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DEEPHAVEN
and
SELECTED STORIES AND SKETCHES
by
SARAH ORNE JEWETT
Contents
DEEPHAVEN (1877)
SELECTED STORIES AND SKETCHES
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY (1881)
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER (1881)
AN OCTOBER RIDE (1881)
TOM'S HUSBAND (1884)
MISS DEBBY'S NEIGHBORS (1884)
DEEPHAVEN
Preface
This book is not wholly new, several of the chapters having already been
published in the "Atlantic Monthly." It has so often been asked if
Deephaven may not be found on the map of New England under another name,
that, to prevent any misunderstanding, I wish to say, while there is a
likeness to be traced, few of the sketches are drawn from that town
itself, and the characters will in almost every case be looked for there
in vain.
I dedicate this story of out-of-door life and country people first to my
father and mother, my two best friends, and also to all my other
friends, whose names I say to myself lovingly, though I do not write
them here.
S. O. J.
Contents
KATE LANCASTER'S PLAN
THE BRANDON HOUSE AND THE LIGHTHOUSE
MY LADY BRANDON
DEEPHAVEN SOCIETY
THE CAPTAINS
DANNY
CAPTAIN SANDS
THE CIRCUS AT DENBY
CUNNER-FISHING
MRS. BONNY
IN SHADOW
MISS CHAUNCEY
LAST DAYS IN DEEPHAVEN
_Kate Lancaster's Plan_
I had been spending the winter in Boston, and Kate Lancaster and I had
been together a great deal, for we are the best of friends. It happened
that the morning when this story begins I had waked up feeling sorry,
and as if something dreadful were going to happen. There did not seem to
be any good reason for it, so I undertook to discourage myself more by
thinking that it would soon be time to leave town, and how much I should
miss being with Kate and my other friends. My mind was still disquieted
when I went down to breakfast; but beside my plate I found, with a
hoped-for letter from my father, a note from Kate. To this day I have
never known any explanation of that depression of my spirits, and I hope
that the good luck which followed will help some reader to lose fear,
and to smile at such shadows if any chance to come.
Kate had evidently written to me in an excited state of mind, for her
note was not so trig-looking as usual; but this is what she said:--
Dear Helen,--I have a plan--I think it a most delightful plan--in
which you and I are chief characters. Promise that you will say
yes; if you do not you will have to remember all your life that you
broke a girl's heart. Come round early, and lunch with me and dine
with me. I'm to be all alone, and it's a long story and will need a
great deal of talking over.
K.
I showed this note to my aunt, and soon went round, very much
interested. My latch-key opened the Lancasters' door, and I hurried to
the parlor, where I heard my friend practising with great diligence. I
went up to her, and she turned her head and kissed me solemnly. You need
not smile; we are not sentimental girls, and are both much averse to
indiscriminate kissing, though I have not the adroit habit of shying in
which Kate is proficient. It would sometimes be impolite in any one
else, but she shies so affectionately.
"Won't you sit down, dear?" she said, with great ceremony, and went on
with her playing, which was abominable that morning; her fingers stepped
on each other, and, whatever the tune might have been in reality, it
certainly had a most remarkable incoherence as I heard it then. I took
up the new Littell and made believe read it, and finally threw it at
Kate; you would have thought we were two children.
"Have you heard that my grand-aunt, Miss Katharine Brandon of Deephaven,
is dead?" I knew that she had died in November, at least six months
before.
"Don't be nonsensical, Kate!" said I. "What is it you are going to tell
me?"
"My grand-aunt died very old, and was the last of her generation. She
had a sister and three brothers, one of whom had the honor of being my
grandfather. Mamma is sole heir to the family estates in Deephaven,
wharf-property and all, and it is a great inconvenience to her. The
house is a charming old house, and some of my ancestors who followed the
sea brought home the greater part of its furnishings. Miss Katharine was
a person who ignored all frivolities, and her house was as sedate as
herself. I have been there but little, for when I was a child my aunt
found no pleasure in the society of noisy children who upset her
treasures, and when I was older she did not care to see strangers, and
after I left school she grew more and more feeble; I had not been there
for two years when she died. Mamma went down very often. The town is a
quaint old place which has seen better days. There are high rocks at the
shore, and there is a beach, and there are woods inland, and hills, and
there is the sea. It might be dull in Deephaven for two young ladies who
were fond of gay society and dependent upon excitement, I suppose; but
for two little girls who were fond of each other and could play in the
boats, and dig and build houses in the sea-sand, and gather shells, and
carry their dolls wherever they went, what could be pleasanter?"
"Nothing," said I, promptly.
Kate had told this a little at a time, with a few appropriate bars of
music between, which suddenly reminded me of the story of a Chinese
procession which I had read in one of Marryat's novels when I was a
child: "A thousand white elephants richly caparisoned,--ti-tum
tilly-lily," and so on, for a page or two. She seemed to have finished
her story for that time, and while it was dawning upon me what she
meant, she sang a bit from one of Jean Ingelow's verses:--
"Will ye step aboard, my dearest,
For the high seas lie before us?"
and then came over to sit beside me and tell the whole story in a more
sensible fashion.
"You know that my father has been meaning to go to England in the
autumn? Yesterday he told us that he is to leave in a month and will be
away all summer, and mamma is going with him. Jack and Willy are to join
a party of their classmates who are to spend nearly the whole of the
long vacation at Lake Superior. I don't care to go abroad again now, and
I did not like any plan that was proposed to me. Aunt Anna was here all
the afternoon, and she is going to take the house at Newport, which is
very pleasant and unexpected, for she hates housekeeping. Mamma thought
of course that I would go with her, but I did not wish to do that, and
it would only result in my keeping house for her visitors, whom I know
very little; and she will be much more free and independent by herself.
Beside, she can have my room if I am not there. I have promised to make
her a long visit in Baltimore next winter instead. I told mamma that I
should like to stay here and go away when I choose. There are ever so
many visits which I have promised; I could stay with you and your Aunt
Mary at Lenox if she goes there, for a while, and I have always wished
to spend a summer in town; but mamma did not encourage that at all. In
the evening papa gave her a letter which had come from Mr. Dockum, the
man who takes care of Aunt Katharine's place, and the most charming idea
came into my head, and I said I meant to spend my summer in Deephaven.
"At first they laughed at me, and then they said I might go if I chose,
and at last they thought nothing could be pleasanter, and mamma wishes
she were going herself. I asked if she did not think you would be the
best person to keep me company, and she does, and papa announced that he
was just going to suggest my asking you. I am to take Ann and Maggie,
who will be overjoyed, for they came from that part of the country, and
the other servants are to go with Aunt Anna, and old Nora will come to
take care of this house, as she always does. Perhaps you and I will come
up to town once in a while for a few days. We shall have such jolly
housekeeping. Mamma and I sat up very late last night, and everything is
planned. Mr. Dockum's house is very near Aunt Katharine's, so we shall
not be lonely; though I know you're no more afraid of that than I. O
Helen, won't you go?"
Do you think it took me long to decide?
Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster sailed the 10th of June, and my Aunt Mary went to
spend her summer among the Berkshire Hills, so I was at the Lancasters'
ready to welcome Kate when she came home, after having said good by to
her father and mother. We meant to go to Deephaven in a week, but were
obliged to stay in town longer. Boston was nearly deserted of our
friends at the last, and we used to take quiet walks in the cool of the
evening after dinner, up and down the street, or sit on the front steps
in company with the servants left in charge of the other houses, who
also sometimes walked up and down and looked at us wonderingly. We had
much shopping to do in the daytime, for there was a probability of our
spending many days in doors, and as we were not to be near any large
town, and did not mean to come to Boston for weeks at least, there was a
great deal to be remembered and arranged. We enjoyed making our plans,
and deciding what we should want, and going to the shops together. I
think we felt most important the day we conferred with Ann and made out
a list of the provisions which must be ordered. This was being
housekeepers in earnest. Mr. Dockum happened to come to town, and we
sent Ann and Maggie, with most of our boxes, to Deephaven in his company
a day or two before we were ready to go ourselves, and when we reached
there the house was opened and in order for us.
On our journey to Deephaven we left the railway twelve miles from that
place, and took passage in a stage-coach. There was only one passenger
beside ourselves. She was a very large, thin, weather-beaten woman, and
looked so tired and lonesome and good-natured, that I could not help
saying it was very dusty; and she was apparently delighted to answer
that she should think everybody was sweeping, and she always felt, after
being in the cars a while, as if she had been taken all to pieces and
left in the different places. And this was the beginning of our
friendship with Mrs. Kew.
After this conversation we looked industriously out of the window into
the pastures and pine-woods. I had given up my seat to her, for I do not
mind riding backward in the least, and you would have thought I had done
her the greatest favor of her life. I think she was the most grateful of
women, and I was often reminded of a remark one of my friends once made
about some one: "If you give Bessie a half-sheet of letter-paper, she
behaves to you as if it were the most exquisite of presents!" Kate and I
had some fruit left in our lunch-basket, and divided it with Mrs. Kew,
but after the first mouthful we looked at each other in dismay. "Lemons
with oranges' clothes on, aren't they?" said she, as Kate threw hers out
of the window, and mine went after it for company; and after this we
began to be very friendly indeed. We both liked the odd woman, there was
something so straightforward and kindly about her.
"Are you going to Deephaven, dear?" she asked me, and then: "I wonder if
you are going to stay long? All summer? Well, that's clever! I do hope
you will come out to the Light to see me; young folks 'most always like
my place. Most likely your friends will fetch you."
"Do you know the Brandon house?" asked Kate.
"Well as I do the meeting-house. There! I wonder I didn't know from the
beginning, but I have been a trying all the way to settle it who you
could be. I've been up country some weeks, stopping with my mother, and
she seemed so set to have me stay till strawberry-time, and would hardly
let me come now. You see she's getting to be old; why, every time I've
come away for fifteen years she's said it was the last time I'd ever see
her, but she's a dreadful smart woman of her age. 'He' wrote me some o'
Mrs. Lancaster's folks were going to take the Brandon house this summer;
and so you are the ones? It's a sightly old place; I used to go and see
Miss Katharine. She must have left a power of china-ware. She set a
great deal by the house, and she kept everything just as it used to be
in her mother's day."
"Then you live in Deephaven too?" asked Kate.
"I've been here the better part of my life. I was raised up among the
hills in Vermont, and I shall always be a real up-country woman if I
live here a hundred years. The sea doesn't come natural to me, it kind
of worries me, though you won't find a happier woman than I be, 'long
shore. When I was first married 'he' had a schooner and went to the
banks, and once he was off on a whaling voyage, and I hope I may never
come to so long a three years as those were again, though I was up to
mother's. Before I was married he had been 'most everywhere. When he
came home that time from whaling, he found I'd taken it so to heart that
he said he'd never go off again, and then he got the chance to keep
Deephaven Light, and we've lived there seventeen years come January.
There isn't great pay, but then nobody tries to get it away from us, and
we've got so's to be contented, if it is lonesome in winter."
"Do you really live in the lighthouse? I remember how I used to beg to
be taken out there when I was a child, and how I used to watch for the
light at night," said Kate, enthusiastically.
So began a friendship which we both still treasure, for knowing Mrs. Kew
was one of the pleasantest things which happened to us in that
delightful summer, and she used to do so much for our pleasure, and was
so good to us. When we went out to the lighthouse for the last time to
say good by, we were very sorry girls indeed. We had no idea until then
how much she cared for us, and her affection touched us very much. She
told us that she loved us as if we belonged to her, and begged us not to
forget her,--as if we ever could!--and to remember that there was always
a home and a warm heart for us if she were alive. Kate and I have often
agreed that few of our acquaintances are half so entertaining. Her
comparisons were most striking and amusing, and her comments upon the
books she read--for she was a great reader--were very shrewd and clever,
and always to the point. She was never out of temper, even when the
barrels of oil were being rolled across her kitchen floor. And she was
such a wise woman! This stage-ride, which we expected to find tiresome,
we enjoyed very much, and we were glad to think, when the coach stopped,
and "he" came to meet her with great satisfaction, that we had one
friend in Deephaven at all events.
I liked the house from my very first sight of it. It stood behind a row
of poplars which were as green and flourishing as the poplars which
stand in stately processions in the fields around Quebec. It was an
imposing great white house, and the lilacs were tall, and there were
crowds of rose-bushes not yet out of bloom; and there were box borders,
and there were great elms at the side of the house and down the road.
The hall door stood wide open, and my hostess turned to me as we went
in, with one of her sweet, sudden smiles. "Won't we have a good time,
Nelly?" said she. And I thought we should.
So our summer's housekeeping began in most pleasant fashion. It was just
at sunset, and Ann's and Maggie's presence made the house seem familiar
at once. Maggie had been unpacking for us, and there was a delicious
supper ready for the hungry girls. Later in the evening we went down to
the shore, which was not very far away; the fresh sea-air was welcome
after the dusty day, and it seemed so quiet and pleasant in Deephaven.
_The Brandon House and the Lighthouse_
I do not know that the Brandon house is really very remarkable, but I
never have been in one that interested me in the same way. Kate used to
recount to select audiences at school some of her experiences with her
Aunt Katharine, and it was popularly believed that she once carried down
some indestructible picture-books when they were first in fashion, and
the old lady basted them for her to hem round the edges at the rate of
two a day. It may have been fabulous. It was impossible to imagine any
children in the old place; everything was for grown people; even the
stair-railing was too high to slide down on. The chairs looked as if
they had been put, at the furnishing of the house, in their places, and
there they meant to remain. The carpets were particularly interesting,
and I remember Kate's pointing out to me one day a great square figure
in one, and telling me she used to keep house there with her dolls for
lack of a better play-house, and if one of them chanced to fall outside
the boundary stripe, it was immediately put to bed with a cold. It is a
house with great possibilities; it might easily be made charming. There
are four very large rooms on the lower floor, and six above, a wide hall
in each story, and a fascinating garret over the whole, where were many
mysterious old chests and boxes, in one of which we found Kate's
grandmother's love-letters; and you may be sure the vista of rummages
which Mr. Lancaster had laughed about was explored to its very end. The
rooms all have elaborate cornices, and the lower hall is very fine, with
an archway dividing it, and panellings of all sorts, and a great door at
each end, through which the lilacs in front and the old pensioner
plum-trees in the garden are seen exchanging bows and gestures. Coming
from the Lancasters' high city house, it did not seem as if we had to go
up stairs at all there, for every step of the stairway is so broad and
low, and you come half-way to a square landing with an old
straight-backed chair in each farther corner; and between them a large,
round-topped window, with a cushioned seat, looking out on the garden
and the village, the hills far inland, and the sunset beyond all. Then
you turn and go up a few more steps to the upper hall, where we used to
stay a great deal. There were more old chairs and a pair of remarkable
sofas, on which we used to deposit the treasures collected in our
wanderings. The wide window which looks out on the lilacs and the sea
was a favorite seat of ours. Facing each other on either side of it are
two old secretaries, and one of them we ascertained to be the
hiding-place of secret drawers, in which may be found valuable records
deposited by ourselves one rainy day when we first explored it. We
wrote, between us, a tragic "journal" on some yellow old letter-paper we
found in the desk. We put it in the most hidden drawer by itself, and
flatter ourselves that it will be regarded with great interest some time
or other. Of one of the front rooms, "the best chamber," we stood rather
in dread. It is very remarkable that there seem to be no ghost-stories
connected with any part of the house, particularly this. We are neither
of us nervous; but there is certainly something dismal about the room.
The huge curtained bed and immense easy-chairs, windows, and everything
were draped in some old-fashioned kind of white cloth which always
seemed to be waving and moving about of itself. The carpet was most
singularly colored with dark reds and indescribable grays and browns,
and the pattern, after a whole summer's study, could never be followed
with one's eye. The paper was captured in a French prize somewhere some
time in the last century, and part of the figure was shaggy, and therein
little spiders found habitation, and went visiting their acquaintances
across the shiny places. The color was an unearthly pink and a
forbidding maroon, with dim white spots, which gave it the appearance of
having moulded. It made you low-spirited to look long in the mirror; and
the great lounge one could not have cheerful associations with, after
hearing that Miss Brandon herself did not like it, having seen so many
of her relatives lie there dead. There were fantastic china ornaments
from Bible subjects on the mantel, and the only picture was one of the
Maid of Orleans tied with an unnecessarily strong rope to a very stout
stake. The best parlor we also rarely used, because all the portraits
which hung there had for some unaccountable reason taken a violent
dislike to us, and followed us suspiciously with their eyes. The
furniture was stately and very uncomfortable, and there was something
about the room which suggested an invisible funeral.
There is not very much to say about the dining-room. It was not
specially interesting, though the sea was in sight from one of the
windows. There were some old Dutch pictures on the wall, so dark that
one could scarcely make out what they were meant to represent, and one
or two engravings. There was a huge sideboard, for which Kate had
brought down from Boston Miss Brandon's own silver which had stood there
for so many years, and looked so much more at home and in place than any
other possibly could have looked, and Kate also found in the closet the
three great decanters with silver labels chained round their necks,
which had always been the companions of the tea-service in her aunt's
lifetime. From the little closets in the sideboard there came a most
significant odor of cake and wine whenever one opened the doors. We used
Miss Brandon's beautiful old blue India china which she had given to
Kate, and which had been carefully packed all winter. Kate sat at the
head and I at the foot of the round table, and I must confess that we
were apt to have either a feast or a famine, for at first we often
forgot to provide our dinners. If this were the case Maggie was sure to
serve us with most derisive elegance, and make us wait for as much
ceremony as she thought necessary for one of Mrs. Lancaster's
dinner-parties.
The west parlor was our favorite room down stairs. It had a great
fireplace framed in blue and white Dutch tiles which ingeniously and
instructively represented the careers of the good and the bad man; the
starting-place of each being a very singular cradle in the centre at the
top. The last two of the series are very high art: a great coffin stands
in the foreground of each, and the virtuous man is being led off by two
disagreeable-looking angels, while the wicked one is hastening from an
indescribable but unpleasant assemblage of claws and horns and eyes
which is rapidly advancing from the distance, open-mouthed, and bringing
a chain with it.
There was a large cabinet holding all the small curiosities and
knick-knacks there seemed to be no other place for,--odd china figures
and cups and vases, unaccountable Chinese carvings and exquisite corals
and sea-shells, minerals and Swiss wood-work, and articles of _vertu_
from the South Seas. Underneath were stored boxes of letters and old
magazines; for this was one of the houses where nothing seems to have
been thrown away. In one parting we found a parcel of old manuscript
sermons, the existence of which was a mystery, until Kate remembered
there had been a gifted son of the house who entered the ministry and
soon died. The windows had each a pane of stained glass, and on the wide
sills we used to put our immense bouquets of field-flowers. There was
one place which I liked and sat in more than any other. The chimney
filled nearly the whole side of the room, all but this little corner,
where there was just room for a very comfortable high-backed cushioned
chair, and a narrow window where I always had a bunch of fresh green
ferns in a tall champagne-glass. I used to write there often, and always
sat there when Kate sang and played. She sent for a tuner, and used to
successfully coax the long-imprisoned music from the antiquated piano,
and sing for her visitors by the hour. She almost always sang her oldest
songs, for they seemed most in keeping with everything about us. I used
to fancy that the portraits liked our being there. There was one young
girl who seemed solitary and forlorn among the rest in the room, who
were all middle-aged. For their part they looked amiable, but rather
unhappy, as if she had come in and interrupted their conversation. We
both grew very fond of her, and it seemed, when we went in the last
morning on purpose to take leave of her, as if she looked at us
imploringly. She was soon afterward boxed up, and now enjoys society
after her own heart in Kate's room in Boston.
There was the largest sofa I ever saw opposite the fireplace; it must
have been brought in in pieces, and built in the room. It was broad
enough for Kate and me to lie on together, and very high and square; but
there was a pile of soft cushions at one end. We used to enjoy it
greatly in September, when the evenings were long and cool, and we had
many candles, and a fire--and crickets too--on the hearth, and the dear
dog lying on the rug. I remember one rainy night, just before Miss
Tennant and Kitty Bruce went away; we had a real drift-wood fire, and
blew out the lights and told stories. Miss Margaret knows so many and
tells them so well. Kate and I were unusually entertaining, for we
became familiar with the family record of the town, and could recount
marvellous adventures by land and sea, and ghost-stories by the dozen.
We had never either of us been in a society consisting of so many
travelled people! Hardly a man but had been the most of his life at sea.
Speaking of ghost-stories, I must tell you that once in the summer two
Cambridge girls who were spending a week with us unwisely enticed us
into giving some thrilling recitals, which nearly frightened them out of
their wits, and Kate and I were finally in terror ourselves. We had all
been on the sofa in the dark, singing and talking, and were waiting in
great suspense after I had finished one of such particular horror that I
declared it should be the last, when we heard footsteps on the hall
stairs. There were lights in the dining-room which shone faintly through
the half-closed door, and we saw something white and shapeless come
slowly down, and clutched each other's gowns in agony. It was only
Kate's dog, who came in and laid his head in her lap and slept
peacefully. We thought we could not sleep a wink after this, and I
bravely went alone out to the light to see my watch, and, finding it was
past twelve, we concluded to sit up all night and to go down to the
shore at sunrise, it would be so much easier than getting up early some
morning. We had been out rowing and had taken a long walk the day
before, and were obliged to dance and make other slight exertions to
keep ourselves awake at one time. We lunched at two, and I never shall
forget the sunrise that morning; but we were singularly quiet and
abstracted that day, and indeed for several days after Deephaven was "a
land in which it seemed always afternoon," we breakfasted so late.
As Mrs. Kew had said, there was "a power of china." Kate and I were
convinced that the lives of her grandmothers must have been spent in
giving tea-parties. We counted ten sets of cups, beside quantities of
stray ones; and some member of the family had evidently devoted her time
to making a collection of pitchers.
There was an escritoire in Miss Brandon's own room, which we looked over
one day. There was a little package of letters; ship letters mostly,
tied with a very pale and tired-looking blue ribbon. They were in a
drawer with a locket holding a faded miniature on ivory and a lock of
brown hair, and there were also some dry twigs and bits of leaf which
had long ago been bright wild-roses, such as still bloom among the
Deephaven rocks. Kate said that she had often heard her mother wonder
why her aunt never had cared to marry, for she had chances enough
doubtless, and had been rich and handsome and finely educated. So there
was a sailor lover after all, and perhaps he had been lost at sea and
she faithfully kept the secret, never mourning outwardly. "And I always
thought her the most matter-of-fact old lady," said Kate; "yet here's
her romance, after all." We put the letters outside on a chair to read,
but afterwards carefully replaced them, without untying them. I'm glad
we did. There were other letters which we did read, and which interested
us very much,--letters from her girl friends written in the
boarding-school vacations, and just after she finished school. Those in
one of the smaller packages were charming; it must have been such a
bright, nice girl who wrote them! They were very few, and were tied with
black ribbon, and marked on the outside in girlish writing: "My dearest
friend, Dolly McAllister, died September 3, 1809, aged eighteen." The
ribbon had evidently been untied and the letters read many times. One
began: "My dear, delightful Kitten: I am quite overjoyed to find my
father has business which will force him to go to Deephaven next week,
and he kindly says if there be no more rain I may ride with him to see
you. I will surely come, for if there is danger of spattering my gown,
and he bids me stay at home, I shall go galloping after him and overtake
him when it is too late to send me back. I have so much to tell you." I
wish I knew more about the visit. Poor Miss Katharine! it made us sad to
look over these treasures of her girlhood. There were her compositions
and exercise-books; some samplers and queer little keepsakes; withered
flowers and some pebbles and other things of like value, with which
there was probably some pleasant association. "Only think of her keeping
them all her days," said I to Kate. "I am continually throwing some
relic of the kind away, because I forget why I have it!"
There was a box in the lower part which Kate was glad to find, for she
had heard her mother wonder if some such things were not in existence.
It held a crucifix and a mass-book and some rosaries, and Kate told me
Miss Katharine's youngest and favorite brother had become a Roman
Catholic while studying in Europe. It was a dreadful blow to the family;
for in those days there could have been few deeper disgraces to the
Brandon family than to have one of its sons go over to popery. Only Miss
Katharine treated him with kindness, and after a time he disappeared
without telling even her where he was going, and was only heard from
indirectly once or twice afterward. It was a great grief to her. "And
mamma knows," said Kate, "that she always had a lingering hope of his
return, for one of the last times she saw Aunt Katharine before she was
ill she spoke of soon going to be with all the rest, and said, 'Though
your Uncle Henry, dear,'--and stopped and smiled sadly; 'you'll think me
a very foolish old woman, but I never quite gave up thinking he might
come home.'"
* * * * *
Mrs. Kew did the honors of the lighthouse thoroughly on our first visit;
but I think we rarely went to see her that we did not make some
entertaining discovery. Mr. Kew's nephew, a guileless youth of forty,
lived with them, and the two men were of a mechanical turn and had
invented numerous aids to housekeeping,--appendages to the stove, and
fixtures on the walls for everything that could be hung up; catches in
the floor to hold the doors open, and ingenious apparatus to close them;
but, above all, a system of barring and bolting for the wide "fore
door," which would have disconcerted an energetic battering-ram. After
all this work being expended, Mrs. Kew informed us that it was usually
wide open all night in summer weather. On the back of this door I
discovered one day a row of marks, and asked their significance. It
seemed that Mrs. Kew had attempted one summer to keep count of the
number of people who inquired about the depredations of the neighbors'
chickens. Mrs. Kew's bedroom was partly devoted to the fine arts. There
was a large collection of likenesses of her relatives and friends on the
wall, which was interesting in the extreme. Mrs. Kew was always much
pleased to tell their names, and her remarks about any feature not
exactly perfect were very searching and critical. "That's my oldest
brother's wife, Clorinthy Adams that was. She's well featured, if it
were not for her nose, and that looks as if it had been thrown at her,
and she wasn't particular about having it on firm, in hopes of getting a
better one. She sets by her looks, though."
There were often sailing-parties that came there from up and down the
coast. One day Kate and I were spending the afternoon at the Light; we
had been fishing, and were sitting in the doorway listening to a
reminiscence of the winter Mrs. Kew kept school at the Four Corners; saw
a boatful coming, and all lost our tempers. Mrs. Kew had a lame ankle,
and Kate offered to go up with the visitors. There were some girls and
young men who stood on the rocks awhile, and then asked us, with much
better manners than the people who usually came, if they could see the
lighthouse, and Kate led the way. She was dressed that day in a costume
we both frequently wore, of gray skirts and blue sailor-jacket, and her
boots were much the worse for wear. The celebrated Lancaster complexion
was rather darkened by the sun. Mrs. Kew expressed a wish to know what
questions they would ask her, and I followed after a few minutes. They
seemed to have finished asking about the lantern, and to have become
personal.
"Don't you get tired staying here?"
"No, indeed!" said Kate.
"Is that your sister down stairs?"
"No, I have no sister."
"I should think you would wish she was. Aren't you ever lonesome?"
"Everybody is, sometimes," said Kate.
"But it's such a lonesome place!" said one of the girls. "I should think
you would get work away. I live in Boston. Why, it's so awful quiet!
nothing but the water, and the wind, when it blows; and I think either
of them is worse than nothing. And only this little bit of a rocky
place! I should want to go to walk."
I heard Kate pleasantly refuse the offer of pay for her services, and
then they began to come down the steep stairs laughing and chattering
with each other. Kate stayed behind to close the doors and leave
everything all right, and the girl who had talked the most waited too,
and when they were on the stairs just above me, and the others out of
hearing, she said, "You're real good to show us the things. I guess
you'll think I'm silly, but I do like you ever so much! I wish you would
come to Boston. I'm in a real nice store,--H----'s, on Winter Street;
and they will want new saleswomen in October. Perhaps you could be at my
counter. I'd teach you, and you could board with me. I've got a real
comfortable room, and I suppose I might have more things, for I get good
pay; but I like to send money home to mother. I'm at my aunt's now, but
I am going back next Monday, and if you will tell me what your name is,
I'll find out for certain about the place, and write you. My name's Mary
Wendell."
I knew by Kate's voice that this had touched her. "You are very kind;
thank you heartily," said she; "but I cannot go and work with you. I
should like to know more about you. I live in Boston too; my friend and
I are staying over in Deephaven for the summer only." And she held out
her hand to the girl, whose face had changed from its first expression
of earnest good-humor to a very startled one; and when she noticed
Kate's hand, and a ring of hers, which had been turned round, she looked
really frightened.
"O, will you please excuse me?" said she, blushing. "I ought to have
known better; but you showed us round so willing, and I never thought of
your not living here. I didn't mean to be rude."
"Of course you did not, and you were not. I am very glad you said it,
and glad you like me," said Kate; and just then the party called the
girl, and she hurried away, and I joined Kate. "Then you heard it all.
That was worth having!" said she. "She was such an honest little soul,
and I mean to look for her when I get home."
Sometimes we used to go out to the Light early in the morning with the
fishermen who went that way to the fishing-grounds, but we usually made
the voyage early in the afternoon if it were not too hot, and we went
fishing off the rocks or sat in the house with Mrs. Kew, who often
related some of her Vermont experiences, or Mr. Kew would tell us
surprising sea-stories and ghost-stories like a story-book sailor. Then
we would have an unreasonably good supper and afterward climb the ladder
to the lantern to see the lamps lighted, and sit there for a while
watching the ships and the sunset. Almost all the coasters came in sight
of Deephaven, and the sea outside the light was their grand highway.
Twice from the lighthouse we saw a yacht squadron like a flock of great
white birds. As for the sunsets, it used to seem often as if we were
near the heart of them, for the sea all around us caught the color of
the clouds, and though the glory was wonderful, I remember best one
still evening when there was a bank of heavy gray clouds in the west
shutting down like a curtain, and the sea was silver-colored. You could
look under and beyond the curtain of clouds into the palest, clearest
yellow sky. There was a little black boat in the distance drifting
slowly, climbing one white wave after another, as if it were bound out
into that other world beyond. But presently the sun came from behind the
clouds, and the dazzling golden light changed the look of everything,
and it was the time then to say one thought it a beautiful sunset; while
before one could only keep very still, and watch the boat, and wonder if
heaven would not be somehow like that far, faint color, which was
neither sea nor sky.
When we came down from the lighthouse and it grew late, we would beg for
an hour or two longer on the water, and row away in the twilight far out
from land, where, with our faces turned from the Light, it seemed as if
we were alone, and the sea shoreless; and as the darkness closed round
us softly, we watched the stars come out, and were always glad to see
Kate's star and my star, which we had chosen when we were children. I
used long ago to be sure of one thing,--that, however far away heaven
might be, it could not be out of sight of the stars. Sometimes in the
evening we waited out at sea for the moonrise, and then we would take
the oars again and go slowly in, once in a while singing or talking, but
oftenest silent.
_My Lady Brandon and the Widow Jim_
When it was known that we had arrived in Deephaven, the people who had
known Miss Brandon so well, and Mrs. Lancaster also, seemed to consider
themselves Kate's friends by inheritance, and were exceedingly polite to
us, in either calling upon us or sending pleasant messages. Before the
first week had ended we had no lack of society. They were not strangers
to Kate, to begin with, and as for me, I think it is easy for me to be
contented, and to feel at home anywhere. I have the good fortune and the
misfortune to belong to the navy,--that is, my father does,--and my life
has been consequently an unsettled one, except during the years of my
school life, when my friendship with Kate began.
I think I should be happy in any town if I were living there with Kate
Lancaster. I will not praise my friend as I can praise her, or say half
the things I might say honestly. She is so fresh and good and true, and
enjoys life so heartily. She is so child-like, without being childish;
and I do not tell you that she is faultless, but when she makes mistakes
she is sorrier and more ready to hopefully try again than any girl I
know. Perhaps you would like to know something about us, but I am not
writing Kate's biography and my own, only telling you of one summer
which we spent together. Sometimes in Deephaven we were between six and
seven years old, but at other times we have felt irreparably grown-up,
and as if we carried a crushing weight of care and duty. In reality we
are both twenty-four, and it is a pleasant age, though I think next year
is sure to be pleasanter, for we do not mind growing older, since we
have lost nothing that we mourn about, and are gaining so much. I shall
be glad if you learn to know Kate a little in my stories. It is not that
I am fond of her and endow her with imagined virtues and graces; no one
can fail to see how unaffected she is, or not notice her thoughtfulness
and generosity and her delightful fun, which never has a trace of
coarseness or silliness. It was very pleasant having her for one's
companion, for she has an unusual power of winning people's confidence,
and of knowing with surest instinct how to meet them on their own
ground. It is the girl's being so genuinely sympathetic and interested
which makes every one ready to talk to her and be friends with her; just
as the sunshine makes it easy for flowers to grow which the chilly winds
hinder. She is not polite for the sake of seeming polite, but polite for
the sake of being kind, and there is not a particle of what Hugh Miller
justly calls the insolence of condescension about her; she is not
brilliantly talented, yet she does everything in a charming fashion of
her own; she is not profoundly learned, yet she knows much of which many
wise people are ignorant, and while she is a patient scholar in both
little things and great, she is no less a teacher to all her
friends,--dear Kate Lancaster!
We knew that we were considered Miss Brandon's representatives in
Deephaven society, and this was no slight responsibility, as she had
received much honor and respect. We heard again and again what a loss
she had been to the town, and we tried that summer to do nothing to
lessen the family reputation, and to give pleasure as well as take it,
though we were singularly persistent in our pursuit of a good time. I
grew much interested in what I heard of Miss Brandon, and it seems to me
that it is a great privilege to have an elderly person in one's
neighborhood, in town or country, who is proud, and conservative, and
who lives in stately fashion; who is intolerant of sham and of useless
novelties, and clings to the old ways of living and behaving as if it
were part of her religion. There is something immensely respectable
about the gentlewomen of the old school. They ignore all bustle and
flashiness, and the conceit of the younger people, who act as if at last
it had been time for them to appear and manage this world as it ought to
have been managed before. Their position in modern society is much like
that of the King's Chapel in its busy street in Boston. It perhaps might
not have been easy to approach Miss Brandon, but I am sure that if I had
visited in Deephaven during her lifetime I should have been very proud
if I had been asked to take tea at her house, and should have liked to
speak afterward of my acquaintance with her. It would have been
impossible not to pay her great deference; it is a pleasure to think
that she must have found this world a most polite world, and have had
the highest opinion of its good manners. _Noblesse oblige_: that is
true in more ways than one!
I cannot help wondering if those of us who will be left by and by to
represent our own generation will seem to have such superior elegance of
behavior; if we shall receive so much respect and be so much valued. It
is hard to imagine it. We know that the world gains new refinements and
a better culture; but to us there never will be such imposing ladies and
gentlemen as these who belong to the old school.
The morning after we reached Deephaven we were busy up stairs, and there
was a determined blow at the knocker of the front door. I went down to
see who was there, and had the pleasure of receiving our first caller.
She was a prim little old woman who looked pleased and expectant, who
wore a neat cap and front, and whose eyes were as bright as black beads.
She wore no bonnet, and had thrown a little three-cornered shawl, with
palm-leaf figures, over her shoulders; and it was evident that she was a
near neighbor. She was very short and straight and thin, and so quick
that she darted like a pickerel when she moved about. It occurred to me
at once that she was a very capable person, and had "faculty," and, dear
me, how fast she talked! She hesitated a moment when she saw me, and
dropped a fragment of a courtesy. "Miss Lan'k'ster?" said she,
doubtfully.
"No," said I, "I'm Miss Denis: Miss Lancaster is at home, though: come
in, won't you?"
"O Mrs. Patton!" said Kate, who came down just then. "How very kind of
you to come over so soon! I should have gone to see you to-day. I was
asking Mrs. Kew last night if you were here."
"Land o' compassion!" said Mrs. Patton, as she shook Kate's hand
delightedly. "Where'd ye s'pose I'd be, dear? I ain't like to move away
from Deephaven now, after I've held by the place so long, I've got as
many roots as the big ellum. Well, I should know you were a Brandon, no
matter where I see you. You've got a real Brandon look; tall and
straight, ain't you? It's four or five years since I saw you, except
once at church, and once you went by, down to the shore, I suppose. It
was a windy day in the spring of the year."
"I remember it very well," said Kate. "Those were both visits of only a
day or two, and I was here at Aunt Katharine's funeral, and went away
that same evening. Do you remember once I was here in the summer for a
longer visit, five or six years ago, and I helped you pick currants in
the garden? You had a very old mug."
"Now, whoever would ha' thought o' your rec'lecting that?" said Mrs.
Patton. "Yes. I had that mug because it was handy to carry about among
the bushes, and then I'd empt' it into the basket as fast as I got it
full. Your aunt always told me to pick all I wanted; she couldn't use
'em, but they used to make sights o' currant wine in old times. I s'pose
that mug would be considerable of a curiosity to anybody that wasn't
used to seeing it round. My grand'ther Joseph Toggerson--my mother was a
Toggerson--picked it up on the long sands in a wad of sea-weed: strange
it wasn't broke, but it's tough; I've dropped it on the floor, many's
the time, and it ain't even chipped. There's some Dutch reading on it
and it's marked 1732. Now I shouldn't ha' thought you'd remembered that
old mug, I declare. Your aunt she had a monstrous sight of chiny. She's
told me where 'most all of it come from, but I expect I've forgot. My
memory fails me a good deal by spells. If you hadn't come down I suppose
your mother would have had the chiny packed up this spring,--what she
didn't take with her after your aunt died. S'pose she hasn't made up her
mind what to do with the house?"
"No," said Kate; "she wishes she could: it is a great puzzle to us."
"I hope you will find it in middling order," said Mrs. Patton, humbly.
"Me and Mis' Dockum have done the best we knew,--opened the windows and
let in the air and tried to keep it from getting damp. I fixed all the
woollens with fresh camphire and tobacco the last o' the winter; you
have to be dreadful careful in one o' these old houses, 'less everything
gets creaking with moths in no time. Miss Katharine, how she did hate
the sight of a moth-miller! There's something I'll speak about before I
forget it: the mice have eat the backs of a pile o' old books that's
stored away in the west chamber closet next to Miss Katharine's room,
and I set a trap there, but it was older 'n the ten commandments, that
trap was, and the spring's rusty. I guess you'd better get some new ones
and set round in different places, 'less the mice'll pester you. There
ain't been no chance for 'em to get much of a living 'long through the
winter, but they'll be sure to come back quick as they find there's
likely to be good board. I see your aunt's cat setting out on the front
steps. She never was no great of a mouser, but it went to my heart to
see how pleased she looks! Come right back, didn't she? How they do hold
to their old haunts!"
"Was that Miss Brandon's cat?" I asked, with great interest. "She has
been up stairs with us, but I supposed she belonged to some neighbor,
and had strayed in. She behaved as if she felt at home, poor old pussy!"
"We must keep her here," said Kate.