SPRING AND THE CHILDREN.
SPRING came at last, waking slowly, as it does on the rocks out at
sea. Giles Heron, from his doorway, watched the green creeping slowly
through the dry, russet grass, and felt a faint stirring at his heart;
this was his last spring on the pleasant earth, and he could think
of nothing homelike that he might look forward to. God was good,
probably, and ’twas likely things were going as they should; but it
looked cold and dark ahead. He liked to feel the bones of the rocks
warming through, as the sun rose higher, and the yellow beams grew
stronger. He hailed every waking smell of leaves, of new grass, of wet,
softening mould. His chief delight was to lie down on the dense carpet
of trailing yew that spread a few yards from his cottage door, and
feel it curl and close round him thick and fragrant; he smiled as he
remembered the island legend of the yew’s closing so once round a man
who had landed on the south rocks with some evil intent,—Giles, in his
weakness, could not remember what evil,—closing round him and holding
him so a prisoner, till the fishermen heard his starving cries, and
rescued him, and carried him over to the main with a warning, scarcely
needed, never to set foot on the island again.
Such tales they told, such foolery! He supposed it was the wind got
into their heads, when it blew all winter, and beat their brains about.
One tale brought another, however, and he found himself thinking of a
story they told of his own people. What was it about the scarlet sorrel
over on Toluma? Toluma is the sister island, a huge rock, bare and gray
for the most part, but with a great mantle of sorrel flung over one
shoulder, which blossoms blood-red in the season. What was the story
Giles had heard when he was a boy, about the red sorrel taking its
colour from the blood of the Herons? He had not thought of all these
old stories for years, but now they came back to him, vague and dim,
yet homelike as nothing else was. The first Heron, he who came over
to the island because he could not stay on the main, having slain his
enemy there; that first Giles Heron of whom any record remained, had
taken his life, over there on the high shoulder of Toluma. It was in
June, when the sorrel was blossoming, and ever since then, the colour
of it had not been tawny-red, as in most places, but blood-red. That
was what they used to say, when he was a boy; and surely the sorrel
was redder there than he had ever seen it elsewhere. Was it the colour
of blood, however? It would be curious to see now. Suppose when one
got a little weaker,—seeing that even now it was hard to get about,
hard to get down to the boat and push her out, so that he had to lie
for some time half faint, floating about, before he could gather up
the oars and pull a little way out from the shore,—suppose that,
while he still could move, he should pull over to the other rock, and
climb up,—taking plenty of time, one ought to be able to do it,—and
take a last rest on the red sorrel. And,—if one should help oneself a
little, seeing the end was so near anyway, and breathing so hard as it
was,—why, then one would know just whether there was any truth in the
story, and if it was the same colour. And it was not likely it would be
laid up against a fellow, so tired as he was, and not good for anything
in this place.
These dreams floated through the mind of the dying man, as he lay in
his boat, sometimes for hours at a time, in the soft spring days. He
always took his lines and bait with him, but no one looked for him to
bring in fish. He had to keep away, that was all. He could not bear the
pain in his wife’s eyes; he fancied she would suffer less while he was
away; at least she would not shiver every time he coughed. She heard
nothing, but each paroxysm shook her with anguish. Isla had never seen
sickness, and knew not what ailed her father, but she grew anxious,
and asked why he did not eat, and why he was so thin. In animated talk
with her mother, hands flying too swift for common eyes to follow, she
besought for new dishes, this or that that might tempt his palate; she
hunted the young wintergreen leaves, that he liked for flavouring. And
the dumb woman would nod and smile at the child, and would make this
dish or that, knowing it would not be tasted.
And so the spring ran on towards summer, and the sunshine lay broad
and strong over the island; only in one spot the shadow still lay, and
crept darker and thicker every day.
But little Jacob saw no shadow, only the light that turned the world
to green and gold, and made the rocks grow hot to the touch. He was a
pretty little fellow, fair-haired and blue-eyed like the Herons; he
might be eight years old at this time, and Isla twelve. It was pretty
to see the two playing together. Hand in hand they strayed over the
Wild Rocks, talking their silent talk, gathering berries or shells.
It was all their own, the south end of the island; the people of the
village near the farther end never came here. They were superstitious
folk, and had their own ideas about the Wild Rocks, and the dumb woman
who dwelt there. Some held it was no mortal wife that Giles Heron had
brought home with him those years ago; and they whispered that the
first Heron had been banished for witchcraft from parts further south,
before he came to our main, and that he had come to escape the burning
in Massachusetts. Then he had taken another life and his own, and was
it likely such a race as that would go down peacefully like other
folks? So there was no one to interfere with Isla and Jacob, and they
could be happy in their own way. They had a castle in every rock, a
watch-tower in every gnarled and stunted tree. They had playmates, too,
in the wild sheep that scampered about the rocky hill-pastures, leaving
their shaggy fleece on bush and briar as they ran. Many of these sheep
belonged to the people in the fishing village, and were caught once
a year and sheared, and let loose again; but some were wholly wild,
and could never be caught; and their fleece hung heavy and broad,
blackened with wind and weather. Now they knew, these sheep, that the
Heron children carried no shears, and that they never tried to drive a
sheep except in play, and for play they themselves were quite ready.
So many a game went on in the deep, little, green valleys among the
Wild Rocks, where the buttercups hide like fairy gold, and the ferns
curl and uncurl year by year, unbroken and uncrushed. Jacob might ride
on the back of the old black ram, the leader of the wild flock, and
Isla could pull his horns, and lead him about, and dress him up with
flowers, as if he were a cosset lamb, instead of a fierce old fellow
who would knock down a tame sheep as soon as look at him, and whom no
other human being save these two had ever dared approach.
There were other friends, too. Sometimes, as the children were
sitting at their play on the rocks, there would rise, from the ragged
crest of an old fir-tree hard by, a great black bird; would hover an
instant, uttering a hoarse croak, which yet had a friendly sound, as
of greeting; then, beating his broad wings, would sail out over the
water. A second followed him, and the two circled and swung together
above the playing children, above the waking, laughing sea. Two ancient
ravens, living apart from the noisy crows and the song-sparrows. They
knew Isla Heron well, in their age-long wisdom, and loved her in their
way. She was not of the same mould as the boys who now and then strayed
to the south end of the island, half timid, half defiant; who called
them crows, and dared one another to throw stones at them. No stone was
ever thrown, however. There was a story on the island of a boy who
had once stoned the ravens,—these very birds, or their forbears, and
had been set upon by them, and driven backward, shrieking, over the
verge of Black Head, to be dashed to pieces on the rocks below. The
ravens had taken note of this child since her babyhood, and found her
ways much like their own. Sometimes they would sit on a rock near by
and watch her, with bright eyes cocked aside, as she strung berries or
shells, or plaited garlands of seaweed. Once or twice they had brushed
her hair, floating past on outspread wing; and she rightly interpreted
this as a token of friendship.
“You might tame them,” her father said when she told him. “Ravens are
easy tamed; I read a book once about one.”
“They would not like me any more if I did,” said Isla. “I should hate
any one who tried to tame me.” And Giles laughed, and thought it would
be no easy task.
Other moods and hours took the children down to the shore; this was
especially their delight in the morning, when the simple housework was
done, and the mother sat at the spinning by the door (for wherever
she came from, she brought her wheel with her, and was a thrifty,
hard-working housewife), and the father out in his boat.
Their bathing-place was such as no king ever had. Among the rocks by
the water’s edge was one of enormous size and strange form. One might
think that some mammoth of forgotten ages had been overtaken by the
tide as he lay asleep; had slept into death, and so turned to stone.
Seen from a distance, he looked all smooth and gray; but, when one
came to climb his vast flanks they were rent and seamed and scarred,
and by his shoulder there was tough climbing enough. Near by, a huge,
formless mass of rock had fallen off into the sea, and between this and
the side of the sleeping monster was a pool of clear shining water.
Brown tresses of rockweed, long ribbons of kelp, swung gently to and
fro; sprays of emerald green floated through the water; the rocks could
be seen at the bottom, and they were green and crimson, with here and
there fringes of delicate rose-colour. In and out among the rockweed
darted brown shrimps and tiny fish; on the rocks the barnacles opened,
waved a plume of fairy feathers, and closed again.
Here the children came to bathe, swimming about as free and gracefully
as the fishes that hardly feared them, or lying at length in the
shallows that stretched gold and crystal in the sun, caressed by soft
fingers, swept by long, brown tresses; only weeds, were they? who could
tell?
Isla loved to lie so, in the summer heat, when the water seemed warm to
her hardy limbs, though a landsman might still think it cold. She would
tether little Jacob to a rock with a long kelp-ribbon, and he would
play contentedly at being a horse, that creature he had never seen save
in a picture. There are no horses on the Island of the Wild Rocks.
There the girl would float and dream, her body at rest, her mind out
and away with the clouds, or the sea-gulls that hovered and wheeled
above the blue sparkling water, till there came a low murmur on the
outer reef, a white break against the seaward side of the rock, and
she knew that the tide was rising. Then, taking the child by the hand,
she would leave the water, and climb up to a great boulder, where the
barnacles lay dry in the sun. Only the great spring tides came here;
and she would lie on the warm rock, one hand supporting her chin, the
other holding Jacob’s hand, and watch the ancient miracle that was
always new.
With a swing and a swirl the waters rushed into their pool of peace;
the foam sprang high, then fell, and crept up the rock, up, up. Now
back, strongly, with a wrench that tugged at the streaming locks,
scattering them loose, unrolling the kelp-ribbons to their utmost
length. It was gone, and for an instant there was stillness again;
then once more came the roar, the inward rush, the snowy column tossed
aloft, the white seeking hands creeping up along the rock, till now
all the water was a white churn of foam, all the air was filled with
driving spray, and the reef thundered with wild artillery. The seas
hove bodily over it, and broke only in the cove itself; the place where
the children had paused and lingered in their upward climb now boiled
like a pot, and even on the top of the great boulder the spray beat in
their faces, stinging, burning. A black wing struck athwart the white
smoke, and a raven floated past on the wind, one eye cast aside on the
children. Isla cried out with glee, and shook her wet hair, and broke
into a chant, such as she loved to croon to the wind; but Jacob was
timid, and did not like the spray in his face, and, though he heard
no sound, shivered at every vibration of the rock as the seas dashed
themselves at it; he pulled his sister’s hand, and begged to be gone;
so home they went over the mammoth’s back, and left the raven to his
own.