Paul Faber, Surgeon

by George MacDonald

The history of the kingdom of Heaven—need I say I mean a very different thing from what is called church-history?—is the only history that will ever be able to show itself a history—that can ever come to be thoroughly written, or to be read with a clear understanding; for it alone will prove able to explain itself, while in doing so it will explain all other attempted histories as well. Many of those who will then be found first in the eternal record, may have been of little regard in the eyes of even their religious contemporaries, may have been absolutely unknown to generations that came after, and were yet the men of life and potency, working as light, as salt, as leaven, in the world. When the real worth of things is, over all, the measure of their estimation, then is the kingdom of our God and His Christ.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE POTTERY.

It had been a very dry autumn, and the periodical rains had been long delayed, so that the minister had been able to do much for the houses he had bought, called the Pottery. There had been but just rain enough to reveal the advantage of the wall he had built to compel the water to keep the wider street. Thoroughly dry and healthy it was impossible to make them, at least in the time; but it is one thing to have the water all about the place you stand on, and another to be up to the knees in it. Not at that point only, however, but at every spot where the water could enter freely, he had done what he could provisionally for the defense of his poor colony—for alas! how much among the well-to-do, in town or city, are the poor like colonists only!—and he had great hopes of the result. Stone and brick and cement he had used freely, and one or two of the people about began to have a glimmering idea of the use of money after a gospel fashion—that is, for thorough work where and because it was needed. The curate was full of admiration and sympathy. But the whole thing gave great dissatisfaction to others not a few. For, as the currents of inundation would be somewhat altered in direction and increased in force by his obstructions, it became necessary for several others also to add to the defenses of their property, and this of course was felt to be a grievance. Their personal inconveniences were like the shilling that hides the moon, and, in the resentment they occasioned, blinded their hearts to the seriousness of the evils from which their merely temporary annoyance was the deliverance of their neighbors. A fancy of prescriptive right in their own comforts outweighed all the long and heavy sufferings of the others. Why should not their neighbors continue miserable, when they had been miserable all their lives hitherto? Those who, on the contrary, had been comfortable all their lives, and liked it so much, ought to continue comfortable—even at their expense. Why not let well alone? Or if people would be so unreasonable as to want to be comfortable too, when nobody cared a straw about them, let them make themselves comfortable without annoying those superior beings who had been comfortable all the time!—Persons who, consciously or unconsciously, reason thus, would do well to read with a little attention the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, wherein it seems recognized that a man's having been used to a thing may be just the reason, not for the continuance, but for the alteration of his condition. In the present case the person who most found himself aggrieved, was the dishonest butcher. A piece of brick wall which the minister had built in contact with the wall of his yard, would indubitably cause such a rise in the water at the descent into the area of his cellar, that, in order to its protection in a moderate flood—in a great one the cellar was always filled—the addition to its defense of two or three more rows of bricks would be required, carrying a correspondent diminution of air and light. It is one of the punishments overtaking those who wrong their neighbors, that not only do they feel more keenly than others any injury done to themselves, but they take many things for injuries that do not belong to the category. It was but a matter of a few shillings at the most, but the man who did not scruple to charge the less careful of his customers for undelivered ounces, gathering to pounds and pounds of meat, resented bitterly the necessity of the outlay. He knew, or ought to have known, that he had but to acquaint the minister with the fact, to have the thing set right at once; but the minister had found him out, and he therefore much preferred the possession of his grievance to its removal. To his friends he regretted that a minister of the gospel should be so corrupted by the mammon of unrighteousness as to use it against members of his own church: that, he said, was not the way to make friends with it. But on the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided showing Mr. Drake any sign of his resentment; for the face of his neighbors shames a man whose heart condemns him but shames him not. He restricted himself to grumbling, and brooded to counterplot the mischiefs of the minister. What right had he to injure him for the sake of the poor? Was it not written in the Bible: Thou shall not favor the poor man in his cause? Was it not written also: For every man shall bear his own burden? That was common sense! He did his share in supporting the poor that were church-members, but was he to suffer for improvements on Drake's property for the sake of a pack of roughs! Let him be charitable at his own cost! etc., etc. Self is prolific in argument.

It suited Mr. Drake well, notwithstanding his church republican theories, against which, in the abstract, I could ill object, seeing the whole current of Bible teaching is toward the God-inspired ideal commonwealth—it suited a man like Mr. Drake well, I say, to be an autocrat, and was a most happy thing for his tenants, for certainly no other system of government than a wise autocracy will serve in regard to the dwellings of the poor. And already, I repeat, he had effected not a little. Several new cottages had been built, and one incorrigible old one pulled down. But it had dawned upon him that, however desirable it might be on a dry hill-side, on such a foundation as this a cottage was the worst form of human dwelling that could be built. For when the whole soil was in time of rain like a full sponge, every room upon it was little better than a hollow in a cloud, and the right thing must be to reduce contact with the soil as much as possible. One high house, therefore, with many stories, and stone feet to stand upon, must be the proper kind of building for such a situation. He must lift the first house from the water, and set as many more houses as convenient upon it.

He had therefore already so far prepared for the building of such a house as should lift a good many families far above all deluge; that is, he had dug the foundation, and deep, to get at the more solid ground. In this he had been precipitate, as not unfrequently in his life; for while he was yet meditating whether he should not lay the foundation altogether solid, of the unporous stone of the neighborhood, the rains began, and there was the great hole, to stand all the winter full of water, in the middle of the cottages!

The weather cleared again, but after a St. Martin's summer unusually prolonged, the rain came down in terrible earnest. Day after day, the clouds condensed, grew water, and poured like a squeezed sponge. A wet November indeed it was—wet overhead—wet underfoot—wet all round! and the rivers rose rapidly.

When the Lythe rose beyond a certain point, it overflowed into a hollow, hardly a valley, and thereby a portion of it descended almost straight to Glaston. Hence it came that in a flood the town was invaded both by the rise of the river from below, and by this current from above, on its way to rejoin the main body of it, and the streets were soon turned into canals. The currents of the slowly swelling river and of its temporary branch then met in Pine street, and formed not a very rapid, but a heavy run at ebb tide; for Glaston, though at some distance from the mouth of the river, measuring by its course, was not far from the sea, which was visible across the green flats, a silvery line on the horizon. Landward, beyond the flats, high ground rose on all sides, and hence it was that the floods came down so deep upon Glaston.

On a certain Saturday it rained all the morning heavily, but toward the afternoon cleared a little, so that many hoped the climax had been reached, while the more experienced looked for worse. After sunset the clouds gathered thicker than before, and the rain of the day was as nothing to the torrent descending with a steady clash all night. When the slow, dull morning came Glaston stood in the middle of a brown lake, into which water was rushing from the sky in straight, continuous lines. The prospect was discomposing. Some, too confident in the apparent change, had omitted needful precautions, in most parts none were now possible, and in many more none would have been of use. Most cellars were full, and the water was rising on the ground-floors. It was a very different affair from a flood in a mountainous country, but serious enough, though without immediate danger to life. Many a person that morning stepped out of bed up to the knee in muddy water.

With the first of the dawn the curate stood peering from the window of his dressing-room, through the water that coursed down the pane, to discover the state of the country; for the window looked inland from the skirt of the town. All was gray mist, brown water, and sheeting rain. The only things clear were that not a soul would be at church that morning, and that, though he could do nothing to divide them the bread needful for their souls, he might do something for some of their bodies. It was a happy thing it was Sunday, for, having laid in their stock of bread the day before, people were not so dependent on the bakers, half whose ovens must now be full of water. But most of the kitchens must be flooded, he reasoned, the fire-wood soaking, and the coal in some cellars inaccessible. The very lucifer-matches in many houses would be as useless as the tinderbox of a shipwrecked sailor. And if the rain were to cease at once the water would yet keep rising for many hours. He turned from the window, took his bath in homoeopathic preparation, and then went to wake his wife.