“I could just as well have made it all of frosted cake,” she said, “but ’t wouldn’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.
“ ’T was 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 teacup, “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.”
20.
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 fishhouse 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, ’t ain’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 sharp-edged little dwelling, which looked strangely modern for its owner. I should have much sooner believed that the smart young wholesale egg merchant of the Landing was its occupant than Mr. Tilley, since a man’s house is really but his larger body, and expresses in a way his nature and character.
I went up the field, following the smooth little path to the side door. As for using the front door, that was a matter of great ceremony; the long grass grew close against the high stone step, and a snowberry bush leaned over it, top-heavy with the weight of a morning-glory vine that had managed to take what the fishermen might call a half hitch about the door-knob. Elijah Tilley came to the side door to receive me; he was knitting a blue yarn stocking without looking on, and was warmly dressed for the season in a thick blue flannel shirt with white crockery buttons, a faded waistcoat and trousers heavily patched at the knees. These were not his fishing clothes. There was something delightful in the grasp of his hand, warm and clean, as if it never touched anything but the comfortable woolen yarn, instead of cold sea water and slippery fish.
“What are the painted stakes for, down in the field?” I hastened to ask, and he came out a step or two along the path to see; and looked at the stakes as if his attention were called to them for the first time.
The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction Page 14