In a period of English history which graybeards call the good old times—the fine old times; that is to say, when Parliament was horribly corrupt, and the Poor Laws as barbarous as the Inquisition; when it took fifteen hours to go from London to Dover; and when at least one-half of the conveniences which we now very reasonably call the necessities of life had no existence—Southbourne was a small straggling village, and, by reason of the quaint and primitive aspect of its houses, something, even in those good old times, like an anachronism on the face of the land. What is now a well-looking street, fairly paved, and decorated with a number of showy shop-windows, was then an uneven road, with great spaces of grassy land, dusty and closely nibbled by goats, between the houses; whilst the houses themselves were mostly gable-roofed, with latticed windows, which served excellently to exclude the light, and which gave a blank and lack-lustre look to the edifices, as though they were weary to death of the view over the way.

Yet, in spite of its architectural deformities, Southbourne was such a place as would weave its homely interests about a man’s heart, and be present to his mind when gay and splendid scenes were forgotten. At the very entrance of the village, as you went into the street out of the dusty London Road, stood the King’s Arms Inn, a long, low-built, white-faced tavern, with a great sign-board hung flagwise over the doorway, which, when the wind was fresh, would swing with hoarse outcries, as though urging the distant wayfarer to make haste and enjoy the welcome that was to be obtained, for a few pence, from the stout, well-fed host who presided within. Opposite this tavern stood a decent farmhouse, its thatched roof black with time, begirt with walls and palings, within which, when the harvest moon was high, great stacks of hay would rear their gold-coloured sides, and make the air as sweet as the smell of new milk. And all about this pleasant farmhouse were apple and cherry trees, under whose shadows a vast family of cocks and hens held the day eternally busy with their voices; while pigs in unseen sties grunted their hungry discord, and did their lazy best to drown the mournful cooing of doves in wicker cages, and the cheerful notes of the birds, who were attracted in countless numbers to the farmyard.

Between these two houses ran what the villagers called the High Street; and the eye followed the road, patched here and there with dark-coloured grass, for nearly a third of a mile, noting the gable-roofed houses that looked at each other from either side; the blacksmith’s shed, where the bellows were always roaring; the flat-roofed baker’s shop, standing importunately forwards, away from the little house in which the baker lived; the butcher’s hard by; the apothecary’s next to that; and the linendraper’s shop, which had absorbed the frontage of no less than two solemn-looking houses—noting these and other details contributing to the carnal or frivolous interests of the place, until it settled upon a small building, which, standing in the centre of the road, narrowed it into a large and a small lane, and thus marked the extent and importance of the High Street.

Our story opens on a summer’s evening. The daylight is still abroad upon the distant hill-tops, but the twilight has fallen like an inaudible hush upon Southbourne, and the farmyards are tranquil, save when, now and again, some uncomfortable hen seeking a resting-place near to her sovereign cock hops for his perch, but in hopping falls and awakens the sleepers with her fluttering scrambles and keen notes of distress, echoed by a hundred wondering throats.

The evening is warm, and many of the house doors are open; and at these open doors sit, here and there, men in their shirt-sleeves, or in homely smocks, smoking long pipes, and addressing each other from across the road with voices bespeaking laborious thought, which demands many reflective puffs to clarify and adjust. Now the apothecary’s boy comes out and lights the coloured lamp over the door, while the apothecary within sets two wax candles against his brilliant globes of lustrous dyes and illuminates the darksome roadway with a crimson and a yellow gleam. Now the linendraper’s assistant steps forth and puts up the shutters to his master’s windows, whilst the master himself struts along the floor, flapping his counter with a dust-brush, and inhaling the appetising perfume which streams from an inner room, and which is the best assurance he could demand that his supper is preparing. Anon comes a lame man, armed with a ladder, a lanthorn, and a can of oil at his girdle; he sets the ladder against a lamp-post, and in five minutes’ time succeeds in kindling a faint uncertain light in the darkling air. Thrice does he perform this laborious duty, and then, lo! the High Street is illuminated.

These lights seem to act as signals for sundry groups of gossips, standing here and there along the dusty road, to disperse. The small cackle of talk, like the click of wheels driven against springs, ceases; the old hobble towards the houses, the young follow yet more leisurely; the gloom deepens; one by one the doors are closed and little yellow lights twinkle mistily upon the latticed windows. And now, though the clock of St. George’s Church has not yet tolled the half-hour past eight, one may easily see that the good village of Southbourne, with one eye upon the candles, costly at sixteenpence the pound, and another eye upon the early hour that is to expel it from its slumbers into the fields and the workshops, is making what haste it can to creep with heavy eyelids into bed.

In the house that looks askant down the road and breaks the thoroughfare into lanes, there is a sorrow at work that should seem absolutely inconsistent with the serenity and peace of the summer evening outside.

Three persons are seated in a cosy room; a tall lamp on a table sheds a soft light upon the walls; the window is open, and the large tremulous stars look in through the branches of the elms which front the little building. How sweet is the smell of the clematis about the window! and see, a great black moth whirrs towards the lamp and occupies the silence with its vigorous slaps against the ceiling.

The old woman in the high-backed chair, looking down upon her placid hands, is a perfect picture of handsome old age: hair white as snow; a sunken cheek touched with a hectic that passes well for, if indeed it be not, the bloom of health; a garrulous under lip; a mild and benevolent expression. She is dressed in an antique satin gown, and a fine red silk handkerchief, as large as a shawl, is pinned about her shoulders.

Facing her sits a young man, broad-shouldered and bronzed, with large lustrous black eyes and dark wavy hair. He wears a pilot cloth coat and black trousers, bell-mouthed at the feet, and a plain silver ring upon his left hand.

Close beside him, on a low chair, sits a young girl, with a sweet and modest face, and bright yellow hair which shines in the lamplight like gold, and blue eyes filled now with tears.

So they sit, so they have sat, for many minutes in silence, and nothing is heard but the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, or the awkward moth that hits the ceiling, or now and again the melancholy plaint of some dreaming or belated bird from the dark country that stretches outside like a vision under the throbbing starlight.

Presently the old lady, lifting her head, says:

“I don’t think it pleases God that people’s hearts should be sorrowful. Nothing should grieve us but the fear of His anger; and if there be truth in religion, and any wisdom in human experience, there is nothing in this world that should make us sad.”

The girl presses her hand to her eyes, and answers in a broken voice:

“John and I have never really been parted before.”

“We never can be parted, Dolly, my sweet little wife,” says the young man. “There was a fear of parting before, but none now, dear one. I am only leaving you for awhile—and that is not parting, is it, grandmother? Parting is separation, and those whom God has joined cannot be parted, cannot be parted, my Dolly!”

“Ay, that is right!” exclaims the old lady. “John is only leaving you for awhile—you cannot be parted—remember that.”

“But it is to be a long while, and my heart will be so lonely without him, granny.”

The old lady gives her head a dispirited shake.

“It is all going and coming in this world,” says she. “To-day here, to-morrow there: ’tis like breathing on a mirror.”

“No, no!” cries the young fellow, “that is a melancholy simile. Life is something more than a breath. I would be content to know nothing but its sorrows, rather than think it the hollow illusion people call it. Oh, Dolly, you must cheer up and help to give me heart. I want all the courage I can get. After this voyage we needn’t be separated any more. Remember, next year I shall be skipper, and then I can take you to sea with me.”

“If next year had only come!” the poor little girl sobs, and lets her face fall upon her husband’s hand.

“Nay, nay,” the old lady chides, gently, “’tis thy business to help and support thy husband, Dolly. Will tears help him? Resolution is softened by them, and made weak and womanish. Your mother before you, my child, knew what it was to part from your father. He once went to Spain, and for many months we knew not whether he was living or dead. You were a little child then. What came to her, came to me, and must come to you as it comes to all women who will needs transplant their own hearts into men’s. Know this, Dolly, that no love is purely sweet that has not known trials and afflictions.”

“Hear that, my little one,” says the young husband, stooping his head until his lips touch his wife’s ears. “Let us seek a blessing in our grief, and we shall find one. It teaches me to know my love for you—our love for each other. Is not such knowledge blessed?”

“See here, Dolly,” continued the grandmother, battling with the tears provoked by the influx of hurrying memories which followed her reference to her own child, Dolly’s mother. “When John is gone, we will put up a calendar against the wall in your bedroom; and every night, after we have worshipped God, we will prick off a day, and you shall see how quickly the calendar grows small under our hands. I am seventy years old, and it was but the other day that I was dancing your mother in my arms, and I was a young woman, and your grandfather a hearty man, with brown hair under his wig, and bright big eyes like yours. Why, that was fifty years ago, and it seems but yesterday! Many’s the bitter tear I have shed, and the grief I have borne; but the times I mourn cannot come back to me, they are gone for ever—my life is but an empty chamber now; there is no fire in the grate, and the chairs are vacant, and I feel so lonely that I sometimes wish I was dead. But what is your grief? It is but a few months’ separation, and every day that dies will give you happiness. It is not so with others, nor with me—no! no!”

As the old grandmother spoke, with some perception, perhaps, of that rather discreditable characteristic of human nature which finds the best solace for its own trouble in the consolation that is wrought out of the griefs of others, the girl gradually raised her head and fixed her eyes wistfully on her husband’s, then laid her cheek against his shoulder, as a child would whom its tears have worn out.

“Grandmother,” said the young man, “I leave my Dolly to your care, and I know you will love and cherish her as though you were sure that any ill that came to her would break my heart.”

“She cannot be dearer to me than she always was,” answered the old lady, solemnly; “but be sure, John, that I’ll take extra care of her, since her preciousness is doubled by being dear to you and having your life bound up in hers.”

“And you will keep her heart up with happy thoughts of me, grandmother,” continued the young fellow, his dark eyes made infinitely tender by the shadow of tears, “and bid her remember that when the wind blows here it may be a summer calm where I am, and blue sky when there are thunderstorms here. You’ll remember this, Dolly?”

“Yes, John.”

“The calendar is a good thought of grandmother’s. Or you may watch the flowers, Dolly; you’ll see them fade away and leave the ground bare. By-and-by they’ll spring up again, and they will be a promise that I am coming back to you—coming quickly—quick as the wind will blow me—back to my little wife, to my sweet wife, Dolly.”

She sobbed quickly with renewed passion, and clasped his hand.

There was a childlike beauty in her face that made her sorrow infinitely touching for him, who loved her with all the strength of his great heart, to behold. He looked wistfully at the old grandmother; but she, more powerless than he, was brooding over the to-morrows which were to come when he should have gone away and left her alone with Dolly’s grief.

“I have a mind,” she said at last, “to send for Mr. Newcome, the rector. He should be able to point out to Dolly better than either of us can, that there is something unrighteous in suffering our hearts to be overcome by any dispensations God in His wise providence may choose to ordain.”

“No, I don’t want Mr. Newcome,” sobbed Dolly. “I must cry, granny. When John is gone, I’ll dry my eyes, and think of nothing but the time when he is to come back to me. But whilst I see him, and know that this time to-morrow he will be gone, I can’t help crying, indeed I can’t, granny.”

“Ay, my dear, but if your tears could bind him to you, and take the place of his duties which summon him away, they would be very well. But it is your place to help him in his troubles, as it is his to help you in yours; and see what a lonesome air his face has as he watches you, because he feels himself away from you by your refusing to listen to the words he tries to comfort you with.”

“I would give my right hand to save Dolly from these tears, grandmother,” said John, “but it is her love that frets. By-and-by her eyes will grow bright, for she will know that every hour which passes after I have left her is bringing us nearer to next summer, when we shall be together again.”

“But a year is such a long time,” wailed Dolly. “It is four times over again the months we have been together, and it seems ages ago since you came home, John. And granny doesn’t know the dangers of the sea. You have never talked to her as you have to me. Haven’t you told me of shipwrecks, and how men fall overboard, and how some ships catch fire and not a creature saved of all a great ship’s crew?”

“Yes, Dolly,” he answered, smoothing her bright hair; “but I have always said that the sea isn’t more dangerous than the land. There’s danger everywhere for the matter of that, isn’t there, grandmother?”

“Oh dear yes,” groaned the old lady; “there are deaths going on all about us, on the dry land, quick as our pulses beat.”

“Ay, true enough, grandmother,” rejoined John; “more deaths are going on ashore than are going on at sea. But why do we talk of death? People part and meet again—why shouldn’t we? There is no end to trouble if once we begin to think of what may happen. A man should put his trust in God”——

“Yes, that first, that chiefly,” interrupted the grandmother.

“And fight his way onward with as much courage and hope and resolution to win as though there were no such thing as death in the world at all. When I bid you good-bye, Dolly, I shan’t say good-bye, perhaps for ever; no! no! I will say good-bye till next summer. Summer is sure to come, and why shouldn’t it bring me back?”

“We will pray God that it will,” exclaimed the grandmother.

Thus these honest hearts talked and hoped; but, in truth, the parting was more bitter than Dolly could bear.

On this, the eve of her husband’s leaving her, she could see no promise in time, no sunshine in the long and dismal blank that stretched before her. She was quite a young bride, had been married only three months; but his presence had already become a habit to her, a portion of her life, a condition of her happiness.

She had engaged herself to him eighteen months since, not many weeks before he sailed on his last voyage; but though she had learnt to love him tenderly as her sweetheart, his going did not then afflict her as it now did. He was only her lover then, but now he was her husband. She was ardent when she became his wife, flushed with the sweet and gracious emotions of her new state, and because the thought of the approaching time threw a shadow upon her happiness, she drove it deep down in her heart, out of sight almost, and so unfitted herself for bravely encountering the certain trouble that was to come.

It had come now; its full weight was upon her; she thought it must break her heart.

When we found them, they had not long returned from the last walk they were to take together for many a weary month; and it was so bitterly sad to them both, that no words can express its pathos. They were surrounded by familiar and beloved objects; and every detail that had heretofore made up the colour and life of their married love now came, each with its special pang of sorrow, to tell them that their dream was dissolved, and that their embraces, their whispers—indeed their very hopes—must be postponed until a period so far off, that it seemed as if no time would ever bring it to them. The poor fellow did his utmost to inspirit her; all the unsubstantial comfort he strove to lay to his own heart he gave to her; but his broken voice made his cheery assurances more sad even than her tears; and down by the little river, when the evening had gathered, and the soft stars were looking upon them, he had given way to his grief, and wept over her as if the form he pressed to him were lifeless.

The story of his courtship and marriage was as simple as the pastoral life of the village in which it occurred.

He had been called to Southbourne by his aunt, who lived there, and who felt herself dying. He had then just returned from a ten months’ voyage. He was fond of his aunt, as the only living relative he had, and came to her at once. At her house—indeed, by her bedside—he met Mrs. Flemming, Dolly’s grandmother. Mrs. Flemming took a fancy to him, admired his handsome face, his honest character, the cordial tenderness of his nature, which he illustrated by his devotion to his sick aunt, and asked him to her house, where he met Dolly.

He fell in love with her; and then, but not till then, he found that Southbourne was an infinitely better place to live in than the neighbourhood of the West India Docks.

Dolly was an innocent little creature, and hardly knew at first what to make of the love she had inspired in her grandmother’s young friend; but by degrees the old story was read through between them, and the last chapter found them betrothed with Mrs. Flemming’s full consent.

Meanwhile the aunt had died and left her little savings to her nephew, who gave the money to Mrs. Flemming to take care of for him until he came home. He was then chief mate, aged twenty-eight. When thirty he was to command a ship, his employers promised. So when he returned, twenty-nine years old, with only another year before him to serve out as a subordinate, he claimed Mrs. Flemming’s leave to marry Dolly; and within three weeks from the time of his arrival they were man and wife.

There could be no hitch: there was nobody’s leave but Mrs. Flemming’s to get. He and Dolly were both of them orphans. Her parents had died when she was a little girl; his, some years before this story begins. His father had been skipper in the service John belonged to, and the shipowners’ favourite captain. Indeed, Captain Holdsworth had served his employers well, and as a token of their gratitude, they kept their eyes on his son; which meant that he was appointed the moment he had passed his examination as first mate, and was to be skipper at an age when a good many in the service were just entering upon their duties as second in command. But this only really argued that the owners knew a smart seaman when they saw him. Young Holdsworth was that; and critical as was the jealousy his quick promotion excited, there was not a man who could be got to say that Jack Holdsworth wasn’t as good a sailor as ever trod upon shipboard.

The first thing he did, when he had the banns put up at St. George’s, was to rent the little house that turned its shoulder upon the Southbourne main road, and furnish it with the money his aunt had left him. That was to be Dolly’s and grandmother’s home. Old Mrs. Flemming had some furniture of her own and an annuity; this last she was to club with John’s pay, which Dolly was to draw every month, and so they would have money enough to keep them as ladies. But the old grandmother’s furniture was very crazy: she of course thought it beautiful and elegant; but this did not prevent the chairs from breaking when John sat on them, nor the legs of the tables from coming off when they were handed through the doors. Such of these relics as did not go to pieces were put into her bedroom, at her particular request, because they enabled her to realise old times; the rest vanished in a cloud of dust into a distant auction-room, and were never heard of more.

The young people’s life was an idyl until the time approached for Holdsworth to sail. They went away for a week after they were married, and Dolly saw life: that is, she saw London, which frightened her, and she was very glad to get home. They had pretty nearly three months before them, and that seemed to give them plenty of time to enjoy themselves in. To be sure, the little cloud upon the horizon grew bigger and bigger every day, and Dolly saw it, and knew that in three months’ time it would have overspread the heavens, and filled the earth with its leaden shadow; but she shrank from looking in that direction, and fixed her eyes on the blue sky overhead, and was as gay under its brightness as if it were never to know an eclipse.

Mrs. Flemming and Dolly had several friends in Southbourne, and during these months tea-parties were pretty frequent. Even the rector asked them to tea, and went to drink tea at their house; and this occasion was a celebrated one, for the rector was a kind, whimsical old gentleman, and insisted on a game of forfeits being played. There were three girls besides Dolly present, so kissing was practicable; and loud was the laughter when it fell to the rector’s lot to kiss Mrs. Flemming, which he did with such a courtier-like air, that, under its influence, the grandmother’s memory unfolded itself; and she instructed the company, in a tremulous voice, and with a lean, underscoring forefinger, in the behaviour of the men of her day, when men were men, etc. etc. Hunt the slipper followed the forfeits, and the evening was closed with port-negus, October ale, and dishes of fruit, sandwiches, and sweetmeats.

Hours so spent would make just such a memory as would keep a man’s heart warm in his bosom under any skies, in any climes, in calm or in storm. Years after the very inscriptions on the tombs of the rector and Mrs. Flemming were scarcely to be read amid the encrusting moss and the toothmarks of time, John Holdsworth remembered that evening: how, flushed as the two Miss Lavernes were into positive prettiness by laughter and Mr. Jackson the curate’s discreet kisses, Dolly looked a queen to them; how her sweet eyes had peeped at him over the rector’s shoulder, as the worthy clergyman claimed his forfeit; how she hung about him and sported, as any infant might, at his side, with her laughter never so ringing and melodious as when her hand was in his. How the kindly grandmother had hobbled about the room, with rusty squeaks of laughter in her mouth, to elude the rector’s reluctant pursuit; how Miss Nelly Laverne blushed, and giggled, and tossed her head about when Mr. Jackson kissed her....

The curtain was falling, the lights were dimming, and now tears and sighs and heartrending yearnings were making a cruel ending of the pleasant summer holiday.