FullReads

Mrs. Todd stopped talking, and rose, putting the cat gently in the chair, while she went away to get another stick of apple-tree wood. It was not an evening when one wished to let the fire go down, and we had a splendid bank of bright coals. I had always wondered where Mrs. Todd had got such an unusual knowledge of cookery, of the varieties of mushrooms, and the use of sorrel as a vegetable, and other blessings of that sort. I had long ago learned that she could vary her omelettes like a child of France, which was indeed a surprise in Dunnet Landing.

IV

All these revelations were of the deepest interest, and I was ready with a question as soon as Mrs. Todd came in and had well settled the fire and herself and the cat again.

“I wonder why she never went back to France, after she was left alone?”

“She come here from the French islands,” explained Mrs. Todd.”I asked her once about her folks, an’ she said they were all dead; ’twas the fever took ’em. She made this her home, lonesome as ’twas; she told me she hadn’t been in France since she was ‘so small,’ and measured me off a child o’ six. She’d lived right out in the country before, so that part wa’n’t unusual to her. Oh yes, there was something very strange about her, and she hadn’t been brought up in high circles nor nothing o’ that kind. I think she’d been really pleased to have the cap’n marry her an’ give her a good home, after all she’d passed through, and leave her free with his money an’ all that. An’ she got over bein’ so strange-looking to me after a while, but ’twas a very singular expression: she wore a fixed smile that wa’n’t a smile; there wa’n’t no light behind it, same ‘s a lamp can’t shine if it ain’t lit. I don’t know just how to express it, ’twas a sort of made countenance.”

One could not help thinking of Sir Philip Sidney’s phrase, “A made countenance, between simpering and smiling.”

“She took it hard, havin’ the captain go off on that last voyage,” Mrs. Todd went on.”She said somethin’ told her when they was partin’ that he would never come back. He was lucky to speak a home-bound ship this side o’ the Cape o’ Good Hope, an’ got a chance to send her a letter, an’ that cheered her up. You often felt as if you was dealin’ with a child’s mind, for all she had so much information that other folks hadn’t. I was a sight younger than I be now, and she made me imagine new things, and I got interested watchin’ her an’ findin’ out what she had to say, but you couldn’t get to no affectionateness with her. I used to blame me sometimes; we used to be real good comrades goin’ off for an afternoon, but I never give her a kiss till the day she laid in her coffin and it come to my heart there wa’n’t no one else to do it.”

“And Captain Tolland died,” I suggested after a while.

“Yes, the cap’n was lost,” said Mrs. Todd, “and of course word didn’t come for a good while after it happened. The letter come from the owners to my uncle, Cap’n Lorenzo Bowden, who was in charge of Cap’n Tolland’s affairs at home, and he come right up for me an’ said I must go with him to the house. I had known what it was to be a widow, myself, for near a year, an’ there was plenty o’ widow women along this coast that the sea had made desolate, but I never saw a heart break as I did then.