Isla Heron. Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
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It was Giles Heron who, still in mid-prime, felt his strength going from him. His people had never had the sturdy, four-square constitution that was the birthright of most of the islanders. They were slender, the Herons, wiry and tough as a rule, but with here and there a narrow chest that could not answer year after year to the call for struggle against the icy winds of winter. One March the north wind raged for a week without ceasing. Heron never thought of staying within doors, but he felt the cold strike deeper and deeper, till it had him by the heart; a cough fastened upon him, and fatalism did the rest.
“I’ve got my call!” he said. “If they’ll let me stay till spring, I’d as lief go as not.”
He turned with feverish earnestness to Isla’s lessons, and racked his brains for forgotten rules of his school-days. Hour after hour they sat in the still sunny cove which was their schoolroom, and he mapped the globe and the different countries on the fine, white sand—he had always been a fair draughtsman—and told her how he had visited this city and that, and how the people looked and spoke and moved.
“I like Greece best!” said the child. “Shall we go there, Giles, when I am big, and live in one of those white things—temples—where the roof is broken, and the sky comes through? I hate roofs!”
“Greece is a good way off,” said Giles. “Bellton is nearer, little girl; you shall go to Bellton. See! here it would be, not three days’ sail. I was there a couple of times; there was a place with trees, and a pond, might be the size of this cove here. Like to go there?”
“Are there rocks?” asked the child. “Can you see the sky?”
“Well, no; not much. The people live in brick houses, joined together in rows, this way,” and he drew a street, with neat sidewalks, and people passing up and down.
“I’ll never go there!” said Isla with decision. “It’s like the jail you told me of, over on the main.”
“Just!” said her father, nodding. “Only folks build these jails and live in them, because they like ’em. Some stay in ’em all winter, I believe, and never go out from October to May. And call that living! I’ll take my way every time, thank you, if it is shorter.”
“Are they white folks?”
“White? yes, child! white as anybody is; whiter, too, like a cellar-plant, because they get no sun.”
“I didn’t know!” said Isla. “I thought maybe they turned black. But I’ll never go there.”
Her father mused; then he drew a larger building at the end of the street, with towers and pinnacles.
“Here’d be a church!” he said. “You’d like that, Isla. There’d be music, an organ, likely, and lots of singing. The windows are coloured red and blue, and the light comes in like sunset all day.”
“That’s pretty!” the child nodded, approvingly. “What do they do there, Giles?”
“Like a meeting-house; say prayers, and preach, and sing hymns and things.”
“Oh!” she paused, and the brightness passed from her face.
“Do you think He likes that, Giles?”
She nodded upward. Her father made no reply. He was not a religious man, but had thought it right to tell the child that there was some one called God, who lived above the sky, and who knew when people did wrong.
“He has all outdoors,” Isla went on. “I should think He would hate a house, even if it was big. Do you suppose they try to fool Him with the coloured windows, Giles?”
Giles thought this unlikely; perhaps they supposed He might feel more at home where ’twas coloured and pretty, he added, trying to fall into the child’s mood.
The girl was silent. “Is He dumb, Giles, do you think?” she asked presently.
“I don’t know,” said Giles. “He never spoke to me. What are you thinking of, Isla Heron?”
“Oh—only I hear like voices sometimes in the wind, and down by the shore more times; and I wondered, that was all. Do you suppose ever He would speak to a girl, Giles?”
“Sooner than any one else!” said Giles Heron.
“He’s good, you’re sure?”
“Yes, they all say He’s good.”
Then Giles made the sign for silence, for his heart seemed to lie cold and beat heavily; and Isla fell a-dreaming, feeling the stillness as home.
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