|
Prev
| Next
| Contents
MY PUPIL.
Although I do happen to know how Miss Oldcastle fared that night
after I left her, the painful record is not essential to my story.
Besides, I have hitherto recorded only those things "quorum pars
magna"--or minima, as the case may be--"fui." There is one
exception, old Weir's story, for the introduction of which my reader
cannot yet see the artistic reason. For whether a story be real in
fact, or only real in meaning, there must always be an idea, or
artistic model in the brain, after which it is fashioned: in the
latter case one of invention, in the former case one of choice.
In the middle of the following week I was returning from a visit I
had paid to Tomkins and his wife, when I met, in the only street of
the village, my good and honoured friend Dr Duncan. Of course I saw
him often--and I beg my reader to remember that this is no diary,
but only a gathering together of some of the more remarkable facts
of my history, admitting of being ideally grouped--but this time I
recall distinctly because the interview bore upon many things.
"Well, Dr Duncan," I said, "busy as usual fighting the devil."
"Ah, my dear Mr Walton," returned the doctor--and a kind word from
him went a long way into my heart--"I know what you mean. You fight
the devil from the inside, and I fight him from the outside. My
chance is a poor one."
"It would be, perhaps, if you were confined to outside remedies. But
what an opportunity your profession gives you of attacking the enemy
from the inside as well! And you have this advantage over us, that
no man can say it belongs to your profession to say such things, and
THEREFORE disregard them."
"Ah, Mr Walton, I have too great a respect for your profession to
dare to interfere with it. The doctor in 'Macbeth,' you know, could
'not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart.'"
"What a memory you have! But you don't think I can do that any more
than you?"
"You know the best medicine to give, anyhow. I wish I always did.
But you see we have no theriaca now."
"Well, we have. For the Lord says, 'Come unto me, and I will give
you rest.'"
"There! I told you! That will meet all diseases."
"Strangely now, there comes into my mind a line of Chaucer, with
which I will make a small return for your quotation from
Shakespeare; you have mentioned theriaca; and I, without thinking of
this line, quoted our Lord's words. Chaucer brings the two together,
for the word triacle is merely a corruption of theriaca, the
unfailing cure for every thing.
'Crist, which that is to every harm triacle.'"
"That is delightful: I thank you. And that is in Chaucer?"
"Yes. In the Man-of-Law's Tale."
"Shall I tell you how I was able to quote so correctly from
Shakespeare? I have just come from referring to the passage. And I
mention that because I want to tell you what made me think of the
passage. I had been to see poor Catherine Weir. I think she is not
long for this world. She has a bad cough, and I fear her lungs are
going."
"I am concerned to hear that. I considered her very delicate, and am
not surprised. But I wish, I do wish, I had got a little hold of her
before, that I might be of some use to her now. Is she in immediate
danger, do you think?"
"No. I do not think so. But I have no expectation of her recovery.
Very likely she will just live through the winter and die in the
spring. Those patients so often go as the flowers come! All her
coughing, poor woman, will not cleanse her stuffed bosom. The
perilous stuff weighs on her heart, as Shakespeare says, as well as
on her lungs."
"Ah, dear! What is it, doctor, that weighs upon her heart? Is it
shame, or what is it? for she is so uncommunicative that I hardly
know anything at all about her yet."
"I cannot tell. She has the faculty of silence."
"But do not think I complain that she has not made me her confessor.
I only mean that if she would talk at all, one would have a chance
of knowing something of the state of her mind, and so might give her
some help."
"Perhaps she will break down all at once, and open her mind to you.
I have not told her she is dying. I think a medical man ought at
least to be quite sure before he dares to say such a thing. I have
known a long life injured, to human view at least, by the medical
verdict in youth of ever imminent death."
"Certainly one has no right to say what God is going to do with any
one till he knows it beyond a doubt. Illness has its own peculiar
mission, independent of any association with coming death, and may
often work better when mingled with the hope of life. I mean we must
take care of presumption when we measure God's plans by our
theories. But could you not suggest something, Doctor Duncan, to
guide me in trying to do my duty by her?"
"I cannot. You see you don't know what she is THINKING; and till you
know that, I presume you will agree with me that all is an aim in
the dark. How can I prescribe, without SOME diagnosis? It is just
one of those few cases in which one would like to have the authority
of the Catholic priests to urge confession with. I do not think
anything will save her life, as we say, but you have taught some of
us to think of the life that belongs to the spirit as THE life; and
I do believe confession would do everything for that."
"Yes, if made to God. But I will grant that communication of one's
sorrows or even sins to a wise brother of mankind may help to a
deeper confession to the Father in heaven. But I have no wish for
AUTHORITY in the matter. Let us see whether the Spirit of God
working in her may not be quite as powerful for a final illumination
of her being as the fiat confessio of a priest. I have no confidence
in FORCING in the moral or spiritual garden. A hothouse development
must necessarily be a sickly one, rendering the plant unfit for the
normal life of the open air. Wait. We must not hurry things. She
will perhaps come to me of herself before long. But I will call and
inquire after her."
We parted; and I went at once to Catherine Weir's shop. She received
me much as usual, which was hardly to be called receiving at all.
Perhaps there was a doubtful shadow, not of more cordiality, but of
less repulsion in it. Her eyes were full of a stony brilliance, and
the flame of the fire that was consuming her glowed upon her cheeks
more brightly, I thought, than ever; but that might be fancy,
occasioned by what the doctor had said about her. Her hand trembled,
but her demeanour was perfectly calm.
"I am sorry to hear you are complaining, Miss Weir," I said.
"I suppose Dr Duncan told you so, sir. But I am quite well. I did
not send for him. He called of himself, and wanted to persuade me I
was ill."
I understood that she felt injured by his interference.
"You should attend to his advice, though. He is a prudent man, and
not in the least given to alarming people without cause."
She returned no answer. So I tried another subject.
"What a fine fellow your brother is!"
"Yes; he grows very much."
"Has your father found another place for him yet?"
"I don't know. My father never tells me about any of his doings."
"But don't you go and talk to him, sometimes?"
"No. He does not care to see me."
"I am going there now: will you come with me?"
"Thank you. I never go where I am not wanted."
"But it is not right that father and daughter should live as you do.
Suppose he may not have been so kind to you as he ought, you should
not cherish resentment against him for it. That only makes matters
worse, you know."
"I never said to human being that he had been unkind to me."
"And yet you let every person in the village know it."
"How?"
Her eye had no longer the stony glitter. It flashed now.
"You are never seen together. You scarcely speak when you meet.
Neither of you crosses the other's threshold."
"It is not my fault."
"It is not ALL your fault, I know. But do you think you can go to a
heaven at last where you will be able to keep apart from each other,
he in his house and you in your house, without any sign that it was
through this father on earth that you were born into the world which
the Father in heaven redeemed by the gift of His own Son?"
She was silent; and, after a pause, I went on.
"I believe, in my heart, that you love your father. I could not
believe otherwise of you. And you will never be happy till you have
made it up with him. Have you done him no wrong?"
At these words, her face turned white--with anger, I could see--all
but those spots on her cheek-bones, which shone out in dreadful
contrast to the deathly paleness of the rest of her face. Then the
returning blood surged violently from her heart, and the red spots
were lost in one crimson glow. She opened her lips to speak, but
apparently changing her mind, turned and walked haughtily out of the
shop and closed the door behind her.
I waited, hoping she would recover herself and return; but, after
ten minutes had passed, I thought it better to go away.
As I had told her, I was going to her father's shop.
There I was received very differently. There was a certain softness
in the manner of the carpenter which I had not observed before, with
the same heartiness in the shake of his hand which had accompanied
my last leave-taking. I had purposely allowed ten days to elapse
before I called again, to give time for the unpleasant feelings
associated with my interference to vanish. And now I had something
in my mind about young Tom.
"Have you got anything for your boy yet, Thomas?"
"Not yet, sir. There's time enough. I don't want to part with him
just yet. There he is, taking his turn at what's going. Tom!"
And from the farther end of the large shop, where I had not observed
him, now approached young Tom, in a canvas jacket, looking quite
like a workman.
"Well, Tom, I am glad to find you can turn your hand to anything."
"I must be a stupid, sir, if I couldn't handle my father's tools,"
returned the lad.
"I don't know that quite. I am not just prepared to admit it for my
own sake. My father is a lawyer, and I never could read a chapter in
one of his books--his tools, you know."
"Perhaps you never tried, sir."
"Indeed, I did; and no doubt I could have done it if I had made up
my mind to it. But I never felt inclined to finish the page. And
that reminds me why I called to-day. Thomas, I know that lad of
yours is fond of reading. Can you spare him from his work for an
hour or so before breakfast?"
"To-morrow, sir?"
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," I answered; "and there's
Shakespeare for you."
"Of course, sir, whatever you wish," said Thomas, with a perplexed
look, in which pleasure seemed to long for confirmation, and to be,
till that came, afraid to put its "native semblance on."
"I want to give him some direction in his reading. When a man is
fond of any tools, and can use them, it is worth while showing him
how to use them better."
"Oh, thank you, sir!" exclaimed Tom, his face beaming with delight.
"That IS kind of you, sir! Tom, you're a made man!" cried the
father.
"So," I went on, "if you will let him come to me for an hour every
morning, till he gets another place, say from eight to nine, I will
see what I can do for him."
Tom's face was as red with delight as his sister's had been with
anger. And I left the shop somewhat consoled for the pain I had
given Catherine, which grieved me without making me sorry that I had
occasioned it.
I had intended to try to do something from the father's side towards
a reconciliation with his daughter. But no sooner had I made up my
proposal for Tom than I saw I had blocked up my own way towards my
more important end. For I could not bear to seem to offer to bribe
him even to allow me to do him good. Nor would he see that it was
for his good and his daughter's--not at first. The first impression
would be that I had a PROFESSIONAL end to gain, that the reconciling
of father and daughter was a sort of parish business of mine, and
that I had smoothed the way to it by offering a gift--an
intellectual one, true, but not, therefore, the less a gift in the
eyes of Thomas, who had a great respect for books. This was just
what would irritate such a man, and I resolved to say nothing about
it, but bide my time.
When Tom came, I asked him if he had read any of Wordsworth. For I
always give people what I like myself, because that must be wherein
I can best help them. I was anxious, too, to find out what he was
capable of. And for this, anything that has more than a surface
meaning will do. I had no doubt about the lad's intellect, and now I
wanted to see what there was deeper than the intellect in him.
He said he had not.
I therefore chose one of Wordsworth's sonnets, not one of his best
by any means, but suitable for my purpose--the one entitled,
"Composed during a Storm." This I gave him to read, telling him to
let me know when he considered that he had mastered the meaning of
it, and sat down to my own studies. I remember I was then reading
the Anglo-Saxon Gospels. I think it was fully half-an-hour before
Tom rose and gently approached my place. I had not been uneasy about
the experiment after ten minutes had passed, and after that time was
doubled, I felt certain of some measure of success. This may
possibly puzzle my reader; but I will explain. It was clear that Tom
did not understand the sonnet at first; and I was not in the least
certain that he would come to understand it by any exertion of his
intellect, without further experience. But what I was delighted to
be made sure of was that Tom at least knew that he did not know. For
that is the very next step to knowing. Indeed, it may be said to be
a more valuable gift than the other, being of general application;
for some quick people will understand many things very easily, but
when they come to a thing that is beyond their present reach, will
fancy they see a meaning in it, or invent one, or even--which is far
worse--pronounce it nonsense; and, indeed, show themselves capable
of any device for getting out of the difficulty, except seeing and
confessing to themselves that they are not able to understand it.
Possibly this sonnet might be beyond Tom now, but, at least, there
was great hope that he saw, or believed, that there must be
something beyond him in it. I only hoped that he would not fall upon
some wrong interpretation, seeing he was brooding over it so long.
"Well, Tom," I said, "have you made it out?"
"I can't say I have, sir. I'm afraid I'm very stupid, for I've tried
hard. I must just ask you to tell me what it means. But I must tell
you one thing, sir: every time I read it over--twenty times, I
daresay--I thought I was lying on my mother's grave, as I lay that
terrible night; and then at the end there you were standing over me
and saying, 'Can I do anything to help you?'"
I was struck with astonishment. For here, in a wonderful manner, I
saw the imagination outrunning the intellect, and manifesting to the
heart what the brain could not yet understand. It indicated
undeveloped gifts of a far higher nature than those belonging to the
mere power of understanding alone. For there was a hidden sympathy
of the deepest kind between the life experience of the lad, and the
embodiment of such life experience on the part of the poet. But he
went on:
"I am sure, sir, I ought to have been at my prayers, then, but I
wasn't; so I didn't deserve you to come. But don't you think God is
sometimes better to us than we deserve?"
"He is just everything to us, Tom; and we don't and can't deserve
anything. Now I will try to explain the sonnet to you."
I had always had an impulse to teach; not for the teaching's sake,
for that, regarded as the attempt to fill skulls with knowledge, had
always been to me a desolate dreariness; but the moment I saw a sign
of hunger, an indication of readiness to receive, I was invariably
seized with a kind of passion for giving. I now proceeded to explain
the sonnet. Having done so, nearly as well as I could, Tom said:
"It is very strange, sir; but now that I have heard you say what the
poem means, I feel as if I had known it all the time, though I could
not say it."
Here at least was no common mind. The reader will not be surprised
to hear that the hour before breakfast extended into two hours after
breakfast as well. Nor did this take up too much of my time, for the
lad was capable of doing a great deal for himself under the sense of
help at hand. His father, so far from making any objection to the
arrangement, was delighted with it. Nor do I believe that the lad
did less work in the shop for it: I learned that he worked regularly
till eight o'clock every night.
Now the good of the arrangement was this: I had the lad fresh in the
morning, clear-headed, with no mists from the valley of labour to
cloud the heights of understanding. From the exercise of the mind it
was a pleasant and relieving change to turn to bodily exertion. I am
certain that he both thought and worked better, because he both
thought and worked. Every literary man ought to be MECHANICAL (to
use a Shakespearean word) as well. But it would have been quite a
different matter, if he had come to me after the labour of the day.
He would not then have been able to think nearly so well. But
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|