman suffer a little while, but only to give her such praise afterwards and such a granting of her prayer as is just wonderful.”

She said nothing for a little while; then murmured,

“Shall I have to be ashamed to all eternity? I do not want not to be ashamed; but shall I never be able to be like other people—in heaven I mean?”

“If He is satisfied with you, you need not think anything more about yourself. If He lets you once kiss His feet, you won’t care to think about other people’s opinion of you even in heaven. But things will go very differently there from here. For everybody there will be more or less ashamed of himself, and will think worse of himself than he does of any one else. If trouble about your past life were to show itself on your face there, they would all run to comfort you, trying to make the best of it, and telling you that you must think about yourself as He thinks about you; for what He thinks is the rule, because it is the infallible right way. But perhaps rather, they would tell you to leave that to Him who has taken away our sins, and not trouble yourself any more about it. But to tell the truth, I don’t think such thoughts will come to you at all when once you have seen the face of Jesus Christ. You will be so filled with His glory and goodness and grace, that you will just live in Him and not in yourself at all.”

“Will He let us tell Him anything we please?”

“He lets you do that now: surely He will not be less our God, our friend there.”

“Oh, I don’t mind how soon He takes me now! Only there’s that poor child that I’ve behaved so badly to! I wish I could take him with me. I have no time to make it up to him here.”

“You must wait till he comes. He won’t think hardly of you. There’s no fear of that.”

“What will become of him, though? I can’t bear the idea of burdening my father with him.”

“Your father will be glad to have him, I know. He will feel it a privilege to do something for your sake. But the boy will do him good. If he does not want him, I will take him myself.”

“Oh! thank you, thank you, sir.”

A burst of tears followed.

“He has often done me good,” I said.

“Who, sir? My father?”

“No. Your son.”

“I don’t quite understand what you mean, sir.”

“I mean just what I say. The words and behaviour of your lovely boy have both roused and comforted my heart again and again.”

She burst again into tears.

“That is good to hear. To think of your saying that! The poor little innocent! Then it isn’t all punishment?”

“If it were ALL punishment, we should perish utterly. He is your punishment; but look in what a lovely loving form your punishment has come, and say whether God has been good to you or not.”

“If I had only received my punishment humbly, things would have been very different now. But I do take it—at least I want to take it—just as He would have me take it. I will bear anything He likes. I suppose I must die?”

“I think He means you to die now. You are ready for it now, I think. You have wanted to die for a long time; but you were not ready for it before.”

“And now I want to live for my boy. But His will be done.”

“Amen. There is no such prayer in the universe as that. It means everything best and most beautiful. Thy will, O God, evermore be done.”

She lay silent. A tap came to the chamber-door. It was Mary, who nursed her sister and attended to the shop.

“If you please, sir, here’s a little girl come to say that Mrs Tomkins is dying, and wants to see you.”

“Then I must say good-night to you, Catherine. I will see you to-morrow morning. Think about old Mrs Tomkins; she’s a good old soul; and when you find your heart drawn to her in the trouble of death, then lift it up to God for her, that He will please to comfort and support her, and make her happier than health—stronger than strength, taking off the old worn garment of her body, and putting upon her the garment of salvation, which will be a grand new body, like that the Saviour had when He rose again.”

“I will try. I will think about her.”

For I thought this would be a help to prepare her for her own death. In thinking lovingly about others, we think healthily about ourselves. And the things she thought of for the comfort of Mrs Tomkins, would return to comfort herself in the prospect of her own end, when perhaps she might not be able to think them out for herself.

CHAPTER XXIX. CALM AND STORM

But of the two, Catherine had herself to go first. Again and again was I sent for to say farewell to Mrs Tomkins, and again and again I returned home leaying her asleep, and for the time better. But on a Saturday evening, as I sat by my vestry-fire, pondering on many things, and trying to make myself feel that they were as God saw them and not as they appeared to me, young Tom came to me with the news that his sister seemed much worse, and his father would be much obliged if I would go and see her. I sent Tom on before, because I wished to follow alone.

It was a brilliant starry night; no moon, no clouds, no wind, nothing but stars. They seemed to lean down towards the earth, as I have seen them since in more southern regions. It was, indeed, a glorious night. That is, I knew it was; I did not feel that it was. For the death which I went to be near, came, with a strange sense of separation, between me and the nature around me. I felt as if nature knew nothing, felt nothing, meant nothing, did not belong to humanity at all; for here was death, and there shone the stars. I was wrong, as I knew afterwards.

I had had very little knowledge of the external shows of death. Strange as it may appear, I had never yet seen a fellow-creature pass beyond the call of his fellow-mortals. I had not even seen my father die. And the thought was oppressive to me. “To think,” I said to myself, as I walked over the bridge to the village-street—“to think that the one moment the person is here, and the next—who shall say WHERE? for we know nothing of the region beyond the grave! Not even our risen Lord thought fit to bring back from Hades any news for the human family standing straining their eyes after their brothers and sisters that have vanished in the dark. Surely it is well, all well, although we know nothing, save that our Lord has been there, knows all about it, and does not choose to tell us. Welcome ignorarance then! the ignorance in which he chooses to leave us. I would rather not know, if He gave me my choice, but preferred that I should not know.” And so the oppression passed from me, and I was free.

But little as I knew of the signs of the approach of death, I was certain, the moment I saw Catherine, that the veil that hid the “silent land” had begun to lift slowly between her and it. And for a moment I almost envied her that she was so soon to see and know that after which our blindness and ignorance were wondering and hungering. She could hardly speak. She looked more patient than calm. There was no light in the room but that of the fire, which flickered flashing and fading, now lighting up the troubled eye, and now letting a shadow of the coming repose fall gently over it. Thomas sat by the fire with the child on his knee, both looking fixedly into the glow. Gerard’s natural mood was so quiet and earnest, that the solemnity about him did not oppress him. He looked as if he were present at some religious observance of which he felt more than he understood, and his childish peace was in no wise inharmonious with the awful silence of the coming change. He was no more disquieted at the presence of death than the stars were.