Part 8 (1/2)
When we went back to the house at the cove we had to wait some time for Mr. Dock.u.m. We succeeded in making friends with the children, and gave them some candy and the rest of our lunch, which luckily had been even more abundant than usual. They looked thin and pitiful, but even in that lonely place, where they so seldom saw a stranger or even a neighbor, they showed that there was an evident effort to make them look like other children, and they were neatly dressed, though there could be no mistake about their being very poor. One forlorn little soul, with honest gray eyes and a sweet, shy smile, showed us a string of beads which she wore round her neck; there were perhaps two dozen of them, blue and white, on a bit of twine, and they were the dearest things in all her world. When we came away we were so glad that we could give the man more than he asked us for taking care of the horse, and his thanks touched us.
”I hope ye may never know what it is to earn every dollar as hard as I have. I never earned any money as easy as this before. I don't feel as if I ought to take it. I've done the best I could,” said the man, with the tears coming into his eyes, and a huskiness in his voice. ”I've done the best I could, and I'm willin' and my woman is, but everything seems to have been ag'in' us; we never seem to get forehanded. It looks sometimes as if the Lord had forgot us, but my woman she never wants me to say that; she says He ain't, and that we might be worse off,--but I don' know. I haven't had my health; that's hendered me most. I'm a boat-builder by trade, but the business's all run down; folks buys 'em second-hand nowadays, and you can't make nothing. I can't stand it to foller deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng, and--well, you see what my land's wuth. But my oldest boy, he's getting ahead. He pushed off this spring, and he works in a box-shop to Boston; a cousin o' his mother's got him the chance. He sent me ten dollars a spell ago and his mother a shawl. I don't see how he done it, but he's smart!”
This seemed to be the only bright spot in their lives, and we admired the shawl and sat down in the house awhile with the mother, who seemed kind and patient and tired, and to have great delight in talking about what one should wear. Kate and I thought and spoke often of these people afterward, and when one day we met the man in Deephaven we sent some things to the children and his wife, and begged him to come to the house whenever he came to town; but we never saw him again, and though we made many plans for going again to the cove, we never did. At one time the road was reported impa.s.sable, and we put off our second excursion for this reason and others until just before we left Deephaven, late in October.
We knew the coast-road would be bad after the fall rains, and we found that Leander, the eldest of the Dock.u.m boys, had some errand that way, so he went with us. We enjoyed the drive that morning in spite of the rough road. The air was warm, and sweet with the smell of bayberry-bushes and pitch-pines and the delicious saltness of the sea, which was not far from us all the way. It was a perfect autumn day.
Sometimes we crossed pebble beaches, and then went farther inland, through woods and up and down steep little hills; over shaky bridges which crossed narrow salt creeks in the marsh-lands. There was a little excitement about the drive, and an exhilaration in the air, and we laughed at jokes forgotten the next minute, and sang, and were jolly enough. Leander, who had never happened to see us in exactly this hilarious state of mind before, seemed surprised and interested, and became unusually talkative, telling us a great many edifying particulars about the people whose houses we pa.s.sed, and who owned every wood-lot along the road. ”Do you see that house over on the pi'nt?” he asked. ”An old fellow lives there that's part lost his mind. He had a son who was drowned off Cod Rock fis.h.i.+ng, much as twenty-five years ago, and he's worn a deep path out to the end of the pi'nt where he goes out every hand's turn o' the day to see if he can't see the boat coming in.” And Leander looked round to see if we were not amused, and seemed puzzled because we didn't laugh. Happily, his next story was funny.
We saw a sleepy little owl on the dead branch of a pine-tree; we saw a rabbit cross the road and disappear in a clump of juniper, and squirrels run up and down trees and along the stone-walls with acorns in their mouths. We pa.s.sed straggling thickets of the upland sumach, leafless, and holding high their ungainly spikes of red berries; there were st.u.r.dy barberry-bushes along the lonely wayside, their unpicked fruit hanging in brilliant cl.u.s.ters. The blueberry-bushes made patches of dull red along the hillsides. The ferns were whitish-gray and brown at the edges of the woods, and the asters and golden-rods which had lately looked so gay in the open fields stood now in faded, frost-bitten companies. There were busy flocks of birds flitting from field to field, ready to start on their journey southward.
When we reached the house, to our surprise there was no one in sight and the place looked deserted. We left the wagon, and while Leander went toward the barn, which stood at a little distance, Kate and I went to the house and knocked. I opened the door a little way and said ”Hallo!”
but n.o.body answered. The people could not have moved away, for there were some chairs standing outside the door, and as I looked in I saw the bunches of herbs hanging up, and a trace of corn, and the furniture was all there. It was a great disappointment, for we had counted upon seeing the children again. Leander said there was n.o.body at the barn, and that they must have gone to a funeral; he couldn't think of anything else.
Just now we saw some people coming up the road, and we thought at first that they were the man and his wife coming back; but they proved to be strangers, and we eagerly asked what had become of the family.
”They're dead, both on 'em. His wife she died about nine weeks ago last Sunday, and he died day before yesterday. Funeral's going to be this afternoon. Thought ye were some of her folks from up country, when we were coming along,” said the man.
”Guess they won't come nigh,” said the woman, scornfully; ”'fraid they'd have to help provide for the children. I was half-sister to him, and I've got to take the two least ones.”
”Did you say he was going to be buried this afternoon?” asked Kate, slowly. We were both more startled than I can tell.
”Yes,” said the man, who seemed much better-natured than his wife. She appeared like a person whose only aim in life was to have things over with. ”Yes, we're going to bury at two o'clock. They had a master sight of trouble, first and last.”
Leander had said nothing all this time. He had known the man, and had expected to spend the day with him and to get him to go on two miles farther to help bargain for a dory. He asked, in a disappointed way, what had carried him off so sudden.
”Drink,” said the woman, relentlessly. ”He ain't been good for nothing sence his wife died: she was took with a fever along in the first of August. _I_'d ha' got up from it!”
”Now don't be hard on the dead, Marthy,” said her husband. ”I guess they done the best they could. They weren't s.h.i.+f'less, you know; they never had no health; 't was against wind and tide with 'em all the time.” And Kate asked, ”Did you say he was your brother?”
”Yes. I was half-sister to him,” said the woman, promptly, with perfect unconsciousness of Kate's meaning.
”And what will become of those poor children?”
”I've got the two youngest over to my place to take care on, and the two next them has been put out to some folks over to the cove. I dare say like's not they'll be sent back.”
”They're clever child'n, I guess,” said the man, who spoke as if this were the first time he had dared take their part. ”Don't be ha'sh, Marthy! Who knows but they may do for us when we get to be old?” And then she turned and looked at him with utter contempt. ”I can't stand it to hear men-folks talking on what they don't know nothing about,” said she. ”The ways of Providence is dreadful myster'ous,” she went on with a whine, instead of the sharp tone of voice which we had heard before.
”We've had a hard row, and we've just got our own children off our hands and able to do for themselves, and now here are these to be fetched up.”
”But perhaps they'll be a help to you; they seem to be good little things,” said Kate. ”I saw them in the summer, and they seemed to be pleasant children, and it is dreadfully hard for them to be left alone.
It's not their fault, you know. We brought over something for them; will you be kind enough to take the basket when you go home?”
”Thank ye, I'm sure,” said the aunt, relenting slightly. ”You can speak to my man about it, and he'll give it to somebody that's going by. I've got to walk in the procession. They'll be obliged, I'm sure. I s'pose you're the young ladies that come here right after the Fourth o' July, ain't you? I should be pleased to have you call and see the child'n if you're over this way again. I heard 'em talk about you last time I was over. Won't ye step into the house and see him? He looks real natural,”
she added. But we said, ”No, thank you.”
Leander told us he believed he wouldn't bother about the dory that day, and he should be there at the house whenever we were ready. He evidently considered it a piece of good luck that he had happened to arrive in time for the funeral. We spoke to the man about the things we had brought for the children, which seemed to delight him, poor soul, and we felt sure he would be kind to them. His wife shouted to him from a window of the house that he'd better not loiter round, or they wouldn't be half ready when the folks began to come, and we said good by to him and went away.
It was a beautiful morning, and we walked slowly along the sh.o.r.e to the high rocks and the pitch-pine trees which we had seen before; the air was deliciously fresh, and one could take long deep breaths of it. The tide was coming in, and the spray dashed higher and higher. We climbed about the rocks and went down in some of the deep cold clefts into which the sun could seldom s.h.i.+ne. We gathered some wild-flowers; bits of pimpernel and one or two sprigs of fringed gentian which had bloomed late in a sheltered place, and a pale little bouquet of asters. We sat for a long time looking off to sea, and we could talk or think of almost nothing beside what we had seen and heard at the farm-house. We said how much we should like to go to that funeral, and we even made up our minds to go back in season, but we gave up the idea: we had no right there, and it would seem as if we were merely curious, and we were afraid our presence would make the people ill at ease, the minister especially. It would be an intrusion.