"Not I, mother. There ain"t but two gals in two miles square here, and I ain"t a-goin" to be the feller to shoo "em apart. What"s the use of bein" gals, and young, and putty, if they can"t get together and talk about their new gownds and the fellers? That ar"s what gals is for."
"I do wish you wouldn"t talk in that way before Sally, father, for her head is full of all sorts of vanity now; and as to Mara, I never did see a more slack-twisted, flimsy thing than she"s grown up to be. Now Sally"s learnt to do something, thanks to me. She can brew, and she can make bread and cake and pickles, and spin, and cut, and make. But as to Mara, what does she do? Why, she paints pictur"s. Mis" Pennel was a-showin" on me a blue-jay she painted, and I was a-thinkin" whether she could brile a bird fit to be eat if she tried; and she don"t know the price of nothin"," continued Mrs. Kittridge, with wasteful profusion of negatives.
"Well," said the Captain, "the Lord makes some things jist to be looked at. Their work is to be putty, and that ar"s Mara"s sphere. It never seemed to me she was cut out for hard work; but she"s got sweet ways and kind words for everybody, and it"s as good as a psalm to look at her."
"And what sort of a wife"ll she make, Captain Kittridge?"
"A real sweet, putty one," said the Captain, persistently.
"Well, as to beauty, I"d rather have our Sally any day," said Mrs.
Kittridge; "and she looks strong and hearty, and seems to be good for use."
"So she is, so she is," said the Captain, with fatherly pride. "Sally"s the very image of her ma at her age--black eyes, black hair, tall and trim as a spruce-tree, and steps off as if she had springs in her heels.
I tell you, the feller"ll have to be spry that catches her. There"s two or three of "em at it, I see; but Sally won"t have nothin" to say to "em. I hope she won"t, yet awhile."
"Sally is a girl that has as good an eddication as money can give,"
said Mrs. Kittridge. "If I"d a-had her advantages at her age, I should a-been a great deal more"n I am. But we ha"n"t spared nothin" for Sally; and when nothin" would do but Mara must be sent to Miss Plucher"s school over in Portland, why, I sent Sally too--for all she"s our seventh child, and Pennel hasn"t but the one."
"You forget Moses," said the Captain.
"Well, he"s settin" up on his own account, I guess. They did talk o"
giving him college eddication; but he was so unstiddy, there weren"t no use in trying. A real wild a.s.s"s colt he was."
"Wal", wal", Moses was in the right on"t. He took the cross-lot track into life," said the Captain. "Colleges is well enough for your smooth, straight-grained lumber, for gen"ral buildin"; but come to fellers that"s got knots, and streaks, and cross-grains, like Moses Pennel, and the best way is to let "em eddicate "emselves, as he"s a-doin". He"s cut out for the sea, plain enough, and he"d better be up to Umbagog, cuttin"
timber for his ship, than havin" rows with tutors, and blowin" the roof off the colleges, as one o" them "ere kind o" fellers is apt to when he don"t have work to use up his steam. Why, mother, there"s more gas got up in them Brunswick buildin"s, from young men that are spilin" for hard work, than you could shake a stick at! But Mis" Pennel told me yesterday she was "spectin" Moses home to-day."
"Oho! that"s at the bottom of Sally"s bein" up there," said Mrs.
Kittridge.
"Mis" Kittridge," said the Captain, "I take it you ain"t the woman as would expect a daughter of your bringin" up to be a-runnin" after any young chap, be he who he may," said the Captain.
Mrs. Kittridge for once was fairly silenced by this home-thrust; nevertheless, she did not the less think it quite possible, from all that she knew of Sally; for although that young lady professed great hardness of heart and contempt for all the young male generation of her acquaintance, yet she had evidently a turn for observing their ways--probably purely in the way of philosophical inquiry.
CHAPTER XIX
EIGHTEEN
In fact, at this very moment our scene-shifter changes the picture. Away rolls the image of Mrs. Kittridge"s kitchen, with its sanded floor, its scoured rows of bright pewter platters, its great, deep fireplace, with wide stone hearth, its little looking-gla.s.s with a bit of asparagus bush, like a green mist, over it. _Exeunt_ the image of Mrs. Kittridge, with her hands floury from the bread she has been moulding, and the dry, ropy, lean Captain, who has been sitting tilting back in a splint-bottomed chair,--and the next scene comes rolling in. It is a chamber in the house of Zephaniah Pennel, whose windows present a blue panorama of sea and sky. Through two windows you look forth into the blue belt of Harpswell Bay, bordered on the farther edge by Harpswell Neck, dotted here and there with houses, among which rises the little white meeting-house, like a mother-bird among a flock of chickens. The third window, on the other side of the room, looks far out to sea, where only a group of low, rocky islands interrupts the clear sweep of the horizon line, with its blue infinitude of distance.
The furniture of this room, though of the barest and most frigid simplicity, is yet relieved by many of those touches of taste and fancy which the indwelling of a person of sensibility and imagination will shed off upon the physical surroundings. The bed was draped with a white spread, embroidered with a kind of knotted tracery, the working of which was considered among the female accomplishments of those days, and over the head of it was a painting of a bunch of crimson and white trillium, executed with a fidelity to Nature that showed the most delicate gifts of observation. Over the mantelpiece hung a painting of the Bay of Genoa, which had accidentally found a voyage home in Zephaniah Pennel"s sea-chest, and which skillful fingers had surrounded with a frame curiously wrought of moss and sea-sh.e.l.ls. Two vases of India china stood on the mantel, filled with spring flowers, crowfoot, anemones, and liverwort, with drooping bells of the twin-flower. The looking-gla.s.s that hung over the table in one corner of the room was fancifully webbed with long, drooping festoons of that gray moss which hangs in such graceful wreaths from the boughs of the pines in the deep forest shadows of Orr"s Island. On the table below was a collection of books: a whole set of Shakespeare which Zephaniah Pennel had bought of a Portland bookseller; a selection, in prose and verse, from the best cla.s.sic writers, presented to Mara Lincoln, the fly-leaf said, by her sincere friend, Theophilus Sewell; a Virgil, much thumbed, with an old, worn cover, which, however, some adroit fingers had concealed under a coating of delicately marbled paper;--there was a Latin dictionary, a set of Plutarch"s Lives, the Mysteries of Udolpho, and Sir Charles Grandison, together with Edwards on the Affections, and Boston"s Fourfold State;--there was an inkstand, curiously contrived from a sea-sh.e.l.l, with pens and paper in that phase of arrangement which betokened frequency of use; and, lastly, a little work-basket, containing a long strip of curious and delicate embroidery, in which the needle yet hanging showed that the work was in progress.
By a table at the sea-looking window sits our little Mara, now grown to the maturity of eighteen summers, but retaining still unmistakable signs of ident.i.ty with the little golden-haired, dreamy, excitable, fanciful "Pearl" of Orr"s _Island_.
She is not quite of a middle height, with something beautiful and child-like about the moulding of her delicate form. We still see those sad, wistful, hazel eyes, over which the lids droop with a dreamy languor, and whose dark l.u.s.tre contrasts singularly with the golden hue of the abundant hair which waves in a thousand rippling undulations around her face. The impression she produces is not that of paleness, though there is no color in her cheek; but her complexion has everywhere that delicate pink tinting which one sees in healthy infants, and with the least emotion brightens into a fluttering bloom. Such a bloom is on her cheek at this moment, as she is working away, copying a bunch of scarlet rock-columbine which is in a wine-gla.s.s of water before her; every few moments stopping and holding her work at a distance, to contemplate its effect. At this moment there steps behind her chair a tall, lithe figure, a face with a rich Spanish complexion, large black eyes, glowing cheeks, marked eyebrows, and l.u.s.trous black hair arranged in shining braids around her head. It is our old friend, Sally Kittridge, whom common fame calls the handsomest girl of all the region round Harpswell, Maquoit, and Orr"s Island. In truth, a wholesome, ruddy, blooming creature she was, the sight of whom cheered and warmed one like a good fire in December; and she seemed to have enough and to spare of the warmest gifts of vitality and joyous animal life. She had a well-formed mouth, but rather large, and a frank laugh which showed all her teeth sound--and a fortunate sight it was, considering that they were white and even as pearls; and the hand that she laid upon Mara"s at this moment, though twice as large as that of the little artist, was yet in harmony with her vigorous, finely developed figure.
"Mara Lincoln," she said, "you are a witch, a perfect little witch, at painting. How you can make things look so like, I don"t see. Now, I could paint the things we painted at Miss Plucher"s; but then, dear me!
they didn"t look at all like flowers. One needed to write under them what they were made for."
"Does this look like to you, Sally?" said Mara. "I wish it would to me.
Just see what a beautiful clear color that flower is. All I can do, I can"t make one like it. My scarlet and yellows sink dead into the paper."
"Why, I think your flowers are wonderful! You are a real genius, that"s what you are! I am only a common girl; I can"t do things as you can."
"You can do things a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don"t pretend to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; but somehow I can"t."
"To be sure you can"t," said Sally, laughing. "I should like to see you try it."
"Now," pursued Mara, in a tone of lamentation, "I could no more get into a carriage and drive to Brunswick as you can, than I could fly. I can"t drive, Sally--something is the matter with me; and the horses always know it the minute I take the reins; they always twitch their ears and stare round into the chaise at me, as much as to say, "What! you there?"
and I feel sure they never will mind me. And then how you can make those wonderful bargains you do, I can"t see!--you talk up to the clerks and the men, and somehow you talk everybody round; but as for me, if I only open my mouth in the humblest way to dispute the price, everybody puts me down. I always tremble when I go into a store, and people talk to me just as if I was a little girl, and once or twice they have made me buy things that I knew I didn"t want, just because they will talk me down."
"Oh, Mara, Mara," said Sally, laughing till the tears rolled down her cheeks, "what do _you_ ever go a-shopping for?--of course you ought always to send me. Why, look at this dress--real India chintz; do you know I made old Pennywhistle"s clerk up in Brunswick give it to me just for the price of common cotton? You see there was a yard of it had got faded by lying in the shop-window, and there were one or two holes and imperfections in it, and you ought to have heard the talk I made! I abused it to right and left, and actually at last I brought the poor wretch to believe that he ought to be grateful to me for taking it off his hands. Well, you see the dress I"ve made of it. The imperfections didn"t hurt it the least in the world as I managed it,--and the faded breadth makes a good ap.r.o.n, so you see. And just so I got that red spotted flannel dress I wore last winter. It was moth-eaten in one or two places, and I made them let me have it at half-price;--made exactly as good a dress. But after all, Mara, I can"t trim a bonnet as you can, and I can"t come up to your embroidery, nor your lace-work, nor I can"t draw and paint as you can, and I can"t sing like you; and then as to all those things you talk with Mr. Sewell about, why they"re beyond my depth,--that"s all I"ve got to say. Now, you are made to have poetry written to you, and all that kind of thing one reads of in novels.
n.o.body would ever think of writing poetry to me, now, or sending me flowers and rings, and such things. If a fellow likes me, he gives me a quince, or a big apple; but, then, Mara, there ain"t any fellows round here that are fit to speak to."
"I"m sure, Sally, there always is a train following you everywhere, at singing-school and Thursday lecture."
"Yes--but what do I care for "em?" said Sally, with a toss of her head.
"Why they follow me, I don"t see. I don"t do anything to make "em, and I tell "em all that they tire me to death; and still they will hang round. What is the reason, do you suppose?"
"What can it be?" said Mara, with a quiet kind of arch drollery which suffused her face, as she bent over her painting.
"Well, you know I can"t bear fellows--I think they are hateful."
"What! even Tom Hiers?" said Mara, continuing her painting.
"Tom Hiers! Do you suppose I care for him? He would insist on waiting on me round all last winter, taking me over in his boat to Portland, and up in his sleigh to Brunswick; but I didn"t care for him."
"Well, there"s Jimmy Wilson, up at Brunswick."
"What! that little snip of a clerk! You don"t suppose I care for him, do you?--only he almost runs his head off following me round when I go up there shopping; he"s nothing but a little dressed-up yard-stick! I never saw a fellow yet that I"d cross the street to have another look at. By the by, Mara, Miss Roxy told me Sunday that Moses was coming down from Umbagog this week."
"Yes, he is," said Mara; "we are looking for him every day."
"You must want to see him. How long is it since you saw him?"
"It is three years," said Mara. "I scarcely know what he is like now. I was visiting in Boston when he came home from his three-years" voyage, and he was gone into the lumbering country when I came back. He seems almost a stranger to me."
"He"s pretty good-looking," said Sally. "I saw him on Sunday when he was here, but he was off on Monday, and never called on old friends. Does he write to you often?"
"Not very," said Mara; "in fact, almost never; and when he does, there is so little in his letters."
"Well, I tell you, Mara, you must not expect fellows to write as girls can. They don"t do it. Now, our boys, when they write home, they tell the lat.i.tude and longitude, and soil and productions, and such things.
But if you or I were only there, don"t you think we should find something more to say? Of course we should,--fifty thousand little things that they never think of."
Mara made no reply to this, but went on very intently with her painting.
A close observer might have noticed a suppressed sigh that seemed to retreat far down into her heart. Sally did not notice it.