The Lady of the Aroostook by W. D. Howells
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W. D. Howells >> The Lady of the Aroostook
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17 Produced by Eric Eldred, Earle Beach
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK
BY W. D. HOWELLS
THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK
I.
In the best room of a farm-house on the skirts of a village in the
hills of Northern Massachusetts, there sat one morning in August
three people who were not strangers to the house, but who had
apparently assembled in the parlor as the place most in accord with
an unaccustomed finery in their dress. One was an elderly woman with a
plain, honest face, as kindly in expression as she could be perfectly
sure she felt, and no more; she rocked herself softly in the haircloth
arm-chair, and addressed as father the old man who sat at one end of
the table between the windows, and drubbed noiselessly upon it with
his stubbed fingers, while his lips, puckered to a whistle, emitted
no sound. His face had that distinctly fresh-shaven effect which once
a week is the advantage of shaving no oftener: here and there, in the
deeper wrinkles, a frosty stubble had escaped the razor. He wore an
old-fashioned, low black satin stock, over the top of which the linen
of his unstarched collar contrived with difficulty to make itself
seen; his high-crowned, lead-colored straw hat lay on the table before
him. At the other end of the table sat a young girl, who leaned upon
it with one arm, propping her averted face on her hand. The window
was open beside her, and she was staring out upon the door-yard, where
the hens were burrowing for coolness in the soft earth under the lilac
bushes; from time to time she put her handkerchief to her eyes.
"I don't like this part of it, father," said the elderly woman,
--"Lyddy's seeming to feel about it the way she does right at the
last moment, as you may say." The old man made a noise in his throat
as if he might speak; but he only unpuckered his mouth, and stayed his
fingers, while the other continued: "I don't want her to go now, no
more than ever I did. I ain't one to think that eatin' up everything
on your plate keeps it from wastin', and I never was; and I say that
even if you couldn't get the money back, it would cost no more to
have her stay than to have her go."
"I don't suppose," said the old man, in a high, husky treble, "but
what I could get some of it back from the captain; may be all. He
didn't seem any ways graspin'. I don't want Lyddy should feel, any
more than you do, Maria, that we're glad to have her go. But what I
look at is this: as long as she has this idea--Well, it's like this
--I d'know as I can express it, either." He relapsed into the comfort
people find in giving up a difficult thing.
"Oh, I know!" returned the woman. "I understand it's an opportunity;
you might call it a leadin', almost, that it would be flyin' in the
face of Providence to refuse. I presume her gifts were given her for
improvement, and it would be the same as buryin' them in the ground
for her to stay up here. But I do say that I want Lyddy should feel
just _so_ about goin', or not go at all. It ain't like goin'
among strangers, though, if it _is_ in a strange land. They're
her father's own kin, and if they're any ways like him they're
warm-_hearted_ enough, if that's all you want. I guess they'll
do what's right by Lyddy when she gets there. And I try to look at it
this way: that long before that maple by the gate is red she'll be
with her father's own sister; and I for one don't mean to let it worry
me." She made search for her handkerchief, and wiped away the tears
that fell down her cheeks.
"Yes," returned the old man; "and before the leaves are on the ground
we shall more'n have got our first letter from her. I declare for't,"
he added, after a tremulous pause, "I was goin' to say how Lyddy would
enjoy readin' it to us! I don't seem to get it rightly into my head
that she's goin' away."
"It ain't as if Lyddy was leavin' any life behind her that's over and
above pleasant," resumed the woman. "She's a good girl, and I never
want to see a more uncomplainin'; but I know it's duller and duller
here all the while for her, with us two old folks, and no young
company; and I d'know as it's been any better the two winters she's
taught in the Mill Village. That's what reconciles me, on Lyddy's
account, as much as anything. I ain't one to set much store on
worldly ambition, and I never was; and I d'know as I care for Lyddy's
advancement, as you may call it. I believe that as far forth as true
happiness goes she'd be as well off here as there. But I don't say but
what she would be more satisfied in the end, and as long as you can't
have happiness, in this world, I say you'd better have satisfaction.
Is that Josiah Whitman's hearse goin' past?" she asked, rising from
her chair, and craning forward to bring her eyes on a level with the
window, while she suspended the agitation of the palm-leaf fan which
she had not ceased to ply during her talk; she remained a moment with
the quiescent fan pressed against her bosom, and then she stepped out
of the door, and down the walk to the gate. "Josiah!" she called,
while the old man looked and listened at the window. "Who you be'n
buryin'?"
The man halted his hearse, and answered briefly, "Mirandy Holcomb."
"Why, I thought the funeral wa'n't to be till tomorrow! Well, I
declare," said the woman, as she reλntered the room and sat down again
in her rocking-chair, "I didn't ask him whether it was Mr. Goodlow
or Mr. Baldwin preached the sermon. I was so put out hearin' it was
Mirandy, you might say I forgot to ask him anything. Mirandy was
always a well woman till they moved down to the Mill Village and began
takin' the hands to board,--so many of 'em. When I think of Lyddy's
teachin' there another winter,--well, I could almost rejoice that she
was goin' away. She ain't a mite too strong as it is."
Here the woman paused, and the old man struck in with his quaint
treble while she fanned herself in silence: "I do suppose the voyage
is goin' to be everything for her health. She'll be from a month
to six weeks gettin' to Try-East, and that'll be a complete change of
air, Mr. Goodlow says. And she won't have a care on her mind the whole
way out. It'll be a season of rest and quiet. I did wish, just for
the joke of the thing, as you may say, that the ship had be'n goin'
straight to Venus, and Lyddy could 'a' walked right in on 'em at
breakfast, some morning. I should liked it to be'n a surprise. But
there wa'n't any ship at Boston loadin' for Venus, and they didn't
much believe I'd find one at New York. So I just took up with the
captain of the Aroostook's offer. He says she can telegraph to her
folks at Venus as soon as she gets to Try-East, and she's welcome
to stay on the ship till they come for her. I didn't think of their
havin' our mod'n improvements out there; but he says they have
telegraphs and railroads everywheres, the same as we do; and they're
_real_ kind and polite when you get used to 'em. The captain,
he's as nice a man as I ever see. His wife's be'n two or three voyages
with him in the Aroostook, and he'll know just how to have Lyddy's
comfort looked after. He showed me the state-room she's goin' to have.
Well, it ain't over and above large, but it's pretty as a pink: all
clean white paint, with a solid mahogany edge to the berth, and a
mahogany-framed lookin'-glass on one side, and little winders at the
top, and white lace curtains to the bed. He says he had it fixed up
for his wife, and he lets Lyddy have it all for her own. She can set
there and do her mendin' when she don't feel like comin' into the
cabin. The cabin--well, I wish you could see that cabin, Maria! The
first mate is a fine-appearing man, too. Some of the sailors looked
pretty rough; but I guess it was as much their clothes as anything;
and I d'know as Lyddy'd _have_ a great deal to do with them,
any way." The old man's treble ceased, and at the same moment the
shrilling of a locust in one of the door-yard maples died away; both
voices, arid, nasal, and high, lapsed as one into a common silence.
The woman stirred impatiently in her chair, as if both voices had been
repeating something heard many times before. They seemed to renew her
discontent. "Yes, I know; I know all that, father. But it ain't the
mahogany I think of. It's the child's gettin' there safe and well."
"Well," said the old man, "I asked the captain about the seasickness,
and he says she ain't nigh so likely to be sick as she would on the
steamer; the motion's more regular, and she won't have the smell of
the machinery. That's what he said. And he said the seasickness would
do her good, any way. I'm sure I don't want her to be sick any more
than you do, Maria." He added this like one who has been unjustly put
upon his defense.
They now both remained silent, the woman rocking herself and fanning,
and the old man holding his fingers suspended from their drubbing upon
the table, and looking miserably from the woman in the rocking-chair
to the girl at the window, as if a strict inquiry into the present
situation might convict him of it in spite of his innocence. The girl
still sat with her face turned from them, and still from time to time
she put her handkerchief to her eyes and wiped away the tears. The
locust in the maple began again, and shrilled inexorably. Suddenly
the girl leaped to her feet.
"There's the stage!" she cried, with a tumult in her voice and manner,
and a kind of choking sob. She showed, now that she stood upright, the
slim and elegant shape which is the divine right of American girlhood,
clothed with the stylishness that instinctive taste may evoke, even in
a hill town, from study of paper patterns, Harper's Bazar, and the
costume of summer boarders. Her dress was carried with spirit and
effect.
"Lydia Blood!" cried the other woman, springing responsively to her
feet, also, and starting toward the girl, "don't you go a step without
you feel just like it! Take off your things this minute and stay, if
you wouldn't jus' as lives go. It's hard enough to _have_ you go,
child, without seemin' to force you!"
"Oh, aunt Maria," answered the girl, piteously, "it almost kills me to
go; but _I'm_ doing it, not you. I know how you'd like to have me
stay. But don't say it again, or I couldn't bear up; and I'm going
now, if I have to be carried."
The old man had risen with the others; he was shorter than either, and
as he looked at them he seemed half awed, half bewildered, by so much
drama. Yet it was comparatively very little. The girl did not offer to
cast herself upon her aunt's neck, and her aunt did not offer her an
embrace, it was only their hearts that clung together as they simply
shook hands and kissed each other. Lydia whirled away for her last
look at herself in the glass over the table, and her aunt tremulously
began to put to rights some slight disorder in the girl's hat.
"Father," she said sharply, "are Lyddy's things all ready there by
the door, so's not to keep Ezra Perkins waitin'? You know he always
grumbles so. And then he _gets_ you to the cars so't you have
to wait half an hour before they start." She continued to pin and pull
at details of Lydia's dress, to which she descended from her hat. "It
sets real nice on you, Lyddy. I guess you'll think of the time we had
gettin' it made up, when you wear it out there." Miss Maria Latham
laughed nervously.
With a harsh banging and rattling, a yellow Concord coach drew up at
the gate where Miss Maria had stopped the hearse. The driver got down,
and without a word put Lydia's boxes and bags into the boot, and left
two or three light parcels for her to take into the coach with her.
Miss Maria went down to the gate with her father and niece. "Take
the back seat, father!" she said, as the old man offered to take the
middle place. "Let them that come later have what's left. You'll be
home to-night, father; I'll set up for you. Good-by again, Lyddy."
She did not kiss the girl again, or touch her hand. Their decent and
sparing adieux had been made in the house. As Miss Maria returned to
the door, the hens, cowering conscience-stricken under the lilacs,
sprang up at sight of her with a screech of guilty alarm, and flew
out over the fence.
"Well, I vow," soliloquized Miss Maria, "from where she set Lyddy must
have seen them pests under the lilacs the whole time, and never said
a word." She pushed the loosened soil into place with the side of her
ample slipper, and then went into the house, where she kindled a fire
in the kitchen stove, and made herself a cup of Japan tea: a variety
of the herb which our country people prefer, apparently because it
affords the same stimulus with none of the pleasure given by the
Chinese leaf.
II.
Lydia and her grandfather reached Boston at four o'clock, and the
old man made a bargain, as he fancied, with an expressman to carry
her baggage across the city to the wharf at which the Aroostook lay.
The expressman civilly offered to take their small parcels without
charge, and deliver them with the trunk and large bag; but as he could
not check them all her grandfather judged it safest not to part with
them, and he and Lydia crowded into the horse-car with their arms and
hands full. The conductor obliged him to give up the largest of these
burdens, and hung the old-fashioned oil-cloth sack on the handle of
the brake behind, where Mr. Latham with keen anxiety, and Lydia with
shame, watched it as it swayed back and forth with the motion of the
car and threatened to break loose from its hand-straps and dash its
bloated bulk to the ground. The old man called out to the conductor
to be sure and stop in Scollay's Square, and the people, who had
already stared uncomfortably at Lydia's bundles, all smiled. Her
grandfather was going to repeat his direction as the conductor made
no sign of having heard it, when his neighbor said kindly, "The car
always stops in Scollay's Square."
"Then why couldn't he say so?" retorted the old man, in his high
nasal key; and now the people laughed outright. He had the nervous
restlessness of age when out of its wonted place: he could not remain
quiet in the car, for counting and securing his parcels; when they
reached Scollay's Square, and were to change cars, he ran to the
car they were to take, though there was abundant time, and sat down
breathless from his effort. He was eager then that they should not be
carried too far, and was constantly turning to look out of the window
to ascertain their whereabouts. His vigilance ended in their getting
aboard the East Boston ferry-boat in the car, and hardly getting
ashore before the boat started. They now gathered up their burdens
once more, and walked toward the wharf they were seeking, past those
squalid streets which open upon the docks. At the corners they
entangled themselves in knots of truck-teams and hucksters' wagons
and horse-cars; once they brought the traffic of the neighborhood to
a stand-still by the thoroughness of their inability and confusion.
They wandered down the wrong wharf amidst the slime cast up by the
fishing craft moored in the dock below, and made their way over heaps
of chains and cordage, and through the hand-carts pushed hither and
thither with their loads of fish, and so struggled back to the avenue
which ran along the top of all the wharves. The water of the docks
was of a livid turbidity, which teemed with the gelatinous globes of
the sun-fish; and people were rowing about there in pleasure-boats,
and sailors on floats were painting the hulls of the black ships. The
faces of the men they met were red and sunburned mostly,--not with
the sunburn of the fields, but of the sea; these men lurched in their
gait with an uncouth heaviness, yet gave them way kindly enough;
but certain dull-eyed, frowzy-headed women seemed to push purposely
against her grandfather, and one of them swore at Lydia for taking
up all the sidewalk with her bundles. There were such dull eyes and
slattern heads at the open windows of the shabby houses; and there
were gaunt, bold-faced young girls who strolled up and down the
pavements, bonnetless and hatless, and chatted into the windows, and
joked with other such girls whom they met. Suddenly a wild outcry rose
from the swarming children up one of the intersecting streets, where
a woman was beating a small boy over the head with a heavy stick:
the boy fell howling and writhing to the ground, and the cruel blows
still rained upon him, till another woman darted from an open door
and caught the child up with one hand, and with the other wrenched the
stick away and flung it into the street. No words passed, and there
was nothing to show whose child the victim was; the first woman walked
off, and while the boy rubbed his head and arms, and screamed with the
pain, the other children, whose sports had been scarcely interrupted,
were shouting and laughing all about him again.
"Grandfather," said Lydia faintly, "let us go down here, and rest a
moment in the shade. I'm almost worn out." She pointed to the open and
quiet space at the side of the lofty granite warehouse which they had
reached.
"Well, I guess I'll set down a minute, too," said her grandfather.
"Lyddy," he added, as they released their aching arms from their
bags and bundles, and sank upon the broad threshold of a door which
seemed to have been shut ever since the decay of the India trade, "I
don't believe but what it would have be'n about as cheap in the end
to come down in a hack. But I acted for what I thought was the best.
I supposed we'd be'n there before now, and the idea of givin' a dollar
for ridin' about ten minutes did seem sinful. I ain't noways afraid
the ship will sail without you. Don't you fret any. I don't seem to
know rightly just where I am, but after we've rested a spell I'll
leave you here, and inquire round. It's a real quiet place, and I
guess your things will be safe."
He took off his straw hat and fanned his face with it, while Lydia
leaned her head against the door frame and closed her eyes. Presently
she heard the trampling of feet going by, but she did not open her
eyes till the feet paused in a hesitating way, and a voice asked
her grandfather, in the firm, neat tone which she had heard summer
boarders from Boston use, "Is the young lady ill?" She now looked
up, and blushed like fire to see two handsome young men regarding
her with frank compassion.
"No," said her grandfather; "a little beat out, that's all. We've
been trying to find Lucas Wharf, and we don't seem somehow just to
hit on it."
"This is Lucas Wharf," said the young man. He made an instinctive
gesture of salutation toward his hat, with the hand in which he held
a cigar; he put the cigar into his mouth as he turned from them, and
the smoke drifted fragrantly back to Lydia as he tramped steadily and
strongly on down the wharf, shoulder to shoulder with his companion.
"Well, I declare for't, so it is," said her grandfather, getting
stiffly to his feet and retiring a few paces to gain a view of the
building at the base of which they had been sitting. "Why, I might
known it by this buildin'! But where's the Aroostook, if this is
Lucas Wharf?" He looked wistfully in the direction the young men
had taken, but they were already too far to call after.
"Grandfather," said the girl, "do I look pale?"
"Well, you don't now," answered the old man, simply. "You've got
a good color now."
"What right had he," she demanded, "to speak to you about me?"
"I d'know but what you did look rather pale, as you set there with
your head leaned back. I d'know as I noticed much."
"He took us for two beggars,--two tramps!" she exclaimed, "sitting
here with our bundles scattered round us!"
The old man did not respond to this conjecture; it probably involved
matters beyond his emotional reach, though he might have understood
them when he was younger. He stood a moment with his mouth puckered
to a whistle, but made no sound, and retired a step or two farther
from the building and looked up at it again. Then he went toward the
dock and looked down into its turbid waters, and returned again with
a face of hopeless perplexity. "This is Lucas Wharf, and no mistake,"
he said. "I know the place first-rate, now. But what I can't make out
is, What's got the Aroostook?"
A man turned the corner of the warehouse from the street above, and
came briskly down towards them, with his hat off, and rubbing his
head and face with a circular application of a red silk handkerchief.
He was dressed in a suit of blue flannel, very neat and shapely, and
across his ample waistcoat stretched a gold watch chain; in his left
hand he carried a white Panama hat. He was short and stout; his round
florid face was full of a sort of prompt kindness; his small blue eyes
twinkled under shaggy brows whose sandy color had not yet taken the
grizzled tone of his close-clipped hair and beard. From his clean
wristbands his hands came out, plump and large; stiff, wiry hairs
stood up on their backs, and under these various designs in tattooing
showed their purple.
Lydia's grandfather stepped out to meet and halt this stranger, as
he drew near, glancing quickly from the girl to the old man, and then
at their bundles. "Can you tell me where a ship named the Aroostook
is, that was layin' at this wharf--Lucas Wharf--a fortnight ago,
and better?"
"Well, I guess I can, Mr. Latham," answered the stranger, with
a quizzical smile, offering one of his stout hands to Lydia's
grandfather. "You don't seem to remember your friends very well,
do you?"
The old man gave a kind of crow expressive of an otherwise unutterable
relief and comfort. "Well, if it ain't Captain Jenness! I be'n so
turned about, I declare for't, I don't believe I'd ever known you if
you hadn't spoke up. Lyddy," he cried with a child-like joy, "this
is Captain Jenness!"
Captain Jenness having put on his hat changed Mr. Latham's hand into
his left, while he stretched his great right hand across it and took
Lydia's long, slim fingers in its grasp, and looked keenly into her
face. "Glad to see you, glad to see you, Miss Blood. (You see I've got
your name down on my papers.) Hope you're well. Ever been a sea-voyage
before? Little homesick, eh?" he asked, as she put her handkerchief to
her eyes. He kept pressing Lydia's hand in the friendliest way. "Well,
that's natural. And you're excited; that's natural, too. But we're not
going to have any homesickness on the Aroostook, because we're going
to make her home to you." At this speech all the girl's gathering
forlornness broke in a sob. "That's right!" said Captain Jenness.
"Bless you, I've got a girl just about your age up at Deer Isle,
myself!" He dropped her hand, and put his arm across her shoulders.
"Good land, I know what girls are, I hope! These your things?" He
caught up the greater part of them into his capacious hands, and
started off down the wharf, talking back at Lydia and her grandfather,
as they followed him with the light parcels he had left them. "I
hauled away from the wharf as soon as I'd stowed my cargo, and I'm at
anchor out there in the stream now, waiting till I can finish up a few
matters of business with the agents and get my passengers on board.
When you get used to the strangeness," he said to Lydia, "you won't
be a bit lonesome. Bless your heart! My wife's been with me many
a voyage, and the last time I was out to Messina I had both my
daughters."
At the end of the wharf, Captain Jenness stopped, and suddenly calling
out, "Here!" began, as she thought, to hurl Lydia's things into the
water. But when she reached the same point, she found they had all
been caught, and deposited in a neat pile in a boat which lay below,
where two sailors stood waiting the captain's further orders. He
keenly measured the distance to the boat with his eye, and then he
bade the men work round outside a schooner which lay near; and jumping
on board this vessel, he helped Lydia and her grandfather down, and
easily transferred them to the small boat. The men bent to their oars,
and pulled swiftly out toward a ship that lay at anchor a little way
off. A light breeze crept along the water, which was here blue and
clear, and the grateful coolness and pleasant motion brought light
into the girl's cheeks and eyes. Without knowing it she smiled.
"That's right!" cried Captain Jenness, who had applauded her sob in
the same terms. "_You'll_ like it, first-rate. Look at that ship!
_That's_ the Aroostook. _Is_ she a beauty, or ain't she?"
The stately vessel stood high from the water, for Captain Jenness's
cargo was light, and he was going out chiefly for a return freight.
Sharp jibs and staysails cut their white outlines keenly against the
afternoon blue of the summer heaven; the topsails and courses dripped,
half-furled, from the yards stretching across the yellow masts that
sprang so far aloft; the hull glistened black with new paint. When
Lydia mounted to the deck she found it as clean scrubbed as her aunt's
kitchen floor. Her glance of admiration was not lost upon Captain
Jenness. "Yes, Miss Blood," said he, "one difference between an
American ship and any other sort is dirt. I wish I could take you
aboard an English vessel, so you could appreciate the Aroostook. But
I guess you don't need it," he added, with a proud satisfaction in
his laugh. "The Aroostook ain't in order yet; wait till we've been
a few days at sea." The captain swept the deck with a loving eye.
It was spacious and handsome, with a stretch of some forty or fifty
feet between the house at the stern and the forecastle, which rose
considerably higher; a low bulwark was surmounted by a heavy rail
supported upon turned posts painted white. Everything, in spite of
the captain's boastful detraction, was in perfect trim, at least to
landfolk's eyes. "Now come into the cabin," said the captain. He gave
Lydia's traps, as he called them, in charge of a boy, while he led the
way below, by a narrow stairway, warning Lydia and her grandfather
to look out for their heads as they followed. "There!" he said, when
they had safely arrived, inviting their inspection of the place with
a general glance of his own.
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