Doctor Luke of the Labrador Part 34

"Oh, leave us go home!"

"He'll be cotchin' you!"

I could bear it no longer: nor wished to know any more about h.e.l.l. I took her hand, and dragged her from the black shadow of the rock: crying out that we must now go home. Then we went back to Tom Tot's cheerful kitchen; and there I no longer feared h.e.l.l, but could not forget, try as I would, what Mary Tot had told me about love.

Skipper Tommy Lovejoy was preaching what the doctor called in his genial way "The Gospel According to Tommy."

"Sure, now, Tom Tot," said he, "the Lard is a Skipper o' wonderful civil disposition. 'Skipper Tommy,' says He t' me, 'an you only does the best----'"

"You're too free with the name o' the Lard."

Skipper Tommy looked up in unfeigned surprise. "Oh, no, Tom," said he, mildly, "I isn't. The Lard an' me is----"

"You're too free," Tom Tot persisted. "Leave Un be or you'll rue it."

"Oh, no, Tom," said the skipper. "The Lard an' me gets along wonderful well together. We're _wonderful_ good friends. I isn't scared o' _He_!"

As we walked home, that night, the doctor told my sister and me that, whatever the greater world might think of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, whether innocuous or virulent, Jagger was beyond cavil flagrantly corrupting our poor folk, who were simple-hearted and easy to persuade: that he was, indeed, a nuisance which must be abated, come what would.

XXIII

The COURSE of TRUE LOVE

Symptoms of my dear sister's previous disorder now again alarmingly developed--sighs and downcast glances, quick flushes, infinite tenderness to us all, flashes of high spirits, wet lashes, tumultuously beating heart; and there were long dreams in the twilight, wherein, when she thought herself alone, her sweet face was at times transfigured into some holy semblance. And perceiving these unhappy evidences, I was once more disquieted; and I said that I must seek the doctor's aid, that she might be cured of the perplexing malady: though, to be sure, as then and there I impatiently observed, the doctor seemed himself in some strange way to have contracted it, and was doubtless quite incapable of prescribing.

My sister would not brook this interference. "I'm not sayin'," she added, "that the doctor couldn't cure me, an he had a mind to; for, Davy, dear," with an earnest wag of her little head, "'twould not be the truth. I'm only sayin' that I'll not have un try it."

"Sure, why, Bessie?"

Her glance fell. "I'll not tell you why," said she.

"But I'm wantin' t' know."

She pursed her lips.

"Is you forgettin'," I demanded, "that I'm your brother?"

"No," she faltered.

"Then," said I, roughly, "I'll have the doctor cure you whether you will or not!"

She took my hand, and for a moment softly stroked it, looking away.

"You're much changed, dear," she said, "since our mother died."

"Oh, Bessie!"

"Ay," she sighed.

I hung my head. 'Twas a familiar bitterness. I was, indeed, not the same as I had been. And it seems to me, now--even at this distant day--that this great loss works sad changes in us every one. Whether we be child or man, we are none of us the same, afterwards.

"Davy," my sister pleaded, "were your poor sister now t' ask you t' say no word----"

"I would not say one word!" I broke in. "Oh, I would not!"

That was the end of it.

Next day the doctor bade me walk with him on the Watchman, so that, as he said, he might without interruption speak a word with me: which I was loath to do; for he had pulled a long face of late, and had sighed and stared more than was good for our spirits, nor smiled at all, save in a way of the wryest, and was now so grave--nay, sunk deep in blear-eyed melancholy--that 'twas plain no happiness lay in prospect.

'Twas sad weather, too--cold fog in the air, the light drear, the land all wet and black, the sea swishing petulantly in the mist. I had no mind to climb the Watchman, but did, cheerily as I could, because he wished it, as was my habit.

When we got to Beacon Rock, there was no flush of red in the doctor's cheeks, as ever there had been, no life in his voice, which not long since had been buoyant; and his hand, while for a moment it rested affectionately on my shoulder, shook in a way that frightened me.

"Leave us go back!" I begged. "I'm not wantin' t' talk."

I wished I had not come: for there was in all this some foreboding of wretchedness. I was very much afraid.

"I have brought you here, Davy," he began, with grim deliberation, "to tell you something about myself. I do not find it," with a shrug and a wry mouth, "a pleasant----"

"Come, zur," I broke in, this not at all to my liking, "leave us go t'

the Soldier's Ear!"

"Not an agreeable duty," he pursued, fixing me with dull eyes, "for me to speak; nor will it be, I fancy, for you to hear. But----"

This exceeded even my utmost fears. "I dare you, zur," said I, desperate for a way of escape, "t' dive from Nestin' Ledge this cold day!"

He smiled--but 'twas half a sad frown; for at once he puckered his forehead.

"You're scared!" I taunted.

He shook his head.

"Oh, do come, zur!"

"No, Davy," said he.

I sighed.

"For," he added, sighing, too, "I have something to tell you, which must now be told."

Whatever it was--however much he wished it said and over with--he was in no haste to begin. While, for a long time, I kicked at the rock, in anxious expectation, he sat with his hands clasped over his knee, staring deep into the drear mist at sea--beyond the breakers, past the stretch of black and restless water, far, far into the gray s.p.a.ces, which held G.o.d knows what changing visions for him! I stole glances at him--not many, for then I dared not, lest I cry; and I fancied that his disconsolate musings must be of London, a great city, which, as he had told me many times, lay infinitely far away in that direction.

"Well, Davy, old man," he said, at last, with a quick little laugh, "hit or miss, here goes!"