CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY.
Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature,
or from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents
Nature's mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in
his drama? I know I have so often found Nature's mood in harmony with
my own, even when she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in
looking back I have wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some
self-deception about it. At all events, on the morning of my
Constance's eighteenth birthday, a lovely October day with a golden
east, clouds of golden foliage about the ways, and an air that seemed
filled with the ether of an _aurum potabile_, there came yet an
occasional blast of wind, which, without being absolutely cold, smelt
of winter, and made one draw one's shoulders together with the sense of
an unfriendly presence. I do not think Constance felt it at all,
however, as she stood on the steps in her riding-habit, waiting till
the horses made their appearance. It had somehow grown into a custom
with us that each of the children, as his or her birthday came round,
should be king or queen for that day, and, subject to the veto of
father and mother, should have everything his or her own way. Let me
say for them, however, that in the matter of choosing the dinner, which
of course was included in the royal prerogative, I came to see that it
was almost invariably the favourite dishes of others of the family that
were chosen, and not those especially agreeable to the royal palate.
Members of families where children have not been taught from their
earliest years that the great privilege of possession is the right to
bestow, may regard this as an improbable assertion; but others will
know that it might well enough be true, even if I did not say that so
it was. But there was always the choice of some individual treat, which
was determined solely by the preference of the individual in authority.
Constance had chosen "a long ride with papa."
I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with
admiration of his own children. The probability of his being correct is
to be determined by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other
people's children. However this may be in my own case, I venture to
assert that Constance did look very lovely that morning. She was fresh
as the young day: we were early people--breakfast and prayers were
over, and it was nine o'clock as she stood on the steps and I
approached her from the lawn.
"O, papa! isn't it jolly?" she said merrily.
"Very jolly indeed, my dear," I answered, delighted to hear the word
from the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word,
and when she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she
was like? Ah! you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did.
I will, however, try to give you a general idea, just in order that you
and I should not be picturing to ourselves two very different persons
while I speak of her.
She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion, and
has nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in
complexion, with her mother's blue eyes, and her mother's long dark
wavy hair. She was generally playful, and took greater liberties with
me than any of the others; only with her liberties, as with her slang,
she knew instinctively when, where, and how much. For on the borders of
her playfulness there seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness,
as if she felt that the present moment owed all its sparkle and
brilliance to the eternal sunlight. And the appearance was not in the
least a deceptive one. The eternal was not far from her--none the
farther that she enjoyed life like a bird, that her laugh was merry,
that her heart was careless, and that her voice rang through the
house--a sweet soprano voice--singing snatches of songs (now a street
tune she had caught from a London organ, now an air from Handel or
Mozart), or that she would sometimes tease her elder sister about her
solemn and anxious looks; for Wynnie, the eldest, had to suffer for her
grandmother's sins against her daughter, and came into the world with a
troubled little heart, that was soon compelled to flee for refuge to
the rock that was higher than she. Ah! my Constance! But God was good
to you and to us in you.
"Where shall we go, Connie?" I said, and the same moment the sound of
the horses' hoofs reached us.
"Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?" she returned.
"It is a long ride," I answered.
"Too much for the pony?"
"O dear, no--not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony."
"I'm quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want
to get something for Wynnie. Do let us go."
"Very well, my dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle--if I may
say _raised_, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to
another than she sprung from the ground on her pony's back.
In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders' webs,
as we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards
the high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we
turned from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a
gallop to begin with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had
been used to the saddle longer than she could remember. She was now
riding a tall well-bred pony, with plenty of life--rather too much, I
sometimes thought, when I was out with Wynnie; but I never thought so
when I was with Constance. Another field or two sufficiently quieted
both animals--I did not want to have all our time taken up with their
frolics--and then we began to talk.
"You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear," I said.
"Quite an old grannie, papa," she answered.
"Old enough to think about what's coming next," I said gravely.
"O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about
the morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that's in the pulpit,"
she added, with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of
her pretty hat.
"You know very well what I mean, you puss," I answered. "And I don't
say one thing in the pulpit and another out of it."
She was at my horse's shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had
been of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had
offended me. She looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I
saw upon Wynnie.
"O, thank you, papa!" she said when I smiled. "I thought I had been
rude. I didn't mean it, indeed I didn't. But I do wish you would make
it a little plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though
you would hardly believe it."
"What do you want made plainer, my child?" I asked.
"When we're to think, and when we're not to think," she answered.
I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
"If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day," I
answered, "if it cannot be done right except you think about it and lay
your plans for it, then that thought is to-day's business, not
to-morrow's."
"Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the
things themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?"
she asked suddenly, again looking up in my face.
We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse's mane, so as to
keep her pony close up.
"Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind."
"Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn't explain things so much. I
seem to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try
the text afterwards by myself, I can't make anything of it, and I've
forgotten every word you said about it."
"Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it."
"I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
Bible," she returned.
"If they can," I rejoined. "But last Sunday, for instance, I did not
expect anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except
your mamma and Thomas Weir."
"How funny! What part of it was that?"
"O! I'm not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But
most likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to
you, in consequence, very commonplace."
"In consequence of what?"
"In consequence of your thinking you understood it."
"O, papa dear! you're getting worse and worse. It's not often I ask you
anything--and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to
bewilder my poor little brains in this way."
"I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea
that you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If
you had never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount
of remark, would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much
more is this the case with truths that belong to the convictions and
feelings of the heart. Suppose a man had never in his life asked God
for anything, or thanked God for anything, would his opinion as to what
David meant in one of his worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole
thing would be beyond him. If you have never known what it is to have
care of any kind upon you, you cannot understand what our Lord means
when he tells us to take no thought for the morrow."
"But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?"
"Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
perhaps I can help you."
"You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at
work every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that
women any more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do?
What have I been sent into the world for? I don't see it; and I feel
very useless and wrong sometimes."
"I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish.
You take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal for
the poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you
are learning yourselves."
"Yes, but that's not work."
"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light.
Not that I have anything to complain of."
"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life,
when there are so many to help everywhere in the world."
"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed
you, than in doing it where he has placed you?"
"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to
do at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her?
You won't think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will
you?"
"No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do, you
must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible
preparation for what he may want you to do next. If people would but do
what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what
came next. And I do not believe that those who follow this rule are
ever left floundering on the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to
find water enough to swim in."
"Thank you, dear papa. That's a little sermon all to myself, and I
think I shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now
let's have a trot."
"There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is
not your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make
yourself as worth God's making as you possibly can. Now I am a little
doubtful whether you keep up your studies at all."
She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face
again.
"I don't like dry things, papa."
"Nobody does."
"Nobody!" she exclaimed. "How do the grammars and history-books come to
be written then?"
In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no
affection in it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her
fault-finding old father?
"No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make
them. Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to
care for them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what
you have to learn."
"What must I do then?" she asked with a sigh. "Must I go all over my
French Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!"
"If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something
you don't like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you
are fond of?" I continued, finding that she remained silent.
"I don't know anything in particular--that is, I don't know anything in
the way of school-work that I really liked. I don't mean that I didn't
try to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I
liked--the poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen
count that silly--don't they?"
"On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the
foundation of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing
God has given us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree about
what poetry was poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God.
Now, what poetry do you like best?"
"Mrs. Hemans's, I think, papa."
"Well, very well, to begin with. 'There is,' as Mr. Carlyle said to a
friend of mine--'There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.'
But it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be.
Most people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and
they expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand
myself, and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable
enough creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with
admiration of what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained
at the cost of expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs.
Hemans. She is simple enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that
whatever mental food you take should be just a little too strong for
you. That implies trouble, necessitates growth, and involves delight."
"I sha'n't mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
about."
I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two
years, and had only been home a month that very day, in order to
account for my knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind.
We went on talking a little more in the same way, and if I were writing
for young people only, I should be tempted to go on a little farther
with the account of what we said to each other; for it might help some
of them to see that the thing they like best should, circumstances and
conscience permitting, be made the centre from which they start to
learn; that they should go on enlarging their knowledge all round from
that one point at which God intended them to begin. But at length we
fell into a silence, a very happy one on my part; for I was more than
delighted to find that this one too of my children was following after
the truth--wanting to do what was right, namely, to obey the word of
the Lord, whether openly spoken to all, or to herself in the voice of
her own conscience and the light of that understanding which is the
candle of the Lord. I had often said to myself in past years, when I
had found myself in the company of young ladies who announced their
opinions--probably of no deeper origin than the prejudices of their
nurses--as if these distinguished them from all the world besides; who
were profound upon passion and ignorant of grace; who had not a notion
whether a dress was beautiful, but only whether it was of the newest
cut--I had often said to myself: "What shall I do if my daughters come
to talk and think like that--if thinking it can be called?" but being
confident that instruction for which the mind is not prepared only lies
in a rotting heap, producing all kinds of mental evils correspondent to
the results of successive loads of food which the system cannot
assimilate, my hope had been to rouse wise questions in the minds of my
children, in place of overwhelming their digestions with what could be
of no instruction or edification without the foregoing appetite. Now my
Constance had begun to ask me questions, and it made me very happy. We
had thus come a long way nearer to each other; for however near the
affection of human animals may bring them, there are abysses between
soul and soul--the souls even of father and daughter--over which they
must pass to meet. And I do not believe that any two human beings alive
know yet what it is to love as love is in the glorious will of the
Father of lights.
I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path--a brown,
soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering
about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of
underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place.
There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and
there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been
struck by lightning, and had stood till the frosts and rains had bared
it of its bark. Now it lay white as a skeleton by the side of the path,
and was, I think, the cause of what followed. All at once my daughter's
pony sprang to the other side of the road, shying sideways; unsettled
her so, I presume; then rearing and plunging, threw her from the saddle
across one of the logs of which I have spoken. I was by her side in a
moment. To my horror she lay motionless. Her eyes were closed, and when
I took her up in my arms she did not open them. I laid her on the moss,
and got some water and sprinkled her face. Then she revived a little;
but seemed in much pain, and all at once went off into another faint. I
was in terrible perplexity.
Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance,
had seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what he
could do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had
thrown over the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask
Mrs. Walton to come with the carriage as quickly as possible. "Tell
her," I said, "that her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is
rather shaken. Ride as hard as you can go."
The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child,
for what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage
arrived. She had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in
her back; and, to my distress, I found that she could not move herself
enough to make the least change of her position. She evidently tried to
keep up as well as she could; but her face expressed great suffering:
it was dreadfully pale, and looked worn with a month's illness. All my
fear was for her spine.
At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as
fast as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing
the coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as
Constance, but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to
determination. I had never seen her look like that before. She asked no
questions: there was time enough for that afterwards. She had brought
plenty of cushions and pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy
couch for the poor girl; but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her
into the carriage. We did our best to keep her from being shaken; but
those few miles were the longest journey I ever made in my life.
When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie--for she was named
after her mother--had got a room on the ground-floor, usually given to
visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to have to
carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the groom
off to Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who had
settled at Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before,
was waiting for us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a
mattress in the position in which she felt the least pain. But why
should I linger over the sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor
child's spine was seriously injured, and that probably years of
suffering were before her. Everything was done that could be done; but
she was not moved from that room for nine months, during which, though
her pain certainly grew less by degrees, her want of power to move
herself remained almost the same.
When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated
by her bedside, I called my other two daughters--Wynnie, the eldest,
and Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside,
one on each side of the door, weeping--into my study, and said to them:
"My darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God's
will; and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen
to your lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your
sister's part to endure."
"O, papa! poor Connie!" cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.
Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon
it.
"Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the
room?" I asked.
"Please do, papa."
"She whispered, 'You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you
can. I don't mind it very much, only for you.' So, you see, if you want
to make her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick
people like to see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie will
not suffer nearly so much if she finds that she does not make the
household gloomy."
This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my
marriage. My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had
found that it was quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my
flock who were ill without putting on a long face when I went to see
them. Of course, I do not mean that I could, or that it was desirable
that I should, look cheerful when any were in great pain or mental
distress. But in ordinary conditions of illness a cheerful countenance
is as a message of _all's well_, which may surely be carried into a
sick chamber by the man who believes that the heart of a loving Father
is at the centre of things, that he is light all about the darkness,
and that he will not only bring good out of evil at last, but will be
with the sufferer all the time, making endurance possible, and pain
tolerable. There are a thousand alleviations that people do not often
think of, coming from God himself. Would you not say, for instance,
that time must pass very slowly in pain? But have you never observed,
or has no one ever made the remark to you, how strangely fast, even in
severe pain, the time passes after all?
"We will do all we can, will we not," I went on, "to make her as
comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little
brothers, that your mother may not have too much to think about now
that she will have Connie to nurse."
They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving
me to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I
then returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child
had fallen asleep.
My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the
pain had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we
could allow Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of
giving her over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the
night. Her chief suffering came from its being necessary that she
should keep nearly one position on her back, because of her spine,
while the external bruise and the swelling of the muscles were in
consequence so painful, that it needed all that mechanical contrivance
could do to render the position endurable. But these outward conditions
were greatly ameliorated before many days were over.
This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes to
let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at
unawares, either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were
not a good thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before
I have done my readers will not be sorry that my tale began so
gloomily. The sickness in Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years
ago, or thereabouts, has no small part in the story of him who came to
put all things under our feet. Praise be to him for evermore!
It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more
sacred heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest
corners; but soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the
gloom. I could see that bits of news were carried from it to the
servants in the kitchen, in the garden, in the stable, and over the way
to the home-farm. Even in the village, and everywhere over the parish,
I was received more kindly, and listened to more willingly, because of
the trouble I and my family were in; while in the house, although we
had never been anything else than a loving family, it was easy to
discover that we all drew more closely together in consequence of our
common anxiety. Previous to this, it had been no unusual thing to see
Wynnie and Dora impatient with each other; for Dora was none the less a
wild, somewhat lawless child, that she was a profoundly affectionate
one. She rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact--whom she called
Aunt Judy, and with whom she was naturally a great favourite. Wynnie,
on the other hand, was sedate, and rather severe--more severe, I must
in justice say, with herself than with anyone else. I had sometimes
wished, it is true, that her mother, in regard to the younger children,
were more like her; but there I was wrong. For one of the great goods
that come of having two parents, is that the one balances and rectifies
the motions of the other. No one is good but God. No one holds the
truth, or can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God. Our human
life is often, at best, but an oscillation between the extremes which
together make the truth; and it is not a bad thing in a family, that
the pendulums of father and mother should differ in movement so far,
that when the one is at one extremity of the swing, the other should be
at the other, so that they meet only in the point of _indifference_, in
the middle; that the predominant tendency of the one should not be the
predominant tendency of the other. I was a very strict
disciplinarian--too much so, perhaps, sometimes: Ethelwyn, on the other
hand, was too much inclined, I thought, to excuse everything. I was
law, she was grace. But grace often yielded to law, and law sometimes
yielded to grace. Yet she represented the higher; for in the ultimate
triumph of grace, in the glad performance of the command from love of
what is commanded, the law is fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ. I must say this for myself, however, that, although
obedience was the one thing I enforced, believing it the one thing upon
which all family economy primarily depends, yet my object always was to
set my children free from my law as soon as possible; in a word, to
help them to become, as soon as it might be, a law unto themselves.
Then they would need no more of mine. Then I would go entirely over to
the mother's higher side, and become to them, as much as in me lay, no
longer law and truth, but grace and truth. But to return to my
children--it was soon evident not only that Wynnie had grown more
indulgent to Dora's vagaries, but that Dora was more submissive to
Wynnie, while the younger children began to obey their eldest sister
with a willing obedience, keeping down their effervescence within
doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in the out-houses.
When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a
yet stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of
gentle light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that
came within the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again
of my lovely child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of
God. He cannot regard his child as his even as a book he has written
may be his. A man's child is his because God has said to him, "Take
this child and nurse it for me." She is God's making; God's marvellous
invention, to be tended and cared for, and ministered unto as one of
his precious things; a young angel, let me say, who needs the air of
this lower world to make her wings grow. And while he regards her thus,
he will see all other children in the same light, and will not dare to
set up his own against others of God's brood with the new-budding
wings. The universal heart of truth will thus rectify, while it
intensifies, the individual feeling towards one's own; and the man who
is most free from poor partisanship in regard to his own family, will
feel the most individual tenderness for the lovely human creatures whom
God has given into his own especial care and responsibility. Show me
the man who is tender, reverential, gracious towards the children of
other men, and I will show you the man who will love and tend his own
best, to whose heart his own will flee for their first refuge after
God, when they catch sight of the cloud in the wind.