Cape Cod Folks Part 25

CHAPTER X.

A LETTER FROM THE FISHERMAN.

The fisherman had gone back to Providence. Rebecca, herself, returning from the Post Office at West Wallen, brought me a letter distinguished by its peculiar dashing chirography. As she handed it to me, the girl, whose glance had been downcast of late, gave me a clear, straightforward, unembarra.s.sed look.

"Do you like him, teacher?" she said.

"Oh, I tolerate him, my dear," I answered. "We're not expected to entertain a particular liking or dislike for everybody we know. There are a great many people we must just simply tolerate."

Rebecca's eyes fell again. "He won't harm you, teacher," she said; "for you was used to folks. Sometime you might remember--I wasn't used to folks."

Occupied with my own thoughts, I pa.s.sed lightly over the girl's slow, trembling speech. She turned away, and I bent to the complacent perusal of my letter. In my then composed and exalted frame of mind its contents were not calculated to create in me either great emotion or surprise. And not because the mere fact of the fisherman's absence had suddenly rendered him more desirable in my eyes, but as the result of a recent determination on my part to take an utterly worldly and practical view of life, I resolved to give this letter the most careful and serious consideration.

The fisherman was of good family, and he was rich; these statements, artistically interwoven by him with the lighter fabric of his letter, were confirmed by an acquaintance of mine in Providence, of whom, in writing, I had incidentally inquired concerning the gentleman.

Respectability and wealth--items not supposed to weigh too heavily with the romantic mind of youth--but I believed that I was no longer either young or romantic. Moreover, I was slowly realizing the fact that school-teaching in Wallencamp was not likely to furnish me the means for making an excessively brilliant personal display, nor for carrying out to any extent my subordinate plans for a world-wide philanthropy.

"Perhaps, after all then," I argued; "it is only left for me to give up my ideas about being unique and independent and sublime, 'take up with a good offer,' and step resolutely, without any sentimental awe, into the great orderly ranks of the married sisterhood."

My life had been but a varied list of surprises to my family and acquaintances, why not effect the crowning surprise of all, by doing something they might have expected of me?

Well, I had dreamed of higher things--but this was a strange, restless, disappointing world. If one saw a plain path open before one's feet, one might as well walk quietly along that way. There were thorns in every path, and it would be nice to be rich, very rich.

My thoughts wandered through a wide field of imaginary delight, encountering only one serious obstacle in the way of their elysium, and that was the fisherman himself considered as a life-long escort and companion.

In my youthful dreams, I had cherished, to be sure, a score of mild Arthur Greys and stern Stephen Montgomerys. My Arthurs had all died of inherited consumption. I had taken leave of their departing spirits under the most thrilling circ.u.mstances, having frequently been married to them at their deathbeds, and had lived but to plant flowers on their graves and wear c.r.a.pe for them ever afterwards; and my dark-browed Stephen Montgomerys had all gone to swell the avenging tide of righteous war, and had been fatally shot, while I remained to shed tears of unavailing grief over the locks of raven hair they left with me on the morning of their departure. But to marry a real, live, omnipresent man--a man, with red hair, sound lungs, and no wars to go to! My aspiring soul shrank from the realistic vision.

And all the while a tenderer vision would rise before my eyes, clothed with its pitiful romance--the Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fashion guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, pa.s.sing indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my lord's grand eyes obscured, perchance, behind clouds of tobacco smoke, while I set the scanty table and fried the briny herrings.

With a shudder for romance, I returned to the contemplation of wealth and respectability; and took up graciously, once more, the briefly abandoned idea of duty.

I had often been told that it was my duty to accommodate myself to other people's views. Perhaps I should accomplish my designs for self-immolation, and thus, in one sense, effect my highest spiritual good, by marrying the fisherman and accommodating myself to his views--ah! but how could that be, I reflected, unsmilingly, when my views were so infinitely superior to his!

I wondered, for one thing, why he should have entertained, of late, such an excessive dislike for Wallencamp and its inhabitants. The natural beauty of Wallencamp had impressed me daily more and more, and the people were harmless, to say the least. I thought he should have enjoyed them; he had a humorous vein; he was not too sn.o.bbish; and he seemed of a nature to wish to make himself generally agreeable to people; but for these special objects of my care he had expressed only derision and contempt, with often a touch of positive malice; and had not been able to abstain from giving me a hard cut or two on my mission, barely avoiding it in his letter, and rejoicing with what seemed to me an unwarrantable warmth in the hope that I should soon quit forever the abominable place.

Then, in my miserable short-sightedness, my thoughts wandered indirectly to Rebecca. I wondered if she had taken to heart anything in the acquaintance she was said to have had with Mr. Rollin, before I came to Wallencamp, which had caused the change in her. I did not believe she had. The girl was too artless and simple to have concealed so completely the resentment she would naturally have cherished--too childish to have borne it so silently. As far as the fisherman was implicated in the affair, even if he had trifled a little for his own amus.e.m.e.nt with the vague impulses, possibly the affections, of this unsophisticated girl, the act was by no means unprecedented among people of wealth and respectability. It was a diversion in which Arthur Grey and Stephen Montgomery would not have indulged, perhaps, "but this," I mused, "is a sadly commonplace sort of world, viewed in the broad daylight of wisdom and experience (and with such penetrating rays I felt my own optics to be only too wearily oppressed); we must give up our high ideals, take people as we find then, and submit gracefully to the inevitable."

Still I was in as much of a quandary as ever as to what I should choose to consider the inevitable in my own path. It never occurred to me in this dilemma to seek advice from the elder members of my own family. They knew nothing really of my situation in Wallencamp, and even if they had been informed more truthfully in regard to it, I thought they could hardly be expected to appreciate the peculiarly trying circ.u.mstances in which I was placed just at present.

Mothers were excellent for mending gloves, taking ink stains out of white dresses with lemon juice, etc., etc.; but there were certain exigencies in the remote and exalted life of those who go on "missions" which their humble though loving skill must ever fail to reach.

I did write home, by the way, for more spending-money. I had been obliged to send to Boston for a few of the latest novels, fresh ribbons, cologne water, and various other articles indispensable to the career of a truly devoted propagandist. I preferred my request no longer as the dependent offspring seeking gifts from a fond and indulgent parent, but as the solicitor of a mere temporary loan, until I should be able to draw on my salary at the close of the term.

One morning, having inured myself to extreme worldliness of soul and begun a deliberately reckless response to the fisherman's letter, I looked out through my window to see the Cradlebow trudging manfully down the lane, with a grotesquely antiquated portmanteau in his hand, and the general air of one who has started a-foot on a journey.

With a singular readiness to be diverted, I found that the picture was, somehow, not conducive to further worldliness of meditation; and when in the evening, Mrs. Cradlebow came in to call, in her mantilla, the impression thus made on my mind was inexpressibly deepened.

Mrs. Cradlebow was not a frequent caller. She had almost earned among the Wallencampers the direful anathema of "not being neighborly."

She informed me, while the singers were gathered, as usual, at the Ark, that Luther had gone to make farewell visits to his friends. He had three married sisters living in different parts of the State. They had children. The children were very fond of him, and he was going on such a long voyage. Mrs. Cradlebow was looking beyond the singers, her eyes shining clear and sad above the pathetic smile on her lips--

"And he says he shan't come back again until he comes to give me such pleasure as I never dreamed of."

Those words come to me now, either as part of the endless mockery of life, or as strains of hidden music, deep and true, running ever beneath the world's dull misinterpretation.

Afterwards, the choir of voices in the room formed an effectual shield for confidential conversation.

"You don't know what a good boy he's always been to me, teacher," Mrs.

Cradlebow continued, with a manner unusual to her, I thought, as of one seeking for sympathy; "so that I've learned to depend so much on him, more, I think, than on anybody else. Some boys when they're growing up so, they feel independent and they answer you back short, but the older he grew, the gentler he was to me, always, and if he had any trouble, it never made him cross to me; and I think it's harder to see anybody so than if they was cross, for he's quick in ways, I know, but when things go real hard against him, he's patient."

"He ought not to know much about trouble yet," I answered hopefully, with the consciousness of one who has fathomed all the mysteries of grief and can yet speak gayly of the forlorn background.

"He doesn't know enough about the world, I'm afraid," said Mrs.

Cradlebow, and her eyes, fixed on my face, seemed to me to be looking gently into my inmost heart. "He expects so much, and he never looks out for himself. I wish he'd be content to go fishing with the other boys--they always come back in the autumn--and not want to sail so far."

I was almost angry because of the embarra.s.sment I felt under that clear glance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MEETING IN THE SCHOOL-HOUSE.

Scene from the Play.]

"Don't you think, Mrs. Cradlebow," I said nervously; "that young people are never content until they find out the world for themselves?" It was an interrogation, but it was sagely uttered.

"I know, I know," she said. "Perhaps it's best he should go." She spoke very quietly and with uncommon composure of demeanor. She withdrew her eyes from my face, but the smile trembled on her lips, and I knew that her heart was breaking over the words, for Luther was her darling.

I wished, almost impatiently, for my own part, that it might all have happened differently; that I might leave everything in Wallencamp just as I had found it, so delightfully happy and peaceful it had seemed to me.

I could not bear, in looking back, to think of one face as wearing upon it any unaccustomed grief. At all events, I felt that my thoughts had been helplessly turned from their prescribed channel, and the fisherman's letter remained from day to day still unanswered.

Meanwhile, winter was vanishing at the Cape. As salient points in its quaint and cherished memory, I recall the frequent clamming excursions, when we rattled own to the beach, at low-tide, in a cart whose groaning members lacked every element of elasticity. Often there were as many as sixteen persons in one cart, and the same number of hoes and baskets--the baskets being filled with small children as a means of keeping both them and the children stationary.

Grandma was always present on these occasions, and the hilarity of the Wallencampers, as they were jounced and joggled over the stones, in a manner which to some might have been productive of great bodily agony, concealed, with them, no undercurrent of nervous dread or pain. They were kind enough to regard the presence of the "teacher" as indispensable to their complete enjoyment, while I was ready to congratulate myself that my society alone was the object desired, for though I brought my near-sighted vision to bear faithfully upon the sands, I never succeeded in capturing a clam.

I heard that Bachelor Lot had confided aside to Captain Sartell that "Teacher'd ought to bring a hook and line. The clams 'ud go for it in a minute if she'd only bring a hook and line;" and, stung by the unsheathed sarcasm of this remark, I was accustomed afterwards to wander off towards "Steeple Rock." The rock was accessible at low-tide, and from thence I could watch the ocean on one side, and the clam-diggers on the other; could see Grandma on her hands and knees, a dot of broad good nature in the distance, always remaining apparently in the one place, and always, somehow, getting her basket full of clams as she gradually sank deeper and deeper into the briny soil; but no true Wallencamper ever caught cold by soaking in the brine.

I could distinguish Madeline wandering lightly about among the rocks, sc.r.a.ping off mussels with her hoe; and the Modoc, the champion clam-digger of all, spreading her tentacles here and there, and never failing to come up with a bivalve. It was a picturesque scene, viewed from the great rock; and when the tide began to sweep in again, George Olver sent a piercing whistle along sh.o.r.e, to call the stragglers together; clams, children, and all were loaded into the cart, and jostled gayly homeward erased by the fresh sea breezes.

For the chowder, which in due course of events arose to take its place among the viands on the Ark board, I would leave it to that sacred and tenfold mystery with which, to my mind, it was ever enshrouded.

I recall the exhibitions held at the school-house, confined exclusively to the native talent of Wallencamp, at which the old and young were a.s.sembled to speak pieces.

It was then that Aunt Rhoda and Aunt Cinthia, matrons of portly frame and perilous foothold, engaged in a metrical dialogue concerning the robbing of a bird's nest, in which lively diversion they a.s.sumed to have partic.i.p.ated. And Bachelor Lot rendered "My beautiful Annabel Lee" with unique effect; and Grandma Keeler spoke mysteriously though hopefully of--

"Hope and Harnah Double-decked schooner Cap'n John Homer Marster and owner Bound for Bermudy."