The Cruise of the Shining Light, Norman Duncan [epub e ink reader .txt] 📗

what's that--ag'in your health?"

I would sip my ginger-ale unheeding.

"An' what about Chesterfield?" says he.

"I'll have another bottle, sir," says I.

"Lord love us!" he would complain, in such distress that I wish I had not troubled him with this passion. "Ye're fair bound t' ruin your constitution with drink."

Pop went the cork.

"An' here's _me_" says he, in disgusted chagrin, "tryin' t' make a gentleman out o' ye!"

Ah, well! 'twas now a mean, poor lookout for the cosey conviviality I had all my life promised myself with my uncle. Since the years when late o' nights I occupied the arms and broad knee of Cap'n Jack Large at the Anchor and Chain--with a steaming comfort within and a rainy wind blowing outside--my uncle and I had dwelt upon the time when I might drink hard liquor with him like a man. 'Twould be grand, says my uncle, to sit o' cold nights, when I was got big, with a bottle o' Long Tom between. A man grown--a man grown able for his bottle! For him, I fancy, 'twas a vision of successful achievement and the reward of it. Lord love us! says he, but the talk o' them times would be lovely. The very thought of it, says he--the thought o' Dannie Callaway grown big and manly and helpfully companionable--fair warmed him with delight. But now, at Twist Tickle, with the strong, sly hands of Judith upon our ways, with her grave eyes watching, now commending, now reproaching, 'twas a new future that confronted us. Ay, but that maid, dwelling responsibly with us men, touched us closely with control! 'Twas a sharp eye here, a sly eye there, a word, a twitch of her red lips, a lift of the brow and dark lashes--and a new ordering of our lives. 'Tis marvellous how she did it: but that she managed us into better habits, by the magic mysteriously natural to a maid, I have neither the wish nor the will to gainsay. I grieved that she should deprive my uncle of his comfort; but being a lad, devoted, I would not add one drop to my uncle's glass, while Judith sat under the lamp, red-cheeked in the heat of the fire, her great eyes wishful to approve, her mind most captivatingly engaged, as I knew, with the will of God, which was her own, dear heart! though she did not know it.

"Dannie," says she, in private, "God wouldn't 'low un more'n a quarter of a inch at a time."

"'Twas in the pantry while I got the bottle."

"An' how," quoth I, "is you knowin' that?"

"Why, child," she answered, "God tol' me so."

I writhed. 'Twas a fancy so strange the maid had: but was yet so true and reverent and usefully efficient--so high in leading to her who led us with her into pure paths--that I must smile and adore her for it. 'Twas to no purpose, as I knew, to thresh over the improbability of the communication: Judith's eyes were round and clear and unwavering--full of most exalted truth, concern, and confidence. There was no pretence anywhere to be descried in their depths: nor evil nor subterfuge of any sort. And it seems to me, now, grown as I am to sager years, that had the Guide whose hand she held upon the rough road of her life communed with His sweet companion, 'twould have been no word of reproach or direction he would whisper for her, who needed none, possessing all the wisdom of virtue, dear heart! but a warning in my uncle's behalf, as she would have it, against the bottle he served. The maid's whimsical fancy is not incomprehensible to me, neither tainted with irreverence nor untruth: 'twas a thing flowering in the eyrie garden of her days at Whisper Cove--a thing, as I cannot doubt, of highest inspiration.

"But," I protested, glibly, looking away, most wishful, indeed, to save my uncle pain, "I isn't able t' measure a quarter of a inch."

"_I_ could," says she.

"Not with the naked eye, maid!"

"Well," says she, "you might try, jus' t' please God."

To be sure I might: I might pour at a guess. But, unhappily (and it may be that there is some philosophy in this for a self-indulgent world), I was not in awe of Judith's fantastic conception of divinity, whatever I thought of my own, by whom, however, I was not conjured. Moreover, I loved my uncle, who had continued to make me happy all my life, and would venture far in the service of his comfort. The twinkling, benevolent aspect of the maid's Deity could not compel a lad to righteousness: I could with perfect complacency conduct myself perversely before it. And must we then, lads and men, worship a God of wrath, quick to punish, niggardly in fatherly forgiveness, lest we stray into evil ways? I do not know. 'Tis beyond me to guess the change to be worked in the world by a new conception of the eternal attributes.

"An' will you not?" says she.

It chanced, now, that she held the lamp near her face, so that her beauty was illumined and transfigured. 'Twas a beauty most tender--most pure and elfin and religious. 'Tis a mean, poor justification, I know, to say that I was in some mysterious way--by the magic resident in the beauty of a maid, and virulently, wickedly active within its sphere, which is the space the vision of a lad may carry--that I was by this magic incapacitated and overcome. 'Tis an excuse made by fallen lads since treason was writ of; 'tis a mere excuse, ennobling no traitorious act: since love, to be sure, has no precedence of loyalty in hearts of truth and manful aspiration. Love? surely it walks with glorious modesty in the train of honor--or is a brazen baggage. But, as it unhappily chanced, whatever the academic conception, the maid held the lamp too close for my salvation: so close that her blue, shadowy eyes bewildered me, and her lips, red and moist, with a gleam of white teeth between, I recall, tempted me quite beyond the endurance of self-respect. I slipped, indeed, most sadly in the path, and came a shamefaced, ridiculous cropper.

"An' will you not," says she, "pour but a quarter of a inch t' the glass?"

"I will," I swore, "for a kiss!"

'Twas an outrageous betrayal of my uncle.

"For shame!" cries she.

"I will for a kiss," I repeated, my soul offered on a platter to the devil, "regardless o' the consequences."

She matched my long words with a great one caught from my tutor. "God isn't inclined," says she, with a toss, "in favor o' kisses."

And there you had it!

* * * * *


When we sat late, our maid-servant would indignantly whisk Judith off to bed--crying out upon us for our wickedness.

"Cather," my uncle would drawl, Judith being gone, "ye're all wore out along o' too much study."

"Not at all, Skipper Nicholas!" cries my tutor.

"Study," says my uncle, in solemn commiseration, "is a bitter thing t' be cotched by. Ye're all wore out, parson, along o' the day's work."

My tutor laughed.

"Too much study for the brain," says my uncle, sympathetically, his eye on the bottle. "I 'low, parson, if I was you I'd turn in."

Cather was unfailingly obedient.

"Dannie," says my uncle, with reviving interest, "have he gone above?"

"He have," says I.

"Take a look," he whispered, "t' see that Judy's stowed away beyond hearin'."

I would step into the hall--where was no nightgowned figure listening on the stair--to reassure him.

"Dannie," says he, wickedly gleeful, "how's the bottle?"

I would hold it up to the lamp and rattle its contents. "'Tis still stout, sir," says I. "'Tis a wonderful bottle."

"Stout!" cries he, delighted. "Very good."

"Still stout," says I; "an' the third night!"

"Then," says he, pushing his glass towards me, "I 'low they's no real need o' puttin' me on short allowance. Be liberal, Dannie, b'y--be liberal when ye pours."

I would be liberal.

"'Tis somehow sort o' comfortable, lad," says he, eying me with honest feeling, "t' be sittin' down here with a ol' chum like you. 'Tis very good, indeed."

I was glad that he thought so.

And now I must tell that I loved Judith. 'Tis enough to say so--to write the bare words down. I'm not wanting to, to be sure: for it shames a man to speak boldly of sacred things like this. It shames a lad, it shames a maid, to expose the heart of either, save sacredly to each other. 'Tis all well enough, and most delightful, when the path is moonlit and secluded, when the warmth and thrill of a slender hand may be felt, when the stars wink tender encouragement from the depths of God's own firmament, when all the world is hushed to make the opportunity: 'tis then all well enough to speak of love. There is nothing, I know, to compare in ecstasy with the whisper and sigh and clinging touch of that time--to compare with the awe and mystery and solemnity of it. But 'tis sacrilegious and most desperately difficult and embarrassing, I find, at this distant day, to write of it. I had thought much upon love, at that wise age--fifteen, it was, I fancy--and it seemed to me, I recall, a thing to cherish within the heart of a man, to hide as a treasure, to dwell upon, alone, in moments of purest exaltation. 'Twas not a thing to bandy about where punts lay tossing in the lap of the sea; 'twas not a thing to tell the green, secretive old hills of Twin Islands; 'twas not a thing to which the doors of the workaday world might be opened, lest the ribaldry to which it come offend and wound it: 'twas a thing to conceal, far and deep, from the common gaze and comment, from the vulgar chances, the laugh and cynical exhaustion and bleared wit of the life we live. I loved Judith--her eyes and tawny hair and slender finger-tips, her whimsical way, her religious, loving soul. I loved her; and I would not have you think 'twas any failure of adoration to pour my uncle an honest dram of rum when she was stowed away in innocency of all the evil under the moon. 'Tis a thing that maids have nothing to do with, thinks I; 'tis a knowledge, indeed, that would defile them....

* * * * *


"Dannie," says my uncle, once, when we were left alone, "he've begun t' fall."

I was mystified.

"The parson," he explained, in a radiant whisper; "he've begun t' yield."

"T' what?" I demanded.

"Temptation. He've a dark eye, lad, as I 'lowed long ago, an' he've begun t' give way t' argument."

"God's sake, Uncle Nick!" I cried, "leave the poor man be. He've done no harm."

He scratched his stubble of hair, and contemplatively traced a crimson scar with his forefinger. "No," he mused, his