The Seaboard Parish Part 67

"I think everybody seems better," I said. "The very idea of home seems reviving to us all."

Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle in his eye.

"Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "She does not want much visiting now; she is going about her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not like the same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one, though I do not choose to ask him any questions about his wife."

I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.

Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by the coach--early. Turner went with him.

Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the prospect of meeting him again in London kept her up.

CHAPTER XII.

THE STUDIO.

I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had wanted to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber, now wanted to take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great oystersh.e.l.ls, and sea-weed.

Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An early day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of service to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he came, I had gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my reasons for leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a little about my successor, that he might not appear among them quite as a stranger. He was much gratified with their reception of him, and had no fear of not finding himself quite at home with them. I promised, if I could comfortably manage it, to pay them a short visit the following summer, and as the weather was now getting quite cold, hastened our preparations for departure.

I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but he had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience would permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us, and we had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel much anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong enough as we went along, to go right through to London, making a few days there the only break in the transit.

It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now bear the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had we occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and before we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie looked a little dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the change in the weather.

"Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear," I said.

"No, papa," she answered; "but we are going home, you know."

_Going home._ It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking before, always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky of hope. I lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog this evening in London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to go through on the way _home._ A. shadow like this would fall upon me; the world would grow dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was the last of the way home.

Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted.

I knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness, more or less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as the thought of water to the thirsty _soul_, for it is the soul far more than the body that thirsts even for the material water, such is the thought of home to the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul pines for sleep, and every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so my heart and soul had often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked myself, where or what that home was? It could consist in no change of place or of circ.u.mstance; no mere absence of care; no acc.u.mulation of repose; no blessed communion even with those whom my soul loved; in the midst of it all I should be longing for a homelier home--one into which I might enter with a sense of infinitely more absolute peace, than a conscious child could know in the arms, upon the bosom of his mother.

In the closest contact of human soul with human soul, when all the atmosphere of thought was rosy with love, again and yet again on the far horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest shoot for a moment through the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that not yet had she reached her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and saw those of my wife and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching me for saying in my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then I said in my heart, "Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for us all.

When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall we be gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries of pictures--wells of water."

Again, what was this home? G.o.d himself. His thoughts, his will, his love, his judgment, are man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will, to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pa.s.s through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of G.o.d, so this greatest of all outward changes--for it is but an outward change--will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us. It is the father, the mother, that make for the child his home.

Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the parents of a family themselves, when they remember that their fathers and mothers have vanished.

At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.

"Won't it be delightful, wife," I began, "to see our fathers and mothers such a long way back in heaven?"

But Ethelwyn's face gave so little response, that I felt at once how dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in G.o.d as it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without a witness.

Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.

Dreary was the change from the stillness and suns.h.i.+ne of Kilkhaven to the fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had slept for a good many nights before.

After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,

"I am going to see Mr. Percivale's studio, my dear: have you any objection to going with me?"

"No, papa," she answered, blus.h.i.+ng. "I have never seen an artist's studio in my life."

"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a cab, and it won't matter."

She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in which no man could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare a.s.sent to my question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the words "second-floor," and left us to find our own way up the two flights of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty.

We knocked at the door of the front room. A well-known voice cried, "Come in," and we entered.

Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio, must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale's room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished oil-painting--these const.i.tuted almost the whole furniture of the room.

With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:

"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all I have got."

"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses," I ventured to say.

"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should not."

"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I returned. "If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most blessed."

"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it does."

"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for themselves."

"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked Wynnie.

"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on the easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."

"Why?" asked Wynnie.

"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished that none but a painter could do it justice."

"But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?"

"I very much want people to look at them."

"Why not us, then?" said Wynnie.

"Because you do not need to be pained."