The pearl of Orr's Island: a story of the coast of Maine

Front matter

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Chapter I

On the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath, in the State of Maine, might have been seen, on a certain autumnal afternoon, a one-horse wagon, in which two persons were sitting. One is an old man, with the peculiarly hard but expressive physiognomy which characterizes the seafaring population of the New England shores.

A clear blue eye, evidently practised in habits of keen observation, white hair, bronzed, weather-beaten cheeks, and a face deeply lined with the furrows of shrewd thought and anxious care, were points of the portrait that made themselves felt at a glance.

By his side sat a young woman of two-and-twenty, of a marked and peculiar personal appearance. Her hair was black, and smoothly parted on a broad forehead, to which a pair of pencilled dark eyebrows gave a striking and definite outline. Beneath, lay a pair of large black eyes, remarkable for tremulous expression of melancholy and timidity. The cheek was white and bloodless as a snowberry, though with the clear and perfect oval of good health ; the mouth was delicately formed, with a certain sad quiet in its lines, which indicated a habitually repressed and sensitive nature.

The dress of this young person, as often happens in

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New England, was, in refinement and even elegance, a marked contrast to that of her male companion and to the humble vehicle in which she rode. There was not only the most fastidious neatness, but a delicacy in the choice of colors, an indication of elegant tastes in the whole arrangement, and the quietest suggestion ift the world of an acquaintance with the usages of fashion, which struck one oddly in those wild and dreary surroundings. On the whole, she impressed one like those fragile wild-flowers which in April cast their fluttering shadows from the mossy crevices of the old New England granite, — an existence in which colorless delicacy is united to a sort of elastic hardihood of life, fit for the rocky soil and harsh winds it is born to encounter.

The scenery of the road along which the two were riding was wild and bare. Only savins and mulleins, with their dark pyramids or white spires of velvet leaves, diversified the sandy way-side ; but out at sea was a wide sweep of blue, reaching far to the open ocean, which lay rolling, tossing, and breaking into white caps of foam in the bright sunshine. For two or three days a north-east storm had been raging, and the sea was in all the commotion which such a general upturning creates.

The two travellers reached a point of elevated land, where they paused a moment, and the man drew up the jogging, stiff-jointed old farm-horse, and raised himself upon his feet to look out at the prospect.

There might be seen in the distance the blue Kennebec sweeping out toward the ocean through its picturesque rocky shores, decked with cedars and other dusky evergreens, which were illuminated by the orange and flarne-colored trees of Indian summer. Here and there

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scarlet creepers swung long trailing garlands over the faces of the dark rock, and fringes of golden rod above swayed with the brisk blowing wind that was driving the blue waters seaward, in face of the up-coming ocean tide, — a conflict which caused them to rise in great foam-crested waves. There were two channels into this river from the open sea, navigable for ships which are coming in to the city of Bath ; one is broad and shallow, the other narrow and deep, and these are divided by a steep ledge of rocks.

Where the spectators of this scene were sitting, they could see in the distance a ship borne with tremendous force by the rising tide into the mouth of the river, and encountering a north-west wind which had succeeded the gale, as northwest winds often do on this coast. The ship, from what might be observed in the distance, seemed struggling to make the wider channel, but was constantlydriven off by the baffling force of the wind.

“ There she is, Naomi,” said the old fisherman, eagerly, to his companion, “coming right in.” The young woman was one of the sort that never start, and never exclaim, but with all deeper emotions grow still. The color slowly mounted into her cheek, her lips parted, and her eyes dilated with a wide, bright expression ; her breathing came in thick gasps, but she said nothing.

The old fisherman stood up in the wagon, his coarse, butternut-colored coat-flaps fluttering and snapping in the breeze, while his interest seemed to be so intense in the efforts of the ship that he made involuntary and eager movements as if to direct her course. A moment passed, and his keen, practised eye discovered a change in her movements, for he cried out involuntarily, —

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“ DorCt take the narrow channel to-day!” and a moment after, “ O Lord ! O Lord ! have mercy, — there they go ! Look ! look ! look ! ”

And, in fact, the ship rose on a great wave clear out of the water, and the next second seemed to leap with a desperate plunge into the narrow passage; for a moment there was a shivering of the masts and the rigging, and she went down and .was gone.

“ They ’re split to pieces ! ” cried the fisherman. “ Oh, my poor girl — my poor girl — they ’re gone ! O Lord, have mercy ! ”

The woman lifted up no voice, but, as one who has been shot through the heart falls with no cry, she fell back, — a mist rose up over her great mournful eyes, — she had fainted.

The story of this wreck of a home-bound ship just entering the harbor is yet told in many a family on this coast. A few hours after, the unfortunate crew were washed ashore in all the joyous holiday rig in which they had attired themselves that morning to go to their sisters, wives, and mothers.

This is the first scene in our story.

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Chapter II

Down near the end of Orr’s Island, facing the open ocean, stands a brown house of the kind that the natives call “ lean-

f

to,” or “ linter,” — one of those large, comfortable structures, barren in the ideal, but rich in the practical, which the working-man of New England can always command.

The waters of the ocean came up within a rod of this house, and the sound of its moaning waves was even no\4 filling the clear autumn starlight. Evidently something watgoing on within, for candles fluttered and winked from win'- dow to window, like fireflies in a dark meadow, and sounds as of quick footsteps, and the flutter of brushing garments, might be heard.

Something unusual is certainly going on within the dwelling of Zephaniah Pennel to-night.

Let us enter the dark front-door. We feel our way to the right, where a solitary ray of light comes from the cfiink of a half-opened door.

Here is the front room of the house, set apart as its place of especial social hilarity and sanctity, — the “ best room,” with its low studded walls, white dimity window-curtains, rag carpet, and polished wood chairs.

It is now lit by the dim gleam of a solitary tallow candle, which seems in the gloom to make only a feeble circle of light around itself, leaving all the rest of the apartment in shadow.

In the centre of the room, stretched upon a table, and

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covered partially by a sea-cloak, lies*the body of a man of twenty-five, — lies, too, evidently as one of whom it is written, — “ He shall return to his house no more, neither shall his place know him any more.” A splendid manhood has suddenly been called to forsake that lifeless form, leaving it, like a deserted palace, beautiful in its desolation.

The hair, dripping with the salt wave, curled in glossy abundance on the finely-formed head ; the flat, broad brow ; the closed eye, with its long black lashes ; the firm, manly mouth ; the strongly-moulded chin, — all, all were sealed with that seal which is never to be broken till the great resurrection day.

He was lying in a full suit of broadcloth, with a white vest and smart blue neck-tie, fastened with a pin, in which was some braided hair under a crystal. All his clothing, as well as his hair, was saturated with sea-water, which trickled from time to time, and struck with a leaden and dropping sound into a sullen pool which lay under the table.

This was the body of James Lincoln, ship-master of the brig Flying Scud, who that morning had dressed himself gayly in his state-room to go on shore and meet his wife, — singing and jesting as he did so.

This is all that you have to learn in the foom below ; but as we stand there,. we hear a trampling of feet in the apartment above, — the quick yet careful opening and shutting of doors, — and voices come and go about the house, and whisper consultations on the stairs. Now comes the roll of wheels, and the Doctor’s gig drives up to the door ; and, as he goes creaking up with his heavy boots, we will follow and gain admission to the dimly-lighted chamber.

Two gossips are sitting in earnest, whispering conversa-

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tion over a small bundle done up in an old flannel petticoat. To them the doctor is about to address himself cheerily, but is repelled by sundry signs and sounds which warn him not to speak.

Moderating his heavy boots as well as he is able to a pace of quiet, he advances for a moment, and the petticoat is unfolded for him to glance at its contents ; while a low, eager, whispered conversation, attended with much head-shaking, warns him that his first duty is with somebody behind the checked curtains of a bed in the farther corner of the room. He steps on tiptoe, and draws the curtain ; and there, with closed eye, and cheek as white as wintry snow, lies the same face over which passed the shadow of death when that illfated ship went down.

This woman was wife to him who lies below, and within the hour has been made mother to a frail little human existence, which the storm of a great anguish has driven untimely on the shores of life, — a precious pearl cast up from the past eternity upon the wet, wave-ribbed sand of the present. Now, weary with her moanings, and beaten out with the wrench of a double anguish, she lies with closed eyes in that passive apathy which precedes deeper shadows and longer rest.

Over against her, on the other side of the bed, sits an aged woman in an attitude of deep dejection, and the old man we saw with her in the morning is standing with an anxious, awe-struck face at the foot of the bed.

The doctor feels the pulse of the woman, or rather lays an inquiring finger where the slightest thread of vital current is scarcely throbbing, and shakes his head mournfully.

The touch of his hand rouses her, — her large, wild, mel-

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ancholy eyes fix themselves on him with an inquiring glance, then she shivers and moans, —

“ Oh, Doctor, Doctor ! — Jamie, Jamie ! ”

“ Come, come ! ” said the doctor, “ cheer up, my girl ; you ’ve got a fine little daughter, — the Lord mingles mercies with his afflictions.”

Her eyes closed, her head moved with a mournful but decided dissent.

A moment after she spoke in the sad old words of the Hebrew Scripture, —

“ Call her not Naomi ; call her Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.” *

And as she spoke, there passed over her face the sharp frost of the last winter ; but even as it passed there broke out a smile, as if a flower had been thrown down from Paradise, and she said, —

“ Not my will, but thy will,” and so was gone.

Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey were soon left alone in the chamber of death.

“ She ’ll make a beautiful corpse,” said Aunt Roxy, surveying the still, white form contemplatively, with her head in an artistic attitude.

“ She was a pretty girl,” said Aunt Ruey ; “ dear me, what a Providence ! I ’member the wedd’n down in that lower room, and what a handsome couple they were.”

“ They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided,” said Aunt Roxy, sententiously.

“ What was it she said, did ye hear ? ” said Aunt Ruey.

“ She called the baby ‘ Mary.’ ”

“ Ah ! sure enough, her mother’s name afore her. What a still, softly-spoken thing she always was ! ”

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“ A pity the poor baby did n’t go with her,” said Aunt Roxy ; “ seven-months’ children are so hard to raise.”

“ ’T is a pity,” said the other.

But babies will live, and all the more when everybody says that it is a pity they should. Life goes on as inexorably in this world as death.

It was ordered by the Will above that out of these two graves should spring one frail, trembling autumn flower, — the “ Mara ” whose poor little roots first struck deep in the salt, bitter waters of our mortal life.

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Chapter III

Now, I cannot think of anything more unlikely and uninteresting to make a story of than that old brown “ linter ” house of Captain Zephaniah Pennel, down on the south end of Orr’s Island.

Zephaniah and Mary Pennel, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, are a pair of worthy, God-fearing people, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless ; but that is no great recommendation to a world gaping for sensation and calling for something stimulating. This worthy couple never read anything but the Bible, the Missionary Herald , and the Christian Mirror , — never went anywhere' except in the round of daily business. He owned a fishing-smack, in which he labored after the apostolic fashion ; and she washed, and ironed, and scrubbed, and brewed, and baked, in her contented round, week in and out. The only recreation they ever enjoyed was the going once a week, in good weather, to a prayer-meeting in a little old brown schoolhouse, about a mile from their dwelling; and making a weekly excursion every Sunday, in their fishing craft, to the church opposite, on Harpswell Neck.

To be sure, Zephaniah had read many wide leaves of God’s great book of Nature, for, like most Maine sea-captains, he had been wherever ship can go, — to all usual and unusual ports. His hard, shrewd, weather-beaten visage had been seen looking over the railings of his brig in the port of Genoa, swept round by its splendid crescent of

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palaces and its snow-crested Apennines. It had looked out in the Lagoons of Venice at that wavy floor which in evening seems a sea of glass mingled with fire, and out of which rise temples, and palaces, and churches, and distant silvery Alps, like so many fabrics of dream-land. He had been through the Skagerrack and Cattegat, — into the Baltic, and away round to Archangel, and there chewed a bit of chip, and considered and calculated what bargains it was best to make. He had walked the streets of Calcutta in his shirt-sleeves, with his best Sunday vest, backed with black glazed cambric, which six months before came from the hands of Miss Roxy, and was pronounced by her to be as good as any tailor could make ; and in all these places he was just Zephaniah Pennel, — a chip of old Maine, — thrifty, careful, shrewd, honest, God-fearing, and carrying an instinctive knowledge of men and things under a face of rustic simplicity.

It was once, returning from ’one of his voyages, that he found his wife with a black-eyed, curly-headed little creature, who called him papa, and climbed on his knee, nestled under his coat, rifled his pockets, and woke him every morning by pulling open his eyes with little fingers, and jabbering unintelligible dialects in his ears.

“ We will call this child Naomi, wife,” he said, after consulting his old Bible; “for that means pleasant, and I’m sure I never see anything beat her for pleasantness. I never knew as children was so engagin’!”

It was to be remarked that Zephaniah after this made shorter and shorter voyages, being somehow conscious of a string around his heart which pulled him harder and harder, till one Sunday,' when the little Naomi was five years old, he said to his wife, —

“ I hope I a’n’t a-pervertin’ Scriptur’ nor nuthin’, but I

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can’t help thinkin’ of one passage, ‘ The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl.’ Well, Mary, 1 ’ve been and sold my brig last week,” he said, folding his daughter’s little quiet head under his coat, “’cause it seems to me the Lord ’s given us this pearl of great price, and it ’s enough for us. I don’t want to be rambling round the world after riches. We’ll have a little farm down on Orr’s Island, and I ’ll have a little fishing-smack, and we’ll live and be happy together.”

And so Mary, who in those days was a pretty young married woman, felt herself rich and happy, — no duchess richer or happier. The two contentedly delved and toiled, and the little Naomi was their princess. The wise men of the East at the feet of an infant, offering gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes on in every house where there is a young child. All the hard and the harsh, and the common and the disagreeable, is for the parents, — all the bright and beautiful for their child.

When the fishing-smack went to Portland to sell mackerel, there came home in Zephaniah’s fishy coat-pocket strings of coral beads, tiny gaiter boots, brilliant silks and ribbons for the little fairy princess, — his Pearl of the Island; and sometimes, when a stray party from the neighboring town of Brunswick came down to explore the romantic scenery of the solitary island, they would be startled by the apparition of this still, graceful, dark-eyed child, exquisitely dressed in the best and 'brightest that the shops of a neighboring city could afford, — sitting like some tropical bird on a lonely rock, where the sea came dashing

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up into the edges of arbor vitae, or tripping along the wet sands for shells and sea-weed.

Many children would have been spoiled by such unlimited indulgence ; but there are natures sent down into this harsh world so timorous, and sensitive, and helpless in themselves, that the utmost stretch of indulgence and kindness is needed for their development, — like plants which the warmest shelf of the green-house and the most careful watch of the gardener alone can bring into flower.

The pale child, with her large, lustrous, dark eyes, and sensitive organization, was nursed and brooded into a beautiful womanhood, and then found a protector in a high-spirited, manly young ship-master, and she became his wife.

And now we see in the best room — the walls lined with serious faces — men, women, and children, that have come to pay the last tribute of sympathy to the living and the dead.

The house looked so utterly alone and solitary in that wild, sea-girt island, that one would have .as soon expected the sea-waves to rise and walk in, as so many neighbors ; but they had come from neighboring points, crossing the glassy sea in their little crafts, whose white sails looked like millers* wings, or walking miles from distant parts of the island.

Some writer calls a funeral one of the amusements of a New England population. Must we call it an amusement to go and see the acted despair of Medea ? or the dying agonies of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur ? It is something of the same awful interest in life’s tragedy, which makes an untaught and primitive people gather to a funeral, — a tragedy where there is no acting, — and one which each one feels must come at some time to his own dwelling.

Be that as it may, here was a roomful. Not only Aunt

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Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who by a prescriptive right presided over all the births, deaths, and marriages of the neighborhood, but there was Captain Kittridge, a long, dry, weather-beaten old sea-captain, who sat as if tied in a double bow-knot, with his little fussy old wife, with a great Leghorn bonnet, and eyes like black glass beads shining through the bows of her horn spectacles, and her hymn-book in her hand ready to lead the psalm. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, and brethren of the deceased ; and in the' midst stood two coffins, where the two united in death lay sleeping tenderly, as those to whom rest is good. All was still as death, except a chance whisper from some busy neighbor, or a creak of an old lady’s great black fan, or the fizz of a fly down the window-pane, and then a stifled sound of deepdrawn breath and weeping from under a cloud of heavy black crape veils, that were together in the group which country-people call the mourners.

A gleam of autumn sunlight streamed through the white curtains, and fell on a silver baptismal vase that stood on the mother’s coffin, as the minister rose and said, “ The ordinance of baptism will now be administered.” A few moments more, and on a baby brow had fallen a few drops of water, and the little pilgrim of a new life had been called Mara in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, — the minister slowly repeating thereafter those beautiful words of Holy Writ, “ A father of the fatherless is God in his holy habitation,” — as if the baptism of that bereaved one had been a solemn adoption into the infinite heart of the Lord.

With something of the quaint pathos which distinguishes the primitive and Biblical people of that lonely shore, the minister read the passage in Ruth from which the name of

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the little stranger was drawn, and which describes the return of the bereaved Naomi to her native land. His voice trembled, and there were tears in many eyes as he read, u And it came to pass as she came to Bethlehem, all the city was moved about them ; and they said, Is this Naomi ? And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi ; call me Mara ; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me ? ”

Deep, heavy sobs from the mourners were for a few moments the only answer to these sad words, till the minister raised the old funeral psalm of New England, —

“ Why do we mourn departing friends,

Or shake at Death’s alarms?

’Tis but the voice that Jesus sends To call them to his arms.

Are we not tending upward too,

As fast as time can move?

And should we wish the hours more slow That bear us to our love? ”

The words rose in old “ China,” — that strange, wild warble, whose quaintly blended harmonies might have been learned of moaning seas or wailing winds, so strange and grand they rose, full of that intense pathos which rises over every defect of execution ; and as they sung, Zephaniah Pennel straightened his tall form, before bowed on his hands, and looked heavenward, his cheeks wet with tears, but something sublime and immortal shining upward through his blue eyes ; and at the last verse he came forward involuntarily, and stood by his dead, and his voice rose over all the others as he sung, —

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“ Then let the last loud trumpet sound,

And bid the dead arise!

Awake, ye nations under ground!

Ye saints, ascend the skies ! ”

The sunbeam through the window-curtain fell on his silver hair, and they that looked beheld his face as it were the face of an angel ; he had gotten a sight of the city whose foundation is jasper, and whose every gate is a separate pearl.

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Chapter IV

The sea lay like an unbroken mirror all around the pinegirt, lonely shores of Orr’s Island. Tall, kingly spruces wore their regal ccowns of cones high in air, sparkling with diamonds of clear exuded gum ; vast old hemlocks of primeval growth stood darkling in their forest shadows, their branches hung with long hoary moss ; while feathery larches, turned to brilliant gold by autumn frosts, lighted up the darker shadows of the evergreens. It was one of those hazy, calm, dissolving days of Indian summer, when everything is so quiet that the faintest kiss of the wave on the beach can be heard, and white clouds seem to faint into the blue of the sky, and soft swathing bands of violet vapor make all earth look dreamy, and give to the sharp, clearcut outlines of the northern landscape all those mysteries of light and shade which impart such tenderness to Italian scenery.

The funeral was over, — the tread of many feet, bearing the heavy burden of two broken lives, had been to the lonely graveyard, and had come back again, — each footstep lighter and more unconstrained as each one went his way from the great old tragedy of Death to the common cheerful walks of Life.

The solemn black clock stood swaying with its eternal « tick-tock, tick-tock,” in the kitchen of the brown house on Orr’s Island. There was there that sense of a stillness that

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can be felt, — such as settles down on a dwelling when any of its inmates have passed through its doors for the last time, to go whence they shall not return. The best room was shut up and darkened, with only so much light as could fall through a little heart-shaped hole in the window-shutter, — for except on solemn visits, or prayer-meetings, or weddings, or funerals, that room formed no part of the daily family scenery.

The kitchen was clean and ample, with a great open fireplace and wide stone hearth, and oven .on one side, and rows of old-fashioned splint-bottomed chairs against the wall. A table scoured to snowy whiteness, and a little work-stand whereon lay the Bible, the Missionary Herald , and the Weekly Christian Mirror , before named, formed the principal furniture. One feature, however, must not be forgotten, — a great sea-chest, which had been the companion of Zephaniah through all the countries of the earth. Old, and battered, and unsightly it looked, yet report said that there was good store within of that which men for the most part respect more than anything else ; and, indeed, it proved often when a deed of grace was to be done, — when a woman was suddenly made a widow in a coast gale, or a fishing-smack was run down in the fogs off the banks, leaving in some neighboring cottage a family of orphans, — in all such cases, the opening of this sea-chest was an event of good omen to the bereaved ; for Zephaniah had a large heart and a large hand, and was apt to take it out full of silver dollars when once it went in. So the ark of the covenant could not have been looked on with more reverence than the neighbors usually showed to Captain Pennel’s sea-chest.

The afternoon sun is shining in a square of light through the open kitchen-door, whence one dreamily disposed might

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look far out to sea, and behold ships coming and going in every variety of shape and size.

But Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who for the present were sole occupants of the premises, were not people of the dreamy kind, and consequently were not gazing off to sea, but attending to very terrestrial matters that in all cases somebody must attend to. The afternoon was warm and balmy, but a few smouldering sticks were kept in the great chimney, and thrust deep into the embers was a mongrel species of snub-nosed tea-pot, which fumed strongly of catnip-tea, a little of which gracious beverage Miss Roxy was preparing in an old-fashioned cracked India china tea-cup, tasting it as she did so with the air of a connoisseur.

Apparently this was for the benefit of a small something in long white clothes, that lay face downward under a little blanket of very blue new flannel, and which something Aunt Roxy, when not otherwise engaged, constantly patted with a gentle tattoo, in tune to the steady trot of her knee.