The Cruise of the Shining Light

“Then,” says she, “I’ll ask Un.”

The which she did, in her peculiar way. ’Twas a ceremony scandalously brief and hurried. Once I caught (I thought) a slit in her eye–a peep-hole through which she spied upon me. Presently she looked up with a shy little grin. “God says, Dannie,” she reported, speaking with slow precision, the grin now giving place to an expression of solemnity and highest rapture, “that He ’lows He didn’t know what a fuss you’d make about a little thing like a kiss. He’ve been wonderful bothered o’ late by overwork, Dannie, an’ He’s sorry for what He done, an’ ’lows you might overlook it this time. ‘You tell Dannie, Judy,’ says He, ‘that he’ve simply no idea what a God like me haves t’ put up with. They’s a woman t’ Thunder Arm,’ says He, ‘that’s been worryin’ me night an’ day t’ keep her baby from dyin’, an’ I simply can’t make up my mind. She’ll make me mad an she doesn’t look out,’ says He, ‘an’ then I’ll kill it. An’ I’ve the heathen, Judy–all them heathen–on my mind. ’Tis enough t’ drive any God mad. An’ jus’ now,’ says He, ‘I’ve got a wonderful big gale blowin’ on the Labrador, an’ I’m near drove deaf,’ says He, ‘by the noise them fishermen is makin’. What with the Labradormen an’ the woman t’ Thunder Arm an’ the heathen ’tis fair awful. An’ now comes Dannie,’ says He, ‘t’ make me sick o’ my berth! You tell Dannie,’ says he, ‘t’ take the kiss an’ be done with it. Tell un t’ go ahead,’ says He, ‘an’ not be afeared o’ me. I isn’t in favor o’ kissin’ as a usual thing,’ says He, ‘for I’ve always ’lowed ’twas sort o’ silly; but if you don’t mind, Judy,’ says He, ‘why, I can turn my head.’”

’Twas not persuasive.

“’Tis a white kiss,” said she, seeking, in her way, to deck the thing with attractions.

I would not turn.

“’Tis all silk.”

It budged me not, though I craved the kiss with a mounting sense of need, a vision of despair. It budged me not: I would not be beguiled.

“An’ oh, Dannie!” she besought, with her hands appealing, “’tis awful expensive!”

I returned.

“Take it,” she sobbed.

I pecked her lips.

“Volume II., page 26!” roared my uncle, his broad red face appearing at that moment in the companionway. “You done well, Dannie! ’Tis quite t’ the taste o’ Skipper Chesterfield. You’re sailin’ twelve knots by the log, lad, on the course you’re steerin’!”

So I did not have another; but the one, you may believe! had done the mischief.

IX

AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

My uncle’s errand, speedily made known, for Judith’s restoration, was this: to require my presence betimes at tea that evening, since (as he said) there was one coming by the mail-boat whom he would have me favorably impress with my appearance and state of gentility–a thing I was by no means loath to do, having now grown used to the small delights of display. But I was belated, as it chanced, after all: for having walked with Judith, by my uncle’s hint, to the cairn at the crest of Tom Tulk’s Head, upon the return I fell in with Moses Shoos, the fool of Twist Tickle, who would have me bear him company to Eli Flack’s cottage, in a nook beyond the Finger, and lend him comfort thereafter, in good or evil fortune, as might befall. To this I gave a glad assent, surmising from the significant conjunction of smartened attire and doleful countenance that an affair of the heart was forward. And ’twas true; ’twas safely to be predicted, indeed, in season and out, of the fool of our harbor: for what with his own witless conjectures and the reports of his mates, made in unkind banter, his leisure was forever employed in the unhappy business: so that never a strange maid came near but he would go shyly forth upon his quest, persuaded of a grateful issue. ’Twas heroic, I thought, and by this, no less than by his attachment, he was endeared to me.

I sniffed a change of wind as we fell in together. ’Twould presently switch to the south (I fancied); and ’twould blow high from the sou’east before the night was done. The shadows were already long; and in the west–above the hills which shut the sea from sight–the blue of mellow weather and of the day was fading. And by the lengthened shadows I was reminded that ’twas an untimely errand the fool was upon. “’Tis a queer time,” said I, “t’ be goin’ t’ Eli’s. Sure, Moses, they’ll be at the board!”

“Dear man! but I’m wonderful crafty, Dannie,” he explained, with a sly twitch of the eye. “An they’re at table, lad, with fish an’ brewis sot out, I’m sure t’ cotch the maid within.”

“The maid?” I inquired.

“Ay, lad; ’tis a maid. I’m told they’s a new baggage come t’ Skipper Eli’s for a bit of a cruise.”

I caught a bashful flush mounting to his ears and the rumble of a chuckle in his throat.

“She’ve come from Tall Pine Harbor,” said he, “with a cask o’ liver; an’ I’m told she’ve her heart dead sot on matrimony.”

“Larry Hull’s maid?”

“No, lad; ’tis not she. She’ve declined. Las’ fall, Dannie, bein’ wind-bound in a easterly gale, I cotched she at Skipper Jonathan Stark’s. No; she’ve declined.”

“’Tis Maria Long, then,” said I.

“No, lad; she’ve declined, too.”

“Elizabeth Wutt?”

“She’ve declined.”

“’Tis not the Widow Tootle!”

“No; she’ve declined,” he answered, dismally. “But,” he added, with a sudden access of cheerfulness, “she come wonderful near it. ’Twas a close call for she! She ’lowed, Dannie, that an my beard had been red she might ha’ went an’ done it, takin’ chances with my wits. She might, says she, put up with a lack o’ wit; but a beard o’ proper color she must have for peace o’ mind. You sees, Dannie, Sam Tootle had a red beard, an’ the widow ’lowed she’d feel strange with a yellow one, bein’ accustomed t’ the other for twenty year. She’ve declined, ’tis true; but she come wonderful near t’ sayin the word. ’Twas quite encouragin’,” he added, then sighed.

“You keep on, Moses,” said I, to hearten him, “an’ you’ll manage it yet.”

“Mother,” he sighed, “used t’ ’low so.”

We were now come to a rise in the road, whence, looking back, I found the sky fast clouding up. ’Twas a wide view, falling between the black, jagged masses of Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul, cast in shadow–a reach of blood-red sea, with mounting clouds at the edge of the world, into which the swollen sun had dropped, to set the wind-blown tatters in a flare of red and gold. ’Twas all a sullen black below, tinged with purple and inky blue; but high above the flame and glow of the rags of cloud there hung a mottled sky, each fleecy puff a touch of warmer color upon the pale green beyond. The last of our folk were bound in from the grounds, with the brown sails spread to a rising breeze, the fleet of tiny craft converging upon the lower-harbor tickle; presently the men would be out of the roughening sea, pulling up the harbor to the stage-heads, there to land and split the catch. Ay, a change of wind, a switch to the sou’east, with the threat of a gale with rain; ’twould blow before dark, no doubt, and ’twas now all dusky in the east, where the sky was cold and gray. Soon the lamps would be alight in the kitchens of our harbor, where the men folk, cleansed of the sweat of the sea, would sit warm and dry with their wives and rosy lads and maids, caring not a whit for the wind and rain without, since they had what they had within.

“I’m knowin’ no other maid at Tall Pine Harbor,” said I, “that’s fit t’ wed.”

“’Tis a maid o’ the name o’ Pearl,” he confided; “an’ I’m told she’s fair on looks.”

“Pearl what, Moses?”

“I disremember, Dannie,” he answered, a bit put out. “The lads told me, out there on the grounds the day, when I got wind of her bein’ here, but I’ve clean forgot. It won’t matter, anyhow, will it, lad? for, sure, I’m able t’ ask.”

“An’ you’ve hopes?”

He trudged on, staring straight ahead, now silent and downcast. “Well, no, Dannie,” he answered, at last, “not what you might call hopes. So many, Dannie, haves declined, that I’d be s’prised t’ cotch one that wouldn’t slip the hook. But not havin’ cast for this one, lad, I’ve not give up. I’m told they’s no wonderful demand for the maid on accounts of temper and cross-eyes; an’ so I was sort of allowin’ she might have a mind t’ try a fool, him bein’ the on’y skipper t’ hand. Mother used t’ say if I kep’ on she ’lowed I’d haul one out in the end: an’ I ’low mother knowed. She never ’lowed I’d cotch a perfeck specimen, in p’int o’ looks, for them, says she, mates accordin’ t’ folly; but she did say, Dannie, that the maid I wed would come t’ know me jus’ the way mother knowed me, an t’ love me jus’ the way mother loved me, for my goodness. ’Twas kind o’ mother t’ think it: nobody else, Dannie, was ever so kind t’ me. I wonder why she was! Would you say, Dannie,” he asked, turning anxiously, “that a cross-eyed maid could be fair on looks? Not,” he added, quickly, “that I’d care a wonderful sight: for mother used t’ say that looks wiped off in the first washin’, anyhow.”

I did not answer.

“You wouldn’t say, would you, lad,” he went on, “that I was fair on looks?”

An ungainly little man, this Moses Shoos: stout enough about the chest, where a man’s strength needs lie, big-shouldered, long-armed, but scrawny and crooked in the legs and of an inconfident, stumbling gait, prone to halt, musing vacantly as he went. He was bravely clad upon his courtship: a suit of homespun from the Quick as Wink, given in fair dealing, as to quality, by Tumm, the clerk, but with reservations as to fit–everywhere (it seemed) unequal to its task, in particular at the wrists and lean shanks. His visage was in the main of a gravely philosophical cast, full at the forehead, pensive about the eyes, restless-lipped, covered upon cheeks and chin with a close, curly growth of yellow beard of a color with his hair: ’twas as though, indeed, he carried a weight of thought–of concern and helpless sympathy for the woes of folk. ’Twas set with a child’s eyes: of the unfaded blue, inquiring, unafraid, innocent, pathetic, reflecting the emotion of the moment; quick, too, but in no way to shame him, to fill with tears. He spoke in a colorless drawl, with small variation of pitch: a soft, low voice, of clear timbre, with a note of melancholy insistently sounding, whatever his mood. I watched him stumble on; and I wondered concerning the love his mother had for him, who got no other love, but did not wonder that he kept her close within his heart, for here was no mystery.

“Eh, Dannie?” he reminded me, with a timid little smile, in which was yet some glint of vanity.

“Oh, ay!” I answered; “you’re fair on looks.”

“Ay,” said he, in fine simplicity; “mother used t’ say so, too. She ’lowed,” he continued, “that I was a sight stronger on looks ’n any fool she ever knowed. It might have been on’y mother, but maybe not. The lads, Dannie, out there on the grounds, is wonderful fond o’ jokin’, an’ they says I’ve a power o’ looks; but mother,” he concluded, his voice grown caressive and reverent, “wouldn’t lie.”

It gave me a familiar pang–ay, it hurt me sore–to feel this loving confidence vibrate upon the strings within me, and to know that the echo in my heart was but an echo, after all, distant and blurred, of the reality of love which was this fool’s possession.

“An’ she said that?” I asked, in poignant envy.

“Oh, ay!” he answered. “Afore she knowed I was a fool, lad, she ’lowed she had the best kid t’ Twist Tickle.”

“An’ after?” I demanded.

“It didn’t seem t’ make no difference, Dannie, not a jot.”