The first boy (I never heard his name) was seated in the third-class
smoking-carriage when I joined my train at Plymouth; seated beside his
mother, an over-heated countrywoman in a state of subsiding fussiness.
We had a good five minutes to wait, but, as such women always will, she
had made a bolt for the first door within reach. Of course she found
herself in a smoking compartment, and of course she disliked tobacco,
but could not, although she made two false starts, make up her mind to
change. She had dropped upon one of the middle seats and dragged her
boy down into the next, thus leaving me the only vacant corner.
The others were occupied by a couple of drovers and a middle-aged man
with a newspaper, which he read column by column, advertisements and
all, without raising his eyes for a moment.
The guard just outside the carriage door had his whistle to his lips,
and his green flag lifted ready to wave, when the woman asked--
"Can anyone tell me if this train goes to London?"
The drovers and I assured her that it did.
"It stops at Bristol, doesn't it? My ticket is for Bristol."
The train was in motion by this time. We set her mind at ease.
She opened a limp basket (called a "frail" I believe), produced an apple
and offered it to the boy. He shook his head.
He was a passably good-looking coltish boy, in a best suit which he had
outgrown, and a hard black hat, the brim of which annoyed him when he
leaned back. A binding of black braid advertised what it was meant to
conceal--that the cuffs of his jacket had been lengthened; yet as he sat
with his hands crossed in his lap he displayed a deal of wrist.
His eyes took my liking at once; eyes of a good grey-black--or, shall I
say, of a grey with fine glooms in it. They looked at you straight but
without staring; neither furtively nor with embarrassment, nor
curiously, nor again sleepily, but with that rare blend of candour and
reserve which allowed you to see that he was thinking his own thoughts,
and had no reason to be ashamed of them. Having taken stock of us, he
gazed thoughtfully out of window. His mother sighed from time to time,
and searched her basket to make sure that this, that, or the other
trifle had not been left behind. The drovers conversed apart; the
middle-aged man (who sat facing the engine) read away pertinaciously at
his newspaper, which he kept folded small by reason of the strong
southerly breeze playing in through the open window; and I divided my
attention between the landscape and the map at the beginning of
Stevenson's _Kidnapped_--then barely a week old, a delight to be
approached with trepidation.
So we were sitting when the train crawled over the metals beyond
Teignmouth Station, gathered speed, and swung into full view of the open
sea. As the first strong breath of it came rushing in at the window I
heard a shuffle of feet. The boy had risen, and with his eyes was
asking our leave to stand by the door. I drew in my knees to make way
for him, and so, after a moment, did the middle-aged man. He did not
thank us, but stepped past politely enough and stood with his hand on
the leathern window-strap. I stared out of the little side window,
wondering what had caught his attention.
And while I wondered, suddenly the child broke into song!
It was the queerest artless performance: it had no tune in it, no
intelligible words--it was just a chant rising and falling as the surf
at the base of the sea-wall boomed and tossed its spray on the wind
fanning his face. And while he chanted, his serious eyes devoured the
blue leagues right away to the horizon.
The drovers at the far end of the compartment turned their faces inward
and grinned. The middle-aged man looked across at me behind the boy's
back with half a smile and resumed his reading. The mother laughed
apologetically--
"'Tis his way. He won't be so crazed for it in a few weeks' time, I
reckon. He's goin' up to Bristol to be bound apprentice to his uncle.
His uncle's master of a sailing ship."
But the boy did not hear. There are four or five tunnels in the red
sandstone between Teignmouth and Dawlish, and through these he sang on
in a low repressed voice, which broke out high and clear and strong as
we swept again into the large wind and sunshine. At Dawlish Station we
drew up for a minute, and a porter on the up platform nodded to one of
the drovers and asked, "What's the matter with 'ee, in there?"
"Nothin', nothin'; we've got a smokin'-concert on," said the drover.
Across the rails a group waiting for the down train stood and stared at
the boy, whispered, and smiled; and I can still recall the fascinated
gaze of a plump urchin of six as he gripped with one hand a wooden spade
and with the other his mother's skirt.
But the boy sang on heedless, and still sang on as we left Dawlish
behind. There was no jubilation in his chant, but through it all there
ran and rang out from time to time a note of high challenge. Perhaps I
read too much in it, for in the heart of a boy many thoughts sing
together before they come to birth,--and to the destinies we see so
distinctly he marches through a haze, drawn onward by incommunicable
yearnings. But as, unseen by him, I glanced up at his blown hair and
eager parted lips, the chant seemed to grow articulate--
"O Sea, I am coming! O fate, waiting and waited for, I salute you!
Friend or adversary, we meet to try each other: for your wonders I have
eyes, for your trials a heart. Use me, for I am ready!"
As we turned inland and ran beside the shore of the Exe, his song died
down and ceased. For a while he stood conning the river, the boats, the
red cliffs and whitewashed towns on the farther bank; and so, as we came
in sight of the cathedral towers, stepped back and dropped into his
seat.
"Well now," said his mother, "you _be_ a funny boy!"
For a moment he did not seem to hear; then started and came out of his
day-dream with a furious blush. I looked away.