“Only folks build these jails and live in them, because they like ’em. Some stay in ’em all winter, I believe, and never go out from October to May. And call that living! I’ll take my way every time, thank you, if it is shorter.”
“Are they white folks?”
“White? yes, child! white as anybody is; whiter, too, like a cellar-plant, because they get no sun.”
“I didn’t know!” said Isla. “I thought maybe they turned black. But I’ll never go there.”
Her father mused; then he drew a larger building at the end of the street, with towers and pinnacles.
“Here’d be a church!” he said. “You’d like that, Isla. There’d be music, an organ, likely, and lots of singing. The windows are coloured red and blue, and the light comes in like sunset all day.”
“That’s pretty!” the child nodded, approvingly. “What do they do there, Giles?”
“Like a meeting-house; say prayers, and preach, and sing hymns and things.”
“Oh!” she paused, and the brightness passed from her face.
“Do you think He likes that, Giles?”
She nodded upward. Her father made no reply. He was not a religious man, but had thought it right to tell the child that there was some one called God, who lived above the sky, and who knew when people did wrong.
“He has all outdoors,” Isla went on. “I should think He would hate a house, even if it was big. Do you suppose they try to fool Him with the coloured windows, Giles?”
Giles thought this unlikely; perhaps they supposed He might feel more at home where ’twas coloured and pretty, he added, trying to fall into the child’s mood.
The girl was silent. “Is He dumb, Giles, do you think?” she asked presently.
“I don’t know,” said Giles. “He never spoke to me. What are you thinking of, Isla Heron?”
“Oh – only I hear like voices sometimes in the wind, and down by the shore more times; and I wondered, that was all. Do you suppose ever He would speak to a girl, Giles?”
“Sooner than any one else!” said Giles Heron.
“He’s good, you’re sure?”
“Yes, they all say He’s good.”
Then Giles made the sign for silence, for his heart seemed to lie cold and beat heavily; and Isla fell a-dreaming, feeling the stillness as home.
CHAPTER III.
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,
