Produced by A. Templeton, J. Sutherland, T. Allen and the
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MEADOW-GRASS
TALES OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE
By Alice Brown
1895
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
NUMBER FIVE
FARMER ELI'S VACATION
AFTER ALL
TOLD IN THE POORHOUSE
HEMAN'S MA
HEARTSEASE
MIS' WADLEIGH'S GUEST
A RIGHTEOUS BARGAIN
JOINT OWNERS IN SPAIN
AT SUDLEIGH FAIR
BANKRUPT
NANCY BOYD'S LAST SERMON
STROLLERS IN TIVERTON
TO M.G.R.
LOVER OF WOODS AND FIELD AND SEA.
NUMBER FIVE.
We who are Tiverton born, though false ambition may have ridden us to
market, or the world's voice incited us to kindred clamoring, have a
way of shutting our eyes, now and then, to present changes, and seeing
things as they were once, as they are still, in a certain sleepy yet
altogether individual corner of country life. And especially do we
delight in one bit of fine mental tracery, etched carelessly, yet for
all time, so far as our own' short span is concerned, by the unerring
stylus of youth: the outline of a little red schoolhouse, distinguished
from the other similar structures within Tiverton bounds by "District
No. V.," painted on a shingle, in primitive black letters, and nailed
aloft over the door. Up to the very hollow which made its playground
and weedy garden, the road was elm-bordered and lined with fair
meadows, skirted in the background by shadowy pines, so soft they did
not even wave; they only seemed to breathe. The treasures of the road!
On either side, the way was plumed and paved with beauties so rare that
now, disheartened dwellers in city streets, we covetously con over in
memory that roaming walk to school and home again. We know it now for
what it was, a daily progress of delight. We see again the old
watering-trough, decayed into the mellow loveliness of gray lichen and
greenest moss. Here beside the ditch whence the water flowed, grew the
pale forget-me-not and sticky star-blossomed cleavers. A step farther,
beyond the nook where the spring bubbled first, were the riches of the
common roadway; and over the gray, lichen-bearded fence, the growth of
stubbly upland pasture. Everywhere, in road and pasture too, thronged
milkweed, odorous haunt of the bee and those frailest butterflies of
the year, born of one family with drifting blossoms; and straightly
tall, the solitary mullein, dust-covered but crowned with a gold softer
and more to be desired than the pride of kings. Perhaps the carriage
folk from the outer world, who sometimes penetrate Tiverton's leafy
quiet, may wonder at the queer little enclosures of sticks and pebbles
on many a bare, tree-shaded slope along the road. "Left there from some
game!" they say to one another, and drive on, satisfied. But these are
no mere discarded playthings, dear ignorant travellers! They are tokens
of the mimic earnest with which child-life is ever seeking to sober
itself, and rushing unsummoned into the workaday fields of an aimlessly
frantic world. They are houses, and the stone boundaries are walls.
This tree stump is an armchair, this board a velvet sofa. Not more
truly is "this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog."
Across the road, at easy running distance from the schoolhouse at
noontime or recess, crawled the little river, with its inevitable
"hole," which each mother's son was warned to avoid in swimming, lest
he be seized with cramp there where the pool was bottomless. What eerie
wonders lurked within the mirror of those shallow brown waters! Long
black hairs cleaved and clung in their limpid flowing. To this day, I
know not whether they were horse-hairs, far from home, or swaying
willow roots; the boys said they were "truly" hairs of the kind
destined to become snakes in their last estate; and the girls,
listening, shivered with all Mother Eve's premonitory thrill along the
backbone. Wish-bugs, too, were here, skimming and darting. The
peculiarity of a wish-bug is that he will bestow upon you your heart's
desire, if only you hold him in the hand and wish. But the impossible
premise defeats the conclusion. You never do hold him long enough,
simply because you can't catch him in the first place. Yet the
fascinating possibility is like a taste for drink, or the glamour of
cards. Does the committee-man drive past to Sudleigh market, suggesting
the prospect of a leisurely return that afternoon, and consequent
dropping in to hear the geography class? Then do the laziest and most
optimistic boys betake them hastily from their dinner-pails to the
river, and spend their precious nooning in quest of the potent bug,
through whose spell the unwelcome visit may be averted. The time so
squandered in riotous gaming might have, fixed the afternoon's "North
Poles and Equators" triumphantly in mind, to the everlasting defiance
of all alien questioning; but no! for human delight lies ever in the
unattainable. The committee-man comes like Nemesis, _aequo pede_, the
lesson is unlearned, and the stern-fibred little teacher orders out the
rack known as staying after school. But what durance beyond hours in
the indescribably desolate schoolroom ever taught mortal boy to shun
the delusive insect created for his special undoing? So long as the
heart has woes of its own breeding, so long also will it dodge the
discipline of labor, and grasp at the flicker of an easy success.
On either side the little bridge (over which horses pounded with an
ominous thunder and a rain of dust on the head of him who lingered
beneath the sleepers, in a fearsome joy), the meadows were pranked with
purple iris and whispering rushes, mingling each its sweetness with the
good, rank smell of mud below. Here were the treasures of the
water-course, close hidden, or blowing in the light of day. The pale,
golden-hearted arrow-head neighbored the homespun pickerel-weed,
and--oh, mysterious glory from an oozy bed!--luscious, sun-golden
cow-lilies rose sturdily triumphant, dripping with color, glowing in
sheen. The button-bush hung out her balls, and white alder painted the
air with faint perfume; willow-herb built her bowery arches, and the
flags were ever glancing like swords of roistering knights. These
flags, be it known to such as have grown up in grievous ignorance of
the lore inseparable from "deestrick school," hold the most practical
significance in the mind of boy and girl; for they bring forth (I know
we thought for our delight alone!) a delicacy known as flag-buds,
everlastingly dear to the childish palate. These were devoured by the
wholesale in their season, and little mouths grew oozy-green as those
of happy beasties in June, from much champing and chewing. Did we lose
our appetite for the delectable dinner-pail through such literal going
to pasture? I think not. Tastes were elastic, in those days; and
Nature, so bullied, durst seldom revolt.
On one side, the nearest neighbor to the school lived at least a mile
away; but on the other, the first house of all owned treasures manifold
for the little squad who, though the day were wet or dry, fair or
frowning, trotted thither at noon. Here were trees under which lay, in
happy season, over-ripe Bartlett pears; here, too, was one
mulberry-tree, whereof the suggestion was strange and wonderful, and
the fruit less appealing to taste than to a mystical fancy. But outside
the bank wall grew the balm-of-Gileads, in a stately, benevolent
row,--trees of healing, of fragrance and romantic charm. No child ever
sought the old home to beg pears and mulberries, or to fill the
school-house pail at its dark-bosomed well, without bearing away a few
of the leaves in a covetous grasp. Sweet treasure-trove these, to be
pressed to fresh young faces, and held and patted in hot little palms,
till they grew flabby but evermore fragrant, still diffusing over the
dusty schoolroom that warm odor, whispering to those who read no corner
but their own New England, of the myrrh and balsams of the East.
We knew everything in those days, we aimless knights-errant with
dinner-pail and slate; the dry, frosty hollow where gentians bloom when
the pride of the field is over, the woody slopes of the hepatica's
awakening, under coverlet of withered leaves, and the sunny banks where
violets love to live with their good gossip, the trembling anemone. At
noon, we roved abroad into solitudes so deep that even our unsuspecting
hearts sometimes quaked with fear of dark and lonesomeness; and then we
came trooping back at the sound of the bell, untamed, happy little
savages, ready to settle, with a long breath, to the afternoon's drowsy
routine. Arrant nonsense that! the boundary of British America and the
conjugation of the verb _to be_! Who that might loll away the hours
upon a bank in silken ease, needed aught even of computation or the
tongues? He alone had inherited the earth.
All the little figures flitting through those tranquil early dramas are
so sharply drawn, so brightly colored still! I meet Melissa Crane
sometimes nowadays, a prosperous matron with space enough on her broad
back for the very largest plaid ever woven; but her present identity is
hazy and unreal. I see instead, with a sudden throb of memory, the
little Melissa, who, one recess, accepted a sugared doughnut from me,
and said, with a quaint imitation of old folks' manner,--
"I think your mother will be a real good cook, if she lives!"
I hear of Susie Marden, who went out West, married, and grew up with
the country in great magnificence; but to me she is and ever will be
the little girl who made seventy pies, one Thanksgiving time, thereby
earning the somewhat stinted admiration of those among us who could not
cook. Many a great deed, tacitly promised in that springtime, never
came to pass; many a brilliant career ingloriously ended. There was Sam
Marshall. He could do sums to the admiration of class and teacher, and,
Cuvier-like, evolve an entire flock from Colburn's two geese and a
half. His memory was prodigious. He could name the Presidents, bound
the States and Territories, and rattle off the list of prepositions so
fast that you could almost see the spark-shower from his rushing wheels
of thought. It was an understood thing among us, when Sam was in his
teens, that he should at least enter the Senate; perhaps he would even
be President, and scatter offices, like halfpence, among his scampering
townsmen. But to-day he patiently does his haying--by hand! and "goes
sleddin'" in the winter. The Senate is as far from him as the Polar
Star, and I question whether he could even bear the crucial test of two
geese and a half. Yet I still look upon him with a thrill of awe, as
the man selected by the popular vote to represent us in fame's
Valhalla, and mysteriously defeated by some unexpected move of the
"unseen hand at a game."
There were a couple of boys such good comrades as never to be happy
save when together. They cared only for the games made for two; all
their goods were tacitly held in common, and a tradition still lives
that David, when a new teacher asked his exact age, claimed his
comrade's birthday, and then wondered why everybody laughed. They had a
way of wandering off together to the woods, on Saturday mornings, when
the routine of chores could be hurried through, and always they bore
with them a store of eggs, apples, or sweet corn, to be cooked in happy
seclusion. All this raw material was stolen from the respective
haylofts and gardens at home, though, as the fathers owned, with an
appreciative grin, the boys might have taken it openly for the asking.
That, however, would so have alloyed the charm of gypsying that it was
not to be thought of for a moment; and they crept about on their
foraging expeditions with all the caution of a hostile tribe. Blessed
fathers and mothers to wink at the escapade, and happy boys, wise
chiefly in their longing to be free! We had a theory that Jonathan and
David would go into business together. Perhaps we thought of them in
the same country store, their chairs tilted on either side of the
air-tight stove, telling stories, in the intervals of custom, as they
apparently did in their earlier estate. For, shy as they were in
general company, they chatted together with an intense earnestness all
day long; and it was one of the stock questions in our neighborhood,
when the social light burned low,--
"What under the sun do you s'pose Dave and Jont find to talk about?"
Alas! again the world had builded foolishly; for with early manhood,
they fell in love with the same round-cheeked school-teacher. Jonathan
married her, after what wrench of feeling I know not; and the other
fled to the town, whence he never returned save for the briefest visit
at Thanksgiving or Christmas time. The stay-at-home lad is a warm
farmer, and the little school-teacher a mother whose unlined face shows
the record of a placid life; but David cannot know even this, save by
hearsay, for he never sees them. He is a moneyed man, and not a year
ago, gave the town a new library. But is he happy? Or does the old
wound still show a ragged edge? For that may be, they tell us, even
"when you come to forty year."
Then, clad in brighter vestments of memory, there was the lad who
earned unto himself much renown, even among his disapproving relatives,
by running away from home, in quest of gold and glory. True, he was
brought back at the end of three days, footsore and muddy, and with
noble appetite for the griddle-cakes his mother cooked him in lieu of
the traditional veal,--but all undaunted. He never tried it again, yet
people say he has thrown away all his chances of a thrifty living by
perpetual wandering in the woods with gun and fishing-rod, and that he
is cursed with a deplorable indifference to the state of his fences and
potato-patch. No one could call him an admirable citizen, but I am not
sure that he has chosen the worser part; for who is so jovial and
sympathetic on a winter evening, when the apples are passed, and even
the shining cat purrs content before the blaze, or in the wood
solitudes, familiar to him as his own house door?
"Pa'tridges' nests?" he said, one spring, with a cock of his eye
calculated to show at once a humorous recognition of his genius and his
delinquencies. "Sartain! I wish I was as sure where I keep my scythe
sned!"
He has learned all the lore of the woods, the ways of "wild critters,"
and the most efficacious means both to woo and kill them. Prim
spinsters eye him acridly, as a man given over to "shif'less" ways, and
wives set him up, like a lurid guidepost, before husbands prone to
lapse from domestic thrift; but the dogs smile at him, and children,
for whom he is ever ready to make kite or dory, though all his hay
should mildew, or to string thimbleberries on a grass spear while
supper cools within, tumble merrily at his heels. Such as he should
never assume domestic relations, to be fettered with requirements of
time and place. Let them rather claim maintenance from a grateful
public, and live, like troubadours of old, ministrant to the general
joy.
Not all the memories of that early day are quite unspotted by remorse.
Although we wore the mask of jocund faces and straightforward glance,
we little people repeatedly proclaimed ourselves the victims of Adam's
fall. Even then we needed to pray for deliverance from those passions
which have since pursued us. There was the little bound girl who lived
with a "selec'man's" wife, a woman with children of her own, but a hard
taskmistress to the stranger within her gates. Poor little Polly! her
clothes, made over from those of her mistress, were of dark, rough
flannel, often in uncouth plaids and appalling stripes. Her petticoats
were dyed of a sickly hue known as cudbar, and she wore heavy woollen
stockings of the same shade. Polly got up early, to milk and drive the
cows; she set the table, washed milkpans, and ran hither and thither on
her sturdy cudbar legs, always willing, sometimes singing, and often
with a mute, questioning look on her little freckled face, as if she
had already begun to wonder why it has pleased God to set so many
boundary lines over which the feeble may not pass. The selec'man's
son--a heavy-faced, greedy boy--was a bully, and Polly became his butt;
she did his tasks, hectored by him in private, and with a child's
strange reticence, she never told even us how unbearable he made her
life. We could see it, however; for not much remains hidden in that
communistic atmosphere of the country neighborhood. But sometimes Polly
revolted; her temper blazed up, a harmless flash in the pan, and then,
it was said, Mis' Jeremiah took her to the shed-chamber and, trounced
her soundly. I myself have seen her sitting at the little low window,
when I trotted by, in the pride of young life, to "borry some
emptin's," or the recipe for a new cake. Often she waved a timid hand
to me; and I am glad to remember a certain sunny morning, illuminated
now because I tossed her up a bright hollyhock in return. It was little
to give out of a full and happy day; but Polly had nothing. Once she
came near great good fortune,--and missed it! For a lady, who boarded a
few weeks in the neighborhood, took a fancy to Polly, and was stirred
to outspoken wrath by our tales of the severity of her life. She gave
her a pretty pink cambric dress, and Polly wore it on "last day," at
the end of the summer term. She was evidently absorbed in love of it,
and sat, smoothing its shiny surface with her little cracked hand, so
oblivious to the requirements of the occasion that she only looked up
dazed when the teacher told her to describe the Amazon River, and
unregretfully let the question pass. The lady meant to take Polly away
with, her, but she fell sick with erysipelas in the face, and was
hurried off to the city to be nursed, "a sight to behold," as everybody
said. And whether she died, or whether she got well and forgot Polly,
none of us ever heard. We only knew she did not return, bringing the
odor of violets and the rustle of starched petticoats into our placid
lives.
But all these thoughts of Polly would be less wearing, when they come
in the night-time knocking at the heart, if I could only remember her
as glowing under the sympathy and loving-kindness of her little mates.
Alas! it was not so. We were senseless little brutes, who, never having
learned the taste of misery ourselves, had no pity for the misfortunes
of others. She was, indeed, ill-treated; but what were we, to translate
the phrase? She was an under dog, and we had no mercy on her. We
"plagued" her, God forgive us! And what the word means, in its full
horror, only a child can compass. We laughed at her cudbar petticoats,
her little "chopped hands;" and when she stumbled over the arithmetic
lesson, because she had been up at four o'clock every morning since the
first bluebirds came, we laughed at that. Life in general seems to have
treated Polly in somewhat the same way. I hear that she did not marry
well, and that her children had begun to "turn out bad," when she died,
prematurely bent and old, not many weeks ago. But when I think of what
we might have given and what we did withhold, when I realize that one
drop of water from each of us would have filled her little cup to
overflowing, there is one compensating thought, and I murmur,
conscience-smitten, "I'm glad she had the pink dress!"
And now the little school is ever present with us, ours still for
counsel or reproof. Its long-closed sessions are open, by day and
night; and I suppose, as time goes on, and we drop into the estate of
those who sit by the fireside, oblivious to present scenes, yet acutely
awake to such as
"Flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,"
it will grow more and more lifelike and more near. Beside it, live all
the joys of memory and many a long-past pain. For we who have walked in
country ways, walk in them always, and with no divided love, even
though brick pavements have been our chosen road this many a year. We
follow the market, we buy and sell, and even run across the sea, to fit
us with new armor for the soul, to guard it from the hurts of years;
but ever do we keep the calendar of this one spring of life. Some
unheard angelus summons us to days of feast and mourning; it may be the
joy of the fresh-springing willow, or the nameless pain responsive to
the croaking of frogs, in the month when twilights are misty, and waves
of world-sorrow flood in upon the heart, we know not why. All those
trembling half-thoughts of the sleep of the year and its awakening,--we
have not escaped them by leaving the routine that brought them forth.
We know when the first violets are blowing in the woods, and we paint
for ourselves the tasselling of the alder and the red of maple-buds. We
taste still the sting of checkerberry and woodsy flavor of the fragrant
birch. When fields of corn are shimmering in the sun, we know exactly
how it would seem to run through those dusty aisles, swept by that
silken drapery, and counselled in whispers from the plumy tops so far
above our heads. The ground-sparrow's nest is not strange to us; no,
nor the partridge's hidden treasure within the wood. We can make
pudding-bags of live-forever, dolls' bonnets, "trimmed up to the
nines," out of the velvet mullein leaf, and from the ox-eyed daisies,
round, cap-begirt faces, smiling as the sun. All the homely secrets of
rural life are ours: the taste of pie, cinnamon-flavored, from the
dinner-pails at noon; the smell of "pears a-b'ilin'," at that happiest
hour when, in the early dusk, we tumble into the kitchen, to find the
table set and the stove redolent of warmth and savor. "What you got for
supper?" we cry,--question to be paralleled in the summer days by
"What'd you have for dinner?" as, famished little bears, we rush to the
dairy-wheel, to feed ravenously on the cold, delicious fragments of the
meal eaten without us.
If time ever stood still, if we were condemned to the blank solitude of
hospital nights or becalmed, mid-ocean days, and had hours for
fruitless dreaming, I wonder what viands we should choose, in setting
forth a banquet from that ambrosial past! Foods unknown to poetry and
song: "cold b'iled dish," pan-dowdy, or rye drop-cakes dripping with
butter! For these do we taste, in moments of retrospect; and perhaps we
dwell the more on their homely savor because we dare not think what
hands prepared them for our use, or, when the board was set, what faces
smiled. We are too wise, with the cunning prudence of the years, to
penetrate over-far beyond the rosy boundary of youth, lest we find also
that bitter pool which is not Lethe, but the waters of a vain regret.
FARMER ELI'S VACATION
"It don't seem as if we'd really got round to it, does it, father?"
asked Mrs. Pike.
The west was paling, and the August insects stirred the air with their
crooning chirp. Eli and his wife sat together on the washing-bench
outside the back door, waiting for the milk to cool before it should be
strained. She was a large, comfortable woman, with an unlined face, and
smooth, fine auburn hair; he was spare and somewhat bent, with curly
iron-gray locks, growing thin, and crow's-feet about his deep-set gray
eyes. He had been smoking the pipe of twilight contentment, but now he
took it out and laid it on the bench beside him, uncrossing his legs
and straightening himself, with the air of a man to whom it falls,
after long pondering, to take some decisive step.
"No; it don't seem as if 'twas goin' to happen," he owned. "It looked
pretty dark to me, all last week. It's a good deal of an undertakin',
come to think it all over. I dunno's I care about goin'."
"Why, father! After you've thought about it so many years, an' Sereno's
got the tents strapped up, an' all! You must be crazy!"
"Well," said the farmer, gently, as he rose and went to carry the
milk-pails into the pantry, calling coaxingly, as he did so, "Kitty!
kitty! You had your milk? Don't you joggle, now!" For one eager tabby
rose on her hind legs, in purring haste, and hit her nose against the
foaming saucer.
Mrs. Pike came ponderously to her feet, and followed, with the heavy,
swaying motion of one grown fleshy and rheumatic. She was not in the
least concerned about Eli's change of mood. He was a gentle soul, and
she had always been able to guide him in paths of her own choosing.
Moreover, the present undertaking was one involving his own good
fortune, and she meant to tolerate no foolish scruples which might
interfere with its result. For Eli, though he had lived all his life
within easy driving distance of the ocean, had never seen it, and ever
since his boyhood he had cherished one darling plan,--some day he would
go to the shore, and camp out there for a week. This, in his starved
imagination, was like a dream of the Acropolis to an artist stricken
blind, or as mountain outlines to the dweller in a lonely plain. But
the years had flitted past, and the dream never seemed nearer
completion. There were always planting, haying, and harvesting to be
considered; and though he was fairly prosperous, excursions were
foreign to his simple habit of life. But at last, his wife had stepped
into the van, and organized an expedition, with all the valor of a
Francis Drake.
"Now, don't you say one word, father," she had said. "We're goin' down
to the beach, Sereno, an' Hattie, an' you an' me, an' we're goin' to
camp out. It'll do us all good."
For days before the date of the excursion, Eli had been solemn and
tremulous, as with joy; but now, on the eve of the great event, he
shrank back from it, with an undefined notion that it was like death,
and that he was not prepared. Next morning, however, when they all rose
and took their early breakfast, preparatory to starting at five, he
showed no sign of indecision, and even went about his outdoor tasks
with an alacrity calculated, as his wife approvingly remarked, to
"for'ard the v'y'ge." He had at last begun to see his way clear, and he
looked well satisfied when his daughter Hattie and Sereno, her husband,
drove into the yard, in a wagon cheerfully suggestive of a wandering
life. The tents and a small hair-trunk were stored in the back, and the
horse's pail swung below.
"Well, father," called Hattie, her rosy face like a flower under the
large shade-hat she had trimmed for the occasion, "guess we're goin' to
have a good day!"
He nodded from the window, where he was patiently holding his head high
and undergoing strangulation, while his wife, breathing huskily with
haste and importance, put on his stock.
"You come in, Hattie, an' help pack the doughnuts into that lard-pail
on the table," she called. "I guess you'll have to take two pails. They
ain't very big."
At length, the two teams were ready, and Eli mounted to his place,
where he looked very slender beside his towering mate. The hired man
stood leaning on the pump, chewing a bit of straw, and the cats rubbed
against his legs, with tails like banners; they were all impressed by a
sense of the unusual.
"Well, good-by, Luke," Mrs. Pike called, over her shoulder; and Eli
gave the man a solemn nod, gathered up the reins, and drove out of the
yard. Just outside the gate, he pulled up.
"Whoa!" he called, and Luke lounged forward. "Don't you forgit them
cats! Git up, Doll!" And this time, they were gone.
For the first ten miles of the way, familiar in being the road to
market, Eli was placidly cheerful. The sense that he was going to do
some strange deed, to step into an unknown country, dropped away from
him, and he chatted, in his intermittent, serious fashion, of the crops
and the lay of the land.
"Pretty bad job up along here, ain't it, father?" called Sereno, as
they passed a sterile pasture where two plodding men and a yoke of oxen
were redeeming the soil from its rocky fetters.
"There's a good deal o' pastur', in some places, that ain't fit for
nothin' but to hold the world together," returned Eli; and then he was
silent, his eyes fixed on Doll's eloquent ears, his mouth working a
little. For this progress through a less desirable stratum of life
caused him to cast a backward glance over his own smooth, middle-aged
road.
"We've prospered, 'ain't we, Maria?" he said, at last; and his wife,
unconsciously following his thoughts, in the manner of those who have
lived long together, stroked her black silk _visite_, and answered,
with a well-satisfied nod:
"I guess we 'ain't got no cause to complain."
The roadside was parched under an August sun; tansy was dust-covered,
and ferns had grown ragged and gray. The jogging horses left behind
their lazy feet a suffocating cloud.
"My land!" cried Mrs. Pike, "if that ain't goldenrod! I do b'lieve it
comes earlier every year, or else the seasons are changin'. See them
elderberries! Ain't they purple! You jest remember that bush, an' when
we go back, we'll fill some pails. I dunno when I've made elderberry
wine."
Like her husband, she was vaguely excited; she began to feel as if life
would be all holidays. At noon, they stopped under the shadow of an
elm-tree which, from its foothold in a field, completely arched the
road; and there they ate a lunch of pie and doughnuts, while the
horses, freed from their headstalls, placidly munched a generous feed
of oats, near by. Hattie and her mother accepted this picnicking with
an air of apologetic amusement; and when one or two passers-by looked
at them, they smiled a little at vacancy, with the air of wishing it
understood that they were by no means accustomed to such
irregularities.
"I guess they think we're gypsies," said Hattie, as one carriage rolled
past.
"Well, they needn't trouble themselves," returned her mother, rising
with difficulty to brush the crumbs from her capacious lap. "I guess
I've got as good an extension-table to home as any on 'em."
But Eli ate sparingly, and with a preoccupied and solemn look.
"Land, father!" exclaimed his wife, "you 'ain't eat no more'n a bird!
"I guess I'll go over to that well," said he, "an' git a drink o'
water. I drink more'n I eat, if I ain't workin'." But when he came
back, carefully bearing a tin pail brimming with cool, clear water, his
face expressed strong disapprobation, and he smacked his lips
scornfully.
"Terrible flat water!" he announced. "Tastes as if it come out o' the
cistern." But the others could find no fault with it, and Sereno
drained the pail.
"Pretty good, I call it," he said; and Mrs. Pike rejoined,--
"You always was pretty particular about water, father."
But Eli still shook his head, and ejaculated, "Brackish, brackish!" as
he began to put the bit in Doll's patient mouth. He was thinking, with
a passion of loyalty, of the clear, ice-cold water at home, which had
never been shut out, by a pump, from the purifying airs of heaven, but
lay where the splashing bucket and chain broke, every day, the image of
moss and fern. His throat grew parched and dry with longing.
When they were within three miles of the sea, it seemed to them that
they could taste the saltness of the incoming breeze; the road was
ankle-deep in dust; the garden flowers were glaring in their
brightness. It was a new world. And when at last they emerged from the
marsh-bordered road upon a ridge of sand, and turned a sudden corner,
Mrs. Pike faced her husband in triumph.
"There, father!" she cried. "There 'tis!"
But Eli's eyes were fixed on the dashboard in front of him. He looked
pale.
"Why, father," said she, impatiently, "ain't you goin' to look? It's
the sea!"
"Yes, yes," said Eli, quietly; "byme-by. I'm goin' to put the horses up
fust."
"Well, I never!" said Mrs. Pike; and as they drew up on the sandy tract
where Sereno had previously arranged a place for their tents, she
added, almost fretfully, turning to Hattie, "I dunno what's come over
your father. There's the water, an' he won't even cast his eyes at it."
But Hattie understood her father, by some intuition of love, though not
of likeness.
"Don't you bother him, ma," she said. "He'll make up his mind to it
pretty soon. Here, le's lift out these little things, while they're
unharnessin', and then they can get at the tents."
Mrs. Pike's mind was diverted by the exigencies of labor, and she said
no more; but after the horses had been put up at a neighboring house,
and Sereno, red-faced with exertion, had superintended the
tent-raising, Hattie slipped her arm through her father's, and led him
away.
"Come, pa," she said, in a whisper; "le's you and me climb over on them
rocks."
Eli went; and when they had picked their way over sand and pools to a
headland where the water thundered below, and salt spray dashed up in
mist to their feet, he turned and looked at the sea. He faced it as a
soul might face Almighty Greatness, only to be stricken blind
thereafter; for his eyes filled painfully with slow, hot tears. Hattie
did not look at him, but after a while she shouted in his ear, above
the outcry of the surf,--
"Here, pa, take my handkerchief. I don't know how 'tis about you, but
this spray gets in my eyes."
Eli took it obediently, but he did not speak; he only looked at the
sea. The two sat there, chilled and quite content, until six o'clock,
when Mrs. Pike came calling to them from the beach, with dramatic
shouts, emphasized by the waving of her ample apron,--
"Supper's ready! Sereno's built a bum-fire, an' I've made some tea!"
Then they slowly made their way back to the tents, and sat down to the
evening meal. Sereno seemed content, and Mrs. Pike was bustling and
triumphant; the familiar act of preparing food had given her the
feeling of home.
"Well, father, what think?" she asked, smiling exuberantly, as she
passed him his mug of tea. "Does it come up to what you expected?"
Eli turned upon her his mild, dazed eyes.
"I guess it does," he said, gently.
That night, they sat upon the shore while the moon rose and laid in the
water her majestic pathway of light. Eli was the last to leave the
rocks, and he lay down on his hard couch in the tent, without speaking.
"I wouldn't say much to father," whispered Hattie to her mother, as
they parted for the night. "He feels it more 'n we do."
"Well, I s'pose he is some tired," said Mrs. Pike, acquiescing, after a
brief look of surprise. "It's a good deal of a jaunt, but I dunno but I
feel paid a'ready. Should you take out your hair-pins, Hattie?"
She slept soundly and vocally, but her husband did not close his eyes.
He looked, though he could see nothing, through the opening in the
tent, in the direction where lay the sea, solemnly clamorous, eternally
responsive to some infinite whisper from without his world. The tension
of the hour was almost more than he could bear; he longed for morning,
in sharp suspense, with a faint hope that the light might bring relief.
Just as the stars faded, and one luminous line pencilled the east, he
rose, smoothed his hair, and stepped softly out upon the beach. There
he saw two shadowy figures, Sereno and Hattie. She hurried forward to
meet him.
"You goin' to see the sunrise, too, father?"
she asked. "I made Sereno come. He's awful mad at bein' waked up."
Eli grasped her arm.
"Hattie," he said, in a whisper, "don't you tell. I jest come out to
see how 'twas here, before I go. I'm goin' home,--I'm goin' _now_."
"Why, father!" said Hattie; but she peered more closely into his face,
and her tone changed. "All right," she added, cheerfully. "Sereno'll go
and harness up."
"No; I'm goin' to walk."
"But, father--"
"I don't mean to breakup your stayin' here, nor your mother's. You tell
her how 'twas. I'm goin' to walk."
Hattie turned and whispered to her husband for a moment. Then she took
her father's hand.
"I'll slip into the tent and put you up somethin' for your breakfast
and luncheon," she said. "Sereno's gone to harness; for, pa, you must
take one horse, and you can send Luke back with it Friday, so's we can
get the things home. What do we want of two horses down here, at two
and ninepence a day? I guess I know!"
So Eli yielded; but before his wife appeared, he had turned his back on
the sea, where the rose of dawn was fast unfolding. As he jogged
homeward, the dusty roadsides bloomed with flowers of paradise, and the
insects' dry chirp thrilled like the song of angels. He drove into the
yard just at the turning of the day, when the fragrant smoke of many a
crackling fire curls cheerily upward, in promise of the evening meal.
"What's busted?" asked Luke, swinging himself down from his load of
fodder-corn, and beginning to unharness Doll.
"Oh, nothin'," said Eli, leaping, from the wagon as if twenty years had
been taken from his bones. "I guess I'm too old for such jaunts. I hope
you didn't forgit them cats."
AFTER ALL.
"The land o' gracious!" said Mrs. Lothrop Wilson, laying down her
"drawing-in hook" on the rug stretched between two chairs in the middle
of the kitchen, and getting up to look from the window. "If there ain't
Lucindy comin' out o' the Pitmans' without a thing on her head, an' all
them little curls a-flyin'! An' the old Judge ain't cold in his grave!"
"I guess the Judge won't be troubled with cold, any to speak of, arter
this," said her husband from the window, where he sat eating his
forenoon lunch of apple-pie and cheese. He was a cooper, and perhaps
the pleasantest moment in his day was that when he slipped out of his
shop, leaving a bit of paper tacked on the door to say he was "on
errands," and walked soberly home for his bite and sup. "If he ain't
good an' warm about now, then the Scriptur's ain't no more to be
depended on than a last year's almanac."
"Late Wilson, I'm ashamed of you," retorted his wife, looking at him
with such reproof that, albeit she had no flesh to spare, she made
herself a double chin. "An' he your own uncle, too! Well, he _was_
nigh, I'll say that for him; an' if he'd had his way, the sun'd ha' riz
an' set when he said the word. But Lucindy's his only darter, an' if
she don't so much as pretend to be a mourner, I guess there ain't
nobody that will. There! don't you say no more! She's comin' in here!"
A light step sounded on the side piazza, and Lucindy came in, with a
little delicate, swaying motion peculiar to her walk. She was a very
slender woman, far past middle life, with a thin, smiling face, light
blue eyes, shining with an eager brightness, and fine hair, which
escaped from its tight twist in little spiral curls about the face.
"How do, Jane?" she said, in an even voice, stirred by a pleasant,
reedy thrill. "How do, Lote?"
Lothrop pushed forward a chair, looking at her with an air of great
kindliness. There was some slight resemblance between them, but the
masculine type seemed entirely lacking in that bright alertness so
apparent in her. Mrs. Wilson nodded, and went back to her drawing-in.
She was making a very red rose with a pink middle.
"I dunno's I can say I'm surprised to see you, Lucindy," she began,
with the duteous aspect of one forced to speak her disapproval, "for I
ketched you comin' out o' the Pitmans' yard."
"Yes," said Lucindy, smiling, and plaiting her skirt between her
nervous fingers. "Yes, I went in to see if they'd let me take Old
Buckskin a spell to-morrow."
"What under the sun--" began Mrs. Wilson; but her husband looked at
her, and she stopped. He had become so used to constituting himself
Lucindy's champion in the old Judge's day, now just ended, that he kept
an unremitting watch on any one who might threaten her peace. But
Lucindy evidently guessed at the unspoken question.
"I should have come here, if I'd expected to drive," she said. "But I
thought maybe your horse wa'n't much used to women, and I kind o'
dreaded to be the first one to try him with a saddle."
Mrs. Wilson put down her hook again, and leaned back in her chair. She
looked from her husband to Lucindy, without speaking. But Lucindy went
on, with the innocent simplicity of a happy child.
"You know I was always possessed to ride horseback," she said,
addressing herself to Lothrop, "and father never would let me. And now
he ain't here, I mean to try it, and see if 'tain't full as nice as I
thought."
"Lucindy!" burst forth Mrs. Wilson, explosively, "ain't you goin' to
pay no respect to your father's memory?"
Lucindy turned to her, smiling still, but with a hint of quizzical
shrewdness about her mouth.
"I guess I ain't called on to put myself out," she said, simply, yet
not irreverently. "Father had his way in pretty much everything while
he was alive. I always made up my mind if I should outlive him, I'd
have all the things I wanted then, when young folks want the most. And
you know then I couldn't get 'em."
"Well!" said Mrs. Wilson. Her tone spoke volumes of conflicting
commentary.
"You got a saddle?" asked Lucindy, turning to her cousin. "I thought I
remembered you had one laid away, up attic. I suppose you'd just as
soon I'd take it?"
He was neither shocked nor amused. He had been looking at her very
sadly, as one who read in every word the entire tragedy of a repressed
and lonely life.
"Yes, we have, Lucindy," he said, gently, quieting his wife by a motion
of the hand, "but 'tain't what you think. It's a man's saddle. You'd
have to set straddle.
"Oh!" said Lucindy, a faint shade of disappointment clouding her face.
"Well, no matter! I guess they've got one down to the Mardens'. Jane,
should you just as soon come round this afternoon, and look over some
bunnit trimmin's with me? I took two kinds of flowers home from Miss
West's, and I can't for my life tell which to have."
"Ain't you goin' to wear black?" Mrs. Wilson spoke now in double
italics.
"Oh, no! I don't feel called on to do that. I always liked bright
colors, and I don't know's 'twould be real honest in me to put on
mournin' when I didn't feel it."
"'Honor thy father'--" began Jane, in spite of her husband's warning
hand; but Lucindy interrupted her, with some perplexity.
"I have, Jane, I have! I honored father all my life, just as much as
ever I could. I done everything he ever told me, little and big! No,
though, there's one thing I never fell in with. I did cheat him once. I
don't know but I'm sorry for that, now it's all past and gone!"
Her cousin had been drumming absently on the window-sill, but he looked
up with awakened interest. Mrs. Wilson, too, felt a wholesale
curiosity, and she, at least, saw no reason for curbing it.
"What was it, Lucindy?" she asked. "The old hunks!" she repeated to
herself, like an anathema.
Lucindy began her confession, with eyes down-dropped and a faltering
voice.
"Father wanted I should have my hair done up tight and firm. So I
pretended I done the best I could with it. I told him these curls round
my face and down in my neck was too short, and I couldn't pin 'em up.
But they wa'n't curls, and they wouldn't ha' been short if I hadn't cut
'em. For every night, and sometimes twice a day, I curled 'em on a
pipe-stem."
"Ain't them curls nat'ral, Lucindy?" cried Mrs. Wilson. "Have you been
fixin' 'em to blow round your face that way, all these years?"
"I begun when I was a little girl," said Lucindy, guiltily. "It did
seem kind o' wrong, but I took real pleasure in it!"
Lothrop could bear no more. He wanted to wipe his eyes, but he chose
instead to walk straight out of the room and down to his shop. His wife
could only express a part of her amazement by demanding, in a futile
sort of way,--
"Where'd you get the pipe?"
"I stole the first one from a hired man we had," said Lucindy, her
cheeks growing pink. "Sometimes I had to use slate-pencils."
There was no one else to administer judgment, and Mrs. Wilson felt the
necessity.
"Well," she began, "an' you can set there, tellin' that an' smilin'--"
"My smilin' don't mean any more'n some other folks' cryin', I guess,"
said Lucindy, smiling still more broadly. "I begun that more'n thirty
years ago. I looked into the glass one day, and I see the corners of my
mouth were goin' down. Sharper 'n, vinegar, I was! So I says to myself,
'I can smile, whether or no. Nobody can't help that!' And I did, and
now I guess I don't know when I do it."
"Well!"
Lucindy rose suddenly and brushed her lap, as if she dusted away
imaginary cares.
"There!" she exclaimed, "I've said more this mornin' than I have for
forty year! Don't you lead me on to talk about what's past and gone!
The only thing is, I mean to have a good time now, what there is left
of it. Some things you can't get back, and some you can. Well, you step
round this afternoon, won't you?"
"I dunno's I can. John's goin' to bring Claribel up, to spend the
arternoon an' stay to supper."
"Why, dear heart! that needn't make no difference. I should admire to
have her, too. I'll show her some shells and coral I found this
mornin', up attic."
Lucindy had almost reached the street when she turned, as with a sudden
resolution, and retraced her steps.
"Jane," she called, looking in at the kitchen window. "It's a real
bright day, pretty as any 't ever I see. Don't you worry for fear o' my
disturbin' them that's gone, if I do try to ketch at somethin'
pleasant. If they're wiser now, I guess they'll be glad I had sense
enough left to do it!"
That afternoon, Mrs. Wilson, in her best gingham and checked sunbonnet,
took her way along the village street to the old Judge Wilson house. It
was a colonial mansion, sitting austerely back in a square yard. In
spite of its prosperity, everything about it wore a dreary air, as if
it were tired of being too well kept; for houses are like people, and
carry their own indefinable atmosphere with them. Mrs. Wilson herself
lived on a narrower and more secluded street, though it was said that
her husband, if he had not defied the old Judge in some crucial matter,
might have studied law with him, and possibly shared his speculations
in wool. Then he, too, might have risen to be one of the first men in
the county, instead of working, in his moderate fashion, for little
more than day's wages. Claribel, a pale, dark-eyed child, also dressed
in her best gingham, walked seriously by her grandmother's side.
Lucindy was waiting for them at the door.
"I declare!" she called, delightedly. "I was 'most afraid you'd forgot
to come! Well, Claribel, if you 'ain't grown! They'll have to put a
brick on your head, or you'll be taller'n grandma."
Claribel submitted to be kissed, and they entered the large, cool
sitting-room, where they took off their things.
"You make yourself at home, Jane," said Lucindy, fluttering about, in
pleasant excitement. "I ain't goin' to pay you a mite of attention till
I see Claribel fixed. Now, Claribel, remember! you can go anywheres
you're a mind to. And you can touch anything there is. You won't find a
thing a little girl can hurt. Here, you come here where I be, and look
across the entry. See that big lamp on the table? Well, if you unhook
them danglin' things and peek through 'em, you'll find the brightest
colors! My, how pretty they be! I've been lookin' through 'em this
mornin'. I used to creep in and do it when I was little," she
continued, in an aside to Mrs. Wilson. "Once I lost one." A strange
look settled on her face; she was recalling a bitter experience.
"There!" she said, releasing Claribel with a little hug, "now run
along! If you look on the lower shelf of the what-not, you'll see some
shells and coral I put there for just such a little girl."
Claribel walked soberly away to her playing.
"Don't you hurt nothin'!" called Mrs. Wilson; and Claribel responded
properly,--
"No, 'm."
"There!" said Lucindy, watching the precise little back across the
hall, "Now le's talk a mite about vanity. You reach me that green box
behind your chair. Here's the best flowers Miss West had for what I
wanted. Here's my bunnit, too. You see what you think."
She set the untrimmed bonnet on her curls, and laid first a bunch of
bright chrysanthemums against it, and then some strange lavender roses.
The roses turned her complexion to an ivory whiteness, and her anxious,
intent expression combined strangely with that undesirable effect.
"My soul, Lucindy!" cried Mrs. Wilson, startled into a more robust
frankness than usual, "you do look like the Old Nick!"
A shade came over Miss Lucindy's honest face. It seemed, for a moment,
as if she were going to cry.
"Don't you like 'em, Jane?" she asked, appealingly. "Won't neither of
'em do?"
Mrs. Wilson was not incapable of compunction, but she felt also the
demands of the family honor.
"Well, Lucindy," she began, soothingly, "now 'tain't any use, is it,
for us to say we ain't gettin' on in years? We be! You 're my age,
an'--Why, look at Claribel in there! What should you say, if you see me
settin' out to meetin' with red flowers on my bunnit? I should be
nothin' but a laughin'-stock!"
Lucindy laid the flowers back in their box, with as much tenderness as
if they held the living fragrance of a dream.
"Well!" she said, wistfully. Then she tried to smile.