"But I am not going to sit down to smoke and keep quiet. I want to have
a bit of talk to you; and as soon as I am done I am going to take you
with me. What do you think of that, Thomas?" And thereupon the old man
lighted his pipe, and sat smiling for a little and moving his long
fingers daintily. "When the two queer companions had taken puff by puff
together for some time, Musgrave said--
"Thomas, my lad, you are very unhappy. I am happy, and I think a man has
no more right to keep happiness to himself than he has to keep money to
himself. I am going to share with you. Now, I'm an old fellow that's got
near done with the world, and you are a slashing young chap, and the
girls look after you. But still, though I am parting with the world, and
you have got a long time to stay in it, I am better off than you. The
sight of these flowers makes me joyful, but it only seems to make you
dour. Now, shall I tell you how it is that I am so happy?"
"I don't want to be happy. What's that got to do with the thing? If you
tell me that there's fifty sovereigns buried at the bottom of Lyne Hill
there, I'll go and try to dig the hill away and get at them, because the
trouble's worth taking; but I don't see the fun of seeking for what you
call happiness."
"Well, then, Thomas, how much do you expect to make by trouting
to-night?"
"Well, if there's any luck, Jem and me will divide fifteen shillings
between us."
"Very good; then I'll give you seven-and-six-pence now. Here are your
three half-crowns. Will you come with me?"
The sulky giant smiled sourly and said, "I don't see why I should not.
Where are you for?"
"Well, I am going to preach at the chapel, Thomas, and I would like you
to hear me and walk home with me, and I think that when I have landed
you at your house that you won't be sorry for missing the trouting."
Tommy rose heavily up, shook the fragments of dry grass from his patched
garments, and signified that he was ready. Musgrave took his arm, and at
once assumed an attitude of companionship and equality. He talked with
this churl about all manner of trivialities, flattered him, appealed to
his sense of shrewdness, made little jokes suitable to his wit, and
finally succeeded in making him feel himself to be rather a clever and
entertaining person. The afternoon sun sloped lower and lower as the two
strolled over the moor. Musgrave's thoughts were high, although his
words ran upon childish things. He had no particular artistic sense, but
the joy of colour, the blaze of the sky, the warm and exhilarating air,
made him feel as though he must utter praises. After passing some miles
of strange moorland, covered with the blaze of gorse, and the
multitudinous flash of marshy pools, the two arrived at a curious square
building, which stood a little outside the fishing village.
Musgrave said, "Now, Thomas, come in, and I'll find you a pew," and the
two entered a low room. The congregation was already collected. There
were fierce faces, bronzed by wind and sun. There were quiet faces that
bore the marks of thought and the memories of toil. The men were all
rudely dressed, and the women wore the primitive clothing which for
three hundred years past has served for the simple tastes of the
villagers. After a pause of a few minutes, Walter Musgrave's tall figure
loomed in the shadowy corner where the pulpit stood. A simple hymn was
dictated and sung in strong nasal tones. The old man who led the singing
prided himself upon the volume of sound which he could at any instant
propel through his nose. Strangers were sometimes a little disconcerted
by this feat, for it seemed as if some wholly new description of trumpet
had been suddenly invented. This man of the trumpet voice was wont to
close his eyes and turn his face towards the ceiling. When once the
preliminary blast had been blown from his nostrils, no power on earth
could stay the flood of song. He became oblivious of time and space and
the congregation. Considerations as to harmony did not enter into his
scheme of the universe. If he got flagrantly wrong, he simply coughed
and took up the thread of the musical narrative where he left off. The
congregation had a great notion of his powers. They considered that the
terrific drone with which he opened a hymn could not be equalled in any
church or in any chapel for twenty miles round.
Musgrave suffered a good deal under the storm of harmony, but he always
bore it bravely, and, when possible, lent the aid of his own high, sweet
tenor, to the nasal clamour. After the hymn came a short prayer,
delivered as though the speaker really believed that his God was at
hand, and would instantly listen to any petition humbly proffered by
frail creatures. At the end of a short pause, Walter Musgrave stood up
to speak. He broadened his chest and straightened himself,
unconsciously hinting at his physical power. He then read his text in a
low voice: _"Why is life given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God
hath hedged in?"_ Musgrave was an uneducated man, with strong logical
instincts. Perhaps, had he been educated thoroughly, the poetic vein,
which gave the chief charm to his mind and conversation, would have been
destroyed. As it was, he invariably confined himself to logic so long as
his emotions remained untouched; but there were moments when his blood
seemed to catch fire, and he broke away from the calm reasoning which
serves for placid men. He then spoke with poetry, and with an accent
which affected the nerves of all who heard him. On this afternoon he
began with a little sketch of the history of Job, and he then detailed
his notion that the Arab, who wrote the most wonderful book in the
world, was really the type of the modern man, and lived hundreds of
generations before his time. He pointed out that all around us in
Britain were men of deep thoughts, and wise thoughts, who had grown
discontented with the world, and had set up their own intelligence in an
endeavour to grasp the purpose of an intelligence infinitely higher. The
existence of evil, the existence of pain, the existence of all the
things that make men's pilgrimage, from dark to dark, mysterious and
awful, can never be probed to any purpose by one creature created by the
great Power who also created the mystery of pain and the problem of
evil. Dwelling in the desert, and seeing day by day the movements of the
world, and the strange progress of the stars, Job had grown to cherish
the pride of intellect. So long as his prosperity was unbroken, he was
contented, and busied himself day after day in relieving the wants of
the poor and in succouring the oppressed. But when the blast of
affliction blew upon him, his kindly disposition forsook him for a
little, and he only thought of his own bitterness; he only thought of
the puzzles that have faced every man who has a heart to feel since
first our race appeared in this wondrous place. Musgrave thought that
every man who has faith, every man whose heart has been torn by the
wrenches of chance, must sympathize with the yearning of Job; but at the
last every man, like Job, comes to see that there are things beyond our
minds. Each of us learns that there are things before which our
intelligence must be abashed, and that the only safe rule of life is to
fall into the attitude of trust, and question no more. He felt it
necessary to touch his homely hearers, and he said: "Only last week the
wind woke from the sky, and the storm swept over the moor, and swept
over this little place where two or three are now gathered together to
worship. Many of our friends put forth in the morning in the joy of
strength, in the pride of manhood, and no one of them fancied the sea
that now fawns upon the shore would wake up into fury, and would dash
its claws into cliff and sand, and rend the works of man into
nothingness. We stood together on these cliffs--wives whose husbands
were wrestling with the storm, mothers who were yearning for the sons
they had borne. We saw the boats fight nearer and nearer through the mad
spray and the tearing blasts. One after another we saw them crushed and
sunken by the hand of the wind. Many of us went to our homes with
bitterness at heart. We could not tell why those innocent men should
have been snatched out of life; we could not tell why the innocent
sufferers who remain should bear their sorrow through all the years
until the release of death comes. Our thoughts were the thoughts that
Job cherished in the black depths of his agony. But let me counsel you;
let me ask you to remember that although death is here and pain is
here--although every moment of our lives brings some new mystery--yet in
the end there shall be peace. Our little sufferings count as nothing in
the sum of the universe. The ills that we cry out against are only but
as the troubles of children, and over all watches the Father who cared
for Job in the desert, and who took to His own breast the souls of those
who went down in the storm that crushed so many hopes of so many men and
women in this our little village. I ask you only to trust. I give you no
arguments. I only beg you to feel. Crush your questionings. Force
yourself to believe in your own insignificance; force yourself to think
that suffering has a wise end, and that even our pains, which are so
great to us, are part of the scheme of a Master who is moulding the
universe to His own plans. When once you have attained this central
attitude of calm and trust, then for the rest of your life you will know
nothing but joy. The thought of death will be no more like to the horror
of a nightmare, but you will meet the great change even as you meet the
deep black sleep of tired men. You will know, while thought remains,
that you have not lived in vain, and you have not died in vain, for
somewhere in God's providence there shall be rest for you, and immortal
peace."
The thin frame of the speaker quivered as he spoke, and his long fingers
writhed with a motion that gave emphasis to his ringing tones. Hob's
Tommy had never heard anything like this before. He sat stupefied, and
felt as though some music not heard of hitherto were playing and giving
him gladness. The congregation broke up, and old William Dent said to
one of his cronies, "Watty was grand this afternoon. Ay, they may talk
about the fine preachers with the Greek and the Latin, but I want to
hear a man like that." Musgrave and Hob's Tommy walked back over the
moor in the twilight after the second service, and the giant spoke not a
word all the way until they reached the bridge that crossed the little
river. The dying twilight made the sluggish water like silver, and the
trees were just beginning to moan with the evening wind. Tommy stood in
the middle of the bridge, and looked--looked into the dark depths of the
water, and then let his eye trace the silver path of the river where it
vanished in the soft purple tints of the wood. He said, "If I was to
drop over here now, Mr. Musgrave, do you think God would take me?" And
Musgrave said--
"Don't talk nonsense, Thomas; come along with me. When God wants to take
you, He will take you; but you must not be trying to put your opinions
in place of God's. Turn back, my man, and look at the Point there where
the Cobbler's Stone stands. Now forget that you are looking at the calm
stream, and think what you would feel like one dark night, with a
northerly gale, if you had to fight your way round the Cobbler, and
expected the sea to double over your boat every minute. You are not in
danger now, and your business is to worship. Try to think, my lad, what
you would feel if you expected that every sea would be the last one. Now
come away, and talk no more nonsense to-night."
So Hob's Tommy did not go trouting on that Sunday evening.
The next day, when he woke up, he had a sense of strangeness, and it
suddenly flashed upon him that he ought to pray. He did not exactly know
how to begin, but he managed to produce a curious imitation of the
prayer he had heard Musgrave deliver the day before. He then put on his
sea-boots and sou'-wester, and strolled into the kitchen. When his
mother heard his foot in the passage, she trembled a little, because Tom
was not over civil as a rule. To her utter astonishment, the ruffian
whom she loved said, "Good morning, mother. Is the coffee ready?" He
then stepped up to her, and placed his arm round her shoulders. He had
never kissed anybody in his life; so that form of endearment did not
occur to him; but he bent his bearded face, and laid his cheek clumsily
against his mother's. The draggled woman was so startled that she was
unable to form any idea as to the possible cause of this transformation.
She only said, "Sit down, my bonny man, and your bacon will be ready for
you in two minutes. I have never seen you look so well in my life. Will
I be sending to the town for some bottled beer for you by the time you
get back?"
"No, mother; I am going to try and do without the drink for a bit. I hit
you last Saturday night, didn't I?"
"Well, don't speak about that, my bonny man."
"Show us the mark, mother."
She bared her arm to the shoulder, and there, sure enough, was a black
bruise.
He ate his breakfast and went out, leaving his mother in a condition of
exaltation which she had not known for many years. All the day, while
the lines were over the side, Tommy sat with his face in his hands. His
two mates joked with him, swore at him, tried all kinds of clumsy
inducements to make him revert to his ordinary saturnine and
entertaining mode of conversation; but he would not be tempted from his
silence. Towards evening a chill blast struck off from the shore, and
Mary's Jem, who was Tommy's mate, said--
"My man, we'll have the white horses in half a minute!"
A short, jumping sea sprang up as if by magic; the men hauled in their
lines, took three reefs in the coble's mainsail before hoisting, and
then laid the boat's head for the land. Minute by minute the blast grew
heavier; quick gusts shook the bents on the sandy hills, and screamed
away over the moaning floor of the sea. The boat had to beat very near
the wind, and, as she ducked and plunged to the short rollers, clouds of
spray came aboard, varied by plunges of green water. Sailing within
three and a half points of the wind, and with her three reefs in the
lug, she made at least four knots, and the water roared under her
rudder. Jemmy lit his pipe, and said--
"We'll have to run north, my man."