MY FIRST MONDAY AT MARSHMALLOWS.
The next day I might expect some visitors. It is a fortunate thing that
English society now regards the parson as a gentleman, else he would
have little chance of being useful to the UPPER CLASSES. But I wanted
to get a good start of them, and see some of my poor before my rich
came to see me. So after breakfast, on as lovely a Monday in the
beginning of autumn as ever came to comfort a clergyman in the reaction
of his efforts to feed his flock on the Sunday, I walked out, and took
my way to the village. I strove to dismiss from my mind every feeling
of DOING DUTY, of PERFORMING MY PART, and all that. I had a horror of
becoming a moral policeman as much as of “doing church.” I would simply
enjoy the privilege, more open to me in virtue of my office, of
ministering. But as no servant has a right to force his service, so I
would be the NEIGHBOUR only, until such time as the opportunity of
being the servant should show itself.
The village was as irregular as a village should be, partly consisting
of those white houses with intersecting parallelograms of black which
still abound in some regions of our island. Just in the centre,
however, grouping about an old house of red brick, which had once been
a manorial residence, but was now subdivided in all modes that analytic
ingenuity could devise, rose a portion of it which, from one point of
view, might seem part of an old town. But you had only to pass round
any one of three visible corners to see stacks of wheat and a
farm-yard; while in another direction the houses went straggling away
into a wood that looked very like the beginning of a forest, of which
some of the village orchards appeared to form part. From the street the
slow-winding, poplar-bordered stream was here and there just visible.
I did not quite like to have it between me and my village. I could not
help preferring that homely relation in which the houses are built up
like swallow-nests on to the very walls of the cathedrals themselves,
to the arrangement here, where the river flowed, with what flow there
was in it, between the church and the people.
A little way beyond the farther end of the village appeared an iron
gate, of considerable size, dividing a lofty stone wall. And upon the
top of that one of the stone pillars supporting the gate which I could
see, stood a creature of stone, whether natant, volant, passant,
couchant, or rampant, I could not tell, only it looked like something
terrible enough for a quite antediluvian heraldry.
As I passed along the street, wondering with myself what relations
between me and these houses were hidden in the future, my eye was
caught by the window of a little shop, in which strings of beads and
elephants of gingerbread formed the chief samples of the goods within.
It was a window much broader than it was high, divided into
lozenge-shaped panes. Wondering what kind of old woman presided over
the treasures in this cave of Aladdin, I thought to make a first of my
visits by going in and buying something. But I hesitated, because I
could not think of anything I was in want of—at least that the old
woman was likely to have. To be sure I wanted a copy of Bengel’s
“Gnomon;” but she was not likely to have that. I wanted the fourth
plate in the third volume of Law’s “Behmen;” she was not likely to have
that either. I did not care for gingerbread; and I had no little girl
to take home beads to.
But why should I not go in without an ostensible errand? For this
reason: there are dissenters everywhere, and I could not tell but I
might be going into the shop of a dissenter. Now, though, I confess,
nothing would have pleased me better than that all the dissenters
should return to their old home in the Church, I could not endure the
suspicion of laying myself out to entice them back by canvassing or
using any personal influence. Whether they returned or not, however,
(and I did not expect many would,) I hoped still, some day, to stand
towards every one of them in the relation of the parson of the parish,
that is, one of whom each might feel certain that he was ready to serve
him or her at any hour when he might be wanted to render a service. In
the meantime, I could not help hesitating.
I had almost made up my mind to ask if she had a small pocket compass,
for I had seen such things in little country shops—I am afraid only in
France, though—when the door opened, and out came the little boy whom I
had already seen twice, and who was therefore one of my oldest friends
in the place. He came across the road to me, took me by the hand, and
said—
“Come and see mother.”
“Where, my dear?” I asked.
“In the shop there,” he answered.
“Is it your mother’s shop?”
“Yes.”
I said no more, but accompanied him. Of course my expectation of seeing
an old woman behind the counter had vanished, but I was not in the
least prepared for the kind of woman I did see.
The place was half a shop and half a kitchen. A yard or so of counter
stretched inwards from the door, just as a hint to those who might be
intrusively inclined. Beyond this, by the chimney-corner, sat the
mother, who rose as we entered. She was certainly one—I do not say of
the most beautiful, but, until I have time to explain further—of the
most remarkable women I had ever seen. Her face was absolutely
white—no, pale cream-colour—except her lips and a spot upon each cheek,
which glowed with a deep carmine. You would have said she had been
painting, and painting very inartistically, so little was the red
shaded into the surrounding white. Now this was certainly not
beautiful. Indeed, it occasioned a strange feeling, almost of terror,
at first, for she reminded one of the spectre woman in the “Rime of the
Ancient Mariner.” But when I got used to her complexion, I saw that the
form of her features was quite beautiful. She might indeed have been
LOVELY but for a certain hardness which showed through the beauty. This
might have been the result of ill health, ill-endured; but I doubted
it. For there was a certain modelling of the cheeks and lips which
showed that the teeth within were firmly closed; and, taken with the
look of the eyes and forehead, seemed the expression of a constant and
bitter self-command. But there were indubitable marks of ill health
upon her, notwithstanding; for not to mention her complexion, her large
dark eye was burning as if the lamp of life had broken and the oil was
blazing; and there was a slight expansion of the nostrils, which
indicated physical unrest. But her manner was perfectly, almost
dreadfully, quiet; her voice soft, low, and chiefly expressive of
indifference. She spoke without looking me in the face, but did not
seem either shy or ashamed. Her figure was remarkably graceful, though
too worn to be beautiful.—Here was a strange parishioner for me!—in a
country toy-shop, too!
As soon as the little fellow had brought me in, he shrunk away through
a half-open door that revealed a stair behind.
“What can I do for you, sir?” said the mother, coldly, and with a kind
of book-propriety of speech, as she stood on the other side of the
little counter, prepared to open box or drawer at command.
“To tell the truth, I hardly know,” I said. “I am the new vicar; but I
do not think that I should have come in to see you just to-day, if it
had not been that your little boy there—where is he gone to? He asked
me to come in and see his mother.”
“He is too ready to make advances to strangers, sir.”
She said this in an incisive tone.
“Oh, but,” I answered, “I am not a stranger to him. I have met him
twice before. He is a little darling. I assure you he has quite gained
my heart.”
No reply for a moment. Then just “Indeed!” and nothing more.
I could not understand it.
But a jar on a shelf, marked TOBACCO, rescued me from the most pressing
portion of the perplexity, namely, what to say next.
“Will you give me a quarter of a pound of tobacco?” I said.
The woman turned, took down the jar, arranged the scales, weighed out
the quantity, wrapped it up, took the money,—and all without one other
word than, “Thank you, sir;” which was all I could return, with the
addition of, “Good morning.”
For nothing was left me but to walk away with my parcel in my pocket.
The little boy did not show himself again. I had hoped to find him
outside.
Pondering, speculating, I now set out for the mill, which, I had
already learned, was on the village side of the river. Coming to a lane
leading down to the river, I followed it, and then walked up a path
outside the row of pollards, through a lovely meadow, where brown and
white cows were eating and shining all over the thick deep grass.
Beyond the meadow, a wood on the side of a rising ground went parallel
with the river a long way. The river flowed on my right. That is, I
knew that it was flowing, but I could not have told how I knew, it was
so slow. Still swollen, it was of a clear brown, in which you could see
the browner trouts darting to and fro with such a slippery gliding,
that the motion seemed the result of will, without any such
intermediate and complicate arrangement as brain and nerves and
muscles. The water-beetles went spinning about over the surface; and
one glorious dragon-fly made a mist about him with his long wings. And
over all, the sun hung in the sky, pouring down life; shining on the
roots of the willows at the bottom of the stream; lighting up the black
head of the water-rat as he hurried across to the opposite bank;
glorifying the rich green lake of the grass; and giving to the whole an
utterance of love and hope and joy, which was, to him who could read
it, a more certain and full revelation of God than any display of power
in thunder, in avalanche, in stormy sea. Those with whom the feeling of
religion is only occasional, have it most when the awful or grand
breaks out of the common; the meek who inherit the earth, find the God
of the whole earth more evidently present—I do not say more present,
for there is no measuring of His presence—more evidently present in the
commonest things. That which is best He gives most plentifully, as is
reason with Him. Hence the quiet fulness of ordinary nature; hence the
Spirit to them that ask it.
I soon came within sound of the mill; and presently, crossing the
stream that flowed back to the river after having done its work on the
corn, I came in front of the building, and looked over the half-door
into the mill. The floor was clean and dusty. A few full sacks, tied
tight at the mouth—they always look to me as if Joseph’s silver cup
were just inside—stood about. In the farther corner, the flour was
trickling down out of two wooden spouts into a wooden receptacle below.
The whole place was full of its own faint but pleasant odour. No man
was visible. The spouts went on pouring the slow torrent of flour, as
if everything could go on with perfect propriety of itself. I could not
even see how a man could get at the stones that I heard grinding away
above, except he went up the rope that hung from the ceiling. So I
walked round the corner of the place, and found myself in the company
of the water-wheel, mossy and green with ancient waterdrops, looking so
furred and overgrown and lumpy, that one might have thought the wood of
it had taken to growing again in its old days, and so the wheel was
losing by slow degrees the shape of a wheel, to become some new awful
monster of a pollard. As yet, however, it was going round; slowly,
indeed, and with the gravity of age, but doing its work, and casting
its loose drops in the alms-giving of a gentle rain upon a little plot
of Master Rogers’s garden, which was therefore full of moisture-loving
flowers. This plot was divided from the mill-wheel by a small stream
which carried away the surplus water, and was now full and running
rapidly.
Beyond the stream, beside the flower bed, stood a dusty young man,
talking to a young woman with a rosy face and clear honest eyes. The
moment they saw me they parted. The young man came across the stream at
a step, and the young woman went up the garden towards the cottage.
“That must be Old Rogers’s cottage?” I said to the miller.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, looking a little sheepish.
“Was that his daughter—that nice-looking young woman you were talking
to?”
“Yes, sir, it was.”
And he stole a shy pleased look at me out of the corners of his eyes.
“It’s a good thing,” I said, “to have an honest experienced old mill
like yours, that can manage to go on of itself for a little while now
and then.”
This gave a great help to his budding confidence. He laughed.
“Well, sir, it’s not very often it’s left to itself. Jane isn’t at her
father’s above once or twice a week at most.”
“She doesn’t live with them, then?”
“No, sir. You see they’re both hearty, and they ain’t over well to do,
and Jane lives up at the Hall, sir. She’s upper housemaid, and waits on
one of the young ladies.—Old Rogers has seen a great deal of the world,
sir.”
“So I imagine. I am just going to see him. Good morning.”
I jumped across the stream, and went up a little gravel-walk, which led
me in a few yards to the cottage-door. It was a sweet place to live in,
with honeysuckle growing over the house, and the sounds of the
softly-labouring mill-wheel ever in its little porch and about its
windows.
The door was open, and Dame Rogers came from within to meet me. She
welcomed me, and led the way into her little kitchen. As I entered,
Jane went out at the back-door. But it was only to call her father, who
presently came in.
“I’m glad to see ye, sir. This pleasure comes of having no work to-day.
After harvest there comes slack times for the likes of me. People don’t
care about a bag of old bones when they can get hold of young men.
Well, well, never mind, old woman. The Lord’ll take us through somehow.
When the wind blows, the ship goes; when the wind drops, the ship
stops; but the sea is His all the same, for He made it; and the wind is
His all the same too.”
He spoke in the most matter-of-fact tone, unaware of anything poetic in
what he said. To him it was just common sense, and common sense only.
“I am sorry you are out of work,” I said. “But my garden is sadly out
of order, and I must have something done to it. You don’t dislike
gardening, do you?”
“Well, I beant a right good hand at garden-work,” answered the old man,
with some embarrassment, scratching his gray head with a troubled
scratch.
There was more in this than met the ear; but what, I could not
conjecture. I would press the point a little. So I took him at his own
word.
“I won’t ask you to do any of the more ornamental part,” I said,—“only
plain digging and hoeing.”
“I would rather be excused, sir.”
“I am afraid I made you think”—
“I thought nothing, sir. I thank you kindly, sir.”
“I assure you I want the work done, and I must employ some one else if
you don’t undertake it.”
“Well, sir, my back’s bad now—no, sir, I won’t tell a story about it. I
would just rather not, sir.”
“Now,” his wife broke in, “now, Old Rogers, why won’t ’ee tell the
parson the truth, like a man, downright? If ye won’t, I’ll do it for
’ee. The fact is, sir,” she went on, turning to me, with a plate in her
hand, which she was wiping, “the fact is, that the old parson’s man for
that kind o’ work was Simmons, t’other end of the village; and my man
is so afeard o’ hurtin’ e’er another, that he’ll turn the bread away
from his own mouth and let it fall in the dirt.”
“Now, now, old ’oman, don’t ’ee belie me. I’m not so bad as that. You
see, sir, I never was good at knowin’ right from wrong like. I never
was good, that is, at tellin’ exactly what I ought to do. So when
anything comes up, I just says to myself, ‘Now, Old Rogers, what do you
think the Lord would best like you to do?’ And as soon as I ax myself
that, I know directly what I’ve got to do; and then my old woman can’t
turn me no more than a bull. And she don’t like my obstinate fits. But,
you see, I daren’t sir, once I axed myself that.”
“Stick to that, Rogers,” I said.
“Besides, sir,” he went on, “Simmons wants it more than I do. He’s got
a sick wife; and my old woman, thank God, is hale and hearty. And there
is another thing besides, sir: he might take it hard of you, sir, and
think it was turning away an old servant like; and then, sir, he
wouldn’t be ready to hear what you had to tell him, and might, mayhap,
lose a deal o’ comfort. And that I would take worst of all, sir.”
“Well, well, Rogers, Simmons shall have the job.”
“Thank ye, sir,” said the old man.
His wife, who could not see the thing quite from her husband’s point of
view, was too honest to say anything; but she was none the less cordial
to me. The daughter stood looking from one to the other with attentive
face, which took everything, but revealed nothing.
I rose to go. As I reached the door, I remembered the tobacco in my
pocket. I had not bought it for myself. I never could smoke. Nor do I
conceive that smoking is essential to a clergyman in the country;
though I have occasionally envied one of my brethren in London, who
will sit down by the fire, and, lighting his pipe, at the same time
please his host and subdue the bad smells of the place. And I never
could hit his way of talking to his parishioners either. He could put
them at their ease in a moment. I think he must have got the trick out
of his pipe. But in reality, I seldom think about how I ought to talk
to anybody I am with.
That I didn’t smoke myself was no reason why I should not help Old
Rogers to smoke. So I pulled out the tobacco.
“You smoke, don’t you, Rogers?” I said.
“Well, sir, I can’t deny it. It’s not much I spend on baccay, anyhow.
Is it, dame?
“No, that it bean’t,” answered his wife.
“You don’t think there’s any harm in smoking a pipe, sir?”
“Not the least,” I answered, with emphasis.
“You see, sir,” he went on, not giving me time to prove how far I was
from thinking there was any harm in it; “You see, sir, sailors learns
many ways they might be better without. I used to take my pan o’ grog
with the rest of them; but I give that up quite, ’cause as how I don’t
want it now.”
“’Cause as how,” interrupted his wife, “you spend the money on tea for
me, instead. You wicked old man to tell stories!”
“Well, I takes my share of the tea, old woman, and I’m sure it’s a deal
better for me. But, to tell the truth, sir, I was a little troubled in
my mind about the baccay, not knowing whether I ought to have it or
not. For you see, the parson that’s gone didn’t more than half like it,
as I could tell by the turn of his hawse-holes when he came in at the
door and me a-smokin’. Not as he said anything; for, ye see, I was an
old man, and I daresay that kep him quiet. But I did hear him blow up a
young chap i’ the village he come upon promiscus with a pipe in his
mouth. He did give him a thunderin’ broadside, to be sure! So I was in
two minds whether I ought to go on with my pipe or not.”
“And how did you settle the question, Rogers?”
“Why, I followed my own old chart, sir.”
“Quite right. One mustn’t mind too much what other people think.”
“That’s not exactly what I mean, sir.”
“What do you mean then? I should like to know.”
“Well, sir, I mean that I said to myself, ‘Now, Old Rogers, what do you
think the Lord would say about this here baccay business?’”
“And what did you think He would say?”
“Why, sir, I thought He would say, ‘Old Rogers, have yer baccay; only
mind ye don’t grumble when you ‘aint got none.’”
Something in this—I could not at the time have told what—touched me
more than I can express. No doubt it was the simple reality of the
relation in which the old man stood to his Father in heaven that made
me feel as if the tears would come in spite of me.
“And this is the man,” I said to myself, “whom I thought I should be
able to teach! Well, the wisest learn most, and I may be useful to him
after all.”
As I said nothing, the old man resumed—
“For you see, sir, it is not always a body feels he has a right to
spend his ha’pence on baccay; and sometimes, too, he aint got none to
spend.”
“In the meantime,” I said, “here is some that I bought for you as I
came along. I hope you will find it good. I am no judge.”
The old sailor’s eyes glistened with gratitude. “Well, who’d ha’
thought it. You didn’t think I was beggin’ for it, sir, surely?”
“You see I had it for you in my pocket.”
“Well, that IS good o’ you, sir!”
“Why, Rogers, that’ll last you a month!” exclaimed his wife, looking
nearly as pleased as himself.
“Six weeks at least, wife,” he answered. “And ye don’t smoke yourself,
sir, and yet ye bring baccay to me! Well, it’s just like yer Master,
sir.”
I went away, resolved that Old Rogers should have no chance of
“grumbling” for want of tobacco, if I could help it.