Yet the spring air held a sadness too, sharper than all the loneliness of winter. The promise was not for her. I am going away, she thought, and for the first time the reminder brought no delight, only a deeper longing. She did not want to leave this place, after all. Suppose she should never walk in the meadows again? Suppose she should never sit in the twilight with Mercy, or see Judith in the new house, or the girl Prudence would grow to be? Suppose she should never see Nat Eaton again?
Suddenly she was trembling. She snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read. She tried to remember how it had felt to stand on the deck of the Dolphin and see before her the harbor of Barbados. The haunting joy eluded her; the dream shores were dim and unreal. Why had she closed her heart to the true meaning of the dream? How long had she really known that the piercing happiness of that moment had come not from the sight of the harbor at all, but from the certainty that the one she loved stood beside her?
If only I could go with Nat, she realized suddenly, it wouldn't matter where we went, to Barbados or just up and down this river. The Dolphin would be home enough.
"There is no escape if love is not there," Hannah had said. Had Hannah known when she herself had not even suspected? It was not escape that she had dreamed about, it was love. And love was Nat.
It must have been Nat from the beginning, she admitted now, and with that knowledge came a sureness that she had never known in all the last bewildering year. Memories of Nat came crowding back to her—agile and sure-footed, as she had first known him, leaning far out on a yardarm to grasp a billowing sail—throwing back his head in laughter, or shooting hot sparks of temper—sitting on a thatched roof in the sunshine—coming miraculously out of the fog that morning, bending tenderly to lift a frightened old woman into the rowboat—and as she had seen him last, standing erect by the door of the magistrate's office, sending across the anger and confusion a steady reassurance and strength.
Nat is New England, too, she thought, like John Holbrook and Uncle Matthew. Why have I never seen that he is one of them? Under that offhand way of his, there is the same rock. Hannah has leaned on it for years. And I refused to see.
Was it too late? He asked me to go, she reminded herself. But what did he mean? Only that he could never bear to see anyone in trouble? And he came back. He risked the whipping post to come back and help me. But he took the same risk to rescue a yellow cat!
After a long time Kit started slowly home. The sun slanted low in the sky, and behind her there began a sweet, disturbing melody. Peepers, Judith had said, the little frogs that lived in the swamp, and why should the sound of them tear at her heart? "Too late? Too late?" they queried, over and over, and she fled along the road to the house where she could shut herself away from them.
From that moment in the meadow Kit ceased to plan at all. She only waited. Somehow she found a way to meet every trading ship that came up the river. How beautiful these proud little sailing ships were! She never glimpsed their spreading sails without an answering surge of her spirits. Yet every new mast that rounded the bend of the river brought at the same time a fresh plunge of disappointment. Always she waited, her eyes straining to make out the figure on the prow, and always, at the sight of those strange, glistening white figureheads, her heart sank. Why did the Dolphin not come?
On the second day of May, as she came out on Wethersfield landing, a trim little ketch was already tied up, fresh-painted, with clean white canvas and not a barnacle on its hull. It must have been newly launched.
The wharf was a confusion of unloading and bartering. A seaman in a blue coat bent to check a row of barrels, and as he straightened up, even before he turned or before she consciously recognized him, Kit began to run.
"Nat!" The greeting burst from her. He turned and saw her, and then he was running, too. As he caught her hands she came to a stop, the wharf, the ship, and Nat himself swinging in a dizzy arc before her eyes.
"Kit? It is Kit, isn't it? Not Mistress Ashby?"
"Oh no, Nat! No!"
"I thought the old Dolphin would never make it!"
The blue gaze was too intense. She had to look away, and abruptly she was conscious of the crowded dock. She pulled her hands away and stepped back, trying, too late, to retrieve her dignity.
"H-how is Hannah?" she stammered.
"Chipper as a sandpiper. She and Gran have been fine company for each other."
"And the Dolphin? Did something happen to her?"
"Just a heavy blow. She's hove down for repairs at the yard. What do you think of the new ketch?"
"She's lovely." Then something in his tone made her look at him more sharply. The blue coat with brass buttons was brand new, and pride sparkled over Nat like the shiny paint on the new vessel. "Nat—you mean—you can't mean she's yours?"
"All but a few payments. By the end of a good summer's trade she'll be every inch mine from stem to stern."
"I can't believe it! She's beautiful, Nat—even more beautiful than the Dolphin!"
"Have you noticed her name?"
Kit leaned sideways to see the letters painted jauntily on the transom. "The WITCH! How did you dare? Does Hannah know?"
"Oh, she's not named after Hannah. I hadn't gone ten miles down the river that day before I knew I'd left the real witch behind."
She did not dare to look up at him. "Can I see her, Nat?" she asked instead. "Will you take me on board?"
"No, not yet." His voice was full of decision. "I want to see your uncle first. Kit—" His words came in an unpremeditated rush. "Will he think it is enough—the new ketch? There'll be a house someday, in Saybrook, or here in Wethersfield if you like. I've thought of nothing else all winter. In November we'll sail south, to the Indies. In the summer—"
"In the summer Hannah and I will have a garden!"
"Kit—" He glanced ruefully about the busy wharf. "Of all the places to choose! I didn't plan it like this. Aren't you going to invite me home with you?"
Happiness brimmed over into shaky laughter. "Captain Eaton, we'd be proud to have you dine with us."
"Then must we stay here any longer?"
She took the arm he offered, but still she lingered, looking back. "I want to see the ketch. Please, Nat, before we go! I can't wait any longer to see my namesake!"
"No," he said again, leading her firmly toward the road. "That ketch has a mind of her own. She's contrary as a very witch herself. All the way up the river she's been holding back somehow, waiting. Now you'll both have to wait. I'm not going to disappoint her. Kit. When I take you on board the Witch, it's going to be for keeps."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The story of Kit Tyler is entirely fictitious. The house in which the Wood family lived, and all the adventures which took place there, existed only in imagination, but old houses much like it can still be seen in Wethersfield, one of the first settlements of the Connecticut Colony. The Great Meadows still stretch quietly along the river, and a relic of an old warehouse marks the once thriving river port. A few real people walk through the imaginary story. Sir Edmond Andros, the royal governor, Captain Samuel Talcott, the magistrate, Eleazer Kimberley, the schoolmaster, and Reverend Gersholm Bulkeley, the ardent royalist, were important men of their time, and the freemen's struggle to preserve their charter is known to every schoolchild in Connecticut.
Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond
(Series: # )
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