University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

Zephaniah Pennel came back to his house in the evening,
after Miss Roxy had taken the little Mara away. He
looked for the flowery face and golden hair as he came
towards the door, and put his hand in his vest-pocket, where
he had deposited a small store of very choice shells and sea
curiosities, thinking of the widening of those dark, soft eyes
when he should present them.

“Where 's Mara?” was the first inquiry after he had
crossed the threshold.

“Why, Roxy 's been an' taken her down to Cap'n Kittridge's
to spend the night,” said Miss Ruey. “Roxy 's
gone to help Mis' Kittridge to turn her spotted gray and
black silk. We was talking this mornin' whether 'no 't would
turn, 'cause I thought the spot was overshot, and would n't
make up on the wrong side; but Roxy she says it 's one of
them ar Calcutty silks that has two sides to 'em, like the
one you bought Miss Pennel, that we made up for her, you
know;” and Miss Ruey arose and gave a finishing snap to
the Sunday pantaloons, which she had been left to “finish
off,” — which snap said, as plainly as words could say that
there was a good job disposed of.

Zephaniah stood looking as helpless as animals of the
male kind generally do when appealed to with such prolixity
on feminine details; in reply to it all, only asked,
meekly, —

“Where 's Mary?”

“Mis' Pennel? Why, she 's up chamber. She 'll be down
in a minute, she said; she thought she 'd have time afore
supper to get to the bottom of the big chist, and see if that
'ere vest pattern a'n't there, and them sticks o' twist for the
button-holes, 'cause Roxy she says she never see nothin' so
rotten as that 'ere twist we 'v' been a-workin' with, that Mis'
Pennel got over to Portland; it 's a clear cheat, and Mis'
Pennel she give more 'n half a cent a stick more for 't than
what Roxy got for her up to Brunswick; so you see these
'ere Portland stores charge up, and their things want lookin'
after.”

Here Mrs. Pennel entered the room, “the Captain”
addressing her eagerly, —

“How came you to let Aunt Roxy take Mara off so far,
and be gone so long?”

“Why, law me, Captain Pennel! the little thing seems
kind o' lonesome. Chil'en want chil'en; Miss Roxy says
she 's altogether too sort o' still and old-fashioned, and must
have child's company to chirk her up, and so she took her
down to play with Sally Kittridge; there 's no manner of
danger or harm in it, and she 'll be back to-morrow afternoon,
and Mara will have a real good time.”

“Wal', now, really,” said the good man, “but it 's 'mazin'
lonesome.”

“Cap'n Pennel, you 'r' gettin' to make an idol of that 'ere
child,” said Miss Ruey. “We have to watch our hearts.
It minds me of the hymn, —

Miss Ruey's mode of getting off poetry, in a sort of high-pitched

canter, with a strong thump on every accented syllable,
might have provoked a smile in more sophisticated
society, but Zephaniah listened to her with deep gravity,
and answered, —

“I 'm 'fraid there 's truth in what you say, Aunt Ruey.
When her mother was called away, I thought that was a
warning I never should forget; but now I seem to be like
Jonah, — I 'm restin' in the shadow of my gourd, and my
heart is glad because of it. I kind o' trembled at the
prayer-meetin' when we was a-singin' —

“Yes,” said Miss Ruey, “Roxy says if the Lord should
take us up short on our prayers, it would make sad work
with us sometimes.”

“Somehow,” said Mrs. Pennel, “it seems to me just her
mother over again. She don't look like her. I think her
hair and complexion comes from the Badger blood; my
mother had that sort o' hair and skin, — but then she has
ways like Naomi, — and it seems as if the Lord had kind o'
given Naomi back to us; so I hope she 's goin to be spared
to us.”

Mrs. Pennel had one of those natures — gentle, trustful,
and hopeful, because not very deep; she was one of the
little children of the world whose faith rests on childlike
ignorance, and who know not the deeper needs of deeper
natures; such see only the sunshine and forget the storm.

This conversation had been going on to the accompaniment
of a clatter of plates and spoons and dishes, and the
fizzling of sausages, prefacing the evening meal, to which

all now sat down after a lengthened grace from Zephaniah.

“There 's a tremendous gale a-brewin',” he said as they
sat at table. “I noticed the clouds to-night as I was comin'
home, and somehow I felt kind o' as if I wanted all our
folks snug in-doors.”

“Why law, husband, Cap'n Kittridge's house is as good
as ours, if it does blow. You never can seem to remember
that houses don't run aground or strike on rocks in storms.”

“The Cap'n puts me in mind of old Cap'n Jeduth Scranton,”
said Miss Ruey, “that built that queer house down by
Middle Bay. The Cap'n he would insist on havin' on't jist
like a ship, and the closet-shelves had holes for the tumblers
and dishes, and he had all his tables and chairs battened
down, and so when it came a gale, they say the old Cap'n
used to sit in his chair and hold on to hear the wind blow.”

“Well, I tell you,” said Captain Pennel, “those that has
followed the seas hears the wind with different ears from
lands-people. When you lie with only a plank between you
and eternity, and hear the voice of the Lord on the waters,
it don't sound as it does on shore.”

And in truth, as they were speaking, a fitful gust swept
by the house, wailing and screaming and rattling the windows,
and after it came the heavy, hollow moan of the surf
on the beach, like the wild, angry howl of some savage animal
just beginning to be lashed into fury.

“Sure enough the wind is rising,” said Miss Ruey, getting
up from the table, and flattening her snub nose against the
window-pane. “Dear me, how dark it is! Mercy on us,
how the waves come in! — all of a sheet of foam. I pity
the ships that 's comin' on coast such a night.”

The storm seemed to have burst out with a sudden fury,

as if myriads of howling demons had all at once been loosened
in the air. Now they piped and whistled with eldritch
screech round the corners of the house — now they thundered
down the chimney — and now they shook the door
and rattled the casement — and anon mustering their forces
with wild ado, seemed to career over the house, and sail
high up into the murky air. The dash of the rising tide
came with successive crash upon crash like the discharge of
heavy artillery, seeming to shake the very house, and the
spray borne by the wind dashed whizzing against the window-panes.

Zephaniah, rising from supper, drew up the little stand
that had the family Bible on it, and the three old time-worn
people sat themselves as seriously down to evening worship
as if they had been an extensive congregation. They raised
the old psalm-tune which our fathers called “Complaint,”
and the cracked, wavering voices of the women, with the
deep, rough bass of the old sea-captain, rose in the uproar
of the storm with a ghostly, strange wildness, like the
scream of the curlew or the wailing of the wind: —

Miss Ruey valued herself on singing a certain weird and
exalted part which in ancient days used to be called counter,
and which wailed and gyrated in unimaginable heights of
the scale, much as you may hear a shrill, fine-voiced wind
over a chimney-top; but altogether, the deep and earnest
gravity with which the three filled up the pauses in the
storm with their quaint minor key, had something singularly
impressive. When the singing was over, Zephaniah read,

to the accompaniment of wind and sea, the words of poetry
made on old Hebrew shores, in the dim, gray dawn of the
world: —

“The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of
glory thundereth; the Lord is upon many waters. The
voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh
the wilderness of Kadesh. The Lord sitteth upon the floods,
yea, the Lord sitteth King forever. The Lord will give
strength to his people; yea, the Lord will bless his people
with peace.”

How natural and home-born sounded this old piece of
Oriental poetry in the ears of the three! The wilderness of
Kadesh, with its great cedars, was doubtless Orr's Island,
where even now the goodly fellowship of black-winged trees
were groaning and swaying, and creaking as the breath of
the Lord passed over them.

And the three old people kneeling by their smouldering
fireside, amid the general uproar, Zephaniah began in the
words of a prayer which Moses the man of God made long
ago under the shadows of Egyptian pyramids: “Lord, thou
hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed
the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting,
thou art God.”

We hear sometimes in these days that the Bible is no
more inspired of God than many other books of historic and
poetic merit. It is a fact, however, that the Bible answers
a strange and wholly exceptional purpose by thousands of
firesides on all shores of the earth; and, till some other book
can be found to do the same thing, it will not be surprising
if a belief of its Divine origin be one of the ineffaceable ideas
of the popular mind.

It will be a long while before a translation from Homer,
or a chapter in the Koran, or any of the beauties of Shakspeare,
will be read in a stormy night on Orr's Island with
the same sense of a Divine presence as the Psalms of David,
or the prayer of Moses the man of God.

Boom! boom! “What 's that?” said Zephaniah, starting,
as they rose up from prayer. “Hark! again, that 's a
gun, — there 's a ship in distress.”

“Poor souls,” said Miss Ruey; “it 's an awful night!”

The captain began to put on his sea-coat.

“You a'n't a-goin' out?” said his wife.

“I must go out along the beach a spell, and see if I can
hear any more of that ship.”

“Mercy on us; the wind 'll blow you over!” said Aunt
Ruey.

“I rayther think I 've stood wind before in my day,” said
Zephaniah, a grim smile stealing over his weather-beaten
cheeks. In fact, the man felt a sort of secret relationship
to the storm, as if it were in some manner a family connection
— a wild, roystering cousin, who drew him out by a
rough attraction of comradeship.

“Well, at any rate,” said Mrs. Pennel, producing a large
tin lantern perforated with many holes, in which she placed
a tallow candle, “take this with you, and don't stay out
long.”

The kitchen-door opened, and the first gust of wind took
off the old man's hat and nearly blew him prostrate. He
came back and shut the door. “I ought to have known better,”
he said, knotting his pocket-handkerchief over his head,
after which he waited for a momentary lull, and went out
into the storm.

Miss Ruey looked through the window-pane, and saw the

light go twinkling far down into the gloom, and ever and
anon came the mournful boom of distant guns.

“Certainly there is a ship in trouble somewhere,” she
said.

“He never can be easy when he hears these guns,” said
Mrs. Pennel; “but what can he do, or anybody, in such a
storm, the wind blowing right on to shore?”

“I should n't wonder if Cap'n Kittridge should be out on
the beach, too,” said Miss Ruey; “but laws, he a'n't much
more than one of these 'ere old grasshoppers you see after
frost comes. Well, any way, there a'n't much help in man
if a ship comes ashore in such a gale as this, such a dark
night too.”

“It 's kind o' lonesome to have poor little Mara away
such a night as this is,” said Mrs. Pennel; “but who
would a-thought it this afternoon, when Aunt Roxy took
her?”

“I 'member my grandmother had a silver cream-pitcher
that come ashore in a storm on Mare P'int,” said Miss Ruey,
as she sat trotting her knitting-needles. “Grand'ther found
it, half full of sand, under a knot of sea-weed way up on
the beach. It had a coat of arms on it, — might have belonged
to some grand family, that pitcher; in the Toothacre
family yet.”

“I remember when I was a girl,” said Mrs. Pennel,
“seeing the hull of a ship that went on Eagle Island —
it run way up in a sort of gully between two rocks, and
lay there years. They split pieces off it sometimes to make
fires when they wanted to make a chowder down on the
beach.”

“My aunt, Lois Toothacre, that lives down by Middle
Bay,” said Miss Ruey, “used to tell about a dreadful blow

they had once in time of the equinoctial storm, — and
what was remarkable, she insisted that she heard a baby
cryin' out in the storm — she heard it just as plain as
could be.”

“Laws a-mercy,” said Mrs. Pennel, nervously, “it was
nothing but the wind, — it always screeches like a child
crying; or maybe it was the seals; seals will cry just like
babes.”

“So they told her, — but no; she insisted she knew the
difference, — it was a baby. Well, what do you think, when
the storm cleared off, they found a baby's cradle washed
ashore sure enough!”

“But they did n't find any baby,” said Mrs. Pennel,
nervously.

“No, they searched the beach far and near, and that
cradle was all they found. Aunt Lois took it in — it was
a very good cradle, and she took it to use, but every time
there came up a gale, that ar cradle would rock, rock, jist as
if somebody was a-sittin' by it; and you could stand across
the room and see there wa' n't nobody there.”

“You make me all of a shiver,” said Mrs. Pennel.

This, of course, was just what Miss Ruey intended, and
she went on: —

“Wal', you see they kind o' got used to it — they found
there wa' n't no harm come of its rockin', and so they did n't
mind; but Aunt Lois had a sister Cerinthy that was a
weakly girl, and had the janders. Cerinthy was one of
the sort that 's born with veils over their faces, and can see
sperits; and one time Cerinthy was a-visitin' Lois after her
second baby was born, and there came up a blow, and Cerinthy
comes out of the keepin'-room, where the cradle was
a-standin', and says, `Sister,' says she, `who 's that woman

sittin' rockin' the cradle?' and Aunt Lois says she, `Why,
there a'n't nobody. That ar cradle always will rock in a
gale, but I 've got used to it, and don't mind it.' `Well,'
says Cerinthy, `jist as true as you live, I jist saw a woman
with a silk gown on, and long black hair a-hangin' down, and
her face was pale as a sheet, sittin' rockin' that ar cradle,
and she looked round at me with her great black eyes kind
o' mournful and wishful, and then she stooped down over the
cradle.' `Well,' says Lois, `I a'n't goin' to have no such
doin's in my house,' and she went right in and took up the
baby, and the very next day she jist had the cradle split up
for kindlin'; and that night, if you 'll believe, when they
was a-burnin' of it, they heard, jist as plain as could be, a
baby scream, scream, screamin' round the house; but after
that they never heard it no more.”

“I don't like such stories,” said Dame Pennel, “'specially
to-night when Mara 's away. I shall get to hearing all
sorts of noises in the wind. I wonder when Cap'n Pennel
will be back.”

And the good woman put more wood on the fire, and as
the tongues of flame streamed up high and clear, she approached
her face to the window-pane and started back with
half a scream, as a pale, anxious visage with sad dark eyes
seemed to approach her. It took a moment or two for her
to discover that she had seen only the reflection of her own
anxious, excited face, the pitchy blackness without having
converted the window into a sort of dark mirror.

Miss Ruey meanwhile began solacing herself by singing,
in her chimney-corner, a very favorite sacred melody,
which contrasted oddly enough with the driving storm and
howling sea: —

The tune was called “Invitation” — one of those profusely
florid in runs, and trills, and quavers, which delighted
the ears of a former generation; and Miss Ruey, innocently
unconscious of the effect of old age on her voice, ran them
up and down, and out and in, in a way that would have
made a laugh, had there been anybody there to notice or
to laugh.

“I remember singin' that ar to Mary Jane Wilson the
very night she died,” said Aunt Ruey, stopping. “She
wanted me to sing to her, and it was jist between two and
three in the mornin'; there was jist the least red streak of
daylight, and I opened the window and sat there and sung,
and when I come to `over the hills where spices grow,' I
looked round and there was a change in Mary Jane, and I
went to the bed, and says she very bright, `Aunt Ruey, the
Beloved has come,' and she was gone afore I could raise her
up on her pillow. I always think of Mary Jane at them
words; if ever there was a broken-hearted crittur took
home, it was her.”

At this moment Mrs. Pennel caught sight through the
window of the gleam of the returning lantern, and in a
moment Captain Pennel entered dripping with rain and
spray.

“Why Cap'n! you 're e'en a'most drowned,” said Aunt
Ruey.

“How long have you been gone? You must have been
a great ways,” said Mrs. Pennel.

“Yes, I have been down to Cap'n Kittridge's. I met

Kittridge out on the beach. We heard the guns plain
enough, but could n't see anything. I went on down to
Kittridge's to get a look at little Mara.”

“Well, she 's all well enough?” said Mrs. Pennel,
anxiously.

“Oh, yes, well enough. Miss Roxy showed her to me in
the trundle-bed, 'long with Sally. The little thing was lying
smiling in her sleep, with her cheek right up against Sally's.
I took comfort looking at her. I could n't help thinking,
`So he giveth his beloved sleep!'”