THE AVENUE.
It will not appear strange that I should linger so long upon the first
few months of my association with a people who, now that I am an old
man, look to me like my own children. For those who were then older
than myself are now “old dwellers in those high countries” where there
is no age, only wisdom; and I shall soon go to them. How glad I shall
be to see my Old Rogers again, who, as he taught me upon earth, will
teach me yet more, I thank my God, in heaven! But I must not let the
reverie which always gathers about the feather-end of my pen the moment
I take it up to write these recollections, interfere with the work
before me.
After this Christmas-tide, I found myself in closer relationship to my
parishioners. No doubt I was always in danger of giving unknown offence
to those who were ready to fancy that I neglected them, and did not
distribute my FAVOURS equally. But as I never took offence, the offence
I gave was easily got rid of. A clergyman, of all men, should be slow
to take offence, for if he does, he will never be free or strong to
reprove sin. And it must sometimes be his duty to speak severely to
those, especially the good, who are turning their faces the wrong way.
It is of little use to reprove the sinner, but it is worth while
sometimes to reprove those who have a regard for righteousness, however
imperfect they may be. “Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee;
rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.”
But I took great care about INTERFERING; though I would interfere upon
request—not always, however, upon the side whence the request came, and
more seldom still upon either side. The clergyman must never be a
partisan. When our Lord was requested to act as umpire between two
brothers, He refused. But He spoke and said, “Take heed, and beware of
covetousness.” Now, though the best of men is unworthy to loose the
latchet of His shoe, yet the servant must be as his Master. Ah me!
while I write it, I remember that the sinful woman might yet do as she
would with His sacred feet. I bethink me: Desert may not touch His
shoe-tie: Love may kiss His feet.
I visited, of course, at the Hall, as at the farmhouses in the country,
and the cottages in the village. I did not come to like Mrs Oldcastle
better. And there was one woman in the house whom I disliked still
more: that Sarah whom Judy had called in my hearing a white wolf. Her
face was yet whiter than that of her mistress, only it was not smooth
like hers; for its whiteness came apparently from the small-pox, which
had so thickened the skin that no blood, if she had any, could shine
through. I seldom saw her—only, indeed, caught a glimpse of her now and
then as I passed through the house.
Nor did I make much progress with Mr Stoddart. He had always something
friendly to say, and often some theosophical theory to bring forward,
which, I must add, never seemed to me to mean, or, at least, to reveal,
anything. He was a great reader of mystical books, and yet the man’s
nature seemed cold. It was sunshiny, but not sunny. His intellect was
rather a lambent flame than a genial warmth. He could make things, but
he could not grow anything. And when I came to see that he had had more
than any one else to do with the education of Miss Oldcastle, I
understood her a little better, and saw that her so-called education
had been in a great measure repression—of a negative sort, no doubt,
but not therefore the less mischievous. For to teach speculation
instead of devotion, mysticism instead of love, word instead of deed,
is surely ruinously repressive to the nature that is meant for
sunbright activity both of heart and hand. My chief perplexity
continued to be how he could play the organ as he did.
My reader will think that I am always coming round to Miss Oldcastle;
but if he does, I cannot help it. I began, I say, to understand her a
little better. She seemed to me always like one walking in a “watery
sunbeam,” without knowing that it was but the wintry pledge of a summer
sun at hand. She took it, or was trying to take it, for THE sunlight;
trying to make herself feel all the glory people said was in the light,
instead of making haste towards the perfect day. I found afterwards
that several things had combined to bring about this condition; and I
know she will forgive me, should I, for the sake of others, endeavour
to make it understood by and by.
I have not much more to tell my readers about this winter. As but of a
whole changeful season only one day, or, it may be, but one moment in
which the time seemed to burst into its own blossom, will cling to the
memory; so of the various interviews with my friends, and the whole
flow of the current of my life, during that winter, nothing more of
nature or human nature occurs to me worth recording. I will pass on to
the summer season as rapidly as I may, though the early spring will
detain me with the relation of just a single incident.
I was on my way to the Hall to see Mr Stoddart. I wanted to ask him
whether something could not be done beyond his exquisite playing to
rouse the sense of music in my people. I believed that nothing helps
you so much to feel as the taking of what share may, from the nature of
the thing, be possible to you; because, for one reason, in order to
feel, it is necessary that the mind should rest upon the matter,
whatever it is. The poorest success, provided the attempt has been
genuine, will enable one to enter into any art ten times better than
before. Now I had, I confess, little hope of moving Mr Stoddart in the
matter; but if I should succeed, I thought it would do himself more
good to mingle with his humble fellows in the attempt to do them a
trifle of good, than the opening of any number of intellectual windows
towards the circumambient truth.
It was just beginning to grow dusk. The wind was blustering in gusts
among the trees, swaying them suddenly and fiercely like a keen
passion, now sweeping them all one way as if the multitude of tops
would break loose and rush away like a wild river, and now subsiding as
suddenly, and allowing them to recover themselves and stand upright,
with tones and motions of indignant expostulation. There was just one
cold bar of light in the west, and the east was one gray mass, while
overhead the stars were twinkling. The grass and all the ground about
the trees were very wet. The time seemed more dreary somehow than the
winter. Rigour was past, and tenderness had not come. For the wind was
cold without being keen, and bursting from the trees every now and then
with a roar as of a sea breaking on distant sands, whirled about me as
if it wanted me to go and join in its fierce play.
Suddenly I saw, to my amazement, in a walk that ran alongside of the
avenue, Miss Oldcastle struggling against the wind, which blew straight
down the path upon her. The cause of my amazement was twofold. First, I
had supposed her with her mother in London, whither their journeys had
been not infrequent since Christmas-tide; and next—why should she be
fighting with the wind, so far from the house, with only a shawl drawn
over her head?
The reader may wonder how I should know her in this attire in the dusk,
and where there was not the smallest probability of finding her.
Suffice it to say that I did recognise her at once; and passing between
two great tree-trunks, and through an opening in some under-wood, was
by her side in a moment. But the noise of the wind had prevented her
from hearing my approach, and when I uttered her name, she started
violently, and, turning, drew herself up very haughtily, in part, I
presume, to hide her tremor.—She was always a little haughty with me, I
must acknowledge. Could there have been anything in my address, however
unconscious of it I was, that made her fear I was ready to become
intrusive? Or might it not be that, hearing of my footing with my
parishioners generally, she was prepared to resent any assumption of
clerical familiarity with her; and so, in my behaviour, any poor
innocent “bush was supposed a bear.” For I need not tell my reader that
nothing was farther from my intention, even with the lowliest of my
flock, than to presume upon my position as clergyman. I think they all
GAVE me the relation I occupied towards them personally.—But I had
never seen her look so haughty as now. If I had been watching her very
thoughts she could hardly have looked more indignant.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, distressed; “I have startled you
dreadfully.”
“Not in the least,” she replied, but without moving, and still with a
curve in her form like the neck of a frayed horse.
I thought it better to leave apology, which was evidently disagreeable
to her, and speak of indifferent things.
“I was on my way to call on Mr Stoddart,” I said.
“You will find him at home, I believe.”
“I fancied you and Mrs Oldcastle in London.”
“We returned yesterday.”
Still she stood as before. I made a movement in the direction of the
house. She seemed as if she would walk in the opposite direction.
“May I not walk with you to the house?”
“I am not going in just yet.”
“Are you protected enough for such a night?”
“I enjoy the wind.”
I bowed and walked on; for what else could I do?
I cannot say that I enjoyed leaving her behind me in the gathering
dark, the wind blowing her about with no more reverence than if she had
been a bush of privet. Nor was it with a light heart that I bore her
repulse as I slowly climbed the hill to the house. However, a little
personal mortification is wholesome—though I cannot say either that I
derived much consolation from the reflection.
Sarah opened the glass door, her black, glossy, restless eyes looking
out of her white face from under gray eyebrows. I knew at once by her
look beyond me that she had expected to find me accompanied by her
young mistress. I did not volunteer any information, as my reader may
suppose.
I found, as I had feared, that, although Mr. Stoddart seemed to listen
with some interest to what I said, I could not bring him to the point
of making any practical suggestion, or of responding to one made by me;
and I left him with the conviction that he would do nothing to help me.
Yet during the whole of our interview he had not opposed a single word
I said. He was like clay too much softened with water to keep the form
into which it has been modelled. He would take SOME kind of form
easily, and lose it yet more easily. I did not show all my
dissatisfaction, however, for that would only have estranged us; and it
is not required, nay, it may be wrong, to show all you feel or think:
what is required of us is, not to show what we do not feel or think;
for that is to be false.
I left the house in a gloomy mood. I know I ought to have looked up to
God and said: “These things do not reach to Thee, my Father. Thou art
ever the same; and I rise above my small as well as my great troubles
by remembering Thy peace, and Thy unchangeable Godhood to me and all
Thy creatures.” But I did not come to myself all at once. The thought
of God had not come, though it was pretty sure to come before I got
home. I was brooding over the littleness of all I could do; and feeling
that sickness which sometimes will overtake a man in the midst of the
work he likes best, when the unpleasant parts of it crowd upon him, and
his own efforts, especially those made from the will without sustaining
impulse, come back upon him with a feeling of unreality, decay, and
bitterness, as if he had been unnatural and untrue, and putting himself
in false relations by false efforts for good. I know this all came from
selfishness—thinking about myself instead of about God and my
neighbour. But so it was.—And so I was walking down the avenue, where
it was now very dark, with my head bent to the ground, when I in my
turn started at the sound of a woman’s voice, and looking up, saw by
the starlight the dim form of Miss Oldcastle standing before me.
She spoke first.
“Mr Walton, I was very rude to you. I beg your pardon.”
“Indeed, I did not think so. I only thought what a blundering awkward
fellow I was to startle you as I did. You have to forgive me.”
“I fancy”—and here I know she smiled, though how I know I do not
know—“I fancy I have made that even,” she said, pleasantly; “for you
must confess I startled you now.”
“You did; but it was in a very different way. I annoyed you with my
rudeness. You only scattered a swarm of bats that kept flapping their
skinny wings in my face.”
“What do you mean? There are no bats at this time of the year.”
“Not outside. In ‘winter and rough weather’ they creep inside, you
know.”
“Ah! I ought to understand you. But I did not think you were ever like
that. I thought you were too good.”
“I wish I were. I hope to be some day. I am not yet, anyhow. And I
thank you for driving the bats away in the meantime.”
“You make me the more ashamed of myself to think that perhaps my
rudeness had a share in bringing them.—Yours is no doubt thankless
labour sometimes.”
She seemed to make the last remark just to prevent the conversation
from returning to her as its subject. And now all the bright portions
of my work came up before me.
“You are quite mistaken in that, Miss Oldcastle. On the contrary, the
thanks I get are far more than commensurate with the labour. Of course
one meets with a disappointment sometimes, but that is only when they
don’t know what you mean. And how should they know what you mean till
they are different themselves?—You remember what Wordsworth says on
this very subject in his poem of Simon Lee?”—
“I do not know anything of Wordsworth.”
“‘I’ve heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.’”
“I do not quite see what he means.”
“May I recommend you to think about it? You will be sure to find it out
for yourself, and that will be ten times more satisfactory than if I
were to explain it to you. And, besides, you will never forget it, if
you do.”
“Will you repeat the lines again?”
I did so.
All this time the wind had been still. Now it rose with a slow gush in
the trees. Was it fancy? Or, as the wind moved the shrubbery, did I see
a white face? And could it be the White Wolf, as Judy called her?
I spoke aloud:
“But it is cruel to keep you standing here in such a night. You must be
a real lover of nature to walk in the dark wind.”
“I like it. Good night.”
So we parted. I gazed into the darkness after her, though she
disappeared at the distance of a yard or two; and would have stood
longer had I not still suspected the proximity of Judy’s Wolf, which
made me turn and go home, regardless now of Mr Stoddart’s DOUGHINESS.
I met Miss Oldcastle several times before the summer, but her old
manner remained, or rather had returned, for there had been nothing of
it in the tone of her voice in that interview, if INTERVIEW it could be
called where neither could see more than the other’s outline.