Mrs. Todd was swinging her basket to and fro like a schoolgirl as she
walked, and at this moment it slipped from her hand and rolled lightly
along the ground as if there were nothing in it. I picked it up and gave
it to her, whereupon she lifted the cover and looked in with anxiety.
“’Tis only a few little things, but I don’t want to lose ’em,” she
explained humbly. “’Twas lucky you took the other basket if I was goin’
to roll it round. Mis’ Abby Martin complained o’ lacking some pretty
pink silk to finish one o’ her little frames, an’ I thought I’d carry
her some, and I had a bunch o’ gold thread that had been in a box o’
mine this twenty year. I never was one to do much fancy work, but we’re
all liable to be swept away by fashion. And then there’s a small packet
o’ very choice herbs that I gave a good deal of attention to; they’ll
smarten her up and give her the best of appetites, come spring. She was
tellin’ me that spring weather is very wiltin’ an’ tryin’ to her, and
she was beginnin’ to dread it already. Mother’s just the same way; if I
could prevail on mother to take some o’ these remedies in good season
’twould make a world o’ difference, but she gets all down hill before I
have a chance to hear of it, and then William comes in to tell me,
sighin’ and bewailin’, how feeble mother is. ‘Why can’t you remember
’bout them good herbs that I never let her be without?’ I say to him—he
does provoke me so; and then off he goes, sulky enough, down to his
boat. Next thing I know, she comes in to go to meetin’, wantin’ to speak
to everybody and feelin’ like a girl. Mis’ Martin’s case is very much
the same; but she’s nobody to watch her. William’s kind o’ slow-moulded;
but there, any William’s better than none when you get to be Mis’
Martin’s age.”
“Hadn’t she any children?” I asked.
“Quite a number,” replied Mrs. Todd grandly, “but some are gone and the
rest are married and settled. She never was a great hand to go about
visitin’. I don’t know but Mis’ Martin might be called a little
peculiar. Even her own folks has to make company of her; she never slips
in and lives right along with the rest as if ’twas at home, even in her
own children’s houses. I heard one o’ her sons’ wives say once she’d
much rather have the Queen to spend the day if she could choose between
the two, but I never thought Abby was so difficult as that. I used to
love to have her come; she may have been sort o’ ceremonious, but very
pleasant and sprightly if you had sense enough to treat her her own way.
I always think she’d know just how to live with great folks, and feel
easier ’long of them an’ their ways. Her son’s wife’s a great driver
with farm-work, boards a great tableful o’ men in hayin’ time, an’ feels
right in her element. I don’t say but she’s a good woman an’ smart, but
sort o’ rough. Anybody that’s gentle-mannered an’ precise like Mis’
Martin would be a sort o’ restraint.
“There’s all sorts o’ folks in the country, same’s there is in the
city,” concluded Mrs. Todd gravely, and I as gravely agreed. The thick
woods were behind us now, and the sun was shining clear overhead, the
morning mists were gone, and a faint blue haze softened the distance; as
we climbed the hill where we were to see the view, it seemed like a
summer day. There was an old house on the height, facing southward,—a
mere forsaken shell of an old house, with empty windows that looked like
blind eyes. The frost-bitten grass grew close about it like brown fur,
and there was a single crooked bough of lilac holding its green leaves
close by the door.
“We’ll just have a good piece of bread-an’-butter now,” said the
commander of the expedition, “and then we’ll hang up the basket on some
peg inside the house out o’ the way o’ the sheep, and have a han’some
entertainment as we’re comin’ back. She’ll be all through her little
dinner when we get there, Mis’ Martin will; but she’ll want to make us
some tea, an’ we must have our visit an’ be startin’ back pretty soon
after two. I don’t want to cross all that low ground again after it ’s
begun to grow chilly. An’ it looks to me as if the clouds might begin to
gather late in the afternoon.”
Before us lay a splendid world of sea and shore. The autumn colors
already brightened the landscape; and here and there at the edge of a
dark tract of pointed firs stood a row of bright swamp maples like
scarlet flowers. The blue sea and the great tide inlets were untroubled
by the lightest winds.
“Poor land, this is!” sighed Mrs. Todd as we sat down to rest on the
worn doorstep. “I’ve known three good hardworkin’ families that come
here full o’ hope an’ pride and tried to make something o’ this farm,
but it beat ’em all. There’s one small field that’s excellent for
potatoes if you let half of it rest every year; but the land’s always
hungry. Now, you see them little peaked-topped spruces an’ fir balsams
comin’ up over the hill all green an’ hearty; they’ve got it all their
own way! Seems sometimes as if wild Natur’ got jealous over a certain
spot, and wanted to do just as she’d a mind to. You’ll see here; she’ll
do her own ploughin’ an’ harrowin’ with frost an’ wet, an’ plant just
what she wants and wait for her own crops. Man can’t do nothin’ with it,
try as he may. I tell you those little trees means business!”
I looked down the slope, and felt as if we ourselves were likely to be
surrounded and overcome if we lingered too long. There was a vigor of
growth, a persistence and savagery about the sturdy little trees that
put weak human nature at complete defiance. One felt a sudden pity for
the men and women who had been worsted after a long fight in that lonely
place; one felt a sudden fear of the unconquerable, immediate forces of
Nature, as in the irresistible moment of a thunderstorm.
“I can recollect the time when folks were shy o’ these woods we just
come through,” said Mrs. Todd seriously. “The men folks themselves
never’d venture into ’em alone; if their cattle got strayed they’d
collect whoever they could get, and start off all together. They said a
person was liable to get bewildered in there alone, and in old times
folks had been lost. I expect there was considerable fear left over from
the old Indian times, and the poor days o’ witchcraft; anyway, I’ve seen
bold men act kind o’ timid. Some women o’ the Asa Bowden family went out
one afternoon berryin’ when I was a girl, and got lost and was out all
night; they found ’em middle o’ the mornin’ next day, not half a mile
from home, scared most to death, an’ sayin’ they’d heard wolves and
other beasts sufficient for a caravan. Poor creatur’s! they’d strayed at
last into a kind of low place amongst some alders, an’ one of ’em was so
overset she never got over it, an’ went off in a sort o’ slow decline.
’Twas like them victims tha’ drowns in a foot o’ water; but their minds
did suffer dreadful. Some folks is born afraid of the woods and all wild
places, but I must say they’ve always been like home to me.”
I glanced at the resolute, confident face of my companion. Life was very
strong in her, as if some force of Nature were personified in this
simple-hearted woman and gave her cousinship to the ancient deities. She
might have walked the primeval fields of Sicily; her strong gingham
skirts might at that very moment bend the slender stalks of asphodel and
be fragrant with trodden thyme, instead of the brown wind-brushed grass
of New England and frost-bitten goldenrod. She was a great soul, was
Mrs. Todd, and I her humble follower, as we went our way to visit the
Queen’s Twin, leaving the bright view of the sea behind us, and
descending to a lower countryside through the dry pastures and fields.
The farms all wore a look of gathering age, though the settlement was,
after all, so young. The fences were already fragile, and it seemed as
if the first impulse of agriculture had soon spent itself without hope
of renewal. The better houses were always those that had some hold upon
the riches of the sea; a house that could not harbor a fishing-boat in
some neighboring inlet was far from being sure of every-day comforts.
The land alone was not enough to live upon in that stony region; it
belonged by right to the forest, and to the forest it fast returned.
From the top of the hill where we had been sitting we had seen
prosperity in the dim distance, where the land was good and the sun
shone upon fat barns, and where warm-looking houses with three or four
chimneys apiece stood high on their solid ridge above the bay.
As we drew nearer to Mrs. Martin’s it was sad to see what poor bushy
fields, what thin and empty dwelling places had been left by those who
had chosen this disappointing part of the northern country for their
home. We crossed the last field and came into a narrow rain-washed road,
and Mrs. Todd looked eager and expectant and said that we were almost at
our journey’s end. “I do hope Mis’ Martin’ll ask you into her best room
where she keeps all the Queen’s pictures. Yes, I think likely she will
ask you; but ’tain’t everybody she deems worthy to visit ’em, I can tell
you!” said Mrs. Todd warningly. “She’s been collectin’ ’em an’ cuttin’
’em out o’ newspapers an’ magazines time out o’ mind, and if she heard
of anybody sailin’ for an English port she’d contrive to get a little
money to ’em and ask to have the last likeness there was. She’s most
covered her best-room wall now; she keeps that room shut up sacred as a
meetin’-house! ‘I won’t say but I have my favorites amongst ’em,’ she
told me t’other day, ‘but they’re all beautiful to me as they can be!’
And she’s made some kind o’ pretty little frames for ’em all—you know
there’s always a new fashion o’ frames comin’ round; first ’twas
shell-work, and then ’twas pine-cones, and bead-work’s had its day, and
now she’s much concerned with perforated cardboard worked with silk. I
tell you that best room’s a sight to see! But you mustn’t look for
anything elegant,” continued Mrs. Todd, after a moment’s reflection.
“Mis’ Martin’s always been in very poor, strugglin’ circumstances. She
had ambition for her children, though they took right after their father
an’ had little for themselves; she wa’n’t over an’ above well married,
however kind she may see fit to speak. She’s been patient an’
hardworkin’ all her life, and always high above makin’ mean complaints
of other folks. I expect all this business about the Queen has buoyed
her over many a shoal place in life. Yes, you might say that Abby’d been
a slave, but there ain’t any slave but has some freedom.”