William led the way across the pasture, and I followed with a deep sense
of pleased anticipation. I do not believe that my companion had expected
me to make any objection, but I knew that he was gratified by the easy
way that his plans for the day were being seconded. He gave a look at
the sky to see if there were any portents, but the sky was frankly blue;
even the doubtful morning haze had disappeared.
We went northward along a rough, clayey road, across a bare-looking,
sunburnt country full of tiresome long slopes where the sun was hot and
bright, and I could not help observing the forlorn look of the farms.
There was a great deal of pasture, but it looked deserted, and I
wondered afresh why the people did not raise more sheep when that seemed
the only possible use to make of their land. I said so to Mr. Blackett,
who gave me a look of pleased surprise.
“That’s what She always maintains,” he said eagerly. “She’s right about
it, too; well, you’ll see!” I was glad to find myself approved, but I
had not the least idea whom he meant, and waited until he felt like
speaking again.
A few minutes later we drove down a steep hill and entered a large tract
of dark spruce woods. It was delightful to be sheltered from the
afternoon sun, and when we had gone some distance in the shade, to my
great pleasure William turned the horse’s head toward some bars, which
he let down, and I drove through into one of those narrow, still,
sweet-scented by-ways which seem to be paths rather than roads. Often we
had to put aside the heavy drooping branches which barred the way, and
once, when a sharp twig struck William in the face, he announced with
such spirit that somebody ought to go through there with an axe, that I
felt unexpectedly guilty. So far as I now remember, this was William’s
only remark all the way through the woods to Thankful Hight’s folks, but
from time to time he pointed or nodded at something which I might have
missed: a sleepy little owl snuggled into the bend of a branch, or a
tall stalk of cardinal flowers where the sunlight came down at the edge
of a small, bright piece of marsh. Many times, being used to the company
of Mrs. Todd and other friends who were in the habit of talking, I came
near making an idle remark to William, but I was for the most part
happily preserved; to be with him only for a short time was to live on a
different level, where thoughts served best because they were thoughts
in common; the primary effect upon our minds of the simple things and
beauties that we saw. Once when I caught sight of a lovely gay
pigeon-woodpecker eyeing us curiously from a dead branch, and
instinctively turned toward William, he gave an indulgent, comprehending
nod which silenced me all the rest of the way. The wood-road was not a
place for common noisy conversation; one would interrupt the birds and
all the still little beasts that belonged there. But it was mortifying
to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self.
One need not always be saying something in this noisy world. I grew
conscious of the difference between William’s usual fashion of life and
mine; for him there were long days of silence in a sea-going boat, and I
could believe that he and his mother usually spoke very little because
they so perfectly understood each other. There was something peculiarly
unresponding about their quiet island in the sea, solidly fixed into the
still foundations of the world, against whose rocky shores the sea beats
and calls and is unanswered.
We were quite half an hour going through the woods; the horse’s feet
made no sound on the brown, soft track under the dark evergreens. I
thought that we should come out at last into more pastures, but there
was no half-wooded strip of land at the end; the high woods grew
squarely against an old stone wall and a sunshiny open field, and we
came out suddenly into broad daylight that startled us and even startled
the horse, who might have been napping as he walked, like an old
soldier. The field sloped up to a low unpainted house that faced the
east. Behind it were long, frost-whitened ledges that made the hill,
with strips of green turf and bushes between. It was the wildest, most
Titanic sort of pasture country up there; there was a sort of daring in
putting a frail wooden house before it, though it might have the homely
field and honest woods to front against. You thought of the elements and
even of possible volcanoes as you looked up the stony heights. Suddenly
I saw that a region of what I had thought gray stones was slowly moving,
as if the sun was making my eyesight unsteady.
“There’s the sheep!” exclaimed William, pointing eagerly. “You see the
sheep?” and sure enough, it was a great company of woolly backs, which
seemed to have taken a mysterious protective resemblance to the ledges
themselves. I could discover but little chance for pasturage on that
high sunburnt ridge, but the sheep were moving steadily in a satisfied
way as they fed along the slopes and hollows.
“I never have seen half so many sheep as these, all summer long!” I
cried with admiration.
“There ain’t so many,” answered William soberly. “It’s a great sight.
They do so well because they’re shepherded, but you can’t beat sense
into some folks.”
“You mean that somebody stays and watches them?” I asked.
“She observed years ago in her readin’ that they don’t turn out their
flocks without protection anywhere but in the State o’ Maine,” returned
William. “First thing that put it into her mind was a little old book
mother’s got; she read it one time when she come out to the Island. They
call it the ‘Shepherd o’ Salisbury Plain.’ ’Twasn’t the purpose o’ the
book to most, but when she read it, ‘There, Mis’ Blackett!’ she said,
‘that’s where we’ve all lacked sense; our Bibles ought to have taught us
that what sheep need is a shepherd.’ You see most folks about here gave
up sheepraisin’ years ago ‘count o’ the dogs. So she gave up
school-teachin’ and went out to tend her flock, and has shepherded ever
since, an’ done well.”
For William, this approached an oration. He spoke with enthusiasm, and I
shared the triumph of the moment. “There she is now!” he exclaimed, in a
different tone, as the tall figure of a woman came following the flock
and stood still on the ridge, looking toward us as if her eyes had been
quick to see a strange object in the familiar emptiness of the field.
William stood up in the wagon, and I thought he was going to call or
wave his hand to her, but he sat down again more clumsily than if the
wagon had made the familiar motion of a boat, and we drove on toward the
house.
It was a most solitary place to live,—a place where one might think that
a life could hide itself. The thick woods were between the farm and the
main road, and as one looked up and down the country, there was no other
house in sight.
“Potatoes look well,” announced William. “The old folks used to say that
there wa’n’t no better land outdoors than the Hight field.”
I found myself possessed of a surprising interest in the shepherdess,
who stood far away in the hill pasture with her great flock, like a
figure of Millet’s, high against the sky.