I had been reflecting upon a state of society which admitted such

personal freedom and a voluntary hermitage. There was something mediæval

in the behavior of poor Joanna Todd under a disappointment of the heart.

The two women had drawn closer together, and were talking on, quite

unconscious of a listener.

“Poor Joanna!” said Mrs. Todd again, and sadly shook her head as if

there were things one could not speak about.

“I called her a great fool,” declared Mrs. Fosdick, with spirit, “but I

pitied her then, and I pity her far more now. Some other minister would

have been a great help to her,—one that preached self-forgetfulness and

doin’ for others to cure our own ills; but Parson Dimmick was a vague

person, well meanin’, but very numb in his feelin’s. I don’t suppose at

that troubled time Joanna could think of any way to mend her troubles

except to run off and hide.”

“Mother used to say she didn’t see how Joanna lived without having

nobody to do for, getting her own meals and tending her own poor self

day in an’ day out,” said Mrs. Todd sorrowfully.

“There was the hens,” repeated Mrs. Fosdick kindly. “I expect she soon

came to makin’ folks o’ them. No, I never went to work to blame Joanna,

as some did. She was full o’ feeling, and her troubles hurt her more

than she could bear. I see it all now as I couldn’t when I was young.”

“I suppose in old times they had their shut-up convents for just such

folks,” said Mrs. Todd, as if she and her friend had disagreed about

Joanna once, and were now in happy harmony. She seemed to speak with new

openness and freedom. “Oh yes, I was only too pleased when the Reverend

Mr. Dimmick invited me to go out with him. He hadn’t been very long in

the place when Joanna left home and friends. ’Twas one day that next

summer after she went, and I had been married early in the spring. He

felt that he ought to go out and visit her. She was a member of the

church, and might wish to have him consider her spiritual state. I

wa’n’t so sure o’ that, but I always liked Joanna, and I’d come to be

her cousin by marriage. Nathan an’ I had conversed about goin’ out to

pay her a visit, but he got his chance to sail sooner ’n he expected. He

always thought everything of her, and last time he come home, knowing

nothing of her change, he brought her a beautiful coral pin from a port

he’d touched at somewheres up the Mediterranean. So I wrapped the little

box in a nice piece of paper and put it in my pocket, and picked her a

bunch of fresh lemon balm, and off we started.”

Mrs. Fosdick laughed. “I remember hearin’ about your trials on the

v’y’ge,” she said.

“Why, yes,” continued Mrs. Todd in her company manner. “I picked her the

balm, an’ we started. Why, yes, Susan, the minister liked to have cost

me my life that day. He would fasten the sheet, though I advised against

it. He said the rope was rough an’ cut his hand. There was a fresh

breeze, an’ he went on talking rather high flown, an’ I felt some

interested. All of a sudden there come up a gust, and he give a screech

and stood right up and called for help, ’way out there to sea. I knocked

him right over into the bottom o’ the bo’t, getting by to catch hold of

the sheet an’ untie it. He wasn’t but a little man; I helped him right

up after the squall passed, and made a handsome apology to him, but he

did act kind o’ offended.”

“I do think they ought not to settle them landlocked folks in parishes

where they’re liable to be on the water,” insisted Mrs. Fosdick. “Think

of the families in our parish that was scattered all about the bay, and

what a sight o’ sails you used to see, in Mr. Dimmick’s day, standing

across to the mainland on a pleasant Sunday morning, filled with

church-going folks, all sure to want him some time or other! You

couldn’t find no doctor that would stand up in the boat and screech if a

flaw struck her.”

“Old Dr. Bennett had a beautiful sail-boat, didn’t he?” responded Mrs.

Todd. “And how well he used to brave the weather! Mother always said

that in time o’ trouble that tall white sail used to look like an

angel’s wing comin’ over the sea to them that was in pain. Well, there’s

a difference in gifts. Mr. Dimmick was not without light.”

“’Twas light o’ the moon, then,” snapped Mrs. Fosdick; “he was pompous

enough, but I never could remember a single word he said. There, go on,

Mis’ Todd; I forget a great deal about that day you went to see poor

Joanna.”

“I felt she saw us coming, and knew us a great way off; yes, I seemed to

feel it within me,” said our friend, laying down her knitting. “I kept

my seat, and took the bo’t inshore without saying a word; there was a

short channel that I was sure Mr. Dimmick wasn’t acquainted with, and

the tide was very low. She never came out to warn us off nor anything,

and I thought, as I hauled the bo’t up on a wave and let the Reverend

Mr. Dimmick step out, that it was somethin’ gained to be safe ashore.

There was a little smoke out o’ the chimney o’ Joanna’s house, and it

did look sort of homelike and pleasant with wild mornin’-glory vines

trained up; an’ there was a plot o’ flowers under the front window,

portulacas and things. I believe she’d made a garden once, when she was

stopping there with her father, and some things must have seeded in. It

looked as if she might have gone over to the other side of the island.

’Twas neat and pretty all about the house, and a lovely day in July. We

walked up from the beach together very sedate, and I felt for poor

Nathan’s little pin to see if ’twas safe in my dress pocket. All of a

sudden Joanna come right to the fore door and stood there, not sayin’ a

word.”

XIV.

THE HERMITAGE.

My companions and I had been so intent upon the subject of the

conversation that we had not heard any one open the gate, but at this

moment, above the noise of the rain, we heard a loud knocking. We were

all startled as we sat by the fire, and Mrs. Todd rose hastily and went

to answer the call, leaving her rocking-chair in violent motion. Mrs.

Fosdick and I heard an anxious voice at the door speaking of a sick

child, and Mrs. Todd’s kind, motherly voice inviting the messenger in:

then we waited in silence. There was a sound of heavy dropping of rain

from the eaves, and the distant roar and undertone of the sea. My

thoughts flew back to the lonely woman on her outer island; what

separation from humankind she must have felt, what terror and sadness,

even in a summer storm like this!

“You send right after the doctor if she ain’t better in half an hour,”

said Mrs. Todd to her worried customer as they parted; and I felt a warm

sense of comfort in the evident resources of even so small a

neighborhood, but for the poor hermit Joanna there was no neighbor on a

winter night.

“How did she look?” demanded Mrs. Fosdick, without preface, as our large

hostess returned to the little room with a mist about her from standing

long in the wet doorway, and the sudden draught of her coming beat out

the smoke and flame from the Franklin stove. “How did poor Joanna look?”

“She was the same as ever, except I thought she looked smaller,”

answered Mrs. Todd after thinking a moment; perhaps it was only a last

considering thought about her patient. “Yes, she was just the same, and

looked very nice, Joanna did. I had been married since she left home,

an’ she treated me like her own folks. I expected she’d look strange,

with her hair turned gray in a night or somethin’, but she wore a pretty

gingham dress I’d often seen her wear before she went away; she must

have kept it nice for best in the afternoons. She always had beautiful,

quiet manners. I remember she waited till we were close to her, and then

kissed me real affectionate, and inquired for Nathan before she shook

hands with the minister, and then she invited us both in. ’Twas the same

little house her father had built him when he was a bachelor, with one

livin’-room, and a little mite of a bedroom out of it where she slept,

but ’twas neat as a ship’s cabin. There was some old chairs, an’ a seat

made of a long box that might have held boat tackle an’ things to lock

up in his fishin’ days, and a good enough stove so anybody could cook

and keep warm in cold weather. I went over once from home and stayed

’most a week with Joanna when we was girls, and those young happy days

rose up before me. Her father was busy all day fishin’ or clammin’; he

was one o’ the pleasantest men in the world, but Joanna’s mother had the

grim streak, and never knew what ’twas to be happy. The first minute my

eyes fell upon Joanna’s face that day I saw how she had grown to look

like Mis’ Todd. ’Twas the mother right over again.”

“Oh dear me!” said Mrs. Fosdick.

“Joanna had done one thing very pretty. There was a little piece o’

swamp on the island where good rushes grew plenty, and she’d gathered

’em, and braided some beautiful mats for the floor and a thick cushion

for the long bunk. She’d showed a good deal of invention; you see there

was a nice chance to pick up pieces o’ wood and boards that drove

ashore, and she’d made good use o’ what she found. There wasn’t no

clock, but she had a few dishes on a shelf, and flowers set about in

shells fixed to the walls, so it did look sort of homelike, though so

lonely and poor. I couldn’t keep the tears out o’ my eyes, I felt so

sad. I said to myself, I must get mother to come over an’ see Joanna;

the love in mother’s heart would warm her, an’ she might be able to

advise.”

“Oh no, Joanna was dreadful stern,” said Mrs. Fosdick.

“We were all settin’ down very proper, but Joanna would keep stealin’

glances at me as if she was glad I come. She had but little to say; she

was real polite an’ gentle, and yet forbiddin’. The minister found it

hard,” confessed Mrs. Todd; “he got embarrassed, an’ when he put on his

authority and asked her if she felt to enjoy religion in her present

situation, an’ she replied that she must be excused from answerin’, I

thought I should fly. She might have made it easier for him; after all,

he was the minister and had taken some trouble to come out, though ’twas

kind of cold an’ unfeelin’ the way he inquired. I thought he might have

seen the little old Bible a-layin’ on the shelf close by him, an’ I

wished he knew enough to just lay his hand on it an’ read somethin’ kind

an’ fatherly ’stead of accusin’ her, an’ then given poor Joanna his

blessin’ with the hope she might be led to comfort. He did offer prayer,

but ’twas all about hearin’ the voice o’ God out o’ the whirlwind; and I

thought while he was goin’ on that anybody that had spent the long cold

winter all alone out on Shell-heap Island knew a good deal more about

those things than he did. I got so provoked I opened my eyes and stared

right at him.

“She didn’t take no notice, she kep’ a nice respectful manner towards

him, and when there come a pause she asked if he had any interest about

the old Indian remains, and took down some queer stone gouges and

hammers off of one of her shelves and showed them to him same ’s if he

was a boy. He remarked that he’d like to walk over an’ see the

shell-heap; so she went right to the door and pointed him the way. I see

then that she’d made her some kind o’ sandal-shoes out o’ the fine

rushes to wear on her feet; she stepped light an’ nice in ’em as shoes.”

Mrs. Fosdick leaned back in her rocking-chair and gave a heavy sigh.

“I didn’t move at first, but I’d held out just as long as I could,” said

Mrs. Todd, whose voice trembled a little. “When Joanna returned from the

door, an’ I could see that man’s stupid back departin’ among the wild

rose bushes, I just ran to her an’ caught her in my arms. I wasn’t so

big as I be now, and she was older than me, but I hugged her tight, just

as if she was a child. ‘Oh, Joanna dear,’ I says, ‘won’t you come ashore

an’ live ’long o’ me at the Landin’, or go over to Green Island to

mother’s when winter comes? Nobody shall trouble you, an’ mother finds

it hard bein’ alone. I can’t bear to leave you here’—and I burst right

out crying. I’d had my own trials, young as I was, an’ she knew it. Oh,

I did entreat her; yes, I entreated Joanna.”

“What did she say then?” asked Mrs. Fosdick, much moved.

“She looked the same way, sad an’ remote through it all,” said Mrs. Todd

mournfully. “She took hold of my hand, and we sat down close together;

’twas as if she turned round an’ made a child of me. ‘I haven’t got no

right to live with folks no more,’ she said. ‘You must never ask me

again, Almiry: I’ve done the only thing I could do, and I’ve made my

choice. I feel a great comfort in your kindness, but I don’t deserve it.

I have committed the unpardonable sin; you don’t understand,’ says she

humbly. ‘I was in great wrath and trouble, and my thoughts was so wicked

towards God that I can’t expect ever to be forgiven. I have come to know

what it is to have patience, but I have lost my hope. You must tell

those that ask how ’tis with me,’ she said, ‘an’ tell them I want to be

alone.’ I couldn’t speak; no, there wa’n’t anything I could say, she

seemed so above everything common. I was a good deal younger then than I

be now, and I got Nathan’s little coral pin out o’ my pocket and put it

into her hand; and when she saw it and I told her where it come from,

her face did really light up for a minute, sort of bright an’ pleasant.

‘Nathan an’ I was always good friends; I’m glad he don’t think hard of

me,’ says she. ‘I want you to have it, Almiry, an’ wear it for love o’

both o’ us,’ and she handed it back to me. ‘You give my love to

Nathan,—he’s a dear good man,’ she said; ‘an’ tell your mother, if I

should be sick she mustn’t wish I could get well, but I want her to be

the one to come.’ Then she seemed to have said all she wanted to, as if

she was done with the world, and we sat there a few minutes longer

together. It was real sweet and quiet except for a good many birds and

the sea rollin’ up on the beach; but at last she rose, an’ I did too,

and she kissed me and held my hand in hers a minute, as if to say

good-by; then she turned and went right away out o’ the door and

disappeared.

“The minister come back pretty soon, and I told him I was all ready, and

we started down to the bo’t. He had picked up some round stones and

things and was carrying them in his pocket-handkerchief; an’ he sat down

amidships without making any question, and let me take the rudder an’

work the bo’t, an’ made no remarks for some time, until we sort of eased

it off speaking of the weather, an’ subjects that arose as we skirted

Black Island, where two or three families lived belongin’ to the parish.

He preached next Sabbath as usual, somethin’ high soundin’ about the

creation, and I couldn’t help thinkin’ he might never get no further; he

seemed to know no remedies, but he had a great use of words.”

Mrs. Fosdick sighed again. “Hearin’ you tell about Joanna brings the

time right back as if ’twas yesterday,” she said. “Yes, she was one o’

them poor things that talked about the great sin; we don’t seem to hear

nothing about the unpardonable sin now, but you may say ’twas not

uncommon then.”

“I expect that if it had been in these days, such a person would be

plagued to death with idle folks,” continued Mrs. Todd, after a long

pause. “As it was, nobody trespassed on her; all the folks about the bay

respected her an’ her feelings; but as time wore on, after you left

here, one after another ventured to make occasion to put somethin’

ashore for her if they went that way. I know mother used to go to see

her sometimes, and send William over now and then with something fresh

an’ nice from the farm. There is a point on the sheltered side where you

can lay a boat close to shore an’ land anything safe on the turf out o’

reach o’ the water. There were one or two others, old folks, that she

would see, and now an’ then she’d hail a passin’ boat an’ ask for

somethin’; and mother got her to promise that she would make some sign

to the Black Island folks if she wanted help. I never saw her myself to

speak to after that day.”

“I expect nowadays, if such a thing happened, she’d have gone out West

to her uncle’s folks or up to Massachusetts and had a change, an’ come

home good as new. The world ’s bigger an’ freer than it used to be,”

urged Mrs. Fosdick.

“No,” said her friend. “’Tis like bad eyesight, the mind of such a

person: if your eyes don’t see right there may be a remedy, but there’s

no kind of glasses to remedy the mind. No, Joanna was Joanna, and there

she lays on her island where she lived and did her poor penance. She

told mother the day she was dyin’ that she always used to want to be

fetched inshore when it come to the last; but she’d thought it over, and

desired to be laid on the island, if ’twas thought right. So the funeral

was out there, a Saturday afternoon in September. ’Twas a pretty day,

and there wa’n’t hardly a boat on the coast within twenty miles that

didn’t head for Shell-heap cram-full o’ folks, an’ all real respectful,

same ’s if she’d always stayed ashore and held her friends. Some went

out o’ mere curiosity, I don’t doubt,—there’s always such to every

funeral; but most had real feelin’, and went purpose to show it. She’d

got most o’ the wild sparrows as tame as could be, livin’ out there so

long among ’em, and one flew right in and lit on the coffin an’ begun to

sing while Mr. Dimmick was speakin’. He was put out by it, an’ acted as

if he didn’t know whether to stop or go on. I may have been prejudiced,

but I wa’n’t the only one thought the poor little bird done the best of

the two.”

“What became o’ the man that treated her so, did you ever hear?” asked

Mrs. Fosdick. “I know he lived up to Massachusetts for a while. Somebody

who came from the same place told me that he was in trade there an’

doin’ very well, but that was years ago.”

“I never heard anything more than that; he went to the war in one o’ the

early rigiments. No, I never heard any more of him,” answered Mrs. Todd.

“Joanna was another sort of person, and perhaps he showed good judgment

in marryin’ somebody else, if only he’d behaved straightforward and

manly. He was a shifty-eyed, coaxin’ sort of man, that got what he

wanted out o’ folks, an’ only gave when he wanted to buy, made friends

easy and lost ’em without knowin’ the difference. She’d had a piece o’

work tryin’ to make him walk accordin’ to her right ideas, but she’d

have had too much variety ever to fall into a melancholy. Some is meant

to be the Joannas in this world, an’ ’twas her poor lot.”

XV.

ON SHELL-HEAP ISLAND.

Some time after Mrs. Fosdick’s visit was over and we had returned to our

former quietness, I was out sailing alone with Captain Bowden in his

large boat. We were taking the crooked northeasterly channel seaward,

and were well out from shore while it was still early in the afternoon.

I found myself presently among some unfamiliar islands, and suddenly

remembered the story of poor Joanna. There is something in the fact of a

hermitage that cannot fail to touch the imagination; the recluses are a

sad kindred, but they are never commonplace. Mrs. Todd had truly said

that Joanna was like one of the saints in the desert; the loneliness of

sorrow will forever keep alive their sad succession.

“Where is Shell-heap Island!” I asked eagerly.

“You see Shell-heap now, layin’ ’way out beyond Black Island there,”

answered the captain, pointing with outstretched arm as he stood, and

holding the rudder with his knee.

“I should like very much to go there,” said I, and the captain, without

comment, changed his course a little more to the eastward and let the

reef out of his mainsail.

“I don’t know’s we can make an easy landin’ for ye,” he remarked

doubtfully. “May get your feet wet; bad place to land. Trouble is I

ought to have brought a tagboat; but they clutch on to the water so, an’

I do love to sail free. This gre’t boat gets easy bothered with anything

trailin’. ’Tain’t breakin’ much on the meetin’-house ledges; guess I can

fetch in to Shell-heap.”

“How long is it since Miss Joanna Todd died?” I asked, partly by way of

explanation.

“Twenty-two years come September,” answered the captain, after

reflection. “She died the same year my oldest boy was born, an’ the town

house was burnt over to the Port. I didn’t know but you merely wanted to

hunt for some o’ them Indian relics. Long’s you want to see where Joanna

lived—No, ’tain’t breakin’ over the ledges; we’ll manage to fetch across

the shoals somehow, ’tis such a distance to go ’way round, and tide’s

a-risin’,” he ended hopefully, and we sailed steadily on, the captain

speechless with intent watching of a difficult course, until the small

island with its low whitish promontory lay in full view before us under

the bright afternoon sun.

The month was August, and I had seen the color of the islands change

from the fresh green of June to a sunburnt brown that made them look

like stone, except where the dark green of the spruces and fir balsam

kept the tint that even winter storms might deepen, but not fade. The

few wind-bent trees on Shell-heap Island were mostly dead and gray, but

there were some low-growing bushes, and a stripe of light green ran

along just above the shore, which I knew to be wild morning glories. As

we came close I could see the high stone walls of a small square field,

though there were no sheep left to assail it; and below, there was a

little harbor-like cove where Captain Bowden was boldly running the

great boat in to seek a landing-place. There was a crooked channel of

deep water which led close up against the shore.

“There, you hold fast for’ard there, an’ wait for her to lift on the

wave. You’ll make a good landin’ if you’re smart; right on the port-hand

side!” the captain called excitedly; and I, standing ready with high

ambition, seized my chance and leaped over to the grassy bank.

“I’m beat if I ain’t aground after all!” mourned the captain

despondently.

But I could reach the bowsprit, and he pushed with the boat-hook, while

the wind veered round a little as if on purpose and helped with the

sail; so presently the boat was free and began to drift out from shore.

“Used to call this p’int Joanna’s wharf privilege, but ’t has worn away

in the weather since her time. I thought one or two bumps wouldn’t hurt

us none,—paint’s got to be renewed, anyway,—but I never thought she’d

tetch. I figured on shyin’ by,” the captain apologized. “She’s too gre’t

a boat to handle well in here; but I used to sort of shy by in Joanna’s

day, an’ cast a little somethin’ ashore—some apples or a couple o’ pears

if I had ’em—on the grass, where she’d be sure to see.”

I stood watching while Captain Bowden cleverly found his way back to

deeper water. “You needn’t make no haste,” he called to me; “I’ll keep

within call. Joanna lays right up there in the far corner o’ the field.

There used to be a path led to the place. I always knew her well. I was

out here to the funeral.”

I found the path; it was touching to discover that this lonely spot was

not without its pilgrims. Later generations will know less and less of

Joanna herself, but there are paths trodden to the shrines of solitude

the world over,—the world cannot forget them, try as it may; the feet of

the young find them out because of curiosity and dim foreboding, while

the old bring hearts full of remembrance. This plain anchorite had been

one of those whom sorrow made too lonely to brave the sight of men, too

timid to front the simple world she knew, yet valiant enough to live

alone with her poor insistent human nature and the calms and passions of

the sea and sky.

The birds were flying all about the field; they fluttered up out of the

grass at my feet as I walked along, so tame that I liked to think they

kept some happy tradition from summer to summer of the safety of nests

and good fellowship of mankind. Poor Joanna’s house was gone except the

stones of its foundations, and there was little trace of her flower

garden except a single faded sprig of much-enduring French pinks, which

a great bee and a yellow butterfly were befriending together. I drank at

the spring, and thought that now and then some one would follow me from

the busy, hard-worked, and simple-thoughted countryside of the mainland,

which lay dim and dreamlike in the August haze, as Joanna must have

watched it many a day. There was the world, and here was she with

eternity well begun. In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there

is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret

happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour

or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of

history they may belong.

But as I stood alone on the island, in the sea-breeze, suddenly there

came a sound of distant voices; gay voices and laughter from a

pleasure-boat that was going seaward full of boys and girls. I knew, as

if she had told me, that poor Joanna must have heard the like on many

and many a summer afternoon, and must have welcomed the good cheer in

spite of hopelessness and winter weather, and all the sorrow and

disappointment in the world.

XVI.

THE GREAT EXPEDITION.

Mrs. Todd never by any chance gave warning overnight of her great

projects and adventures by sea and land. She first came to an

understanding with the primal forces of nature, and never trusted to any

preliminary promise of good weather, but examined the day for herself in

its infancy. Then, if the stars were propitious, and the wind blew from

a quarter of good inheritance whence no surprises of sea-turns or

southwest sultriness might be feared, long before I was fairly awake I

used to hear a rustle and knocking like a great mouse in the walls, and

an impatient tread on the steep garret stairs that led to Mrs. Todd’s

chief place of storage. She went and came as if she had already started

on her expedition with utmost haste and kept returning for something

that was forgotten. When I appeared in quest of my breakfast, she would

be absent-minded and sparing of speech, as if I had displeased her, and

she was now, by main force of principle, holding herself back from

altercation and strife of tongues.

These signs of a change became familiar to me in the course of time, and

Mrs. Todd hardly noticed some plain proofs of divination one August

morning when I said, without preface, that I had just seen the Beggs’

best chaise go by, and that we should have to take the grocery. Mrs.

Todd was alert in a moment.

“There! I might have known!” she exclaimed. “It’s the 15th of August,

when he goes and gets his money. He heired an annuity from an uncle o’

his on his mother’s side. I understood the uncle said none o’ Sam Begg’s

wife’s folks should make free with it, so after Sam’s gone it’ll all be

past an’ spent, like last summer. That’s what Sam prospers on now, if

you can call it prosperin’. Yes, I might have known. ’Tis the 15th o’

August with him, an’ he gener’ly stops to dinner with a cousin’s widow

on the way home. Feb’uary an’ August is the times. Takes him ’bout all

day to go an’ come.”

I heard this explanation with interest. The tone of Mrs. Todd’s voice

was complaining at the last.

“I like the grocery just as well as the chaise,” I hastened to say,

referring to a long-bodied high wagon with a canopy-top, like an

attenuated four-posted bedstead on wheels, in which we sometimes

journeyed. “We can put things in behind—roots and flowers and

raspberries, or anything you are going after—much better than if we had

the chaise.”

Mrs. Todd looked stony and unwilling. “I counted upon the chaise,” she

said, turning her back to me, and roughly pushing back all the quiet

tumblers on the cupboard shelf as if they had been impertinent. “Yes, I

desired the chaise for once. I ain’t goin’ berryin’ nor to fetch home no

more wilted vegetation this year. Season’s about past, except for a poor

few o’ late things,” she added in a milder tone. “I’m goin’ up country.

No, I ain’t intendin’ to go berryin’. I’ve been plottin’ for it the past

fortnight and hopin’ for a good day.”

“Would you like to have me go too?” I asked frankly, but not without a

humble fear that I might have mistaken the purpose of this latest plan.

“Oh certain, dear!” answered my friend affectionately. “Oh no, I never

thought o’ any one else for comp’ny, if it’s convenient for you, long ’s

poor mother ain’t come. I ain’t nothin’ like so handy with a conveyance

as I be with a good bo’t. Comes o’ my early bringing-up. I expect we’ve

got to make that great high wagon do. The tires want settin’ and ’tis

all loose-jointed, so I can hear it shackle the other side o’ the ridge.

We’ll put the basket in front. I ain’t goin’ to have it bouncin’ an’

twirlin’ all the way. Why, I’ve been makin’ some nice hearts and rounds

to carry.”

These were signs of high festivity, and my interest deepened moment by

moment.

“I’ll go down to the Beggs’ and get the horse just as soon as I finish

my breakfast,” said I. “Then we can start whenever you are ready.”

Mrs. Todd looked cloudy again. “I don’t know but you look nice enough to

go just as you be,” she suggested doubtfully. “No, you wouldn’t want to

wear that pretty blue dress o’ yourn ’way up country. ’Tain’t dusty now,

but it may be comin’ home. No, I expect you’d rather not wear that and

the other hat.”

“Oh yes. I shouldn’t think of wearing these clothes,” said I, with

sudden illumination. “Why, if we’re going up country and are likely to

see some of your friends, I’ll put on my blue dress and you must wear

your watch; I am not going at all if you mean to wear the big hat.”

“Now you’re behavin’ pretty,” responded Mrs. Todd, with a gay toss of

her head and a cheerful smile, as she came across the room, bringing a

saucerful of wild raspberries, a pretty piece of salvage from

supper-time. “I was cast down when I see you come to breakfast. I didn’t

think ’twas just what you’d select to wear to the reunion, where you’re

goin’ to meet everybody.”

“What reunion do you mean?” I asked, not without amazement. “Not the

Bowden Family’s? I thought that was going to take place in September.”

“To-day’s the day. They sent word the middle o’ the week. I thought you

might have heard of it. Yes, they changed the day. I been thinkin’ we’d

talk it over, but you never can tell beforehand how it’s goin’ to be,

and ’tain’t worth while to wear a day all out before it comes.” Mrs.

Todd gave no place to the pleasures of anticipation, but she spoke like

the oracle that she was. “I wish mother was here to go,” she continued

sadly. “I did look for her last night, and I couldn’t keep back the

tears when the dark really fell and she wa’n’t here, she does so enjoy a

great occasion. If William had a mite o’ snap an’ ambition, he’d take

the lead at such a time. Mother likes variety, and there ain’t but a few

nice opportunities ’round here, an’ them she has to miss ’less she

contrives to get ashore to me. I do re’lly hate to go to the reunion

without mother, an’ ’tis a beautiful day; everybody’ll be asking where

she is. Once she’d have got here anyway. Poor mother’s beginnin’ to feel

her age.”

“Why, there’s your mother now!” I exclaimed with joy, I was so glad to

see the dear old soul again. “I hear her voice at the gate.” But Mrs.

Todd was out of the door before me.

There, sure enough, stood Mrs. Blackett, who must have left Green Island

before daylight. She had climbed the steep road from the waterside so

eagerly that she was out of breath, and was standing by the garden fence

to rest. She held an old-fashioned brown wicker cap-basket in her hand,

as if visiting were a thing of every day, and looked up at us as pleased

and triumphant as a child.

“Oh, what a poor, plain garden! Hardly a flower in it except your bush

o’ balm!” she said. “But you do keep your garden neat, Almiry. Are you

both well, an’ goin’ up country with me?” She came a step or two closer

to meet us, with quaint politeness and quite as delightful as if she

were at home. She dropped a quick little curtsey before Mrs. Todd.

“There, mother, what a girl you be! I am so pleased! I was just

bewailin’ you,” said the daughter, with unwonted feeling. “I was just

bewailin’ you, I was so disappointed, an’ I kep’ myself awake a good

piece o’ the night scoldin’ poor William. I watched for the boat till I

was ready to shed tears yisterday, and when ’twas comin’ dark I kep’

making errands out to the gate an’ down the road to see if you wa’n’t in

the doldrums somewhere down the bay.”

“There was a head wind, as you know,” said Mrs. Blackett, giving me the

cap-basket, and holding my hand affectionately as we walked up the

clean-swept path to the door. “I was partly ready to come, but dear

William said I should be all tired out and might get cold, havin’ to

beat all the way in. So we give it up, and set down and spent the

evenin’ together. It was a little rough and windy outside, and I guess

’twas better judgment; we went to bed very early and made a good start

just at daylight. It’s been a lovely mornin’ on the water. William

thought he’d better fetch across beyond Bird Rocks, rowin’ the greater

part o’ the way; then we sailed from there right over to the Landin’,

makin’ only one tack. William’ll be in again for me to-morrow, so I can

come back here an’ rest me over night, an’ go to meetin’ to-morrow, and

have a nice, good visit.”

“She was just havin’ her breakfast,” said Mrs. Todd, who had listened

eagerly to the long explanation without a word of disapproval, while her

face shone more and more with joy. “You just sit right down an’ have a

cup of tea and rest you while we make our preparations. Oh, I am so

gratified to think you’ve come! Yes, she was just havin’ her breakfast,

and we were speakin’ of you. Where’s William?”

“He went right back; he said he expected some schooners in about noon

after bait, but he’ll come an’ have his dinner with us to-morrow, unless

it rains; then next day. I laid his best things out all ready,”

explained Mrs. Blackett, a little anxiously. “This wind will serve him

nice all the way home. Yes, I will take a cup of tea, dear,—a cup of tea

is always good; and then I’ll rest a minute and be all ready to start.”

“I do feel condemned for havin’ such hard thoughts o’ William,” openly

confessed Mrs. Todd. She stood before us so large and serious that we

both laughed and could not find it in our hearts to convict so rueful a

culprit. “He shall have a good dinner to-morrow, if it can be got, and I

shall be real glad to see William,” the confession ended handsomely,

while Mrs. Blackett smiled approval and made haste to praise the tea.

Then I hurried away to make sure of the grocery wagon. Whatever might be

the good of the reunion, I was going to have the pleasure and delight of

a day in Mrs. Blackett’s company, not to speak of Mrs. Todd’s.

The early morning breeze was still blowing, and the warm, sunshiny air

was of some ethereal northern sort, with a cool freshness as if it came

over new-fallen snow. The world was filled with a fragrance of

fir-balsam and the faintest flavor of seaweed from the ledges, bare and

brown at low tide in the little harbor. It was so still and so early

that the village was but half awake. I could hear no voices but those of

the birds, small and great,—the constant song sparrows, the clink of a

yellow-hammer over in the woods, and the far conversation of some

deliberate crows. I saw William Blackett’s escaping sail already far

from land, and Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window

as I passed by, watching for some one who never came. I tried to speak

to him, but he did not see me. There was a patient look on the old man’s

face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom

to speak his own language or find companionship.

XVII.

A COUNTRY ROAD.

Whatever doubts and anxieties I may have had about the inconvenience of

the Beggs’ high wagon for a person of Mrs. Blackett’s age and shortness,

they were happily overcome by the aid of a chair and her own valiant

spirit. Mrs. Todd bestowed great care upon seating us as if we were

taking passage by boat, but she finally pronounced that we were properly

trimmed. When we had gone only a little way up the hill she remembered

that she had left the house door wide open, though the large key was

safe in her pocket. I offered to run back, but my offer was met with

lofty scorn, and we lightly dismissed the matter from our minds, until

two or three miles further on we met the doctor, and Mrs. Todd asked him

to stop and ask her nearest neighbor to step over and close the door if

the dust seemed to blow in the afternoon.

“She’ll be there in her kitchen; she’ll hear you the minute you call; ’t

wont give you no delay,” said Mrs. Todd to the doctor. “Yes, Mis’

Dennett’s right there, with the windows all open. It isn’t as if my fore

door opened right on the road, anyway.” At which proof of composure Mrs.

Blackett smiled wisely at me.

The doctor seemed delighted to see our guest; they were evidently the

warmest friends, and I saw a look of affectionate confidence in their

eyes. The good man left his carriage to speak to us, but as he took Mrs.

Blackett’s hand he held it a moment, and, as if merely from force of

habit, felt her pulse as they talked; then to my delight he gave the

firm old wrist a commending pat.

“You’re wearing well: good for another ten years at this rate,” he

assured her cheerfully, and she smiled back. “I like to keep a strict

account of my old stand-bys,” and he turned to me. “Don’t you let Mrs.

Todd overdo to-day,—old folks like her are apt to be thoughtless;” and

then we all laughed, and, parting, went our ways gayly.

“I suppose he puts up with your rivalry the same as ever?” asked Mrs.

Blackett. “You and he are as friendly as ever, I see, Almiry,” and

Almira sagely nodded.

“He’s got too many long routes now to stop to ‘tend to all his door

patients,” she said, “especially them that takes pleasure in talkin’

themselves over. The doctor and me have got to be kind of partners; he’s

gone a good deal, far an’ wide. Looked tired, didn’t he? I shall have to

advise with him an’ get him off for a good rest. He’ll take the big boat

from Rockland an’ go off up to Boston an’ mouse round among the other

doctors, once in two or three years, and come home fresh as a boy. I

guess they think consider’ble of him up there.” Mrs. Todd shook the

reins and reached determinedly for the whip, as if she were compelling

public opinion.

Whatever energy and spirit the white horse had to begin with were soon

exhausted by the steep hills and his discernment of a long expedition

ahead. We toiled slowly along. Mrs. Blackett and I sat together, and

Mrs. Todd sat alone in front with much majesty and the large basket of

provisions. Part of the way the road was shaded by thick woods, but we

also passed one farmhouse after another on the high uplands, which we

all three regarded with deep interest, the house itself and the barns

and garden-spots and poultry all having to suffer an inspection of the

shrewdest sort. This was a highway quite new to me; in fact, most of my

journeys with Mrs. Todd had been made afoot and between the roads, in

open pasturelands. My friends stopped several times for brief dooryard

visits, and made so many promises of stopping again on the way home that

I began to wonder how long the expedition would last. I had often

noticed how warmly Mrs. Todd was greeted by her friends, but it was

hardly to be compared to the feeling now shown toward Mrs. Blackett. A

look of delight came to the faces of those who recognized the plain,

dear old figure beside me; one revelation after another was made of the

constant interest and intercourse that had linked the far island and

these scattered farms into a golden chain of love and dependence.

“Now, we mustn’t stop again if we can help it,” insisted Mrs. Todd at

last. “You’ll get tired, mother, and you’ll think the less o’ reunions.

We can visit along here any day. There, if they ain’t frying doughnuts

in this next house, too! These are new folks, you know, from over St.

George way; they took this old Talcot farm last year. ’Tis the best

water on the road, and the checkrein’s come undone—yes, we’d best delay

a little and water the horse.”

We stopped, and seeing a party of pleasure-seekers in holiday attire,

the thin, anxious mistress of the farmhouse came out with wistful

sympathy to hear what news we might have to give. Mrs. Blackett first

spied her at the half-closed door, and asked with such cheerful

directness if we were trespassing that, after a few words, she went back

to her kitchen and reappeared with a plateful of doughnuts.

“Entertainment for man and beast,” announced Mrs. Todd with

satisfaction. “Why, we’ve perceived there was new doughnuts all along

the road, but you’re the first that has treated us.”

Our new acquaintance flushed with pleasure, but said nothing.

“They’re very nice; you’ve had good luck with ’em,” pronounced Mrs.

Todd. “Yes, we’ve observed there was doughnuts all the way along; if one

house is frying all the rest is; ’tis so with a great many things.”

“I don’t suppose likely you’re goin’ up to the Bowden reunion?” asked

the hostess as the white horse lifted his head and we were saying

good-by.

“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd and I, all together.

“I am connected with the family. Yes, I expect to be there this

afternoon. I’ve been lookin’ forward to it,” she told us eagerly.

“We shall see you there. Come and sit with us if it’s convenient,” said

dear Mrs. Blackett, and we drove away.

“I wonder who she was before she was married?” said Mrs. Todd, who was

usually unerring in matters of genealogy. “She must have been one of

that remote branch that lived down beyond Thomaston. We can find out

this afternoon. I expect that the families’ll march together, or be

sorted out some way. I’m willing to own a relation that has such proper

ideas of doughnuts.”

“I seem to see the family looks,” said Mrs. Blackett. “I wish we’d asked

her name. She’s a stranger, and I want to help make it pleasant for all

such.”

“She resembles Cousin Pa’lina Bowden about the forehead,” said Mrs. Todd

with decision.

We had just passed a piece of woodland that shaded the road, and come

out to some open fields beyond, when Mrs. Todd suddenly reined in the

horse as if somebody had stood on the roadside and stopped her. She even

gave that quick reassuring nod of her head which was usually made to

answer for a bow, but I discovered that she was looking eagerly at a

tall ash-tree that grew just inside the field fence.

“I thought ’twas goin’ to do well,” she said complacently as we went on

again. “Last time I was up this way that tree was kind of drooping and

discouraged. Grown trees act that way sometimes, same ’s folks; then

they’ll put right to it and strike their roots off into new ground and

start all over again with real good courage. Ash-trees is very likely to

have poor spells; they ain’t got the resolution of other trees.”

I listened hopefully for more; it was this peculiar wisdom that made one

value Mrs. Todd’s pleasant company.

“There’s sometimes a good hearty tree growin’ right out of the bare

rock, out o’ some crack that just holds the roots;” she went on to say,

“right on the pitch o’ one o’ them bare stony hills where you can’t seem

to see a wheel-barrowful o’ good earth in a place, but that tree’ll keep

a green top in the driest summer. You lay your ear down to the ground

an’ you’ll hear a little stream runnin’. Every such tree has got its own

livin’ spring; there’s folks made to match ’em.”

I could not help turning to look at Mrs. Blackett, close beside me. Her

hands were clasped placidly in their thin black woolen gloves, and she

was looking at the flowery wayside as we went slowly along, with a

pleased, expectant smile. I do not think she had heard a word about the

trees.

“I just saw a nice plant o’ elecampane growin’ back there,” she said

presently to her daughter.

“I haven’t got my mind on herbs to-day,” responded Mrs. Todd, in the

most matter-of-fact way. “I’m bent on seeing folks,” and she shook the

reins again.

I for one had no wish to hurry, it was so pleasant in the shady roads.

The woods stood close to the road on the right; on the left were narrow

fields and pastures where there were as many acres of spruces and pines

as there were acres of bay and juniper and huckleberry, with a little

turf between. When I thought we were in the heart of the inland country,

we reached the top of a hill, and suddenly there lay spread out before

us a wonderful great view of well-cleared fields that swept down to the

wide water of a bay. Beyond this were distant shores like another

country in the midday haze which half hid the hills beyond, and the

far-away pale blue mountains on the northern horizon. There was a

schooner with all sails set coming down the bay from a white village

that was sprinkled on the shore, and there were many sailboats flitting

about. It was a noble landscape, and my eyes, which had grown used to

the narrow inspection of a shaded roadside, could hardly take it in.

“Why, it’s the upper bay,” said Mrs. Todd. “You can see ’way over into

the town of Fessenden. Those farms ’way over there are all in Fessenden.

Mother used to have a sister that lived up that shore. If we started as

early ’s we could on a summer mornin’, we couldn’t get to her place from

Green Island till late afternoon, even with a fair, steady breeze, and

you had to strike the time just right so as to fetch up ’long o’ the

tide and land near the flood. ’Twas ticklish business, an’ we didn’t

visit back an’ forth as much as mother desired. You have to go ’way down

the co’st to Cold Spring Light an’ round that long point,—up here’s what

they call the Back Shore.”

“No, we were ’most always separated, my dear sister and me, after the

first year she was married,” said Mrs. Blackett. “We had our little

families an’ plenty o’ cares. We were always lookin’ forward to the time

we could see each other more. Now and then she’d get out to the island

for a few days while her husband’d go fishin’; and once he stopped with

her an’ two children, and made him some flakes right there and cured all

his fish for winter. We did have a beautiful time together, sister an’

me; she used to look back to it long ’s she lived.”

“I do love to look over there where she used to live,” Mrs. Blackett

went on as we began to go down the hill. “It seems as if she must still

be there, though she’s long been gone. She loved their farm,—she didn’t

see how I got so used to our island; but somehow I was always happy from

the first.”

“Yes, it’s very dull to me up among those slow farms,” declared Mrs.

Todd. “The snow troubles ’em in winter. They’re all besieged by winter,

as you may say; ’tis far better by the shore than up among such places.

I never thought I should like to live up country.”

“Why, just see the carriages ahead of us on the next rise!” exclaimed

Mrs. Blackett. “There’s going to be a great gathering, don’t you believe

there is, Almiry? It hasn’t seemed up to now as if anybody was going but

us. An’ ’tis such a beautiful day, with yesterday cool and pleasant to

work an’ get ready, I shouldn’t wonder if everybody was there, even the

slow ones like Phebe Ann Brock.”

Mrs. Blackett’s eyes were bright with excitement, and even Mrs. Todd

showed remarkable enthusiasm. She hurried the horse and caught up with

the holiday-makers ahead. “There’s all the Dep’fords goin’, six in the

wagon,” she told us joyfully; “an’ Mis’ Alva Tilley’s folks are now

risin’ the hill in their new carryall.”

Mrs. Blackett pulled at the neat bow of her black bonnet-strings, and

tied them again with careful precision. “I believe your bonnet’s on a

little bit sideways, dear,” she advised Mrs. Todd as if she were a

child; but Mrs. Todd was too much occupied to pay proper heed. We began

to feel a new sense of gayety and of taking part in the great occasion

as we joined the little train.

XVIII.

THE BOWDEN REUNION.

It is very rare in country life, where high days and holidays are few,

that any occasion of general interest proves to be less than great. Such

is the hidden fire of enthusiasm in the New England nature that, once

given an outlet, it shines forth with almost volcanic light and heat. In

quiet neighborhoods such inward force does not waste itself upon those

petty excitements of every day that belong to cities, but when, at long

intervals, the altars to patriotism, to friendship, to the ties of

kindred, are reared in our familiar fields, then the fires glow, the

flames come up as if from the inexhaustible burning heart of the earth;

the primal fires break through the granite dust in which our souls are

set. Each heart is warm and every face shines with the ancient light.

Such a day as this has transfiguring powers, and easily makes friends of

those who have been cold-hearted, and gives to those who are dumb their

chance to speak, and lends some beauty to the plainest face.

“Oh, I expect I shall meet friends to-day that I haven’t seen in a long

while,” said Mrs. Blackett with deep satisfaction. “’Twill bring out a

good many of the old folks, ’tis such a lovely day. I’m always glad not

to have them disappointed.”

“I guess likely the best of ’em ’ll be there,” answered Mrs. Todd with

gentle humor, stealing a glance at me. “There’s one thing certain:

there’s nothing takes in this whole neighborhood like anything related

to the Bowdens. Yes, I do feel that when you call upon the Bowdens you

may expect most families to rise up between the Landing and the far end

of the Back Cove. Those that aren’t kin by blood are kin by marriage.”

“There used to be an old story goin’ about when I was a girl,” said Mrs.

Blackett, with much amusement. “There was a great many more Bowdens then

than there are now, and the folks was all setting in meeting a dreadful

hot Sunday afternoon, and a scatter-witted little bound girl came

running to the meetin’-house door all out o’ breath from somewheres in

the neighborhood. ‘Mis’ Bowden, Mis’ Bowden!’ says she. ‘Your baby’s in

a fit!’ They used to tell that the whole congregation was up on its feet

in a minute and right out into the aisles. All the Mis’ Bowdens was

setting right out for home; the minister stood there in the pulpit

trying’ to keep sober, an’ all at once he burst right out laughin’. He

was a very nice man, they said, and he said he’d better give ’em the

benediction, and they could hear the sermon next Sunday, so he kept it

over. My mother was there, and she thought certain ’twas me.”

“None of our family was ever subject to fits,” interrupted Mrs. Todd

severely. “No, we never had fits, none of us, and ’twas lucky we didn’t

’way out there to Green Island. Now these folks right in front: dear

sakes knows the bunches o’ soothing catnip an’ yarrow I’ve had to favor

old Mis’ Evins with dryin’! You can see it right in their expressions,

all them Evins folks. There, just you look up to the crossroads,

mother,” she suddenly exclaimed. “See all the teams ahead of us. And oh,

look down on the bay; yes, look down on the bay! See what a sight o’

boats, all headin’ for the Bowden place cove!”

“Oh, ain’t it beautiful!” said Mrs. Blackett, with all the delight of a

girl. She stood up in the high wagon to see everything, and when she sat

down again she took fast hold of my hand.

“Hadn’t you better urge the horse a little, Almiry?” she asked. “He’s

had it easy as we came along, and he can rest when we get there. The

others are some little ways ahead, and I don’t want to lose a minute.”

We watched the boats drop their sails one by one in the cove as we drove

along the high land. The old Bowden house stood, low-storied and

broad-roofed, in its green fields as if it were a motherly brown hen

waiting for the flock that came straying toward it from every direction.

The first Bowden settler had made his home there, and it was still the

Bowden farm; five generations of sailors and farmers and soldiers had

been its children. And presently Mrs. Blackett showed me the

stone-walled burying-ground that stood like a little fort on a knoll

overlooking the bay, but, as she said, there were plenty of scattered

Bowdens who were not laid there,—some lost at sea, and some out West,

and some who died in the war; most of the home graves were those of

women.

We could see now that there were different footpaths from along shore

and across country. In all these there were straggling processions

walking in single file, like old illustrations of the Pilgrim’s

Progress. There was a crowd about the house as if huge bees were

swarming in the lilac bushes. Beyond the fields and cove a higher point

of land ran out into the bay, covered with woods which must have kept

away much of the northwest wind in winter. Now there was a pleasant look

of shade and shelter there for the great family meeting.

We hurried on our way, beginning to feel as if we were very late, and it

was a great satisfaction at last to turn out of the stony highroad into

a green lane shaded with old apple-trees. Mrs. Todd encouraged the horse

until he fairly pranced with gayety as we drove round to the front of

the house on the soft turf. There was an instant cry of rejoicing, and

two or three persons ran toward us from the busy group.

“Why, dear Mis’ Blackett!—here’s Mis’ Blackett!” I heard them say, as if

it were pleasure enough for one day to have a sight of her. Mrs. Todd

turned to me with a lovely look of triumph and self-forgetfulness. An

elderly man who wore the look of a prosperous sea-captain put up both

arms and lifted Mrs. Blackett down from the high wagon like a child, and

kissed her with hearty affection. “I was master afraid she wouldn’t be

here,” he said, looking at Mrs. Todd with a face like a happy sunburnt

schoolboy, while everybody crowded round to give their welcome.

“Mother’s always the queen,” said Mrs. Todd. “Yes, they’ll all make

everything of mother; she’ll have a lovely time to-day. I wouldn’t have

had her miss it, and there won’t be a thing she’ll ever regret, except

to mourn because William wa’n’t here.”

Mrs. Blackett having been properly escorted to the house, Mrs. Todd

received her own full share of honor, and some of the men, with a simple

kindness that was the soul of chivalry, waited upon us and our baskets

and led away the white horse. I already knew some of Mrs. Todd’s friends

and kindred, and felt like an adopted Bowden in this happy moment. It

seemed to be enough for any one to have arrived by the same conveyance

as Mrs. Blackett, who presently had her court inside the house, while

Mrs. Todd, large, hospitable, and preeminent, was the centre of a

rapidly increasing crowd about the lilac bushes. Small companies were

continually coming up the long green slope from the water, and nearly

all the boats had come to shore. I counted three or four that were

baffled by the light breeze, but before long all the Bowdens, small and

great, seemed to have assembled, and we started to go up to the grove

across the field.

Out of the chattering crowd of noisy children, and large-waisted women

whose best black dresses fell straight to the ground in generous folds,

and sunburnt men who looked as serious as if it were town-meeting day,

there suddenly came silence and order. I saw the straight, soldierly

little figure of a man who bore a fine resemblance to Mrs. Blackett, and

who appeared to marshal us with perfect ease. He was imperative enough,

but with a grand military sort of courtesy, and bore himself with solemn

dignity of importance. We were sorted out according to some clear design

of his own, and stood as speechless as a troop to await his orders. Even

the children were ready to march together, a pretty flock, and at the

last moment Mrs. Blackett and a few distinguished companions, the

ministers and those who were very old, came out of the house together

and took their places. We ranked by fours, and even then we made a long

procession.

There was a wide path mowed for us across the field, and, as we moved

along, the birds flew up out of the thick second crop of clover, and the

bees hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white

gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves

together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to

our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be

heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate

a victory, or to worship the god of harvests in the grove above. It was

strangely moving to see this and to make part of it. The sky, the sea,

have watched poor humanity at its rites so long; we were no more a New

England family celebrating its own existence and simple progress; we

carried the tokens and inheritance of all such households from which

this had descended, and were only the latest of our line. We possessed

the instincts of a far, forgotten childhood; I found myself thinking

that we ought to be carrying green branches and singing as we went. So

we came to the thick shaded grove still silent, and were set in our

places by the straight trees that swayed together and let sunshine

through here and there like a single golden leaf that flickered down,

vanishing in the cool shade.

The grove was so large that the great family looked far smaller than it

had in the open field; there was a thick growth of dark pines and firs

with an occasional maple or oak that gave a gleam of color like a bright

window in the great roof. On three sides we could see the water, shining

behind the tree trunks, and feel the cool salt breeze that began to come

up with the tide just as the day reached its highest point of heat. We

could see the green sunlit field we had just crossed as if we looked out

at it from a dark room, and the old house and its lilacs standing

placidly in the sun, and the great barn with a stockade of carriages

from which two or three care-taking men who had lingered were coming

across the field together. Mrs. Todd had taken off her warm gloves and

looked the picture of content.

“There!” she exclaimed. “I’ve always meant to have you see this place,

but I never looked for such a beautiful opportunity—weather an’ occasion

both made to match. Yes, it suits me: I don’t ask no more. I want to

know if you saw mother walkin’ at the head! It choked me right up to see

mother at the head, walkin’ with the ministers,” and Mrs. Todd turned

away to hide the feelings she could not instantly control.

“Who was the marshal?” I hastened to ask. “Was he an old soldier?”

“Don’t he do well?” answered Mrs. Todd with satisfaction.

“He don’t often have such a chance to show off his gifts,” said Mrs.

Caplin, a friend from the Landing who had joined us. “That’s Sant

Bowden; he always takes the lead, such days. Good for nothing else most

o’ his time; trouble is, he”—

I turned with interest to hear the worst. Mrs. Caplin’s tone was both

zealous and impressive.

“Stim’lates,” she explained scornfully.

“No, Santin never was in the war,” said Mrs. Todd with lofty

indifference. “It was a cause of real distress to him. He kep’

enlistin’, and traveled far an’ wide about here, an’ even took the bo’t

and went to Boston to volunteer; but he ain’t a sound man, an’ they

wouldn’t have him. They say he knows all their tactics, an’ can tell all

about the battle o’ Waterloo well’s he can Bunker Hill. I told him once

the country’d lost a great general, an’ I meant it, too.”

“I expect you’re near right,” said Mrs. Caplin, a little crestfallen and

apologetic.

“I be right,” insisted Mrs. Todd with much amiability. “’Twas most too

bad to cramp him down to his peaceful trade, but he’s a most excellent

shoemaker at his best, an’ he always says it’s a trade that gives him

time to think an’ plan his manœuvres. Over to the Port they always

invite him to march Decoration Day, same as the rest, an’ he does look

noble; he comes of soldier stock.”

I had been noticing with great interest the curiously French type of

face which prevailed in this rustic company. I had said to myself before

that Mrs. Blackett was plainly of French descent, in both her appearance

and her charming gifts, but this is not surprising when one has learned

how large a proportion of the early settlers on this northern coast of

New England were of Huguenot blood, and that it is the Norman

Englishman, not the Saxon, who goes adventuring to a new world.

“They used to say in old times,” said Mrs. Todd modestly, “that our

family came of very high folks in France, and one of ’em was a great

general in some o’ the old wars. I sometimes think that Santin’s ability

has come ’way down from then. ’Tain’t nothin’ he’s ever acquired; ’twas

born in him. I don’t know’s he ever saw a fine parade, or met with those

that studied up such things. He’s figured it all out an’ got his papers

so he knows how to aim a cannon right for William’s fish-house five

miles out on Green Island, or up there on Burnt Island where the signal

is. He had it all over to me one day, an’ I tried hard to appear

interested. His life’s all in it, but he will have those poor gloomy

spells come over him now an’ then, an’ then he has to drink.”

Mrs. Caplin gave a heavy sigh.

“There’s a great many such strayaway folks, just as there is plants,”

continued Mrs. Todd, who was nothing if not botanical. “I know of just

one sprig of laurel that grows over back here in a wild spot, an’ I

never could hear of no other on this coast. I had a large bunch brought

me once from Massachusetts way, so I know it. This piece grows in an

open spot where you’d think ’twould do well, but it’s sort o’

poor-lookin’. I’ve visited it time an’ again, just to notice its poor

blooms. ’Tis a real Sant Bowden, out of its own place.”

Mrs. Caplin looked bewildered and blank. “Well, all I know is, last year

he worked out some kind of a plan so’s to parade the county conference

in platoons, and got ’em all flustered up tryin’ to sense his ideas of a

holler square,” she burst forth. “They was holler enough anyway after

ridin’ ’way down from up country into the salt air, and they’d been

treated to a sermon on faith an’ works from old Fayther Harlow that

never knows when to cease. ’Twa’n’t no time for tactics then,—they

wa’n’t a-thinkin’ of the church military. Sant, he couldn’t do nothin’

with ’em. All he thinks of, when he sees a crowd, is how to march ’em.

’Tis all very well when he don’t ’tempt too much. He never did act like

other folks.”

“Ain’t I just been maintainin’ that he ain’t like ’em?” urged Mrs. Todd

decidedly. “Strange folks has got to have strange ways, for what I see.”

“Somebody observed once that you could pick out the likeness of ’most

every sort of a foreigner when you looked about you in our parish,” said

Sister Caplin, her face brightening with sudden illumination. “I didn’t

see the bearin’ of it then quite so plain. I always did think Mari’

Harris resembled a Chinee.”

“Mari’ Harris was pretty as a child, I remember,” said the pleasant

voice of Mrs. Blackett, who, after receiving the affectionate greetings

of nearly the whole company, came to join us,—to see, as she insisted,

that we were out of mischief.

“Yes, Mari’ was one o’ them pretty little lambs that make dreadful

homely old sheep,” replied Mrs. Todd with energy. “Cap’n Littlepage

never’d look so disconsolate if she was any sort of a proper person to

direct things. She might divert him; yes, she might divert the old

gentleman, an’ let him think he had his own way, ’stead o’ arguing

everything down to the bare bone. ’Twouldn’t hurt her to sit down an’

hear his great stories once in a while.”

“The stories are very interesting,” I ventured to say.

“Yes, you always catch yourself a-thinkin’ what if they was all true,

and he had the right of it,” answered Mrs. Todd. “He’s a good sight

better company, though dreamy, than such sordid creatur’s as Mari’

Harris.”

“Live and let live,” said dear old Mrs. Blackett gently. “I haven’t seen

the captain for a good while, now that I ain’t so constant to meetin’,”

she added wistfully. “We always have known each other.”

“Why, if it is a good pleasant day to-morrow, I’ll get William to call

an’ invite the capt’in to dinner. William’ll be in early so’s to pass up

the street without meetin’ anybody.”

“There, they’re callin’ out it’s time to set the tables,” said Mrs.

Caplin, with great excitement.

“Here’s Cousin Sarah Jane Blackett! Well, I am pleased, certain!”

exclaimed Mrs. Todd, with unaffected delight; and these kindred spirits

met and parted with the promise of a good talk later on. After this

there was no more time for conversation until we were seated in order at

the long tables.

“I’m one that always dreads seeing some o’ the folks that I don’t like,

at such a time as this,” announced Mrs. Todd privately to me after a

season of reflection. We were just waiting for the feast to begin. “You

wouldn’t think such a great creatur’ ’s I be could feel all over pins

an’ needles. I remember, the day I promised to Nathan, how it come over

me, just’s I was feelin’ happy ’s I could, that I’d got to have an own

cousin o’ his for my near relation all the rest o’ my life, an’ it

seemed as if die I should. Poor Nathan saw somethin’ had crossed me,—he

had very nice feelings,—and when he asked me what ’twas, I told him. ‘I

never could like her myself,’ said he. ‘You sha’n’t be bothered, dear,’

he says; an’ ’twas one o’ the things that made me set a good deal by

Nathan, he didn’t make a habit of always opposin’, like some men. ‘Yes,’

says I, ‘but think o’ Thanksgivin’ times an’ funerals; she’s our

relation, an’ we’ve got to own her.’ Young folks don’t think o’ those

things. There she goes now, do let’s pray her by!” said Mrs. Todd, with

an alarming transition from general opinions to particular animosities.

“I hate her just the same as I always did; but she’s got on a real

pretty dress. I do try to remember that she’s Nathan’s cousin. Oh dear,

well; she’s gone by after all, an’ ain’t seen me. I expected she’d come

pleasantin’ round just to show off an’ say afterwards she was

acquainted.”

This was so different from Mrs. Todd’s usual largeness of mind that I

had a moment’s uneasiness; but the cloud passed quickly over her spirit,

and was gone with the offender.

There never was a more generous out-of-door feast along the coast than

the Bowden family set forth that day. To call it a picnic would make it

seem trivial. The great tables were edged with pretty oak-leaf trimming,

which the boys and girls made. We brought flowers from the

fence-thickets of the great field; and out of the disorder of flowers

and provisions suddenly appeared as orderly a scheme for the feast as

the marshal had shaped for the procession. I began to respect the

Bowdens for their inheritance of good taste and skill and a certain

pleasing gift of formality. Something made them do all these things in a

finer way than most country people would have done them. As I looked up

and down the tables there was a good cheer, a grave soberness that shone

with pleasure, a humble dignity of bearing. There were some who should

have sat below the salt for lack of this good breeding; but they were

not many. So, I said to myself, their ancestors may have sat in the

great hall of some old French house in the Middle Ages, when battles and

sieges and processions and feasts were familiar things. The ministers

and Mrs. Blackett, with a few of their rank and age, were put in places

of honor, and for once that I looked any other way I looked twice at

Mrs. Blackett’s face, serene and mindful of privilege and

responsibility, the mistress by simple fitness of this great day.

Mrs. Todd looked up at the roof of green trees, and then carefully

surveyed the company. “I see ’em better now they’re all settin’ down,”

she said with satisfaction. “There’s old Mr. Gilbraith and his sister. I

wish they were settin’ with us; they’re not among folks they can parley

with, an’ they look disappointed.”

As the feast went on, the spirits of my companion steadily rose. The

excitement of an unexpectedly great occasion was a subtle stimulant to

her disposition, and I could see that sometimes when Mrs. Todd had

seemed limited and heavily domestic, she had simply grown sluggish for

lack of proper surroundings. She was not so much reminiscent now as

expectant, and as alert and gay as a girl. We who were her neighbors

were full of gayety, which was but the reflected light from her beaming

countenance. It was not the first time that I was full of wonder at the

waste of human ability in this world, as a botanist wonders at the

wastefulness of nature, the thousand seeds that die, the unused

provision of every sort. The reserve force of society grows more and

more amazing to one’s thought. More than one face among the Bowdens

showed that only opportunity and stimulus were lacking,—a narrow set of

circumstances had caged a fine able character and held it captive. One

sees exactly the same types in a country gathering as in the most

brilliant city company. You are safe to be understood if the spirit of

your speech is the same for one neighbor as for the other.

XIX.

THE FEAST’S END.

The feast was a noble feast, as has already been said. There was an

elegant ingenuity displayed in the form of pies which delighted my

heart. Once acknowledge that an American pie is far to be preferred to

its humble ancestor, the English tart, and it is joyful to be reassured

at a Bowden reunion that invention has not yet failed. Beside a

delightful variety of material, the decorations went beyond all my

former experience; dates and names were wrought in lines of pastry and

frosting on the tops. There was even more elaborate reading matter on an

excellent early-apple pie which we began to share and eat, precept upon

precept. Mrs. Todd helped me generously to the whole word _Bowden_, and

consumed _Reunion_ herself, save an undecipherable fragment; but the

most renowned essay in cookery on the tables was a model of the old

Bowden house made of durable gingerbread, with all the windows and doors

in the right places, and sprigs of genuine lilac set at the front. It

must have been baked in sections, in one of the last of the great brick

ovens, and fastened together on the morning of the day. There was a

general sigh when this fell into ruin at the feast’s end, and it was

shared by a great part of the assembly, not without seriousness, and as

if it were a pledge and token of loyalty. I met the maker of the

gingerbread house, which had called up lively remembrances of a childish

story. She had the gleaming eye of an enthusiast and a look of high

ideals.

“I could just as well have made it all of frosted cake,” she said, “but

’twouldn’t have been the right shade; the old house, as you observe, was

never painted, and I concluded that plain gingerbread would represent it

best. It wasn’t all I expected it would be,” she said sadly, as many an

artist had said before her of his work.

There were speeches by the ministers; and there proved to be a historian

among the Bowdens, who gave some fine anecdotes of the family history;

and then appeared a poetess, whom Mrs. Todd regarded with wistful

compassion and indulgence, and when the long faded garland of verses

came to an appealing end, she turned to me with words of praise.

“Sounded pretty,” said the generous listener. “Yes, I thought she did

very well. We went to school together, an’ Mary Anna had a very hard

time; trouble was, her mother thought she’d given birth to a genius, an’

Mary Anna’s come to believe it herself. There, I don’t know what we

should have done without her; there ain’t nobody else that can write

poetry between here and ’way up towards Rockland; it adds a great deal

at such a time. When she speaks o’ those that are gone, she feels it

all, and so does everybody else, but she harps too much. I’d laid half

of that away for next time, if I was Mary Anna. There comes mother to

speak to her, an’ old Mr. Gilbraith’s sister; now she’ll be heartened

right up. Mother’ll say just the right thing.”

The leave-takings were as affecting as the meetings of these old friends

had been. There were enough young persons at the reunion, but it is the

old who really value such opportunities; as for the young, it is the

habit of every day to meet their comrades,—the time of separation has

not come. To see the joy with which these elder kinsfolk and

acquaintances had looked in one another’s faces, and the lingering touch

of their friendly hands; to see these affectionate meetings and then the

reluctant partings, gave one a new idea of the isolation in which it was

possible to live in that after all thinly settled region. They did not

expect to see one another again very soon; the steady, hard work on the

farms, the difficulty of getting from place to place, especially in

winter when boats were laid up, gave double value to any occasion which

could bring a large number of families together. Even funerals in this

country of the pointed firs were not without their social advantages and

satisfactions. I heard the words “next summer” repeated many times,

though summer was still ours and all the leaves were green.

The boats began to put out from shore, and the wagons to drive away.

Mrs. Blackett took me into the old house when we came back from the

grove: it was her father’s birthplace and early home, and she had spent

much of her own childhood there with her grandmother. She spoke of those

days as if they had but lately passed; in fact, I could imagine that the

house looked almost exactly the same to her. I could see the brown

rafters of the unfinished roof as I looked up the steep staircase,

though the best room was as handsome with its good wainscoting and touch

of ornament on the cornice as any old room of its day in a town.

Some of the guests who came from a distance were still sitting in the

best room when we went in to take leave of the master and mistress of

the house. We all said eagerly what a pleasant day it had been, and how

swiftly the time had passed. Perhaps it is the great national

anniversaries which our country has lately kept, and the soldiers’

meetings that take place everywhere, which have made reunions of every

sort the fashion. This one, at least, had been very interesting. I

fancied that old feuds had been overlooked, and the old saying that

blood is thicker than water had again proved itself true, though from

the variety of names one argued a certain adulteration of the Bowden

traits and belongings. Clannishness is an instinct of the heart,—it is

more than a birthright, or a custom; and lesser rights were forgotten in

the claim to a common inheritance.

We were among the very last to return to our proper lives and lodgings.

I came near to feeling like a true Bowden, and parted from certain new

friends as if they were old friends; we were rich with the treasure of a

new remembrance.

At last we were in the high wagon again; the old white horse had been

well fed in the Bowden barn, and we drove away and soon began to climb

the long hill toward the wooded ridge. The road was new to me, as roads

always are, going back. Most of our companions had been full of anxious

thoughts of home,—of the cows, or of young children likely to fall into

disaster,—but we had no reasons for haste, and drove slowly along,

talking and resting by the way. Mrs. Todd said once that she really

hoped her front door had been shut on account of the dust blowing in,

but added that nothing made any weight on her mind except not to forget

to turn a few late mullein leaves that were drying on a newspaper in the

little loft. Mrs. Blackett and I gave our word of honor that we would

remind her of this heavy responsibility. The way seemed short, we had so

much to talk about. We climbed hills where we could see the great bay

and the islands, and then went down into shady valleys where the air

began to feel like evening, cool and damp with a fragrance of wet ferns.

Mrs. Todd alighted once or twice, refusing all assistance in securing

some boughs of a rare shrub which she valued for its bark, though she

proved incommunicative as to her reasons. We passed the house where we

had been so kindly entertained with doughnuts earlier in the day, and

found it closed and deserted, which was a disappointment.

“They must have stopped to tea somewheres and thought they’d finish up

the day,” said Mrs. Todd. “Those that enjoyed it best’ll want to get

right home so’s to think it over.”

“I didn’t see the woman there after all, did you?” asked Mrs. Blackett

as the horse stopped to drink at the trough.

“Oh yes, I spoke with her,” answered Mrs. Todd, with but scant interest

or approval. “She ain’t a member o’ our family.”

“I thought you said she resembled Cousin Pa’lina Bowden about the

forehead,” suggested Mrs. Blackett.

“Well, she don’t,” answered Mrs. Todd impatiently. “I ain’t one that’s

ord’narily mistaken about family likenesses, and she didn’t seem to meet

with friends, so I went square up to her. ‘I expect you’re a Bowden by

your looks,’ says I. ‘Yes, I take it you’re one o’ the Bowdens.’ ‘Lor’,

no,’ says she. ‘Dennett was my maiden name, but I married a Bowden for

my first husband. I thought I’d come an’ just see what was a-goin’ on’!”

Mrs. Blackett laughed heartily. “I’m goin’ to remember to tell William

o’ that,” she said. “There, Almiry, the only thing that’s troubled me

all this day is to think how William would have enjoyed it. I do so wish

William had been there.”

“I sort of wish he had, myself,” said Mrs. Todd frankly.

“There wa’n’t many old folks there, somehow,” said Mrs. Blackett, with a

touch of sadness in her voice. “There ain’t so many to come as there

used to be, I’m aware, but I expected to see more.”

“I thought they turned out pretty well, when you come to think of it;

why, everybody was sayin’ so an’ feelin’ gratified,” answered Mrs. Todd

hastily with pleasing unconsciousness; then I saw the quick color flash

into her cheek, and presently she made some excuse to turn and steal an

anxious look at her mother. Mrs. Blackett was smiling and thinking about

her happy day, though she began to look a little tired. Neither of my

companions was troubled by her burden of years. I hoped in my heart that

I might be like them as I lived on into age, and then smiled to think

that I too was no longer very young. So we always keep the same hearts,

though our outer framework fails and shows the touch of time.

“’Twas pretty when they sang the hymn, wasn’t it?” asked Mrs. Blackett

at supper-time, with real enthusiasm. “There was such a plenty o’ men’s

voices; where I sat it did sound beautiful. I had to stop and listen

when they came to the last verse.”

I saw that Mrs. Todd’s broad shoulders began to shake. “There was good

singers there; yes, there was excellent singers,” she agreed heartily,

putting down her tea-cup, “but I chanced to drift alongside Mis’ Peter

Bowden o’ Great Bay, an’ I couldn’t help thinkin’ if she was as far out

o’ town as she was out o’ tune, she wouldn’t get back in a day.”

XX.

ALONG SHORE.

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 fishermen 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 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 fishhouses, 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 a 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

cobble-stones and rocks to the field edge, where there was a heavy piece

of old wreck timber, like a ship’s bone, full of treenails. 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 sharpedged 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’t was

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 of 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.”