Rockhaven
Page 4
CHAPTER IV
WHERE THE SEA-GULLS COME
Like a pair of Titanic spectacles joined with a bridge of granite, thetwo halves of Rockhaven faced the Atlantic billows, as grim and defiantas when Leif Ericson's crew of fearless Norsemen sailed into itsbeautiful harbor. With a coast line of bold cliffs, indented byoccasional fissures and crested with stunted spruce, the interior,sloping toward the centre, hears only the whisper of the ocean winds.
Rockhaven has a history, and it is one filled with the pathos ofpoverty, from that day, long ago, when Captain Carver first sailed intoits land-locked harbor to split, salt, and dry his sloop load of cod onthe sunny slope of a granite ledge, until now, when two stragglingvillages of tiny houses, interspersed with racks for drying cod, a fewuntidy fishing smacks tied up at its small wharves, and a littlesteamboat that daily journeys back and forth to the main land, thirtymiles distant, entitles it to be called inhabited. In that history alsois incorporated many ghastly tales of shipwreck on its forbidding andwave-beaten shores, of long winters when its ledges and ravines wereburied beneath a pall of snow, its little fleet of fishermenstorm-stayed in the harbor, and food and fuel scarce. It also has itsromantic tales of love and waiting to end in despair, when some fisherboy sailed away and never came back; and one that had a tragic ending,when a fond and foolish maiden ended years of waiting by hanging herselfin the old tide mill.
And, too, it has had its religious revival, when a wave of Bible readingand conversion swept over its poorly fed people, to be followed by asplit in its one Baptist church on the merits and truths of closecommunion or its opposite, to end in the formation of another.
It also had its moods, fair and charming when the warm south wind barelyripples the blue sea about, the wild roses smile between its graniteledges, and the sea-gulls sail leisurely over them; or else gloomy andsolemn when it lies hid under a pall of fog while the ocean surges boomand bellow along its rock-ribbed shore.
On the inner and right-hand shore of the secure harbor, a small fishingvillage fringes both sides of a long street, and at the head of theharbor, one mile away, stands another hamlet. The first and largervillage is called Rockhaven, the other Northaven. Each has its littlechurch and schoolhouse, also used for town meetings, its one or twogeneral stores, and a post-office. Those in Rockhaven, where fishing isthe sole industry, are permeated with that salty odor of cured fish,combined with tar, coffee, and kerosene; and scattered over the interiorare a score of modest farmhouses.
At one end of the harbor, and where the village of Northaven stands, anatural gateway of rock almost cuts off a portion of the harbor, andhere was an old tide mill, built of unhewn stone, but now unused, itsroof fallen in, its gates rotted away, and the abutments that once heldit in place now used to support a bridge.
On one of the headlands just north of Rockhaven village, and known asNorse Hill, stands a peculiar structure, a circular stone tower open atthe top and with an entrance on the inner or landward side. Traditionsays this was built by the Norsemen as a place of worship. Beyond thishill, at the highest point of the island, is a deep fissure in thecoast, ending in a small open cave above tidewater and facing the south.This is known as the Devil's Oven. On either side of this gorge, andextending back from it, is a thicket of stunted spruce. The bottom andsides of this inlet, semicircular in shape, are coated thick withrockweed and bare at low tide. On the side of the harbor oppositeRockhaven, and facing it, is a small granite quarry owned andoccasionally operated by one of the natives, a quaint old bachelor namedJesse Hutton. In summer, and until late in the fall, each morning asmall fleet of fishing craft spread their wings and sail away, to returneach night. On the wharves and between most of the small brown housesback of them, are fish racks of various sizes, interspersed with tinysheds built beside rocks, old battered boats, piles of rotting nets,broken lobster pots, and a medley of wrack of all sorts and kinds,beaten and bleached by the salty sea.
In summer, too, a white-winged yacht, trim and trig, with her brassrails, tiny cannon, and duck-clad crew, occasionally sails into theharbor and anchors, to send her complement of fashionablepleasure-seekers ashore. Here they ramble along the one main street,with its plank walk, peeping curiously into the open doors and windowsof the shops, at the simply clad women and barefooted children who eyethem with awe. Each are as wide apart from the other as the poles intheir dress, manners, and ways of living, and each as much a curiosityto the other.
Of the social life of the island there is little to be said, for it isas simple as the garb of its plain people, who never grow rich and areseldom very poor. Each of the two villages is blessed with a diminutivechurch, Baptist in denomination, the one at Rockhaven the oldest andknown as Hard-Shell; that at Northaven as Free-Will. Each calls togethermost of the womenkind and grown-up children, as well as a few of themen, every Sunday, while the rest of the men, if in summer, loungearound the wharves smoking and swapping yarns. There is no greatinterest in religion among either sex, and church attendance seems morea social pleasure than a duty.
Occasionally a few of the young people will get together, as young folksalways do, to play games; and though it is in the creed of both churchesthat dancing is to be abjured, nevertheless old Jess Hutton, whosefiddle was his wife, child, and sole companion in his solitude, wasoccasionally induced to play and call off for the lads and lasses of thetown, with a fringe of old folks around the walls as spectators.
"I like to see 'em dance," he always said, "fer they look so happy whenat it; 'sides, when they get old they won't want to. Dancin's as nat'ralto young folks as grass growin' in spring."
Every small village has its oracle, whose opinion on all matters passescurrent as law and gospel, whose stories and jokes are repeated by all,and who is by tacit consent chosen moderator at town meetings, holds theoffice of selectman and chairman of the school committee for life, isaccepted as referee in all disputes, and the friend, counsellor, andadviser of all. Such a man in Rockhaven was Jesse Hutton. Though heargued with the Rev. Jason Bush, who officiated at Rockhaven on Sundays,about the unsocial nature of close communion, and occasionally met andhad a tilt with the Northaven minister, he was a friend to both.
"Goin' to church and believin' in a futur'," he would say, "is jest asnecessary to livin' and happiness as sparkin' on the part of young folksis necessary to the makin' o' homes."
For Jesse Hutton, or simply Jess, as old and young called him, was inhis way a bit of a philosopher, and his philosophy may be summed up bysaying that he had the happy faculty of looking upon the dark side oflife cheerfully. It also may be said that he looked upon the cheerfulside of life temperately.
And here it may be prudent to insert a little of Jess Hutton's history.He was the elder of two brothers, schoolboys on the island when itspopulation numbered less than one hundred, and one small brownschoolhouse served as a place of worship on Sundays as well as a templeof learning on week-days. Here the two boys Jesse and Jethro, receivedscant education, and at the age of fourteen and sixteen, respectively,knew more about the sailing of fishing smacks and the catching andcuring of cod and mackerel than of decimal fractions and the rule ofthree.
And then the Civil War came on, and when its wave of patriotism reachedfar-off Rockhaven, Jess Hutton, then a sturdy young man, enlisting inthe navy under Farragut, served his country bravely and well. Then Jesscame back, a limping hero, to find his brother Jethro deeply in lovewith pretty Letty Carver, for whom Jess had cherished a boyishadmiration, and in a fair way to secure a home, with her as a chiefincentive. Jess made no comment when he saw which way the wind blew inthat quarter, but, philosopher that he was, even then, quietly butpromptly turned his face away from the island and for a score of yearsRockhaven knew not of his whereabouts. Gossips, recalling how he andLetty, as grown-up school children, had played together along the sandybeach of the little harbor or by the old tide mill, then grinding itsgrist, asserted that Jess had been driven away by disappointment; butbeyond surmise they could not go, for to no one did he i
mpart one wordof his reasons for leaving the island and the scenes of his boyhood.
Twenty years later, Letty Carver, who had become Mrs. Jethro Hutton, wasleft a widow with one child, a little girl named Mona, a small whitecottage on Rock Lane, and, so far as any one knew, not much else.
And then Jess Hutton returned.
Once more the gossips became busy with what Jess would or should do,especially as he seemed to have brought back sufficient means to at oncebuild a respectable dwelling place, the upper half fitted for a domicileand the lower for a store.
But all surmise came to naught, together with all the well-meant andexcellent domestic paths mapped out by the busybodies for Jess and thewidow to follow, for when the combination house was done and the storestocked, Jess Hutton attended regularly to the latter and keptbachelor's hall in the former; and though he was an occasional caller atthe cottage in Rock Lane and usually walked to church with the widow andlittle Mona on Sundays, the store and its customers by day or night werehis chief care, and his solitary home merely a place to sleep in. Andyet not; for beyond that, during his many years of wandering on themainland, he had contracted the habit of amusing himself with theviolin when lonesome, and Jess, the eccentric old bachelor, as sometermed him, and his fiddle became a curiosity among the odd and yetsimple people of Rockhaven. Then, too, the little girl, Mona, his niece,became, as she grew up, his protegee and care, and he her oneinseparable friend and adviser.