XXIII. William's Wedding I.
THE hurry of life in a large town, the
constant putting aside of preference to yield to a most unsatisfactory
activity, began to vex me, and one day I took the train, and only left it for
the eastward-bound boat. Carlyle says somewhere that the only happiness a man
ought to ask for is happiness enough to get his work done; and against this the
complexity and futile ingenuity of social life seem a conspiracy. But the first
salt wind from the east, the first sight of a lighthouse set boldly on its
outer rock, the flash of a gull, the waiting procession of seaward-bound firs
on an island, made me feel solid and definite again, instead of a poor,
incoherent being. Life was resumed, and anxious living blew away as if it had
not been. I could not breathe deep enough or long enough. It was a return to
happiness. The coast had still a wintry
look; it was far on in May, but all the shore looked cold and sterile. One was
conscious of going north as well as east, and as the day went on the sea grew
colder, and all the warmer air and bracing strength and stimulus of the autumn
weather, and storage of the heat of summer, were quite gone. I was very cold
and very tired when I came at evening up the lower bay, and saw the white
houses of Dunnet Landing climbing the hill. They had a friendly look, these
little houses, not as if they were climbing up the shore, but as if they were
rather all coming down to meet a fond and weary traveler, and I could hardly
wait with patience to step off the boat. It was not the usual eager company on
the wharf. The coming-in of the mailboat was the one large public event of a
summer day, and I was disappointed at seeing none of my intimate friends but Johnny
Bowden, who had evidently done nothing all winter but grow, so that his short
sea-smitten clothes gave him a look of poverty. Johnny's expression did not
change as we greeted each other, but I suddenly felt that I had shown
indifference and inconvenient delay by not coming sooner; before I could make
an apology he took my small portmanteau, and walking before me in his old
fashion he made straight up the hilly road toward Mrs. Todd's. Yes, he was much
grown — it had never occurred to me the summer before that Johnny was likely,
with the help of time and other forces, to grow into a young man; he was such a
well-framed and well-settled chunk of a boy that nature seemed to have set him
aside as something finished, quite satisfactory, and entirely completed. The wonderful little green
garden had been enchanted away by winter. There were a few frost-bitten twigs
and some thin shrubbery against the fence, but it was a most unpromising small
piece of ground. My heart was beating like a lover's as I passed it on the way
to the door of Mrs. Todd's house, which seemed to have become much smaller
under the influence of winter weather. "She hasn't gone
away?" I asked Johnny Bowden with a sudden anxiety just as we reached the
doorstep. "Gone away!" he
faced me with blank astonishment, — "I see her settin' by Mis' Caplin's
window, the one nighest the road, about four o'clock!" And eager with
suppressed news of my coming he made his entrance as if the house were a
burrow. Then on my homesick heart
fell the voice of Mrs. Todd. She stopped, through what I knew to be excess of
feeling, to rebuke Johnny for bringing in so much mud, and I dallied without
for one moment during the ceremony; then we met again face to face.
"I dare say you can
advise me what shapes they are goin' to wear. My meetin'-bunnit ain't goin' to
do me again this year; no! I can't expect 't would do me forever," said
Mrs. Todd, as soon as she could say anything. "There! do set down and tell
me how you have been! We've got a weddin' in the family, I s'pose you
know?" "A wedding!" said
I, still full of excitement. "Yes; I expect if the
tide serves and the line storm don't overtake him they'll come in and appear
out on Sunday. I shouldn't have concerned me about the bunnit for a month yet,
nobody would notice, but havin' an occasion like this I shall show
consider'ble. 'T will be an ordeal for William!" "For William!"
I exclaimed. "What do you mean, Mrs. Todd?" She gave a comfortable
little laugh. "Well, the Lord's seen reason at last an' removed Mis' Cap'n
Hight up to the farm, an' I don't know but the weddin's goin' to be this week.
Esther's had a great deal of business disposin' of her flock, but she's done extra
well — the folks that owns the next place goin' up country are well off. 'T is
elegant land north side o' that bleak ridge, an' one o' the boys has been
Esther's right-hand man of late. She instructed him in all matters, and after
she markets the early lambs he's goin' to take the farm on halves, an' she's
give the refusal to him to buy her out within two years. She's reserved the
buryin'-lot, an' the right o' way in, an'...." I couldn't stop for details.
I demanded reassurance of the central fact. "William going to be
married?" I repeated; whereat Mrs. Todd gave me a searching look that was
not without scorn. "Old Mis' Hight's
funeral was a week ago Wednesday, and 't was very well attended," she
assured me after a moment's pause. "Poor thing!" said
I, with a sudden vision of her helplessness and angry battle against the fate
of illness; "it was very hard for her." "I thought it was hard
for Esther!" said Mrs. Todd without sentiment.
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; 't is 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 Mr. 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. 'T wouldn't done to take notice, 't
would '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." IV.
The period of waiting was
one of direct contrast to these high moments of recognition. The very slowness
of the morning hours wasted that sense of excitement with which we had begun
the day. Mrs. Todd came down from the mount where her face had shone so bright,
to the cares of common life, and some acquaintances from Black Island for whom
she had little natural preference or liking came, bringing a poor, sickly child
to get medical advice. They were noisy women, with harsh, clamorous voices, and
they stayed a long time. I heard the clink of teacups, however, and could
detect no impatience in the tones of Mrs. Todd's voice; but when they were at
last going away, she did not linger unduly over her leave-taking, and returned
to me to explain that they were people she had never liked, and they had made
an excuse of a friendly visit to save their doctor's bill; but she pitied the
poor little child, and knew beside that the doctor was away. "I had to give 'em the
remedies right out," she told me; "they wouldn't have bought a cent's
worth o' drugs down to the store for that dwindlin' thing. She needed feedin'
up, and I don't expect she gets milk enough; they 're great butter-makers down
to Black Island, 't is excellent pasturage, but they use no milk themselves,
and their butter is heavy laden with salt to make weight, so that you'd think
all their ideas come down from Sodom." She was very indignant and
very wistful about the pale little girl. "I wish they'd let me kept
her," she said. "I kind of advised it, and her eyes was so wishful in
that pinched face when she heard me, so that I could see what was the matter
with her, but they said she wa'n't prepared. Prepared!" And Mrs. Todd
snuffed like an offended war-horse, and departed; but I could hear her still
grumbling and talking to herself in high dudgeon an hour afterward. At the end of that time her
arch enemy, Mari' Harris, appeared at the side-door with a gingham handkerchief
over her head. She was always on hand for the news, and made some formal excuse
for her presence, — she wished to borrow the weekly paper. Captain Littlepage,
whose housekeeper she was, had taken it from the post-office in the morning,
but had forgotten, being of failing memory, what he had done with it. "How is the poor old
gentleman?" asked Mrs. Todd with solicitude, ignoring the present errand
of Maria and all her concerns. I had spoken the evening
before of intended visits to Captain Littlepage and Elijah Tilley, and I now
heard Mrs. Todd repeating my inquiries and intentions, and fending off with
unusual volubility of her own the curious questions that were sure to come. But
at last Maria Harris secured an opportunity and boldly inquired if she had not
seen William ashore early that morning. "I don't say he
wasn't," replied Mrs. Todd; "Thu'sday's a very usual day with him to
come ashore." "He was all dressed
up," insisted Maria — she really had no sense of propriety. "I didn't
know but they was going to be married?" Mrs. Todd did not reply. I
recognized from the sounds that reached me that she had retired to the
fastnesses of the kitchen-closet and was clattering the tins. "I expect they'll marry
soon anyway," continued the visitor. "I expect they will if
they want to," answered Mrs. Todd. "I don't know nothin' 't all about
it; that's what folks say." And presently the gingham handkerchief
retreated past my window. "I routed her, horse
and foot," said Mrs. Todd proudly, coming at once to stand at my door.
"Who's comin' now?" as two figures passed inward bound to the
kitchen. They were Mrs. Begg and
Johnny Bowden's mother, who were favorites, and were received with Mrs. Todd's
usual civilities. Then one of the Mrs. Caplins came with a cup in hand to
borrow yeast. On one pretext or another nearly all our acquaintances came to
satisfy themselves of the facts, and see what Mrs. Todd would impart about the
wedding. But she firmly avoided the subject through the length of every call
and errand, and answered the final leading question of each curious guest with
her noncommittal phrase, "I don't know nothin' 't all about it; that's
what folks say!" She had just repeated this
for the fourth or fifth time and shut the door upon the last comers, when we
met in the little front entry. Mrs. Todd was not in a bad temper, but highly
amused. "I've been havin' all sorts o' social privileges, you may have
observed. They didn't seem to consider that if they could only hold out till
afternoon they'd know as much as I did. There wa'n't but one o' the whole
sixteen that showed real interest, the rest demeaned themselves to ask out o'
cheap curiosity; no, there wa'n't but one showed any real feelin'." "Miss Maria Harris, you
mean?" and Mrs. Todd laughed. "Certain, dear,"
she agreed, "how you do understand poor human natur'!" A short distance down the
hilly street stood a narrow house that was newly painted white. It blinded
one's eyes to catch the reflection of the sun. It was the house of the
minister, and a wagon had just stopped before it; a man was helping a woman to
alight, and they stood side by side for a moment, while Johnny Bowden appeared
as if by magic, and climbed to the wagon-seat. Then they went into the house
and shut the door. Mrs. Todd and I stood close together and watched; the tears
were running down her cheeks. I watched Johnny Bowden, who made light of so
great a moment by so handling the whip that the old white Caplin horse started
up from time to time and was inexorably stopped as if he had some idea of
running away. There was something in the back of the wagon which now and then
claimed the boy's attention; he leaned over as if there were something very
precious left in his charge; perhaps it was only Esther's little trunk going to
its new home. At last the door of the
parsonage opened, and two figures came out. The minister followed them and
stood in the doorway, delaying them with parting words; he could not have
thought it was a time for admonition. "He's all alone; his
wife's up to Portland to her sister's," said Mrs. Todd aloud, in a
matter-of-fact voice. "She's a nice woman, but she might ha' talked too
much. There! see, they 're comin' here. I didn't know how 't would be. Yes,
they 're comin' up to see us before they go home. I declare, if William ain't
lookin' just like a king!" Mrs. Todd took one step
forward, and we stood and waited. The happy pair came walking up the street,
Johnny Bowden driving ahead. I heard a plaintive little cry from time to time
to which in the excitement of the moment I had not stopped to listen; but when
William and Esther had come and shaken hands with Mr. Todd and then with me, all
in silence, Esther stepped quickly to the back of the wagon, and unfastening
some cords returned to us carrying a little white lamb. She gave a shy glance
at William as she fondled it and held it to her heart, and then, still silent,
we went into the house together. The lamb had stopped bleating. It was lovely
to see Esther carry it in her arms. When we got into the house,
all the repression of Mrs. Todd's usual manner was swept away by her flood of
feeling. She took Esther's thin figure, lamb and all, to her heart and held her
there, kissing her as she might have kissed a child, and then held out her hand
to William and they gave each other the kiss of peace. This was so moving, so
tender, so free from their usual fetters of self-consciousness, that Esther and
I could not help giving each other a happy glance of comprehension. I never saw
a young bride half so touching in her happiness as Esther was that day of her
wedding. We took the cake and wine of the marriage feast together, always in
silence, like a true sacrament, and then to my astonishment I found that
sympathy and public interest in so great an occasion were going to have their
way. I shrank from the thought of William's possible sufferings, but he
welcomed both the first group of neighbors and the last with heartiness; and
when at last they had gone, for there were thoughtless loiterers in Dunnet
Landing, I made ready with eager zeal and walked with William and Esther to the
water-side. It was only a little way, and kind faces nodded reassuringly from
the windows, while kind voices spoke from the doors. Esther carried the lamb on
one arm; she had found time to tell me that its mother had died that morning
and she could not bring herself to the thought of leaving it behind. She kept
the other hand on William's arm until we reached the landing. Then he shook
hands with me, and looked me full in the face to be sure I understood how happy
he was, and stepping into the boat held out his arms to Esther — at last she
was his own. I watched him make a nest
for the lamb out of an old sea-cloak at Esther's feet, and then he wrapped her
own shawl round her shoulders, and finding a pin in the lapel of his Sunday
coat he pinned it for her. She looked at him fondly while he did this, and then
glanced up at us, a pretty, girlish color brightening her cheeks. We stood there together and
watched them go far out into the bay. The sunshine of the May day was low now,
but there was a steady breeze, and the boat moved well. "Mother'll be watching
for them," said Mrs. Todd. "Yes, mother'll be watching all day, and
waiting. She'll be so happy to have Esther come." We went home together up the hill, and Mrs. Todd said nothing more; but we held each other's hands all the way. |