My Father
My father was a tall, staid, solemn man, who walked slowly with long
strides. He spoke very little, and generally looked as if he were
pondering next Sunday’s sermon. His head was grey, and a little bent,
as if he were gathering truth from the ground. Once I came upon him in
the garden, standing with his face up to heaven, and I thought he was
seeing something in the clouds; but when I came nearer, I saw that his
eyes were closed, and it made me feel very solemn. I crept away as if
I had been peeping where I ought not. He did not talk much to us. What
he said was very gentle, and it seemed to me it was his solemnity that
made him gentle. I have seen him look very angry. He used to walk much
about his fields, especially of a summer morning before the sun was
up. This was after my mother’s death. I presume he felt nearer to her
in the fields than in the house. There was a kind of grandeur about
him, I am sure; for I never saw one of his parishioners salute him in
the road, without a look of my father himself passing like a solemn
cloud over the face of the man or woman. For us, we feared and loved
him both at once. I do not remember ever being punished by him, but
Kirsty (of whom I shall have to speak by and by) has told me that he
did punish us when we were very small children. Neither did he teach
us much himself, except on the occasions I am about to mention; and I
cannot say that I learned much from his sermons. These gave entire
satisfaction to those of his parishioners whom I happened to hear
speak of them; but, although I loved the sound of his voice, and liked
to look at his face as he stood up there in the ancient pulpit clad in
his gown and bands, I never cared much about what he said. Of course
it was all right, and a better sermon than any other clergyman
whatever could have preached, but what it was all about was of no
consequence to me. I may as well confess at once that I never had the
least doubt that my father was the best man in the world. Nay, to this
very hour I am of the same opinion, notwithstanding that the son of
the village tailor once gave me a tremendous thrashing for saying so,
on the ground that I was altogether wrong, seeing _his_ father was the
best man in the world--at least I have learned to modify the assertion
only to this extent--that my father was the best man I have ever
known.
The church was a very old one--had seen candles burning, heard the
little bell ringing, and smelt the incense of the old Catholic
service. It was so old, that it seemed settling down again into the
earth, especially on one side, where great buttresses had been built
to keep it up. It leaned against them like a weary old thing that
wanted to go to sleep. It had a short square tower, like so many of
the churches in England; and although there was but one old cracked
bell in it, although there was no organ to give out its glorious
sounds, although there was neither chanting nor responses, I assure my
English readers that the awe and reverence which fell upon me as I
crossed its worn threshold were nowise inferior, as far as I can
judge, to the awe and respect they feel when they enter the more
beautiful churches of their country. There was a hush in it which
demanded a refraining of the foot, a treading softly as upon holy
ground; and the church was inseparably associated with my father.
The pew we sat in was a square one, with a table in the middle of it
for our books. My brother David generally used it for laying his head
upon, that he might go to sleep comfortably. My brother Tom put his
feet on the cross-bar of it, leaned back in his corner--for you see we
had a corner apiece--put his hands in his trousers pockets, and stared
hard at my father--for Tom’s corner was well in front of the pulpit.
My brother Allister, whose back was to the pulpit, used to learn the
_paraphrases_ all the time of the sermon. I, happiest of all in my
position, could look up at my father, if I pleased, a little sideways;
or, if I preferred, which I confess I often did, study--a rare sight
in Scotch churches--the figure of an armed knight, carved in stone,
which lay on the top of the tomb of Sir Worm Wymble--at least that is
the nearest I can come to the spelling of the name they gave him. The
tomb was close by the side of the pew, with only a flagged passage
between. It stood in a hollow in the wall, and the knight lay under
the arch of the recess, so silent, so patient, with folded palms, as
if praying for some help which he could not name. From the presence of
this labour of the sculptor came a certain element into the feeling of
the place, which it could not otherwise have possessed: organ and
chant were not altogether needful while that carved knight lay there
with face upturned, as if looking to heaven.
[Illustration]
But from gazing at the knight I began to regard the wall about him,
and the arch over him; and from the arch my eye would seek the roof,
and descending, rest on the pillars, or wander about the windows,
searching the building of the place, discovering the points of its
strength, and how it was upheld. So that while my father was talking
of the church as a company of believers, and describing how it was
held together by faith, I was trying to understand how the stone and
lime of the old place was kept from falling asunder, and thus
beginning to follow what has become my profession since; for I am an
architect.
But the church has led me away from my father. He always spoke in
rather a low voice, but so earnestly that every eye, as it seemed to
me, but mine and those of two of my brothers, was fixed upon him. I
think, however, that it was in part the fault of certain teaching of
his own, better fitted for our understanding, that we paid so little
heed. Even Tom, with all his staring, knew as little about the sermon
as any of us. But my father did not question us much concerning it; he
did what was far better. On Sunday afternoons, in the warm, peaceful
sunlight of summer, with the honeysuckle filling the air of the little
arbour in which we sat, and his one glass of wine set on the table in
the middle, he would sit for an hour talking away to us in his gentle,
slow, deep voice, telling us story after story out of the New
Testament, and explaining them in a way I have seldom heard equalled.
Or, in the cold winter nights, he would come into the room where I and
my two younger brothers slept--the nursery it was--and, sitting down
with Tom by his side before the fire that burned bright in the frosty
air, would open the great family Bible on the table, turn his face
towards the two beds where we three lay wide awake, and tell us story
after story out of the Old Testament, sometimes reading a few verses,
sometimes turning the bare facts into an expanded and illustrated
narrative of his own, which, in Shakspere fashion, he presented after
the modes and ways of our own country and time. I shall never forget
Joseph in Egypt hearing the pattering of the asses’ hoofs in the
street, and throwing up the window, and looking out, and seeing all
his own brothers coming riding towards him; or the grand rush of the
sea waves over the bewildered hosts of the Egyptians. We lay and
listened with all the more enjoyment, that while the fire was burning
so brightly, and the presence of my father filling the room with
safety and peace, the wind was howling outside, and the snow drifting
up against the window. Sometimes I passed into the land of sleep with
his voice in my ears and his love in my heart; perhaps into the land
of visions--once certainly into a dream of the sun and moon and stars
making obeisance to the too-favoured son of Jacob.