disappointment, that there were great spiders' webs in the corners of
the door, and around the latch, and that it had not been opened since
I was there before. But I saw something shining in the grass, and
found it was a silver knee-buckle. It must have belonged to one of the
ghostly guests, and my faith in them came back for a while, in spite
of the cobwebs. By and by I bravely carried it up to Madam, and asked
if it were hers. Sometimes she would not answer for a long time, when
one rudely broke in upon her reveries, and she hesitated now, looking
at me with singular earnestness. Deborah was in the room; and, when
she saw the buckle, she quietly said that it had been on the
window-ledge the day before, and must have slipped out. "I found it
down by the doorstep in the grass," said I humbly; and then I offered
Lady Ferry some strawberries which I had picked for her on a broad
green leaf, and came away again.
A day or two after this, while my dream was still fresh in my mind, I
went with Martha to her own home, which was a mile or two distant,--a
comfortable farmhouse for those days, where I was always made welcome.
The servants were all very kind to me: as I recall it now, they seemed
to have a pity for me, because I was the only child perhaps. I was
very happy, that is certain, and I enjoyed my childish amusements as
heartily as if there were no unfathomable mysteries or perplexities or
sorrows anywhere in the world.
I was sitting by the fireplace at Martha's, and her grandmother, who
was very old, and who was fast losing her wits, had been talking to me
about Madam. I do not remember what she said, at least, it made little
impression; but her grandson, a worthless fellow, sauntered in, and
began to tell a story of his own, hearing of whom we spoke. "I was
coming home late last night," said he, "and, as I was in that dark
place along by the Noroway pines, old Lady Ferry she went by me, and I
was near scared to death. She looked fearful tall--towered way up
above me. Her face was all lit up with blue light, and her feet didn't
touch the ground. She wasn't taking steps, she wasn't walking, but
movin' along like a sail-boat before the wind. I dodged behind some
little birches, and I was scared she'd see me; but she went right out
o' sight up the road. She ain't mortal."
"Don't scare the child with such foolishness," said his aunt
disdainfully. "You'll be seein' worse things a-dancin' before your
eyes than that poor, harmless old creatur' if you don't quit the ways
you've been following lately. If that was last night, you were too
drunk to see any thing;" and the fellow muttered, and went out,
banging the door. But the story had been told, and I was stiffened and
chilled with fright; and all the way home I was in terror, looking
fearfully behind me again and again.
When I saw cousin Agnes, I felt safer, and since cousin Matthew was
not at home, and we were alone, I could not resist telling her what I
had heard. She listened to me kindly, and seemed so confident that my
story was idle nonsense, that my fears were quieted. She talked to me
until I no longer was a believer in there being any unhappy mystery or
harmfulness; but I could not get over the fright, and I dreaded my
lonely room, and I was glad enough when cousin Agnes, with her
unfailing thoughtfulness, asked if I would like to have her come to
sleep with me, and even went up stairs with me at my own early
bedtime, saying that she should find it dull to sit all alone in the
parlor. So I went to sleep, thinking of what I had heard, it is true,
but no longer unhappy, because her dear arm was over me, and I was
perfectly safe. I waked up for a little while in the night, and it was
light in the room, so that I could see her face, fearless and sweet
and sad, and I wondered, in my blessed sense of security, if she were
ever afraid of any thing, and why I myself had been afraid of Lady
Ferry.
I will not tell other stories: they are much alike, all my memories of
those weeks and months at the ferry, and I have no wish to be
wearisome. The last time I saw Madam she was standing in the garden
door at dusk. I was going away before daylight in the morning. It was
in the autumn: some dry leaves flittered about on the stone at her
feet, and she was watching them. I said good-by again, and she did not
answer me; but I think she knew I was going away, and I am sure she
was sorry, for we had been a great deal together; and, child as I was,
I thought to how many friends she must have had to say farewell.
Although I wished to see my father and mother, I cried as if my heart
would break because I had to leave the ferry. The time spent there had
been the happiest time of all my life, I think. I was old enough to
enjoy, but not to suffer much, and there was singularly little to
trouble one. I did not know that my life was ever to be different. I
have learned, since those childish days, that one must battle against
storms if one would reach the calm which is to follow them. I have
learned also that anxiety, sorrow, and regret fall to the lot of every
one, and that there is always underlying our lives, this mysterious
and frightful element of existence; an uncertainty at times, though we
do trust every thing to God. Under the best-loved and most beautiful
face we know, there is hidden a skull as ghastly as that from which we
turn aside with a shudder in the anatomist's cabinet. We smile, and
are gay enough; God pity us! We try to forget our heart-aches and
remorse. We even call our lives commonplace, and, bearing our own
heaviest burdens silently, we try to keep the commandment, and to bear
one another's also. There is One who knows: we look forward, as he
means we shall, and there is always a hand ready to help us, though we
reach out for it doubtfully in the dark.
For many years after this summer was over, I lived in a distant,
foreign country; at last my father and I were to go back to America.
Cousin Agnes and cousin Matthew, and my mother, were all long since
dead, and I rarely thought of my childhood, for in an eventful and
hurried life the present claims one almost wholly. We were travelling
in Europe, and it happened that one day I was in a bookshop in
Amsterdam, waiting for an acquaintance whom I was to meet, and who was
behind time.
The shop was a quaint place, and I amused myself by looking over an
armful of old English books which a boy had thrown down near me,
raising a cloud of dust which was plain evidence of their antiquity. I
came to one, almost the last, which had a strangely familiar look, and
I found that it was a copy of the same book which I had lost in the
wall at the ferry. I bought it for a few coppers with the greatest
satisfaction, and began at once to read it. It had been published in
England early in the eighteenth century, and was written by one
Mr. Thomas Highward of Chester,--a journal of his travels among some
of the English colonists of North America, containing much curious and
desirable knowledge, with some useful advice to those persons having
intentions of emigrating. I looked at the prosy pages here and there,
and finally found again those reminiscences of the town of Boston and
the story of Mistress Honor Warburton, who was cursed, and doomed to
live in this world to the end of time. She had lately been in Boston,
but had disappeared again; she endeavored to disguise herself, and
would not stay long in one place if she feared that her story was
known, and that she was recognized. One Mr. Fleming, a man of good
standing and repute, and an officer of Her Majesty Queen Anne, had
sworn to Mr. Thomas Highward that his father, a person of great age,
had once seen Mistress Warburton in his youth; that she then bore
another name, but had the same appearance. "Not wishing to seem unduly
credulous," said Mr. Highward, "I disputed this tale; but there was
some considerable evidence in its favour, and at least this woman was
of vast age, and was spoken of with extreme wonder by the town's
folk."
I could not help thinking of my old childish suspicions of Lady Ferry,
though I smiled at the folly of them and of this story more than once.
I tried to remember if I had heard of her death; but I was still a
child when my cousin Agnes had died. Had poor Lady Ferry survived her?
and what could have become of her? I asked my father, but he could
remember nothing, if indeed he ever had heard of her death at all. He
spoke of our cousins' kindness to this forlorn soul, and that,
learning her desolation and her piteous history (and being the more
pitiful because of her shattered mind), when she had last wandered to
their door, they had cared for the old gentlewoman to the end of her
days--"for I do not think she can be living yet," said my father, with
a merry twinkle in his eyes: "she must have been nearly a hundred
years old when you saw her. She belonged to a fine old family which
had gone to wreck and ruin. She strayed about for years, and it was a
godsend to her to have found such a home in her last days."
That same summer we reached America, and for the first time since I
had left it I went to the ferry. The house was still imposing, the
prestige of the Haverford grandeur still lingered; but it looked
forlorn and uncared for. It seemed very familiar; but the months I had
spent there were so long ago, that they seemed almost to belong to
another life. I sat alone on the doorstep for a long time, where I
used often to watch for Lady Ferry; and forgotten thoughts and dreams
of my childhood came back to me. The river was the only thing that
seemed as young as ever. I looked in at some of the windows where the
shutters were pushed back, and I walked about the garden, where I
could hardly trace the walks, all overgrown with thick, short grass,
though there were a few ragged lines of box, and some old rose-bushes;
and I saw the very last of the flowers,--a bright red poppy, which had
bloomed under a lilac-tree among the weeds.
Out beyond the garden, on a slope by the river, I saw the family
burying-ground, and it was with a comfortable warmth at my heart that
I stood inside the familiar old enclosure. There was my Lady Ferry's
grave; there could be no mistake about it, and she was dead. I smiled
at my satisfaction and at my foolish childish thoughts, and thanked
God that there could be no truth in them, and that death comes
surely,--say, rather, that the better life comes surely,--though it
comes late.
The sad-looking, yellow-topped cypress, which only seems to feel quite
at home in country burying-grounds, had kindly spread itself like a
coverlet over the grave, which already looked like a very old grave;
and the headstone was leaning a little, not to be out of the fashion
of the rest. I traced again the words of old Colonel Haverford's
pompous epitaph, and idly read some others. I remembered the old days
so vividly there; I thought of my cousin Agnes, and wished that I
could see her; and at last, as the daylight faded, I came away. When I
crossed the river, the ferry-man looked at me wonderingly, for my eyes
were filled with tears. Although we were in shadow on the water, the
last red glow of the sun blazed on the high gable-windows, just as it
did the first time I crossed over,--only a child then, with my life
before me.
I asked the ferry-man some questions, but he could tell me nothing; he
was a new-comer to that part of the country. He was sorry that the
boat was not in better order; but there were almost never any
passengers. The great house was out of repair: people would not live
there, for they said it was haunted. Oh, yes! he had heard of Lady
Ferry. She had lived to be very ancient; but she was dead.
"Yes," said I, "she is dead."
A BIT OF SHORE LIFE.
I often think of a boy with whom I made friends last summer, during
some idle, pleasant days that I spent by the sea. I was almost always
out of doors, and I used to watch the boats go out and come in; and I
had a hearty liking for the good-natured fishermen, who were lazy and
busy by turns, who waited for the wind to change, and waited for the
tide to turn, and waited for the fish to bite, and were always ready
to gossip about the weather, and the fish, and the wonderful events
that had befallen them and their friends.
Georgie was the only boy of whom I ever saw much at the shore. The few
young people there were all went to school through the hot summer days
at a little weather-beaten schoolhouse a mile or two inland. There
were few houses to be seen, at any rate, and Georgie's house was the
only one so close to the water. He looked already nothing but a
fisherman; his clothes were covered with an oil-skin suit, which had
evidently been awkwardly cut down for him from one of his father's, of
whom he was a curious little likeness. I could hardly believe that he
was twelve years old, he was so stunted and small; yet he was a strong
little fellow; his hands were horny and hard from handling the clumsy
oars, and his face was so brown and dry from the hot sun and chilly
spray, that he looked even older when one came close to him. The first
time I saw him was one evening just at night-fall. I was sitting on
the pebbles, and he came down from the fish-house with some
lobster-nets, and a bucket with some pieces of fish in it for bait,
and put them into the stern of one of the boats which lay just at the
edge of the rising tide. He looked at the clouds over the sea, and at
the open sky overhead, in an old, wise way, and then, as if satisfied
with the weather, began to push off his boat. It dragged on the
pebbles; it was a heavy thing, and he could not get it far enough out
to be floated by the low waves, so I went down to help him. He looked
amazed that a girl should have thought of it, and as if he wished to
ask me what good I supposed I could do, though I was twice his size.
But the boat grated and slid down toward the sand, and I gave her a
last push as the boy perched with one knee on her gunwale and let the
other foot drag in the water for a minute. He was afloat after all;
and he took the oars, and pulled manfully out toward the moorings,
where the whale-boats and a sail-boat or two were swaying about in the
wind, which was rising a little since the sun had set. He did not say
a word to me, or I to him. I watched him go out into the
twilight,--such a little fellow, between those two great oars! But the
boat could not drift or loiter with his steady stroke, and out he
went, until I could only see the boat at last, lifting and sinking on
the waves beyond the reef outside the moorings. I asked one of the
fishermen whom I knew very well, "Who is that little fellow? Ought he
to be out by himself, it is growing dark so fast?"
"Why, that's _Georgie!_" said my friend, with his grim smile. "Bless
ye! he's like a duck; ye can't drown him. He won't be in until ten
o'clock, like's not. He'll go way out to the far ledges when the tide
covers them too deep where he is now. Lobsters he's after."
"Whose boy is he?" said I.
"Why, Andrer's, up here to the fish-house. _She's_ dead, and him and
the boy get along together somehow or 'nother. They've both got
something saved up, and Andrer's a clever fellow; took it very hard,
losing of his wife. I was telling of him the other day: 'Andrer,' says
I, 'ye ought to look up somebody or 'nother, and not live this way.
There's plenty o' smart, stirring women that would mend ye up, and
cook for ye, and do well by ye.'--'No,' says he; 'I've hed my wife,
and I've lost her.'--'Well, now,' says I, 'ye've shown respect, and
there's the boy a-growin' up, and if either of you was took sick, why,
here ye be.'--'Yes,' says he, 'here I be, sure enough;' and he drawed
a long breath, 's if he felt bad; so that's all I said. But it's no
way for a man to get along, and he ought to think of the boy. He owned
a good house about half a mile up the road; but he moved right down
here after she died, and his cousin took it, and it burnt up in the
winter. Four year ago that was. I was down to the Georges Banks."
Some other men came down toward the water, and took a boat that was
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 favor.
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 color of every
thing 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 fisherman 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 very 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 Georgie, 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.