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.