It was after John MacFarland was Captain of Black Bar Life-Saving
Station for nearly twenty years. Every summer evening all that time I
would see him and Mis' MacFarland driving along to the station, for in
the summer the crew is off for two months and only the Captain stays
there from sundown to sunup.
I never saw her drive past without thinking how she hated to look at the
sea. She never sat where she could see salt water. She had been going
out to Black Bar all these years and never once had seen the boat-drill.
This was because she knew, on account of her husband's being a
life-saver, what the sea does to the vessels and the men in them.
When Mis' MacFarland's married daughter died and her little
granddaughter Moira came to live with her, I would see all of them, the
Captain, Mis' MacFarland and Moira, driving to the station summer
evenings, Moira's head peeping out between them like a little bird. And
I would always think how Mis' MacFarland hated the sea, and I'd be real
glad that the blowing of the sand grinds the station windows white till
you can't see through them.
Then John MacFarland died all of a sudden just at the end of the summer.
He had been building a yawl out there at the station for nearly two
years, and she was just ready to la'nch. I remember meeting him on the
boardwalk and him telling me about that boat of his, and thinking what a
fine figure of a man he was for over sixty. And next I heard he was
dead.
Then Mis' MacFarland had a spell of sickness, and that is how I came to
be housekeeper to her and Moira. And I remember how she struck me the
first day, for there she was sitting looking out over the bay watching
the boats as though the sight of them gave her pleasure. I was so
surprised I spoke right out:
"Why, Mis' MacFarland," says I, "I thought you couldn't abide the look
of salt water."
"I don't seem to feel there's the difference between land and sea I used
to," she says in her gentle, smiling way. "We learn."
I wanted to ask her how we learned what I saw she'd learned, for, if you
can understand me, _she seemed to have gotten beyond grief_, but before
I could speak Moira came running in and it seemed as if the joy in her
heart shone out of her so the place was all lighted up. Her face was
tanned so brown that her blue eyes looked strange, and against her skin
the fair hair around her forehead looked almost silver.
"Where you been," I said, "to have so much fun?"
"In the back country," says she. "I'm always happy when I come from in
back."
"Were you alone?" She stopped a minute before she answered.
"Yes--I suppose so," as if she didn't quite know. It was a funny answer
but there was a funny, secret, joyful look on her face that suddenly
made me take her in my arms and kiss her, and quite surprised to find
myself doing it.
Then she sat down and I went around getting supper; first I thought she
was reading, she was so still. Then my eyes happened to fall on her and
I saw she was _listening_; then suddenly it was like she _heard_. She
had the stillest, shiningest look. All this don't sound like much, I
know, but I won't forget how Moira and Mis' MacFarland struck me that
first day, not till I die.
When I went to bed I couldn't get 'em out of my mind and I found myself
saying out loud:
"There's joy and peace in this house!"
It was quite a time before I sensed what had happened to Mis' MacFarland
and what made her change so toward the sea. She'd sit by the window, a
Bible in her hands and praying, and you would catch the words of her
prayer, and she was praying for those she loved--for the living and the
dead. That was only natural--but what I got to understand was that _she
didn't feel any different about them_. Not a bit different did she feel
about the living and the dead!
They were all there in her heart, the dead and the living, and not
divided off at all like in most folks' minds.
I used to wonder about Moira, too, when she'd have these quiet
spells--like she was _listening_, but not to any sounds. Then next you'd
feel as if she was gladder than anything you'd ever known, sitting there
so still with that listening look on her face--only now like I told you,
as if she'd _heard_. She'd be so happy inside that you'd like to be near
her, as if there was a light in her heart so you could warm yourself by
it.
It's hard to tell just how I came to feel this. I suppose just by living
with folks you get to know all sorts of things about them. It's not the
things they say that matters. I knew a woman once, a pleasant-spoken
body, yet she'd pizen the air about her by the unspoken thoughts of her
heart. Sometimes these thoughts would burst out in awful fits of
anger--but you'd know how she was inside, if she spoke to you always as
gentle as a dove.
I'd like to be near Moira those times and yet it made me uneasy, too,
her sitting so still, listening, and Mis' MacFarland, as you might say,
always looking over the edge of eternity. It was all right for _her_ but
I'd wonder about Moira. I wondered so hard I took it up with Mis'
MacFarland.
"Do you think you're doing right by that child?" I asked her right out
plain.
"Why, how do you mean?" she says in her calm way.
"Teaching her things that's all right for us older people to know but
that don't seem to me are for young things."
"Teaching her things!" says Mis' MacFarland. "I haven't taught Moira
nothing. If you mean them still, quiet, happy spells of hers, she's
always had 'em. _She_ taught _me_. It was watching her when she was
little that taught me----"
"Taught you what?" I asked her when she wouldn't go on.
"It's hard to say it in words--taught me how near all the rest is."