CHAPTER IPIERTOWN
Inthe West of England stands a city surrounded by hills. Its streets are wide, its shops fine and plentiful, and there are many handsome and some stately terraces of houses in it. In the heart of the city a gem of ecclesiastical architecture rears its admirable tower, and this fine old structure is known everywhere as the Abbey Church.
How am I to convey to one who has never beheld them the beauties of the scene when viewed from some commanding eminence—say on a rich autumn afternoon whilst the sun paints every object a tender red, and before the shadows have grown long in the valley? Orchards colour the landscape with the dyes of their fruit and leaves. White houses gleam amidst trees and tracts of vegetation. The violet shadow of a cloud floats slowly down some dark green distant slope. In the pastures cattle are feeding, and the noise of the barking of dogs ascends from the river-side. Rows and crescents of buildings hang in clusters upon the hills, blending with the various hues of the country and lending a grace as of nature’s own to the scene. The river flows with a red glitter in its breast past meadows and gardens and nestling cottages.
Many roads more or less steep conduct to the several eminences, in the valley of which peacefully stands this western city. One of them in a somewhat gentle acclivity windseastwards, and as the wayfarer proceeds along this road he passes through a long avenue of chestnuts, which in the heat of the summer cast a delicious shade upon the dust, and here the air is so pure that it acts upon the spirits like a cordial. The ocean is not very many miles distant, and you taste the saltness of its breath in the summer breeze as it blows down the hill-sides, bringing with it a hundred perfumes, and a hundred musical sounds from the orchards and the gardens.
About a mile beyond this avenue of chestnuts there stood—I say there stood, but I do not doubt there still stands—a pretty house of a modern character, such as would be offered for letting or for selling as a ‘villa residence.’ I will speak of it as of a thing that is past. It was situated on the edge of the hill; on one side the white road wound by it; on the other side its land of about oneacre and a half sloped into meadows and pastures, and this wide space of fields sank treeless, defined by hedges, well stocked in the seasons with sheep and cows and other cattle, to the silver line of the river.
Now have I brought you to my home, to the home in which I was living a little while before the strange and terrible experience that, with the help of another pen, I am about to relate befel me. And that you may thoroughly understand the story which I shall almost immediately enter upon, it is necessary that I should submit a little home picture to you.
It was a Sunday afternoon early in the month of October in a year that is all too recent for the endurance of memory. A party of four, of which one was a little boy aged two, were seated at table drinking tea in the dining-room of the house, which stood a mile beyond the chestnut avenue. Upon thehearth-rug, where was stretched a soft white blanket, lay a baby of eight months old, tossing its fat pink legs and dragging at the tube of a feeding-bottle. A lady sat at the head of the table.
This lady was in her twenty-sixth year—no one better knew the date of her birth than I. She was a handsome woman, and presently you will understand why I exhibit no reluctance in speaking of her beauty. I will be brief in my description of her, but I will invite your attention to a sketch that, in its relations to this tale, carries, as you will discover, a deeper significance than ordinarily accompanies the portraits of the heroes or heroines of romance.
She was in her twenty-sixth year, I say. Her hair was dark, not black. I am unable to find a name for its peculiar shade. It was so abundant as to be inconvenient to its owner, whose character was somewhat impatient, so that every morning’s wrestle with the long thick tresses was felt as a trouble and often as a cause of vexatious delay. Her eyebrows were thick and arched, and, as she wore her hair low, but a very little of her white well-shaped brow was to be seen. Her nose was after the Roman type, but not too large nor prominent, yet it gave her an air as though she held her head high, and it also communicated an expression of eagerness to the whole countenance. Her complexion was a delicate bloom, her mouth was small, the teeth very white and regular. She had a good figure, a little above the medium height of women, with a promise in her shape of stoutness when her years should have increased. She was simply dressed, and wore but little jewellery, no more than a thin watch-chain round her neck and a wedding-ring and two other rings on the same finger.
Such was the lady in her twenty-sixth yearwho sat at the head of the tea-table on that October Sunday afternoon.
At her side was her little boy, two years old. He was a beautiful child with golden hair and dark blue eyes. He sat in a high child’s chair on his mother’s left, and whilst he waited for her to feed him he beat the table with a spoon.
At the table on the right sat the husband of this lady, a man entering upon his thirty-first year. He was tall, thin, and fair, and wore small whiskers, and his eyes were a dark grey. Handsome he was not, but he had a well-bred air, and his face expressed a gentle and amiable nature.
Confronting the lady at the head of the table was her twin sister. Nearly always between twins there is a strong family likeness. I have heard of twins who resembled each other so closely as to be mistaken one for the other unless they were together, when,to be sure, there must be some subtle difference to distinguish them. There was undoubtedly a family likeness between these two sisters, but it appeared rather in their smile and in certain small tricks of posture and of gesture, and in their walk and in the attitudes which they insensibly fell into when seated; in these things lay a family likeness rather than in their faces. Their voices did not in the least resemble each other’s. That of the lady who sat at the head of the table was somewhat high-pitched; her accents were delivered with impulse and energy, no matter how trivial might be the subject on which she discoursed. Her sister, on the other hand, had a sweet, low, musical voice; she pronounced her words with a charming note of plaintiveness, and she never spoke much at a time nor often. Her hair was not so plentiful as her sister’s; it was a light bright brown, with a gloss upon it like that of theshell of a horse-chestnut, but it had not the rich deep dye of that nut. She wore it with a simplicity that was infinitely becoming to her beauty. Beautiful she was, far more so than her sister; hers was a beauty far more tender and womanly than her sister’s; you thought of the meekness and the sweetness of the dove in looking at her, and the expression of her dark-brown eyes was dove-like. She was shorter than her sister, but equally well shaped, and she was the younger.
These four sitting at table, and the little baby of eight months tossing its tiny toes shod with knitted shoes upon a blanket on the hearth-rug, formed the occupants of that parlour, and were the living details of the domestic picture that the curtain of the terrible drama of my life rises upon. The rays of the westering sun streamed upon the windows of the room, and the atmosphere was warm with crimson light. One window stoodopen, but the church bells had not yet begun to ring for evening service, and the peace of the English Sabbath lay upon the land outside: a peace scarcely disturbed by the distant barking of dogs, by the occasional moaning lowing of near cattle, and by the drowsy murmuring hum of bees and flies amongst the flowers under the windows.
Who were these people, and what was their name? The name of the gentleman was John Campbell, and the lady seated at the head of the table was his wife, Agnes—Agnes Campbell, whose story she herself now relates, and the sweet sister at the foot of the table was Mary Hutchinson.
I had been married at the time when my story opens a little above three years. My father was Colonel Hutchinson, of the Honourable East India Company’s service. He had distinguished himself in India in a period of terrible peril, but he had died before he couldreap the reward of his valour and his judgment. He died a poor man, his whole fortune amounting to no more than five thousand pounds; but the pension my mother drew, conjointly with the interest of my father’s little fortune, enabled her to live in tolerable comfort, and after my father’s death we took up our abode in the noble old city of Bath, where we dwelt happily, making many friends and enjoying a round of simple pleasures.
Society in Bath is largely, almost wholly, composed of ladies; young men are scarce, and marriage at the best is but vaguely dreamed of, though hope is sufficiently constant to support the spirits.
It chanced that Mary and I were invited one evening to play a round game of cards at the house of a friend. We went, expecting to find the company formed entirely of girls like ourselves, with perhaps one or two old fogeys. But soon after our arrival a gentleman was shown into the room, and introduced to us as Mr. John Campbell. He was the only young man present; the other gentlemen were composed of a general, a colonel, and an admiral, whose united ages I afterwards calculated would have exactly amounted to two hundred years. I did not notice that Mr. Campbell paid me much attention that evening. Mary afterwards said he seldom had his eyes off me, butthatI did not observe. On the contrary, I thought he looked very often and very admiringly ather.
Well, he saw us to the door of our house, to use the homely phrase, and on the following afternoon he called upon us; but if it was love at first sight on his part, I cannot say that he illustrated his fervour by his behaviour. He was very polite, very kind, very attentive; seemed happy in my society, was a frequent visitor at our house, would steal an hour from business to find himself anexcuse to meet us in the gardens or park where we walked; but that was all.
If I had been led by the reading of novels to suppose that a man looks love when he means love, I might have searched Mr. Campbell’s face in vain for any expression of deep-seated sentiment. Indeed, after three months, I could not have said that he was more in love with me than with my sister. But by the end of that time I must own that I was very much in love with him. And though so tenderly did I love my sister that I would gladly have relinquished him to her, had her love for him been as mine, yet to no other woman could I have parted with him without the belief—which to be sure I used to laugh at after I was married—that my heart would break if he did not make me his. But my heart was not to be broken because of his not loving me and making me his, for within six months from the date of our meeting wewere married, and I was the happiest girl in all England, and my sister as happy as I in my happiness.
My husband was a solicitor. His practice in those days was small and would not have supported him even as a bachelor; but he had been the only son of a man who was able to leave him an income of several hundreds a year. We went abroad for a month, and I returned to find my poor mother dead. This loss left my sister without a relative in the world saving myself. It is seldom that this can be said of man or woman. To be without a relative in this complicated world of aunts and uncles, of nieces and nephews, and of cousins no matter how far removed, seems incredible. There may be plenty of people who are alone in the sense of not knowing who their relatives are, though they would find they had relations in plenty were they to seek them or were they to comeinto a fortune; but it is rare indeed to hear of anyone who out of his or her perfect knowledge of the family connections can positively assert, ‘I have not a relative in the world.’
Yet thus it was with my sister and me when my mother died. But I will not delay my story to explain how this happened. Therefore, being alone in the world, my sister came to live with my husband and me. How greatly her making one of us added to my happiness I cannot express. I will not pretend that it did grieve me to leave my poor mother: no, nature works forwards; the fruit falls from the tree, the young bird flutters from its nest; it is nature’s law that a child should part from its parent, and deep as the sadness of separation may seem at the time, it will show but as a light-hearted grief at the best when looked back upon and contrasted with other sorrows of life.
But it was a bitter pain to me to part withmy sister. We had grown up side by side; we were as blossoms upon one stalk, and the sap of the single stalk fed the two flowers.
And now as we sat drinking tea in the parlour of our house on that fine October Sunday afternoon, our conversation was as homely as the picture we made. Nevertheless it involved a topic of considerable interest to us. My little boy Johnny had been looking somewhat pale, and his appetite was not as I, his mother, considered it should be. The summer had been a very hot one, and when it is even moderately warm in most parts of England, it is commonly very broiling indeed in our city of the Abbey Church, where there are tall hills to protect the population from the breeze, where the roads are steep, glaring, and dusty, and where the width of many of the streets is quite out of proportion to the stature of the houses, so that you do not know where to look for shade.
My husband’s business would not suffer him to leave home until the early autumn, and he could not prevail upon me to go away without him; but now he was able to take a holiday for a month, and the doctor had recommended the seaside for little Johnny and the baby, and as we sat drinking tea we talked of the best place to go to.
‘It does not matter to me what part of the coast you choose,’ said my husband. ‘I only stipulate that you shall not select a town that is confidently recommended by the whole of the medical faculty, and whose medical officer every year sends to the newspapers a statement that the death-rate is the lowest in England, and that it is the healthiest seaside resort in the United Kingdom.’
‘Then you shut every seaside town against us,’ said my sister, ‘for every seaside town is the healthiest in England.’
I named Margate; my husband made a grimace.
‘No,’ he exclaimed, ‘I should not like to return to Bath and say we have been to Margate. It was only the other day I heard General Cramp swear that Margate was not the vulgarest place in all England, oh no! but the vulgarest place in all the world.’
‘Its air is very fine,’ said I, ‘and it is fine air that we want.’ And here I looked at Johnny. ‘What does it matter to us what sort of people go to Margate, if its air is good?’
‘I will not go to Margate,’ said my husband.
My sister named two or three towns on the coast.
‘Let us,’ said my husband, ‘go to some place where there is no hotel and where there is no pier.’
‘And where there is no circulating library,’cried I, ‘and where there are two miles of mud when the water is out.’
And then I named several towns as my sister had, but my suggestions were not regarded. At this point baby began to roar, and my husband rose to ring for the nurse, but it was nurse’s ‘Sunday out,’ and Mary and I were taking her place. Mary picked baby up off the blanket, and holding its cheek to hers, sung softly to it in her low sweet voice. The darling was instantly silent. The effect of my sister’s plaintive melodious voice upon fretful children was magical. I remember once calling with her upon a lady who wished that we should see her baby. The baby was brought into the room, and the moment it saw us it began to yell. My sister stepped up to it as it sat on the nurse’s arm, and looking at it in the face with a smile began to sing, and the infant, silencing its cries, stared back at her with its mouth wideopen in the very posture of a scream, but as silent as though it had been a doll. When she ceased to sing and turned from it, it roared again, and again she silenced it by singing.
My baby lay hushed in her arms, and the sweet eyes of Mary looked at us over the little fat cheek that she nestled to her throat, and we continued to discourse upon the best place to go to.
My husband named a small seaside town, and I could see by the expression of his face he meant that we should go there. It was many years since he had visited it, but he recollected and described the beauties of the scenery of the coast with enthusiasm. It was on the Bristol Channel, at no very considerable distance from the city in which we dwelt, and he said he wished to go there because, should there come a call upon him from the office, he would be able to make the doublejourney, with plenty of leisure between for all he might have to do, in a day, computing that day from eight till midnight.
‘Oh! it is a beautiful romantic spot, Agnes,’ said he. ‘Its sands, when the water is out, are as firm as this floor. It has high, dark cliffs, magnificently bold and rugged, and when the breaker bursts upon the sand, the cliffs echo its voice, and you seem to hear the note of an approaching tempest.’
‘But it is a cheerful place, John? Cliffs and sands are very well, but in a month one wearies of cliffs and sands, and in a month again how many days of wet will there be?’
‘It is cheerful—very,’ said my husband. ‘Its cheerfulness is inborn, like good-nature in a man. It owes nothing of its brightness to excursionists, to steamboats, to Punch and Judy, and to German bands. It has three good streets and a number of clean lodging-houses.’
‘Has it a pier and a hotel?’ asked Mary.
‘It has what the cockneys call a jetty,’ answered my husband. ‘I should prefer to term it a pier. What is the difference between a pier and a jetty? This jetty is short, massive, very richly tarred, and just the sort of jetty for Johnny to fall over the edge of if he is not looked after. There is a wooden canopy at the extremity of it under which, Mary, you will be able to sit and read your favourite poet without risk of being intruded upon. The verses of your favourite poet will be set to music by the rippling of the water among the massive supports of the pier, and you will have nothing to do but to be happy.’
‘Are there any boats?’ I asked.
‘Many capital boats,’ he answered.
‘Sailing boats?’ said I.
‘Sailing boats and rowing boats,’ said he.
‘I shall often want to go out sailing,’ said I. ‘What is more heavenly than sailing?’
‘You will have to go alone so far as I am concerned, Agnes,’ said Mary.
‘Yes, but John will often accompany me,’ said I.
‘Not very often,’ he exclaimed. ‘Had I been a lover of sailing I should have gone to sea, instead of which I am a solicitor, and I spell sails with an “e” and not with an “i.” Well, is it settled?’ he continued, drawing a pipe case from his pocket and extracting the pipe from it. ‘I believe there will be time for half a pipe of tobacco before we go to church.’
But the nurse being out I could not go to church, and my sister would not leave me alone with the children, and my husband, instead of filling half a pipe filled a whole one, and took no heed of the church bells whentheir happy peaceful chimes floated through the open window. Indeed it wasnotsettled; the subject was too interesting to be swiftly dismissed, yet my husband had his way in the end, as usually happened, for before evening service was over we had arranged to spend a month at the little town whose praises he had sung so poetically.
Next day he made a journey to the shores of the Bristol Channel to seek for lodgings. But the accommodation he required was not to be found in apartments, and when he returned he told me that he had taken a house standing near the edge of the cliff in a garden of its own. A few days later our little family proceeded to the sea coast. We left two servants behind us to look after the house, and the only domestic we took with us was the nurse, a person of about my own age, who had been with me at this time about six weeks, having replaced an excellent, trustworthy young woman who had left me to get married.
I will call the little place from which dates the story of my terrific experiences, Piertown.
What with having to change here, and to get out there, and to wait somewhere else, the journey was a tedious one, and when we arrived it was raining hard and blowing very strong, and I remember as we drove from the railway station catching sight through the streaming window glass of the white waves of the sea rushing like bodies of snow out of the pale haze of the rain and the spray, and I also remember that I heard a strange low voice of thunder in the air, made by the huge breakers as they tumbled in hills of water upon the beach and rushed backwards into the sea in sheets of froth.
It was so cold that we were very glad to find a cheerful fire in the parlour, that wasrendered yet more hospitable to the sight by the table being equipped for a two o’clock dinner. The house was small, but very strongly built, with thick plate-glass windows in the lower rooms, against which the wind and the rain were hissing as though an engine were letting off steam close by. A couple of maid-servants had been left in the house. Never could I have imagined that servants would be willing to sleep as those two did in one small bed, in a tiny garret where all the light they had fell through a skylight window about the size of a book. But I have noticed in the country, that is to say, in rural parts and quiet towns such as Piertown, servants are grateful and dutiful for such food and lodging as would cause them to be incessantly grumbling and changing their places in cities like Bath.
Baby and little Johnny were taken upstairs by the nurse, and my husband and Mary andI went to the window and stood gazing at the sea. We had a very clear view of it. The house stood within a few yards of the edge of the cliff, and the extremity of the garden between was bounded by a dwarf wall of flint which left the prospect open.
‘What do you think of that sight, Agnes?’ said my husband. ‘Would sailing be heavenly to-day, do you think?’
‘Never more heavenly if one could feel safe,’ said I. ‘How swiftly a boat would rush before such a wind as this! Hark to the roaring in the chimney! It makes me feel as if I were in the cabin of a ship. It is delightful. It is like being at sea and enjoying the full spirit of it without suffering the horrors of being tossed and bruised, and without any chance of being upset and shipwrecked.’
‘You should have married a sailor,’ said my husband dryly.
‘What have you been reading lately, Agnes, to put this sudden love of the sea into your head?’ said Mary. ‘You used not to care for the water.’
‘I have been reading nothing to make me love the sea,’ I answered; ‘but when I look at such a sight as that I feel that if I were a man I should consider that the earth was formed of something more than land, and that the best part of it is not where trees grow and where houses are built.’
My husband laughed. ‘One hour ofthatwould cure you,’ said he pointing. ‘Onehour, indeed! Ten minutes of it. I tell you what—there is a very heavy sea running to-day. Itmustbe so, for we are high-perched here, and look how defined are the shapes of the waves as they come storming out of the mist towards the land.’
‘I wish a ship would pass,’ said I. ‘I should like to see her roll and plunge.’
And for some time after my husband and Mary had withdrawn from the window I stood gazing at the bleared and throbbing scene of ocean, hoping and longing to see a ship go by, little suspecting that my wishes were as wicked as though they were those of a wrecker, for had any ship been close enough in to the coast to enable me to see her amid the thickness that was upon the face of the streaming and rushing waters, nothing could have saved her from being driven ashore, where in all probability her crew would have perished.
But in the afternoon the weather cleared; it continued to blow a strong wind right upon the land, but the sky opened into many blue lakes, and changed into a magnificent picture of immense bodies of stately sailing cream-coloured cloud, upon which the setting sun shone, colouring their skirts with a dark rich gold, and the horizon expanded to as far asthe eye could pierce, with one staggering and leaning shaft of white upon the very rim of the sea.
‘Let us go and look at the town,’ said my husband; and Mary and I put on our hats and jackets and the three of us sallied forth.
We had to walk some distance to reach the little town, and when we arrived there was not very much to see. The three streets were neither spacious nor splendid; on the contrary, they struck me as rather mean and weather-beaten. But then people do not leave cities in order to view the shops and streets of little seaside towns. Piertown lay in a sort of chasm. It was as though a party of fishermen in ancient days, wandering along the coast in search of a good site for the erection of their cottages, and falling in with this great split in the cliff, as though an earthquake had not long before happened, hadexclaimed, ‘Let us settle here.’ There was a peculiar smell of salt in the streets, and the roadways and pavements presented a sort of faint sparkling surface, as though a great deal of brine had fallen upon them and dried up. There was also a smell of kippered herring in the strong wind, and it seemed to proceed from every shop door that we passed.
Very few people were to be seen. We were much stared at by the shopmen through their windows, and here and there a little knot of lounging men dressed as boatmen hushed their hoarse voices to intently gaze at us.
‘This is what I like,’ said my husband. ‘Here is all the privacy that we could desire, and the most delightful primitiveness also. A professional man when he takes a holiday ought to give crowded places a very wide berth, and put himself as close to nature—to nature, rugged, homely and roaring, after thispattern,’ said he with a sweep of his hand, ‘as his requirements of eating and drinking and sleeping will permit.’
‘It seems a very dull place,’ said I when, having reached the top of one of the three steep streets, we turned to retrace our steps. ‘If the weather does not allow me to have plenty of boating I shall soon wish myself home again.’
‘You will not find a circulating library here,’ said Mary, looking around her. ‘I should not suppose that many people belonging to Piertown are able to read.’
‘The place is made up of grocers’ shops,’ said my husband. ‘What a queer smell of bloaters!’
I amused myself by counting no less than five grocers’ shops in one street, and I did not see a single person resembling a customer in any one of them. I pulled my husband’s arm to stop him opposite a shop inwhose windows I believed I saw three men hanging by the neck. They proved to be complete suits of oilskins, each surmounted by one of those nautical helmets called sou’-westers, and at a little distance, as they dangled in the twilight within the windows, they exactly resembled three mariners who had committed suicide.
We now walked down to the pier, and there the great plain of the ocean stretched before us without the dimmest break of land anywhere along its confines, and the white surf boiled within the toss of a pebble from us. The pier projected from a short esplanade; along this esplanade ran a terrace of mean stunted structures, eight in all; and my husband, after looking and counting, exclaimed: ‘Five of them are public-houses. Yes! this is the seaside.’
The pier forked straight out for a short distance, then rounded sharply to the right,thus forming a little harbour, in the shelter of which lay a cluster of boats of several kinds. The massive piles and supports of the pier broke the weight of the seas, which rushed hissing white as milk amongst the black timbers; but the water within was considerably agitated nevertheless, and the boats hopped and plunged and jumped and rubbed their sides one against another, straining at the ropes which held them, as though they were timid living creatures like sheep, terrified by the noise and appearance of the waters, and desperately struggling at their tethers in their desire to get on shore.
We stood looking, inhaling deeply and with delight the salt sweetness of the strong ocean breeze. The land soared on either hand from the little town, and ran away in dark masses of towering cliff, and far as the eye could follow went the white line of the surf, with a broad platform of grey hard sandbetwixt it and the base of the cliff. Here and there in one or another of the public-house windows glimmered a face whose eyes surveyed us steadfastly. We might make sure by the manner in which we were looked at, that Piertown was not greatly troubled by visitors.
There was a wooden post near the entrance of the pier, and upon it leaned the figure of a man clad in trousers of a stuff resembling blanket, a rusty coat buttoned up to his neck, around which was a large shawl, and upon his head he wore a yellow sou’-wester. He might have been carved out of wood, so motionless was his posture and so intent his gaze at the horizon, where there was nothing to be seen but water, though I strained my sight in the hope of perceiving the object which appeared to fascinate him. A short clay pipe, of the colour of soot, projected from his lips. He seemed to hold itthus as one might wear an ornament, for no smoke issued from it.
We drew close, and my husband said: ‘Good afternoon.’
The man looked slowly round, surveyed us one after another, then readjusting himself upon his post and fastening his eyes afresh upon the horizon, he responded in a deep voice: ‘Good arternoon.’
‘Is there anything in sight?’ said my husband.
‘No,’ answered the man.
‘Then what are you looking at?’
‘I ain’t looking,’ answered the man; ‘I’m a-thinking.’
‘And what are you thinking of?’
‘Why,’ said the man, ‘I’m a-thinking that I han’t tasted a drop o’ beer for two days.’
‘This, indeed, is being at the seaside,’ said my husband cheerfully, and putting his handin his pocket he produced a sixpence, which he gave to the man.
The effect was remarkable; the man instantly stood upright, and went round to the other side of the post to lean over it, so that he might confront us. And it was remarkable in other ways; for no sooner had my husband given the man the sixpence than the doors of two or three of the public-houses opposite opened, and several figures dressed like this man emerged and approached us very slowly, halting often and looking much at the weather, and then approaching us by another step, and all in a manner as though they were acting unconsciously, and without the least idea whatever that my husband had given the man some money.
He was a man of about forty-five or fifty years of age, with a very honest cast of countenance, the expression of which slightly inclined towards surliness. You will wonderthat I should take such particular notice of a mere lounging boatman; and yet this same plain, common-looking sailor, was to become the most memorable of all the persons I had ever met with in my life.