It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

[CHAPTER XLVI]

HOW LIZARANN SAW THE SEA, AND A CHINESE LADY WROTE A BAD ACCOUNT OF HER TO HER FRIENDS. HOW IT NEVER REACHED JIM, AND MISS FOSSETT WAS WIRED FOR. HOW THE RECTOR HAD TO GO TO CHIPPING CHESTER.

The tide was coming in at Chalk Cliff, and the Children, meaning thereby all those on the coast at the time, were little glowing spots of perfect unconcern; entire freedom from care, from memory of the past and apprehension for the future; things as unencumbered of responsibility and pain as tracts of smooth and furrowed sands, beneath a broiling July sun, with endless pools at choice awaiting the returning flood, and little boats to navigate them, and nets to capture prawns, and sand-castles and spades and wooden panniers you could pat the sand into, could make them. And the Children were paddling in the pools, and insuring swift and prosperous passages to the vessels under their control by pushing them—for there was never a breath of wind—and chasing elusive prawns and unknown specimens beneath the rocks, and putting their fingers in anemones, and molesting crabs, and not succeeding in removing limpets suddenly from their holdings, because the limpets were too sharp for them. Also they were hard at work, the more purposeful ones, erecting sand castles the very self-same shape as the limpets, and meeting in the middle, when they—the Children—burrowed from opposite sides to complete the said castles with four or even more tunnels, essential to perfect structure; and, ending with their country's flag, in tin, upon the summit, contentedly awaited the coming of the tide to wash it all away, and leave them new clean spaces for to-morrow.

Why is Lizarann content to watch the Children in the sun, to be dissociated from them as she lies upon the sand in the shade of that big white umbrella a guardian nurse manipulates in her interest? Why does she not seize the glorious opportunities of Life at its best; of Life those babies yonder, too happy now to measure their own happiness, will look back on one day not so very far hence as a sweet Elysium of the past, a heaven of unquestioning content the clouds of the years to come will never let them know again? Why does Lizarann—our Lizarann!—prefer to lie still and converse with the good woman who has charge of her?

Well!—you see, she got tired with the journey yesterday. That's all. You'll see she'll pick up when she's been here a few days, and the sea air has had time to tell. Besides, it is notorious that its first effect on you is always enervating; and then you take quinine, and it gives you a headache.

Whatever the cause, Lizarann accepted the effect, and was content to watch the Children in the middle zone of best building sand, not too wet and not too dry, all working hard to be ready for the tide that was heralding its coming in a major key, as is the manner of tides that have died sadly away to sea, six hours since, in a minor. A false musical metaphor to him whose hearing goes no deeper than the surface of sound—true! But not to Lizarann, though she knew as little as we how to word the difference rightly between the joy of the sea returning and the lament of its departure. For this is written because Lizarann wanted to ask the lady in charge of her questions about this varied sounding of the waters, noted by her in the wakeful hours of her first night at the nursing-home.

This lady was benevolent, Lizarann was convinced. But for all that, she was like the stout Chinese carved in wood who sat all day long in the window of the tea-shop Aunt Stingy bought a quarter of a pound at a time at, nearly opposite Trott Street. Only then this image was evidently a portrait of a benevolent Chinese, of whom no little girl would have been afraid to ask questions about the tides. Lizarann reasoned on the position before she ventured on speech. Then she said: "I heard that all the time I was in bed. Yass!—through the open window."

"Poor little woman!" said the lady. "Yes, my dear, that's the water. It's the sound it makes."

"It didn't kept me awike," said Lizarann, anxious not to reflect upon the sea, of which she knew her Daddy had a high opinion. But the lady had said, "Poor little woman!" on general principles; not, as the little girl supposed, with reference to wakefulness caused by it.