Doctor Luke of the Labrador by Norman Duncan (color ebook reader .txt) 📖

that I quickly warmed to the diversion and chattered as fast as my tongue would wag. He laughed at me for saying "nar" for not (and the like) and I at him for saying "cawm" for calm; and soon we were very merry, and not only merry, but as intimate as friends of a lifetime. By and by I took him to see the Soldier's Ear, which is an odd rock near the Rat Hole, and, after that, to listen to the sea coughing and gurgling at the bottom of Satan's Well. And in all this he forgot that he was sad--and I that my mother was dead.

"Will you walk with me to-morrow, Davy?" he asked, when I said that I must be off home.

"That I will, zur," said I.

"After breakfast."

"Ay, zur; a quarter of five."

"Well, no," he drawled. "Half after nine."

"'Tis a sheer waste o' time," I protested. "But 'twill suit me, zur, an it pleases you. My sister will tell _me_ the hour."

"Your sister?" he asked, quickly.

"Bessie," said I.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "she was your sister. I saw her there--that night. And she is your sister?"

"You got it right," cried I, proudly. "_That's_ my sister!"

He slapped me on the back (which shocked me, for our folk are not that playful); and, laughing heartily as he went, he took the road to Tom Tot's, where he had found food and housing for a time. I watched him from the turn in the road, as he went lightly down the slope towards South Tickle--his trim-clad, straight, graceful figure, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, lithe in action, as compared with our lumbering gait; inefficient, 'tis true, but potentially strong. As I walked home, I straightened my own shoulders, held my head high, lifted my feet from the ground, flung bold glances to right and left, as I had seen him do: for, even then, I loved him very much. All the while I was exultantly conscious that a new duty and a new delight had come to me: some great thing, given of God--a work to do, a happiness to cherish. And that night he came and went in my dreams--but glorified: his smile not mirthless, his grave, gray eyes not overcast, his face not flabby and flushed, his voice not slow and sad, but vibrant with fine, live purpose. My waking thought was the wish that the man of the hills might be the man of my vision; and in my simple morning petition it became a prayer.

"Dear mama," I prayed, "there's something wrong along o' the man who come the night you died. He've managed somehow t' get wonderful sick. I'm not knowin' what ails un, or where he cotched it; but I sees it plain in his face: an' 'tis a woeful sickness. Do you make haste t' the throne o' God, please, mum, an' tell Un I been askin' you t' have un cured. You'd want un well, too, an you was here; an' the Lard 'll surely listen t' you, an' take your word for 't. Oh, do you pray the Lard, with all your might an' main, dear mama, t' heal that man!"

* * * * *


In our land the works of the Lord are not obscured by what the hands of men have made. The twofold vision ranges free and far. Here are no brick walls, no unnatural need or circumstance, no confusing inventions, no gasping haste, no specious distractions, no clamour of wheel and heartless voices, to blind the soul, to pervert its pure desires, to deaden its fears, to deafen its ears to the sweeter calls--to shut it in, to shrivel it: to sicken it in every part. Rock and waste of sea and the high sweep of the sky--winds and rain and sunlight and flying clouds--great hills, mysterious distances, flaming sunsets, the still, vast darkness of night! These are the mighty works of the Lord, and of none other--unspoiled and unobscured. In them He proclaims Himself. They who have not known before that the heavens and the earth are the handiwork of God, here discover it: and perceive the Presence and the Power, and are ashamed and overawed. Thus our land works its marvel in the sensitive soul. I have sometimes thought that in the waste is sounded the great keynote of life--with which true hearts ever seek to vibrate in tune.


XIII

A SMILING FACE

"Doctor Luke, zur," I said, as we walked that day, "I dreamed o' you, last night."

"Pleasantly, I hope?"

I sighed.

"What," said he, gravely, "did you dream of me?"

'Twas hard to frame a reply. "I been thinkin', since," I faltered, floundering in search of a simile, "that you're like a--like a----"

"Like what?" he demanded.

I did not know. My eye sought everywhere, but found no happy suggestion. Then, through an opening in the hills, I caught sight of the melancholy wreck on the Reef of the Thirty Black Devils.

"I fear t' tell," said I.

He stopped. "But I wish to know," he persisted. "You'll tell me, Davy, will you not? It means so much."

"Like a wrecked ship," said I.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, starting from me.

At once he sent me home; nor would he have me walk with him that afternoon, because, as he said, my sister would not allow me to bear him company, did she know as much as I had in some strange way divined.

* * * * *


Next day, armed with my sister's express permission, I overcame his scruples; and off we went to Red Indian Cave. Everywhere, indeed, we went together, while the wrecked folk waited the mail-boat to come--Doctor Luke and I--hand in hand--happy (for the agony of my loss came most in the night, when I lay wakeful and alone in my little bed) as the long, blue days. We roamed the hills, climbed the cliffs, clambered along shore; and once, to my unbounded astonishment and alarm, he stripped to the skin and went head first into the sea from the base of the Good Promise cliffs. Then nothing would content him but that I, too, should strip and plunge in: which I did (though you may think it extraordinary), lest he think me afraid to trust his power to save me. Thus the invigourating air, the yellow sunlight, the smiling sea beyond the rocks, the blue sky overhead, were separate delights in which our friendship ripened: so that at times I wondered what loneliness would overtake me when he had gone. I told him I wished he would not go away on the mail-boat, but would stay and live with us, that, being a doctor, as he had said, he might heal our folk when they fell sick, and no one would die, any more. He laughed at that--but not because of merriment--and gripped my hand tighter, and I began to hope that, perhaps, he would not go away; but he did not tell me whether he would or not.

* * * * *


When the mail-boat was near due, my sister said that I must have the doctor to tea; for it would never do, said she, to accept his kindnesses and show no hospitality in return. In reply to this Doctor Luke said that I must present his compliments to my sister (which I thought a curious way of putting it), and say that he accepted the invitation with great pleasure; and, as though it were a matter of grave moment, he had me repeat the form until I knew it perfectly. That evening my sister wore a long skirt, fashioned in haste from one of my mother's gowns, and this, with my mother's keys, which she kept hanging from her girdle, as my mother used to do, made her very sweetly staid. The doctor came speckless, wearing his only shirt, which (as Tom Tot's wife made known to all the harbour) he had paid one dollar to have washed and ironed in three hours for the occasion, spending the interval (it was averred) in his room. While we waited for the maids to lay the table, my sister moved in and out, directing them; and the doctor gazed at her in a way so marked that I made sure she had forgotten a hook or a button, and followed her to the kitchen to discover the omission.

"Sure, Bessie, dear," I began, very gingerly, "I'm fair dreadin' that you're--you're----"

She was humming, in happy unconsciousness of her state; and I was chagrined by the necessity of disclosing it: but resolutely continued, for it must be done.

"Loose," I concluded.

She gave a little jump--a full inch, it may be--from the floor.

"Davy!" she cried, in mixed horror and distress. "Oh, dear! Whereabouts?"

"Do you turn around," said I, "an' I'll soon find out."

She whirled like a top. But I could find nothing awry. She was shipshape from head to toe.

"'Tis very queer," said I. "Sure, I thought you'd missed a button, for the doctor is lookin' at you all the time."

"At _me_!" she cried.

"Ay, at you."

She was then convinced with me that there was something amiss, and called the maids to our help, for, as she said, I was only a boy (though a dear one), and ill schooled in such matters. But it turned out that their eyes were no sharper than mine. They pronounced her hooked and buttoned and pinned to the Queen's taste.

"'Tis queer, then," I persisted, when the maids had gone, "that he looks at you so hard."

"Is you sure he does?" she asked, much puzzled, "for," she added, with a little frown, "I'm not knowin' why he should."

"Nor I," said I.

At table we were very quiet, but none the less happy for that; for it seemed to me that my mother's gentle spirit hovered near, content with what we did. And after tea my father sat with the doctor on our platform, talking of disease and healing, until, in obedience to my sister's glance, I took our guest away to the harbour, to see (as I said) the greatest glories of the sunset: for, as I knew, my sister wished to take my father within, and change the current of his thought. Then I rowed the doctor to North Tickle, and let the punt lie in the swell of the open sea, where it was very solemn and quiet. The sky was heavy with drifting masses of cloud, aflare with red and gold and all the sunset colours, from the black line of coast, lying in the west, far into the east, where sea and sky were turning gray. Indeed, it was very still, very solemn, lying in the long, crimson swell of the great deep, while the dusk came creeping over the sea.

"I do not wonder," the doctor muttered, with a shudder, "that the people who dwell here fear God."

There was something familiar to me in that feeling; but for the moment