by Ellen Wood
THE GHOST OF THE HOLLOW FIELD
LOSING LENA.
FINDING BOTH OF THEM.
WOLFE BARRINGTON’S TAMING.
MAJOR PARRIFER.
COMING HOME TO HIM.
LEASE, THE POINTSMAN.
AUNT DEAN.
GOING THROUGH THE TUNNEL.
DICK MITCHEL.
A HUNT BY MOONLIGHT.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
JERRY’S GAZETTE.
SOPHIE CHALK.
AT MISS DEVEEN’S.
THE GAME FINISHED.
GOING TO THE MOP.
BREAKING DOWN.
REALITY OR DELUSION?
DAVID GARTH’S NIGHT-WATCH.
DAVID GARTH’S GHOST.
SEEING LIFE.
OUR STRIKE.
BURSTING-UP.
GETTING AWAY.
OVER THE WATER.
AT WHITNEY HALL.
LOST IN THE POST.
A LIFE OF TROUBLE.
HESTER REED’S PILLS.
ABEL CREW.
ROBERT ASHTON’S WEDDING-DAY.
HARDLY WORTH TELLING.
CHARLES VAN RHEYN.
MRS. TODHETLEY’S EARRINGS.
A TALE OF SIN.
A DAY OF PLEASURE.
THE FINAL ENDING TO IT.
MARGARET RYMER.
THE OTHER EARRING.
ANNE.
THE KEY OF THE CHURCH.
THE SYLLABUB FEAST.
SEEN IN THE MOONLIGHT.
ROSE LODGE.
LEE, THE LETTER-MAN.
THE MYSTERY OF JESSY PAGE.
CRABB RAVINE.
OUR VISIT.
JANET CAREY.
DR. KNOX.
HELEN WHITNEY’S WEDDING.
HELEN’S CURATE.
JELLICO’S PACK.
CAROMEL’S FARM.
CHARLOTTE AND CHARLOTTE.
THE LAST OF THE CAROMELS.
A DAY IN BRIAR WOOD.
THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.
DISAPPEARANCE.
THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.
LADY JENKINS. MINA.
LADY JENKINS. DOUBT.
LADY JENKINS. MADAME.
LADY JENKINS. LIGHT.
THE ANGELS’ MUSIC.
JOHNNY LUDLOW.
SANDSTONE TORR.
CHANDLER AND CHANDLER.
VERENA FONTAINE’S REBELLION.
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE.
ROGER BEVERE.
KETIRA THE GIPSY.
THE CURATE OF ST. MATTHEW’S.
MRS. CRAMP’S TENANT
FEATHERSTON’S STORY.
WATCHING ON ST. MARK’S EVE.
SANKER’S VISIT.
ROGER MONK.
THE EBONY BOX.
OUR FIRST TERM AT OXFORD.
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN
CARAMEL COTTAGE
A TRAGEDY
IN LATER YEARS
THE SILENT CHIMES
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE.
A DAY IN BRIAR WOOD.
A DAY OF PLEASURE.
A HUNT BY MOONLIGHT.
A LIFE OF TROUBLE.
A TALE OF SIN.
A TRAGEDY
ABEL CREW.
ANNE.
AT MISS DEVEEN’S.
AT WHITNEY HALL.
AUNT DEAN.
BREAKING DOWN.
BURSTING-UP.
CARAMEL COTTAGE
CAROMEL’S FARM.
CHANDLER AND CHANDLER.
CHARLES VAN RHEYN.
CHARLOTTE AND CHARLOTTE.
COMING HOME TO HIM.
CRABB RAVINE.
DAVID GARTH’S GHOST.
DAVID GARTH’S NIGHT-WATCH.
DICK MITCHEL.
DISAPPEARANCE.
DR. KNOX.
FEATHERSTON’S STORY.
FINDING BOTH OF THEM.
GETTING AWAY.
GOING THROUGH THE TUNNEL.
GOING TO THE MOP.
HARDLY WORTH TELLING.
HELEN WHITNEY’S WEDDING.
HELEN’S CURATE.
HESTER REED’S PILLS.
IN LATER YEARS
JANET CAREY.
JELLICO’S PACK.
JERRY’S GAZETTE.
JOHNNY LUDLOW.
KETIRA THE GIPSY.
LADY JENKINS. DOUBT.
LADY JENKINS. LIGHT.
LADY JENKINS. MADAME.
LADY JENKINS. MINA.
LEASE, THE POINTSMAN.
LEE, THE LETTER-MAN.
LOSING LENA.
LOST IN THE POST.
MAJOR PARRIFER.
MARGARET RYMER.
MRS. CRAMP’S TENANT
MRS. TODHETLEY’S EARRINGS.
OUR FIRST TERM AT OXFORD.
OUR STRIKE.
OUR VISIT.
OVER THE WATER.
REALITY OR DELUSION?
ROBERT ASHTON’S WEDDING-DAY.
ROGER BEVERE.
ROGER MONK.
ROSE LODGE.
SANDSTONE TORR.
SANKER’S VISIT.
SEEING LIFE.
SEEN IN THE MOONLIGHT.
SOPHIE CHALK.
THE ANGELS’ MUSIC.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
THE CURATE OF ST. MATTHEW’S.
THE EBONY BOX.
THE ELCHESTER COLLEGE BOYS
THE FINAL ENDING TO IT.
THE GAME FINISHED.
THE GHOST OF THE HOLLOW FIELD
THE KEY OF THE CHURCH.
THE LAST OF THE CAROMELS.
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN
THE MYSTERY OF JESSY PAGE.
THE OTHER EARRING.
THE SILENT CHIMES
THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.
THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.
THE SYLLABUB FEAST.
VERENA FONTAINE’S REBELLION.
WATCHING ON ST. MARK’S EVE.
WOLFE BARRINGTON’S TAMING.
The Non-Fiction
St John’s Wood Park, London — Wood’s last home was at No. 16
OUR CHILDREN
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
THE various lots of man in this world seem to be dealt out very unequally. That of some people appears to be cast in a sunny plain of uninterrupted prosperity and enjoyment, where there is nothing to do but go forward jauntily, taking little care for the morrow. That of others is undoubtedly thrown amid difficulties, and troubles, and sorrows; hardly a step of it can be taken but rocks jut out ahead, impeding the course, and thorns press into the foot. It is just possible that there may be less real difference in the two lots than is presented on their surface. If we could look into the heart of the most favoured as God looks into it, we might find there some hidden corroding anxiety or care; that ugly monster known familiarly amidst us as the “skeleton in the closet.” And, it may be, that within the breast of the most careworn and apparently unfortunate — in that hidden life, hidden from the world — there reigns some compensating element of soothing peace. One thing is certain: that natures are not all formed to feel in a like degree. While the shock of some great trouble, whether anticipated or falling unexpectedly, as the case may happen, is passed over lightly by one man — hardly seen when it comes; to another it is as a terrible agony, shattering the spirit for the time, leaving its marks until death.
But — whatever the lot, sunny or stormy, light or heavy, fair or dark, the race of life must be run, and we must fulfil our common duties in it. It has been getting rather a fast race of late years. What with business and pleasure, with out-of-door occupations and in-door cares, with the calls of society and the obligations of home and family, life seems to be one swift, bustling, heated course, in which there is never a moment to spare, night or day. It is said in that great Book — some few of us have become too busy to read it — that in the latter days we shall run to and fro, and kn
owledge shall be increased. Most certainly it would seem as if that prophecy had been written for the present time. We not only run to and fro in the literal interpretation of the words, and in a marvellous degree, from land to land, from country to country, over the seas and the waters, but we are running to and fro at home hourly and daily, giving ourselves no repose. The world was never so full of bustle as it is now; the career of men and women never so fast. “If I could, I would do so-and-so, but there’s no time even to think of it,” is a common assertion, often heard.
Just so. Life has become to the most of us one swift, headlong race — a continuous fight in which there is so much to do that the half of it has to be left undone. From Monday morning until Saturday night we are all pushing away in the fierce struggle to get along, rushing from one excitement to another. Some at work, some at play, all in a degree at both; no space is left for breathing-time. Even Sunday does not now bring to man its appointed rest, for we must go abroad to this place and that after the morning service; and visiting on that day has become fashionable.
Elderly people wonder why the summer or autumn holiday has become so universal; they and their fathers did not take it. The reason is, that the artificial speed at which we now live, with the unnatural excitement this speed creates, renders the interval of rest necessary to recruit the spent brain and jaded frame. In a word, the present system of existence is such, that all our powers of mind and body are taxed to keep it up, all our thoughts and energies must be exclusively and continuously devoted to it. And so the life runs on heedlessly, with its bustle and strife, its work and pleasure, its incessant whirl and its petty cares, affording no spare time in which to think of making much preparation for the other life that must come after. For the most part we forget how surely and fleetly we are hastening on to it.
We should, and do forget it; should forget it perhaps to the end. But there is One in heaven who cares more for us than we care for ourselves, and in mercy calls our attention to it now and then. However prosperously sunny the career may be, however full of painful adversity, there comes in most lives a time, or times, when we are pulled-up in our headlong course, and are brought, as it were, face to face with God. By some terrible accident, by an attack of dangerous illness, by the death of one very near and dear, by an epidemic that is slaying its hundreds around us, and that we are in mortal dread of catching, by a sudden awakening to the fact that old age is creeping on: in some one or other of these ways, as it may be, the check comes, and arouses us out of our supine apathy. I do not mean that mere temporary check arising from an ordinary cause — the hearing of an impressive sermon, the reading of a serious book — inducing uneasiness and passing reflection, here today and gone again to-morrow; but one of those solemn calls when we hear Death knocking at the door, and see that he must inevitably enter. A little sooner or a little later, what matters it? — there stands Death: and we know not whether we may be able to keep him out, even for a short period, or whether he is not, even then, gliding in.
Oh, what an hour of tribulation that is! Nothing of anguish in the past can have been like unto it. Death there; eternity at hand; and we unprepared!
Our days had been so full of business, you see, and we were so over-burdened with the work and pleasures of the world that we had no time to make preparation for it. It might not have been unprofitable work or sinful pleasures, but laudable industry and wholesome recreation. — Only — it was all done for the good of this life, none of it for the next.
Those who refused the call to the Great Supper that Christ tells of us of, on the plea that they were too busy to attend it, did not urge excuses that are sinful in themselves. The buying of ground and of oxen and the marrying of a wife are all right and necessary transactions of this life: and so were ours. We had been earning money — necessary to live; we had been making full use of our time — given us to use; we had been regulating our homes well, and planning for the social advancement of our children; we had been dining with our friends and been dined with in return. What was there wrong in all this? Nothing; surely nothing. No. But there we lie with that awful terror of remorse upon us, feeling and knowing that the mistake consisted in our having lived only for this world, and not at all for God.
My friends, such an hour, such a check, may not yet have been experienced by you; but it most assuredly will be, unlikely though you may at present deem it. Unless heaven is prepared for beforehand, the strings of conscience must be awakened on the death-bed.
All the mistakes and sins of the past life rise up in array then. We had thought we were doing so well in it! We have not been (in the wide sense of the term) open sinners or secret sinners, but simply busy people elbowing others in the world’s race, and using our best exertions to keep a fair and reputable place in it. Ah, but what have we left undone? If the very holiest among us pour forth that question in something very like despair when about to render up their account, what must we do who have not been holy at all?
There have been sins of omission and commission. If not of that glaring nature that the world itself for propriety’s sake condemns, have there not been lighter ones? Lighter, as we estimate them; not much lighter, perhaps, in the sight of heaven. The unkind word spoken; the unneighbourly act done; the utter lack of St. Paul’s charity; the cheating, the lying, the pride, the scorn; the deliberate abandonment of those who had a claim on us; the hardness of heart; frivolity; deceit; self-indulgence; covetousness; the habitual neglect of God — who is free from these? Opportunities wasted; time misspent; precepts flung away.
In rude health, when the grave seems so far off that it need not concern us at all, these sins seem to us as very venial ones; not, in fact, to be called sins: in that solemn hour I am trying to bring before you, when the grave has drawn near and is making ready, they start out in crimson colours, and we behold them in their true nature. With the hands raised in despair, the heart crying aloud in its anguish, we then ask of God that a little more span of life may be given to us as it was to Hezekiah of old, so that we may redeem the past.— “A year, Lord! — a month!
— a week! Only a day, that we may repent of our sins!”
Too late. We have had the time, and not used it — not used it for that which can alone serve us in this our last solemn need. It was good to work for riches: we needed them: but riches have taken to themselves wings in this our closing hour, and flown away. It was well to strive for place and power; some must fill it: to rise to a height amidst men; to attain to fame: but these desirable things cannot go away with us; we have to leave them behind. If we might but live our life over again! we cry out amid the cold dews of agony, so that we might atone for the carelessness of the past! that we might strive a little, while working for this world, to work also for God! Too late.
Believe me, this is no ideal picture — no creation of a vivid imagination. How many of those gone from us for ever, going from us daily, could testify to its truth! But they could never properly testify to the dreadful anguish of the despairing soul at that awful “Too late,” for it would be impossible to depict it. Tongue cannot utter it, or pen form words for it. If represented in all its truth and remorse and reality — which it never can be — heart and courage would alike start back with the prayer, “Lord, help me to avoid this!”
It is not so much what we have done amiss, as what we have left undone, that will trouble us, looking back. For the heaviest sin that can lie on the conscience, Jesus Christ holds out his free pardon. He can wash us white. He will wash all who supplicate him. But, that heavy array of things left undone — oh! it is that that torments the spirit and affrights the soul! We see now at the end, when time is over, how much lay in our duty to do — and we did it not. In our thoughtlessness we saw it not. We had not meant to be unkind, or careless, or neglectful, or to have given indifference where we should have given love, or to have run the race of life looking only at our own comforts and conveniences and interests, and not at all to the end. We seemed to be sailing smoothly and
safely (or hardly and painfully, according to our lot) down the current of life, just as others were sailing; and we thought ourselves sufficiently religious, and never dreamt of such a day of retribution as this. Too late: the race is run; regrets avails not. Life is over, with all its good and evil.
But, amid our past omissions — to call them by a light name — there is one that presses upon the spirit at this solemn time above every other, and it is this that I wish exclusively to enlarge upon: neglected duty in regard to our children. Our own sins, those that touch ourselves solely, lie with us; what we have committed we shall have to answer for. There is a verse, perhaps the most solemn in all the Book of Revelation, that shows us this.
“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, acccording to their works.”
Yes, our works, whether they have been good or evil, go forth with us to judgment; and by them we shall be justified, or by them condemned. They cannot affect another. Each soul must to itself stand or fall. But it is a different thing in regard to those children we leave behind us; and it may be that they, at the last Dread Day, shall be lost or saved according as we have trained them.
In the very happiest death-bed there must always lie something of remorse and regret; for who has lived as well as he might have lived? A truly happy death-bed is a thing to be written of; to be talked about; to cause hearts to glow with thankfulness: and how rare it is, as compared with its opposite, you well know. It is a scene of peace, of holy calm; almost as if Heaven had come down to earth for a little space and sanctified the chamber. For he, whose soul is on the wing, found his Saviour long before, and has striven to live in his precepts; and he knows that the God, whom he has done his poor best to serve, has blotted out all his sins for that Saviour’s sake. But, even the dying thoughts of such a one as this are overshadowed by anxious doubts and fears for the children he is leaving; and he says to himself, “I might have done more for them; have taught them to know their God better; have trained them more effectually for Heaven and walked with them more untiringly on the road to it.” And if these reproachful regrets visit the good man, who has in truth had his children’s best interests at heart throughout life, and laboured for their vital happiness — if he sees his own shortcomings in this last closing hour when time is fading and opportunities are gone — what must be, think you, the regret of those who have not so laboured?