WE WERE a little late to dinner, but Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd were
lenient, and we all took our places after William had paused to wash his
hands, like a pious Brahmin, at the well, and put on a neat blue coat
which he took from a peg behind the kitchen door. Then he resolutely
asked a blessing in words that I could not hear, and we ate the chowder
and were thankful. The kitten went round and round the table, quite
erect, and, holding on by her fierce young claws, she stopped to mew
with pathos at each elbow, or darted off to the open door when a song
sparrow forgot himself and lit in the grass too near. William did not
talk much, but his sister Todd occupied the time and told all the news
there was to tell of Dunnet Landing and its coasts, while the old mother
listened with delight. Her hospitality was something exquisite; she had
the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves
and their houses belong entirely to a guest's pleasure,--that charming
surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them,
so that they make a part of one's own life that can never be forgotten.
Tact is after all a kind of mindreading, and my hostess held the golden
gift. Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett's
world and mine were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that
final, that highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness.
Sometimes, as I watched her eager, sweet old face, I wondered why she
had been set to shine on this lonely island of the northern coast.
It must have been to keep the balance true, and make up to all her
scattered and depending neighbors for other things which they may have
lacked.
When we had finished clearing away the old blue plates, and the kitten
had taken care of her share of the fresh haddock, just as we were
putting back the kitchen chairs in their places, Mrs. Todd said briskly
that she must go up into the pasture now to gather the desired herbs.
“You can stop here an' rest, or you can accompany me,” she announced.
“Mother ought to have her nap, and when we come back she an' William'll
sing for you. She admires music,” said Mrs. Todd, turning to speak to
her mother.
But Mrs. Blackett tried to say that she couldn't sing as she used, and
perhaps William wouldn't feel like it. She looked tired, the good old
soul, or I should have liked to sit in the peaceful little house while
she slept; I had had much pleasant experience of pastures already in her
daughter's company. But it seemed best to go with Mrs. Todd, and off we
went.
Mrs. Todd carried the gingham bag which she had brought from home, and a
small heavy burden in the bottom made it hang straight and slender from
her hand. The way was steep, and she soon grew breathless, so that we
sat down to rest awhile on a convenient large stone among the bayberry.
“There, I wanted you to see this,--'tis mother's picture,” said Mrs.
Todd; “'twas taken once when she was up to Portland soon after she
was married. That's me,” she added, opening another worn case, and
displaying the full face of the cheerful child she looked like still in
spite of being past sixty. “And here's William an' father together. I
take after father, large and heavy, an' William is like mother's folks,
short an' thin. He ought to have made something o' himself, bein' a man
an' so like mother; but though he's been very steady to work, an' kept
up the farm, an' done his fishin' too right along, he never had mother's
snap an' power o' seein' things just as they be. He's got excellent
judgment, too,” meditated William's sister, but she could not arrive at
any satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure in
life. “I think it is well to see any one so happy an' makin' the most
of life just as it falls to hand,” she said as she began to put the
daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my hand to see her mother's
once more, a most flowerlike face of a lovely young woman in quaint
dress. There was in the eyes a look of anticipation and joy, a far-off
look that sought the horizon; one often sees it in seafaring families,
inherited by girls and boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea,
and are always watching for distant sails or the first loom of the
land. At sea there is nothing to be seen close by, and this has its
counterpart in a sailor's character, in the large and brave and patient
traits that are developed, the hopeful pleasantness that one loves so in
a seafarer.
When the family pictures were wrapped again in a big handkerchief, we
set forward in a narrow footpath and made our way to a lonely place that
faced northward, where there was more pasturage and fewer bushes, and we
went down to the edge of short grass above some rocky cliffs where the
deep sea broke with a great noise, though the wind was down and the
water looked quiet a little way from shore. Among the grass grew such
pennyroyal as the rest of the world could not provide. There was a fine
fragrance in the air as we gathered it sprig by sprig and stepped along
carefully, and Mrs. Todd pressed her aromatic nosegay between her hands
and offered it to me again and again.
“There's nothin' like it,” she said; “oh no, there's no such pennyr'yal
as this in the state of Maine. It's the right pattern of the plant, and
all the rest I ever see is but an imitation. Don't it do you good?” And
I answered with enthusiasm.
“There, dear, I never showed nobody else but mother where to find this
place; 'tis kind of sainted to me. Nathan, my husband, an' I used to
love this place when we was courtin', and”--she hesitated, and then
spoke softly--“when he was lost, 'twas just off shore tryin' to get in
by the short channel out there between Squaw Islands, right in sight o'
this headland where we'd set an' made our plans all summer long.”
I had never heard her speak of her husband before, but I felt that we
were friends now since she had brought me to this place.
“'Twas but a dream with us,” Mrs. Todd said. “I knew it when he was
gone. I knew it”--and she whispered as if she were at confession--“I
knew it afore he started to go to sea. My heart was gone out o' my
keepin' before I ever saw Nathan; but he loved me well, and he made me
real happy, and he died before he ever knew what he'd had to know if
we'd lived long together. 'Tis very strange about love. No, Nathan never
found out, but my heart was troubled when I knew him first. There's more
women likes to be loved than there is of those that loves. I spent some
happy hours right here. I always liked Nathan, and he never knew. But
this pennyr'yal always reminded me, as I'd sit and gather it and hear
him talkin'--it always would remind me of--the other one.”
She looked away from me, and presently rose and went on by herself.
There was something lonely and solitary about her great determined
shape. She might have been Antigone alone on the Theban plain. It is not
often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and
silence. An absolute, archaic grief possessed this countrywoman; she
seemed like a renewal of some historic soul, with her sorrows and the
remoteness of a daily life busied with rustic simplicities and the
scents of primeval herbs.
I was not incompetent at herb-gathering, and after a while, when I had
sat long enough waking myself to new thoughts, and reading a page of
remembrance with new pleasure, I gathered some bunches, as I was bound
to do, and at last we met again higher up the shore, in the plain
every-day world we had left behind when we went down to the penny-royal
plot. As we walked together along the high edge of the field we saw a
hundred sails about the bay and farther seaward; it was mid-afternoon or
after, and the day was coming to an end.
“Yes, they're all makin' towards the shore,--the small craft an' the
lobster smacks an' all,” said my companion. “We must spend a little time
with mother now, just to have our tea, an' then put for home.”
“No matter if we lose the wind at sundown; I can row in with Johnny,”
said I; and Mrs. Todd nodded reassuringly and kept to her steady plod,
not quickening her gait even when we saw William come round the corner
of the house as if to look for us, and wave his hand and disappear.
“Why, William's right on deck; I didn't know's we should see any more of
him!” exclaimed Mrs. Todd. “Now mother'll put the kettle right on; she's
got a good fire goin'.” I too could see the blue smoke thicken, and then
we both walked a little faster, while Mrs. Todd groped in her full bag
of herbs to find the daguerreotypes and be ready to put them in their
places.