A FAMILY PICTURE.
The year drew to its close, and society at Combhaven, which possessed
something of that capacity for adapting itself to circumstances which
is characteristic of society in wider circles, had got accustomed
to the idea of Joshua Haggard’s marriage; and, if not altogether
reconciled to his union, had become, at any rate, resigned to the
inevitable.
‘It’s a blessed mercy for Mr. Haggard that he’s got a sister to
look after his house and keep the furniture polished, and see that
the bottoms of the loaves and broken pieces don’t get thrown to the
fowls,’ remarked careful housewives to each other in the friendly
loquacity of the tea-table, ‘or else things would go to wrack and
ruin altogether, I should think, with a young wife like that.’
‘And so pretty, too,’ sighed a matron, gently shaking the stiffest
of caps, as if prettiness were a crime.
‘Pretty and useless, no doubt, poor thing. And he seems so foolishly
fond of her. I’m sure to see them out walking together you’d think
they were sweethearts that had only just begun to keep company,’
remarked Mrs. Pycroft, of the First and Last, whose conversations
with her husband after marriage had been chiefly of a didactic or
argumentative character.
Once, and once only, had Joshua--whose style of preaching was more
personal and familiar than that which obtained at this time in the
Established Church, where the chaff of abstruse doctrine was but
sparsely qualified with the grain of moral teaching and Gospel
truth--approached indirectly the subject of his marriage.
He had been quoting Richard Baxter’s _Call to the Unconverted_, and,
suddenly diverging from the theology of the preacher, enlarged upon
the man and his life.
‘It was in many ways a life of trial, yet in all ways a life full
of blessing,’ he said; ‘nor do I count it the smallest of graces
which Providence bestowed upon this great and good man that, at
forty-seven years of age, he was blessed in the affection of a wife
of three-and-twenty. He had come to that time of life without having
ever known the sweetness of domestic happiness. But it pleased God
that he should be the instrument of this dear girl’s conversion,
and that her heart should go forth to him who had brought her the
message of salvation. There were some, perchance, in those evil days
who were scandalised by this marriage; for it had been a part of
Baxter’s creed that for ministers to marry was barely lawful. But
Heaven smiled upon this wedded pair, who were verily married in the
Lord; and Baxter has told us that he found in his wife a helpmeet, a
comforter in all his sorrows, the sharer of his prison, and always
the helper to his joy.’
Before the year was ended Naomi had become completely reconciled to
her father’s marriage. She had suffered faint thrills of pain just at
first, when she saw Cynthia draw her chair near Joshua’s, and perhaps
sit with her hand in his, while he read the evening Scriptures.
She had felt it just a little hard to see her father’s eyes rest
with such ineffable love upon the face of the stranger; but she
had schooled her heart to submit to this loss--if loss it could be
called--since her father was more affectionate to his children than
he had been before his marriage. She had subdued all human jealousy,
and had taught herself to be glad that her father had won so fair
and faithful a companion. There was something indescribably touching
in the young wife’s childlike affection for her husband, her intense
belief in him, her unbounded admiration for his talents and powers as
preacher and teacher, her implicit faith in his judgment. If flattery
be a pleasant poison, Joshua was in a fair way to be poisoned by the
sweetest of all flatteries--the exaggerated estimate which springs
from womanly love. Love with a woman of this temper is but another
name for worship; and Cynthia’s love had begun in a spiritual
idolatry which had set Joshua but a little way below the saints
and apostles he had taught her to reverence. In a man so truthful
as Joshua closer communion revealed no flaw, familiarity was not
followed by disillusion. After two months of married life the husband
still occupied the pedestal upon which Cynthia had elevated the
teacher; but, although she had suffered no disappointment in the man
himself, her vivid and romantic mind began to find something wanting
in his surroundings. The atmosphere of her daily life was depressing;
the young eager spirit yearned for work of some kind, and was flung
back upon the dull blank of idleness. She sighed for keener air, a
wider horizon, yet scarcely knew what she desired. She had secret
aspirations for her husband, and rebelled against that commonplace
trade which occupied one half of his life--that buying and selling
and getting gain, which seemed to her enthusiastic mind a practical
denial of the Gospel which the trader preached on Sundays, the lesson
which he taught his flock on weekdays. These divided duties, this
solicitous service to a worldly master, struck her as out of joint
with her husband’s sacred character. To her, who had known no other
church than this Dissenting community, and who hardly knew that they
were Dissenters, Joshua was as holy as if Episcopal hands had been
laid upon him, and she was troubled by the incongruity between the
trader and the priest. Yet, seeing that Joshua saw no harm in his
calling, that he held honest trade as an honourable office, she dared
not lift up her voice in remonstrance, and accepted the shop as one
of those things which, like aunt Judith, were an inevitable element
in her life.
Christmas brought cheerful thoughts and friendly relations between
the minister and his flock. Presents rained upon Joshua at this
season, and those stiffnecked members of his congregation who had
lifted the nose at his marriage, atoned for their unfriendly feeling
by the fattest of turkeys and youngest of geese. Christmas was a
season of much eating and drinking at Combhaven; and even Methodism
forgot to be ascetic, and gorged itself with beef and pudding, with
a riotous delight in the good things of this mortal life that would
have made William Law’s hair stand on end. The Established Church
woke up from its comfortable doze, and sang carols on Christmas-eve;
the ecclesiastical feeling for colour displayed itself in sprigs of
holly, stuck here and there in convenient places by the hands of
beadle and pew-opener; and a dole of bread, provided by the bequest
of the virtuous dame Margery Hawker, of this parish, was meted out
to five-and-twenty poor women on Christmas morning. New bonnets,
modelled upon the coal-scuttle of the period, were to be seen above
the high oaken pews of St. Mary Magdalene, and enlivened the crowded
congregation at Little Bethel. It was altogether a season of pleasant
thoughts and general contentment, a season which seemed very sweet to
Naomi, as she walked in the leafless woods with the lover who was so
soon to be her husband. Early in March, before the birds had pecked
the crocuses to death, before the daffodils had begun their fairy
dances in the windy afternoons, Naomi and Oswald were to be married
at the gray old parish church. It was a wonderful thing to think of.
Naomi was to be a great lady, and live at the Grange, and have that
pretty morning-room, with its dainty bookcases, and neat duodecimo
edition of the old poets, bound in white vellum, for her very own.
She was to belong to the old Squire and his son. The gardens and
the park, where the cattle browsed, and the beautiful mysterious
wood, with its glades and dells and lopsided old trees, and knolls
and thickets, which one could never quite know by heart, were to be
hers--a part of her life, inseparable from all her future years.
‘You will let me go to chapel, Oswald?’ she asked earnestly; ‘you
will never try to keep me away from Little Bethel?’
‘My dearest, I would rather go there with you than hinder your going.
You shall be free, my dear. These things are more to you than they
are to me. It would be hard if I were to oppose my prejudices to your
deep-rooted faith. And who shall say whether John Wesley’s creed is
right or wrong? It is a comfortable doctrine most assuredly that sin
brings us closer to Christ, and that the deeper we sink in the mire
the nearer we are to the stars.’
‘O Oswald, you don’t understand. It is our consciousness of sin that
brings us to the Fount of grace, not the sin.’
They were very happy at this Christmastide. It was one of those
green yules to which popular prejudice accredits the filling of
churchyards, although the _Times_ obituary goes far to prove the good
old-fashioned Christmas, with his icicle diadem and his mantle of
snow, Death’s sterner coadjutor. Blackbirds were merry in the woods
at evensong, and mistaken dog-violets struggled into untimely bloom
under the shelter of tall hedges. Oswald dined with his father upon
the great festival, and, as soon as he decently could do so, stole
away from the fire-lit dining-room, leaving the old Squire asleep
in his big arm-chair, where he would in all likelihood slumber
peacefully until bed-time, when he would awake with wonderful
briskness to go his round of the lower chambers, and see that every
bolt was duly drawn against thieves and burglars, for although half
a dozen spoons and forks, and a pair of salt-cellars with corpulent
bodies and attenuated legs comprised the utmost display of silver
that ever decorated the Squire’s table, there was a goodly store of
old tankards, venison-dishes, soup-tureens, and smaller plate stowed
away in the great oak closet in old Mr. Pentreath’s bedroom.
Oswald walked straight to the minister’s house--but not quite so fast
as he had been accustomed to walk in the same direction. The air
was wondrously mild; the western sky a pale primrose; the wooded
horizon-line bluer than it is wont to be. It was a winter twilight
that might tempt a man to linger, and Oswald was full of thought.
Early in March--so soon--for him, as for Naomi, that approaching
marriage was an event to be contemplated with wonder, almost with
disbelief. His apprenticeship, which at the beginning had seemed to
him as long as Jacob’s, was nearly ended. His patience and truth and
constancy were to have their reward.
‘Dear girl!’ he said to himself, thinking of his betrothed. ‘She is
the best and noblest of women; where could I find so perfect a wife?
I do not believe there is a flaw in her goodness. I always feel
myself a better man when I am with her. Yes, that is what a wife
ought to be.’
And then in his low legato tones he repeated that familiar verse of
Wordsworth’s--
‘A perfect woman, nobly planned’--
from a poem which seems to concentrate in thirty lines all that can
ever be said or sung in praise of womankind.
He could see the ruddy firelight shining in the minister’s best
parlour as he came round the bend of the road. It was tea-time,
and they were all assembled there, no doubt--aunt Judith in her
best gown, which was such an excellent fit across the chest as to
be faintly suggestive of a strait waistcoat; Naomi sitting in her
favourite corner with the red light flickering upon her glossy hair,
and those deep dark eyes of hers full of grave thoughts; and on the
other side of the hearth that childlike face and figure, the very
type of innocent and guileless maidenhood, Oswald’s idea of Goethe’s
Gretchen, nestling close to Joshua’s side, looking up at him now and
then with worshipping eyes.
Oswald saw the family scene afar off, as if it had been a
mirage-picture. He turned the handle of the door and went in.
The passage was dimly lighted by an oil-lamp. He knocked at the
parlour-door by way of ceremony, and the minister’s deep voice bade
him enter. Yes, the scene was just as his imagination had shown it
to him--aunt Judith seated at the tea-board, the old brown Bible at
Joshua’s right hand, Cynthia’s fair hair looking like palest gold
in the uncertain light, Naomi’s dark head drooping thoughtfully,
Jim screwed as close as possible to the fire, stooping to roast
chestnuts between the bars--a peaceful home-picture. They all looked
up and gave him welcome, but Naomi’s gratified smile was worth all
the rest.
‘I did not think you would be able to come,’ she exclaimed.
‘Luckily for me my father indulged in a heavier dinner than usual
and fell asleep immediately after it. But I should have contrived to
come under any circumstances. I hope I am in time for a cup of your
excellent tea, Miss Haggard? It is not every one can make such tea as
yours.’
‘Every one hasn’t been making tea in the same pot for five-and-twenty
years,’ replied aunt Judith, obviously mollified by this compliment.
‘You want to know your pot and to know your tea if it’s to be worth
drinking.’
Miss Haggard dispensed the beverage with an abnormal stiffness
peculiar to festive occasions and best gowns. Social gatherings of a
cheerful nature did not induce aunt Judith to unbend. On occasions
of this kind she assumed a spinal inflexibility which, in her mind,
was the surest indication of a virtuous bringing-up and a polite
education. And this backboard politeness was accepted at Combhaven,
where Miss Haggard was considered ‘quite the lady.’
‘I don’t know what’s coming to the women in this place,’ said aunt
Judith presently, when there was a pause in the conversation, ‘but I
think they must have set their hearts on spending money one against
the other. I counted four new bonnets in chapel this morning, without
counting Mrs. Spradgers’s, that had been fresh trimmed, and she only
had it in October, for I sold her the ribbon for it--a lovely maroon
with an orange spot.’
‘I hope you had something better to do in chapel than count the new
bonnets and think badly of your neighbours, Judith,’ remonstrated
Joshua.
‘I’ve got eyes in chapel as well as out of chapel,’ answered Judith,
‘and there’s times when the most serious-minded Christian can use
’em--while the hymn’s being given out, for instance; our time’s
our own then, I should think. All I can say is, that if milliners’
made-up bonnets--drawn silk trumpery that one heavy shower will
spoil--don’t bring Combhaven to ruin, nothing else will. There’s
Mrs. Flitton, that I’ve sold many a serviceable straw to in days
gone by, decked out in a velvet cottage with a bird of Paradise from
Barnstaple. It was luxury of this kind that led to the French king
losing his head when we were young folks, Joshua. I’ve heard you say
as much many a time, so don’t deny it.’
‘If you thought less of your neighbours’ shortcomings, Judith--’
‘I can’t help thinking of them when I’ve got fourteen straw bonnets,
best quality, left out of last summer’s stock. The shape will be old
next year, I daresay. Fashions change so quick nowadays. I shall have
to sell ’em to the servant-girls, half-price.’
‘How you do worry about a few shillings, aunt!’ cried Jim, in a
disgusted tone. ‘We make more on our side of the shop in a day than
you can lose on your side in a week.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Pert. When your father loses money by _my_ department
I hope he’ll tell me so. I haven’t heard of it yet.’
‘Then why do you make such a fuss about half a dozen straw bonnets?
You _said_ you were going to lose by ’em.’
‘If I lose by my bonnets I shall come home upon my ribbons, you may
be sure, Mr. James; and when you know the grocery business as well as
I know the drapery, you may take me to task, not sooner.’
‘We won’t talk any more about the shop this evening, Judith,’ said
Joshua. ‘We may be too assiduous in business.’
‘The Bible tells us not to be slothful,’ replied the aggrieved
Judith; ‘but I daresay it vexes Mrs. Haggard to hear such talk. She’d
have liked to have married a bishop, with his carriage and pair.’
This was a hit at Cynthia’s dislike to the shop, which the girl had
revealed involuntarily upon one or two occasions.
‘I should be glad if my husband had nothing to distract his thoughts
from his chapel and his schools,’ answered Cynthia. ‘Any man can keep
a shop. It seems a hard thing that his time should be taken up with
selling grocery.’
‘Does it seem a hard thing that he’s got a comfortable home and money
in the bank, and a fortune to give his daughter?’ demanded aunt
Judith. ‘He wouldn’t have got those out of Little Bethel.’
Cynthia sighed. She fancied it would have been far happier to have
wandered with her husband from village to village, tending him and
comforting him in his pilgrimage, than to lead this prosperous life
in a settled home, where there was so much to draw his mind away
from his great work. And was it for the sake of a substantial house
and daily food, for money heaped up in the bank, that the teacher
consented so to limit his sphere of usefulness--nay, in a manner to
hide his light under a bushel? Naomi had talked to Cynthia of that
missionary life which seemed so glorious to her, and the younger girl
had caught the enthusiasm of the elder. She felt as if her husband’s
true vocation lay far away beyond the wide strange seas, among the
races that had never heard of the Christian’s God.
Happily for household peace upon this festive occasion the clearing
away of the tea-things, and the retirement of Judith to wash them,
put an end to a discussion that had tended towards unpleasantness.
Naomi and Oswald were able to enjoy their quiet talk on one side of
the hearth, while Joshua read one of his favourite Puritan divines
on the other, Cynthia sitting by him in meek silence, full of sweet
thoughts and dreamy aspirations after an unknown good. James went on
roasting his chestnuts, which ever and anon exploded with a fizz and
a splutter, to his own delight and the consternation of the assembly.
‘How pretty she is!’ whispered Oswald to Naomi, contemplating
Cynthia’s thoughtful face during a pause in his talk. He watched
her with the same pleasure and interest he might have felt in the
contemplation of a pretty child--something soft and sweet and
helpless, which he looked down upon from the altitude of his mature
years.
‘Yes, she is very pretty and very good. My father is quite happy in
his marriage.’
‘Why does she never come with us in our walks? It must be dull for
her of an afternoon, when your father is out.’
‘She goes for a walk with Jim sometimes.’
‘But why not with us?’
‘I don’t know. She’s very shy. I rather think she’s afraid of you.’
‘Afraid of me! O, that’s too ridiculous.’
‘She thinks you a very fine gentleman.’
‘That’s delightful! You know how much of the fine gentleman there is
about me, Naomi. I am afraid she must be rather silly.’
‘O no, indeed. She is wonderfully bright and quick in everything.’
‘Is she? I should hardly have thought her so. We are talking of
you, Mrs. Haggard,’ pursued Oswald, abandoning his confidential,
half-whispering tone; ‘I have been asking Naomi why you never join us
in our afternoon rambles. Perhaps you don’t care for woods and hills?’
‘Yes I do,’ answered Cynthia; ‘I am very fond of this beautiful
place. It is prettier than anything I ever saw before.’
‘I should think so,’ said aunt Judith sharply. ‘It’s bare enough in
the mining country where you come from, I’ve always heard say.’
‘You should come with us sometimes, Mrs. Haggard,’ said Oswald.
‘Yes,’ said Joshua, looking up from his book. ‘It would be better for
you to go out-of-doors oftener, Cynthia. I find you sitting reading
or working in the parlour every afternoon when I come home to tea.’
‘There’s nothing so bad as poring over a book for a young woman’s
spine,’ said aunt Judith. ‘Mrs. Haggard will be round-shouldered
before she’s thirty if she doesn’t take care.’
Judith’s backbone was her tower of strength. Years might creep on,
the insidious approach of age might show itself in a sprinkling of
gray hairs among the dark ones--by crow’s-feet at the corners of the
eyes--but Judith’s spine defied the assailant Time. It straightened
itself against the enemy, and at eight-and-forty Miss Haggard was
more erect than she had been at eighteen.
‘Yes, my love, you must really have more air and exercise,’ said
Joshua.
Cynthia gave a faint sigh. She was very happy, on such an evening as
this, in her husband’s company, sitting next him, stealing her hand
into his now and then, or leaning against his shoulder to read a page
or so of the book he was reading; but there were times in her life
when she felt as if she belonged to no one. Thus it was that she had
taken to pore over books, or to sit long at some laborious piece of
plain needlework. There was so little for her to do; she was never
happier than when Joshua allowed her to go and sit in some stuffy
cottage, beside the bed of sickness or decrepitude, and read the Book
she loved. She felt then that she too had her mission in the world,
and that she was in some wise worthy of the husband who had chosen
her.
Not a festive Christmas evening this for those who have been wont to
associate the occasion with cheery family circles, merry children,
old-fashioned games, cards, forfeits, and snapdragon--the good old
traditional Christmas immortalised by Washington Irving and Charles
Dickens. A pack of cards had never been seen in Mr. Haggard’s house,
and forfeits or snapdragon he would have accounted childish folly.
His children had never been gratified with such empty delights. In
the day when he took up John Wesley as his guide and model, he
put away from him all small pleasures, all sensual gratifications.
At heart he was an ascetic, and it grated a little upon his sense
of right to see the board loaded with cold turkey and chine and
plum-pudding upon this particular evening. He would have been happier
eating his dry bread and hard cheese, and feeling that he was denying
himself while all the rest of the world were feasting and revelling.
There was a touch of the Pharisee’s spiritual pride here, perhaps;
but the pride had its source in that idea of calling and special
grace which was implanted in the preacher’s heart. Had he not been
chosen and elected in the days of his youth, when he first felt
himself called to do God’s work? He could name the day and hour.
It was no slow awakening to solemn truths, no gradual leavening
of the human mind with spiritual grace; but a sudden and absolute
conversion--an instantaneous call to righteousness. Yesterday a
child of wrath, to-day the heir of salvation, a citizen of heaven,
an inhabitant of eternity. Wondrous, mysterious had been this
Pentecostal season; he looked back at it with love and pride. How
pitiful a price had he paid for so great a treasure, in surrendering
the transient pleasures of this world!
And now Heaven had rewarded him with the sweetest of all earthly
blessings--the blessed joys of home.
He looked at his daughter, happy by her lover’s side; at his son,
healthy, intelligent, active, dutiful; at his useful sister, rough
and bitter, like medicinal herbs, but a faithful servant; at his
wife, dearest of all; and thanked God for these manifold blessings.