OLD MRS TOMKINS.
Very severe weather came, and much sickness followed, chiefly amongst
the poorer people, who can so ill keep out the cold. Yet some of my
well-to-do parishioners were laid up likewise—amongst others Mr
Boulderstone, who had an attack of pleurisy. I had grown quite attached
to Mr Boulderstone by this time, not because he was what is called
interesting, for he was not; not because he was clever, for he was not;
not because he was well-read, for he was not; not because he was
possessed of influence in the parish, though he had that influence; but
simply because he was true; he was what he appeared, felt what he
professed, did what he said; appearing kind, and feeling and acting
kindly. Such a man is rare and precious, were he as stupid as the Welsh
giant in “Jack the Giant-Killer.” I could never see Mr Boulderstone a
mile off, but my heart felt the warmer for the sight.
Even in his great pain he seemed to forget himself as he received me,
and to gain comfort from my mere presence. I could not help regarding
him as a child of heaven, to be treated with the more reverence that he
had the less aid to his goodness from his slow understanding. It seemed
to me that the angels might gather with reverence around such a man, to
watch the gradual and tardy awakening of the intellect in one in whom
the heart and the conscience had been awake from the first. The latter
safe, they at least would see well that there was no fear for the
former. Intelligence is a consequence of love; nor is there any true
intelligence without it.
But I could not help feeling keenly the contrast when I went from his
warm, comfortable, well-defended chamber, in which every appliance that
could alleviate suffering or aid recovery was at hand, like a castle
well appointed with arms and engines against the inroads of winter and
his yet colder ally Death,—when, I say, I went from his chamber to the
cottage of the Tomkinses, and found it, as it were, lying open and bare
to the enemy. What holes and cracks there were about the door, through
which the fierce wind rushed at once into the room to attack the aged
feet and hands and throats! There were no defences of threefold
draperies, and no soft carpet on the brick floor,—only a small rug
which my sister had carried them laid down before a weak-eyed little
fire, that seemed to despair of making anything of it against the huge
cold that beleaguered and invaded the place. True, we had had the
little cottage patched up. The two Thomas Weirs had been at work upon
it for a whole day and a half in the first of the cold weather this
winter; but it was like putting the new cloth on the old garment, for
fresh places had broken out, and although Mrs Tomkins had fought the
cold well with what rags she could spare, and an old knife, yet such
razor-edged winds are hard to keep out, and here she was now, lying in
bed, and breathing hard, like the sore-pressed garrison which had
retreated to its last defence, the keep of the castle. Poor old Tomkins
sat shivering over the little fire.
“Come, come, Tomkins! this won’t do,” I said, as I caught up a broken
shovel that would have let a lump as big as one’s fist through a hole
in the middle of it. “Why don’t you burn your coals in weather like
this? Where do you keep them?”
It made my heart ache to see the little heap in a box hardly bigger
than the chest of tea my sister brought from London with her. I threw
half of it on the fire at once.
“Deary me, Mr Walton! you ARE wasteful, sir. The Lord never sent His
good coals to be used that way.”
“He did though, Tomkins,” I answered. “And He’ll send you a little more
this evening, after I get home. Keep yourself warm, man. This world’s
cold in winter, you know.”
“Indeed, sir, I know that. And I’m like to know it worse afore long.
She’s going,” he said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb
towards the bed where his wife lay.
I went to her. I had seen her several times within the last few weeks,
but had observed nothing to make me consider her seriously ill. I now
saw at a glance that Tomkins was right. She had not long to live.
“I am sorry to see you suffering so much, Mrs Tomkins,” I said.
“I don’t suffer so wery much, sir; though to be sure it be hard to get
the breath into my body, sir. And I do feel cold-like, sir.”
“I’m going home directly, and I’ll send you down another blanket. It’s
much colder to-day than it was yesterday.”
“It’s not weather-cold, sir, wi’ me. It’s grave-cold, sir. Blankets
won’t do me no good, sir. I can’t get it out of my head how perishing
cold I shall be when I’m under the mould, sir; though I oughtn’t to
mind it when it’s the will o’ God. It’s only till the resurrection,
sir.”
“But it’s not the will of God, Mrs Tomkins.”
“Ain’t it, sir? Sure I thought it was.”
“You believe in Jesus Christ, don’t you, Mrs Tomkins?”
“That I do, sir, with all my heart and soul.”
“Well, He says that whosoever liveth and believeth in Him shall never
die.”
“But, you know, sir, everybody dies. I MUST die, and be laid in the
churchyard, sir. And that’s what I don’t like.”
“But I say that is all a mistake. YOU won’t die. Your body will die,
and be laid away out of sight; but you will be awake, alive, more alive
than you are now, a great deal.”
And here let me interrupt the conversation to remark upon the great
mistake of teaching children that they have souls. The consequence is,
that they think of their souls as of something which is not themselves.
For what a man HAS cannot be himself. Hence, when they are told that
their souls go to heaven, they think of their SELVES as lying in the
grave. They ought to be taught that they have bodies; and that their
bodies die; while they themselves live on. Then they will not think, as
old Mrs Tomkins did, that THEY will be laid in the grave. It is making
altogether too much of the body, and is indicative of an evil tendency
to materialism, that we talk as if we POSSESSED souls, instead of BEING
souls. We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies
when dead than they do of their hair when it is cut off, or of their
old clothes when they have done with them.
“Do you really think so, sir?”
“Indeed I do. I don’t know anything about where you will be. But you
will be with God—in your Father’s house, you know. And that is enough,
is it not?”
“Yes, surely, sir. But I wish you was to be there by the bedside of me
when I was a-dyin’. I can’t help bein’ summat skeered at it. It don’t
come nat’ral to me, like. I ha’ got used to this old bed here, cold as
it has been—many’s the night—wi’ my good man there by the side of me.”
“Send for me, Mrs Tomkins, any moment, day or night, and I’ll be with
you directly.”
“I think, sir, if I had a hold ov you i’ the one hand, and my man
there, the Lord bless him, i’ the other, I could go comfortable.”
“I’ll come the minute you send for me—just to keep you in mind that a
better friend than I am is holding you all the time, though you mayn’t
feel His hands. If it is some comfort to have hold of a human friend,
think that a friend who is more than man, a divine friend, has a hold
of you, who knows all your fears and pains, and sees how natural they
are, and can just with a word, or a touch, or a look into your soul,
keep them from going one hair’s-breadth too far. He loves us up to all
our need, just because we need it, and He is all love to give.”
“But I can’t help thinking, sir, that I wouldn’t be troublesome. He has
such a deal to look after! And I don’t see how He can think of
everybody, at every minute, like. I don’t mean that He will let
anything go wrong. But He might forget an old body like me for a
minute, like.”
“You would need to be as wise as He is before you could see how He does
it. But you must believe more than you can understand. It is only
common sense to do so. Think how nonsensical it would be to suppose
that one who could make everything, and keep the whole going as He
does, shouldn’t be able to help forgetting. It would be unreasonable to
think that He must forget because you couldn’t understand how He could
remember. I think it is as hard for Him to forget anything as it is for
us to remember everything; for forgetting comes of weakness, and from
our not being finished yet, and He is all strength and all perfection.”
“Then you think, sir, He never forgets anything?”
I knew by the trouble that gathered on the old woman’s brow what kind
of thought was passing through her mind. But I let her go on, thinking
so to help her the better. She paused for one moment only, and then
resumed—much interrupted by the shortness of her breathing.
“When I was brought to bed first,” she said, “it was o’ twins, sir. And
oh! sir, it was VERY hard. As I said to my man after I got my head up a
bit, ‘Tomkins,’ says I, ‘you don’t know what it is to have TWO on ’em
cryin’ and cryin’, and you next to nothin’ to give ’em; till their
cryin’ sticks to your brain, and ye hear ’em when they’re fast asleep,
one on each side o’ you.’ Well, sir, I’m ashamed to confess it even to
you; and what the Lord can think of me, I don’t know.”
“I would rather confess to Him than to the best friend I ever had,” I
said; “I am so sure that He will make every excuse for me that ought to
be made. And a friend can’t always do that. He can’t know all about it.
And you can’t tell him all, because you don’t know all yourself. He
does.”
“But I would like to tell YOU, sir. Would you believe it, sir, I wished
’em dead? Just to get the wailin’ of them out o’ my head, I wished ’em
dead. In the courtyard o’ the squire’s house, where my Tomkins worked
on the home-farm, there was an old draw-well. It wasn’t used, and there
was a lid to it, with a hole in it, through which you could put a good
big stone. And Tomkins once took me to it, and, without tellin’ me what
it was, he put a stone in, and told me to hearken. And I hearkened, but
I heard nothing,—as I told him so. ‘But,’ says he, ‘hearken, lass.’ And
in a little while there come a blast o’ noise like from somewheres.
‘What’s that, Tomkins?’ I said. ‘That’s the ston’,’ says he, ‘a
strikin’ on the water down that there well.’ And I turned sick at the
thought of it. And it’s down there that I wished the darlin’s that God
had sent me; for there they’d be quiet.”
“Mothers are often a little out of their minds at such times, Mrs
Tomkins. And so were you.”
“I don’t know, sir. But I must tell you another thing. The Sunday afore
that, the parson had been preachin’ about ‘Suffer little children,’ you
know, sir, ‘to come unto me.’ I suppose that was what put it in my
head; but I fell asleep wi’ nothin’ else in my head but the cries o’
the infants and the sound o’ the ston’ in the draw-well. And I dreamed
that I had one o’ them under each arm, cryin’ dreadful, and was walkin’
across the court the way to the draw-well; when all at once a man come
up to me and held out his two hands, and said, ‘Gie me my childer.’ And
I was in a terrible fear. And I gave him first one and then the
t’other, and he took them, and one laid its head on one shoulder of
him, and t’other upon t’other, and they stopped their cryin’, and fell
fast asleep; and away he walked wi’ them into the dark, and I saw him
no more. And then I awoke cryin’, I didn’t know why. And I took my
twins to me, and my breasts was full, if ye’ll excuse me, sir. And my
heart was as full o’ love to them. And they hardly cried worth
mentionin’ again. But afore they was two year old, they both died o’
the brown chytis, sir. And I think that He took them.”
“He did take them, Mrs Tomkins; and you’ll see them again soon.”
“But, if He never forgets anything——”
“I didn’t say that. I think He can do what He pleases. And if He
pleases to forget anything, then He can forget it. And I think that is
what He does with our sins—that is, after He has got them away from us,
once we are clean from them altogether. It would be a dreadful thing if
He forgot them before that, and left them sticking fast to us and
defiling us. How then should we ever be made clean?—What else does the
prophet Isaiah mean when he says, ‘Thou hast cast my sins behind Thy
back?’ Is not that where He does not choose to see them any more? They
are not pleasant to Him to think of any more than to us. It is as if He
said—‘I will not think of that any more, for my sister will never do it
again,’ and so He throws it behind His back.”
“They ARE good words, sir. I could not bear Him to think of me and my
sins both at once.”
I could not help thinking of the words of Macbeth, “To know my deed,
’twere best not know myself.”
The old woman lay quiet after this, relieved in mind, though not in
body, by the communication she had made with so much difficulty, and I
hastened home to send some coals and other things, and then call upon
Dr Duncan, lest he should not know that his patient was so much worse
as I had found her.
From Dr Duncan’s I went to see old Samuel Weir, who likewise was
ailing. The bitter weather was telling chiefly upon the aged. I found
him in bed, under the old embroidery. No one was in the room with him.
He greeted me with a withered smile, sweet and true, although no flash
of white teeth broke forth to light up the welcome of the aged head.
“Are you not lonely, Mr Weir?”
“No, sir. I don’t know as ever I was less lonely. I’ve got my stick,
you see, sir,” he said, pointing to a thorn stick which lay beside him.
“I do not quite understand you,” I returned, knowing that the old man’s
gently humorous sayings always meant something.
“You see, sir, when I want anything, I’ve only got to knock on the
floor, and up comes my son out of the shop. And then again, when I
knock at the door of the house up there, my Father opens it and looks
out. So I have both my son on earth and my Father in heaven, and what
can an old man want more?”
“What, indeed, could any one want more?”
“It’s very strange,” the old man resumed after a pause, “but as I lie
here, after I’ve had my tea, and it is almost dark, I begin to feel as
if I was a child again.—They say old age is a second childhood; but
before I grew so old, I used to think that meant only that a man was
helpless and silly again, as he used to be when he was a child: I never
thought it meant that a man felt like a child again, as light-hearted
and untroubled as I do now.”
“Well, I suspect that is not what people do mean when they say so. But
I am very glad—you don’t know how pleased it makes me to hear that you
feel so. I will hope to fare in the same way when my time comes.”
“Indeed, I hope you will, sir; for I am main and happy. Just before you
came in now, I had really forgotten that I was a toothless old man, and
thought I was lying here waiting for my mother to come in and say
good-night to me before I went to sleep. Wasn’t that curious, when I
never saw my mother, as I told you before, sir?”
“It was very curious.”
“But I have no end of fancies. Only when I begin to think about it, I
can always tell when they are fancies, and they never put me out.
There’s one I see often—a man down on his knees at that cupboard nigh
the floor there, searching and searching for somewhat. And I wish he
would just turn round his face once for a moment that I might see him.
I have a notion always it’s my own father.”
“How do you account for that fancy, now, Mr Weir?”
“I’ve often thought about it, sir, but I never could account for it.
I’m none willing to think it’s a ghost; for what’s the good of it? I’ve
turned out that cupboard over and over, and there’s nothing there I
don’t know.”
“You’re not afraid of it, are you?”
“No, sir. Why should I be? I never did it no harm. And God can surely
take care of me from all sorts.”
My readers must not think anything is going to come out of this strange
illusion of the old man’s brain. I questioned him a little more about
it, and came simply to the conclusion, that when he was a child he had
found the door open and had wandered into the house, at the time
uninhabited, had peeped in at the door of the same room where he now
lay, and had actually seen a man in the position he described, half in
the cupboard, searching for something. His mind had kept the impression
after the conscious memory had lost its hold of the circumstance, and
now revived it under certain physical conditions. It was a glimpse out
of one of the many stories which haunted the old mansion. But there he
lay like a child, as he said, fearless even of such usurpations upon
his senses.
I think instances of quiet unSELFconscious faith are more common than
is generally supposed. Few have along with it the genial communicative
impulse of old Samuel Weir, which gives the opportunity of seeing into
their hidden world. He seemed to have been, and to have remained, a
child, in the best sense of the word. He had never had much trouble
with himself, for he was of a kindly, gentle, trusting nature; and his
will had never been called upon to exercise any strong effort to enable
him to walk in the straight path. Nor had his intellect, on the other
hand, while capable enough, ever been so active as to suggest
difficulties to his faith, leaving him, even theoretically, far nearer
the truth than those who start objections for their own sakes, liking
to feel themselves in a position of supposed antagonism to the
generally acknowledged sources of illumination. For faith is in itself
a light that lightens even the intellect, and hence the shield of the
complete soldier of God, the shield of faith, is represented by Spenser
as “framed all of diamond, perfect, pure, and clean,” (the power of the
diamond to absorb and again radiate light being no poetic fiction, but
a well-known scientific fact,) whose light falling upon any enchantment
or false appearance, destroys it utterly: for
“all that was not such as seemed in sight,
Before that shield did fade, and suddaine fall.”
Old Rogers had passed through a very much larger experience. Many more
difficulties had come to him, and he had met them in his own fashion
and overcome them. For while there is such a thing as truth, the mind
that can honestly beget a difficulty must at the same time be capable
of receiving that light of the truth which annihilates the difficulty,
or at least of receiving enough to enable it to foresee vaguely some
solution, for a full perception of which the intellect may not be as
yet competent. By every such victory Old Rogers had enlarged his being,
ever becoming more childlike and faithful; so that, while the
childlikeness of Weir was the childlikeness of a child, that of Old
Rogers was the childlikeness of a man, in which submission to God is
not only a gladness, but a conscious will and choice. But as the safety
of neither depended on his own feelings, but on the love of God who was
working in him, we may well leave all such differences of nature and
education to the care of Him who first made the men different, and then
brought different conditions out of them. The one thing is, whether we
are letting God have His own way with us, following where He leads,
learning the lessons He gives us.
I wished that Mr Stoddart had been with me during these two visits.
Perhaps he might have seen that the education of life was a marvellous
thing, and, even in the poorest intellectual results, far more full of
poetry and wonder than the outcome of that constant watering with the
watering-pot of self-education which, dissociated from the duties of
life and the influences of his fellows, had made of him what he was.
But I doubt if he would have seen it.
A week had elapsed from the night I had sat up with Gerard Weir, and
his mother had not risen from her bed, nor did it seem likely she would
ever rise again. On a Friday I went to see her, just as the darkness
was beginning to gather. The fire of life was burning itself out fast.
It glowed on her cheeks, it burned in her hands, it blazed in her eyes.
But the fever had left her mind. That was cool, oh, so cool, now! Those
fierce tropical storms of passion had passed away, and nothing of life
was lost. Revenge had passed away, but revenge is of death, and deadly.
Forgiveness had taken its place, and forgiveness is the giving, and so
the receiving of life. Gerard, his dear little head starred with
sticking-plaster, sat on her bed, looking as quietly happy as child
could look, over a wooden horse with cylindrical body and jointless
legs, covered with an eruption of red and black spots.—Is it the
ignorance or the imagination of children that makes them so easily
pleased with the merest hint at representation? I suspect the one helps
the other towards that most desirable result, satisfaction.—But he
dropped it when he saw me, in a way so abandoning that—comparing small
things with great—it called to my mind those lines of Milton:—
“From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve,
Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed.”
The quiet child FLUNG himself upon my neck, and the mother’s face
gleamed with pleasure.
“Dear boy!” I said, “I am very glad to see you so much better.”
For this was the first time he had shown such a revival of energy. He
had been quite sweet when he saw me, but, until this evening, listless.
“Yes,” he said, “I am quite well now.” And he put his hand up to his
head.
“Does it ache?”
“Not much now. The doctor says I had a bad fall.”
“So you had, my child. But you will soon be well again.”
The mother’s face was turned aside, yet I could see one tear forcing
its way from under her closed eyelid.
“Oh, I don’t mind it,” he answered. “Mammy is so kind to me! She lets
me sit on her bed as long as I like.”
“That IS nice. But just run to auntie in the next room. I think your
mammy would like to talk to me for a little while.”
The child hurried off the bed, and ran with overflowing obedience.
“I can even think of HIM now,” said the mother, “without going into a
passion. I hope God will forgive him. _I_ do. I think He will forgive
me.”
“Did you ever hear,” I asked, “of Jesus refusing anybody that wanted
kindness from Him? He wouldn’t always do exactly what they asked Him,
because that would sometimes be of no use, and sometimes would even be
wrong; but He never pushed them away from Him, never repulsed their
approach to Him. For the sake of His disciples, He made the
Syrophenician woman suffer a little while, but only to give her such
praise afterwards and such a granting of her prayer as is just
wonderful.”
She said nothing for a little while; then murmured,
“Shall I have to be ashamed to all eternity? I do not want not to be
ashamed; but shall I never be able to be like other people—in heaven I
mean?”
“If He is satisfied with you, you need not think anything more about
yourself. If He lets you once kiss His feet, you won’t care to think
about other people’s opinion of you even in heaven. But things will go
very differently there from here. For everybody there will be more or
less ashamed of himself, and will think worse of himself than he does
of any one else. If trouble about your past life were to show itself on
your face there, they would all run to comfort you, trying to make the
best of it, and telling you that you must think about yourself as He
thinks about you; for what He thinks is the rule, because it is the
infallible right way. But perhaps rather, they would tell you to leave
that to Him who has taken away our sins, and not trouble yourself any
more about it. But to tell the truth, I don’t think such thoughts will
come to you at all when once you have seen the face of Jesus Christ.
You will be so filled with His glory and goodness and grace, that you
will just live in Him and not in yourself at all.”
“Will He let us tell Him anything we please?”
“He lets you do that now: surely He will not be less our God, our
friend there.”
“Oh, I don’t mind how soon He takes me now! Only there’s that poor
child that I’ve behaved so badly to! I wish I could take him with me. I
have no time to make it up to him here.”
“You must wait till he comes. He won’t think hardly of you. There’s no
fear of that.”
“What will become of him, though? I can’t bear the idea of burdening my
father with him.”
“Your father will be glad to have him, I know. He will feel it a
privilege to do something for your sake. But the boy will do him good.
If he does not want him, I will take him myself.”
“Oh! thank you, thank you, sir.”
A burst of tears followed.
“He has often done me good,” I said.
“Who, sir? My father?”
“No. Your son.”
“I don’t quite understand what you mean, sir.”
“I mean just what I say. The words and behaviour of your lovely boy
have both roused and comforted my heart again and again.”
She burst again into tears.
“That is good to hear. To think of your saying that! The poor little
innocent! Then it isn’t all punishment?”
“If it were ALL punishment, we should perish utterly. He is your
punishment; but look in what a lovely loving form your punishment has
come, and say whether God has been good to you or not.”
“If I had only received my punishment humbly, things would have been
very different now. But I do take it—at least I want to take it—just as
He would have me take it. I will bear anything He likes. I suppose I
must die?”
“I think He means you to die now. You are ready for it now, I think.
You have wanted to die for a long time; but you were not ready for it
before.”
“And now I want to live for my boy. But His will be done.”
“Amen. There is no such prayer in the universe as that. It means
everything best and most beautiful. Thy will, O God, evermore be done.”
She lay silent. A tap came to the chamber-door. It was Mary, who nursed
her sister and attended to the shop.
“If you please, sir, here’s a little girl come to say that Mrs Tomkins
is dying, and wants to see you.”
“Then I must say good-night to you, Catherine. I will see you to-morrow
morning. Think about old Mrs Tomkins; she’s a good old soul; and when
you find your heart drawn to her in the trouble of death, then lift it
up to God for her, that He will please to comfort and support her, and
make her happier than health—stronger than strength, taking off the old
worn garment of her body, and putting upon her the garment of
salvation, which will be a grand new body, like that the Saviour had
when He rose again.”
“I will try. I will think about her.”
For I thought this would be a help to prepare her for her own death. In
thinking lovingly about others, we think healthily about ourselves. And
the things she thought of for the comfort of Mrs Tomkins, would return
to comfort herself in the prospect of her own end, when perhaps she
might not be able to think them out for herself.