May afternoon. The woods about the field to the northward were full of
birds, and the young leaves scarcely hid the solemn shapes of a
company of crows that patiently attended the corn-planting. Two of the
men had finished their hoeing, and were busy with the construction of
a scarecrow; they knelt in the furrows, chuckling, and looking over
some forlorn, discarded garments. It was a time-honored custom to make
the scarecrow resemble one of the poor-house family; and this year
they intended to have Mrs. Lavina Dow protect the field in effigy;
last year it was the counterfeit of Betsey Lane who stood on guard,
with an easily recognized quilted hood and the remains of a valued
shawl that one of the calves had found airing on a fence and chewed to
pieces. Behind the men was the foundation for this rustic attempt at
statuary,--an upright stake and bar in the form of a cross. This stood
on the highest part of the field; and as the men knelt near it, and
the quaint figures of the corn-planters went and came, the scene gave
a curious suggestion of foreign life. It was not like New England; the
presence of the rude cross appealed strangely to the imagination.
IV.
Life flowed so smoothly, for the most part, at the Byfleet Boor-farm,
that nobody knew what to make, later in the summer, of a strange
disappearance. All the elder inmates were familiar with illness and
death, and the poor pomp of a town-pauper's funeral. The comings and
goings and the various misfortunes of those who composed this strange
family, related only through its disasters, hardly served for the
excitement and talk of a single day. Now that the June days were at
their longest, the old people were sure to wake earlier than ever; but
one morning, to the astonishment of every one, Betsey Lane's bed was
empty; the sheets and blankets, which were her own, and guarded with
jealous care, were carefully folded and placed on a chair not too near
the window, and Betsey had flown. Nobody had heard her go down the
creaking stairs. The kitchen door was unlocked, and the old watchdog
lay on the step outside in the early sunshine, wagging his tail and
looking wise, as if he were left on guard and meant to keep the
fugitive's secret.
"Never knowed her to do nothin' afore 'thout talking it over a
fortnight, and paradin' off when we could all see her," ventured a
spiteful voice. "Guess we can wait till night to hear 'bout it."
Mrs. Dow looked sorrowful and shook her head. "Betsey had an aunt on
her mother's side that went and drownded of herself; she was a
pritty-appearing woman as ever you see."
"Perhaps she's gone to spend the day with Decker's folks," suggested
Peggy Bond. "She always takes an extra early start; she was speakin'
lately o' going up their way;" but Mrs. Dow shook her head with a most
melancholy look. "I'm impressed that something's befell her," she
insisted. "I heard her a-groanin' in her sleep. I was wakeful the
forepart o' the night,--'tis very unusual with me, too."
"'Twa'n't like Betsey not to leave us any word," said the other old
friend, with more resentment than melancholy. They sat together almost
in silence that morning in the shed chamber. Mrs. Dow was sorting and
cutting rags, and Peggy braided them into long ropes, to be made into
mats at a later date. If they had only known where Betsey Lane had
gone, they might have talked about it until dinner-time at noon; but
failing this new subject, they could take no interest in any of their
old ones. Out in the field the corn was well up, and the men were
hoeing. It was a hot morning in the shed chamber, and the woolen rags
were dusty and hot to handle.
V.
Byfleet people knew each other well, and when this mysteriously absent
person did not return to the town-farm at the end of a week, public
interest became much excited; and presently it was ascertained that
Betsey Lane was neither making a visit to her friends the Deckers on
Birch Hill, nor to any nearer acquaintances; in fact, she had
disappeared altogether from her wonted haunts. Nobody remembered to
have seen her pass, hers had been such an early flitting; and when
somebody thought of her having gone away by train, he was laughed at
for forgetting that the earliest morning train from South Byfleet, the
nearest station, did not start until long after eight o'clock; and if
Betsey had designed to be one of the passengers, she would have
started along the road at seven, and been seen and known of all women.
There was not a kitchen in that part of Byfleet that did not have
windows toward the road. Conversation rarely left the level of the
neighborhood gossip: to see Betsey Lane, in her best clothes, at that
hour in the morning, would have been the signal for much exercise of
imagination; but as day after day went by without news, the curiosity
of those who knew her best turned slowly into fear, and at last Peggy
Bond again gave utterance to the belief that Betsey had either gone
out in the early morning and put an end to her life, or that she had
gone to the Centennial. Some of the people at table were moved to loud
laughter,--it was at supper-time on a Sunday night,--but others
listened with great interest.
"She never'd put on her good clothes to drownd herself," said the
widow. "She might have thought 'twas good as takin' 'em with her,
though. Old folks has wandered off an' got lost in the woods afore
now."
Mrs. Dow and Peggy resented this impertinent remark, but deigned to
take no notice of the speaker. "She wouldn't have wore her best
clothes to the Centennial, would she?" mildly inquired Peggy, bobbing
her head toward the ceiling. "'Twould be a shame to spoil your best
things in such a place. An' I don't know of her havin' any money;
there's the end o' that."
"You're bad as old Mis' Bland, that used to live neighbor to our
folks," said one of the old men. "She was dreadful precise; an' she so
begretched to wear a good alapaca dress that was left to her, that it
hung in a press forty year, an' baited the moths at last."
"I often seen Mis' Bland a-goin' in to meetin' when I was a young
girl," said Peggy Bond approvingly. "She was a good-appearin' woman,
an' she left property."
"Wish she'd left it to me, then," said the poor soul opposite,
glancing at her pathetic row of children: but it was not good manners
at the farm to deplore one's situation, and Mrs. Dow and Peggy only
frowned. "Where do you suppose Betsey can be?" said Mrs. Dow, for the
twentieth time. "She didn't have no money. I know she ain't gone far,
if it's so that she's yet alive. She's b'en real pinched all the
spring."
"Perhaps that lady that come one day give her some," the keeper's wife
suggested mildly.
"Then Betsey would have told me," said Mrs. Dow, with injured dignity.
VI.
On the morning of her disappearance, Betsey rose even before the pewee
and the English sparrow, and dressed herself quietly, though with
trembling hands, and stole out of the kitchen door like a plunderless
thief. The old dog licked her hand and looked at her anxiously; the
tortoise-shell cat rubbed against her best gown, and trotted away up
the yard, then she turned anxiously and came after the old woman,
following faithfully until she had to be driven back. Betsey was used
to long country excursions afoot. She dearly loved the early morning;
and finding that there was no dew to trouble her, she began to follow
pasture paths and short cuts across the fields, surprising here and
there a flock of sleepy sheep, or a startled calf that rustled out
from the bushes. The birds were pecking their breakfast from bush and
turf; and hardly any of the wild inhabitants of that rural world were
enough alarmed by her presence to do more than flutter away if they
chanced to be in her path. She stepped along, light-footed and eager
as a girl, dressed in her neat old straw bonnet and black gown, and
carrying a few belongings in her best bundle-handkerchief, one that
her only brother had brought home from the East Indies fifty years
before. There was an old crow perched as sentinel on a small, dead
pine-tree, where he could warn friends who were pulling up the
sprouted corn in a field close by; but he only gave a contemptuous caw
as the adventurer appeared, and she shook her bundle at him in
revenge, and laughed to see him so clumsy as he tried to keep his
footing on the twigs.
"Yes, I be," she assured him. "I'm a-goin' to Pheladelphy, to the
Centennial, same's other folks. I'd jest as soon tell ye's not, old
crow;" and Betsey laughed aloud in pleased content with herself and
her daring, as she walked along. She had only two miles to go to the
station at South Byfleet, and she felt for the money now and then, and
found it safe enough. She took great pride in the success of her
escape, and especially in the long concealment of her wealth. Not a
night had passed since Mrs. Strafford's visit that she had not slept
with the roll of money under her pillow by night, and buttoned safe
inside her dress by day. She knew that everybody would offer advice
and even commands about the spending or saving of it; and she brooked
no interference.
The last mile of the foot-path to South Byfleet was along the railway
track; and Betsey began to feel in haste, though it was still nearly
two hours to train time. She looked anxiously forward and back along
the rails every few minutes, for fear of being run over; and at last
she caught sight of an engine that was apparently coming toward her,
and took flight into the woods before she could gather courage to
follow the path again. The freight train proved to be at a standstill,
waiting at a turnout; and some of the men were straying about, eating
their early breakfast comfortably in this time of leisure. As the old
woman came up to them, she stopped too, for a moment of rest and
conversation.
"Where be ye goin'?" she asked pleasantly; and they told her. It was
to the town where she had to change cars and take the great through
train; a point of geography which she had learned from evening talks
between the men at the farm.
"What'll ye carry me there for?"
"We don't run no passenger cars," said one of the young fellows,
laughing. "What makes you in such a hurry?"
"I'm startin' for Pheladelphy, an' it's a gre't ways to go."
"So't is; but you're consid'able early, if you're makin' for the
eight-forty train. See here! you haven't got a needle an' thread 'long
of you in that bundle, have you? If you'll sew me on a couple o'
buttons, I'll give ye a free ride. I'm in a sight o' distress, an'
none o' the fellows is provided with as much as a bent pin."
"You poor boy! I'll have you seen to, in half a minute. I'm troubled
with a stiff arm, but I'll do the best I can."
The obliging Betsey seated herself stiffly on the slope of the
embankment, and found her thread and needle with utmost haste. Two of
the train-men stood by and watched the careful stitches, and even
offered her a place as spare brakeman, so that they might keep her
near; and Betsey took the offer with considerable seriousness, only
thinking it necessary to assure them that she was getting most too old
to be out in all weathers. An express went by like an earthquake, and
she was presently hoisted on board an empty box-car by two of her new
and flattering acquaintances, and found herself before noon at the end
of the first stage of her journey, without having spent a cent, and
furnished with any amount of thrifty advice. One of the young men,
being compassionate of her unprotected state as a traveler, advised
her to find out the widow of an uncle of his in Philadelphia, saying
despairingly that he couldn't tell her just how to find the house; but
Miss Betsey Lane said that she had an English tongue in her head, and
should be sure to find whatever she was looking for. This unexpected
incident of the freight train was the reason why everybody about the
South Byfleet station insisted that no such person had taken passage
by the regular train that same morning, and why there were those who
persuaded themselves that Miss Betsey Lane was probably lying at the
bottom of the poor-farm pond.
VII.
"Land sakes!" said Miss Betsey Lane, as she watched a Turkish person
parading by in his red fez, "I call the Centennial somethin' like the
day o' judgment! I wish I was goin' to stop a month, but I dare say
'twould be the death o' my poor old bones."
She was leaning against the barrier of a patent pop-corn
establishment, which had given her a sudden reminder of home, and of
the winter nights when the sharp-kerneled little red and yellow ears
were brought out, and Old Uncle Eph Flanders sat by the kitchen stove,
and solemnly filled a great wooden chopping-tray for the refreshment
of the company. She had wandered and loitered and looked until her
eyes and head had grown numb and unreceptive; but it is only
unimaginative persons who can be really astonished. The imagination
can always outrun the possible and actual sights and sounds of the
world; and this plain old body from Byfleet rarely found anything rich
and splendid enough to surprise her. She saw the wonders of the West
and the splendors of the East with equal calmness and satisfaction;
she had always known that there was an amazing world outside the
boundaries of Byfleet. There was a piece of paper in her pocket on
which was marked, in her clumsy handwriting, "If Betsey Lane should
meet with accident, notify the selectmen of Byfleet;" but having made
this slight provision for the future, she had thrown herself boldly
into the sea of strangers, and then had made the joyful discovery that
friends were to be found at every turn.
There was something delightfully companionable about Betsey; she had a
way of suddenly looking up over her big spectacles with a reassuring
and expectant smile, as if you were going to speak to her, and you
generally did. She must have found out where hundreds of people came
from, and whom they had left at home, and what they thought of the
great show, as she sat on a bench to rest, or leaned over the railings
where free luncheons were afforded by the makers of hot waffles and
molasses candy and fried potatoes; and there was not a night when she
did not return to her lodgings with a pocket crammed with samples of
spool cotton and nobody knows what. She had already collected small
presents for almost everybody she knew at home, and she was such a
pleasant, beaming old country body, so unmistakably appreciative and
interested, that nobody ever thought of wishing that she would move
on. Nearly all the busy people of the Exhibition called her either
Aunty or Grandma at once, and made little pleasures for her as best
they could. She was a delightful contrast to the indifferent, stupid
crowd that drifted along, with eyes fixed at the same level, and
seeing, even on that level, nothing for fifty feet at a time. "What be
you making here, dear?" Betsey Lane would ask joyfully, and the most
perfunctory guardian hastened to explain. She squandered money as she
had never had the pleasure of doing before, and this hastened the day
when she must return to Byfleet. She was always inquiring if there
were any spectacle-sellers at hand, and received occasional
directions; but it was a difficult place for her to find her way about
in, and the very last day of her stay arrived before she found an
exhibitor of the desired sort, an oculist and instrument-maker.
"I called to get some specs for a friend that's upsighted," she
gravely informed the salesman, to his extreme amusement. "She's
dreadful troubled, and jerks her head up like a hen a-drinkin'. She's
got a blur a-growin' an' spreadin', an' sometimes she can see out to
one side on't, and more times she can't."
"Cataracts," said a middle-aged gentleman at her side; and Betsey Lane
turned to regard him with approval and curiosity.
"'Tis Miss Peggy Bond I was mentioning, of Byfleet Poor-farm," she
explained. "I count on gettin' some glasses to relieve her trouble, if
there's any to be found."
"Glasses won't do her any good," said the stranger. "Suppose you come
and sit down on this bench, and tell me all about it. First, where is
Byfleet?" and Betsey gave the directions at length.
"I thought so," said the surgeon. "How old is this friend of yours?"
Betsey cleared her throat decisively, and smoothed her gown over her
knees as if it were an apron; then she turned to take a good look at
her new acquaintance as they sat on the rustic bench together. "Who be
you, sir, I should like to know?" she asked, in a friendly tone.
"My name's Dunster."
"I take it you're a doctor," continued Betsey, as if they had
overtaken each other walking from Byfleet to South Byfleet on a summer
morning.
"I'm a doctor; part of one at least," said he. "I know more or less
about eyes; and I spend my summers down on the shore at the mouth of
your river; some day I'll come up and look at this person. How old is
she?"
"Peggy Bond is one that never tells her age; 'tain't come quite up to
where she'll begin to brag of it, you see," explained Betsey
reluctantly; "but I know her to be nigh to seventy-six, one way or
t'other. Her an' Mrs. Mary Ann Chick was same year's child'n, and
Peggy knows I know it, an' two or three times when we've be'n in the
buryin'-ground where Mary Ann lays an' has her dates right on her
headstone, I couldn't bring Peggy to take no sort o' notice. I will
say she makes, at times, a convenience of being upsighted. But there,
I feel for her,--everybody does; it keeps her stubbin' an' trippin'
against everything, beakin' and gazin' up the way she has to."
"Yes, yes," said the doctor, whose eyes were twinkling. "I'll come and
look after her, with your town doctor, this summer,--some time in the
last of July or first of August."
"You'll find occupation," said Betsey, not without an air of
patronage. "Most of us to the Byfleet Farm has got our ails, now I
tell ye. You ain't got no bitters that'll take a dozen years right off
an ol' lady's shoulders?"
The busy man smiled pleasantly, and shook his head as he went away.
"Dunster," said Betsey to herself, soberly committing the new name to
her sound memory. "Yes, I mustn't forget to speak of him to the
doctor, as he directed. I do' know now as Peggy would vally herself
quite so much accordin' to, if she had her eyes fixed same as other
folks. I expect there wouldn't been a smarter woman in town, though,
if she'd had a proper chance. Now I've done what I set to do for her,
I do believe, an' 'twa'n't glasses, neither. I'll git her a pritty
little shawl with that money I laid aside. Peggy Bond ain't got a
pritty shawl. I always wanted to have a real good time, an' now I'm
havin' it."
VIII.
Two or three days later, two pathetic figures might have been seen
crossing the slopes of the poor-farm field, toward the low shores of
Byfield pond. It was early in the morning, and the stubble of the
lately mown grass was wet with rain and hindering to old feet. Peggy
Bond was more blundering and liable to stray in the wrong direction
than usual; it was one of the days when she could hardly see at all.
Aunt Lavina Dow was unusually clumsy of movement, and stiff in the
joints; she had not been so far from the house for three years. The
morning breeze filled the gathers of her wide gingham skirt, and
aggravated the size of her unwieldy figure. She supported herself with
a stick, and trusted beside to the fragile support of Peggy's arm.
They were talking together in whispers.
"Oh, my sakes!" exclaimed Peggy, moving her small head from side to
side. "Hear you wheeze, Mis' Dow! This may be the death o' you; there,
do go slow! You set here on the sidehill, an' le' me go try if I can
see."
"It needs more eyesight than you've got," said Mrs. Dow, panting
between the words. "Oh! to think how spry I was in my young days, an'
here I be now, the full of a door, an' all my complaints so aggravated
by my size. 'T is hard! 'tis hard! but I'm a-doin' of all this for
pore Betsey's sake. I know they've all laughed, but I look to see her
ris' to the top o' the pond this day,--'tis just nine days since she
departed; an' say what they may, I know she hove herself in. It run in
her family; Betsey had an aunt that done just so, an' she ain't be'n
like herself, a-broodin' an' hivin' away alone, an' nothin' to say to
you an' me that was always sich good company all together. Somethin'
sprung her mind, now I tell ye, Mis' Bond."
"I feel to hope we sha'n't find her, I must say," faltered Peggy. It
was plain that Mrs. Dow was the captain of this doleful expedition. "I
guess she ain't never thought o' drowndin' of herself, Mis' Dow; she's
gone off a-visitin' way over to the other side o' South Byfleet; some
thinks she's gone to the Centennial even now!"
"She hadn't no proper means, I tell ye," wheezed Mrs. Dow indignantly;
"an' if you prefer that others should find her floatin' to the top
this day, instid of us that's her best friends, you can step back to
the house."
They walked on in aggrieved silence. Peggy Bond trembled with
excitement, but her companion's firm grasp never wavered, and so they
came to the narrow, gravelly margin and stood still. Peggy tried in
vain to see the glittering water and the pond-lilies that starred it;
she knew that they must be there; once, years ago, she had caught
fleeting glimpses of them, and she never forgot what she had once
seen. The clear blue sky overhead, the dark pine-woods beyond the
pond, were all clearly pictured in her mind. "Can't you see nothin'?"
she faltered; "I believe I'm wuss'n upsighted this day. I'm going to
be blind."
"No," said Lavina Dow solemnly; "no, there ain't nothin' whatever,
Peggy. I hope to mercy she ain't"--
"Why, whoever'd expected to find you 'way out here!" exclaimed a brisk
and cheerful voice. There stood Betsey Lane herself, close behind
them, having just emerged from a thicket of alders that grew close by.
She was following the short way homeward from the railroad.
"Why, what's the matter, Mis' Dow? You ain't overdoin', be ye? an'
Peggy's all of a flutter. What in the name o' natur' ails ye?"
"There ain't nothin' the matter, as I knows on," responded the leader
of this fruitless expedition. "We only thought we'd take a stroll this
pleasant mornin'," she added, with sublime self-possession. "Where've
you be'n, Betsey Lane?"
"To Pheladelphy, ma'am," said Betsey, looking quite young and gay, and
wearing a townish and unfamiliar air that upheld her words. "All ought
to go that can; why, you feel's if you'd be'n all round the world. I
guess I've got enough to think of and tell ye for the rest o' my days.
I've always wanted to go somewheres. I wish you'd be'n there, I do so.
I've talked with folks from Chiny an' the back o' Pennsylvany; and I
see folks way from Australy that 'peared as well as anybody; an' I see
how they made spool cotton, an' sights o' other things; an' I spoke
with a doctor that lives down to the beach in the summer, an' he
offered to come up 'long in the first of August, an' see what he can
do for Peggy's eyesight. There was di'monds there as big as pigeon's
eggs; an' I met with Mis' Abby Fletcher from South Byfleet depot; an'
there was hogs there that weighed risin' thirteen hunderd"--
"I want to know," said Mrs. Lavina Dow and Peggy Bond, together.
"Well, 'twas a great exper'ence for a person," added Lavina, turning
ponderously, in spite of herself, to give a last wistful look at the
smiling waters of the pond.
"I don't know how soon I be goin' to settle down," proclaimed the
rustic sister of Sindbad. "What's for the good o' one's for the good
of all. You just wait till we're setting together up in the old shed
chamber! You know, my dear Mis' Katy Strafford give me a han'some
present o' money that day she come to see me; and I'd be'n a-dreamin'
by night an' day o' seein' that Centennial; and when I come to think
on't I felt sure somebody ought to go from this neighborhood, if 'twas
only for the good o' the rest; and I thought I'd better be the one. I
wa'n't goin' to ask the selec'men neither. I've come back with
one-thirty-five in money, and I see everything there, an' I fetched ye
all a little somethin'; but I'm full o' dust now, an' pretty nigh beat
out. I never see a place more friendly than Pheladelphy; but 't ain't
natural to a Byfleet person to be always walkin' on a level. There,
now, Peggy, you take my bundle-handkercher and the basket, and let
Mis' Dow sag on to me. I 'll git her along twice as easy."
With this the small elderly company set forth triumphant toward the
poor-house, across the wide green field.
* * * * *
_The Gray Mills of Farley_