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BY
(dedication)
TO THOSE SELF-STYLED 'PROGRESSIVISTS' WHO BY PRECEPT AND
EXAMPLE ASSIST THE INFAMOUS CAUSE OF EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION AND WHO, BY
PROMOTING THE IDEA, BORROWED FROM FRENCH ATHEISM, OF DENYING TO THE
CHILDREN IN BOARD-SCHOOLS AND ELSEWHERE, THE KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE OF GOD, AS
THE TRUE FOUNDATION OF NOBLE LIVING, ARE GUILTY OF A WORSE CRIME THAN
MURDER.
about to hide his glowing face altogether for the night, behind the black vizor of our upward-moving earth. The hush of the gloaming began to permeate nature; flowers, draggled with rain, essayed to lift their delicate stems from the mould where they had been bowed prone and almost broken,--and a little brown bird fluttering joyously out of a bush where it had taken shelter from the tempest, alighted on a window-sill of one of the nearest human habitations it could perceive, and there piped a gentle roundelay for the cheering and encouragement of those within before so much as preening a feather. The window was open, and in the room beyond it a small boy sat at a school-desk reading, and every now and then making pencil notes on a large folio sheet of paper beside him. He was intent upon his work,--yet he turned quickly at the sound of the bird's song and listened, his deep thoughtful eyes darkening and softening with a liquid look as of unshed tears. It was only for a moment that he thus interrupted his studies,--anon, he again bent over the book before him with an air of methodical patience and resignation strange to see in one so young. He might have been a bank clerk, or an experienced accountant in
a London merchant's office, from his serious old-fashioned manner, instead of a child barely eleven years of age; indeed, as a matter of fact, there was an almost appalling expression of premature wisdom on his pale wistful features;--the 'thinking furrow' already marked his forehead,--and what should still have been the babyish upper curve of his sensitive little mouth, was almost though not quite obliterated by a severe line of constantly practised self-restraint. Stooping his fair curly head over the printed page more closely as the day darkened, he continued reading, pondering, and writing; and the bird, which had come to assure him as well as it could, that fine bright weather,--such weather as boys love,--might be expected to-morrow, seemed disappointed that its gay carol was not more appreciated. At any rate it ceased singing, and began to plume itself with fastidious grace and prettiness, peering round at the youthful student from time to time inquisitively, as much as to say,--"What wonder is this? The rain is over,--the air is fresh,--the flowers are fragrant,--there is light in the sky,--all the world of nature is glad, and rejoices,--yet here is a living creature shut up with a book which surely God never had the making
of!--and his face is wan, and his eyes are sad, and he seems not to know the meaning of joy!"
The burning bars of saffron widened in the western heavens,--shafts
of turquoise-blue, pale rose, and chrysoprase flashed down towards the sea
like reflections from the glory of some unbarred gate of
Paradise,--and the sun, flaming with August fires, suddenly burst
forth in all his splendour. Full on Combmartin, with its grey old church,
stone cottages, and thatched roofs overgrown with flowers, the cheerful
radiance fell, bathing it from end to end in a shower of gold,--the
waves running into the quiet harbour caught the lustrous glamour and shone
with deep translucent glitterings of amber melting into green,--and
through the shadows of the room where the solitary little student sat at
work, a bright ray came dancing, and glistened on his bent head like the
touch of some passing angel's benediction. Just then the door opened,
and a young man entered, clad in white boating flannels.
"Still at it, Lionel!" he said kindly. "Look here,
drop it all for to-day! The storm is quite over;--come with me, and
I'll take you for a pull on the water."
Lionel looked up, half surprised, half afraid.
"Does he say I may go, Mr. Montrose?"
"I haven't asked him," replied Montrose curtly,
"I say you may,--and not only that you may, but
that you must! I'm your tutor,--at least for the
present,--and you know you've got to obey me, or
else--!"
Here he squared himself, and made playfully threatening gestures after
the most approved methods of boxing.
The boy smiled, and rose from his chair.
"I don't think I get on very fast," he said
apologetically, with a doubtful glance at the volume over which he had been
poring--"It's all my stupidity I suppose, but sometimes it
seems a muddle to me, and more often still it seems useless. How, for
instance, can I feel any real interest in the amount of the tithes that
were paid to certain bishops in England in the year 1054? I don't care
what was paid, and I'm sure I never shall care. It has nothing to do
with the way people live nowadays, has it?"
"No,--but it goes under the head of general
information,"--answered Montrose laughing,--"Anyhow,
you can leave the tithes alone for the present,--forget
them,--and forget all the bishops and kings too if you like! You
looked fagged
out,--what do you say to a first-class Devonshire tea at Miss Payne's?"
"Jolly!" and a flash of something like merriment lit up
Lionel's small pale face--"But we'll go on the water
first, please! It will soon be sunset, and I love to watch a sunset from
the sea."
Montrose was silent. Standing at the open door he waited, attentively
observing meanwhile the quiet and precise movements of his young pupil who
was now busy putting away his books and writing materials. He did this with
an almost painful care: wiping his pen, re-sharpening his pencil to be
ready for use when he came back to work again, folding a scattered sheet or
two of paper neatly, dusting the desk, setting up the volume concerning
'tithes' and what not, on a particular shelf, and looking about
him in evident anxiety lest he should have forgotten some trifle. His
tutor, though a man of neat taste and exemplary tidiness himself, would
have preferred to see this mere child leaving everything in a disorderly
heap, and rushing out into the fresh air with a wild whoop and bellow. But
he gave his thoughts no speech, and studied the methodical goings to and
fro of the patient little
lad from under his half-drooped eyelids with an expression of mingled kindness and concern, till at last, the room being set in as prim an order as that of some fastidious old spinster, Lionel took down his red jersey-cap from its own particular peg in the wall, put it on, and smiled up confidingly at his stalwart companion.
"Now, Mr. Montrose!" he said.
Montrose started as from a reverie.
"Ah! That's it! Now's the word!"
Flinging on his own straw hat, and softly whistling a lively tune as he
went, he led the way downstairs and out of the house, the little Lionel
following in his footsteps closely and somewhat timidly. Their two figures
could soon be discerned among the flowers and shrubs of the garden as they
passed across it towards the carriage gate, which opened directly on to the
high road,--and a woman watching them from an upper window pushed her
fair face through a tangle of fuchsias and called,
"Playing truant, Mr. Montrose? That's right! Always do what
you're told not to do! Good-bye, Lylie!"
Lionel looked up and waved his cap.
"Good-bye, mother!"
The beautiful face framed in red fuchsia flowers softened at the sound
of the child's clear voice,--anon, it drew back into the shadow
and disappeared.
The woods and hills around Combmartin were now all aglow with the warm
luminance of the descending sun, and presently, out on the sea which was
still rough and sparkling with a million diamond-like points of spray, a
small boat was seen, tossing lightly over the crested billows. William
Montrose, B.A., 'oor Willie' as some of his affectionate
Highland relatives called him, pulled at the oars with dash and spirit, and
Lionel Valliscourt, only son and heir of John Valliscourt of Valliscourt in
the county of Somerset, sat curled up, not in the stern, but almost at the
end of the prow, his dreamy eyes watching with keen delight every wave that
advanced to meet the little skiff and break against it in an opaline
shower.
"I say, Mr. Montrose!" he shouted--"This is
glorious!"
"Aye, aye!" responded Montrose, B.A. with a deep breath and
an extra pull--"Life's a fine thing when you get it in big
doses!"
Lionel did not hear this observation,--he was
absorbed in catching a string of seaweed, slimy and unprofitable to most people, but very beautiful in his eyes. There were hundreds of delicate little shells knitted into it, as fragile and fine as pearls, and every such tiny casket held a life as frail. Ample material for meditation was there in this tangle of mysterious organisms marvellously perfect, and while he minutely studied the dainty net-work of ocean's weaving, across the young boy's mind there flitted the dark shadow of the inscrutable and unseen. He asked within himself, just as the oldest and wisest scholars have asked to their dying day, the 'why' of things,--the cause for the prolific creation of so many apparently unnecessary objects, such as a separate universe of shells for example,--what was the ultimate intention of it all? He thought earnestly,--and thinking, grew sorrowful, child though he was, with the hopeless sorrow of Ecclesiastes the Preacher and his incessant cry of 'Vanitas vanitatem!' Meantime the heavens were ablaze with glory,--the two rims of the friendly planets, earth and the sun, seemed to touch one another on the edge of the sea,--then, the bright circle was covered by the dark, and the soft haze of a purple twilight began to creep
over the 'Hangman's Hills' as they are curiously styled,--the Great and the Little Hangman. There is nothing about these grassy slopes at all suggestive of capital punishment, and they appear to have derived their names from a legend of the country which tells how a thief, running away with a stolen sheep tied across his back, was summarily and unexpectedly punished for his misdeed by the sheep itself, who struggled so violently, as to pull the cord which fastened it close round its captor's throat in a thoroughly 'hangman' like manner, thus killing him on the spot. The two promontories form a bold and picturesque headland as seen from the sea, and Willie Montrose, resting for a moment on his oars, looked up at them admiringly, and almost with love in his eyes, just because they reminded him of a favourite little bit of coast scenery in his own more romantic and beautiful Scottish land. Then he brought his gaze down to the curled-up small figure of his pupil, who was still absorbed in the contemplation of his treasure-trove of sea-weed and shells.
"What have you got there, Lionel?" he asked.
The boy turned round and faced him.
"Thousands of little people!" he answered,
with a smile,--"All in pretty little houses of their own too,--look!"and he held up his dripping trophy,--"It's quite a city, isn't it?--and I shouldn't wonder if the inhabitants thought almost as much of themselves as we do." His eyes darkened, and the smile on his young face vanished. "What do you think about it, Mr. Montrose? I don't see that we are a bit more valuable in the universe than these little shell-people."
Montrose made no immediate reply. He pulled out a big silver watch and
glanced at it.
"Tea-time!" he announced abruptly--"Put the
shell-people back in their own native element, my boy, and don't ask
me any conundrums just now, please! Take an oar!"
With a flush of pleasure, Lionel obeyed,--first dropping the
seaweed carefully into a frothy billow that just then shouldered itself up
caressingly against the boat, and watching it float away. Then he pulled at
the oar manfully enough with his weak little arms,--while Montrose,
controlling his own strength that it might not overbalance that of the
child, noted his exertions with a grave and somewhat pitying air. The tide
was flowing in, and the boat went swiftly with it,--the healthful
exercise sent colour into Lionel's pale cheeks and
lustre into his deep-set eyes, so that when they finally ran their little craft ashore and sprang out of it, the boy looked as nature meant all boys to look, bright and happy-hearted, and the sad little furrow on his forehead, so indicative of painful thought and study, was scarcely perceptible. Glancing first up at the darkening skies, then at his own clothes sprinkled with salt spray, he laughed joyously as he said,
"I'm afraid we shall catch it when we get home, Mr.
Montrose!"
"I shall,--you won't;" returned
Montrose imperturbably, "But,--as it's my last
evening,--it doesn't matter."
All the mirth faded from Lionel's face, and he uttered a faint cry
of wonder and distress.
"Your last evening?--oh no!--surely not! You
don't,--you can't mean it!" he faltered nervously.
Willie Montrose's honest blue eyes softened with a great tenderness
and compassion.
"Come along, laddie, and have your tea!" he said kindly, his
tongue lapsing somewhat into his own soft Highland accentuation;
"Come along and I'll tell you all about it. Life is like being
out on the sea yonder,--a body must take the
rough with the smooth, and just make the best of it. One mustn't mind a few troubles now and then,--and--and--partings and the like; you've often heard that the best of friends must part, haven't you? There now, don't look so downcast!--come along to Miss Payne's cottage, where we can get the best cream in all Devonshire, and we'll have a jolly spread and a talk out, shall we?"
But Lionel stood mute,--the colour left his cheeks, and his little
mouth once more became set and stern.
"I know!" he said at last slowly, "I know exactly what
you have to tell me, Mr. Montrose! My father is sending you away. I am not
surprised; oh no! I thought it would happen soon. You see you have been too
kind,--too easy with me,--that's what it is.
No,--I'm not going to cry"--here he choked back a
little rising sob bravely,--"you mustn't think
that,--I am glad you are going away for your own sake, but I'm
sorry for myself,--very sorry! I'm always feeling sorry for
myself,--isn't it cowardly? Marcus Aurelius says the worst form
of cowardice is self-pity."
"Oh, hang Marcus Aurelius!" burst out Montrose.
Lionel smiled,--a dreary little cynical smile.
"Shall we go and have our tea?" he suggested
quietly--"I'm ready."
And they walked slowly up from the shore together,--the young man
with a light yet leisurely tread, the child with wearily dragging feet that
seemed scarcely able to support his body. Painful thoughts and forebodings
kept them silent, and they exchanged not a word even when a sudden red and
golden after-glow flashed across the sea as the very last salutation of the
vanished sun,--indeed they scarcely saw the fiery splendour that
would, at a happier moment, have been a perfect feast of beauty to their
eyes. Turning away from the principal street of the village they bent their
steps towards a small thatched cottage, overgrown from porch to roof with
climbing roses, fuchsias and jessamine, where an unobtrusive signboard
might be just discerned framed in a wreath of brilliant nasturtiums, and
bearing the following device,
CLARINDA CLEVERLY PAYNE.
NEW LAID EGGS. DEVONSHIRE CREAM.
JUNKETS.
TEAS PROVIDED.
Within this rustic habitation, tutor and pupil disappeared, and the
pebbly shore of Combmartin was left in the possession of two ancient
mariners, who, seated side by side on the overhanging wall, smoked their
pipes together in solemn silence, and watched the gradual smoothing of the
sea as it spread itself out in wider, longer, and more placid undulations,
as though submissively preparing for the coming of its magnetic mistress,
the moon.
having been supposed to have gone to his 'little place' (an estate of several thousand acres) in Inverness-shire. And it was concerning his present change of plan and humour that Mr. Valliscourt was just now rallying him in ponderously playful fashion.
"Ya-as!" drawled Sir Charles in answer,--"I have
doosid habits of caprice. Never know what I'm going to do from one day
to another! Fact, I assure you! You see a chum of mine has got Watermouth
Castle for a few weeks, and he asked me to join his house-party.
That's how it is I happen to be here."
Mrs. Valliscourt, who had left the dinner-table and was seated in a
lounge chair near the open window, looked round and smiled. Her smile was a
very beautiful one,--her large flashing eyes and brilliantly white
teeth gave it a sun-like dazzle that amazed and half bewitched any man who
was not quite prepared to meet it.
"I suppose you are all very select at
Watermouth,"--observed Mr. Valliscourt, cracking a walnut and
beginning to peel the kernel with a deliberate and fastidious nicety which
showed off his long, white, well-kept fingers to admirable
advantage,--"Nothing lower than a baronet, eh?"
And he laughed softly.
Sir Charles gave him a quick glance from under his lazily drooping
eyelids that might have startled him had he perceived it. Malice, derision,
and intense hatred were expressed in it, and for a second it illumined the
face on which it gleamed with a wicked flash as of hell-fire. It vanished
almost as quickly as it had shone, and a reply was given in such quiet,
listless tones as betrayed nothing of the speaker's feelings.
"Well, I really don't know! There's a painter fellow
staying with us,--one of those humbugs called 'rising
artists,'--gives himself doosid airs too. He's got a
commission to do the castle. Of course he isn't thought much
of,--we keep him in his place as much as we can,--still he's
there, and he doesn't dine with the servants either. The rest are the
usual lot,--dowagers with marriageable but penniless
daughters,--two or three ugly 'advanced' young women who
have brought their bicycles and go tearing about the country all day, and a
few stupid old peers. It's rather slow. I was bored to exhaustion at
the general tea-meeting this afternoon, so knowing you were here I thought
I'd ride over and see you."
"Delighted!" said Mr. Valliscourt politely--
"But may I ask how you knew we were here?"
Sir Charles bit his lip to hide a little smile, as he answered
lightly,
"Oh, everybody knows everything in these little out-of-the-way
villages. Besides, when you take the only available large house in
Combmartin you can't expect to hide your light under a bushel.
It's really a charming old place too."
"It's a barrack," said Mrs. Valliscourt, speaking now
for the first time, and looking straight at her husband as she did
so,--"It's excessively damp, and very badly furnished. Of
course it could be made delightful if anybody were silly enough to spend a
couple of thousand pounds upon it,--but as it is, I cannot possibly
imagine why John took such a horrid little hole for a summer holiday
residence."
"You know very well why I took it," returned Mr. Valliscourt
stiffly--"It was not for my personal enjoyment, nor for yours. I
am old enough, I presume, to do without what certain foolish people call
'a necessary change,' and so are you for that matter. I was
advised to give Lionel the benefit of sea-air,--and as I was anxious
to avoid the noise and racket of ordinary sea-side
places, as well as the undesirable companionship of other people's children who might endeavour to associate with my son, I chose a house at Combmartin because I considered, and still consider, Combmartin perfectly suited for my purpose. Combmartin being off the line of railway and somewhat difficult of access, is completely retired and thoroughly unfashionable,--and Lionel will be able to continue his holiday tasks under an efficient tutor without undue distraction or interruption."
He said all this in a dry methodical way, cracking walnuts between
whiles, with a curious air, as of coldly civil protest against the
vulgarity of eating them.
Mrs. Valliscourt turned her head away, and looked out into the tangled
garden, where the foliage, glistening with the day's long rain,
sparkled in the silver gleam of the rising moon. Sir Charles Lascelles said
nothing for a few moments,--then he suddenly broke silence with a
question. "You are giving Montrose the sack aren't
you?"
"I am dismissing Mr. Montrose,--yes, certainly;"
replied Valliscourt, his hard mouth compressing itself into harder
lines,--"Mr. Mon-
trose is too young for his place, and too self-opinionated. It is the fault of all Scotchmen to think too much of themselves. He is clever; I do not deny that; but he does not work Lionel sufficiently. He is fonder of athletics than classics. Now in my opinion, athletics are altogether overdone in England,--and I do not want my son to grow up with all his brains in his muscles. His intellectual faculties must be developed,--"
"At the expense of the physical?" interposed Sir
Charles,--"Why not do both together?"
"That is my aim and intention,"--said Valliscourt
somewhat pompously--"but Mr. Montrose is not fitted either by
education or temperament to carry out my scheme. In fact he has refused
point-blank to go through the schedule of tuition I have formulated for the
holiday tasks of my son, and has taken it upon himself to say to
me,--to me!--that Lionel is not capable of such a
course of study, and that complete rest is what the boy requires. Of course
this is an excuse to obtain a good time for himself in the way of boating
and other out-of-door amusements. Moreover, I have discovered to my extreme
concern, that Mr. Montrose has not yet thrown
off the shackles of superstitious legend and observance, and that in spite of the advance of science, he is really not much better than a savage in his ideas of the universe. He actually believes in Mumbo-Jumbo,--that is, God,--still!--and also in the immortality of the soul!" Here Mr. Valliscourt laughed outright. "Of course, if it were not so ridiculous, I should be angry,--all the same, one cannot be too particular in the matter of a child's training and education, and I am considerably annoyed that I was not made aware of these barbarous predilections and prejudices of his before he took up a responsible position in my house."
"Of course you would not have engaged him if you had known?"
queried Sir Charles.
"Certainly not." Here Mr. Valliscourt looked at his watch.
"Will you excuse me? It is nine o'clock, and I told Montrose to
attend me at that hour in my study to receive the remaining portion of his
salary. He leaves by the early coach to-morrow morning."
Mrs. Valliscourt rose, and moved with an elegant languor towards the
door.
"You had better come into the drawing-room, Sir Charles, and have
a chat with me," she said,
favouring the baronet with one of her dazzling smiles as she glanced back at him over her shoulder,--"I suppose you are in no very special hurry to return to Watermouth?"
"No,--not just immediately!" he replied with an
answering smile, as he followed her out across the square oak-panelled hall
and into the apartment she had named, which had the merit of being more
comfortably furnished than any other part of the house, and moreover
boasted four deep bay-windows, each one commanding different and equally
beautiful views of the surrounding country. Mr. Valliscourt meantime went
in an opposite direction, and entered a small parlour, formerly a
store-room, but now transformed into a kind of study, where he found
William Montrose, B.A., awaiting him.
'Oor Willie' looked pale, and his lips were hard set. His
employer nodded to him carelessly in passing, and then sitting down at his
office-desk, unlocked a drawer, took from thence his cheque-book, and wrote
out a sum that was more than 'oor Willie's' due. As he
handed it over, the young man glanced at it, and coloured hotly.
"No thank you, Mr. Valliscourt,"--he
said,--"The exact sum, please, and not a farthing
over."
"What!" exclaimed Valliscourt in a satirical
tone--"A Scotchman refuse an extra fee! Is this the age of
miracles?"
Montrose grew paler, but kept himself quiet.
"Think what you like of Scotchmen, Mr. Valliscourt," he
returned composedly--"They can get on without your good opinion
I daresay, and certainly they need none of my defending. I merely refuse to
accept anything I have not honestly earned,--there is no miracle in
that, I fancy. It is not as if I took my dismissal badly,--on the
contrary, I should have dismissed myself if you had not forestalled me. I
will have no share in child-murder."
If a bomb had exploded in the little room, Mr. Valliscourt could not
have looked more thoroughly astounded. He sprang from his chair and
confronted the audacious speaker in such indignation as almost choked his
utterance.
"Ch--ch--child-murder!" he spluttered, trembling
all over in the excess of his sudden rage--"D--d--did
I hear you rightly, sir? Ch--child-murder!"
"I repeat it, Mr. Valliscourt,"--said Montrose, his
blue eyes now flashing dangerously and his lips
quivering--"Child-murder! Take the phrase
and think it over! You have only one child,--a boy of a most lovable and intelligent disposition,--quick-brained,--too quick-brained by half!--and you are killing him with your hard and fast rules, and your pernicious 'system' of intellectual training. You deprive him of such pastimes and exercises as are necessary to his health and growth,--you surround him with petty tyrannies which make his young life a martyrdom,--you give him no companions of his own age, and you are, as I say, murdering him,--slowly perhaps, but none the less surely. Any physician with the merest superficial knowledge of his business, would tell you what I tell you,--that is, any physician who preferred truth to fees."
White with passion, Mr. Valliscourt snatched up the cheque he had just
written and tore it into fragments,--then opening another drawer in
his desk, he took out a handful of notes and gold, and counting them
rapidly, flung them upon the table.
"Hold your insolent tongue, sir!" he said in hoarse accents
of ill-suppressed fury,--"There is your money,--exact to a
farthing; take it and go! And before you presume to apply for another
situation as tutor to the son of a gentleman,
you had better learn to know your place and put a check on your Scotch conceit and impertinence! Not another word!--go!"
With a sudden proud lifting of his head, Montrose eyed his late employer
from heel to brow and from brow to heel again, in the disdainful
"measuring" manner known to fighting men,--his eyes
sparkled with anger,--and his hands involuntarily clenched. Then, all
at once, evidently moved by some thought which restrained, if it did not
entirely overcome his wrath, he swept up his wage lightly in one hand,
turned and left the room without either a 'thank you' or
'good-evening.' When he had gone, John Valliscourt burst into
an angry laugh.
"Insolent young cub!" he muttered--"How such
fellows get University honours and recommendations is more than I can
imagine! Favouritism and jobbery I suppose,--like everything else. An
inefficient, boastful, lazy Scotchman if ever there was one,--and the
worst companion in the world for Lionel. The boy has done nothing but idle
away his time ever since he came. I'm very glad Professor Cadman-Gore
is able to accept a few weeks of holiday tuition,--he is expensive
certainly,--but he will remedy all the mischief
Montrose has done, and get Lionel on;--he is a thoroughly reliable man too, on the religious question."
Soothed by the prospect of the coming of Professor Cadman-Gore, Mr.
Valliscourt cooled down, and presently went to join his wife and Sir
Charles Lascelles in the drawing-room. He found that apartment empty
however, and on inquiry of one of the servants, learnt that Sir Charles had
been gone some minutes, and that Mrs. Valliscourt was walking by herself in
the garden. Mr. Valliscourt thereupon went to one of the deep bay-windows
which stood open, and sniffed the scented summer air. The day's rain
had certainly left the ground wet, and he was not fond of strolling about
under damp trees. The moon was high, and very beautiful in her clear
fullness, but Mr. Valliscourt did not admire moonlight effects,--he
thought all that kind of thing 'stagey.' The grave and
devotional silence of the night hallowed the landscape,--Mr.
Valliscourt disliked silence, and he therefore coughed loudly and with much
unpleasant throat-scraping, to disturb it. Throat-scraping gave just the
necessary suggestion of prose to a picture which would otherwise have been
purely romantic,--a picture of shadowed woodland and
hill and silver cloud and purple sky, in all of which beauteous presentments, mere humanity seemed blotted out and forgotten. Mr. Valliscourt coughed his ugly cough in order to get humanity into it,--and as he finished the last little hawking note of irritating noise, he wondered where his wife was. The garden was a large and rambling one, and had been long and greatly neglected, though the owners of the place had shrewdly arranged with Mr. Valliscourt, when he had taken the house for three months, that he should pay a gardener weekly wages to attend to it. A decent but dull native of Combmartin had been elected to this post, and his exertions had certainly effected something in the way of clearing the paths and keeping them clean,--but he was apparently incapable of dealing with the wild growth of sweet-briar, myrtle, fuchsia and bog-oak that had sprung up everywhere in the erratic yet always artistic fashion of mother Nature, when she is left to design her own woodland ways,--so that the entire pleasaunce was more a wilderness than anything else. Yet it had its attractions, or seemed to have, at least for Mrs. Valliscourt, for she passed nearly all her time in it. Now, however, owing to the long shadows, her husband could not
perceive her anywhere, though presently, as he stood at the window, he
heard her voice carolling an absurd ditty, of which he caught a distinct
fragment concerning
"Gay Bo-hem-i-ah!
We're not
particular what we do
In gay
Bo-hem-i-ah,"--
whereat, his face, cold and heavy-featured as it was, grew downright ugly
in its expression of malign contempt.
"She ought to have been a music-hall singer!" he said to
himself with a kind of inward snarl--"She has all the taste and
talent required for it. And to think she is actually well born and well
educated! What an atrocious anomaly!"
He banged the window to violently, and went within. There was a
smoking-room at the back of the house, and thither he retired with his
cigar-case, and one of the dullest of all the various dull evening
papers.
the 'Pack o' Cards' on account of its peculiar structure,--and watching Mr. Montrose climb up thereon to the too-tootle-tooing of the horn, and then finally, beholding the whole glorious equipage dash away at break-neck speed to Barnstaple! This was something for a boy, as mere boy, to look forward to with a thrill of expectation;--but deep down in his heart of hearts he was thinking of another delight as well,--a plan he had formed in secret, and of which he had not breathed a word, even to Willie Montrose. The scheme was a bold and dreadful one; and it was this,--to run away for the day. He did not wish to shirk his studies,--but he knew there were to be no lessons till his new tutor, Professor Cadman-Gore arrived, and Professor Cadman-Gore was not due till that evening at ten o'clock. The whole day therefore was before him,--the long, beautiful, sunshiny day,--and he, in his own mind, resolved that he would for once make the best of it. He had no wish to deceive his father,--his desire for an 'escapade' arose out of an instinctive longing which he himself had not the skill to analyse,--a longing not only for freedom, but for rest. Turning it over and over in his thoughts now, as he had turned it over and over
all night, poor child, he could not see that there was any particular harm or mischief in his intention. Neither his father nor mother ever wanted him or sent for him except at luncheon, which was his dinner,--all the rest of the time he was supposed to be with his tutor, always engaged in learning something useful. But now, it so happened that he was to be left for several hours without any tutor, and why should he not take the chance of liberty while it was offered him? He was still mentally debating this question, when Montrose entered softly, portmanteau in hand.
"Come along, laddie!" he said with a kind
smile--"Step gently! Nobody's astir,--and I'll
aid and abet you in this morning's outing. We're going to
breakfast together at Miss Payne's,--the coach won't be here
for a long time yet."
Lionel gave a noiseless jump of delight on the floor, and then did as he
was told, creeping after his tutor down the stairs like a velvet-footed
kitten, and reddening with excess of timidity and pleasure when the big
hall-door was opened cautiously and closed again with equal care behind
them, and they stood together among the honey-suckle and wild rose-tangles
of the sweetly-scented garden.
"Let me help you carry your portmanteau, Mr.
Montrose"--he said sturdily--"I'm sure I
can!"
"I'm sure you can't!" returned Montrose with a
laugh, "Leave it alone, my boy,--it's too heavy for you.
Here, you can carry my Homer instead!"
Lionel took the well-worn leather-bound volume, and bore it along in
both hands reverently as though it were a sacred relic.
"Where are you going, Mr. Montrose?" he asked
presently,--"Have you got another boy like me to
teach?"
"No,--not yet. I wonder if I shall manage to find another boy
like you, eh? Do you think I shall?"
Lionel considered seriously for a moment before replying.
"Well, I don't know," he said at last,--"I
suppose there must be some. You see when you're an only boy, you get
different to other boys. You've got to try and be more clever, you
know. If I had two or three brothers now, my father would want to make
every one of them clever, and he wouldn't have to get it all out of
me. That's how I look at it."
"Oh, that's how you look at it," echoed Montrose,
studying with some compassion the delicate little figure trotting at his
side,--"You think your father wants to get the brain-produce of
a whole family out of you? Well,--I believe he does!"
"Of course he does!" averred Lionel solemnly, "And it
is very natural if you think of it. If you've only got one boy, you
expect a good deal from him!"
"Too much by half!" growled Montrose, sotto-voce,--then
aloud he added--"Well, laddie, you needn't fret
yourself,--you are learning quite fast enough, and you know a good
deal more now than ever I did at your age. I was at school at Inverness
when I was a little chap, and passed nearly all my time
fighting,--that's how I learned my lessons!"
He laughed,--a joyous ringing laugh which was quite infectious, and
Lionel laughed too. It seemed so droll for a boy to pass his time in
fighting!--so very exceptional and extraordinary!
"Why, Mr. Montrose,"--he exclaimed--"what
did you fight so much for?"
"Oh, any excuse was good enough for me!" returned Montrose
gleefully, "If I thought a boy
had too long a nose, I pulled it for him, and then we fought the question out together. They were just grand times!--grand!"
"I have never fought a boy,"--murmured Lionel
regretfully, "I never had any boy to fight with!"
Montrose looked down at him, and a sudden gravity clouded his previous
mirth.
"Listen to me, laddie," he said earnestly--"When
you have a chance, ask your father to send you to school. You've a
tongue in your head,--ask him,--say it's the thing
you're longing for,--beg for it as though it were your life.
You're quite ready for it; you'll take a high place at once with
what you know, and you'll be as happy as the day is long. You'll
find plenty of boys to fight with,--and to conquer!--fighting is
the rule of this world, my boy, and to those who fight well, so is
conquering. And it's a good thing to begin practising the business
early,--practice makes perfect. Tell your father,--and tell this
professor who is coming to take my place, that it is your own wish to go to
a public school,--Eton, Harrow, Winchester,--any of them can turn
out men."
Lionel looked pained and puzzled.
"Yes,--I will ask,"--he said--"But
I'm sure I shall be refused. Father will never hear of it. The boys in
public schools all go to church on Sundays, don't they? Well, you know
I should never be allowed to do that!"
Montrose made no reply, and they walked on in unbroken silence till they
reached the abode of Miss Clarinda Cleverly Payne, where on the threshold
stood a bright-eyed, pleasant-faced active personage in a lilac cotton gown
and snow-white mob-cap of the fashion of half a century ago.
"Good-morning sir! Nice morning! Good-morning Master Lionel! Well
now, toe be sure, I dew believe the eggs is just laid for you! I heerd the
hens a-clucking the very minute you came in sight! Ah dearie me! if we all
did our duty when it was expected of us, like my hens, the world would get
on a deal better than it dew! Walk in, sir!--walk in Master
Lionel!--the table's spread and everything's ready; the
window's open too, for there's a sight o' honeysuckle
outside and it dew smell sweet, I can assure you! Nothing like Devonshire
honeysuckle except Devonshire cream! Ah, and you'll find plenty
o' that for breakfast! And I'm sure this little
gentleman's sorry his kind master's going away, eh?"
"Yes, I am very sorry, ma'am," said Lionel earnestly,
taking off his little cap politely as he looked up at the worthy
Clarinda's sunbrowned, honest countenance--"But it
isn't much use being sorry, is it? He must go, and I must
stay,--and if I were to fret for a whole year about it, it
wouldn't make any difference, would it?"
"No, that it wouldn't,"--returned Miss Payne,
staring hard into the pathetic young eyes that so wistfully regarded
her,--"But you see some of us can't take things so sensibly
as you do, my dear!--we're not all so clever!"
"Clever!" echoed Lionel, with an accent of such bitterness
as might have befitted a cynic of many years' worldly
experience--"I am not clever. I am only crammed."
"Lord bless us!" exclaimed Clarinda, gazing helplessly about
her,--"What does the child mean?"
"He means just what he says"--answered Montrose with a
slight, rather sad smile,--"If you had to learn all the things
Lionel is supposed to know--"
"Larn?" interrupted Miss Clarinda with a
sharp sniff--"Thank the Lord I ain't had no larnin'! I know how to do my work and live honestly without runnin' into debt,--and that's enough for me. To see the young gels nowadays with their books an' their penny papers, all a-gabblin' of a parcel o' rubbish as doesn't consarn 'em,--it dew drive me wild, I can tell you! My niece Susie got one o' them there cheap novels one day, and down she sat, a-readin' an' a-readin', an' she let the cream boil and spoilt it, an' later on in the day, she slipt and fell on the doorstep with a dozen new-laid eggs in her apron and broke eight o' them,--then in a week or two she took to doin' her hair in all sorts o' queer towzley ways, and pinched her waist in, till she couldn't fancy her dinner and her nose got as red as a carrot. I said nothing,--for the more you say to they young things the worse they get,--but at last I got hold o' the book that had done the mischief and took to readin' it myself. Lor!--I laughed till I nearly split!--a parcel o' nonsense all about a fool of a country wench as couldn't do nothing but make butter, and yet she married a lord an' was took to Court with di'monds an' fal-lals!--such a muck o' lies was printed in that there book as was enough to bring the judgment
of the Almighty on the jackass as wrote it! I went to my niece and I sez to her, sez I--'Susie my gel, you're a decent, strong, well-favoured sort o' lass, taken just as God made ye, and if you behave yourself, you may likely marry an honest farmer lad in time,--but if ye get such notions o' lords and ladies as are in this silly lyin' book, an' go doin' o' your hair like crazy Jane, there's not a man in Combmartin as won't despise ye. An' ye'll go to the bad, my gel, as sure as a die!' She was a decent lass, Susie, an' she knew I meant well by her, so she just dropped the book down our old dry well in the back yard, seventy feet deep, and took to the cream agin. She's married well now, and lives over at Woolacombe, very comfortably off. She's got a good husband, a poultry-farm and three babies, an' she's no time for novel-readin' now, thanks to the Lord!"
This narrative, delivered volubly with much oratorical gesture and
scarcely any pauses, left Miss Clarinda well-nigh out of breath, and as she
and her visitors were now in the one 'best parlour' of the
cottage, she ceased talking, and bustled about to get them their breakfast.
Montrose leaned out of the open lattice-window where the
'sight o' honeysuckle' hung in fragrant garlands, and inhaled the delicious perfume with a deep breath of delight.
"It's a bonnie place, this Devonshire,"--he said,
half to himself and half to Lionel--"But it's not so bonnie
as Scotland."
Lionel had sat down in the window-nook with rather a weary air, the
Homer volume still clasped in his hands.
"Are you going to Scotland soon?" he asked.
"Yes. I shall go straight home there for a few days and see my
mother." Here the young man turned and surveyed his small pupil with
involuntary tenderness. "I wish I could take you with me," he
added softly--"My mother would love you, I know."
Lionel was mute. He was thinking to himself how strange it would seem to
be loved by Mr. Montrose's mother, as he was not loved by his own. At
that moment, Clarinda Cleverly Payne brought in the breakfast in her usual
smart, bustling way;--excellent tea, new milk, eggs, honey, cream,
jam, home-made bread, and scones smoking hot, were all set forth in
tempting profusion, and to crown the feast, an antique china basket filled
with the rosiest apples and juiciest
pears, was placed in the centre of the table. William Montrose, B.A. and his little friend sat down to their good cheer, each with very different feelings,--'oor Willie' with a hearty and appreciative appetite,--the boy with only a faint sense of hunger, which was over-weighted by mental fatigue and consequent physical indifference. However he tried to eat well to please the kindly companion from whom he was so soon to be parted,--and it was not till he had quite finished, that Montrose, pushing aside his cup and plate, addressed the following remarks to his late pupil,--
"Look here, Lionel," he said, "I don't want you
to forget me. If ever you should take it into your head to run
away,"--here a deep blush crimsoned Lionel's face, for was
he not going to run away that very day?--"or--or anything
of that sort, just write and tell me all about it first. A letter will
always find me at my mother's house, The Nest, Kilmun. I don't,
of course, wish to persuade you to run away"--(he looked as if
he did though!) "because that would be a very desperate thing to
do,--still, if you feel you can't hold up under your lessons, or
that Professor Cadman-Gore is too much for you, why, rather than break down
altogether, you'd better show
a clean pair of heels. I expect I'm giving you advice which a good many people would think very wrong on my part,--all the same, boys do run away at times,--it has been done!" Here his merry blue eyes twinkled. "And if you have any more of that giddiness you complained of the other day,--or if you go off in a dead faint as you did last week,--you really mustn't conceal these sensations any longer,--you must tell your father, and let him take you to see a doctor."
Lionel listened with an air of rather wearied patience.
"What's the good of it!" he
sighed--"I'm not ill, you know. Besides I've had the
doctor before, and he said there was nothing the matter with me. Doctors
don't seem to be very clever,--my mother was ill two years ago,
and they couldn't cure her. When they gave her up and left her alone,
she got well. Things always appear to go that way,--the more you do,
the worse you get."
Montrose was quite accustomed to such a hopeless tone of reasoning from
the boy,--yet somehow, on this bright summer morning when he, in the
full enjoyment of health and liberty, was going home to those who loved
him, the absolute loneliness of this child's life and his pathetic
resignation
to it, smote him with a keener sense of pain than usual.
"And as for running away"--continued Lionel, flushing
as he spoke--"I might do that perhaps for a few hours,... but if
I tried to run away for good and go for a sailor, which is what I should
like, I should only be brought back,--you know I should. And if I
wrote to you about it, I should get you into dreadful trouble. You
don't seem to think of all that, Mr. Montrose, but I
think of it."
"You think too much altogether,"--said Montrose, almost
crossly,--it vexed him to realise that this boy of barely eleven years
was actually older and more reflective in mind than himself, a man of
seven-and-twenty!--"You are always thinking!"
"Yes,"--agreed Lionel gravely, "But then
there's so much to think about in this world, isn't
there!"
To this Montrose volunteered no answer. He sat, gazing at the dish of
rosy apples in front of him with a brooding frown,--and presently,
Lionel laid one little cold trembling hand on his arm.
"But I shall never forget you,--Willie!" he said,
pausing before the name--"You know you said I might call you
Willie sometimes. You
have been very good to me,--you are the youngest tutor I have ever had--and the kindest;--and though I can't keep all the lessons in my head, I can keep the kindness. I can indeed!"
He looked so small and fragile as he spoke, his sensitive little face
a-quiver with emotion, and his soft eyes full of wistful affection and
appeal, that Montrose was much inclined to give him a hearty kiss, just as
he would have kissed a pretty baby. But he remembered in time all the dry
morsels of so-called wisdom that had been packed into that little curly
head,--all the profound meditations of dead-and-gone philosophers that
were stored in the recesses of that young mind,--and he reflected,
with an odd sense of humorous pity, that it would never do to kiss such a
learned little man. So he gave him a couple of pleasant pats on the
shoulder instead, and answered--"All right laddie! I know! Only
just think now and again of what I've said to you, and when
you're getting puzzled and dazed-like over your books, go into the
fresh air and never mind the lessons,--and if you get a thrashing for
it, well,--all I can say is, a thrashing is better than a sickness.
Health's the grandest thing going,--a far sight better than
wealth." At
that moment the 'too-too-tootle' of the coach-horn came ringing towards them in a gay sonorous echo, and he started up. "By Jove! I must be off! Miss Payne! Clarinda!"
"Now, if it isn't like your impudence, Mr.
Montrose,"--said Miss Payne, appearing at the doorway with her
strong bare arms dusty with the flour of the scones she had just been
making, "to be calling me Clarinda! Upon my word I don't know
what the gentlemen are coming to,"--here she giggled and
simpered in spite of her fifty-two years, as Montrose, nothing daunted,
dropped more than the money due for the breakfast into her hand, and
audaciously kissed her on the cheek,--(he had no scruples about
kissing her, oh no! not at all!--though he had about
kissing Lionel,--) "Really they seem to be quite reckless
nowadays,--it was very different, I dew assure you, when I was a
gel--"
"Oh no, it wasn't, Clarinda, I dew assure
you!" laughed Montrose, with a playful mimicking of her voice and
manner--"It was just the same, and always will be the same to
the crack of doom! Men will always be devils,--and women--angels!
Good-bye, Clarinda!"
"Good-bye, sir! A pleasant journey to you!"
and Miss Payne bobbed up and down under her rose-covered porch, after precisely the same fashion in which the greatest ladies of the land make their 'dip' salutation to Royalty--"Hope to see you here again some day, sir!"
"I hope so too!" he answered cheerily, waving one hand,
while he grasped his portmanteau with the other, and walked with a swinging
stride down the village street, followed by Lionel, to the 'Pack
o' Cards' inn, where the coach had just arrived. It was a
picturesque 'turn-out,' with its four strong, sleek horses, its
passengers, all rendered more or less bright-faced by the freshness of the
morning air, its white-hatted coachman, and its jolly guard, who blew the
horn more for the pleasure of blowing it than anything else,--and
Lionel surveyed it in a kind of sober rapture.
"You are glad to go, Mr. Montrose,"--he
said--"You must be glad to go!"
"Yes, I am glad in one way"--replied Montrose,
"But I'm sorry in another. I'm sorry to leave you,
laddie,--I should like to be living here for awhile just to keep you
out of harm's way."
"Would you?" Lionel looked at him surprisedly. "But I
am never in the way of harm,--nothing ever happens to me of any
particular sort, you know. One day is just like another."
"Well, good-bye!" and Montrose, having given over his
portmanteau to the coach-guard, laid both his hands on the boy's
fragile shoulders, "When you get home, tell your father it was I who
took you out with me this morning to see me off, and that if he wants to
question me about it, he knows where a letter will find me. I
take all the blame, remember! Good-bye, my dear wee
laddie!--and--and--God bless you!"
Lionel's lip quivered, and the smile he managed to force was very
suggestive of tears.
"Good-bye!" he said faintly.
"Too-too-too-tootle-too!" carolled the guard on his shining
horn,--and Montrose climbed nimbly up to his place on the top of the
coach. The red-faced driver bent a severe eye on certain village children
that were standing about, agape with admiration at himself and his
equipage. "Now then! Out of the way, youngsters!" There
followed a general scrimmage, and the horses started.
"Too-too-tootle-too!" Up the village street they galloped
merrily in the cheerful sunlight, their manes blown back by the dancing
breeze.
"Good-bye! Good-bye!" shouted Montrose once more, waving his
straw hat energetically to the solitary small figure left standing in the
road.
But Lionel's voice could not now 'carry' far enough to
echo the farewell, so he only lifted his little red cap once in response,
the parting smile soon fading from his young face, and the worn pucker on
his brow deepening in intensity. He stood motionless,--watching till
the last glimpse of the coach had vanished,--then he started, as it
were from a waking dream, and found that he still held the Homer
volume,--Montrose had forgotten it. Some of the village children were
standing apart, staring at him, and he heard them saying something about
the 'little gemmun livin' up at the big 'ouse.' He
looked at them in his turn;--there were two nice red-cheeked boys with
red-cheeked apples in their hands,--their faces were almost the
counterpart of the apples in roundness and shininess. He would have liked
to talk to them, but he felt instinctively that if he made any advances in
this direction, they would probably be either timid or resentful,--so
he dismissed the idea from his mind, and went on his own solitary way. He
was not going home,--no,
--he was quite resolved to have a real holiday all to himself, before his new teacher arrived. And as he knew the ancient church of Combmartin was considered one of the chief objects of interest in the neighbourhood, and as, owing to his father's 'system' of education and ideas concerning religion or rather non-religion, he had been forbidden to visit it, he very naturally decided to go thither. And the tears he had resolutely kept back as long as Willie Montrose had been with him, now filled his eyes and dropped slowly, one by one, as he thought sorrowfully that now there would be no more pleasant tossings in an open boat on the sea,--no more excursions into the woods for 'botany lessons' which had served as an excuse for many do-nothing but health-giving rambles, and the reading or reciting of stirring ballads such as 'The Battle of the Baltic,' and 'Henry of Navarre,' under the refreshing shade of the beautiful green trees,--nothing of all this in future,--nothing to look forward to but the dreaded society of Professor Cadman-Gore. Professor Cadman-Gore had a terrible reputation for learning,--all the world was as one mighty jackass, viewed in the light of his prodigious and portentous intellect,--and the young boy's heart ached under the oppression of
his thoughts as he walked, with the lagging step and bent head of an old man, towards the wooden churchyard gate, lifted the latch softly, and went in, Homer in hand, to stroll about and meditate, Hamlet-wise, among the graves of the forgotten dead.
HEERE LYETH
YE EARTHLIE BODIE OF SIMON YEDDIE
Saddler in
Combmartin
WHO DYED
FULLE OF JOYE AND HOPE TO SEE
HIS DEARE
MASTER
CHRISTE
ON THE 17TH DAYE OF JUNE 1671. AGED 102.
'And
He lodged in ye House of one Simon, a Tanner.'
With much difficulty Lionel made out this quaint inscription, standing,
as he did, at some little distance off, in order not to frighten away the
robin. He had to spell each word over carefully before he could understand
it, and even when he had finally got it clear, it was still somewhat
incomprehensible to his mind. And while he stood thinking about it, and
wondering at the oddly chosen text which completed it, the robin redbreast
suddenly flew away with an alarmed chirp, and a man's head, covered
with a luxuriant crop of roughly curling white hair, rose, as it seemed,
out of the very ground, goblin-wise, and looked at him inquisitively.
Startled, yet by no means afraid, Lionel stepped back a few paces.
"Hulloa!" said the head. "Doan't be skeer'd,
little zur! I be only a-diggin' fur Mother Twiley."
The accent in which these words were spoken was extremely gentle, even
musical, despite its provincial intonation,--and Lionel's
momentary misgiving was instantly dispelled. Full of curiosity, he advanced
and discovered the speaker to be a big, broad-shouldered, and exceedingly
handsome man, the bulk of whose figure was partially hidden in a dark,
squarely-cut pit of earth, which the boy's instinct told him was a
grave.
"I'm not scared at all, thank you"--he said,
lifting his little red cap with the politeness which was habitual to
him--"It was only because your head came up so suddenly that I
started; I did not know anybody was here at all except the robin that flew
away just now. What a big hole you are making!"
"Aye!" And the man smiled, his clear blue eyes sparkling
with a cheery light as he turned over and broke a black clod of earth with
his spade,--"Mother Twiley allus liked plenty o' room!
Lor' bless 'er! When she was at her best, she 'minded me of
a haystack,--a comfortable, soft sort o' haystack for the
chillern to play an' jump about on,--an' there was allus
chillern round her for the matter o' that. Well! Now she's gone
there's not a body as has got a word agin her, an' that's
more than can be said for either kings or queens."
"Is she dead?" asked Lionel softly.
"Why, yes, s'fur as this world's consarned, she's
dead," was the reply--"But, Lord! what's this world!
Nuthin'! Just a breath, an' we're done wi't. It's
the next world we've got to look to, little zur,--the next world
is what we should all he a-workin' fur day an' night.
"'There's a glory o' the moon
An' a
glory o' the stars
But the glory o' the angels
shines
Beyond our prison bars!'"
He sang this verse melodiously in a rich sweet baritone, digging the
while and patting the sides of the grave smooth as he worked.
Lionel sat down on one of the grassy mounds and stared at him
thoughtfully.
"How can you believe all that nonsense?" he asked with
reproachful solemnity--"Such a big man as you are
too!"
The grave-digger stopped abruptly in his toil, and turning round,
surveyed the little lad with undisguised astonishment.
"How can I believe all that nonsense!" he repeated at last
slowly,--"Nonsense? Is a wee mousie like you a-talkin'
o' the blessed sure an' certain hope o' heaven as
nonsense? God ha' mercy on ye, ye poor little thing! Who
has had the bringin' of ye up, anyway?"
Lionel flushed deeply and his eyes smarted with repressed tears. He was
very lonely; and he wanted to talk to this cheery-looking man who had such
a soft musical voice and such a kindly smile, but now he feared he had
offended him.
"My name is Lionel,--Lionel Valliscourt," he said in
low, rather tremulous tones,--"I am the only son of Mr.
Valliscourt who has taken the big house over there for the
summer,--that one,--you can just see the chimneys through the
trees"--and he indicated the direction by a little wave of his
hand--"And I have always had very clever men for tutors ever
since I was six years old,--I shall be eleven next birthday,--and
they have taught me lots of things. And why I said the next world was
nonsense, was because I have always been told so. One would be very glad,
of course, if it were true, but then, it isn't true. It
is only an idea,--a sort of legend. My father says nobody with any
sense nowadays believes it. Scientific books prove to you, you know, that
when you go into a grave like that," and he pointed to the hole in
which the white-haired sexton stood, listening and inwardly
marvelling--"you are quite dead for ever,--you never see
the sun any more, or hear the birds sing, and you never find out why you
were made at all, which I think is very curious, and very cruel;--and
you are eaten up by the worms. Now it surely is nonsense,
isn't it, to think you can come to life again after you are eaten by
the
worms?--and that is what I meant, when I asked how you could believe such a thing. I hope you will excuse me,--I didn't wish to offend you."
The grave-digger still stood silent. His fine resolute features
expressed various emotions,--wonder, pain, pity and something of
indignation,--then, all at once these flitting shadows of thought
melted into a sunny smile of tenderness.
"Offend me? No indeed!--ye couldn't do that, my little
zur, if ye tried,--ye're too much of a babby. An' so
ye're Mr. Valliscourt's son, eh?--well, I'm Reuben
Dale, the verger o' th' church here, an' sexton, an'
road-mender, an' carpenter, an' anything else wotsoever my hand
finds to do, I does it with my might, purvided it harrums nobody an'
gits me a livin'. Now ye see these arms o' mine"--and
he raised one of the brown muscular limbs alluded to--"They
ha' served me well,--they ha' earned bread an'
clothing, an' kep' wife an' child, an' please God
they'll serve me yet many a long day, an' I'm grateful to
have 'em for use an' hard labour,--but I know the
time'll come when they'll be laid down in a grave like this
'ere, stark an' stiff an' decayin' away to the bone,
a-makin' soil fur vi'lets an' daisies to grow over me. But
what o'
that? I'll not be a-wantin' of 'em then,--no more than
I'm a-wantin' now the long clothes I wore when our passon
baptised me at t' old font yonder. I, who am, at present, owner
o' these arms, will be zumwheres else,--livin' an'
thinkin', an' please the Lord, workin' too, for work's
divine an' wholesome,--I'll 'ave better limbs mebbe,
an' stronger,--but whatsever body I get into, ye may depend
on't, little zur, it'll be as right an' fittin' for the
ways o' the next world, as the body I've got now is right
an' fittin' fur this one. An' my soul will be the same as
keeps me up at this moment, bad or good,--onny I pray it may get a bit
wiser an' better, an' not go down like." He raised his
clear blue eyes to the bright expanse above him, and murmured half
inaudibly,--
"Let him that thinketh he
standeth, take heed lest he fall,"--and seemed for a
moment lost in meditation.
"Please, Mr.--Mr. Dale, what do you mean by your soul?"
asked Lionel gravely.
Reuben Dale brought his rapt gaze down from the shining sky to the
quaint and solemn little figure before him.
"What do I mean, my dear?" he echoed, with a note of
compassion vibrating in his rich voice--
"I mean the onny livin' part o' me,--the 'vital spark o' heavenly flame' in all of us, that our dear Lord died to save. That's what I mean,--an' that's what you'll mean too, ye poor pale little chap, when ye'se growed up and begins to unnerstand all the marvels o' God's goodness to us ungrateful sinners. Onny to think o' the blessed sunshine should be enough fur the givin' o' thanks,--but Lord pity us!--we're sore forgetful of all our daily mercies!"
"And--your friend,--Mother Twiley,"--hinted
Lionel almost deferentially,--"Had she what you call a
soul?"
"Aye, that she had!--an' a great one, an' a true
one, an' an angel one,--fur all that she wor old, an' not so
well-looking in her body as she must ha' been in her
mind,"--replied the sexton, "But ye may be sure God found
her right beautiful in His sight when He tuk her to Himself t'other
evening just as the stars were risin.'"
"But how do you know,"--persisted Lionel, who was
getting deeply, almost painfully interested in the
conversation--"Do tell me please!--how do you
know she had a soul?"
"My dear, when you see a very poor old woman, with nothing of
world's comfort or
world's goods about her, bearing a humble an' hard lot in peace an' contentment, wi' a cheerful face an' bright eye, a smile fur every one, a heart fur the childer, forgiveness fur the wrongdoers, an' charity fur all, who can look back on eighty years o' life with a 'Praise God' for every breath of it, you may be sure that somethin' better an' higher than the mere poor, worn, tired body o' her, keeps 'er firm to 'er work an' true to her friends,--an' so 'twos with Mother Twiley. So fur as her body went 'twos just a trouble to her,--twitched wi' rheumatiz, an' difficult to manage in the matter o' mere breathing,--but her soul was straight enough, an' strong enough. Lord!--'ere in Combmartin we knew her soul so well that we forgot all about the poor old case it lived in,--I hardly think we saw it! Our bodies are weak bothersome things, my dear,--an' without a soul to help 'em along we should never keep 'em going."
"I believe that,"--said Lionel, heaving a little
sigh,--"I can't help believing it, though it's not
what I've been taught. My body is weak; it aches all over often.
Still, I think, Mr. Dale, that souls, such as you talk about, must be
exceptions, you know, Like blue eyes, for instance,--
everybody hasn't got blue eyes; well, perhaps everybody hasn't got a soul. You see that might be how it is. My father would be very angry if you told him he had a soul. And I know he will never let me have one, not even if I could grow it somehow."
Reuben Dale was speechless. He gazed at the boy's small sad face in
wonder too great for words. Himself a simple-hearted God-fearing man who
had lived all his life at Combmartin, working hard for his daily bread, and
entirely contented with his humble lot, he had never heard of the feverish
and foolish discussions held in over-populated cities, where deluded men
and women shut out God from their consciences, as they shut out the blue
sky by the toppling height and close crowding together of their hideous
houses,--where the very press teaches blasphemy and atheism, and
permits to pass into the hands of the public, with praise and
recommendation, such lewd books as might move even a Rabelais to sick
abhorrence. And he certainly had never deemed it possible that any form of
government could exist in the world, which favoured the bringing-up and
education of children without religion. He had heard of France,--but
he was
not aware that it had eschewed religion from its public schools, and was rapidly becoming a mere forcing-bed for the production of child-thieves, child-murderers, and child-parricides. He believed in England as he believed in God, with that complete and glorious faith in mother-country which makes the nation great,--and it would have been a shock to his steadfast, deeply religious nature, had he been told that even this beloved England of ours, misled by those who should have been her best guardians, was accepting lessons from France in open atheism, 'Simianism,' and general 'free' morality. Thus, the child that sat before him was a kind of unnatural prodigy to his sight,--the little pale face, framed in an aureole of fair curling hair, might have aptly fitted an angel,--but the elderly manner, the methodical, precise fashion in which this young thing spoke, seemed to honest Reuben 'uncanny,' and he ruffled his beard with one hand in dire perplexity, quite taken aback, and at a loss how to continue the conversation. For how could he give any instruction in the art of 'growing' a soul? Happily however, a diversion here occurred in the sudden, almost noiseless approach of a tiny girl, with the prettiest little face imaginable, that
peered out like a pink rose from under a white 'poke' sun-bonnet and a tangle of nut-brown curls,--a little girl who appeared to Lionel's eyes like a vision of Helen of Troy in miniature, so lovely and dainty was her aspect. He had never been allowed to read any fairy-tales, so he could not liken her to a fairy, which would have been more natural,--but he had done a lot of heavy translation-work in Homer, and he knew that all the heroes in the "Iliad" quarrelled about this Helen, and that she was very beautiful. Therefore he immediately decided that Helen of Troy when she was a little girl (she must have been a little girl once!) was exactly like the charming small person who now came towards him, carrying a wicker basket on her arm, and tripping across graves as delicately as though she were nothing but a blossom blown over them by the summer breeze.
"Halloa!" exclaimed Reuben Dale, throwing down his spade,
"Here's my little 'un! Well, my Jas'min flower!
Bringin' a snack for th' old feyther?"
At this query the little girl smiled, creating a luminous effect beneath
her poke-bonnet as though a sunbeam were caught within it,--then
she made a small round O of her tiny red mouth, with the evident intention to thereby convey a hint of something delicious. And finally she opened her basket, and took out a brown jug, full of hot fragrant coffee, lavishly frothed at the top with cream, and two big slices of home-made bread and butter.
"Is that right, feyther?" she inquired, as she carefully set
these delicacies on the edge of the grave within her father's
reach.
"That's right, my bird!"--responded Reuben,
lifting her in his arms high above his head, and giving her a sounding kiss
on both her rosy cheeks as he put her down again--"An' look
'ere Jessamine, there's a little gemmun for ye to talk to. Go
an' say how-d'y-do to 'im."
Thus commanded, Jessamine obeyed, strictly to the letter. She went to
where Lionel sat admiringly watching her, and put out her dumpy mite of a
hand.
"How-d'y-do!" said she. And before Lionel could utter a
word in reply she had shaken her curls defiantly, and run away! The boy
sprang up, pained and perplexed;--Reuben Dale laughed.
"After her, my lad! Run!--the run'll do ye good!
She's just like that at first,--fur all
the world like a kitten, fond o' fun! Ye'll find 'er a-hidin' round the corner!"
Thus encouraged, Lionel ran,--actually ran,--a thing he very
seldom did. He became almost a hero, like the big men of the
'Iliad'! His 'Helen' was
'a-hidin' round the corner,'--he was valiantly
determined to find her,--and after dodging the little white sun-bonnet
round trees and over tombs till he was well-nigh breathless, she, like all
feminine things, condescended to be caught at last, and to look shyly in
the face of her youthful captor.
"What boy be you?" she asked, biting the string of her
sun-bonnet with an air of demure coquetry--"You be
prutty,--all th' boys roond 'ere be oogly."
Oh, what an accent for a baby 'Helen of Troy'!--and yet
how charming it was to hear her say 'oogly,' because she made
another of those little round O's of her mouth that suggested
deliciousness;--even the deliciousness of kissing. Lionel thought he
would like to kiss her, and coloured hotly at the very idea. Meanwhile his
'Helen of Troy' continued her observation of him.
"Would 'ee like an aaple?" she demanded,
producing a small, very rosy one from the depths of a miniature pocket,--"I'll gi' ye this, if s'be ye'se let me bite th' red bit oot."
If ever a young lady looked 'fetching,' as the slang phrase
expresses it, Miss Jessamine Dale did so at that moment. What with the
mischievous light in her dark blue eyes, and the smile on her little mouth
as she suggested that she should 'bite the red bit,' and the
altogether winsome, provocative, innocent allurement of her manner, Lionel
quite lost his head for the moment, and forgot everything but the natural
facts that he was a little boy, and she was a little girl. He laughed
merrily,--such a laugh as he had not enjoyed for many a weary
day,--and taking the apple from her hand, held it to her lips while
she carefully closed her tiny teeth on the 'red bit' and
secured it, the juice dropping all over her dimpled chin.
"I'm to have the rest, am I?" said Lionel then,
venturing to hold her by the arm and assist her over a very large and very
ancient grave, wherein reposed, as the half-broken tombstone said,
"Ye Bodie of Martha Dumphy, Aged Ninety-seven Yeeres." Long,
long ago lived Martha Dumphy,--long, long ago she died,--but
could anything of her have still been conscious, she would have felt no offence or sacrilege in the tread of those innocent young feet that sprang so lightly over her last resting-place.
"Yes, you're to 'ave the rest,"--replied
Jessamine benevolently,--then with an infinite slyness and humour she
added--"I've got 'nuther i' my
poacket!"
How they laughed, to be sure! Forgetful of 'Ye Bodie of Martha
Dumphy,' they sat down on the grass that covered her old bones, and
enjoyed their apples to the full, Miss Jessamine generously bestowing the
'red bit' of the second apple on Lionel, who, though he was not
really hungry, found something curiously appetising in these stray morsels
of juicy fruit lately plucked from the tree.
"Coom into th' church,"--then said Jessamine,
"Feyther's left the door open. Coom an' see th' big
lilies on th' Lord's table."
Lionel looked into her lovely little face, feeling singularly
embarrassed by this invitation. He knew what she meant of course,--he
had been duly instructed in the form of the Christian 'myth,'
as a myth only, in company with all the other creeds known to history. They
had
been bracketed together for his study and consideration in a group of twelve, thus:--
Atom, productive of other atoms which moved in circles of fortuitous regularity, shaping worlds indifferently, and without any Mind-force whatever behind the visible Matter. Thus had the intellectual classes fathomed the Eternal, entirely to their own satisfaction,--and of course he, poor little Lionel, was being brought up to take his place among the intellectual classes, where his father was already a shining light of dogmatic pedantry. He was assured that only the poor, the ignorant, and the feeble-minded still appealed to God as "Our Father," and believed in the socialist workman, Jesus of Nazareth, as a Divine Personage whose way of life and death had shown all men the road to Heaven. One of the chief faults found with Willie Montrose as a tutor, had been his implicit faith in these supernatural things, and his point-blank refusal to teach his young pupil otherwise. Hence the subject, Religion, had been removed altogether from Lionel's 'course of study,' and the unswerving firmness Montrose had shown on the matter had led, among other more trifling drawbacks, to his dismissal. All this was fresh in the boy's mind,--and now Jessamine said "Coom an' see th' big lilies on th' Lord's table!" She, then, was one of the 'semi-
barbarians,' this pretty little girl,--and yet how happy she seemed!--what an innocent, dove-like expression of tenderness and trust shone in her eyes as she spoke! How very young she was!--and alas, how very old he felt as he looked at her! She knew so little,--he had learned so much, and though he was but four years her senior, he seemed in his own pained consciousness to be an elderly man studying the merry pranks of a child.
"Coom!" repeated Jessamine,--her 'coom'
sounding very like the soft note of a ring-dove, as she got up from the
grassy bed of 'Martha Dumphy's' everlasting
sleep--"It be cool i' th' church,--we'll sit
i' th' poopit an' y' shall tell me a story 'bout
Heaven. Y' know all 'bout angels don't 'ee? How they
cooms down all in white an kisses us when we'se in bed asleep? Did
ever any of 'em kiss 'ee?"
Lionel's lonely little heart beat strangely. An angel kiss
him!--what a sweet fancy,--but how foolish! Yet with
Jessamine's face so near his own he could not tell her that he did not
believe in angels, she looked so like a little one herself. So he answered
her quaint question with a simple
"No!"
"I woul' ha' thowt they did,"--continued
Jessamine encouragingly--"Ye bain't a bad boy, be ye?"
Lionel smiled rather plaintively.
"Perhaps I am"--he said,--"and perhaps
that's why the angels don't come."
"My mother's an angel," went on Jessamine, "She
couldn't abear bein' away from God no longer, an' so she
flew to Heaven one night quite suddint, with big white wings an' a
star on her head. Feyther says she often flies doon jes' for a minute
like, an' kisses 'im, an' me too, when we'se asleep.
Auntie Kate takes care of us since she went."
"Then she is dead?" queried Lionel.
"Nowt o' that,"--replied Jessamine peacefully,
"Hasn't I told 'ee she's an angel?"
"But have you ever seen her since she went away?" persisted
the boy.
"No. I bain't good enough,"--and a small sigh of
pathetic self-reproach heaved the baby breast--"I'se very
little yet, an' bad offen. But I'll see her some day for
sure."
Lionel could find nothing to say to this, and in another minute they had
entered the church together. The subtle sweet fragrance of the 'big
lilies on th' Lord's table' came floating
towards them on a cool breath of air as the heavy old oaken door swung open and closed again, and they paused in the aisle, hand in hand, looking gravely up and down,--first at the tall white flowers that filled the gilt vases on either side of the altar, mystically suggesting in their snowy stateliness, the words 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God';--then, at the patterns of blue, red and amber cast on the stone pavement by the reflections of the sun through the stained-glass windows. The ancient roof, with its crookedly planned oak mouldings of the very earliest English style of architecture, had a grave and darkening effect on the sunshine, and the solemn hush of the place, expressive of past prayer, impressed Lionel with a sweet yet unfamiliar sense of rest. Jessamine grasped his hand closer.
"Coom into th' poopit,"--she
whispered--"There be soft cushions there an' a big big
Bible,--I'll show 'ee a pictur,"--here she opened
her eyes very wide--"my pictur!--my own very
best pictur!"
Somewhat curious to see this treasure, Lionel climbed with her up the
pulpit-stairs, feeling that he was really having what might be called
an adventure on this his stolen holiday. Jessamine was evidently quite familiar with the pulpit as a coign of vantage, for she hauled the big Bible she had spoken of out of its recess with much care and much breathless labour, and placed it on a velvet cushion on the floor. Then she curled herself down beside it and, turning over a few pages, beckoned Lionel to kneel and look also.
"Here 'tis!" she said with a soft chuckle of
rapture--"See! See this prutty boy!--you's
somethin' a bit like, aint'y? An' see all these oogly ole
men! They'se wise people, so they thinks. An' th' prutty
boy's tellin' 'em how silly they be, an' aw' in a
muddle wi' their books an' larnin,'--an' how good
God is, an' all 'bout Heaven,--see! An' they'se
very angry wi'm an' 'stonished, 'cos He's onny a
boy, an' they'se all ole men as cross as sticks. An' there
He is y'see, an' He knows all about what they oogly men
doan't know, 'cos He's the little Jesus."
The subject of the picture was Christ expounding the Law to the doctors
of the Temple, and Lionel studied it with an almost passionate interest.
Only a boy!--and yet in His boyhood He was able to teach the would-be
wise men of His day!
"Though," thought Lionel, with his usual melancholy cynicism, "perhaps they were not really wise, and that is why He found it easy."
Meanwhile Jessamine having gloated over her 'own best
pictur' sufficiently, shut the book, put it religiously back in its
place, and sat herself down beside her companion on the top step of the
pulpit-stair.
"Wot's y' name?" she demanded.
"Lionel," he answered.
"Li'nel? How funny! Wot's Li'nel? 'Tain't
a flower?"
"No. Your name is a flower."
"'Iss! Our jess'mine tree was all over bloom the
mornin' I was born, an' that's why I'm called
Jessamine. I likes my name better'n your'n."
"So do I," said Lionel smiling--"Mine is not
nearly such a pretty name. My mother calls me Lylie."
"I likes that,--that's prutty,--I'se
call'y Lylie too," declared Miss Jessamine promptly, and as she
spoke she slipped an arm confidingly round his neck--"You be a
nice boy Lylie! Now tell me a story!"
sky-tint of the forget-me-not, or the iris-veined heart of the Egyptian lotus. But the child-look is in such blossoms, and we often recognise it when we come suddenly upon them peering heavenwards out of the green tangles of grass and fern. Jessamine's eyes were a mixture of grave pansy-hues and laughing forget-me-nots, and when she smiled both these flowers appeared to meet with a pretty rivalry in her shining glances. And once again Lionel thought of Helen of Troy.
"Ain't 'ee got no story?" quoth she presently,
after waiting a patient two minutes--"What book be that
there?"
And she put a dumpy little red finger on the copy of Homer left behind
by Willie Montrose and still carried under Lionel's arm.
"It's Homer," replied the boy promptly--"My
tutor went away by the first coach this morning and he forgot to take it
with him. It's his book, and a favourite copy,--I must send it to
him by post."
"'Iss,--'ee must send it to him," echoed
Jessamine approvingly--"What be 'Omer?"
"He was a great poet,--the first great poet that ever lived,
so far as history knows, and he was an ancient
Greek,"--explained Lionel--"He lived
--oh, ages ago. He tells all about the Trojan wars in this book; it's an epic."
"What's epik?" inquired Jessamine--"An'
what's Drojunwors?"
Lionel laughed softly. The gravity of the old church roof hung over him,
otherwise his laughter would have been less restrained.
"You wouldn't understand it, if I told you, dear," he
said, becoming suddenly protective and manful as he realised her delightful
ignorance and weakness--"Homer was a poet,--do you know
what poetry is?"
"'Iss,--'deed I do!" declared Jessamine,
allowing her head to droop caressingly on his shoulder, "I've
'eerd a lot o't. I'll tell you some,--it be like
this--
"Gentle Jesus meek an' mild,
Look upon a little
child,
Pity my simplicitie
An' suffer me to come to
Thee!"
She looked up as she finished the familiar stanza with one of her
radiant baby smiles.
"Didn't I say that nice?" she demanded.
"Very nice!" murmured Lionel, while thoughts were flying
round and round in his brain concerning the 'semi-barbarians who
still believed in
the Christian myth,' which was one of his father's constantly repeated and favourite phrases.
"Now tell me some more 'Omer an'
Drojunwors,"--she said, nestling against him like a soft
kitten--"Is it 'bout angels?"
"No," replied Lionel,--"It is all about great big
men,--very big men--"
"Too big to get into this church?" queried Jessamine in
awe-struck tones.
"Yes--I believe they would have been too big to get into this
church"--said Lionel, smiling involuntarily--"And
they all fought about a lady called Helen, who was the most beautiful woman
in the world."
"Why did she let 'em fight?" asked Jessamine
gravely--"She was not a good lady to let the poor big men fight
an' 'urt theirselves for 'er. She should 'ave made
'em all friends."
"She couldn't,"--said Lionel--"You see
they wouldn't be friends."
"They must ha' been funny big men!" murmured
Jessamine--"Where be they all now?"
"Oh, dead ever so long ago!" laughed the
boy--"Some people say they never lived at all!"
"Oh then it's all fairy-tale like Puss-in-Boots," said
Jessamine--"Your Drojunwors is a fairy-
book like mine. Only I like Puss-in-Boots better. Do 'ee know my fairy-book?"
Lionel had never had what is called a 'fairy-book' in his
life, fairy-books having been considered by his father in the same light as
that with which Mr. H. Holman, one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of
Schools recently regarded them, publicly denouncing them as
"dangerous to morality and mischievous as to knowledge, contradicting
the most obvious and elementary facts of experience." (Alas, good
Dry-as-Dust Holman! How much thou art to be pitied for never having been in
the least young! And dost thou not realise that Religion itself in all its
forms of creed, 'contradicts the most obvious and elementary facts of
experience'?) The little Lionel was unacquainted with Mr. Holman, but
he knew his own father's stern contempt for fairy-tales, even for
those which have, in many cases, strangely foretold some of the most
brilliant recent discoveries in science, so he replied to Jessamine's
question by a negative shake of his head, the while he gazed admiringly at
the nut-brown curls that rippled in charming disarray on his shoulder.
"I'll tell 'ee somethin' in it,"--she
continued,
with the thinking dreamy air of a child-angel rapt in some sublime reverie--"There wos once a little girl an' a little boy,--'bout s' big as we be,--they wos good an' prutty, an' they'd got a bad, bad ole uncle. He couldn't abide 'em 'cos they wos s' good an' 'e wos s' bad; so one day 'e took 'em out in a great big dark wood where no sun couldn't shine, an' there 'e lost 'em both. An' when they wos lost, they walked 'bout, up an' down, an' couldn't get out nohow, an' they got tired an' 'ungry, an' so they laid down an' said their prayers, an' put their arms round each other's necks,--so--"and here Jessamine cuddled closer--"an' died jest right off, an' God took 'em straight to Heaven. An' then all the robin redbreasts i' th' wood were sorry 'bout it, an' they came an' covered 'em all over wi' beautiful red an' green leaves, 'cos God told the robins to bury 'em jest so, 'cos they wos good an' their ole uncle wos bad, an' the robins did jest what God told 'em." Her voice died away in a soft croodling whisper, and her eyelids drooped. "Was that a nice story?" she asked.
"Very!" responded Lionel almost paternally, feeling quite
old and wise, as he ventured now to put his own arm round her.
"I fink," murmured Jessamine then--"that
'oor bad ole Drojunwors 'as made me sleepy."
And as a matter of fact, in a couple of minutes, the little maiden was
fast asleep, her pretty mouth half open like a tiny rosebud, and the light
rise and fall of her breathing suggesting the delicate palpitations of a
dove's breast. Lionel sat very quiet, still encircling her with his
arm, and looked dreamily about him. He studied the altar-screen immediately
in front of him, regarding with somewhat of a gravely inquiring air the
ancient, roughly carved oaken figures of the twelve apostles that partly
formed it. He knew all about them of course,--that they were
originally common fishermen picked up on the shores of Galilee by Jesus the
son of Joseph the carpenter, and that they went about with Him everywhere,
while He preached the new strange Gospel of Love which seemed like madness
to a world of contention, envy and malice. They were just poor ordinary
men;--not kings,--not warriors,--not nobly born,--not
distinguished for either learning or courage,--and yet they had become
far greater in history than any monarch that ever lived,--they were
evangelists, saints, nay almost secondary gods in the opinion of a section
of "semi-barbaric"
mankind. It was very strange!--very strange indeed, thought Lionel as he gazed earnestly at their quaint wooden faces,--and stranger still that a mere man who was a carpenter's son, should have made the larger and more civilised portion of humanity believe in Him as God, for more than eighteen hundred years! What had He done? Why nothing,--but good. What had He taught? Nothing--but purity and unselfishness. What was He? A determined reformer, who strove to upset the hard and fast laws of Jewish tradition, and unite all classes in one broad and holy creed of love to God and Brotherhood,--a union of the Divine and Human which should ultimately lead to perfection. Even the various tutors who had taken their several turns at setting poor Lionel's little mind like a knife to the grindstone of learning, had been unable to say otherwise than that this Nazarene carpenter's son was good and wise and brave. In goodness none ever surpassed Him,--that was certain. Socrates was wise and brave,--but he was not actually good;--many sins could be laid to his charge, and the same could be asserted of all the other famous moralists and philosophers who had essayed to teach the various successive generations of men. But against
Christ, nothing could be said. True, He denounced the Jewish priesthood on the score that they were hypocrites; "and surely,"--thought Lionel with a prescience beyond his years, "He would have to denounce the Christian priesthood too, if it is true, as my father says, that they all preach what they don't believe, simply to gain a living." He sighed,--and his eyes wandered to the 'big lilies on th' Lord's table' with a wistful yearning. Those great white cups of fragrance!--with what sweet pride they stood up, each on its green stem, and silently breathed out praise to the Creator of their loveliness! "Behold the lilies of the field!--they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." How true that was! Put 'Solomon in all his glory' or any monarch that ever existed beside 'one of these' tall fair flowers, and he in his coronation-robes and crown, would seem but a mere doll-puppet decked out in tawdry tinsel. Lionel drew the little Jessamine closer to him as she slept, and sighed again,--the unconscious sigh of a tired young thing overweighted with thought, and longing for rest and tenderness. The summer sunlight streamed down upon the two children with a broad
beneficence, as though the love of Christ for the weak and helpless were mixed with the golden rays,--as though the very silence and purity of the light expressed the Divine meaning,--"These 'little ones' are Mine as the lilies are Mine! Suffer them to come to Me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." And as Lionel mused and dreamed, becoming gradually drowsy himself, the church-door swung softly open, and Reuben Dale the verger entered, with another and younger man, who carried a roll of music under his arm, and who immediately ascended alone to the organ-loft. Dale meanwhile paused, lifting his cap reverently, and looking about him in evident search for his little girl. Lionel beckoned to him from the pulpit-stairs, at the same time laying a finger on his lips to intimate that Jessamine was asleep. Honest Reuben advanced on tip-toe, and surveyed the two small creatures encircled in one another's arms, with undisguised and good-natured admiration.
"Now that's jest prutty!" he murmured inaudibly to
himself--"An' as nat'ral as two young burrds! An'
yon poor pale little lad looks a'most as if he was 'appy for once
in's life!"
At that moment a solemn chord of sound stirred
the air,--the organist had commenced his daily practice, and was deftly unweaving the melodious intricacies of a stately fugue of Bach's, made doubly rich in tone by the grave pedal-bass with which it was sustained and accompanied. Lionel started,--and Jessamine awoke. Rubbing her chubby little fists into her eyes, she sat up, yawned and stared,--then smiled bewitchingly as she saw her father.
"We wos babes i' th' wood"--she explained
sweetly--"An' we wos waitin' fur the robins to come
an' cover us up. Onny I 'specs they couldn't git froo
th' windows to bring th' leaves."
"I 'specs not indeed!" said Dale, the kind smile
broadening on his mouth and lighting up his fine eyes--"Now ye
jest coom out o' that there poopit, ye little pixie--it's
dinner-time, an' we'se goin' 'ome."
Jessamine rose promptly and skipped down the pulpit-stairs, Lionel
following her.
"Coom along wi' us,"--she said taking him
affectionately by the arm--"Ain't 'e
a'-coomin' feyther?--'e be a rare nice boy!"
"If s' be as 'e likes to coom, why sartinly an'
welcome!" responded Reuben,--"But he's a little
gemmun as 'as got a feyther an' mother o's own, an'
mebbe they wants 'im."
Lionel stood silent and inert. They were going away
'home,'--this cheery verger and his pretty
child,--and the old creeping sense of oppression and loneliness stole
over the boy's mind and chilled his heart. The music surging out from
the organ-loft moved him strangely to thoughts hitherto
unfamiliar,--and he thought he would stay alone in the church and
listen, and try to understand the subtle meaning of such glorious, yet
wordless eloquence. It seemed like angels singing,--only there were no
angels!--it made one fancy the gates of Heaven were open,--only
there was no Heaven!--it suggested God's great voice speaking
tenderly,--only there was no God! A deep sigh broke from
him,--and all unconsciously two big tears rose in his eyes, and
splashed down wet and glistening on his little blue woollen vest. In a
second the impulsive Jessamine had thrown her arms about him.
"O don't 'ee ky!" she crooned fondly in his
ear--"We'se both goin' 'ome wi' feyther,
an' 'e'll be kind t' ye! An' when we've
'ad our dinner I'll show 'ee my dee ole
'oss!--such a nice ole 'oss 'e
be!"
Despite himself Lionel laughed, though his lips still trembled. Poor
boy, he could hardly himself
understand the cause of his own emotion,--why his heart had given that sudden heave of pain,--why the tears had come,--or why he had felt so desolately, sorrowfully alone in a huge, cold, pitiless world,--but he was grateful to Jessamine all the same for her sympathy. Reuben Dale meanwhile had been studying him gravely and curiously.
"Would 'ee reely like to coom an' take a snack wi'
us, little zur?" he asked gently and with a certain
deference--"Ours is onny a poor cottage, ye know, an' sadly
out o' repair,--we'se 'ad no lord o' th'
manor coom nigh us for many a year to look arter us an' see how we be
a-farin',--none o' them fine folks cares for either our
souls or bodies, purvidin' they gits their money out o' our
labour an' worrit. All we 'as by way o' remembrance from
'em is a 'love-letter' twice a year a-claimin'
o' their rent,--they never fails to send us that
'ffectionate message"--and his eyes twinkled
humorously--"but as fur puttin' a new fence or a new roof
or makin' of us comfortabler like for our money, Lor' bless
'ee, they never thinks o't. But if ye'll take us as ye find
us, ye'll be right welcome to coom on an' play wi' Jessamine
a bit longer."
"Thank you very much,--I should dearly like to
come,"--said Lionel wistfully--"You see I am all
alone just now,--my tutor went away this morning, and another tutor is
coming to-night to take his place,--but in the meantime there is
nothing for me to do, as the plan of my studies is going to be
changed,--it is always being changed,--and so I may as well be
here as at home. I am giving myself a holiday to-day"--here he
raised his eyes and looked Reuben Dale straight in the
face--"and I wish to tell you Mr. Dale, that I am doing it
without my father's knowledge or permission. I am so tired of
books!--and I love to be out in the fresh air. Of course now you know
this, you mayn't wish to have me, but then if you will please say so,
I will go into the woods for the rest of the day, or stay by myself in the
church. I should like to see more of the church,--it interests
me."
Dale regarded the little fellow steadfastly, first in doubt and
perplexity--then with a broadening smile
"Tired o' books, be 'ee?" he
queried--"Well!--ye're young enough,
sure-ly! An' books can wait awhile for ye. Reyther than
go wanderin' i' th' woods by y'self, ye'd better
coom along wi' me an' Jessamine,--onny mind, ye must tell
yer
feyther where ye ha' been,--ye must be sartin zure o' that!"
"Of course I'll tell him,"--responded Lionel
manfully--"I always tell him everything, no matter how angry he
is. You see he is very often angry, whatever I do or say,--though he
means it all for my good. He is a very good man,--he has never done
anything wrong in all his life."
"Ay, ay! Then he's jest a miracle!" said Reuben
drily,--"Well now, little zur, 'fore we goes, I'll
take ye round th' church,--there ain't much to see, but what
there is I know more about than any one else in Combmartin.
Coom!--look at these 'ere altar-gates."
He spoke in soft tones, and trod softly as befitted the sanctity of the
place,--and the two children followed him, hand in hand, as he
approached the oaken screen and pointed out the twelve apostles carved upon
it.
"Now do 'ee know, little zur," said he, "why this
'ere carvin' is at least two hunner' years
old--an' likely more'n that?"
"No," answered Lionel, squeezing Jessamine's little
warm hand in his own, out of sheer comfort at feeling that he was not to be
separated from her yet.
"Jest watch these 'ere gates as I pull 'em to an'
fro,"*--continued
Reuben,--"Do what ye will wi' 'em, they won't
shut,--see!" and he proved the fact beyond
dispute,--"That shows they wos made 'fore the days o'
Cromwell. For in they times all the gates o' th' altars was
copied arter the pattern o' Scripture which sez--'An'
the gates o' Heaven shall never be shut, either by day or by
night.' Then when Cromwell came an' broke up the statues,
an' tore down the picters or whited them out wheresever they wos on
th' walls, the altars was made different, wi' gates that shut
an' locked,--I s'pose 'e was that sing'ler afraid
of idolatry that 'e thought the folks might go an' worship
th' Communion cup on th' Lord's table. So now ye'll be
able to tell when ye sees the inside of a church, whether the altar-gates
is old or new, by this one thing,--if they can't shut,
they're 'fore Cromwell's day,--if they can,
they're wot's called modern gimcrackery. Now, see the
roof!"
Lionel looked up, much impressed by the verger's learning.
___________________* The description of
Combmartin Church in these pages is given as nearly as possible in the
words of the verger, one James Norman, (may he long enjoy his cheerful,
manly and contented life!) who, all unconsciously, "sat" to the
author last summer for the portrait of "Reuben Dale."
Page 96
"Folks 'as bin 'ere an' said quite
wise-like--'O that roof's quite modern,'--but
'tain't nuthin' o' th' sort. See them oak
mouldings?--not one o' them's straight,--not a line!
They couldn't get 'em exact in them days,--they wosn't
clever enough. So they're all crooked an' 'bout as old as
th' altar-screen,--mebbe older, for if ye stand 'ere jest
where I be, ye'll see they all bend more one way than t'other,
makin' the whole roof look lop-sided like, an' why's that
d'ye think? Ye can't tell? Well, they'd a reason for what
they did in them there old times, an' a sentiment too,--an'
they made the churches lean a bit to the side on which our Lord's head
bent on the Cross when He said 'It is finished!' Ye'll
find nearly all th' old churches lean a bit that way,--it's
a sign of age, as well as a sign o' faith. Now look at these 'ere
figures on the pews,--ain't they all got their 'eds cut
off?"
Lionel admitted that they had, with a grave little nod,--Jessamine,
who copied his every gesture for the moment, nodded too.
"That wos Cromwell's doin',"--went on
Reuben,--"'E an' 'is men wos consumed-like
wi' what they called the fury o' holiness, an' they thought
all these figures wos false gods and sym-
bols of idolatry, an' they jest cut their 'eds off,--executed 'em as 'twere, like King Charles hisself. Now look up there,"--and he pointed to a narrow window on the left-hand side of the chancel--"There's a prutty colour comin' through that bit o' glass! It's the only mossel o' real old stained glass i' th' church,--an' it's a rare sight older than the church itself. D'ye know how to tell old stained glass from new? No? Well, I'll tell ye. When it's old it's very thick,--an' if ye put your hand on its wrong side it's rough,--very rough, jest as if 'twere covered wi' baked cinders,--that's allus a sure an' sartin proof o' great age. Modern stained glass ye'll find a'most as smooth an' polished on its wrong side as on its right. Now, if ye coom into th' vestry I'll show ye the real old chest what wos used for Peter's pence when we wos under Papist rule."
He led the way across the central aisle,--Lionel followed,
interested and curious, thinking meanwhile that this handsome white-haired
verger could not exactly be called a stupid man, or even a
'semi-barbarian,'--he was decidedly intelligent, and
seemed to know something about the facts of history.
"There's an old door fur ye!" he said with
almost an air of triumph as he paused on the vestry threshold and rapped his fingers lightly on the thick oak panels of the ancient portal--"That's older than anything in the church--I shouldn't a bit wonder if it came out o' some sacred place o' Norman worship,--it looks like it. An' here's th' old key"--and he held up a quaint and heavy iron implement that looked more like a screw-driver with a cross handle than anything else,--"An' here's Peter's little money-box,"--showing a ponderous oak chest some five feet long and three feet high--"That 'ud 'old a rare sight o' pennies, wouldn't it! Now don't you two chillern go a-tryin' to lift the lid, for it's mortal 'eavy, an' it 'ud crush your little 'an's to pulp in a minnit. I'll let ye see the inside o't,--there y'are!"
And with a powerful effort of his sinewy arms he threw it open,
disclosing its black worm-eaten interior, with a few old bits of tarnished
silver lying at the bottom, the fragments of a long disused
Communion-service. Lionel and Jessamine peered down at these with immense
inquisitiveness.
"Lor' bless me!" said Reuben then, laughing a
little,--"There's a deal o' wot I calls silly
faith left in some o' they good Papist folk still. There wos a nice ole leddy cam' 'ere last summer, an' she believed that Peter hisself cam' down from Heaven o' nights, an' tuk all the money offered 'im, specially pennies, fur they'se the coins chiefly mentioned i' th' Testament, an' she axed me to let 'er put a penny in,--I s'pose she thought the saint might be in want o't. 'For, my good man,' sez she to me, ''ave you never 'eerd that St. Peter still visits th' world, an' when he cooms down 'ere, it may be he might need this penny o' mine to buy bread.' 'Do as ye like marm,' sez I,--'it don't make no difference to me I'm sure!' Well, she put the penny in, bless 'er 'art!--an' this Christmas past I wos a-cleanin' an' rubbin' up everything i' th' church, an' in dustin' out this 'ere box, there I saw that penny,--St. Peter 'adn't come arter it! So I just tuk it!" and he chuckled softly--"I tuk it an' giv' it to a poor old beggar-man outside the church-gate, so I played Peter fur once i' my life, an' not s' badly I 'ope, but wot I shall be furgiven!"
The smile deepened at the corners of his mouth and sparkled in his fine
eyes as he shut the great coffer, and stood up in all his manly height and
breadth, surveying the two small creatures beside him.
"Well, do 'ee like th' old church, little zur? he asked
of Lionel, whose face expressed an intense and melancholy gravity.
"Indeed I do!" answered the boy--"But I think I
like the music even better,--listen! What is that?" And he held
up one hand with a gesture of rapt attention.