by May Crommelin, author of "Queenie," "Dead Men's Dollars," etc.
As published in Strange Doings in Strange Places (Cassell & Company, Ltd.; 1890), originally published in Cassell's Saturday Journal.
I.
It was an old churchyard on a hill above the fishing village that nestled in the cove. In front was a view of the sea, framed by other hills that rose in steep cliffs, against which many a good ship had been broken up, as if a child's toy were taken and dashed in pieces against the side of a house. Down in the village of Blackcove there were cottages and gossiping wives on the thresholds, fishing boats drawn up on the beach, a snug inn parlour, where the men gathered together. There were laughter and drinking, quarrelling and friendly voices--all the little noise and stir of human life. Up here reigned only stillness, and the great peace of the wide sky overhead, and the lonely hillside behind. One little dwelling stood not far from the churchyard gate--a whitewashed cabin with so deep-thatched a brown roof that it seemed as if the frail old walls below could hardly support it any longer without crumbling away.
Abner Goodchild and his young wife, Jessie, had strolled into the churchyard when the toil of the day was over and the evening meal finished; he carried the year-old baby on his arm. The churchyard was different from those in most parts of England, because in this parish, and some adjoining ones, it was the custom to erect, not head-stones, but head-boards, to the graves. These were made of two posts and a cross piece, like the letter H long drawn out. Some of these were of drift-wood that had, maybe, grown and borne leafage in an English wood years ago, till after being hewn down and sailing the seas as part of a gallant ship, it had come ashore at last, and this was the end thereof. In one corner of the church-yard stood two very aged yew trees, of which the upper branches met; and beneath these, where the ground was always bare of grass, but dry and sheltered, and brown with fallen yew needles, was a grave board, with the inscription, "Martha Goodchild."
"Now, that is where I should like to be buried--beside mother," said Abner, pausing as he and Jessie sauntered by. "It's so solemn and still that she fancied the spot, and so do I. Look, there's just room for you and me, Jessie, on this side."
"Room for you, if you like, but not for me, thank you," returned his wife, tossing her head. "I'd rather be out where I could get a warming of sunlight at times, if even there was a sopping of rain at others. There would be more company, at least, and change. Goodness knows, I have loneliness enough in my life in that cottage there, without wanting more of it when I'm dead.
"Abner Goodchild sighed, and pressed the sleeping child's head softly against his breast. He was a kindly, soft-hearted young fellow, of whom his old dead mother used to say, with loving pride, that he was the best son in the world. But, somehow, he never could rightly feel himself a good enough husband for Jessie.
"Dear, I know what you are thinking of. I promised you before we married that when times got better we would leave the old home, though I was born in it, and my father before me, and—and the walls seem like a part of our lives," he said, humbly, with a choking sensation in his throat. "But you see, my girl, luck has been against me hard. Heaven is my witness, I would work my fingers to the bone for you and the little one. It has not been for want of trying--but luck has been against me hard!"
"Luck!" scoffed Jessie. "Yes. It was bad luck for me I took you instead of Harry Best down there. Everything goes right with him. Why don't you take and go to sea when you have the chance of a good berth, instead of hanging about the beach doing odd jobs for any one that kindly asks you? You lost your own boat, and your cow died, and what have we but the cottage that is falling about our ears, and a strip of garden ground?"
Abner looked in loving silence at the fair head of his comely wife, every curling tendril of whose hair he loved. Her greenish-grey eyes were staring away seawards, burning with angered bitterness, as he guessed.
It was in his mind to say, "We have each other, and our love; and we have the babe; and our health, and my strength to work for us all three"--but there! Jessie would have flouted him with scorn.
So in a shaking voice, despite his manhood, he asked, low, "Would you have me go to sea, then? It is a long trip, mind you, and I may not be home for two years, or, maybe, three, if I sail with Uncle Ben. It's a long time to be parted, my girl."
"What do three years matter if you get your money and send it me home? Many a sailor's wife has to put up with that. We can leave the cottage, and I'll take baby and stay with Aunt Susan down in the village. She is a hearty woman to be with, and likes company," returned Jessie, with eagerness. "Do now, Abner; think of it," and she laid her hand pleadingly on his arm.
"I have thought--many a night since first you began about it," returned Abner hoarsely, turning away his head. "And as you're so set upon it, Jess--well!--I'll go!"
There was a great seaport fifteen miles away, and there a ship was fitting out for cruising among the South Sea Islands. Uncle Ben, an old Blackcove crony, was to be her mate, and now, come home for a week, was spinning sea-yarns, and enticing the young village fishermen to ship with him this voyage. But for Jessie's sake and the child's, Abner would have gladly said "yes," at first. For much as he loved the hillside and his cottage, he loved the salt water at times even better, and a great longing would come over him to sail out beyond the horizon. He was a son of the sea by nature; but mother and wife and infant had moored his life to land by cables of love hitherto.
II.
Nearly seven years later a footsore, wayfaring man was trudging to Blackcove village along the high road. It was a cool, twilight evening, yet he wiped great sweat drops from his brow, for he had walked far and fast; and as he caught sight of the houses on the beach, and the old church on the hillside, an exultant light broke out in his face. He stood still; took off his hat; and a silent prayer of thanks shaped itself on his lips.
Presently he met a little eight-year-old girl getting over a stile with her school books. She was a pretty, demure child, with lint-white hair, and Abner's heart warmed to her, for she was from his own village that he had not seen for these several long years.
"Good-evening, my dear," he said, gently, in a joyous voice. "Can you tell me where Mrs. Goodchild lives, and how she is?"
"I don't know any Mrs. Goodchild. There is no one of that name in our village," said the little maiden, pursing up her lips demurely.
Abner's heart stood still; his veins ran cold for a minute. Then he forced himself to ask slowly, in a voice strange to himself--
"Come, are you sure, my dear? She lived with her aunt, Mrs. Truman--last--that kept the corner shop."
"Yes, I know. You mean my mother, but she's not Mrs. Goodchild any more. She married Mr. Henry Best last year, and a good thing too," the little girl replied, tossing her head as if imitating some one. It struck her with surprise, next minute, to see that the seemingly middle-aged, strong man with the grizzled head and iron-grey beard, who had accosted her so cheerily, was leaning now against the stile as her step-father might do when a little over-come with liquor. His face looked grey and ill, she thought, and he was breathing very heavily.
In pure curiosity the little girl waited, till at last Abner turned, and laying two trembling hands on her head, kissed her face--whereat she pouted.
"So you are Patty; little Patty. My mother had the same name. Child, have you ever heard of your poor father? Tell me."
"Yes. He was a bad one," innocently answered Patty, shaking her curly head. "Mother says so. She had no comfort at all with him; but now she's got a most 'spectable husband."
Abner groaned.
"Will you show me the way to your home, dear? I used to know your mother."
Across two fields was the short cut to Henry Best's cottage, that stood not far from the beach, and at the end of the village street. It was a larger dwelling than most of its neighbours, and there were signs of ease and comfort in its kitchen, where a buxom woman was busied over the fire. She looked round with surprise as her little daughter came in, followed by the strange man whose form blocked the doorway, where he stood still. Then she straightened herself, still looking; and man and woman gazed in silence in each other's eyes. Did she know him? Did she not know him? Not a muscle of Jessie's face moved; not an eyelash flickered. Abner could not guess, for his own heart was beating violently with great, strong thumps, and there was a mist before his eyes, while a cold sweat had broken out on his face.
Then, as in a dream, he heard his wife's voice saying, calmly—
"You are a stranger, I think. Will you take a seat? Patty, child, just go round to Aunt Susan and ask her to oblige me with two halfpenny bloaters for supper."
The little girl trotted obediently away. When she was gone, Abner began, huskily, "Will you give me a light for my pipe, missis? I've come a long way--" But at that he could withhold himself no longer, and cried out, with a great and exceeding bitter cry—
"Jessie! don't you know me?"
"Know you! It is time I should forget you," was the woman's answer, given with such cold, merciless anger, as she stood with her arms akimbo, that Abner could not believe his ears.
Then she wheeled round to the fire again, and opening the oven door with a bang turned some bread.
"What do you want here? You deserted me all these years, and no thanks to you that I was not in the workhouse. You come back like a beggar--a tramp--after spending the pay you should have sent your lawful wife, I'll be bound, like the lazy, mean fellow you always were."
"Don't, Jessie: don't!" pleaded Abner, putting up his hand as if her words hit him like stones. "The ship was lost at sea, and I was the only one left alive. After nine days I was picked up on a raft, but what with the sun, or thirst, I was gone clean out of my senses. Heaven knows it's the truth! Look, my hair turned grey then, Jessie. They put me in an asylum in America, where I've been, they told me afterwards, nigh four years. Oh, Jessie, Jessie, try and believe me!
"At last a new doctor came, who took me to the seaside. There the wind seemed to blow my head. clear, and the sight of the ships and the salt water put me on the right track again, and I could tell them by degrees where I came from, and how I had a wife and child in the old country my heart was just bursting to see. Oh, Jessie, Jessie, I've loved you so! I've always been true to you. Have you not one kind word for me?"
But Jessie was silent. She had left off poking the fire, and stood outwardly sullen; yet her heart was a little touched by the pleading agony in Abner's eyes. Seeing she would not speak, his face hardened, and he said, in a sort of defiant whisper—
"You did not wait till seven years were out, so you are my lawful wife still. Henry Best has no right to you. Beggar as I am, I can force you to come back to me and live with me."
At that Jessie's knees quaked; she turned deadly white, and grasped the kitchen table for support.
"You would never have the heart to do it, Abner; you were always too good and kind for that," she gasped, in a voice as low as his own. "Oh, have mercy on me! It was six years since you sailed, and--and Henry Best was good to me, and I was sick of sewing and sewing to keep myself and Patty; and it was like heaven to have a comfortable house and all easy--so different from the old, hard times."
She paused, struggling for breath; then, in a burst of pleading terror, she laid her hands on his arm, and pushed him towards the other side of the fire-place. In the corner behind the big settle was a cradle, and a baby in it, lying sleeping, like a warm, living rosebud.
"Look; you see that!" breathed the woman. Would you have the heart to tear me away from my comfortable home and my baby, that would be crying for me, to starve with you. You have not a penny in your pockets, so we might go to the workhouse together, or be highway tramps. Oh! Abner, Abner, don't! I would rather die."
Abner stood with his face working; he was stirred very greatly by her appeal.
"What would you have me do, then?" he asked, turning away his eyes from the sleeping infant and staring hard out of the window.
"Do? Go away," panted Jessie. "Who would know you ever came here? You are so changed that even I hardly knew you; and if you go back straight to Coalport none of the neighbours need even see you. Dear Abner, you used to be so kind, and always said you could not find it in your heart to refuse me anything."
She clutched his arm hard, looking beseechingly in the man's stern face. Then changing her tactics suddenly, Jessie moved to the fireplace and uncovered a small brown teapot. And if you want money, there's some here--my own savings. I meant to keep it for a new jacket next winter; but there--take it all."
"Don't--there, don't!" muttered poor Abner, putting aside the quaking hand that held out some silver pieces to him, with a rising sickness of his heart that made him feel he must get away from his wife's presence and be alone. "As if I would take your money, my poor girl!"
Then, with a mighty groan, drawing his hand across his eyes, "Listen! Once before you asked me to go away, and I did your bidding. This is the second time; and it's all I can ever do to please you, Jessie--I'm going!"
"There is Henry coming up from the boats. Oh, Heaven bless you, Abner! go quickly," cried Jessie, flinging open the back door." This way--across the fields—and he'll not see you."
"Best not. For if ever we meet it will be the death of one of us," Abner ground out between his teeth.
But somehow he found himself outside in the fresh evening air even as a burly, black-haired fisherman, ruddy faced and rollicking of aspect, came into the cottage, calling so boisterously for his supper that he seemed to have been drinking a little too much at the little inn down the village street. Abner got away, he knew not how, staggering somewhat in his walk, till he found himself in a wood, towards which he had gone blindly without conscious volition. There he fell, face downwards, among rough grasses and brushwood. The sunset sky paled from crimson to grey; the silvery dew fell upon the man's prone form as on the leaves and herbage; the stars came out in the night sky overhead. After three hours or more Abner rose up slowly, and looked round him in the darkness with aching eyes. He saw the dark hillside above Sandycove, and a glitter of moonlight on the windows of the church. What would he not have given to go up there and touch his mother's grave in the darkness with his hands, as if to seek comfort from her, and see his own cottage--nay, his no more, and mayhap it had now crumbled to ruin? And his failing strength he knew would not suffice for the two miles from hence to the church, besides afterwards taking him to Coalport. For he must be there by morning light, and then away, away to sea. Who cared whither? None on earth--not even himself. Oh, to end it all! Just to lie on here and die and pass out of this misery called life.
But he had promised Jessie he would go. So through the weary hours of that night till dawn broke, the footsore man crawled back, leaving his native village behind; friendless and famished for a crust, homeless--hopeless. "If only I do not go mad again," he said to himself. It was his only emotion--this fear; perhaps it was good for him to feel even it.
III.
An awful autumn night. Such a night of terrible storm as few even of the oldest Sandycove villagers could remember. Down at the village inn a knot of women were wringing their hands and praying and weeping, for their men were out at sea.
Jessie was one of these. Many of the neighbours had joined them, and were crowded in the kitchen. and parlour; for listening to the rain-laden, terrific blast the men could not sleep, but had risen from bed and come in their sea-going garments, staggering against the wind, dropping in one by one, to shake their heads and ask each other what they thought of it. Then, once gathered together, some could not endure to remain indoors, but slipped out again under the lee of a wall. There they stayed, listening to the sullen boom of the sea and the great lash of the waves, which also, at regular intervals rushing into the sea-caves under the cliffs, made, as it were, the report of a cannon; and around and above all was the howling of the gale past their ears and overhead.
Dark though it was, they could see clearly the great white breakers rolling in on the little beach, and at times, when a faint moon shone through the wild cloud wrack, a vessel, and again another and another, gliding past, out in the offing, like grey ghosts.
At last, as dawn approached, the watchers cried out that there was a barque in danger under the cliffs. She was labouring heavily, and sending up signals of distress; but of what avail? Ah! She was on the Shark's Teeth--cruel rocks that hardly showed above the waves, but that gripped her fast as with clenched jaws. "Heaven help them, poor souls!" sighed the women, watching, and then moaned afresh in their souls, but durst not speak, as the men hurried to bring out the lifeboat.
Twice she tried gallantly to breast the waves as they put out; twice she was driven back, her crew soaked, beaten by the elements, themselves well-nigh lost.
"Give it up! give up trying!" cried out the women now; and even the bravest of the men owned it was in vain. They could do no more. Up the cliffs, overhanging the sea on that side where the doomed vessel had struck, was a wood; and here, with growing light, almost all the Sandycove people hurried, battling against the storm. For it is an awful sight to see a ship go down, with living men on board, under the heaving, pitiless wild waters, when none can help; but at least it seems like a duty to watch one's fellow-beings to the end.
Out here in the open air the full horror of that fearful night was felt in its intensity. Great boughs now and again snapped off like matches as the trees groaned and swayed. It was dangerous to stay higher up in the wood, so the people huddled down nearer the beach, where were sheltering rocks and fewer trees.
And what of those on board the doomed Ocean Beauty?--for so the barque was called. They were staring death in the face; the ship was breaking up; by daylight, most likely, not a plank would be left of her. All were stricken with helplessness and horror excepting one grizzled sailor. He had nothing to live for; nought to fear; so he was calm. This man had with difficulty got hold of an empty oil-can, corked it tightly, then, lashing a rope to it, threw it over-board.
Hardly a vacant eye had watched him hitherto, but now the apathy of the faces huddled near lightened with a gleam of interest, of hope. The men, clinging for shelter as best they might, watched the can bobbing on the twilight waters, and prayed, as they had seldom or ever prayed before, that it might be washed ashore by the tide."
"And see--see! the little crowd on the beach yonder descry it too. They are pointing, signalling.
"Hooray! hooray!"--the cheer from those on shore sends new life into the hearts of the shipwrecked crew, and an answering hoarse shout goes up feebly from their throats, for the rope has been caught! They may be saved yet!
"Who goes ashore first?"
"You, Abner Goodchild," sang out the captain of the vessel. It was your deed if any of us see our wives again. Go, man, and luck be with you."
But Abner Goodchild, the second mate, whose eyes had been lately fixed as in sorrowful recognition on the shore and wooded cliff, and the hillside with the church now revealed by the dawning light, shook his head.
"Not me, sir. I have no wife, or any to miss me. I stay till last," he simply said.
He was not asked twice. There was not a second to lose. First one of the crew, then another and another, let himself down into the boiling waters, and, by the help of Abner's rope, each man was able to swim ashore, battling through the great breakers. Cheers came from the shore where the rescuers were standing in a line breast high in the white, seething surf to drag in the exhausted swimmers.
But Abner, the mate, did not heed. He was lying in the most sheltered spot he could find, with a loose plank before him, on which he seemed quietly cutting some letters with his clasp knife. None of the ship's crew noticed him; if they had they would only have said to each other, "He is mad;" for the mate was thought queer in his head at times.
But a man who had been clinging, at a little distance, to some cordage, crept towards him at the risk of his life, being twice almost washed overboard by the great waves that broke blindingly on the ship's side.
Then Abner, raising his eyes, saw he was a fisher-man whom alone of his crew they had rescued from a fishing smack on the previous night, before it foundered, and whose face he had not hitherto noticed. But he knew him now.
"Mate," entreated the fisherman, "for pity's sake, speak for me to have a chance on that rope; for I've a wife and three babes on shore there watching for me. You've a name from our parts. I knew a man that bore it who is dead and gone. Why! Merciful powers! it's himself!"
For, looking closely into the mate's face, weather-worn though it was and altered, he recognised his school chum of boyhood's years.
"Yes, Henry Best, it is!" replied Abner.
Then he turned and went on cutting with his knife. Another great wave struck the barque, and she quivered all through with a rending noise as if her ribs were breaking, and she herself crying out like a live thing.
"Poor Jessie!" uttered the fisherman, looking shorewards.
At that Abner Goodchild spoke.
"Henry, I will help you," he almost whispered; "but if I do, I shall be a dead man, for we must not both get ashore alive. So swear to me to do two things if I give you my turn. One is that you will marry Jessie again in church; and the second that, as sure as the sun is in the sky, you will be a good father to my child, Patty."
"I swear," said Henry Best, like a desperate man.
And again came that terrible crashing noise, with sounds as of sawing, grinding, and cracking all through the barque. So Abner spoke up to the captain who stood by the rope to keep authority to the last.
"Let this man go instead of me, sir."
For they three were left last alive on deck.
Then he went and lay down again beside his plank and went on cutting, but Henry Best slipped safely overboard.
"You next," roared the captain, above the howling of the storm.
"I have not done my work yet," was all Goodchild answered.
And as he did not seem to hear the captain's expostulations and entreaties, the latter thought him mad, so left him there. And Abner took a rope and lashed himself to his plank. Then came a noise in his ears like the crack of doom, and a rush of green water surging and blinding all around. When it was past there was no ship left in the Shark's Teeth; only some floating spars on the waves to be seen. The Ocean Beauty was gone!
* * * * *
That evening, at sunset, a little crowd of villagers were gathered on the beach around the body of a drowned sailor. He had been washed ashore, tied to a plank on which were the letters, freshly cut, "A. Goodchild."
Before dying, Abner had carved his own head-board!
So they took him up, wondering; and laid him next day beside his old mother under the yew-trees in the churchyard upon the hillside; and they put his plank above him, like the other wooden grave-posts around.
And when the funeral was over, the two chief mourners went back into church, where all the people followed, grave, yet whispering, to hear the clergyman read the marriage service for the second time over Henry Best and Jessie, heretofore called his wife.