Calico Bush Read online

  CALICO BUSH

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1931 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Copyright renewed 1959 by Arthur S. Pederson

  Copyright © 1966 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers is a trademark of Simon & Schuster

  First published 1931; reset and reissued 1966; reissued 1987

  Printed in the United States of America

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the first printing of this title as follows:

  Field, Rachel Lyman, 1894-1942.

  Calico bush. With the original wood engravings by Allen Lewis.

  New York, Macmillan [1966]

  xi, 201 p. illus. 24 cm. I. Title. PZ7.F475Cal 5 66-19095

  ISBN 0-02-734610-2

  ISBN-13: 978-0-0273-4610-7

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-3655-3

  To my island neighbors and especially Captain Jim Sprague

  CALICO BUSH:

  An Appreciation

  Many years after reading Calico Bush two memories remained clear: the rugged beauty of its setting and the inner courage of Marguerite Ledoux. Reading it again, I realize that the feeling of place and the appreciation of people are the strengths that carry the story, simple in pattern but complex and beautiful in texture.

  Rachel Field was fifteen, three years older than Marguerite, when she first visited Maine and fell under the spell of its “island-scattered coast.” The strong sense of place had its roots in her love and intuitive understanding of a region where the somber, icy months of winter are long and spring comes late but so suddenly that “almost overnight it seemed, the earth turned from bleakness to vehement green.” Marguerite thought, “I do believe that even the birds sing more and the flowers put on brighter colors because the season is so brief.” The certain instinct of the artist prompted Rachel Field to divide the story into seasons rather than chapters.

  Although Marguerite had been reared gently in pre-revolutionary France and, in the new world, was reduced to bondage in a pioneering family, she never commands pity. Reserved, keeping her old self a bit apart from “Maggie,” the Bound-out Girl, she responded to respect and friendship and drew the comfort that she needed from the trust and love of the children in her care. Her quiet self-containment gave dignity to her servitude and makes her unforgettable.

  Calico Bush derives its title from the low-growing sheep laurel, with its deep pink blossoms, which Marguerite first saw on the rocky shore “springing out of every crack and crevice.” Aunt Hepsa explained, “’Tain’t held so choice as the tall kind that grows in the hills, but I think it’s pretty. I’ve heard it called Calico Bush in these parts, an’ there’s a ballad they sing of it.” Marguerite adapted to her new life as the calico bush did to its rugged terrain, growing hardy, resourceful, and bonny. And the ballad that Aunt Hepsa sang to her joined the French songs in her memory, adding gentle overtones to her hard-working life.

  Allen Lewis’ wood engravings underline the stark beauty of the setting and the courage of a time when merely to survive required the greatest determination and endurance. More than his few illustrations are unnecessary, so vivid are the pictures that the story calls up in the reader’s mind.

  Thirty-five years have passed since Calico Bush was first published. Since then hundreds of pioneer stories have come and gone, but Calico Bush still stands out as a near-perfect re-creation of people and place in a story of courage, understated and beautiful.

  Ruth Hill Viguers

  April, 1966

  Wellesley, Massachusetts

  MAYPOLE POINT

  Wherever you go in the State of Maine

  You’ll come across some old French strain—

  A scarlet thread in the sober skein

  Of later settlers, since first Champlain

  Charted those islands of the sea

  In the name of France and the Fleur-de-Lis.

  Changed, misspelled, and lost perhaps,

  You can find some yet if you search the maps,

  A scattered handful of six or so

  With Mount Desert and Isle au Haut.

  Those lilies of France were far too frail

  For the bitter winters; the northeast gale;

  The sharp-toothed ledges; the icy tides;

  The bristling spruce on the mountain sides;

  For a land that succors a needly tree

  Can be less kind to a fleur-de-lis.

  It’s years now since they were broken and lost;

  Sturdier stock has weathered the frost.

  But here and there in some far place

  A name persists, or a foreign face;

  A lift of shoulder; a turn of head;

  Along with an Old World chest or bed;

  A Breton Bible; a silver spoon;

  And feet more quick to a fiddle tune;

  A gift for taking the last, mad chance

  Because some great-great came from France.

  These are the facts, and precious few,

  Of a certain Marguerite Ledoux,

  A Bound-out Girl, thirteen or so,

  To Dolly Sargent and her man Joe,

  And their brood of children born and bred

  In the pleasant port of Marblehead.

  No one knows what sent them forth,

  Picking a course part east, part north,

  In an open sloop, as like as not,

  Piled with whatever goods they’d got;

  And no one knows, or ever will,

  How they built that chimney and rough doorsill,

  Laid on the roof and stuffed each chink,

  And deepened the spring that they might drink.

  Settlers make mention of births and dying,

  But for the rest, there’s no use trying.

  It’s the same long round, in sun and rain,

  Sun-up to sun-down, and over again.

  Trees must be felled and chips set flying,

  Fires must burn and pans kept frying.

  There’s wool to be sheared, and spun by hand,

  And crops wrung somehow from half-cleared land.

  Winters of sleet, and storm by night,

  Northern summers too brief and bright,

  A fight for bare necessities—

  Yes, Marguerite knew all of these.

  But she is a legend, none the less,

  A flowering sprig in the wilderness,

  A name blown out of years ago,

  A sprightly phantom in calico.

  This is her story, and this is why

  I think of her when tides run high

  On rocky ledges; when some wild bird

  Calls with a note she may have heard;

  When berries ripen in marshy ground,

  Bright as the ones she must have found

  In other seasons of sun and rain,

  On the island-scattered coast of Maine.

  CONTENTS

  AN APPRECIATION BY RUTH HILL VIGUERS

  MAYPOLE POINT

  PART I: SUMMER

  PART II: FALL

  PART III: WINTER

  PART IV: SPRING

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  They found a spot in the shade of the settle

  The men lifted and laid the great brown logs in place

  There was no sound except her footfalls in the snow

  At last her fingers touched the top

  PART 1SUMMER

  1743 and a fine June mo
rning. Blue water, wind from the southwest, and Marguerite Ledoux taking her last sight of Marblehead as she crouched at the low railing of the Isabella B. Farther astern she could see Amos Hunt, master and owner of the Isabella B., at the tiller, with Joel Sargent and his brother, Ira, handling ropes or helping to stow their goods more compactly. Nearer at hand Joel’s wife, Dolly Sargent, was seated on an old wooden chest, her eyes also straining against the strong sea sunshine till the last familiar headland should be out of sight. Four small children clustered about her, and a baby filled her broad lap. In her full, brown homespun dress and scoop bonnet, Marguerite thought she looked mightily like one of the hens in their coop up forward. But of this resemblance she said nothing, having learned that Bound-out Girls were not expected to hold opinions of their own, least of all upon the appearance of their masters and mistresses.

  “Maggie! Maggie!” She started up, seeing Dolly beckoning to her, remembering of a sudden that this was to be her name now.

  “Here’s a great hank o’ wool to be untangled and wound,” Dolly Sargent was saying. “No need to idle the morning away if we are bound for dear knows where.”

  Dolly sighed, and her eyes turned once more to the low line of shore that grew steadily a dimmer, paler blue as the boat carried them on.

  Taking the wool from her, the girl moved back to her place amidships. Here she found a small wooden keg between several larger ones and sat down to her task. Her fingers were brown and twiglike, but they moved deftly in and out of the thick blue strands of wool. The sun was higher now, and she pushed the cotton bonnet back on her shoulders, making the strings of it fast against the breeze.

  Presently a sandy-headed boy went by with a great leap, tweaking one of her dark braids as he passed, and wrinkling his face up into a wide grimace.

  “Ho, Frenchee!” he sang out shrilly, “you’ll be black’s an Injun ’fore we make port.”

  The girl did not reply, bending to her work more steadily, though she felt an odd dread as always at the approach of this boy. Caleb Sargent was thirteen, only a few months older than she would be on her next birthday, but he stood a good head and a half above her, and his keen blue eyes and teasing mouth were forever expressing his scorn of all womankind and of Marguerite Ledoux in particular. Sometimes she imagined that he also felt an outsider in the midst of this clamoring group of younger half-sisters and his half-brother. His own mother, Joel Sargent’s first wife, had died years before. This morning he was feeling very proud of himself, partly because he had inherited a pair of his Uncle Ira’s nankeen breeches, still several sizes too large for him, and partly because he had been given charge of the family livestock—the cow and her calf, the hens and chickens, and four unhappy sheep who kept up a pitiful bleating in the forward part of the ship. With some old planks he had been knocking up a makeshift pen for them. Now he scrambled back to this rough shelter with a twist of rope he had begged of his father.

  Captain Hunt watched him go with a dubious headshake.

  “Ain’t likely to make the headway we’d ought to with such a load forward,” he was complaining for the twentieth time since they had put out. “I didn’t lot on carrying livestock and all these here young ones when we made our bargain.”

  “Never you mind that,” Joel answered him shortly, “I paid you what you asked in hard silver, every shilling of it, and if you ain’t aiming to do your part—”

  “Dad blast ye!” the Captain broke in. “I’m not the man to go back on my word once it’s given. But I say she sets too low in the water. She ain’t trimmed proper.”

  Words passed between the men. There was more argument as to the shifting of household goods stowed in the cockpit and under cover of the hatches.

  It was strange, Marguerite thought, to see the family spinning wheel and churn lashed to the rail along with a chest and settle, and the feather bed and a couple of patchwork quilts spread on wooden benches below in the dark little cabin. Where the light struck through the hatchway, she could make out the bright reds and greens of “The Rose of Sharon” and “The Feathered Star,” both familiar patterns and greatly cherished by Dolly Sargent, who had little time nowadays for such fine needlework. Overhead the great canvas sail filled and strained as the Isabella B. scudded before the wind. There were patches upon it too—sharp, white lengths of new canvas set into the older weathered gray. One of these showed jagged and triangular as if a dart of lightning had left its mark there. A sturdily built boat, the Isabella B., larger and heavier than most of the fishing smacks thereabouts, with a blunt-nosed prow that rose dripping with salt spray only to plunge and rise again. An odd-shaped world of wood and rope and canvas in which eleven souls and all their earthly possessions were to live for upwards of five days and nights. Strange indeed, but perhaps no stranger than what had already befallen Marguerite Ledoux in the last twelve months.

  She was thinking of this as her fingers moved through the wool, trying to sort out the events that had brought her by varying stages to being there at the beck and call of a family of strangers, on a wooden vessel bound for parts unknown—as unknown to her, at least, she told herself, as these new colonies across the sea had been when she and Grand’mère and Oncle Pierre had set forth all those many months before. It had been just such another blue day, and the port of Le Havre had been brave to see in the morning light. Grand’mère had cried, seeing the last of France, but Oncle Pierre had been in good spirits. He had laughed and planned many things—the house they should have together someday in a part called after King Louis, where it was warm and sunny, with rich lands, where people talked their language and one would fancy oneself in a Little France. There they would pay well to hear him play his violin, and it would certainly not be long before he taught those rich planters’ sons and daughters the latest dancing steps. Yes, Oncle Pierre would be a personage there, perhaps the only French dancing master in the New World. The thought had made him hold his head very high and point his toes out even when their ship pitched and the deck grew wet and slanting.

  Even Grand’mère had grown resigned and happy, thinking of Oncle Pierre a great man over in Little France, thinking of the new home they would make for Marguerite, whose own dead parents had left her in their hands. It had been a long, long voyage, with sun and storm and fog and variable winds, but they had not minded. Even with food grown scanty and water-soaked they had not minded very much. There were always the plans to talk about among themselves, or if the nights were fine and the sky alive with stars large and small, there had been Oncle Pierre’s violin to make music. Such beautiful music as he would play, and so many old songs he knew, both the words and tunes. Sitting there now in the shadow of the Isabella B.’s patched sail, Marguerite could sing those same little notes and repeat the same words he had taught her; and yet, for all that, Oncle Pierre was dead and gone. He would never point his toes in their narrow shoes again, nor draw his bow smoothly across the taut strings.

  It had happened with the swiftness of lightning. One of the sailors had fallen ill almost within sight of land. Great red sores had appeared on his face, and fever burned in his eyes. It had been a terrible time. One had scarcely dared to look at another’s face for fear of seeing the first dread sign. And then Oncle Pierre—Marguerite could not even now let herself think of the day when he had fallen ill. They would not allow her and Grand’mère to go near him. Two old sailors with scarred faces did what they could. But it had been no use at all. She and Grand’mère knelt together on the deck when they buried him at sea; they told over their rosaries and whispered what prayers they could. After that, the Captain put them ashore at the nearest port. It was not the one intended, but the Captain would take no more risks. He must be rid of his ailing crew and clean his vessel. All Oncle Pierre’s belongings had been flung into the sea with him, even the precious violin and bow, so she and Grand’mère had nothing but their clothes and the little money bag with its few remaining coins.

  There had been none to welcome them to the port of Marblehead
, and Grand’mère was too spent to journey to that far place, named for King Louis, where she would have heard her own tongue. So it was one lodging after another while their money lasted, and then a place called “Poor Farm,” which they shared with others even less fortunate. But Grand’mère had ceased to care much by that time. She was too weak to get up from her bed, and often she imagined for days on end that she was in France again. At such times she smiled and sang snatches of the songs Oncle Pierre had sung, and if she forgot the words, Marguerite would join in as she sat beside her with sewing. For Marguerite could sew very well for a girl of twelve. All the women at the Poor Farm had praised her little stitches, and she had showed them how to do fancy scallops and garlands as the Sisters in the convent at Le Havre had taught her. In return they helped her care for Grand’mère and gave her instruction in their language. It had not been hard to learn, although people still smiled to hear the way she said certain words. There was Caleb, for instance, who never tired of mocking her queer r’s and the way she could never say her h’s.

  Remembering Caleb, she looked quickly forward, relieved to see his shock of orange-colored hair bent over the coops. All the rest being busy also, she took this moment to draw from under the front of her dress of coarse gray holland a piece of cord from which hung two small objects. One of these was a plain gold ring, the same that Grand’mère had always worn, the other a button of gilt from Oncle Pierre’s best blue coat. She had found it afterwards between two boards of the deck where it had rolled. Such little things, she thought, to have outlasted Grand’mère and Oncle Pierre. Now they were all that remained to her of her past, and as such they were very precious.

  People had been kind to her when Grand’mère died, but afterwards they had explained that life would be very different. It was not enough, it appeared, for one to know songs and dancing steps and how to sew and embroider. This was a new, rough country with very different sort of work to be done, and an able-bodied girl of twelve must earn her “board and keep.” She remembered what a frightening sound those same words had had. And then they had explained to her that she was to be a “Bound-out Girl.” Already those in authority were searching about for a family who would take her to work for them. But the fact that she was French had stood in her way. Several women had come to look her over, only to dismiss her with headshakes when they discovered her birth.