The Village Watch-Tower Part 1

The Village Watch-Tower.

by (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EDITION

These days the name of Kate Douglas Wiggin is virtually unknown. But if one mentions the t.i.tle "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," recognition (at least in America) is instant. Everyone has heard of Rebecca; her story has been in print continuously since it was first published in 1903.

It is certainly Mrs. Wiggin's most famous book, and the only one of her many books that is still in print. Everything else she wrote has slipped into complete obscurity. Occasionally in an antique shop, one may still find a copy of her immensely popular seasonal book, "The Birds'

Christmas Carol", but that is about the extent of what is readily available, even second-hand.

The Birds' Christas Carol is available as our Etext #721, Nov. 1996.

In 1904, Jack London wrote (from Manchuria!) to say that Rebecca had won his heart. ("She is real," he wrote, "she lives; she has given me many regrets, but I love her.") Some eighty years later I happened to pick up and read "Rebecca" for the first time. The book was so thoroughly enjoyable that when I had finished it, I began at once a search for other works by the same author--especially for a sequel to "Rebecca", which seemed practically to demand one. There was never a sequel written, but "The New Chronicles of Rebecca" was published in 1907, and contained some further chapters in the life of its heroine. I had to be satisfied with that, for the time being. Then, well over a year after jotting down Mrs. Wiggin's name on my list of authors to "purchase on sight", I finally ran across a copy of "The Village Watch-Tower"; and it was not even a book of which I had heard. It was first published in 1895 by Houghton, who published much of her other work at the time, and apparently was never published again. Shortly thereafter I found a copy of her autobiography.

Kate Douglas Wiggin (nee Smith) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 28, 1856. She was raised for the most-part in Maine, which forms a backdrop to much of her fiction. She moved to California in the 1870s, and became involved in the "free kindergarten" movement. She opened the Silver Street Free Kindergarten in San Francisco, the first free kindergarten in California, and there she worked until the late 1880s (meantime opening her own training school for teachers). Her first husband, Samuel Wiggin, died in 1889. By then famous, she returned to New York and Maine. She moved in international social circles, lecturing and giving readings from her work. In 1895 she married for the second time (to George Riggs).

At her home in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate and Marin County, she wrote her first book, "The Birds' Christmas Carol", to raise money for her school. The book also proved to be her means of entrance into publis.h.i.+ng, translation, and travel in elite circles throughout Europe. The book was republished many times thereafter, and translated into several languages. In addition to factual and educational works (undertaken together with her sister, Nora Archibald Smith) she also wrote a number of other popular novels in the early years of the 20th century, including "Rebecca", and "The Story of Waitstill Baxter"

(1913). She died in 1923, on August 23, at Harrow-on-Hill, England.

Beverly Seaton observed, in "American Women Writers", that Mrs. Wiggin was "a popular writer who expressed what her contemporaries themselves thought of as 'real life'" (p. 413). "The Village Watch-Tower" I think is a perfect example of that observation; it captures vividly a few frozen moments of rural America, right at the twilight of the 19th century. Most of it was written in the village of Quillcote, Maine, her childhood home--and certainly the model for the village of these stories.

No attempt has been made to edit this book for consistency or to update or "correct" the spelling. Mrs. Wiggin's spelling is somewhat transitional between modern American and British spellings. The only liberty taken is that of removing extra s.p.a.ces in contractions. E.g., I have used "wouldn't" where the original has consistently "would n't"; this is true for all such contractions with "n't" which appeared inordinately distracting to the modern reader.

R. McGowan, San Jose, March 1997

THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER

Dear old apple-tree, under whose gnarled branches these stories were written, to you I dedicate the book. My head was so close to you, who can tell from whence the thoughts came? I only know that when all the other trees in the orchard were barren, there were always stories to be found under your branches, and so it is our joint book, dear apple-tree.

Your pink blossoms have fallen on the page as I wrote; your ruddy fruit has dropped into my lap; the suns.h.i.+ne streamed through your leaves and tipped my pencil with gold. The birds singing in your boughs may have lent a sweet note here and there; and do you remember the day when the gentle shower came? We just curled the closer, and you and I and the sky all cried together while we wrote "The Fore-Room Rug."

It should be a lovely book, dear apple-tree, but alas! it is not altogether that, because I am not so simple as you, and because I have strayed farther away from the heart of Mother Nature.

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

"Quillcote," Hollis, Maine, August 12, 1895.

THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER.

It stood on the gentle slope of a hill, the old gray house, with its weather-beaten clapboards and its roof of ragged s.h.i.+ngles. It was in the very lap of the road, so that the stage-driver could almost knock on the window pane without getting down from his seat, on those rare occasions when he brought "old Mis' Bascom" a parcel from Saco.

Humble and dilapidated as it was, it was almost beautiful in the springtime, when the dandelion-dotted turf grew close to the great stone steps; or in the summer, when the famous Bascom elm cast its graceful shadow over the front door. The elm, indeed, was the only object that ever did cast its shadow there. Lucinda Bascom said her "front door 'n'

entry never hed ben used except for fun'rals, 'n' she was goin' to keep it nice for that purpose, 'n' not get it all tracked up."

She was sitting now where she had sat for thirty years. Her high-backed rocker, with its cus.h.i.+on of copperplate patch and its crocheted tidy, stood always by a southern window that looked out on the river. The river was a sheet of crystal, as it poured over the dam; a rus.h.i.+ng, roaring torrent of foaming white, as it swept under the bridge and fought its way between the rocky cliffs beyond, sweeping swirling, eddying, in its narrow channel, pulsing restlessly into the ragged fissures of its sh.o.r.es, and leaping with a tempestuous roar into the Witches' Eel-pot, a deep wooded gorge cleft in the very heart of the granite bank.

But Lucinda Bascom could see more than the river from her favorite window. It was a much-traveled road, the road that ran past the house on its way from Liberty Village to Milliken's Mills. A tottering old sign-board, on a verdant triangle of turf, directed you over Deacon Chute's hill to the "Flag Medder Road," and from thence to Liberty Centre; the little post-office and store, where the stage stopped twice a day, was quite within eyeshot; so were the public watering-trough, Brigadier Hill, and, behind the ruins of an old mill, the wooded path that led to the Witches' Eel-pot, a favorite walk for village lovers.

This was all on her side of the river. As for the bridge which knit together the two tiny villages, n.o.body could pa.s.s over that without being seen from the Bascoms'. The rumble of wheels generally brought a family party to the window,--Jot Bascom's wife (she that was Diadema Dennett), Jot himself, if he were in the house, little Jot, and grandpa Bascom, who looked at the pa.s.sers-by with a vacant smile parting his thin lips. Old Mrs. Bascom herself did not need the rumble of wheels to tell her that a vehicle was coming, for she could see it fully ten minutes before it reached the bridge,--at the very moment it appeared at the crest of Saco Hill, where strangers pulled up their horses, on a clear day, and paused to look at Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, miles away in the distance. Tory Hill and Saco Hill met at the bridge, and just there, too, the river road began its shady course along the east side of the stream: in view of all which "old Mis' Bascom's settin'-room winder"

might well be called the "Village Watch-Tower," when you consider further that she had moved only from her high-backed rocker to her bed, and from her bed to her rocker, for more than thirty years,--ever since that july day when her husband had had a sun-stroke while painting the meeting-house steeple, and her baby Jonathan had been thereby hastened into a world not in the least ready to receive him.

She could not have lived without that window, she would have told you, nor without the river, which had lulled her to sleep ever since she could remember. It was in the south chamber upstairs that she had been born. Her mother had lain there and listened to the swirl of the water, in that year when the river was higher than the oldest inhabitant had ever seen it,--the year when the covered bridge at the Mills had been carried away, and when the one at the Falls was in hourly danger of succ.u.mbing to the force of the freshet.

All the men in both villages were working on the river, strengthening the dam, bracing the bridge, and breaking the jams of logs; and with the parting of the boom, the snapping of the bridge timbers, the cras.h.i.+ng of the logs against the rocks, and the shouts of the river-drivers, the little Lucinda had come into the world. Some one had gone for the father, and had found him on the river, where he had been since day-break, drenched with the storm, blown fro his dangerous footing time after time, but still battling with the great heaped-up ma.s.ses of logs, wrenching them from one another's grasp, and sending them down the swollen stream.

Finally the jam broke; and a cheer of triumph burst from the excited men, as the logs, freed from their bondage, swept down the raging flood, on and ever on in joyous liberty, faster and faster, till they encountered some new obstacle, when they heaped themselves together again, like puppets of Fate, and were beaten by the waves into another helpless surrender.

With the breaking of the jam, one dead monarch of the forest leaped into the air as if it had been shot from a cannon's mouth, and lodged between two jutting peaks of rock high on the river bank. Presently another log was dashed against it, but rolled off and hurried down the stream; then another, and still another; but no force seemed enough to drive the giant from its intrenched position.

"Hurry on down to the next jam, Raish, and let it alone," cried the men.

"Mebbe it'll git washed off in the night, and anyhow you can't budge it with no kind of a tool we've got here."

Then from the sh.o.r.e came a boy's voice calling, "There's a baby up to your house!" And the men repeated in stentorian tones, "Baby up to your house, Rais.h.!.+ Leggo the log; you're wanted!"

"Boy or girl?" shouted the young father.

"Girl!" came back the answer above the roar of the river.

Whereupon Raish Dunnell steadied himself with his pick and taking a hatchet from his belt, cut a rude letter "L" on the side of the stranded log.

"L's for Lucindy," he laughed. "Now you log if you git's fur as Saco, drop in to my wife's folks and tell 'em the baby's name."

There had not been such a freshet for years before, and there had never been one since; so, as the quiet seasons went by, "Lucindy's log" was left in peace, the columbines blooming all about it, the harebells hanging their heads of delicate blue among the rocks that held it in place, the birds building their nests in the knot-holes of its withered side.

Seventy years had pa.s.sed, and on each birthday, from the time when she was only "Raish Dunnell's little Lou," to the years when she was Lucinda Bascom, wife and mother, she had wandered down by the river side, and gazed, a little superst.i.tiously perhaps, on the log that had been marked with an "L" on the morning she was born. It had stood the wear and tear of the elements bravely, but now it was beginning, like Lucinda, to show its age. Its back was bent, like hers; its face was seamed and wrinkled, like her own; and the village lovers who looked at it from the opposite bank wondered if, after all, it would hold out as long as "old Mis'

Bascom."

She held out bravely, old Mrs. Bascom, though she was "all skin, bones, and tongue," as the neighbors said; for n.o.body needed to go into the Bascoms' to brighten up aunt Lucinda a bit, or take her the news; one went in to get a bit of brightness, and to hear the news.

"I should get lonesome, I s'pose," she was wont to say, "if it wa'n't for the way this house is set, and this chair, and this winder, 'n' all.

Men folks used to build some o' the houses up in a lane, or turn 'em back or side to the road, so the women folks couldn't see anythin' to keep their minds off their churnin' or dish-was.h.i.+n'; but Aaron Dunnell hed somethin' else to think about, 'n' that was himself, first, last, and all the time. His store was down to bottom of the hill, 'n' when he come up to his meals, he used to set where he could see the door; 'n'

if any cust'mer come, he could call to 'em to wait a spell till he got through eatin'. Land! I can hear him now, yellin' to 'em, with his mouth full of victuals! They hed to wait till he got good 'n' ready, too.

There wa'n't so much comp't.i.tion in business then as there is now, or he'd 'a' hed to give up eatin' or hire a clerk. ... I've always felt to be thankful that the house was on this rise o' ground. The teams hev to slow up on 'count o' the hill, 'n' it gives me consid'ble chance to see folks 'n' what they've got in the back of the wagon, 'n' one thing 'n'

other. ... The neighbors is continually comin' in here to talk about things that's goin' on in the village. I like to hear 'em, but land!

they can't tell me nothing'! They often say, 'For ma.s.sy sakes, Lucindy Bascom, how d' you know that?' 'Why,' says I to them, 'I don't ask no questions, 'n' folks don't tell me no lies; I just set in my winder, 'n' put two 'n' two together,--that's all I do.' I ain't never ben in a playhouse, but I don't suppose the play-actors git down off the platform on t' the main floor to explain to the folks what they've ben doin', do they? I expect, if folks can't understand their draymas when the're actin' of 'em out, they have to go ignorant, don't they? Well, what do I want with explainin', when everythin' is acted out right in the road?"

There was quite a gathering of neighbors at the Bascoms' on this particular July afternoon. No invitations had been sent out, and none were needed. A common excitement had made it vital that people should drop in somewhere, and speculate about certain interesting matters well known to be going on in the community, but going on in such an underhand and secretive fas.h.i.+on that it well-nigh destroyed one's faith in human nature.

The sitting-room door was open into the entry, so that whatever breeze there was might come in, and an unusual glimpse of the new foreroom rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast pa.s.sing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the a.s.sembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney protected from the flies by a brown paper bag inverted over its head. Two plaster Samuels praying under the pink mosquito netting adorned the ends of the shelf. There were screens at all the windows, and Diadema fidgeted nervously when a visitor came in the mosquito netting door, for fear a fly should sneak in with her.

On the wall were certificates of members.h.i.+p in the Missionary Society; a picture of Maidens welcoming Was.h.i.+ngton in the Streets of Alexandria, in a frame of cuc.u.mber seeds; and an interesting doc.u.ment setting forth the claims of the Dunnell family as old settlers long before the separation of Maine from Ma.s.sachusetts,--the fact bein' established by an obituary notice reading, "In Saco, December 1791, Dorcas, daughter of Abiathar Dunnell, two months old of Fits unbaptized."