Aylwin | Page 7

He was sitting on
the grass close to the brink of the indentation cut by the water into the
horse-shoe curve called by the fishermen Mousetrap Cove; sitting there
as still as an image of a boy in stone, at the forbidden spot where the
wooden fence proclaimed the crumbling hollow crust to be specially
dangerous--sitting and looking across the sheer deep gulf below.
Flinty Point on his right was sometimes in purple shadow and
sometimes shining in the sun; Needle Point on his left was sometimes
in purple shadow and sometimes shining in the sun; and beyond these
headlands spread now the wide purple, and now the wide sparkle of the
open sea. The very gulls, wheeling as close to him as they dared,
seemed to be frightened at the little boy's peril. Straight ahead he was
gazing, however--gazing so intently that his eyes must have been
seeing very much or else very little of that limitless world of light and
coloured shade. On account of certain questions connected with race
that will be raised in this narrative, I must dwell a little while upon the
child's personal appearance, and especially upon his colour. Natural or
acquired, it was one that might be almost called unique; as much like a
young Gypsy's colour as was compatible with respectable descent, and
yet not a Gypsy's colour. A deep undertone of 'Romany brown' seemed
breaking through that peculiar kind of ruddy golden glow which no
sunshine can give till it has itself been deepened and coloured and
enriched by the responsive kisses of the sea.
Moreover, there was a certain something in his eyes that was not
Gypsy-like--a something which is not uncommonly seen in the eyes of
boys born along that coast, whether those eyes be black or blue or grey;
a something which cannot be described, but which seems like a reflex
of the daring gaze of that great land-conquering and daring sea. Very
striking was this expression as he momentarily turned his face
landward to watch one of the gulls that had come wheeling up the cliffs

towards the flinty grey tower of the church--the old deserted church,
whose graveyard the sea had already half washed away. As his eyes
followed the bird's movements, however, this daring sea-look seemed
to be growing gradually weaker and weaker. At last it faded away
altogether, and by the time his face was turned again towards the sea,
the look I have tried to describe was supplanted by such a gaze as that
gull would give were it hiding behind a boulder with a broken wing. A
mist of cruel trouble was covering his eyes, and soon the mist had
grown into two bright glittering pearly tears, which, globing and
trembling, larger and larger, were at length big enough to drown both
eyes; big enough to drop, shining, on the grass: big enough to blot out
altogether the most brilliant picture that sea and sky could make. For
that little boy had begun to learn a lesson which life was going to teach
him fully--the lesson that shining sails in the sunny wind, and black
trailing bands of smoke passing here and there along the horizon, and
silvery gulls dipping playfully into the green and silver waves (nay, all
the beauties and all the wonders of the world), make but a blurred
picture to eyes that look through the lens of tears. However, with a
brown hand brisk and angry, he brushed away these tears, like one who
should say, 'This kind of thing will never do.'
Indeed, so hardy was the boy's face--tanned by the sun, hardened and
bronzed by the wind, reddened by the brine--that tears seemed entirely
out of place there. The meaning of those tears must be fully accounted
for, and if possible fully justified, for this little boy is to be the hero of
this story. In other words, he is Henry Aylwin; that is to say, myself:
and those who know me now in the full vigour of manhood, a lusty
knight of the alpenstock of some repute, will be surprised to know what
troubled me. They will be surprised to know that owing to a fall from
the cliff I was for about two years a cripple.
This is how it came about. Rough and yielding as were the paths, called
'gangways,' connecting the cliffs with the endless reaches of sand
below, they were not rough enough, or yielding enough, or in any way
dangerous enough for me.
So I used to fashion 'gangways' of my own; I used to descend the cliff
at whatsoever point it pleased me, clinging to the lumps of sandy earth
with the prehensile power of a spider-monkey. Many a warning had I
had from the good fishermen and sea-folk, that