A Singer from the Sea, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [best story books to read TXT] 📗

a grand future before you?"

"I do care. I care for myself. I care a thousand times more for father and mother. A word against my good name would kill them. They would never hold up their heads any more. And then, however bad a name the public gave me, I should give myself a worse one; I should indeed! Night and day my soul would never cease saying to me: 'Denas Penelles, you are a murderess! Hanging is too little for you. Get out of this life and go to your own place'--and you know where that would be."

"You silly, bigoted little Methodist! People do not die of grief in these days, they have too much to do. You would soon be able to send them a great deal of money, and that would put all right."

"For shame, Roland! Little you know of St. Penfer fishermen, nothing at all you know of John and Joan Penelles, if you think a city full of gold would atone to them for my dishonour. What is the use of going around about our words when there are straight ones enough to say? I will go to London as your wife, or I will not go at all."

There was a momentary expression on Roland's face which might have terrified Denas if she had seen it, but her gaze was far outward; she was looking down on the waves and the boats of St. Penfer and on one little cottage on its shingle. And Roland's hasty glance into her resolute face convinced him that all parleying was useless. He was angry and could not quite control himself. His voice showed decided pique as he answered:

"Very well, Denas. Take care of your own honour, by all means; mine is of no value, of course."

"If you think marrying me makes it of no value, take care of your own honour, Roland. I will not be your wife; no, indeed. And as for London, I will not go near it. And as for my voice, it may be worth money, but it is not worth my honour, and my good name, and my father's and mother's life. Why should I sing for strangers? I will sing for my father and the fishers on the sea; and I will sing in the chapel--and there is an end of the matter."

She rose with such an air of decision and wounded feeling that Roland involuntarily thought of her attitude when Elizabeth offended her. From the position taken at that hour she had never wavered; she was still as angry at Mrs. Burrell as she had been when she left the Court in the first outburst of her indignation. And she was so handsome in her affected indifference and her real indignation that Roland was ready to sacrifice everything rather than lose her. He let all other considerations slip away from him; he vowed that his chief longing, his most passionate desire, was to marry her--to make her his and his only; and that nothing but a chivalric sense of the wrong he might be doing her future had made him hesitate. And then he eloquently praised himself for such a nicety of honour, and tried to make her understand how really noble he had been in his self-denial, and how hard it was for him to be accused of the very thing he was trying to avoid. And he looked so injured, with his beautiful eyes full of tears, that Denas was privately ashamed of herself, and fearful that she had in defence of her modesty gone beyond proper boundaries.

Then the subject of their marriage was frankly discussed. Roland was now honest and earnest enough, and yet Denas felt that the charm of the great question and answer had been lost in considering it. Spontaneity--that subtle element of all that is lovely and enchanting--had flown away at the first suspicion of constraint. Some sweet illusion that had always hung like a halo over this grand decision evaded her consciousness; the glorious ideal had become a reality and lost all its enchantments in the change.

After a long discussion, it was finally arranged that Roland should meet Denas at a small way-station about four miles distant on the following Monday evening. From there they could take a train to Plymouth, and at Plymouth there was a Wesleyan minister whom Denas had seen and who she felt sure would marry them. From Plymouth to Exeter, Salisbury, and London was a straight road, and yet one which had many asides and not too easy to follow; though as to any fear of interruptions, they were hardly worth considering. Denas would leave her home as usual on Monday morning, and her parents would have no expectation of seeing her until the following Friday night. By that time she would be settled in London--she would have been Roland's wife for nearly four days.

These arrangements were made on Friday night, and on the following morning Denas went home very early. As she took the cliff-road she felt that the spirit of change had entered into her heart and her imagination. The familiar path had become monotonously dreary; she had a kind of pity for the people who had not her hope of a speedy escape from it. The desolate winter beach, the lonely boats, the closed cottages--how inexorably common they looked! She felt that there must be something in the world better for her than such mean poverty. Roland's words had indeed induced this utter weariness and contempt for the conditions of her life, but the conditions themselves were thus made to give the most eloquent sanction to his advice and entreaties.

And when a girl has set her face toward a wrong road, nothing is sadder in life than the general certainty there is that every small event will urge her forward on it. Usually the home-coming of Denas was watched for and seen afar off, and some special dainty was simmering on the hob for her refreshment. There was all the pleasant flurry that belongs to love's warm welcome. But she had delayed her return in order to spend the evening with Roland, and the environments of the morning had not the same air of easy happiness that attaches itself to the evening hours.

Joan was elbow-deep in her week's cleaning and baking. John had the uncomfortable feeling of a man who knows himself in the way. He had only loitered around in order to see Denas and be sure that all was well with his girl. Then he was a trifle disappointed that she had not brought him his weekly paper. He went silently off to the boats, and Denas was annoyed and reproved by his patient look of disappointment. Women who are cleaning and baking are often, what is called by people less troublesomely employed, cross. Denas was sure her mother was cross and a little unreasonable. She had not time to listen to the village gossip; "it would keep till evening," she said.

Then she bid Denas hurry up and get her father's heavy guernsey mended and his bottle of water filled, ready for the boat. "They be going out on the noon ebb," she said, "and back with the midnight tide, and so take thought for the Sabbath; for your father, he do have to preach over to Pendree to-morrow, and the sermon more on his mind than the fishing--God help us!"

"Will father expect me to walk with him to Pendree to-morrow, mother? It is too far; I cannot walk so far."

"Will he expect you? Not as I know by, Denas--if you don't want to go. There be girls as would busy all to do so. But there! it is easy seen you are neither fatherish or motherish these days."

"I wish father was rich enough to stay at home and never go to sea again."

"That be a bit of nonsense! Your father has had a taking to the sea all his life; and he never could abide to be boxed up on land. Aw, my dear, John Penelles is a busker of a fisherman! The storm never yet did blow that down-daunted him! Tris says it is a great thing to see your father stand smiling by the wheel when the lightning be flying all across the elements and the big waves be threatening moment by moment to make a mouthful of the boat. That be the Penelles' way, my dear; they come from a good old haveage;[3] but there, then, it be whist poor speed we make when our tongues tire our hands."

"'Tis like a storm as it can be, mother."

"Aw, then, a young girl should say brave words or no words at all. 'Tis not your work to forespeak bad weather, and I wish you wouldn't do it, Denas; I do for sure."

In an hour John came back and had a mouthful of meat and bread, but he was hurried and anxious, and said he had not come yet to his meat-list and would be off about his business. Then Joan asked him concerning the weather, and he answered:

"The gulls do fly high, and that do mean a breeze; but there be no danger until they fly inland. The boats will be back before midnight, my dear."

"If the wind do let them, John. Denas says it be on its contrary old ways again."

"My old dear, we be safest when the storm-winds blow; for then God do be keeping the lookout for us. Joan, my wife, 'tis not your business to be looking after the wind, nor mine either; for just as long as John Penelles trusts his boat to the Great Pilot, it is sure and certain to come into harbour right side up. Now, my dear, give me a big jug of milk, with a little boiling water in it to take off the edge of the cold, and then I'll away for the gray fish--if so be God fills the net on either side the boat for us."

"Hark, father! The wind has turned to a north-easter--a bad wind on this coast."

"Not it, Denas. What was it you read me in that story paper? Some verses by a great and good man who have been in a stiff north-easter, or else he never could have got the true grip of it:


"'Welcome, wild north-easter!
Come, and strong within us
Stir the seaman's blood,
Bracing brain and sinew;
Come, thou wind of God!'"


"That is not right, and that is not the whole of it, father."

"Aw, 'tis enough, my dear; all that the soul wants, the memory can hold to--'tis enough. Good-bye, and God's keeping."

He drank his warm milk, buttoned close his pilot coat, and went off toward the boats. Denas had no fear for him, but Joan had not learned trust from her husband's trust; the iron ring of the wind, the black sea, the wild sky with its tattered remnants of clouds, made her full of apprehension. She hurried her work and was silent over it; while Denas sat in the little window sewing, and occasionally letting her eyes wander outward over the lonely beach and the homely "cob" cottages of the fishers.

It was a solitary, lonesome, dreary-looking spot on that bleak winter day; and life inside those tiny houses was restricted and full of limitations. Denas thought of them all, but she weighed and measured the life without taking into account the love that sat on each hearthstone--the love that turned the simple houses into homes and the plain, hard-working men into husbands and sons and brothers and lovers and saw