Within and without all was at rest; the silence was broken only by the timid whisper of the swell, and by the chime of dropping water within some unseen cave: but what a different rest! Without, all lying breathless, stupefied, sun-stricken, in blinding glare; within, all coolness, and refreshing sleep. Without, all simple, broad, and vast; within, all various, with infinite richness of form and colour.—An Hairoun Alraschid's bower, looking out upon the—
Bother the fellow! Why will he go on analysing and figuring in this way? Why not let the blessed place tell him what it means, instead of telling it what he thinks? And—why, he is actually writing verses, though not about Fra Dolcino!
"How rests yon rock, whoso half-day's bath is done,
With broad bright sight, beneath the broad bright sun,
Like sea-nymph tired, on cushioned mosses sleeping.
Yet, nearer drawn, beneath her purple tresses,
From down-bent brows we find her slowly weeping,
So many a heart for cruel man's caresses
Must only pine and pine, and yet must bear
A gallant front beneath life's gaudy glare."
Silly fellow! Do you think that Nature had time to think of such a far-fetched conceit as that while it was making that rock and peopling it with a million tiny living things, of which not one falleth to the ground without your Father's knowledge, and each more beautiful than any sea-nymph whom you ever fancied? For, after all, you cannot fancy a whole sea nymph (perhaps in that case you could make one), but only a very little scrap of her outside. Or if, as you boast, you are inspired by the Creative Spirit, tell us what the Creative Spirit says about that rock, and not such verse as that, the lesson of which you don't yourself really feel. Pretty enough it is, perhaps: but in your haste to say a pretty thing, just because it was pretty, you have not cared to condemn yourself out of your own mouth. Why were you sulky, sir, with Mrs. Vavasour this very morning, after all that passed, because she would look over the washing-books, while you wanted her to hear about Fra Dolcino? And why, though she was up to her knees among your dirty shirts when you went out, did you not give her one parting kiss, which would have transfigured her virtuous drudgery for her into a sacred pleasure? One is heartily glad to see you disturbed, cross though you may look at it, by that sturdy step and jolly whistle which burst in on you from the other end of the chasm, as Tom Thurnall, with an old smock frock over his coat and a large basket on his arm, comes stumbling and hopping towards you, dropping every now and then on hands and knees, and turning over on his back, to squeeze his head into some muddy crack, and then withdraw it with the salt water dripping down his nose.
Elsley closed his eyes, and rested his head on his hand in a somewhat studied "pose." But as he wished not to be interrupted, it may not have been altogether unpardonable to pretend sleep. However, the sleeping posture had exactly the opposite effect to that which he designed.
"Ah, Mr. Vavasour!"
"Humph!" quoth he slowly, if not sulkily.
"I admire your taste, sir; a charming summerhouse old Triton has vacated for your use; but let me advise you not to go to sleep in it."
"Why then, sir?"
"Because—it's no business of mine, of course: but the tide has turned already; and if a breeze springs up old Triton will be back again in a hurry, and in a rage also; and—I may possibly lose a good patient."
Elsley, who knew nothing about the tides, save that "the moon wooed the ocean," or some such important fact, thanked him coolly enough, and returned to a meditative attitude. Tom saw that he was in the seventh heaven, and went on: but he had not gone three steps before he pulled up short, slapping his hands together once, as a man does who has found what he wants; and then plunged up to his knees in a rock pool, and then began working very gently at something under water.
Elsley watched him for full five minutes with so much curiosity, that, despite of himself, he asked him what he was doing.
Tom had his whole face under water, and did not hear, till Elsley had repeated the question.
"Only a rare zoophyte," said he at last, lifting his dripping visage, and gasping for breath; and then he dived again.
"Inexplicable pedantry of science!" thought Elsley to himself, while Tom worked on steadfastly, and at last rose, and, taking out a phial from his basket, was about to deposit in it something invisible.
"Stay a moment; you really have roused my curiosity by your earnestness. May I see what it is for which you have taken so much trouble?"
Tom held out on his finger a piece of slimy crust the size of a halfpenny. Elsley could only shrug his shoulders.
"Nothing to you, sir, I doubt not; but worth a guinea to me, even if it be only to mount bits of it as microscopic objects."
"So you mingle business with science?" said Elsley, rather in a contemptuous tone.
"Why not? I must live, and my father too; and it is as honest a way of making money as any other: I poach in no man's manor for my game."
"But what is your game! What possible attraction in that bit of dirt can make men spend their money on it?"
"You shall see," said Tom, dropping it into the phial of salt water, and offering it to Elsley, with his pocket magnifier.
"Judge for yourself."
Elsley did so, and beheld a new wonder—a living plant of crystal, studded with crystal bells, from each of which waved a crown of delicate arms. It was the first time that Elsley had ever seen one of those exquisite zoophytes which stud every rock and every tuft of weed.
"This is most beautiful," said he at length.
"Humph! why should not Mr. Vavasour write a poem about it?"
"Why not indeed?" thought Elsley.
"It's no business of mine, no man's less: but I often wonder why you poets don't take to the microscope, and tell us a little more about the wonderful things which are here already, and not about those which are not, and which, perhaps, never will be."
"Well," said Elsley, after another look: "but, after all, these things have no human interest in them."
"I don't know that; they have to me, for instance. These are the things which I would write about if I had any turn for verse, not about human nature, of which I know, I'm afraid, a little too much already. I always like to read old Darwin's 'Loves of the Plants;' bosh as it is in a scientific point of view, it amuses one's fancy without making one lose one's temper, as one must when one begins to analyse the microscopic ape called self and friends.
"You would like, then, the old Cosmogonies, the Eddas and the Vedas," said Elsley, getting interested, as most people did after five minutes' talk with the cynical doctor. "I suppose you would not say much for their science; but, as poetry, they are just what you ask for—the expression of thoughtful spirits, who looked round upon nature with awe-struck, childlike eyes, and asked of all heaven and earth the question, 'What are you? How came you to be?' Yet—it may be my fault—while I admire them, I cannot sympathise with them. To me, this zoophyte is as a being of another sphere; and till I can create some link in my own mind between it and humanity it is as nothing in my eyes."
"There is link enough, sir, don't doubt, and chains of iron and brass too."
"You believe then, in the development theory of the 'Vestiges'?"
"Doctors who have their bread to earn never commit themselves to theories. No; all I meant was, that this little zoophyte lives by the same laws as you and I; and that he, and the sea-weeds, and so forth, teach us doctors certain little rules concerning life and death, which you will have a chance soon of seeing at work on the most grand and poetical, and indeed altogether tragic scale."
"What do you mean?"
"When the cholera comes here as it will, at its present pace, before the end of the summer, then I shall have the zoophytes rising up in judgment against me, if I have not profited by a leaf out of their book."
"The cholera?" said Elsley in a startled voice, forgetting Tom's parables in the new thought. For Elsley had a dread more nervous than really coward of infectious diseases; and he had also (and prided himself, too, on having) all Goethe's dislike of anything terrible or horrible, of sickness, disease, wounds, death, anything which jarred with that "beautiful" which was his idol.
"The cholera?" repeated he. "I hope not; I wish you had not mentioned it, Mr. Thurnall."
"I am very sorry that I did so, if it offends you. I had thought that forewarned was forearmed. After all it is no business of mine; if I have extra labour, as I shall have, I shall have extra experience; and that will be a fair set-off, even if the board of guardians don't vote me an extra remuneration, as they ought to do."
Elsley was struck dumb; first by the certainty which Tom's words expressed, and next by the coolness of their temper. At last he stammered out, "Good heavens, Mr. Thurnall! you do not talk of that frightful scourge—so disgusting, too, in its character—as a matter of profit and loss? It is sordid, cold-hearted!"
"My dear sir, if I let myself think, much more talk, about the matter in any other tone, I should face the thing poorly enough when it came. I shall have work enough to keep my head about the end of August or beginning of September, and I must not lose it beforehand, by indulging in any horror, disgust, or other emotion perfectly justifiable in a layman."
"But are not doctors men?"
"That depends very much on what 'a man' means."
"Men with human sympathy and compassion."
"Oh, I mean by a man, a man with human strength. My dear sir, one may be too busy, and at doing good too (though that is not my line, save professionally, because it is my only way of earning money); but one may be too busy at doing good to have time for compassion. If while I was cutting a man's leg off I thought of the pain which he was suffering—"
"Thank heaven!" said Elsley, "that it was not my lot to become a medical man."
Tom looked at him with the quaintest smile: a flush of mingled anger and contempt had been rising in him as he heard the ex-bottle-boy talking sentiment: but he only went on quietly,
"No, sir; with your more delicate sensibilities, you may thank Heaven that you did not become a medical man; your life would have been one of torture, disgust, and agonising sense of responsibility. But do you not see that you must thank Heaven for the sufferer's sake also? I will not shock you again by talking of amputation; but even in the smallest matter—even if you were merely sending medicine to an old maid—suppose that your imagination were preoccupied by the thought of her old age, her sufferings, her disappointed hopes, her regretful dream of bygone youth, and beauty, and love, and all the tender fancies which might well spring out of such a mournful spectacle, would you not be but too likely (pardon the bathos) to end by sending her an elderly gentleman's medicine after all, and so either frightfully increasing her sufferings, or ending them once for all?"
Tom said this in the most quiet and natural tone, without even a twinkle of his wicked eye: but Elsley heard him begin with reddening face; and as he went on, the red had turned to purple, and then to deadly yellow; till making a half-step forward he cried fiercely:—
"Sir!" and then stopped suddenly; for his feet slipped upon the polished stone, and on his face he fell into the pool at Thurnall's feet.
"Well for both of us geese!" said Tom inwardly, as he went to pick him up. "I verily believe he was going to strike me, and that would have done for neither of us. I was a fool to say it; but the temptation was so exquisite; and it must have come some day."
But Vavasour staggered up of his own accord, and dashing away Tom's proffered hand, was rushing off without a word.
"Not so, Mr. John Briggs!" said Tom, making up his mind in a moment that he must have it out now, or never; and that he might have everything to fear from Vavasour if he let him go home furious. We do not part thus, sir!"
"We will meet again, if you will," foamed Vavasour, "but it shall end in the death of one of us!"
"By each other's potions? I can doctor myself, sir, thank you. Listen to me, John Briggs! You shall listen!" and Tom sprang past him, and planted himself at the foot of the rock steps, to prevent his escaping upward.
"What, do you wish to quarrel with me, sir? It is I who ought to quarrel with you. I am the aggrieved party, and not you, sir! I have not seen the son of the man who, when I was an apothecary's boy, petted me, lent me books, introduced me as a genius, turned my head for me, which was just what I was vain enough to enjoy—I have not seen that man's son cast ashore penniless and friendless, and yet never held out to him a helping hand, but tried to conceal my identity from him, from a dirty shame of my honest father's honest name."
Vavasour dropped his eyes, for was it not true? but he raised them again more fiercely than ever.
"Curse you! I owe you nothing. It was you who made me ashamed of it.
You rhymed on it, and laughed about poetry coming out of such a name."
"And what if I did? Are poets to "be made of nothing but tinder and gall?" Why could you not take an honest joke as it was meant, and go your way like other people, till you had shown yourself worth something, and won honour even, for the name of Briggs?"
"And I have! I have my own station now, my own fame, sir, and it is nothing to you what I choose to call myself. I have won my place, I say, and your mean envy cannot rob me of it."
"You have your station. Very good," said Tom, not caring to notice the imputation; "you owe the greater part of it to your having made a most fortunate marriage, for which I respect you, as a practical man. Let your poetry be what it may (and people tell me that it is really very beautiful), your match shows me that you are a clever, and therefore a successful person."
"Do you take me for a sordid schemer, like yourself? I loved what was worthy of me, and won it because I deserved it."
"Then, having won it, treat it as it deserves," said Tom, with a cool searching look, before which Vavasour's eyes fell again. "Understand me, Mr. John Briggs; it is of no consequence to me what you call yourself: but it is of consequence to me that I should not have a patient in my parish whom I cannot cure; for I cannot cure broken hearts, though they will be simple enough to come to me for medicine."
"You shall have no chance! You shall never enter my house! You shall not ruin me, sir, by your bills!"
Tom made no answer to this fresh insult. He had another game to play.
"Take care what you say, Briggs; remember that, after all, you are in my power, and I had better remind you plainly of the fact."
"And you mean to make me your tool? I will die first!"
"I believe that," said Tom, who was very near adding, "that he should be sorry to work with such tools."
"My tools are my lancet and my drugs," said he, quietly, "and all I have to say refers to them. It suits my purpose to become the principal medical man in this neighbourhood—"
"And I am to tout for introductions for you?"
"You are to be so very kind as to allow me to finish my sentence, just as you would allow any other gentleman; and because I wish for practice, and patients, and power, you will be so kind as to treat me henceforth as one high-minded man would treat another, to whom he is obliged. For you know, John Briggs, as well as I," said Tom, drawing himself up to his full height, "look me in the face, if you can, ere you deny it, that I was, while you knew me, as honourable a man, and as kind-hearted a man, as you ever were; and that now—considering the circumstances under which we meet,—you have more reason to trust me, than I have, prima facie, to trust you."
Vavasour answered not a word.
"Good-bye, then," said Tom, drawing aside from the step; "Mrs. Vavasour will be anxious about you. And mind! With regard to her first of all, sir, and then with regard to other matters—as long, and only as long, as you remember that you are John Briggs of Whitbury, I shall be the first to forget it. There is my hand, for old acquaintance' sake."
Vavasour took the proffered hand coldly, paused a moment, and then wrung it in silence, and hurried away home.
"Have I played my ace ill after all?" said Tom, sitting down to consider. "As for whether I should have played it all, that's no business of mine now. Madam Might-have-been may see to that. But did I play ill? for if I did, I may try a new lead yet. Ought I to have twitted him about his wife? If he's venomous, it may only make matters worse; and still worse if he be suspicious. I don't think he was either in old times; but vanity will make a man so, and it may have made him. Well, I must only ingratiate myself all the more with her; and find out, too, whether she has his secret as well as I. What I am most afraid of is my having told him plainly that he was in my power; it's apt to make sprats of his size flounce desperately, in the mere hope of proving themselves whales after all, if it's only to their miserable selves. Never mind; he can't break my tackle; and besides, that gripe of the hand seemed to indicate that the poor wretch was beat, and thought himself let off easily—as indeed he is. We'll hope so. Now, zoophytes, for another turn with you!"
To tell the truth, however, Tom is looking for more than zoophytes, and has been doing so at every dead low tide since he was wrecked. He has heard nothing yet of his belt. The notes have not been presented at the London bank; nobody in the village has been spending more money than usual; for cunning Tom has contrived already to know how many pints of ale every man of whom he has the least doubt has drunk. Perhaps, after all, the belt may have been torn off in the life struggle; it may have been for a moment in Grace's hands, and then have been swept into the sea. What more likely? And what more likely, in that case, that, sinking by its weight, it is wedged away in some cranny of the rocks?
So spring-tide after spring-tide Tom searches, and all the more carefully because others are searching too, for waifs and strays from the wreck. Sad relics of mortality he finds at times, as others do: once, even, a dressing-case, full of rings and pins and chains, which belonged, he fancied, to a gay young bride with whom he had waltzed many a time on deck, as they slipped along before the soft trade-wind: but no belt. He sent the dressing-case to the Lloyd's underwriters, and searched on: but in vain. Neither could he find that any one else had forestalled him; and that very afternoon, sulky and disheartened, he determined to waste no more time about the matter, and strode home, vowing signal vengeance against the thief, if he caught him.
"And I will catch him! These west-country yokels, to fancy that they can do Tom Thurnall! It's adding insult to injury, as Sam Weller's parrot has it."
Now his shortest way home lay across the shore, and then along the beach, and up the steps by the little waterfall, past Mrs. Harvey's door; and at that door sat Grace, sewing in the sun. She looked up and bowed as his passed, smiling modestly, and little dreaming of what was passing in his mind; and when a very lovely girl smiled and bowed to Tom, he must needs do the same to her: whereon she added,—
"I beg your pardon, sir: have you heard anything of the money you lost? I—we—have been so ashamed to think of such a thing happening here."
Tom's evil spirit was roused.
"Have you heard anything of it, Miss Harvey? For you seem to me the only person in the place who knows anything about the matter."
"I, sir?" cried Grace, fixing her great startled eyes full on him.
"Why, ma'am," said Tom, with a courtly smile, "you may possibly recollect, if you will so far tax your memory, that you had it in your hands at least a moment, when you did me the kindness to save my life; and as you were kind enough to inform me that I should recover it when I was worthy of it, I suppose I have not yet risen in your eyes to the required state of conversion and regeneration." And swinging impatiently away, he walked on, really afraid lest he should say something rude.
Grace half called after him, and then suddenly checking herself, rushed in to her mother with a wild and pale face.
"What is this Mr. Thurnall has been saying to me about his belt and money which he lost?"
"About what? Has he been rude to you, the bad man?" cried Mrs. Harvey, dropping the pie-dish in some confusion, and taking a long while to pick up the pieces.
"About the belt—the money which he lost? Why don't you speak, mother?"
"Belt—money? Ah, I recollect now. He has lost some money, he says."
"Of course he has."
"How should you know anything? I recollect there was some talk of it, though. But what matter what he says? He was quite passed away, I'll swear, when they carried him up."
"But, mother! mother! he says that I know about it; that I had it in my hands!"
"You? Oh the wicked wretch, the false, ungrateful, slanderous child of wrath, with adder's poison tinder his lips! No, my child! Though we're poor, we're honest! Let him slander us, rob us, of our good name, send us to prison, if he will—he cannot rob us of our souls. We'll be silent; we'll turn the other cheek, and commit our cause to One above who pleads for the orphan and the widow. We will not strive nor cry, my child. Oh, no!" And Mrs. Harvey began fussing over the smashed pie-dish.
"I shall not strive nor cry, mother," said Grace, who had recovered her usual calm: "but he must have some cause for these strange words. Do you recollect seeing me with the belt?"
"Belt, what's a belt? I know nothing about belts. I tell you he's a villain, and a slanderer. Oh, that it should have come to this, to have my child's fair fame blasted by a wretch that comes nobody knows where from, and has been doing nobody knows what, for aught I know!"
"Mother, mother! we know no harm of him. If he is mistaken, God forgive him!"
"If he is mistaken?" went on Mrs. Harvey, still over the pie-dish: but Grace gave her no answer.
She was deep in thought. She recollected now, that as she had gone up the path, from the cove on that eventful morning, she had seen Willis and Thurnall whispering earnestly together; and she recollected now, for the first time, that there had been, a certain sadness and perplexity, almost reserve, about Willis ever since. Good Heavens! could he suspect her too? She would find out that at least; and no sooner had her mother fussed away, talking angrily to herself, into the back kitchen, than Grace put on her bonnet and shawl, and went forth to find the Captain.
In an hour she returned. Her lips were firm set, her cheeks pale, her eyes red with weeping. She said nothing to her mother, who for her part did not seem inclined to allude again to the matter.
"Where have you been, child? You look quite poorly, and your eyes red."
"The wind is very cold, mother," said she, and went into her room. Her mother looked sharply after her, and muttered to herself.
Grace went in, and sat down on the bed.
"What a coldness this is at my heart!" she said aloud to herself, trying to smile; but she could not: and she sat on the bedside, without taking off her bonnet and shawl, her hands hanging listlessly by her side, her head drooping on her bosom, till her mother called her to tea: then she was forced to rouse herself, and went out, composed, but utterly wretched.
Tom walked up homeward, very ill at ease. He had played, to use his nomenclature, two trump cards running, and was by no means satisfied that he had played them well. He had no right, certainly, to be satisfied with either move; for both had been made in a somewhat evil spirit, and certainly for no very disinterested end.
That was a view of the matter, however, which never entered his mind; there was only that general dissatisfaction with himself which is, though men try hard to deny the fact, none other than the supernatural sting of conscience. He tried "to lay to his soul the flattering unction" that he might, after all, be of use to Mrs. Vavasour, by using his power over her husband: but he knew in his secret heart that any move of his in that direction was likely only to make matters worse; that to-day's explosion might only have sent home the hapless Vavasour in a more irritable temper than ever. And thinking over many things, backward and forward, he saw his own way so little, that he actually condescended to go and "pump" Frank Headley. So he termed it: but, after all, it was only like asking advice of a good man, because he did not feel himself quite good enough to advise himself.
The curate was preparing to sally forth, after his frugal dinner. The morning he spent at the schools, or in parish secularities; the afternoon, till dusk, was devoted to visiting the poor; the night, not to sleep, but to reading and sermon writing. Thus, by sitting up till two in the morning, and rising again at six for his private devotions, before walking a mile and a half up to church for the morning service, Frank Headley burnt the candle of life at both ends very effectually, and showed that he did so by his pale cheeks and red eyes.
"Ah!" said Tom, as he entered. "As usual: poor Nature is being robbed and murdered by rich Grace."
"What do you mean now?" asked Frank, smiling, for he had become accustomed enough to Tom's quaint parables, though he had to scold him often enough for their irreverence.
"Nature says, 'after dinner sit awhile;' and even the dumb animals hear her voice, and lie by for a siesta when their stomachs are full. Grace says, 'Jump up and rush out the moment you have swallowed your food; and if you get an indigestion, abuse poor Nature for it; and lay the blame on Adam's fall.'"
"You are irreverent, my good sir, as usual; but you are unjust also this time."
"How then?"
"Unjust to Grace, as you phrase it," answered Frank, with a quaint sad smile. "I assure you on my honour, that Grace has nothing whatsoever to do with my 'rushing out' just now, but simply the desire to do my good works that they may be seen of men. I hate going out. I should like to sit and read the whole afternoon: but I am afraid lest the dissenters should say, 'He has not been to see so-and-so for the last three days;' so off I go, and no credit to me."
Why had Frank dared, upon a month's acquaintance, to lay bare his own heart thus to a man of no creed at all? Because, I suppose, amid all differences, he had found one point of likeness between himself and Thurnall; he had found that Tom at heart was a truly genuine man, sincere and faithful to his own scheme of the universe.
How that man, through all his eventful life, had been enabled to
"Bate not a jot of heart or hope,
But steer right onward,"
was a problem which Frank longed curiously, and yet fearfully withal, to solve. There were many qualities in him which Frank could not but admire, and long to imitate; and, "Whence had they come?" was another problem at which he looked, trembling as many a new thought crossed him. He longed, too, to learn from Tom somewhat at least of that savoir faire, that power of "becoming all things to all men," which St. Paul had; and for want of which Frank had failed. He saw, too, with surprise, that Tom had gained in one month more real insight into the characters of his parishioners than he had done in twelve; and besides all, there was the craving of the lonely heart for human confidence and friendship. So it befell that Frank spoke out his inmost thought that day, and thought no shame; and it befell also, that Thurnall, when he heard it, said in his heart—
"What a noble, honest fellow you are, when you—"
But he answered enigmatically.
"Oh, I quite agree with you that Grace has nothing to do with it. I only referred it to that source because I thought you would do so."
"You ought to be ashamed of your dishonesty, then."
"I know it; but my view of the case is, that you rush out after dinner for the very same reason that the Yankee storekeeper does—from—You'll forgive me if I say it?"
"Of course. You cannot speak too plainly to me."
"Conceit; the Yankee fancies himself such an important person, that the commercial world will stand still unless he flies back to its help after ten minutes' gobbling, with his month full of pork and pickled peaches. And you fancy yourself so important in your line, that the spiritual world will stand still unless you bolt back to help it in like wise. Substitute a half-cooked mutton chop for the pork, and the cases are exact parallels."
"Your parallel does not hold good, Doctor. The Yankee goes back to his store to earn money for himself, and not to keep commerce alive."
"While you go for utterly disinterested motives.—I see."
"Do you?" said Frank. "If you think that I fancy myself a better man than the Yankee, you mistake me: but at least you will confess that I am not working for money."
"No; you have your notions of reward, and he has his. He wants to be paid by material dollars, payable next month; you by spiritual dollars, payable when you die. I don't see the great difference."
"Only the slight difference between what is material and what is spiritual."
"They seem to me, from all I can hear in pulpits, to be only two different sorts of pleasant things, and to be sought after, both alike, simply because they are pleasant. Self-interest, if you will forgive me, seems to me the spring of both: only, to do you justice, you are a farther-sighted and more prudent man than the Yankee storekeeper; and having more exquisitely developed notions of what your true self-interest is, are content to wait a little longer than he."
"You stab with a jest, Thurnall. You little know how your words hit home."
"Well, then, to turn from a matter of which I know nothing—I must keep you in, and give you parish business to do at home. I am come to consult you as my spiritual pastor and master."