The Seaboard Parish, Complete

“Let me at least share in its overflow,” he rejoined, and nothing more passed on the subject.

For the next ten minutes we stood in absolute silence. We had set Connie down on the grass again, but propped up so that she could see through the doorway. And she lay in still ecstasy. But there was more to be seen ere we descended. There was the rest of the little islet with its crop of down-grass, on which the horses of all the knights of King Arthur’s round table might have fed for a week—yes, for a fortnight, without, by any means, encountering the short commons of war. There were the ruins of the castle so built of plates of the laminated stone of the rocks on which they stood, and so woven in or more properly incorporated with the outstanding rocks themselves, that in some parts I found it impossible to tell which was building and which was rock—the walls themselves seeming like a growth out of the island itself, so perfectly were they in harmony with, and in kind the same as, the natural ground upon which and of which they had been constructed. And this would seem to me to be the perfection of architecture. The work of man’s hands should be so in harmony with the place where it stands that it must look as if it had grown out of the soil. But the walls were in some parts so thin that one wondered how they could have stood so long. They must have been built before the time of any formidable artillery—enough only for defence from arrows. But then the island was nowhere commanded, and its own steep cliffs would be more easily defended than any erections upon it. Clearly the intention was that no enemy should thereon find rest for the sole of his foot; for if he was able to land, farewell to the notion of any further defence. Then there was outside the walls the little chapel—such a tiny chapel! of which little more than the foundation remained, with the ruins of the altar still standing, and outside the chancel, nestling by its wall, a coffin hollowed in the rock; then the churchyard a little way off full of graves, which, I presume, would have vanished long ago were it not that the very graves were founded on the rock. There still stood old worn-out headstones of thin slate, but no memorials were left. Then there was the fragment of arched passage underground laid open to the air in the centre of the islet; and last, and grandest of all, the awful edges of the rock, broken by time, and carved by the winds and the waters into grotesque shapes and threatening forms. Over all the surface of the islet we carried Connie, and from three sides of this sea-fortress she looked abroad over “the Atlantic’s level powers.” It blew a gentle ethereal breeze on the top; but had there been such a wind as I have since stood against on that fearful citadel of nature, I should have been in terror lest we should all be blown, into the deep. Over the edge she peeped at the strange fantastic needle-rock, and round the corner she peeped to see Wynnie and her mother seated in what they call Arthur’s chair—a canopied hollow wrought in the plated rock by the mightiest of all solvents—air and water; till at length it was time that we should take our leave of the few sheep that fed over the place, and issuing by the gothic door, wind away down the dangerous path to the safe ground below.

“I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?” I said.

“Why?” she asked, in wonderment. “There’s nothing higher yet, is there?”

“No, my love. If there were, you would hardly be able for it to-day, I should think. It is only to keep you from being frightened at the precipice as you go down.”

“But I sha’n’t be frightened, papa.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you are going to carry me.”

“But what if I should slip? I might, you know.”

“I don’t mind. I sha’n’t mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you do it. I sha’n’t be to blame, and I’m sure you won’t, papa.” Then she drew my head down and whispered in my ear, “If I get as much more by being killed, as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I’m sure it will be well worth it.”

I tried to smile a reply, for I could not speak one. We took her just as she was, and with some tremor on my part, but not a single slip, we bore her down the winding path, her face showing all the time that, instead of being afraid, she was in a state of ecstatic delight. My wife, I could see, was nervous, however; and she breathed a sigh of relief when we were once more at the foot.

“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” she said.

“So am I,” I returned, as we set down the litter.

“Poor papa! I’ve pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale’s too!”

Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then turning towards her, he said, “Look here, Miss Connie;” and flung it far out from the isthmus on which we were resting. We heard it strike on a rock below, and then fall in a shower of fragments. “My arms are all right, you see,” he said.

Meantime, Wynnie had scrambled down to the shore, where we had not yet been. In a few minutes, we still lingering, she came running back to us out of breath with the news:

“Papa! Mr. Percivale! there’s such a grand cave down there! It goes right through under the island.”

Connie looked so eager, that Percivale and I glanced at each other, and without a word, lifted her, and followed Wynnie. It was a little way that we had to carry her down, but it was very broken, and insomuch more difficult than the other. At length we stood in the cavern. What a contrast to the vision overhead!—nothing to be seen but the cool, dark vault of the cave, long and winding, with the fresh seaweed lying on its pebbly floor, and its walls wet with the last tide, for every tide rolled through in rising and falling—the waters on the opposite sides of the islet greeting through this cave; the blue shimmer of the rising sea, and the forms of huge outlying rocks, looking in at the further end, where the roof rose like a grand cathedral arch; and the green gleam of veins rich with copper, dashing and streaking the darkness in gloomy little chapels, where the floor of heaped-up pebbles rose and rose within till it met the descending roof. It was like a going-down from Paradise into the grave—but a cool, friendly, brown-lighted grave, which even in its darkest recesses bore some witness to the wind of God outside, in the occasional ripple of shadowed light, from the play of the sun on the waves, that, fleeted and reflected, wandered across its jagged roof. But we dared not keep Connie long in the damp coolness; and I have given my reader quite enough of description for one hour’s reading. He can scarcely be equal to more.

My invalids had now beheld the sea in such a different aspect, that I no longer feared to go back to Kilkhaven. Thither we went three days after, and at my invitation, Percivale took Turner’s place in the carriage.

CHAPTER XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE

How bright the yellow shores of Kilkhaven looked after the dark sands of Tintagel! But how low and tame its highest cliffs after the mighty rampart of rocks which there face the sea like a cordon of fierce guardians! It was pleasant to settle down again in what had begun to look like home, and was indeed made such by the boisterous welcome of Dora and the boys. Connie’s baby crowed aloud, and stretched forth her chubby arms at sight of her. The wind blew gently around us, full both of the freshness of the clean waters and the scents of the down-grasses, to welcome us back. And the dread vision of the shore had now receded so far into the past, that it was no longer able to hurt.

We had called at the blacksmith’s house on our way home, and found that he was so far better as to be working at his forge again. His mother said he was used to such attacks, and soon got over them. I, however, feared that they indicated an approaching break-down.

“Indeed, sir,” she said, “Joe might be well enough if he liked. It’s all his own fault.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I cannot believe that your son is in any way guilty of his own illness.”

“He’s a well-behaved lad, my Joe,” she answered; “but he hasn’t learned what I had to learn long ago.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other.”

She was a woman with a long upper lip and a judicial face, and as she spoke, her lip grew longer and longer; and when she closed her mouth in mark of her own resolution, that lip seemed to occupy two-thirds of all her face under the nose.

“And what is it he won’t do?”

“I don’t mind whether he does it or not, if he would only make—up—his—mind—and—stick—to—it.”

“What is it you want him to do, then?”

“I don’t want him to do it, I’m sure. It’s no good to me—and wouldn’t be much to him, that I’ll be bound. Howsomever, he must please himself.”

I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was no more sunshine for him at home than his mother’s face indicated. Few things can make a man so strong and able for his work as a sun indoors, whose rays are smiles, ever ready to shine upon him when he opens the door,—the face of wife or mother or sister. Now his mother’s face certainly was not sunny. No doubt it must have shone upon him when he was a baby. God has made that provision for babies, who need sunshine so much that a mother’s face cannot help being sunny to them: why should the sunshine depart as the child grows older?

“Well, I suppose I must not ask. But I fear your son is very far from well. Such attacks do not often occur without serious mischief somewhere. And if there is anything troubling him, he is less likely to get over it.”

“If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to it—”

“O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind.”

“That’s just what he won’t do.”

All the time she looked naughty, only after a self-righteous fashion. It was evident that whatever was the cause of it, she was not in sympathy with her son, and therefore could not help him out of any difficulty he might be in. I made no further attempt to learn from her the cause of her son’s discomfort, clearly a deeper cause than his illness. In passing his workshop, we stopped for a moment, and I made an arrangement to meet him at the church the next day.

I was there before him, and found that he had done a good deal since we left. Little remained except to get the keys put to rights, and the rods attached to the cranks in the box. To-day he was to bring a carpenter, a cousin of his own, with him.

They soon arrived, and a small consultation followed. The cousin was a bright-eyed, cheruby-cheeked little man, with a ready smile and white teeth: I thought he might help me to understand what was amiss in Joseph’s affairs. But I would not make the attempt except openly. I therefore said half in a jocular fashion, as with gloomy, self-withdrawn countenance the smith was fitting one loop into another in two of his iron rods,—

“I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more cheerful. You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine.”

The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.

“Well, sir, if you’ll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the rest of us. He’s a religious man, is Joe.”

“But I don’t see how that should make him miserable. It hasn’t made me miserable. I hope I’m a religious man myself. It makes me happy every day of my life.”

“Ah, well,” returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked away gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it, “I don’t say it’s the religion, for I don’t know; but perhaps it’s the way he takes it up. He don’t look after hisself enough; he’s always thinking about other people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that if you don’t look after yourself, why, who is to look after you? That’s common sense, I think.”

It was a curious contrast—the merry friendly face, which shone good-fellowship to all mankind, accusing the sombre, pale, sad, severe, even somewhat bitter countenance beside him, of thinking too much about other people, and too little about himself. Of course it might be correct in a way. There is all the difference between a comfortable, healthy inclination, and a pained, conscientious principle. It was a smile very unlike his cousin’s with which Joe heard his remarks on himself.

“But,” I said, “you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take Joe’s way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of yourself.”

“I don’t see why, sir.”

“Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else.”

“Not so well, I doubt, sir.”