Kitabı oku: «Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood», sayfa 14
Now I think humiliation is a very different condition of mind from humility. Humiliation no man can desire: it is shame and torture. Humility is the true, right condition of humanity—peaceful, divine. And yet a man may gladly welcome humiliation when it comes, if he finds that with fierce shock and rude revulsion it has turned him right round, with his face away from pride, whither he was travelling, and towards humility, however far away upon the horizon’s verge she may sit waiting for him. To me, however, there came a gentle and not therefore less effective dissolution of the bonds both of pride and humiliation; and before Weir and I met, I was nearly as anxious to heal his wounded spirit, as I was to work justice for his son.
I was walking slowly, with burning cheek and downcast eyes, the one of conflict, the other of shame and defeat, away from the great house, which seemed to be staring after me down the avenue with all its window-eyes, when suddenly my deliverance came. At a somewhat sharp turn, where the avenue changed into a winding road, Miss Oldcastle stood waiting for me, the glow of haste upon her cheek, and the firmness of resolution upon her lips. Once more I was startled by her sudden presence, but she did not smile.
“Mr Walton, what do you want me to do? I would not willing refuse, if it is, as you say, really my duty to go with you.”
“I cannot be positive about that,” I answered. “I think I put it too strongly. But it would be a considerable advantage, I think, if you WOULD go with me and let me ask you a few questions in the presence of Thomas Weir. It will have more effect if I am able to tell him that I have only learned as yet that you were in the shop on that day, and refer him to you for the rest.”
“I will go.”
“A thousand thanks. But how did you manage to—?”
Here I stopped, not knowing how to finish the question.
“You are surprised that I came, notwithstanding mamma’s objection to my going?”
“I confess I am. I should not have been surprised at Judy’s doing so, now.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Do you think obedience to parents is to last for ever? The honour is, of course. But I am surely old enough to be right in following my conscience at least.”
“You mistake me. That is not the difficulty at all. Of course you ought to do what is right against the highest authority on earth, which I take to be just the parental. What I am surprised at is your courage.”
“Not because of its degree, only that it is mine!”
And she sighed.—She was quite right, and I did not know what to answer. But she resumed.
“I know I am cowardly. But if I cannot dare, I can bear. Is it not strange?—With my mother looking at me, I dare not say a word, dare hardly move against her will. And it is not always a good will. I cannot honour my mother as I would. But the moment her eyes are off me, I can do anything, knowing the consequences perfectly, and just as regardless of them; for, as I tell you, Mr Walton, I can endure; and you do not know what that might COME to mean with my mother. Once she kept me shut up in my room, and sent me only bread and water, for a whole week to the very hour. Not that I minded that much, but it will let you know a little of my position in my own home. That is why I walked away before her. I saw what was coming.”
And Miss Oldcastle drew herself up with more expression of pride than I had yet seen in her, revealing to me that perhaps I had hitherto quite misunderstood the source of her apparent haughtiness. I could not reply for indignation. My silence must have been the cause of what she said next.
“Ah! you think I have no right to speak so about my own mother! Well! well! But indeed I would not have done so a month ago.”
“If I am silent, Miss Oldcastle, it is that my sympathy is too strong for me. There are mothers and mothers. And for a mother not to be a mother is too dreadful.”
She made no reply. I resumed.
“It will seem cruel, perhaps;—certainly in saying it, I lay myself open to the rejoinder that talk is SO easy;—still I shall feel more honest when I have said it: the only thing I feel should be altered in your conduct—forgive me—is that you should DARE your mother. Do not think, for it is an unfortunate phrase, that my meaning is a vulgar one. If it were, I should at least know better than to utter it to you. What I mean is, that you ought to be able to be and do the same before your mother’s eyes, that you are and do when she is out of sight. I mean that you should look in your mother’s eyes, and do what is RIGHT.”
“I KNOW that—know it WELL.” (She emphasized the words as I do.) “But you do not know what a spell she casts upon me; how impossible it is to do as you say.”
“Difficult, I allow. Impossible, not. You will never be free till you do so.”
“You are too hard upon me. Besides, though you will scarcely be able to believe it now, I DO honour her, and cannot help feeling that by doing as I do, I avoid irreverence, impertinence, rudeness—whichever is the right word for what I mean.”
“I understand you perfectly. But the truth is more than propriety of behaviour, even to a parent; and indeed has in it a deeper reverence, or the germ of it at least, than any adherence to the mere code of respect. If you once did as I want you to do, you would find that in reality you both revered and loved your mother more than you do now.”
“You may be right. But I am certain you speak without any real idea of the difficulty.”
“That may be. And yet what I say remains just as true.”
“How could I meet VIOLENCE, for instance?”
“Impossible!”
She returned no reply. We walked in silence for some minutes. At length she said,
“My mother’s self-will amounts to madness, I do believe. I have yet to learn where she would stop of herself.”
“All self-will is madness,” I returned—stupidly enough For what is the use of making general remarks when you have a terrible concrete before you? “To want one’s own way just and only because it is one’s own way is the height of madness.”
“Perhaps. But when madness has to be encountered as if it were sense, it makes it no easier to know that it is madness.”
“Does your uncle give you no help?”
“He! Poor man! He is as frightened at her as I am. He dares not even go away. He did not know what he was coming to when he came to Oldcastle Hall. Dear uncle! I owe him a great deal. But for any help of that sort, he is of no more use than a child. I believe mamma looks upon him as half an idiot. He can do anything or everything but help one to live, to BE anything. Oh me! I AM so tired!”
And the PROUD lady, as I had thought her, perhaps not incorrectly, burst out crying.
What was I to do? I did not know in the least. What I said, I do not even now know. But by this time we were at the gate, and as soon as we had passed the guardian monstrosities, we found the open road an effectual antidote to tears. When we came within sight of the old house where Weir lived, Miss Oldcastle became again a little curious as to what I required of her.
“Trust me,” I said. “There is nothing mysterious about it. Only I prefer the truth to come out fresh in the ears of the man most concerned.”
“I do trust you,” she answered. And we knocked at the house-door.
Thomas Weir himself opened the door, with a candle in his hand. He looked very much astonished to see his lady-visitor. He asked us, politely enough, to walk up-stairs, and ushered us into the large room I have already described. There sat the old man, as I had first seen him, by the side of the fire. He received us with more than politeness—with courtesy; and I could not help glancing at Miss Oldcastle to see what impression this family of “low, free-thinking republicans” made upon her. It was easy to discover that the impression was of favourable surprise. But I was as much surprised at her behaviour as she was at theirs. Not a haughty tone was to be heard in her voice; not a haughty movement to be seen in her form. She accepted the chair offered her, and sat down, perfectly at home, by the fireside, only that she turned towards me, waiting for what explanation I might think proper to give.
Before I had time to speak, however, old Mr Weir broke the silence.
“I’ve been telling Tom, sir, as I’ve told him many a time afore, as how he’s a deal too hard with his children.”
“Father!” interrupted Thomas, angrily.
“Have patience a bit, my boy,” persisted the old man, turning again towards me.—“Now, sir, he won’t even hear young Tom’s side of the story; and I say that boy won’t tell him no lie if he’s the same boy he went away.”
“I tell you, father,” again began Thomas; but this time I interposed, to prevent useless talk beforehand.
“Thomas,” I said, “listen to me. I have heard your son’s side of the story. Because of something he said I went to Miss Oldcastle, and asked her whether she was in his late master’s shop last Thursday. That is all I have asked her, and all she has told me is that she was. I know no more than you what she is going to reply to my questions now, but I have no doubt her answers will correspond to your son’s story.”
I then put my questions to Miss Oldcastle, whose answers amounted to this:—That they had wanted to buy a shawl; that they had seen none good enough; that they had left the shop without buying anything; and that they had been waited upon by a young man, who, while perfectly polite and attentive to their wants, did not seem to have the ways or manners of a London shop-lad.
I then told them the story as young Tom had related it to me, and asked if his sister was not in the house and might not go to fetch him. But she was with her sister Catherine.
“I think, Mr Walton, if you have done with me, I ought to go home now,” said Miss Oldcastle.
“Certainly,” I answered. “I will take you home at once. I am greatly obliged to you for coming.”
“Indeed, sir,” said the old man, rising with difficulty, “we’re obliged both to you and the lady more than we can tell. To take such a deal of trouble for us! But you see, sir, you’re one of them as thinks a man’s got his duty to do one way or another, whether he be clergyman or carpenter. God bless you, Miss. You’re of the right sort, which you’ll excuse an old man, Miss, as’ll never see ye again till ye’ve got the wings as ye ought to have.”
Miss Oldcastle smiled very sweetly, and answered nothing, but shook hands with them both, and bade them good-night. Weir could not speak a word; he could hardly even lift his eyes. But a red spot glowed on each of his pale cheeks, making him look very like his daughter Catherine, and I could see Miss Oldcastle wince and grow red too with the gripe he gave her hand. But she smiled again none the less sweetly.
“I will see Miss Oldcastle home, and then go back to my house and bring the boy with me,” I said, as we left.
It was some time before either of us spoke. The sun was setting, the sky the earth and the air lovely with rosy light, and the world full of that peculiar calm which belongs to the evening of the day of rest. Surely the world ought to wake better on the morrow.
“Not very dangerous people, those, Miss Oldcastle?” I said, at last.
“I thank you very much for taking me to see them,” she returned, cordially.
“You won’t believe all you may happen to hear against the working people now?”
“I never did.”
“There are ill-conditioned, cross-grained, low-minded, selfish, unbelieving people amongst them. God knows it. But there are ladies and gentlemen amongst them too.”
“That old man is a gentleman.”
“He is. And the only way to teach them all to be such, is to be such to them. The man who does not show himself a gentleman to the working people—why should I call them the poor? some of them are better off than many of the rich, for they can pay their debts, and do it—”
I had forgot the beginning of my sentence.
“You were saying that the man who does not show himself a gentleman to the poor—”
“Is no gentleman at all—only a gentle without the man; and if you consult my namesake old Izaak, you will find what that is.”
“I will look. I know your way now. You won’t tell me anything I can find out for myself.”
“Is it not the best way?”
“Yes. Because, for one thing, you find out so much more than you look for.”
“Certainly that has been my own experience.”
“Are you a descendant of Izaak Walton?”
“No. I believe there are none. But I hope I have so much of his spirit that I can do two things like him.”
“Tell me.”
“Live in the country, though I was not brought up in it; and know a good man when I see him.”
“I am very glad you asked me to go to-night.”
“If people only knew their own brothers and sisters, the kingdom of heaven would not be far off.”
I do not think Miss Oldcastle quite liked this, for she was silent thereafter; though I allow that her silence was not conclusive. And we had now come close to the house.
“I wish I could help you,” I said.
“In what?”
“To bear what I fear is waiting you.”
“I told you I was equal to that. It is where we are unequal that we want help. You may have to give it me some day—who knows?”
I left her most unwillingly in the porch, just as Sarah (the white wolf) had her hand on the door, rejoicing in my heart, however, over her last words.
My reader will not be surprised, after all this, if, before I get very much further with my story, I have to confess that I loved Miss Oldcastle.
When young Tom and I entered the room, his grandfather rose and tottered to meet him. His father made one step towards him and then hesitated. Of all conditions of the human mind, that of being ashamed of himself must have been the strangest to Thomas Weir. The man had never in his life, I believe, done anything mean or dishonest, and therefore he had had less frequent opportunities than most people of being ashamed of himself. Hence his fall had been from another pinnacle—that of pride. When a man thinks it such a fine thing to have done right, he might almost as well have done wrong, for it shows he considers right something EXTRA, not absolutely essential to human existence, not the life of a man. I call it Thomas Weir’s fall; for surely to behave in an unfatherly manner to both daughter and son—the one sinful, and therefore needing the more tenderness—the other innocent, and therefore claiming justification—and to do so from pride, and hurt pride, was fall enough in one history, worse a great deal than many sins that go by harder names; for the world’s judgment of wrong does not exactly correspond with the reality. And now if he was humbled in the one instance, there would be room to hope he might become humble in the other. But I had soon to see that, for a time, his pride, driven from its entrenchment against his son, only retreated, with all its forces, into the other against his daughter.
Before a moment had passed, justice overcame so far that he held out his hand and said:—
“Come, Tom, let by-gones be by-gones.”
But I stepped between.
“Thomas Weir,” I said, “I have too great a regard for you—and you know I dare not flatter you—to let you off this way, or rather leave you to think you have done your duty when you have not done the half of it. You have done your son a wrong, a great wrong. How can you claim to be a gentleman—I say nothing of being a Christian, for therein you make no claim—how, I say, can you claim to act like a gentleman, if, having done a man wrong—his being your own son has nothing to do with the matter one way or other, except that it ought to make you see your duty more easily—having done him wrong, why don’t you beg his pardon, I say, like a man?”
He did not move a step. But young Tom stepped hurriedly forward, and catching his father’s hand in both of his, cried out:
“My father shan’t beg my pardon. I beg yours, father, for everything I ever did to displease you, but I WASN’T to blame in this. I wasn’t, indeed.”
“Tom, I beg your pardon,” said the hard man, overcome at last. “And now, sir,” he added, turning to me, “will you let by-gones be by-gones between my boy and me?”
There was just a touch of bitterness in his tone.
“With all my heart,” I replied. “But I want just a word with you in the shop before I go.”
“Certainly,” he answered, stiffly; and I bade the old and the young man good night, and followed him down stairs.
“Thomas, my friend,” I said, when we got into the shop, laying my hand on his shoulder, “will you after this say that God has dealt hardly with you? There’s a son for any man God ever made to give thanks for on his knees! Thomas, you have a strong sense of fair play in your heart, and you GIVE fair play neither to your own son nor yet to God himself. You close your doors and brood over your own miseries, and the wrongs people have done you; whereas, if you would but open those doors, you might come out into the light of God’s truth, and see that His heart is as clear as sunlight towards you. You won’t believe this, and therefore naturally you can’t quite believe that there is a God at all; for, indeed, a being that was not all light would be no God at all. If you would but let Him teach you, you would find your perplexities melt away like the snow in spring, till you could hardly believe you had ever felt them. No arguing will convince you of a God; but let Him once come in, and all argument will be tenfold useless to convince you that there is no God. Give God justice. Try Him as I have said.—Good night.”
He did not return my farewell with a single word. But the grasp of his strong rough hand was more earnest and loving even than usual. I could not see his face, for it was almost dark; but, indeed, I felt that it was better I could not see it.
I went home as peaceful in my heart as the night whose curtains God had drawn about the earth that it might sleep till the morrow.
CHAPTER XIV. MY PUPIL
Although I do happen to know how Miss Oldcastle fared that night after I left her, the painful record is not essential to my story. Besides, I have hitherto recorded only those things “quorum pars magna”—or minima, as the case may be—“fui.” There is one exception, old Weir’s story, for the introduction of which my reader cannot yet see the artistic reason. For whether a story be real in fact, or only real in meaning, there must always be an idea, or artistic model in the brain, after which it is fashioned: in the latter case one of invention, in the former case one of choice.
In the middle of the following week I was returning from a visit I had paid to Tomkins and his wife, when I met, in the only street of the village, my good and honoured friend Dr Duncan. Of course I saw him often—and I beg my reader to remember that this is no diary, but only a gathering together of some of the more remarkable facts of my history, admitting of being ideally grouped—but this time I recall distinctly because the interview bore upon many things.
“Well, Dr Duncan,” I said, “busy as usual fighting the devil.”
“Ah, my dear Mr Walton,” returned the doctor—and a kind word from him went a long way into my heart—“I know what you mean. You fight the devil from the inside, and I fight him from the outside. My chance is a poor one.”
“It would be, perhaps, if you were confined to outside remedies. But what an opportunity your profession gives you of attacking the enemy from the inside as well! And you have this advantage over us, that no man can say it belongs to your profession to say such things, and THEREFORE disregard them.”
“Ah, Mr Walton, I have too great a respect for your profession to dare to interfere with it. The doctor in ‘Macbeth,’ you know, could
‘not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart.’”
“What a memory you have! But you don’t think I can do that any more than you?”
“You know the best medicine to give, anyhow. I wish I always did. But you see we have no theriaca now.”
“Well, we have. For the Lord says, ‘Come unto me, and I will give you rest.’”
“There! I told you! That will meet all diseases.”
“Strangely now, there comes into my mind a line of Chaucer, with which I will make a small return for your quotation from Shakespeare; you have mentioned theriaca; and I, without thinking of this line, quoted our Lord’s words. Chaucer brings the two together, for the word triacle is merely a corruption of theriaca, the unfailing cure for every thing.
‘Crist, which that is to every harm triacle.’”
“That is delightful: I thank you. And that is in Chaucer?”
“Yes. In the Man-of-Law’s Tale.”
“Shall I tell you how I was able to quote so correctly from Shakespeare? I have just come from referring to the passage. And I mention that because I want to tell you what made me think of the passage. I had been to see poor Catherine Weir. I think she is not long for this world. She has a bad cough, and I fear her lungs are going.”
“I am concerned to hear that. I considered her very delicate, and am not surprised. But I wish, I do wish, I had got a little hold of her before, that I might be of some use to her now. Is she in immediate danger, do you think?”
“No. I do not think so. But I have no expectation of her recovery. Very likely she will just live through the winter and die in the spring. Those patients so often go as the flowers come! All her coughing, poor woman, will not cleanse her stuffed bosom. The perilous stuff weighs on her heart, as Shakespeare says, as well as on her lungs.”
“Ah, dear! What is it, doctor, that weighs upon her heart? Is it shame, or what is it? for she is so uncommunicative that I hardly know anything at all about her yet.”
“I cannot tell. She has the faculty of silence.”
“But do not think I complain that she has not made me her confessor. I only mean that if she would talk at all, one would have a chance of knowing something of the state of her mind, and so might give her some help.”
“Perhaps she will break down all at once, and open her mind to you. I have not told her she is dying. I think a medical man ought at least to be quite sure before he dares to say such a thing. I have known a long life injured, to human view at least, by the medical verdict in youth of ever imminent death.”
“Certainly one has no right to say what God is going to do with any one till he knows it beyond a doubt. Illness has its own peculiar mission, independent of any association with coming death, and may often work better when mingled with the hope of life. I mean we must take care of presumption when we measure God’s plans by our theories. But could you not suggest something, Doctor Duncan, to guide me in trying to do my duty by her?”
“I cannot. You see you don’t know what she is THINKING; and till you know that, I presume you will agree with me that all is an aim in the dark. How can I prescribe, without SOME diagnosis? It is just one of those few cases in which one would like to have the authority of the Catholic priests to urge confession with. I do not think anything will save her life, as we say, but you have taught some of us to think of the life that belongs to the spirit as THE life; and I do believe confession would do everything for that.”
“Yes, if made to God. But I will grant that communication of one’s sorrows or even sins to a wise brother of mankind may help to a deeper confession to the Father in heaven. But I have no wish for AUTHORITY in the matter. Let us see whether the Spirit of God working in her may not be quite as powerful for a final illumination of her being as the fiat confessio of a priest. I have no confidence in FORCING in the moral or spiritual garden. A hothouse development must necessarily be a sickly one, rendering the plant unfit for the normal life of the open air. Wait. We must not hurry things. She will perhaps come to me of herself before long. But I will call and inquire after her.”
We parted; and I went at once to Catherine Weir’s shop. She received me much as usual, which was hardly to be called receiving at all. Perhaps there was a doubtful shadow, not of more cordiality, but of less repulsion in it. Her eyes were full of a stony brilliance, and the flame of the fire that was consuming her glowed upon her cheeks more brightly, I thought, than ever; but that might be fancy, occasioned by what the doctor had said about her. Her hand trembled, but her demeanour was perfectly calm.
“I am sorry to hear you are complaining, Miss Weir,” I said.
“I suppose Dr Duncan told you so, sir. But I am quite well. I did not send for him. He called of himself, and wanted to persuade me I was ill.”
I understood that she felt injured by his interference.
“You should attend to his advice, though. He is a prudent man, and not in the least given to alarming people without cause.”
She returned no answer. So I tried another subject.
“What a fine fellow your brother is!”
“Yes; he grows very much.”
“Has your father found another place for him yet?”
“I don’t know. My father never tells me about any of his doings.”
“But don’t you go and talk to him, sometimes?”
“No. He does not care to see me.”
“I am going there now: will you come with me?”
“Thank you. I never go where I am not wanted.”
“But it is not right that father and daughter should live as you do. Suppose he may not have been so kind to you as he ought, you should not cherish resentment against him for it. That only makes matters worse, you know.”
“I never said to human being that he had been unkind to me.”
“And yet you let every person in the village know it.”
“How?”
Her eye had no longer the stony glitter. It flashed now.
“You are never seen together. You scarcely speak when you meet. Neither of you crosses the other’s threshold.”
“It is not my fault.”
“It is not ALL your fault, I know. But do you think you can go to a heaven at last where you will be able to keep apart from each other, he in his house and you in your house, without any sign that it was through this father on earth that you were born into the world which the Father in heaven redeemed by the gift of His own Son?”
She was silent; and, after a pause, I went on.
“I believe, in my heart, that you love your father. I could not believe otherwise of you. And you will never be happy till you have made it up with him. Have you done him no wrong?”
At these words, her face turned white—with anger, I could see—all but those spots on her cheek-bones, which shone out in dreadful contrast to the deathly paleness of the rest of her face. Then the returning blood surged violently from her heart, and the red spots were lost in one crimson glow. She opened her lips to speak, but apparently changing her mind, turned and walked haughtily out of the shop and closed the door behind her.
I waited, hoping she would recover herself and return; but, after ten minutes had passed, I thought it better to go away.
As I had told her, I was going to her father’s shop.
There I was received very differently. There was a certain softness in the manner of the carpenter which I had not observed before, with the same heartiness in the shake of his hand which had accompanied my last leave-taking. I had purposely allowed ten days to elapse before I called again, to give time for the unpleasant feelings associated with my interference to vanish. And now I had something in my mind about young Tom.
“Have you got anything for your boy yet, Thomas?”
“Not yet, sir. There’s time enough. I don’t want to part with him just yet. There he is, taking his turn at what’s going. Tom!”
And from the farther end of the large shop, where I had not observed him, now approached young Tom, in a canvas jacket, looking quite like a workman.
“Well, Tom, I am glad to find you can turn your hand to anything.”
“I must be a stupid, sir, if I couldn’t handle my father’s tools,” returned the lad.
“I don’t know that quite. I am not just prepared to admit it for my own sake. My father is a lawyer, and I never could read a chapter in one of his books—his tools, you know.”
“Perhaps you never tried, sir.”
“Indeed, I did; and no doubt I could have done it if I had made up my mind to it. But I never felt inclined to finish the page. And that reminds me why I called to-day. Thomas, I know that lad of yours is fond of reading. Can you spare him from his work for an hour or so before breakfast?”
“To-morrow, sir?”
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,” I answered; “and there’s Shakespeare for you.”
“Of course, sir, whatever you wish,” said Thomas, with a perplexed look, in which pleasure seemed to long for confirmation, and to be, till that came, afraid to put its “native semblance on.”
“I want to give him some direction in his reading. When a man is fond of any tools, and can use them, it is worth while showing him how to use them better.”
“Oh, thank you, sir!” exclaimed Tom, his face beaming with delight.
“That IS kind of you, sir! Tom, you’re a made man!” cried the father.
“So,” I went on, “if you will let him come to me for an hour every morning, till he gets another place, say from eight to nine, I will see what I can do for him.”
Tom’s face was as red with delight as his sister’s had been with anger. And I left the shop somewhat consoled for the pain I had given Catherine, which grieved me without making me sorry that I had occasioned it.
I had intended to try to do something from the father’s side towards a reconciliation with his daughter. But no sooner had I made up my proposal for Tom than I saw I had blocked up my own way towards my more important end. For I could not bear to seem to offer to bribe him even to allow me to do him good. Nor would he see that it was for his good and his daughter’s—not at first. The first impression would be that I had a PROFESSIONAL end to gain, that the reconciling of father and daughter was a sort of parish business of mine, and that I had smoothed the way to it by offering a gift—an intellectual one, true, but not, therefore, the less a gift in the eyes of Thomas, who had a great respect for books. This was just what would irritate such a man, and I resolved to say nothing about it, but bide my time.
