could get about most of the time. I've got the best bitters ye ever see,
good for the spring of the year. S'pose yer sister, Miss Lorimer,
wouldn't like some? she used to be weakly lookin'." But her brother
refused the offer, saying that she had not been so well for many years.
"Do you often get out to church nowadays, Mrs. Bonny? I believe Mr. Reid
preaches in the school-house sometimes, down by the great ledge; doesn't
he?"
"Well, yes, he does; but I don't know as I get much of any good. Parson
Reid, he's a worthy creatur', but he never seems to have nothin' to say
about foreordination and them p'ints. Old Parson Padelford was the man!
I used to set under his preachin' a good deal; I had an aunt living down
to East Parish. He'd get worked up, and he'd shut up the Bible and
preach the hair off your head, 'long at the end of the sermon. Couldn't
understand more nor a quarter part what he said," said Mrs. Bonny,
admiringly. "Well, we were a-speaking about the meeting over to the
ledge; I don't know's I like them people any to speak of. They had a
great revival over there in the fall, and one Sunday I thought's how I'd
go; and when I got there, who should be a-prayin' but old Ben Patey,--he
always lays out to get converted,--and he kep' it up diligent till I
couldn't stand it no longer; and by and by says he, 'I've been a
wanderer'; and I up and says, 'Yes, you have, I'll back ye up on that,
Ben; ye've wandered around my wood-lot and spoilt half the likely young
oaks and ashes I've got, a-stealing your basket-stuff.' And the folks
laughed out loud, and up he got and cleared. He's an awful old thief,
and he's no idea of being anything else. I wa'n't a-goin' to set there
and hear him makin' b'lieve to the Lord. If anybody's heart is in it, I
ain't a-goin' to hender 'em; I'm a professor, and I ain't ashamed of it,
week-days nor Sundays neither. I can't bear to see folks so pious to
meeting, and cheat yer eye-teeth out Monday morning. Well, there! we
ain't none of us perfect; even old Parson Moody was round-shouldered,
they say."
"You were speaking of the Becketts just now," said Mr. Lorimer (after we
had stopped laughing, and Mrs. Bonny had settled her big steel-bowed
spectacles, and sat looking at him with an expression of extreme wisdom.
One might have ventured to call her "peart," I think). "How do they get
on? I am seldom in this region nowadays, since Mr. Reid has taken it
under his charge."
"They get along, somehow or 'nother," replied Mrs. Bonny; "they've got
the best farm this side of the ledge, but they're dreadful lazy and
shiftless, them young folks. Old Mis' Hate-evil Beckett was tellin' me
the other day--she that was Samanthy Barnes, you know--that one of the
boys got fighting, the other side of the mountain, and come home with
his nose broke and a piece o' one ear bit off. I forget which ear it
was. Their mother is a real clever, willin' woman, and she takes it to
heart, but it's no use for her to say anything. Mis' Hate-evil Beckett,
says she, 'It does make my man feel dreadful to see his brother's folks
carry on so.' 'But there,' says I, 'Mis' Beckett, it's just such things
as we read of; Scriptur' is fulfilled: In the larter days there shall be
disobedient children.'"
This application of the text was too much for us, but Mrs. Bonny looked
serious, and we did not like to laugh. Two or three of the exiled fowls
had crept slyly in, dodging underneath our chairs, and had perched
themselves behind the stove. They were long-legged, half-grown
creatures, and just at this minute one rash young rooster made a manful
attempt to crow. "Do tell!" said his mistress, who rose in great wrath,
"you needn't be so forth-putting, as I knows on!" After this we were
urged to stay and have some supper. Mrs. Bonny assured us she could pick
a likely young hen in no time, fry her with a bit of pork, and get us up
"a good meat tea"; but we had to disappoint her, as we had some distance
to walk to the house where we had left our horses, and a long drive
home.
Kate asked if she would be kind enough to lend us a tumbler (for ours
was in the basket, which was given into Tommy's charge). We were
thirsty, and would like to go back to the spring and get some water.
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Bonny, "I've got a glass, if it's so's I can find
it." And she pulled a chair under the little cupboard over the
fireplace, mounted it, and opened the door. Several things fell out at
her, and after taking a careful survey she went in, head and shoulders,
until I thought that she would disappear altogether; but soon she came
back, and reaching in took out one treasure after another, putting them
on the mantel-piece or dropping them on the floor. There were some
bunches of dried herbs, a tin horn, a lump of tallow in a broken plate,
a newspaper, and an old boot, with a number of turkey-wings tied
together, several bottles, and a steel trap, and finally, such a
tumbler! which she produced with triumph, before stepping down. She
poured out of it on the table a mixture of old buttons and squash-seeds,
beside a lump of beeswax which she said she had lost, and now pocketed
with satisfaction. She wiped the tumbler on her apron and handed it to
Kate, but we were not so thirsty as we had been, though we thanked her
and went down to the spring, coming back as soon as possible, for we
could not lose a bit of the conversation.
There was a beautiful view from the doorstep, and we stopped a minute
there. "Real sightly, ain't it?" said Mrs. Bonny. "But you ought to be
here and look across the woods some morning just at sun-up. Why, the sky
is all yaller and red, and them low lands topped with fog! Yes, it's
nice weather, good growin' weather, this week. Corn and all the rest of
the trade looks first-rate. I call it a forrard season. It's just such
weather as we read of, ain't it?"
"I don't remember where, just at this moment," said Mr. Lorimer.
"Why, in the almanac, bless ye!" said she, with a tone of pity in her
grum voice; could it be possible he didn't know,--the Deephaven
minister!
We asked her to come and see us. She said she had always thought she'd
get a chance some time to see Miss Katharine Brandon's house. She should
be pleased to call, and she didn't know but she should be down to the
shore before very long. She was 'shamed to look so shif'less that day,
but she had some good clothes in a chist in the bedroom, and a boughten
bonnet with a good cypress veil, which she had when "he" died. She
calculated they would do, though they might be old-fashioned, some. She
seemed greatly pleased at Mr. Lorimer's having taken the trouble to come
to see her. All those people had a great reverence for "the minister."
We were urged to come again in "rosbry" time, which was near at hand,
and she gave us messages for some of her old customers and
acquaintances. "I believe some of those old creatur's will never die,"
said she; "why, they're getting to be ter'ble old, ain't they, Mr.
Lorimer? There! ye've done me a sight of good, and I wish I could ha'
found the Bible, to hear ye read a Psalm." When Mr. Lorimer shook hands
with her, at leaving, she made him a most reverential courtesy. He was
the greatest man she knew; and once during the call, when he was
speaking of serious things in his simple, earnest way, she had so devout
a look, and seemed so interested, that Kate and I, and Mr. Lorimer
himself, caught a new, fresh meaning in the familiar words he spoke.
Living there in the lonely clearing, deep in the woods and far from any
neighbor, she knew all the herbs and trees and the harmless wild
creatures who lived among them, by heart; and she had an amazing store
of tradition and superstition, which made her so entertaining to us that
we went to see her many times before we came away in the autumn. We went
with her to find some pitcher-plants, one day, and it was wonderful how
much she knew about the woods, what keen observation she had. There was
something so wild and unconventional about Mrs. Bonny that it was like
taking an afternoon walk with a good-natured Indian. We used to carry
her offerings of tobacco, for she was a great smoker, and advised us to
try it, if ever we should be troubled with nerves, or "narves," as she
pronounced the name of that affliction.
_In Shadow_
Soon after we went to Deephaven we took a long drive one day with Mr.
Dockum, the kindest and silentest of men. He had the care of the Brandon
property, and had some business at that time connected with a large
tract of pasture-land perhaps ten miles from town. We had heard of the
coast-road which led to it, how rocky and how rough and wild it was, and
when Kate heard by chance that Mr. Dockum meant to go that way, she
asked if we might go with him. He said he would much rather take us than
"go sole alone," but he should be away until late and we must take our
dinner, which we did not mind doing at all.
After we were three or four miles from Deephaven the country looked very
different. The shore was so rocky that there were almost no places where
a boat could put in, so there were no fishermen in the region, and the
farms were scattered wide apart; the land was so poor that even the
trees looked hungry. At the end of our drive we left the horse at a
lonely little farm-house close by the sea. Mr. Dockum was to walk a long
way inland through the woods with a man whom he had come to meet, and he
told us if we followed the shore westward a mile or two we should find
some very high rocks, for which he knew we had a great liking. It was a
delightful day to spend out of doors; there was an occasional whiff of
east-wind. Seeing us seemed to be a perfect godsend to the people whose
nearest neighbors lived far out of sight. We had a long talk with them
before we went for our walk. The house was close by the water by a
narrow cove, around which the rocks were low, but farther down the shore
the land rose more and more, and at last we stood at the edge of the
highest rocks of all and looked far down at the sea, dashing its white
spray high over the ledges that quiet day. What could it be in winter
when there was a storm and the great waves came thundering in?
After we had explored the shore to our hearts' content and were tired,
we rested for a while in the shadow of some gnarled pitch-pines which
stood close together, as near the sea as they dared. They looked like a
band of outlaws; they were such wild-looking trees. They seemed very
old, and as if their savage fights with the winter winds had made them
hard-hearted. And yet the little wild-flowers and the thin green
grass-blades were growing fearlessly close around their feet; and there
were some comfortable birds'-nests in safe corners of their rough
branches.
When we went back to the house at the cove we had to wait some time for
Mr. Dockum. We succeeded in making friends with the children, and gave
them some candy and the rest of our lunch, which luckily had been even
more abundant than usual. They looked thin and pitiful, but even in that
lonely place, where they so seldom saw a stranger or even a neighbor,
they showed that there was an evident effort to make them look like
other children, and they were neatly dressed, though there could be no
mistake about their being very poor. One forlorn little soul, with
honest gray eyes and a sweet, shy smile, showed us a string of beads
which she wore round her neck; there were perhaps two dozen of them,
blue and white, on a bit of twine, and they were the dearest things in
all her world. When we came away we were so glad that we could give the
man more than he asked us for taking care of the horse, and his thanks
touched us.
"I hope ye may never know what it is to earn every dollar as hard as I
have. I never earned any money as easy as this before. I don't feel as
if I ought to take it. I've done the best I could," said the man, with
the tears coming into his eyes, and a huskiness in his voice. "I've done
the best I could, and I'm willin' and my woman is, but everything seems
to have been ag'in' us; we never seem to get forehanded. It looks
sometimes as if the Lord had forgot us, but my woman she never wants me
to say that; she says He ain't, and that we might be worse off,--but I
don' know. I haven't had my health; that's hendered me most. I'm a
boat-builder by trade, but the business's all run down; folks buys 'em
second-hand nowadays, and you can't make nothing. I can't stand it to
foller deep-sea fishing, and--well, you see what my land's wuth. But my
oldest boy, he's getting ahead. He pushed off this spring, and he works
in a box-shop to Boston; a cousin o' his mother's got him the chance. He
sent me ten dollars a spell ago and his mother a shawl. I don't see how
he done it, but he's smart!"
This seemed to be the only bright spot in their lives, and we admired
the shawl and sat down in the house awhile with the mother, who seemed
kind and patient and tired, and to have great delight in talking about
what one should wear. Kate and I thought and spoke often of these people
afterward, and when one day we met the man in Deephaven we sent some
things to the children and his wife, and begged him to come to the house
whenever he came to town; but we never saw him again, and though we made
many plans for going again to the cove, we never did. At one time the
road was reported impassable, and we put off our second excursion for
this reason and others until just before we left Deephaven, late in
October.
We knew the coast-road would be bad after the fall rains, and we found
that Leander, the eldest of the Dockum boys, had some errand that way,
so he went with us. We enjoyed the drive that morning in spite of the
rough road. The air was warm, and sweet with the smell of
bayberry-bushes and pitch-pines and the delicious saltness of the sea,
which was not far from us all the way. It was a perfect autumn day.
Sometimes we crossed pebble beaches, and then went farther inland,
through woods and up and down steep little hills; over shaky bridges
which crossed narrow salt creeks in the marsh-lands. There was a little
excitement about the drive, and an exhilaration in the air, and we
laughed at jokes forgotten the next minute, and sang, and were jolly
enough. Leander, who had never happened to see us in exactly this
hilarious state of mind before, seemed surprised and interested, and
became unusually talkative, telling us a great many edifying particulars
about the people whose houses we passed, and who owned every wood-lot
along the road. "Do you see that house over on the pi'nt?" he asked. "An
old fellow lives there that's part lost his mind. He had a son who was
drowned off Cod Rock fishing, much as twenty-five years ago, and he's
worn a deep path out to the end of the pi'nt where he goes out every
hand's turn o' the day to see if he can't see the boat coming in." And
Leander looked round to see if we were not amused, and seemed puzzled
because we didn't laugh. Happily, his next story was funny.
We saw a sleepy little owl on the dead branch of a pine-tree; we saw a
rabbit cross the road and disappear in a clump of juniper, and squirrels
run up and down trees and along the stone-walls with acorns in their
mouths. We passed straggling thickets of the upland sumach, leafless,
and holding high their ungainly spikes of red berries; there were sturdy
barberry-bushes along the lonely wayside, their unpicked fruit hanging
in brilliant clusters. The blueberry-bushes made patches of dull red
along the hillsides. The ferns were whitish-gray and brown at the edges
of the woods, and the asters and golden-rods which had lately looked so
gay in the open fields stood now in faded, frost-bitten companies. There
were busy flocks of birds flitting from field to field, ready to start
on their journey southward.
When we reached the house, to our surprise there was no one in sight and
the place looked deserted. We left the wagon, and while Leander went
toward the barn, which stood at a little distance, Kate and I went to
the house and knocked. I opened the door a little way and said "Hallo!"
but nobody answered. The people could not have moved away, for there
were some chairs standing outside the door, and as I looked in I saw the
bunches of herbs hanging up, and a trace of corn, and the furniture was
all there. It was a great disappointment, for we had counted upon seeing
the children again. Leander said there was nobody at the barn, and that
they must have gone to a funeral; he couldn't think of anything else.
Just now we saw some people coming up the road, and we thought at first
that they were the man and his wife coming back; but they proved to be
strangers, and we eagerly asked what had become of the family.
"They're dead, both on 'em. His wife she died about nine weeks ago last
Sunday, and he died day before yesterday. Funeral's going to be this
afternoon. Thought ye were some of her folks from up country, when we
were coming along," said the man.
"Guess they won't come nigh," said the woman, scornfully; "'fraid
they'd have to help provide for the children. I was half-sister to him,
and I've got to take the two least ones."
"Did you say he was going to be buried this afternoon?" asked Kate,
slowly. We were both more startled than I can tell.
"Yes," said the man, who seemed much better-natured than his wife. She
appeared like a person whose only aim in life was to have things over
with. "Yes, we're going to bury at two o'clock. They had a master sight
of trouble, first and last."
Leander had said nothing all this time. He had known the man, and had
expected to spend the day with him and to get him to go on two miles
farther to help bargain for a dory. He asked, in a disappointed way,
what had carried him off so sudden.
"Drink," said the woman, relentlessly. "He ain't been good for nothing
sence his wife died: she was took with a fever along in the first of
August. _I_'d ha' got up from it!"
"Now don't be hard on the dead, Marthy," said her husband. "I guess they
done the best they could. They weren't shif'less, you know; they never
had no health; 't was against wind and tide with 'em all the time." And
Kate asked, "Did you say he was your brother?"
"Yes. I was half-sister to him," said the woman, promptly, with perfect
unconsciousness of Kate's meaning.
"And what will become of those poor children?"
"I've got the two youngest over to my place to take care on, and the two
next them has been put out to some folks over to the cove. I dare say
like's not they'll be sent back."
"They're clever child'n, I guess," said the man, who spoke as if this
were the first time he had dared take their part. "Don't be ha'sh,
Marthy! Who knows but they may do for us when we get to be old?" And
then she turned and looked at him with utter contempt. "I can't stand it
to hear men-folks talking on what they don't know nothing about," said
she. "The ways of Providence is dreadful myster'ous," she went on with a
whine, instead of the sharp tone of voice which we had heard before.
"We've had a hard row, and we've just got our own children off our hands
and able to do for themselves, and now here are these to be fetched up."
"But perhaps they'll be a help to you; they seem to be good little
things," said Kate. "I saw them in the summer, and they seemed to be
pleasant children, and it is dreadfully hard for them to be left alone.
It's not their fault, you know. We brought over something for them; will
you be kind enough to take the basket when you go home?"
"Thank ye, I'm sure," said the aunt, relenting slightly. "You can speak
to my man about it, and he'll give it to somebody that's going by. I've
got to walk in the procession. They'll be obliged, I'm sure. I s'pose
you're the young ladies that come here right after the Fourth o' July,
ain't you? I should be pleased to have you call and see the child'n if
you're over this way again. I heard 'em talk about you last time I was
over. Won't ye step into the house and see him? He looks real natural,"
she added. But we said, "No, thank you."
Leander told us he believed he wouldn't bother about the dory that day,
and he should be there at the house whenever we were ready. He evidently
considered it a piece of good luck that he had happened to arrive in
time for the funeral. We spoke to the man about the things we had
brought for the children, which seemed to delight him, poor soul, and we
felt sure he would be kind to them. His wife shouted to him from a
window of the house that he'd better not loiter round, or they wouldn't
be half ready when the folks began to come, and we said good by to him
and went away.
It was a beautiful morning, and we walked slowly along the shore to the
high rocks and the pitch-pine trees which we had seen before; the air
was deliciously fresh, and one could take long deep breaths of it. The
tide was coming in, and the spray dashed higher and higher. We climbed
about the rocks and went down in some of the deep cold clefts into which
the sun could seldom shine. We gathered some wild-flowers; bits of
pimpernel and one or two sprigs of fringed gentian which had bloomed
late in a sheltered place, and a pale little bouquet of asters. We sat
for a long time looking off to sea, and we could talk or think of almost
nothing beside what we had seen and heard at the farm-house. We said how
much we should like to go to that funeral, and we even made up our minds
to go back in season, but we gave up the idea: we had no right there,
and it would seem as if we were merely curious, and we were afraid our
presence would make the people ill at ease, the minister especially. It
would be an intrusion.
We spoke of the children, and tried to think what could be done for
them: we were afraid they would be told so many times that it was lucky
they did not have to go to the poor-house, and yet we could not help
pitying the hard-worked, discouraged woman whom we had seen, in spite of
her bitterness. Poor soul! she looked like a person to whom nobody had
ever been very kind, and for whom life had no pleasures: its sunshine
had never been warm enough to thaw the ice at her heart.
We remembered how we knocked at the door and called loudly, but there
had been no answer, and we wondered how we should have felt if we had
gone farther into the room and had found the dead man in his coffin, all
alone in the house. We thought of our first visit, and what he had said
to us, and we wished we had come again sooner, for we might have helped
them so much more if we had only known.
"What a pitiful ending it is," said Kate. "Do you realize that the
family is broken up, and the children are to be half strangers to each
other? Did you not notice that they seemed very fond of each other when
we saw them in the summer? There was not half the roughness and apparent
carelessness of one another which one so often sees in the country.
Theirs was such a little world; one can understand how, when the man's
wife died, he was bewildered and discouraged, utterly at a loss. The
thoughts of winter, and of the little children, and of the struggles he
had already come through against poverty and disappointment were
terrible thoughts; and like a boat adrift at sea, the waves of his
misery brought him in against the rocks, and his simple life was
wrecked."
"I suppose his grandest hopes and wishes would have been realized in a
good farm and a thousand or two dollars in safe keeping," said I. "Do
you remember that merry little song in 'As You Like It'?
'Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets';
and
'Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.'
That is all he lived for, his literal daily bread. I suppose what would
be prosperity to him would be miserably insufficient for some other
people. I wonder how we can help being conscious, in the midst of our
comforts and pleasures, of the lives which are being starved to death in
more ways than one."
"I suppose one thinks more about these things as one grows older," said
Kate, thoughtfully. "How seldom life in this world seems to be a
success! Among rich or poor only here and there one touches
satisfaction, though the one who seems to have made an utter failure may
really be the greatest conqueror. And, Helen, I find that I understand
better and better how unsatisfactory, how purposeless and disastrous,
any life must be which is not a Christian life! It is like being always
in the dark, and wandering one knows not where, if one is not learning
more and more what it is to have a friendship with God."