Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

“No. Can you repeat them?”

“‘His volant touch, Instinct through all proportions, low and high, Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.’”

“That is wonderfully fine. Thank you. That is better than my fugue by a good deal. You have cancelled the obligation.”

“Do you think doing a good turn again is cancelling an obligation? I don’t think an obligation can ever be RETURNED in the sense of being got rid of. But I am being hypercritical.”

“Not at all.—Shall I tell you what I was thinking of while playing that fugue?”

“I should like much to hear.”

“I had been thinking, while you were preaching, of the many fancies men had worshipped for the truth; now following this, now following that; ever believing they were on the point of laying hold upon her, and going down to the grave empty-handed as they came.”

“And empty-hearted, too?” I asked; but he went on without heeding me.

“And I saw a vision of multitudes following, following where nothing was to be seen, with arms outstretched in all directions, some clasping vacancy to their bosoms, some reaching on tiptoe over the heads of their neighbours, and some with hanging heads, and hands clasped behind their backs, retiring hopeless from the chase.”

“Strange!” I said; “for I felt so full of hope while you played, that I never doubted it was hope you meant to express.”

“So I do not doubt I did; for the multitude was full of hope, vain hope, to lay hold upon the truth. And you, being full of the main expression, and in sympathy with it, did not heed the undertones of disappointment, or the sighs of those who turned their backs on the chase. Just so it is in life.”

“I am no musician,” I returned, “to give you a musical counter to your picture. But I see a grave man tilling the ground in peace, and the form of Truth standing behind him, and folding her wings closer and closer over and around him as he works on at his day’s labour.”

“Very pretty,” said Mr Stoddart, and said no more.

“Suppose,” I went on, “that a person knows that he has not laid hold on the truth, is that sufficient ground for his making any further assertion than that he has not found it?”

“No. But if he has tried hard and has not found ANYTHING that he can say is true, he cannot help thinking that most likely there is no such thing.”

“Suppose,” I said, “that nobody has found the truth, is that sufficient ground for saying that nobody ever will find it? or that there is no such thing as truth to be found? Are the ages so nearly done that no chance yet remains? Surely if God has made us to desire the truth, He has got some truth to cast into the gulf of that desire. Shall God create hunger and no food? But possibly a man may be looking the wrong way for it. You may be using the microscope, when you ought to open both eyes and lift up your head. Or a man may be finding some truth which is feeding his soul, when he does not think he is finding any. You know the Fairy Queen. Think how long the Redcross Knight travelled with the Lady Truth—Una, you know—without learning to believe in her; and how much longer still without ever seeing her face. For my part, may God give me strength to follow till I die. Only I will venture to say this, that it is not by any agony of the intellect that I expect to discover her.”

Mr Stoddart sat drumming silently with his fingers, a half-smile on his face, and his eyes raised at an angle of forty-five degrees. I felt that the enthusiasm with which I had spoken was thrown away upon him. But I was not going to be ashamed therefore. I would put some faith in his best nature.

“But does not,” he said, gently lowering his eyes upon mine after a moment’s pause—“does not your choice of a profession imply that you have not to give chase to a fleeting phantom? Do you not profess to have, and hold, and therefore teach the truth?”

“I profess only to have caught glimpses of her white garments,—those, I mean, of the abstract truth of which you speak. But I have seen that which is eternally beyond her: the ideal in the real, the living truth, not the truth that I can THINK, but the truth that thinks itself, that thinks me, that God has thought, yea, that God is, the truth BEING true to itself and to God and to man—Christ Jesus, my Lord, who knows, and feels, and does the truth. I have seen Him, and I am both content and unsatisfied. For in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Thomas a Kempis says: ‘Cui aeternum Verbum loquitur, ille a multis opinionibus expeditur.’” (He to whom the eternal Word speaks, is set free from a press of opinions.)

I rose, and held out my hand to Mr Stoddart. He rose likewise, and took it kindly, conducted me to the room below, and ringing the bell, committed me to the care of the butler.

As I approached the gate, I met Jane Rogers coming back from the village. I stopped and spoke to her. Her eyes were very red.

“Nothing amiss at home, Jane?” I said.

“No, sir, thank you,” answered Jane, and burst out crying.

“What is the matter, then? Is your–”

“Nothing’s the matter with nobody, sir.”

“Something is the matter with you.”

“Yes, sir. But I’m quite well.”

“I don’t want to pry into your affairs; but if you think I can be of any use to you, mind you come to me.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” said Jane; and, dropping a courtesy, walked on with her basket.

I went to her parents’ cottage. As I came near the mill, the young miller was standing in the door with his eyes fixed on the ground, while the mill went on hopping behind him. But when he caught sight of me, he turned, and went in, as if he had not seen me.

“Has he been behaving ill to Jane?” thought I. As he evidently wished to avoid me, I passed the mill without looking in at the door, as I was in the habit of doing, and went on to the cottage, where I lifted the latch, and walked in. Both the old people were there, and both looked troubled, though they welcomed me none the less kindly.

“I met Jane,” I said, “and she looked unhappy; so I came on to hear what was the matter.”

“You oughtn’t to be troubled with our small affairs,” said Mrs. Rogers.

“If the parson wants to know, why, the parson must be told,” said Old Rogers, smiling cheerily, as if he, at least, would be relieved by telling me.

“I don’t want to know,” I said, “if you don’t want to tell me. But can I be of any use?”

“I don’t think you can, sir,—leastways, I’m afraid not,” said the old woman.

“I am sorry to say, sir, that Master Brownrigg and his son has come to words about our Jane; and it’s not agreeable to have folk’s daughter quarrelled over in that way,” said Old Rogers. “What’ll be the upshot on it, I don’t know, but it looks bad now. For the father he tells the son that if ever he hear of him saying one word to our Jane, out of the mill he goes, as sure as his name’s Dick. Now, it’s rather a good chance, I think, to see what the young fellow’s made of, sir. So I tells my old ‘oman here; and so I told Jane. But neither on ‘em seems to see the comfort of it somehow. But the New Testament do say a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife.”

“But she ain’t his wife yet,” said Mrs Rogers to her husband, whose drift was not yet evident.

“No more she can be, ‘cept he leaves his father for her.”

“And what’ll become of them then, without the mill?”

“You and me never had no mill, old ‘oman,” said Rogers; “yet here we be, very nearly ripe now,—ain’t us, wife?”

“Medlar-like, Old Rogers, I doubt,—rotten before we’re ripe,” replied his wife, quoting a more humorous than refined proverb.

“Nay, nay, old ‘oman. Don’t ‘e say so. The Lord won’t let us rot before we’re ripe, anyhow. That I be sure on.”

“But, anyhow, it’s all very well to talk. Thou knows how to talk, Rogers. But how will it be when the children comes, and no mill?”

“To grind ‘em in, old ‘oman?”

Mrs Rogers turned to me, who was listening with real interest, and much amusement.

“I wish you would speak a word to Old Rogers, sir. He never will speak as he’s spoken to. He’s always over merry, or over serious. He either takes me up short with a sermon, or he laughs me out of countenance that I don’t know where to look.”

Now I was pretty sure that Rogers’s conduct was simple consistency, and that the difficulty arose from his always acting upon one or two of the plainest principles of truth and right; whereas his wife, good woman—for the bad, old leaven of the Pharisees could not rise much in her somehow—was always reminding him of certain precepts of behaviour to the oblivion of principles. “A bird in the hand,” &c.—“Marry in haste,” &c.—“When want comes in at the door love flies out at the window,” were amongst her favourite sayings; although not one of them was supported by her own experience. For instance, she had married in haste herself, and never, I believe, had once thought of repenting of it, although she had had far more than the requisite leisure for doing so. And many was the time that want had come in at her door, and the first thing it always did was to clip the wings of Love, and make him less flighty, and more tender and serviceable. So I could not even pretend to read her husband a lecture.

“He’s a curious man, Old Rogers,” I said. “But as far as I can see, he’s in the right, in the main. Isn’t he now?”

“Oh, yes, I daresay. I think he’s always right about the rights of the thing, you know. But a body may go too far that way. It won’t do to starve, sir.”