Friday, the first of August, 1834.
Many may remember that day; what a
soft, grey, summer morning it was, and how it broke
out into brightness; how everywhere bells were ringing,
club fraternities walking with bands and banners,
school-children having feasts and work-people holidays;
how, in town and country, there was spread abroad
a general sense of benevolent rejoicing because
honest old England had lifted up her generous voice,
nay, had paid down cheerfully her twenty millions,
and in all her colonies the negro was free.
Many may still find, in some forgotten
drawer, the medal bought by thousands and tens of
thousands, of all classes, in copper, silver, or gold distributed
in charity-schools, and given by old people to their
grandchildren. I saw Mrs. Halifax tying one with
a piece of blue ribbon round little Louise’s
neck, in remembrance of this day. The pretty
medal, with the slave standing upright, stretching
out to Heaven free hands, from which the fetters are
dropping as I overheard John say to his
wife, he could fancy the freeman Paul would stand in
the Roman prison, when he answered to those that loved
him, “I have fought the good
fight. I have finished my
course. I have kept the faith.”
Now, with my quickened ears, I often
heard John talking quietly to his wife on this wise.
He remained by her side the whole
forenoon wheeling her about in her garden-chair;
taking her to see her school-children in their glory
on our lawn to hear the shouts rising up
from the people at the mill-yard below. For
all Enderley, following the master’s example,
took an interest, hearty even among hearty hard-working
England, in the Emancipation of the Slaves.
We had our own young people round
us, and the day was a glorious day, they declared
one and all.
John was happy too infinitely
happy. After dinner he carried his wife to her
chair beside the weeping ash, where she could smell
the late hay in the meadow, and hear the ripple of
the stream in the beech-wood faint, for
it was almost dried up now, but pleasant still.
Her husband sat on the grass, making her laugh with
his quaint sayings admiring her in her
new bonnet, and in the lovely white shawl Guy’s
shawl which Mr. Guy himself had really no
time for admiring. He had gone off to the school
tea-drinking, escorting his sister and sister-in-law,
and another lady, whose eyes brightened with most
“sisterly” joy whenever she glanced at
her old playfellow. Guy’s “sister”
she nevertheless was not, nor was ever likely to be and
I questioned whether, in his secret heart, he had
not begun already to feel particularly thankful for
that circumstance.
“Ah, mother,” cried the
father, smiling, “you’ll see how it will
end: all our young birds will soon be flown there
will be nobody left but you and me.”
“Never mind, John;” and
stooping over him, she gave him one of her quiet,
soft kisses, precious now she was an old woman as they
had been in the days of her bloom. “Never
mind. Once there were only our two selves now
there will be only our two selves again. We shall
be very happy. We only need one another.”
“Only one another, my darling.”
This last word, and the manner of
his saying it, I can hear if I listen in silence,
clear as if yet I heard its sound. This last
sight of them sitting under the ash-tree,
the sun making still whiter Ursula’s white shawl,
brightening the marriage ring on her bare hand, and
throwing, instead of silver, some of their boyish gold
colour into the edges of John’s curls this
picture I see with my shut eyes, vivid as yesterday.
I sat for some time in my room then
John came to fetch me for our customary walk along
his favourite “terrace” on the Flat.
He rarely liked to miss it he said the
day hardly seemed complete or perfect unless one had
seen the sun set. Thus, almost every evening,
we used to spend an hour or more, pacing up and down,
or sitting in that little hollow under the brow of
the Flat, where, as from the topmost seat of a natural
amphitheatre, one could see Rose Cottage and the old
well-head where the cattle drank; our own green garden-gate,
the dark mass of the beech-wood, and far away beyond
that Nunneley Hill, where the sun went down.
There, having walked somewhat less
time than usual, for the evening was warm and it had
been a fatiguing day, John and I sat down together.
We talked a little, ramblingly chiefly
of Longfield how I was to have my old room
again and how a new nursery was to be planned
for the grandchildren.
“We can’t get out of the
way of children, I see clearly,” he said, laughing.
“We shall have Longfield just as full as ever
it was, all summer time. But in winter we’ll
be quiet, and sit by the chimney-corner, and plunge
into my dusty desert of books eh, Phineas?
You shall help me to make notes for those lectures
I have intended giving at Norton Bury, these ten years
past. And we’ll rub up our old Latin,
and dip into modern poetry great rubbish,
I fear! Nobody like our old friend Will of Avon,
or even your namesake, worthy Phineas Fletcher.”
I reminded him of the “Shepherd’s
life and fate,” which he always liked so much,
and used to say was his ideal of peaceful happiness.
“Well, and I think so still.
‘Keep true to the dreams of thy youth,’
saith the old German; I have not been false to mine.
I have had a happy life, thank God; ay, and what
few men can say, it has been the very sort of happiness
I myself would have chosen. I think most lives,
if, while faithfully doing our little best, day by
day, we were content to leave their thread in wiser
hands than ours, would thus weave themselves out;
until, looked back upon as a whole, they would seem
as bright a web as mine.”
He sat, talking thus, resting his
chin on his hands his eyes, calm and sweet,
looking out westward where the sun was about
an hour from the horizon.
“Do you remember how we used
to lie on the grass in your father’s garden,
and how we never could catch the sunset except in fragments
between the abbey trees! I wonder if they keep
the yew hedge clipped as round as ever.”
I told him Edwin had said to-day that
some strange tenants were going to make an inn of
the old house, and turn the lawn into a bowling-green.
“What a shame! I wish
I could prevent it. And yet, perhaps not,”
he added, after a silence. “Ought we not
rather to recognise and submit to the universal law
of change? How each in his place is fulfilling
his day, and passing away, just as that sun is passing.
Only we know not whither he passes; while whither
we go we know, and the Way we know the
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.”
Almost before he had done speaking (God
grant that in the Kingdom I may hear that voice, not
a tone altered I would not wish it altered
even there) a whole troop of our young people
came out of Mrs. Tod’s cottage, and nodded to
us from below.
There was Mrs. Edwin, standing talking
to the good old soul, who admired her baby-boy very
much, but wouldn’t allow there could be any
children like Mrs. Halifax’s children.
There was Edwin, deep in converse
with his brother Guy, while beside them prettier
and younger-looking than ever Grace Oldtower
was making a posy for little Louise.
Further down the slope, walking slowly,
side by side, evidently seeing nobody but one another,
were another couple.
“I think, sometimes, John, that
those two, William and Maud, will be the happiest
of all the children.”
He smiled, looked after them for a
minute, and then laid himself quietly down on his
back along the slope, his eyes still directed towards
the sunset. When, brightening as it descended,
the sun shone level upon the place where we were sitting,
I saw John pull his broad straw hat over his face,
and compose himself, with both hands clasped upon
his breast, in the attitude of sleep.
I knew he was very tired, so I spoke
no more, but threw my cloak over him. He looked
up, thanked me silently, with his old familiar smile.
One day one day I shall know him by that
smile! I sat half an hour or more watching the
sun, which sank steadily, slowly, round, and red,
without a single cloud. Beautiful, as I had never
before seen it; so clear, that one could note the
very instant its disc touched the horizon’s
grey.
Maud and Mr. Ravenel were coming up
the slope. I beckoned them to come softly, not
to disturb the father. They and I sat in silence,
facing the west. The sun journeyed down to his
setting lower lower; there was
a crescent, a line, a dim sparkle of light; then he
was gone. And still we sat grave,
but not sad looking into the brightness
he had left behind; believing, yea, knowing, we should
see his glorious face again to-morrow.
“How cold it has grown,”
said Maud. “I think we ought to wake my
father.”
She went up to him, laid her hand
upon his, that were folded together over the cloak drew
back startled alarmed.
“Father!”
I put the child aside. It was
I who moved the hat from John’s face the
face for John himself was far, far away.
Gone from us unto Him whose faithful servant he was.
While he was sleeping thus the Master had called
him.
His two sons carried him down the
slope. They laid him in the upper room in Mrs.
Tod’s cottage. Then I went home to tell
his wife.
She was at last composed, as we thought,
lying on her bed, death-like almost, but calm.
It was ten o’clock at night. I left her
with all her children watching round her.
I went out, up to Rose Cottage, to
sit an hour by myself alone, looking at him whom I
should not see again for as he had said “a
little while.”
“A little while a
little while.” I comforted myself with
those words. I fancied I could almost hear John
saying them, standing near me, with his hand on my
shoulder. John himself, quite distinct from that
which lay so still before me; beautiful as nothing
but death can be, younger much than he had looked
this very morning younger by twenty years.
Farewell, John! Farewell, my
more than brother! It is but for a little while.
As I sat, thinking how peacefully
the hands lay, clasped together still, how sweet was
the expression of the close mouth, and what a strange
shadowy likeness the whole face bore to Muriel’s
little face, which I had seen resting in the same
deep rest on the same pillow; some one touched me.
It was Mrs. Halifax.
How she came I do not know; nor how
she had managed to steal out from among her children.
Nor how she, who had not walked for weeks, had found
her way up hither, in the dark, all alone. Nor
what strength, almost more than mortal, helped her
to stand there, as she did stand, upright and calm gazing gazing
as I had done.
“It is very like him; don’t
you think so, Phineas?” The voice low and soft,
unbroken by any sob. “He once told me,
in case of this, he would rather I did
not come and look at him; but I can, you see.”
I gave her my place, and she sat down
by the bed. It might have been ten minutes or
more that she and I remained thus, without exchanging
a word.
“I think I hear some one at
the door. Brother, will you call in the children?”
Guy, altogether overcome, knelt down
beside his mother, and besought her to let him take
her home.
“Presently presently,
my son. You are very good to me; but your
father. Children, come in and look at your father.”
They all gathered round her weeping;
but she spoke without single tear.
“I was a girl, younger than
any of you, when first I met your father. Next
month we shall have been married thirty-three years.
Thirty-three years.”
Her eyes grew dreamy, as if fancy
had led her back all that space of time; her fingers
moved to and fro, mechanically, over her wedding-ring.
“Children, we were so happy,
you cannot tell. He was so good; he loved me
so. Better than that, he made me good; that was
why I loved him. Oh, what his love was to me
from the first! strength, hope, peace; comfort and
help in trouble, sweetness in prosperity. How
my life became happy and complete how I
grew worthier to myself because he had taken me for
his own! And what he was Children,
no one but me ever knew all his goodness, no one but
himself ever knew how dearly I loved your father.
We were more precious each to each than anything on
earth; except His service, who gave us to one another.”
Her voice dropped all but inaudible;
but she roused herself, and made it once more clear
and firm, the mother’s natural voice.
“Guy, Edwin, all of you, must
never forget your father. You must do as he
wishes, and live as he lived in all ways.
You must love him, and love one another. Children,
you will never do anything that need make you ashamed
to meet your father.”
As they hung round her she kissed
them all her three sons and her daughter,
one by one; then, her mind being perhaps led astray
by the room we were in, looked feebly round for one
more child remembered smiled
“How glad her father will be
to have her again his own little Muriel.”
“Mother! mother darling! come
home,” whispered Guy, almost in a sob.
His mother stooped over him, gave
him one kiss more him her favourite of
all her children and repeated the old phrase:
“Presently, presently!
Now go away, all of you; I want to be left for a
little, alone with my husband.”
As we went out, I saw her turn toward
the bed “John, John!” The same
tone, almost the same words, with which she had crept
up to him years before, the day they were betrothed.
Just a low, low murmur, like a tired child creeping
to fond protecting arms. “John, John!”
We closed the door. We all sat
on the stairs outside; it might have been for minutes,
it might have been for hours. Within or without no
one spoke nothing stirred.
At last Guy softly went in.
She was still in the same place by
the bed-side, but half lying on the bed, as I had
seen her turn when I was shutting the door. Her
arm was round her husband’s neck; her face,
pressed inwards to the pillow, was nestled close to
his hair. They might have been asleep both
of them.
One of her children called her, but
she neither answered nor stirred.
Guy lifted her up, very tenderly;
his mother, who had no stay left but him his
mother a widow
No, thank God! she was not a widow now.