maids," said Mrs. Patton; "but she told me that it was a long spell
before she seemed to feel contented. She used to set on the steps and
cry by the hour together, and try to get in, to first one door and then
another. I used to think how bad Miss Katharine would feel; she set a
great deal by a cat, and she took notice of this as long as she did of
anything. Her mind failed her, you know. Great loss to Deephaven, she
was. Proud woman, and some folks were scared of her; but I always got
along with her, and I wouldn't ask for no kinder friend nor neighbor.
I've had my troubles, and I've seen the day I was suffering poor, and I
couldn't have brought myself to ask town help nohow, but I wish ye'd ha'
heared her scold me when she found it out; and she come marching into my
kitchen one morning, like a grenadier, and says she, 'Why didn't you
send and tell me how sick and poor you are?' says she. And she said
she'd ha' been so glad to help me all along, but she thought I had
means,--everybody did; and I see the tears in her eyes, but she was
scolding me and speaking as if she was dreadful mad. She made me
comfortable, and she sent over one o' her maids to see to me, and got
the doctor, and a load o' stuff come up from the store, so I didn't have
to buy anything for a good many weeks. I got better and so's to work,
but she never'd let me say nothing about it. I had a good deal o'
trouble, and I thought I'd lost my health, but I hadn't, and that was
thirty or forty years ago. There never was nothing going on at the great
house that she didn't have me over, sewing or cleaning or company; and
I got so that I knew how she liked to have things done. I felt as if it
was my own sister, though I never had one, when I was going over to help
lay her out. She used to talk as free to me as she would to Miss Lorimer
or Miss Carew. I s'pose ye ain't seen nothing o' them yet? She was a
good Christian woman, Miss Katharine was. 'The memory of the just is
blessed'; that's what Mr. Lorimer said in his sermon the Sunday after
she died, and there wasn't a blood-relation there to hear it. I declare
it looked pitiful to see that pew empty that ought to ha' been the
mourners' pew. Your mother, Mis' Lancaster, had to go home Saturday,
your father was going away sudden to Washington, I've understood, and
she come back again the first of the week. There! it didn't make no sort
o' difference, p'r'aps nobody thought of it but me. There hadn't been
anybody in the pew more than a couple o' times since she used to sit
there herself, regular as Sunday come." And Mrs. Patton looked for a
minute as if she were going to cry, but she changed her mind upon second
thought.
"Your mother gave me most of Miss Katharine's clothes; this cap belonged
to her, that I've got on now; it's 'most wore out, but it does for
mornings."
"O," said Kate, "I have two new ones for you in one of my trunks! Mamma
meant to choose them herself, but she had not time, and so she told me,
and I think I found the kind she thought you would like."
"Now I'm sure!" said Mrs. Patton, "if that ain't kind; you don't tell me
that Mis' Lancaster thought of me just as she was going off? I shall set
everything by them caps, and I'm much obliged to you too, Miss Kate. I
was just going to speak of that time you were here and saw the mug; you
trimmed a cap for Miss Katharine to give me, real Boston style. I guess
that box of cap-fixings is up on the top shelf of Miss Katharine's
closet now, to the left hand," said Mrs. Patton, with wistful certainty.
"She used to make her every-day caps herself, and she had some beautiful
materials laid away that she never used. Some folks has laughed at me
for being so particular 'bout wearing caps except for best, but I don't
know's it's presuming beyond my station, and somehow I feel more respect
for myself when I have a good cap on. I can't get over your mother's
rec'lecting about me; and she sent me a handsome present o' money this
spring for looking after the house. I never should have asked for a
cent; it's a pleasure to me to keep an eye on it, out o' respect to your
aunt. I was so pleased when I heard you were coming long o' your friend.
I like to see the old place open; it was about as bad as having no
meeting. I miss seeing the lights, and your aunt was a great hand for
lighting up bright; the big hall lantern was lit every night, and she
put it out when she went up stairs. She liked to go round same's if it
was day. You see I forget all the time she was sick, and go back to the
days when she was well and about the house. When her mind was failing
her, and she was up stairs in her room, her eyesight seemed to be lost
part of the time, and sometimes she'd tell us to get the lamp and a
couple o' candles in the middle o' the day, and then she'd be as
satisfied! But she used to take a notion to set in the dark, some
nights, and think, I s'pose. I should have forty fits, if I undertook
it. That was a good while ago; and do you rec'lect how she used to play
the piano? She used to be a great hand to play when she was young."
"Indeed I remember it," said Kate, who told me afterward how her aunt
used to sit at the piano in the twilight and play to herself. "She was
formerly a skilful musician," said my friend, "though one would not have
imagined she cared for music. When I was a child she used to play in
company of an evening, and once when I was here one of her old friends
asked for a tune, and she laughingly said that her day was over and her
fingers were stiff; though I believe she might have played as well as
ever then, if she had cared to try. But once in a while when she had
been quiet all day and rather sad--I am ashamed that I used to think she
was cross--she would open the piano and sit there until late, while I
used to be enchanted by her memories of dancing-tunes, and old psalms,
and marches and songs. There was one tune which I am sure had a history:
there was a sweet wild cadence in it, and she would come back to it
again and again, always going through with it in the same measured way.
I have remembered so many things about my aunt since I have been here,"
said Kate, "which I hardly noticed and did not understand when they
happened. I was afraid of her when I was a little girl, but I think if
I had grown up sooner, I should have enjoyed her heartily. It never used
to occur to me that she had a spark of tenderness or of sentiment, until
just before she was ill, but I have been growing more fond of her ever
since. I might have given her a great deal more pleasure. It was not
long after I was through school that she became so feeble, and of course
she liked best having mamma come to see her; one of us had to be at
home. I have thought lately how careful one ought to be, to be kind and
thoughtful to one's old friends. It is so soon too late to be good to
them, and then one is always so sorry."
I must tell you more of Mrs. Patton; of course it was not long before we
returned her call, and we were much entertained; we always liked to see
our friends in their own houses. Her house was a little way down the
road, unpainted and gambrel-roofed, but so low that the old lilac-bushes
which clustered round it were as tall as the eaves. The Widow Jim (as
nearly every one called her in distinction to the widow Jack Patton, who
was a tailoress and lived at the other end of the town) was a very
useful person. I suppose there must be her counterpart in all old New
England villages. She sewed, and she made elaborate rugs, and she had a
decided talent for making carpets,--if there were one to be made, which
must have happened seldom. But there were a great many to be turned and
made over in Deephaven, and she went to the Carews' and Lorimers' at
house-cleaning time or in seasons of great festivity. She had no equal
in sickness, and knew how to brew every old-fashioned dose and to make
every variety of herb-tea, and when her nursing was put to an end by her
patient's death, she was commander-in-chief at the funeral, and stood
near the doorway to direct the mourning friends to their seats; and I
have no reason to doubt that she sometimes even had the immense
responsibility of making out the order of the procession, since she had
all genealogy and relationship at her tongue's end. It was an awful
thing in Deephaven, we found, if the precedence was wrongly assigned,
and once we chanced to hear some bitter remarks because the cousins of
the departed wife had been placed after the husband's relatives,--"the
blood-relations ridin' behind them that was only kin by marriage! I
don't wonder they felt hurt!" said the person who spoke; a most
unselfish and unassuming soul, ordinarily.
Mrs. Patton knew everybody's secrets, but she told them judiciously if
at all. She chattered all day to you as a sparrow twitters, and you did
not tire of her; and Kate and I were never more agreeably entertained
than when she told us of old times and of Kate's ancestors and their
contemporaries; for her memory was wonderful, and she had either seen
everything that had happened in Deephaven for a long time, or had
received the particulars from reliable witnesses. She had known much
trouble; her husband had been but small satisfaction to her, and it was
not to be wondered at if she looked upon all proposed marriages with
compassion. She was always early at church, and she wore the same bonnet
that she had when Kate was a child; it was such a well-preserved, proper
black straw bonnet, with discreet bows of ribbon, and a useful lace veil
to protect it from the weather.
She showed us into the best room the first time we went to see her. It
was the plainest little room, and very dull, and there was an exact
sufficiency about its furnishings. Yet there was a certain dignity about
it; it was unmistakably a best room, and not a place where one might
make a litter or carry one's every-day work. You felt at once that
somebody valued the prim old-fashioned chairs, and the two half-moon
tables, and the thin carpet, which must have needed anxious stretching
every spring to make it come to the edge of the floor. There were some
mourning-pieces by way of decoration, inscribed with the names of Mrs.
Patton's departed friends,--two worked in crewel to the memory of her
father and mother, and two paper memorials, with the woman weeping under
the willow at the side of a monument. They were all brown with age; and
there was a sampler beside, worked by "Judith Beckett, aged ten," and
all five were framed in slender black frames and hung very high on the
walls. There was a rocking-chair which looked as if it felt too grand
for use, and considered itself imposing. It tilted far back on its
rockers, and was bent forward at the top to make one's head
uncomfortable. It need not have troubled itself; nobody would ever wish
to sit there. It was such a big rocking-chair, and Mrs. Patton was proud
of it; always generously urging her guests to enjoy its comfort, which
was imaginary with her, as she was so short that she could hardly have
climbed into it without assistance.
Mrs. Patton was a little ceremonious at first, but soon recovered
herself and told us a great deal which we were glad to hear. I asked her
once if she had not always lived at Deephaven. "Here and beyond East
Parish," said she. "Mr. Patton,--that was my husband,--he owned a good
farm there when I married him, but I come back here again after he died;
place was all mortgaged. I never got a cent, and I was poorer than when
I started. I worked harder 'n ever I did before or since to keep things
together, but 't wasn't any kind o' use. Your mother knows all about it,
Miss Kate,"--as if we might not be willing to believe it on her
authority. "I come back here a widow and destitute, and I tell you the
world looked fair to me when I left this house first to go over there.
Don't you run no risks, you're better off as you be, dears. But land
sakes alive, 'he' didn't mean no hurt! and he set everything by me when
he was himself. I don't make no scruples of speaking about it, everybody
knows how it was, but I did go through with everything. I never knew
what the day would bring forth," said the widow, as if this were the
first time she had had a chance to tell her sorrows to a sympathizing
audience. She did not seem to mind talking about the troubles of her
married life any more than a soldier minds telling the story of his
campaigns, and dwells with pride on the worst battle of all.
Her favorite subject always was Miss Brandon, and after a pause she said
that she hoped we were finding everything right in the house; she had
meant to take up the carpet in the best spare room, but it didn't seem
to need it; it was taken up the year before, and the room had not been
used since, there was not a mite of dust under it last time. And Kate
assured her, with an appearance of great wisdom, that she did not think
it could be necessary at all.
"I come home and had a good cry yesterday after I was over to see you,"
said Mrs. Patton, and I could not help wondering if she really could
cry, for she looked so perfectly dried up, so dry that she might rustle
in the wind. "Your aunt had been failin' so long that just after she
died it was a relief, but I've got so's to forget all about that, and I
miss her as she used to be; it seemed as if you had stepped into her
place, and you look some as she used to when she was young."
"You must miss her," said Kate, "and I know how much she used to depend
upon you. You were very kind to her."
"I sat up with her the night she died," said the widow, with mournful
satisfaction. "I have lived neighbor to her all my life except the
thirteen years I was married, and there wasn't a week I wasn't over to
the great house except I was off to a distance taking care of the sick.
When she got to be feeble she always wanted me to 'tend to the cleaning
and to see to putting the canopies and curtains on the bedsteads, and
she wouldn't trust nobody but me to handle some of the best china. I
used to say, 'Miss Katharine, why don't you have some young folks come
and stop with you? There's Mis' Lancaster's daughter a growing up'; but
she didn't seem to care for nobody but your mother. You wouldn't believe
what a hand she used to be for company in her younger days. Surprisin'
how folks alters. When I first rec'lect her much she was as straight as
an arrow, and she used to go to Boston visiting and come home with the
top of the fashion. She always did dress elegant. It used to be gay
here, and she was always going down to the Lorimers' or the Carews' to
tea, and they coming here. Her sister was married; she was a good deal
older; but some of her brothers were at home. There was your grandfather
and Mr. Henry. I don't think she ever got it over,--his disappearing so.
There were lots of folks then that's dead and gone, and they used to
have their card-parties, and old Cap'n Manning--he's dead and gone--used
to have 'em all to play whist every fortnight, sometimes three or four
tables, and they always had cake and wine handed round, or the cap'n
made some punch, like's not, with oranges in it, and lemons; _he_ knew
how! He was a bachelor to the end of his days, the old cap'n was, but he
used to entertain real handsome. I rec'lect one night they was a playin'
after the wine was brought in, and he upset his glass all over Miss
Martha Lorimer's invisible-green watered silk, and spoilt the better
part of two breadths. She sent right over for me early the next morning
to see if I knew of anything to take out the spots, but I didn't, though
I can take grease out o' most any material. We tried clear alcohol, and
saleratus-water, and hartshorn, and pouring water through, and heating
of it, and when we got through it was worse than when we started. She
felt dreadful bad about it, and at last she says, 'Judith, we won't work
over it any more, but if you 'll give me a day some time or 'nother,
we'll rip it up and make a quilt of it.' I see that quilt last time I
was in Miss Rebecca's north chamber. Miss Martha was her aunt; you never
saw her; she was dead and gone before your day. It was a silk old Cap'n
Peter Lorimer, her brother, who left 'em his money, brought home from
sea, and she had worn it for best and second best eleven year. It looked
as good as new, and she never would have ripped it up if she could have
matched it. I said it seemed to be a shame, but it was a curi's figure.
Cap'n Manning fetched her one to pay for it the next time he went to
Boston. She didn't want to take it, but he wouldn't take no for an
answer; he was free-handed, the cap'n was. I helped 'em make it 'long of
Mary Ann Simms the dressmaker,--she's dead and gone too,--the time it
was made. It was brown, and a beautiful-looking piece, but it wore
shiny, and she made a double-gown of it before she died."
Mrs. Patton brought Kate and me some delicious old-fashioned cake with
much spice in it, and told us it was made by old Mrs. Chantrey Brandon's
receipt which she got in England, that it would keep a year, and she
always kept a loaf by her, now that she could afford it; she supposed we
knew Miss Katharine had named her in her will long before she was sick.
"It has put me beyond fear of want," said Mrs. Patton. "I won't deny
that I used to think it would go hard with me when I got so old I
couldn't earn my living. You see I never laid up but a little, and it's
hard for a woman who comes of respectable folks to be a pauper in her
last days; but your aunt, Miss Kate, she thought of it too, and I'm sure
I'm thankful to be so comfortable, and to stay in my house, which I
couldn't have done, like's not. Miss Rebecca Lorimer said to me after I
got news of the will, 'Why, Mis' Patton, you don't suppose your friends
would ever have let you want!' And I says, 'My friends are kind,--the
Lord bless 'em!--but I feel better to be able to do for myself than to
be beholden.'"
After this long call we went down to the post-office, and coming home
stopped for a while in the old burying-ground, which we had noticed the
day before; and we sat for the first time on the great stone in the
wall, in the shade of a maple-tree, where we so often waited afterward
for the stage to come with the mail, or rested on our way home from a
walk. It was a comfortable perch; we used to read our letters there, I
remember.
I must tell you a little about the Deephaven burying-ground, for its
interest was inexhaustible, and I do not know how much time we may have
spent in reading the long epitaphs on the grave-stones and trying to
puzzle out the inscriptions, which were often so old and worn that we
could only trace a letter here and there. It was a neglected corner of
the world, and there were straggling sumachs and acacias scattered about
the enclosure, while a row of fine old elms marked the boundary of two
sides. The grass was long and tangled, and most of the stones leaned one
way or the other, and some had fallen flat. There were a few handsome
old family monuments clustered in one corner, among which the one that
marked Miss Brandon's grave looked so new and fresh that it seemed
inappropriate. "It should have been dingy to begin with, like the rest,"
said Kate one day; "but I think it will make itself look like its
neighbors as soon as possible."
There were many stones which were sacred to the memory of men who had
been lost at sea, almost always giving the name of the departed ship,
which was so kept in remembrance; and one felt as much interest in the
ship Starlight, supposed to have foundered off the Cape of Good Hope, as
in the poor fellow who had the ill luck to be one of her crew. There
were dozens of such inscriptions, and there were other stones
perpetuating the fame of Honourable gentlemen who had been members of
His Majesty's Council, or surveyors of His Majesty's Woods, or King's
Officers of Customs for the town of Deephaven. Some of the epitaphs were
beautiful, showing that tenderness for the friends who had died, that
longing to do them justice, to fully acknowledge their virtues and
dearness, which is so touching, and so unmistakable even under the
stiff, quaint expressions and formal words which were thought suitable
to be chiselled on the stones, so soon to be looked at carelessly by
the tearless eyes of strangers. We often used to notice names, and learn
their history from the old people whom we knew, and in this way we heard
many stories which we never shall forget. It is wonderful, the romance
and tragedy and adventure which one may find in a quiet old-fashioned
country town, though to heartily enjoy the every-day life one must care
to study life and character, and must find pleasure in thought and
observation of simple things, and have an instinctive, delicious
interest in what to other eyes is unflavored dulness.
To go back to Mrs. Patton; on our way home, after our first call upon
her, we stopped to speak to Mrs. Dockum, who mentioned that she had seen
us going in to the "Widow Jim's."
"Willin' woman," said Mrs. Dockum, "always been respected; got an
uncommon facility o' speech. I never saw such a hand to talk, but then
she has something to say, which ain't the case with everybody. Good
neighbor, does according to her means always. Dreadful tough time of it
with her husband, shif'less and drunk all his time. Noticed that dent in
the side of her forehead, I s'pose? That's where he liked to have killed
her; slung a stone bottle at her."
"_What!_" said Kate and I, very much shocked.
"She don't like to have it inquired about; but she and I were sitting up
with 'Manda Damer one night, and she gave me the particulars. I knew he
did it, for she had a fit o' sickness afterward. Had sliced cucumbers
for breakfast that morning; he was very partial to them, and he wanted
some vinegar. Happened to be two bottles in the cellar-way; were just
alike, and one of 'em was vinegar and the other had sperrit in it at
haying-time. He takes up the wrong one and pours on quick, and out come
the hayseed and flies, and he give the bottle a sling, and it hit her
there where you see the scar; might put the end of your finger into the
dent. He said he meant to break the bottle ag'in the door, but it went
slant-wise, sort of. I don' know, I'm sure" (meditatively). "She said he
was good-natured; it was early in the mornin', and he hadn't had time to
get upset; but he had a high temper naturally, and so much drink hadn't
made it much better. She had good prospects when she married him.
Six-foot-two and red cheeks and straight as a Noroway pine; had a good
property from his father, and his mother come of a good family, but he
died in debt; drank like a fish. Yes, 'twas a shame, nice woman; good
consistent church-member; always been respected; useful among the sick."
_Deephaven Society_
It was curious to notice, in this quaint little fishing-village by the
sea, how clearly the gradations of society were defined. The place
prided itself most upon having been long ago the residence of one
Governor Chantrey, who was a rich shipowner and East India merchant, and
whose fame and magnificence were almost fabulous. It was a never-ceasing
regret that his house should have burned down after he died, and there
is no doubt that if it were still standing it would rival any ruin of
the Old World.
The elderly people, though laying claim to no slight degree of present
consequence, modestly ignored it, and spoke with pride of the grand way
in which life was carried on by their ancestors, the Deephaven families
of old times. I think Kate and I were assured at least a hundred times
that Governor Chantrey kept a valet, and his wife, Lady Chantrey, kept a
maid, and that the governor had an uncle in England who was a baronet;
and I believe this must have been why our friends felt so deep an
interest in the affairs of the English nobility: they no doubt felt
themselves entitled to seats near the throne itself. There were formerly
five families who kept their coaches in Deephaven; there were balls at
the governor's, and regal entertainments at other of the grand mansions;
there is not a really distinguished person in the country who will not
prove to have been directly or indirectly connected with Deephaven. We
were shown the cellar of the Chantrey house, and the terraces, and a few
clumps of lilacs, and the grand rows of elms. There are still two of the
governor's warehouses left, but his ruined wharves are fast
disappearing, and are almost deserted, except by small barefooted boys
who sit on the edges to fish for sea-perch when the tide comes in. There
is an imposing monument in the burying-ground to the great man and his
amiable consort. I am sure that if there were any surviving relatives of
the governor they would receive in Deephaven far more deference than is
consistent with the principles of a republican government; but the
family became extinct long since, and I have heard, though it is not a
subject that one may speak of lightly, that the sons were unworthy their
noble descent and came to inglorious ends.
There were still remaining a few representatives of the old families,
who were treated with much reverence by the rest of the townspeople,
although they were, like the conies of Scripture, a feeble folk.
Deephaven is utterly out of fashion. It never recovered from the effects
of the embargo of 1807, and a sand-bar has been steadily filling in the
mouth of the harbor. Though the fishing gives what occupation there is
for the inhabitants of the place, it is by no means sufficient to draw
recruits from abroad. But nobody in Deephaven cares for excitement, and
if some one once in a while has the low taste to prefer a more active
life, he is obliged to go elsewhere in search of it, and is spoken of
afterward with kind pity. I well remember the Widow Moses said to me, in
speaking of a certain misguided nephew of hers, "I never could see what
could 'a' sot him out to leave so many privileges and go way off to
Lynn, with all them children too. Why, they lived here no more than a
cable's length from the meetin'-house!"