by Rachel Field
“’Tis a shame she never had a taste of maple sugar,” she said sadly; “she was that fond of sweet things.”
Ira did not speak, but she knew from his quiet nod that he felt as she did. As they came down carrying the full buckets he squinted off at the Mount Desert hills and the northeast sky.
“Wind’s gettin’ more westerly,” he told her. “If it holds like this I’ve a notion to go over to the Welles place. Want to go along?”
Marguerite flushed with eager gratefulness. “But I do not know,” she hastened to add, “whether Dolly can spare me from the house and the children.”
“I’ll see to that,” he assured her, then he added somewhat sheepishly, “I reckon Abby’d like for you to teach her some o’ those fancy stitches you learned over in France. You don’t have no use for ’em here, an’ Abby’s got aplenty of cloth to work on.”
Marguerite lay awake long that night, wondering if Dolly would make objections to this plan. But she raised little more than a complaint or two, only charging them to be back early in time to help her with the sap and syrup kettles. The children clamored to go when they saw her putting her shoes on over her moccasins and tying on the brown cloak.
“You can save your breath,” Ira told them good-naturedly, at the same time including Caleb in his remark. “Maggie’s the only crew I’m takin’.”
He had the dory ready when she ran down to the cove, and he had fetched along a small bucket of the syrup and some fine squirrel and otter skins he had been curing as presents. The wind was fresh but not too chill, and the sun danced on the edge of every wave.
“This breeze’ll serve us pretty,” said Ira, pushing out before he hoisted the triangle of canvas to their spruce-pole mast. “Seems like we could commence to count on spring at last, though April’s still ahead, an’ that’s a treacherous month.”
It was strange and delightful being out in the dory with Ira. He did not talk much, but that was no matter with the wind from a proper quarter and so much of joyful anticipation ahead. Ira whistled as he let out and shifted sail, making use of one of the oars for rudder from the stern seat. He seemed happier, Marguerite thought, than on any day since his last visit before Christmas. She had never been in that direction and it filled her with zest to see each wooded point they passed and to mark how the shapes of the Mount Desert hills changed from this slightly nearer view. They seemed darker and more deeply indented than from their own land. Marguerite tried to keep the outlines fixed in her mind. It would be pleasant to have them there long after she was back on the Sargent point.
“There ’tis,” said Ira suddenly after they had been sailing some time; “just past the point.”
Marguerite found herself possessed with curiosity to see this other home, and at the same time with a deep shyness. She remembered Hannah Welles’ frowns and her often disapproving tongue on the occasions of the Raising and the corn-shelling; and she could not help thinking how worn and dingy her own brown homespun would look beside Abby’s clean, bright dresses. Just for a moment she wished she might go back. But it was too late for such regrets; already the square, weathered house with its low roof and sheds had come into view, patches of snow still showing in the clearing and woods behind.
They could hear the sound of chopping from this direction as they neared shore. Ira furled the sail and rowed the dory in with long, strong strokes. The shore made a natural little harbor roundabout, a more quiet, sheltered place than their cove, but shallower. Ira said that no vessel as large as the Isabella B. could have anchored there. When they were halfway in he lifted up his voice in a great halloo which brought two figures to the door. One of these, heavy and in dark skirts, Marguerite recognized as Hannah Welles, and the other she knew at once for Abby. In another moment Abby was hurrying down toward shore to welcome them, bareheaded, with her blue skirts blowing about her as she ran.
“Ira,” she called when they were within hailing distance, “I’ve been lookin’ for you this long time!”
She sent the pebbles rattling down the little beach as she came running to the place where Ira dragged the dory up. He put Marguerite and the things ashore carefully before he caught her up in his arms, holding her there as easily as if she had been Patty.
“No, no you mustn’t,” she protested. “Mother’s got her eye to the window, an’ you know how she feels!”
“I know,” said Ira with a headshake, setting her down again and walking beside her toward the house.
Marguerite followed them up the path. She felt a little in awe of this girl who, though she might be only five years older, was so far removed from her by reason of the feelings she had awakened in Ira and Ethan Jordan. She could not hear what Ira was saying, but she knew he smiled often as he bent over Abby’s brown, blowing hair.
The family in the gray board house had seen no outsiders for so long that even Hannah Welles welcomed them warmly. Perhaps she was growing reconciled to Ira and the Sargents, though she still made sharp remarks about his dependence on his brother and about the risk they ran in so stubbornly settling where they had. The bucket of syrup which Ira had fetched brought some show of pleasure into her face. She admitted to having a sweet tooth, and so far they had not discovered any sugar maples on their land. Ira agreed to go up to the wood lot to see how Timothy and Nathan were coming along with the chopping and hauling, and while he was out Marguerite was questioned minutely on all the happenings of the winter.
Seth Jordan had brought them news of Debby’s death, but Hannah Welles wanted all the details and made many comments and offered dire warnings of her own. Abby was more sympathetic.
“Poor little thing!” she said. “It don’t seem right such things should befall ’em.”
After that all three set about preparing dinner. There was much talk and bustle over the addition of a pumpkin pie they had been keeping for some special occasion. Abby felt there could be no doubt that its time had come, though her mother seemed less inclined to share it with Ira Sargent and Marguerite. She gave in at the end, however, and set it to warm in the brick oven. Marguerite’s eyes were quite dazzled by all the pieces of pewter and crockery this kitchen boasted. There were not so many as on the Jordans’ shelves, but still, after their own meager stock of wooden plates and a cracked bowl or two and one pewter tankard and mug, it seemed a grand sight indeed. As for the set of sprigged china cups and saucers, they were of a shining gayety that quite took her breath away. Hannah saw the admiration in the girl’s eyes and shook her head.
“Abby’s offered to give ’em back to Ethan,” she told her, with a sidewise glance at her daughter’s head bent over the mixing trough, “but he told her to keep ’em. I don’t hold with takin’ gifts from any man but the one a girl’s pledged to marry. But Abby’s got notions of her own. Well, I wash my hands of the whole business.”
“Exceptin’ every day when you tell her what a fool she is to take me!” came Ira’s voice from the doorway, where he stood tall and smiling.
Once the dinner dishes were cleared away Abby, at Ira’s suggestion, brought out the new calico dress she was making and several lengths of material for more—a buff cotton with a pattern of little green leaves scattered over it; another of striped blue and white, and a cloak she was fashioning from several yards of fine red broadcloth which Timothy had brought back from the fall trip. Marguerite’s eyes shone as she fingered the rich, crimson folds. She felt a craving for color after the long winter months, just as she had for the sweetness of the maple syrup.
“Father said it was scandalous when Timothy told him what he paid for this,” Abby told her, “but it’ll be my best for years to come.”
“It is the color of red roses,” said Marguerite, stroking the smooth folds softly with her finger, “like some that grew in our garden in Le Havre.”
“An’ you’ll look like a rose yourself when you wear it,” murmured Ira, with a quick glance to make sure Hannah Welles was busy at the far side of the kitchen. Timothy was waiting impatiently outside t
o take him down to inspect a new dory he was building near shore, but still Ira lingered, watching Abby unfolding the cloth or holding up the dresses she had already cut and basted.
“I can do plain sewing,” Abby was explaining to Marguerite, “but when it comes to fancy stiches for trimmin’ I’ve no notion how to go about it. Ira thought maybe you’d show me some.”
Hannah Welles sniffed disapprovingly from her corner and gave it as her opinion that a girl was lucky if she got a calico for summer and a linsey for winter, without worrying her head with fashions and furbelows. Marguerite noticed, however, that when she began to make some of her embroidery stitches on a piece of cotton for Abby to go by, Hannah drew almost as close as her daughter to watch. Marguerite’s fingers were a little clumsy after all the heavier work of the winter. The needle and thread seemed too fine at first, then gradually the old patterns came back to her and she found the needle moving in and out with its old cunning.
“It’s a wonder to see how you can do it,” marveled Abby.
“It is nothing,” Margurite told her, flushing with pleasure. “You should see how the Sisters in the convent could make flowers, in wreaths and little garlands, and lace as well. If I had stayed another year I was to learn lace-making.”
“A couple o’ good patchwork quilts would be a better way to spend the time,” observed Hannah Welles.
“Ah, yes,” agreed Marguerite. “Aunt Hepsa has promised to help me with one. Already I know the patterns of ‘Rose of Sharon’ and ‘Feathered Star,’ and she will show me the ‘Delectable Mountains.’”
Abbey was quick to learn, and her admiration filled Marguerite with happiness. She forgot her old dress and clumsy shoes; she even forgot, for the afternoon, that she was the Sargents’ Bound-out Girl whose French words and ways were a continual source of annoyance to them. There was a little roll of calico snippets left from the dresses which she eyed longingly. The twins’ corncob doll was in dire need of new clothing, and she longed to ask Abby for a bit to take home. It was nearly time to leave, however, before she summoned courage to do so, and then she waited till they were alone in the kitchen.
“Why, to be sure you can have a piece,” Abby told her kindly. “Here’s a bit from my pink print.” Then, as she saw the girl’s hand reach out to stroke the lengths of broadcloth once more, she continued, “And here’s some left over from cuttin’ the cloak. It’s not enough for a dress or jacket, but maybe you could piece it into a hood for yourself.”
Marguerite sat speechless as Abby put the little roll of crimson stuff into her hands. She could not believe such good fortune had befallen her all in one day.
“Oh,” she said at last softly, “you are good—good. It warms me through to touch it. It shall be my greatest treasure.”
Darkness caught them just as Ira dragged the dory up their own beach. Marguerite’s teeth were chattering with the cold of the chill late March evening as she sped up the path, but she knew that under the old brown cloak her hands held a strip of such color as she had not seen since the days in Le Harve. Dolly scolded them less than might have been expected considering the time they had been gone, and when Marguerite showed her the red cloth she offered to let it lie with her own precious scraps and the five pewter spoons she kept in the old pine chest.
Many weeks of raw winds and cold were still before them, but as the days grew steadily longer, all their spirits rose. They had plenty of fresh fish now, and Ira and Joel cut new ax handles and got out all the old tools to be put in readiness against planting time. This was still far off, for even by mid-April the frost was not fully out of the ground, though here and there in sunnier places signs of green were already showing.
“I never knew a place where it took so everlastingly long to warm up,” Dolly complained. “lt’s enough to take the heart out o’ anybody!”
“Just you wait,” Joel would tell her, “’tain’t like other places. Here, they say, it comes all to once.”
What worried the men now was their need of ammunition and seed. The severe winter had obliged them to eat all the corn and potatoes, leaving none for sowing. Then they had been forced to shoot more wild fowl and game than they would otherwise have needed. This had made great inroads into their store of powder. There was not even enough to see them through the summer, and in case of an Indian attack they would be in a dangerous position. Joel’s face looked worn and very grim whenever he talked of this in the evening after the younger ones were asleep, and even Ira’s pleasant mouth began to grow serious.
“I dassent ask Jordan for no more powder,” Joel said wearily. “He’s not much better off himself, an’ Morse an’ Stanley they’d begrudge me so much as a farthing’s worth, they’re so down on us for settlin’ here.”
“I guess Timothy Welles would let me have some,” Ira put in, “but I hate to ask favors till Abby an’ I can get married.”
Marguerite heard them still discussing the problem after she stretched herself under the covers. When she had first come to stay with them these moments before sleep had been her time for thinking of home—of Le Harve and Grand’mère and Oncle Pierre and the Sisters in the Convent. Now she suddenly realized that she was thinking to herself in English, not French, and that her mind also turned over and over these matters of their daily life and comfort. It concerned her so much more now to wonder how many potatoes they must raise to keep the household through another winter, and whether there would be many nuts and wild berries to gather that summer. Sometimes she went for days without slipping her finger through the gold ring on its cord around her neck. “Perhaps,” she thought, in sudden alarm, “I shall someday forget that I have another name than ‘Maggie’!”
It was the end of April now, and fresh green was appearing in some new spot each morning as the children and Marguerite ran out of the log house. Ira and Joel took turns with the plow, while the other tussled with last year’s stumps. These had been left to rot all winter and now they must be grubbed out and the holes filled and smoothed over. It was desperately hard work. Sometimes it took a whole day to dislodge one of the larger stumps, even with both men exerting all their strength and the children and Dolly cheering them on from the dooryard.
“It is like pulling the teeth of a giant,” Marguerite said as she watched Ira get the iron crowbar under a particularly stubborn root and heave and strain with all his weight to loosen it. “I would there were a yoke of oxen to help.”
“You might’s well wish for the moon to come down an’ give me a hand!” Ira retorted as he straightened up painfully and wiped his scarlet face before he went at the stump again.
“Some year, though, we’ll have oxen,” chirped Patty cheerfully.
“Yes,” added Becky, “an’ a white cat with double paws.”
“I’d rather have Pumpkin!” cried Jacob, throwing himself on the dog and rolling over and over with him on the soft brown earth.
All the children looked less pale and spindling now, though they had lost their chubbiness during the winter. Marguerite noticed from her own shadow that she, too, had lengthened considerably. Her last year’s holland was almost to her knees and strained across the shoulders and chest. She could reach to set the wooden platters on the highest shelf now, where before her fingertips had barely touched the edge. Aunt Hepsa had remarked on the change in her the first time she had seen her since Debby’s death.
“My, Maggie,” she had exclaimed, “You’re growin’ like a weed. Watch out you don’t get so brown again this summer, an’ by another year you won’t hardly know yourself for the same girl.”
The old woman had made a fine start with the new quilt. Already she had half the patches pieced together. The buff and deep blue colors made the sharp bold outlines of the pattern stand out with extraordinary clearness.
“Yes,” Marguerite had cried out in wondering admiration as Aunt Hepsa had spread the squares before her, “it is true. The jagged points are like a mountain range—very blue and dark across the water.”
Heps
a Jordan had told her then of the name and its meaning. Marguerite listened eagerly. She had never heard of a book called “Pilgrim’s Progress” which the old woman declared was second only to the Holy Bible. A man named John Bunyan had written it long ago in a prison in England. The Jordans owned no copy of it, but Aunt Hepsa could remember most of what had befallen the characters of the story—Christian, Great Heart, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and the rest. Marguerite and the children had hung spellbound while she recounted it.
“I always did admire the part about the mountains,” she had wound up, “but first there was that place called ‘Doubting Castle’ kept by ‘Giant Despair’. ’Twas after they got away from there that they went on till they came to the ‘Delectable Mountains’ an’ found the gardens an’ orchards an’ fountains of water. It’s good to recollect that when I’m piecin’.”
Marguerite found herself thinking of this often now that she and the children were out again for long hours in the April weather. She often turned her eyes to the distant line of the Mount Desert hills, remembering all Aunt Hepsa had told her, and it was on one of these occasions that she saw a strange white square looming against them.
“Look,” she called to Caleb, who was splitting wood for kindling in the dooryard, “and see this strange thing!”
He left the chopping block to join her, narrowing his blue eyes and pushing the sandy lock of hair off his forehead.
“It’s a full-rigged vessel and no mistake,” he said in an awed tone. “She’s comin’ this way.”
The twins and Jacob ran toward the house, shouting excitedly as they went. “A full-rigged vessel comin’ this way!”
Soon the whole family had gathered on the point to watch. There could be no thought of work with such a sight as this approaching over water that had not held any craft larger than sloops and dories for so long. There was much talk and speculation about it, and Joel and Ira decided that it must be taking the inner course to Boston.
