The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett- Volume 1
Copyright© 2024 by Sarah Orne Jewett
Chapter 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 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.
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