Calico Bush

by Rachel Field

  “They’ll make a straight wake for land every time,” the Captain assured them. “That calf’s strong enough now, an’ the sheep will follow.”

  Marguerite, Dolly, and the younger children were all put ashore in the small skiff. Joel and Captain Hunt went back to their tree-chopping, leaving Ira and Caleb to land the cattle. It was not so easy as they had expected. Marguerite and the children sat on a large rock near the beach and watched the efforts of Ira and Caleb to get the animals over the side. The sheep could be bundled over, though they struggled and squirmed desperately, but old Brindle was anything but manageable. It was necessary therefore to put the sheep over first. They swam inshore bravely enough, though it took a deal of running about before Marguerite and the twins could catch and bring them, draggled and dripping, to the tethering place. At last Ira and Caleb, despairing of getting the cow overboard, hit upon the plan of dumping the calf in first. This had the desired effect. Once the calf struck the water with loud cries, its mother was easily pushed over the side after it. But unfortunately the calf, instead of swimming toward the cove, struck out in the opposite direction. The cow, being thoroughly frightened by this time and confused with the struggle on board the Isabella B., seemed to lose all sense of direction and started swimming after her calf, both of them heading out into the open channel between shore and Sunday Island. The tide ran hard through there. It was well on the ebb, a fact which had been overlooked in taking this time for landing. Before the little group on shore could realize what had happened, a wide stretch of water showed between the pair and the boat. In spite of the iciness of the water they were swimming strong. Not only this, but in their flounderings as they went overboard, one of them had struck the dory tied alongside, overturning it and scattering the two pair of oars. Already Ira was letting himself down by the rope to right it again, but meantime old Brindle and her calf were making great headway.

  “Oh, oh, they’ll be drownded!” screamed the twins, jumping up and down wildly.

  Their mother stared after the animals despairingly, unable to muster a word.

  Marguerite could never be sure how she got into the skiff. She must have run along the beach, for a pebble flew up and struck her smartly on the cheek. It was many months since she had had a pair of oars in her hands, but she reached for one without hesitation and standing upright in the stern summoned all her strength for pushing off. The skiff rocked under her, grated over the pebbles, and then slid into the water. A confusion of cries was in her ears from those on land and those aboard the vessel, but she shook her head and bent to the oars, only glancing over her shoulder every now and again for a sight of the tawny bobbing heads.

  “Mon Dieu!” she murmured between set teeth, in a queer jumble of French and English. “They must not drown. Il faut les sauver!”

  But it was no time to waste breath on heavenly petitions. She had need of all she could muster. Once she had the skiff headed out into the channel the tide would help, but the animals were also being swept along by it. Then the oars were clumsy affairs, made to fit a man’s hands rather than her own thin brown ones. Nevertheless she gripped valiantly, bracing her bare feet against a wooden cleat till her toes ached with the pressure. Drops of sweat rose on her forehead and trickled down over her face. She felt them on her cheeks and lips as she tugged tirelessly at the oars.

  Now it seemed that she was gaining on the two a little. Then a new fear struck her. Perhaps the cow and calf were growing weaker. Maybe she would not reach them before they sank in that cold, cold water. She redoubled her efforts and the little boat shot forward. A few moments more and she could see Brindle and her calf clearly, their brown heads well out of water and their eyes rolling and panic-stricken. Since she had no rope with which to make them fast, even had she been skillful enough to get it about their necks, she decided to try and head them in the direction of Sunday Island, which lay a quarter of a mile or so beyond. If they continued to make for the channel and open water nothing could save them. So she brought the skiff as close alongside as she could, even thumping the calf with an oar and calling out to them with what breath was left her.

  The calf seemed nearly exhausted, and even old Brindle was swimming more slowly all the time.

  “Here, Boss—here, Boss!” she called, imitating Caleb’s manner as best she could and heading her bow towards the island. It seemed a long time before she saw to her relief that they were following her in. Ira and Caleb were now in the dory and would be there soon if only she could get the beasts safely into shallow water. Looking over her shoulder as she pulled she could see a cove, with a cleared field above it. Never had grass looked so green or beautiful to her.

  And then old Brindle’s brown shoulders reared themselves up from the water. That meant she had touched bottom. Another moment and Marguerite saw her struggling up the beach with the calf wobbling weakly after.

  “Oh, mon Dieu!” she breathed. “Merci bien!” and she let herself slump over the oars.

  She felt suddenly very weak and dizzy, and a queer ringing filled her ears as if gigantic seashells were pressed against them. She was only half aware of Ira Sargent, standing up to his waist in water dragging the boat inshore.

  “They are safe?” she managed to ask him faintly as he half lifted her out and set her high and dry on a tangle of beach pea-vines.

  “Yes,” he told her. “I couldn’t Ve headed ’em in better myself. You just lay here a spell and get your wind back.”

  She closed her eyes obediently. The sun was warm on her lids, and her heart pounded less violently. She could hear Caleb calling, “Here, Boss—here, Boss” and the tide shuffling the pebbles farther down. She would have felt very well content had it not been for the aching of her back and shoulders.

  And then she heard another voice mingled with Ira’s, a woman’s voice, high and lively as a bird’s.

  “Well, I never!” it said. “If I’d ’a known I was havin’ visitors I’d ’a been down to meet ye.”

  Marguerite opened her eyes to see a little old woman approaching. As grotesque as a crooked apple tree decked out in print calico, the little figure bent over her, peering down with bright black eyes in nests of crisscross wrinkles.

  “Mercy me,” she went on, her head with its smoothly parted gray hair tilting to one side oddly, “you ain’t an Injun, be ye?”

  Marguerite smiled a little wanly, but Caleb was by to speak up.

  “She’s French,” he said. “That’s ’bout the same.”

  “Well, that’s news to me,” she answered, her face breaking up into innumerable fine lines of kindly merriment. “All the same, I guess some milk an’ bread fresh out o’ the pan wouldn’t taste amiss after chasing those pesky critters all the way across. Oh, yes,” she added, with another wag of her head, “I seen you from the house an’ I lit out for shore quick’s I could.”

  Presently Marguerite found herself following the little figure up a footpath. Her breath still came short and she ached all over, but she felt that if this stranger had asked her to mount a precipice, she would have tried to do her bidding.

  “Hepsa Jordan, that’s my name,” she was telling them as they went towards the house in its square field. “I’m aunt to Seth and his son Ethan. Likely they told you.”

  She moved with a quickness that made the skirts of her print dress dip and billow about her ankles. Her feet stepped briskly in homemade slippers of cowhide as she led the way to the square-set house. With its wide boards of weathered gray and the sheds and outbuildings set so close, Marguerite thought it looked not unlike some gray old dam with her lambs. But it was the dooryard of gay flowers that made her breath come shorter, rather than the steep climb. It seemed nothing short of a miracle to find clove pinks, sunflowers, morning-glories, and even a cinnamon rose bush blooming in such a far place, and the girl’s exclamations of wonder pleased the old woman mightily.

  “Why, I wouldn’t feel I was settled proper without I had me a garden of posies,” she said. Then as she saw Margueri
te marveling at the rose bush, she added with a smile, “I fetched that slip clear from Boston myself. Seth he vowed ’twouldn’t catch on, but I knew better. It takes a dreadful lot to kill a rose bush.”

  “Like some folks, eh?” laughed Ira.

  “That’s the truth if you mean me,” she answered him. “I was past seventy-three when I told Seth I’d come here, an’ I ain’t been ailin’ a day since. That’s my loom an’ spinnin’ wheel in the shed yonder. When we shear our sheep the wool’s stored there an’ it’s there I dye an’ spin an’ do my weavin’. I’ve been a great hand at such work all my days. Seems a pity I’ve no woman person to help me with housework so I could keep at my weavin’ an’ patchin’ an’ herbdryin’. Yes, I tell Ethan it’s time he fetched home a wife.”

  Marguerite was to learn much that afternoon as they sat in the sunny kitchen eating warm cornbread from the pan just drawn out of the brick oven, drinking milk from pewter mugs that Aunt Hepsa said her mother’s people had brought with them from Scotland. Even pleasanter than the food and quiet of the kitchen was the old lady’s lively talk of herself and of their scattered neighbors.

  “Seth he tells me you’ve fetched along a regular snarl of young ones,” she said as she refilled their mugs, “an’ I said I wished as how he’d helped himself to a few. Eliza and Sam Stanley have got three, but they’re a good half-day’s sail to the west o’ your point. Then there’s the Morses, Hiram an’ Mary Jane. They’re a young pair, lately settled over to the head o’ Seal Cove with a year-old baby. They stayed over here with me when there was that Injun trouble in the spring. The Welleses they ain’t so far to the east o’ you, an’ there’s four o’ them—Nathan an’ Hannah an’ Timothy an’ Abigail. She’s smart, Abby is, ’bout eighteen by this time.”

  “An’ pretty into the bargain?” asked Ira with a laugh.

  “You’d best ask Ethan that,” she answered with a knowing nod. “He’s over to their place every chance he can get, an’ I doubt it’s for visitin’ with the old folks. Tim he’s pleasant-spoken an’ a good worker, but he’s crosseyed, poor fellow—born in the middle o’ the week an’ lookin’ both ways for Sunday, that’s how my mother used to call it.”

  They all laughed together over this, and a deep warmth and contentment settled over the kitchen. Marguerite sat in a happy daze, only half aware of the talk that flowed between the old woman and Ira. She felt as she had not felt since she and Grand’mère and Oncle Pierre had boarded that ship for the New World. She could not have explained it in words, but she felt that here was a place of enduring comfort; here were gray walls, pewter mugs, flowers as gay as those she had left across the water in Le Havre, and an old lady with kind, bright eyes whose knitting needles clicked in time to her own words.

  But presently it was time to go. The two Jordans came in from the woods and hearing the tale of the cow and her calf volunteered to help Ira get them across the channel. It was plain from their manner that they still disapproved of the Sargents’ settling on the point, but they were not ones to deny help to neighbors in need. With a little sigh Marguerite rose to go with them. She had almost reached the doorstep when Hepsa Jordan spoke up.

  “Leave the girl here with me tonight,” she said to Ira. “She’s kind of beat-out chasin’ those critters, an’ Ethan shall fetch her back tomorrow.”

  Marguerite pressed her hands tight together lest she show too great an eagerness. She felt sure that if Joel and Dolly Sargent had been there such a suggestion would have been instantly dismissed, but Caleb had run on ahead and was out of hearing, and Ira might not make any objection. She could scarcely contain her joy when she heard him fall into the plan easily.

  “You’d best call me Aunt Hepsa, same’s the rest do,” her hostess told her as they stood in the open door watching the boats set out with the cow in tow and the calf made fast in the dory. “I’m not one for puttin’ on cornstarch airs. Bound-out Girl or no, it’s all one to me so long’s you smart an’ sensible.”

  Marguerite flushed at these words. She was suddenly aware of her bedraggled dress with a great rent in the front breadth, of her disheveled hair, and her skin, tanned and grimy from all those days without soap and water. The old woman must have read her thoughts, for without more ado she led her back into the house and to a room across the entry. Here again the girl’s eyes widened to see as fine a cherry bedstead, spread with sheets and patchwork quilts, as one could wish for, and a low chair by the small-paned window, with piece bag and sewing basket beside it.

  “This here’s my chamber,” the old lady explained with pride. “Most folks would use it for a parlor, but Seth he wanted I should have the best. The bed I’ve had since I was married. I picked the feathers an’ wove the sheets myself, an’ the quilts are filled with wool from our own sheep. Now if you’ve a mind to wash yourself,” she added, bringing out a heavy towel of bird’s-eye weave, “here’s a towel to dry you. That bucket’s full o’ water, an’ I keep soft soap in the covered dish there.”

  Marguerite needed no urging. Once she was alone, she let her clothes slip to the floor. Then standing on a braided rush mat she began to rub herself all over with the soap and water. It felt soft and lathery to her skin, and the water came chill but very fresh and invigorating from the wooden bucket. As she splashed and rubbed her body dry on the rough cloth she felt renewed in some strange way. It was as if she had shed all the drudgery and humiliation as well as the grime of those past days. She sang as she rebraided her dark hair. Her voice came full and unabashed, there being none by to chide her for the French words.

  “Sur le pont d’Avignon” she sang over and over as Oncle Pierre had taught her.

  On y danse, on y danse.

  Sur le pont d’Avignon,

  On y danse, tout en rond.

  “It is a thousand pities,” she thought as she slipped into her old linen again, “that I cannot also have fresh garments, but one may not have everything in this world, as Grand’mère so often told me.”

  When the room was tidied and the soapy water emptied, she joined Aunt Hepsa, who was bending over a huge iron kettle in the weaving shed, where wool was piled just as it came from the sheep’s backs and other hanks which had been dyed hung waiting for spinning. Here also stood a spinning wheel, and a sturdy wooden loom took up half the place along with a quilting frame and reel.

  “This dye’s got to be stirred twice a day till it comes,” she explained as she bent over it with a stout stick, “an’ where I’m to get the time to color all this wool an’ spin it into cloth I don’t know.”

  The midafternoon sun came in at the door, touching a hank of reddish yarn into a royal color. Marguerite stood amazed before the sight. In France she had seen weavers and lacemakers, but never such a place as this nor so strange a little figure as Hepsa Jordan made over the dye pot.

  “If she were not so kind and I did not know better,” she thought, “I should say she might be a witch.”

  “Supposin’ we go up to the pasture a ways,” the other said after a little. “I’ve been meanin’ to get me a basketful o’ bay leaves for this long spell. They make the best fast yellow dye there is, an’ I need aplenty to mix with that brown for Ethan’s winter linsey.”

  So presently they were climbing a steep footpath that led among rocks and spruces to a higher patch of open green where sheep’s backs and gray boulders were thickly scattered. Now and then a ram’s bell sounded from some far thicket, and the sea thudded faintly along the outer ledges.

  “lt’s a lovely island,” Marguerite said. “I did not know it was so big.”

  “Yes, it’s sightly,” her companion agreed. “We landed on it a Sunday ’most ten years back. That’s how it comes by the name. Seth an’ Ethan they’ve been over it all, even when they had to cut a way through the tall woods, but I don’t get so far from the house now it’s built to my liking. If I had a young one about like you, I expect I’d scramble round more.”

  “You have no children of your own then?” Marguerite put the
question timidly.

  “No livin’ ones. I buried two along with my man years back. Lost the lot of ’em in a spell o’ the fever. But I helped Seth to raise Ethan, an’ he’s like my own.”

  They came into the pasture now, where the bayberry bushes were so green and springing that they must push their way between. Wherever they bruised them the leaves gave out a strong scent, very crisp and spicy. This was so delicious that Marguerite sniffed eagerly as if she had been a young colt turned out to pasture. Her blood tingled from her late scrubbing and the climb in sun and wind. She felt light and nimble and alive with new wonder. Below her the ranks of firs and spruces went down to the shore in thickset green. She could see the Jordan house, with smoke at the chimney and a bit of color that she knew for the flowers in the dooryard. Off to the southwest there were the far lines of Fox and Deer islands, and across the channel waters the Sargents’ cove and the Isabella B. at anchor. And farther away to the eastward more islands and the Mount Desert hills, faintly blue and rugged. Seeing them so, it was as if she knew herself for a part of all this miracle of land and sea and sky.

  Though she could feel her feet firmly braced between the bayberry bushes of Sunday Island, Marguerite knew that something in her went out past the nearby ledges to those French hills and to the sea whose other shore was the world she had left behind.

  Hepsa Jordan shaded her eyes with her hand and took her fill of the horizon line.

  “I declare it does a body good to come up here once in a while,” she said. “Some folks keep so close to their kitchen fires they wouldn’t know if the sun was to set in the east someday. Here, child, take the basket and get me the top-most parts. We can strip the leaves off afterwards. I’m goin’ on a ways to hunt a few mullein leaves. There’s no better cure for some complaints than mullein leaves boiled in milk.”