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AN ANGEL UNAWARES.
Feeling rather more than the usual reaction so well-known to
clergymen after the concentrated duties of the Sunday, I resolved on
Monday to have the long country walk I had been disappointed of on
the Saturday previous. It was such a day as it seems impossible to
describe except in negatives. It was not stormy, it was not rainy,
it was not sunshiny, it was not snowy, it was not frosty, it was not
foggy, it was not clear, it was nothing but cloudy and quiet and
cold and generally ungenial, with just a puff of wind now and then
to give an assertion to its ungeniality. I should not in the least
have cared to tell what sort the day was, had it not been an exact
representation of my own mind. It was not the day that made me such
as itself. The weather could always easily influence the surface of
my mind, my external mood, but it could never go much further. The
smallest pleasure would break through the conditions that merely
came of such a day. But this morning my whole mind and heart seemed
like the day. The summer was thousands of miles off on the other
side of the globe. Ethelwyn, up at the old house there across the
river, seemed millions of miles away. The summer MIGHT come back;
she never would come nearer: it was absurd to expect it. For in such
moods stupidity constantly arrogates to itself the qualities and
claims of insight. In fact, it passes itself off for common sense,
making the most dreary ever appear the most reasonable. In such
moods a man might almost be persuaded that it was ridiculous to
expect any such poetic absurdity as the summer, with its diamond
mornings and its opal evenings, ever to come again; nay, to think
that it ever had had any existence except in the fancies of the
human heart--one of its castles in the air. The whole of life seemed
faint and foggy, with no red in it anywhere; and when I glanced at
my present relations in Marshmallows, I could not help finding
several circumstances to give some appearance of justice to this
appearance of things. I seemed to myself to have done no good. I had
driven Catherine Weir to the verge of suicide, while at the same
time I could not restrain her from the contemplation of some dire
revenge. I had lost the man upon whom I had most reckoned as a seal
of my ministry, namely, Thomas Weir. True there was Old Rogers; but
Old Rogers was just as good before I found him. I could not dream of
having made him any better. And so I went on brooding over all the
disappointing portions of my labour, all the time thinking about
myself, instead of God and the work that lay for me to do in the
days to come.
"Nobody," I said, "but Old Rogers understands me. Nobody would care,
as far as my teaching goes, if another man took my place from next
Sunday forward. And for Miss Oldcastle, her playing the Agnus Dei on
Saturday afternoon, even if she intended that I should hear it,
could only indicate at most that she knew how she had behaved to me
in the morning, and thought she had gone too far and been unkind, or
perhaps was afraid lest she should be accountable for any failure I
might make in my Sunday duties, and therefore felt bound to do
something to restore my equanimity."
Choosing, though without consciously intending to do so, the
dreariest path to be found, I wandered up the side of the slow black
river, with the sentinel pollards looking at themselves in its
gloomy mirror, just as I was looking at myself in the mirror of my
circumstances. They leaned in all directions, irregular as the
headstones in an ancient churchyard. In the summer they looked like
explosions of green leaves at the best; now they looked like the
burnt-out cases of the summer's fireworks. How different, too, was
the river from the time when a whole fleet of shining white lilies
lay anchored among their own broad green leaves upon its clear
waters, filled with sunlight in every pore, as they themselves would
fill the pores of a million-caverned sponge! But I could not even
recall the past summer as beautiful. I seemed to care for nothing.
The first miserable afternoon at Marshmallows looked now as if it
had been the whole of my coming relation to the place seen through a
reversed telescope. And here I was IN it now.
The walk along the side was tolerably dry, although the river was
bank-full. But when I came to the bridge I wanted to cross--a wooden
one--I found that the approach to it had been partly undermined and
carried away, for here the river had overflowed its banks in one of
the late storms; and all about the place was still very wet and
swampy. I could therefore get no farther in my gloomy walk, and so
turned back upon my steps. Scarcely had I done so, when I saw a man
coming hastily towards me from far upon the straight line of the
river walk. I could not mistake him at any distance. It was Old
Rogers. I felt both ashamed and comforted when I recognized him.
"Well, Old Rogers," I said, as soon as he came within hail, trying
to speak cheerfully, "you cannot get much farther this way--without
wading a bit, at least."
"I don't want to go no farther now, sir. I came to find you."
"Nothing amiss, I hope?"
"Nothing as I knows on, sir. I only wanted to have a little chat
with you. I told master I wanted to leave for an hour or so. He
allus lets me do just as I like."
"But how did you know where to find me?"
"I saw you come this way. You passed me right on the bridge, and
didn't see me, sir. So says I to myself, 'Old Rogers, summat's amiss
wi' parson to-day. He never went by me like that afore. This won't
do. You just go and see.' So I went home and told master, and here I
be, sir. And I hope you're noways offended with the liberty of me."
"Did I really pass you on the bridge?" I said, unable to understand
it.
"That you did, sir. I knowed parson must be a goodish bit in his own
in'ards afore he would do that."
"I needn't tell you I didn't see you, Old Rogers."
"I could tell you that, sir. I hope there's nothing gone main wrong,
sir. Miss is well, sir, I hope?"
"Quite well, I thank you. No, my dear fellow, nothing's gone main
wrong, as you say. Some of my running tackle got jammed a bit,
that's all. I'm a little out of spirits, I believe."
"Well, sir, don't you be afeard I'm going to be troublesome. Don't
think I want to get aboard your ship, except you fling me a rope.
There's a many things you mun ha' to think about that an ignorant
man like me couldn't take up if you was to let 'em drop. And being a
gentleman, I do believe, makes the matter worse betuxt us. And
there's many a thing that no man can go talkin' about to any but
only the Lord himself. Still you can't help us poor folks seeing
when there's summat amiss, and we can't help havin' our own thoughts
any more than the sailor's jackdaw that couldn't speak. And
sometimes we may be nearer the mark than you would suppose, for God
has made us all of one blood, you know."
"What ARE you driving at, Old Rogers?" I said with a smile, which
was none the less true that I suspected he had read some of the
worst trouble of my heart. For why should I mind an honourable man
like him knowing what oppressed me, though, as things went, I
certainly should not, as he said, choose to tell it to any but one?
"I don't want to say what I was driving at, if it was anything but
this--that I want to put to the clumsy hand of a rough old tar, with
a heart as soft as the pitch that makes his hand hard--to trim your
sails a bit, sir, and help you to lie a point closer to the wind.
You're not just close-hauled, sir."
"Say on, Old Rogers. I understand you, and I will listen with all my
heart, for you have a good right to speak."
And Old Rogers spoke thus:--
"Oncet upon a time, I made a voyage in a merchant barque. We were
becalmed in the South Seas. And weary work it wur, a doin' of
nothin' from day to day. But when the water began to come up thick
from the bottom of the water-casks, it was wearier a deal. Then a
thick fog came on, as white as snow a'most, and we couldn't see more
than a few yards ahead or on any side of us. But the fog didn't keep
the heat off; it only made it worse, and the water was fast going
done. The short allowance grew shorter and shorter, and the men,
some of them, were half-mad with thirst, and began to look bad at
one another. I kept up my heart by looking ahead inside me. For days
and days the fog hung about us as if the air had been made o' flocks
o' wool. The captain took to his berth, and several of the crew to
their hammocks, for it was just as hot on deck as anywhere else. The
mate lay on a sparesail on the quarter-deck, groaning. I had a
strong suspicion that the schooner was drifting, and hove the lead
again and again, but could find no bottom. Some of the men got hold
of the spirits, and THAT didn't quench their thirst. It drove them
clean mad. I had to knock one of them down myself with a capstan
bar, for he ran at the mate with his knife. At last I began to lose
all hope. And still I was sure the schooner was slowly drifting. My
head was like to burst, and my tongue was like a lump of holystone
in my mouth. Well, one morning, I had just, as I thought, lain down
on the deck to breathe my last, hoping I should die before I went
quite mad with thirst, when all at once the fog lifted, like the
foot of a sail. I sprung to my feet. There was the blue sky
overhead; but the terrible burning sun was there. A moment more and
a light air blew on my cheek, and, turning my face to it as if it
had been the very breath of God, there was an island within half a
mile, and I saw the shine of water on the face of a rock on the
shore. I cried out, 'Land on the weather-quarter! Water in sight!'
In a moment more a boat was lowered, and in a few minutes the boat's
crew, of which I was one, were lying, clothes and all, in a little
stream that came down from the hills above.--There, Mr Walton!
that's what I wanted to say to you."
This is as near the story of my old friend as my limited knowledge
of sea affairs allows me to report it.
"I understand you quite, Old Rogers, and I thank you heartily," I
said.
"No doubt," resumed he, "King Solomon was quite right, as he always
was, I suppose, in what he SAID, for his wisdom mun ha' laid mostly
in the tongue--right, I say, when he said, 'Boast not thyself of
to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth;' but I
can't help thinking there's another side to it. I think it would be
as good advice to a man on the other tack, whose boasting lay far to
windward, and he close on a lee-shore wi' breakers--it wouldn't be
amiss to say to him, 'Don't strike your colours to the morrow; for
thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.' There's just as many
good days as bad ones; as much fair weather as foul in the days to
come. And if a man keeps up heart, he's all the better for that, and
none the worse when the evil day does come. But, God forgive me! I'm
talking like a heathen. As if there was any chance about what the
days would bring forth. No, my lad," said the old sailor, assuming
the dignity of his superior years under the inspiration of the
truth, "boast nor trust nor hope in the morrow. Boast and trust and
hope in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him, who is the health of thy
countenance and thy God."
I could but hold out my hand. I had nothing to say. For he had
spoken to me as an angel of God.
The old man was silent for some moments: his emotion needed time to
still itself again. Nor did he return to the subject. He held out
his hand once more, saying--
"Good day, sir. I must go back to my work."
"I will go back with you," I returned.
And so we walked back side by side to the village, but not a word
did we speak the one to the other, till we shook hands and parted
upon the bridge, where we had first met. Old Rogers went to his
work, and I lingered upon the bridge. I leaned upon the low parapet,
and looked up the stream as far as the mists creeping about the
banks, and hovering in thinnest veils over the surface of the water,
would permit. Then I turned and looked down the river crawling on to
the sweep it made out of sight just where Mr Brownrigg's farm began
to come down to its banks. Then I looked to the left, and there
stood my old church, as quiet in the dreary day, though not so
bright, as in the sunshine: even the graves themselves must look yet
more "solemn sad" in a wintry day like this, than they look when the
sunlight that infolds them proclaims that God is not the God of the
dead but of the living. One of the great battles that we have to
fight in this world--for twenty great battles have to be fought all
at once and in one--is the battle with appearances. I turned me to
the right, and there once more I saw, as on that first afternoon,
the weathercock that watched the winds over the stables at Oldcastle
Hall. It had caught just one glimpse of the sun through some rent in
the vapours, and flung it across to me, ere it vanished again amid
the general dinginess of the hour.
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