The Nymph and the Lamp

by Thomas H Raddall

  One of the girls came to the doorway and inspected Carney with care. He did not look like an operator. Operators were cheerful youngsters, usually in uniform, and inclined to be flip if you gave them the slightest encouragement. The present Superintendent had impressed that upon his typists. It had taken him some time to clear out the old easygoing atmosphere and put the office on what he called a proper business footing. The old days were gone. There were so many operators now, and so many more important things than personnel. “Find out what they want,” he had told the girls, “and get them out as quickly as you can.”

  The big man in the shabby clothes was obviously different. His thick blond hair, his crisp beard, his calm blue gaze, the slow instinctive gesture towards his forehead as she approached, his whole fish-out-of-water attitude set him apart from the young men on the chairs. She summed him up as a tramp skipper wanting to sign on an operator, or perhaps to inquire about a wireless set.

  “Yes,” she said, lifting her brows. She was a tall girl, rather pale, with tortoise-shell glasses. Her brown skirt was neat but too long to be fashionable, and she wore a cool white blouse. Her dark hair was done up in, a thick bun at the back of her head. The young ops on the chairs ignored her. Their eyes were focused on the other girl, whose shorn blond head caught the afternoon sun and whose silken legs, generously displayed through the open door, they regarded with a frank and cheerful lust.

  “The Superintendent,” Carney murmured in his deep voice. “Is he in?”

  “Mr. Hurd’s rather busy. Is there something I can do?”

  He hesitated. He pictured the mysterious Hurd engaged in matters of importance to which the affairs of Matthew Carney were as dust. The whole atmosphere of the place, including this young woman with her strictly business air, made him feel an interloper.

  “My name’s Carney,” he said awkwardly, but in that rich musical tone. “I’m from Marina—Marina Island, that is. I’ve come ashore on leave and I was told to report here.”

  “Oh!” she gave him another long glance and turned away, walking past the blond girl, and rapped on the glass of the inner door. She stepped inside and reappeared almost instantly saying briskly, “Go right in, Mr. Carney, please.”

  Carney passed inside and found a slim neat-featured man of thirty rising behind a glass-topped desk and thrusting out a hand. Carney had never seen him before. Mr. Hurd wore pince-nez, which added a note of cleverness to an otherwise undistinguished face. His gleaming black hair was neatly brushed and there was a carnation in his buttonhole. There was a touch of the sea about him, faint and remote, as if it had not lasted long and as if a good deal of office air had intervened. He had the look of a man who for years had enjoyed good meals, steam heat, a soft bed and the embraces of a satisfactory wife. At this moment his eyes were curious but his smile was like the sun.

  “Carney? Carney of Marina? Well, well! At last we get a look at you!” They shook hands. The Superintendent waved him to a chair.

  “This is an occasion, Carney! You know, you’re rather famous. The operators tell all sorts of tales.” And seeing Carney’s uplifted brows, “Well, you know, they talk of Marina as if it were the last place God made. And of course they’re a foot-loose lot. Any man who’s stayed in one place for ten years is a phenomenon. Anyone who’s stayed that long on Marina is, well, a kind of monstrosity. Nonsense, of course. They haven’t a sense of duty nowadays, not like the old-timers; not like you. Why, you’re a pioneer, one of the originals. Is it true that you helped Marconi fly his kite in Newfoundland?”

  “Yes. What’s queer about that?”

  “Nothing at all. It’s magnificent! You’re—you’re one of the great few. Everybody on the Canadian coast has heard of you. Everybody knows your hand at the key on Marina. Everybody talks about ‘Carney of Marina.’ Do you mean to say you don’t know that?”

  Carney regarded him seriously. “There must be other chaps who’ve stayed in one place a long time. Nothing wonderful in that. When I went to Marina I’d planned to ask for relief in a year or two, but the time went by. Then the war came, all the young chaps off to the navy or the army or some other excitement; somebody had to stay, so I stayed. Foot-loose? I used to be that but I got over it. Went to sea as a boy and got it out of my system. I wouldn’t have asked for leave now if it wasn’t a bit important—one or two things I’ve put off too long.”

  “Of course,” Hurd murmured, all solicitude. Men like Carney were hard to find. Life on the shore station was lonely and monotonous and the new generation of operators wanted nothing of that sort. Young, feckless, no thought for tomorrow—the war, no doubt—all for the blue water and the far ports of the world, the taste of strange drinks and the tingle of foreign women. When you hinted at a job up the coast they said, “I got through the war alive, why bury myself now?” And off they went, cap on one ear, flashing gold braid and brass buttons like admirals, and winking at the girls.

  “I’m going back of course,” Carney said.

  “Ah! Good! Meanwhile a run about the mainland won’t do you any harm, old man. Look after your business, whatever it is, and then take a holiday—you’ve earned it. The Elgin won’t be going back to Marina till the end of August, so you’ve three months clear. Have a good time. Anything you want? Money?”

  Carney shook his head. “My pay’s been banked all this time, you know. Nothing I want really, thanks.”

  “What about the station? You left Skane in charge, eh? A queer sort, but a good man, I think. I sent young Sargent down to take the empty watch, and he’ll stay the full year.”

  “Yes, I talked to him on the beach, when he got out of the boat. Seemed a nice young chap. Stick it all right, once he gets used to it. Of course he’ll find it’s not like life aboard ship. MacGillivray’s year is up in July. He’ll want to come away when I go back.”

  “I suppose so. And what about the station?”

  “All right. Did you send down the paint I asked for? The sand wipes it off the buildings, blowing about in the winter gales, but I like to keep the place smart and shipshape. The radio traffic’s falling off a bit but it still keeps us busy. All the liners seem to be full up with people sending messages, especially the westbound. Emigrants pouring out to the States, the French boats, the Italian boats, all those, popping stuff at us by the hour as soon as they come into range—‘Meet me Ellis Island with fifty dollars’—that sort of thing. Keeps us on the jump, copying the stuff and then buzzing it on to the mainland. Hard on the engine, running it day and night for such long spells. We ought to have another for a stand-by.” As he said this, Carney’s look was anxious.

  “Um! I’ll think that over. Everything’s in short supply, you appreciate that. Terrific demand. Things are moving fast since the war, I tell you. All these new ships to fit, all the old ones wanting new gear. Gad! A few years ago you had to sell the very idea to shipowners and masters. Now they come yelling for direction-finders, radio-telephones, every newfangled thing under the sun, as if we could pull it out of a hat.”

  When Carney went out, the tall typist came in with some papers, and Hurd said whimsically, “Well, that’s the famous Carney—Carney of Marina. You know, we all think of radio as something born yesterday, and there’s old Carney to prove we’re wrong. Of course, those first ops weren’t youngsters like the kind we get today. Some were sailors, some were railway telegraphers attracted by something new. Carney actually had been to sea in square-rigged ships, fancy that! Still wears a beard, and looks like something out of a China clipper.”

  The girl put the paper down for him to sign. “He doesn’t seem awfully old. His eyes are like a boy’s.”

  Hurd scratched his name at the foot of a letter and picked up the next. “Carney’s forty-six. That’s old, in this game.”

  “He looks younger,” she insisted. “Because he’s big and healthy, I suppose. I’d have said he was in the middle thirties without the beard, of course. There’s something about him, I can’t think of the word. Innocent? That seems abs
urd. And…”

  “And what?”

  “And rather attractive.”

  “You’re joking!”

  The girl pressed her lips together. “Not at all. Will you sign the duplicate of this one, please, it’s for the marine insurance people. I fancy most women would see something interesting in a man like that, in spite of those awful clothes.”

  “Ah, that’s because he’s lived on a desert island for years. Women never understand how a man in good health can get along without ’em, and what they don’t understand makes ’em curious.” Hurd smiled over the pen as he said it. Miss Jardine was an excellent secretary, serious and businesslike. He liked to tease her now and then. It gave him a chance to exercise his wit, and he enjoyed seeing her pursed lips and the mild indignation in the gray eyes behind the glasses.

  She made no answer. She was looking out of the window at the row of masts showing above the rooftops of Water Street.

  “Well,” he said crisply, “there’s the lot, signed. I’ll see one of those young ship ops now. Send in the chap from the Stella Maris. Oh, and Miss Jardine…”

  “Yes?”

  “Make a note of that chap Skane—the one Carney left in charge at Marina. He’s been there two years or more and seems to like the life. A good operator, too. Another Carney in a few more years. We need men like that.”

  “I’ll put a special card in the personnel file.” Miss Jardine took the letters and went out.

  CHAPTER 2

  It would have puzzled Hurd to know that with two or three months of leisure, with several thousand dollars in the Bank of Nova Scotia, and with all the pleasures of civilization at his hand, Carney could think of little but his birthplace in a remote fishing village in Newfoundland. It was an odd sentiment; for there was nothing to be sentimental about. At seventeen his mother had been seduced by a glib straw-haired Norwegian from a barque loading dried fish for Pernambuco. She never saw the man again, and Carney was brought up under his mother’s name in the little outport, where such accidents were not uncommon. When she married later it was natural that young Matt should be sent to an orphanage in Saint John’s. He had run away from the place at fourteen and shipped as mess boy in a sealing steamer. From that time he had known nothing but the sea and a queer variety of ports in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, in Labrador, Spain, Italy and South America, seen chiefly in barques and schooners engaged in the salt fish trade.

  At twenty-five he had tired of the sea and found a job on the Newfoundland railways. This had led to a post as agent at a small station in the interior, where he used to lie awake on winter nights wondering what was to become of him. The pay was barely enough to cover his board and clothing, and the prospect of advancement had no more substance than the frost that gleamed so white on the nails protruding through the roof above his head.

  Then, by one of those accidents that make the comedy of life—a train delayed in his station by a snowstorm—he had met a man engaged in the strange new business of wireless telegraphy. The man was looking for a few telegraphers, and Carney’s years at sea had given him a knowledge of the rigger’s craft, very useful to a man engaged in setting up masts and aerials about the coast. So Carney’s life was changed by a whirl of snow out of Labrador; and the change had led him through the years to various bleak places on the Canadian east coast, and finally to Marina.

  The orphanage had taught him to read and write. In the first years of his new profession he had sent for books on electrical theory and studied them with dogged persistence in the long dull watches of the night. Up to a point he had learned a good deal, much more than the average operator of his time. But there was a limit. The new invention grew too fast. It became technical beyond his grasp. The higher mathematics were involved and they towered above his head like a mountain range whose peaks were lost in the clouds.

  In the course of his duties he had acquired a knack with the simple inductance coils, transformers, condensers and other apparatus of the early days, and with the gasoline engines that supplied the power. He fell back on this knowledge at last, and rested content with what the orphanage (with marvelous foresight) had termed the station to which it had pleased God to call him.

  The technical books he had thrown aside. Thereafter his reading was confined to the more romantic sorts of prose, and especially to verse, which he admired. In the course of time and solitude he came to regard such people as Wordsworth and Lord Byron in the light of gods, immensely more important than Signor Marconi, a heresy that would have shocked his superiors; and he liked to get away by himself, walking for miles along the barren shore of Marina, shouting aloud the lines that stirred him. Of all the operators’ yarns this at least was true.

  And it must have been this, the music in other men’s words, the romance of memory on which they chiefly played, and a craving to be touched even faintly by its magic, as poets were, that led him now towards the place where he was born. He took a train to North Sydney and crossed over to Port-aux-Basques in the small mail steamer. It was a pleasure to hear the idiom of Newfoundland again, not from the lips of some wanderer but on every side, in its own habitat, murmuring or shouting the trivial things of life like the voice of the land itself.

  All was familiar. Even the railway seemed untouched by time. Nothing had been changed, not even the battered rolling stock. He sat back in a shabby chair and smiled as the train lurched off across the wilderness towards Saint John’s. When the conductor, walking like a seaman in a gale, came through the cars calling out each station in his flat singsong the very names seemed like music. Codroy, Fishels, Bay of Islands, Deer Lake—by Jingo, where else in the world could you find names with a sound like that; or Horse Chops, say, or Heart’s Content or Topsails or Come-By-Chance or Joe Batt’s Arm?

  Rain was falling when the train rattled past the little way station where he had spent that stranded year so far from the sea. He pressed his nose against the streaming pane, as eager for a sight of it as on that day, long ago, when he had come there delighted with the prospect of life in the heart of the land. Nothing was altered; the small red shack beside the rails, the sodden bits of washing hanging limp on a cord at the back, the wisp of chimney smoke, and even (in a blurred glimpse of a bored face bent over a telegraph key) what might have been the ghost of himself. Then it was gone, and once more there was only the barren landscape, with the telegraph poles staggering past and the wires swooping up and down in the rain. I might have stayed. I might have been there yet, he thought piously.

  He spent a month in Saint John’s, wandering about the dusty streets and looking down on the blue harbor in the bowl of rocky hills. Once or twice he found himself before the orphanage, trying to make up his mind to go in; but he turned away. No! Nothing to remember there except the bewilderment of a small boy suddenly alone in the midst of strangers, the dreary daylight hours, the weeping in the dark, the slowly fading vision of a familiar young woman-creature, kindly in a placid way, who had called him Matty and let him run wild like the young goats on the hill.

  The law of gravity is not on the books in the Saint John’s courthouse but it governs all that city’s life, and it carried Carney, as it carries everyone, towards the docks. There he found company, boarding ships with a bottle of smuggled Saint Pierre rum for a talisman, and swapping tales of old voyages to the seal-ice and to Spain. Or he sat alone against a bollard at a wharf’s end, sucking slowly on his pipe, with his eyes closed against the dazzle on the water. There was a reek of old blubber where the sealers docked in spring. He sniffed it luxuriously, and like a Chinaman at opium was filled with pictures of his youth.

  First there were pictures of a voyage to the ice fields, his maiden embrace of the sea. It was all very clear; the sealers swarming over the ship’s side, running over the ice like an invasion of gesticulating ants, shouting, striking with their clubs at glistening dark forms that writhed away, and paused, and then were still. The busy flash of knives, the limp bloody masses of pelt and blubber dragged to the ship and
hoisted aboard. The long dim cavern in the ’tween decks where at each day’s end officers and crew and seal hunters ate in relays at a common board; the thick reek mingled of food and wet wool, of sweat, of tobacco, of seal blood and fat; the white teeth grinning in rows of gaunt unshaven faces, half lost, like ghosts in the overpowering murk; the voices shouting for more food, more tea, and he, the mess boy, rushing about with mugs and plates and heavy steaming pots.

  And one final vision photographed in every detail on a memory boyish and virgin: the stark beauty of the ice pack, all white fire in the sunshine of a March afternoon, patched with scarlet where the seals had died, veined by the blue water of the leads, silent as death under the spring sky, and fading away astern with one last blink on the horizon as if at an unspeakable outrage.

  But there were other pictures. The old barque—what was her name, Cassandra?—with her patched sails and rotten timbers, her bowsprit steeved so high that his nose was level with the foreyard when he stood on the jib boom’s end. Ah yes, Cassandra and that voyage to the Azores; the boats discharging salt fish to the shore, the foreign houses white in the sun, the cathedral and the convent bells that rang all day long, the jabber of Portuguese, the women all dressed like nuns, the smatch of new wine from the vineyards on the mountainside. By Jingo, it was all new then, and wonderful. It was something to be young, to go to sea, to suffer, to smile, to sweat with labor and to sweat with fear, to wonder how long the old hooker would last in the seas that ran and the winds that blew; and then to find over the curve of the wet world a place like Fayal, waiting all this time for you. Just for you.