WILLIAM WAS sitting on the side door step, and the old mother was busy
making her tea; she gave into my hand an old flowered-glass tea-caddy.
“William thought you'd like to see this, when he was settin' the table.
My father brought it to my mother from the island of Tobago; an' here's
a pair of beautiful mugs that came with it.” She opened the glass door
of a little cupboard beside the chimney. “These I call my best things,
dear,” she said. “You'd laugh to see how we enjoy 'em Sunday nights in
winter: we have a real company tea 'stead o' livin' right along just
the same, an' I make somethin' good for a s'prise an' put on some o' my
preserves, an' we get a'talkin' together an' have real pleasant times.”
Mrs. Todd laughed indulgently, and looked to see what I thought of such
childishness.
“I wish I could be here some Sunday evening,” said I.
“William an' me'll be talkin' about you an' thinkin' o' this nice day,”
said Mrs. Blackett affectionately, and she glanced at William, and he
looked up bravely and nodded. I began to discover that he and his sister
could not speak their deeper feelings before each other.
“Now I want you an' mother to sing,” said Mrs. Todd abruptly, with
an air of command, and I gave William much sympathy in his evident
distress.
“After I've had my cup o' tea, dear,” answered the old hostess
cheerfully; and so we sat down and took our cups and made merry while
they lasted. It was impossible not to wish to stay on forever at Green
Island, and I could not help saying so.
“I'm very happy here, both winter an' summer,” said old Mrs. Blackett.
“William an' I never wish for any other home, do we, William? I'm glad
you find it pleasant; I wish you'd come an' stay, dear, whenever you
feel inclined. But here's Almiry; I always think Providence was kind
to plot an' have her husband leave her a good house where she really
belonged. She'd been very restless if she'd had to continue here on
Green Island. You wanted more scope, didn't you, Almiry, an' to live in
a large place where more things grew? Sometimes folks wonders that
we don't live together; perhaps we shall some time,” and a shadow of
sadness and apprehension flitted across her face. “The time o' sickness
an' failin' has got to come to all. But Almiry's got an herb that's good
for everything.” She smiled as she spoke, and looked bright again.
“There's some herb that's good for everybody, except for them that
thinks they're sick when they ain't,” announced Mrs. Todd, with a truly
professional air of finality. “Come, William, let's have Sweet Home, an'
then mother'll sing Cupid an' the Bee for us.”
Then followed a most charming surprise. William mastered his timidity
and began to sing. His voice was a little faint and frail, like the
family daguerreotypes, but it was a tenor voice, and perfectly true
and sweet. I have never heard Home, Sweet Home sung as touchingly and
seriously as he sang it; he seemed to make it quite new; and when he
paused for a moment at the end of the first line and began the next,
the old mother joined him and they sang together, she missing only the
higher notes, where he seemed to lend his voice to hers for the moment
and carry on her very note and air. It was the silent man's real and
only means of expression, and one could have listened forever, and have
asked for more and more songs of old Scotch and English inheritance and
the best that have lived from the ballad music of the war. Mrs. Todd
kept time visibly, and sometimes audibly, with her ample foot. I saw the
tears in her eyes sometimes, when I could see beyond the tears in mine.
But at last the songs ended and the time came to say good-by; it was the
end of a great pleasure.
Mrs. Blackett, the dear old lady, opened the door of her bedroom while
Mrs. Todd was tying up the herb bag, and William had gone down to get
the boat ready and to blow the horn for Johnny Bowden, who had joined a
roving boat party who were off the shore lobstering.
I went to the door of the bedroom, and thought how pleasant it looked,
with its pink-and-white patchwork quilt and the brown unpainted paneling
of its woodwork.
“Come right in, dear,” she said. “I want you to set down in my old
quilted rockin'-chair there by the window; you'll say it's the prettiest
view in the house. I set there a good deal to rest me and when I want to
read.”
There was a worn red Bible on the lightstand, and Mrs. Blackett's heavy
silver-bowed glasses; her thimble was on the narrow window-ledge, and
folded carefully on the table was a thick striped-cotton shirt that
she was making for her son. Those dear old fingers and their loving
stitches, that heart which had made the most of everything that needed
love! Here was the real home, the heart of the old house on Green
Island! I sat in the rocking-chair, and felt that it was a place of
peace, the little brown bedroom, and the quiet outlook upon field and
sea and sky.
I looked up, and we understood each other without speaking. “I shall
like to think o' your settin' here to-day,” said Mrs. Blackett. “I want
you to come again. It has been so pleasant for William.”
The wind served us all the way home, and did not fall or let the sail
slacken until we were close to the shore. We had a generous freight of
lobsters in the boat, and new potatoes which William had put aboard, and
what Mrs. Todd proudly called a full “kag” of prime number one salted
mackerel; and when we landed we had to make business arrangements to
have these conveyed to her house in a wheelbarrow.
I never shall forget the day at Green Island. The town of Dunnet Landing
seemed large and noisy and oppressive as we came ashore. Such is the
power of contrast; for the village was so still that I could hear the
shy whippoorwills singing that night as I lay awake in my downstairs
bedroom, and the scent of Mrs. Todd's herb garden under the window blew
in again and again with every gentle rising of the seabreeze.