Читать книгу Time Out Of Mind - Rachel Field - Страница 4

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I was never one to begrudge people their memories. From a child I would listen when they spoke of the past. Mother often remarked upon it as strange in one so young. But I think I must have guessed, even then, at what is now clear to me, though I have not skill enough with words to make it plain. For I know that nothing can be so sweet as remembered joy, and nothing so bitter as despair that no longer has the power to hurt us. And to me the past seems like nothing so much as one of those shells that used to be on every mantelpiece of sea-faring families years ago along the coast of Maine.

There were two such shells in the parlor of Fortune's Folly. Rissa and Nat and I were never tired of pressing one or the other to our ears to hear how a dwindled thunder of sea still beat in each fluted pink hollow. So I say again, that is how the past seems to me—a hollow shell out of the mighty sea of Time, which each one of us may press to the ear to drown out the louder clamor of the present. Perhaps it is too childish and fanciful a notion for people to believe in, in these times. Perhaps it only comes of my being so much alone with memories that make both sweet and bitter company.

Except for the Fortune family I should have had another story to set down. Like as not I should not be putting it to paper at all, but telling it to children, and maybe grandchildren, about my own fire. For no one living, I think, but must sometimes wonder at the working out of his life, or who does not say:—"If my mother had not come knocking at such and such a door—If my father had taken the right hand road instead of the left—If the tin peddler had waited another hour to come by—If I had not worn the sprigged muslin and sash to the strawberry festival, what another sort of creature might I find myself today?" I doubt if any are too stupid or too clever as not to have wasted a thought or so in such useless pastimes. Of late years the habit has grown on me and I often go back over the events, trivial enough in themselves, that brought me here to Little Prospect and bound me from a child to the Fortunes and their proud and difficult ways.

I know what they say of them in the village, and of me as well. But they will say less and less as the years go by and new faces crowd out the old, as the houses of summer people are crowding the farms and homesteads about Little Prospect. For this reason, and because I alone am left of the three who grew up together in Fortune's Folly on the hill, I must set down the true pattern of our lives here on the blank pages of Major Fortune's half-filled ledgers and log-books. It would have angered him, maybe, to know they were put to such use all these years after he entered the names there with such high hope in his heart and pen. Well, he is over his tempers now, and the long pages he left empty are perhaps as good a legacy as any other. Who will read my words in these busy times I do not know. Certainly not the children of Little Prospect who may have heard dark whispers from their mothers and aunts of Kate Fernald and how she has come down in the world, Even Sadie Berry, who took me in and got me work in the post-office, does not guess what I do here alone in my upper room night after night. She seldom climbs her steep stairs and so she does not see how the table is drawn close to the northwest window that I may have the last glow of light that lingers over Nobble Head Narrows for my scribbling. She does not know that once the door is shut behind me my mind takes twenty, thirty, and even forty years in a single stride and I am young again. So we walk backwards to meet the horizons we passed long ago. So we are re-born, and so we live and lean upon ourselves as the honeysuckle shoot climbs down its own stalk when there is nothing higher for it to lay hold on.

The gilt and marble clock that looks like royalty visiting a poor relation will strike in a moment from my pine dresser. Presently a hidden door will swing open in the middle of the gold face and two little enameled figures of woodsmen will come out with a cross-saw and go through the motions of sawing an invisible log.

"Father says they're killing time," Nat told me once as we watched them together in the east parlor. I could not begin to write without mention of the clock, for it must always mark the beginning of time for me, though I was ten years old before I saw its precise small figures and heard its faint chime that seemed to come from the bottom of a deep well.

Before then I lived inland in a sheltered hilly country where I might be yet if it had not been for father's forgetting his jacket the day he drove his last load of apples to the cider-mill nine miles from our farm. He left it behind him by the merest chance. When mother found it over the hitching post he was too far away for me to run after him, and by noon rain was coming down in steady white streamers. It was nearly dark before he drove into the yard again, soaked through and chilled to the bone. Nothing mother could do warmed him—not mustard, or soapstone, or steaming toddy. The doctor came and the neighbors, but there was no helping him. By another week he was in his grave and mother and I alone in the farmhouse with winter coming on and the livestock more than one woman and a ten year old girl could manage.

He'd had poor crops that year and the one before, and burying him had swallowed up about all there was saved. Neighbors took the horse and cows and pigs off our hands, but what they brought wasn't enough to see us through the winter. So when word came from mother's cousin in Little Prospect that he'd found a place for her as housekeeper at the big place they called "Fortune's Folly" it seemed nothing short of providential. All the neighbors told her so and turned to, to help us go. In spite of her sadness mother was glad of the chance. She'd never liked the lonely farm that father set such store by, and though she shed some tears when it came to selling the furniture to anyone who would have it, once we were off in the puffing black train with our bags about us and two old trunks stowed in the baggage car, she began to take heart again.

Being housekeeper in a great house like Major Fortune's wouldn't be like coming down in the world. He had sent us money for our fare on the train that would set us within ten miles of our goal, and Cousin Sam had written he wasn't the interfering kind. He wouldn't be likely to take another wife and mother could have things her own way up at the Folly. There'd be a better chance for me there, mother figured, with a district school to go to nearby. Then there were the two Fortune children, a boy and a girl about my own age. It stood to reason I'd pick up genteel ways from them as I wouldn't back on the farm along with dumb beasts and no advantages to mention.

I remember she talked to me about it the better part of the journey as I watched brown fields and frosty ponds and November woods going by the train window. I didn't feel so sure I'd like having advantages, and I dreaded meeting those two young Fortunes. I wasn't easy with other children, being shy and awkward on account of having no playmates but the hens and pigs and the calves that came with the Spring and went off in the Butcher's cart as soon as I'd begun making soft-eyed pets of them. It was a jolting way-train, for in those days there were no fast expresses thundering through the countryside, and a long journey with stops at every sort of a one-horse station. I sat pressed close to the chill pane of glass while mother dozed or woke to tell me all over again that I mustn't hang back and keep to myself now that I was to have two playmates. According to her Fortune's Folly was the largest and most elegant house east of Portland and a landmark up and down the coast. She used to go to Little Prospect when she was a girl and she had never forgotten its white columns and cupola above the spruce woods on the high bluff.

"Fortune's and yeast can't be kept at the bottom," was a saying they had about them, she told me. It is years now since I have heard it from any lips and soon there will be none left to remember it. "There's no port too far for Fortune pines to cast their shadows," was another she told me that day. It puzzled me at first till she explained that it meant the tall masts of Fortune built vessels which had become a by-word the globe around. But even she spoke darkly of changing times and of how there were more steamboats every year. Steam was well enough on land, she added, but it would never crowd out canvas, no matter what people said. For it stood to reason it was cheaper to make the wind serve you for nothing instead of this dirty coal. I did not bother my head much with what she said, though it is strange to remember her words all these years after as I sit at my window and see the harbor crowded with sail-less vessels and the yellow funnels of yachts going by and the smoke of the steamer from Boston on its morning and evening trips. But that day I was too occupied with new sights to pay proper heed.

We were hungry from our early start and tired with the excitement of goodbyes and all the rumble and jolting. After we had eaten our lunch I fell asleep and so lost my first chance of seeing salt water. It was mid-afternoon when mother roused me. The brakeman was calling "Rockland", and all about us people were reaching for their bags and bundles. I felt stiff and cold from sitting cramped so long beside the window and near to crying as we filed out with the rest. Wagons and men and horses and heaped baggage were all about the platform, and though I could not see beyond the wooden station a keen wind met us at the steps and I felt a sudden sense of the sea against my cheek and lips.

Cousin Sam Jordan had come to meet us in the Fortunes' high black wagon with yellow wheels. But he did not drive the great bay horses harnessed to it. The first black man I had ever set eyes upon stood beside them, holding their tossing heads, reassuring them against the noise of the engine. Later I was to know him well and to call him Bo, as Nat and Rissa did. But that afternoon I hung back in fear of his dark skin, thick lips and flattened nose. He was a great curiosity in the whole region and had been so since the Major brought him back from the South. That was when he had returned just before the end of the Civil War with his military title; the dusky Bo, and a wife from Philadelphia whose delicate airs and the number of trunks full of finery she brought with her were still a wonder to Little Prospect.

It took considerable manoeuvring on the part of Cousin Sam and the station master to get all our belongings into the wagon, and then it looked as if there would not be room for us beside, certainly not for me and a freckled boy a year or two older. His name was Jake Bullard, and it appeared that he belonged in the Jordan household, for he was younger brother to Cousin Sam's wife, Martha. His unabashed scrutiny increased my shyness, so that I could only cling, speechless to mother's hand as we stood there about the wagon.

"Young ones'll have to ride behind with the things," Cousin Sam decided at last. "Cheer up, Kate, Jake won't eat you!"

He laughed and winked at the boy and before I could protest I was swung up into the back among our familiar pieces of baggage. Jake climbed in beside me with a grin that only added to my dread. But it was growing colder, and there was nothing to do but share the buffalo robe between us. So many things were piled at our backs that I could not see mother or Cousin Sam no matter how I twisted. It made me feel frightened and far away when the horses set off at a smart clip and their hoof beats and the grinding of the wheels drowned out even the sound of voices. There was straw on the floor of the wagon that stuck into my legs and my companion took far more than his share of room. It was a bad beginning and I felt like crying.

But for all that, I shall not soon forget that ride or my first sight of the sea. It came to me without warning for I had been hiding under the buffalo robe to avoid meeting the eyes of the boy named Jake. Some extra freshness of air must have roused me to peer out. As I did so a moist salty wind closed round me. I felt as if I were plunging into space and suddenly my eyes widened to meet a vast and shimmering waste. It was a sea of tossing quicksilver that I saw, limitless and lonely, in the light of a late afternoon in Fall. Though I have seen it in every mood and color since that day it must always seem most miraculous to me so, stirring with that clear colorlessness which is most truly its own.

Presently the road swerved away from shore and for a mile or two woods closed us in. I had never seen such tall trees of pine and fir and spruce before and I marvelled to see how their ranks of thick-set green could suddenly make twilight all about us. I thought of my mother's words and how she had said there was no port too far for Fortune pines to cast their shadows. In that moment I knew what the saying meant, but I did not know, as I do now, that their shadow had already fallen upon me.

Jake unbent a little on our journey. In spite of our shyness we sat close together under the buffalo robe, and in the growing cold of dusk we were each comforted by the warmth of the other's body. My ignorance of the most commonplace sights, such as anchored ships, wharfs and the black sticks of herring weirs in sheltered coves stirred him to conversation. He grew swaggering as he told me the names of these and of towns and harbors that we passed. As the light dwindled and brightness left the sea I found my eyes straining to fix the outlines of bold headlands and islands on my mind. I listened as Jake named them over, pointing out each darkly humped shape with a superior forefinger. Turnip and Heron islands; the Sisters; Fiddler's Reach and Old Horse Ledges—it seems impossible that there was ever a time in my life when they were unfamiliar to me.

The Fortune Ship Yard lay halfway to Little Prospect, and we stopped there to water the horses and stretch our legs. By then it was almost dark and the enormous bulk of a vessel on the ways loomed at the water's edge like the gigantic skeleton of some stranded sea-monster. It put me in mind of Jonah and the Whale in our big Bible, but I was much too shy to mention this to Jake even if he had not hurried off to join the men who were busy about the yard. We went in to the brick office to warm ourselves by the fire in a pot-bellied black iron stove. I had never seen a place so full of books and desks and high stools and the pictures of ships on the walls.

As mother and I stood warming our hands a small, rather stooped man, who then seemed old to me but who could not have been much beyond fifty came forward with a kindly word of greeting. This was my first sight of Henry Willis, the Major's right hand man at the ship-yard. Later I was to understand why the men referred to him as "Fortune's Ballust" because only his steady head and shrewd judgment kept the business prospering under the Major's less practical schemes. But on that afternoon I only knew that the gentleman wore drooping moustaches of faded brown and gold rimmed spectacles which he pushed back on his forehead as he smiled at us in a slow pleasant way. He stood talking to mother in an undertone, so that only half his words came to me. Still I remember he said he was glad that mother had come and that she had brought me along.

"They'll need her," he said, staring at me with near sighted brown eyes. "Too much Fortune in the girl, and not enough of it in the boy. Not that they're a bad pair, Mrs. Fernald, in fact I'd like to see them up to more healthy mischief."

He turned to me again and inquired my age.

"Ten and a half," I managed to stammer, shifting under his gaze.

"About a year older than Nat," he said, "and you'd make two of him. Rissa's eleven and smart's a whip. Yes, she's quite a craft."

I liked Henry Willis then and there though I had not the remotest idea what he meant by that last word. In those days along the coast of Maine and other sea-faring communities scarcely a man, woman or child spoke without some sea-faring phrase creeping in. In a few months' time it came as naturally to me, but on that first evening it was all strange and a little frightening. The peppermint stick he brought from a drawer of his desk proved, however, as sweet as those I had had inland. I was hungry enough to eat it all down, but it seemed wiser to divide with Jake who scrambled back beside me in the straw.

Jake gobbled his half down in no time, and was less short with me the rest of the way. There was no light now except the queer, wavering gleams from the lantern hung under the wagon, and a faint, wide glimmer on the seaward side of the road. Above the creaking and grinding of wheels and the clop-clop of four pair of hoofs, I could hear the sea on the ledges, like no sound I had ever known before. Was it always like that, I asked Jake timidly?

"Wait till you hear it in the line storm." He told me. "Can't hardly hear yourself holler sometimes. 'Bout half way to flood now. Look," he added, "there's Whale Back Light over beyond the Narrows."

I did not know what the Narrows were then, but I looked where he pointed and saw a speck of brightness, like a nearer star shining across the water. Even now as I look up from the half-written page before me, I can see it through my window. In all these fifty odd years since that November evening I have never been out of sight of its beam, except for spells of fog and storm and the week I traveled to New York for Nat's night of triumph. To me it is as much a part of the night sky as the Great and Little Dipper and the steadfast prick of the North Star.

I remember little more of the journey, for the numbness of my fingers and toes and the soreness of my body braced against the joltings drove other matters from my mind. But at last we made a tremendous clatter going over the boards of a wooden bridge. Dark water gleamed for a moment below and squares of lighted window pane showed high above us before more trees closed in and swallowed them up. The next thing I knew the horses had stopped and someone set me down on my own half frozen feet.

Presently I was in the largest kitchen I had ever seen, thawing out by a tremendous stove. Mother and a plump woman named Annie talked on and on while another younger one they called Rose brought us food that had been warming in the oven. I drowsed over my plate, too tired from the cold and my long journey to eat with my usual good appetite. Perhaps I slept before the sound of a distant bell roused me.

"There," the woman named Annie exclaimed, "that means he's ready to see you."

Mother started up in a great fluster, brushing off crumbs and smoothing her hair in a way that always filled me with alarm. I hoped she would go alone and I made myself as small as I could beside her. But she jerked me up and polishing my face with her handkerchief hurried me with her out of the kitchen.

We stood in a long room full of heavy dark furniture and books that climbed to the high ceiling. Oil lamps with shades like flowers and a brightly blazing fire filled it with light and warmth. A tall man stood warming himself before the fire, his feet wide apart in polished boots. I heard his deep voice greeting mother and then I hung back knowing that his eyes were upon me.

"So you're Kate Fernald," I heard him saying. "A square-rigged girl and no mistake!"

I was not naturally concerned with my looks, but his words went through me like a splinter of ice. Not that they were so much in themselves. It was the amused mockery of his voice that chilled me. In that fraction of time it took for him to say them and for his eyes to find me, I was suddenly aware of my stockiness under the new blue woolen dress that was too long at the hem and sleeves. To save time and trouble mother had had my mop of sandy hair cropped close only a few days before. I could feel my ears turning scarlet without so much as a wisp to cover them. My heart pounded in furious misery as I stood silent and flushed before him.

"Major Fortune wants to shake hands with you, Kate," I heard mother whispering to me. "Don't stand there like a ninny."

She shoved me forward and I felt a large hand close over mine. Another hand tilted my chin up and I saw for the first time the face that I was to know and dread for the next dozen years of my life. A handsome face it was, even then in his middle age; the cheek bones high and prominent; the nose sharp as the bowsprit of one of his own ships; and the eyes steely gray under heavy brows. He wore the moustache and side whiskers that were the fashion then in the mid-seventies, and these were still light brown though his hair showed plenty of gray. I know now that he treated mother with generosity and consideration that night. It was only the sight of my sturdy body in such contrast to Nat's frailness that made him resent me as he did. But the memory persists. Even after all these years I can still turn hot and cold remembering his look and voice.

"Clarissa! Nathaniel!" He spoke shortly, dropping my hand and dismissing me as if I had been a sack of potatoes.

Two figures rose from the other end of the room and came towards me. We met by the rosewood piano, the first I had ever set eyes on, and the harp catching glints of firelight on its gilded frame and strings. Not by mere chance, it seems to me now, did we meet by those two instruments that were to have so strange a part in our three lives. The little tin-type that the photographer in Portland took that winter stands on my dresser, but I need not cross the room to refresh my memory of the way they looked that night. I can see each sprig of Rissa's patterned green challis, and the half anxious, half amused pucker on Nat's forehead as we stood in shy silence together. Clarissa was eleven then, a year and some months older than I, and as the Major liked to point out with pride, "clipper built". Her slimness and grace were marked even in the bunched and draped dress which was then in style. I had never seen its like and that and her grave beauty filled me with awe. She was fair, like her father, with a cloud of crinkled, light brown hair that grew down in a deep point on her forehead. This gave her face the shape of a violet leaf, for her chin was tapering and her eyes, gray as the Major's but softer, were set wide apart. A narrow band of black velvet tied her hair and her cheeks were faintly colored like the outer petals of a white rose.

But it is Nat and his impish delicacy that I remember best. It was true as Henry Willis had said that afternoon, I would have made two of him though he was not a full year younger. Over the fireplace hung the portrait of a lady in an oval gilt frame and I knew without being told that this was his dead mother whose very image he bore. Everything was peaked and startled about his face—brows like two black feathers above brown, merry eyes; tumbled spikes of dark hair, and a small triangular chin.

"Hello," he said abruptly in a curiously deep voice, and put out his hand to me. I took it without answering and as we touched our fingers together the clock began to strike on the mantelpiece. I saw the little figures of the woodsmen come out and begin to saw away at their unseen log. To my excited, overtaxed mind the notes of the chime and his voice became one, as if he and time were to be somehow bound forever to me.

But what he said next was a very childish and simple question.

"How old are you?"

One other incident of that evening which is clear in my mind, came about through my awkward shyness. We three still stood round the piano, ill at ease as children will be at first meeting. I could see that mother was nearly through her talk with the Major, and I turned to join her. As I did so my hand brushed the nearest ivory and black keys. The sound twanged in the firelit room and I saw Nat go white and dart one of those looks at his sister that I was to know so well later on. She made no sign save for a widening of her eyes. I saw Major Fortune look our way with a slightly annoyed expression, but beyond that he took no notice. I could feel an unnamed dread gradually fading out of the room as he went on talking to mother. But I knew without a word being spoken that it had been a close shave, and that in some way it had to do with the piano.