Chapter IV

FROM ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW. MRS. KINGSCOTE'S STORY.

I HAVE persuaded my friend, Mrs. Murchison, to put down on paper certain recollections of certain events which happened a few years since—not easily, since she is diffident, and not aware of her own unusual powers. But at last she yielded, and a beginning is made which she has shown to me. My impulse, thereupon, is to fill up certain gaps in her story; adding particulars, for my own pleasure, which she has omitted.

"Friend," I call her; and why not? Though we occupy different positions in life, that need be no bar to friendship. Somebody has defined friendship to be "a strong and habitual inclination in two people to promote the good of one another"—an inclination springing, of course, from mutual love. Well, I love Mrs. Murchison, and Mrs. Murchison loves me; I would do aught I could for the good of Mrs. Murchison, and she would do aught she could for my good. Moreover, I trust Mrs. Murchison, and Mrs. Murchison trusts me. I understand Mrs. Murchison, and Mrs. Murchison understands me. What does all this mean, if not friendship?

It is a true and tried friendship also; not an affair of last week. Years have passed, and many things have happened since the day when Mrs. Murchison, with her husband and children, came down for a few hours from Littleburgh to Ermespoint, fully intending to return the same evening. How powerless we are to carry out our intentions, unless God wills that we should! How seldom, as we go through life, have we the least idea of what lies ahead! A precipice may be just three steps in advance, yet we often do not see it until we are on the brink. All this would be very terrible, if we did not know that our steps are guided and guarded by a Father's Hand. If He conducts to the precipice-edge, then all is well. Nay, even if He bids us plunge over— to death—what is it but a swift and sure passage Home? I mean, with those who know and love and obey Him.

We had not been long at Ermespoint, and the house was still in confusion. My boy, Bertram, was expected home that day; and Ellie and I went to meet him at the station. He was just sixteen, and very delicate, from the effects of a severe illness some months earlier. He came rushing to us, out of the train, full of spirit as usual, and poured out a hurried jumble about having been "taken rather" on the way, and somebody having been "so good" to him.

It was difficult to make out exactly what he meant; but I followed him across the platform to the little group of excursionists.

"You've got to thank her, mother," Bertram whispered energetically.

The picture comes back to me now, as I recall that day. A strong broad-built working-man, respectful and respectable, in his Sunday suit, holding by the hand one of the prettiest little children I have ever seen—poor tiny Bessie! She had the sweetest face, so shy and smiling. Two other children and a biggish boy were there; but after Bessie, I noticed chiefly the mother. She was young-looking still, though over thirty-five in age; and remarkable for her extreme neatness and sobriety of dress, together with a gentle placid anxious face—placid and anxious together. That was curious. A rather thin face, but not too thin, not long or bony; with high cheek-bones, and deep-set tender wistful eyes; while the mouth was quiet, yet disposed to be tremulous. Something about Mrs. Murchison won my trust and my liking on the spot.

Only a few words were exchanged between us then; but Bertram said he would find them later on the shore; and he gave me no peace till I promised to have the whole family in to tea in the basement-room. We were still so busy, unpacking and arranging, and the house was in so much confusion, that I confess I did hesitate for a few minutes. It seemed to me that the maids had enough to do. However, I knew they never minded anything if it were for Bertram,—he was always such a favourite,—and I gave way, though only on condition that he would stay quietly indoors till after lunch.

Then he went out with Ellie and Rosamund; and what follows Mrs. Murchison has to a great extent told—better, I am sure, than I could, for she has an extraordinary memory for conversations. I could not repeat one tenth part of what I said to her that sorrowful day; but she says it is all correct. Sometimes I tell her she makes up out of her own head; and then she smiles and shakes the said head, and answers only, "You know better, ma'am." So I do: she is true to the backbone, and her memory is as true as herself.

We had been so short a time in Ermespoint, and so busy while there, as to have had little leisure yet for learning much about it. Ellie and Rose had been down to the beach several times, but only near at hand—except just once, the day before, when old nurse and they went along the shore under the west cliff; and they came back full of the beauty of the place. My husband took a stroll the same way in the evening; and he spoke, on his return, of the remarkable overhanging of the cliffs. But still he had no thought of danger. No warning-boards were up; and it seemed inconceivable that people should be quietly left to run into such peril, without a word being said to hinder them.

We did not know till later that warning-boards had once been up, and had been removed,—nobody could precisely say by whom or for what reason. No doubt it was for the interest of certain bathing-machine owners, that people should not be frightened away; yet if that were all—! One finds it difficult to believe in such selfishness—such recklessness of human life!

However—so things were, and remonstrances had been made by one or two gentlemen living at Ermespoint without avail. My husband's predecessor tried to rouse people to a sense of the danger; but nobody would listen, or at least nobody cared to act. I suppose it was hopeless, until somebody's life should be forfeited, and poor little Bessie was the victim. It might have been all the Murchisons, and all my children, if the landslip had come just half-an-hour earlier, when the whole party were close up under the cliff.

I never can look back to that day without a shudder; thinking how Philip and I might have been left childless. We had lost two little ones already; and if the three others had been taken—But mercifully we were spared!

I don't know how I told Mrs. Murchison of little Bessie's death. It was one of the most terrible things I have ever had to do. She seems to remember all I said, but I do not. I only remember her look,— the sad despairing certainty that one was gone; the longing and the dread to know which; the bitterness of that sorrowful cry,—"Oh, not Jervis! Oh, not my Bessie!"—then the strange quiet with which she listened to my poor attempts to comfort; and the patient begging to go to her child. Perhaps that did her good! the little one looked so unutterably sweet.

And then she was enough herself to be able to try and comfort my poor broken-down Bertram. The boy had been in such an agony, blaming himself for taking them all to that part of the beach, talking as if the little one's death lay at his door. I sent him to her when I was not in the room; but he was gone again before I returned.

Nurse Coles' new little home was very near; not a hundred yards from our garden gate. If it had been more, Mrs. Murchison could hardly have walked so far.

We had had Nurse Coles near us for years, ever since she had been out of a place, and we thought then that she would remain near us always. She was devoted to my husband, and to all of us; a good faithful servant of the old type. She belonged to us, and we to her; her interests were ours, and ours were hers.

My husband was on the beach almost immediately after the fall of rock took place: for the news spread like wildfire, and he happened to be passing near. He thought of Nurse Coles' rooms the first thing, and when Murchison and little Bessie were dug out, he had poor Murchison taken at once to Mrs. Coles, as well as Louey; while I think it was my thought to have little Bessie's body brought to our basement-room. But everything at first seemed in such a strange confusion.

Murchison was still unconscious when we reached the cottage, and the doctor was only just gone, and Nurse Coles was tending him.

"It was a bad case," she whispered to me; "the poor fellow was so frightfully crushed and hurt all over; two ribs and one arm broken, and both head and back injured—nobody could say how much."

"Is there any hope for him?" Mrs. Murchison asked; and I saw that she had overheard every word.

Nurse Coles shook her head dubiously.

"The doctor didn't say. She didn't suppose he could tell yet. It was a bad case, any how, and they'd got a long bout of nursing before them."