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Chapter 1.
With many noble qualities—firmness, piety, integrity, and a thorough
affection for his family—the father of the poor prodigal, Richard
Sinclair, had many of the hard points of the Scottish character ; a want
of liberality in his estimate of others, particularly of their religious
qualities; a jealousy about his family prerogative, when it was needless
to assert it ; and a liking or discipline, or, as he styled it, nurture,
without tact to modify its applications. Towards his eldest son—a shy
and affectionate youth—his behaviour, indeed, seemed distinctly opposite
to what we may characterise as its usual expression—overbearing gravity.
Without this son’s advice, he never ventured on any speculation that
seemed doubtful. He was softly amenable to the mild wisdom of the lad,
and paid it a quiet deference, of which, indeed, he sometimes appeared
to be ashamed, as a degree of weakness in himself. But the youth had
never disobeyed his parents’ will in any one particular ; he was grave
and gentle; and his father, who had been brought up amidst a large and
rugged family, and was thus accustomed to rather stormy usages, was now
at a loss, in matters of rebuke, how to meet this new species of
warfare, which lay in mild and quiet habits, and eventually became
afraid of the censure which was felt in the affectionate silence of his
eldest son.
This superiority might have offended old Sinclair’s self-love ; but the
youth, as already stated, made ample amends, by paying in his turn a
scrupulous and entire deference to his parent, whom he thus virtually
controlled, as a good wife knows to rule her husband, by not seeming to
rule at all. From this subdued tone of his favourite prerogative in the
father before us there was a reaction—something like a compensation to
the parental authority — which began to press too hard upon his second
son Richard, who, being of a bolder character than his brother, was less
scrupulously dealt with; besides that the forward temperament of this
younger boy frequently offended against what his father honestly deemed
propriety and good rule.
He lost no opportunity, when Richard had done anything in the slightest
degree wrong, of checking him with disproportioned censure, and of
reminding him of what he owed to his parents; and this was repeated,
till bearing blame in the boy became a substitute for gratitude—till
the sense of obligation, instead of being a special call to love, was
distinctly felt to be an intolerable burden. From all these
circumstances there naturally grew up shyness betwixt father and son,
which was unintentionally aggravated by Richard’s mother, who, aware of
her husband’s severe temper, tried to qualify it by her own soft words
and deeds of love. This only brought out the evil more distinctly in its
hard outline; and the very circumstance that she constantly tried to
explain into good his father’s austerity became her own refutation, and
stamped that austerity as a great degree of tyranny.
Home thus became associated with disagreeable feelings to young Richard
Sinclair; who, being a boy of a giddy character, and naturally
self-willed, could not cling to the good, despite of the admixture of
evil. He neglected his books, fell into gross irregularities ; and the
admonitions of his father, rendered useless from the above miserable
system of discipline, were now, when most needed, thoroughly despised.
The death of his elder brother, by which he was left an only son,
softened for a while the harsh intercourse which subsisted between
Richard and his father, and checked the youth for a little in his bad
habits. But vice overcame him anew; and, growing daily worse, he at
length completed the character of the prodigal, by running off to sea,
hardening his heart against his father’s worth, and heedless of the soft
affection of his mother.
The hardships of a sea-faring life, heightened by a series of peculiar
misfortunes, still farther aggravated by a long course of bad health,
gradually subdued the young prodigal’s heart; and after the lapse of
several years we find him on his way returning to his native village,
clad in the meanest attire, slow and irregular in his step; his
countenance, besides being of a dead yellow hue from late jaundice, thin
and worn to the bone; yet improved in his moral nature, caring not har
pride, ready to forgive, and anxious to be forgiven; and, above all,
yearning to confess his crimes and sorrows to a mother’s unchanging
love.
About the noon of an October day, he reached the churchyard of his
native parish, his heart impelling him first to visit the burying-ground
of his family, under the fear, not the less striking because altogether
vague, that he might there see a recent grave; for he had heard nothing
of his parents since his first departure to sea. As he entered the
graveyard by a small postern, he saw a funeral coming in by the main
gate on the opposite side ; and wishing not to be observed, he turned
into a small plantation of poplars and silver firs, which hid the place
of graves from the view of the clergyman’s manse windows. Onward came
the sable group slowly to the middle of the churchyard, where lay,
indicating the deep parallel grave beside it, the heap of fat, clammy
earth, from which two or three ragged boys were taking handfuls, to see,
from its restless crumbling, whether it was the dust of the wicked,
which, according to a popular belief, never lies still for a moment. The
dark crowd took their places round the grave; a little bustle was heard
as the coffin was uncovered ; it was lowered by the creaking cords, and
again the heads of the company were all narrowly bent over it for a
moment. Not a sound was heard in the air, save the flitting wing of some
little bird among the boughs ; the ruffling of another, as, with bill
engulfed in its feathers, it picked the insects from its skin; and the
melancholy cry of a single chaffinch, which foretold the coming rain.
In natural accordance with the solemnity of the mourners before him, our
youth, as he stood in the plantation, raised his hat; and when the crowd
drew back to give room to the sexton and his associates to dash in the
earth, he leant upon the wall, looking earnestly over it to recognise,
if possible, the prime mourner; At the head of the grave, more forward a
little than the others, and apart in his sad privilege, stood a man,
apparently about sixty years of age, of a strong frame,—in which yet
there was trembling,—and a fine open bald forehead ; and,
notwithstanding that the face of the mourner was compressed with the
lines of unusual affliction, and bowed down over his hat, which with
both hands was pressed upon his mouth, Richard saw him and knew him but
too well—Oh, God I his own father! And wildly the youth’s eyes rambled
around the throng, to penetrate the mystery of his own loss, till on his
dim eyeballs reeled the whole group, now scattered and melted to mist,
now gathered and compressed into one black, shapeless heap.
But now the thick air began to twinkle, as it still darkened; and the
rain, which to the surprise of all had been kept up so long, began to
fall out in steep-down streams from the low-hung clouds, driving the
black train from the half-finished grave, to mix with a throng of other
people, apparently assembling for public worship, who ran along the
sides of the church in haste to reach the doors. The bell began to toll,
but ceased almost in a minute; the clergyman hurried by in his white
bands ; and before Richard could leave the plantation and advance into
the churchyard,—perhaps for the purpose of inquiring who was the person
just entombed,—every one was in save that bareheaded man—God bless him !
—- who, heedless of the rain, still stood by the sexton, whose spade was
now beating round the wet turf of the compacted grave. The young
prodigal had not the heart, under a most awful sense of his own errors,
which now overcame him, to advance to his afflicted father. On the
contrary, to avoid his observation, he slunk away behind the church, and
by a door, which likewise admitted to an old staircase leading to a
family division of the gallery, he got into a back aisle, thickly
peopled with spectral marbles, which, through two or three small panes,
admitted a view of the interior of the church. "Have I lived not to
know," said he to himself, "when comes God’s most holy Sabbath-day?
Assuredly, this loss of reckoning, this confusion of heart, is of very
hell itself. But hold—to-day is Monday; then it must be the day after a
solemn commemoration, in this place, of Christ’s bleeding sacrifice for
men. I shall sit me down on this slab a while, and see if there may be
any good thing for me —any gleam of the glorious shield that wards off
evil thoughts and the fears of the soul—any strong preparation of faith
to take me up by the hand, and lead me through my difficulties. At all
events, I shall try to pray with the good for the mourners, that claim
from me a thousand prayers: and God rest that dead one !”
Owing to the unusual darkness in the church, the twenty-third psalm was
chosen by the clergyman, as one that could be sung by most of the
congregation without referring to the book ; and its beautiful pastoral
devotion suited well with the solemn dedication which yesterday had
been made of a little flock to the care of the Great Shepherd, and with
their hopes of His needful aid. And the sweet voices of the young, who
in early piety had vowed themselves to God, seemed to have caught the
assured and thrilling song of the redeemed; and their white robes, as
they rose to pray, twinkled like glimpses of angels’ parting wings,
bringing home more deeply to the heart of the poor youth in the aisle a
sense of his misery as an alien and an outcast from the ordinances of
salvation.
Richard made an effort to attend to the instructions of the clergyman ;
but his heart was soon borne away from attention ; and so anxious did he
become in the new calculation, which of his father’s family it might be
whom he had just seen interred, that he could not refrain from going out
before the church windows and looking at the new grave. Heedless of
being seen, he measured it by stepping, and was convinced, from its
length, that either his mother or his sister Mary must be below. "God
forbid !” he ejaculated, "that it should be my poor mother’s grave! that
she should be gone for ever, ere I have testified my sense of all her
love!" It struck him, with a new thought of remorse, that he was wishing
the other alternative, that it might be his sister Mary’s. And then he
thought upon early days, when she who was his first playmate led him
with her little hand abroad in summer days to the green meadows, and
taught him to weave the white-fingered rushes, and introduced him,
because she was his elder, to new sports and playfellows; whose heart,
he knew, would brook to lie beneath the cold flowers of the spring
sooner than give up its love for him, prodigal though he was; and how
was the alternative much better, if it was she whom he had lost ! As he
made these reflections, he was again sauntering into the aisle, where,
sitting down in his former seat, the sad apprehension that his mother
was dead laid siege to his heart. Her mild image, in sainted white, rose
to his mind’s eye ; and she seemed to bend over him, and to say to him,
" Come, my care-worn boy, and tell me how it has fared with you in the
hard world ?” This vision soon gave place to severe realities; and in
bitter sadness he thought of her who came each night to his bedside when
he was a little child, to kiss him, and arrange the clothes around him
that his little body might be warm.
With a reeling unsteadiness of mind which, from very earnestness, could
not be stayed upon its object, he tried to remember his last interview
with her, and the tenor of his last letter to her, to find out what kind
expressions he had used, till, painfully conscious that he could muster
little to make up an argument of his love, he was again left to guess
his mother’s anguish of soul in her last hour over his neglect, and to
grapple with the conviction that his own folly had brought her down
prematurely to the grave. At length his heart, becoming passive amidst
the very multitude and activity of reflections that were tugging at it
from all sides, yielded to the weariness which the day’s fatigue, acting
upon his frame, worn by late fever, had induced, and he fell into a deep
sleep. When he awoke, the voice of the clergyman had ceased, and all was
silence in the church ; the interior of which as he looked through the
small pane, he saw had been darkened by the shutting of the
window-boards. Next moment he glanced at the aisle door and saw it
closed upon him. Then looking round all over the place, with that
calmness which signifies a desperate fear at hand, " Here I am, then !”
he exclaimed ; "if that door be locked upon me, as I dread it is !”
Cautiously he went to it, as if afraid of being resolved in his dreadful
apprehension ; and, after first feeling with his hand that the bolt was
drawn upon him, he tried to open it, and was made distinctly aware of
his horrid captivity; Sharply he turned aghast, as if to address some
one behind him ; then turning again to the door, he shook it with all
his strength, in the hope that some one might yet be lingering in the
churchyard, and so might hear him. No one, however, came to his
assistance; and now the reflection burst full and black upon him, that
here he might remain unheard till he died of hunger. His heart and
countenance fell, when he remembered how remote the churchyard was from
the village, and from the public way, and how long it was till next
Sunday should come round. From boyhood recollection he remembered well
this same aisle door; that it was black on the outside, with here and
there large white commas to represent tears; and that it was very thick,
and yet farther strengthened by being studded with a great number of
large iron nails.
"Yet I must try to the very utmost," he said, "either to break it or
make myself be heard by the inmates of the manse, which is my best
chance of release.” Accordingly he borrowed as much impetus as the
breadth of the vault allowed him, and flung himself upon the door in a
series of attacks, shouting at the same time with all his might. But the
door stood firm as a rock despite of him ; nor could he distinguish, as
he listened from time to time, the slightest symptoms of his having been
heard by any one. He went to the small grated window which lighted this
house of death, and after watching at it for some time, he saw an old
woman pass along a footpath beyond the graveyard, with a bundle of
sticks upon her head ; but she never seemed to hear him when he called
upon her. A little afterwards he saw two boys sauntering near the gate
of the burying-ground ; but though they heard him when he cried, it only
made them scamper off, to all appearance mightily terrified.
TO BE CONTINUED ….. |
