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THE DEVIL IN THE VICAR.
I wanted just to pass the gate, and look up the road towards
Oldcastle Hall. I thought to see nothing but the empty road between
the leafless trees, lying there like a dead stream that would not
bear me on to the "sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice" that lay
beyond. But just as I reached the gate, Miss Oldcastle came out of
the lodge, where I learned afterwards the woman that kept the gate
was ill.
When she saw me she stopped, and I entered hurriedly, and addressed
her. But I could say nothing better than the merest commonplaces.
For her old manner, which I had almost forgotten, a certain coldness
shadowed with haughtiness, whose influence I had strongly felt when
I began to make her acquaintance, had returned. I cannot make my
reader understand how this could be blended with the sweetness in
her face and the gentleness of her manners; but there the opposites
were, and I could feel them both. There was likewise a certain
drawing of herself away from me, which checked the smallest advance
on my part; so that--I wonder at it now, but so it was--after a few
words of very ordinary conversation, I bade her good morning and
went away, feeling like "a man forbid"--as if I had done her some
wrong, and she had chidden me for it. What a stone lay in my breast!
I could hardly breathe for it. What could have caused her to change
her manner towards me? I had made no advance; I could not have
offended her. Yet there she glided up the road, and here stood I,
outside the gate. That road was now a flowing river that bore from
me the treasure of the earth, while my boat was spell-bound, and
could not follow. I would run after her, fall at her feet, and
intreat to know wherein I had offended her. But there I stood
enchanted, and there she floated away between the trees; till at
length she turned the slow sweep, and I, breathing deep as she
vanished from my sight, turned likewise, and walked back the dreary
way to the village. And now I knew that I had never been miserable
in my life before. And I knew, too, that I had never loved her as I
loved her now.
But, as I had for the last ten years of my life been striving to be
a right will, with a thousand failures and forgetfulnesses every one
of those years, while yet the desire grew stronger as hope recovered
from every failure, I would now try to do my work as if nothing had
happened to incapacitate me for it. So I went on to fulfil the plan
with which I had left home, including, as it did, a visit to Thomas
Weir, whom I had not seen in his own shop since he had ordered me
out of it. This, as far as I was concerned, was more accidental than
intentional. I had, indeed, abstained from going to him for a while,
in order to give him time TO COME ROUND; but then circumstances
which I have recorded intervened to prevent me; so that as yet no
advance had been made on my part any more than on his towards a
reconciliation; which, however, could have been such only on one
side, for I had not been in the least offended by the way he had
behaved to me, and needed no reconciliation. To tell the truth, I
was pleased to find that my words had had force enough with him to
rouse his wrath. Anything rather than indifference! That the heart
of the honest man would in the end right me, I could not doubt; in
the meantime I would see whether a friendly call might not improve
the state of affairs. Till he yielded to the voice within him,
however, I could not expect that our relation to each other would be
quite restored. As long as he resisted his conscience, and knew that
I sided with his conscience, it was impossible he should regard me
with peaceful eyes, however much he might desire to be friendly with
me.
I found him busy, as usual, for he was one of the most diligent men
I have ever known. But his face was gloomy, and I thought or fancied
that the old scorn had begun once more to usurp the expression of
it. Young Tom was not in the shop.
"It is a long time since I saw you, now, Thomas."
"I can hardly wonder at that," he returned, as if he were trying to
do me justice; but his eyes dropped, and he resumed his work, and
said no more. I thought it better to make no reference to the past
even by assuring him that it was not from resentment that I had been
a stranger.
"How is Tom?" I asked.
"Well enough," he returned. Then, with a smile of peevishness not
unmingled with contempt, he added: "He's getting too uppish for me.
I don't think the Latin agrees with him."
I could not help suspecting at once how the matter stood--namely,
that the father, unhappy in his conduct to his daughter, and unable
to make up his mind to do right with regard to her, had been
behaving captiously and unjustly to his son, and so had rendered
himself more miserable than ever.
"Perhaps he finds it too much for him without me," I said,
evasively; "but I called to-day partly to inform him that I am quite
ready now to recommence our readings together; after which I hope
you will find the Latin agree with him better."
"I wish you would let him alone, sir--I mean, take no more trouble
about him. You see I can't do as you want me; I wasn't made to go
another man's way; and so it's very hard--more than I can bear--to
be under so much obligation to you."
"But you mistake me altogether, Thomas. It is for the lad's own sake
that I want to go on reading with him. And you won't interfere
between him and any use I can be of to him. I assure you, to have
you go my way instead of your own is the last thing I could wish,
though I confess I do wish very much that you would choose the right
way for your own way."
He made me no answer, but maintained a sullen silence.
"Thomas," I said at length, "I had thought you were breaking every
bond of Satan that withheld you from entering into the kingdom of
heaven; but I fear he has strengthened his bands and holds you now
as much a captive as ever. So it is not even your own way you are
walking in, but his."
"It's no use your trying to frighten me. I don't believe in the
devil."
"It is God I want you to believe in. And I am not going to dispute
with you now about whether there is a devil or not. In a matter of
life and death we have no time for settling every disputed point."
"Life or death! What do you mean?"
"I mean that whether you believe there is a devil or not, you KNOW
there is an evil power in your mind dragging you down. I am not
speaking in generals; I mean NOW, and you know as to what I mean it.
And if you yield to it, that evil power, whatever may be your theory
about it, will drag you down to death. It is a matter of life or
death, I repeat, not of theory about the devil."
"Well, I always did say, that if you once give a priest an inch
he'll take an ell; and I am sorry I forgot it for once."
Having said this, he shut up his mouth in a manner that indicated
plainly enough he would not open it again for some time. This, more
than his speech, irritated me, and with a mere "good morning," I
walked out of the shop.
No sooner was I in the open air than I knew that I too, I as well as
poor Thomas Weir, was under a spell; knew that I had gone to him
before I had recovered sufficiently from the mingled disappointment
and mortification of my interview with Miss Oldcastle; that while I
spoke to him I was not speaking with a whole heart; that I had been
discharging a duty as if I had been discharging a musket; that,
although I had spoken the truth, I had spoken it ungraciously and
selfishly.
I could not bear it. I turned instantly and went back into the shop.
"Thomas, my friend," I said, holding out my hand, "I beg your
pardon. I was wrong. I spoke to you as I ought not. I was troubled
in my own mind, and that made me lose my temper and be rude to you,
who are far more troubled than I am. Forgive me!"
He did not take my hand at first, but stared at me as if, not
comprehending me, he supposed that I was backing up what I had said
last with more of the same sort. But by the time I had finished he
saw what I meant; his countenance altered and looked as if the evil
spirit were about to depart from him; he held out his hand, gave
mine a great grasp, dropped his head, went on with his work, and
said never a word.
I went out of the shop once more, but in a greatly altered mood.
On the way home, I tried to find out how it was that I had that
morning failed so signally. I had little virtue in keeping my
temper, because it was naturally very even; therefore I had the more
shame in losing it. I had borne all my uneasiness about Miss
Oldcastle without, as far as I knew, transgressing in this fashion
till this very morning. Were great sorrows less hurtful to the
temper than small disappointments? Yes, surely. But Shakespeare
represents Brutus, after hearing of the sudden death of his wife, as
losing his temper with Cassius to a degree that bewildered the
latter, who said he did not know that Brutus could have been so
angry. Is this consistent with the character of the stately-minded
Brutus, or with the dignity of sorrow? It is. For the loss of his
wife alone would have made him only less irritable; but the whole
weight of an army, with its distracting cares and conflicting
interests, pressed upon him; and the battle of an empire was to be
fought at daybreak, so that he could not be alone with his grief.
Between the silence of death in his mind, and the roar of life in
his brain, he became irritable.
Looking yet deeper into it, I found that till this morning I had
experienced no personal mortification with respect to Miss
Oldcastle. It was not the mere disappointment of having no more talk
with her, for the sight of her was a blessing I had not in the least
expected, that had worked upon me, but the fact that she had
repelled or seemed to repel me. And thus I found that self was at
the root of the wrong I had done to one over whose mental condition,
especially while I was telling him the unwelcome truth, I ought to
have been as tender as a mother over her wounded child. I could not
say that it was wrong to feel disappointed or even mortified; but
something was wrong when one whose especial business it was to serve
his people in the name of Him who was full of grace and truth, made
them suffer because of his own inward pain.
No sooner had I settled this in my mind than my trouble returned
with a sudden pang. Had I actually seen her that morning, and spoken
to her, and left her with a pain in my heart? What if that face of
hers was doomed ever to bring with it such a pain--to be ever to me
no more than a lovely vision radiating grief? If so, I would endure
in silence and as patiently as I could, trying to make up for the
lack of brightness in my own fate by causing more brightness in the
fate of others. I would at least keep on trying to do my work.
That moment I felt a little hand poke itself into mine. I looked
down, and there was Gerard Weir looking up in my face. I found
myself in the midst of the children coming out of school, for it was
Saturday, and a half-holiday. He smiled in my face, and I hope I
smiled in his; and so, hand in hand, we went on to the vicarage,
where I gave him up to my sister. But I cannot convey to my reader
any notion of the quietness that entered my heart with the grasp of
that childish hand. I think it was the faith of the boy in me that
comforted me, but I could not help thinking of the words of our Lord
about receiving a child in His name, and so receiving Him. By the
time we reached the vicarage my heart was very quiet. As the little
child held by my hand, so I seemed to be holding by God's hand. And
a sense of heart-security, as well as soul-safety, awoke in me; and
I said to myself,--Surely He will take care of my heart as well as
of my mind and my conscience. For one blessed moment I seemed to be
at the very centre of things, looking out quietly upon my own
troubled emotions as upon something outside of me--apart from me,
even as one from the firm rock may look abroad upon the vexed sea.
And I thought I then knew something of what the apostle meant when
he said, "Your life is hid with Christ in God." I knew that there
was a deeper self than that which was thus troubled.
I had not had my usual ramble this morning, and was otherwise ill
prepared for the Sunday. So I went early into the church; but
finding that the sexton's wife had not yet finished lighting the
stove, I sat down by my own fire in the vestry.
Suppose I am sitting there now while I say one word for our
congregations in winter. I was very particular in having the church
well warmed before Sunday. I think some parsons must neglect seeing
after this matter on principle, because warmth may make a weary
creature go to sleep here and there about the place: as if any
healing doctrine could enter the soul while it is on the rack of the
frost. The clergy should see--for it is their business--that their
people have no occasion to think of their bodies at all while they
are in church. They have enough ado to think of the truth. When our
Lord was feeding even their bodies, He made them all sit down on the
grass. It is worth noticing that there was much grass in the
place--a rare thing I should think in those countries--and
therefore, perhaps, it was chosen by Him for their comfort in
feeding their souls and bodies both. If I may judge from experiences
of my own, one of the reasons why some churches are of all places
the least likely for anything good to be found in, is, that they are
as wretchedly cold to the body as they are to the soul--too cold
every way for anything to grow in them. Edelweiss, "Noble-white"--as
they call a plant growing under the snow on some of the Alps--could
not survive the winter in such churches. There is small welcome in a
cold house. And the clergyman, who is the steward, should look to
it. It is for him to give his Master's friends a welcome to his
Master's house--for the welcome of a servant is precious, and
now-a-days very rare.
And now Mrs Stone must have finished. I go into the old church which
looks as if it were quietly waiting for its people. No. She has not
done yet. Never mind.--How full of meaning the vaulted roof looks!
as if, having gathered a soul of its own out of the generations that
have worshipped here for so long, it had feeling enough to grow
hungry for a psalm before the end of the week.
Some such half-foolish fancy was now passing through my
tranquillized mind or rather heart--for the mind would have rejected
it at once--when to my--what shall I call it?--not amazement, for
the delight was too strong for amazement--the old organ woke up and
began to think aloud. As if it had been brooding over it all the
week in the wonderful convolutions of its wooden brain, it began to
sigh out the Agnus Dei of Mozart's twelfth mass upon the air of the
still church, which lay swept and garnished for the Sunday.--How
could it be? I know now; and I guessed then; and my guess was right;
and my reader must be content to guess too. I took no step to verify
my conjecture, for I felt that I was upon my honour, but sat in one
of the pews and listened, till the old organ sobbed itself into
silence. Then I heard the steps of the sexton's wife vanish from the
church, heard her lock the door, and knew that I was alone in the
ancient pile, with the twilight growing thick about me, and felt
like Sir Galahad, when, after the "rolling organ-harmony," he heard
"wings flutter, voices hover clear." In a moment the mood changed;
and I was sorry, not that the dear organ was dead for the night, but
actually felt gently-mournful that the wonderful old thing never had
and never could have a conscious life of its own. So strangely does
the passion--which I had not invented, reader, whoever thou art
that thinkest love and a church do not well harmonize--so strangely,
I say, full to overflowing of its own vitality, does it radiate
life, that it would even of its own superabundance quicken into
blessed consciousness the inanimate objects around it, thinking what
they would feel had they a consciousness correspondent to their
form, were their faculties moved from within themselves instead of
from the will and operation of humanity.
I lingered on long in the dark church, as my reader knows I had done
often before. Nor did I move from the seat I had first taken till I
left the sacred building. And there I made my sermon for the next
morning. And herewith I impart it to my reader. But he need not be
afraid of another such as I have already given him, for I impart it
only in its original germ, its concentrated essence of sermon--these
four verses:
Had I the grace to win the grace
Of some old man complete in lore,
My face would worship at his face,
Like childhood seated on the floor.
Had I the grace to win the grace
Of childhood, loving shy, apart,
The child should find a nearer place,
And teach me resting on my heart.
Had I the grace to win the grace
Of maiden living all above,
My soul would trample down the base,
That she might have a man to love.
A grace I have no grace to win
Knocks now at my half-open door:
Ah, Lord of glory, come thou in,
Thy grace divine is all and more.
This was what I made for myself. I told my people that God had
created all our worships, reverences, tendernesses, loves. That they
had come out of His heart, and He had made them in us because they
were in Him first. That otherwise He would not have cared to make
them. That all that we could imagine of the wise, the lovely, the
beautiful, was in Him, only infinitely more of them than we could
not merely imagine, but understand, even if He did all He could to
explain them to us, to make us understand them. That in Him was all
the wise teaching of the best man ever known in the world and more;
all the grace and gentleness and truth of the best child and more;
all the tenderness and devotion of the truest type of womankind and
more; for there is a love that passeth the love of woman, not the
love of Jonathan to David, though David said so: but the love of God
to the men and women whom He has made. Therefore, we must be all
God's; and all our aspirations, all our worships, all our honours,
all our loves, must centre in Him, the Best.
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