Doctor Luke of the Labrador Part 24

The doctor came in from the sea at evening--when the wind had freshened to a gale, blowing bitter cold. He had been for three days and nights fighting without sleep for the life of that mother of seven--and had won! Ay, she had pulled through; she was now resting in the practiced care of the Cuddy Cove women, whose knowledge of such things had been generously increased. The ragged, st.u.r.dy seven still had a mother to love and counsel them. The Cuddy Cove men spoke reverently of the deed and the man who had done it. Tired? The doctor laughed. Not he! Why, he had been asleep under a tarpaulin all the way from Cuddy Cove! And Skipper Elisha Timbertight had handled the skiff in the high seas so cleverly, so tenderly, so watchfully--what a marvellous hand it was!--that the man under the tarpaulin had not been awakened until the nose of the boat touched the wharf piles. But the doctor was hollow-eyed and hoa.r.s.e, staggering of weariness, but cheerfully smiling, as he went up the path to talk with the woman from Bowsprit Head.

"You are waiting for me?" he asked.

She was frightened--by his accent, his soft voice, his gentle manner, to which the women of our coast are not used. But she managed to stammer that her baby was sick.

"'Tis his throat," she added.

The child was noisily fighting for breath. He gasped, writhed in her lap, struggled desperately for air, and, at last, lay panting. She exposed him to the doctor's gaze--a dull-eyed, scrawny, ugly babe: such as mothers wish to hide from sight.

"He've always been like that," she said. "He's wonderful sick. I've fetched un here t' be cured."

"A pretty child," said the doctor.

'Twas a wondrous kind lie--told with such perfect dissimulation that it carried the conviction of truth.

"What say?" she asked, leaning forward.

"A pretty child," the doctor repeated, very distinctly.

"They don't say that t' Bowsprit Head, zur."

"Well--_I_ say it!"

"I'll tell un so!" she exclaimed, joyfully. "I'll tell un you said so, zur, when I gets back t' Bowsprit Head. For n.o.body--n.o.body, zur--ever said that afore--about my baby!"

The child stirred and complained. She lifted him from her lap--rocked him--hushed him--drew him close, rocking him all the time.

"Have you another?"

"No, zur; 'tis me first."

"And does he talk?" the doctor asked.

She looked up--in a glow of pride. And she flushed gloriously while she turned her eyes once more upon the gasping, ill-featured babe upon her breast.

"He said 'mama'--once!" she answered.

In the fog--far, far away, in the distances beyond Skull Island, which were hidden--the doctor found at that moment some strange interest.

"Once?" he asked, his face still turned away.

"Ay, zur," she solemnly declared. "I calls my G.o.d t' witness! I'm not makin' believe, zur," she went on, with rising excitement. "They says t'

Bowsprit Head that I dreamed it, zur, but I knows I didn't. 'Twas at the dawn. He lay here, zur--here, zur--on me breast. I was wide awake, zur--waitin' for the day. Oh, he said it, zur," she cried, crushing the child to her bosom. "I heared un say it! 'Mama!' says he."

"When I have cured him," said the doctor, gently, "he will say more than that."

"What say?" she gasped.

"When I have taken--something--out of his throat--with my knife--he will be able to say much more than that. When he has grown a little older, he will say, 'Mama, I loves you!'"

The woman began to cry.

There is virtue for the city-bred, I fancy, in the clean salt air and simple living of our coast--and, surely, for every one, everywhere, a tonic in the performance of good deeds. Hard practice in fair and foul weather worked a vast change in the doctor. Toil and fresh air are eminent physicians. The wonder of salty wind and the hand-to-hand conflict with a northern sea! They gave him health, a clear-eyed, brown, deep-breathed sort of health, and restored a strength, broad-shouldered and lithe and playful, that was his natural heritage. With this new power came joyous courage, indomitability of purpose, a restless activity of body and mind. He no longer carried the suggestion of a wrecked ship; however afflicted his soul may still have been, he was now, in manly qualities, the man the good G.o.d designed--strong and bonnie and tender-hearted: betraying no weakness in the duties of the day. His plans shot far beyond our narrow prospect, shaming our blindness and timidity, when he disclosed them; and his interests--searching, insatiable, reflective--comprehended all that touched our work and way of life: so that, as Tom Tot was moved to exclaim, by way of an explosion of amazement, 'twas not long before he had mastered the fish business, gill, fin and liver. And he went about with hearty words on the tip of his tongue and a laugh in his gray eyes--merry the day long, whatever the fortune of it. The children ran out of the cottages to greet him as he pa.s.sed by, and a mult.i.tude of surly, ill-conditioned dogs, which yielded the road to no one else, accepted him as a distinguished intimate. But still, and often--late in the night--my sister and I lay awake listening to the disquieting fall of his feet as he paced his bedroom floor. And sometimes I crept to his door--and hearkened--and came away, sad that I had gone.

When--autumn being come with raw winds and darkened days--the doctor said that he must go an errand south to St. John's and the Canadian cities before winter settled upon our coast, I was beset by melancholy fears that he would not return, but, enamoured anew of the glories of those storied harbours, would abandon us, though we had come to love him, with all our hearts. Skipper Tommy Lovejoy joined with my sister to persuade me out of these drear fancies: which (said they) were ill-conceived; for the doctor must depart a little while, else our plans for the new sloop and little hospital (and our defense against Jagger) would go all awry. Perceiving, then, that I would not be convinced, the doctor took me walking on the bald old Watchman, and there shamed me for mistrusting him: saying, afterwards, that though it might puzzle our harbour and utterly confound his greater world, which must now be informed, he had in truth cast his lot with us, for good and all, counting his fortune a happy one, thus to come at last to a little corner of the world where good impulses, elsewhere scrawny and disregarded, now flourished l.u.s.tily in his heart. Then with delight I said that I would fly the big flag in welcome when the returning mail-boat came puffing through the Gate. And scampering down the Watchman went the doctor and I, hand in hand, mistrust fled, to the very threshold of my father's house, where my sister waited, smiling to know that all went well again.

Past ten o'clock of a dismal night we sat waiting for the mail-boat--unstrung by anxious expectation: made wretched by the sadness of the parting.

"There she blows, zur!" cried Skipper Tommy, jumping up. "We'd best get aboard smartly, zur, for she'll never come through the Gate this dirty night."

The doctor rose, and looked, for a strained, silent moment, upon my dear sister, but with what emotion, though it sounded the deeps of pa.s.sion, I could not then conjecture. He took her hand in both of his, and held it tight, without speaking. She tried, dear heart! to meet his ardent eyes--but could not.

"I'm wishin' you a fine voyage, zur," she said, her voice fallen to a tremulous whisper.

He kissed the hand he held.

"T' the south," she added, with a swift, wondering look into his eyes, "an' back."

"Child," he began with feeling, "I----"

In some strange pa.s.sion my sister stepped from him. "Call me that no more!" she cried, her voice broken, her eyes wide and moist, her little hands clinched. "Why, child!" the doctor exclaimed. "I----"

"I'm _not_ a child!"

The doctor turned helplessly to me--and I in bewilderment to my sister--to whom, again, the doctor extended his hands, but now with a frank smile, as though understanding that which still puzzled me.

"Sister----" said he.

"No, no!"

'Twas my nature, it may be, then to have intervened; but I was mystified and afraid--and felt the play of some great force, unknown and dreadful, which had inevitably cut my sister off from me, her brother, keeping her alone and helpless in the midst of it--and I quailed and kept silent.

"Bessie!"

She took his hand. "Good-bye, zur," she whispered, turning away, flushed.

"Good-bye!"

The doctor went out, with a new mark upon him; and I followed, still silent, thinking it a poor farewell my sister had given him, but yet divining, serenely, that all this was beyond the knowledge of lads. I did not know, when I bade the doctor farewell and G.o.dspeed, that his heart tasted such bitterness as, G.o.d grant! the hearts of men do seldom feel, and that, n.o.bility a.s.serting itself, he had determined never again to return: fearing to bring my sister the unhappiness of love, rather than the joy of it. When I had put him safe aboard, I went back to the house, where I found my sister sorely weeping--not for herself, she sobbed, but for him, whom she had wounded.

XVIII