The Seaboard Parish, Complete

But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low and earnest. One I recognised as Joe’s voice. The other was a woman’s. I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore felt no immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat debating with myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length, in a lull of the wind, I heard the woman say—I could fancy with a sigh—

“I’m sure you’ll du what is right, Joe. Don’t ‘e think o’ me, Joe.”

“It’s just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben’t for my sake. Surely you know that?”

There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best do—go away quietly or let them know I was there—when she spoke again. There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and I heard what she said well enough.

“It ben’t for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don’t think you be going to die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?”

It flashed across me how once before, a stormy night and darkness had brought me close to a soul in agony. Then I was in agony myself; now the world was all fair and hopeful around me—the portals of the world beyond ever opening wider as I approached them, and letting out more of their glory to gladden the path to their threshold. But here were two souls straying in a mist which faith might roll away, and leave them walking in the light. The moment was come. I must speak.

“Joe!” I called out.

“Who’s there?” he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.

“Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?”

“We can’t be very far off,” he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure at finding me so nigh.

I rose, and peering about through the darkness, found that they were a little higher up on the same rock by which I was sheltered.

“You mustn’t think,” I said, “that I have been eavesdropping. I had no idea anyone was near me till I heard your voices, and I did not hear a word till just the last sentence or two.”

“I saw someone go up the Castle-rock,” said Joe; “but I thought he was gone away again. It will be a lesson to me.”

“I’m no tell-tale, Joe,” I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. “You will have no cause to regret that I happened to overhear a little. I am sure, Joe, you will never say anything you need be ashamed of. But what I heard was sufficient to let me into the secret of your trouble. Will you let me talk to Joe, Agnes? I’ve been young myself, and, to tell the truth, I don’t think I’m old yet.”

“I am sure, sir,” she answered, “you won’t be hard on Joe and me. I don’t suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we can’t be—married.”

She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was a certain womanly composure in her utterance. “I’m sure it’s very bold of me to talk so,” she added, “but Joe will tell you all about it.”

I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the motion of her hand stealing into his.

“Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted,” I said. “A woman can be braver than a big smith sometimes. Agnes has done her part. Now you do yours, and tell me all about it.”

No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.

“I think I know how the matter lies, Joe. You think you are not going to live long, and that therefore you ought not to marry. Am I right?”

“Not far off it, sir,” he answered.

“Now, Joe,” I said, “can’t we talk as friends about this matter? I have no right to intrude into your affairs—none in the least—except what friendship gives me. If you say I am not to talk about it, I shall be silent. To force advice upon you would be as impertinent as useless.”

“It’s all the same, I’m afraid, sir. My mind has been made up for a long time. What right have I to bring other people into trouble? But I take it kind of you, sir, though I mayn’t look over-pleased. Agnes wants to hear your way of it. I’m agreeable.”

This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for proceeding.

“I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is the will of God?”

“Surely, sir.”

“Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each other, they should marry?”

“Certainly, sir—where there be no reasons against it.”

“Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you would?”

“I do see that a man should not bring a woman into trouble for the sake of being comfortable himself for the rest of a few weary days.”

Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she would be Joe’s wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.

“Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But listen to me. In the first place, you don’t know, and you are not required to know, when you are going to die. In fact, you have nothing to do with it. Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work while the day lasts, diligently. The best preparation for death is life. Besides, I have known delicate people who have outlived all their strong relations, and been left alone in the earth—because they had possibly taken too much care of themselves. But marriage is God’s will, and death is God’s will, and you have no business to set the one over against, as antagonistic to, the other. For anything you know, the gladness and the peace of marriage may be the very means intended for your restoration to health and strength. I suspect your desire to marry, fighting against the fancy that you ought not to marry, has a good deal to do with the state of health in which you now find yourself. A man would get over many things if he were happy, that he cannot get over when he is miserable.”

“But it’s for Aggy. You forget that.”

“I do not forget it. What right have you to seek for her another kind of welfare than you would have yourself? Are you to treat her as if she were worldly when you are not—to provide for her a comfort which yourself you would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to die soon?—if you are thus doomed, which to me is by no means clear. Why not have what happiness you may for the rest of your sojourn? If you find at the end of twenty years that here you are after all, you will be rather sorry you did not do as I say.”

“And if I find myself dying at the end of six months’?”

“You will thank God for those six months. The whole thing, my dear fellow, is a want of faith in God. I do not doubt you think you are doing right, but, I repeat, the whole thing comes from want of faith in God. You will take things into your own hands, and order them after a preventive and self-protective fashion, lest God should have ordained the worst for you, which worst, after all, would be best met by doing his will without inquiry into the future; and which worst is no evil. Death is no more an evil than marriage is.”

“But you don’t see it as I do,” persisted the blacksmith.

“Of course I don’t. I think you see it as it is not.”

He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He started.

“What a wave!” he cried. “That spray came over the top of the rock. We shall have to run for it.”

I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.

“There’s no hurry,” I said. “It was high water an hour and a half ago.”

“You don’t know this coast, sir,” returned he, “or you wouldn’t talk like that.”

As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock, looked along.

“For God’s sake, Aggy!” he cried in terror, “come at once. Every other wave be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level.”

So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw her along.

“Hadn’t we better stay where we are?” I suggested.

“If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and I don’t care about being out all night. It’s not the tide, sir; it’s a ground swell—from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no questions about tide or no tide.”

“Come along, then,” I said. “But just wait one minute more. It is better to be ready for the worst.”

For I remembered that the day before I had seen a crowbar lying among the stones, and I thought it might be useful. In a moment or two I had found it, and returning, gave it to Joe. Then I took the girl’s disengaged hand. She thanked me in a voice perfectly calm and firm. Joe took the bar in haste, and drew Agnes towards the breakwater.

Any real thought of danger had not yet crossed my mind. But when I looked along the outstretched back of the mole, and saw a dim sheet of white sweep across it, I felt that there was ground for his anxiety, and prepared myself for a struggle.

“Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?” I said, grasping my own stout oak-stick more firmly.

“Perfectly,” answered Joe. “To stick between the stones and hold on. We must watch our time between the waves.”

“You take the command, then, Joe,” I returned. “You see better than I do, and you know the ways of that raging wild beast there better than I do. I will obey orders—one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or sea to lose hold of Agnes—eh, Joe?”

Joe gave a grim enough laugh in reply, and we started, he carrying his crowbar in his right hand towards the advancing sea, and I my oak-stick in my left towards the still water within.

“Quick march!” said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.

Now the back of the breakwater was very rugged, for it was formed of huge stones, with wide gaps between, where the waters had washed out the cement, and worn their edges. But what impeded our progress secured our safety.

“Halt!” cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter of the rocks. “There’s a topper coming.”

We halted at the word of command, as a huge wave, with combing crest, rushed against the far out-sloping base of the mole, and flung its heavy top right over the middle of the mass, a score or two of yards in front of us.

“Now for it!” cried Joe. “Run!”

We did run. In my mind there was just sense enough of danger to add to the pleasure of the excitement. I did not know how much danger there was. Over the rough worn stones we sped stumbling.

“Halt!” cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.

“God be with us!” I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes’s waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed, held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes. It took but a moment.

“Now then!” cried Joe. “Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!”

But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the sloping side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, “Down, Joe! Down on your face, and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!”

They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave, floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.

“Now, now!” cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the water pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and arrived, panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept the surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back over the danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the breakwater from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

“I believe, sir,” said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, “if you hadn’t taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost.”

“It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was not sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it low down.”

“We were awfully near death,” said Joe.

“Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don’t go all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as foresight—believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the future, and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is the man most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and ready. Our Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should be brought before kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what answer they should make, for it would be given them when the time came.”

We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions spoke.

“You have escaped one death together,” I said at length: “dare another.”

Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage, I said, “Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I will take Agnes home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?”

Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: “As you please, sir. Good night, Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can.”

When I returned from giving Agnes over to her parents, I made haste to change my clothes, and put on my warm dressing-gown. I may as well mention at once, that not one of us was the worse for our ducking. I then went up to Connie’s room.

“Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe.”

“I’ve been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out, papa. But all I could do was to trust in God.”

“Do you call that all, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in that than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed all.”

I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were well into another month before I told Connie.

When I left her, I went to Joe’s room to see how he was, and found him having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,

“Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won’t be the worse for it.”

“I don’t much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon.”

“But you ought to care what comes of you, Joe. I will tell you why. You are an instrument out of which ought to come praise to God, and, therefore, you ought to care for the instrument.”

“That way, yes, sir, I ought.”

“And you have no business to be like some children who say, ‘Mamma won’t give me so and so,’ instead of asking her to give it them.”

“I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young woman. I couldn’t say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir, there was to come a family. It might be, you know.”

“Of course. What else would you have?”

“But if I was to die, where would she be then?”

“In God’s hands; just as she is now.”

“But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that to provide for.”

“O, Joe! how little you know a woman’s heart! It would just be the greatest comfort she could have for losing you—that’s all. Many a woman has married a man she did not care enough for, just that she might have a child of her own to let out her heart upon. I don’t say that is right, you know. Such love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her child because it is her husband’s more than because it is her own, and because it is God’s more than either’s. I saw in the papers the other day, that a woman was brought before the Recorder of London for stealing a baby, when the judge himself said that there was no imaginable motive for her action but a motherly passion to possess the child. It is the need of a child that makes so many women take to poor miserable, broken-nosed lap-dogs; for they are self-indulgent, and cannot face the troubles and dangers of adopting a child. They would if they might get one of a good family, or from a respectable home; but they dare not take an orphan out of the dirt, lest it should spoil their silken chairs. But that has nothing to do with our argument. What I mean is this, that if Agnes really loves you, as no one can look in her face and doubt, she will be far happier if you leave her a child—yes, she will be happier if you only leave her your name for hers—than if you died without calling her your wife.”

I took Joe’s basin from him, and he lay down. He turned his face to the wall. I waited a moment, but finding him silent, bade him good-night, and left the room.

A month after, I married them.