第 65 页

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.

CHAPTER 54

The bachelor, among his various occupations, found in the old church a

constant source of interest and amusement. Taking that pride in it

which men conceive for the wonders of their own little world, he had

made its history his study; and many a summer day within its walls, and

many a winter's night beside the parsonage fire, had found the bachelor

still poring over, and adding to, his goodly store of tale and legend.

As he was not one of those rough spirits who would strip fair Truth of

every little shadowy vestment in which time and teeming fancies love to

array her--and some of which become her pleasantly enough, serving,

like the waters of her well, to add new graces to the charms they half

conceal and half suggest, and to awaken interest and pursuit rather

than languor and indifference--as, unlike this stern and obdurate

class, he loved to see the goddess crowned with those garlands of wild

flowers which tradition wreathes for her gentle wearing, and which are

often freshest in their homeliest shapes--he trod with a light step and

bore with a light hand upon the dust of centuries, unwilling to

demolish any of the airy shrines that had been raised above it, if any

good feeling or affection of the human heart were hiding thereabouts.

Thus, in the case of an ancient coffin of rough stone, supposed, for

many generations, to contain the bones of a certain baron, who, after

ravaging, with cut, and thrust, and plunder, in foreign lands, came

back with a penitent and sorrowing heart to die at home, but which had

been lately shown by learned antiquaries to be no such thing, as the

baron in question (so they contended) had died hard in battle, gnashing

his teeth and cursing with his latest breath--the bachelor stoutly

maintained that the old tale was the true one; that the baron,

repenting him of the evil, had done great charities and meekly given up

the ghost; and that, if ever baron went to heaven, that baron was then

at peace. In like manner, when the aforesaid antiquaries did argue and

contend that a certain secret vault was not the tomb of a grey-haired

lady who had been hanged and drawn and quartered by glorious Queen Bess

for succouring a wretched priest who fainted of thirst and hunger at

her door, the bachelor did solemnly maintain, against all comers, that

the church was hallowed by the said poor lady's ashes; that her remains

had been collected in the night from four of the city's gates, and

thither in secret brought, and there deposited; and the bachelor did

further (being highly excited at such times) deny the glory of Queen

Bess, and assert the immeasurably greater glory of the meanest woman in

her realm, who had a merciful and tender heart. As to the assertion

that the flat stone near the door was not the grave of the miser who

had disowned his only child and left a sum of money to the church to

buy a peal of bells, the bachelor did readily admit the same, and that

the place had given birth to no such man. In a word, he would have had

every stone, and plate of brass, the monument only of deeds whose

memory should survive. All others he was willing to forget. They

might be buried in consecrated ground, but he would have had them

buried deep, and never brought to light again.

It was from the lips of such a tutor, that the child learnt her easy

task. Already impressed, beyond all telling, by the silent building

and the peaceful beauty of the spot in which it stood--majestic age

surrounded by perpetual youth--it seemed to her, when she heard these

things, sacred to all goodness and virtue. It was another world, where

sin and sorrow never came; a tranquil place of rest, where nothing evil

entered.

When the bachelor had given her in connection with almost every tomb

and flat grave-stone some history of its own, he took her down into the

old crypt, now a mere dull vault, and showed her how it had been

lighted up in the time of the monks, and how, amid lamps depending from

the roof, and swinging censers exhaling scented odours, and habits

glittering with gold and silver, and pictures, and precious stuffs, and

jewels all flashing and glistening through the low arches, the chaunt

of aged voices had been many a time heard there, at midnight, in old

days, while hooded figures knelt and prayed around, and told their

rosaries of beads. Thence, he took her above ground again, and showed

her, high up in the old walls, small galleries, where the nuns had been

wont to glide along--dimly seen in their dark dresses so far off--or

to pause like gloomy shadows, listening to the prayers. He showed her

too, how the warriors, whose figures rested on the tombs, had worn

those rotting scraps of armour up above--how this had been a helmet,

and that a shield, and that a gauntlet--and how they had wielded the

great two-handed swords, and beaten men down, with yonder iron mace.

All that he told the child she treasured in her mind; and sometimes,

when she awoke at night from dreams of those old times, and rising from

her bed looked out at the dark church, she almost hoped to see the