William’s Wedding

"William's Wedding" by Sarah Orne Jewett is a charming novella that captures the essence of small-town life and the intricacies of relationships. Set in a quaint New England village, the story revolves around the preparations for a wedding, highlighting the joys and challenges faced by those involved. Through rich character portrayals and a vivid sense of place, Jewett explores themes of love, community, and the passage of time, ultimately celebrating the bonds that unite people in both joyous and trying times. The narrative is infused with local color and keen observations, making it a delightful read for fans of lyrical, character-driven storytelling.

• Short story

								
                                   I.

The hurry of life in a large town, the constant putting aside of
preference to yield to a most unsatisfactory activity, began to vex me,
and one day I took the train, and only left it for the eastward-bound
boat. Carlyle says somewhere that the only happiness a man ought to ask
for is happiness enough to get his work done; and against this the
complexity and futile ingenuity of social life seems a conspiracy. But
the first salt wind from the east, the first sight of a lighthouse set
boldly on its outer rock, the flash of a gull, the waiting procession of
seaward-bound firs on an island, made me feel solid and definite again,
instead of a poor, incoherent being. Life was resumed, and anxious
living blew away as if it had not been. I could not breathe deep enough
or long enough. It was a return to happiness.

The coast had still a wintry look; it was far on in May, but all the
shore looked cold and sterile. One was conscious of going north as well
as east, and as the day went on the sea grew colder, and all the warmer
air and bracing strength and stimulus of the autumn weather, and storage
of the heat of summer, were quite gone. I was very cold and very tired
when I came at evening up the lower bay, and saw the white houses of
Dunnet Landing climbing the hill. They had a friendly look, these little
houses, not as if they were climbing up the shore, but as if they were
rather all coming down to meet a fond and weary traveler, and I could
hardly wait with patience to step off the boat. It was not the usual
eager company on the wharf. The coming-in of the mailboat was the one
large public event of a summer day, and I was disappointed at seeing
none of my intimate friends but Johnny Bowden, who had evidently done
nothing all winter but grow, so that his short sea-smitten clothes gave
him a look of poverty.

Johnny’s expression did not change as we greeted each other, but I
suddenly felt that I had shown indifference and inconvenient delay by
not coming sooner; before I could make an apology he took my small
portmanteau, and walking before me in his old fashion he made straight
up the hilly road toward Mrs. Todd’s. Yes, he was much grown—it had
never occurred to me the summer before that Johnny was likely, with the
help of time and other forces, to grow into a young man; he was such a
well-framed and well-settled chunk of a boy that nature seemed to have
set him aside as something finished, quite satisfactory, and entirely
completed.

The wonderful little green garden had been enchanted away by winter.
There were a few frost-bitten twigs and some thin shrubbery against the
fence, but it was a most unpromising small piece of ground. My heart was
beating like a lover’s as I passed it on the way to the door of Mrs.
Todd’s house, which seemed to have become much smaller under the
influence of winter weather.

“She hasn’t gone away?” I asked Johnny Bowden with a sudden anxiety just
as we reached the doorstep.

“Gone away!” he faced me with blank astonishment,—“I see her settin’ by
Mis’ Caplin’s window, the one nighest the road, about four o’clock!” And
eager with suppressed news of my coming he made his entrance as if the
house were a burrow.

Then on my homesick heart fell the voice of Mrs. Todd. She stopped,
through what I knew to be excess of feeling, to rebuke Johnny for
bringing in so much mud, and I dallied without for one moment during the
ceremony; then we met again face to face.

                                  II.

“I dare say you can advise me what shapes they are goin’ to wear. My
meetin’-bunnit ain’t goin’ to do me again this year; no! I can’t expect
’twould do me forever,” said Mrs. Todd, as soon as she could say
anything. “There! do set down and tell me how you have been! We’ve got a
weddin’ in the family, I s’pose you know?”

“A wedding!” said I, still full of excitement.

“Yes; I expect if the tide serves and the line storm don’t overtake him
they’ll come in and appear out on Sunday. I shouldn’t have concerned me
about the bunnit for a month yet, nobody would notice, but havin’ an
occasion like this I shall show consider’ble. ’Twill be an ordeal for
William!”

“For William!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean, Mrs. Todd?”

She gave a comfortable little laugh. “Well, the Lord’s seen reason at
last an’ removed Mis’ Cap’n Hight up to the farm, an’ I don’t know but
the weddin’s goin’ to be this week. Esther’s had a great deal of
business disposin’ of her flock, but she’s done extra well—the folks
that owns the next place goin’ up country are well off. ’Tis elegant
land north side o’ that bleak ridge, an’ one o’ the boys has been
Esther’s righthand man of late. She instructed him in all matters, and
after she markets the early lambs he’s goin’ to take the farm on halves,
an’ she’s give the refusal to him to buy her out within two years. She’s
reserved the buryin’-lot, an’ the right o’ way in, an’—”

I couldn’t stop for details. I demanded reassurance of the central fact.

“William going to be married?” I repeated; whereat Mrs. Todd gave me a
searching look that was not without scorn.

“Old Mis’ Hight’s funeral was a week ago Wednesday, and ’twas very well
attended,” she assured me after a moment’s pause.

“Poor thing!” said I, with a sudden vision of her helplessness and angry
battle against the fate of illness; “it was very hard for her.”

“I thought it was hard for Esther!” said Mrs. Todd without sentiment.

                                  III.

I had an odd feeling of strangeness: I missed the garden, and the little
rooms, to which I had added a few things of my own the summer before,
seemed oddly unfamiliar. It was like the hermit crab in a cold new
shell,—and with the windows shut against the raw May air, and a strange
silence and grayness of the sea all that first night and day of my
visit, I felt as if I had after all lost my hold of that quiet life.

Mrs. Todd made the apt suggestion that city persons were prone to run
themselves to death, and advised me to stay and get properly rested now
that I had taken the trouble to come. She did not know how long I had
been homesick for the conditions of life at the Landing the autumn
before—it was natural enough to feel a little unsupported by compelling
incidents on my return.

Some one has said that one never leaves a place, or arrives at one,
until the next day! But on the second morning I woke with the familiar
feeling of interest and ease, and the bright May sun was streaming in,
while I could hear Mrs. Todd’s heavy footsteps pounding about in the
other part of the house as if something were going to happen. There was
the first golden robin singing somewhere close to the house, and a
lovely aspect of spring now, and I looked at the garden to see that in
the warm night some of its treasures had grown a hand’s breadth; the
determined spikes of yellow daffies stood tall against the doorsteps,
and the bloodroot was unfolding leaf and flower. The belated spring
which I had left behind farther south had overtaken me on this northern

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