The Seaboard Parish, Complete

CHAPTER IX. THE FUNERAL

It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as if it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The madness of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the world was rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded the best outlook over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the sands, her two cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her; but half way between the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something shapeless, drifted over with sand. It was all that remained together of the great ship that had the day before swept over the waters like a live thing with wings—of all the works of man’s hands the nearest to the shape and sign of life. The wind had ceased altogether, only now and then a little breeze arose which murmured “I am very sorry,” and lay down again. And I knew that in the houses on the shore dead men and women were lying.

I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I made a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into the events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale, looking very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his hand warmly.

“Thank God,” I said, “that you are returned to us, Percivale.”

“I doubt if that is much to give thanks for,” he said.

“We are the judges of that,” I rejoined. “Tell me all about it.”

While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment hesitated in the doorway.

“Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale,” I said.

Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with an emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed—why, I could not easily have told, for she looked most charming in the act,—more lovely than I had ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising God, and her heart would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest man, and I think attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in danger in the way of duty,—a fact sufficient to move the heart of any good woman.

She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand trembled. I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he evidently enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.

I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into the village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.

As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of the sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his tools lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.

“Ah, Coombes! you’ll want them,” I said.

“A good many o’ my people be come all at once, you see, sir,” he returned. “I shall have enough ado to make ‘em all comfortable like.”

“But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all comfortable yourself alone.”

“We’ll see what I can do,” he returned. “I ben’t a bit willin’ to let no one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir.”

“How many are there wanting your services?” I asked.

“There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don’t doubt, on the way.”

“But you won’t think of making separate graves for them all,” I said. “They died together: let them lie together.”

The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with indignation. The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had deserved it, I yet felt the rebuke.

“How would you like, sir,” he said, at length, “to be put in the same bed with a lot of people you didn’t know nothing about?”

I knew the old man’s way, and that any argument which denied the premiss of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.

“That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn’t think of it after they’d been down awhile—six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can’t be comfortable for ‘em, poor things. One on ‘em be a baby: I daresay he’d rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o’ the women be a mother. I don’t know,” he went on reflectively, “whether she be the baby’s own mother, but I daresay neither o’ them ‘ll mind it if I take it for granted, and lay ‘em down together. So that’s one bed less.”

One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves within the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in the church, having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties to perfection. He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended the stair, thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old woman.

“Where are Joe and Agnes?” I asked.

“You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day, and so he couldn’t stop. He did say Agnes needn’t go with him; but she thought she couldn’t part with him so soon, you see, sir.”

“She had received him from the dead—raised to life again,” I said; “it was most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him neglect his work!”

“I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the tire put on Farmer Wheatstone’s cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was his business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy wouldn’t stay behind.”

“Fine fellow, Joe!” I said, and took my leave.

As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing, and apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were making the coffins in the joiners’ shops, of which there were two in the place.

I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth, and so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have it vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world of form, as soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding, life-giving mould, seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy that will sometimes emerge from the froth of reverie—I mean, of subdued consciousness remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is altogether and vilely repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even the shadow of sentiment, though some of my readers, who may not yet have learned to distinguish between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I dare to utter such a barbarism.

I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that he had sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers, requesting those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies to appear within four days at Kilkhaven.

This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.

On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each other, arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the last of their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the shadow left behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any object remains a moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the object itself has gone, so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body, lingers a moment upon the earth after the object itself has gone to the “high countries.” It was well to see with what a sober sorrow the dignified little old man bore his grief. It was as if he felt that the loss of his son was only for a moment. But the young woman had taken on the hue of the corpse she came to seek. Her eyes were sunken as if with the weight of the light she cared not for, and her cheeks had already pined away as if to be ready for the grave. A being thus emptied of its glory seized and possessed my thoughts. She never even told us whom she came seeking, and after one involuntary question, which simply received no answer, I was very careful not even to approach another. I do not think the form she sought was there; and she may have gone home with the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a doubtful dawn over her coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.

On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had all the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others on stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the evening these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old man soon found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows of the dead. He turned to me and said quietly—

“That’s him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He’s with his mother; and if I’m sorry, she’s glad.”

With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God only knew—certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest thoughts are of more awful significance than the most serious of us can imagine.

For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light in her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there could no more justify her than Milton in letting her

With him, too, she might well add—

But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them to be my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over. To this they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received them like herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her, to which no doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations of humanity and destroys its distinctions.

The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of his daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me first. I went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man, with long arms and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow ponderous utterance, which I had some difficulty in understanding. He treated the object of his visit with a certain hardness, and at the same time lightness, which also I had some difficulty in understanding.

“You want to see the—” I said, and hesitated.

“Ow ay—the boadies,” he answered. “She winna be there, I daursay, but I wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be ‘at she was there, wi’oot biddin’ her good-bye like.”

When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell upon me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn, grand, ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace before her altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a sea of troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when the churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed away, when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and no man shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, “Know the Lord”? The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my companion up to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on. He had looked at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the beautiful form which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the white cheeks, taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the brown hair tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was dead—

“Eh, Maggie! hoo cam ye here, lass?”

Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he put his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was shaken with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe and reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief with yellow spots on it—I see it now—from his pocket, rubbed his face with it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said, without looking at me, “I’ll awa’ hame.”

“Wouldn’t you like a piece of her hair?” I asked.

“Gin ye please,” he answered gently, as if his daughter’s form had been mine now, and her hair were mine to give.

By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.

“Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?” I asked.

“Yes, to be sure, sir,” she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by the string suspending them from her waist.

“Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair,” I said.

She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed it respectfully to the father.

He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the communion-rail, and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky gold. It was, indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it must be a yard long. He passed his big fingers through and through it, but tenderly, as if it had been still growing on the live lovely head, stopping every moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and shake out the sand that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for nearly half-an-hour, and we stood looking on with something closely akin to awe. At length he folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black leather book, laid it carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led the way from the church, and he followed me.

Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with his other hand in his trousers-pocket—

“She’ll hae putten ye to some expense—for the coffin an’ sic like.”

“We’ll talk about that afterwards,” I answered. “Come home with me now, and have some refreshment.”

“Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o’ tribble already. I’ll jist awa’ hame.”

“We are going to lay them down this evening. You won’t go before the funeral. Indeed, I think you can’t get away till Monday morning. My wife and I will be glad of your company till then.”

“I’m no company for gentle-fowk, sir.”

“Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her laid,” I said.

He yielded and followed me.

Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain enough—that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But there was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring farms. Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at work. The brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard—the mole-heaps of burrowing Death.

The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a little hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said—

“I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk there—i’ that neuk, I wad tak’ it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam’ aboot that I cam’ here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get a sma’ bit heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi’ ye to pay for’t.”

“To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?”

“Ow jist—let me see—Maggie Jamieson—nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It’s the last thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o’ Scripter aneath’t, ye ken.”

“What verse would you like?”

He thought for a little.

“Isna there a text that says, ‘The deid shall hear his voice’?”

“Yes: ‘The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.’”

“Ay. That’s it. Weel, jist put that on.—They canna do better than hear his voice,” he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.

I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for the day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could not talk to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs of sorrow in their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill in whose unseen bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a subterranean torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling down hidden precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This daughter might, though from her face I did not think it, have gone away against her father’s will. That son might have been a ne’er-do-well at home—how could I tell? The woman might be looking for the lover that had forsaken her—I could not divine. I would speak no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort to his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the forefront of humanity; I would read some of the words he spoke. From them the human nature in each would draw what comfort it could. I took my New Testament from my pocket, and said, without any preamble,

“When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved him enough to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be overwhelmed for a time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not believe the glad end of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful death that awaited him—a death to which that of our friends in the wreck was ease itself. I will just read to you what he said.”

I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I could hardly hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the best things are just those from which the humble will draw the truth they are capable of seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left it to them to hear for themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment, fearful of darkening counsel by words without knowledge. For the Bible is awfully set against what is not wise.

When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I talked of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us. But little of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing nothing of the sorrow it had caused.

We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at seven o’clock.

“I have an invalid to visit out in this direction,” I said; “would you mind walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we shall get back just in time for tea.”

They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard a little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy, and point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our aid. I may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I have had two of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us there.

The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed hour. I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the Christian, the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church received it, as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the earth.

As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be carried out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began to read, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before the dead. There I read the Psalm, “Lord, thou hast been our refuge,” and the glorious lesson, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.” Then the men of the neighbourhood came forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the church, each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, “Man that is born of a woman;” then went from one to another of the graves, and read over each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy.” Then again, I went back to the church-door and read, “I heard a voice from heaven;” and so to the end of the service.

Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.

A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie’s remaining in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face—pale and worn; but it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the fresh power called forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.

Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant secret light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short of the impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come, however, I could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully painful to all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual child-gift of forgetting. The servants—even Walter—looked thin and anxious.

That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because I did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had again and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended itself to me so that I could say “I must take that;” nothing said plainly, “This is what you have to speak of.”

As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion, or rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to justify me in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole justification, in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I cared heartily in my own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness I was dumb. And I do think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman ought to be at liberty upon occasion to say, “My friends, I cannot preach to-day.” What a riddance it would be for the Church, I do not say if every priest were to speak sense, but only if every priest were to abstain from speaking of that in which, at the moment, he feels little or no interest!

I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for sleep will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can compass. I have read somewhere—I will verify it by present search—that Luther’s translation, of the verse in the psalm, “So he giveth to his beloved sleep,” is, “He giveth his beloved sleeping,” or while asleep. Yes, so it is, literally, in English, “It is in vain that ye rise early, and then sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he gives it sleeping.” This was my experience in the present instance; for the thought of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, “Why should I talk about death? Every man’s heart is now full of death. We have enough of that—even the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the tempest. What I have to do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to speak of life.” It flashed in on my mind: “Death is over and gone. The resurrection comes next. I will speak of the raising of Lazarus.”

The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of them would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would have called a caput mortuum, or death’s head, namely, a lifeless lump of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative, attempted to give a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to present the substance of it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat cleared of the unavoidable, let me say necessary—yes, I will say valuable—repetitions and enforcements by which the various considerations are pressed upon the minds of the hearers. These are entirely wearisome in print—useless too, for the reader may ponder over every phrase till he finds out the purport of it—if indeed there be such readers nowadays.