Early one morning at Dunnet Landing, as if it were still night, I waked,
suddenly startled by a spirited conversation beneath my window. It was
not one of Mrs. Todd’s morning soliloquies; she was not addressing her
plants and flowers in words of either praise or blame. Her voice was
declamatory though perfectly good-humored, while the second voice, a
man’s, was of lower pitch and somewhat deprecating.
The sun was just above the sea, and struck straight across my room
through a crack in the blind. It was a strange hour for the arrival of a
guest, and still too soon for the general run of business, even in that
tiny eastern haven where daybreak fisheries and early tides must often
rule the day.
The man’s voice suddenly declared itself to my sleepy ears. It was Mr.
William Blackett’s.
“Why, sister Almiry,” he protested gently, “I don’t need none o’ your
nostrums!”
“Pick me a small han’ful,” she commanded. “No, no, a _small_ han’ful, I
said,—o’ them large pennyr’yal sprigs! I go to all the trouble an’
cossetin’ of ’em just so as to have you ready to meet such occasions,
an’ last year, you may remember, you never stopped here at all the day
you went up country. An’ the frost come at last an’ blacked it. I never
saw any herb that so objected to gardin ground; might as well try to
flourish mayflowers in a common front yard. There, you can come in now,
an’ set and eat what breakfast you’ve got patience for. I’ve found
everything I want, an’ I’ll mash ’em up an’ be all ready to put ’em on.”
I heard such a pleading note of appeal as the speakers went round the
corner of the house, and my curiosity was so demanding, that I dressed
in haste, and joined my friends a little later, with two unnoticed
excuses of the beauty of the morning, and the early mail boat. William’s
breakfast had been slighted; he had taken his cup of tea and merely
pushed back the rest on the kitchen table. He was now sitting in a
helpless condition by the side window, with one of his sister’s purple
calico aprons pinned close about his neck. Poor William was meekly
submitting to being smeared, as to his countenance, with a most pungent
and unattractive lotion of pennyroyal and other green herbs which had
been hastily pounded and mixed with cream in the little white stone
mortar.
I had to cast two or three straightforward looks at William to reassure
myself that he really looked happy and expectant in spite of his
melancholy circumstances, and was not being overtaken by retribution.
The brother and sister seemed to be on delightful terms with each other
for once, and there was something of cheerful anticipation in their
morning talk. I was reminded of Medea’s anointing Jason before the great
episode of the iron bulls, but to-day William really could not be going
up country to see a railroad for the first time. I knew this to be one
of his great schemes, but he was not fitted to appear in public, or to
front an observing world of strangers. As I appeared he essayed to rise,
but Mrs. Todd pushed him back into the chair.
“Set where you be till it dries on,” she insisted. “Land sakes, you’d
think he’d get over bein’ a boy some time or ’nother, gettin’ along in
years as he is. An’ you’d think he’d seen full enough o’ fish, but once
a year he has to break loose like this, an’ travel off way up back o’
the Bowden place—far out o’ my beat, ’tis—an’ go a trout fishin’!”
Her tone of amused scorn was so full of challenge that William changed
color even under the green streaks.
“I want some change,” he said, looking at me and not at her. “’Tis the
prettiest little shady brook you ever saw.”
“If he ever fetched home more ’n a couple o’ minnies, ’twould seem worth
while,” Mrs. Todd concluded, putting a last dab of the mysterious
compound so perilously near her brother’s mouth that William flushed
again and was silent.
A little later I witnessed his escape, when Mrs. Todd had taken the
foolish risk of going down cellar. There was a horse and wagon outside
the garden fence, and presently we stood where we could see him driving
up the hill with thoughtless speed. Mrs. Todd said nothing, but watched
him affectionately out of sight.
“It serves to keep the mosquitoes off,” she said, and a moment later it
occurred to my slow mind that she spoke of the pennyroyal lotion. “I
don’t know sometimes but William’s kind of poetical,” she continued, in
her gentlest voice. “You’d think if anything could cure him of it,
’twould be the fish business.”
It was only twenty minutes past six on a summer morning, but we both sat
down to rest as if the activities of the day were over. Mrs. Todd rocked
gently for a time, and seemed to be lost, though not poorly, like
Macbeth, in her thoughts. At last she resumed relations with her actual
surroundings. “I shall now put my lobsters on. They’ll make us a good
supper,” she announced. “Then I can let the fire out for all day; give
it a holiday, same’s William. You can have a little one now, nice an’
hot, if you ain’t got all the breakfast you want. Yes, I’ll put the
lobsters on. William was very thoughtful to bring ’em over; William is
thoughtful; if he only had a spark o’ ambition, there be few could match
him.”
This unusual concession was afforded a sympathetic listener from the
depths of the kitchen closet. Mrs. Todd was getting out her old iron
lobster pot, and began to speak of prosaic affairs. I hoped that I
should hear something more about her brother and their island life, and
sat idly by the kitchen window looking at the morning glories that
shaded it, believing that some flaw of wind might set Mrs. Todd’s mind
on its former course. Then it occurred to me that she had spoken about
our supper rather than our dinner, and I guessed that she might have
some great scheme before her for the day.
When I had loitered for some time and there was no further word about
William, and at last I was conscious of receiving no attention whatever,
I went away. It was something of a disappointment to find that she put
no hindrance in the way of my usual morning affairs, of going up to the
empty little white schoolhouse on the hill where I did my task of
writing. I had been almost sure of a holiday when I discovered that Mrs.
Todd was likely to take one herself; we had not been far afield to
gather herbs and pleasures for many days now, but a little later she had
silently vanished. I found my luncheon ready on the table in the little
entry, wrapped in its shining old homespun napkin, and as if by way of
special consolation, there was a stone bottle of Mrs. Todd’s best spruce
beer, with a long piece of cod line wound round it by which it could be
lowered for coolness into the deep schoolhouse well.
I walked away with a dull supply of writing-paper and these provisions,
feeling like a reluctant child who hopes to be called back at every
step. There was no relenting voice to be heard, and when I reached the
schoolhouse, I found that I had left an open window and a swinging
shutter the day before, and the sea wind that blew at evening had
fluttered my poor sheaf of papers all about the room.
So the day did not begin very well, and I began to recognize that it was
one of the days when nothing could be done without company. The truth
was that my heart had gone trouting with William, but it would have been
too selfish to say a word even to one’s self about spoiling his day. If
there is one way above another of getting so close to nature that one
simply is a piece of nature, following a primeval instinct with perfect
self-forgetfulness and forgetting everything except the dreamy
consciousness of pleasant freedom, it is to take the course of a shady
trout brook. The dark pools and the sunny shallows beckon one on; the
wedge of sky between the trees on either bank, the speaking,
companioning noise of the water, the amazing importance of what one is
doing, and the constant sense of life and beauty make a strange
transformation of the quick hours. I had a sudden memory of all this,
and another, and another. I could not get myself free from “fishing and
wishing.”
At that moment I heard the unusual sound of wheels, and I looked past
the high-growing thicket of wild roses and straggling sumach to see the
white nose and meagre shape of the Caplin horse; then I saw William
sitting in the open wagon, with a small expectant smile upon his face.
“I’ve got two lines,” he said. “I was quite a piece up the road. I
thought perhaps ’twas so you’d feel like going.”
There was enough excitement for most occasions in hearing William speak
three sentences at once. Words seemed but vain to me at that bright
moment. I stepped back from the schoolhouse window with a beating heart.
The spruce-beer bottle was not yet in the well, and with that and my
luncheon, and Pleasure at the helm, I went out into the happy world. The
land breeze was blowing, and, as we turned away, I saw a flatter of
white go past the window as I left the schoolhouse and my morning’s work
to their neglected fate.