THE WHITE ROSE ROAD
by Sarah Orne Jewett
(from Strangers and Wayfarers 1890)
Being a New Englander, it is natural that I should first speak
about the weather. Only the middle of June, the green fields, and
blue sky, and bright sun, with a touch of northern mountain wind
blowing straight toward the sea, could make such a day, and that
is all one can say about it. We were driving seaward through a
part of the country which has been least changed in the last
thirty years,--among farms which have been won from swampy lowland,
and rocky, stump-buttressed hillsides: where the forests wall in
the fields, and send their outposts year by year farther into
the pastures. There is a year or two in the history of these
pastures before they have arrived at the dignity of being called
woodland, and yet are too much shaded and overgrown by young
trees to give proper pasturage, when they made delightful harbors
for the small wild creatures which yet remain, and for wild
flowers and berries. Here you send an astonished rabbit scurrying
to his burrow, and there you startle yourself with a partridge,
who seems to get the best of the encounter. Sometimes you see a
hen partridge and her brood of chickens crossing your path with
an air of comfortable door-yard security. As you drive along the
narrow, grassy road, you see many charming sights and delightful
nooks on either hand, where the young trees spring out of a
close-cropped turf that carpets the ground like velvet. Toward
the east and the quaint fishing village of Ogunquit, I find the
most delightful woodland roads. There is little left of the large
timber which once filled the region, but much young growth, and
there are hundreds of acres of cleared land and pasture-ground
where the forests are springing fast and covering the country
once more, as if they had no idea of losing in their war with
civilization and the intruding white settler. The pine woods
and the Indians seem to be next of kin, and the former owners
of this corner of New England are the only proper figures to
paint into such landscapes. The twilight under tall pines seems
to be untenanted and to lack something, at first sight, as if
one opened the door of an empty house. A farmer passing through
with his axe is but an intruder, and children straying home from
school give one a feeling of solicitude at their unprotectedness.
The pine woods are the red man's house, and it may be hazardous
even yet for the gray farmhouses to stand so near the eaves of
the forest. I have noticed a distrust of the deep woods, among
elderly people, which was something more than a fear of losing
their way. It was a feeling of defenselessness against some
unrecognized but malicious influence.
Driving through the long woodland way, shaded and chilly when you
are out of the sun; across the Great Works River and its pretty
elm-grown intervale; across the short bridges of brown brooks;
delayed now and then by the sight of ripe strawberries in sunny
spots by the roadside, one comes to a higher open country, where
farm joins farm, and the cleared fields lie all along the highway,
while the woods are pushed back a good distance on either hand.
The wooded hills, bleak here and there with granite ledges, rise
beyond. The houses are beside the road, with green door-yards and
large barns, almost empty now, and with wide doors standing open,
as if they were already expecting the hay crop to be brought in.
The tall green grass is waving in the fields as the wind goes
over, and there is a fragrance of whiteweed and ripe strawberries
and clover blowing through the sunshiny barns, with their lean
sides and their festoons of brown, dusty cobwebs; dull, comfortable
creatures they appear to imaginative eyes, waiting hungrily for
their yearly meal. The eave-swallows are teasing their sleepy
shapes, like the birds which flit about great beasts; gay, movable,
irreverent, almost derisive, those barn swallows fly to and fro
in the still, clear air.
The noise of our wheels brings fewer faces to the windows than usual,
and we lose the pleasure of seeing some of our friends who are apt
to be looking out, and to whom we like to say good-day. Some funeral
must be taking place, or perhaps the women may have gone out into the
fields. It is hoeing-time and strawberry-time, and already we have
seen some of the younger women at work among the corn and potatoes.
One sight will be charming to remember. On a green hillside sloping
to the west, near one of the houses, a thin little girl was working
away lustily with a big hoe on a patch of land perhaps fifty feet by
twenty. There were all sorts of things growing there, as if a child's
fancy had made the choice,--straight rows of turnips and carrots and
beets, a little of everything, one might say; but the only touch of
color was from a long border of useful sage in full bloom of dull
blue, on the upper side. I am sure this was called Katy's or Becky's
piece by the elder members of the family. One can imagine how the
young creature had planned it in the spring, and persuaded the men
to plough and harrow it, and since then had stoutly done all the work
herself, and meant to send the harvest of the piece to market, and
pocket her honest gains, as they came in, for some great end. She was
as thin as a grasshopper, this busy little gardener, and hardly turned
to give us a glance, as we drove slowly up the hill close by. The sun
will brown and dry her like a spear of grass on that hot slope, but
a spark of fine spirit is in the small body, and I wish her a famous
crop. I hate to say that the piece looked backward, all except the
sage, and that it was a heavy bit of land for the clumsy hoe to pick
at. The only puzzle is, what she proposes to do with so long a row of
sage. Yet there may be a large family with a downfall of measles yet
ahead, and she does not mean to be caught without sage-tea.
Along this road every one of the old farmhouses has at least one tall
bush of white roses by the door,--a most lovely sight, with buds and
blossoms, and unvexed green leaves. I wish that I knew the history
of them, and whence the first bush was brought. Perhaps from England
itself, like a red rose that I know in Kittery, and the new shoots
from the root were given to one neighbor after another all through the
district. The bushes are slender, but they grow tall without climbing
against the wall, and sway to and fro in the wind with a grace of
youth and an inexpressible charm of beauty. How many lovers must have
picked them on Sunday evenings, in all the bygone years, and carried
them along the roads or by the pasture footpaths, hiding them clumsily
under their Sunday coats if they caught sight of any one coming. Here,
too, where the sea wind nips many a young life before its prime, how
often the white roses have been put into paler hands, and withered
there!
In spite of the serene and placid look of the old houses, one who has
always known them cannot help thinking of the sorrows of these farms
and their almost undiverted toil. Near the little gardener's plot, we
turned from the main road and drove through lately cleared woodland up
to an old farmhouse, high on a ledgy hill, whence there is a fine view
of the country seaward and mountainward. There were few of the once
large household left there: only the old farmer, who was crippled
by war wounds, active, cheerful man that he was once, and two young
orphan children. There has been much hard work spent on the place.
Every generation has toiled from youth to age without being able
to make much beyond a living. The dollars that can be saved are but
few, and sickness and death have often brought their bitter cost.
The mistress of the farm was helpless for many years; through all the
summers and winters she sat in her pillowed rocking-chair in the plain
room. She could watch the seldom-visited lane, and beyond it, a little
way across the fields, were the woods; besides these, only the clouds
in the sky. She could not lift her food to her mouth; she could not
be her husband's working partner. She never went into another woman's
house to see her works and ways, but sat there, aching and tired,
vexed by flies and by heat, and isolated in long storms. Yet the whole
countryside neighbored her with true affection. Her spirit grew
stronger as her body grew weaker, and the doctors, who grieved because
they could do so little with their skill, were never confronted by
that malady of the spirit, a desire for ease and laziness, which makes
the soundest of bodies useless and complaining. The thought of her
blooms in one's mind like the whitest of flowers; it makes one braver
and more thankful to remember the simple faith and patience with which
she bore her pain and trouble. How often she must have said, "I wish
I could do something for you in return," when she was doing a thousand
times more than if, like her neighbors, she followed the simple round
of daily life! She was doing constant kindness by her example; but
nobody can tell the woe of her long days and nights, the solitude of
her spirit, as she was being lifted by such hard ways to the knowledge
of higher truth and experience. Think of her pain when, one after
another, her children fell ill and died, and she could not tend them!
And now, in the same worn chair where she lived and slept sat her
husband, helpless too, thinking of her, and missing her more than
if she had been sometimes away from home, like other women. Even a
stranger would miss her in the house.
There sat the old farmer looking down the lane in his turn, bearing
his afflictions with a patient sternness that may have been born of
watching his wife's serenity. There was a half-withered rose lying
within his reach. Some days nobody came up the lane, and the wild
birds that ventured near the house and the clouds that blew over were
his only entertainment. He had a fine face, of the older New England
type, clean-shaven and strong-featured,--a type that is fast passing
away. He might have been a Cumberland dalesman, such were his dignity,
and self-possession, and English soberness of manner. His large frame
was built for hard work, for lifting great weights and pushing his
plough through new-cleared land. We felt at home together, and each
knew many things that the other did of earlier days, and of losses
that had come with time. I remembered coming to the old house often in
my childhood; it was in this very farm lane that I first saw anemones,
and learned what to call them. After we drove away, this crippled man
must have thought a long time about my elders and betters, as if he
were reading their story out of a book. I suppose he has hauled many a
stick of timber pine down for ship-yards, and gone through the village
so early in the winter morning that I, waking in my warm bed, only
heard the sleds creak through the frozen snow as the slow oxen plodded
by.
Near the house a trout brook comes plashing over the ledges. At one
place there is a most exquisite waterfall, to which neither painter's
brush nor writer's pen can do justice. The sunlight falls through
flickering leaves into the deep glen, and makes the foam whiter and
the brook more golden-brown. You can hear the merry noise of it all
night, all day, in the house. A little way above the farmstead it
comes through marshy ground, which I fear has been the cause of much
illness and sorrow to the poor, troubled family. I had a thrill of
pain, as it seemed to me that the brook was mocking at all that
trouble with all its wild carelessness and loud laughter, as it
hurried away down the glen.
When we had said good-by and were turning the horses away, there
suddenly appeared in a footpath that led down from one of the green
hills the young grandchild, just coming home from school. She was
as quick as a bird, and as shy in her little pink gown, and balanced
herself on one foot, like a flower. The brother was the elder of
the two orphans; he was the old man's delight and dependence by day,
while his hired man was afield. The sober country boy had learned
to wait and tend, and the young people were indeed a joy in that
lonely household. There was no sign that they ever played like other
children,--no truckle-cart in the yard, no doll, no bits of broken
crockery in order on a rock. They had learned a fashion of life from
their elders, and already could lift and carry their share of the
burdens of life.
It was a country of wild flowers; the last of the columbines were
clinging to the hillsides; down in the small, fenced meadows belonging
to the farm were meadow rue just coming in flower, and red and white
clover; the golden buttercups were thicker than the grass, while many
mulleins were standing straight and slender among the pine stumps,
with their first blossoms atop. Rudbeckias had found their way in,
and appeared more than ever like bold foreigners. Their names should
be translated into country speech, and the children ought to call
them "rude-beckies," by way of relating them to bouncing-bets and
sweet-williams. The pasture grass was green and thick after the
plentiful rains, and the busy cattle took little notice of us as they
browsed steadily and tinkled their pleasant bells. Looking off, the
smooth, round back of Great Hill caught the sunlight with its fields
of young grain, and all the long, wooded slopes and valleys were fresh
and fair in the June weather, away toward the blue New Hampshire hills
on the northern horizon. Seaward stood Agamenticus, dark with its
pitch pines, and the far sea itself, blue and calm, ruled the uneven
country with its unchangeable line.
Out on the white rose road again, we saw more of the rose-trees
than ever, and now and then a carefully tended flower garden, always
delightful to see and think about. These are not made by merely
looking through a florist's catalogue, and ordering this or that new
seedling and a proper selection of bulbs or shrubs; everything in
a country garden has its history and personal association. The old
bushes, the perennials, are apt to have most tender relationship with
the hands that planted them long ago. There is a constant exchange
of such treasures between the neighbors, and in the spring, slips and
cuttings may be seen rooting on the window ledges, while the house
plants give endless work all winter long, since they need careful
protection against frost in long nights of the severe weather. A
flower-loving woman brings back from every one of her infrequent
journeys some treasure of flower-seeds or a huge miscellaneous
nosegay. Time to work in the little plot of pleasure-ground is
hardly won by the busy mistress of the farmhouse. The most appealing
collection of flowering plants and vines that I ever saw was in
Virginia, once, above the exquisite valley spanned by the Natural
Bridge, a valley far too little known or praised. I had noticed
an old log house, as I learned to know the outlook from the
picturesque hotel, and was sure that it must give a charming view
from its perch on the summit of a hill.
One day I went there,--one April day, when the whole landscape was
full of color from the budding trees,--and before I could look at the
view, I caught sight of some rare vines, already in leaf, about the
dilapidated walls of the cabin. Then across the low paling I saw the
brilliant colors of tulips and daffodils. There were many rose-bushes;
in fact, the whole top of the hill was a flower garden, once well
cared for and carefully ordered. It was all the work of an old woman
of Scotch-Irish descent, who had been busy with the cares of life,
and a very hard worker; yet I was told that to gratify her love for
flowers she would often go afoot many miles over those rough Virginia
roads, with a root or cutting from her own garden, to barter for a new
rose or a brighter blossom of some sort, with which she would return
in triumph. I fancied that sometimes she had to go by night on these
charming quests. I could see her business-like, small figure setting
forth down the steep path, when she had a good conscience toward her
housekeeping and the children were in order to be left. I am sure
that her friends thought of her when they were away from home and
could bring her an offering of something rare. Alas, she had grown
too old and feeble to care for her dear blossoms any longer, and had
been forced to go to live with a married son. I dare say that she
was thinking of her garden that very day, and wondering if this plant
or that were not in bloom, and perhaps had a heartache at the thought
that her tenants, the careless colored children, might tread the young
shoots of peony and rose, and make havoc in the herb-bed. It was an
uncommon collection, made by years of patient toil and self-sacrifice.
I thought of that deserted Southern garden as I followed my own New
England road. The flower-plots were in gay bloom all along the way;
almost every house had some flowers before it, sometimes carefully
fenced about by stakes and barrel staves from the miscreant hens
and chickens which lurked everywhere, and liked a good scratch and
fluffing in soft earth this year as well as any other. The world
seemed full of young life. There were calves tethered in pleasant
shady spots, and puppies and kittens adventuring from the doorways.
The trees were full of birds: bobolinks, and cat-birds, and
yellow-hammers, and golden robins, and sometimes a thrush, for the
afternoon was wearing late. We passed the spring which once marked the
boundary where three towns met,--Berwick, York, and Wells,--a famous
spot in the early settlement of the country, but many of its old
traditions are now forgotten. One of the omnipresent regicides of
Charles the First is believed to have hidden himself for a long time
under a great rock close by. The story runs that he made his miserable
home in this den for several years, but I believe that there is no
record that more than three of the regicides escaped to this country,
and their wanderings are otherwise accounted for. There is a firm
belief that one of them came to York, and was the ancestor of many
persons now living there, but I do not know whether he can have been
the hero of the Baker's Spring hermitage beside. We stopped to drink
some of the delicious water, which never fails to flow cold and
clear under the shade of a great oak, and were amused with the sight
of a flock of gay little country children who passed by in deep
conversation. What could such atoms of humanity be talking about?
"Old times," said John, the master of horse, with instant decision.
We met now and then a man or woman, who stopped to give us hospitable
greeting; but there was no staying for visits, lest the daylight might
fail us. It was delightful to find this old-established neighborhood
so thriving and populous, for a few days before I had driven over
three miles of road, and passed only one house that was tenanted,
and six cellars or crumbling chimneys where good farmhouses had been,
the lilacs blooming in solitude, and the fields, cleared with so
much difficulty a century or two ago, all going back to the original
woodland from which they were won. What would the old farmers say to
see the fate of their worthy bequest to the younger generation? They
would wag their heads sorrowfully, with sad foreboding.
After we had passed more woodland and a well-known quarry, where, for
a wonder, the derrick was not creaking and not a single hammer was
clinking at the stone wedges, we did not see any one hoeing in the
fields, as we had seen so many on the white rose road, the other side
of the hills. Presently we met two or three people walking sedately,
clad in their best clothes. There was a subdued air of public
excitement and concern, and one of us remembered that there had been
a death in the neighborhood; this was the day of the funeral. The man
had been known to us in former years. We had an instinct to hide our
unsympathetic pleasuring, but there was nothing to be done except to
follow our homeward road straight by the house.
The occasion was nearly ended by this time: the borrowed chairs were
being set out in the yard in little groups; even the funeral supper
had been eaten, and the brothers and sisters and near relatives of the
departed man were just going home. The new grave showed plainly out
in the green field near by. He had belonged to one of the ancient
families of the region, long settled on this old farm by the narrow
river; they had given their name to a bridge, and the bridge had
christened the meeting-house which stood close by. We were much struck
by the solemn figure of the mother, a very old woman, as she walked
toward her old home with some of her remaining children. I had not
thought to see her again, knowing her great age and infirmity. She
was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect,
dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as
if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme of life.
An air of dominion cloaked her finely. She had long been queen of her
surroundings and law-giver to her great family. Royalty is a quality,
one of Nature's gifts, and there one might behold it as truly as if
Victoria Regina Imperatrix had passed by. The natural instincts common
to humanity were there undisguised, unconcealed, simply accepted. We
had seen a royal progress; she was the central figure of that rural
society; as you looked at the little group, you could see her only.
Now that she came abroad so rarely, her presence was not without deep
significance, and so she took her homeward way with a primitive kind
of majesty.
It was evident that the neighborhood was in great excitement and quite
thrown out of its usual placidity. An acquaintance came from a small
house farther down the road, and we stopped for a word with him. We
spoke of the funeral, and were told something of the man who had died.
"Yes, and there's a man layin' very sick here," said our friend in an
excited whisper. "He won't last but a day or two. There's another
man buried yesterday that was struck by lightnin', comin' acrost a
field when that great shower begun. The lightnin' stove through his
hat and run down all over him, and ploughed a spot in the ground."
There was a knot of people about the door; the minister of that
scattered parish stood among them, and they all looked at us eagerly,
as if we too might be carrying news of a fresh disaster through the
countryside.
Somehow the melancholy tales did not touch our sympathies as they
ought, and we could not see the pathetic side of them as at another
time, the day was so full of cheer and the sky and earth so glorious.
The very fields looked busy with their early summer growth, the horses
began to think of the clack of the oat-bin cover, and we were hurried
along between the silvery willows and the rustling alders, taking time
to gather a handful of stray-away conserve roses by the roadside; and
where the highway made a long bend eastward among the farms, two of us
left the carriage, and followed a footpath along the green river bank
and through the pastures, coming out to the road again only a minute
later than the horses. I believe that it is an old Indian trail
followed from the salmon falls farther down the river, where the
up-country Indians came to dry the plentiful fish for their winter
supplies. I have traced the greater part of this deep-worn footpath,
which goes straight as an arrow across the country, the first day's
trail being from the falls (where Mason's settlers came in 1627, and
built their Great Works of a saw-mill with a gang of saws, and
presently a grist mill beside) to Emery's Bridge. I should like to
follow the old footpath still farther. I found part of it by accident
a long time ago. Once, as you came close to the river, you were sure
to find fishermen scattered along,--sometimes I myself have been
discovered; but it is not much use to go fishing any more. If some
public-spirited person would kindly be the Frank Buckland of New
England, and try to have the laws enforced that protect the inland
fisheries, he would do his country great service. Years ago, there
were so many salmon that, as an enthusiastic old friend once assured
me, "you could walk across on them below the falls;" but now they
are unknown, simply because certain substances which would enrich
the farms are thrown from factories and tanneries into our clear New
England streams. Good river fish are growing very scarce. The smelts,
and bass, and shad have all left this upper branch of the Piscataqua,
as the salmon left it long ago, and the supply of one necessary sort
of good cheap food is lost to a growing community, for the lack of a
little thought and care in the factory companies and saw-mills, and
the building in some cases of fish-ways over the dams. I think that
the need of preaching against this bad economy is very great. The
sight of a proud lad with a string of undersized trout will scatter
half the idlers in town into the pastures next day, but everybody
patiently accepts the depopulation of a fine clear river, where the
tide comes fresh from the sea to be tainted by the spoiled stream,
which started from its mountain sources as pure as heart could wish.
Man has done his best to ruin the world he lives in, one is tempted
to say at impulsive first thought; but after all, as I mounted the
last hill before reaching the village, the houses took on a new look
of comfort and pleasantness; the fields that I knew so well were a
fresher green than before, the sun was down, and the provocations of
the day seemed very slight compared to the satisfaction. I believed
that with a little more time we should grow wiser about our fish and
other things beside.
It will be good to remember the white rose road and its quietness
in many a busy town day to come. As I think of these slight sketches,
I wonder if they will have to others a tinge of sadness; but I have
seldom spent an afternoon so full of pleasure and fresh and delighted
consciousness of the possibilities of rural life.
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