TIM’S MOTHER AND DETAILS
Mrs. Reynolds always insisted that she belonged on Nantucket Island,
although she had been born and reared on the mainland.
“It would take centuries of exile to get a Coffin to acknowledge any
other spot as home,” she would say.
She had inherited a beautiful old house on the main street of
Nantucket Town and it had been almost a religion with her to keep that
house as her grandmothers for generations had kept it. Not a modern
touch was allowed to profane the lovely simplicity of that island
home. Her regret was that only the summers could be spent there. She
would have enjoyed it the whole year round and she resented Mr.
Reynolds’ large law practice that compelled his presence in Boston.
In Boston, Mrs. Reynolds was a fashionable, handsomely dressed woman,
but the moment she entered her ancestral halls she changed her costly
attire for a gown of severe simplicity more in keeping with the
painted floors, rag rugs and cane-bottomed chairs found therein. She
might have been her own great-grandmother in her sprigged muslin dress
with a hemstitched kerchief crossed over her loyal Coffin bosom. The
retinue of servants the Reynolds family found necessary in Boston to
administer to their wants were left on the mainland. Ruling in their
stead was one severe-looking person who claimed distant relationship
with Mrs. Reynolds since they boasted the same great-great-grandmother
Cousin Esther Sylvester was her name. She was the maid of all work,
accomplishing with the utmost ease and precision the labor of cook,
laundress, and housemaid, and at the same time never forgetting that
she was of the same blood as the mistress. The fact that her cousin’s
grandfather had left the island and gone over on the mainland,
amassing a fortune, made not a whit of difference to the independent
Esther, whose grandfather had stayed where he was and, at least, kept
what he had, which was a fourth share in a very likely whaling vessel
and an extremely picturesque fisherman’s cottage at Siasconset. Esther
had inherited this property and, like her grandfather, she had held on
to it. She still owned a fourth share in the whaling vessel and the
picturesque cottage at ’Sconset. To be sure, the whaling vessel was
rotting at the Nantucket wharf, a mute reminder that the wheels of the
world no longer had to be greased with sperm oil. The cottage had
proved a much more valuable asset, as she rented it every summer for
large sums to a great actress who delighted in its simplicity and the
view one could get from its crooked little windows of the quaint old
village streets.
Mrs. Reynolds and Cousin Esther had not only the same
great-grandmothers but also the same insatiable curiosity about the
small and seemingly unimportant details of everyday life. Perhaps it
was something that had been bred in the bones of the original
Nantucket Islanders when, in old days, they had been cut off from the
world for months at a time and their own affairs and the affairs of
their neighbors were of all importance because of the fact that the
affairs of the nation were stale long before they were brought to
their ears. The fact that Amanda Bartlett had broken her best Canton
china teapot was a current event while the news that the men of Boston
had thrown the tea into the bay at the famous Boston Tea Party was
days old before they heard of it.
The telegram telling of Tim’s accident had thrown Mrs. Reynolds and
Cousin Esther Sylvester into a great state of excitement. Not only
were they very uneasy about their darling boy but they did so want to
know how and when and where the accident had occurred. Who had rescued
him? Which leg was broken, etc., etc., etc. Who were the mysterious
persons who had sent the lengthy telegram, evidently not at all
counting the cost? How did they happen to be at Hurricane Island? Were
they white people? If so, why did they say their yacht was named such
a strange outlandish name, “Boojum!” Surely the telegraph operator
must have got it wrong. Perhaps they were Fiji Islanders and not white
persons after all. At any rate, they had rescued the beloved Tim and
were bearing him home in the yacht with the exotic name and the ladies
were determined to be as nice to them as could be.
“Cousin Esther, you had better make extra preparations and be ready
for guests,” suggested Mrs. Reynolds. “You know how Mr. Reynolds loses
his head when he begins to invite.”
“Certainly, Cousin Lucia. I have baked three kinds of pies and have a
cold joint in the larder. I calculate there will be food enough for
all the Boojummers likely to land,” said Miss Sylvester with some
stiffness of manner. She did not at all like suggestions from her
cousin-mistress.
Up the quiet, shady street of Nantucket Town came the Boojummers. Mr.
Reynolds led the way with Mr. Wing. Then came the stretcher bearers,
Breck and Jack, the grinning Tim borne lightly between them. The
others flocked around the point of interest not certain they should
not have stayed away and let Tim have his home-coming without such a
crowd, but when this had been suggested, Mr. Reynolds made so many
protestations there was nothing to do but tag along.
“Well, when you come right down to it,” said Mabel, “I guess there
isn’t anybody to leave out. Father must go to receive thanks for being
near by with the ‘Boojum.’ Of course, Jack and Breck must go to carry
Tim; Frances must go because she found him, and Jane must go because
she helped carry him; Ellen must go to look after Jack, and--”
“And you and Charlie must go along to do the head work,” teased Jane.
“Exactly! Charlie must look after the legal aspect of the case and I
must look after Charlie.”
“Here they come! Here they come!” cried Mrs. Reynolds, peeping through
the living-room window.
“Yes, and it’s a good thing I baked three kinds of pies,” asserted
Cousin Esther, grimly. “I’ll be bound Mr. Reynolds has invited them to
dinner.”
“How pale my Tim looks! I’m afraid I’m going to cry, Cousin Esther,
although I know how he hates for me to.”
“Don’t do it, Cousin Lucia, don’t do it! Remember Great-great-Aunt
Patience who never shed a tear even when they brought home her three
boys all drowned off Sankity. Here’s the smelling-salts. Now bear up!”
Tim was pale in spite of a summer’s tan. The stretcher bearers were as
careful as possible, but every little jolt was painful to the
fractured hip.
“It hurts I know,” whispered Frances.
“Not much, but thank you for thinking about it, all the same.” Tim had
been wondering if any of them realized how much it did hurt.
“Just think how Jane and I bumped you and be thankful our skirts are
where they are instead of stretched on oars and you swung in the
middle.”
“I wonder if Mother is going to weep over me. Poor Mother! It does her
good to cry, but Cousin Esther is so stern with her when she gives
way. Of course I’m not crazy about being cried over, but I can stand
it for the good of the cause. I can stand anything better than
Mother’s suppressed expression. There she is! Yes, she has her
suppressed expression!”
Mrs. Reynolds came slowly from the door. Her instinct was to fly to
her son and throw herself on him, take his red head in her arms and
weep, but, remembering Great-great-Aunt Patience, she held on to
herself, knowing full well the stern Cousin Esther was looking at her
from the small-paned window.
The mother bent over her boy, giving him a restrained peck. But he put
his arms around her and drew her close.
“Come on, old lady, and don’t be so Coffinish. Give us what our
Southern friends call a ‘sho nuf’ kiss.”
That was too much for poor Mrs. Reynolds. Not only did she give Tim a
“sho nuf” kiss but added to it a genuine hug, while the tears fell
fast. What did she care after all for old Great-great-Aunt Patience
and her strength of character that kept her from shedding tears even
if her three sons were drowned off Sankity?
“That’s something like!” declared Tim. “Now you won’t have to get a
headache from restrained emotion. Never mind Cousin Esther. She will
forget it by the time she makes enough pies for all of us.”
Tim then proceeded, with the help of his father, to introduce all the
Boojummers to his mother. After the formal introduction, he began with
the utmost patience to give a detailed account of the accident to the
eager ladies, Cousin Esther having joined them in the living room
where the stretcher bearers had deposited their burden on a long, low
couch.
“And this is the one who found me,” indicating Frances.
“Do tell!” from Miss Esther.
“Now tell me how you found him,” from Mrs. Reynolds. “How you found
him and what you were doing there and how you happened to look behind
the rock--everything! everything! Don’t leave out a thing.”
Frances proceeded with the narrative. When she got to the place where
she went after Jane, her insatiate hostess exclaimed:
“And you tell me what you were doing and what you thought and what you
said; please, Jane!”
With a twinkle in her eye, Jane took up the tale which seemed like a
game of consequences. The improvised stretcher made its appearance in
the story and the distracted mother looked eagerly about as though
expecting the stretcher to tell all it knew.
“Now this is where the petticoats come in!” exclaimed Mr. Reynolds.
“What did I tell you?”
“You made a stretcher out of the oars and your skirts? Remarkable!
Wonderful! What kind of skirts?”
“These we are wearing!” Frances and Jane sounded like a Greek chorus.
“Those identical ones?”
“The same!”
Cousin Esther, who was standing next to Frances, picked up a piece of
her skirt between thumb and forefinger and examined it critically.
“What they call khaki nowadays,” she said sententiously. “It is really
a kind of lightweight sail cloth.”
“And the oars! What kind of oars? I do wish I might have seen the
oars.”
“Here’s one of them,” grinned Tim. “I’ve been lying on it all the way
here and mighty uncomfortable it was, but I felt I must produce it.”
He proceeded to roll over a bit and pull gingerly at a little red oar
that had been concealed up to that moment. “Here it is. Exhibit B! Now
proceed!”
“No wonder you were making faces as we came long,” scolded Frances.
“Why didn’t you let me carry the oar? It wasn’t very good for a broken
hip.”
“Excuse me, please,” put in Breck. “But none of this is very good for
a broken hip. I’m not much of a doctor, but I’m the only one you have
had as yet and I really must insist, Mrs. Reynolds, upon my patient’s
being put to bed and a real surgeon being called in to pass on my
work.”
“Oh, thunder, Breck! Not before grub!” grumbled Tim.
All of them laughed at this and Mrs. Reynolds cried a little more.
“Now you are my own boy again,” she laughed through her tears.
“You remind me, Mother, of Tennyson’s lines,” quoted Mr. Reynolds:
“Home they brought her warrior dead;
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry.
All her maidens, watching, said,
‘She must weep or she will die.’”
“It seems to more like Sawyer’s parody on Tennyson,” suggested
Frances:
“Home they brought her sailor son,
Grown a man across the sea,
Tall and broad and black of beard,
And hoarse of voice as man may be.
Hand to shake and mouth to kiss,
Both he offered e’re he spoke;
But she said, ‘What man is this
Comes to play a sorry joke?’
Then they praised him, called him ‘smart.’
‘Tightest lad that ever stept.’
But her son she did not know,
And she neither smiled nor wept.
Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set a pigeon-pie in sight;
She saw him eat--‘’Tis he! ’Tis he!’
She knew him by his appetite!”