John Holdsworth, Chief Mate. William Clark Russell
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always roaring; the flat-roofed baker’s shop, standing importunately forwards, away from the little house in which the baker lived; the butcher’s hard by; the apothecary’s next to that; and the linendraper’s shop, which had absorbed the frontage of no less than two solemn-looking houses—noting these and other details contributing to the carnal or frivolous interests of the place, until it settled upon a small building, which, standing in the centre of the road, narrowed it into a large and a small lane, and thus marked the extent and importance of the High Street.
Our story opens on a summer’s evening. The daylight is still abroad upon the distant hill-tops, but the twilight has fallen like an inaudible hush upon Southbourne, and the farmyards are tranquil, save when, now and again, some uncomfortable hen seeking a resting-place near to her sovereign cock hops for his perch, but in hopping falls and awakens the sleepers with her fluttering scrambles and keen notes of distress, echoed by a hundred wondering throats.
The evening is warm, and many of the house doors are open; and at these open doors sit, here and there, men in their shirt-sleeves, or in homely smocks, smoking long pipes, and addressing each other from across the road with voices bespeaking laborious thought, which demands many reflective puffs to clarify and adjust. Now the apothecary’s boy comes out and lights the coloured lamp over the door, while the apothecary within sets two wax candles against his brilliant globes of lustrous dyes and illuminates the darksome roadway with a crimson and a yellow gleam. Now the linendraper’s assistant steps forth and puts up the shutters to his master’s windows, whilst the master himself struts along the floor, flapping his counter with a dust-brush, and inhaling the appetising perfume which streams from an inner room, and which is the best assurance he could demand that his supper is preparing. Anon comes a lame man, armed with a ladder, a lanthorn, and a can of oil at his girdle; he sets the ladder against a lamp-post, and in five minutes’ time succeeds in kindling a faint uncertain light in the darkling air. Thrice does he perform this laborious duty, and then, lo! the High Street is illuminated.
These lights seem to act as signals for sundry groups of gossips, standing here and there along the dusty road, to disperse. The small cackle of talk, like the click of wheels driven against springs, ceases; the old hobble towards the houses, the young follow yet more leisurely; the gloom deepens; one by one the doors are closed and little yellow lights twinkle mistily upon the latticed windows. And now, though the clock of St. George’s Church has not yet tolled the half-hour past eight, one may easily see that the good village of Southbourne, with one eye upon the candles, costly at sixteenpence the pound, and another eye upon the early hour that is to expel it from its slumbers into the fields and the workshops, is making what haste it can to creep with heavy eyelids into bed.
In the house that looks askant down the road and breaks the thoroughfare into lanes, there is a sorrow at work that should seem absolutely inconsistent with the serenity and peace of the summer evening outside.
Three persons are seated in a cosy room; a tall lamp on a table sheds a soft light upon the walls; the window is open, and the large tremulous stars look in through the branches of the elms which front the little building. How sweet is the smell of the clematis about the window! and see, a great black moth whirrs towards the lamp and occupies the silence with its vigorous slaps against the ceiling.
The old woman in the high-backed chair, looking down upon her placid hands, is a perfect picture of handsome old age: hair white as snow; a sunken cheek touched with a hectic that passes well for, if indeed it be not, the bloom of health; a garrulous under lip; a mild and benevolent expression. She is dressed in an antique satin gown, and a fine red silk handkerchief, as large as a shawl, is pinned about her shoulders.
Facing her sits a young man, broad-shouldered and bronzed, with large lustrous black eyes and dark wavy hair. He wears a pilot cloth coat and black trousers, bell-mouthed at the feet, and a plain silver ring upon his left hand.
Close beside him, on a low chair, sits a young girl, with a sweet and modest face, and bright yellow hair which shines in the lamplight like gold, and blue eyes filled now with tears.
So they sit, so they have sat, for many minutes in silence, and nothing is heard but the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, or the awkward moth that hits the ceiling, or now and again the melancholy plaint of some dreaming or belated bird from the dark country that stretches outside like a vision under the throbbing starlight.
Presently the old lady, lifting her head, says:
“I don’t think it pleases God that people’s hearts should be sorrowful. Nothing should grieve us but the fear of His anger; and if there be truth in religion, and any wisdom in human experience, there is nothing in this world that should make us sad.”
The girl presses her hand to her eyes, and answers in a broken voice:
“John and I have never really been parted before.”
“We never can be parted, Dolly, my sweet little wife,” says the young man. “There was a fear of parting before, but none now, dear one. I am only leaving you for awhile—and that is not parting, is it, grandmother? Parting is separation, and those whom God has joined cannot be parted, cannot be parted, my Dolly!”
“Ay, that is right!” exclaims the old lady. “John is only leaving you for awhile—you cannot be parted—remember that.”
“But it is to be a long while, and my heart will be so lonely without him, granny.”
The old lady gives her head a dispirited shake.
“It is all going and coming in this world,” says she. “To-day here, to-morrow there: ’tis like breathing on a mirror.”
“No, no!” cries the young fellow, “that is a melancholy simile. Life is something more than a breath. I would be content to know nothing but its sorrows, rather than think it the hollow illusion people call it. Oh, Dolly, you must cheer up and help to give me heart. I want all the courage I can get. After this voyage we needn’t be separated any more. Remember, next year I shall be skipper, and then I can take you to sea with me.”
“If next year had only come!” the poor little girl sobs, and lets her face fall upon her husband’s hand.
“Nay, nay,” the old lady chides, gently, “ ’tis thy business to help and support thy husband, Dolly. Will tears help him? Resolution is softened by them, and made weak and womanish. Your mother before you, my child, knew what it was to part from your father. He once went to Spain, and for many months we knew not whether he was living or dead. You were a little child then. What came to her, came to me, and must come to you as it comes to all women who will needs transplant their own hearts into men’s. Know this, Dolly, that no love is purely sweet that has not known trials and afflictions.”
“Hear that, my little one,” says the young husband, stooping his head until his lips touch his wife’s ears. “Let us seek a blessing in our grief, and we shall find one. It teaches me to know my love for you—our love for each other. Is not such knowledge blessed?”
“See here, Dolly,” continued the grandmother, battling with the tears provoked by the influx of hurrying memories which followed her reference to her own child, Dolly’s mother. “When John is gone, we will put up a calendar against the wall in your bedroom; and every night, after we have worshipped God, we will prick off a day, and you shall see how quickly the calendar grows small under our hands. I am seventy years old, and it was but the other day that I was dancing your mother in my arms, and I was a young woman, and your grandfather a hearty man, with brown hair under his wig, and bright big eyes like yours. Why, that was fifty years ago, and it seems but yesterday! Many’s the bitter tear I have shed, and the grief I have borne; but the times I mourn cannot come back to me, they are gone for ever—my life is but an empty chamber now; there is no fire in the grate, and the chairs are vacant, and I feel so lonely that I sometimes wish I was dead. But what is your grief? It is but a few months’ separation, and every day that dies will give you happiness. It is not so with others, nor with me—no! no!”
As the old grandmother spoke, with some perception, perhaps, of that rather discreditable characteristic of human