University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

During the night and storm, the little Mara had lain
sleeping as quietly as if the cruel sea, that had made her an
orphan from her birth, were her kind-tempered old grandfather
singing her to sleep, as he often did, — with a
somewhat hoarse voice truly, but with ever an undertone
of protecting love.

But toward daybreak, there came very clear and bright
into her childish mind a dream, having that vivid distinctness
which often characterizes the dreams of early childhood.

She thought she saw before her the little cove where she
and Sally had been playing the day before, with its broad
sparkling white beach of sand curving round its blue seamirror,
and studded thickly with gold and silver shells.
She saw the boat of Captain Kittridge upon the stocks,
and his tar-kettle with the smouldering fires flickering under
it; but, as often happens in dreams, a certain rainbow vividness
and clearness invested everything, and she and
Sally were jumping for joy at the beautiful things they
found on the beach.

Suddenly, there stood before them a woman, dressed in a
long white garment. She was very pale, with sweet, serious
dark eyes, and she led by the hand a black-eyed boy, who
seemed to be crying and looking about as for something
lost. She dreamed that she stood still, and the woman came
toward her, looking at her with sweet, sad eyes, till the

child seemed to feel them in every fibre of her frame. The
woman laid her hand on her head as if in blessing, and then
put the boy's hand in hers, and said, “Take him, Mara, he is
a playmate for you;” and with that the little boy's face flashed
out into a merry laugh. The woman faded away, and the
three children remained playing together, gathering shells
and pebbles of a wonderful brightness. So vivid was this
vision, that the little one awoke laughing with pleasure, and
searched under her pillows for the strange and beautiful
things that she had been gathering in dreamland.

“What 's Mara looking after?” said Sally, sitting up in
her trundle-bed, and speaking in the patronizing motherly
tone she commonly used to her little playmate.

“All gone, pitty boy — all gone!” said the child, looking
round regretfully, and shaking her golden head; “pitty lady
all gone!”

“How queer she talks!” said Sally, who had awakened
with the project of building a sheet-house with her fairy neighbor,
and was beginning to loosen the upper sheet and dispose
the pillows with a view to this species of architecture.

“Come, Mara, let 's make a pretty house!” she said.

“Pitty boy out dere — out dere!” said the little one,
pointing to the window, with a deeper expression than ever
of wishfulness in her eyes.

“Come, Sally Kittridge, get up this minute!” said the
voice of her mother, entering the door at this moment; “and
here, put these clothes on to Mara, the child must n't run
round in her best; it 's strange, now, Mary Pennel never
thinks of such things.”

Sally, who was of an efficient temperament, was preparing
energetically to second these commands of her mother,
and endue her little neighbor with a coarse brown stuff

dress, somewhat faded and patched, which she herself had
outgrown when of Mara's age; with shoes, which had been
coarsely made to begin with, and very much battered by
time; but, quite to her surprise, the child, generally so
passive and tractable, opposed a most unexpected and desperate
resistance to this operation. She began to cry and to
sob and shake her curly head, throwing her tiny hands out
in a wild species of freakish opposition, which had, notwithstanding,
a quaint and singular grace about it, while she
stated her objections in all the little English at her command.

“Mara don't want — Mara want pitty boo des — and
pitty shoes.”

“Why, was ever anything like it?” said Mrs. Kittridge
to Miss Roxy, as they both were drawn to the door by the
outcry; “here 's this child won't have decent every-day
clothes put on her, — she must be kept dressed up like a
princess. Now, that ar 's French calico!” said Mrs. Kittridge,
holding up the controverted blue dress, “and that ar
never cost a cent under five-and-sixpence a yard; it takes a
yard and a half to make it, and it must have been a good
day's work to make it up; call that three-and-sixpence more,
and with them pearl buttons and thread and all, that ar dress
never cost less than a dollar and seventy-five, and here she 's
goin' to run out every day in it!”

“Well, well!” said Miss Roxy, who had taken the sobbing
fair one in her lap, “you know, Mis' Kittridge, this
'ere 's a kind o' pet lamb, an old-folks' darling, and things be
with her as they be, and we can't make her over, and she 's
such a nervous little thing we must n't cross her.” Saying
which, she proceeded to dress the child in her own clothes.

“If you had a good large checked apron, I would n't mind
putting that on her!” added Miss Roxy, after she had arrayed
the child.

“Here 's one,” said Mrs. Kittridge; “that may save her
clothes some.”

Miss Roxy began to put on the wholesome garment; but,
rather to her mortification, the little fairy began to weep
again in a most heart-broken manner.

“Don't want che't apon.”

“Why don't Mara want nice checked apron?” said Miss
Roxy, in that extra cheerful tone by which children are to
be made to believe they have mistaken their own mind.

“Don't want it!” with a decided wave of the little hand;
“I 's too pitty to wear che't apon.”

“Well! well!” said Mrs. Kittridge, rolling up her eyes,
“did I ever! no, I never did. If there a'n't depraved natur'
a-comin' out early. Well, if she says she 's pretty now,
what 'll it be when she 's fifteen?”

“She 'll learn to tell a lie about it by that time,” said
Miss Roxy, “and say she thinks she 's horrid. The
child is pretty, and the truth comes uppermost with her
now.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” burst with a great crash from Captain
Kittridge, who had come in behind, and stood silently
listening during this conversation; “that 's musical now;
come here, my little maid, you are too pretty for checked
aprons, and no mistake;” and seizing the child in his long
arms, he tossed her up like a butterfly, while her sunny
curls shone in the morning light.

“There 's one comfort about the child, Miss Kittridge,”
said Aunt Roxy; “she 's one of them that dirt won't stick
to. I never knew her to stain or tear her clothes, — she
always come in jist so nice.”

“She a'n't much like Sally, then!” said Mrs. Kittridge.
“That girl 'll run through more clothes! Only last week

she walked the crown out of my old black straw bonnet,
and left it hanging on the top of a blackberry-bush.”

“Wal', wal',” said Captain Kittridge, “as to dressin' this
'ere child, — why, ef Pennel 's a mind to dress her in cloth
of gold, it 's none of our business! He 's rich enough for
all he wants to do, and so let 's eat our breakfast and mind
our own business.”

After breakfast Captain Kittridge took the two children
down to the cove, to investigate the state of his boat and
tar-kettle, set high above the highest tide-mark.

The sun had risen gloriously, the sky was of an intense,
vivid blue, and only great snowy islands of clouds, lying in
silver banks on the horizon, showed vestiges of last night's
storm. The whole wide sea was one glorious scene of forming
and dissolving mountains of blue and purple, breaking
at the crest into brilliant silver. All round the island the
waves were constantly leaping and springing into jets and
columns of brilliant foam, throwing themselves high up, in
silvery cataracts, into the very arms of the solemn evergreen
forests which overhung the shore.

The sands of the little cove seemed harder and whiter
than ever, and were thickly bestrewn with the shells and
sea-weed which the upturnings of the night had brought in.
There lay what might have been fringes and fragments of
sea-gods' vestures, — blue, crimson, purple, and orange sea-weeds,
wreathed in tangled ropes of kelp and sea-grass, or
lying separately scattered on the sands. The children ran
wildly, shouting as they began gathering sea-treasures; and
Sally, with the air of an experienced hand in the business,
untwisted the coils of ropy sea-weed, from which every
moment she disengaged some new treasure, in some rarer
shell or smoother pebble.

Suddenly, the child shook out something from a knotted
mass of sea-grass, which she held up with a perfect shriek
of delight.

It was a bracelet of hair, fastened by a brilliant clasp
of green, sparkling stones, such as she had never seen before.

She redoubled her cries of delight, as she saw it sparkle
between her and the sun, calling upon her father.

“Father! father! do come here, and see what I 've
found!”

He came quickly, and took the bracelet from the child's
hand; but, at the same moment, looking over her head, he
caught sight of an object partially concealed behind a projecting
rock. He took a step forward, and uttered an
exclamation, —

“Well, well! sure enough! poor things!”

There lay, bedded in sand and sea-weed, a woman with a
little boy clasped in her arms! Both had been carefully
lashed to a spar, but the child was held to the bosom of the
woman, with a pressure closer than any knot that mortal
hands could tie.

Both were deep sunk in the sand, into which had streamed
the woman's long, dark hair, which sparkled with glittering
morsels of sand and pebbles, and with those tiny, brilliant,
yellow shells which are so numerous on that shore.

The woman was both young and beautiful. The forehead,
damp with ocean-spray, was like sculptured marble, —
the eyebrows dark and decided in their outline; but the
long, heavy, black fringes had shut down, as a solemn curtain,
over all the history of mortal joy or sorrow that those
eyes had looked upon. A wedding-ring gleamed on the
marble hand; but the sea had divorced all human ties, and

taken her as a bride to itself. And, in truth, it seemed to
have made to her a worthy bed, for she was all folded and
inwreathed in sand and shells and sea-weeds, and a great,
weird-looking leaf of kelp, some yards in length, lay twined
around her like a shroud.

The child that lay in her bosom had hair, and face, and
eyelashes like her own, and his little hands were holding
tightly a portion of the black dress which she wore.

“Cold, — cold, — stone dead!” was the muttered exclamation
of the old seaman, as he bent over the woman.

“She must have struck her head there,” he mused, as he
laid his finger on a dark, bruised spot on her temple. He
laid his hand on the child's heart, and put one finger under
the arm to see if there was any lingering vital heat, and then
hastily cut the lashings that bound the pair to the spar, and
with difficulty disengaged the child from the cold clasp in
which dying love had bound him to a heart which should
beat no more with mortal joy or sorrow.

Sally, after the first moment, had run screaming toward
the house, with all a child's forward eagerness, to be the
bearer of news; but the little Mara stood, looking anxiously,
with a wishful earnestness of face.

“Pitty boy, — pitty boy, — come!” she said often; but
the old man was so busy, he scarcely regarded her.

“Now, Cap'n Kittridge, do tell!” said Miss Roxy, meeting
him in all haste, with a cap-border stiff in air, while
Dame Kittridge exclaimed, —

“Now, you don't! Well, well! did n't I say that was a
ship last night? And what a solemnizing thought it was,
that souls might be goin' into eternity!”

“We must have blankets and hot bottles, right away!”
said Miss Roxy, who always took the earthly view of matters,

and who was, in her own person, a personified humane
society. “Miss Kittridge, you jist dip out your dishwater
into the smallest tub, and we 'll put him in. Stand away,
Mara! Sally, you take her out of the way! We 'll fetch
this child to, perhaps. I 've fetched 'em to, when they 's
seemed to be dead as door-nails!”

“Cap'n Kittridge, you 're sure the woman 's dead?”

“Laws, yes; she had a blow right on her temple here.
There 's no bringing her to till the resurrection.”

“Well, then, you jist go and get Cap'n Pennel to come
down and help you, and get the body into the house, and
we 'll attend to layin' it out by and by. Tell Ruey to come
down.”

Aunt Roxy issued her orders with all the military vigor
and precision of a general in case of a sudden attack. It
was her habit. Sickness and death were her opportunities;
where they were, she felt herself at home, and she addressed
herself to the task before her with undoubting faith.

Before many hours a pair of large, dark eyes slowly
emerged from under the black-fringed lids of the little
drowned boy, — they rolled dreamily round for a moment,
and dropped again in heavy languor.

The little Mara had, with the quiet persistence which
formed a trait in her baby character, dragged stools and
chairs to the back of the bed, which she at last succeeded
in scaling, and sat opposite to where the child lay, grave and
still, watching with intense earnestness the process that was
going on.

At the moment when the eyes had opened, she stretched
forth her little arms, and said, eagerly, “Pitty boy, come,”
— and then, as they closed again, she dropped her hands
with a sigh of disappointment. Yet, before night, the

little stranger sat up in bed, and laughed with pleasure at
the treasures of shells and pebbles which the children spread
out on the bed before him.

He was a vigorous, well-made, handsome child, with brilliant
eyes and teeth, but the few words that he spoke were
in a language unknown to most present. Captain Kittridge
declared it to be Spanish, and that a call which he most
passionately and often repeated was for his mother. But he
was of that happy age when sorrow can be easily effaced,
and the efforts of the children called forth joyous smiles.
When his playthings did not go to his liking, he showed
sparkles of a fiery, irascible spirit.

The little Mara seemed to appropriate him in feminine
fashion, as a chosen idol and graven image. She gave him
at once all her slender stock of infantine treasures, and
seemed to watch with an ecstatic devotion his every movement,
— often repeating, as she looked delightedly around,
“Pitty boy, come.”

She had no words to explain the strange dream of the
morning; it lay in her, struggling for expression, and giving
her an interest in the new-comer as in something belonging
to herself. Whence it came, — whence come multitudes
like it, which spring up as strange, enchanted flowers, every
now and then in the dull, material pathway of life, — who
knows?

It may be that our present faculties have among them a
rudimentary one, like the germs of wings in the chrysalis,
by which the spiritual world becomes sometimes an object
of perception, — there may be natures in which the walls
of the material are so fine and translucent that the spiritual
is seen through them as through a glass darkly. It may be,
too, that the love which is stronger than death has a power

sometimes to make itself heard and felt through the walls of
our mortality, when it would plead for the defenceless ones
it has left behind. All these things may be, — who knows?

“There,” said Miss Roxy, coming out of the keeping-room
at sunset; “I would n't ask to see a better-lookin' corpse.
That ar woman was a sight to behold this morning. I guess
I shook a double handful of stones and them little shells out
of her hair, — now she reely looks beautiful. Captain Kittridge
has made a coffin out o' some cedar-boards he happened
to have, and I lined it with bleached cotton, and
stuffed the pillow nice and full, and when we come to get
her in, she reely will look lovely.”

“I s'pose, Mis' Kittridge, you 'll have the funeral to-morrow,
— it 's Sunday.”

“Why, yes, Aunt Roxy, — I think everybody must want
to improve such a dispensation. Have you took little Mara
in to look at the corpse?”

“Well, no,” said Miss Roxy; “Mis' Pennel 's gettin'
ready to take her home.”

“I think it 's an opportunity we ought to improve,” said
Mrs. Kittridge, “to learn children what death is. I think
we can't begin to solemnize their minds too young.”

At this moment Sally and the little Mara entered the
room.

“Come here, children,” said Mrs. Kittridge, taking a hand
of either one, and leading them to the closed door of the
keeping-room; “I 've got somethin' to show you.”

The room looked ghostly and dim, — the rays of light fell
through the closed shutter on an object mysteriously muffled
in a white sheet.

Sally's bright face expressed only the vague curiosity of a

child to see something new; but the little Mara resisted and
hung back with all her force, so that Mrs. Kittridge was
obliged to take her up and hold her.

She folded back the sheet from the chill and wintry form
which lay so icily, lonely, and cold. Sally walked around
it, and gratified her curiosity by seeing it from every point
of view, and laying her warm, busy hand on the lifeless and
cold one; but Mara clung to Mrs. Kittridge, with eyes that
expressed a distressed astonishment. The good woman
stooped over and placed the child's little hand for a moment
on the icy forehead. The little one gave a piercing
scream, and struggled to get away; and as soon as she was
put down, she ran and hid her face in Aunt Roxy's dress,
sobbing bitterly.

“That child 'll grow up to follow vanity,” said Mrs. Kittridge;
“her little head is full of dress now, and she hates
anything serious, — it 's easy to see that.”

The little Mara had no words to tell what a strange, distressful
chill had passed up her arm and through her brain,
as she felt that icy cold of death, — that cold so different
from all others. It was an impression of fear and pain that
lasted weeks and months, so that she would start out of sleep
and cry with a terror which she had not yet a sufficiency of
language to describe.

“You seem to forget, Mis' Kittridge, that this 'ere child
a'n't rugged like our Sally,” said Aunt Roxy, as she raised
the little Mara in her arms. “She was a seven-months'
baby, and hard to raise at all, and a shivery, scary little
creature.”

“Well, then, she ought to be hardened,” said Dame Kittridge.
“But Mary Pennel never had no sort of idea of
bringin' up children, — 't was jist so with Naomi, — the girl

never had no sort o' resolution, and she just died for want o'
resolution, — that 's what came of it. I tell ye, children 's
got to learn to take the world as it is; and 't a'n't no use
bringin' on 'em up too tender. Teach 'em to begin as
they 've got to go on, — that 's my maxim.”

“Mis' Kittridge,” said Aunt Roxy, “there 's reason in all
things, and there 's difference in children. `What 's one's
meat 's another's pison.' You could n't fetch up Mis' Pennel's
children, and she could n't fetch up yourn, — so let 's
say no more 'bout it.”

“I 'm always a-tellin' my wife that ar,” said Captain Kittridge;
“she 's always wantin' to make everybody over after
her pattern.”

“Cap'n Kittridge, I don't think you need to speak,”
resumed his wife. “When such a loud providence is
a-knockin' at your door, I think you 'd better be a-searchin'
your own heart, — here it is the eleventh hour, and you
ha' n't come into the Lord's vineyard yet.”

“Oh! come, come, Mis' Kittridge, don't twit a feller
afore folks,” said the Captain. “I 'm goin' over to Harpswell
Neck this blessed minute after the minister to 'tend the
funeral, — so we 'll let him preach.”