news that the owners of a Salem ship in which he held a small interest
wished him to go out as supercargo. He was brisk and well in health,
and his son-in-law, an honest but an unlucky fellow, had done less
well than usual, so that nobody was surprised when Enoch made ready
for his voyage. It was nearly a year after the theft, and nothing had
come so near to restoring him to public favor as his apparent lack of
ready money. He openly said that he put great hope in his adventure to
the Spice Islands, and when he said farewell one Sunday to some
members of the dispersing congregation, more than one person wished
him heartily a pleasant voyage and safe return. He had an insinuating
tone of voice and an imploring look that day, and this fact, with his
probable long absence and the dangers of the deep, won him much
sympathy. It is a shameful thing to accuse a man wrongfully, and Enoch
Holt had behaved well since the trial; and, what is more, had shown no
accession to his means of living. So away he went, with a fair amount
of good wishes, though one or two persons assured remonstrating
listeners that they thought it likely Enoch would make a good voyage,
better than common, and show himself forwarded when he came to port.
Soon after his departure, Mrs. Peter Downs and an intimate
acquaintance discussed the ever-exciting subject of the Knowles
robbery over a friendly cup of tea.
They were in the Downs kitchen, and quite by themselves. Peter Downs
himself had been drawn as a juror, and had been for two days at the
county town. Mrs. Downs was giving herself to social interests in his
absence, and Mrs. Forder, an asthmatic but very companionable person,
had arrived by two o'clock that afternoon with her knitting work, sure
of being welcome. The two old friends had first talked over varied
subjects of immediate concern, but when supper was nearly finished,
they fell back upon the lost Knowles gold, as has been already said.
"They got a dreadful blow, poor gals," wheezed Mrs. Forder, with
compassion. "'T was harder for them than for most folks; they'd had a
long stent with the ol' gentleman; very arbitrary, very arbitrary."
"Yes," answered Mrs. Downs, pushing back her tea-cup, then lifting it
again to see if it was quite empty. "Yes, it took holt o' Hannah, the
most. I should 'a' said Betsey was a good deal the most set in her
ways an' would 'a' been most tore up, but 't wa'n't so."
"Lucky that Holt's folks sets on the other aisle in the meetin'-house,
I do consider, so 't they needn't face each other sure as Sabbath
comes round."
"I see Hannah an' him come face to face two Sabbaths afore Enoch left.
So happened he dallied to have a word 'long o' Deacon Good'in, an' him
an' Hannah stepped front of each other 'fore they knowed what they's
about. I sh'd thought her eyes 'd looked right through him. No one of
'em took the word; Enoch he slinked off pretty quick."
"I see 'em too," said Mrs. Forder; "made my blood run cold."
"Nothin' ain't come of the curse yit,"--Mrs. Downs lowered the tone of
her voice,--"least, folks says so. It kind o' worries pore Phoebe
Holt--Mis' Dow, I would say. She was narved all up at the time o' the
trial, an' when her next baby come into the world, first thin' she
made out t' ask me was whether it seemed likely, an' she gived me a
pleadin' look as if I'd got to tell her what she hadn't heart to ask.
'Yes, dear,' says I, 'put up his little hands to me kind of wonted';
an' she turned a look on me like another creatur', so pleased an'
contented."
"I s'pose you don't see no great of the Knowles gals?" inquired
Mrs. Forder, who lived two miles away in the other direction.
"They stepped to the door yisterday when I was passin' by, an' I went
in an' set a spell long of 'em," replied the hostess. "They'd got
pestered with that ol' loom o' theirn. 'Fore I thought, says I, ''T is
all worn out, Betsey,' says I. 'Why on airth don't ye git somebody to
git some o' your own wood an' season it well so 't won't warp, same's
mine done, an' build ye a new one?' But Betsey muttered an' twitched
away; 't wa'n't like her, but they're dis'p'inted at every turn, I
s'pose, an' feel poor where they've got the same's ever to do with.
Hannah's a-coughin' this spring's if somethin' ailed her. I asked her
if she had bad feelin's in her pipes, an' she said yis, she had, but
not to speak of 't before Betsey. I'm goin' to fix her up some
hoarhound an' elecampane quick's the ground's nice an' warm an' roots
livens up a grain more. They're limp an' wizened 'long to the fust of
the spring. Them would be service'ble, simmered away to a syrup 'long
o' molasses; now don't you think so, Mis' Forder?"
"Excellent," replied the wheezing dame. "I covet a portion myself, now
you speak. Nothin' cures my complaint, but a new remedy takes holt
clever sometimes, an' eases me for a spell." And she gave a plaintive
sigh, and began to knit again.
Mrs. Downs rose and pushed the supper-table to the wall and drew her
chair nearer to the stove. The April nights were chilly.
"The folks is late comin' after me," said Mrs. Forder, ostentatiously.
"I may's well confess that I told 'em if they was late with the work
they might let go o' fetchin' o' me an' I'd walk home in the mornin';
take it easy when I was fresh. Course I mean ef 't wouldn't put you
out: I knowed you was all alone, an' I kind o' wanted a change."
"Them words was in my mind to utter while we was to table," avowed
Mrs. Downs, hospitably. "I ain't reelly afeared, but 't is sort o'
creepy fastenin' up an' goin' to bed alone. Nobody can't help
hearkin', an' every common noise starts you. I never used to give
nothin' a thought till the Knowleses was robbed, though."
"'T was mysterious, I do maintain," acknowledged Mrs. Forder. "Comes
over me sometimes p'raps 't wasn't Enoch; he'd 'a' branched out more
in course o' time. I'm waitin' to see if he does extry well to sea
'fore I let my mind come to bear on his bein' clean handed."
"Plenty thought 't was the ole Cap'n come back for it an' sperited it
away. Enough said that 't wasn't no honest gains; most on't was
prize-money o' slave ships, an' all kinds o' devil's gold was mixed
in. I s'pose you've heard that said?"
"Time an' again," responded Mrs. Forder; "an' the worst on't was
simple old Pappy Flanders went an' told the Knowles gals themselves
that folks thought the ole Cap'n come back an' got it, and Hannah done
wrong to cuss Enoch Holt an' his ginerations after him the way she
done."
"I think it took holt on her ter'ble after all she'd gone through,"
said Mrs. Downs, compassionately. "He ain't near so simple as he is
ugly, Pappy Flanders ain't. I've seen him set here an' read the paper
sober's anybody when I've been goin' about my mornin's work in the
shed-room, an' when I'd come in to look about he'd twist it with his
hands an' roll his eyes an' begin to git off some o' his gable. I
think them wander-in' cheap-wits likes the fun on't an' 'scapes stiddy
work, an' gits the rovin' habit so fixed, it sp'iles 'em."
"My gran'ther was to the South Seas in his young days," related
Mrs. Forder, impressively, "an' he said cussin' was common there. I
mean sober spitin' with a cuss. He seen one o' them black folks git a
gredge against another an' go an' set down an' look stiddy at him in
his hut an' cuss him in his mind an' set there an' watch, watch, until
the other kind o' took sick an' died, all in a fortnight, I believe he
said; 't would make your blood run cold to hear gran'ther describe it,
't would so. He never done nothin' but set an' look, an' folks would
give him somethin' to eat now an' then, as if they thought 't was all
right, an' the other one 'd try to go an' come, an' at last he hived
away altogether an' died. I don't know what you'd call it that ailed
him. There's suthin' in cussin' that's bad for folks, now I tell ye,
Mis' Downs."
"Hannah's eyes always makes me creepy now," Mrs. Downs confessed
uneasily. "They don't look pleadin' an' childish same 's they used to.
Seems to me as if she'd had the worst on't."
"We ain't seen the end on't yit," said Mrs. Forder, impressively. "I
feel it within me, Marthy Downs, an' it's a terrible thing to have
happened right amon'st us in Christian times. If we live long enough
we're goin' to have plenty to talk over in our old age that's come o'
that cuss. Some seed's shy o' sproutin' till a spring when the s'ile's
jest right to breed it."
"There's lobeely now," agreed Mrs. Downs, pleased to descend to
prosaic and familiar levels. "They ain't a good crop one year in six,
and then you find it in a place where you never observed none to grow
afore, like's not; ain't it so, reelly?" And she rose to clear the
table, pleased with the certainty of a guest that night. Their
conversation was not reassuring to the heart of a timid woman, alone
in an isolated farmhouse on a dark spring evening, especially so near
the anniversary of old Captain Knowles's death.
V.
Later in these rural lives by many years two aged women were crossing
a wide field together, following a footpath such as one often finds
between widely separated homes of the New England country. Along these
lightly traced thoroughfares, the children go to play, and lovers to
plead, and older people to companion one another in work and pleasure,
in sickness and sorrow; generation after generation comes and goes
again by these country by-ways.
The footpath led from Mrs. Forder's to another farmhouse half a mile
beyond, where there had been a wedding. Mrs. Downs was there, and in
the June weather she had been easily persuaded to go home to tea with
Mrs. Forder with the promise of being driven home later in the
evening. Mrs. Downs's husband had been dead three years, and her
friend's large family was scattered from the old nest; they were
lonely at times in their later years, these old friends, and found it
very pleasant now to have a walk together. Thin little Mrs. Forder,
with all her wheezing, was the stronger and more active of the two:
Downs had grown heavier and weaker with advancing years.
They paced along the footpath slowly, Mrs. Downs rolling in her gait
like a sailor, and availing herself of every pretext to stop and look
at herbs in the pasture ground they crossed, and at the growing grass
in the mowing fields. They discussed the wedding minutely, and then
where the way grew wider they walked side by side instead of following
each other, and their voices sank to the low tone that betokens
confidence.
"You don't say that you really put faith in all them old stories?"
"It ain't accident altogether, noways you can fix it in your mind,"
maintained Mrs. Downs. "Needn't tell me that cussin' don't do neither
good nor harm. I shouldn't want to marry amon'st the Holts if I was
young ag'in! I r'member when this young man was born that's married
to-day, an' the fust thing his poor mother wanted to know was about
his hands bein' right. I said yes they was, but las' year he was
twenty year old and come home from the frontier with one o' them
hands--his right one--shot off in a fight. They say 't happened to
sights o' other fel-lows, an' their laigs gone too, but I count 'em
over on my fingers, them Holts, an' he's the third. May say that 't
was all an accident his mother's gittin' throwed out o' her waggin
comin' home from meetin', an' her wrist not bein' set good, an' she,
bein' run down at the time, 'most lost it altogether, but thar' it is,
stiffened up an' no good to her. There was the second. An' Enoch Holt
hisself come home from the Chiny seas, made a good passage an' a sight
o' money in the pepper trade, jest's we expected, an' goin' to build
him a new house, an' the frame gives a kind o' lurch when they was
raisin' of it an' surges over on to him an' nips him under. 'Which
arm?' says everybody along the road when they was comin' an' goin'
with the doctor. 'Right one--got to lose it,' says the doctor to 'em,
an' next time Enoch Holt got out to meetin' he stood up in the house
o' God with the hymn-book in his left hand, an' no right hand to turn
his leaf with. He knowed what we was all a-thinkin'."
"Well," said Mrs. Forder, very short-breathed with climbing the long
slope of the pasture hill, "I don't know but I'd as soon be them as
the Knowles gals. Hannah never knowed no peace again after she spoke
them words in the co't-house. They come back an' harnted her, an' you
know, Miss Downs, better 'n I do, being door-neighbors as one may say,
how they lived their lives out like wild beasts into a lair."
"They used to go out some by night to git the air," pursued Mrs. Downs
with interest. "I used to open the door an' step right in, an' I used
to take their yarn an' stuff 'long o' mine an' sell 'em, an' do for
the poor stray creatur's long's they'd let me. They'd be grateful for
a mess o' early pease or potatoes as ever you see, an' Peter he allays
favored 'em with pork, fresh an' salt, when we slaughtered. The old
Cap'n kept 'em child'n long as he lived, an' then they was too old to
l'arn different. I allays liked Hannah the best till that change
struck her. Betsey she held out to the last jest about the same. I
don't know, now I come to think of it, but what she felt it the most
o' the two."
"They'd never let me's much as git a look at 'em," complained
Mrs. Forder. "Folks got awful stories a-goin' one time. I've heard it
said, an' it allays creeped me cold all over, that there was somethin'
come an' lived with 'em--a kind o' black shadder, a cobweb kind o' a
man-shape that followed 'em about the house an' made a third to them;
but they got hardened to it theirselves, only they was afraid 't would
follow if they went anywheres from home. You don't believe no such
piece o' nonsense?--But there, I've asked ye times enough before."
"They'd got shadders enough, poor creatur's," said Mrs. Downs with
reserve. "Wasn't no kind o' need to make 'em up no spooks, as I know
on. Well, here's these young folks a-startin'; I wish 'em well, I'm
sure. She likes him with his one hand better than most gals likes them
as has a good sound pair. They looked prime happy; I hope no curse
won't foller 'em."
The friends stopped again--poor, short-winded bodies--on the crest of
the low hill and turned to look at the wide landscape, bewildered by
the marvelous beauty and the sudden flood of golden sunset light that
poured out of the western sky. They could not remember that they had
ever observed the wide view before; it was like a revelation or an
outlook towards the celestial country, the sight of their own green
farms and the countryside that bounded them. It was a pleasant country
indeed, their own New England: their petty thoughts and vain
imaginings seemed futile and unrelated to so fair a scene of things.
But the figure of a man who was crossing the meadow below looked like
a malicious black insect. It was an old man, it was Enoch Holt; time
had worn and bent him enough to have satisfied his bitterest foe. The
women could see his empty coat-sleeve flutter as he walked slowly and
unexpectantly in that glorious evening light.
THE WHITE ROSE ROAD.
Being a New Englander, it is natural that I should first speak about
the weather. Only the middle of June, the green fields, and blue sky,
and bright sun, with a touch of northern mountain wind blowing
straight toward the sea, could make such a day, and that is all one
can say about it. We were driving seaward through a part of the
country which has been least changed in the last thirty years,--among
farms which have been won from swampy lowland, and rocky,
stamp-buttressed hillsides: where the forests wall in the fields, and
send their outposts year by year farther into the pastures. There is a
year or two in the history of these pastures before they have arrived
at the dignity of being called woodland, and yet are too much shaded
and overgrown by young trees to give proper pasturage, when they made
delightful harbors for the small wild creatures which yet remain, and
for wild flowers and berries. Here you send an astonished rabbit
scurrying to his burrow, and there you startle yourself with a
partridge, who seems to get the best of the encounter. Sometimes you
see a hen partridge and her brood of chickens crossing your path with
an air of comfortable door-yard security. As you drive along the
narrow, grassy road, you see many charming sights and delightful nooks
on either hand, where the young trees spring out of a close-cropped
turf that carpets the ground like velvet. Toward the east and the
quaint fishing village of Ogunquit, I find the most delightful
woodland roads. There is little left of the large timber which once
filled the region, but much young growth, and there are hundreds of
acres of cleared land and pasture-ground where the forests are
springing fast and covering the country once more, as if they had no
idea of losing in their war with civilization and the intruding white
settler. The pine woods and the Indians seem to be next of kin, and
the former owners of this corner of New England are the only proper
figures to paint into such landscapes. The twilight under tall pines
seems to be untenanted and to lack something, at first sight, as if
one opened the door of an empty house. A farmer passing through with
his axe is but an intruder, and children straying home from school
give one a feeling of solicitude at their unprotectedness. The pine
woods are the red man's house, and it may be hazardous even yet for
the gray farmhouses to stand so near the eaves of the forest. I have
noticed a distrust of the deep woods, among elderly people, which was
something more than a fear of losing their way. It was a feeling of
defenselessness against some unrecognized but malicious influence.
Driving through the long woodland way, shaded and chilly when you are
out of the sun; across the Great Works River and its pretty elm-grown
intervale; across the short bridges of brown brooks; delayed now and
then by the sight of ripe strawberries in sunny spots by the roadside,
one comes to a higher open country, where farm joins farm, and the
cleared fields lie all along the highway, while the woods are pushed
back a good distance on either hand. The wooded hills, bleak here and
there with granite ledges, rise beyond. The houses are beside the
road, with green door-yards and large barns, almost empty now, and
with wide doors standing open, as if they were already expecting the
hay crop to be brought in. The tall green grass is waving in the
fields as the wind goes over, and there is a fragrance of whiteweed
and ripe strawberries and clover blowing through the sunshiny barns,
with their lean sides and their festoons of brown, dusty cobwebs;
dull, comfortable creatures they appear to imaginative eyes, waiting
hungrily for their yearly meal. The eave-swallows are teasing their
sleepy shapes, like the birds which flit about great beasts; gay,
movable, irreverent, almost derisive, those barn swallows fly to and
fro in the still, clear air.
The noise of our wheels brings fewer faces to the windows than usual,
and we lose the pleasure of seeing some of our friends who are apt to
be looking out, and to whom we like to say good-day. Some funeral must
be taking place, or perhaps the women may have gone out into the
fields. It is hoeing-time and strawberry-time, and already we have
seen some of the younger women at work among the corn and potatoes.
One sight will be charming to remember. On a green hillside sloping to
the west, near one of the houses, a thin little girl was working away
lustily with a big hoe on a patch of land perhaps fifty feet by
twenty. There were all sorts of things growing there, as if a child's
fancy had made the choice,--straight rows of turnips and carrots and
beets, a little of everything, one might say; but the only touch of
color was from a long border of useful sage in full bloom of dull
blue, on the upper side. I am sure this was called Katy's or Becky's
_piece_ by the elder members of the family. One can imagine how the
young creature had planned it in the spring, and persuaded the men to
plough and harrow it, and since then had stoutly done all the work
herself, and meant to send the harvest of the piece to market, and
pocket her honest gains, as they came in, for some great end. She was
as thin as a grasshopper, this busy little gardener, and hardly turned
to give us a glance, as we drove slowly up the hill close by. The sun
will brown and dry her like a spear of grass on that hot slope, but a
spark of fine spirit is in the small body, and I wish her a famous
crop. I hate to say that the piece looked backward, all except the
sage, and that it was a heavy bit of land for the clumsy hoe to pick
at. The only puzzle is, what she proposes to do with so long a row of
sage. Yet there may be a large family with a downfall of measles yet
ahead, and she does not mean to be caught without sage-tea.
Along this road every one of the old farmhouses has at least one tall
bush of white roses by the door,--a most lovely sight, with buds and
blossoms, and unvexed green leaves. I wish that I knew the history of
them, and whence the first bush was brought. Perhaps from England
itself, like a red rose that I know in Kittery, and the new shoots
from the root were given to one neighbor after another all through the
district. The bushes are slender, but they grow tall without climbing
against the wall, and sway to and fro in the wind with a grace of
youth and an inexpressible charm of beauty. How many lovers must have
picked them on Sunday evenings, in all the bygone years, and carried
them along the roads or by the pasture footpaths, hiding them clumsily
under their Sunday coats if they caught sight of any one coming. Here,
too, where the sea wind nips many a young life before its prime, how
often the white roses have been put into paler hands, and withered
there! In spite of the serene and placid look of the old houses, one
who has always known them cannot help thinking of the sorrows of these
farms and their almost undiverted toil. Near the little gardener's
plot, we turned from the main road and drove through lately cleared
woodland up to an old farmhouse, high on a ledgy hill, whence there is
a fine view of the country seaward and mountain-ward. There were few
of the once large household left there: only the old farmer, who was
crippled by war wounds, active, cheerful man that he was once, and two
young orphan children. There has been much hard work spent on the
place. Every generation has toiled from youth to age without being
able to make much beyond a living. The dollars that can be saved are
but few, and sickness and death have often brought their bitter cost.
The mistress of the farm was helpless for many years; through all the
summers and winters she sat in her pillowed rocking-chair in the plain
room. She could watch the seldom-visited lane, and beyond it, a little
way across the fields, were the woods; besides these, only the clouds
in the sky. She could not lift her food to her mouth; she could not be
her husband's working partner. She never went into another woman's
house to see her works and ways, but sat there, aching and tired,
vexed by flies and by heat, and isolated in long storms. Yet the whole
countryside neighbored her with true affection. Her spirit grew
stronger as her body grew weaker, and the doctors, who grieved because
they could do so little with their skill, were never confronted by
that malady of the spirit, a desire for ease and laziness, which makes
the soundest of bodies useless and complaining. The thought of her
blooms in one's mind like the whitest of flowers; it makes one braver
and more thankful to remember the simple faith and patience with which
she bore her pain and trouble. How often she must have said, "I wish I
could do something for you in return," when she was doing a thousand
times more than if, like her neighbors, she followed the simple round
of daily life! She was doing constant kindness by her example; but
nobody can tell the woe of her long days and nights, the solitude of
her spirit, as she was being lifted by such hard ways to the knowledge
of higher truth and experience. Think of her pain when, one after
another, her children fell ill and died, and she could not tend them!
And now, in the same worn chair where she lived and slept sat her
husband, helpless too, thinking of her, and missing her more than if
she had been sometimes away from home, like other women. Even a
stranger would miss her in the house.
There sat the old farmer looking down the lane in his turn, bearing
his afflictions with a patient sterness that may have been born of
watching his wife's serenity. There was a half-withered rose lying
within his reach. Some days nobody came up the lane, and the wild
birds that ventured near the house and the clouds that blew over were
his only entertainment. He had a fine face, of the older New England
type, clean-shaven and strong-featured,--a type that is fast passing
away. He might have been a Cumberland dalesman, such were his dignity,
and self-possession, and English soberness of manner. His large frame
was built for hard work, for lifting great weights and pushing his
plough through new-cleared land. We felt at home together, and each
knew many things that the other did of earlier days, and of losses
that had come with time. I remembered coming to the old house often in
my childhood; it was in this very farm lane that I first saw anemones,
and learned what to call them. After we drove away, this crippled man
must have thought a long time about my elders and betters, as if he
were reading their story out of a book. I suppose he has hauled many a
stick of timber pine down for ship-yards, and gone through the village
so early in the winter morning that I, waking in my warm bed, only
heard the sleds creak through the frozen snow as the slow oxen plodded
by.