Adela Cathcart, Volume 2

"But this officer showed himself worthy of commanding such men as this private; for right nobly did he understand and meet his feelings. He uttered no word of the discovery he had made, till years afterwards; but it soon began to be remarked that whenever anything arduous, or in any manner distinguished, had to be done, this man was sure to be of the party appointed. In short, as often as he could, the colonel "set him in the forefront of the battle." Passing through all with wonderful escape, he was soon as much noticed for his reckless bravery, as hitherto for his precision in the discharge of duties bringing only commendation and not honour. But his final lustration was at hand.

"A great part of the army was hastening, by forced marches, to raise the siege of a town which was already on the point of falling into the hands of the enemy. Forming one of a reconnoitring party, which preceded the main body at some considerable distance, he and his companions came suddenly upon one of the enemy's outposts, occupying a high, and on one side precipitous rock, a short way from the town, which it commanded. Retreat was impossible, for they were already discovered, and the bullets were falling amongst them like the first of a hail-storm. The only possibility of escape remaining for them was a nearly hopeless improbability. It lay in forcing the post on this steep rock; which if they could do before assistance came to the enemy, they might, perhaps, be able to hold out, by means of its defences, till the arrival of the army. Their position was at once understood by all; and, by a sudden, simultaneous impulse, they found themselves half-way up the steep ascent, and in the struggle of a close conflict, without being aware of any order to that effect from their officer. But their courage was of no avail; the advantages of the place were too great; and in a few minutes the whole party was cut to pieces, or stretched helpless on the rock. Our youth had fallen amongst the foremost; for a musket ball had grazed his skull, and laid him insensible.

"But consciousness slowly returned, and he succeeded at last in raising himself and looking around him. The place was deserted. A few of his friends, alive, but grievously wounded, lay near him. The rest were dead. It appeared that, learning the proximity of the English forces from this rencontre with part of their advanced guard, and dreading lest the town, which was on the point of surrendering, should after all be snatched from their grasp, the commander of the enemy's forces had ordered an immediate and general assault; and had for this purpose recalled from their outposts the whole of his troops thus stationed, that he might make the attempt with the utmost strength he could accumulate.

"As the youth's power of vision returned, he perceived, from the height where he he lay, that the town was already in the hands of the enemy. But looking down into the level space immediately below him, he started to his feet at once; for a girl, bare-headed, was fleeing towards the rock, pursued by several soldiers. "Aha!" said he, divining her purpose—the soldiers behind and the rock before her—"I will help you to die!" And he stooped and wrenched from the dead fingers of a sergeant the sword which they clenched by the bloody hilt. A new throb of life pulsed through him to his very finger-tips; and on the brink of the unseen world he stood, with the blood rushing through his veins in a wild dance of excitement. One who lay near him wounded, but recovered afterwards, said that he looked like one inspired. With a keen eye he watched the chase. The girl drew nigh; and rushed up the path near which he was standing. Close on her footsteps came the soldiers, the distance gradually lessening between them.

"Not many paces higher up, was a narrower part of the ascent, where the path was confined by great stones, or pieces of rock. Here had been the chief defence in the preceding assault, and in it lay many bodies of his friends. Thither he went and took his stand.

"On the girl came, over the dead, with rigid hands and flying feet, the bloodless skin drawn tight on her features, and her eyes awfully large and wild. She did not see him though she bounded past so near that her hair flew in his eyes. "Never mind!" said he, "we shall meet soon." And he stepped into the narrow path just in time to face her pursuers—between her and them. Like the red lightning the bloody sword fell, and a man beneath it. Cling! clang! went the echoes in the rocks—and another man was down; for, in his excitement, he was a destroying angel to the breathless pursuers. His stature rose, his chest dilated; and as the third foe fell dead, the girl was safe; for her body lay a broken, empty, but undesecrated temple, at the foot of the rock. That moment his sword flew in shivers from his grasp. The next instant he fell, pierced to the heart; and his spirit rose triumphant, free, strong, and calm, above the stormy world, which at length lay vanquished beneath him."

"A capital story!" cried our host, the moment the curate had ceased reading. "But you should not have killed him. You should have made a general of him. By heaven! he deserved it."

Mr. Armstrong was evidently much pleased that the colonel so heartily sympathized with his tale. And every one else added some words of commendation. I could not help thinking with myself that he had only embodied the story of his own life in other more striking forms. But I knew that, if I said so, he would laugh at me, and answer that all he had done was quite easy to do—he had found no difficulty in it; whereas this man was a hero and did the thing that he found very difficult indeed. Still I was sure that the story was at least the outgrowth of his own mind.

"May we ask," I said, "how much of the tale is fact?"

"I am sorry it is not all fact," he answered.

"Tell us how much, then," I said.

"Well, I will tell you what made me write it. I heard an old lady at a dinner-table mention that she had once known a young officer who had his sword broken over his head, and was dismissed from the army, for cowardice. I began trying first to understand his feelings; then to see how the thing could have happened; and then to discover what could be done for him. And hence the story. That was all, I am sorry to say."

"I thought as much," I rejoined.

"Will you excuse me if I venture to make a remark?" said Mrs. Bloomfield.

"With all my heart," answered the curate.

"It seemed to me that there was nothing Christian in the story. And I cannot help feeling that a clergyman might, therefore, have done better."

"I allow that in words there is nothing Christian," answered Mr. Armstrong; "and I am quite ready to allow also that it might have been better if something of the kind you mean had been expressed in it. The whole thing, however, is only a sketch. But I cannot allow that, in spirit and scope, it is anything other than Christian, or indeed anything but Christian. It seems to me that the whole might be used as a Christian parable."

While the curate spoke, I had seen Adela's face flush; but the cause was not visible to me. As he uttered the last words, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and Harry's voice said:

"At your parables again, Ralph?"

He had come in so gently that the only sign of his entrance had been the rose-light on Adela's cheeks.—Was he the sun? And was she a cloud of the east?

"Glad to see you safe amongst us again," said the colonel, backed by almost every one of the company.

"What's your quarrel with my parables, Harry?" said the curate.

"Quarrel? None at all. They are the delight of my heart. I only wish you would give our friends one of your best—The Castle, for instance."

"Not yet a while, Harry. It is not my turn for some time, I hope. Perhaps Miss Cathcart will be tired of the whole affair, before it comes round to me again."

"Then I shall deserve to be starved of stories all the rest of my life," answered Adela, laughing.

"If you will allow me, then," said Harry, "I will give you a parable, called The Lost Church, from the German poet, Uhland."

"Softly, Harry," said his brother; "you are ready enough with what is not yours to give; but where is your own story that you promised, and which indeed we should have a right to demand, whether you had promised it or not?"

"I am working at it, Ralph, in my spare moments, which are not very many; and I want to choose the right sort of night to tell it in, too. This one wouldn't do at all. There's no moon."

"If it is a horrid story, it is a pity you did not read it last time, before you set out to cross the moor."

"Oh, that night would not have done at all. A night like that drives all fear out of one's head. But indeed it is not finished yet.—May I repeat the parable now, Miss Cathcart?"

"What do you mean by a parable, Mr. Henry?" interrupted Mrs. Cathcart. "It sounds rather profane to me."

"I mean a picture in words, where more is meant than meets the ear."

"But why call it a parable?"

"Because it is one."

"Why not speak in plain words then?"

"Because a good parable is plainer than the plainest words. You remember what Tennyson says—that

  'truth embodied in a tale  Shall enter in at lowly doors'?"

"Goethe," said the curate, "has a little parable about poems, which is equally true about parables—

  'Poems are painted window-panes.  If one looks from the square into the church,  Dusk and dimness are his gains—  Sir Philistine is left in the lurch.  The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,  Nor any words henceforth assuage him.  But come just inside what conceals;  Cross the holy threshold quite—  All at once,'tis rainbow-bright;  Device and story flash to light;  A gracious splendour truth reveals.  This, to God's children, is full measure;  It edifies and gives them pleasure.'"

"I can't follow that," said Adela.

"I will write it out for you," said Harry; "and then you will be able to follow it perfectly."

"Thank you very much. Now for your parable."

"It is called The Lost Church; and I assure you it is full of meaning."

"I hope I shall be able to find it out."

"You will find the more the longer you think about it.

  'Oft in the far wood, overhead,    Tones of a bell are heard obscurely;  How old the sounds no sage has said,    Or yet explained the story surely.  From the lost church, the legend saith,    Out on the winds, the ringing goeth;  Once full of pilgrims was the path—    Now where to find it, no one knoweth.  Deep in the wood I lately went,    Where no foot-trodden path is lying;  From the time's woe and discontent,    My heart went forth to God in sighing.  When in the forest's wild repose,    I heard the ringing somewhat clearer;  The higher that my longing rose,    Downward it rang the fuller, nearer.  So on its thoughts my heart did brood,    My sense was with the sound so busy,  That I have never understood    How I clomb up the height so dizzy.  To me it seemed a hundred years    Had passed away in dreaming, sighing—  When lo! high o'er the clouds, appears    An open space in sunlight lying.  The heaven, dark-blue, above it bowed;    The sun shone o'er it, large and glowing;  Beneath, a ministers structure proud    Stood in the gold light, golden showing.  It seemed on those great clouds, sun-clear,    Aloft to hover, as on pinions;  Its spire-point seemed to disappear,    Melting away in high dominions.  The bell's clear tones, entrancing, full—    The quivering tower, they, booming, swung it;  No human hand the rope did pull—    The holy storm-winds sweeping rung it.  The storm, the stream, came down, came near,    And seized my heart with longing holy;  Into the church I went, with fear,    With trembling step, and gladness lowly.  The threshold crossed—I cannot show    What in me moved; words cannot paint it.  Both dark and clear, the windows glow    With noble forms of martyrs sainted.  I gazed and saw—transfigured glory!    The pictures swell and break their barriers;  I saw the world and all its story    Of holy women, holy warriors.  Down at the altar I sank slowly;    My heart was like the face of Stephen.  Aloft, upon the arches holy,    Shone out in gold the glow of heaven.  I prayed; I looked again; and lo!    The dome's high sweep had flown asunder;  The heavenly gates wide open go;    And every veil unveils a wonder.  What gloriousness I then beheld,    Kneeling in prayer, silent and wondrous,  What sounds triumphant on me swelled,    Like organs and like trumpets thunderous—  My mortal words can never tell;    But who for such is sighing sorest,  Let him give heed unto the bell    That dimly soundeth in the forest.'"

"Splendid!" cried the schoolmaster, with enthusiasm.

"What is the lost church?" asked Mrs. Cathcart.

"No one can tell, but him who finds it, like the poet," answered the curate.

"But I suppose you at least consider it the Church of England," returned the lady with one of her sweetest attempts at a smile.

"God forbid!" exclaimed the clergyman, with a kind of sacred horror.

"Not the Church of England!" cried Mrs. Cathcart, in a tone of horror likewise, dashed with amazement.

"No, madam—the Church of God; the great cathedral-church of the universe; of which Church I trust the Church of England is a little Jesus-chapel."

"God bless you, Mr. Armstrong!" cried the schoolmaster.

The colonel likewise showed some sign of emotion. Mrs. Cathcart looked set-down and indignant. Percy stared. Adela and Harry looked at each other.

"Whoever finds God in his own heart," said the clergyman, solemnly, "has found the lost Church—the Church of God."

And he looked at Adela as he spoke. She cast down her eyes, and thanked him with her heart.

A silence followed.

"Harry, you must come up with your story next time—positively," said Mr. Armstrong at length.

"I don't think I can. I cannot undertake to do so, at all events."

"Then what is to be done?—I have it. Lizzie, my dear, you have got that story you wrote once for a Christmas paper, have you not?"

"Yes, I have, Ralph; but that is far too slight a thing to be worth reading here."

"It will do at least to give Harry a chance for his. I mustn't praise it 'afore fowk,' you know."

"But it was never quite finished—at least so people said."

"Well, you can finish it to-morrow well enough."

"I haven't time."

"You needn't be working at that—all day long and every day. There is no such hurry."

The blank indicates a certain cessation of intelligible sound occasioned by the close application of Lizzie's palm to Ralph's lips. She did not, dare, however, to make any further opposition to his request.

"I think we have some claim on you, Mrs. Armstrong," said the host. "It will be my sister's turn next time, and after that Percy's."

Percy gave a great laugh; and his mother said, with a slight toss of her head:

"I am not so fond of being criticised myself!"

"Has criticism been your occupation, Mrs. Cathcart," I said, "during our readings? If so, then indeed we have a claim on you greater than I had supposed."

She could not hide some degree of confusion and annoyance. But I had had my revenge, and I had no wish for her story; so I said nothing more.

We parted with the understanding that Mrs. Armstrong would read her story on the following Monday.

Again, before he took his leave, Mr. Harry had a little therapeutic tete-a-tete with Miss Adela, which lasted about two minutes, Mrs. Cathcart watching them every second of the time, with her eyes as round and wide as she could make them, for they were by nature very long, and by art very narrow, for she rarely opened them to any width at all. They were not pleasant eyes, those eyes of Mrs. Cathcart's. Percy's were like them, only better, for though they had a reddish tinge, he did open them wider.

CHAPTER VII.

MY UNCLE PETER

"Why don't you write a story, Percy?" said his mother to him next morning at breakfast.

"Plenty of quill-driving at Somerset-House, mother. I prefer something else in the holidays."

"But I don't like to see you showing to disadvantage, Percy," said his uncle kindly. "Why don't you try?"

"The doctor-fellow hasn't read one yet. And I don't think he will."

"Have patience. I think he will."

"I don't care. I don't want to hear it. It's all a confounded bore. They're nothing but goody humbug, or sentimental whining. His would be sure to smell of black draught. I'm not partial to drugs."

The mother frowned, and the uncle tried to smile kindly and excusingly. Percy rose and left the room.

"You see he's jealous of the doctor," remarked his mother, with an upward toss of the head.

The colonel did not reply, and I ventured no remark.

"There is a vein of essential vulgarity in both the brothers," said the lady.

"I don't think so," returned the colonel; and there the conversation ended.

Adela was practising at her piano the greater part of the day. The weather would not admit of a walk.

When we were all seated once more for our reading and Mrs. Armstrong had her paper in her hand, after a little delay of apparent irresolution, she said all at once:

"Ralph, I can't read. Will you read it for me?"

"Do try to read it yourself, my dear," said her husband.

"I am sure I shall break down," she answered.

"If you were able to write it, surely you are able to read it," said the colonel. "I know what my difficulty would be."

"It is a very different thing to read one's own writing. I could read anything else well enough.—Will you read it for me, Henry?"

"With pleasure, if it must be any other than yourself. I know your handwriting nearly as well as my own. It's none of your usual lady-hands-all point and no character. But what do you say, Ralph?"

"Read it by all means, if she will have it so. The company has had enough of my reading. It will be a change of voice at least."

I saw that Adela looked pleasedly expectant.

"Pray don't look for much," said Mrs. Armstrong in a pleading tone. "I assure you it is nothing, or at best a mere trifle. But I could not help myself, without feeling obstinate. And my husband lays so much on the cherished obstinacy of Lady Macbeth, holding that to be the key to her character, that he has terrified me from every indulgence of mine."

She laughed very sweetly; and her husband joining in the laugh, all further hindrance was swept away in the music of their laughter; and Harry, taking the papers from his sister's hand, commenced at once. It was partly in print, and partly in manuscript.

"MY UNCLE PETER.

"I will tell you the story of my Uncle Peter, who was born on Christmas-day. He was very anxious to die on Christmas-day as well; but I must confess that was rather ambitious in Uncle Peter. Shakespeare is said to have been born on St. George's-day, and there is some ground for believing that he died on St. George's-day. He thus fulfilled a cycle. But we cannot expect that of any but great men, and Uncle Peter was not a great man, though I think I shall be able to show that he was a good man. The only pieces of selfishness I ever discovered in him were, his self-gratulation at having been born on Christmas-day, and the ambition with regard to his death, which I have just recorded; and that this selfishness was not of a kind to be very injurious to his fellowmen, I think I shall be able to show as well.

"The first remembrance that I have of him, is his taking me one Christmas-eve to the largest toy-shop in London, and telling me to choose any toy whatever that I pleased. He little knew the agony of choice into which this request of his,—for it was put to me as a request, in the most polite, loving manner,—threw his astonished nephew. If a general right of choice from the treasures of the whole world had been unanimously voted me, it could hardly have cast me into greater perplexity. I wandered about, staring like a distracted ghost at the 'wealth of Ormus and of Ind,' displayed about me. Uncle Peter followed me with perfect patience; nay, I believe, with a delight that equalled my perplexity, for, every now and then when I looked round to him with a silent appeal for sympathy in the distressing dilemma into which he had thrown me, I found him rubbing his hands and spiritually chuckling over his victim. Nor would he volunteer the least assistance to save me from the dire consequences of too much liberty. How long I was in making up my mind I cannot tell; but as I look back upon this splendour of my childhood, I feel as if I must have wandered for weeks through interminable forest-alleys of toy-bearing trees. As often as I read the story of Aladdin—and I read it now and then still, for I have children about, and their books about—the subterranean orchard of jewels always brings back to my inward vision the inexhaustible riches of the toy-shop to which Uncle Peter took me that Christmas-eve. As soon as, in despair of choosing well, I had made a desperate plunge at decision, my Uncle Peter, as if to forestall any supervention of repentance, began buying like a maniac, giving me everything that took his fancy or mine, till we and our toys nearly filled the cab which he called to take us home.

"Uncle Peter was little round man, not very fat, resembling both in limbs and features an overgrown baby. And I believe the resemblance was not merely an external one; for, though his intellect was quite up to par, he retained a degree of simplicity of character and of tastes that was not childlike only, but bordered, sometimes, upon the childish. To look at him, you could not have fancied a face or a figure with less of the romantic about them; yet I believe that the whole region of his brain was held in fee-simple, whatever that may mean, by a race of fairy architects, who built aerial castles therein, regardless of expense. His imagination was the most distinguishing feature of his character. And to hear him defend any of his extravagancies, it would appear that he considered himself especially privileged in that respect. 'Ah, my dear,' he would say to my mother when she expostulated with him on making some present far beyond the small means he at that time possessed, 'ah, my dear, you see I was born on Christmas-day.' Many a time he would come in from town, where he was a clerk in a merchant's office, with the water running out of his boots, and his umbrella carefully tucked under his arm; and we would know very well that he had given the last coppers he had, for his omnibus home, to some beggar or crossing-sweeper, and had then been so delighted with the pleasure he had given, that he forgot to make the best of it by putting up his umbrella. Home he would trudge, in his worn suit of black, with his steel watch-chain and bunch of ancestral seals swinging and ringing from his fob, and the rain running into his trousers pockets, to the great endangerment of the health of his cherished old silver watch, which never went wrong because it was put right every day by St. Paul's. He was quite poor then, as I have said. I do not think he had more than a hundred pounds a-year, and he must have been five and thirty. I suppose his employers showed their care for the morals of their clerks, by never allowing them any margin to mis-spend. But Uncle Peter lived in constant hope and expectation of some unexampled good luck befalling him; 'For,' said he, 'I was born on Christmas-day.'

"He was never married. When people used to jest with him about being an old bachelor, he used to smile, for anything would make him smile; but I was a very little boy indeed when I began to observe that the smile on such occasions was mingled with sadness, and that Uncle Peter's face looked very much as if he were going to cry. But he never said anything on the subject, and not even my mother knew whether he had had any love-story or not. I have often wondered whether his goodness might not come in part from his having lost some one very dear to him, and having his life on earth purified by the thoughts of her life in heaven. But I never found out. After his death—for he did die, though not on Christmas-day—I found a lock of hair folded in paper with a date on it—that was all—in a secret drawer of his old desk. The date was far earlier than my first recollections of him. I reverentially burnt it with fire.

"He lived in lodgings by himself not far from our house; and, when not with us, was pretty sure to be found seated in his easy-chair, for he was fond of his simple comforts, beside a good fire, reading by the light of one candle. He had his tea always as soon as he came home, and some buttered toast or a hot muffin, of which he was sure to make me eat three-quarters if I chanced to drop in upon him at the right hour, which, I am rather ashamed to say, I not unfrequently did. He dared not order another, as I soon discovered. Yet, I fear, that did not abate my appetite for what there was. You see, I was never so good as Uncle Peter. When he had finished his tea, he turned his chair to the fire, and read—what do you think? Sensible Travels and Discoveries, or Political Economy, or Popular Geology? No: Fairy Tales, as many as he could lay hold of; and when they failed him, Romances or Novels. Almost anything in this way would do that was not bad. I believe he had read every word of Richardson's novels, and most of Fielding's and De Foe's. But once I saw him throw a volume in the fire, which he had been fidgeting over for a while. I was just finishing a sum I had brought across to him to help me with. I looked up, and saw the volume in the fire. The heat made it writhe open, and I saw the author's name, and that was Sterne. He had bought it at a book-stall as he came home. He sat awhile, and then got up and took down his Bible, and began reading a chapter in the New Testament, as if for an antidote to the book he had destroyed."