The Country of the Pointed Firs

Elijah Tilley was such an evasive, discouraged-looking person, heavy-headed, and stooping so that one could never look him in the face, that even after his friendly exclamation about Monroe Pennell, the lobster smack’s skipper, and the sleepy boy, I did not venture at once to speak again. Mr. Tilley was carrying a small haddock in one hand, and presently shifted it to the other hand lest it might touch my skirt. I knew that my company was accepted, and we walked together a little way.

“You mean to have a good supper,” I ventured to say, by way of friendliness.

“Goin’ to have this ‘ere haddock an’ some o’ my good baked potatoes; must eat to live,” responded my companion with great pleasantness and open approval. I found that I had suddenly left the forbidding coast and come into the smooth little harbor of friendship.

“You ain’t never been up to my place,” said the old man. “Folks don’t come now as they used to; no, ‘tain’t no use to ask folks now. My poor dear she was a great hand to draw young company.”

I remembered that Mrs. Todd had once said that this old fisherman had been sore stricken and unconsoled at the death of his wife.

“I should like very much to come,” said I. “Perhaps you are going to be at home later on?”

Mr. Tilley agreed, by a sober nod, and went his way bent-shouldered and with a rolling gait. There was a new patch high on the shoulder of his old waistcoat, which corresponded to the renewing of the Miranda’s mainsail down the bay, and I wondered if his own fingers, clumsy with much deep-sea fishing, had set it in.

“Was there a good catch to-day?” I asked, stopping a moment. “I didn’t happen to be on the shore when the boats came in.”

“No; all come in pretty light,” answered Mr. Tilley. “Addicks an’ Bowden they done the best; Abel an’ me we had but a slim fare. We went out ‘arly, but not so ‘arly as sometimes; looked like a poor mornin’. I got nine haddick, all small, and seven fish; the rest on ‘em got more fish than haddick. Well, I don’t expect they feel like bitin’ every day; we l’arn to humor ‘em a little, an’ let ‘em have their way ‘bout it. These plaguey dog-fish kind of worry ‘em.” Mr. Tilley pronounced the last sentence with much sympathy, as if he looked upon himself as a true friend of all the haddock and codfish that lived on the fishing grounds, and so we parted.

Later in the afternoon I went along the beach again until I came to the foot of Mr. Tilley’s land, and found his rough track across the cobblestones and rocks to the field edge, where there was a heavy piece of old wreck timber, like a ship’s bone, full of tree-nails. From this a little footpath, narrow with one man’s treading, led up across the small green field that made Mr. Tilley’s whole estate, except a straggling pasture that tilted on edge up the steep hillside beyond the house and road. I could hear the tinkle-tankle of a cow-bell somewhere among the spruces by which the pasture was being walked over and forested from every side; it was likely to be called the wood lot before long, but the field was unmolested. I could not see a bush or a brier anywhere within its walls, and hardly a stray pebble showed itself. This was most surprising in that country of firm ledges, and scattered stones which all the walls that industry could devise had hardly begun to clear away off the land. In the narrow field I noticed some stout stakes, apparently planted at random in the grass and among the hills of potatoes, but carefully painted yellow and white to match the house, a neat sharp-edged little dwelling, which looked strangely modern for its owner. I should have much sooner believed that the smart young wholesale egg merchant of the Landing was its occupant than Mr. Tilley, since a man’s house is really but his larger body, and expresses in a way his nature and character.

I went up the field, following the smooth little path to the side door. As for using the front door, that was a matter of great ceremony; the long grass grew close against the high stone step, and a snowberry bush leaned over it, top-heavy with the weight of a morning-glory vine that had managed to take what the fishermen might call a half hitch about the door-knob. Elijah Tilley came to the side door to receive me; he was knitting a blue yarn stocking without looking on, and was warmly dressed for the season in a thick blue flannel shirt with white crockery buttons, a faded waistcoat and trousers heavily patched at the knees. These were not his fishing clothes. There was something delightful in the grasp of his hand, warm and clean, as if it never touched anything but the comfortable woolen yarn, instead of cold sea water and slippery fish.

“What are the painted stakes for, down in the field?” I hastened to ask, and he came out a step or two along the path to see; and looked at the stakes as if his attention were called to them for the first time.

“Folks laughed at me when I first bought this place an’ come here to live,” he explained. “They said ‘twa’n’t no kind of a field privilege at all; no place to raise anything, all full o’ stones. I was aware ‘twas good land, an’ I worked some on it—odd times when I didn’t have nothin’ else on hand—till I cleared them loose stones all out. You never see a prettier piece than ‘tis now; now did ye? Well, as for them painted marks, them’s my buoys. I struck on to some heavy rocks that didn’t show none, but a plow’d be liable to ground on ‘em, an’ so I ketched holt an’ buoyed ‘em same’s you see. They don’t trouble me no more’n if they wa’n’t there.”

“You haven’t been to sea for nothing,” I said laughing.

“One trade helps another,” said Elijah with an amiable smile. “Come right in an’ set down. Come in an’ rest ye,” he exclaimed, and led the way into his comfortable kitchen. The sunshine poured in at the two further windows, and a cat was curled up sound asleep on the table that stood between them. There was a new-looking light oilcloth of a tiled pattern on the floor, and a crockery teapot, large for a household of only one person, stood on the bright stove. I ventured to say that somebody must be a very good housekeeper.

“That’s me,” acknowledged the old fisherman with frankness. “There ain’t nobody here but me. I try to keep things looking right, same’s poor dear left ‘em. You set down here in this chair, then you can look off an’ see the water. None on ‘em thought I was goin’ to get along alone, no way, but I wa’n’t goin’ to have my house turned upsi’ down an’ all changed about; no, not to please nobody. I was the only one knew just how she liked to have things set, poor dear, an’ I said I was goin’ to make shift, and I have made shift. I’d rather tough it out alone.” And he sighed heavily, as if to sigh were his familiar consolation.

We were both silent for a minute; the old man looked out the window, as if he had forgotten I was there.

“You must miss her very much?” I said at last.

“I do miss her,” he answered, and sighed again. “Folks all kep’ repeatin’ that time would ease me, but I can’t find it does. No, I miss her just the same every day.”

“How long is it since she died?” I asked.

“Eight year now, come the first of October. It don’t seem near so long. I’ve got a sister that comes and stops ‘long o’ me a little spell, spring an’ fall, an’ odd times if I send after her. I ain’t near so good a hand to sew as I be to knit, and she’s very quick to set everything to rights. She’s a married woman with a family; her son’s folks lives at home, an’ I can’t make no great claim on her time. But it makes me a kind o’ good excuse, when I do send, to help her a little; she ain’t none too well off. Poor dear always liked her, and we used to contrive our ways together. ‘Tis full as easy to be alone. I set here an’ think it all over, an’ think considerable when the weather’s bad to go outside. I get so some days it feels as if poor dear might step right back into this kitchen. I keep a-watchin’ them doors as if she might step in to ary one. Yes, ma’am, I keep a-lookin’ off an’ droppin’ o’ my stitches; that’s just how it seems. I can’t git over losin’ of her no way nor no how. Yes, ma’am, that’s just how it seems to me.”

I did not say anything, and he did not look up.

“I git feelin’ so sometimes I have to lay everything by an’ go out door. She was a sweet pretty creatur’ long’s she lived,” the old man added mournfully. “There’s that little rockin’ chair o’ her’n, I set an’ notice it an’ think how strange ‘tis a creatur’ like her should be gone an’ that chair be here right in its old place.”

“I wish I had known her; Mrs. Todd told me about your wife one day,” I said.

“You’d have liked to come and see her; all the folks did,” said poor Elijah. “She’d been so pleased to hear everything and see somebody new that took such an int’rest. She had a kind o’ gift to make it pleasant for folks. I guess likely Almiry Todd told you she was a pretty woman, especially in her young days; late years, too, she kep’ her looks and come to be so pleasant lookin’. There, ‘tain’t so much matter, I shall be done afore a great while. No; I sha’n’t trouble the fish a great sight more.”

The old widower sat with his head bowed over his knitting, as if he were hastily shortening the very thread of time. The minutes went slowly by. He stopped his work and clasped his hands firmly together. I saw he had forgotten his guest, and I kept the afternoon watch with him. At last he looked up as if but a moment had passed of his continual loneliness.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m one that has seen trouble,” he said, and began to knit again.

The visible tribute of his careful housekeeping, and the clean bright room which had once enshrined his wife, and now enshrined her memory, was very moving to me; he had no thought for any one else or for any other place. I began to see her myself in her home,—a delicate-looking, faded little woman, who leaned upon his rough strength and affectionate heart, who was always watching for his boat out of this very window, and who always opened the door and welcomed him when he came home.

“I used to laugh at her, poor dear,” said Elijah, as if he read my thought. “I used to make light of her timid notions. She used to be fearful when I was out in bad weather or baffled about gittin’ ashore. She used to say the time seemed long to her, but I’ve found out all about it now. I used to be dreadful thoughtless when I was a young man and the fish was bitin’ well. I’d stay out late some o’ them days, an’ I expect she’d watch an’ watch an’ lose heart a-waitin’. My heart alive! what a supper she’d git, an’ be right there watchin’ from the door, with somethin’ over her head if ‘twas cold, waitin’ to hear all about it as I come up the field. Lord, how I think o’ all them little things!”

“This was what she called the best room; in this way,” he said presently, laying his knitting on the table, and leading the way across the front entry and unlocking a door, which he threw open with an air of pride. The best room seemed to me a much sadder and more empty place than the kitchen; its conventionalities lacked the simple perfection of the humbler room and failed on the side of poor ambition; it was only when one remembered what patient saving, and what high respect for society in the abstract go to such furnishing that the little parlor was interesting at all. I could imagine the great day of certain purchases, the bewildering shops of the next large town, the aspiring anxious woman, the clumsy sea-tanned man in his best clothes, so eager to be pleased, but at ease only when they were safe back in the sailboat again, going down the bay with their precious freight, the hoarded money all spent and nothing to think of but tiller and sail. I looked at the unworn carpet, the glass vases on the mantelpiece with their prim bunches of bleached swamp grass and dusty marsh rosemary, and I could read the history of Mrs. Tilley’s best room from its very beginning.

“You see for yourself what beautiful rugs she could make; now I’m going to show you her best tea things she thought so much of,” said the master of the house, opening the door of a shallow cupboard. “That’s real chiny, all of it on those two shelves,” he told me proudly. “I bought it all myself, when we was first married, in the port of Bordeaux. There never was one single piece of it broke until— Well, I used to say, long as she lived, there never was a piece broke, but long at the last I noticed she’d look kind o’ distressed, an’ I thought ‘twas ‘count o’ me boastin’. When they asked if they should use it when the folks was here to supper, time o’ her funeral, I knew she’d want to have everything nice, and I said ‘certain.’ Some o’ the women they come runnin’ to me an’ called me, while they was takin’ of the chiny down, an’ showed me there was one o’ the cups broke an’ the pieces wropped in paper and pushed way back here, corner o’ the shelf. They didn’t want me to go an’ think they done it. Poor dear! I had to put right out o’ the house when I see that. I knowed in one minute how ‘twas. We’d got so used to sayin’ ‘twas all there just’s I fetched it home, an’ so when she broke that cup somehow or ‘nother she couldn’t frame no words to come an’ tell me. She couldn’t think ‘twould vex me, ‘twas her own hurt pride. I guess there wa’n’t no other secret ever lay between us.”

The French cups with their gay sprigs of pink and blue, the best tumblers, an old flowered bowl and tea caddy, and a japanned waiter or two adorned the shelves. These, with a few daguerreotypes in a little square pile, had the closet to themselves, and I was conscious of much pleasure in seeing them. One is shown over many a house in these days where the interest may be more complex, but not more definite.

“Those were her best things, poor dear,” said Elijah as he locked the door again. “She told me that last summer before she was taken away that she couldn’t think o’ anything more she wanted, there was everything in the house, an’ all her rooms was furnished pretty. I was goin’ over to the Port, an’ inquired for errands. I used to ask her to say what she wanted, cost or no cost—she was a very reasonable woman, an’ ‘twas the place where she done all but her extra shopping. It kind o’ chilled me up when she spoke so satisfied.”

“You don’t go out fishing after Christmas?” I asked, as we came back to the bright kitchen.

“No; I take stiddy to my knitting after January sets in,” said the old seafarer. “‘Tain’t worth while, fish make off into deeper water an’ you can’t stand no such perishin’ for the sake o’ what you get. I leave out a few traps in sheltered coves an’ do a little lobsterin’ on fair days. The young fellows braves it out, some on ‘em; but, for me, I lay in my winter’s yarn an’ set here where ‘tis warm, an’ knit an’ take my comfort. Mother learnt me once when I was a lad; she was a beautiful knitter herself. I was laid up with a bad knee, an’ she said ‘twould take up my time an’ 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 fishing grounds 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 darkly wooded 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.