The Pearl of Orr's Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine
But Mara said the truth in saying that the question of personal happiness never entered her thoughts. She loved Moses in a way that made it necessary to her happiness to devote herself to him, to watch over and care for him; and though she knew not how, she felt a sort of presentiment that it was through her that he must be brought into sympathy with a spiritual and immortal life.
All this passed through Mara's mind in the reverie into which Sally's last words threw her, as she sat on the door-sill and looked off into the starry distance and heard the weird murmur of the sea.
"How lonesome the sea at night always is," said Sally. "I declare, Mara, I don't wonder you miss that creature, for, to tell the truth, I do a little bit. It was something, you know, to have somebody to come in, and to joke with, and to say how he liked one's hair and one's ribbons, and all that. I quite got up a friendship for Moses, so that I can feel how dull you must be;" and Sally gave a half sigh, and then whistled a tune as adroitly as a blackbird.
"Yes," said Mara, "we two girls down on this lonely island need some one to connect us with the great world; and he was so full of life, and so certain and confident, he seemed to open a way before one out into life."
"Well, of course, while he is gone there will be plenty to do getting ready to be married," said Sally. "By the by, when I was over to Portland the other day, Maria Potter showed me a new pattern for a bed-quilt, the sweetest thing you can imagine, – it is called the morning star. There is a great star in the centre, and little stars all around, – white on a blue ground. I mean to begin one for you."
"I am going to begin spinning some very fine flax next week," said Mara; "and have I shown you the new pattern I drew for a counterpane? it is to be morning-glories, leaves and flowers, you know, – a pretty idea, isn't it?"
And so, the conversation falling from the region of the sentimental to the practical, the two girls went in and spent an hour in discussions so purely feminine that we will not enlighten the reader further therewith. Sally seemed to be investing all her energies in the preparation of the wedding outfit of her friend, about which she talked with a constant and restless activity, and for which she formed a thousand plans, and projected shopping tours to Portland, Brunswick, and even to Boston, – this last being about as far off a venture at that time as Paris now seems to a Boston belle.
"When you are married," said Sally, "you'll have to take me to live with you; that creature sha'n't have you all to himself. I hate men, they are so exorbitant, – they spoil all our playmates; and what shall I do when you are gone?"
"You will go with Mr. – what's his name?" said Mara.
"Pshaw, I don't know him. I shall be an old maid," said Sally; "and really there isn't much harm in that, if one could have company, – if somebody or other wouldn't marry all one's friends, – that's lonesome," she said, winking a tear out of her black eyes and laughing. "If I were only a young fellow now, Mara, I'd have you myself, and that would be just the thing; and I'd shoot Moses, if he said a word; and I'd have money, and I'd have honors, and I'd carry you off to Europe, and take you to Paris and Rome, and nobody knows where; and we'd live in peace, as the story-books say."
"Come, Sally, how wild you are talking," said Mara, "and the clock has just struck one; let's try to go to sleep."
Sally put her face to Mara's and kissed her, and Mara felt a moist spot on her cheek, – could it be a tear?
CHAPTER XXXV
THE TOOTHACRE COTTAGE
Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey Toothacre lived in a little one-story gambrel-roofed cottage, on the side of Harpswell Bay, just at the head of the long cove which we have already described. The windows on two sides commanded the beautiful bay and the opposite shores, and on the other they looked out into the dense forest, through whose deep shadows of white birch and pine the silver rise and fall of the sea daily revealed itself.
The house itself was a miracle of neatness within, for the two thrifty sisters were worshipers of soap and sand, and these two tutelary deities had kept every board of the house-floor white and smooth, and also every table and bench and tub of household use. There was a sacred care over each article, however small and insignificant, which composed their slender household stock. The loss or breakage of one of them would have made a visible crack in the hearts of the worthy sisters, – for every plate, knife, fork, spoon, cup, or glass was as intimate with them, as instinct with home feeling, as if it had a soul; each defect or spot had its history, and a cracked dish or article of furniture received as tender and considerate medical treatment as if it were capable of understanding and feeling the attention.
It was now a warm, spicy day in June, – one of those which bring out the pineapple fragrance from the fir-shoots, and cause the spruce and hemlocks to exude a warm, resinous perfume. The two sisters, for a wonder, were having a day to themselves, free from the numerous calls of the vicinity for twelve miles round. The room in which they were sitting was bestrewn with fragments of dresses and bonnets, which were being torn to pieces in a most wholesale way, with a view to a general rejuvenescence. A person of unsympathetic temperament, and disposed to take sarcastic views of life, might perhaps wonder what possible object these two battered and weather-beaten old bodies proposed to themselves in this process, – whether Miss Roxy's gaunt black-straw helmet, which she had worn defiantly all winter, was likely to receive much lustre from being pressed over and trimmed with an old green ribbon which that energetic female had colored black by a domestic recipe; and whether Miss Roxy's rusty bombazette would really seem to the world any fresher for being ripped, and washed, and turned, for the second or third time, and made over with every breadth in a different situation. Probably after a week of efficient labor, busily expended in bleaching, dyeing, pressing, sewing, and ripping, an unenlightened spectator, seeing them come into the meeting-house, would simply think, "There are those two old frights with the same old things on they have worn these fifty years." Happily the weird sisters were contentedly ignorant of any such remarks, for no duchesses could have enjoyed a more quiet belief in their own social position, and their semi-annual spring and fall rehabilitation was therefore entered into with the most simple-hearted satisfaction.
"I'm a-thinkin', Roxy," said Aunt Ruey, considerately turning and turning on her hand an old straw bonnet, on which were streaked all the marks of the former trimming in lighter lines, which revealed too clearly the effects of wind and weather, – "I'm a-thinkin' whether or no this 'ere mightn't as well be dyed and done with it as try to bleach it out. I've had it ten years last May, and it's kind o' losin' its freshness, you know. I don't believe these 'ere streaks will bleach out."
"Never mind, Ruey," said Miss Roxy, authoritatively, "I'm goin' to do Mis' Badger's leg'orn, and it won't cost nothin'; so hang your'n in the barrel along with it, – the same smoke'll do 'em both. Mis' Badger she finds the brimstone, and next fall you can put it in the dye when we do the yarn."
"That ar straw is a beautiful straw!" said Miss Ruey, in a plaintive tone, tenderly examining the battered old head-piece, – "I braided every stroke on it myself, and I don't know as I could do it ag'in. My fingers ain't quite so limber as they was! I don't think I shall put green ribbon on it ag'in; 'cause green is such a color to ruin, if a body gets caught out in a shower! There's these green streaks come that day I left my amberil at Captain Broad's, and went to meetin'. Mis' Broad she says to me, 'Aunt Ruey, it won't rain.' And says I to her, 'Well, Mis' Broad, I'll try it; though I never did leave my amberil at home but what it rained.' And so I went, and sure enough it rained cats and dogs, and streaked my bonnet all up; and them ar streaks won't bleach out, I'm feared."
"How long is it Mis' Badger has had that ar leg'orn?"
"Why, you know, the Cap'n he brought it home when he came from his voyage from Marseilles. That ar was when Phebe Ann was born, and she's fifteen year old. It was a most elegant thing when he brought it; but I think it kind o' led Mis' Badger on to extravagant ways, – for gettin' new trimmin' spring and fall so uses up money as fast as new bonnets; but Mis' Badger's got the money, and she's got a right to use it if she pleases; but if I'd a-had new trimmin's spring and fall, I shouldn't a-put away what I have in the bank."
"Have you seen the straw Sally Kittridge is braidin' for Mara Lincoln's weddin' bonnet?" said Miss Ruey. "It's jist the finest thing ever you did see, – and the whitest. I was a-tellin' Sally that I could do as well once myself, but my mantle was a-fallin' on her. Sally don't seem to act a bit like a disap'inted gal. She is as chipper as she can be about Mara's weddin', and seems like she couldn't do too much. But laws, everybody seems to want to be a-doin' for her. Miss Emily was a-showin' me a fine double damask tablecloth that she was goin' to give her; and Mis' Pennel, she's been a-spinnin' and layin' up sheets and towels and tablecloths all her life, – and then she has all Naomi's things. Mis' Pennel was talkin' to me the other day about bleachin' 'em out 'cause they'd got yellow a-lyin'. I kind o' felt as if 'twas unlucky to be a-fittin' out a bride with her dead mother's things, but I didn't like to say nothin'."
"Ruey," said Miss Roxy impressively, "I hain't never had but jist one mind about Mara Lincoln's weddin', – it's to be, – but it won't be the way people think. I hain't nussed and watched and sot up nights sixty years for nothin'. I can see beyond what most folks can, – her weddin' garments is bought and paid for, and she'll wear 'em, but she won't be Moses Pennel's wife, – now you see."
"Why, whose wife will she be then?" said Miss Ruey; "'cause that ar Mr. Adams is married. I saw it in the paper last week when I was up to Mis' Badger's."
Miss Roxy shut her lips with oracular sternness and went on with her sewing.
"Who's that comin' in the back door?" said Miss Ruey, as the sound of a footstep fell upon her ear. "Bless me," she added, as she started up to look, "if folks ain't always nearest when you're talkin' about 'em. Why, Mara; you come down here and catched us in all our dirt! Well now, we're glad to see you, if we be," said Miss Ruey.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE SHADOW OF DEATH
It was in truth Mara herself who came and stood in the doorway. She appeared overwearied with her walk, for her cheeks had a vivid brightness unlike their usual tender pink. Her eyes had, too, a brilliancy almost painful to look upon. They seemed like ardent fires, in which the life was slowly burning away.
"Sit down, sit down, little Mara," said Aunt Ruey. "Why, how like a picture you look this mornin', – one needn't ask you how you do, – it's plain enough that you are pretty well."
"Yes, I am, Aunt Ruey," she answered, sinking into a chair; "only it is warm to-day, and the sun is so hot, that's all, I believe; but I am very tired."
"So you are now, poor thing," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy, where's my turkey-feather fan? Oh, here 'tis; there, take it, and fan you, child; and maybe you'll have a glass of our spruce beer?"
"Thank you, Aunt Roxy. I brought you some young wintergreen," said Mara, unrolling from her handkerchief a small knot of those fragrant leaves, which were wilted by the heat.
"Thank you, I'm sure," said Miss Ruey, in delight; "you always fetch something, Mara, – always would, ever since you could toddle. Roxy and I was jist talkin' about your weddin'. I s'pose you're gettin' things well along down to your house. Well, here's the beer. I don't hardly know whether you'll think it worked enough, though. I set it Saturday afternoon, for all Mis' Twitchell said it was wicked for beer to work Sundays," said Miss Ruey, with a feeble cackle at her own joke.
"Thank you, Aunt Ruey; it is excellent, as your things always are. I was very thirsty."
"I s'pose you hear from Moses pretty often now," said Aunt Ruey. "How kind o' providential it happened about his getting that property; he'll be a rich man now; and Mara, you'll come to grandeur, won't you? Well, I don't know anybody deserves it more, – I r'ally don't. Mis' Badger was a-sayin' so a-Sunday, and Cap'n Kittridge and all on 'em. I s'pose though we've got to lose you, – you'll be goin' off to Boston, or New York, or somewhere."
"We can't tell what may happen, Aunt Ruey," said Mara, and there was a slight tremor in her voice as she spoke.
Miss Roxy, who beyond the first salutations had taken no part in this conversation, had from time to time regarded Mara over the tops of her spectacles with looks of grave apprehension; and Mara, looking up, now encountered one of these glances.
"Have you taken the dock and dandelion tea I told you about?" said the wise woman, rather abruptly.
"Yes, Aunt Roxy, I have taken them faithfully for two weeks past."
"And do they seem to set you up any?" said Miss Roxy.
"No, I don't think they do. Grandma thinks I'm better, and grandpa, and I let them think so; but Miss Roxy, can't you think of something else?"
Miss Roxy laid aside the straw bonnet which she was ripping, and motioned Mara into the outer room, – the sink-room, as the sisters called it. It was the scullery of their little establishment, – the place where all dish-washing and clothes-washing was generally performed, – but the boards of the floor were white as snow, and the place had the odor of neatness. The open door looked out pleasantly into the deep forest, where the waters of the cove, now at high tide, could be seen glittering through the trees. Soft moving spots of sunlight fell, checkering the feathery ferns and small piney tribes of evergreen which ran in ruffling wreaths of green through the dry, brown matting of fallen pine needles. Birds were singing and calling to each other merrily from the green shadows of the forest, – everything had a sylvan fullness and freshness of life. There are moods of mind when the sight of the bloom and freshness of nature affects us painfully, like the want of sympathy in a dear friend. Mara had been all her days a child of the woods; her delicate life had grown up in them like one of their own cool shaded flowers; and there was not a moss, not a fern, not an upspringing thing that waved a leaf or threw forth a flower-bell, that was not a well-known friend to her; she had watched for years its haunts, known the time of its coming and its going, studied its shy and veiled habits, and interwoven with its life each year a portion of her own; and now she looked out into the old mossy woods, with their wavering spots of sun and shadow, with a yearning pain, as if she wanted help or sympathy to come from their silent recesses.
She sat down on the clean, scoured door-sill, and took off her straw hat. Her golden-brown hair was moist with the damps of fatigue, which made it curl and wave in darker little rings about her forehead; her eyes, – those longing, wistful eyes, – had a deeper pathos of sadness than ever they had worn before; and her delicate lips trembled with some strong suppressed emotion.
"Aunt Roxy," she said suddenly, "I must speak to somebody. I can't go on and keep up without telling some one, and it had better be you, because you have skill and experience, and can help me if anybody can. I've been going on for six months now, taking this and taking that, and trying to get better, but it's of no use. Aunt Roxy, I feel my life going, – going just as steadily and as quietly every day as the sand goes out of your hour-glass. I want to live, – oh, I never wanted to live so much, and I can't, – oh, I know I can't. Can I now, – do you think I can?"
Mara looked imploringly at Miss Roxy. The hard-visaged woman sat down on the wash-bench, and, covering her worn, stony visage with her checked apron, sobbed aloud.
Mara was confounded. This implacably withered, sensible, dry woman, beneficently impassive in sickness and sorrow, weeping! – it was awful, as if one of the Fates had laid down her fatal distaff to weep.
Mara sprung up impulsively and threw her arms round her neck.
"Now don't, Aunt Roxy, don't. I didn't think you would feel bad, or I wouldn't have told you; but oh, you don't know how hard it is to keep such a secret all to one's self. I have to make believe all the time that I am feeling well and getting better. I really say what isn't true every day, because, poor grandmamma, how could I bear to see her distress? and grandpapa, – oh, I wish people didn't love me so! Why cannot they let me go? And oh, Aunt Roxy, I had a letter only yesterday, and he is so sure we shall be married this fall, – and I know it cannot be." Mara's voice gave way in sobs, and the two wept together, – the old grim, gray woman holding the soft golden head against her breast with a convulsive grasp. "Oh, Aunt Roxy, do you love me, too?" said Mara. "I didn't know you did."
"Love ye, child?" said Miss Roxy; "yes, I love ye like my life. I ain't one that makes talk about things, but I do; you come into my arms fust of anybody's in this world, – and except poor little Hitty, I never loved nobody as I have you."
"Ah! that was your sister, whose grave I have seen," said Mara, speaking in a soothing, caressing tone, and putting her little thin hand against the grim, wasted cheek, which was now moist with tears.
"Jes' so, child, she died when she was a year younger than you be; she was not lost, for God took her. Poor Hitty! her life jest dried up like a brook in August, – jest so. Well, she was hopefully pious, and it was better for her."
"Did she go like me, Aunt Roxy?" said Mara.
"Well, yes, dear; she did begin jest so, and I gave her everything I could think of; and we had doctors for her far and near; but 'twasn't to be, – that's all we could say; she was called, and her time was come."
"Well, now, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, "at any rate, it's a relief to speak out to some one. It's more than two months that I have felt every day more and more that there was no hope, – life has hung on me like a weight. I have had to make myself keep up, and make myself do everything, and no one knows how it has tried me. I am so tired all the time, I could cry; and yet when I go to bed nights I can't sleep, I lie in such a hot, restless way; and then before morning I am drenched with cold sweat, and feel so weak and wretched. I force myself to eat, and I force myself to talk and laugh, and it's all pretense; and it wears me out, – it would be better if I stopped trying, – it would be better to give up and act as weak as I feel; but how can I let them know?"
"My dear child," said Aunt Roxy, "the truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end. When folks know jest where they are, why they can walk; you'll all be supported; you must trust in the Lord. I have been more'n forty years with sick rooms and dyin' beds, and I never knew it fail that those that trusted in the Lord was brought through."
"Oh, Aunt Roxy, it is so hard for me to give up, – to give up hoping to live. There were a good many years when I thought I should love to depart, – not that I was really unhappy, but I longed to go to heaven, though I knew it was selfish, when I knew how lonesome I should leave my friends. But now, oh, life has looked so bright; I have clung to it so; I do now. I lie awake nights and pray, and try to give it up and be resigned, and I can't. Is it wicked?"
"Well, it's natur' to want to live," said Miss Roxy. "Life is sweet, and in a gen'l way we was made to live. Don't worry; the Lord'll bring you right when His time comes. Folks isn't always supported jest when they want to be, nor as they want to be; but yet they're supported fust and last. Ef I was to tell you how as I has hope in your case, I shouldn't be a-tellin' you the truth. I hasn't much of any; only all things is possible with God. If you could kind o' give it all up and rest easy in His hands, and keep a-doin' what you can, – why, while there's life there's hope, you know; and if you are to be made well, you will be all the sooner."
"Aunt Roxy, it's all right; I know it's all right. God knows best; He will do what is best; I know that; but my heart bleeds, and is sore. And when I get his letters, – I got one yesterday, – it brings it all back again. Everything is going on so well; he says he has done more than all he ever hoped; his letters are full of jokes, full of spirit. Ah, he little knows, – and how can I tell him?"
"Child, you needn't yet. You can jest kind o' prepare his mind a little."
"Aunt Roxy, have you spoken of my case to any one, – have you told what you know of me?"
"No, child, I hain't said nothin' more than that you was a little weakly now and then."
"I have such a color every afternoon," said Mara. "Grandpapa talks about my roses, and Captain Kittridge jokes me about growing so handsome; nobody seems to realize how I feel. I have kept up with all the strength I had. I have tried to shake it off, and to feel that nothing was the matter, – really there is nothing much, only this weakness. This morning I thought it would do me good to walk down here. I remember times when I could ramble whole days in the woods, but I was so tired before I got half way here that I had to stop a long while and rest. Aunt Roxy, if you would only tell grandpapa and grandmamma just how things are, and what the danger is, and let them stop talking to me about wedding things, – for really and truly I am too unwell to keep up any longer."
"Well, child, I will," said Miss Roxy. "Your grandfather will be supported, and hold you up, for he's one of the sort as has the secret of the Lord, – I remember him of old. Why, the day your father and mother was buried he stood up and sung old China, and his face was wonderful to see. He seemed to be standin' with the world under his feet and heaven opening. He's a master Christian, your grandfather is; and now you jest go and lie down in the little bedroom, and rest you a bit, and by and by, in the cool of the afternoon, I'll walk along home with you."
Miss Roxy opened the door of a little room, whose white fringy window-curtains were blown inward by breezes from the blue sea, and laid the child down to rest on a clean sweet-smelling bed with as deft and tender care as if she were not a bony, hard-visaged, angular female, in a black mohair frisette.
She stopped a moment wistfully before a little profile head, of a kind which resembles a black shadow on a white ground. "That was Hitty!" she said.
Mara had often seen in the graveyard a mound inscribed to this young person, and heard traditionally of a young and pretty sister of Miss Roxy who had died very many years before. But the grave was overgrown with blackberry-vines, and gray moss had grown into the crevices of the slab which served for a tombstone, and never before that day had she heard Miss Roxy speak of her. Miss Roxy took down the little black object and handed it to Mara. "You can't tell much by that, but she was a most beautiful creatur'. Well, it's all best as it is." Mara saw nothing but a little black shadow cast on white paper, yet she was affected by the perception how bright, how beautiful, was the image in the memory of that seemingly stern, commonplace woman, and how of all that in her mind's eye she saw and remembered, she could find no outward witness but this black block. "So some day my friends will speak of me as a distant shadow," she said, as with a sigh she turned her head on the pillow.
Miss Roxy shut the door gently as she went out, and betrayed the unwonted rush of softer feelings which had come over her only by being more dictatorial and commanding than usual in her treatment of her sister, who was sitting in fidgety curiosity to know what could have been the subject of the private conference.
"I s'pose Mara wanted to get some advice about makin' up her weddin' things," said Miss Ruey, with a sort of humble quiver, as Miss Roxy began ripping and tearing fiercely at her old straw bonnet, as if she really purposed its utter and immediate demolition.
"No she didn't, neither," said Miss Roxy, fiercely. "I declare, Ruey, you are silly; your head is always full of weddin's, weddin's, weddin's – nothin' else – from mornin' till night, and night till mornin'. I tell you there's other things have got to be thought of in this world besides weddin' clothes, and it would be well, if people would think more o' gettin' their weddin' garments ready for the kingdom of heaven. That's what Mara's got to think of; for, mark my words, Ruey, there is no marryin' and givin' in marriage for her in this world."
