The Seaboard Parish, Complete

But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low and earnest. One I recognised as Joe’s voice. The other was a woman’s. I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore felt no immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat debating with myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length, in a lull of the wind, I heard the woman say—I could fancy with a sigh—

“I’m sure you’ll du what is right, Joe. Don’t ‘e think o’ me, Joe.”

“It’s just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben’t for my sake. Surely you know that?”

There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best do—go away quietly or let them know I was there—when she spoke again. There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and I heard what she said well enough.

“It ben’t for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don’t think you be going to die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?”

It flashed across me how once before, a stormy night and darkness had brought me close to a soul in agony. Then I was in agony myself; now the world was all fair and hopeful around me—the portals of the world beyond ever opening wider as I approached them, and letting out more of their glory to gladden the path to their threshold. But here were two souls straying in a mist which faith might roll away, and leave them walking in the light. The moment was come. I must speak.

“Joe!” I called out.

“Who’s there?” he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.

“Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?”

“We can’t be very far off,” he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure at finding me so nigh.

I rose, and peering about through the darkness, found that they were a little higher up on the same rock by which I was sheltered.

“You mustn’t think,” I said, “that I have been eavesdropping. I had no idea anyone was near me till I heard your voices, and I did not hear a word till just the last sentence or two.”

“I saw someone go up the Castle-rock,” said Joe; “but I thought he was gone away again. It will be a lesson to me.”

“I’m no tell-tale, Joe,” I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. “You will have no cause to regret that I happened to overhear a little. I am sure, Joe, you will never say anything you need be ashamed of. But what I heard was sufficient to let me into the secret of your trouble. Will you let me talk to Joe, Agnes? I’ve been young myself, and, to tell the truth, I don’t think I’m old yet.”

“I am sure, sir,” she answered, “you won’t be hard on Joe and me. I don’t suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we can’t be—married.”

She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was a certain womanly composure in her utterance. “I’m sure it’s very bold of me to talk so,” she added, “but Joe will tell you all about it.”

I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the motion of her hand stealing into his.

“Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted,” I said. “A woman can be braver than a big smith sometimes. Agnes has done her part. Now you do yours, and tell me all about it.”

No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.

“I think I know how the matter lies, Joe. You think you are not going to live long, and that therefore you ought not to marry. Am I right?”

“Not far off it, sir,” he answered.

“Now, Joe,” I said, “can’t we talk as friends about this matter? I have no right to intrude into your affairs—none in the least—except what friendship gives me. If you say I am not to talk about it, I shall be silent. To force advice upon you would be as impertinent as useless.”

“It’s all the same, I’m afraid, sir. My mind has been made up for a long time. What right have I to bring other people into trouble? But I take it kind of you, sir, though I mayn’t look over-pleased. Agnes wants to hear your way of it. I’m agreeable.”

This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for proceeding.

“I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is the will of God?”

“Surely, sir.”

“Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each other, they should marry?”

“Certainly, sir—where there be no reasons against it.”

“Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you would?”

“I do see that a man should not bring a woman into trouble for the sake of being comfortable himself for the rest of a few weary days.”

Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she would be Joe’s wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.

“Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But listen to me. In the first place, you don’t know, and you are not required to know, when you are going to die. In fact, you have nothing to do with it. Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work while the day lasts, diligently. The best preparation for death is life. Besides, I have known delicate people who have outlived all their strong relations, and been left alone in the earth—because they had possibly taken too much care of themselves. But marriage is God’s will, and death is God’s will, and you have no business to set the one over against, as antagonistic to, the other. For anything you know, the gladness and the peace of marriage may be the very means intended for your restoration to health and strength. I suspect your desire to marry, fighting against the fancy that you ought not to marry, has a good deal to do with the state of health in which you now find yourself. A man would get over many things if he were happy, that he cannot get over when he is miserable.”

“But it’s for Aggy. You forget that.”

“I do not forget it. What right have you to seek for her another kind of welfare than you would have yourself? Are you to treat her as if she were worldly when you are not—to provide for her a comfort which yourself you would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to die soon?—if you are thus doomed, which to me is by no means clear. Why not have what happiness you may for the rest of your sojourn? If you find at the end of twenty years that here you are after all, you will be rather sorry you did not do as I say.”

“And if I find myself dying at the end of six months’?”

“You will thank God for those six months. The whole thing, my dear fellow, is a want of faith in God. I do not doubt you think you are doing right, but, I repeat, the whole thing comes from want of faith in God. You will take things into your own hands, and order them after a preventive and self-protective fashion, lest God should have ordained the worst for you, which worst, after all, would be best met by doing his will without inquiry into the future; and which worst is no evil. Death is no more an evil than marriage is.”

“But you don’t see it as I do,” persisted the blacksmith.

“Of course I don’t. I think you see it as it is not.”

He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He started.

“What a wave!” he cried. “That spray came over the top of the rock. We shall have to run for it.”

I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.

“There’s no hurry,” I said. “It was high water an hour and a half ago.”

“You don’t know this coast, sir,” returned he, “or you wouldn’t talk like that.”

As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock, looked along.

“For God’s sake, Aggy!” he cried in terror, “come at once. Every other wave be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level.”

So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw her along.

“Hadn’t we better stay where we are?” I suggested.

“If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and I don’t care about being out all night. It’s not the tide, sir; it’s a ground swell—from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no questions about tide or no tide.”

“Come along, then,” I said. “But just wait one minute more. It is better to be ready for the worst.”

For I remembered that the day before I had seen a crowbar lying among the stones, and I thought it might be useful. In a moment or two I had found it, and returning, gave it to Joe. Then I took the girl’s disengaged hand. She thanked me in a voice perfectly calm and firm. Joe took the bar in haste, and drew Agnes towards the breakwater.

Any real thought of danger had not yet crossed my mind. But when I looked along the outstretched back of the mole, and saw a dim sheet of white sweep across it, I felt that there was ground for his anxiety, and prepared myself for a struggle.

“Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?” I said, grasping my own stout oak-stick more firmly.

“Perfectly,” answered Joe. “To stick between the stones and hold on. We must watch our time between the waves.”

“You take the command, then, Joe,” I returned. “You see better than I do, and you know the ways of that raging wild beast there better than I do. I will obey orders—one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or sea to lose hold of Agnes—eh, Joe?”

Joe gave a grim enough laugh in reply, and we started, he carrying his crowbar in his right hand towards the advancing sea, and I my oak-stick in my left towards the still water within.

“Quick march!” said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.

Now the back of the breakwater was very rugged, for it was formed of huge stones, with wide gaps between, where the waters had washed out the cement, and worn their edges. But what impeded our progress secured our safety.

“Halt!” cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter of the rocks. “There’s a topper coming.”

We halted at the word of command, as a huge wave, with combing crest, rushed against the far out-sloping base of the mole, and flung its heavy top right over the middle of the mass, a score or two of yards in front of us.

“Now for it!” cried Joe. “Run!”

We did run. In my mind there was just sense enough of danger to add to the pleasure of the excitement. I did not know how much danger there was. Over the rough worn stones we sped stumbling.

“Halt!” cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.

“God be with us!” I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes’s waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed, held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes. It took but a moment.

“Now then!” cried Joe. “Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!”

But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the sloping side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, “Down, Joe! Down on your face, and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!”

They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave, floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.

“Now, now!” cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the water pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and arrived, panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept the surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back over the danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the breakwater from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

“I believe, sir,” said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, “if you hadn’t taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost.”

“It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was not sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it low down.”

“We were awfully near death,” said Joe.

“Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don’t go all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as foresight—believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the future, and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is the man most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and ready. Our Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should be brought before kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what answer they should make, for it would be given them when the time came.”

We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions spoke.

“You have escaped one death together,” I said at length: “dare another.”

Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage, I said, “Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I will take Agnes home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?”

Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: “As you please, sir. Good night, Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can.”

When I returned from giving Agnes over to her parents, I made haste to change my clothes, and put on my warm dressing-gown. I may as well mention at once, that not one of us was the worse for our ducking. I then went up to Connie’s room.

“Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe.”

“I’ve been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out, papa. But all I could do was to trust in God.”

“Do you call that all, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in that than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed all.”

I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were well into another month before I told Connie.

When I left her, I went to Joe’s room to see how he was, and found him having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,

“Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won’t be the worse for it.”

“I don’t much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon.”

“But you ought to care what comes of you, Joe. I will tell you why. You are an instrument out of which ought to come praise to God, and, therefore, you ought to care for the instrument.”

“That way, yes, sir, I ought.”

“And you have no business to be like some children who say, ‘Mamma won’t give me so and so,’ instead of asking her to give it them.”

“I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young woman. I couldn’t say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir, there was to come a family. It might be, you know.”

“Of course. What else would you have?”

“But if I was to die, where would she be then?”

“In God’s hands; just as she is now.”

“But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that to provide for.”

“O, Joe! how little you know a woman’s heart! It would just be the greatest comfort she could have for losing you—that’s all. Many a woman has married a man she did not care enough for, just that she might have a child of her own to let out her heart upon. I don’t say that is right, you know. Such love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her child because it is her husband’s more than because it is her own, and because it is God’s more than either’s. I saw in the papers the other day, that a woman was brought before the Recorder of London for stealing a baby, when the judge himself said that there was no imaginable motive for her action but a motherly passion to possess the child. It is the need of a child that makes so many women take to poor miserable, broken-nosed lap-dogs; for they are self-indulgent, and cannot face the troubles and dangers of adopting a child. They would if they might get one of a good family, or from a respectable home; but they dare not take an orphan out of the dirt, lest it should spoil their silken chairs. But that has nothing to do with our argument. What I mean is this, that if Agnes really loves you, as no one can look in her face and doubt, she will be far happier if you leave her a child—yes, she will be happier if you only leave her your name for hers—than if you died without calling her your wife.”

I took Joe’s basin from him, and he lay down. He turned his face to the wall. I waited a moment, but finding him silent, bade him good-night, and left the room.

A month after, I married them.

CHAPTER XIII. THE HARVEST

It was some time before we got the bells to work to our mind, but at last we succeeded. The worst of it was to get the cranks, which at first required strong pressure on the keys, to work easily enough. But neither Joe nor his cousin spared any pains to perfect the attempt, and, as I say, at length we succeeded. I took Wynnie down to the instrument and made her try whether she could not do something, and she succeeded in making the old tower discourse loudly and eloquently.

By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the morning of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers with the sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to the God of the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that part of the country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid plentifully on the benches. What with the calling of the bells, like voices in the highway, and the solemn meditation of the organ within to bear aloft the thoughts of those who heard, and came to the prayer and thanksgiving in common, and the message which God had given me to utter to them, I hoped that we should indeed keep holiday.

Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft, dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and cottage, calling aloud—for who could dissociate the words from the music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?—written none the less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with laughing at their quaintness—calling aloud,

  “All people that on earth do dwell  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell—  Come ye before him and rejoice.”

Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the name of the Lord to serve him with mirth as in the old version, and not with the fear with which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had prepared—a proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history of the church while she was not only able to number singers amongst her clergy, but those singers were capable of influencing the whole heart and judgment of the nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ. The song I had prepared was this:

  “We praise the Life of All;  From buried seeds so small  Who makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand;  Who stores the corn  In rick and barn  To feed the winter of the land.  We praise the Life of Light!  Who from the brooding night  Draws out the morning holy, calm, and grand;  Veils up the moon,  Sends out the sun,  To glad the face of all the land.  We praise the Life of Work,  Who from sleep’s lonely dark  Leads forth his children to arise and stand,  Then go their way,  The live-long day,  To trust and labour in the land.  We praise the Life of Good,  Who breaks sin’s lazy mood,  Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.  The furrowed waste  They leave, and haste  Home, home, to till their Father’s land.  We praise the Life of Life,  Who in this soil of strife  Casts us at birth, like seed from sower’s hand;  To die and so  Like corn to grow  A golden harvest in his land.”

After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect.” And this is something like what I said to them:

“The world, my friends, is full of resurrections, and it is not always of the same resurrection that St. Paul speaks. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it—the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life. That you may feel that the sunrise is a resurrection—the word resurrection just means a rising again—I will read you a little description of it from a sermon by a great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor. Listen. ‘But as when the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man’s reason and his life.’ Is not this a resurrection of the day out of the night? Or hear how Milton makes his Adam and Eve praise God in the morning,—

  ‘Ye mists and exhalations that now rise  From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,  Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,  In honour to the world’s great Author rise,  Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,  Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,  Rising or falling still advance his praise.’

But it is yet more of a resurrection to you. Think of your own condition through the night and in the morning. You die, as it were, every night. The death of darkness comes down over the earth; but a deeper death, the death of sleep, descends on you. A power overshadows you; your eyelids close, you cannot keep them open if you would; your limbs lie moveless; the day is gone; your whole life is gone; you have forgotten everything; an evil man might come and do with your goods as he pleased; you are helpless. But the God of the Resurrection is awake all the time, watching his sleeping men and women, even as a mother who watches her sleeping baby, only with larger eyes and more full of love than hers; and so, you know not how, all at once you know that you are what you are; that there is a world that wants you outside of you, and a God that wants you inside of you; you rise from the death of sleep, not by your own power, for you knew nothing about it; God put his hand over your eyes, and you were dead; he lifted his hand and breathed light on you and you rose from the dead, thanked the God who raised you up, and went forth to do your work. From darkness to light; from blindness to seeing; from knowing nothing to looking abroad on the mighty world; from helpless submission to willing obedience,—is not this a resurrection indeed? That St. Paul saw it to be such may be shown from his using the two things with the same meaning when he says, ‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’ No doubt he meant a great deal more. No man who understands what he is speaking about can well mean only one thing at a time.

“But to return to the resurrections we see around us in nature. Look at the death that falls upon the world in winter. And look how it revives when the sun draws near enough in the spring to wile the life in it once more out of its grave. See how the pale, meek snowdrops come up with their bowed heads, as if full of the memory of the fierce winds they encountered last spring, and yet ready in the strength of their weakness to encounter them again. Up comes the crocus, bringing its gold safe from the dark of its colourless grave into the light of its parent gold. Primroses, and anemones, and blue-bells, and a thousand other children of the spring, hear the resurrection-trumpet of the wind from the west and south, obey, and leave their graves behind to breathe the air of the sweet heavens. Up and up they come till the year is glorious with the rose and the lily, till the trees are not only clothed upon with new garments of loveliest green, but the fruit-tree bringeth forth its fruit, and the little children of men are made glad with apples, and cherries, and hazel-nuts. The earth laughs out in green and gold. The sky shares in the grand resurrection. The garments of its mourning, wherewith it made men sad, its clouds of snow and hail and stormy vapours, are swept away, have sunk indeed to the earth, and are now humbly feeding the roots of the flowers whose dead stalks they beat upon all the winter long. Instead, the sky has put on the garments of praise. Her blue, coloured after the sapphire-floor on which stands the throne of him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is dashed and glorified with the pure white of sailing clouds, and at morning and evening prayer, puts on colours in which the human heart drowns itself with delight—green and gold and purple and rose. Even the icebergs floating about in the lonely summer seas of the north are flashing all the glories of the rainbow. But, indeed, is not this whole world itself a monument of the Resurrection? The earth was without form and void. The wind of God moved on the face of the waters, and up arose this fair world. Darkness was on the face of the deep: God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.