Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

  “Don’t believe it; it ’s nothing but one great sponge for miles.—Steady up there; steady!”

  “Very well,” said Raymond, “so be it. If there is only the lighthouse, at the lighthouse we ’ll get off, and take our chances.”

  “You ’re surveyors, I suppose?” said the captain.

  Surveyors are the pioneers of the lake-country, understood by the people to be a set of harmless monomaniacs, given to building little observatories along-shore, where there is nothing to observe; mild madmen, whose vagaries and instruments are equally singular. As surveyors, therefore, the captain saw nothing surprising in our determination to get off at the lighthouse; if we had proposed going ashore on a plank in the middle of Lake Huron, he would have made no objection.

  At length the lighthouse came into view, a little fortress perched on spiles, with a ladder for entrance; as usual in small houses, much time seemed devoted to washing, for a large crane, swung to and fro by a rope, extended out over the water, covered with fluttering garments hung out to dry. The steamer lay to, our row-boat was launched, our traps handed out, Captain Kidd took his place in the bow, and we pushed off into the shallows; then the great paddle-wheels revolved again, and the steamer sailed away, leaving us astern, rocking on her waves, and watched listlessly by the passengers until a turn hid us from their view. In the mean time numerous flaxen-haired children had appeared at the little windows of the lighthouse,—too many of them, indeed, for our hopes of comfort.

  “Ten,” said Raymond, counting heads.

  The ten, moved by curiosity as we approached, hung out of the windows so far that they held on merely by their ankles.

  “We cannot possibly save them all,” I remarked, looking up at the dangling gazers.

  “O, they ’re amphibious,” said Raymond; “web-footed, I presume.”

  We rowed up under the fortress, and demanded parley with the keeper in the following language:—

  “Is your father here?”

  “No; but ma is,” answered the chorus.—“Ma! ma!”

  Ma appeared, a portly female, who held converse with us from the top of the ladder. The sum and substance of the dialogue was that she had not a corner to give us, and recommended us to find Liakim, and have him show us the way to Waiting Samuel’s.

  “Waiting Samuel’s?” we repeated.

  “Yes; he ’s a kind of crazy man living away over there in the Flats. But there ’s no harm in him, and his wife is a tidy housekeeper. You be surveyors, I suppose?”

  We accepted the imputation in order to avoid a broadside of questions, and asked the whereabouts of Liakim.

  “O, he ’s round the point, somewhere there, fishing!”

  We rowed on and found him, a little, round-shouldered man, in an old flat-bottomed boat, who had not taken a fish, and looked as though he never would. We explained our errand.

  “Did Rosabel Lee tell ye to come to me?” he asked.

  “The woman in the lighthouse told us,” I said.

  “That ’s Rosabel Lee, that ’s my wife; I ’m Liakim Lee,” said the little man, gathering together his forlorn old rods and tackle, and pulling up his anchor.

  “In the kingdom down by the sea

  Lived the beautiful Annabel Lee,”

  I quoted, sotto voce.

  “And what very remarkable feet had she!” added Raymond, improvising under the inspiration of certain shoes, scow-like in shape, gigantic in length and breadth, which had made themselves visible at the top round of the ladder.

  At length the shabby old boat got under way, and we followed in its path, turning off to the right through a network of channels, now pulling ourselves along by the reeds, now paddling over a raft of lily-pads, now poling through a winding labyrinth, and now rowing with broad sweeps across the little lake. The sun was sinking, and the western sky grew bright at his coming; there was not a cloud to make mountain-peaks on the horizon, nothing but the level earth below meeting the curved sky above, so evenly and clearly that it seemed as though we could go out there and touch it with our hands. Soon we lost sight of the little lighthouse; then one by one the distant sails sank down and disappeared, and we were left alone on the grassy sea, rowing toward the sunset.

  “We must have come a mile or two, and there is no sign of a house,” I called out to our guide.

  “Well, I don’t pretend to know how far it is, exactly,” replied Liakim; “we don’t know how far anything is here in the Flats, we don’t.”

  “But are you sure you know the way?”

  “O my, yes! We ’ve got most to the boy. There it is!”

  The “boy” was a buoy, a fragment of plank painted white, part of the cabin-work of some wrecked steamer.

  “Now, then,” said Liakim, pausing, “you jest go straight on in this here channel till you come to the ninth run from this boy, on the right; take that, and it will lead you right up to Waiting Samuel’s door.”

  “Are n’t you coming with us?”

  “Well, no. In the first place, Rosabel Lee will be waiting supper for me, and she don’t like to wait; and, besides, Samuel can’t abide to see none of us round his part of the Flats.”

  “But—” I began.

  “Let him go,” interposed Raymond; “we can find the house without trouble.” And he tossed a silver dollar to the little man, who was already turning his boat.

  “Thank you,” said Liakim. “Be sure you take the ninth run and no other,—the ninth run from this boy. If you make any mistake, you ’ll find yourselves miles away.”

  With this cheerful statement, he began to row back. I did not altogether fancy being left on the watery waste without a guide; the name, too, of our mythic host did not bring up a certainty of supper and beds. “Waiting Samuel,” I repeated, doubtfully. “What is he waiting for?” I called back over my shoulder; for Raymond was rowing.

  “The judgment-day!” answered Liakim, in a shrill key. The boats were now far apart; another turn, and we were alone.

  We glided on, counting the runs on the right: some were wide, promising rivers; others wee little rivulets; the eighth was far away; and, when we had passed it, we could hardly decide whether we had reached the ninth or not, so small was the opening, so choked with weeds, showing scarcely a gleam of water beyond when we stood up to inspect it.

  “It is certainly the ninth, and I vote that we try it. It will do as well as another, and I, for one, am in no hurry to arrive anywhere,” said Raymond, pushing the boat in among the reeds.

  “Do you want to lose yourself in this wilderness?” I asked, making a flag of my handkerchief to mark the spot where we had left the main stream.

  “I think we are lost already,” was the calm reply. I began to fear we were.

  For some distance the “run,” as Liakim called it, continued choked with aquatic vegetation, which acted like so many devil-fish catching our oars; at length it widened and gradually gave us a clear channel, albeit so winding and erratic that the glow of the sunset, our only beacon, seemed to be executing a waltz all round the horizon. At length we saw a dark spot on the left, and distinguished the outline of a low house. “There it is,” I said, plying my oars with renewed strength. But the run turned short off in the opposite direction, and the house disappeared. After some time it rose again, this time on our right, but once more the run turned its back and shot off on a tangent. The sun had gone, and the rapid twilight of September was falling around us; the air, however, was singularly clear, and, as there was absolutely nothing to make a shadow, the darkness came on evenly over the level green. I was growing anxious, when a third time the house appeared, but the wilful run passed by it, although so near that we could distinguish its open windows and door. “Why not get out and wade across?” I suggested.

  “According to Liakim, it is the duty of this run to take us to the very door of Waiting S
amuel’s mansion, and it shall take us,” said Raymond, rowing on. It did.

  Doubling upon itself in the most unexpected manner, it brought us back to a little island, where the tall grass had given way to a vegetable-garden. We landed, secured our boat, and walked up the pathway toward the house. In the dusk it seemed to be a low, square structure, built of planks covered with plaster; the roof was flat, the windows unusually broad, the door stood open,—but no one appeared. We knocked. A voice from within called out, “Who are you, and what do you want with Waiting Samuel?”

  “Pilgrims, asking for food and shelter,” replied Raymond.

  “Do you know the ways of righteousness?”

  “We can learn them.”

  “Will you conform to the rules of this household without murmuring?”

  “We will.”

  “Enter then, and peace be with you!” said the voice, drawing nearer. We stepped cautiously through the dark passage into a room, whose open windows let in sufficient twilight to show us a shadowy figure. “Seat yourselves,” it said. We found a bench, and sat down.

  “What seek ye here?” continued the shadow.

  “Rest!” replied Raymond.

  “Hunting and fishing!” I added.

  “Ye will find more than rest,” said the voice, ignoring me altogether (I am often ignored in this way),—“more than rest, if ye stay long enough, and learn of the hidden treasures. Are you willing to seek for them?”

  “Certainly!” said Raymond. “Where shall we dig?”

  “I speak not of earthly digging, young man. Will you give me the charge of your souls?”

  “Certainly, if you will also take charge of our bodies.”

  “Supper, for instance,” I said, again coming to the front; “and beds.”

  The shadow groaned; then it called out wearily, “Roxana!”

  “Yes, Samuel,” replied an answering voice, and a second shadow became dimly visible on the threshold. “The woman will attend to your earthly concerns,” said Waiting Samuel.—“Roxana, take them hence.” The second shadow came forward, and, without a word, took our hands and led us along the dark passage like two children, warning us now of a step, now of a turn, then of two steps, and finally opening a door and ushering us into a fire-lighted room. Peat was burning upon the wide hearth, and a singing kettle hung above it on a crane; the red glow shone on a rough table, chairs cushioned in bright calico, a loud-ticking clock, a few gayly flowered plates and cups on a shelf, shining tins against the plastered wall, and a cat dozing on a bit of carpet in one corner. The cheery domestic scene, coming after the wide, dusky Flats, the silence, the darkness, and the mystical words of the shadowy Samuel, seemed so real and pleasant that my heart grew light within me.

  “What a bright fire!” I said. “This is your domain, I suppose, Mrs.—Mrs.—”

  “I am not Mrs.; I am called Roxana,” replied the woman, busying herself at the hearth.

  “Ah, you are then the sister of Waiting Samuel, I presume?”

  “No, I am his wife, fast enough; we were married by the minister twenty years ago. But that was before Samuel had seen any visions.”

  “Does he see visions?”

  “Yes, almost every day.”

  “Do you see them, also?”

  “O no; I ’m not like Samuel. He has great gifts, Samuel has! The visions told us to come here; we used to live away down in Maine.”

  “Indeed! That was a long journey!”

  “Yes! And we did n’t come straight either. We ’d get to one place and stop, and I ’d think we were going to stay, and just get things comfortable, when Samuel would see another vision, and we ’d have to start on. We wandered in that way two or three years, but at last we got here, and something in the Flats seemed to suit the spirits, and they let us stay.”

  At this moment, through the half-open door, came a voice.

  “An evil beast is in this house. Let him depart.”

  “Do you mean me?” said Raymond, who had made himself comfortable in a rocking-chair.

  “Nay; I refer to the four-legged beast,” continued the voice. “Come forth, Apollyon!”

  Poor Captain Kidd seemed to feel that he was the person in question, for he hastened under the table with drooping tail and mortified aspect.

  “Roxana, send forth the beast,” said the voice.

  The woman put down her dishes and went toward the table; but I interposed.

  “If he must go, I will take him,” I said, rising.

  “Yes; he must go,” replied Roxana, holding open the door. So I ordered out the unwilling Captain, and led him into the passageway.

  “Out of the house, out of the house,” said Waiting Samuel. “His feet may not rest upon this sacred ground. I must take him hence in the boat.”

  “But where?”

  “Across the channel there is an islet large enough for him; he shall have food and shelter, but here he cannot abide,” said the man, leading the way down to the boat.

  The Captain was therefore ferried across, a tent was made for him out of some old mats, food was provided, and, lest he should swim back, he was tethered by a long rope, which allowed him to prowl around his domain and take his choice of three runs for drinking-water. With all these advantages, the ungrateful animal persisted in howling dismally as we rowed away. It was company he wanted, and not a “dear little isle of his own”; but then, he was not by nature poetical.

  “You do not like dogs?” I said, as we reached our strand again.

  “St. Paul wrote, ‘Beware of dogs,’” replied Samuel.

  “But did he mean—”

  “I argue not with unbelievers; his meaning is clear to me, let that suffice,” said my strange host, turning away and leaving me to find my way back alone. A delicious repast was awaiting me. Years have gone by, the world and all its delicacies have been unrolled before me, but the memory of the meals I ate in that little kitchen in the Flats haunts me still. That night it was only fish, potatoes, biscuits, butter, stewed fruit, and coffee; but the fish was fresh, and done to the turn of a perfect broil, not burn; the potatoes were fried to a rare crisp, yet tender perfection, not chippy brittleness; the biscuits were light, flaked creamily, and brown on the bottom; the butter freshly churned, without salt; the fruit, great pears, with their cores extracted, standing whole on their dish, ready to melt, but not melted; and the coffee clear and strong, with yellow cream and the old-fashioned, unadulterated loaf-sugar. We ate. That does not express it; we devoured. Roxana waited on us, and warmed up into something like excitement under our praises.

  “I do like good cooking,” she confessed. “It ’s about all I have left of my old life. I go over to the mainland for supplies, and in the winter I try all kinds of new things to pass away the time. But Samuel is a poor eater, he is; and so there is n’t much comfort in it. I ’m mighty glad you ’ve come, and I hope you ’ll stay as long as you find it pleasant.” This we promised to do, as we finished the potatoes and attacked the great jellied pears. “There ’s one thing, though,” continued Roxana; “you ’ll have to come to our service on the roof at sunrise.”

  “What service?” I asked.

  “The invocation. Dawn is a holy time, Samuel says, and we always wait for it; ‘before the morning watch,’ you know,—it says so in the Bible. Why, my name means ‘the dawn,’ Samuel says; that ’s the reason he gave it to me. My real name, down in Maine, was Maria,—Maria Ann.”

  “But I may not wake in time,” I said.

  “Samuel will call you.”

  “And if, in spite of that, I should sleep over?”

  “You would not do that; it would vex him,” replied Roxana, calmly.

  “Do you believe in these visions, madam?” asked Raymond, as we left the table, and seated ourselves in front of the dying fire.

  “Yes,” said Roxana; emphasis was unnece
ssary,—of course she believed.

  “How often do they come?”

  “Almost every day there is a spiritual presence, but it does not always speak. They come and hold long conversations in the winter, when there is nothing else to do; that, I think, is very kind of them, for in the summer Samuel can fish, and his time is more occupied. There were fishermen in the Bible, you know; it is a holy calling.”

  “Does Samuel ever go over to the mainland?”

  “No, he never leaves the Flats. I do all the business; take over the fish, and buy the supplies. I bought all our cattle,” said Roxana, with pride. “I poled them away over here on a raft, one by one, when they were little things.”

  “Where do you pasture them?”

  “Here, on the island; there are only a few acres, to be sure; but I can cut boat-loads of the best feed within a stone’s throw. If we only had a little more solid ground! But this island is almost the only solid piece in the Flats.”

  “Your butter is certainly delicious.”

  “Yes, I do my best. It is sold to the steamers and vessels as fast as I make it.”

  “You keep yourself busy, I see.”

  “O, I like to work; I could n’t get on without it.”

  “And Samuel?”

  “He is not like me,” replied Roxana. “He has great gifts, Samuel has. I often think how strange it is that I should be the wife of such a holy man! He is very kind to me, too; he tells me about the visions, and all the other things.”

  “What things?” said Raymond.

  “The spirits, and the sacred influence of the sun; the fiery triangle, and the thousand years of joy. The great day is coming, you know; Samuel is waiting for it.”

  “Nine of the night. Take thou thy rest. I will lay me down in peace, and sleep, for it is thou, Lord, only, that makest me dwell in safety,” chanted a voice in the hall; the tone was deep and not without melody, and the words singularly impressive in that still, remote place.

  “Go,” said Roxana, instantly pushing aside her half-washed dishes. “Samuel will take you to your room.”