SOUTHPORT ISLAND
In summer Southport Island, as yet untainted by the tide of outing
travel, was a spot to inspire dreams, poetry, and canvases covered with
ocean lore. Its many coves and inlets where the tides ebbed and flowed
among the weed-covered rocks; its bold cliffs, sea washed, and above
which the white gulls and fish-hawks circled; the deep thickets of
spruce through which the ocean winds murmured, and where great beds of
ferns and clusters of red bunch-berries grew, were one and all left
undisturbed, week in, week out.
At the Cape, where Uncle Terry, Aunt Lissy, and Telly lived their simple
home life, and Bascom, the storekeeper and postmaster, talked
unceasingly when he could find a listener, and Deacon Oaks wondered why
"the grace o' God hadn't freed the land from stuns," no one ever came to
disturb its quietude. Every morning Uncle Terry, often accompanied by
Telly in a calico dress and sunbonnet, rowed out to pull his lobster
traps, and after dinner harnessed and drove to the head of the island to
meet the mail boat, then at eventide, after lighting his pipe and the
lighthouse lamp at about the same time, generally strolled over to
Bascom's to have a chat, while Telly made a call on the "Widder Leach,"
a misanthropic but pious protegée of hers, and Aunt Lissy read the
"Boston Journal." Once in about three weeks, according to weather, the
monotony of the village was disturbed by the arrival of the small
schooner owned jointly by Uncle Terry, Oaks, and Bascom, and which plied
between the Cape and Boston. Once in two weeks services were held as
usual in the little brown church, and as often the lighthouse tender
called and left coal and oil for Uncle Terry. Regularly on Thursday
evenings the few piously inclined, led by Deacon Oaks, gathered in the
church to sing hymns they repeated fifty-two times each year, listen to
a prayer by Oaks, that seldom varied in a single sentence, and heard
Auntie Leach thank the Lord for his "many mercies," though what they
were in her case it would be hard to tell, unless being permitted to
live alone and work hard to live at all was a mercy. The scattered
islanders and the handful whose dwellings comprised the Cape worked
hard, lived frugally, and were unconscious that all around them was a
rocky shore whose cliffs and inlets and beaches were so many poems of
picturesque and charming scenery.
This was Southport in summer, but in winter when the little harbor at
the Cape was ice-bound, the winding road to the head of the island
buried beneath drifts, and the people often for weeks at a time
absolutely cut off from communication with the rest of the world, it was
a place cheerless in its desolation. Like so many woodchucks then, the
residents kept within doors, or only stirred out to cut wood, fodder the
stock, and shovel paths so that the children could go to school. The
days were short and the evenings long, and to get together and spend
hours in labored conversation the only pastime. It was one of those long
evenings, and when Aunt Lissy and Telly were at a neighbor's, and Uncle
Terry, left to himself, was reading every line, including the
advertisements, in the last "Boston Journal," that the following met his
eye:
WANTED.--Information that will lead to the discovery of an heir to
the estate of one Eric Peterson, a land-owner and shipbuilder of
Stockholm, Sweden, whose son, with his wife, child, and crew, were
known to have been wrecked on the coast of Maine, in March, 187-.
Nothing has ever been heard of said Peterson or his wife, but the
child may have been saved. Any one having information that will
lead to the discovery of this child will be amply rewarded by
communicating with
NICHOLAS FRYE,
-- PEMBERTON SQUARE, BOSTON. _Attorney at Law._
"Wal, I'll be everlastin'ly gol darned!" he exclaimed after he had read
it for the third time. "If this don't beat all natur, I'm a goat."
It was fortunate he was alone, for it gave him time to think the matter
over, and after half an hour of astonishment he decided to say nothing
to his wife or Telly.
"I'll jis' breathe easy an' sag up," he said to himself, "same as though
I was crossin' thin ice, an' if nothin' comes on't nobody'll be the
worse for worryin'."
Then he cut the slip out and hid it in his black leather wallet, and
then wisely cut out the entire page and burned it.
"Wimmin are sich curis creeters they'd be sure to want to know what I'd
cut out o' that page," he said to himself, "an' never rest till I told
'em."
When Aunt Lissy and Telly came home he was as composed as a rock and sat
quietly puffing his pipe, with his feet on top of a chair and pointing
towards the fire.
"Were you lonesome, father?" asked Telly, who usually led conversation
in the Terry home. "We stopped at Bascom's, and you know he never stops
talking."
"He's worse'n burdock burs ter git away from," answered Uncle Terry,
"an' ye can't be perlite ter him unless ye want t' spend the rest o' yer
life listenin'. His tongue allus seemed ter be hung in the middle an'
wag both ways. I wasn't lonesome," he continued, rising and adding a few
sticks to the fire, as the two women laid aside their wraps and drew
chairs up; "I've read the paper purty well through an' had a spell o'
livin' over by-gones," and then, turning to Telly and smiling, he added:
"I got thinkin' o' the day ye came ashore, an' mother she got that
excited she sot the box ye was in on the stove an' then put more wood
in. It's a wonder she didn't put ye in the stove instead o' the wood!"
As this joke was not new to the listeners, no notice was taken of it,
and the three lapsed into silence.
Outside the steady boom of the surf beating on the rocks came with
monotonous regularity, and inside the clock ticked. For a long time
Uncle Terry sat and smoked on in silence, resuming, perhaps, his
by-gones, and then said: "By the way, Telly, what's become o' them
trinkets o' yourn ye had on that day? It's been so long now, 'most
twenty years, I 'bout forgot 'em. I s'pose ye hain't lost 'em, hev ye?"
"Why, no, father," she answered, a little surprised. "I hope not. They
are all in the box in my bureau, and no one ever disturbs them."
"Ye wouldn't mind fetchin' 'em now, would ye, Telly?" he continued after
drawing a long whiff of smoke and slowly emitting it in rings. "It's
been so many years, an' since I got thinkin' 'bout it I'd like to take a
look at 'em, jest to remind me o' that fortunate day ye came to us."
The girl arose, and going upstairs, returned with a small tin box shaped
like a trunk, and drawing the table up in front of Uncle Terry, set the
box down upon it. It is likely that its contents were so many links that
bound the two together, for as he opened it she perched herself on the
arm of his chair, and leaning against his shoulder, passed one arm
caressingly around his neck and watched him take out the contents.
First came a soft, fleecy baby blanket, then two little garments, once
whitest muslin but now yellow with age, and then another smaller one of
flannel. Pinned to this were two tiny shoes of knitted wool. In the
bottom of the box was a small wooden shoe, and though clumsy in
comparison, yet evidently fashioned to fit a lady's foot. Tucked in
this was a little box tied with faded ribbon, and in this were a locket
and chain, two rings, and a scrap of paper. The writing on the paper,
once hastily scrawled by a despairing mother's hand, had almost faded,
and inside the locket were two faces, one a man's with strongly marked
features, the other girlish with big eyes and hair in curls.
These were all the heritage of this waif of the sea who now, a fair girl
with eyes and face like the woman's picture, was leaning on the shoulder
of her foster-father, and they told a pathetic tale of life and death;
of romance and mystery not yet unwoven, and a story not yet told.
How many times that orphan girl had imagined what that tale might be;
how often before she had examined every one of those mute tokens; how
many times gazed with moist eyes at the faces in the locket; and how, as
the years bearing her onward toward maturity passed, had she hoped and
waited, hoping ever that some word, some whisper from that far-off land
of her birth might reach her! But none ever came, and now hope was dead.
And as she looked at those mute relics which told so little and yet so
much of her history, while the old man who had been all that a kind
father could be to her took them out one by one, she realized more than
ever before what a debt of gratitude she owed to him. When he had looked
them over and put them back in the exact order in which they had been
packed, he closed the box, and taking the little hand that had been
caressing his face in his own wrinkled and bony one, held it for a
moment. When he released it the girl stooped, and pressing her lips to
his weather-browned cheek, arose and resumed her seat. Had observant
eyes watched her then, they would have noticed that hers remained closed
for a few moments and that two tears glistened there.
"Wal, ye better put the box away now," said Uncle Terry at last. "I'll
jest go out an' take a look off'n the pint and then it'll be time to
turn in."