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THE COFFIN.
On the way back, my thoughts were still occupied with the woman I
had seen in the little shop. The old man-of-war's man was probably
the nobler being of the two; and if I had had to choose between
them, I should no doubt have chosen him. But I had not to choose
between them; I had only to think about them; and I thought a great
deal more about the one I could not understand than the one I could
understand. For Old Rogers wanted little help from me; whereas the
other was evidently a soul in pain, and therefore belonged to me in
peculiar right of my office; while the readiest way in which I could
justify to myself the possession of that office was to make it a
shepherding of the sheep. So I resolved to find out what I could
about her, as one having a right to know, that I might see whether I
could not help her. From herself it was evident that her secret, if
she had one, was not to be easily gained; but even the common
reports of the village would be some enlightenment to the darkness I
was in about her.
As I went again through the village, I observed a narrow lane
striking off to the left, and resolved to explore in that direction.
It led up to one side of the large house of which I have already
spoken. As I came near, I smelt what has been to me always a
delightful smell--that of fresh deals under the hands of the
carpenter. In the scent of those boards of pine is enclosed all the
idea the tree could gather of the world of forest where it was
reared. It speaks of many wild and bright but chiefly clean and
rather cold things. If I were idling, it would draw me to it across
many fields.--Turning a corner, I heard the sound of a saw. And this
sound drew me yet more. For a carpenter's shop was the delight of my
boyhood; and after I began to read the history of our Lord with
something of that sense of reality with which we read other
histories, and which, I am sorry to think, so much of the well-meant
instruction we receive in our youth tends to destroy, my feeling
about such a workshop grew stronger and stronger, till at last I
never could go near enough to see the shavings lying on the floor of
one, without a spiritual sensation such as I have in entering an old
church; which sensation, ever since having been admitted on the
usual conditions to a Mohammedan mosque, urges me to pull off, not
only my hat, but my shoes likewise. And the feeling has grown upon
me, till now it seems at times as if the only cure in the world for
social pride would be to go for five silent minutes into a
carpenter's shop. How one can think of himself as above his
neighbours, within sight, sound, or smell of one, I fear I am
getting almost unable to imagine, and one ought not to get out of
sympathy with the wrong. Only as I am growing old now, it does not
matter so much, for I daresay my time will not be very long.
So I drew near to the shop, feeling as if the Lord might be at work
there at one of the benches. And when I reached the door, there was
my pale-faced hearer of the Sunday afternoon, sawing a board for a
coffin-lid.
As my shadow fell across and darkened his work, he lifted his head
and saw me.
I could not altogether understand the expression of his countenance
as he stood upright from his labour and touched his old hat with
rather a proud than a courteous gesture. And I could not believe
that he was glad to see me, although he laid down his saw and
advanced to the door. It was the gentleman in him, not the man, that
sought to make me welcome, hardly caring whether I saw through the
ceremony or not. True, there was a smile on his lips, but the smile
of a man who cherishes a secret grudge; of one who does not
altogether dislike you, but who has a claim upon you--say, for an
apology, of which claim he doubts whether you know the existence. So
the smile seemed tightened, and stopped just when it got half-way to
its width, and was about to become hearty and begin to shine.
"May I come in?" I said.
"Come in, sir," he answered.
"I am glad I have happened to come upon you by accident," I said.
He smiled as if he did not quite believe in the accident, and
considered it a part of the play between us that I should pretend
it. I hastened to add--
"I was wandering about the place, making some acquaintance with it,
and with my friends in it, when I came upon you quite unexpectedly.
You know I saw you in church on Sunday afternoon."
"I know you saw me, sir," he answered, with a motion as if to return
to his work; "but, to tell the truth, I don't go to church very
often."
I did not quite know whether to take this as proceeding from an
honest fear of being misunderstood, or from a sense of being in
general superior to all that sort of thing. But I felt that it would
be of no good to pursue the inquiry directly. I looked therefore for
something to say.
"Ah! your work is not always a pleasant one," I said, associating
the feelings of which I have already spoken with the facts before
me, and looking at the coffin, the lower part of which stood nearly
finished upon trestles on the floor.
"Well, there are unpleasant things in all trades," he answered. "But
it does not matter," he added, with an increase of bitterness in his
smile.
"I didn't mean," I said, "that the work was unpleasant--only sad.
It must always be painful to make a coffin."
"A joiner gets used to it, sir, as you do to the funeral service.
But, for my part, I don't see why it should be considered so unhappy
for a man to be buried. This isn't such a good job, after all, this
world, sir, you must allow."
"Neither is that coffin," said I, as if by a sudden inspiration.
The man seemed taken aback, as Old Rogers might have said. He looked
at the coffin and then looked at me.
"Well, sir," he said, after a short pause, which no doubt seemed
longer both to him and to me than it would have seemed to any third
person, "I don't see anything amiss with the coffin. I don't say
it'll last till doomsday, as the gravedigger says to Hamlet, because
I don't know so much about doomsday as some people pretend to; but
you see, sir, it's not finished yet."
"Thank you," I said; "that's just what I meant. You thought I was
hasty in my judgment of your coffin; whereas I only said of it
knowingly what you said of the world thoughtlessly. How do you know
that the world is finished anymore than your coffin? And how dare
you then say that it is a bad job?"
The same respectfully scornful smile passed over his face, as much
as to say, "Ah! it's your trade to talk that way, so I must not be
too hard upon you."
"At any rate, sir," he said, "whoever made it has taken long enough
about it, a person would think, to finish anything he ever meant to
finish."
"One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day," I said.
"That's supposing," he answered, "that the Lord did make the world.
For my part, I am half of a mind that the Lord didn't make it at
all."
"I am very glad to hear you say so," I answered.
Hereupon I found that we had changed places a little. He looked up
at me. The smile of superiority was no longer there, and a puzzled
questioning, which might indicate either "Who would have expected
that from you?" or, "What can he mean?" or both at once, had taken
its place. I, for my part, knew that on the scale of the man's
judgment I had risen nearer to his own level. As he said nothing,
however, and I was in danger of being misunderstood, I proceeded at
once.
"Of course it seems to me better that you should not believe God had
done a thing, than that you should believe He had not done it well!"
"Ah! I see, sir. Then you will allow there is some room for doubting
whether He made the world at all?"
"Yes; for I do not think an honest man, as you seem to me to be,
would be able to doubt without any room whatever. That would be only
for a fool. But it is just possible, as we are not perfectly good
ourselves--you'll allow that, won't you?"
"That I will, sir; God knows."
"Well, I say--as we're not quite good ourselves, it's just possible
that things may be too good for us to do them the justice of
believing in them."
"But there are things, you must allow, so plainly wrong!"
"So much so, both in the world and in myself, that it would be to me
torturing despair to believe that God did not make the world; for
then, how would it ever be put right? Therefore I prefer the theory
that He has not done making it yet."
"But wouldn't you say, sir, that God might have managed it without
so many slips in the making as your way would suppose? I should
think myself a bad workman if I worked after that fashion."
"I do not believe that there are any slips. You know you are making
a coffin; but are you sure you know what God is making of the
world?"
"That I can't tell, of course, nor anybody else."
"Then you can't say that what looks like a slip is really a slip,
either in the design or in the workmanship. You do not know what end
He has in view; and you may find some day that those slips were just
the straight road to that very end."
"Ah! maybe. But you can't be sure of it, you see."
"Perhaps not, in the way you mean; but sure enough, for all that, to
try it upon life--to order my way by it, and so find that it works
well. And I find that it explains everything that comes near it. You
know that no engineer would be satisfied with his engine on paper,
nor with any proof whatever except seeing how it will go."
He made no reply.
It is a principle of mine never to push anything over the edge. When
I am successful, in any argument, my one dread is of humiliating my
opponent. Indeed I cannot bear it. It humiliates me. And if you want
him to think about anything, you must leave him room, and not give
him such associations with the question that the very idea of it
will be painful and irritating to him. Let him have a hand in the
convincing of himself. I have been surprised sometimes to see my own
arguments come up fresh and green, when I thought the fowls of the
air had devoured them up. When a man reasons for victory and not for
the truth in the other soul, he is sure of just one ally, the same
that Faust had in fighting Gretchen's brother--that is, the Devil.
But God and good men are against him. So I never follow up a victory
of that kind, for, as I said, the defeat of the intellect is not the
object in fighting with the sword of the Spirit, but the acceptance
of the heart. In this case, therefore, I drew back.
"May I ask for whom you are making that coffin?"
"For a sister of my own, sir."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"There's no occasion. I can't say I'm sorry, though she was one of
the best women I ever knew."
"Why are you not sorry, then? Life's a good thing in the main, you
will allow."
"Yes, when it's endurable at all. But to have a brute of a husband
coming home at any hour of the night or morning, drunk upon the
money she had earned by hard work, was enough to take more of the
shine out of things than church-going on Sundays could put in again,
regular as she was, poor woman! I'm as glad as her brute of a
husband, that she's out of his way at last."
"How do you know he's glad of it?"
"He's been drunk every night since she died."
"Then he's the worse for losing her?"
"He may well be. Crying like a hypocrite, too, over his own work!"
"A fool he must be. A hypocrite, perhaps not. A hypocrite is a
terrible name to give. Perhaps her death will do him good."
"He doesn't deserve to be done any good to. I would have made this
coffin for him with a world of pleasure."
"I never found that I deserved anything, not even a coffin. The only
claim that I could ever lay to anything was that I was very much in
want of it."
The old smile returned--as much as to say, "That's your little game
in the church." But I resolved to try nothing more with him at
present; and indeed was sorry that I had started the new question at
all, partly because thus I had again given him occasion to feel that
he knew better than I did, which was not good either for him or for
me in our relation to each other.
"This has been a fine old room once," I said, looking round the
workshop.
"You can see it wasn't a workshop always, sir. Many a grand
dinner-party has sat down in this room when it was in its glory.
Look at the chimney-piece there."
"I have been looking at it," I said, going nearer.
"It represents the four quarters of the world, you see."
I saw strange figures of men and women, one on a kneeling camel, one
on a crawling crocodile, and others differently mounted; with
various besides of Nature's bizarre productions creeping and flying
in stone-carving over the huge fire-place, in which, in place of a
fire, stood several new and therefore brilliantly red cart-wheels.
The sun shone through the upper part of a high window, of which many
of the panes were broken, right in upon the cart-wheels, which,
glowing thus in the chimney under the sombre chimney-piece, added to
the grotesque look of the whole assemblage of contrasts. The coffin
and the carpenter stood in the twilight occasioned by the sharp
division of light made by a lofty wing of the house that rose
flanking the other window. The room was still wainscotted in panels,
which, I presume, for the sake of the more light required for
handicraft, had been washed all over with white. At the level of
labour they were broken in many places. Somehow or other, the whole
reminded me of Albert Durer's "Melencholia."
Seeing I was interested in looking about his shop, my new
friend--for I could not help feeling that we should be friends
before all was over, and so began to count him one already--resumed
the conversation. He had never taken up the dropped thread of it
before.
"Yes, sir," he said; "the owners of the place little thought it
would come to this--the deals growing into a coffin there on the
spot where the grand dinner was laid for them and their guests! But
there is another thing about it that is odder still; my son is the
last male"--
Here he stopped suddenly, and his face grew very red. As suddenly he
resumed--
"I'm not a gentleman, sir; but I will tell the truth. Curse it!--I
beg your pardon, sir,"--and here the old smile--"I don't think I got
that from THEIR side of the house.--My son's NOT the last male
descendant."
Here followed another pause.
As to the imprecation, I knew better than to take any notice of a
mere expression of excitement under a sense of some injury with
which I was not yet acquainted. If I could get his feelings right in
regard to other and more important things, a reform in that matter
would soon follow; whereas to make a mountain of a molehill would be
to put that very mountain between him and me. Nor would I ask him
any questions, lest I should just happen to ask him the wrong one;
for this parishioner of mine evidently wanted careful handling, if I
would do him any good. And it will not do any man good to fling even
the Bible in his face. Nay, a roll of bank-notes, which would be
more evidently a good to most men, would carry insult with it if
presented in that manner. You cannot expect people to accept before
they have had a chance of seeing what the offered gift really is.
After a pause, therefore, the carpenter had once more to recommence,
or let the conversation lie. I stood in a waiting attitude. And
while I looked at him, I was reminded of some one else whom I
knew--with whom, too, I had pleasant associations--though I could
not in the least determine who that one might be.
"It's very foolish of me to talk so to a stranger," he resumed.
"It is very kind and friendly of you," I said, still careful to make
no advances. "And you yourself belong to the old family that once
lived in this old house?"
"It would be no boast to tell the truth, sir, even if it were a
credit to me, which it is not. That family has been nothing but a
curse to ours."
I noted that he spoke of that family as different from his, and yet
implied that he belonged to it. The explanation would come in time.
But the man was again silent, planing away at half the lid of his
sister's coffin. And I could not help thinking that the closed mouth
meant to utter nothing more on this occasion.
"I am sure there must be many a story to tell about this old place,
if only there were any one to tell them," I said at last, looking
round the room once more.--"I think I see the remains of paintings
on the ceiling."
"You are sharp-eyed, sir. My father says they were plain enough in
his young days."
"Is your father alive, then?"
"That he is, sir, and hearty too, though he seldom goes out of doors
now. Will you go up stairs and see him? He's past ninety, sir. He
has plenty of stories to tell about the old place--before it began
to fall to pieces like."
"I won't go to-day," I said, partly because I wanted to be at home
to receive any one who might call, and partly to secure an excuse
for calling again upon the carpenter sooner than I should otherwise
have liked to do. "I expect visitors myself, and it is time I were
at home. Good morning."
"Good morning, sir."
And away home I went with a new wonder in my brain. The man did not
seem unknown to me. I mean, the state of his mind woke no feeling of
perplexity in me. I was certain of understanding it thoroughly when
I had learned something of his history; for that such a man must
have a history of his own was rendered only the more probable from
the fact that he knew something of the history of his forefathers,
though, indeed, there are some men who seem to have no other. It was
strange, however, to think of that man working away at a trade in
the very house in which such ancestors had eaten and drunk, and
married and given in marriage. The house and family had declined
together--in outward appearance at least; for it was quite possible
both might have risen in the moral and spiritual scale in proportion
as they sank in the social one. And if any of my readers are at
first inclined to think that this could hardly be, seeing that the
man was little, if anything, better than an infidel, I would just
like to hold one minute's conversation with them on that subject. A
man may be on the way to the truth, just in virtue of his doubting.
I will tell you what Lord Bacon says, and of all writers of English
I delight in him: "So it is in contemplation: if a man will begin
with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content
to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." Now I could not
tell the kind or character of this man's doubt; but it was evidently
real and not affected doubt; and that was much in his favour. And I
couid see that he was a thinking man; just one of the sort I thought
I should get on with in time, because he was honest--
notwithstanding that unpleasant smile of his, which did irritate me
a little, and partly piqued me into the determination to get the
better of the man, if I possibly could, by making friends with him.
At all events, here was another strange parishioner. And who could
it be that he was like?
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