And I said nothing, but pegged along beside him down the echoing stone stairs, my elation rapidly oozing out at my finger-tips. I was beginning to think of the other side of it—his side and my mother’s—and to be more than half sorry for my haste; but what is done is done. Boys—and girls too—are thoughtlessly cruel, fortunately for them and the world.
I could not eat much dinner, but went off to my room to pack a few things, among them my two precious books. It was not a large bundle that I tied up. My father must have told my mother as soon as I had gone, for she came up to my room as I was tying up my bundle. She had been crying, and tears were yet in her eyes, but she smiled divinely as she stood in my doorway.
“Well, Timmie, darling,” she said gently, “so you ’re going to leave us. Four years is a long, long time to look forward to without you. I had hope that you would choose something else. But if you had to choose this it ’s better to have it soon over, and not to have a month of dreading it. And I ’ll say nothing but God bless you and God keep you, my precious!” She sat on the bed. “Come here, darling boy, and let me have one hug and a kiss to remember.”
So I went, and I threw my arms around her neck, and I hid my face. We stayed so for a long time, she rocking back and forth, hugging me hard, and whispering to me.
CHAPTER III
The Clearchus did not get off that day, and at six o’clock my father and I walked home together, my heart like lead. The evening passed somehow. We all went up to bed at nine, as we always did, while the bell on the Stone Church was ringing the curfew; but we might as well have stayed up for two or three hours longer, for I could not sleep, and I am sure that my mother could not. It had begun to rain, a dreary drizzle, before I finally fell asleep.
I was awakened to find my mother standing in my doorway. She was smiling, but she looked as if she had not slept well. It was already after six. I jumped up, slid into my clothes hastily, and joined the family at breakfast, but I could scarcely eat. I was glad when my father pushed back his plate and got up. I said good-bye simply enough to my brothers, and they said good-bye to me, but they did not get up. They did not even stop eating. My mother came to the door with us. Tears stood in her eyes, but she smiled as she gave me a long, close hug. I returned her hug and her kiss, but I was very near to tears and I could not speak, so I bolted out at the door into the rain after my father, and I waved my hand to her. That was another picture that I carried locked in my breast of my mother standing at the open door, in the dreary drizzle, looking after me and smiling. Mothers have a good deal to bear. I wonder that they stand it.
We did not get off until after ten o’clock. I was the first to see it—I mean the job wagon with its load of men and bundles. It was being driven on to the next wharf below—Central Wharf it was, although I did not know the wharves infallibly by name then. I called to my father, took up my bundle, and walked, rather slowly, I am afraid, around the head of the dock. The afternoon before I should have run. My father caught up with me at the head of the wharf.
The wagon was unloading about halfway down the wharf when we got there, and the men were taking out their bundles. Those bundles were of all sizes and all colors, but all were shapeless, a few in neat canvas bags, several in pillow-cases, and the others in gay flame-colored cloths, red and orange and a peculiar blue, but the predominating color was some shade of magenta. It is curious how fond those Western Islanders are of magenta. The men were grouping themselves, squatting on their bundles in the drizzle, or sitting on the rounded tops of the mooring-piles or on the stringpiece, or standing. I noticed only three of them: a great, gaunt, very black man, with thin hoops of gold in his ears, who stood impassively, his arms folded across his breast, and gazed at nothing and did not speak; a smaller man, also intensely black and with similar gold hoops in his ears, who sat atop of a pile and smiled and poured a steady stream of talk that I could not understand up to the first, and the gaunt man smiled now and then, showing a set of teeth that were sharp and of a dazzling whiteness; and a very old man, who I suppose was originally a white man, with fingers permanently bent, like talons, and very wrinkled face that looked like leather in texture and in color. He was sitting on the stringpiece, his neat canvas bag between his knees, and looking up at the two black men; and occasionally there would flit over his face a humorous smile, leaving the look of humor there. On the whole it was a quiet crowd, and merry enough, considering the weather. A man, who I found afterwards was the second mate, moved slowly around among the groups and finally stood still, holding converse with none and gazing out over the harbor.
The old man cast his humorous eye up at my father.