Beside Still Waters Part 12

XLII

Aconite--The Dropping Veil

How swiftly the summer melted into the autumn! the old lime-trees in the college court were soon all gold--how bravely that gold seemed to enrich the heart, on the still, clear, fresh mornings of St. Luke's summer! that wise physician of souls has indeed had set aside for him the most inspiriting, the most healing days of the year, days of tonic coolness, of invigorating colour, of bracing sun; and then the winter closes in, when light is short, and the sun is low and cold; when the eye is grateful for the rich brown of naked fields, leafless woods, and misty distances. Yet there is a solemn charm about the darkening day, when the sun sets over the wide plain rolled in smoky vapours, and gilded banks of cloud; and then there is the long firelit evening to follow, when books give up their secrets and talk is easiest.

The summer, for all its enervating heat, its piercing light, was the time, so Hugh thought, for reflection. In winter the mind is often sunk in a sort of comfortable drowsiness, and hybernates within its secure cell. Hugh found the activities of work very absorbing in those darker days: his thoughts took on a more placid, more contented tinge.

Early in the year he walked alone along the Backs at Cambridge. He pa.s.sed the great romantic gateposts of St. John's, with the elms of the high garden towering over them, his mind occupied with a hundred small designs. It was with a shock of inexpressible surprise, as he pa.s.sed by the clear stream that runs over its sandy shallows, and feeds the garden moats, to see that in the Wilderness the ground was bright with the round heads of the yellow aconite, the first flower to hear the message of spring. The appearance of that brave and hardy flower in that particular place had a peculiar and moving a.s.sociation for Hugh.

More than twenty years before, in his undergraduate days, in a time of deep perplexity of mind, he had walked that way on a bright Sunday morning, his young heart burdened with sorrowful preoccupation. How hard those youthful griefs had been to bear! they were so unfamiliar, they seemed so irreparably overwhelming; one had not learned to look over them or through them; they darkened the present, they hung like a black cloud over the future. How fantastic, how exaggerated those woes had been, and yet how unbearably real! He had stood, he remembered, to watch the mild sunlight strike in soft shafts among the trees. The hardy blossoms, cold and scentless, but so unmistakably alive, had given him a deep message of hope, a thrill of expectation. He had gone back, he remembered, and in a glow of impa.s.sioned emotion had written a little poem on the theme, in a locked notebook, to which he confided his inmost thoughts. He could recall some of the poor stanzas still, so worthless in expression, yet with so fiery a heart.

The thought of the long intervening years came back to Hugh with a sense of wonder and grat.i.tude. He had half expected then, he remembered, that some great experience would perhaps come to him, and lift him out of his shadowed thoughts, his vague regrets. That great experience had not befallen him, but how far more wisely and tenderly he had been dealt with instead! Experience had been lavished upon him; he had gained interest, he had practised activity, and he had found patience and hope by the way. He knew no more than he knew then of the great and dim design that lay behind the world, and now he hardly desired to know. He had been led, he had been guided, with a perfect tenderness, a deliberate love. The only lost hours, after all, had been the hours which he had given to anxiety and doubt, to ambition and desire. When the moment had come, which he had heavily antic.i.p.ated, there had never been any question as to how he should act; and yet he had not been a mere puppet moved by forces outside his control. He could not harmonise the sense of guidance with the sense of freedom, and yet both had undoubtedly been there. He had been dealt with both frankly and tenderly; not saved from fruitful mistakes, not forbidden to wander; and yet his mistakes had never been permitted to be irreparable, his wanderings had taught him to desire the road rather than to dread the desert.

A great sense of tranquillity and peace settled down upon his spirit.

He cast himself in an utter dependence upon the mighty will of the Father; and in that calm of thought his little cares, and they were many, faded like wreaths of steam cast abroad upon the air. To be sincere and loving and quiet, that was the ineffable secret; not to scheme for fame, or influence, or even for usefulness; to receive as in a channel the strength and sweetness of G.o.d.

A bird hidden in a dark yew-tree began softly to flute, in that still afternoon, a little song that seemed like a prayer for bright days and leafy trees and embowered greenness; a prayer that should be certainly answered, and the fulfilment of which should be dearer for the delay.

Hugh knew in that moment that the life he had lived and would live was, in its bareness and bleakness, its veiling cloud, its chilly airs, but the preface to some vast and glorious springtime of the spirit, when hill and valley should break together into sunlit bloom, when the trees should be clothed with leaf, when birds should sing clear for joy, and the soul should be utterly satisfied. The old poet had said that the saddest thing was to remember happy days in hours of sorrow; but to remember the dreary days in a season of calm content, what joy could be compared to that? His heart was slowly filled, as a cup with wine, with an unutterable hope; but he desired no longer that some great thing should come to him, which should exalt him above his fellows and make him envied and admired. Rather should the humblest and the lowest place suffice, some corner of life which he should deck, and tend, and keep bright and sweet; a few hands to grasp, a few hearts to encourage; and even so to do that with no set purpose, but by merely letting the gentle joy of the soul overflow, like a spring of br.i.m.m.i.n.g waters, fed from high hills of faith.

And so, like a figure that pa.s.ses down a corridor and enters at an open door, Hugh pa.s.ses from our sight. He mingles with his fellows, he goes to and fro, he speaks and he is silent, he smiles and weeps; he may not be distinguished from other men, and there lies his best happiness, because he is waiting upon G.o.d. His life may be long or short; he may mix with the crowd or sit solitary. If he differs at all from others, it is in this, that he desires no costly thread of gold, no bright-hued skein that he may weave his texture of life. Upon that tapestry will be depicted no knight in s.h.i.+ning armour; no nymphs with floating vestures, no paradise of flowers; rather dim hills and cloud-hung valleys, and the darkness of haunted groves; with one figure of shadowy hue in sober raiment, walking earnestly as one that has a note of the way; he would desire nothing but what may uphold him; he would fear nothing but what may stain him; he would shun the company of none who need him; he would clasp the hand of any gentle-hearted pilgrim. So would he walk in quietness to the dim valley and the dark stream, believing that the Father has a place and a work and a joy for the smallest thing that His hands have made.

THE END