The Country of the Pointed Firs
by
Sarah Orne Jewett

Part 1 out of 3








The Country of
the Pointed Firs

SARAH ORNE JEWETT



Note

SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909) was born and died in South Berwick,
Maine. Her father was the region's most distinguished doctor and,
as a child, Jewett often accompanied him on his round of patient
visits. She began writing poetry at an early age and when she was
only 19 her short story "Mr. Bruce" was accepted by the Atlantic
Monthly. Her association with that magazine continued, and
William Dean Howells, who was editor at that time, encouraged her
to publish her first book, Deephaven (1877), a collection of
sketches published earlier in the Atlantic Monthly. Through
her friendship with Howells, Jewett became acquainted with Boston's
literary elite, including Annie Fields, with whom she developed one
of the most intimate and lasting relationships of her life.

The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered
Jewett's finest work, described by Henry James as her "beautiful
little quantum of achievement." Despite James's diminutives, the
novel remains a classic. Because it is loosely structured, many
critics view the book not as a novel, but a series of sketches;
however, its structure is unified through both setting and theme.
Jewett herself felt that her strengths as a writer lay not in plot
development or dramatic tension, but in character development.
Indeed, she determined early in her career to preserve a
disappearing way of life, and her novel can be read as a study of
the effects of isolation and hardship on the inhabitants who lived
in the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast.

Jewett died in 1909, eight years after an accident that
effectively ended her writing career. Her reputation had grown
during her lifetime, extending far beyond the bounds of the New
England she loved.



Contents
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I The Return
II Mrs. Todd
III The Schoolhouse
IV At the Schoolhouse Window
V Captain Littlepage
VI The Waiting Place
VII The Outer Island
VIII Green Island
IX William
X Where Pennyroyal Grew
XI The Old Singers
XII A Strange Sail
XIII Poor Joanna
XIV The Hermitage
XV On Shell-heap Island
XVI The Great Expedition
XVII A Country Road
XVIII The Bowden Reunion
XIX The Feast's End
XX Along Shore
XXI The Backward View






I

The Return

THERE WAS SOMETHING about the coast town of Dunnet which made it
seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine.
Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that
neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to
the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to
be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges by the
Landing. These houses made the most of their seaward view, and
there was a gayety and determined floweriness in their bits of
garden ground; the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their
steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the
far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and
its background of spruces and balsam firs. When one really knows
a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming
acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at
first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the
growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

After a first brief visit made two or three summers before in
the course of a yachting cruise, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned
to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs, the same
quaintness of the village with its elaborate conventionalities; all
that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the
centre of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told.
One evening in June, a single passenger landed upon the steamboat
wharf. The tide was high, there was a fine crowd of spectators,
and the younger portion of the company followed her with subdued
excitement up the narrow street of the salt-aired, white-
clapboarded little town.




II


Mrs. Todd

LATER, THERE WAS only one fault to find with this choice of a
summer lodging-place, and that was its complete lack of seclusion.
At first the tiny house of Mrs. Almira Todd, which stood with its
end to the street, appeared to be retired and sheltered enough from
the busy world, behind its bushy bit of a green garden, in which
all the blooming things, two or three gay hollyhocks and some
London-pride, were pushed back against the gray-shingled wall. It
was a queer little garden and puzzling to a stranger, the few
flowers being put at a disadvantage by so much greenery; but the
discovery was soon made that Mrs. Todd was an ardent lover of
herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea-breezes blew into the low
end-window of the house laden with not only sweet-brier and sweet-
mary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, wormwood and
southernwood. If Mrs. Todd had occasion to step into the far
corner of her herb plot, she trod heavily upon thyme, and made its
fragrant presence known with all the rest. Being a very large
person, her full skirts brushed and bent almost every slender stalk
that her feet missed. You could always tell when she was stepping
about there, even when you were half awake in the morning, and
learned to know, in the course of a few weeks' experience, in
exactly which corner of the garden she might be.

At one side of this herb plot were other growths of a rustic
pharmacopoeia, great treasures and rarities among the commoner
herbs. There were some strange and pungent odors that roused a dim
sense and remembrance of something in the forgotten past. Some of
these might once have belonged to sacred and mystic rites, and have
had some occult knowledge handed with them down the centuries; but
now they pertained only to humble compounds brewed at intervals
with molasses or vinegar or spirits in a small caldron on Mrs.
Todd's kitchen stove. They were dispensed to suffering neighbors,
who usually came at night as if by stealth, bringing their own
ancient-looking vials to be filled. One nostrum was called the
Indian remedy, and its price was but fifteen cents; the whispered
directions could be heard as customers passed the windows. With
most remedies the purchaser was allowed to depart unadmonished from
the kitchen, Mrs. Todd being a wise saver of steps; but with
certain vials she gave cautions, standing in the doorway, and
there were other doses which had to be accompanied on their healing
way as far as the gate, while she muttered long chapters of
directions, and kept up an air of secrecy and importance to the
last. It may not have been only the common aids of humanity with
which she tried to cope; it seemed sometimes as if love and hate
and jealousy and adverse winds at sea might also find their proper
remedies among the curious wild-looking plants in Mrs. Todd's
garden.

The village doctor and this learned herbalist were upon the
best of terms. The good man may have counted upon the unfavorable
effect of certain potions which he should find his opportunity in
counteracting; at any rate, he now and then stopped and exchanged
greetings with Mrs. Todd over the picket fence. The conversation
became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and
he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and
make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent
course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such
firm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of
worthy neighbors.

To arrive at this quietest of seaside villages late in June,
when the busy herb-gathering season was just beginning, was also to
arrive in the early prime of Mrs. Todd's activity in the brewing of
old-fashioned spruce beer. This cooling and refreshing drink had
been brought to wonderful perfection through a long series of
experiments; it had won immense local fame, and the supplies for
its manufacture were always giving out and having to be
replenished. For various reasons, the seclusion and uninterrupted
days which had been looked forward to proved to be very rare in
this otherwise delightful corner of the world. My hostess and I
had made our shrewd business agreement on the basis of a simple
cold luncheon at noon, and liberal restitution in the matter of hot
suppers, to provide for which the lodger might sometimes be seen
hurrying down the road, late in the day, with cunner line in hand.
It was soon found that this arrangement made large allowance for
Mrs. Todd's slow herb-gathering progresses through woods and
pastures. The spruce-beer customers were pretty steady in hot
weather, and there were many demands for different soothing syrups
and elixirs with which the unwise curiosity of my early residence
had made me acquainted. Knowing Mrs. Todd to be a widow, who had
little beside this slender business and the income from one hungry
lodger to maintain her, one's energies and even interest were
quickly bestowed, until it became a matter of course that she
should go afield every pleasant day, and that the lodger should
answer all peremptory knocks at the side door.

In taking an occasional wisdom-giving stroll in Mrs. Todd's
company, and in acting as business partner during her
frequent absences, I found the July days fly fast, and it was not
until I felt myself confronted with too great pride and pleasure in
the display, one night, of two dollars and twenty-seven cents which
I had taken in during the day, that I remembered a long piece of
writing, sadly belated now, which I was bound to do. To have been
patted kindly on the shoulder and called "darlin'," to have been
offered a surprise of early mushrooms for supper, to have had all
the glory of making two dollars and twenty-seven cents in a single
day, and then to renounce it all and withdraw from these pleasant
successes, needed much resolution. Literary employments are so
vexed with uncertainties at best, and it was not until the voice of
conscience sounded louder in my ears than the sea on the nearest
pebble beach that I said unkind words of withdrawal to Mrs. Todd.
She only became more wistfully affectionate than ever in her
expressions, and looked as disappointed as I expected when I
frankly told her that I could no longer enjoy the pleasure of what
we called "seein' folks." I felt that I was cruel to a whole
neighborhood in curtailing her liberty in this most important
season for harvesting the different wild herbs that were so much
counted upon to ease their winter ails.

"Well, dear," she said sorrowfully, "I've took great advantage
o' your bein' here. I ain't had such a season for years, but I
have never had nobody I could so trust. All you lack is a few
qualities, but with time you'd gain judgment an' experience, an' be
very able in the business. I'd stand right here an' say it to
anybody."


Mrs. Todd and I were not separated or estranged by the change
in our business relations; on the contrary, a deeper intimacy
seemed to begin. I do not know what herb of the night it was that
used sometimes to send out a penetrating odor late in the evening,
after the dew had fallen, and the moon was high, and the cool air
came up from the sea. Then Mrs. Todd would feel that she must talk
to somebody, and I was only too glad to listen. We both fell under
the spell, and she either stood outside the window, or made an
errand to my sitting-room, and told, it might be very commonplace
news of the day, or, as happened one misty summer night, all that
lay deepest in her heart. It was in this way that I came to know
that she had loved one who was far above her.

"No, dear, him I speak of could never think of me," she said.
"When we was young together his mother didn't favor the match, an'
done everything she could to part us; and folks thought we both
married well, but't wa'n't what either one of us wanted most; an'
now we're left alone again, an' might have had each other all the
time. He was above bein' a seafarin' man, an' prospered more
than most; he come of a high family, an' my lot was plain an' hard-
workin'. I ain't seen him for some years; he's forgot our youthful
feelin's, I expect, but a woman's heart is different; them feelin's
comes back when you think you've done with 'em, as sure as spring
comes with the year. An' I've always had ways of hearin' about
him."

She stood in the centre of a braided rug, and its rings of
black and gray seemed to circle about her feet in the dim light.
Her height and massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a
huge sibyl, while the strange fragrance of the mysterious herb blew
in from the little garden.




III


The Schoolhouse

FOR SOME DAYS after this, Mrs. Todd's customers came and went past
my windows, and, haying-time being nearly over, strangers began to
arrive from the inland country, such was her widespread reputation.
Sometimes I saw a pale young creature like a white windflower left
over into midsummer, upon whose face consumption had set its bright
and wistful mark; but oftener two stout, hard-worked women from the
farms came together, and detailed their symptoms to Mrs. Todd in
loud and cheerful voices, combining the satisfactions of a friendly
gossip with the medical opportunity. They seemed to give much from
their own store of therapeutic learning. I became aware of the
school in which my landlady had strengthened her natural gift; but
hers was always the governing mind, and the final command, "Take of
hy'sop one handful" (or whatever herb it was), was received in
respectful silence. One afternoon, when I had listened,--it was
impossible not to listen, with cottonless ears,--and then laughed
and listened again, with an idle pen in my hand, during a
particularly spirited and personal conversation, I reached for my
hat, and, taking blotting-book and all under my arm, I resolutely
fled further temptation, and walked out past the fragrant green
garden and up the dusty road. The way went straight uphill, and
presently I stopped and turned to look back.

The tide was in, the wide harbor was surrounded by its dark
woods, and the small wooden houses stood as near as they could get
to the landing. Mrs. Todd's was the last house on the way
inland. The gray ledges of the rocky shore were well covered with
sod in most places, and the pasture bayberry and wild roses grew
thick among them. I could see the higher inland country and the
scattered farms. On the brink of the hill stood a little white
schoolhouse, much wind-blown and weather-beaten, which was a
landmark to seagoing folk; from its door there was a most beautiful
view of sea and shore. The summer vacation now prevailed, and
after finding the door unfastened, and taking a long look through
one of the seaward windows, and reflecting afterward for some time
in a shady place near by among the bayberry bushes, I returned to
the chief place of business in the village, and, to the amusement
of two of the selectmen, brothers and autocrats of Dunnet Landing,
I hired the schoolhouse for the rest of the vacation for fifty
cents a week.

Selfish as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to
possess great advantages, and I spent many days there quite
undisturbed, with the sea-breeze blowing through the small, high
windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro. I hung
my hat and luncheon-basket on an entry nail as if I were a small
scholar, but I sat at the teacher's desk as if I were that great
authority, with all the timid empty benches in rows before me. Now
and then an idle sheep came and stood for a long time looking in at
the door. At sundown I went back, feeling most businesslike, down
toward the village again, and usually met the flavor, not of the
herb garden, but of Mrs. Todd's hot supper, halfway up the hill.
On the nights when there were evening meetings or other public
exercises that demanded her presence we had tea very early, and I
was welcomed back as if from a long absence.

Once or twice I feigned excuses for staying at home, while
Mrs. Todd made distant excursions, and came home late, with both
hands full and a heavily laden apron. This was in pennyroyal time,
and when the rare lobelia was in its prime and the elecampane was
coming on. One day she appeared at the schoolhouse itself, partly
out of amused curiosity about my industries; but she explained that
there was no tansy in the neighborhood with such snap to it as some
that grew about the schoolhouse lot. Being scuffed down all the
spring made it grow so much the better, like some folks that had it
hard in their youth, and were bound to make the most of themselves
before they died.




IV


At the Schoolhouse Window

ONE DAY I reached the schoolhouse very late, owing to attendance
upon the funeral of an acquaintance and neighbor, with whose sad
decline in health I had been familiar, and whose last days both the
doctor and Mrs. Todd had tried in vain to ease. The services had
taken place at one o'clock, and now, at quarter past two, I stood
at the schoolhouse window, looking down at the procession as it
went along the lower road close to the shore. It was a walking
funeral, and even at that distance I could recognize most of the
mourners as they went their solemn way. Mrs. Begg had been very
much respected, and there was a large company of friends following
to her grave. She had been brought up on one of the neighboring
farms, and each of the few times that I had seen her she professed
great dissatisfaction with town life. The people lived too close
together for her liking, at the Landing, and she could not get used
to the constant sound of the sea. She had lived to lament three
seafaring husbands, and her house was decorated with West Indian
curiosities, specimens of conch shells and fine coral which they
had brought home from their voyages in lumber-laden ships. Mrs.
Todd had told me all our neighbor's history. They had been girls
together, and, to use her own phrase, had "both seen trouble till
they knew the best and worst on 't." I could see the sorrowful,
large figure of Mrs. Todd as I stood at the window. She made a
break in the procession by walking slowly and keeping the after-
part of it back. She held a handkerchief to her eyes, and I knew,
with a pang of sympathy, that hers was not affected grief.

Beside her, after much difficulty, I recognized the one
strange and unrelated person in all the company, an old man who had
always been mysterious to me. I could see his thin, bending
figure. He wore a narrow, long-tailed coat and walked with a
stick, and had the same "cant to leeward" as the wind-bent trees on
the height above.

This was Captain Littlepage, whom I had seen only once or
twice before, sitting pale and old behind a closed window; never
out of doors until now. Mrs. Todd always shook her head gravely
when I asked a question, and said that he wasn't what he had been
once, and seemed to class him with her other secrets. He might
have belonged with a simple which grew in a certain slug-haunted
corner of the garden, whose use she could never be betrayed
into telling me, though I saw her cutting the tops by moonlight
once, as if it were a charm, and not a medicine, like the great
fading bloodroot leaves.

I could see that she was trying to keep pace with the old
captain's lighter steps. He looked like an aged grasshopper of
some strange human variety. Behind this pair was a short,
impatient, little person, who kept the captain's house, and gave it
what Mrs. Todd and others believed to be no proper sort of care.
She was usually called "that Mari' Harris" in subdued conversation
between intimates, but they treated her with anxious civility when
they met her face to face.

The bay-sheltered islands and the great sea beyond stretched
away to the far horizon southward and eastward; the little
procession in the foreground looked futile and helpless on the edge
of the rocky shore. It was a glorious day early in July, with a
clear, high sky; there were no clouds, there was no noise of the
sea. The song sparrows sang and sang, as if with joyous knowledge
of immortality, and contempt for those who could so pettily concern
themselves with death. I stood watching until the funeral
procession had crept round a shoulder of the slope below and
disappeared from the great landscape as if it had gone into a cave.

An hour later I was busy at my work. Now and then a bee
blundered in and took me for an enemy; but there was a useful stick
upon the teacher's desk, and I rapped to call the bees to order as
if they were unruly scholars, or waved them away from their riots
over the ink, which I had bought at the Landing store, and
discovered to be scented with bergamot, as if to refresh the labors
of anxious scribes. One anxious scribe felt very dull that day; a
sheep-bell tinkled near by, and called her wandering wits after it.
The sentences failed to catch these lovely summer cadences. For
the first time I began to wish for a companion and for news from
the outer world, which had been, half unconsciously, forgotten.
Watching the funeral gave one a sort of pain. I began to wonder if
I ought not to have walked with the rest, instead of hurrying away
at the end of the services. Perhaps the Sunday gown I had put on
for the occasion was making this disastrous change of feeling, but
I had now made myself and my friends remember that I did not really
belong to Dunnet Landing.

I sighed, and turned to the half-written page again.




V


Captain Littlepage

IT WAS A long time after this; an hour was very long in that coast
town where nothing stole away the shortest minute. I had lost
myself completely in work, when I heard footsteps outside. There
was a steep footpath between the upper and the lower road, which I
climbed to shorten the way, as the children had taught me, but I
believed that Mrs. Todd would find it inaccessible, unless she had
occasion to seek me in great haste. I wrote on, feeling like a
besieged miser of time, while the footsteps came nearer, and the
sheep-bell tinkled away in haste as if someone had shaken a stick
in its wearer's face. Then I looked, and saw Captain Littlepage
passing the nearest window; the next moment he tapped politely at
the door.

"Come in, sir," I said, rising to meet him; and he entered,
bowing with much courtesy. I stepped down from the desk and
offered him a chair by the window, where he seated himself at once,
being sadly spent by his climb. I returned to my fixed seat behind
the teacher's desk, which gave him the lower place of a scholar.

"You ought to have the place of honor, Captain Littlepage," I
said.


"A happy, rural seat of various views,"

he quoted, as he gazed out into the sunshine and up the long wooded
shore. Then he glanced at me, and looked all about him as pleased
as a child.

"My quotation was from Paradise Lost: the greatest of poems,
I suppose you know?" and I nodded. "There's nothing that ranks, to
my mind, with Paradise Lost; it's all lofty, all lofty," he
continued. "Shakespeare was a great poet; he copied life, but you
have to put up with a great deal of low talk."

I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that
Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading; she
had also made dark reference to his having "spells" of some
unexplainable nature. I could not help wondering what errand had
brought him out in search of me. There was something quite
charming in his appearance: it was a face thin and delicate with
refinement, but worn into appealing lines, as if he had suffered
from loneliness and misapprehension. He looked, with his
careful precision of dress, as if he were the object of cherishing
care on the part of elderly unmarried sisters, but I knew Mari'
Harris to be a very common-place, inelegant person, who would have
no such standards; it was plain that the captain was his own
attentive valet. He sat looking at me expectantly. I could not
help thinking that, with his queer head and length of thinness, he
was made to hop along the road of life rather than to walk. The
captain was very grave indeed, and I bade my inward spirit keep
close to discretion.

"Poor Mrs. Begg has gone," I ventured to say. I still wore my
Sunday gown by way of showing respect.

"She has gone," said the captain,--"very easy at the last, I
was informed; she slipped away as if she were glad of the
opportunity."

I thought of the Countess of Carberry, and felt that history
repeated itself.

"She was one of the old stock," continued Captain Littlepage,
with touching sincerity. "She was very much looked up to in this
town, and will be missed."

I wondered, as I looked at him, if he had sprung from a line
of ministers; he had the refinement of look and air of command
which are the heritage of the old ecclesiastical families of New
England. But as Darwin says in his autobiography, "there is no
such king as a sea-captain; he is greater even than a king or a
schoolmaster!"

Captain Littlepage moved his chair out of the wake of the
sunshine, and still sat looking at me. I began to be very eager to
know upon what errand he had come.

"It may be found out some o' these days," he said earnestly.
"We may know it all, the next step; where Mrs. Begg is now, for
instance. Certainty, not conjecture, is what we all desire."

"I suppose we shall know it all some day," said I.

"We shall know it while yet below," insisted the captain, with
a flush of impatience on his thin cheeks. "We have not looked for
truth in the right direction. I know what I speak of; those who
have laughed at me little know how much reason my ideas are based
upon." He waved his hand toward the village below. "In that
handful of houses they fancy that they comprehend the universe."

I smiled, and waited for him to go on.

"I am an old man, as you can see," he continued, "and I have
been a shipmaster the greater part of my life,--forty-three years
in all. You may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age."

He did not look so old, and I hastened to say so.

"You must have left the sea a good many years ago, then,
Captain Littlepage?" I said.

"I should have been serviceable at least five or six years
more," he answered. "My acquaintance with certain--my experience
upon a certain occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do
not mind telling you that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest
discoveries that man has ever made."

Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense
of his sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and
I asked to hear more with all the deference I really felt. A
swallow flew into the schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird
were after it, and beat itself against the walls for a minute, and
escaped again to the open air; but Captain Littlepage took no
notice whatever of the flurry.

"I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London
docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's
Bay," said the captain earnestly. "We were delayed in lading, and
baffled by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-
about and across. Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when I
made port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern
waters with such a vessel and such a crew as I had. They cared for
nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but my first mate was
a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being frozen in there
until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could to get
clear of Hudson's Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of the
vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full-rigged
ship, called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I
meant it should be my last v'y'ge in her, and so it proved. She
had been an excellent vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her
I can't say so much."

"Then you were wrecked?" I asked, as he made a long pause.

"I wa'n't caught astern o' the lighter by any fault of mine,"
said the captain gloomily. "We left Fort Churchill and run out
into the Bay with a light pair o' heels; but I had been vexed to
death with their red-tape rigging at the company's office, and
chilled with stayin' on deck an' tryin' to hurry up things, and
when we were well out o' sight o' land, headin' for Hudson's
Straits, I had a bad turn o' some sort o' fever, and had to stay
below. The days were getting short, and we made good runs, all
well on board but me, and the crew done their work by dint of hard
driving."

I began to find this unexpected narrative a little dull.
Captain Littlepage spoke with a kind of slow correctness that
lacked the longshore high flavor to which I had grown used; but I
listened respectfully while he explained the winds having become
contrary, and talked on in a dreary sort of way about his voyage,
the bad weather, and the disadvantages he was under in the
lightness of his ship, which bounced about like a chip in a
bucket, and would not answer the rudder or properly respond to the
most careful setting of sails.

"So there we were blowin' along anyways," he complained; but
looking at me at this moment, and seeing that my thoughts were
unkindly wandering, he ceased to speak.

"It was a hard life at sea in those days, I am sure," said I,
with redoubled interest.

"It was a dog's life," said the poor old gentleman, quite
reassured, "but it made men of those who followed it. I see a
change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers
now, small and poor as 'tis, who once would have followed the sea,
every lazy soul of 'em. There is no occupation so fit for just
that class o' men who never get beyond the fo'cas'le. I view it,
in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful
ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no
knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled
newspaper. In the old days, a good part o' the best men here knew
a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them. They
saw the world for themselves, and like's not their wives and
children saw it with them. They may not have had the best of
knowledge to carry with 'em sight-seein', but they were some
acquainted with foreign lands an' their laws, an' could see outside
the battle for town clerk here in Dunnet; they got some sense o'
proportion. Yes, they lived more dignified, and their houses were
better within an' without. Shipping's a terrible loss to this part
o' New England from a social point o' view, ma'am."

"I have thought of that myself," I returned, with my interest
quite awakened. "It accounts for the change in a great many
things,--the sad disappearance of sea-captains,--doesn't it?"

"A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading," said my
companion, brightening still more, and taking on a most touching
air of unreserve. "A captain is not expected to be familiar with
his crew, and for company's sake in dull days and nights he turns
to his book. Most of us old shipmasters came to know 'most
everything about something; one would take to readin' on farming
topics, and some were great on medicine,--but Lord help their poor
crews!--or some were all for history, and now and then there'd be
one like me that gave his time to the poets. I was well acquainted
with a shipmaster that was all for bees an' beekeepin'; and if you
met him in port and went aboard, he'd sit and talk a terrible while
about their havin' so much information, and the money that could be
made out of keepin' 'em. He was one of the smartest captains that
ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle,
a great bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle's beehive. There
was old Cap'n Jameson: he had notions of Solomon's Temple, and made
a very handsome little model of the same, right from the Scripture
measurements, same's other sailors make little ships and design new
tricks of rigging and all that. No, there's nothing to take the
place of shipping in a place like ours. These bicycles offend me
dreadfully; they don't afford no real opportunities of experience
such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when folks left home in the
old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they
stayed there and had some pride in it. There's no large-minded way
of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule everything;
we're all turned upside down and going back year by year."

"Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not," said I, trying to
soothe his feelings.

There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the
noise of the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange
warning wave that gives notice of the turn of the tide. A late
golden robin, with the most joyful and eager of voices, was singing
close by in a thicket of wild roses.




VI


The Waiting Place

"HOW DID YOU manage with the rest of that rough voyage on the
Minerva?" I asked.

"I shall be glad to explain to you," said Captain Littlepage,
forgetting his grievances for the moment. "If I had a map at hand
I could explain better. We were driven to and fro 'way up toward
what we used to call Parry's Discoveries, and lost our bearings.
It was thick and foggy, and at last I lost my ship; she drove on a
rock, and we managed to get ashore on what I took to be a barren
island, the few of us that were left alive. When she first struck,
the sea was somewhat calmer than it had been, and most of the crew,
against orders, manned the long-boat and put off in a hurry, and
were never heard of more. Our own boat upset, but the carpenter
kept himself and me above water, and we drifted in. I had no
strength to call upon after my recent fever, and laid down to die;
but he found the tracks of a man and dog the second day, and
got along the shore to one of those far missionary stations that
the Moravians support. They were very poor themselves, and in
distress; 'twas a useless place. There were but few Esquimaux left
in that region. There we remained for some time, and I became
acquainted with strange events.

The captain lifted his head and gave me a questioning glance.
I could not help noticing that the dulled look in his eyes had
gone, and there was instead a clear intentness that made them seem
dark and piercing.

"There was a supply ship expected, and the pastor, an
excellent Christian man, made no doubt that we should get passage
in her. He was hoping that orders would come to break up the
station; but everything was uncertain, and we got on the best we
could for a while. We fished, and helped the people in other ways;
there was no other way of paying our debts. I was taken to the
pastor's house until I got better; but they were crowded, and I
felt myself in the way, and made excuse to join with an old seaman,
a Scotchman, who had built him a warm cabin, and had room in it for
another. He was looked upon with regard, and had stood by the
pastor in some troubles with the people. He had been on one of
those English exploring parties that found one end of the road to
the north pole, but never could find the other. We lived like dogs
in a kennel, or so you'd thought if you had seen the hut from the
outside; but the main thing was to keep warm; there were piles of
bird-skins to lie on, and he'd made him a good bunk, and there was
another for me. 'Twas dreadful dreary waitin' there; we begun to
think the supply steamer was lost, and my poor ship broke up and
strewed herself all along the shore. We got to watching on the
headlands; my men and me knew the people were short of supplies and
had to pinch themselves. It ought to read in the Bible, 'Man
cannot live by fish alone,' if they'd told the truth of things;
'taint bread that wears the worst on you! First part of the time,
old Gaffett, that I lived with, seemed speechless, and I didn't
know what to make of him, nor he of me, I dare say; but as we got
acquainted, I found he'd been through more disasters than I had,
and had troubles that wa'n't going to let him live a great while.
It used to ease his mind to talk to an understanding person, so we
used to sit and talk together all day, if it rained or blew so that
we couldn't get out. I'd got a bad blow on the back of my head at
the time we came ashore, and it pained me at times, and my strength
was broken, anyway; I've never been so able since."

Captain Littlepage fell into a reverie.

"Then I had the good of my reading," he explained presently.
"I had no books; the pastor spoke but little English, and all his
books were foreign; but I used to say over all I could remember.
The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a
man. I was well acquainted with the works of Milton, but up there
it did seem to me as if Shakespeare was the king; he has his sea
terms very accurate, and some beautiful passages were calming to
the mind. I could say them over until I shed tears; there was
nothing beautiful to me in that place but the stars above and those
passages of verse.

"Gaffett was always brooding and brooding, and talking to
himself; he was afraid he should never get away, and it preyed upon
his mind. He thought when I got home I could interest the
scientific men in his discovery: but they're all taken up with
their own notions; some didn't even take pains to answer the
letters I wrote. You observe that I said this crippled man Gaffett
had been shipped on a voyage of discovery. I now tell you that the
ship was lost on its return, and only Gaffett and two officers were
saved off the Greenland coast, and he had knowledge later that
those men never got back to England; the brig they shipped on was
run down in the night. So no other living soul had the facts, and
he gave them to me. There is a strange sort of a country 'way up
north beyond the ice, and strange folks living in it. Gaffett
believed it was the next world to this."

"What do you mean, Captain Littlepage?" I exclaimed. The old
man was bending forward and whispering; he looked over his shoulder
before he spoke the last sentence.

"To hear old Gaffett tell about it was something awful," he
said, going on with his story quite steadily after the moment of
excitement had passed. "'Twas first a tale of dogs and sledges,
and cold and wind and snow. Then they begun to find the ice grow
rotten; they had been frozen in, and got into a current flowing
north, far up beyond Fox Channel, and they took to their boats when
the ship got crushed, and this warm current took them out of sight
of the ice, and into a great open sea; and they still followed it
due north, just the very way they had planned to go. Then they
struck a coast that wasn't laid down or charted, but the cliffs
were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and struck
across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower;
they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight
of something that looked like a great town. 'For God's sake,
Gaffett!' said I, the first time he told me. 'You don't mean a
town two degrees farther north than ships had ever been?' for he'd
got their course marked on an old chart that he'd pieced out at the
top; but he insisted upon it, and told it over and over again, to
be sure I had it straight to carry to those who would be
interested. There was no snow and ice, he said, after they had
sailed some days with that warm current, which seemed to come right
from under the ice that they'd been pinched up in and had
been crossing on foot for weeks."

"But what about the town?" I asked. "Did they get to the
town?"

"They did," said the captain, "and found inhabitants; 'twas an
awful condition of things. It appeared, as near as Gaffett could
express it, like a place where there was neither living nor dead.
They could see the place when they were approaching it by sea
pretty near like any town, and thick with habitations; but all at
once they lost sight of it altogether, and when they got close
inshore they could see the shapes of folks, but they never could
get near them,--all blowing gray figures that would pass along
alone, or sometimes gathered in companies as if they were watching.
The men were frightened at first, but the shapes never came near
them,--it was as if they blew back; and at last they all got bold
and went ashore, and found birds' eggs and sea fowl, like any wild
northern spot where creatures were tame and folks had never been,
and there was good water. Gaffett said that he and another man
came near one o' the fog-shaped men that was going along slow with
the look of a pack on his back, among the rocks, an' they chased
him; but, Lord! he flittered away out o' sight like a leaf the wind
takes with it, or a piece of cobweb. They would make as if they
talked together, but there was no sound of voices, and 'they acted
as if they didn't see us, but only felt us coming towards them,'
says Gaffett one day, trying to tell the particulars. They
couldn't see the town when they were ashore. One day the captain
and the doctor were gone till night up across the high land where
the town had seemed to be, and they came back at night beat out and
white as ashes, and wrote and wrote all next day in their
notebooks, and whispered together full of excitement, and they were
sharp-spoken with the men when they offered to ask any questions.

"Then there came a day," said Captain Littlepage, leaning
toward me with a strange look in his eyes, and whispering quickly.
"The men all swore they wouldn't stay any longer; the man on watch
early in the morning gave the alarm, and they all put off in the
boat and got a little way out to sea. Those folks, or whatever
they were, come about 'em like bats; all at once they raised
incessant armies, and come as if to drive 'em back to sea. They
stood thick at the edge o' the water like the ridges o' grim war;
no thought o' flight, none of retreat. Sometimes a standing fight,
then soaring on main wing tormented all the air. And when they'd
got the boat out o' reach o' danger, Gaffett said they looked back,
and there was the town again, standing up just as they'd seen it
first, comin' on the coast. Say what you might, they all believed
'twas a kind of waiting-place between this world an' the next."

The captain had sprung to his feet in his excitement, and made
excited gestures, but he still whispered huskily.

"Sit down, sir," I said as quietly as I could, and he sank
into his chair quite spent.

"Gaffett thought the officers were hurrying home to report and
to fit out a new expedition when they were all lost. At the time,
the men got orders not to talk over what they had seen," the old
man explained presently in a more natural tone.

"Weren't they all starving, and wasn't it a mirage or
something of that sort?" I ventured to ask. But he looked at me
blankly.

"Gaffett had got so that his mind ran on nothing else," he
went on. "The ship's surgeon let fall an opinion to the captain,
one day, that 'twas some condition o' the light and the magnetic
currents that let them see those folks. 'Twa'n't a right-feeling
part of the world, anyway; they had to battle with the compass to
make it serve, an' everything seemed to go wrong. Gaffett had
worked it out in his own mind that they was all common ghosts, but
the conditions were unusual favorable for seeing them. He was
always talking about the Ge'graphical Society, but he never took
proper steps, as I viewed it now, and stayed right there at the
mission. He was a good deal crippled, and thought they'd confine
him in some jail of a hospital. He said he was waiting to find the
right men to tell, somebody bound north. Once in a while they
stopped there to leave a mail or something. He was set in his
notions, and let two or three proper explorin' expeditions go by
him because he didn't like their looks; but when I was there he had
got restless, fearin' he might be taken away or something. He had
all his directions written out straight as a string to give the
right ones. I wanted him to trust 'em to me, so I might have
something to show, but he wouldn't. I suppose he's dead now. I
wrote to him an' I done all I could. 'Twill be a great exploit
some o' these days."

I assented absent-mindedly, thinking more just then of my
companion's alert, determined look and the seafaring, ready aspect
that had come to his face; but at this moment there fell a sudden
change, and the old, pathetic, scholarly look returned. Behind me
hung a map of North America, and I saw, as I turned a little, that
his eyes were fixed upon the northernmost regions and their careful
recent outlines with a look of bewilderment.




VII


The Outer Island


GAFFETT WITH HIS good bunk and the bird-skins, the story of
the wreck of the Minerva, the human-shaped creatures of fog and
cobweb, the great words of Milton with which he described their
onslaught upon the crew, all this moving tale had such an air of
truth that I could not argue with Captain Littlepage. The old man
looked away from the map as if it had vaguely troubled him, and
regarded me appealingly.

"We were just speaking of"--and he stopped. I saw that he had
suddenly forgotten his subject.

"There were a great many persons at the funeral," I hastened
to say.

"Oh yes," the captain answered, with satisfaction. "All
showed respect who could. The sad circumstances had for a moment
slipped my mind. Yes, Mrs. Begg will be very much missed. She was
a capital manager for her husband when he was at sea. Oh yes,
shipping is a very great loss." And he sighed heavily. "There was
hardly a man of any standing who didn't interest himself in some
way in navigation. It always gave credit to a town. I call it
low-water mark now here in Dunnet."

He rose with dignity to take leave, and asked me to stop at
his house some day, when he would show me some outlandish things
that he had brought home from sea. I was familiar with the subject
of the decadence of shipping interests in all its affecting
branches, having been already some time in Dunnet, and I felt sure
that Captain Littlepage's mind had now returned to a safe level.

As we came down the hill toward the village our ways divided,
and when I had seen the old captain well started on a smooth piece
of sidewalk which would lead him to his own door, we parted, the
best of friends. "Step in some afternoon," he said, as
affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee
shore of age like himself. I turned toward home, and presently met
Mrs. Todd coming toward me with an anxious expression.

"I see you sleevin' the old gentleman down the hill," she
suggested.

"Yes. I've had a very interesting afternoon with him," I
answered, and her face brightened.

"Oh, then he's all right. I was afraid 'twas one o' his
flighty spells, an' Mari' Harris wouldn't"--

"Yes," I returned, smiling, "he has been telling me some old
stories, but we talked about Mrs. Begg and the funeral beside, and
Paradise Lost."

"I expect he got tellin' of you some o' his great narratives,"
she answered, looking at me shrewdly. "Funerals always sets him
goin'. Some o' them tales hangs together toler'ble well," she
added, with a sharper look than before. "An' he's been a great
reader all his seafarin' days. Some thinks he overdid, and
affected his head, but for a man o' his years he's amazin' now when
he's at his best. Oh, he used to be a beautiful man!"


We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and
its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the
pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to
embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the
trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the
heights and down to the water's edge.

It had been growing gray and cloudy, like the first evening of
autumn, and a shadow had fallen on the darkening shore. Suddenly,
as we looked, a gleam of golden sunshine struck the outer islands,
and one of them shone out clear in the light, and revealed itself
in a compelling way to our eyes. Mrs. Todd was looking off across
the bay with a face full of affection and interest. The sunburst
upon that outermost island made it seem like a sudden revelation of
the world beyond this which some believe to be so near.

"That's where mother lives," said Mrs. Todd. "Can't we see it
plain? I was brought up out there on Green Island. I know every
rock an' bush on it."

"Your mother!" I exclaimed, with great interest.

"Yes, dear, cert'in; I've got her yet, old's I be. She's one
of them spry, light-footed little women; always was, an' light-
hearted, too," answered Mrs. Todd, with satisfaction. "She's seen
all the trouble folks can see, without it's her last sickness; an'
she's got a word of courage for everybody. Life ain't spoilt her
a mite. She's eighty-six an' I'm sixty-seven, and I've seen the
time I've felt a good sight the oldest. 'Land sakes alive!' says
she, last time I was out to see her. 'How you do lurch about
steppin' into a bo't?' I laughed so I liked to have gone right
over into the water; an' we pushed off, an' left her laughin' there
on the shore."

The light had faded as we watched. Mrs. Todd had mounted a
gray rock, and stood there grand and architectural, like a
caryatide. Presently she stepped down, and we continued our
way homeward.

"You an' me, we'll take a bo't an' go out some day and see
mother," she promised me. "'Twould please her very much,
an' there's one or two sca'ce herbs grows better on the island than
anywhere else. I ain't seen their like nowheres here on the main."

"Now I'm goin' right down to get us each a mug o' my beer,"
she announced as we entered the house, "an' I believe I'll sneak in
a little mite o' camomile. Goin' to the funeral an' all, I feel to
have had a very wearin' afternoon."

I heard her going down into the cool little cellar, and then
there was considerable delay. When she returned, mug in hand, I
noticed the taste of camomile, in spite of my protest; but its
flavor was disguised by some other herb that I did not know, and
she stood over me until I drank it all and said that I liked it.

"I don't give that to everybody," said Mrs. Todd kindly; and
I felt for a moment as if it were part of a spell and incantation,
and as if my enchantress would now begin to look like the cobweb
shapes of the arctic town. Nothing happened but a quiet evening
and some delightful plans that we made about going to Green Island,
and on the morrow there was the clear sunshine and blue sky of
another day.




VIII


Green Island

ONE MORNING, very early, I heard Mrs. Todd in the garden outside my
window. By the unusual loudness of her remarks to a passer-by, and
the notes of a familiar hymn which she sang as she worked among the
herbs, and which came as if directed purposely to the sleepy ears
of my consciousness, I knew that she wished I would wake up and
come and speak to her.

In a few minutes she responded to a morning voice from behind
the blinds. "I expect you're goin' up to your schoolhouse to pass
all this pleasant day; yes, I expect you're goin' to be dreadful
busy," she said despairingly.

"Perhaps not," said I. "Why, what's going to be the matter
with you, Mrs. Todd?" For I supposed that she was tempted by the
fine weather to take one of her favorite expeditions along the
shore pastures to gather herbs and simples, and would like to have
me keep the house.

"No, I don't want to go nowhere by land," she answered
gayly,--"no, not by land; but I don't know's we shall have a better
day all the rest of the summer to go out to Green Island an' see
mother. I waked up early thinkin' of her. The wind's light
northeast,--'twill take us right straight out, an' this time o'
year it's liable to change round southwest an' fetch us home
pretty, 'long late in the afternoon. Yes, it's goin' to be a good
day."

"Speak to the captain and the Bowden boy, if you see anybody
going by toward the landing," said I. "We'll take the big boat."

"Oh, my sakes! now you let me do things my way," said Mrs.
Todd scornfully. "No, dear, we won't take no big bo't. I'll just
git a handy dory, an' Johnny Bowden an' me, we'll man her
ourselves. I don't want no abler bo't than a good dory, an' a nice
light breeze ain't goin' to make no sea; an' Johnny's my cousin's
son,--mother'll like to have him come; an' he'll be down to the
herrin' weirs all the time we're there, anyway; we don't want to
carry no men folks havin' to be considered every minute an' takin'
up all our time. No, you let me do; we'll just slip out an' see
mother by ourselves. I guess what breakfast you'll want's about
ready now."

I had become well acquainted with Mrs. Todd as landlady, herb-
gatherer, and rustic philosopher; we had been discreet fellow-
passengers once or twice when I had sailed up the coast to a larger
town than Dunnet Landing to do some shopping; but I was yet to
become acquainted with her as a mariner. An hour later we pushed
off from the landing in the desired dory. The tide was just on the
turn, beginning to fall, and several friends and acquaintances
stood along the side of the dilapidated wharf and cheered us by
their words and evident interest. Johnny Bowden and I were both
rowing in haste to get out where we could catch the breeze and put
up the small sail which lay clumsily furled along the gunwale.
Mrs. Todd sat aft, a stern and unbending lawgiver.

"You better let her drift; we'll get there 'bout as quick; the
tide'll take her right out from under these old buildin's; there's
plenty wind outside."

"Your bo't ain't trimmed proper, Mis' Todd!" exclaimed a voice
from shore. "You're lo'ded so the bo't'll drag; you can't git her
before the wind, ma'am. You set 'midships, Mis' Todd, an' let the
boy hold the sheet 'n' steer after he gits the sail up; you won't
never git out to Green Island that way. She's lo'ded bad, your
bo't is,--she's heavy behind's she is now!"

Mrs. Todd turned with some difficulty and regarded the anxious
adviser, my right oar flew out of water, and we seemed about to
capsize. "That you, Asa? Good-mornin'," she said politely.
"I al'ays liked the starn seat best. When'd you git back from up
country?"

This allusion to Asa's origin was not lost upon the rest of
the company. We were some little distance from shore, but we could
hear a chuckle of laughter, and Asa, a person who was too ready
with his criticism and advice on every possible subject, turned and
walked indignantly away.

When we caught the wind we were soon on our seaward course,
and only stopped to underrun a trawl, for the floats of which Mrs.
Todd looked earnestly, explaining that her mother might not be
prepared for three extra to dinner; it was her brother's trawl, and
she meant to just run her eye along for the right sort of a little
haddock. I leaned over the boat's side with great interest and
excitement, while she skillfully handled the long line of hooks,
and made scornful remarks upon worthless, bait-consuming creatures
of the sea as she reviewed them and left them on the trawl or shook
them off into the waves. At last we came to what she pronounced a
proper haddock, and having taken him on board and ended his life
resolutely, we went our way.

As we sailed along I listened to an increasingly delightful
commentary upon the islands, some of them barren rocks, or at best
giving sparse pasturage for sheep in the early summer. On one of
these an eager little flock ran to the water's edge and bleated at
us so affectingly that I would willingly have stopped; but Mrs.
Todd steered away from the rocks, and scolded at the sheep's mean
owner, an acquaintance of hers, who grudged the little salt and
still less care which the patient creatures needed. The hot
midsummer sun makes prisons of these small islands that are a
paradise in early June, with their cool springs and short thick-
growing grass. On a larger island, farther out to sea, my
entertaining companion showed me with glee the small houses of two
farmers who shared the island between them, and declared that for
three generations the people had not spoken to each other even in
times of sickness or death or birth. "When the news come that the
war was over, one of 'em knew it a week, and never stepped across
his wall to tell the other," she said. "There, they enjoy it;
they've got to have somethin' to interest 'em in such a place; 'tis
a good deal more tryin' to be tied to folks you don't like than
'tis to be alone. Each of 'em tell the neighbors their wrongs;
plenty likes to hear and tell again; them as fetch a bone'll carry
one, an' so they keep the fight a-goin'. I must say I like variety
myself; some folks washes Monday an' irons Tuesday the whole year
round, even if the circus is goin' by!"

A long time before we landed at Green Island we could see the
small white house, standing high like a beacon, where Mrs. Todd was
born and where her mother lived, on a green slope above the
water, with dark spruce woods still higher. There were crops in
the fields, which we presently distinguished from one another.
Mrs. Todd examined them while we were still far at sea. "Mother's
late potatoes looks backward; ain't had rain enough so far," she
pronounced her opinion. "They look weedier than what they call
Front Street down to Cowper Centre. I expect brother William is so
occupied with his herrin' weirs an' servin' out bait to the
schooners that he don't think once a day of the land."

"What's the flag for, up above the spruces there behind the
house?" I inquired, with eagerness.

"Oh, that's the sign for herrin'," she explained kindly, while
Johnny Bowden regarded me with contemptuous surprise. "When they
get enough for schooners they raise that flag; an' when 'tis a poor
catch in the weir pocket they just fly a little signal down by the
shore, an' then the small bo'ts comes and get enough an' over for
their trawls. There, look! there she is: mother sees us; she's
wavin' somethin' out o' the fore door! She'll be to the landin'-
place quick's we are."

I looked, and could see a tiny flutter in the doorway, but a
quicker signal had made its way from the heart on shore to the
heart on the sea.

"How do you suppose she knows it is me?" said Mrs. Todd, with
a tender smile on her broad face. "There, you never get over bein'
a child long's you have a mother to go to. Look at the chimney,
now; she's gone right in an' brightened up the fire. Well, there,
I'm glad mother's well; you'll enjoy seein' her very much."

Mrs. Todd leaned back into her proper position, and the boat
trimmed again. She took a firmer grasp of the sheet, and gave an
impatient look up at the gaff and the leech of the little sail, and
twitched the sheet as if she urged the wind like a horse. There
came at once a fresh gust, and we seemed to have doubled our speed.
Soon we were near enough to see a tiny figure with handkerchiefed
head come down across the field and stand waiting for us at the
cove above a curve of pebble beach.

Presently the dory grated on the pebbles, and Johnny Bowden,
who had been kept in abeyance during the voyage, sprang out and
used manful exertions to haul us up with the next wave, so that
Mrs. Todd could make a dry landing.

"You don that very well," she said, mounting to her feet, and
coming ashore somewhat stiffly, but with great dignity, refusing
our outstretched hands, and returning to possess herself of a bag
which had lain at her feet.

"Well, mother, here I be!" she announced with indifference;
but they stood and beamed in each other's faces.

"Lookin' pretty well for an old lady, ain't she?" said Mrs.
Todd's mother, turning away from her daughter to speak to me. She
was a delightful little person herself, with bright eyes and an
affectionate air of expectation like a child on a holiday. You
felt as if Mrs. Blackett were an old and dear friend before you let
go her cordial hand. We all started together up the hill.

"Now don't you haste too fast, mother," said Mrs. Todd
warningly; "'tis a far reach o' risin' ground to the fore door, and
you won't set an' get your breath when you're once there, but go
trotting about. Now don't you go a mite faster than we proceed
with this bag an' basket. Johnny, there, 'll fetch up the haddock.
I just made one stop to underrun William's trawl till I come to
jes' such a fish's I thought you'd want to make one o' your nice
chowders of. I've brought an onion with me that was layin' about
on the window-sill at home."

"That's just what I was wantin'," said the hostess. "I give
a sigh when you spoke o' chowder, knowin' my onions was out.
William forgot to replenish us last time he was to the Landin'.
Don't you haste so yourself Almiry, up this risin' ground. I hear
you commencin' to wheeze a'ready."

This mild revenge seemed to afford great pleasure to both
giver and receiver. They laughed a little, and looked at each
other affectionately, and then at me. Mrs. Todd considerately
paused, and faced about to regard the wide sea view. I was glad to
stop, being more out of breath than either of my companions, and I
prolonged the halt by asking the names of the neighboring islands.
There was a fine breeze blowing, which we felt more there on the
high land than when we were running before it in the dory.

"Why, this ain't that kitten I saw when I was out last, the
one that I said didn't appear likely?" exclaimed Mrs. Todd as we
went our way.

"That's the one, Almiry," said her mother. "She always had a
likely look to me, an' she's right after business. I never see
such a mouser for one of her age. If't wan't for William, I never
should have housed that other dronin' old thing so long; but he
sets by her on account of her havin' a bob tail. I don't deem it
advisable to maintain cats just on account of their havin' bob
tails; they're like all other curiosities, good for them that wants
to see 'm twice. This kitten catches mice for both, an' keeps me
respectable as I ain't been for a year. She's a real understandin'
little help, this kitten is. I picked her from among five Miss
Augusta Pernell had over to Burnt Island," said the old woman,
trudging along with the kitten close at her skirts. "Augusta, she
says to me, 'Why, Mis' Blackett, you've took and homeliest;'
and, says I, 'I've got the smartest; I'm satisfied.'"

"I'd trust nobody sooner'n you to pick out a kitten, mother,"
said the daughter handsomely, and we went on in peace and harmony.

The house was just before us now, on a green level that looked
as if a huge hand had scooped it out of the long green field we had
been ascending. A little way above, the dark, spruce woods began
to climb the top of the hill and cover the seaward slopes of the
island. There was just room for the small farm and the forest; we
looked down at the fish-house and its rough sheds, and the weirs
stretching far out into the water. As we looked upward, the tops
of the firs came sharp against the blue sky. There was a great
stretch of rough pasture-land round the shoulder of the island to
the eastward, and here were all the thick-scattered gray rocks that
kept their places, and the gray backs of many sheep that forever
wandered and fed on the thin sweet pasturage that fringed the
ledges and made soft hollows and strips of green turf like growing
velvet. I could see the rich green of bayberry bushes here and
there, where the rocks made room. The air was very sweet; one
could not help wishing to be a citizen of such a complete and tiny
continent and home of fisherfolk.

The house was broad and clean, with a roof that looked heavy
on its low walls. It was one of the houses that seem firm-rooted
in the ground, as if they were two-thirds below the surface, like
icebergs. The front door stood hospitably open in expectation of
company, and an orderly vine grew at each side; but our path led to
the kitchen door at the house-end, and there grew a mass of gay
flowers and greenery, as if they had been swept together by some
diligent garden broom into a tangled heap: there were portulacas
all along under the lower step and straggling off into the grass,
and clustering mallows that crept as near as they dared, like poor
relations. I saw the bright eyes and brainless little heads of two
half-grown chickens who were snuggled down among the mallows as if
they had been chased away from the door more than once, and
expected to be again.

"It seems kind o' formal comin' in this way," said Mrs. Todd
impulsively, as we passed the flowers and came to the front
doorstep; but she was mindful of the proprieties, and walked before
us into the best room on the left.

"Why, mother, if you haven't gone an' turned the carpet!" she
exclaimed, with something in her voice that spoke of awe and
admiration. "When'd you get to it? I s'pose Mis' Addicks come
over an' helped you, from White Island Landing?"

"No, she didn't," answered the old woman, standing proudly
erect, and making the most of a great moment. "I done it all
myself with William's help. He had a spare day, an' took right
holt with me; an' 'twas all well beat on the grass, an' turned, an'
put down again afore we went to bed. I ripped an' sewed over two
o' them long breadths. I ain't had such a good night's sleep for
two years."

"There, what do you think o' havin' such a mother as that for
eighty-six year old?" said Mrs. Todd, standing before us like a
large figure of Victory.

As for the mother, she took on a sudden look of youth; you
felt as if she promised a great future, and was beginning, not
ending, her summers and their happy toils.

"My, my!" exclaimed Mrs. Todd. "I couldn't ha' done it
myself, I've got to own it."

"I was much pleased to have it off my mind," said Mrs.
Blackett, humbly; "the more so because along at the first of the
next week I wasn't very well. I suppose it may have been the
change of weather."

Mrs. Todd could not resist a significant glance at me, but,
with charming sympathy, she forbore to point the lesson or to
connect this illness with its apparent cause. She loomed larger
than ever in the little old-fashioned best room, with its few
pieces of good furniture and pictures of national interest. The
green paper curtains were stamped with conventional landscapes of
a foreign order,--castles on inaccessible crags, and lovely lakes
with steep wooded shores; under-foot the treasured carpet was
covered thick with home-made rugs. There were empty glass lamps
and crystallized bouquets of grass and some fine shells on the
narrow mantelpiece.

"I was married in this room," said Mrs. Todd unexpectedly; and
I heard her give a sigh after she had spoken, as if she could not
help the touch of regret that would forever come with all her
thoughts of happiness.

"We stood right there between the windows," she added, "and
the minister stood here. William wouldn't come in. He was always
odd about seein' folks, just's he is now. I run to meet 'em from
a child, an' William, he'd take an' run away."

"I've been the gainer," said the old mother cheerfully.
"William has been son an' daughter both since you was married off
the island. He's been 'most too satisfied to stop at home 'long o'
his old mother, but I always tell 'em I'm the gainer."

We were all moving toward the kitchen as if by common
instinct. The best room was too suggestive of serious occasions,
and the shades were all pulled down to shut out the summer
light and air. It was indeed a tribute to Society to find a room
set apart for her behests out there on so apparently neighborless
and remote an island. Afternoon visits and evening festivals must
be few in such a bleak situation at certain seasons of the year,
but Mrs. Blackett was of those who do not live to themselves, and
who have long since passed the line that divides mere self-concern
from a valued share in whatever Society can give and take. There
were those of her neighbors who never had taken the trouble to
furnish a best room, but Mrs. Blackett was one who knew the uses of
a parlor.

"Yes, do come right out into the old kitchen; I shan't make
any stranger of you," she invited us pleasantly, after we had been
properly received in the room appointed to formality. "I expect
Almiry, here, 'll be driftin' out 'mongst the pasture-weeds quick's
she can find a good excuse. 'Tis hot now. You'd better content
yourselves till you get nice an' rested, an' 'long after dinner the
sea-breeze 'll spring up, an' then you can take your walks, an' go
up an' see the prospect from the big ledge. Almiry'll want to show
off everything there is. Then I'll get you a good cup o' tea
before you start to go home. The days are plenty long now."

While we were talking in the best room the selected fish had
been mysteriously brought up from the shore, and lay all cleaned
and ready in an earthen crock on the table.

"I think William might have just stopped an' said a word,"
remarked Mrs. Todd, pouting with high affront as she caught sight
of it. "He's friendly enough when he comes ashore, an' was
remarkable social the last time, for him."

"He ain't disposed to be very social with the ladies,"
explained William's mother, with a delightful glance at me, as if
she counted upon my friendship and tolerance. "He's very
particular, and he's all in his old fishin'-clothes to-day. He'll
want me to tell him everything you said and done, after you've
gone. William has very deep affections. He'll want to see you,
Almiry. Yes, I guess he'll be in by an' by."

"I'll search for him by 'n' by, if he don't," proclaimed Mrs.
Todd, with an air of unalterable resolution. "I know all of his
burrows down 'long the shore. I'll catch him by hand 'fore he
knows it. I've got some business with William, anyway. I brought
forty-two cents with me that was due him for them last lobsters he
brought in."

"You can leave it with me," suggested the little old mother,
who was already stepping about among her pots and pans in the
pantry, and preparing to make the chowder.

I became possessed of a sudden unwonted curiosity in regard to
William, and felt that half the pleasure of my visit would be lost
if I could not make his interesting acquaintance.




IX


William

MRS. TODD HAD taken the onion out of her basket and laid it down
upon the kitchen table. "There's Johnny Bowden come with us, you
know," she reminded her mother. "He'll be hungry enough to eat his
size."

"I've got new doughnuts, dear," said the little old lady.
"You don't often catch William 'n' me out o' provisions. I expect
you might have chose a somewhat larger fish, but I'll try an' make
it do. I shall have to have a few extra potatoes, but there's a
field full out there, an' the hoe's leanin' against the well-house,
in 'mongst the climbin'-beans." She smiled and gave her daughter
a commanding nod.

"Land sakes alive! Le's blow the horn for William," insisted
Mrs. Todd, with some excitement. "He needn't break his spirit so
far's to come in. He'll know you need him for something
particular, an' then we can call to him as he comes up the path.
I won't put him to no pain."

Mrs. Blackett's old face, for the first time, wore a look of
trouble, and I found it necessary to counteract the teasing spirit
of Almira. It was too pleasant to stay indoors altogether, even in
such rewarding companionship; besides, I might meet William; and,
straying out presently, I found the hoe by the well-house and an
old splint basket at the woodshed door, and also found my way down
to the field where there was a great square patch of rough, weedy
potato-tops and tall ragweed. One corner was already dug, and I
chose a fat-looking hill where the tops were well withered. There
is all the pleasure that one can have in gold-digging in finding
one's hopes satisfied in the riches of a good hill of potatoes. I
longed to go on; but it did not seem frugal to dig any longer after
my basket was full, and at last I took my hoe by the middle and
lifted the basket to go back up the hill. I was sure that Mrs.
Blackett must be waiting impatiently to slice the potatoes into the
chowder, layer after layer, with the fish.

"You let me take holt o' that basket, ma'am," said the
pleasant, anxious voice behind me.

I turned, startled in the silence of the wide field, and saw
an elderly man, bent in the shoulders as fishermen often are, gray-
headed and clean-shaven, and with a timid air. It was William. He
looked just like his mother, and I had been imagining that he was
large and stout like his sister, Almira Todd; and, strange to say,
my fancy had led me to picture him not far from thirty and a little
loutish. It was necessary instead to pay William the respect due
to age.

I accustomed myself to plain facts on the instant, and we said
good-morning like old friends. The basket was really heavy, and I
put the hoe through its handle and offered him one end; then we
moved easily toward the house together, speaking of the fine
weather and of mackerel which were reported to be striking in all
about the bay. William had been out since three o'clock, and had
taken an extra fare of fish. I could feel that Mrs. Todd's eyes
were upon us as we approached the house, and although I fell behind
in the narrow path, and let William take the basket alone and
precede me at some little distance the rest of the way, I could
plainly hear her greet him.

"Got round to comin' in, didn't you?" she inquired, with
amusement. "Well, now, that's clever. Didn't know's I should see
you to-day, William, an' I wanted to settle an account."

I felt somewhat disturbed and responsible, but when I joined
them they were on most simple and friendly terms. It became
evident that, with William, it was the first step that cost, and
that, having once joined in social interests, he was able to pursue
them with more or less pleasure. He was about sixty, and not
young-looking for his years, yet so undying is the spirit of youth,
and bashfulness has such a power of survival, that I felt all the
time as if one must try to make the occasion easy for some one who
was young and new to the affairs of social life. He asked politely
if I would like to go up to the great ledge while dinner was
getting ready; so, not without a deep sense of pleasure, and a
delighted look of surprise from the two hostesses, we started,
William and I, as if both of us felt much younger than we looked.
Such was the innocence and simplicity of the moment that when I
heard Mrs. Todd laughing behind us in the kitchen I laughed too,
but William did not even blush. I think he was a little deaf, and
he stepped along before me most businesslike and intent upon his
errand.

We went from the upper edge of the field above the house into
a smooth, brown path among the dark spruces. The hot sun brought
out the fragrance of the pitchy bark, and the shade was pleasant as
we climbed the hill. William stopped once or twice to show
me a great wasps'-nest close by, or some fishhawks'-nests below in
a bit of swamp. He picked a few sprigs of late-blooming linnaea as
we came out upon an open bit of pasture at the top of the island,
and gave them to me without speaking, but he knew as well as I that
one could not say half he wished about linnaea. Through this piece
of rough pasture ran a huge shape of stone like the great backbone
of an enormous creature. At the end, near the woods, we could
climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above the
circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and
could see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of
island ground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons. It
gave a sudden sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged
one in,--that sense of liberty in space and time which great
prospects always give.

"There ain't no such view in the world, I expect," said
William proudly, and I hastened to speak my heartfelt tribute of
praise; it was impossible not to feel as if an untraveled boy had
spoken, and yet one loved to have him value his native heath.




X


Where Pennyroyal Grew

WE WERE a little late to dinner, but Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd
were lenient, and we all took our places after William had paused
to wash his hands, like a pious Brahmin, at the well, and put on a
neat blue coat which he took from a peg behind the kitchen door.
Then he resolutely asked a blessing in words that I could not hear,
and we ate the chowder and were thankful. The kitten went round
and round the table, quite erect, and, holding on by her fierce
young claws, she stopped to mew with pathos at each elbow, or
darted off to the open door when a song sparrow forgot himself and
lit in the grass too near. William did not talk much, but his
sister Todd occupied the time and told all the news there was to
tell of Dunnet Landing and its coasts, while the old mother
listened with delight. Her hospitality was something exquisite;
she had the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make
themselves and their houses belong entirely to a guest's
pleasure,--that charming surrender for the moment of themselves and
whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one's
own life that can never be forgotten. Tact is after all a kind of
mindreading, and my hostess held the golden gift. Sympathy is of
the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett's world and mine
were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that final, that
highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness. Sometimes,
as I watched her eager, sweet old face, I wondered why she had been
set to shine on this lonely island of the northern coast. It must
have been to keep the balance true, and make up to all her
scattered and depending neighbors for other things which they may
have lacked.

When we had finished clearing away the old blue plates, and
the kitten had taken care of her share of the fresh haddock, just
as we were putting back the kitchen chairs in their places, Mrs.
Todd said briskly that she must go up into the pasture now to
gather the desired herbs.

"You can stop here an' rest, or you can accompany me," she
announced. "Mother ought to have her nap, and when we come back
she an' William'll sing for you. She admires music," said Mrs.
Todd, turning to speak to her mother.

But Mrs. Blackett tried to say that she couldn't sing as she
used, and perhaps William wouldn't feel like it. She looked tired,
the good old soul, or I should have liked to sit in the peaceful
little house while she slept; I had had much pleasant experience of
pastures already in her daughter's company. But it seemed best to
go with Mrs. Todd, and off we went.

Mrs. Todd carried the gingham bag which she had brought from
home, and a small heavy burden in the bottom made it hang straight
and slender from her hand. The way was steep, and she soon grew
breathless, so that we sat down to rest awhile on a convenient
large stone among the bayberry.

"There, I wanted you to see this,--'tis mother's picture,"
said Mrs. Todd; "'twas taken once when she was up to Portland soon
after she was married. That's me," she added, opening another worn
case, and displaying the full face of the cheerful child she looked
like still in spite of being past sixty. "And here's William an'
father together. I take after father, large and heavy, an' William
is like mother's folks, short an' thin. He ought to have made
something o' himself, bein' a man an' so like mother; but though
he's been very steady to work, an' kept up the farm, an' done his
fishin' too right along, he never had mother's snap an' power o'
seein' things just as they be. He's got excellent judgment, too,"
meditated William's sister, but she could not arrive at any
satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure
in life. "I think it is well to see any one so happy an' makin'
the most of life just as it falls to hand," she said as she began
to put the daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my
hand to see her mother's once more, a most flowerlike face of a
lovely young woman in quaint dress. There was in the eyes a look
of anticipation and joy, a far-off look that sought the horizon;
one often sees it in seafaring families, inherited by girls and
boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea, and are always
watching for distant sails or the first loom of the land. At sea
there is nothing to be seen close by, and this has its counterpart
in a sailor's character, in the large and brave and patient traits
that are developed, the hopeful pleasantness that one loves so in
a seafarer.

When the family pictures were wrapped again in a big
handkerchief, we set forward in a narrow footpath and made our way
to a lonely place that faced northward, where there was more
pasturage and fewer bushes, and we went down to the edge of short
grass above some rocky cliffs where the deep sea broke with a great
noise, though the wind was down and the water looked quiet a little
way from shore. Among the grass grew such pennyroyal as the rest
of the world could not provide. There was a fine fragrance in the
air as we gathered it sprig by sprig and stepped along carefully,
and Mrs. Todd pressed her aromatic nosegay between her hands and
offered it to me again and again.

"There's nothin' like it," she said; "oh no, there's no such
pennyr'yal as this in the state of Maine. It's the right pattern
of the plant, and all the rest I ever see is but an imitation.
Don't it do you good?" And I answered with enthusiasm.

"There, dear, I never showed nobody else but mother where to
find this place; 'tis kind of sainted to me. Nathan, my husband,
an' I used to love this place when we was courtin', and"--she
hesitated, and then spoke softly--"when he was lost, 'twas just off
shore tryin' to get in by the short channel out there between Squaw
Islands, right in sight o' this headland where we'd set an' made
our plans all summer long."

I had never heard her speak of her husband before, but I felt
that we were friends now since she had brought me to this place.

"'Twas but a dream with us," Mrs. Todd said. "I knew it when
he was gone. I knew it"--and she whispered as if she were at
confession--"I knew it afore he started to go to sea. My heart was
gone out o' my keepin' before I ever saw Nathan; but he loved me
well, and he made me real happy, and he died before he ever knew
what he'd had to know if we'd lived long together. 'Tis very
strange about love. No, Nathan never found out, but my heart was
troubled when I knew him first. There's more women likes to be
loved than there is of those that loves. I spent some happy hours
right here. I always liked Nathan, and he never knew. But this
pennyr'yal always reminded me, as I'd sit and gather it and hear
him talkin'--it always would remind me of--the other one."

She looked away from me, and presently rose and went on by
herself. There was something lonely and solitary about her great
determined shape. She might have been Antigone alone on the Theban
plain. It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the
places of great grief and silence. An absolute, archaic grief
possessed this countrywoman; she seemed like a renewal of some
historic soul, with her sorrows and the remoteness of a daily life
busied with rustic simplicities and the scents of primeval herbs.


I was not incompetent at herb-gathering, and after a while,
when I had sat long enough waking myself to new thoughts, and
reading a page of remembrance with new pleasure, I gathered some
bunches, as I was bound to do, and at last we met again higher up
the shore, in the plain every-day world we had left behind when we
went down to the penny-royal plot. As we walked together along the
high edge of the field we saw a hundred sails about the bay and
farther seaward; it was mid-afternoon or after, and the day was
coming to an end.

"Yes, they're all makin' towards the shore,--the small craft
an' the lobster smacks an' all," said my companion. "We must spend
a little time with mother now, just to have our tea, an' then put
for home."

"No matter if we lose the wind at sundown; I can row in with
Johnny," said I; and Mrs. Todd nodded reassuringly and kept to her
steady plod, not quickening her gait even when we saw William come
round the corner of the house as if to look for us, and wave his
hand and disappear.

"Why, William's right on deck; I didn't know's we should see
any more of him!" exclaimed Mrs. Todd. "Now mother'll put the
kettle right on; she's got a good fire goin'." I too could see the
blue smoke thicken, and then we both walked a little faster, while
Mrs. Todd groped in her full bag of herbs to find the
daguerreotypes and be ready to put them in their places.




XI


The Old Singers

WILLIAM WAS sitting on the side door step, and the old mother was
busy making her tea; she gave into my hand an old flowered-glass
tea-caddy.

"William thought you'd like to see this, when he was settin'
the table. My father brought it to my mother from the island
of Tobago; an' here's a pair of beautiful mugs that came with it."
She opened the glass door of a little cupboard beside the chimney.
"These I call my best things, dear," she said. "You'd laugh to see
how we enjoy 'em Sunday nights in winter: we have a real company
tea 'stead o' livin' right along just the same, an' I make
somethin' good for a s'prise an' put on some o' my preserves, an'
we get a'talkin' together an' have real pleasant times."

Mrs. Todd laughed indulgently, and looked to see what I
thought of such childishness.

"I wish I could be here some Sunday evening," said I.

"William an' me'll be talkin' about you an' thinkin' o' this
nice day," said Mrs. Blackett affectionately, and she glanced at
William, and he looked up bravely and nodded. I began to discover
that he and his sister could not speak their deeper feelings before
each other.

"Now I want you an' mother to sing," said Mrs. Todd abruptly,
with an air of command, and I gave William much sympathy in his
evident distress.

"After I've had my cup o' tea, dear," answered the old hostess
cheerfully; and so we sat down and took our cups and made merry
while they lasted. It was impossible not to wish to stay on
forever at Green Island, and I could not help saying so.

"I'm very happy here, both winter an' summer," said old Mrs.
Blackett. "William an' I never wish for any other home, do we,
William? I'm glad you find it pleasant; I wish you'd come an'
stay, dear, whenever you feel inclined. But here's Almiry; I
always think Providence was kind to plot an' have her husband leave
her a good house where she really belonged. She'd been very
restless if she'd had to continue here on Green Island. You wanted
more scope, didn't you, Almiry, an' to live in a large place where
more things grew? Sometimes folks wonders that we don't live
together; perhaps we shall some time," and a shadow of sadness and
apprehension flitted across her face. "The time o' sickness an'
failin' has got to come to all. But Almiry's got an herb that's
good for everything." She smiled as she spoke, and looked bright
again.

"There's some herb that's good for everybody, except for them
that thinks they're sick when they ain't," announced Mrs. Todd,
with a truly professional air of finality. "Come, William, let's
have Sweet Home, an' then mother'll sing Cupid an' the Bee for us."

Then followed a most charming surprise. William mastered his
timidity and began to sing. His voice was a little faint and
frail, like the family daguerreotypes, but it was a tenor voice,
and perfectly true and sweet. I have never heard Home, Sweet Home
sung as touchingly and seriously as he sang it; he seemed to
make it quite new; and when he paused for a moment at the end of
the first line and began the next, the old mother joined him and
they sang together, she missing only the higher notes, where he
seemed to lend his voice to hers for the moment and carry on her
very note and air. It was the silent man's real and only means of
expression, and one could have listened forever, and have asked for
more and more songs of old Scotch and English inheritance and the
best that have lived from the ballad music of the war. Mrs. Todd
kept time visibly, and sometimes audibly, with her ample foot. I
saw the tears in her eyes sometimes, when I could see beyond the
tears in mine. But at last the songs ended and the time came to
say good-by; it was the end of a great pleasure.

Mrs. Blackett, the dear old lady, opened the door of her
bedroom while Mrs. Todd was tying up the herb bag, and William had
gone down to get the boat ready and to blow the horn for Johnny
Bowden, who had joined a roving boat party who were off the shore
lobstering.

I went to the door of the bedroom, and thought how pleasant it
looked, with its pink-and-white patchwork quilt and the brown
unpainted paneling of its woodwork.

"Come right in, dear," she said. "I want you to set down in
my old quilted rockin'-chair there by the window; you'll say it's
the prettiest view in the house. I set there a good deal to rest
me and when I want to read."

There was a worn red Bible on the lightstand, and Mrs.
Blackett's heavy silver-bowed glasses; her thimble was on the
narrow window-ledge, and folded carefully on the table was a thick
striped-cotton shirt that she was making for her son. Those dear
old fingers and their loving stitches, that heart which had made
the most of everything that needed love! Here was the real home,
the heart of the old house on Green Island! I sat in the rocking-
chair, and felt that it was a place of peace, the little brown
bedroom, and the quiet outlook upon field and sea and sky.

I looked up, and we understood each other without speaking.
"I shall like to think o' your settin' here to-day," said Mrs.
Blackett. "I want you to come again. It has been so pleasant for
William."

The wind served us all the way home, and did not fall or let
the sail slacken until we were close to the shore. We had a
generous freight of lobsters in the boat, and new potatoes which
William had put aboard, and what Mrs. Todd proudly called a full
"kag" of prime number one salted mackerel; and when we landed we
had to make business arrangements to have these conveyed to her
house in a wheelbarrow.

I never shall forget the day at Green Island. The town of
Dunnet Landing seemed large and noisy and oppressive as we came
ashore. Such is the power of contrast; for the village was
so still that I could hear the shy whippoorwills singing that night
as I lay awake in my downstairs bedroom, and the scent of Mrs.
Todd's herb garden under the window blew in again and again with
every gentle rising of the seabreeze.




XII


A Strange Sail

EXCEPT FOR a few stray guests, islanders or from the inland
country, to whom Mrs. Todd offered the hospitalities of a single
meal, we were quite by ourselves all summer; and when there were
signs of invasion, late in July, and a certain Mrs. Fosdick
appeared like a strange sail on the far horizon, I suffered much
from apprehension. I had been living in the quaint little house
with as much comfort and unconsciousness as if it were a larger
body, or a double shell, in whose simple convolutions Mrs. Todd and
I had secreted ourselves, until some wandering hermit crab of a
visitor marked the little spare room for her own. Perhaps now and
then a castaway on a lonely desert island dreads the thought of
being rescued. I heard of Mrs. Fosdick for the first time with a
selfish sense of objection; but after all, I was still vacation-
tenant of the schoolhouse, where I could always be alone, and it
was impossible not to sympathize with Mrs. Todd, who, in spite of
some preliminary grumbling, was really delighted with the prospect
of entertaining an old friend.

For nearly a month we received occasional news of Mrs.
Fosdick, who seemed to be making a royal progress from house to
house in the inland neighborhood, after the fashion of Queen
Elizabeth. One Sunday after another came and went, disappointing
Mrs. Todd in the hope of seeing her guest at church and fixing the
day for the great visit to begin; but Mrs. Fosdick was not ready to
commit herself to a date. An assurance of "some time this week"
was not sufficiently definite from a free-footed housekeeper's
point of view, and Mrs. Todd put aside all herb-gathering plans,
and went through the various stages of expectation, provocation,
and despair. At last she was ready to believe that Mrs. Fosdick
must have forgotten her promise and returned to her home, which was
vaguely said to be over Thomaston way. But one evening, just as
the supper-table was cleared and "readied up," and Mrs. Todd had
put her large apron over her head and stepped forth for an
evening stroll in the garden, the unexpected happened. She heard
the sound of wheels, and gave an excited cry to me, as I sat by the
window, that Mrs. Fosdick was coming right up the street.

"She may not be considerate, but she's dreadful good company,"
said Mrs. Todd hastily, coming back a few steps from the
neighborhood of the gate. "No, she ain't a mite considerate, but
there's a small lobster left over from your tea; yes, it's a real
mercy there's a lobster. Susan Fosdick might just as well have
passed the compliment o' comin' an hour ago."

"Perhaps she has had her supper," I ventured to suggest,
sharing the housekeeper's anxiety, and meekly conscious of an
inconsiderate appetite for my own supper after a long expedition up
the bay. There were so few emergencies of any sort at Dunnet
Landing that this one appeared overwhelming.

"No, she's rode 'way over from Nahum Brayton's place. I
expect they were busy on the farm, and couldn't spare the horse in
proper season. You just sly out an' set the teakittle on again,
dear, an' drop in a good han'ful o' chips; the fire's all alive.
I'll take her right up to lay off her things, as she'll be occupied
with explanations an' gettin' her bunnit off, so you'll have plenty
o' time. She's one I shouldn't like to have find me unprepared."

Mrs. Fosdick was already at the gate, and Mrs. Todd now turned
with an air of complete surprise and delight to welcome her.

"Why, Susan Fosdick," I heard her exclaim in a fine unhindered
voice, as if she were calling across a field, "I come near giving
of you up! I was afraid you'd gone an' 'portioned out my visit to
somebody else. I s'pose you've been to supper?"

"Lor', no, I ain't, Almiry Todd," said Mrs. Fosdick
cheerfully, as she turned, laden with bags and bundles, from making
her adieux to the boy driver. "I ain't had a mite o' supper, dear.
I've been lottin' all the way on a cup o' that best tea o' yourn,--
some o' that Oolong you keep in the little chist. I don't want
none o' your useful herbs."

"I keep that tea for ministers' folks," gayly responded Mrs.
Todd. "Come right along in, Susan Fosdick. I declare if you ain't
the same old sixpence!"

As they came up the walk together, laughing like girls, I
fled, full of cares, to the kitchen, to brighten the fire and be
sure that the lobster, sole dependence of a late supper, was well
out of reach of the cat. There proved to be fine reserves of wild
raspberries and bread and butter, so that I regained my composure,
and waited impatiently for my own share of this illustrious visit
to begin. There was an instant sense of high festivity in
the evening air from the moment when our guest had so frankly
demanded the Oolong tea.

The great moment arrived. I was formally presented at the
stair-foot, and the two friends passed on to the kitchen, where I
soon heard a hospitable clink of crockery and the brisk stirring of
a tea-cup. I sat in my high-backed rocking-chair by the window in
the front room with an unreasonable feeling of being left out, like
the child who stood at the gate in Hans Andersen's story. Mrs.
Fosdick did not look, at first sight, like a person of great social
gifts. She was a serious-looking little bit of an old woman, with
a birdlike nod of the head. I had often been told that she was the
"best hand in the world to make a visit,"--as if to visit were the
highest of vocations; that everybody wished for her, while few
could get her; and I saw that Mrs. Todd felt a comfortable sense of
distinction in being favored with the company of this eminent
person who "knew just how." It was certainly true that Mrs.
Fosdick gave both her hostess and me a warm feeling of enjoyment
and expectation, as if she had the power of social suggestion to
all neighboring minds.

The two friends did not reappear for at least an hour. I
could hear their busy voices, loud and low by turns, as they ranged
from public to confidential topics. At last Mrs. Todd kindly
remembered me and returned, giving my door a ceremonious knock
before she stepped in, with the small visitor in her wake. She
reached behind her and took Mrs. Fosdick's hand as if she were
young and bashful, and gave her a gentle pull forward.

"There, I don't know whether you're goin' to take to each
other or not; no, nobody can't tell whether you'll suit each other,
but I expect you'll get along some way, both having seen the
world," said our affectionate hostess. "You can inform Mis'
Fosdick how we found the folks out to Green Island the other day.
She's always been well acquainted with mother. I'll slip out now
an' put away the supper things an' set my bread to rise, if you'll
both excuse me. You can come an' keep me company when you get
ready, either or both." And Mrs. Todd, large and amiable,
disappeared and left us.

Being furnished not only with a subject of conversation, but
with a safe refuge in the kitchen in case of incompatibility, Mrs.
Fosdick and I sat down, prepared to make the best of each other.
I soon discovered that she, like many of the elder women of the
coast, had spent a part of her life at sea, and was full of a good
traveler's curiosity and enlightenment. By the time we thought it
discreet to join our hostess we were already sincere friends.

You may speak of a visit's setting in as well as a tide's, and
it was impossible, as Mrs. Todd whispered to me, not to be
pleased at the way this visit was setting in; a new impulse and
refreshing of the social currents and seldom visited bays of memory
appeared to have begun. Mrs. Fosdick had been the mother of a
large family of sons and daughters,--sailors and sailors' wives,--
and most of them had died before her. I soon grew more or less
acquainted with the histories of all their fortunes and
misfortunes, and subjects of an intimate nature were no more
withheld from my ears than if I had been a shell on the
mantelpiece. Mrs. Fosdick was not without a touch of dignity and
elegance; she was fashionable in her dress, but it was a curiously
well-preserved provincial fashion of some years back. In a wider
sphere one might have called her a woman of the world, with her
unexpected bits of modern knowledge, but Mrs. Todd's wisdom was an
intimation of truth itself. She might belong to any age, like an
idyl of Theocritus; but while she always understood Mrs. Fosdick,
that entertaining pilgrim could not always understand Mrs. Todd.

That very first evening my friends plunged into a borderless
sea of reminiscences and personal news. Mrs. Fosdick had been
staying with a family who owned the farm where she was born, and
she had visited every sunny knoll and shady field corner; but when
she said that it might be for the last time, I detected in her tone
something expectant of the contradiction which Mrs. Todd promptly
offered.

"Almiry," said Mrs. Fosdick, with sadness, "you may say what
you like, but I am one of nine brothers and sisters brought up on
the old place, and we're all dead but me."

"Your sister Dailey ain't gone, is she? Why, no, Louisa ain't
gone!" exclaimed Mrs. Todd, with surprise. "Why, I never heard of
that occurrence!"

"Yes'm; she passed away last October, in Lynn. She had made
her distant home in Vermont State, but she was making a visit to
her youngest daughter. Louisa was the only one of my family whose
funeral I wasn't able to attend, but 'twas a mere accident. All
the rest of us were settled right about home. I thought it was
very slack of 'em in Lynn not to fetch her to the old place; but
when I came to hear about it, I learned that they'd recently put up
a very elegant monument, and my sister Dailey was always great for
show. She'd just been out to see the monument the week before she
was taken down, and admired it so much that they felt sure of her
wishes."

"So she's really gone, and the funeral was up to Lynn!"
repeated Mrs. Todd, as if to impress the sad fact upon her mind.
"She was some years younger than we be, too. I recollect the first
day she ever came to school; 'twas that first year mother
sent me inshore to stay with aunt Topham's folks and get my
schooling. You fetched little Louisa to school one Monday mornin'
in a pink dress an' her long curls, and she set between you an' me,
and got cryin' after a while, so the teacher sent us home with her
at recess."


 


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