The Seaboard Parish Volume 1

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Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this magazine
could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to follow us to
the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent on before us, but the
boys had intended the precious box to go with themselves. Knowing well,
however, how little they would miss it, and with what shouts of south-sea
discovery they would greet the forgotten treasure when they returned, I
insisted on the lumbering article being left in peace. So that, as man
goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever he may have accumulated before
the fatal moment, they had to set off for the far country without chest or
ginger-beer--not therefore altogether so desolate and unprovided for as
they imagined. The abandoned treasure was forgotten the moment the few
tears it had occasioned were wiped away.

It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows were
twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the dear old
house.

"I'm sorry to leave the swallows behind," said Wynnie, as she stepped into
the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already there, eager
and strong-hearted for the journey.

We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed to
enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of the
meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we met
bravely diligent at their day's work, as they trudged along the road with
wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I could see
her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its expression
that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a brown-faced gipsy
family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the passing carriage. A
fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under the convoy of the parent
duck, next attracted her.

"Look; look. Isn't that delicious?" she cried.

"I don't think I should like it though," said Wynnie.

"What shouldn't you like, Wynnie?" asked her mother.

"To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!"

"They feel it with their legs and their webby toes," said Connie.

"Yes, that is some consolation," answered Wynnie.

"And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning."

I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie's illness had not
in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had rather, as
it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and sympathetic,
so that the things around her could enter her soul even more easily than
before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in reality brought her into
closer contact with the movements of all vitality.

We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station. Everybody
almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for Connie's sake
chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had forgotten to
say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak to him. The same
instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie was the centre of
all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother or sister. Had she been
a martyr who had stood the test and received her aureole, she could hardly
have been more regarded. The common use of the word martyr is a curious
instance of how words get degraded. The sufferings involved in martyrdom,
and not the pure will giving occasion to that suffering, is fixed upon by
the common mind as the martyrdom. The witness-bearing is lost sight of,
except we can suppose that "a martyr to the toothache" means a witness of
the fact of the toothache and its tortures. But while _martyrdom_ really
means a bearing for the sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any
suffering, even that we have brought upon ourselves, may become martyrdom.
When it is so borne that the sufferer therein bears witness to the presence
and fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to his will, in gentle
endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which is not seldom to be
seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than all, perhaps, and
rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and merciful consequence
of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with righteous shame, as the
cleansing of the Father's hand, indicating that repentance unto life which
lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes him such that the holiest men
of old would talk to him with gladness and respect, then indeed it may be
called a martyrdom. This latter could not be Connie's case, but the former
was hers, and so far she might be called a martyr, even as the old women of
the village designated her.

After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so
long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant,
who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the establishment,
looking after everything and putting his hand to everything, with an
indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the wine-cellar, and from
the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could not possibly get on
without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise beside the driver from
the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than otherwise at the noise of the
youngsters.

"Good-bye, Marshmallows," they were shouting at the top of their voices,
as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody's ears on the
open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that there
was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them as much
liberty as could be afforded them.

At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now in
wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany us a
good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us in
moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and only
at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times on the
way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the streets
delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the children and
servants, all but my wife's maid, on before us, under the charge of Walter.
This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped only the night, for
Connie found herself quite able to go on the next morning. Here Turner left
us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked a little out of spirits
after his departure, but soon recovered herself. The next night we spent
at a small town on the borders of Devonshire, which was the limit of our
railway travelling. Here we remained for another whole day, for the remnant
of the journey across part of Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be
posted, and was a good five hours' work. We started about eleven o'clock,
full of spirits at the thought that we had all but accomplished the only
part of the undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness. Connie was
quite merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open carriage with
a hood. Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the maid in the
rumble, and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we had
four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and
thankfulness, who would not be happy?

There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I altogether
understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment has something
to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion, the change of
scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the next turn in
the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the pine-trees
especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the harness as you
pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses, the glitter and the
shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy faces, the scent of burning
wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a thousand other things combine
to make such a journey delightful. But I believe it needs something more
than this--something even closer to the human life--to account for the
pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect it is its living symbolism; the
hidden relations which it bears to the eternal soul in its aspirations and
longings--ever following after, ever attaining, never satisfied. Do not
misunderstand me, my reader. A man, you will allow, perhaps, may be content
although he is not and cannot be happy: I feel inclined to turn all this
the other way, saying that a man ought always to be happy, never to be
content. You will see I do not say _contented_; I say _content_. Here comes
in his faith: his life is hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded.
All things are his, to become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as
his being enlarges to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary
incompleteness falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God's
idea he is complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God
the Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch as
he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I leave it,
however.

I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt I
was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with full
confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man be
happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the feeble
knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill? True, the
fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp of life; but
if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth; if less of fire,
more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light. Verily, youth is
good, but old age is better--to the man who forsakes not his youth when his
youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature do not depend upon youth
or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose meekness inherits the earth.
The smell of that field of beans gives me more delight now than ever it
could have given me when I was a youth. And if I ask myself why I find it
is simply because I have more faith now than I had then. It came to me then
as an accident of nature--a passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs'
share of the crumbs. Now I believe that God _means_ that odour of the
bean-field; that when Jesus smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in
Galilee, he thought of his Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if
I should never smell it again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age
should make me deaf as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope
you are too, or will be before you have done with this same beautiful
mystical life of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's
books of poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest,
perhaps.

And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in a
word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the brightness
of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a little weary,
lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping towards the
earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the brightness of the morning star,
ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that brightens at the
sun's approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its light, and somewhat
sad because severe. Connie's face was bright with the brightness of a lake
in the rosy evening, the sound of the river flowing in and the sound of the
river flowing forth just audible, but itself still, and content to be still
and mirror the sunset. Dora's was bright with the brightness of a marigold
that follows the sun without knowing it; and Eliza's was bright with the
brightness of a half-blown cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This last
is not a good simile, but I cannot find a better. I confess failure, and go
on.

After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they were,
where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her to carry
her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads through which
were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches of heather all
about were showing their bells, though not yet in their autumnal outburst
of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded of Scotland, in which I had
travelled a good deal between the ages of twenty and five-and-twenty. The
further I went the stronger I felt the resemblance. The look of the fields,
the stone fences that divided them, the shape and colour and materials of
the houses, the aspect of the people, the feeling of the air, and of the
earth and sky generally, made me imagine myself in a milder and more
favoured Scotland. The west wind was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge
which one can so often detect in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot
sun. Though she had already travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up
within a few minutes after we got on this moor; and we had not gone much
farther before a shout from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little
Dora had discovered the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue
and bright. We soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie's eyes it seemed
to linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them seemed the
reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors. Ethelwyn's eyes, too,
were full of it, and a flush on her generally pale cheek showed that she
too expected the ocean. After a few miles along this breezy expanse, we
began to descend towards the sea-level. Down the winding of a gradual
slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new chapter in our
history. We came again upon a few trees here and there, all with their tops
cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds,
like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep
their tops mown with their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the
crests of the broken waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages,
with streets narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, that needed careful
driving and the frequent pressure of the break upon the wheel. And now the
sea shone upon us with nearer greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear
its talk with the shore. At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the
last level, drove over a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw
the land vanish in the sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden
drawbridge, and along the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops
and schooners. Then came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an
ascent, and ere we reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by
loud shouts, and the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top
of a stone wall to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept
quiet, knowing that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing
about the evil it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch,
leading through the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The
journey was over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the
county of Cornwall.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.

We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which nurse
had fixed upon for her--the best in the house, of course, again. She did
seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at once, and in half an
hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very glad. After dinner I went
up to Connie's room. There I found her fast asleep on the sofa, and Wynnie
as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The drive and the sea air had
had the same effect on both of them. But pleased as I was to see Connie
sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see Wynnie asleep on the
floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give to a father and mother to
see this or that child asleep! It is when her kittens are asleep that the
cat creeps away to look after her own comforts. Our cat chose to have her
kittens in my study once, and as I would not have her further disturbed
than to give them another cushion to lie on in place of that which belonged
to my sofa, I had many opportunities of watching them as I wrote, or
prepared my sermons. But I must not talk about the cat and her kittens
now. When parents see their children asleep, especially if they have been
suffering in any way, they breathe more freely; a load is lifted off their
minds; their responsibility seems over; the children have gone back to
their Father, and he alone is looking after them for a while. Now, I had
not been comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially during our
journey, and still more especially during the last part of our journey.
There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or less
dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much for her,
although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had not quite
enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without much
thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do not seem
to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them; while for others
a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is necessary for the
health of both body and mind, and when the matter or occasion for so much
is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous to what follows when a
healthy physical system is not supplied with sufficient food: the oxygen,
the source of life, begins to consume the life itself; it tears up the
timbers of the house to burn against the cold. Or, to use a different
simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance does not strike the rock and
make the waters flow, such a mind--one that must think to live--will go
digging into itself, and is in danger of injuring the very fountain of
thought, by drawing away its living water into ditches and stagnant pools.
This was, I say, the case in part with my Wynnie, although I did not
understand it at that moment. She did not look quite happy, did not always
meet a smile with a smile, looked almost reprovingly upon the frolics of
the little brother-imps, and though kindness itself when any real hurt or
grief befell them, had reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner,
of which I have already spoken as interrupted by Connie's accident. To her
mother and me she was service itself, only service without the smile which
is as the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a
little uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
had seemed almost annoyed at Connie's ecstasies, and said to Dora many
times: "Do be quiet, Dora;" although there was not a single creature but
ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
child's explosions. So I was--but although I say _so_, I hardly know why
I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief in the
anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I stood
regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her uncomfortable,
she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with the words, "I beg
your pardon, papa," looking almost guiltily round her, and putting up her
hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an impropriety in being caught
untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition of mind that was not healthy.

"My dear," I said, "what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to see
you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold you."

"O papa," she said, laying her head on my shoulder, "I am afraid I must be
very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong, or
rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure there
must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly know what
it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected something, and you
had come to find fault with me. _Is_ there anything, papa?"

"Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
that."

"I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day! Why
shouldn't I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked, papa."

Here Connie woke up.

"There now! I've waked Connie," Wynnie resumed. "I'm always doing something
I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take that sin off
my poor conscience."

"What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?" asked Connie.

"It isn't nonsense, Connie. You know I am."

"I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don't
_feel_ wicked."

"My dear children," I said, "we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say to
himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one man to
say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case to do as
St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing--to judge our own selves,
which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do what our Lord
has told us expressly we are not to do--to judge other people. You get
your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going to explore a little
of this desert island upon which we have been cast away. And you, Connie,
just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep again."

Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to talk
seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.

Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what we
talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported it to
Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies who went
to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news of nature,
to her who could not go to gather them for herself. It think it will be the
best plan to take part of both plans.

When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed _in_, the rocks,
buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life for a
big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still blew
from the west, both warm and strong--I mean strength-giving--and the wind
was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was green and
soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright flowers, chiefly
yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the downs, the shadows of
whose unequal surface were now beginning to be thrown east, for the sun was
going seawards. I stood up, stretched out my arms, threw back my shoulders
and my head, and filled my chest with a draught of the delicious wind,
feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed with wine. Wynnie stood
apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar, thoughtful, and turning her eyes
hither and thither.

"That makes me feel young again," I said.

"I wish it would make me feel old then," said Wynnie.

"What do you mean, my child?"

"Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
young," she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were walking
up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the down-turf was
indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we had reached the
top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight. The top of the
hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun was hanging on the
face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea stretched for visible
miles and miles along the shore on either hand, its wide blue mantle
fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land, and scalloped into
all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the nether fires which had
formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as they bore the rising tide up
on the shore, was the one music fit for the whole. Ear and eye, touch and
smell, were alike invaded with blessedness. I ought to have kept this to
give my reader in Connie's room; but he shall share with her presently. The
sense of space--of mighty room for life and growth--filled my soul, and I
thanked God in my heart. The wind seemed to bear that growth into my soul,
even as the wind of God first breathed into man's nostrils the breath of
life, and the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment of every aspiration. I
turned and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but listless amidst that
which lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.

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