Chapter 3

As we sailed along I listened to an increasingly delightful commentary
upon the islands, some of them barren rocks, or at best giving sparse
pasturage for sheep in the early summer. On one of these an eager little
flock ran to the water's edge and bleated at us so affectingly that I
would willingly have stopped; but Mrs. Todd steered away from the rocks,
and scolded at the sheep's mean owner, an acquaintance of hers, who
grudged the little salt and still less care which the patient creatures
needed. The hot midsummer sun makes prisons of these small islands
that are a paradise in early June, with their cool springs and short
thick-growing grass. On a larger island, farther out to sea, my
entertaining companion showed me with glee the small houses of two
farmers who shared the island between them, and declared that for three
generations the people had not spoken to each other even in times of
sickness or death or birth. “When the news come that the war was over,
one of 'em knew it a week, and never stepped across his wall to tell the
other,” she said. “There, they enjoy it; they've got to have somethin'
to interest 'em in such a place; 'tis a good deal more tryin' to be
tied to folks you don't like than 'tis to be alone. Each of 'em tell
the neighbors their wrongs; plenty likes to hear and tell again; them
as fetch a bone'll carry one, an' so they keep the fight a-goin'. I must
say I like variety myself; some folks washes Monday an' irons Tuesday
the whole year round, even if the circus is goin' by!”

A long time before we landed at Green Island we could see the small
white house, standing high like a beacon, where Mrs. Todd was born and
where her mother lived, on a green slope above the water, with dark
spruce woods still higher. There were crops in the fields, which we
presently distinguished from one another. Mrs. Todd examined them while
we were still far at sea. “Mother's late potatoes looks backward; ain't
had rain enough so far,” she pronounced her opinion. “They look weedier
than what they call Front Street down to Cowper Centre. I expect brother
William is so occupied with his herrin' weirs an' servin' out bait to
the schooners that he don't think once a day of the land.”

“What's the flag for, up above the spruces there behind the house?” I
inquired, with eagerness.

“Oh, that's the sign for herrin',” she explained kindly, while Johnny
Bowden regarded me with contemptuous surprise. “When they get enough for
schooners they raise that flag; an' when 'tis a poor catch in the weir
pocket they just fly a little signal down by the shore, an' then the
small bo'ts comes and get enough an' over for their trawls. There, look!
there she is: mother sees us; she's wavin' somethin' out o' the fore
door! She'll be to the landin'-place quick's we are.”

I looked, and could see a tiny flutter in the doorway, but a quicker
signal had made its way from the heart on shore to the heart on the sea.

“How do you suppose she knows it is me?” said Mrs. Todd, with a tender
smile on her broad face. “There, you never get over bein' a child long's
you have a mother to go to. Look at the chimney, now; she's gone right
in an' brightened up the fire. Well, there, I'm glad mother's well;
you'll enjoy seein' her very much.”

Mrs. Todd leaned back into her proper position, and the boat trimmed
again. She took a firmer grasp of the sheet, and gave an impatient look
up at the gaff and the leech of the little sail, and twitched the sheet
as if she urged the wind like a horse. There came at once a fresh gust,
and we seemed to have doubled our speed. Soon we were near enough to see
a tiny figure with handkerchiefed head come down across the field and
stand waiting for us at the cove above a curve of pebble beach.

Presently the dory grated on the pebbles, and Johnny Bowden, who had
been kept in abeyance during the voyage, sprang out and used manful
exertions to haul us up with the next wave, so that Mrs. Todd could make
a dry landing.

“You don that very well,” she said, mounting to her feet, and
coming ashore somewhat stiffly, but with great dignity, refusing our
outstretched hands, and returning to possess herself of a bag which had
lain at her feet.

“Well, mother, here I be!” she announced with indifference; but they
stood and beamed in each other's faces.

“Lookin' pretty well for an old lady, ain't she?” said Mrs. Todd's
mother, turning away from her daughter to speak to me. She was a
delightful little person herself, with bright eyes and an affectionate
air of expectation like a child on a holiday. You felt as if Mrs.
Blackett were an old and dear friend before you let go her cordial hand.
We all started together up the hill.

“Now don't you haste too fast, mother,” said Mrs. Todd warningly; “'tis
a far reach o' risin' ground to the fore door, and you won't set an' get
your breath when you're once there, but go trotting about. Now don't
you go a mite faster than we proceed with this bag an' basket. Johnny,
there, 'll fetch up the haddock. I just made one stop to underrun
William's trawl till I come to jes' such a fish's I thought you'd want
to make one o' your nice chowders of. I've brought an onion with me that
was layin' about on the window-sill at home.”

“That's just what I was wantin',” said the hostess. “I give a sigh
when you spoke o' chowder, knowin' my onions was out. William forgot
to replenish us last time he was to the Landin'. Don't you haste so
yourself Almiry, up this risin' ground. I hear you commencin' to wheeze
a'ready.”

This mild revenge seemed to afford great pleasure to both giver
and receiver. They laughed a little, and looked at each other
affectionately, and then at me. Mrs. Todd considerately paused, and
faced about to regard the wide sea view. I was glad to stop, being more
out of breath than either of my companions, and I prolonged the halt
by asking the names of the neighboring islands. There was a fine breeze
blowing, which we felt more there on the high land than when we were
running before it in the dory.

“Why, this ain't that kitten I saw when I was out last, the one that I
said didn't appear likely?” exclaimed Mrs. Todd as we went our way.

“That's the one, Almiry,” said her mother. “She always had a likely look
to me, an' she's right after business. I never see such a mouser for
one of her age. If't wan't for William, I never should have housed that
other dronin' old thing so long; but he sets by her on account of her
havin' a bob tail. I don't deem it advisable to maintain cats just on
account of their havin' bob tails; they're like all other curiosities,
good for them that wants to see 'm twice. This kitten catches mice for
both, an' keeps me respectable as I ain't been for a year. She's a real
understandin' little help, this kitten is. I picked her from among five
Miss Augusta Pernell had over to Burnt Island,” said the old woman,
trudging along with the kitten close at her skirts. “Augusta, she says
to me, 'Why, Mis' Blackett, you've took and homeliest;' and, says I,
'I've got the smartest; I'm satisfied.'”

“I'd trust nobody sooner'n you to pick out a kitten, mother,” said the
daughter handsomely, and we went on in peace and harmony.

The house was just before us now, on a green level that looked as if
a huge hand had scooped it out of the long green field we had been
ascending. A little way above, the dark, spruce woods began to climb the
top of the hill and cover the seaward slopes of the island. There was
just room for the small farm and the forest; we looked down at the
fish-house and its rough sheds, and the weirs stretching far out into
the water. As we looked upward, the tops of the firs came sharp against
the blue sky. There was a great stretch of rough pasture-land round
the shoulder of the island to the eastward, and here were all the
thick-scattered gray rocks that kept their places, and the gray backs
of many sheep that forever wandered and fed on the thin sweet pasturage
that fringed the ledges and made soft hollows and strips of green turf
like growing velvet. I could see the rich green of bayberry bushes here
and there, where the rocks made room. The air was very sweet; one could
not help wishing to be a citizen of such a complete and tiny continent
and home of fisherfolk.

The house was broad and clean, with a roof that looked heavy on its low
walls. It was one of the houses that seem firm-rooted in the ground, as
if they were two-thirds below the surface, like icebergs. The front door
stood hospitably open in expectation of company, and an orderly
vine grew at each side; but our path led to the kitchen door at the
house-end, and there grew a mass of gay flowers and greenery, as if they
had been swept together by some diligent garden broom into a tangled
heap: there were portulacas all along under the lower step and
straggling off into the grass, and clustering mallows that crept as near
as they dared, like poor relations. I saw the bright eyes and brainless
little heads of two half-grown chickens who were snuggled down among the
mallows as if they had been chased away from the door more than once,
and expected to be again.

“It seems kind o' formal comin' in this way,” said Mrs. Todd
impulsively, as we passed the flowers and came to the front doorstep;
but she was mindful of the proprieties, and walked before us into the
best room on the left.

“Why, mother, if you haven't gone an' turned the carpet!” she exclaimed,
with something in her voice that spoke of awe and admiration. “When'd
you get to it? I s'pose Mis' Addicks come over an' helped you, from
White Island Landing?”

“No, she didn't,” answered the old woman, standing proudly erect, and
making the most of a great moment. “I done it all myself with William's
help. He had a spare day, an' took right holt with me; an' 'twas all
well beat on the grass, an' turned, an' put down again afore we went to
bed. I ripped an' sewed over two o' them long breadths. I ain't had such
a good night's sleep for two years.”

“There, what do you think o' havin' such a mother as that for eighty-six
year old?” said Mrs. Todd, standing before us like a large figure of
Victory.

As for the mother, she took on a sudden look of youth; you felt as if
she promised a great future, and was beginning, not ending, her summers
and their happy toils.

“My, my!” exclaimed Mrs. Todd. “I couldn't ha' done it myself, I've got
to own it.”

“I was much pleased to have it off my mind,” said Mrs. Blackett, humbly;
“the more so because along at the first of the next week I wasn't very
well. I suppose it may have been the change of weather.”

Mrs. Todd could not resist a significant glance at me, but, with
charming sympathy, she forbore to point the lesson or to connect this
illness with its apparent cause. She loomed larger than ever in the
little old-fashioned best room, with its few pieces of good furniture
and pictures of national interest. The green paper curtains were
stamped with conventional landscapes of a foreign order,--castles
on inaccessible crags, and lovely lakes with steep wooded shores;
under-foot the treasured carpet was covered thick with home-made rugs.
There were empty glass lamps and crystallized bouquets of grass and some
fine shells on the narrow mantelpiece.

“I was married in this room,” said Mrs. Todd unexpectedly; and I heard
her give a sigh after she had spoken, as if she could not help the touch
of regret that would forever come with all her thoughts of happiness.

“We stood right there between the windows,” she added, “and the minister
stood here. William wouldn't come in. He was always odd about seein'
folks, just's he is now. I run to meet 'em from a child, an' William,
he'd take an' run away.”

“I've been the gainer,” said the old mother cheerfully. “William has
been son an' daughter both since you was married off the island. He's
been 'most too satisfied to stop at home 'long o' his old mother, but I
always tell 'em I'm the gainer.”

We were all moving toward the kitchen as if by common instinct. The best
room was too suggestive of serious occasions, and the shades were
all pulled down to shut out the summer light and air. It was indeed a
tribute to Society to find a room set apart for her behests out there
on so apparently neighborless and remote an island. Afternoon visits
and evening festivals must be few in such a bleak situation at certain
seasons of the year, but Mrs. Blackett was of those who do not live to
themselves, and who have long since passed the line that divides mere
self-concern from a valued share in whatever Society can give and take.
There were those of her neighbors who never had taken the trouble to
furnish a best room, but Mrs. Blackett was one who knew the uses of a
parlor.

“Yes, do come right out into the old kitchen; I shan't make any stranger
of you,” she invited us pleasantly, after we had been properly received
in the room appointed to formality. “I expect Almiry, here, 'll be
driftin' out 'mongst the pasture-weeds quick's she can find a good
excuse. 'Tis hot now. You'd better content yourselves till you get nice
an' rested, an' 'long after dinner the sea-breeze 'll spring up, an'
then you can take your walks, an' go up an' see the prospect from the
big ledge. Almiry'll want to show off everything there is. Then I'll get
you a good cup o' tea before you start to go home. The days are plenty
long now.”

While we were talking in the best room the selected fish had been
mysteriously brought up from the shore, and lay all cleaned and ready in
an earthen crock on the table.

“I think William might have just stopped an' said a word,” remarked
Mrs. Todd, pouting with high affront as she caught sight of it. “He's
friendly enough when he comes ashore, an' was remarkable social the last
time, for him.”

“He ain't disposed to be very social with the ladies,” explained
William's mother, with a delightful glance at me, as if she counted upon
my friendship and tolerance. “He's very particular, and he's all in his
old fishin'-clothes to-day. He'll want me to tell him everything you
said and done, after you've gone. William has very deep affections.
He'll want to see you, Almiry. Yes, I guess he'll be in by an' by.”

“I'll search for him by 'n' by, if he don't,” proclaimed Mrs. Todd, with
an air of unalterable resolution. “I know all of his burrows down 'long
the shore. I'll catch him by hand 'fore he knows it. I've got some
business with William, anyway. I brought forty-two cents with me that
was due him for them last lobsters he brought in.”

“You can leave it with me,” suggested the little old mother, who was
already stepping about among her pots and pans in the pantry, and
preparing to make the chowder.

I became possessed of a sudden unwonted curiosity in regard to William,
and felt that half the pleasure of my visit would be lost if I could not
make his interesting acquaintance.

IX. William

MRS. TODD HAD taken the onion out of her basket and laid it down upon
the kitchen table. “There's Johnny Bowden come with us, you know,” she
reminded her mother. “He'll be hungry enough to eat his size.”

“I've got new doughnuts, dear,” said the little old lady. “You don't
often catch William 'n' me out o' provisions. I expect you might have
chose a somewhat larger fish, but I'll try an' make it do. I shall have
to have a few extra potatoes, but there's a field full out there,
an' the hoe's leanin' against the well-house, in 'mongst the
climbin'-beans.” She smiled and gave her daughter a commanding nod.

“Land sakes alive! Le's blow the horn for William,” insisted Mrs. Todd,
with some excitement. “He needn't break his spirit so far's to come in.
He'll know you need him for something particular, an' then we can call
to him as he comes up the path. I won't put him to no pain.”

Mrs. Blackett's old face, for the first time, wore a look of trouble,
and I found it necessary to counteract the teasing spirit of Almira.
It was too pleasant to stay indoors altogether, even in such rewarding
companionship; besides, I might meet William; and, straying out
presently, I found the hoe by the well-house and an old splint basket at
the woodshed door, and also found my way down to the field where there
was a great square patch of rough, weedy potato-tops and tall ragweed.
One corner was already dug, and I chose a fat-looking hill where the
tops were well withered. There is all the pleasure that one can have in
gold-digging in finding one's hopes satisfied in the riches of a good
hill of potatoes. I longed to go on; but it did not seem frugal to dig
any longer after my basket was full, and at last I took my hoe by the
middle and lifted the basket to go back up the hill. I was sure that
Mrs. Blackett must be waiting impatiently to slice the potatoes into the
chowder, layer after layer, with the fish.

“You let me take holt o' that basket, ma'am,” said the pleasant, anxious
voice behind me.

I turned, startled in the silence of the wide field, and saw an elderly
man, bent in the shoulders as fishermen often are, gray-headed and
clean-shaven, and with a timid air. It was William. He looked just like
his mother, and I had been imagining that he was large and stout like
his sister, Almira Todd; and, strange to say, my fancy had led me to
picture him not far from thirty and a little loutish. It was necessary
instead to pay William the respect due to age.

I accustomed myself to plain facts on the instant, and we said
good-morning like old friends. The basket was really heavy, and I put
the hoe through its handle and offered him one end; then we moved easily
toward the house together, speaking of the fine weather and of mackerel
which were reported to be striking in all about the bay. William had
been out since three o'clock, and had taken an extra fare of fish.
I could feel that Mrs. Todd's eyes were upon us as we approached the
house, and although I fell behind in the narrow path, and let William
take the basket alone and precede me at some little distance the rest of
the way, I could plainly hear her greet him.

“Got round to comin' in, didn't you?” she inquired, with amusement.
“Well, now, that's clever. Didn't know's I should see you to-day,
William, an' I wanted to settle an account.”

I felt somewhat disturbed and responsible, but when I joined them they
were on most simple and friendly terms. It became evident that, with
William, it was the first step that cost, and that, having once joined
in social interests, he was able to pursue them with more or less
pleasure. He was about sixty, and not young-looking for his years, yet
so undying is the spirit of youth, and bashfulness has such a power
of survival, that I felt all the time as if one must try to make the
occasion easy for some one who was young and new to the affairs of
social life. He asked politely if I would like to go up to the great
ledge while dinner was getting ready; so, not without a deep sense of
pleasure, and a delighted look of surprise from the two hostesses,
we started, William and I, as if both of us felt much younger than we
looked. Such was the innocence and simplicity of the moment that when
I heard Mrs. Todd laughing behind us in the kitchen I laughed too, but
William did not even blush. I think he was a little deaf, and he stepped
along before me most businesslike and intent upon his errand.

We went from the upper edge of the field above the house into a smooth,
brown path among the dark spruces. The hot sun brought out the fragrance
of the pitchy bark, and the shade was pleasant as we climbed the hill.
William stopped once or twice to show me a great wasps'-nest close by,
or some fishhawks'-nests below in a bit of swamp. He picked a few sprigs
of late-blooming linnaea as we came out upon an open bit of pasture at
the top of the island, and gave them to me without speaking, but he
knew as well as I that one could not say half he wished about linnaea.
Through this piece of rough pasture ran a huge shape of stone like the
great backbone of an enormous creature. At the end, near the woods, we
could climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above
the circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and
could see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of island
ground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons. It gave a sudden
sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged one in,--that
sense of liberty in space and time which great prospects always give.

“There ain't no such view in the world, I expect,” said William
proudly, and I hastened to speak my heartfelt tribute of praise; it was
impossible not to feel as if an untraveled boy had spoken, and yet one
loved to have him value his native heath.

X. Where Pennyroyal Grew

WE WERE a little late to dinner, but Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd were
lenient, and we all took our places after William had paused to wash his
hands, like a pious Brahmin, at the well, and put on a neat blue coat
which he took from a peg behind the kitchen door. Then he resolutely
asked a blessing in words that I could not hear, and we ate the chowder
and were thankful. The kitten went round and round the table, quite
erect, and, holding on by her fierce young claws, she stopped to mew
with pathos at each elbow, or darted off to the open door when a song
sparrow forgot himself and lit in the grass too near. William did not
talk much, but his sister Todd occupied the time and told all the news
there was to tell of Dunnet Landing and its coasts, while the old mother
listened with delight. Her hospitality was something exquisite; she had
the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves
and their houses belong entirely to a guest's pleasure,--that charming
surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them,
so that they make a part of one's own life that can never be forgotten.
Tact is after all a kind of mindreading, and my hostess held the golden
gift. Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett's
world and mine were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that
final, that highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness.
Sometimes, as I watched her eager, sweet old face, I wondered why she
had been set to shine on this lonely island of the northern coast.
It must have been to keep the balance true, and make up to all her
scattered and depending neighbors for other things which they may have
lacked.

When we had finished clearing away the old blue plates, and the kitten
had taken care of her share of the fresh haddock, just as we were
putting back the kitchen chairs in their places, Mrs. Todd said briskly
that she must go up into the pasture now to gather the desired herbs.

“You can stop here an' rest, or you can accompany me,” she announced.
“Mother ought to have her nap, and when we come back she an' William'll
sing for you. She admires music,” said Mrs. Todd, turning to speak to
her mother.

But Mrs. Blackett tried to say that she couldn't sing as she used, and
perhaps William wouldn't feel like it. She looked tired, the good old
soul, or I should have liked to sit in the peaceful little house while
she slept; I had had much pleasant experience of pastures already in her
daughter's company. But it seemed best to go with Mrs. Todd, and off we
went.

Mrs. Todd carried the gingham bag which she had brought from home, and a
small heavy burden in the bottom made it hang straight and slender from
her hand. The way was steep, and she soon grew breathless, so that we
sat down to rest awhile on a convenient large stone among the bayberry.

“There, I wanted you to see this,--'tis mother's picture,” said Mrs.
Todd; “'twas taken once when she was up to Portland soon after she
was married. That's me,” she added, opening another worn case, and
displaying the full face of the cheerful child she looked like still in
spite of being past sixty. “And here's William an' father together. I
take after father, large and heavy, an' William is like mother's folks,
short an' thin. He ought to have made something o' himself, bein' a man
an' so like mother; but though he's been very steady to work, an' kept
up the farm, an' done his fishin' too right along, he never had mother's
snap an' power o' seein' things just as they be. He's got excellent
judgment, too,” meditated William's sister, but she could not arrive at
any satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure in
life. “I think it is well to see any one so happy an' makin' the most
of life just as it falls to hand,” she said as she began to put the
daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my hand to see her mother's
once more, a most flowerlike face of a lovely young woman in quaint
dress. There was in the eyes a look of anticipation and joy, a far-off
look that sought the horizon; one often sees it in seafaring families,
inherited by girls and boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea,
and are always watching for distant sails or the first loom of the
land. At sea there is nothing to be seen close by, and this has its
counterpart in a sailor's character, in the large and brave and patient
traits that are developed, the hopeful pleasantness that one loves so in
a seafarer.

When the family pictures were wrapped again in a big handkerchief, we
set forward in a narrow footpath and made our way to a lonely place that
faced northward, where there was more pasturage and fewer bushes, and we
went down to the edge of short grass above some rocky cliffs where the
deep sea broke with a great noise, though the wind was down and the
water looked quiet a little way from shore. Among the grass grew such
pennyroyal as the rest of the world could not provide. There was a fine
fragrance in the air as we gathered it sprig by sprig and stepped along
carefully, and Mrs. Todd pressed her aromatic nosegay between her hands
and offered it to me again and again.

“There's nothin' like it,” she said; “oh no, there's no such pennyr'yal
as this in the state of Maine. It's the right pattern of the plant, and
all the rest I ever see is but an imitation. Don't it do you good?” And
I answered with enthusiasm.

“There, dear, I never showed nobody else but mother where to find this
place; 'tis kind of sainted to me. Nathan, my husband, an' I used to
love this place when we was courtin', and”--she hesitated, and then
spoke softly--“when he was lost, 'twas just off shore tryin' to get in
by the short channel out there between Squaw Islands, right in sight o'
this headland where we'd set an' made our plans all summer long.”

I had never heard her speak of her husband before, but I felt that we
were friends now since she had brought me to this place.

“'Twas but a dream with us,” Mrs. Todd said. “I knew it when he was
gone. I knew it”--and she whispered as if she were at confession--“I
knew it afore he started to go to sea. My heart was gone out o' my
keepin' before I ever saw Nathan; but he loved me well, and he made me
real happy, and he died before he ever knew what he'd had to know if
we'd lived long together.