Father and Son Part 5

Among these quiet, taciturn people, there were several whom I recall with affection. In this remote corner of Devons.h.i.+re, on the road nowhither, they had preserved much of the air of that eighteenth century which the elders among them perfectly remembered. There was one old man, born before the French Revolution, whose figure often recurs to me. This was James Petherbridge, the Nestor of our meeting, extremely tall and attenuated; he came on Sundays in a full, white smockfrock, smartly embroidered down the front, and when he settled himself to listen, he would raise this smock like a skirt, and reveal a pair of immensely long thin legs, cased in tight leggings, and ending in shoes with buckles. As the sacred message fell from my Father's lips the lantern jaws of Mr. Petherbridge slowly fell apart, while his knees sloped to so immense a distance from one another that it seemed as though they never could meet again. He had been pious all his life, and he would tell us, in some modest pride, that when he was a lad, the farmer's wife who was his mistress used to say, 'I think our Jem is going to be a Methody, he do so hanker after G.o.dly discoursings.' Mr. Petherbridge was accustomed to pray orally at our prayer-meetings, in a funny old voice like wind in a hollow tree, and he seldom failed to express a hope that 'the Lord would support Miss Lafroy'-- who was the village schoolmistress, and one of our congregation,--'in her labour of teaching the young idea how to shoot'. I, not understanding this literary allusion, long believed the school to be addicted to some species of pistol-practice.

The key of the Room was kept by Richard Moxhay, the mason, who was of a generation younger than Mr. Petherbridge, but yet 'getting on in years'. Moxhay, I cannot tell why, was always dressed in white corduroy, on which any stain of Devons.h.i.+re scarlet mud was painfully conspicuous; when he was smartened up, his appearance suggested that somebody had given him a coating of that rich Western whitewash which looks like Devons.h.i.+re cream.

His locks were long and spa.r.s.e, and as deadly black as his clothes were white. He was a modest, gentle man, with a wife even more meek and gracious than himself. They never, to my recollection, spoke unless they were spoken to, and their melancholy impa.s.siveness used to vex my Father, who once, referring to the Moxhays, described them, sententiously but justly, as being 'laborious, but it would be an exaggeration to say happy, Christians'. Indeed, my memory pictures almost all the 'saints' of that early time as sad and humble souls, lacking vitality, yet not complaining of anything definite. A quite surprising number of them, it is true, male and female, suffered from different forms of consumption, so that the Room rang in winter evenings with a discord of hacking coughs. But it seems to me that, when I was quite young, half the inhabitants of our rural district were affected with phthisis. No doubt, our peculiar religious community was more likely to attract the feeble members of a population, than to tempt the flush and the fair.

Miss Marks, patient pilgrim that she was, accepted this quaint society without a murmur, although I do not think it was much to her taste. But in a very short time it was sweetened to her by the formation of a devoted and romantic friends.h.i.+p for one of the 'sisters', who was, indeed, if my childish recollection does not fail me, a very charming person. The consequence of this enthusiastic alliance was that I was carried into the bosom of the family to which Miss Marks' new friend belonged, and of these excellent people I must give what picture I can.

Almost opposite the Room, therefore at the far end of the village, across one of the rare small gardens (in which this first winter I discovered with rapture the magenta stars of a new flower, hepatica)--a shop-window displayed a thin row of plates and dishes, cups and saucers; above it was painted the name of Burmington. This china-shop was the property of three orphan sisters, Ann, Mary Grace, and Bess, the latter lately married to a carpenter, who was 'elder' at our meeting; the other two, resolute old maids. Ann, whom I have already mentioned, had been one of the girls converted by the Cornish fishermen. She was about ten years older than Bess, and Mary Grace came halfway between them. Ann was a very worthy woman, but masterful and pa.s.sionate, suffering from an ungovernable temper, which at calmer moments she used to refer to, not without complacency, as 'the sin which doth most easily beset me'. Bess was insignificant, and vulgarized by domestic cares. But Mary Grace was a delightful creature. The Burmingtons lived in what was almost the only old house surviving in the village. It was an extraordinary construction of two storeys, with vast rooms, and winding pa.s.sages, and surprising changes of level. The sisters were poor, but very industrious, and never in anything like want; they sold, as I have said, crockery, and they took in was.h.i.+ng, and did a little fine needlework, and sold the produce of a great, vague garden at the back. In process of time, the elder sisters took a young woman, whose name was Drusilla Elliott, to live with them as servant and companion; she was a converted person, wors.h.i.+pping with a kindred sect, the Bible Christians. I remember being much interested in hearing how Bess, before her marriage, became converted. Mary Grace, on account of her infirm health, slept alone in one room; in another, of vast size, stood a family fourposter, where Ann slept with Drusilla Elliott, and another bed in the same room took Bess. The sisters and their friend had been constantly praying that Bess might 'find peace', for she was still a stranger to salvation. One night, she suddenly called out, rather crossly, 'What are you two whispering about? Do go to sleep,' to which Ann replied: 'We are praying for you.' 'How do you know,' answered Bess, 'that I don't believe?' And then she told them that, that very night, when she was sitting in the shop, she had closed with G.o.d's offer of redemption. Late in the night as it was, Ann and Drusilla could do no less than go in and waken Mary Grace, whom, however, they found awake, praying, she too, for the conversion of Bess. They told her the good news, and all four, kneeling in the darkness, gave thanks aloud to G.o.d for his infinite mercy.

It was Mary Grace Burmington who now became the romantic friend of Miss Marks, and a sort of second benevolence to me. She must have been under thirty years of age; she wax very small, and she was distressingly deformed in the spine, but she had an animated, almost a sparkling countenance. When we first arrived in the village, Mary Grace was only just recovering from a gastric fever which had taken her close to the grave. I remember hearing that the vicar, a stout and pompous man at whom we always glared defiance, went, in Mary Grace's supposed extremity, to the Burmingtons' shop-door, and shouted: 'Peace be to this house,'

intending to offer his ministrations, but that Ann, who was in one of her tantrums, positively hounded him from the doorstep and down the garden, in her pa.s.sionate nonconformity. Mary Grace, however, recovered, and soon became, not merely Miss Marks'

inseparable friend, but my Father's spiritual factotum. He found it irksome to visit the 'saints' from house to house, and Mary Grace Burmington gladly a.s.sumed this labour. She proved a most efficient coadjutor; searched out, cherished and confirmed any of those, especially the young, who were attracted by my Father's preaching, and for several years was a great joy and comfort to us all. Even when her illness so increased that she could no longer rise from her bed, she was a centre of usefulness and cheerfulness from that retreat, where she 'received', in a kind of rustic state, under a patchwork coverlid that was like a basket of flowers.

My Father, ever reflecting on what could be done to confirm my spiritual vocation, to pin me down, as it were, beyond any possibility of escape, bethought him that it would accustom me to what he called 'pastoral work in the Lord's service', if I accompanied Mary Grace on her visits from house to house. If it is remembered that I was only eight and a half when this scheme was carried into practice, it will surprise no one to hear that it was not crowned with success. I disliked extremely this visitation of the poor. I felt shy, I had nothing to say, with difficulty could I understand their soft Devonian patois, and most of all--a signal perhaps of my neurotic condition--I dreaded and loathed the smells of their cottages. One had to run over the whole gamut of odours, some so faint that they embraced the nostril with a fairy kiss, others bluntly gross, of the 'knock- you-down' order; some sweet, with a dreadful sourness; some bitter, with a smack of rancid hair-oil. There were fine manly smells of the pigsty and the open drain, and these prided themselves on being all they seemed to be; but there were also feminine odours, masquerading as you knew not what, in which penny whiffs, vials of balm and opoponax, seemed to have become tainted, vaguely, with the residue of the slop-pail. It was not, I think, that the villagers were particularly dirty, but those were days before the invention of sanitary science, and my poor young nose was morbidly, nay ridiculously sensitive. I often came home from 'visiting the saints' absolutely incapable of eating the milk-sop, with brown sugar strewn over it, which was my evening meal.

There was one exception to my unwillingness to join in the pastoral labours of Mary Grace. When she announced, on a fine afternoon, that we were going to Pavor and Barton, I was always agog to start. These were two hamlets in our parish, and, I should suppose, the original home of its population. Pavor was, even then, decayed almost to extinction, but Barton preserved its desultory street of ancient, detached cottages. Each, however poor, had a wild garden around it, and, where the inhabitants possessed some pride in their surroundings, the roses and the jasmines and that distinguished creeper,--which one sees nowhere at its best but in Devons.h.i.+re cottage-gardens,--the stately cotoneaster, made the whole place a bower. Barton was in vivid contrast to our own harsh, open, squalid village, with its mean modern houses, its absence of all vegetation. The ancient thatched cottages of Barton were shut in by moist hills, and canopied by ancient trees; they were approached along a deep lane which was all a wonder and a revelation to me that spring, since, in the very words of Sh.e.l.ley:

There in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray.

Around and beyond Barton there lay fairyland. All was mysterious, unexplored, rich with infinite possibilities. I should one day enter it, the sword of make-believe in my hand, the cap of courage on my head, 'when you are a big boy', said the oracle of Mary Grace. For the present, we had to content ourselves with being an unadventurous couple--a little woman, bent half-double, and a preternaturally sedate small boy--as we walked very slowly, side by side, conversing on terms of high familiarity, in which Biblical and colloquial phrases were quaintly jumbled, through the sticky red mud of the Pavor lanes with Barton as a bourne before us.

When we came home, my Father would sometimes ask me for particulars. Where had we been, whom had we found at home, what testimony had those visited been able to give of the Lord's goodness to them, what had Mary Grace replied in the way of exhortation, reproof or condolence? These questions I hated at the time, but they were very useful to me, since they gave me the habit of concentrating my attention on what was going on in the course of our visits, in case I might be called upon to give a report. My Father was very kind in the matter; he cultivated my powers of expression, he did not snub me when I failed to be intelligent. But I overheard Miss Marks and Mary Grace discussing the whole question under the guise of referring to 'you know whom, not a hundred miles hence', fancying that I could not recognize their little ostrich because its head was in a bag of metaphor. I understood perfectly, and gathered that they both of them thought this business of my going into undrained cottages injudicious. Accordingly, I was by degrees taken 'visiting' only when Mary Grace was going into the country-hamlets, and then I was usually left outside, to skip among the flowers and stalk the b.u.t.terflies.

I must not, however, underestimate the very prominent part taken all through this spring and summer of 1858 by the collection of specimens on the seash.o.r.e. My Father had returned, the chagrin of his failure in theorizing now being mitigated, to what was his real work in life, the practical study of animal forms in detail.

He was not a biologist, in the true sense of the term. That luminous indication which Flaubert gives of what the action of the scientific mind should be, _affranchissant esprit et pesant les mondes, sans haine, sans peur, sans pitie, sans amour et sans Dieu_, was opposed in every segment to the att.i.tude of my Father, who, nevertheless, was a man of very high scientific attainment.

But, again I repeat, he was not a philosopher; he was incapable, by temperament and education, of forming broad generalizations and of escaping in a vast survey from the troublesome pettiness of detail. He saw everything through a lens, nothing in the immensity of nature. Certain senses were absent in him; I think that, with all his justice, he had no conception of the importance of liberty; with all his intelligence, the boundaries of the atmosphere in which his mind could think at all were always close about him; with all his faith in the Word of G.o.d, he had no confidence in the Divine Benevolence; and with all his pa.s.sionate piety, he habitually mistook fear for love.

It was down on the sh.o.r.e, tramping along the pebbled terraces of the beach, clambering over the great blocks of fallen conglomerate which broke the white curve with rufous promontories that jutted into the sea, or, finally, bending over those shallow tidal pools in the limestone rocks which were our proper hunting- ground,--it was in such circ.u.mstances as these that my Father became most easy, most happy, most human. That hard look across his brows, which it wearied me to see, the look that came from sleepless anxiety of conscience, faded away, and left the dark countenance still always stern indeed, but serene and unupbraiding. Those pools were our mirrors, in which, reflected in the dark hyaline and framed by the sleek and s.h.i.+ning fronds of oar-weed there used to appear the shapes of a middle-aged man and a funny little boy, equally eager, and, I almost find the presumption to say, equally well prepared fog business.

If anyone goes down to those sh.o.r.es now, if man or boy seeks to follow in our traces, let him realize at once, before he takes the trouble to roll up his sleeves, that his zeal will end in labour lost. There is nothing, now, where in our days there was so much. Then the rocks between tide and tide were submarine gardens of a beauty that seemed often to be fabulous, and was positively delusive, since, if we delicately lifted the weedcurtains of a windless pool, though we might for a moment see its sides and floor paven with living blossoms, ivory-white, rosy-red, grange and amethyst, yet all that panoply would melt away, furled into the hollow rock, if we so much as dropped a pebble in to disturb the magic dream.

Half a century ago, in many parts of the coast of Devons.h.i.+re and Cornwall, where the limestone at the water's edge is wrought into crevices and hollows, the tideline was, like Keats' Grecian vase, 'a still unravished bride of quietness'. These cups and basins were always full, whether the tide was high or low, and the only way in which they were affected was that twice in the twenty-four hours they were replenished by cold streams from the great sea, and then twice were left br.i.m.m.i.n.g to be vivified by the temperate movement of the upper air. They were living flower-beds, so exquisite in their perfection, that my Father, in spite of his scientific requirements, used not seldom to pause before he began to rifle them, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. that it was indeed a pity to disturb such congregated beauty. The antiquity of these rock-pools, and the infinite succession of the soft and radiant forms, sea- anemones, seaweeds, sh.e.l.ls, fishes, which had inhabited them, undisturbed since the creation of the world, used to occupy my Father's fancy. We burst in, he used to say, where no one had ever thought of intruding before; and if the Garden of Eden had been situate in Devons.h.i.+re, Adam and Eve, stepping lightly down to bathe in the rainbow-coloured spray, would have seen the identical sights that we now saw,--the great prawns gliding like transparent launches, anthea waving in the twilight its thick white waxen tentacles, and the fronds of the duke faintly streaming on the water like huge red banners in some reverted atmosphere.

All this is long over and done with. The ring of living beauty drawn about our sh.o.r.es was a very thin and fragile one. It had existed all those centuries solely in consequence of the indifference, the blissful ignorance of man. These rockbasins, fringed by corallines, filled with still water almost as pellucid as the upper air itself, thronged with beautiful sensitive forms of life, they exist no longer, they are all profaned, and emptied, and vulgarized. An army of 'collectors' has pa.s.sed over them, and ravaged every corner of them. The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisite product of centuries of natural selection has been crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning, idle-minded curiosity. That my Father, himself so reverent, so conservative, had by the popularity of his books acquired the direct responsibility for a calamity that he had never antic.i.p.ated became clear enough to himself before many years had pa.s.sed, and cost him great chagrin. No one will see again on the sh.o.r.e of England what I saw in my early childhood, the submarine vision of dark rocks, speckled and starred with an infinite variety of colour, and streamed over by silken flags of royal crimson and purple.

In reviving these impressions, I am unable to give any exact chronological sequence to them. These particular adventures began early in 1858, they reached their greatest intensity in the summer of 1859, and they did not altogether cease, so far as my Father was concerned, until nearly twenty years later. But it was while he was composing what, as I am told by scientific men of today, continues to be his most valuable contribution to knowledge, his _History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals_, that we worked together on the sh.o.r.e for a definite purpose, and the last instalment of that still-cla.s.sic volume was ready for press by the close of 1859.

The way in which my Father worked, in his most desperate escapades, was to wade breast-high into one of the huge pools, and examine the worm-eaten surface of the rock above and below the brim. In such remote places--spots where I could never venture being left, a slightly timorous Andromeda, chained to a safer level of the cliff--in these extreme basins, there used often to lurk a marvellous profusion of animal and vegetable forms. My Father would search for the roughest and most corroded points of rock, those offering the best refuge for a variety of creatures, and would then chisel off fragments as low down in the water as he could. These pieces of rock were instantly plunged in the salt.w.a.ter of jars which we had brought with us for the purpose. When as much had been collected as we could carry away-- my Father always dragged about an immense square basket, the creak of whose handles I can still fancy that I hear--we turned to trudge up the long climb home. Then all our prizes were spread out, face upward, in shallow pans of clean sea-water.

In a few hours, when all dirt had subsided, and what living creatures we had brought seemed to have recovered their composure, my work began. My eyes were extremely keen and powerful, though they were vexatiously near-sighted. Of no use in examining objects at any distance, in investigating a minute surface, my vision was trained to be invaluable. The shallow pan, with our spoils, would rest on a table near the window, and I, kneeling on a chair opposite the light, would lean over the surface until everything was within an inch or two of my eyes.

Often I bent, in my zeal, so far forward that the water touched the tip of my nose and gave me a little icy shock. In this att.i.tude, an idle spectator might have formed the impression that I was trying to wash my head and could not quite summon up resolution enough to plunge. In this odd pose I would remain for a long time, holding my breath and examining with extreme care every atom of rock, every swirl of detritus. This was a task which my Father could only perform by the help of a lens, with which, of course, he took care to supplement my examination. But that my survey was of use, he has himself most handsomely testified in his _Actinologia Britannica_, where he expresses his debt to the 'keen and well-practised eye of my little son'. Nor, if boasting is not to be excluded, is it every eminent biologist, every proud and masterful F.R.S., who can lay his hand on his heart and swear that, before reaching the age of ten years, he had added, not merely a new species, but a new genus to the British fauna. That however, the author of these pages can do, who, on 29 June 1859, discovered a tiny atom,--and ran in the greatest agitation to announce the discovery of that object 'as a form with which he was unacquainted',--which figures since then on all lists of sea-anemones as ph.e.l.lia murocincta, or the walled corklet. Alas! that so fair a swallow should have made no biological summer in after-life.

These delicious agitations by the edge of the salt-sea wave must have greatly improved my health, which however was still looked upon as fragile. I was loaded with coats and comforters, and strolled out between Miss Marks and Mary Grace Burmington, a m.u.f.fled ball of flannel. This alone was enough to give me a look of delicacy which the 'saints', in their blunt way, made no scruple of commenting upon to my face. I was greatly impressed by a conversation held over my bed one evening by the servants. Our cook, Susan, a person of enormous size, and Kate, the tattling, tiresome parlour-maid who waited upon us, on the summer evening I speak of were standing--I cannot tell why--on each side of my bed. I shut my eyes, and lay quite still, in order to escape conversing with them, and they spoke to one another. 'Ah, poor lamb,' Kate said trivially, '_he's_ not long for this world; going home to Jesus, he is,--in a jiffy, I should say by the look of 'un.' But Susan answered: 'Not so. I dreamed about 'un, and I know for sure that he is to be spared for missionary service.'

'Missionary service?' repeated Kate, impressed. 'Yes,' Susan went on, with solemn emphasis, 'he'll bleed for his Lord in heathen parts, that's what the future have in store for _'im_.' When they were gone, I beat upon the coverlid with my fists, and I determined that whatever happened, I would not, not, _not_, go out to preach the Gospel among horrid, tropical n.i.g.g.e.rs.

CHAPTER VII

IN the history of an infancy so cloistered and uniform as mine, such a real adventure as my being publicly and successfully kidnapped cannot be overlooked. There were several 'innocents' in our village--harmless eccentrics who had more or less unquestionably crossed the barrier which divides the sane from the insane. They were not discouraged by public opinion; indeed, several of them were favoured beings, suspected by my Father of exaggerating their mental density in order to escape having to work, like dogs, who, as we all know, could speak as well as we do, were they not afraid of being made to fetch and carry. Miss Mary Flaw was not one of these imbeciles. She was what the French call a _detraquee_; she had enjoyed good intelligence and an active mind, but her wits had left the rails and were careening about the country. Miss Flaw was the daughter of a retired Baptist minister, and she lived, with I remember not what relations, in a little solitary house high up at Barton Cross, whither Mary Grace and I would sometimes struggle when our pastoral duties were over. In later years, when I met with those celebrated verses in which the philosopher expresses the hope

In the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining, May my lot no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining, And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea

my thoughts returned instinctively, and they still return, to the high abode of Miss Flaw. There was a porch at her door, both for shelter and shade, and it was covered with jasmine; but the charm of the place was a summer-house close by, containing a table, encrusted with cowry-sh.e.l.ls, and seats from which one saw the distant waters of the bay. At the entrance to this grotto there was always set a 'snug elbow-chair', destined, I suppose, for the Rev. Mr. Flaw, or else left there in pious memory of him, since I cannot recollect whether he was alive or dead.

I delighted in these visits to Mary Flaw. She always received us with effusion, tripping forward to meet us, and leading us, each by a hand held high, with a dancing movement which I thought infinitely graceful, to the cowry-sh.e.l.l bower, where she would regale us with Devons.h.i.+re cream and with small hard biscuits that were like pebbles. The conversation of Mary Flaw was a great treat to me. I enjoyed its irregularities, its waywardness; it was like a tune that wandered into several keys. As Mary Grace Burmington put it, one never knew what dear Mary Flaw would say next, and that she did not herself know added to the charm. She had become crazed, poor thing, in consequence of a disappointment in love, but of course I did not know that, nor that she was crazed at all. I thought her brilliant and original, and I liked her very much. In the light of coming events, it would be affectation were I to pretend that she did not feel a similar partiality for me.

Miss Flaw was, from the first, devoted to my Father's ministrations, and it was part of our odd village indulgence that no one ever dreamed of preventing her from coming to the Room. On Sunday evenings the bulk of the audience was arranged on forms, with backs to them, set in the middle of the floor, with a pa.s.sage round them, while other forms were placed against the walls. My Father preached from a lectern, facing the audience. If darkness came on in the course of the service, Richard Moxhay, glimmering in his cream-white corduroys, used to go slowly around, lighting groups of tallow candles by the help of a box of lucifers. Mary Flaw always a.s.sumed the place of honour, on the left extremity of the front bench, immediately opposite my Father. Miss Marks and Mary Grace, with me ensconced and almost buried between them, occupied the right of the same bench. While the lighting proceeded, Miss Flaw used to direct it from her seat, silently, by pointing out to Moxhay, who took no notice, what groups of candles he should light next. She did this just as the clown in the circus directs the grooms how to move the furniture, and Moxhay paid no more attention to her than the grooms do to the clown. Miss Flaw had another peculiarity: she silently went through a service exactly similar to ours, but much briefer. The course of our evening service was this: My Father prayed, and we all knelt down; then he gave out a hymn and most of us stood up to sing; then he preached for about an hour, while we sat and listened; then a hymn again; then prayer and the valediction.

Mary Flaw went through this ritual, but on a smaller scale. We all knelt down together, but when we rose from our knees, Miss Flaw was already standing up, and was pretending, without a sound, to sing a hymn; in the midst of our hymn, she sat down, opened her Bible, found a text, and then leaned back, her eyes fixed in s.p.a.ce, listening to an imaginary sermon which our own real one soon caught up, and coincided with for about three- quarters of an hour. Then, while our sermon went peacefully on, Miss Flaw would rise, and sing in silence (if I am permitted to use such an expression) her own visionary hymn; then she would kneel down and pray, then rise, collect her belongings, and sweep, in fairy majesty, out of the chapel, my Father still rounding his periods from the pulpit. n.o.body ever thought of preventing these movements, or of checking the poor creature in her innocent flightiness, until the evening of the great event.

It was all my own fault. Mary Flaw had finished her imaginary service earlier than usual. She had stood up alone with her hymn- book before her; she had flung herself on her knees alone, in the att.i.tude of devotion; she had risen; she had seated herself for a moment to put on her gloves, and to collect her Bible, her hymn- book and her pocket-handkerchief in her reticule. She was ready to start, and she looked around her with a pleasant air; my Father, all undisturbed, booming away meanwhile over our heads. I know not why the manoeuvres of Miss Flaw especially attracted me that evening, but I leaned out across Miss Marks and I caught Miss Flaw's eye. She nodded, I nodded; and the amazing deed was done, I hardly know how. Miss Flaw, with incredible swiftness, flew along the line, plucked me by the coat-collar from between my paralysed protectresses, darted with me down the chapel and out into the dark, before anyone had time to say 'Jack Robinson'.

My Father gazed from the pulpit and the stream of exhortation withered on his lips. No one in the body of the audience stirred; no one but himself had clearly seen what had happened. Vague rows of 'saints' with gaping countenances stared up at him, while he shouted, 'Will n.o.body stop them? as we whisked out through the doorway. Forth into the moist night we went, and up the lampless village, where, a few minutes later, the swiftest of the congregation, with my Father at their head, found us sitting on the doorstep of the butcher's shop. My captor was now quite quiet, and made no objection to my quitting her,--'without a single kiss or a goodbye', as the poet says.

Although I had scarcely felt frightened at the time, doubtless my nerves were shaken by this escapade, and it may have had something to do with the recurrence of the distressing visions from which I had suffered as a very little child. These came back, with a force and expansion due to my increased maturity. I had hardly laid my head down on the pillow, than, as it seemed to me, I was taking part in a mad gallop through s.p.a.ce. Some force, which had tight hold of me, so that I felt myself an atom in its grasp, was hurrying me on over an endless slender bridge, under which on either side a loud torrent rushed at a vertiginous depth below. At first our helpless flight,--for I was bound hand and foot like Mazeppa,--proceeded in a straight line, but presently it began to curve, and we raced and roared along, in what gradually became a monstrous vortex, reverberant with noises, loud with light, while, as we proceeded, enormous concentric circles engulfed us, and wheeled above and about us. It seemed as if we,--I, that is, and the undefined force which carried me,-- were pus.h.i.+ng feverishly on towards a goal which our whole concentrated energies were bent on reaching, but which a frenzied despair in my heart told me we never could reach, yet the attainment of which alone could save us from destruction. Far away, in the pulsation of the great luminous whorls, I could just see that goal, a ruby-coloured point waxing and waning, and it bore, or to be exact it consisted of the letters of the word CARMINE.

This agitating vision recurred night after night, and filled me with inexpressible distress. The details of it altered very little, and I knew what I had to expect when I crept into bed. I knew that for a few minutes I should be battling with the chill of the linen sheets, and trying to keep awake, but that then, without a pause, I should slip into that terrible realm of storm and stress in which I was bound hand and foot, and sent galloping through infinity. Often have I wakened, with unutterable joy, to find my Father and Miss Marks, whom my screams had disturbed, standing one on each side of my bed. They could release me from my nightmare, which seldom a.s.sailed me twice a night--but how to preserve me from its original attack pa.s.sed their understanding.

My Father, in his tenderness, thought to exorcize the demon by prayer. He would appear in the bedroom, just as I was first slipping into bed, and he would kneel at my side. The light from a candle on the mantel-shelf streamed down upon his dark head of hair while his face was buried in the coverlid, from which a loud voice came up, a little m.u.f.fled, begging that I might be preserved against all the evil spirits that walk in darkness and that the deep might not swallow me up.

This little ceremony gave a distraction to my thoughts, and may have been useful in that way. But it led to an unfortunate circ.u.mstance. My Father began to enjoy these orisons at my bedside, and to prolong them. Perhaps they lasted a little too long, but I contrived to keep awake through them, sometimes by a great effort. On one unhappy night, however, I gave even worse offense than slumber would have given. My Father was praying aloud, in the att.i.tude I have described, and I was half sitting, half lying in bed, with the clothes sloping from my chin.

Suddenly a rather large insect--dark and flat, with more legs than a self-respecting insect ought to need--appeared at the bottom of the counterpane, and slowly advanced. I think it was nothing worse than a beetle. It walked successfully past my Father's sleek black ball of a head, and climbed straight up at me, nearer, nearer, until it seemed all a twinkle of horns and joints. I bore it in silent fascination until it almost tickled my chin, and then I screamed 'Papa! Papa!' My Father rose in great dudgeon, removed the insect (what were insects to him!) and then gave me a tremendous lecture.

The sense of desperation which this incident produced I shall not easily forget. Life seemed really to be very hara.s.sing when to visions within and beetles without there was joined the consciousness of having grievously offended G.o.d by an act of disrespect. It is difficult for me to justify to myself the violent jobation which my Father gave me in consequence of my scream, except by attributing to him something of the human weakness of vanity. I cannot help thinking that he liked to hear himself speak to G.o.d in the presence of an admiring listener. He prayed with fervour and animation, in pure Johnsonian English, and I hope I am not undutiful if I add my impression that he was not displeased with the sound of his own devotions. My cry for help had needlessly, as he thought, broken in upon this holy and seemly performance. 'You, the child of a naturalist,' he remarked in awesome tones, '_you_ to pretend to feel terror at the advance of an insect?' It could but be a pretext, he declared, for avoiding the testimony of faith in prayer. 'If your heart were fixed, if it panted after the Lord, it would take more than the movements of a beetle to make you disturb oral supplication at His footstool. Beware! for G.o.d is a jealous G.o.d and He consumes them in wrath who make a noise like a dog.'

My Father took at all times a singular pleasure in repeating that 'our G.o.d is a jealous G.o.d'. He liked the word, which I suppose he used in an antiquated sense. He was accustomed to tell the 'saints' at the Room,--in a very genial manner, and smiling at them as he said it,--'I am jealous over you, my beloved brothers and sisters, with a G.o.dly jealousy.' I know that this was interpreted by some of the saints,--for I heard Mary Grace say so to Miss Marks--as meaning that my Father was resentful because some of them attended the service at the Wesleyan chapel on Thursday evenings. But my Father was utterly incapable of such littleness as this, and when he talked of 'jealousy' he meant a lofty solicitude, a careful watchfulness. He meant that their spiritual honour was a matter of anxiety to him. No doubt when he used to tell me to remember that our G.o.d is a jealous G.o.d, he meant that my sins and shortcomings were not matters of indifference to the Divine Being. But I think, looking back, that it was very extraordinary for a man, so instructed and so intelligent as he, to dwell so much on the possible anger of the Lord, rather than on his pity and love. The theory of extreme Puritanism can surely offer no quainter example of its fallacy than this idea that the omnipotent Jehovah--could be seriously offended, and could stoop to revenge, because a little, nervous child of nine had disturbed a prayer by being frightened at a beetle.

The fact that the word 'Carmine' appeared as the goal of my visionary pursuits is not so inexplicable as it may seem. My Father was at this time producing numerous water-colour drawings of minute and even of microscopic forms of life. These he executed in the manner of miniature, with an amazing fidelity of form and with a brilliancy of colour which remains unfaded after fifty years. By far the most costly of his pigments was the intense crimson which is manufactured out of the very spirit and, essence of cochineal. I had lately become a fervent imitator of his works of art, and I was allowed to use all of his colours, except one; I was strictly forbidden to let a hair of my paint- brush touch the little broken ma.s.s of carmine which was all that he possessed. We believed, but I do not know whether this could be the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold at a guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my s.h.i.+bboleth of self-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art and wealth could combine to produce. I imagined, for instance, that at Belshazzar's feast, the loftiest epergne of gold, surrounded by flowers and jewels, carried the monarch's proudest possession, a cake of carmine. I knew of no object in the world of luxury more desirable than this, and its obsession in my waking hours is quite enough, I think, to account for 'carmine' having been the torment of my dreams.

The little incident of the beetle displays my Father's mood at this period in its worst light. His severity was not very creditable, perhaps, to his good sense, but without a word of explanation it may seem even more unreasonable than it was. My Father might have been less stern to my lapses from high conduct, and my own mind at the same time less armoured against his arrows, if our relations had been those which exist in an ordinary religious family. He would have been more indulgent, and my own affections might nevertheless have been more easily alienated, if I had been treated by him as a commonplace child, standing as yet outside the pale of conscious Christianity. But he had formed the idea, and cultivated it a.s.siduously, that I was an _ame d'elite_, a being to whom the mysteries of salvation had been divinely revealed and by whom they had been accepted. I was, to his partial fancy, one in whom the Holy Ghost had already performed a real and permanent work. Hence, I was inside the pale; I had attained that inner position which divided, as we used to say, the Sheep from the Goats. Another little boy might be very well-behaved, but if he had not consciously 'laid hold on Christ', his good deeds, so far, were absolutely useless. Whereas I might be a very naughty boy, and require much chastis.e.m.e.nt from G.o.d and man, but nothing--so my Father thought--could invalidate my election, and sooner or later, perhaps even after many stripes, I must inevitably be brought back to a state of grace.

The paradox between this unquestionable sanctification by faith and my equally unquestionable naughtiness, occupied my Father greatly at this time. He made it a frequent subject of intercession at family prayers, not caring to hide from the servants misdemeanours of mine, which he spread out with a melancholy unction before the Lord. He cultivated the belief that all my little ailments, all my aches and pains, were sent to correct my faults. He carried this persuasion very far, even putting this exhortation before, instead of after, an instant relief of my sufferings. If I burned my finger with a sulphur match, or pinched the end of my nose in the door (to mention but two sorrows that recur to my memory), my Father would solemnly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e: 'Oh may these afflictions be much sanctified to him!'

before offering any remedy for my pain. So that I almost longed, under the pressure of these pangs, to be a G.o.dless child, who had never known the privileges of saving grace, since I argued that such a child would be subjected to none of the sufferings which seemed to a.s.sail my path.

What the ideas or conduct of 'another child' might be I had, however, at this time no idea, for, strange as it may sound, I had not, until my tenth year was far advanced, made acquaintance with any such creature. The 'saints' had children, but I was not called upon to cultivate their company, and I had not the slightest wish to do so. But early in 1859 I was allowed, at last, to a.s.sociate with a child of my own age. I do not recall that this permission gave me any rapture; I accepted it philosophically but without that delighted eagerness which I might have been expected to show. My earliest companion, then, was a little boy of almost exactly my own age. His name was Benny, which no doubt was short for Benjamin. His surname was Jeffries; his mother--I think he had no father--was a solemn and shadowy lady of means who lived in a villa, which was older and much larger than ours, on the opposite side of the road. Going to 'play with Benny' involved a small public excursion, and this I was now allowed to make by myself--an immense source of self- respect.

Everything in my little memories seems to run askew; obviously I ought to have been extremely stirred and broadened by this earliest a.s.sociation with a boy of my own age! Yet I cannot truly say that it was so. Benny's mother possessed what seemed to me a vast domain, with lawns winding among broad shrubberies, and a kitchen-garden, with aged fruit-trees in it. The ripeness of this place, mossed and leafy, was gratifying to my senses, on which the rawness of our own bald garden jarred. There was an old brick wall between the two divisions, upon which it was possible for us to climb up, and from this we gained Pisgah-views which were a prodigious pleasure. But I had not the faintest idea how to 'play'; I had never learned, had never heard of any 'games'. I think Benny must have lacked initiative almost as much as I did.

We walked about, and shook the bushes, and climbed along the wall; I think that was almost all we ever did do. And, sadly enough, I cannot recover a phrase from Benny's lips, nor an action, nor a gesture, although I remember quite clearly how some grown-up people of that time looked, and the very words they said.

For example, I recollect Miss Wilkes very distinctly, since I studied her with great deliberation, and with a suspicious watchfulness that was above my years. In Miss Wilkes a type that had hitherto been absolutely unfamiliar to us obtruded upon our experience. In our Eveless Eden, Woman, if not exactly _hirsuta et horrida_, had always been 'of a certain age'. But Miss Wilkes was a comparatively young thing, and she advanced not by any means unconscious of her charms. All was feminine, all was impulsive, about Miss Wilkes; every gesture seemed eloquent with girlish innocence and the playful dawn of life. In actual years I fancy she was not so extremely youthful, since she was the responsible and trusted headmistress of a large boarding-school for girls, but in her heart the joy of life ran high. Miss Wilkes had a small, round face, with melting eyes, and when she lifted her head, her ringlets seemed to vibrate and s.h.i.+ver like the bells of a paG.o.da. She had a charming way of clasping her hands, and holding them against her bodice, while she said, 'Oh, but--really now?' in a manner inexpressibly engaging. She was very earnest, and she had a pleading way of calling out: 'O, but aren't you teasing me?' which would have brought a tiger fawning to her crinoline.

After we had spent a full year without any social distractions, it seems that our circle of acquaintances had now begun to extend, in spite of my Father's unwillingness to visit his neighbours. He was a fortress that required to be stormed, but there was considerable local curiosity about him, so that by-and- by escalading parties were formed, some of which were partly successful. In the first place, Charles Kingsley had never hesitated to come, from the beginning, ever since our arrival. He had reason to visit our neighbouring town rather frequently, and on such occasions he always marched up and attacked us. It was extraordinary how persistent he was, for my Father must have been a very trying friend. I vividly recollect that a sort of cross- examination of would-be communicants was going on in our half- furnished drawing-room one weekday morning, when Mr. Kingsley was announced; my Father, in stentorian tones, replied: 'Tell Mr.

Kingsley that I am engaged in examining Scripture with certain of the Lord's children.' And I, a little later, kneeling at the window, while the candidates were being dismissed with prayer, watched the author of _Hypatia_ nervously careening about the garden, very restless and impatient, yet preferring this ignominy to the chance of losing my Father's company altogether. Kingsley, a daring spirit, used sometimes to drag us out trawling with him in Torbay, and although his hawk's beak and rattling voice frightened me a little, his was always a jolly presence that brought some refreshment to our seriousness.

But the other visitors who came in Kingsley's wake and without his excuse--how they disturbed us! We used to be seated, my Father at his microscope, I with my map or book, in the down- stairs room we called the study. There would be a hush around us in which you could hear a sea-anemone sigh. Then, abruptly, would come a ring at the front door; my Father would bend at me a corrugated brow, and murmur, under his breath, 'What's that?' and then, at the sound of footsteps, would bolt into the verandah, and around the garden into the potting-shed. If it was no visitor more serious than the postman or the tax-gatherer, I used to go forth and coax the timid wanderer home. If it was a caller, above all a female caller, it was my privilege to prevaricate, remarking innocently that 'Papa is out!'

Into a paradise so carefully guarded, I know not how that serpent Miss Wilkes could penetrate, but there she was. She 'broke bread'

with the Brethren at the adjacent town, from which she carried on strategical movements, which were, up to a certain point, highly successful. She professed herself deeply interested in microscopy, and desired that some of her young ladies should study it also. She came attended by an unimportant man, and by pupils to whom I had sometimes, very unwillingly, to show our 'natural objects'. They would invade us, and all our quietness with chattering noise; I could bear none of them, and I was singularly drawn to Miss Marks by finding that she disliked them too.

By whatever arts she worked, Miss Wilkes certainly achieved a certain ascendancy. When the knocks came at the front door, I was now instructed to see whether the visitor were not she, before my Father bolted to the potting-shed. She was an untiring listener, and my Father had a genius for instruction. Miss Wilkes was never weary of expressing what a revelation of the wonderful works of G.o.d in creation her acquaintance with us had been. She would gaze through the microscope at awful forms, and would persevere until the silver rim which marked the confines of the drop of water under inspection would ripple inwards with a flash of light and vanish, because the drop itself had evaporated. 'Well, I can only say, how marvellous are Thy doings!' was a frequent e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of Miss Wilkes, and one that was very well received. She learned the Latin names of many of the species, and it seems quite pathetic to me, looking back, to realize how much trouble the poor woman took. She 'hung', as the expression is, upon my Father's every word, and one instance of this led to a certain revelation.