第 66 页

windows lighted up, and hear the organ's swell, and sound of voices, on

the rushing wind.

The old sexton soon got better, and was about again. From him the

child learnt many other things, though of a different kind. He was not

able to work, but one day there was a grave to be made, and he came to

overlook the man who dug it. He was in a talkative mood; and the

child, at first standing by his side, and afterwards sitting on the

grass at his feet, with her thoughtful face raised towards his, began

to converse with him.

Now, the man who did the sexton's duty was a little older than he,

though much more active. But he was deaf; and when the sexton (who

peradventure, on a pinch, might have walked a mile with great

difficulty in half-a-dozen hours) exchanged a remark with him about his

work, the child could not help noticing that he did so with an

impatient kind of pity for his infirmity, as if he were himself the

strongest and heartiest man alive.

'I'm sorry to see there is this to do,' said the child when she

approached. 'I heard of no one having died.'

'She lived in another hamlet, my dear,' returned the sexton. 'Three

mile away.'

'Was she young?'

'Ye-yes' said the sexton; not more than sixty-four, I think. David,

was she more than sixty-four?'

David, who was digging hard, heard nothing of the question. The

sexton, as he could not reach to touch him with his crutch, and was too

infirm to rise without assistance, called his attention by throwing a

little mould upon his red nightcap.

'What's the matter now?' said David, looking up.

'How old was Becky Morgan?' asked the sexton.

'Becky Morgan?' repeated David.

'Yes,' replied the sexton; adding in a half compassionate, half

irritable tone, which the old man couldn't hear, 'you're getting very

deaf, Davy, very deaf to be sure!'

The old man stopped in his work, and cleansing his spade with a piece

of slate he had by him for the purpose--and scraping off, in the

process, the essence of Heaven knows how many Becky Morgans--set

himself to consider the subject.

'Let me think' quoth he. 'I saw last night what they had put upon the

coffin--was it seventy-nine?'

'No, no,' said the sexton.

'Ah yes, it was though,' returned the old man with a sigh. 'For I

remember thinking she was very near our age. Yes, it was seventy-nine.'

'Are you sure you didn't mistake a figure, Davy?' asked the sexton,

with signs of some emotion.

'What?' said the old man. 'Say that again.'

'He's very deaf. He's very deaf indeed,' cried the sexton petulantly;

'are you sure you're right about the figures?'

'Oh quite,' replied the old man. 'Why not?'

'He's exceedingly deaf,' muttered the sexton to himself. 'I think he's

getting foolish.'

The child rather wondered what had led him to this belief, as, to say

the truth, the old man seemed quite as sharp as he, and was infinitely

more robust. As the sexton said nothing more just then, however, she

forgot it for the time, and spoke again.

'You were telling me,' she said, 'about your gardening. Do you ever

plant things here?'

'In the churchyard?' returned the sexton, 'Not I.'

'I have seen some flowers and little shrubs about,' the child rejoined;

'there are some over there, you see. I thought they were of your

rearing, though indeed they grow but poorly.'

'They grow as Heaven wills,' said the old man; 'and it kindly ordains

that they shall never flourish here.'

'I do not understand you.'

'Why, this it is,' said the sexton. 'They mark the graves of those who

had very tender, loving friends.'

'I was sure they did!' the child exclaimed. 'I am very glad to know

they do!'

'Aye,' returned the old man, 'but stay. Look at them. See how they

hang their heads, and droop, and wither. Do you guess the reason?'

'No,' the child replied.

'Because the memory of those who lie below, passes away so soon. At

first they tend them, morning, noon, and night; they soon begin to come

less frequently; from once a day, to once a week; from once a week to

once a month; then, at long and uncertain intervals; then, not at all.

Such tokens seldom flourish long. I have known the briefest summer

flowers outlive them.'

'I grieve to hear it,' said the child.

'Ah! so say the gentlefolks who come down here to look about them,'

returned the old man, shaking his head, 'but I say otherwise. "It's a

pretty custom you have in this part of the country," they say to me

sometimes, "to plant the graves, but it's melancholy to see these

things all withering or dead." I crave their pardon and tell them that,

as I take it, 'tis a good sign for the happiness of the living. And so

it is. It's nature.'

'Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to the

stars by night, and to think that the dead are there, and not in

graves,' said the child in an earnest voice.

'Perhaps so,' replied the old man doubtfully. 'It may be.'

'Whether it be as I believe it is, or no,' thought the child within

herself, 'I'll make this place my garden. It will be no harm at least

to work here day by day, and pleasant thoughts will come of it, I am

sure.'

Her glowing cheek and moistened eye passed unnoticed by the sexton, who

turned towards old David, and called him by his name. It was plain

that Becky Morgan's age still troubled him; though why, the child could

scarcely understand.

The second or third repetition of his name attracted the old man's

attention. Pausing from his work, he leant on his spade, and put his

hand to his dull ear.

'Did you call?' he said.

'I have been thinking, Davy,' replied the sexton, 'that she,' he

pointed to the grave, 'must have been a deal older than you or me.'

'Seventy-nine,' answered the old man with a shake of the head, 'I tell

you that I saw it.'

'Saw it?' replied the sexton; 'aye, but, Davy, women don't always tell

the truth about their age.'

'That's true indeed,' said the other old man, with a sudden sparkle in

his eye. 'She might have been older.'

'I'm sure she must have been. Why, only think how old she looked. You

and I seemed but boys to her.'

'She did look old,' rejoined David. 'You're right. She did look old.'

'Call to mind how old she looked for many a long, long year, and say if

she could be but seventy-nine at last--only our age,' said the sexton.

'Five year older at the very least!' cried the other.

'Five!' retorted the sexton. 'Ten. Good eighty-nine. I call to mind

the time her daughter died. She was eighty-nine if she was a day, and

tries to pass upon us now, for ten year younger. Oh! human vanity!'

The other old man was not behindhand with some moral reflections on

this fruitful theme, and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such

weight as to render it doubtful--not whether the deceased was of the

age suggested, but whether she had not almost reached the patriarchal

term of a hundred. When they had settled this question to their mutual

satisfaction, the sexton, with his friend's assistance, rose to go.

'It's chilly, sitting here, and I must be careful--till the summer,' he

said, as he prepared to limp away.

'What?' asked old David.

'He's very deaf, poor fellow!' cried the sexton. 'Good-bye!'

'Ah!' said old David, looking after him. 'He's failing very fast.

He ages every day.'

And so they parted; each persuaded that the other had less life in him

than himself; and both greatly consoled and comforted by the little

fiction they had agreed upon, respecting Becky Morgan, whose decease

was no longer a precedent of uncomfortable application, and would be no

business of theirs for half a score of years to come.

The child remained, for some minutes, watching the deaf old man as he

threw out the earth with his shovel, and, often stopping to cough and

fetch his breath, still muttered to himself, with a kind of sober

chuckle, that the sexton was wearing fast. At length she turned away,

and walking thoughtfully through the churchyard, came unexpectedly upon

the schoolmaster, who was sitting on a green grave in the sun, reading.

'Nell here?' he said cheerfully, as he closed his book. 'It does me

good to see you in the air and light. I feared you were again in the

church, where you so often are.'

'Feared!' replied the child, sitting down beside him. 'Is it not a

good place?'

'Yes, yes,' said the schoolmaster. 'But you must be gay

sometimes--nay, don't shake your head and smile so sadly.'

'Not sadly, if you knew my heart. Do not look at me as if you thought

me sorrowful. There is not a happier creature on earth, than I am now.'

Full of grateful tenderness, the child took his hand, and folded it

between her own. 'It's God's will!' she said, when they had been

silent for some time.

'What?'

'All this,' she rejoined; 'all this about us. But which of us is sad

now? You see that I am smiling.'

'And so am I,' said the schoolmaster; 'smiling to think how often we

shall laugh in this same place. Were you not talking yonder?'

'Yes,'the child rejoined.

'Of something that has made you sorrowful?'

There was a long pause.

'What was it?' said the schoolmaster, tenderly. 'Come. Tell me what

it was.'

'I rather grieve--I _do_ rather grieve to think,' said the child,

bursting into tears, 'that those who die about us, are so soon

forgotten.'

'And do you think,' said the schoolmaster, marking the glance she had

thrown around, 'that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a faded

flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness or cold neglect? Do you

think there are no deeds, far away from here, in which these dead may

be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there may be people busy in the world,

at this instant, in whose good actions and good thoughts these very

graves--neglected as they look to us--are the chief instruments.'

'Tell me no more,' said the child quickly. 'Tell me no more. I feel,

I know it. How could I be unmindful of it, when I thought of you?'

'There is nothing,' cried her friend, 'no, nothing innocent or good,

that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An

infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the

better thoughts of those who loved it, and will play its part, through

them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt

to ashes or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to

the Host of Heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that

loved it here. Forgotten! oh, if the good deeds of human creatures

could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear;

for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection, would be seen to

have their growth in dusty graves!'

'Yes,' said the child, 'it is the truth; I know it is. Who should feel

its force so much as I, in whom your little scholar lives again! Dear,

dear, good friend, if you knew the comfort you have given me!'

The poor schoolmaster made her no answer, but bent over her in silence;

for his heart was full.

They were yet seated in the same place, when the grandfather

approached. Before they had spoken many words together, the church

clock struck the hour of school, and their friend withdrew.

'A good man,' said the grandfather, looking after him; 'a kind man.

Surely he will never harm us, Nell. We are safe here, at last, eh? We

will never go away from here?'

The child shook her head and smiled.

'She needs rest,' said the old man, patting her cheek; 'too pale--too

pale. She is not like what she was.'

'When?' asked the child.

'Ha!' said the old man, 'to be sure--when? How many weeks ago? Could

I count them on my fingers? Let them rest though; they're better

gone.'

'Much better, dear,' replied the child. 'We will forget them;

or, if we ever call them to mind, it shall be only as some uneasy dream

that has passed away.'

'Hush!' said the old man, motioning hastily to her with his hand and

looking over his shoulder; 'no more talk of the dream, and all the

miseries it brought. There are no dreams here. 'Tis a quiet place,

and they keep away. Let us never think about them, lest they should

pursue us again. Sunken eyes and hollow cheeks--wet, cold, and

famine--and horrors before them all, that were even worse--we must

forget such things if we would be tranquil here.'

'Thank Heaven!' inwardly exclaimed the child, 'for this most happy

change!'

'I will be patient,' said the old man, 'humble, very thankful, and

obedient, if you will let me stay. But do not hide from me; do not

steal away alone; let me keep beside you. Indeed, I will be very true

and faithful, Nell.'

'I steal away alone! why that,' replied the child, with assumed gaiety,

'would be a pleasant jest indeed. See here, dear grandfather, we'll

make this place our garden--why not! It is a very good one--and

to-morrow we'll begin, and work together, side by side.'