The Seaboard Parish Part 64

"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 G.o.d.'"

"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 gra.s.s. 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 G.o.d only heard, and G.o.d 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 G.o.d had spoken words of comfort to his mourning friends, when he was the present G.o.d 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 gra.s.s, and walked towards the brow of the sh.o.r.e. 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 a.s.sented 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 G.o.d, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 G.o.d that which no effort of his own will can compa.s.s. 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 G.o.d 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_--repet.i.tions 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.

I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical ablution, and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged as if myself newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the downs full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep in my mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be not only ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith that cannot laugh at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array of defiant appearances. The fresh breeze of the morning visited me. "O G.o.d," I said in my heart, "would that when the dark day comes, in which I can feel nothing, I may be able to front it with the memory of this day's strength, and so help myself to trust in the Father! I would call to mind the days of old, with David the king."

When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had been cast ash.o.r.e with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and found him very pale and worn.

"I think I am going, sir," he said; "and I wanted to see you before I die."

"Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid," I returned.

"I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I wasn't afraid then, I'm not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my bed. But just look here, sir."

He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded the envelope, and showed a lump of something--I could not at first tell what. He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible, with nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly in a state of pulp.

"That's the bible my mother gave me when I left home first," he said. "I don't know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that cut through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a'most have cut through my ribs if it hadn't been for it."

"Very likely," I returned. "The body of the Bible has saved your bodily life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life."

"I think I know what you mean, sir," he panted out. "My mother was a good woman, and I know she prayed to G.o.d for me."

"Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?"

"If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He's nearly as bad as I am."

"We won't forget you," I said. "I will come in after church and see how you are."

I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I did not think the poor fellow was going to die.

I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since.

We took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and stables, and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his health continues delicate.

CHAPTER X.

THE SERMON.