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THE JOURNEY.
For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the sojourn.
First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer, consisting,
as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground ginger, and cold
water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge, exhausted and
renewed about twelve times before the day of departure arrived; and when at
last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered with dismay that they
had drunk the last drop two days before, and there was none in stock. Then
there was a wonderful and more successful hoarding of marbles, of a variety
so great that my memory refuses to bear the names of the different kinds,
which, I think, must have greatly increased since the time when I too was
a boy, when some marbles--one of real, white marble with red veins
especially--produced in my mind something of the delight that a work of art
produces now. These were carefully deposited in one of the many divisions
of a huge old hair-trunk, which they had got their uncle Weir, who could
use his father's tools with pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them
with a multiplicity of boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and
slides, that was quite bewildering. In this same box was stowed also a
quantity of hair, the gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the premises.
This was for making fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on the part of
Harry that it was to be employed in catching whales and crocodiles. Then
all their favourite books were stowed away in the same chest, in especial
a packet of a dozen penny books, of which I think I could give a complete
list now. For one afternoon as I searched about in the lumber-room after a
set of old library steps, which I wanted to get repaired, I came upon the
chest, and opening it, discovered my boys' hoard, and in it this packet of
books. I sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through, from
Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop o' my Thumb without rising, and this in
the broad daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the
rose-coloured silken seat, richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair
with three golden legs. Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say
the names of them, over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding
now that they had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something
in potency, they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these,
and Charlie not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding,
in virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
string; a rabbit's skin; a Noah's ark; an American clock, that refused to
go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of lead-soldiers,
and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt ball having an eagle
of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this magazine
could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to follow us to
the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent on before us, but the
boys had intended the precious box to go with themselves. Knowing well,
however, how little they would miss it, and with what shouts of south-sea
discovery they would greet the forgotten treasure when they returned, I
insisted on the lumbering article being left in peace. So that, as man
goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever he may have accumulated before
the fatal moment, they had to set off for the far country without chest or
ginger-beer--not therefore altogether so desolate and unprovided for as
they imagined. The abandoned treasure was forgotten the moment the few
tears it had occasioned were wiped away.
It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows were
twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the dear old
house.
"I'm sorry to leave the swallows behind," said Wynnie, as she stepped into
the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already there, eager
and strong-hearted for the journey.
We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed to
enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of the
meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we met
bravely diligent at their day's work, as they trudged along the road with
wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I could see
her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its expression
that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a brown-faced gipsy
family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the passing carriage. A
fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under the convoy of the parent
duck, next attracted her.
"Look; look. Isn't that delicious?" she cried.
"I don't think I should like it though," said Wynnie.
"What shouldn't you like, Wynnie?" asked her mother.
"To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!"
"They feel it with their legs and their webby toes," said Connie.
"Yes, that is some consolation," answered Wynnie.
"And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning."
I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie's illness had not
in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had rather, as
it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and sympathetic,
so that the things around her could enter her soul even more easily than
before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in reality brought her into
closer contact with the movements of all vitality.
We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station. Everybody
almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for Connie's sake
chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had forgotten to
say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak to him. The same
instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie was the centre of
all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother or sister. Had she been
a martyr who had stood the test and received her aureole, she could hardly
have been more regarded. The common use of the word martyr is a curious
instance of how words get degraded. The sufferings involved in martyrdom,
and not the pure will giving occasion to that suffering, is fixed upon by
the common mind as the martyrdom. The witness-bearing is lost sight of,
except we can suppose that "a martyr to the toothache" means a witness of
the fact of the toothache and its tortures. But while martyrdom really
means a bearing for the sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any
suffering, even that we have brought upon ourselves, may become martyrdom.
When it is so borne that the sufferer therein bears witness to the presence
and fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to his will, in gentle
endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which is not seldom to be
seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than all, perhaps, and
rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and merciful consequence
of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with righteous shame, as the
cleansing of the Father's hand, indicating that repentance unto life which
lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes him such that the holiest men
of old would talk to him with gladness and respect, then indeed it may be
called a martyrdom. This latter could not be Connie's case, but the former
was hers, and so far she might be called a martyr, even as the old women of
the village designated her.
After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so
long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant,
who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the establishment,
looking after everything and putting his hand to everything, with an
indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the wine-cellar, and from
the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could not possibly get on
without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise beside the driver from
the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than otherwise at the noise of the
youngsters.
"Good-bye, Marshmallows," they were shouting at the top of their voices,
as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody's ears on the
open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that there
was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them as much
liberty as could be afforded them.
At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now in
wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany us a
good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us in
moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and only
at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times on the
way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the streets
delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the children and
servants, all but my wife's maid, on before us, under the charge of Walter.
This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped only the night, for
Connie found herself quite able to go on the next morning. Here Turner left
us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked a little out of spirits
after his departure, but soon recovered herself. The next night we spent
at a small town on the borders of Devonshire, which was the limit of our
railway travelling. Here we remained for another whole day, for the remnant
of the journey across part of Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be
posted, and was a good five hours' work. We started about eleven o'clock,
full of spirits at the thought that we had all but accomplished the only
part of the undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness. Connie was
quite merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open carriage with
a hood. Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the maid in the
rumble, and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we had
four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and
thankfulness, who would not be happy?
There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I altogether
understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment has something
to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion, the change of
scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the next turn in
the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the pine-trees
especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the harness as you
pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses, the glitter and the
shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy faces, the scent of burning
wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a thousand other things combine
to make such a journey delightful. But I believe it needs something more
than this--something even closer to the human life--to account for the
pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect it is its living symbolism; the
hidden relations which it bears to the eternal soul in its aspirations and
longings--ever following after, ever attaining, never satisfied. Do not
misunderstand me, my reader. A man, you will allow, perhaps, may be content
although he is not and cannot be happy: I feel inclined to turn all this
the other way, saying that a man ought always to be happy, never to be
content. You will see I do not say contented; I say content. Here comes
in his faith: his life is hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded.
All things are his, to become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as
his being enlarges to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary
incompleteness falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God's
idea he is complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God
the Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch as
he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I leave it,
however.
I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt I
was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with full
confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man be
happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the feeble
knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill? True, the
fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp of life; but
if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth; if less of fire,
more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light. Verily, youth is
good, but old age is better--to the man who forsakes not his youth when his
youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature do not depend upon youth
or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose meekness inherits the earth.
The smell of that field of beans gives me more delight now than ever it
could have given me when I was a youth. And if I ask myself why I find it
is simply because I have more faith now than I had then. It came to me then
as an accident of nature--a passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs'
share of the crumbs. Now I believe that God means that odour of the
bean-field; that when Jesus smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in
Galilee, he thought of his Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if
I should never smell it again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age
should make me deaf as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope
you are too, or will be before you have done with this same beautiful
mystical life of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's
books of poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest,
perhaps.
And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in a
word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the brightness
of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a little weary,
lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping towards the
earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the brightness of the morning star,
ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that brightens at the
sun's approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its light, and somewhat
sad because severe. Connie's face was bright with the brightness of a lake
in the rosy evening, the sound of the river flowing in and the sound of the
river flowing forth just audible, but itself still, and content to be still
and mirror the sunset. Dora's was bright with the brightness of a marigold
that follows the sun without knowing it; and Eliza's was bright with the
brightness of a half-blown cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This last
is not a good simile, but I cannot find a better. I confess failure, and go
on.
After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they were,
where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her to carry
her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads through which
were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches of heather all
about were showing their bells, though not yet in their autumnal outburst
of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded of Scotland, in which I had
travelled a good deal between the ages of twenty and five-and-twenty. The
further I went the stronger I felt the resemblance. The look of the fields,
the stone fences that divided them, the shape and colour and materials of
the houses, the aspect of the people, the feeling of the air, and of the
earth and sky generally, made me imagine myself in a milder and more
favoured Scotland. The west wind was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge
which one can so often detect in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot
sun. Though she had already travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up
within a few minutes after we got on this moor; and we had not gone much
farther before a shout from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little
Dora had discovered the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue
and bright. We soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie's eyes it seemed
to linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them seemed the
reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors. Ethelwyn's eyes, too,
were full of it, and a flush on her generally pale cheek showed that she
too expected the ocean. After a few miles along this breezy expanse, we
began to descend towards the sea-level. Down the winding of a gradual
slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new chapter in our
history. We came again upon a few trees here and there, all with their tops
cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds,
like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep
their tops mown with their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the
crests of the broken waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages,
with streets narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, that needed careful
driving and the frequent pressure of the break upon the wheel. And now the
sea shone upon us with nearer greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear
its talk with the shore. At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the
last level, drove over a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw
the land vanish in the sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden
drawbridge, and along the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops
and schooners. Then came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an
ascent, and ere we reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by
loud shouts, and the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top
of a stone wall to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept
quiet, knowing that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing
about the evil it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch,
leading through the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The
journey was over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the
county of Cornwall.
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