The Seaboard Parish Part 57

"Well, you're a younger man than I am; but I've seen the day, as Lear says. What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we would be judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of the strength that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it still. But I am not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking."

"I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take my way along the downs for a mile or two; I don't mind being wet."

"I didn't once."

"Don't you think," resumed Percivale, "that in some sense the old man--not that I can allow _you_ that dignity yet, Mr. Walton--has a right to regard the past as his own?"

"That would be scanned," I answered, as we walked towards the village.

"Surely the results of the past are the man's own. Any action of the man's, upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a man had done a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation upon which to build more good, grew so vain of it that he became incapable of doing anything more of the same sort, you could not say that the action belonged to him still. Therein he has severed his connection with the past. Again, what has never in any deep sense been a man's own, cannot surely continue to be his afterwards. Thus the things that a man has merely possessed once, the very people who most admired him for their sakes when he had them, give him no credit for after he has lost them. Riches that have taken to themselves wings leave with the poor man only a surpa.s.sing poverty. Strength, likewise, which can so little depend on any exercise of the will in man, pa.s.ses from him with the years. It was not his all the time; it was but lent him, and had nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble man may put forth a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the eyes of his neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for what he could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was his own; the strength of the other pa.s.ses from him, for it was never his own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to have been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a great measure with intellect."

"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can in any way be called his own?"

"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to will the truth. This, too, is as much G.o.d's gift as everything else: I ought to say is more G.o.d's gift than anything else, for he gives it to be the man's own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth, he has G.o.d himself. Man _can_ possess G.o.d: all other things follow as necessary results. What poor creatures we should have been if G.o.d had not made us to do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this was in the mind of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense of a far higher life in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the root of all our false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves. We cannot commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves. We have little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of will, and therefore we talk of our strength of body, wors.h.i.+p the riches we have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part with all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of G.o.d which the wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which the growing luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even possible for any man."

We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce blast of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the streets did look!--how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no living creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that seemed to have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which, forgetful of its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging to it against a window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a mimic storm within its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down the kennels like a long brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide from the tormenting wind, and every now and then the rain came in full rout before the conquering blast.

When I got home, I peeped in at Connie's door the first thing, and saw that she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of the conch against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was sitting staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she could see over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately looked. Her face was paler and keener than usual.

"Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?"

"Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He says I am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as I like."

"But you look too tired for it. Hadn't you better lie down again?"

"It's only the storm, papa."

"The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so."

"It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is going to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow."

"You didn't hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The storm was raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its reach--fast asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down."

"Very well, papa."

I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments she was already looking much better.

After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went out again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the s.e.xton and his wife, were faring. The wind had already increased in violence.

It threatened to blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was coming in with great rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as I pa.s.sed through it to reach the lower part where they lived. When I peeped in from the bottom of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the steps of someone overhead, I called out.

Agnes's voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to the bedrooms above--

"Mother's gone to church, sir."

"Gone to church!" I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled what the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church during a storm.

"O yes, Agnes, I remember!" I said; "your mother thinks the weather bad enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?

Where is your husband?"

"He'll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don't mind the wet. You see, we don't like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the sailors call 'great guns.'"

"And what becomes of his mother then?"

"There don't be any sea out there, sir. Leastways," she added with a quiet smile, and stopped.

"You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the elements out there?"

She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe's mother was proverbial.

"But really, sir," she said, "she don't mind the weather a bit; and though we don't live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn't hear of that, we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know."

"I'm sure it's quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you, now?"

She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow complexion, that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought a reply.

"I don't think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He's been working very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him."

"And how are you?"

"Quite well, thank you, sir."

I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very different thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the church.

When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling.

A certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the southern transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of the stone, on the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a considerable crack between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut some sod from another part of the churchyard, and was now standing, with the rain pouring on him from the roof, beating this sod down in the crack. He was sheltered from the wind by the church, but he was as wet as he could be. I may mention that he never appeared in the least disconcerted when I came upon him in the discharge of his functions: he was so content with his own feeling in the matter, that no difference of opinion could disturb him.

"This will never do, Coombes," I said. "You will get your death of cold.

You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there's rheumatism in the world!"

"It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha' done now for a night. I think he'll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at him through that hole."

"Do go home, then," I said, "and change your clothes. Is your wife in the church?"

"She be, sir. This door, sir--this door," he added, as he saw me going round to the usual entrance. "You'll find her in there."

I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first, for it was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there somehow, although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters.

Mrs. Coombes was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts--how it did roar up there--as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the wind and send it down to ventilate the church!--she was sitting at the foot of the chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.

The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I drew near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but only sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to say much, however.

"How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked. "Not all night?"

"No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn't thought o' going yet for a bit."

"Why there's Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I'm afraid he'll go on pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as full of rheumatism as they can hold."

"Deary me! I didn't know as my old man was there. He tould me he had them all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there's always some mendin' to do."

I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.