’Tis cozy enough,” said my father, chucking my mother under the chin, “even for a maid a man might cotch up Boston way!”
Presently came Skipper Tommy Lovejoy by rollicking dog-team from the Lodge to inquire after my mother’s health—to cheer us, it may be, I’m thinking, with his hearty way, his vast hope, his odd fancies, his ruddy, twinkling face. Most we laughed when he described his plan (how seriously conceived there was no knowing) for training whales to serve as tugboats in calms and adverse winds. It appeared, too, that a similar recital had been trying to the composure of old Tom Tot, of our harbour, who had searched the Bible for seven years to discover therein a good man of whom it was said that he laughed, and, failing utterly, had thereupon vowed never again to commit the sin of levity.
“Sure, I near fetched un,” said Skipper Tommy, gleefully, “with me whales. I come near makin’ Tom Tot break that scandalous vow, zur, indeed I did! He got wonderful purple in the face, an’ choked in a fearsome way, when I showed un my steerin’ gear for the beast’s tail, but, as I’m sad t’ say, zur, he managed t’ keep it in without bustin’. But I’ll get un yet, zur—oh, ay, zur—just leave un t’ me! Ecod! zur, I’m thinkin’ he’ll capsize with all hands when I tells un I’m t’ have a wheel-house on the forward deck o’ that wha-a-ale!”
But the old man soon forgot all about his whales, as he had forgotten to make out the strange way the Lord had discovered to fasten His stars to the sky; moved by a long contemplation of my mother’s frailty, he had a nobler inspiration.
“ ’Tis sad, lass,” he said, his face aquiver with sympathy, “t’ think that we’ve but one doctor t’ cure the sick, an’ him on the mail-boat. ’Tis wonderful sad t’ think o’ that! ’Tis a hard case,” he went on, “but if a man only thunk hard enough he’d find a way t’ mend it. Sure, what ought t’ be mended can be mended. ’Tis the way o’ the world. If a man only thinks hard an’ thinks sensible, he’ll find a way, zur, every time. ’Tis easy t’ think hard, but ’tis sometimes hard,” he added, “t’ think t’ the point.”
We were silent while he continued lost in deep and puzzled thought.
“Ecod!” he burst out. “I got it!”
“Have you, now?” cried my father, half amused, half amazed.
“Just this minute, zur,” said the skipper, in a glow of delighted astonishment. “It come t’ me all t’ oncet.”
“An’ what is it?”
“ ’Tis a sort o’ book, zur!”
“A book?”
“Ay, ’tis just a book. Find out all the cures in the world an’ put un in a book. Get the doctor-women’s, an’ the healers’, an’ the real doctor’s, an’ put un right in a book. Has you got the dip-theria? Ask the book what t’ do. ‘Dip-theria?’ says the book t’ you. ‘Well, that’s sad. Tie a split herring round your neck.’ S’pose you got the salt-water sores. What do you do, then? Why, turn t’ the book. ‘Oh, ’tis nothin’ t’ cure that,’ says the book. ‘Wear a brass chain on your wrist, lad, an’ you’ll be troubled no more.’ Take it, now, when you got blood-poison in the hand. What is you t’ do, you wants t’ know? ‘Blood-poison in the hand?’ says the book. ‘Good gracious, that’s awful! Cut off your hand.’ ’Twould be a wonderful good work,” the skipper concluded, “t’ make a book like that!” It appeared to me that it would.
“I wonder,” the skipper went on, staring at the fire, a little smile playing upon his face, “if I couldn’t do that! ’Twould surely be a thing worth doin’. I wonder—I wonder—if I couldn’t manage—somehow—t’ do it!”
We said nothing; for he was not thinking of us, any more, as we knew—but only dreaming of the new and beneficent work which had of a sudden appeared to him.
“But I isn’t able t’ write,” he muttered, at last. “I—I—wisht I could!”
“ ’Twould be a wonderful fine work for a man t’ do,” said my father.
“ ’Tis a wonder, now,” said Skipper Tommy, looking up with a bright face, “that no one ever thought o’ doin’ that afore. T’ my mind,” he added, much puzzled, “ ’tis very queer, indeed, that they’s nar a man in all the world t’ think o’ that—but me!”
My mother smiled.
“I’m thinkin’ I’ll just have t’ try,” Skipper Tommy went on, frowning anxiously. “But, ecod!” he cried, “maybe the Lard wouldn’t like it. Now, maybe, He wants us men t’ mind our business. Maybe, He’d say, ‘You keep your finger out o’ My pie. Don’t you go makin’ no books about cures.’ But, oh, no!” with the overflow of fine feeling which so often came upon him. “Why, He wouldn’t mind a little thing like that. Sure, I wouldn’t mind it, meself! ‘You go right ahead, lad,’ He’d say, ‘an’ try t’ work your cures. Don’t you be afeared o’ Me. I’ll not mind. But, lad,’ He’d say, ‘when I wants my way I just got t’ have it. Don’t you forget that. Don’t you go thinkin’ you can have your way afore I has Mine. You just trust Me t’ do what’s right. I know My business. I’m used t’ running worlds. I’m wonderful sorry,’ He’d say, ‘t’ have t’ make you feel bad; but they’s times, b‘y,’ He’d say, ‘when I really got t’ have My way.’ Oh, no,” Skipper Tommy concluded, “the Lard wouldn’t mind a poor man’s tryin’ t’ make a book like that! An’ I thinks I’ll just have t’ try.”
“Sure, Skipper Tommy,” said I, “I’ll help you.”
Skipper Tommy stared at me in great amaze.
“Ay,” said my mother, “Davy has learned to write.”
“That I have,” I boasted; “an’ I’ll help you make that book.”
“ ’Tis the same,” cried Skipper Tommy, slapping his thigh “as if ’twas writ already!”
After a long time, my mother spoke. “You’re always wanting to do some good thing, Skipper Tommy, are you not?” said she.
“Well,” he admitted, his face falling, “I thinks and wonders a deal, ’tis true, but somehow I don’t seem t’——”
“Ay?” my father asked.
“Get—nowhere—much!”
Very true: but, even then, there was a man on the way to help him.
IV
MARY
In the dead of winter, great storms of wind and snow raged for days together, so that it was unsafe to venture ten fathoms from the door, and the glass fell to fifty degrees (and more) below zero, where the liquid behaved in a fashion so sluggish that
