AN ATMOSPHERE OF LOVE
After the fierce north-east wind came one from the south-east, whose
wings were laden with moisture, and which cast cold showers over the
earth. It is said that a breath from this quarter brings a downpour that
continues unintermittently for forty-eight hours. On this occasion,
however, the rain was not incessant. The sky lowered when it did not
send down its showers, and these latter were cold and unfertilising.
“February fill dyke, March dry it up,” is the saying, but March this
year was one of rain, and February had been a month of warmth and
sunshine, which had forced on all vegetation, which March was cutting
with its cruel frosts and beating down with its pitiless rains.
That had come about in Coombe Cellars which might have been anticipated.
Kate had been sent across the water with the scantiest provision against
cold, and with no instruction as to how to act in the event of delay of
the atmospheric train. She was not a strong child, and the bitter cold
had cut her to the marrow. On the morning following she was unable to
rise, and by night she was in a burning fever.
Kate had an attic room where there was no grate--a room lighted by a
tiny window that looked east across the river.
Against the panes the rain pattered, and the water dripped from the
eaves upon the window-ledge with the monotonous sound of the
death-watch. Hard by was the well-head of a fall-pipe, in which birds
had made their nests, and had so choked it that the water, unable to
descend by the pipe, squirted and plashed heavily on the slates below.
A candle, brought from the kitchen, stood on the window-shelf guttering
in the wind that found its way through the ill-fitting lattice and
cracked diamond panes. It cast but an uncertain shimmer over the face of
the sick girl.
On the floor stood an iron rushlight-holder, the sides pierced with
round holes. In this a feeble rushlight burned slowly.
Beside the bed sat Mrs. Pepperill, and the old rector of
Coombe-in-Teignhead stood with bowed head, so as not to knock his crown
against the ceiling, looking intently at the girl. Zerah was uneasy. Her
conscience reproached her. She had acted inconsiderately, if not
wrongly, in sending her niece across the water. She was afraid lest she
should be blamed by the parson, and lest her conduct should be commented
on by the parish.
She reasoned with herself, without being able thoroughly to still the
qualms of her conscience. What cause had she to suppose that the train
would not arrive punctually? How could she have foreseen that it would
come in so late that it made it impossible for Kate to cross in the then
condition of the tide? Had Jan Pooke arrived but ten minutes earlier
than he did, then, unquestionably, the boat would have come over, if not
at Coombe Cellars, yet somewhat lower down the river. She was not gifted
with the prophetic faculty. She had so many things to occupy her mind
that she could not provide for every contingency. Should the child die,
no blame--no reasonable blame--could attach to her. The fault lay with
Mr. Brunel, who had laid down the atmospheric railway; with the engineer
at the Teignmouth exhausting-pump, who had not done his duty properly;
with the guard of the train, who had not seen that the rollers for
opening and closing the valves did their work properly; with John Pooke,
for delaying over his hat that he had let fall; with Jason Quarm, for
not offering to ferry the boat in the place of his daughter, instead of
staying over the fire with her husband, filling his head with
mischievous nonsense about making money out of mud and sinking capital
which would never come to the surface again. Finally, the fault lay with
Providence, that blind and inconsiderate power, which had robbed her of
Wilmot, and now had not retarded the ebb by ten minutes, which might
easily have been effected by shifting the direction of the wind to the
south-west.
The feeble light flickered in the window, and almost in the same manner
did the life of the girl flicker, burning itself away as the candle
guttered in the overmuch and irregular heat, now quivering under the
in-rush of draught, hissing blue and faint, and ready to expire, then
flaring up in exaggerated incandescence. The cheeks flushed, the eyes
burned with unnatural light, and the pulse ebbed and flowed.
“Where do the stars go by day?” asked Kate in delirium; “and why does
the Plough turn in heaven? Is God’s hand on it?”
“My child,” said the parson, “God’s plough in the earth is the frost,
that cuts deep and turns and crumbles the clods ready for the seed;
and God’s plough on human hearts is great sorrow and sharp
disappointment--to make the necessary furrow into which to drop the
seeds of faith, and love, and patience.”
“She is not speaking to you, sir,” said Mrs. Pepperill. “She’s talking
rambling like. But she’s terrible at questions--always.”
The clergyman held his hands folded behind his back, and looked intently
at the fevered face. The eyes were bright, but not with intelligence.
Kate neither recognised him, nor understood what he said.
“I wonder now where the doctor is?” said Zerah. “I reckon he has gone to
some patient who can pay a guinea where we pay seven shillings and
sixpence. Doctor Mant will be with such twice a day--as we are poor, he
will come to us only now and then.”
“You judge harshly. You have but just sent for him.”
“I did not think Kate was bad enough to need a doctor.”
“God is the Great Physician. Put your trust in Him.”
“That is what you said when Wilmot was ill. I lost her all the same.”
“It was the will of Heaven. God’s plough, maybe, was needed.”
“In what way did I deserve to be so treated? My beautiful child! my own,
very very own child.” Zerah’s eyes filled, but her lips contracted,
making crow-feet at the corners. “I have had left to me instead this
cold-hearted creature, my niece, who can in no way make up to me for
what I have lost. I’ve had a sovereign taken from me and a ha’penny left
in my hand.”
“God has given you this child to love and care for. For His own wise
purposes He took away Wilmot, whom you were spoiling with over-much
affection and blind admiration. Now He would have you love and cherish
the treasure He has left in your hands.”
“Treasure?”
“Ay, treasure. Love her.”
“Of course I love her! I do my duty by her.”
“You have done your duty--of that I have no doubt. But how have you done
it? Do you know, Mrs. Pepperill, there are two ways in which everything
may be done--as a duty to God, in the spirit of bondage or in the spirit
of love? So with regard to the image of God in this innocent and
suffering child. You may do your duty perfunctorily or in charity.”
“I do it in charity. Her father has not paid a penny for her keep.”
“That is not what I mean; charity is the spirit of love. There are two
minds in which man may stand before God, to everything, to
everyone--there is the servant mind and the filial mind, the duty mind,
and the mind of love. And with what mind have you treated this child?”
The parson put his hand to Kate’s brow and drew back from it the dark
hair, sweeping the locks aside with his trembling fingers.
“Look,” said he. “What a forehead she has got--what a brow! full, full,
full of thought. This is no common head--there is no vulgar brain in
this poor little skull.”
“Wilmot had a head and brains,” said Mrs. Pepperill, “and her forehead
was higher and whiter.”
Zerah’s conscience was stinging her. What the rector said was true, and
the consciousness that it was true made her angry.
Would she have sent Wilmot across the water insufficiently protected
against the east wind? would she have done this without weighing the
chances of the atmospheric railway breaking down? If death were to
snatch this child from her, she would ever feel that some responsibility
had weighed on her. However much she might shift the blame, some of it
must adhere to her.
She had not been kind to the motherless girl. It was true she had not
been unkind to her; but then Kate had a right to a share of her heart.
She had valued her niece chiefly as a foil to her daughter; and when the
latter died, her feelings toward Kate had been dipped in wormwood.
Zerah was not a bad woman, but she was a disappointed woman. She was
disappointed in her husband, disappointed in her child. Her heart was
not congealed, nor was her conscience dead, but both were in a torpid
condition.
Now, as by the glimmer of the swaling candle she looked on the suffering
girl, the ice about her heart cracked--a warm gush of pity, an ache of
remorse, came upon her; she bowed and kissed the arched brow of her
niece.
The rector knelt and prayed in silence. He loved the intelligent child
in his Sunday school--the nightingale in his church choir. Zerah obeyed
his example.
Then both heard the stair creak, and a heavy tread sounded on the
boards.
Mrs. Pepperill looked round, but the irregular tread would have told her
who had entered the attic chamber without the testimony of her eyes. She
stood up and signed to Jason Quarm to be less noisy in his movements.
“Pshaw!” said he; “it is nothing. Kitty will get over it. You, Zerah,
are tough. I am tough. Leather toughness is the characteristic of us
Quarms. When she is better, send her to me--to the moor. That will set
her up.”
The rector rose.
Jason went to the head of the bed and laid his large hand on the sick
girl’s brow. The coolness of his palm seemed to do her good.
“You see--it comforts the little toad,” said her father. “There is
nothing to alarm you in the case. Children are like corks. They go under
water and are up again--mostly up. Dipping under is temporary--temporary
and soon over. Parson, do you want to speculate? I am buying oak dirt
cheap--to sell at a tremendous profit. Ten per cent. at the least. What
do you say?”
The rector shook his head.
“Well, I shouldn’t go away from Coombe with Kitty ill but that I expect
to make my fortune and hers. She’ll have a dower some day out of the
Brimpts oaks.”
Then the man stumped out of the room and down the steep stairs.
Jason Quarm was always sanguine.
“Do you think Kate will live?” asked Zerah, who did not share his views.
“I trust so,” answered the rector. “If she does, then regard her as a
gift from heaven. Once before she was put, a frail and feeble object,
into your arms to rear and cherish. You were then too much engrossed in
your daughter to give to this child your full attention. Your own Wilmot
has been taken away. Now your niece has been almost withdrawn from you.
But the hand that holds the issues of life and death spares her; she is
committed to you once more--again helpless, frail, and committed to you
that you may envelop her in an atmosphere of LOVE.”
“I have loved her,” said Mrs. Pepperill. “This is the second time, sir,
that you have charged me with lack of love towards Kate.”
“Wilmot,” said the rector, “was one who stormed the heart. She went up
against it, with flags flying and martial music, and broke in at the
point of the bayonet. Kate’s nature is different. She will storm no
heart. She sits on the doorstep as a beggar, and does not even knock and
solicit admission. Throw open your door, extend your hand, and the timid
child will falter in, frightened, yet elate with hope.”
“I don’t know,” said Zerah meditatively. “You’ll excuse my saying it,
but when a child is heartless”--
“Heartless?--who is heartless?”
“Kate, to be sure.”
“Heartless?” repeated the rector. “You are in grievous error. No child
is heartless. None of God’s creatures are void of love. God is love
Himself, and we are all made in the image of the Creator. In all of us
is the divine attribute of love. We were made to love and to be loved.
It is a necessity of our nature. This poor little spirit--with how much
love has it been suckled? With how much has its nakedness been clothed?
The cream of your heart’s affection was given to your own daughter, and
only the whey--thin and somewhat acidulated--offered to the niece. Turn
over a new leaf, Mrs. Pepperill. Treat this child in a manner different
from that in which she has been treated. I allow frankly that you have
not been unkind, unjust, ungracious. But such a soul as this cannot
flower in an atmosphere of negatives. You know something about the
principle on which the atmospheric railway acts, do you not, Mrs.
Pepperill? There is a pump which exhausts the air. Now put a plant, an
animal, into a vessel from which the vital air has been withdrawn, and
plant or animal will die at once. It has been given nothing deleterious,
nothing poisonous has been administered. It dies simply because it has
been deprived of that atmosphere in which God ordained that it should
live and flourish. My good friend,” said the rector, and his voice shook
with mingled tenderness of feeling and humour, “if I were to take you up
and set you under the exhausting apparatus, and work at the pump, you
would gasp--gasp and die.”
The woman turned cold and blank at the suggestion.
“If I did that,” continued the parson, “the coroner who sat on you would
pronounce that you had been murdered by me. I should be sent to the
assizes, and should infallibly be hung. Very well: there are other kinds
of murder than killing the body. There is the killing of the noble,
divine nature in man, and that not by acts of violence only, but by
denial of what is essential to its existence. Remember this, Mrs.
Pepperill: what the atmosphere is to the lungs, that love is to the
heart. God created the lungs to be inflated with air, and the heart to
be filled with Love.”