Doctor and Mrs. Jackson were, for all we knew, the oldest pair in the
parish: their heads were very grey, and they had an old-world look about
them, and an air of wisdom and experience in life, that gave them a
place of importance in our society and claimed the respect of us all.
Yet I cannot remember that any of us noticed them until they became the
intimate friends of the old Scholar. Then we all came to know them, and
to feel as though we had known them all our lives.
[Illustration: Doctor and Mrs. Jackson.]
Their heads were grey, and their dress was black, and as they lived in
the old grey tower of the church they seemed to have something ancient
and ecclesiastical about them; no one inquired into their history or
descent; we took it all for granted, as we did the Established Church
itself. They were there as the church was there, looking out over
meadows and ploughed fields as it had looked out since good souls built
it in the reign of Henry III., and over these same fields Dr. and Mrs.
Jackson looked out with knowing eyes as they sat on their gurgoyles of a
sunshiny morning. The water that collected on the tower roof was
discharged by large projecting gurgoyles ending in the semblance of two
fierce animal heads, one a griffin, and the other a wolf; and on these
the Doctor and his wife loved to sit and talk, full in view of the old
Scholar’s study room.
The church was not only old, but mouldy and ill cared for. It had
escaped the ruthless hand of the restorer, the ivy clung around it, the
lights and shadows still made its quaint stone fretwork restful to the
eye, but I fear it cannot be denied that it needed the kindly hand of a
skilful architect to keep it from decay. Half of a stringcourse below
the gurgoyles had fallen and never been replaced: and below that again
the effigy of the patron saint looked as if it had been damaged by
stone-throwing. The churchyard was overgrown and untidy, and the porch
unswept, and the old oaken doors were crazy on their hinges. Inside you
saw ancient and beautiful woodwork crumbling away, old tiles cracking
under the wear and tear of iron-heeled boots and old dames’ pattens, and
cobwebs and spiders descending from the groined roof upon your
prayer-book. If you went up the spiral staircase into the ringers’
chamber, you would see names written on the wall, two or three empty
bottles, and traces of banquets enjoyed after the clock had struck and
the peal ceased,—banquets of which the Doctor and his wife occasionally
partook, coming in through that unglazed lancet window when all was
still.
The church indeed was mouldy enough, and the air within it was close and
sleep-giving: and as the old parson murmured his sermon twice a Sunday
from the high old pulpit, his hearers gradually dropped into a tranquil
doze or a pleasant day-dream,—all except the old Scholar, who sat just
below, holding his hand to his ear, and eagerly looking for one of those
subtle allusions, those reminiscences of old reading, or even now and
then three words of Latin from Virgil or the “Imitatio,” with which his
lifelong friend would strain a point to please him. They had been at
school together, and at college together, and now they were spending
their last years together, for the old Scholar had come, none of us knew
whence, and settled down in the manor-house by the churchyard, hard by
the Rectory of his old companion. And so they walked together through
the still and shady avenues of life’s evening, wishing for no change,
reading much and talking little, lovers of old times and old books,
seeking the truth, not indeed in the world around them, but in the
choice words of the wise man of old: “Pia et humilis inquisitio
veritatis, per sanas patrum sententias studens ambulare.”
And Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked down on them from their gurgoyles, and
approved. I suppose that old grey-headed bird did not know that he had
been honoured with a doctorate, though he looked wise enough to be
doctor of divinity, law and medicine, all in one; it had been conferred
upon him by the old Scholar one day as he walked up and down his garden
path, glancing now and then at the friendly pair on the tower. And in
one way or another we had all come to know of it; and even visitors to
the village soon made acquaintance with the Doctor and his wife.
No one, as I said, unless it were his old friend the Vicar, knew whence
or why the old Scholar had come to take up his abode among us. We
thought he must have had some great sorrow in his life which was still a
burden to him: but if it was the old old story, he never told his love.
Yet the burden he carried, if there were one, did not make him a less
cheerful neighbour to the folk around him. He knew all the old people in
the village, if not all the young ones: he would sit chatting in their
cottages on a wet day, and on a fine one he would stroll around with
some old fellow past his work, and glean old words and sayings, and pick
up odds and ends of treasure for the history of the parish which he was
going to write some day.
“I am like Dr. and Mrs. Jackson,” he would say: “I poke and pry into all
the corners of the old place, and when I find anything that catches my
eye I carry it home and hide it away. And really I don’t know that my
treasures will ever come to light, any more than the Doctor’s up there
in the tower.”
Those who were ever admitted to his study, as I sometimes was in my
college vacations, knew that there was great store of hidden treasure
there; and now and again he would talk to me of the church and its
monuments, of the manor and its copyholds, of furlongs and virgates and
courts leet and courts baron, and many other things for which I cared
little, though I listened to please him, and left him well pleased
myself.
But at other times, and chiefly on those dim still days of autumn when a
mist is apt to hang over men’s hearts as over field and woodland, he
would walk up and down his garden path ‘talking to hisself in furrin
tongues’ as our old sexton expressed it, who heard him as he dug a grave
in the adjoining churchyard. Once or twice I heard him myself, when I
happened to be within range of his gentle voice. Sometimes it was Greek,
and then I could not easily follow it. Once I heard “Sed neque Medorum
silvæ,” and could just catch sight of him pausing to look round at the
grey fields as he slowly added line to line of that immortal song. And
there were single lines which he would repeat again and again,
cherishing them with tenderness like old jewels, and doubtless seeing
many a sparkle in them that I could not, as he turned them over and
over. And there were bits of Latin from some author unknown to me then,
known to me later as the unknown author of the “De Imitatione”: “Unde
coronabitur patientia tua, si nihil adversi occurrerit;” or, “Nimis
avide consolationem quæris.”
At one time he took long walks or rides, and coming in after dark to
dinner, would spend the evening in “logging” (as he called it) all that
he had seen or heard. But when I knew him he was getting old, and the
rambles were growing shorter: it was not often that he was seen beyond
the village. He would go up to the village shop of afternoons, where a
chair was always set for him, and talk to the people as they came in on
various errands. But his old friends died off one by one: he followed
them to the churchyard, and would stand with bare head there, listening
to the Vicar reading the prayers, while Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked down
on the scene from the tower as usual. And really it seemed as if they
would soon be the only old friends left to him.
For the greater part of the year they were his companions most of the
day: they became a part of his life, and we called them his familiar
spirits. When he woke in the morning he could see them as he lay in bed,
and sometimes they would come to his window if he had put out a
breakfast for them overnight. But as a rule they took their own
breakfast in the fields with the rooks and starlings and peewits, while
he was dressing; and when, after his own breakfast, he took his walk up
and down the garden path, they were to be seen perched on their
gurgoyles, preening their feathers, chatting, and turning their wise old
heads round and round in great ease of body and contentment of mind. In
the early spring, after a bath in the large flat earthenware pan, which
was daily filled for them by the housekeeper, they would turn their
attention to a heap of odds and ends laid out for them in a corner of
the garden: bits of string, old shoe-laces, shreds of all
sorts,—everything that was wanted for nothing else went into the
Doctor’s “library,” as the old Scholar called it, in which he and his
wife conducted their researches. Nor could our dear old friend always
refrain from adding some special treasure to the heap: he is known to
have cut off one button after another from his coat, because they had a
gleam upon them that he thought would please, and fragments of his old
neckties were found in the tower when the long companionship had at last
come to an end. It was only after the nesting season that for a time he
missed them, when they took their young family out into the world, and
introduced them to the society of which we may hope they have since
become ornaments; and this absence the old Scholar took in very good
part, being confident that he should see them again in August at latest.
Besides, at the end of June I myself came home to the village: and
though I could not hope to rival them in his esteem or respect, I might
make shift to fill the gap till they returned. When I went to see him he
would take my hand with all kindness, and invariably point to the vacant
church tower. “I am glad to see you, my lad: Dr. and Mrs. Jackson have
gone for a few days into the country with the children, but they will be
home again long before you leave us.”
It is sad to me even now to think that such an old friendship, which I
am sure was felt in equal strength by both men and birds, should ever
have come to an end. It had to be, but it gives me pain to tell the
story.
The old Vicar fell into a drowsy decay, and the murmur of his sermons
was heard no more in the church. A Curate took the work for him, and the
old Scholar came and listened as before; but the sweet old memories of a
long friendship were not to be found in those discourses, nor the
flashes of light from the world’s great poets and thinkers that had been
wont to keep him awake and cheer him. And at last the old shepherd died,
and slept among the sheep to whose needs he had been ministering so
quietly for half a century. The old Scholar, bent and withered, was
there to see the last of his friend, and the Doctor and his wife looked
sadly down from the tower. They never saw him again outside his own
garden.
A new Vicar came, a kindly, shrewd, and active man, whose sense of the
right order of things was sadly wounded as he examined the church from
end to end in company with his churchwardens. “You have let the fabric
fall into ruin, Mr. Harding,” he said, “into ruin: I can’t use a milder
word. We must scrape together what we can, and make it fit for divine
worship. Let us come up into the tower and see how things are there.”
The crestfallen churchwardens followed him up the well-worn stairs, but
were left far behind, and his active youthful figure disappeared in
front of them into the darkness. When they found him at last in the
ringers’ chamber, he was kicking at a great heap of refuse accumulated
on the floor in a corner.
“What on earth is this, Mr. Harding?” asked the Vicar. “Who makes a
kitchen-midden of the church tower?”
“That there belongs to Dr. and Mrs. Jackson,” said poor Harding.
“Then Dr. and Mrs. Jackson had better come and fetch it away at once!”
cried the Vicar, forgetting in his indignation to ask who they were.
“See about it directly, please: it is your duty as churchwarden, and if
your duties have so far been neglected, you cannot do better than begin
to make up for the past. I do not mean to speak harshly,” he added,
seeing Mr. Harding’s grave face grow graver, “but the state of this
tower is dreadful, and we must see to it at once.”
Mr. Harding said nothing, but made for the staircase, disappeared from
view, and went home very sad at heart. “I doubt the old Doctor and his
missus will have to go,” said he. Mrs. Harding let her work drop to the
floor and stared at him. “Then the old gentleman’ll have to go too,” she
said. And there was consternation among all the old folks that evening.
Next day I happened to be sitting with the old Scholar when the new
Vicar called. He was received with all the gentle grace and cordiality
which our old friend showed to strangers, and we sat for a few minutes
talking of the weather and the village. Then the Vicar came to the point
of his mission, and I am bound to say that he performed his operation
with tenderness and skill, considering how little he could have guessed
what pain he was inflicting.
“You love the old church, I am sure,” he began. “And I daresay you like
it better as it is, and would not care to see it restored. I don’t want
to spoil it, but I must at least begin by cleaning it thoroughly: and
even that alone will cost a good deal. It is inches deep in dust and
mess in places, and up in the tower they eat and drink and smoke and
write their names,—and what they do it for I don’t know, but they have
made it the common rubbish-heap of the parish. By the way, can you tell
me anything of a Dr. and Mrs. Jackson, who seem to have goings on up
there,—some eccentric old people are they? or——” At this point he caught
sight of my face, which was getting as red as fire.
“Dear me,” he said, turning suddenly upon me, and losing his balance as
he saw that something was wrong, “I hope they are not—not—” and he
stopped in some perplexity.
“No, Sir,” said I. “My name is Johnson.” And I broke out into an
irresistible peal of laughter, in which even the old Scholar joined
me,—but it was the last time I ever saw him laugh.
We cleared up the mystery for the discomfited Vicar; and the old Scholar
went quietly to his desk and wrote a cheque with a trembling Hand.
“I will give you fifty pounds,” he said, “to help to put the old church
in good repair, and I will trust you not to ‘restore’ it. We have
neglected it too long. Dr. and Mrs. Jackson must take their treasures
elsewhere: but I trust that they will long remain your parishioners.”
And so they parted, each with a pleasing sense of duty done: but the
Vicar had high hopes before him, while our dear old Scholar began to
nurse sad misgivings. I cheered him up and bade him goodbye, and meant
to tell the Vicar all about him. But one thing and another prevented me,
and the next day I left the village.
This happened at the end of June, and it was September before I was home
again from the Continent. The man who drove me from the station told me
that the old Scholar was dying. I went to his gate through the
churchyard, and found it neat and well-trimmed: the church was looking
brighter and tidier, and the door was open; and the tower seemed to have
found a fresh youth, with its stringcourse and effigy repaired, and its
abundant crop of ivy lopped away from the lancet windows. But no Doctor
or his wife were sitting on the gurgoyles, or taking the air on the
battlements. I knocked sadly at the old Scholar’s door, fearing that he
had spent his last days in utter friendlessness.
His old housekeeper let me in, and took me at once upstairs. He was
lying on his bed, facing an open window that looked towards the tower;
there was another to the right with a view of distant cornfields full of
autumn sheaves. For once, she told me, that he looked at the cornfields,
he looked a dozen times at the tower: “and if the Doctor and his wife
would but come back,” she said, “he would surely die happy. They should
be here by now, if ’twere like it was in the old times: but they went
off without their young ones when the men began to rummage in the tower,
and I doubt they’ll never come back again now.”
The old Scholar was only half conscious, but he seemed to know me and
kept my hand in his. I made up my mind not to leave him, and sat there
till the shadow of the tower grew long enough to reach us, and then till
the great harvest moon arose over the distant corn-sheaves. Sometimes he
would murmur a few words, and once or twice I caught the favourite old
treasures,—“Unde coronabitur patientia tua,” and “Nimis avide
consolationem quæris.” And so we passed the night, till the moon sank
again, and ‘the high lawns appeared, Under the opening eyelids of the
Morn.’
Then I left him for a few minutes, and descending to the garden filled
the earthenware pan with fresh water, and scattered food on the dewy
grass in the dim hope that the Doctor and his wife might have come back
to see the last of their old friend.
And I had no sooner returned and drawn up the blinds of the sick-room
than I saw them once more on the gurgoyles. I could hardly believe my
eyes: I threw up the window and let the sweet air into the room. The
light roused the old Scholar; he opened his eyes, and at that moment the
Doctor and his wife flew past the window to their morning bath. I am
sure he saw them; a smile of great happiness came over his wasted
features, and he lay back and closed his eyes again. I read him the
Lord’s Prayer: and after a while I heard him whisper, “Nunc
coronabitur—,” as he sank into sleep.
Each day, until he was laid by his old friend the Vicar, we put out the
morning bath and breakfast for his last old friends; then the house was
shut up, and finding that they were not expected, the Doctor and his
wife departed, and were seen no more by any of us. They had done their
kindly work well, and they took our thanks with them.