The Country of the Pointed Firs Sarah Orne Jewett (bill gates best books TXT) đ
- Author: Sarah Orne Jewett
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But Mrs. Blackett tried to say that she couldnât sing as she used, and perhaps William wouldnât feel like it. She looked tired, the good old soul, or I should have liked to sit in the peaceful little house while she slept; I had had much pleasant experience of pastures already in her daughterâs company. But it seemed best to go with Mrs. Todd, and off we went.
Mrs. Todd carried the gingham bag which she had brought from home, and a small heavy burden in the bottom made it hang straight and slender from her hand. The way was steep, and she soon grew breathless, so that we sat down to rest awhile on a convenient large stone among the bayberry.
âThere, I wanted you to see thisâ ââtis motherâs picture,â said Mrs. Todd; âââtwas taken once when she was up to Portland soon after she was married. Thatâs me,â she added, opening another worn case, and displaying the full face of the cheerful child she looked like still in spite of being past sixty. âAnd hereâs William anâ father together. I take after father, large and heavy, anâ William is like motherâs folks, short anâ thin. He ought to have made something oâ himself, beinâ a man anâ so like mother; but though heâs been very steady to work, anâ kept up the farm, anâ done his fishinâ too right along, he never had motherâs snap anâ power oâ seeinâ things just as they be. Heâs got excellent judgment, too,â meditated Williamâs sister, but she could not arrive at any satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure in life. âI think it is well to see anyone so happy anâ makinâ the most of life just as it falls to hand,â she said as she began to put the daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my hand to see her motherâs once more, a most flowerlike face of a lovely young woman in quaint dress. There was in the eyes a look of anticipation and joy, a far-off look that sought the horizon; one often sees it in seafaring families, inherited by girls and boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea, and are always watching for distant sails or the first loom of the land. At sea there is nothing to be seen close by, and this has its counterpart in a sailorâs character, in the large and brave and patient traits that are developed, the hopeful pleasantness that one loves so in a seafarer.
When the family pictures were wrapped again in a big handkerchief, we set forward in a narrow footpath and made our way to a lonely place that faced northward, where there was more pasturage and fewer bushes, and we went down to the edge of short grass above some rocky cliffs where the deep sea broke with a great noise, though the wind was down and the water looked quiet a little way from shore. Among the grass grew such pennyroyal as the rest of the world could not provide. There was a fine fragrance in the air as we gathered it sprig by sprig and stepped along carefully, and Mrs. Todd pressed her aromatic nosegay between her hands and offered it to me again and again.
âThereâs nothinâ like it,â she said; âoh no, thereâs no such pennyrâyal as this in the state of Maine. Itâs the right pattern of the plant, and all the rest I ever see is but an imitation. Donât it do you good?â And I answered with enthusiasm.
âThere, dear, I never showed nobody else but mother where to find this place; âtis kind of sainted to me. Nathan, my husband, anâ I used to love this place when we was courtinâ, andââ âshe hesitated, and then spoke softlyâ ââwhen he was lost, âtwas just off shore tryinâ to get in by the short channel out there between Squaw Islands, right in sight oâ this headland where weâd set anâ made our plans all summer long.â
I had never heard her speak of her husband before, but I felt that we were friends now since she had brought me to this place.
âââTwas but a dream with us,â Mrs. Todd said. âI knew it when he was gone. I knew itââ âand she whispered as if she were at confessionâ ââI knew it afore he started to go to sea. My heart was gone out oâ my keepinâ before I ever saw Nathan; but he loved me well, and he made me real happy, and he died before he ever knew what heâd had to know if weâd lived long together. âTis very strange about love. No, Nathan never found out, but my heart was troubled when I knew him first. Thereâs more women likes to be loved than there is of those that loves. I spent some happy hours right here. I always liked Nathan, and he never knew. But this pennyrâyal always reminded me, as Iâd sit and gather it and hear him talkinââ âit always would remind me ofâ âthe other one.â
She looked away from me, and presently rose and went on by herself. There was something lonely and solitary about her great determined shape. She might have been Antigone alone on the Theban plain. It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and silence. An absolute, archaic grief possessed this countrywoman; she seemed like a renewal of some historic soul, with her sorrows and the remoteness of a daily life busied with rustic simplicities and the scents of primeval herbs.
I was not incompetent at herb-gathering, and after a while, when I had sat long enough waking myself to new thoughts, and reading a page of remembrance with new pleasure, I gathered some bunches, as I was bound to do, and at last we met again higher up the shore, in the plain everyday world we had left behind when we went down
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