The Seaboard Parish, Complete

“I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton,” he said.

“I wish I were,” I returned. “At least I know I should rejoice in it, if it had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?”

“Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which would give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and individuality to your representation of her.”

“I know what you mean,” I answered; “but I have no gift whatever in that direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects of light and shade; though I think I have a little notion of colour—perhaps about as much as the little London boy, who stopped a friend of mine once to ask the way to the field where the buttercups grew, had of nature.”

“I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures.”

“That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they made me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of looking at them.”

“May I offer you my address?” he said, and took a card from his pocket-book. “It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of me when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a visit.”

“I shall be most happy,” I returned, taking his card.—“Did it ever occur to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes ago, how little you can do without shadow in making a picture?”

“Little indeed,” answered Percivale. “In fact, it would be no picture at all.”

“I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows.”

“But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God, to be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes.”

“It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think of his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but upon the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think a great part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which oppresses you will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin is possible to him. Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God that in order that sin should become impossible he should allow sin to come? that, in order that his creatures should choose the good and refuse the evil, in order that they might become such, with their whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to turn from sin with a perfect repugnance of the will, he should allow them to fall? that, in order that, from being sweet childish children, they should become noble, child-like men and women, he should let them try to walk alone? Why should he not allow the possible in order that it should become impossible? for possible it would ever have been, even in the midst of all the blessedness, until it had been, and had been thus destroyed. Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever exist, it seems to me, where there is creation still going on. How could I be content to guard my children so that they should never have temptation, knowing that in all probability they would fail if at any moment it should cross their path? Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be possible between us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long as it was possible it should be there developed. And if this can be said for the existence of moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes a comparative trifle; nay, a positive good, for by this the other is combated.”

“I think I understand you,” returned Percivale. “I will think over what you have said. These are very difficult questions.”

“Very. I don’t think argument is of much use about them, except as it may help to quiet a man’s uneasiness a little, and so give his mind peace to think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no question, once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest—in very fact, the only way into the light.”

As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came a little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the preparations for our dinner—over the gates of the lock, down the sides of the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the direction of the children, who were still playing merrily.

“Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you see, somewhere hereabout on the sands?” I said.

“I shall be delighted,” he answered, “if you will let me be of some use first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out.”

“Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will.”

“That is what I hoped,” said Percivale; and we went together towards the parsonage.

As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but when we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.

“Where is Wynnie?” I asked.

“She saw you coming,” she answered, “and went to get Connie ready; for I guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out.”

But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie’s disappearance. “What if she should have fallen in love with him,” I thought, “and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be dreadful for us all.”

They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each other it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently a great mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help sympathising with each other’s peculiarities. And anyone could see what a fine couple they would make.

Wynnie was much taller than Connie—almost the height of her mother. She had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise, thoughtful, often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on which a smile seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled like water when she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why should not two such walk together along the path to the gates of the light? And yet I could not help some anxiety. I did not know anything of his history. I had no testimony concerning him from anyone that knew him. His past life was a blank to me; his means of livelihood probably insufficient—certainly, I judged, precarious; and his position in society—but there I checked myself: I had had enough of that kind of thing already. I would not willingly offend in that worldliness again. The God of the whole earth could not choose that I should look at such works of his hands after that fashion. And I was his servant—not Mammon’s or Belial’s.

All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the winnowing-fan of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife, who took no pains to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and I went upstairs, almost unconsciously, to Connie’s room.

When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie’s arm round her waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk thus occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but turned it again at Connie’s cry, and I saw a tear on her face.

“My darlings, I beg your pardon,” I said. “It was very stupid of me not to knock at the door.”

Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said—

“It’s nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn’t want you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all. It didn’t hurt me much, only I’m such a goose! I’m in terror before the pain comes. Look at me,” she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation on my countenance, “I’m all right now.” And she smiled in my face perfectly.

I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me with her eyes, but Wynnie’s were hidden in her handkerchief.

I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came to say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.

“Come, Mr. Percivale,” I said; and he followed me up to Connie’s room.

Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for going. We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for the easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater, along its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before we reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us. We stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted to take breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I wanted Wynnie to hear without its being addressed to her.

“Do you see, Connie,” I said, “how far off the water is?”

“Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to it.”

“You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that sand, will be covered before sunset.”

“I know it will be. But it doesn’t look likely, does it, papa!”

“Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?”

“Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind blowing when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to wake myself up’ quite to get rid of the thought.”

“Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and sand at the bottom of it, stretching far away.”

“Yes, papa.”

“Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about between the stones?”

“Yes, papa.”

“Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the great gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed across this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry regiment off its back.”

“Papa!” exclaimed Connie, turning pale.

Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.

“Then I was right in being frightened, papa!” cried Connie, bursting into tears; for since her accident she could not well command her feelings.

“You were right in trusting in God, Connie.”

“But you might have been drowned, papa!” she sobbed.

“Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking of things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is our department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what a change—from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles will come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the storm look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of Nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for God is Peace.”

“But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton,” said Percivale, “you can hardly expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It seems to me that its influences cannot be imparted.”

“That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another; for it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in the person who has experienced can draw over or derive—to use an old Italian word—some of its benefits to him who has the faith. Experience may thus, in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh experience of our own. At least I can hope that the experience of a father may take the form of hope in the minds of his daughters. Hope never hurt anyone, never yet interfered with duty; nay, always strengthens to the performance of duty, gives courage, and clears the judgment. St. Paul says we are saved by hope. Hope is the most rational thing in the universe. Even the ancient poets, who believed it was delusive, yet regarded it as an antidote given by the mercy of the gods against some, at least, of the ills of life.”

“But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded.”

“Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for what were the gods in whom they believed—I cannot say in whom they trusted? Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of doing for men when they gave them the illusion of hope. But I see they are waiting for us below. One thing I repeat—the waves that foamed across the spot where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and vanished.”

“But they will come again, papa,” faltered Wynnie.

“And God will come with them, my love,” I said, as we lifted the litter.

In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a table-cloth spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the light outside and in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope the others too, that afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were creeping up over the level, soundless almost as thought; but it would be time to go home long before they had reached us. The sun was in the western half of the sky, and now and then a breath of wind came from the sea, with a slight saw-edge in it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could stand much more in that way now. And when I saw how she could move herself on her couch, and thought how much she had improved since first she was laid upon it, hope for her kept fluttering joyously in my heart. I could not help fancying even that I saw her move her legs a little; but I could not be in the least sure; and she, if she did move them, was clearly unconscious of it. Charles and Harry were every now and then starting up from their dinner and running off with a shout, to return with apparently increased appetite for the rest of it; and neither their mother nor I cared to interfere with the indecorum. Dora alone took it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very silent, but looked more cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My wife’s face was a picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking about with the baby, occasionally with one hand helping the other servants to wait upon us. They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the hour, and, like Ariel, did their spiriting gently.

“This is the will of God,” I said, after the things were removed, and we had sat for a few moments in silence.

“What is the will of God, husband?” asked Ethelwyn.

“Why, this, my love,” I answered; “this living air, and wind, and sea, and light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes. Yes, but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the harmony. When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was for Lazarus himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That could not be, seeing he had the power to call him back when he would. The grief was for the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was so dreadful because they had not faith enough in his Father, the God of life and love, who was looking after it all, full of tenderness and grace, with whom Lazarus was present and blessed. It was the aching, loving heart of humanity for which he wept, that needed God so awfully, and could not yet trust in him. Their brother was only hidden in the skirts of their Father’s garment, but they could not believe that: they said he was dead—lost—away—all gone, as the children say. And it was so sad to think of a whole world full of the grief of death, that he could not bear it without the human tears to help his heart, as they help ours. It was for our dark sorrows that he wept. But the peace could be no less plain on the face that saw God. Did you ever think of that wonderful saying: ‘Again a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father’? The heart of man would have joined the ‘because I go to the Father’ with the former result—the not seeing of him. The heart of man is not able, without more and more light, to understand that all vision is in the light of the Father. Because Jesus went to the Father, therefore the disciples saw him tenfold more. His body no longer in their eyes, his very being, his very self was in their hearts—not in their affections only—in their spirits, their heavenly consciousness.”

As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I repeated it:

      “If I Him but have,    If he be but mine,      If my heart, hence to the grave,    Ne’er forgets his love divine—  Know I nought of sadness,  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.      If I Him but have,    Glad with all I part;      Follow on my pilgrim staff    My Lord only, with true heart;  Leave them, nothing saying,  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.        If I Him but have,      Glad I fall asleep;        Aye the flood that his heart gave      Strength within my heart shall keep,  And with soft compelling  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.        If I Him but have,      Mine the world I hail!        Glad as cherub smiling grave,      Holding back the virgin’s veil.  Sunk and lost in seeing,  Earthly fears have died from all my being.        Where I have but Him      Is my Fatherland;        And all gifts and graces come      Heritage into my hand:  Brothers long deplored  I in his disciples find restored.”

“What a lovely hymn, papa!” exclaimed Connie. She could always speak more easily than either her mother or sister. “Who wrote it?”

“Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis.”

“But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?”

“Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and feeling, however I may have failed in making an English poem of it.”

“O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?”

“Years before you were born, Connie.”

“To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!” she returned. “Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?”

“No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don’t think he belonged to any section of the church in particular.”

“But oughtn’t he, papa?”

“Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is the use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?”

“O, I didn’t think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I wanted to know more about him.”

The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider Christianity as associated of necessity with this or that form of it, instead of as simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more repulsive to me as I had grown myself, for it always seemed like an insult to my brethren in Christ; hence the least hint of it in my children I was too ready to be down upon like a most unchristian ogre. I took her hand in mine, and she was comforted, for she saw in my face that I was sorry, and yet she could see that there was reason at the root of my haste.

“But,” said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far she was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a barrier between him and me—“But,” she said, “the lovely feeling in that poem seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to the New Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about us. These things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and being glad in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and solemn things. As soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of them.”

“That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to the rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with their conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with art it was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of its history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to make Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we are beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either the whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the human soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is the heart not only of theology so called, but of history, politics, science, and art. The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him, and therefore by him only can be revealed. This will interpret all things, or it has not yet been. Teachers of men have not taught this, because they have not seen it. If we do not find him in nature, we may conclude either that we do not understand the expression of nature, or have mistaken ideas or poor feelings about him. It is one great business in our life to find the interpretation which will render this harmony visible. Till we find it, we have not seen him to be all in all. Recognising a discord when they touched the notes of nature and society, the hermits forsook the instrument altogether, and contented themselves with a partial symphony—lofty, narrow, and weak. Their example, more or less, has been followed by almost all Christians. Exclusion is so much the easier way of getting harmony in the orchestra than study, insight, and interpretation, that most have adopted it. It is for us, and all who have hope in the infinite God, to widen its basis as we may, to search and find the true tone and right idea, place, and combination of instruments, until to our enraptured ear they all, with one voice of multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare the glory of God and of his Christ.”

“A grand idea,” said Percivale.

“Therefore likely to be a true one,” I returned. “People find it hard to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God will yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs.”

I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look my familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there I sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs. As I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast from the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide had crept up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk down over the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured the half of the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain veil as of the commonplace, like that which so often settles down over the spirit of man after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had dropped over the face of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts across the dull waters. It was time to lift Connie and take her home.

This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.

CHAPTER III. A PASTORAL VISIT

The next morning rose neither “cherchef’t in a comely cloud” nor “roab’d in flames and amber light,” but covered all in a rainy mist, which the wind mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now and then the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of my study with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out and meet its ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows anywhere. The sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth, sea, and sky were possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The breakfast-bell rang, and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who was always down first to make the tea, standing at the window with a sad face, giving fit response to the aspect of nature without, her soul talking with the gray spirit. I did find her at the window, looking out upon the restless tossing of the waters, but with no despondent answer to the trouble of nature. On the contrary, her cheek, though neither rosy nor radiant, looked luminous, and her eyes were flashing out upon the ebb-tide which was sinking away into the troubled ocean beyond. Does my girl-reader expect me to tell her next that something had happened? that Percivale had said something to her? or that, at least, he had just passed the window, and given her a look which she might interpret as she pleased? I must disappoint her. It was nothing of the sort. I knew the heart and feeling of my child. It was only that kind nature was in sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more peaceful in storm than in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of life instantly began in her when the obligation of gladness had departed with the light. Her own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could smile now when nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I could not help saying to myself, “She must marry a poor man some day; she is a creature of the north, and not of the south; the hot sun of prosperity would wither her up. Give her a bleak hill-side, and a glint or two of sunshine between the hailstorms, and she will live and grow; give her poverty and love, and life will be interesting to her as a romance; give her money and position, and she will grow dull and haughty. She will believe in nothing that poet can sing or architect build. She will, like Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved to smile at anything.”