The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

Author:Sarah Orne Jewett
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Country life -- Fiction, Psychological fiction, Authorship -- Fiction, Maine -- Fiction, Women authors -- Fiction, Summer resorts -- Fiction, Pastoral fiction, Seaside resorts -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2020-05-31T18:27:03+00:00

XIV The Hermitage

My com­pan­ion and I had been so in­tent upon the sub­ject of the con­ver­sa­tion that we had not heard any­one open the gate, but at this mo­ment, above the noise of the rain, we heard a loud knock­ing. We were all star­tled as we sat by the fire, and Mrs. Todd rose hastily and went to an­swer the call, leav­ing her rock­ing-chair in vi­o­lent mo­tion. Mrs. Fos­dick and I heard an anx­ious voice at the door speak­ing of a sick child, and Mrs. Todd’s kind, moth­erly voice invit­ing the mes­sen­ger in: then we waited in si­lence. There was a sound of heavy drop­ping of rain from the eaves, and the dis­tant roar and un­der­tone of the sea. My thoughts flew back to the lonely woman on her outer is­land; what sep­a­ra­tion from hu­mankind she must have felt, what ter­ror and sad­ness, even in a sum­mer storm like this!

“You send right af­ter the doc­tor if she ain’t bet­ter in half an hour,” said Mrs. Todd to her wor­ried cus­tomer as they parted; and I felt a warm sense of com­fort in the ev­i­dent re­sources of even so small a neigh­bor­hood, but for the poor her­mit Joanna there was no neigh­bor on a win­ter night.

“How did she look?” de­manded Mrs. Fos­dick, with­out pref­ace, as our large host­ess re­turned to the lit­tle room with a mist about her from stand­ing long in the wet door­way, and the sud­den draught of her com­ing beat out the smoke and flame from the Franklin stove. “How did poor Joanna look?”

“She was the same as ever, ex­cept I thought she looked smaller,” an­swered Mrs. Todd af­ter think­ing a mo­ment; per­haps it was only a last con­sid­er­ing thought about her pa­tient. “Yes, she was just the same, and looked very nice, Joanna did. I had been mar­ried since she left home, an’ she treated me like her own folks. I ex­pected she’d look strange, with her hair turned gray in a night or some­thin’, but she wore a pretty ging­ham dress I’d of­ten seen her wear be­fore she went away; she must have kept it nice for best in the af­ter­noons. She al­ways had beau­ti­ful, quiet man­ners. I re­mem­ber she waited till we were close to her, and then kissed me real af­fec­tion­ate, and in­quired for Nathan be­fore she shook hands with the min­is­ter, and then she in­vited us both in. ’Twas the same lit­tle house her fa­ther had built him when he was a bach­e­lor, with one livin’-room, and a lit­tle mite of a bed­room out of it where she slept, but ’twas neat as a ship’s cabin. There was some old chairs, an’ a seat made of a long box that might have held boat tackle an’ things to lock up in his fishin’ days, and a good enough stove so any­body could cook and keep warm in cold weather. I went over once from home and stayed ’most a week with Joanna when we was girls, and those young happy days rose up be­fore me.

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