Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 3 of 3

Bull Garnet gathered his fleeting life, and looked at Pell with a love so deep that it banished admiration. Then his failing heart supplied, for the last, last time of all, the woe–worn fountain of his eyes. Strong and violent as he was, a little thing had often touched him to the turn of tears. What impulse is there but has this end? Even comic laughter.

Pell lifted from the counterpane the broad but shrunken hand, which was on the way to be offered to him, until sad memory stopped it. Then he looked down at the poor grey face, where the forehead, from the fall of the rest, appeared almost a monstrosity, and the waning of strong emotions left a quivering of hollowness. The young parson looked down with noble pity. Much he knew of his father–in–law! Bull Garnet would never be pitied. He drew his hand back with a little jerk, and placed it against his broad, square chin.

“I canʼt bear to die like this, Pell. I wish to God you could shave me.”

Pell went suddenly down on his knees, put his strong brown hands up, and said nothing except the Lordʼs Prayer. Bull Garnet tried to raise his palms, but the power of his wrists was gone, and so he let them fall together. Then at every grand petition he nodded at the ceiling, as if he saw it going upward, and thought of the lath and plaster.

He had said he should die at four oʼclock, for the paroxysms of heart–complaint returned at measured intervals, and he felt that he could not outlast another. So with his usual mastery and economy of labour, he had sent a man to get the keys and begin to toll the great church bell, as soon as ever the clock struck four. “Not too long apart,” he said, “steadily, and be done with it.” When the boom of the sluggish bell came in at the open window, Bull Garnet smiled, because the man was doing it as he had ordered him.

“Right,” he whispered, “yes, quite right. I have always been before my time. Just let me see my children.” And then he had no more pain.

*****

Amy came in very softly, to know if he was dead. They had told her she ought to leave it alone, but she could not see it so. Knowing all and feeling all, she felt beyond her knowledge. If it would – oh, if it would help him with a spark of hope in his parting, help him in the judgment–day, to have the glad forgiveness of the brother with the deeper wrong – there it was, and he was welcome.

A little whispering went on, pale lips into trembling ears, and then Cradock, with his shoes off, was brought to the side of the bed.

“He wonʼt know you,” Pearl sobbed softly; “but how kind of you to come!” She was surprised at nothing now.

Her father raised his languid eyes, until they met Cradockʼs eager ones; there they dwelt with doubt, and wonder, and a slow rejoicing, and a last attempt at expression.

John Rosedew took the wan stiffening hand, lying on the sheet like a cast–off glove, and placed it in Cradockʼs sunburnt palm.

“He knows all,” the parson whispered; “he has read the letter you left for him; and, knowing all, he forgives you.”

“That I do, with all my heart,” Cradock answered firmly. “May God forgive me as I do you. Wholly, purely, for once and for all!”

“Kind – noble – Godlike – ” the dying man said very slowly, but with his old decision.

Bull Garnet could not speak again. The great expansion of heart had been too much for its weakness. Only now and then he looked at Cradock with his Amy, and every look was a prayer for them, and perhaps a recorded blessing.

Then they slipped away, in tears, and left him, as he ought to be, with his children only. And the telegraph of death was that God would never part them.

Now, think you not this man was dying a great deal better than he deserved? No doubt he was. And, for that matter, so perhaps do most of us. But does our Father think so?

CHAPTER XVIII

Softly and quietly fell the mould on the coffin of Bull Garnet. A great tree overhung his sleep, without fear of the woodman. Clayton Nowellʼs simple grave, turfed and very tidy, was only a few yards away. That ancient tree spread forth its arms on this one and the other, as a grandsire lays his hands peacefully and placidly on children who have quarrelled.

A lovely spot, as one might see, for violence to rest in, for long remorse to lose the track, and deep repentance hopefully abide the time of God. To feel the soft mantle of winter return, and the promising gladness of spring, the massive depths of the summer–tide, and the bright disarray of autumn. And to be, no more the while, oppressed, or grieved, or overworked.

There shall forest–children come, joining hands in pleasant fear, and, sitting upon grassy mounds, wonder who inhabits them, wonder who and what it is that cannot wonder any more. And haply they shall tell this tale – become a legend then – when he who writes, and ye who read, are dust.

Ay, and tell it better far, more simply, and more sweetly, never having gone astray from the inborn sympathy. For every grown–up man is apt to mar the uses of his pen with bitter words, and small, and twaddling; conceiting himself to be keen in the first, just in the second, and sage in the third. For all of these let him crave forgiveness of God, his fellow–creatures, and himself, respectively.

Sir Cradock Nowell, still alive to the normal sense of duty, tottered away on John Rosedewʼs arm, from the grave of his half–brother. He had never learned whose hand it was that dug the grave near by, and no one ever forced that unhappy knowledge on him. This last blow, which seemed to strike his chiefest prop from under him, had left its weal on his failing mind in great marks of astonishment. That such a strong, great man should drop, and he, the elder and the weaker, be left to do without him! He was going to the Rectory now, to have a glass of wine, after fatigue of the funeral, a vintage very choice and rare, according to Mr. Rosedew, and newly imported from Oxford. And truly that was its origin. It might have claimed “founderʼs kin fellowship,” like most of the Oxford wine–skins.

“Wonderful, wonderful man!” said poor Sir Cradock, doing his best to keep his back very upright, from a sudden suffusion of memory, – ”to think that he should go first, John! Oh, if I had a son left, he should take that man for his model.”

“Scarcely that,” John Rosedew thought, knowing all the circumstances; “but of the dead I will say no harm.”

“So quick, so ready, so up for anything! Ah, I remember he knocked a man down just at the corner by this gate here, where the dandelion–seed is. And afterwards he proved how richly he deserved it. That is the way to do things, John.”

“I am not quite sure of that,” said the conscientious parson; “it might be wiser to prove that first; and then to abstain from doing it. I remember an instance in point – ”

“Of course you do. You always do, John, and I wish you wouldnʼt. But that has nothing to do with it. You are always cutting me short, John; and worse than ever since you came back, and they talked of you so at Oxford. I hope they have not changed you, John.”

He looked at the white–haired rector, with an old manʼs jealousy. Who else had any right to him?

“My dear old friend,” replied John Rosedew, with kind sorrow in his eyes, “I never meant to cut you short. I will try not to do it again. But I know I am rude sometimes, and I am always sorry afterwards.”

“Nonsense, John; donʼt talk of it. I understand you by this time; and we allow for one another. But now about my son, my poor unlucky boy.”

“To be sure, yes,” said the other old man, not wishing to hurry matters. And so they stopped and probed the hedge instead of one another.

“I donʼt know how it is,” at last Sir Cradock Nowell said, being rather aggrieved with John Rosedew for not breaking ground upon him – ”but how hard those stubs of ash are! Look at that splinter, almost severed by a man who does not know how to splash; Jem, his name is, poor Garnet told me, Jem – something or other – and yet all I can do with my stick wonʼt fetch it away from the stock.”

“Like a child who will not quit his father, however his father has treated him.”

“What do you mean by that, John? Are you driving at me again? I thought you had given it over.”

“I never give over anything,” John answered, in a manner for him quite melodramatic, and beyond his usual key.

“No. We always knew how stubborn you were. And now you are worse than ever.”

“No fool like an old fool,” John Rosedew answered, smiling sweetly, yet with some regret. “Cradock, I am such a fool I shall let out everything.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sir Cradock Nowell, leaning heavily on his staff, and setting his white face rigidly, yet with every line of it ready to melt; “John, I have heard strange rumours, or I have dreamed strange dreams. In the name of God, what is it, John? My son! – my only son – ”

He could say no more, but turned away, and bowed his head, and trembled.

“Your only son, your innocent son, has been at my house these three days; and when you like, you can see him.”

“When I like – ah, to be sure! I donʼt like many people. I am getting very old, John. And no one to come after me. It seems a pity, donʼt you think, and every one against me so?”

“You can take your own part still, my friend. And you have to take your sonʼs part.”

“Yes, to be sure, my sonʼs part. Perhaps he will come back some day. And I know he did not do it, now; and I was very hard to him – donʼt you think I was, John? – very hard to my poor Craddy, and he was so like his mother!”

“But you will be very kind to him now; and he will be such a comfort to you, now he is come back again, and going away no more.”

“I declare you make me shake, John. You do talk such nonsense. One would think you knew all about him, – more than his own father does. What have I done, to be kept like this in the dark, all in the dark? And you seem to think that I was hard to him.”

“Cradock, all you have to do is just to say the word; just to say that you wish to see him, and your son will come and talk to you.”

“Talk to me! Oh yes, I should like to talk to him – very much – I mean, of course, if he is at leisure.”

He leaned on his stick, and tried to think, while John Rosedew hurried off; and of all his thoughts the foremost were, “What will Cradock my boy be like; and what shall I give him for dinner?”