Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/818

768 an ink-bottle, wherein the liquid had dried. It was inexpressibly sad, tragically lonely.

Through the dusty window-panes one could see the raw earth, raw buildings, and raw humanity of Panning Flats in all their hideousness. Depression sank into my soul like lead—

"Please, mister, have you seen it?" a small voice behind me inquired, an expectant thrill in every word.

I turned sharply, almost angrily, and was confronted by a boy of nine or ten—a strange, uncanny child. His jaw was square and his chin pointed. His hair was black as ink, wiry and straight. His eyes, sapphire blue, shone weirdly out of a dusky bronze countenance. A torn shirt and a pair of ragged overalls made up his costume, through which portions of his lean brown body were plainly to be seen.

"Have yer seen it?" he asked, eagerly, his slim fingers twitching.

"Seen what?" I asked.

"The sea!" He brought out the word as one might hear a little white novice speak of God.

"Yes," I nodded; "lots; been across it a dozen times."

"Oh!" He drew nearer with an almost convulsive movement, and stood looking at me as if I were too rare to be human.

"Do I gather," I asked, sitting down in the rocker, "that you don't know anybody who has seen it?"

"Pete has," he answered, gravely, "and so has Red Jack and Boney Sam. But they don't seem ter see it right. They just say it's a lot of water, that joggles up and down and makes you feel like Sunday mornin'; and Mist' Burrage he wouldn't never say nothin', 'ceptin' the sea'd tuck somethin' he were fond on, and he didn't never want ter see it again or talk about it—and he wouldn't."

There was a world of misery, of hope deferred, in the last sentence, and I knew only too well that Burrage would tolerate no reference to the loss that had wrecked his life.

"Tell me 'bout it," he implored, standing before me, an odd, eager little figure.

Thus adjured to describe "It," I became suddenly helpless—as who would not? But I love the ocean with a great and enduring love, and in my loneliness it seemed like speaking of an ab- sent friend.

"It's the finest thing in the world," I said; "the strongest thing and the deepest thing. It's the kindest and the crudest. It's immortal youth—"

I broke off with a laugh, thinking how utterly unintelligible were such words to the child before me. I looked, up and met the sapphire eyes. In them was a great joy, a great recognition.

"Yep!" he nodded, emphatically, "that's it. And if you look 'way down when the sun shines, you see long, long streaks like green light, an' they're full o' dust, like when the sun shines in ther winder."

"Now where in the world did you hear that?" I asked, surprised. "Who told you?"

He looked embarrassed and shook his head. "I dreamed it."

"That's a very true dream," I said, slowly. "It's just like that; and when the water comes to the land it makes waves that curl over and break. If it's a rocky coast, you can see through the tops of the waves, and they are green—green, like the light through that bottle there." I was watching him closely now. He was nodding approval. Then he took up the tale himself.

"But when it hits sand an' gravel, it sucks it up so the water's gray, like the upper sluices; an' it talks all the time, like the trees in Horse-thief Gulch."

"But you know just as much as I do. What do you want me to tell?"

"But I dun'no' nauthin'—nauthin'," he reiterated, miserably. "I sorter seem ter know, an' I wanter know, but I dunno' nauthin'!"

Steps sounded outside. The child turned pale under his tawny skin.

"Don't tell Kate, please don't tell Kate!" he begged, in evident terror.

"All right," I whispered, reassuringly, and going to the door, threw it wide. The boy cowered back near the window as the woman came in, bearing my supper on a tray. Her weary eyes lit vengefully as they fell upon the child.

"Eerick!" she drawled, "git! What yer doin' yere?"