Mis' Down," he said. "I wouldn't ha' spoken 'bout this 'less you had
led right on to it; but I overtook her when I was gittin' towards home
this afternoon, an' I see by her looks she was worked up a good deal;
but we talked about how well things had gone off, an' she wanted to
know what expenses we'd been put to, an' I told her; and she said
she'd give five dollars any day I'd stop in for it. An' then she spoke
right out. 'I'm alone in the world,' says she, 'and I've got somethin'
to do with, an' I'd like to have a plain stone put up to Eb Munson's
grave, with the number of his rigiment on it, an' I'll pay the bill.
'Tain't out o' Mr. Down's money,' she says; ''tis mine, an' I want you
to see to it.' I said I would, but we'd made a plot to git some o'
them soldiers' headstones that's provided by the government. 'Twas a
shame it had been overlooked so long. 'No,' says she; 'I'm goin' to
pay for Eb's myself.' An' I told her there wouldn't be no objection.
Don't ary one o' you speak about it. 'Twouldn't be fair. She was real
well-appearin'. I never felt to respect Marthy so before."
"We was kind o' hard on her sometimes, but folks couldn't help it.
I've seen her pass Eb right by in the road an' never look at him when
he first come home," said John Stover.
"If she hadn't felt bad, she wouldn't have cared one way or t'other,"
insisted Henry Merrill. "'Tain't for us to judge. Sometimes folks has
to get along in years before they see things fair. Come; I must be
goin' home. I'm tired as an old dog."
"It seemed kind o' natural to be steppin' out together again. Strange
we three got through with so little damage, an' so many dropped round
us," said Asa Brown. "I've never been one mite sorry I went out in old
A Company. I was thinkin' when I was marchin' to-day, though, that we
should all have to take to the wagons before long an' do our marchin'
on wheels, so many of us felt kind o' stiff. There's one thing,--folks
won't never say again that we can't show no public sperit here in old
Barlow."
* * * * *
The Flight of Betsey Lane
I.
One windy morning in May, three old women sat together near an open
window in the shed chamber of Byfleet Poor-house. The wind was from
the northwest, but their window faced the southeast, and they were
only visited by an occasional pleasant waft of fresh air. They were
close together, knee to knee, picking over a bushel of beans, and
commanding a view of the dandelion-starred, green yard below, and of
the winding, sandy road that led to the village, two miles away. Some
captive bees were scolding among the cobwebs of the rafters overhead,
or thumping against the upper panes of glass; two calves were bawling
from the barnyard, where some of the men were at work loading a
dump-cart and shouting as if every one were deaf. There was a
cheerful feeling of activity, and even an air of comfort, about the
Byfleet Poor-house. Almost every one was possessed of a most
interesting past, though there was less to be said about the future.
The inmates were by no means distressed or unhappy; many of them
retired to this shelter only for the winter season, and would go out
presently, some to begin such work as they could still do, others to
live in their own small houses; old age had impoverished most of them
by limiting their power of endurance; but far from lamenting the fact
that they were town charges, they rather liked the change and
excitement of a winter residence on the poor-farm. There was a
sharp-faced, hard-worked young widow with seven children, who was an
exception to the general level of society, because she deplored the
change in her fortunes. The older women regarded her with suspicion,
and were apt to talk about her in moments like this, when they
happened to sit together at their work.
The three bean-pickers were dressed alike in stout brown ginghams,
checked by a white line, and all wore great faded aprons of blue
drilling, with sufficient pockets convenient to the right hand. Miss
Peggy Bond was a very small, belligerent-looking person, who wore a
huge pair of steel-bowed spectacles, holding her sharp chin well up in
air, as if to supplement an inadequate nose. She was more than half
blind, but the spectacles seemed to face upward instead of square
ahead, as if their wearer were always on the sharp lookout for birds.
Miss Bond had suffered much personal damage from time to time, because
she never took heed where she planted her feet, and so was always
tripping and stubbing her bruised way through the world. She had
fallen down hatchways and cellarways, and stepped composedly into deep
ditches and pasture brooks; but she was proud of stating that she was
upsighted, and so was her father before her. At the poor-house, where
an unusual malady was considered a distinction, upsightedness was
looked upon as a most honorable infirmity. Plain rheumatism, such as
afflicted Aunt Lavina Dow, whose twisted hands found even this light
work difficult and tiresome,--plain rheumatism was something of
every-day occurrence, and nobody cared to hear about it. Poor Peggy
was a meek and friendly soul, who never put herself forward; she was
just like other folks, as she always loved to say, but Mrs. Lavina Dow
was a different sort of person altogether, of great dignity and,
occasionally, almost aggressive behavior. The time had been when she
could do a good day's work with anybody: but for many years now she
had not left the town-farm, being too badly crippled to work; she had
no relations or friends to visit, but from an innate love of authority
she could not submit to being one of those who are forgotten by the
world. Mrs. Dow was the hostess and social lawgiver here, where she
remembered every inmate and every item of interest for nearly forty
years, besides an immense amount of town history and biography for
three or four generations back.
She was the dear friend of the third woman, Betsey Lane; together they
led thought and opinion--chiefly opinion--and held sway, not only over
Byfleet Poor-farm, but also the selectmen and all others in authority.
Betsey Lane had spent most of her life as aid-in-general to the
respected household of old General Thornton. She had been much trusted
and valued, and, at the breaking up of that once large and flourishing
family, she had been left in good circumstances, what with legacies
and her own comfortable savings; but by sad misfortune and lavish
generosity everything had been scattered, and after much illness,
which ended in a stiffened arm and more uncertainty, the good soul had
sensibly decided that it was easier for the whole town to support her
than for a part of it. She had always hoped to see something of the
world before she died; she came of an adventurous, seafaring stock,
but had never made a longer journey than to the towns of Danby and
Northville, thirty miles away.
They were all old women; but Betsey Lane, who was sixty-nine, and
looked much older, was the youngest. Peggy Bond was far on in the
seventies, and Mrs. Dow was at least ten years older. She made a great
secret of her years; and as she sometimes spoke of events prior to the
Revolution with the assertion of having been an eye-witness, she
naturally wore an air of vast antiquity. Her tales were an
inexpressible delight to Betsey Lane, who felt younger by twenty years
because her friend and comrade was so unconscious of chronological
limitations.
The bushel basket of cranberry beans was within easy reach, and each
of the pickers had filled her lap from it again and again. The shed
chamber was not an unpleasant place in which to sit at work, with its
traces of seed corn hanging from the brown cross-beams, its spare
churns, and dusty loom, and rickety wool-wheels, and a few bits of old
furniture. In one far corner was a wide board of dismal use and
suggestion, and close beside it an old cradle. There was a battered
chest of drawers where the keeper of the poor-house kept his
garden-seeds, with the withered remains of three seed cucumbers
ornamenting the top. Nothing beautiful could be discovered, nothing
interesting, but there was something usable and homely about the
place. It was the favorite and untroubled bower of the bean-pickers,
to which they might retreat unmolested from the public apartments of
this rustic institution.
Betsey Lane blew away the chaff from her handful of beans. The spring
breeze blew the chaff back again, and sifted it over her face and
shoulders. She rubbed it out of her eyes impatiently, and happened to
notice old Peggy holding her own handful high, as if it were an
oblation, and turning her queer, up-tilted head this way and that, to
look at the beans sharply, as if she were first cousin to a hen.
"There, Miss Bond, 'tis kind of botherin' work for you, ain't it?"
Betsey inquired compassionately.
"I feel to enjoy it, anything that I can do my own way so," responded
Peggy. "I like to do my part. Ain't that old Mis' Fales comin' up the
road? It sounds like her step."
The others looked, but they were not far-sighted, and for a moment
Peggy had the advantage. Mrs. Fales was not a favorite.
"I hope she ain't comin' here to put up this spring. I guess she won't
now, it's gettin' so late," said Betsey Lane. "She likes to go rovin'
soon as the roads is settled."
"'Tis Mis' Fales!" said Peggy Bond, listening with solemn anxiety.
"There, do let's pray her by!"
"I guess she's headin' for her cousin's folks up Beech Hill way," said
Betsey presently. "If she'd left her daughter's this mornin', she'd
have got just about as far as this. I kind o' wish she had stepped in
just to pass the time o' day, long's she wa'n't going to make no
stop."
There was a silence as to further speech in the shed chamber; and even
the calves were quiet in the barnyard. The men had all gone away to
the field where corn-planting was going on. The beans clicked steadily
into the wooden measure at the pickers' feet. Betsey Lane began to
sing a hymn, and the others joined in as best they might, like
autumnal crickets; their voices were sharp and cracked, with now and
then a few low notes of plaintive tone. Betsey herself could sing
pretty well, but the others could only make a kind of accompaniment.
Their voices ceased altogether at the higher notes.
"Oh my! I wish I had the means to go to the Centennial," mourned
Betsey Lane, stopping so suddenly that the others had to go on
croaking and shrilling without her for a moment before they could
stop. "It seems to me as if I can't die happy 'less I do," she added;
"I ain't never seen nothin' of the world, an' here I be."
"What if you was as old as I be?" suggested Mrs. Dow pompously.
"You've got time enough yet, Betsey; don't you go an' despair. I
knowed of a woman that went clean round the world four times when she
was past eighty, an' enjoyed herself real well. Her folks followed the
sea; she had three sons an' a daughter married,--all shipmasters, and
she'd been with her own husband when they was young. She was left a
widder early, and fetched up her family herself,--a real stirrin',
smart woman. After they'd got married off, an' settled, an' was doing
well, she come to be lonesome; and first she tried to stick it out
alone, but she wa'n't one that could; an' she got a notion she hadn't
nothin' before her but her last sickness, and she wa'n't a person
that enjoyed havin' other folks do for her. So one on her boys--I
guess 'twas the oldest--said he was going to take her to sea; there
was ample room, an' he was sailin' a good time o' year for the Cape o'
Good Hope an' way up to some o' them tea-ports in the Chiny Seas. She
was all high to go, but it made a sight o' talk at her age; an' the
minister made it a subject o' prayer the last Sunday, and all the
folks took a last leave; but she said to some she'd fetch 'em home
something real pritty, and so did. An' then they come home t'other
way, round the Horn, an' she done so well, an' was such a sight o'
company, the other child'n was jealous, an' she promised she'd go a
v'y'ge long o' each on 'em. She was as sprightly a person as ever I
see; an' could speak well o' what she'd seen."
"Did she die to sea?" asked Peggy, with interest.
"No, she died to home between v'y'ges, or she'd gone to sea again. I
was to her funeral. She liked her son George's ship the best; 'twas
the one she was going on to Callao. They said the men aboard all
called her 'gran'ma'am,' an' she kep' 'em mended up, an' would go
below and tend to 'em if they was sick. She might 'a' been alive an'
enjoyin' of herself a good many years but for the kick of a cow; 'twas
a new cow out of a drove, a dreadful unruly beast."
Mrs. Dow stopped for breath, and reached down for a new supply of
beans; her empty apron was gray with soft chaff. Betsey Lane, still
pondering on the Centennial, began to sing another verse of her hymn,
and again the old women joined her. At this moment some strangers came
driving round into the yard from the front of the house. The turf was
soft, and our friends did not hear the horses' steps. Their voices
cracked and quavered; it was a funny little concert, and a lady in an
open carriage just below listened with sympathy and amusement.
II.
"Betsey! Betsey! Miss Lane!" a voice called eagerly at the foot of the
stairs that led up from the shed. "Betsey! There's a lady here wants
to see you right away."
Betsey was dazed with excitement, like a country child who knows the
rare pleasure of being called out of school. "Lor', I ain't fit to go
down, be I?" she faltered, looking anxiously at her friends; but Peggy
was gazing even nearer to the zenith than usual, in her excited effort
to see down into the yard, and Mrs. Dow only nodded somewhat
jealously, and said that she guessed 'twas nobody would do her any
harm. She rose ponderously, while Betsey hesitated, being, as they
would have said, all of a twitter. "It is a lady, certain," Mrs. Dow
assured her; "'tain't often there's a lady comes here."
"While there was any of Mis' Gen'ral Thornton's folks left, I wa'n't
without visits from the gentry," said Betsey Lane, turning back
proudly at the head of the stairs, with a touch of old-world pride and
sense of high station. Then she disappeared, and closed the door
behind her at the stair-foot with a decision quite unwelcome to the
friends above.
"She needn't 'a' been so dreadful 'fraid anybody was goin' to listen.
I guess we've got folks to ride an' see us, or had once, if we hain't
now," said Miss Peggy Bond, plaintively.
"I expect 't was only the wind shoved it to," said Aunt Lavina.
"Betsey is one that gits flustered easier than some. I wish 'twas
somebody to take her off an' give her a kind of a good time; she's
young to settle down 'long of old folks like us. Betsey's got a notion
o' rovin' such as ain't my natur', but I should like to see her
satisfied. She'd been a very understandin' person, if she had the
advantages that some does."
"'Tis so," said Peggy Bond, tilting her chin high. "I suppose you
can't hear nothin' they're saying? I feel my hearin' ain't up to whar
it was. I can hear things close to me well as ever; but there, hearin'
ain't everything; 'tain't as if we lived where there was more goin' on
to hear. Seems to me them folks is stoppin' a good while."
"They surely be," agreed Lavina Dow.
"I expect it's somethin' particular. There ain't none of the Thornton
folks left, except one o' the gran'darters, an' I've often heard
Betsey remark that she should never see her more, for she lives to
London. Strange how folks feels contented in them strayaway places off
to the ends of the airth."
The flies and bees were buzzing against the hot windowpanes; the
handfuls of beans were clicking into the brown wooden measure. A bird
came and perched on the windowsill, and then flitted away toward the
blue sky. Below, in the yard, Betsey Lane stood talking with the lady.
She had put her blue drilling apron over her head, and her face was
shining with delight.
"Lor', dear," she said, for at least the third time, "I remember ye
when I first see ye; an awful pritty baby you was, an' they all said
you looked just like the old gen'ral. Be you goin' back to foreign
parts right away?"
"Yes, I'm going back; you know that all my children are there. I wish
I could take you with me for a visit," said the charming young guest.
"I'm going to carry over some of the pictures and furniture from the
old house; I didn't care half so much for them when I was younger as I
do now. Perhaps next summer we shall all come over for a while. I
should like to see my girls and boys playing under the pines."
"I wish you re'lly was livin' to the old place," said Betsey Lane. Her
imagination was not swift; she needed time to think over all that was
being told her, and she could not fancy the two strange houses across
the sea. The old Thornton house was to her mind the most delightful
and elegant in the world.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Mrs. Strafford
kindly,--"anything that I can do for you myself, before I go away? I
shall be writing to you, and sending some pictures of the children,
and you must let me know how you are getting on."
"Yes, there is one thing, darlin'. If you could stop in the village
an' pick me out a pritty, little, small lookin'-glass, that I can keep
for my own an' have to remember you by. 'Tain't that I want to set me
above the rest o' the folks, but I was always used to havin' my own
when I was to your grandma's. There's very nice folks here, some on
'em, and I'm better off than if I was able to keep house; but sence
you ask me, that's the only thing I feel cropin' about. What be you
goin' right back for? ain't you goin' to see the great fair to
Pheladelphy, that everybody talks about?"
"No," said Mrs. Strafford, laughing at this eager and almost
convicting question. "No; I'm going back next week. If I were, I
believe that I should take you with me. Good-by, dear old Betsey; you
make me feel as if I were a little girl again; you look just the
same."
For full five minutes the old woman stood out in the sunshine, dazed
with delight, and majestic with a sense of her own consequence. She
held something tight in her hand, without thinking what it might be;
but just as the friendly mistress of the poor-farm came out to hear
the news, she tucked the roll of money into the bosom of her brown
gingham dress. "'Twas my dear Mis' Katy Strafford," she turned to say
proudly. "She come way over from London; she's been sick; they thought
the voyage would do her good. She said most the first thing she had on
her mind was to come an' find me, and see how I was, an' if I was
comfortable; an' now she's goin' right back. She's got two splendid
houses; an' said how she wished I was there to look after things,--she
remembered I was always her gran'ma's right hand. Oh, it does so carry
me back, to see her! Seems if all the rest on 'em must be there
together to the old house. There, I must go right up an' tell Mis' Dow
an' Peggy."
"Dinner's all ready; I was just goin' to blow the horn for the
men-folks," said the keeper's wife. "They'll be right down. I expect
you've got along smart with them beans,--all three of you together;"
but Betsey's mind roved so high and so far at that moment that no
achievements of bean-picking could lure it back.
III.
The long table in the great kitchen soon gathered its company of waifs
and strays,--creatures of improvidence and misfortune, and the
irreparable victims of old age. The dinner was satisfactory, and there
was not much delay for conversation. Peggy Bond and Mrs. Dow and
Betsey Lane always sat together at one end, with an air of putting the
rest of the company below the salt. Betsey was still flushed with
excitement; in fact, she could not eat as much as usual, and she
looked up from time to time expectantly, as if she were likely to be
asked to speak of her guest; but everybody was hungry, and even Mrs.
Dow broke in upon some attempted confidences by asking inopportunely
for a second potato. There were nearly twenty at the table, counting
the keeper and his wife and two children, noisy little persons who had
come from school with the small flock belonging to the poor widow, who
sat just opposite our friends. She finished her dinner before any one
else, and pushed her chair back; she always helped with the
housework,--a thin, sorry, bad-tempered-looking poor soul, whom grief
had sharpened instead of softening. "I expect you feel too fine to set
with common folks," she said enviously to Betsey.
"Here I be a-settin'," responded Betsey calmly. "I don' know's I
behave more unbecomin' than usual." Betsey prided herself upon her
good and proper manners; but the rest of the company, who would have
liked to hear the bit of morning news, were now defrauded of that
pleasure. The wrong note had been struck; there was a silence after
the clatter of knives and plates, and one by one the cheerful town
charges disappeared. The bean-picking had been finished, and there was
a call for any of the women who felt like planting corn; so Peggy
Bond, who could follow the line of hills pretty fairly, and Betsey
herself, who was still equal to anybody at that work, and Mrs. Dow,
all went out to the field together. Aunt Lavina labored slowly up the
yard, carrying a light splint-bottomed kitchen chair and her
knitting-work, and sat near the stone wall on a gentle rise, where she
could see the pond and the green country, and exchange a word with her
friends as they came and went up and down the rows. Betsey vouchsafed
a word now and then about Mrs. Strafford, but you would have thought
that she had been suddenly elevated to Mrs. Strafford's own cares and
the responsibilities attending them, and had little in common with her
old associates. Mrs. Dow and Peggy knew well that these high-feeling
times never lasted long, and so they waited with as much patience as
they could muster. They were by no means without that true tact which
is only another word for unselfish sympathy.
The strip of corn land ran along the side of a great field; at the
upper end of it was a field-corner thicket of young maples and walnut
saplings, the children of a great nut-tree that marked the boundary.
Once, when Betsey Lane found herself alone near this shelter at the
end of her row, the other planters having lagged behind beyond the
rising ground, she looked stealthily about, and then put her hand
inside her gown, and for the first time took out the money that Mrs.
Strafford had given her. She turned it over and over with an
astonished look: there were new bank-bills for a hundred dollars.
Betsey gave a funny little shrug of her shoulders, came out of the
bushes, and took a step or two on the narrow edge of turf, as if she
were going to dance; then she hastily tucked away her treasure, and
stepped discreetly down into the soft harrowed and hoed land, and
began to drop corn again, five kernels to a hill. She had seen the top
of Peggy Bond's head over the knoll, and now Peggy herself came
entirely into view, gazing upward to the skies, and stumbling more or
less, but counting the corn by touch and twisting her head about
anxiously to gain advantage over her uncertain vision. Betsey made a
friendly, inarticulate little sound as they passed; she was thinking
that somebody said once that Peggy's eyesight might be remedied if she
could go to Boston to the hospital; but that was so remote and
impossible an undertaking that no one had ever taken the first step.
Betsey Lane's brown old face suddenly worked with excitement, but in a
moment more she regained her usual firm expression, and spoke
carelessly to Peggy as she turned and came alongside.