Anne and Gilbert found Uncle Jim sitting on a bench outside the lighthouse, putting the finishing touches to a wonderful, full-rigged, toy schooner. He rose and welcomed them to his abode with the gentle, unconscious courtesy that became him so well.
“This has been a purty nice day all through, Mistress Blythe, and now, right at the last, it’s brought its best. Would you like to sit down here outside a bit, while the light lasts? I’ve just finished this bit of a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the Glen. After I promised to make it for him I was kinder sorry, for his mother was vexed. She’s afraid he’ll be wanting to go to sea later on and she doesn’t want the notion encouraged in him. But what could I do, Mistress Blythe? I’d PROMISED him, and I think it’s sorter real dastardly to break a promise you make to a child. Come, sit down. It won’t take long to stay an hour.”
The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea’s surface into long, silvery ripples, and sent sheeny shadows flying out across it, from every point and headland, like transparent wings. The dusk was hanging a curtain of violet gloom over the sand dunes and the headlands where gulls were huddling. The sky was faintly filmed over with scarfs of silken vapor. Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons. An evening star was watching over the bar.
“Isn’t that a view worth looking at?” said Captain Jim, with a loving, proprietary pride. “Nice and far from the marketplace, ain’t it? No buying and selling and getting gain. You don’t have to pay anything — all that sea and sky free—’without money and without price.’ There’s going to be a moonrise purty soon, too — I’m never tired of finding out what a moonrise can be over them rocks and sea and harbor. There’s a surprise in it every time.”
They had their moonrise, and watched its marvel and magic in a silence that asked nothing of the world or each other. Then they went up into the tower, and Captain Jim showed and explained the mechanism of the great light. Finally they found themselves in the dining room, where a fire of driftwood was weaving flames of wavering, elusive, sea-born hues in the open fireplace.
“I put this fireplace in myself,” remarked Captain Jim. “The Government don’t give lighthouse keepers such luxuries. Look at the colors that wood makes. If you’d like some driftwood for your fire, Mistress Blythe, I’ll bring you up a load some day. Sit down. I’m going to make you a cup of tea.”
Captain Jim placed a chair for Anne, having first removed therefrom a huge, orange-colored cat and a newspaper.
“Get down, Matey. The sofa is your place. I must put this paper away safe till I can find time to finish the story in it. It’s called A Mad Love. ‘Tisn’t my favorite brand of fiction, but I’m reading it jest to see how long she can spin it out. It’s at the sixty-second chapter now, and the wedding ain’t any nearer than when it begun, far’s I can see. When little Joe comes I have to read him pirate yarns. Ain’t it strange how innocent little creatures like children like the blood-thirstiest stories?”
“Like my lad Davy at home,” said Anne. “He wants tales that reek with gore.”
Captain Jim’s tea proved to be nectar. He was pleased as a child with Anne’s compliments, but he affected a fine indifference.
“The secret is I don’t skimp the cream,” he remarked airily. Captain Jim had never heard of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but he evidently agreed with that writer’s dictum that “big heart never liked little cream pot.”
“We met an odd-looking personage coming out of your lane,” said Gilbert as they sipped. “Who was he?”
Captain Jim grinned.
“That’s Marshall Elliott — a mighty fine man with jest one streak of foolishness in him. I s’pose you wondered what his object was in turning himself into a sort of dime museum freak.”
“Is he a modern Nazarite or a Hebrew prophet left over from olden times?” asked Anne.
“Neither of them. It’s politics that’s at the bottom of his freak. All those Elliotts and Crawfords and MacAllisters are dyed-in-the-wool politicians. They’re born Grit or Tory, as the case may be, and they live Grit or Tory, and they die Grit or Tory; and what they’re going to do in heaven, where there’s probably no politics, is more than I can fathom. This Marshall Elliott was born a Grit. I’m a Grit myself in moderation, but there’s no moderation about Marshall. Fifteen years ago there was a specially bitter general election. Marshall fought for his party tooth and nail. He was dead sure the Liberals would win — so sure that he got up at a public meeting and vowed that he wouldn’t shave his face or cut his hair until the Grits were in power. Well, they didn’t go in — and they’ve never got in yet — and you saw the result today for yourselves. Marshall stuck to his word.”
“What does his wife think of it?” asked Anne.
“He’s a bachelor. But if he had a wife I reckon she couldn’t make him break that vow. That family of Elliotts has always been more stubborn than natteral. Marshall’s brother Alexander had a dog he set great store by, and when it died the man actilly wanted to have it buried in the graveyard, ‘along with the other Christians,’ he said. Course, he wasn’t allowed to; so he buried it just outside the graveyard fence, and never darkened the church door again. But Sundays he’d drive his family to church and sit by that dog’s grave and read his Bible all the time service was going on. They say when he was dying he asked his wife to bury him beside the dog; she was a meek little soul but she fired up at THAT. She said SHE wasn’t going to be buried beside no dog, and if he’d rather have his last resting place beside the dog than beside her, jest to say so. Alexander Elliott was a stubborn mule, but he was fond of his wife, so he give in and said, ‘Well, durn it, bury me where you please. But when Gabriel’s trump blows I expect my dog to rise with the rest of us, for he had as much soul as any durned Elliott or Crawford or MacAllister that ever strutted.’ Them was HIS parting words. As for Marshall, we’re all used to him, but he must strike strangers as right down peculiar-looking. I’ve known him ever since he was ten — he’s about fifty now — and I like him. Him and me was out codfishing today. That’s about all I’m good for now — catching trout and cod occasional. But ‘tweren’t always so — not by no manner of means. I used to do other things, as you’d admit if you saw my life-book.”
Anne was just going to ask what his life-book was when the First Mate created a diversion by springing upon Captain Jim’s knee. He was a gorgeous beastie, with a face as round as a full moon, vivid green eyes, and immense, white, double paws. Captain Jim stroked his velvet back gently.
“I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate,” he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate’s tremendous purrs. “I saved his life, and when you’ve saved a creature’s life you’re bound to love it. It’s next thing to giving life. There’s some turrible thoughtless people in the world, Mistress Blythe. Some of them city folks who have summer homes over the harbor are so thoughtless that they’re cruel. It’s the worst kind of cruelty — the thoughtless kind. You can’t cope with it. They keep cats there in the summer, and feed and pet ‘em, and doll ‘em up with ribbons and collars. And then in the fall they go off and leave ‘em to starve or freeze. It makes my blood boil, Mistress Blythe. One day last winter I found a poor old mother cat dead on the shore, lying against the skin-and-bone bodies of her three little kittens. She’d died trying to shelter ‘em. She had her poor stiff paws around ‘em. Master, I cried. Then I swore. Then I carried them poor little kittens home and fed ‘em up and found good homes for ‘em. I knew the woman who left the cat and when she