Derval Hampton: A Story of the Sea (Complete)
James Grant
9781465656759
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I wonder why Heaven sent us into this world to face the mortifications we have to endure? "Do not say this, Greville, dearest; it is not for us to judge; we have but to suffer and endure, and be thankful for life, for health, and that we are not worse off than we are." "Thankful for life!" exclaimed the man, bitterly. "Why should I be thankful for a life of poverty, obscurity, and trouble?" "Trouble is sent, as the preacher tells us, to make us better and draw us closer to God. It is 'not my will, but Thine be done'; so we ought not to question the mystery of life; and then, husband dear, we have our little boy!" As she said this, something of a soft smile replaced the angry and far-away expression that filled her husband's dark eyes. Greville Hampton and his wife Mary—her hands busy with work—were seated in the ivy-clad porch of their little cottage on a bright evening in summer. Before them, at the end of the vista down the dell in which it stood, lay the waters of the English Channel glittering in sunlight, as it rolled away from Rockham Bay to craggy Hartland Point, a sheer precipice 300 feet in height. If humble and small in accommodation, the cottage of Finglecombe was pretty externally, with its wealth of creeping plants, and kept scrupulously neat and clean within, though destitute of every luxury. Before the cottage lay the pretty garden which Greville Hampton tended with his own hands, and where Mary reared and twined her flowers. There were the ripening strawberries, their fresh green leaves lying lightly on beds of yellow straw, the late asparagus and wonderful cucumbers under glass-shades, mellow-flavoured peas in borders, and wonderful nectarines climbing up the wall. Behind the cottage, on the south, lay Finglecombe, (in old Devonian) "The dell with the hazel boundary," and a lovely dell it was, bordered by gentle slopes, covered with those "apple bowers," for which the district is so famous, in all their luxuriance and greenery. Yet, all this brought no pleasure to the eye or mind of Greville Hampton, a moody and discontented man, one on whom the world and society had smiled in other days, and thus he was ever comparing the present with the irrecoverable past. There was an air of great refinement in both husband and wife, an air that contrasted strongly and strangely with their plain attire and circumscribed dwelling. Greville Hampton's face was dark in complexion, aquiline in feature, a very handsome face, one quite warranted to claim the unmistakable admiration his wife had for it, and yet it was not a pleasing one. His brow was indicative of intellect and courage; his lip, shaded by a black moustache, was indicative of a resolute will and firm purpose; and his dark hazel eyes, if stern and even gloomy in their normal expression, could soften with a depth of affection when they dwelt on the face of Mary, on the child that was playing at their feet, or at the approach of a friend, and showed that he had a warm heart under the crust in which he was wont to hide it. Early disappointment, great monetary losses, and a wrong more real than fancied, the loss of a title and patrimony, had much to do with the latter, and hence came the bitter expression that at times stole over his well-formed mouth, and the shadow that clouded a really handsome face. Mary was indeed a lovely woman, but her slight girlish figure, and the bright tint of colour on her soft, Madonna-like cheek, seemed to speak of a delicacy of constitution, not quite suited for the hardships and trials consequent upon the loss of all to which she had been at one time accustomed. Her dress was coarse and plain, yet arranged so tastefully, that her figure made it look graceful, and it seemed—humble though the material—to repose on her rounded bust and limbs with something suggestive of distinction and placid elegance.
