Doctor Luke of the Labrador Part 15

Our harbour was for many days crowded with wrecked folk--strange of speech, of dress, of manners--who went about in flocks, prying into our innermost concerns, so that we were soon wearied of their perverse and insatiable curiosity, though we did not let them know it. They were sorry for my father and sister and me, I know, for, one and all, when they came to see my mother lying dead, they _said_ they were. And they stood soberly by her shallow grave, when we laid her dear body away, and they wept when old Tom Tot spoke of the dust and ashes, which we are, and the stony earth rattled hopelessly on the coffin. Doubtless they were well-intentioned towards us all, and towards me, a motherless lad, more than any other, and doubtless they should be forgiven much, for they were but ignorant folk, from strange parts of the world; but I took it hard that they should laugh on the roads, as though no great thing had happened, and when, at last, the women folk took to praising my hair and eyes, as my mother used to do, and, moreover, to kissing me in public places, which had been my mother's privilege, I was speedily scandalized and fled their proximity with great cunning and agility.

My father, however, sought them out, at all times and places, that he might tell them the tragic circ.u.mstances of my mother's death, and seemed not to remember that he had told them all before.

"But five days!" he would whisper, excitedly, when he had b.u.t.tonholed a stranger in the shop. "Eh, man? Have you heared tell o' my poor wife?"

"Five days?"

"Ay; had you folk been wrecked five days afore--just five, mark you--she would have been alive, the day."

"How sad!"

"Five days!" my father would suddenly cry, wringing his hands. "My G.o.d!

_Only five days_!"

A new expression of sympathy--and a glance of the sharpest suspicion--would escape the stranger.

"Five days!" my father would repeat, as though communicating some fact which made him peculiarly important to all the world. "That, now," with a knowing glance, "is what I calls wonderful queer."

My father was not the same as he had been. He was like a man become a child again--interested in little things, dreaming much, wondering more: conceiving himself, like a child, an object of deepest interest to us all. No longer, now, did he command us, but, rather, sought to know from my sister (to whom he constantly turned) what he should do from hour to hour; and I thought it strange that he should do our bidding as though he had never been used to bidding us. But so it was; and, moreover (which I thought a great pity), he forgot that he was to kill the mail-boat doctor when the steamer put into our harbour on the southward trip--a purpose from which, a week before, Skipper Tommy Lovejoy could not dissuade him, though he tried for hours together. Ay, with his bare hands, my father was to have killed that man--to have wrung his neck and flung him overboard--but now there was no word of the deed: my father but puttered about, mildly muttering that the great ship had been wrecked five days too late.

I have said that my father loved my mother; it may be that he loved her overmuch--and, perhaps, that accounts for what came upon him when he lost her. I have since thought it sad that our hearts may contain a love so great that all the world seems empty when chance plucks it out; but the thought, no doubt, is not a wise one.

The doctor whom I had found with my father in my mother's room was not among the folk who babbled on the roads and came prying into the stages with tiresome exclamations of "Really!" and "How in-tres-ting!" He kept aloof from them and from us all. All day long he wandered on the heads and hills of our harbour--a melancholy figure, conspicuous against the blue sky of those days: far off, solitary, bowed. Sometimes he sat for hours on the Watchman, staring out to sea, so still that it would have been small blame to the gulls had they mistaken him for a new boulder, mysteriously come to the hill; sometimes he lay sprawling on the high point of Skull Island, staring at the sky, lost to knowledge of the world around; sometimes he clambered down the cliffs of Good Promise to the water's edge, and stood staring, forever staring, at the breakers (which no man should do). Often I was not content with watching him from afar, but softly followed close, and peered at him from the shelter of a boulder or peeped over the shoulder of a hill; and so sad did he seem--so full of sighs and melancholy att.i.tudes--that invariably I went home pitying: for at that time my heart was tender, and the sight of sorrow hurt it.

Once I crept closer and closer, and, at last, taking courage (though his clean-shaven face and soft gray hat abashed me), ran to him and slipped my hand in his.

He started; then, perceiving who it was, he withdrew his hand with a wrench, and turned away: which hurt me.

"You are the son," said he, "of the woman who died, are you not?"

I was more abashed than ever--and wished I had not been so bold.

"I'm Davy Roth, zur," I whispered, for I was much afraid. "My mother's dead an' buried, zur."

"I saw you," said he, "in the room--that night."

There was a long pause. Then, "What's _your_ name, zur?" I asked him.

"Mine?"

"Ay."

"Mine," said he, "is Luke--"

He stopped--and thoughtfully frowned. I waited; but he said no more.

"Doctor Luke?" I ventured.

"Well," he drawled, "that will serve."

Then I thought I must tell him what was in my heart to say. Why not? The wish was good, and his soft, melancholy voice irresistibly appealed to my raw and childish sympathies.

"I wisht, zur," I whispered, looking down at my boots, through sheer embarra.s.sment, "that you----"

My tongue failed me. I was left in a sad lurch. He was not like our folk--not like our folk, at all--and I could not freely speak my mind.

"Yes?" he said, to encourage me.

"That you wasn't so sad," I blurted, with a rush, looking swift and deep into his gray eyes.

"Why not?" said he, taking my hand.

"I'm not wantin' you t' be."

He put his arm over my shoulder. "Why not?" he asked. "Tell me why not, won't you?"

The corners of my mouth fell. It may have been in sympathetic response to the tremolo of feeling in his voice. I was in peril of unmanly tears (as often chanced in those days)--and only women, as I knew, should see lads weep. I hid my face against him.

"Because, zur," I said, "it makes me sad, too!"

He sat down and drew me to his knee. "This is very strange," he said, "and very kind. You would not have me sad?" I shook my head. "I do not understand," he muttered. "It is very strange." (But it was not strange on our coast, where all men are neighbours, and each may without shame or offense seek to comfort the other.) Then he had me tell him tales of our folk, to which he listened with interest so eager that I quickly warmed to the diversion and chattered as fast as my tongue would wag. He laughed at me for saying "nar" for not (and the like) and I at him for saying "cawm" for calm; and soon we were very merry, and not only merry, but as intimate as friends of a lifetime. By and by I took him to see the Soldier's Ear, which is an odd rock near the Rat Hole, and, after that, to listen to the sea coughing and gurgling at the bottom of Satan's Well. And in all this he forgot that he was sad--and I that my mother was dead.

"Will you walk with me to-morrow, Davy?" he asked, when I said that I must be off home.

"That I will, zur," said I.

"After breakfast."

"Ay, zur; a quarter of five."

"Well, no," he drawled. "Half after nine."

"'Tis a sheer waste o' time," I protested. "But 'twill suit me, zur, an it pleases you. My sister will tell _me_ the hour."

"Your sister?" he asked, quickly.

"Bessie," said I.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "she was your sister. I saw her there--that night.

And she is your sister?"

"You got it right," cried I, proudly. "_That's_ my sister!"

He slapped me on the back (which shocked me, for our folk are not that playful); and, laughing heartily as he went, he took the road to Tom Tot's, where he had found food and housing for a time. I watched him from the turn in the road, as he went lightly down the slope towards South Tickle--his trim-clad, straight, graceful figure, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, lithe in action, as compared with our lumbering gait; inefficient, 'tis true, but potentially strong. As I walked home, I straightened my own shoulders, held my head high, lifted my feet from the ground, flung bold glances to right and left, as I had seen him do: for, even then, I loved him very much. All the while I was exultantly conscious that a new duty and a new delight had come to me: some great thing, given of G.o.d--a work to do, a happiness to cherish.

And that night he came and went in my dreams--but glorified: his smile not mirthless, his grave, gray eyes not overcast, his face not flabby and flushed, his voice not slow and sad, but vibrant with fine, live purpose. My waking thought was the wish that the man of the hills might be the man of my vision; and in my simple morning pet.i.tion it became a prayer.