I found the old man seated at his dinner, which he left immediately when he heard that Miss Oldcastle needed his help. In a few words I told him, as we went, the story of what had befallen at the Hall, to which he listened with the interest of a boy reading a romance, asking twenty questions about the particulars which I hurried over. Then he shook me warmly by the hand, saying—
“You have fairly won her, Walton, and I am as glad of it as I could be of anything I can think of. She is well worth all you must have suffered. This will at length remove the curse from that wretched family. You have saved her from perhaps even a worse fate than her sister’s.”
“I fear she will be ill, though,” I said, “after all that she has gone through.”
But I did not even suspect how ill she would be.
As soon as I heard Dr Duncan’s opinion of her, which was not very definite, a great fear seized upon me that I was destined to lose her after all. This fear, however, terrible as it was, did not torture me like the fear that had preceded it. I could oftener feel able to say, “Thy will be done” than I could before.
Dr Duncan was hardly out of the house when Old Rogers arrived, and was shown into the study. He looked excited. I allowed him to tell out his story, which was his daughter’s of course, without interruption. He ended by saying:—
“Now, sir, you really must do summat. This won’t do in a Christian country. We ain’t aboard ship here with a nor’-easter a-walkin’ the quarter-deck.”
“There’s no occasion, my dear old fellow, to do anything.”
He was taken aback.
“Well, I don’t understand you, Mr Walton. You’re the last man I’d have expected to hear argufy for faith without works. It’s right to trust in God; but if you don’t stand to your halliards, your craft ’ll miss stays, and your faith ’ll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike.”
I suspect there was some confusion in the figure, but the old man’s meaning was plain enough. Nor would I keep him in a moment more of suspense.
“Miss Oldcastle is in the house, Old Rogers,” I said.
“What house, sir?” returned the old man, his gray eyes opening wider as he spoke.
“This house, to be sure.”
I shall never forget the look the old man cast upwards, or the reality given to it by the ordinarily odd sailor-fashion of pulling his forelock, as he returned inward thanks to the Father of all for His kindness to his friend. And never in my now wide circle of readers shall I find one, the most educated and responsive, who will listen to my story with a more gracious interest than that old man showed as I recounted to him the adventures of the evening. There were few to whom I could have told them: to Old Rogers I felt that it was right and natural and dignified to tell the story even of my love’s victory.
How then am I able to tell it to the world as now? I can easily explain the seeming inconsistency. It is not merely that I am speaking, as I have said before, from behind a screen, or as clothed in the coat of darkness of an anonymous writer; but I find that, as I come nearer and nearer to the invisible world, all my brothers and sisters grow dearer and dearer to me; I feel towards them more and more as the children of my Father in heaven; and although some of them are good children and some naughty children, some very lovable and some hard to love, yet I never feel that they are below me, or unfit to listen to the story even of my love, if they only care to listen; and if they do not care, there is no harm done, except they read it. Even should they, and then scoff at what seemed and seems to me the precious story, I have these defences: first, that it was not for them that I cast forth my precious pearls, for precious to me is the significance of every fact in my history—not that it is mine, for I have only been as clay in the hands of the potter, but that it is God’s, who made my history as it seemed and was good to Him; and second, that even should they trample them under their feet, they cannot well get at me to rend me. And more, the nearer I come to the region beyond, the more I feel that in that land a man needs not shrink from uttering his deepest thoughts, inasmuch as he that understands them not will not therefore revile him.—“But you are not there yet. You are in the land in which the brother speaketh evil of that which he understandeth not.”—True, friend; too true. But I only do as Dr Donne did in writing that poem in his sickness, when he thought he was near to the world of which we speak: I rehearse now, that I may find it easier then.
“Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with the choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music, as I come,
I tune the instrument here at the door;
And what I must do then, think here before.”
When Rogers had thanked God, he rose, took my hand, and said:—
“Mr Walton, you WILL preach now. I thank God for the good we shall all get from the trouble you have gone through.”
“I ought to be the better for it,” I answered.
“You WILL be the better for it,” he returned. “I believe I’ve allus been the better for any trouble as ever I had to go through with. I couldn’t quite say the same for every bit of good luck I had; leastways, I consider trouble the best luck a man can have. And I wish you a good night, sir. Thank God! again.”
“But, Rogers, you don’t mean it would be good for us to have bad luck always, do you? You shouldn’t be pleased at what’s come to me now, in that case.”
“No, sir, sartinly not.”
“How can you say, then, that bad luck is the best luck?”
“I mean the bad luck that comes to us—not the bad luck that doesn’t come. But you’re right, sir. Good luck or bad luck’s both best when HE sends ’em, as He allus does. In fac’, sir, there is no bad luck but what comes out o’ the man hisself. The rest’s all good.”
But whether it was the consequence of a reaction from the mental strain I had suffered, or the depressing effect of Miss Oldcastle’s illness coming so close upon the joy of winning her; or that I was more careless and less anxious to do my duty than I ought to have been—I greatly fear that Old Rogers must have been painfully disappointed in the sermons which I did preach for several of the following Sundays. He never even hinted at such a fact, but I felt it much myself. A man has often to be humbled through failure, especially after success. I do not clearly know how my failures worked upon me; but I think a man may sometimes get spiritual good without being conscious of the point of its arrival, or being able to trace the process by which it was wrought in him. I believe that my failures did work some humility in me, and a certain carelessness of outward success even in spiritual matters, so far as the success affected me, provided only the will of God was done in the dishonour of my weakness. And I think, but I am not sure, that soon after I approached this condition of mind, I began to preach better. But still I found for some time that however much the subject of my sermon interested me in my study or in the church or vestry on the Saturday evening; nay, even although my heart was full of fervour during the prayers and lessons; no sooner had I begun to speak than the glow died out of the sky of my thoughts; a dull clearness of the intellectual faculties took its place; and I was painfully aware that what I could speak without being moved myself was not the most likely utterance to move the feelings of those who only listened. Still a man may occasionally be used by the Spirit of God as the inglorious “trumpet of a prophecy” instead of being inspired with the life of the Word, and hence speaking out of a full heart in testimony of that which he hath known and seen.
I hardly remember when or how I came upon the plan, but now, as often as I find myself in such a condition, I turn away from any attempt to produce a sermon; and, taking up one of the sayings of our Lord which He himself has said “are spirit and are life,” I labour simply to make the people see in it what I see in it; and when I find that thus my own heart is warmed, I am justified in the hope that the hearts of some at least of my hearers are thereby warmed likewise.
But no doubt the fact that the life of Miss Oldcastle seemed to tremble in the balance, had something to do with those results of which I may have already said too much. My design had been to go at once to London and make preparation for as early a wedding as she would consent to; but the very day after I brought her home, life and not marriage was the question. Dr Duncan looked very grave, and although he gave me all the encouragement he could, all his encouragement did not amount to much. There was such a lack of vitality about her! The treatment to which she had been for so long a time subjected had depressed her till life was nearly quenched from lack of hope. Nor did the sudden change seem able to restore the healthy action of what the old physicians called the animal spirits. Possibly the strong reaction paralysed their channels, and thus prevented her gladness from reaching her physical nature so as to operate on its health. Her whole complaint appeared in excessive weakness. Finding that she fainted after every little excitement, I left her for four weeks entirely to my sister and Dr Duncan, during which time she never saw me; and it was long before I could venture to stay in her room more than a minute or two. But as the summer approached she began to show signs of reviving life, and by the end of May was able to be wheeled into the garden in a chair.
During her aunt’s illness, Judy came often to the vicarage. But Miss Oldcastle was unable to see her any more than myself without the painful consequence which I have mentioned. So the dear child always came to me in the study, and through her endless vivacity infected me with some of her hope. For she had no fears whatever about her aunt’s recovery.
I had had some painful apprehensions as to the treatment Judy herself might meet with from her grandmother, and had been doubtful whether I ought not to have carried her off as well as her aunt; but the first time she came, which was the next day, she set my mind at rest on that subject.
“But does your grannie know where you are come?” I had asked her.
“So well, Mr Walton,” she replied, “that there was no occasion to tell her. Why shouldn’t I rebel as well as Aunt Wynnie, I wonder?” she added, looking archness itself.
“How does she bear it?”
“Bear what, Mr Walton?”
“The loss of your aunt.”
“You don’t think grannie cares about that, do you! She’s vexed enough at the loss of Captain Everard,—Do you know, I think he had too much wine yesterday, or he wouldn’t have made quite such a fool of himself.”
“I fear he hadn’t had quite enough to give him courage, Judy. I daresay he was brave enough once, but a bad conscience soon destroys a man’s courage.”
“Why do you call it a bad conscience, Mr Walton? I should have thought that a bad conscience was one that would let a girl go on anyhow and say nothing about it to make her uncomfortable.”
“You are quite right, Judy; that is the worst kind of conscience, certainly. But tell me, how does Mrs Oldcastle bear it?”
“You asked me that already.”
Somehow Judy’s words always seem more pert upon paper than they did upon her lips. Her naivete, the twinkling light in her eyes, and the smile flitting about her mouth, always modified greatly the expression of her words.
“—Grannie never says a word about you or auntie either.”
“But you said she was vexed: how do you know that?”
“Because ever since the captain went away this morning, she won’t speak a word to Sarah even.”
“Are you not afraid of her locking you up some day or other?”
“Not a bit of it. Grannie won’t touch me. And you shouldn’t tempt me to run away from her like auntie. I won’t. Grannie is a naughty old lady, and I don’t believe anybody loves her but me—not Sarah, I’m certain. Therefore I can’t leave her, and I won’t leave her, Mr Walton, whatever you may say about her.”
“Indeed, I don’t want you to leave her, Judy.”
And Judy did not leave her as long as she lived. And the old lady’s love to that child was at least one redeeming point in her fierce character. No one can tell how mucn good it may have done her before she died—though but a few years passed before her soul was required of her. Before that time came, however, a quarrel took place between her and Sarah, which quarrel I incline to regard as a hopeful sign. And to this day Judy has never heard how her old grannie treated her mother. When she learns it now from these pages I think she will be glad that she did not know it before her death.
The old lady would see neither doctor nor parson; nor would she hear of sending for her daughter. The only sign of softening that she gave was that once she folded her granddaughter in her arms and wept long and bitterly. Perhaps the thought of her dying child came back upon her, along with the reflection that the only friend she had was the child of that marriage which she had persecuted to dissolution.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg