Even when the sun hid behind the clouds, Mr. Island assured us enough energy would be stored to keep the engines running, and if not, the sails would catch the wind as always and continue to impel the ship forward. Mr. Grindle was well pleased. His ships would not be likely to falter in a dead calm, and he'd outpace any competitor to port.
One day he brought home a sample of the new sailcloth and the filaments made it gleam with pearlescent beauty. I could only imagine how splendid a fully rigged ship would look with sails bent and the sun full upon it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Island left the lightkeeper's house to reside with Dr. Hutchinson. Isaiah Fernald had grown surly, and we suspected the rum. Mrs. Fernald and the girls hurried through town on their errands, their expressions wan and bereft of joy. There was talk of the government relieving Isaiah of duty. After all, the light kept itself. In fact, rumor had it that all lightkeepers would be replaced by a replica of the device that kept Schooner Head Light aglow.
Mr. Island spent long hours poring over plans and drawings in anticipation of removing his ship from the ocean floor. I chanced to see him one evening through an undraped window, bent over his desk, examining the pages of a logbook in the glow of a candle. No one was privy to these plans but Lydia.
November blustered in, cold and rainy. Lydia waved a handkerchief in farewell as Dr. Hutchinson drove off with Mr. Island to the train station to begin their lyceum tour. Beneath the hood of Lydia's cloak I saw tears. It could have been rain but I think not.
Lydia spent evenings with me, huddled by the warmth of the stove in the kitchen, writing letters to Mr. Island. That is, I wrote the letters for she was not capable with her maimed hand. The content consisted of, as one may guess, sentiments of youth, the sentiments of love. I recall a few I wrote Mr. Grindle during our courtship.
She narrated, blushing girlishly as she did so, and I inked the papers wondering throughout it all how such an odd looking fellow, with all his deformities, could capture the heart of this sweet young woman.
"Lydia," I said, "what will you do if he is able to leave for his own land?"
"I don't believe he'll be able to do it," she said with complete assurance. "All of the men say it's impossible for him to recover his own ship. Even your Mr. Grindle."
I laid my pen down on the table and looked her squarely in the eyes. "It appears that Mr. Island is capable of a good many things. If he should succeed in retrieving his ship, what then?"
"I will go with him."
I shook my head at her confidence, then remembered love can drive one to do a great many things. "My dear, he comes from a very foreign place. It will not be easy."
"I shall manage quite well," she said and would speak no more of it.
Mr. Island wrote Lydia in return, and she shared portions of his letters with me, whether out of her own excitement and desire to share them, or out of a feeling of obligation toward me for writing him letters on her behalf, I do not know, though I suspect the former.
She showed me his fine renderings of Faneuil Hall and Boston's waterfront. He could not write in English, but his drawing skill was excellent. The letters, crafted by Dr. Hutchinson's ornate hand, spoke of the wonders of Boston and New York, and of the society there.
In a side note to me, he said he spoke on behalf of women's rights just as he'd promised. He called on Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton in New Jersey, the most radical leader of the struggle, but she was not home. How thrilled I was that he tried.
The Boston paper my husband subscribed to, however, told a different story of Mr. Island's exploits, stories of which I did not have the heart to relate to Lydia. One evening, as the bitter November wind lashed rain against our windows, Mr. Grindle and I sat in the parlor, he with his paper, me with wool and needles. I was knitting a pair of mittens for my little niece.
The house groaned with the wind, and the fire spat and hissed like an angry cat as rain seeped down the chimney. Over the cacophony, I heard my husband grumble at the paper.
"What is it?" I asked him.
He snapped the paper in his hands. "Our Mr. Island has made friends with every industrialist in Boston."
"This is good."
"Humph. Just so long as he doesn't sell any secrets of my ship engines." Mr. Grindle stroked his mustache. "It says here that though Joseph was well received by society people, he faced much heckling and ridicule while speaking. Apparently it is generally believed he is suffering from delusions borne of reading Jules Verne, that he is malformed not only physically but he is quite mad as well." He looked up at me. "Was he reading Jules Verne?"
"I do not think he could read our language, or French, for that matter." I found the account very dispiriting, for I knew Mr. Island only for the kind fellow he was. Unusual, yes, but certainly not mad.
"Hmm. Well, in any case, he has created quite a sensation." Mr. Grindle read on and tsked.
I dropped my knitting into my lap. "Go on, George Grindle, what else does the paper tell you?"
"His audiences could not endure his foreignness, apparently. They hurled rotten vegetables at him." He paused again, brows raised. "What in Heaven's name would possess Joseph to endorse woman's suffrage?"
I wondered if Mr. Island's poor reception was the result of his foreignness, as my husband put it, or because he endorsed suffrage. Miss Susan Anthony received similar treatment for the cause.
"It says here," Mr. Grindle said, "that Lucy Stone does not wish to associate the cause with Joseph Island."
I was not surprised. She did little to associate with Mrs. Stanton and those of a more radical mind either. A gust of wind rattled the windows and I sighed. It would be a long winter. More so for Lydia Pendleton.
* * * * *
Mr. Island returned from his tour months early. Snow frosted the blocky granite shore the day he and Dr. Hutchinson drove in on a sleigh in early January. It was a bright blue day but frigid. Frigid down to the marrow.
Lydia ran to welcome them home and Mr. Grindle and I followed. Her enthusiastic greeting was cut short by a gasp of shock. Mr. Island disembarked from the sleigh painstakingly and stiffly. He stood more bent than ever and, though it was difficult to tell beneath the buffalo robe he wrapped about himself, he appeared fragile.
He greeted Lydia with a feeble smile, and Dr. Hutchinson hastened to support him. Lydia grabbed his other side. He took mincing footsteps to the doctor's house. My husband and I glanced at one another and followed behind.
In a flurry of a ragged and patched coat, Isaiah Fernald rounded the doctor's house. He'd been turned out of the keeper's house in late November by the Lighthouse Service. Where he lived no one knew exactly, though some spoke of a hermit taking refuge in an old fish shack on Barred Cove. Tilda and the girls removed to Castine, where Tilda still had family. No one spoke of it though it was known.
"YOU!" Isaiah shouted at Mr. Island, a plume of steam issuing from his mouth. He slipped on some ice to his knees. He gripped an empty bottle.
"Izaiah," Mr. Island said, barely above a whisper.
"Your fault."
We could tell by Isaiah's drawl and inability to stand erect that he'd been at the rum.
"Your fault," Isaiah repeated. "Your fault I've lost it all. My lighthouse. My . . . my little girls." He sobbed into his hands, oblivious to the snow soaking through his trousers. We watched the spectacle, entranced.
Mr. Island reached out with a gloved hand. I had knitted the gloves at Lydia's request, the only time, I daresay, that I'll ever knit gloves with only three fingers.
"Izaiah," he whispered. He reached. His hand trembled.
"Your fault!" Isaiah staggered to his feet and lobbed his bottle at Mr. Island.
Lydia would've shielded Mr. Island if she could have reacted quickly enough. None of us could. The bottle shattered on his shoulder. Splinters of glass glinted on his turned cheek.
"Scoundrel," my husband muttered. "I will take care of Isaiah. You get Joseph into the house." Isaiah lay in a crumpled heap in the snow, and m
y husband grabbed him by the collar.
We bustled our ill friend into the back bedroom he had occupied before beginning his travels. I caught his eyes once. They had lost the luster I remembered. They brimmed with creamy tears. At least, I took them for tears. So many things about Mr. Island were strange that it was difficult to know.
And after that episode, I knew Lydia's tears. She desperately wished to help him if she could.
He gazed at her in a dispirited way and in a quavering voice said, "Leave, pleeze. Leave."
Weeks passed before he would see anyone. Eventually he did summon Mr. Grindle and me. We arrived in the Hutchinson parlor to find him draped in a shawl and sipping tea by the fire. He looked better than on that first day of his return but still fragile and weary. A greenish discoloration encircled his eyes and mouth.
Margarite served us tea, and after Mr. Island assured himself of our well-being, he said, "I need my ship. I need my island, or elze I do not get well."
Mr. Grindle squirmed in his chair. "I am sorry," he said. "As you know, winter is a treacherous time to work. The cost of labor is inordinate at this time of year."
"I am rich," Mr. Island said. "Very rich. I show them, them in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, how to make macheenze. Macheenze that work better. Monee is not a factor."
"The weather is."
Mr. Island nodded. "Neverthelezz, we begin."
I took turns with Lydia and Mrs. Hutchinson watching over Mr. Island in his weakened state. At first he made a go of it, fighting the illness, but soon he was bedridden. He wrote frequently in his logbook and consulted with my husband on the salvaging of his ship. When my husband wasn't available, he pressed me.
"Meezus Grindle, what progress do they make?" He lay covered by quilts and blankets, but still, chills racked his body.
I pushed the velvet drapes aside from the window that overlooked the harbor. Snow swirled outside. A chickadee hopped from one swaying branch to another. "It appears they've rigged a platform, but the seas are too rough to erect it this day." I turned away from the drafty window and adjusted my shawl.
"I fear I will not make it through the winter." Indeed, the sickly green discoloration mottled his cheeks. A cure for his illness proved beyond Dr. Hutchinson's powers. "I fear I will not see my home again. My ship, it will not be salvaged."
Lydia entered to take the night watch. She stirred the embers of the fireplace and sparks shot up the chimney. "Of course it will be," she said. "And you will take me to Evanonway."
Her words, though brave, belied desperation as if all her optimistic energy might imbue him with the strength to go on.
"Dear, dear Lydia," he said. "I wish it, but Evanonway is too far for you. Too far."
Lydia knelt beside his bed. She placed her mittened hand over his and used the other to brush his wispy hair away from his face. "You will improve, Joseph, and then we shall discuss it. But now you need rest. I will watch you throughout the night."
They gazed at one another for a time without saying a word. I feared to move lest I break the spell. Finally, Lydia stood and bent over him. She pressed her lips to his brow in a chaste kiss. He caressed her cheek with his deformed hand. Before they remembered my presence, I slipped through the door. But even as I did so, their voices carried to me.
"Rest now, Joseph. You've all my love. Rest now."
"In Evanonway," he replied, "we say, arem, mi doran. You make me alive."
* * * * *
May brings all seasons to Maine, the warmth of summer sun and the frosty breath of latent winter in the wind. With May comes the thawing of the earth.
I inhaled the mixed scents of freshly turned soil and sea air. Gulls wheeled overhead, and the sails of fishing sloops dotted the cobalt bay. Mr. Island's derricks, mounted on the platform by Heddybemps Rock, stood unmanned, lifeless.
I wound my hands in my shawl and stood leeward of Mr. Grindle. The cemetery rises on a high spot above our village and few trees protect it from the scouring of the wind.
Reverend Foster stood with his head bowed over Mr. Island's grave. The wind snatched words of prayer from his lips and whipped them past my ears.
Mr. Grindle purchased the headstone and had it engraved upon it simply, "Here rests Joseph Island, far from home, a mariner, died March 20, 1870, of illness." A saber and flag were carved in relief above the words on a headstone left unused after the war. When I protested, my frugal husband chastised me. "Joseph was a traveler, an explorer. Do you think his courage any less than that of our Union soldiers?"
Dr. Hutchinson had donated the plot, very near where his ancestor, Joseph Hutchinson, reposed in eternal sleep.
Lydia looked out to the ocean, and what she saw, I could not say. Her face, thin and white from the exertion of nursing Mr. Island through the long, dark winter, was without expression. No tears traced her cheeks. Her grief had been silent all along.
The good citizens of Schooner Harbor had donned black and gathered as once they did one October evening. This time it was not to greet the stranger from far away but to bid him farewell. My husband knelt to the ground and took up some loose soil. He sprinkled it on the pine coffin. Others followed his lead.
Earlier I had plucked starflowers, so tiny and white and sturdy in the uncertainty of May, and I planned to leave them by his stone.
I stopped by the edge of the grave, reflecting on Mr. Island's time with us. It had been less than a year, but his influence went well beyond Schooner Harbor, with his clever knowledge of machines. I suspected our world would never be the same again.
But for me? I had simply lost a friend. I had been able to see beyond his misshapen appearance, beyond his foreignness, and see the kind soul within. I believe it was so for most in our small village.
I looked for Lydia in the crowd, grateful so many had assembled to say their good-byes, but she was walking away. The flowers fell from my fingers and I slipped between my husband and the reverend. Miss Richardson, weeping openly, grasped my arm and squeezed it.
"Time, my dear, will heal all wounds."
I loosed myself from the spinster. By this time, Lydia was at the bottom of the cemetery path, had passed through the wrought iron gate, and was striding in the direction of the lighthouse. I hoisted my skirts up and struck out after her.
"What is wrong?" my husband called after me. "Are you overcome?"
For perhaps the first time since we had met, I ignored my husband. Mr. Grindle means well, but he seldom understands the workings of a woman's heart. It was not mine I was thinking of, rather Lydia's. It was too soon to contemplate another burial.
Lydia flew along the road without impediment while I mired in the mud. Chin up and back held straight, she hurried ever faster, ever out of reach. Mud sucked at my ankles. I despaired of catching up with her before it was too late.
She entered the lighthouse grounds. She passed the keeper's house with its boarded windows, passed the light tower in need of a whitewash. I, too, entered the grounds, and only then did the gap between us close.
I found her standing on the very edge of Schooner Head's cliff face. I trembled and panted, but she stood calm as she overlooked the frothing sea far below, calm as though she had floated there to fulfill her dreadful purpose.
"Lydia, dear," I said.
"Do you know, he once pointed to the moon and called it an island? He said there were more islands than we knew over greater expanses than we could fathom."
"Lydia—"
She turned wide brown eyes on me. "I want to be with him."
Her dark cloak slipped to the ground, and she teetered on the edge. In desperation, I must have leaped the yards that separated us. I clamped my hands around her arm. She struggled and my insides roiled. I feared she'd topple the both of us over the edge.
"Lydia," I said, "do not do this. This is not what he would wish. Lydia, do you hear me? Joseph wished for you to go on. Who will remember him and his fate? Who will tell his people should they search for him?"
Something awakened in her, and she looked at me again. This time she saw me. "Yes. Someone must tell his people." She fell to her knees weeping. My own, weak from preventing this near lover's leap, sank into the earth. I folded Lydia in my arms.
"We shall not speak of this to anyone, Lydia," I said. "We must go on as best we can. Cherish his memory, yes, but live on." I stroked her hair, which spilled out from beneath her bonnet, and whispered any comforting platitudes I could think of till she calmed. In time, we separated.
* * * * *
We strolled in silence along the Shore Road toward the village. As we drew abreast of the Hutchinson home, the doctor stepped outside, still garbed in his mourning clothes.
"Lydia, one moment please." He carried a book.
"Yes, Dr. Hutchinson?" she asked.
"My dear girl, I know how fond you and Joseph were of one another. In fact, he spoke of you often."
A ghost of a smile played on Lydia's lips.
"I've a token for you. Joseph's logbook. He was my friend, poor fellow, but I think this would mean more to you."
Lydia received the logbook gently as if it might crumble in her hands. "Thank you, Doctor. It means so very much to me, really."
The doctor smiled, but his eyes remained sad. "It's as it should be. Joseph was a fine draftsman, but the written parts are in his own tongue." He tipped his hat and reentered his home.
Lydia opened the book to pages full of, what looked to me, gibberish. Knotted characters looped across the page. She leafed through the book, and there appeared drawings of plans for machines of some sort. Again, they proved nonsensical to me. Could these be the plans I saw Mr. Island poring over through the window months ago? The plans for retrieving his ship? Or plans of the ship itself?
One drawing was of an oblong object that reminded me more of a bird than an oceangoing vessel. Very foreign. Then I recalled Isaiah Fernald's story of rescuing Mr. Island, of his oar ringing against the hull of a strange ship.
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