“My dear young lady!” cried Mr. Crimble, as if shocked, “is it wise to attempt it? It must be admitted, of course, that if we do not take advantage of the benefits bestowed upon us by Providence in a Christian community, we cannot escape His displeasure. The absence from His Love.”
“Yes,” I said, looking at him in sudden intimacy, “I believe that.” And I pondered a while, following up my own thoughts. “Have you ever read Mr. Clodd’s Childhood of the World, Mr. Crimble?”
By the momentary confusion of his face I gathered that he had not. “Mr. Clodd? … Ah, yes, the writer on Primitive Man.”
“This was only a little book, for the young, you know. But in it Mr. Clodd says, I remember, that even the most shocking old forms of religion were not invented by devils. They were ‘Man’s struggles from darkness to twilight.’ What he meant was that no man loves darkness. At least,” I added, with a sudden gush of remembrances, “not without the stars.”
“That is exceedingly true,” replied Mr. Crimble. “And, talking of stars, what a wonderful sight it was the night before last, the whole heavens one spangle of diamonds! I was returning from visiting a sick parishioner, Mr. Hubbins.” Then it was his foot that Fanny and I had heard reverberating on the hill! I hastily hid my face in my cup, but he appeared not to have noticed my confusion. He took another slice of bread and butter; folded it carefully in two, then peered up out of the corner of his round eye at me, and added solemnly: “Sick, I regret to say, no longer.”
“Dead?” I cried from the bottom of my heart, and again looked at him.
Then my eyes strayed to the silent scene beyond the window, silent, it seemed, with the very presence of poor Mr. Hubbins. “I should not like to go to Hell in the snow,” I said ruminatingly. Out of the past welled into memory an old ballad my mother had taught me:—
“This ae nighte, this ae nighte
—Every nighte and alle,
Fire and sleet and candle-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule!”
“Beautiful, beautiful,” murmured Mr. Crimble, yet not without a trace of alarm in his dark eyes. “But believe me, I am not suggesting that Mr. Hubbins—His was, I am told, a wonderfully peaceful end.”
“Peaceful! Oh, but surely not in his mind, Mr. Crimble. Surely one must be more alive in that last hour than ever—just when one’s going away. At any rate,” and I couldn’t refrain a sigh, almost of envy, “I hope I shall be. Was Mr. Hubbins a good man?”
“He was a most regular churchgoer,” replied my visitor a little unsteadily; “a family-man, one of our Sidesmen, in fact. He will be greatly missed. You may remember what Mr. Ruskin wrote of his father: ‘Here lies an entirely honest merchant.’ Mr. Ruskin, senior, was, as a matter of fact, in the wine trade. Mr. Hubbins, I believe, was in linen, though, of course, it amounts to the same thing. But haven’t we,” and he cleared his throat, “haven’t we—er—strayed into a rather lugubrious subject?”
“We have strayed into a rather lugubrious world,” said I.
“Of course, of course; but, believe me, we mustn’t always think too closely. ‘Days and moments quickly flying,’ true enough, though hardly appropriate, as a matter of fact, at this particular season in the Christian year. But, on the other hand, ‘we may make our lives sublime.’ Does not yet another poet tell us that? Although, perhaps, Mr. Hub—”
“Yes,” I interposed eagerly, the lover of books in me at once rising to the bait, “but what do you think Longfellow absolutely meant by his ‘sailor on the main’ of life being comforted, you remember, by somebody else having been shipwrecked and just leaving footprints in the sand? I used to wonder and wonder. Does the poem imply, Mr. Crimble, that merely to be born is to be shipwrecked? I don’t think that can be so, because Longfellow was quite a cheerful man, wasn’t he?—at least for a poet. For my part,” I ran on, now thoroughly at home with my visitor, and on familiar ground, “I am sure I prefer poor Friday. Do you remember how Robinson Crusoe described him soon after the rescue from the savages as ‘without Passions, Sullenness, or Designs,’ even though he did, poor thing, ‘have a hankering stomach after some of the Flesh’? Not that I mean to suggest,” I added hastily, “that Mr. Hubbins was in any sense a cannibal.”
“By no means,” said Mr. Crimble helplessly. “But there,” and he brushed his knees with his handkerchief, “I fear you are too much of a reader for me, and—and critic. For that very reason I do hope, Miss M., you will sometimes contrive to pay a visit to St. Peter’s. Mother Church has room for all, you know, in her—about her footstool.” He smiled at me very kindly. “And our organist, Mr. Temple, has been treating us to some charmingly quaint old carols—at least the words seem a little quaint to a modern ear. But I cannot boast of being a student of poetry. Parochial work leaves little time even for the classics:—
“Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo.
Favete linguis. …”
He almost chirped the delightful words in a high, pleasant voice, but except for the first three of them, they were too many for my small Latin, and I afterwards forgot to test the aptness of his quotation. I was just about to ask him (with some little unwillingness) to translate the whole ode for me, when I heard Fanny’s step at the door. I desisted.
At her entry the whole of our conversation, as it hung about in
