LATER, THERE WAS only one fault to find with this choice of a summer
lodging-place, and that was its complete lack of seclusion. At first the
tiny house of Mrs. Almira Todd, which stood with its end to the street,
appeared to be retired and sheltered enough from the busy world, behind
its bushy bit of a green garden, in which all the blooming things, two
or three gay hollyhocks and some London-pride, were pushed back against
the gray-shingled wall. It was a queer little garden and puzzling to
a stranger, the few flowers being put at a disadvantage by so much
greenery; but the discovery was soon made that Mrs. Todd was an ardent
lover of herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea-breezes blew into
the low end-window of the house laden with not only sweet-brier
and sweet-mary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, wormwood and
southernwood. If Mrs. Todd had occasion to step into the far corner
of her herb plot, she trod heavily upon thyme, and made its fragrant
presence known with all the rest. Being a very large person, her full
skirts brushed and bent almost every slender stalk that her feet missed.
You could always tell when she was stepping about there, even when you
were half awake in the morning, and learned to know, in the course of a
few weeks' experience, in exactly which corner of the garden she might
be.
At one side of this herb plot were other growths of a rustic
pharmacopoeia, great treasures and rarities among the commoner herbs.
There were some strange and pungent odors that roused a dim sense and
remembrance of something in the forgotten past. Some of these might
once have belonged to sacred and mystic rites, and have had some occult
knowledge handed with them down the centuries; but now they pertained
only to humble compounds brewed at intervals with molasses or vinegar
or spirits in a small caldron on Mrs. Todd's kitchen stove. They were
dispensed to suffering neighbors, who usually came at night as if by
stealth, bringing their own ancient-looking vials to be filled. One
nostrum was called the Indian remedy, and its price was but fifteen
cents; the whispered directions could be heard as customers passed
the windows. With most remedies the purchaser was allowed to depart
unadmonished from the kitchen, Mrs. Todd being a wise saver of steps;
but with certain vials she gave cautions, standing in the doorway, and
there were other doses which had to be accompanied on their healing way
as far as the gate, while she muttered long chapters of directions, and
kept up an air of secrecy and importance to the last. It may not have
been only the common aids of humanity with which she tried to cope; it
seemed sometimes as if love and hate and jealousy and adverse winds at
sea might also find their proper remedies among the curious wild-looking
plants in Mrs. Todd's garden.
The village doctor and this learned herbalist were upon the best of
terms. The good man may have counted upon the unfavorable effect of
certain potions which he should find his opportunity in counteracting;
at any rate, he now and then stopped and exchanged greetings with Mrs.
Todd over the picket fence. The conversation became at once professional
after the briefest preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a
sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps
about her faith in a too persistent course of thoroughwort elixir, in
which my landlady professed such firm belief as sometimes to endanger
the life and usefulness of worthy neighbors.
To arrive at this quietest of seaside villages late in June, when the
busy herb-gathering season was just beginning, was also to arrive in
the early prime of Mrs. Todd's activity in the brewing of old-fashioned
spruce beer. This cooling and refreshing drink had been brought to
wonderful perfection through a long series of experiments; it had won
immense local fame, and the supplies for its manufacture were always
giving out and having to be replenished. For various reasons, the
seclusion and uninterrupted days which had been looked forward to proved
to be very rare in this otherwise delightful corner of the world. My
hostess and I had made our shrewd business agreement on the basis of a
simple cold luncheon at noon, and liberal restitution in the matter of
hot suppers, to provide for which the lodger might sometimes be seen
hurrying down the road, late in the day, with cunner line in hand.
It was soon found that this arrangement made large allowance for Mrs.
Todd's slow herb-gathering progresses through woods and pastures. The
spruce-beer customers were pretty steady in hot weather, and there were
many demands for different soothing syrups and elixirs with which the
unwise curiosity of my early residence had made me acquainted. Knowing
Mrs. Todd to be a widow, who had little beside this slender business and
the income from one hungry lodger to maintain her, one's energies and
even interest were quickly bestowed, until it became a matter of course
that she should go afield every pleasant day, and that the lodger should
answer all peremptory knocks at the side door.
In taking an occasional wisdom-giving stroll in Mrs. Todd's company, and
in acting as business partner during her frequent absences, I found the
July days fly fast, and it was not until I felt myself confronted with
too great pride and pleasure in the display, one night, of two dollars
and twenty-seven cents which I had taken in during the day, that I
remembered a long piece of writing, sadly belated now, which I was bound
to do. To have been patted kindly on the shoulder and called “darlin',”
to have been offered a surprise of early mushrooms for supper, to have
had all the glory of making two dollars and twenty-seven cents in a
single day, and then to renounce it all and withdraw from these pleasant
successes, needed much resolution. Literary employments are so vexed
with uncertainties at best, and it was not until the voice of conscience
sounded louder in my ears than the sea on the nearest pebble beach that
I said unkind words of withdrawal to Mrs. Todd. She only became more
wistfully affectionate than ever in her expressions, and looked as
disappointed as I expected when I frankly told her that I could no
longer enjoy the pleasure of what we called “seein' folks.” I felt that
I was cruel to a whole neighborhood in curtailing her liberty in this
most important season for harvesting the different wild herbs that were
so much counted upon to ease their winter ails.
“Well, dear,” she said sorrowfully, “I've took great advantage o' your
bein' here. I ain't had such a season for years, but I have never had
nobody I could so trust. All you lack is a few qualities, but with time
you'd gain judgment an' experience, an' be very able in the business.
I'd stand right here an' say it to anybody.”
Mrs. Todd and I were not separated or estranged by the change in our
business relations; on the contrary, a deeper intimacy seemed to begin.
I do not know what herb of the night it was that used sometimes to send
out a penetrating odor late in the evening, after the dew had fallen,
and the moon was high, and the cool air came up from the sea. Then Mrs.
Todd would feel that she must talk to somebody, and I was only too glad
to listen. We both fell under the spell, and she either stood outside
the window, or made an errand to my sitting-room, and told, it might
be very commonplace news of the day, or, as happened one misty summer
night, all that lay deepest in her heart. It was in this way that I came
to know that she had loved one who was far above her.
“No, dear, him I speak of could never think of me,” she said. “When
we was young together his mother didn't favor the match, an' done
everything she could to part us; and folks thought we both married well,
but't wa'n't what either one of us wanted most; an' now we're left alone
again, an' might have had each other all the time. He was above bein' a
seafarin' man, an' prospered more than most; he come of a high family,
an' my lot was plain an' hard-workin'. I ain't seen him for some years;
he's forgot our youthful feelin's, I expect, but a woman's heart is
different; them feelin's comes back when you think you've done with
'em, as sure as spring comes with the year. An' I've always had ways of
hearin' about him.”
She stood in the centre of a braided rug, and its rings of black and
gray seemed to circle about her feet in the dim light. Her height and
massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a huge sibyl, while the
strange fragrance of the mysterious herb blew in from the little garden.