THE CHURCHYARD.
On Sundays, Malcolm was always more or less annoyed by the obtrusive
presence of his arms and legs, accompanied by a vague feeling that,
at any moment, and no warning given, they might, with some insane
and irrepressible flourish, break the Sabbath on their own account,
and degrade him in the eyes of his fellow-townsmen, who seemed all
silently watching how he bore the restraints of the holy day. It
must be conceded, however, that the discomfort had quite as much
to do with his Sunday clothes as with the Sabbath-day, and that
it interfered but little with an altogether peculiar calm which
appeared to him to belong in its own right to the Sunday, whether
its light flowed in the sunny cataracts of June, or oozed through
the spongy clouds of November. As he walked again to the Alton,
or Old Town in the evening, the filmy floats of white in the lofty
blue, the droop of the long dark grass by the side of the
short-brown corn, the shadows pointing like all lengthening shadows
towards the quarter of hope, the yellow glory filling the air and
paling the green below, the unseen larks hanging aloft--like
air-pitcher-plants that over-flowed in song--like electric jars
emptying themselves of the sweet thunder of bliss in the flashing
of wings and the trembling of melodious throats; these were indeed
of the summer but the cup of rest had been poured out upon them;
the Sabbath brooded like an embodied peace over the earth, and
under its wings they grew sevenfold peaceful--with a peace that
might be felt, like the hand of a mother pressed upon the half-sleeping
child. The rusted iron cross on the eastern gable of the
old church stood glowing lustreless in the westering sun; while the
gilded vane, whose business was the wind, creaked radiantly this
way and that, in the flaws from the region of the sunset: its shadow
flickered soft on the new grave, where the grass of the wounded
sod was drooping. Again seated on a neighbour stone, Malcolm found
his friend.
“See,” said the schoolmaster as the fisherman sat down beside him,
“how the shadow from one grave stretches like an arm to embrace
another! In this light the churchyard seems the very birthplace of
shadows: see them flowing out of the tombs as from fountains, to
overflow the world! Does the morning or the evening light suit such
a place best, Malcolm?”
The pupil thought for a while.
“The evenin’ licht, sir,” he answered at length; “for ye see the
sun’s deein’ like, an’ deith’s like a fa’in asleep, an’ the grave’s
the bed, an’ the sod’s the bed-claes, an’ there’s a lang nicht to
the fore.”
“Are ye sure o’ that, Malcolm?”
“It’s the wye folk thinks an’ says aboot it, sir.”
“Or maybe doesna think, an’ only says?”
“Maybe, sir; I dinna ken.”
“Come here, Malcolm,” said Mr Graham, and took him by the arm, and
led him towards the east end of the church, where a few tombstones
were crowded against the wall, as if they would press close to a
place they might not enter.
“Read that,” he said, pointing to a flat stone, where every hollow
letter was shown in high relief by the growth in it of a lovely
moss. The rest of the stone was rich in gray and green and brown
lichens, but only in the letters grew the bright moss; the inscription
stood as it were in the hand of nature herself--“_He is not here;
he is risen._”
While Malcolm gazed, trying to think what his master would have
him think, the latter resumed.
“If he is risen--if the sun is up, Malcolm--then the morning and
not the evening is the season for the place of tombs; the morning
when the shadows are shortening and separating, not the evening
when they are growing all into one. I used to love the churchyard
best in the evening, when the past was more to me than the future;
now I visit it almost every bright summer morning, and only
occasionally at night.”
“But, sir, isna deith a dreidfu’ thing?” said Malcolm.
“That depends on whether a man regards it as his fate, or as the
will of a perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread; but if God be
light, then death itself must be full of splendour--a splendour
probably too keen for our eyes to receive.”
“But there’s the deein’ itsel’: isna that fearsome? It’s _that_ I
wad be fleyed at.”
“I don’t see why it should be. It’s the want of a God that makes
it dreadful, and _you_ will be greatly to blame, Malcolm, if you
haven’t found your God by the time you have to die.”
They were startled by a gruff voice near them. The speaker was
hidden by a corner of the church.
“Ay, she’s weel happit (_covered_),” it said. “But a grave never
luiks richt wantin’ a stane, an’ her auld cousin wad hear o’ nane
bein’ laid ower _her_. I said it micht be set up at her heid, whaur
she wad never fin’ the weicht o’ ’t; but na, na! nane o’ ’t for
_her_! She’s ane ’at maun tak her ain gait, say the ither thing wha
likes.”
It was Watty Witherspail who spoke--a thin shaving of a man,
with a deep, harsh, indeed startling voice.
“An’ what ailed her at a stane?” returned the voice of Jonathan
Auldbuird, the sexton. “--Nae doobt it wad be the expense?”
“Amna I tellin’ ye what it was? Deil a bit o’ the expense cam intill
the calcalation! The auld maiden’s nane sae close as fowk ’at disna
ken her wad mak her oot. _I_ ken her weel. She wadna hae a stane
laid upon her as gien she wanted to haud her doon, puir thing! She
said, says she, ‘The yerd’s eneuch upo’ the tap o’ her, wantin’
that!’”
“It micht be some sair, she wad be thinkin’ doobtless, for sic a
waik worn cratur to lift whan the trump was blawn,” said the sexton,
with the feeble laugh of one who doubts the reception of his wit.
“Weel, I div whiles think,” responded Watty,--but it was impossible
from his tone to tell whether or not he spoke in earnest,--“’at
maybe my boxies _is_ a wheen ower weel made for the use they’re
pitten till. They sudna be that ill to rive--gien a’ be true ’at
the minister says. Ye see, we dinna ken whan that day may come,
an’ there may na be time for the wat an’ the worm to ca (_drive_)
the boords apairt.”
“Hoots, man! it’s no _your_ lang nails nor yet yer heidit screws
’ll haud doon the redeemt, gien the jeedgement war the morn’s mornin’,”
said the sexton; “an’ for the lave, they wad be glaid eneuch to
bide whaur they are; but they’ll a’ be howkit oot,--fear na ye
that.”
“The Lord grant a blessed uprisin’ to you an’ me, Jonathan, at that
day!” said Watty, in the tone of one who felt himself uttering a
more than ordinarily religious sentiment; and on the word followed
the sound of their retreating footsteps.
“How closely together may come the solemn and the grotesque! the
ludicrous and the majestic!” said the schoolmaster. “Here, to us
lingering in awe about the doors beyond which lie the gulfs of the
unknown--to our very side come the wright and the grave-digger
with their talk of the strength of coffins and the judgment of the
living God!”
“I hae whiles thoucht mysel’, sir,” said Malcolm, “it was gey
strange-like to hae a wuman o’ the mak o’ Mistress Catanach sittin’ at
the receipt o’ bairns, like the gate-keeper o’ the ither warl’, wi’ the
hasp o’ ’t in her han’: it doesna promise ower weel for them ’at she
lats in. An’ noo ye hae pitten ’t intill my heid that there’s Watty
Witherspail an’ Jonathan Auldbuird for the porters to open an’ lat a’
that’s left o’ ’s oot again! Think o’ sic like haein’ sic a han’ in sic
solemn maitters!”
“Indeed some of us have strange porters,” said Mr Graham, with a smile,
“both to open to us and to close behind us! yet even in them lies the
human nature, which, itself the embodiment of the unknown, wanders out
through the gates of mystery, to wander back, it may be, in a manner
not altogether unlike that by which it came.”
In contemplative moods, the schoolmaster spoke in a calm and loftily
sustained style of book-English--quite another language from that
he used when he sought to rouse the consciences of his pupils, and
strangely contrasted with that in which Malcolm kept up his side of the
dialogue.
“I houp, sir,” said the latter, “it’ll be nae sort o’ a celestial
Mistress Catanach ’at’ll be waitin’ for me o’ the ither side; nor
yet for my puir daddy, wha cud ill bide bein’ wamled aboot upo’
_her_ knee.”
Mr Graham laughed outright.
“If there be one to act the nurse,” he answered, “I presume there
will be one to take the mother’s part too.”
“But speakin’ o’ the grave, sir,” pursued Malcolm, “I wuss ye cud
drop a word ’at micht be o’ some comfort to my daddy. It’s plain to
me, frae words he lats fa’ noo an’ than, that, instead o’ lea’in’
the warl’ ahint him whan he dees, he thinks to lie smorin’ an’
smocherin’ i’ the mools, clammy an’ weet, but a’ there, an’ trimlin’
at the thocht o’ the suddent awfu’ roar an’ din o’ the brazen
trumpet o’ the archangel. I wuss ye wad luik in an’ say something
till him some nicht. It’s nae guid mentionin’ ’t to the minister;
he wad only gie a lauch an’ gang awa’. An’ gien ye cud jist slide
in a word aboot forgiein’ his enemies, sir! I made licht o’ the
maitter to Mistress Courthope, ’cause she only maks him waur. She
does weel wi’ what the minister pits intill her, but she has little
o’ her ain to mix ’t up wi’, an’ sae has but sma’ weicht wi’ the
likes o’ my gran’father. Only ye winna lat him think ye called on
purpose.”
They walked about the churchyard until the sun went down in what Mr
Graham called the grave of his endless resurrection--the clouds
on the one side bearing all the pomp of his funeral, the clouds on
the other all the glory of his uprising; and when now the twilight
trembled filmy on the borders of the dark, the master once more
seated himself beside the new grave, and motioned to Malcolm to
take his place beside him: there they talked and dreamed together
of the life to come, with many wanderings and returns; and little
as the boy knew of the ocean-depths of sorrowful experience in the
bosom of his companion whence floated up the breaking bubbles of
rainbow-hued thought, his words fell upon his heart--not to be
provender for the birds of flitting fancy and airy speculation,
but the seed--it might be decades ere it ripened--of a coming
harvest of hope. At length the master rose and said,--
“Malcolm, I’m going in: I should like you to stay here half an hour
alone, and then go straight home to bed.”
For the master believed in solitude and silence. Say rather, he
believed in God. What the youth might think, feel, or judge, he could
not tell; but he believed that when the Human is still, the Divine
speaks to it, because it is its own.
Malcolm consented willingly. The darkness had deepened, the graves
all but vanished; an old setting moon appeared, boatlike over
a great cloudy chasm, into which it slowly sank; blocks of cloud,
with stars between, possessed the sky; all nature seemed thinking
about death; a listless wind began to blow, and Malcolm began to
feel as if he were awake too long, and _ought_ to be asleep--as
if he were out in a dream--a dead man that had risen too soon or
lingered too late--so lonely, so forsaken! The wind, soft as it
was, seemed to blow through his very soul. Yet something held him,
and his half hour was long over when he left the churchyard.
As he walked home, the words of a German poem, a version of which
Mr Graham had often repeated to him, and once more that same night,
kept ringing in his heart:
Uplifted is the stone,
And all mankind arisen!
We men remain thine own,
And vanished is our prison!
What bitterest grief can stay
Before thy golden cup,
When earth and life give way,
And with our Lord we sup!
To the marriage Death doth call.
The maidens are not slack;
The lamps are burning all--
Of oil there is no lack.
Afar I hear the walking
Of thy great marriage throng!
And hark! the stars are talking
With human tone and tongue!
Courage! for life is hasting
To endless life away;
The inner fire, unwasting,
Transfigures our dull clay!
See the stars melting, sinking,
In life wine, golden bright!
We, of the splendour drinking,
Shall grow to stars of light.
Lost, lost are all our losses;
Love set for ever free;
The full life heaves and tosses
Like an eternal sea!
One endless living story!
One poem spread abroad!
And the sun of all our glory
Is the countenance of God.