“I git feelin’ so sometimes I have to lay everything by an’ go out door.
She was a sweet pretty creatur’ long’s she lived,” the old man added
mournfully. “There’s that little rockin’ chair o’ her’n, I set an’
notice it an’ think how strange ’tis a creatur’ like her should be gone
an’ that chair be here right in its old place.”
“I wish I had known her; Mrs. Todd told me about your wife one day,” I
said.
“You’d have liked to come and see her; all the folks did,” said poor
Elijah. “She’d been so pleased to hear everything and see somebody new
that took such an int’rest. She had a kind o’ gift to make it pleasant
for folks. I guess likely Almiry Todd told you she was a pretty woman,
especially in her young days; late years, too, she kep’ her looks and
come to be so pleasant lookin’. There, ’tain’t so much matter, I shall
be done afore a great while. No; I sha’n’t trouble the fish a great
sight more.”
The old widower sat with his head bowed over his knitting, as if he were
hastily shortening the very thread of time. The minutes went slowly by.
He stopped his work and clasped his hands firmly together. I saw he had
forgotten his guest, and I kept the afternoon watch with him. At last he
looked up as if but a moment had passed of his continual loneliness.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m one that has seen trouble,” he said, and began to knit
again.
The visible tribute of his careful housekeeping, and the clean bright
room which had once enshrined his wife, and now enshrined her memory,
was very moving to me; he had no thought for any one else or for any
other place. I began to see her myself in her home,—a delicate-looking,
faded little woman, who leaned upon his rough strength and affectionate
heart, who was always watching for his boat out of this very window, and
who always opened the door and welcomed him when he came home.
“I used to laugh at her, poor dear,” said Elijah, as if he read my
thought. “I used to make light of her timid notions. She used to be
fearful when I was out in bad weather or baffled about gittin’ ashore.
She used to say the time seemed long to her, but I’ve found out all
about it now. I used to be dreadful thoughtless when I was a young man
and the fish was bitin’ well. I’d stay out late some o’ them days, an’ I
expect she’d watch an’ watch an’ lose heart a-waitin’. My heart alive!
what a supper she’d git, an’ be right there watchin’ from the door, with
somethin’ over her head if ’twas cold, waitin’ to hear all about it as I
come up the field. Lord, how I think o’ all them little things!
“This was what she called the best room; in this way,” he said
presently, laying his knitting on the table, and leading the way across
the front entry and unlocking a door, which he threw open with an air of
pride. The best room seemed to me a much sadder and more empty place
than the kitchen; its conventionalities lacked the simple perfection of
the humbler room and failed on the side of poor ambition; it was only
when one remembered what patient saving, and what high respect for
society in the abstract go to such furnishing that the little parlor was
interesting at all. I could imagine the great day of certain purchases,
the bewildering shops of the next large town, the aspiring anxious
woman, the clumsy sea-tanned man in his best clothes, so eager to be
pleased, but at ease only when they were safe back in the sail-boat
again, going down the bay with their precious freight, the hoarded money
all spent and nothing to think of but tiller and sail. I looked at the
unworn carpet, the glass vases on the mantelpiece with their prim
bunches of bleached swamp grass and dusty marsh rosemary, and I could
read the history of Mrs. Tilley’s best room from its very beginning.
“You see for yourself what beautiful rugs she could make; now I’m going
to show you her best tea things she thought so much of,” said the master
of the house, opening the door of a shallow cupboard. “That’s real
chiny, all of it on those two shelves,” he told me proudly. “I bought it
all myself, when we was first married, in the port of Bordeaux. There
never was one single piece of it broke until— Well, I used to say, long
as she lived, there never was a piece broke, but long at the last I
noticed she’d look kind o’ distressed, an’ I thought ’twas ‘count o’ me
boastin’. When they asked if they should use it when the folks was here
to supper, time o’ her funeral, I knew she’d want to have everything
nice, and I said ‘certain.’ Some o’ the women they come runnin’ to me
an’ called me, while they was takin’ of the chiny down, an’ showed me
there was one o’ the cups broke an’ the pieces wropped in paper and
pushed way back here, corner o’ the shelf. They didn’t want me to go an’
think they done it. Poor dear! I had to put right out o’ the house when
I see that. I knowed in one minute how ’twas. We’d got so used to sayin’
’twas all there just’s I fetched it home, an’ so when she broke that cup
somehow or ’nother she couldn’t frame no words to come an’ tell me. She
couldn’t think ’twould vex me, ’twas her own hurt pride. I guess there
wa’n’t no other secret ever lay between us.”
The French cups with their gay sprigs of pink and blue, the best
tumblers, an old flowered bowl and tea caddy, and a japanned waiter or
two adorned the shelves. These, with a few daguerreotypes in a little
square pile, had the closet to themselves, and I was conscious of much
pleasure in seeing them. One is shown over many a house in these days
where the interest may be more complex, but not more definite.
“Those were her best things, poor dear,” said Elijah as he locked the
door again. “She told me that last summer before she was taken away that
she couldn’t think o’ anything more she wanted, there was everything in
the house, an’ all her rooms was furnished pretty. I was goin’ over to
the Port, an’ inquired for errands. I used to ask her to say what she
wanted, cost or no cost—she was a very reasonable woman, an’ ’twas the
place where she done all but her extra shopping. It kind o’ chilled me
up when she spoke so satisfied.”
“You don’t go out fishing after Christmas?” I asked, as we came back to
the bright kitchen.
“No; I take stiddy to my knitting after January sets in,” said the old
seafarer. “’Tain’t worth while, fish make off into deeper water an’ you
can’t stand no such perishin’ for the sake o’ what you get. I leave out
a few traps in sheltered coves an’ do a little lobsterin’ on fair days.
The young fellows braves it out, some on ’em; but, for me, I lay in my
winter’s yarn an’ set here where ’tis warm, an’ knit an’ take my
comfort. Mother learnt me once when I was a lad; she was a beautiful
knitter herself. I was laid up with a bad knee, an’ she said ’twould
take up my time an’ help her; we was a large family. They’ll buy all the
folks can do down here to Addicks’ store. They say our Dunnet stockin’s
is gettin’ to be celebrated up to Boston,—good quality o’ wool an’ even
knittin’ or somethin’. I’ve always been called a pretty hand to do
nettin’, but seines is master cheap to what they used to be when they
was all hand worked. I change off to nettin’ long towards spring, and I
piece up my trawls and lines and get my fishin’ stuff to rights. Lobster
pots they require attention, but I make ’em up in spring weather when
it’s warm there in the barn. No; I ain’t one o’ them that likes to set
an’ do nothin’.
“You see the rugs, poor dear did them; she wa’n’t very partial to
knittin’,” old Elijah went on, after he had counted his stitches. “Our
rugs is beginnin’ to show wear, but I can’t master none o’ them womanish
tricks. My sister, she tinkers ’em up. She said last time she was here
that she guessed they’d last my time.”
“The old ones are always the prettiest,” I said.
“You ain’t referrin’ to the braided ones now?” answered Mr. Tilley. “You
see ours is braided for the most part, an’ their good looks is all in
the beginnin’. Poor dear used to say they made an easier floor. I go
shufflin’ round the house same’s if ’twas a bo’t, and I always used to
be stubbin’ up the corners o’ the hooked kind. Her an’ me was always
havin’ our jokes together same’s a boy an’ girl. Outsiders never’d know
nothin’ about it to see us. She had nice manners with all, but to me
there was nobody so entertainin’. She’d take off anybody’s natural talk
winter evenin’s when we set here alone, so you’d think ’twas them
a-speakin’. There, there!”
I saw that he had dropped a stitch again, and was snarling the blue yarn
round his clumsy fingers. He handled it and threw it off at arm’s length
as if it were a cod line; and frowned impatiently, but I saw a tear
shining on his cheek.
I said that I must be going, it was growing late, and asked if I might
come again, and if he would take me out to the fishing grounds some day.
“Yes, come any time you want to,” said my host, “’tain’t so pleasant as
when poor dear was here. Oh, I didn’t want to lose her an’ she didn’t
want to go, but it had to be. Such things ain’t for us to say; there’s
no yes an’ no to it.
“You find Almiry Todd one o’ the best o’ women?” said Mr. Tilley as we
parted. He was standing in the doorway and I had started off down the
narrow green field. “No, there ain’t a better hearted woman in the State
o’ Maine. I’ve known her from a girl. She’s had the best o’ mothers. You
tell her I’m liable to fetch her up a couple or three nice good mackerel
early to-morrow,” he said. “Now don’t let it slip your mind. Poor dear,
she always thought a sight o’ Almiry, and she used to remind me there
was nobody to fish for her; but I don’t rec’lect it as I ought to. I see
you drop a line yourself very handy now an’ then.”
We laughed together like the best of friends, and I spoke again about
the fishing grounds, and confessed that I had no fancy for a southerly
breeze and a ground swell.
“Nor me neither,” said the old fisherman. “Nobody likes ’em, say what
they may. Poor dear was disobliged by the mere sight of a bo’t. Almiry’s
got the best o’ mothers, I expect you know; Mis’ Blackett out to Green
Island; and we was always plannin’ to go out when summer come; but
there, I couldn’t pick no day’s weather that seemed to suit her just
right. I never set out to worry her neither, ’twa’n’t no kind o’ use;
she was so pleasant we couldn’t have no fret nor trouble. ’Twas never
‘you dear an’ you darlin’’ afore folks, an’ ‘you divil’ behind the
door!”
As I looked back from the lower end of the field I saw him still
standing, a lonely figure in the doorway. “Poor dear,” I repeated to
myself half aloud; “I wonder where she is and what she knows of the
little world she left. I wonder what she has been doing these eight
years!”