Part 52 (2/2)

I used to try to arrange my thoughts, but could not; the past seemed swept away and buried, like the wreck of some drowned land after a flood.

Ploughed by affliction to the core, my heart lay fallow for every seed that fell. Eleanor understood me, and gently and gradually, beneath her skilful hand, the chaos began again to bloom with verdure. She and Crossthwaite used to sit and read to me--from the Bible, from poets, from every book which could suggest soothing, graceful, or hopeful fancies. Now out of the stillness of the darkened chamber, one or two priceless sentences of a Kempis, or a spirit-stirring Hebrew psalm, would fall upon my ear: and then there was silence again; and I was left to brood over the words in vacancy, till they became a fibre of my own soul's core. Again and again the stories of Lazarus and the Magdalene alternated with Milton's Penseroso, or with Wordsworth's tenderest and most solemn strains. Exquisite prints from the history of our Lord's life and death were hung one by one, each for a few days, opposite my bed, where they might catch my eye the moment that I woke, the moment before I fell asleep. I heard one day the good dean remonstrating with her on the ”sentimentalism” of her mode of treatment.

”Poor drowned b.u.t.terfly!” she answered, smiling, ”he must be fed with honey-dew. Have I not surely had practice enough already?”

”Yes, angel that you are!” answered the old man. ”You have indeed had practice enough!” And lifting her hand reverentially to his lips, he turned and left the room.

She sat down by me as I lay, and began to read from Tennyson's Lotus-Eaters. But it was not reading--it was rather a soft dreamy chant, which rose and fell like the waves of sound on an aeolian harp.

”There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the gra.s.s, Or night dews on still waters between wails Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pa.s.s; Music that gentler on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.

Here are cool mosses deep, And through the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

”Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness?

All things have rest: why should we toil alone?

We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings.

And cease from wanderings; Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm, Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings, 'There is no joy but calm!'

Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?”

She paused--

My soul was an enchanted boat Which, like a sleeping swan, did float Upon the silver waves of her sweet singing.

Half-unconscious, I looked up. Before me hung a copy of Raffaelle's cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. As my eye wandered over it, it seemed to blend into harmony with the feelings which the poem had stirred. I seemed to float upon the gla.s.sy lake. I watched the vista of the waters and mountains, receding into the dreamy infinite of the still summer sky.

Softly from distant sh.o.r.es came the hum of eager mult.i.tudes; towers and palaces slept quietly beneath the eastern sun. In front, fantastic fishes, and the birds of the mountain and the lake, confessed His power, who sat there in His calm G.o.dlike beauty, His eye ranging over all that still infinity of His own works, over all that wondrous line of figures, which seemed to express every gradation of spiritual consciousness, from the dark self-condemned dislike of Judas's averted and wily face, through mere animal greediness to the first dawnings of surprise, and on to the manly awe and grat.i.tude of Andrew's majestic figure, and the self-abhorrent humility of Peter, as he shrank down into the bottom of the skiff, and with convulsive palms and bursting brow seemed to press out from his inmost heart the words, ”Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Truly, pictures are the books of the unlearned, and of the mis-learned too.

Glorious Raffaelle! Shakspeare of the South! Mighty preacher, to whose blessed intuition it was given to know all human hearts, to embody in form and colour all spiritual truths, common alike to Protestant and Papist, to workman and to sage--oh that I may meet thee before the throne of G.o.d, if it be but to thank thee for that one picture, in which thou didst reveal to me, in a single glance, every step of my own spiritual history!

She seemed to follow my eyes, and guess from them the workings of my heart; for now, in a low, half-abstracted voice, as Diotima may have talked of old, she began to speak of rest and labour, of death and life; of a labour which is perfect rest--of a daily death, which is but daily birth--of weakness, which is the strength of G.o.d; and so she wandered on in her speech to Him who died for us. And gradually she turned to me. She laid one finger solemnly on my listless palm, as her words and voice became more intense, more personal. She talked of Him, as Mary may have talked just risen from His feet. She spoke of Him as I had never heard Him spoken of before--with a tender pa.s.sionate loyalty, kept down and softened by the deepest awe. The sense of her intense belief, s.h.i.+ning out in every lineament of her face, carried conviction to my heart more than ten thousand arguments could do. It must be true!--Was not the power of it around her like a glory? She spoke of Him as near us--watching us--in words of such vivid eloquence that I turned half-startled to her, as if I expected to see Him standing by her side.

She spoke of Him as the great Reformer; and yet as the true conservative; the inspirer of all new truths, revealing in His Bible to every age abysses of new wisdom, as the times require; and yet the vindicator of all which is ancient and eternal--the justifier of His own dealings with man from the beginning. She spoke of Him as the true demagogue--the champion of the poor; and yet as the true King, above and below all earthly rank; on whose will alone all real superiority of man to man, all the time-justified and time-honoured usages of the family, the society, the nation, stand and shall stand for ever.

And then she changed her tone; and in a voice of infinite tenderness she spoke of Him as the Creator, the Word, the Inspirer, the only perfect Artist, the Fountain of all Genius.

She made me feel--would that His ministers had made me feel it before, since they say that they believe it--that He had pa.s.sed victorious through my vilest temptations, that He sympathized with my every struggle.

She told me how He, in the first dawn of manhood, full of the dim consciousness of His own power, full of strange yearning presentiments about His own sad and glorious destiny, went up into the wilderness, as every youth, above all every genius, must, there to be tempted of the devil. She told how alone with the wild beasts, and the brute powers of nature, He saw into the open secret--the mystery of man's twofold life, His kings.h.i.+p over earth, His sons.h.i.+p under G.o.d: and conquered in the might of His knowledge. How He was tempted, like every genius, to use His creative powers for selfish ends--to yield to the l.u.s.t of display and singularity, and break through those laws which He came to reveal and to fulfil--to do one little act of evil, that He might secure thereby the harvest of good which was the object of His life: and how He had conquered in the faith that He was the Son of G.o.d. She told me how He had borne the sorrows of genius; how the slightest pang that I had ever felt was but a dim faint pattern of His; how He, above all men, had felt the agony of calumny, misconception, misinterpretation; how He had fought with bigotry and stupidity, casting His pearls before swine, knowing full well what it was to speak to the deaf and the blind; how He had wept over Jerusalem, in the bitterness of disappointed patriotism, when He had tried in vain to awaken within a nation of slavish and yet rebellious bigots the consciousness of their glorious calling....

It was too much--I hid my face in the coverlet, and burst out into long, low, and yet most happy weeping. She rose and went to the window, and beckoned Katie from the room within.

”I am afraid,” she said, ”my conversation has been too much for him.”

”Showers sweeten the air,” said Katie; and truly enough, as my own lightened brain told me.

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