John Holdsworth, Chief Mate. William Clark Russell
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on her husband’s, then laid her cheek against his shoulder, as a child would whom its tears have worn out.
“Grandmother,” said the young man, “I leave my Dolly to your care, and I know you will love and cherish her as though you were sure that any ill that came to her would break my heart.”
“She cannot be dearer to me than she always was,” answered the old lady, solemnly; “but be sure, John, that I’ll take extra care of her, since her preciousness is doubled by being dear to you and having your life bound up in hers.”
“And you will keep her heart up with happy thoughts of me, grandmother,” continued the young fellow, his dark eyes made infinitely tender by the shadow of tears, “and bid her remember that when the wind blows here it may be a summer calm where I am, and blue sky when there are thunderstorms here. You’ll remember this, Dolly?”
“Yes, John.”
“The calendar is a good thought of grandmother’s. Or you may watch the flowers, Dolly; you’ll see them fade away and leave the ground bare. By-and-by they’ll spring up again, and they will be a promise that I am coming back to you—coming quickly—quick as the wind will blow me—back to my little wife, to my sweet wife, Dolly.”
She sobbed quickly with renewed passion, and clasped his hand.
There was a childlike beauty in her face that made her sorrow infinitely touching for him, who loved her with all the strength of his great heart, to behold. He looked wistfully at the old grandmother; but she, more powerless than he, was brooding over the to-morrows which were to come when he should have gone away and left her alone with Dolly’s grief.
“I have a mind,” she said at last, “to send for Mr. Newcome, the rector. He should be able to point out to Dolly better than either of us can, that there is something unrighteous in suffering our hearts to be overcome by any dispensations God in His wise providence may choose to ordain.”
“No, I don’t want Mr. Newcome,” sobbed Dolly. “I must cry, granny. When John is gone, I’ll dry my eyes, and think of nothing but the time when he is to come back to me. But whilst I see him, and know that this time to-morrow he will be gone, I can’t help crying, indeed I can’t, granny.”
“Ay, my dear, but if your tears could bind him to you, and take the place of his duties which summon him away, they would be very well. But it is your place to help him in his troubles, as it is his to help you in yours; and see what a lonesome air his face has as he watches you, because he feels himself away from you by your refusing to listen to the words he tries to comfort you with.”
“I would give my right hand to save Dolly from these tears, grandmother,” said John, “but it is her love that frets. By-and-by her eyes will grow bright, for she will know that every hour which passes after I have left her is bringing us nearer to next summer, when we shall be together again.”
“But a year is such a long time,” wailed Dolly. “It is four times over again the months we have been together, and it seems ages ago since you came home, John. And granny doesn’t know the dangers of the sea. You have never talked to her as you have to me. Haven’t you told me of shipwrecks, and how men fall overboard, and how some ships catch fire and not a creature saved of all a great ship’s crew?”
“Yes, Dolly,” he answered, smoothing her bright hair; “but I have always said that the sea isn’t more dangerous than the land. There’s danger everywhere for the matter of that, isn’t there, grandmother?”
“Oh dear yes,” groaned the old lady; “there are deaths going on all about us, on the dry land, quick as our pulses beat.”
“Ay, true enough, grandmother,” rejoined John; “more deaths are going on ashore than are going on at sea. But why do we talk of death? People part and meet again—why shouldn’t we? There is no end to trouble if once we begin to think of what may happen. A man should put his trust in God”——
“Yes, that first, that chiefly,” interrupted the grandmother.
“And fight his way onward with as much courage and hope and resolution to win as though there were no such thing as death in the world at all. When I bid you good-bye, Dolly, I shan’t say good-bye, perhaps for ever; no! no! I will say good-bye till next summer. Summer is sure to come, and why shouldn’t it bring me back?”
“We will pray God that it will,” exclaimed the grandmother.
Thus these honest hearts talked and hoped; but, in truth, the parting was more bitter than Dolly could bear.
On this, the eve of her husband’s leaving her, she could see no promise in time, no sunshine in the long and dismal blank that stretched before her. She was quite a young bride, had been married only three months; but his presence had already become a habit to her, a portion of her life, a condition of her happiness.
She had engaged herself to him eighteen months since, not many weeks before he sailed on his last voyage; but though she had learnt to love him tenderly as her sweetheart, his going did not then afflict her as it now did. He was only her lover then, but now he was her husband. She was ardent when she became his wife, flushed with the sweet and gracious emotions of her new state, and because the thought of the approaching time threw a shadow upon her happiness, she drove it deep down in her heart, out of sight almost, and so unfitted herself for bravely encountering the certain trouble that was to come.
It had come now; its full weight was upon her; she thought it must break her heart.
When we found them, they had not long returned from the last walk they were to take together for many a weary month; and it was so bitterly sad to them both, that no words can express its pathos. They were surrounded by familiar and beloved objects; and every detail that had heretofore made up the colour and life of their married love now came, each with its special pang of sorrow, to tell them that their dream was dissolved, and that their embraces, their whispers—indeed their very hopes—must be postponed until a period so far off, that it seemed as if no time would ever bring it to them. The poor fellow did his utmost to inspirit her; all the unsubstantial comfort he strove to lay to his own heart he gave to her; but his broken voice made his cheery assurances more sad even than her tears; and down by the little river, when the evening had gathered, and the soft stars were looking upon them, he had given way to his grief, and wept over her as if the form he pressed to him were lifeless.
The story of his courtship and marriage was as simple as the pastoral life of the village in which it occurred.
He had been called to Southbourne by his aunt, who lived there, and who felt herself dying. He had then just returned from a ten months’ voyage. He was fond of his aunt, as the only living relative he had, and came to her at once. At her house—indeed, by her bedside—he met Mrs. Flemming, Dolly’s grandmother. Mrs. Flemming took a fancy to him, admired his handsome face, his honest character, the cordial tenderness of his nature, which he illustrated by his devotion to his sick aunt, and asked him to her house, where he met Dolly.
He fell in love with her; and then, but not till then, he found that Southbourne was an infinitely better place to live in than the neighbourhood of the West India Docks.
Dolly was an innocent little creature, and hardly knew at first what to make of the love she had inspired in her grandmother’s young friend; but by degrees the old story was read through between them, and the last chapter found them betrothed with Mrs. Flemming’s full consent.
Meanwhile the aunt had died and left her little savings to her nephew, who gave the money to Mrs. Flemming to take care of for him until he came home. He was then chief mate, aged twenty-eight. When thirty he was to command a ship, his employers promised. So when he returned, twenty-nine years old, with only another year before him to serve out as a subordinate, he claimed Mrs. Flemming’s leave to marry Dolly; and within three weeks from the time of his arrival they were man and wife.
There could be no hitch: there was nobody’s leave but Mrs. Flemming’s to get. He and Dolly were both of them orphans. Her parents