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

lifted to the sky, "to that voice!"

* * * * *


The clouds in the west broke, and through the rift a shaft of sunlight shot, glad to be free, and touched our world of sea and rock with loving finger-tips, but failed, as I turned homeward, hearing no voice of my unknown mother in the wandering call of the bell; and all the world went gray and sullenly mute, as it had been....


XIX

A WORD OF WARNING

Presently my uncle and I made ready to set out for St. John's upon the sinister business which twice a year engaged his evil talents at the wee waterside place wherein he was the sauciest dog in the pack. There was now no wandering upon the emotionless old hills of Twin Islands to prepare him, no departure from the fishing, no unseemly turning to the bottle, to factitious rage; but he brooded more despairingly in his chair by the window when the flare of western glory left the world. At evening, when he thought me gone upon my pleasure, I watched him from the shadows of the hall, grave with youth, wishing, all the while, that he might greet the night with gratitude for the mercy of it; and I listened to his muttering--and I saw that he was grown old and weak with age: unequal, it might be, to the wickedness he would command in my service. "_For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire._" For me 'twas still sweet to watch the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear the sea's melodious whispering; but to him the sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. I wished that he would forsake the evil he followed for my sake. I would be a club-footed, paddle-punt fisherman, as the gray little man from St. John's had said, and be content with that fortune, could my uncle but look into the eyes of night without misgiving.

But I must not tell him so....

* * * * *


We left John Cather behind.

"Uncle Nick," says I, "I 'low we'd best have un along."

"An' why?" cries he.

"I don't know," says I, honestly puzzled.

He looked at me quizzically. "Is you sure?" he asked. His eyes twinkled. "Is you sure you doesn't know?"

"I don't know," I answered, frowning. "I don't know at all."

"Dannie," says he, significantly, "'tisn't time yet for John Cather t' go t' St. John's. You got t' take your chance."

"What chance?" I demanded.

"I don't know," says he.

I scowled.

"But," says he, "an I was you I wouldn't fear on no account whatever. No," he repeated, "_I_ wouldn't fear--an I was you."

So John Cather was left with Judy and the watchful maid-servant who loved her, having no child of her own, when my uncle and I fared out of the tickle upon the outside boat. I was troubled in the dark and wash and heave of that night, but could not for the life of me tell why. John Cather had bade me good-bye with a heartening laugh and clap on the shoulder. 'Twas with gratitude--and sure persuasion of unworthiness--that I remembered his affection. And Judy had given me a sisterly kiss of farewell which yet lingered upon my lips so warmly that in my perplexity I was conscious of it lying there and must like a thirsty man feel the place her moist mouth had touched. 'Twas grief, thinks I, because of parting with my friend John Cather; and I puzzled no longer, but devoted myself to the accomplishment of manners, as I had been taught, and now attended with interest, having grown old and wise. 'Twas rainy weather, windy, with the sea in an ugly pother off the rocks of our hard coast. 'Twas wet, blustering weather, indeed, all the hapless time we were gone from Twist Tickle: the tap-rooms of St. John's, I recall, disagreeably steamed and reeked. My uncle put me to bed that night with a motherly injunction to recite the twenty-third psalm for safety against the perils of the sea and the machinations of wicked men, and to regard the precepts of the noble Lord Chesterfield for guidance in more difficult waters: the man being quite sober for the first time in all my life upon these occasions of departure.

"Dannie, lad," says he, "you cling t' that there little anchor I'm give ye t' hold to."

I asked him mechanically what that was.

"The twenty-third psa'm," says he.

To this I promised.

"An', Dannie," says he, drawing the great bandanna handkerchief from his trousers-pocket to blow his nose, "don't ye be gettin' lonely: for Dannie--"

I must sharply attend.

"I'm for'ard," he declared, "standin' by!"

He could not perceive, poor man! that I was no longer to be dealt with as a child.

* * * * *


There befell me in the city a singular encounter. 'Twas of a soggy, dismal day: there was a searching wind abroad, I recall, to chill the marrow of impoverished folk, a gray light upon all the slimy world, a dispiriting fog flowing endlessly in scowling clouds over the hills to thicken and eddy and drip upon the streets and harbor. It being now at the crisis of my uncle's intoxication, I was come from my hotel alone, wandering without aim, to speed the anxious hours. Abreast of the familiar door of the Anchor and Chain, where long ago I had gratefully drunk with Cap'n Jack Large, I paused; and I wondered, as I stared at the worn brass knob, now broken into beads of cold sweat with the weather, whether or not I might venture some persuasion upon my perverse uncle, but was all at once plucked by the tail of my coat, and turned in a rage to resent the impudence. 'Twas but a scrawny, brass-buttoned boy, however, with an errand for the lad with the rings, as they called me. I followed, to be sure, and was by this ill-nourished messenger led to the crossing of King Street with Water, where my uncle was used to tap-tapping the pavement. Thence in a moment we ascended to a group of office-rooms, on the opposite side of the street, wherein, having been ceremoniously ushered, I found the gray stranger who had called me a club-footed, ill-begotten young whelp, on that windy night at Twist Tickle, and had with meaning complacency threatened my uncle's assassination.

I had not expected it.

"Ha!" snaps he. "Here you are, eh?"

To my amazement.

"You know me?" he demanded.

I did not know his quality, which seemed, however, by the state he dwelt in, by the deference he commanded from the scrawny, brass-buttoned, ill-nourished, tragically obsequious child who had fetched me, to be of distinction.

"Sit down," he bade me.

I would not.

"Well, well!" cries he. "You've manners as brief as your memory."

'Twas a vivid recollection that had shorn my manner to the bare. My uncle had not been quick enough to sweep the lamp from the table: I remembered this man. 'Twas he who had of that windy night most cruelly damned me; 'twas he who had struck my uncle.

"I've not forgot you, sir," says I.

He was gray: he was indeed most incredibly gray--gray of hair and eye and brow and flesh, gray of mood and outlook upon the world, forever dwelling, as it seemed, in a gray fog of suspicion and irascibility. I was gone over, from pate to shrinking club-foot, with more intimate and intelligently curious observation than ever a 'longshore jack or coast-wise skipper had achieved in the years when I wore rings. Never before had I suffered a stare more keen and unabashed: 'twas an assurance stripped of insolence by some tragical need and right. He sat beyond a broad, littered table, leaning forward upon it, his back to the riley light, his drawn face nestled within the lean, white hands of him; and 'twas now a brooding inspection I must bear--an unself-conscious thing, remote from my feeling, proceeding from eyes as gray as winter through narrow slits that rapidly snapped shut and flashed open in spasmodic winking. He was a man of fashion, of authority, of large affairs, it seemed--a gentleman, according to my uncle's code and fashion-plates. But he was now by my presence so wretchedly detached from the great world he moved in that for a moment I was stirred to pity him. What had this masterful little man, thinks I, to fear from Dannie Callaway of Twist Tickle?

Enough, as it turned out; but 'twas all an unhappy mystery to me on that drear, clammy day.

"Come, sir!" says I, in anger. "You've fetched me here?"

He seemed not to hear.

"What you wantin' of me?" I brusquely asked.

"Yes," says he, sighing; "you are here, aren't you?" He fingered the papers on his table in a way so desultory and weak that once more I was moved to pity him. Then, with blank eyes, and hopelessly hanging lip, a lean finger still continuing to rustle the forgotten documents, he looked out of the window, where 'twas all murky and dismal, harbor and rocky hill beyond obliterated by the dispiriting fog. "I wish to warn you," he continued. "You think, perhaps," he demanded, looking sharply into my eyes, "that you are kin of mine?"

I had no such dreadful fear, and, being an unkind lad, frankly told him.

"You dream," he pursued, "that you were born to some station?"

I would not have him know.

"Daniel," says he, with a faint twinkle of amusement and pity, "tell me of that wretched dream."

'Twas a romantic hope that had lingered with me despite my wish to have it begone: but I would not tell this man. I had fancied, as what lad would not? but with no actual longing, because of love for Judith, that the ultimate revelation would lift me high in the world. But now, in the presence of this gray personage, under his twinkle and pitying grin, the fancy forever vanished from me. 'Twas comforting to know, at any rate, that I might wed Judith without outrage. There would be small difficulty, then, thinks I, in winning the maid; and 'twas most gratifying to know it.

"Daniel," says he, in distress, "has that rascally Top misled you to this ridiculously romantic conclusion?"

"No, sir," I answered.

"You are the son," he declared, with thin-lipped deliberation, by which I was persuaded and sorely chagrined, "of Tom Callaway, who was lost, with all hands but the chiefest rascal it has been my lot to encounter, in the wreck of the _Will-o'-the-Wisp_. Tom Callaway, master: he