Her only hope at last was that he might have made some other port or taken shelter under the lee of the island.
The night passed away. Wee Mattie slept, and towards morning even the distracted wife’s sorrows were bathed for an hour in slumber. But she sprang up at last – she thought she heard his voice.
The fire had burned out on the hearth, the lamp was out too, but grey daylight was shimmering through the uncurtained panes.
“Yes, yes!” she cried. “Coming, Joe! Coming, lad!”
And she staggered up and rushed forth.
What was that dark thing on the beach? It was a great boat – it was his yawl, bottom up.
She knew little more for a time after that. She saw people hurrying towards her and towards the wreck; then all was a mist for hours.
But they found poor Joe beneath the yawl, and they bore him in and laid him in the little “best” room. He was dead and stiff, with cold, hard hands half clenched, and in one a morsel of rope. It was the end of the main sheet he had grasped in his hour of agony, and they cut it off and left it there.
Her grief, they say, when she awoke at last, was past describing. With a wail of widowed anguish, that thrilled through the hearts of the sea-hardened listeners she flung herself on the body.
“My Joe, my Joe – my own poor boy!” she moaned. “Oh, why has Heaven deprived me of my man!”
They simply turned away and left her to her grief. They thought it best, but there was not a man among them whose face was not wet with tears.
That was my first sorrow; but, alas! there were more to come.
And it is strange the effect that sorrow has on the young. Before this, all my life had seemed one long happy dream. But all at once I became awake, and I date my real existence from the day they laid poor Joe Gray in the little churchyard, high above the sea, that will sing his requiem for ever and for ay.
Chapter Four
The Sound of War – First Sorrows – A Change in our Lives
Like many other poor folks, to the houses of whom Death comes when least expected, Nancy Gray was left without a penny in the world, and wee Mattie was doubly an orphan since Daddie Gray was drowned.
When then, after a visit or two to the fisherman’s cottage, auntie one morning announced that she had taken Mattie over to be as one of her own kith and kin, and that Nancy herself would have employment at Trafalgar Cottage, none of us was a bit surprised. It was only the angel in auntie’s heart showing a little more.
So Mattie was henceforth styled “sister” by Jill and me.
Then came sorrow the second. War broke out at the Cape, the Caffres were up and killing – butchering, in fact – our poor people at all hands. Father’s regiment was ordered out, and though he himself might have stayed at home, he elected to go.
What a grief this was for us! Jill and I looked upon our dear father as one already dead.
“I’m sure they’ll kill you, father,” Jill sobbed.
“Why me, my boy?”
“Because they kill all the prettiest men,” said the innocent boy.
Then came a few busy days and tearful days, and – then my father was gone. The scene of the departure of the soldiers for the war is something I will never forget. What made it all the worse was, that in returning home our carriage was blocked by a mob, and we had to witness the passing by of a soldier’s funeral. It was inexpressibly sad, and I remember my dear mother wept on auntie’s breast, till I verily believed her heart would break.
From that very date our bed was made up in mother’s own room. We were all she had now. Besides, something must have told her that she would not even have us long.
Children’s sorrows do not last very long, their souls are very resilient, and this is wisely ordered. So by the time we got father’s first letter we had learned to live on in happy hope of soon seeing him back.
Letter after letter came; some that told of the fighting were sad enough, but there was no word of our soldier father returning from the wars.
One day we were all seated at breakfast and talking quite cheerfully, when the postman’s thrilling rat-tat was heard at the door. That knock always did make us start, now that father was away at the wars. And this very morning, too, we had watched the postman till he went past and disappeared round the corner, so he must have forgotten our letter and come with it on his return. Sally came in with it at last, but seemed to take such a long time.
“It’s from the Cape, ma’am,” she said, “and it isn’t in black.”
Girls are so thoughtless.
I cannot tell you how it was, but neither Jill nor I could take our eyes off poor ma’s face when she took the letter, tore it open, and began to read. A glance at the envelope told her it was his dear handwriting, so a gleam of joy came into her eyes, and a fond smile half-played round her lips. Alas! both the gleam and the smile were quickly banished, and were succeeded by a look of utter despair. Oh, my beautiful mother, how dazed and strange she appeared! One glance round the table, then the letter dropped from her fingers, and we rushed to support her.
But the flood of tears came now fast enough, and as she threw herself on the sofa in a paroxysm of grief, we really thought her heart would break.
Speak she could not for a time.
“Oh, mother dear, what is it?”
“Tell us, mother, tell us all.”
“Is father killed?”
The sight of our anguish probably helped to stem for a time the current of her own.
“N-no,” she sobbed. “Father is not killed – but he is wounded – slightly, he says, – and, I must go away to him.”
Here she hugged us to her breast.
“It will not be for long, children – only just a little, little time – and you must both be so good.”
Our turn had come now – our very hearts seemed swamped as the great grief came swelling over them, like the waves of the ocean. She let us weep for a time, she made no attempt either to repress our tears or to stop our senseless, incoherent talk.
“You cannot go. You must not leave us.”
This, and this alone, was the burden of our song. Alas! the fiat had gone forth, and in our very souls we knew and felt it. Once more she kissed us, then auntie led us out, saying we must leave mamma a little while for her good. We would do anything for ma’s good, even to going away into the schoolroom – which never before had looked so grim and cheerless – and squatting on our goatskin to cry. Every now and then poor Jill would say —
“Don’t you cry so, Jack.”
And every now and then I would make the same request to him.
They say there is no love equal to that a mother bears for a child; but tell me this, ye who have known it, what love exceeds that which a fond and sensitive child bears for a mother? and oh, what else on earth can fill the aching void that is left when she is gone?
For a time weeping gave us relief, then even that consolation was taken away. I just felt that my life’s lamp had clean gone out, that there was no more hope —could be no more hope for me.
It was difficult to realise or grasp all the terrible truth at once. Mother going away! Our own dear darling mother, and we, perhaps never, never to see her more! Never listen to her voice again at eventide, singing low to us by the firelight, or telling us tales by our bedside! Never kneel again by her knees to pray! Never