ugh, too, if what people tell me so often is
true--that it used to be so one time that the office clerks would
correct their account-books by what I told 'em out of my head. But
sometimes--not often--things come back to me, like to-day--maybe because
'tis a winter day and a gale o' wind drivin' the sea afore it in the bay
below there. Things come to me then--like pictures--wind and sea and fog
and the wrecks on a lee shore.
In my business--but of course you know--runnin' after wrecks, from
Newfoundland to Cuba, I had to be days and maybe weeks away from
home--which was no harm when I had no more home than a room in a
sailor's boardin'-house, and no harm later with Sarah. Even if anything
happened to me, I used to feel that Sarah--that's my first
wife--Sarah'd still have the two lads to hearten her and keep her busy;
but 'twas different with--but there, my mind's off again....
Maybe some things--comforts, refinements--I might 'a' practised myself
in, got used to 'em like, but could I see in those early days that I'd
ever have a grand home--me who'd been cast away at fourteen--even if I'd
had time? It was to be able to do without comforts--to make a pleasure
out o' hardship--that meant success almost as much as knowin' the
business. And I did know my business in those days--or people lied a
lot. And it always meant more to me--the name of bein' the great
wrecker--than all the money I made, and in those last few years I made
plenty of it--I did that. Me who once slaved for six dollars a month as
boy in a Bangor coaster. And I mind how I used to look back and say--or
was it somebody tellin' me?--that 'twas a great day for me and mine when
the old lumber schooner wrecked herself on Peaked Hill Bar--because when
she was hove down I was hove into a bigger world. Once in my pride I
used to cherish praise like that--but sometimes now I'm not so sure.
And this man, an upstandin' handsome man--no one that knew him but spoke
well of him, to me anyway, for I would not allow aught else after I come
to know him. Since that last wreck it seems to me I've listened to
other talk of him, but that's not so clear to me ... my brain, as I say,
clouds up like on things that happened since.
No one ever met Her--my second wife, that is--but said she was beautiful
and good--said so to me, anyway. It is true--but that came afterward,
like the other talk, and it's not too clear in my mind what they did
say. But he came to me and I liked him
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