The farm was typical of the Island. The kitchen door opened directly
on the farmyard, and around it, at the moment, were gathered turkeys,
ducks, geese and chickens. Mac brought me to a little gate in the
flower-garden fence, and, passing through it, we walked along the
pathway before the house, so that I could enter through the front door
and be received in the "front room." Island opposition to affectation
or "putting on," as the people say, forbade calling this "front room"
a parlor. No one would think of doing such a thing, unless he was
already well along the way to "aristocracy." One dare not violate the
unwritten Island law to keep natural and plain.
I noticed that when Mac spoke to me he used the cultured accents of
the old college; but before others he spoke as the Islanders
spoke--good English, better English than that of the farmers I knew,
but flat--the extremity of plainness. I could not analyze that Island
brogue. It sounded like a mixture of Irish and Scotch, unpleasant only
because unsoftened. But you could scarcely call it brogue. It struck
me as a sort of protest against affectation; as the Islander's way of
explaining, without putting it in the sense of the words, that he does
not want to be taken at a false valuation. The Island brogue is a
notice that the user of it meets you man to man. So it reflected Mac,
and it reflected his people, unspoiled, unvarnished, true as steel,
full of rigid honesty; but undemonstrative, with the wells of
affection hidden, yet full to the top, of pure, bright, limpid water.
The "front room" had a hand-woven carpet on the floor, made of a
material called "drugget." A few old prints, in glaring colors, were
on the walls. There was a Sacred Heart and an odd-looking picture of
the dead Christ resting in a tomb, with an altar above and candles all
around it. It was a strange religious conceit. On another wall was a
coffin plate, surrounded with waxed flowers and framed, with a little
photograph of a young man in the center of the flowers. The chairs
were plain enough, but covered with a coarse hand-made lace. It was
not Mac's kind of a room, at all. It made me shudder and wonder how
the scholar who loved his old book-lined college den and knew the old
masters, could even live near to it.
Mac came in very soon, leading an old lady, who walked with a cane.
She was bent and wrinkled with age. I could see that she was blind.
She had a strange-looking old shawl, the like of which I had only a
vague recollection of seeing as a boy, about her shoulders; and on her
head was a black cap with white ruching around her face.
"My mother, Bruce," he said, very simply.
As I took the old lady's hand, he said to her: "This is my old friend,
Professor Bruce, mother. He has come all the way from New York to see
me. I'll leave you together while I go to see sister. Sister has been
bedridden for years, Bruce."
The old lady was too much embarrassed to speak. Mac smiled at me as he
led her to a chair and said: "Bruce does not look like a professor,
mother. He just looks like me."
I could see all the Island respect for learning in the poor old lady's
deference. Mac left us, and his mother asked if I would not have some
tea. I refused the tea, giving as excuse that it was so close to the
hour of the evening meal.
"So, you knew my son at college?" said the mother.
"I knew him well, Mrs. McKinney. He was my dearest friend."
The old lady began to cry softly.
"I am so sorry," she said, "that he failed in his examinations, and
yet, I ought to be glad, I suppose, for it is a comfort to have him.
Ellie is a cripple and without Alec what would we do? Of course, if
he hadn't failed, I couldn't hope to keep him, so it is better,
perhaps, as it is. But he was such a smart boy and so anxious to get
on. It was a great disappointment to him; and then, of course, none of
us liked to have the neighbors know that the boy was not cut out for
something better than a farmer. But you must have liked him, when you
came all the way from New York to see him."