"Wish me luck!" he repeated.
"I wish you luck," says I.
"Thanks," says he: and was off.
I lied in this way because I would not have Judith know that I grieved
for her, lest she suffer, in days to come, for my disappointment....
* * * * *
I was faint and very thirsty, I recall: I wished that I might drink
from a brook of snow-water. 'Twas Calling Brook I visualized, which
flows from the melting ice of cold, dark crevices, musically falling,
beneath a canopy of springing leaves, to the waters of Sister Bight. I
wished to drink from Calling Brook, and to lie down, here alone and
high above the sea, and to sleep, without dreaming, for a long, long
time. I lay me down on the gray moss. I did not think of Judith and
John Cather. I had forgotten them: I was numb to the passion and
affairs of life. I suffered no agony of any sort; 'twas as though I
had newly emerged from unconsciousness--the survivor of some natural
catastrophe, fallen by act of God, conveying no blame to me--a
survivor upon whom there still lingered a beneficent stupor of body.
Presently I discovered myself in a new world, with which, thinks I,
brisking up, I must become familiar, having no unmanly regret, but a
courageous heart to fare through the maze of it; and like a curious
child I peered about upon this strange habitation. Near by there was a
gray, weathered stone in the moss: I reached to possess it--and was
amazed to find that my hand neither overshot nor fell short, but
accurately performed its service. I cast the stone towards heaven:
'twas a surprise to see it fall earthward in obedience to some law I
could not in my daze define--some law I had with impatient labor,
long, long ago, made sure I understood and would remember. I looked
away to sea, stared into the sky, surveyed the hills: 'twas the
self-same world I had known, constituted of the same materials,
cohering in the self-same way, obedient to the self-same laws,
fashioned and adorned the same as it had been. 'Twas the self-same
world of sea and sky and rock, wherein I had so long dwelt--a world
familiar to my feet and eyes and heart's experience: a world of
tree-clad, greening hills, of known paths, of children's shouting and
the chirp and song of spring-time. But there had come a change upon
its spirit: nay! thinks I, quite proud of the conceit, its spirit had
departed--the thing had died to me, and was become without meaning, an
inimical mystery. Then I felt the nerves of my soul tingle with
awakening: then I suffered very much.
And evening came....
* * * * *
By-and-by, having heartened myself with courageous plans, I stepped
out, with the feet of a man, upon the Whisper Cove road. I had it in
mind to enjoy with Judith and John Cather the tender disclosure of
their love. I would kiss Judith, by Heaven! thinks I: I would kiss her
smile and blushes, whatever she thought of the deed; and I would wring
John Cather's fragile right hand until his teeth uncovered and he
groaned for mercy. 'Twas fearsome weather, then, so that, overwrought
in the spirit as I was, I did not fail to feel the oppression of it
and the instinctive alarm it aroused. 'Twas very still and heavy and
sullen and uneasy, 'twas pregnant of fears, like a moment of suspense:
I started when an alder branch or reaching spruce limb struck me. In
this bewildering weather there were no lovers on the road; the
valleys, the shadowy nooks, the secluded reaches of path, lay vacant
in the melancholy dusk. 'Twas not until I came to the last hill,
whence the road tumbled down to a cluster of impoverished cottages,
listlessly clinging to the barren rock of Whisper Cove, that I found
Judith. John Cather was not about: the maid was with Aunt Esther All,
the gossip, and was now so strangely agitated that I stopped in sheer
amazement. That the child should be abject and agonized before the
grim, cynical tattler of Whisper Cove! That she should gesticulate in
a way so passionate! That she should fling her arms wide, that she
should cover her face with her hands, that she should in some grievous
disturbance beat upon her heart! I could not make it out. 'Twas a
queer way, thinks I, to express the rapture of her fortune; and no
suspicion enlightened me, because, I think, of the paralysis of
despair upon my faculties.