The Coxswain's Bride; also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue

“And come early, Butts,” said Tom Westlake, buttoning up his coat.

“You may depend on me, sir.”

“Stand by to shut the door quickly after us,” added Tom as he grasped the handle, “else the wind will get in and blow the fire about.”

The brother and sister, being young and active, were pretty smart in making their exit, and David Butts, being used to doors, was not slow to shut his own, but they could not altogether baffle the colonel, for he was waiting outside. Indeed, he had been whistling with furious insolence through the keyhole all the time of the visit. Sliding in edgewise, at the moment of opening, he managed to scatter the ashes again, and whirl about some of the light articles before he was fairly expelled.

Thereafter, along with his father and brother, he went riotously after Tom and Matilda Westlake, sometimes shrieking over their heads; now and then dashing on in front, and, whirling round in an eddy, plunging straight back into their faces, but they could make nothing of it. The brother and sister merely laughed at them, and defied them to do their worst, even, in the joy of their hearts, going the length of saying to several utter but beaming strangers, that it was “splendid Christmas weather.” And so it was,—to the young and strong. Not so, alas! to the old and feeble.

It almost seemed as if Colonel Wind and Major Snow had taken offence at this last sally, for about that time of the day they forsook their father and left London—probably to visit the country. At all events, the clouds cleared away, the sky became blue, and the sun shone out gloriously—though without perceptibly diminishing the frost.

After spending another hour or two in paying visits, during which they passed abruptly, more than once from poverty-stricken scenes of moderate mirth to abodes of sickness and desolation, Tom and Matilda, by means of ’bus and cab, at last found themselves in the neighbourhood of the Serpentine.

“What say you to a turn on the ice, Matty?”

“Charming,” cried Matty.

Society on the Serpentine, when frozen over, is not very select, but the brother and sister were not particular on that point just then. They hired skates; they skimmed about over the well-swept surface; they tripped over innumerable bits of stick or stone or orange-peel; they ran into, or were run into by, various beings whose wrong-headedness induced a preference for skating backwards. In short, they conducted themselves as people usually do on skates, and returned home pretty well exhausted and blooming.

That evening, after a family dinner, at which a number of young cousins and other relatives were present, Tom and his sister left the festive circle round the fire, and retired to a glass conservatory opening out of the drawing-room. There was a sofa in it and there they found Ned Westlake extended at full length. He rose at once and made room for them.

“Well, Ned, how have you enjoyed yourself to-day?” asked Tom.

“Oh, splendidly! There was such a jolly party in Wharton’s grounds—most of them able to skate splendidly. The pond is so sheltered that the wind scarcely affected us, and a staff of sweepers cleared away the snow as fast as it fell. Afterwards, when it cleared up and the sun shone through the trees, it was absolutely magnificent. It’s the jolliest day I’ve had on the ice for years, though I’m almost knocked up by it. Jovially fatigued, in fact. But where have you been?”

“We also have been skating,” said Matilda.

“Indeed! I thought you had intended to spend the day somewhere in the east-end attending some of those free breakfasts, and visiting the poor, or something of that sort—as if there were not enough of city missionaries, and sisters of mercy, or charity, or whatever you call them, to look after such things.”

“You are right, Ned,” said Tom, “such was our intention, and we carried it out too. It was only at the end of the day that we took to skating on the Serpentine, and, considering the number of people we have run into, or overturned, or tumbled over, we found a couple of hours of it quite sufficient.”

From this point Tom Westlake “harked back” and related his experiences of the day. He possessed considerable power of graphic delineation, and gradually aroused the interest of his gay and volatile but kindly-disposed brother.

“Ned,” said he, at last, “do you really believe in the truth of these words, ‘Blessed are they that consider the poor?’”

“Yes, Tom, I do,” replied Ned, becoming suddenly serious.

What Tom said to his brother after that we will not relate, but the result was that, before that Christmas evening closed, he succeeded in convincing Ned that a day of “jolly good fun” may be rendered inexpressibly more “jolly,” by being commenced with an effort to cheer and lighten the lot of those into whose sad lives there enter but a small amount of jollity and far too little fun.

Story 3 – Chapter 1.

A Double Rescue—Introduction

It is a curious and interesting fact that Christmas-tide seemed to have a peculiar influence on the prospects of our hero Jack Matterby all through his life. All the chief events of his career, somehow, happened on or about Christmas Day.

Jack was born, to begin with, on a Christmas morning. His father, who was a farmer in the middle ranks of life, rejoiced in the fact, esteeming it full of promise for the future. So did his mother. Jack himself did not at first seem to have any particular feeling on the subject. If one might judge his opinions by his conduct, it seemed that he was rather displeased than otherwise at having been born; for he spent all the first part of his natal day in squalling and making faces, as though he did not like the world at all, and would rather not have come into it.

“John, dear,” said his mother to his father, one day not long after his birth, “I’m so glad he is a boy. He might have been a girl, you know.”

“No, Molly; he could never have been a girl!” replied the husband, as he gently patted his wife’s shoulder.

“Now, don’t laugh at me, John, dear. You know what I mean. But what shall we call him?”

“John, of course,” replied the farmer, with decision. “My father was called John, and his father was called John, and also his grandfather, and so on back, I have no doubt, to the very beginning of time.”

“Nay, John,” returned his wife, simply, “that could hardly be; for however many of your ancestors may have been Johns, the first, you know, was Adam.”

“Why, Molly, you’re getting to be quite sharp,” returned the farmer. “Nevertheless this little man is to be John, like the rest of us.”

Mrs Matterby, being meek, gave in; but she did so with a sigh, for she wished the little one to be named Joseph, after her own deceased father.

Thus it came to pass that the child was named John. The name was expanded to Johnny during the first period of childhood. Afterwards it was contracted to Jack, and did not attain to the simple grandeur of John till the owner of it became a man.

In the Johnny period of life our hero confined his attention almost exclusively to smashing and overturning. To overturn and to destroy were his chief amusements. He made war on crockery to such an extent that tea-cups and saucers were usually scarce in the family. He assaulted looking-glasses so constantly, that there was, ere long, barely enough of mirror left for his father to shave in. As to which fact the farmer used to say, “Never mind, Molly. Don’t look so down-hearted, lass. If he only leaves a bit enough to see a corner of my chin and the half of my razor, that will do well enough.” No window in the family mansion was thoroughly whole, and the appearance of a fat little fist on the wrong side of a pane of glass was quite a familiar object in the nursery.

As for toys—Johnny had none, so to speak. He had only a large basket full of bits, the misapplication of which to each other gave him many hours of profound recreation. Everything that would turn inside out was so turned. Whatever was by nature straight he bent, whatever bent he straightened. Round things he made square when possible, and square things round; soft things hard, and hard things soft. In short, nothing was too hard for Johnny. Everything that came into his clutches was subjected to what we may style the influence of experimental philosophy; and if Farmer Matterby had been a poor man he must soon have been ruined, but, being what is styled “well-to-do,” he only said, in reference to these things—

“Go ahead, my boy. Make hay while the sun shines. If you carry on as you’ve begun, you’ll make your mark somewhere in this world.”

“Alas!” remarked poor Mrs Matterby, “he has made his mark already everywhere, and that a little too freely!”

Nevertheless she was proud of her boy, and sought to subdue his spirit by teaching him lessons of self-denial and love out of the Word of God. Johnny listened intently to these lessons, gazing with large wondering eyes, though he understood little of the teaching at first. It was not all lost on him, however; and he thoroughly understood and reciprocated the deep love that beamed in his mother’s eyes.

Soon after Johnny had slid into the Jack period of life he became acquainted with a fisher-boy of his own age, whose parents dwelt in a cottage on the sea-shore, not a quarter of a mile from his own home, and close to the village of Blackby.

Natty Grove was as fine a little fellow as one could wish to see: fair, curly-headed, blue-eyed, rough-jacketed, and almost swallowed up in a pair of his father’s sea-boots which had been cut down in the legs to fit him. As to the feet!—well, as his father Ned Grove remarked, there was plenty of room for growth. Natty had no mother, but he had a little sister about three years of age, and a grandmother, who might have been about thirty times three. No one could tell her age for certain; but she was so old and wrinkled and dried up and withered and small, that she might certainly have claimed to be “the oldest inhabitant.” She had been bed-ridden for many years because of what her son called rum-matticks and her grandson styled rum-ticks.

The name of Natty’s little sister was Nellie; that of his grandmother, Nell—old Nell, as people affectionately called her.

Now it may perhaps surprise the reader to be told that Jack Matterby, at the age of nine years, was deeply in love. He had, indeed, been in that condition, more or less from the age of three, but the passion became more decided at nine. He was in love with Nell—not blue-eyed little Nellie, but with wrinkled old Nell; for that antiquated creature was brimming over with love to mankind, specially to children. On our hero she poured out such wealth of affection that he was powerfully attracted to her even in the period of Johnny-hood, and, as we have said, she captured him entirely when he reached Jack-hood.

Old Nell was a splendid story-teller. That was one of the baits with which she was fond of hooking young people. It was interesting to sit in the fisherman’s poor cottage and watch the little ones sitting open-mouthed and eyed gazing at the withered little face, in which loving-kindness, mingling with fun, beamed from the old eyes, played among the wrinkles, smiled on the lips, and asserted itself in the gentle tones.

“Jack,” said Mrs Matterby, on the Christmas morning which ushered in her boy’s ninth birthday, “come, I’m going to give you a treat to-day.”

“You always do, mammy, on my birthdays,” said Jack.

“I want you to go with a message to a poor woman,” continued the mother.

“Is that all?” exclaimed Jack, with a disappointed look.

“Yes, that’s all—or nearly all,” replied his mother, with a twinkle in her eye, however, which kept her son from open rebellion. “I want you to carry this basket of good things, with my best love and Christmas good-wishes, to old Nell Grove.”

“Oho!” exclaimed Jack, brightening up at once, “I’m your man; here, give me the basket. But, mother,” he added with a sudden look of perplexity, “you called old Nell a poor woman, and I’ve heard her sometimes say that she has everything that she needs and more than she deserves! She can’t be poor if that’s true, and it must be true; for you know that old Nell never, never tells lies.”

“True, Jack; old Nell is not poor in one sense: she is rich in faith. She has got ‘contentment with godliness,’ and many rich people have not got that. Nevertheless she has none too much of the necessaries of this life, and none at all of the luxuries, so that she is what people usually call poor.”

“That’s a puzzler, mammy—poor and rich both!”