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.
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 the wind began to blow and we
struck out seaward to double the long sheltering headland of the cape,
and when I looked back again, the islands and the headland had run
together and Dunnet Landing and all its coasts were lost to sight.