Читать книгу The Heart that Knows - Charles George Douglas Roberts - Страница 4

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The barquentine G. G. Goodridge was a new ship, fresh from Purdy’s shipyard and the tarred hands of the riggers. She was of four hundred tons register, and owned in Sackville and Westcock. As she started down the Bay of Fundy on her maiden voyage she was held to be sailing under the special favour of Providence, in that she bore in white letters across her stern, as well as on her starboard bow, the name of the well-loved rector of the parish, the Reverend G. G. Goodridge. She owed her very existence, indeed, to the rector’s efficient succour at a crucial moment; and among the seafaring folk, who are always superstitious (as becomes men who live with the great mysteries), it was considered that his name would be her passport to the good-will of fate.

It happened that very late one night, when the barquentine was still on the stocks in Purdy’s shipyard, the rector was jogging slowly homeward from the bedside of a sick parishioner in Sackville. It was a moonless night, the blue-black sky sown thick with stars and the Great Bear wheeling low. Purdy’s shipyard is on a short but wide-channelled creek emptying into the Tantramar in that portion of Westcock village which lies on the Sackville road, half a mile south of the Frosty Hollow “Bito.” The rector’s head was sunk in reverie, the reins hung loose on the horse’s neck, and the light “buggy,” its top lowered back, jolted at its will over every rut and stone in the rough country road. As he passed Purdy’s shipyard, however, the rector raised his eyes, and glanced down at the fine new vessel in which all Westcock was interested. In another week she would be gay with flags; and at high tide, amid the chorus of an enthusiastic throng, she would glide down her greased and smoking “ways” to plunge with an enormous splash into the yellow waters of the creek-basin. The shipyard was a good quarter of a mile from the road, but the great, tarred hull, high on its stocks, was conspicuous against the glimmer of water beyond. But it was not the lofty shadow of the hull that caught the rector’s eye and made him sit up, very wide-awake. The next instant he turned the horse’s head sharply, drove bumping over the ditch and the roadside hillocks to the fence, sprang out, and threw the reins over a fence stake. Then he vaulted the fence and ran as fast as he could across the fields toward the ship, shouting “Fire! Fire! Fire!” at the top of his great voice.

The flames were just beginning to rise from a heap of rubbish close under the stern, when the rector vaulted the fence. When he reached the ship they were licking high and red upon the fresh-tarred sides. A workman’s bucket stood near; and, fortunately for the ship, the tide was at its height, lapping softly almost under the stern-port. The rector was a man of great muscular strength and trained activity. Though his lungs heaved hard from that quarter-mile sprint across the uneven, dusky fields, in a few seconds he had dashed bucket after bucket of water upon the blaze, and upon the little, incipient flames which were beginning to hiss here and there far up the ship’s side. By the time the ship-carpenters came running, half-awake, from the big house far at the other side of the yard, the rector had the fire well in hand, and there was only a smouldering, smoking pile of chips and shavings to show what had happened. The rector was hot, and tired, as well as angry at the carelessness which could leave a lot of such inflammable stuff so close beside the ship. His voice was stern as he addressed the staring foreman.

“Did you want the ship to be burned,” he inquired, pointing to the heap, “that you left all that stuff there?”

The foreman rubbed his head.

“There wasn’t no stuff left nigh to her, not a mite, when we knocked off work at sundown,” he declared, positively. “No sir-ee, parson. If any one of the hands done a fool trick like that, he’d git the sack right quick.”

As he spoke, the rector stooped and picked up an empty kerosene-can. Without a word he held it aloft. One of the hands had brought a lantern from the house. He swung it up, and the smoky light fell upon the circle of bearded, wondering faces gathered about the rector. As they stared at the kerosene-can, understanding kindled, and an angry growl passed swiftly from throat to throat.

“Yes,” said the rector, dropping the can with a tinny clang, “it’s the work of an incendiary. And he can’t be far away.”

“We’ll git him!” swore the foreman, with an earnest and ingenious oath which the rector did not seem to hear; and in an instant, as if each man in the crowd had received his individual orders, they all scattered, and faded away into the dark. The rector, left once more alone, stood for a few seconds pulling at his beard and glancing after them, an amused smile lurking about the corners of his kindly, tolerant mouth. Then he kicked the pile of embers all apart, drenched them with several more buckets of water till not a spark winked through the gloom, threw down the bucket with a deep breath of satisfaction, and betook himself away across the fields to where he had left the horse and buggy. He had no interest in the catching of the rascal who had set the fire,—and, indeed, they never did catch him. But as a result of that night’s adventure the name of the barquentine, which was to have been the Elmira Etter, was changed at the eleventh hour to the G. G. Goodridge, much to the rector’s surprise and boyish gratification. He had always wanted to travel, but had never felt free to gratify the desire. And now, his imagination was keenly stirred by the thought of this ship which bore his name visiting the foreign lands and the strange, peacock-hued seas of which he had wistfully dreamed. It lay close to his heart that this ship should have to do with nought but honest and clean trading, with humaneness and with good works. When he learned that Captain Job Britton, of Wood Point, was to be her master, he felt secure, for he knew Job’s sturdy honesty, as well as the real kindness of heart that hid itself, not ineffectually, behind his gnarled and grizzled exterior.

Captain Job was a widower of fifty. When ashore,—which was seldom, as every ship-owner from Dorchester to the Joggins craved his services,—he lived in a snug white cottage just below the Point, with his one, idolized daughter, Melissa, and Melissa’s aunt, a spinster of matured and immitigable acidity. He was rather short, but of an astonishing breadth of shoulder, with short-cut, matted, reddish gray, streaked hair, bushy red and gray beard, and bristling, pale eyebrows over a pair of deep-set, piercing, steel-gray eyes. His massive neck, and all the skin of his face that was not mantled with hair, were mahogany red, and deeply creased with the wrinkles that tell of ceaseless battling with wind and salt and sun.

Melissa, who since babyhood had been well-spoiled, not only by her father, but even by her aunt, was a smallish, thinnish, decidedly pretty blonde of the carroty type, with eyes pale but bright, a skin faintly freckled, and a mouth both full-lipped and firm, which curiously contradicted the softness of the rest of her face. Her voice was a childlike treble, and her whole manner was one of trustful frankness. Nevertheless, for all her softness and trustfulness, no one but her father quite trusted her; and the girls at the Sackville seminary, where she had got her schooling, found that, though she was generous in her way, and anxious to be liked, it was never safe to traverse her purpose in even the most trivial matter. They distrusted her, of course, for her prettiness, among other good reasons; but most of all they distrusted her because, though she seemed so timid, she was not, in reality, afraid of anything, not even of June-bugs and mice, which every nice young lady ought to fear. From all this it would appear that Melissa Britton, behind her small, pale face and under her luxuriant, glossy, light red hair, concealed a personality to be reckoned with. Both she and Luella Warden sang in the parish church choir, her flute-like soprano and Luella’s rich contralto being the rector’s chief dependence on those rare occasions, such as Christmas, or Easter, or a visit from the bishop, when there was anthem-music to be rendered. Between the two there was a certain natural rivalry in this matter of voice, though neither of them realized it, thanks to the rector’s vigilant tact. Melissa admired Luella’s voice, but confidently, though in secret, preferred her own. Luella was inclined, as a rule, to agree with her. While the rector, rather preferring Luella’s for its sympathetic breadth and cello-like tenderness, never allowed his preference to be guessed.