waiting, already fitted out with a trawl coiled in two tubs, and some
hand-lines and bait for rock-cod and haddock, and my friend joined
them; they were going out for a night's fishing. I watched them hoist
the little sprit-sail, and drift a little until they caught the wind,
and then I looked again for Georgie, whose boat was like a black spot
on the water.
I knew him better soon after that. I used to go out with him for
lobsters, or to catch cunners, and it was strange that he never had any
cronies, and would hardly speak to the other children. He was very
shy; but he had put all his heart into his work,--a man's hard work,
which he had taken from choice. His father was kind to him; but he had
a sorry home, and no mother,--the brave, fearless, steady little soul!
He looked forward to going one day (I hope that day has already dawned)
to see the shipyards at a large seaport some twenty miles away. His
face lit up when he told me of it, as some other child's would who had
been promised a day in fairy-land. And he confided to me that he
thought he should go to the Banks that coming winter. "But it's so
cold!" said I; "should you really like it?"--"Cold!" said Georgie.
"Ho! rest of the men never froze." That was it,--the "rest of the
men;" and he would work until he dropped, or tend a line until his
fingers froze, for the sake of that likeness,--the grave, slow little
man, who has so much business with the sea, and who trusts himself with
touching confidence to its treacherous keeping and favour.
Andrew West, Georgie's father, was almost as silent as his son at
first, but it was not long before we were very good friends, and I went
out with him at four o'clock one morning, to see him set his trawl. I
remember there was a thin mist over the sea, and the air was almost
chilly: but, as the sun came up, it changed the colour of everything to
the most exquisite pink,--the smooth slow waves, and the mist that blew
over them as if it were a cloud that had fallen down out of the sky.
The world just then was like the hollow of a great pink sea-shell; and
we could only hear the noise of it, the dull sound of the waves among
the outer ledges.
We had to drift about for an hour or two when the trawl was set; and
after a while the fog shut down again gray and close, so we could not
see either the sun or the shore. We were a little more than four miles
out, and we had put out more than half a mile of lines. It is very
interesting to see the different fish that come up on the
hooks,--worthless sculpin and dog-fish, and good rock-cod and haddock,
and curious stray creatures which often even the fishermen do not know.
We had capital good luck that morning, and Georgie and Andrew and I
were all pleased. I had a hand-line, and was fishing part of the time,
and Georgie thought very well of me when he found I was not afraid of a
big fish, and, besides that, I had taken the oars while he tended the
sail, though there was hardly wind enough to make it worth his while.
It was about eight o'clock when we came in, and there was a horse and
wagon standing near the landing; and we saw a woman come out of
Andrew's little house. "There's your aunt Hannah a'ready," said he to
Georgie; and presently she came down the pebbles to meet the boat,
looking at me with much wonder as I jumped ashore.
"I sh'd think you might a' cleaned up your boat, Andrer, if you was
going to take ladies out," said she graciously. And the fisherman
rejoined, that perhaps she would have thought it looked better when it
went out than it did then; he never had got a better fare o' fish
unless the trawls had been set over night.
There certainly had been a good haul; and, when Andrew carefully put
those I had caught with the hand-line by themselves, I asked his sister
to take them, if she liked. "Bless you!" said she, much pleased, "we
couldn't eat one o' them big rock-cod in a week--I'll take a little
ha'dick if Andrer 'll pick me one out."
She was a tall, large woman, who had a direct, business-like
manner,--what the country people would call a master smart woman, or a
regular driver,--and I liked her. She said something to her brother
about some clothes she had been making for him or for Georgie, and I
went off to the house where I was boarding for my breakfast. I was
hungry enough, since I had had only a hurried lunch a good while before
sunrise. I came back late in the morning, and found that Georgie's
aunt was just going away. I think my friends must have spoken well of
me, for she came out to meet me as I nodded in going by, and said, "I
suppose ye drive about some? We should be pleased to have ye come up
to see us. We live right 'mongst the woods; it ain't much of a place
to ask anybody to." And she added that she might have done a good deal
better for herself to have staid off. But there! they had the place,
and she supposed she and Cynthy had done as well there as anywhere.
Cynthy--well, she wasn't one of your pushing kind; but I should have
some flowers, and perhaps it would be a change for me. I thanked her,
and said I should be delighted to go. Georgie and I would make her a
call together some afternoon when he wasn't busy; and Georgie actually
smiled when I looked at him, and said, "All right," and then hurried
off down the shore. "Ain't he an odd boy?" said Miss Hannah West, with
a shadow of disapproval in her face. "But he's just like his father
and grandfather before him; you wouldn't think they had no gratitude
nor feelin', but I s'pose they have. They used to say my father
never'd forgit a friend, or forgive an enemy. Well, I'm much obliged
to you, I'm sure, for taking an interest in the boy." I said I liked
him: I only wished I could do something for him. And then she said
good-day, and drove off. I felt as if we were already good friends.
"I'm much obliged for the fish," she turned round to say to me again,
as she went away.
One morning, not long afterward, I asked Georgie if he could possibly
leave his business that afternoon, and he gravely answered me that he
could get away just as well as not, for the tide would not be right for
lobsters until after supper.
"I should like to go up and see your aunt," said I. "You know she
asked me to come the other day when she was here.
"I'd like to go," said Georgie sedately. "Father was going up this
week; but the mackerel struck in, and we couldn't leave. But it's
better'n six miles up there."
"That's not far," said I. "I'm going to have Captain Donnell's horse
and wagon;" and Georgie looked much interested.
I wondered if he would wear his oil-skin suit; but I was much amazed,
and my heart was touched, at seeing how hard he had tried to put
himself in trim for the visit. He had on his best jacket and trousers
(which might have been most boys' worst), and a clean calico shirt; and
he had scrubbed his' freckled, honest little face and his hard little
hands, until they were as clean as possible; and either he or his
father had cut his hair. I should think it had been done with a knife,
and it looked as if a rat had gnawed it. He had such a holiday air!
He really looked very well; but still, if I were to have a picture of
George, it should be in the oil-skin fishing-suit. He had gone out to
his box, which was anchored a little way out in the cove, and had
chosen two fine lobsters which he had tied together with a bit of
fish-line. They were lazily moving their claws and feelers; and his
father, who had come in with his boat not long before, added from his
fare of fish three plump mackerel.
"They're always glad to get new fish," said he. "The girls can't abide
a fish that's corned, and I haven't had a chance to send 'em up any
mackerel before. Ye see, they live on a cross-road, and the fish-carts
don't go by." And I told him I was very glad to carry them, or any
thing else he would like to send. "Mind your manners, now, Georgie,"
said he, "and don't be forrard. You might split up some kindlin's for
y'r aunts, and do whatever they want of ye. Boys ain't made just to
look at, so ye be handy, will ye?" And Georgie nodded solemnly. They
seemed very fond of each other, and I looked back some time afterward
to see the fisherman still standing there to watch his boy. He was
used to his being out at sea alone for hours; but this might be a great
risk to let him go off inland to stay all the afternoon.
The road crossed the salt-marshes for the first mile, and, when we had
struck the higher land, we soon entered the pine-woods, which cover a
great part of that country. It had been raining in the morning for a
little while; and the trunks of the trees were still damp, and the
underbrush was shining wet, and sent out a sweet, fresh smell. I spoke
of it, and Georgie told me that sometimes this fragrance blew far out
to sea, and then you knew the wind was north-west.
"There's the big pine you sight Minister's Ledge by," said he, "when
that comes in range over the white schoolhouse, about two miles out."
The lobsters were clashing their pegged claws together in the back of
the wagon, and Georgie sometimes looked over at them to be sure they
were all right. Of course I had given him the reins when we first
started, and he was delighted because we saw some squirrels, and even a
rabbit, which scurried across the road as if I had been a fiery dragon,
and Georgie something worse.
We presently came in sight of a house close by the road,--an
old-looking place, with a ledgy, forlorn field stretching out behind it
toward some low woods. There were high white-birch poles holding up
thick tangles of hop-vines, and at the side there were sunflowers
straggling about as if they had come up from seed scattered by the
wind. Some of them were close together, as if they were whispering to
each other; and their big, yellow faces were all turned toward the
front of the house, where people were already collected as if there was
a funeral.
"It's the auction," said Georgie with great satisfaction. "I heard 'em
talking about it down at the shore this morning. There's Lisha Downs
now. He started off just before we did. That's his fish-cart over by
the well."
"What is going to be sold?" said I.
"All the stuff," said Georgie, as if he were much pleased. "She's
going off up to Boston with her son."
"I think we had better stop," said I, for I saw Mrs. 'Lisha Downs, who
was one of my acquaintances at the shore, and I wished to see what was
going on, besides giving Georgie a chance at the festivities. So we
tied the horse, and went toward the house, and I found several people
whom I knew a little. Mrs. Downs shook hands with me as formally as if
we had not talked for some time as I went by her house to the shore,
just after my breakfast. She presented me to several of her friends
with whom she had been talking as I came up. "Let me make you
acquainted," she said: and every time I bowed she bowed too,
unconsciously, and seemed a little ill at ease and embarrassed, but
luckily the ceremony was soon over. "I thought I would stop for a few
minutes," said I by way of apology. "I didn't know why the people were
here until Georgie told me."
"She's going to move up to Boston 'long of her son," said one of the
women, who looked very pleasant and very tired. "I think myself it is
a bad plan to pull old folks up by the roots. There's a niece of hers
that would have been glad to stop with her, and do for the old lady.
But John, he's very high-handed, and wants it his way, and he says his
mother sha'n't live in any such place as this. He makes a sight o'
money. He's got out a patent, and they say he's just bought a new
house that cost him eleven thousand dollars. But old Mis' Wallis,
she's wonted here; and she was telling of me yesterday she was only
going to please John. He says he wants her up there, where she'll be
more comfortable, and see something."
"He means well," said another woman whom I did not know; "but folks
about here never thought no great of his judgment. He's put up some
splendid stones in the burying-lot to his father and his sister Miranda
that died. I used to go to school 'long of Miranda. She'd have been
pleased to go to Boston; she was that kind. But there! mother was
saying last night, what if his business took a turn, and he lost every
thing! Mother's took it dreadfully to heart; she and Mis' Wallis were
always mates as long ago as they can recollect."
It was evident that the old widow was both pitied and envied by her
friends on account of her bettered fortunes, and they came up to speak
to her with more or less seriousness, as befitted the occasion. She
looked at me with great curiosity, but Mrs. Down told her who I was,
and I had a sudden instinct to say how sorry I was for her, but I was
afraid it might appear intrusive on so short an acquaintance. She was
a thin old soul who looked as if she had had a good deal of trouble in
her day, and as if she had been very poor and very anxious. "Yes,"
said she to some one who had come from a distance, "it does come hard
to go off. Home is home, and I seem to hate to sell off my things; but
I suppose they would look queer up to Boston. John says I won't have
no idea of the house until I see it:" and she looked proud and
important for a minute, but, as some one brought an old chair out at
the door, her face fell again. "Oh, dear!" said she, "I should like to
keep that! it belonged to my mother. It's most wore out anyway. I
guess I'll let somebody keep it for me;" and she hurried off
despairingly to find her son, while we went into the house.
There is so little to interest the people who live on those quiet,
secluded farms, that an event of this kind gives great pleasure. I
know they have not done talking yet about the sale, of the bargains
that were made, or the goods that brought more than they were worth.
And then the women had the chance of going all about the house, and
committing every detail of its furnishings to their tenacious memories.
It is a curiosity one grows more and more willing to pardon, for there
is so little to amuse them in everyday life. I wonder if any one has
not often been struck, as I have, by the sadness and hopelessness which
seems to overshadow many of the people who live on the lonely farms in
the outskirts of small New-England villages. It is most noticeable
among the elderly women. Their talk is very cheerless, and they have a
morbid interest in sicknesses and deaths; they tell each other long
stories about such things; they are very forlorn; they dwell
persistently upon any troubles which they have; and their petty
disputes with each other have a tragic hold upon their thoughts,
sometimes being handed down from one generation to the next. Is it
because their world is so small, and life affords so little amusement
and pleasure, and is at best such a dreary round of the dullest
housekeeping? There is a lack of real merriment, and the fun is an
odd, rough way of joking: it is a stupid, heavy sort of fun, though
there is much of a certain quaint humour, and once in a while a flash
of wit.
I came upon a short, stout old sister in one room, making all the
effort she possibly could to see what was on the upper shelves of a
closet. We were the only persons there, and she looked longingly at a
convenient chair, and I know she wished I would go away. But my heart
suddenly went out toward an old dark-green Delft bowl which I saw, and
I asked her if she would be kind enough to let me take it, as if I
thought she were there for a purpose. "I'll bring you a chair," said
I; and she said, "Certain, dear." And I helped her up, and I'm sure
she had the good look she had coveted while I took the bowl to the
window. It was badly cracked, and had been mended with putty; but the
rich, dull colour of it was exquisite. One often comes across a
beautiful old stray bit of china in such a place as this, and I
imagined it filled with apple-blossoms or wild roses. Mrs. Wallis
wished to give it to me, she said it wasn't good for any thing; and,
finding she did not care for it, I bought it; and now it is perched
high in my room, with the cracks discreetly turned to the wall. "Seems
to me she never had thrown away nothing," said my friend, whom I found
still standing on the chair when I came back. "Here's some pieces of a
pitcher: I wonder when she broke it! I've heard her say it was one her
grandmother gave her, though. The old lady bought it at a vandoo down
at old Mis' Walton Peters's after she died, so Mis' Wallis said. I
guess I'll speak to her, and see if she wants every thing sold that's
here."
There was a very great pathos to me about this old home. It must have
been a hard place to get a living in, both for men and women, with its
wretched farming-land, and the house itself so cold and thin and worn
out. I could understand that the son was in a hurry to get his mother
away from it. I was sure that the boyhood he had spent there must have
been uncomfortable, and that he did not look back to it with much
pleasure. There is an immense contrast between even a moderately
comfortable city house and such a place as this. No wonder that he
remembered the bitter cold mornings, the frost and chill, and the dark,
and the hard work, and wished his mother to leave them all behind, as
he had done! He did not care for the few plain bits of furniture: why
should he? and he had been away so long, that he had lost his interest
in the neighbours. Perhaps this might come back to him again as he
grew older; but now he moved about among them, in his handsome but
somewhat flashy clothes, with a look that told me he felt conscious of
his superior station in life. I did not altogether like his looks,
though somebody said admiringly, as he went by, "They say he's worth as
much as thirty thousand dollars a'ready. He's smart as a whip."
But, while I did not wonder at the son's wishing his mother to go away,
I also did not wonder at her being unwilling to leave the dull little
house where she had spent so much of her life. I was afraid no other
house in the world would ever seem like home to her: she was a part of
the old place: she had worn the doors smooth by the touch of her hands,
and she had scrubbed the floors, and walked over them, until the knots
stood up high in the pine boards. The old clock had been unscrewed
from the wall, and stood on a table; and when I heard its loud and
anxious tick, my first thought was one of pity for the poor thing, for
fear it might be homesick, like its mistress. When I went out again, I
was very sorry for old Mrs. Wallis; she looked so worried and excited,
and as if this new turn of affairs in her life was too strange and
unnatural; it bewildered her, and she could not understand it; she only
knew every thing was going to be different.
Georgie was by himself, as usual, looking grave and intent. He had
gone aloft on the wheel of a clumsy great ox-cart in which some of the
men had come to the auction, and he was looking over people's heads,
and seeing every thing that was sold. I saw he was not ready to come
away, so I was not in a hurry. I heard Mrs. Wallis say to one of her
friends, "You just go in and take that rug with the flowers on't, and
go and put it in your wagon. It's right beside my chest that's packed
ready to go. John told me to give away any thing I had a mind to. He
don't care nothing about the money. I hooked that rug four year ago;
it's most new; the red of the roses was made out of a dress of
Miranda's. I kept it a good while after she died; but it's no us to
let it lay. I've given a good deal to my sister Stiles: she was over
here helping me yesterday. There! it's all come upon me so sudden; I
s'pose I shall wish, after I get away, that I had done things
different; but, after I knew the farm was goin' to be sold, I didn't
seem to realize I was goin' to break up, until John came, day before
yesterday."
She was very friendly with me, when I said I should think she would be
sorry to go away: but she seemed glad to find I had been in Boston a
great deal, and that I was not at all unhappy there. "But I suppose
you have folks there," said she, "though I never supposed they was so
sociable as they be here, and I ain't one that's easy to make
acquaintance. It's different with young folks; and then in a case o'
sickness I should hate to have strange folks round me. It seems as if
I never set so much by the old place as I do now I'm goin' away. I
used to wish 'he' would sell, and move over to the Port, it was such
hard work getting along when the child'n was small. And there's one of
my boys that run away to sea, and never was heard from. I've always
thought he might come back, though everybody gave him up years ago. I
can't help thinking what if he should come back, and find I wa'n't
here! There; I'm glad to please John: he sets everything by me, and I
s'pose he thinks he's going to make a spry young woman of me. Well,
it's natural. Every thing looks fair to him, and he thinks he can have
the world just as he wants it; but _I_ know it's a world o' change,--a
world o' change and loss. And you see, I shall have to go to a strange
meetin' up there. Why, Mis' Sands! I am pleased to see you. How did
you get word?" And then Mrs. Wallis made another careful apology for
moving away. She seemed to be so afraid some one would think she had
not been satisfied with the neighbourhood.
The auctioneer was a disagreeable-looking man, with a most unpleasant
voice, which gave me a sense of discomfort, the little old house and
its surroundings seemed so grave and silent and lonely. It was like
having all the noise and confusion on a Sunday. The house was so shut
in by the trees, that the only outlook to the world beyond was a narrow
gap in the pines, through which one could see the sea, bright, blue and
warm with sunshine, that summer day.
There was something wistful about the place, as there must have been
about the people who had lived there; yet, hungry and unsatisfied as
her life might have been in many ways, the poor old woman dreaded the
change.
The thought flashed through my mind that we all have more or less of
this same feeling about leaving this world for a better one. We have
the certainty that we shall be a great deal happier in heaven; but we
cling despairingly to the familiar things of this life. God pity the
people who find it so hard to believe what he says, and who are afraid
to die, and are afraid of the things they do not understand! I kept
thinking over and over of what Mrs. Wallis had said: 'A world of change
and loss!' What should we do if we did not have God's love to make up
for it, and if we did not know something of heaven already?
It seemed very doleful that everybody should look on the dark side of
the Widow Wallis's flitting, and I tried to suggest to her some of the
pleasures and advantages of it, once when I had a chance. And indeed
she was proud enough to be going away with her rich son; it was not
like selling her goods because she was too poor to keep the old home
any longer. I hoped the son would always be prosperous, and that the
son's wife would always be kind, and not ashamed of her, or think she
was in the way. But I am afraid it may be a somewhat uneasy idleness,
and that there will not be much beside her knitting-work to remind her
of the old routine. She will even miss going back and forward from the
old well in storm and sunshine; she will miss looking after the
chickens, and her slow walks about the little place, or out to a
neighbour's for a bit of gossip, with the old brown checked
handkerchief over her head; and, when the few homely, faithful old
flowers come up next year by the door-step, there will be nobody to
care any thing about them.
I said good-by, and got into the wagon, and Georgie clambered in after
me with a look of great importance, and we drove away. He was very
talkative: the unusual excitement of the day was not without its
effect. He had a good deal to tell me about the people I had seen,
though I had to ask a good many questions.
"Who was the thin old fellow, with the black coat, faded yellow-green
on the shoulders, who was talking to Skipper Down about the dog-fish?"
"That's old Cap'n Abiah Lane," said Georgie; "lives over toward Little
Beach,--him that was cast away in a fog in a dory down to the Banks
once; like to have starved to death before he got picked up. I've
heard him tell all about it. Don't look as if he'd ever had enough to
eat since!" said the boy grimly. "He used to come over a good deal
last winter, and go out after cod 'long o' father and me. His boats
all went adrift in a big storm in November, and he never heard nothing
about 'em; guess they got stove against the rocks."