Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers Part 12

"Yes," and Robert walked slowly back along the way he had come, Miss Shipton accompanying him, for it was the way home. When they came to the corner, however, they both, without noticing it, went eastward, and not to the town.

"Should you like to be a sailor, Mr. Trevanion?" said Miss Shipton, catching sight of the fishing vessels over the low sea-beaten hedge.

"No, I think not. At least it would depend----"

"Depend on what?"

"I should not like to be away for weeks during the North Sea fishing, if----"

"If it were very cold?"

"Oh, no; that is not what I meant--if I had a wife at home who cared for me and watched for me!"

"Really, Mr. Trevanion, if you were a fisherman you would not take things so seriously. It would all come as a matter of course. Yon would be busy with your nets, and have no time to think of her."

"But she might think of me."

"Oh, well, perhaps she might now and then; but she would have her house to look after, and all her friends would be near her."

"On stormy nights," said Robert, musingly.

"How very serious you are! Such a lovely day, too--a nice time to be talking about stormy nights! Of course there are stormy nights, but the boats can run into harbour, and if they cannot, the men are not always drowned."

"Certainly not; how foolish, and to think of coming home after five or six weeks on the Doggerbank--oh me! But here is the very rock where we sat the other morning. I am sure you are tired, let us sit down again; your hair is not dry yet."

They sat down.

"It is quite wet still," and Robert ventured to touch it, putting his hand underneath it.

"An awful plague it is! Horrid sandy-coloured stuff, and such a nuisance in the water! I think I shall have it cut short."

"I am sure you won't. Sandy-coloured! it is beautiful."

Miss Shipton tossed her parasol about, shaking her hair loose from his fingers.

"When it is spread out in the sunshine," said Robert, as he separated a little piece of it between his fingers, "the sun shows its varying shades. How lovely they are!" His hand went a little higher, till it touched the back of her neck.

"On stormy nights.--on stormy nights," he almost whispered, "I should think of you if you did not think of me."

The hand went a little farther under the hair, his head inclined to it, and he was intoxicated with its own rich scent mingled with, that of the sweet sea-water. He trembled with emotion from head to foot. What is there in life like this? Old as creation, ever new; and under the almost tropical sun, fronting the ocean, in the full heat of youth, he drew her head to his. She yielded, and in a moment his eyes and mouth were buried in her loose-cl.u.s.tering tresses. Before, however, he could say another word he was interrupted. A sheep, feeding above them, alarmed by a stranger's approach, rushed down past them; and hastily recovering himself, Robert looked up. There was n.o.body, but he saw that they were near his house, and that his father, who had just come to the window, was looking down straight upon them. Miss Shipton immediately said that it was late, rose, and walked homewards; and Robert alone went up the cliff.

Michael had seen the girl walk away and had recognised her, but he had not seen what had preceded her departure. Instantly, however, he penetrated the secret, and his first words when Robert presented himself were--

"Why, Robert, that was Miss Shipton."

"Yes, father."

"What were she and you doing here?"

"We happened to meet."

There was something in the tone in which Robert replied which showed the father at once that his son's confidence in him was not illimitable, as he had believed it to be hitherto. It is a heart-breaking time for father and mother when they first become aware that the deepest secrets in their children are intrusted not to them, but to others. Michael felt repelled and was silent; but after a while, as they both were leaning over the garden-wall and gazing upon the water, he said--

"Mere worldlings, those Shiptons, Robert!"

"I do not know much about them, but they seem an honest, good sort of people."

"Ah! yes, my son; they may be all that. But what is it? They are not the Lord's."

Robert made no reply, and presently father and son left the house and went back to Perran to their work, uncommunicative.

It was a peculiar misfortune for a man of Michael's temperament that he had n.o.body save his son who could a.s.sist him in the shaping of his resolves or in the correction of his conclusions. Brought up in a narrow sect, self-centred, moody, he needed continually that wholesome twist to another point of the compa.s.s which intercourse with equals gives. He was continually p.r.o.ne to subjection under the rigorous domination of a single thought, from which he deduced inference after inference, ending in absurdity, which would have been dissipated in an instant by discussion.

We complain of people because they are not original, but we do not ask what their originality, if they had any, would be worth. Better a thousand times than the originality of most of us is the average common-sense which is not our own exclusively, but shared with millions of our fellow-beings, and is not due to any one of them. Michael ought to have talked over the events of the morning with his wife; but alas!

his wife's counsel was never sought, and not worth having. He did seek counsel at the throne of heavenly grace that night, but the answer given by the oracle was framed by himself. He was in sore straits. Something seemed to have interposed itself between him and Robert, and when, instead of the old unveiled frankness, Robert was reticent and even suspicious, Michael's heart almost broke, and he went up to his room, and shutting the door, wept bitter tears. His sorrow clothed itself, even at its uttermost, with no words of his own, but always in those of the Book.

"O my son Absalom!" he cried, "my son, my son, Absalom! Would G.o.d I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"

He remembered also what his own married life had been; he always trusted that Robert would have a wife who would be a help to him, and he felt sure that this girl Shipton, with her pretty rosy face and blue eyes, had no brains. To think that his boy should repeat the same inexplicable blunder, that she was _silly_, that he would never hear from her lips a serious word! What will she be if trouble comes on him? What will she be when a twelvemonth has pa.s.sed? What will _he_ be when he sits by his fireside in long winter evenings, alone with her, and finds she cannot interest him for a moment?

Worse still, she was not a child of G.o.d. He did not know that she ever sought the Lord. She went to church once a day and read her prayers, and that was all. She was not one of the chosen, and she might corrupt him, and he might fall away, and so commit the sin against the Holy Ghost "O Lord, O Lord!" he prayed one evening, in rebellion rather than as a suppliant, "what has Thy servant done that Thou shouldst visit him thus?"

He almost mutinied, but he was afraid, and his religion came to his rescue, and he broke down into "And yet not my will, the will of the meanest of sinners, but Thine be done." He made up his mind once or twice that he would solemnly remonstrate with his son, but his aspect was such whenever the subject was approached, even from a distance, that he dared not. Hitherto the boy had joyfully submitted to be counselled, and had sought his father's direction, but now, if the conversation turned in a certain direction, a kind of savage reserve was visible, at which Michael was frightened. He was a man of exceedingly slow conception.

For days and days he would often debate within himself, and at the end the fog was as thick as ever. He complained once to David Trevenna of this failing, and David gave him a useful piece of practical advice.

"Leave it alone, master. The more you thinks, the more you muddle yourself. Leave it alone, and when it comes into your head, try to get rid of it. In a week or so the thing will do more for itself than you'll do for it. It will settle, like new beer, and come clear enough. That's what my missus has often said to me, and I know she's right."

But, do what he might, Michael could not in this instance leave it alone.

He cast about incessantly for some device by which he could break his son loose from the girl. It was all in vain. She might be frivolous, but there was nothing against her character, and he saw evident signs that if he attempted any exercise of authority he would lose Robert altogether in open revolt. For Robert, it must be remembered, had never scattered his strength in loose love. He had grown up to manhood in perfect innocence, and all his stored-up pa.s.sion spent itself in idealising the object which by chance had provoked it.

Michael one night--it was a Sunday night--he was always worse on Sundays when he had not been at work--was unable to sleep, and rose and read the Book. He turned to the Epistle to the Romans, a favourite epistle with him, and deservedly so, for there we come face to face with the divine apostle, with a reality un.o.bscured by miracle or myth. And such a reality! Christianity becomes no longer a marvel, for a man with that force and depth of experience is sufficient to impose a religion on the whole human race, no matter what the form of the creed may be. Michael read in the ninth chapter, "_I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh_." What did Paul mean? Accursed from Christ! What _could_ he mean save that he was willing to be d.a.m.ned to save those whom he loved. Why not? Why should not a man be willing to be d.a.m.ned for others? The d.a.m.nation of a single soul is shut up in itself, and may be the means of saving not only others, but their children and a whole race. d.a.m.nation! It is awful, horrible; millions of years, with no relief, with no light from the Most High, and in subjection to His Enemy. "And yet, if it is to save--if it is to save Robert," thought Michael, "G.o.d give me strength--I could endure it. Did not the Son Himself venture to risk the wrath of the Father that He might redeem man? What am I? what is my poor self?" And Michael determined that night that neither his life in this world nor in the next, if he could rescue his child, should be of any account.

How sublime a thing is this dust or dirt we call man! We grovel in view of the vast distances of the fixed stars and their magnitudes, but these distances and these dimensions are a delusion. There is nothing grander in Sirius than in a pebble, nor anything more worthy of admiration and astonishment in his remoteness than in the length of Oxford Street. The true sublime is in the self-negation of the martyr, and it became doubly magnificent in the case of Michael, who was willing not merely to give up a finite existence for something other than himself--to be shot and so end, or to be burnt with a hope of following glory--but to submit for ever to separation and torment, if only he might shield his child from G.o.d's displeasure. It may be objected that such a resolution is impossible. Doubtless it is now altogether incredible; but it is so because we no longer know what religion means, or what is the effect produced upon the mind by the constant study of one book and a perfectly unconditional belief in it. Furthermore, as before said, Michael never corrected himself or preserved his sanity by constant intercourse with his fellows. He incessantly brooded, and the offspring of a soul like his, begotten on itself, is monstrous and grotesque. He questioned himself and his oracle further. What could Paul mean exactly? G.o.d could not curse him if he did no wrong. He could only mean that he was willing to sin and be punished provided Israel might live. It was lawful then to tell a lie or perpetrate any evil deed in order to protect his child.

Something suddenly crossed his mind; what it was we shall see later on.

And yet the thought was too awful. He could not endure to sin, not only against his Creator, but against his boy. Perhaps G.o.d might pardon him after centuries of suffering; and yet He could not. The gates of h.e.l.l having once closed upon him, there could be no escape. He struggled in agony, until at last he determined that, first of all, he would speak to Robert, although he knew it would be useless. He would conquer the strange dread he had of remonstrance, and then, if that failed, he would--do anything.

On the Sabbath following, as they came out of the meeting-house in the evening, Michael proposed to Robert that they should walk down to the sh.o.r.e. It was a very unusual proposal, for walking on the Sabbath, save to and from the means of grace, was almost a crime, and Robert a.s.sented, not without some curiosity and even alarm. The two went together in silence till they came to the deserted sh.o.r.e. The sun had set behind the point on their right, and far away in the distance could he seen the beneficent interrupted ray of the revolving light. Father and son walked side by side.

"Robert," said Michael at last, "I have long wished to speak to you. G.o.d knows I would not do it if He did not command me, but I cannot help it.

I fear you have engaged yourself with a young woman who is not one of His children."

"Who told you she was not, father?"

"Who told me? Why, Robert, it is notorious. Who told me? Is she not known to belong to the world? does she ever appear before the Lord?"

"Do you think then, father, that because she does not come to our chapel she cannot be saved?"

"No, you know I do not. The Lord has His followers doubtless in other communions besides our own, but the Shiptons are not His."

"You mean, I suppose, that they do not believe exactly what we believe, and that they go to church?"

"No, no; I mean that she has not found Him, and that she is of the world--of the world! O Robert, Robert! think what you are doing--that you will mate yourself with one who is not elect, that you may have children who will he the children of wrath. You don't know what I have gone through for you. I have wrestled and prayed before I could bring myself to do my duty and talk with you, and even now I cannot speak.