CHAPTER XV
Humphrey Baskerville had hoped that his nephew might visit him on Christmas Eve; but he learned that it was impossible, because Rupert had joined the carol-singers, and would be occupied with them on a wide circle of song.
After dark he sat alone until near seven o'clock; then Mrs. Hacker returned home and they took their supper together.
The meal ended, she cleared it away and settled to her knitting. Talk passed between them not unmarked by sentiment, for it concerned the past and related to those changes the year had brought. On the following day Humphrey was to eat his Christmas dinner at Cadworthy, and Susan hoped to spend the festival with friends in Shaugh.
"I've got Heathman and his mother to be of the company," said Mr. Baskerville. "The daughters are both about their own business, and one goes to her sweetheart, and Cora's down to Plymouth, so we shall escape from them and no harm done. But Heathman and his mother will be there. They are rather a puzzle to me, Susan."
"No doubt," she replied. "You'll go on puzzling yourself over this party or that till you've puzzled yourself into the workhouse. Haven't you paid all the creditors to the last penny?"
"Not so," he answered. "That's where it lies. A man's children and their mother are his first creditors, I should reckon. They've got first call in justice, if not in law. I judge that there's a fine bit of duty there, and the way they look at life—so much my own way 'tis—makes me feel—— I wrote to that bad Cora yesterday. She's working hard, I'm told."
Susan sniffed.
"So does the Devil," she said. "'Tis all very well for you, I suppose; because when you wake up some morning and discover as you've got nought left in the world but your night-shirt, you'll go about to them you've befriended to seek for your own again—and lucky you'll be if you find it, or half of it; but what of me?"
"You'll never want," he declared. "You're the sort always to fall on your feet."
"So's young Lintern for that matter. No need to worry about him. He's a lesson, if you like. The man to be contented whatever haps."
"I know it. I've marked it. I've learnt no little from him. A big heart and a mighty power of taking life as it comes without fuss. There's a bad side to it, however, as well as a good. I've worked that out. It's good for a man to be contented, but no good for the place he lives in. Contented people never stir up things, or throw light into dark corners, or let air into stuffy places. Content means stagnation so oft as not."
"They mind their own business, however."
"They mostly do; and that's selfish wisdom so oft as not. Now Jack Head's never content, and never will be."
"Don't name that man on Christmas Eve!" said Mrs. Hacker testily. "I hate to think of him any day of the week, for that matter."
"Yet him and the east wind both be useful, little as you like 'em. For my part, I've been a neighbour to the east wind all my life and shared its quality in the eyes of most folk—till now. But the wind of God be turning out of the east for me, Susan."
"So long as you be pleased with yourself—— And as for content, 'tisn't a vartue, 'tis an accident, like red hair or bow legs. You can't get it, nor yet get away from it, by taking thought."
He nodded.
"You're in the right there. One man will make more noise if he scratches his finger than another if he breaks his leg. 'Tis part of the build of the mind, and don't depend on chance. Same with misery—that's a matter of character, not condition, I know men that won't be wretched while they can draw their breath; and some won't be happy, though they've got thrice their share of good fortune. No doubt that's how Providence levels up, and gives the one what he can't enjoy, to balance him with the other, who's got nought, but who's also got the blessed power of making happiness out of nought."
"You've found the middle way, I suppose," she said; "and, like others who think they're on the sure road to happiness, you be pushing along too fast."
"Running myself out of breath—eh? But you're wrong. I'm too cautious for that. If I'm a miser, as the people still think here and there, then 'tis for peace I'm a miser. 'Twas always peace of mind that I hungered and hankered for, yet went in doubt if such a thing there was. And even now, though I seem three-parts along the road to it, I feel a cold fear often enough whether my way will stand all weathers. It may break down yet."
"Not while your money lasts," she answered with a short laugh.
He followed his own thoughts in silence, and then spoke aloud again.
"Restless as the fox, and hungrier than ever he was. Every man's hand against me, as I thought, and mine held out to every man; but they wouldn't see it. None to come to my hearth willingly, though 'twas always hot for 'em; none to look into my meaning, though that meaning was always meant for kindness. But who shall blame any living creature that they thought me an enemy and not a friend? How should they know? Didn't I hide the scant good that was in me, more careful than the bird her nest?"
"They be up to your tricks now, anyway; and I've helped to show 'em better, though you may not believe it," declared Susan. "What a long-tongued, well-meaning female could do I've done for you; and I always shall say so."
"I know that," he said. "There's no good thing on earth than can't be made better, but one thing. And that's the thing in all Christian minds this night—I mean the thing called love. You know it—you deal in it. Out of your kind soul you've always felt friendly to me, and you saw what I had the wish but not the power to show to others; and you've done your share of the work to make the people like me better. Maybe 'tis mostly your doing, if we could but read into the truth of it."
This work-a-day world must for ever fall far short of the humblest ethical ideal, and doubtless even those who fell prostrate at the shout of their Thunder Spirit, or worshipped the sun and the sea in the morning of days, guessed dimly how their kind lacked much of perfection. To them the brooding soul of humanity revealed the road, though little knew those early men the length of it; little they understood that the goal of any faultless standard must remain a shifting ideal within reach of mind alone.
At certain points Baskerville darkly suspected weak places in this new armour of light. While his days had, indeed, achieved a consummation and orbicular completeness beyond all hope; while, looking backward, he could not fail to contrast noontide gloom with sunset light, the fierce equinox of autumn with this unfolding period of a gracious Indian summer now following upon it; yet, even here, there fell a narrow shadow of cloud; there wakened a wind not unedged. In deep and secret thought he had drifted upon that negation of justice involved by the Golden Rule. He saw, what every intellect worthy a name must see: that to do as you would be done by, to withhold the scourge from the guilty shoulder, to suffer the weed to flourish in the garden, to shield our fellow-men from the consequence of their evil or folly, is to put the individual higher than society, and to follow a precept that ethics in evolution has long rejected.
But he shirked his dilemma: he believed it not necessary to pursue the paradox to its bitter end. The Golden Rule he hypostatised into a living and an omnipresent creed; henceforth it was destined to be his criterion of every action; and to his doubting spirit he replied, that if not practicable in youth, if not convenient for middle age, this principle might most justly direct the performance and stimulate the thought of the old. Thus he was, and knew himself, untrue to the clearer, colder conviction of his reasoning past; but in practice this defection brought a peace so exalted, a content so steady, a recognition so precious, that he rested his spirit upon it in faith and sought no further.
Now he retraced his time, and made a brief and pregnant summary thereof for Susan's ear.
"'Tis to be spoken in a score of words," he said. "My life has been a storm in a teacup; but none the less a terrible storm for me until I won the grace to still it. Port to the sailor-man be a blessed thing according to the voyage that's gone afore. The worse that, the better the peace of the haven when he comes to it."
She was going to speak, but a sound on the stillness of night stopped her.
"Hark!" was all she said.
Together they rose and went to his outer door.
The gibbous moon sailed through a sky of thin cloud, and light fell dimly upon the open spaces, but sparkled in the great darkness of evergreen things about the garden. Earth rolled night-hidden to the southern hills, and its breast was touched with sparks of flame, where glimmered those few habitations visible from this place. A lattice of naked boughs meshed the moonlight under the slope of the hill, and from beneath their shadows ascended a moving thread of men and boys. They broke the stillness with speech and laughter, and their red lantern-light struck to right and left and killed the wan moonshine as they came.
"What's toward now?" asked Mr. Baskerville, staring blankly before him.
"Why," cried Susan, "'tis the carol-singers without a doubt! They'll want an ocean of beer presently, and where shall us get it from?"
"Coming to me—coming to sing to me!" he mumbled. "Good God, a thing far beyond my utmost thought is this!"
The crowd rolled clattering up, and the woman stayed to welcome them; but the man ran back into his house, sat down in his chair, bent forward to listen and clasped his hands tightly between his knees.
Acute emotion marked his countenance; but this painful tension passed when out of the night there rolled the melodious thunder of an ancient tune.
"Singing for me!" he murmured many times while the old song throbbed.