FullReads

“And then?” I asked.

“Then I get the North Foreland, and the trippers come out from Margate, and I live on shore with my wife and–By the way, I wanted to speak to you about my boy. He’s getting up in years. What shall I make of him? A linen-draper, eh? In the Midlands, what? or something in a Free Library, handing out Charles Reade’s books? He’s at home now. Come and see him!”

In Garstin’s quarters, within the coastguard enclosure, I was introduced to his wife and the lad, Leopold. “What shall we call him?” Mrs. Garstin had asked, some fifteen years before. “I don’t know any seafaring man by the name of Leopold,” Garstin had replied, after a moment of reflection. So Leopold he was named.

Mrs. Garstin was a buxom, unimaginative woman, but she shared to the full her husband’s horror of the sea. She told me of nights when she lay alone listening to the moan of the wind overhead, and seeing the column of the Bishop rock upon its base, and of mornings when she climbed from the sheltered barracks up the gorse, with her heart tugging in her breast, certain, certain that this morning, at least, there would be no Bishop lighthouse visible from the top of the garrison.

“It seems a sort of insult to the works of God,” said she, in a hushed voice. “It seems as if it stood up there in God’s face and cried, ‘You can’t hurt me!'”

“Yes, most presumptuous and provoking,” said Garstin; and so they fell to talking of the boy, who, at all events, should fulfil his destiny very far inland from the sea. Mrs. Garstin leaned to the linen-drapery; Garstin inclined to the free library.

“Well, I will come down to the North Foreland,” said I, “and you shall tell me which way it is.”

“Yes, if–” said Garstin, and stopped.

“Yes, if–” repeated his wife, with a nod of the head.

“Oh! it won’t go this winter,” said I.

And it didn’t. But, on the other hand, Garstin did not go to the North Foreland, nor for two years did I hear any more of him. But two years later I returned to St. Mary’s and walked across the beach of the island to the little graveyard by the sea. A new tablet upon the outer wall of the church caught and held my eye. I read the inscription and remained incredulous. For the Bishop still stood. But the letters were there engraved upon the plate, and as I read them again, the futility of Garstin’s fears was enforced upon me with a singular pathos.

For the Bishop still stood and Garstin had died on the Christmas Eve of that last year which he was to spend upon rock lighthouses. Of how he died the tablet gave a hint, but no more than a hint. There were four words inscribed underneath his name:

“And he was not.”

I walked back to Hugh Town, wondering at the tragedy which those four words half hid and half revealed, and remembering that the tide runs seven miles an hour past the Bishop, with many eddies and whirlpools. Almost unconsciously I went up the hill above Hugh Town and came to the signal station on the top of the garrison. And so occupied was I with my recollections of Garstin that it did not strike me as strange that I should find Mrs. Garstin standing now where he had stood and looking out to the Bishop as he was used to look.

“I had not heard,” I said to her.

“No?” she returned simply, and again turned her eyes seawards. It was late on a midsummer afternoon. The sun hung a foot or so above the water, a huge ball of dull red fire, and from St. Mary’s out to the horizon’s rim the sea stretched a rippling lagoon of the colour of claret. Over the whole expanse there was but one boat visible, a lugger, between Sennen and St. Agnes, beating homewards against a light wind.