Blowing weather

by John T. McIntyre

"However," said the little man consolingly, "your loss is not, as the insurers of ships say, complete. You still have the ledgers; and what they've yielded once they'll yield again."

And so, with a nod and a smile and a good-by he was gone. Anthony lay with the coverlet drawn up under his chin, and propped high with pillows; his head throbbed and swam; he drowsed between wakefulness and sleep, and strange pictures lit up his mind. There was a vessel that crossed his sleep—a slim, swift vessel, her sails filled with mist, and driving away over a darkened sea. She was fleeing from him, and he was following, making slow head against winds and storms. Though the ship was a great way off, he could see into her cabin; there was a light there, a yellow light with a spot of red at its heart—and beside this sat a man who wore a patch over one eye, and he smirked over Anthony's note-book, which he held in his hand.

There were strange things in that book; there were matters that opposed each other fancifully, and told of ships and men and cargoes, and places; and there were other things, like shouted lies. Anthony had studied them and knew them well. And now, as he drowsed, the cabin was gone, the ship had disappeared, the sea had changed to land; but his thought still had to do with books. He sat before a great many of them; they were heavy, sober, and clean; they were the ledgers of Rufus Stevens' Sons, the solid books of a solid house; surely in them no wrong could thrive. But there were flaming lightnings in the sky; the world was full of pain and weariness, and the books held knowledge which he must have; so he began to open them. They seemed countless; each was like the other in its dull leather, and their rows stretched across plains and streams, and through cities, away among vague spaces, and disappeared in the rising of mists, the booming of waters, and the dashing of spray.

And now, under his hand, were the books of Lucas, and the books of Carberry. These he especially desired. They were thick and seemed to promise pleasant things; but they opened evilly; the mind sprang back from their pages, repelled. But, for all that, they were well and carefully written, just as he had been told they would be. Lucas had set down his statements in a useful hand, clear and with excellent spacing. Carberry's way was well ordered; he had a confident, clerkly smoothness, which all but covered astonishments that caught the breath from one's lips. But Anthony found himself held among the pages of Lucas much oftener, for Lucas's day, so it seemed, had been one of rare daring; there had been courage and devilment in his time, and no great care. The waters had been awash with costly stuffs; ships were sucked to their doom, and dead men had floated down the byways of the sea.

Now he saw a river sealed with ice, and through the ice countless bowsprits poked forlornly; many eyes looked through a thickening mist, eyes with black patches over them; then a ship loomed through it, a ship with sides as wide as the world; a man in a bo'sun's-chair was let down; he held a pen and ink-pot and along the water-line of the ship he wrote unreadable things in a practiced hand. Anthony strove to understand the words, but could not. He fought with the mists to see the man's face. Once he fancied it was a clean-cut, handsome one with cold eyes and a sneer about the lips; but as he pronounced Tarrant's name the face changed. It was now a bright one, full of inspiration and eager purpose. Anthony looked to find how the man sat in the chair and saw he was nursing a lame foot. But it could not be Charles! For the man was of splendid bulk; as he wrote he laughed, and the mist whirled at the sound, and the waters leaped and threw it back.

And then the books came again,—the weary, weary books,—greater than before and bursting with threats. The pages were hard to turn; it took all the strength he had to come to the smallest thing, and, oddly enough, between the leaves he found those muskets and pistols which he had thought at the bottom of the river. And, as he took up each, the touch of the iron told him he'd best put them carefully by for need in a future time. And this he did, for the menace in the books made his heart feel cold.

Here there was a blank: and then he found himself traveling an endless road, through a waste place, and carrying a burden, a torturing, breaking burden, the essence of which could be nothing but despair. When he felt he must sink under it, it suddenly became light and desirable; he wanted passionately to go on with it. And then he saw it was a girl, and that she hated him; so he put her down, and talked with her. All the air about her was filled with words, each with wings like a bat; they whispered in her ear as they flitted by, and it was the evil of these words that made her hate him.

He looked along the endless road, through the waste places; a bleak sky lowered over it, the air that stirred its dust was mournful, and the soul in him grew fearful that he must travel it alone! Where was her father? He would speak to him, for her father was wise with years and must know the venom of false words. And then she was no longer there; her father stood in her place, an old, old man, with a white, high-held head; and to him Anthony began eagerly to pour out his thoughts. But he stopped, for he saw a scar on the old man's face, the puckered red mark of an ancient sword-stroke; and the old man moved toward him with the soft sure steps of a great cat. Anthony, in horror, protested; and he could hear his voice lifting through all space against the cold derision in the aspect of Monsieur Lafargue. Then, with the damp of fear on him, he labored heavily through the zone of half-sleep and burst into wakefulness.

He was still in bed next day. Dr. King came to see him; he had his breakfast, which the good woman who rented the lodgings brought him, and then lay back, thinking. The spring day fluttered in at the window; a man who had early greens to sell chanted their quality and price in the street; a knife-grinder's bell tinkled steadily along; the voices of some children arose gleefully from a garden. There was a knock on the door, and Captain Weir came in. He shook Anthony's hand, and sat coldly down by the bed.

"Sparhawk visited us at the counting-room this morning," said he, "and we were astonished by what he had to tell. What does the doctor say?"