The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2

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"Do you think, then, that it is only by association that nature thus
impresses us? that she has no power of meaning these things?"

"Not at all. No doubt there is something in the recollection of the
associations of childhood to strengthen the power of nature upon us; but
the power is in nature herself, else it would be but a poor weak thing to
what it is. There _is_ purity and state in that sky. There _is_ a peace
now in this wide still earth--not so very beautiful, you own--and in that
overhanging blue, which my heart cries out that it needs and cannot be well
till it gains--gains in the truth, gains in God, who is the power of truth,
the living and causing truth. There is indeed a rest that remaineth, a rest
pictured out even here this night, to rouse my dull heart to desire it and
follow after it, a rest that consists in thinking the thoughts of Him who
is the Peace because the Unity, in being filled with that spirit which now
pictures itself forth in this repose of the heavens and the earth."

"True," said Turner, after a pause. "I must think more about such things.
The science the present day is going wild about will not give us that
rest."

"No; but that rest will do much to give you that science. A man with this
repose in his heart will do more by far, other capabilities being equal, to
find out the laws that govern things. For all law is living rest."

"What you have been saying," resumed Turner, after another pause, "reminds
me much of one of Wordsworth's poems. I do not mean the famous ode."

"You mean the 'Ninth Evening Voluntary,' I know--one of his finest and
truest and deepest poems. It begins, 'Had this effulgence disappeared.'"

"Yes, that is the one I mean. I shall read it again when I go home. But
you don't agree with Wordsworth, do you, about our having had an existence
previous to this?"

He gave a little laugh as he asked the question.

"Not in the least. But an opinion held by such men as Plato, Origen, and
Wordsworth, is not to be laughed at, Mr. Turner. It cannot be in its nature
absurd. I might have mentioned Shelley as holding it, too, had his opinion
been worth anything."

"Then you don't think much of Shelley?"

"I think his _feeling_ most valuable; his _opinion_ nearly worthless."

"Well, perhaps I had no business to laugh, at it; but--"

"Do not suppose for a moment that I even lean to it. I dislike it. It would
make me unhappy to think there was the least of sound argument for it. But
I respect the men who have held it, and know there must be _something_ good
in it, else they could not have held it."

"Are you able then to sympathise with that ode of Wordsworth's? Does it not
depend for all its worth on the admission of this theory?"

"Not in the least. Is it necessary to admit that we must have had a
conscious life before this life to find meaning in the words,--

'But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home'?

Is not all the good in us his image? Imperfect and sinful as we are, is not
all the foundation of our being his image? Is not the sin all ours, and the
life in us all God's? We cannot be the creatures of God without partaking
of his nature. Every motion of our conscience, every admiration of what
is pure and noble, is a sign and a result of this. Is not every
self-accusation a proof of the presence of his spirit? That comes not of
ourselves--that is not without him. These are the clouds of glory we come
trailing from him. All feelings of beauty and peace and loveliness and
right and goodness, we trail with us from our home. God is the only home
of the human soul. To interpret in this manner what Wordsworth says, will
enable us to enter into perfect sympathy with all that grandest of his
poems. I do not say this is what he meant; but I think it includes what he
meant by being greater and wider than what he meant. Nor am I guilty of
presumption in saying so, for surely the idea that we are born of God is a
greater idea than that we have lived with him a life before this life. But
Wordsworth is not the first among our religious poets to give us at least
what is valuable in the notion. I came upon a volume amongst my friend
Shepherd's books, with which I had made no acquaintance before--Henry
Vaughan's poems. I brought it with me, for it has finer lines, I almost
think, than any in George Herbert, though not so fine poems by any means as
his best. When we go into the house I will read one of them to you."

"Thank you," said Turner. "I wish I could have such talk once a week. The
shades of the prison-house, you know, Mr. Walton, are always trying to
close about us, and shut out the vision of the glories we have come from,
as Wordsworth says."

"A man," I answered, "who ministers to the miserable necessities of his
fellows has even more need than another to believe in the light and the
gladness--else a poor Job's comforter will he be. _I_ don't want to be
treated like a musical snuff-box."

The doctor laughed.

"No man can _prove_," he said, "that there is not a being inside the
snuff-box, existing in virtue of the harmony of its parts, comfortable when
they go well, sick when they go badly, and dying when it is dismembered, or
even when it stops."

"No," I answered. "No man can prove it. But no man can convince a human
being of it. And just as little can anyone convince me that my conscience,
making me do sometimes what I _don't_ like, comes from a harmonious action
of the particles of my brain. But it is time we went in, for by the law of
things in general, I being ready for my dinner, my dinner ought to be ready
for me."

"A law with more exceptions than instances, I fear," said Turner.

"I doubt that," I answered. "The readiness is everything, and that we
constantly blunder in. But we had better see whether we are really ready
for it, by trying whether it is ready for us."

Connie went to bed early, as indeed we all did, and she was rather better
than worse the next morning. My wife, for the first time for many nights,
said nothing about the crying of the sea. The following day Turner and I
set out to explore the neighbourhood. The rest remained quietly at home.

It was, as I have said, a high bare country. The fields lay side by side,
parted from each other chiefly, as so often in Scotland, by stone
walls; and these stones being of a laminated nature, the walls were not
unfrequently built by laying thin plates on their edges, which gave a
neatness to them not found in other parts of the country as far as I am
aware. In the middle of the fields came here and there patches of yet
unreclaimed moorland.

Now in a region like this, beauty must be looked for below the surface.
There is a probability of finding hollows of repose, sunken spots of
loveliness, hidden away altogether from the general aspect of sternness,
or perhaps sterility, that meets the eye in glancing over the outspread
landscape; just as in the natures of stern men you may expect to find, if
opportunity should be afforded you, sunny spots of tender verdure, kept
ever green by that very sternness which is turned towards the common
gaze--thus existent because they are below the surface, and not laid bare
to the sweep of the cold winds that roam the world. How often have not men
started with amaze at the discovery of some feminine sweetness, some grace
of protection in the man whom they had judged cold and hard and rugged,
inaccessible to the more genial influences of humanity! It may be that such
men are only fighting against the wind, and keep their hearts open to the
sun.

I knew this; and when Turner and I set out that morning to explore, I
expected to light upon some instance of it--some mine or other in which
nature had hidden away rare jewels; but I was not prepared to find such as
I did find. With our hearts full of a glad secret we returned home, but we
said nothing about it, in order that Ethelwyn and Wynnie might enjoy the
discovery even as we had enjoyed it.

There was another grand fact with regard to the neighbourhood about which
we judged it better to be silent for a few days, that the inland influences
might be free to work. We were considerably nearer the ocean than my wife
and daughters supposed, for we had made a great round in order to arrive
from the land-side. We were, however, out of the sound of its waves, which
broke all along the shore, in this part, at the foot of tremendous cliffs.
What cliffs they were we shall soon find.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE KEEVE.

"Now, my dear! now, Wynnie!" I said, after prayers the next morning, "you
must come out for a walk as soon as ever you can get your bonnets on."

"But we can't leave Connie, papa," objected Wynnie.

"O, yes, you can, quite well. There's nursie to look after her. What do you
say, Connie?"

For, for some time now, Connie had been able to get up so early, that it
was no unusual thing to have prayers in her room.

"I am entirely independent of help from my family," returned Connie
grandiloquently. "I am a woman of independent means," she added. "If you
say another word, I will rise and leave the room."

And she made a movement as if she would actually do as she had said. Seized
with an involuntary terror, I rushed towards her, and the impertinent girl
burst out laughing in my face--threw herself back on her pillows, and
laughed delightedly.

"Take care, papa," she said. "I carry a terrible club for rebellious
people." Then, her mood changing, she added, as if to suppress the tears
gathering in her eyes, "I am the queen--of luxury and self-will--and I
won't have anybody come near me till dinner-time. I mean to enjoy myself."

So the matter was settled, and we went out for our walk. Ethelwyn was
not such a good walker as she had been; but even if she had retained the
strength of her youth, we should not have got on much the better for it--so
often did she and Wynnie stop to grub ferns out of the chinks and roots of
the stone-walls. Now, I admire ferns as much as anybody--that is, not,
I fear, so much as my wife and daughter, but quite enough
notwithstanding--but I do not quite enjoy being pulled up like a fern at
every turn.

"Now, my dear, what is the use of stopping to torture that harmless
vegetable?" I say, but say in vain. "It is much more beautiful where it is
than it will be anywhere where you can put it. Besides, you know they never
come to anything with you. They _always_ die."

Thereupon my wife reminds me of this fern and that fern, gathered in such
and such places, and now in such and such corners of the garden or the
greenhouse, or under glass-shades in this or that room, of the very
existence of which I am ignorant, whether from original inattention, or
merely from forgetfulness, I do not know. Certainly, out of their own place
I do not care much for them.

At length, partly by the inducement I held out to them of a much greater
variety of ferns where we were bound, I succeeded in getting them over the
two miles in little more than two hours. After passing from the lanes into
the fields, our way led downwards till we reached a very steep large
slope, with a delightful southern exposure, and covered with the sweetest
down-grasses. It was just the place to lie in, as on the edge of the earth,
and look abroad upon the universe of air and floating worlds.

"Let us have a rest here, Ethel," I said. "I am sure this is much more
delightful than uprooting ferns. What an awful thing to think that here we
are on this great round tumbling ball of a world, held by the feet, and
lifting up the head into infinite space--without choice or wish of our
own--compelled to think and to be, whether we will or not! Just God must
know it to be very good, or he would not have taken it in his hands to make
individual lives without a possible will of theirs. He must be our Father,
or we are wretched creatures--the slaves of a fatal necessity! Did it ever
strike you, Turner, that each one of us stands on the apex of the world?
With a sphere, you know, it must be so. And thus is typified, as it seems
to me, that each one of us must look up for himself to find God, and then
look abroad to find his fellows."

"I think I know what you mean," was all Turner's reply.

"No doubt," I resumed, "the apprehension of this truth has, in otherwise
ill-ordered minds, given rise to all sorts of fierce and grotesque
fanaticism. But the minds which have thus conceived the truth, would have
been immeasurably worse without it; nay, this truth affords at last
the only possible door out of the miseries of their own chaos, whether
inherited or the result of their own misconduct."

"What's that in the grass?" cried Wynnie, in a tone of alarm.

I looked where she indicated, and saw a slow-worm, or blind-worm, lying
basking in the sun. I rose and went towards it.

"Here's your stick," said Turner.

"What for?" I asked. "Why should I kill it? It is perfectly harmless, and,
to my mind, beautiful."

I took it in my hands, and brought it to my wife. She gave an involuntary
shudder as it came near her.

"I assure you it is harmless," I said, "though it has a forked tongue."
And I opened its mouth as I spoke. "I do not think the serpent form is
essentially ugly."

"It makes me feel ugly," said Wynnie.

"I allow I do not quite understand the mystery of it," I said. "But you
never saw lovelier ornamentation than these silvery scales, with all the
neatness of what you ladies call a set pattern, and none of the stiffness,
for there are not two of them the same in form. And you never saw lovelier
curves than this little patient creature, which does not even try to get
away from me, makes with the queer long thin body of him."

"I wonder how it can look after its tail, it is so far off," said Wynnie.

"It does though--better than you ladies look after your long dresses. I
wonder whether it is descended from creatures that once had feet, and did
not make a good use of them. Perhaps they had wings even, and would not use
them at all, and so lost them. Its ancestors may have had poison-fangs; it
is innocent enough. But it is a terrible thing to be all feet, is it not?
There is an awful significance in the condemnation of the serpent--'On thy
belly shalt thou go, and eat dust.' But it is better to talk of beautiful
things. _My_ soul at least has dropped from its world apex. Let us go on.
Come, wife. Come, Turner."

They did not seem willing to rise. But the glen drew me. I rose, and my
wife followed my example with the help of my hand. She returned to the
subject, however, as we descended the slope.

"Is it possible that in the course of ever so many ages wings and feet
should be both lost?" she said.

"The most presumptuous thing in the world is to pronounce on the possible
and the impossible. I do not know what is possible and what is impossible.
I can only tell a little of what is true and what is untrue. But I do say
this, that between the condition of many decent members of society and that
for the sake of which God made them, there is a gulf quite as vast as that
between a serpent and a bird. I get peeps now and then into the condition
of my own heart, which, for the moment, make it seem impossible that I
should ever rise into a true state of nature--that is, into the simplicity
of God's will concerning me. The only hope for ourselves and for others
lies in him--in the power the creating spirit has over the spirits he has
made."

By this time the descent on the grass was getting too steep and slippery to
admit of our continuing to advance in that direction. We turned, therefore,
down the valley in the direction of the sea. It was but a narrow cleft,
and narrowed much towards a deeper cleft, in which we now saw the tops of
trees, and from which we heard the rush of water. Nor had we gone far in
this direction before we came upon a gate in a stone wall, which led into
what seemed a neglected garden. We entered, and found a path turning and
winding, among small trees, and luxuriant ferns, and great stones, and
fragments of ruins down towards the bottom of the chasm. The noise of
falling water increased as we went on, and at length, after some scrambling
and several sharp turns, we found ourselves with a nearly precipitous wall
on each side, clothed with shrubs and ivy, and creeping things of the
vegetable world. Up this cleft there was no advance. The head of it was a
precipice down which shot the stream from the vale above, pouring out of a
deep slit it had itself cut in the rock as with a knife. Halfway down, it
tumbled into a great basin of hollowed stone, and flowing from a chasm in
its side, which left part of the lip of the basin standing like the arch of
a vanished bridge, it fell into a black pool below, whence it crept as
if half-stunned or weary down the gentle decline of the ravine. It was a
perfect little picture. I, for my part, had never seen such a picturesque
fall. It was a little gem of nature, complete in effect. The ladies were
full of pleasure. Wynnie, forgetting her usual reserve, broke out in
frantic exclamations of delight.

We stood for a while regarding the ceaseless pour of the water down the
precipice, here shot slanting in a little trough of the rock, full of
force and purpose, here falling in great curls of green and gray, with an
expression of absolute helplessness and conscious perdition, as if sheer to
the centre, but rejoicing the next moment to find itself brought up boiling
and bubbling in the basin, to issue in the gathered hope of experience.
Then we turned down the stream a little way, crossed it by a plank, and
stood again to regard it from the opposite side. Small as the whole affair
was--not more than about a hundred and fifty feet in height--it was so full
of variety that I saw it was all my memory could do, if it carried away
anything like a correct picture of its aspect. I was contemplating it
fixedly, when a little stifled cry from Wynnie made me start and look
round. Her face was flushed, yet she was trying to look unconcerned.

"I thought we were quite alone, papa," she said; "but I see a gentleman
sketching."

I looked whither she indicated. A little way down, the bed of the ravine
widened considerably, and was no doubt filled with water in rainy weather.
Now it was swampy--full of reeds and willow bushes. But on the opposite
side of the stream, with a little canal from it going all around it, lay a
great flat rectangular stone, not more than a foot above the level of the
water, and upon a camp-stool in the centre of this stone sat a gentleman
sketching. I had no doubt that Wynnie had recognised him at once. And I
was annoyed, and indeed angry, to think that Mr. Percivale had followed us
here. But while I regarded him, he looked up, rose very quietly, and,
with his pencil in his hand, came towards us. With no nearer approach to
familiarity than a bow, and no expression of either much pleasure or any
surprise, he said--

"I have seen your party for some time, Mr. Walton--since you crossed the
stream; but I would not break in upon your enjoyment with the surprise
which my presence here must cause you."

I suppose I answered with a bow of some sort; for I could not say with
truth that I was glad to see him. He resumed, doubtless penetrating my
suspicion--

"I have been here almost a week. I certainly had no expectation of the
pleasure of seeing you."

This he said lightly, though no doubt with the object of clearing himself.
And I was, if not reassured, yet disarmed, by his statement; for I could
not believe, from what I knew of him, that he would be guilty of such
a white lie as many a gentleman would have thought justifiable on the
occasion. Still, I suppose he found me a little stiff, for presently he
said--

"If you will excuse me, I will return to my work."

Then I felt as if I must say something, for I had shown him no courtesy
during the interview.

"It must be a great pleasure to carry away such talismans with you--capable
of bringing the place back to your mental vision at any moment."

"To tell the truth," he answered, "I am a little ashamed of being found
sketching here. Such bits of scenery are not of my favourite studies. But
it is a change."

"It is very beautiful here," I said, in a tone of contravention.

"It is very pretty," he answered--"very lovely, if you will--not very
beautiful, I think. I would keep that word for things of larger regard.
Beauty requires width, and here is none. I had almost said this place was
fanciful--the work of imagination in her play-hours, not in her large
serious moods. It affects me like the face of a woman only pretty, about
which boys and guardsmen will rave--to me not very interesting, save for
its single lines."

"Why, then, do you sketch the place?"

"A very fair question," he returned, with a smile. "Just because it is
soothing from the very absence of beauty. I would far rather, however, if I
were only following my taste, take the barest bit of the moor above, with a
streak of the cold sky over it. That gives room."

"You would like to put a skylark in it, wouldn't you?"

"That I would if I knew how. I see you know what I mean. But the mere
romantic I never had much taste for; though if you saw the kind of pictures
I try to paint, you would not wonder that I take sketches of places like
this, while in my heart of hearts I do not care much for them. They are so
different, and just _therefore_ they are good for me. I am not working now;
I am only playing."

"With a view to working better afterwards, I have no doubt," I answered.

"You are right there, I hope," was his quiet reply, as he turned and walked
back to the island.

He had not made a step towards joining us. He had only taken his hat off to
the ladies. He was gaining ground upon me rapidly.

"Have you quarrelled with our new friend, Harry?" said my wife, as I came
up to her.

She was sitting on a stone. Turner and Wynnie were farther off towards the
foot of the fall.

"Not in the least," I answered, slightly outraged--I did not at first
know why--by the question. "He is only gone to his work, which is a duty
belonging both to the first and second tables of the law."

"I hope you have asked him to come home to our early dinner, then," she
rejoined.

"I have not. That remains for you to do. Come, I will take you to him."

Ethelwyn rose at once, put her hand in mine, and with a little help soon
reached the table-rock. When Percivale saw that she was really on a visit
to him on his island-perch, he rose, and when she came near enough, held
out his hand. It was but a step, and she was beside him in a moment. After
the usual greetings, which on her part, although very quiet, like every
motion and word of hers, were yet indubitably cordial and kind, she said,
"When you get back to London, Mr. Percivale, might I ask you to allow some
friends of mine to call at your studio, and see your paintings?"

"With all my heart," answered Percivale. "I must warn you, however, that I
have not much they will care to see. They will perhaps go away less happy
than they entered. Not many people care to see my pictures twice."

"I would not send you anyone I thought unworthy of the honour," answered my
wife.

Percivale bowed--one of his stately, old-world bows, which I greatly liked.

"Any friend of yours--that is guarantee sufficient," he answered.

There was this peculiarity about any compliment that Percivale paid, that
you had not a doubt of its being genuine.

"Will you come and take an early dinner with us?" said my wife. "My invalid
daughter will be very pleased to see you."

"I will with pleasure," he answered, but in a tone of some hesitation, as
he glanced from Ethelwyn to me.

"My wife speaks for us all," I said. "It will give us all pleasure."

"I am only afraid it will break in upon your morning's work," remarked
Ethelwyn.

"O, that is not of the least consequence," he rejoined. "In fact, as I have
just been saying to Mr. Walton, I am not working at all at present. This is
pure recreation."

As he spoke he turned towards his easel, and began hastily to bundle up his
things.

"We're not quite ready to go yet," said my wife, loath to leave the lovely
spot. "What a curious flat stone this is!" she added.

"It is," said Percivale. "The man to whom the place belongs, a worthy
yeoman of the old school, says that this wider part of the channel must
have been the fish-pond, and that the portly monks stood on this stone and
fished in the pond."

"Then was there a monastery here?" I asked.

"Certainly. The ruins of the chapel, one of the smallest, are on the top,
just above the fall--rather a fearful place to look down from. I wonder
you did not observe them as you came. They say it had a silver bell in the
days of its glory, which now lies in a deep hole under the basin, half-way
between the top and bottom of the fall. But the old man says that nothing
will make him look, or let anyone else lift the huge stone; for he is much
better pleased to believe that it may be there, than he would be to know it
was not there; for certainly, if it were found, it would not be left there
long."

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