My uncle’s soul, as I had been taught (and but a moment gone informed), was damned.
“Uncle Nick,” I inquired, “will the Shepherd find you?”
“Me?” cries he.
“Ay,” I persisted; “will he not seek till he finds you, too?”
“Hist!” he whispered. “I’m damned, Dannie, for good an’ all.”
“You?”
“Good Lord, yes!” said he, under his breath. “Hist! Certain sure, I is—damned t’ hell for what I’m doin’.”
At this distant day I know that what he did was all for me, but not on that moonlit night of my childhood.
“What’s that?” said I.
“I’m damned for it, anyhow,” he answered. “Say no more, Dannie.”
I marvelled, but could make nothing of it at all. ’Tis strange (I have since thought) that we damn ourselves without hesitation: not one worthy man in all the world counting himself deserving of escape from those dreadful tortures preached for us by such apostles of injustice as find themselves, by the laws they have framed, interpreting without reverence or fear of blunder, free from the common judgment. Ay, we damn ourselves; but no man among us damns his friend, who is as evil as himself. And who damns his own child? ’Tis no doubt foolish to be vexed by any philosophy comprehending what is vulgarly called hell; but still (as I have thought) this is a reasonable view: there is no hell in the philosophy of a mother for her own child; and as by beneficent decree every man is the son of his mother, consequently there is no hell; else ’twould make such unhappiness in heaven. Ah, well! I looked out of the window where were the great works of the Lord: His rock and sea and sky. The moon was there to surprise me—half risen: the sea shot with a glistening pathway to the glory of the night. And in that vast uncertain and inimical place, far out from shore, there rode a schooner of twenty tons, dawdling unafraid, her small sails spread for a breeze, in hope. Whither bound? Northward: an evil coast for sailing-craft—cruel waters: rock and fog and ice and tempestuous winds. Thither bound, undaunted, with wings wide, abroad in the teeth of many perils, come wreck or not. At least (I thought) she had ventured from snug harbor.
“Dannie,” said my uncle, “you’re all alone in the world.”
Alone? Not I! “Why, sir,” said I, “I’ve you!”
He looked away.
“Isn’t I?” I demanded.
“No, lad,” he answered; “you isn’t.”
’Twas the first step he had led me from dependence upon him. ’Twas as though he had loosened my hand a little from its confident clasp of his own. I was alarmed.
“Many’s the lad,” said he, “that thinks he’ve his mother; an’ many’s the mother that thinks she’ve her lad. But yet they is both alone—all alone. ’Tis the queerest thing in the world.”
“But, Uncle Nick, I haves you!”
“No,” he persisted; “you is all alone. Why, Lord! Dannie, you is ’leven. What does I know about you?”
Not enough.
“An’ what does you know about me?”
I wondered.
“All children is alone,” said he. “Their mothers doesn’t think so; but they is. They’re alone—all alone. They got t’ walk alone. How am I t’ help you, Dannie? What can I do for you? Of all the wisdom I’ve gathered I’d give you all an’ go beggared, but you cannot take one jot. You must walk alone; ’tis the way o’ the world. An’, Dannie, could I say t’ the evil that is abroad, ‘Stand back! Make way! Leave this child o’ mine t’ walk in holiness!’ I would not speak the word. ’Twould be hard t’ stand helpless while you was sore beset. I’m not knowin’ how I’d bear it. ’Twould hurt me, Dannie, God knows! But still I’d have you walk where sin walks. ’Tis a man’s path, an’ I’d have you take it, lad, like a man. I’d not have you come a milk-sop t’ the Gate. I’d have you come scathless, an that might be with honor; but I’d have you come a man, scarred with a man’s scars, an need be. You walk alone, Dannie, God help you, in the world God made: I’ve no knowledge o’ your goings. You’ll wander far on they small feet. God grant you may walk manfully wherever they stray. I’ve no more t’ hope for than just only that.”
“I’ll try, sir,” said I.
My uncle touched me again—moving nearer, now, that his hand might lie upon me. “Dannie,” he whispered, “if you must sin the sins of us—”
“Ay, sir?”
“They’ll be some poor folk t’ suffer. An’ Dannie—”
I was very grave in the pause.
“You’ll not forget t’ be kind, will you,” he pleaded, “t’ them that suffer for your sins?”
“I will not sin,” I protested, “t’ the hurt of any others.”
He seemed not to hear. “An’ you’ll bear your own pain,” he continued, “like a man, will you not?”
I would bear it like a man.
“That’s good,” said he. “That’s very good!”
The moon was now risen from the sea: the room full of white light.
“They is a Shepherd,” said my uncle. “God be thanked for that. He’ll fetch you home.”
“An’ you?” said I.
“Me? Oh no!”
“He’ll remember,” said I, confidently, “that you was once a little lad—jus’ like me.”
“God knows!” said he.
I was then bade go to sleep.…
* * * *
Presently I fell asleep, but awoke, deep in the night, to find my uncle brooding in a chair by my bed. The moon was high in the unclouded heaven. There was no sound or stirring in all the world—a low, unresting, melancholy swish and sighing upon the rocks below my window, where the uneasy sea plainted of some woe long forgot by all save it, which was like a deeper stillness and silence. The Lost Soul was lifted old and solemn and gray in the cold light and shadow of the night. I was troubled: for my uncle sat in the white beam, striking in at my window, his eyes staring from cavernous shadows, his face strangely fixed and woful—drawn, tragical, set in no incertitude of sorrow and grievous pain and expectation. I was afraid—’twas his eyes: they shook me with fear of the place and distance from which it seemed he gazed at me. ’Twas as though a gulf lay between, a place of ghostly depths, of echoes and jagged rock, dark with wind-blown shadows. He had brought me far (it seemed) upon a journey, leading me; and having now set my feet in other paths and turned my face to a City of Light, lifted in glory upon a hill, was by some unworthiness turned back to his own place, but stayed a moment upon the cloudy cliff at the edge of darkness, with the night big and thick beyond, to watch me on my way.
“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 t
urning 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 upo
n 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.
The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works Page 88
