Indeed, a conscience is a most distressing comrade. And, albeit a
conscience is not for a fisherman,--he cannot afford it,--a clammer may
be pricked and stabbed and plagued by that he would willingly get rid
of. For I suppose it was my conscience that impelled me to buy--in
secret, for I would not have Eve know of it lest it give her anxiety--a
little card with two revolving discs and pictures of a signalman in
every position that is possible to a signalman.
By diligent use of that card and much practice in the proper manner of
waving my arms I hoped to make myself duly proficient in the art of
signalling by the wigwag method.
I found the card at a nautical instrument store in the city on the day
after our dinner; and as I looked at it somewhat doubtfully, the clerk
pulled out a little book that gave the matter more at length. I bought
them both, and I have been practising the motions for a week in secret.
And that has its difficulties too, that I do it in secret, for if I
practised in the house it was not secret, nor was it secret in my garden
or in the hayfield or on my bluff. At last I hit upon that little clump
of trees. No one could see me there.
To-day being the Fourth of July, I thought it fit that I practise more
diligently than usual. So, having gathered my first peas, a generous
mess of them, I repaired to the clump of trees; and having propped the
book upon a branch and hung the card upon a twig, I began. But no sooner
had I got to work at it than somebody came running out of the house,
softly calling, "Adam! Adam!" It was the voice of Eve, and she was
waving a paper, for I could hear it rustling. And I swept the book off
its branch and the card from its twig, tearing the card in my haste, and
I stepped from my hiding-place on to the bluff, so that I should seem to
be but gazing out over the water, as is my wont.
I was just putting the book and the card in my pocket when Eve came upon
me, but she was so intent that she did not notice. The paper that she
had is published in the nearest city, and it is a good paper, a better
paper than any published in Boston. It suits me even better than the
London "Times," to which I subscribe, for although the "Times" has the
war news in greater detail than we have it, it is usually three weeks
old; and news which one has read three weeks before is old enough to
have been forgotten.
She held the paper up before my eyes.
"See, Adam," she said. "Here is good news for the Fourth. Our transports
have beaten the submarines, great flocks of them, and have sunk some of
them, and they have arrived safely, every ship and every man."
I smiled at her enthusiasm. "That should be good news. To be sure, the
submarines that were sunk carried their crews down with them to be
drowned like rats in a trap, and we used to think that Germans were
pretty good--"
"Good!" she cried. "When they have committed so many murders on the
sea!"
"Well, these Germans will commit no more murders. Let me see your
paper."
There it was in great staring lines of type before my eyes. I had but
just digested the headlines, and was preparing to read the solid columns
when Eve snatched it away.
"I can't wait for you to read it all. I want to show it to father."
There was probably nothing there that Old Goodwin did not know already.
He has a way of knowing things; but I said nothing of it. I smiled again
at Eve, and let her go.
"Adam," she said anxiously, turning back, "_you_ wouldn't commit
murders on the sea, would you? _You_ couldn't persuade yourself that it
was right?"
"Well," I answered gravely, "I have none in contemplation, but I have
not given the matter much consideration. If I were sailing the high
seas, and were to meet--also sailing the raging main--Sands and his
talking machine, I might--"
Eve laughed. "Yes, you might." And she came back and kissed me. "You're
no sort of a murderer."
"You don't know, Eve," I protested, "what sort of a murderer I might be.
I would not boast, and I speak in all modesty, but I try to do as well
as I can whatever I set my hand to. I venture to say that I should do
my murdering thoroughly."
She laughed again, merrily, and again she kissed me.
"The murdering that you will do will not amount to that." And she
snapped her fingers. "Jack Ogilvie is like to do more of it,--if you
call that murder." She sighed and turned away. "Now I will go."
And she was gone down the steep path and along the shore, stopping now
and then to wave at me. It hurt me somewhat not to go with her, but I
must be at my signalling.
So, as soon as Eve was out of sight in the greenery, I began again,
standing on the bluff where I was, an imprudent thing to do. I laid my
book and my card upon the ground, and began to wave my arms gently,
stooping now and then to the book to be sure that I had it right, and
saying the names of the letters to myself as I waved. For each letter
has a name in the signal book. And as I waved, I thought upon Eve's sigh
that she had sighed as she turned away, and it seemed almost as if she
were sorry that I was not as Ogilvie; but that could not be that she
would have me go, for had she not said other? And, without knowing what
I was doing, I proclaimed it to the world. "Eve would have me murder,"
was the sentence I was signalling. "Eve would have me murder on the sea
even as Ogilvie." I was even shouting the names of the letters by this.
And I looked and there was a big gray motor-boat just without the
harbor, and Ogilvie himself standing up on her deck and watching
me--and wondering, I had no doubt.
The motor-boat came on swiftly, and Ogilvie watched me as if he thought
I had gone daft, while I, out of bravado I fear, signalled again that
message about Eve, no better than a lie. And directly opposite my bluff
the motor-boat came to a stop, and Ogilvie began to wave his arms, so
that any that saw might well think there were two madmen in the harbor.
And to my delight, I could read it, and read it easily. It was a brief
message, it is true. "What!" said Ogilvie with his waving arms.
"Repeat."
I did not repeat, but I sent him another message. "Come up here and I
will explain. I am practising. Give me some more."
So he gave me more, and I could read it, although his messages were not
simple. It filled my soul with an unreasonable joy, as a boy's when he
finds that he has mastered at school some task which he thought that he
had not. And we waved our arms at each other, two gone clean crazy, for
a long time, and Ogilvie smiled more and more, until at last he laughed.
"Well done," he signalled. "I will be there in half an hour."
And the motor-boat started again, and I turned, smiling, well pleased
with myself, and there sat Eve on the bench under the pine, and she was
laughing.
"Adam," she said, "come here and sit beside me, and explain. Oh, bring
your book." For in my awkwardness I was leaving it there on the grass.
"I saw it. I have been watching you."
And I turned meekly as that same boy at school caught in some mischief,
and I went and sat beside her, but I did not explain.
"Where is Elizabeth?" I asked.
"Elizabeth," she said, "has gone sailing with Pukkie. You might have
known it. Now, what were you doing, and why were you doing it?"
I have found the truth to serve me best, and I would not tell Eve other
than the truth in any littlest thing. So I told her all, and showed her
the matter all set forth in the book. And she was interested and
pleased, and would learn wigwagging herself.
"You must teach me, Adam," she said, "and we will do it together."
And that pleased me mightily, that we do it together. And she clasped
my arm in both her hands, and bent forward and looked up into my face.
And in her eyes as she looked was even greater tenderness than was wont
to be, and that was a marvel; and there was a great joy too.
"Tell me, Adam," she said softly. "Why did you do it? What set you at
it?"
"The nature that God gave me," I said, "or conscience, which is the same
thing. I do not know. It--it is hard, Eve, to be forty-three when one
would be twenty-three--for a reason. As for the signalling," I added,
"that is nothing much, save that we be learning it together."
"I know," she said. "A symptom."
I did not know what she meant, whether my conscience or the signalling.
But still she was looking up at me with joy in her eyes, and happiness;
and she gave a little soft cry and a little happy laugh, and she
squeezed my arm between her hands.
"Oh, Adam, Adam!" she cried low. "I love you--you don't know how much.
And I don't wish that _I_ was twenty-three. Do you know why?"