THE JOURNEY.
For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the
sojourn. First of all there was an extensive preparation of
ginger-beer, consisting, as I was informed in confidence, of brown
sugar, ground ginger, and cold water. This store was, however, as near
as I can judge, exhausted and renewed about twelve times before the day
of departure arrived; and when at last the auspicious morning dawned,
they remembered with dismay that they had drunk the last drop two days
before, and there was none in stock. Then there was a wonderful and
more successful hoarding of marbles, of a variety so great that my
memory refuses to bear the names of the different kinds, which, I
think, must have greatly increased since the time when I too was a boy,
when some marbles--one of real, white marble with red veins
especially--produced in my mind something of the delight that a work of
art produces now. These were carefully deposited in one of the many
divisions of a huge old hair-trunk, which they had got their uncle
Weir, who could use his father's tools with pleasure if not to profit,
to fit up for them with a multiplicity of boxes, and cupboards, and
drawers, and trays, and slides, that was quite bewildering. In this
same box was stowed also a quantity of hair, the gleanings of all the
horse-tails upon the premises. This was for making fishing-tackle, with
a vague notion on the part of Harry that it was to be employed in
catching whales and crocodiles. Then all their favourite books were
stowed away in the same chest, in especial a packet of a dozen penny
books, of which I think I could give a complete list now. For one
afternoon as I searched about in the lumber-room after a set of old
library steps, which I wanted to get repaired, I came upon the chest,
and opening it, discovered my boys' hoard, and in it this packet of
books. I sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through,
from Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop o' my Thumb without rising, and
this in the broad daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me
on the rose-coloured silken seat, richly worked, of a large
stately-looking chair with three golden legs. Yes I could tell you all
those stories, not to say the names of them, over yet. Only I knew
every one of them before; finding now that they had fared like good
vintages, for if they had lost something in potency, they had gained
much in flavour. Harry could not read these, and Charlie not very well,
but they put confidence in them notwithstanding, in virtue of the red,
blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of sawdust, the design of
which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of string; a rabbit's
skin; a Noah's ark; an American clock, that refused to go for all the
variety of treatment they gave it; a box of lead-soldiers, and twenty
other things, amongst which was a huge gilt ball having an eagle of
brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this
magazine could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to
follow us to the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent on
before us, but the boys had intended the precious box to go with
themselves. Knowing well, however, how little they would miss it, and
with what shouts of south-sea discovery they would greet the forgotten
treasure when they returned, I insisted on the lumbering article being
left in peace. So that, as man goeth treasureless to his grave,
whatever he may have accumulated before the fatal moment, they had to
set off for the far country without chest or ginger-beer--not therefore
altogether so desolate and unprovided for as they imagined. The
abandoned treasure was forgotten the moment the few tears it had
occasioned were wiped away.
It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows
were twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the
dear old house.
"I'm sorry to leave the swallows behind," said Wynnie, as she stepped
into the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already
there, eager and strong-hearted for the journey.
We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed
to enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of
the meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we
met bravely diligent at their day's work, as they trudged along the
road with wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that
I could see her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its
expression that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a
brown-faced gipsy family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the
passing carriage. A fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under
the convoy of the parent duck, next attracted her.
"Look; look. Isn't that delicious?" she cried.
"I don't think I should like it though," said Wynnie.
"What shouldn't you like, Wynnie?" asked her mother.
"To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!"
"They feel it with their legs and their webby toes," said Connie.
"Yes, that is some consolation," answered Wynnie.
"And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning."
I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie's illness had
not in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had
rather, as it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and
sympathetic, so that the things around her could enter her soul even
more easily than before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in
reality brought her into closer contact with the movements of all
vitality.
We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station.
Everybody almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for
Connie's sake chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had
forgotten to say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak
to him. The same instant there was a crowd of women about us. But
Connie was the centre of all their regards. They hardly looked at her
mother or sister. Had she been a martyr who had stood the test and
received her aureole, she could hardly have been more regarded. The
common use of the word martyr is a curious instance of how words get
degraded. The sufferings involved in martyrdom, and not the pure will
giving occasion to that suffering, is fixed upon by the common mind as
the martyrdom. The witness-bearing is lost sight of, except we can
suppose that "a martyr to the toothache" means a witness of the fact of
the toothache and its tortures. But while _martyrdom_ really means a
bearing for the sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any
suffering, even that we have brought upon ourselves, may become
martyrdom. When it is so borne that the sufferer therein bears witness
to the presence and fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to
his will, in gentle endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which
is not seldom to be seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than
all, perhaps, and rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and
merciful consequence of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with
righteous shame, as the cleansing of the Father's hand, indicating that
repentance unto life which lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes
him such that the holiest men of old would talk to him with gladness
and respect, then indeed it may be called a martyrdom. This latter
could not be Connie's case, but the former was hers, and so far she
might be called a martyr, even as the old women of the village
designated her.
After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough
to do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were
about, so long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the
man-servant, who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of
the establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to
everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the
wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we
could not possibly get on without him, sat on the box of the
post-chaise beside the driver from the Griffin, rather connived, I
fear, than otherwise at the noise of the youngsters.
"Good-bye, Marshmallows," they were shouting at the top of their
voices, as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had
spent a wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody's
ears on the open country road I allowed them to shout till they were
tired, which condition fortunately arrived before we reached the
station, so that there was no occasion for me to interfere. I always
sought to give them as much liberty as could be afforded them.
At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now
in wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany
us a good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent
us in moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his
professional skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not
unfrequently, and only at the end showed herself at length wearied. We
stopped three times on the way: first at Salisbury, where the streams
running through the streets delighted her. There we remained one whole
day, but sent the children and servants, all but my wife's maid, on
before us, under the charge of Walter. This left us more at our ease.
At Exeter, we stopped only the night, for Connie found herself quite
able to go on the next morning. Here Turner left us, and we missed him
very much. Connie looked a little out of spirits after his departure,
but soon recovered herself. The next night we spent at a small town on
the borders of Devonshire, which was the limit of our railway
travelling. Here we remained for another whole day, for the remnant of
the journey across part of Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be
posted, and was a good five hours' work. We started about eleven
o'clock, full of spirits at the thought that we had all but
accomplished the only part of the undertaking about which we had had
any uneasiness. Connie was quite merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We
had an open carriage with a hood. Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora
and Eliza the maid in the rumble, and I by the coachman. The road being
very hilly, we had four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a
gentle wind, hope and thankfulness, who would not be happy?
There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I
altogether understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment
has something to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the
motion, the change of scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill
or the next turn in the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent
of the pine-trees especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle
of the harness as you pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the
horses, the glitter and the shadow, the cottages and the roses and the
rosy faces, the scent of burning wood or peat from the chimneys, these
and a thousand other things combine to make such a journey delightful.
But I believe it needs something more than this--something even closer
to the human life--to account for the pleasure that motion gives us. I
suspect it is its living symbolism; the hidden relations which it bears
to the eternal soul in its aspirations and longings--ever following
after, ever attaining, never satisfied. Do not misunderstand me, my
reader. A man, you will allow, perhaps, may be content although he is
not and cannot be happy: I feel inclined to turn all this the other
way, saying that a man ought always to be happy, never to be content.
You will see I do not say _contented_; I say _content_. Here comes in
his faith: his life is hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded.
All things are his, to become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift,
as his being enlarges to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own
necessary incompleteness falls upon the man, he has only to remember
that in God's idea he is complete, only his life is hid from himself
with Christ in God the Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of
mysticism, I plead guilty with gladness: I only hope it may be of that
true mysticism which, inasmuch as he makes constant use of it, St. Paul
would understand at once. I leave it, however.
I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No
doubt I was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite
middle-aged, with full confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles.
Why should not a man be happy when he is growing old, so long as his
faith strengthens the feeble knees which chiefly suffer in the process
of going down the hill? True, the fever heat is over, and the oil burns
more slowly in the lamp of life; but if there is less fervour, there is
more pervading warmth; if less of fire, more of sunshine; there is less
smoke and more light. Verily, youth is good, but old age is better--to
the man who forsakes not his youth when his youth forsakes him. The
sweet visitings of nature do not depend upon youth or romance, but upon
that quiet spirit whose meekness inherits the earth. The smell of that
field of beans gives me more delight now than ever it could have given
me when I was a youth. And if I ask myself why I find it is simply
because I have more faith now than I had then. It came to me then as an
accident of nature--a passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs'
share of the crumbs. Now I believe that God _means_ that odour of the
bean-field; that when Jesus smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in
Galilee, he thought of his Father. And if God means it, it is mine,
even if I should never smell it again. The music of the spheres is mine
if old age should make me deaf as the adder. Am I mystical again,
reader? Then I hope you are too, or will be before you have done with
this same beautiful mystical life of ours. More and more nature becomes
to me one of God's books of poetry--not his grandest--that is
history--but his loveliest, perhaps.
And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were
happy? I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader
by describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from
the countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each
off in a word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with
the brightness of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work,
and, a little weary, lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from
stooping towards the earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the
brightness of the morning star, ever growing pale and faint over the
amber ocean that brightens at the sun's approach; for life looked to
Wynnie severe in its light, and somewhat sad because severe. Connie's
face was bright with the brightness of a lake in the rosy evening, the
sound of the river flowing in and the sound of the river flowing forth
just audible, but itself still, and content to be still and mirror the
sunset. Dora's was bright with the brightness of a marigold that
follows the sun without knowing it; and Eliza's was bright with the
brightness of a half-blown cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This
last is not a good simile, but I cannot find a better. I confess
failure, and go on.
After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they
were, where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her
to carry her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads
through which were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches
of heather all about were showing their bells, though not yet in their
autumnal outburst of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded of
Scotland, in which I had travelled a good deal between the ages of
twenty and five-and-twenty. The further I went the stronger I felt the
resemblance. The look of the fields, the stone fences that divided
them, the shape and colour and materials of the houses, the aspect of
the people, the feeling of the air, and of the earth and sky generally,
made me imagine myself in a milder and more favoured Scotland. The west
wind was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge which one can so often
detect in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot sun. Though she had
already travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up within a few
minutes after we got on this moor; and we had not gone much farther
before a shout from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little Dora
had discovered the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue
and bright. We soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie's eyes it
seemed to linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them
seemed the reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors.
Ethelwyn's eyes, too, were full of it, and a flush on her generally
pale cheek showed that she too expected the ocean. After a few miles
along this breezy expanse, we began to descend towards the sea-level.
Down the winding of a gradual slope, interrupted by steep descents, we
approached this new chapter in our history. We came again upon a few
trees here and there, all with their tops cut off in a plane inclined
upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds, like a sweeping scythe,
bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep their tops mown with
their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the crests of the broken
waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages, with streets
narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, that needed careful driving and the
frequent pressure of the break upon the wheel. And now the sea shone
upon us with nearer greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear its
talk with the shore. At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the
last level, drove over a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw
the land vanish in the sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden
drawbridge, and along the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen
sloops and schooners. Then came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate,
and an ascent, and ere we reached the rectory, we were aware of its
proximity by loud shouts, and the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering
along the top of a stone wall to meet us. This made their mother
nervous, but she kept quiet, knowing that unrestrained anxiety is
always in danger of bringing about the evil it fears. A moment after,
we drew up at a long porch, leading through the segment of a circle to
the door of the house. The journey was over. We got down in the little
village of Kilkhaven, in the county of Cornwall.