metanoia
hen i see what a little way the solemnisation of matrimony in the common prayer book lies from the burial-service for the dead, (only separated by the order for the visitation of the sick,) it makes me think how sometimes in actual life marriages and funerals seem to tread upon the heels of one another. scarce were the bills for master braidfoot’s wedding-dinner paid, when my dear mother, who had been fast but gently sinking, departed this life without a sigh. i had left her much as usual the night before; but in the 94morning was aware of a grey shadow over her face, unlike anything i had yet seen, and impossible to describe, that made me sensible of the presence of death. my father supported her in his arms, master blower prayed aloud beside her, i bathed her face with vinegar, and dolly ran for the doctor; but just as he crossed our threshold, she gently breathed her last.
how empty the house seemed! for, though a person may take no active part in its business, yet a sense of their nearness is accompanied by a constant feeling of companionship, such as i think we might feel with regard to our heavenly father if we would look into the fact of his being constantly about us a little more narrowly. excellent master blower was a tower of strength to us under this bereavement; knowing how to comfort 95a man better than i could, and possessed of more calmness and composedness than i could be expected to have, though he said his heart bled for us all the while. but he set before us the blessedness of my mother in her glorified state so strongly, that it was impossible not to feel that our loss was her gain.
while the house was yet darkened, i heard a hushed voice that had become strange to my ears of late, saying to my father in the next room, “i am sure, uncle, if you would look upon it as a mark of respect.” ... and my father, in tears, made answer to him, “i should, mark, i should! i shall be glad for you to accompany us to the grave; for, indeed, my boy, she was very kindly affectioned towards you.”
and then cried again; and, i think, mark cried too. it was balm to my 96heart to think he was going to the funeral. an ill-advised deed had in the first instance banished him from us, and, in time, he had not only become reconciled to his banishment, but, from what i made out of the report of others, had learnt to rejoice in it. the first signal of a better frame was his returning to us, which cost him an effort, and then repaid itself. master blower called it metanoia, whatever that meant.
violet was very kind to me. all her old affection for me now returned; and she would bring her work and sit with me for hours. also the benskins and braidfoots were kind in their way, though after a homely fashion. but one that better understood comforting was nearer at hand. one evening, i heard master blower, as he met my father on the stairs, say, “why, old friend, we have 97lived many a year under the same roof, and have never broken bread together yet! bring cherry with you, and sup with me to-night!”
my disconsolate father, being taken by surprise, had no power to refuse the honour; dolly was sent for a crab, and we spent a very peaceful and pleasant evening together, not ended without prayer. as we left, the kind man said, “well, friend, since you won’t ask me, i’ll ask myself to sup to-morrow night with you.” and so he did; and many a rich and learned man might have envied us the discreet and pleasant guest that honoured our poor table. from that time, we thus spent two evenings together every week.
by this time my friend kitty had taken upon her all the importance of a well-to-do tradesman’s wife, which fitted 98her as well as one of her husband’s best pair of gloves. instead of stuff and dimity, flowered chintz and even silk was now the wear! looped well up, too, to shew the grass-green quilted petticoat and clocked stockings. nothing, master braidfoot thought, was too good for her. and instead of its being “good husband,” “honoured master braidfoot,” so bashfully spoken, as at first, now it was “dear hugh,” “sweet hugh,” or “hugh” by itself alone. and happy, without a cloud, would the lives of this worthy couple have been but for the hinderances of mistress armytage. now it was her parsimony in something her son-in-law could well afford and desired to have; now her expensiveness in something for which she dared not give him the bill; and then he would find it out, and rate her, half in sport, and then she would 99take offence in right earnest. then kitty would cry, and then her mother would say she knew she was only in the way, and would go off for a while to her old quarters. when she got there, her tongue lay not still, like a good house-dog in its kennel, but must needs yap, yap, like a little terrier, that flies at every comer; and, to every neighbour along the borough it was, “oh, you know not what a turk...!”—“my poor, poor daughter!”—“temper of an angel!”—“will wear her out at last!”—“never know a man before he’s married!”—“peace and poverty for my money” ... and such-like.
meanwhile, hugh and kitty were as merry as crickets in their own chimney-corner, little guessing or caring what an ill report of their fireside was spreading all along southwark: and if hugh met e’er 100a neighbour’s wife that gave him a dark look, as much as to say, “ah! for all your blythe face, i know what i know!” all he did was to cry, “neighbour, how do you do?” in a jovial voice that rang along the street. thus the husband and wife would go on, mighty comfortable by themselves, till some favourite dish, perhaps, of mistress armytage’s would be set on table, and kitty, with a tear in her eye, would say, “poor, dear mother is so fond of a roast pig.” “set it down before the fire again, then,” says hugh, “while i run and fetch the old gentlewoman.... i’ll be back in five minutes.”—and, in about a quarter of an hour, sure enough, he would return with the widow on his arm, and there would be a little kissing and crying, and then all would sit down in high good-humour with one 101another, and things would go on quietly till hugh and his mother-in-law quarrelled again.
about this time, dear, good master blower, who had hitherto led a removed life among us, hidden and yet known, ministering and being ministered unto by many of his old flock on the sly, did by some indiscretion or misadventure provoke the notice of the powers then riding paramount, and, coming home to us in great perturbation one day, told us he must at once take ship to holland in a vessel going down the river the next morning. this was greatly to the sorrow of my father and myself; and some tears of mine fell on his little packet of clean linen as i made it up for him; and i thought it no wrong to slip into the easy slippers i knew he would not fail to take out at the journey’s end, a 102little purse with seven gold caroluses in it, that i had long been hoarding for some good use. the wind was light, but yet fair: there was a remedy against sea-sickness in my father’s shop-window that i had not much faith in, it had lain so long in the sun, even supposing there ever were any virtue in it; however, i thought there could be no harm in just sewing it in the lining of his coat, according to the directions printed ... at least, so i thought at the time, but afterwards i observed i had made a mistake, but it did no harm, if no good. and father gave him a bottle of cognac brandy, which really had some virtue in it, so we did for him what we could, one way or another. and he packed up what few papers he could carry, and burned others, and locked up the rest, leaving them and his books in my 103charge, with his blessing. and so the good man went.
often afterwards, when i was setting his rooms in order, and dusting his books, i would stand, with my duster in my hand, looking at the table at which he used to write, and the old arm-chair in which he used to sit, and fall into a 104kind of muse, till i almost seemed to see his large, quiet, brown eyes, that were set so far under the shadow of his brows, and seemed lighted up, somehow, from within, looking up at me, and his pleasant face smiling at me, (he had a very sweet smile, had master blower,) and his pleasant voice saying, “well, cherry, is it eating-time again, already?”
now and then i would open one or other of his books, and, if i chanced upon anything i understood and that interested me, would stand reading on and on, till i was startled by hearing my father call for me. at length, he knew where to look for me; and took to laughing at me for taking such a turn for study; but one day he fell to reading one of master blower’s books himself, and liked it so well, that, we being but quiet companions for one another, now there was so little to 105say, we spent many an hour, sitting over-against each other, each with our book.
one day, as i sat sewing in the parlour, and my father was cutting a man’s hair, i heard his customer say, “my lord protector’s very ill, and like to die.”
“don’t believe it,” said my father; “he’ll never die in his bed.” which, for once, was a presage that did not come true.
“well, he seems to think so too,” said the other; “at all events he’s having thanks put up for his recovery, while yet he’s as bad as can be; which looks premature.”
“that’s the faith of assurance, i call it,” said my father dryly. “well, now, what may be the matter with his grace?—a pain in his heart, or his head, or what?”
106“a tertian fever, they say,” returned his companion; “you know his favourite daughter died scarce a month back, and, in her last moments, she told him many a thing that no one had had courage to tell him before, and expostulated with him on his ways, and charged him with slaying the lord’s anointed; which, ’tis thought, he took so much to heart as that his troubled mind invited if it did not occasion this illness.”
“well,” said my father, “i’d rather be the dead king than the dying protector. what has become now of all his trust in the lord, and inward assurance? does the grandeur he has earned with so much guilt, smooth his sick pillow? is the death he so boldly confronted on the battlefield quite so easy to face, now he lies quiet and 107watchful all night, with his silk curtains drawn about him? does he feel as secure of being one of the elect, unable to fall into final reprobation, as when he was fighting his way up to a dead man’s chair? ah, sir, we may ask one another these questions, but our own hearts must give their only answer.”
in fact, oliver cromwell presently breathed his last, amidst a tempest of wind and rain, that seemed a type of his own tempestuous character. and in his place was set up one that did not fill it: his quiet and peaceable son, richard, who had gone on his knees to his father to pray that the king’s head might not be cut off. he was gentle, generous, and humane; but those were no recommendations in the eyes of the army or parliament, so he was presently set aside. 108whereon ensued such squabblings and heart-burnings, i was glad i was not a man.
one day, mark came in, all flushed and eager, looking like his old self; and “uncle!” says he, “there’s a brave time coming again for hairdressers! it’s my fancy, wigs will presently be in, (for cavalier curls won’t grow in a night!) and then you’ll have a market for that lot of hair that you and i put so carefully aside.”
“how so, mark?” says my father.
“why,” says mark, “honest george monk, as the soldiers call him, is marching up to london, and you have always said he was a royalist in his heart.”
“heaven defend us from siege and civil war,” says father; “we’ve had too much of them already. better 109one master than many, even such a master as old noll; and if general monk is coming up to seat himself in his place, ’twill be better for us than these city tumults, wherein a parcel of young ’prentices that deserve a good threshing, get together and clamour for things they know not, till grown men are forced to put them down with a strong hand. where there’s order, there’s liberty; and nowhere else.”
mark’s news proved true; the disaffected regiments were sent out of london, and general monk with his army entered westminster. he was a right-judging as well as right-meaning man, on the whole, to my mind, prudent and moderate, though he sided first with one party, then with the other, then back to the first again. one of the evil consequences of our evil times was, so many 110conscientious men were set down for obstinate and pig-headed, or else turn-coats. my father, to represent the humour of the time, had removed the obnoxious cavalier and puritan from his window, and set up in their stead a head that united half of both, which, revolving slowly when he pulled a string, shewed now one side, now the other, and, as he observed, never looked so bad as when you saw a little of both. but as soon as monk, throwing off his late shew of moderation, marched into the city, removed the posts and chains across the streets, seized on obnoxious persons, and broke down our gates and portcullises, my father became sure that a great change was at hand, and the king would enjoy his own again. whereon, he commenced beautifying and renewing the waxen cavalier, which had got a 111little fly-spitten, and privately smuggled into the house a most beautiful female counterpart for it, extremely like queen henrietta maria, whom i immediately set about dressing in the favourite style of her majesty, that is to say, in a rich velvet boddice, with a falling collar of cutwork, vandyked at the edge, relieved by a blue breast-knot. my father dressed her hair in long, drooping, dark curls, with a few pearl pins; and, abiding the right time with calmness and confidence, shut up the comely pair in a dark closet till the happy moment for their bursting upon the world should arrive.
