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.