The Country of the Pointed Firs
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Sarah Orne Jewett >> The Country of the Pointed Firs
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"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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