AUNTY BELL’S KITCHEN
The storm was still raging, the wind beating in fierce gusts against
the house and rattling the window-panes, when Sanford awoke in the
low-ceiled room always reserved for him at Captain Joe’s.
“Turrible dirty, ain’t it?” the captain called, as he came in with a
hearty good-morning and threw open the green blinds. “I guess she’ll
scale off; it’s hauled a leetle s’uth’ard since daylight. The glass is
a-risin’, too. Aunty Bell says breakfas’ ’s ready jes’ ’s soon’s you
be.”
“All right, captain. Don’t wait. I’ll come in ten minutes,” replied
Sanford.
Outside the little windows a wide-armed tree swayed in the storm, its
budding branches tapping the panes. Sanford went to the window and
looked out. The garden was dripping, and the plank walk that ran to
the swinging-gate was glistening in the driving rain.
These changes in the weather did not affect his plans. Bad days were
to be expected, and the loss of time at an exposed site like that of
the Ledge was always considered in the original estimate of the cost
of the structure. If the sea prevented the landing of stone for a day
or so, the sloop, as he knew, could load a full cargo of blocks from
the wharf across the road, now hidden by the bursting lilacs in the
captain’s garden; or the men could begin on the iron parts of the new
derricks, and if it cleared, as Captain Joe predicted, they could trim
the masts and fit the bands. Sanford turned cheerfully from the
window, and picked up his big sponge that lay by the tin tub Aunty
Bell always filled for him the night before.
The furniture and appointments about him were of the plainest. There
were a bed, a wash-stand and a portable tub, three chairs, and a small
table littered with drawing materials. Dimity curtains, snow-white,
hung at the windows, and the bureau was covered with a freshly
laundered white Marseilles cover. On the walls were tacked mechanical
drawings, showing cross-sections of the several courses of
masonry,—prospective views of the concrete base and details of the
cisterns and cellars of the lighthouse. Each of these was labeled
“Shark Ledge Lighthouse. Henry Sanford, Contractor,” and signed, “W.
A. Carleton, Asst. Supt. U. S. L. Estb’t.” In one corner of the room
rested a field transit, and a pole with its red-and-white target.
The cottage itself was on the main shore road leading from the village
to Keyport Light, and a little removed from the highway. It had two
stories and a narrow hall with rooms on either side. In the rear were
the dining-room and kitchen. Overlooking the road in front was a wide
portico with sloping roof.
There were two outside doors belonging to the house. These were always
open. They served two purposes,—to let in the air and to let in the
neighbors. The neighbors included everybody who happened to be
passing, from the doctor to the tramp. This constant stream of
visitors always met in the kitchen,—a low-ceiled, old-fashioned
interior, full of nooks and angles, that had for years adapted itself
to everybody’s wants and ministered to everybody’s comfort,—and was
really the cheeriest and cosiest room in the house.
Its fittings and furnishings were as simple as they were convenient.
On one side, opposite the door, were the windows, looking out upon the
garden, their sills filled with plants in winter and sou’wester hats
in summer. In the far corner stood a pine dresser painted bright
green, decorated with rows of plates and saucers set up on edge,
besides various dishes and platters, all glistening from the last
touch of Aunty Bell’s hand polish. Next to the dresser was a broad,
low settle, also of pine and also bright green, except where countless
pairs of overalls had worn the paint away. Chairs of all kinds stood
about,—rockers for winter nights, and more ceremonious straight-backs
for meal-times. There was a huge table, too, with always a place for
one more, and a mantel-rest for pipes and knickknacks,—never known
to be without a box of matches or a nautical almanac. There were rows
of hooks nailed to the backs of the doors, especially adapted to
rubber coats and oilskins. And tucked away in a corner under the
stairs was a fresh, sweet-smelling, brass-hooped cedar bucket with a
cocoanut dipper that had helped to cool almost every throat from
Keyport Village to Keyport Light.
But it was the stove that made this room unique: not an ordinary,
commonplace cooking-machine, but a big, generous, roomy arrangement,
pushed far back out of everybody’s way, with out-riggers for broiling,
and capacious ovens for baking, and shelves for keeping things hot,
besides big and little openings on top for pots and kettles and
frying-pans, of a pattern unknown to the modern chef; each and every
one dearly prized by the cheery little soul who burnt her face to a
blazing red in its service. This cast-iron embodiment of all the
hospitable virtues was the special pride of Aunty Bell, the captain’s
wife, a neat, quick, busy little woman, about half the size of the
captain in height, width, and thickness. Into its recesses she poured
the warmth of her heart, and from out of its capacious receptacles she
took the products of her bounty. Every kettle sang and every griddle
“sizzed” to please her, and every fire crackled and laughed at her
bidding.
When Sanford entered there was hardly room enough to move. A damp,
sweet smell of fresh young grass came in at an open window. Through
the door could be seen the wet graveled walks, washed clean by the
storm, over which hopped one or more venturesome robins in search of
the early worm.
Carleton, the government superintendent, sat near the door, his chair
tilted back. In the doorway itself stood Miss Mary Peebles, the
schoolmistress, an angular, thin, mild-eyed woman, in a rain-varnished
waterproof. Even while she was taking it off, she was protesting that
she was too wet to come in, and could not stop. Near the stove stooped
Bill Lacey, drying his jacket. Around the walls and on the
window-sills were other waifs, temporarily homeless,—two from the
paraphernalia dock (regular boarders these), and a third, the captain
of the tug, whose cook was drunk.
All about the place—now in the pantry, now in the kitchen, now with a
big dish, now with a pile of plates or a pitcher of milk—bustled
Aunty Bell, with a smile of welcome and a cheery word for every one
who came.
Nobody, of course, had come to breakfast,—that was seen from the way
in which everybody insisted he had just dropped in for a moment out of
the wet to see the captain, hearing he was home from the Ledge, and
from the alacrity with which everybody, one after another, as the
savory smells of fried fish and soft clams filled the room, forgot his
good resolutions and drew up his chair to the hospitable board.
Most of them told the truth about wanting to see the captain. Since
his sojourn among them, and without any effort of his own, he had
filled the position of adviser, protector, and banker to half the
people along the shore. He had fought Miss Peebles’s battle, when the
school trustees wanted the girl from Norwich to have her place. He had
recommended the tug captain to the towing company, and had coached him
over-night to insure his getting a license in the morning. He had
indorsed Caleb West’s note to make up the last payment on the cabin he
had bought to put his young wife Betty in; and when the new furniture
had come over from Westerly, he had sent two of his men to unload it,
and had laid some of the carpets himself on a Saturday when Betty
expected Caleb in from the Ledge, and wanted to have the house ready
for his first Sunday at home.
When Mrs. Bell announced breakfast, Captain Joe, in his shirt-sleeves,
took his seat at the head of the table, and with a hearty, welcoming
wave of his hand invited everybody to sit down,—Carleton first, of
course, he being the man of authority, and representing to the
working-man that mysterious, intangible power known as the
“government.”
The superintendent generally stopped in at the captain’s if the
morning were stormy; it was nearer his lodgings than the farmhouse
where he took his meals—and then breakfast at the captain’s cost
nothing. He had come in on this particular day ostensibly to protest
about the sloop’s having gone to the Ledge without a notification to
him. He had begun by saying, with much bluster, that he didn’t know
about the one stone that Caleb West was “reported” to have set; that
nothing would be accepted unless he was satisfied, and nothing paid
for by the department without his signature. But he ended in great
good humor when the captain invited him to breakfast and placed him at
his own right hand. Carleton liked little distinctions when made in
his favor; he considered them due to his position.
The superintendent was a type of his class. His appointment at Shark
Ledge Light had been secured through the efforts of a brother-in-law
who was a custom-house inspector. Before his arrival at Keyport he had
never seen a stone laid or a batch of concrete mixed. To this
ignorance of the ordinary methods of construction was added an
overpowering sense of his own importance coupled with the knowledge
that the withholding of a certificate—the superintendent could choose
his own time for giving it—might embarrass everybody connected with
the work. He was not dishonest, however, and had no faults more
serious than those of ignorance, self-importance, and conceit. This
last broke out in his person: he wore a dyed mustache, a yellow
diamond shirt-pin, and on Sundays patent leather shoes one size too
small.
Captain Joe understood the superintendent thoroughly. “Ain’t it
cur’us,” he would sometimes say, “that a man’s old’s him is willin’
ter set round all day knowin’ he don’t know nothin’, never larnin’,
an’ yit allus afeard some un’ll find it out?” Then, as the
helplessness of the man rose in his mind, he would add, “Well, poor
critter, somebody’s got ter support him; guess the guv’ment’s th’ best
paymaster fur him.”
When breakfast was over, the skipper of the Screamer dropped in to
make his first visit, shaking the water from his oilskins as he
entered.
“Pleased to meet yer, Mis’ Bell,” he said in his bluff, wholesome way,
acknowledging the captain’s introduction to Mrs. Bell, then casting
his eyes about for a seat, and finally taking an edge of a window-sill
among the sou’westers.
“Give me your hat an’ coat, and do have breakfast, Captain Brandt,”
said Mrs. Bell in a tone as hearty as if it were the first meal she
had served that day.
“No, thank ye, I had some ’board sloop,” replied Captain Brandt.
“Here, cap’n, take my seat,” said Captain Joe. “I’m goin’ out ter see
how the weather looks.” He picked up the first hat he came to,—as was
his custom,—and disappeared through the open door, followed by nearly
all the seafaring men in the room.
As the men passed out, each one reached for his hat and oilskins
hanging behind the wooden door, and waddling out stood huddled
together in the driving rain like yellow penguins, their eyes turned
skyward.
Each man diagnosed the weather for himself. Six doctors over a patient
with a hidden disease are never so impressive nor so obstinate as six
seafaring men over a probable change of wind. The drift of the
cloud-rack scudding in from the sea, the clearness of the air, the
current of the upper clouds, were each silently considered. No
opinions were given. It was for Captain Joe to say what he thought of
the weather. Breaking clouds meant one kind of work for them,—fitting
derricks, perhaps,—a continued storm meant another.
If the captain arrived at any conclusion, it was not expressed. He had
walked down to the gate and leaned over the palings, looking up at the
sky across the harbor, and then behind him toward the west. The rain
trickled unheeded down the borrowed sou’wester and fell upon his blue
flannel shirt. He looked up and down the road at the passers-by
tramping along in the wet: the twice-a-day postman, wearing an old
army coat and black rubber cape; the little children crowding together
under one umbrella, only the child in the middle keeping dry; and the
butcher in the meat wagon with its white canvas cover and swinging
scales. Suddenly he gave a quick cry, swung back the gate with the
gesture of a rollicking boy, and threw both arms wide open in a mock
attempt to catch a young girl who sprang past him and dashed up the
broad walk with a merry ringing laugh that brought every one to the
outer door.
“Well, if I live!” exclaimed Mrs. Bell. “Mary Peebles, you jes’ come
here an’ see Betty West. Ain’t you got no better sense, Betty, than to
come down in all this soakin’ rain? Caleb’ll be dreadful mad, an’ I
don’t blame him a mite. Come right in this minute and take that shawl
off.”
“I ain’t wet a bit, Aunty Bell,” laughed Betty, entering the room. “I
got Caleb’s high rubber boots on. Look at ’em. Ain’t they big!”
showing the great soles with all the animation of a child. “An’ this
shawl don’t let no water through nowhere. Oh, but didn’t it blow round
my porch las’ night!” Then turning to the captain, who had followed
close behind, “I think you’re real mean, Cap’n Joe, to keep Caleb out
all night on the Ledge. I was that dead lonely I could’er cried. Oh,
is Mr. Sanford here?” she asked quickly, and with a little shaded tone
of deference in her voice, as she caught sight of him in the next
room. “I thought he’d gone to New York. How do you do, Mr. Sanford?”
with another laugh and a nod of her head, which Sanford as kindly
returned.
“We come purty nigh leavin’ everybody on the Ledge las’ night, Betty,
an’ the sloop too,” said Captain Joe, “cutting” his eye at the skipper
as he spoke. Then in a more serious tone, “I lef’ Caleb a-purpose,
child. We got some stavin’ big derricks to set, an’ Mr. Sanford wants
’em up week arter next, an’ there ain’t nobody kin fix the anchor
sockets but me an’ Caleb. He’s at work on ’em now, an’ I had to come
back to git th’ bands on ’em. He’ll be home for Sunday, little gal.”
“Well, you jes’ better, or I’ll lock up my place an’ come right down
here to Aunty Bell. Caleb wasn’t home but two nights last week, and
it’s only the beginnin’ of summer. I ain’t like Aunty Bell,—she can’t
get lonely. Don’t make no difference whether you’re home or not, this
place is so chuck-full of folks you can’t turn round in it; but ’way
up where I live, you don’t see a soul sometimes all day but a peddler.
Oh, I jes’ can’t stand it, an’ I won’t. Land sakes, Aunty Bell, what a
lot of folks you’ve had for breakfast!”
[Illustration: “Swung back the gate with the gesture of a rollicking boy”]
With another laugh she turned to the table, picked up a pile of
plates, and carried them into the pantry to Miss Peebles, who was
there helping in the wash-up.
Lacey, who had stopped to look after his drying coat when the men went
out, watched her slender, graceful figure, and bright, cheery, joyous
face, full of dimples and color and sparkle, the hair in short curls
all over her head, the throat plump and white, the little ears
nestling and half hidden.
She had been brought up in the next village, two miles away, and had
come over every morning, when she was a girl, to Miss Peebles’s
school. Almost everybody knew her and loved her; Captain Joe as much
as if she had been his own child. She filled a place in his heart of
which he seldom spoke,—never to Aunty Bell,—a place empty until
Betty came, and always aching since he and his wife had laid away, on
the hill back of the village church, the only child that had ever come
to them.
When Caleb gave up the lightship Captain Joe had established him with
Betty’s mother as boarder, and that was how the marriage came about.
When Betty returned to the room again, her arms loaded with plates,
Carleton and Lacey were standing.
“Take this seat; you must be tired walking down so far,” said
Carleton, with a manner never seen in him except when some pretty
woman was about.
“No, I’m not a bit tired, but I’ll set down till I get these boots
off. Aunty Bell, can you lend me a pair of slippers? One of these
plaguy boots leaks.”
“I’ll take ’em off,” offered Carleton, with a gesture of gallantry.
“You’ll do nothin’ of the kind!” she exclaimed, with a toss of her
head. “I’ll take ’em off myself,” and she turned her back, and slipped
the boots from under her dress. “But you can take ’em to Aunty Bell
an’ swap ’em for her slippers,” she added, with a merry laugh at the
humor of her making the immaculate Carleton carry off Caleb’s old
boots. The slippers on, she thanked him, with a nod, and, turning her
head, caught sight of Lacey.
“What are you doing here, Bill Lacey?” she asked. “Why ain’t you at
the Ledge?”
Although the young rigger had been but a short time on the captain’s
force, he had employed every leisure moment of it in making himself
agreeable to the wives of the men. To Betty his attentions had been
most marked.
He had saved her the best of the long thin shavings that curled from
his spoke-shave when he was planing the huge derrick masts on the
wharf. And when she came to gather them as kindling for her stove, he
had done everything in his power to win her confidence, detaining her
in talk long after the other women had departed with their loads.
When he answered her sally to-day, his white teeth gleamed under his
curling mustache.
“Captain wants me,” he said, “to fit some bands round the new
derricks. We expect ’em over from Medford to-day, if it clears up.”
“An’ there ain’t no doubt but what ye’ll get yer job, Billy,” burst
out the captain; “it’s breakin’ now over Crotch Island,” and he
bustled again out of the open door, the men who had followed him
turning back after him.
Carleton waited until he became convinced that no part of his
immaculate personality burdened Betty’s mind, and then, a little
disconcerted by her evident preference for Lacey, joined Sanford in
the next room. There he renewed his complaint about the enrockment
block having been placed without a notification to him, and it was not
until Sanford invited him on the tug for a run to Medford to inspect
Mrs. Leroy’s new dining-room that he became pacified.
As Mrs. Bell and the schoolmistress, Miss Peebles, were still in the
pantry, a rattling of china marking their progress, the kitchen was
empty except for Lacey and Betty. The young rigger, seeing no one
within hearing, crossed the room, and, bending over Betty’s chair,
said in a low tone, “Why didn’t you come down to the dock yesterday
when we was a-hoistin’ the stone on the Screamer? ’Most everybody
’longshore was there. I had some chips saved for ye.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Betty indifferently.
“Ye ought’er seen the old man yesterday,” continued Lacey; “me an’ him
held the guy, and he was a-blowin’ like a porpoise.”
Betty did not answer. She knew how old Caleb was.
“Hadn’t been for me it would’er laid him out.”
The girl started, and her eyes flashed. “Bill Lacey, Caleb knows more
in a minute than you ever will in your whole life. You shan’t talk
that way about him, neither.”
“Well, who’s a-talkin’?” said Lacey, looking down at her, more
occupied with the curve of her throat than with his reply.
“You are, an’ you know it,” she answered sharply.
“I didn’t mean nothin’, Betty. I ain’t got nothin’ agin him ’cept his
gittin’ you.” Then in a lower tone, “You needn’t take my head off, if
I did say it.”
“I ain’t takin’ your head off, Billy.” She looked into his eyes for
the first time, her voice softening. She was never angry with any one
for long; besides, she felt older than he, and a certain boyishness in
him appealed to her.
“You spoke awful cross,” he said, bending until his lips almost
touched her curls, “an’ you know, Betty, there ain’t a girl, married
or single, up ’n’ down this shore nor nowheres else, that I think as
much of as I do you, an’ if”—
“Here, now, Bill Lacey!” some one shouted.
The young rigger stepped back, and turned his head.
Captain Joe was standing in the doorway, with one hand on the frame,
an ugly, determined expression filling his eyes.
“They want ye down ter the dock, young feller, jes’ ’s quick ’s ye kin
get there.”
Lacey’s face was scarlet. He looked at Captain Joe, picked up his hat,
and walked down the garden path without a word.
Betty ran in to Aunty Bell.
When the two men reached the swinging-gate, Captain Joe laid his hand
on Lacey’s shoulder, whirled him round suddenly, and said in a calm,
decided voice that carried conviction in every tone, “I don’t say
nothin’, an’ maybe ye don’t mean nothin’, but I’ve been a-watchin’ ye
lately, an’ I don’t like yer ways. One thing, howsomever, I’ll tell
ye, an’ I don’t want ye ter forgit it: if I ever ketch ye a-foolin’
round Caleb West’s lobster-pots, I’ll break yer damned head. Do ye
hear?”