Lady Ferry Page #8

"Lady Ferry" is a novella by Sarah Orne Jewett that explores themes of love, loss, and the passage of time through the lens of a small New England community. The story revolves around the character of Lady Ferry, a former belle who grapples with her past while navigating the complexities of her relationships. Jewett's lyrical prose immerses readers in the rich imagery of the setting, highlighting the connection between personal history and the natural world. The work is a poignant reflection on the enduring impacts of memory and the deep-seated ties of community.

• Short story

								

cousin Matthew said at breakfast time that the tide had risen so that
it had carried off two old boats that had been left on the shore to go
to pieces. I sprang to the window, and sure enough they had
disappeared. I had played in one of them the day before. Should I tell
cousin Matthew what I had seen or dreamed? But I was too sure that he
would only laugh at me; and yet I was none the less sure that those
boats had carried passengers.

When I went out to the garden, I hurried to the porch, and saw, to my
disappointment, that there were great spiders' webs in the corners of
the door, and around the latch, and that it had not been opened since
I was there before. But I saw something shining in the grass, and
found it was a silver knee-buckle. It must have belonged to one of the
ghostly guests, and my faith in them came back for a while, in spite
of the cobwebs. By and by I bravely carried it up to Madam, and asked
if it were hers. Sometimes she would not answer for a long time, when
one rudely broke in upon her reveries, and she hesitated now, looking
at me with singular earnestness. Deborah was in the room; and, when
she saw the buckle, she quietly said that it had been on the
window-ledge the day before, and must have slipped out. "I found it
down  by the doorstep in the grass," said I humbly; and then I offered
Lady Ferry some strawberries which I had picked for her on a broad
green leaf, and came away again.

A day or two after this, while my dream was still fresh in my mind, I
went with Martha to her own home, which was a mile or two distant,--a
comfortable farmhouse for those days, where I was always made welcome.
The servants were all very kind to me: as I recall it now, they seemed
to have a pity for me, because I was the only child perhaps. I was
very happy, that is certain, and I enjoyed my childish amusements as
heartily as if there were no unfathomable mysteries or perplexities or
sorrows anywhere in the world.

I was sitting by the fireplace at Martha's, and her grandmother, who
was very old, and who was fast losing her wits, had been talking to me
about Madam. I do not remember what she said, at least, it made little
impression; but her grandson, a worthless fellow, sauntered in, and
began to tell a story of his own, hearing of whom we spoke. "I was
coming home late last night," said he, "and, as I was in that dark
place along by the Noroway pines, old Lady Ferry she went by me, and I
was near scared to death. She looked fearful tall--towered way up
above me. Her face was all lit up with blue light, and her feet didn't
touch the ground. She wasn't taking steps, she wasn't walking, but
movin' along like a sail-boat before the wind. I dodged behind some
little birches, and I was scared she'd see me; but she went right out
o' sight up the road. She ain't mortal."

"Don't scare the child with such foolishness," said his aunt
disdainfully. "You'll be seein' worse things a-dancin' before your
eyes than that poor, harmless old creatur' if you don't quit the ways
you've been following lately. If that was last night, you were too
drunk to see any thing;" and the fellow muttered, and went out,
banging the door. But the story had been told, and I was stiffened and
chilled with fright; and all the way home I was in terror, looking
fearfully behind me again and again.

When I saw cousin Agnes, I felt safer, and since cousin Matthew was
not at home, and we were alone, I could not resist telling her what I
had heard. She listened to me kindly, and seemed so confident that my
story was idle nonsense, that my fears were quieted. She talked to me
until I no longer was a believer in there being any unhappy mystery or
harmfulness; but I could not get over the fright, and I dreaded my
lonely room, and I was glad enough when cousin Agnes, with her
unfailing thoughtfulness, asked if I would like to have her come to
sleep with me, and even went up stairs with me at my own early
bedtime, saying that she should find it dull to sit all alone in the
parlor. So I went to sleep, thinking of what I had heard, it is true,
but no longer unhappy, because her dear arm was over me, and I was
perfectly safe. I waked up for a little while in the night, and it was
light in the room, so that I could see her face, fearless and sweet
and sad, and I wondered, in my blessed sense of security, if she were
ever afraid of any thing, and why I myself had been afraid of Lady
Ferry.

I will not tell other stories: they are much alike, all my memories of
those weeks and months at the ferry, and I have no wish to be
wearisome. The last time I saw Madam she was standing in the garden
door at dusk. I was going away before daylight in the morning. It was
in the autumn: some dry leaves flittered about on the stone at her
feet, and she was watching them. I said good-by again, and she did not
answer me; but I think she knew I was going away, and I am sure she
was sorry, for we had been a great deal together; and, child as I was,
I thought to how many friends she must have had to say farewell.

Although I wished to see my father and mother, I cried as if my heart
would break because I had to leave the ferry. The time spent there had
been the happiest time of all my life, I think. I was old enough to
enjoy, but not to suffer much, and there was singularly little to
trouble one. I did not know that my life was ever to be different. I
have learned, since those childish days, that one must battle against
storms if one would reach the calm which is to follow them. I have
learned also that anxiety, sorrow, and regret fall to the lot of every
one, and that there is always underlying our lives, this mysterious
and frightful element of existence; an uncertainty at times, though we
do trust every thing to God. Under the best-loved and most beautiful
face we know, there is hidden a skull as ghastly as that from which we
turn aside with a shudder in the anatomist's cabinet. We smile, and
are gay enough; God pity us! We try to forget our heart-aches and
remorse. We even call our lives commonplace, and, bearing our own
heaviest burdens silently, we try to keep the commandment, and to bear
one another's also. There is One who knows: we look forward, as he
means we shall, and there is always a hand ready to help us, though we
reach out for it doubtfully in the dark.

For many years after this summer was over, I lived in a distant,
foreign country; at last my father and I were to go back to America.
Cousin Agnes and cousin Matthew, and my mother, were all long since
dead, and I rarely thought of my childhood, for in an eventful and
hurried life the present claims one almost wholly. We were travelling
in Europe, and it happened that one day I was in a bookshop in
Amsterdam, waiting for an acquaintance whom I was to meet, and who was
behind time.

The shop was a quaint place, and I amused myself by looking over an
armful of old English books which a boy had thrown down near me,
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