Calico Bush

by Rachel Field

  Marguerite sang once more as she filled the basket with fragrant bay. Sometimes at her approach a sheep would bleat or start away and at other times stand still, regarding her with foolish bright eyes. When the basket was heaped with green she went to join Aunt Hepsa, whose small figure and head in its neatly tied kerchief she could see above her on a bare ledge of rock that cropped out boldly. Smaller plants grew there, springing out of every crack and crevice, and some low bushes with flowers of a deep pinkish color.

  “Sheep laurel,” the old lady told her. “’Tain’t held so choice as the tall kind that grows in the hills, but I think it’s pretty. I’ve heard it called Calico Bush in these parts, an’ there’s a ballad they sing of it.”

  Marguerite would have liked to hear it then and there, but Hepsa Jordan said it was too late. Maybe after supper, if Seth felt like scraping his fiddle strings, she would sing it for her. Marguerite wished they need never leave the pasture, but the time had come. So they retraced their steps, the girl chatting freely of herself, telling of Le Havre, of Grand’mère and Oncle Pierre, and of the embroidery lessons the Sisters in the convent had given her.

  “It’s a pity to have you forget such things in a place like this,” the old woman said, “for there ain’t likely to be much call for fancy stitches with all those young ones wearing the clothes off’n their backs an’ a yard o’ new cloth worth its weight in hard silver. First look I had at you I could tell you was raised more genteel than most. Young’s you be, you’ve had more’n your share o’ trouble, but you’ll weather it. Yes, a young tree bends where an old tree breaks.”

  As they came through the woods the old woman’s quick eye found a couple of late-blooming lady-slippers. These she added to the mullein leaves, explaining as she did so that the plant could be used for brewing a tea excellent for quieting the nerves of restless patients. It was evident, thought Marguerite, that her companion possessed more than a common store of such knowledge.

  “There’s an herb to cure ’most every ailment,” she told the girl. “I will say this much for the Injuns—they’ve learned more from growin’ plants than most doctors an’ apothecaries I’ve met with in my time.”

  Marguerite thought the kitchen even pleasanter by fire and candlelight than before. The homemade bay berry drips gave out almost as fine a fragrance as the leaves she set to work stripping after the meal was over and the dishes washed. She said little, being somewhat in awe of Seth and Ethan, who took little heed of her presence. They were telling Aunt Hepsa of Joel Sargent’s determination to settle on the point regardless of their warnings.

  “Ain’t goin’ to move so much as a mile,” Seth told her. “Means to build him a log house on that cellar an’ won’t take advice from no one. Any fool had ought to know this is no time to cut logs with the sap well in ’em, but he’s commenced fellin’ trees. ‘You’re in for trouble with ’em shrinkin’,’ I says to him, but ’twas only wastin’ my breath.”

  Ethan was full of a plan for returning to Portsmouth with Captain Hunt on the Isabella B. He and Timothy Welles could work their way that far, returning in a sloop which they would tow.

  “With the weather likely to hold through July we’re pretty certain of a fair voyage back, an’ it’s a chance to lay in supplies.”

  But his father demurred, being loath to spare him from their crops just then. Besides, there was the fear of Indians for those who journeyed and those who stayed at home. However, he agreed to think the matter over before Captain Hunt made arrangements to leave.

  “If you do go, Ethan,” Aunt Hepsa spoke up, “there’s just one thing you can fetch me back an’ that’s some indigo. I can find makeshift dyes for the other colors, but you can’t set a blue pot without you have indigo.”

  “Ain’t there colors enough besides that you must have blue?” Ethan asked her smiling.

  “For the most o’ my patchwork, yes,” she answered. “But you know I’ve been hankerin’ to piece me a quilt o’ that ‘Delectable Mountains’ pattern. I’d sooner make none at all if I can’t have it blue an’ buff accordin’ to my fancy.”

  “Well, that bein’ so,” Ethan said, “I suppose I’ll have to fetch you a bag o’ indigo if I have to hunt it from door to door!”

  He had a slow, good-natured smile that suited his broad frame and heavy, dark brows. Marguerite liked him, but not so well as Ira. Presently at his aunt’s bidding Seth brought out his fiddle and tightened the strings. Marguerite caught her breath with excitement at the first scraping of the bow along them. She had not heard a fiddle for so long—not since Oncle Pierre’s had followed him to the bottom of the sea. Somehow it seemed even more extra-ordinary to hear it in this far-off place, at the edge of the wilderness and already echoing to Indian alarms. Seth Jordan did not play so well as Oncle Pierre; his fingers were stiff and one of his strings was missing. Still, any sort of melody seemed good to Marguerite, and the ballad she was to hear was certainly as sad as all such tales of lost or blighted love should be.

  “Aunt Hepsa she used to be a great hand at singin’ in her young days,” Ethan had told their guest under cover of the noise made by the fiddle-tuning. “She knows a lot besides ‘Calico Bush.’”

  And then the old woman folded her hands in her lap and began in a voice that was still sweet, though quavering on the higher notes. Not once till the end did she pause or falter for a single word. Marguerite listened intently, fearful lest some of the English phrases should be unfamiliar to her.

  Calico, sprigged calico,

  My love, Judy, she plagued me so

  For a weddin’ dress of calico

  That off to Portsmouth I must go,

  Twenty miles in a storm of snow.

  Calico, sprigged calico!

  O, Judy, what for would you have me go

  So far an’ wide in a northeast blow?

  The Parson will wed us as true, I know,

  In patches as in sprigged calico.

  But she shook her head and she wouldn’t take “no,”

  For her heart it was fixed on calico,

  On calico, sprigged calico.

  While she by the fire did bend and sew

  Off I set, for I loved her so,

  Too well to lose her to black-eyed Joe

  All for the want of calico,

  Of calico, sprigged calico!

  The snow it fell and the winds did blow.

  I wandered high and I wandered low

  Till night came on me black as a crow,

  And never a light did shine or show,

  Calico, sprigged calico!

  I laid me down where the laurels grow,

  All spent with the cold and the falling snow.

  “O, Judy,” I cried in deepest woe,

  “Cursed be our love and calico,

  “Calico, sprigged calico!”

  ’Twas Spring before they found me so,

  Dead and perished from top to toe.

  Tears from my Judy’s eyes did flow,

  “O cruel pride that laid him low,

  “My true love’s died for calico,

  “For calico, sprigged calico!”

  So, maids who pass where the laurels grow,

  Think on this tale of long ago.

  Set not your hearts on a furbelow

  Lest you live to curse sprigged calico,

  Calico, sprigged calico!

  There was silence in the kitchen after the song ended. Then Ethan broke it as he rose to climb to his room aloft.

  “He was a plumb fool to go, that fellow was,” he muttered. “I say it served him right to get froze.”

  “But he loved her so,” sighed Marguerite contentedly. “And it is necessary that a ballad should be sad.”

  “Well, all I know is my voice ain’t what ’twas,” Aunt Hepsa remarked with a nod. “It’s goin’ same way as my cashmere shawl—kind o’ thin in spots. Come along to bed, child.”

  Marguerite followed her into the bedroom. Soon she was beside her under the covers of the wide ol
d bed, her mind a queer jumble of islands and water, colored wools, pasture herbs, and plaintive ballad airs.

  Next morning when she took leave of Aunt Hepsa a bond had sprung up between them, though the girl’s thanks were awkward and faltering, and the old woman’s parting words were almost equally so.

  “Well, good-by, Maggie,” she called after her from the door. “You can come again when you’ve got a mind to.”

  PART 2FALL

  It was the first day of September on the calendar that Ira Sargent had made by cutting a notch for each day that passed on a pole beside the doorstep. But even without that and the sight of the nearly completed log house and cornfield, Marguerite thought she would have known that summer was over. Goldenrod and red berries would have told her; a deeper haze on the Mount Desert hills, and the incessant chirping of crickets morning, noon, and night.

  “Rubbin’ their hind legs together, that’s how they do it,” the twins had explained to her the evening before as they went to sleep on the spruce boughs of their makeshift shelter.

  But there was little time to discuss crickets and their like that morning, for it was to be a great day, one on which all their thoughts had been bent for many weeks past.

  “Well, it’s turned out fair for the Raisin’,” Dolly Sargent had announced almost before the sun was fully up from the water, “for which I’m thankful. When I heard the wind commence to blow last night I declare my heart ’most failed me thinkin’ it might storm to keep the folks from comin’.”

  “An’ Captain Hunt delayed again,” added her husband as he built up a fire in the rough oven of beach stones.

  Marguerite was as eager as the children for the activity to begin. She had never heard of a Raising, and Caleb had been more than usually scornful in consequence.

  “How’d you think we’d get the roof on ’fore frost,” he had demanded, “without we had some help? It’s took Pa an’ Ira an’ me an’ the Cap’n ’most all summer to get the logs cut an’ dragged down here an’ part set up. I tell you, women folks don’t know nothin’ when it comes to buildin’ houses.”

  But it was from Ira and the little girls that Marguerite learned more. A roof-raising seemed to be in the nature of a celebration, from all she could gather. Neighbors might disapprove of things one did and said, but when the time came to put the roof on one’s house they would come to help. It was a duty, and also an excuse for festivity. So they would all be coming soon—the Jordans from Sunday Island; the Stanley family from the west; the Welleses from the east, and the Morses with their baby from Seal Cove. That was to be eventful enough, without the sailing of the Isabella B., but Captain Hunt had said he would be off once the roof was laid on. Twice he had been set to go. Once Timothy Welles was laid up with a swollen hand, and then there had been a rumor of Indians to delay them. Ethan and Timothy were to go with him as far as Portsmouth, where he would readily find others to sail to Boston. Already the two young men had been entrusted with various commissions to bring back in their sloop—food supplies, farm tools, cloth, and other necessities.

  “I expect they won’t start till their own chores are done,” said Dolly, who was already busy over her stores of meal and milk and the cheese she and Marguerite had made yesterday.

  Caleb was out in the dory fishing. They could see his orange head bent over the side as he worked his lines skillfully. Caleb was a great hand at fishing. Already he had long strings of cod and haddock drying for winter use. “A likely boy,” Hepsa Jordan had said of him. “’Course you can’t expect too much when they’re between the hay an’ grass same’s he is, but I’ll lay he’ll turn out smarter ’n the Stanleys’ Andrew.”

  Marguerite had not yet seen Andrew, but she certainly hoped he would be more kindly disposed to her than Caleb. She and the twins were helping to pick feathers from several fine wildfowl the Captain and Ira had shot for the feast, while Jacob and Patty ran to and from bringing winter-green and partridge berries for garnishing. Near at hand Debby kicked and gurgled in the wooden cradle set out on the mossy ground. Every now and again Marguerite paused in her work to set the rockers in motion or to make sure the child did not wriggle free of the shawl’s worn folds. The air came crisp from the northwest, and Debby was wearing her best cotton dress in honor of the Raising, not the usual one of heavy holland that did her for every day. Her little face was almost as sunburned as the older children’s, her hair bleached white as theirs.

  “She’ll be the smallest one at the Raisin’, I guess,” said Becky, “littler ’n the Morses’ baby if they fetch him.”

  “’Course they’ll fetch him,” Susan told her with scorn. “They’d never leave him home for the Injuns to get, maybe.”

  “Mercy sakes, don’t talk of Injuns today,” chided Dolly from the rough log table set in the open where she was stirring cornmeal in the largest iron kettle. “I’ve got enough on my hands without worryin’ over that. Besides, it’s temptin’ Providence when they’ve kept away from these parts all summer.”

  Dolly Sargent appeared almost happy with the prospect of visitors so near at hand. She had donned her best calico and a clean kerchief and had found some bits of the blue yarn to tie Marguerite’s braids and the twins’ yellow pigtails.

  “Wisht I had somethin’ clean to put on Jacob’s back an’ Patty’s,” she sighed as they came running back with their hands full of the red berries, their faces smeared, and their hair stuck full of twigs and burrs. “I’ll help finish with these feathers, Maggie. You take ’em up to the spring for a scrubbin’. Get a cloth from the chest, an’ the comb an’ shears, for you’ll have to cut out all those burrs. I can’t have folks sayin’ my young ones look like a pair o’ sheep fetched in from pasture!”

  There had been precious little time for washing and combing in all those weeks, so the task of making them presentable was not easy. Marguerite, however, was not one to give up readily.

  “If I had soap I should not have to rub so hard,” she told the protesting pair as she dipped the spring water up by the gourdful, pouring it over their hands and faces and then polishing away with the rough linen towel.

  “You’ve took my skin off a’ready!” cried Patty.

  “An’ my nose!” put in Jacob, who had turned as red as the rock maple growing near the little spring.

  Their hair presented even greater difficulties. It was no use trying to drag a comb through, and when she had cut out all snags and burrs the effect was worse than before.

  “Ciel!” she exclaimed, laughing in spite of herself. “But you look as if the mice had been nibbling at you.”

  Marguerite watched the two run off to join the others, glad that they could not see how queer they looked. She lingered a moment or so to bathe her own face with the cool water and to smooth her hair. After she had done so a sudden curiosity overcame her to see herself again. She had almost forgotten what her face was like in those long, busy days of hard work.

  She knelt on the moss that grew about the spring, waiting for the water to clear of the ripples she had made in it. A leaf from the rock maple drifted down to settle on the surface like a tiny flame. Motionless it lay there on the dark water so that when she peered in and saw herself at last the leaf seemed to be caught in her own hair. She saw it clearly beside the paler oval of her face, as much a part of her as the dark eyes and the teeth that showed white between her lips. And suddenly, as she stared, this nose and mouth, this pointed chin and eyes and parted hair that she knew for her own, all seemed very strange to her. It was as if she looked at the picture of a girl she did not know. She shivered and sprang up with a quick catch of breath. Was it only the red leaf’s doing, she wondered, or could people be such strangers to themselves?

  As she sped down towards shore she heard Caleb calling from the cove. The twins ran to her, signaling excitedly that the boats were coming. Sure enough a triangular patch of sail was putting out from Sunday Island, and another was making its way round the eastern point.

  “They’re a-comin’, Maggi
e!” Becky was shouting.

  “Quick,” cried Susan, seizing her hand, “let’s go to meet ’em.”

  It seemed nothing short of a miracle to see so many people flocking to their point. Marguerite counted each of the four boatloads over as its occupants set foot on the beach. First there were the three from Sunday Island, Aunt Hepsa’s old face wrinkled with pleasure over the covered basket of good things she had brought for the feast. Next came the Morses-Hiram, Mary Jane, and Reuben the baby; with Eliza and Sam Stanley and their three sturdy children appearing from the other direction in a stout dory, rowed by Sam and shock-headed young Andrew. Last of all there were the Welleses, Timothy sailing his sister Abigail in the sloop which he and Ethan were to tow to Portsmouth, and their parents, Nathan and Hannah, following in a smaller rig. Marguerite was curious to set eyes on Abby Welles, and so she guessed must Ira be, for he had been the first on hand to help her step ashore, with Ethan close on his heels. No, Marguerite decided, Aunt Hepsa had not said too much of this girl’s charms. She looked very pretty in her full cotton dress that was almost as deep a pink as the flowers of the calico bush. Under the sunbonnet she wore, her cheeks showed warm and softly rounded, her eyes a quiet gray, and her hair brown and curling at either side of the parting. She stepped lightly over the stones in her homemade slippers of cowhide bound with thongs about her ankles. Seeing her fresh dress and white knitted stockings, Marguerite hung back, more than ever conscious of her own bare feet and the dingy, bedraggled Holland dress she had already half outgrown. But Aunt Hepsa was beckoning.

  “Here, Maggie,” she said, feeling about in the depths of the calico workbag she had brought. “See if these stockings fit you. I presume likely you won’t get time to knit none for yourself against cold weather.”

  Marguerite’s hands trembled as she unrolled the stockings, marking how firm and close they were knit of gray wool with a border of red yarn at the top.

  “Ah, merci bien,” she cried, reverting to her French as she still did in moments of emotion. “They are beautiful. I shall be most proud to wear them.”