LIII. IN THE SMOKE.
CHAPTER I.
OVER AND DONE.
Sitting in the parsonage garden, in a white frock, with a pale green sash about her waist, leaning back against the red-brick wall, her glowing copper hair lit by the evening sun, was Judith Trevisa.
She was tossing guelder-roses into the air; some dozens were strewn about her feet on the gravel, but one remained of the many she had plucked and thrown and caught, and thrown and caught again for a sunny afternoon hour. As each greenish-white ball of flowers went up into the air it diffused a faint but pleasant fragrance.
“When I have done with you, my beauty, I have done altogether,” said Judith.
“With what?”
Her father spoke. He had come up unperceived by the girl, burdened with a shovel in one hand and a bucket in the other, looking pale, weary, and worn.
“Papa, you nearly spoiled my game. Let me finish, and I will speak.”
“Is it a very serious matter, Judith, and engrossing?”
“Engrossing, but not serious, Je m’amuse.”
The old rector seated himself on the bench beside her, and he also leaned back against the red-brick, gold-and-gray-lichen-spotted wall, and looked into the distance before him, waiting till his daughter was ready to speak, not, perhaps, sorry to have a little rest first, for he was overtired. Had Judith not been absorbed in her ball-play with the guelder-rose bunch she would have noticed his haggard appearance, the green hue about his mouth, the sunken eyes, the beaded brow. But she was counting the rebounds of her ball, bent on sustaining her play as long as was possible to her.
She formed a charming picture, fresh and pure, and had the old man not been overtired, he would have thought so with a throb of parental pride.
She was a child in size, slender in build, delicate in bone, with face and hands of porcelain transparency and whiteness, with, moreover, that incomparable complexion only seen in the British Isles, and then only with red-gold hair.
Her bronze-leather shoes were the hue of some large flies that basked and frisked on the warm wall, only slightly disturbed by the girl’s play, to return again and run and preen themselves again, and glitter jewel-like as studs on that sun-baked, lichen-enamelled wall. Her eyes, moreover, were lustrous as the backs of these flies, iridescent with the changing lights of the declining sun, and the changed direction of her glance following the dancing ball of guelder-rose. Her long fingers might have been of china, but that when raised so that the sun struck their backs they were turned to a translucent rose. There was no color in her cheek, only the faintest suffusion of pink on the temples below where the hair was rolled back in waves of luminous molten copper dashing against the brick wall.
“I have done my work,” said the rector.
“And I my play,” responded the girl, letting the ball drop into her lap and rock there from one knee to the other. “Papa, this fellow is the conqueror; I have made him dance thirty-five great leaps, and he has not yet fallen—wilfully. I let him go down and get breath just now. There lie all my dancers dead about me. They failed very speedily.”
“You cannot be forever playing, Ju.”
“That is why I play now, papa. When playtime is over I shall be in earnest indeed.”
“Indeed?” the old man sighed.
Judith looked round, and was shocked to see how ill her father appeared to be.
“Are you very tired, darling papa?”
“Yes—overtired.”
“Have you been at your usual task?”
“Yes, Ju—an unprofitable task.”
“Oh, papa!”
“Yes, unprofitable. The next wind from the sea that blows—one will blow in an hour—and all my work is undone.”
“But, my dear papa!” Judith stooped and looked into the bucket. “Why!—what has made you bring a load of sand up here? We want none in the garden. And such a distance too!—from the church. No wonder you are tired.”
“Have I brought it?” he asked, without looking at the bucket.
“You have, indeed. That, if you please, is unprofitable work, not the digging of the church out of the sand-heaps that swallow it.”
“My dear, I did not know that I had not emptied the pail outside the church-yard gate. I am very tired; perhaps that explains it.”
“No doubt about it, papa. It was work quite as unprofitable but much more exhausting than my ball-play. Now, papa, while you have been digging your church out of the sand, which will blow over it again to-night, you say, I have been pitching and tossing guelder-roses. We have been both wasting time, one as much as the other.”
“One as much as the other,” repeated the old man. “Yes, dear, one as much as the other, and I have been doing it all my time here—morally, spiritually, as well as materially, digging the church out of the smothering sands, and all in vain—all profitless work. You are right, Ju.”
“Papa,” said Judith hastily, seeing his discouragement and knowing his tendency to depression, “papa, do you hear the sea how it roars? I have stood on the bench, more than once, to look out seaward, and find a reason for it; but there is none—all blue, blue as a larkspur; and not a cloud in the sky—all blue, blue there too. No wind either, and that is why I have done well with my ball-play. Do you hear the roar of the sea, papa?” she repeated.
“Yes, Ju. There will be a storm shortly. The sea is thrown into great swells of rollers, a sure token that something is coming. Before night a gale will be on us.”
Then ensued silence. Judith with one finger trifled with the guelder-rose bunch in her lap musingly, not desirous to resume her play with it. Something in her father’s manner was unusual, and made her uneasy.
“My dear!” he began, after a pause, “one must look out to sea—into the vast mysterious sea of the future—and prepare for what is coming from it. Just now the air is still, and we sit in this sweet, sunny garden, and lean our backs against the warm wall, and smell the fragrance of the flowers; but we hear the beating of the sea, and know that a mighty tempest, with clouds and darkness, is coming. So in other matters we must look out and be ready—count the time till it comes. My dear, when I am gone——”
“Papa!”
“We were looking out to sea and listening. That must come at some time—it may come sooner than you anticipate.” He paused, heaved a sigh, and said, “Oh, Jamie! What are we to do about Jamie?”
“Papa, I will always take care of Jamie.”
“But who will take care of you?”
“Of me? Oh, papa, surely I can take care of myself!”
He shook his head doubtfully.
“Papa, you know how strong I am in will—how firm I can be with Jamie.”
“But all mankind are not Jamies. It is not for you I fear, as much as for you and him together. He is a trouble and a difficulty.”
“Jamie is not so silly and troublesome as you think. All he needs is application. He cannot screw his mind down to his books—to any serious occupation. But that will come. I have heard say that the stupidest children make the sharpest men. Little by little it will come, but it will come certainly.