Beside Still Waters, Arthur Christopher Benson [good books for high schoolers .txt] 📗

robed in a solemn pomp. The fields were shrouded in mist, but the cloud-rims in the west were touched with intense edges of gold; Hugh thought of the little churchyard that lay beyond those trees, where, under the raw mould heaped up so mutely, under the old wall, beside the yew-tree, in the shadow of the chancel-gable, lay the perishing vesture of the spirit of his friend, banished from light and warmth to his last cold house. How lonely, how desolate it seemed; and the mourners too, sitting in the dreary rooms, with the agony of the gap upon them, the empty chair, the silent voice, the folded papers, the closed books! How could God atone for all that, even though He made all things new? it was not what was new, but what was old, for which one craved; that long perspective of summer mornings, of pacings to and fro, of happy work, of firelit evenings, of talk, of laughter, the groups breaking up and reforming--how little one had guessed and valued the joy, the content, the blessing of them at the time! In the midst of them, one was reaching forwards, restlessly and vainly, to the future that was to be richer yet. Then the future became the happy present, and still one had leaned forward. How idle it all was! even while he waited and gazed, the light of evening was gone, the clouds were lustreless and wan, the sunset, that band of golden light, was flying softly, a girdle of beauty round the world; but the twilight and the night had their beauty too, their peace, their refreshment, their calm.


XLI

Following the Light--Sincerity

It must not be thought that because this little book attempts to trace the more secret and solitary thoughts of Hugh, as his soul took shape under the silent influences of pensive reflection, that the current of his life was all passed in lonely speculation. He had a definite place in the world, and mixed with his fellow-men, with no avoidance of the little cares of daily life. He only tended, as solitude became more dear to him, and as the thoughts that he loved best rose more swiftly and vividly about him, to frame his life, as far as he could, upon simple and unambitious lines.

In this he acted according to the dictates of a kind of intuition. It was useless, he felt, to analyse motives; it was impossible to discover how much was disinterestedness, how much unworldliness, how much the pursuit of truth, how much the avoidance of anxious responsibility, how much pure indolence. He was quite ready to believe that a certain amount of the latter came in, though Hugh was not indolent in the ordinary sense of the word. He was incapable of pure idling; but he was also incapable of carrying out prolonged and patient labour, unless he was keenly interested in an object; and the fact that he found the renunciation of ambitions so easy and simple a thing, was a sufficient proof to him that his interest in mundane things was not very vital. But Hugh above all things desired to have no illusions about himself; and he was saved from personal vanity, not so much by humility of nature, as from a deep sense of the utter dependence of all created things on their Creator. He did not look upon his own powers, his own good qualities, as redounding in any way to his credit, but as the gift of God. He never fell into the error of imagining himself to have achieved anything by his own ability or originality, but only as the outcome of a desire implanted in him by God, Who had also furnished him with the requisite perseverance to carry them out. He could not lay his finger on any single quality, and say that he had of his own effort improved it. And, in studying the lives and temperaments of others, he did not think of their achievements as things which they had accomplished; but rather as a sign of the fuller greatness of glory which had been revealed to them. Life thus became to him a following of light; he desired to know his own limitations, not because of the interest of them, but as indicating to him more clearly what he might undertake. It was a curious proof to him of the appropriateness of each man's conditions and environment to his own particular nature, when he reflected that no one whom he had ever known, however unhappy, however faulty, would ever willingly have exchanged identities with any one else. People desired to be rid of definite afflictions, definite faults; they desired and envied particular qualities, particular advantages that others possessed, but he could not imagine that any one in the world would exchange any one else's identity for his own; one would like perhaps to be in another's place, and this was generally accompanied by a feeling that one would be able to make a much better thing of another's sources of happiness and enjoyment, than the person whose prosperity or ability one envied seemed to make. But he could hardly conceive of any extremity of despair so great as to make a human being willing to accept the lot of another in its entirety. Even one's own faults and limitations were dear to one; the whole thing--character, circumstances, relations with others, position--made up to each person the most interesting problem in the world; and this immense consciousness of separateness, even of essential superiority, was perhaps the strongest argument that Hugh knew in favour of the preservation of a personal identity after death.

Hugh then found himself in this position; he was no longer young, but he seemed to himself to have retained the best part of youth, its openness to new impressions, its zest, its sense of the momentousness of occasions, its hopefulness; he found himself with duties which he felt himself capable of discharging; with a trained literary instinct and a real power of expression; even it he had not hitherto produced any memorable work, he felt that he was equipped for the task, if only some great and congenial theme presented itself to his mind. He found himself with a small circle of friends, with a competence sufficient for his simple needs; day by day there opened upon his mind ideas, thoughts, and prospects of ever-increasing mystery and beauty; as to his character and temperament, he found himself desiring to empty himself of all extraneous elements, all conventional traditions, all adopted ideas; his idea of life indeed was that it was an educative process, and that the further that the soul could advance upon the path of self-knowledge and sincerity, the more that it could cast away all the things that were not of its essence, the better prepared one was to be filled with the divine wisdom. The deeper that he plunged into the consideration of the mysterious conditions and laws which surrounded him, the greater the mystery became; but instead of becoming more hopeless, it seemed to him that the dawn appeared to brighten every moment, as one came closer to the appreciation of one's own ignorance, weakness, and humility. Instead of drawing nearer to despair, he drew every day nearer to a tender simplicity, a larger if more distant hope, an intenser desire to be at one with the vast Will that had set him where he was, and that denied him as yet a knowledge of the secret. As he ascended with slow steps into the dark mountain of life, the kingdoms of the world became more remote, the noise of their shouting more faint. He thought, with no compassion, but with a wondering tenderness, of the busy throng beneath; but he saw that, one by one, spirits smitten with the divine hope, slipped from that noisy world, and like himself, began to climb the solitary hills. What lay on the other side? That he could not even guess; but he had a belief in the richness, the largeness of the mind of God; and he saw as in a vision the day breaking on a purer and sweeter world, full of great surprises, mighty thoughts, pure joys; he knew not whether it was near or far, but something in his heart told him that it was assuredly there!


XLII

Aconite--The Dropping Veil

How swiftly the summer melted into the autumn! the old lime-trees in the college court were soon all gold--how bravely that gold seemed to enrich the heart, on the still, clear, fresh mornings of St. Luke's summer! that wise physician of souls has indeed had set aside for him the most inspiriting, the most healing days of the year, days of tonic coolness, of invigorating colour, of bracing sun; and then the winter closes in, when light is short, and the sun is low and cold; when the eye is grateful for the rich brown of naked fields, leafless woods, and misty distances. Yet there is a solemn charm about the darkening day, when the sun sets over the wide plain rolled in smoky vapours, and gilded banks of cloud; and then there is the long firelit evening to follow, when books give up their secrets and talk is easiest.

The summer, for all its enervating heat, its piercing light, was the time, so Hugh thought, for reflection. In winter the mind is often sunk in a sort of comfortable drowsiness, and hybernates within its secure cell. Hugh found the activities of work very absorbing in those darker days: his thoughts took on a more placid, more contented tinge. Early in the year he walked alone along the Backs at Cambridge. He passed the great romantic gateposts of St. John's, with the elms of the high garden towering over them, his mind occupied with a hundred small designs. It was with a shock of inexpressible surprise, as he passed by the clear stream that runs over its sandy shallows, and feeds the garden moats, to see that in the Wilderness the ground was bright with the round heads of the yellow aconite, the first flower to hear the message of spring. The appearance of that brave and hardy flower in that particular place had a peculiar and moving association for Hugh. More than twenty years before, in his undergraduate days, in a time of deep perplexity of mind, he had walked that way on a bright Sunday morning, his young heart burdened with sorrowful preoccupation. How hard those youthful griefs had been to bear! they were so unfamiliar, they seemed so irreparably overwhelming; one had not learned to look over them or through them; they darkened the present, they hung like a black cloud over the future. How fantastic, how exaggerated those woes had been, and yet how unbearably real! He had stood, he remembered, to watch the mild sunlight strike in soft shafts among the trees. The hardy blossoms, cold and scentless, but so unmistakably alive, had given him a deep message of hope, a thrill of expectation. He had gone back, he remembered, and in a glow of impassioned emotion had written a little poem on the theme, in a locked notebook, to which he confided his inmost thoughts. He could recall some of the poor stanzas still, so worthless in expression, yet with so fiery a heart.

The thought of the long intervening years came back to Hugh with a sense of wonder and gratitude. He had half expected then, he remembered, that some great experience would perhaps come to him, and lift