"But, first and foremost," continued Mr. Poyntz, after having revived
his failing pipe with a dozen or so of quick whiffs, "first and foremost
I must mention a queer habit he had--Scholar Gloam, I mean--and by which
it was as I first came acquainted with him. As long as the sun was over
the horizon line he'd stay indoors, behind the lock of his study door;
but at nightfall out he'd walk, foul weather or fair, and through the
wood back yonder, down across the rocky pasture to the sea, a trip of
maybe a mile and over. And often at midnight, as I've been pulling
shorewards from the offing in my fishing dory, I've seen him standing
a-top of the point, where the lighthouse stands now, the sky being
light behind him, and he looking black, and bigger than any human
creature; and sometimes he'd be tossing his arms about, and shouting
out some un-Christian lingo, though there was no one there to talk
to--leastways that I could see. 'Twas a queer thing, I say, for a
slender, delicate-looking gentleman like him to be out so by night, in
all weathers, seeming not to know the difference whether it blew, or
rained, or snowed, or all three together. Some folks used for to shake
their heads over it, and say he was gone daft; others there was (the
superstitious kind, d'ye see) would have it as how Davy Jones, whose
black bones had been the end of many a good ship and cargo, was in the
custom of coming nightly to the point to hold parley with him, as it
might be to strike a bargain whereby Davy should get the Scholar his
estates and riches again in change for his soul.
"But Jack Poyntz never troubled his head with such fancies, sir; and
times, when I'd stowed my boat away, I'd hail him, and have him down to
the house; and sitting snug together by the kitchen fire, many a strange
yarn has he spun me, the like of which never was heard before--leastways
not outside of the books that were hid in his library--and of which many
were writ in strange tongues as are not spoken in our Christian times.
But it's not for me to be repeating of 'em now, only, as I was a-telling
ye, it was such-like things brought us acquainted; and very good chums
we were, allowing for his being a young gentleman scholar, and me a
sailor as had no great book-learning, though knowing more of men and
things than a hundred such as him. And by the end of a couple of years
or so, meeting him that way off and on, I knew him as well as ever
anybody knew him--as well, maybe, as he knew himself.
"Well, things being this way, one day, about the last week in September,
it came on to blow. There was no rain, but no moon either, and the air
was thick; and night coming on, it was as black as my hat. It wasn't
long afore there was a heavy sea running, and ye could have heard the
surf on them Devil's Ribs five miles inland. I shipped the lantern up in
the fore gable as usual, though knowing it couldn't show far in such a
night; and, thinks I, see it or not, any ship that gets caught in the
tide this weather is bound to wreck; so I'll hope, says I to myself,
that they'll give us a wide berth. Howbe, I wasn't sleepy, so I loaded
my pipe, and, thinks I, I'll have a snug smoke and a drop of grog
alongside the kitchen fire afore turning in. No chance, thinks I, of my
Scholar happening in this night; he never could beat up against that
wind, not if he had Davy Jones himself to pilot him. Well, there I
sat for maybe an hour, the noise of the storm getting ever louder and
louder, so at times I could hardly hear the rattle of my spoon as I
stirred up the grog in the tumbler. Then all of a sudden there comes
a knocking at the door, quick and heavy, and up I jumps and opens
it, and lo! there was the Scholar, with no hat and no coat, and that
strange-coloured hair of his blown up wild about his head, and his eyes
wide open and bright as a binnacle.
"'Why don't you come in, sir?' shouts I, loud as if I was a-hailing him
at the maintop, such a noise the wind made; 'ye'll get the heart and
lungs blown clean out of ye if ye stop there!'
"Seemed like he answered me something, I couldn't make out what; but he
laid hold on my sleeve with that thin white hand of his, that gripped
like a vice, as if he'd pull me out into the storm with him, instead of
coming in to me. And by his face I could see there was a storm within
him as stirred him more than the one without; and then he pointed down
seawards, and, thinks I, 'tis a ship he's seen or heard on the Devil's
Ribs. And though I knew well we could no more help any poor wrecked
souls than if they was in the moon, yet it wasn't in me to back out of
going with him to see what there was to see. So just laying hold of my
tarpaulin and a flask of rum, off we starts on the run, dead in the
wind's eye. How he managed for to scud over the ground at that rate is
more than I could make out; the wind seemed to take no hold on him, but
just let him through easy, though all the time it was near blowing my
ears off.
"Well, down we came to the beach at last, at a place about a cable's
length this side of the point. I'd kept my man in sight up to this time
by reason of the white shirt he had on, his coat, as I told ye, being
off him, but whither gone I'd not remembered for to ask him. But now,
all of a sudden, I found he'd disappeared, and all I could see was the
pale froth of the surf that came leaping up the beach, with a sound from
the black wave behind it like the going off of a big gun. Howsoever,
I presently stumbled round the corner of a big boulder--ye may see it
yonder, sir, in a line with the face of the lighthouse and the top of
the pine stump--and there he was on his knees beside something wrapped
up and still; and when I looked, 'twas seemingly a young girl, about
twelve to thirteen years old, with no life in her. She had come ashore
on a bit of planking, and the Scholar he had seen her coming, and had
scrambled down from the cliff in time to haul her in and under the lea
of the boulder. How he did it the Lord only knows, for ten men working
together might have failed in it. But there she lay, with no mark of
harm or bruise upon her, and yet (as my heart misgave me) lifeless from
the washing of the waves through which she had voyaged to land.
"I saw 'twould be no use trying to give her rum yet awhile, so I stoops
to lift her up along with the bit of planking that she lay upon; and
Scholar Gloam he helped, though neither of us spoke, by reason of the
thundering noise of the surf and the wind that half deafened us. It took
us maybe a quarter of an hour, and then we were at home, and had her
down before the fire, and wrapped in hot blankets, and everything done
that could be done; and after nigh a couple of hours' work, she moved
the least mite in the world, and fetched a sigh. With that I sings out
like I'd come upon a chest full of gold dollars, and says I, 'All's
well, Scholar Gloam; she's a-coming to, and she'll live to smile on us
yet!' And then what does he do, sir, but just throws his head back with
a little laugh, and topples over in a dead faint. 'Twas the exhaustion,
ye must understand, as had come on all at once after the suspense of
whether she was alive or dead was over. So there was I with the two of
'em to doctor. Well, I soon had the Scholar all right again; but when he
saw as how the child was a-doing well, he drops off suddenly to sleep,
being tired right out and unable for to keep his eyes open; and I didn't
wake him, but just threw a blanket over him, and let him sleep it out.
"It was, maybe, half an hour after that that the little girl spoke; she
had been opening her eyes and then shutting them several times, and
wondering where she was got to, I suppose, poor little dear. She was
pretty and white, with yellow hair and big blue eyes, and soft little
feet and hands, and pointed fingers; and round her neck was the
pearl-shell necklace that ye've seen Agatha wearing, sir. Well, she
looked at me for a bit, and seemed like to cry, not knowing who I was,
or where she'd got to, d'ye see; and then she said something, repeating
it over twice or thrice; but I couldn't understand her, by reason of her
speaking some foreign lingo as was unknown to me. Howsoever, I took for
granted that it must be some of her people she was asking after; so I
pointed to the back room, and made believe as they were in there, but
asleep, and not to be disturbed then. She believed me, poor little soul,
and presently after dropped quietly asleep, with the tears yet under her
eyelids, and the firelight flickering over her sweet face and yellow
hair.
"Well, I sat there between the two, for I wasn't sleepy at all myself,
and kept the fire alight, and my own pipe a-going, till morning, by
which time the storm was mostly cleared off. So I got the old lantern
down from the gable, and stirred about to get breakfast ready; and at
sunrise, the two being still sleeping, I walked out to see if so be as
anything of the wreck was visible. But the Devil's Ribs was only a bank
of foam, and when I came to the beach there was naught there but a few
shattered timbers and bits of spars and rigging; whatever else there
may have been had gone down within the whirlpool of the Devil's Ribs,
and would never see daylight more; nor was there anything to tell where
the wrecked ship hailed from, or what she was, or whither she was bound.
Nay, a man might well have doubted whether there'd been any wreck at
all; and superstitious folks might have thought that the pretty child we
had found was a sea-nymph or a mermaid, who had come on the shoulders
of waves to bring us good luck--or bad, maybe! Not that I'd have ye to
think, sir, that I'm of the superstitious kind, being a man as has
seen much of the world, and lived a number of years in it. But 'twas a
strange thing altogether, and stranger yet was to follow, as ye shall
hear.
"In my walk I happened by the boulder where I'd been with the Scholar
overnight, and there I picked up a small iron box, with a big lock on
it; it was lashed to four bits of wood, so as it might float, and I
think it must have come ashore along with the raft that brought the
little girl. Just as I laid hands on it, and cut away the lashings, I
sighted one of the villagers a-coming over the cliff path towards me.
So, not caring to be hailed at that time, I slipped the box in the
pocket of my jacket, and steered for the house.
"And lo! there was the fair child sitting in the chair, and the Scholar
he was kneeling in front of her, with her hands in his, and they were
a-talking together in that same foreign lingo as she had spoken in to
me; for, d'ye see, he had learnt it all from his books, and understood
it as well as she who was born to it. The child was a bit scared and
tearful still, and he seemed to be a-comforting of her; and as I came
in, says he, 'Don't let on that her folks are drowned, Jack; for I've
told her they're but borne away to another harbour, and will return one
day to claim her. So meanwhile,' says he, 'she'll come to live with me
at the mill, and be my little girl; for is she not my little girl now,
since 'twas I brought her forth from the ocean that would have robbed
her sweet young life?' With that he kisses her little hands, and says
somewhat to her again in her own tongue. It touched my heart to see the
two together, sir; for, d'ye see, the Scholar had never seemed to be
aware, as I may say, of women or children until now; he had moved
through life without seeing them or speaking to them, save at times
in an absent, dreamy sort of a way, as though they were in different
worlds. But now he was full of earnestness and a kind of joyful
trembling surprise, as one who had all of a sudden opened his eyes to a
great treasure, and was delighting in it all the more for that he had
been unknowing of it before. He was all in all a changed man, and
softened, and waked up inside, so that his eyes seemed to be a-seeing
the things that was round him, and not things in a dream; and methought
there was a difference in his voice, too; it was deeper and tenderer
like, and made you feel as how he had grown to be a man more than a
scholar. I thought he was as a ship that had long been lingering in cold
dark waters, baffled with winds that set towards no pleasant harbour,
but which had at last found its sails filled with a fair fresh breeze,
as was blowing her to warm southern seas and tropic islands full of heat
and life. Ye'll maybe laugh, sir, to hear an old sailor talk like this;
but surely I had loved the man, and pitied him, too, for his loneliness;
and it touched me, as I said, to see that he had found a good thing in
the world, and could feel the happiness of it.
"'Pretty soon, Jack,' says he again, 'ye must help me carry her to the
mill this morning, before the village folks are astir; and don't tell
them that she's there, or whence she came. She's my own, and her past is
all gone for ever; God has sent her to me for my own. I shall make her
love me as I now love her, and no other shall have any part in her. I
will be to her all that she has lost, and more; and I will cherish her
always and make her happy. And when the village folks find out that I
have her (as soon of course they must), they shall be told that she is
a good fairy come to bring me fortune and delight. I'd say that she rose
up one morning out of the deep clear pool just above the mill-race; and
that though appearing as a human being, she is in very truth not mortal,
but has consented to live with me so long as I continue worthy of
her companionship. But when the time comes--which God forbid it ever
should!--that I prove unworthy, then shall she vanish back to her
natural abode, and I be more desolate than before she came. And as
for this necklace,' says he, 'it is a talisman; and should fate ever
separate us, yet this be left me, 'twill be a pledge that'...."
"What's happened?"