A White Heron and Other Stories Read online

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  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

  GENERAL EDITOR: PAUL NEGRI

  EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: SUSAN L. RATTINER

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1999 by Dover Publications, Inc.

  All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 1999; is a new selection of ten short stories reprinted from standard texts. A new introductory Note has been specially prepared for this edition.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909.

  A white heron, and other stories / Sarah Orne Jewett.

  p. cm.—(Dover thrift editions)

  9780486158594

  1. United States—Social life and customs—19th century Fiction. 2. New England—Social life and customs Fiction. 3. Women—New England Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.

  PS2131 1999b

  813’.4—dc21

  99-38635

  CIP

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

  Note

  “My dear father; my dear friend; the best and wisest man I ever knew.”

  —epigraph to Country By-Ways (1881)

  PROFOUNDLY INFLUENCED by her physician father, Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), the second of three daughters, was born in South Berwick, Maine. Sickly as a child, she often accompanied her father on his rural rounds, absorbing vital information about people in her home state. This paternal influence inculcated not only an abiding respect and admiration for her father; it also spawned a tangible wealth of raw material from which she later extracted ideas. Discussions with her father on these outings often touched upon their shared love of literature. Among her favorite authors and influences were Leo Tolstoy, Gustave Flaubert, and Jane Austen. Jewett turned to writing when habitual ill health prevented her from pursuing a career in medicine.

  Evident in her writings is the pride she took in her community and her quest to preserve the provincial way of life that was rapidly heading toward extinction. Deeply rooted in Maine, she valued continuity above all else and staunchly resisted change of any kind. Her devotion to her town, kindled time and again, shines through her best works. Her excellently crafted sketches of small-town life feature all the minutiae that only a longtime resident can bring to the fore.

  Not deceived by the outwardly bland façade that small towns are known for, Jewett was able to transform her stories into genuine portrayals, as character development was clearly her forte. Rural life, so comfortable and familiar to Jewett, was brought vividly to life through her sketches. Her first short story, “Jenny Garrow’s Lover,” was published under a pseudonym in The Flag of Our Nation in 1868, and then another of Jewett’s short stories, “Mr. Bruce,” was accepted by the Atlantic Monthly. Thereafter, she regularly contributed stories and poems to magazines. Her first Maine story, “The Shore House,” set in fictional Deephaven, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1873. At the urging of William Dean Howells, her literary mentor and editor of the Atlantic Monthly at that time, she published Deephaven (1877), a compilation of local-color stories that were originally published in the magazine over the course of several years.

  Jewett, through her long-standing friendship with Howells, became an influential member of Boston’s literary circle, which also included John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Willa Cather. Bereft after her father’s death in 1878, Jewett found solace with Annie Fields, the wife of publisher James Fields. The pair soon forged a close relationship, sharing an enduring camaraderie that lasted until Jewett’s death in 1909. Perhaps it was this friendship in particular that inspired Jewett to focus on the prominent theme of female friendships that recurs in many of her short stories.

  Of her twenty volumes, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered Jewett’s finest work and remains a classic. Some of her other novels and collected short stories include Country By-Ways (1881), A Country Doctor (1884), A Marsh Island (1885), and The Tory Lover (1901). The title story of A White Heron and Other Stories (1886) continues to be her best-known individual tale. In 1902, a crippling carriage accident abruptly ended her writing career. Jewett died of a stroke in 1909, in the same house in which she was born in her beloved Maine.

  The present edition is a new selection of ten of Jewett’s short stories, reprinted from standard texts. The stories that appear here are arranged chronologically.

  Table of Contents

  DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS UNABRIDGED

  Title Page

  DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

  Copyright Page

  Note

  A White Heron

  The Dulham Ladies

  Miss Tempy’s Watchers

  Miss Peck’s Promotion

  The Courting of Sister Wisby

  The Town Poor

  The Passing of Sister Barsett

  Miss Esther’s Guest

  The Guests of Mrs. Timms

  The Foreigner

  A White Heron

  I

  THE WOODS WERE already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o
’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior, but a valued companion for all that. They were going away from the western light, and striking deep into the dark woods, but their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not.

  There was hardly a night the summer through when the old cow could be found waiting at the pasture bars; on the contrary, it was her greatest pleasure to hide herself away among the high huckleberry bushes, and though she wore a loud bell she had made the discovery that if one stood perfectly still it would not ring. So Sylvia had to hunt for her until she found her, and call Co’! Co’! with never an answering Moo, until her childish patience was quite spent. If the creature had not given good milk and plenty of it, the case would have seemed very different to her owners. Besides, Sylvia had all the time there was, and very little use to make of it. Sometimes in pleasant weather it was a consolation to look upon the cow’s pranks as an intelligent attempt to play hide and seek, and as the child had no playmates she lent herself to this amusement with a good deal of zest. Though this chase had been so long that the wary animal herself had given an unusual signal of her whereabouts, Sylvia had only laughed when she came upon Mistress Moolly at the swamp-side, and urged her affectionately homeward with a twig of birch leaves. The old cow was not inclined to wander farther, she even turned in the right direction for once as they left the pasture, and stepped along the road at a good pace. She was quite ready to be milked now, and seldom stopped to browse. Sylvia wondered what her grandmother would say because they were so late. It was a great while since she had left home at half past five o’clock, but everybody knew the difficulty of making this errand a short one. Mrs. Tilley had chased the hornéd torment too many summer evenings herself to blame any one else for lingering, and was only thankful as she waited that she had Sylvia, nowadays, to give such valuable assistance. The good woman suspected that Sylvia loitered occasionally on her own account; there never was such a child for straying about out-of-doors since the world was made! Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm. She thought often with wistful compassion of a wretched dry geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.

  “‘Afraid of folks,’” old Mrs. Tilley said to herself, with a smile, after she had made the unlikely choice of Sylvia from her daughter’s houseful of children, and was returning to the farm. “‘Afraid of folks,’ they said! I guess she won’t be troubled no great with ’em up to the old place!” When they reached the door of the lonely house and stopped to unlock it, and the cat came to purr loudly, and rub against them, a deserted pussy, indeed, but fat with young robins, Sylvia whispered that this was a beautiful place to live in, and she never should wish to go home.

  The companions followed the shady woodroad, the cow taking slow steps, and the child very fast ones. The cow stopped long at the brook to drink, as if the pasture were not half a swamp, and Sylvia stood still and waited, letting her bare feet cool themselves in the shoal water, while the great twilight moths struck softly against her. She waded on through the brook as the cow moved away, and listened to the thrushes with a heart that beat fast with pleasure. There was a stirring in the great boughs overhead. They were full of little birds and beasts that seemed to be wide-awake, and going about their world, or else saying good-night to each other in sleepy twitters. Sylvia herself felt sleepy as she walked along. However, it was not much farther to the house, and the air was soft and sweet. She was not often in the woods so late as this, and it made her feel as if she were a part of the gray shadows and the moving leaves. She was just thinking how long it seemed since she first came to the farm a year ago, and wondering if everything went on in the noisy town just the same as when she was there; the thought of the great red-faced boy who used to chase and frighten her made her hurry along the path to escape from the shadow of the trees.

  Suddenly this little woods-girl is horror-stricken to hear a clear whistle not very far away. Not a bird’s whistle, which would have a sort of friendliness, but a boy’s whistle, determined, and somewhat aggressive. Sylvia left the cow to whatever sad fate might await her, and stepped discreetly aside into the bushes, but she was just too late. The enemy had discovered her, and called out in a very cheerful and persuasive tone, “Halloa, little girl, how far is it to the road?” and trembling Sylvia answered almost inaudibly, “A good ways.”

  She did not dare to look boldly at the tall young man, who carried a gun over his shoulder, but she came out of her bush and again followed the cow, while he walked alongside.

  “I have been hunting for some birds,” the stranger said kindly, “and I have lost my way, and need a friend very much. Don’t be afraid,” he added gallantly. “Speak up and tell me what your name is, and whether you think I can spend the night at your house, and go out gunning early in the morning.”

  Sylvia was more alarmed than before. Would not her grandmother consider her much to blame? But who could have foreseen such an accident as this? It did not appear to be her fault, and she hung her head as if the stem of it were broken, but managed to answer “Sylvy,” with much effort when her companion again asked her name.

  Mrs. Tilley was standing in the doorway when the trio came into view. The cow gave a loud moo by way of explanation.

  “Yes, you’d better speak up for yourself, you old trial! Where’s she tucked herself away this time, Sylvy?” Sylvia kept an awed silence; she knew by instinct that her grandmother did not comprehend the gravity of the situation. She must be mistaking the stranger for one of the farmer-lads of the region.

  The young man stood his gun beside the door, and dropped a heavy game-bag beside it; then he bade Mrs. Tilley good-evening, and repeated-his wayfarer’s story, and asked if he could have a night’s lodging.

  “Put me anywhere you like,” he said. “I must be off early in the morning, before day; but I am very hungry, indeed. You can give me some milk at any rate, that’s plain.”

  “Dear sakes, yes,” responded the hostess, whose long slumbering hospitality seemed to be easily awakened. “You might fare better if you went out on the main road a mile or so, but you’re welcome to what we’ve got. I’ll milk right off, and you make yourself at home. You can sleep on husks or feathers,” she proffered graciously. “I raised them all myself. There’s good pasturing for geese just below here towards the ma’sh. Now step round and set a plate for the gentleman, Sylvy!” And Sylvia promptly stepped. She was glad to have something to do, and she was hungry herself.

  It was a surprise to find so clean and comfortable a little dwelling in this New England wilderness. The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive housekeeping, and the dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens. This was the best thrift of an old-fashioned farmstead, though on such a small scale that it seemed like a hermitage. He listened eagerly to the old woman’s quaint talk, he watched Sylvia’s pale face and shining gray eyes with ever growing enthusiasm, and insisted that this was the best supper he had eaten for a month; then, afterward, the new-made friends sat down in the doorway together while the moon came up.

  Soon it would be berry-time, and Sylvia was a great help at picking. The cow was a good milker, though a plaguy thing to keep track of, the hostess gossiped frankly, adding presently that she had buried four children, so that Sylvia’s mother, and a son (who might be dead) in California were all the children she had left. “Dan, my boy, was a great hand to go gunning,” she explained sadly. “I never wanted for pa’tridges or gray squer’ls while he was to home. He’s been a great wand’rer, I expect, and he’s no hand to write letters. There, I don’t blame him, I’d ha’ seen the world myself if it had been so I could.

  “Sylvi
a takes after him,” the grandmother continued affectionately, after a minute’s pause. “There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know her way over, and the wild creatur’s counts her one o’ themselves. Squer’ls she’ll tame to come an’ feed right out o’ her hands, and all sorts o’ birds. Last winter she got the jay-birds to bangeing1 here, and I believe she’d ’a’ scanted herself of her own meals to have plenty to throw out amongst ‘em, if I hadn’t kep’ watch. Anything but crows, I tell her, I’m willin’ to help support,—though Dan he went an’ tamed one o’ them that did seem to have reason same as folks. It was round here a good spell after he went away. Dan an’ his father they didn’t hitch,—but he never held up his head ag’in after Dan had dared him an’ gone off.”

  The guest did not notice this hint of family sorrows in his eager interest in something else.

  “So Sylvy knows all about birds, does she?” he exclaimed, as he looked round at the little girl who sat, very demure but increasingly sleepy, in the moonlight. “I am making a collection of birds myself. I have been at it ever since I was a boy.” (Mrs. Tilley smiled.) “There are two or three very rare ones I have been hunting for these five years. I mean to get them on my own ground if they can be found.”

  “Do you cage ’em up?” asked Mrs. Tilley doubtfully, in response to this enthusiastic announcement.

  “Oh, no, they’re stuffed and preserved, dozens and dozens of them,” said the ornithologist, “and I have shot or snared every one myself. I caught a glimpse of a white heron three miles from here on Saturday, and I have followed it in this direction. They have never been found in this district at all. The little white heron, it is,” and he turned again to look at Sylvia with the hope of discovering that the rare bird was one of her acquaintances.