house of rough stone, much festooned with creepers, which crowned a
little height at the base of the fells, in the centre of a wild wood.
The house was that of a very old man, hard on his ninetieth year, a
relative of Hugh's, and an old friend of his family. There was a short
cut to the house among the woods, and Hugh left the carriage to go
round by the drive, while he himself walked up. The path was a little
track among copses, roofed over by interlacing boughs, and giving an
abundance of pretty glimpses to right and left of the unvisited places
of the wood; old brown boulders covered with moss, with ash-suckers
shooting out among the stones, little streams rippling downwards, small
green lawns fringed with low trees. The western valley was full of a
rich golden light, and the wooded ridges rose quietly one after
another, with the dark solemn forms of mountains on the horizon. A few
dappled clouds, fringed with fire, floated high in the green sky. It
all seemed to him to be screening some sacred and mysterious pageant,
which was, as it were, being celebrated out in the west, where the
orange sunset lay dying. He thought of the lonely valleys among the
hills, slowly filling with twilight gloom, the high ridges from which
one could discern the sun sinking in glory over the far-spread flashing
sea with its misty rim. The house loomed up suddenly over the
thickets, with a light or two burning in the windows which pierced the
thick wall.
Within, all was as it had been for many a year; it was a house in which
everything seemed to stand still, the day passing smoothly in a simple
and pleasant routine. He received a very kindly and gentle welcome
from his host, and was pleased to find that the party was of the
quietest--an old friend or two, a widowed daughter of the house, one or
two youthful cousins. Hugh slipped into his place in the household as
if he had never been absent; he established his books in a corner of
the dark library full of old volumes. It was always a pleasure to him
to see his host, a courtly, silent old man, with snow-white hair and
beard, who sate smiling, eating so little that Hugh wondered how he
sustained life, reading for an hour or two, walking a little about the
garden, sitting long in contented meditation, never seeming to be weary
or melancholy. Hugh remembered that, some years before, he had
wondered that any one could live so, neither looking backwards nor
forwards, with no designs or cares or purposes, simply taking each day
as it came with a perfect tranquillity, not overshadowed by the thought
of how few years of life were left him. But now he seemed to
understand it better; it was just the soft close of a kindly and
innocent life, dying like a tree or a flower. The old man liked to
have Hugh as the companion of his morning ramble, showed him many
curious plants and flowers, and spoke often of the reminiscences of his
departed youth with no shadow of desire or regret. At first the
grateful coolness of the place revived Hugh; but the soft, moist
climate brought with it a fatigue of its own, an indolent dejection,
which made him averse to work and even to bodily activity. He took,
however, one or two lonely walks among the mountains. In his listless
mood, he was vexed and disquieted by the contrast between the utter
peace and beauty of the hills, which seemed to uplift themselves, half
in majesty and half in appeal, into the still sky, as though they had
struggled out of the world, and yet desired a further blessing,--the
contrast between their meek and rugged patience, and the noisy, dusty
crowd of shameless and indifferent tourists, that circulated among the
green valleys, like a poisonous fluid in the veins of the wholesome
mountains. They brought a kind of blight upon the place; and yet they
were harmless, inquisitive people, tempted thither, most of them by
fashion, a few perhaps by a feeble love of beauty, and only desirous to
bring their own standard of comforts with them. The world seemed out
of joint; the radical ugliness and baseness of man an insult to the
purity and sweetness of nature.
Hugh walked back, in a close and heavy afternoon, across the fell, with
these thoughts struggling together in his heart. The valley was
breathlessly still, and the flies buzzed round him as he disturbed them
from the bracken. The whole world looked so sweet and noble, that it
was impossible not to think that it was moulded and designed by a Will
of unutterable graciousness and beauty. From the top, beside a little
crag full of clinging trees, that held on tenaciously to the crevices
and ledges, with so perfect an accommodation to their precarious
situation, Hugh surveyed the wide valleys, and saw the smoke ascend
from hamlets and houses, the lake as still as a mirror, while the
shadows lengthened on the hills, which seemed indeed to change their
very shapes by delicate gradations. It looked perfectly peaceful and
serene. Yet in how many houses were there unquiet and suffering
hearts, waiting in vain for respite or release! The pain of the world
pressed heavily upon Hugh; it seemed that if he could have breathed out
his life there upon the hill-top among the fern, to mingle with the
incense of the evening, that would be best; and yet even while he
thought it, there seemed to contend with his sadness an immense desire
for joy, for life; how many beautiful things there were to see, to
hear, to feel, to say; to be loved, to be needed--how Hugh craved for
that! While he sate, there alighted on his knee, with much
deliberation, a dry, varnished-looking, orange-banded fly, which might
have almost been turned out of a manufactory a moment before. It sent
out a thin and musical buzzing, as it cleaned its brown, large-eyed
head industriously with its long legs. It seemed to wish to sit with
Hugh; and again and again, after a short flight, it returned to the
same place. What was the meaning of this tiny, definite life, with its
short space of sun and shade, made with so curious and elaborate an
art, so whimsically adorned and glorified? Here again he was touched
close by the impenetrable mystery of things. But presently the
cheerful and complacent creature flew off on some secret errand, and
Hugh was left alone again.
He descended swiftly into the valley; the road was full of dust. The
vehicles, full of chattering, smoking, vacuous persons were speeding
home. The hands of many were full of poor fading flowers, torn from
lawn and ledge to please a momentary whim. Yet beside the road slid
the clear stream over its shingle, passing from brisk cascades into
dark and silent pools, fringed with rich water-plants, the trees bowing
over the water. How swiftly one passed from disgust and ugliness into
unimagined peace! It was all going forwards, all changing, all tending
to some unknown goal.
Hugh found his host sitting on the terrace, under a leafy sycamore, a
perfect picture of holy age and serenity. He listened to the recital
of Hugh's little adventures with a smile, and said that he had often
walked over the fell in the old days, but did not suppose he would ever
see it again. "I am just waiting for my release," he said, with a
little nod of his head; "every time that I sit here, I think it may
very likely be the last." Hugh longed to ask him the secret of this
contented and passionless peace, but he knew there could be no answer;
it was the kindly gift of God.
The sunset died away among the blue hill-ranges, and a soft breeze
began to stir among the leaves of the sycamore overhead. A nightjar
sent out its liquid, reiterated note from the heather, and a star
climbed above the edge of the dark hill. Here was peace enough, if he
could but reach it and seize it. Yet it softly eluded his grasp, and
seemed only to mock him as unattainable. Should he ever grasp it?
There was no answer possible; yet a message seemed to come wistfully
and timidly, flying like a night-bird out of the wild woodland, as
though it would have settled near him; but it left him with the same
inextinguishable hunger of the heart, that seemed to be increased
rather than fed by the fragrant incense of the garden, the sight of the
cool, glimmering paths, the pale rock rising from the turf, the silent
pool.
XXXIX
A Friend--The Gate of Life
Hugh was staying in the country with his mother. It was a bright
morning in the late summer, and he had just walked out on to the little
gravel-sweep before the house, which commanded a view of a pleasant
wooded valley with a stream running through; it was one of those fresh
days, with a light breeze rustling in the trees, when it seemed good to
be alive; rain had fallen in the night, and had washed the dust of a
long drought off the trees; some soft aerial pigment seemed mingled
with the air, lending a rich lustre to everything; the small woods on
the hillside opposite had a mellow colour, and the pastures between
were of radiant and transparent freshness; the little gusts whirled
over the woodland, turning the under sides of the leaves up, and
brightening the whole with a dash of lighter green.
Just at this moment a telegram was put into Hugh's hand, announcing the
sudden death of an elderly lady, who had been a good friend to him for
over twenty years. Death seemed to be everywhere about him, and the
bright scene suddenly assumed an almost heartless aspect of mirth; but
he put the thought from him, and strove rather to feel that life and
death rejoiced together.
Later in the day he heard more particulars. His friend was a wealthy
woman who had lived a very quiet life for many years in a pleasant
country-house. She had often spoken to Hugh of her fear of a long and
tedious illness, wearing alike to both the sufferer and those in
attendance, when the mind may become fretful, fearful, and impatient in
the last scene, just when one most desires that the latest memories of
one's life may be cheerful, brave, and serene. Her prayer had been
very tenderly answered; she had been ailing of late; but she had been
sitting talking in her drawing-room the day before, to a quiet family
group, when she had been seized with a sudden faintness, and had died
gently, in a few minutes, smiling palely, and probably not even knowing
that she was in any sort of danger.
Hugh spent the day mostly in solitude, and retraced in tender thought
the stages of their long friendship. His friend had been a woman of
strong and marked individuality, who had loved life, and had made many
loyal friends. She was intensely, almost morbidly, aware of the
suffering of the world, especially of animals; and Hugh remembered how
she had once told him that a shooting-party in the neighbouring
squire's woods had generally meant for her a sleepless night, at the
thought of wounded birds and beasts suffering and bleeding the long
hours through, couched in the fern, faint with pain, and wondering
patiently what hard thing had befallen them. She had been a woman of
strong preferences and prejudices, marked likes and dislikes; intensely
critical of others, even of those she loved best. Her talk was lively,
epigrammatic, and pungent; she was the daughter of a famous Whig house,
and had the strong aristocratical prejudices, coupled with a
theoretical belief in popular equality, so often found in old Whig
families. But this superiority betrayed itself not in any obvious
arrogance or disdain, but in a high and distinguished personal
courtesy, that penetrated, as if by a subtle aroma, all that she said
or did. Though careless of personal appearance, with no grace of
beauty, and wearing habitually the oldest clothes, she was yet
indisputably the first person in any society in which she found
herself. She was intensely reserved about herself, her family, her
possessions, and her past; but Hugh had an inkling that there had been
some deep disappointment in the background, which had turned a
passionately affectionate nature into a fastidious and critical
temperament. She had a wonderful contralto voice, and a real genius
for music; she could rarely be persuaded to touch an instrument; but
occasionally, with a small and familiar party, she would sing a few old
songs with a passion and a depth of melancholy feeling that produced an
almost physical thrill in her audience. She was of an indolent
temperament, read little, never worked, had few philanthropic or social
instincts; she was always ready to talk, but was equally content to
spend long afternoons sitting alone before a fire, just shielding her
eyes from the blaze, meditating with an intentness that seemed as
though she were revolving over and over again some particular memory,
some old and sad problem for which she could find no solution. Hugh
used to think that she blamed herself for something irreparable.
But her gift of humour, of incisive penetration, of serious enthusiasm,
made it always refreshing to be with her; and Hugh found himself
reflecting that though it had been in many ways so inarticulate and
inactive a life, it yet seemed, by virtue of a certain vivid quality, a
certain subdued fire, a life of imperishable worth. She had been both
generous and severe in her judgments; but there had never been anything
tame, or mild, or weak about her. She had always known her own mind;
she yielded freely to impulse without ever expressing regret or
repentance. Small as her circle had been, Hugh yet felt that she had
somehow affected the world; and yet he could indicate nothing that she
had accomplished, except for the fact that she had been a kind of
bracing influence in the lives of all who had come near her.
Her last message to him had been an intensely sympathetic letter of
outspoken encouragement. She had heard that a severe judgment had been
passed upon Hugh's writings by a common friend. She knew that this had
been repeated to Hugh, and judged rightly that it had hurt and wounded
him. Her letter was to the effect that the judgment was entirely
baseless, and that he was to pursue the line he had taken up without
any attempt to deviate from it. It went to Hugh's heart that he had
made little effort of late, owing to circumstances and pressure of
work, to see her; but he knew that she was aware of his affection, and
he had never doubted hers. He felt, too, that if there had been
anything to forgive, any shadow of dissatisfaction, it was forgiven in
that moment. Her death seemed somehow to Hugh to be the strongest
proof he had ever received of the permanent identity of the soul; it
was impossible to think of her as not there; equally impossible was it
to think of her as wrapt in sleep, or even transformed to a heavenly
meekness; he could think of her, with perhaps an added brightness of
demeanour, at the knowledge of how easy a thing after all had been the
passage she had feared, with the dark eyes that he knew so well, like
wells of fire in the pale face, smiling almost disdainfully at the
thought that others should grieve for her; she was one whom it was
impossible ever to compassionate, and Hugh could not compassionate her
now. She would have had no sort of tolerance for any melancholy or
brooding grief; she would desire to be tenderly remembered, but she
would have been utterly impatient of the thought that any grief for her
should weaken or darken the outlook of her friends upon the world.
Hugh resolved, with a great flood of strong love for his friend, that
he would grieve for her as she would have had him grieve, as though
they were but separated for a little.
She had left, he learnt, the most decisive direction that no one should
be summoned to her funeral: that was so like her brave, sensible
nature; she desired the grief for her to be wholesome and temperate
grief, with no lingering over the sad accidents of mortality. Hugh
felt the strong bond of friendship, that had existed between them, grow
and blossom into a vigorous and enduring love. She seemed close beside
him all that day, approving his efforts after a joyful tranquillity.
He could almost see her, if he sank for a moment into a tearful sorrow,
casting upward that impatient look he knew so well, if any instance of
human weakness were related in her presence.
And thus the death of his old friend seemed, as the day drew on, to
have brought a strange brightness into his life, by making the dark
less terrible, the unknown more familiar. She was there, with the same
brave courtesy, the same wholesome scorn, the same humorous
decisiveness; and though the thought of the gap came like an ache into
his mind, again and again, he resolved that he would not yield to
ineffectual sadness; but that he would be worthy of the friendship
which she had given him, not easily, he remembered, but after long
testing and weighing his character; and that he would be faithful--he
prayed that he might be that--to so pure and generous a gift.
XL
A Funeral Pomp--The Daily Manna--The Lapsing Moment
In Hugh's temperament, sensitive and eager as it was, there was a
strong tendency to live in the future and in the past rather than in
the present. In the past, he realised, he could live without dismay
and without languor, because the mind has so extraordinary a power of
sifting its memories, of throwing away and disregarding all that is
sordid, ugly, and base, and retaining only the finest gold. But there
was a danger in dwelling too much upon the future, because the anxious
mind, fertile in imagination, was so apt to weave for itself pictures
of discouragement and failure, sad dilemmas, dreary dishonours,
calamities, shadows, woes. How often had the thought of what might be
in store clouded the pure sunshine of some bright day of summer; how
often had the thought of isolation, of loss, of bereavement, hung like
a cloud between himself and his intercourse even with those whom he
most feared to lose! He thought sometimes of that sad and yet bracing
sentiment, uttered by one whose life had been filled with every delight
that wealth, guided by cultivated taste, could purchase. "My life,"
said this wearied man, "has been clouded by troubles, most of which
never happened." But even apart from the sorrows which he knew might
or might not befall him, there was one darkest shadow, the shadow of
death, the cessation of beloved energies, of delightful prospects, of
the sweet interchange of friendship, of the bright and brave things of
life. Could one, he asked himself, ever come to regard death as a
natural, a beautiful thing, a delicious resting from life, an appointed
goal? It was the one thing certain and inevitable, the last terror,
the final silence, which it seemed nothing could break.
The thought came to him with a deep insistence on a day when a funeral
of a great personage, called away without a single warning, was
celebrated in the chapel of his own college. There was a great
gathering of friends and residents. The long procession, blackrobed
and bareheaded, with the chilly winter sun shining down on the court,
wound slowly through the college buildings, with many halts, and at
last entered the great chapel, the organ playing softly a melody of
pathetic grief, in which the sad revolt of human hearts that had loved
life, and the warm, kind world, made itself heard. They passed to
their places, and then very slowly and heavily, the sad and helpless
burden, the coffin, veiled and palled, freighted with the rich scents
of the dying flowers that lay in stainless purity upon it, was borne to
its place. The life of their brother had been a very useful, happy,
and innocent life, full of quiet energies, of simple activities, of
refined pleasures. There seemed no need for its suspension. The very
suddenness of the summons had been a beautiful and kindly thing,
attended by no fears and little suffering--but kindly, only upon the
supposition that it was necessary. The holy service proceeded, the
voice of old human sorrow, of tender hope, of ardent faith, thrilling
through the mournful words. It was well, no doubt, as acquiescence was
inevitable, to acquiesce as patiently, even as eagerly as possible.
But there were two alternatives; either the beloved life had gone out
utterly, as an expiring flame; if so, was it not well to know it, so
that one might frame one's life upon that sad knowledge? yet the heart
could not bear to think it; and then faith seemed to step in, dimly
smiling, finger on lip, and pointing upwards. If that smile, that
pointing hand, meant anything, why could there not be sent some hint of
certainty, that the sweet, fragrant life that was over, so knit up with
love and friendship and regard, had a further, a serener future
awaiting it? The question was, did such a scene as was then enacted
hold any real and vital message of hope for the soul; or was it a thing
to turn the back upon, to forget, to banish, as merely casting a shadow
upon the joyful energies of life?
It seemed to Hugh, when the sad rites were done, and he was left alone,
that there was but one solution possible; the thought shaped itself
dimly and wistfully out of the dark--that there was one element that
was out of place, one element over which the mind had a certain power,
that one must resolve to exorcise and cast out--the element of fear.
And yet fear, that unmanning, abominable thing, that struck the light
out of life, that made one incapable of energy and activity alike, was
that too not a dark gift from the Father's hand? Had it a purifying, a
restoring influence? It seemed to Hugh that it had none. Yet why was
it made so terribly easy, so insupportably natural, if it had not its
place in the great economy of God? Was not this the darkest of dark
dilemmas? Slowly reflecting on it, Hugh seemed to see that fear had
one effect of good about it; it was one of those things, and alas they
were many, that seemed strewn about us, only that we might learn to
triumph over them. For one who really believed in the absolutely
infinite and all-embracing Will of God, there was no room for fear at
all. If the things of life were sent wisely, tenderly, and graciously,
not care, not suffering, not even death admitted of any questioning;
and yet fear seemed a deeper, more instinctive thing than reasoning
itself. The very fear of non-existence, in the light of reason, seemed
a wholly unreal thing. No shadow of it attached to the long dark years
of the world, which had passed before one's own conscious life began.
One could look back in the pages of history to the ancient pageant of
the world in which one had no part, and not feel oneself wronged or
misused in having had no share in those vivid things. Why should we
regard a past in which we had had no conscious part with such a blithe
serenity, and yet look forward to that future, in which, for all we
knew, we could have no part either, with such an envious despair? The
thought was unreasonable enough, but it was there. But it was
possible, by thus boldly and tranquilly confronting the problem, to
diminish the pressure of the shadow. A man could throw himself, could
he not, in utter confidence before the feet of God, claiming nothing,
demanding nothing but the sense of perfect acquiescence in His Will and
Deed? The secret again was, not to forecast and forebode, but to live
in the day and for the day, practising labour, kindliness, gentleness,
peace. That was a true image, the image of those old pilgrims who
gathered the manna for their daily use; little or much, it sufficed;
and no one might, through indolence or prudence, evade the daily labour
by laying up a store; the store vanished in corruption. So it was with
all ambitious dreams, all attempts to lay a jealous hand on what might
be; it was that which poisoned life. Those far-reaching plans, those
hopes of ease and glory, that wealth laid up for many years, they were
the very substance of decay. Even fear itself must be accepted, when
it was wholesomely and inevitably there; but not amplified, added to,
dwelt upon. How rarely was one in doubt about the next, the immediate
duty. And one could surely win, by patient practice, by resolute
effort, the power of casting out of the moment the shadow of the uneasy
days ahead. How simple, how brief those very uneasinesses turned out
to be! Things were never as bad as one feared, ever easier than one
had hoped. It was a false prudence, a foolish calculation, to think
that by picturing the terrors of a crisis one made it easier when it
came; just as one so sadly discounted joys by anticipation, and found
them hollow, disappointing husks when they lay open in the hand.