Chapter IV Timothy’s Three Friends
Madelaine Power wandered along the shore idly watching the waves as they came tumbling in, their white crests curling in a succession of long feathery lines, until with a roar and a hiss they were flung upon the beach, spreading themselves out like great fans of foam upon the shingle.
No figure but her own was to be seen on the narrow pebbly strip, which ran like a yellow ribbon between the foot of the cliff and the incoming tide. No sound was to be heard save the monotonous music of the breakers, and an occasional wild cry as a stray sea-gull circled above her head.
Madelaine gave a little shiver as her eye followed the desolate track.
“Only eleven years ago this month since Gerald and I trod this very shore,” she said. “Only eleven years, and yet what a lifetime it seems! Truly much of it has been to me a sad and solitary way. It has been heavy walking, and most of it against the wind!”
She stood for a moment gazing at the coast-line, up which a sea-mist was slowly travelling, blotting out the distant view of ocean and headland.
“Just as my troubles have blotted out my sun,” she thought to herself, as she morbidly let her mind dwell on the dark days of the past.
It was not strange that her spirit failed her at times, for the road had indeed been toilsome to her young feet.
The only child of a struggling country doctor, and left an orphan at the age of seventeen, she had early engaged in a hard fight for existence, earning a scanty livelihood by teaching in the neighbouring town. It was there that the girl made the acquaintance of the handsome young surveyor whose friendship made so great a difference to her lonely lot. Small wonder was it, when he asked her to be his wife, that she should feel as if a new and glorious era had suddenly dawned. No matter that her home was to be henceforth in the unknown West. The heart’s love of her strong and generous nature had been given wholly to him whom she would gladly have followed to the ends of the earth.
With high hope the youthful couple had gone forth to try their fortune in the New World, and for some months things went cheerily enough with them. Then came speculations and accompanying failure, and Madelaine learnt only too well the weak side of the man whom she still loved, but with the pitiful sustaining tenderness of a nobler and braver character than his own.
After the birth of their boy, Gerald had for a time displayed greater energy and perseverance in seeking to better his position, journeying often long distances in search of work. It was during one of these absences that Madelaine received the letter which almost broke her heart and sprinkled her chestnut hair with grey.
It told her how her husband had been suddenly smitten by the cold hand of death while travelling in a wild part of the country, his body being laid to rest in the depths of the trackless forest. His watch and chain and an unfinished diary were the only tokens enclosed in the accompanying package, and the young widow was left to realize as best she could the desolate and penniless position in which she and her infant were now placed.
Neither she nor Gerald had any relatives to whom she could appeal, and had it not been for the aid given to her in her distress by an eccentric and benevolent neighbour she would indeed have been destitute. Touched by the forlorn condition of the hapless pair, this aged recluse invited them to share his humble dwelling, and when he died about three months later, Madelaine found to her surprise, that he had willed the whole of his little property to herself and her son. One solitary stipulation he made, and that a hard one in the faithful Madelaine’s eyes. Only by adopting his name could she and the boy claim the legacy that he left. It was after much searching of heart that finally the thought of the benefit which would accrue to her child outweighed the repugnance she felt in setting aside the sacred name of her dead husband, and as Madelaine Power she set sail with her baby for England, and settled down in their new home.
Helping out the small income by typewriting and fine needlework, she had managed hitherto to make a fairly comfortable living; but at present the thought of Robin’s education weighed somewhat heavily upon her heart. To be either a doctor or a surveyor was the summit of the boy’s ambition, but how to give him the training he required for such a career was a problem she had not solved as yet.
As she let her mind wander again to the future, she chanced to look down upon the beach where a wave had run up higher than its fellows, almost to the spot where she stood. There at her feet lay a tiny fish, struggling vainly on the sand, a helpless waif, left high and dry by the retreating sea.
“You poor little thing,” she cried, as she stooped, and, lifting it gently, threw it with a steady hand into the deep water beyond. “I couldn’t leave you to die there all by yourself. How strange to think that in all these miles of desolate shore you should have been washed up just at my feet. I wonder if God knew? Yes, of course He did, for we’re told plainly that the eyes of the Lord are in every place. If He hears the young ravens when they cry, and notices if a sparrow falls, He knows surely when the humblest of His human creatures are in need.”
She turned and walked back by the shore, now brightened by a gleam of sunshine, as the sea-mist cleared away. The waves seemed to sing a new refrain as she passed along, the melody of which put vigour into her steps and a light into her eyes;
“How much more.... How much more
Will He clothe you,
O, ye of little faith?”
“I may as well go up and pay Timothy a visit,” she thought, as she reached a rough ladder-like staircase which gave access to the top of the cliff from the beach below. The wall of the aged fisherman’s cottage could be seen almost on a line with the edge of the crag.
“How terrible it must be to live there,” she exclaimed as she looked up. “I hardly like even to go in to visit him for a few minutes, and to think of trying to sleep in such a place!”
She knocked at the door, and entered the little kitchen, which was fortunately at that end of the house which was furthest from the sea.
It was a low room with heavy wooden rafters and whitewashed walls. The old man was sitting by the open fireplace in his high-backed chair, placidly smoking his pipe, while at his elbow stood an oak table an which lay a well-worn Bible in its brown leather binding, and a pair of horn spectacles.
After a few words of greeting, Mrs. Power’s thoughts turned naturally to the danger threatening the occupant of the perilous dwelling.
“I wonder you’re not afraid, Timothy, of staying here all by yourself. Any night the waves may break away another piece of the cliff, and the house may go.”
Timothy slowly took his pipe out of his mouth and laid it carefully upon the table; then placing both his withered hands upon his knees, he leant forward and nodded his head gently, while he kept his kindly eyes fixed on the face of his visitor.
“I be ninety-four year old come next Lady-day,” he commenced in his high quaking voice, “and I’ve seen many a good friend pass away. The old wife she’s gone, and the two little ones that God took with the whooping cough when they were but babes. My brothers are all gone, and my three sisters, and the fine comrades I started with on life’s journey. We went together down to the sea in ships, and not one on ’em’s outside the harbour now, except my old worthless self. They’re all gone, all my good true friends, all gone but three. And them three, I think on them by day, and I dream on them by night, the only three on ’em that’s left. Like as not you’ll smile when I tell you their names. They be right strange friends even for an old man like me.”
“Tell me who they are?” said his visitor, for Timothy had ceased speaking and was gazing absently into the fire.
He hesitated a moment.
“Well,” he said at length, “I’ll tell you. One on ’em’s Death, and another be the Tide, but the third be the best One of all.”
“What do you mean?” asked Madelaine, for the old man had paused, as if his thoughts had wandered back again to long past days. “How do you count them your friends?”
“This here little house was my father’s before me,” continued Timothy, as if talking to himself, “and man and boy I’ve never lived elsewhere, though when I was a little lad there were two fine fields between us and the cliff. I was always a running to the edge to watch the tide, it fair bewitched me to see it come creeping up and then backing away, day in, day out, like some mighty living thing with a living breathing heart. And when I got a bit older, that there sea made a fisher of me. Summer and winter it gave me my daily bread; it never failed me yet. The sea’s been a rare good friend to me from the one end of life to t’other; a rare good friend it’s been. It’ll not go back on me now, it won’t. ’Twould be a mean trick to play on me, it would, if it took the old place from under my feet, after four and ninety years of good fellowship! I’m not afraid of the Tide.”
Mrs. Power knew not what to say. No arguments rose to her lips, though she vainly longed to remonstrate.
“Well, Timothy,” she said at last, “I can’t say that I’m as well acquainted with the ways of the tide as you are, but the other of your friends that you seem so sure of, I have often heard mentioned as the great Enemy.”
Timothy’s face lit up with a triumphant smile as he raised one hand and pointed upwards.
“And why?—I reckon it’s because they don’t understand. I thought that once myself, but I see clearer now. The Tide’s a good friend, but Death’s better.”
“How did you find that out, Timothy?” questioned Mrs. Power.
“It was many a long year ago now,” was the reply. “The old clergyman’s sister, Miss Alice, she was a good one, she was, and she would have us young chaps up at the big house to learn us summat when the winter nights did come, and the sea was too rough for the fishing. She was always for book learning, was Miss Alice.
“‘Don’t go and waste your life, lad,’ she would say, ‘thinking it’s enough to feed the poor body; ’stead of that, do something for the soul too.’
“It’s dead and buried she’s been this long while now, but she comes back to me plain, she do, my eyes they seem to see her sitting there yet, same as I saw her last, the week before she died. She sent for me, she did, seeing I was one of her old scholars, to tell me she was going home, and to bid me take more thought for heaven. She was always a wonderful kind teacher, was Miss Alice, and her face fair shone when she spoke of God and the golden city.
“That evening she was sitting by the fire, and on the wall just behind her was a big picter. Well—that picter it transfixed me wholly; it stuck in my mind, it did, I have it before me now, as plain as a pikestaff.”
“What was it like?” asked Mrs. Power.
“There was an old chap—as it might be me,” answered Timothy, “and he was sitting in his big arm-chair—as it might be this ’un, and his Bible by his side, and his vittles on the table—just as I have here. He did look so wonderful tired, that poor man, and he was resting so comfortable in the big chair. His eyes they were shut, and his head it was leaning back, and he was sleeping so quiet and peaceable-like. But you’d never guess what was in that room along of him. No, you’d never guess.”
“I would rather you told me,” said Madelaine, “I’m not good at guessing.”
“Well,” continued Timothy, “along side of the table was a great big skeleton, dressed up in long flowing clothes, and its face looked right kind and gentle, it did, and its hands were stretched up, a-pulling the rope of a great bell that hung in the belfry over the old man’s head. The sun was just sinking, you could see it out of the little window in the back of the picter. Says I to Miss Alice, ‘The old chap’ll be finely scared when he wakes up and sees the ghost.’ ‘No,’ said she, ’there’s writing here below, and it means something quite different. The name of that picture is “Death as Friend.” It means that he’s come to call the poor man away from all his want and all his weariness, and to tell him it’s time to go up to the beautiful city and the light of God.’ He’s no enemy—he’s a right good friend for an old man to have.”
“So you’re expecting him to come for you, Timothy,” said Madelaine gently.
“Yes, I’m just waiting here for my friend,” was the quiet answer. “He won’t be long now, and the other friend down below there, I know he’ll wait till I’m in the mansions of gold before he takes down the walls of my little house here. I’m waiting quite patient, and I’m not afraid. We’re waiting, all of us, my friends and me, for we’re all in the Hand of Him that’s mightier than the mightiest, Him that’s the best Friend of all. I be safe to trust in Him, for He knows the end from the beginning, and the times and the seasons are His alone.”
The old man took off his fisherman’s cap as he spoke, and closed his eyes as if in prayer. Mrs. Power did not like to disturb him, but silently left the hut.
The sunny landscape look blurred to her as she walked home along the edge of the cliff.
“I’ve had a lesson,” she said to herself. “The Lord knoweth them that are His. Surely we may well commit ourselves to the care of our Best Friend.”