CHAPTER IV.
THE STRONG PULL.
hen Lucy Challoner found herself shut into one of those “secret pavilions,” which God erects so often in the heart of life’s storms—quiet resting-places into which neither the tempest which is overpast, nor the after-swells which are to come, can find entrance. The tossed heart is hushed like that of a little child, and looking neither before nor after, is content with the peace and the benediction of the passing hour.
It was cheering to see how the sea-breeze brought healthy tints to Charlie’s pale face, while every hour found him stronger and more fit to throw aside the little physical frailties which hang about one after a great illness.
For the first day of their visit they were content with one little stroll on the pier, and then they sat at their window discovering endless interest in the fact that “Lloyd’s” station was in the house next but one to theirs, so that every ship which hove in sight became voluble in nautical signs. Then their walks grew longer, extending ever further down the shingly shore.
“Now, Lucy,” said Mr. Challoner, “was not I right to come here instead of to any mere invalid resort? Why, it lifts up one’s soul—and one’s body with it—just to look at these Deal boatmen. They’re so ready to give their lives for you if need be, that a kind of exhalation of health comes from them.”
Before they left Deal, Lucy Challoner not only fully approved of her husband’s choice as for himself, but felt convinced that he had made his choice for her too, and with equal wisdom and foresight.
As the days passed on, and Charlie and his little boy made friends with many of the old salts who lounge along the shingle as if life was nothing but the sea view (which seems reflected in their very eyes), Lucy sometimes stayed indoors and occupied herself with details of her husband’s outfit. Her landlady came in and out of the room, generally silent, but cheerful and ready to respond to advances.
“We can see the Goodwin Sands very plainly to-day,” Lucy said once. “What a terrible trap they are.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. May answered. “And if those in the other world know aught about what’s done in this—and why shouldn’t they?—I wonder how those men feel who neglected to keep down those sands, because they wanted to build a big steeple instead of doing their duty? On wild nights here, when we’re almost certain poor souls are going down by the score, I never can help thinking o’ those others. It must be mighty bad for them surely. And yet maybe they didn’t know what they were doing was so bad—or didn’t think! I’d not make them out worse than most of us, and we all need God our Saviour. Maybe God lets ’em receive the poor drowned souls, and comfort ’em and care for ’em.”
“But is it true that the sands became dangerous through neglect?” asked Lucy. “I have heard the story, but I have heard that geology has a different word to say.”
Mrs. May shook her head slightly.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” she said. “I’m speaking as if the story be true. And certain it is that men and money have been able to do a good bit to lessen the risks of the Sands as they are, and it is a pity that they did not do it sooner. And maybe they might do a great deal more yet. I wish gentlemen in power would think over such things instead of wanting to spend money on guns to kill poor folks in far-off countries. It’s wonderful what has been left for private folk to do before the others stir. I daresay you’ve never heard of one Powell, of Deal, living nigh two hundred years ago?”
“No,” answered Lucy reflecting, and unable to recall any Powell of popular memory, save Mary, the wilful wife of the poet Milton.
“Well, ma’am,” said Mrs. May, with a slight drawing-up of her neat figure. “That Powell of Deal (my mother was of the family, though, of course, generations later), he seemed to be one of the first to think of saving people off the wrecks on the Sands. There were no lifeboats in his time, you know.”
“I know,” Lucy assented. “There were no lifeboats till nearly a hundred years after that, and very few until about seventy years ago.”
“Well, that Powell was Mayor of Deal in those days, and pretty well off for just a shopkeeper in the town—a tailor and outfitter he was. And there came a great storm one November night—it was such a storm as never was. It was the night the Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed along with the man that built it, and people were killed in their beds, even in grand houses, and the loss of life and property was tremendous. We can guess what it was on the Goodwins, ma’am. There were thirteen men-of-war wrecked, and hundreds of men—more than a thousand—were drowned. Then the people who were watching from the shore saw that some had got on the Goodwins, and there they were sure to be washed away.”
Mrs. May paused and looked at Lucy with emphatic eyes.
“So Powell, he could not bear it, and he ordered out the custom-house boats, and offered a reward of five shillings for every sailor that should be saved. It was not much, for he hadn’t much. They say he went out himself. And two hundred men were saved that otherwise must have been drowned. And he took them all into his care, and fed them and clothed them. And though they were Royal Navy men, he had a deal of bother and loss of time before the Government made up the money he was out of pocket, which he could not afford to lose. He seemed to be the very first to show that it was anybody’s bounden duty to save the drowning. But he’s never been much talked of. The stories of fighting and killing are the stories that are told. He was only a tailor and outfitter, you see, ma’am, and most folks give such but a sneer. But my mother brought all her children up to remember him and to learn from him to look out to see what their hands can do. She used to say people laugh at a tailor as the ninth part of a man; but I say nine good men were rolled into one in my great-great-uncle Powell.”
“Then you have always lived in Deal, I suppose?” asked Lucy, interested in the sudden frankness of the hitherto reserved woman.
“Yes, ma’am; but I’ve been in London,” she said.
“When your husband was living?” Lucy inquired gently.
“No, ma’am,” replied Mrs. May. “I married a Kingsdown man, a pilot. His father’s still living in Kingsdown, old and frail, but he’s saved people’s lives by scores and scores. He has been a great man in the lifeboat.”
“Did your husband ever go out in the boat?” asked Lucy.
“He met his death in it,” said Mrs. May quite calmly. “We hadn’t been married a year, and it was the first time he had ever gone out. It was the Lord’s will that his father should go again and again and do great things and come home safe and sound, and be living at eighty-five. But my Jarvist was knocked over and washed away before he could do anything. But the Lord knew what Jarvist’s will was, and the Lord took it for the deed.”
Mrs. May stood gazing out towards the fateful line on the horizon. Lucy’s eyes were full of tears.
“Oh, Mrs. May,” she said, “how hard it was for you! How could you bear to go on living beside this cruel sea in sight of that terrible place!”
Mrs. May turned towards her with a wistful smile.
“Ah,” she said, “how many ladies have said that to me! (Not that I tell everyone who comes, for some would not care to hear. There are folks who go out to picnic and dance on the Goodwins!) But look here, dear,” she went on eagerly, her last reserve melted in Lucy’s tears, “we all see houses, and yet somebody has died in every house; we all see our beds, and yet we’ve seen dear ones die on them, and we look to die there ourselves some day. It’s all hard just at first. After a while, the thought of death settles into a bit of life. It’s the Lord’s will that it comes in one way to one and in another to another. But it’s all right if it means going to Him, and all we’ve got to do is to keep on following.”
“And you had your husband such a little time!” cried Lucy, thinking to herself that she and Charlie had already had more than seven years of happy life together.
“Yes,” said Mrs. May; “I was a widow at twenty-five. I’m just fifty now, and my people live long, so likely I’ve got a good bit to go yet. I had my Jarvist just for one year. But I reckon that one year was quite enough to soak through all the rest, back and fore, just as a fine perfume does.
“I took it very hard at first,” she went on. “I took it rebellious. But Jarvist’s father he came to me, and says he, ‘Joan’—and he put his hand on my shoulder, and it had a kind of feeling as if it pulled me up like—‘Joan,’ says he, ‘Jarvist has done his part. Now you’ve got to do yours. You married a sailor, Joan; he’s died at his place, you’ve got to live at yours. Don’t make no fuss about it, lass,’ says he (he speaks old-fashioned and homely), ‘you won’t see Jarvist a day the sooner. You wouldn’t have liked Jarvist to stay at home to please you, would you?’ says he. ‘And if he’d have done such a mean thing, and yet his time were come, then he’d have broke his neck a-trippin’ over a doormat,’ says the old man. ‘I’ll tell you something, Joan. Before Jarvist went out he said to me, “Father, if aught took me, you’d be good to Joan.” We all thinks that to each other,’ father-in-law says, ‘but the young men—specially the new-married—they generally says it once or twice before they feel it’s taken for granted. Said I back to Jarvist, “Joan’s a lass with grit in her, and she’ll be good to herself and to others, too, I reckon.” And that was my promise to Jarvist for you, Joan, and you’ve got to make it good,’ says he. So I’ve tried to do. That’s five-and-twenty years ago, and time is passing on. It’s not so long for any of us after all.”
“I beg pardon for speaking so freely to you, ma’am,” she went on after a short pause, while Lucy’s tears dropped; “but there’s a look in your face that if you’d been a man would have sent you out to the Goodwins. But the women have to do their part at home—keeping ready dry clothes and hot gruel sometimes,” she added with a quiet laugh, “as we did one day this spring, when one poor soul was left wrecked on the Goodwins after all his shipmates were drowned. It was said the lifeboat couldn’t go out; but then our men they couldn’t stay in! Never shall I forget that night at the little mariners’ service where I often go. The gentleman that was praying and reading the Scriptures saw the men’s faces, and he broke short off to say, ‘Can we go? Can we do something?’ Why not? It was all in the service of God. And they went, and they brought off the man safely—a poor Norwegian.”
Lucy had learned to fear contact with strangers since her husband’s illness. Their misjudged “sympathy,” their well-meant comments, had so often been as the rubbing of salt into the ever-open wound of anxiety, and the almost tenderer spot of hope. She had learned the lesson that if the greatest consolation for sorrow is to have beside us one who understands it and shares it, then the next greatest blessing is to be able to bear one’s burden alone, apart from those to whom one’s agony is but a spectacle or a dumping ground for commonplaces.
But she found there was no need to shrink from Mrs. May. When she confided to the landlady the plans that were in preparation, and the long separation which was impending, Mrs. May was full of encouraging hope. She could narrate cases in which the sea, despite its terrible side, had acted as a beneficent healer and life restorer. She could tell, too, of many who had suffered in the same way as Mr. Challoner, and were still alive—elderly people, with long useful years behind them. To Lucy Challoner this sort of cheer was the more acceptable because it came to her surrounded by an atmosphere, and supported by a foundation, in which neither life nor death were held to be the main things—but only “the will of the Lord,” which could make either death or life blessed both to those who were left and to those who were taken.
Very different was the tone of the notes which came from Lucy’s sister Florence. Mrs. Brand wrote a large hand, so that a very few words covered four sides of a sheet of note-paper; also she wrote, as it were, breathlessly, dropping pronouns and punctuation. She was very forcible in bewailing her sister’s departure to Deal—“So sudden—and such a place—and didn’t Charlie feel the journey—and it mightn’t be amiss if it turned him aside from the bigger scheme—couldn’t bear to think of it—poor dear Lucy all alone—well, the child, of course—and if for Charlie’s good, but it seemed a great risk—wasn’t beginning to look for a successor for Pollie yet; no good being in hurry—better not hire anyone till a day or two before wanted—and Lucy not coming back to London till the very night before Charlie sailed for the North—who was Captain Grant?—hoped he was a decent man—master mariners not always up to much; but if Charlie kept pretty well, perhaps he would not mind about trifles. Must get word as soon as they were sure of dates—must get last look of Charlie—and had good many evening engagements on. Poor dear Lucy, Florence really pitied—things had looked so different at Lucy’s marriage, but might turn out better, even yet.”
As Lucy read those notes, her pulse used to quicken with a sense of revolt. Charlie’s wife was no person to be pitied! Come what might, she was not to be pitied! Her anxieties, her possible sorrows, were not to be regarded as so much ill-luck, to be secretly contrasted by Florence with her own splendid fortune in stalwart, prosperous Jem, and her showy house, and large “visiting circle.”
After these rebellious sensations, Lucy always turned penitent—said to herself that she was silly and even wicked, and resolved to allow no such feelings to arise again. But Florence’s next note always stirred them anew. The east wind will ruffle us; we can but turn our backs to it, or veil our faces, and afterwards soothe the irritated skin with emollients. So there are natures which thus rush rudely on our souls. And we cannot change those natures, or their effect upon us; we can only avert the worst results by tact, hide our soreness in silence, and heal damages by patience and forbearance. Let us put our conscious misery to a good use by its keeping us humbly aware that any sweetness or amiability that we may seem to possess belongs, after all, almost as much to our environment as to ourselves!
The peaceful resting-time wore to an end. Charlie Challoner and his little boy had made friends with nearly all the Deal “hovellers,” lounging so easily on the shingly shore, watching the sea and the sky, as if there were nothing else to do in life, yet with the strength of scores of conquered storms wrought into their fine old faces. They had heard many stories grave and gay, and little Hugh had gathered up some queer treasures in the way of uncommon shells and stones, and even a little carved boat.
Lucy herself did not talk much to the old boatmen. Her happy relations with Mrs. May had not overcome all her shrinking from strangers, and she preferred to hear of them from Charlie, and to let him tell over their yarns to her. But when she went out with her husband they all gave her kindly greeting. It was Lucy’s delighted pride that whoever knew Charlie first seemed always ready to welcome and approve of her. She revelled in being regarded kindly for his sake. Yet it was as often something of her which had originally commended him. He or she who is wrapped round by a true and tender love carries its grace everywhere.
After Charlie had had his pleasant chats to some of those old men, the one of them had said to the other—
“Reckon that gentleman’s got a good woman belonging to him. Ye sort o’ feel it on him, like ye smell the spicy breezes before ye touch a port o’ the land where spices grow.”
“Course he has,” said the other; “haven’t ye seen her? A winsome lass—one of the little craft that can go through a great deal of rough weather—the sort that’s generally made for that purpose, to my thinking.”
Then came the last day before the returning day.
“We will go for a long walk inland,” said Charlie. “It will be my last sight of English trees for a long while; and if autumn has carried off some of their beauty, it has added more of its own.”
That afternoon Mrs. May announced that she was going for a walk up to Walmer Castle, and asked if the little master might go with her. Hugh was delighted—the sea was a perennial joy to him—to whom country lanes did not seem marvellously different from London squares and parks. Lucy gratefully assented. She never knew whether it was an accident, or whether the kind woman realised that she and Charlie would be thankful for a quiet ramble and an undisturbed conversation.
Perhaps they did not talk much during that walk. Hearts were too full and tears too near the surface. But each uttered solemnly those expressions of mutual love and faith which must generally lie half hidden under the little commonplaces of daily life. Each, as it were, rendered back the mutual charge of the other,—Charles promising faithfully to take care of himself, and to remember all the precautions Lucy would insist on, if she were with him,—Lucy pledging herself to keep as free as possible from worrying, to remember that, under all the circumstances, the coming of letters must be more or less uncertain and far between, adding a voluntary clause that she would do her very best to be brave and wise under any unforeseen conditions which might arise, and under which she could not seek Charlie’s counsel and support. That voluntary clause was due to Lucy’s tender self-reproach against the household secret that she was keeping, even for her husband’s own sake. Charlie received it, with assurances that he knew she would keep her word. Little did either of them then think how that little pledge was to return to their minds, to their common soothing and upholding!
Lucy felt that this quiet hour of spiritual nearness was their true farewell. With its thrilling emotions would be blent for ever the memory of the solemn November afternoon sky—sunless, but with suggestions of sunlight in its delicate opal hues—and the square tower of Munceam church, lifting its grey head from a mass of foliage, glorious with vivid autumn tints.
After that came the bustle of final packing, the farewell to Mrs. May—to whom Lucy felt she owed something which was not included in her modest bill—the railway journey, the return home. The house was in apple-pie order, and at this critical juncture Charlie ceased to wonder at Pollie’s unrestrained, fast-flowing tears. The Brands “looked in” late that night in evening dress on their way from a dinner-party. Jem Brand talked loud and fast to Charlie, while Florence patted her sister’s hands and whispered that she had not secured her a servant yet—they would go about that business together—the interest and excitement would be cheering to Lucy’s loneliness—there were still three or four days to pass before Pollie left—plenty of time.
“Plenty of time!” Lucy echoed absently. “What did it really matter? Charlie was going away!”
Then it was over. Lucy came back from seeing her husband on board the Scotch steamer for Aberdeen. She felt as if she had died, and had come to life again in an emptied earth. How strange the street noises sounded! How strange the familiar house looked! Even little Hugh seemed somehow different!
Lucy had not experienced enough to know that the worst was not yet. She had still to expect her husband’s telegram of his safe arrival in the north. She could look forward to one or two letters from him written from Peterhead. And when these came, full of cheer, of pleasant descriptions of scenery, fellow-passengers, and friendly welcome, together with good accounts of the dear wanderer’s own progress towards strength, poor Lucy began to feel as if she had passed the sharpest corner of her woe, and almost to congratulate herself on her own bravery.
Alas, beyond “the strong pull” on one’s courage and submission, there comes “the long pull.”
(To be continued.)
[THINGS IN SEASON, IN MARKET AND KITCHEN.]
By LA MÉNAGÈRE.
There are several new additions to our list. We have grass-lamb, mackerel, the first salmon, salads, salad-herbs, cucumbers, spinach, spring onions, turnip and nettle-tops, but as yet no additional fruits. However, whilst we have such an abundance of good rhubarb and green salads, we have nothing to complain of, for what can be better for health than these, or more refreshing?—so welcome, too, after the winter. Fresh mint, sorrel, chervil, and water-cress add flavour to the bowl, and spring onions give it piquancy.
People who suffer from sleeplessness should try the effect of a sandwich of spring onions—bread and butter with finely-minced onion spread between—before retiring to rest. It is said to be most soothing and sleep-inviting.
I would specially recommend these “green” sandwiches to all who find a difficulty in eating salad-herbs in any other form—for instance, chopped mustard and cress, thinly-shaved cucumber and onion, chopped parsley, mint and sorrel—all are excellent when spread between thin slices of buttered bread, and very dainty, too, are they.
This is the month when we may begin one of our favourite dishes of spinach and eggs—one of our physic dishes, I might say, for on very good authority we learn that spinach contains more iron than almost anything else that can be mentioned, and when combined with the sulphur of the egg becomes a capital tonic medicine. So by all means let us eat plenty of it.
I have mentioned mackerel as belonging to the month of April. From now until the end of June they will be prime, and are a good fish to eat; but out of their proper season they are not wholesome. Perhaps they are nicest when carefully boiled and served with parsley sauce; but if baked with butter and accompanied by gooseberry sauce, or split open and broiled, with herb sauce, they are very nearly as good. Also they are excellent for breakfast when pickled and eaten cold.
It is hardly possible this month to lay too much stress on the virtues of salads; and to prepare these well, to make as many varieties of them as possible, and to mix the dressing with due art, is well worth careful study on the part of every housewife.
A perfectly plain dressing of salt, pepper, vinegar and oil, if well beaten together, and then a spoonful of good cream added, becomes almost equal to a mayonnaise, and is not so expensive or troublesome to make ready.
The following would be found a suitable little dinner for this month, and it is easy to vary at will:—