NO woman, even if we may take Dr. John Donne’s interpretation of them to be true, can change her face and show so great a depth of hidden cunning as the sea.
The sea is such a variable companion, when one goes down to it, that at certain times we are almost startled by the alterations in its countenance, that seem strangely to correspond to the quick and fretful changes in the human mind.
Under the shadow of a heavy thunder-cloud, it becomes the wine-dark deep as Homer saw it. But seen again with the afternoon sun upon it, it becomes a Victorian lady, until the tide creeps unnoticed around our feet, and we remember the days of Canute and his fine flatterers, that were, after all, exactly the same pretty gentlemen as the flatterers who live now. And when we have climbed out of the way of the water and are safely seated upon a higher ridge of pebbles, and look again at the sea, it isn’t the same. The sea is no recorder of history now; it has become pure emotion. The sea moans and weeps, shines and laughs, and tells as we gaze a little sadly at it a story of fair love passages: how a fair lady of noble presence stands upon the little rounded pebbles, and takes the hand of a bold fisherman who steps on shore from his boat; and his rough outer garments blowing apart, there is revealed the golden shift of a king.
And then as the light of day wanes and the darkness gathers, and we behold the far reaches of the deep, we are led to contemplate the grand vista of eternity. Then the dark waters gather tumultuously about the golden gate of the grave, behind which stands the Name, spoken with holy dread by all generations of mankind.
Spoken with awe unfathomable. For whatever we may think of the injustice, the cruelty, the pain here upon earth, the Name, and the terror and love of it that hides so silent behind the tomb, must for ever hide, too, the ultimate truth. God, for ever and everlasting, life without end—God.
Mr. Caddy wasn’t of a jealous nature; he would stand beside his gate and tell the ducks that he didn’t mind how often the Mockery girls went out to amuse themselves. ‘All groves and meadows be box-beds wi’ they maidens,’ he would remark happily, knowing well enough that Simon or the girls would tell him all about it, and that he would have the pleasure of handing on all that they had said to the ducks.
However little the American nation may be able to agree here, I must be brave enough to venture the opinion that there is a type of human creature, godlike in nature, who can become very important to his environment by doing nothing. Mr. Caddy had become so, and the importance that he had in Mockery was shared by his ducks.
Mr. Caddy was by nature friendly to the world, though one person resident in it, though not of Mockery, had incurred his displeasure. This was none other than the Mr. Hunt who so frightened Mrs. Moggs when he came to her, talking about money.
Coming by in his motor one day, Mr. Hunt had run over one of Mr. Caddy’s ducks that had become separated from the others and was quacking in the lane. Mr. Caddy did indeed walk as far as the duck and raise it pityingly, and it died in his arms.
The car was gone, and Mr. Hunt with it. Mr. Caddy carried the duck back to the pond and placed it gently upon the floating weeds.
And then he went back to his gate again and stared at the dead duck in the pond.
Mr. Hunt had made an enemy.
But little did the postmaster know how important Mr. Caddy was. Now listen. Mrs. Topple would always choose to pass Mr. Caddy’s cottage on her way to the fields, and now that July was so near to running into August she would inquire of him as from an expert in botany where he supposed she might be able to find the clover with four leaves. Mr. Caddy advised her to let the fields alone, and to begin to search, as she had finished with the children’s lessons, by the roadside.
‘But do ’ee mind Mr. Hunt don’t kill ’ee,’ remarked Mr. Caddy.
Every one in Mockery always wished that God had invented a way to increase the souls to be saved without there having to be children.
‘I do often think,’ said Mr. Caddy, who, before he learned how pleasant his gate was to lean against, had in his extreme youth been a rabbit-catcher—‘I do often think that if they babies, that so soon be running children, had to bolt out of holes into rabbit netting, ’twould be better for all.’
‘But dogs mid have they,’ said Mrs. Pottle, who was passing down the lane, ‘or else they ferrets Simon Cheney do keep in ’s bag.’
‘If they did,’ said Mr. Caddy, after turning over in his mind the hard problem and looking at it from another angle—‘if they did, ’twouldn’t be noticed.’
As though they arose because Mr. Caddy had mentioned them, the children, the very worst among them—indeed, they might well have lived in those cities of the plain—surrounded Mr. Caddy and shouted to him that if he didn’t say where the Nellie-bird had gone to they would stone his ducks to death, as surely and certainly as Mr. Hunt had killed the one he ran over.
‘The fisherman,’ said Mr. Caddy, addressing not the bad children but his good ducks, ‘be where Esther Pottle do bide.’
The children with this news in their ears at once broke and ran, nearly overturning their teacher, who, following Mr. Caddy’s advice, was already beginning to search the roadside for clover to heal her wound.
They ran here and there, that fair summer morning, for their holidays were begun, and they had nothing to do that day, save mischief.
Near to Mr. Gulliver’s cottage they saw Esther. Mr. Gulliver was telling her how he had in the spring-time—and he had never forgotten it—seen an odd monster in the wood—a demon, he called it—who had in a moment of time, a miraculous moment, changed into her cousin Dinah and Master Simon Cheney.
Mr. Gulliver stood aside when the children ran by, and Esther, being unable to turn back and go to her home, fled to the sea.
But of all places to run to in the wide world, when one is being chased by the little sharp-toothed wolves, the sea is least likely to be a preserver; unless one means to dive after the precious pearl of eternity like Mr. Pink.
But Esther’s faith in the fisherman was so strong, that had his boat been a mile from land instead of a yard or two she would have felt she was saved.
As it was, the fleeing Esther, near blinded by her own hair, a pretty thing in the sun, with her frock unfastened by running, cast herself into the boat, and the fisherman pushed off.
Mockery perceiving this act of escape, gave the cries that dogs do when a doe rabbit, whose soft fur they had hoped to get their teeth into, has run into a deep hole in the ground that is beyond their reach.
The pack of Mockery had one voice, and their cries were accompanied by stones, that dropped into the sea about the boat, safe within which Esther had sunk exhausted upon the fisherman’s nets.
‘Wold Caddy do tell ’is ducks,’ shouted the rude children, ‘that every fisherman’s boat wi’ a maiden in en be a fine feather-bed.’
‘Bad Esther, whose mother bain’t married, be in thee’s boat,’ they shouted again, hoping to raise enough virtue in the heart of the fisherman to give him cause for throwing Esther into the sea.
‘And mind blind cow don’t watch ’ee.’
The fisherman stood beside his mast and smiled upon the children, while Esther, whose eyes matched the darkest deeps in colour, though a little dimmed now by love, looked up at the fisherman with all the faith and affection of a happy child.
The summer wind, that had ruffled the waters a little now, sank entirely into a dead calm. The boat’s sail flapped or else hung limp, the tiny waves splashed upon the pebbles, and the children wandered away from the shore, crying out every now and again, in order to make their path the easier, ‘The Nellie-bird!—the Nellie-bird!’