Echoes (Rowland)

by Henry C. Rowland

ECHOES

By Henry C. Rowland

IT was to fill the time until we should meet again that I had bought the schooner which had come up from the islands loaded with mahogany. I had no especial fondness for the sea, no dislike for it, but at least it is void of human sympathy and it cannot be compassionately intrusive. So I bought the vessel and put aboard her a crew picked from my own slaves. They knew my ways and could do my will unspoken, and would not prove obstacles to me in my flight from myself.

She had been with me when for the last time I watered the little violets which bloomed beneath her window. They were like her, these violets; in the morning they lifted their sweet faces just as she lifted her face—both had the same subtle fragrance—and they were such hardy little creatures for all of their delicacy—like herself. Some of them I culled and laid upon her bosom, clasped in her cold little hand; the rest I planted on the bosom of the little mound beneath which she rested. Then I groped out through the swift afterglow and back to the empty home she had so loved.

And so I bought the schooner. She had lain disused the summer through, and many times while wandering hand in hand along the purple beach we had admired together the free sweep of her lines, the sea-going sheer of her decks, the flare of her full bows.

“When the tobacco crop is in,” she told me one evening as she sat upon the broad arm of my chair and listened to the whippoorwills, “we shall charter the Starlight and go upon a cruise, just you and I and old Yuba—for you cannot steer, darling, with your arm as it is now . . . Then, if we like her we shall buy her, and then, and then”—her breath came fast like the breath of a child—“we shall drift far away to find new worlds.”

But she had not waited for me.

Once during her illness she had whispered in my ear, her poor little arms about my neck, “If I die, darling, buy the Starlight. She will help you—to wait.”

So I had bought the Starlight—to help me to wait. The month before her illness I had chartered the little vessel and we had cruised to Martinique. She had loved it; often when I thought that she was sleeping below I had felt her sweet presence at my elbow and her hand had fluttered into mine as I leaned on the rail and rested my eyes upon the star-hung distance.

And so, when it was all over, I bought the Starlight and sent my blacks aboard. They were St. Thomas men, the same whom I had had before, and they knew and understood me.

“Yas, marster,” said black Simon, and this was all he said as he pulled me out aboard, “marster, he know—me know—missie, she dar—she dar!”

I understood and did not answer. My quartermaster, Yuba, a Marabout of great age, also understood.

“Marster know,” he said simply. “Yuba know. De sea, he no like de shore—no, no!” He wove interlacing figures with his hands. “No crisscross so,” said he.

They understood, these blacks. And so, as soon as might be I barred my door and kissed the upturned faces of the violets upon the bosom of the little mound and then fled with shuddering heart to my vessel. At daylight I sailed between the Capes, and midnight found me in the Gulf Stream.

It was dark in splashes where the clouds hung low; the breeze was light and baffling. Yuba was at the wheel. At midnight I thought that perhaps I might sleep, so I walked aft toward the companionway. On the corner of the house there was a place where she used to love to sit and watch the great following seas. And here I crouched upon the deck, and with arms flung across the heavy structure my soul went out to her.

It was while I groveled there in the warm reek of the brine-soaked darkness that she came to me, and I felt her presence as so often I had felt it before. No matter how deep my sleep, she had never stirred and awakened to face the dubious dark alone; no matter how encompassing my fatigue from work in the blaze of a tropic sun she had never come to me unannounced. And so, with the flaming seas crumbling beneath the bows and the spill of wind from the close-hauled mainsail smiting soft, quick blows upon my bowed shoulders and the pale fire-flecked darkness all about, I felt her come, and looked up to see her rosy face smiling at me against the leeward murk. It was not as I had seen it last, a-writhe with the pain which pays the tithe of a new soul, but radiant and with red lips curving in a smile, and clear eyes looking joyously into mine. Both arms were stretched to me, and as my heart swelled to meet her there came floating from the void an elliptical body, small as her hand and glowing with a faint but luminous purple. It drifted slowly upward, crossed without obscuring her sweet face, floated over her head, evading my gaze and hung poised above the aureole of fine-spun hair.

For long our eyes clung together in silence; her gaze was of a tenderness which flooded mine even while I rested in the transient content of one eased of a constant pain. Then slowly the ellipse quivered and faded. Her eyes said “Darling,” but not sadly, and when she had gone I turned and staggered aft, heavily content, for I knew that my utter loneliness was at an end and that the thinnest of substance was all that divided us. Dimly and through habit alone I lurched to the binnacle. The sable face of Yuba took black contour against the background of the humid night; his bulging eyes rolled upward from the compass, and the light from the binnacle-lamps painted expression upon his Afrite face. His booming chuckle undertoned the hiss beneath the bilges; it contained no mockery but the wisdom of a race as old as Life, now involute but concentrating the wisdom of ages in reasonless instinct.

“Marster,” he muttered, and his black features worked and writhed, “marster, Yuba say um so—missie dar!” His huge hands left the spokes and the massive arms swept before his face with the motion of a swimmer. “Yas, marster—ya, missie dar, missie dar!” And he gloomed off to windward with rolling eyes and flat nostrils spread upon his cheeks.

Happy and infinitely at peace I groped to my bunk, and as I threw myself upon it my arms enfolded and my lips kissed the subtle darkness—for perhaps she was there!

And this, old friend, is why my life is the life of the gull and petrel, and the cut of my vessel’s canvas is known upon the Seven Seas. For every night when the sea is not too turbulent she comes to me and we hold long communions, while Yuba, at the wheel, glares away into the misty darkness and his old, old features writhe and twist and his pupils swell like those of a dog following Shapes which weave in the gloom beyond the crimson zone of the camp-fire. And so, while Yuba grips the wheel and mumbles unlearned melodies deep in his sable throat, the Purple Ellipse drifts away and upward, fleeing from my wrapt vision till beneath it appears her smiling face, rosy as the Cross beneath the Egg.

So the pain has all gone from me, and I wait in such patience as a man may. And sometimes we talk together, and when she goes I wait until the echo of her vision has faded to the tone of the night, and I hear the deep echoes of ancient knowledge in the throat of old Yuba as he peers and mumbles and twists the spokes of the wheel.

A year ago I went home. I watered her violets—the same in whose tender faces her own was so often crushed. They were thriving, those hardy, tender blossoms. I watered her violets, and then, though I had seen her but the night before, I could not stay, but with wringing heart fled to my vessel and heaved up the anchor. And faithful old Yuba steered out across the sea and into the night.