第4章

To arrive at this quietest of seaside villages late in June, when the busy herb-gathering season was just beginning, was also to arrive in the early prime of Mrs.Todd's activity in the brewing of old-fashioned spruce beer.This cooling and refreshing drink had been brought to wonderful perfection through a long series of experiments; it had won immense local fame, and the supplies for its manufacture were always giving out and having to be replenished.For various reasons, the seclusion and uninterrupted days which had been looked forward to proved to be very rare in this otherwise delightful corner of the world.My hostess and Ihad made our shrewd business agreement on the basis of a simple cold luncheon at noon, and liberal restitution in the matter of hot suppers, to provide for which the lodger might sometimes be seen hurrying down the road, late in the day, with cunner line in hand.

It was soon found that this arrangement made large allowance for Mrs.Todd's slow herb-gathering progresses through woods and pastures.The spruce-beer customers were pretty steady in hot weather, and there were many demands for different soothing syrups and elixirs with which the unwise curiosity of my early residence had made me acquainted.Knowing Mrs.Todd to be a widow, who had little beside this slender business and the income from one hungry lodger to maintain her, one's energies and even interest were quickly bestowed, until it became a matter of course that she should go afield every pleasant day, and that the lodger should answer all peremptory knocks at the side door.

In taking an occasional wisdom-giving stroll in Mrs.Todd's company, and in acting as business partner during her frequent absences, I found the July days fly fast, and it was not until I felt myself confronted with too great pride and pleasure in the display, one night, of two dollars and twenty-seven cents which I had taken in during the day, that I remembered a long piece of writing, sadly belated now, which I was bound to do.To have been patted kindly on the shoulder and called "darlin'," to have been offered a surprise of early mushrooms for supper, to have had all the glory of making two dollars and twenty-seven cents in a single day, and then to renounce it all and withdraw from these pleasant successes, needed much resolution.Literary employments are so vexed with uncertainties at best, and it was not until the voice of conscience sounded louder in my ears than the sea on the nearest pebble beach that I said unkind words of withdrawal to Mrs.Todd.

She only became more wistfully affectionate than ever in her expressions, and looked as disappointed as I expected when Ifrankly told her that I could no longer enjoy the pleasure of what we called "seein' folks." I felt that I was cruel to a whole neighborhood in curtailing her liberty in this most important season for harvesting the different wild herbs that were so much counted upon to ease their winter ails.

"Well, dear," she said sorrowfully, "I've took great advantage o' your bein' here.I ain't had such a season for years, but Ihave never had nobody I could so trust.All you lack is a few qualities, but with time you'd gain judgment an' experience, an' be very able in the business.I'd stand right here an' say it to anybody."Mrs.Todd and I were not separated or estranged by the change in our business relations; on the contrary, a deeper intimacy seemed to begin.I do not know what herb of the night it was that used sometimes to send out a penetrating odor late in the evening, after the dew had fallen, and the moon was high, and the cool air came up from the sea.Then Mrs.Todd would feel that she must talk to somebody, and I was only too glad to listen.We both fell under the spell, and she either stood outside the window, or made an errand to my sitting-room, and told, it might be very commonplace news of the day, or, as happened one misty summer night, all that lay deepest in her heart.It was in this way that I came to know that she had loved one who was far above her.

"No, dear, him I speak of could never think of me," she said.

"When we was young together his mother didn't favor the match, an'

done everything she could to part us; and folks thought we both married well, but't wa'n't what either one of us wanted most; an'

now we're left alone again, an' might have had each other all the time.He was above bein' a seafarin' man, an' prospered more than most; he come of a high family, an' my lot was plain an' hard-workin'.I ain't seen him for some years; he's forgot our youthful feelin's, I expect, but a woman's heart is different; them feelin's comes back when you think you've done with 'em, as sure as spring comes with the year.An' I've always had ways of hearin' about him."She stood in the centre of a braided rug, and its rings of black and gray seemed to circle about her feet in the dim light.

Her height and massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a huge sibyl, while the strange fragrance of the mysterious herb blew in from the little garden.