LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 88, 11 September 1874, Page 4

LITERATURE.

ACROSS THE SANDS. In Two Chapters. Chapter I. Continued. 1 But if you must go, Margaret,’ said Aline at last, ‘ I wish you were going to take some other way than that across those dreadful sands. I have a horror of those sands ever since, one day when you were away, I coaxed old Nanny into telling me some of those stories of shipwrecks, and smugglers, and peop'e overtaken by the tide, that she is only too full of. There was one, in particular, of a girl, a bride, who went across to meet her bridegroom, and never was seen more, until her body was washed ashore, they say, at Warren Point, fifty miles along the coast, I wish you would go by Battle Bridge.’ ‘ But consider, Aline, dearest,’ said Margaret gently, ‘the inland road by the bridge is over five miles at the least; whereas by the Stour and the sands—ah 1 don’t shake your head, and look at me so imploringly—the road is barely three. Six miles of regular walking is enough, after pounding on so many pianos, and going through so many musical exercises : and I always dislike the days when the river is too full to allow me to cross by the stepping-stones, and I am compelled to toil round by the bridge. And as for the tide’—and here she picked up a local almanac that lay on the table, and consulted it with an air of mock-gravity— ‘ why, I have become as learned in its ebbing and flowing as any ancient mariner on the jetty yonder. It leaves me plenty of time to-day to cross and recross dryshod. So now, Aline, I must kiss you again, and be off, for it will never do to keep Mrs Thrummett —Mrs Montague Thrummett —and her daughters waiting.’ So she spoke, and soon afterwards, with a rapid step, was wending her solitary way across the sands.

Stoui’chester, one of those anomalous English towns that belong, as it were, to two incongruous epochs, stands on a rising ground, overlooking the Stour, the tall chimneys of its factories contrasting oddly with the grand gray tower of the minster church. There are a few quaint mansions, too, built of mouldering stone, that is golden with lichens and discoloured by exposure to the weather; and queer old gardens, in which the monks and nuns raised their salads and pruned their peach trees long ago; and fragments of the crumbling town wall, sorely jostled by stuccoed villas and brand new terraces. For Stourchester, with its manufactures, is a thriving place; and Margaret had chosen wisely in selecting it as the spot where she, the bread-winner of that modest, thrifty household at Wood End, could most easily earn her own livelihood and that of her ailing sister.

It was fortunate for the ancient town of Stourchester that it had, in its old age, formed that alliance with novel forms of manufacturing industry, which were evidenced by the black smoke that floated lazily away inland, for its former source of prosperity had long since ceased to be available. The place had been a seaport once, but that was in early days; and even two centuries before, the harbour had been gradually silted up, and the prosperity of the town on the decline- The very river had deserted its traditional channel, and now ran at a considerable distance from the walls, that it was said, in worm-eaten chronicles, to lave ; and indeed the Stour, shrunken and dwindled as to its volume, since sundry canals and aqueducts have levied toll upon its head-waters, trickles but feebly through the midst of shoals and sandbanks to the sea. The estuary of the river, however, is still as broad as of old, presenting a fine broad expanse of smooth sand, that glistens silver bright when first the sea rolls back from the river mouth, and that presently lies yellow, and firm, and dry, affording the readiest road by which to cross from Wood End and the adjoining villages to Stourchester,

The sands have an ill name along the coast, partly due, no doubt, to the popular taste for the horrible and mysterious, and partly to genuine anecdotes of local mishap. That lives had been lost there, again and again, was but too true. The passage between Stourchester and the coast villages could be effected in fair weather, and with common precautions, with perfect safety. But it was otherwise when the tide was unusually high, or when a strong gale from the seaward forced the salt flood into the narrowing mouth of the Stour, for on these occasions the danger of being belated on the sands was great indeed. There were legends, authentic enough, of a mad race for life and death between some well-mounted horseman and the swift advance of the tide ; with other and sadder histories of children or of wanderers unacquainted with the district, who had lost their way upon the twilight expanse of the sands, and so perished. There was talk, too, of a shifting quicksand, the terror of the coast, that at flood tides and irregular intervals, appeared to claim its victims from among the heedless passengers. Nanny, the old woman who was Margaret and Aline’s domestic factotum, was garrulous concerning these perils; but Miss Gray, who was naturally courageous, merely laughed at them. ‘ Nobody, so far as I can learn’—she used to say in answer to Nanny’s boding expostulations—‘ has ever been lost on the sands yet, except through some extraordinary carelessness or rashness. Depend upon it, Nanny, that I shall keep much too cautious an eye upon the nautical almanac to furnish you with materials for another story. When the tide comes in at an awkward hour, I must go round by Battle Bridge, and that is all; but when the water is out, I greatly prefer the stepping-stones.’ It was easy and pleasant enough, on that August day, to cross from Wood End, nestling among its coppices and hedgerows, and Stourchester, rising conspicuous on its sloping hill, and overlooking at once the coast-line and the country inland, where the river ran peacefully between osier beds and green meadows in which the cattle were quietly browsing; while here and there, a wreath of blue smoke showed where a lonely farm lay amidst its sheltering elms. In the opposite direction, far away, the gray waters of the retreating sea were visible; while here and there a miniature lagoon remained in some depression of the sands; and Margaret loitered fora moment as she passed, to watch the star-fish moving their bejewelled limbs among the lumps of variegated seaweed, and the small red crabs crawling briskly at the bottom of the shallow pool. The Stour, like many another stream, divides its scanty waters into several tiny channels ere it reaches the sea, and these were traversed at low tide by the help of a series of stones, rugged with the shell fish that clung to them, and fringed with long green weed, but which afforded a sufficient bridge to one whose foot was as sure, and her eyes as quick, as those of Margaret Gray. There was something threatening in the gloom of the day and in the signs of the weather. The wind had nearly died away, but a heavy bank of clouds darkened the horizon to seaward, and there was almost a warning shrillness in the harsh note of the white-winged gull, that along the tiny river’s tortuous course.

The music lessons over at last; the wearied instructress was free to he ld her steps homeward. No very notable change in the weather had as yet occurred, but the bank of clouds that lay piled up against the faroff sky-line was now a mountainous rampart of billowy vapor, edged with a lurid glow, as of huge masses of heated copper, where its summits caught the rays of the declining sun. The sea birds, in greater numbers than before, flitted shrieking past, as if in search of a haven, before the storm should test their strength ; and from the distant waters came a low, sullen murmur, as the waves chafed upon the reef of half-submerged rocks that lay beyond the smooth stretch of the sands.

‘ We shall have a rough night of it, miss,’ said an old Nestor of a fisherman, in striped nightcap and heavy surf boots, who was mending a coble that had been drawn up for repairs, high and dry on the beach, intermitting the strokes of his hammer to give a neighbourly greeting to the young lady as she passed him by. ‘ You are in luck to be so near port, but it will rain by sundown,’ Unwonted sounds, indicative of bustle and confusion, reached Margaret’s ears as she approached her humble home: the buzz and clatter of unfamiliar voices, the tread of feet, and the slamming of doors. Quickening her steps, she reached the cottage, to find the narrow passage and the little sittingroom occupied by several women, wives, mostly, of the cottagers who dwelt near, and who were all friends and gossips of Nanny. Among them was Nanny herself, wringing her hands, and evidently very much frightened, while the chorus of females kept up a well-meant but utterly useless clamour of advice.

‘Burnt feathers is best!’ said one crone oracularly. 1 Try the drops, Nanny—there’s nothing like the drops!’ urged a second. ‘ Poor thing; ’tis a dead swoon. There’s nothing could do her good now but three sprigs of rosemary, gathered at the full of the moon, and ’

But this learned recipe was left uncompleted, for now Margaret burst impatiently through the group, and stood beside the couch whereon Aline lay, the centre of the chattering crowd. One glance was sufficient to ascertain the cause of the turmoil. There lay the sufferer, her blue eyes half-closed, and staring at vacancy, with the fixed stony gaze of a statue, her pale lips slightly parted, her teeth set, and the slender fingers of her white hands clenched, as if in the act of grappling with some invisible foe. Her fair hair hung Idose over her shoulders, and her whole attitude was one that indicated pain, not rest. And yet no sculptured effigy could have been more still, more mute and motionless, than she was, or, to all appearance, more unconscious of the fond eager words and caressing touch of the sister whom sheloved so well. Marble-white she lay, and nothing but the feeblest flutter of the laboring heart told that she was yet to be numbered among the living. The first shock of the discovery over, Margaret’s sound common-sense and resolute will reasserted themselves. Once, and once only, had she seen Aline stretched before her in such a state of pain and helplessness. They had both been much younger then, Aline a mere child ; and Margaret could well remember the alarm that she and her mother had shared, and how anxious had been the interval of suspense while medical skill did battle with the fell disease, and life was gradually enabled to gain the victory. To be continued.