John Holdsworth, Chief Mate

by William Clark Russell

Here was the scene, the place at last, that was to roll back the curtains which hid the past from him, and to proclaim the resurrection of the life within him that for years had slept a sleep as deep as death.

There he stood, brought by God’s hand from a far-off world into the little Kentish village, where his memories lay heaped, where association made a beacon of every humble house to lead him with unerring step backward and backward to the sweetest, the dearest of all his memories.

How remembered, how deeply remembered, the scene! The old tavern on the right, with its swinging signboard, its burnished latticed windows, the great elm tree spreading its branches, like soft fingers, over the red-tiled roof; the farmhouse facing it, with the clamour of hidden poultry all about it, softened by the cooing of doves; and the cherry and apple trees stretching forth their fruit over the wooden railing, and the strings of white linen drying in the open spaces among the trees; the vista of gable-peaked houses, the old shops, the grassy land between the houses, the blacksmith’s shed, the hens in the roadway, the children on the doorsteps, the women working at the open windows, and the little house at the extremity, backed by soft masses of green trees and the delicate blue of the afternoon sky.

He knew his life’s history as he surveyed this scene, as though a voice in his ear were whispering it all to him. The chain was too complete not to suggest the unseen links; the throng of associations was too manifold and pregnant not to reveal to his mind the things which his eyes beheld not. Swiftly and fiercely—a very whirlwind of logic—thought flew over each stepping-stone to the hidden past; and then he knew what he had left, what he was now to seek, and what had been the WANT which his instincts—that deeper life of his of which the movements were independent of the senses—had never lost sight of.

When his faintness had passed, a great joy took possession of him—an impulse so keenly exhilarating, that he could have cried aloud in his rapture. But then came a revulsion—a deadly fear—of what he knew not, save that its presence turned him into ice, and damped his forehead with sweat.

He was all unconscious of the eyes that were upon him; but some one approaching made him turn his head, and he saw several persons watching him curiously from the door of the inn, while others, plain country people in smocks and highlows, muttered to one another as they stared from the pavement.

“Won’t you please to step in, sir?” said the man who came forward, a short, square-faced individual, in a black calico apron and a white hat.

“Who lives in that house?” returned Holdsworth, pointing down the road.

“That one yonder, with the chimbley looking this way? Why, I don’t think anybody’s living in it just now, although I did hear that it was taken by a party from Ashford.—Emily!” he called.