Chapter VII.
The schoolmaster's story.
I was walking up the street the next day, when, finding I was passing
the Grammar-school, and knowing there was nothing going on there now,
I thought I should not be intruding if I dropped in upon the
schoolmaster and his wife, and had a little chat with them. I already
counted them friends; for I felt that however different our training
and lives might have been, we all meant the same thing now, and that
is the true bond of fellowship. I found Mr. Bloomfield reading to his
wife--a novel, too. Evidently he intended to make the most of this
individual holiday, by making it as unlike a work-day as possible.
"I see you are enjoying yourselves," I said. "It's a shame to break in
upon you."
"We are delighted to see you. Your interruption will only postpone a
good thing to a better," said the kind-hearted schoolmaster, laying
down his book. "Will you take a pipe?"
"With pleasure--but not here, surely?"
"Oh! we smoke everywhere in holiday-time."
"You enjoy your holiday, I can see."
"I should think so. I don't believe one of the boys delights in a
holiday quite as heartily as I do. You must not imagine I don't enjoy
my work, though."
"Not in the least. Earnest work breeds earnest play. But you must find
the labour wearisome at times."
"I confess I have felt it such. I have said to myself sometimes: 'Am I
to go on for ever teaching boys Latin grammar, till I wish there had
never been a Latin nation to leave such an incubus upon the bosom of
after ages?' Then I would remind myself, that, under cover of grammar
and geography, and all the other _farce_-meat (as the word ought to be
written and pronounced), I put something better into my pupils;
something that I loved myself, and cared to give to them. But I often
ask myself to what it all goes.--I learn to love my boys. I kill in
them all the bad I can. I nourish in them all the good I can. I send
them across the borders of manhood--and they leave me, and most likely
I hear nothing more of them. And I say to myself: 'My life is like a
wind. It blows and will cease.' But something says in reply: 'Wouldst
thou not be one of God's winds, content to blow, and scatter the rain
and dew, and shake the plants into fresh life, and then pass away and
know nothing of what thou hast done?' And I answer: 'Yes, Lord."'
"You are not a wind; you are a poet, Mr. Bloomfield," I said, with
emotion.
"One of the speechless ones, then," he returned, with a smile that
showed plainly enough that the speechless longed for utterance. It was
such a smile as would, upon the face of a child, wile anything out of
you. Surely God, who needs no wiles to make him give what one is ready
to receive, will let him sing some day, to his heart's content! And
me, too, O Lord, I pray.
"What a pleasure it must be to you now, to have such a man as
Mr. Armstrong for your curate! He will be a brother to you," I said,
as soon as I could speak.
"Mr, Smith, I cannot tell you what he is to me already. He is doing
what I would fain have done--what was denied to me."
"How do you mean?"
"I studied for the church. But I aimed too high. My heart burned
within me, but my powers were small. I wanted to relight the ancient
lamp, but my rush-light would not kindle it. My friends saw no light;
they only smelt burning: I was heterodox. I hesitated, I feared, I
yielded, I withdrew. To this day, I do not know whether I did right or
wrong. But I am honoured yet in being allowed to teach. And if at the
last I have the faintest 'Well done' from the Master, I shall be
satisfied."
Mrs. Bloomfield was gently weeping; partly from regret, as I judged,
that her husband was not in the position she would have given him,
partly from delight in his manly goodness. A watery film stood in the
schoolmaster's eyes, and his wise gentle face was irradiated with the
light of a far-off morning, whose dawn was visible to his hope.
"The world is the better for you at least, Mr. Bloomfield," I said. "I
wish some more of us were as sure as you of helping on the daily
Creation, which is quite as certain a fact as that of old; and is even
more important to us, than that recorded in the book of Genesis. It is
not great battles alone that build up the world's history, nor great
poems alone that make the generations grow. There is a still small
rain from heaven that has more to do with the blessedness of nature
and of human nature, than the mightiest earthquake, or the loveliest
rainbow."
"I do comfort myself," he answered, "at this Christmas-time, and for
the whole year, with the thought that, after all, the world was saved
by a child.--But that brings me to think of a little trouble I am in,
Mr. Smith. The only paper I have, at all fit for reading to-morrow
night, is much too short to occupy the evening. What is to be done?"
"Oh! we can talk about it."
"That is just what I could not bear. It is rather an odd composition,
I fear; but whether it be worth anything or not, I cannot help having
a great affection for it."
"Then it is true, I presume?"
"There again! That is just one of the questions I don't want to
answer. I quite sympathized with you last night in not wishing to know
how much of Mr. Armstrong's story was true. Even if wholly fictitious,
a good story is always true. But there are things which one would have
no right to invent, which would be worth nothing if they were
invented, from the very circumstance of their origin in the brain, and
not in the world. The very beauty of them demands that they should be
fact; or, if not, that they should not be told--sent out poor
unclothed spirits into the world before a body of fact has been
prepared for them. But I have always found it impossible to define the
kinds of stories I mean. The nearest I can come to it is this: If the
force of the lesson depends on the story being a fact, it must not be
told except it is a fact. Then again, there are true things that one
would be shy of telling, if he thought they would be attributed to
himself. Now this story of mine is made up of fiction and fact both.
And I fear that if I were called upon to take it to pieces, it would
lose the force of any little truth it possesses, besides exposing me
to what I would gladly avoid. Indeed I fear I ought not to read it at
all."
"You are amongst friends, you know, Mr. Bloomfield."
"Entirely?" he asked, with a half comic expression.
"Well," I answered, laughing, "any exception that may exist, is hardly
worth considering, and indeed ought to be thankfully accepted, as
tending to wholesomeness. Neither vinegar nor mustard would be
desirable as food, you know; yet--"
"I understand you. I am ashamed of having made such a fuss about
nothing. I will do my best, I assure you."
I fear that the fastidiousness of the good man will not be excuse
enough for the introduction of such a long preamble to a story for
which only a few will in the least care. But the said preamble
happening to touch on some interesting subjects, I thought it well to
record it. As to the story itself, there are some remarks of Balzac in
the introduction to one of his, that would well apply to the
schoolmaster's. They are to the effect that some stories which have
nothing in them as stories, yet fill one with an interest both gentle
and profound, if they are read in the mood that is exactly fitted for
their just reception.
Mr. Bloomfield conducted me to the door.
"I hope you will not think me a grumbler," he said; "I should not like
your disapprobation, Mr. Smith."
"You do me great honour," I said, honestly. "Believe me there is no
danger of that. I understand and sympathize with you entirely."
"My love of approbation is large," he said, tapping the bump referred
to with his forefinger. "Excuse it and me too."
"There is no need, my dear friend," I said, "if I may call you such."
His answer was a warm squeeze of the hand, with which we parted.
As I returned home, I met Henry Armstrong, mounted on a bay mare of a
far different sort from what a sportsman would consider a doctor
justified in using for his purposes. In fact she was a thorough
hunter; no beauty certainly, with her ewe-neck, drooping tail, and
white face and stocking; but she had an eye at once gentle and wild as
that of a savage angel, if my reader will condescend to dream for a
moment of such an anomaly; while her hind quarters were power itself,
and her foreleg was flung right out from the shoulder with a gesture
not of work but of delight; the step itself being entirely one of
work,--long in proportion to its height. The lines of her fore and
hind-quarters converged so much, that there was hardly more than room
for the saddle between them. I had never seen such action. Altogether,
although not much of a hunting man, the motion of the creature gave me
such a sense of power and joy, that I longed to be scouring the fields
with her under me. It was a sunshiny day, with a keen cold air, and a
thin sprinkling of snow; and Harry looked so radiant with health, that
one could easily believe he had health to convey, if not to bestow. He
stopped and inquired after his patient.
"Could you not get her to go out with you, Mr. Smith?" he said.
"Would that be safe, Mr. Henry?"
"Perfectly safe, if she is willing to go; not otherwise. Get her to go
willingly for ten minutes, and see if she is not the better for it.
What I want is to make the blood go quicker and more plentifully
through her brain. She has not fever enough. She does not live fast
enough."
"I will try," I said. "Have you been far to-day?"
"Just come out. You might tell that by the mare. You should see her
three hours after this."
And he patted her neck as if he loved her--as I am sure he did--and
trotted gently away.
When I came up to the gate, Beeves was standing at it.
"A nice gentleman that, sir!" said he.
"He is, Beeves. I quite agree with you."
"And rides a good mare, sir; and rides as well as any man in the
country. I never see him leave home in a hurry. Always goes gently
out, and comes gently in. What has gone between, you may see by her
skin when she comes home."
"Does he hunt, Beeves?"
"I believe not, sir; except the fox crosses him in one of his
rounds. Then if he is heading anywhere in his direction, they say
doctor and mare go at it like mad. He's got two more in his stable,
better horses to look at; but that's the one to go."
"I wonder how he affords such animals."
"They say he has a way of buying them lame, and a wonderful knack of
setting them up again. They all go, anyhow."
"Will you say to your mistress, that I should like very much if she
would come to me here."
Beeves stared, but said, "Yes, sir," and went in. I was now standing
in front of the house, doubtful of the reception Adela would give my
message, but judging that curiosity would aid my desire. I was right.
Beeves came back with the message that his mistress would join me in a
few minutes. In a quarter of an hour she came, wrapt in furs. She was
very pale, but her eye was brighter than usual, and it did not shrink
from the cold glitter of the snow. She put her arm in mine, and we
walked for ten minutes along the dry gravel walks, chatting
cheerfully, about anything and nothing.
"Now you must go in," I said.
"Not yet, surely, uncle. By the bye, do you think it was right of me
to come out?"
"Mr. Henry Armstrong said you might."
She did not reply, but I thought a slight rose-colour tinged her
cheek.
"But he said you must not be out more than ten minutes."
"Well, I suppose I must do as I am told."
And she turned at once, and went up the stair to the door, almost as
lightly as any other girl of her age.
There was some progress, plainly enough. But was that a rose-tinge I
had seen on her cheek or not?
The next evening, after tea, we arranged ourselves much as on the last
occasion; and Mr. Bloomfield, taking a neat manuscript from his
pocket, and evidently restraining himself from apology and
explanation, although as evidently nervous about the whole proceeding,
and jealous of his own presumption, began to read as follows.
His voice trembled as he read, and his wife's face was a shade or two
paler than usual.
"BIRTH, DREAMING, AND DEATH.
"In a little room, scantily furnished, lighted, not from the window,
for it was dark without, and the shutters were closed, but from the
peaked flame of a small, clear-burning lamp, sat a young man, with his
back to the lamp and his face to the fire. No book or paper on the
table indicated labour just forsaken; nor could one tell from his
eyes, in which the light had all retreated inwards, whether his
consciousness was absorbed in thought, or reverie only. The window
curtains, which scarcely concealed the shutters, were of coarse
texture, but of brilliant scarlet--for he loved bright colours; and
the faint reflection they threw on his pale, thin face, made it look
more delicate than it would have seemed in pure daylight. Two or three
bookshelves, suspended by cords from a nail in the wall, contained a
collection of books, poverty-stricken as to numbers, with but few to
fill up the chronological gap between the Greek New Testament and
stray volumes of the poets of the present century. But his love for
the souls of his individual books was the stronger that there was no
possibility of its degenerating into avarice for the bodies or
outsides whose aggregate constitutes the piece of house-furniture
called a library.
"Some years before, the young man (my story is so short, and calls in
so few personages, that I need not give him a name) had aspired, under
the influence of religious and sympathetic feeling, to be a clergyman;
but Providence, either in the form of poverty, or of theological
difficulty, had prevented his prosecuting his studies to that end. And
now he was only a village schoolmaster, nor likely to advance
further. I have said _only_ a village schoolmaster; but is it not
better to be a teacher _of_ babes than a preacher _to_ men, at any
time; not to speak of those troublous times of transition, wherein a
difference of degree must so often assume the appearance of a
difference of kind? That man is more happy--I will not say more
blessed--who, loving boys and girls, is loved and revered by them,
than he who, ministering unto men and women, is compelled to pour his
words into the filter of religious suspicion, whence the water is
allowed to pass away unheeded, and only the residuum is retained for
the analysis of ignorant party-spirit.
"He had married a simple village girl, in whose eyes he was nobler
than the noblest--to whom he was the mirror, in which the real forms
of all things around were reflected. Who dares pity my poor village
schoolmaster? I fling his pity away. Had he not found in her love the
verdict of God, that he was worth loving? Did he not in her possess
the eternal and unchangeable? Were not her eyes openings through which
he looked into the great depths that could not be measured or
represented? She was his public, his society, his critic. He found in
her the heaven of his rest. God gave unto him immortality, and he was
glad. For his ambition, it had died of its own mortality. He read the
words of Jesus, and the words of great prophets whom he has sent; and
learned that the wind-tossed anemone is a word of God as real and true
as the unbending oak beneath which it grows--that reality is an
absolute existence precluding degrees. If his mind was, as his room,
scantily furnished, it was yet lofty; if his light was small, it was
brilliant. God lived, and he lived. Perhaps the highest moral height
which a man can reach, and at the same time the most difficult of
attainment, is the willingness to be _nothing_ relatively, so that he
attain that positive excellence which the original conditions of his
being render not merely possible, but imperative. It is nothing to a
man to be greater or less than another--to be esteemed or otherwise by
the public or private world in which he moves. Does he, or does he
not, behold and love and live the unchangeable, the essential, the
divine? This he can only do according as God has made him. He can
behold and understand God in the least degree, as well as in the
greatest, only by the godlike within him; and he that loves thus the
good and great has no room, no thought, no necessity for comparison
and difference. The truth satisfies him. He lives in its
absoluteness. God makes the glow-worm as well as the star; the light
in both is divine. If mine be an earth-star to gladden the wayside, I
must cultivate humbly and rejoicingly its green earth-glow, and not
seek to blanch it to the whiteness of the stars that lie in the fields
of blue. For to deny God in my own being is to cease to behold him in
any. God and man can meet only by the man's becoming that which God
meant him to be. Then he enters into the house of life, which is
greater than the house of fame. It is better to be a child in a green
field, than a knight of many orders in a state ceremonial.
"All night long he had sat there, and morning was drawing nigh. He has
not heard the busy wind all night, heaping up snow against the house,
which will make him start at the ghostly face of the world when at
length he opens the shutters, and it stares upon him so white. For up
in a little room above, white-curtained, like the great earth without,
there has been a storm, too, half the night--moanings and prayers--and
some forbidden tears; but now, at length, it is over; and through the
portals of two mouths instead of one, flows and ebbs the tide of the
great air-sea which feeds the life of man. With the sorrow of the
mother, the new life is purchased for the child; our very being is
redeemed from nothingness with the pains of a death of which we know
nothing.
"An hour has gone by since the watcher below has been delivered from
the fear and doubt that held him. He has seen the mother and the
child--the first she has given to life and him--and has returned to
his lonely room, quiet and glad.
"But not long did he sit thus before thoughts of doubt awoke in his
mind. He remembered his scanty income, and the somewhat feeble health
of his wife. One or two small debts he had contracted, seemed
absolutely to press on his bosom; and the newborn child--'oh! how
doubly welcome,' he thought, 'if I were but half as rich again as I
am!'--brought with it, as its own love, so its own care. The dogs of
need, that so often hunt us up to heaven, seemed hard upon his heels;
and he prayed to God with fervour; and as he prayed he fell asleep in
his chair, and as he slept he dreamed. The fire and the lamp burned on
as before, but threw no rays into his soul; yet now, for the first
time, he seemed to become aware of the storm without; for his dream
was as follows:--
"He lay in his bed, and listened to the howling of the wintry wind. He
trembled at the thought of the pitiless cold, and turned to sleep
again, when he thought he heard a feeble knocking at the door. He rose
in haste, and went down with a light. As he opened the door, the wind,
entering with a gust of frosty particles, blew out his candle; but he
found it unnecessary, for the grey dawn had come. Looking out, he saw
nothing at first; but a second look, turned downwards, showed him a
little half-frozen child, who looked quietly, but beseechingly, in his
face. His hair was filled with drifted snow, and his little hands and
cheeks were blue with cold. The heart of the schoolmaster swelled to
bursting with the spring-flood of love and pity that rose up within
it. He lifted the child to his bosom, and carried him into the house;
where, in the dream's incongruity, he found a fire blazing in the room
in which he now slept. The child said never a word. He set him by the
fire, and made haste to get hot water, and put him in a warm bath. He
never doubted that this was a stray orphan who had wandered to him for
protection, and he felt that he could not part with him again; even
though the train of his previous troubles and doubts once more passed
through the mind of the dreamer, and there seemed no answer to his
perplexities for the lack of that cheap thing, gold--yea, silver. But
when he had undressed and bathed the little orphan, and having dried
him on his knees, set him down to reach something warm to wrap him in,
the boy suddenly looked up in his face, as if revived, and said with a
heavenly smile, 'I am the child Jesus.' 'The child Jesus!' said the
dreamer, astonished. 'Thou art like any other child.' 'No, do not say
so,' returned the boy; 'but say, _Any other child is like me_.' And
the child and the dream slowly faded away; and he awoke with these
words sounding in his heart--'Whosoever shall receiveth one of such
children in my name, receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me,
receiveth not me, but him that sent me.' It was the voice of God
saying to him: 'Thou wouldst receive the child whom I sent thee out of
the cold, stormy night; receive the new child out of the cold waste
into the warm human house, as the door by which it can enter God's
house, its home. If better could be done for it, or for thee, would I
have sent it hither? Through thy love, my little one must learn my
love and be blessed. And thou shall not keep it without thy reward.
For thy necessities--in thy little house, is there not yet room? in
thy barrel, is there not yet meal? and thy purse is not empty quite.
Thou canst not eat more than a mouthful at once. I have made thee
so. Is it any trouble to me to take care of thee? Only I prefer to
feed thee from my own hand, and not from thy store.'And the
schoolmaster sprang up in joy, ran upstairs, kissed his wife, and
clasped the baby in his arms in the name of the child Jesus. And in
that embrace, he knew that he received God to his heart. Soon, with a
tender, beaming face, he was wading through the snow to the
school-house, where he spent a happy day amidst the rosy faces and
bright eyes of his boys and girls. These, likewise, he loved the more
dearly and joyfully for that dream, and those words in his heart; so
that, amidst their true child-faces, (all going well with them, as not
unfrequently happened in his schoolroom), he felt as if all the
elements of Paradise were gathered around him, and knew that he was
God's child, doing God's work.
"But while that dream was passing through the soul of the husband,
another visited the wife, as she lay in the faintness and trembling
joy of the new motherhood. For although she that has been mother
before, is not the less a new mother to the new child, her former
relation not covering with its wings the fresh bird in the nest of her
bosom, yet there must be a peculiar delight in the thoughts and
feelings that come with the first-born.--As she lay half in a sleep,
half in a faint, with the vapours of a gentle delirium floating
through her brain, without losing the sense of existence she lost the
consciousness of its form, and thought she lay, not a young mother in
her bed, but a nosegay of wild flowers in a basket, crushed, flattened
and half-withered. With her in the basket lay other bunches of
flowers, whose odours, some rare as well as rich, revealed to her the
sad contrast in which she was placed. Beside her lay a cluster of
delicately curved, faintly tinged, tea-scented roses; while she was
only blue hyacinth bells, pale primroses, amethyst anemones, closed
blood-coloured daisies, purple violets, and one sweet-scented, pure
white orchis. The basket lay on the counter of a well-known little
shop in the village, waiting for purchasers. By and by her own husband
entered the shop, and approached the basket to choose a nosegay. 'Ah!'
thought she, 'will he choose me? How dreadful if he should not, and I
should be left lying here, while he takes another! But how should he
choose me? They are all so beautiful; and even my scent is nearly
gone. And he cannot know that it is I lying here. Alas! alas!' But as
she thought thus, she felt his hand clasp her, heard the ransom-money
fall, and felt that she was pressed to his face and lips, as he passed
from the shop. He _had_ chosen her; he _had_ known her. She opened her
eyes: her husband's kiss had awakened her. She did not speak, but
looked up thankfully in his eyes, as if he had, in fact, like one of
the old knights, delivered her from the transformation of some evil
magic, by the counter-enchantment of a kiss, and restored her from a
half-withered nosegay to be a woman, a wife, a mother. The dream
comforted her much, for she had often feared that she, the simple,
so-called uneducated girl, could not be enough for the great
schoolmaster. But soon her thoughts flowed into another channel; the
tears rose in her dark eyes, shining clear from beneath a stream that
was not of sorrow; and it was only weakness that kept her from
uttering audible words like these:--'Father in heaven, shall I trust
my husband's love, and doubt thine? Wilt thou meet less richly the
fearing hope of thy child's heart, than he in my dream met the longing
of his wife's? He was perfected in my eyes by the love he bore
me--shall I find thee less complete? Here I lie on thy world, faint,
and crushed, and withered; and my soul often seems as if it had lost
all the odours that should float up in the sweet-smelling savour of
thankfulness and love to thee. But thou hast only to take me, only to
choose me, only to clasp me to thy bosom, and I shall be a beautiful
singing angel, singing to God, and comforting my husband while I
sing. Father, take me, possess me, fill me!'
"So she lay patiently waiting for the summer-time of restored strength
that drew slowly nigh. With her husband and her child near her, in her
soul, and God everywhere, there was for her no death, and no
hurt. When she said to herself, 'How rich I am!' it was with the
riches that pass not away--the riches of the Son of man; for in her
treasures, the human and the divine were blended--were one.
"But there was a hard trial in store for them. They had learned to
receive what the Father sent: they had now to learn that what he gave
he gave eternally, after his own being--his own glory. For ere the
mother awoke from her first sleep, the baby, like a frolicsome child-
angel, that but tapped at his mother's window and fled--the baby died;
died while the mother slept away the pangs of its birth, died while
the father was teaching other babes out of the joy of his new
fatherhood.
"When the mother woke, she lay still in her joy--the joy of a doubled
life; and knew not that death had been there, and had left behind only
the little human coffin.
"'Nurse, bring me the baby,' she said at last. 'I want to see it.'
"But the nurse pretended not to hear.
"'I want to nurse it. Bring it.'
"She had not yet learned to say _him_; for it was her first baby.
"But the nurse went out of the room, and remained some minutes
away. When she returned, the mother spoke more absolutely, and the
nurse was compelled to reply--at last.
"'Nurse, do bring me the baby; I am quite able to nurse it now.'
"'Not yet, if you please, ma'am. Really you must rest a while
first. Do try to go to sleep.'
"The nurse spoke steadily, and looked her too straight in the face;
and there was a constraint in her voice, a determination to be calm,
that at once roused the suspicion of the mother; for though her
first-born was dead, and she had given birth to what was now, as far
as the eye could reach, the waxen image of a son, a child had come
from God, and had departed to him again; and she was his mother.
"And the fear fell upon her heart that it might be as it was; and,
looking at her attendant with a face blanched yet more with fear than
with suffering, she said,
"'Nurse, is the baby--?'
"She could not say _dead_; for to utter the word would be at once to
make it possible that the only fruit of her labour had been pain and
sorrow.
"But the nurse saw that further concealment was impossible; and,
without another word, went and fetched the husband, who, with face
pale as the mother's, brought the baby, dressed in its white clothes,
and laid it by its mother's side, where it lay too still.
"'Oh, ma'am, do not take on so,' said the nurse, as she saw the face
of the mother grow like the face of the child, as if she were about to
rush after him into the dark.
"But she was not 'taking on' at all. She only felt that pain at her
heart, which is the farewell kiss of a long-cherished joy. Though cast
out of paradise into a world that looked very dull and weary, yet,
used to suffering, and always claiming from God the consolation it
needed, and satisfied with that, she was able, presently, to look up
in her husband's face, and try to reassure him of her well-being by a
dreary smile.
"'Leave the baby,' she said; and they left it where it was. Long and
earnestly she gazed on the perfect tiny features of the little
alabaster countenance, and tried to feel that this was the child she
had been so long waiting for. As she looked, she fancied she heard it
breathe, and she thought--'What if it should be only asleep!' but,
alas! the eyes would not open, and when she drew it close to her, she
shivered to feel it so cold. At length, as her eyes wandered over and
over the little face, a look of her husband dawned unexpectedly upon
it; and, as if the wife's heart awoke the mother's she cried out,
'Baby! baby!' and burst into tears, during which weeping she fell
asleep.
"When she awoke, she found the babe had been removed while she slept.
But the unsatisfied heart of the mother longed to look again on the
form of the child; and again, though with remonstrance from the nurse,
it was laid beside her. All day and all night long, it remained by her
side, like a little frozen thing that had wandered from its home, and
now lay dead by the door.
"Next morning the nurse protested that she must part with it, for it
made her fret; but she knew it quieted her, and she would rather keep
her little lifeless babe. At length the nurse appealed to the father;
and the mother feared he would think it necessary to remove it; but to
her joy and gratitude he said, 'No, no; let her keep it as long as she
likes.' And she loved her husband the more for that; for he understood
her.
"Then she had the cradle brought near the bed, all ready as it was for
a live child that had open eyes, and therefore needed sleep--needed
the lids of the brain to close, when it was filled full of the strange
colours and forms of the new world. But this one needed no cradle, for
it slept on. It needed, instead of the little curtains to darken it to
sleep, a great sunlight to wake it up from the darkness, and the
ever-satisfied rest. Yet she laid it in the cradle, which she had set
near her, where she could see it, with the little hand and arm laid
out on the white coverlet. If she could only keep it so! Could not
something be done, if not to awake it, yet to turn it to stone, and
let it remain so for ever? No; the body must go back to its mother,
the earth, and the _form_ which is immortal, being the thought of God,
must go back to its Father--the Maker. And as it lay in the white
cradle, a white coffin was being made for it. And the mother thought:
'I wonder which trees are growing coffins for my husband and me.'
"But ere the child, that had the prayer of Job in his grief, and had
died from its mother's womb, was carried away to be buried, the mother
prayed over it this prayer:--'O God, if thou wilt not let me be a
mother, I have one refuge: I will go back and be a child: I will be
thy child more than ever. My mother-heart will find relief in
childhood towards its Father. For is it not the same nature that makes
the true mother and the true child? Is it not the same thought
blossoming upward and blossoming downward? So there is God the Father
and God the Son. Thou wilt keep my little son for me. He has gone home
to be nursed for me. And when I grow well, I will be more simple, and
truthful, and joyful in thy sight. And now thou art taking away my
child, my plaything, from me. But I think how pleased I should be, if
I had a daughter, and she loved me so well that she only smiled when I
took her plaything from her. Oh! I will not disappoint thee--thou
shall have thy joy. Here I am, do with me what thou wilt; I will only
smile.'
"And how fared the heart of the father? At first, in the bitterness of
his grief, he called the loss of his child a punishment for his doubt
and unbelief; and the feeling of punishment made the stroke more keen,
and the heart less willing to endure it. But better thoughts woke
within him ere long.
"The old woman who swept out his schoolroom, came in the evening to
inquire after the mistress, and to offer her condolences on the loss
of the baby. She came likewise to tell the news, that a certain old
man of little respectability had departed at last, unregretted by a
single soul in the village but herself, who had been his nurse through
the last tedious illness.
"The schoolmaster thought with himself:
"'Can that soiled and withered leaf of a man, and my little snow-flake
of a baby, have gone the same road? Will they meet by the way? Can
they talk about the same thing--anything? They must part on the
boarders of the shining land, and they could hardly speak by the way.'
"'He will live four-and-twenty hours, nurse,' the doctor had said.
"'No, doctor; he will die to-night,' the nurse had replied; during
which whispered dialogue, the patient had lain breathing quietly, for
the last of suffering was nearly over.
He was at the close of an ill-spent life, not so much selfishly
towards others as indulgently towards himself. He had failed of true
joy by trying often and perseveringly to create a false one; and now,
about to knock at the gate of the other world, he bore with him no
burden of the good things of this; and one might be tempted to say of
him, that it were better he had not been born. The great majestic
mystery lay before him--but when would he see its majesty?
"He was dying thus, because he had tried to live as Nature said he
should not live; and he had taken his own wages--for the law of the
Maker is the necessity of his creature. His own children had forsaken
him, for they were not perfect as their Father in heaven, who maketh
his sun to shine on the evil and on the good. Instead of doubling
their care as his need doubled, they had thought of the disgrace he
brought on them, and not of the duty they owed him; and now, left to
die alone for them, he was waited on by this hired nurse, who,
familiar with death-beds, knew better than the doctor--knew that he
could live only a few hours.
"Stooping to his ear, she had told him, as gently as she could--for
she thought she ought not to conceal it--that he must die that night.
He had lain silent for a few moments; then had called her, and, with
broken and failing voice, had said, 'Nurse, you are the only friend I
have: give me one kiss before I die.' And the woman-heart had answered
the prayer.
"'And,' said the old woman, 'he put his arms round my neck, and gave
me a long kiss, such a long kiss! and then he turned his face away,
and never spoke again.'
"So, with the last unction of a woman's kiss, with this baptism for
the dead, he had departed.
"'Poor old man! he had not quite destroyed his heart yet,' thought the
schoolmaster. 'Surely it was the child-nature that woke in him at the
last, when the only thing left for his soul to desire, the only thing
he could think of as a preparation for the dread something, was a
kiss. Strange conjunction, yet simple and natural! Eternity--a kiss.
Kiss me; for I am going to the Unknown!--Poor old man!' the
schoolmaster went on in his thoughts, 'I hope my baby has met him, and
put his tiny hand in the poor old shaking hand, and so led him across
the borders into the shining land, and up to where Jesus sits, and
said to the Lord: "Lord, forgive this old man, for he knew not what he
did." And I trust the Lord has forgiven him.'
"And then the bereaved father fell on his knees, and cried out:
"'Lord, thou hast not punished me. Thou wouldst not punish for a
passing thought of troubled unbelief, with which I strove. Lord, take
my child and his mother and me, and do what thou wilt with us. I know
thou givest not, to take again.'
"And ere the schoolmaster could call his protestantism to his aid, he
had ended his prayer with the cry:
"'And O God! have mercy upon the poor old man, and lay not his sins to
his charge.'
"For, though a woman's kiss may comfort a man to eternity, it is not
all he needs. And the thought of his lost child had made the soul of
the father compassionate."
* * * * *
He ceased, and we sat silent.
* * * * *
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
