The Seaboard Parish, Complete

“You did right, my child,” I replied. At the same moment a pang of anxiety passed through me lest under the influence of her repentance she should have said anything more than becoming. But I banished the doubt instantly as faithlessness in the womanly instincts of my child. For we men are always so ready and anxious to keep women right, like the wretched creature, Laertes, in Hamlet, who reads his sister such a lesson on her maidenly duties, but declines almost with contempt to listen to a word from her as to any co-relative obligation on his side!

And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the day—the rights of women—that what women demand it is not for men to withhold. It is not their business to lay the law for women. That women must lay down for themselves. I confess that, although I must herein seem to many of my readers old-fashioned and conservative, I should not like to see any woman I cared much for either in parliament or in an anatomical class-room; but on the other hand I feel that women must be left free to settle that matter. If it is not good, good women will find it out and recoil from it. If it is good then God give them good speed. One thing they have a right to—a far wider and more valuable education than they have been in the way of receiving. When the mothers are well taught the generations will grow in knowledge at a fourfold rate. But still the teaching of life is better than all the schools, and common sense than all learning. This common sense is a rare gift, scantier in none than in those who lay claim to it on the ground of following commonplace, worldly, and prudential maxims. But I must return to my Wynnie.

“And what did Mr. Percivale say?” I resumed, for she was silent.

“He took the blame all on himself, papa.”

“Like a gentleman,” I said.

“But I could not leave it so, you know, papa, because that was not the truth.”

“Well?”

“I told him that I had lost my temper from disappointment; that I had thought I did not care for my drawings because I was so far from satisfied with them, but when he made me feel that they were worth nothing, then I found from the vexation I felt that I had cared for them. But I do think, papa, I was more ashamed of having shown them, and vexed with myself, than cross with him. But I was very silly.”

“Well, and what did he say?”

“He began to praise them then. But you know I could not take much of that, for what could he do?”

“You might give him credit for a little honesty, at least.”

“Yes; but things may be true in a way, you know, and not mean much.”

“He seems to have succeeded in reconciling you to the prosecution of your efforts, however; for I saw you go out with your sketching apparatus this afternoon.”

“Yes,” she answered shyly. “He was so kind that somehow I got heart to try again. He’s very nice, isn’t he?”

My answer was not quite ready.

“Don’t you like him, papa?”

“Well—I like him—yes. But we must not be in haste with our judgments, you know. I have had very little opportunity of seeing into him. There is much in him that I like, but—”

“But what? please, papa.”

“To tell the truth then, Wynnie, for I can speak my mind to you, my child, there is a certain shyness of approaching the subject of religion; so that I have my fears lest he should belong to any of these new schools of a fragmentary philosophy which acknowledge no source of truth but the testimony of the senses and the deductions made therefrom by the intellect.”

“But is not that a hasty conclusion, papa?”

“That is a hasty question, my dear. I have come to no conclusion. I was only speaking confidentially about my fears.”

“Perhaps, papa, it’s only that he’s not sure enough, and is afraid of appearing to profess more than he believes. I’m sure, if that’s it, I have the greatest sympathy with him.”

I looked at her, and saw the tears gathering fast in her eyes.

“Pray to God on the chance of his hearing you, my darling, and go to sleep,” I said. “I will not think hardly of you because you cannot be so sure as I am. How could you be? You have not had my experience. Perhaps you are right about Mr. Percivale too. But it would be an awkward thing to get intimate with him, you know, and then find out that we did not like him after all. You couldn’t like a man much, could you, who did not believe in anything greater than himself, anything marvellous, grand, beyond our understanding—who thought that he had come out of the dirt and was going back to the dirt?”

“I could, papa, if he tried to do his duty notwithstanding—for I’m sure I couldn’t. I should cry myself to death.”

“You are right, my child. I should honour him too. But I should be very sorry for him. For he would be so disappointed in himself.”

I do not know whether this was the best answer to make, but I had little time to think.

“But you don’t know that he’s like that.”

“I do not, my dear. And more, I will not associate the idea with him till I know for certain. We will leave it to ignorant old ladies who lay claim to an instinct for theology to jump at conclusions, and reserve ours—as even such a man as we have been supposing might well teach us—till we have sufficient facts from which to draw them. Now go to bed, my child.”

“Good-night then, dear papa,” she said, and left me with a kiss.

I was not altogether comfortable after this conversation. I had tried to be fair to the young man both in word and thought, but I could not relish the idea of my daughter falling in love with him, which looked likely enough, before I knew more about him, and found that more good and hope-giving. There was but one rational thing left to do, and that was to cast my care on him that careth for us—on the Father who loved my child more than even I could love her—and loved the young man too, and regarded my anxiety, and would take its cause upon himself. After I had lifted up my heart to him I was at ease, read a canto of Dante’s Paradise, and then went to bed. The prematurity of a conversation with my wife, in which I found that she was very favourably impressed with Mr. Percivale, must be pardoned to the forecasting hearts of fathers and mothers.

As I went out for my walk the next morning, I caught sight of the sexton, with whom as yet I had had but little communication, busily trimming some of the newer graves in the churchyard. I turned in through the nearer gate, which was fashioned like a lych-gate, with seats on the sides and a stone table in the centre, but had no roof. The one on the other side of the church was roofed, but probably they had found that here no roof could resist the sea-blasts in winter. The top of the wall where the roof should have rested, was simply covered with flat slates to protect it from the rain.

“Good-morning, Coombes,” I said.

He turned up a wizened, humorous old face, the very type of a gravedigger’s, and with one hand leaning on the edge of the green mound, upon which he had been cropping with a pair of shears the too long and too thin grass, touched his cap with the other, and bade me a cheerful good-morning in return.

“You’re making things tidy,” I said.

“It take time to make them all comfortable, you see, sir,” he returned, taking up his shears again and clipping away at the top and sides of the mound.

“You mean the dead, Coombes?”

“Yes, sir; to be sure, sir.”

“You don’t think it makes much difference to their comfort, do you, whether the grass is one length or another upon their graves?”

“Well no, sir. I don’t suppose it makes much difference to them. But it look more comfortable, you know. And I like things to look comfortable. Don’t you, sir?”

“To be sure I do, Coombes. And you are quite right. The resting-place of the body, although the person it belonged to be far away, should be respected.”

“That’s what I think, though I don’t get no credit for it. I du believe the people hereabouts thinks me only a single hair better than a Jack Ketch. But I’m sure I du my best to make the poor things comfortable.”

He seemed unable to rid his mind of the idea that the comfort of the departed was dependent upon his ministrations.

“The trouble I have with them sometimes! There’s now this same one as lies here, old Jonathan Giles. He have the gout so bad! and just as I come within a couple o’ inches o’ the right depth, out come the edge of a great stone in the near corner at the foot of the bed. Thinks I, he’ll never lie comfortable with that same under his gouty toe. But the trouble I had to get out that stone! I du assure you, sir, it took me nigh half the day.—But this be one of the nicest places to lie in all up and down the coast—a nice gravelly soil, you see, sir; dry, and warm, and comfortable. Them poor things as comes out of the sea must quite enjoy the change, sir.”

There was something grotesque in the man’s persistence in regarding the objects of his interest from this point of view. It was a curious way for the humanity that was in him to find expression; but I did not like to let him go on thus. It was so much opposed to all that I believed and felt about the change from this world to the next!

“But, Coombes,” I said, “why will you go on talking as if it made an atom of difference to the dead bodies where they were buried? They care no more about it than your old coat would care where it was thrown after you had done with it.”

He turned and regarded his coat where it hung beside him on the headstone of the same grave at which he was working, shook his head with a smile that seemed to hint a doubt whether the said old coat would be altogether so indifferent to its treatment when, it was past use as I had implied. Then he turned again to his work, and after a moment’s silence began to approach me from another side. I confess he had the better of me before I was aware of what he was about.

“The church of Boscastle stands high on the cliff. You’ve been to Boscastle, sir?”

I told him I had not yet, but hoped to go before the summer was over.

“Ah, you should see Boscastle, sir. It’s a wonderful place. That’s where I was born, sir. When I was a by that church was haunted, sir. It’s a damp place, and the wind in it awful. I du believe it stand higher than any church in the country, and have got more wind in it of a stormy night than any church whatsomever. Well, they said it was haunted; and sure enough every now and then there was a knocking heard down below. And this always took place of a stormy night, as if there was some poor thing down in the low wouts (vaults), and he wasn’t comfortable and wanted to get out. Well, one night it was so plain and so fearful it was that the sexton he went and took the blacksmith and a ship’s carpenter down to the harbour, and they go up together, and they hearken all over the floor, and they open one of the old family wouts that belongs to the Penhaligans, and they go down with a light. Now the wind it was a-blowing all as usual, only worse than common. And there to be sure what do they see but the wout half-full of sea-water, and nows and thens a great spout coming in through a hole in the rock; for it was high-water and a wind off the sea, as I tell you. And there was a coffin afloat on the water, and every time the spout come through, it set it knocking agen the side o’ the wout, and that was the ghost.”