The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 39

"Come," Old Seth coaxed her, "you needn' be afeard to trust us with your little secrets."

She seemed, at all events, to have made up her mind to trust us.

From the pocket of her skirt she drew a tattered, paper-covered book, opened it, and was about to tear out a couple of pages, but paused.

"I'd like to send it," said she; but still paused, and at length pa.s.sed the open book to Seth.

"I see." He nodded. "Seems a pity--don't it?--to tear up good printed stuff. Tell 'ee what," he suggested: "you leave me take the book over as 'tis, and this evenin', if you'll be waitin' here, I'll bring it back safe."

She brightened at once. "That'll do brave. Tell 'en I hope he's keepin' well, and give my love to the others."

"Right you are," promised Seth cheerfully, pushing off.

"And don't you forget!" she called after us.

Seth laughed. "That's a very good girl, now," he commented as he settled himself to the tiller again. "Must be a poor job courtin' with a light-house man: not much walkin' together for they. No harm, I s'pose, in your seem' the maid's book." He handed it to my father, who shook his head.

"Aw," went on Seth, guessing why he hesitated, "there's no writin' in it--only print." He held the book open. It was a nautical almanack, and night by night the girl had pencilled out the hour of sunset.

Night by night the first flash of the Off Island lamp carried her lover's message to her, and, as Seth explained (but it needed no explanation), at that signal she blotted out yet one more of the days between her and the marriage day.

Off Island rose from the sea a sheer ma.s.s of granite, about a hundred and fifty feet in height, and all but inaccessible had it not been for a rock stair-way hewn out by the Brethren of the Trinity House.

The keepers had spied our boat, and a tall young man stood on one of the lower steps to welcome us: not Reuben, but Reuben's younger brother Sam.

Reuben met us at the top of the staircase, where the puffins built so thickly that a false step would almost certainly send the foot crashing through the roof of one of their oddly shaped houses. He too was a tall youth; an inch or two taller, maybe, than his brother, whom we had left in charge of the boat. It would have puzzled you to guess their ages.

Young they surely were, but much gazing in the face of the salt wind had creased the corners of their eyes, and their faces wore a beautiful gravity, as though they had been captured young and dedicated to some priestly service.

Reuben touched his cap, and, taking the book from Seth without a word, led us to the cottage, where his mother stood scouring a deal table: a little woman with dark eyes like beads, and thin grey hair tucked within a grey muslin cap. She had kilted her gown high and tucked up her sleeves, and looked to me, for all the world, like a doll on a penwiper.

But her hands were busy continually; the small room shone and gleamed with her tireless cleansing and polishing; and in the midst of it her eyes sparkled with expectation of news from the outer world.

Seth understood her, and rattled at once into a recital of all the happenings on the islands: births, marriages, and deaths, sickness, courtship, and boat-building, the price of market-stuff, and the names of vessels newly arrived in the roads. But after a minute she turned from him to my father.

"'Tis all so narrow, sir--Seth's news. I want to know what's happenin'

in the world."

Now, much was happening in those May weeks--much all over Europe, but much indeed in France, where Paris was pa.s.sing through the sharp agonies of the Commune. The latest my father had to tell was almost a week old; but two days before we set sail for the islands the Versaillais troops had swept the boulevards, and every steamer had brought newspapers from the mainland. Mrs. Hicks' eyes grew bigger and rounder as she listened; but she had listened a very short while before she cried--

"Father must hear this! He's up polishin' the lantern, sir. Begging your pardon, but he must hear you tell it; he must indeed." With immense pride she added, "He was over to France, one time."

She marched us off to the lantern, up the winding stairway, up the ladder, and into the great gla.s.s cage, where stood an old man busily polishing the bra.s.s reflector.

"Father, here's a gentleman come, with news from France!"

As the old man came forward with a fumbling step, my father drew a thick bundle from his coat pocket. "I've brought you some newspapers," said he; "they will tell you more than I can."

He held them out, but the wife interposed hurriedly. "Not to him, sir.

Give them to Reuben, if you please, and thank you. But he, sir--he's blind."

I looked, as my father looked. A film covered both pupils of the old man's eyes.

"He've been blind these seven years," Reuben explained in a low voice.

"Me and Sam are the regular keepers now; but the Board lets him live on here, and he's terrible clever at polishing."

"He knows the lamp so well as ever he did," broke in the old woman; "the leastest little scratch, he don't miss it. How he doesn' break his poor neck is more'n I can tell; but he don't--though 'tis a sore trial."

While they explained, the old man's hand went out to caress the lamp, but stopped within an inch of the sparkling lenses.

"Iss," said he musingly, "with this here cataract I misses a brave lot.

There's a lot to be seen up here, for a man with eyesight. Will 'ee tell me, please sir, what's the news from France? I was over there, one time."

It turned out he had once paid a visit to one of the small Breton ports: Roscoff I think it was, and have a suspicion that smuggling lay at the bottom of the business there.

"Well now," he commented as my father told something of his tale, "I wouldn' have thought it of the Johnnies. They treated me very pleasant, and I speak of a man as I find en." He turned his sightless eyes on the family he had brought up to think well of Frenchmen.

"They are different folk in Paris."

"Iss, that's a big place. Cherbourg's a big place, too, they tell me.

I came near going there, one time; but my travellin's over. It _do_ give a man something to think over, though. I wish my son here could have travelled a bit before settlin' down."

But Reuben, on the far side of the lantern, was turning the pages of the tattered almanack.

"Well-a-well!" said the old woman. "A body must be thankful for good sons, and mine be that. But I'd love to end my days settin' in a window and watchin' folks go by to church."

It was past seven o'clock when we hoisted sail again, and as we drew near the greater islands a crimson flash shot out over the sea in our wake. On a dim beach ahead stood a girl waiting.

TWO BOYS.

I daresay they never saw, and perhaps never will see, one another.

I met them on separate railway journeys, and the dates are divided by five years almost. One boy was travelling third-cla.s.s, the other first.

The age of each when I made his very slight acquaintance (with the one I did not even exchange a word) was about fourteen. Almost certainly their lives and their stories have no connection outside of my thoughts.

But I think of them often, and together. They have grown up; the younger will be a man by this time; if I met them now, their altered faces would probably be quite strange to me. Yet the two boys remain my friends, and that is why I take leave to include them among these stories of my friends.

I.

The first boy (I never heard his name) was seated in the third-cla.s.s smoking-carriage when I joined my train at Plymouth; seated beside his mother, an over-heated countrywoman in a state of subsiding fussiness.

We had a good five minutes to wait, but, as such women always will, she had made a bolt for the first door within reach. Of course she found herself in a smoking compartment, and of course she disliked tobacco, but could not, although she made two false starts, make up her mind to change. She had dropped upon one of the middle seats and dragged her boy down into the next, thus leaving me the only vacant corner.

The others were occupied by a couple of drovers and a middle-aged man with a newspaper, which he read column by column, advertis.e.m.e.nts and all, without raising his eyes for a moment.

The guard just outside the carriage door had his whistle to his lips, and his green flag lifted ready to wave, when the woman asked-- "Can anyone tell me if this train goes to London?"

The drovers and I a.s.sured her that it did.

"It stops at Bristol, doesn't it? My ticket is for Bristol."

The train was in motion by this time. We set her mind at ease.