WHY THE SAD GOOD-BYE WAS GIVEN.
In commission--At home in Malta--After long years--Settled at
Wilton--Unwelcome tidings--Unavailing skill.
Fourteen years ago, amid the mists of Scotland, there was a bonny
wedding at a hill-side kirk; the bride, a sweet young English girl, who
had left her southern home to pay a visit to her uncle, the old
village-pastor; the bridegroom, a stout sailor, home from sea for a
short while at his native village. And after a six weeks' happy
wooing, a happy wedding took the two away, far from the heathery hills
and the mountain lochs; far from the moors and fells of Scotland.
A brief honeymoon of quiet, unmarred happiness, and Alan Campbell
received instructions to join his ship, ordered to Malta for three
years. His wife, of course, could not sail with him, so he took a
berth for her in one of the ordinary passenger steamers that run from
Southampton to the island. And after seeing her safe on board one
rainy April afternoon, her tearful face itself like April weather, he
took the evening mail-train to Plymouth, and the following morning was
on board his ship. It was not long before his impatience was
gratified, and the "Thunderer" steamed out into the English Channel.
Thus over the great waves, through time of sun and stars, through storm
and shine, sailed the two parted many miles of heaving sea; Minnie,
pale and trembling in her little cabin, with the noise of the waters
ever sounding in her sleepless ears; Alan pacing to and fro in the heat
and throbbing of the engines of the "Thunderer."
It was a joyful meeting at the island-fortress in the blue
Mediterranean. Alan obtained leave to sleep on shore, and took a
little white cottage that overlooked the bay, where the good ship
"Thunderer" lay at anchor; and there, at her outhanging window, every
evening Minnie would sit, looking so anxiously across the bay towards
the great black hull of the vessel, till a gig would put off that
brought Alan home to her.
So the days and weeks went on. The spring died into the summer's
flowery lap; the summer ripened and mellowed unto the golden autumn;
and when the year's late last months were come, there was another
inmate in the little cottage by the bay; another pair of eyes, blue as
the mother's, to greet Alan as he came home at night; another pair of
hands to hold and call his own.
The time ran as quickly as it ran happily. The three years passed, and
again Alan had to put his wife on board a passenger steamer bound for
England--this time with her boy Harry to bear her company, a sturdy
young gentleman of somewhat over two years; while he himself sailed for
Plymouth in the "Thunderer." And so it came to pass, that after many
such changes of abode, and many voyages over the dangerous waters,
twelve years from the date of their marriage, they came to Wilton.
They found lodgings at Mrs Valentine's farm, near the old church--a
strange contrast after the home on the blue waters of the
Mediterranean, but a very nice contrast withal. And it seemed, at
last, as if poor Mrs Campbell had found a climate that suited her, and
that put new life and strength into her failing, fragile form. For
those happy and treacherous nights, spent in looking over the bay at
Malta for her husband's home-coming, had sown the seeds of a
consumption, that each month now seemed to be increasing its wasting,
rapid strides.
Yet at Wilton she seemed revived and better than she had been for long;
and Alan grew more cheerful and hopeful that, if God pleased, her life,
with care and watching, might be spared. So he took rooms at the farm
for a length of time; sent his boy, now grown into a young image of his
stout father, to a grammar-school in the village, and determined that,
as the place agreed with her so well, Minnie should make it her home,
even when he went to sea.
And once more their happiness lost the cloud of doubt and anxiety that
for long had been hanging over it. But the dream was soon to be snapt.
One evening Alan came home to find his wife much worse than she had
ever been. He learnt the cause. She had been sitting with a sick
person, and from the hot, sickroom had passed out into the damp evening
air. And this was the result.
The village-doctor was sent for at once; and when, on the next morning,
Alan anxiously, tremblingly, asked him the candid truth, it was with an
open letter in his hand, with which his fingers nervously played. It
was marked "On Her Majesty's Service." He must hold himself in
readiness to sail within a fortnight. And the doctor's answer was a
fearful crowning to this unexpected tidings.
"She may linger on for a month," he said, "six weeks at most. You will
have to bid her good-bye for ever when you go. No skill can make her
live till you come home."
Alan never uttered a word, but his face was very pale, and a great
shudder passed over his frame.
"It is very, very sad for you," said the little doctor, "I pity you
from my heart." And then he jolted away down the lane in his shaky
trap, drawn by his broken-winded pony.
And Alan turned into the farm, and was soon by his wife's side.
So the fortnight passed, and the good-bye was said; and this is why
that good-bye was so unutterably sad; and this is all that Harry could
not understand.