PAGE 10
The Man On The Beach
by
“Look yar! I don’t wonder they said you was looney! I’m Trinidad Joe’s onmarried darter, and the only woman in this house. Any fool could have told you that. Now, ef you can rig us up a baby out o’ them facts, I’d like to see it done.”
Inwardly furious but outwardly polite, James North begged her pardon, deplored his ignorance, and, with a courtly bow, made a movement to take the child. But the woman as quickly drew it away.
“Not much,” she said, hastily. “What! trust that poor critter to you? No, sir! Thar’s more ways of feeding a baby, young man, than you knows on, with all your ‘nat’ral nourishment.’ But it looks kinder logy and stupid.”
North freezingly admitted that he had given the infant whisky as a stimulant.
“You did? Come, now, that ain’t so looney after all. Well, I’ll take the baby, and when Dad comes home we’ll see what can be done.”
North hesitated. His dislike of the woman was intense, and yet he knew no one else and the baby needed instant care. Besides, he began to see the ludicrousness of his making a first call on his neighbors with a foundling to dispose of. She saw his hesitation, and said,–
“Ye don’t know me, in course. Well, I’m Bessy Robinson, Trinidad Joe Robinson’s daughter. I reckon Dad will give me a character if you want references, or any of the boys on the river.”
“I’m only thinking of the trouble I’m giving you, Miss Robinson, I assure you. Any expense you may incur–“
“Young man,” said Bessy Robinson, turning sharply on her heel, and facing him with her black brows a little contracted, “if it comes to expenses, I reckon I’ll pay you for that baby, or not take it at all. But I don’t know you well enough to quarrel with you on sight. So leave the child to me, and, if you choose, paddle down here to-morrow, after sun up–the ride will do you good–and see it, and Dad thrown in. Good by!” and with one powerful but well-shaped arm thrown around the child, and the other crooked at the dimpled elbow a little aggressively, she swept by James North and entered a bedroom, closing the door behind her.
When Mr. James North reached his cabin it was dark. As he rebuilt his fire, and tried to rearrange the scattered and disordered furniture, and remove the debris of last night’s storm, he was conscious for the first time of feeling lonely. He did not miss the child. Beyond the instincts of humanity and duty he had really no interest in its welfare or future. He was rather glad to get rid of it, he would have preferred to some one else, and yet SHE looked as if she were competent. And then came the reflection that since the morning he had not once thought of the woman he loved. The like had never occurred in his twelvemonth solitude. So he set to work, thinking of her and of his sorrows, until the word “Looney,” in connection with his suffering, flashed across his memory. “Looney!” It was not a nice word. It suggested something less than insanity; something that might happen to a common, unintellectual sort of person. He remembered the loon, an ungainly feathered neighbor, that was popularly supposed to have lent its name to the adjective. Could it be possible that people looked upon him as one too hopelessly and uninterestingly afflicted for sympathy or companionship, too unimportant and common for even ridicule; or was this but the coarse interpretation of that vulgar girl?
Nevertheless, the next morning “after sun up” James North was at Trinidad Joe’s cabin. That worthy proprietor himself–a long, lank man, with even more than the ordinary rural Western characteristics of ill health, ill feeding, and melancholy–met him on the bank, clothed in a manner and costume that was a singular combination of the frontiersman and the sailor. When North had again related the story of his finding the child, Trinidad Joe pondered.