University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

In fact, at this very moment our scene-shifter changes the
picture. Away rolls the image of Mrs. Kittridge's kitchen,
with its sanded floor, its scoured rows of bright pewter platters,
its great, deep fireplace, with wide stone hearth, its little
looking-glass with a bit of asparagus bush, like a green mist,
over it. Exeunt the image of Mrs. Kittridge, with her
hands floury from the bread she has been moulding, and
the dry, ropy, lean Captain, who has been sitting tilting back
in a splint-bottomed chair, — and the next scene comes rolling
in. It is a chamber in the house of Zephaniah Pennel,
whose windows present a blue panorama of sea and sky.
Through two windows you look forth into the blue belt of
Harpswell Bay, bordered on the farther edge by Harpswell
Neck, dotted here and there with houses, among which rises
the little white meeting-house, like a mother-bird among a
flock of chickens. The third window, on the other side of
the room, looks far out to sea, where only a group of low,
rocky islands interrupts the clear sweep of the horizon line,
with its blue infinitude of distance.

The furniture of this room, though of the barest and most
frigid simplicity, is yet relieved by many of those touches of
taste and fancy which the indwelling of a person of sensibility
and imagination will shed off upon the physical surroundings.
The bed was draped with a white spread, embroidered
with a kind of knotted tracery, the working of

which was considered among the female accomplishments of
those days, and over the head of it was a painting of a
bunch of crimson and white trillium, executed with a fidelity
to Nature that showed the most delicate gifts of observation.
Over the mantel-piece hung a painting of the Bay of Genoa,
which had accidentally found a voyage home in Zephaniah
Pennel's sea-chest, and which skilful fingers had surrounded
with a frame curiously wrought of moss and sea-shells. Two
vases of India china stood on the mantel, filled with spring
flowers, crowfoot, anemones, and liverwort, with drooping
bells of the twin-flower. The looking-glass that hung over
the table in one corner of the room was fancifully webbed
with long, drooping festoons of that gray moss which hangs
in such graceful wreaths from the boughs of the pines in the
deep forest shadows of Orr's Island. On the table below
was a collection of books: a whole set of Shakspeare which
Zephaniah Pennel had bought of a Portland bookseller; a
selection, in prose and verse, from the best classic writers,
presented to Mara Lincoln, the fly-leaf said, by her sincere
friend, Theophilus Sewell; a Virgil, much thumbed, with an
old, worn cover, which, however, some adroit fingers had
concealed under a coating of delicately marbled paper; —
there was a Latin dictionary, a set of Plutarch's Lives, the
Mysteries of Udolpho, and Sir Charles Grandison, together
with Edwards on the Affections, and Boston's Fourfold State;
— there was an inkstand, curiously contrived from a sea-shell,
with pens and paper in that phase of arrangement
which betokened frequency of use; and, lastly, a little
work-basket, containing a long strip of curious and delicate
embroidery, in which the needle yet hanging showed
that the work was in progress.

By a table at the sea-looking window sits our little Mara,

now grown to the maturity of eighteen summers, but retaining
still unmistakable signs of identity with the little golden-haired,
dreamy, excitable, fanciful “Pearl” of Orr's Island.

She is not quite of a middle height, with something beautiful
and childlike about the moulding of her delicate form.
We still see those sad, wistful, hazel eyes, over which the
lids droop with a dreamy languor, and whose dark lustre
contrasts singularly with the golden hue of the abundant
hair which waves in a thousand rippling undulations around
her face. The impression she produces is not that of paleness,
though there is no color in her cheek; but her complexion
has everywhere that delicate pink tinting which
one sees in healthy infants, and with the least emotion
brightens into a fluttering bloom. Such a bloom is on her
cheek at this moment, as she is working away, copying a
bunch of scarlet rock-columbine which is in a wine-glass of
water before her; every few moments stopping and holding
her work at a distance, to contemplate its effect. At this
moment there steps behind her chair a tall, lithe figure, a
face with a rich Spanish complexion, large black eyes, glowing
cheeks, marked eyebrows, and lustrous black hair, arranged
in shining braids around her head. It is our old
friend, Sally Kittridge, whom common fame calls the handsomest
girl of all the region round Harpswell, Macquoit, and
Orr's Island. In truth, a wholesome, ruddy, blooming creature
she was, the sight of whom cheered and warmed one like a
good fire in December; and she seemed to have enough and
to spare of the warmest gifts of vitality and joyous animal
life. She had a well-formed mouth, but rather large, and a
frank laugh which showed all her teeth sound — and a fortunate
sight it was, considering that they were white and
even as pearls; and the hand that she laid upon Mara's at

this moment, though twice as large as that of the little
artist, was yet in harmony with her vigorous, finely developed
figure.

“Mara Lincoln,” she said, “you are a witch, a perfect
little witch, at painting. How you can make things look so
like I don't see. Now, I could paint the things we painted
at Miss Plucher's; but then, dear me! they didn't look at all
like flowers. One needed to write under them what they
were made for.”

“Does this look like to you, Sally?” said Mara. “I wish
it would to me. Just see what a beautiful clear color that
flower is. All I can do, I can't make one like it. My
scarlet and yellows sink dead into the paper.”

“Why, I think your flowers are wonderful! You are a
real genius, that's what you are! I am only a common girl;
I can't do things as you can.”

“You can do things a thousand times more useful, Sally.
I don't pretend to compare with you in the useful arts, and
I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like
a useless little creature. If I could go round as you can,
and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead in the
world, I should feel that I was good for something; but
somehow I can't.”

“To be sure you can't,” said Sally, laughing. “I should
like to see you try it.”

“Now,” pursued Mara, in a tone of lamentation, “I could
no more get into a carriage and drive to Brunswick as you
can, than I could fly. I can't drive, Sally — something is
the matter with me; and the horses always know it the minute
I take the reins; they always twitch their ears and stare
round into the chaise at me, as much as to say, `What! you
there?' and I feel sure they never will mind me. And then

how you can make those wonderful bargains you do, I can't
see! — you talk up to the clerks and the men, and somehow
you talk everybody round; but as for me, if I only open my
mouth in the humblest way to dispute the price, everybody
puts me down. I always tremble when I go into a store,
and people talk to me just as if I was a little girl, and once
or twice they have made me buy things that I knew I did n't
want, just because they will talk me down.”

“Oh, Mara, Mara,” said Sally, laughing till the tears
rolled down her cheeks, “what do you ever go a-shopping
for? — of course you ought always to send me. Why, look
at this dress — real India chintz; do you know I made old
Pennywhistle's clerk up in Brunswick give it to me just for
the price of common cotton? You see there was a yard of
it had got faded by lying in the shop-window, and there
were one or two holes and imperfections in it, and you ought
to have heard the talk I made! I abused it to right and
left, and actually at last I brought the poor wretch to believe
that he ought to be grateful to me for taking it off his hands.
Well, you see the dress I 've made of it. The imperfections
did n't hurt it the least in the world as I managed it, — and
the faded breadth makes a good apron, so you see. And
just so I got that red spotted flannel dress I wore last winter.
It was moth-eaten in one or two places, and I made
them let me have it at half-price; — made exactly as good a
dress. But after all, Mara, I can't trim a bonnet as you can,
and I can't come up to your embroidery, nor your lace-work,
nor I can't draw and paint as you can, and I can't sing like
you; and then as to all those things you talk with Mr.
Sewell about, why they 're beyond my depth, — that 's all
I 've got to say. Now, you are made to have poetry written
to you, and all that kind of thing one reads of in novels.

Nobody would ever think of writing poetry to me, now, or
sending me flowers and rings, and such things. If a fellow
likes me, he gives me a quince, or a big apple; but, then,
Mara, there a'n't any fellows round here that are fit to speak
to.”

“I 'm sure, Sally, there always is a train following you
everywhere, at singing-school and Thursday lecture.”

“Yes — but what do I care for 'em?” said Sally, with a
toss of her head. “Why they follow me, I don't see. I
don't do anything to make 'em, and I tell 'em all that they
tire me to death; and still they will hang round. What is
the reason, do you suppose?”

“What can it be?” said Mara, with a quiet kind of arch
drollery which suffused her face, as she bent over her painting.

“Well, you know I can't bear fellows — I think they are
hateful.”

“What! even Tom Hiers?” said Mara, continuing her
painting.

“Tom Hiers! Do you suppose I care for him? He
would insist on waiting on me round all last winter, taking
me over in his boat to Portland, and up in his sleigh to
Brunswick; but I did n't care for him.”

“Well, there 's Jimmy Wilson, up at Brunswick.”

“What! that little snip of a clerk! You don't suppose
I care for him, do you? — only he almost runs his head off
following me round when I go up there shopping; he 's
nothing but a little dressed-up yard-stick! I never saw a
fellow yet that I 'd cross the street to have another look at.
By the by, Mara, Miss Roxy told me Sunday that Moses
was coming down from Umbagog this week.”

“Yes, he is,” said Mara; “we are looking for him every
day.”

“You must want to see him. How long is it since you
saw him?”

“It is three years,” said Mara. “I scarcely know what
he is like now. I was visiting in Boston when he came
home from his three-years' voyage, and he was gone into the
lumbering country when I came back. He seems almost a
stranger to me.”

“He 's pretty good-looking,” said Sally. “I saw him on
Sunday when he was here, but he was off on Monday, and
never called on old friends. Does he write to you often?”

“Not very,” said Mara; “in fact, almost never; and
when he does there is so little in his letters.”

“Well, I tell you, Mara, you must not expect fellows to
write as girls can. They don't do it. Now, our boys,
when they write home, they tell the latitude and longitude,
and soil and productions, and such things. But if you or I
were only there, don't you think we should find something
more to say? Of course we should, — fifty thousand little
things that they never think of.”

Mara made no reply to this, but went on very intently
with her painting. A close observer might have noticed a
suppressed sigh that seemed to retreat far down into her
heart. Sally did not notice it.

What was in that sigh? It was the sigh of a long, deep
inner history, unwritten and untold — such as are transpiring
daily by thousands, and of which we take no heed.