From _Land's End_, by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Copyright, 1908, by
Harper and Brothers. By permission of the publishers and Wilbur
Daniel Steele.
I tell you sir, I was innocent. I didn't know any more about the world
at twenty-two than some do at twelve. My uncle and aunt in Duxbury
brought me up strict; I studied hard in high school, I worked hard after
hours, and I went to church twice on Sundays, and I can't see it's right
to put me in a place like this, with crazy people. Oh yes, I know
they're crazy--you can't tell _me._ As for what they said in court about
finding her with her husband, that's the Inspector's lie, sir, because
he's down on me, and wants to make it look like my fault.
No, sir, I can't say as I thought she was handsome--not at first. For
one thing, her lips were too thin and white, and her color was bad. I'll
tell you a fact, sir; that first day I came off to the Light I was
sitting on my cot in the store-room (that's where the assistant keeper
sleeps at the Seven Brothers), as lonesome as I could be, away from home
for the first time, and the water all around me, and, even though it
was a calm day, pounding enough on the ledge to send a kind of a
_woom-woom-woom_ whining up through all that solid rock of the tower.
And when old Fedderson poked his head down from the living-room with the
sunshine above making a kind of bright frame around his hair and
whiskers, to give me a cheery, "Make yourself to home, son!" I remember
I said to myself: "_He's_ all right. I'll get along with _him_. But his
wife's enough to sour milk." That was queer, because she was so much
under him in age--'long about twenty-eight or so, and him nearer fifty.
But that's what I said, sir.
Of course that feeling wore off, same as any feeling will wear off
sooner or later in a place like the Seven Brothers. Cooped up in a place
like that you come to know folks so well that you forget what they _do_
look like. There was a long time I never noticed her, any more than
you'd notice the cat. We used to sit of an evening around the table, as
if you were Fedderson there, and me here, and her somewhere back there,
in the rocker, knitting. Fedderson would be working on his
Jacob's-ladder, and I'd be reading. He'd been working on that
Jacob's-ladder a year, I guess, and every time the Inspector came off
with the tender he was so astonished to see how good that ladder was
that the old man would go to work and make it better. That's all he
lived for.
If I was reading, as I say, I daren't take my eyes off the book, or
Fedderson had me. And then he'd begin--what the Inspector said about
him. How surprised the member of the board had been, that time, to see
everything so clean about the light. What the Inspector had said about
Fedderson's being stuck here in a second-class light--best keeper on the
coast. And so on and so on, till either he or I had to go aloft and have
a look at the wicks.
He'd been there twenty-three years, all told, and he'd got used to the
feeling that he was kept down unfair--so used to it, I guess, that he
fed on it, and told himself how folks ashore would talk when he was dead
and gone--best keeper on the coast--kept down unfair. Not that he said
that to me. No, he was far too loyal and humble and respectful, doing
his duty without complaint, as anybody could see.
And all that time, night after night, hardly ever a word out of the
woman. As I remember it, she seemed more like a piece of furniture than
anything else--not even a very good cook, nor over and above tidy. One
day, when he and I were trimming the lamp, he passed the remark that his
_first_ wife used to dust the lens and take a pride in it. Not that he
said a word against Anna, though. He never said a word against any
living mortal; he was too upright.
I don't know how it came about; or, rather, I _do_ know, but it was so
sudden, and so far away from my thoughts, that it shocked me, like the
world turned over. It was at prayers. That night I remember Fedderson
was uncommon long-winded. We'd had a batch of newspapers out by the
tender, and at such times the old man always made a long watch of it,
getting the world straightened out. For one thing, the United States
minister to Turkey was dead. Well, from him and his soul, Fedderson got
on to Turkey and the Presbyterian college there, and from that to
heathen in general. He rambled on and on, like the surf on the ledge,
_woom-woom-woom_, never coming to an end.
You know how you'll be at prayers sometimes. My mind strayed. I counted
the canes in the chair-seat where I was kneeling; I plaited a corner of
the table-cloth between my fingers for a spell, and by and by my eyes
went wandering up the back of the chair.
The woman, sir, was looking at me. Her chair was back to mine, close,
and both our heads were down in the shadow under the edge of the table,
with Fedderson clear over on the other side by the stove. And there were
her two eyes hunting mine between the spindles in the shadow. You won't
believe me, sir, but I tell you I felt like jumping to my feet and
running out of the room--it was so queer.
I don't know what her husband was praying about after that. His voice
didn't mean anything, no more than the seas on the ledge away down
there. I went to work to count the canes in the seat again, but all my
eyes were in the top of my head. It got so I couldn't stand it. We were
at the Lord's prayer, saying it singsong together, when I had to look up
again. And there her two eyes were, between the spindles, hunting mine.
Just then all of us were saying, "Forgive us our trespasses--" I thought
of it afterward.
When we got up she was turned the other way, but I couldn't help seeing
her cheeks were red. It was terrible. I wondered if Fedderson would
notice, though I might have known he wouldn't--not him. He was in too
much of a hurry to get at his Jacob's-ladder, and then he had to tell me
for the tenth time what the Inspector'd said that day about getting him
another light--Kingdom Come, maybe, he said.
I made some excuse or other and got away. Once in the store-room, I sat
down on my cot and stayed there a long time, feeling queerer than
anything. I read a chapter in the Bible, I don't know why. After I'd got
my boots off I sat with them in my hands for as much as an hour, I
guess, staring at the oil-tank and its lopsided shadow on the wall. I
tell you, sir, I was shocked. I was only twenty-two remember, and I was
shocked and horrified.
And when I did turn in, finally, I didn't sleep at all well. Two or
three times I came to, sitting straight up in bed. Once I got up and
opened the outer door to have a look. The water was like glass, dim,
without a breath of wind, and the moon just going down. Over on the
black shore I made out two lights in a village, like a pair of eyes
watching. Lonely? My, yes! Lonely and nervous. I had a horror of her,
sir. The dinghy-boat hung on its davits just there in front of the door,
and for a minute I had an awful hankering to climb into it, lower away,
and row off, no matter where. It sounds foolish.
Well, it seemed foolish next morning, with the sun shining and
everything as usual--Fedderson sucking his pen and wagging his head over
his eternal "log," and his wife down in the rocker with her head in the
newspaper, and her breakfast work still waiting. I guess that jarred it
out of me more than anything else--sight of her slouched down there,
with her stringy, yellow hair and her dusty apron and the pale back of
her neck, reading the Society Notes. _Society Notes_! Think of it! For
the first time since I came to Seven Brothers I wanted to laugh.
I guess I did laugh when I went aloft to clean the lamp and found
everything so free and breezy, gulls flying high and little whitecaps
making under a westerly. It was like feeling a big load dropped off your
shoulders. Fedderson came up with his dust-rag and cocked his head at
me.
"What's the matter, Ray?" said he.
"Nothing," said I. And then I couldn't help it. "Seems kind of out of
place for society notes," said I, "out here at Seven Brothers."
He was the other side of the lens, and when he looked at me he had a
thousand eyes, all sober. For a minute I thought he was going on
dusting, but then he came out and sat down on a sill.
"Sometimes," said he, "I get to thinking it may be a mite dull for her
out here. She's pretty young, Ray. Not much more'n a girl, hardly."
"Not much more'n a _girl!_" It gave me a turn, sir, as though I'd seen
my aunt in short dresses.
"It's a good home for her, though," he went on slow. "I've seen a lot
worse ashore, Ray. Of course if I could get a shore light----"
"Kingdom Come's a shore light."
He looked at me out of his deep-set eyes, and then he turned them around
the light-room, where he'd been so long.
"No," said he, wagging his head. "It ain't for such as me."