“Thank you, Ezra,” the doctor answered, much relieved. The captain eased him into a rocker, by the table. “There, that’s better. You see, captain, I’m a bit done up. It always tires me to ride on a train; and then, too, the drive from the station was exhausting. I’m not used to driving, you know, and—”
“I know, I know,” Briggs interrupted. “Just sit you there, doctor, and keep right still. I’ll be back in half a twinkling.”
And, satisfied that the doctor was all safe and sound, he stumped into the house; while Ezra whistled to the dog and strode away to go aboard the buggy as navigating officer of that sorry equipage.
Even before Ezra had safely berthed the horse in the stable up the lane, bordered with sweetbrier and sumacs, Captain Briggs returned with a tray, whereon was a bottle of his very best Jamaica, now kept exclusively for sickness or a cold, or, it might be, for some rare and special guest. The Jamaica was flanked with a little jug of water, with glasses, lemons, sugar. At sight of it the doctor left off brushing his coat, all powdered with the gray rock-dust of the Massachusetts north shore, and smiled with sunken lips.
“I couldn’t have prescribed better, myself,” said he.
“Correct, sir,” agreed the captain. He set the tray on the piazza table. “I don’t hardly ever touch grog any more. But it’s got its uses, now and then. You need a stiff drink, doctor, and I’m going to join you, for old times’ sake. Surely there’s no sin in that, after half a century that we haven’t laid eyes on one another!”
Speaking, he was at work on the manufacture of a brace of drinks.
“It’s my rule not to touch it,” he added. “But I’ve got to make an exception to-day. Sugar, sir? Lemon? All O. K., then. Well, doctor, here goes. Here’s to—to—”
“To fifty years of life!” the doctor exclaimed. He stood up, raising the glass that Briggs had given him. His eye cleared; for a moment his aged hand held firm.
“To fifty years!” the captain echoed. And so the glasses clinked, and so they drank that toast, bottoms-up, those two old men so different in the long ago, so very different now.
When Filhiol had resumed his seat, the captain drew a chair up close to him, both facing the sea. Through the doctor’s spent tissues a little warmth began to diffuse itself. But still he found nothing to say; nor, for a minute or two, did the captain. A little silence, strangely awkward, drew itself between them, now that the first stimulus of the meeting had spent itself. Where, indeed, should they begin to knit up so vast a chasm?