The Bird in the Box

by Mary M. Mears

Lizzie Goodenough's son was the one child admitted to her friendship. In winter she permitted him to drag her to and from school on his sled, and in summer she allowed him to string thimble-berries for her on a long grass, which could be smuggled under the desk out of sight of the teacher and eaten at odd moments, when one stood in such dire need of refreshment in the dry country of learning. But, strictly speaking, she had no companions.

For her grandfather a warm strong love beat in her little heart. Often she would clasp him about the neck with one thin arm, and with the other hand against his cheek, would gaze intently upon him until a simultaneous gleam of laughter shot into both their faces. Then she would nestle to him, quivering with a divine mirth which was the mask of diviner tears.

For Nora Gage, Rachel entertained a silent dislike that expressed itself in manoeuvres to keep out of her way. If Nora entered a room, Rachel, if possible, left it. If the housekeeper, in her flapping slippers, shuffled out into the yard and cast herself down on the seat beneath the apple tree, where Rachel was playing, the child immediately gathered up her pebbles and shells and gravely sought another place. She spoke no oftener to the housekeeper than was necessary, and when she did speak, a weight of scorn trembled in her voice as if some feeling were silently gathering power. Nora Gage looked upon her with her little eyes, which were shrewd and meditative, exactly as a pig's are shrewd and meditative, and was apparently indifferent. But it was inconceivable that she did not hate her.

A part of a battered wreck and a figure-head were, in the truest sense, Rachel's companions. Both were rooted fast where they had come ashore, but before they had reached that expanse of sand, the sea had had its way with them. They were by no means parts of the same craft, but torn, hurled, gnawed, they had been brought, by the rollicking mood of the ocean, past the fierce skirting of rocks outside and dashed there together on the shore of the bay, to become the playmates of a little child.

Timber by timber the wreck had been washed small, and sometimes after a storm streams of rusty water that resembled blood trickled from its various bolts. Rachel, climbing out upon the wreck, sometimes felt the shallow water sucking between its timbers urging it to put to sea again; and, conscious of the tremble of eagerness in the poor maimed thing, she would pat the beams in passionate sympathy, and lay her cheek to them. Often she tried to dislodge the great hulk by placing her shoulder against it, and once, when the sea sucked off a plank and the tide flung it on the shore several rods away, she spent the following morning in hauling the dissevered portion back to the wreck and trying to hammer it into position. There was in her a curious susceptibility to the pathos of things.

Here and there about the wreck vestiges of paint appeared, and a faint assemblage of letters formed the name Defender on what had been the prow. This paint Rachel brought to temporary brightness by rubbing it with a corner of her apron dipped in sea water. The sand that clogged the ribs of the wreck she removed daily with a shovel. In brief, no waning sovereign, already in the clutch of death could have been waited upon by a trusty handmaiden with more patience and love. In her day she had sailed many a stormy sea, that ship, and without doubt had made many a difficult port; but now in the days of her nothingness to be loved with a love passing that of sailor or captain (for in such affection there is ever something of the seaman's pride in the capabilities of his craft), to be loved, forsooth, with a deep feminine tenderness,—surely, if comfort were possible to those broken bolts and spars, the wreck was comforted. And, testifying to the gallantry inherent in every timber, all that remained of her responded to the thrill of the child's spirit. It was as if the wreck heard commands summoning her to deeds of spiritual daring. The stumps of her masts she lifted to the sky with an air of defiance, she resisted the encroachments of the sand; and in the upward sweep of her lines toward her broken bow, there was indomitable courage and pride invincible. Valour answered valour and the sun shone gently on the incongruous playmates, on the wreck whose earthly voyages were over, and on the child whose life's journey had scarcely begun.

For the figure-head, Rachel entertained a somewhat different sentiment. It was evidently a bit of German carving, and represented a robust goddess with face lifted to the sky. Full waves of hair blew back from the face; the chin was gone, the nose was gone, but in the gaze of the eyes was blank, unquestioning triumph. She was clad in swirling drapery and a breastplate of overlapping scales, and in the one arm that remained to her she carried a sceptre tipped with a diminutive crown. Rachel admired the way the figure-head stood proudly erect, even strained backwards, and sometimes grasping a stick, she paced the sands in grotesque imitation of the wooden woman. But more often she sat before her lost in silent contemplation. She saw her fastened to the prow of a vessel, "great-kneed, deep-breasted," with lips and eyes stung by the spray; she saw her bowing deep into the trough of a wave, her gaze as she sank still intrepidly lifted to heaven; and she saw her rise again, dripping, all gilded by the light of the sun. The exhilaration of life and hope were still in the figure-head, wrought into her with the carving, it would seem, and these qualities her later experience in the brine had heightened to a kind of glory, so that now, unmindful that she was stranded, she stared out at the dawns and the evenings and the far-away twinkling stars with the same undaunted look of conquest.

This look, branded upon the figure-head and smitten into her round staring pupils, had its effect upon the child. Often and often when there was a storm off Pemoquod and the green water ran fifty feet high with the spray twice as high, grinding and pounding over the rocks and even entering the bay, until its strong death-fingers reached her very feet, Rachel stared at the waters while a fierce exultation swelled her little heart.

Persistent in her childish desires, imperious when they were crossed, at all other times gentle and tractable, Rachel up to her ninth year comprehended no force superior to that of which she was conscious in herself. Her grandfather she could sway by a word, and there were ways she knew of compelling Nora Gage; as for André, he was a slave, to be ruled by kindness for the most part and blows when necessary, blows aimed straight at his wild dark face. In her domain she tolerated no insubordination. But one night the pettiness of this domain and its purely human limits were revealed to her.

When whiskey got the better of Captain Daniels at the lighthouse, and this happened occasionally, Lizzie Goodenough, with a strong arm, could draw the oil and tend the beacon. If truth were told, it was because he had recognised her possibilities for usefulness in this direction, that the captain, sixteen years before, had taken pity on the girl and her newly-born infant. At the time he was just recovering from what he termed "a bad spell," and Lizzie appealed to him as capable and sturdy; moreover, she was very handsome, with a frown set squarely between her brows and an ominous light in her glance. He had never married her. Now that her boy had grown large enough to go on watch at a pinch, the arrangement was even more advantageous.