Chapter Six.
Christmas Cheer.
“Then opened wide the baron’s hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
All hailed with uncontrolled delight,
And general voice, the happy night
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down.”
Scott.
(In Edith’s handwriting.)
Selwick Hall, December ye x.
Here have I been a-thinking I should scantly write a word when my month was come, and already, with but ten days thereof, have I filled half as much paper as either Helen or Milisent. But in good sooth, I do trust the next ten days shall not be so full of things happening as these last. Nathless, I do love to have things happen, after a fashion: but I would have them to be alway pleasant things. And when things happen, they be so oft unpleasant.
Now, if one might order one’s own life, methinks it should be a right pleasant thing. For I reckon I should not go a-fooling, like as some lasses do. Mine head is not all stuffed with gallants, nor yet with velvet and gold. But I would love to be great. Not great like a duchess, just a name and no more: but to make a name for myself, and to have folks talk of me, how good and how clever I were. That is what I would fain be thought—good and clever. I take no care to be thought fair, nor in high place; howbeit, I desire not to be ugly nor no lower down than I am. But I am quite content with mine own place, only I feel within me that I could do great things.
And how can a woman do great things, without she be rare high in place, such like as the Queen’s Majesty, or my Lady Duchess of Suffolk? Or how could I ever look to do great things, here in Derwent dale? Oh, I do envy our Wat and Ned, by reason they can go about the world and o’er the seas, and make themselves famous.
And, somehow, in a woman’s life everything seems so little. ’Tis just cooking and eating; washing linen and soiling of it; going to bed and rising again. Always doing things and then undoing them, and alway the same things over and over again. It seems as if nought would ever stay done. If one makes a new gown, ’tis but that it may be worn out, and then shall another be wanted. I would the world could give o’er going on, and every thing getting worn out and done with.
Other folks do not seem to feel thus. I reckon Helen never does, not one bit. Some be so much easier satisfied than other. I count them the happiest.
I cannot tell how it is, but I do never feel satisfied. ’Tis as though there were wings within me, that must ever of their nature be stretching upward and onward. Where should they end, an’ they might go forward? Would there be any end? Can one be satisfied, ever?
I believe Anstace and Helen are satisfied, but then ’tis their nature to be content with things as they be. I do not know about Mother and Aunt Joyce. I misdoubt if it be altogether their nature. But then neither do they seem always satisfied. Father doth so: and his nature is high enough. I think I shall ask Father. As for Cousin Bess, an’ I were to ask at her, she should conceive me never a whit. ’Tis her nature to cook and darn and scour, and to look complacently on her cake and her mended hole and her cleaned chamber, and never trouble herself to think that they shall lack doing o’er again to-morrow. Chambers are like to need cleansing, and what were women made for save to keep them clean? That is Cousin Bess, right out. For Master Stuyvesant, methinks he is right the other way, and rather counts the world a dirty place and full of holes, that there shall be no good in neither cleansing nor mending. And I look not on matters in that light. Methinks it were better to cleanse the chamber, if only one could keep it from being dirtied at after. I shall see what Father saith.
Selwick Hall, December the xii.
Yester even, as we were sat in the great chamber,—there was Mother and Helen at their wheels, and Aunt Joyce and my Lady Stafford a-sewing, and Mistress Martin and Milisent and me at the broidery,—and Father had but just beat Sir Robert in a game of the chess, and Mynheer, one foot upon his other knee, was deep in a great book which thereon rested,—and fresh logs were thrown of the fire by Kate, which sent forth upward a shower of pleasant sparkles, and methought as I glanced around the chamber, that all looked rare pleasant and comfortable, and we ought to thank God therefore. When all had been silent a short while, out came I with my question, well-nigh ere I myself wist it were out—
“Father, are you satisfied?”
“A mighty question, my maid,” saith he,—while Helen looked up in surprise, and Aunt Joyce and Mistress Martin and Milisent fell a-laughing. “With what? The past, the present, or the future?” quoth Father.
“With things, Father,” said I. “With life and every thing.”
“Ah, Edith, hast thou come to that?” saith my Lady Stafford: and she exchanged smiles with Mother.
“Daughter,” Father makes answer, “methinks no man is ever satisfied with life, until he be first satisfied with God. The furthest he can go in that direction, is not to think if he be satisfied or no. A man may be well pleased with lesser things: but to be satisfied, that can he not.”
“‘Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again,’” quoth Mother, softly.
“Ay,” saith Sir Robert; “and wit you, Mistress Edith, what cometh at times to men adrift of the ocean, when all their fresh water is spent?”
“Why, surely, they should find water in plenty in the sea, Sir,” said I.
“Right so do they,” saith he: “and ’tis a quality of the sea-water, that if a man athirst doth once taste the same, his thirst becometh so great that he drinketh thereof again and again, the thirst worsening with every draught, until at last it drives him mad.”
“An apt image of the pleasures of this world,” answers Father. “Ah, how is all nature as God’s picture-book, given to help His dull childer over their tasks!”
“But, Father,”—said I, and stayed.
“Well, my maid?” he answers of his kindly fashion.
“I cry you mercy, Father, if I speak foolishly; but it seems me that pious folk be not alway satisfied. They make as much fume as other folk when things go as they would not have them.”
“The angels do not so, I reckon,” saith Mynheer, a-looking up.
“We are not angels yet,” quoth Father, a little drily. “Truth, my maid: and we ought to repent thereof, seeing such practices but too oft cause the enemy to blaspheme, and put stumbling-blocks in the way of weak brethren. Ay, and from what we read in God’s Word, it should seem as though all murmuring and repining—not sorrowing, mark thou; but murmuring—went for far heavier sin in His eyes than it doth commonly in ours. We count it a light matter if we grumble when things go awry, and matters do seem as if they were bent on turning forth right as we would not have them. Let us remember, for ourselves, that such displeaseth the Lord. He reckons it unbelief and mistrust. ‘How long,’ saith He unto Moses, ‘will this people provoke Me? and how long will it be ere they believe Me?’ Howbeit, as for our neighbours, we need not judge them. And indeed, such matters depend much on men’s complexions (Note 1), and some find it a deal easier to control them than other. And after all, Edith, there is a sense wherein no man can ever be fully satisfied in this life. We were meant to aspire; and if we were entirely content with present things, then should we grovel. To submit cheerfully is one thing: to be fully gratified, so that no desire is left, is an other. We shall not be that, methinks, till we reach Heaven.”
“Shall we so, even there?” saith Sir Robert. “It hath alway seemed to me that when Diogenes did define his gods as ‘they that had no wants,’ he pointed to a very miserable set of creatures. Is it not human nature that the thing present shall fall short of the thing prospective?”
“The in posse is better than the in esse?” saith Father. “Well, it should seem so, in this dispensation. But how, in the next world, our powers may be extended, and our souls in some degree suffer change, that we can be fully satisfied and yet be alway aspiring—I reckon we cannot now understand. I only gather from Scripture that it shall be thus. You and I know very little, Robin, of what shall be in Heaven.”
“Ah, true,—true!” saith Sir Robert.
“It hath struck me at times,” saith Father, “that while it may seem strange to the young and eager soul, yet it is better understood as one grows older,—how the account of Heaven given us in Scripture is nearly all in negations. God and ourselves are the two matters positive. The rest are nays: there shall be no pain, no crying, no sorrow, no night, no death, no curse. And though youth would oft have it all yea, yet nay suits age the better. An old man and weary feels the thought of active bliss at times too much for him. It wearies him to think of perpetual singing and constant flying. It is rest he needs—it is peace.”
“Well, Father,” saith Milisent, looking up, “I hope it is not wicked of me, but I never did enjoy the prospect of sitting of a cloud and singing Hallelujah for ever and ever.”
“Right what I was wont to think at thy years, Milly,” saith Mother, a-laughing.
“Dear hearts,” saith Father, “there is in God’s Word a word for the smallest need of every one of us, if we will only take the pain to search and find it there. ‘They had no rest day neither night,’ (Cranmer’s version of Revelations chapter four verse 8)—that is for the eager, active soul that longs to be up and doing. And ‘they rest from their labours,’—that is for the weary heart that is too tired for rapture.”
“Yet doth not that latter class of texts, think you,” saith Sir Robert, “refer mainly to the rest of the body in the grave?”
“Well, it may be so,” answers Father: “yet, look you, the rest of the grave must be something that will rest us.”
“What is thy notion, Aubrey,” saith Aunt Joyce, “of the state of the soul betwixt death and resurrection?”
“My notion, Joyce,” saith Father, “is that Scripture giveth us no very plain note thereon. I conclude, therefore, that it shall be time to know when we come to it. This only do I see—that all the passages which speak thereof as ‘sleep,’ ‘forgetfulness,’ and the like, be in the Old Testament: and all those—nay, let me correct myself—most of those which speak thereof as of a condition of conscious bliss, ‘being with Christ,’ and so, are in the New. There I find the matter: and there, under your good pleasure, will I leave it.”
“Well, that should seem,” quoth Aunt Joyce, “as if the condition of souls had been altered by the coming of our Lord.”
“By His death, rather, as methinks, if so be. It may be so. I dare not be positive either way.”
“Has it never seemed strange to you, Louvaine,” saith Sir Robert, “how little we be told in God’s Word touching all those mysteries whereon men’s minds will ever be busying themselves—to all appearance, so long as the world lasts? This matter of our talk—the origin of evil—free-will and sovereign grace—and the like. Why are we told no more?”
“Why,” saith Father, with that twinkle in his eyes which means fun, “I am one of the meaner intelligences of the universe, and I wis not. If you can find any whither the Angel Gabriel, you may ask at him if he can untie your knots.”
“Now, Aubrey, that is right what mads me!” breaks in Aunt Joyce. “Sir Robert asks why we be told no more, and thine answer is but to repeat that we be told no more. Do, man, give a plain answer to a plain question.”
“Nay, now thou aft like old Lawyer Pearson?” quoth Father. “‘I wis not, Master,’ saith the witness. ‘Ay, but will you swear?’ saith he. ‘Why,’ quoth the witness, ‘how can I swear when I wis not?’ ‘Nay, but you must swear one way or an other,’ saith he. Under thy leave, Joyce, I do decline to swear either way, seeing I wis not.”
Aunt Joyce gives a little stamp of her foot. “What on earth is the good of men, when they wit no more than women?” quoth she: whereat all laughed.
“Ah, some women have great wits,” saith Father.
“Give o’er thy mocking, Aubrey!” answers she. “Tell us plain, what notion thou hast, and be not so strict tied to chapter and verse.”
“Of what worth shall then be my notions? Well,” saith Father, “I have given them on the one matter. As for the origin of evil, I find the origin of mine evil in mine own heart, and no further can I get except to Satan.”
“Ay, but I would fain reach over Satan,” saith she.
“That shall we not do without Satan overreaching us,” quoth Father. “Well, then—as to free-will and grace, I find both. ‘Whosoever will, take of the water of life,’—and ‘Yet will ye not come unto Me that ye might have life.’ But also I find, ‘No man can come to Me, except the Father draw him;’ and that faith cometh ‘Not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.’”
“Come, tarry not there!” saith Aunt Joyce. “How dost thou reconcile them?”
“Why, I don’t reconcile them,” quoth he.
“Ay, but do!” she makes answer.
“Well,” saith he, “if thou wilt come and visit me, Joyce, an hundred years hence, at the sign of the Burnt-Sacrifice, in Amethyst Lane, in the New Jerusalem, I will see if I can do it for thee then.”
“Aubrey Louvaine!” saith Aunt Joyce, “thou art—”
“Not yet there,” he answers. “I am fully aware of it.”
“The wearifullest tease ever I saw, when it liketh thee!” saith she.
“Dost thou know, Joyce,” quoth Mother, laughing merrily, “I found out that afore I was wed. He did play right cruelly on mine eagerness once or twice.”
“Good lack! then why didst thou wed him?” saith Aunt Joyce.
Mother laughed at this, and Father made a merry answer, which turned the discourse to other matter, and were not worth to set down. So we gat not back to our sad talk, but all ended with mirth.
This morrow come o’er Robin Lewthwaite, with a couple of rare fowl and his mother’s loving commendations for Mother. He saith nothing is yet at all heard of their Blanche, and he shook his head right sorrowfully when I asked at him if he thought aught should be. It seemed so strange a thing to see Robin sorrowful.
Selwick Hall, December ye xvi.
This morrow, my Lady Stafford, Aunt Joyce, and I, were sat at our work alone in the great chamber. Milly was gone with Mother a-visiting poor folk, and Sir Robert and Mistress Martin, with Helen for guide, were away towards Thirlmere,—my Lady Stafford denying to go withal, by reason she had an ill rheum catched yesterday amongst the snowy lanes. All at once, up looks my Lady, and she saith—
“Joyce, what is this I heard yestereven of old Mall Crewdson, touching one Everett, or Tregarvon—she wist not rightly which his name were—that hath done a deal of mischief in these parts of late? What manner of mischief?—for old Mary was very mysterious. May-be I do not well to ask afore Edith?”
“Ay, Dulcie, well enough,” saith Aunt Joyce, sadly, “for Edith knows the worst she can already. And if you knew the worst you could—”
“Why, what is it?” quoth she.
“Leonard,” saith Aunt Joyce, curtly.
“Leonard!” Every drop of blood seemed gone out of my Lady’s face. “I thought he was dead, years gone.”
“So did not I,” Aunt Joyce made low answer.
“No, I wis thou never didst,” saith my Lady, tenderly. “So thy love is still alive, Joyce? Poor heart!”
“My heart is,” she saith. “As for love, it is poor stuff if it can die.”
“There is a deal of poor stuff abroad, then,” quoth her Ladyship. “In very deed, so it is. So he is yet at his old work?”
Aunt Joyce only bent her head.
“Well, it were not possible to wish he had kept to the new,” pursueth she. “I do fear there were some brent in Smithfield, that had been alive at this day but for him. But ever since Queen Mary died hath he kept him so quiet, that in very deed I never now reckoned him amongst the living. Where is he now?”
“God wot,” saith Aunt Joyce, huskily.
My Lady was silent awhile: and then she saith—
“Well, may-be better so. But Joyce, doth Lettice know?”
“That Tregarvon were he? Not without Aubrey hath told her these last ten days: and her face saith not so.”
“No, it doth not,” my Lady makes answer. “But Sir Aubrey wist, then? His face is not wont to talk unless he will.”
“In no wise,” saith Aunt Joyce. “Ay, Dulcibel; I had to tell him.”
“Thou?” saith my Lady, pityingly.
“None knew him but me,” made she answer, and her voice grew very troubled. “Not even Aubrey, nor Lettice. Bess guessed at him after awhile, but not till she had seen him divers times. But for me one glimpse was enough.”
Aunt Joyce’s work was still now.
“Hadst thou surmised aforetime that it were he?”
Aunt Joyce shook her head.
“No need for surmising, Dulcie,” she said. “If I were laid in my grave for a year and a day, I should know his step upon the mould above me.”
“My poor Joyce!” softly quoth my Lady Stafford. “Even God hath no stronger word than ‘passing the love of women.’ Yet a woman’s love lasts not out to that in most cases.”
“Her heart lasts not out, thou meanest,” saith Aunt Joyce. “Hearts are weak, Dulcie, but love is immortal.”
“And hast thou still hope—for him, Joyce?” answereth my Lady. “I lost the last atom of mine, years gone.”
“Hope of his ultimate salvation? Ay—as long as life lasts. I shall give over hoping for it when I see it.”
“But,” saith my Lady slowly, as though she scarce liked to say the same, “how if thou never wert to see it?”
“‘Between the stirrup and the ground,
Mercy I sought, mercy I found.’
“Thou wist that epitaph, Dulcie, on him that lost life by a fall from the saddle. My seeing it were comfort, but no necessity. I could go on hoping that God had seen it.”
Aunt Joyce arose and left the chamber. Then saith my Lady Stafford to me—
“There goes a strong soul. There be women such as she: but they are not to be picked, like blackberries, off every bramble. Edith, young folks are apt to think love a mere matter of youth and of matrimony. They cannot make a deeper blunder. The longer love lasts, the stronger it groweth.”
“Always, my Lady?” said I.
“Ay,” saith she. “That is, if it be love.”
We wrought a while without more talk: when suddenly saith my Lady Stafford:—
“Edith, didst thou see this Tregarvon, or how he called himself?”
“Ay, Madam,” said I. “He made up to me one morrow, when my sister Milisent and I were on Saint Hubert’s Isle in the mere yonder, and I was sat, a-drawing, of a stone.”
“Ay so?” quoth she, with some earnestness in her voice. “And what then?”
“I think he took not much of me, Madam,” said I.
My Lady Stafford smiled, yet methought somewhat pensively.
“May I wit what he said to thee, Edith?”
“Oh, a parcel of stuff touching mine hair and mine eyes, and the like,” said I. “I knew well enough what colours mine hair and eyes were of, without his telling me. Could I dress mine hair every morrow afore the mirror, and not see?”
“Well, Edith,” saith she, “methinks he did not take much of thee. I would I could have seen him,”—and her voice grew sadder. “Not that my voice should have had any potency with him: that had it never yet. But I would fain have noted how far the years had changed him, and if—if there seemed any more hope of his amendment than of old time. There was a time when in all Oxfordshire he was allowed the goodliest man, and I fear he was not far from being likewise the worst.”
Here come in Mother, and my Lady Stafford changed the discourse right quickly. I saw I must say no more. But I am well assured Aunt Joyce’s Mary was never my Lady Stafford. Who methinks it were it should serve no good end to set down.
Selwick Hall, December ye xix.
As we sat this even of the great chamber, saith Father:—
“Stafford, do you remember our talk some days gone, touching what manner of life there should be in Heaven?”
“That do I well,” Sir Robert made answer.
“Well,” quoth Father, “I have fallen to think more thereupon. And the thought comes to me—wherefore account we always that we shall do but one thing there, and that all shall do the same? Here is Milisent—ay, and Lettice too—that think they should be weary to sit of a cloud and sing for ever and ever.”
“Truly, so should I, methinks,” saith Sir Robert.
“So should we all, I cast no doubt,” answers Father, “if our capacity for fatigue did extend into that life. But why expect the same thing over and over? It is not so on earth. I am not reading, nor is Lettice sewing, nor Milisent broidering, with no intermission, from the morning to the night. Neither do we all the same fashion of work.”
“Ay,” saith Aunt Joyce, somewhat eagerly; “but the work done here below is needful, Aubrey. There shall be no necessity for nought there.”
“Art avised o’ that, Joyce?” saith Father.
“Why,” saith she, “dost look for brooms and dusters in Heaven? Shall Bess and I sweep out the gold streets, thinkest, or fetch a pan to seethe the fruits of the Tree of Life?”
“One would think,” saith Sir Robert, “if all be allegorical, as some wise doctors do say, that they should be shadowy brooms that swept parabolical streets.”
“Allegorical fiddlesticks!” quoth Aunt Joyce. “I did never walk yet o’er a parabolical paving, nor sat me down to rest me of an allegorical chair. Am I to be allegorical, forsooth? You be a poor comforter, Sir Robert.”
“Soft you now!” saith Father. “I enter a caveat, as lawyers have it. Methinks I have walked for some years o’er a parabolical paving, and rested me in many an allegorical chair. Thou minglest somewhat too much the spiritual and the material, Joyce.”
“I count I take thee, Audrey,” saith she: “thou wouldst say that the allegorical city is for the dwelling of the spirit, and the real for the body. But, pray you, if my spirit have a dwelling in thine allegorical city—”
“Nay, I said not the city were allegorical,” quoth he. “Burden not me withal, for in truth I do believe it very real.”
“No, that was Sir Robert,” saith she, “so I will ask at him, as shall be but fair. Where, I pray you, is my body to be, Sir, whilst my soul dwelleth in your parabolical city?”
“There shall be a spiritual body, my mistress,” makes he answer, smiling.
“Truth,” quoth she, “but I reckon it must be somewhere. It seems me, to my small wit, that if my soul and my spiritual body be to dwell in an allegorical city, then I must needs be allegorical also. And I warrant you, that should not like me a whit.”
“Let us not mingle differences,” saith Father. “Be the spiritual and the allegorical but one thing?”
“Nay, I believe there be two,” saith Aunt Joyce: “’tis Sir Robert here would have them alike.”
“But how would you define them?” saith Sir Robert to Father.
“Thus,” he made answer. “The spiritual is that which is real, as fully as the material: but it is invisible. The allegorical is that which is shadowy and doth but exist in the fantasy. If I say of these my daughters, they be my jewels, I speak allegorically: for they be not gems, but maidens. But I do not love them in an allegory, but in reality. Love is a moral and spiritual matter, but no allegory. So, Heaven is a spiritual place, but methinks not an allegorical one.”
“But the New Jerusalem—the Golden City which lieth four-square—that is allegorical, surely!”
“We shall see when we are there,” saith Father. “I think not.”
Sir Robert pursed up his lips as though he could no wise allow the same.
“Mind you, Robin,” saith Father, “I say not that there may not be allegory touching some of the details. I reckon the pearls of the twelve gates were never found in earthly oysters: nor do I account that the gold of the streets was molten in an earthly furnace. No more, when Edith saith she will run and fetch a thing, should I think to accuse her of falsehood if I saw that she walked, and ran not. ’Tis never well to fetch a parable down on all fours. You and I use allegory always in our common talk.”
“Ay,” quoth Sir Robert: “but you reckon they be pearls, and gold?”
“I will tell you when I have seen them,” saith Father, and smiled. “Either they be gold and pearls, or they be that to which, in our earthly minds, gold and pearls come the nearest. Why, my friend, we be all but lisping children to God. Think you one moment, and tell me if every word we use touching Him hath not in it more or less of parable? We call Him Father, and King, and Master, and Guide, and Lord. Is not every one of these taken from earthly relationships, and doth it not presuppose a something which is to be found on earth? We have no better wits than to do so here. If God would teach us that we know not, it must be by talking to us touching things we do know. Did not you the same with your children when they were babes? How far we may be able to penetrate, when we be truly men, grown up unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, verily I cannot tell. Only I do see that not only all Scripture, but all analogy, pointeth to a time when we shall emerge from this caterpillar state, and spread our wings as butterflies in the sunshine. Nay, there is yet a better image in nature. The grub of the dragon-fly dwelleth in the waters, and cannot live in the air till it come forth into the final state. Tell me then, I pray you, how shall this water-grub conceive the notion of flying through the air? Supposing you able to talk with him, could you represent the same unto him other than by the conceit of gliding through water with most delightsome swiftness and directness? To talk of an element wherein he had no experience should be simply so much nonsense to him. Now, it may be—take me not, I pray you, as meaning it must be—that all that shall be found in Heaven differs as greatly from what is found on earth as the water differs from the air. Concerning these matters, I take it, God teaches us by likening them to such things as we know that shall give the best conceit of them to our minds. Here on earth, the fairest and most costly matter is gold and gems. Well, He would have us know that the heavenly city is builded of the fairest and most precious matter. But that the matter is real, and that the city is builded of somewhat, that will I yield to none. To do other were to make it a fairy tale, Heaven in cloud-land, and God Himself but the shadow of a dream. The only difference I can see is, that we should never awake from the dream, but should go on dreaming it for ever.”
“O Louvaine!” saith Sir Robert. “I can never allow of matter in Heaven. All there is spiritual.”
“Now, what mean you by matter?” saith Father. “Matter is a term of this world. I argue not for matter in Heaven as opposed to spirit, but for reality as opposed to allegory.”
“You’ll be out of my depth next plunge,” saith Sir Robert, merrily.
“We shall both be out of our depth, Robin, ere long, and under your leave there will we leave it. But I see you are a bit of a Manichee.”
“That is out of my depth, at any rate,” quoth he. “I am but ill read in ancient controversies, though I know you dabble in them.”
“Why, I have dipped my fingers into a good parcel of matters in my time,” saith Father. “But the Manichees, old friend, were men that did maintain the inherent evil of matter. All things, with them, were wicked that had to do therewith. Wherein, though they knew it not, they were much akin to the Indian mystics of Buddha, that do set their whole happiness in the attaining of Nirvana.”
“What is that?” saith Aunt Joyce. “Is it an India goddess, or something good to eat?”
“It is,” quoth Father, “the condition of having no ideas.”
“Good lack!” saith she, “then daft Madge is nearest perfection of us all.”
“Perhaps she is, in sober truth,” Father makes answer.
“Meseemeth,” whispers Milisent to me, “that Jack Benn is a Manichee.”
“’Tis strange,” saith Father, as in meditation, “how those old heresies shall be continually re-born under new names: nor only that, but how in the heart of every man and woman there is by nature a leaning unto some form of heresy. Here is Robin Stafford a Manichee: and Bess a Mennonite: and my Lady Stafford (if I mistake not) a Stoic: and Mynheer somewhat given to be a Cynic: and Lettice and Milisent, methinks, are by their nature Epicureans. Mistress Martin, it seemeth me, should be an Essene: and what shall we call thee, Edith?”
“Aught but a Pharisee, Father,” said I, laughing.
“Nay, thou art no Pharisee,” saith he. “But that they were a nation and not a sect, I should write thee down a Sybarite. Nell is as near a Pharisee as we have one in the chamber; yet methinketh it were to insult her to give her such a name.”
“Go on,” saith Aunt Joyce. “I’m waiting.”
“What, for thine own class?”
“Mine and thine,” saith she.
Father’s eyes did shine with fun. “Well, Joyce, to tell truth, I am somewhat puzzled to class thee: but I am disposed to put thee amongst the Brownists.”
“What on earth for?” saith she.
“Why,” quoth he, “because thou hast a mighty notion of having things thine own way.”
“Sir Robert,” quoth Aunt Joyce, “pray you, box my cousin’s ears for me, as you sit convenient.—And what art thou thine own self, thou caitiff?”
“A Bonus Homo,” answers Father, right sadly: whereat all that did know Latin fell a-laughing. And I, asking at my Lady Stafford, she told me that Bonus Homo is to say Good Man, and was in past time the name of a certain Order of friars, that had carried down the truth of the Gospel from the first ages in a certain part lying betwixt Italy and France.
“Nell,” saith Father, “I did thee wrong to call thee a Pharisee: thou art rather a Herodian.”
“But I pray you, Sir Aubrey, what did you mean by the name you gave me?” saith Mistress Martin. “For I would fain wit my faults, that I may go about to amend them: and as at this present I am none the wiser.”
“The Essenes,” saith he, “Mistress Martin, were a sect of the Jews, so extreme orthodox that they did deny to perform sacrifice or worship in the Temple, seeing there they should have to mingle themselves with other sects, and with wicked men that brought not their sacrifices rightly. Moreover, they would neither eat flesh-meat nor drink wine: and they believed not that there were so much as one good woman in the whole world.”
“Then I cry you mercy, Sir Aubrey,” quoth she, “but if so be, assuredly I am not of them. I do most heartily believe in good women, whereof methinks I can see four afore me, at the very least, this instant moment: nor have I yet abjured neither wine nor flesh-meat.”
“Oh no, the details be different,” saith he: “yet I dare be bold to say, you have a conceit of a perfect Church, whereinto no untrue man should ever be suffered to enter.”
“Ay, that have I,” said she. “Methinks the Church of England is too comprehensive, and should be drawn on stricter lines.”
“And therein are you an Essene,” answereth Father.
“Oh, Grissel would fain have every man close examined,” saith Sir Robert, “and only admitted unto the Lord’s Supper by the clergy after right strict dealing.”
“Were you alway of this manner of thought, Mistress Martin?” asks Father.
“I trow not,” said she. “As one gets on in life, you see, one doth perceive many difficulties and differences that one noted not aforetime.”
“One is more apt to fall into ruts, that I know,” saith Aunt Joyce: “I had ado enough, and yet have, to keep me out of them.”
“A man is apt to do one of two things,” saith Father: “either to fall into a rut, or to leave the road altogether. Either his charity contracteth, and he can see none right that walk not in his rut; or else his charity breaketh all bounds, and he would have all to be right, which way soever they walk.”
“Why, those be the two ends of the pole,” quoth Sir Robert, “and, I warrant you, you shall find Grissel right at the end, which so it be. She hath a conceit that a man cannot be too right, nor that, if a thing be good, you cannot have too much thereof.”
“Ah, that hangeth on the thing,” saith Father. “You cannot have too much faith nor charity, but you may get too much syllabub. Methinks that is scantly the true rendering thereof. Have not the proportions much to do withal? If a man’s faith outrun his charity, behold him at the one end of your pole; but if his charity outrun his faith, here is he at the other. Now faith and charity should keep pace. Let either get afore the other, and the man is no longer a perfect man; but a man with one limb grown out, and another shrivelled up.”
“But, Sir Aubrey,” quoth Mistress Martin, “can a man be too holy, or too happy?”
“Surely not, Mistress Martin,” saith he. “But look you, God is the fountain and pattern of both: and in Him all attributes are at once in utmost perfection, and in strictest proportion. We sons of Adam, since his fall, be gone out of proportion. And note you, for it is worthy note—that nothing short of revelation did ever yet conceive of a perfect God. The gods of the heathen were altogether such as themselves. Even very Christians, with revelation to guide them, are ever starting aside like a broken bow in their conceits of God. Either they would have Him all justice and no mercy, or else all mercy and no justice: and the looser they hold by the revelation God has made of Himself, the dimmer and the more out of proportion be their thoughts of God. The most men frame a God unto themselves, and be assured that he shall be like themselves—that the sins which he holds in abhorrence shall be the sins whereto they are not prone.”
“Are we not, in fine,” saith Sir Robert, “so far gone from original righteousness, that our imperfect nature hath lost power to imagine perfection?”
“Not a doubt thereof,” saith Father. “Look you but abroad in the world. You shall find pride lauded and called high spirit and nobleness: covetousness is prudence and good thrift: flattery and conformity to the world are good nature and kindliness. Every blast from Hell hath been renamed after one of the breezes of Heaven.”
There was silence so long after this that I reckoned the discourse were o’er. When all suddenly saith Sir Robert:—
“Louvaine, have you much hope for the future—whether of the Church or of the world?”
“All hope in God: none out of Him.”
“Nay, come closer,” saith Sir Robert. “What shall hap in the next few reigns?”
“‘I will overturn, overturn, overturn, until He come whose right it is: and I will give it Him.’ There is our pole-star, Robin: and I see no other stars. ‘This same Jesus shall so come.’ ‘Even so, come, Lord Jesus!’”
“Yet may He not be said to ‘come’ by the Spirit shed abroad in the hearts of men, and so the world be regenerated?”
“Find that in God’s Word, Robin, afore He comes, and I will welcome it with all my heart,” answers Father. “I could never see it there. I see there a mighty spread of knowledge, and civility (civilisation), and communications of men—as hath been since the invention of printing, and may be destined to spread yet much further abroad. But knowledge is not faith, nor is civility Christianity. And, in fine, He is to come as He went. He did not go invisibly in the hearts of men.”
“But ‘the kingdom of God is within you.’”
“Ay, in the sense wherein the word is there used. The power of Christ, at that time, was to be a power over men’s hearts, not an outward show of regality: but ‘He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go,’ is a very different matter.”
“Oh, of course we look for our Lord’s advent in His own person,” quoth Sir Robert: “but I cannot think He will come to a sin-stained earth. It were not suitable to His dignity. The way of the Lord must be prepared.”
“We shall see, when He comes,” gently answereth Father. “But if He had not deigned to come to a sin-stained earth, what should have come either of Robin Stafford or of Aubrey Louvaine?”
Selwick Hall, December ye xxiii.
Four nights hath it taken me to write that last piece, for all the days have we been right busy making ready for Christmas. There be in the buttery now thirty great spice-cakes, and an hundred mince pies, and a mighty bowl of plum-porridge (plum-pudding without the cloth) ready for the boiling, and four barons of beef, and a great sight of carrots and winter greens, and two great cheeses, and a parcel of sugar-candy for the childre, and store of sherris-sack and claret, and Rhenish wine, and muscadel. As to the barrels of ale, and the raisins of Corance (currants) and the apples, and the conserves and codiniac (quince marmalade), and such like, I will not tarry to count them. And to-day, and yet again it shall be to-morrow, have Mother and Aunt Joyce, and we three maids, trudged all the vicinage, bidding our neighbours to the Hall on Christmas Eve and for the even of Christmas Day. And as to-night am I well aweary, for Thirlmere side fell to my share, and I was this morrow as far as old Madge’s bidding her and young Madge, and that is six miles well reckoned. Father saith alway that though it be our duty at all times, yet is it more specially at Christmas, to bid the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind: so we have them alway of Christmas night, and of Christmas Eve have we a somewhat selecter gathering, of our own kin and close friends and such like: only Master Banaster and Anstace come both times. Then on New Year’s Day have we alway a great sort of childre, and merry games and music and such like. But the last night of the old year will Father have no gatherings nor merrymaking. He saith ’tis a right solemn time; and as each one of us came to the age of fourteen years have we parted at nine o’ the clock as usual, but not on that night for bed. Every one sitteth by him or herself in a separate chamber, with a Bible or some portion thereof open afore. There do we read and pray and meditate until half-past eleven, at which time all we gather in the great chamber. Then Father reads first the 139th Psalm, and then that piece in the Revelation touching all the dead standing afore God: and he prayeth a while, until about five minutes afore the year end. Then all gather in the great window toward Keswick, and tarry as still as death until Master Cridge ring the great bell on Lord Island, so soon as he hear the chimes of Keswick Church. Then, no sooner hath the bell died away, which telleth to all around that the New Year is born, then Father striketh up, and all we join in, the 100th Psalm—to wit, “All people that on earth do dwell.”
And when the last note of the Amen dieth, then we kiss one another, and each wisheth the other a happy new year and God’s blessing therein: and so away to bed.
I reckon I shall not have no time to write again until Christmas Day is well over.
“Father,” said I last night to him—we were us two alone that minute—“Father, do you love Christmas?”
He looked on me and smiled.
“I love to see my childre glad, dear maid,” saith he: “and I love to feast my poor neighbours, that at other times get little feasting enough. But Christmas is the childre’s festival, Edith: for it is the festival of untroubled hearts and eyes that have no tears behind them. For the weary hearts and the tearful eyes the true feast is Easter. The one is a hope: the other is a victory. There are no clouds o’er the blue sky in the first: the storm is over, and the sun is out again, in the last. ‘We believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.’ But we are apt to believe in the resurrection the most truly when the grave hath been lately open: and the life of the world to come is the gladdest thought to them for whom the life of the world that is seems not much to live for.”
Selwick Hall, December the xxviii.
“Well, Edith,” quoth Aunt Joyce to me last night, “thou hast had a rare time of it!”
“I have, Aunt,” said I: “yet I warrant you, I was not sorry to have Sunday come at after.”
Eh, but I was weary when I gat me abed on Christmas night, and it were ten o’clock well told ere I so did. Helen and Milisent were later yet: but Mother packed me off, saying that growing maids should not tarry up late: and when I found me withinside the blankets, I warrant you, but I was thankful!
I reckon, being now something rested, I must set down all that we did: and first for Christmas Eve.
Hal and Anstace came early (their childre were bidden to Keswick unto a childre’s gathering): then about three o’ the clock, Master and Mistress Lewthwaite, with Alice, Nym, Jack, and Robin (and by the same token, Nym played the despairing gallant that I could not choose but laugh, his hat awry and his ruff all o’ one side, and a bombasted (padded) doublet that made him look twice his own size). And methought it a sore pity to miss Blanche, that was wont to be merriest of us all (when as she were in a good humour) and so Alice said unto me, while the water stood in her eyes. A little while after come Doctor and Mistress Meade, and their Isabel: then old Mistress Rigg, and her three tall daughters, Mrs Martha, Mrs Katherine, and Mrs Anne: then Farmer Benson and his dame, and their Margaret and Agnes; and Master Coward, with their Tom and Susan; and Master and Mistress Armstrong, with their Ben, Nicholas, and Gillian. Last of all come Master Park and Master Murthwaite, both together, and their mistresses, with the young folk,—Hugh and Austin Park, and Dudley, Faith, and Temperance Murthwaite. So our four-and-thirty guests, with ourselves, thirteen, made in all a goodly company of forty-seven.
First, when all were come in and had doffed their out-door raiment, and greeting over, we sat us down to supper: where one of the barons of beef, and plum-porridge, and apple-pies, and chicken-pies, and syllabub, and all manner of good things: but in very deed I might scarce eat my supper for laughing at Nym Lewthwaite, that was sat right over against me, and did scarce taste aught, but spent the time in gazing lack-a-daisically on our Helen, and fetching great sighs with his hand laid of his heart. Supper o’er, we first had snap-dragon, then hot cockles, then blindman’s buff, then hunt the weasel. We pausing to take breath at after, Father called us to sing; so we gathered all in the great chamber, and first Mynheer sang a Dutch song, and then Sir Robert and Mistress Martin a rare part-song, touching the beauties of spring-time. Then sang Farmer Benson, Master Armstrong, and Ben and Agnes, “The hunt is up,” which was delightsome to hear. Then Aunt Joyce would sing “Pastime with good company,” and would needs have Milisent and me and Robin Lewthwaite to help her. After this Jack Lewthwaite and Nick Armstrong made us to laugh well, by singing “The cramp is in my purse full sore.” The music ended with a sweet glee of Faith and Temperance Murthwaite (something sober, but I know it liked Father none the worse) and the old English song of “Summer is ycumen in,” sung of Father and Sir Robert, our Helen, and Isabel Meade. Then we sat around the fire till rear-supper, and had “Questions and Commands,” and cried forfeits, and wound up with “I love my love.” And some were rare witty and mirthful in that last, particularly Sir Robert, who did treat his love to oranges and orfevery in the Orcades (Hebrides) (and Father said he marvelled how he gat them there), and Aunt Joyce, who said her love was Benjamin Breakrope, and he came from the Tower of Babel. Then, after that, fell we a-telling stories: and a right brave one of Father, out of one of his old Chronicles, how Queen Philippa gat a pardon from her lord for the six gentlemen of Calais: and a merry, of Dr Meade, touching King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, and the three questions that the King did ask at the Abbot’s gardener (he playing his master), and the witty answers he made unto him. Then would Master Armstrong tell a tale; and an awesome ghost-story it were, that made my flesh creep, and Milisent whispered in mine ear that she should sleep never a wink at after it.
“Eh!” saith Farmer Benson, and fetched an heavy sigh: “ghosts be ill matter of an house.”
“Saw you e’er a ghost, Farmer Benson?” saith Dudley Murthwaite.
“Nay, lad,” quoth he: “I’ve had too much good daylight work in my time to lie awake a-seeing ghosts when night cometh.”
“Ah, but I’ve seen a ghost,” saith Austin Park.
“Oh, where?” cried a dozen together.
“Why, it was but night afore last,” saith he, “up by the old white-thorn that was strake of the lightning, come two years last Midsummer, just at yon reach o’ the lake that comes up higher than the rest.”
“Ay, ay,” saith Farmer Benson: “and what like were it, Master Austin?”
“A woman all in white, with her head cut off,” quoth he.
“Said she aught to thee?”
“Nay, I gave her no chance; I took to my heels,” quoth he.
“Now, Austin, that should I ne’er have done,” saith Aunt Joyce, who believes in ghosts never a whit. “I would have stood my ground, for I did never yet behold a ghost, and would dearly love to do it: and do but think how curious it should be to find out what she spake withal, that had her head cut off.”
“Mistress Joyce, had you found you, as I did, close to a blasted tree, and been met of a white woman with no head, I’ll lay you aught you will you’d never have run no faster,” saith Austin in an injured tone.
“That should I not,” quoth Aunt Joyce boldly. “I shall win my fortune at that game, Austin, if thou deny not thy debts of honour. Why, man o’ life, what harm should a blasted tree do me? Had the lightning struck it that minute while I stood there, then might there have been some danger: but because the lightning struck it two years gone, how should it hurt me now? And as to a woman with no head, that would I tarry to believe till I had stripped off her white sheet and seen for myself.”
“Eh, Mistress Joyce,” cries old Mistress Rigg, “but sure you should never dare to touch a ghost?”
“There be not many things, save sin, Mistress Rigg, that I should not dare to do an’ it liked me. I have run after a thief with a poker: ay, and I have handled a Popish catchpoll, in Queen Mary’s days, that he never came near my house no more. And wherefore, I pray you tell me, should I be more feared of a spirit without a body than of a spirit within the body?—Austin, if thou meet the ghost again, prithee bid her come up to Selwick Hall and ask for Joyce Morrell, for I would give forty shillings to have a good talk with her. Only think, how much a ghost could tell a body!”
“Lack-a-day, Mistress Joyce, I’ll neither make nor meddle with her!” cries Austin.
“Poor weak soul!” saith Aunt Joyce. Whereat many laughed.
So, after a while, sat we down to rear-supper; and at after that, gathered in small groups, twos and threes and the like, and talked: and I with Isabel Meade, and Temperance Murthwaite, and Austin Park, had some rare merriment touching divers matters. When all at once I heard Aunt Joyce say—
“Well, but what ill were there in asking questions of spirits, if they might visit the earth?”
“The ill for which Adam was turned forth of Eden,” saith Father: “disobedience to a plain command of God. Look in the xviii chapter of Deuteronomy, and you shall see necromancy forbidden by name. That is, communication with such as be dead.”
“But that were for religion, Sir Aubrey,” saith Master Coward. “This, look you, were but matter of curiousness.”
“That is to say, it was Eva’s sin rather than Adam’s,” Father makes answer. “Surely, that which is forbid as solemn matter of religion, should be rather forbid as mere matter of curiousness.”
“But was that aught more than a ceremonial law of the Jews, no longer binding upon Christians?” saith Sir Robert.
“Nay, then, turn you to Paul’s Epistle to Timothy,” quoth Father, “where among the doctrines taught by them that shall depart from the faith, he doth enumerate ‘doctrines of devils,’—or, as the Greek hath it, of demons. Now these demons were but dead men, whom the Pagans held to be go-betweens for living men with their gods. So this, see you, is a two-edged sword, forbidding all communication with the dead, whether as saints to be invoked, or as visitants to be questioned.”
“Nobody’s like to question ’em save Mistress Joyce,” saith Farmer Benson, of his husky voice, which alway soundeth as though he should have an ill rheum of his throat.
Aunt Joyce laughed. “Nay, I were but joking,” quoth she: “but I warrant you, if I meet Austin’s white woman without a head, I’ll see if she be ghost or no.”
“But what think you, Sir Aubrey—wherefore was such communication forbid?” saith Master Murthwaite.
“God wot,” saith Father. “I am not of His council-chamber. My Master’s plain word is enough for me.”
“One might think that a warning from beyond the grave should have so solemn an effect on a sinner.”
“Nay, we be told right contrary. ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one rise from death again.’ How much rather when One hath risen from the dead, and they have refused to hear Him?”
Then arose Dr Meade, that was discoursing with Mynheer of a corner, and prayers were had. After which a grace-cup, and then all took their leave, Master Park being last to go as to come. And just ere he was through the door, saith Austin to Aunt Joyce, a-laughing—
“You’ll mind to let me know, Mistress Joyce, what the ghost saith to you. I can stand it second-hand, may-be.”
“That’s a jolly hearing, from one of the stronger sex to one of the weaker!” quoth she. “Well said, thou mocking companion: I will give thee to wit—a piece of my mind, if no more.”
Christmas-Day, of course, all to church: and in the even sat down to supper seventy-six, all but ourselves poor men and women and childre. And two of the barons of beef, and six bowls of plum-porridge, and one hundred pies of divers kinds,—to say nought of lesser dishes, that Milly counted up to eighty. Then after, snap-dragon, whereat was much mirth; and singing of Christmas carols, and games with the childre. And all away looking mighty pleased.
Daft Madge would know of me if the angels lived o’ plum-porridge. I told her I thought not so.
“It is like to be somewhat rare good,” quoth she. “The Lord’s so rich, look you,—main richer nor Sir Aubrey. If t’ servant gives poor folk plum-porridge, what’ll t’ Master give?”
Father answered her, for he was close by—
“‘Fat things full of marrow, wines on the lees well refined.’”
“Eh, that sounds good!” saith she, a-licking of her lips. “And that’s for t’ hungry folk, Master?”
“It is only for hungry folk,” saith he. “’Tis not thrown away on the full ones. ‘Whosoever will, take,’ saith the Lord, who gives the feast.”
“Eh, then I shall get some!” saith she, a-laughing all o’er her face, as she doth when she is pleased at aught. “You’ll be sure and let me know when ’tis, Master? I’ll come, if ’tis snow up to t’ knees all t’ way.”
“The Lord will be sure and let thee know, Madge, when ’tis ready,” saith Father; for he hath oft said that little as poor Madge can conceive, he is assured she is one of God’s childre.
“Oh, if ’tis Him to let me know, ’t’ll be all right,” saith Madge, smiling and drawing of her cloak around her. “He’ll not forget Madge—not He. He come down o’ purpose to die for me, you know.”
Father saith, as Madge trudged away in her clogs after old Madge, her grandmother—
“Ah, rich Madge—not poor! May-be thine shall be the most abundant entrance of any in this chamber.”
I am at the end of my month, and as to-morrow I hand the book to Helen. But I dare not count up my two-pences, for I am feared they be so many.
Note 1. Complexion, at this date, signified temperament, not colour. The Middle Age physicians divided the complexions of mankind into four—the lymphatic, the sanguine, the nervous, and the bilious: and their treatment was always grounded on these considerations. Colour of skin, hair, and eyes, being considered symptomatic of complexion, the word was readily transferred from one to the other.