help her; we was a large family. They'll buy all the folks can do
down here to Addicks' store. They say our Dunnet stockin's is
gettin' to be
celebrated up to Boston,--good quality o' wool an'
even knittin' or somethin'. I've always been called a pretty hand
to do nettin', but seines is master cheap to what they used to be
when they was all hand worked. I change off to nettin' long
towards spring, and I piece up my trawls and lines and get my
fishin' stuff to rights. Lobster pots they require attention, but
I make 'em up in spring weather when it's warm there in the barn.
No; I ain't one o' them that likes to set an' do nothin'."
"You see the rugs, poor dear did them; she wa'n't very partial
to knittin'," old Elijah went on, after he had counted his
stitches. "Our rugs is beginnin' to show wear, but I can't master
none o' them womanish tricks. My sister, she tinkers 'em up. She
said last time she was here that she guessed they'd last my time."
"The old ones are always the prettiest," I said.
"You ain't referrin' to the braided ones now?" answered Mr.
Tilley. "You see ours is braided for the most part, an' their good
looks is all in the beginnin'. Poor dear used to say they made an
easier floor. I go shufflin' round the house same's if 'twas a
bo't, and I always used to be stubbin' up the corners o' the hooked
kind. Her an' me was always havin' our jokes together same's a boy
an' girl. Outsiders never'd know nothin' about it to see us. She
had nice manners with all, but to me there was nobody so
entertainin'. She'd take off anybody's natural talk winter
evenin's when we set here alone, so you'd think 'twas them a-
speakin'. There, there!"
I saw that he had dropped a
stitch again, and was snarling the
blue yarn round his
clumsy fingers. He handled it and threw it off
at arm's length as if it were a cod line; and frowned impatiently,
but I saw a tear shining on his cheek.
I said that I must be going, it was growing late, and asked if
I might come again, and if he would take me out to the
fishinggrounds someday.
"Yes, come any time you want to," said my host, "'tain't so
pleasant as when poor dear was here. Oh, I didn't want to lose her
an' she didn't want to go, but it had to be. Such things ain't for
us to say; there's no yes an' no to it."
"You find Almiry Todd one o' the best o' women?" said Mr.
Tilley as we parted. He was
standing in the
doorway and I had
started off down the narrow green field. "No, there ain't a better
hearted woman in the State o' Maine. I've known her from a girl.
She's had the best o' mothers. You tell her I'm
liable to fetch
her up a couple or three nice good mackerel early tomorrow," he
said. "Now don't let it slip your mind. Poor dear, she always
thought a sight o' Almiry, and she used to
remind me there was
nobody to fish for her; but I don't rec'lect it as I ought to. I
see you drop a line yourself very handy now an' then."
We laughed together like the best of friends, and I spoke
again about the
fishing grounds, and confessed that I had no fancy
for a southerly
breeze and a ground swell.
"Nor me neither," said the old
fisherman. "Nobody likes 'em,
say what they may. Poor dear was disobliged by the mere sight of
a bo't. Almiry's got the best o' mothers, I expect you know; Mis'
Blackett out to Green Island; and we was always plannin' to go out
when summer come; but there, I couldn't pick no day's weather that
seemed to suit her just right. I never set out to worry her
neither, 'twa'n't no kind o' use; she was so pleasant we couldn't
have no fret nor trouble. 'Twas never 'you dear an' you darlin''
afore folks, an' 'you divil' behind the door!"
As I looked back from the lower end of the field I saw him
still
standing, a
lonely figure in the
doorway. "Poor dear," I
repeated to myself half aloud; "I wonder where she is and what she
knows of the little world she left. I wonder what she has been
doing these eight years!"
I gave the message about the mackerel to Mrs. Todd.
"Been visitin' with 'Lijah?" she asked with interest. "I
expect you had kind of a dull
session; he ain't the talkin' kind;
dwellin' so much long o' fish seems to make 'em lose the gift o'
speech." But when I told her that Mr. Tilley had been talking to
me that day, she interrupted me quickly.
"Then 'twas all about his wife, an' he can't say nothin' too
pleasant neither. She was
modest with strangers, but there ain't
one o' her old friends can ever make up her loss. For me, I don't
want to go there no more. There's some folks you miss and some
folks you don't, when they're gone, but there ain't hardly a day I
don't think o' dear Sarah Tilley. She was always right there; yes,
you knew just where to find her like a plain flower. 'Lijah's
worthy enough; I do
esteem 'Lijah, but he's a ploddin' man."
XXI
The Backward View
AT LAST IT WAS the time of late summer, when the house was cool and
damp in the morning, and all the light seemed to come through green
leaves; but at the first step out of doors the
sunshine always laid
a warm hand on my shoulder, and the clear, high sky seemed to lift
quickly as I looked at it. There was no autumnal mist on the
coast, nor any August fog; instead of these, the sea, the sky, all
the long shore line and the
inland hills, with every bush of bay
and every fir-top, gained a deeper color and a sharper clearness.
There was something shining in the air, and a kind of lustre on the
water and the
pasture grass,--a northern look that, except at this
moment of the year, one must go far to seek. The
sunshine of a
northern summer was coming to its lovely end.
The days were few then at Dunnet Landing, and I let each of
them slip away unwillingly as a miser spends his coins. I wished
to have one of my first weeks back again, with those long hours
when nothing happened except the growth of herbs and the course of
the sun. Once I had not even known where to go for a walk; now
there were many
delightful things to be done and done again, as if
I were in London. I felt
hurried and full of pleasant engagements,
and the days flew by like a
handful of flowers flung to the sea
wind.
At last I had to say good-by to all my Dunnet Landing friends,
and my homelike place in the little house, and return to the world
in which I feared to find myself a
foreigner. There may be
restrictions to such a summer's happiness, but the ease that
belongs to
simplicity is
charming enough to make up for
whatever a
simple life may lack, and the gifts of peace are not for those who
live in the thick of battle.
I was to take the small unpunctual
steamer that went down the
bay in the afternoon, and I sat for a while by my window looking
out on the green herb garden, with regret for company. Mrs. Todd
had hardly
spoken all day except in the briefest and most
disapproving way; it was as if we were on the edge of a quarrel.
It seemed impossible to take my
departure with anything like
composure. At last I heard a
footstep, and looked up to find that
Mrs. Todd was
standing at the door.
"I've seen to everything now," she told me in an unusually
loud and business-like voice. "Your trunks are on the w'arf by
this time. Cap'n Bowden he come and took 'em down himself,
an' is going to see that they're safe
aboard. Yes, I've seen to
all your 'rangements," she
repeated in a gentler tone. "These
things I've left on the kitchen table you'll want to carry by hand;
the basket needn't be returned. I guess I shall walk over towards
the Port now an' inquire how old Mis' Edward Caplin is."
I glanced at my friend's face, and saw a look that touched me
to the heart. I had been sorry enough before to go away.
"I guess you'll excuse me if I ain't down there to stand
around on the w'arf and see you go," she said, still
trying to be
gruff. "Yes, I ought to go over and inquire for Mis' Edward
Caplin; it's her third shock, and if mother gets in on Sunday
she'll want to know just how the old lady is." With this last word
Mrs. Todd turned and left me as if with sudden thought of something
she had forgotten, so that I felt sure she was coming back, but
presently I heard her go out of the kitchen door and walk down the
path toward the gate. I could not part so; I ran after her to say
good-by, but she shook her head and waved her hand without looking
back when she heard my hurrying steps, and so went away down the
street.
When I went in again the little house had suddenly grown
lonely, and my room looked empty as it had the day I came. I and
all my
belongings had died out of it, and I knew how it would seem
when Mrs. Todd came back and found her lodger gone. So we die
before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to
their natural end.
I found the little packages on the kitchen table. There was
a
quaint West Indian basket which I knew its owner had valued, and
which I had once admired; there was an affecting
provision laid
beside it for my seafaring supper, with a neatly tied bunch of
southernwood and a twig of bay, and a little old leather box which
held the coral pin that Nathan Todd brought home to give to poor
Joanna.
There was still an hour to wait, and I went up the hill just
above the
schoolhouse and sat there thinking of things, and looking
off to sea, and watching for the boat to come in sight. I could
see Green Island, small and
darklywooded at that distance; below
me were the houses of the village with their apple-trees and bits
of garden ground. Presently, as I looked at the
pastures beyond,
I caught a last
glimpse of Mrs. Todd herself, walking slowly in the
footpath that led along, following the shore toward the Port. At
such a distance one can feel the large,
positive qualities that
control a
character. Close at hand, Mrs. Todd seemed able and
warm-hearted and quite absorbed in her bustling industries, but her
distant figure looked mateless and appealing, with something about
it that was
strangely self-possessed and
mysterious. Now
and then she stooped to pick something,--it might have been her
favorite pennyroyal,--and at last I lost sight of her as she slowly
crossed an open space on one of the higher points of land, and
disappeared again behind a dark clump of juniper and the pointed
firs.
As I came away on the little coastwise
steamer, there was an
old sea
running which made the surf leap high on all the rocky
shores. I stood on deck, looking back, and watched the busy gulls
agree and turn, and sway together down the long slopes of air, then
separate
hastily and
plunge into the waves. The tide was setting
in, and plenty of small fish were coming with it,
unconscious of
the silver flashing of the great birds
overhead and the quickness
of their
fierce beaks. The sea was full of life and spirit, the
tops of the waves flew back as if they were
winged like the gulls
themselves, and like them had the freedom of the wind. Out in the
main
channel we passed a bent-shouldered old
fisherman bound for
the evening round among his
lobster traps. He was toiling along
with short oars, and the dory tossed and sank and tossed again with
the
steamer's waves. I saw that it was old Elijah Tilley, and
though we had so long been strangers we had come to be warm
friends, and I wished that he had waited for one of his mates, it
was such hard work to row along shore through rough seas and tend
the traps alone. As we passed I waved my hand and tried to call to
him, and he looked up and answered my farewells by a
solemn nod.
The little town, with the tall masts of its disabled schooners in
the inner bay, stood high above the flat sea for a few minutes then
it sank back into the
uniformity of the coast, and became
indistinguishable from the other towns that looked as if they were
crumbled on the furzy-green stoniness of the shore.
The small outer islands of the bay were covered among the
ledges with turf that looked as fresh as the early grass; there had
been some days of rain the week before, and the darker green of the
sweet-fern was scattered on all the
pasture heights. It looked
like the
beginning of summer
ashore, though the sheep, round and
warm in their winter wool, betrayed the season of the year as they
went feeding along the slopes in the low afternoon
sunshine. Presently