GRANDPARENTS
Zephaniah Pennel came back to his house in the evening, after Miss Roxy
had taken the little Mara away. He looked for the flowery face and
golden hair as he came towards the door, and put his hand in his
vest-pocket, where he had deposited a small store of very choice shells
and sea curiosities, thinking of the widening of those dark, soft eyes
when he should present them.
"Where's Mara?" was the first inquiry after he had crossed the
threshold.
"Why, Roxy's been an' taken her down to Cap'n Kittridge's to spend the
night," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy's gone to help Mis' Kittridge to turn her
spotted gray and black silk. We was talking this mornin' whether 'no 't
would turn, 'cause _I_ thought the spot was overshot, and wouldn't make
up on the wrong side; but Roxy she says it's one of them ar Calcutty
silks that has two sides to 'em, like the one you bought Miss Pennel,
that we made up for her, you know;" and Miss Ruey arose and gave a
finishing snap to the Sunday pantaloons, which she had been left to
"finish off,"--which snap said, as plainly as words could say that there
was a good job disposed of.
Zephaniah stood looking as helpless as animals of the male kind
generally do when appealed to with such prolixity on feminine details;
in reply to it all, only he asked meekly,--
"Where's Mary?"
"Mis' Pennel? Why, she's up chamber. She'll be down in a minute, she
said; she thought she'd have time afore supper to get to the bottom of
the big chist, and see if that 'ere vest pattern ain't there, and them
sticks o' twist for the button-holes, 'cause Roxy she says she never see
nothin' so rotten as that 'ere twist we've been a-workin' with, that
Mis' Pennel got over to Portland; it's a clear cheat, and Mis' Pennel
she give more'n half a cent a stick more for 't than what Roxy got for
her up to Brunswick; so you see these 'ere Portland stores charge up,
and their things want lookin' after."
Here Mrs. Pennel entered the room, "the Captain" addressing her
eagerly,--
"How came you to let Aunt Roxy take Mara off so far, and be gone so
long?"
"Why, law me, Captain Pennel! the little thing seems kind o' lonesome.
Chil'en want chil'en; Miss Roxy says she's altogether too sort o' still
and old-fashioned, and must have child's company to chirk her up, and so
she took her down to play with Sally Kittridge; there's no manner of
danger or harm in it, and she'll be back to-morrow afternoon, and Mara
will have a real good time."
"Wal', now, really," said the good man, "but it's 'mazin' lonesome."
"Cap'n Pennel, you're gettin' to make an idol of that 'ere child," said
Miss Ruey. "We have to watch our hearts. It minds me of the hymn,--
"'The fondness of a creature's love,
How strong it strikes the sense,--
Thither the warm affections move,
Nor can we call them hence.'"
Miss Ruey's mode of getting off poetry, in a sort of high-pitched
canter, with a strong thump on every accented syllable, might have
provoked a smile in more sophisticated society, but Zephaniah listened
to her with deep gravity, and answered,--
"I'm 'fraid there's truth in what you say, Aunt Ruey. When her mother
was called away, I thought that was a warning I never should forget; but
now I seem to be like Jonah,--I'm restin' in the shadow of my gourd, and
my heart is glad because of it. I kind o' trembled at the prayer meetin'
when we was a-singin',--
"'The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.'"
"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "Roxy says if the Lord should take us up short on
our prayers, it would make sad work with us sometimes."
"Somehow," said Mrs. Pennel, "it seems to me just her mother over again.
She don't look like her. I think her hair and complexion comes from the
Badger blood; my mother had that sort o' hair and skin,--but then she
has ways like Naomi,--and it seems as if the Lord had kind o' given
Naomi back to us; so I hope she's goin' to be spared to us."
Mrs. Pennel had one of those natures--gentle, trustful, and hopeful,
because not very deep; she was one of the little children of the world
whose faith rests on child-like ignorance, and who know not the deeper
needs of deeper natures; such see only the sunshine and forget the
storm.
This conversation had been going on to the accompaniment of a clatter of
plates and spoons and dishes, and the fizzling of sausages, prefacing
the evening meal, to which all now sat down after a lengthened grace
from Zephaniah.
"There's a tremendous gale a-brewin'," he said, as they sat at table. "I
noticed the clouds to-night as I was comin' home, and somehow I felt
kind o' as if I wanted all our folks snug in-doors."
"Why, law, husband, Cap'n Kittridge's house is as good as ours, if it
does blow. You never can seem to remember that houses don't run aground
or strike on rocks in storms."
"The Cap'n puts me in mind of old Cap'n Jeduth Scranton," said Miss
Ruey, "that built that queer house down by Middle Bay. The Cap'n he
would insist on havin' on't jist like a ship, and the closet-shelves had
holes for the tumblers and dishes, and he had all his tables and chairs
battened down, and so when it came a gale, they say the old Cap'n used
to sit in his chair and hold on to hear the wind blow."
"Well, I tell you," said Captain, "those that has followed the seas
hears the wind with different ears from lands-people. When you lie with
only a plank between you and eternity, and hear the voice of the Lord on
the waters, it don't sound as it does on shore."
And in truth, as they were speaking, a fitful gust swept by the house,
wailing and screaming and rattling the windows, and after it came the
heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild, angry howl
of some savage animal just beginning to be lashed into fury.
"Sure enough, the wind is rising," said Miss Ruey, getting up from the
table, and flattening her snub nose against the window-pane. "Dear me,
how dark it is! Mercy on us, how the waves come in!--all of a sheet of
foam. I pity the ships that's comin' on coast such a night."
The storm seemed to have burst out with a sudden fury, as if myriads of
howling demons had all at once been loosened in the air. Now they piped
and whistled with eldritch screech round the corners of the house--now
they thundered down the chimney--and now they shook the door and rattled
the casement--and anon mustering their forces with wild ado, seemed to
career over the house, and sail high up into the murky air. The dash of
the rising tide came with successive crash upon crash like the discharge
of heavy artillery, seeming to shake the very house, and the spray
borne by the wind dashed whizzing against the window-panes.
Zephaniah, rising from supper, drew up the little stand that had the
family Bible on it, and the three old time-worn people sat themselves as
seriously down to evening worship as if they had been an extensive
congregation. They raised the old psalm-tune which our fathers called
"Complaint," and the cracked, wavering voices of the women, with the
deep, rough bass of the old sea-captain, rose in the uproar of the storm
with a ghostly, strange wildness, like the scream of the curlew or the
wailing of the wind:--
"Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray,
Nor let our sun go down at noon:
Thy years are an eternal day,
And must thy children die so soon!"
Miss Ruey valued herself on singing a certain weird and exalted part
which in ancient days used to be called counter, and which wailed and
gyrated in unimaginable heights of the scale, much as you may hear a
shrill, fine-voiced wind over a chimney-top; but altogether, the deep
and earnest gravity with which the three filled up the pauses in the
storm with their quaint minor key, had something singularly impressive.
When the singing was over, Zephaniah read to the accompaniment of wind
and sea, the words of poetry made on old Hebrew shores, in the dim, gray
dawn of the world:--
"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thundereth;
the Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord shaketh the
wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. The Lord sitteth
upon the floods, yea, the Lord sitteth King forever. The Lord will give
strength to his people; yea, the Lord will bless his people with peace."
How natural and home-born sounded this old piece of Oriental poetry in
the ears of the three! The wilderness of Kadesh, with its great cedars,
was doubtless Orr's Island, where even now the goodly fellowship of
black-winged trees were groaning and swaying, and creaking as the breath
of the Lord passed over them.
And the three old people kneeling by their smouldering fireside, amid
the general uproar, Zephaniah began in the words of a prayer which Moses
the man of God made long ago under the shadows of Egyptian pyramids:
"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."
We hear sometimes in these days that the Bible is no more inspired of
God than many other books of historic and poetic merit. It is a fact,
however, that the Bible answers a strange and wholly exceptional purpose
by thousands of firesides on all shores of the earth; and, till some
other book can be found to do the same thing, it will not be surprising
if a belief of its Divine origin be one of the ineffaceable ideas of the
popular mind. It will be a long while before a translation from Homer or
a chapter in the Koran, or any of the beauties of Shakespeare, will be
read in a stormy night on Orr's Island with the same sense of a Divine
presence as the Psalms of David, or the prayer of Moses, the man of God.
Boom! boom! "What's that?" said Zephaniah, starting, as they rose up
from prayer. "Hark! again, that's a gun,--there's a ship in distress."
"Poor souls," said Miss Ruey; "it's an awful night!"
The captain began to put on his sea-coat.
"You ain't a-goin' out?" said his wife.
"I must go out along the beach a spell, and see if I can hear any more
of that ship."
"Mercy on us; the wind'll blow you over!" said Aunt Ruey.
"I rayther think I've stood wind before in my day," said Zephaniah, a
grim smile stealing over his weather-beaten cheeks. In fact, the man
felt a sort of secret relationship to the storm, as if it were in some
manner a family connection--a wild, roystering cousin, who drew him out
by a rough attraction of comradeship.
"Well, at any rate," said Mrs. Pennel, producing a large tin lantern
perforated with many holes, in which she placed a tallow candle, "take
this with you, and don't stay out long."
The kitchen door opened, and the first gust of wind took off the old
man's hat and nearly blew him prostrate. He came back and shut the
door. "I ought to have known better," he said, knotting his
pocket-handkerchief over his head, after which he waited for a momentary
lull, and went out into the storm.
Miss Ruey looked through the window-pane, and saw the light go twinkling
far down into the gloom, and ever and anon came the mournful boom of
distant guns.
"Certainly there is a ship in trouble somewhere," she said.
"He never can be easy when he hears these guns," said Mrs. Pennel; "but
what can he do, or anybody, in such a storm, the wind blowing right on
to shore?"
"I shouldn't wonder if Cap'n Kittridge should be out on the beach, too,"
said Miss Ruey; "but laws, he ain't much more than one of these 'ere old
grasshoppers you see after frost comes. Well, any way, there _ain't_
much help in man if a ship comes ashore in such a gale as this, such a
dark night too."
"It's kind o' lonesome to have poor little Mara away such a night as
this is," said Mrs. Pennel; "but who would a-thought it this afternoon,
when Aunt Roxy took her?"
"I 'member my grandmother had a silver cream-pitcher that come ashore
in a storm on Mare P'int," said Miss Ruey, as she sat trotting her
knitting-needles. "Grand'ther found it, half full of sand, under a knot
of seaweed way up on the beach. It had a coat of arms on it,--might have
belonged to some grand family, that pitcher; in the Toothacre family
yet."
"I remember when I was a girl," said Mrs. Pennel, "seeing the hull of a
ship that went on Eagle Island; it run way up in a sort of gully between
two rocks, and lay there years. They split pieces off it sometimes to
make fires, when they wanted to make a chowder down on the beach."
"My aunt, Lois Toothacre, that lives down by Middle Bay," said Miss
Ruey, "used to tell about a dreadful blow they had once in time of the
equinoctial storm; and what was remarkable, she insisted that she heard
a baby cryin' out in the storm,--she heard it just as plain as could
be."
"Laws a-mercy," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously, "it was nothing but the
wind,--it always screeches like a child crying; or maybe it was the
seals; seals will cry just like babes."
"So they told her; but no,--she insisted she knew the difference,--it
_was_ a baby. Well, what do you think, when the storm cleared off, they
found a baby's cradle washed ashore sure enough!"
"But they didn't find any baby," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously.
"No; they searched the beach far and near, and that cradle was all they
found. Aunt Lois took it in--it was a very good cradle, and she took it
to use, but every time there came up a gale, that ar cradle would rock,
rock, jist as if somebody was a-sittin' by it; and you could stand
across the room and see there wa'n't nobody there."
"You make me all of a shiver," said Mrs. Pennel.
This, of course, was just what Miss Ruey intended, and she went on:--
"Wal', you see they kind o' got used to it; they found there wa'n't no
harm come of its rockin', and so they didn't mind; but Aunt Lois had a
sister Cerinthy that was a weakly girl, and had the janders. Cerinthy
was one of the sort that's born with veils over their faces, and can see
sperits; and one time Cerinthy was a-visitin' Lois after her second baby
was born, and there came up a blow, and Cerinthy comes out of the
keepin'-room, where the cradle was a-standin', and says, 'Sister,' says
she, 'who's that woman sittin' rockin' the cradle?' and Aunt Lois says
she, 'Why, there ain't nobody. That ar cradle always will rock in a
gale, but I've got used to it, and don't mind it.' 'Well,' says
Cerinthy, 'jist as true as you live, I just saw a woman with a silk gown
on, and long black hair a-hangin' down, and her face was pale as a
sheet, sittin' rockin' that ar cradle, and she looked round at me with
her great black eyes kind o' mournful and wishful, and then she stooped
down over the cradle.' 'Well,' says Lois, 'I ain't goin' to have no such
doin's in my house,' and she went right in and took up the baby, and the
very next day she jist had the cradle split up for kindlin'; and that
night, if you'll believe, when they was a-burnin' of it, they heard,
jist as plain as could be, a baby scream, scream, screamin' round the
house; but after that they never heard it no more."
"I don't like such stories," said Dame Pennel, "'specially to-night,
when Mara's away. I shall get to hearing all sorts of noises in the
wind. I wonder when Cap'n Pennel will be back."
And the good woman put more wood on the fire, and as the tongues of
flame streamed up high and clear, she approached her face to the
window-pane and started back with half a scream, as a pale, anxious
visage with sad dark eyes seemed to approach her. It took a moment or
two for her to discover that she had seen only the reflection of her own
anxious, excited face, the pitchy blackness without having converted the
window into a sort of dark mirror.
Miss Ruey meanwhile began solacing herself by singing, in her
chimney-corner, a very favorite sacred melody, which contrasted oddly
enough with the driving storm and howling sea:--
"Haste, my beloved, haste away,
Cut short the hours of thy delay;
Fly like the bounding hart or roe,
Over the hills where spices grow."
The tune was called "Invitation,"--one of those profusely florid in
runs, and trills, and quavers, which delighted the ears of a former
generation; and Miss Ruey, innocently unconscious of the effect of old
age on her voice, ran them up and down, and out and in, in a way that
would have made a laugh, had there been anybody there to notice or to
laugh.
"I remember singin' that ar to Mary Jane Wilson the very night she
died," said Aunt Ruey, stopping. "She wanted me to sing to her, and it
was jist between two and three in the mornin'; there was jist the least
red streak of daylight, and I opened the window and sat there and sung,
and when I come to 'over the hills where spices grow,' I looked round
and there was a change in Mary Jane, and I went to the bed, and says she
very bright, 'Aunt Ruey, the Beloved has come,' and she was gone afore I
could raise her up on her pillow. I always think of Mary Jane at them
words; if ever there was a broken-hearted crittur took home, it was
her."
At this moment Mrs. Pennel caught sight through the window of the gleam
of the returning lantern, and in a moment Captain Pennel entered,
dripping with rain and spray.
"Why, Cap'n! you're e'en a'most drowned," said Aunt Ruey.
"How long have you been gone? You must have been a great ways," said
Mrs. Pennel.
"Yes, I have been down to Cap'n Kittridge's. I met Kittridge out on the
beach. We heard the guns plain enough, but couldn't see anything. I went
on down to Kittridge's to get a look at little Mara."
"Well, she's all well enough?" said Mrs. Pennel, anxiously.
"Oh, yes, well enough. Miss Roxy showed her to me in the trundle-bed,
'long with Sally. The little thing was lying smiling in her sleep, with
her cheek right up against Sally's. I took comfort looking at her. I
couldn't help thinking: 'So he giveth his beloved sleep!'"