The Janet Coombe was ready to be launched. Her two years of waiting were over, and as the great black ship lay on the slip biding for the high spring tides, it seemed as if her very timbers called for the first embrace of the sea which she would never leave again.
The evening of 1 September was arranged for the launching, just before sunset, when the tide was at its highest. All Plyn was in a fever of excitement, because with the launching of a new ship everybody automatically took a half-holiday, and this ship was to bear the name of Coombe itself.
The evening before, a Sunday, all the family were assembled in the parlour. The weather was warm, and Janet, who was overtired with the preparations, and scarce able to realize that the great day would dawn tomorrow, sat in her chair before the open window, while the cool air played on her face. She would have climbed the hill to the Castle ruins if she had had the strength, but she was too weary. She lay back in her chair, looking down upon the harbour, and let her thoughts wander as they willed.
It seemed to her that in all her life this was the moment for which she had waited. Two other moments only would perhaps equal it. The night on the boat from Plymouth, and the morning she first held Joseph in her arms. But tomorrow her ship, built because of her, would be claimed by the sea, and she would step upon its decks and give her blessing. Life would hold no more for her than the beauty of that moment. Dusk was creeping over Plyn, over the quiet town and the sleeping harbour. Behind, cloaked in shadows, were the hills and the valleys that she loved so well. A supreme feeling of peace and contentment came upon her, she was filled with a love of all things, of people and of places, of Thomas her husband, of her children, and Joseph beyond them all.
From the parlour came the strains of the harmonium. The family were grouped round Mary as they had done for so many years, to sing the Sunday hymn. As the night descended and the stars shone upon Janet’s uplifted face, her children opened their voices to their God. ‘Abide with me! fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens; Lord with me abide! When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me. Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day; Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away; change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me!’
As Janet listened, sweet and clear above the voices of the others was that of Joseph - ‘Abide with me.’
It was close to sunset, and the tide had made its highest mark. The red light of the sky glittered upon the houses, and the parting smile of the sun lingered upon the water. All Plyn was gathered about the slip to watch the ship plunge into the sea. The yard was decorated with flags, and thronged with folk. A chair had been brought for Janet, and she was seated upon it, her hand on Joseph’s arm. Her eyes were upon the figure-head of the ship. It was Janet herself, Janet with her dark hair and eyes and her firm chin; dressed in white with her hand at her breast.
As she looked on it for the first time her heart throbbed in her bosom and her limbs trembled. This was herself, this was she fulfilling her dream, placed there in the bows of the vessel which bore her name. She forgot everything but that her moment had come, the moment when she would become part of a ship - part of the sea for ever. Mist came into her eyes. She saw nothing of Plyn, nothing of the people about her - only the ship hovering on the brink of the slip waiting for the plunge.
She heard none of the cheers; in her ears were the call of the wind and the cry of the waves. Beyond the hill the sun glimmered for an instant - a ball of fire. A great shout arose from the people:‘There she goes!’The harbour rang with their cries and the mighty crash as the vessel struck the water. At the sound a shudder passed through Janet’s body and she opened her arms. Her eyes were filled with a great beauty, like the light of a star, and her soul passed away into the breathing, living ship. Janet Coombe was dead.
Book Two
Joseph Coombe (1863-1900)
No later light has lighted up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.
E. BRONTË
1
When Janet Coombe died Thomas turned to his eldest daughter Mary for comfort and care. She helped him as best she could with gentle looks and tender words, and little by little his faith was restored to him and his affection for his daughter increased; Samuel and Herbert reigned supreme down at the yard, and with their own growing families and separate homes, there was no time for them to give way beneath the strain of losing a devoted parent.
Philip left home and moved to rooms in the middle of the town, near to his firm of Hogg and Williams. Here he could have absolute independence, unbothered by his many relatives. Lizzie felt keenly the blow of parting with her mother, and for a time she weakened considerably in health, but with her coming to convalescence came the presence of one Nicholas Stevens upon her little sphere, and this good man, some fifteen years older than herself and a farmer from up Truan way, was to aid her to recovery; and though she had lost her mother she was to find a devoted and faithful husband.
Joseph was different. His brothers and sisters had to live motherless, his father without a wife; but with the passing of Janet something of Joseph’s immortality had perished. He must walk through life henceforward with the certain knowledge that there was no reason for his existence, and that whereso-ever he trod and in what dubious company, he would inevitably march alone. The blessed love, his one and only salvation, was extinguished.
During those first weeks Joseph worked hard, never allowing himself a moment in which to relax.
There was much to be done.The ship had just been launched, and there were many necessary formalities to be gone through which Joseph, as her future master, took upon himself to arrange. Nor was she yet ready for sea, and it was some four months before she would be finished and fitted out. This was the business of Samuel and Herbert,Thomas Coombe being too dumbfounded with grief to help, and Joseph lent them a willing hand, suggesting improvements here and there, which his years of sea experience qualified him to give.
When Janet was buried that soft September afternoon, the sun shone upon the windows of the church, and the tall grass blew gently in the west wind. There was no sadness in the air. A blackbird sang joyfully on the topmost bough of the elm tree and from two fields away came the glad shouts of schoolboys as they played. The men were working as usual on the jetties; a ship passed out of the harbour laden with clay, bound for a distant land. People moved to and fro like little dots on the Town Quay; the smoke rose from the chimneys; and beyond the harbour entrance were scattered a few fishermen in their small open boats, spinning for mackerel.
Henceforward Janet Coombe would be a little name carved on a still grey tombstone, until the winds and rain of many years should bring it to obscurity, and then covered with moss and the tangled roots of ivy the letters would fade away, and she would be as unremembered as the fallen trodden leaves of past summer and the melted snow of a vanished winter.
The family stood by the open grave, Thomas supported by Samuel and Mary, with the others weeping at his side.
Joseph watched them, dry-eyed and still; he saw the white surplice of the parson blowing in the wind; he looked into the heavens where the loose clouds fled across the sky, he heard the eager voices of the boys as they played in the field near by.
Dust unto dust. There was no reason then for life - it was only a fraction of a moment between birth and death, a movement upon the surface of water, and then it was still. Janet had loved and suffered, she had known beauty and pain, and now she was finished - blotted by the heedless earth, to be no more than a few dull letters on a stone.
Joseph watched the gravel fall in upon her coffin, stones and earth together hiding it from his view, then the whole was strewn with wreaths of brilliant autumn flowers.
As the little crowd dispersed from the side of the grave, Joseph threw back his head and laughed aloud. A
few turned back to gaze on his solitary figure, torn with mirth over his mother’s corpse.
It was not until the Janet Coombe started on her maiden voyage that a measure of consolation came to him.
The desolation of Plyn where Janet was no more lay behind him like a cast-off dream, and here stretched the calm and solitary sea, the love of which had run in his blood even before birth. The sea held danger, much beauty, and the elusive quality of unknown things in its keeping; here perhaps, when the winds shouted and the high sea swept him forward, there would come to him for one moment forgetfulness, and with it the zest of living once again. This ship was her namesake and her life’s dream; they had planned it together as their means of escape to perpetual freedom - and now Janet was dead. This ship was alive, sweeping her way over the surface of the water like a carefree gull, with Plyn a dark line far astern on the horizon; but Janet was dead. She would have been beside him now, treading the sloping deck, turning her head aloft to watch the mighty spread of canvas, listening to the kiss of spray as the vessel tossed the sea from her bows.
And Janet lay in Lanoc churchyard. She could not see, she could not touch, she could not feel; all her promises had vanished in the air.
‘I will never forsake you.’ Had she said those words? If there was any truth in beauty, any power in love, should she not be there at his side, whispering in his ear, holding his hands with ghostly fingers? He was alone, save for the watch, and the man at the helm.
So Janet had been wrong; there was no force stronger than death; and survival was but another falsity in the general scheme of things, a fairy tale for frightened children who had never learnt to walk in the dark. He was alone then, but for his ship which had come to him like a legacy from her. For the sake of her blessed memory the ship should not be unworthy of her.
Joseph glanced around him, up at the wide sky with the grave placid stars; beside him at the dark swift water; and then with a word to the helmsman he went below to the cabin, where his supper was spread on the narrow table, and the lamp swung in its gimbals above his head. He was joined by the first mate, and after a little while, when they had eaten and drunk, Joseph turned in. All was silent. The watch on deck, busy with their own thoughts, spoke not to one another. The helmsman watched his compass, while the mate paced up and down beside him, the sparks from his pipe brushing away into the air.
And unknown to all save the wind and the sea, with the spray leaping to kiss her eyes and the breeze alighting on her hair, the figurehead of Janet Coombe smiled to herself in the darkness.
2
The maiden voyage of the Janet Coombe lasted some months. She sailed first to St John’s, Newfoundland, laden with china clay from Plyn, and from thence she proceeded with fish down to the Mediterranean, a very important freight at that time of the year, when the Catholic inhabitants of these southern ports were fasting for Lent.Then she filled with fruit, and there was a gallant race to London of schooners, barquentines, and brigantines, all eager to be the first to deliver their perishable cargo. The first home was Janet Coombe, who signalled for a pilot two miles before Gravesend, with her rivals still half a day astern of her down Channel.
From London she ran up to Newcastle in ballast, and there loaded with coals for Madeira; from thence to St Michaels for fruit and back to London, from whence she crossed the North Sea to Hamburg. Nearly a year had passed since she sailed from Plyn harbour, but time meant little to Joseph now.
There was no peace to him save on the decks of his own ship, of whose capabilities and speed he was justly proud, and he journeyed from one port to another with but one desire in his mind, to escape somehow from the spectre of loneliness that haunted his still moments.
While he was at Hull he received the following letter from Samuel:Plyn. 13 November 1864
My dear Brother—
As requested I have much pleasure in dropping you a few lines to say that we settled yesterday and that we had a goodly number present, all of whom, both ladies and gentlemen, were highly pleased at the success of yourself and the vessel, and your first year’s work; and I believe it was the heartfelt wish of all that the same good fortune would smile upon you in the future. I need only add that yourself and vessel are now spoken very favourably of and I trust, and know, that you will do your best it may continue so. The Francis Hope is waiting at Falmouth for orders, and as it is probable she will be sent to Hamburg, all being well, you will be there together.
We are all in good health and hoping to get your sailing letter soon. Wishing you a prosperous and quick passage with our best love, believe me, Your affectionate brother, Samuel
Joseph smiled as he folded the letter, and put it away. He pictured them all at Plyn, solemn and unchanged, going about their work from day to day with few cares and worries, knowing nothing of the misery that gripped him always, nor of the dogged wish which swept upon him at times, to lose himself in adventure.
They would all forgather at Ivy House on Sunday evenings, with Mary seated at the harmonium, and offer up their voices to a God that did not exist. He did not know in his mind whether he pitied them or envied them.
There was a security in their life, a steadfastness of purpose which he would never know. But they knew nothing of the lifting power of a ship, of the scream of a gale in torn rigging, of the force of a tempest-swept sea which could fling humanity to destruction.
So Joseph pocketed his letter, and made sail for Hamburg, to whose port come men from every corner of the globe, where the richest merchants rub shoulders with the poorest sewer rat, where adventure beckons over the tall masts of crowded ships and loses itself in the sinister dock-side houses.
He knew no thrill like the entering of a strange harbour. First the dawning of an unfamiliar coast-line, then the hail of the pilot who came to take charge, the entering of a wide river which led to the port beyond.
If it was dark there would be the dim outlines of other ships at anchor, the rough voices of men, calling one another in a foreign tongue; and then suddenly the glare of lights, the throb of humanity, the shape of tall buildings outlined against the sky. There would be a scurry of feet in the darkness, a sharp cry from the pilot and the rattle of the heavy clanking chain. Janet Coombe was anchored in unknown waters.
Then, when all was safe and snug, Joseph would look about him, and let his eyes travel towards those challenging lights, which called to him to forsake the deck of his ship. Amidst those lights moved danger and romance, beneath those dark buildings dwelt poverty and suffering, love and death.
Joseph threw back his head and breathed the air which was a mixture of ships and tar and water, together with the smell of food and drink and tobacco, of people touching one another, and the disturbing scent of women. So Joseph looked upon Hamburg for the first time, and the figurehead of the Janet Coombe gazed proudly across the still waters to the city beyond.
Joseph was a month in Hamburg. He explored what he could of it, between visits to his broker and seeing to the general business of arranging a freight, and it was always the docks that interested him most. Joseph liked to lose himself amongst this crowd, pick up a few scattered words of their language, and drink with them in the thick atmosphere of the overheated cafés.
There was no need to speak sentences and search for phrases; a common understanding united every man there, for there was but one topic of conversation, one search which brought them here together. Women, always women.
A smile, a nod, a gesture, the chinking of money, this was the bond between them, while their restless eyes searched through the crowded room, and their restless feet beat time to the tune played by the scraping fiddler. On his last night in Hamburg, for they were to sail next morning for Dublin, Joseph left the broker’s office and made his way down to that part of the docks where lay the Janet Coombe. The pilot was coming aboard at six o’clock, and long hours at sea stretched once more before him. The reasonable thing to do would be to go to the ship right away, and turn in, snatching a few last precious mo
ments of sleep.
But Joseph found little rest in sleep, and small comfort in reason. Here in Hamburg the lights glittered through the open doors of the cafés, the dark figures of men lurked in the corners of the street, and next to him on the pavement a woman murmured something, brushing against him with her skirt. Below him lay the docks, and the silent ships at their moorings. Tonight perhaps there would be something in the air, and an answer to a closed secret. So Joseph smiled, and bade reason fly to the winds, and he disappeared along the lighted streets in search of adventure, the inevitable adventure which means one breathless, intoxicating moment of intolerable pleasure - but so unchanging - so always the same.
Joseph stood by the crowd at the door of a café watching the people inside. There was a little stage at the corner of the room, where a Negro girl was dancing, and heaped against the walls were tables where the men were seated. The floor space in the middle was intended for dancing, but at the moment it was filled with women, parading up and down, like animals at a show. Joseph pushed his way round the room and sat at a table, while a hustled waiter stood at his elbow for orders. Joseph drank his beer thoughtfully, his eyes searching the crowd of women on the middle of the floor. Two Portuguese were settled at the next table. One had a white, pasty face, with protruding eyes and a dirty tuft of beard. He muttered excitedly to his companion, and clutched his glass with puffy, trembling hands. Joseph watched him as he drank his beer, and disliked him.
The Negro girl had finished her performance. There were a few shouts and some half-hearted clapping, then the men rose from their tables and fought to get to the women in the centre of the room. Music struck up from the band in the corner, and dancing began. Couples pressed against each other, unaware of their ugliness, their greasy faces, their fixed, meaningless smiles. The men knew only that beneath the tangled petticoats and the trailing skirts was a woman. Nothing mattered but that.