Chapter 10

A LONG YEAR IN A SHORT CHAPTER.

It was Christmas Eve, and Eyebright, alone in the kitchen, was hanging up the stockings before going to bed. Papa, who had a headache, had retired early, so there was no one to interrupt her. She only wished there had been. Half the fun of Christmas seems missing when there is nobody from whom to keep a secret, no mystery, no hiding of things in corners and bringing them out at just the right moment. Very carefully she tied papa's stocking to the corner of the chimney and proceeded to "fill" it; that is, to put in a pair of old fur gloves which she had discovered in one of the boxes, and had mended by way of a surprise, and a small silk bag full of hickory-nut meats, carefully picked from the shells. These were all the Christmas gifts she had been able to get for papa, and the long gray stocking-leg looked very empty to her eyes. She had wished much to knit him a comforter, but it was three weeks and more since either of them had been able to get to the village; besides which, she knew that papa felt very poor indeed, and she did not like to ask for money, even so little as would have carried out her wish. "This must do," she said, with a quick sigh. Then she hung up her own stocking, and went upstairs. Eyebright always had hung up her stocking on Christmas Eve ever since she could remember, and she did it now more from the force of habit than any thing else, forgetting that there was no Wealthy at hand to put things in, and that they were living on an island which, since winter began, seemed to have changed its place, and swung a great deal farther away from things and people and the rest of the world than it had been.

For winter comes early to the Maine coasts. Long before Thanksgiving, the ground was white with snow, and it stayed white from that time on till spring. After the first heavy storm, the farmers turned out with snow-ploughs to break paths through the village. As more snow fell, it was shovelled out and thrown on either side of the path, till the long double mounds half hid the people who walked between. But there was no one to break a path along the shore toward the causeway. The tide, rising and falling, kept a little strip of sand clear for part of the distance, and on this Eyebright now and then made her way to the village. But it was a hard and uncertain walk, and as rowing the boat was very cold work, it happened sometimes that for weeks together neither she nor papa left the island, or saw anybody except each other.

This would have seemed very lonely, indeed, had not the house-work filled up so much of her time. Papa had no such resource. After the wood was chopped, and the cow fed, and a little snow shovelled, perhaps,--that was all. He could not find pleasure, as Eyebright did, in reading over and over again a book which he already knew by heart; the climate did not brace and stimulate him as it did her; the cold affected him very much; he moped in the solitude, and time hung heavily upon his hands.

Eyebright often wondered how they could ever have got along--or, in fact, if it could have been possible to get along at all--without their cow. Papa had bought her in the autumn, when he began to realize how completely they were to be shut off from village supplies in bad weather. She was a good-natured, yellow beast, without any pedigree, or any name till Eyebright dubbed her "Golden Rod," partly because of her color, and partly because the field in which she grazed before she came to them was full of goldenrod, which the cow was supposed to eat, though I dare say she didn't. She gave a good deal of milk, not of the richest quality, for her diet was rather spare, but it was a great help and comfort to have it. With milk, potatoes, cabbages, and beets from their own garden; flour, Indian meal, and a barrel of salt beef in store, there was no danger of starvation on Causey Island, though Eyebright at times grew very tired of ringing the changes on these few articles of diet, and trying to invent new dishes with which to tempt papa's appetite, which had grown very poor since the winter set in.

Altogether, life on the island was a good deal harder and less pleasant now than it had been in summer-time, and the sea was a great deal less pleasant. Eyebright loved it still; but her love was mingled with fear, and she began to realize what a terrible thing the ocean can be. The great gray waves which leaped and roared and flung themselves madly on the rocks, were so different from the blue, rippling waves of the summer, that she could hardly believe it the same sea. And even when pleasant days came, and the waves grew calm, and the beautiful color returned to the water, still the other and frightful look of the ocean remained in her memory, and her bad dreams were always about storms and shipwrecks. Many more boats passed between Malachi and Scrapplehead in winter than in summer. Now that the inland roads were blocked with snow, and the Boston steamer had ceased to run, the mails came that way, being brought over every week in a sail-boat. Even row-boats passed to and fro in calm weather, and what with lumber vessels and fishing smacks, and an occasional traveller from out-of-the-way Canada, sails at sea, or the sound of clinking oars off the bathing-beach, became of frequent occurrence. These little boats out in the great fierce ocean weighed heavily on Eyebright's mind sometimes. Especially was this the case when heavy fogs wrapped the coast, as occasionally they did for days together, making all landmarks dangerously dim and indistinct. At such times it seemed as if Causey Island were a big rocky lump which had got in the way, and against which ships were almost certain to run. She wished very much for a light-house, and she coaxed papa to let her keep a kerosene lamp burning in the window of her bedroom on all foggy and very dark nights. "The little gal's lamp," the Malachi sailors called it, and they learned to look for it as a guide, though its reflective power was not enough to make it serviceable in a fog, which was the chief danger of all.

There was no fog, however, when she opened her eyes on Christmas morning, but a bright sun, just rising, which was a sort of Christmas present in itself. She made haste to dress, for she heard papa moving in his room, and she wished to get down first, but he was as quick as she, and they finally met at the stair-top, and went down together.

When he saw the stockings, he looked surprised and vexed.

"Dear me! did you hang up your stocking, Eyebright?" he asked, in a depressed tone. "I quite forgot it was Christmas. You'll have no presents, my child, I'm afraid."

"Never mind, papa, I don't care; I don't want any thing," said Eyebright.

She spoke bravely, but there was a lump in her throat, and she could hardly keep from tears. It seemed so strange and dreadful not to have any thing at all in her stocking,--not one single thing! She had not thought much about the matter, but with childish faith had taken it for granted that she must have something--some sort of a present, and for a moment the disappointment was hard to bear.

Papa looked very much troubled, especially when he spied his own stocking and perceived that his little daughter had remembered him while he had forgotten her. He spent the morning rummaging his desk and the trunks upstairs, as if in search of something, and after dinner announced that he was going to the village to get the mail. The mails came into Scrapplehead twice a week, but he seldom had any letters, and Eyebright never, so, as a general thing, they were not very particular about calling regularly at the post-office.

Eyebright wanted to go, too, but the day was so cold that papa thought she would better not. She wrapped him in every warm thing she could find, and drew the fur-gloves over his fingers with great satisfaction.

"They will keep you quite warm, won't they?" she said. "Your fingers would almost freeze without them, wouldn't they? You like them, don't you, papa?"

"Very much," said Mr. Bright, giving her a good-by kiss.

Then he stepped into the boat and took the oars, while she wrapped her arms in her shawl and watched him row away. Her breath froze on the air like a cloud of white steam. She felt her ears tingle, and presently ran back to the house, feeling as if Jack Frost were nipping her as she ran, but with glowing cheeks and spirits brightened by the splendid air.

Just before sunset papa came rowing back. He was almost stiff with cold, but when once he had thawed out in the warm kitchen, he seemed none the worse for that. It was quite exciting to hear from the village after such a long silence. Papa had seen Mrs. Downs and Mr. Downs and the children. Benny had had the mumps, but he was almost well again. Mrs. Downs sent her love to Eyebright, and a mince pie pinned up in a towel. This was very nice, but when Eyebright unpinned the towel and saw the pie, she gave a scream of dismay.

"Why, papa, it's all hard," she said, "and it's just like ice. Touch it, papa; did you ever feel any thing so cold?"

In fact, the pie was frozen hard, and had to be thawed for a long time in the oven before it was fit to eat. While this process was going on, papa produced a little parcel from his pocket. It was a Christmas present,--a pretty blue neck-tie. Eyebright was delighted, and showed her gratitude by kissing papa at least a dozen times, and dancing about the kitchen.

"Oh, and here's a letter for you, too," he said.

"A letter for me. How queer! I never had a letter before, that I remember. Why, it's from Wealthy! Papa, I wish you'd read it to me. It looks very hard to make out, Wealthy writes such a funny hand. Don't you recollect how she used to work over her copy-book, with her nose almost touching the paper, and how inky she used to get?"

It was the first time they had heard from Wealthy since they left Tunxet, more than eight months before. Wealthy wrote very few letters, and those few cost an amount of time, trouble, and ink-spots, which would have discouraged most people from writing at all.

This was the letter:--

DEAR EYEBRIGHT: I take my pen in hand to tell you that I am well, and hope you are the same. All the friends here is well, except Miss Bury. She's down with intermitting fever, and old Miss Beadles is dead and buried. Whether that's being well or not I can't say. Some folks think so, and some folks don't. I haint written before. I aint much of a scribe, as you know, so I judge you haven't been surprised at not hearing of me. I might have writ sooner, but along in the fall my arm was kind of lamed with rheumatism, and when I got over that, there was Mandy Harmon's weddin' things to do,--Pelatiah Harmon's daughter, down to the corners, you know. What girls want so many clothes for when they get married, I cant for the life of me tell. The shops don't shut up for good just afterward, so far as anybody knows, but you'd think they did from the fuss some of them make. Mandy had five new dresses. They was cut down to Worcester, but I made them, besides two calikus and ten of every thing, and a double gown and an Ulster and the Lord knows what not. I've had to stick to it to put 'em through, but they're all done at last, and she got married last week and went off, and she'll spend the next few years a-alterin' of them things over, or I miss my guess. That Mather girl keeps asking me about you, but I tell her you haint wrote but twice, and I don't know no more than she does. Mr. Bury got your Pa's letter. We was glad to hear you liked it up there, but most places is pleasant enough in summer. Winter is the tug. I suppose it's cold enough where you are, sometimes, judging from Probbabillities. Mr. Asher has took the house. Tell your Pa. It dont look much like old times. He has put wooden points on top of the barn and mended the back gate, and he's got a nasty Newfoundland which barks most all the time. Now I must conclude.--Yours truly,

WEALTHY A. JUDSON.

P. S.--My respects to your Pa and to all inquiring friends. I was thinking that that water-proof of your Ma's had better be cut over for you in the spring. What kind of help do you get up in Maine?

"Oh, how like dear, funny old Wealthy that is!" cried Eyebright, as between smiles and tears she listened to the reading of this letter. "Whom do you suppose she means by 'all inquiring friends'? And isn't it just like her to call Bessie 'that Mather girl'? Wealthy never could endure Bessie,--I can't imagine why. Well, this has been a real nice Christmas, after all. I'm glad you didn't go to the post-office last week, papa, for then we should have got the letter sooner, and shouldn't have had it for to-day. It was much nicer to have it now."

"Winter's the tug." Eyebright thought often of this sentence of Wealthy's as the long weeks went by, and still the cold continued and the spring delayed, till it seemed as though it were never coming at all, and papa grew thinner and more listless and discouraged all the time. The loneliness and want of occupation hurt him more than it did Eyebright, and when spring came, as at last it did, his spirits did not revive as she had hoped they would. Farming was trying and depressing work on Causey Island. The land was poor and rocky,--"out of heart," as the saying is,--and Mr. Bright had neither the spirit nor the money to bring it into condition. He missed his old occupation and his old neighbors more than he had expected; he missed newspapers; and a growing anxiety about the future, and about Eyebright,--who was getting no schooling of any kind,--combined to depress him and give him the feeling that he had dropped out of life, and there was no use in trying to make things better.

It was certainly a disadvantage to Eyebright, at her age, to be taken out of school; still life on the island was a schooling for all that, and schooling of a very useful kind. History and geography are excellent things, but no geography or history can take the place of the lessons which Eyebright was now learning,--lessons in patience, unselfishness, good-humor, and helpfulness. When she fought with her own little discontents and vexations, and kept her face bright and sunny for papa's sake, she was gaining more good than she could have done from the longest chapter in the best school-book ever printed. Not that the school-books are not desirable, too, or that Eyebright did not miss them. After the first novelty of their new life was over, she missed school very much,--not the fun of school only, but the actual study itself. Her mind felt as they say teething dogs do, as if it must have something to bite on. She tried the experiment of setting herself lessons, but it did not succeed very well. There was no one to explain the little difficulties that arose, and she grew puzzled and confused, and lost the desire to go on.

Another thing which she missed very much was going to church. There had never been either a church or a Sunday-school in Scrapplehead, and the people who made any difference for Sunday made it by idling about, which was almost worse than working. At first, Eyebright tried to observe the day after a fashion, by learning a hymn and studying a short Bible lesson, but such good habits drop off after a while, when there is nothing and nobody to remind or help us, and little by little she got out of the way of keeping it up, and sometimes quite forgot that it was Sunday till afterward. Days were much alike on the island, especially in winter, and it was not easy to remember, which must be her excuse; but it was a sad want in her week, and a want which was continually growing worse as she grew older.

Altogether, it was not a good or wholesome life for a child to lead, and only her high spirits and sweet, healthful temper kept her from being seriously hurt by it. It was just now that Mr. Joyce's words were proved true, and the quick power of imagination with which nature had gifted her became her best friend. It enabled her to take sights and sounds into the place of play-fellows and friends, mixing them with her life as it were, and half in fun, half in earnest, getting companionship out of them. Skies and sunsets, flowers, waves, birds,--all became a part of the fairy-world which lay always at hand, and to which her mind went for change and rest from work too hard and thoughts over-anxious for a child to bear. She was growing fast, but the only signs she gave of growing older were her womanly and thoughtful ways about papa and his comforts, and a slight, very slight, difference in her feeling toward Genevieve, whom she played with no longer, though she took her out now and then when she was quite alone, and set her in a chair opposite, as better than no company at all. Eyebright had no idea of being disloyal to this dear old friend, but her eyes had opened to the fact that Genevieve was only wax, and do what she could, it was impossible to make her seem alive any more.

Her rapid growth was another trouble, for she could not wear the clothes which she had brought with her to the island, and it was very hard to get others. Papa had no money to spare, she knew, and she could not bear to worry him with her difficulties, so she went to Mrs. Downs instead. Mrs. Downs had her hands full of sewing for "him" and her three boys; still she found time to advise and help, and between her fitting and Eyebright's sewing, a skirt and jacket were concocted out of the water-proof designated by Wealthy, which though rather queer in pattern, did nicely for cool days, and relieved Eyebright from the long-legged sensation which was growing over her. This, with a calico, some of Mrs. Bright's underclothing altered a little, and a sun-bonnet with a deep cape, made a tolerable summer outfit. Gloves, ruffles, ribbons, and such little niceties, she learned to do without; and when the sweet summer came again with long days and warm winds, when she could row, sit out-doors as much as she liked, and swing in the wild-grape hammocks which festooned the shore, she did not miss them. Girls on desert islands can dispense with finery.

But summers in Maine are very short, and, as lengthening days and chilly nights began to hint at coming winter, Eyebright caught herself shivering, and knew that she dreaded it very much indeed.

"How long it will seem!" she thought. "And how will poor papa bear it? And what am I to do when all mamma's old clothes are worn out? I don't suppose I ever shall have any new ones, and how I am to manage, I cannot imagine!"