CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 3 1924 013 519 925 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013519925 "AND THKKK LAY SOMKTHINO DARK UPON ONB l V TUB GRASSY MOUNDS. 1 Sl'OKIC. " P"(ic ojo. ANNALS QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD By GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D. AUTHOR OF "the SEABOARDPARISH," " ROBERT FALCONER,*' ** DAVID ELGIN BROD," "alec FORBES," " PAUL FABER," ETC., ETC. BOSTON "^ D LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON ST OPPOSITE JROMFIELD .UNIVLRSJTY UBRARV CONTENTS. aiAP.. PAGE I. DESPONDENCY AND CONSOLATION, .... I II. MY FIRST SUNDAY AT MARSHMALLOWS, . . l8 III. MY FIRST MONDAY AT MARSHMALLOWS, . . 25 IV. THE COFFIN, 40 V. VISITORS FROM THE HALL, 54 VI. OLDCASTLE HALL, 68 VII. THE bishop's BASIN, ...... gl VIII. WHAT I PREACHED, 127 IX. THE ORGANIST, . ■ 135 ■ X. MY CHRISTMAS PARTY. I69 XL SERMON ON GOD AND MAMMON, .... IQO XII. THE AVENUE, 233 XIII. YOUNG WEIR, 244 XIV. MY PUPIL, 287 XV. DR. DUNCAN'S STORY, 303 XVI. THE ORGAN, 3^8 XVM. THE CHURCH-RATE, 334 CONTENTS. CHAP. FAGB XVIII. JUDY'S NEWS, 351 XIX. THE INVALID, 3^0 XX MOOD AND WILI,, 375 XXI. THE DEVIL IN THOMAS WEIR 388 XXII. THE DEVIL IN CATHERINE WEIR, .... 396 XXIII. THE DEVIL IN THE VICAR, .... 412 XXIV. AN ANGEL UNAWARES, 425 XXV. TWO PARISHIONERS, ..... 434 XXVI. SATAN CAST OUT, 447 XXVII. THE MAN AND THE CHILD, .... 464 XXVIII. OLD MRS. TOMKINS, 477 XXIX. CALM AND STORM 496 XXX. A SERMON TO MYSELF, 509 , XXXI. A COUNCIL OF FRIENDS, 53D XXXII. THE NEXT THING, 544 XXXIII. OLD ROGERS'S THANKSGIVING, .... 558 XXXJY. TQM'S STORY, . . . ,■ . , , 568 ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD. CHAPTER L DESPONDENCY AND CONSOLATIOK. SEFORE I begin to tell you some of the things I have seen and heard, in both of which I have had to take a share^ now from the com- pulsion of my office, now from the leading of my own heart, and now from that destiny which, in- cluding both, so often throws the man who supposed himself a mere on-looker, into the very vortex of events — that destiny which took form to the old pagans as a gray mist high beyond the heads of their gods, but to us is known as an infinite love, revealed in the mystery of man — ^I say before I begin, it is fitting that, in the ab- sence of a common friend to do that office for me, I should introduce myself to your acquaintance, and I hope coming friendship. Nor can there be any impro- priety in my telling you about myself, seeing I remain A 8 ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD. concealed behind my own words. You can never look me in the eyes, though you may look me in the soul. You may find me out, find my faults, my vanities, my sins, but you will not see me, at least in this world. To you I am but a voice of revealing, not a form of vision ; therefore I am bold behind the mask, to speak to you heart to heait ; bold, I say, just so much the more that I do not speak to you face to face. And when we meet in heaven — well, there I know there is no hiding ; there, there is no reason for hiding anything ; there, the whole desire will be alternate revelation and vision. I am now getting old — faster and faster. I cannot help my gray hairs, nor the wrinkles that gather so slowly yet ruthlessly ; no, nor the quaver that will come in my voice, nor the sense of being feeble in the knees, even when I walk only across the floor of my study. But I have not got used to age yet. I do not feel one atom older than I did at three-and- twenty. Nay, to tell all the truth, I feel a good deal younger. — For then I only felt that a man had to take up his cross ; whereas now 1 feel that a man has to follow Him ; and that makes an unspeakable difference. — ^When my voice quavers, I feel that it is mine and not mine ; that it just belongs to me like my watch, which does not go well now, though it went well thirty years ago — not more than a minute out in 'a month. And when I feel my knees shake, I think of them with a kind of pity, as I used to think of an old mare of my father's of which I was very fond when I m as a lad, and which bore me across many a field and over many a fence, but which at last came to have the same DESPONDENCY AND CONSOLATION. J weakness in her knees that I have in mine; and she knew it too, and took care of them, and so of herself, in a wise equine fashion. These things are not me — or /, if the grammarians like it better, (I always feel a strife between doing as the scholar does and doing as other people do;) they are not me, I say; I have them — and, please God, shall soon have better. For it is not a pleasant thing for a young man, or a young woman either, I venture to say, to have an old voice, and a wrinkled face, and weak knees, and gray hair, or no hair at all. And if any moral Philistine, as our queer Ger- man brothers over the Northern fish-pond would call him, say that this is all rubbish, for that we are old, I would answer: " Of all children how can the children of God be old?" So little do I give in to calling this outside of me, me, that I should not mind presenting a minute descrip- tion of my own person such as would at once clear me from any suspicion of vanity in so introducing myself Not that my honesty would result in the least from indifference to the external — ^but from comparative indif- ference to the transitional; not to the transitional in itself, which is of eternal significance and result, but to the particular form of imperfection which it may have reached at any individual moment of its infinite pro- gression towards the complete. For no sooner have I spoken the word now, than that now is dead and another is dying ; nay, in such a regard, there is no w?e/— onLy a past of whicl- we know a Uttle, and a future of which we know far less a»d far more. But I will not speak at aU 4 ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBCUftHOCO. of this body of my earthly tabernacle, for it is on the whole more pleasant to forget all about it. And be- sides, I do not want to set any of ray readers to whom I would have the pleasure of speaking far more openly and cordially than if they were seated on the other side of my writing-table — I do not want to set them wonder- ing whether the vicar be this vicar or that vicar; or indeed to run the risk of giving the offence I might give, if I were anything else than " a wandering voice." I did not feel as I feel pow when first I came to this parish. For, as I have said, I am now getting old very fast. True, I was thirty when I was made a vicar, an age at which a man might be expected to be beginning to grow wise ; but even then I had much yet to learn. I well remember the first evening on which I wan- dered out from the vicarage to take a look about me — to find out, in short, where I was, and what aspect the sky and earth here presented. Strangely enough, I had never been here before ; for the presentation had been made me while I was abroad. — I was depressed. It was depressing weather. Grave doubts as to whether I was in my place in the church, would keep rising and floating about, like rain-clouds within me. Not that I doubted about the church ; I only doubted about my- self. " Were my motives pure t" " WTiat were my motives?" And, to tell the truth, I did not know what my motives were, and therefore I could not answer about the purity of them. Perhaps see.'ng we are in this world in order to become pure, it would be expecting too much of any young man that he should be abs}- not be very long. So I drew near to the shop, feeling as if the Lord might be at work there at one of the benches. And when I reached the door, there was my pale-faced hearer of the Sunday afternoon, sawing a board for a coffin-lid. As my shadow fell across and darkened his work, he ■ lifted his head and saw me. I could not altogether understand the expression of his countenance as he stood upright from his labour and touched his old hat with rather a proud than a courteous gesture. And I could not believe that he was glad to see me, although he laid down his saw and advanced to the door. It was the gentleman in him, not the man, ■that sought to make me welcome, hardly caring whether I saw through the ceremony or not. True, there was a smile on his lips, but the smile of a man who cherishes a secret grudge ; of one who does not altogether dislike you, but who has a claim upon you — say, for an apology, of which claim he doubts whether you know the exist- ence. So the smile seemed tightened, and stopped just when it got half-way to its width, and was about to be- come hearty and begin to shine. "May I come in?" I said. " Come in, sir," he answered. THE COFFIN. 43 * I am glad I have happened to come upon you by accident," I said. He smiled as if he did not quite believe in the acci- dent, and considered it a part of the play between us that I should pretend it. I hastened to add — "I was wandering about the place, making some acquaintance with it, and with my friends in it, when I came upon you quite unexpectedly. You know I saw you in church on Sunday afternoon." " I know you saw me, sir," he answered, with a motion as if to return to his work ; " but, to tell the truth, I don't go to church very often." I did not quite know whether to take this as proceed- ing from an honest fear of being misunderstood, or from a sense of being in general superior to all that sort of thing. But I felt that it would be of no good to pursue the inquiry directly. I looked therefore for something to say. "Ah! your work is not always a pleasant one," I said, associating the feelings of which I have abeady spoken with the facts before me, and looking at the coffin, the lower part of which stood nearly finished upon trestles on the floor. > " Well, there are unpleasant things in all trades," he answered. "But it does not matter," he added, with an increase of bitterness in his smile. "I didn't mean," I said, "that the work was un- plsasant — only sad. It must always be painful to make » coflSn." " A joiner gets used to it, sir, as you do to the funeral 44 ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD. service. But, for my part, I don't see why i: should be considered so unhappy for a man to be buried. This isn't such a good job, after all, this world, sir, you must allow." " Neither is that coffin," said I, as if by a sTidden in- spiration. The man seemed taken aback, as Old Rogers might have said. He looked at the coffin and then looked at me. "Well, sir," he said, after a short pause, which no doubt seemed longer both to him and to me than it would have seemed to any third person, " I don't see anything amiss with the coffin. I don't say it '11 last till doomsday, as the gravedigger says to Hamlet, because I don't know so much about doomsday as some people pretend to ; but you see, sir, it 's not finished yet." " Thank you," I said ; " that 's just what I meant. You thought I was hasty in my judgment of your coffin ; whereas I only said of it knowingly what you said of the world thoughtlessly. How do you know that the world is finished any more than your coffin { And how dare you then say that it is a bad job i " The same respectfully scornful smile passed over his face, as much as to say, " Ah ! it 's your trade to talk that way, so I must not-be too hard upon you." "At any rate, sir," he said, "whoever made it has taken long enough about it, a person would think, to finish anything he ever meant to finish." " One day is with the Lord as a tliousand years, and a thousand years as one day,' I said. THE COFFIN. 4] " Thai 's supposing," he answered, " that the Lord did make the world. For my part, I am half of a mind that the Lord didn't make it at all." " I am very glad to hear you say so," I answered. Hereupon I found that we had changed places a little. He looked up at me. The smile of superiority was no longer there, and a puzzled questioning, which might it dicate either " Who would have expected that from you?" or, "What can he mean?" or both at once, had taken its place. I, for my part, knew that on the scale of the man's judgment I had risen nearer to his own level. As he said nothing, however, and I was in danger of being misunderstood, I proceeded at once. " Of course it seems to me better that you should not beheve God had done a thing, than that you should be- lieve He had not done it well ! " " Ah ! I see, sir. Then you will allow there is some ioom for doubting whether He made the worid at all ? " "Yes; for I do not think an honest man, as you seem to me to be, would be able to doubt without any room whatever. That would be only for a fool. But it is just possible, as we are not perfectly good ourselves— you '11 allow that, won't you 1 " " That I will, sir ; God knows." " Well, I say — as we 're not quite good ourselves, it 's just possible that things may be too good for us to do them the justice of believing in them." "But there are tilings, you must allow, so plainly wrong ! " " So lauch so, both in the world and in myself, that it 4^ ANNALS OF A QUIE3 NEIGHBOURHOOD. would be to me torturing despair to believe that God did not make the world ; for then, how would it ever be put right? Therefore I prefer the theory that He has not done making it yet." " But wouldn't you say, sir, that God might have managed it without so many slips in the making as your way would suppose? I should think myself a bad work man ifJ worked after that fashion." " I do not believe that there are any slips. You know you are making a cofSn; but are you sure you know what God is making of the world 1" " That I can't tell, of course, nor anybody else." "Then you can't say that what looks like a slip is really a slip, either in the design or in the workmanship. You do not know what end He has in view ; and you may find some day that those slips were just the straight road to that very end." " Ah ! maybe. But you can't be sure of it, you see." " Perhaps not, in the way you mean ; but sure enough, for all that, to try it upon hfe — to order my way by it, and so find that it works well. And I find that it ex- plains everything that comes near it You know that no engineer would be satisfied with his engine on paper, nor with any proof whatever except seeing how w will go." He made no reply. It is a principle of mine never to push anything over the edge. When I am successful in any argument, my one dread is of humiliating my opponent. Indeed I cannot bear it It humiliates me. And if you want THE COFFIN. 4) him to think about anything, you must leave him room, and not give him such associations with the question tliai the very idea of it will be painful and irritating to him. Let him have a nand in the convincing of himself. I have been surprised sometimes to see my own argu- ments come up fresh and green, when I thought the fowls of the air had devoured them up. When a man reasons for victory and not for the truth in the other soul, he is sure of just one ally, the same that Faust had in fighting Gretchen's brother — that is, the Devil. But God and good men are against him. So I never follow up a victory of that kind, for, as I said, the defeat of the intellect is not the object in fighting with the sword of the Spirit, but the acceptance of the heart. In this case, therefore, I drew back. " May I ask for whom you are making that coffin J" " For a sister of my own, sir." " I 'm sorry to hear that." " There 's no occasion. I can't say 1 'm sony, though she was one of the best women I ever knew.'' " Why are you not sorry, then 1 Life 's a good thmg in the main, you will allow." " Yes, when it 's endurable at all. But to have a brute of a husband coming home at any hour of the night or morning, drunk upon the money she had earned by hard WDrk, was enough to take more of the shine out ol things than church-going on Sundays could put in again, regular as she was, poor woman ! I 'm as glad as her brute of a husband, that she 's out of his way at last." " How do you know he 's glad of it I" 48 ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD. " lie 's been drunk every night since she died." " Then he *s the worse for losing her?" " He may well be. Crying like a h)'pocrite, too, ovei liis own work ' " " A fool he must be. A hypocrite, perhaps not A hypocrite is a terrible name to give. Perhaps her death will do him good." " He doesn't deserve to be done any good to. I would have made this coffin for him with a world ol pleasure." " I never found that I deserved anything, not even a coffin. The only claim that I could ever lay to any- thing was that I was very much in want of it." The old smile returned — as much as to say, " That 's your little game in the church." But I resolved to try nothing more with him at present ; and indeed was sorry that I had started the new question at all, partly because thus I had again given him occasion to feel that he knew better than I did, which was not good either for him or for me in our relation to each other. " This has been a fine old room once," I said, look- ing round the workshop. '' You can see it wasn't a workshop always, sir. Many a grand dinn^-party has sat down in this room when it was in its glory. Look at the chimney-piece there." " I have been looking at it," I said, going nearer. " It represents the four quarters of the world, you see." I saw strange figures of men and women, one on a kneeling camel, one on a crawling crocodile, and others THE COFFIN. ^ differently mounted; with various besides of Nature's bizarre productions creeping and flying in stone-carving over the huge fire-place, in which, in place of a fire, stood several new and therefore brilliantly red cart* wheels. The sun shone through the upper part of a high window, of which many of the panes were broken, right in upon the cart-wheels, which, glowing thus in the chimney under the sombre chimney-piece, added to the grotesque look of the whole assemblage of contrasts. The coffin and the carpenter stood in the twilight occa- sioned by the sharp division of light made by a lofty wing of the house that rose flanking the other window. The room was still wainscotted in panels, which, I pre- sume, for the sake of the more light required for handi- craft, had been washed all over with white. At the level of labour they were broken in many places. Somehow or other, the whole reminded me of Albert Diirer's " Melencholia." Seeing I was interested in looking about his shop, my new friend — for I could not help feeling that we' should be friends before all was over, and so began to count him one already — resumed the conversation. He had never taken up the dropped thread of it before. "Yes, sir," he said; "the owners of the place little thought it would come to this — the deals growing into a coffin there on the spot where the grand dinner was laid for them and their guests ! But there is another thing about it that is odder still ; my son is the last male " Here he stopped suddenly, and his face grew very red. As suddenly he resumed — 50 ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD. '• I 'in not a gentleman, sir; but I will tell the truthi Curse it ! — I beg your pardon, sir," — and here the old smile — " I doji't think I got that from their side, of the house. — My son's not the last male descendanl." Here followed another pause. As to the imprecation, I knew better than to take any notice of a mere expression of excitement under a sense of some injury with which I was not yet acquainted. li I could get his feelings right in regard to other and more important things, a reform in that matter would soon follow; whereas to make a mountain of a mole- hill would be to put that very mountain between him and me. Nor would I ask him any questions, lest I should just happen to ask him the wrong one ; for this parishioner of mine evidently wanted careful handling, if I would do him any good. And it will not do any man good to fling even the Bible in his face. Nay, a roll of bank-notes, which would be more evidently a good to most men, would carry insult with it if presented in that manner. You cannot expect people to accept before they have had a chance of seeing what the offered gift really is. After a pause, therefore, the carpenter had once more to recommence, or let the conversation lie. I stood in a waiting attitude. And while I looked at him, I was reminded of some one else whom I knew — with whom too, I had pleasant associations — though I could not in the least determine who that one might be. " It 's very foolish of me to talk so to a stranger," he resumed. THE COFFIN. 5I "It is very kind and friendly of you," I said, still careful to make no advances. " And you yourself be- long to the old family that once lived in this old house?" " It would be no boast to tell the truth,*sir, even if it were a credit to me, which it is not. That family has been nothing but a curse to ours." I noted that he spoke of that family as different from his, and yet implied that he belonged to it.- The ex- planation would come in time. But the man was again silent, planing away at half the lid of his sister's coffin. And I could not help thinking that the closed mouth meant to utter nothing more on this occasion. " I am sure there must be many a story to tell about ihis old place, if only there were any one to tell them," I said at last, looking round the room once more. — " I think I see the remains of paintings on the ceiling." " You are sharp-eyed, sir. My father says they were plain enough in his young days.'' " Is your father alive, then?" " That he is, sir, and hearty too, though he seldom goes out of doors now. Will you go up stairs and see him i He 's past ninety, sir. He has plenty of stories to tell about the old place — before it began to fall to pieces like." " I won't go to-day," I said, partly because I wajited to be at home to »-eceive any one who might call, and partly to secure an excuse for calling again upon the carpenter sooner than I should otherwise have liked to do. " I expect visitors myself, and it is time I were at home. Good morning." 52 ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD, "Good morning, sir." And away home I went with a new wonder in my brain. The man did not seem unknown to me. I mean, the state orhis mind woke no feeling of perplexity in me. I was certain of understanding it thoroughly when I had learned something of his history ; for that such a man must have a history of his own was rendered only the more probable from the fact that he knew something of the history of his forefathers, though, indeed, there are some men who seem to have no other. It wai strange, however, to think of that man working away at a trade in the very house in which such ancestors had eaten and drunk, and married and given in marriage. The house and family had declined together — in out- ward appearance at least ; for it was quite possible both might have risen in the moral and spiritual scale in proportion as they sank in the social one. And if any of my readers are at first inclined to think that this could hardly be, seeing that the man was little, if any- thing, better than an infidel, I would just like to hold one minute's conversation with them on that subject A man may be on the way to the truth, just in virtue of his doubling. I will lell you what Lord Bacon says, and of all writers of English I delight in him : " So it is in contemplation : if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts ; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." Now I could not tell the kind or character of this man's doubt ; but it was evidently real and not affected doubt ; and ihat was much in his favour And I could see tliat he THE COFFIN. S3 was a thinking man; just one of the sort I thought I should get on with in time, because he was honest — notwithstanding that unpleasant smile of his, which