"_SURLY JIM_"
One night, contrary to his usual habit, Pat could not sleep. He had been
to sleep for some hours during the early part of the night, but now he was
wide awake, and he did not feel like going to sleep any more. He sat up
in bed, and looked round him in the moonlight. There were his father and
mother, both sleeping calmly and quietly. If father was in bed, Jim must
be up in the lighthouse, watching to see the big lamp did not "go to sleep
by accident," as the child phrased it in his own mind. He was suddenly
taken with a vivid curiosity to go to that lighted chamber himself. He
had only been there by day as yet. He wondered what it would look like at
night; and almost before he knew what he was doing, he had slipped out
of bed, and was putting on his clothes. He did not want to disturb his
father, who would by-and-by have to get up and take his own watch in the
tower, as the child called it in his thoughts, so he moved softly about,
and presently found himself creeping up the dim staircase that was lighted
at intervals by small lamps placed in niches in the wall.
It made him rather breathless to mount so many stairs, but curiosity and
a love of adventure led him on, and presently he found himself within the
wonderful chamber he had visited before, only that now the great bright
lamp with its myriad wicks and wonderful reflectors was alight, and slowly
moving round and round, so that at one time it showed a red eye to those
out at sea in great ships, at another a green, and again a pure white
light, as white as crystal.
The child stood gazing at the wonderful mechanism without speaking a
word. He was trying to see how it moved, and by what power the great
reflectors moved round and round. Of course he could not understand, and
he quickly came to the conclusion that the thing was some great living
monster, and that it had to be watched all the night through lest it
went to sleep, or refused to do its part properly. He wondered, with a
thrill of nervous terror, whether it would resent his intrusion into its
special domain. Standing as he did in the full glare of the light, he
could not hope to escape observation, and he looked about him as if for a
hiding-place in case of attack.
And then his eye fell upon the figure of the solitary watcher--a bent
bowed figure, in a slouching and indifferent attitude, now quite familiar
to the child, although he and the individual who owned that rough exterior
had never as yet exchanged a single word.
Pat was not a shy child as a rule, but he had always stood in awe of
"Surly Jim." He could eat better and chatter more freely when the man was
not present at table. He shrank a little into himself always when Jim
entered the living room. It was not often that he did this, save when
called to meals, for when not on duty, he was either sleeping in his own
room, or sitting in the boat smoking a short black pipe, and Pat had never
attempted to approach him at these times. Now he was nearer to him than he
had ever been, except at table, and yet the man appeared to take no manner
of notice of his approach. He sat with his elbows on his knees, and his
head in his hands, and did not seem to look up at the child's cautious
approach. Pat felt certain he had been seen, but this indifference seemed
a little uncanny. He drew near step by step, and at last laid one small
cold hand on the knee of the assistant.
"Is it alive?" he asked softly, divided in his awe of the wonderful
mechanism and its grim watcher. The man slowly lifted his head, and stared
at the child without attempting to speak. Pat hesitated a moment, and then
climbed upon the bench upon which Jim was seated, and slipped his small
thin hand within the horny palm of the man. He felt that he must have hold
of something human up here in this strange place of light and movement. He
was trembling, and yet he was not exactly afraid.
His hand was suffered to remain where he had placed it. Jim glanced
furtively down at the small fingers in his hard hand, and perhaps
something of an unwonted nature stole into his heart, for, to the
astonishment of the child, he suddenly spoke.
"What did you want to know, little master?"
Now Pat thought it was very grand to be addressed as "little master," and
his opinion of Jim began quickly to change. He could not be as cross as he
tried to make out. The child took courage, and went on with his questions,
in the order in which they came into his mind.
"Is it alive?" he asked, with his eyes upon the slowly moving reflectors,
as they solemnly revolved round and round the centre light.
"Seems like as if she was," answered the man; "her takes a deal of food,
and a deal of cleaning, and a deal of watching. Her be as full of moods as
wimmim folk mostly be. She can't get along without a deal of notice, no
more than they can!"
Pat fixed his wondering eyes on the speaker's face. He was almost as
much fascinated in Jim's slow and deliberate speech as in the subject in
hand. It was almost as though the mouth of the dumb had been unstopped,
as though it was only in this strange place, and in the witching hour of
night, that the man's tongue was unloosed. He spoke very slowly, as though
it was not easy for him to find words in which to clothe his thoughts.
"It's a _she_ then, is it?" asked Pat, all alive in a moment. "That's
very interesting. I always thought she must be alive, but mother and
father laugh at me. Perhaps they don't know so well as you--you've been
here so much longer, haven't you?"
"I've been a-keeping of her this five years or more," said Jim, after a
long pause, in which Pat began to wonder whether he would ever speak again
or not; "afore that I was in prison. They let me come out to look after
her. It was so hard to get anybody to stop."
Pat felt a thrill of awe run through him. He had heard of people going to
prison of course, and had known many lads and men who had passed through
the ordeal of going there for a time; but that seemed different from Jim's
case. He wondered whether this strange gruff man had ever been a murderer,
or had done some very dreadful deed. If so, was it safe to be sitting up
here with him in the night, all alone? Might he not perhaps think it would
be a good opportunity for throwing him down the staircase, or out over the
gallery into the sea? For a moment the child felt a queer sensation of
fear come over him, and then it all passed away as fast as it came, for
Jim still held him by the hand, and his clasp upon his fingers felt kind
and friendly. He looked up into the sullen, weather-beaten face above him
with his confiding smile, and asked--
"What had they put you in prison for? Had you done anything bad?"
"No," answered Jim, after the inevitable pause, "I hadn't. It were another
man; but they wouldn't believe it. He gave evidence against me, and they
took his word, not mine. Folks said it were proved against I, and so I was
sent to prison. But I hadn't done it--I don't care what they say."
"No, and I don't care, either!" cried Pat, with hot partisanship; "I know
you didn't do it! It was they who were wicked and bad to send you to
prison! But they had to let you out again, you see!"
He spoke the last words with an air as of triumph, edging up towards Jim
in a confidential way as he did so. The man was knitting his heavy brows,
and looking as though he was not sure whether all this were not a strange
dream.
"They let me out to come here. I had three more years to run. They said
if I would stop and do my duty it should count as though I had served
my time. So I came, and here I be. It's the only home I've known since
_that_ thing happened, and I don't want no other. I've got fond of
_her_"--nodding towards the big lamp; "she looks kind at me now, and she's
the only friend I've got. I'll bide here as long as I live. It's sore work
going back to find all one's mates dead or changed to you."
"Yes; don't go back," said Pat; "stay here with us. I'll be your friend,
too. I should like a friend of my own. Father and mother don't count like
that, because they _are_ just father and mother. I should like to have a
friend as well. Let us be friends, Jim; and perhaps then _she'll_ let me
be her friend too."
Pat spoke in the simplest good faith, whilst Jim passed his hand across
his eyes, and then looked down at the small figure beside him, rather as
though he were not sure that it was not all a dream after all. Pat was not
altogether sure of this either. It was certainly very queer to be up in
the middle of the night just under the great lamp, sitting hand in hand
with Jim and talking about being friends. He looked up into the rough face
above him and smiled as he said--
"Jim, do you think we are _both_ dreaming?"
[Illustration: "Jim opened a door close by."--_Page 35._]
"It seems almost like it, little master," answered the man; "but we'll go
out into the gallery, and get a breath of fresh air. That's the best thing
to wake one up if one is getting be-fogged."
Pat was delighted at this notion. He knew that there was an outside
gallery running all round the glass house where the lamp lived. He had
seen it from the boat when his father had rowed him out a little way in
the evenings; but he had never been out on it before, and to go there at
night for the first time seemed a very wonderful thing to do. He would see
how the sea looked from up there in the moonlight; and perhaps Jim would
be able to tell him how the sun managed to swim round from one side to the
other before morning, and why it always came up in just the same place
every day, and went down in the same place every night. Jim must know a
lot of things, living so much up there, he thought.
So Jim got up and opened a door close by, and a breath of cold wind came
rushing into the warm room under the big lamp. Pat looked wonderingly out
into the black darkness, and shivered a little, holding Jim's hand fast in
his small tenacious clasp. And then Jim, all in a moment, shuffled somehow
out of his warm rough pilot coat, and wrapped it round the child's thin
frame, and lifting him bodily in his strong arms, carried him out into
the still calm night, shutting the door behind him as he went, that the
draught might not make the lamp flicker or flare.
For a moment it came into the child's head to wonder whether Jim was going
to throw him over the gallery rail and into the sea, and he shut his eyes
tight, and breathed a little prayer. But something in the strong clasp in
which he was held stilled this fear almost before it had taken shape, and
the next minute the child wonderingly opened his eyes and gazed with awe
at the scene before him.
It did not seem dark now, for the silver moon rode high in the sky, and
though the sea beneath looked black in places, there was a great track
of silver light right across it where the moonlight lay, and sometimes a
white sea-bird would fly athwart the silver track, and for that moment its
beautiful white wings seemed to shine like silver too. The little plashing
waves below were tipped and crested with phosphorescent light, and broke
against the reef in a thousand ripples of molten silver. The whole world
seemed as if it had been turned into ebony and silver, and the child
looked and looked, drinking in the wonderful beauty, which was beyond his
powers of comprehension.
He forgot all the questions he had meant to ask; he forgot the puzzle
about the sun and its setting and rising; he could think of nothing but
the strange majestic beauty of the summer night, and looking up into Jim's
dark face, he wondered if it looked the same to him.
He was beautifully snug and warm wrapped up, and held close and safely.
There was nothing to mar his happiness and wonder. He gazed, and gazed,
and gazed again, till at last his confused thoughts found vent in words.
"I can't think how He thought of it!"
"Who thought of what, little master?" asked Jim, who had now found his
tongue, and did not seem indisposed to use it more freely.
"Why, God to be sure," answered the child reverently. "You know that God
made everything; and before He made it He'd have to think of it, and know
what it would look like; and I can't think how He did!"
"I don't seem to know much about that," said the man, as Pat looked up at
him as if for a suggestion. "It's a many years since I heard the name of
God spoke--except to swear by," he added as an afterthought.
Now Pat knew very well what swearing sounded like, for he had heard a
great deal too much of it in his small life. But his mother had always
taught him to shun those people who used bad words, and he had never
heard an oath pass his father's lips. He had been brought up to read his
Bible, and to learn as much of the meaning of it as his mother was able
to teach him. Neither his father nor his mother were able to do much more
than read and write. They had not much education, and were ignorant of a
great deal that they would have liked to know. But they were devout and
simple-minded Christian folks, and had carefully trained their little boy
in all they knew themselves. If Nat had something of the stern Puritan
element in his creed, Eileen on her part had the vivid imagination and
burning devotion of her warm-hearted race, and Pat had inherited much
of her temperament, though not without some of his father's hard-headed
shrewdness. Pat had begun to feel as though this lighthouse must be
wonderfully near to God--much nearer than the crowded court where he had
lived before. It seemed to him often as though God _must_ be looking
straight down out of heaven at the Lone Rock, and that there was nothing
to come between Him and it, to hinder Him from seeing everything. So the
child had got into the habit of thinking a great deal more than before of
God; and it seemed very natural to think of Him to-night, with the great
dome of star-spangled sky above, and the limitless black sea below, with
the shining pathway across it that might be leading straight to heaven.
But Jim's words troubled him rather. He didn't like to think that Jim
did not think about God too. He didn't see how he could help it in his
long lonely night-watches. Pat knew very well that he should be frightened
of the loneliness and the darkness if he wasn't quite sure that God
would take care of him somehow, though how He did it the child was not
at all certain. He went off on this train of thought now; and instead of
answering Jim's remark, or asking him why he had not heard or thought
about God for many years, he looked up into his face in a meditative
fashion, and said, slowly and reflectively--
"I think He must send the angels to fly about the lighthouses at night
and keep them safe. Mother says perhaps the stars are the angels' eyes
looking down at us; and don't you think it feels like as if there were
angels flying all about here? I think perhaps they like to dip their big
beautiful white wings in the moonlight, like the sea-gulls. I almost think
I can feel them flying round; it seems like as if there was a sound of
wings in the air!"
"May be, little master, may be," answered Jim, without much interest in
his face and tone. "If there be anything of that sort about the place, I
make no doubt you would be the one to hear and see it."
Pat did not quite know what these muttered words might mean, nor could
he get Jim to talk to him or sustain his share in the conversation. In
point of fact, the talk grew very broken and disjointed, for the night
air blowing on his face made the child very sleepy, and Jim was never one
to speak by himself. How that night's adventure ended Pat never knew. He
seemed soon to be flying all round the lighthouse on a pair of beautiful
white wings, and trying to coax Jim, who stood on the gallery watching, to
come and fly with him too. But Jim, though he had wings too, did not seem
to have any wish to use them, and only stood still watching his companion,
and refusing to trust himself to the flight to which Pat urged him, and
the child was just trying to make him believe that it would all be right
if he would only believe, when he felt a hand upon his head, and a voice
said in his ear--
"Little son, little son, it is time you were waking, honey. The day has
begun hours ago, and I can't find your clothes anywhere. Where did you put
them when you took them off, Pat?"
Pat opened his eyes to find that he had no beautiful wings after all, and
that he was just in his own bed, covered up very snug and warm, but when
he threw off the bed clothes, there he found himself all dressed in those
very clothes for which his mother had been hunting everywhere.
"Why, whatever does it mean?" cried Eileen, "the child has been walking
in his sleep. Saints preserve us! but if he takes to that in this place
it's never a wink of quiet sleep I will get!"
"Oh, mother, it was not in my sleep!" cried Pat, remembering all the
adventure now. "I was wide awake. I wanted to see the big lamp alight, and
I went up, and Jim let me sit with him, and he wrapped me up in his coat
by-and-by, and took me out on to the gallery. And I suppose I must have
gone to sleep there, and he must have brought me back to bed and wrapped
me up like that. Mother, Jim is a very kind man. He isn't a bit like what
I thought; I'm going to have him for a friend. I think by-and-by he will
like me perhaps. I like him very much. He was very kind last night."
"Well, if anybody can come at his heart, it will be the child," thought
Eileen, whose own advances had been steadily rejected and ignored. She was
sorry for the lonely man with the sad history, and was a little afraid
of him too; but when she whispered a word of her fear to her husband,
Nat stoutly declared it was "all right." Pat could do as he liked, and
make what advances he chose. The worst that could happen would be that
Jim would turn a deaf ear to him. He would never harm the child. He was
not that sort. There were stories against him, it was true; but nothing
they need fear as regards their own child. Nat was not troubled with a
vivid imagination, and Eileen had long learnt to subdue her fears when
her husband told her she was frightening herself about nothing. She would
be glad enough to lighten the dreary lot of "Surly Jim," and watched with
some curiosity the advances of Pat towards him.
At first little progress seemed made. At table the two hardly looked
at each other, and Jim never spoke unless actually obliged; but now and
again she would see them sitting together in the boat, which had always
been Jim's summer sitting-room, and gradually it seemed as though there
was more talk between them. She could see that Pat began to chatter away
freely enough, and sometimes she fancied that Jim took a share in the
conversation. His pipe would go out, and be laid aside. He would lean
towards the child, and seem to be listening with some intentness. Eileen
was not a little curious to know what all this talk was about, but Pat was
singularly reticent, and seldom spoke of Jim, though he would chatter to
his mother about anything and everything else. Once she did venture to ask
what they had been talking about, and got an answer that surprised her not
a little.
"We talk about a lot of things; Jim knows such a lot when you once get him
to talk," said Pat, with a certain quiet reserve of manner. "But I think
he likes it best when we talk about God. You see he'd almost forgotten
about Him. He's remembering now, and it's very interesting. We've begun at
the beginning of the Bible, and we skip a good deal, so we shall soon get
to the part about Jesus, and I think that'll be the most interesting of
all!"
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