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CALM AND STORM.
But of the two, Catherine had herself to go first. Again and again
was I sent for to say farewell to Mrs Tomkins, and again and again I
returned home leaying her asleep, and for the time better. But on a
Saturday evening, as I sat by my vestry-fire, pondering on many
things, and trying to make myself feel that they were as God saw
them and not as they appeared to me, young Tom came to me with the
news that his sister seemed much worse, and his father would be much
obliged if I would go and see her. I sent Tom on before, because I
wished to follow alone.
It was a brilliant starry night; no moon, no clouds, no wind,
nothing but stars. They seemed to lean down towards the earth, as I
have seen them since in more southern regions. It was, indeed, a
glorious night. That is, I knew it was; I did not feel that it was.
For the death which I went to be near, came, with a strange sense of
separation, between me and the nature around me. I felt as if nature
knew nothing, felt nothing, meant nothing, did not belong to
humanity at all; for here was death, and there shone the stars. I
was wrong, as I knew afterwards.
I had had very little knowledge of the external shows of death.
Strange as it may appear, I had never yet seen a fellow-creature
pass beyond the call of his fellow-mortals. I had not even seen my
father die. And the thought was oppressive to me. "To think," I said
to myself, as I walked over the bridge to the village-street--"to
think that the one moment the person is here, and the next--who
shall say WHERE? for we know nothing of the region beyond the grave!
Not even our risen Lord thought fit to bring back from Hades any
news for the human family standing straining their eyes after their
brothers and sisters that have vanished in the dark. Surely it is
well, all well, although we know nothing, save that our Lord has
been there, knows all about it, and does not choose to tell us.
Welcome ignorarance then! the ignorance in which he chooses to leave
us. I would rather not know, if He gave me my choice, but preferred
that I should not know." And so the oppression passed from me, and I
was free.
But little as I knew of the signs of the approach of death, I was
certain, the moment I saw Catherine, that the veil that hid the
"silent land" had begun to lift slowly between her and it. And for a
moment I almost envied her that she was so soon to see and know that
after which our blindness and ignorance were wondering and
hungering. She could hardly speak. She looked more patient than
calm. There was no light in the room but that of the fire, which
flickered flashing and fading, now lighting up the troubled eye, and
now letting a shadow of the coming repose fall gently over it.
Thomas sat by the fire with the child on his knee, both looking
fixedly into the glow. Gerard's natural mood was so quiet and
earnest, that the solemnity about him did not oppress him. He looked
as if he were present at some religious observance of which he felt
more than he understood, and his childish peace was in no wise
inharmonious with the awful silence of the coming change. He was no
more disquieted at the presence of death than the stars were.
And this was the end of the lovely girl--to leave the fair world
still young, because a selfish man had seen that she was fair! No
time can change the relation of cause and effect. The poison that
operates ever so slowly is yet poison, and yet slays. And that man
was now murdering her, with weapon long-reaching from out of the
past. But no, thank God! this was not the end of her. Though there
is woe for that man by whom the offence cometh, yet there is
provision for the offence. There is One who bringeth light out of
darkness, joy out of sorrow, humility out of wrong. Back to the
Father's house we go with the sorrows and sins which, instead of
inheriting the earth, we gathered and heaped upon our weary
shoulders, and a different Elder Brother from that angry one who
would not receive the poor swine-humbled prodigal, takes the burden
from our shoulders, and leads us into the presence of the Good.
She put out her hand feebly, let it lie in mine, looked as if she
wanted me to sit down by her bedside, and when I did so, closed her
eyes. She said nothing. Her father was too much troubled to meet me
without showing the signs of his distress, and his was a nature that
ever sought concealment for its emotion; therefore he sat still. But
Gerard crept down from his knee, came to me, clambered up on mine,
and laid his little hand upon his mother's, which I was holding. She
opened her eyes, looked at the child, shut them again, and tears
came out from between the closed lids.
"Has Gerard ever been baptized?" I asked her.
Her lips indicated a NO.
"Then I will be his godfather. And that will be a pledge to you that
I will never lose sight of him."
She pressed my hand, and the tears came faster.
Believing with all my heart that the dying should remember their
dying Lord, and that the "Do this in remembrance of me" can never be
better obeyed than when the partaker is about to pass, supported by
the God of his faith, through the same darkness which lay before our
Lord when He uttered the words and appointed the symbol, we kneeled,
Thomas and I, and young Tom, who had by this time joined us with his
sister Mary, around the bed, and partook with the dying woman of the
signs of that death, wherein our Lord gave Himself entirely to us,
to live by His death, and to the Father of us all in holiest
sacrifice as the high-priest of us His people, leading us to the
altar of a like self-abnegation. Upon what that bread and that wine
mean, the sacrifice of our Lord, the whole world of humanity hangs.
It is the redemption of men.
After she had received the holy sacrament, she lay still as before.
I heard her murmur once, "Lord, I do not deserve it. But I do love
Thee." And about two hours after, she quietly breathed her last. We
all kneeled, and I thanked the Father of us aloud that He had taken
her to Himself. Gerard had been fast asleep on his aunt's lap, and
she had put him to bed a little before. Surely he slept a deeper
sleep than his mother's; for had she not awaked even as she fell
asleep?
When I came out once more, I knew better what the stars meant. They
looked to me now as if they knew all about death, and therefore
could not be sad to the eyes of men; as if that unsympathetic look
they wore came from this, that they were made like the happy truth,
and not like our fears.
But soon the solemn feeling of repose, the sense that the world and
all its cares would thus pass into nothing, vanished in its turn.
For a moment I had been, as it were, walking on the shore of the
Eternal, where the tide of time had left me in its retreat. Far away
across the level sands I heard it moaning, but I stood on the firm
ground of truth, and heeded it not. In a few moments more it was
raving around me; it had carried me away from my rest, and I was
filled with the noise of its cares.
For when I returned home, my sister told me that Old Rogers had
called, and seemed concerned not to find me at home. He would have
gone to find me, my sister said, had I been anywhere but by a
deathbed. He would not leave any message, however, saying he would
call in the morning.
I thought it better to go to his house. The stars were still shining
as brightly as before, but a strong foreboding of trouble filled my
mind, and once more the stars were far away, and lifted me no nearer
to "Him who made the seven stars and Orion." When I examined myself,
I could give no reason for my sudden fearfulness, save this: that as
I went to Catherine's house, I had passed Jane Rogers on her way to
her father's, and having just greeted her, had gone on; but, as it
now came back upon me, she had looked at me strangely--that is,
with some significance in her face which conveyed nothing to me; and
now her father had been to seek me: it must have something to do
with Miss Oldcastle.
But when I came to the cottage, it was dark and still, and I could
not bring myself to rouse the weary man from his bed. Indeed it was
past eleven, as I found to my surprise on looking at my watch. So I
turned and lingered by the old mill, and fell a pondering on the
profusion of strength that rushed past the wheel away to the great
sea. doing nothing. "Nature," I thought, "does not demand that power
should always be force. Power itself must repose. He that believeth
shall--not make haste, says the Bible. But it needs strength to be
still. Is my faith not strong enough to be still?" I looked up to
the heavens once more, and the quietness of the stars seemed to
reproach me. "We are safe up here," they seemed to say: "we shine,
fearless and confident, for the God who gave the primrose its rough
leaves to hide it from the blast of uneven spring, hangs us in the
awful hollows of space. We cannot fall out of His safety. Lift up
your eyes on high, and behold! Who hath created these things--that
bringeth out their host by number! He calleth them all by names. By
the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power, not one
faileth. Why sayest thou, O Jacob! and speakest, O Israel! my way is
hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?"
The night was very still; there was, I thought, no one awake within
miles of me. The stars seemed to shine into me the divine reproach
of those glorious words. "O my God!" I cried, and fell on my knees
by the mill-door.
What I tried to say more I will not say here. I MAY say that I cried
to God. What I said to Him ought not, cannot be repeated to another.
When I opened my eyes I saw the door of the mill was open too, and
there in the door, his white head glimmering, stood Old Rogers, with
a look on his face as if he had just come down from the mount. I
started to my feet, with that strange feeling of something like
shame that seizes one at the very thought of other eyes than those
of the Father. The old man came forward, and bowed his head with an
unconscious expression of humble dignity, but would have passed me
without speech, leaving the mill-door open behind him. I could not
bear to part with him thus.
"Won't you speak to me, Rogers ?" I said.
He turned at once with evident pleasure.
"I beg your pardon, sir. I was ashamed of having intruded on you,
and I thought you would rather be left alone. I thought--I
thought---" hesitated the old man, "that you might like to go into
the mill, for the night's cold out o' doors."
"Thank you, Rogers. I won't now. I thought you had been in bed. How
do you come to be out so late?"
"You see, sir, when I'm in any trouble, it's no use to go to bed. I
can't sleep. I only keep the old 'oman wakin'. And the key o' the
mill allus hangin' at the back o' my door, and knowin' it to be a
good place to--to--shut the door in, I came out as soon as she was
asleep; but I little thought to see you, sir."
"I came to find you, not thinking how the time went. Catherine Weir
is gone home."
"I am right glad to hear it, poor woman. And perhaps something will
come out now that will help us."
"I do not quite understand you," I said, with hesitation.
But Rogers made no reply.
"I am sorry to hear you are in trouble to-night. Can I help you?" I
resumed.
"If you can help yourself, sir, you can help me. But I have no
right to say so. Only, if a pair of old eyes be not blind, a man may
pray to God about anything he sees. I was prayin' hard about you in
there, sir, while you was on your knees o' the other side o' the
door."
I could partly guess what the old man meant, and I could not ask him
for further explanation.
"What did you want to see me about?" I inquired.
He hesitated for a moment.
"I daresay it was very foolish of me, sir. But I just wanted to tell
you that--our Jane was down here from the Hall this arternoon----"
"I passed her on the bridge. Is she quite well?"
"Yes, yes, sir. You know that's not the point."
The old man's tone seemed to reprove me for vain words, and I held
my peace.
"The captain's there again."
An icy spear seemed to pass through my heart. I could make no reply.
The same moment a cold wind blew on me from the open door of the
mill.
Although Lear was of course right when he said,
"The tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there,"
yet it is also true, that sometimes, in the midst of its greatest
pain, the mind takes marvellous notice of the smallest things that
happen around it. This involves a law of which illustrations could
be plentifully adduced from Shakespeare himself, namely, that the
intellectual part of the mind can go on working with strange
independence of the emotional.
From the door of the mill, as from a sepulchral tavern, blew a cold
wind like the very breath of death upon me, just when that pang
shot, in absolute pain, through my heart. For a wind had arisen from
behind the mill, and we were in its shelter save where a window
behind and the door beside me allowed free passage to the first of
the coming storm.
I believed I turned away from the old man without a word. He made no
attempt to detain me. Whether he went back into his closet, the old
mill, sacred in the eyes of the Father who honours His children,
even as the church wherein many prayers went up to Him, or turned
homewards to his cottage and his sleeping wife, I cannot tell. The
first I remember after that cold wind is, that I was fighting with
that wind, gathered even to a storm, upon the common where I had
dealt so severely with her who had this very night gone into that
region into which, as into a waveless sea, all the rivers of life
rush and are silent. Is it the sea of death? No. The sea of life--a
life too keen, too refined, for our senses to know it, and therefore
we call it death--because we cannot lay hold upon it.
I will not dwell upon my thoughts as I wandered about over that
waste. The wind had risen to a storm charged with fierce showers of
stinging hail, which gave a look of gray wrath to the invisible wind
as it swept slanting by, and then danced and scudded along the
levels. The next point in that night of pain is when I found myself
standing at the iron gate of Oldcastle Hall. I had left the common,
passed my own house and the church, crossed the river, walked
through the village, and was restored to self-consciousness--that
is, I knew that I was there--only when first I stood in the shelter
of one of those great pillars and the monster on its top. Finding
the gate open, for they were not precise about having it fastened, I
pushed it and entered. The wind was roaring in the trees as I think
I have never heard it roar since; for the hail clashed upon the bare
branches and twigs, and mingled an unearthly hiss with the roar. In
the midst of it the house stood like a tomb, dark, silent, without
one dim light to show that sleep and not death ruled within. I could
have fancied that there were no windows in it, that it stood, like
an eyeless skull, in that gaunt forest of skeleton trees, empty and
desolate, beaten by the ungenial hail, the dead rain of the country
of death. I passed round to the other side, stepping gently lest
some ear might be awake--as if any ear, even that of Judy's white
wolf, could have heard the loudest step in such a storm. I heard the
hailstones crush between my feet and the soft grass of the lawn, but
I dared not stop to look up at the back of the house. I went on to
the staircase in the rock, and by its rude steps, dangerous in the
flapping of such storm-wings as swept about it that night, descended
to the little grove below, around the deep-walled pool. Here the
wind did not reach me. It roared overhead, but, save an occasional
sigh, as if of sympathy with their suffering brethren abroad in the
woild, the hermits of this cell stood upright and still around the
sleeping water. But my heart was a well in which a storm boiled and
raged; and all that "pother o'er my head" was peace itself compared
to what I felt. I sat down on the seat at the foot of a tree, where
I had first seen Miss Oldcastle reading. And then I looked up to the
house. Yes, there was a light there! It must be in her window. She
then could not rest any more than I. Sleep was driven from her eyes
because she must wed the man she would not; while sleep was driven
from mine because I could not marry the woman I would. Was that it?
No. My heart acquitted me, in part at least, of thinking only of my
own sorrow in the presence of her greater distress. Gladly would I
have given her up for ever, without a hope, to redeem her from such
a bondage. "But it would be to marry another some day," suggested
the tormentor within. And then the storm, which had a little abated,
broke out afresh in my soul. But before I rose from her seat I was
ready even for that--at least I thought so--if only I might deliver
her from the all but destruction that seemed to be impending over
her. The same moment in which my mind seemed to have arrived at the
possibility of such a resolution, I rose almost involuntarily, and
glancing once more at the dull light in her window--for I did not
doubt that it was her window, though it was much too dark to
discern, the shape of the house--almost felt my way to the stair,
and climbed again into the storm.
But I was quieter now, and able to go home. It must have been nearly
morning, though at this season of the year the morning is undefined,
when I reached my own house. My sister had gone to bed, for I could
always let myself in; nor, indeed, did any one in Marshmailows think
the locking of the door at night an imperative duty.
When I fell asleep, I was again in the old quarry, staring into the
deep well. I thought Mrs Oldcastle was murdering her daughter in the
house above, while I was spell-bound to the spot, where, if I stood
long enough, I should see her body float into the well from the
subterranean passage, the opening of which was just below where I
stood. I was thus confusing and reconstructing the two dreadful
stories of the place--that told me by old Weir, about the
circumstances of his birth; and that told me by Dr Duncan, about Mrs
Oldcastle's treatment of her elder daughter. But as a white hand and
arm appeared in the water below me, sorrow and pity more than horror
broke the bonds of sleep, and I awoke to less trouble than that of
my dreams, only because that which I feared had not yet come.
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