Chapter Chapter 53 · 第53章

Nell was stirring early in the morning, and having discharged her

household tasks, and put everything in order for the good schoolmaster

(though sorely against his will, for he would have spared her the

pains), took down, from its nail by the fireside, a little bundle of

keys with which the bachelor had formally invested her on the previous

day, and went out alone to visit the old church.

The sky was serene and bright, the air clear, perfumed with the fresh

scent of newly fallen leaves, and grateful to every sense. The

neighbouring stream sparkled, and rolled onward with a tuneful sound;

the dew glistened on the green mounds, like tears shed by Good Spirits

over the dead. Some young children sported among the tombs, and hid

from each other, with laughing faces. They had an infant with them,

and had laid it down asleep upon a child’s grave, in a little bed of

leaves. It was a new grave--the resting-place, perhaps, of some little

creature, who, meek and patient in its illness, had often sat and

watched them, and now seemed, to their minds, scarcely changed.

She drew near and asked one of them whose grave it was. The child

answered that that was not its name; it was a garden--his brother’s.

It was greener, he said, than all the other gardens, and the birds

loved it better because he had been used to feed them. When he had

done speaking, he looked at her with a smile, and kneeling down and

nestling for a moment with his cheek against the turf, bounded merrily

away.

She passed the church, gazing upward at its old tower, went through the

wicket gate, and so into the village. The old sexton, leaning on a

crutch, was taking the air at his cottage door, and gave her good

morrow.

‘You are better?’ said the child, stopping to speak with him.

‘Ay surely,’ returned the old man. ‘I’m thankful to say, much better.’

‘_You_ will be quite well soon.’

‘With Heaven’s leave, and a little patience. But come in, come in!’

The old man limped on before, and warning her of the downward step,

which he achieved himself with no small difficulty, led the way into

his little cottage.

‘It is but one room you see. There is another up above, but the stair

has got harder to climb o’ late years, and I never use it. I’m

thinking of taking to it again, next summer, though.’

The child wondered how a grey-headed man like him--one of his trade

too--could talk of time so easily. He saw her eyes wandering to the

tools that hung upon the wall, and smiled.

‘I warrant now,’ he said, ‘that you think all those are used in making

graves.’

‘Indeed, I wondered that you wanted so many.’

‘And well you might. I am a gardener. I dig the ground, and plant

things that are to live and grow. My works don’t all moulder away, and

rot in the earth. You see that spade in the centre?’

‘The very old one--so notched and worn? Yes.’

‘That’s the sexton’s spade, and it’s a well-used one, as you see.

We’re healthy people here, but it has done a power of work. If it

could speak now, that spade, it would tell you of many an unexpected

job that it and I have done together; but I forget ‘em, for my memory’s

a poor one.--That’s nothing new,’ he added hastily. ‘It always was.’

‘There are flowers and shrubs to speak to your other work,’ said the

child.

‘Oh yes. And tall trees. But they are not so separate from the

sexton’s labours as you think.’

‘No!’

‘Not in my mind, and recollection--such as it is,’ said the old man.

‘Indeed they often help it. For say that I planted such a tree for

such a man. There it stands, to remind me that he died. When I look

at its broad shadow, and remember what it was in his time, it helps me

to the age of my other work, and I can tell you pretty nearly when I

made his grave.’

‘But it may remind you of one who is still alive,’ said the child.

‘Of twenty that are dead, in connexion with that one who lives, then,’

rejoined the old man; ‘wife, husband, parents, brothers, sisters,

children, friends--a score at least. So it happens that the sexton’s

spade gets worn and battered. I shall need a new one--next summer.’

The child looked quickly towards him, thinking that he jested with his

age and infirmity: but the unconscious sexton was quite in earnest.

‘Ah!’ he said, after a brief silence. ‘People never learn. They never

learn. It’s only we who turn up the ground, where nothing grows and

everything decays, who think of such things as these--who think of

them properly, I mean. You have been into the church?’

‘I am going there now,’ the child replied.

‘There’s an old well there,’ said the sexton, ‘right underneath the

belfry; a deep, dark, echoing well. Forty year ago, you had only to

let down the bucket till the first knot in the rope was free of the

windlass, and you heard it splashing in the cold dull water. By little

and little the water fell away, so that in ten year after that, a

second knot was made, and you must unwind so much rope, or the bucket

swung tight and empty at the end. In ten years’ time, the water fell

again, and a third knot was made. In ten years more, the well dried

up; and now, if you lower the bucket till your arms are tired, and let

out nearly all the cord, you’ll hear it, of a sudden, clanking and

rattling on the ground below; with a sound of being so deep and so far

down, that your heart leaps into your mouth, and you start away as if

you were falling in.’

‘A dreadful place to come on in the dark!’ exclaimed the child, who had

followed the old man’s looks and words until she seemed to stand upon

its brink.

‘What is it but a grave!’ said the sexton. ‘What else! And which of

our old folks, knowing all this, thought, as the spring subsided, of

their own failing strength, and lessening life? Not one!’

‘Are you very old yourself?’ asked the child, involuntarily.

‘I shall be seventy-nine--next summer.’

‘You still work when you are well?’

‘Work! To be sure. You shall see my gardens hereabout. Look at the

window there. I made, and have kept, that plot of ground entirely with

my own hands. By this time next year I shall hardly see the sky, the

boughs will have grown so thick. I have my winter work at night

besides.’

He opened, as he spoke, a cupboard close to where he sat, and produced

some miniature boxes, carved in a homely manner and made of old wood.

‘Some gentlefolks who are fond of ancient days, and what belongs to

them,’ he said, ‘like to buy these keepsakes from our church and ruins.

Sometimes, I make them of scraps of oak, that turn up here and there;

sometimes of bits of coffins which the vaults have long preserved. See

here--this is a little chest of the last kind, clasped at the edges

with fragments of brass plates that had writing on ‘em once, though it

would be hard to read it now. I haven’t many by me at this time of

year, but these shelves will be full--next summer.’

The child admired and praised his work, and shortly afterwards

departed; thinking, as she went, how strange it was, that this old man,

drawing from his pursuits, and everything around him, one stern moral,

never contemplated its application to himself; and, while he dwelt upon

the uncertainty of human life, seemed both in word and deed to deem

himself immortal. But her musings did not stop here, for she was wise

enough to think that by a good and merciful adjustment this must be

human nature, and that the old sexton, with his plans for next summer,

was but a type of all mankind.

Full of these meditations, she reached the church. It was easy to find

the key belonging to the outer door, for each was labelled on a scrap

of yellow parchment. Its very turning in the lock awoke a hollow

sound, and when she entered with a faltering step, the echoes that it

raised in closing, made her start.

If the peace of the simple village had moved the child more strongly,

because of the dark and troubled ways that lay beyond, and through

which she had journeyed with such failing feet, what was the deep

impression of finding herself alone in that solemn building, where the

very light, coming through sunken windows, seemed old and grey, and the

air, redolent of earth and mould, seemed laden with decay, purified by

time of all its grosser particles, and sighing through arch and aisle,

and clustered pillars, like the breath of ages gone! Here was the

broken pavement, worn, so long ago, by pious feet, that Time, stealing

on the pilgrims’ steps, had trodden out their track, and left but

crumbling stones. Here were the rotten beam, the sinking arch, the

sapped and mouldering wall, the lowly trench of earth, the stately tomb

on which no epitaph remained--all--marble, stone, iron, wood, and

dust--one common monument of ruin. The best work and the worst, the

plainest and the richest, the stateliest and the least imposing--both

of Heaven’s work and Man’s--all found one common level here, and told

one common tale.

Some part of the edifice had been a baronial chapel, and here were

effigies of warriors stretched upon their beds of stone with folded

hands--cross-legged, those who had fought in the Holy Wars--girded

with their swords, and cased in armour as they had lived. Some of

these knights had their own weapons, helmets, coats of mail, hanging

upon the walls hard by, and dangling from rusty hooks. Broken and

dilapidated as they were, they yet retained their ancient form, and

something of their ancient aspect. Thus violent deeds live after men

upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in

mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but

atoms of earth themselves.

The child sat down, in this old, silent place, among the stark figures

on the tombs--they made it more quiet there, than elsewhere, to her

fancy--and gazing round with a feeling of awe, tempered with a calm

delight, felt that now she was happy, and at rest. She took a Bible

from the shelf, and read; then, laying it down, thought of the summer

days and the bright springtime that would come--of the rays of sun that

would fall in aslant, upon the sleeping forms--of the leaves that would

flutter at the window, and play in glistening shadows on the

pavement--of the songs of birds, and growth of buds and blossoms out of

doors--of the sweet air, that would steal in, and gently wave the

tattered banners overhead. What if the spot awakened thoughts of

death! Die who would, it would still remain the same; these sights and

sounds would still go on, as happily as ever. It would be no pain to

sleep amidst them.

She left the chapel--very slowly and often turning back to gaze

again--and coming to a low door, which plainly led into the tower,

opened it, and climbed the winding stair in darkness; save where she

looked down, through narrow loopholes, on the place she had left, or

caught a glimmering vision of the dusty bells. At length she gained

the end of the ascent and stood upon the turret top.

Oh! the glory of the sudden burst of light; the freshness of the fields

and woods, stretching away on every side, and meeting the bright blue

sky; the cattle grazing in the pasturage; the smoke, that, coming from

among the trees, seemed to rise upward from the green earth; the

children yet at their gambols down below--all, everything, so beautiful

and happy! It was like passing from death to life; it was drawing

nearer Heaven.

The children were gone, when she emerged into the porch, and locked the

door. As she passed the school-house she could hear the busy hum of

voices. Her friend had begun his labours only on that day. The noise

grew louder, and, looking back, she saw the boys come trooping out and

disperse themselves with merry shouts and play. ‘It’s a good thing,’

thought the child, ‘I am very glad they pass the church.’ And then she

stopped, to fancy how the noise would sound inside, and how gently it

would seem to die away upon the ear.

Again that day, yes, twice again, she stole back to the old chapel, and

in her former seat read from the same book, or indulged the same quiet

train of thought. Even when it had grown dusk, and the shadows of

coming night made it more solemn still, the child remained, like one

rooted to the spot, and had no fear or thought of stirring.

They found her there, at last, and took her home. She looked pale but

very happy, until they separated for the night; and then, as the poor

schoolmaster stooped down to kiss her cheek, he thought he felt a tear

upon his face.