STILL LIFE.
I must now, if I am to bring you to "Two years ago," and to my story,
as it was told to me, ask you to follow me into the good old West
Country, and set you down at the back of an old harbour pier; thirty
feet of grey and brown boulders, spotted aloft with bright yellow
lichens, and black drops of tar, polished lower down by the surge of
centuries, and towards the foot of the wall roughened with crusts
of barnacles, and mussel-nests in crack and cranny, and festoons of
coarse dripping weed.
On a low rock at its foot, her back resting against the Cyclopean
wall, sits a young woman of eight-and-twenty, soberly, almost primly
dressed, with three or four tiny children clustering round her. In
front of them, on a narrow spit of sand between the rocks, a dozen
little girls are laughing, romping, and pattering about, turning the
stones for "shannies" and "bullies," and other luckless fish left by
the tide; while the party beneath the pier wall look steadfastly down
into a little rock-pool at their feet,--full of the pink and green
and purple cut-work of delicate weeds and coralline, and starred with
great sea-dahlias, crimson and brown and grey, and with the waving
snake-locks of the Cercus, pale blue, and rose-tipped like the fingers
of the dawn. One delicate Medusa is sliding across the pool, by slow
pantings of its crystal bell; and on it the eyes of the whole group
are fixed,--for it seems to be the subject of some story which the
village schoolmistress is finishing in a sweet, half-abstracted
voice,--
"And so the cruel soldier was changed into a great rough red starfish,
who goes about killing the poor mussels, while nobody loves him, or
cares to take his part; and the poor little girl was changed into a
beautiful bright jelly-fish, like that one, who swims about all day in
the pleasant sunshine, with a red cross stamped on its heart."
"Oh, mistress, what a pretty story!" cry the little ones, with tearful
eyes. "And what shall we be changed to when we die?"
"If we will only be good we shall go up to Jesus, and be beautiful
angels, and sing hymns. Would that it might be soon, soon; for you and
me, and all!" And she draws the children, to her, and looks upward, as
if longing to bear them with her aloft.
Let us leave the conversation where it is, and look into the face of
the speaker, who, young as she is, has already meditated so long upon
the mystery of death that it has grown lovely in her eyes.
Her figure is tall, graceful, and slight, the severity of its outlines
suiting well with the severity of her dress, with the brown stuff gown
and plain grey whittle. Her neck is long, almost too long: but all
defects are forgotten in the first look at her face. We can see it
fully, for her bonnet lies beside her on the rock.
The masque, though thin, is perfect. The brow, like that of Greek
statue, looks lower than it really is, for the hair springs from below
the bend of the forehead. The brain is very long, and sweeps backward
and upward in grand curves, till it attains above the ears a great
expanse and height. She should be a character more able to feel
than to argue; full of all a woman's veneration, devotion, love of
children,--perhaps, too, of a woman's anxiety.
The nose is slightly aquiline; the sharp-cut nostrils indicate a
reserve of compressed strength and passion; the mouth is delicate;
the lips, which are full and somewhat heavy, not from coarseness, but
rather from languor, show somewhat of both the upper and the under
teeth. Her eyes are bent on the pool at her feet; so that we can see
nothing of them but the large sleepy lids, fringed with lashes so long
and dark that the eye looks as if it had been painted, in the Eastern
fashion, with antimony; the dark lashes, dark eyebrows, dark hair,
crisped (as West-country hair so often is) to its very roots, increase
the almost ghostlike paleness of the face, not sallow, not snow-white,
but of a clear, bloodless, waxen hue.
And now she lifts her eyes,--dark eyes, of preternatural largeness;
brilliant, too, but not with the sparkle of the diamond; brilliant as
deep clear wells are, in which the mellow moonlight sleeps fathom-deep
between black walls of rock; and round them, and round the wide-opened
lips, and arching eyebrow, and slightly wrinkled forehead, hangs an
air of melancholy thought, vague doubt, almost of startled fear; then
that expression passes, and the whole face collapses into a languor of
patient sadness, which seems to say,--"I cannot solve the mystery. Let
Him solve it as seems good to Him."
The pier has, as usual, two stages; the upper and narrower for a
public promenade, the lower and broader one for business. Two rough
collier-lads, strangers to the place, are lounging on the wall above,
and begin, out of mere mischief, dropping pebbles on the group below.
"Hillo! you young rascals," calls an old man lounging like them on
the wall; "if you don't drop that, you're likely to get your heads
broken."
"Will you do it?"
"I would thirty years ago; but I'll find a dozen in five minutes who
will do it now. Here, lads! here's two Welsh vagabonds pelting our
schoolmistress."
This is spoken to a group of Sea-Titans, who are sitting about on
the pier-way behind him, in red caps, blue jackets, striped jerseys,
bright brown trousers, and all the picturesque comfort of a
fisherman's costume, superintending the mending of a boat.
Up jump half-a-dozen off the logs and baulkings, where they have been
squatting, doubled up knee to nose, after the fashion of their class,
and a volley of execrations, like a storm of grape, almost blows
the two offenders off the wall. The bolder, however, lingers,
anathematising in turn; whereon a black-bearded youth, some six feet
four in height, catches up an oar, makes a sweep at the shins of
the lad above his head, and brings him writhing down upon the upper
pier-way, whence he walks off howling, and muttering threats of
"taking the law." In vain;--there is not a magistrate within ten
miles; and custom, Lynch-law, and the coast-guard lieutenant, settle
all matters in Aberalva town, and do so easily enough; for the petty
crimes which fill our gaols are all unknown among those honest
Vikings' sons; and any man who covets his neighbour's goods, instead
of stealing them has only to go and borrow them, on condition, of
course, of lending in his turn.
"What's that collier-lad hollering about, Captain Willis?" asks Mr.
Tardrew, steward to Lord Scoutbush, landlord of Aberalva, as he comes
up to the old man.
"Gentleman Jan cut him over, for pelting the schoolmistress below
here."
"Serve him right; he'll have to cut over that curate next, I reckon."
"Oh, Mr. Tardrew, don't you talk so; the young gentleman is as kind a
man as I ever saw, and comes in and out of our house like a lamb."
"Wolf in sheep's clothing," growls Tardrew.
"What d'ye think he says to me last week? Wanted to turn the
schoolmistress out of her place because she went to chapel sometimes."
"I know, I know," replied Willis, in the tone of a man who wished to
avoid a painful subject. "And what did you answer, then, Mr. Tardrew?"
"I told him he might if he liked; but he'd make the place too hot
to hold him, if he hadn't done it already, with his bowings and his
crossings, and his chantings, and his Popish Gregories,--and tells one
he's no Papist; called him Pope Gregory himself. What do we want with
popes' tunes here, instead of the Old Hundredth and Martyrdom? I
should like to see any Pope of the lot make a tune like them."
Captain Willis listened with a face half sad, half slily amused. He
and Tardrew were old friends; being the two most notable persons in
the parish, save Jones the lieutenant, Heale the doctor, and another
gentleman, of whom we shall speak presently. Both of them too, were
thorough-going Protestants, and though Churchmen, walked sometimes
into the Brianite Chapel of an afternoon, and thought it no sin. But
each took the curate's "Puseyism" in a different way, being two men as
unlike each other as one could well find.
Tardrew--steward to Lord Scoutbush, the absentee landlord,--was a
shrewd, hard-bitten, choleric old fellow, of the shape, colour, and
consistence of a red brick; one of those English types which Mr.
Emerson has so well hit off in his rather confused and contradictory
"Traits:"--
"He hides virtues under vices, or, rather, under the semblance of
them. It is the misshapen, hairy, Scandinavian Troll again who lifts
the cart out of the mire, or threshes the corn which ten day-labourers
could not end: but it is done in the dark, and with muttered
maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose
speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a
pinch. He says, No; and serves you, and his thanks disgust you." Such,
was Tardrew,--a true British bulldog, who lived pretty faithfully up
to his Old Testament, but had, somehow, forgotten the existence of the
New.
Willis was a very different and a very much nobler person; the most
perfect specimen which I ever have met (for I knew him well, and loved
him) of that type of British sailor which good Captain Marryat has
painted in his Masterman Ready, and painted far better than I can,
even though I do so from life. A tall and graceful old man, though
stooping much from lumbago and old wounds; with snow-white hair and
whiskers, delicate aquiline features, the manners of a nobleman, and
the heart of a child. All children knew that latter fact, and clung
to him instinctively. Even "the Boys," that terrible Berserk-tribe,
self-organised, self-dependent, and bound together in common
iniquities and the dread of common retribution, who were in Aberalva,
as all fishing towns, the torment and terror of all douce fogies, male
and female,--even the Boys, I say, respected Captain Willis, so potent
was the influence of his gentleness; nailed not up his shutters, nor
tied fishing-lines across his doorway; tail-piped not his dog, nor
sent his cat to sea on a barrel-stave; nor put live crabs into his
pocket, nor dead dog-fish into his well; yea, even when judgment, too
long provoked, made bare her red right hand, and the lieutenant vowed
by his commission that he would send half-a-dozen of them to the
treadmill, they would send up a deputation to "beg Captain Willis to
beg the schoolmistress to beg them off." For between Willis and
that fair young creature a friendship had grown up, easily to be
understood. Willis was one of those rare natures upon whose purity no
mire can cling; who pass through the furnace, and yet not even the
smell of fire has passed upon them. Bred, almost born, on board a
smuggling cutter, in the old war-times; then hunting, in the old
coast-blockade service, the smugglers among whom he had been trained;
watching the slow horrors of the Walcheren; fighting under Collingwood
and Nelson, and many another valiant Captain; lounging away years
of temptation on the West-Indian station, as sailing-master of a
ship-of-the-line; pensioned comfortably now for many a year in his
native town, he had been always the same gentle, valiant, righteous
man; sober in life, strict in duty, and simple in word; a soul as
transparent as crystal, and as pure. He was the oracle of
Aberalva now; and even Lieutenant Brown would ask his
opinion,--non-commissioned officer though he was,--in a tone which was
all the more patronising, because he stood a little in awe of the old
man.
But why, when the boys wanted to be begged off, was the schoolmistress
to be their advocate? Because Grace Harvey exercised, without
intending anything of the kind, an almost mesmeric influence on every
one in the little town. Goodness rather than talent had given her
wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom,
which, to those simple, superstitious folk, seemed altogether an
inspiration. There was a mystery about her, too, which worked strongly
on the hearts of the West-country people. She was supposed to be at
times "not right;" and wandering intellect is with them, as with
many primitive peoples, an object more of awe than of pity. Her deep
melancholy alternated with bursts of wild eloquence, with fantastic
fables, with entreaties and warnings against sin, full of such pity
and pathos that they melted, at times, the hardest hearts. A whole
world of strange tales, half false, half true, had grown up around
her as she grew. She was believed to spend whole nights in prayer; to
speak with visitors from the other world; even to have the power of
seeing into futurity. The intensity of her imagination gave rise to
the belief that she had only to will, and she could see whom she
would, and all that they were doing, even across the seas; her
exquisite sensibility, it was whispered, made her feel every bodily
suffering she witnessed, as acutely as the sufferer's self, and in the
very limb in which he suffered. Her deep melancholy was believed to be
caused by some dark fate--by some agonising sympathy with evil-doers;
and it was sometimes said in Aberalva,--"Don't do that, for poor
Grace's sake. She bears the sins of all the parish."
So it befell that Grace Harvey governed, she knew not how or why, all
hearts in that wild simple fishing-town. Rough men, fighting on the
quay, shook hands at Grace's bidding. Wives who could not lure their
husbands from the beer-shop, sent Grace in to fetch them home, sobered
by shame: and woe to the stranger who fancied that her entrance into
that noisy den gave him a right to say a rough word to the fair girl!
The maidens, instead of envying her beauty, made her the confidant of
all their loves; for though many a man would gladly have married her,
to woo her was more than any dared; and Gentleman Jan himself, the
rightful bully of the quay, as being the handsomest and biggest
man for many a mile, beside owning a tidy trawler and two good
mackerel-boats, had said openly, that if any man had a right to her,
he supposed he had; but that he should as soon think of asking her to
marry him, as of asking the moon.
But it was in the school, in the duty which lay nearest to her, that
Grace's inward loveliness shone most lovely. Whatever dark cloud of
melancholy lay upon her own heart, she took care that it should never
overshadow one of those young innocents, whom she taught by love and
ruled by love, always tender, always cheerful, even gay and playful;
punishing, when she rarely punished, with tears and kisses. To make
them as happy as she could in a world where there was nothing but
temptation, and disappointment, and misery; to make them "fit for
heaven," and then to pray that they might go thither as speedily
as possible, this had been her work for now seven years; and that
Manichaeism which has driven darker and harder natures to destroy
young children, that they might go straight to bliss, took in her the
form of outpourings of gratitude (when the first natural tears were
dried), as often as one of her little lambs was "delivered out of the
miseries of this sinful world." But as long as they were in the
world, she was their guardian angel; and there was hardly a mother in
Aberalva who did not confess her debt to Grace, not merely for her
children's scholarship, but for their characters.
Frank Headley the curate, therefore, had touched altogether the
wrong chord when he spoke of displacing Grace. And when, that same
afternoon, he sauntered down to the pier-head, wearied with his
parish work, not only did Tardrew stump away in silence as soon as he
appeared, but Captain Willis's face assumed a grave and severe look,
which was not often to be seen on it.
"Well, Captain Willis?" said Frank, solitary and sad; longing for a
talk with someone, and not quite sure whether he was welcome.
"Well, sir?" and the old man lifted his hat, and made one of his
princely bows. "You look tired, sir; I am afraid you're doing too
much."
"I shall have more to do, soon," said the curate, his eye glancing
towards the schoolmistress, who, disturbed by the noise above, was
walking slowly up the beach, with a child holding to every finger, and
every fold of her dress.
Willis saw the direction of his eye, and came at once to the point, in
his gentle, straightforward fashion.
"I hear you have thoughts of taking the school from her, sir?"
"Why--indeed--I shall be very sorry; but if she will persist in going
to the chapel, I cannot overlook the sin of schism."
"She takes the children to church twice a Sunday, don't she? And
teaches them all that you tell her--"
"Why--yes--I have taken the religious instruction almost into my own
hands now."
Willis smiled quietly.
"You'll excuse an old sailor, sir; but I think that's more than mortal
man can do. There's no hour of the day but what she's teaching them
something. She's telling them Bible stories now, I'll warrant, if you
could hear her."
Frank made no answer.
"You wouldn't stop her doing that? Oh, sir," and the old man spoke
with a quiet earnestness which was not without its effect, "just look
at her now, like the Good Shepherd with His lambs about His feet, and
think whether that's not much too pretty a sight to put an end to, in
a poor sinful world like this."
"It is my duty," said Frank, hardening himself. "It pains me
exceedingly, Willis;--I hope I need not tell you that."
"If I know aught of Mr. Headley's heart by his ways, you needn't
indeed, sir."
"But I cannot allow it.--Her mother a class leader among these
Dissenters, and one of the most active of them, too.--The school next
door to her house. The preacher, of course, has influence there, and
must have. How am I to instil Church principles into them, if he is
counteracting me the moment my back is turned? I have made up my mind,
Willis, to do nothing in a hurry. Lady-day is past, and she must go on
till Midsummer; then I shall take the school into my own hands, and
teach them myself, for I can pay no mistress or master; and Mr. St.
Just--"
Frank checked himself as he was going to speak the truth; namely, that
his sleepy old absentee rector, Lord Scoutbush's uncle, would yawn and
grumble at the move, and wondering why Frank "had not the sense to
leave ill alone," would give him no manner of assistance beyond his
pittance of eighty pounds a-year, and five pounds at Christmas to
spend on the poor.
"Excuse me, sir, I don't doubt that you'll do your best in teaching,
as you always do: but I tell you honestly, you'll get no children to
teach."
"No children?"
"Their mothers know the worth of Grace too well, and the children too,
sir; and they'll go to her all the same, do what you will; and never a
one will enter the church door from that day forth."
"On their own heads be it!" said Frank, a little testily; "but I
should not have fancied Miss Harvey the sort of person to set up
herself in defiance of me."
"The more reason, sir, if you'll forgive me, for your not putting upon
her."
"I do not want to put upon her or any one. I will do everything. I
will--I do--work day and night for these people, Mr. Willis. I tell
you, as I would my own father. I don't think I have another object
on earth--if I have, I hope I shall forget it--than the parish: but
Church principles I must carry out."
"Well, sir, certainly no man ever worked here as you do. If all had
been like you, sir, there would not be a Dissenter here now; but
excuse me, sir, the Church is a very good thing, and I keep to mine,
having served under her Majesty, and her Majesty's forefathers, and
learnt to obey orders, I hope; but don't you think, sir, you're taking
it as the Pharisees took the Sabbath-day?"
"How then!"
"Why, as if man was made for the Church, and not the Church for man."
"That is a shrewd thought, at least. Where did you pick it up?"
"'Tis none of my own, sir; a bit of wisdom that my maid let fall; and
it has stuck to me strangely ever since."
"Your maid?"
"Yes, Grace there. I always call her my maid; having no father, poor
thing, she looks up to me as one, pretty much,--the dear soul. Oh,
sir! I hope you'll think over this again, before you do anything. It's
done in a day: but years won't undo it again."
So Grace's sayings were quoted against him. Her power was formidable
enough, if she dare use it. He was silent awhile, and then--
"Do you think she has heard of this--of my--"
"Honesty's the best policy, sir: she has; and that's the truth. You
know how things get round."
"Well; and what did she say?"
"I'll tell you her very words, sir; and they were these, if you'll
excuse me. 'Poor dear gentleman,' says she, 'if he thinks chapel-going
so wrong, why does he dare drive folks to chapel? I wonder, every time
he looks at that deep sea, he don't remember what the Lord said about
it, and those who cause his little ones to offend.'"
Frank was somewhat awed. The thought was new; the application of the
text, as his own scholarship taught him, even more exact than Grace
had fancied.
"Then she was not angry?"
"She, sir! You couldn't anger her if you tore her in pieces with hot
pincers, as they did those old martyrs she's always telling about."
"Good-bye, Willis," said Frank, in a hopeless tone of voice, and
sauntered to the pier-end, down the steps, and along the lower
pier-way, burdened with many thoughts. He came up to the knot of
chatting sailors. Not one of them touched his cap, or moved out of the
way for him. The boat lay almost across the whole pier-way; and he
stopped, awkwardly enough, for there was not room to get by.
"Will you be so kind as to let me pass?" asked he, meekly enough. But
no one stirred.
"Why don't you get up, Tom?" asked one.
"I be lame."
"So be I."
"The gentleman can step over me, if he likes," said big Jan; a
proposition the impossibility whereof raised a horse-laugh.
"Ain't you ashamed of yourselves, lads?" said the severe voice of
Willis, from above. The men rose sulkily; and Frank hastened on, as
ready to cry as ever he had been in his life. Poor fellow! he had been
labouring among these people for now twelve months, as no man had ever
laboured before, and he felt that he had not won the confidence of a
single human being,--not even of the old women, who took his teaching
for the sake of his charity, and who scented popery, all the while, in
words in which there was no popery, and in doctrines which were just
the same, on the whole, as those of the dissenting preacher, simply
because he would sprinkle among them certain words and phrases which
had become "suspect," as party badges. His church was all but empty;
the general excuse was, that it was a mile from the town: but Frank
knew that that was not the true reason; that all the parish had got it
into their heads that he had a leaning to popery; that he was going
over to Rome; that he was probably a Jesuit in disguise.
Now, be it always remembered, Frank Headley was a good man, in every
sense of the word. He had nothing, save the outside, in common with
those undesirable coxcombs, who have not been bred by the High Church
movement, but have taken refuge in its cracks, as they would have done
forty years ago in those of the Evangelical,--youths who hide their
crass ignorance and dulness under the cloak of Church infallibility,
and having neither wit, manners, learning, humanity, or any other
dignity whereon to stand, talk loud, _pour pis aller_, about the
dignity of the priesthood. Such men Frank had met at neighbouring
clerical meetings, overbearing and out-talking the elder and the wiser
members; and finding that he got no good from them, had withdrawn into
his parish-work, to eat his own heart, like Bellerophon of old. For
Frank was a gentleman and a Christian, if ever one there was. Delicate
in person, all but consumptive; graceful and refined in all his works
and ways; a scholar, elegant rather than deep, yet a scholar still;
full of all love for painting, architecture, and poetry, he had come
down to bury himself in this remote curacy, in the honest desire of
doing good. He had been a curate in a fashionable London Church; but
finding the atmosphere thereof not over wholesome to his soul, he
had had the courage to throw off St. Nepomuc's, its brotherhoods,
sisterhoods, and all its gorgeous and highly-organised appliances for
enabling five thousand rich to take tolerable care of five hundred
poor: and had fled from "the holy virgins" (as certain old ladies,
who do twice their work with half their noise, call them) into the
wilderness of Bethnal Green. But six months' gallant work there, with
gallant men (for there are High Churchmen there who are an honour to
England), brought him to death's door. The doctors commanded some soft
western air. Frank, as chivalrous as a knight-errant of old, would
fain have died at his post, but his mother interfered; and he could
do no less than obey her. So he had taken this remote west country
curacy; all the more willingly because he knew that nine-tenths of the
people were Dissenters. To recover that place to the Church would be
something worth living for. So he had come, and laboured late and
early; and behold, he had failed utterly; and seemed farther than
ever from success. He had opened, too hastily, a crusade against the
Dissenters, and denounced where he should have conciliated. He had
overlooked--indeed he hardly knew--the sad truth, that the mere fact
of his being a clergyman was no passport to the hearts of his people.
For the curate who preceded him had been an old man, mean, ignorant,
incapable, remaining there simply because nobody else would have him,
and given to brandy-and-water as much as his flock.
The rector for the last fifteen years, Lord Scoutbush's uncle, was a
cypher. The rector before him had notoriously earned the living by a
marriage with a lady who stood in some questionable relation to Lord
Scoutbush's father, and who had never had a thought above his dinner
and his tithes; and all that the Aberalva fishermen knew of God or
righteousness, they had learnt from the _soi-disant_ disciples of John
Wesley. So Frank Headley had to make up, at starting, the arrears
of half-a-century of base neglect; but instead of doing so, he had
contrived to awaken against himself that dogged hatred of popery which
lies inarticulate and confused, but deep and firm, in the heart of the
English people. Poor fellow! if he made a mistake, he suffered for it.
There was hardly a sadder soul than poor Frank, as he went listlessly
up the village street that afternoon, to his lodging at Captain
Willis's, which he had taken because he preferred living in the
village itself to occupying the comfortable rectory a mile out of
town.
However we cannot set him straight;--after all, every man must perform
that office for himself. So the best thing we can do, as we landed,
naturally, at the pier-head, is to walk up-street after him, and see
what sort of a place Aberalva is.
Beneath us, to the left hand, is the quay-pool, now lying dry, in
which a dozen trawlers are lopping over on their sides, their red
sails drying in the sun, the tails of the trawls hauled up to the
topmast heads; while the more handy of their owners are getting on
board by ladders, to pack away the said red sails; for it will blow
to night. In the long furrows which their keels have left, and in the
shallow muddy pools, lie innumerable fragments of exenterated maids
(not human ones, pitiful reader, but belonging to the order Pisces,
and the family Raia), and some twenty non-exenterated ray-dogs and
picked dogs (Anglice, dog-fish), together with a fine basking shark,
at least nine feet long, out of which the kneeling Mr. George Thomas,
clothed in pilot cloth patches of every hue, bright scarlet, blue and
brown (not to mention a large square of white canvas which has been
let into that part of his trousers which is now uppermost), is
dissecting the liver for the purpose of greasing his "sheaves" with
the fragrant oil thereof. The pools in general are bedded with black
mud, and creamed over with oily flakes which may proceed from the tar
on the vessels' sides, and may also from "decomposing animal matter,"
as we euphemise it now-a-days. The hot pebbles, at high-tide
mark,--crowned with a long black row of herring and mackerel boats,
laid up in ordinary for the present--are beautifully variegated with
mackerels' heads, gurnets' fins, old hag, lobworm, and mussel-baits,
and the inwards of a whole ichthyological museum; save at one spot
where the Cloaca maxima and Port Esquiline of Aberalva town (small
enough, considering the place holds fifteen hundred souls) murmurs
from beneath a grey stone arch toward the sea, not unfraught with dead
rats and cats, who, their ancient feud forgotten, combine lovingly at
last in increasing the health of the blue-trousered urchins who are
sailing upon that Acherontic stream bits of board with a feather stuck
in it, or of their tiny sisters who are dancing about in the dirtiest
pool among the trawlers in a way which (if your respectable black coat
be seen upon the pier) will elicit from one of the balconied windows
above, decked with reeking shirts and linen, some such shriek as--
"Patience Penberthy, Patience Penberthy--a! You nasty, dirty, little
ondecent hussy--a! What be playing in the quay-pool for--a! A pulling
up your pesticoats before the quality--a!" Each exclamation being
followed with that groaning grunt, with which the West-country folk,
after having screamed their lungs empty through their noses, recover
their breath for a fresh burst.
Never mind; it is no nosegay, certainly as a whole: but did you ever
see sturdier, rosier, nobler-looking children,--rounder faces, raven
hair, bright grey eyes, full of fun and tenderness? As for the dirt,
that cannot harm them; poor people's children must be dirty--why not?
Look on fifty yards to the left. Between two ridges of high pebble
bank, some twenty yards apart, comes Alva river rushing to the sea.
On the opposite ridge, a low white house, with three or four white
canvas-covered boats, and a flag-staff with sloping cross-yard,
betokens the coast-guard station. Beyond it rise black jagged cliffs;
mile after mile of iron-bound wall; and here and there, at the glens'
mouths, great banks and denes of shifting sand. In front of it, upon
the beach, are half-a-dozen great green and grey heaps of Welsh
limestone; behind it, at the cliff foot, is the lime-kiln, with its
white dusty heaps, and brown dusty men, its quivering mirage of hot
air, its strings of patient hay-nibbling donkeys, which look as
if they had just awakened out of a flour bin. Above, a green down
stretches up to bright yellow furze-crofts far aloft. Behind a reedy
marsh, covered with red cattle, paves the valley till it closes in;
the steep sides of the hills are clothed in oak and ash covert, in
which, three months ago, you could have shot more cocks in one day
than you would in Berkshire in a year. Pleasant little glimpses there
are, too, of grey stone farm-houses, nestling among sycamore and
beech; bright-green meadows, alder-fringed; squares of rich red
fallow-field, parted by lines of golden furze; all cut out with a
peculiar blackness, and clearness, soft and tender withal, which
betokens a climate surcharged with rain. Only in the very bosom of
the valley, a soft mist hangs, increasing the sense of distance, and
softening back one hill and wood behind another, till the great brown
moor which backs it all seems to rise out of the empty air. For a
thousand feet it ranges up, in rude sheets of brown heather, and grey
cairns and screes of granite, all sharp and black-edged against the
pale blue sky; and all suddenly cut off above by one long horizontal
line of dark grey cloud, which seems to hang there motionless, and yet
is growing to windward, and dying to leeward, for ever rushing out of
the invisible into sight, and into the invisible again, at railroad
speed. Out of nothing the moor rises, and into nothing it ascends,--a
great dark phantom between earth and sky, boding rain and howling
tempest, and perhaps fearful wreck--for the groundswell moans and
thunders on the beach behind us, louder and louder every moment.
Let us go on, and up the street, after we have scrambled through the
usual labyrinth of timber-baulks, rusty anchors, boats which have been
dragged, for the purpose of mending and tarring, into the very middle
of the road, and old spars stowed under walls, in the vain hope that
they may be of some use for something some day, and have stood the
stares and welcomes of the lazy giants who are sitting about upon
them, black-locked, black-bearded, with ruddy, wholesome faces, and
eyes as bright as diamonds; men who are on their own ground, and know
it; who will not touch their caps to you, or pull the short black pipe
from between their lips as you pass, but expect you to prove yourself
a gentleman, by speaking respectfully to them; which, if you do, you
will find them as hearty, intelligent, brave fellows as ever walked
this earth, capable of anything, from working the naval-brigade
guns at Sevastopol, down to running up to ... a hundred miles in a
cockleshell lugger, to forestall the early mackerel market. God be
with you, my brave lads, and with your children after you; for as long
as you are what I have known you, Old England will rule the seas, and
many a land beside!
But in going up Aberalva Street, you remark several things; first,
that the houses were all white-washed yesterday, except where the
snowy white is picked out by buttresses of pink and blue; next,
that they all have bright green palings in front, and bright green
window-sills and frames; next, that they are all roofed with shining
grey slate, and the space between the window and the pales flagged
with the same; next, that where such space is not flagged, it is full
of flowers and shrubs which stand the winter only in our greenhouses.
The fuchsias are ten feet high, laden with ripe purple berries running
over (for there are no birds to pick them off); and there in the front
of the coast-guard lieutenant's house, is Cobaea scandens, covered
with purple claret-glasses, as it has been ever since Christmas: for
Aberalva knows no winter: and there are grown-up men in it who never
put on a skate, or made a snowball in their lives. A most cleanly,
bright-coloured, foreign-looking street, is that long straggling one
which runs up the hill towards Penalva Court: only remark, that this
cleanliness is gained by making the gutter in the middle street the
common sewer of the town, and tread clear of cabbage-leaves, pilchard
bones, _et id genus omne_. For Aberalva is like Paris (if the answer
of a celebrated sanitary reformer to the Emperor be truly reported),
"fair without but foul within."
However, the wind is blowing dull and hollow from south-west; the
clouds are rolling faster and faster up from the Atlantic; the sky to
westward is brassy green; the glass is falling fast; and there will
be wind and rain enough to-night to sweep even Aberalva clean for the
next week.
Grace Harvey sees the coming storm, as she goes slowly homewards,
dismissing her little flock; and she lingers long and sadly outside
her cottage door, looking out over the fast blackening sea, and
listening to the hollow thunder of the groundswell, against the back
of the point which shelters Aberalva Cove.
Far away on the horizon, the masts of stately ships stand out against
the sky, driving fast to the eastward with shortened sail. They, too,
know what is coming; and Grace prays for them as she stands, in her
wild way, with half outspoken words.
"All those gallant ships, dear Lord! and so many beautiful men in
them, and so few of them ready to die; and all those gallant soldiers
going to the war;--Lord, wilt thou not have mercy? Spare them for
a little time before--. Is not that cruel, man-devouring sea full
enough, Lord; and brave men's bones enough, strewn up and down all
rocks and sands? And is not that dark place full enough, O Lord, of
poor souls cut off in a moment, as my two were? Oh, not to-night, dear
Lord! Do not call any one to-night--give them a day more, one chance
more, poor fellows--they have had so few, and so many temptations,
and, perhaps, no schooling. They go to sea so early, and young things
will be young things, Lord. Spare them but one night more--and yet He
did not spare my two--they had no time to repent, and have no time for
ever, evermore!"
And she stands looking out over the sea; but she has lost sight of
everything, save her own sad imaginations. Her eyes open wider and
wider, as if before some unseen horror; the eyebrows contract upwards;
the cheeks sharpen; the mouth parts; the lips draw back, showing
the white teeth, as if in intensest agony. Thus she stands long,
motionless, awe-frozen, save when a shudder runs through every limb,
with such a countenance as that "fair terror" of which Shelley sang--
"Its horror and its beauty are divine;
Upon its lips and eyelids seem to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lucid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death."
Her mother comes out from the cottage door behind, and lays her hand
upon the girl's shoulder. The spell is broken; and hiding her face in
her hands, Grace bursts into violent weeping.
"What are you doing, my poor child, here in the cold night air?"
"My two, mother, my two!" said she; "and all the poor souls at sea
to-night!"
"You mustn't think of it. Haven't I told you not to think of it? One
would lose one's wits if one did too often."
"If it is all true, mother, what else is there worth thinking of in
heaven or earth?"
And Grace goes in with a dull, heavy look of utter exhaustion, bodily
and mental, and quietly sets the things for supper, and goes about her
cottage work as one who bears a heavy chain, but has borne it too long
to let it hinder the daily drudgery of life.
Grace had reason to pray at least, for the soldiers who were going
to the war. For as she prayed, the Orinoco, Ripon, and Manilla, were
steaming down Southampton Water, with the Guards on board; and but
that morning little Lord Scoutbush, left behind at the depôt, had bid
farewell to his best friend, opposite Buckingham Palace, while the
bearskins were on the bayonet-points, with--
"Well, old fellow, you have the fun, after all, and I the work;" and
had been answered with--
"Fun? there will be no fighting; and I shall only have lost my season
in town."
Was there, then, no man among them that day, who
"As the trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,
Heard in the wild March morning the angels call his soul"?
* * * * *
Verily they are gone down to Hades, even many stalwart souls of
heroes.