Fog Magic

by Julia L. Sauer

  “Mrs. Cornwall’s in command of her,” he went on.

  “Mrs. Cornwall! Laleah Cornwall!” They couldn’t believe it. She was no seafaring woman. This was her first voyage. She had gone as a bride from this very town on her honeymoon to the Far East. Even the children could remember the gay wedding not two years before. Captain Cornwall had at last won the bride that he had courted between voyages for twenty years.

  To Greta the names “Cornwall” and “Laleah Cornwall” seemed familiar. Where had she heard them? There was no one of that name living in Little Valley. But she stopped wondering to listen to the people around her.

  “But the Cap’n? Where’s he?” voices asked.

  “Cap’n Cornwall died aboard ship. He died in the roadstead of Bombay,” Mr. Morehouse continued slowly.

  “But why’s Laleah Cornwall bringing the vessel home? Where’s the mate?” someone asked quickly.

  “Young Eldridge, the mate, is my wife’s cousin,” another added.

  “There’s been trouble aboard.” There was complete silence as the old man went on. “Cap’n Cornwall died in his own cabin. But he died of—of yellow fever. The mate wanted to bury him at sea as was right and proper. And then, I reckon, Laleah Cornwall went mad. You can understand how it’d be. She’d been married but a few months. Well, she got hold of the Cap’n’s pistols and she threatened to kill every man in the crew if they didn’t do her bidding. She swore she’d bring the Cap’n home for Christian burial in her family plot. There was no sense to it, of course, but she held the only firearms aboard. She meant what she said. And they knew it.

  “Young Eldridge was between the devil and the deep sea—a crazed woman holding two guns on him and a crew well-nigh out of its wits with terror as long as the Cap’n’s body was aboard. But he played a man’s part, I’ll say that for him, and he thought fast. He thought up a plan and he persuaded Laleah Cornwall to agree to it. Between them he and the ship’s carpenter got the Cap’n sewed up in sailcloth; they lashed the body in the ship’s longboat and they towed the Cap’n home. Young Eldridge says that Mrs. Cornwall never put her guns down until they were cleared for the open sea; and she kept vigil over that line for days for fear somebody’d cut the longboat loose. I guess after a time she must have let down a bit. She could see the crew was content—as long as there was a line between them and the longboat. It would have been a different story, though, if anybody else had been struck down with the fever. That would have started the panic all over again. She’s quiet enough now,” he added. “She’s a broken-hearted woman, and sort of dazed from all she’s been through. But she’s clear enough in her mind. And she wants to bury the Cap’n in her family’s plot rather than where his folks lie. Ru pert, Burpee, and the rest of us here have agreed to let her. There’s no danger now after the months the longboat’s been tossing in the tropic sun. But we’ll send someone down the shore to ask Dr. Ingraham for certain so the womenfolk won’t fret about the children.”

  There was no unwillingness, only murmurs of sympathy. The men broke up into groups to discuss it and make plans.

  “Like as not Laleah Cornwall will feel more comfortable in her own home,” one said. “I’ll go tell the womenfolk. My wife and some of the others can get her house open and aired out before Laleah comes ashore.”

  “My wife’ll be glad to help,” said another. “A house that’s been closed for over a year is a gloomy place to come back to.”

  Mr. Morehouse gave directions. Young men were dispatched to row up the shore to Middle Harbour to carry the news of the Emmeretta’s homecoming. Others were sent down shore to tell the minister; and to ask if Doctor Ingraham thought it safe to bury a victim of yellow fever ashore.

  Only Greta could be quite sure of the answer they would bring back. Suddenly it had come to her why the names of the captain and his wife were so familiar. Over the mountain, in her own village cemetery, among the oldest headstones, were two that bore the names Captain Ansel Cornwall and Laleah Cornwall, Widow of Captain Ansel Cornwall.

  Retha and Greta trouped slowly back along the beach with the others. No one had heart to go back to work. Only from one small building on the shore came familiar sounds. The carpenter was already hard at work sawing up his best lumber. He was building a coffin for Captain Ansel Cornwall. When you build a vessel to go out to meet the sea, you put into it only the finest timber and the finest workmanship; the vessel must match the integrity of the men who sail it. Surely this last little barque, destined to withstand not the sea but the soil, must be fashioned with the same integrity. The helpless body sewn in sailcloth and lying out there in the longboat in the fog had come half around the world to rest in its native soil. It must have the finest coffin the carpenter could build.

  As they listened to the pounding, the older men were all thinking of the gay Cornwall wedding and that honeymoon to foreign lands. Laleah Cornwall had been proud and headstrong. Yes, and vain, too, the women always said. Only a vain woman would relish sending her lover off to sea again and again as she had done for the pleasure of seeing him come back faithfully at the end of each voyage. They wondered if it was regret for all the lost years that had driven the bride to such frenzied courage that she had dared to defy the crew and bring the Captain home. Well, she was a young woman still. There would be many years to regret the folly of her youth.

  But Greta knew better. Only she, in all Blue Cove, knew that on the tombstone in the cemetery the dates showed that Laleah Cornwall had survived her husband by less than a year.

  The next day in Little Valley was as foggy as the one before had been. Tollerton foghorn had not stopped its steady warning blasts once during the night. It was Sunday, too, and it should be the day of Captain Cornwall’s funeral.

  All during the morning Greta could not keep her mind from the drama going on over the mountain. She wanted, yet hesitated to go. Perhaps when she got there it would not be the “next” day in Blue Cove at all; perhaps there would be no reference whatever to the Emmeretta’s homecoming. But she had to find out.

  “I don’t like your going for walks on a Sunday,” her mother said.

  “Just this once, Mother,” Greta begged. “And I promise I’ll be back in plenty of time for Young People’s meeting.”

  At the fork Old Man Himion’s house showed plainly. But there was no smoke from his chimney and ahead of her, where the Old Road entered the spruce woods, she thought she saw his tall figure merge with the fog. Old Man Himion, too, was going to the Captain’s funeral.

  As she passed the Sentinel Rocks, Greta could see people coming up from the shore. They had come from up and down the coast in their boats and they were climbing the steep road from the wharf in solemn, hushed little groups. Unwilling to meet so many strangers, she walked slowly until they had all turned into the street. By the time she reached the clearing they were out of sight in the fog.

  She found Retha in the doorway with Princess in her arms. There were children in the other doorways, too, and they called to Greta in hushed voices. Anthony had crawled to his favorite spot inside the fence and he kept the babies he was minding very quiet.

  “Mother said I could stay outside until the procession leaves the church,” Retha told her. “Then I’m to go inside so as not to seem curious about others’ sorrow.”

  It was so quiet that they could hear the murmur of voices from the church at the end of the street. Princess had slipped down to curl gracefully on the stone doorstep.

  “So many of the things that happen here seem sad things,” Greta said finally.

  Retha looked at her in astonishment. “Isn’t there sorrow where you live?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Greta was forced to admit.

  “But less than here?” Retha wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. No—I guess not.”

  Retha seemed relieved. “My mother says that living and dying are such natural things that one shouldn’t be any more sorrowful than the other. Unless they are deaths because of a war. That�
��s different, of course. I mean, when—when people die that way it isn’t natural —or it isn’t part of what she calls everyday living. But, thank goodness, we don’t have to be afraid of war. There’s no need for our country ever, ever to have another war, is there?”

  Greta thought of the war that was shadowing the whole world and she groped helplessly for a reply.

  “But sometimes somebody else makes you fight when you don’t want to. You just have to fight,” she tried to explain.

  “That’s silly,” said Retha. “Nobody has to fight.” Greta knew she could never explain to Retha the riddle of her generation. She was relieved to see that the service was over. Through the fog came a slow procession.

  They slipped indoors and the other children did the same. Only Anthony stayed outside, peering through the pickets of the fence with his strange questioning eyes.

  It was a small procession that followed the coffin along the village street to the old Post Road and turned east to go over the mountain. Laleah Cornwall walked straight and proud in her widow’s weeds; friends and relatives followed, and the Emmeretta’s crew, awkward in their shore clothes, came at the end. When she was sure that she would be in no danger of overtaking it, Greta started home over the mountain.

  Late that afternoon, when the Young People’s meeting in her own church parlor was over, Greta slipped out into the cemetery and stepped quietly between the familiar graves. But there was no fresh mound there, unsodded and recent.

  9

  . THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE BALL

  GRETA often wished that she could hear more about the persons she met or saw or became interested in at Blue Cove. Sometimes things happened while she was there that were as exciting as a cinema and she felt as she did once or twice when she had had to leave before a picture was finished. Sometimes it was like stepping into a cinema near the end of a picture when she could only guess at all that had gone before. The Morrills were willing enough to answer questions, but often Greta had a queer feeling that even they might not know the answers. Perhaps she herself sometimes knew better than they. Surely this was true about Ann and it was true, too, about the widow of Captain Cornwall. Laleah. Cornwall was a favorite topic of conversation among the women who brought their knitting or mending over to Mrs. Morrill’s pleasant kitchen on foggy afternoons. At such times Greta would sit on the floor with Princess in her lap and listen as they discussed the widow Cornwall. Laleah was a rich woman now. She could even have as smart a pair of horses as Mrs. Trask’s if she wished. Would she marry again? they wondered, or would she be content to stay on in her girlhood home and grow old, another of the solitary widows with whom the province abounds? The tongues of her neighbors might have been softer if they had known that, worn out by genuine grief, she was so soon to follow the captain over the mountain to the cemetery on the other side. But only Greta knew that.

  There were some questions that Greta was sure her father could answer. What, for instance, had happened to the village of Blue Cove itself? Prosperous villages didn’t turn into a cluster of sod-covered cellar holes over night. If some persons in such towns made fortunes and moved away, there were always others to stay on and live and die in the homes of their fathers. But it was a question she could never ask.

  Perhaps the strangest part of all this queer and lovely experience was that she was sure in her heart that her father as a boy had known Blue Cove as she knew it. She had caught a look on his face sometimes when she had come home in the early dusk of a foggy day that was more than welcome. It was more like the way her mother had looked when Greta had come home once from a visit to grandmother’s—an eager look, begging for news of loved ones. Once, too, Father had brought some gentians from a trip inland.

  “ ‘Her eyes are as blue as the gentian,’ ” he quoted, and then added, “did you ever see eyes as blue as the gentian, Greta?”

  “Never except Mrs. Morrill’s,” Greta had answered without thinking and caught her breath for fear he would ask some embarrassing question. But he didn’t. Still, why had she been so sure that he heard and understood and was pleased? His only reply had been to tell her, quite casually, that the gentians would look well in the pink luster pitcher.

  But Greta seldom wasted time in wondering. She was busy and happy in clear weather. And if the strange fog —born as it was of the northern ice and the tropic sea —had a magic power to enfold her in another life, she saw no need to be anything but happy there, too.

  It was very pleasant to find Retha waiting for her at the Sentinel Rocks one day and looking unusually excited for such a quiet girl. “I just couldn’t have borne it if you hadn’t come today!” were her first words. “What do you think’s happened?” she went on. She gave Greta no chance to speak. “Mrs. Stanton is back from Halifax! She’s at Mrs. Trask’s and she’s coming over to tea!”

  Greta was just as excited. “Did she see the Duke of Kent?” she asked.

  “We don’t know, but she must have, because she looks so happy. Anyhow she laughed when Mother asked her. And now you’ll be here when she tells us about it! I’ve got to hurry right back. I promised Mother I’d butter the bread for tea. She will slice it because I never can get it thin enough, and you can help me butter it. We’ll need loads of it because everybody’s coming.”

  They raced on down the Old Road together and turned into the village street. Anthony was peering out between the pickets in his fence corner with such a piercing look that Retha stopped suddenly. She always treated him as if he could hear and understand.

  “Mrs. Stanton has come back from Halifax, Anthony,” she said distinctly and in that louder tone we always use to foreigners. “We don’t know for sure, but we think she got what she went after. Anyhow I’ll tell you tomorrow.” A little flicker of a smile lightened Anthony’s somber face. Greta could not tell whether it meant that he had understood or whether it was merely his response to a friendly gesture.

  Indoors Mrs. Morrill had opened the parlor and was putting little touches to her spotless house. The butter had been brought up from the cellar to soften, and preserves and dishes of candied ginger were set out. The delicate task of buttering the thin slices of soft bread kept both girls busy until after the guests had begun to arrive.

  All the neighbors were there who had been there on that Sunday afternoon when Mrs. Stanton had stopped on her way to Halifax. There were others besides so that the parlor was filled and some even sat in the kitchen. Mrs. Trask, impatient as always with any preliminary conversation, said briskly, “Well, Ardis, did you see the Duke?”

  Mrs. Stanton nodded happily. “Yes,” she said, “I saw him,” and paused.

  “Well, go on, Ardis Stanton!” Mrs. Trask bade. “We aim to hear more than that you stood and gaped at him. Even a cat can look at a queen.”

  Mrs. Stanton only laughed. “I must tell my story in my own way, Harriet Trask,” she said. “You always did hurry me. In school you stood better than I did and I always thought it was because you never gave me a chance to answer.” The others laughed, too.

  “Take your own time, Ardis,” Stella Denton said. “Like as not we’ll survive the suspense even if it doesn’t seem possible now.”

  “I reached Halifax pretty well worn out,” Mrs. Stanton began slowly. “But you wouldn’t be so much interested in what happened to me on the way. I walked most of it. Oh, I had a few rides but it seemed best to save what money I had for food and decent lodgings. At Annapolis Royal and at Windsor I had friends to stop with, so I could rest up and start Out fresh again.

  “I told you when I was here that I had a plan for seeing the Duke. I hardly dared hope it would work. But it did. Old Mr. Blackthorn, down on the Island, has a grandniece in service in Government House and he gave me a note to her. She turned out to be a pleasant girl and she promised to help me. Now this was my plan —somehow I had to get into Government House when there was a party; and somehow I had to be presented to His Highness. I knew there was no use in applying for an audience on business. I’d never h
ave got past all the guards and aides and secretaries with my clothes and my story—no, nor with my wrinkles, either. But I had one dress—my wedding dress. My grandfather brought that ivory silk all the way from China for my sixteenth birthday. He said then it was to be laid aside for my wedding dress. I remember Mother thought it wasn’t suitable and that it was too elegant, but when I came to get married two years later, Grandfather made quite a fuss. She finally let me use it.”

  “That was as lovely a length of silk as ever came out of the East, Ardis,” Mrs. Denton interrupted. “Captain Dakin must have enjoyed picking it out. But then he always favored you.”

  “I guess he must have,” Mrs. Stanton agreed. “I used to tell Mother she was just a mite envious of that silk. Of course, I knew she wasn‘t, but you know how proper she always was and how everything had to be what she called ‘suitable.’ And that ivory brocade, she said, was only ‘suitable’ for a court ball. Well, one day last winter when it seemed that I’d about reached the end of my strength, I went into my room and took my wedding dress out of the chest. It was the only pretty thing I had left and it used to rest me to sit and hold it. It took me back—but you know how that is. A dress you’ve worn and been happy in always gathers in and holds a sort of fragrance of happiness. I got to thinking how Grandfather and Mother had argued about using that silk for my wedding. All at once it came to me what Mother had said about its being suitable for a court ball. I made up my mind I’d see the Duke of Kent in that dress.”

  The women all laughed. Young Prince , Edward, Duke of Kent and the King’s own son, who had just come out to the province, had shown a marked preference for ladies who were beautiful. Even as far from Halifax as the islands off the Neck, stories of his taste for beauty had spread.

  “Well, I call that using the wits the Lord gave you,” Mrs. Trask laughed. “Go on, Ardis. How did you contrive to do it?”