The lighthouse on the Isle of the Wise Virgin--formerly called the
Isle of Birds--still looks out over the blue waters of the Gulf of
Saint Lawrence; its white tower motionless through the day, like a
sea-gull sleeping on the rock; its great yellow eye wide-open and
winking, winking steadily once a minute, all through the night. And
the birds visit the island,--not in great flocks as formerly, but
still plenty of them,--long-winged waterbirds in the summer, and in
the spring and fall short-winged landbirds passing in their
migrations--the children and grandchildren, no doubt, of the same
flying families that used to pass there fifty years ago, in the days
when Nataline Fortin was "The Keeper of the Light." And she herself,
that brave girl who said that the light was her "law of God," and who
kept it, though it nearly broke her heart--Nataline is still guardian
of the island and its flashing beacon of safety.
Not in her own person, you understand, for her dark curly hair long
since turned white, and her brown eyes were closed, and she was laid
at rest beside her father in the little graveyard behind the chapel at
Dead Men's Point. But her spirit still inhabits the island and keeps
the light. The son whom she bore to Marcel Thibault was called
Baptiste, after her father, and he is now the lighthouse-keeper; and
her granddaughter, Nataline, is her living image; a brown darling of a
girl, merry and fearless, who plays the fife bravely all along the
march of life.
It is good to have some duties in the world which do not change, and
some spirits who meet them with a proud cheerfulness, and some
families who pass on the duty and the cheer from generation to
generation--aristocrats, first families, the best blood.
Nataline the second was bustling about the kitchen of the lighthouse,
humming a little song, as I sat there with my friend Baptiste, snugly
sheltered from the night fury of the first September storm. The sticks
of sprucewood snapped and crackled in the range; the kettle purred a
soft accompaniment to the girl's low voice; the wind and the rain
beat against the seaward window. I was glad that I had given up the
trout fishing, and left my camp on the _Sainte-Marguerite-en-bas_, and
come to pass a couple of days with the Thibaults at the lighthouse.
Suddenly there was a quick blow on the window behind me, as if someone
had thrown a ball of wet seaweed or sand against it. I leaped to my
feet and turned quickly, but saw nothing in the darkness.
"It is a bird, m'sieu'," said Baptiste, "only a little bird. The light
draws them, and then it blinds them. Most times they fly against the
big lantern above. But now and then one comes to this window. In the
morning sometimes after a big storm we find a hundred dead ones around
the tower."
"But, oh," cried Nataline, "the pity of it! I can't get over the pity
of it. The poor little one,--how it must be deceived,--to seek light
and to find death! Let me go out and look for it. Perhaps it is not
dead."
She came back in a minute, the rain-drops shining on her cheeks and in
her hair. In the hollow of her firm hands she held a feathery brown
little body, limp and warm. We examined it carefully. It was stunned,
but not killed, and apparently neither leg nor wing was broken.
"It is a white-throat sparrow," I said to Nataline, "you know the tiny
bird that sings all day in the bushes, _sweet-sweet-Canada, Canada,
Canada_?"
"But yes!" she cried, "he is the dearest of them all. He seems to
speak to you,--to say, 'be happy.' We call him the _rossignol_.
Perhaps if we take care of him, he will get well, and be able to fly
to-morrow--and to sing again."
So we made a nest in a box for the little creature, which breathed
lightly, and covered him over with a cloth so that he should not fly
about and hurt himself. Then Nataline went singing up to bed, for she
must rise at two in the morning to take her watch with the light.
Baptiste and I drew our chairs up to the range, and lit our pipes for
a good talk.
"Those small birds, m'sieu'," he began, puffing slowly at his pipe,
"you think, without doubt, that it is all an affair of chance, the way
they come,--that it means nothing,--that it serves no purpose for them
to die?"
Certain words in an old book, about a sparrow falling to the ground,
came into my mind, and I answered him carefully, hoping, perhaps, that
he might be led on into one of those mystical legends which still
linger among the exiled children of Britanny in the new world.
"From our side, my friend, it looks like chance--and from the birds'
side, certainly, like a very bad chance. But we do not know all.
Perhaps there is some meaning or purpose beyond us. Who can tell?"
"I will tell you," he replied gravely, laying down his pipe, and
leaning forward with his knotted hands on his knees. "I will tell you
that those little birds are sometimes the messengers of God. They can
bring a word or a warning from Him. That is what we Bretons have
believed for many centuries at home in France. Why should it not be
true here? Is He not here also? Those birds are God's _coureurs des
bois_. They do His errands. Would you like to hear a thing that
happened in this house?"
This is what he told me.
I
My father, Marcel Thibault, was an honest man, strong in the heart,
strong in the arms, but, in the conscience,--well, he had his little
weaknesses, like the rest of us. You see his father, the old Thibault
lived in the days when there was no lighthouse here, and wrecking was
the chief trade of this coast.
It is a cruel trade, m'sieu'--to live by the misfortune of others. No
one can be really happy who lives by such a trade as that. But my
father--he was born under that influence; and all the time he was a
boy he heard always people talking of what the sea might bring to
them, clothes and furniture, and all kinds of precious things--and
never a thought of what the sea might take away from the other people
who were shipwrecked and drowned. So what wonder is it that my father
grew up with weak places and holes in his conscience?
But my mother, Nataline Fortin--ah, m'sieu', she was a straight soul,
for sure--clean white, like a wild swan! I suppose she was not a
saint. She was too fond of singing and dancing for that. But she was
a good woman, and nothing could make her happy that came from the
misery of another person. Her idea of goodness was like this light in
the lantern above us--something faithful and steady that warns people
away from shipwreck and danger.
Well, it happened one day, about this time forty-eight years ago, just
before I was ready to be born, my father had to go up to the village
of _La Trinite_ on a matter of business. He was coming back in his
boat at evening, with his sail up, and perfectly easy in his
mind--though it was after sunset--because he knew that my mother was
entirely capable of kindling the light and taking care of it in his
absence. The wind was moderate, and the sea gentle. He had passed the
_Point du Caribou_ about two miles, when suddenly he felt his boat
strike against something in the shadow.
He knew it could not be a rock. There was no hardness, no grating
sound. He supposed it might be a tree floating in the water. But when
he looked over the side of the boat, he saw it was the body of a dead
man.
The face was bloated and blue, as if the man had been drowned for
some days. The clothing was fine, showing that he must have been a
person of quality; but it was disarranged and torn, as if he had
passed through a struggle to his death. The hands, puffed and
shapeless, floated on the water, as if to balance the body. They
seemed almost to move in an effort to keep the body afloat. And on the
little finger of the left hand there was a great ring of gold with a
red stone set in it, like a live coal of fire.
When my father saw this ring a passion of covetousness leaped upon
him.
"It is a thing of price," he said, "and the sea has brought it to me
for the heritage of my unborn child. What good is a ring to a dead
man? But for my baby it will be a fortune."
So he luffed the boat, and reached out with his oar, and pulled the
body near to him, and took the cold, stiff hand into his own. He
tugged at the ring, but it would not come off. The finger was swollen
and hard, and no effort that he could make served to dislodge the
ring.
Then my father grew angry, because the dead man seemed to withhold
from him the bounty of the sea. He laid the hand across the gunwale
of the boat, and, taking up the axe that lay beside him, with a single
blow he chopped the little finger from the hand.
The body of the dead man swung away from the boat, turned on its side,
lifting its crippled left hand into the air, and sank beneath the
water. My father laid the finger with the ring upon it under the
thwart, and sailed on, wishing that the boat would go faster. But the
wind was light, and before he came to the island it was already dark,
and a white creeping fog, very thin and full of moonlight, was spread
over the sea like a shroud.
As he went up the path to the house he was trying to pull off the
ring. At last it came loose in his hand; and the red stone was as
bright as a big star on the edge of the sky, and the gold was heavy in
his palm. So he hid the ring in his vest.
But the finger he dropped in a cluster of blue-berry bushes not far
from the path. And he came into the house with a load of joy and
trouble on his soul; for he knew that it is wicked to maim the dead,
but he thought also of the value of the ring.