ONE DAY as I went along the shore beyond the old wharves and the newer,
high-stepped fabric of the steamer landing, I saw that all the boats
were beached, and the slack water period of the early afternoon
prevailed. Nothing was going on, not even the most leisurely of
occupations, like baiting trawls or mending nets, or repairing lobster
pots; the very boats seemed to be taking an afternoon nap in the sun.
I could hardly discover a distant sail as I looked seaward, except a
weather-beaten lobster smack, which seemed to have been taken for a
plaything by the light airs that blew about the bay. It drifted and
turned about so aimlessly in the wide reach off Burnt Island, that I
suspected there was nobody at the wheel, or that she might have parted
her rusty anchor chain while all the crew were asleep.
I watched her for a minute or two; she was the old Miranda, owned by
some of the Caplins, and I knew her by an odd shaped patch of newish
duck that was set into the peak of her dingy mainsail. Her vagaries
offered such an exciting subject for conversation that my heart rejoiced
at the sound of a hoarse voice behind me. At that moment, before I
had time to answer, I saw something large and shapeless flung from the
Miranda's deck that splashed the water high against her black side,
and my companion gave a satisfied chuckle. The old lobster smack's sail
caught the breeze again at this moment, and she moved off down the bay.
Turning, I found old Elijah Tilley, who had come softly out of his dark
fish-house, as if it were a burrow.
“Boy got kind o' drowsy steerin' of her; Monroe he hove him right
overboard; 'wake now fast enough,” explained Mr. Tilley, and we laughed
together.
I was delighted, for my part, that the vicissitudes and dangers of the
Miranda, in a rocky channel, should have given me this opportunity to
make acquaintance with an old fisherman to whom I had never spoken. At
first he had seemed to be one of those evasive and uncomfortable persons
who are so suspicious of you that they make you almost suspicious of
yourself. Mr. Elijah Tilley appeared to regard a stranger with scornful
indifference. You might see him standing on the pebble beach or in a
fish-house doorway, but when you came nearer he was gone. He was one of
the small company of elderly, gaunt-shaped great fisherman whom I used
to like to see leading up a deep-laden boat by the head, as if it were
a horse, from the water's edge to the steep slope of the pebble beach.
There were four of these large old men at the Landing, who were the
survivors of an earlier and more vigorous generation. There was an
alliance and understanding between them, so close that it was apparently
speechless. They gave much time to watching one another's boats go out
or come in; they lent a ready hand at tending one another's lobster
traps in rough weather; they helped to clean the fish or to sliver
porgies for the trawls, as if they were in close partnership; and when
a boat came in from deep-sea fishing they were never too far out of
the way, and hastened to help carry it ashore, two by two, splashing
alongside, or holding its steady head, as if it were a willful sea colt.
As a matter of fact no boat could help being steady and way-wise under
their instant direction and companionship. Abel's boat and Jonathan
Bowden's boat were as distinct and experienced personalities as the men
themselves, and as inexpressive. Arguments and opinions were unknown
to the conversation of these ancient friends; you would as soon have
expected to hear small talk in a company of elephants as to hear old Mr.
Bowden or Elijah Tilley and their two mates waste breath upon any form
of trivial gossip. They made brief statements to one another from time
to time. As you came to know them you wondered more and more that
they should talk at all. Speech seemed to be a light and elegant
accomplishment, and their unexpected acquaintance with its arts made
them of new value to the listener. You felt almost as if a landmark pine
should suddenly address you in regard to the weather, or a lofty-minded
old camel make a remark as you stood respectfully near him under the
circus tent.
I often wondered a great deal about the inner life and thought of these
self-contained old fishermen; their minds seemed to be fixed upon nature
and the elements rather than upon any contrivances of man, like politics
or theology. My friend, Captain Bowden, who was the nephew of the eldest
of this group, regarded them with deference; but he did not belong to
their secret companionship, though he was neither young nor talkative.
“They've gone together ever since they were boys, they know most
everything about the sea amon'st them,” he told me once. “They was
always just as you see 'em now since the memory of man.”
These ancient seafarers had houses and lands not outwardly different
from other Dunnet Landing dwellings, and two of them were fathers of
families, but their true dwelling places were the sea, and the stony
beach that edged its familiar shore, and the fish-houses, where much
salt brine from the mackerel kits had soaked the very timbers into a
state of brown permanence and petrifaction. It had also affected the old
fishermen's hard complexions, until one fancied that when Death claimed
them it could only be with the aid, not of any slender modern dart, but
the good serviceable harpoon of a seventeenth century woodcut.
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.”