Medoline Selwyn's Work Part 5

The next morning I went in search of Mrs. Flaxman. I found her busy superintending, along with the housekeeper, some extensive pickling and preserving operations. I hesitated at first in making my request; I wanted her to accompany me to the funeral.

"I promised Mrs. Blake to go to her daughter's funeral to-day, and I should so much like to have you go with me," I said.

"If you would like my company, your liking shall be gratified, my dear."

"But you looked tired, and it is such a hot day."

"I shall want folk to come and get me safely planted away some day, and we can take the carriage. Thomas will be glad to go; at least he always wants to attend funerals. Such persons usually are fond of the mild excitement attendant on such gatherings."

I went in search of Thomas, who was with coachman and gardener, having a lad to a.s.sist him in both occupations. He a.s.sured me that work was very pressing, and it would be at considerable personal sacrifice if he went.

The stable boy, a red-haired, keen-faced youth standing by, gave a quizzical look, which I interpreted as meaning that Thomas wished to conceal the fact that he was very glad indeed to go to Mrs. Daniel Blake's funeral. At the appointed hour I found myself in a carriage drawn by a pair of horses fully as handsome, but much more sedate than Faery.

"Why, this is positively luxurious," I exclaimed, leaning back in the very comfortable carriage. Mrs. Flaxman smiled serenely.

"My dear, it is a luxury you may every day enjoy. I am not inclined for carriage exercise--a walk has greater charm for me save when I am tired."

"If you had walked all your life--only enjoying a carriage at brief intervals during the holidays, you would enjoy this drive, I am sure."

"Your life is not a very long affair, my child. At your age, no doubt, I thought as you now do. I believe G.o.d intended that youth and age should see this world through different eyes."

Mrs. Flaxman, I was finding, had a way of setting me thinking about serious things, and yet the thoughts were mainly pleasant ones. She was different from any one I ever knew. I found her presence so restful. I had the impression that some time in her life she had encountered storms, but the mastery had been gained; and now she had drifted into a peaceful harbor. Looking back now over longer stretches of years and experiences than I then had, I can recall a few other persons who impressed me in a similar fashion. But they were rare and beautiful exceptions to the scores, and even hundreds of average human folk whom I have known.

After we had driven some distance, Thomas turned to inquire if we were going to the grave.

"It is a shady drive good part of the way; trees on one side and the water's edge bordering the other. Perhaps we might as well go."

"They'd take it very kind of you, ma'am, I am sure," Thomas responded, although her remarks were addressed to me. Evidently he was very willing to exercise the horses, notwithstanding his press of work.

We sat in the carriage at the door of Daniel's cottage. The house seemed full, and quite a crowd were standing outside.

"They have shown the poor thing a good deal of respect," Mrs. Flaxman whispered to me as she glanced at the numerous a.s.semblage.

Suddenly, on the hush that seemed to enfold everything, there broke weird, discordant singing--women's voices sounding high and piercing, the men's deeper and more melodious. The hymn they sang was long, and the air very plaintive, bringing tears to my eyes, and causing the strange, oppressed feeling of the preceding day to return. When the singing ceased I noticed the men removing their hats, and a moment after a stentorian voice speaking loudly. I glanced around amazed, but Mrs. Flaxman noticing my surprise, whispered, "It is prayer."

If the singing made me nervous the prayer intensified the feeling. In the hot, midsummer air, so still the leaves scarce rippled on the trees, I could, after a few seconds, distinguish every word the man uttered.

Accustomed to the decorous prayer of the German pastors our teachers had taken us to hear, this impetuous prayer to the Deity awed me. He talked with the invisible Jehovah as if they two were long tried friends, between whom there was such perfect trust; whatever the man asked the G.o.d would bestow. First there was intercession, pleading for forgiveness for past offences, and for restraining grace for future needs. Afterward he spoke of Death, the common inheritance of each of us, and the pain his entrance had caused in this home, and then followed thanksgiving that through Christ we could conquer even Death himself. I shall never forget the triumphant ring in that man's voice as he pa.s.sed on to the joy of those who, trampling on Death, have pa.s.sed safely within the light of G.o.d.

"If one of the old masters had heard that man's prayer to-day, he would have set it to some grand music. It reminds me of a _Te Deum_ or oratoria," I said to Mrs. Flaxman, when the benediction was p.r.o.nounced.

The tears were in her eyes, but her face was shining as if some inner light were irradiating it.

"Did you ever hear so impetuous a prayer?" I asked.

She answered my question by asking another:

"Did you not like it?"

"I think it frightened me. The clergyman seemed to be talking to some one right beside him."

"Is not all prayer that--talking, pleading with a G.o.d nigh at hand?"

I did not reply. My eyes were fastened on the crowd now issuing from the cottage door; the coffin, carried by men, came first, the people pressing hurriedly after--among them one whom I instinctively felt to be the clergyman--a thick-set man with hair turning white, and a most n.o.ble, benignant face. As the procession formed he took his place at the head; Daniel and his mother climbing into a wagon directly behind the hea.r.s.e; the former looked utterly broken down, as if the light of his eyes had verily been quenched.

The procession then moved slowly along, and in a short time we turned out of the Mill Road, and into a beautiful shady street along the water's edge. I watched the sunlight on the shimmering waters, and far across, where one of the wooded headlands looked down into the sea, the green trees made such a picture on the water that, in watching this perfect bit of landscape, I found myself forgetting the solemn occasion, and the sorrowing heart of the solitary mourner, while I planned to come there the very next day with my sketch book, and secure this gem to send to my favorite teacher as a specimen of my new surroundings. And then fancy got painting her own pictures as to what my work in this new life with its greatly altered meaning should be, and before we had reached the grave's edge I had mapped out my ongoings for a long stretch of the future, and that in such eager, worldly fashion that I almost forgot that at the end of all this bright-hued future there lay for me, as well as for Daniel Blake's wife, an open grave. My busy thoughts were recalled by hearing the penetrating voice of the preacher saying "dust to dust, ashes to ashes," with the remainder of the beautiful formula used by many of the churches in planting the human germ. A glance around revealed Daniel Blake leaning in the very abandonment of grief on a tombstone at the grave's side, and looking down into the coffin that was rapidly disappearing under the shovelfuls of clay. A keen sense of my own heartlessness in feeling so happy within touch of such woe came over me, while a vague wonder seized me, if some other careless-hearted creatures might not be planning their joys some day in presence of my breaking heart.

CHAPTER V.

A NEW ACCOMPLISHMENT LEARNED.

I was rapidly attaining the comfortable home feeling at Oaklands, which makes life in castle or hut a rapture. There were so many sources of enjoyment open to me. I had a more than usual love for painting, and had for years prosecuted the art more from love than duty. My last teacher, an old German Professor, exacting and very thorough, had been as particular with my instruction as if my bread depended on my proficiency.

I thanked him now in my heart when I found myself shut out from other opportunities for improvement than what, unaided, I could secure. There were special bits of landscape I loved to sketch over and over again; these I would take to Mrs. Flaxman, or Reynolds, the housekeeper, to see if they could recognize the original of my drawing; but even Samuel, the stable-boy, could name the spot at sight. His joy was unbounded, but scarcely excelled my own when I succeeded in making a water-color sketch of himself, the hair a shade or two less flame-colored than was natural, and which even Hubert p.r.o.nounced a very fair likeness. Then in the large, stately drawing-room, some of whose furnishing dated back a century or more, stood a fine, grand piano. Here I studied over again my school lessons, or tried new ventures from some of the masters. What dreams I had in that dim room in the pauses of my music; peopling that place again with the vanished ones who had loved and suffered there my own dead parents among the rest, whose faces looked down at me, I thought tenderly, from the walls where their portraits hung in heavy carved frames, of a fashion a generation old. There was about my mother's face a haunting expression, as of a well known face which long afterward looked out at me one day from my own reflection in the mirror and then, to my joy, I discovered I was like her in feature and expression. In the library too, whose key Mr. Winthrop had left with Mrs. Flaxman for my use, I found an unexplored wonderland. My literature had chiefly consisted of the text book variety, and if I had possessed wider range, my time was so fully occupied with lessons I could not have availed myself of the privilege; but now, with what relish I went from shelf to shelf, dipping into a book here and another there, taking by turns poetry, history, fiction, and biography, Shakespeare and Milton had so often perplexed me in Grammar and a.n.a.lysis, that I left them for the most part severely alone; but there were others, fresh and new to me as a June morning, and quite as refreshing: Hubert used sometimes to join me, but we generally disagreed. I had little patience with his practical criticisms of my choicest readings, while he a.s.sured me my enthusiasm over my favorite authors was a clear waste of sentiment. Mrs. Flaxman was, in addition to all this, adding to my fund of knowledge the very useful one of needlework, and was getting me interested not only in the mysteries of plain sewing, but brought some of her carefully h.o.a.rded tapestries for me to imitate--beautiful Scriptural scenes that sent me to the Bible with a critical interest to see if the designs were in harmony with its spirit. Then too I used to spend happy hours exploring garden, field and forest, for Oaklands embraced a wide area, making acquaintance with the gentle Alderneys, and Jerseys, who brought us so generously their daily offering, as well as the many other meek, dumb creatures whom I was getting to care for with a quite human interest. The seash.o.r.e too had its constantly renewed fascinations which drew me there, to watch its tireless ebb and flow, or the busy craft disappearing out of sight towards their many havens around the earth. Stories I had for the seash.o.r.e, and others for the woodland and gardens which I carried on in long chapters, day after day, until sorrowfully I came to the end, as we must always do to everything in this world.

My heroes and heroines were all singularly busy people, carrying on their loves and intrigues amid restless activities, and living in the main to help others in the way of life rather than, like myself, living to themselves alone. Altogether I did not find a moment of my sixteen hours of working life each day any too long, and opened my eyes on each morning's light as if it were a fresh creation.

Then, in addition to all these, there were solemn, stately tea drinkings among the upper ten of Cavendish society, but usually I found them a task--the music was poor, the conversation almost wholly confined to local affairs, and the only refection of a first-cla.s.s nature was the food provided. Cavendish ladies were notable housewives, and could converse eloquently on pickling, preserving, baking and the many details of domestic economy, while as regarded the fashions, I verily believe they could have enlightened Worth himself on some important particulars.

I used to feel sadly out of place, and sat very often silent and constrained, thinking of my dearer, and more satisfying companionships of books, and sea, and flowers, and the fair face of nature generally, and wondering if I could ever get, like them, absorbed in such humble things, getting for instance my pickles nicely greened, and of a proper degree of crispness, and my preserves, and jellies prepared with equal perfection for diseased and fastidious palates. "Why can't they talk of their minds, and the food these must relish, and a.s.similate, instead of all the time being devoted to the body; how it must be fed and clothed?" I asked, with perhaps too evident contempt, of Mrs. Flaxman, one evening as we drove home under the midnight stars, after one of these entertainments.

"My child, it is natural that people should talk on subjects that most interest them. Not every one has vision clear enough to penetrate beyond the tangible and visible."

"Then, in what are the Cavendish aristocracy better than Mrs. Blake, and that cla.s.s? Even she talks sometimes to me about G.o.d and the soul. She says she and Daniel think a great deal about these of late."

"G.o.d only knows; they may be far better in His sight than any of us,"

Mrs. Flaxman said, wearily.

"Not any better than you, dear friend," I said, clasping the little, thin hand in mine.

"Yes, better, if they are doing more for others than I, sacrificing their own ease and pleasure, which, alas, I am not doing."

"How can you say that, when you are making home, and me so happy? I want to grow to be just such a woman as you."

"Alas, child, you must take a higher ideal than I am to pattern after, if your life is to be a success."

"Mrs. Blake tells me of a good man living on the Mill Road, who is blind and thinks a great deal. He says none of us can tell what our lives seem like to the angels, and that many a one will get an overwhelming surprise after death; some who think they are no good in the world, mere c.u.mberers of the ground, will find such blessed surprises as they wander through the Heavenly places."

"That is very comforting, dear, if we could only hope to be among those meek ones."

"He told Mrs. Blake she might be one of G.o.d's blessed ones if she wished--that any sincere soul was welcomed by Him."

"Surely you did not need to go to Mrs. Blake to learn that?"

I was silent, perhaps ashamed for Mrs. Flaxman to know how very dense my ignorance was respecting these mysteries of our holy religion. As the weeks went by my friendship for Mrs. Blake strengthened. I kept her little cottage brightened with the old-fashioned blossoms that she loved best. "They mind me so of when I was a child, and the whole world seemed in summer time like a great garden. We lived deep in the country, just a little strip of ground brought in from the woods, and all round our little log house was the green trees," she said one day, the pleasant reflective look that I liked to see coming into her kind, strong face. I used to sit and listen to her homely, uncultivated speech, and wonder why I liked her so much better than my natural a.s.sociates. She was so real, I could not imagine her trying to appear other than she was. Some way she seemed to take me back to elementary things, like the memories of childhood or the reading of the Book of Genesis. Then she had so changed Daniel's cottage--newly papered, whitewashed and thoroughly cleansed with soap and water, it seemed one of the cosiest, homeliest places I ever saw. I only went in the afternoons, and her housework then was always done; but she was never idle. I used to watch her knitting stockings of all sizes with silent curiosity; but one day I asked who a tiny pair of scarlet ones was for. "Mrs. Lark.u.m's baby. The poor things are in desperate trouble," she replied.

"But do you knit for other folks?"

"Yes, fur some. Them I jest finished is fur one of the Chisties' down the lane. Any size from one to ten fits there."