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THE AVENUE.
It will not appear strange that I should linger so long upon the
first few months of my association with a people who, now that I am
an old man, look to me like my own children. For those who were then
older than myself are now "old dwellers in those high countries"
where there is no age, only wisdom; and I shall soon go to them. How
glad I shall be to see my Old Rogers again, who, as he taught me
upon earth, will teach me yet niore, I thank my God, in heaven! But
I must not let the reverie which' always gathers about the
feather-end of my pen the moment I take it up to write these
recollections, interfere with the work before me.
After this Christmas-tide, I found myself in closer relationship to
my parishioners. No doubt I was always in danger of giving unknown
offence to those who were ready to fancy that I neglected them, and
did not distribute my FAVOURS equally. But as I never took offence,
the offence I gave was easily got rid of. A clergyman, of all men,
should be slow to take offence, for if he does, he will never be
free or strong to reprove sin. And it must sometimes be his duty to
speak severely to those, especially the good, who are turning their
faces the wrong way. It is of little use to reprove the sinner, but
it is worth while sometimes to reprove those who have a regard for
righteousness, however imperfect they may be. "Reprove not a
scorner, lest he hate thee; rebuke a wise man, and he will love
thee."
But I took great care about INTERFERING; though I would interfere
upon request--not always, however, upon the side whence the request
came, and more seldom still upon either side. The clergyman must
never be a partisan. When our Lord was requested to act as umpire
between two brothers, He refused. But He spoke and said, "Take heed,
and beware of covetousness." Now, though the best of men is unworthy
to loose the latchet of His shoe, yet the servant must be as his
Master. Ah me! while I write it, I remember that the sinful woman
might yet do as she would with His sacred feet. I bethink me: Desert
may not touch His shoe-tie: Love may kiss His feet.
I visited, of course, at the Hall, as at the farmhouses in the
country, and the cottages in the village. I did not come to like Mrs
Oldcastle better. And there was one woman in the house whom I
disliked still more: that Sarah whom Judy had called in my hearing a
white wolf. Her face was yet whiter than that of her mistress, only
it was not smooth like hers; for its whiteness came apparently from
the small-pox, which had so thickened the skin that no blood, if she
had any, could shine through. I seldom saw her--only, indeed, caught
a glimpse of her now and then as I passed through the house.
Nor did I make much progress with Mr Stoddart. He had always
something friendly to say, and often some theosophical theory to
bring forward, which, I must add, never seemed to me to mean, or, at
least, to reveal, anything. He was a great reader of mystical books,
and yet the man's nature seemed cold. It was sunshiny, but not
sunny. His intellect was rather a lambent flame than a genial
warmth. He could make things, but he could not grow anything. And
when I came to see that he had had more than any one else to do with
the education of Miss Oldcastle, I understood her a little better,
and saw that her so-called education had been in a great measure
repression--of a negative sort, no doubt, but not therefore the less
mischievous. For to teach speculation instead of devotion, mysticism
instead of love, word instead of deed, is surely ruinously
repressive to the nature that is meant for sunbright activity both
of heart and hand. My chief perplexity continued to be how he could
play the organ as he did.
My reader will think that I am always coming round to Miss
Oldcastle; but if he does, I cannot help it. I began, I say, to
understand her a little better. She seemed to me always like one
walking in a "watery sunbeam," without knowing that it was but the
wintry pledge of a summer sun at hand. She took it, or was trying to
take it, for THE sunlight; trying to make herself feel all the glory
people said was in the light, instead of making haste towards the
perfect day. I found afterwards that several things had combined to
bring about this condition; and I know she will forgive me, should
I, for the sake of others, endeavour to make it understood by and
by.
I have not much more to tell my readers about this winter. As but of
a whole changeful season only one day, or, it may be, but one moment
in which the time seemed to burst into its own blossom, will cling
to the memory; so of the various interviews with my friends, and the
whole flow of the current of my life, during that winter, nothing
more of nature or human nature occurs to me worth recording. I will
pass on to the summer season as rapidly as I may, though the early
spring will detain me with the relation of just a single incident.
I was on my way to the Hall to see Mr Stoddart. I wanted to ask him
whether something could not be done beyond his exquisite playing to
rouse the sense of music in my people. I believed that nothing helps
you so much to feel as the taking of what share may, from the nature
of the thing, be possible to you; because, for one reason, in order
to feel, it is necessary that the mind should rest upon the matter,
whatever it is. The poorest success, provided the attempt has been
genuine, will enable one to enter into any art ten times better than
before. Now I had, I confess, little hope of moving Mr Stoddart in
the matter; but if I should succeed, I thought it would do himself
more good to mingle with his humble fellows in the attempt to do
them a trifle of good, than the opening of any number of
intellectual windows towards the circumambient truth.
It was just beginning to grow dusk. The wind was blustering in gusts
among the trees, swaying them suddenly and fiercely like a keen
passion, now sweeping them all one way as if the multitude of tops
would break loose and rush away like a wild river, and now subsiding
as suddenly, and allowing them to recover themselves and stand
upright, with tones and motions of indignant expostulation. There
was just one cold bar of light in the west, and the east was one
gray mass, while overhead the stars were twinkling. The grass and
all the ground about the trees were very wet. The time seemed more
dreary somehow than the winter. Rigour was past, and tenderness had
not come. For the wind was cold without being keen, and bursting
from the trees every now and then with a roar as of a sea breaking
on distant sands, whirled about me as if it wanted me to go and join
in its fierce play.
Suddenly I saw, to my amazement, in a walk that ran alongside of the
avenue, Miss Oldcastle struggling against the wind, which blew
straight down the path upon her. The cause of my amazement was
twofold. First, I had supposed her with her mother in London,
whither their journeys had been not infrequent since Christmas-tide;
and next--why should she be fighting with the wind, so far from the
house, with only a shawl drawn over her head?
The reader may wonder how I should know her in this attire in the
dusk, and where there was not the smallest probability of finding
her. Suffice it to say that I did recognise her at once; and
passing between two great tree-trunks, and through an opening in
some under-wood, was by her side in a moment. But the noise of the
wind had prevented her from hearing my approach, and when I uttered
her name, she started violently, and, turning, drew herself up very
haughtily, in part, I presume, to hide her tremor.--She was always a
little haughty with me, I must acknowledge. Could there have been
anything in my address, however unconscious of it I was, that made
her fear I was ready to become intrusive? Or might it not be that,
hearing of my footing with my parishioners generally, she was
prepared to resent any assumption of clerical familiarity with her;
and so, in my behaviour, any poor innocent "bush was supposed a
bear." For I need not tell my reader that nothing was farther from
my intention, even with the lowliest of my flock, than to presume
upon my position as clergyman. I think they all GAVE me the relation
I occupied towards them personally.--But I had never seen her look
so haughty as now. If I had been watching her very thoughts she
could hardly have looked more indignant.
"I beg your pardon," I said, distressed; "I have startled you
dreadfully."
"Not in the least," she replied, but without moving, and still with
a curve in her form like the neck of a frayed horse.
I thought it better to leave apology, which was evidently
disagreeable to her, and speak of indifferent things.
"I was on my way to call on Mr Stoddart," I said.
"You will find him at home, I believe."
"I fancied you and Mrs Oldcastle in London."
"We returned yesterday."
Still she stood as before. I made a movement in the direction of the
house. She seemed as if she would walk in the opposite direction.
"May I not walk with you to the house?"
"I am not going in just yet."
"Are you protected enough for sucn a night?"
"I enjoy the wind."
I bowed and walked on; for what else could I do?
I cannot say that I enjoyed leaving her behind me in the gathering
dark, the wind blowing her about with no more reverence than if she
had been a bush of privet. Nor was it with a light heart that I bore
her repulse as I slowly climbed the hill to the house. However, a
little personal mortification is wholesome--though I cannot say
either that I derived much consolation from the reflection.
Sarah opened the glass door, her black, glossy, restless eyes
looking out of her white face from under gray eyebrows. I knew at
once by her look beyond me that she had expected to find me
accompanied by her young mistress. I did not volunteer any
information, as my reader may suppose.
I found, as I had feared, that, although Mr. Stoddart seemed to
listen with some interest to what I said, I could not bring him to
the point of making any practical suggestion, or of responding to
one made by me; and I left him with the conviction that he would do
nothing to help me. Yet during the whole of our interview he had not
opposed a single word I said. He was like clay too much softened
with water to keep the form into which it has been modelled. He
would take SOME kind of form easily, and lose it yet more easily. I
did not show all my dissatisfaction, however, for that would only
have estranged us; and it is not required, nay, it may be wrong, to
show all you feel or think: what is required of us is, not to show
what we do not feel or think; for that is to be false.
I left the house in a gloomy mood. I know I ought to have looked up
to God and said: "These things do not reach to Thee, my Father. Thou
art ever the same; and I rise above my small as well as my great
troubles by remembering Thy peace, and Thy unchangeable Godhood to
me and all Thy creatures." But I did not come to myself all at once.
The thought of God had not come, though it was pretty sure to come
before I got home. I was brooding over the littleness of all I could
do; and feeling that sickness which sometimes will overtake a man in
the midst of the work he likes best, when the unpleasant parts of it
crowd upon him, and his own efforts, especially those made from the
will without sustaining impulse, come back upon him with a feeling
of unreality, decay, and bitterness, as if he had been unnatural and
untrue, and putting himself in false relations by false efforts for
good. I know this all came from selfishness--thinking about myself
instead of about God and my neighbour. But so it was.--And so I was
walking down the avenue, where it was now very dark, with my head
bent to the ground, when I in my turn started at the sound of a
woman's voice, and looking up, saw by the starlight the dim form of
Miss Oldcastle standing before me.
She spoke first.
"Mr Walton, I was very rude to you. I beg your pardon."
"Indeed, I did not think so. I only thought what a blundering
awkward fellow I was to startle you as I did. You have to forgive
me."
"I fancy"--and here I know she smiled, though how I know I do not
know--"I fancy I have made that even," she said, pleasantly; "for
you must confess I startled you now."
"You did; but it was in a very different way. I annoyed you with my
rudeness. You only scattered a swarm of bats that kept flapping
their skinny wings in my face."
"What do you mean? There are no bats at this time of the year."
"Not outside. In 'winter and rough weather' they creep inside, you
know."
"Ah! I ought to understand you. But I did not think you were ever
like that. I thought you were too good."
"I wish I were. I hope to be some day. I am not yet, anyhow. And I
thank you for driving the bats away in the meantime."
"You make me the more ashamed of myself to think that perhaps my
rudeness had a share in bringing them.--Yours is no doubt thankless
labour sometimes."
She seemed to make the last remark just to prevent the conversation
from returning to her as its subject. And now all the bright
portions of my work came up before me.
"You are quite mistaken in that, Miss Oldcastle. On the contrary,
the thanks I get are far more than commensurate with the labour. Of
course one meets with a disappointment sometimes, but that is only
when they don't know what you mean. And how should they know what
you mean till they are different themselves?--You remember what
Wordsworth says on this very subject in his poem of Simon Lee?"--
"I do not know anything of Wordsworth."
"'I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still
returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me
mourning.'"
"I do not quite see what he means."
"May I recommend you to think about it? You will be sure to find it
out for yourself, and that will be ten times more satisfactory than
if I were to explain it to you. And, besides, you will never forget
it, if you do."
"Will you repeat the lines again?"
I did so.
All this time the wind had been still. Now it rose with a slow gush
in the trees. Was it fancy? Or, as the wind moved the shrubbery, did
I see a white face? And could it be the White Wolf, as Judy called
her?
I spoke aloud:
"But it is cruel to keep you standing here in such a night. You must
be a real lover of nature to walk in the dark wind."
"I like it. Good night."
So we parted. I gazed into the darkness after her, though she
disappeared at the distance of a yard or two; and would have stood
longer had I not still suspected the proximity of Judy's Wolf, which
made me turn and go home, regardless now of Mr Stoddart's
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