Chapter VI.
The bell.
Before the next meeting took place, namely, after breakfast on the
following morning, Percy having gone to visit the dogs, Mrs. Cathcart
addressed me:
"I had something to say to my brother, Mr. Smith, but--"
"And you wish to be alone with him? With all my heart," I said.
"Not at all, Mr. Smith," she answered, with one of her smiles, which
were quite incomprehensible to me, until I hit upon the theory that
she kept a stock of them for general use, as stingy old ladies keep up
their half worn ribbons to make presents of to servant-maids; "I only
wanted to know, before I made a remark to the colonel, whether
Dr. Armstrong--"
"Mr. Armstrong lays no claim to the rank of a physician."
"So much the better for my argument. But is he a friend of yours,
Mr. Smith?"
"Yes--of nearly a week's standing."
"Oh, then, I am in no danger of hurting your feelings."
"I don't know that," thought I, but I did not say it.
"Well, Colonel Cathcart--excuse the liberty I am taking--but surely
you do not mean to dismiss Dr. Wade, and give a young man like that
the charge of your daughter's health at such a crisis."
"Dr. Wade is dismissed already, Jane. He did her no more good than any
old woman might have done."
"But such a young man!"
"Not so very young," I ventured to say. "He is thirty at least."
But the colonel was angry with her interference; for, an impetuous man
always, he had become irritable of late.
"Jane," he said, "is a man less likely to be delicate because he is
young? Or does a man always become more refined as he grows older? For
my part--" and here his opposition to his unpleasant sister-in-law
possibly made him say more than he would otherwise have conceded--"I
have never seen a young man whose manners and behaviour I liked
better."
"Much good that will do her! It will only hasten the mischief. You men
are so slow to take a hint, brother; and it is really too hard to be
forced to explain one's self always. Don't you see that, whether he
cures her or not, he will make her fall in love with him? And you
won't relish that, I fancy."
"You won't relish it, at all events. But mayn't he fall in love with
her as well?" thought I; which thought, a certain expression in the
colonel's face kept me from uttering. I saw at once that his sister's
words had set a discord in the good man's music. He made no reply; and
Mrs. Cathcart saw that her arrow had gone to the feather. I saw what
she tried to conceal--the flash of success on her face. But she
presently extinguished it, and rose and left the room. I thought with
myself that such an arrangement would be the very best thing for
Adela; and that, if the blessedness of woman lies in any way in the
possession of true manhood, she, let her position in society be what
it might compared with his, and let her have all the earls in the
kingdom for uncles, would be a fortunate woman indeed, to marry such a
man as Harry Armstrong;--for so much was I attracted to the man, that
I already called him Harry, when I and Myself talked about him. But I
was concerned to see my old friend so much disturbed. I hoped however
that his good generous heart would right its own jarring chords before
long, and that he would not spoil a chance of Adela's recovery,
however slight, by any hasty measures founded on nothing better than
paternal jealousy. I thought, indeed, he had gone too far to make that
possible for some time; but I did not know how far his internal
discomfort might act upon his behaviour as host, and so interfere with
the homeliness of our story-club, upon which I depended not a little
for a portion of the desired result.
The motive of Mrs. Cathcart's opposition was evident. She was a
partizan of Percy; for Adela was a very tolerable fortune, as people
say.
These thoughts went through my mind, as thoughts do, in no time at
all; and when the lady had closed the door behind her with protracted
gentleness, I was ready to show my game; in which I really considered
my friend and myself partners.
"Those women," I said, (women forgive me!), with a laugh which I trust
the colonel did not discover to be a forced one--"Those women are
always thinking about falling in love and that sort of foolery. I
wonder she isn't jealous of me now! Well, I do love Adela better than
any man will, for some weeks to come. I've been a sweetheart of hers
ever since she was in long clothes." Here I tried to laugh again, and,
to judge from the colonel, I verily believe I succeeded. The cloud
lightened on his face, as I made light of its cause, till at last he
laughed too. If I thought it all nonsense, why should he think it
earnest? So I turned the conversation to the club, about which I was
more concerned than about the love-making at present, seeing the
latter had positively no existence as yet.
"Adela seemed quite to enjoy the reading last night," I said.
"I thought she looked very grave," he answered.
The good man had been watching her face all the time, I saw, and
evidently paying no heed to the story. I doubted if he was the better
judge for this--observing only _ab extra_, and without being in
sympathy with her feelings as moved by the tale.
"Now that is just what I should have wished to see," I answered.
"We don't want her merry all at once. What we want is, that she
should take an interest in something. A grave face is a sign of
interest. It is all the world better than a listless face."
"But what good can stories do in sickness?"
"That depends on the origin of the sickness. My conviction is, that,
near or far off, in ourselves, or in our ancestors--say Adam and Eve,
for comprehension's sake--all our ailments have a moral cause. I think
that if we were all good, disease would, in the course of generations,
disappear utterly from the face of the earth."
"That's just like one of your notions, old friend! Rather peculiar.
Mystical, is it not?"
"But I meant to go on to say that, in Adela's case, I believe, from
conversation I have had with her, that the operation of mind on body
is far more immediate than that I have hinted at."
"You cannot mean to imply," said my friend, in some alarm, that Adela
has anything upon her conscience?"
"Certainly not. But there may be moral diseases that do not in the
least imply personal wrong or fault. They may themselves be
transmitted, for instance. Or even if such sprung wholly from present
physical causes, any help given to the mind would react on those
causes. Still more would the physical ill be influenced through the
mental, if the mind be the source of both.
"Now from whatever cause, Adela is in a kind of moral atrophy, for she
cannot digest the food provided for her, so as to get any good of
it. Suppose a patient in a corresponding physical condition, should
show a relish for anything proposed to him, would you not take it for
a sign that that was just the thing to do him good? And we may accept
the interest Adela shows in any kind of mental pabulum provided for
her, as an analogous sign. It corresponds to relish, and is a ground
for expecting some benefit to follow--in a word, some nourishment of
the spiritual life. Relish may be called the digestion of the palate;
interest, the digestion of the inner ears; both significant of further
digestion to follow. The food thus relished may not be the best food;
and yet it may be the best for the patient, because she feels no
repugnance to it, and can digest and assimilate, as well as swallow
it. For my part, I believe in no cramming, bodily or mental. I think
nothing learned without interest, can be of the slightest after
benefit; and although the effort may comprise a moral good, it
involves considerable intellectual injury. All I have said applies
with still greater force to religious teaching, though that is not
definitely the question now."
"Well, Smith, I can't talk philosophy like you; but what you say
sounds to me like sense. At all events, if Adela enjoys it, that is
enough for me. Will the young doctor tell stories too?"
"I don't know. I fancy he _could_. But to-night we have his brother."
"I shall make them welcome, anyhow."
This was all I wanted of him; and now I was impatient for the evening,
and the clergyman's tale. The more I saw of him the better I liked
him, and felt the more interest in him. I went to church that same
day, and heard him read prayers, and liked him better still; so that I
was quite hungry for the story he was going to read to us.
The evening came, and with it the company. Arrangements, similar to
those of the evening before, having been made, with some little
improvements, the colonel now occupying the middle place in the
half-circle, and the doctor seated, whether by chance or design, at
the corner farthest from the invalid's couch, the clergyman said, as
he rolled and unrolled the manuscript in his hand:
"To explain how I came to write a story, the scene of which is in
Scotland, I may be allowed to inform the company that I spent a good
part of my boyhood in a town in Aberdeenshire, with my grandfather,
who was a thorough Scotchman. He had removed thither from the south,
where the name is indigenous; being indeed a descendant of that
Christy, whom his father, Johnie Armstrong, standing with the rope
about his neck, ready to be hanged--or murdered, as the ballad calls
it--apostrophizes in these words:
'And God be with thee, Christy, my son,
Where thou sits on thy nurse's knee!
But an' thou live this hundred year,
Thy father's better thou'lt never be.'
But I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen all, for this has
positively nothing to do with the story. Only please to remember that
in those days it was quite respectable to be hanged."
We all agreed to this with a profusion of corroboration, except the
colonel; who, I thought, winced a little. But presently our attention
was occupied with the story, thus announced:
"_The Bell. A Sketch in Pen and Ink_."
He read in a great, deep, musical voice, with a wealth of pathos in
it--always suppressed, yet almost too much for me in the more touching
portions of the story.
"One interruption more," he said, before he began. "I fear you will
find it a sad story."
And he looked at Adela.
I believe that he had chosen the story on the homoeopathic principle.
"I like sad stories," she answered; and he went on at once.
"THE BELL.
"A SKETCH IN PEN AND INK.
"Elsie Scott had let her work fall on her knees, and her hands on her
work, and was looking out of the wide, low window of her room, which
was on one of the ground floors of the village street. Through a gap
in the household shrubbery of fuchsias and myrtles filling the window-
sill, one passing on the foot-pavement might get a momentary glimpse
of her pale face, lighted up with two blue eyes, over which some
inward trouble had spread a faint, gauze-like haziness. But almost
before her thoughts had had time to wander back to this trouble, a
shout of children's voices, at the other end of the street, reached
her ear. She listened a moment. A shadow of displeasure and pain
crossed her countenance; and rising hastily, she betook herself to an
inner apartment, and closed the door behind her.
"Meantime the sounds drew nearer; and by and by, an old man, whose
strange appearance and dress showed that he had little capacity either
for good or evil, passed the window. His clothes were comfortable
enough in quality and condition, for they were the annual gift of a
benevolent lady in the neighbourhood; but, being made to accommodate
his taste, both known and traditional, they were somewhat peculiar in
cut and adornment. Both coat and trousers were of a dark grey cloth;
but the former, which, in its shape, partook of the military, had a
straight collar of yellow, and narrow cuffs of the same; while upon
both sleeves, about the place where a corporal wears his stripes, was
expressed, in the same yellow cloth, a somewhat singular device. It
was as close an imitation of a bell, with its tongue hanging out of
its mouth, as the tailor's skill could produce from a single piece of
cloth. The origin of the military cut of his coat was well known. His
preference for it arose in the time of the wars of the first Napoleon,
when the threatened invasion of the country caused the organization of
many volunteer regiments. The martial show and exercises captivated
the poor man's fancy; and from that time forward nothing pleased his
vanity, and consequently conciliated his good will more, than to style
him by his favourite title--the _Colonel_. But the badge on his arm
had a deeper origin, which will be partially manifest in the course of
the story--if story it can be called. It was, indeed, the baptism of
the fool, the outward and visible sign of his relation to the infinite
and unseen. His countenance, however, although the features were not
of any peculiarly low or animal type, showed no corresponding sign of
the consciousness of such a relation, being as vacant as human
countenance could well be.
"The cause of Elsie's annoyance was that the fool was annoyed; for, he
was turned his rank into scorn, and assailed him with epithets hateful
to him. Although the most harmless of creatures when let alone, he was
dangerous when roused; and now he stooped repeatedly to pick up stones
and hurl them at his tormentors, who took care, while abusing him, to
keep at a considerable distance, lest he should get hold of them.
Amidst the sounds of derision that followed him, might be heard the
words frequently repeated--'_Come hame, come hame._' But in a few
minutes the noise ceased, either from the interference of some
friendly inhabitant, or that the boys grew weary, and departed in
search of other amusement. By and by, Elsie might be seen again at her
work in the window; but the cloud over her eyes was deeper, and her
whole face more sad.
"Indeed, so much did the persecution of the poor man affect her, that
an onlooker would have been compelled to seek the cause in some yet
deeper sympathy than that commonly felt for the oppressed, even by
women. And such a sympathy existed, strange as it may seem, between
the beautiful girl (for many called her a _bonnie lassie_) and this
'tatter of humanity.' Nothing would have been farther from the
thoughts of those that knew them, than the supposition of any
correspondence or connection between them; yet this sympathy sprung in
part from a real similarity in their history and present condition.
"All the facts that were known about _Feel Jock's_ origin were these:
that seventy years ago, a man who had gone with his horse and cart
some miles from the village, to fetch home a load of peat from a
desolate _moss_, had heard, while toiling along as rough a road on as
lonely a hill-side as any in Scotland, the cry of a child; and,
searching about, had found the infant, hardly wrapt in rags, and
untended, as if the earth herself had just given him birth,--that
desert moor, wide and dismal, broken and watery, the only bosom for
him to lie upon, and the cold, clear night-heaven his only covering.
The man had brought him home, and the parish had taken parish-care of
him. He had grown up, and proved what he now was--almost an idiot.
Many of the townspeople were kind to him, and employed him in fetching
water for them from the river and wells in the neighbourhood, paying
him for his trouble in victuals, or whisky, of which he was very
fond. He seldom spoke; and the sentences he could utter were few; yet
the tone, and even the words of his limited vocabulary, were
sufficient to express gratitude and some measure of love towards those
who were kind to him, and hatred of those who teased and insulted him.
He lived a life without aim, and apparently to no purpose; in this
resembling most of his more gifted fellow-men, who, with all the tools
and materials needful for the building of a noble mansion, are yet
content with a clay hut.
"Elsie, on the contrary, had been born in a comfortable farmhouse,
amidst homeliness and abundance. But at a very early age, she had lost
both father and mother; not so early, however, but that she had faint
memories of warm soft times on her mother's bosom, and of refuge in
her mother's arms from the attacks of geese, and the pursuit of pigs.
Therefore, in after-times, when she looked forward to heaven, it was
as much a reverting to the old heavenly times of childhood and
mother's love, as an anticipation of something yet to be revealed.
Indeed, without some such memory, how should we ever picture to
ourselves a perfect rest? But sometimes it would seem as if the more a
heart was made capable of loving, the less it had to love; and poor
Elsie, in passing from a mother's to a brother's guardianship, felt a
change of spiritual temperature, too keen. He was not a bad man, or
incapable of benevolence when touched by the sight of want in anything
of which he would himself have felt the privation; but he was so
coarsely made, that only the purest animal necessities affected him;
and a hard word, or unfeeling speech, could never have reached the
quick of his nature through the hide that enclosed it. Elsie, on the
contrary, was excessively and painfully sensitive, as if her nature
constantly protended an invisible multitude of half-spiritual, half-
nervous antennae, which shrunk and trembled in every current of air at
all below their own temperature. The effect of this upon her behaviour
was such, that she was called odd; and the poor girl felt that she was
not like other people, yet could not help it. Her brother, too,
laughed at her without the slightest idea of the pain he occasioned,
or the remotest feeling of curiosity as to what the inward and
consistent causes of the outward abnormal condition might be.
Tenderness was the divine comforting she needed; and it was altogether
absent from her brother's character and behaviour.
"Her neighbours looked on her with some interest, but they rather
shunned than courted her acquaintance; especially after the return of
certain nervous attacks, to which she had been subject in childhood,
and which were again brought on by the events I must relate. It is
curious how certain diseases repel, by a kind of awe, the sympathies
of the neighbours: as if, by the fact of being subject to them, the
patient were removed into another realm of existence, from which, like
the dead with the living, she can hold communion with those around her
only partially, and with a mixture of dread pervading the intercourse.
Thus some of the deepest, purest wells of spiritual life, are, like
those in old castles, choked up by the decay of the outer walls. But
what tended more than anything, perhaps, to keep up the painful unrest
of her soul (for the beauty of her character was evident in the fact,
that the irritation seldom reached her _mind_), was a circumstance at
which, in its present connection, some of my readers will smile, and
others feel a shudder corresponding in kind to that of Elsie.
"Her brother was very fond of a rather small, but ferocious-looking
bull-dog, which followed close at his heels, wherever he went, with
hanging head and slouching gait, never leaping or racing about like
other dogs. When in the house, he always lay under his master's
chair. He seemed to dislike Elsie, and she felt an unspeakable
repugnance to him. Though she never mentioned her aversion, her
brother easily saw it by the way in which she avoided the animal; and
attributing it entirely to fear--which indeed had a great share in the
matter--he would cruelly aggravate it, by telling her stories of the
fierce hardihood and relentless persistency of this kind of animal. He
dared not yet further increase her terror by offering to set the
creature upon her, because it was doubtful whether he might be able to
restrain him; but the mental suffering which he occasioned by this
heartless conduct, and for which he had no sympathy, was as severe as
many bodily sufferings to which he would have been sorry to subject
her. Whenever the poor girl happened inadvertently to pass near the
dog, which was seldom, a low growl made her aware of his proximity,
and drove her to a quick retreat. He was, in fact, the animal
impersonation of the animal opposition which she had continually to
endure. Like chooses like; and the bull-dog _in_ her brother made
choice of the bull-dog _out of_ him for his companion. So her day was
one of shrinking fear and multiform discomfort.
"But a nature capable of so much distress, must of necessity be
_capable_ of a corresponding amount of pleasure; and in her case this
was manifest in the fact, that sleep and the quiet of her own room
restored her wonderfully. If she was only let alone, a calm mood,
filled with images of pleasure, soon took possession of her mind.
"Her acquaintance with the fool had commenced some ten years previous
to the time I write of, when she was quite a little girl, and had come
from the country with her brother, who, having taken a small farm
close to the town, preferred residing in the town to occupying the
farm-house, which was not comfortable. She looked at first with some
terror on his uncouth appearance, and with much wonderment on his
strange dress. This wonder was heightened by a conversation she
overheard one day in the street, between the fool and a little pale-
faced boy, who, approaching him respectfully, said, 'Weel, cornel!'
'Weel, laddie!' was the reply. 'Fat dis the wow say, cornel?' 'Come
hame, come hame!' answered the _colonel_, with both accent and
quantity heaped on the word _hame_. She heard no more, and knew not
what the little she had heard, meant. What the _wow_ could be, she had
no idea; only, as the years passed on, the strange word became in her
mind indescribably associated with the strange shape in yellow cloth
on his sleeves. Had she been a native of the town, she could not have
failed to know its import, so familiar was every one with it, although
the word did not belong to the local vocabulary; but, as it was, years
passed away before she discovered its meaning. And when, again and
again, the fool, attempting to convey his gratitude for some kindness
she had shown him, mumbled over the words--_'The wow o' Rivven--the
wow o' Rivven,'_ the wonder would return as to what could be the idea
associated with them in his mind, but she made no advance towards
their explanation.
"That, however, which most attracted her to the old man, was his
persecution by the children. They were to him what the bull-dog was to
her--the constant source of irritation and annoyance. They could
hardly hurt him, nor did he appear to dread other injury from them
than insult, to which, fool though he was, he was keenly alive. Human
gad-flies that they were! they sometimes stung him beyond endurance,
and he would curse them in the impotence of his anger. Once or twice
Elsie had been so far carried beyond her constitutional timidity, by
sympathy for the distress of her friend, that she had gone out and
talked to the boys,--even scolded them, so that they slunk away
ashamed, and began to stand as much in dread of her as of the clutches
of their prey. So she, gentle and timid to excess, acquired among them
the reputation of a termagant. Popular opinion among children, as
among men, is often just, but as often very unjust; for the same
manifestations may proceed from opposite principles; and, therefore,
as indices to character, any mislead as often as enlighten.
"Next door to the house in which Elsie resided, dwelt a tradesman and
his wife, who kept an indefinite sort of shop, in which various kinds
of goods were exposed to sale. Their youngest son was about the same
age as Elsie; and while they were rather more than children, and less
than young people, he spent many of his evenings with her, somewhat to
the loss of position in his classes at the parish school. They were,
indeed, much attached to each other; and, peculiarly constituted as
Elsie was, one may imagine what kind of heavenly messenger a companion
stronger than herself must have been to her. In fact, if she could
have framed the undefinable need of her child-like nature into an
articulate prayer, it would have been--'Give me some one to love me
stronger than I.' Any love was helpful, yes, in its degree, saving to
her poor troubled soul; but the hope, as they grew older together,
that the powerful, yet tender-hearted youth, really loved her, and
would one day make her his wife, was like the opening of heavenly eyes
of life and love in the hitherto blank and death-like face of her
existence. But nothing had been said of love, although they met and
parted like lovers.
"Doubtless if the circles of their thought and feeling had continued
as now to intersect each other, there would have been no interruption
to their affection; but the time at length arrived when the old couple
seeing the rest of their family comfortably settled in life, resolved
to make a gentleman of the youngest; and so sent him from school to
college. The facilities existing in Scotland for providing a
professional training, enabled them to educate him as a surgeon. He
parted from Elsie with some regret; but, far less dependent on her
than she was on him, and full of the prospects of the future, he felt
none of that sinking at the heart which seemed to lay her whole nature
open to a fresh inroad of all the terrors and sorrows of her peculiar
existence. No correspondence took place between them. New pursuits and
relations, and the development of his tastes and judgments, entirely
altered the position of poor Elsie in his memory. Having been, during
their intercourse, far less of a man than she of a woman, he had no
definite idea of the place he had occupied in her regard; and in his
mind she receded into the background of the past, without his having
any idea that she would suffer thereby, or that he was unjust towards
her; while, in her thoughts, his image stood in the highest and
clearest relief. It was the centre-point from which and towards which
all lines radiated and converged; and although she could not but be
doubtful about the future, yet there was much hope mingled with her
doubts.
"But when, at the close of two years, he visited his native village,
and she saw before her, instead of the homely youth who had left her
that winter evening, one who, to her inexperienced eyes, appeared a
finished gentleman, her heart sank within her, as if she had found
Nature herself false in her ripening processes, destroying the
beautiful promise of a former year by changing instead of developing
her creations. He spoke kindly to her, but not cordially. To her ear
the voice seemed to come from a great distance out of the past; and
while she looked upon him, that optical change passed over her vision,
which all have experienced after gazing abstractedly on any object for
a time: his form grew very small, and receded to an immeasurable
distance; till, her imagination mingling with the twilight haze of her
senses, she seemed to see him standing far off on a hill, with the
bright horizon of sunset for a back-ground to his clearly defined
figure.
"She knew no more till she found herself in bed in the dark; and the
first message that reached her from the outer world, was the infernal
growl of the bull-dog from the room below. Next day she saw her lover
walking with two ladies, who would have thought it some degree of
condescension to speak to her; and he passed the house without once
looking towards it.
"One who is sufficiently possessed by the demon of nervousness to be
glad of the magnetic influences of a friend's company in a public
promenade, or of a horse beneath him in passing through a churchyard,
will have some faint idea of how utterly exposed and defenceless poor
Elsie now felt on the crowded thoroughfare of life. And the
insensibility which had overtaken her, was not the ordinary swoon with
which Nature relieves the over-strained nerves, but the return of the
epileptic fits of her early childhood; and if the condition of the
poor girl had been pitiable before, it was tenfold more so now. Yet
she did not complain, but bore all in silence, though it was evident
that her health was giving way. But now, help came to her from a
strange quarter; though many might not be willing to accord the name
of help to that which rather hastened than retarded the progress of
her decline.
"She had gone to spend a few of the summer days with a relative in the
country, some miles from her home, if home it could be called. One
evening, towards sunset, she went out for a solitary walk. Passing
from the little garden gate, she went along a bare country road for
some distance, and then, turning aside by a footpath through a thicket
of low trees, she came out in a lonely little churchyard on the
hill-side. Hardly knowing whether or not she had intended to go there,
she seated herself on a mound covered with long grass, one of
many. Before her stood the ruins of an old church which was taking
centuries to crumble. Little remained but the gable-wall, immensely
thick, and covered with ancient ivy. The rays of the setting sun fell
on a mound at its foot, not green like the rest, but of a rich,
red-brown in the rosy sunset, and evidently but newly heaped up. Her
eyes, too, rested upon it. Slowly the sun sank below the near horizon.
"As the last brilliant point disappeared, the ivy darkened, and a wind
arose and shook all its leaves, making them look cold and troubled;
and to Elsie's ear came a low faint sound, as from a far-off bell. But
close beside her--and she started and shivered at the sound--rose a
deep, monotonous, almost sepulchral voice: '_Come hame, come hame! The
wow, the wow!_'
"At once she understood the whole. She sat in the churchyard of the
ancient parish church of Ruthven; and when she lifted up her eyes,
there she saw, in the half-ruined belfry, the old bell, all but hidden
with ivy, which the passing wind had roused to utter one sleepy tone;
and there, beside her, stood the fool with the bell on his arm; and to
him and to her the _wow o' Rivven_ said, '_Come hame, come hame!_' Ah,
what did she want in the whole universe of God but a home? And though
the ground beneath was hard, and the sky overhead far and boundless,
and the hill-side lonely and companionless, yet somewhere within the
visible, and beyond these the outer surfaces of creation, there might
be a home for her; as round the wintry house the snows lie heaped up
cold and white and dreary all the long _forenight_, while within,
beyond the closed shutters, and giving no glimmer through the thick
stone walls, the fires are blazing joyously, and the voices and
laughter of young unfrozen children are heard, and nothing belongs to
winter but the grey hairs on the heads of the parents, within whose
warm hearts child-like voices are heard, and child-like thoughts move
to and fro. The kernel of winter itself is spring, or a sleeping
summer.
"It was no wonder that the fool, cast out of the earth on a far more
desolate spot than this, should seek to return within her bosom at
this place of open doors, and should call it _home_. For surely the
surface of the earth had no home for him. The mound at the foot of the
gable contained the body of one who had shown him kindness. He had
followed the funeral that afternoon from the town, and had remained
behind with the bell. Indeed, it was his custom, though Elsie had not
known it, to follow every funeral going to this, his favourite
churchyard of Ruthven; and, possibly in imitation of its booming, for
it was still tolled at the funerals, he had given the old bell the
name of the _wow_, and had translated its monotonous clangour into the
articulate sounds--_come home, come home_. What precise meaning he
attached to the words, it is impossible to say; but it was evident
that the place possessed a strange attraction for him, drawing him
towards it by the cords of some spiritual magnetism. It is possible
that in the mind of the idiot there may have been some feeling about
this churchyard and bell, which, in the mind of another, would have
become a grand poetic thought; a feeling as if the ghostly old bell
hung at the church-door of the invisible world, and ever and anon rung
out joyous notes (though they sounded sad in the ears of the living),
calling to the children of the unseen to _come home, come home_.--She
sat for some time in silence; for the bell did not ring again, and the
fool spoke no more; till the dews began to fall, when she rose and
went home, followed by her companion, who passed the night in the
barn.
"From that hour Elsie was furnished with a visual image of the rest
she sought; an image which, mingling with deeper and holier thoughts,
became, like the bow set in the cloud, the earthly pledge and sign of
the fulfilment of heavenly hopes. Often when the wintry fog of cold
discomfort and homelessness filled her soul, all at once the picture
of the little churchyard--with the old gable and belfry, and the
slanting sunlight steeping down to the very roots the long grass on
the graves--arose in the darkened chamber (_camera obscura_) of her
soul; and again she heard the faint Ĉolian sound of the bell, and the
voice of the prophet-fool who interpreted the oracle; and the inward
weariness was soothed by the promise of a long sleep. Who can tell how
many have been counted fools simply because they were prophets; or how
much of the madness in the world may be the utterance of thoughts true
and just, but belonging to a region differing from ours in its nature
and scenery!
"But to Elsie looking out of her window came the mocking tones of the
idle boys who had chosen as the vehicle of their scorn the very words
which showed the relation of the fool to the eternal, and revealed in
him an element higher far than any yet developed in them. They turned
his glory into shame, like the enemies of David when they mocked the
would-be king. And the best in a man is often that which is most
condemned by those who have not attained to his goodness. The words,
however, even as repeated by the boys, had not solely awakened
indignation at the persecution of the old man: they had likewise
comforted her with the thought of the refuge that awaited both him and
her.
"But the same evening a worse trial befell her. Again she sat near the
window, oppressed by the consciousness that her brother had come
in. He had gone up-stairs, and his dog had remained at the door,
exchanging surly compliments with some of his own kind; when the fool
came strolling past, and, I do not know from what cause, the dog flew
at him. Elsie heard his cry and looked up. Her fear of the brute
vanished in a moment before her sympathy for her friend. She darted
from the house, and rushed towards the dog to drag him off the
defenceless idiot, calling him by his name in a tone of anger and
dislike. He left the fool, and, springing at Elsie, seized her by the
arm above the elbow with such a gripe that, in the midst of her agony,
she fancied she heard the bone crack. But she uttered no cry, for the
most apprehensive are sometimes the most courageous. Just then,
however, her former lover was coming along the street, and, catching a
glimpse of what had happened, was on the spot in an instant, took the
dog by the throat with a gripe not inferior to his own, and having
thus compelled him to give up his hold, dashed him on the ground with
a force that almost stunned him, and then with a superadded kick sent
him away limping and howling; whereupon the fool, attacking him
furiously with a stick, would certainly have finished him, had not his
master descried his plight and come to his rescue.
"Meantime the young surgeon had carried Elsie into the house; for, as
soon as she was rescued from the dog, she had fallen down in one of
her fits, which were becoming more and more frequent of themselves,
and little needed such a shock as this to increase their violence. He
was dressing her arm when she began to recover; and when she opened
her eyes, in a state of half-consciousness, the first object she
beheld, was his face bending over her. Re-calling nothing of what had
occurred, it seemed to her, in the dreamy condition in which the fit
had left her, the same face, unchanged, which had once shone in upon
her tardy spring-time, and promised to ripen it into summer. She
forgot that it had departed and left her in the wintry cold. And so
she uttered wild words of love and trust; and the youth, while stung
with remorse at his own neglect, was astonished to perceive the poetic
forms of beauty in which the soul of the uneducated maiden burst into
flower. But as her senses recovered themselves, the face gradually
changed to her, as if the slow alteration of two years had been
phantasmagorically compressed into a few moments; and the glow
departed from the maiden's thoughts and words, and her soul found
itself at the narrow window of the present, from which she could
behold but a dreary country.--From the street came the iambic cry of
the fool, 'Come hame, come hame."
"Tycho Brahe, I think, is said to have kept a fool, who frequently sat
at his feet in his study, and to whose mutterings he used to listen in
the pauses of his own thought. The shining soul of the astronomer drew
forth the rainbow of harmony from the misty spray of words ascending
ever from the dark gulf into which the thoughts of the idiot were ever
falling. He beheld curious concurrences of words therein, and could
read strange meanings from them--sometimes even received wondrous
hints for the direction of celestial inquiry, from what, to any other,
and it may be to the fool himself, was but a ceaseless and aimless
babble. Such power lieth in words. It is not then to be wondered at,
that the sounds I have mentioned should fall on the ears of Elsie, at
such a moment, as a message from God himself. This then--all this
dreariness--was but a passing show like the rest, and there lay
somewhere for her a reality--a home. The tears burst up from her
oppressed heart. She received the message, and prepared to go home.
From that time her strength gradually sank, but her spirits as
steadily rose.
"The strength of the fool, too, began to fail, for he was old. He bore
all the signs of age, even to the grey hairs, which betokened no
wisdom. But one cannot say what wisdom might be in him, or how far he
had not fought his own battle, and been victorious. Whether any notion
of a continuance of life and thought dwelt in his brain, it is
impossible to tell; but he seemed to have the idea that this was not
his home; and those who saw him gradually approaching his end, might
well anticipate for him a higher life in the world to come. He had
passed through this world without ever awakening to such a
consciousness of being, as is common to mankind. He had spent his
years like a weary dream through a long night--a strange, dismal,
unkindly dream; and now the morning was at hand. Often in his dream
had he listened with sleepy senses to the ringing of the bell, but
that bell would awake him at last. He was like a seed buried too deep
in the soil, to which, therefore, has never forced its way upwards to
the open air, never experienced the resurrection of the dead. But
seeds will grow ages after they have fallen into the earth; and,
indeed, with many kinds, and within some limits, the older the seed
before it germinates, the more plentiful is the fruit. And may it not
be believed of many human beings, that, the great Husbandman having
sown them like seeds in the soil of human affairs, there they lie
buried a life long; and only after the upturning of the soil by death,
reach a position in which the awakening of their aspiration and the
consequent growth become possible. Surely he has made nothing in vain.
"A violent cold and cough brought him at last near to his end, and,
hearing that he was ill, Elsie ventured one bright spring day to go to
see him. When she entered the miserable room where he lay, he held out
his hand to her with something like a smile, and muttered feebly and
painfully, 'I'm gaein' to the wow, nae to come back again.' Elsie
could not restrain her tears; while the old man, looking fixedly at
her, though with meaningless eyes, muttered, for the last time, '_Come
hame! come hame!_' and sank into a lethargy, from which nothing could
rouse him, till, next morning, he was waked by friendly death from the
long sleep of this world's night. They bore him to his favourite
church-yard, and buried him within the site of the old church, below
his loved bell, which had ever been to him as the cuckoo-note of a
coming spring. Thus he at length obeyed its summons, and went home.
"Elsie lingered till the first summer days lay warm on the land.
Several kind hearts in the village, hearing of her illness, visited
her and ministered to her. Wondering at her sweetness and patience,
they regretted they had not known her before. How much consolation
might not their kindness have imparted, and how much might not their
sympathy have strengthened her on her painful road! But they could not
long have delayed her going home. Nor, mentally constituted as she
was, would this have been at all to be desired. Indeed it was chiefly
the expectation of departure that quieted and soothed her tremulous
nature. It is true that a deep spring of hope and faith kept singing
on in her heart, but this alone, without the anticipation of speedy
release, could only have kept her mind at peace. It could not have
reached, at least for a long time, the border land between body and
mind, in which her disease lay.
"One still night of summer, the nurse who watched by her bedside heard
her murmur through her sleep, 'I hear it: _come hame--come hame_. I'm
comin', I'm comin'--I'm gaein' hame to the wow, nae to come back.' She
awoke at the sound of her own words, and begged the nurse to convey to
her brother her last request, that she might be buried by the side of
the fool, within the old church of Ruthven. Then she turned her face
to the wall, and in the morning was found quiet and cold. She must
have died within a few minutes after her last words. She was buried
according to her request; and thus she, too, went home.
"Side by side rest the aged fool and the young maiden; for the bell
called them, and they obeyed; and surely they found the fire burning
bright, and heard friendly voices, and felt sweet lips on theirs, in
the home to which they went. Surely both intellect and love were
waiting them there.
"Still the old bell hangs in the old gable; and whenever another is
borne to the old churchyard, it keeps calling to those who are left
behind, with the same sad, but friendly and unchanging voice--_'Come
hame! come hame! come hame!'_"
For a full minute, there was silence in the little company. I myself
dared not look up, but the movement of indistinct and cloudy white
over my undirected eyes, let me know that two or three, amongst them
Adela, were lifting their handkerchiefs to their faces. At length a
voice broke the silence.
"How much of your affecting tale is true, Mr. Armstrong?"
The voice belonged to Mrs. Cathcart.
"I object to the question," said I. "I don't want to know. Suppose,
Mrs. Cathcart, I were to put this story-club, members, stories, and
all, into a book, how would any one like to have her real existence
questioned? It would at least imply that I had made a very bad
portrait of that one."
The lady cast rather a frightened look at me, which I confess I was
not sorry to see. But the curate interposed.
"What frightful sophistry, Mr. Smith!" Then turning to Mrs. Cathcart,
he continued:
"I have not the slightest objection to answer your question, Mrs.
Cathcart; and if our friend Mr. Smith does not want to hear the
answer, I will wait till he stops his ears."
He glanced to me, his black eyes twinkling with fun. I saw that it was
all he could do to keep from winking; but he did.
"Oh no," I answered; "I will share what is going."
"Well, then, the fool is a real character, in every point. But I
learned after I had written the sketch, that I had made one mistake.
He was in reality about seventeen, when he was found on the hill. The
bell is a real character too. Elsie is a creature of my own. So of
course are the brother and the dog."
"I don't know whether to be glad or sorry that there was no Elsie,"
said his wife. "But did you know the fool yourself?"
"Perfectly well, and had a great respect for him. When a little boy, I
was quite proud of the way he behaved to me. He occasionally visited
the general persecution of the boys, upon any boy he chanced to meet
on the road; but as often as I met him, he walked quietly past me,
muttering '_Auntie's folk_!' or returning my greeting of _'A fine day,
Colonel!'_ with a grunted _'Ay!'_"
"What did he mean by 'Auntie's folk?'" asked Mrs. Armstrong.
"My grandmother was kind to him, and he always called her _Auntie_. I
cannot tell how the fancy originated; but certainly he knew all her
descendants somehow--a degree of intelligence not to have been
expected of him--and invariably murmured 'Auntie's folk,' as often as
he passed any of them on the road, as if to remind himself that these
were friends, or relations. Possibly he had lived with an aunt before
he was exposed on the moor."
"Is _wow_ a word at all?" I asked.
"If you look into Jamieson's Dictionary," said Armstrong, "as I have
done for the express purpose, you will find that the word is used
differently in different quarters of the country--chiefly, however, as
a verb. It means _to bark, to howl;_ likewise _to wave or beckon;_
also _to woo, or make love to_. Any of these might be given as an
explanation of his word. But I do not think it had anything to do with
these meanings; nor was the word used, in that district, in either of
the last two senses, in my time at least. It was used, however, in the
meaning of _alas_--a form of _woe_ in fact; as _wow's me!_ But I
believe it was, in the fool's use, an attempt to reproduce the sound
which the bell made. If you repeat the word several times, resting on
the final _w_, and pausing between each repetition--_wow! wow!
wow!_--you will find that the sound is not at all unlike the tolling
of a funeral bell; and therefore the word is most probably an
onomatopoetic invention of the fool's own."
Adela offered no remark upon the story, and I knew from her
countenance that she was too much affected to be inclined to speak.
Her eyes had that fixed, forward look, which, combined with haziness,
indicates deep emotion, while the curves of her mouth were nearly
straightened out by the compression of her lips. I had thought, while
the reader went on, that she could hardly fail to find in the story of
Elsie, some correspondence to her own condition and necessities: I now
believe that she had found that correspondence. More talk was not
desirable; and I was glad when, after a few attempts at ordinary
conversation, Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield rose to take their leave, which
was accepted by the whole company as a signal for departure.
"But stay," I interposed; "who is to read or tell next?"
"Why, I will be revenged on Harry," said the clergyman.
"That you can't," said the doctor; "for I have nothing to give you."
"You don't mean to say you are going to jib?"
"No. I don't say I won't read. In fact I have a story in my head, and
a bit of it on paper; but I positively can't read next time."
"Will you oblige us with a story, Colonel?" said I.
"My dear fellow, you know I never put pen to paper in my life, except
when I could not help it. I may tell you a story before it is all
over, but write one I cannot."
"A tale that is told is the best tale of all," I said. "Shall we book
you for next time?"
"No, no! not next time; positively not. My story must come of itself,
else I cannot tell it at all."
"Well, there's nobody left but you, Mr. Bloomfield. So you can't get
rid of it."
"I don't think I ever wrote what was worth calling a story; but I
don't mind reading you something of the sort which I have at home, on
one condition."
"What is that?"
"That nobody ask any questions about it."
"Oh! certainly."
"But my only reason is, that somehow I feel it would all come to
pieces if you did. It is nothing, as a story; but there are feelings
expressed in it, which were very strong in me when I wrote it, and
which I do not feel willing to talk about, although I have no
objection to having them thought about."
"Well, that is settled. When shall we meet again?"
"To-morrow, or the day after," said the colonel; "which you please."
"Oh! the day after, if I may have a word in it," said the doctor. "I
shall be very busy to-morrow--and we mustn't crowd remedies either,
you know."
The close of the sentence was addressed to me only. The rest of the
company had taken leave, and were already at the door, when he made
the last remark. He now came up to his patient, felt her pulse, and
put the question,
"How have you slept the last two nights?"
"Better, thank you."
"And do you feel refreshed when you wake?"
"More so than for some time."
"I won't give you anything to-night.--Good night."
"Good night. Thank you."
This was all that passed between them. Jealousy, with the six eyes of
Colonel, Mrs., and Percy Cathcart, was intent upon the pair during the
brief conversation. And I thought Adela perceived the fact.
