CHAPTER XII.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEA.

It very often happens that the so-called equinoctial gales are behind their time, and do not arrive until Night has undoubtedly made good her victory over Day. When such is the case, we have a mild November, with soft south-westerly breezes varying in strength according to the lie of the land or the individual experience of farmer or townsman. At sea it blows hard enough in all good sooth, and there may be watery eyes at the wheel or on the forecastle; but there are no frozen fingers aloft, which is in itself a mercy. There is a good hearty roar through the shrouds, and certain parts of the deck are always wet, but the clear horizon and rushing clouds overhead are full of brave exhilaration.

On land, things are dirtier, more especially under foot, where the leaves lose all their crackle and subside odorously into mud. Water stands on the roadways, and in ruts elsewhere; and curled beech-leaves float thereon in vague navigation, half waterlogged like any foreign timber-ship. The tilled land, bearing in its bosom seed for next year's crops, or merely waiting fallow, is damp and soft and black; men walking thereon--rustic or sportsman--make huge impressions, and carry quite a weight on either foot. The trees stand bare and leafless, though rapid green mouldy growths relieve the wet monochrome of bark or rind.

Here, again, as at sea, the atmosphere is singularly gay and translucent. Things afar off seem near, and new details in the landscape become apparent. Any little bit of colour seems to gleam, almost to glow, and the greenness of the meadow is startling. Although there is an autumnal odour on the breeze, it has no sense of melancholy. The clouds may be gray, but they are fraught with life, and one knows that there is brightness behind. With motion, melancholy cannot live.

The effect of this soft breeziness upon different people is apparent to the most casual of observers. It freshens sailors up, and they pull on their oilskins with a cheery pugnacity; tillers of the land are busy, and wonder how long it will last; and hunting-men (provided only the land be not _too_ heavy) are wild with a joy which has no rival in times of peace; timid riders grow bold, and bold men reckless. It is only folks who stay indoors that complain of depression. For myself, I confess it makes me long to be at sea, and although I can see nothing but sky and chimney-pots over the ink-stand, the very shades of colour, of dark and light, are before me if I close my eyes. It is a long rolling sweep of greeny gray, with here and there a tip of dirty white, and the line of horizon is hard and clear enough to please the veriest novice with the sextant.

In November, 1876, there were a few days of such weather as I have attempted to describe, and Brenda, who spent that time on the east coast of England, in a manner learnt to associate soft winds and clear airs with the much-maligned county of Suffolk. All through the rest of her life, through the long aimless years during which she learnt to love the verdant plains with their bare mud sea-walls, she only thought of Suffolk as connected with and forming part of soft autumnal melancholy. She never again listened to the wail of the sea-gull without involuntarily waiting for the cheery cry of the snipe. Never again did she look on a vast plain without experiencing a sense of incompleteness which could only have been dispelled by the murmurous voice of the sea breaking on to shingle.

The human mind is strangely inconsistent in its reception and retention of impressions. As in modern photography, the length of exposure seems to be of little consequence. Without any tangible reason, and for no obvious use, certain incidents remain engraved upon our memory, while the detail of other events infinitely more important passes away, and only the result remains.

Brenda and Alice only passed four days in the little hamlet selected for them by Theodore Trist as a safe hiding-place; but during that time a great new influence came into Brenda's soul.

She had always been sensitive to the beauties of Nature. A glorious landscape, a golden sunset, or the soft silver of moon-rise, had spoken to her in that silent language of Nature which appeals to the most prosaic heart at times; but never until now had one of earth's great wonders established a longing in her soul--a longing for its constant company which is naught else but passionate love. She had hitherto looked upon the sea as an inconvenience to be overcome before reaching other countries. Perhaps she was aware that this inconvenience possessed at times a charm, but not until now had she conceived it possible that she, Brenda Gilholme, should ever love it with an insatiable longing such as the love of sailors. On board the _Hermione_ she had passed her apprenticeship; had, as the admiral was wont to say, learnt the ropes; but never had she loved the sea for its own grand incomprehensible sake as she loved it now.

Its gray mournful humours seemed to sympathize with her own thoughts. Its monotonous voice, rising and falling on the shingle shore, spoke in unmistakable language, and told of other things than mere earthly joys and sorrows.

I who write these lines learnt to love the sea many years ago, when I had naught else but water to look upon--from day to day, from morning till night, through the day and through the darkness, week after week, month after month. The love crept into my heart slowly and very surely, like the love of a boy, growing into manhood, for some little maiden growing by his side. And now, whether on its bosom or looking on it from the noisy shore, that love is as fresh as ever. The noise of breaking water thrills the man as it thrilled the boy--the smell of tar, even, makes me grave.

Men may love their own country, but the sea, with its ever-varying humours, kind and cruel by turn, exacts a fuller devotion. A woman once told me of her love for her native country. She happened to be a practical, prosaic, middle-aged woman of the world. We were seated on a gorgeous sofa in a blaze of artificial light, amidst artificial smiles, listening to the murmurs of artificial conversation. Something moved her; some word of mine fell into the well of her memory and set the still pool all rippling. I listened in silence. She spoke of Dartmoor, and I think I understood her. At the end I said:

'What Dartmoor is to you, the sea is to me;' and she smiled in a strange, sympathetic way.

That is the nearest approach that I have met of a love for land which is akin to the love of sea.

In Brenda's case, as in all, this new-found passion influenced her very nature. If love--love, I mean, of a woman--will alter a man's whole mode of life, of action, and of thought, surely these lesser passions leave their mark as well.

Undoubtedly the girl caught from the great sea some of its patient contentment; for the ocean is always content, whether it be glistening beneath a cloudless sky, or rolling, sweeping onwards before the wind in broad gray curves. Those who work upon the great waters are different from other men in the possession of a certain calm equanimity, which is like no other condition of mind. It is the philosophy of the sea.

At first Brenda had dreaded the thought of being imprisoned, as it were, in this tiny east coast fishing village with her sister. This was no outcome of a waning love, but rather a proof that her feelings towards her sister were as true and loyal as ever. She feared that Alice would lower herself in her sight. She dreaded the necessary _tête-à-têtes_ because she felt that her sister's character had not improved, and could not well bear the searching light of a close familiarity.

After the first hour or two, however, the sisters appeared to settle down into a routine of life which in no way savoured of familiarity. The last two years had hopelessly severed them, and now that they were alone together the gulf seemed to widen between them.

Brenda was aware that some great change had come over her life or that of her sister. They no longer possessed a single taste or a single interest in common. Whether the fault lay entirely at her own door, or whether Alice were partially or wholly to blame, the girl did not attempt to decide. She merely felt that it would be simple hypocrisy to pretend a familiarity she did not feel. Yet she loved her sister, despite all. The tie of blood is strangely strong in some people; with others it is no link at all.

After an uncomfortable meal had been bravely sat out subsequent to Brenda's arrival, the younger sister announced her intention of going out for a long ramble down the coast. Alice complained that she had no energy, predicted that the dismal flat land and muddy sea were about to prove fatal to her health, and subsided into a yellow-backed novel. This was a fair sample of their life in exile.

Alice deluged her weak intellect with fiction of no particular merit, and Brenda learnt to love the sea. For her the bleak deserted shore, the long, low waves rolling in continuously, the dirty sweeping of sand-banks near the shore, and the endless fields of shingle, acquired a mournful beauty which few can find in such things.

Only once was reference made to Theodore Trist, and then the subject was tacitly tabooed, much to the relief of Brenda. This happened during the first evening of their joint exile. Doubtless a sudden fit of communicativeness came over Alice just as they come to the rest of us--at odd moments, without any particular _raison d'être_.

The miserable shuffling waiter had removed all traces of their simple evening meal, and Brenda was looking between the curtains across the sea, which shimmered beneath the rays of a great yellow moon. Alice had taken up her novel, but its pages had no interest for her just then. She had appropriated the only easy-chair in the room, and was leaning back against its worn leather stuffing with a discontented look upon her lovely face. Her small red mouth had acquired of late a peculiar 'set' expression, as if the lips were habitually pressed close with an effort.

'Theo,' she said, without looking towards the tall, slim form by the window, 'has changed.'

Brenda moved the curtain a little more to one side, so that the old wooden rings rattled on the pole. Then she leant her shoulder against the framework of the window, and turned her face towards the firelight. Her gentle gaze rested on the beautiful form gracefully reclining in the deep chair. She noted the easy repose of each limb, the proud poise of the golden head, and the clearcut profile showing white against the dingy background. There was no glamour in her eyes, such as would have blinded the judgment of nine men out of ten; but there was in its place the great tie of sisterly love.

Brenda, looking on that beauty, knew that it was the curse of her sister's life. Instead of envying her, she was mentally meting out pity and allowance.

'I suppose,' she said, without much encouragement in her manner, 'that we have all changed in one way or another.'

'But Theo has changed in more than one way.'

'Has he?'

'Yes. His manner is quite different from what it used to be; and he seems self-absorbed--less energetic, less sympathetic.'

Brenda did not answer at once. She turned slightly, and looked out of the window, resting her fingers upon the old wooden framework.

'You see,' she suggested, 'he has other interests in life now. He is a great man, and has ambition. It is only natural that he should be absorbed in his own affairs.'

Mrs. Huston raised her small foot, and rested the heel of her slipper on the brass fender, while she contemplated the diminutive limb with some satisfaction.

'I have met one or two great men,' she said meditatively, 'and I invariably found them very much like ordinary beings, rather less immersed in 'shop,' perhaps, and quite as interesting--not to say polite.'

Brenda winced.

'Was Theo not polite?'

'Hardly, my dear.'

As Mrs. Huston delivered herself of this opinion, with a faint tinge of bitterness in her manner, she turned and looked towards her sister, as if challenging her to attempt a palliation of Trist's conduct.

Brenda neither moved nor spoke. The moonlight, flooding through the diamond panes of the window, made her face look pale and wan. There were deep shadows about her lips. Without, upon the shingle, the sea boomed continuously with a low, dreamlike hopelessness.

I wish I were a great artist, to be able to paint a picture of that small parlour in an east coast village inn. But there would be a greater skill required than the mere technicalities of art. These would be needed to deal successfully with the cross-lights of utterly different hues--the cold, green-tinted moonlight, the ruddy glow of burning driftwood washed from the deck of some Baltic trader; and the reflection of each in turn upon quaint old bureaux, bright with the polish of half a dozen generations; gleaming upon Indian curio, and shimmering over the glass of dim engravings. All this would require infinite skill; but no brush or pencil could convey the old-day mournfulness that seemed to hang in the atmosphere. Perhaps it found birth in the murmuring rise and fall of restless waves, or in the flicker of the fire, in the quick crackle of the sodden wood. My picture should be called 'The Contrast,' and in the gloom of the low ceiling I should bring out with loving care two graceful forms--two lovely faces.

The one--the more beautiful--in all the rosiness of young life, glowing in the firelight. The other, pale and wan, with an exquisite beauty, delicate and yet strong, resolute and yet refined. Of two working in the field, one is taken, the other remaineth. Around us are many workers, and of every two we look upon, one seems to have the preference. One has greater joy, the other greater sorrow; and, strive as we will, think as we will, argue as we will, we can never tell 'why.' We can never satisfy that great question of the human mind. Life has been called many things: I can express it in less than a word--in a mere symbol--?--a note of interrogation, the largest at the compositor's command.

In this great field of ours, where we all work blindly, many are taken, and many left. Moreover, those who would wish to go remain, and those who cling to work are taken. She who grindeth best passeth first.

Brenda never answered her sister's challenge. She turned her eyes away, facing the cold moonlight, staring at the silver sea with eyes that saw no beauty there.

'O God!' she whispered, glancing upwards into the glowing heavens with that instinct which comes alike to pagan and Christian, 'send a great war, so that Theo may go to it.'