I had an odd feeling of strangeness: I missed the garden, and the little
rooms, to which I had added a few things of my own the summer before,
seemed oddly unfamiliar. It was like the hermit crab in a cold new
shell,—and with the windows shut against the raw May air, and a strange
silence and grayness of the sea all that first night and day of my
visit, I felt as if I had after all lost my hold of that quiet life.
Mrs. Todd made the apt suggestion that city persons were prone to run
themselves to death, and advised me to stay and get properly rested now
that I had taken the trouble to come. She did not know how long I had
been homesick for the conditions of life at the Landing the autumn
before—it was natural enough to feel a little unsupported by compelling
incidents on my return.
Some one has said that one never leaves a place, or arrives at one,
until the next day! But on the second morning I woke with the familiar
feeling of interest and ease, and the bright May sun was streaming in,
while I could hear Mrs. Todd’s heavy footsteps pounding about in the
other part of the house as if something were going to happen. There was
the first golden robin singing somewhere close to the house, and a
lovely aspect of spring now, and I looked at the garden to see that in
the warm night some of its treasures had grown a hand’s breadth; the
determined spikes of yellow daffies stood tall against the doorsteps,
and the bloodroot was unfolding leaf and flower. The belated spring
which I had left behind farther south had overtaken me on this northern
coast. I even saw a presumptuous dandelion in the garden border.
It is difficult to report the great events of New England; expression is
so slight, and those few words which escape us in moments of deep
feeling look but meagre on the printed page. One has to assume too much
of the dramatic fervor as one reads; but as I came out of my room at
breakfast-time I met Mrs. Todd face to face, and when she said to me,
“This weather’ll bring William in after her; ’tis their happy day!” I
felt something take possession of me which ought to communicate itself
to the least sympathetic reader of this cold page. It is written for
those who have a Dunnet Landing of their own: who either kindly share
this with the writer, or possess another.
“I ain’t seen his comin’ sail yet; he’ll be likely to dodge round among
the islands so he’ll be the less observed,” continued Mrs. Todd. “You
can get a dory up the bay, even a clean new painted one, if you know as
how, keepin’ it against the high land.” She stepped to the door and
looked off to sea as she spoke. I could see her eye follow the gray
shores to and fro, and then a bright light spread over her calm face.
“There he comes, and he’s strikin’ right in across the open bay like a
man!” she said with splendid approval. “See, there he comes! Yes,
there’s William, and he’s bent his new sail.”
I looked too, and saw the fleck of white no larger than a gull’s wing
yet, but present to her eager vision.
I was going to France for the whole long summer that year, and the more
I thought of such an absence from these simple scenes the more dear and
delightful they became. Santa Teresa says that the true proficiency of
the soul is not in much thinking, but in much loving, and sometimes I
believed that I had never found love in its simplicity as I had found it
at Dunnet Landing in the various hearts of Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd
and William. It is only because one came to know them, these three,
loving and wise and true, in their own habitations. Their counterparts
are in every village in the world, thank heaven, and the gift to one’s
life is only in its discernment. I had only lived in Dunnet until the
usual distractions and artifices of the world were no longer in control,
and I saw these simple natures clear. “The happiness of life is in its
recognitions. It seems that we are not ignorant of these truths, and
even that we believe them; but we are so little accustomed to think of
them, they are so strange to us—”
“Well now, deary me!” said Mrs. Todd, breaking into exclamation; “I’ve
got to fly round—I thought he’d have to beat; he can’t sail far on that
tack, and he won’t be in for a good hour yet—I expect he’s made every
arrangement, but he said he shouldn’t go up after Esther unless the
weather was good, and I declare it did look doubtful this morning.”
I remembered Esther’s weather-worn face. She was like a Frenchwoman who
had spent her life in the fields. I remembered her pleasant look, her
childlike eyes, and thought of the astonishment of joy she would feel
now in being taken care of and tenderly sheltered from wind and weather
after all these years. They were going to be young again now, she and
William, to forget work and care in the spring weather. I could hardly
wait for the boat to come to land, I was so eager to see his happy face.
“Cake an’ wine I’m goin’ to set ’em out!” said Mrs. Todd. “They won’t
stop to set down for an ordered meal, they’ll want to get right out home
quick’s they can. Yes, I’ll give ’em some cake an’ wine—I’ve got a rare
plum-cake from my best receipt, and a bottle o’ wine that the old Cap’n
Denton of all give me, one of two, the day I was married, one we had and
one we saved, and I’ve never touched it till now. He said there wa’n’t
none like it in the State o’ Maine.”
It was a day of waiting, that day of spring; the May weather was as
expectant as our fond hearts, and one could see the grass grow green
hour by hour. The warm air was full of birds, there was a glow of light
on the sea instead of the cold shining of chilly weather which had
lingered late. There was a look on Mrs. Todd’s face which I saw once and
could not meet again. She was in her highest mood. Then I went out early
for a walk, and when I came back we sat in different rooms for the most
part. There was such a thrill in the air that our only conversation was
in her most abrupt and incisive manner. She was knitting, I believe, and
as for me I dallied with a book. I heard her walking to and fro, and,
the door being wide open now, she went out and paced the front walk to
the gate as if she walked a quarter-deck.
It is very solemn to sit waiting for the great events of life—most of us
have done it again and again—to be expectant of life or expectant of
death gives one the same feeling.
But at the last Mrs. Todd came quickly back from the gate, and standing
in the sunshine at the door, she beckoned me as if she were a sibyl.
“I thought you comprehended everything the day you was up there,” she
added with a little more patience in her tone, but I felt that she
thought I had lost instead of gained since we parted the autumn before.
“William’s made this pretext o’ goin’ fishin’ for the last time.
’Twouldn’t done to take notice, ’twould ‘a scared him to death! but
there never was nobody took less comfort out o’ forty years courtin’.
No, he won’t have to make no further pretexts,” said Mrs. Todd, with an
air of triumph.
“Did you know where he was going that day?” I asked, with a sudden burst
of admiration at such discernment.
“I did!” replied Mrs. Todd grandly.
“Oh! but that pennyroyal lotion,” I indignantly protested, remembering
that under pretext of mosquitoes she had besmeared the poor lover in an
awful way—why, it was outrageous! Medea could not have been more
conscious of high ultimate purposes.
“Darlin’,” said Mrs. Todd, in the excitement of my arrival and the great
concerns of marriage, “he’s got a beautiful shaped face, and they pison
him very unusual—you wouldn’t have had him present himself to his lady
all lop-sided with a mosquito-bite? Once when we was young I rode up
with him, and they set upon him in concert the minute we entered the
woods.” She stood before me reproachfully, and I was conscious of
deserved rebuke. “Yes, you’ve come just in the nick of time to advise me
about a bunnit. They say large bows on top is liable to be worn.”