“Uncle Nick,” said I, “’tis wonderful late in the night.”
“Ay, Dannie,” he answered; “but I’m wantin’ sore t’ sit by you here a spell.”
“I’ll not be able,” I objected, “t’ go t’ sleep.”
“’Twill do no hurt, lad,” said he “if I’m wonderful quiet. An’ I’ll be quiet–wonderful quiet.”
“But I’m
wantin’
t’ go t’ sleep!”
“Ah, well,” said he, “I’ll not trouble you, then. I would not have you lie awake. I’ll go. Good-night. God bless you, lad!”
I wish I had not driven him away…
VII
TWIN ISLANDS
In all this time I have said little enough of Twist Tickle, never a word (I think) of Twin Islands, between whose ragged shores the sheltering tickle winds; and by your favor I come now gratefully to the task. ’Tis a fishing outport: a place of rock and sea and windy sky–no more than that–but much loved by the twelvescore simple souls of us, who asked for share of all the earth but salt-water and a harbor (with the winds blowing) to thrive sufficient to ourselves and to the world beyond. Had my uncle sought a secret place to foster the child that was I–which yet might yield fair wage for toil–his quest fortuitously ended when the
Shining Light
ran dripping out of the gale and came to anchor in the quiet water of the tickle. But more like ’twas something finer that moved him: in that upheaval of his life, it may be, ’twas a wistful turning of the heart to the paths and familiar waters of the shore where he lived as a lad. Had the
Shining Light
sailed near or far and passed the harbor by, the changed fortunes of–but there was no sailing by, nor could have been, for the great wind upon whose wings she came was passionate, too, and fateful.
If ’tis a delight to love, whatever may come of it (as some hold), I found delight upon the grim hills of Twin Islands…
They lie hard by the coast, but are yet remote: Ship’s Run divides them from the long blue line of main-land which lifts its barren hills in misty distance from our kinder place. ’Tis a lusty stretch of gray water, sullen, melancholy, easily troubled by the winds, which delight, it seems, sweeping from the drear seas of the north, to stir its rage. In evil weather ’tis wide as space; when a nor’easter lifts the white dust of the sea, clouding Blow-me-down-Billy of the main-land in a swirl of mist and spume, there is no departure; nor is there any crossing (mark you) when in the spring of the year a southerly gale urges the ice to sea. We of Twin Islands were cut off by Ship’s Run from all the stirring and inquisitive world.
According to Tumm, the clerk of the
Quick as Wink
, which traded our harbor, Twin Islands are t’ the west’ard o’ the Scarf o’ Fog, a bit below the Blue Gravestones, where the
Soldier o’ the Cross
was picked up by Satan’s Tail in the nor’easter o’ the Year o’ the Big Shore Catch. “Oh, I knows un!” says he. “You opens the Tickle when you rounds Cocked Hat o’ the Hen-an’-Chickens an’ lays a course for Gentleman Cove, t’other side o’ the bay. Good harbor in dirty weather,” says he: “an’, ecod! my lads, a hearty folk.” This is forbidding enough, God knows! as to situation; but though the ancient islands, scoured by wind and rain, are set in a misty isolation and show gray, grimly wrinkled faces to the unkind sea, betraying no tenderness, they are green and genial in the places within: there are valleys; and the sun is no idler, and the lean earth of those parts is not to be discouraged.
“God-forsaken place, Nick!” quoth Tom Bull, at the Anchor and Chain.
“How was you knowin’ that, Tom?” says my uncle. “You isn’t never
been
there.”
“
Sounds
God-forsaken.”
“So does hell.”
“Well, hell
is
.”
“There you goes again, Tom Bull!” cries my uncle, with a sniff and wrathful twitch of the lip. “There you goes again, you dunderhead–jumpin’ t’ conclusions!”
Tom Bull was shocked.
“Hell God-forsaken!” growls my uncle. “They’s more hard labor for the good Lord t’ do in hell, Tom Bull, than any place I knows on; an’ I ’low He’s right there, kep’ double watches on the jump, a-doin’ of it!”
Twist Tickle pursues an attenuated way between the Twins, broadening into the harbor basin beyond the Pillar o’ Cloud, narrowing at the Finger and Thumb, widening, once more, into the lower harbor, and escaping to the sea, at last, between Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul, which are great bare heads. You get a glimpse of the Tickle from the deck of the mail-boat: this when she rounds the Cocked Hat and wallows off towards Gentleman Cove. ’Tis but a niggardly glimpse at best, and vastly unfair to the graces of the place: a white house, wee and listlessly tilted, gripping a rock, as with expiring interest; a reach of placid water, deep and shadowy, from which rise the hills, gray, rugged, splashed with green; heights beyond, scarfed with clinging wisps of mist.
The white houses are builded in a fashion the most disorderly at the edge of the tickle, strung clear from the narrows to the Lost Soul and straying somewhat upon the slopes, with the scrawny-legged flakes clinging to the bare declivities and the stages squatted at the water-side; but some houses, whose tenants are solitary folk made morose by company, congregate in the remoter coves–where the shore is the shore of the open sea and there is no crowd to trouble–whence paths scramble over the hills to the Tickle settlement. My uncle’s cottage sat respectably, even with some superiority, upon a narrow neck of rock by the Lost Soul, outlooking, westerly, to sea, but in the opposite direction dwelling in a way more intimate and fond upon the unruffled water of Old Wives’ Cove, within the harbor, where rode the
Shining Light
.
“An’ there she’ll lie,” he was used to saying, with a grave and mysteriously significant wink, “until I’ve sore need o’ she.”
“Ay,” said they, “or till she rots, plank an’ strand.”
“An she rots,” says my uncle, “she may rot: for she’ll sail these here waters, sound or rotten, by the Lord! an I just put her to it.”
Unhappy, then, perhaps, Twin Islands, in situation and prospect; but the folk of that harbor, who deal barehanded with wind and sea to catch fish, have this wisdom: that a barren, a waste of selfish water, a low, soggy sky have nothing to do with the hearts of men, which are independent, in love and hope and present content, of these unfeeling things. We were seafaring men, every jack of the place, with no knowledge of a world apart from green water, which forever confronted us, fashioning our lives; but we played the old comedy as heartily, with feeling as true and deep, the same fine art, as you, my gentlefolk! and made a spectacle as grateful to the gods for whom the stage (it seems) is set.
And there is a road from the Tickle to the sea–to an outer cove, high-cliffed, frothy, sombre, with many melancholy echoes of wind and breakers and listless human voices, where is a cluster of hopeless, impoverished homes. ’Tis a wilful-minded path, lingering indolently among the hills, artful, intimate, wise with age, and most indulgently secretive of its soft discoveries. It is used to the lagging feet of lovers. There are valleys in its length, and winding, wooded stretches, kindly places; and there are arching alders along the way to provide a seclusion yet more tender. In the moonlight ’tis a path of enchantment–a way (as I know) of pain and high delight: of a wandering hope that tantalizes but must in faith, as we are men, be followed to its catastrophe. I have suffered much of ecstasy and despair upon that path. ’Tis the road to Whisper Cove.
Judith dwelt at Whisper Cove…
VIII
A MAID O’ WHISPER COVE
Fourteen, then, and something more: a footloose lad of Twist Tickle–free to sail and wander, to do and dream, to read the riddles of my years, blithe and unalarmed. ’Tis beyond the will and wish of me to forget the day I lay upon the Knob o’ Lookout, from afar keeping watch on the path to Whisper Cove–the taste of it, salty and cool, the touch of it upon my cheek and in my hair, the sunlight and scampering wind: the simple haps and accidents, the perception, awakening within me, and the portent. ’Twas blowing high and merrily from the west–a yellow wind from the warm west and from the golden mist and low blue line of coast at the other side of the bay. It rippled the azure floor between, and flung the spray of the breakers into the sunshine, and heartily clapped the gray cliff, and pulled the ears of the spruce, and went swinging on, in joyous mood, to the gray spaces of the great sea beyond Twin Islands. I shall not forget: for faith! the fates were met in conspiracy with the day to plot the mischief of my life. There was no warning, no question to ease the issue in my case: ’twas all ordained in secret; and the lever of destiny was touched, and the labor of the unfeeling loom went forward to weave the pattern of my days.
Judith (as I know) washed her mother’s face and hands with conscientious care: ’twas her way. Doubtless, in the way she had, she chattered, the while, a torrent of affectionate reproof and direction, which gave no moment for promise or complaint, and at last, with a raised finger and a masterful little flash of the eye, bade the flighty woman keep out of mischief for the time. What then, ’tis easy to guess: she exhausted the resources of soap and water in her own adornment (for she smelled of suds in the cabin of the
Shining Light
), and set out by the path from Whisper Cove to Twist Tickle, with never a glance behind, but a prim, sharp outlook, from shyly downcast eyes, upon all the world ahead. A staid, slim little maid, with softly fashioned shoulders, carried sedately, her small head drooping with shy grace, like a flower upon its slender stalk, seeming as she went her dainty way to perceive neither scene nor incident of the passage, but yet observing all in swift, sly little flashes.
“An’ a-ha!” thinks I, “she’s bound for the
Shining Light
!”
It was blowing: on the edge of the cliff, where the path was lifted high above the sea, winding through sunlit space, the shameless old wind, turned skyward by the gray cliff, made bold, in the way the wind knows and will practise, wherever it blows. The wind cared nothing for the tragic possibility of a lad on the path: Judith was but a fluttering rag in the gust. At once–’twas a miracle of activity–her face reappeared in a cloud of calico and tawny hair. She looked fearfully to the path and yellow hills; and her eyes (it must be) were wide with the distress of this adventure, and there were blushes (I know) upon her cheeks, and a flash of white between her moist red lips. Without hint of the thing (in her way)–as though recklessly yielding to delight despite her fears–she lifted her hands and abandoned the pinafore to the will of the wind with a frightened little chuckle. ’Twas her way: thus in a flash to pass from nay to yea without mistrust or lingering. Presently, tired of the space and breeze, she dawdled on in the sunshine, idling with the berries and scrawny flowers by the way, and with the gulls, winging above the sea, until, as with settled intention, she vanished over the cliff by the goat-path to Old Wives’ Cove, where rode the
Shining Light
, sound asleep under a blanket of sunshine in the lee of the Lost Soul.
I followed.
In the cabin of the
Shining Light
, cross-legged on the table, in the midst of the order she had accomplished, her hands neatly folded in her lap, Judith sat serene. She had heard my clatter on the gang-plank, my shuffle and heavy tread on the deck. ’Twas I, she knew: there was no mistaking, God help me! the fall of my feet on road or deck. It may be that her heart for a moment fluttered to know that the lad that was I came at last. She has not told me: I do not know. But faith! my own was troublesome enough with a new and irritating uneasiness, for which was no accounting.
I feigned astonishment. “Hello!” quoth I; “what you doin’ here?”
She turned away–the eager expectation all fled from her face: I saw it vanish.
“Eh?” says I.
She sniffed: ’twas a frank sniff of contempt–pain, like a half-heard sob, mixed with the scorn of it.
“What you doin’ here?”
I stood reproached; she had achieved it in a glance–a little shaft of light, darting upon me, departing, having dealt its wound.
“Well, maid,” cries I, the smart of her glance and silence enraging me, “is you got no tongue?”
She puckered her brows, pursed her lips; she sighed–and concerned herself with her hair-ribbon, quite placid once more. ’Twas a trick well known to me. ’Twas a trick aggravating to the temper. ’Twas a maid’s trick–an ensnaring, deadly trick. ’Twas a trick ominous of my imminent confusion.
“Eh?” I demanded.
“Dannie, child,” she admonished, gently, “God hates a liar!”
I might have known.
“T’ make believe,” cries she, “that I’d not be here! How could you!”
“’Tis not a lie.”
“’Tis a white lie, child,” she chided. “You’ve come, Dannie, poor lad! t’ be a white liar. ’Tis a woful state–an’ a parlous thing. For, child, if you keeps on–”
She had paused. ’Twas a trick to fetch the question. I asked it.
“You’ll be a blue one,” says she. “An’ then–”
“What then?”
“Blue-black, child. An’ then–”
I waited.
“Oh, Dannie, lad!” cries she, her little hands clasped, a pitiful quaver in her voice, so that I felt consigned to woe, indeed, for this misdoing, “you’ll be a liar as black as–”
There was no more of it.
“You dare not say it!” I taunted.
I did not wish that she should: not I! but still, being a lad, would have her come close enough to sauce the devil. But I would not have her say that word. Indeed, I need not have troubled. ’Twas not in her mind to be so unmaidenly, with a lad at hand to serve her purpose.
“No,” says she, “I dare not; but you, Dannie, bein’ a lad–”
Her voice trailed off expectantly.
“Black as hell?”
She nodded.
“Come, maid,” says I, “you’ve called me a liar.”
“I wasn’t wantin’ to.”
“No odds,” says I. “An’ if I’m a liar,” says I, “I ’low I’m a fool for it?”
“You is.”
“Then, my maid,” cries I, in triumph, “you’ll be keepin’ me company in hell! You’ve called me a fool. ‘An’ whoso calleth his brother a fool–’”
“Oh no,” says she, quite undisturbed. “’Tis not so.”
“Not so?”
“Why, no, child! Didn’t you know?”
“But it
says
so!”
“Dannie, child,” says she, with unruffled superiority, “I come down from heaven one year an’ five months after God sent you. An’ God
told
me, Dannie, just afore I left Un at the Gate, that He’d changed His mind about that.”
The particular color of this stupendous prevarication I am still unable to determine…
Here in the cabin of the
Shining Light
was my workshop. On the bench, stout-hulled and bravely masted, was a bark to be rigged. My fingers itched to be dealing with the delicate labor. ’Twas no time now, thought I, all at once, to dally with the child. The maid was a sweet maid, an amiably irritating maid, well enough, in her way, to idle with; but the building of the ship was a substantial delight, subject to the mastery of a man with hands and a will, the end a sure achievement–no vague, elusive thing, sought in madness, vanishing in the grasp. I would be about this man’s-work. Never was such a ship as this ship should be! And to the work went Judith and I. But presently, as never happened before, I was in some strange way conscious of Judith’s nearness. ’Twas a soft, companionable presence, indeed! I bungled the knots, and could no longer work my will upon the perverse spars, but had rather dwell upon her slender hands, swiftly, capably busy, her tawny hair, her sun-browned cheeks and the creamy curve of her brow, the blue and flash and fathomless depths of her eyes. I remembered the sunlight and freshening breeze upon the hills, the chirp and gentle stirring of the day, the azure sea and far-off, tender mist, the playful breakers, flinging spray high into the yellow sunshine. ’Twas no time now, thought I, to be busied with craft in the gloomy cabin of the
Shining Light
, which was all well enough in its way; ’twas a time to be abroad in the sunlit wind. And I sighed: not knowing what ailed me, but yet uneasy and most melancholy. The world was an ill place for a lad to be (thinks I), and all the labor of it a vanity…
Now the afternoon was near spent. My hands were idle–my eyes and heart far astray from the labor of the time. It was very still and dreamful in the cabin. The chinks were red with the outer glow, and a stream of mote-laden sunlight, aslant, came in at the companionway.
It fell upon Judith.
“Judy,” I whispered, bending close, “I ’low I might as well–might as well have–”
She looked up in affright.
“Have a kiss,” said I.
“Oh no!” she gasped.
“Why not? Sure I’m able for it!”
“Ay,” she answered, in her wisdom yielding this; “but, Dannie, child, ’tisn’t
’lowed
.”
“Why not?”
Her eyes turned round with religious awe. “God,” said she, with a solemn wag, “wouldn’t like it.”
“I’d never stop for that.”
“May be,” she chided; “but I ’low, lad, we ought t’ ’blige Un once in a while. ’Tis no more than kind. An’ what’s a kiss t’ lack? Pooh!”
I was huffed.
“Ah, well, then!” said she, “an your heart’s set on it, Dannie, I’ve no mind t’ stop you. But–”
I moved forward, abashed, but determined.
“But,” she continued, with an emphasis that brought me to a stop, “I ’low I better ask God, t’ make sure.”
’Twas the way she had in emergencies.
“Do,” said I, dolefully.
The God of the lad that was I–the God of his childish vision, when, in the darkness of night, he lifted his eyes in prayer, seeking the leading of a Shepherd–was a forbidding God: white, gigantic, in the shape of an old, old man, the Ancient of Days, in a flowing robe, seated scowling upon a throne, aloft on a rolling cloud, with an awful mist of darkness all roundabout. But Judith, as I knew, visualized in a more felicitous way. The God to whom she appealed was a rotund, florid old gentleman, with the briefest, most wiry of sandy whiskers upon his chops, a jolly double chin, a sunburned nose, kindly blue eyes forever opened in mild wonder (and a bit bleared by the wind), the fat figure clad in broadly checked tweed knickerbockers and a rakish cap to match, like the mad tourists who sometimes strayed our way. ’Twas this complacent, benevolent Deity that she made haste to interrogate in my behalf, unabashed by the spats and binocular, the corpulent plaid stockings and cigar, which completed his attire. She spread her feet, in the way she had at such times; and she shut her eyes, and she set her teeth, and she clinched her hands, and thus silently began to wrestle for the answer, her face all screwed, as by a taste of lemon.
4
4
I am informed that there are strange folk who do not visualize after the manner of Judith and me. ’Tis a wonder how they conceive, at all!
Presently my patience was worn.
“What news?” I inquired.
“Hist!” she whispered. “He’s lookin’ at me through His glasses.”
I waited an interval.
“What now, Judy?”
“Hist!” says she. “He’s wonderful busy makin’ up His mind. Leave Un be, Dannie!”
’Twas trying, indeed! I craved the kiss. Nor by watching the child’s puckered face could I win a hint to ease the suspense that rode me. Upon the will of Judith’s Lord God Almighty in tweed knickerbockers surely depended the disposition of the maid. I wished He would make haste to answer.
“Judy, maid,” I implored, “will He never have done?”
“You’ll be makin’ Un mad, Dannie,” she warned.
“I can wait no longer.”
“He’s scowlin’.”
I wished I had not interrupted.
“I ’low,” she reported, “He’ll shake His head in a minute.”
’Twas a tender way to break ill news.
“Ay,” she sighed, opening her eyes. “He’ve gone an’ done it. I knowed it. He’ve said I hadn’t better not. I’m wonderful sorry you’ve t’ lack the kiss, Dannie. I’m wonderful sorry, Dannie,” she repeated, in a little quiver of pity, “for
you
!”
She was pitiful: there’s no forgetting that compassion, its tearful concern and wistfulness. I was bewildered. More wishful beseeching must surely have softened a Deity with a sunburned nose and a double chin! Indeed, I was bewildered by this fantasy of weeping and nonsense. For the little break in her voice and the veil of tears upon her eyes I cannot account. ’Twas the way she had as a maid: and concerning this I have found it folly to speculate. Of the boundaries of sincerity and pretence within her heart I have no knowledge. There was no pretence (I think); ’twas all reality–the feigning and the feeling–for Judith walked in a confusion of the truths of life with visions. There came a time–a moment in our lives–when there was no feigning. ’Twas a kiss besought; and ’twas kiss or not, as between a man and a maid, with no Almighty in tweed knickerbockers conveniently at hand to shoulder the blame. Ah, well, Judith! the golden, mote-laden shaft which transfigured your childish loveliness into angelic glory, the encompassing shadows, the stirring of the day without, the winds of blue weather blowing upon the hills, are beauties faded long ago, the young denial a pain almost forgot. The path we trod thereafter, Judith, is a memory, too: the days and nights of all the years since in the streaming sunlight of that afternoon the lad that was I looked upon you to find the shadowy chambers of your eyes all misty with compassion.
“Dannie,” she ventured, softly, “you’re able t’ take it.”
“Ay–but will not.”
“You’re wonderful strong, Dannie, an’ I’m but a maid.”
“I’ll wrest no kisses,” said I, with a twitch of scorn, “from maids.”
She smiled. ’Twas a passing burst of rapture, which, vanishing, left her wan and aged beyond her years.
“No,” she whispered, but not to me, “he’d
not
do that. He’d not–do that! An’ I’d care little enough for the Dannie Callaway that would.”
“You cares little enough as ’tis,” said I. “You cares nothing at all. You cares not a jot.”
She smiled again: but now as a wilful, flirting maid. “As for carin’ for
you
, Dannie,” she mused, dissembling candor, “I
do
– an’ I don’t.”
The unholy sp