The cottage that I have inhabited these six years looks down on the
one quiet creek in a harbour full of business. The vessels that
enter beneath Battery Point move up past the grey walls and green
quay-doors of the port to the jetties where their cargoes lie.
All day long I can see them faring up and down past the mouth of my
creek; and all the year round I listen to the sounds of them--the
dropping or lifting of anchors, the _wh-h-ing!_ of a siren-whistle
cutting the air like a twanged bow, the concertina that plays at
night, the rush of the clay cargo shot from the jetty into the lading
ship. But all this is too far remote to vex me. Only one vessel
lies beneath my terrace; and she has lain there for a dozen years.
After many voyages she was purchased by the Board of Guardians in our
district, dismasted, and anchored up here to serve as a hospital-ship
in case the cholera visited us. She has never had a sick man on
board from that day to the present. But once upon a time three
people spent a very happy night on her deck, as you shall hear.
She is called _The Gleaner_.
I think I was never so much annoyed in my life as on the day when
Annie, my only servant, gave me a month's "warning." That was four
years ago; and she gave up cooking for me to marry a young watchmaker
down at the town--a youth of no mark save for a curious distortion of
the left eyebrow (due to much gazing through a circular glass into
the bowels of watches), a frantic assortment of religious
convictions, a habit of playing the fiddle in hours of ease, and an
absurd name--Tubal Cain Bonaday. I noticed that Annie softened it to
"Tubey."
Of course I tried to dissuade her, but my arguments were those of a
wifeless man, and very weak. She listened to them with much
patience, and went off to buy her wedding-frock. She was a plain
girl, without a scintilla of humour; and had just that sense of an
omelet that is vouchsafed to one woman in a generation.
So she and Tubal Cain were married at the end of the month, and
disappeared on their honeymoon, no one quite knew whither. They went
on the last day of April.
At half-past eight in the evening of May 6th I had just finished my
seventh miserable dinner. My windows were open to the evening, and
the scent of the gorse-bushes below the terrace hung heavily
underneath the verandah and stole into the room where I sat before
the white cloth, in the lamp-light. I had taken a cigarette and was
reaching for the match-box when I chanced to look up, and paused to
marvel at a singular beauty in the atmosphere outside.
It seemed a final atonement of sky and earth in one sheet of vivid
blue. Of form I could see nothing; the heavens, the waters of the
creek below, the woods on the opposite shore were simply
indistinguishable--blotted out in this one colour. If you can recall
certain advertisements of Mr. Reckitt, and can imagine one of these
transparent, with a soft light glowing behind it, you will be as near
as I can help you to guessing the exact colour. And, but for a
solitary star and the red lamp of a steamer lying off the creek's
mouth, this blue covered the whole firmament and face of the earth.
I lit my cigarette and stepped out upon the verandah. In a minute or
so a sound made me return, fetch a cap from the hall, and descend the
terrace softly.
My feet trod on bluebells and red-robins, and now and then crushed
the fragrance out of a low-lying spike of gorse. I knew the flowers
were there, though in this curious light I could only see them by
peering closely. At the foot of the terrace I pulled up and leant
over the oak fence that guarded the abrupt drop into the creek.
There was a light just underneath. It came from the deck of the
hospital-ship, and showed me two figures standing there--a woman
leaning against the bulwarks, and a man beside her. The man had a
fiddle under his chin, and was playing "Annie Laurie," rather slowly
and with a deal of sweetness.
When the melody ceased, I craned still further over the oak fence and
called down, "Tubal Cain!"
The pair gave a start, and there was some whispering before the
answer came up to me.
"Is that you, sir?"
"To be sure," said I. "What are you two about on board _The
Gleaner?_"