Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

“Nobody,” I said, “but Old Rogers understands me. Nobody would care, as far as my teaching goes, if another man took my place from next Sunday forward. And for Miss Oldcastle, her playing the Agnus Dei on Saturday afternoon, even if she intended that I should hear it, could only indicate at most that she knew how she had behaved to me in the morning, and thought she had gone too far and been unkind, or perhaps was afraid lest she should be accountable for any failure I might make in my Sunday duties, and therefore felt bound to do something to restore my equanimity.”

Choosing, though without consciously intending to do so, the dreariest path to be found, I wandered up the side of the slow black river, with the sentinel pollards looking at themselves in its gloomy mirror, just as I was looking at myself in the mirror of my circumstances. They leaned in all directions, irregular as the headstones in an ancient churchyard. In the summer they looked like explosions of green leaves at the best; now they looked like the burnt-out cases of the summer’s fireworks. How different, too, was the river from the time when a whole fleet of shining white lilies lay anchored among their own broad green leaves upon its clear waters, filled with sunlight in every pore, as they themselves would fill the pores of a million-caverned sponge! But I could not even recall the past summer as beautiful. I seemed to care for nothing. The first miserable afternoon at Marshmallows looked now as if it had been the whole of my coming relation to the place seen through a reversed telescope. And here I was IN it now.

The walk along the side was tolerably dry, although the river was bank-full. But when I came to the bridge I wanted to cross—a wooden one—I found that the approach to it had been partly undermined and carried away, for here the river had overflowed its banks in one of the late storms; and all about the place was still very wet and swampy. I could therefore get no farther in my gloomy walk, and so turned back upon my steps. Scarcely had I done so, when I saw a man coming hastily towards me from far upon the straight line of the river walk. I could not mistake him at any distance. It was Old Rogers. I felt both ashamed and comforted when I recognized him.

“Well, Old Rogers,” I said, as soon as he came within hail, trying to speak cheerfully, “you cannot get much farther this way—without wading a bit, at least.”

“I don’t want to go no farther now, sir. I came to find you.”

“Nothing amiss, I hope?”

“Nothing as I knows on, sir. I only wanted to have a little chat with you. I told master I wanted to leave for an hour or so. He allus lets me do just as I like.”

“But how did you know where to find me?”

“I saw you come this way. You passed me right on the bridge, and didn’t see me, sir. So says I to myself, ‘Old Rogers, summat’s amiss wi’ parson to-day. He never went by me like that afore. This won’t do. You just go and see.’ So I went home and told master, and here I be, sir. And I hope you’re noways offended with the liberty of me.”

“Did I really pass you on the bridge?” I said, unable to understand it.

“That you did, sir. I knowed parson must be a goodish bit in his own in’ards afore he would do that.”

“I needn’t tell you I didn’t see you, Old Rogers.”

“I could tell you that, sir. I hope there’s nothing gone main wrong, sir. Miss is well, sir, I hope?”

“Quite well, I thank you. No, my dear fellow, nothing’s gone main wrong, as you say. Some of my running tackle got jammed a bit, that’s all. I’m a little out of spirits, I believe.”

“Well, sir, don’t you be afeard I’m going to be troublesome. Don’t think I want to get aboard your ship, except you fling me a rope. There’s a many things you mun ha’ to think about that an ignorant man like me couldn’t take up if you was to let ‘em drop. And being a gentleman, I do believe, makes the matter worse betuxt us. And there’s many a thing that no man can go talkin’ about to any but only the Lord himself. Still you can’t help us poor folks seeing when there’s summat amiss, and we can’t help havin’ our own thoughts any more than the sailor’s jackdaw that couldn’t speak. And sometimes we may be nearer the mark than you would suppose, for God has made us all of one blood, you know.”

“What ARE you driving at, Old Rogers?” I said with a smile, which was none the less true that I suspected he had read some of the worst trouble of my heart. For why should I mind an honourable man like him knowing what oppressed me, though, as things went, I certainly should not, as he said, choose to tell it to any but one?

“I don’t want to say what I was driving at, if it was anything but this—that I want to put to the clumsy hand of a rough old tar, with a heart as soft as the pitch that makes his hand hard—to trim your sails a bit, sir, and help you to lie a point closer to the wind. You’re not just close-hauled, sir.”

“Say on, Old Rogers. I understand you, and I will listen with all my heart, for you have a good right to speak.”

And Old Rogers spoke thus:—

“Oncet upon a time, I made a voyage in a merchant barque. We were becalmed in the South Seas. And weary work it wur, a doin’ of nothin’ from day to day. But when the water began to come up thick from the bottom of the water-casks, it was wearier a deal. Then a thick fog came on, as white as snow a’most, and we couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead or on any side of us. But the fog didn’t keep the heat off; it only made it worse, and the water was fast going done. The short allowance grew shorter and shorter, and the men, some of them, were half-mad with thirst, and began to look bad at one another. I kept up my heart by looking ahead inside me. For days and days the fog hung about us as if the air had been made o’ flocks o’ wool. The captain took to his berth, and several of the crew to their hammocks, for it was just as hot on deck as anywhere else. The mate lay on a sparesail on the quarter-deck, groaning. I had a strong suspicion that the schooner was drifting, and hove the lead again and again, but could find no bottom. Some of the men got hold of the spirits, and THAT didn’t quench their thirst. It drove them clean mad. I had to knock one of them down myself with a capstan bar, for he ran at the mate with his knife. At last I began to lose all hope. And still I was sure the schooner was slowly drifting. My head was like to burst, and my tongue was like a lump of holystone in my mouth. Well, one morning, I had just, as I thought, lain down on the deck to breathe my last, hoping I should die before I went quite mad with thirst, when all at once the fog lifted, like the foot of a sail. I sprung to my feet. There was the blue sky overhead; but the terrible burning sun was there. A moment more and a light air blew on my cheek, and, turning my face to it as if it had been the very breath of God, there was an island within half a mile, and I saw the shine of water on the face of a rock on the shore. I cried out, ‘Land on the weather-quarter! Water in sight!’ In a moment more a boat was lowered, and in a few minutes the boat’s crew, of which I was one, were lying, clothes and all, in a little stream that came down from the hills above.—There, Mr Walton! that’s what I wanted to say to you.”

This is as near the story of my old friend as my limited knowledge of sea affairs allows me to report it.

“I understand you quite, Old Rogers, and I thank you heartily,” I said.

“No doubt,” resumed he, “King Solomon was quite right, as he always was, I suppose, in what he SAID, for his wisdom mun ha’ laid mostly in the tongue—right, I say, when he said, ‘Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth;’ but I can’t help thinking there’s another side to it. I think it would be as good advice to a man on the other tack, whose boasting lay far to windward, and he close on a lee-shore wi’ breakers—it wouldn’t be amiss to say to him, ‘Don’t strike your colours to the morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’ There’s just as many good days as bad ones; as much fair weather as foul in the days to come. And if a man keeps up heart, he’s all the better for that, and none the worse when the evil day does come. But, God forgive me! I’m talking like a heathen. As if there was any chance about what the days would bring forth. No, my lad,” said the old sailor, assuming the dignity of his superior years under the inspiration of the truth, “boast nor trust nor hope in the morrow. Boast and trust and hope in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him, who is the health of thy countenance and thy God.”

I could but hold out my hand. I had nothing to say. For he had spoken to me as an angel of God.

The old man was silent for some moments: his emotion needed time to still itself again. Nor did he return to the subject. He held out his hand once more, saying—

“Good day, sir. I must go back to my work.”

“I will go back with you,” I returned.

And so we walked back side by side to the village, but not a word did we speak the one to the other, till we shook hands and parted upon the bridge, where we had first met. Old Rogers went to his work, and I lingered upon the bridge. I leaned upon the low parapet, and looked up the stream as far as the mists creeping about the banks, and hovering in thinnest veils over the surface of the water, would permit. Then I turned and looked down the river crawling on to the sweep it made out of sight just where Mr Brownrigg’s farm began to come down to its banks. Then I looked to the left, and there stood my old church, as quiet in the dreary day, though not so bright, as in the sunshine: even the graves themselves must look yet more “solemn sad” in a wintry day like this, than they look when the sunlight that infolds them proclaims that God is not the God of the dead but of the living. One of the great battles that we have to fight in this world—for twenty great battles have to be fought all at once and in one—is the battle with appearances. I turned me to the right, and there once more I saw, as on that first afternoon, the weathercock that watched the winds over the stables at Oldcastle Hall. It had caught just one glimpse of the sun through some rent in the vapours, and flung it across to me, ere it vanished again amid the general dinginess of the hour.

CHAPTER XXV. TWO PARISHIONERS

I HAVE said, near the beginning of my story, that my parish was a large one: how is it that I have mentioned but one of the great families in it, and have indeed confined my recollections entirely to the village and its immediate neighbourhood? Will my reader have patience while I explain this to him a little? First, as he may have observed, my personal attraction is towards the poor rather than the rich. I was made so. I can generally get nearer the poor than the rich. But I say GENERALLY, for I have known a few rich people quite as much to my mind as the best of the poor. Thereupon, of course, their education would give them the advantage with me in the possibilities of communion. But when the heart is right, and there is a good stock of common sense as well,—a gift predominant, as far as I am aware, in no one class over another, education will turn the scale very gently with me. And then when I reflect that some of these poor people would have made nobler ladies and gentlemen than all but two or three I know, if they had only had the opportunity, there is a reaction towards the poor, something like a feeling of favour because they have not had fair play—a feeling soon modified, though not altered, by the reflection that they are such because God who loves them better than we do, has so ordered their lot, and by the recollection that not only was our Lord himself poor, but He said the poor were blessed. And let me just say in passing that I not only believe it because He said it, but I believe it because I see that it is so. I think sometimes that the world must have been especially created for the poor, and that particular allowances will be made for the rich because they are born into such disadvantages, and with their wickednesses and their miseries, their love of spiritual dirt and meanness, subserve the highest growth and emancipation of the poor, that they may inherit both the earth and the kingdom of heaven.

But I have been once more wandering from my subject.

Thus it was that the people in the village lying close to my door attracted most of my attention at first; of which attention those more immediately associated with the village, as, for instance, the inhabitants of the Hall, came in for a share, although they did not belong to the same class.

Again, the houses of most of the gentlefolk lay considerably apart from the church and from each other. Many of them went elsewhere to church, and I did not feel bound to visit those, for I had enough to occupy me without, and had little chance of getting a hold of them to do them good. Still there were one or two families which I would have visited oftener, I confess, had I been more interested in them, or had I had a horse. Therefore, I ought to have bought a horse sooner than I did. Before this winter was over, however, I did buy one, partly to please Dr Duncan, who urged me to it for the sake of my health, partly because I could then do my duty better, and partly, I confess, from having been very fond of an old mare of my father’s, when I was a boy, living, after my mother’s death, at a farm of his in B—shire. Happening to come across a gray mare very much like her, I bought her at once.

I think it was the very day after the events recorded in my last chapter that I mounted her to pay a visit to two rich maiden ladies, whose carriage stopped at the Lych-gate most Sundays when the weather was favourable, but whom I had called upon only once since I came to the parish. I should not have thought this visit worth mentioning, except for the conversation I had with them, during which a hint or two were dropped which had an influence in colouring my thoughts for some time after.

I was shown with much ceremony by a butler, as old apparently as his livery of yellow and green, into the presence of the two ladies, one of whom sat in state reading a volume of the Spectator. She was very tall, and as square as the straight long-backed chair upon which she sat. A fat asthmatic poodle lay at her feet upon the hearth-rug. The other, a little lively gray-haired creature, who looked like a most ancient girl whom no power of gathering years would ever make old, was standing upon a high chair, making love to a demoniacal-looking cockatoo in a gilded cage. As I entered the room, the latter all but jumped from her perch with a merry though wavering laugh, and advanced to meet me.

“Jonathan, bring the cake and wine,” she cried to the retreating servant.

The former rose with a solemn stiff-backedness, which was more amusing than dignified, and extended her hand as I approached her, without moving from her place.

“We were afraid, Mr Walton,” said the little lady, “that you had forgotten we were parishioners of yours.”

“That I could hardly do,” I answered, “seeing you are such regular attendants at church. But I confess I have given you ground for your rebuke, Miss Crowther. I bought a horse, however, the other day, and this is the first use I have put him to.”

“We’re charmed to see you. It is very good of you not to forget such uninteresting girls as we are.”

“You forget, Jemima,” interposed her sister, in a feminine bass, “that time is always on the wing. I should have thought we were both decidedly middle-aged, though you are the elder by I will not say how many years.”

“All but ten years, Hester. I remember rocking you in your cradle scores of times. But somehow, Mr Walton, I can’t help feeling as if she were my elder sister. She is so learned, you see; and I don’t read anything but the newspapers.”

“And your Bible, Jemima. Do yourself justice.”

“That’s a matter of course, sister. But this is not the way to entertain Mr Walton.”

“The gentlemen used to entertain the ladies when I was young, Jemima. I do not know how it may have been when you were.”

“Much the same, I believe, sister. But if you look at Mr Walton, I think you will see that he is pretty much entertained as it is.”

“I agree with Miss Hester,” I said. “It is the duty of gentlemen to entertain ladies. But it is so much the kinder of ladies when they surpass their duty, and condescend to entertain gentlemen.”

“What can surpass duty, Mr Walton? I confess I do not agree with your doctrines upon that point.”

“I do not quite understand you, Miss Hester,” I returned.

“Why, Mr Walton—I hope you will not think me rude, but it always seems to me—and it has given me much pain, when I consider that your congregation is chiefly composed of the lower classes, who may be greatly injured by such a style of preaching. I must say I think so, Mr Walton. Only perhaps you are one of those who think a lady’s opinion on such matters is worth nothing.”

“On the contrary, I respect an opinion just as far as the lady or gentleman who holds it seems to me qualified to have formed it first. But you have not yet told me what you think so objectionable in my preaching.”

“You always speak as if faith in Christ was something greater than duty. Now I think duty the first thing.”

“I quite agree with you, Miss Crowther. For how can I, or any clergyman, urge a man to that which is not his duty? But tell me, is not faith in Christ a duty? Where you have mistaken me is, that you think I speak of faith as higher than duty, when indeed I speak of faith as higher than any OTHER duty. It is the highest duty of man. I do not say the duty he always sees clearest, or even sees at all. But the fact is, that when that which is a duty becomes the highest delight of a man, the joy of his very being, he no more thinks or needs to think about it as a duty. What would you think of the love of a son who, when an appeal was made to his affections, should say, ‘Oh yes, I love my mother dearly: it is my duty, of course?’”

“That sounds very plausible, Mr Walton; but still I cannot help feeling that you preach faith and not works. I do not say that you are not to preach faith, of course; but you know faith without works is dead.”

“Now, really, Hester,” interposed Miss Jemima, “I cannot think how it is, but, for my part, I should have said that Mr Walton was constantly preaching works. He’s always telling you to do something or other. I know I always come out of the church with something on my mind; and I’ve got to work it off somehow before I’m comfortable.”

And here Miss Jemima got up on the chair again, and began to flirt with the cockatoo once more, but only in silent signs.

I cannot quite recall how this part of the conversation drew to a close. But I will tell a fact or two about the sisters which may possibly explain how it was that they took up such different notions of my preaching. The elder scarce left the house, but spent almost the whole of her time in reading small dingy books of eighteenth century literature. She believed in no other; thought Shakespeare sentimental where he was not low, and Bacon pompous; Addison thoroughly respectable and gentlemanly. Pope was the great English poet, incomparably before Milton. The “Essay on Man” contained the deepest wisdom; the “Rape of the Lock” the most graceful imagination to be found in the language. The “Vicar of Wakefield” was pretty, but foolish; while in philosophy, Paley was perfect, especially in his notion of happiness, which she had heard objected to, and therefore warmly defended. Somehow or other, respectability—in position, in morals, in religion, in conduct—was everything. The consequence was that her very nature was old-fashioned, and had nothing in it of that lasting youth which is the birthright—so often despised—of every immortal being. But I have already said more about her than her place in my story justifies.

Miss Crowther, on the contrary, whose eccentricities did not lie on the side of respectability, had gone on shocking the stiff proprieties of her younger sister till she could be shocked no more, and gave in as to the hopelessness of fate. She had had a severe disappointment in youth, had not only survived it, but saved her heart alive out of it, losing only, as far as appeared to the eyes of her neighbours at least, any remnant of selfish care about herself; and she now spent the love which had before been concentrated upon one object, upon every living thing that came near her, even to her sister’s sole favourite, the wheezing poodle. She was very odd, it must be confessed, with her gray hair, her clear gray eye with wrinkled eyelids, her light step, her laugh at once girlish and cracked; darting in and out of the cottages, scolding this matron with a lurking smile in every tone, hugging that baby, boxing the ears of the other little tyrant, passing this one’s rent, and threatening that other with awful vengeances, but it was a very lovely oddity. Their property was not large, and she knew every living thing on the place down to the dogs and pigs. And Miss Jemima, as the people always called her, transferring the MISS CROWTHER of primogeniture to the younger, who kept, like King Henry IV.,—

   “Her presence, like a robe pontifical,    Ne’er seen but wonder’d at,”

was the actual queen of the neighbourhood; for, though she was the very soul of kindness, she was determined to have her own way, and had it.

Although I did not know all this at the time, such were the two ladies who held these different opinions about my preaching; the one who did nothing but read Messrs Addison, Pope, Paley, and Co., considering that I neglected the doctrine of works as the seal of faith, and the one who was busy helping her neighbours from morning to night, finding little in my preaching, except incentive to benevolence.

The next point where my recollection can take up the conversation, is where Miss Hester made the following further criticism on my pulpit labours.

“You are too anxious to explain everything, Mr Walton.”

I pause in my recording, to do my critic the justice of remarking that what she said looks worse on paper than it sounded from her lips; for she was a gentlewoman, and the tone has much to do with the impression made by the intellectual contents of all speech.

“Where can be the use of trying to make uneducated people see the grounds of everything?” she said. “It is enough that this or that is in the Bible.”

“Yes; but there is just the point. What is in the Bible? Is it this or that?”

“You are their spiritual instructor: tell them what is in the Bible.”

“But you have just been objecting to my mode of representing what is in the Bible.”

“It will be so much the worse, if you add argument to convince them of what is incorrect.”

“I doubt that. Falsehood will expose itself the sooner that honest argument is used to support it.”

“You cannot expect them to judge of what you tell them.”

“The Bible urges upon us to search and understand.”

“I grant that for those whose business it is, like yourself.”

“Do you think, then, that the Church consists of a few privileged to understand, and a great many who cannot understand, and therefore need not be taught?”

“I said you had to teach them.”

“But to teach is to make people understand.”

“I don’t think so. If you come to that, how much can the wisest of us understand? You remember what Pope says,—

   ‘Superior beings, when of late they saw    A mortal man unfold all Nature’s law,    Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape,    And show’d a Newton as we show an ape’?”

“I do not know the passage. Pope is not my Bible. I should call such superior beings very inferior beings indeed.”

“Do you call the angels inferior beings?”

“Such angels, certainly.”

“He means the good angels, of course.”

“And I say the good angels could never behave like that, for contempt is one of the lowest spiritual conditions in which any being can place himself. Our Lord says, ‘Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for their angels do always behold the face of my Father, who is in heaven.’”

“Now will you even say that you understand that passage?”

“Practically, well enough; just as the poorest man of my congregation may understand it. I am not to despise one of the little ones. Pope represents the angels as despising a Newton even.”

“And you despise Pope.”

“I hope not. I say he was full of despising, and therefore, if for no other reason, a small man.”