John Holdsworth, Chief Mate

by William Clark Russell

For many minutes he held this posture, presently lifted his head, and looked about him; then took his hat and went out.

The landlord behind the bar made him a low bow, and offered his services to show him over the village. Holdsworth declined his offer with a “Thank you,” and walked into the road. He glanced over his shoulder suspiciously as he advanced, disliking the inquisitive stare with which he had been followed through the bar of the inn by the people drinking there, but no one watched him. He held a stick, on which he leaned as he moved, like an infirm man; and often he paused and gazed around him. The people in the roadway, or in the houses, eyed him as he passed with the curiosity a stranger seldom fails to excite in small unfrequented places; but he took no notice of them; his mind was intent on vivifying the impressions it was receiving with old memories, and adjusting the ideas which had been restored to him out of the dark and secret hiding-places of the past.

Few changes had been made in the aspect of the little village to embarrass the picture which his recovered memory had submitted to him. Some alterations in the external form of one or two shops, and two freshly-built houses on the left-hand side facing the blacksmith’s shed, were the only new features in the familiar scene of this quaint broad thoroughfare.

His steps grew more reluctant, his face took a sharper expression of pain, though never losing its characteristic of hardness and severity, as he drew near to his old home. He forced himself forwards, and, when abreast, halted and looked at it.

The windows were blindless, the garden showed signs of long neglect, and a board nailed to a post leaned towards the road, bearing the announcement, in painted letters, that the house was to let. A row of cobwebs garnished the woodwork of the gate, and glistened in the sunshine; the bare rooms, visible through the windows, looked cheerless and inhospitable; the window-glass was dirty, and some of the panes in the kitchen window were broken. The grass about the house was tall and vividly green. That window, looking towards the trees between the lanes, belonged to Dolly’s room. There were white soft curtains to it in those days, and the glass was pure and transparent as spring-water. That room on the left was the sitting-room. There they had taken their meals; there they had played forfeits, had hunted the slipper, had made the walls ring with innocent laughter. He remembered the old grandmother’s placid smile, the rector’s kindly jokes, his Dolly’s sweet face, throwing a light of purity and beauty about her. And under the sill were the dead branches of the clematis, still held to the wall by the pieces of black leather Dolly’s own hand had nailed. Such humble signs make grief sharper than large memorials.

He stood leaning upon his stick, losing all sense of the present in this vision of the past. His thoughts, taking their departure from the time when he first fitted out that house as a home for Dolly, flowed regularly downwards. He was a bridegroom again, and his wife was at his side, and her eyes upon his, and their hands clasped. Now the shadow of separation that was to darken them presently was felt; and then came the eve of his departure, thronged with the memory of kisses sweet and bitter, of tears and broken prayers, and brave hopes battling with sullen misgivings. He was now on board the “Meteor,” and now in the open boat, surrounded by the dying, and himself suffering tortures it broke him down to recall; and now he was in Australia, striving with memory, which would yield no answer to his passionate prayers. But the finger of God pointed the way to his old home; and now he was returning to England, with his past still hidden in gloom, but with his heart not unhopeful of the morning that was to break after the long darkness of the night. And finally, with the old village of Southbourne before him, came the rush of memory—the brief exultation—the spasm of fear—the terror that held him mute—the disclosure that showed him his wife less his than had he traversed all the desolate miles of water only to kneel by her grave....

Tears would have relieved him, but he could not weep. He turned and moved slowly away, stopping again and again to look back at the little empty house, while sobs convulsed him, and a sense of supreme desolation and friendlessness weighed him down.

[CHAPTER XXIII.]
REFLECTIONS.

The fowl dished up by the landlady and served upon fine linen, was plump, and juicy and aromatic enough to re-excite the appetite of an alderman after Mansion House dinner; but Holdsworth hardly touched it. The woman looked vexed as she removed it, for the neglect of such a dainty was as good as a spoken disparagement of her skill as a cook. She set a fine cheese, fresh from the farmhouse over the way, upon the table, and butter from the same dairy, firm and sweet-smelling, as butter should be; but these were left untasted.