FullReads

“Hullo, Zeke!”

Zeke, as he stepped out of the ferry-boat, looked with some confusion on his face. He wore his best suit, with a bunch of sweet-william in his button-hole.

“Come to bid us good-bye, I s’pose? We’ve heard of your luck. Here, scramble up this way if you can manage, and shake hands on your fortune.”

Zeke obeyed. The climb seemed to fluster him; but the afternoon was a hot one, in spite of a light westerly breeze. The two men moved side by side across the garden-slope, and as they did so John caught sight of a twinkle of sunshine on Captain Tangye’s brass telescope across the harbour.

They paused beside one of the heaps of rubbish. “This is a fine thing for you, Zeke.”

“Ay, pretty fair.”

“I s’pose we sha’n’t be seein’ much of you now. ‘Tis like an end of old times. I reckoned we’d have a pipe together afore partin’.” John pulled out a stumpy clay and filled it. “Got a match about you?”

Zeke passed him one, and he struck it on his boot. “There, now,” he went on, “I meant to set a light to these here heaps of rubbish this afternoon, and now I’ve come out without my matches.” He waited for the sulphur to finish bubbling, and then began to puff.

Zeke handed him half-a-dozen matches.

“I dunno how many ’twill take,” said John. “S’pose we go round together and light up. ‘Twont’ take us a quarter of an hour, an’ we can talk by the way.”

Ten minutes later, Captain Tangye, across the harbour, shut his telescope with an angry snap. The smoke of five-and-twenty bonfires crawled up the hillside and completely hid John Penaluna’s garden–hid the two figures standing there, hid the little summer-house at the top of the slope. It was enough to make a man swear, and Captain Tangye swore.

John Penaluna drew a long breath.

“Well, good-bye and bless ‘ee, Zeke. Hester’s up in the summer-house. I won’t go up with ‘ee; my back’s too stiff. Go an’ make your adoos to her; she’s cleverer than I be, and maybe will tell ‘ee what we’ve both got in our minds.”

This was the third rash thing that John Penaluna did.

He watched Zeke up the hill, till the smoke hid him. Then he picked up his spade. “Shall I find her, when I step home this evening? Please God, yes.”

And he did. She was there by the supper-table? waiting for him. Her eyes were red. John pretended to have dropped something, and went back for a moment to look for it. When he returned, neither spoke.

VI

Years passed–many years. Their life ran on in its old groove.

John toiled from early morning to sunset, as before–and yet not quite as before. There was a difference, and Captain Tangye would, no doubt, have perceived it long before had not Death one day come on him in an east wind and closed his activities with a snap, much as he had so often closed his telescope.

For a year or two after Zeke’s departure, John went on enlarging his garden-bounds, though more languidly. Then followed four or five years during which his conquests seemed to stand still. And then little by little, the brambles and wild growth rallied. Perhaps–who knows?–the assaulted wilderness had found its Joan of Arc. At any rate, it stood up to him at length, and pressed in upon him and drove him back. Year by year, on one excuse or another, an outpost, a foot or two, would be abandoned and left to be reclaimed by the weeds. They were the assailants now. And there came a time when they had him at bay, a beaten man, in a patch of not more than fifty square feet, the centre of his former domain. “Time, not Corydon,” had conquered him.

He was working here one afternoon when a boy came up the lower path from the ferry, and put a telegram into his hands. He read it over, thought for a while, and turned to climb the old track towards the summer-house, but brambles choked it completely, and he had to fetch a circuit and strike the grass walk at the head of the slope.

He had not entered the summer-house for years, but he found Hester knitting there as usual; and put the telegram into her hands.

“Zeke is drowned.” He paused and added–he could not help it–“You’ll not need to be looking out to sea any more.”

Hester made as if to answer him, but rose instead and laid a hand on his breast. It was a thin hand, and roughened with housework. With the other she pointed to where the view had lain seaward. He turned. There was no longer any view. The brambles hid it, and must have hidden it for many years.

“Then what have you been thinkin’ of all these days?”

Her eyes filled; but she managed to say, “Of you, John.”

“It’s with you as with me. The weeds have us, every side, each in our corner.” He looked at his hands, and with sudden resolution turned and left her.

“Where are you going?”

“To fetch a hook. I’ll have that view open again before nightfall, or my name’s not John Penaluna.”