The Seaboard Parish Volume 1
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George MacDonald >> The Seaboard Parish Volume 1
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13 Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE SEABOARD PARISH
BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
VOL. I.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
I. HOMILETIC
II. CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY
III. THE SICK CHAMBER
IV. A SUNDAY EVENING
V. MY DREAM
VI. THE KEW BABY
VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
VIII. THEODORA'S DOOM
IX. A SPRING CHAPTER
X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER
XI. CONNIE'S DREAM
XII. THE JOURNEY
XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED
XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN
XV. THE OLD CHURCH
XVI. CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER
XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH
CHAPTER I.
HOMILETIC.
Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say
or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had not
by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not have
wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you would want
any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again
at my writing-table, to write for you--with a strange feeling, however,
that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful acoustic contrivance,
by means of which the words which I have a habit of whispering over to
myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes of people whom I
cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a sense of your
presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to man.
But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that you
have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually happens
in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a more puzzled
mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners
of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one, peeping out at me like a
rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me almost at the same instant the
tail-end of it, and vanishing with a contemptuous _thud_ of its hind
feet on the ground. For I must have suitable regard to the desires of my
children. It is a fine thing to be able to give people what they want, if
at the same time you can give them what you want. To give people what they
want, would sometimes be to give them only dirt and poison. To give them
what you want, might be to set before them something of which they could
not eat a mouthful. What both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a
dish of good wholesome venison. Now I suppose my children around me are
neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go
that will not do. What they want is, I believe, something that I know
about--that has happened to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of
thing I like best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me
something that has happened to himself, especially if he will give me a
peep into how his heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the
closed door, and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has
something true and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old
people that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them;
but that only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to
disentangle confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at the
time appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light that was
in them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they are far enough
off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know best
what it is. How I should like to write a story for old people! The young
are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old people
come in for a share? A story without a young person in it at all! Nobody
under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy tale, could it? Or a
love story either? I am not so sure about that. The worst of it would be,
however, that hardly a young person would read it. Now, we old people would
not like that. We can read young people's books and enjoy them: they would
not try to read old men's books or old women's books; they would be so sure
of their being dry. My dear old brothers and sisters, we know better, do we
not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot
see the fun. We have strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look
more and more marvellous every time we turn them over again; only
somehow they do not belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say
_week_,--and so the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have
had one pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother's feet, and
listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his mother's
wedding-gown was as old as Eve's coat of skins. But then he was young
enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common to the
young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men, old women,
to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the future. Now is
your salvation nearer than when you believed; for, however your souls may
be at peace, however your quietness and confidence may give you strength,
in the decay of your earthly tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in
the weakening of its stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars,
you have yet your share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But
the one thing I should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would
be, "Friends, let us not grow old." Old age is but a mask; let us not call
the mask the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it
from its hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth?
Then only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to
enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps
whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for
putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if
we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying
their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a measure from sociable
relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise creatures that creep
aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves by that their wings may
grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a
withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it is pleasant--no one knows
how pleasant except him who experiences it--to sit apart and see the drama
of life going on around him, while his feelings are calm and free, his
vision clear, and his judgment righteous, the old man must ever be ready,
should the sweep of action catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering
old legs, and go with brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the
less true that his hands tremble, and that he would gladly return to his
chimney-corner. If he is never thus called out, let him examine himself,
lest he should be falling into the number of those that say, "I go, sir,"
and go not; who are content with thinking beautiful things in an Atlantis,
Oceana, Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of their fingers
to work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the man who, using
just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never has a thought
of his own.
I have been talking--to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
grandchildren? I remember--to my companions in old age. It is time I
returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side of
the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one word:
We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never do aright
after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the men, neither
shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his people because the
young ones do not think just as the old ones choose. The Lord has something
fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to receive his message. When
we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world
is over. It might end more honourably.
Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of which
I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite elderly, yet
active man--young still, in fact, to what I am now. But even then, though
my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder, and needed all my
stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces, and the trials of them
that are dear, will make even those that look for a better country both for
themselves and their friends, sad, though it will be with a preponderance
of the first meaning of the word _sad_, which was _settled_, _thoughtful_.
I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my study
because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover over every
foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the pleasanter
to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none the worse, for
anyone who prefers it to books.
I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the history
of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend's parish, while
my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my curate, took the
entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will soon appear. I will
try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my story interesting,
although it will cost me suffering to recall some of the incidents I have
to narrate.
CHAPTER II.
CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY.
Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature, or
from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents Nature's
mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in his drama? I
know I have so often found Nature's mood in harmony with my own, even
when she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in looking back I have
wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some self-deception about it.
At all events, on the morning of my Constance's eighteenth birthday, a
lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of golden foliage about the
ways, and an air that seemed filled with the ether of an _aurum potabile_,
there came yet an occasional blast of wind, which, without being absolutely
cold, smelt of winter, and made one draw one's shoulders together with the
sense of an unfriendly presence. I do not think Constance felt it at all,
however, as she stood on the steps in her riding-habit, waiting till the
horses made their appearance. It had somehow grown into a custom with us
that each of the children, as his or her birthday came round, should be
king or queen for that day, and, subject to the veto of father and mother,
should have everything his or her own way. Let me say for them, however,
that in the matter of choosing the dinner, which of course was included
in the royal prerogative, I came to see that it was almost invariably the
favourite dishes of others of the family that were chosen, and not those
especially agreeable to the royal palate. Members of families where
children have not been taught from their earliest years that the great
privilege of possession is the right to bestow, may regard this as an
improbable assertion; but others will know that it might well enough be
true, even if I did not say that so it was. But there was always the choice
of some individual treat, which was determined solely by the preference of
the individual in authority. Constance had chosen "a long ride with papa."
I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration of
his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be determined
by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people's children.
However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that Constance did
look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young day: we were
early people--breakfast and prayers were over, and it was nine o'clock as
she stood on the steps and I approached her from the lawn.
"O, papa! isn't it jolly?" she said merrily.
"Very jolly indeed, my dear," I answered, delighted to hear the word from
the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word, and when
she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was like? Ah!
you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I will, however,
try to give you a general idea, just in order that you and I should not be
picturing to ourselves two very different persons while I speak of her.
She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion, and has
nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in complexion,
with her mother's blue eyes, and her mother's long dark wavy hair. She
was generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than any of the
others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she knew instinctively
when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her playfulness there
seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if she felt that the
present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance to the eternal sunlight.
And the appearance was not in the least a deceptive one. The eternal was
not far from her--none the farther that she enjoyed life like a bird, that
her laugh was merry, that her heart was careless, and that her voice rang
through the house--a sweet soprano voice--singing snatches of songs (now a
street tune she had caught from a London organ, now an air from Handel
or Mozart), or that she would sometimes tease her elder sister about her
solemn and anxious looks; for Wynnie, the eldest, had to suffer for her
grandmother's sins against her daughter, and came into the world with a
troubled little heart, that was soon compelled to flee for refuge to the
rock that was higher than she. Ah! my Constance! But God was good to you
and to us in you.
"Where shall we go, Connie?" I said, and the same moment the sound of the
horses' hoofs reached us.
"Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?" she returned.
"It is a long ride," I answered.
"Too much for the pony?"
"O dear, no--not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony."
"I'm quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want to
get something for Wynnie. Do let us go."
"Very well, my dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle--if I may say
_raised_, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another
than she sprung from the ground on her pony's back.
In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders' webs, as
we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards the
high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we turned
from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a gallop to begin
with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been used to the saddle
longer than she could remember. She was now riding a tall well-bred pony,
with plenty of life--rather too much, I sometimes thought, when I was out
with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I was with Constance. Another
field or two sufficiently quieted both animals--I did not want to have all
our time taken up with their frolics--and then we began to talk.
"You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear," I said.
"Quite an old grannie, papa," she answered.
"Old enough to think about what's coming next," I said gravely.
"O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about the
morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that's in the pulpit," she added,
with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her pretty hat.
"You know very well what I mean, you puss," I answered. "And I don't say
one thing in the pulpit and another out of it."
She was at my horse's shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had been
of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended me. She
looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon Wynnie.
"O, thank you, papa!" she said when I smiled. "I thought I had been rude. I
didn't mean it, indeed I didn't. But I do wish you would make it a little
plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you would hardly
believe it."
"What do you want made plainer, my child?" I asked.
"When we're to think, and when we're not to think," she answered.
I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
"If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day," I answered,
"if it cannot be done right except you think about it and lay your plans
for it, then that thought is to-day's business, not to-morrow's."
"Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?" she asked
suddenly, again looking up in my face.
We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse's mane, so as to keep
her pony close up.
"Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind."
"Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn't explain things so much. I seem
to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try the text
afterwards by myself, I can't make anything of it, and I've forgotten every
word you said about it."
"Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it."
"I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
Bible," she returned.
"If they can," I rejoined. "But last Sunday, for instance, I did not expect
anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except your mamma
and Thomas Weir."
"How funny! What part of it was that?"
"O! I'm not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But most
likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to you, in
consequence, very commonplace."
"In consequence of what?"
"In consequence of your thinking you understood it."
"O, papa dear! you're getting worse and worse. It's not often I ask you
anything--and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to bewilder
my poor little brains in this way."
"I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea that
you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If you had
never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of remark,
would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is this the
case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of the heart.
Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything, or thanked
God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant in one of his
worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be beyond him. If
you have never known what it is to have care of any kind upon you, you
cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to take no thought
for the morrow."
"But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?"
"Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
perhaps I can help you."
"You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at work
every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that women any
more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do? What have I
been sent into the world for? I don't see it; and I feel very useless and
wrong sometimes."
"I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish. You
take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal for the poor.
You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you are learning
yourselves."
"Yes, but that's not work."
"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And you
would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not that I
have anything to complain of."
"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life, when
there are so many to help everywhere in the world."
"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed you,
than in doing it where he has placed you?"
"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do at
home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You won't
think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?"
"No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do, you must
do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for
what he may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to
do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next. And I do
not believe that those who follow this rule are ever left floundering on
the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find water enough to swim
in."
"Thank you, dear papa. That's a little sermon all to myself, and I think I
shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let's have a
trot."
"There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is not
your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make yourself
as worth God's making as you possibly can. Now I am a little doubtful
whether you keep up your studies at all."
She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face again.
"I don't like dry things, papa."
"Nobody does."
"Nobody!" she exclaimed. "How do the grammars and history-books come to be
written then?"
In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection in
it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding old
father?
"No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make them.
Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to care for
them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what you have to
learn."
"What must I do then?" she asked with a sigh. "Must I go all over my French
Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!"
"If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something you
don't like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you are fond
of?" I continued, finding that she remained silent.
"I don't know anything in particular--that is, I don't know anything in the
way of school-work that I really liked. I don't mean that I didn't try
to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I liked--the
poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen count that
silly--don't they?"
"On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the foundation
of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing God has given
us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree about what poetry was
poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God. Now, what poetry do
you like best?"
"Mrs. Hemans's, I think, papa."
"Well, very well, to begin with. 'There is,' as Mr. Carlyle said to a
friend of mine--'There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.' But
it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be. Most
people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and they
expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand myself,
and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable enough
creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with admiration of
what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained at the cost of
expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs. Hemans. She is simple
enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that whatever mental food you
take should be just a little too strong for you. That implies trouble,
necessitates growth, and involves delight."
"I sha'n't mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
about."
I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two years,
and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account for my
knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on talking a
little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young people only,
I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the account of what we
said to each other; for it might help some of them to see that the thing
they like best should, circumstances and conscience permitting, be made the
centre from which they start to learn; that they should go on enlarging
their knowledge all round from that one point at which God intended them to
begin. But at length we fell into a silence, a very happy one on my part;
for I was more than delighted to find that this one too of my children was
following after the truth--wanting to do what was right, namely, to obey
the word of the Lord, whether openly spoken to all, or to herself in the
voice of her own conscience and the light of that understanding which is
the candle of the Lord. I had often said to myself in past years, when
I had found myself in the company of young ladies who announced their
opinions--probably of no deeper origin than the prejudices of their
nurses--as if these distinguished them from all the world besides; who were
profound upon passion and ignorant of grace; who had not a notion whether a
dress was beautiful, but only whether it was of the newest cut--I had often
said to myself: "What shall I do if my daughters come to talk and think
like that--if thinking it can be called?" but being confident that
instruction for which the mind is not prepared only lies in a rotting
heap, producing all kinds of mental evils correspondent to the results of
successive loads of food which the system cannot assimilate, my hope had
been to rouse wise questions in the minds of my children, in place of
overwhelming their digestions with what could be of no instruction or
edification without the foregoing appetite. Now my Constance had begun to
ask me questions, and it made me very happy. We had thus come a long way
nearer to each other; for however near the affection of human animals may
bring them, there are abysses between soul and soul--the souls even of
father and daughter--over which they must pass to meet. And I do not
believe that any two human beings alive know yet what it is to love as love
is in the glorious will of the Father of lights.
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