The Romance of the Coast | Page 5

you think of the far northern seas, by the borders
of which her forefathers in a remote time were probably born. As I
have said, Peggy could use very rough words when farmers' wives tired
her with too much chaffering; but mostly her face had a hard placidity
that refreshed the mind, just as it is refreshed by considering the
deliberate ways of harmless animals.

Towards eleven in the morning Peggy would be seated in her warm
kitchen, beside a flat basket in which mysterious coils of brown twine
wound round and round. The brown twine had tied to it long lines of
horse-hair snoods with sharp white hooks lashed on by slips of waxed
thread. Peggy baited one after another of these hooks and laid them
dexterously so that the line might be shot overboard without
entanglement. You might sit down in the sanded kitchen to talk to the
good woman if you were not nice about fishy odours. If you led on to
such subjects, she would bring out her store of ghostly stories: how a
dead lady walked in the shrubberies by the tower after the squire's sons
murdered her lover; and how the old clock in the tower had a queer
light travelling over its face on one day of the year. Or she would
gossip about the folks in the place; telling you how poor Jemmy had
lost money, and how old Adam had got a rare stocking, and him
meeting the priest every day like a poor man. You might smoke as
much as you liked in Peggy's kitchen; and for various reasons it was
just as well to keep smoking: the sanitary principles of Dr. Richardson
are not known in the villages on the coast. Peggy herself did not smoke,
because it was not considered right for women to use tobacco until they
were past the age of sixty-five. After that they had their weekly
allowance with the groceries. In the evenings of bright days you saw
Peggy at her best. When the dusk fell, and the level sands shone with a
deep smooth gloss, you would see strange figures bowing with
rhythmic motions. These figures were those of women. All the women
of the village turn out on the sand to hunt for sand-eels. To catch a
sand-eel requires long practice. You take two iron hooks, and work
them down deep in the sand when the tide has just gone. With quick
but steady movements, you make a series of deep "criss-crosses;" and
when the fish is disturbed by the hooks you whip him smartly out, and
put him in the basket before his magical wriggle has taken him deep
into the sand again. The women stooping over the shining floor look
like ghostly harvesters reaping invisible crops. They are very silent, and
their steps are feline. Peggy worked out her day, and then she would go
home and cut up the eels for the next day's lines. In the early morning
the men came in, and then Peggy had to turn out and carry the fish to
the cart that drove inland to the coach or the railway station. It was not
a gay life; but still each fresh day brought the lads and their father

home, and Peggy could not have looked at them, and more especially
perhaps at her great sons, without being proud of her men-folk. While
they were sleeping she had to be at work, so that the home life was
restricted, but it was abundantly clear that in a rough and silent way the
whole of the family were fond of each other; and if Peggy could spare
little more than a glance when the brown sail of the coble came in sight,
it is probable that she felt just as much as ladies who have time for long
and yearning looks.
There came a time when Peggy needed no more to look out for the sail.
Her husband went stolidly down to the boat one evening, and her three
sons followed with their weighty tread. The father was a big, rugged
man with a dark face; the lads were yellow-haired, taking after their
mother. Some of the fishermen did not like the look of the evening sky,
but Peggy's husband never much heeded the weather.
Next day the wind came away very strong, and the cobles had to cower
southward under a bare strip of mainsail. The men ashore did not like
to be asked whether they thought the weather would get worse; and the
women stood anxiously at their doors. A little later and they gathered
all together on the rock-edge. One coble, finely handled, was working
steadily up to the bend where the boats ran in for the smooth water, and
Peggy followed every yard