Fourteen, then, and something more: a footloose lad of Twist
Tickle--free to sail and wander, to do and dream, to read the riddles
of my years, blithe and unalarmed. 'Tis beyond the will and wish of me
to forget the day I lay upon the Knob o' Lookout, from afar keeping
watch on the path to Whisper Cove--the taste of it, salty and cool,
the touch of it upon my cheek and in my hair, the sunlight and
scampering wind: the simple haps and accidents, the perception,
awakening within me, and the portent. 'Twas blowing high and merrily
from the west--a yellow wind from the warm west and from the golden
mist and low blue line of coast at the other side of the bay. It
rippled the azure floor between, and flung the spray of the breakers
into the sunshine, and heartily clapped the gray cliff, and pulled the
ears of the spruce, and went swinging on, in joyous mood, to the gray
spaces of the great sea beyond Twin Islands. I shall not forget: for
faith! the fates were met in conspiracy with the day to plot the
mischief of my life. There was no warning, no question to ease the
issue in my case: 'twas all ordained in secret; and the lever of
destiny was touched, and the labor of the unfeeling loom went forward
to weave the pattern of my days.
* * * * *
Judith (as I know) washed her mother's face and hands with conscientious
care: 'twas her way. Doubtless, in the way she had, she chattered,
the while, a torrent of affectionate reproof and direction, which gave
no moment for promise or complaint, and at last, with a raised finger
and a masterful little flash of the eye, bade the flighty woman keep
out of mischief for the time. What then, 'tis easy to guess: she
exhausted the resources of soap and water in her own adornment (for she
smelled of suds in the cabin of the _Shining Light_), and set out by
the path from Whisper Cove to Twist Tickle, with never a glance
behind, but a prim, sharp outlook, from shyly downcast eyes, upon all
the world ahead. A staid, slim little maid, with softly fashioned
shoulders, carried sedately, her small head drooping with shy grace,
like a flower upon its slender stalk, seeming as she went her dainty
way to perceive neither scene nor incident of the passage, but yet
observing all in swift, sly little flashes.
"An' a-ha!" thinks I, "she's bound for the _Shining Light_!"
It was blowing: on the edge of the cliff, where the path was lifted
high above the sea, winding through sunlit space, the shameless old
wind, turned skyward by the gray cliff, made bold, in the way the wind
knows and will practise, wherever it blows. The wind cared nothing
for the tragic possibility of a lad on the path: Judith was but a
fluttering rag in the gust. At once--'twas a miracle of activity--her
face reappeared in a cloud of calico and tawny hair. She looked
fearfully to the path and yellow hills; and her eyes (it must be) were
wide with the distress of this adventure, and there were blushes (I
know) upon her cheeks, and a flash of white between her moist red
lips. Without hint of the thing (in her way)--as though recklessly
yielding to delight despite her fears--she lifted her hands and
abandoned the pinafore to the will of the wind with a frightened
little chuckle. 'Twas her way: thus in a flash to pass from nay to yea
without mistrust or lingering. Presently, tired of the space and
breeze, she dawdled on in the sunshine, idling with the berries and
scrawny flowers by the way, and with the gulls, winging above the sea,
until, as with settled intention, she vanished over the cliff by the
goat-path to Old Wives' Cove, where rode the _Shining Light_, sound
asleep under a blanket of sunshine in the lee of the Lost Soul.