A SPRING CHAPTER.
More especially now in my old age, I find myself "to a lingering motion
bound." I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons. This
may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a
spring chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why
I have called my story "The Seaboard Parish."
I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things:
one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was
a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and
so could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay
all about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm
enough, and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling;
it would have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church
of nature, seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at
home, I felt justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so
far in my greed as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear
it, leaves and all, with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive,
home to my little woman--a present from the outside world which she
loved so much. And as I went there dawned upon me the recollection of a
little mirror in which, if I could find it, she would see it still more
lovely than in a direct looking at itself. So I set myself to find it;
for it lay in fragments in the drawers and cabinets of my memory. And
before I got home I had found all the pieces and put them together; and
then it was a lovely little sonnet which a friend of mine had written
and allowed me to see many years before. I was in the way of writing
verses myself; but I should have been proud to have written this one. I
never could have done that. Yet, as far as I knew, it had never seen
the light through the windows of print. It was with some difficulty
that I got it all right; but I thought I had succeeded very nearly, if
not absolutely, and I said it over and over, till I was sure I should
not spoil its music or its meaning by halting in the delivery of it.
"Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you," I said.
She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it
had been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in
her eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with
her two hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I
said what I have already written about the mirror, and repeated the
sonnet to her. Here it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it.
My friend had found the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he
told me that there was a tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:
"I know not what among the grass thou art,
Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
To send thine image through them to the heart;
But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
Thou growest up within me from that hour,
And through the snow I with the spring depart.
I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
But thou a life immortal dost begin,
Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!"
"Will you say it again, papa?" said Connie; "I do not quite understand
it."
"I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
have brought."
"Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I
may read it quite easily."
I promised, and repeated the poem.
"I understand it a little better," she said; "but the meaning is just
like the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give
it me in writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what
else you have brought me."
I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the
plant and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only
expressed satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat
down with us.
"I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning," I said. "She feels the
loss of her mother very much, poor thing."
"How old was she, papa?" asked Connie.
"She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself,
and her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old
lady, you know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat
on the tablecloth. 'Mr. Shafton,' she said, 'was one of the old school;
he would never have done that. I don't know what the world is coming
to.'"
My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
manners.
"What did you say, papa?" they asked.
"I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. 'O, it's all right now,
my dear,' she said, 'when you've taken it up again. But I like good
manners, though I live in a cottage now.'"
"Had she seen better days, then?" asked Wynnie.
"She was a farmer's daughter, and a farmer's widow. I suppose the chief
difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead
of a good-sized farmhouse."
"But what is the story you have to tell us?"
"I'm coming to that when you have done with your questions."
"We have done, papa."
"After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about
the cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a
good deal of her mother's sense of dignity about her,--but I want your
mother to hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie."
"O, do make haste, Wynnie," said Connie.
When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
"Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, 'Here it is,
at last!' She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother's, and was
holding it in one hand, while with the other she drew from the
pocket--what do you think?"
Various guesses were hazarded.
"No, no--nothing like it. I know you _could_ never guess. Therefore it
would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe. The old
woman of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was
wearing at the very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an
iron horseshoe."
"What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?"
"That she proceeded at once to do. 'Do you remember, sir,' she said,
'how that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?' 'I
do remember having observed it there,' I answered; 'for once when I
took notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, "I hope you are not
afraid of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?" And she looked a little offended, and
assured me to the contrary.' 'Well,' her daughter went on, 'about three
months ago, I missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it.
And here it is! I can hardly think she can have carried it about all
that time without me finding it out, but I don't know. Here it is,
anyhow. Perhaps when she felt death drawing nearer, she took it from
somewhere where she had hidden it, and put it in her pocket. If I had
found it in time, I would have put it in her coffin.' 'But why?' I
asked. 'Do tell me the story about it, if you know it.' 'I know it
quite well, for she told me all about it once. It is the shoe of a
favourite mare of my father's--one he used to ride when he went
courting my mother. My grandfather did not like to have a young man
coming about the house, and so he came after the old folks were gone to
bed. But he had a long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had to
go over some stones to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread
straw there, for it was under the window of my grandfather's room, that
her shoes mightn't make a noise and wake him. And that's one of the
shoes,' she said, holding it up to me. 'When the mare died, my mother
begged my father for the one off her near forefoot, where she had so
often stood and patted her neck when my father was mounted to ride home
again.'"
"But it was very naughty of her, wasn't it," said Wynnie, "to do that
without her father's knowledge?"
"I don't say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might
find that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn't a
father, we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a
child. The father's part has to come first, and teach the child's part.
Now, if I might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom
probably it was much softened, her father was very possibly a hard,
unreasoning, and unreasonable man--such that it scarcely ever came into
the daughter's head that she had anything else to do with regard to him
than beware of the consequences of letting him know that she had a
lover. The whole thing, I allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father
was first to blame, and far more to blame than the daughter. And that
is the more likely from the high character of the old dame, and the
romantic way in which she clung to the memory of the courtship. A true
heart only does not grow old. And I have, therefore, no doubt that the
marriage was a happy one. Besides, I daresay it was very much the
custom of the country where they were, and that makes some difference."
"Well, I'm sure, papa, you wouldn't like any of us to go and do like
that," said Wynnie.
"Assuredly not, my dear," I answered, laughing. "Nor have I any fear of
it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things
to trouble me if you did?"
"If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an _if_"
said Wynnie.
"It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to
you as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all
possible for you to do such a thing."
"It's too dreadful to talk about, papa," said Wynnie; and the subject
was dropped.
She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are
in danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they
are whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in
the wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong.
If the perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always
looked into her own bosom to see whether she could not with justice
aver that she was the doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that
moment as if she had been deceiving me already, and deserved to be
driven out of the house. This came of an over-sensitiveness,
accompanied by a general dissatisfaction with herself, which was not
upheld by a sufficient faith in the divine sympathy, or sufficient
confidence of final purification. She never spared herself; and if she
was a little severe on the younger ones sometimes, no one was yet more
indulgent to them. She would eat all their hard crusts for them, always
give them the best and take the worst for herself. If there was any
part in the dish that she was helping that she thought nobody would
like, she invariably assigned it to her own share. It looked like a
determined self-mortification sometimes; but that was not it. She did
not care for her own comfort enough to feel it any mortification;
though I observed that when her mother or I helped her to anything
nice, she ate it with as much relish as the youngest of the party. And
her sweet smile was always ready to meet the least kindness that was
offered her. Her obedience was perfect, and had been so for very many
years, as far as we could see. Indeed, not since she was the merest
child had there been any contest between us. Now, of course, there was
no demand of obedience: she was simply the best earthly friend that her
father and mother had. It often caused me some passing anxiety to think
that her temperament, as well as her devotion to her home, might cause
her great suffering some day; but when those thoughts came, I just gave
her to God to take care of. Her mother sometimes said to her that she
would make an excellent wife for a poor man. She would brighten up
greatly at this, taking it for a compliment of the best sort. And she
did not forget it, as the sequel will show. She would choose to sit
with one candle lit when there were two on the table, wasting her eyes
to save the candles. "Which will you have for dinner to-day, papa,
roast beef or boiled?" she asked me once, when her mother was too
unwell to attend to the housekeeping. And when I replied that I would
have whichever she liked best--"The boiled beef lasts longest, I
think," she said. Yet she was not only as liberal and kind as any to
the poor, but she was, which is rarer, and perhaps more important for
the final formation of a character, carefully just to everyone with
whom she had any dealings. Her sense of law was very strong. Law with
her was something absolute, and not to be questioned. In her childhood
there was one lady to whom for years she showed a decided aversion, and
we could not understand it, for it was the most inoffensive Miss
Boulderstone. When she was nearly grown up, one of us happening to
allude to the fact, she volunteered an explanation. Miss Boulderstone
had happened to call one day when Wynnie, then between three and four
was in disgrace--_in the corner_, in fact. Miss Boulderstone interceded
for her; and this was the whole front of her offending.
"I _was_ so angry!" she said. "'As if my papa did not know best when I
ought to come out of the corner!' I said to myself. And I couldn't bear
her for ever so long after that."
Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
favourite before she died. She left Wynnie--for she and her brother
were the last of their race--a death's-head watch, which had been in
the family she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen
Elizabeth's time. I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as
well repaired as its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since,
though not with the greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an
old death's-head, the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears
it to this day, and wouldn't part with it for the best watch in the
world.
I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more
able to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as
yet my story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I
will fulfil them, and I shall be content.
Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old
couple, for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they
were not born old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a
decaying family that had not left the land on which they were born for
a great many generations--though the old people had not, of what the
French call sentiments, one between them, they were yet capable of a
stronger and, I had almost said, more romantic attachment, than many
couples who have married from love; for the lady's sole trouble in
dying was what her brother _would_ do without her; and from the day of
her death, he grew more and more dull and seemingly stupid. Nothing
gave him any pleasure but having Wynnie to dinner with him. I knew that
it must be very dull for her, but she went often, and I never heard her
complain of it, though she certainly did look fagged--not _bored_,
observe, but fagged--showing that she had been exerting herself to meet
the difficulties of the situation. When the good man died, we found
that he had left all his money in my hands, in trust for the poor of
the parish, to be applied in any way I thought best. This involved me
in much perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to make money
useful to the poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.
My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property my
wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private
fortune, and the income of several years (not my income from the
church, it may be as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the
encumbrances. But even then there remained much to be done, if I would
be the good steward that was not to be ashamed at his Lord's coming.
First of all there were many cottages to be built for the labourers on
the estate. If the farmers would not, or could not, help, I must do it;
for to provide decent dwellings for them, was clearly one of the divine
conditions in the righteous tenure of property, whatever the human
might be; for it was not for myself alone, or for myself chiefly, that
this property was given to me; it was for those who lived upon it.
Therefore I laid out what money I could, not only in getting all the
land clearly in its right relation to its owner, but in doing the best
I could for those attached to it who could not help themselves. And
when I hint to my reader that I had some conscience in paying my
curate, though, as they had no children, they did not require so much
as I should otherwise have felt compelled to give them, he will easily
see that as my family grew up I could not have so much to give away of
my own as I should have liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr.
Boulderstone was the more acceptable to me.
One word more ere I finish this chapter.--I should not like my friends
to think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because I
have made no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the
first time, because of my daughter's illness. It was much easier to
give them now than when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty
of room in the old hall. But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar
gathering there every Easter.
Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not
mentioned him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie's
accident. The fact was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him, a
long holiday. Martha had had several disappointing illnesses, and her
general health had suffered so much in consequence that there was even
some fear of her lungs, and a winter in the south of France had been
strongly recommended. Upon this I came in with more than a
recommendation, and insisted that they should go. They had started in
the beginning of October, and had not returned up to the time of which
I am now about to write--somewhere in the beginning of the month of
April. But my sister was now almost quite well, and I was not sorry to
think that I should soon have a little more leisure for such small
literary pursuits as I delighted in--to my own enrichment, and
consequently to the good of my parishioners and friends.