“H-m!” said he. “Nothing yet.”
“Expecting some one, captain?”
“My grandson, Hal.”
“Grandson! That’s fine! The only one?”
“The only one.” Briggs lowered his glass with disappointment. “He’s the sole surviving member of the family, beside myself. All the rest are up there, doctor, in that little cemetery on the hilltop.”
Filhiol’s eyes followed the captain’s pointing hand, as it indicated the burial-ground lying under the vagrant cloud-shadows of the fading afternoon, peaceful and “sweet with blade and leaf and blossom.” In a pine against the richly luminous sky a bluejay was scolding. As a contrabass to the rhythm of the blacksmith’s hammer, the booming murmur of the sea trembled across the summer air. The captain went on:
“I’ve had great losses, doctor. Bitter and hard to bear. After I fell in love and changed my way of life, and married and settled here, I thought maybe fate would be kind to me, but it wasn’t. One by one my people were taken away from me—my wife, and then my son’s wife, and last of all, my son. Three, I’ve lost, and got one left. Yet it isn’t exactly as if I’d really lost them. I’m not one that can bury love, and forget it. My folks aren’t gone. They’re still with me, in a way.
“I don’t see how people can let their kin be buried in strange places and forgotten. I want to keep mine always near me, where I can look out for them, and where I know they won’t feel lonesome. I want them to be right near home, doctor, where it’s all so friendly and familiar. Maybe that’s an old man’s foolish notion, but that’s the way I feel, and that’s the way I’ve had it.”
“I—think I understand,” the doctor answered. “Go on.”
“They aren’t really gone,” continued Briggs. “They’re still up there, very, very near to me. There’s nothing mournful in the lot; nothing sad or melancholy. No, Ezra and I have made it cheerful, with roses and petunias and zinnias and all kinds of pretty flowers and bushes and vines. You can see some of those vines now on the monument.” He pointed once more. “That one, off to starboard of the big elm. It’s a beautiful place, really. The breeze is always cool up there, doctor, and the sun stays there longest of any spot round here. It strikes that hill first thing in the morning, and stays till last thing at night. We’ve got a bench there, a real comfortable one I made myself; not one of those hard, iron things they usually put in cemeteries. I’ve given Hal lots of his lessons, reading and navigation, up there. I go up every day a spell, and take the dog with me, and Ezra goes, too; and we carry up flowers and put ’em in jars, and holystone the monument and the headstones, and make it all shipshape. It’s all as bright as a button, and so it’s going to be, as long as I’m on deck.”