The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett [classic english novels .txt] 📗

As they came up the walk together, laughing like girls, I fled, full of cares, to the kitchen, to brighten the fire and be sure that the lobster, sole dependence of a late supper, was well out of reach of the cat. There proved to be fine reserves of wild raspberries and bread and butter, so that I regained my composure, and waited impatiently for my own share of this illustrious visit to begin. There was an instant sense of high festivity in the evening air from the moment when our guest had so frankly demanded the Oolong tea.

The great moment arrived. I was formally presented at the stair-foot, and the two friends passed on to the kitchen, where I soon heard a hospitable clink of crockery and the brisk stirring of a teacup. I sat in my high-backed rocking-chair by the window in the front room with an unreasonable feeling of being left out, like the child who stood at the gate in Hans Andersen’s story. Mrs. Fosdick did not look, at first sight, like a person of great social gifts. She was a serious-looking little bit of an old woman, with a birdlike nod of the head. I had often been told that she was the “best hand in the world to make a visit,”⁠—as if to visit were the highest of vocations; that everybody wished for her, while few could get her; and I saw that Mrs. Todd felt a comfortable sense of distinction in being favored with the company of this eminent person who “knew just how.” It was certainly true that Mrs. Fosdick gave both her hostess and me a warm feeling of enjoyment and expectation, as if she had the power of social suggestion to all neighboring minds.

The two friends did not reappear for at least an hour. I could hear their busy voices, loud and low by turns, as they ranged from public to confidential topics. At last Mrs. Todd kindly remembered me and returned, giving my door a ceremonious knock before she stepped in, with the small visitor in her wake. She reached behind her and took Mrs. Fosdick’s hand as if she were young and bashful, and gave her a gentle pull forward.

“There, I don’t know whether you’re goin’ to take to each other or not; no, nobody can’t tell whether you’ll suit each other, but I expect you’ll get along some way, both having seen the world,” said our affectionate hostess. “You can inform Mis’ Fosdick how we found the folks out to Green Island the other day. She’s always been well acquainted with mother. I’ll slip out now an’ put away the supper things an’ set my bread to rise, if you’ll both excuse me. You can come an’ keep me company when you get ready, either or both.” And Mrs. Todd, large and amiable, disappeared and left us.

Being furnished not only with a subject of conversation, but with a safe refuge in the kitchen in case of incompatibility, Mrs. Fosdick and I sat down, prepared to make the best of each other. I soon discovered that she, like many of the elder women of the coast, had spent a part of her life at sea, and was full of a good traveler’s curiosity and enlightenment. By the time we thought it discreet to join our hostess we were already sincere friends.

You may speak of a visit’s setting in as well as a tide’s, and it was impossible, as Mrs. Todd whispered to me, not to be pleased at the way this visit was setting in; a new impulse and refreshing of the social currents and seldom visited bays of memory appeared to have begun. Mrs. Fosdick had been the mother of a large family of sons and daughters⁠—sailors and sailors’ wives⁠—and most of them had died before her. I soon grew more or less acquainted with the histories of all their fortunes and misfortunes, and subjects of an intimate nature were no more withheld from my ears than if I had been a shell on the mantelpiece. Mrs. Fosdick was not without a touch of dignity and elegance; she was fashionable in her dress, but it was a curiously well-preserved provincial fashion of some years back. In a wider sphere one might have called her a woman of the world, with her unexpected bits of modern knowledge, but Mrs. Todd’s wisdom was an intimation of truth itself. She might belong to any age, like an idyl of Theocritus; but while she always understood Mrs. Fosdick, that entertaining pilgrim could not always understand Mrs. Todd.

That very first evening my friends plunged into a borderless sea of reminiscences and personal news. Mrs. Fosdick had been staying with a family who owned the farm where she was born, and she had visited every sunny knoll and shady field corner; but when she said that it might be for the last time, I detected in her tone something expectant of the contradiction which Mrs. Todd promptly offered.

“Almiry,” said Mrs. Fosdick, with sadness, “you may say what you like, but I am one of nine brothers and sisters brought up on the old place, and we’re all dead but me.”

“Your sister Dailey ain’t gone, is she? Why, no, Louisa ain’t gone!” exclaimed Mrs. Todd, with surprise. “Why, I never heard of that occurrence!”

“Yes’m; she passed away last October, in Lynn. She had made her distant home in Vermont State, but she was making a visit to her youngest daughter. Louisa was the only one of my family whose funeral I wasn’t able to attend, but ’twas a mere accident. All the rest of us were settled right about home. I thought it was very slack of ’em in Lynn not to fetch her to the old place; but when I came to hear about it, I learned that they’d recently put up a very elegant monument, and my sister Dailey was always great for show. She’d just been out to see the monument the week before she was taken down, and admired it so much