Silver Shoal Light/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
THE SUMMONS
JIM, standing on the Quimpaug boat-landing and shuffling over the mail, tossed a letter down to Elspeth, who sat in the stern of the dory.
"There's a pleasant little missive," said he. "The abhorred Blue Envelope! The death-warrant of a perfectly good Day, I suppose."
"Oh, what a bore!" groaned Elspeth, opening the envelope. "Don't look so alarmed, Joan. It's just that the doctor wants to see Garth. To-morrow, of course, Jim! Why does he never leave us time to change the appointment? It might be horribly inconvenient."
"Farewell, bright morrow!" sighed Jim, taking the oars. He turned to Joan. "This happens about twice a year," he said, "and Elspeth and Garth journey for millions of hot or cold miles, whichever the case may be. Them Dr. Stone says: 'Well, well, well! I wish that all my patients could live in lighthouses!' and then they come home again."
"That seems indefinite," said Joan. "Where does this doctor live? In that chaotic town where I came from hundreds of years ago?"
"Worse," said Jim; "he lives in what is called by Quimpaug folk 'The City.' You have to take the Pettasantuck at 6:37 a.m. If you're lucky, you return by her at 5:10 p.m., several hours in villainous trains and hectic trolley-cars having intervened. Let's get to bed betimes to-night; it means a beastly early start."
The next morning broke wanly through a dripping fog. Joan, who came into see if the travelers were ready, found Elspeth with a raging headache.
"I don’t know what to do!" said Elspeth faintly. "I never have headaches. But I can't stir; it's simply impossible. Jim can't go, because of the fog. I've told him that he'll just have to telegraph that we can't come, though it's not the twenty-four hours' notice Dr. Stone demands."
"If you could trust me," Joan said, "I'll go."
"Of course we trust you!" Elspeth said, "but I shouldn't think of asking you to go. It's a dreadful bore."
"But I'd like to," said Joan, "if you'd really let me. I mean it."
"What a blessing you are!" sighed Elspeth, her hands pressed to her throbbing head.
"We'll have to hurry, then," said Jim, when Joan sought him out in the service-room and told him of the new plan. "There's no breakfast in view yet; you see, I thought everything was off. And has anybody thought about some civilized clothes for Garth?"
"I must find some for myself," said Joan, who wore a very salty blue skirt and a borrowed jumper. "I'll see what he's doing."
She found Garth sitting on the floor in his room, struggling with an unfamiliar tan shoe.
"These things are lots uncomfortabler than sneakers," he observed, as Joan came in, "and I can't find any good clothes. There's a sailor-suit somewhere. It's a very nice one; it has long trousers."
Joan proceeded to search.
"Perhaps you'd better ask Mudder to find it; she knows where it is," Garth suggested.
"Did you know," Joan asked, "that your mother has a dreadfully bad headache and that I’m going to town with you?"
"I didn’t know it at all," he said. "Poor Mudder! Are we really, Joan? Just us, by ourselves?"
"We are," she said, "because your father can’t leave while it’s so foggy. Here are the good clothes, I think."
She produced the sailor-suit in question from a top drawer and cast it upon the bed. As Garth had said, there were long trousers, which were of blue serge. The white jumper had a dark blue collar, and an elaborate device was embroidered on the sleeve.
"That’s a real, sure-enough rating," explained Garth, his tones somewhat muffled on account of his diving into the jumper. "It came off a real sailor. Fogger got it, and Mudder sewed it on. It means gunner’s mate, second class. And the stripe around the top means that I belong to the starboard watch. There! Will you tie my necktie, please? Am I all right?"
He was so very much so, that when Joan had 
She hugged him suddenly
Jim had cooked a very creditable omelet, and Joan ran downstairs at his call, with Garth’s coat over her arm.
"You didn’t know that I was skilled in light housekeeping, as well as in lighthouse-keeping, did you?" Jim said, as he put the coffee-pot upon the table.
Garth was still upstairs, saying a long farewell to his mother.
"You’d think he was starting on a three years’ cruise," said Jim. "Hi, Pem!" he shouted. "My unsurpassed cookery is growing cold, and the Pettasantuck leaves in exactly forty-nine and a half minutes."
Garth came down finally, a little silent, and they made a hasty meal.
"I can leave the place long enough to take you in," said Jim, pouring coffee. "The bell’s wound for six hours, and Caleb won’t let it stop."
"Mudder’s here, too," said Garth.
"Yes," Jim said; "and I’ve no doubt she’d be as heroic as the lightkeepers’ wives in books. If the bell stopped, she’d probably rise from her bed and cling to the clapper, like the 'curfew shall not ring to-night' person."
"But that wouldn’t make it ring," Garth objected; "that would stop it!"
"So it would!" Jim said. "But the principle’s the same. That’s what I meant. You have the fortitude of a Christian martyr, Miss Kirkland; it’s going to be hotter than blazes in town. By the way, it might be a good idea to give you Dr. Stone’s address." He scribbled it on the leaf of a note-book and handed it to her. "And do try to get something more out of him than simply the fact that it’s good for people to live in lighthouses. I know that, myself."
He rowed them over to the steamboat-landing through the fog. He had put straw mats on the wet seats of the dory, "for the city people," as he remarked.
"I’m a little afraid of you both," he said. "I don’t often see ladies with gloves and spotted veils sitting in my slippery boat. And dignified young gentlemen in long trousers! Remember that you’ve a hat on, Garth; it nearly went off then!"
From the upper deck of the Pettasantuck the dory looked very small in that expanse of gray. Jim rowed a little distance away from the landing; then let his boat drift, leaning on the oars. On board an engine-room bell clanged. The green water was suddenly thrashed to foam as the Pettasantuck, throbbing and rattling, backed away from the wharf. All at once Jim stood up and began to signal with extended arms.
"He’s semaphoring," said Garth. "Oh, I do wish he wouldn’t do it so fast! Oh, wait!" But Jim and the little boat were now a fading blur in the fog. "All I got was ‘Good-bye,’" said Garth, "but there was something else."
Very faintly they heard the bell of the unseen lighthouse tolling steadily, remotely, through the thick air.
"You ought to know semaphore, Joan," Garth said after a time. "It’s awfully useful, and it’s fun to do. Sometimes battleships come in—that is, they used to before we went into the war—and it’s exciting to know what they say. I can’t tell what they’re talking about,—they go much too fast,—but Fogger can. He knows all the light-signals, and those wiggly ‘blinkies’ that go just like flashes of lightning. But I’ll show you how the semaphore alphabet goes, only I never can remember which is M and which is S. You stick your arms out different ways for all the letters, you know."
He proceeded to demonstrate, telling Joan the letters as he made each signal.
"Of course you really ought to have flags," he said, "but your arms do just as well when you’re close to a person. R—S—T—"
Both arms being raised over his head, the crutches promptly clattered to the deck, and Garth caught at the railing and missed it.
"Bother!" he said, as Joan put out her hand to steady him. "That was rather silly of me. It’s all right when I do B and H, and those low things, but when I get to high up ones, like T and U, of course that’s what happens. But a person can’t semaphore properly sitting down."
"Let’s try," said Joan, pulling up two camp-chairs. "Why, I think it’s quite as easy. Now please show me the letters from A to G again, so that I’ll be able to learn those first."
By the time the Pettasantuck neared Salt Rock Landing, an hour and a half later, Joan had mastered enough of the code to send very simple messages to Garth, who sat the width of the deck away. He had taken off his hat, because he could not signal and hold it at the same time, and he sat on the edge of it to keep it from blowing away. Sometimes Joan was a little bothered by the spelling of the messages he sent her, but on the whole she understood them very well, with only occasional promptings.
A number of people were now on deck, for the most part guests of the Harbor View House, who had been trying to carry on an interrupted night’s rest by huddling themselves into the stiff, plush-covered chairs in the cabin. These passengers seemed to be much edified by the signaling, and several of them were gazing at Joan and Garth, who remained unconscious of the sensation they were creating. Garth, his hair rumpled and his eyes shining, was sending quite a hard sentence, with wildly waving arms. Joan, wearing a perfectly unintentional scowl, was trying to put down the letters on the back of an old envelop. "Dousuposeucoldunderstandabatleshipnow?” It took her some time to decode this into, "Do you suppose you could understand a battleship now?" and when she looked up, to answer with a very emphatic "No!" she found fixed on her the glassily amazed eyes of a prim elderly lady.
"I suppose we did look rather as though we were crazy," said Joan, as she pulled her camp-stool up beside Garth’s, "if people didn’t know what we were doing."
"That’s the worst of people," Garth said; "they stare at you whatever you do. I don’t see why signaling isn’t perfickly all right. That’s one reason why you’re so nice, Joan; you like to do any sort of thing at all."
Joan smiled a little. She wondered to herself if, a few weeks ago, she would have sat upon the deck of a steamer waving her arms at a hatless child, whether any one was looking on or not.
"We’re almost in, anyhow," she said; "we couldn’t have done it much longer."
"Oh, look there, Joan!" cried Garth. "There’s another lighthouse! It’s not nearly as nice as ours."
It was not; for it consisted of a hideous mansard-roofed house, painted red and perched upon a heap of raw, stone blocks, the light-tower sprouting from the middle of the roof like some strange fungus very much out of place.
"I do believe there’s a cat sitting on the step!" said Joan. "I wonder how he likes living in the middle of the bay."
"Cap’n Brewer, that kept our Light before we did," said Garth, "used to have hens. Cap’n ’Bijah says that they could swim just like ducks. He saw them often, he says, but I don’t believe they could! Let’s wave to the little girl, Joan."
So they waved their hands to the barefooted child who stood at the door of the lighthouse. A woman in a calico dress ran out to the steps and looked after the Pettasantuck, shading her eyes.
"Oh," said Joan, "I’d much, much rather live in ours. It’s the most wonderful place in the world."
The "ours" was quite unconscious.
The boat arrived a few minutes later at Salt Rock Landing, a doleful place, with no scenery more interesting than a baggage-shed and a heap of coal. Here a shuttle-train waited to carry the passengers from the steamer to Tewksville Junction, where the train on the main tracks went through. This train was on a different line from the one by which Joan had arrived; it stopped at a new assortment of small stations. Somewhat to Joan’s surprise, she found herself much interested in the frequent halts which had so annoyed her before. This was because she and Garth guessed, between each station, how long it would be before the train reached the next one. Joan timed it by her wrist-watch, and it was most exciting to see who had guessed the nearest. It was just as difficult to understand the names of the places as it was to gauge the distance between them.
"Nextation is Wussoniv! Wussoniv!" shouted the brakeman, as the door slammed.
"What a name!" said Joan. "I think that we’ll reach Wussoniv in fourteen minutes."
"I think it’ll be ten minutes," Garth cried.
They came to the station—which turned out to be West Olneysville—in eleven minutes and forty-two seconds by Joan’s watch, and Garth won. After that the train turned itself suddenly into an express and dashed past all the little towns with a fine disdain, trying in breathless haste to make up for the time it had been wasting. It thundered finally under the echoing arches of the terminal, and Joan and Garth stepped out upon the platform into dim resounding spaces. Dozens of locomotives snorted and hissed, sending up jets of white steam into the great, smoke-hung dome. The dank, imprisoned atmosphere was slightly chilly, although hot sunshine poured down outside.
Garth was a good deal excited as he and Joan entered the waiting-room, where a great many people dashed in different directions for trains and hurrying porters staggered under loads of bags. Joan left him to wait for her while she very thoughtfully purchased return tickets. She noticed that almost every one had been looking rather hard at Garth, and fancied that it might be on account of the crutches. But as she returned to him, it struck her that it was for quite a different reason. He was sitting quietly, with his hands clasped, and he did not see her. On one side of him sat a hot woman with two restless children, who were standing on the bench, kicking the back of the seat. On the other side was a thin-featured young girl absurdly muffled in summer furs. She held a bag on her knees and sat gazing blankly before her with a listless, indifferent stare. Garth, it seemed to Joan, looked rather as though he had dropped from another planet. There was a curious sort of splendid simplicity about him, his sun-browned face full of a quiet eagerness, his clear, sea-gray eyes absolutely untroubled. Joan thought him a good deal like the salt wind that had blown in at her window from the great wide places that first night at Silver Shoal.
"He makes everybody else look so—so mussy, somehow," she reflected.
A very crowded street-car proved to be the next step in the journey towards Dr. Stone’s office. It was a pay-as-you-enter car, but Joan, having entered, found herself unable to pay at the same moment. She stood swaying to and fro, clutching Garth with one hand and struggling madly to unfasten her pocket-book with the other. Even when a pocket-book is open, it is a difficult feat to hold it and abstract a coin from its depths at the same time, with only one hand. Joan found this out; she also discovered that she had no smaller change than a two dollar bill. The conducter grew irate; the people who crowded the vestibule behind her were more so.
"Town is barbaric! Why in the world does any one choose to live in it?" muttered Joan, vowing mentally that they would return in a taxicab.
Garth sat on Joan’s lap in the car; there was no other place for him to sit. He was much interested in the shops and the crowds of people and motors outside the car; he did not seem to be hot at all. Perhaps one of the reasons why Joan felt so extremely warm was because she held not only Garth, but also his coat and her own. Peanut shells littered the floor of the car beneath her feet, and the girl next her chewed gum energetically. Joan fixed her eyes resolutely on the cool curve of Garth’s cheek and tried to fancy that the roar of the car, as it pounded along, was the sound of surf on the Reef.
When they left the trolley-car the travelers found that they had time to walk down the street for a little while before their appointment. It was very crowded and dusty and exceedingly hot. The sun blazed down mercilessly, and the sidewalks sent back waves of heat. Men sprawled on the park-benches opposite, with handkerchiefs tucked into their collars, and ragged children splashed under the streams of a fountain, with a rapturous disregard for such clothes as they had on. Two hand-organs were vying with each other as to which could play "La Marseillaise" the louder, and as they played in quite different keys, the effect was depressing.
Garth looked in at the shop-windows and asked Joan a great many questions. He beamed affably at the sailors who passed them occasionally, and one young naval officer was so struck by the quality of the smile he received that he saluted—to Garth’s huge delight. Just as they went by the office of a great trans-atlantic steamship company, Garth turned back suddenly and slipped from Joan’s side. She followed him, wondering what could be of interest there, and found him gazing raptly in at the window.
Beneath two placards marked "Then" and "Now" stood two complete and beautiful models, one of a full-rigged sailing vessel, the other of a great modern liner. It was at the full-rigged ship that Garth gazed, discovering first one detail and then another of the perfectly executed model, pointing them out joyously to Joan.
"Oh, look!" he cried. "Look at the pennant on her truck, and the reef in her main-course, and even the little ports open,—and—and everything!" He lapsed into silence, and Joan realized that the clanging street, and the dust, and the hot stifling smell of the city touched him not at all; that he was far away, standing in fancy on the decks of that little ship. It was with a very gentle hand that she finally drew him away from the window.