Surgeon Paul Faber by George MacDonald (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖

many more houses as convenient upon it.

He had therefore already so far prepared for the building of such a house as should lift a good many families far above all deluge; that is, he had dug the foundation, and deep, to get at the more solid ground. In this he had been precipitate, as not unfrequently in his life; for while he was yet meditating whether he should not lay the foundation altogether solid, of the unporous stone of the neighborhood, the rains began, and there was the great hole, to stand all the winter full of water, in the middle of the cottages!

The weather cleared again, but after a St. Martin's summer unusually prolonged, the rain came down in terrible earnest. Day after day, the clouds condensed, grew water, and poured like a squeezed sponge. A wet November indeed it was-wet overhead-wet underfoot-wet all round! and the rivers rose rapidly.

When the Lythe rose beyond a certain point, it overflowed into a hollow, hardly a valley, and thereby a portion of it descended almost straight to Glaston. Hence it came that in a flood the town was invaded both by the rise of the river from below, and by this current from above, on its way to rejoin the main body of it, and the streets were soon turned into canals. The currents of the slowly swelling river and of its temporary branch then met in Pine street, and formed not a very rapid, but a heavy run at ebb tide; for Glaston, though at some distance from the mouth of the river, measuring by its course, was not far from the sea, which was visible across the green flats, a silvery line on the horizon. Landward, beyond the flats, high ground rose on all sides, and hence it was that the floods came down so deep upon Glaston.

On a certain Saturday it rained all the morning heavily, but toward the afternoon cleared a little, so that many hoped the climax had been reached, while the more experienced looked for worse. After sunset the clouds gathered thicker than before, and the rain of the day was as nothing to the torrent descending with a steady clash all night. When the slow, dull morning came Glaston stood in the middle of a brown lake, into which water was rushing from the sky in straight, continuous lines. The prospect was discomposing. Some, too confident in the apparent change, had omitted needful precautions, in most parts none were now possible, and in many more none would have been of use. Most cellars were full, and the water was rising on the ground-floors. It was a very different affair from a flood in a mountainous country, but serious enough, though without immediate danger to life. Many a person that morning stepped out of bed up to the knee in muddy water.

With the first of the dawn the curate stood peering from the window of his dressing-room, through the water that coursed down the pane, to discover the state of the country; for the window looked inland from the skirt of the town. All was gray mist, brown water, and sheeting rain. The only things clear were that not a soul would be at church that morning, and that, though he could do nothing to divide them the bread needful for their souls, he might do something for some of their bodies. It was a happy thing it was Sunday, for, having laid in their stock of bread the day before, people were not so dependent on the bakers, half whose ovens must now be full of water. But most of the kitchens must be flooded, he reasoned, the fire-wood soaking, and the coal in some cellars inaccessible. The very lucifer-matches in many houses would be as useless as the tinderbox of a shipwrecked sailor. And if the rain were to cease at once the water would yet keep rising for many hours. He turned from the window, took his bath in homoeopathic preparation, and then went to wake his wife.

She was one of those blessed women who always open their eyes smiling. She owed very little of her power of sympathy to personal suffering; the perfection of her health might have made one who was too anxious for her spiritual growth even a little regretful. Her husband therefore had seldom to think of sparing her when any thing had to be done. She could lose a night's sleep without the smallest injury, and stand fatigue better than most men; and in the requirements of the present necessity there would be mingled a large element of adventure, almost of frolic, full of delight to a vigorous organization.

"What a good time of it the angels of wind and flame must have!" said the curate to himself as he went to wake her. "What a delight to be embodied as a wind, or a flame, or a rushing sea!-Come, Helen, my help! Glaston wants you," he said softly in her ear.

She started up.

"What is it, Thomas?" she said, holding her eyes wider open than was needful, to show him she was capable.

"Nothing to frighten you, darling," he answered, "but plenty to be done. The river is out, and the people are all asleep. Most of them will have to wait for their breakfast, I fear. We shall have no prayers this morning."

"But plenty of divine service," rejoined Helen, with a smile for what her aunt called one of his whims, as she got up and seized some of her garments.

"Take time for your bath, dear," said her husband.

"There will be time for that afterward," she replied. "What shall I do first?"

"Wake the servants, and tell them to light the kitchen fire, and make all the tea and coffee they can. But tell them to make it good. We shall get more of every thing as soon as it is light. I'll go and bring the boat. I had it drawn up and moored in the ruins ready to float yesterday. I wish I hadn't put on my shirt though: I shall have to swim for it, I fear."

"I shall have one aired before you come back," said Helen.

"Aired!" returned her husband: "you had better say watered. In five minutes neither of us will have a dry stitch on. I'll take it off again, and be content with my blue jersey."

He hurried out into the rain. Happily there was no wind.

Helen waked the servants. Before they appeared she had the fire lighted, and as many utensils as it would accommodate set upon it with water. When Wingfold returned, he found her in the midst of her household, busily preparing every kind of eatable and drinkable they could lay hands upon.

He had brought his boat to the church yard and moored it between two headstones: they would have their breakfast first, for there was no saying when they might get any lunch, and food is work. Besides, there was little to be gained by rousing people out of their good sleep: there was no danger yet.

"It is a great comfort," said the curate, as he drank his coffee, "to see how Drake goes in heart and soul for his tenants. He is pompous-a little, and something of a fine gentleman, but what is that beside his great truth! That work of his is the simplest act of Christianity of a public kind I have ever seen!"

"But is there not a great change on him since he had his money?" said Helen. "He seems to me so much humbler in his carriage and simpler in his manners than before."

"It is quite true," replied her husband. "It is mortifying to think," he went on after a little pause, "how many of our clergy, from mere beggarly pride, holding their rank superior-as better accredited servants of the Carpenter of Nazareth, I suppose-would look down on that man as a hedge-parson. The world they court looked down upon themselves from a yet greater height once, and may come to do so again. Perhaps the sooner the better, for then they will know which to choose. Now they serve Mammon and think they serve God."

"It is not quite so bad as that, surely!" said Helen.

"If it is not worldly pride, what is it? I do not think it is spiritual pride. Few get on far enough to be much in danger of that worst of all vices. It must then be church-pride, and that is the worst form of worldly pride, for it is a carrying into the kingdom of Heaven of the habits and judgments of the kingdom of Satan. I am wrong! such things can not be imported into the kingdom of Heaven: they can only be imported into the Church, which is bad enough. Helen, the churchman's pride is a thing to turn a saint sick with disgust, so utterly is it at discord with the lovely human harmony he imagines himself the minister of. He is the Pharisee, it may be the good Pharisee, of the kingdom of Heaven; but if the proud churchman be in the kingdom at all, it must be as one of the least in it. I don't believe one in ten who is guilty of this pride is aware of the sin of it. Only the other evening I heard a worthy canon say, it may have been more in joke than appeared, that he would have all dissenters burned. Now the canon would not hang one of them-but he does look down on them all with contempt. Such miserable paltry weaknesses and wickednesses, for in a servant of the Kingdom the feeling which suggests such a speech is wicked, are the moth holes in the garments of the Church, the teredo in its piles, the dry rot in its floors, the scaling and crumbling of its buttresses. They do more to ruin what such men call the Church, even in outward respects, than any of the rude attacks of those whom they thus despise. He who, in the name of Christ, pushes his neighbor from him, is a schismatic, and that of the worst and only dangerous type! But we had better be going. It's of no use telling you to take your waterproof; you'd only be giving it to the first poor woman we picked up."

"I may as well have the good of it till then," said Helen, and ran to fetch it, while the curate went to bring his boat to the house.

When he opened the door, there was no longer a spot of earth or of sky to be seen-only water, and the gray sponge filling the upper air, through which coursed multitudinous perpendicular runnels of water. Clad in a pair of old trowsers and a jersey, he went wading, and where the ground dipped, swimming, to the western gate of the churchyard. In a few minutes he was at the kitchen window, holding the boat in a long painter, for the water, although quite up to the rectory walls, was not yet deep enough there to float the boat with any body in it. The servants handed him out the great cans they used at school-teas, full of hot coffee, and baskets of bread, and he placed them in the boat, covering them with a tarpaulin. Then Helen appeared at the door, in her waterproof, with a great fur-cloak-to throw over him, she said, when she took the oars, for she meant to have her share of the fun: it was so seldom there was any going on a Sunday!-How she would have shocked her aunt, and better women than she!

"To-day," said the curate, "we shall