In the Roar of the Sea. S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
fine weather broken in upon by the gale had returned; the sun shone in unhindered at the window, and blazed on the children’s hair; the brass nails, polished by friction, twinkled as little suns, but were naught in lustre to the gorgeous red of the hair of the twins, for the first were but brass, and the other of living gold.
Two more lonely beings could hardly be discovered on the face of the earth—at all events in the peninsula of Cornwall—but the sense of this loneliness was summed in the heart of Judith, and was there articulate; Jamie was but dimly conscious of discomfort and bereavement. She knew what her father’s death entailed on her, or knew in part, and conjectured more. Had she been left absolutely alone in the world her condition would have been less difficult than it was actually, encumbered with her helpless brother. Swimming alone in the tossing sea, she might have struck out with confidence that she could keep her head above water, but it was quite otherwise when clinging to her was a poor, half-witted boy, incapable of doing anything to save himself, and all whose movements tended only to embarrass her. Not that she regretted for an instant having to care for Jamie, for she loved him with sisterly and motherly love combined, intensified in force by fusion; if to her a future seemed inconceivable without Jamie, a future without him would be one without ambition, pleasure, or interest.
The twin brother was very like her, with the same beautiful and abundant hair, delicate in build, and with the same refined face, but without the flashes of alternating mood that lightened and darkened her face. His had a searching, bewildered, distressed expression on it—the only expression it ever bore except when he was out of temper, and then it mirrored on its surface his inward ill-humor. His was an appealing face, a face that told of a spirit infantile, innocent, and ignorant, that would never grow stronger, but which could deteriorate by loss of innocence—the only charge of which it was capable. The boy had no inherent naughtiness in him, but was constantly falling into mischief through thoughtlessness, and he was difficult to manage because incapable of reasoning.
What every one saw—that he never would be other than what he was—Judith would not admit. She acknowledged his inaptitude at his books, his frivolity, his restlessness, but believed that these were infirmities to be overcome, and that when overcome the boy would be as other boys are.
Now these children—they were aged eighteen, but Jamie looked four years younger—sat in their father’s chair, clinging to each other, all in all to one another, for they had no one else to love and who loved them.
“Listen to me, Jamie.”
“Yes, Ju, I be——”
“Don’t say ‘I be’—say ‘I am.’ ”
“Yes, Ju.”
“Jamie, dear!” she drew her arm tighter about him; her heart was bounding, and every beat caused her pain. “Jamie, dear, you know that, now dear papa is gone, and you will never see him in this world again, that——”
“Yes, Ju.”
“That I have to look to you, my brother, to stand up for me like a man, to think and do for me as well as for yourself—a brave, stout, industrious fellow.”
“Yes, Ju.”
“I am a girl, and you will soon be a man, and must work for both of us. You must earn the money, and I will spend it frugally as we both require it. Then we shall be happy again, and dear papa in Paradise will be glad and smile on us. You will make an effort, will you not, Jamie? Hitherto you have been able to run about and play and squander your time, but now serious days have come upon us, and you must fix your mind on work and determine—Jamie—mind, screw your heart to a strong determination to put away childish things and be a man, and a strength and a comfort to me.”
He put up his lips to kiss her cheek, but could not reach it, as her head was leaning on her hand away from him.
“What are you fidgeting at, my dear?” she asked, without stirring, feeling his body restless under her arm.
“A nail is coming out,” he answered.
It was so; whilst she had been speaking to him he was working at one of the brass studs, and had loosened its bite in the chair.
“Oh, Jamie! you are making work by thus drawing out a nail. Can you not help me a little, and reduce the amount one has to think of and do? You have not been attending to what I said, and I was so much in earnest.” She spoke in a tone of discouragement, and the tone, more than the words, impressed the susceptible heart of the boy. He began to cry.
“You are cross.”
“I am not cross, my pet; I am never cross with you, I love you too dearly; but you try my patience sometimes, and just now I am overstrained—and then I did want to make you understand.”
“Now papa’s dead I’ll do no more lessons, shall I?” asked Jamie, coaxingly.
“You must, indeed, and with me instead of papa.”
“Not rosa, rosæ?”
“Yes, rosa, rosæ.”
Then he sulked.
“I don’t love you a bit. It is not fair. Papa is dead, so I ought not to have any more lessons. I hate rosa, rosæ!” He kicked the legs of the chair peevishly with his heels. As his sister said nothing, seemed to be inattentive—for she was weary and dispirited—he slapped her cheek by raising his hand over his head.
“What, Jamie, strike me, your only friend?”
Then he threw his arms round her again, and kissed her. “I’ll love you; only, Ju, say I am not to do rosa, rosæ!”
“How long have you been working at the first declension in the Latin grammar, Jamie?”
He tried for an instant to think, gave up the effort, laid his head on her shoulder, and said:
“I don’t know and don’t care. Say I am not to do rosa, rosæ!”
“What! not if papa wished it?”
“I hate the Latin grammar!”
For a while both remained silent. Judith felt the tension to which her mind and nerves had been subjected, and lapsed momentarily into a condition of something like unconsciousness, in which she was dimly sensible of a certain satisfaction rising out of the pause in thought and effort. The boy lay quiet, with his head on her shoulder, for a while, then withdrew his arms, folded his hands on his lap, and began to make a noise by compressing the air between the palms.
“There’s a finch out there going ‘chink! chink!’ and listen, Ju, I can make ‘chink! chink!’ too.”
Judith recovered herself from her distraction, and said:
“Never mind the finch now. Think of what I say. We shall have to leave this house.”
“Why?”
“Of course we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the better. It is no more ours.”
“Yes, it is ours. I have my rabbits here.”
“Now that papa is dead it is no longer ours.”
“It’s a wicked shame.”
“Not at all, Jamie. This house was given to papa for his life only; now it will go to a new rector, and Aunt Dunes[B] is going to fetch us away to another house.”
[B] Dunes is the short for Dionysia.
“When?”
“To-day.”
“I won’t go,” said the boy. “I swear I won’t.”
“Hush, hush, Jamie! Don’t use