The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction

by Sarah Orne Jewett

  “There’s all sorts o’ folks in the country, same’s there is in the city,” concluded Mrs. Todd gravely, and I as gravely agreed. The thick woods were behind us now, and the sun was shining clear overhead, the morning mists were gone, and a faint blue haze softened the distance; as we climbed the hill where we were to see the view, it seemed like a summer day. There was an old house on the height, facing southward—a mere forsaken shell of an old house, with empty windows that looked like blind eyes. The frost-bitten grass grew close about it like brown fur, and there was a single crooked bough of lilac holding its green leaves close by the door.

  “We’ll just have a good piece of bread-an’-butter now,” said the commander of the expedition, “and then we’ll hang up the basket on some peg inside the house out o’ the way o’ the sheep, and have a han’some entertainment as we’re comin’ back. She’ll be all through her little dinner when we get there, Mis’ Martin will; but she’ll want to make us some tea, an’ we must have our visit an’ be startin’ back pretty soon after two. I don’t want to cross all that low ground again after it’s begun to grow chilly. An’ it looks to me as if the clouds might begin to gather late in the afternoon.”

  Before us lay a splendid world of sea and shore. The autumn colors already brightened the landscape; and here and there at the edge of a dark tract of pointed firs stood a row of bright swamp-maples like scarlet flowers. The blue sea and the great tide inlets were untroubled by the lightest winds.

  “Poor land, this is!” sighed Mrs. Todd as we sat down to rest on the worn doorstep. “I’ve known three good hard-workin’ families that come here full o’ hope an’ pride and tried to make something o’ this farm, but it beat ’em all. There’s one small field that’s excellent for potatoes if you let half of it rest every year; but the land’s always hungry. Now, you see them little peakéd-topped spruces an’ fir balsams comin’ up over the hill all green an’ hearty; they’ve got it all their own way! Seems sometimes as if wild Natur’ got jealous over a certain spot, and wanted to do just as she’d a mind to. You’ll see here; she’ll do her own ploughin’ an’ harrowin’ with frost an’ wet, an’ plant just what she wants and wait for her own crops. Man can’t do nothin’ with it, try as he may, I tell you those little trees means business!”

  I looked down the slope, and felt as if we ourselves were likely to be surrounded and overcome if we lingered too long. There was a vigor of growth, a persistence and savagery about the sturdy little trees that put weak human nature at complete defiance. One felt a sudden pity for the men and women who had been worsted after a long fight in that lonely place; one felt a sudden fear of the unconquerable, immediate forces of Nature, as in the irresistible moment of a thunderstorm.

  “I can recollect the time when folks were shy o’ these woods we just come through,” said Mrs. Todd seriously. “The men-folks themselves never’d venture into ’em alone; if their cattle got strayed they’d collect whoever they could get, and start off all together. They said a person was liable to get bewildered in there alone, and in old times folks had been lost. I expect there was considerable fear left over from the old Indian times, and the poor days o’ witchcraft; anyway, I’ve seen bold men act kind o’ timid. Some women o’ the Asa Bowden family went out one afternoon berryin’ when I was a girl, and got lost and was out all night; they found ’em middle o’ the mornin’ next day, not half a mile from home, scared most to death, an’ sayin’ they’d heard wolves and other beasts sufficient for a caravan. Poor creatur’s! They’d strayed at last into a kind of low place amongst some alders, an’ one of ’em was so overset she never got over it, an’ went off in a sort o’ slow decline. ’T was like them victims that drowns in a foot o’ water; but their minds did suffer dreadful. Some folks is born afraid of the woods and all wild places, but I must say they’ve always been like home to me.”

  I glanced at the resolute, confident face of my companion. Life was very strong in her, as if some force of Nature were personified in this simple-hearted woman and gave her cousinship to the ancient deities. She might have walked the primeval fields of Sicily; her strong gingham skirts might at that very moment bend the slender stalks of asphodel and be fragrant with trodden thyme, instead of the brown wind-brushed grass of New England and frost-bitten goldenrod. She was a great soul, was Mrs. Todd, and I her humble follower, as we went our way to visit the Queen’s Twin, leaving the bright view of the sea behind us, and descending to a lower country side through the dry pastures and fields.

  The farms all wore a look of gathering age, though the settlement was, after all, so young. The fences were already fragile, and it seemed as if the first impulse of agriculture had soon spent itself without hope of renewal. The better houses were always those that had some hold upon the riches of the sea; a house that could not harbor a fishing-boat in some neighboring inlet was far from being sure of every-day comforts. The land alone was not enough to live upon in that stony region; it belonged by right to the forest, and to the forest it fast returned. From the top of the hill where we had been sitting we had seen prosperity in the dim distance, where the land was good and the sun shone upon fat barns, and where warm-looking houses with three or four chimneys apiece stood high on their solid ridge above the bay.

  As we drew nearer to Mrs. Martin’s it was sad to see what poor bushy fields, what thin and empty dwelling-places had been left by those who had chosen this disappointing part of the northern country for their home. We crossed the last field and came into a narrow rainwashed road, and Mrs. Todd looked eager and expectant and said that we were almost at our journey’s end. “I do hope Mis’ Martin’ll ask you into her best room where she keeps all the Queen’s pictures. Yes, I think likely she will ask you; but ’t ain’t everybody she deems worthy to visit ’em, I can tell you,” said Mrs. Todd warningly. “She’s been collectin’ ’em an’ cuttin’ ’em out o’ newspapers an’ magazines time out o’ mind, and if she heard of anybody sailin’ for an English port she’d contrive to get a little money to ’em and ask to have the last likeness there was. She’s most covered her best-room wall now; she keeps that room shut up sacred as a meetin’-house! ‘I won’t say but I have my favorites amongst ’em,’ she told me t’ other day, ‘but they’re all beautiful to me as they can be!’ And she’s made some kind o’ pretty little frames for ’em all—you know there’s always a new fashion o’ frames comin’ round; first ’t was shell-work, and then ’t was pine-cones, and bead-work’s had its day, and now she’s much concerned with perforated cardboard worked with silk. I tell you that best room’s a sight to see! But you mustn’t look for anything elegant,” continued Mrs. Todd, after a moment’s reflection. “Mis’ Martin’s always been in very poor, strugglin’ circumstances. She had ambition for her children, though they took right after their father an’ had little for themselves; she wa’n’t over an’ above well married, however kind she may see fit to speak. She’s been patient an’ hard-workin’ all her life, and always high above makin’ mean complaints of other folks. I expect all this business about the Queen has buoyed her over many a shoal place in life. Yes, you might say that Abby’d been a slave, but there ain’t any slave but has some freedom.”

  IV

  PRESENTLY I SAW A low gray house standing on a grassy bank close to the road. The door was at the side, facing us, and a tangle of snowberry bushes and cinnamon roses grew to the level of the window-sills. On the doorstep stood a bent-shouldered, little old woman; there was an air of welcome and of unmistakable dignity about her.

  “She sees us coming,” exclaimed Mrs. Todd in an excited whisper. “There, I told her I might be over this way again if the weather held good, and if I came I’d bring you. She said right off she’d take great pleasure in havin’ a visit from you; I was surprised, she’s usually so retirin’.”

  Even this reassurance did not quell a faint apprehension on our part; there was something distinctly formal in the occasion, and one felt that consciousness of inadequacy which is never easy for the
humblest pride to bear. On the way I had torn my dress in an unexpected encounter with a little thorn-bush, and I could not imagine how it felt to be going to Court and forgetting one’s feathers or her Court train.

  The Queen’s Twin was oblivious of such trifles; she stood waiting with a calm look until we came near enough to take her kind hand. She was a beautiful old woman, with clear eyes and a lovely quietness and genuineness of manner; there was not a trace of anything pretentious about her, or high-flown, as Mrs. Todd would say comprehensively. Beauty in age is rare enough in women who have spent their lives in the hard work of a farmhouse; but autumn-like and withered as this woman may have looked, her features had kept, or rather gained, a great refinement. She led us into her old kitchen and gave us seats, and took one of the little straight-backed chairs herself and sat a short distance away, as if she were giving audience to an ambassador. It seemed as if we should all be standing; you could not help feeling that the habits of her life were more ceremonious, but that for the moment she assumed the simplicities of the occasion.

  Mrs. Todd was always Mrs. Todd, too great and self-possessed a soul for any occasion to ruffle. I admired her calmness, and presently the slow current of neighborhood talk carried one easily along; we spoke of the weather and the small adventures of the way, and then, as if I were after all not a stranger, our hostess turned almost affectionately to speak to me.

  “The weather will be growing dark in London now. I expect that you’ve been in London, dear?” she said.

  “Oh, yes,” I answered. “Only last year.”

  “It is a great many years since I was there, along in the forties,” said Mrs. Martin. “ ’T was the only voyage I ever made; most of my neighbors have been great travelers. My brother was master of a vessel, and his wife usually sailed with him; but that year she had a young child more frail than the others, and she dreaded the care of it at sea. It happened that my brother got a chance for my husband to go as super-cargo, being a good accountant, and came one day to urge him to take it; he was very ill-disposed to the sea, but he had met with losses, and I saw my own opportunity and persuaded them both to let me go too. In those days they didn’t object to a woman’s being aboard to wash and mend, the voyages were sometimes very long. And that was the way I come to see the Queen.”

  Mrs. Martin was looking straight in my eyes to see if I showed any genuine interest in the most interesting person in the world.

  “Oh, I am very glad you saw the Queen,” I hastened to say. “Mrs. Todd has told me that you and she were born the very same day.”

  “We were indeed, dear!” said Mrs. Martin, and she leaned back comfortably and smiled as she had not smiled before. Mrs. Todd gave a satisfied nod and glance, as if to say that things were going on as well as possible in this anxious moment.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Martin again, drawing her chair a little nearer, “ ’t was a very remarkable thing; we were born the same day, and at exactly the same hour, after you allowed for all the difference in time. My father figured it out sea-fashion. Her Royal Majesty and I opened our eyes upon this world together; say what you may ’t is a bond between us.”

  Mrs. Todd assented with an air of triumph, and untied her hat-strings and threw them back over her shoulders with a gallant air.

  “And I married a man by the name of Albert, just the same as she did, and all by chance, for I didn’t get the news that she had an Albert too till a fortnight afterward; news was slower coming then than it is now. My first baby was a girl, and I called her Victoria after my mate; but the next one was a boy, and my husband wanted the right to name him, and took his own name and his brother Edward’s and pretty soon I saw in the paper that the little Prince o’ Wales had been christened just the same. After that I made excuse to wait till I knew what she’d named her children. I didn’t want to break the chain, so I had an Alfred, and my darling Alice that I lost long before she lost hers, and there I stopped. If I’d only had a dear daughter to stay at home with me, same’s her youngest one, I should have been so thankful! But if only one of us could have a little Beatrice, I’m glad ’t was the Queen; we’ve both seen trouble, but she’s had the most care.”

  I asked Mrs. Martin if she lived alone all the year, and was told that she did except for a visit now and then from one of her grandchildren, “the only one that really likes to come an’ stay quiet ’long o’ grandma. She always says quick as she’s through her schoolin’ she’s goin’ to live with me all the time, but she’s very pretty an’ has taking ways,” said Mrs. Martin, looking both proud and wistful, “so I can tell nothing at all about it! Yes, I’ve been alone most o’ the time since my Albert was taken away, and that’s a great many years; he had a long time o’ failing and sickness first.” (Mrs. Todd’s foot gave an impatient scuff on the floor.) “An’ I’ve always lived right here. I ain’t like the Queen’s Majesty, for this is the only palace I’ve got,” said the dear old thing, smiling again. “I’m glad of it too, I don’t like changing about, an’ our stations in life are set very different. I don’t require what the Queen does, but sometimes I’ve thought ’t was left to me to do the plain things she don’t have time for. I expect she’s a beautiful housekeeper, nobody couldn’t have done better in her high place, and she’s been as good a mother as she’s been a queen.”

  “I guess she has, Abby,” agreed Mrs. Todd instantly. “How was it you happened to get such a good look at her? I meant to ask you again when I was here t’ other day.”

  “Our ship was layin’ in the Thames, right there above Wapping. We was dischargin’ cargo, and under orders to clear as quick as we could for Bordeaux to take on an excellent freight o’ French goods,” explained Mrs. Martin eagerly. “I heard that the Queen was goin’ to a great review of her army, and would drive out o’ her Buckin’ham Palace about ten o’clock in the mornin’, and I ran aft to Albert, my husband, and brother Horace where they was standin’ together by the hatchway, and told ’em they must one of ’em take me. They laughed, I was in such a hurry, and said they couldn’t go; and I found they meant it and got sort of impatient when I began to talk, and I was ’most broken-hearted; ’t was all the reason I had for makin’ that hard voyage. Albert couldn’t help often reproachin’ me, for he did so resent the sea, an’ I’d known how ’t would be before we sailed; but I’d minded nothing all the way till then, and I just crep’ back to my cabin an’ begun to cry. They was disappointed about their ship’s cook, an’ I’d cooked for fo’c’s’lek an’ cabin myself all the way over; ’t was dreadful hard work, specially in rough weather; we’d had head winds an’ a six weeks’ voyage. They’d acted sort of ashamed o’ me when I pled so to go ashore, an’ that hurt my feelin’s most of all. But Albert come below pretty soon; I’d never given way so in my life, an’ he begun to act frightened, and treated me gentle just as he did when we was goin’ to be married, an’ when I got over sobbin’ he went on deck and saw Horace an’ talked it over what they could do; they really had their duty to the vessel, and couldn’t be spared that day. Horace was real good when he understood everything, and he come an’ told me I’d more than worked my passage an’ was goin’ to do just as I liked now we was in port. He’d engaged a cook, too, that was comin’ aboard that mornin’, and he was goin’ to send the ship’s carpenter with me—a nice fellow from up Thomaston way; he’d gone to put on his ashore clothes as quick’s he could. So then I got ready, and we started off in the small boat and rowed up river. I was afraid we were too late, but the tide was setting up very strong, and we landed an’ left the boat to a keeper, and I run all the way up those great streets and across a park. ’T was a great day, with sights o’ folks everywhere, but ’t was just as if they was nothin’ but wax images to me. I kep’ askin’ my way an’ runnin’ on, with the carpenter comin’ after as best he could, and just as I worked to the front o’ the crowd by the palace, the gates was flung open and out she came; all prancin’ horses and shinin’ gold, and in a beautiful carriage there she sat; ’t was a moment o’ he
aven to me. I saw her plain, and she looked right at me so pleasant and happy, just as if she knew there was somethin’ different between us from other folks.”

  There was a moment when the Queen’s Twin could not go on and neither of her listeners could ask a question.

  “Prince Albert was sitting right beside her in the carriage,” she continued. “Oh, he was a beautiful man! Yes, dear, I saw ’em both together just as I see you now, and then she was gone out o’ sight in another minute, and the common crowd was all spread over the place pushin’ an’ cheerin’. ’T was some kind o’ holiday, an’ the carpenter and I got separated, an’ then I found him again after I didn’t think I should, an’ he was all for makin’ a day of it, and goin’ to show me all the sights; he’d been in London before, but I didn’t want nothin’ else, an’ we went back through the streets down to the wa terside an’ took the boat. I remember I mended an old coat o’ my Albert’s as good as I could, sittin’ on the quarter-deck in the sun all that afternoon, and ’t was all as if I was livin’ in a lovely dream. I don’t know how to explain it, but there hasn’t been no friend I’ve felt so near to me ever since.”

  One could not say much—only listen. Mrs. Todd put in a discerning question now and then, and Mrs. Martin’s eyes shone brighter and brighter as she talked. What a lovely gift of imagination and true affection was in this fond old heart! I looked about the plain New England kitchen, with its wood-smoked walls and homely braided rugs on the worn floor, and all its simple furnishings. The loud-ticking clock seemed to encourage us to speak; at the other side of the room was an early newspaper portrait of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. On a shelf below were some flowers in a little dish, as if they were put before a shrine.