The Seaboard Parish, Complete

“You may if you like, sir,” answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was not to be repelled.

I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the sun’s disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.

“What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?”

“Just the top of your head,” answered he.

“There, then,” I returned, “that is just what you are like—a man with the light on his head, but not on his face. And why not on your face? Because you hold your head down.”

“Isn’t it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as you put it, by doing his duty?”

“That is a difficult question,” I replied. “I must think before I answer it.”

“I mean,” added Joe—“mightn’t his duty be a painful one?”

“Yes. But I think that would rather etherealise than destroy the light. Behind the sorrow would spring a yet greater light from the very duty itself. I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I mean.—To be frank with you, Joe, I do not see that light in your face. Therefore I think something must be wrong with you. Remember a good man is not necessarily in the right. St. Peter was a good man, yet our Lord called him Satan—and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not mean.”

“How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my duty—nothing else, as far as I know?”

“Then,” I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, “I doubt whether what you suppose to be your duty can be your duty. If it were, I do not think it would make you so miserable. At least—I may be wrong, but I venture to think so.”

“What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he not to do it?”

“Most assuredly—until he knows better. But it is of the greatest consequence whether the supposed duty be the will of God or the invention of one’s own fancy or mistaken judgment. A real duty is always something right in itself. The duty a man makes his for the time, by supposing it to be a duty, may be something quite wrong in itself. The duty of a Hindoo widow is to burn herself on the body of her husband. But that duty lasts no longer than till she sees that, not being the will of God, it is not her duty. A real duty, on the other hand, is a necessity of the human nature, without seeing and doing which a man can never attain to the truth and blessedness of his own being. It was the duty of the early hermits to encourage the growth of vermin upon their bodies, for they supposed that was pleasing to God; but they could not fare so well as if they had seen the truth that the will of God was cleanliness. And there may be far more serious things done by Christian people against the will of God, in the fancy of doing their duty, than such a trifle as swarming with worms. In a word, thinking a thing is your duty makes it your duty only till you know better. And the prime duty of every man is to seek and find, that he may do, the will of God.”

“But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought not, if he is doing what he don’t like?”

“Not so likely, I allow. But there may be ambition in it. A man must not want to be better than the right. That is the delusion of the anchorite—a delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for the sake of his own sanctity.”

“It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person’s own sake at all.”

“It might be; but except it were the will of God for that other person, it would be doing him or her a real injury.”

We were coming gradually towards what I wanted to make the point in question. I wished him to tell me all about it himself, however, for I knew that while advice given on request is generally disregarded, to offer advice unasked is worthy only of a fool.

“But how are you to know the will of God in every case?” asked Joe.

“By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them—except there be anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher law.”

“Ah! but that be just what there is here.”

“Well, my dear fellow, that may be; but the special conduct may not be right for the special case for all that. The speciality of the case may not be even sufficient to take it from under the ordinary rule. But it is of no use talking generals. Let us come to particulars. If you can trust me, tell me all about it, and we may be able to let some light in. I am sure there is darkness somewhere.”

“I will turn it over in my mind, sir; and if I can bring myself to talk about it, I will. I would rather tell you than anyone else.”

I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset—there never was a grander place for sunsets—and went home.

CHAPTER XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE

The next morning Harry came with the clothes. But Joe did not go to church. Neither did Agnes make her appearance that morning. They were both present at the evening service, however.

When we came out of church, it was cloudy and dark, and the wind was blowing cold from the sea. The sky was covered with one cloud, but the waves tossing themselves against the rocks, flashed whiteness out of the general gloom. As the tide rose the wind increased. It was a night of surly temper—hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above—there was no blue; and the wind was gurly; I once heard that word in Scotland, and never forgot it.

After one of our usual gatherings in Connie’s room, which were much shorter here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till supper should be ready.

Now I have always had, as I think I have incidentally stated before, a certain peculiar pleasure in the surly aspects of nature. When I was a young man this took form in opposition and defiance; since I had begun to grow old the form had changed into a sense of safety. I welcomed such aspects, partly at least, because they roused my faith to look through and beyond the small region of human conditions in which alone the storm can be and blow, and thus induced a feeling like that of the child who lies in his warm crib and listens to the howling of one of these same storms outside the strong-built house which yet trembles at its fiercer onsets: the house is not in danger; or, if it be, that is his father’s business, not his. Hence it came that, after supper, I put on my great-coat and travelling-cap, and went out into the ill-tempered night—speaking of it in its human symbolism.

I meant to have a stroll down to the breakwater, of which I have yet said little, but which was a favourite resort, both of myself and my children. At the further end of it, always covered at high water, was an outlying cluster of low rocks, in the heart of which the lord of the manor, a noble-hearted Christian gentleman of the old school, had constructed a bath of graduated depth—an open-air swimming-pool—the only really safe place for men who were swimmers to bathe in. Thither I was in the habit of taking my two little men every morning, and bathing with them, that I might develop the fish that was in them; for, as George Herbert says:

“Man is everything,
And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
A beast, yet is, or should be, more;”

and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as well.

It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my Connie’s room, that the nearest way to the breakwater should be through that room; but so it was. I mention the fact because I want my readers to understand a certain peculiarity of the room. By the side of the window which looked out upon the breakwater was a narrow door, apparently of a closet or cupboard, which communicated, however, with a narrow, curving, wood-built passage, leading into a little wooden hut, the walls of which were by no means impervious to the wind, for they were formed of outside-planks, with the bark still upon them. From this hut one or two little windows looked seaward, and a door led out on the bit of sward in which lay the flower-bed under Connie’s window. From this spot again a door in the low wall and thick hedge led out on the downs, where a path wound along the cliffs that formed the side of the bay, till, descending under the storm-tower, it brought you to the root of the breakwater.

This mole stretched its long strong low back to a rock a good way out, breaking the force of the waves, and rendering the channel of a small river, that here flowed into the sea across the sands from the mouth of the canal, a refuge from the Atlantic. But it was a roadway often hard to reach. In fair weather even, the wind falling as the vessel rounded the point of the breakwater into the calm of the projecting headlands, the under-current would sometimes dash her helpless on the rocks. During all this heavenly summer there had been no thought or fear of any such disaster. The present night was a hint of what weather would yet come.

When I went into Connie’s room, I found her lying in bed a very picture of peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.

“Papa,” she said, “why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not going out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully.”

“Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your baby.”

“But it is very dark.”

“I allow that; but there is a glimmer from the sea. I am only going on the breakwater for a few minutes. You know I like a stormy night quite as much as a fine one.”

“I shall be miserable till you come home, papa.”

“Nonsense, Connie. You don’t think your father hasn’t sense to take care of himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of comfort, you don’t think I can go anywhere without my Father to take care of me?”

“But there is no occasion—is there, papa?”

“Do you think I should be better pleased with my boys if they shrunk from everything involving the least possibility of danger because there was no occasion for it? That is just the way to make cowards. And I am certain God would not like his children to indulge in such moods of self-preservation as that. He might well be ashamed of them. The fearful are far more likely to meet with accidents than the courageous. But really, Connie, I am almost ashamed of talking so. It is all your fault. There is positively no ground for apprehension, and I hope you won’t spoil my walk by the thought that my foolish little girl is frightened.”

“I will be good—indeed I will, papa,” she said, holding up her mouth to kiss me.

I left her room, and went through the wooden passage into the bark hut. The wind roared about it, shook it, and pawed it, and sung and whistled in the chinks of the planks. I went out and shut the door. That moment the wind seized upon me, and I had to fight with it. When I got on the path leading along the edge of the downs, I felt something lighter than any feather fly in my face. When I put up my hand, I found my cheek wet. Again and again I was thus assailed, but when I got to the breakwater I found what it was. They were flakes of foam, bubbles worked up into little masses of adhering thousands, which the wind blew off the waters and across the downs, carrying some of them miles inland. When I reached the breakwater, and looked along its ridge through the darkness of the night, I was bewildered to see a whiteness lying here and there in a great patch upon its top. They were but accumulations of these foam-flakes, like soap-suds, lying so thick that I expected to have to wade through them, only they vanished at the touch of my feet. Till then I had almost believed it was snow I saw. On the edge of the waves, in quieter spots, they lay like yeast, foaming and working. Now and then a little rush of water from a higher wave swept over the top of the broad breakwater, as with head bowed sideways against the wind, I struggled along towards the rock at its end; but I said to myself, “The tide is falling fast, and salt water hurts nobody,” and struggled on over the huge rough stones of the mighty heap, outside which the waves were white with wrath, inside which they had fallen asleep, only heaving with the memory of their late unrest. I reached the tall rock at length, climbed the rude stair leading up to the flagstaff, and looked abroad, if looking it could be called, into the thick dark. But the wind blew so strong on the top that I was glad to descend. Between me and the basin where yesterday morning I had bathed in still water and sunshine with my boys, rolled the deathly waves. I wandered on the rough narrow space yet uncovered, stumbling over the stones and the rocky points between which they lay, stood here and there half-meditating, and at length, finding a sheltered nook in a mass of rock, sat with the wind howling and the waves bursting around me. There I fell into a sort of brown study—almost a half-sleep.

But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low and earnest. One I recognised as Joe’s voice. The other was a woman’s. I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore felt no immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat debating with myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length, in a lull of the wind, I heard the woman say—I could fancy with a sigh—

“I’m sure you’ll du what is right, Joe. Don’t ‘e think o’ me, Joe.”

“It’s just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben’t for my sake. Surely you know that?”

There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best do—go away quietly or let them know I was there—when she spoke again. There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and I heard what she said well enough.