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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
mind-reading, 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. 'Tis
very strange about love. No, Nathan never found out, but my heart was troubled
when I knew him first. There's more women likes to be loved than there is of
those that loves. I spent some happy hours right here. I always liked Nathan,
and he never knew. But this pennyr'yal always reminded me, as I'd sit and
gather it and hear him talkin' — it always would remind me of — the other
one." She looked
away from me, and presently rose and went on by herself. There was something
lonely and solitary about her great determined shape. She might have been
Antigone alone on the Theban plain. It is not often given in a noisy world to
come to the places of great grief and silence. An absolute, archaic grief
possessed this countrywoman; she seemed like a renewal of some historic soul,
with her sorrows and the remoteness of a daily life busied with rustic
simplicities and the scents of primeval herbs. I was not
incompetent at herb-gathering, and after a while, when I had sat long enough
waking myself to new thoughts, and reading a page of remembrance with new
pleasure, I gathered some bunches, as I was bound to do, and at last we met
again higher up the shore, in the plain every-day world we had left behind when
we went down to the penny-royal plot. As we walked together along the high edge
of the field we saw a hundred sails about the bay and farther seaward; it was
mid-afternoon or after, and the day was coming to an end. "Yes,
they're all makin' towards the shore, — the small craft an' the lobster smacks
an' all," said my companion. "We must spend a little time with mother
now, just to have our tea, an' then put for home." "No
matter if we lose the wind at sundown; I can row in with Johnny," said I;
and Mrs. Todd nodded reassuringly and kept to her steady plod, not quickening
her gait even when we saw William come round the corner of the house as if to
look for us, and wave his hand and disappear. "Why, William's right on deck; I didn't know's we should see any more of him!" exclaimed Mrs. Todd. "Now mother'll put the kettle right on; she's got a good fire goin'." I too could see the blue smoke thicken, and then we both walked a little faster, while Mrs. Todd groped in her full bag of herbs to find the daguerreotypes and be ready to put them in their places. |