For the rest of the day and into the evening, the odd sensation in Hannah’s feet seemed to creep up toward her ankles. Sometimes it felt like a delicate stirring, and at other times it was almost like a whisper, a liquid murmur. It did not interfere with her walking. If anything, she felt as if she were gliding just slightly above the polished wood floors and Oriental carpets of number 18. And despite the general uproar of the house over the missing cat, Hannah experienced a sense of calm and freedom. It was as if Jade’s disappearance brought a new serenity within herself and a newfound grace. She could not wait until her chores for the day were finished. It was Hannah’s turn to bathe first in the old cast-iron claw-footed tub that the serving girls shared, and she wanted to examine her feet.
Finally, at the end of the day, Hannah was alone in the water closet. The space was a stark one, with the slipper-shaped old tub and its lion-claw feet taking up the scant room. There was a single hook on which to hang one’s uniform and a small stool to place a bath towel. Hannah began to undress. She always removed the grosgrain pouch last. The pouch now contained the teardrop she had shed in the music room that had been mysteriously transformed on the painter’s lips into an iridescent oval like the others.
When she undressed she usually tucked the pouch into the deepest pocket of her dress. But tonight there was a slight alteration of her ritual. She took her pouch off first and did not tuck it away into the pocket. She could still feel the radiant spot on her chest as she opened the pouch. She peered in and gasped. She could see nothing but a luminous mist in the pouch. Panic seized her. Had the teardrop crystals dissolved, leaving only this cool vapor behind, like a last breath of some sort? Then once more she felt that whispering around her feet and quickly peeled off her stockings.
At first glance her feet and ankles looked as they always had—pale, slender with blue veins that crossed over the top and slanted toward her ankle bone beneath the white, nearly translucent skin. But then she spied something else. A netting, a fine filigree, was dimly visible. She bent closer. The pattern of the netting resembled lace, but the openings were not mere circles or diamonds. They were teardrops!
“What has happened here?” Hannah whispered as she looked at her feet and ran her hands over them. She opened the pouch again and peered in. The mist was still contained, but she could discern a few crystals—quite ordinary-looking actually, with none of the luminous glow of the vapor that surrounded them.
Twenty minutes later, after she had taken her bath and gone to bed, there was a soft rapping on her door.
“Yes.”
“It’s me, Florrie. Don’t mean to disturb you.”
“What is it?”
“Well, Daze and I are itching like crazy and the tub smells of salt—not those fancy kinds of bath salts that the Hawley girls use. Something stronger. Are you itching, too?”
“Uh…I didn’t use any bath salts.” Hannah shut her eyes tight and lied. “But, yes, I am itching. I wonder if somehow when the tub was cleaned, we didn’t dilute the borax and Javelle solution enough.”
“That’s probably it,” Florrie replied.
“Yes, probably.” But Hannah vowed that she would never again bathe first.
16 BEYOND WORDS
THE ELIZABETH M. PROUTY steamed out of Boston Harbor and angled north and east across Massachusetts Bay. As soon as they rounded Cape Ann, billowing seas rolled in from the east. “Oh, dear!” Susie sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Hannah turned to look at her. They were standing together on the deck.
“It always gets me when we round Cape Ann. It’s like the whole ocean comes swirling in, stirring up my innards.” A gray tinge had crept beneath Susie’s usually rosy complexion, draining her of color. “That’s open sea out there. The whole Atlantic,” she whispered.
Hannah was ecstatic at the view that so frightened Susie. But she was careful to conceal her enthusiasm. Since the evening before when she had bathed and discovered that filigree of teardrop lace, she had realized that a very strange shift had begun deep within her. She had checked her feet at least a half a dozen times since bathing. The change in them seemed to depend on the time of the day—sometimes it was more visible than others. But perhaps the strangest thing of all for Hannah was that although she felt herself moving away from all the things that she had once longed for, those things that would make her feel “fit and proper,” it no longer disturbed her. She felt that she was going toward something new, that she was on the brink of something a little bit frightening but at the same time, true.
She closed her eyes and let the rhythms of the sea wrap around her. It was not unlike the night that she first felt the vibrations of the harp strings traveling up through the din of the nor’easter to her bed. Now there was not a storm, but the roar of the steamship’s engines and the crushing sound of its prow slicing through the waves. Nonetheless Hannah was able to tease out the deeper rhythms and melodies of the sea that resonated like the music of the harp, but even more powerfully. And in that moment she knew that she could not only play the harp, but if she were swept from this deck into the sea, she could swim as well.
Deep within her soul, in her spirit, in her very muscle was an ancient music that sang like a memory as old as all the oceans. She would have to be patient, but she burned to know what was happening to her. She sensed that the painter knew. He was also part of this world, or he had been at some time. Of this, too, she was certain.
Before they had rounded the jutting cape, the air had been punctuated by the clanging of the occasional bell buoy or the mournful groan of a whistle buoy exhaling into the mist. But finally the coastline slipped away completely. They were truly on the open sea. Not a speck of land would be visible until much later that night, and only if the sky cleared and the moon and the stars were visible.
Hannah felt a strange and wonderful peace fill her, a harmony surging through the deepest recesses of her mind. She never went below to the tiny cabin that she shared with Daze and Susie and two serving girls from other Boston families. She stayed out all day and all through the night. The fog cleared, the stars broke out, and a slice of moon sailed high in the sky. On the horizon, she saw a mound rising from the sea. She walked forward to the bow rail. The sky at this time of night appeared not black but almost dark blue, with the sea gray against it.
“That be Isle au Haut,” said Sal, the friendly crew member who had been answering all her questions. “And you see that flickering to starboard?” Hannah squinted. She glimpsed something that appeared like a firefly popping up and down behind the horizon line.
“Yes, yes! I see it.”
“That’s the Mount Desert Rock Lighthouse. It be twenty miles or so south of Mount Desert Island.”
The night became a deeply radiant blue and within another few minutes a profile reared up from the sea.
“Green Mountain,” Sal said.
“And it’s on Mount Desert?” Hannah asked. “A mountain on a mountain!” She laughed.
“Yes, that’s Mount Desert. And that’s her mountain.” And that, Hannah thought happily, is the almost-proper island and I am going there!
Other islands and lighthouses began to appear like sentries along the sea path to Mount Desert. There was Long Island, the Cranberries, Great Duck Light, Baker Island Light. Most of these were given a wide berth as the Elizabeth M. Prouty plied the nowsmooth waters. They skimmed by one lighthouse island as they turned to port and entered Frenchman Bay. It was the last lighthouse before they landed, called Egg Rock Light.
They came so close, Hannah felt she could almost reach out and touch it. Built on a rocky ledge to mark the entrance to the bay, it was a homely lighthouse set in a half-story building, stolid and square with worn clapboards. A dormer projected from each of the four sides of the roof like a blunt beak. In the center of the building, an ungainly brick tower rose, which held the light. The island on which the house perched like a squat, flightless bird with its beak to the wind was scoured by the sea. There was hardly a
blade of grass, but the granite rocks sloped gently into the water.
As they sailed by, Hannah caught a glimpse of a girl standing at the edge of one rock looking longingly at the horizon. Hannah inhaled sharply. It was almost as if she were seeing a mirror image of herself. The girl was the same height and had a willowy build that seemed to bend into the breeze. But mostly it was the way the sunlight caught the girl’s hair. It was just after dawn and the reddish tones of her hair sparkled and seemed touched by a delicate greenish cast. In another few minutes the sun would be higher and Hannah knew that the girl’s long, blowing curls would erupt in a dazzling conflagration of red flames. She felt something quicken inside her.
It was all hustle and bustle as soon as they walked down the gangplank. It seemed as if the entire population had come to greet the Elizabeth M. Prouty. In the midst of the crowd a small bowlegged man was waving his cap and shouting, “Daze! Daze!”
“It’s my dad!” Daze exclaimed. And suddenly Hannah realized that indeed Daze’s peculiar accent was neither peculiar nor unique here. Everyone was speaking in those funny swooping rhythms, then chopping off the sound abruptly. And instead of saying yes, the word was a-yuh.
“This is Hannah, Dad.”
“A-yuh.”
“She’s ever so clever, and is really becoming more of an upstairs maid than just a scullery girl.”
“A-yuh.”
“And Susie came with us, and Willy, and the vases, of course.”
“A-yuh.”
And so it went. Daze’s father, Perl, was the groundskeeper and general handyman for Gladrock. He had brought with him two buckboards and three men to help with the loading of the vases, the dollhouse, and the steamer trunks of the Hawleys.
“We walk,” Daze explained. “It ain’t far at all.”
They followed a road through the village of Bar Harbor, which only consisted of the one main street, two hotels, a few cottages, and three churches. The wharves were piled high with lobster traps, and bobbing just off the wharves were dozens of skiffs, dories, sloops, and schooners with faded sails, many patched from old clothes. The strong scent of fish pervaded everything, and Hannah noticed mounds of cod left to dry in the sun. The air seemed to have a special brilliance on this morning, and Hannah gasped as they rounded each bend and saw a new finger of land stretching out into the bay.
Just on the edge of town they passed a general store called Bee’s.
“Oh!” exclaimed Susie. “We have to go in and buy some penny candy. They have the best penny candy here. And the chocolate drops are heaven.”
The three girls went into the store. It was crowded with people and Hannah noticed that not only did the people say a-yuh quite a bit, but everyone—from the first meeting—addressed females as “dear.” With the Maine accent the word was broken into almost two syllables and became de-ah.
Daze and Susie advised Hannah on what to buy. Hannah could not believe one little store could hold so much. In addition to candy and fresh vegetables—the first of the season—there were fancy cookies, pastries, writing paper and pens, mousetraps, oil for lamps, candles, beeswax, and honeycombs fresh from the hive. The store was filled now with “natives.” Daze had been quick to explain the different classes of people on Mount Desert. The natives were people like her dad and herself who had been born and raised on the island. The natives could now be heard discussing the “rusticators.” That was the term used for all the summer people, but not their servants, who were just called servants. But the rusticators were divided into the “mealers,” who rented houses and lived near enough to hotels to walk to the dining rooms, and the “hauled mealers,” who had to be driven in buckboards or pony traps because the distance was too far to walk. And then there were the “cottagers,” or summer people like the Hawleys who owned their own houses and had a staff of servants to cook, serve meals, captain their sailing yachts, take care of their gardens, and do anything else that might add to their summer enjoyment for the two or three months they spent on this not-proper island. The natives of Mount Desert were by and large fishermen. They fished for anything that swam in the sea, trapped lobsters, and dug in the mud flats for clams. They were rugged men and women. Many of the women served in the hotels and the cottages of the rusticators during the summer, as did their children and some of the men who no longer fished.
About ten minutes after the girls had left Bee’s, they turned into a wooded lane that dipped and wound through a pine and balsam forest. Hannah thought she had never smelled anything lovelier than the scent of salt air mingling with the tangy pungency of these trees. The path was covered with a thick layer of pine needles that muffled their footsteps and even softened the sound of voices. The lane then became more of a drive, which was composed of crushed shells—pinky orange ones of lobsters, purple mussel shells, and weathered clams. Suddenly a great, sprawling, gray-shingled house rose up from the greenest lawn Hannah had ever seen.
“A cottage!” Hannah exclaimed. “You call this a cottage? I’ve never seen anything bigger in my life.”
“I know,” said Susie. “The rich folks up here call their houses cottages for some reason. I’m not sure why. Maybe they think it makes them fit in somehow with the natives.”
“Just how would that be?” Hannah asked, almost laughing out loud.
The three girls made their way across the lush lawn. All around the house dozens of servants were scurrying about. Men were walking with two-wheeled carts, spreading something on the flower beds. Others were raking the lawn, some were clipping the hedges. As they walked up to the front door, two maids came running out. “Daze! Susie!” they called.
“We aren’t going in through the front door, are we?” Hannah asked.
“Oh, yes, the Hawleys won’t be here for a week. We can come and go as we please until then.”
But Hannah hardly heard, for she had just caught sight of the sea. She began to run across the lawn toward the water. Then she stopped stock-still. This was beyond her wildest dreams. Across a small sloping meadow there was the water, less than five hundred feet from the front door. The water nestled into a snug cove that opened onto Frenchman Bay and gave a view of Egg Rock Lighthouse and the islands beyond. Beyond that was the sea, the vast sea for thousands upon thousands of miles.
The next seven days were the happiest days Hannah had ever known. The bedroom she shared with Susie and Daze was tucked away high in the eaves of the house. Her bed was in a narrow dormer with a small round window that framed a piece of the water, two dark spruce trees, and a lavender rock that slanted into the sea. That was all she needed. Anytime she looked through the window, Hannah glimpsed the endlessly changing moods of the sea. All through the night she could hear its distant surge against the outer rocks and imagine the cresting waves she could not quite see.
All day she worked hard alongside Daze, Susie, and half a dozen island girls to get the house ready for the Hawleys. But in the early evenings, she would go down to the slanting rock and sit silently. Some days the fog was thick. “Thick as mud,” Daze’s father would announce when he came into the kitchen at six in the morning for his mug of coffee.
One evening, a few days before the family’s arrival, all the servants went into the village for a dance at the church hall. The natives’ church, not the fancier one where the rusticators went. Hannah had no desire to go. She much preferred to stay right at Gladrock and perhaps go down to her own “glad rock,” as she now thought of the lavender stone, which was much smaller than the huge granite expanse that the “cottage” was named for. She just had a bit more sewing to do on Ettie’s summer clothes and her bathing costume, which intrigued Hannah to no end. Ettie apparently was the only one of all the Hawleys who dared swim in the frigid Maine waters and she was only permitted to do this under the strict supervision of adults. Most of the rusticators, and especially the cottagers, swam at the swank tennis and swimming club in the saltwater swimming pool. But not Ettie.
Hannah wondered how in the world one ever man
aged to swim in such a costume. Made of wool, the outfit consisted of three-quarter-length trousers and a belted jacket. Beneath the trousers were striped stockings and then there were special lace-up bathing shoes. When she had finished stitching the hems on the trousers, which had to be let down two inches since Ettie had shot up quite a bit since the previous summer, Hannah thought she would go down to the cove and her rock. As she came down the stairs, she noticed that a door to a room she had not yet been in had been left partway open. She gently pushed open the door and walked in.
“Oh!” Hannah said softly. A harp stood by a tall window, illuminated by a stream of moonlight. This time there was not a soul in the entire house—no servant, no family, no Jade. The harp beckoned Hannah, just as the moon lures the tides. For only the second time in her life she eased a harp onto her shoulder. As soon as it touched, an energy coursed through her. She did not even think of the woman who played that night when she first heard the music. Her own fingers fell naturally on the strings. There was again a remnant torn from some ancient fabric, a memory of music that came to her as she began to play the strings.
A series of notes issued into the night and were suspended in the air, like bubbles, like silver drops of moonlight. Was it water or was it light? She had played those notes with her right hand but now tried it with her left, placing her fingers in a different position on the strings. The tones were deeper, darker, richer, but when she combined them with the ones she had coaxed from the strings with her right hand, a soft illumination seemed to suffuse the sound.
The seconds stretched into minutes. There were no interruptions.
It all came to her instinctively. Hannah did not know the names of the notes that her fingers brought forth. She did not know that for the first several minutes she had been exploring the scales, an arrangement of notes in an ascending and descending order of pitch, or that the striking difference she discovered between the intervals of notes in which sometimes the vibrations seemed to multiply and at other times diminish was a musical phenomenon known as an octave. She just felt it, just did it.
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