The Seaboard Parish, Complete

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.

CHAPTER XIII. THE HARVEST

It was some time before we got the bells to work to our mind, but at last we succeeded. The worst of it was to get the cranks, which at first required strong pressure on the keys, to work easily enough. But neither Joe nor his cousin spared any pains to perfect the attempt, and, as I say, at length we succeeded. I took Wynnie down to the instrument and made her try whether she could not do something, and she succeeded in making the old tower discourse loudly and eloquently.

By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the morning of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers with the sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to the God of the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that part of the country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid plentifully on the benches. What with the calling of the bells, like voices in the highway, and the solemn meditation of the organ within to bear aloft the thoughts of those who heard, and came to the prayer and thanksgiving in common, and the message which God had given me to utter to them, I hoped that we should indeed keep holiday.

Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft, dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and cottage, calling aloud—for who could dissociate the words from the music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?—written none the less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with laughing at their quaintness—calling aloud,

“All people that on earth do dwell
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell—
Come ye before him and rejoice.”

Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the name of the Lord to serve him with mirth as in the old version, and not with the fear with which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had prepared—a proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history of the church while she was not only able to number singers amongst her clergy, but those singers were capable of influencing the whole heart and judgment of the nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ. The song I had prepared was this:

“We praise the Life of All;
From buried seeds so small
Who makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand;
Who stores the corn