My mother lay thus abandoned for seven days. It was very still and
solemn in the room--and there was a hush in all the house; and there was
a mystery, which even the break of day could not dissolve, and a shadow,
which the streaming sunlight could not drive away. Beyond the broad
window of her room, the hills of Skull Island and God's Warning stood
yellow in the spring sunshine, rivulets dripping from the ragged patches
of snow which yet lingered in the hollows; and the harbour water rippled
under balmy, fragrant winds from the wilderness; and workaday voices,
strangely unchanged by the solemn change upon our days, came drifting up
the hill from my father's wharves; and, ay, indeed, all the world of sea
and land was warm and wakeful and light of heart, just as it used to be.
But within, where were the shadow and the mystery, we walked on tiptoe
and spoke in whispers, lest we offend the spirit which had entered in.
* * * * *
By day my father was occupied with the men of the place, who were then
anxiously fitting out for the fishing season, which had come of a sudden
with the news of a fine sign at Battle Harbour. But my mother did not
mind, but, rather, smiled, and was content to know that he was about his
business--as men must be, whatever may come to pass in the house--and
that he was useful to the folk of our harbour, whom she loved. And my
dear sister--whose heart and hands God fashioned with kind purpose--gave
full measure of tenderness for both; and my mother was grateful for
that, as she ever was for my sister's loving kindness to her and to me
and to us all.
One night, being overwrought by sorrow, it may be, my father said that
he would have the doctor-woman from Wolf Cove to help my mother.
"For," said he, "I been thinkin' a deal about she, o' late, an' they's
no tellin' that she wouldn't do you good."
My mother raised her eyebrows. "The doctor-woman!" cried she. "Why,
David!"
"Ay," said my father, looking away, "I s'pose 'tis great folly in me t'
think it. But they isn't no one else t' turn to."
And that was unanswerable.
"There seems to be no one else," my mother admitted. "But, David--the
doctor-woman?"
"They _does_ work cures," my father pursued. "I'm not knowin' _how_
they does; but they does, an' that's all I'm sayin'. Tim Budderly o' the
Arm told me--an' 'twas but an hour ago--that she charmed un free o'
fits."
"I have heard," my mother mused, "that they work cures. And if----"
"They's no knowin' what she can do," my father broke in, my mother now
listening eagerly. "An' I just wish you'd leave me go fetch her. Won't
you, lass? Come, now!"
"'Tis no use, David," said my mother. "She couldn't do anything--for
me."
"Ay, but," my father persisted, "you're forgettin' that she've worked
cures afore this. I'm fair believin'," he added with conviction, "that
they's virtue in some o' they charms. Not in many, maybe, but in some.
An' she might work a cure on you. I'm not sayin' she will. I'm only
sayin' she might."
My mother stared long at the white washed rafters overhead. "Oh," she
sighed, plucking at the coverlet, "if only she could!"
"She might," said my father. "They's no tellin' till you've tried."
"'Tis true, David," my mother whispered, still fingering the coverlet.
"God works in strange ways--and we've no one else in this land to help
us--and, perhaps, He might----"
My father was quick to press his advantage. "Ay," he cried, "'tis very
_likely_ she'll cure you."
"David," said my mother, tearing at the coverlet, "let us have her over
to see me. She might do me good," she ran on, eagerly. "She might at
least tell me what I'm ailing of. She might stop the pain. She might
even----"
"Hush!" my father interrupted, softly. "Don't build on it, dear," said
he, who had himself, but a moment gone, been so eager and confident.
"But we'll try what she can do."
"Ay, dear," my mother whispered, in a voice grown very weak, "we'll
try."
* * * * *
Skipper Tommy Lovejoy would have my father leave _him_ fetch the woman
from Wolf Cove, nor, to my father's impatient surprise, would hear of
any other; and he tipped me a happy wink--which had also a glint of
mystery in it--when my father said that he might: whereby I knew that
the old fellow was about the business of the book. And three days later,
being on the lookout at the window of my mother's room, I beheld the
punt come back by way of North Tickle, Skipper Tommy labouring heavily
at the oars, and the woman, squatted in the stern, serenely managing the
sail to make the best of a capful of wind. I marvelled that the punt
should make headway so poor in the quiet water--and that she should be
so much by the stern--and that Skipper Tommy should be bent near
double--until, by and by, the doctor-woman came waddling up the path,
the skipper at her heels: whereupon I marvelled no more, for the reason
was quite plain.
"Ecod! lad," the skipper whispered, taking me aside, the while wiping
the sweat from his red face with his hand; "but she'll weigh five
quintal if a pound! She's e-_nar_-mous! 'Twould break your heart t' pull
_that_ cargo from Wolf Cove. But I managed it, lad," with a solemn wink,
"for the good o' the cause. Hist! now; but I found out a wonderful
lot--about cures!"
Indeed, she was of a bulk most extraordinary; and she was rolling in
fat, above and below, though it was springtime! 'Twas a wonder to me,
with our folk not yet fattened by the more generous diet of the season,
that she had managed to preserve her great double chin through the
winter. It may be that this unfathomable circumstance first put me in
awe of her; but I am inclined to think, after all, that it was her eyes,
which were not like the eyes of our folk, but were brown--dog's eyes, we
call them on our coast, for we are a blue-eyed race--and upon occasion
flashed like lightning. So much weight did she carry forward, too, that
I fancied (and still believe) she would have toppled over had she not
long ago learned to outwit nature in the matter of maintaining a
balance. And an odd figure she cut, as you may be sure! For she was
dressed somewhat in the fashion of men, with a cloth cap, rusty
pea-jacket and sea-boots (the last, for some mysterious reason, being
slit up the sides, as a brief skirt disclosed); and her grizzled hair
was cut short, in the manner of men, but yet with some of the coquetry
of women. In truth, as we soon found it was her boast that she was the
equal of men, her complaint that the foolish way of the world (which she
said had gone all askew) would not let her skipper a schooner, which, as
she maintained in a deep bass voice, she was more capable of doing than
most men.
"I make no doubt o' that, mum," said Skipper Tommy Lovejoy, to whom, in
the kitchen, that night, she propounded her strange philosophy; "but you
see, mum, '_tis_ the way o' the world, an' folks just _will_ stick t'
their idees, an', mum," he went on, with a propitiating smile, "as you
is only a woman, why----"
"_Only_ a woman!" she roared, sitting up with a jerk. "Does you say----"
"Why, ay, mum!" Skipper Tommy put in, mildly. "You _isn't_ a man, is
you?"
She sat dumb and transfixed.
"Well, then," said Skipper Tommy, in a mildly argumentative way, "'tis
as I says. You must do as the women does, an' not as a man might want
to----"
"Mm-a-an!" she mocked, in a way that withered the poor skipper. "No, I
isn't a man! Was you hearin' me _say_ I was? Oh, you _wasn't_, wasn't
you? An' is you thinkin' I'd _be_ a man an I could? What!" she roared.
"You isn't _sure_ about that, isn't you? Oh, my! Isn't you! Well, well!
He isn't _sure_," appealing to me, with a shaking under lip. "Oh, my!
There's a man--_he's_ a man for you--there's a _man_--puttin' a poor
woman t' scorn! Oh, my!" she wailed, bursting into tears, as all women
will, when put to the need of it. "Oh, dear!"
Skipper Tommy was vastly concerned for her. "My poor woman," he began,
"don't you be cryin', now. Come, now----"
"Oh, his _poor_ woman," she interrupted, bitingly. "_His_ poor woman!
Oh, my! An' I s'pose you thinks 'tis the poor woman's place t' work in
the splittin' stage an' not on the deck of a fore-an'-after. You does,
does you? Ay, 'tis what I _s'posed_!" she said, with scorn. "An' if
_you_ married _me_," she continued, transfixing the terrified skipper
with a fat forefinger, "I s'pose you'd be wantin' me t' split the fish
you cotched. Oh, you would, would you? Oh, my! But I'll have you t'
know, Skipper Thomas Lovejoy," with a sudden and alarming change of
voice, "that I've the makin's of a better ship's-master than _you_. An'
by the Lord Harry! I'm a better _man_," saying which, she leaped from
her chair with surprising agility, and began to roll up her sleeves,
"an' I'll prove it on your wisage! Come on with you!" she cried,
striking a belligerent attitude, her fists waving in a fashion most
terrifying. "Come on an you dare!"
Skipper Tommy dodged behind the table in great haste and horror.
"Oh, dear!" cried she. "He won't! Oh, my! _There's_ a man for you. An'
I'm but a woman, is I. His poor woman. Oh, _his_ woman! Look you here,
Skipper Thomas Lovejoy, you been stickin' wonderful close alongside o'
me since you come t' Wolf Cove, an' I'm not quite knowin' what tricks
you've in mind. But I'm thinkin' you're like all the men, an' I'll have
you t' know this, that if 'tis marriage with me you're thinkin' on----"
But Skipper Tommy gasped and wildly fled.
"Ha!" she snorted, triumphantly. "I was _thinkin_' I was a better man
than he!"
"'Tis a shame," said I, "t' scare un so!"
Whereat, without uttering a sound, she laughed until the china clinked
and rattled on the shelves, and I thought the pots and pans would come
clattering from their places. And then she strutted the floor for all
the world like a rooster once I saw in the South.