Part 94

It was good to be there, in such good company, on a sunny August morning, and look around and about and down below: the miles and miles of purple moor, the woods of Castle Rohan, the wide North Sea, which turns such a heavenly blue beneath a cloudless sky; the two stone piers, with each its lighthouse, and little people patiently looking across the waves for Heaven knows what! the busy harbor full of life and animation; under our feet the red roofs of the old town and the little clock tower of the market-place; across the stream the long quay with its ale-houses and emporiums and jet shops and lively traffic; its old gabled dwellings and their rotting wooden balconies. And rising out of all this, tier upon tier, up the opposite cliff, the Whitby of the visitors, dominated by a gigantic windmill that is--or was--almost as important a landmark as the old abbey itself.

To the south the shining river ebbs and flows, between its big ship-building yards and the railway to York, under endless moving craft and a forest of masts, now straight on end, now slanting helplessly on one side when there's not water enough to float their keels; and the long row of Cornish fishing-smacks, two or three deep.

How the blue smoke of their cooking wreathes upward in savory whiffs and whirls! They are good cooks, these rovers from Penzance, and do themselves well, and remind us that it is time to go and get lunch at the hotel.

We do, and do ourselves uncommonly well also; and afterwards we take a boat, we four (if the tide serves), and row up for a mile or so to a certain dam at Ruswarp, and there we take another boat on a lovely little secluded river, which is quite independent of tides, and where for a mile or more the trees bend over us from either side as we leisurely paddle along and watch the leaping salmon-trout, pulling now and then under a drooping ash or weeping-willow to gaze and dream or chat, or read out loud from Sylvia's Lovers; Sylvia Robson once lived in a little farm-house near Upgang, which we know well, and at Whitby every one reads about Sylvia Robson; or else we tell stories, or inform each other what a jolly time we're having, and tease old Chucker-out, who gets quite excited, and we admire the discretion with which he disposes of his huge body as ballast to trim the boat, and remains perfectly still in spite of his excitement for fear he should upset us. Indeed, he has been learning all his life how to behave in boats, and how to get in and out of them.

And so on till tea-time at five, and we remember there's a little inn at Sleights, where the scones are good; or, better still, a leafy garden full of raspberry-bushes at Cock Mill, where they give excellent jam with your tea, and from which there are three ways of walking back to Whitby when there's not enough water to row--and which is the most delightful of those three ways has never been decided yet.

Then from the stone pier we watch a hundred brown-sailed Cornish fishing-smacks follow each other in single file across the harbor bar and go sailing out into the west as the sun goes down--a most beautiful sight, of which Marty feels all the mystery and the charm and the pathos, and Chips all the jollity and danger and romance.

Then to the trap, and home all four of us au grand trot, between the hedge-rows and through the splendid woods of Castle Rohan; there at last we find all the warmth and light and music and fun of Marsfield, and many good things besides: supper, dinner, tea--all in one; and happy, healthy, hungry, indefatigable boys and girls who've been trapesing over miles and miles of moor and fell, to beautiful mills and dells and waterfalls--too many miles for slender Marty or little Chips; or even Bob and Chucker-out--who weigh thirty-two stone between them, and are getting lazy in their old age, and fat and scant of breath.

Whitby is an ideal place for young people; it almost makes old people feel young themselves there when the young are about; there is so much to do.

I, being the eldest of the large party, chummed most of the time with the two youngest and became a boy again; so much so that I felt myself almost a sneak when I tactfully tried to restrain such exuberance of spirits on their part as might have led them into mischief: indeed it was difficult not to lead them into mischief myself; all the old inventiveness (that had got me and others into so many scrapes at Brossard's) seemed to come back, enhanced by experience and maturity.

At all events, Marty and Chips were happier with me than without--of that I feel quite sure, for I tested it in many ways.

I always took immense pains to devise the kinds of excursion that would please them best, and these never seemed to fail of their object; and I was provident and well skilled in all details of the commissariat (Chips was healthily alimentative); I was a very Bradshaw at trains and times and distances, and also, if I am not bragging too much, and making myself out an Admirable Crichton, extremely weatherwise, and good at carrying small people pickaback when they got tired.

Marty was well up in local folk-lore, and had mastered the history of Whitby and St. Hilda, and Sylvia Robson; and of the old obsolete whaling-trade, in which she took a passionate interest; and fixed poor little Chips's mind with a passion for the Polar regions (he is now on the coast of Senegambia).

We were much on the open sea ourselves, in cobles; sometimes the big dog with us--"Joomboa," as the fishermen called him; and they marvelled at his good manners and stately immobility in a boat.

One afternoon--a perfect afternoon--we took tea at Runswick, from which charming little village the Whitbys take their second title, and had ourselves rowed round the cliffs to Staithes, which we reached just before sunset; Chips and his sister also taking an oar between them, and I another. There, on the brink of the little bay, with the singularly quaint and picturesque old village behind it, were fifty fishing-boats side by side waiting to be launched, and all the fishing population of Staithes were there to launch them--men, women and children; as we landed we were immediately pressed into the service.

Marty and Chips, wild with enthusiasm, pushed and yo-ho'd with the best; and I also won some commendation by my hearty efforts in the common cause. Soon the coast was clear of all but old men and boys, women and children, and our four selves; and the boats all sailed westward, in a cluster, and lost themselves in the golden haze. It was the prettiest sight I ever saw, and we were all quite romantic about it.

Chucker-out held a small court on the sands, and was worshipped and fed with stale fish by a crowd of good-looking and agreeable little lasses and lads who called him "Joomboa," and pressed Chips and Marty for biographical details about him, and were not disappointed. And I smoked a pipe of pipes with some splendid old salts, and shared my Honeydew among them.

Nous étions bien, là!

So sped those happy weeks--with something new and exciting every day--even on rainy days, when we wore waterproofs and big india-rubber boots and sou'westers, and Chucker-out's coat got so heavy with the soak that he could hardly drag himself along: and we settled, we three at least, that we would never go to France or Scotland--never any more--never anywhere in the world but Whitby, jolly Whitby--

Ah me! l'homme propose....

Marty always wore a red woollen fisherman's cap that hung down behind over the waving masses of her long, thick yellow hair--a blue jersey of the elaborate kind women knit on the Whitby quay--a short, striped petticoat like a Boulogne fishwife's, and light brown stockings on her long, thin legs.

I have a photograph of her like that, holding a shrimping-net; with a magnifying-glass, I can see the little high-light in the middle of each jet-black eye--and every detail and charm and perfection of her childish face. Of all the art-treasures I've amassed in my long life, that is to me the most beautiful, far and away--but I can't look at it yet for more than a second at a time....

"O tempo passato, perchè non ritorni?"

As Mary is so fond of singing to me sometimes, when she thinks I've got the blues. As if I haven't always got the blues!

All Barty's teaching is thrown away on me, now that he's not here himself to point his moral--

"Et je m'en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m'emporte Deçà, delà, Pareil à la Feuille morte...."

Heaven bless thee, Mary dear, rossignolet de mon âme! Would thou wert ever by my side! fain would I keep thee for myself in a golden cage, and feed thee on the tongues of other nightingales, so thou mightst warble every day, and all day long. By some strange congenital mystery the native tuning of thy voice is such, for me, that all the pleasure of my past years seems to go forever ringing in every single note. Thy dear mother speaks again, thy gay young father rollicks and jokes and sings, and little Marty laughs her happy laugh.

Da capo, e da capo, Mary--only at night shouldst thou cease from thy sweet pipings, that I might smoke myself to sleep, and dream that all is once more as it used to be.

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