IN THE PORCH

THEY sat down in the porch, the two women and the boy, and the stranger who had come from the country. The old woman was spinning, and the young one was sewing, and the stranger was watching the rain-clouds gather. The boy was turning over the leaves of a book in which the lives of great men were written down.

“I would give the world to know a great man,” he said, and the spinner looked up and answered—

“Ah! it is a grand thing; one feels one knows the world when one knows a great man.”

“And what is greatness?” asked the woman from the country; and then they were all silent, each wondering how the others would answer. And at last the boy spoke again, looking round at the women—

“Have any of you known a great man?” he asked, and again they were silent; but presently the spinner said—

“When I was young, there was a rich man living in the town; he must have been great, for he was very rich, and over his grave there stands a tall marble monument.”

“And what did he go?” asked the boy.

“I don’t know what he did; but once when he was young he had no money, so he set to work, and he worked and worked hard, so that long before he was middle-age he became very rich; and then he built a great house and lived in it, and kept grand horses and carriages, and when he drove through the town, all the people looked after him with wonder.”

“But what good deeds did he do?” asked the boy, “and what great things?”

“I never heard of any good deeds,” the spinner answered; “he had no time to think of the poor, or to fight battles as the heroes did; but he worked hard to become rich, and he had all things that money could buy.”

“It is a good thing to work,” said the woman from the country.

“And was he learned?” asked the boy.

“Ah, I do not know,” the spinner said. “He may have been, but he had his business to think of, and he did not talk much, or write books, or paint pictures, or teach others; none can tell how much he knew.”

“And had he many friends?”

“He had little time to make friends, and none knew him well; but sometimes rich men sat at his table, and ate and drank, and invited him to their houses, but he had little time to go, and little to say when he went, for he had to think of all the ways of making money, so that his riches might exceed those of other men.”

“And had he wife and children?”

“Oh no,” said the spinner, shaking her head sadly; “he had no time to give to his affections, and his heart had no room for them.”

“And for what did he work?”

“He worked to become rich, and to live among the things that money buys, and so that, if he chose, he might live at ease. He was a great man to win all these things for himself.”

“And who loved him?”

“There were none who loved him, but some feared him, and many longed to be as rich as he.”

“And had he never lived, what then?”

“Dear lad, I cannot tell: another would have been in his place, and the money that he earned would have been in other hands, but I cannot tell in whose.”

“And what was the good of him?”

“I do not know. But he was a great man, and when he died, he left directions for a grand marble tomb.”

“And what was the good of that?” asked the boy.

“Ah, lad, if our name is written in no human heart, and none care to remember it, and if there are no books and no deeds called after us, is it not a great thing to have it written up on marble? It would be sad indeed if there were no room anywhere on earth for it: there was room on a marble tomb for his.”

“Did any weep for him?”

“No, there were none to weep for him; but the marble monument is there, tall and fine.”

“Do any remember him?”

“Few remember him, and none care to think of him; but there are some distant cousins of his in a far-off land, and these spend his money: they had no need of it, and they never saw his face, but they spend his money with a lavish hand—all the gold and silver which he had heaped up. Oh, he was a great man, and very rich.” And then the spinner was silent.”

II.

“AND now tell me,” said the boy, turning to the young woman, “did you ever know a great man?”

“I have known so few people,” she answered, thoughtfully. She was silent for a few minutes, and then spoke again. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “there was a poor woman who lodged for a time in my mother’s cottage. She was very poor; she had only a few clothes and a little shoe that her father, who was a cobbler, had left unfinished when he died, and she had an old sampler which she had worked, when she was a child. One day she showed the little shoe to the village cobbler, and I think he always worked better afterwards; for he said he had never seen work better done than the work that was in the unfinished shoe, and he felt ashamed of his own bad stitches. When the woman had been a year in my mother’s house she died, and left my mother all she had, just the old clothes, and the little shoe, and the sampler. On the sampler there was worked the name and age of the worker, ‘Sarah Short, aged 7 years,’ and right down at the bottom there was written on the frame, ‘I have tried to work this well, for Daddy said good work lives on for ever.’ And my mother told me to take these words to heart, and then she hung the sampler up over the fireplace in our little sitting-room. And one day, just a few years ago, an artist came to my mother’s cottage, and asked if he could lodge there for the summer while he painted a picture; so we made room for him, and every day he went out to paint the view from the hillside. He was not strong when he came, and he was sorely disheartened about his work, for he was poor, and no one bought his pictures; though he tried hard to paint his very best, no one seemed to care for them or to notice them. He was almost in despair when he came, and beginning to think that it was of no use working well, or hoping for good things to come. After a bit he lost patience with the picture he was painting, for it took so much time, and he was not sure that any would buy it, or that those who cared for pictures would ever see it, and so he put it away, and began painting portraits of the village folk. He painted many, and there was one delicate child whose little face he painted just for love of it; and became he loved the child he took so much pains with the portrait that he did it better than all the others, and those who saw it stood for a long time looking at the pale little face, and the large blue eyes; and then I think they fell to thinking of things far better than themselves. At last there were no more portraits to paint, and the painter seemed to lose all heart again, and he used to take a book and go to the woods and spend the whole day in reading. My mother was grieved for him, for she saw that he was poor, and that fame and money would be very sweet to him. One day”—the young woman stopped for a moment and looked up at the boy, scarcely seeing him, but thinking of the days that were gone, and living once more in them—“it seems like yesterday,” she said with a sigh, and then went on—“one day when he was going out, and had to pass as usual through our little sitting-room, his eye caught the old sampler hanging up over the fireplace, and he went up to it and looked at it, and then he read the words beneath, ‘Good work lives on for ever.’ He read them and turned away, and then went back and read them again. The next morning he took the unfinished picture to the hillside again and worked at it with a will to which he had been a stranger many a day. He worked at it every day, oh, so carefully. Many a bit he painted out and painted in again, and many a night he was dissatisfied with his whole day’s work, but still he went on and one. It seemed as if there was something in his heart that he painted right into the picture, and besides this, he painted all he saw, and at last when it was done, and one looked at it, one fancied one could hear the birds sing, and feel the sweet summer air coming from the south. I always though when I saw it,” continued the woman, “that it was a blessed thing for us all to live in so beautiful a world, and a sin and a sorrow when we did anything to disgrace it. There are few of us,” she added, “who can do things worthy of it: that is too great a happiness for many of us to reach.

“At last the painter went away, and we heard no more of him for a long time, not till the next year, and then news came that every one was talking of his pictures—that they were hanging in the Exhibition, and were counted the best there—and the pictures were the view from the hillside and the portrait of the little child. And we were all so proud and happy in the village, thinking of the grand people who would se our child’s face and the view of our own country-side that we had known all our lives. After that the painter painted many pictures, and we heard his name many times, though it was long before we saw him again. But at last one day he walked into our cottage, looking proud and happy, as those who have done well must surely feel. He told us how the picture he had painted, which he had so nearly put away unfinished, had been sold and hung up in a public gallery, where all could see it. Bu the portrait of the child he had brought for the child’s mother, for he said none could value it as she would. And then he told us how he owed most of his fame to the old sampler that hung up over our fireplace. For he had given up his picture in despair, fearing he would gain nothing by it, but when he read the words written on the sampler, he sat and thought how gain and fame were small things to seek, and that the knowledge that one had done some good work would surely be sweeter far than either. So he had taken out his picture and worked at it again, trying hard with that, as with all after work, to make it better and better, never wholly satisfied with what he had done, and for ever with each new thing he did, aiming higher and higher; striving after that perfection which many seek yet none can hope to gain. And now,” said the woman, looking up at the boy again, “all people know his name, and the knowledge he sought is his, and all other things are in his reach. He offered to but the old sampler of us, and said he would keep it all his life; but my mother would not sell it, for she said it had been given to her from simple love, which no money can buy. Surely the painter is a great man!” and the woman stopped.

“Yes,” said the boy, “he is a great man; but I think the cobbler was a great man too. Do you know what he was called?”

“I never heard his name,” the woman answered, “but I suppose it was that by which his daughter went.”

“Where did he live?” asked the boy.

“I do not know,” the woman answered, “but what he was and where he lived do not concern us; it is what he did that has been of help and service to others; and what we are matters little, but what we do matters to all the world.” Surely she was right, seeing how immortal is human action, be it good or ill? None of us can say that the good shall live and the bad shall die, and none of us can tell when we may be making history.

III

“SURELY the things we can do matter little!” the boy said. “I cannot think that anything I can ever do will be of consequence.”

“You cannot tell,” said the woman, “and thus it is that we must be so careful.”

“And why is what one does so much greater than what one is?” he asked absently, half forgetting the story she had just told him.

“Man must die,” the woman answered sadly; “even the best loved and the greatest, and those who knew him and remember his face die also in their turn. So he who desires to live must fashion his own immortality our of what his hands shall find to do. And he whose ambition is highest has no wish to be remembered, save by those who loved him; but that his work shall be remembered, that is the desire of his soul.”

“Many a man lives and works and dies,” said the woman from the country, “without thought of anything save of doing his best in his day, glad and ready to help those about him, content to die when his turn comes, and never a thought of lying in wait for immortality.”

“It steals on many a one unawares and wraps him round so softly he never knows that it is his!” said the young woman, taking up her sewing once more.

“I am not thinking of those,” said the stranger, “but of those whom it never touches, and who have neither thought nor knowledge of it, and yet are as useful as any. One does not think of the stones hidden at the base, and yet the great tower rests on them, and but for them would never stand so high.”

“Ah! but then it is surely a great thing to help a tower to stand,” the spinner said. But the stranger did not seem to hear her, and went on—

“It is the simple-hearted fold, pure-lived and pure-thinking, who do well for love of doing well, and for love of those about them that help, each one in his place, to make the world so beautiful and life so sweet. Each one helps to make a whole, just as the little grains of sand make up the long sea-shore.”

“But we were talking of great men,” the boy said impatiently. “Did you ever know any?” he asked the stranger.

She was silent for a moment, and then she spoke, looking away from the boy, far off into the distance, as if the place she had come from lay beyond, and her thoughts were going home to it with every word she said.

“No,” she said, “I have never known any that were called great; but once, years and years ago, I knew a scholar: he had more knowledge than any man for miles and miles round.”

“Tell me about him,” the boy said eagerly.

“He had studied all his life long,” the stranger went on; “he knew all manner of languages, and had read all the books that were written in them. He was always studying: he shut himself up and saw no one, and talked to no one if he could help it, and learned more and more and more, and bought all strange and learned books to read, and at last I heard that there were few greater scholars than he. Many people went to his house; but even if he saw them, he did not say much, for he was always thinking of this strange science, and that new art, and of the books he was reading, and the language he was learning, so that he seemed to have no words for common use, and those who went to see him came away strangely impressed by his learning, and yet no wiser than they went.”

“What did he do with his learning?” asked the boy. “Did he teach any?”

“No, he taught none: the simple people were afraid of him, for he knew so much and said so little. Even to learned men like himself he did not say much more; so they too went away disappointed.”

“What did he do with his learning?”

“He did nothing with it, he never wrote it down, he never taught others; he just went on for ever taking in and never giving out; he was like a human cupboard—”

“He was just like a cupboard,” laughed the boy. But the stranger frowned when she heard him laugh; it seemed as if the recollection of the scholar was painful to her.

“And one day,” she went on, “a lock was put upon his lips, and he could never learn again, and could speak no more, for the key to the lock has never been found in this world; and so there was nothing more to be done with the scholar, and he was hidden away out of sight and sound for ever, and all his learning was locked up with him.”

“Is that all?” asked the boy; but the stranger went on quickly, not seeming to hear him. “There was a blacksmith living in the same place with the scholar,” she said. “He had a wife and children; he worked hard, as best he could, and was always cheerful and hopeful, and had a helping hand and a ready smile for all who looked for them, and for many who had no thought of finding them. He died at the same time as the scholar, and those who were nearest to him would have died for love of him, but that they knew it would be greater love still to live for him. All the place was sadder and poorer for his loss, and the best wish folk could wish his sons was that they might grow up to be like him.”

“But he was not a great man; there are surely many like him?” the boy said.

“And he was lucky in his friends to be loved so well,” the spinner said.

“No, he was not a great man, and there are many like him,” the stranger said with a sigh. “But he was worth considering; it is the like of him that have made the world worth living in for us, and will make it worth living in for those that are to come. As for love.” she said, looking at the spinner, “there is always love somewhere for the heart that knows how to bid it welcome;” and she rose to go on her way.

“But we were talking of greatness,” the boy persisted.

“Yes, we were talking of greatness,” she repeated sadly. “Don’t hanker after it or go seeking it; do what you can as best you can, and some day perhaps without your knowing it, it will be looking over your shoulder;” and before any of them spoke again the stranger was journeying on into the distance.