THE OLD GARDEN.
The next morning, Juliet, walking listlessly up and down the garden,
turned the corner of a yew hedge, and came suddenly upon a figure that
might well have appeared one of the kobolds of German legend. He was
digging slowly but steadily, crooning a strange song--so low that, until
she saw him she did not hear him.
She started back in dismay. The kobold neither raised his head nor
showed other sign than the ceasing of his song that he was aware of her
presence. Slowly and steadily he went on with his work. He was trenching
the ground deep, still throwing the earth from the bottom to the top.
Juliet, concluding he was deaf, and the ceasing of his song accidental,
turned softly, and would have retreated. But Polwarth, so far from being
deaf, heard better than most people. His senses, indeed, had been
sharpened by his infirmities--all but those of taste and smell, which
were fitful, now dull and now exquisitely keen. At the first movement
breaking the stillness into which consternation had cast her, he spoke.
"Can you guess what I am doing, Mrs. Faber?" he said, throwing up a
spadeful and a glance together, like a man who could spare no time from
his work.
Juliet's heart got in the way, and she could not answer him. She felt
much as a ghost, wandering through a house, might feel, if suddenly
addressed by the name she had borne in the old days, while yet she was
clothed in the garments of the flesh. Could it be that this man led such
a retired life that, although living so near Glaston, and seeing so many
at his gate, he had yet never heard that she had passed from the ken of
the living? Or could it be that Dorothy had betrayed her? She stood
quaking. The situation was strange. Before her was a man who did not
seem to know that what he knew concerning her was a secret from all the
world besides! And with that she had a sudden insight into the
consequence of the fact of her existence coming to her husband's
knowledge: would it not add to his contempt and scorn to know that she
was not even dead? Would he not at once conclude that she had been
contriving to work on his feelings, that she had been speculating on his
repentance, counting upon and awaiting such a return of his old
fondness, as would make him forget all her faults, and prepare him to
receive her again with delight?--But she must answer the creature! Ill
could she afford to offend him! But what was she to say? She had utterly
forgotten what he had said to her. She stood staring at him, unable to
speak. It was but for a few moments, but they were long as minutes. And
as she gazed, it seemed as if the strange being in the trench had dug
his way up from the lower parts of the earth, bringing her secret with
him, and come to ask her questions. What an earthy yet unearthly look he
had! Almost for the moment she believed the ancient rumors of other
races than those of mankind, that shared the earth with them, but led
such differently conditioned lives, that, in the course of ages, only a
scanty few of the unblending natures crossed each other's path, to stand
astare in mutual astonishment.
Polwarth went on digging, nor once looked up. After a little while he
resumed, in the most natural way, speaking as if he had known her well:
"Mr. Drake and I were talking, some weeks ago, about a certain curious
little old-fashioned flower in my garden at the back of the lodge. He
asked me if I could spare him a root of it. I told him I could spare him
any thing he would like to have, but that I would gladly give him every
flower in my garden, roots and all, if he would but let me dig three
yards square in his garden at the Old House, and have all that came up
of itself for a year."
He paused again. Juliet neither spoke nor moved. He dug rather feebly
for a gnome, with panting, asthmatic breath.
"Perhaps you are not aware, ma'am," he began again, and ceasing his
labor stood up leaning on the spade, which was nearly as high as
himself, "that many of the seeds which fall upon the ground do not grow,
yet, strange to tell, retain the power of growth. I suspect myself, but
have not had opportunity of testing the conjecture, that such fall in
their pods, or shells, and that before these are sufficiently decayed to
allow the sun and moisture and air to reach them, they have got covered
up in the soil too deep for those same influences. They say fishes a
long time bedded in ice will come to life again: I can not tell about
that, but it is well enough known that if you dig deep in any old
garden, such as this, ancient, perhaps forgotten flowers, will appear.
The fashion has changed, they have been neglected or uprooted, but all
the time their life is hid below. And the older they are, the nearer
perhaps to their primary idea!"
By this time she was far more composed, though not yet had she made up
her mind what to say, or how to treat the dilemma in which she found
herself.
After a brief pause therefore, he resumed again:
"I don't fancy," he said, with a low, asthmatic laugh, "that we shall
have many forgotten weeds come up. They all, I suspect, keep pretty well
in the sun. But just think how the fierce digging of the crisis to which
the great Husbandman every now and then leads a nation, brings back to
the surface its old forgotten flowers. What virtues, for instance, the
Revolution brought to light as even yet in the nature of the corrupted
nobility of France!"
"What a peculiar goblin it is!" thought Juliet, beginning to forget
herself a little in watching and listening to the strange creature. She
had often seen him before, but had always turned from him with a kind of
sympathetic shame: of course the poor creature could not bear to be
looked at; he must know himself improper!
"I have sometimes wondered," Polwarth yet again resumed, "whether the
troubles without end that some people seem born to--I do not mean those
they bring upon themselves--may not be as subsoil plows, tearing deep
into the family mold, that the seeds of the lost virtues of their race
may in them be once more brought within reach of sun and air and dew. It
would be a pleasant, hopeful thought if one might hold it. Would it not,
ma'am?"
"It would indeed," answered Juliet with a sigh, which rose from an
undefined feeling that if some hidden virtue would come up in her, it
would be welcome. How many people would like to be good, if only they
might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness
well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have
that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of
Heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of
righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it! They do
not know that it is goodness all the time their very being is pining
after, and that they are starving their nature of its necessary food.
Then Polwarth's idea turned itself round in Juliet's mind, and grew
clearer, but assumed reference to weeds only, and not flowers. She
thought how that fault of hers had, like the seed of a poison-plant,
been buried for years, unknown to one alive, and forgotten almost by
herself--so diligently forgotten indeed, that it seemed to have
gradually slipped away over the horizon of her existence; and now here
it was at the surface again in all its horror and old reality! nor that
merely, for already it had blossomed and borne its rightful fruit of
dismay--an evil pod, filled with a sickening juice, and swarming with
gray flies.--But she must speak, and, if possible, prevent the odd
creature from going and publishing in Glaston that he had seen Mrs.
Faber, and she was at the Old House.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked abruptly.
"How do you know that I knew, ma'am?" returned Polwarth, in a tone which
took from the words all appearance of rudeness.
"You were not in the least surprised to see me," she answered.
"A man," returned the dwarf, "who keeps his eyes open may almost cease
to be surprised at any thing. In my time I have seen so much that is
wonderful--in fact every thing seems to me so wonderful that I hardly
expect to be surprised any more."
He said this, desiring to provoke conversation. But Juliet took the
answer for an evasive one, and it strengthened her suspicion of Dorothy.
She was getting tired of her! Then there was only one thing left!--The
minor prophet had betaken himself again to his work, delving deeper, and
throwing slow spadeful after spadeful to the surface.
"Miss Drake told you I was here!" said Juliet.
"No, indeed, Mrs. Faber. No one told me," answered Polwarth. "I learned
it for myself. I could hardly help finding it out."
"Then--then--does every body know it?" she faltered, her heart sinking
within her at the thought.
"Indeed, ma'am, so far as I know, not a single person is aware you are
alive except Miss Drake and myself. I have not even told my niece who
lives with me, and who can keep a secret as well as myself."
Juliet breathed a great sigh of relief.
"Will you tell me why you have kept it so secret?" she asked.
"Because it was your secret, ma'am, not mine."
"But you were under no obligation to keep my secret."
"How do you justify such a frightful statement as that, ma'am?"
"Why, what could it matter to you?"
"Every thing."
"I do not understand. You have no interest in me. You could have no
inducement."
"On the contrary, I had the strongest inducement: I saw that an
opportunity might come of serving you."
"But that is just the unintelligible thing to me. There is no reason why
you should wish to serve me!" said Juliet, thinking to get at the bottom
of some design.
"There you mistake, ma'am. I am under the most absolute and imperative
obligation to serve you--the greatest under which any being can find
himself."
"What a ridiculous, crooked little monster!" said Juliet to herself. But
she began the same moment to think whether she might not turn the
creature's devotion to good account. She might at all events insure his
silence.
"Would you be kind enough to explain yourself?" she said, now also
interested in the continuance of the conversation.
"I would at once," replied Polwarth, "had I sufficient ground for hoping
you would understand my explanation."
"I do not know that I am particularly stupid," she returned, with a wan
smile.
"I have heard to the contrary," said Polwarth. "Yet I can not help
greatly doubting whether you will understand what I am now going to tell
you. For I will tell you--on the chance: I have no secrets--that is, of
my own.--I am one of those, Mrs. Faber," he went on after a moment's
pause, but his voice neither became more solemn in tone, nor did he
cease his digging, although it got slower, "who, against the
_non-evidence_ of their senses, believe there is a Master of men, the
one Master, a right perfect Man, who demands of them, and lets them know
in themselves the rectitude of the demand that they also shall be right
and true men, that is, true brothers to their brothers and sisters of
mankind. It is recorded too, and I believe it, that this Master said
that any service rendered to one of His people was rendered to Himself.
Therefore, for love of His will, even if I had no sympathy with you,
Mrs. Faber, I should feel bound to help you. As you can not believe me
interested in yourself, I must tell you that to betray your secret for
the satisfaction of a love of gossip, would be to sin against my highest
joy, against my own hope, against the heart of God, from which your
being and mine draws the life of its every moment."
Juliet's heart seemed to turn sick at the thought of such a creature
claiming brotherhood with her. That it gave ground for such a claim,
seemed for the moment an irresistible argument against the existence of
a God.
In her countenance Polwarth read at once that he had blundered, and a
sad, noble, humble smile irradiated his. It had its effect on Juliet.
She would be generous and forgive his presumption: she knew dwarfs were
always conceited--that wise Nature had provided them with high thoughts
wherewith to add the missing cubit to their stature. What repulsive
things Christianity taught! Her very flesh recoiled from the poor ape!
"I trust you are satisfied, ma'am," the kobold added, after a moment's
vain expectation of a word from Juliet, "that your secret is safe with
me."
"I am," answered Juliet, with a condescending motion of her stately
neck, saying to herself in feeling if not in conscious thought,--"After
all he is hardly human! I may accept his devotion as I would that of a
dog!"
The moment she had thus far yielded, she began to long to speak of her
husband. Perhaps he can tell her something of him! At least he could
talk about him. She would have been eager to look on his reflection, had
it been possible, in the mind of a dog that loved him. She would turn
the conversation in a direction that might find him.
"But I do not see," she went on, "how you, Mr. Polwarth--I think that is
your name--how you can, consistently with your principles,--"
"Excuse me, ma'am: I can not even, by silence, seem to admit that you
know any thing whatever of my principles."
"Oh!" she returned, with a smile of generous confession, "I was brought
up to believe as you do."
"That but satisfies me that for the present you are incapable of knowing
any thing of my principles."
"I do not wonder at your thinking so," she returned, with the
condescension of superior education, as she supposed, and yet with the
first motion of an unconscious respect for the odd little monster.--He,
with wheezing chest, went on throwing up the deep, damp, fresh earth, to
him smelling of marvelous things. Ruth would have ached all over to see
him working so hard!--"Still," Juliet went on, "supposing your judgment
of me correct, that only makes it the stranger you should imagine that
in serving such a one, you are pleasing Him you call your Master. He
says whosoever denies Him before men He will deny before the angels of
God."
"What my Lord says He will do, He will do, as He meant it when He said
it: what He tells me to do, I try to understand and do. Now He has told
me of all things not to say that good comes of evil. He condemned that
in the Pharisees as the greatest of crimes. When, therefore, I see a man
like your husband, helping his neighbors near and far, being kind,
indeed loving, and good-hearted to all men,"--Here a great sigh, checked
and broken into many little ones, came in a tremulous chain from the
bosom of the wife--"I am bound to say that man is not scattering his
Master abroad. He is indeed opposing Him in words: he speaks against the
Son of Man; but that the Son of Man Himself says shall be forgiven him.
If I mistake in this, to my own Master I stand or fall."
"How can He be his Master if he does not acknowledge Him?"
"Because the very tongue with which he denies Him is yet His. I am the
master of the flowers that will now grow by my labor, though not one of
them will know me--how much more must He be the Master of the men He
has called into being, though they do not acknowledge Him! If the story
of the gospel be a true one, as with my heart and soul and all that is
in me I believe it is, then Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and Master of Mr.
Faber, and for him not to acknowledge it is to fall from the summit of
his being. To deny one's Master, is to be a slave."
"You are very polite!" said Mrs. Faber, and turned away. She recalled
her imaginary danger, however, and turning again, said, "But though I
differ from you in opinion, Mr. Polwarth, I quite recognize you as no
common man, and put you upon your honor with regard to my secret."
"Had you entrusted me with your secret, ma'am, the phrase would have had
more significance. But, obeying my Master, I do not require to think of
my own honor. Those who do not acknowledge their Master, can not afford
to forget it. But if they do not learn to obey Him, they will find by
the time they have got through what they call life, they have left
themselves little honor to boast of."
"He has guessed my real secret!" thought poor Juliet, and turning away
in confusion, without a word of farewell, went straight into the house.
But before Dorothy, who had been on the watch at the top of the slope,
came in, she had begun to hope that the words of the forward,
disagreeable, conceited dwarf had in them nothing beyond a general
remark.
When Dorothy entered, she instantly accused her of treachery. Dorothy,
repressing her indignation, begged she would go with her to Polwarth.
But when they reached the spot, the gnome had vanished.
He had been digging only for the sake of the flowers buried in Juliet,
and had gone home to lie down. His bodily strength was exhausted, but
will and faith and purpose never forsook the soul cramped up in that
distorted frame. When greatly suffering, he would yet suffer with his
will--not merely resigning himself to the will of God, but desiring the
suffering that God willed. When the wearied soul could no longer keep
the summit of the task, when not strength merely, but the consciousness
of faith and duty failed him, he would cast faith and strength and duty,
all his being, into the gulf of the Father's will, and simply suffer, no
longer trying to feel any thing--waiting only until the Life should send
him light.
Dorothy turned to Juliet.
"You might have asked Mr. Polwarth, Juliet, whether I had betrayed
you," she said.
"Now I think of it, he did say you had not told him. But how was I to
take the word of a creature like that?"
"Juliet," said Dorothy, very angry, "I begin to doubt if you were worth
taking the trouble for!"
She turned from her, and walked toward the house. Juliet rushed after
her and caught her in her arms.
"Forgive me, Dorothy," she cried. "I am not in my right senses, I do
believe. What _is_ to be done now this--man knows it?"
"Things are no worse than they were," said Dorothy, as quickly appeased
as angered. "On the contrary, I believe we have the only one to help us
who is able to do it. Why, Juliet, why what am I to do with you when my
father sends the carpenters and bricklayers to the house? They will be
into every corner! He talks of commencing next week, and I am at my
wits' end."
"Oh! don't forsake me, Dorothy, after all you have done for me," cried
Juliet. "If you turn me out, there never was creature in the world so
forlorn as I shall be--absolutely helpless, Dorothy!"
"I will do all I can for you, my poor Juliet; but if Mr. Polwarth do not
think of some way, I don't know what will become of us. You don't know
what you are guilty of in despising him. Mr. Wingfold speaks of him as
far the first man in Glaston."
Certainly Mr. Wingfold, Mr. Drew, and some others of the best men in the
place, did think him, of those they knew, the greatest in the kingdom of
Heaven. Glaston was altogether of a different opinion. Which was the
right opinion, must be left to the measuring rod that shall finally be
applied to the statures of men.
The history of the kingdom of Heaven--need I say I mean a very different
thing from what is called _church-history?_--is the only history that
will ever be able to show itself a history--that can ever come to be
thoroughly written, or to be read with a clear understanding; for it
alone will prove able to explain itself, while in doing so it will
explain all other attempted histories as well. Many of those who will
then be found first in the eternal record, may have been of little
regard in the eyes of even their religious contemporaries, may have been
absolutely unknown to generations that came after, and were yet the men
of life and potency, working as light, as salt, as leaven, in the
world. When the real worth of things is, over all, the measure of their
estimation, then is the kingdom of our God and His Christ.