Norman Duncan

“ I believed in visions––in the unreasoning progress, an advance in the way of life not calculated, but made in unselfish faith, with eyes lifted up from the vulgar, swarming, assailing advantages of existence. My uncle and the fool and I! there was no peril upon the sea to daunt us: we would find and fetch, to her own place, in perfect honor, the maid I loved. And of all this I thought, whatever the worth of it, as I ran upon the Whisper Cove road, in the evening of that gray, blustering day. ”

“ And having journeyed far in this unhappy wise, we came again to the spacious sea and sky and clean air of Twist Tickle, where Judith was with my uncle on the neck of land by the Lost Soul, and the world returned to its familiar guise of coast and ocean and free winds, and the Shining Light, once more scraped and refitted against the contingencies of my presence, awaited the ultimate event in the placid waters of Old Wives’ Cove....
Judith was grown to womanly age and ways and perfected in every maidenly attraction. ”

“ I demanded.
“No, lad,” he answered; “you isn’t.”
’Twas the first step he had led me from dependence upon him. ’Twas as though he had loosened my hand a little from its confident clasp of his own. I was alarmed.
“Many’s the lad,” said he, “that thinks he’ve his mother; an’ many’s the mother that thinks she’ve her lad. But yet they is both alone––all alone. ’Tis the queerest thing in the world.”
“But, Uncle Nick, I haves you!”
“No,” he persisted; “you is all alone. Why, Lord! Dannie, you is ’leven. What does I know about you?” ”

“ Faith, but ’twas a bitter night! Men were drowning on our coast––going to death in the wreck of schooners. The sea broke in unmasked assault upon the great rocks of Whisper Cove; the gale worried the cottage on the cliff. But ’twas warm in the kitchen: the women had kept the fire for the cup o’ tea to follow the event; ’twas warm, and the lamp made light and shadow, and the kettle bubbled and puffed, the wood crackled, the fire snored and glowed, all serenely, in disregard of death, as though no mystery had come to appal the souls of us.
My uncle had Judith on his knee. ”

“ We dropped the anchor of the Shining Light, and beat out, through the tickle, to the wide, menacing sea, with the night coming down and a gale of wind blowing lustily up from the gray northeast. ’Twas thus not in flight the Shining Light continued her cruise, ’twas in pursuit of the maid I loved: a thing infinitely more anxious and momentous––a thing that meant more than life or death to me, with the maid gone as cook on a Labrador craft. ”

“ As we went our way in new paths, my mind dwelt continually with Judith, whom I loved; the vision of her face, wistful and most fair in the mirage of Twist 266 Tickle, and the illusion of her voice, whispering from the vacant world, were the realities of these wanderings––the people and palaces a fantasy. Of this I said nothing to John Cather, who was himself cast down by some obscure ailment of the spirit, so that I would not add to his melancholy with my love-sickness, but rather sought by cheerful behavior to mitigate the circumstances of his sighs, which I managed not at all. ”

“ The last of our folk were bound in from the grounds, with the brown sails spread to a rising breeze, the fleet of tiny craft converging upon the lower-harbor tickle; presently the men would be out of the roughening sea, pulling up the harbor to the stage-heads, there to land and split the catch. Ay, a change of wind, a switch to the sou’east, with the threat of a gale with rain; ’twould blow before dark, no doubt, and ’twas now all dusky in the east, where the sky was cold and gray. ”

“ The weather concerns the old, the satisfied and disillusioned of life, the folk from whom the romance of being has departed. What care had we for the weather? ’Twas dusk, and we were alone at the turn of the road––a broad, rocky twist in the path, not without the softness of grass, where lovers had kissed in parting since fishing was begun from Twist Tickle and Whisper Cove. By the falling shades and a screen of young leaves we were hid from the prying eyes of Whisper Cove. ”

“ But a warm glow, falling from the lamp above the table, and the fire, crackling and snorting in the grate, put the power of the gale to shame. ’Twas cosey where we sat: warm, light, dry, with hunger driven off––a cosey place on a bitter night: a peace and comfort to thank the good God for, with many a schooner off our coast, from Chidley to the Baccalieu light, riding out the gale, in a smother of broken water, with a rocky shore and a flash of breakers to leeward. ”

“ I was hurt: for, being a lad, not a maid of subtle perceptions, I would not have my uncle go lacking that which comforted his distress and melancholy. Faith! but I had myself been looking forward with a thirsty gullet to the day––drawn near, as I thought––when I should like a man drink hard liquor with him in the glow of our fire: as, indeed, had he, by frank confession, indiscreetly made when he was grown horrified or wroth with my intemperance with ginger-ale.
“God save ye, Dannie!” ”

“ Unhappy, then, perhaps, Twin Islands, in situation and prospect; but the folk of that harbor, who deal barehanded with wind and sea to catch fish, have this wisdom: that a barren, a waste of selfish water, a low, soggy sky have nothing to do with the hearts of men, which are independent, in love and hope and present content, of these unfeeling things. We were seafaring men, every jack of the place, with no knowledge of a world apart from green water, which forever confronted us, fashioning our lives ”

“ The Shining Light came lurching through the frothy sea with the wind astern: a flash of white in the mist, vanishing among the careering waves, doughtily reappearing––growing the while into the stature of a small craft of parts, making harbor under a black, tumultuous sky. Beyond the Toads, where there is a turmoil of breaking water, she made a sad mess of it, so that the folk of the Tickle, watching the strange appearance from the heads, made sure she had gone down ”

“ The white houses are builded in a fashion the most disorderly at the edge of the tickle, strung clear from the narrows to the Lost Soul and straying somewhat upon the slopes, with the scrawny-legged flakes clinging to the bare declivities and the stages squatted at the water-side; but some houses, whose tenants are solitary folk made morose by company, congregate in the remoter coves––where the shore is the shore of the open sea and there is no crowd to trouble––whence paths scramble over the hills to the Tickle settlement. ”

“ My uncle, Nicholas Top, of Twist Tickle, was of a cut so grotesque that folk forgot their manners when he stumped abroad. Bowling through the streets of St. John’s, which twice a year he tapped with staff and wooden leg, myself in leading––bowling cheerily, with his last rag spread, as he said, and be damned to the chart––he left a swirling wake of amazement: craning necks, open mouths, round eyes, grins so frank, the beholders being taken unaware, that ’twas simple to distinguish hearts of pity from savage ones. ”

“ He was clad in yellow oil-skins, a-drip, glistening in the light of the lamps, for he was newly come in from the rain: a bitter night, the wind in the northeast, with a black fog abroad (I remember it well) ––a wet, black night, the rain driving past the red-curtained windows of the Anchor and Chain, the streets swept clean of men, ourselves light-hearted and warm, indifferent, being ashore from the wind, the cloudy night, the vicious, crested waves of the open, where men must never laugh nor touch a glass. ”

“ My uncle’s round little eyes protruded––started from the bristles and purpling scars and brown flesh of his broad face––as many a time before I had in sad bewilderment watched them do. Paid for––all the pride and comfort and strange advantages of my life! All paid for in the black heart of this mystery! And John Cather, too! I wondered again, with an eye upon my uncle’s significantly active thumb, having no courage to meet his poignant glance, how that might be. ”

“ I used to try, I know, as a child, lying alone in the dark, when my uncle was gone to bed, to conjure from the shadows some yearning face, to feel a soft hand come gratefully from the hidden places of my room to smooth the couch and touch me with a healing touch, in cure of my uneasy tossing, to hear a voice crooning to my woe and restlessness ”

“ It rippled the azure floor between, and flung the spray of the breakers into the sunshine, and heartily clapped the gray cliff, and pulled the ears of the spruce, and went swinging on, in joyous mood, to the gray spaces of the great sea beyond Twin Islands. I shall not forget: for faith! the fates were met in conspiracy with the day to plot the mischief of my life. There was no warning, no question to ease the issue 76 in my case: ’twas all ordained in secret; and the lever of destiny was touched, and the labor of the unfeeling loom went forward to weave the pattern of my days. ”

“ The thing delighted my uncle; he would chuckle and clap me on the back and cry, “That’s very good!” until I was wrought into a mood of defiance quite ridiculous. But still ’tis rather grateful to recall: for what’s a lad’s boasting but the honest courage of a man? I would serve my uncle; but ’twas not all: I would serve Judith. She was now come into our care: I would serve her.
“They won’t nothin’ hurt she!” thinks I.
I am glad to recall that this boyish love took a turn so chivalrous....
When ’twas noised abroad that my uncle was to refit the Shining Light, Twist Tickle grew hilarious. ”

“ For this––though but an ancient story, told by old folk to engage my presence in the punts and stages of our harbor––I loved her, as a man, Newfoundland born and bred, may with propriety love a ship.
There are maids to be loved, no doubt, and ’tis very nice to love them, because they are maids, fashioned in a form most lovely by the good Lord, given a heart most childlike and true and loving and tenderly dependent, so that, in all the world, as I know, there is nothing so to be cherished with a man’s last breath as a maid. I have loved a maid and speak with authority. ”

“ Judith and I were then cold and distant in behavior with each other, but unfailing in politeness: ’twas now a settled attitude, preserved by each towards the other, and betraying no feeling of any sort whatever.
“John Cather,” says I, “you’ve been ill.”
He laughed. “You are a dull fellow!” says he, in his light way. “’Tis the penalty of honesty, I suppose; and nature has fined you heavily. I have not been ill: I have been troubled.” ”

“ At evening, when he thought me gone upon my pleasure, I watched him from the shadows of the hall, grave with youth, wishing, all the while, that he might greet the night with gratitude for the mercy of it; and I listened to his muttering––and I saw that he was grown old and weak with age: unequal, it might be, to the wickedness he would command in my service. “For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire.” ”

“ If ’tis a delight to love, whatever may come of it (as some hold) , I found delight upon the grim hills of Twin Islands....
They lie hard by the coast, but are yet remote: Ship’s Run divides them from the long blue line of main-land which lifts its barren hills in misty distance from our kinder place. ’Tis a lusty stretch of gray water, sullen, melancholy, easily troubled by the winds, which delight, it seems, sweeping from the drear seas of the north, to stir its rage. ”

“ And there is a road from the Tickle to the sea––to an outer cove, high-cliffed, frothy, sombre, with many melancholy echoes of wind and breakers and listless human voices, where is a cluster of hopeless, impoverished homes. ’Tis a wilful-minded path, lingering indolently among the hills, artful, intimate, wise with age, and most indulgently secretive of its soft discoveries. It is used to the lagging feet of lovers. There are valleys in its length, and winding, wooded stretches, kindly places; and there are arching alders along the way to provide a seclusion yet more tender. ”

“ My tutor, John Cather, as his name turned out to be, was older than I, after all––my elder by five years, I fancied, with age-wise ways and a proud glance to overawe my youth, were need of it to come: a slight, dark-skinned man, clean-featured, lean-cheeked, full-lipped, with restless dark eyes, thin, olive-tinted hands, black hair, worn overlong, parted in the manner of a maid and falling upon his brow in glossy waves, which he would ruffle into disorder, with the air of knowing what he was about. ”

“ Here was John Cather departed in sore agony, for which was no cure that ever I heard of or could conceive. Here was John Cather gone with the wreck of a soul. A cynical, purposeless, brooding life he must live to his last day: there was no healing in all the world for his despair. Here with us––to whom, in the 304 years of our intercourse, he gave nothing but gladness––his ruin had been wrought. ’Twas not by wish of us; but there was small comfort in the reflection, since John Cather must suffer the same. Here was John Cather gone; and here, presently, was my uncle, pacing the floor below. ”

“ For many days before our departure from Twist Tickle by the outside boat, my uncle would quit the Green Bull grounds, where he fished with hook and line, would moor his punt fore and aft, and take to the bleak hills of Twin Islands, there (it seemed) to nurse some questionable design: whence at dusk he would emerge, exhausted in leg and spirit, but yet with strength to mutter obscure imprecations as he came tapping up the gravelled walk from the gate, and with the will to manage a bottle and glass in the kitchen.
“The bottle!” cries he. “Ecod! the dog’ll never scare ol’ Nick Top. ”

“ I shall never forget the exhibition of zeal. ’Twas divinely unselfish––’twas heroic as men have seldom shown heroism. Remembering what occurred thereafter, I number the misguided man with the holy martyrs. At the Cock’s Crest, whence the road tumbled down the cliff to Whisper Cove, the wind tore the breath out of Parson Lute, and the noise of the breakers, and the white of the sea beyond, without mercy, contemptuous, confused him utterly. ”