FROM ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW.
MRS. KINGSCOTE'S STORY.
I HAVE persuaded my friend, Mrs. Murchison, to put down on paper
certain recollections of certain events which happened a few years
since—not easily, since she is diffident, and not aware of her own
unusual powers. But at last she yielded, and a beginning is made which
she has shown to me. My impulse, thereupon, is to fill up certain gaps
in her story; adding particulars, for my own pleasure, which she has
omitted.
"Friend," I call her; and why not? Though we occupy different
positions in life, that need be no bar to friendship. Somebody has
defined friendship to be "a strong and habitual inclination in two
people to promote the good of one another"—an inclination springing,
of course, from mutual love. Well, I love Mrs. Murchison, and Mrs.
Murchison loves me; I would do aught I could for the good of
Mrs. Murchison, and she would do aught she could for my good.
Moreover, I trust Mrs. Murchison, and Mrs. Murchison trusts me.
I understand Mrs. Murchison, and Mrs. Murchison understands me.
What does all this mean, if not friendship?
It is a true and tried friendship also; not an affair of last week.
Years have passed, and many things have happened since the day when
Mrs. Murchison, with her husband and children, came down for a few
hours from Littleburgh to Ermespoint, fully intending to return the
same evening. How powerless we are to carry out our intentions, unless
God wills that we should! How seldom, as we go through life, have we
the least idea of what lies ahead! A precipice may be just three steps
in advance, yet we often do not see it until we are on the brink. All
this would be very terrible, if we did not know that our steps are
guided and guarded by a Father's Hand. If He conducts to the
precipice-edge, then all is well. Nay, even if He bids us plunge over—
to death—what is it but a swift and sure passage Home? I mean, with
those who know and love and obey Him.
We had not been long at Ermespoint, and the house was still in
confusion. My boy, Bertram, was expected home that day; and Ellie
and I went to meet him at the station. He was just sixteen, and very
delicate, from the effects of a severe illness some months earlier.
He came rushing to us, out of the train, full of spirit as usual, and
poured out a hurried jumble about having been "taken rather" on the
way, and somebody having been "so good" to him.
It was difficult to make out exactly what he meant; but I followed him
across the platform to the little group of excursionists.
"You've got to thank her, mother," Bertram whispered energetically.
The picture comes back to me now, as I recall that day. A strong
broad-built working-man, respectful and respectable, in his Sunday
suit, holding by the hand one of the prettiest little children I have
ever seen—poor tiny Bessie! She had the sweetest face, so shy and
smiling. Two other children and a biggish boy were there; but after
Bessie, I noticed chiefly the mother. She was young-looking still,
though over thirty-five in age; and remarkable for her extreme
neatness and sobriety of dress, together with a gentle placid
anxious face—placid and anxious together. That was curious. A rather
thin face, but not too thin, not long or bony; with high cheek-bones,
and deep-set tender wistful eyes; while the mouth was quiet, yet
disposed to be tremulous. Something about Mrs. Murchison won my trust
and my liking on the spot.
Only a few words were exchanged between us then; but Bertram said he
would find them later on the shore; and he gave me no peace till I
promised to have the whole family in to tea in the basement-room.
We were still so busy, unpacking and arranging, and the house was in
so much confusion, that I confess I did hesitate for a few minutes.
It seemed to me that the maids had enough to do. However, I knew they
never minded anything if it were for Bertram,—he was always such a
favourite,—and I gave way, though only on condition that he would stay
quietly indoors till after lunch.
Then he went out with Ellie and Rosamund; and what follows Mrs.
Murchison has to a great extent told—better, I am sure, than I could,
for she has an extraordinary memory for conversations. I could not
repeat one tenth part of what I said to her that sorrowful day; but
she says it is all correct. Sometimes I tell her she makes up out of
her own head; and then she smiles and shakes the said head, and
answers only, "You know better, ma'am." So I do: she is true to the
backbone, and her memory is as true as herself.
We had been so short a time in Ermespoint, and so busy while there,
as to have had little leisure yet for learning much about it. Ellie
and Rose had been down to the beach several times, but only near
at hand—except just once, the day before, when old nurse and they went
along the shore under the west cliff; and they came back full of the
beauty of the place. My husband took a stroll the same way in the
evening; and he spoke, on his return, of the remarkable overhanging of
the cliffs. But still he had no thought of danger. No warning-boards
were up; and it seemed inconceivable that people should be quietly
left to run into such peril, without a word being said to hinder them.
We did not know till later that warning-boards had once been up, and
had been removed,—nobody could precisely say by whom or for what
reason. No doubt it was for the interest of certain bathing-machine
owners, that people should not be frightened away; yet if that were
all—! One finds it difficult to believe in such selfishness—such
recklessness of human life!
However—so things were, and remonstrances had been made by one or two
gentlemen living at Ermespoint without avail. My husband's predecessor
tried to rouse people to a sense of the danger; but nobody would
listen, or at least nobody cared to act. I suppose it was hopeless,
until somebody's life should be forfeited, and poor little Bessie was
the victim. It might have been all the Murchisons, and all my
children, if the landslip had come just half-an-hour earlier, when the
whole party were close up under the cliff.
I never can look back to that day without a shudder; thinking how
Philip and I might have been left childless. We had lost two little
ones already; and if the three others had been taken—But mercifully
we were spared!
I don't know how I told Mrs. Murchison of little Bessie's death.
It was one of the most terrible things I have ever had to do. She
seems to remember all I said, but I do not. I only remember her look,—
the sad despairing certainty that one was gone; the longing and the
dread to know which; the bitterness of that sorrowful cry,—"Oh, not
Jervis! Oh, not my Bessie!"—then the strange quiet with which she
listened to my poor attempts to comfort; and the patient begging to go
to her child. Perhaps that did her good! the little one looked so
unutterably sweet.
And then she was enough herself to be able to try and comfort my poor
broken-down Bertram. The boy had been in such an agony, blaming
himself for taking them all to that part of the beach, talking as
if the little one's death lay at his door. I sent him to her when I
was not in the room; but he was gone again before I returned.
Nurse Coles' new little home was very near; not a hundred yards from
our garden gate. If it had been more, Mrs. Murchison could hardly have
walked so far.
We had had Nurse Coles near us for years, ever since she had been out
of a place, and we thought then that she would remain near us always.
She was devoted to my husband, and to all of us; a good faithful
servant of the old type. She belonged to us, and we to her;
her interests were ours, and ours were hers.
My husband was on the beach almost immediately after the fall of rock
took place: for the news spread like wildfire, and he happened to be
passing near. He thought of Nurse Coles' rooms the first thing, and
when Murchison and little Bessie were dug out, he had poor Murchison
taken at once to Mrs. Coles, as well as Louey; while I think it was
my thought to have little Bessie's body brought to our basement-room.
But everything at first seemed in such a strange confusion.
Murchison was still unconscious when we reached the cottage, and the
doctor was only just gone, and Nurse Coles was tending him.
"It was a bad case," she whispered to me; "the poor fellow was so
frightfully crushed and hurt all over; two ribs and one arm broken,
and both head and back injured—nobody could say how much."
"Is there any hope for him?" Mrs. Murchison asked; and I saw that
she had overheard every word.
Nurse Coles shook her head dubiously.
"The doctor didn't say. She didn't suppose he could tell yet. It was a
bad case, any how, and they'd got a long bout of nursing before them."