“But, Sally, you must know that Moses loves you.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Sally, freakishly tossing her head and laughing.
“If he did not,” said Mara, “why has he sought you so much, and taken every opportunity to be with you? I’m sure I’ve been left here alone hour after hour, when my only comfort was that it was because my two best friends loved each other, as I know they must some time love some one better than they do me.”
The most practiced self-control must fail some time, and Mara’s voice faltered on these last words, and she put her hands over her eyes. Sally turned quickly and looked at her, then giving her hair a sudden fold round her shoulders, and running to her friend, she kneeled down on the floor by her, and put her arms round her waist, and looked up into her face with an air of more gravity than she commonly used.
“Now, Mara, what a wicked, inconsistent fool I have been! Did you feel lonesome? — did you care? I ought to have seen that; but I’m selfish, I love admiration, and I love to have some one to flatter me, and run after me; and so I’ve been going on and on in this silly way. But I didn’t know you cared — indeed, I didn’t — you are such a deep little thing. Nobody can ever tell what you feel. I never shall forgive myself, if you have been lonesome, for you are worth five hundred times as much as I am. You really do love Moses. I don’t.”
“I do love him as a dear brother,” said Mara.
“Dear fiddlestick,” said Sally. “Love is love; and when a person loves all she can, it isn’t much use to talk so. I’ve been a wicked sinner, that I have. Love? Do you suppose I would bear with Moses Pennel all his ins and outs and ups and downs, and be always putting him before myself in everything, as you do? No, I couldn’t; I haven’t it in me; but you have. He’s a sinner, too, and deserves to get me for a wife. But, Mara, I have tormented him well — there’s some comfort in that.”
“It’s no comfort to me,” said Mara. “I see his heart is set on you — the happiness of his life depends on you — and that he is pained and hurt when you give him only cold, trifling words when he needs real true love. It is a serious thing, dear, to have a strong man set his whole heart on you. It will do him a great good or a great evil, and you ought not to make light of it.”
“Oh, pshaw, Mara, you don’t know these fellows; they are only playing games with us. If they once catch us, they have no mercy; and for one here’s a child that isn’t going to be caught. I can see plain enough that Moses Pennel has been trying to get me in love with him, but he doesn’t love me. No, he doesn’t,” said Sally, reflectively. “He only wants to make a conquest of me, and I’m just the same. I want to make a conquest of him, — at least I have been wanting to, — but now I see it’s a false, wicked kind of way to do as we’ve been doing.”
“And is it really possible, Sally, that you don’t love him?” said Mara, her large, serious eyes looking into Sally’s. “What! be with him so much, — seem to like him so much, — look at him as I have seen you do, — and not love him!”
“I can’t help my eyes; they will look so,” said Sally, hiding her face in Mara’s lap with a sort of coquettish consciousness. “I tell you I’ve been silly and wicked; but he’s just the same exactly.”
“And you have worn his ring all summer?”
“Yes, and he has worn mine; and I have a lock of his hair, and he has a lock of mine; yet I don’t believe he cares for them a bit. Oh, his heart is safe enough. If he has any, it isn’t with me: that I know.”
“But if you found it were, Sally? Suppose you found that, after all, you were the one love and hope of his life; that all he was doing and thinking was for you; that he was laboring, and toiling, and leaving home, so that he might some day offer you a heart and home, and be your best friend for life? Perhaps he dares not tell you how he really does feel.”
“It’s no such thing! it’s no such thing!” said Sally, lifting up her head, with her eyes full of tears, which she dashed angrily away. “What am I crying for? I hate him. I’m glad he’s going away. Lately it has been such a trouble to me to have things go on so. I’m really getting to dislike him. You are the one he ought to love. Perhaps all this time you are the one he does love,” said Sally, with a sudden energy, as if a new thought had dawned in her mind.
“Oh, no; he does not even love me as he once did, when we were children,” said Mara. “He is so shut up in himself, so reserved, I know nothing about what passes in his heart.”
“No more does anybody,” said Sally. “Moses Pennel isn’t one that says and does things straightforward because he feels so; but he says and does them to see what you will do. That’s his way. Nobody knows why he has been going on with me as he has. He has had his own reasons, doubtless, as I have had mine.”
“He has admired you very much, Sally,” said Mara, “and praised you to me very warmly. He thinks you are so handsome. I could tell you ever so many things he has said about you. He knows as I do that you are a more enterprising, practical sort of body than I am, too. Everybody thinks you are engaged. I have heard it spoken of everywhere.”
“Everybody is mistaken, then, as usual,” said Sally. “Perhaps Aunt Roxy was in the right of it when she said that Moses would never be in love with anybody but himself.”
“Aunt Roxy has always been prejudiced and unjust to Moses,” said Mara, her cheeks flushing. “She never liked him from a child, and she never can be made to see anything good in him. I know that he has a deep heart, — a nature that craves affection and sympathy; and it is only because he is so sensitive that he is so reserved and conceals his feelings so much. He has a noble, kind heart, and I believe he truly loves you, Sally; it must be so.”
Sally rose from the floor and went on arranging her hair without speaking. Something seemed to disturb her mind. She bit her lip, and threw down the brush and comb violently. In the clear depths of the little square of looking-glass a face looked into hers, whose eyes were perturbed as if with the shadows of some coming inward storm; the black brows were knit, and the lips quivered. She drew a long breath and burst out into a loud laugh.
“What are you laughing at now?” said Mara, who stood in her white night-dress by the window, with her hair falling in golden waves about her face.
“Oh, because these fellows are so funny,” said Sally; “it’s such fun to see their actions. Come now,” she added, turning to Mara, “don’t look so grave and sanctified. It’s better to laugh than cry about things, any time. It’s a great deal better to be made hard-hearted like me, and not care for anybody, than to be like you, for instance. The idea of any one’s being in love is the drollest thing to me. I haven’t the least idea how it feels. I wonder if I ever shall be in love!”
“It will come to you in its time, Sally.”
“Oh, yes, — I suppose like the chicken-pox or the whooping cough,” said Sally; “one of the things to be gone through with, and rather disagreeable while it lasts, — so I hope to put it off as long as possible.”
“Well, come,” said Mara, “we must not sit up all night.”
After the two girls were nestled into bed and the light out, instead of the brisk chatter there fell a great silence between them. The full round moon cast the reflection of the window on the white bed, and the ever restless moan of the sea became more audible in the fixed stillness. The two faces, both young and fair, yet so different in their expression, lay each still on its pillow, — their wide-open eyes gleaming out in the shadow like mystical gems. Each was breathing softly, as if afraid of disturbing the other. At last Sally gave an impatient movement.
“How lonesome the sea sounds in the night,” she said. “I wish it would ever be still.”
“I like to hear it,” said Mara. “When I was in Boston, for a while I thought I could not sleep, I used to miss it so much.”
There was another silence, which lasted so long that each girl thought the other asleep, and moved softly, but at a restless movement from Sally, Mara spoke again.
“Sally,
— you asleep?”
“No, — I thought you were.”
“I wanted to ask you,” said Mara, “did Moses ever say anything to you about me? — you know I told you how much he said about you.”
“Yes; he asked me once if you were engaged to Mr. Adams.”
“And what did you tell him?” said Mara, with increasing interest.
“Well, I only plagued him. I sometimes made him think you were, and sometimes that you were not; and then again, that there was a deep mystery in hand. But I praised and glorified Mr. Adams, and told him what a splendid match it would be, and put on any little bits of embroidery here and there that I could lay hands on. I used to make him sulky and gloomy for a whole evening sometimes. In that way it was one of the best weapons I had.”
“Sally, what does make you love to tease people so?” said Mara.
“Why, you know the hymn says, —
‘Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For ’tis their nature too.’
That’s all the account I can give of it.”
“But,” said Mara, “I never can rest easy a moment when I see I am making a person uncomfortable.”
“Well, I don’t tease anybody but the men. I don’t tease father or mother or you, — but men are fair game; they are such thumby, blundering creatures, and we can confuse them so.”
“Take care, Sally, it’s playing with edge tools; you may lose your heart some day in this kind of game.”
“Never you fear,” said Sally; “but aren’t you sleepy? — let’s go to sleep.”
Both girls turned their faces resolutely in opposite directions, and remained for an hour with their large eyes looking out into the moonlit chamber, like the fixed stars over Harpswell Bay. At last sleep drew softly down the fringy curtains.
CHAPTER XXX
THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL
In the plain, simple regions we are describing, — where the sea is the great avenue of active life, and the pine forests are the great source of wealth, — ship-building is an engrossing interest, and there is no fête that calls forth the community like the launching of a vessel. And no wonder; for what is there belonging to this workaday world of ours that has such a never-failing fund of poetry and grace as a ship? A ship is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it: its white wings touch the regions of the unknown and the imaginative; they seem to us full of the odors of quaint, strange, foreign shores, where life, we fondly dream, moves in brighter currents than the muddy, tranquil tides of every day.
Who that sees one bound outward, with her white breasts swelling and heaving, as if with a reaching expectancy, does not feel his own heart swell with a longing impulse to go with her to the far-off shores? Even at dingy, crowded wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities, the coming in of a ship is an event that never can lose its interest. But on these romantic shores of Maine, where all is so wild and still, and the blue sea lies embraced in the arms of dark, solitary forests, the sudden incoming of a ship from a distant voyage is a sort of romance. Who that has stood by the blue waters of Middle Bay, engirdled as it is by soft slopes of green farming land, interchanged here and there with heavy billows of forest-trees, or rocky, pine-crowned promontories, has not felt that sense of seclusion and solitude which is so delightful? And then what a wonder! There comes a ship from China, drifting in like a white cloud, — the gallant creature! how the waters hiss and foam before her! with what a great free, generous plash she throws out her anchors, as if she said a cheerful “Well done!” to some glorious work accomplished! The very life and spirit of strange romantic lands come with her; suggestions of sandal-wood and spice breathe through the pine-woods; she is an oriental queen, with hands full of mystical gifts; “all her garments smell of myrrh and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made her glad.” No wonder men have loved ships like birds, and that there have been found brave, rough hearts that in fatal wrecks chose rather to go down with their ocean love than to leave her in the last throes of her death-agony.
A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has an unconscious poetry ever underlying its existence. Exotic ideas from foreign lands relieve the trite monotony of life; the ship-owner lives in communion with the whole world, and is less likely to fall into the petty commonplaces that infest the routine of inland life.
Never arose a clearer or lovelier October morning than that which was to start the Ariel on her watery pilgrimage. Moses had risen while the stars were yet twinkling over their own images in Middle Bay, to go down and see that everything was right; and in all the houses that we know in the vicinity, everybody woke with the one thought of being ready to go to the launching.
Mrs. Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy over the provisions for the ample cold collation that was to be spread in a barn adjoining the scene, — the materials for which they were packing into baskets covered with nice clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat which lay within a stone’s throw of the door in the brightening dawn, her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.
It had been agreed that the Pennels and the Kittridges should cross together in this boat with their contributions of good cheer.
The Kittridges, too, had been astir with the dawn, intent on their quota of the festive preparations, in which Dame Kittridge’s housewifely reputation was involved, — for it had been a disputed point in the neighborhood whether she or Mrs. Pennel made the best doughnuts; and of course, with this fact before her mind, her efforts in this line had been all but superhuman.
The Captain skipped in and out in high feather, — occasionally pinching Sally’s cheek, and asking if she were going as captain or mate upon the vessel after it was launched, for which he got in return a fillip of his sleeve or a sly twitch of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father were on romping terms with each other from early childhood, a thing which drew frequent lectures from the always exhorting Mrs. Kittridge.
“Such levity!” she said, as she saw Sally in full chase after his retreating figure, in order to be revenged for some sly allusions he had whispered in her ear.
“Sally Kittridge! Sally Kittridge!” she called, “come back this minute. What are you about? I should think your father was old enough to know better.”
“Lawful sakes, Polly, it kind o’ renews one’s youth to get a new ship done,” said the Captain, skipping in at another door. “Sort o’ puts me in mind o’ that I went out cap’en in when I was jist beginning to court you, as somebody else is courtin’ our Sally here.”
“Now, father,” said Sally, threateningly, “what did I tell you?”
“It’s really lemancholy,” said the Captain, “to think how it does distress gals to talk to ’em ‘bout the fellers, when they ain’t thinkin’ o’ nothin’ else all the time. They can’t even laugh without sayin’ he-he-he!”
“Now, father, you know I’ve told you five hundred times that I don’t care a cent for Moses Pennel, — that he’s a hateful creature,” said Sally, looking very red and determined.
“Yes, yes,” said the Captain, “I take that ar’s the reason you’ve ben a-wearin’ the ring he gin you and them ribbins you’ve got on your neck this blessed minute, and why you’ve giggled off to singin’-school, and Lord knows where with him all summer, — that ar’s clear now.”
“But, father,” said Sally, getting redder and more earnest, “I don’t care for him really, and I’ve told him so. I keep telling him so, and he will run after me.”
“Haw! haw!” laughed the Captain; “he will, will he? Jist so, Sally; that ar’s jist the way your ma there talked to me, and it kind o’ ‘couraged me along. I knew that gals always has to be read back’ard jist like the writin’ in the Barbary States.”
“Captain Kittridge, will you stop such ridiculous talk?” said his helpmeet; “and jist carry this ‘ere basket of cold chicken down to the landin’ agin the Pennels come round i
n the boat; and you must step spry, for there’s two more baskets a-comin’.”
The Captain shouldered the basket and walked toward the sea with it, and Sally retired to her own little room to hold a farewell consultation with her mirror before she went.
You will perhaps think from the conversation that you heard the other night, that Sally now will cease all thought of coquettish allurement in her acquaintance with Moses, and cause him to see by an immediate and marked change her entire indifference. Probably, as she stands thoughtfully before her mirror, she is meditating on the propriety of laying aside the ribbons he gave her — perhaps she will alter that arrangement of her hair which is one that he himself particularly dictated as most becoming to the character of her face. She opens a little drawer, which looks like a flower garden, all full of little knots of pink and blue and red, and various fancies of the toilet, and looks into it reflectively. She looses the ribbon from her hair and chooses another, — but Moses gave her that too, and said, she remembers, that when she wore that “he should know she had been thinking of him.” Sally is Sally yet — as full of sly dashes of coquetry as a tulip is of streaks.
“There’s no reason I should make myself look like a fright because I don’t care for him,” she says; “besides, after all that he has said, he ought to say more, — he ought at least to give me a chance to say no, — he shall, too,” said the gypsy, winking at the bright, elfish face in the glass.
“Sally Kittridge, Sally Kittridge,” called her mother, “how long will you stay prinkin’? — come down this minute.”
“Law now, mother,” said the Captain, “gals must prink afore such times; it’s as natural as for hens to dress their feathers afore a thunder-storm.”
Sally at last appeared, all in a flutter of ribbons and scarfs, whose bright, high colors assorted well with the ultramarine blue of her dress, and the vivid pomegranate hue of her cheeks. The boat with its white sails flapping was balancing and courtesying up and down on the waters, and in the stern sat Mara; her shining white straw hat trimmed with blue ribbons set off her golden hair and pink shell complexion. The dark, even penciling of her eyebrows, and the beauty of the brow above, the brown translucent clearness of her thoughtful eyes, made her face striking even with its extreme delicacy of tone. She was unusually animated and excited, and her cheeks had a rich bloom of that pure deep rose-color which flushes up in fair complexions under excitement, and her eyes had a kind of intense expression, for which they had always been remarkable. All the deep secluded yearning of repressed nature was looking out of them, giving that pathos which every one has felt at times in the silence of eyes.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 226