Starres are poore books, and oftentimes do misse;
This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.
GEORGE HERBERT.
The voyage across the Atlantic was not, in itself, at all
notable. The first half of the passage was extremely unquiet,
and most of the passengers uncomfortable to match. Then the
weather cleared; and the rest of the way, though lengthened
out a good deal by the tricks of the wind, was very fair and
pleasant.
Fifteen days of tossing and sea-sickness had brought little
Fleda to look like the ghost of herself. So soon as the
weather changed, and sky and sea were looking gentle again,
Mr. Carleton had a mattress and cushions laid in a sheltered
corner of the deck for her, and carried her up. She had hardly
any more strength than a baby.
"What are you looking at me so for, Mr. Carleton?" said she, a
little while after he had carried her up, with a sweet serious
smile that seemed to know the answer to her question.
He stooped down and clasped her little thin hand, as
reverentially as if she really had not belonged to the earth.
"You are more like a sprite than I like to see you just now,"
said he, unconsciously fastening the child's heart to himself
with the magnetism of those deep eyes. "I must get some of
the sailors' salt beef and sea-biscuit for you they say that
is the best thing to make people well."
"Oh, I feel better already," said Fleda; and settling her
little face upon the cushion and closing her eyes, she added,
"thank you, Mr. Carleton!"
The fresh air began to restore her immediately; she was no
more sick; her appetite came back; and from that time, without
the help of beef and sea-biscuit, she mended rapidly. Mr.
Carleton proved himself as good a nurse on the sea as on land.
She seemed to be never far from his thoughts. He was
constantly finding out something that would do her good or
please her; and Fleda could not discover that he took any
trouble about it; she could not feel that she was a burden to
him; the things seemed to come as a matter of course. Mrs.
Carleton was not wanting in any show of kindness or care, and
yet, when Fleda looked back upon the day, it somehow was Guy
that had done everything for her; she thought little of
thanking anybody but him.
There were other passengers that petted her a great deal, or
would have done so, if Fleda's very timid, retiring nature had
not stood in the way. She was never bashful, nor awkward; but
yet it was only a very peculiar sympathetic style of address
that could get within the wall of reserve which, in general,
hid her from other people. Hid what it could: for through that
reserve a singular modesty, sweetness, and gracefulness of
spirit would show themselves. But there was much more behind.
There were no eyes, however, on board, that did not look
kindly on little Fleda, excepting only two pair. The Captain
showed her a great deal of flattering attention, and said she
was a pattern of a passenger; even the sailors noticed and
spoke of her, and let slip no occasion of showing the respect
and interest she had raised. But there were two pair of eyes,
and one of them Fleda thought most remarkably ugly, that were
an exception to the rest; these belonged to her cousin
Rossitur and Lieutenant Thorn. Rossitur had never forgiven her
remarks upon his character as a gentleman, and declared
preference of Mr. Carleton in that capacity; and Thorn was
mortified at the invincible childish reserve which she opposed
to all his advances; and both, absurd as it seems, were
jealous of the young Englishman's advantage over them. Both
not the less, because their sole reason for making her a
person of consequence was that he had thought fit to do so.
Fleda would permit neither of them to do anything for her that
she could help.
They took their revenge in raillery, which was not always
good-natured. Mr. Carleton never answered it in any other way
than by his look of cold disdain, not always by that; little
Fleda could not be quite so unmoved. Many a time her nice
sense of delicacy confessed itself hurt, by the deep and
abiding colour her cheeks would wear after one of their ill-
mannered flings at her. She bore them with a grave dignity
peculiar to herself, but the same nice delicacy forbade her to
mention the subject to any one; and the young gentlemen
contrived to give the little child in the course of the voyage
a good deal of pain. She shunned them at last as she would the
plague. As to the rest, Fleda liked her life on board ship
amazingly. In her quiet way she took al the good that offered
and seemed not to recognise the ill.
Mr. Carleton had bought for her a copy of The Rape of the
Lock, and Bryant's poems. With these, sitting or lying among
her cushions, Fleda amused herself a great deal; and it was an
especial pleasure when he would sit down by her and read and
talk about them. Still a greater was to watch the sea, in its
changes of colour and varieties of agitation, and to get from
Mr. Carleton, bit by bit, all the pieces of knowledge
concerning it that he had ever made his own. Even when Fleda
feared it she was fascinated; and while the fear went off the
fascination grew deeper. Daintily nestling among her cushions,
she watched with charmed eyes the long rollers that came up in
detachments of three to attack the good ship, that like a
slandered character rode patiently over them; or the crested
green billows, or sometimes the little rippling waves that
showed old Ocean's placidest face; while with ears as charmed
as if he had been delivering a fairy tale, she listened to all
Mr. Carleton could tell her of the green water where the
whales feed, or the blue water where Neptune sits in his own
solitude, the furthest from land, and the pavement under his
feet outdoes the very canopy overhead in its deep colouring;
of the transparent seas where the curious mysterious marine
plants and animals may be clearly seen many feet down, and in
the North where hundreds of feet of depth do not hide the
bottom; of the icebergs; and whirling great fields of ice,
between which, if a ship get, she had as good be an almond in
a pair of strong nut-crackers. How the water grows colder and
murkier as it is nearer the shore; how the mountain waves are
piled together; and how old Ocean, like a wise man,. however
roughened and tumbled outwardly by the currents of life, is
always calm at heart. Of the signs of the weather; the out-
riders of the winds, and the use the seaman makes of the
tidings they bring, and before Mr. Carleton knew where he was,
he found himself deep in the science of navigation, and making
a star-gazer of little Fleda. Sometimes kneeling beside him as
he sat on her mattress, with her hand leaning on his shoulder,
Fleda asked, listened, and looked; as engaged, as rapt, as
interested, as another child would be in Robinson Crusoe,
gravely drinking in knowledge with a fresh healthy taste for
it that never had enough. Mr. Carleton was about as amused and
as interested as she. There is a second taste of knowledge
that some minds get in imparting it, almost as sweet as the
first relish. At any rate, Fleda never felt that she had any
reason to fear tiring him; and his mother, complaining of his
want of sociableness, said she believed Guy did not like to
talk to any-body but that little pet of his, and one or two of
the old sailors. If left to her own resources, Fleda was never
at a loss; she amused herself with her books, or watching the
sailors, or watching the sea, or with some fanciful
manufacture she had learned from one of the ladies on board,
or with what the company about her were saying and doing.
One evening she had been some time alone, looking out upon the
restless little waves that were tossing and tumbling in every
direction. She had been afraid of them at first, and they were
still rather fearful to her imagination. This evening, as heir
musing eye watched them rise and fall, her childish fancy
likened them to the up-springing chances of life, uncertain,
unstable, alike too much for her skill and her strength to
manage. She was not more helpless before the attacks of the
one than of the other. But then that calm blue heaven that
hung over the sea. It was like the heaven of power and love
above her destinies; only this was far higher, and more pure
and abiding. "He knoweth them that trust in him." "There shall
not a hair of your head perish."
Not these words, perhaps, but something like the sense of
them, was in little Fleda's head. Mr. Carleton coming up, saw
her gazing out upon the water, with an eye that seemed to see
nothing.
"Elfie! Are you looking into futurity!"
"No, yes not exactly!" said Fleda, smiling.
"No, yes, and not exactly!" said he, throwing himself down
beside her. "What does all that mean?"
"I wasn't exactly looking into futurity," said Fleda.
"What then? Don't tell me you were 'thinking;' I know that
already. What?"
Fleda was always rather shy of opening her cabinet of
thoughts. She glanced at him, and hesitated, and then yielded
to a fascination of eye and smile that rarely failed of its
end. Looking off to the sea again as if she had left her
thoughts there, she said,
"I was only thinking of that beautiful hymn of Mr. Newton's."
"What hymn?"
"That long one, 'The Lord will provide.' "
"Do you know it? Tell it to me, Elfie; let us see whether I
shall think it beautiful."
Fleda knew the whole, and repeated it.
"Though troubles assail,
And dangers affright,
Though friends should all fail,
And foes all unite;
Yet one thing secures us
Whatever betide,
The Scripture assures us
'The Lord will provide.'
"The birds without barn
Or storehouse are fed;
From them let us learn
To trust for our bread.
His saints what is fitting
Shall ne'er be denied,
So long as 'tis written,
'The Lord will provide.'
"His call we obey,
Like Abraham of old,
Not knowing our way,
But faith makes us bold.
And though we are strangers,
We have a good guide,
And trust in all dangers
'The Lord will provide.'
"We may like the ships
In tempests be tossed
On perilous deeps,
But cannot be lost.
Though Satan enrages
The wind and the tide,
The promise engages
'The Lord will provide.'
"When Satan appears
To stop up our path,
And fills us with fears,
We triumph by faith.
He cannot take from us,
Though oft he has tried,
This heart-cheering promise,
'The Lord will provide.'
"He tells us we're weak,
Our hope is in vain,
The good that we seek
We ne'er shall obtain;
But when such suggestions
Our spirits have tried,
This answers all questions,
'The Lord will provide.'
"No strength of our own,
Or goodness we claim;
But since we have known
The Saviour's great name,
In this, our strong tower,
For safety we hide;
The Lord is our power!
'The Lord will provide.'
"When life sinks apace,
And death is in view,
This word of his grace
Shall comfort us through.
No fearing nor doubting,
With Christ on our side,
We hope to die shouting
'The Lord will provide!' "
Guy listened very attentively to the whole. He was very far
from understanding the meaning of several of the verses, but
the bounding expression of confidence and hope he did
understand, and did feel.
"Happy to be so deluded!" he thought. "I almost wish I could
share the delusion!"
He was gloomily silent when she had done, and little Fleda's
eyes were so full that it was a little while before she could
look towards him, and ask in her gentle way, "Do you like it,
Mr. Carleton?"
She was gratified by his grave "Yes!"
"But Elfie," said he, smiling again, "you have not told me
your thoughts yet. What had these verses to do with the sea
you were looking at so hard?"
"Nothing; I was thinking," said Fleda, slowly, "that the sea
seemed something like the world I don't mean it was like,
but it made me think of it; and I thought how pleasant it is
to know that God takes care of his people."
"Don't he take care of everybody?"
"Yes, in one sort of way," said Fleda; "but then it is only
his children that he has promised to keep from everything that
will hurt them."
"I don't see how that promise is kept, Elfie. I think those
who call themselves so meet with as many troubles as the rest
of the world, and perhaps more."
"Yes," said Fleda, quickly, "they have troubles, but then God
wont let the troubles do them any harm."
A subtle evasion, thought Mr. Carleton. "Where did you learn
that, Elfie?"
"The Bible says so," said Fleda.
"Well, how do you know it from that?" said Mr. Carleton,
impelled, he hardly knew whether by his bad or his good angel,
to carry on the conversation.
"Why," said Fleda, looking as if it were a very simple
question, and Mr. Carleton were catechising her, "you know,
Mr. Carleton, the Bible was written by men who were taught by
God exactly what to say, so there could be nothing in it that
is not true."
"How do you know those men were so taught?"
"The Bible says so."
A child's answer! but with a child's wisdom in it, not learnt
of the schools. "He that is of God heareth God's words." To
little Fleda, as to every simple and humble intelligence, the
Bible proved itself; she had no need to go further.
Mr. Carleton did not smile, for nothing would have tempted him
to hurt her feelings; but he said, though conscience did not
let him do it without a twinge,
"But don't you know, Elfie, there are some people who do not
believe the Bible?"
"Ah, but those are bad people," replied Fleda, quickly; "all
good people believe it."
A child's reason again, but hitting the mark this time.
Unconsciously, little Fleda had brought forward a strong
argument for her cause. Mr. Carleton felt it, and rising up,
that he might not be obliged to say anything more, he began to
pace slowly up and down the deck, turning the matter over.
Was it so? that there were hardly any good men (he thought
there might be a few), who did not believe in the Bible and
uphold its authority? and that all the worst portion of
society was comprehended in the other class? and if so, how
had he overlooked it? He had reasoned most unphilosophically,
from a few solitary instances that had come under his own eye;
but applying the broad principle of induction, it could not be
doubted that the Bible was on the side of all that is sound,
healthful, and hopeful, in this disordered world. And whatever
might be the character of a few exceptions, it was not
supposable that a wide system of hypocrisy should tell
universally for the best interests of mankind. Summoning
history to produce her witnesses, as he went on with his walk
up and down, he saw with increasing interest, what he had
never seen before, that the Bible had come like the breath of
spring upon the moral waste of mind; that the ice-bound
intellect and cold heart of the world had waked into life
under its kindly influence, and that all the rich growth of
the one and the other had come forth at its bidding. And
except in that sun-lightened tract, the world was and had been
a waste indeed. Doubtless, in that waste, intellect had at
different times put forth sundry barren shoots, such as a
vigorous plant can make in the absence of the sun, but also
like them immature, unsound, and groping vainly after the
light in which alone they could expand and perfect themselves;
ripening no seed for a future and richer growth. And flowers
the wilderness had none. The affections were stunted and
overgrown.
All this was so how had he overlooked it? His unbelief had
come from a thoughtless, ignorant, one-sided view of life and
human things. The disorder and ruin which he saw, where he did
not also see the adjusting hand at work, had led him to refuse
his credit to the Supreme Fabricator. He thought the waste
would never be reclaimed, and did not know how much it already
owed to the sun of revelation; but what was the waste where
that light had not been! Mr. Carleton was staggered. He did
not know what to think. He began to think he had been a fool.
Poor little Fleda was meditating less agreeably the while.
With the sure tact of truth, she had discerned that there was
more than jest in the questions that had been put to her. She
almost feared that Mr. Carleton shared himself the doubts he
had so lightly spoken of, and the thought gave her great
distress. However, when he came to take her down to tea, with
all his usual manner, Fleda's earnest look at him ended in the
conviction that there was. nothing very wrong under that face.
For several days, Mr. Carleton pondered the matter of this
evening's conversation, characteristically restless till he
had made up his mind. He wished very much to draw Fleda to
speak further upon the subject, but it was not easy; she never
led to it. He sought in vain an opportunity to bring it in
easily, and at last resolved to make one..
"Elfie," said he, one morning, when all the rest of the
passengers were happily engaged at a distance with the letter-
bags "I wish you would let me hear that favourite hymn of
yours again; l like it very much."
Fleda was much gratified, and immediately with great
satisfaction repeated the hymn. Its peculiar beauty struck him
yet more the second time than the first.
"Do you understand those two last verses?" said he, when she
had done.
Fleda said "Yes!" rather surprised.
"I do not," he said, gravely.
Fleda paused a minute or two, and then finding that it
depended on her to enlighten him, said in her modest way,
"Why, it means that we have no goodness of our own, and only
expect to be forgiven, and taken to heaven, for the Saviour's
sake."
Mr. Carleton asked, "How _for his sake?_"
"Why, you know, Mr. Carleton, we don't deserve to go there,
and if we are forgiven at all, it must be for what He has
done."
"And what is that, Elfie?"
"He died for us," said Fleda, with a look of some anxiety into
Mr. Carleton's face.
"Died for us! And what end was that to serve, Elfie?" said
he, partly willing to hear the full statement of the matter,
and partly willing to see how far her intelligence could give
it.
"Because we are sinners," said Fleda, "and God has said that
sinners shall die."
"Then how can he keep his word, and forgive at all?"
"Because Christ has died _for us_," said Fleda, eagerly
"instead of us."
"Do you understand the justice of letting one take the place
of others?"
"He was willing, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with a singular
wistful expression, that touched him.
"Still, Elfie," said he, after a minute's silence, "how could
the ends of justice be answered by the death of one man in the
place of millions?"
"No, Mr. Carleton, but He was God as well as man," Fleda said,
with a sparkle in her eye which perhaps delayed her
companion's rejoinder.
"What should induce him, Elfie," he said, gently, "to do such
a thing for people who had displeased him?"
"Because he loved us, Mr. Carleton."
She answered with so evident a strong and clear appreciation
of what she was saying, that it half made its way into Mr.
Carleton's mind by the force of sheer sympathy. Her words came
almost as something new.
Certainly Mr. Carleton had heard these things before; though
perhaps never in a way that appealed so directly to his
intelligence and his candour. He was again silent an instant,
pondering, and so was Fleda.
"Do you know, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, "there are some
people who do not believe that the Saviour was anything more
than a man?"
"Yes, I know it," said Fleda; "it is very strange!"
"Why is it strange?"
"Because the Bible says it so plainly."
"But those people hold, I believe, that the Bible does not say
it."
"I don't see how they could have read the Bible," said Fleda.
"Why, he said so himself."
"Who said so?"
"Jesus Christ. Don't you believe it, Mr. Carleton?"
She saw he did not, and the shade that had come over her face
was reflected in his before he said "No."
"But perhaps I shall believe it yet, Elfie," he said, kindly.
"Can you show me the place in your Bible where Jesus says this
of himself?"
Fleda looked in despair. She hastily turned over the leaves of
her Bible to find the passages he had asked for, and Mr.
Carleton was cut to the heart to see that she twice was
obliged to turn her face from him, and brush her hand over her
eyes, before she could find them. She turned to Matt. xxvi.
63-65, and, without speaking, gave him the book, pointing to
the passage. He read it with great care, and several times
over.
"You are right, Elfie," he said. "I do not see how those who
honour the authority of the Bible, and the character of Jesus
Christ, can deny the truth of His own declaration. If that is
false, so must those be."
Fleda took the Bible, and hurriedly sought out another
passage.
"Grandpa showed me these places," she said, "once when we were
talking about Mr. Didenhover _he_ didn't believe that. There
are a great many other places, grandpa said; but one! is
enough."
She gave him the latter part of the 20th chapter of John.
"You see, Mr. Carleton, he let Thomas fall down and worship
him, and call him God; and if he had _not_ been, you know God
is more displeased with that than with anything."
"With what, Elfie?"
"With men's worshipping any other than himself. He says he
'will not give his glory to another.' "
"Where is that?"
"I am afraid I can't find it," said Fleda "it is somewhere
in Isaiah, I know"
She tried in vain; and failing, then looked up in Mr.
Carleton's face to see what impression had been made.
"You see Thomas believed when he _saw_," said he, answering her;
"I will believe, too, when I see."
"Ah! if you wait for that" said Fleda.
Her voice suddenly checked: she bent her face down again to
her little Bible, and there was a moment's struggle with
herself.
"Are you looking for something more to show me?" said Mr.
Carleton, kindly, stooping his face down to hers.
"Not much," said Fleda, hurriedly; and then making a great
effort, she raised her head, and gave him the book again.
"Look here, Mr. Carleton Jesus said, 'Blessed are they that
have not seen, and yet have believed.' "
Mr. Carleton was profoundly struck, and the thought recurred
to him afterwards, and was dwelt upon. "Blessed are they that
have _not_ seen, and yet have believed." It was strange at
first, and then he wondered that it should ever have been so.
His was a mind peculiarly open to conviction, peculiarly
accessible to truth; and his attention being called to it, he
saw faintly now what he had never seen before, the beauty of
the principle of _faith_ how natural, how reasonable, how
_necessary_, how honourable to the Supreme Being, how happy even
for man, that the grounds of his trust in God being
established, his acceptance of many other things should rest
on that trust alone.
Mr. Carleton now became more reserved and unsociable than
ever. He wearied himself with thinking. If he could have got
at the books, he would have spent his days and nights in
studying the evidences of Christianity; but the ship was bare
of any such books, and he never thought of turning to the most
obvious of all, the Bible itself. His unbelief was shaken; it
was within an ace of falling in pieces to the very foundation;
or, rather, he began to suspect how foundationless it had
been. It came at last to one point with him If there were a
God, he would not have left the world without a revelation
no more would he have suffered that revelation to defeat its
own end by becoming corrupted or alloyed; if there was such a
revelation, it could be no other than the Bible; and his
acceptance of the whole scheme of Christianity now hung upon
the turn of a hair. Yet he could not resolve himself. He
balanced the counter doubts and arguments on one side and on
the other, and strained his mind to the task; he could not
weigh them nicely enough. He was in a maze; and seeking to
clear and calm his judgment that he might see the way out, it
was in vain that he tried to shake his dizzied head from the
effect of the turns it had made. By dint of anxiety to find
the right path, reason had lost herself in the wilderness.
Fleda was not, as Mr. Carleton had feared she would be, at all
alienated from him by the discovery that had given her so much
pain. It wrought in another way, rather to add a touch of
tender and anxious interest to the affection she had for him.
It gave her, however, much more pain than he thought. If he
had seen the secret tears that fell on his account, he would
have been grieved; and if he had known of the many petitions
that little heart made for him, he could hardly have loved her
more than he did.
One evening Mr. Carleton had been a long while pacing up and
down the deck in front of little Fleda's nest, thinking and
thinking, without coming to any end. It was a most fair
evening, near sunset, the sky without a cloud, except two or
three little dainty strips which set off its blue. The ocean
was very quiet, only broken into cheerful mites of waves that
seemed to have nothing to do but sparkle. The sun's rays were
almost level now, and a long path of glory across the sea led
off towards his sinking disk. Fleda sat watching and enjoying
it all in her happy fashion, which always made the most of
everything good, and was especially quick in catching any form
of natural beauty.
Mr. Carleton's thoughts were elsewhere too busy to take note
of things around him. Fleda looked now and then as he passed
at his gloomy brow, wondering what he was thinking of, and
wishing that he could have the same reason to be happy that
she had. In one of his turns his eye met her gentle glance;
and, vexed and bewildered as he was with study, there was
something in that calm bright face that impelled him
irresistibly to ask the little child to set the proud scholar
right. Placing himself beside her, he said,
"Elfie, how do you know there is a God? what reason have you
for thinking so, out of the Bible?"
It was a strange look little Fleda gave him. He felt it at the
time, and he never forgot it. Such a look of reproach, sorrow,
and _pity_, he afterwards thought, as an angel's face might have
worn. The _question_ did not seem to occupy her a moment. After
this answering look she suddenly pointed to the sinking sun,
and said
"Who made that, Mr. Carleton?"
Mr. Carleton's eyes, following the direction of hers, met the
long, bright rays, whose still witness-bearing was almost too
powerful to be borne. The sun was just dipping majestically
into the sea, and its calm self-assertion seemed to him at
that instant hardly stronger than its vindication of its
Author.
A slight arrow may find the joint in the armour before which
many weightier shafts have fallen powerless. Mr. Carleton was
an unbeliever no more from that time.