A LETTER FROM THE FISHERMAN.
The fisherman had gone back to Providence. Rebecca, herself, returning
from the Post Office at West Wallen, brought me a letter distinguished by
its peculiar dashing chirography. As she handed it to me, the girl, whose
glance had been downcast of late, gave me a clear, straightforward,
unembarrassed look.
"Do you like him, teacher?" she said.
"Oh, I tolerate him, my dear," I answered. "We're not expected to
entertain a particular liking or dislike for everybody we know. There are
a great many people we must just simply tolerate."
Rebecca's eyes fell again. "He won't harm you, teacher," she said; "for
you was used to folks. Sometime you might remember--I wasn't used to
folks."
Occupied with my own thoughts, I passed lightly over the girl's slow,
trembling speech. She turned away, and I bent to the complacent perusal
of my letter. In my then composed and exalted frame of mind its contents
were not calculated to create in me either great emotion or surprise. And
not because the mere fact of the fisherman's absence had suddenly
rendered him more desirable in my eyes, but as the result of a recent
determination on my part to take an utterly worldly and practical view of
life, I resolved to give this letter the most careful and serious
consideration.
The fisherman was of good family, and he was rich; these statements,
artistically interwoven by him with the lighter fabric of his letter,
were confirmed by an acquaintance of mine in Providence, of whom, in
writing, I had incidentally inquired concerning the gentleman.
Respectability and wealth--items not supposed to weigh too heavily with
the romantic mind of youth--but I believed that I was no longer either
young or romantic. Moreover, I was slowly realizing the fact that
school-teaching in Wallencamp was not likely to furnish me the means for
making an excessively brilliant personal display, nor for carrying out to
any extent my subordinate plans for a world-wide philanthropy.
"Perhaps, after all then," I argued; "it is only left for me to give up
my ideas about being unique and independent and sublime, 'take up with a
good offer,' and step resolutely, without any sentimental awe, into the
great orderly ranks of the married sisterhood."
My life had been but a varied list of surprises to my family and
acquaintances, why not effect the crowning surprise of all, by doing
something they might have expected of me?
Well, I had dreamed of higher things--but this was a strange, restless,
disappointing world. If one saw a plain path open before one's feet, one
might as well walk quietly along that way. There were thorns in every
path, and it would be nice to be rich, very rich.
My thoughts wandered through a wide field of imaginary delight,
encountering only one serious obstacle in the way of their elysium, and
that was the fisherman himself considered as a life-long escort and
companion.
In my youthful dreams, I had cherished, to be sure, a score of mild
Arthur Greys and stern Stephen Montgomerys. My Arthurs had all died of
inherited consumption. I had taken leave of their departing spirits under
the most thrilling circumstances, having frequently been married to them
at their deathbeds, and had lived but to plant flowers on their graves
and wear crape for them ever afterwards; and my dark-browed Stephen
Montgomerys had all gone to swell the avenging tide of righteous war, and
had been fatally shot, while I remained to shed tears of unavailing grief
over the locks of raven hair they left with me on the morning of their
departure. But to marry a real, live, omnipresent man--a man, with red
hair, sound lungs, and no wars to go to! My aspiring soul shrank from the
realistic vision.
And all the while a tenderer vision would rise before my eyes, clothed
with its pitiful romance--the Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fashion
guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, passing
indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness
of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously
poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in
one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls
and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my
lord's grand eyes obscured, perchance, behind clouds of tobacco smoke,
while I set the scanty table and fried the briny herrings.
With a shudder for romance, I returned to the contemplation of wealth and
respectability; and took up graciously, once more, the briefly abandoned
idea of duty.
I had often been told that it was my duty to accommodate myself to other
people's views. Perhaps I should accomplish my designs for
self-immolation, and thus, in one sense, effect my highest spiritual
good, by marrying the fisherman and accommodating myself to his
views--ah! but how could that be, I reflected, unsmilingly, when my views
were so infinitely superior to his!
I wondered, for one thing, why he should have entertained, of late, such
an excessive dislike for Wallencamp and its inhabitants. The natural
beauty of Wallencamp had impressed me daily more and more, and the people
were harmless, to say the least. I thought he should have enjoyed them;
he had a humorous vein; he was not too snobbish; and he seemed of a
nature to wish to make himself generally agreeable to people; but for
these special objects of my care he had expressed only derision and
contempt, with often a touch of positive malice; and had not been able to
abstain from giving me a hard cut or two on my mission, barely avoiding
it in his letter, and rejoicing with what seemed to me an unwarrantable
warmth in the hope that I should soon quit forever the abominable place.
Then, in my miserable short-sightedness, my thoughts wandered indirectly
to Rebecca. I wondered if she had taken to heart anything in the
acquaintance she was said to have had with Mr. Rollin, before I came to
Wallencamp, which had caused the change in her. I did not believe she
had. The girl was too artless and simple to have concealed so completely
the resentment she would naturally have cherished--too childish to have
borne it so silently. As far as the fisherman was implicated in the
affair, even if he had trifled a little for his own amusement with the
vague impulses, possibly the affections, of this unsophisticated girl,
the act was by no means unprecedented among people of wealth and
respectability. It was a diversion in which Arthur Grey and Stephen
Montgomery would not have indulged, perhaps, "but this," I mused, "is a
sadly commonplace sort of world, viewed in the broad daylight of wisdom
and experience (and with such penetrating rays I felt my own optics to be
only too wearily oppressed); we must give up our high ideals, take people
as we find then, and submit gracefully to the inevitable."
Still I was in as much of a quandary as ever as to what I should choose
to consider the inevitable in my own path. It never occurred to me in
this dilemma to seek advice from the elder members of my own family. They
knew nothing really of my situation in Wallencamp, and even if they had
been informed more truthfully in regard to it, I thought they could
hardly be expected to appreciate the peculiarly trying circumstances in
which I was placed just at present.
Mothers were excellent for mending gloves, taking ink stains out of white
dresses with lemon juice, etc., etc.; but there were certain exigencies
in the remote and exalted life of those who go on "missions" which their
humble though loving skill must ever fail to reach.
I did write home, by the way, for more spending-money. I had been obliged
to send to Boston for a few of the latest novels, fresh ribbons, cologne
water, and various other articles indispensable to the career of a truly
devoted propagandist. I preferred my request no longer as the dependent
offspring seeking gifts from a fond and indulgent parent, but as the
solicitor of a mere temporary loan, until I should be able to draw on my
salary at the close of the term.
One morning, having inured myself to extreme worldliness of soul and
begun a deliberately reckless response to the fisherman's letter, I
looked out through my window to see the Cradlebow trudging manfully down
the lane, with a grotesquely antiquated portmanteau in his hand, and the
general air of one who has started a-foot on a journey.
With a singular readiness to be diverted, I found that the picture was,
somehow, not conducive to further worldliness of meditation; and when in
the evening, Mrs. Cradlebow came in to call, in her mantilla, the
impression thus made on my mind was inexpressibly deepened.
Mrs. Cradlebow was not a frequent caller. She had almost earned among the
Wallencampers the direful anathema of "not being neighborly."
She informed me, while the singers were gathered, as usual, at the Ark,
that Luther had gone to make farewell visits to his friends. He had
three married sisters living in different parts of the State. They had
children. The children were very fond of him, and he was going on such a
long voyage. Mrs. Cradlebow was looking beyond the singers, her eyes
shining clear and sad above the pathetic smile on her lips--
"And he says he shan't come back again until he comes to give me such
pleasure as I never dreamed of."
Those words come to me now, either as part of the endless mockery of
life, or as strains of hidden music, deep and true, running ever beneath
the world's dull misinterpretation.
Afterwards, the choir of voices in the room formed an effectual shield
for confidential conversation.
"You don't know what a good boy he's always been to me, teacher," Mrs.
Cradlebow continued, with a manner unusual to her, I thought, as of one
seeking for sympathy; "so that I've learned to depend so much on him,
more, I think, than on anybody else. Some boys when they're growing up
so, they feel independent and they answer you back short, but the older
he grew, the gentler he was to me, always, and if he had any trouble, it
never made him cross to me; and I think it's harder to see anybody so
than if they was cross, for he's quick in ways, I know, but when things
go real hard against him, he's patient."
"He ought not to know much about trouble yet," I answered hopefully, with
the consciousness of one who has fathomed all the mysteries of grief and
can yet speak gayly of the forlorn background.
"He doesn't know enough about the world, I'm afraid," said Mrs.
Cradlebow, and her eyes, fixed on my face, seemed to me to be looking
gently into my inmost heart. "He expects so much, and he never looks out
for himself. I wish he'd be content to go fishing with the other
boys--they always come back in the autumn--and not want to sail so far."
I was almost angry because of the embarrassment I felt under that clear
glance.
[Illustration: THE MEETING IN THE SCHOOL-HOUSE.
Scene from the Play.]
"Don't you think, Mrs. Cradlebow," I said nervously; "that young people
are never content until they find out the world for themselves?" It was
an interrogation, but it was sagely uttered.
"I know, I know," she said. "Perhaps it's best he should go." She spoke
very quietly and with uncommon composure of demeanor. She withdrew her
eyes from my face, but the smile trembled on her lips, and I knew that
her heart was breaking over the words, for Luther was her darling.
I wished, almost impatiently, for my own part, that it might all have
happened differently; that I might leave everything in Wallencamp just as
I had found it, so delightfully happy and peaceful it had seemed to me.
I could not bear, in looking back, to think of one face as wearing upon
it any unaccustomed grief. At all events, I felt that my thoughts had
been helplessly turned from their prescribed channel, and the fisherman's
letter remained from day to day still unanswered.
Meanwhile, winter was vanishing at the Cape. As salient points in its
quaint and cherished memory, I recall the frequent clamming excursions,
when we rattled own to the beach, at low-tide, in a cart whose groaning
members lacked every element of elasticity. Often there were as many as
sixteen persons in one cart, and the same number of hoes and baskets--the
baskets being filled with small children as a means of keeping both them
and the children stationary.
Grandma was always present on these occasions, and the hilarity of the
Wallencampers, as they were jounced and joggled over the stones, in a
manner which to some might have been productive of great bodily agony,
concealed, with them, no undercurrent of nervous dread or pain. They were
kind enough to regard the presence of the "teacher" as indispensable to
their complete enjoyment, while I was ready to congratulate myself that
my society alone was the object desired, for though I brought my
near-sighted vision to bear faithfully upon the sands, I never succeeded
in capturing a clam.
I heard that Bachelor Lot had confided aside to Captain Sartell that
"Teacher'd ought to bring a hook and line. The clams 'ud go for it in a
minute if she'd only bring a hook and line;" and, stung by the unsheathed
sarcasm of this remark, I was accustomed afterwards to wander off towards
"Steeple Rock." The rock was accessible at low-tide, and from thence I
could watch the ocean on one side, and the clam-diggers on the other;
could see Grandma on her hands and knees, a dot of broad good nature
in the distance, always remaining apparently in the one place, and
always, somehow, getting her basket full of clams as she gradually sank
deeper and deeper into the briny soil; but no true Wallencamper ever
caught cold by soaking in the brine.
I could distinguish Madeline wandering lightly about among the rocks,
scraping off mussels with her hoe; and the Modoc, the champion
clam-digger of all, spreading her tentacles here and there, and never
failing to come up with a bivalve. It was a picturesque scene, viewed
from the great rock; and when the tide began to sweep in again, George
Olver sent a piercing whistle along shore, to call the stragglers
together; clams, children, and all were loaded into the cart, and jostled
gayly homeward erased by the fresh sea breezes.
For the chowder, which in due course of events arose to take its place
among the viands on the Ark board, I would leave it to that sacred and
tenfold mystery with which, to my mind, it was ever enshrouded.
* * * * *
I recall the exhibitions held at the school-house, confined exclusively
to the native talent of Wallencamp, at which the old and young were
assembled to speak pieces.
It was then that Aunt Rhoda and Aunt Cinthia, matrons of portly frame and
perilous foothold, engaged in a metrical dialogue concerning the robbing
of a bird's nest, in which lively diversion they assumed to have
participated. And Bachelor Lot rendered "My beautiful Annabel Lee" with
unique effect; and Grandma Keeler spoke mysteriously though hopefully
of--
"Hope and Harnah
Double-decked schooner
Cap'n John Homer
Marster and owner
Bound for Bermudy."
The strange effect produced upon me by the first of these rhetorical
entertainments is still as fresh in my mind as though it had been
yesterday, so luminous was the night with stars; so loud and prolonged
the preliminary blowing of the horn; so festive the appearance of the
school-house, loaded as it was with evergreens; so abnormal the
proportions of the stage, which had been extended to comprise nearly
two-thirds of the school-room.
It comes to me again, the first shock of surprise at finding all
Wallencamp on the stage, Grandpa and I, alone, being left like ostracized
owls among the shrubbery of the auditorium. Our sense of isolation was
only intensified by hearing the sounds of mirth which proceeded from the
other side of the curtain, and seeing a foot or an elbow occasionally
thrust out into our own green though silent realm.
Thrice Aunt Rhoda appeared before the curtain to proclaim in pregnant
tones, "We are now awaiting for Josiah and Annie."
Josiah, by the way, had married a Wallencamp girl and taken her to West
Wallen to live, yet the two were ever faithful attendants at the
Wallencamp festivities.
"Declaration" after "declaration" was announced by Aunt Rhoda, and as the
declaimers finished their parts, they descended to sit with us, until at
last the curtain was drawn aside, revealing Madeline, alone upon the
stage, seated at her "music."
She opened the Hymnal, and struck the leading chord, mid straightway,
from the Wallencampers, all gathered now below, there arose a burst of
melody as it had been one mighty voice.