The Life of Nancy

by Sarah Orne Jewett

On the road home from the Packer farm that winter afternoon Mr. Ferris's sleigh-bells sounded lonely, and nobody was met or overtaken to whom he could brag of his success. Now and then he looked back with joy to the hill behind the Packer house, where the assailed pine-trees still stood together, superb survivors of an earlier growth. The snow was white about them now, but in summer they stood near the road at the top of a broad field which had been won from wild land by generation after generation of the Packers. Whatever man's hands have handled, and his thoughts have centred in, gives something back to man, and becomes charged with his transferred life, and brought into relationship. The great pines could remember all the Packers, if they could remember anything; they were like some huge archaic creatures whose thoughts were slow and dim. So many anxious eyes had sought these trees from the sea, so many wanderers by land had gladly welcomed the far sight of them in coming back to the old town, it must have been that the great live things felt their responsibility as landmarks and sentinels. How could any fisherman find the deep-sea fishing-grounds for cod and haddock without bringing them into range with a certain blue hill far inland, or with the steeple of the old church on the Wilton road? How could a hurrying boat find the short way into harbor before a gale without sighting the big trees from point to point among the rocky shallows? It was a dangerous bit of coast in every way, and every fisherman and pleasure-boatman knew the pines on Packer's Hill. As for the Packers themselves, the first great adventure for a child was to climb alone to the great pines, and to see an astonishing world from beneath their shadow; and as the men and women of the family grew old, they sometimes made an effort to climb the hill once more in summer weather, to sit in the shelter of the trees, where the breeze was cool, and to think of what had passed, and to touch the rough bark with affectionate hands. The boys went there when they came home from voyages at sea; the girls went there with their lovers. The trees were like friends, and whether you looked seaward, being in an inland country, or whether you looked shoreward, being on the sea, there they stood and grew in their places, while a worldful of people lived and died, and again and again new worldfuls were born and passed away, and still these landmark pines lived their long lives, and were green and vigorous yet.

III.

There was a fishing-boat coming into the neighboring cove, as has already been said, while Ferris and John Packer stood together talking in the yard. In this fishing-boat were two other men, younger and lighter-hearted, if it were only for the reason that neither of them had such a store of petty ill deeds and unkindnesses to remember in dark moments. They were in an old dory, and there was much ice clinging to her, inside and out, as if the fishers had been out for many hours. There were only a few cod lying around in the bottom, already stiffened in the icy air. The wind was light, and one of the men was rowing with short, jerky strokes, to help the sail, while the other held the sheet and steered with a spare oar that had lost most of its blade. The wind came in flaws, chilling, and mischievous in its freaks. "I ain't goin' out any more this year," said the younger man, who rowed, giving a great shudder. "I ain't goin' to perish myself for a pinch o' fish like this"—pushing them with his heavy boot. "Generally it's some warmer than we are gittin' it now, 'way into January. I've got a good chance to go into Otis's shoe-shop; Bill Otis was tellin' me he didn't know but he should go out West to see his uncle's folks,—he done well this last season, lobsterin',—an' I can have his bench if I want it. I do' know but I may make up some lobster-pots myself, evenin's an' odd times, and take to lobsterin' another season. I know a few good places that Bill Otis ain't struck; and then the scarcer lobsters git to be, the more you git for 'em, so now a poor ketch's 'most better 'n a good one."

"Le' me take the oars," said Joe Banks, without attempting a reply to such deep economical wisdom.

"You hold that sheet light," grumbled the other man, "or these gusts'll have us over. An' don't let that old oar o' yourn range about so. I can't git no hold o' the water." The boat lifted suddenly on a wave and sank again in the trough, the sail flapped, and a great cold splash of salt water came aboard, floating the fish to the stern, against Banks's feet. Chauncey, grumbling heartily, began to bail with a square-built wooden scoop for which he reached far behind him in the bow.

"They say the sea holds its heat longer than the land, but I guess summer's about over out here." He shivered again as he spoke. "Come, le' 's say this is the last trip, Joe."

Joe looked up at the sky, quite unconcerned. "We may have it warmer after we git more snow," he said. "I'd like to keep on myself until after the first o' the year, same's usual. I've got my reasons," he added. "But don't you go out no more, Chauncey."

"What you goin' to do about them trees o' Packer's?" asked Chauncey suddenly, and not without effort. The question had been on his mind all the afternoon. "Old Ferris has laid a bet that he'll git 'em anyway. I signed the paper they've got down to Fox'l Berry's store to the Cove. A number has signed it, but I shouldn't want to be the one to carry it up to Packer. They all want your name, but they've got some feelin' about how you're situated. Some o' the boys made me promise to speak to you, bein' 's we're keepin' together."

"You can tell 'em I'll sign it," said Joe Banks, flushing a warm, bright color under his sea-chilled skin. "I don't know what set him out to be so poor-behaved. He's a quick-tempered man, Packer is, but quick over. I never knew him to keep no such a black temper as this."

"They always say that you can't drive a Packer," said Chauncey, tugging against the uneven waves. "His mother came o' that old fightin' stock up to Bolton; 't was a different streak from his father's folks—they was different-hearted an' all pleasant. Ferris has done the whole mean business. John Packer'd be madder 'n he is now if he knowed how Ferris is makin' a tool of him. He got a little too much aboard long ago's Thanksgivin' Day, and bragged to me an' another fellow when he was balmy how he'd rile up Packer into sellin' them pines, and then he'd double his money on 'em up to Boston; he said there wa'n't no such a timber pine as that big one left in the State that he knows on. Why, 'tis 'most five foot through high's I can reach."