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DR DUNCAN'S STORY.
On the next Sunday but one--which was surprising to me when I
considered the manner of our last parting--Catherine Weir was in
church, for the second time since I had come to the place. As it
happened, only as Spenser says--
"It chanced--eternal God that chance did guide,"
--and why I say this, will appear afterwards--I had, in preaching
upon, that is, in endeavouring to enforce the Lord's Prayer by
making them think about the meaning of the words they were so
familiar with, come to the petition, "Forgive us our debts, as we
forgive our debtors;" with which I naturally connected the words of
our Lord that follow: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if ye forgive not men
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
I need not tell my reader more of what I said about this, than that
I tried to show that even were it possible with God to forgive an
unforgiving man, the man himself would not be able to believe for a
moment that God did forgive him, and therefore could get no comfort
or help or joy of any kind from the forgiveness; so essentially does
hatred, or revenge, or contempt, or anything that separates us from
man, separate us from God too. To the loving soul alone does the
Father reveal Himself; for love alone can understand Him. It is the
peace-makers who are His children.
This I said, thinking of no one more than another of my audience.
But as I closed my sermon, I could not help fancying that Mrs
Oldcastle looked at me with more than her usual fierceness. I forgot
all about it, however, for I never seemed to myself to have any hold
of, or relation to, that woman. I know I was wrong in being unable
to feel my relation to her because I disliked her. But not till
years after did I begin to understand how she felt, or recognize in
myself a common humanity with her. A sin of my own made me
understand her condition. I can hardly explain now; I will tell it
when the time comes. When I called upon her next, after the
interview last related, she behaved much as if she had forgotten all
about it, which was not likely.
In the end of the week after the sermon to which I have alluded, I
was passing the Hall-gate on my usual Saturday's walk, when Judy saw
me from within, as she came out of the lodge. She was with me in a
moment.
"Mr Walton," she said, "how could you preach at Grannie as you did
last Sunday?"
"I did not preach at anybody, Judy."
"Oh, Mr Walton!"
"You know I didn't, Judy. You know that if I had, I would not say I
had not."
"Yes, yes; I know that perfectly," she said, seriously. "But Grannie
thinks you did."
"How do you know that?"
"By her face."
"That is all, is it?"
"You don't think Grannie would say so?"
"No. Nor yet that you could know by her face what she was thinking."
"Oh! can't I just? I can read her face--not so well as plain print;
but, let me see, as well as what Uncle Stoddart calls black-letter,
at least. I know she thought you were preaching at her; and her face
said, 'I shan't forgive YOU, anyhow. I never forgive, and I won't
for all your preaching.' That's what her face said."
"I am sure she would not say so, Judy," I said, really not knowing
what to say.
"Oh, no; she would not say so. She would say, 'I always forgive, but
I never forget.' That's a favourite saying of hers."
"But, Judy, don't you think it is rather hypocritical of you to say
all this to me about your grandmother when she is so kind to you,
and you seem such good friends with her?"
She looked up in my face with an expression of surprise.
"It is all TRUE, Mr Walton," she said.
"Perhaps. But you are saying it behind her back."
"I will go home and say it to her face directly."
She turned to go.
"No, no, Judy. I did not mean that," I said, taking her by the arm.
"I won't say you told me to do it. I thought there was no harm in
telling you. Grannie is kind to me, and I am kind to her. But
Grannie is afraid of my tongue, and I mean her to be afraid of it.
It's the only way to keep her in order. Darling Aunt Winnie! it's
all she's got to defend her. If you knew how she treats her
sometimes, you would be cross with Grannie yourself, Mr Walton, for
all your goodness and your white surplice."
And to my yet greater surprise, the wayward girl burst out crying,
and, breaking away from me, ran through the gate, and out of sight
amongst the trees, without once looking back.
I pursued my walk, my meditations somewhat discomposed by the
recurring question:--Would she go home and tell her grandmother what
she had said to me? And, if she did, would it not widen the breach
upon the opposite side of which I seemed to see Ethelwyn stand, out
of the reach of my help?
I walked quickly on to reach a stile by means of which I should soon
leave the little world of Marshmallows quite behind me, and be alone
with nature and my Greek Testament. Hearing the sound of horse-hoofs
on the road from Addicehead, I glanced up from my pocket-book, in
which I had been looking over the thoughts that had at various
moments passed through my mind that week, in order to choose one (or
more, if they would go together) to be brooded over to-day for my
people's spiritual diet to-morrow--I say I glanced up from my
pocket-book, and saw a young man, that is, if I could call myself
young still, of distinguished appearance, approaching upon a good
serviceable hack. He turned into my road and passed me. He was pale,
with a dark moustache, and large dark eyes; sat his horse well and
carelessly; had fine features of the type commonly considered
Grecian, but thin, and expressive chiefly of conscious weariness. He
wore a white hat with crape upon it, white gloves, and long,
military-looking boots. All this I caught as he passed me; and I
remember them, because, looking after him, I saw him stop at the
lodge of the Hall, ring the bell, and then ride through the gate. I
confess I did not quite like this; but I got over the feeling so far
as to be able to turn to my Testament when I had reached and crossed
the stile.
I came home another way, after one of the most delightful days I had
ever spent. Having reached the river in the course of my wandering,
I came down the side of it towards Old Rogers's cottage, loitering
and looking, quiet in heart and soul and mind, because I had
committed my cares to Him who careth for us. The earth was round
me--I was rooted, as it were, in it, but the air of a higher life
was about me. I was swayed to and fro by the motions of a spiritual
power; feelings and desires and hopes passed through me, passed
away, and returned; and still my head rose into the truth, and the
will of God was the regnant sunlight upon it. I might change my
place and condition; new feelings might come forth, and old feelings
retire into the lonely corners of my being; but still my heart
should be glad and strong in the one changeless thing, in the truth
that maketh free; still my head should rise into the sunlight of
God, and I should know that because He lived I should live also, and
because He was true I should remain true also, nor should any change
pass upon me that should make me mourn the decadence of humanity.
And then I found that I was gazing over the stump of an old pollard,
on which I was leaning, down on a great bed of white water-lilies,
that lay in the broad slow river, here broader and slower than in
most places. The slanting yellow sunlight shone through the water
down to the very roots anchored in the soil, and the water swathed
their stems with coolness and freshness, and a universal sense, I
doubt not, of watery presence and nurture. And there on their lovely
heads, as they lay on the pillow of the water, shone the life-giving
light of the summer sun, filling all the spaces between their
outspread petals of living silver with its sea of radiance, and
making them gleam with the whiteness which was born of them and the
sun. And then came a hand on my shoulder, and, turning, I saw the
gray head and the white smock of my old friend Rogers, and I was
glad that he loved me enough not to be afraid of the parson and the
gentleman.
"I've found it, sir, I do think," he said, his brown furrowed old
face shining with a yet lovelier light than that which shone from
the blossoms of the water-lilies, though, after what I had been
thinking about them, it was no wonder that they seemed both to mean
the same thing,--both to shine in the light of His countenance.
"Found what, Old Rogers?" I returned, raising myself, and laying my
hand in return on his shoulder.
"Why He was displeased with the disciples for not knowing--"
"What He meant about the leaven of the Pharisees," I interrupted.
"Yes, yes, of course. Tell me then."
"I will try, sir. It was all dark to me for days. For it appeared to
me very nat'ral that, seeing they had no bread in the locker, and
hearing tell of leaven which they weren't to eat, they should think
it had summat to do with their having none of any sort. But He
didn't seem to think it was right of them to fall into the blunder.
For why then? A man can't be always right. He may be like myself, a
foremast-man with no schoolin' but what the winds and the waves puts
into him, and I'm thinkin' those fishermen the Lord took to so much
were something o' that sort. 'How could they help it?' I said to
myself, sir. And from that I came to ask myself, 'Could they have
helped it?' If they couldn't, He wouldn't have been vexed with them.
Mayhap they ought to ha' been able to help it. And all at once, sir,
this mornin', it came to me. I don't know how, but it was give to
me, anyhow. And I flung down my rake, and I ran in to the old woman,
but she wasn't in the way, and so I went back to my work again. But
when I saw you, sir, a readin' upon the lilies o' the field,
leastways, the lilies o' the water, I couldn't help runnin' out to
tell you. Isn't it a satisfaction, sir, when yer dead reckonin' runs
ye right in betwixt the cheeks of the harbour? I see it all now."
"Well, I want to know, old Rogers. I'm not so old as you, and so I
MAY live longer; and every time I read that passage, I should like
to be able to say to myself, 'Old Rogers gave me this.'"
"I only hope I'm right, sir. It was just this: their heads was full
of their dinner because they didn't know where it was to come from.
But they ought to ha' known where it always come from. If their
hearts had been full of the dinner He gave the five thousand hungry
men and women and children, they wouldn't have been uncomfortable
about not having a loaf. And so they wouldn't have been set upon the
wrong tack when He spoke about the leaven of the Pharisees and
Sadducees; and they would have known in a moment what He meant. And
if I hadn't been too much of the same sort, I wouldn't have started
saying it was but reasonable to be in the doldrums because they were
at sea with no biscuit in the locker."
"You're right; you must be right, old Rogers. It's as plain as
possible," I cried, rejoiced at the old man's insight. "Thank you.
I'll preach about it to-morrow. I thought I had got my sermon in
Foxborough Wood, but I was mistaken: you had got it."
But I was mistaken again. I had not got my sermon yet.
I walked with him to his cottage and left him, after a greeting with
the "old woman." Passing then through the village, and seeing by the
light of her candle the form of Catherine Weir behind her counter, I
went in. I thought old Rogers's tobacco must be nearly gone, and I
might safely buy some more. Catherine's manner was much the same as
usual. But as she was weighing my purchase, she broke out all at
once:
"It's no use your preaching at me, Mr Walton. I cannot, I WILL not
forgive. I will do anything BUT forgive. And it's no use."
"It is not I that say it, Catherine. It is the Lord himself."
I saw no great use in protesting my innocence, yet I thought it
better to add--
"And I was not preaching AT you. I was preaching to you, as much as
to any one there, and no more."
Of this she took no notice, and I resumed:
"Just think of what HE says; not what I say."
"I can't help it. If He won't forgive me, I must go without it. I
can't forgive."
I saw that good and evil were fighting in her, and felt that no
words of mine could be of further avail at the moment. The words of
our Lord had laid hold of her; that was enough for this time. Nor
dared I ask her any questions. I had the feeling that it would hurt,
not help. All I could venture to say, was:
"I won't trouble you with talk, Catherine. Our Lord wants to talk to
you. It is not for me to interfere. But please to remember, if ever
you think I can serve you in any way, you have only to send for me."
She murmured a mechanical thanks, and handed me my parcel. I paid
for it, bade her good night, and left the shop.
"O Lord," I said in my heart, as I walked away, "what a labour Thou
hast with us all! Shall we ever, some day, be all, and quite, good
like Thee? Help me. Fill me with Thy light, that my work may all go
to bring about the gladness of Thy kingdom--the holy household of us
brothers and sisters--all Thy children."
And now I found that I wanted very much to see my friend Dr Duncan.
He received me with his stately cordiality, and a smile that went
farther than all his words of greeting.
"Come now, Mr Walton, I am just going to sit down to my dinner, and
you must join me. I think there will be enough for us both. There
is, I believe, a chicken a-piece for us, and we can make up with
cheese and a glass of--would you believe it?--my own father's port.
He was fond of port--the old man--though I never saw him with one
glass more aboard than the registered tonnage. He always sat light
on the water. Ah, dear me! I'm old myself now."
"But what am I to do with Mrs Pearson?" I said. "There's some
chef-d'oeuvre of hers waiting for me by this time. She always treats
me particularly well on Saturdays and Sundays."
"Ah! then, you must not stop with me. You will fare better at home."
"But I should much prefer stopping with you. Couldn't you send a
message for me?"
"To be sure. My boy will run with it at once."
Now, what is the use of writing all this? I do not know. Only that
even a tete-a-tete dinner with an old friend, now that I am an old
man myself, has such a pearly halo about it in the mists of the
past, that every little circumstance connected with it becomes
interesting, though it may be quite unworthy of record. So, kind
reader, let it stand.
We sat down to our dinner, so simple and so well-cooked that it was
just what I liked. I wanted very much to tell my friend what had
occurred in Catherine's shop, but I would not begin till we were
safe from interruption; and so we chatted away concerning many
things, he telling me about his seafaring life, and I telling him
some of the few remarkable things that had happened to me in the
course of my life-voyage. There is no man but has met with some
remarkable things that other people would like to know, and which
would seem stranger to them than they did at the time to the person
to whom they happened.
At length I brought our conversation round to my interview with
Catherine Weir.
"Can you understand," I said, "a woman finding it so hard to forgive
her own father?"
"Are you sure it is her father?" he returned.
"Surely she has not this feeling towards more than one. That she has
it towards her father, I know."
"I don't know," he answered. "I have known resentment preponderate
over every other feeling and passion--in the mind of a woman too. I
once heard of a good woman who cherished this feeling against a good
man because of some distrustful words he had once addressed to
herself. She had lived to a great age, and was expressing to her
clergyman her desire that God would take her away: she had been
waiting a long time. The clergyman--a very shrewd as well as devout
man, and not without a touch of humour, said: 'Perhaps God doesn't
mean to let you die till you've forgiven Mr---.' She was as if
struck with a flash of thought, sat silent during the rest of his
visit, and when the clergyman called the next day, he found Mr---
and her talking together very quietly over a cup of tea. And she
hadn't long to wait after that, I was told, but was gathered to her
fathers--or went home to her children, whichever is the better
phrase."
"I wish I had had your experience, Dr Duncan," I said.
"I have not had so much experience as a general practitioner,
because I have been so long at sea. But I am satisfied that until a
medical man knows a good deal more about his patient than most
medical men give themselves the trouble to find out, his
prescriptions will partake a good deal more than is necessary of
haphazard.--As to this question of obstinate resentment, I know one
case in which it is the ruling presence of a woman's life--the very
light that is in her is resentment. I think her possessed myself.
"Tell me something about her."
"I will. But even to you I will mention no names. Not that I have
her confidence in the least. But I think it is better not. I was
called to attend a lady at a house where I had never yet been."
"Was it in---?" I began, but checked myself. Dr Duncan smiled and
went on without remark. I could see that he told his story with
great care, lest, I thought, he should let anything slip that might
give a clue to the place or people.
"I was led up into an old-fashioned, richly-furnished room. A great
wood-fire burned on the hearth. The bed was surrounded with heavy
dark curtains, in which the shadowy remains of bright colours were
just visible. In the bed lay one of the loveliest young creatures I
had ever seen. And, one on each side, stood two of the most
dreadful-looking women I had ever beheld. Still as death, while I
examined my patient, they stood, with moveless faces, one as white
as the other. Only the eyes of both of them were alive. One was
evidently mistress, and the other servant. The latter looked more
self-contained than the former, but less determined and possibly
more cruel. That both could be unkind at least, was plain enough.
There was trouble and signs of inward conflict in the eyes of the
mistress. The maid gave no sign of any inside to her at all, but
stood watching her mistress. A child's toy was lying in a corner of
the room."
I may here interrupt my friend's story to tell my reader that I may
be mingling some of my own conclusions with what the good man told
me of his. For he will see well enough already that I had in a
moment attached his description to persons I knew, and, as it turned
out, correctly, though I could not be certain about it till the
story had advanced a little beyond this early stage of its progress.
"I found the lady very weak and very feverish--a quick feeble pulse,
now bounding, and now intermitting--and a restlessness in her eye
which I felt contained the secret of her disorder. She kept
glancing, as if involuntarily, towards the door, which would not
open for all her looking, and I heard her once murmur to herself
--for I was still quick of hearing then--'He won't come!' Perhaps I
only saw her lips move to those words--I cannot be sure, but I am
certain she said them in her heart. I prescribed for her as far as I
could venture, but begged a word with her mother. She went with me
into an adjoining room.
"'The lady is longing for something,' I said, not wishing to be so
definite as I could have been.
"The mother made no reply. I saw her lips shut yet closer than
before.
"'She is your daughter, is she not?'
"'Yes,'--very decidedly.
"'Could you not find out what she wishes?'
"'Perhaps I could guess.'
"'I do not think I can do her any good till she has what she wants.'
"'Is that your mode of prescribing, doctor?' she said, tartly.
"'Yes, certainly,' I answered--'in the present case. Is she
married?'
"'Yes.'
"'Has she any children?'
"'One daughter.'
"'Let her see her, then.'
"'She does not care to see her.'
"'Where is her husband?'
"'Excuse me, doctor; I did not send for you to ask questions, but to
give advice.'
"'And I came to ask questions, in order that I might give advice. Do
you think a human being is like a clock, that can be taken to
pieces, cleaned, and put together again?'
"'My daughter's condition is not a fit subject for jesting.'
"'Certainly not. Send for her husband, or the undertaker, whichever
you please,' I said, forgetting my manners and my temper together,
for I was more irritable then than I am now, and there was something
so repulsive about the woman, that I felt as if I was talking to an
evil creature that for her own ends, though what I could not tell,
was tormenting the dying lady.
"'I understood you were a GENTLEMAN--of experience and breeding.'
"'I am not in the question, madam. It is your daughter.'
"'She shall take your prescription.'
"'She must see her husband if it be possible.'
"'It is not possible.'
"'Why?'
"'I say it is not possible, and that is enough. Good morning.'
"I could say no more at that time. I called the next day. She was
just the same, only that I knew she wanted to speak to me, and dared
not, because of the presence of the two women. Her troubled eyes
seemed searching mine for pity and help, and I could not tell what
to do for her. There are, indeed, as some one says, strongholds of
injustice and wrong into which no law can enter to help.
"One afternoon, about a week after my first visit, I was sitting by
her bedside, wondering what could be done to get her out of the
clutches of these tormentors, who were, evidently to me, consuming
her in the slow fire of her own affections, when I heard a faint
noise, a rapid foot in the house so quiet before; heard doors open
and shut, then a dull sound of conflict of some sort. Presently a
quick step came up the oak-stair. The face of my patient flushed,
and her eyes gleamed as if her soul would come out of them. Weak as
she was she sat up in bed, almost without an effort, and the two
women darted from the room, one after the other.
"'My husband!' said the girl--for indeed she was little more in age,
turning her face, almost distorted with eagerness, towards me.
"'Yes, my dear,' I said, 'I know. But you must be as still as you
can, else you will be very ill. Do keep quiet.'
"'I will, I will,' she gasped, stuffing her pocket-handkerchief
actually into her mouth to prevent herself from screaming, as if
that was what would hurt her. 'But go to him. They will murder him.'
"That moment I heard a cry, and what sounded like an articulate
imprecation, but both from a woman's voice; and the next, a young
man--as fine a fellow as I ever saw--dressed like a game-keeper, but
evidently a gentleman, walked into the room with a quietness that
strangely contrasted with the dreadful paleness of his face and with
his disordered hair; while the two women followed, as red as he was
white, and evidently in fierce wrath from a fruitless struggle with
the powerful youth. He walked gently up to his wife, whose
outstretched arms and face followed his face as he came round the
bed to where she was at the other side, till arms, and face, and
head, fell into his embrace.
"I had gone to the mother.
"'Let us have no scene now,' I said, 'or her blood will be on your
head.'
"She took no notice of what I said, but stood silently glaring, not
gazing, at the pair. I feared an outburst, and had resolved, if it
came, to carry her at once from the room, which I was quite able to
do then, Mr Walton, though I don't look like it now. But in a moment
more the young man, becoming uneasy at the motionlessness of his
wife, lifted up her head, and glanced in her face. Seeing the look
of terror in his, I hastened to him, and lifting her from him, laid
her down--dead. Disease of the heart, I believe. The mother burst
into a shriek--not of horror, or grief, or remorse, but of deadly
hatred.
"'Look at your work!' she cried to him, as he stood gazing in stupor
on the face of the girl. 'You said she was yours, not mine; take
her. You may have her now you have killed her.'
"'He may have killed her; but you have MURDERED her, madam,' I said,
as I took the man by the arm, and led him away, yielding like a
child. But the moment I got him out of the house, he gave a groan,
and, breaking away from me, rushed down a road leading from the back
of the house towards the home-farm. I followed, but he had
disappeared. I went on; but before I could reach the farm, I heard
the gallop of a horse, and saw him tearing away at full speed along
the London road. I never heard more of him, or of the story. Some
women can be secret enough, I assure you."
I need not follow the rest of our conversation. I could hardly doubt
whose was the story I had heard. It threw a light upon several
things about which I had been perplexed. What a horror of darkness
seemed to hang over that family! What deeds of wickedness! But the
reason was clear: the horror came from within; selfishness, and
fierceness of temper were its source--no unhappy DOOM. The worship
of one's own will fumes out around the being an atmosphere of evil,
an altogether abnormal condition of the moral firmament, out of
which will break the very flames of hell. The consciousness of birth
and of breeding, instead of stirring up to deeds of gentleness and
"high emprise," becomes then but an incentive to violence and
cruelty; and things which seem as if they could not happen in a
civilized country and a polished age, are proved as possible as ever
where the heart is unloving, the feelings unrefined, self the
centre, and God nowhere in the man or woman's vision. The terrible
things that one reads in old histories, or in modern newspapers,
were done by human beings, not by demons.
I did not let my friend know that I knew all that he concealed; but
I may as well tell my reader now, what I could not have told him
then. I know all the story now, and, as no better place will come,
as far as I can see, I will tell it at once, and briefly.
Dorothy--a wonderful name, THE GIFT OF GOD, to be so treated, faring
in this, however, like many other of God's gifts--Dorothy Oldcastle
was the eldest daughter of Jeremy and Sibyl Oldcastle, and the
sister therefore of Ethelwyn. Her father, who was an easy-going man,
entirely under the dominion of his wife, died when she was about
fifteen, and her mother sent her to school, with especial
recommendation to the care of a clergyman in the neighbourhood, whom
Mrs Oldcastle knew; for, somehow--and the fact is not so unusual as
to justify especial inquiry here--though she paid no attention to
what our Lord or His apostles said, nor indeed seemed to care to ask
herself if what she did was right, or what she accepted (I cannot
say BELIEVED) was true, she had yet a certain (to me all but
incomprehensible) leaning to the clergy. I think it belongs to the
same kind of superstition which many of our own day are turning to.
Offered the Spirit of God for the asking, offered it by the Lord
himself, in the misery of their unbelief they betake themselves to
necromancy instead, and raise the dead to ask their advice, AND
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