Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

All the time I was speaking, the rain, mingled with sleet, was dashing against the windows, and the wind was howling over the graves all about. But the dead were not troubled by the storm; and over my head, from beam to beam of the roof, now resting on one, now flitting to another, a sparrow kept flying, which had taken refuge in the church till the storm should cease and the sun shine out in the great temple. “This,” I said aloud, “is what the church is for: as the sparrow finds there a house from the storm, so the human heart escapes thither to hear the still small voice of God when its faith is too weak to find Him in the storm, and in the sorrow, and in the pain.” And while I spoke, a dim watery gleam fell on the chancel-floor, and the comfort of the sun awoke in my heart. Nor let any one call me superstitious for taking that pale sun-ray of hope as sent to me; for I received it as comfort for the race, and for me as one of the family, even as the bow that was set in the cloud, a promise to the eyes of light for them that sit in darkness. As I write, my eye falls upon the Bible on the table by my side, and I read the words, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield, the Lord will give grace and glory.” And I lift my eyes from my paper and look abroad from my window, and the sun is shining in its strength. The leaves are dancing in the light wind that gives them each its share of the sun, and my trouble has passed away for ever, like the storm of that night and the unrest of that strange Sabbath.

Such comforts would come to us oftener from Nature, if we really believed that our God was the God of Nature; that when He made, or rather when He makes, He means; that not His hands only, but His heart too, is in the making of those things; that, therefore, the influences of Nature upon human minds and hearts are because He intended them. And if we believe that our God is everywhere, why should we not think Him present even in the coincidences that sometimes seem so strange? For, if He be in the things that coincide, He must be in the coincidence of those things.

Miss Oldcastle told me once that she could not take her eyes off a butterfly which was flitting about in the church all the time I was speaking of the resurrection of the dead. I told the people that in Greek there was one word for the soul and for a butterfly—Psyche; that I thought as the light on the rain made the natural symbol of mercy—the rainbow, so the butterfly was the type in nature, and made to the end, amongst other ends, of being such a type—of the resurrection of the human body; that its name certainly expressed the hope of the Greeks in immortality, while to us it speaks likewise of a glorified body, whereby we shall know and love each other with our eyes as well as our hearts.—My sister saw the butterfly too, but only remembered that she had seen it when it was mentioned in her hearing: on her the sight made no impression; she saw no coincidence.

I descended from the pulpit comforted by the sermon I had preached to myself. But I was glad to feel justified in telling my people that, in consequence of the continued storm, for there had been no more of sunshine than just that watery gleam, there would be no service in the afternoon, and that I would instead visit some of my sick poor, whom the weather might have discomposed in their worn dwellings.

The people were very slow in dispersing. There was so much putting on of clogs, gathering up of skirts over the head, and expanding of umbrellas, soon to be taken down again as worse than useless in the violence of the wind, that the porches were crowded, and the few left in the church detained till the others made way. I lingered with these. They were all poor people.

“I am sorry you will have such a wet walk home,” I said to Mrs Baird, the wife of old Reginald Baird, the shoemaker, a little wizened creature, with more wrinkles than hairs, who the older and more withered she grew, seemed like the kernels of some nuts only to grow the sweeter.

“It’s very good of you to let us off this afternoon, sir. Not as I minds the wet: it finds out the holes in people’s shoes, and gets my husband into more work.”

This was in fact the response of the shoemaker’s wife to my sermon. If we look for responses after our fashion instead of after people’s own fashion, we ought to be disappointed. Any recognition of truth, whatever form it may take, whether that of poetic delight, intellectual corroboration, practical commonplace; or even vulgar aphorism, must be welcomed by the husbandmen of the God of growth. A response which jars against the peculiar pitch of our mental instrument, must not therefore be turned away from with dislike. Our mood of the moment is not that by which the universe is tuned into its harmonies. We must drop our instrument and listen to the other, and if we find that the player upon it is breathing after a higher expression, is, after his fashion, striving to embody something he sees of the same truth the utterance of which called forth this his answer, let us thank God and take courage. God at least is pleased: and if our refinement and education take away from our pleasure, it is because of something low, false, and selfish, not divine in a word, that is mingled with that refinement and that education. If the shoemaker’s wife’s response to the prophet’s grand poem about the care of God over His creatures, took the form of acknowledgment for the rain that found out the holes in the people’s shoes, it was the more genuine and true, for in itself it afforded proof that it was not a mere reflex of the words of the prophet, but sprung from the experience and recognition of the shoemaker’s wife. Nor was there anything necessarily selfish in it, for if there are holes in people’s shoes, the sooner they are found out the better.

While I was talking to Mrs Baird, Mr Stoddart, whose love for the old organ had been stronger than his dislike to the storm, had come down into the church, and now approached me.

“I never saw you in the church before, Mr Stoddart,” I said, “though I have heard you often enough. You use your own private door always.”

“I thought to go that way now, but there came such a fierce burst of wind and rain in my face, that my courage failed me, and I turned back—like the sparrow—for refuge in the church.”

“A thought strikes me,” I said. “Come home with me, and have some lunch, and then we will go together to see some of my poor people. I have often wished to ask you.”

His face fell.

“It is such a day!” he answered, remonstratingly, but not positively refusing. It was not his way ever to refuse anything positively.

“So it was when you set out this morning,” I returned; “but you would not deprive us of the aid of your music for the sake of a charge of wind, and a rattle of rain-drops.”

“But I shan’t be of any use. You are going, and that is enough.”

“I beg your pardon. Your very presence will be of use. Nothing yet given him or done for him by his fellow, ever did any man so much good as the recognition of the brotherhood by the common signs of friendship and sympathy. The best good of given money depends on the degree to which it is the sign of that friendship and sympathy. Our Lord did not make little of visiting: ‘I was sick, and ye visited me.’ ‘Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.’ Of course, if the visitor goes professionally and not humanly,—as a mere religious policeman, that is—whether he only distributes tracts with condescending words, or gives money liberally because he thinks he ought, the more he does not go the better, for he only does harm to them and himself too.”

“But I cannot pretend to feel any of the interest you consider essential: why then should I go?”

“To please me, your friend. That is a good human reason. You need not say a word—you must not pretend anything. Go as my companion, not as their visitor. Will you come?”

“I suppose I must.”

“You must, then. Thank you. You will help me. I have seldom a companion.”

So when the storm-fit had abated for the moment, we hurried to the vicarage, had a good though hasty lunch, (to which I was pleased to see Mr Stoddart do justice; for it is with man as with beast, if you want work out of him, he must eat well—and it is the one justification of eating well, that a man works well upon it,) and set out for the village. The rain was worse than ever. There was no sleet, and the wind was not cold, but the windows of heaven were opened, and if the fountains of the great deep were not broken up, it looked like it, at least, when we reached the bridge and saw how the river had spread out over all the low lands on its borders. We could not talk much as we went along.

“Don’t you find some pleasure in fighting the wind?” I said.

“I have no doubt I should,” answered Mr Stoddart, “if I thought I were going to do any good; but as it is, to tell the truth, I would rather be by my own fire with my folio Dante on the reading desk.”

“Well, I would rather help the poorest woman in creation, than contemplate the sufferings of the greatest and wickedest,” I said.

“There are two things you forget,” returned Mr Stoddart. “First, that the poem of Dante is not nearly occupied with the sufferings of the wicked; and next, that what I have complained of in this expedition—which as far as I am concerned, I would call a wild goose chase, were it not that it is your doing and not mine—is that I am not going to help anybody.”

“You would have the best of the argument entirely,” I replied, “if your expectation was sure to turn out correct.”

As I spoke, we had come within a few yards of the Tomkins’s cottage, which lay low down from the village towards the river, and I saw that the water was at the threshold. I turned to Mr Stoddart, who, to do him justice, had not yet grumbled in the least.

“Perhaps you had better go home, after all,” I said; “for you must wade into Tomkins’s if you go at all. Poor old man! what can he be doing, with his wife dying, and the river in his house!”

“You have constituted yourself my superior officer, Mr Walton. I never turned my back on my leader yet. Though I confess I wish I could see the enemy a little clearer.”

“There is the enemy,” I said, pointing to the water, and walking into it.

Mr Stoddart followed me without a moment’s hesitation.

When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was a small stream of water running straight from the door to the fire on the hearth, which it had already drowned. The old man was sitting by his wife’s bedside. Life seemed rapidly going from the old woman. She lay breathing very hard.

“Oh, sir,” said the old man, as he rose, almost crying, “you’re come at last!”

“Did you send for me?” I asked.

“No, sir. I had nobody to send. Leastways, I asked the Lord if He wouldn’t fetch you. I been prayin’ hard for you for the last hour. I couldn’t leave her to come for you. And I do believe the wind ‘ud ha’ blown me off my two old legs.”

“Well, I am come, you see. I would have come sooner, but I had no idea you would be flooded.”

“It’s not that I mind, sir, though it IS cold sin’ the fire went. But she IS goin’ now, sir. She ha’n’t spoken a word this two hours and more, and her breathin’s worse and worse. She don’t know me now, sir.”

A moan of protestation came from the dying woman.

“She does know you, and loves you too, Tomkins,” I said. “And you’ll both know each other better by and by.”

The old woman made a feeble motion with her hand. I took it in mine. It was cold and deathlike. The rain was falling in large slow drops from the roof upon the bedclothes. But she would be beyond the reach of all the region storms before long, and it did not matter much.

“Look if you can find a basin or plate, Mr Stoddart, and put it to catch the drop here,” I said.

For I wanted to give him the first chance of being useful.

“There’s one in the press there,” said the old man, rising feebly.

“Keep your seat,” said Mr Stoddart. “I’ll get it.”

And he got a basin from the cupboard, and put it on the bed to catch the drop.

The old woman held my hand in hers; but by its motion I knew that she wanted something; and guessing what it was from what she had said before, I made her husband sit on the bed on the other side of her and take hold of her other hand, while I took his place on the chair by the bedside. This seemed to content her. So I went and whispered to Mr Stoddart, who had stood looking on disconsolately:—

“You heard me say I would visit some of my sick people this afternoon. Some will be expecting me with certainty. You must go instead of me, and tell them that I cannot come, because old Mrs Tomkins is dying; but I will see them soon.”

He seemed rather relieved at the commission. I gave him the necessary directions to find the cottages, and he left me.

I may mention here that this was the beginning of a relation between Mr Stoddart and the poor of the parish—a very slight one indeed, at first, for it consisted only in his knowing two or three of them, so as to ask after their health when he met them, and give them an occasional half-crown. But it led to better things before many years had passed. It seems scarcely more than yesterday—though it is twenty years ago—that I came upon him in the avenue, standing in dismay over the fragments of a jug of soup which he had dropped, to the detriment of his trousers as well as the loss of his soup. “What am I to do?” he said. “Poor Jones expects his soup to-day.”—“Why, go back and get some more.”—“But what will cook say?” The poor man was more afraid of the cook than he would have been of a squadron of cavalry. “Never mind the cook. Tell her you must have some more as soon as it can be got ready.” He stood uncertain for a moment. Then his face brightened. “I will tell her I want my luncheon. I always have soup. And I’ll get out through the greenhouse, and carry it to Jones.”—“Very well,” I said; “that will do capitally.” And I went on, without caring to disturb my satisfaction by determining whether the devotion of his own soup arose more from love to Jones, or fear of the cook. He was a great help to me in the latter part of his life, especially after I lost good Dr Duncan, and my beloved friend Old Rogers. He was just one of those men who make excellent front-rank men, but are quite unfit for officers. He could do what he was told without flinching, but he always required to be told.

I resumed my seat by the bedside, where the old woman was again moaning. As soon as I took her hand she ceased, and so I sat till it began to grow dark.

“Are you there, sir?” she would murmur.

“Yes, I am here. I have a hold of your hand.”

“I can’t feel you, sir.”

“But you can hear me. And you can hear God’s voice in your heart. I am here, though you can’t feel me. And God is here, though you can’t see Him.”

She would be silent for a while, and then murmur again—

“Are you there, Tomkins?”

“Yes, my woman, I’m here,” answered the old man to one of these questions; “but I wish I was there instead, wheresomever it be as you’re goin’, old girl.”

And all that I could hear of her answer was, “Bym by; bym by.”

Why should I linger over the death-bed of an illiterate woman, old and plain, dying away by inches? Is it only that she died with a hold of my hand, and that therefore I am interested in the story? I trust not. I was interested in HER. Why? Would my readers be more interested if I told them of the death of a young lovely creature, who said touching things, and died amidst a circle of friends, who felt that the very light of life was being taken away from them? It was enough for me that here was a woman with a heart like my own; who needed the same salvation I needed; to whom the love of God was the one blessed thing; who was passing through the same dark passage into the light that the Lord had passed through before her, that I had to pass through after her. She had no theories—at least, she gave utterance to none; she had few thoughts of her own—and gave still fewer of them expression; you might guess at a true notion in her mind, but an abstract idea she could scarcely lay hold of; her speech was very common; her manner rather brusque than gentle; but she could love; she could forget herself; she could be sorry for what she did or thought wrong; she could hope; she could wish to be better; she could admire good people; she could trust in God her Saviour. And now the loving God-made human heart in her was going into a new school that it might begin a fresh beautiful growth. She was old, I have said, and plain; but now her old age and plainness were about to vanish, and all that had made her youth attractive to young Tomkins was about to return to her, only rendered tenfold more beautiful by the growth of fifty years of learning according to her ability. God has such patience in working us into vessels of honour! in teaching us to be children! And shall we find the human heart in which the germs of all that is noblest and loveliest and likest to God have begun to grow and manifest themselves uninteresting, because its circumstances have been narrow, bare, and poverty-stricken, though neither sordid nor unclean; because the woman is old and wrinkled and brown, as if these were more than the transient accidents of humanity; because she has neither learned grammar nor philosophy; because her habits have neither been delicate nor self-indulgent? To help the mind of such a woman to unfold to the recognition of the endless delights of truth; to watch the dawn of the rising intelligence upon the too still face, and the transfiguration of the whole form, as the gentle rusticity vanishes in yet gentler grace, is a labour and a delight worth the time and mind of an archangel. Our best living poet says—but no; I will not quote. It is a distinct wrong that befalls the best books to have many of their best words quoted till in their own place and connexion they cease to have force and influence. The meaning of the passage is that the communication of truth is one of the greatest delights the human heart can experience. Surely this is true. Does not the teaching of men form a great part of the divine gladness?

Therefore even the dull approaches of death are full of deep significance and warm interest to one who loves his fellows, who desires not to be distinguished by any better fate than theirs; and shrinks from the pride of supposing that his own death, or that of the noblest of the good, is more precious in the sight of God than that of “one of the least of these little ones.”

At length, after a long silence, the peculiar sounds of obstructed breathing indicated the end at hand. The jaw fell, and the eyes were fixed. The old man closed the mouth and the eyes of his old companion, weeping like a child, and I prayed aloud, giving thanks to God for taking her to Himself. It went to my heart to leave the old man alone with the dead; but it was better to let him be alone for a while, ere the women should come to do the last offices for the abandoned form.

I went to Old Rogers, told him the state in which I had left poor Tomkins, and asked him what was to be done.

“I’ll go and bring him home, sir, directly. He can’t be left there.”

“But how can you bring him in such a night?”

“Let me see, sir. I must think. Would your mare go in a cart, do you think?”

“Quite quietly. She brought a load of gravel from the common a few days ago. But where’s your cart? I haven’t got one.”

“There’s one at Weir’s to be repaired, sir. It wouldn’t be stealing to borrow it.”

How he managed with Tomkins I do not know. I thought it better to leave all the rest to him. He only said afterwards, that he could hardly get the old man away from the body. But when I went in next day, I found Tomkins sitting, disconsolate, but as comfortable as he could be, in the easy chair by the side of the fire. Mrs Rogers was bustling about cheerily. The storm had died in the night. The sun was shining. It was the first of the spring weather. The whole country was gleaming with water. But soon it would sink away, and the grass be the thicker for its rising.