The Confession of Stephen Whapshare

Chapter I

Because by the light of uncommon griefs the meaning of common sorrows may become plainer, I, Stephen Whapshare, unfold the story of my unmatched experience for the comfort of my brothers, the sad in heart and the failures amongst men. I was the son of a fisher of Devon, and the first things my hands touched in labour were the nets my father used in sea-fishing. From my early childhood I spent many hours in a wide loft over some workshops, to which A Che Confession of 2 I ascended by an outside ladder. Here my father taught me the art of making and mending nets, this being the employment by which he added to his earnings in times un seasonable for sea-fishing. In the loft were three square - shaped windows, and through these peep-holes, as I moved about in the dim place, netting and mending, I could see pictures of sea and sky and light.

It was a wonderful and dazzling thing I looked on, ever on the 0 0 ' quietest days having a ripple of change before me, and even when the sea-mists came up, receiving an impression of blank immaterial whiteness. This whiteness or splendour of the day is set in memory amidst the cozy redness of my evenings, when, returning to my parents' cottage, I sat in my nook by the fire, and watched the comfortable glow, and felt my mother's love about me, and the awe and pride of my father's presence. And in these evenings I received the impress of simple and direct piety, listening to my father's voice night by night reading from the Bible, and weaving the stories of Scripture and the Stephen Mbapsbare. 3 grand English in which they were told, in separably into my conception of the reality of life. In my childhood I was also often with my father in his boat, and remained with him by night as well as by day ; and thus I learned at first hand something of the loneli ness and danger of the sea, and the wonder of the sea-fishing — the empty nets thrown out, the heavy nets drawn in, full of strange and palpitating shapes, which affected my child's heart with fantastic suggestion, opening out to it the fringe of an unknown world that had "business in the great waters."

It was amidst things of this kind that was formed within me the trend of thought through which my life was wrecked and saved at last. I sat usually in the prow of the boat, watching rather than helping, seeing some cruel things done, but also kindness, amongst men ; and my imagination was affected to a secret sympathy with the helpless things drawn from their mysterious happiness beneath the waves, showing themselves to us in Sbe Confession of agonised glimpses, and looking at our world with empty eyes that not so much as under stood what misadventure had brought them into it. So I sat close with my thoughts, the wash of the sea in my ears, the creaking of the ropes, and straining and flapping of sails, and sometimes the lashing of storm. One night I remember in particular. It was a still night.

The waves lapped lazily, and the boat rose and fell with a gentle move ment, and the men were quiet. It was so calm, and I myself so shared in the calm, that the things around me were visionary, and came and went as dreams, amidst which my heart lay small and still. News of a mackerel shoal had reached us in the afternoon, and my father had put out to meet the fish. We now lay anchored not far from shore, with the nets spread. But the evening went by, and still the shining stream did not pass us, and we remained where we were, waitino far into the night. Between the ropes I saw the evening star. Sometimes I slumbered, but when I woke it was there, sliding slowly downwards with its four silver rays ; and Stephen TWlbapsbare. 5 once, opening my eyes between sleep and waking, I saw my father stooping down in the boat with a lantern in his hand.

The light struck his face, and I caught it in profile as I had often seen it at home, the glow of the fire upon it, quiet, rugged, and simple as an old picture. And such was the force of association that, seeing it so, I seemed to myself at home, with the pressure of my mother's arm about me ; and, though no word was uttered now, my father's voice was loud and solemn in my ears : " I will make you to become fishers of men!" it said, for that was the text which had struck my fancy at our last worship. My father shut down the lantern, and I could not see his face any more. The words ran on in my mind. Then I think I slept. When I awaked it was dawn, and they had pulled in the nets. They were empty, save for a few odd fish, whose sides jumped with the fear and distress they were in. The faces of the men, grim and callous, bent over this shaking, ebbing life, and I remarked that those creatures for tbe Confession of which the fisher has no use they wantonly killed ; but the young of the desirable sort they threw back into the sea.

And when that happened my child's heart drew a breath of relief, for I was ever on the side of the fish whose beautiful sport I often caught sight of amidst the sea-weed through the clear blue waves ; and the promise of the text was further perplexing and heightening my sympathy by the analogy which I could not understand. By and by I gathered that through some exceptional ill-chance, the mackerel shoal had turned aside, and the men had missed it. They swore roughly over their wasted labour, and my father startled me by unaccustomed harshness. " Get up, lazy-bones ! " cried he gruffly. " We want no sluggards on this boat ! " and he pushed me with his foot. The striking of this rough reality upon my visionary state shook out of me odd speech, and, opening my eyes wide on my father's face — so changed from its aspect of the nio*ht before — I uttered the words with which my mind was charged : Stephen TOUbapshare. 7 " I will make you to become fishers of men!"

I exclaimed. At that my father's jaw fell, and a curious silence sank on the boat, for there was none in it who could not trace the words to Sacred Writ ; and in between the silence the waves beat gently. Grey morn was all about us now, and I saw with wonder that the men looked with stealthy glances at one another, and that my father stared at the bottom of the boat. Peter Labrum, a lad of nineteen, but one who was already the leader if drink and swearing were in question, looked across his shoulder at me as he stooped over the boat's edge to gather in the last links of the empty nets, and his face wore a silly smile, and one that was partly malicious. All this I noted without under standing either what I had said or what I had done. My father sat down and cut me a piece of bread, and handed it to me.

I took it, but had no mind to eat, being as greatly disturbed by the sudden hush as I had been by the rough speech. "Shall we set he ashore?" asked Peter, grinning. "Steve," said my father, "shall we set 'ee ashore ? " But I shook my head. "We're going further out for big fish. They mackerel have failed. Will 'ee come ? " And I nodded. " Let be," said my father ; "let en come." So we sailed further, and the haul of fish was good, but night overtook us, and, the boat being loaded, a storm caught us. I lay huddled up in the bottom, faint and sick with the movement, and when the morning dawned again, I saw, for the first time, the faces of grown men changed by the fear of death, and grappling with the fate that pressed them. I saw the faces momentarily through sheets and washes of rain and spray ; but the storm tore their voices from my ears.

Sometimes the faces flashed out of the wet mists below me, sometimes above me. I myself was lashed fast by a rope, and as I lay sick, and cramped, and cold, suddenly I saw my father's face hanging over me, washed by storm, and the eyes small and hard with fear. " Steve ! Pray ! Pray hard ! " he shouted. Stephen TPUbapsbare. 9 And the next moment, so tossed were we, I looked down on that which had just leaned above me. Then, heeding my father's com mand, I, for the first time in my life, lifted myself above my baby prayers, and cried to a felt but invisible Power, undoubting that we lay, as it were, in the hollow of a Great Hand, which poured us and our boat from one instant of peril into another, but which could in a moment snatch us back from our fate to a place of safety. A day or two afterwards, when we were back at home, and the fish had been sold, and the event was falling gently into the dream-like amongst the old accustomed things, I sat in my corner on my small wooden stool with my book.

I had not gone in the boat again, for the fishing was stopped for a time, the sea being rough and angry, while a great wind whirled rain-clouds over the shore, mingled with sand and small pebbles. Neither had I gone out to mend nets in the loft. And, as I sat that evening and read, I heard my name gently spoken. Already, as I say, the memory of the storm was fading, yet it was not forgotten, and when I heard my name so spoken, and saw my parents standing before me with a notable look in their eyes — as though an angel of God had passed between the doors of the house, and left some fragment of His light behind — I thought of it again. 0 "Steve," said my father, "will you grow up to be a fisher of men ? " And he spread his rough hands out over me as though in consecration. I looked at my mother, being awed beyond my wont ; and in my imagination I saw nothing but a great grey chalky stretch of sea and sky, and a net suspended between, full of palpitating and strange shapes.

"And learn to be a great scholard," said my mother quickly, seeing the pallor which crept into my face. At which I smiled. Aye, mother, that will I," said I Then I got up from my stool ; and, being persons of few words, my parents said no more, but looked at each other, and let me pass between them. I went to the house Stephen •©Hbapsbare. 11 door and shut it behind me. And there I stood, watching the wash of the rain over a wind-tossed sky, and hearing the ceaseless roar of the breakers, and the scream of the pebbles on the shore. I knew that it was settled I was to go no more in the boat, but must be diligent with my books to some mysterious end. My breast swelled, and my heart beat fast within it. The road on which our cottage stood had an upward lift, and curled along the cliff, dotted with houses, then it passed into the main street of a small village, and out again 0 ' 0 into the bare cliff beyond.

To-day it was so wet that it shone in a pale glitter of mud and water, while the gutter of the cottage made a ceaseless trickle of flowing drops close to my ears. And over the rise, in the midst of the rush and the wind, came the figure of a man, rolling a trifle in his walk, and bending his head in the storm. I watched him idly, and on and on he came, until I saw him to be young Peter Labrum, leaving one public-house behind him, and walking a mile or so through the wet to find another i2 Œbe Confession of at the end. Seeing me he lurched towards me, and, presuming on my boyhood, took me most unmannerly by the ear. And this my loathing of the smell of beer and my new-found dignity made me resent. "Let me a-be, Pete!" cried I. "O-ho, Steve!" cried he, offended; "saved from drowning, are 'ee ?

Saved from drown ing, and kept safe for a hanging ! " At this I, exceedingly angered, gave him a push, and wrenched myself free ; but he, being three-parts drunk already, lurched up against the side of the house, and fell under the gutter. Whereat, seeing the big man fallen at a child's touch, and the water flow ing over him, I became greatly disturbed in my imagination, and thinking of the net suspended between sea and sky, and of the palpitating shapes within, burst into tears. "I didn't mean it, Pete!" cried I. At this, angry at the fall, and astonished at my tears, he came at me with a clenched fist, but I ran into the porch to avoid him ; he then leaned against the side and contented himself with words. Stepben Mbapsbare. 13 " Gallow's-bird ! " cried he, looking at me with a red, drunken face of malice, his fisher cap pushed to the back of his head ; " I'll meet 'ee and be even with 'ee yet, if I must hang with 'ee for it ! " Cbe Confession of 14

Chapter II

That was the last meeting between Pete and myself in our native village. I after wards heard that his drunkenness was a celebration of a rise in life in his own method. His handsome face, and the facility with which he followed evil counsels, had attracted the attention of a flashily dressed ne'er-do-weel, who was amusing himself in the neighbourhood, and who needed a com panion and tool to help him on his way to destruction. This man took Pete into his service, and very shortly we heard that the fisher-lad had followed his master to London. And therein having plunged, we heard of him no more. In the meantime, I set to my books with a will, yet tempered my studies with some practice in athletics, so that in me mi-^ht 0 be better fashioned a complete man. My Stephen TMbapsbare. 15 parents were by persuasion Wesleyan Metho dists, but in our village was no too jealous demarcation between the forms of religion, so that the clergyman made it his business to advise as to my education.

I lived amidst these things with the patient adaptability of a child to the will of his elders, understanding little of the matter, but con scious of a mysterious width of destiny to which the means were present application. Those about me passed me on to my future with officious hands ; I had a sesame that opened every door. From the clergyman's interest I proceeded to that of the great people of the neighbourhood, who, finding in my gifts a distinction indigenous to their own dis trict, made it their business to bring me forward. Thus, by the time I was two or three and twenty, I had left the sphere to which I was born, and had been so far received in the houses of the richer folk as to have acquired something of manners and cour tesy, and of the ease of gracious be haviour. While staying at one of these houses, into Ubc Confession of 16 which I ever seemed to myself to have arrived by some magic of fate, I was introduced to a gentleman who offered me the post of secretary.

Mr. Ashley, my future employer, was of northern extraction, and belonged to a firm of successful railway operators. In him the inherited desire to be rich had changed to a desire for social distinction. Not yet in Parliament, he hoped, in the future, to be called upon to stand for his native town of Millbottom, at present represented by Mr. Craven, a local master and mill-owner. Mr. Ashley's ambition, and the cool game with the world which he played for it, were the fundamental facts of his character. He would have been a tolerable fellow to deal with had he presented himself barely as the man he was, for he had resource, and a temper under management, and considerable tact. But these good parts were obscured by pretensions to something he named " the higher life." I never knew Mr. Ashley to risk good opinion by a rash correction of the current pattern of virtue ; but by an assiduous performance of religious and philan- Stephen Whapshare. 17 thropic acts, he fingered the susceptibilities of his fellows, plucked honour from the shelf, and economically repaid expenditure by reputation.

It is probable that my parents had, in their first idea for me, the calling of the Wesleyan ministry ; but, deceived by the rumour of Mr. Ashley's good deeds, and further per suaded by some persons of the neighbour hood, they exchanged this for the offered secretaryship. It may be that, confused by a similarity in broadcloth, they took it but as a variation. I had no knowledge either way, but longed to taste of that apple of Sodom, the world. Therefore I put on gladly the habit of a class to which I did not belong, left the fisher village and my early austerities behind, and passed into the service of as plausible a rascal as ever posed for a guide to heaven. As with Pete, so with myself; London was the first destination, and there I had not been long before I made my discoveries, and began to bite of the apple, and to find it in the taste both good and evil.

From E some things I met with I shrank sensitively, and that not so much because they were broadly bad as because they were callously accepted. In the face of the general suave compromise — each man fearing to offend his neighbour by his principles, each man thread ing his way between his sense of absolute right and so much mitigation of it as would least threaten his own security — I began to long for those broad sins of my own people wherein a man erred or did not err ; the swearing, drinking, and rough passions with which, in familiar innocence, I was as much acquainted as with the storms of the sea. I longed, I say, for an obvious pursuit of destruction in place of this close sailing about infernal shores, from which men perilously escaped by narrow evasions, and then, in triumphant ingenuity, explained the cleanness of their hands.

But chiefly I was not unmindful of that base of wretchedness on which this society, thus complex in its adjustments between vice and virtue, stood. The house where my employer lived was in Stephen Whapshare. 19 Westminster, in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament, in the very heart of thinking, scheming London. One day, having been sent to a part of London where the misery flowed, not through contrasting channels of splendour and beauty as at Westminster, but in the narrow streets where it is bred, I found myself in so great a passion of pity and ruth, so great an indignation, that I could not come into the house, but, turning aside, walked through Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, and up to the terrace of the National Gallery, where I stood looking down at the scene beneath me. And in the strength of my emotion, and the simplicity of my religious faith (as yet unaltered from my parents' instruction), I lifted my aspiration upwards, praying that I might not traffic with philan thropy for my own advantage, but, becoming the servant and helper of these despoiled children of earth, be in myself Christ's disciple to them, and forsaking "the little competitions, factions, and debates of man kind," with place and office, deliberately in my own life return to the simple austerity of that teaching which He followed Himself and 0 laid on others.

It was my spiritual majority I reached in that hour, shaping definitely within my mind the aim worth my pursuit in life. And the prayer thus loosened from my heart went up and stood in ignorant courage before God ; and He laid His hand on it and took it back to Himself, remembering it. I returned to my employer's house, and, mounting the stairs, entered the drawing-room. The couple were at tea-drinking, and there were no guests. Mr. Ashley stood on the hearth, his back to the fire — for it was March — and Mrs. Ashley sat at the tea-table near. Mr. Ashley was stout, and had a double chin, presided over by a hard, commonplace eye. His habit of speech was in circumlocution. Mrs. Ashley was a coldly handsome woman, who made a figure at bazaars ; I presume that she knew how to dress, for she ever lent me the impression of costliness and of grave transactions in shops.

In manner, she was apt to over-emphasize her husband's. But her Stephen Wbapsbare. 21 leading personal trait was a narrow, insolent pride, which marked and never forgave an injury or a kindness. " Things are stirring a little, Whapshare ! " cried Mr. Ashley as I entered. " My husband," said Mrs. Ashley from behind the tea-cups, "has received a com pliment — one as great as it is unexpected." Whereupon I cast about amongst my later memories to recall what favour of fortune Mr. Ashley had been most assiduously schem ing for. " Is it the borough of Millbottom ? " asked I, with light bursting over my mind. Mrs. Ashley handed me a cup with a murmur of surprise at my skilful guessing. " You read in the papers of the sudden death of Mr. Craven, member for Millbottom, I presume ? " suggested Mr. Ashley, giving me my cue for the game of feigning which he played.

"Ah!" said I, speaking to my light, "there will be a bye-election." " Just so. Well, they've telegraphed to me to stand." " It will be an opportunity for my husband in the service of his country — should he feel it right to accept." " I think I may accept." "Had you not better telegraph at once?" cried I, deceived for the moment. " You are in a hurry ! " and Mr. Ashley smiled over his double chin to the carpet. " You think I should stand ? " I nodded, and stirred my tea in silence, being convinced that he had already tele graphed in the affirmative, and that immediately upon receiving the message. I was not skilful in feigning resoonse. I marvelled at 0 0 1 this worrying of a straightforward occurrence by little unnecessary lies. But there are persons whose intellectual capacity leads them to feel safer amidst lies than truth, and who conceive that every event is adorned by a setting of falsity.

Mr. Ashley, seeing that I was awkward at falling in with the game, somewhat impatiently invited me to be ready to start with him to Millbottom the next day, to which I consented, not with out a sense of pleasure, for, in my new- Stepben Wbapsbare. 23 found clearness of aim, each day was my opportunity, and every place my occasion, and each change a lift onwards over my own road. But how could I dream of the pit into which I should fall straight from the radiant hour ? What had I done to be so punished ? What was my sin that my humiliation should be bitter ? and that He should take me and grind me to atoms in the mills of His experience ? For even now as I sat in the room of my employer, with the sun on my hair, and gifts of food and drink before me, and the sense of choice, and will, and strength within, He drew my prayer, my consecration, back to Him, laying His hand on it, and answering it.

And He whispered to His messengers : " Go blind him ! " And to the forces of Nature He whispered : " Take his will prisoner ! " And to the forces that are spiritual He whispered : " Lie in wait for him in the way!" And Hell itself He com manded : " Loosen your battalions upon him, and beleaguer him round ! " Thus to the knowledge and experience hidden in the overshadowing of His wings of night, He, the Spirit, stooped down, laying His lips against the ears of their silence and speaking. Stephen Wbapsbare. 25

Chapter III

Millbottom was a large manufacturing town 0 0 on the border between two counties, and the house of my employer stood above a neighbouring village which lay in a valley of romantic beauty, spreading out the greystone prose of a few factories and many cottages amidst the poetry of as hill-dappled and faircoloured a landscape as I have seen. Its people were racy of the soil, wholesome and independent. Amongst them I speedily found myself more at home than I had been since leaving my native district ; here I could fall into place within the mean and benign average of human nature, and so lose some of that feeling of isolation to which I had been subject amidst the strained complexity of London. To live in the house of my employer was not a part of my arrangement with him, so I sought my lodging elsewhere, having a choice that way, and being glad to be some times free from the atmosphere which kept me inwardly protesting through half the hours of the day.

I heard of lodgings in one of those little " halls," which, of the size of a very large and roomy cottage but no more, mark the survival of yeomen families in the north. The name of the owner of this little hall was Maver, and the hall itself was called Maver Hall — for the name of the yeomen and their land is usually one. Maver Hall — the small house and the small garden — was surrounded by a stone wall, in which was a painted gate. As I pushed this back, the house-door opposite opened, and a woman of angular figure, with a long, interminable waist, and of plain features, and a singular tacitur nity of manner, stood on the threshold ex pectant of my business. "Is this house Mr. Maver's?" asked I, uncovering my head. The woman frowned. "Aye, John Maver's," said she. "Clap thee hat on, young man !

We're plain folk." I obeyed involuntarily " I was told I might get rooms here "If thou'rt honest and civil." " I trust I am both." And I smiled, relishing this rough directness of address. "Time will show. But come in and welcome," said she, without mitigation of her dry, inexpectant bearing. It appeared there were two rooms ; one a bare, cleanly place, built over a wood-shed, and pervaded by a pleasant country odour of sweet herbs, which I might call my bedroom. For my sitting-room I was given the " parlour," which contained more furniture than was to my liking. Some of it was old and good ; but there was a less pleasing admixture, and especially many strange compositions in coloured wool, serving either as mats or antimacassars. The real pride of the house was the kitchen, a place of age, cleanliness, and comfort.

After viewing the two rooms offered me, I lingered at the open door with a twinge of heartache, Œbe Confession of 28 so much did its honest integrity of atmosphere bring back the taste of my still humbler home in the south. My pause was noted by the woman, whose taciturn face changed a little, while her eye travelled over my coat. This was, indeed, of London make, I being as much of a dandy as my salary would allow ; but she offered me no invitation, and I was passing on, when a big masculine voice from the interior called to me : "Come in, sir, come in! and welcome. Mary, lass, why dost keep the gentleman standing ? " I found myself in the presence of a burly looking man, whose gravity of expression was tempered by a lively pair of grey eyes ; the rest of his features having as sturdy a mould as I have seen in a north countryman.

He wore the dress of a master stone-mason ; the dust of labour lay upon his clothes and hair and beard. He stood under the great black beam of his kitchen, and his eyes rested on me with an expression something between pride and invitation. On a rocking-chair by the fire sat a woman, clasping a sleeping child of about two years in her arms, and slowly rocking to and fro. "You are Mr. Maver?" I asked. " John Maver at your service, sir, stone mason and class-leader." With him I settled the terms for my rooms, Mary standing by the while. I remarked a great similarity in feature be tween the two ; but the type was more suit able to the masculine face than the feminine, and there was, besides, in the brother the adornment of hair to soften asperities. John was better looking for a man than Mary for a woman.