woman made everybody look better for being with her.
“‘Esther, can I do anything for you?’
“‘My boy will want a mother; be one to him, will you?’
“‘That I will, Esther;’ and she came round to the bedside, and kissed her.
“‘Ben, take my hand, and hold it in yours, dear.’
“I took her hand, and held it till she died. Just before she died, she said,
“‘God bless you, Ben. I’m sorry to leave you, dear, but I’m going to him. I’ll tell him you kept your promise. Be as kind to his boy as you’ve been to me, Ben. God bless you.’
“She never spoke again, but lay quite still for an hour or more with her eyes shut, and I only knew she was dead when her hand felt cold.
“‘Come, Ben,’ says the curate’s wife, ‘you mustn’t stay here now, it will do you no good. Come, Ben.’
“She took my hand, and I took hers, and she led me downstairs to this room, and put me in the chair you’re sitting in. She gave her orders to the servant about getting somebody to come. I couldn’t let go her hand, it seemed to keep me alive; and she let it stay there. I seemed to fancy that Esther was not dead when I held that hand. I don’t know how long she stayed. Esther died at eight; and they told me afterwards that the curate had been, and seen me holding his wife’s hand, and left her there till I fell asleep, about two o’clock; so that six mortal hours did she sit beside me. It was the kindest thing I ever knew even a woman do. Some people might think it foolish. I think it saved me my reason, for I felt as if I was out of my mind when I found Esther’s hand get cold.
“I went to the funeral, and we had a stone put up; and you can see it in the churchyard there. We had put on it,
“‘Sacred to the memory of Esther, the intended wife of John Sands, and wife of Benjamin Stevens.’
“It would make no difference to her whether I put it on or not, but I always keep my word, you know; can’t feel it right to break it to any but mad people, when you’ve made them a promise to keep them quiet. I don’t know that it’s right even then.”
“And the son?”
“O, he’s captain of the ‘Clara,’ now gone to Melbourne. He was away when she died. He didn’t want to go to sea; but, as I told him, his mother’s story would be sure to leak out, and he’d find ashore that he’d have hard lines on account of it; so he went to sea, and he’s been captain this last three years, and a thoro’ good seaman too.”
“I see you don’t wear your wife’s wedding-ring.”
“No; I couldn’t get it over any of my fingers, it’s so small; but it’s not colder now than it was when she had it on her finger.”
“Well, Ben, yours is a strange story.”
“Perhaps it is; but there’s many a stranger stowed away in some men’s hearts; aye, and many a log that, overhauled, would make men stare a little.”
“Perhaps you’ll let me look at what you call your ‘land-logs’ some day.”
“O, yes. It’s no use living if you don’t do some good; and perhaps somebody might be happier for knowing what Ben Stevens had seen in his sixty years’ voyage.”
I went through the churchyard home, and looked at the tombstone, and felt a respect for the old sailor who goes about with his wife’s wedding-ring on his heart—not the less either because his fingers had been made too large by toil for the ring to fit them. I began to think it possible that a hard hand and a soft heart may exist together. I feel satisfied that they are united in my friend Ben Stevens.
AIMLESS.
Aimless to float upon the tide of life,
Aimless, and therefore hopeless—saddest fate
That man can ever know—with danger rife,
Black danger to the soul’s eternal state.
Better to have creation’s meanest thing
On which to lavish thought and energy,
Than, bounding wishes in one daily ring,
Content oneself to eat, and sleep, and be.
And yet, when darkness brooding o’er my soul.
Hides the fair mountain tops where I would climb;
When from earth’s valley chilly mists uproll,
And my tried land-marks vanish in the rime;
Then, I could almost wish myself a clod,
Who lived because he lived—some happy fool,
Like sheep who crops from day to day the sod,
Or lazy fly upon a stagnant pool,
So I might only be at rest—at rest—
Nor blind mine eyes with looking at the light,
Nor, struggling for the highest and the best,
Fall from the summit of an Alpine height
To the deep chasm of a starless night!
JAPANESE FRAGMENTS.
BY CAPTAIN SHERARD OSBORN, R.N.
CHAPTER VIII.
- ↑ See “Memorials of Japan” edited for the Hakluyt Society, by Thomas Rundall, Esq.
