THE GATHERED STORM.
I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear it
save in the _rallentondo_ passages of the wind; but through all the wind
I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not wake my
wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to Connie's
room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were, she would be
frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the same room. I opened
the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was burning, for Wynnie was
an admirable stoker, and could generally keep the fire in all night. I
crept to the bedside: there was just light enough to see that Connie was
fast asleep, and that her dreams were not of storms. It was a marvel how
well the child always slept. But, as I turned to leave the room, Wynnie's
voice called me in a whisper. Approaching her bed, I saw her wide eyes,
like the eyes of the darkness, for I could scarcely see anything of her
face.
"Awake, darling?" I said.
"Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn't Connie sleeping
delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for her."
"It is the best thing for us all, next to God's spirit, I sometimes think,
my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps you
awake?"
"I don't think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house shakes
so that I do feel a little nervous. I don't know how it is. I never felt
afraid of anything natural before."
"What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only hurt
the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think about
him, dear."
"I do try, papa. Don't you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful storm,
is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there now!"
"There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment, I
suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of dying.
Mind, they are all in God's hands."
"Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand is
over them, making them dark with his care."
"And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those
odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
beautifully, 'And now with darkness closest weary eyes,' he adds:
Thus in thy ebony box
Thou dost enclose us, till the day
Put our amendment in our way,
And give new wheels to our disordered clocks."
"He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a good
clock of God's making; but you want new wheels, according to our beloved
brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night."
This was tiresome talk--was it--in the middle of the night, reader? Well,
but my child did not think so, I know.
Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and sky.
The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled a
little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again, and
the wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible human
hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into the village.
The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I passed: not a man
or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if nobody had crossed
their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open. One child came out of the
baker's with a big loaf in her apron. The wind threatened to blow the hair
off her head, if not herself first into the canal. I took her by the hand
and led her, or rather, let her lead me home, while I kept her from being
carried away by the wind. Having landed her safely inside her mother's
door, I went on, climbed the heights above the village, and looked abroad
over the Atlantic. What a waste of aimless tossing to and fro! Gray mist
above, full of falling rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and
bursting as billow broke upon billow. The tide was ebbing now, but almost
every other wave swept the breakwater. They burst on the rocks at the end
of it, and rushed in shattered spouts and clouds of spray far into the air
over their heads. "Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall
be able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The
solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing, out
on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it could be
that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even in her most
uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was right; it was
Percivale.
"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere in
Coleridge's Remorse. "They are but water-drops, after all, that make this
great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."
"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as you
think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know that
hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no more. It
is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules have to fight
for the mastery, or at least for freedom."
"Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort that
gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of human
feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much of its awe;
although, as we were saying the other day, it is only _a picture_ of the
troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are with the elements,
and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I will go home and change
my clothes."
"I have hardly had enough of it yet," returned Percivale. "I shall have a
stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little way
from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch awhile
there."
"Well, you're a younger man than I am; but I've seen the day, as Lear says.
What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we would be
judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of the strength
that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it still. But I am
not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking."
"I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take my
way along the downs for a mile or two; I don't mind being wet."
"I didn't once."
"Don't you think," resumed Percivale, "that in some sense the old man--not
that I can allow _you_ that dignity yet, Mr. Walton--has a right to regard
the past as his own?"
"That would be scanned," I answered, as we walked towards the village.
"Surely the results of the past are the man's own. Any action of the man's,
upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a man had done
a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation upon which to
build more good, grew so vain of it that he became incapable of doing
anything more of the same sort, you could not say that the action belonged
to him still. Therein he has severed his connection with the past. Again,
what has never in any deep sense been a man's own, cannot surely continue
to be his afterwards. Thus the things that a man has merely possessed once,
the very people who most admired him for their sakes when he had them,
give him no credit for after he has lost them. Riches that have taken
to themselves wings leave with the poor man only a surpassing poverty.
Strength, likewise, which can so little depend on any exercise of the will
in man, passes from him with the years. It was not his all the time; it was
but lent him, and had nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble
man may put forth a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the
eyes of his neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for
what he could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was
his own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his
own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to have
been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a great
measure with intellect."
"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can
in any way be called his own?"
"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to will
the truth. This, too, is as much God's gift as everything else: I ought to
say is more God's gift than anything else, for he gives it to be the man's
own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth, he has
God himself. Man _can_ possess God: all other things follow as necessary
results. What poor creatures we should have been if God had not made us to
do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the hands that hang down, and
strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this was in the mind of the
prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man
glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not
the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this,
that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise
loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these
things I delight, saith the Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense
of a far higher life in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the
root of all our false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves.
We cannot commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves.
We have little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of
will, and therefore we talk of our strength of body, worship the riches
we have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual
successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius
must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part with
all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of God which the
wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which the growing
luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even possible for any
man."
We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce blast
of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the streets
did look!--how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no living
creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that seemed to
have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which, forgetful of
its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging to it against a
window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a mimic storm within
its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down the kennels like a long
brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide from the tormenting wind,
and every now and then the rain came in full rout before the conquering
blast.
When I got home, I peeped in at Connie's door the first thing, and saw that
she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of the conch
against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was sitting
staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she could see
over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately looked. Her
face was paler and keener than usual.
"Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?"
"Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He says I
am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as I like."
"But you look too tired for it. Hadn't you better lie down again?"
"It's only the storm, papa."
"The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so."
"It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is going
to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow."
"You didn't hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The storm was
raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its reach--fast
asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down."
"Very well, papa."
I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
she was already looking much better.
After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went out
again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and his wife,
were faring. The wind had already increased in violence. It threatened to
blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was coming in with great
rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as I passed through it to
reach the lower part where they lived. When I peeped in from the bottom
of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the steps of someone overhead, I
called out.
Agnes's voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to the
bedrooms above--
"Mother's gone to church, sir."
"Gone to church!" I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled what
the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church during a
storm.
"O yes, Agnes, I remember!" I said; "your mother thinks the weather bad
enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
Where is your husband?"
"He'll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don't mind the wet. You see, we
don't like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the sailors
call 'great guns.'"
"And what becomes of his mother then?"
"There don't be any sea out there, sir. Leastways," she added with a quiet
smile, and stopped.
"You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
elements out there?"
She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe's mother
was proverbial.
"But really, sir," she said, "she don't mind the weather a bit; and though
we don't live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn't hear of that,
we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know."
"I'm sure it's quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
now?"
She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow complexion,
that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought a reply.
"I don't think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He's been working
very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him."
"And how are you?"
"Quite well, thank you, sir."
I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very different
thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the church.
When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling. A
certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the southern
transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of the stone, on
the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a considerable crack
between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut some sod from another
part of the churchyard, and was now standing, with the rain pouring on him
from the roof, beating this sod down in the crack. He was sheltered from
the wind by the church, but he was as wet as he could be. I may mention
that he never appeared in the least disconcerted when I came upon him in
the discharge of his functions: he was so content with his own feeling in
the matter, that no difference of opinion could disturb him.
"This will never do, Coombes," I said. "You will get your death of cold.
You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there's rheumatism in
the world!"
"It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha' done now for a night. I think
he'll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at him through
that hole."
"Do go home, then," I said, "and change your clothes. Is your wife in the
church?"
"She be, sir. This door, sir--this door," he added, as he saw me going
round to the usual entrance. "You'll find her in there."
I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first, for it
was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there somehow,
although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters. Mrs. Coombes
was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the
wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts--how it did roar up
there--as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the wind and send
it down to ventilate the church!--she was sitting at the foot of the
chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.
The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I drew
near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but only
sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret place of
the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to say much,
however.
"How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked. "Not all
night?"
"No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn't thought o' going yet for a
bit."
"Why there's Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I'm afraid he'll go on
pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as full of
rheumatism as they can hold."
"Deary me! I didn't know as my old man was there. He tould me he had them
all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there's always some
mendin' to do."
I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.
"You be comin' home with me, mother. This will never do. Father's as wet as
a mop. I ha' brought something for your supper, and Aggy's a-cookin' of it;
and we're going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a chapter or two
of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea. There! Come along."
The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully in
her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.
"No, no," I said; "I'm the shepherd and you're the sheep, so I'll drive you
before me--at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended if I take
on me to say I am _his_ shepherd."
"Nay, nay, don't say that, sir. You've been a good shepherd to me when I
was a very sulky sheep. But if you'll please to go, sir, I'll lock the door
behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the sheep
follow the shepherd. And I'll follow like a good sheep," he added,
laughing.
"You're right, Joe," I said, and took the lead without more ado.
I was struck by his saying _them parts_, which seemed to indicate a habit
of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the gospel-story.
The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his cottage, Joe
taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I could of Coombes
by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared I had done ill in
that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought the thin feeble little
man would have got on better if he had been more heavily weighted against
it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and so we got in. The old man
took his tools from me and set them down in the mill, for the roof of which
I felt some anxiety as we passed through, so full of wind was the whole
space. But when we opened the inner door the welcome of a glowing fire
burst up the stair as if that had been a well of warmth and light below. I
went down with them. Coombes departed to change his clothes, and the rest
of us stood round the fire, where Agnes was busy cooking something like
white puddings for their supper.
"Did you hear, sir," said Joe, "that the coastguard is off to the
Goose-pot? There's a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the road
with the rocket-cart."
"How far off is that, Joe?"
"Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor'ards."
"What sort of a vessel is she?"
"That I don't know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
coast-guard didn't know themselves."
"Poor things!" said Mrs. Coombes. "If any of them comes ashore, they'll be
sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this."
She had caught a little infection of her husband's mode of thought.
"It's not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?"
"I don't think so, sir. There's no likelihood."
"Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?" said the
old woman.
"There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another time
with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with my own
people. They will be more uneasy if I am away."
"Of coorse, of coorse, sir."
"So I'll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over."
I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out. It
was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There would
be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do much
while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore was
terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their breaking,
but they filled the earth and the air with their furious noises. The wind
roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the land, only to the one
had been set a hitherto--to the other none. Ere the night was far gone,
however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean itself had not broken its
bars.
I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept pressing
their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of will, through
the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there was doing. They
could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and dismay, with a soul in
it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie's room, and found that she was
left alone. She looked restless, pale, and frightened. The house quivered,
and still the wind howled and whistled through the adjoining bark-hut.
"Connie, darling, have they left you alone?" I said.
"Only for a few minutes, papa. I don't mind it."
"Don't be frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the sea
of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the Atlantic
just as well. Jeremiah says he 'divideth the sea when the waves thereof
roar.'"
The same moment Dora came running into the room.
"Papa," she cried, "the spray--such a lot of it--came dashing on the
windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?"
"I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down."
"O, papa! I do want to see."
"What do you want to see, Dora?"
"The storm, papa."
"It is as black as pitch. You can't see anything."
"O, but I want to--to--be beside it."
"Well, you sha'n't stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along. Ask
Wynnie to come here."
The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not
seem even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on to the
little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The dining-room
was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might see better from
the windows. The children and some of the servants were there looking out.
I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength of two of the women
to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great sheet of spray rushed
over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The rain had ceased, and it
was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could see the gleaming whiteness
all before me. The next moment a wave rolled over the low wall in front of
me, breaking on it and wrapping me round in a sheet of water. Something
hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found, on searching, that one of the
large flat stones that lay for coping on the top of the wall was on the
grass beside me. If it had struck me straight, it must have broken my leg.
There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into the
house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but heard
nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned and tapped
at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me within. When I
went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had joined our party.
He and Turner were talking together at one of the windows.
"Did you hear a gun?" I asked them.
"No. Was there one?"
"I'm not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast."
"I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready," said Turner.
"No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea," I said, remembering
what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.
"They would try, though, I suppose," said Turner.
"I do not know," said Percivale. "I don't know the people. But I have seen
a life-boat out in as bad a night--whether in as bad a sea, I cannot tell:
that depends on the coast, I suppose."
We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had fared
with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.
"How is Connie, now, my dear?"
"Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
didn't mind, I wish he would go up and see her."
"Of course--instantly," said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.
But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear, so
shrill was it, we heard Connie's voice shrieking, "Papa, papa! There's a
great ship ashore down there. Come, come!"
Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. "How? What? Where
could the voice come from?" was the unformed movement of our thoughts. But
the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though not the
less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and thought
only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that is afar!
Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.
A little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so that
it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door at the
top of it was open. The door that led from Connie's room into the bark-hut
was likewise open, and light shone through it into the place--enough to
show a figure standing by the furthest window with face pressed against the
glass. And from this figure came the cry, "Papa, papa! Quick, quick! The
waves will knock her to pieces!"
In very truth it was Connie standing there.