WHIT MONDAY
Light shadows--hardly seen as such--
Crept softly o'er the summer land
In mute caresses, like the touch
Of some familiar hand.
"I want to give your work-people a treat," said Tremaine to Elisabeth,
in the early summer.
"That is very nice of you; but this goes without saying, as you are
always planning and doing something nice. I shall be very glad for our
people to have a little pleasure, as at present the annual tea-meeting
at East Lane Chapel seems to be their one and only dissipation; and
although tea-meetings may be very well in their way, they hardly seem to
fulfil one's ideal of human joy."
"Ah! you have touched upon a point to which I was coming," said Alan
earnestly; "it is wonderful how often our minds jump together! Not only
am I anxious to give the Osierfield people something more enjoyable than
a tea-meeting--I also wish to eliminate the tea-meeting spirit from
their idea of enjoyment."
"How do you mean?" It was noteworthy that while Elisabeth was always
ready to teach Christopher, she was equally willing to learn from Alan.
"I mean that I want to show people that pleasure and religion have
nothing to do with each other. It always seems to me such a mistake that
the pleasures of the poor--the innocent pleasures, of course--are
generally inseparable from religious institutions. If they attend a
tea-party, they open it with prayer; if they are taken for a country
drive, they sing hymns by the way."
"Oh! but I think they do this because they like it, and not because they
are made to do it," said Elisabeth eagerly.
"Not a bit of it; they do it because they are accustomed to do it, and
they feel that it is expected of them. Religion is as much a part of
their dissipation as evening dress is of ours, and just as much a purely
conventional part; and I want to teach them to dissociate the two ideas
in their own minds."
"I doubt if you will succeed, Mr. Tremaine."
"Yes, I shall; I invariably succeed. I have never failed in anything
yet, and I never mean to fail. And I do so want to make the poor people
enjoy themselves thoroughly. Of course, it is a good thing to have one's
pills always hidden in jam; but it must be a miserable thing to belong
to a section of society where one's jam is invariably full of pills."
Elisabeth smiled, but did not speak; Alan was the one person of her
acquaintance to whom she would rather listen than talk.
"It is a morbid and unhealthy habit," he went on, "to introduce religion
into everything, in the way that English people are so fond of doing. It
decreases their pleasures by casting its shadow over purely human and
natural joys; and it increases their sorrow and want by teaching them to
lean upon some hypothetical Power, instead of trying to do the best
that they can for themselves. Also it enervates their reasoning
faculties; for nothing is so detrimental to one's intellectual strength
as the habit of believing things which one knows to be impossible."
"Then don't you believe in religion of any kind?"
"Most certainly I do--in many religions. I believe in the religion of
art and of science and of humanity, and countless more; in fact, the
only religion I do not believe in is Christianity, because that spoils
all the rest by condemning art as fleshly, science as untrue, and
humanity as sinful. I want to bring the old Pantheism to life again, and
to teach our people to worship beauty as the Greeks worshipped it of
old; and I want you to help me."
Elisabeth gasped as Elisha might have gasped when Elijah's mantle fell
upon him. She was as yet too young to beware of false prophets. "I
should love to make people happy," she said; "there seems to be so much
happiness in the world and so few that find it."
"The Greeks found it; therefore, why should not the English? I mean to
teach them to find it, and I shall begin with your work-people on Whit
Monday."
"What shall you do?" asked the girl, with intense interest.
"It is no good taking away old lamps until you are prepared to offer new
ones in their place; therefore I shall not take away the consolations
(so called) of religion until I have shown the people a more excellent
way. I shall first show them nature, and then art--nature to arouse
their highest instincts, and art to express the same; and I am
convinced that after they have once been brought face to face with the
beautiful thus embodied, the old faiths will lose the power to move
them."
When Whit Monday came round, the throbbing heart of the Osierfield
stopped beating, as it was obliged to stop on a bank-holiday; and the
workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, were taken by Alan Tremaine
in large brakes to Pembruge Castle, which the owner had kindly thrown
open to them, at Alan's request, for the occasion.
It was a long drive and a wonderfully beautiful one, for the year was at
its best. All the trees had put on their new summer dresses, and never a
pair of them were of the same shade. The hedges were covered with a
wreath of white May-blossom, and seemed like interminable drifts of that
snow in summer which is as good news from a far country; and the roads
were bordered by the feathery hemlock, which covered the face of the
land as with a bridal veil.
"Isn't the world a beautiful place?" said Elisabeth, with a sigh of
content, to Alan, who was driving her in his mail-phaeton. "I do hope
all the people will see and understand how beautiful it is."
"They can not help seeing and understanding; beauty such as this is its
own interpreter. Surely such a glimpse of nature as we are now enjoying
does people more good than a hundred prayer-meetings in a stuffy
chapel."
"Beauty slides into one's soul on a day like this, just as something--I
forget what--slid into the soul of the Ancient Mariner; doesn't it?"
"Of course it does; and you will find that these people--now that they
are brought face to face with it--will be just as ready to worship
abstract beauty as ever the Greeks were. The fault has not been with the
poor for not having worshipped beauty, but with the rich for not having
shown them sufficient beauty to worship. The rich have tried to choke
them off with religion instead, because it came cheaper and was less
troublesome to produce."
"Then do you think that the love of beauty will elevate these people
more and make them happier than Christianity has done?"
"Most assuredly I do. Had our climate been sunnier and the fight for
existence less bitter, I believe that Christianity would have died out
in England years ago; but the worship of sorrow will always have its
attractions for the sorrowful; and the doctrine of renunciation will
never be without its charm for those unfortunate ones to whom poverty
and disease have stood sponsors, and have renounced all life's good
things in their name before ever they saw the light. Man makes his god
in his own image; and thus it comes to pass that while the strong and
joyous Greek adored Zeus on Olympus, the anæmic and neurotic Englishman
worships Christ on Calvary. Do you tell me that if people were happy
they would bow down before a stricken and crucified God? Not they. And I
want to make them so happy that they shall cease to have any desire for
a suffering Deity."
"Well, you have made them happy enough for to-day, at any rate," said
Elisabeth, as she looked up at him with gratitude and admiration. "I saw
them all when they were starting, and there wasn't one face among them
that hadn't joy written on every feature in capital letters."
"Then in that case they won't be troubling their minds to-day about
their religion; they will save it for the gloomy days, as we save
narcotics for times of pain. You may depend upon that."
"I'm not so sure: their religion is more of a reality to them than you
think," Elisabeth replied.
While Alan was thus, enjoying himself in his own fashion, his guests
were enjoying themselves in theirs; and as they drove through summer's
fairyland, they, too, talked by the way.
"Eh! but the May-blossom's a pretty sight," exclaimed Caleb Bateson, as
the big wagonettes rolled along the country roads. "I never saw it finer
than it is this year--not in all the years I've lived in Mershire; and
Mershire's the land for May-blossom."
"It do look pretty," agreed his wife. "I only wish Lucy Ellen was here
to see it; she was always a one for the May-blossom. Why, when she was
ever such a little girl she'd come home carrying branches of it bigger
than herself, till she looked like nothing but a walking May-pole."
"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Hankey, who happened to be driving in the same
vehicle as the Batesons, "she'll be feeling sad and homesick to see it
all again, I'll be bound."
Lucy Ellen's mother laughed contentedly. "Folks haven't time to feel
homesick when they've got a husband to look after; he soon takes the
place of May-blossom, bless you!"
"You're in luck to see all your children married and settled before the
Lord has been pleased to take you," remarked Mrs. Hankey, with envy in
her voice.
"Well, I'm glad for the two lads to have somebody to look after them,
I'm bound to say; I feel now as they've some one to air their shirts
when I'm not there, for you never can trust a man to look after
himself--never. Men have no sense to know what is good for 'em and what
is bad for 'em, poor things! But Lucy Ellen is a different thing. Of
course I'm pleased for her to have a home of her own, and such nice
furniture as she's got, too, and in such a good circuit; but when your
daughter is married you don't see her as often as you want to, and it is
no good pretending as you do."
"That's true," agreed Caleb Bateson, with a big sigh; "and I never cease
to miss my little lass."
"She ain't no little lass now, Mr. Bateson," argued Mrs. Hankey; "Lucy
Ellen must be forty, if she's a day."
"So she be, Mrs. Hankey--so she be; but she is my little lass to me, all
the same, and always will be. The children never grow up to them as
loves 'em. They are always our children, just as we are always the
Lord's children; and we never leave off a-screening and a-sheltering o'
them, any more than He ever leaves off a-screening and a-sheltering of
us."
"I'm glad to hear as Lucy Ellen has married into a good circuit. Unless
the Lord build the house we know how they labour in vain that build it;
and the Lord can't do much unless He has a good minister to help Him. I
don't deny as He _may_ work through local preachers; but I like a
regular superintendent myself, with one or more ministers under him."
"Oh! Lucy Ellen lives in one of the best circuits in the Connexion,"
said Mrs. Bateson proudly; "they have an ex-president as superintendent,
and three ministers under him, and a supernumerary as well. They never
hear the same preached more than once a month; it's something grand!"
"Eh! it's a fine place is Craychester," added Caleb; "they held
Conference there two years ago."
"It must be a grand thing to live in a place where they hold
Conference," remarked Mrs. Hankey.
"It is indeed," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "Lucy Ellen said it seemed for all
the world like heaven, to see so many ministers about, all in their
black coats and white neckcloths. And then such preaching as they heard!
It isn't often young folks enjoy such privileges, and so I told her."
"When all's said and done, there's nothing like a good sermon for giving
folks real pleasure. Nothing in this world comes up to it, and I doubt
if there'll be anything much better in the next," said Caleb; "I don't
see as how there can be."
His friends all agreed with him, and continued, for the rest of the
drive, to discuss the respective merits of various discourses they had
been privileged to hear.
It was a glorious day. The sky was blue, with just enough white clouds
flitting about to show how blue the blue part really was; and the
varying shadows kept passing, like the caress of some unseen yet
ever-protecting Hand, over the green nearnesses and the violet distances
of a country whose foundations seemed to be of emerald and amethyst, and
its walls and gateways of pearl. The large company from the Osierfield
drove across the breezy common at the foot of Sedgehill Ridge, and then
plunged into a network of lanes which led them, by sweet and mysterious
ways, to the great highway from the Midlands to the coast of the western
sea. On they went, past the little hamlet where the Danes and the Saxons
fought a great fight more than a thousand years ago, and which is still
called by a strange Saxon name, meaning "the burying-place of the
slain"; and the little hamlet smiled in the summer sunshine, as if with
kindly memories of those old warriors whose warfare had been
accomplished so many centuries ago, and who lie together, beneath the
white blossom, in the arms of the great peacemaker called Death, waiting
for the resurrection morning which that blossom is sent to foretell. On,
between man's walls of gray stone, till they came to God's walls of red
sandstone; and then up a steep hill to another common, where the
sweet-scented gorse made a golden pavement, and where there suddenly
burst upon their sight a view so wide and so wonderful that those who
look upon it with the seeing eye and the understanding heart catch
glimpses of the King in His beauty through the fairness of the land that
is very far off. On past the mossy stone, like an overgrown and
illiterate milestone, which marks the boundary between Mershire and
Salopshire; and then through a typical English village, noteworthy
because the rites of Mayday, with May-queen and May-pole to boot, are
still celebrated there exactly as they were celebrated some three
hundred years ago. At last they came to a picturesque wall and gateway,
built of the red stone which belongs to that part of the country, and
which has a trick of growing so much redder at evening-time that it
looks as if the cold stone were blushing with pleasure at being kissed
Good-night by the sun; and then through a wood sloping on the left side
down to a little stream, which was so busy talking to itself about its
own concerns that it had not time to leap and sparkle for the amusement
of passers-by; until they drew up in front of a quaint old castle, built
of the same stone as the outer walls and gateway.
The family were away from home, so the whole of the castle was at the
disposal of Alan and his party, and they had permission to go wherever
they liked. The state-rooms were in front of the building and led out
of each other, so that when all the doors were open any one could see
right from one end of the castle to the other. Dinner was to be served
in the large saloon at the back, built over what was once the courtyard;
and while his servants were laying the tables with the cold viands which
they had brought with them, Alan took his guests through the state-rooms
to see the pictures, and endeavoured to carry out his plan of educating
them by pointing out to them some of the finer works of art.
"This," he said, stopping in front of a portrait, "is a picture of Lady
Mary Wortley-Montagu, who was born here, painted by one of the first
portrait-painters of her day. I want you to look at her hands, and to
notice how exquisitely they are painted. Also I wish to call your
attention to the expression of her face. You know that it is the duty of
art to interpret nature--that is to say, to show to ordinary people
those hidden beauties and underlying meanings of common things which
they would never be able to find out for themselves; and I think that in
the expression on this woman's face the artist has shown forth, in a
most wonderful way, the dissatisfaction and bitterness of her heart. As
you look at her face you seem to see right into her soul, and to
understand how she was foredoomed by nature and temperament to ask too
much of life and to receive too little."
"Well, to be sure!" remarked Mrs. Bateson, in an undertone, to her lord
and master; "she is a bit like our superintendent's wife, only not so
stout. And what a gown she has got on! I should say that satin is worth
five-and-six a yard if it is worth a penny. And I call it a sin and a
shame to have a dirty green parrot sitting on your shoulder when you're
wearing satin like that. If she'd had any sense she'd have fed the
animals before she put her best gown on."
"I never could abide parrots," joined in Mrs. Hankey; "they smell so."
"And as for her looking dissatisfied and all that," continued Mrs.
Bateson, "I for one can't see it. But if she did, it was all a pack of
rubbish. What had she to grumble at, I should like to know, with a satin
gown on at five-and-six a yard?"
By this time Alan had moved on to another picture. "This represents an
unhappy marriage," he explained. "At first sight you see nothing but two
well-dressed people sitting at table; but as you look into the picture
you perceive the misery in the woman's face and the cruelty in the
man's, and you realize all that they mean."
"Well, I see nothing more at second sight," whispered Mrs. Hankey;
"except that the tablecloth might have been cleaner. There's another of
your grumbling fine ladies! Now for sure she'd nothing to grumble at,
sitting so grand at table with a glass of sherry-wine to drink."
"The husband looks a cantankerous chap," remarked Caleb.
"Poor thing! it's his liver," said Mrs. Bateson, taking up the cudgels
as usual on behalf of the bilious and oppressed. "You can see from his
complexion that he is out of order, and that all that rich dinner will
do him no good. It was his wife's duty to see that he had something
plain to eat, with none of them sauces and fal-lals, instead of playing
the fine lady and making troubles out of nothing. I've no patience with
her!"
"Still, he do look as if he'd a temper," persisted Mr. Bateson.
"And if he do, Caleb, what of that? If a man in his own house hasn't the
right to show a bit of temper, I should like to know who has? I've no
patience with the women that will get married and have a man of their
own; and then cry their eyes out because the man isn't an old woman. If
they want meekness and obedience, let 'em remain single and keep lapdogs
and canaries; and leave the husbands for those as can manage 'em and
enjoy 'em, for there ain't enough to go round as it is." And Mrs.
Bateson waxed quite indignant.
Here Tremaine took up his parable. "This weird figure, clothed in skins,
and feeding upon nothing more satisfying than locusts and wild honey, is
a type of all those who are set apart for the difficult and
unsatisfactory lot of heralds and forerunners. They see the good time
coming, and make ready the way for it, knowing all the while that its
fuller light and wider freedom are not for them; they lead their fellows
to the very borders of the promised land, conscious that their own
graves are already dug in the wilderness. No great social or political
movement has ever been carried on without their aid; and they have never
reaped the benefits of those reforms which they lived and died to
compass. Perhaps there are no sadder sights on the page of history than
those solitary figures, of all nations and all times, who have foretold
the coming of the dawn and yet died before it was yet day."'
"Did you ever?" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson _sotto voce_; "a grown man like
that, and not to know John the Baptist when he sees him! Forerunners and
heralds indeed! Why, it's John the Baptist as large as life, and those
as don't recognise him ought to be ashamed of theirselves."
"Lucy Ellen would have known who it was when she was three years old,"
said Caleb proudly.
"And so she ought; I'd have slapped her if she hadn't, and richly she'd
have deserved it."
"It's a comfort as Mr. Tremaine's mother is in her grave," remarked Mrs.
Hankey, not a whit behind the others as regards shocked sensibilities;
"this would have been a sad day for her if she had been alive."
"And it would!" agreed Mrs. Bateson warmly. "I know if one of my
children hadn't known John the Baptist by sight, I should have been that
ashamed I should never have held up my head again in this world--never!"
Mr. Bateson endeavoured to take a charitable view of the situation. "I
expect as the poor lad's schooling was neglected through having lost his
parents; and there's some things as you never seem to master at all
except you master 'em when you're young--the Books of the Bible being
one of them."
"My lads could say the Books of the Bible through, without stopping to
take breath, when they were six, and Lucy Ellen when she was five and a
half."
"Well, then, Kezia, you should be all the more ready to take pity on
them poor orphans as haven't had the advantages as our children have
had."
"So I am, Caleb; and if it had been one of the minor prophets I
shouldn't have said a word--I can't always tell Jonah myself unless
there's a whale somewhere at the back; but John the Baptist----!"
When the inspection of the pictures had been accomplished, the company
sat down to dinner in the large saloon; and Alan was slightly
disconcerted when they opened the proceedings by singing, at the top of
their voices, "Be present at our table, Lord." Elisabeth, on seeing the
expression of his face, sorely wanted to laugh; but she stifled this
desire, as she had learned by experience that humour was not one of
Alan's strong points. Now Christopher could generally see when a thing
was funny, even when the joke was at his own expense; but Alan took life
more seriously, which--as Elisabeth assured herself--showed what a much
more earnest man than Christopher he was, in spite of his less orthodox
opinions. So she made up her mind that she would not catch Christopher's
eye on the present occasion, as she usually did when anything amused
her, because it was cruel to laugh at the frustration of poor Alan's
high-flown plans; and then naturally she looked straight at the spot
where Chris was presiding over a table, and returned his smile of
perfect comprehension. It was one of Elisabeth's peculiarities that she
invariably did the thing which she had definitely made up her mind not
to do.
After dinner the party broke up and wandered about, in small
detachments, over the park and through the woods and by the mere, until
it was tea-time. Alan spent most of his afternoon in explaining to
Elisabeth the more excellent ways whereby the poor may be enabled to
share the pleasures of the rich; and Christopher spent most of his in
carrying Johnnie Stubbs to the mere and taking him for a row, and so
helping the crippled youth to forget for a short time that he was not as
other men are, and that it was out of pity that he, who never worked,
had been permitted to take the holiday which he could not earn.
After tea Alan and Elisabeth were standing on the steps leading from the
saloon to the garden.
"What a magnificent fellow that is!" exclaimed Alan, pointing to the
huge figure of Caleb Bateson, who was talking to Jemima Stubbs on the
far side of the lawn. Caleb certainly justified this admiration, for he
was a fine specimen of a Mershire puddler--and there is no finer race of
men to be found anywhere than the puddlers of Mershire.
Elisabeth's eyes twinkled. "That is one of your anæmic and neurotic
Christians," she remarked demurely.
Displeasure settled on Alan's brow; he greatly objected to Elisabeth's
habit of making fun of things, and had tried his best to cure her of it.
To a great extent he had succeeded (for the time being); but even yet
the cloven foot of Elisabeth's levity now and then showed itself, much
to his regret.
"Exceptions do not disprove rules," he replied coldly. "Moreover,
Bateson is probably religious rather from the force of convention than
of conviction." Tremaine never failed to enjoy his own rounded
sentences, and this one pleased him so much that it almost succeeded in
dispelling the cloud which Elisabeth's ill-timed gibe had created.
"He is a class-leader and a local preacher," she added.
"Those terms convey no meaning to my mind."
"Don't they? Well, they mean that Caleb not only loyally supports the
government of Providence, but is prepared to take office under it,"
Elisabeth explained.
Alan never quarrelled with people; he always reproved them. "You make a
great mistake--and an extremely feminine one--Miss Farringdon, in
invariably deducting general rules from individual instances. Believe
me, this is a most illogical form of reasoning, and leads to erroneous,
and sometimes dangerous, conclusions."
Elisabeth tossed her head; she did not like to be reproved, even by Alan
Tremaine. "My conclusions are nearly always correct, anyhow," she
retorted; "and if you get to the right place, I don't see that it
matters how you go there. I never bother my head about the 'rolling
stock' or the 'permanent way' of my intuitions; I know they'll bring me
to the right conclusion, and I leave them to work out their Bradshaw for
themselves."
In the meantime Jemima Stubbs was pouring out a recital of her
grievances into the ever-sympathetic ear of Caleb Bateson.
"You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, my lass," he had said in his
cheery voice, laying a big hand in tender caress upon the girl's narrow
shoulders.
"And how should I, Mr. Bateson, not having a beau nor nobody to talk
to?" she replied in her quavering treble. "What with havin' first mother
to nurse when I was a little gell, and then havin' Johnnie to look
after, I've never had time to make myself look pretty and to get a beau,
like other gells. And now I'm too old for that sort of thing, and yet
I've never had my chance, as you may say."
"Poor lass! It's a hard life as you've had, and no mistake."
"That it is, Mr. Bateson. Men wants gells as look pretty and make 'em
laugh; they don't care for the dull, dowdy ones, such as me; and yet how
can a gell be light-hearted and gay, I should like to know, when it's
work, work, work, all the day, and nurse, nurse, nurse, all the night?
Yet the men don't make no allowance for that--not they. They just see as
a gell is plain and stupid, and then they has nothing more to do with
her, and she can go to Jericho for all they cares."
"You've had a hard time of it, my lass," repeated Bateson, in his full,
deep voice.
"Right you are, Mr. Bateson; and it's made my hair gray, and my face all
wrinkles, and my hands a sight o' roughness and ugliness, till I'm a
regular old woman and a fright at that. And I'm but thirty-five now,
though no one 'ud believe it to look at me."
"Thirty-five, are you? B'ain't you more than that, Jemima, for surely
you look more?"
"I know I does, but I ain't; and lots o' women--them as has had easy
times and their way made smooth for them--look little more than gells
when they are thirty-five; and the men run after 'em as fast as if they
was only twenty. But I'm an old woman, I am, and I've never had time to
be a young one, and I've never had a beau nor nothing."
"It seems now, Jemima, as if the Lord was dealing a bit hard with you;
but never you fret yourself; He'll explain it all and make it all up to
you in His own good time."
"I only hope He may, Mr. Bateson."
"My lass, do you remember how Saint Paul said, 'From henceforth let no
man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus'? Now
it seems to me that all the gray hairs and the wrinkles and the
roughness that come to us when we are working for others and doing our
duty, are nothing more nor less than the marks of the Lord Jesus."
"That's a comfortin' view of the matter, I don't deny."
"There are lots o' men in this world, Jemima, and still more women, who
grow old before their time working for other people; and I take it that
when folks talk o' their wrinkles, the Lord says, 'My Name shall be in
their foreheads'; and when folks talk o' their gray hairs, He says,
'They shall walk with Me in white: for they are worthy.' And why do we
mark the things that belong to us? Why, so as we can know 'em again and
can claim 'em as our own afore the whole world. And that's just why the
Lord marks us: so as all the world shall know as we are His, and so as
no man shall ever pluck us out of His Hand."
Jemima looked gratefully up at the kindly prophet who was trying to
comfort her. "Law! Mr. Bateson, that's a consolin' way of looking at
things, and I only hope as you're right. But all the same, I'd have
liked to have had a beau of my own just for onst, like other gells. I
dessay it's very wicked o' me to feel like this, and it's enough to make
the Lord angry with me; but it don't seem to me as there's anything in
religion that quite makes up for never havin' had a beau o' your own."
"The Lord won't be angry with you, my lass; don't you fear. He made
women and He understands 'em, and He ain't the one to blame 'em for
being as He Himself made 'em. Remember the Book says, 'as one whom his
mother comforteth'; and I hold that means as He understands women and
their troubles better than the kindest father ever could. And He won't
let His children give up things for His sake without paying them back
some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold; and don't you ever
get thinking that He will."
"As Jemima says, yours is a comfortable doctrine, Bateson, but I am
afraid you have no real foundation for your consoling belief," exclaimed
Alan Tremaine, coming up and interrupting the conversation.
"Eh! but I have, sir, saving your presence; I know in Whom I have
believed; and what a man has once known for certain, he can never not
know again as long as he lives."
"But Christianity is a myth, a fable. You may imagine and pretend that
it is true, but you can not know that it is."
"But I do know, sir, begging your pardon, as well as I know you are
standing here and the sun is shining over yonder."
Alan smiled rather scornfully: how credulous were the lower classes, he
thought in his pride of intellectual superiority. "I do not understand
how you can know a thing that has never been proved," he said.
The giant turned and looked on his fragile frame with eyes full of a
great pity. "You do not understand, you say, sir that's just it; and I
am too foolish and ignorant to be able to explain things rightly to a
gentleman like you; but the Lord will explain it to you when He thinks
fit. You are young yet, sir, and the way stretches long before you, and
the mysteries of God are hidden from your eyes. But when you have loved
and cherished a woman as your own flesh, and when you have had little
children clinging round your knees, you'll understand rightly enough
then without needing any man to teach you."
"My good man, do you suppose a wife and children would teach me more
than the collected wisdom of the ages?"
"A sight more, Mr. Tremaine--a sight more. Folks don't learn the best
things from books, sir. Why, when the Lord Himself wrote the law on
tables of stone, they got broken; but when He writes it on the fleshly
tables of our hearts, it lives forever. And His Handwriting is the love
we bear for our fellow-creatures, and--through them--for Him; at least,
so it seems to me."
"That is pure imagination and sentiment, Bateson. Very pretty and
poetic, no doubt; but it won't hold water."
Caleb smiled indulgently. "Wait till you've got a little lass of your
own, like my Lucy Ellen, sir. Not that you'll ever have one quite as
good as her, bless her! for her equal never has been seen in this world,
and never will. But when you've got a little lass of your own, and know
as you'd be tortured to death quite cheerful-like just to save her a
minute's pain, you'll laugh at all the nonsense that's written in books,
and feel you know a sight better than all of 'em put together."
"I don't quite see why."
"Well, you see, sir, it's like this. When the dove came back to the ark
with the olive leaf in her mouth, Noah didn't begin sayin' how wonderful
it was for a leaf to have grown out of nothing all of a sudden, as some
folks are so fond of saying. Not he; he'd too much sense. He says to his
sons, 'Look here: a leaf here means a tree somewhere, and the sooner we
make for that tree the better!' And so it is with us. When we feel that
all at onst there's somebody that matters more to us than ourselves, we
know that this wonderful feelin' hasn't sprung out of the selfishness
that filled our hearts before, but is just a leaf off a great Tree
which is a shadow and resting-place for the whole world."
Tremaine looked thoughtful; Caleb's childlike faith and extensive
vocabulary were alike puzzles to him. He did not understand that in
homes--however simple--where the Bible is studied until it becomes as
household words, the children are accustomed to a "well of English
undefiled"; and so, unconsciously, mould their style upon and borrow
their expressions from the Book which, even when taken only from a
literary standpoint, is the finest Book ever read by man.
After a minute's silence he said: "I have been wondering whether it
really is any pleasure to the poor to see the homes of the rich, or
whether it only makes them dissatisfied. Now, what do you think,
Bateson?"
"Well, sir, if it makes 'em dissatisfied it didn't ought to."
"Perhaps not. Still, I have a good deal of sympathy with socialism
myself; and I know I should feel it very hard if I were poor, while
other men, not a whit better and probably worse than myself, were rich."
"And so it would be hard, sir, if this was the end of everything, and it
was all haphazard, as it were; so hard that no sensible man could see it
without going clean off his head altogether. But when you rightly
understand as it's all the Master's doing, and that He knows what He's
about a sight better than we could teach Him, it makes a wonderful
difference. Whether we're rich or poor, happy or sorrowful, is His
business and He can attend to that; but whether we serve Him rightly in
the place where He has put us, is our business, and it'll take us all
our time to look after it without trying to do His work as well."
Tremaine merely smiled, and Bateson went on--
"You see, sir, there's work in the world of all kinds for all sorts; and
whether they be lords and ladies, or just poor folks like we, they've
got to do the work that the Lord has set them to do, and not to go
hankering after each other's. Why, Mr. Tremaine, if at our place the
puddlers wanted to do the work of the shinglers, and the shinglers
wanted to do the work of the rollers, and the rollers wanted to do the
work of the masters, the Osierfield wouldn't be for long the biggest
ironworks in Mershire. Not it! You have to use your common sense in
religion as in everything else."
"You think that religion is the only thing to make people contented and
happy? So do I; but I don't think that the religion to do this
effectually is Christianity."
"No more do I, sir; that's where you make a mistake, begging your
pardon; you go confusing principles with persons. It isn't my love for
my wife that lights the fire and cooks the dinner and makes my little
home like heaven to me--it's my wife herself; it wasn't my children's
faith in their daddy that fed 'em and clothed 'em when they were too
little to work for themselves--it was me myself; and it isn't the
religion of Christ that keeps us straight in this world and makes us
ready for the next--it is Christ Himself."
Thus the rich man and the poor man talked together, moving along
parallel lines, neither understanding, and each looking down upon the
other--Alan with the scornful pity of the scholar who has delved in the
dust of dreary negatives which generations of doubters have gradually
heaped up; and Caleb with the pitiful scorn of one who has been into the
sanctuary of God, and so learned to understand the end of these men.
Late that night, when all the merrymakers had gone to their homes,
Tremaine sat smoking in the moonlight on the terrace of the Moat House.
"It is strange," he said to himself, "what a hold the Christian myth has
taken upon the minds of the English people, and especially of the
working classes. I can see how its pathos might appeal to those whose
health was spoiled and whose physique was stunted by poverty and misery;
but it puzzles me to find a magnificent giant such as Bateson, a man too
strong to have nerves and too healthy to have delusions, as thoroughly
imbued with its traditions as any one. I fail to understand the secret
of its power."
At that very moment Caleb was closing the day, as was his custom, with
family prayer, and his prayer ran thus--
"We beseech Thee, O Lord, look kindly upon the stranger who has this day
shown such favour unto Thy servants; pay back all that he has given us
sevenfold into his bosom. He is very young, Lord, and very ignorant and
very foolish; his eyes are holden so that he can not see the operations
of Thy Hands; but he is not very far from Thy Kingdom. Lead him,
Heavenly Father, in the way that he should go; open his eyes that he may
behold the hidden things of Thy Law; look upon him and love him, as Thou
didst aforetime another young man who had great possessions. Lord, tell
him that this earth is only Thy footstool; show him that the beauty he
sees all around him is the hem of Thy garment; and teach him that the
wisdom of this world is but foolishness with Thee. And this we beg, O
Lord, for Christ's sake. Amen."
Thus Caleb prayed, and Alan could not hear him, and could not have
understood him even if he had heard.
But there was One who heard, and understood.