Beached Keels/Captain Christy/Chapter 4
IV
The swift invasion of winter had changed the cosy village, and the autumnal land whose Northern strength was more than beauty, into a huddling camp, a bare, angular outpost against cold desolation. The harbor lay dull and blackened, as though winter-killed; scattered islets shone like alabaster domes of drowned mausoleums; along the foreshore the wharves ran in bony snowbanks across gleaming slopes and valleys of thin, sallow ice, which, at the hidden work of tides in clear morning silences, surprised the bleak solitude with little, far-heard noises of straining, crashing, tinkling, as if invisible wanderers among the hummocks were to smash through areas of glass. At long intervals the dirty sails of a schooner crawled along the lifted skyline. The ragged granite of the mountains, sharp against an Italian blue of winter skies, bore white symbols, gigantic and undecipherable; their sides were burnt brown, charred bitterly, cut with long scars of snow; from their bases the bare hills, ridged with undulating spines of buried fences, and rearing now and then the Christmas spire of a lonely evergreen, sloped away to the glitter of the fields and the pink haze of lowland alders. Only the promontories ran their great nebs down into the sea, steadfast in stern verdure, scorning to change with seasons or with centuries.
For hours, for half-days, nothing stirred in the main street of the seaport, except a wraith of powdery snow. The ocean wind, on howling nights, had by the freaks of its own will heaped drifts against windows, or swept the frozen road bare to the fossil hoofprints from the age of summer. Rarely, and strangely as if down and out from the painted vista of a stage background, appeared a man trudging, a mittenful of snow held to his ear, and his beard fringed with shapeless beads of ice. Such figures, without exception, paused under a wooden boat that threatened the path from above a window where a lighted lamp kept the frost melting. They kicked the snow from their heels, and entered.
Mr. Laurel's shop was a winter club by day and night. He was a ruddy, solemn little cobbler, whose leather apron bulged over a comfortable stomach, and round whose ear coiled always a "waxed end." Inordinate smoker and debater, local authority on music, he shone in these long days when—as Bunty Gildersleeve expressed it—there was "nuthin' but sit by the fire and drink whiskey and tell lies." Whenever discussion drooped, some one called out, "Give us a toon, now, come." And Mr. Laurel, washing his hands with an extravagance of soap and drying them fastidiously on the shop towel, opened an ancient case in a corner, and sat down before his musical glasses. He waved circles of practice in the air, bent over, and, touching the clustered rims reverently, drew forth thin, vocal harmonies of surprising sweetness. The concert always began with "Home, Sweet Home" or "Forsaken;" always ended with "Old Black Joe," when the artist, swaying backward, was lost in his work. "You can hear ut sayin' the words," he breathed, yearning with tearful rapture toward the ceiling. The audience, respectful, soothed, in wreaths and layers of thick smoke from clay pipes, formed a circle of serious, weatherbeaten faces, of big legs crossed luxuriously, of protruding boot-toes that gently waggled to the rhythm of the harmonica.
Their talk circumnavigated the realms of free speculation: what best cured the bots; whether King Solomon might not have known about electricity; whether hairs could be changed to water-serpents; whether heroes of the Fenian raid should have medals; what might be the properest way of building a weir; whether ministers were better than other folks; and what place good dogs have in the Hereafter.
Frequently upon these abstract thoughts broke in a loud scuffle and a hoarse muttering at the door, and old Gale the fisherman stumped in, filthy, red-eyed, bearded with icicles, strangely invested in a chafed leathern reefer and a bell-crowned silk hat, like some Ancient Mariner of low farce.
"Hallelujah!" he croaked inconsequently, shifting a feeble glare about the room. "Rejoice, bretherin!"
"Mornin', doctor," they replied. "How the patients this cold spell?"
"Healt the sick and cast out divils," recited the old man, as if struggling hoarsely against a storm that defeated his shouts. "Causin' the blind to walk and the lame to clap their hands. No credit to me, bretherin. Providence done it. Praise the Lord! Who's got a fig o' tabacca?"
To become a doctor was the fisherman's mode of hibernating. A fat book—"Cost me five dollar!" he roared—which contained as frontispiece an M.D.'s diploma perforated at the edge, to be torn out and framed; a black oilcloth bag, holding bottles and boxes, "Opydeldock, hartshorn, medder-sage, black cohosh, tinction o' nitre, arnicky;" and a tall, rusty silk hat which called forth reminiscences of Mr. Beatty as a young bridegroom,—with nothing more, he annually joined the noble army of Hippocrates. The wonder was that, although these sources of his dignity were simple and known, the doctor found a patient or two nearly every season. The first reproach of all physicians he had silenced this winter, by healing himself: "them turr'ble cracklin's in the drums o' my head, I stopped 'em all with the marrer of a hog's jaw."
"Jawbon' of an ass, ye mean," growled Bunty Gildersleeve. But even he was impressed by the historical fact that old Mr. Lightborn, a farmer Up the Line, had sent down a homemade diagnosis of his daughter's case, when she had shown a distressing fondness for "a idel, dangers man, a drunkart and a gamboler."
"I sent 'er a love-philtre," bellowed the doctor. "Took it in her tea and knew no better! Fixed 'er up! Hallelujah!"
And indeed, all knew that Miss Lightborn had shortly transferred her passion to a quiet young man of considerable property, out on the Ridges.
Or perhaps, when the medical fisher had been quieted with the loan of a tobacco-pipe, their talk wandered into foreign lands. Captain Christy came in seldom now, and said almost nothing; so Mr. Gildersleeve, second only to him as a great traveler, bore off the honors.
"And so we run clos' in, and fired our muskuts right amongst the bazzarr there on the shore, and wore ship and stood out to sea," he would conclude.
"But how could ye git along," propounded the skeptical Mr. Laurel, "in them foreign places where they dunno how to talk?"
"Learnt the lingo," drawled the storyteller scornfully. "Wha'd ye think? Follerin' the sea, a man picks up lots o' the dead languages."
"Give us some Dutch," challenged a listener.
"Wee gates," said Bunty, with readiness. "Much as to say, 'How's the boy?'—I know some Spanish, too."
"Let's hear ye," scoffed the cobbler, in a tone of profound unbelief.
"Addy Oats," was the reply.
"Who's she?" asked several voices.
"Way them Dons says 'good-by,’" he explained. "And they go fricasseein' round with therr hats, so— Many the time I watched 'em doin' ut in Barrcelony."
"What's the French like?" another demanded.
"Quiddlety," pronounced the linguist.
"Oh, get out with ye," cried Mr. Laurel, plying an awl contemptuously. "’T ain't. I 've heard 'em myself, up at Troy's Pistols one summer. 'T ain't the least bit like ut."
"Captain Christy," appealed Mr. Gildersleeve with dignity, "ain't that how the Crapos ask ye what time o' day ut is? Come, now."
The captain roused slowly from another revery; his vision returned to present objects, and with absent-minded tolerance he replied: "Yes, that's right, so fur's I know, Bunty."
But his face seldom lighted nowadays; he soon withdrew into caverns of deep-eyed silence; and perhaps would neither speak nor stir again until the clangor of the noon bell startled the winter air and broke up their morning session. Even when he returned to the cottage, which he and Zwinglius now kept together by strict rule of shipboard, his unshared thought still enfolded him as clouds about a mountain castle.
Though all the village noticed this change, none grieved so heartily as Joyce. On Sundays, from the tiny organ-loft of the church, she looked down with ineffectual pity on the tall figure below, the broad, spare shoulders slightly bent, the great white head, anointed with a wine-red stain from a window-shaft of sunlight. And when at her touch "St. Ann's" quavered from the doddering organ, she listened for the brave old bass that vibrated beneath the other voices, strong as a deep-sea current:—
"Time like an ever-rolling stream
Bears all its sons away:
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
•••••"God, our help in ages past.
Our hope for years to come.
Our shelter from the stormy blast.
And our eternal home."
Yes, thought the girl as she played, he was without fear and strongly comforted; but the youthful sense of justice rebelled within her, and, forgetting the stern conditions of this our race, she wondered why he, who kept the faith, could not finish the course without the burden of a late sorrow. She longed for a chance to lighten it.
And so when one day the captain, chopping a frozen log, cut his foot with a glancing blow, it was not wholly a misfortune. With an excuse to leave her lodgings at Mrs. Gildersleeve's, she at once moved into the captain's house, took charge, and managed the restless prisoner like a child.
"Now don't you dare," she commanded, before each morning tramp to school, "don't you dare take it down off that chair! Stand by!"
"Aye, aye," returned the captain comfortably. He sat by the window, the bandaged foot elevated on cushions, and one of her books at his elbow. "Stand by it is, marm!" And when she reached the gate again at noon, a big hand waving in the window showed him still at his post.
It was a happy time in the little house: the cloud descended sometimes on the captain, but more rarely and briefly. There were long evenings when Zwinglius rolled out to gather news at Laurel's; when age and youth sat together trading confidences, slowly, with many intervals; when the clock ticked, the Northern Spies roasted sputtering between the andirons, the wood fire purred for snow, or a frosty nail started like a pistol shot in the night.
"And now why," Joyce questioned, as if their talk had not faltered, "why do they seem to think young people are always happy, and all that? I think we 're more perplexed and troubled than older ones, and selfish— Yes, I do—and—and often cruel."
"Oh, that's all right," declared the captain, nodding wisely, as if to dismiss a trifle. "Ye must enjoy yourself while you 're young. 'T ain't right not to. And then when ye git to be old—well, the' 's lots o' nice things about bein' old, too. Lots. Only fault I got to find with it is that things won't stop a while for ye—only a—sort o'—breathin' spell while ye can watch everything jest as 't is—and see friends happy, and— No; things clip right along. That's all seems hard. They don't stop nor stay for ye."
The hand of the tall clock crawled through a quarter circle before either spoke again.
"Now me," the captain mused. A burnt log crashed into a ruin of rosy coals that lit up his whimsical smile. "I ben master sulky these days. Ever sence I sold the vessel—and She went."
Joyce reached up from her hassock, and captured one of his big fingers on the chair-arm.
"Master sulky," he continued. "The Book says, 'There remaineth a rest.' I know, too. That's so. But not yet, ye see, not right now. Work—that's what I want. As young 's I ever felt, and can't give up the sea yet a while. Why, ye would n't think, Joyce, the time I lay awake nights thinkin' how much I want to go another v'yage or two."
"I wish you could," said the girl sorrowfully.
"P'raps I may, some time," he responded. "Kind o' hev a feelin' it 'll come about. Now, if I had a ship this minute a-layin' at the foot o' King Street in St. John, why. Wood and Guthrie'd give me a cargo. Yes, sir! They know me. That's what 'ud happen. Hmm! So good 't won't come true."
Although the lame foot soon grew sound again, they found their evenings too pleasant to forego. The captain begged, worthy Mrs. Gildersleeve took his side, and Joyce was glad enough to remain in what seemed to be her first home. The winter crept along, through blind storm and freezing brightness.
One day, as Captain Christy sat at breakfast, Zwinglius darted in, stuttering:—
"She-she-she—she's nosin' round galley-west and crookit, cap'n! Nobody can't make out what she's aimin' fer to do!"
"Who?" the captain asked severely.
"Why, this here ship," stammered the mate. "She's a-gormin' round the bay,—three ways fer Sunday."
The captain strode to the entry, fought his way into an overcoat, hauled down the earlaps of his enormous cap, and marched outdoors. The mate trotted behind him down the windswept road, dangling a brace of fat overshoes, which he begged the captain to put on.
Puffs of light breeze chased thin snow-veils along the petrified ruts, twirled them upward in faint spirals, strewed them suddenly broadcast. A white hill that bared its smooth contour beyond the town smoked with vapors of snow that—clinging close as the steam about the body of a sweating horse—rose slowly, and shifted against the lemon glare of an arctic sun. Beyond the foot of the slope, where the dead vista of the street broke wide upon the harbor, a brigantine lay motionless, in stays, her scant canvas sagging in black-shadowed wrinkles.
A knot of men watched her from the verge of the yellow beach ice.
"What d' ye think, cap'n?" called Bunty, as the two approached. "What kind o' didos they cuttin' up aboard her? See, there they go ag'in!"
The brigantine fell off on a short, aimless leg as if to run down a group of landward isles, slatted up in irons again, came about on the opposite tack, made nothing but leeway, and at last,—when the company of numb watchers, beating arms and stamping, had turned away in disgust from her drunken repetition,—she suddenly went off, caught the wind abaft her beam, and stood out to sea.
All morning speculation ran riot at Laurel's; and when, that afternoon, the brigantine reappeared, to knock about as before, they could have pitched their excitement no higher for Captain Kidd and his Jolly Roger.
"If she wants to stave a hole in her bottom"—began Captain Christy; he stopped short, and spoke no more that afternoon, but with shining eyes paced back and forth, fidgeted, chuckled strangely. His conduct, amazing his friends, added to the day's mysteries.
While the sun was still two hours aloft, a boat put off from the brigantine, pulled shoreward, and landed a solitary passenger,—a mean-faced little man in pea-jacket and hip-boots. He scornfully asked for the telegraph office, cursed it for being twenty miles away, bought a pint of whiskey, and drove off with Sam Tipton's boy in a pung. The two sailors who had rowed him were of the city-bred type, and remained unsociable even after rounds of drink. "Yes, he's mate o' the Amirald," they said gruffly. "An' a bum one, too. An' she wants a tow, an' he's gone to telegraph up river for a tug, an' by God, that's all you Reubens pumps out o' us. Hey, whiskers?"
When nine o'clock passed, and no captain came to supper, Joyce began an anxious expedition. A piercing sea wind, in sudden, wrestling gusts, filled her cloak, raged at her skirts, checked her as though against the bellying of an invisible sail; then dropped, was gone, and left all things without breath or movement, except the high stars racing through rifts into blackness. In such pauses she caught now and then a hoarse bellow, a deep, throbbing bass note in the distance.
In the pathway of light from a window she met the captain, marching with head erect and face radiant.
"You sinner!" she scolded, taking his arm. "Why did you worry me, wandering round on such a bad, raw night?"
"That's all right," he boomed, in a voice of exhilaration. "She's never showed a light,—nary a flicker! An' there's the tug tootin' round for her! Not a flicker!"
The hoarse whistle sounded again in the stillness. Far out, a green coal moved over the face of the waters; a red coal joined it; both gleamed lustrous for a moment; then, with a bellow, the green vanished.
"Try again!" the captain advised satirically. "P'raps the Amirald's short o' karosene!"
"What's it all about?" asked the girl, tugging him homeward. "What have you been up to all this time?"
"Moon-cussin'," explained the culprit. "Jest a little moon-cussin'. In a few days I 'll tell ye, p'raps." He listened for sounds in a chill gust that staggered them. "Good noos, I think, Joyce girl. Aye, aye, home it is, then."