Hesba Stretton

“ But as she lay awake at night, thinking of Ishmael, who was sleeping soundly in his old shelter, the cave in the limestone rock, she wondered what would become of him if she could not prevail upon him to leave her for ever, whilst she was still living. There would be no one who loved her to close her dying eyes, and hold her dying hand, and whisper last words of love into her dying ear, if Ishmael were gone. But, oh, how gladly would she rather die in utter loneliness if she knew that he was safe, and would have a new start in life! ”

“ But when the summer was ended, and after the damp warm fogs of November were over, and a keen, black frost set in sharply before Christmas—a frost which had none of the beauty of white lime and clear blue skies, but which hung over the city like a pall, and penetrated to every fireside with an icy breath; when only the strong and the healthy, who were well clothed and well fed, could meet it bravely, while the delicate, and sickly, and poverty-stricken, shrank before it, and were chilled through and through, then Dolly drooped and failed altogether. ”

“ The cliffs, Sark Cliffs, which have not their equal in the world, stretched below us, with every hue of gold and bronze, and hoary white, and soft gray; and here and there a black rock, with livid shades of purple, and a bloom upon it like a raven's wing. Rocky islets, never trodden by human foot, over which the foam poured ceaselessly, were dotted all about the changeful surface of the water. And just beneath the level of my eyes was Olivia's face—the loveliest thing there, though there was so much beauty lying around us. ”

“ There is nothing more before me; all is gray and flat and cold, a desolate monotony of years, till death comes."
"You make me unhappy," said Phebe. "Ought we not to love God first, and man for God's sake? There is no passion in that; but there is inexhaustible faithfulness and tenderness."
"How far away from me you are!" answered Felicita with a faint smile.
She turned her sad face again towards the sea, and sat silent, watching the flitting sails pass by, but holding Phebe's hand fast in her own, as if she craved her companionship. ”

“ But all words failed David Chantrey. "Father!" he cried, "Father!" There was nothing more that he could say. It was the single, despairing call of a soul that was full of trouble; that was "laid in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps." But the bewildered brain of the dying man caught the cry, and he muttered it over to himself; "Father! father! where is he?"
"It's God, our Father who art in heaven," said Ann Holland, uttering the words very slowly and distinctly in his ear; "try to think of Him, and pray to Him. He'll hear you, even now." ”

“ Philip, who did not know the harm he did?" urged Rachel.
"If he married her," he said hesitatingly.
"Oh, he married her," replied Rachel.
Andrew's white head sank into his hands, and the tears trickled slowly down his face. Sophy had been married. For the sting of his sorrow had been the dread that his child had lost her innocence. The tears he shed were tears of gladness and thankfulness. True, she was dead; but he, too, would soon die, and he would meet her with no shame upon her head. He was not afraid of dying now, for the secret he dreaded had been revealed to him. ”

“ There was always a low, solemn murmur of the invisible sea, singing like a lullaby about the peaceful dwelling, and hushing it into a more profound quiet than even utter silence; for utter silence is irksome and fretting to the ear, which needs some slight reverberation to keep the brain behind it still. A perfume of violets, and the more dainty scent of primroses, pervaded the garden. It seemed incredible that any man should be allowed to live in such a spot; but then Captain Carey was almost as gentle and fastidious as a woman.
Johanna was not unlike her home. ”

“ There was a breath of serenity and peace in this early hour which soothed Phebe's fevered brain, as she slowly sauntered on with the purpose of finding the cemetery, where the granite cross stood over the grave that had occupied so much of her thoughts since she had heard of Roland Sefton's death. She reached it at last and stood motionless before it, looking back through all the years in which she had mourned with Roland's mother his untimely death. He whom she had mourned for was not lying here; but did not his life hold deeper cause for grief than his death ever had? ”

“ Sometimes of an evening, before I've lit the gas, I've a sort of a feeling as if I could almost see the Lord Jesus, and hear him talking to me. He looks to me something like our eldest brother, him that died when we were little. Charlotte, thee remembers him? A white, quiet, patient face, with a smile like the sun shining behind clouds. Well, whether it's only a dream or no I cannot tell, but there's a face looks at me, or seems to look at me out of the dusk; and I think to myself, maybe the Lord Jesus says, 'Old Oliver's lonesome down there in the dark, and his eyes growing dim. ”

“ A narrow meadow of glebe-land separated the churchyard from the Rectory garden, a bank of flowers and turf sloping up to the house. Nowhere could a more pleasant, home-like dwelling be found, lightly covered with sweet-scented creeping plants, which climbed up to the highest gable, and flung down long sprays of blossom-laden branches to toss to and fro in the air. Many a weary, bedinned Londoner had felt heart-sick at the sight of its tranquillity and peace.
The people of Upton, great and small, conformist or nonconformist, were proud of their rector. ”

“ I never returned to my spring-day upon the cliffs of Sark.
A little crumbling path led round the rock and along the edge of the ravine. I chose it because from it I could see all the fantastic shore, bending in a semicircle toward the isle of Breckhou, with tiny, untrodden bays, covered at this hour with only glittering ripples, and with all the soft and tender shadows of the headlands falling across them. I had but to look straight below me, and I could see long tresses of glossy seaweed floating under the surface of the sea. ”

“ The night was dark, but the sky was full of stars. Along the high roads crossing the Common lamps glimmered here and there, just tracing out the route, but leaving the open stretch of moorland as dark as if it had been hundreds of miles from any artificial light. The bushes and brushwood were black; and here and there lay small sinister-looking pools, lurking in treacherous hollows, and catching some gleam of light on their surface, which alone revealed them to the passers-by. A red gloom hung over London, throbbing as if it beat with the pulsations of the life underneath it. ”

“ I never loved Roland; can you believe that, Phebe?"
"Yes," she answered in a whisper, and with downcast eyes.
"Not as I think of love," continued Felicita in a dreary voice. "I have tried to love you all; but you seem so far away from me, as if I could never touch you. Even Felix and Hilda, they are like phantom children, who do not warm my heart, or gladden it, as other mothers are made happy by their children. Sometimes I have dreamed of what life would have been if I had given myself to some man for whom I would have forfeited the world, and counted the loss as nothing. ”

“ All day long the sun had shone down steadily upon the streets of London, with a fierce glare and glowing heat, until the barefooted children had felt the dusty pavement burn under their tread almost as painfully as the icy pavement had frozen their naked feet in the winter. In the parks, and in every open space, especially about the cool splash of the fountains at Charing Cross, the people, who had escaped from the crowded and unventilated back streets, basked in the sunshine, or sought every corner where a shadow could be found. ”

“ Doctor, I never could bear to see any soft, tender, young thing in trouble. If it's nothing but a little bird that has fallen out of its warm nest, or a lamb slipped down among the cliffs, I feel as if I could risk my life to put them back again in some safe place. Yes, and I have done it scores of times, when I dared not let my poor mother know. Well, there stood mam'zelle, pale and trembling, with the tears ready to fall in her eyes; just such a soft, poor, tender soul as my little wife used to be. You remember my little wife, Dr. Martin? ”

“ On Colonel Cleveland's death Margaret herself would become possessor of her mother's dowry.
The feeling of freedom with which Sidney could now live was too new and too unfamiliar to be altogether a happy one. He had scarcely realized how oppressive had been the burden of Sophy's possible claim upon him. It had weighed down his spirit with a constant, yet almost unconscious, repression. He was like a man who had worn fetters until he drags his foot along the ground, unable to believe that he can walk like other men. ”

“ Alice's voice trembled, and she laid her hand caressingly on the name of Roland Sefton graved on the cross above her. Jean Merle listened, as if he heard the words whispered a long way off, or as by some one speaking in a dream. The meaning had not reached his brain, but was travelling slowly to it, and would surely pierce his heart with a new sorrow and a fresh pang of remorse. The loud chanting of the monks in the abbey close by broke in upon their solemn silence, and awoke Alice from the reverie into which she had fallen. ”

“ Tony cowered down upon his broom under the wall where Dolly had sat in the sunshine all the morning to watch him sweep his crossing. It was all over now. She was lost to him; for he should never dare to go back to old Oliver's house, and face that terrible old woman again. There was nothing for him but to return to his old life and his old haunts; and a chill ran through him, body and spirit, as he thought of it. His heap of paper shavings under the counter, where the biting winds could not reach him, came to his mind, and the tears rushed to his eyes. ”

“ Nothing on earth could be more charming, or more winning, than Olivia's delight over that child. It was the first baby she had ever had in her arms, she told us; and to see her sitting in the low rocking-chair, with her head bent over it, and to watch her dainty way of handling it, was quite a picture. Captain Carey had an artist's eye, and was in raptures; Julia had a mother's eye, and was so won by Olivia's admiration of her baby, that the thin crust of ice melted from her like the arctic snows before a Greenland summer. ”

“ She was a strikingly beautiful woman; but the thought of what anguish and dread had been concealed under her reserved and stately air, so cold yet so gentle, filled Phebe's soul with a sudden terror. What an awful life of self-approved, stoical falsehood she had been living! She could see the man, from whom she had just parted, standing without, homeless and friendless, on the verge of pennilessness; a dead man in a living world, cut off from all the ties and duties of the home and the society he loved. But to Phebe he did not appear so wretched as Felicita was. ”

“ Margaret started. A sudden pang shot through her heart. After all these years was she to discover the fate of the poor girl, whose loss she had mourned so long, in this remote spot? Could this be Sophy Goldsmith's grave? And oh! how sorrowful beyond all their fears must her sad lot have been! Dying, alone, deserted; leaving behind her a child who had grown into this miserable pariah of the mountains. Swiftly the thought of Andrew Goldsmith, and his dark, deep grief when he learnt all, passed through her mind. ”

“ I knew it was Tardif who fried the fish which came in with my tea; and, when the night closed in, it was he who trimmed the oil-lamp and brought it in, and drew the check curtains across the low casement, as if there were prying eyes to see me on the opposite bank. Then a deep, deep stillness crept over the solitary place—a stillness strangely deeper than that even of the daytime. The wail of the sea-gulls died away, and the few busy cries of the farm-yard ceased; the only sound that broke the silence was a muffled, hollow boom which came up the ravine from the sea. ”

“ Only it seems impossible that you should wish me to be your wife."
"Cannot you see what you will be to me," he said passionately. "It will be like reaching home after a weary exile; like finding a fountain of living waters after crossing a burning wilderness. I ought not to ask it of you, Phebe. But what man could doom himself to endless thirst and exile! If you love me so much that you do not see how unworthy I am of you, I cannot give you up again. You are all the world to me."
"But I am only Phebe Marlowe," she said, still doubtfully.
"And I am only Jean Merle," he replied. ”

“ Sidney and Margaret had been there before; and for them there was but one point of interest, their son lying ill, perhaps dying, under one of those glittering roofs. But Dorothy gazed out of the windows at the lagoons over which the strange railway was carrying her. She was very weary, and her eyelids were heavy and swollen with long wakefulness; but the stretches of silvery water, with its low banks of soft sea-green weeds, were too beautiful not to arouse her. ”

“ The water looked white and milky, with lines across it like the tracks on the cliffs, which no human foot could tread; and the tide was coming back to the shore with a low, tranquil, yet sad moan. The sea-gulls skimmed past us with their white wings, almost touching us; their plaintive wailing seeming to warn us of the treachery and sorrow of the sea. I was not afraid of the treachery of the sea, yet I could not bear to hear them, nor could Tardif.
We landed at one of the stone staircases running up the side of the pier at Guernsey; for we were only just in time for the steamer. ”