_Books by Laura E. Richards._
“Mrs. Richards has made for herself a little niche apart in the
literary world, from her delicate treatment of New England village
life.”—_Boston Post._
“=SOME SAY=,” and a companion story, “=NEIGHBOURS IN
CYRUS=.” 16mo, 50 cents.
=JIM OF HELLAS; or, IN DURANCE VILE=, and a companion
story, =BETHESDA POOL=. 16mo, 50 cents.
=MARIE.= 16mo, 50 cents.
“Seldom has Mrs. Richards drawn a more irresistible
picture, or framed one with more artistic literary
adjustment.”—_Boston Herald._
“A perfect literary gem.”—_Boston Transcript._
=NARCISSA=, and a companion story, =IN VERONA=. 16mo,
cloth, 50 cents.
“Each is a simple, touching, sweet little story
of rustic New England life, full of vivid
pictures of interesting character, and refreshing
for its unaffected genuineness and human
feeling.”—_Congregationalist._
“They are the most charming stories ever written of
American country life.”—_New York World._
=MELODY.= The story of a Child. 16mo, 50 cents.
“Had there never been a ‘Captain January’, ‘Melody’
would easily take first place.”—_Boston Times._
“The quaintly pretty, touching, old-fashioned story is
told with perfect grace; the few persons who belong
to it are touched in with distinctness and with
sympathy.”—_Milwaukee Sentinel._
=SAME.= _Illustrated Holiday Edition._ With thirty
half-tone pictures from drawings by Frank T. Merrill.
4to, cloth, $1.25.
=CAPTAIN JANUARY.= 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.
A charming idyl of New England coast life, whose
success has been very remarkable. One reads it, is
thoroughly charmed by it, tells others, and so its
fame has been heralded by its readers, until to-day it
is selling by the thousands, constantly enlarging the
circle of its delighted admirers.
=SAME.= _Illustrated Holiday Edition._ With thirty
half-tone pictures from drawings by Frank T. Merrill.
4to, cloth, $1.25.
=WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE.= 4to, cloth, gilt top, $1.25.
The title most happily introduces the reader to the
charming home-life of Dr. Howe and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe
during the childhood of the author.
=GLIMPSES OF THE FRENCH COURT.= Sketches from French
History. Illustrated with a series of portraits in
etching and photogravure. Square 12mo, cloth, $1.50.
With true literary touch, she gives us the story of
some of the salient figures of this remarkable period.
=ISLA HERON.= A charming prose idyl of quaint New
England life. Small quarto, cloth, 75 cents.
=NAUTILUS.= A very interesting story, with
illustrations; uniquely bound, small quarto, cloth,
75 cents.
=FIVE MINUTE STORIES.= A charming collection of short
stories and clever poems for children.
_Estes & Lauriat, Publishers, Boston._
[Illustration]
ISLA HERON
BY
LAURA E. RICHARDS
AUTHOR OF “CAPTAIN JANUARY,” “MELODY,” “MARIE,” “NAUTILUS,”
“QUEEN HILDEGARDE,” ETC.
=Illustrated=
BY
FRANK T. MERRILL
_Fifth Thousand_
BOSTON
ESTES AND LAURIAT
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1896_,
BY ESTES AND LAURIAT
_All rights reserved_
=Colonial Press:=
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
Electrotyped by Geo. C. Scott & Sons
TO MY HUSBAND
AFTER TWENTY-FIVE HAPPY YEARS
1871-1896
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PREACHER 13
II. THE HERONS 20
III. SPRING AND THE CHILDREN 26
IV. THE SCARLET SORREL 35
V. “LONE, LONE, THOU HAST LEFT ME HERE” 40
VI. THE NEW TEACHING 48
VII. LITTLE JACOB 57
VIII. LOCHABER NO MORE! 64
IX. THE NEW SCHOLARS 71
X. JOE’S TREASURY 79
XI. DISCOVERY 85
XII. THE WILD ROCKS AGAIN 97
XIII. THE LAST 102
ISLA HERON.
CHAPTER I.
THE PREACHER.
THE morning service was over, and the congregation gone home. The
preacher was to dine with Captain Maynard, but there was an hour and
more to dinner-time, and she had begged permission to stroll about
for half an hour, promising to find her way to the comfortable white
cottage, perched on a point of rock overlooking the little bay.
Now she was standing on the lower rocks, looking about her; a trim,
quiet figure in a black gown, with a close straw bonnet set on her
smooth brown hair. She “didn’t handsome much,” the people decided,
but she had a taking way with her, and preached good, sound Advent
doctrine. They were glad she had come, and would be sorry when the
schooner should take her on her way the next day, to preach at other
places along the coast.
The young woman seemed to be looking for some one, for she shaded
her eyes with her hand, and gazed earnestly up and down the line of
rocks. So absorbed was she, that she almost stumbled over a figure
sitting on the rocks, which now rose and confronted her. A strange
figure enough; so rough and gray and battered that it was hardly to be
wondered at that she had not distinguished it from the rock itself. The
face it turned upon her was red and brown in patches, as if the skin
were moth-eaten; the mouth was huge and misshapen; only the blue eyes,
bright and kindly, redeemed, in some degree, the hideousness of the
other features.
“Mornin’, preacher!” said this strange being. “You preached good this
mornin’. Joe heard you; you might not have seen him, for he stood in
the doorway, but Joe heard you, and it done him good.”
“I am glad to hear that!” said the preacher, smiling. “No, I did not
see you. What is your other name, beside Joe? I could hardly call you
by that, could I?”
“Brazybone; Joe Brazybone. Sculpin Joe, the boys call me. They don’t
think Joe’s handsome, round here; but he’s got an uglier one to home,
he tells ’em. Ma’am Brazybone, she beats Joe, preacher, I tell you.”
“Your—your wife?” asked the preacher, hardly knowing what to say.
“Brother’s wife,” said Joe. “Widder, I should say. Brother died ten
year ago, effects of lookin’ at her too much. He was tender, Joe’s
tough. I hope to wear her out fust, lookin’ at me, but ther’s no
sayin’. There she is now, out searchin’ for me. Don’t you say a word,
preacher, don’t you say a word! She can’t see none too well, and I
ain’t goin’ in yet for a spell.”
He crouched down against the rock, and again seemed almost a part of
it. The preacher, half amused, half embarrassed, stood still, as a
woman came out of a tiny hut near by, and peered about her with angry,
short-sighted eyes. Mrs. Brazybone was a vast woman, with a face like
a comic nightmare, and a set of misfit features that might have been
picked up at a rag and bottle shop. Her hair was untidy, her dress
awry, and her little eyes gleamed with ill-humour. “Decidedly,” thought
the preacher, “Joe is right, and she is the worse of the two.”
“Joe Brazybone!” called the sister-in-law. “Joseph! you comin’ in to
dinner?”
There was no answer.
“Joe Brazybone, will you speak to me? I know you are there somewheres,
if I can’t see you. Now you come in, or you won’t get no dinner this
day. Skulkin’ round those rocks, as if you was a seal! I wish ’t you
was!”
She went into the house and shut the door with a bang.
“Is this wise?” asked the preacher, looking down at Joe, who was
shaking with silent laughter. “Why do you want to make her angry,
Joseph? and you will be hungry presently, if you are not now.”
“Joe cooks his own dinner, whenever he gets a chance, preacher. He’s a
good cook, Joe is, and Mother Brazybone ain’t, you see. She’ll go off
a-visitin’ pretty soon, and then Joe’ll get him some dinner. What was
you lookin’ for, preacher, when you come out here on my rocks? You was
lookin’ for some one, and it wasn’t Joe.”
“You are right,” said the preacher, “I saw a young girl in the hall,—or
rather, she stood outside, leaning in at the window,—whose face
interested me greatly. She disappeared before the service was over, and
I wondered if I might see her somewhere. I—I hardly know why I came
down here to look for her. She was a beautiful girl, about fourteen, I
should think, with long hair of a strange colour, and very brilliant
eyes.”
She paused, for Joe Brazybone was nodding and blinking with every
appearance of delight.
“You saw her, did you?” he said. “Yes! yes! anybody would notice Isly.
She’d be queen of this hull island, if folks had their rights, and if
other folks knowed a queen when they saw her. Not governor, I don’t
mean, nor yet anything of that sort, but a real queen, with a crown on
her head, and all the folks down on their marrer-bones every time she
set her foot out-o’-doors.”
“I don’t understand you,” said the preacher. “Do you mean that the
island belongs by right to that young girl?”
Joe nodded like a mandarin.
“It does, by the rights of it. Every step and foot of land belongs to
the Herons, and she’s the only Heron left alive, save and except the
boy, as he don’t count, bein’ deef-dummy. But Isly Heron she’s the
born queen, and you may believe what Joseph says about that, preacher.
I knowed Herons all my life. Herons was master folks over on the
main, before ever they come here. When they come over, they brought
Brazybones with ’em, to clean their fish and wash out their boats. Long
ago thet was, way back among the gret-grets, and ’t hes been so ever
since, till it come down to Giles and Joe. Joe done it, too, as long as
Giles would let him. Old Joe would ha’ done it to the last, but Giles
sent him away. He was sick and sufferin’, Giles was, and he didn’t want
old Joe to know it, but Joe did know. Joe would have died when Giles
did, preacher, if it hadn’t ha’ been for Isly and the boy.”
The strange creature was brushing his ragged gray sleeve across his
eyes, and his voice quavered curiously.
“You never saw Giles?” he said, looking up presently.
“Giles was Isly’s father, but he’s dead now. You might never have seen
him formerly, when he was over on the main some time?”
The preacher shook her head.
“He was another!” Joe went on, half to himself. “Like a king, Giles
was, for all his smilin’, pleasant ways. Most folks didn’t know it, but
Joe knowed it. Many’s the time I’ve hid down against the rock, after
Giles wouldn’t see me no more, and waited so I could touch him when he
went by. It done me good to touch his coat; I felt good come out to me,
every time I done it.”
He stared at the preacher, and she stared back at him, thinking him
out of his wits. Probably he was, or, more likely still, he had never
had his full share of intelligence. Yet, if the preacher had been a
seer—if she had had powers of vision that could pierce the veil of past
as of future years—she might have called up scenes and figures that
from century to century should seem to justify some of Joe Brazybone’s
ideas, fantastic as they were. She might see, in generation after
generation, two figures side by side, one masterful, dominant, the
other crouching, serving, loving, coming to heel when called, like a
dog, springing like a man to action at the master’s word. One might
almost, even now, fancy a dim scene, half hidden by rolling clouds of
dust and smoke. A battle-field. Gilles Tête d’Airain, the fair-haired
Norman, stands wiping his bloody sword, and calls back his men from the
pursuit, for the enemy is scattered beyond redemption. The half-savage
soldiers come trooping back with wild gestures, with great shouts
of triumph. Among them the chief singles out one, an ugly fellow of
enormous strength, who twice, since the bloody morning, has stood
between his master and death. He kneels, a serf, bound for life and for
death; he is bidden to rise a free man, with henceforth a name and a
station of his own.
“_Brave et bon tu t’es montré; Brave-et-Bon sera ton nom, d’ici à
jamais!_”
The clouds roll forward, the vision is gone. But was this true? and has
Tête d’Airain sunk to mere Heron, and has Brave-et-Bon, good and brave,
drawled itself away into Brazybone? If this were so, it might account
for poor Joe’s attitude, at which all the villagers laugh.
“You’d like to see Isly, preacher? You was meanin’ to speak to her?”
“I—yes, if you think she would like to see me. Her face interested me
greatly; I should like to see her nearer, and make her acquaintance.”
“This way, preacher! this way! you’re the right sort; a lady yourself,
and knowin’ a lady when you see one. Mother Brazybone, she would have
taken Isly home, when her mother died; but I wouldn’t hear to it. I
know’d how ’twould be. She’d ha’ set her to work, and tried to make a
servant of her; Isly Heron doin’ Mother Brazybone’s work! Guess the
solid rocks would ha’ come down to do the cookin’ fust, ’fore they
allowed any such doin’s. These rocks know Herons, I tell you, most as
well as old Joe does. They laid soft under Giles, that day he was up
yonder.” He nodded upward, toward a huge mass of rock that towered
across the narrow bay, the younger sister of the Island of the Wild
Rocks.
The preacher, more and more puzzled, followed her strange guide, as he
led the way toward a point of rock not far distant.
“She’ll be here, likely!” he said. “She often stops here on her way
home, Isly does, to look about her, and see the lay of the land. She
thinks, too, Isly does! A power of thinkin’ she keeps up! Wonderful,
for one of her size, if she warn’t a Heron, and thinkin’ natural to ’em
all,—wonderful!”
They turned the point of rock, and came directly upon the person of
whom they were in search. She was standing still, with her hands
folded, looking out to sea; a slender, youthful figure, lonely as the
rocks around her. This was Isla Heron. And while Joe Brazybone, in
his clumsy way, is presenting the preacher to her, as if the crown
he fancied were shining in actual gold on her head, let us go back a
little, and see who the child is, and who her father was, the Giles
Heron who was so faithfully loved, and who is now gone to his own
place.