Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

“For you see, sir, it is not always a body feels he has a right to spend his ha’pence on baccay; and sometimes, too, he ‘aint got none to spend.”

“In the meantime,” I said, “here is some that I bought for you as I came along. I hope you will find it good. I am no judge.”

The old sailor’s eyes glistened with gratitude. “Well, who’d ha’ thought it. You didn’t think I was beggin’ for it, sir, surely?”

“You see I had it for you in my pocket.”

“Well, that IS good o’ you, sir!”

“Why, Rogers, that’ll last you a month!” exclaimed his wife, looking nearly as pleased as himself.

“Six weeks at least, wife,” he answered. “And ye don’t smoke yourself, sir, and yet ye bring baccay to me! Well, it’s just like yer Master, sir.”

I went away, resolved that Old Rogers should have no chance of “grumbling” for want of tobacco, if I could help it.

CHAPTER IV. THE COFFIN

On the way back, my thoughts were still occupied with the woman I had seen in the little shop. The old man-of-war’s man was probably the nobler being of the two; and if I had had to choose between them, I should no doubt have chosen him. But I had not to choose between them; I had only to think about them; and I thought a great deal more about the one I could not understand than the one I could understand. For Old Rogers wanted little help from me; whereas the other was evidently a soul in pain, and therefore belonged to me in peculiar right of my office; while the readiest way in which I could justify to myself the possession of that office was to make it a shepherding of the sheep. So I resolved to find out what I could about her, as one having a right to know, that I might see whether I could not help her. From herself it was evident that her secret, if she had one, was not to be easily gained; but even the common reports of the village would be some enlightenment to the darkness I was in about her.

As I went again through the village, I observed a narrow lane striking off to the left, and resolved to explore in that direction. It led up to one side of the large house of which I have already spoken. As I came near, I smelt what has been to me always a delightful smell—that of fresh deals under the hands of the carpenter. In the scent of those boards of pine is enclosed all the idea the tree could gather of the world of forest where it was reared. It speaks of many wild and bright but chiefly clean and rather cold things. If I were idling, it would draw me to it across many fields.—Turning a corner, I heard the sound of a saw. And this sound drew me yet more. For a carpenter’s shop was the delight of my boyhood; and after I began to read the history of our Lord with something of that sense of reality with which we read other histories, and which, I am sorry to think, so much of the well-meant instruction we receive in our youth tends to destroy, my feeling about such a workshop grew stronger and stronger, till at last I never could go near enough to see the shavings lying on the floor of one, without a spiritual sensation such as I have in entering an old church; which sensation, ever since having been admitted on the usual conditions to a Mohammedan mosque, urges me to pull off, not only my hat, but my shoes likewise. And the feeling has grown upon me, till now it seems at times as if the only cure in the world for social pride would be to go for five silent minutes into a carpenter’s shop. How one can think of himself as above his neighbours, within sight, sound, or smell of one, I fear I am getting almost unable to imagine, and one ought not to get out of sympathy with the wrong. Only as I am growing old now, it does not matter so much, for I daresay my time will not be very long.

So I drew near to the shop, feeling as if the Lord might be at work there at one of the benches. And when I reached the door, there was my pale-faced hearer of the Sunday afternoon, sawing a board for a coffin-lid.

As my shadow fell across and darkened his work, he lifted his head and saw me.

I could not altogether understand the expression of his countenance as he stood upright from his labour and touched his old hat with rather a proud than a courteous gesture. And I could not believe that he was glad to see me, although he laid down his saw and advanced to the door. It was the gentleman in him, not the man, that sought to make me welcome, hardly caring whether I saw through the ceremony or not. True, there was a smile on his lips, but the smile of a man who cherishes a secret grudge; of one who does not altogether dislike you, but who has a claim upon you—say, for an apology, of which claim he doubts whether you know the existence. So the smile seemed tightened, and stopped just when it got half-way to its width, and was about to become hearty and begin to shine.

“May I come in?” I said.

“Come in, sir,” he answered.

“I am glad I have happened to come upon you by accident,” I said.

He smiled as if he did not quite believe in the accident, and considered it a part of the play between us that I should pretend it. I hastened to add—

“I was wandering about the place, making some acquaintance with it, and with my friends in it, when I came upon you quite unexpectedly. You know I saw you in church on Sunday afternoon.”

“I know you saw me, sir,” he answered, with a motion as if to return to his work; “but, to tell the truth, I don’t go to church very often.”

I did not quite know whether to take this as proceeding from an honest fear of being misunderstood, or from a sense of being in general superior to all that sort of thing. But I felt that it would be of no good to pursue the inquiry directly. I looked therefore for something to say.

“Ah! your work is not always a pleasant one,” I said, associating the feelings of which I have already spoken with the facts before me, and looking at the coffin, the lower part of which stood nearly finished upon trestles on the floor.

“Well, there are unpleasant things in all trades,” he answered. “But it does not matter,” he added, with an increase of bitterness in his smile.

“I didn’t mean,” I said, “that the work was unpleasant—only sad. It must always be painful to make a coffin.”

“A joiner gets used to it, sir, as you do to the funeral service. But, for my part, I don’t see why it should be considered so unhappy for a man to be buried. This isn’t such a good job, after all, this world, sir, you must allow.”

“Neither is that coffin,” said I, as if by a sudden inspiration.

The man seemed taken aback, as Old Rogers might have said. He looked at the coffin and then looked at me.

“Well, sir,” he said, after a short pause, which no doubt seemed longer both to him and to me than it would have seemed to any third person, “I don’t see anything amiss with the coffin. I don’t say it’ll last till doomsday, as the gravedigger says to Hamlet, because I don’t know so much about doomsday as some people pretend to; but you see, sir, it’s not finished yet.”

“Thank you,” I said; “that’s just what I meant. You thought I was hasty in my judgment of your coffin; whereas I only said of it knowingly what you said of the world thoughtlessly. How do you know that the world is finished anymore than your coffin? And how dare you then say that it is a bad job?”

The same respectfully scornful smile passed over his face, as much as to say, “Ah! it’s your trade to talk that way, so I must not be too hard upon you.”

“At any rate, sir,” he said, “whoever made it has taken long enough about it, a person would think, to finish anything he ever meant to finish.”

“One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” I said.

“That’s supposing,” he answered, “that the Lord did make the world. For my part, I am half of a mind that the Lord didn’t make it at all.”

“I am very glad to hear you say so,” I answered.

Hereupon I found that we had changed places a little. He looked up at me. The smile of superiority was no longer there, and a puzzled questioning, which might indicate either “Who would have expected that from you?” or, “What can he mean?” or both at once, had taken its place. I, for my part, knew that on the scale of the man’s judgment I had risen nearer to his own level. As he said nothing, however, and I was in danger of being misunderstood, I proceeded at once.

“Of course it seems to me better that you should not believe God had done a thing, than that you should believe He had not done it well!”

“Ah! I see, sir. Then you will allow there is some room for doubting whether He made the world at all?”

“Yes; for I do not think an honest man, as you seem to me to be, would be able to doubt without any room whatever. That would be only for a fool. But it is just possible, as we are not perfectly good ourselves—you’ll allow that, won’t you?”

“That I will, sir; God knows.”

“Well, I say—as we’re not quite good ourselves, it’s just possible that things may be too good for us to do them the justice of believing in them.”

“But there are things, you must allow, so plainly wrong!”

“So much so, both in the world and in myself, that it would be to me torturing despair to believe that God did not make the world; for then, how would it ever be put right? Therefore I prefer the theory that He has not done making it yet.”

“But wouldn’t you say, sir, that God might have managed it without so many slips in the making as your way would suppose? I should think myself a bad workman if I worked after that fashion.”

“I do not believe that there are any slips. You know you are making a coffin; but are you sure you know what God is making of the world?”

“That I can’t tell, of course, nor anybody else.”

“Then you can’t say that what looks like a slip is really a slip, either in the design or in the workmanship. You do not know what end He has in view; and you may find some day that those slips were just the straight road to that very end.”

“Ah! maybe. But you can’t be sure of it, you see.”

“Perhaps not, in the way you mean; but sure enough, for all that, to try it upon life—to order my way by it, and so find that it works well. And I find that it explains everything that comes near it. You know that no engineer would be satisfied with his engine on paper, nor with any proof whatever except seeing how it will go.”

He made no reply.

It is a principle of mine never to push anything over the edge. When I am successful, in any argument, my one dread is of humiliating my opponent. Indeed I cannot bear it. It humiliates me. And if you want him to think about anything, you must leave him room, and not give him such associations with the question that the very idea of it will be painful and irritating to him. Let him have a hand in the convincing of himself. I have been surprised sometimes to see my own arguments come up fresh and green, when I thought the fowls of the air had devoured them up. When a man reasons for victory and not for the truth in the other soul, he is sure of just one ally, the same that Faust had in fighting Gretchen’s brother—that is, the Devil. But God and good men are against him. So I never follow up a victory of that kind, for, as I said, the defeat of the intellect is not the object in fighting with the sword of the Spirit, but the acceptance of the heart. In this case, therefore, I drew back.