upon the beach, I know nothing of it, being both Lord of the Manor and
Justice of the Peace.
The village, too, renewed itself with the new almshouses and church.
There were old houses rebuilt and fresh ones reared, and all are ours,
except the Why Not? which still remains the Duchy Inn. And that was let
again, and men left the Choughs at Ringstave and came back to their old
haunt, and any shipwrecked or travel-worn sailor found board and welcome
within its doors.
And of the Mohune Hospital--for that was what the alms-houses were now
called--Master Glennie was first warden, with fair rooms and a full
library, and Master Ratsey head of the Bedesmen. There they spent happier
days, till they were gathered in the fullness of their years; and sleep
on the sunny side of the church, within sound of the sea, by that great
buttress where I once found Master Ratsey listening with his ear to
ground. And close beside them lies Elzevir Block, most faithful and most
loved by me, with a text on his tombstone: 'Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friend,' and some of Mr.
Glennie's verses.
And of ourselves let me speak last. The Manor House is a stately home
again, with trim lawns and terraced balustrades, where we can sit and
see the thin blue smoke hang above the village on summer evenings. And
in the Manor woods my wife and I have seen a little Grace and a little
John and little Elzevir, our firstborn, play; and now our daughter is
grown up, fair to us as the polished corners of the Temple, and our sons
are gone out to serve King George on sea and land. But as for us, for
Grace and me, we never leave this our happy Moonfleet, being well
content to see the dawn tipping the long cliff-line with gold, and the
night walking in dew across the meadows; to watch the spring clothe the
beech boughs with green, or the figs ripen on the southern wall: while
behind all, is spread as a curtain the eternal sea, ever the same and
ever changing. Yet I love to see it best when it is lashed to madness in
the autumn gale, and to hear the grinding roar and churn of the pebbles
like a great organ playing all the night. 'Tis then I turn in bed and
thank God, more from the heart, perhaps, than any other living man,
that I am not fighting for my life on Moonfleet Beach. And more than
once I have stood rope in hand in that same awful place, and tried to
save a struggling wretch; but never saw one come through the surf alive,
in such a night as he saved me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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