Chapter VI.
What did draw out his first smile.
Mr. Porson was a man about five and forty; his wife was a few years
younger. His theories of religion were neither large nor lofty; he
accepted those that were handed down to him, and did not trouble
himself as to whether they were correct. He did what was better: he
tried constantly to obey the law of God, whether he found it in the
Bible or in his own heart. Thus he was greater in the kingdom of
heaven than thousands that knew more, had better theories about God,
and could talk much more fluently concerning religion than he. By
obeying God he let God teach him. So his heart was always growing; and
where the heart grows, there is no fear of the intellect; there it
also grows, and in the best fashion of growth. He was very good to his
people, and not foolishly kind. He tried his best to help them to be
what they ought to be, to make them bear their troubles, be true to
one another, and govern themselves. He was like a father to them. For
some, of course, he could do but little, because they were locked
boxes with nothing in them; but for a few he did much. Perhaps it was
because he was so good to his flock that God gave him little Clare to
bring up. Perhaps it was because he and his wife were so good to
Clare, that by and by a wonderful thing took place.
About three years after the earthquake, Mrs. Porson had a baby-girl
sent her for her very own. The father and mother thought themselves
the happiest couple on the face of the earth--and who knows but they
were! If they were not, so much the better! for then, happy as they
were, there were happier yet than they; and who, in his greatest
happiness, would not be happier still to know that the earth held
happier than he!
When Clare first saw the baby, he looked down on her with solemn,
unmoved countenance, and gazed changeless for a whole minute. He
thought there had been another earthquake, that another church-dome
had fallen, and another child been found and brought home from the
ruin. Then light began to grow somewhere under his face. His mother,
full as was her heart of her new child, watched his countenance
anxiously. The light under his face grew and grew, till his face was
radiant. Then out of the midst of the shining broke the heavenliest
smile she had ever seen on human countenance--a smile that was a
clearer revelation of God than ten thousand books about him. For what
must not that God be, who had made the boy that smiled such a smile
and never knew it! After this he smiled occasionally, though it was
but seldom. He never laughed--that is, not until years after this
time; but, on the other hand, he never looked sullen. A quiet peace,
like the stillness of a long summer twilight in the north, dwelt upon
his visage, and appeared to model his every motion. Part of his life
seemed away, and he waiting for it to come back. Then he would be
merry!
He was never in a hurry, yet always doing something--always, that is,
when he was not in his own room. There his mother would sometimes find
him sitting absolutely still, with his hands on his knees. Nor was she
sorry to surprise him thus, for then she was sure of one of his rare
smiles. She thought he must then be dreaming of his own mother, and a
pang would go through her at the thought that he would one day love
her more than herself. "He will laugh then!" she said. She did not
think how the gratitude of that mother would one day overwhelm her
with gladness.
He never sought to be caressed, but always snuggled to one that drew
him close. Never once did he push any one away. He learned what
lessons were set him--not very fast, but with persistent endeavour to
understand. He was greatly given to reading, but not particularly
quick. He thus escaped much, fancying that he knew when he did not
know--a quicksand into which fall so many clever boys and girls. Give
me a slow, steady boy, who knows when he does not know a thing! To
know that you do not know, is to be a small prophet. Such a boy has a
glimmer of the something he does not know, or at least of the place
where it is; while the boy who easily grasps the words that stand for
a thing, is apt to think he knows the thing itself when he sees but
the wrapper of it--thinks he knows the church when he has caught sight
of the weather-cock. Mrs. Porson could see the understanding of a
thing gradually burst into blossom on the boy's face. It did not
smile, it only shone. Understanding is light; it needs love to change
light into a smile.
There was something in the boy that his parents hardly hoped to
understand; something in his face that made them long to know what was
going on in him, but made them doubt if ever in this life they
should. He was not concealing anything from them. He did not know that
he had anything to tell, or that they wanted to know anything. He
never doubted that everybody saw him just as he felt himself; his soul
seemed bare to all the world. But he knew little of what was passing
in him: child or man never knows more than a small part of that.
When first he was allowed to take the little one in his arms, he
sitting on a stool at his mother's feet, it was almost a new start in
his existence. A new confidence was born in his spirit. Mrs. Person
could read, as if reflected in his countenance, the pride and
tenderness that composed so much of her own conscious motherhood. A
certain staidness, almost sternness, took possession of his face as he
bent over the helpless creature, half on his knees, half in his
arms--the sternness of a protecting divinity that knew danger not
afar. He had taken a step upward in being; he was aware in himself,
without knowing it, of the dignity of fatherhood. Even now he knew
what so many seem never to learn, that a man is the defender of the
weak; that, if a man is his brother's keeper, still more is he his
sister's. She belonged to him, therefore he was hers in the slavery of
love, which alone is freedom. So reverential and so careful did he
show himself, that soon his mother trusted him, to the extent of his
power, more than any nurse.
By and by she made the delightful discovery that, when he was alone
with the baby, the silent boy could talk. Where was no need or hope of
being understood, his words began to flow--with a rhythmical cadence
that seemed ever on the verge of verse. When first his mother heard
the sweet murmur of his voice, she listened; and then first she
learned what a hold the terrible thing that had given him into her
arms had upon him. For she heard him half singing, half saying--
"Baby, baby, do not grow. Keep small, and lie on my lap, and dream of
walking, but never walk; for when you walk you will run, and when you
run you will go away with father and mother--away to a big place where
the ground goes up to the sky; and you will go up the ground that goes
up to the sky, and you will come to a big church, and you will go into
the church; and the ground and the church and the sky will go _hurr,
hurr, hurr_; and the sky, full of angels, will come down with a great
roar; and all the yards and sails will drop out of the sky, and tumble
down father and mother, and hold them down that they cannot get up
again; and then you will have nobody but me. I will do all I can, but
I am only brother Clare, and you will want, want, want mother and
father, mother and father, and they will be always coming, and never
be come, not for ever so long! Don't grow a big girl, Maly!"
The mother could not think what to say. She went in, and, in the hope
of turning his thoughts aside, took the baby, and made haste to
consult her husband.
"We must leave it," said Mr. Person. "Experience will soon correct
what mistake is in his notion. It is not so very far wrong. You and I
must go from them one day: what is it but that the sky will fall down
on us, and our bodies will get up no more! He thinks the time nearer
at hand than for their sakes I hope it is; but nobody can tell."
Clare never associated the church where the awful thing took place,
with the church to which he went on Sundays. The time for it, he
imagined, came to everybody. To Clare, nothing ever _happened_. The
way out of the world was a church in a city set on a hill, and there
an earthquake was always ready.
The heart of his adoptive mother grew yet more tender toward him after
the coming of her own child. She was not quite sure that she did not
love him even more than Mary. She could not help the feeling that he
was a child of heaven sent out to nurse on the earth; and that it was
in reward for her care of him that her own darling was sent her. That
their love to the boy had something to do with the coming of the girl,
I believe myself, though what that something was, I do not precisely
understand.
She left him less often alone with the child. She would not have his
thoughts drawn to the church of the earthquake; neither would she have
the mournfulness of his sweet voice much in the ears of her baby. He
never sang in a minor key when any one was by, but always and solely
when the baby and he were alone together.
