Part 11

Will Swan did not go to America. What he did was to find an engagement on a small boat that went to and from Bristol, bringing groceries, earthenware, timber, ovens from Bridgewater, and which conveyed slates from the Cornish quarries to that great mercantile city which goes on building, building without ceasing. He was away sometimes for a week; sometimes for a fortnight; now and then for over a month. America! He was not going to expatriate himself for a woman’s sake, when there was plenty of work to be found in his native land, or rather, on the seas that washed it.

The Bristol Channel looks upon the map as though in it could be only calm water, as in the estuary of the Thames. It is, however, not so. When the wind blows from the west, how the great Atlantic billows roll in, and with what fury do they recoil and strike the faces of their brother waves also seeking an entrance! They tread one another down; they overleap one another; they beat one another about, and leave a long line of foam down the centre of the Channel, the dust and wreckage of ten thousand broken waves.

And then, without. When Hartland Point has been turned, what a coast! The iron-black frowning cliffs stand up sheer from deep sea, and seem to say, “We look on all passers-by as foes; let none venture to approach us!”

And how the Atlantic billows heave there! It is no exaggeration to say that they run mountains high. Woe to the vessel, great or small, that enters or attempts to cross the great loop between Hartland and Trevose. It is a mouth to champ up and suck the life out of every boat that falls into it when the wind is inland.

Cicely heard that Will Swan had not gone to the States. She saw him occasionally in church, but when there he never looked her way. He stood up straight as a post, sang with lungs like the bellows of a blacksmith, in his blue jersey, his face brown as a coffee-berry fresh roasted, but his eye, blue as the summer sea, flashed and twinkled, but never on her.

She heard talk of him too. He was much at the Ship Inn; and Kate Varcoe, the daughter of the host, was a “likely lass,” cheerful, fresh-faced, with black dancing eyes. With Kate he chaffed and made merry. Cicely listened every Sunday to hear the banns called, but no—called they were not. Next, some one said that William had a sweetheart in Bristol.

Oh, in Bristol! Then why should not she show him that if he could be false she would be so also. For a while she allowed herself to be walked out by young Hannaway, a respectable youth, a carpenter by trade, who made the coffins for all the neighbourhood, and undertook in black for all the dead in that and the neighbouring parishes.

When next she encountered Will she was at the side of Hannaway. He was talking with some chums, and a burst of laughter from them pealed out after she had passed. Had he made some remark relative to her that had caused this merriment? Her cheeks burned. She was angry. She hated him. She was dull as a companion, and after three Sundays, as young Hannaway “got no forrarder” with her, he gave her up and took to walking with Kate Varcoe.

On the quay was a long bench, whereon the sailors and fishermen were wont to sit and yarn. There Will, when at home, sat and yarned also—now about ships, then about fish, about tobacco, and last about girls. He was boastful, and laughed and said that he had only to hold up his little finger and whistle, and half-a-dozen would perch on it. But this was so strange in Will, so different from his wont, that an old pilot who had known him from a child and now heard him, shook his head and said, “He’s not got that Ciss out of his head yet, I’ll swear.”

Then the news came that Cicely was ill—very ill; “something on the nerve,” so it was said, and others opined “her orgings were gone scatt.”

Will Swan asked no questions about her, but whistled “Black-eyed Susan” with his hands in his pockets. It was obvious he cared nothing for her.

Then she began to mend. The disease, whatever it was, went “off the nerve” again, or the “orgings” got patched up with powders or plaster. Very white and weak, Cicely sat at her window and looked out. One day she saw Will Swan coming along the way. “Is he about to ask after me?” she thought. No, he went by. He did not turn in at the familiar—at one time familiar—kitchen back entrance. He did not even look up at her window.

Now, at last, Cicely left our service. Her mother was dead, and some one was needed at home to keep house for her father. She left us without a word of regret. Indeed, she did not even say good-bye to my father and mother. My dear mother, in her sweet, gentle way, reproached her for it when they met.

“I thought, ma’am,” said Cicely, “if you’d wanted to say good-bye, you’d ha’ come to the kitchen to say it to me. ’Twasn’t for me to intrude.”

“Oh! Cicely, after so many years!”—my mother’s eyes filled. She really loved that girl, and from the depth of my heart I believe Cicely loved her, but she was too perverse to show it.

“Now,” said Cicely to herself, “I’ll have no more nonsense.” By which she meant that she would drive all thoughts of Will from her head. But this is easier said and resolved on than accomplished. And you, we will say, think that your thoughts, or fancies, are in your own power, that you can trifle with them, and, when you like, put them aside. But when the day comes that you _do_ wish thus to be rid of them, then you find yourself entangled, chained in the passion, and you cannot break from it. So was it with Cicely. She thought and worked for her old father more zealously and lustily than she had for us, but only thought the more continuously on, and suffered the keener for, young Will Swan.

Summer was over; autumn harvests were gathered in; Martinmas summer had brooded over the land, enveloping all in a warm, lovely haze; and then, suddenly came the change. Without warning an equinoctial gale burst on the coast, the summer was over, the brightness past—winter had come with gloom and sadness.

On the evening after it had been blowing great guns all day, the door was thrown open, and one of the coastguard looked in.

“Jan Crowe!” called he to Cicely’s father, who had charge over the lifeboat, “there’s the _Marianne_ wrecked.”

“The _Marianne_!”

Cicely uttered a cry. That was Will Swan’s vessel, or, rather, the vessel in which Will Swan was. She ran down to the beach. The sea was almost indistinguishable from the air, so lashed and shaken together was wave with wind, so intermingled were foam and rain. The air was filled with sound. The sands trembled with the beating of the surf on them. The whole sky was brown and blurred with clouds sweeping along from the west, inland, with screaming sea-birds peppered against the vapour, and salt tears dripping out of it; now driving in rushes, then staying and drawing up as a veil, and allowing the wind full play to riot and rend between the clouds and the ocean.

All colour was gone out of land and sea and sky—gone as though melted together into one medley of dull grey, never to be gathered together into pure colour again. No outlines were clear. The bold points of land that ran out into the sea were so be-hazed with spoondrift and rain that they had changed their appearance, they had lost their consistency, they seemed to waver and threaten to dissolve into the seething flood that beat about them.

None but an experienced eye could distinguish the _Marianne_ in the haze and tossing mass of sea.

Men and women, in fluttering garments, were on the beach, with their hands to their eyes screening them, gazing seaward.

Cries rose for the boat to be launched. But in such a sea it was not possible to do anything. The _Marianne_ was a wreck. No living being was on her. The captain of the coast-guard put his glass to his eye and looked steadily at the tossing—now seen, now obscured—patch that was once the _Marianne_. In the gathering darkness little could be distinguished.

“They’ve left her,” he said. “There’s none aboard but a dog. Hark! you can hear him bark.”

Those near held their breath.

“I can’t hear nothing,” said a seaman.

“You can if you look through my glass,” said the captain, “you can then both see and hear the little dog yapping. He wouldn’t be yapping like that unless he’d been left behind.”

“But where be they? There was Cap’n Thomas, and Simon Feathers, and Joe Wilcock, and Bill Swan.”

“Aye,” said another, “and there’s Tony Graves; his mother be here in a terrible take-on. ’Tis the first time the boy has been so far to sea.”

“Where be they?” asked the captain. “I can’t see anything of a boat. They’ve took to it, sure as I’m here, and just as certain she’s capsized.”

“Then they’ll be washed ashore, dead or alive,” said one.

“Of course they will. ’Tain’t no use trying the lifeboat when you know they’re not in the vessel. You don’t know where to look for ’em.”

So the shore was searched, and, first one, then another was recovered; the boy Tony first, alive and not much the worse; then Joe Wilcock dead, or so near death that there seemed no chance of recovering him. With the barbarous ignorance then common, he was thrown across a barrel to let the water run out of his lungs. He struggled, gasped, and was still.

Captain Thomas, a large stout man, holding to an oar, forged his way ashore, but he was much bruised and cut by having been beaten against sharp slate rocks like razors. He could not speak, but his eyes were lively, black eyes under white bushy brows. After a quarter of an hour he gasped out, “Where’s Tony? I stood my life to his mother I’d bring him safe home.”

“Safe he is,” said some one near.

“Then that’s right,” said the captain. “Where’s the rest?”

They could tell him only of Joe Wilcock. Feathers and Swan had not been washed ashore.

By this time it was night. Lanterns were flashing along the beach. Then up from the water came some one; it was Cicely, drenched to the skin, her hair streaming, but wet as seaweed. She was dragging in her arms a dark mass.

Some ran to her with lights. What she was heaving was Will Swan, conscious, for he looked at her, but speechlessly. The moment others drew nigh the girl released her load and disappeared.

The night became clearer. The wind shifted to the north, the clouds parted. Stars appeared in the patches of dark sky. The rain ceased, but the sea still thundered and gleamed white.

A knock at the cottage door of the old fellow who had charge of the lifeboat. He was out still, but Cicely opened and saw Will Swan before her with both hands extended.

She drew her hand back and looked coldly at him.

He was staggered, and said: “Well, Ciss!”

“Well,” she said, “what do you want here?”

Will stepped forward, and tried to put his arm round her to take a kiss. She thrust him from her impatiently.

For a moment he stood motionless, then he burst forth: “It was you—you who snatched me out of the water.”

“You are mistaken, it was Jacob Finch. I stood by. I would have done that for any one.”

Will became white as chalk; then almost in fury, as if he would have torn her, he cried: “Ciss! you be cruel to me and to yourself. I don’t care, say yes or no, fight or bite if you will, mine you shall be, or I will carry you in these arms and throw you and myself together over the cliff into the sea.”

He seized her in his strong arms, clasped her to his heart, and covered her face with kisses.

So, in a paroxysm of fury, was this courtship done.

And Cicely melted like wax against glowing iron. But only for a moment, and then said: “Well, if it must be, it must.”

Fifty years have passed since that day.

There is now an old seaman sits smoking his pipe on the bench, looking seaward, and he yarns with his mates, and is looked up to and listened to by the younger men. He has got strapping sons of his own. They are seamen as was their father. He has a daughter married, and the old chap is fond of taking one of his grandchildren out with him, to walk on the quay and sit on the old bench beside him or else on his knee.

That old man is Will Swan.

The Crowe, by holy matrimony, had become a Swan.

The pretty Cicely I remembered so long ago was now dead; and old Bill wore a black band round his blue jersey arm.

A day or two ago I was sitting by him on the bench.

He was silent for a long time, smoking and blowing clouds.

Presently he turned his face to me. I saw there was trouble in it.

“You knew my wife, sir?” he said.

“Indeed I did, since I was a little child.”

“I know you did.”

Then again silence.

Presently again his face turned, and he drew his pipe from his mouth and rested it on his knee.

“You’re a minister now, sir?”

“Yes; I am a parson.”

“Then p’r’aps you can tell me something.”

“I will tell you what I can.”

“You see, sir, Ciss was that won’erful sort of a woman. Though us was married for fifty years her never once in all that time would say as her loved me.”

Again a long pause; another smoke. Then a turn to me: “You _are_ a parson?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

“Well, you can tell me. When I get into life everlasting, do you think Ciss will meet me at the gates o’ Paradise and say: ‘What are you doin’ here now? Don’t you go bothering of me, _I_ don’t want you’?”

“All that is left behind,” said I, “all, all in the soil and dross of the grave. Above, the bright happy smile will break out, and the welcome, and the hands will be stretched out——”

“Thank you,” he said slowly. Great tears were in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. “I hopes the same, but I doubts it. There must be a terrible, mirac’lous change for that to come about. But things may happen past ’uman understanding, and even onions turn to apples, and jerseys to pea-jackets. No offence, sir,” and he touched his forehead.

THE WEATHERCOCK

THE WEATHERCOCK

Lydia French had a shop opposite the church. The little town or overgrown village had no market, but there were fairs held in the space before the church on one side and Lydia French’s shop on the other twice in the year. Both were cattle fairs, frequented by farmers. On such occasions bullocks ran about with tails lifted, yelling men and barking dogs behind and before them, and made either for the churchyard wall or for Lydia French’s shop window. The Oddfellows, moreover, held their annual feast there, and processionised behind a band, and waved banners and wore sashes, and ate and drank heartily at the “Peal of Bells.” On such occasions stalls were erected in the open space, where nuts were shot for, and barley-sugar-sticks and twisted peppermint rods and brandy-balls were sold, also ginger-pop and lemonade. On all these occasions Lydia French’s shop was full of customers. She, moreover, had a good _clientèle_ in the entire parish, but experienced less difficulty in disposing of her goods than in getting her little bills paid.

But though there were defaulters, yet those who liquidated were in the majority, or Lydia French would not have been the prosperous woman she was. Her aspect breathed a fulness of purse and flush of comfort that were convincing. She could afford herself, on occasion, a silk gown. She made weekly expeditions to the bank to pay in hebdomadal profits. She had recently repapered her little parlour, and the paper was white and gold.

She was generous. When children put down their pennies for acid drops or almond rock, she always made the balance incline in their favour, to their great admiration; when their mothers bought calico, she was not particular to a quarter of a yard; and she was large-hearted—she subscribed equally to the missionaries of Church and Chapel.

Lydia French was a widow. She had been married but for a twelvemonth to a commercial traveller, who had in the brief year tried her forbearance and strained her means, and she had now been a widow of three years, and was without encumbrance.

Several had made advances to her, but she soon let commercial travellers understand that none of them need apply. There was one who trafficked in a “Life of Wellington,” with magnificent steel engravings, issued in parts, who laid siege to her; and when he would not take a “No” she refused to receive any more numbers of the series. Whereupon he threatened her with legal proceedings, averring that she had bound herself to Wellington from the cradle to the grave when she received the first part. She paid up rather than go into court, and nursed bitterness of heart against travellers thenceforth. The man whom she had married was bad enough; this Wellingtonian man was “wusser,” as she expressed it. It really was preposterous that such a woman, plump, prosperous, comely, should not find her man.

But, indeed, there were plenty of men who wanted her, only she was hard to please. A young farmer—she did not relish farm-work; she did not wish to give up the shop. The blooming butcher—she had an aversion for the trade. A handsome drover—he tippled. A Methodist class-leader—he was a teetotaller, and she liked her drop of mild ale.

But, finally she seemed to hesitate between two—John Newbold, the mason, and Jack Westcott—or, as the children called him, Jackie Waistcoat, the sailor.

Both were fine men, and both had good characters; the first was somewhat too heavy, the latter somewhat too lively. But where is perfection to be found? In woman, perhaps—nay, certainly—not in man.

There was this advantage to whichsoever she cast the kerchief, that he would not require her to give up the shop. To the shop she was attached. The shop made her a power in the parish, brought her into relation with all, gave her consequence, and drew to her a good deal of money. This, then, was a _sine quâ non_—that she should keep the shop after marriage as before. Besides, she did not desire to have a husband always hanging about her, like a fly in hot weather, that will not be driven away. She was accustomed to independence. A man on the premises all day implied interference, and that she was determined not to tolerate.

Lydia French sat in her shop; no business was doing this day. She had made up her account to midsummer, and the balance was good; it made her feel good—like a bracing sermon or a melting hymn. She had taken stock—roughly. Everything was satisfactory. The little house was in excellent condition, she owned it; that is to say, on three lives, and she had paid Newbold’s bill for putting it in thorough repair. The chimney had smoked; that was cured by the new revolving cowl. The drain from the sink had emitted smells; that was rectified—Newbold had put down a stink-trap. Newbold was a useful man when any masoning work was required. Could she put up with him for always—for better, for worse?

She looked up, and looked out at her little window between the bottles of pink and pallid drops, and the withered oranges that would no longer sell, and the stay-laces, and the ginger-beer bottles, and the can of mustard, and the tin of biscuits. And she saw that which was to her a constant worry—the weathercock on the church spire.

In the great gale of the preceding November the cock had been blown on one side, the spindle on which for many years it had revolved had been bent over, so that now the poor bird lay on his back in mid-air, and could neither right himself nor turn with the wind.

Mrs. French, neat in herself, orderly in her house, above all, in the shop, could not endure to see what was out of place, inverted, useless. She had liked to know from which direction the wind blew. It had provided her with conversation with her customers. It had satisfied her sense of the fitness of things that the spindle on the spire should be upright, and that the vane should fulfil the object for which it was ordained.

Now more than six months had passed, and the cock was still reversed. She had remonstrated with the parson.

“My dear Mrs. French,” he had replied, “that is the affair of the churchwardens. I have badgered all my friends, and impoverished myself over the restoration of the church—I can do no more.”

She complained to the churchwardens. “Lor’ bless y’,” said they, “there be no levying o’ church-rates now, what can _we_ do?”

“It really is a scandal,” said Lydia. “And now the village feast is coming on, and the Oddfellows will march about, and the cock will——”

“Be an odd fellow, too, turned upside down, like many of the heads after ale and punch.”

“I don’t like it,” said Lydia. “I sees it with its blessed feet turned up and its comb down—helpless. It is real unchristian and inhuman to let it bide so.”

The churchwardens said, “Meddlin’ with aught on the steeple is darned expensive. Beside, ’tain’t everywhere you can find a steeplejack.”

So Lydia fidgeted and mused and schemed: that vane became the trouble of her life.

In at the shop door came simultaneously, from opposite directions, the builder and the mariner.

They had a curious knack, these men, of spying on each other, and of denying each other the opportunity of having a few words in private with the widow.

In this, however, the sailor had the advantage over the mason, for he was not daily engaged, as was the other. But Newbold so contrived that when he was absent, should Westcott endeavour to steal a march on him, his mother or his sister should invade the shop and so prevent privacy.

Which was the favoured swain neither could decide; but that was not wonderful, for Lydia had not decided for herself.

“Good-morning, mem,” said the mason. “I’ll just trouble you for an ounce of bird’s-eye.”

“And I’ll have same of Virginia shag,” said the sailor.

“Fine day, mem,” said Newbold.

“Which way is the wind?” asked the widow.

“East by nor’-east,” answered Westcott.

“Ah! then we shall have fine weather, and lasting for the revel.”

“Hope so,” said the mason.

“It is really distressing—I can now never tell the way of the wind. It is as bad as having a kitchen clock as won’t work. That there church stag——”

Mrs. French never spoke of the weathercock, but used the local term for a cock, which throughout Devon is invariably—a stag.

“Ah!” said Newbold.

“Well, now,” said Westcott.

“It really do seem a burnin’ shame to have the poor unfort’nate bird lyin’ on his back and kickin’ at the clouds, and that, too, on the day of the parish feast. What will folk say of us? That we’ve no public spirit left. The farmers might get up a subscription. Would it be so amazin’ expensive? Would they have to scaffold all the tower up, and to the top of the spire?”

“That’s the way masons ’ud set about it,” said Jack Westcott contemptuously.

“And pray how ’ud sailors do it?”

“Swarm up,” said Jack.

“Get along! That wouldn’t do it.”

“Yes, it would, I bet a guinea. I might, but you——” The sailor shrugged his shoulders.

“For the matter of that,” observed the builder, after musing a while, “I don’t see but what it might be done, and done at no terrible cost. There’s a sort of a window on each side of the spire, and I suppose it would be possible to run out planks and make a sort of a platform and set up a ladder agin the steeple.”

“Would it not be dangerous?”

“Oh, of course there’s nothing in that way without danger. But if it has to be done, it can be done.”

“I warrant I’d get up without any of your arrangements,” said the mariner.

“I daresay you might,” responded the builder slowly; “but what good would that be? You’ve more to do than spike a Jacky Tar at the top; you’ve got to remove the spindle, and that must be roped and let down with caution. There’s a deal of things belonging to all things,” said Newbold sententiously, “and that’s what escapes the likes of you.”

“I bet I’d do it!” said the sailor.

“I bet so would I!” said the mason.

“But,” added the latter, “I ain’t going to risk my precious life and sacrifice time and labour for nothin’.”