THE GATHERING STORM.
The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than in
our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the ocean,
the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there, indeed,
so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the winter through,
compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness of the season is
almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against furious storms of
wind and rain.
Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another visit.
I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away so soon
again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find time for a
holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what I knew of
him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.
He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir was
working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have got a
man to take my place better.
He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I was
sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one side to the
other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner encouraged her in
making gentle and frequent use of her strength, impressing it upon her,
however, that everything depended on avoiding everything like a jerk or
twist of any sort. I was with them when he said this. She looked up at him
with a happy smile.
"I will do all I can, Mr. Turner," she said, "to get out of people's way as
soon as possible."
Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add--
"I know you don't mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and not
be helped--more than other people--as soon as possible. I will therefore be
as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we don't get well, Mr.
Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next summer.--I do," she added,
nodding her pretty head up from the pillow, when she saw the glance the
doctor and I exchanged. "Look here," she went on, poking the eider-down
quilt up with her foot.
"Magnificent!" said Turner; "but mind, you must do nothing out of bravado.
That won't do at all."
"I have done," said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.
That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or farther
from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for many weeks.
Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was only because of
the weather, not because of her health.
One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs. Stokes.
She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her mental health
was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very different, and
the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband especially, was
changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified, and I had good
hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding down the hill of
difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.
It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage to
return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of light
gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was blowing
fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from the east.
The clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose
fringes--disreputable, troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like
mischief. They reminded me of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," in which
he compares the "loose clouds" to hair, and calls them "the locks of the
approaching storm." Away to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a
luminous yellow, covered all the sea-horizon, extending north and south as
far as the eye could reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed to
lie in its bosom. Now and then I could discern the dim ghost of a vessel
through it, as tacking for north or south it came near enough to the edge
of the fog to show itself for a few moments, ere it retreated again
into its bosom. There was exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air,
notwithstanding the coolness of the wind, and I was glad when I found
myself comfortably seated by the drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie
bestirring herself to make the tea.
"It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie," I said.
Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.
"You seem to like the idea of it," I added.
"You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea of
it too."
"_Per se_, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a world
without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman's idea of the
perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a trim-shaven lawn,
rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on the shore only in
wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget which. But the older
you grow, the more sides of a thing will present themselves to your
contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in itself, but you
cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think for a moment of
the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are gathered within the
skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the toils of the storm are
around them. Look at the barometer in the hall, my dear, and tell me what
it says."
She went and returned.
"It was not very low, papa--only at rain; but the moment I touched it, the
hand dropped an inch."
"Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
however."
"That doesn't make much difference though, does it, papa?"
"No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think of
things from our own standpoint."
"But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
nurse teach us Dr. Watts's hymns for children, because you said they tended
to encourage selfishness."
"Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast between the
misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the apparent--mind,
I only say apparent--ground of thankfulness, that they are not fit for
teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to the question, he
would abjure any such intention, saying that only he meant to heighten
the sense of our obligation. But it does tend to selfishness and, what is
worse, self-righteousness, and is very dangerous therefore. What right have
I to thank God that I am not as other men are in anything? I have to thank
God for the good things he has given to me; but how dare I suppose that he
is not doing the same for other people in proportion to their capacity? I
don't like to appear to condemn Dr. Watts's hymns. Certainly he has written
the very worst hymns I know; but he has likewise written the best--for
public worship, I mean."
"Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that comes
of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the idea of a
storm, I cannot help it coming."
"I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older, other
things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to us, and
impress us more."
Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.
"But," said Wynnie, "you say everybody is in God's hands as well as we."
"Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
fire."
"Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a storm,
ought we?"
"No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the very
persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to rescue them
from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn't the tea ready?"
"Yes, papa. I'll just go and tell mamma."
When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us, Wynnie
resumed the talk.
"I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don't see my
way out of it--logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use of
taking any trouble about them if they are in God's hands? Why should we try
to take them out of God's hands?"
"Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or whatever
you call it. Take them out of God's hands! If you could do that, it would
be perdition indeed. God's hands is the only safe place in the universe;
and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God's hands on the shore
because we say they are in his hands who go down to the sea in ships? If we
draw them on shore, surely they are not out of God's hands."
"I see--I see. But God could save them without us."
"Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we must
work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father lets his
little child help him a little, that the child may learn to be and to do,
so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our fellows, because we
would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we could. He requires us to do
our best."
"But God may not mean to save them."
"He may mean them to be drowned--we do not know. But we know that we must
try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God's great and
good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that best."
"But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, 'by
the mercy of God.' They don't say it is by the mercy of God when he is
drowned."
"But _people_ cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not feel.
Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death would break
out in a 'thank God,' and therefore they say it is God's mercy when another
is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider it God's mercy when a
man is drowned, that is just the sin of the world--the want of faith. But
the man who creeps out of the drowning, choking billows into the glory of
the new heavens and the new earth--do you think his thanksgiving for the
mercy of God which has delivered him is less than that of the man who
creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the waves on to the dreary, surf-beaten
shore? In nothing do we show less faith than the way in which we think and
speak about death. 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy
victory?' says the apostle. 'Here, here, here,' cry the Christian people,
'everywhere. It is an awful sting, a fearful victory. But God keeps it away
from us many a time when we ask him--to let it pierce us to the heart, at
last, to be sure; but that can't be helped.' I mean this is how they feel
in their hearts who do not believe that God is as merciful when he sends
death as when he sends life; who, Christian people as they are, yet look
upon death as an evil thing which cannot be avoided, and would, if they
might live always, be content to live always. Death or Life--each is God's;
for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: there are no dead,
for all live to him."
"But don't you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?" said my wife.
"There can be no doubt about that, my dear."
"Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so."
"Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child's sole
desire is for food--the very best possible to begin with. But how would it
be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse to share
this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the man who never
so far rises above the desire for food that _nothing_ could make him forget
his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians should be strong enough to
overcome the fear of death. We ought to love and believe him so much, that
when he says we shall not die, we should at least believe that death must
be something very different from what it looks to us to be--so different,
that what we mean by the word does not apply to the reality at all; and so
Jesus cannot use the word, because it would seem to us that he meant what
we mean by it, which he, seeing it all round, cannot mean."
"That does seem quite reasonable," said Ethelwyn.
Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.
"She looks uneasy, does she not?" I said.
"You mean the Atlantic?" he returned, looking round. "Yes, I think so. I am
glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very feverish,
probably delirious before morning. She won't sleep much, and will talk
rather loud when the tide comes in."
"Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?"
"Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again before
they vanish."
"It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to
me that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little more
regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the evening;
in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is lowest again
while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain at night has such
an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps all a fancy."
"There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke to
me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even six
hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!"
"Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care to
go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to Connie's
room and have some Shakspere?"
"I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?"
"Let us have the _Midsummer Night's Dream,"_ said Ethelwyn.
"You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you're quite right.
It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer. I suspect
that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written in the winter.
It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full value upon what we
lack."
"There is one reason," said Wynnie with a roguish look, "why I like that
play."
"I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie."
"But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn't it, papa?"
"I'm not sure of that. But what is your reason?"
"That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women. _They_
are true throughout."
"I might choose to say that was because they were not tried."
"And I might venture to answer that Shakspere--being true to nature always,
as you say, papa--knew very well how absurd it would be to represent a
woman's feelings as under the influence of the juice of a paltry flower."
"Capital, Wynnie!" said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
approbation.
"Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?" said Turner. "It is the
common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
night."
"But," said Ethelwyn, "he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted to
this, that he would only believe his own eyes."
"I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner," I said. "For my part, I have more
admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more weight
to the consistency of the various testimony than could be altogether
counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now I will tell you
what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling power of the poet. He
brings together such marvellous contrasts, without a single shock or jar
to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the conjunction. Think for a
moment--the ordinary commonplace courtiers; the lovers, men and women in
the condition of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a hold of
them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their courtiers,
Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the ignorant,
clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,--fairies and clowns, lovers and
courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony, clothed with a night
of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the king and queen. But I
have talked enough about it. Let us get our books."
As we sat in Connie's room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of
the poet's fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. "Musk roses," said Titania; and the
first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the window. "Good
hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow," said Bottom; and the roar of the waters
was in our ears. "So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently
entwist," said Titania; and the blast poured the rain in a spout against
the window. "Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells," said
Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the chinks of the bark-house
opening from the room. We drew the curtains closer, made up the fire
higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere we had done; and when
we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it was with the hope that,
through all the rising storm, she would dream of breeze-haunted summer
woods.