A SALT-FISH DINNER.
“Nay, Betty, flout me not! ’Tis an honest word I’ve said to you, and I
look to have it answered honestly.”
“I know not what you call honest, Master Alexander Standish”--
“There, now! You can’t even speak without a gibe at my high-sounding
name. I count it right down unkind, Betty”--
“Then if I don’t please you, there’s the road home. Isn’t your name
Alexander in very sooth, or is that a by-name your mother calls you for
short?”
“It seems to me, Mistress Alden, that your humor is a little shrewish.”
“There, that will do! Never speak to me again so long as you’ve breath
to speak at all.”
“Nay, Betty, I crave your pardon. ’Twas rude of me, but you put me past
my patience.”
“Which is such a straitened foothold the least jostle will drive you
from it.”
“Betty, I love you. Will you be my wife?”
“Trust a modest man for impudence, when once he makes a start.”
“Betty, I pray you lay aside this mood, and answer me seriously. ’Tis
my just due, maiden, and John Alden’s daughter should be honest.”
“Well, then, Alick, in all sadness I will answer you--no.”
“Do you mean it, Betty?”
“As I mean to be saved.”
“And will you so far humor your oldest friend as to tell him why?”
“You do not love me as the man I wed must love, nor do I love you save
as a dear friend of childhood, and as such I shall ever love you. As
such and no more.”
“I do not love you, say you, lass?”
“No. You fain would marry some one out of hand, because Gillian has
fooled you, and you’re longing to show her that you care as little as
she.”
“What--who--did she say such a thing, Betty?”
“Nay. Oh, Alick, I must laugh,--you look so red and so befogged!--like
the sun rising on a misty morning.”
“Who told you--what puts it in your head that I care for Gillian?”
“I said not you cared for her; I said she’d fooled you; and ’twas mine
own eyes and mother wit told me, and no one else. She’s played with you
as my Tabby does with a mouse, only at the last she let you slip from
under her claws, not quite killed, and you ran to your old gossip to
have the wound salved; that’s all!”
“And do you believe it was all put on? Do you truly think she cared
nothing at all for me?”
“No more than she did for your brother Josias, or my brothers David and
Joseph, or Constant Southworth, or, or--the rest”--
“The rest! Oh, you mean Will Pabodie, don’t you? You’ve noted how of
late she’s all eyes and ears for him.”
“Nay, I’ve noted naught.” The words were few and the voice was cold,
but something in the tone made Alick Standish look keenly into the face
of his old friend. It was scarlet, and the brave brown eyes were full
of tears; but as Betty caught his look she returned it with one of
right royal defiance.
“Poor David!” said she, steadying her voice with a mighty effort, “he
has not got over Tabby’s love-pats yet. He’s worse off than you, Alick.
But here we are at home. Come in and have a mug of cider or a noggin of
milk after your walk, won’t you, lad?”
“I’ll have the milk and thank you kindly. Isn’t that Sally peeping out
of the dairy window?”
“Yes, she’s dairy-maid this week, and will give you the milk. You’ll
catch her in her short gown and petticoat.”
“Won’t she be vexed?” asked the young man, with a smile anything but
heart-broken.
“She’ll not eat you if she is. Open the door of a sudden and catch
her at work,” whispered Betty; and Alick, the smile broadening into
mischief, sharply pushed back the cleated door, revealing the figure of
a tall girl, who, with arms bare to the shoulders, was at that moment
tossing a great mass of yellow butter high into the air, her lithe
form well displayed as she leaned back and held up her hands to catch
her ponderous plaything. A linen cloth pinned around the forehead just
above the brows formed a piquant frame for the rosy, dimpling Greuze
face, with its sweet blue eyes and pure but tender lips; a lovely
innocent maiden, and as Alick Standish looked at her as if for the
first time, while she, suffering the butterball to drop upon the stone
slab in front of her, would fain have pulled her kirtle straight, but
dared not touch it with her moist hands, and half cried in her pretty
confusion, he knew as by a revelation that all his other fancies had
been but dreams and follies, and here before him stood the woman, whom
out of all the world he would choose to be his wife,--the woman whom he
could love, and love to the end.
But while the man’s heart leaped up within him, like his who, searching
for mica, suddenly comes upon diamonds, all that rose to the lips was a
little laugh, and the prosaic petition,--
“Might I have a noggin of milk?”
“Surely. Betty shall give it you-- Nay, she’s gone. Well, wait but
till I wash my hands and put my butter down in the cellar hole. Mayhap
you’ll lift up the trap for me.”
“Of course I will! Where is it?”
“Just here.” And tapping with one foot, Sally Alden showed an iron ring
set into the floor, and evidently intended to raise a big trap door in
the middle of the dairy. Throwing it back so that it rested upon the
floor, Alick looked down the steep steps into the little deep and cool
cellar, which in those days imperfectly forestalled the refrigerator of
to-day.
“Let me carry down the butter for you, Sally,” said he. “’Tis too
steep.”
“’Tis no steeper than it was last week, or will be next,” laughed Sally
in a sweet tremor of bashful joy; for Alick was her hero, and hitherto
had only treated her as one of the children. “But if you like, you may
hand me the dish after I am down.”
“Yes, indeed. It looks like the head of John Baptist on a charger, as
’tis seen in the Elder’s big Bible.”
“And so it does,” replied the girl, glancing with a new interest at
the great ball of butter in the middle of the pewter platter, which
Alexander held aloft in mimicry of the picture both had seen as
children.
Then presently, the butter deposited, the trap door closed, and the
noggin of milk presented and quaffed, the two came through the long
passage dividing the dairy from the kitchen, and were met by the
mistress of the house, our Priscilla, a little older, but still as
charming as when we first knew her, and showing among her daughters
like the rose among its buds, the glorious fulfillment of a gracious
promise.
“Good-morrow to you, Alick. Go into the sitting-room, you and
Betty,--or no; Sally, you’ve been busy while Betty was on her travels,
you go and make Alick miserable till dinner’s dished”--
“Nay, dame, I’m beholden to you, but I must go”--
“Surely you must go, but not without your dinner, my lad. ’Tis Saturday
and salt-fish dinner, you know, and I’ll warrant me your mother’s ’ll
be no better than I shall give you.”
“My mother’d be the first to say she’s no match for Mistress Alden in
delicate cookery.”
“There, there, go say your pretty things to the girls, Sally or Betty,
it matters not which, but don’t whet your wit on an old woman like me.
Be off with you!”
Laughing and well pleased that fortune so favored his half-formed
wishes, Alick followed Sally through the sitting-room to the front
door, standing wide open to the summer; and then, sitting on the
threshold, their feet upon the great natural doorstone which their
children’s and their children’s children’s feet should press, the man
and the maid entered into that fairyland we all pass through once in
our lives.
“And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,
And most forget, but either way,
That and the child’s forgotten dream
Are all the light of all our day.”
“Alick! Sally! Come to dinner!” cried Betty’s blithe voice; but as the
young man arose and turned his glowing face toward her, she stared at
it for a moment in astonishment, and then turned sharply away to hide
the smile that would in her own despite curl her lips.
“They’re stronger than we women in some ways, but they’re wondrously
weak in others,” was the thought beneath that smile.
In the great airy kitchen, where no fire was made in the warm weather,
a table was spread large enough to accommodate, besides the heads of
the family, their eight children, and the two men and a woman who lived
in the house really as “help,” and not servants.
A fourteenth seat was now placed for the guest between Betty and
her brother Joseph, still his mother’s true lover and helper, but
Alick noted with pleasure that Sally sat opposite, and gave him the
opportunity to study her face, which he seemed never to have seen
before.
The long grace ended, and the clatter of chairs and feet upon the bare
floor a little subsided, John Alden, viewing with satisfaction the
great codfish lying at full length upon the platter yet longer than
itself, said,--
“George Soule has had more than ordinary luck with his dunfish this
season; don’t they say so at your house, Alick?”
“Yes, sir, a small share, if you please.”
Alden stared, and his wife interposed:--
“He says he’ll have some, father. Did you know that George Soule had
set up as dry-salter for the town, Alick?”
“Yes, I heard so. Indeed, father bought a quintal of dun and another of
white fish of him,” replied Alick, wondering what Betty and Sally were
laughing about.
“Now I don’t see why the captain portioned them that fashion,”
mused John Alden, rapidly distributing the fish into fourteen empty
trenchers. “For doubtless he knows as well as I, or rather your mother
knows as well as our housewife here, that the only way to cook your
fish aright is to bind a good dunfish carefully between two whitefish,
and steep the three all night in lukewarm water; then in the morning
to cast out that water and put in fresh, and again steep it so nigh
the fire that it ever tries to boil yet never makes out. Finally,
when all else is ready, master dunfish is released from his bondage,
and carefully laid upon a platter unbroken, while his bedfellows the
whitefish are thrown to the ducks or the pigs”--
“Or made into a mince wherein no man can tell the white from the dun
fish,” interposed Priscilla. “Why, father, I should suppose you’d
been ship’s cook all your youth, and major-domo ever since. I never
mistrusted you knew how a salt codfish should be cooked.”
“I see a mort of things I don’t talk about,” retorted Alden quietly,
“and if you knew not more than most women, I could tell you just how
master tomcod should be served.”
“Try it, father!” cried Betty, who was her father’s darling and might
say what she liked, because she never liked to say anything amiss.
“Tell us now without looking around the board, tell us what should lie
on it to be eaten with salt codfish.”
“Well, there must be a white sauce, compounded of cream and wheaten
flour and butter; and there must be pork-scraps cut in dice and fried
of a dainty brown; and there must be beets boiled tender, but not
cut to let out the color; and there must be parsnips and turnips and
onions; and there must be brown bread and white bread; and there must
be sallet oil and mustard; and above all, there must be a good flagon
of cider, and another to back it.”
“Right, right! Here’s every one of the things you told about and more,
for here’s a dish of those roots John Howland got in Boston of the
sloop trading to the Carolinas. Molly begged so hard for them that
mother cooked some, but I doubt if they will suit with salt fish.”
“Father told of eating some in Boston, but we’ve had none as yet,” said
Alick, and Sally, taking up one of the sweet potatoes, broke it in two
and handed a piece across the table to Alick, who, eating it skin and
all, as if it were a fruit, declared it with sincerity to be the most
delicious morsel he had ever tasted.
“I’ve an apple pasty to follow,” announced Priscilla, as her husband
pushed away his plate. “Rachel, you and Timothy may take away the
trenchers and bring some fresh ones; and Sally, have you a jug of cream
and a morsel of cheese for us in your dairy?”
“Yes, indeed, mother,” and Sally, glad to escape Alick’s scrutiny,
jumped up and retreated to the dairy.
“While John Howland was in Boston he saw Ras Brewster,” said Joseph
to keep up the conversation, which rather lagged through Betty’s
preoccupation and her mother’s housewifely cares.
“He has been at Kennebec all this time, hasn’t he?” asked Alick with
somewhat languid interest.
“Yes, but Master Winslow sent for him to company him to England. Will
they make any stay there, father?”
“The Lord only knows, my son,” returned Alden with a ponderous sigh.
“The Bay people, that is to say the authorities, have to my mind done
an ill-advised thing in tolling Edward Winslow away from us. They say
he has a skillful tongue and good acquaintance with the ways of courts;
and so he hath, so he hath, but also he has a home, and comrades of
old time who look to him for comfort and aid, the more that so many of
the old stock are removed by death or distance. It is not well done of
the Bay people, and much do I hope that Winslow will not deeply engage
himself in their concerns.”
“And Wrastle has gone with him?” asked Alick in a low voice of Joseph,
who nodded assent, adding presently, as his father lapsed into
silence,--
“He’ll be writer and keep the papers,--a secretary, Master Winslow
called it; and Ras said there was no knowing when he might come back.”
“Now here’s the pie, and the cheese, and the cream, and some fresh
nutcakes, and some metheglin; so cease your lament, John, and be merry
while you may!” cried Priscilla, cutting the pie, which was baked in a
great iron basin, and was more of a pudding than a pie, as it needed to
be, since fourteen hungry mouths were to feed upon it.