How the _St. Lawrence_ came to stray from her course down the Strait I
do not remember. As concerns such trivial things, the days that followed
my mother's death are all misty in my mind; but I do recall (for when
Skipper Tommy had made my mother's coffin he took me to the heads of
Good Promise to see the sight) that the big seas of that day pounded the
vessel to a shapeless wreck on the jagged rocks of the Reef of the
Thirty Black Devils: where she lay desolate for many a day thereafter.
But the sea was not quick enough to balk our folk of their salvage: all
day long--even while the ship was going to pieces--they swarmed upon
her; and they loaded their punts again and again, fearlessly boarding,
and with infinite patience and courage managed to get their heavensent
plunder ashore. 'Twas diverting to watch them; and when the twins, who
had been among the most active at the wreck, came at last to their
father, I laughed to know that, as Timmie said, they had food enough
ashore to keep the wrinkles out of their stomachs all winter.
* * * * *
Our harbour was for many days crowded with wrecked folk--strange of
speech, of dress, of manners--who went about in flocks, prying into our
innermost concerns, so that we were soon wearied of their perverse and
insatiable curiosity, though we did not let them know it. They were
sorry for my father and sister and me, I know, for, one and all, when
they came to see my mother lying dead, they _said_ they were. And they
stood soberly by her shallow grave, when we laid her dear body away, and
they wept when old Tom Tot spoke of the dust and ashes, which we are,
and the stony earth rattled hopelessly on the coffin. Doubtless they
were well-intentioned towards us all, and towards me, a motherless lad,
more than any other, and doubtless they should be forgiven much, for
they were but ignorant folk, from strange parts of the world; but I took
it hard that they should laugh on the roads, as though no great thing
had happened, and when, at last, the women folk took to praising my hair
and eyes, as my mother used to do, and, moreover, to kissing me in
public places, which had been my mother's privilege, I was speedily
scandalized and fled their proximity with great cunning and agility.
My father, however, sought them out, at all times and places, that he
might tell them the tragic circumstances of my mother's death, and
seemed not to remember that he had told them all before.
"But five days!" he would whisper, excitedly, when he had buttonholed a
stranger in the shop. "Eh, man? Have you heared tell o' my poor wife?"
"Five days?"
"Ay; had you folk been wrecked five days afore--just five, mark
you--she would have been alive, the day."
"How sad!"
"Five days!" my father would suddenly cry, wringing his hands. "My God!
_Only five days_!"
A new expression of sympathy--and a glance of the sharpest
suspicion--would escape the stranger.
"Five days!" my father would repeat, as though communicating some fact
which made him peculiarly important to all the world. "That, now," with
a knowing glance, "is what I calls wonderful queer."
My father was not the same as he had been. He was like a man become a
child again--interested in little things, dreaming much, wondering more:
conceiving himself, like a child, an object of deepest interest to us
all. No longer, now, did he command us, but, rather, sought to know from
my sister (to whom he constantly turned) what he should do from hour to
hour; and I thought it strange that he should do our bidding as though
he had never been used to bidding us. But so it was; and, moreover
(which I thought a great pity), he forgot that he was to kill the
mail-boat doctor when the steamer put into our harbour on the southward
trip--a purpose from which, a week before, Skipper Tommy Lovejoy could
not dissuade him, though he tried for hours together. Ay, with his bare
hands, my father was to have killed that man--to have wrung his neck and
flung him overboard--but now there was no word of the deed: my father
but puttered about, mildly muttering that the great ship had been
wrecked five days too late.
I have said that my father loved my mother; it may be that he loved her
overmuch--and, perhaps, that accounts for what came upon him when he
lost her. I have since thought it sad that our hearts may contain a love
so great that all the world seems empty when chance plucks it out; but
the thought, no doubt, is not a wise one.
* * * * *
The doctor whom I had found with my father in my mother's room was not
among the folk who babbled on the roads and came prying into the stages
with tiresome exclamations of "Really!" and "How in-tres-ting!" He kept
aloof from them and from us all. All day long he wandered on the heads
and hills of our harbour--a melancholy figure, conspicuous against the
blue sky of those days: far off, solitary, bowed. Sometimes he sat for
hours on the Watchman, staring out to sea, so still that it would have
been small blame to the gulls had they mistaken him for a new boulder,
mysteriously come to the hill; sometimes he lay sprawling on the high
point of Skull Island, staring at the sky, lost to knowledge of the
world around; sometimes he clambered down the cliffs of Good Promise to
the water's edge, and stood staring, forever staring, at the breakers
(which no man should do). Often I was not content with watching him from
afar, but softly followed close, and peered at him from the shelter of a
boulder or peeped over the shoulder of a hill; and so sad did he
seem--so full of sighs and melancholy attitudes--that invariably I went
home pitying: for at that time my heart was tender, and the sight of
sorrow hurt it.
Once I crept closer and closer, and, at last, taking courage (though his
clean-shaven face and soft gray hat abashed me), ran to him and slipped
my hand in his.
He started; then, perceiving who it was, he withdrew his hand with a
wrench, and turned away: which hurt me.
"You are the son," said he, "of the woman who died, are you not?"