The Seaboard Parish Part 31

The doctor laughed.

"No man can _prove_," he said, "that there is not a being inside the snuff-box, existing in virtue of the harmony of its parts, comfortable when they go well, sick when they go badly, and dying when it is dismembered, or even when it stops."

"No," I answered. "No man can prove it. But no man can convince a human being of it. And just as little can anyone convince me that my conscience, making me do sometimes what I _don't_ like, comes from a harmonious action of the particles of my brain. But it is time we went in, for by the law of things in general, I being ready for my dinner, my dinner ought to be ready for me."

"A law with more exceptions than instances, I fear," said Turner.

"I doubt that," I answered. "The readiness is everything, and that we constantly blunder in. But we had better see whether we are really ready for it, by trying whether it is ready for us."

Connie went to bed early, as indeed we all did, and she was rather better than worse the next morning. My wife, for the first time for many nights, said nothing about the crying of the sea. The following day Turner and I set out to explore the neighbourhood. The rest remained quietly at home.

It was, as I have said, a high bare country. The fields lay side by side, parted from each other chiefly, as so often in Scotland, by stone walls; and these stones being of a laminated nature, the walls were not unfrequently built by laying thin plates on their edges, which gave a neatness to them not found in other parts of the country as far as I am aware. In the middle of the fields came here and there patches of yet unreclaimed moorland.

Now in a region like this, beauty must be looked for below the surface.

There is a probability of finding hollows of repose, sunken spots of loveliness, hidden away altogether from the general aspect of sternness, or perhaps sterility, that meets the eye in glancing over the outspread landscape; just as in the natures of stern men you may expect to find, if opportunity should be afforded you, sunny spots of tender verdure, kept ever green by that very sternness which is turned towards the common gaze--thus existent because they are below the surface, and not laid bare to the sweep of the cold winds that roam the world. How often have not men started with amaze at the discovery of some feminine sweetness, some grace of protection in the man whom they had judged cold and hard and rugged, inaccessible to the more genial influences of humanity! It may be that such men are only fighting against the wind, and keep their hearts open to the sun.

I knew this; and when Turner and I set out that morning to explore, I expected to light upon some instance of it--some mine or other in which nature had hidden away rare jewels; but I was not prepared to find such as I did find. With our hearts full of a glad secret we returned home, but we said nothing about it, in order that Ethelwyn and Wynnie might enjoy the discovery even as we had enjoyed it.

There was another grand fact with regard to the neighbourhood about which we judged it better to be silent for a few days, that the inland influences might be free to work. We were considerably nearer the ocean than my wife and daughters supposed, for we had made a great round in order to arrive from the land-side. We were, however, out of the sound of its waves, which broke all along the sh.o.r.e, in this part, at the foot of tremendous cliffs. What cliffs they were we shall soon find.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE KEEVE.

"Now, my dear! now, Wynnie!" I said, after prayers the next morning, "you must come out for a walk as soon as ever you can get your bonnets on."

"But we can't leave Connie, papa," objected Wynnie.

"O, yes, you can, quite well. There's nursie to look after her. What do you say, Connie?"

For, for some time now, Connie had been able to get up so early, that it was no unusual thing to have prayers in her room.

"I am entirely independent of help from my family," returned Connie grandiloquently. "I am a woman of independent means," she added. "If you say another word, I will rise and leave the room."

And she made a movement as if she would actually do as she had said.

Seized with an involuntary terror, I rushed towards her, and the impertinent girl burst out laughing in my face--threw herself back on her pillows, and laughed delightedly.

"Take care, papa," she said. "I carry a terrible club for rebellious people." Then, her mood changing, she added, as if to suppress the tears gathering in her eyes, "I am the queen--of luxury and self-will--and I won't have anybody come near me till dinner-time. I mean to enjoy myself."

So the matter was settled, and we went out for our walk. Ethelwyn was not such a good walker as she had been; but even if she had retained the strength of her youth, we should not have got on much the better for it--so often did she and Wynnie stop to grub ferns out of the c.h.i.n.ks and roots of the stone-walls. Now, I admire ferns as much as anybody--that is, not, I fear, so much as my wife and daughter, but quite enough notwithstanding--but I do not quite enjoy being pulled up like a fern at every turn.

"Now, my dear, what is the use of stopping to torture that harmless vegetable?" I say, but say in vain. "It is much more beautiful where it is than it will be anywhere where you can put it. Besides, you know they never come to anything with you. They _always_ die."

Thereupon my wife reminds me of this fern and that fern, gathered in such and such places, and now in such and such corners of the garden or the greenhouse, or under gla.s.s-shades in this or that room, of the very existence of which I am ignorant, whether from original inattention, or merely from forgetfulness, I do not know. Certainly, out of their own place I do not care much for them.

At length, partly by the inducement I held out to them of a much greater variety of ferns where we were bound, I succeeded in getting them over the two miles in little more than two hours. After pa.s.sing from the lanes into the fields, our way led downwards till we reached a very steep large slope, with a delightful southern exposure, and covered with the sweetest down-gra.s.ses. It was just the place to lie in, as on the edge of the earth, and look abroad upon the universe of air and floating worlds.

"Let us have a rest here, Ethel," I said. "I am sure this is much more delightful than uprooting ferns. What an awful thing to think that here we are on this great round tumbling ball of a world, held by the feet, and lifting up the head into infinite s.p.a.ce--without choice or wish of our own--compelled to think and to be, whether we will or not! Just G.o.d must know it to be very good, or he would not have taken it in his hands to make individual lives without a possible will of theirs. He must be our Father, or we are wretched creatures--the slaves of a fatal necessity! Did it ever strike you, Turner, that each one of us stands on the apex of the world? With a sphere, you know, it must be so. And thus is typified, as it seems to me, that each one of us must look up for himself to find G.o.d, and then look abroad to find his fellows."

"I think I know what you mean," was all Turner's reply.

"No doubt," I resumed, "the apprehension of this truth has, in otherwise ill-ordered minds, given rise to all sorts of fierce and grotesque fanaticism. But the minds which have thus conceived the truth, would have been immeasurably worse without it; nay, this truth affords at last the only possible door out of the miseries of their own chaos, whether inherited or the result of their own misconduct."

"What's that in the gra.s.s?" cried Wynnie, in a tone of alarm.

I looked where she indicated, and saw a slow-worm, or blind-worm, lying basking in the sun. I rose and went towards it.

"Here's your stick," said Turner.

"What for?" I asked. "Why should I kill it? It is perfectly harmless, and, to my mind, beautiful."

I took it in my hands, and brought it to my wife. She gave an involuntary shudder as it came near her.

"I a.s.sure you it is harmless," I said, "though it has a forked tongue."

And I opened its mouth as I spoke. "I do not think the serpent form is essentially ugly."

"It makes me feel ugly," said Wynnie.

"I allow I do not quite understand the mystery of it," I said. "But you never saw lovelier ornamentation than these silvery scales, with all the neatness of what you ladies call a set pattern, and none of the stiffness, for there are not two of them the same in form. And you never saw lovelier curves than this little patient creature, which does not even try to get away from me, makes with the queer long thin body of him."

"I wonder how it can look after its tail, it is so far off," said Wynnie.

"It does though--better than you ladies look after your long dresses.

I wonder whether it is descended from creatures that once had feet, and did not make a good use of them. Perhaps they had wings even, and would not use them at all, and so lost them. Its ancestors may have had poison-fangs; it is innocent enough. But it is a terrible thing to be all feet, is it not? There is an awful significance in the condemnation of the serpent--'On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust.' But it is better to talk of beautiful things. _My_ soul at least has dropped from its world apex. Let us go on. Come, wife. Come, Turner."

They did not seem willing to rise. But the glen drew me. I rose, and my wife followed my example with the help of my hand. She returned to the subject, however, as we descended the slope.

"Is it possible that in the course of ever so many ages wings and feet should be both lost?" she said.

"The most presumptuous thing in the world is to p.r.o.nounce on the possible and the impossible. I do not know what is possible and what is impossible. I can only tell a little of what is true and what is untrue.

But I do say this, that between the condition of many decent members of society and that for the sake of which G.o.d made them, there is a gulf quite as vast as that between a serpent and a bird. I get peeps now and then into the condition of my own heart, which, for the moment, make it seem impossible that I should ever rise into a true state of nature--that is, into the simplicity of G.o.d's will concerning me. The only hope for ourselves and for others lies in him--in the power the creating spirit has over the spirits he has made."

By this time the descent on the gra.s.s was getting too steep and slippery to admit of our continuing to advance in that direction. We turned, therefore, down the valley in the direction of the sea. It was but a narrow cleft, and narrowed much towards a deeper cleft, in which we now saw the tops of trees, and from which we heard the rush of water. Nor had we gone far in this direction before we came upon a gate in a stone wall, which led into what seemed a neglected garden. We entered, and found a path turning and winding, among small trees, and luxuriant ferns, and great stones, and fragments of ruins down towards the bottom of the chasm. The noise of falling water increased as we went on, and at length, after some scrambling and several sharp turns, we found ourselves with a nearly precipitous wall on each side, clothed with shrubs and ivy, and creeping things of the vegetable world. Up this cleft there was no advance. The head of it was a precipice down which shot the stream from the vale above, pouring out of a deep slit it had itself cut in the rock as with a knife. Halfway down, it tumbled into a great basin of hollowed stone, and flowing from a chasm in its side, which left part of the lip of the basin standing like the arch of a vanished bridge, it fell into a black pool below, whence it crept as if half-stunned or weary down the gentle decline of the ravine. It was a perfect little picture. I, for my part, had never seen such a picturesque fall. It was a little gem of nature, complete in effect.

The ladies were full of pleasure. Wynnie, forgetting her usual reserve, broke out in frantic exclamations of delight.

We stood for a while regarding the ceaseless pour of the water down the precipice, here shot slanting in a little trough of the rock, full of force and purpose, here falling in great curls of green and gray, with an expression of absolute helplessness and conscious perdition, as if sheer to the centre, but rejoicing the next moment to find itself brought up boiling and bubbling in the basin, to issue in the gathered hope of experience. Then we turned down the stream a little way, crossed it by a plank, and stood again to regard it from the opposite side.

Small as the whole affair was--not more than about a hundred and fifty feet in height--it was so full of variety that I saw it was all my memory could do, if it carried away anything like a correct picture of its aspect. I was contemplating it fixedly, when a little stifled cry from Wynnie made me start and look round. Her face was flushed, yet she was trying to look unconcerned.

"I thought we were quite alone, papa," she said; "but I see a gentleman sketching."