Byron Lyall, a grizzled, elderly man, half farmer, half fisherman, and Maxwell Holmes, the Prospect schoolteacher, came up to the boat presently. Paul lay softly and listened to what they were saying. He was not troubled by any sense of dishonour. Honour was something Paul King could not lose since it was something he had never possessed. They were talking of him and Joan.
“What a shame that a girl like Joan Shelley should throw herself away on a man like that,” Holmes said.
Byron Lyall removed the pipe he was smoking and spat reflectively at his shadow.
“Darned shame,” he agreed. “That girl’s life will be ruined if she marries him, plum’ ruined, and marry him she will. He’s bewitched her — darned if I can understand it. A dozen better men have wanted her — Connor Mitchell for one. And he’s a honest, steady fellow with a good home to offer her. If King had left her alone, she’d have taken Connor. She used to like him well enough. But that’s all over. She’s infatuated with King, the worthless scamp. She’ll marry him and be sorry for it to her last day. He’s bad clear through and always will be. Why, look you, Teacher, most men pull up a bit when they’re courting a girl, no matter how wild they’ve been and will be again. Paul hasn’t. It hasn’t made any difference. He was dead drunk night afore last at the Harbour head, and he hasn’t done a stroke of work for a month. And yet Joan Shelley’ll take him.”
“What are her people thinking of to let her go with him?” asked Holmes.
“She hasn’t any but her brother. He’s against Paul, of course, but it won’t matter. The girl’s fancy’s caught and she’ll go her own gait to ruin. Ruin, I tell ye. If she marries that handsome ne’er-do-well, she’ll be a wretched woman all her days and none to pity her.”
The two moved away then, and Paul lay motionless, face downward on the sand, his lips pressed against Joan’s sweet, crushed rose. He felt no anger over Byron Lyall’s unsparing condemnation. He knew it was true, every word of it. He was a worthless scamp and always would be. He knew that perfectly well. It was in his blood. None of his race had ever been respectable and he was worse than them all. He had no intention of trying to reform because he could not and because he did not even want to. He was not fit to touch Joan’s hand. Yet he had meant to marry her!
But to spoil her life! Would it do that? Yes, it surely would. And if he were out of the way, taking his baleful charm out of her life, Connor Mitchell might and doubtless would win her yet and give her all he could not.
The man suddenly felt his eyes wet with tears. He had never shed a tear in his daredevil life before, but they came hot and stinging now. Something he had never known or thought of before entered into his passion and purified it. He loved Joan. Did he love her well enough to stand aside and let another take the sweetness and grace that was now his own? Did he love her well enough to save her from the poverty-stricken, shamed life she must lead with him? Did he love her better than himself?
“I ain’t fit to think of her,” he groaned. “I never did a decent thing in my life, as they say. But how can I give her up — God, how can I?”
He lay still a long time after that, until the moonlight crept around the boat and drove away the shadow. Then he got up and went slowly down to the water’s edge with Joan’s rose, all wet with his unaccustomed tears, in his hands. Slowly and reverently he plucked off the petals and scattered them on the ripples, where they drifted lightly off like fairy shallops on moonshine. When the last one had fluttered from his fingers, he went back to the house and hunted up Captain Alec Matheson, who was smoking his pipe in a corner of the verandah and watching the young folks dancing through the open door. The two men talked together for some time.
When the dance broke up and the guests straggled homeward, Paul sought Joan. Rob Shelley had his own girl to see home and relinquished the guardianship of his sister with a scowl. Paul strode out of the kitchen and down the steps at the side of Joan, smiling with his usual daredeviltry. He whistled noisily all the way up the lane.
“Great little dance,” he said. “My last in Prospect for a spell, I guess.”
“Why?” asked Joan wonderingly.
“Oh, I’m going to take a run down to South America in Matheson’s schooner. Lord knows when I’ll come back. This old place has got too deadly dull to suit me. I’m going to look for something livelier.”
Joan’s lips turned ashen under the fringes of her white fascinator. She trembled violently and put one of her small brown hands up to her throat. “You — you are not coming back?” she said faintly.
“Not likely. I’m pretty well tired of Prospect and I haven’t got anything to hold me here. Things’ll be livelier down south.”
Joan said nothing more. They walked along the spruce-fringed roads where the moonbeams laughed down through the thick, softly swaying boughs. Paul whistled one rollicking tune after another. The girl bit her lips and clenched her hands. He cared nothing for her — he had been making a mock of her as of others. Hurt pride and wounded love fought each other in her soul. Pride conquered. She would not let him, or anyone, see that she cared. She would not care!
At her gate Paul held out his hand.
“Well, good-bye, Joan. I’m sailing tomorrow so I won’t see you again — not for years likely. You will be some sober old married woman when I come back to Prospect, if I ever do.”
“Good-bye,” said Joan steadily. She gave him her cold hand and looked calmly into his face without quailing. She had loved him with all her heart, but now a fatal scorn of him was already mingling with her love. He was what they said he was, a scamp without principle or honour.
Paul whistled himself out of the Shelley lane and over the hill. Then he flung himself down under the spruces, crushed his face into the spicy frosted ferns, and had his black hour alone.
But when Captain Alec’s schooner sailed out of the harbour the next day, Paul King was on board of her, the wildest and most hilarious of a wild and hilarious crew. Prospect people nodded their satisfaction.
“Good riddance,” they said. “Paul King is black to the core. He never did a decent thing in his life.”
A Soul That Was Not at Home
There was a very fine sunset on the night Paul and Miss Trevor first met, and she had lingered on the headland beyond Noel’s Cove to delight in it. The west was splendid in daffodil and rose; away to the north there was a mackerel sky of little fiery golden clouds; and across the water straight from Miss Trevor’s feet ran a sparkling path of light to the sun, whose rim had just touched the throbbing edge of the purple sea. Off to the left were softly swelling violet hills and beyond the sandshore, where little waves were crisping and silvering, there was a harbour where scores of slender masts were nodding against the gracious horizon.
Miss Trevor sighed with sheer happiness in all the wonderful, fleeting, elusive loveliness of sky and sea. Then she turned to look back at Noel’s Cove, dim and shadowy in the gloom of the tall headlands, and she saw Paul.
It did not occur to her that he could be a shore boy — she knew the shore type too well. She thought his coming mysterious, for she was sure he had not come along the sand, and the tide was too high for him to have come past the other headland. Yet there he was, sitting on a red sandstone boulder, with his bare, bronzed, shapely little legs crossed in front of him and his hands clasped around his knee. He was not looking at Miss Trevor but at the sunset — or, rather, it seemed as if he were looking through the sunset to still grander and more radiant splendours beyond, of which the things seen were only the pale reflections, not worthy of attention from those who had the gift of further sight.
Miss Trevor looked him over carefully with eyes that had seen a good many people in many parts of the world for more years than she found it altogether pleasant to acknowledge, and she concluded that he was quite the handsomest lad she had ever seen. He had a lithe, supple body, with sloping shoulders and a brown, satin throat. His hair was thick and wavy, of a fine reddish chestnut; his brows were very straight and much dar
ker than his hair; and his eyes were large and grey and meditative. The modelling of chin and jaw was perfect and his mouth was delicious, being full without pouting, the crimson lips just softly touching, and curving into finely finished little corners that narrowly escaped being dimpled.
His attire was a blue cotton shirt and a pair of scanty corduroy knickerbockers, but he wore it with such an unconscious air of purple and fine linen that Miss Trevor was tricked into believing him much better dressed than he really was.
Presently he smiled dreamily, and the smile completed her subjugation. It was not merely an affair of lip and eye, as are most smiles; it seemed an illumination of his whole body, as if some lamp had suddenly burst into flame inside of him, irradiating him from his chestnut crown to the tips of his unspoiled toes. Best of all, it was involuntary, born of no external effort or motive, but simply the outflashing of some wild, delicious thought that was as untrammelled and freakish as the wind of the sea.
Miss Trevor made up her mind that she must find out all about him, and she stepped out from the shadows of the rocks into the vivid, eerie light that was glowing all along the shore. The boy turned his head and looked at her, first with surprise, then with inquiry, then with admiration. Miss Trevor, in a white dress with a lace scarf on her dark, stately head, was well worth admiring. She smiled at him and Paul smiled back. It was not quite up to his first smile, having more of the effect of being put on from the outside, but at least it conveyed the subtly flattering impression that it had been put on solely for her, and they were as good friends from that moment as if they had known each other for a hundred years. Miss Trevor had enough discrimination to realize this and know that she need not waste time in becoming acquainted.
“I want to know your name and where you live and what you were looking at beyond the sunset,” she said.
“My name is Paul Hubert. I live over there. And I can’t tell just what I saw in the sunset, but when I go home I’m going to write it all in my foolscap book.”
In her surprise over the second clause of his answer, Miss Trevor forgot, at first, to appreciate the last. “Over there,” according to his gesture, was up at the head of Noel’s Cove, where there was a little grey house perched on the rocks and looking like a large seashell cast up by the tide. The house had a stovepipe coming out of its roof in lieu of a chimney, and two of its window panes were replaced by shingles. Could this boy, who looked as young princes should — and seldom do — live there? Then he was a shore boy after all.
“Who lives there with you?” she asked. “You see” — plaintively—”I must ask questions about you. I know we like each other, and that is all that really matters. But there are some tiresome items which it would be convenient to know. For example, have you a father — a mother? Are there any more of you? How long have you been yourself?”
Paul did not reply immediately. He clasped his hands behind him and looked at her affectionately.
“I like the way you talk,” he said. “I never knew anybody did talk like that except folks in books and my rock people.”
“Your rock people?”
“I’m eleven years old. I haven’t any father or mother, they’re dead. I live over there with Stephen Kane. Stephen is splendid. He plays the violin and takes me fishing in his boat. When I get bigger he’s going shares with me. I love him, and I love my rock people too.”
“What do you mean by your rock people?” asked Miss Trevor, enjoying herself hugely. This was the only child she had ever met who talked as she wanted children to talk and who understood her remarks without having to have them translated.
“Nora is one of them,” said Paul, “the best one of them. I love her better than all the others because she came first. She lives around that point and she has black eyes and black hair and she knows all about the mermaids and water kelpies. You ought to hear the stories she can tell. Then there are the Twin Sailors. They don’t live anywhere — they sail all the time, but they often come ashore to talk to me. They are a pair of jolly tars and they have seen everything in the world — and more than what’s in the world, if you only knew it. Do you know what happened to the Youngest Twin Sailor once? He was sailing and he sailed right into a moonglade. A moonglade is the track the full moon makes on the water when it is rising from the sea, you know. Well, the Youngest Twin Sailor sailed along the moonglade till he came right up to the moon, and there was a little golden door in the moon and he opened it and sailed right through. He had some wonderful adventures inside the moon — I’ve got them all written down in my foolscap book. Then there is the Golden Lady of the Cave. One day I found a big cave down the shore and I went in and in and in — and after a while I found the Golden Lady. She has golden hair right down to her feet, and her dress is all glittering and glistening like gold that is alive. And she has a golden harp and she plays all day long on it — you might hear the music if you’d listen carefully, but prob’bly you’d think it was only the wind among the rocks. I’ve never told Nora about the Golden Lady, because I think it would hurt her feelings. It even hurts her feelings when I talk too long with the Twin Sailors. And I hate to hurt Nora’s feelings, because I do love her best of all my rock people.”
“Paul! How much of this is true?” gasped Miss Trevor.
“Why, none of it!” said Paul, opening his eyes widely and reproachfully. “I thought you would know that. If I’d s’posed you wouldn’t I’d have warned you there wasn’t any of it true. I thought you were one of the kind that would know.”
“I am. Oh, I am!” said Miss Trevor eagerly. “I really would have known if I had stopped to think. Well, it’s getting late now. I must go back, although I don’t want to. But I’m coming to see you again. Will you be here tomorrow afternoon?”
Paul nodded.
“Yes. I promised to meet the Youngest Twin Sailor down at the striped rocks tomorrow afternoon, but the day after will do just as well. That is the beauty of the rock people, you know. You can always depend on them to be there just when you want them. The Youngest Twin Sailor won’t mind — he’s very good-tempered. If it was the Oldest Twin I dare say he’d be cross. I have my suspicions about that Oldest Twin sometimes. I b’lieve he’d be a pirate if he dared. You don’t know how fierce he can look at times. There’s really something very mysterious about him.”
On her way back to the hotel Miss Trevor remembered the foolscap book.
“I must get him to show it to me,” she mused, smiling. “Why, the boy is a born genius — and to think he should be a shore boy! I can’t understand it. And here I am loving him already. Well, a woman has to love something — and you don’t have to know people for years before you can love them.”
Paul was waiting on the Noel’s Cove rocks for Miss Trevor the next afternoon. He was not alone; a tall man, with a lined, strong-featured face and a grey beard, was with him. The man was clad in a rough suit and looked what he was, a ‘longshore fisherman. But he had deep-set, kindly eyes, and Miss Trevor liked his face. He moved off to one side when she came and stood there for a little, apparently gazing out to sea, while Paul and Miss Trevor talked. Then he walked away up the cove and disappeared in his little grey house.
“Stephen came down to see if you were a suitable person for me to talk to,” said Paul gravely.
“I hope he thinks I am,” said Miss Trevor, amused.
“Oh, he does! He wouldn’t have gone away and left us alone if he didn’t. Stephen is very particular who he lets me ‘sociate with. Why, even the rock people now — I had to promise I’d never let the Twin Sailors swear before he’d allow me to be friends with them. Sometimes I know by the look of the Oldest Twin that he’s just dying to swear, but I never let him, because I promised Stephen. I’d do anything for Stephen. He’s awful good to me. Stephen’s bringing me up, you know, and he’s bound to do it well. We’re just perfectly happy here, only I wish I’d more books to read. We go fishing, and when we come home at night I help Stephen clean the fish and then we sit outside the door a
nd he plays the violin for me. We sit there for hours sometimes. We never talk much — Stephen isn’t much of a hand for talking — but we just sit and think. There’s not many men like Stephen, I can tell you.”
Miss Trevor did not get a glimpse of the foolscap book that day, nor for many days after. Paul blushed all over his beautiful face whenever she mentioned it.
“Oh, I couldn’t show you that,” he said uncomfortably. “Why, I’ve never even showed it to Stephen — or Nora. Let me tell you something else instead, something that happened to me once long ago. You’ll find it more interesting than the foolscap book, only you must remember it isn’t true! You won’t forget that, will you?”
“I’ll try to remember,” Miss Trevor agreed.
“Well, I was sitting here one evening just like I was last night, and the sun was setting. And an enchanted boat came sailing over the sea and I got into her. The boat was all pearly like the inside of the mussel shells, and her sail was like moonshine. Well, I sailed right across to the sunset. Think of that — I’ve been in the sunset! And what do you suppose it is? The sunset is a land all flowers, like a great garden, and the clouds are beds of flowers. We sailed into a great big harbour, a thousand times bigger than the harbour over there at your hotel, and I stepped out of the boat on a ‘normous meadow all roses. I stayed there for ever so long. It seemed almost a year, but the Youngest Twin Sailor says I was only away a few hours or so. You see, in Sunset Land the time is ever so much longer than it is here. But I was glad to come back too. I’m always glad to come back to the cove and Stephen. Now, you know this never really happened.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 711