The Seaboard Parish Volume 1
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George MacDonald >> The Seaboard Parish Volume 1
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"Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?" asked my wife, with no great
compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
were beyond the average in development.
"I think I do," I answered.
"Could you tell which was this night's milk, now?"
"There will be less cream on it," I answered.
"Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I've got some sugar here.
I wish we had a bottle."
I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
lying on her lap clean and dry--a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went on
talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got her
to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing fell
fast asleep.
Ethelwyn's nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know where
her baby's clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a wardrobe
in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on. I could not
understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be indued with little
chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not know what all, requiring
a, world of nice care, and a hundred turnings to and fro, now on its little
stomach, now on its back, now sitting up, now lying down, when it would
have slept just as well, and I venture to think much more comfortably,
if laid in blankets and well covered over. But I had never ventured to
interfere with any of my own children, devoutly believing up to this
moment, though in a dim unquestioning way, that there must be some hidden
feminine wisdom in the whole process; and now that I had begun to question
it, I found that my opportunity had long gone by, if I had ever had one.
And after all there may be some reason for it, though I confess I do
strongly suspect that all these matters are so wonderfully complicated
in order that the girl left in the woman may have her heart's content of
playing with her doll; just as the woman hid in the girl expends no end of
lovely affection upon the dull stupidity of wooden cheeks and a body of
sawdust. But it was a delight to my heart to see how Ethelwyn could not be
satisfied without treating the foundling in precisely the same fashion as
one of her own. And if this was a necessary preparation for what, should
follow, I would be the very last to complain of it.
We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal mother,
now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in my Ethelwyn's
bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it would have been
very painful to me had she shown it possible for her to treat the baby
otherwise, especially after what we had been talking about that same
evening.
So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about it but
ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the going and
coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good laugh over
the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
"Pray for the poor thing, Harry," she sobbed, "before you come to bed."
I knelt down, and said:
"O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to us
as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee. Take
thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to order
our ways towards her."
Then I said to Ethelwyn,
"We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother. Mind
you go to sleep."
"I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night," she returned.
I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I had
a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell or not.
We slept soundly--God's baby and all.
CHAPTER V.
MY DREAM.
I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those who
are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when they
can associate it with something else with which they are familiar. Such
do not care to see that the thing with which they associate it may be as
mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys marvel, it
cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is just as
wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an old
man's prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked about for
a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams there is an
immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow stone lying a few
yards from me. I wondered how it could have come there, for there were no
mountains or rocks near: the field was part of a level country. Carelessly,
I sat down upon it astride, and watched the setting of the sun. Somehow I
fancied that his light was more sorrowful than the light of the setting sun
should be, and I began to feel very heavy at the heart. No sooner had the
last brilliant spark of his light vanished, than I felt the stone under me
begin to move. With the inactivity of a dreamer, however, I did not care
to rise, but wondered only what would come next. My seat, after several
strange tumbling motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and
then I found that I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse--a skeleton horse
almost, only he had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain,
as if his joints were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the
direction in which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, I never
thought of dismounting. I was going on to meet what might come. Slowly,
feebly, trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and as he went his
joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little faster. All at
once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that we were on the
borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me, and the moor
grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always recovering
himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise no more, but
as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface became a little
smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted till he reached
a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell into what was
plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were low and covered
with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the place of mounds.
Gravestones lay in every position except the level or the upright, and
broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My horse bore me into the
midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he had risen, he lay down again.
Once more I was astride of a long narrow stone. And now I found that it was
an ancient gravestone which I knew well in a certain Sussex churchyard, the
top of it carved into the rough resemblance of a human skeleton--that of a
man, tradition said, who had been killed by a serpent that came out of a
bottomless pool in the next field. How long I sat there I do not know; but
at last I saw the faint gray light of morning begin to appear in front of
me. The horse of death had carried me eastward. The dawn grew over the top
of a hill that here rose against the horizon. But it was a wild dreary
dawn--a blot of gray first, which then stretched into long lines of dreary
yellow and gray, looking more like a blasted and withered sunset than a
fresh sunrise. And well it suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if
churchyard I ought to call it where no church was to be seen--only a vast
hideous square of graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the
flat stone of which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat
with my eyes fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the middle
closed, then widened again as the two halves of the stone were lifted up,
and flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door. From the grave
rose a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as if he had just
come from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung the stones apart,
and as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me, they remained
outspread from the action for a moment, as if blessing the sleeping people.
Then he came towards me with the same smile, and took my hand. I rose, and
he led me away over another broken wall towards the hill that lay before
us. And as we went the sun came nearer, the pale yellow bars flushed into
orange and rosy red, till at length the edges of the clouds were swept with
an agony of golden light, which even my dreamy eyes could not endure, and I
awoke weeping for joy.
This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:
"What is the matter, husband?"
So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.
"It was this little darling that set you dreaming so," she said, and
turning, put the baby in my arms.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW BABY.
I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie was
heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
"Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn't it jolly?"
"Where did she get it?" cried Harry in return.
"In the parsley-bed, I suppose," answered Charlie, and was nearer right
than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had no
doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of the
family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their curiosity
being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was exemplified that
confusion of the intellectual being which is produced by the witness of
incontestable truth to a thing incredible--in which case the probability
always is, that the incredibility results from something in the mind of the
hearer falsely associated with and disturbing the true perception of the
thing to which witness is borne.
Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had. And
seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met with from
everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked questions. And
that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good gift of God. Ask what
questions you will, but when you see that the gift is a good one, make
sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for you to ask questions
afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the more ready you will be
to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was not
Ethelwyn's baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
"Of course, you'll give information to the police," said, I am sorry to
say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to be
a magistrate as well.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure."
"Wouldn't it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
easy to suspect it?" I asked. "And just think what it would be to give the
baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her mother.
But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don't say I would refuse
her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had once
abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don't want the
parents."
"But you don't want the child."
"How do you know that?" I returned--rather rudely, I am afraid, for I am
easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless--about children
especially.
"O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one has
a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people."
"That is just what I thought I was doing," I answered; but he went on
without heeding my reply--
"We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not so
fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother's keeper."
"And my sister's too," I answered. "And if the question lies between
keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that, I
venture to choose for myself."
"She ought to go to the workhouse," said the magistrate--a friendly,
good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and
departed.
This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame. Which?
_I_ say the latter.
Some of Ethelwyn's friends were no less positive about her duty in the
affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one of
them--Miss Bowdler.
"But, my dear Mrs. Walton," she was saying, "you'll be having all the
tramps in England leaving their babies at your door."
"The better for the babies," interposed I, laughing.
"But you don't think of your wife, Mr. Walton."
"Don't I? I thought I did," I returned dryly.
"Depend upon it, you'll repent it."
"I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad."
"Ah! but, really! it's not a thing to be made game of."
"Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
house."
"What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough."
"As well as I choose to know--certainly," I answered.
This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which
she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in the
superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted
as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic,
half-anxious look, and said:
"But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
we couldn't go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
stepping on a baby on the door-step."
"You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, 'If God
should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?' He who sent us this
one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come. All that
we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of doing right.
But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that wandering mothers
have not even the attachment of animals to their offspring. There are not
so many that are willing to part with babies as all that would come to. If
you believe that God sent this one, that is enough for the present. If he
should send another, we should know by that that we had to take it in."
My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
babies--that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and nurses
and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for what I
believed than what I saw--that was all I could pretend to discover. But
even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to allow before
three months were over that little Theodora--for we turned the name of
my youngest daughter upside down for her--"was a proper child." To none,
however, did she seem to bring so much delight as to our dear Constance.
Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I found the sleepy, useless
little thing lying beside her on the bed, and her staring at it with such
loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but it came at last to be called
Connie's Dora, or Miss Connie's baby, all over the house, and nothing
pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this did her old nurse take quite
kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as an interloper, who had no
right to the tenderness which was lavished upon her. But she had no sooner
given in than the baby began to grow dear to her as well as to the rest. In
fact, the house was ere long full of nurses. The staff included everyone
but myself, who only occasionally, at the entreaty of some one or other of
the younger ones, took her in my arms.
But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude, all
centering round the question in what manner the child was to be brought up.
Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as Ethelwyn constantly
reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I could not discover the
principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can tell how soon a principle
in such a case will begin, even unconsciously, to operate; and the danger
was that the moment when it ought to begin to operate would be long past
before the principle was discovered, except I did what I could now to find
it out. I had again and again to remind myself that there was no cause for
anxiety; for that I might certainly claim the enlightenment which all who
want to do right are sure to receive; but still I continued uneasy just
from feeling a vacancy where a principle ought to have been.
CHAPTER VII.
ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress--in the
recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how
I came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to
keep before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might be
turned aside would not trouble me.
We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east, and
the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the children to
rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and, believing that
the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the faculties for aiding
the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them questions as to what they
thought he might have said or done in ordinary family occurrences, thus
giving a reality in their minds to this part of his history, and trying to
rouse in them a habit of referring their conduct to the standard of his. If
we do not thus employ our imagination on sacred things, his example can be
of no use to us except in exactly corresponding circumstances--and when can
such occur from one end to another of our lives? The very effort to think
how he would have done, is a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and,
even if the conclusion arrived at should not be correct from lack of
sufficient knowledge of his character and principles, it will be better
than any that can be arrived at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking
of such questions gave me good opportunity, through the answers they
returned, of seeing what their notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus
of discovering how to help the dawn of the light in their growing minds.
Nor let anyone fear that such employment of the divine gift of imagination
will lead to foolish vagaries and useless inventions; while the object is
to discover the right way--the truth--there is little danger of that.
Besides, there I was to help hereby in the actual training of their
imaginations to truth and wisdom. To aid in this, I told them some of
the stories that were circulated about him in the early centuries of the
church, but which the church has rejected as of no authority; and I showed
them how some of them could not be true, because they were so unlike those
words and actions which we had the best of reasons for receiving as true;
and how one or two of them might be true--though, considering the company
in which we found them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them.
And such wise things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous how
children can reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances are
sometimes entirely concordant with the results arrived at through years of
thought by the earnest mind--results which no mind would ever arrive at
save by virtue of the child-like in it.
Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus in
the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by dwelling a
little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from group to group
of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem and asking every
fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy, till at length they
were in great trouble when they could not find him even in Jerusalem. Then
came the delight of his mother when she did find him at last, and his
answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered over the simple story,
my children had put many questions to me about Jesus being a boy, and not
seeming to know things which, if he was God, he must have known, they
thought. To some of these I had just to reply that I did not understand
myself, and therefore could not teach them; to others, that I could explain
them, but that they were not yet, some of them, old enough to receive and
understand my explanation; while others I did my best to answer as simply
as I could. But at this point we arrived at a question put by Wynnie, to
answer which aright I considered of the greatest importance. Wynnie said:
"That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled me,
papa."
"What is, my dear?" I said; for although I thought I knew well enough what
she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for her own
sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand the
difficulty much better if she presented it herself.
"I mean that he spoke to his mother--"
"Why don't you say _mamma_, Wynnie?" said Charlie. "She was his own mamma,
wasn't she, papa?"
"Yes, my dear; but don't you know that the shoemaker's children down in the
village always call their mamma _mother_?"
"Yes; but they are shoemaker's children."
"Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
carpenter. He called his mamma, _mother_. But, Charlie, _mother_ is the
more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. _Lady_ is a very
pretty word; but _woman_ is a very beautiful word. Just so with _mamma_ and
_mother_. _Mamma_ is pretty, but _mother_ is beautiful."
"Why don't we always say _mother_ then?"
"Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for Sundays--that
is, for the more solemn times of life. We don't want it to get common to us
with too much use. We may think it as much as we like; thinking does not
spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and especially beautiful words.
Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was saying."
"I was saying, papa, that I can't help feeling as if--I know it can't be
true--but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he said that
to her."
I looked at the page and read the words, "How is it that ye sought me? wist
ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And I sat silent for a
while.
"Why don't you speak, papa?" said Harry.
"I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry," I said. "Long after I was your
age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as they now
trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me so lovely
that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact that they
troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall. I can hardly
see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me. And why is that?
Simply because I understand them now, and I did not understand them then.
I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof; now I hear them as uttered
with a tone of loving surprise. But really I cannot feel sure what it was
that I did not like. And I am confident it is so with a great many things
that we reject. We reject them simply because we do not understand them.
Therefore, indeed, we cannot with truth be said to reject them at all. It
is some false appearance that we reject. Some of the grandest things in
the whole realm of truth look repellent to us, and we turn away from them,
simply because we are not--to use a familiar phrase--we are not up to them.
They appear to us, therefore, to be what they are not. Instruction sounds
to the proud man like reproof; illumination comes on the vain man like
scorn; the manifestation of a higher condition of motive and action
than his own, falls on the self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is
consciousness and conscience working together that produce this impression;
the result is from the man himself, not from the higher source. From the
truth comes the power, but the shape it assumes to the man is from the man
himself."
"You are quite beyond me now, papa," said Wynnie.
"Well, my dear," I answered, "I will return to the words of the boy Jesus,
instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you what they
mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about them is all
and altogether an illusion."
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