The Seaboard Parish, Complete

CHAPTER XV. THE OLD CHURCH

The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold—an awe I never fail to feel—heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place where men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although for art there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty staring ugliness. To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of holy need seems to linger in the place, and the uncovered head acknowledges the sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing. But this was no ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them from the chancel, all the windows of which were of richly stained glass, and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may appear in another part of my story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the cogitations to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with even what I could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles and modes of architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of contesting human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature brings into harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive intrusions upon her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of the word, so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that which in itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture of this building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at work informing the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and gently, and wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as yet their effects were invisible, were already at work—of the many making one. I will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural description, which, possibly even more than a detailed description of natural beauty dissociated from human feeling, would only weary him, even if it were not unintelligible. When we are reading a poem, we do not first of all examine the construction and dwell on the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after, if we find that the poem itself is so good that its parts are therefore worth examining, as being probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of the main work. There were carvings on the ends of the benches all along the aisle on both sides, well worth examination, and some of them even of description; but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the columns: they supported arches of different fashion on the opposite sides, but they were themselves similar in matter and construction, both remarkable. They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very far from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was a single stone with chamfered sides.

Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many thoughts that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length into the tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body of the church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above, for bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend Shepherd. And as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful it would be if in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was precious; so that when it came to the minister of his people—a fresh vision of his glory, a discovery of his meaning—he might make haste to the church, and into the tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the deepest-toned bell of all, and constrain it by the force of strong arms to utter its voice of call, “Come hither, come hear, my people, for God hath spoken;” and from the streets or the lanes would troop the eager folk; the plough be left in the furrow, the cream in the churn; and the crowding people bring faces into the church, all with one question upon them—“What hath the Lord spoken?” But now it would be answer sufficient to such a call to say, “But what will become of the butter?” or, “An hour’s ploughing will be lost.” And the clergy—how would they bring about such a time? They do not even believe that God has a word to his people through them. They think that his word is petrified for use in the Bible and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old heard so much of the word of God, and have so set it down, that there is no need for any more words of the Lord coming to the prophets of a land; therefore they look down upon the prophesying—that is, the preaching of the word—make light of it, the best of them, say these prayers are everything, or all but everything: their hearts are not set upon hearing what God the Lord will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people again. Therefore it is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to the clock, are no longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have nothing to do in telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little of this part of their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must remain such as they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers which are the word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when the prophets see no vision, how should they have any word to speak?

These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my guide. She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I thought, or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had taken her stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting busily. How her needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however, but, fixed on the slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from her feet, seemed to be gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite objectless outlook. To try her, I took for the moment the position of an accuser.

“So you don’t mind working in church?” I said.

When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far sea-waves to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she answered—

“The church knows me, sir.”

“But what has that to do with it?”

“I don’t think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you know, sir.”

“Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be diligent somewhere else, couldn’t you?”

As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But she only smiled and said, “It won’t hurt she, sir; and my good man, who does all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I don’t keep he warm he’ll be laid up, and then the church won’t be kep’ nice, sir, till he’s up again.”

I was tempted to go on.

“But you could have sat down outside—there are some nice gravestones near—and waited till I came out.”

“But what’s the church for, sir? The sun’s werry hot to-day, sir; and Mr. Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the sun, instead of comin’ in here to the cool o’ the shadow, I wouldn’t be takin’ the church at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old church, sir. There’s a something do seem to come out o’ the old walls and settle down like the cool o’ the day upon my old heart that’s nearly tired o’ crying, and would fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o’ the journey. My old man’s stockin’ won’t hurt the church, sir, and, bein’ a good deed as I suppose it is, it’s none the worse for the place. I think, if He was to come by wi’ the whip o’ small cords, I wouldn’t be afeared of his layin’ it upo’ my old back. Do you think he would, sir?”

Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.

“Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or ill-done work that the church’s Master drives away. All our work ought to be done in the shadow of the church.”

“I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir,” she said, smiling her sweet old smile. “Nobody knows what this old church is to me.”

Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I thought.

“You have had a family?” I said, interrogatively.

“I’ve had thirteen,” she answered. “Six bys and seven maidens.”

“Why, you are rich!” I returned. “And where are they all?”

“Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one be down in the mill, there.”

“And your boys?”

“One of them be lyin’ beside his sisters—drownded afore my eyes, sir. Three o’ them be at sea, and two o’ them in it, sir.”

At sea! I thought. What a wide where! As vague to the imagination, almost, as in the other world. How a mother’s thoughts must go roaming about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find them!

As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.

“It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with my knitting. Many’s the stormy night, when my husband couldn’t keep still, but would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good in life, but just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see by the white of them, with the balls o’ foam flying in his face in the dark—many’s the such a night that I have left the house after he was gone, with this blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church here, and sat down where I’m sittin’ now—leastways where I was sittin’ when your reverence spoke to me—and hearkened to the wind howling about the place. The church windows never rattle, sir—like the cottage windows, as I suppose you know, sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the church.”

“But if you had sons at sea,” said I, again wishing to draw her out, “it would not be of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they were in danger.”

“O! yes, it be, sir. What’s the good of feeling safe yourself but it let you know other people be safe too? It’s when you don’t feel safe yourself that you feel other people ben’t safe.”

“But,” I said—and such confidence I had from what she had already uttered, that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one—“some of your sons were drowned for all that you say about their safety.”

“Well, sir,” she answered, with a sigh, “I trust they’re none the less safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why, they might ha’ been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an’ bone, and got home again wi’ the loss of half the wits they set out with. Wouldn’t that ha’ been worse than being drownded right off? And that wouldn’t ha’ been the worst, either. The church she seem to tell me all the time, that for all the roaring outside, there be really no danger after all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What is the bottom of the sea, sir? You bein’ a clergyman can tell that, sir. I shouldn’t ha’ known it if I hadn’t had bys o’ my own at sea, sir. But you can tell, sir, though you ain’t got none there.”

And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to his instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.

“The hollow of his hand,” I said, and said no more.

“I thought you would know it, sir,” she returned, with a little glow of triumph in her tone. “Well, then, that’s just what the church tells me when I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too, sir, for I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when they come home, if they do come home, they’re none the worse that I went to the old church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them poor dears, all out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone almost in the quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come across me, sir, that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing all the noise and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about in the world, watching it all, letting it drown some o’ them and take them back to him, and keeping it from going too far with others of them that are not quite ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see, sir, though I be an old woman; and not nice to look at.”

I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes! Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert would leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life is God’s school, and they that will listen to the Master there will learn at God’s speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious of Shepherd, and repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such glorious old stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal upon my light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling lasted but for a moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed and the true light shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it. Why should not Shepherd have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd was more of what would now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought my doctrine simpler and therefore better than his; but was this any reason why I should have all the grand people to minister to in my parish! Recovering myself, I found her last words still in my ears.

“You are very nice to look at,” I said. “You must not find fault with the work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty than to be as you now are. Time and time’s rents and furrows are all his making and his doing. God makes nothing ugly.”

“Are you quite sure of that, sir?”

I paused. Such a question from such a woman “must give us pause.” And, as I paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I could not insist that God had never made anything ugly.

“No. I am not sure of it,” I answered. For of all things my soul recoiled from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know seemed to me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master, whose servants we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and self-seeking. “But if he does,” I went on to say, “it must be that we may see what it is like, and therefore not like it.”

Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of stool or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was some kind of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much like the ends of the benches and book-boards.

“What is that you were sitting on?” I asked. “A chest or what?”

“It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years agone, sir. But what it be, you’ll be better able to tell than I be, sir.”

“Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time,” I said. “But how should it then come to be banished to the tower?”

“No, sir; it can’t be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I be thinking.”

I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ. With some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of huge keys, fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one after another, but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and once down, so they mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there was any sign of a bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive kind of reed-instrument, like what we call a seraphine or harmonium now-a-days. But there was no hole through which there could have been any communication with or from a bellows, although there might have been a small one inside. There were, however, a dozen little round holes in the fixed part of the top, which might afford some clue to the mystery of its former life. I could not find any way of reaching the inside of it, so strongly was it put together; therefore I was left, I thought, to the efforts of my imagination alone for any hope of discovery with regard to the instrument, seeing further observation was impossible. But here I found that I was mistaken in two important conclusions, the latter of which depended on the former. The first of these was that it was an instrument: it was only one end of an instrument; therefore, secondly, there might be room for observation still. But I found this out by accident, which has had a share in most discoveries, and which, meaning a something that falls into our hands unlocked for, is so far an unobjectionable word even to the man who does not believe in chance. I had for the time given up the question as insoluble, and was gazing about the place, when, glancing up at the holes in the ceiling through which the bell-ropes went, I spied two or three thick wires hanging through the same ceiling close to the wall, and right over the box with the keys. The vague suspicion of a discovery dawned upon me.

“Have you got the key of the tower?” I asked.

“No, sir. But I’ll run home for it at once,” she answered. And rising, she went out in haste.

“Run!” thought I, looking after her. “It is a word of the will and the feeling, not of the body.” But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had no sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she felt that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I was on the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her from hurting herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to be as good as mine in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her seat, awaited her reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either saw or imagined I saw signs of openings corresponding in number and position with those in the lid under me. In about three minutes the old woman returned, panting but not distressed, with a great crooked old key in her hand. Why are all the keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask her that question, though. What I said to her, was—