RETURNED EMPTY
The breeze freshened, and, as was to be expected, blew the fog-bank away
before sunset.
Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. Like many of his cloth
and generation, Parson Marvin pinned all his faith on education. "Give a
boy a good education," he said, a hundred times. "Make a gentleman of
him, and you have done your duty by him."
"Make a gentleman of him--and the world will be glad to feed and clothe
him," was the real thought in his mind, as it was in the mind of nearly
all his contemporaries. The wildest dreamer of those days never
anticipated that, in the passage of one brief generation, social
advancement should be for the shrewdly ignorant rather than for the
scholar; that it would be better for a man that his mind be stored with
knowledge of the world than the wisdom of the classics; that the
successful grocer might find a kinder welcome in a palace than the
scholar; that the manufacturer of kitchen utensils might feed with kings
and speak to them, without aspirates, between the courses.
Parson Marvin knew none of these things, however; nor suspected that the
advance of civilisation is not always progressive, but that she may take
hands with vulgarity and dance down-hill, as she does to-day. His one
scheme of life for Sep was that he should be sent to the ancient school
where field-sports are cultivated to-day and English gentlemen turned
upon the world more ignorant than any other gentlemen in the universe.
Then, of course, Sep must go to that College with which his father's life
had been so closely allied. And if it please God to call him to the
Church, and the College should remember that it had given his father a
living, and do the same by him--for that reason and no other--then, of
course, Sep would be a made man.
And the making of Sep had been in progress during the winter day that a
fog-bank came in from the North Sea and clung tenaciously to the low,
surfless coast. In the afternoon the sun broke through at last, wintry
and pale. Sep, who, by some instinct--the instinct, it is to be supposed,
of young animals--knew that he was destined to be of a generation that
should cultivate ignorance out of doors, rather than learning by the
fireside, threw aside his books and cried out that he could no longer
breathe in his father's study.
So Parson Marvin went off, alone, to visit a distant parishioner--one who
was dying by himself out on the marsh, in a cottage cut off from all the
world in a spring tide.
"Don't forget that it is high tide at five o'clock, and that there is no
moon, and that the dykes will be full. You will never find your way
across the marsh after dark," said Sep--the learned in tides and those
practical affairs of nature, which were as a closed book to the scholar.
Parson Marvin vaguely acknowledged the warning and went away, leaving Sep
to accompany Miriam on her daily errand to the simple shops in
Farlingford, which would awake to life and business now that the sea-fog
was gone. For the men of Farlingford, like nearly all seafarers, are
timorous of bad weather on shore and sit indoors during its passage,
while they treat storm and rain with a calm contempt at sea.
"Sail a-coming up the river, master," River Andrew said to Sep, who was
awaiting Miriam in the village street, and he walked on, without further
comment, spade on shoulder, toward the church-yard, where he spent a
portion of his day, without apparent effect.
So, when Miriam had done her shopping, it was only natural that they
should turn their footsteps toward the quay and the river-wall. Or was it
fate? So often is the natural nothing but the inevitable in holiday garb.
"That is no Farlingford boat," said Sep, versed in riverside knowledge,
so soon as he saw the balance-lug moving along the line of the
river-wall, half a mile below the village.
They stood watching. Few coasters were at sea in these months of wild
weather, and there was nothing moving on the quay. The moss-grown
slip-way, where "The Last Hope" had been drawn up for repair, stood gaunt
and empty, half submerged by the flowing tide. Many Farlingford men were
engaged in the winter fisheries on the Dogger, and farther north, in
Lowestoft boats. In winter, Farlingford--thrust out into the North Sea,
surrounded by marsh--is forgotten by the world.
The solitary boat came round the corner into the wider sheet of water,
locally known as Quay Reach.
"A foreigner!" cried Sep, jumping, as was his wont, from one foot to the
other with excitement. "It is like the boat that was brought up by the
tide, with a dead man in it, long ago. And that was a Belgian boat."
Miriam was looking at the boat with a sudden brightness in her eyes, a
rush of colour to her cheeks, which were round and healthy and of that
soft clear pink which marks a face swept constantly by mist and a salty
air. In flat countries, where men may see each other, unimpeded by hedge
or tree or hillock, across a space measured only by miles, the eye is
soon trained--like the sailor's eye--to see and recognise at a great
distance.
There was no mistaking the attitude of the solitary steersman of this
foreign boat stealing quietly up to Farlingford on the flood tide. It was
Loo Barebone sitting on the gunwale as he always sat, with one knee
raised on the thwart, to support his elbow, and his chin in the palm of
his hand, so that he could glance up the head of the sail or ahead,
without needing to change his position.
Sep turned and looked up at her.
"I thought you said he was never coming back," he said, reproachfully.
"So I did. I thought he was never coming back."
Sep looked at her again, and then at the boat. One never knows how much
children, and dogs--who live daily with human beings--understand.
"Your face is very red," he observed. "That comes from telling untruths."
"It comes from the cold wind," replied Miriam, with an odd, breathless
laugh.
"If we do not go home, he will be there before us," said Sep, gravely.
"He will make one tack across to the other side, and then make the mouth
of the creek."
They turned and walked, side by side, on the top of the sea-wall toward
the rectory. Their figures must have been outlined against the sky, for
any watching from the river. The girl, tall and strong, walking with the
ease that comes from health and a steadfast mind; the eager, restless boy
running and jumping by her side. Barebone must have seen them as soon as
they saw him. They were part of Farlingford, these two. He had a sudden
feeling of having been away for years, with this difference--that he came
back and found nothing changed. Whereas, in reality, he who returns after
a long absence usually finds no one awaiting him.
He did as Sep had foretold--crossing to the far side of the river, and
then gaining the mouth of the creek in one tack. Miriam and Sep had
reached the rectory garden first, and now stood waiting for him. He came
on in silence. Last time--on "The Last Hope"--he had come up the river
singing.
Sep waved his hand, and, in response, Barebone nodded his head, with one
eye peering ahead, for the breeze was fresh.
The old chain was still there, imperfectly fastened round a tottering
post at the foot of the tide-washed steps. It clinked as he made fast the
boat. Miriam had not heard the sound of it since that night, long ago,
when Loo had gone down the steps in the dark and cast off.
"I was given a passage home in a French fishing-boat, and borrowed their
dinghy to come ashore in," said Loo, as he came up the steps. He knew
that Farlingford would want some explanation, and that Sep would be proud
to give it. An explanation is never the worse for a spice of truth.
"Miriam told me you were never coming home again," answered Sep, still
nourishing that grievance.
"Well, she was wrong, and here I am!" was Loo's reply, with his old,
ready laugh. "And here is Farlingford--unchanged, and no harm done."
"Why should there be any harm done?" was Sep's prompt question.
Barebone was shaking hands with Miriam.
"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "Because there always is harm done, I
suppose."
Miriam was thinking that he had changed; that the man who had unmoored
his boat at these steps six months ago had departed for ever, and that
another had come back in his place. A minute later, as he turned to close
the gate that shut off the rectory garden from the river-wall, chance
ruled it that their eyes should meet for an instant, and she knew that he
had not changed; that he might, perhaps, never change so long as he
lived. She turned abruptly and led the way to the house.
Sep had a hundred questions to ask, but only a few of them were personal.
Children live in a world of their own, and are not slow to invite those
whom they like to come into it, while to the others, they shut the door
with a greater frankness than is permissible later in life.
"Father," he explained, "has gone to see old Doy, who is dying."
"Is he still dying? He will never die, I am sure; for he has been trying
to do it ever since I remember," laughed Barebone; who was interested, it
seemed, in Sep's affairs, and never noticed that Miriam was walking more
quickly than they were.
"And I am rather anxious about him," continued Sep, with the gravity that
comes of a realised responsibility. "He moons along, you know, with his
mind far away, and he doesn't know the path across the marsh a bit. He is
bound to lose his way, and it is getting dark. Suppose I shall have to go
and look for him."
"With a lantern," suggested Loo, darkly, without looking toward Miriam.
"Oh, yes!" replied Sep, with delight. "With a lantern, of course. Nobody
but a fool would go out on to the marshes after dark without a lantern.
The weed on the water makes it the same as the grass, and that old woman
who was nearly drowned last winter, you know, she walked straight in, and
thought it was dry land."
And Loo heard no more, for they were at the door; and Miriam, in the
lighted hall, was waiting for them, with all the colour gone from her
face.
"He is sure to be in in a few minutes," she said; for she had heard the
end of their talk. She could scarcely have helped hearing Loo's weighty
suggestion of a lantern, which had had the effect he must have
anticipated. Sep was already hurriedly searching for matches. It would be
difficult to dissuade him from his purpose. What boy would willingly give
up the prospect of an adventure on the marsh alone, with a bull's-eye?
Miriam tried, and tried in vain. She gained time, however, and was
listening for Marvin's footstep on the gravel all the while.
Sep found the matches--and it chanced that there was a sufficiency of oil
in his lantern. He lighted up and went away, leaving an abominable smell
of untrimmed wick behind him.
It was tea-time, and, half a century ago, that meal was a matter of
greater importance than it is to-day. A fire burned in the dining-room,
glowing warmly on the mellow walls and gleaming furniture; but there was
no lamp, nor need of one, in a room with large windows facing the sunset
sky.
Miriam led the way into this room, and lifted the shining, old-fashioned
kettle to the hob. She took a chair that stood near, and sat, with her
shoulder turned toward him, looking into the fire.
"We will have tea as soon as they come in," she said, in that voice of
camaraderie which speaks of a life-long friendship between a man and a
woman--if such a friendship be possible. Is it?--who knows? "They will
not be long, I am sure. You will like tea, after having been so long
abroad. It is one of the charms of coming home, or one of the
alleviations. I don't know which. And now, tell me all that has happened
since you went away--if you care to."