old-looking place, with a ledgy, forlorn field stretching out behind
it toward some low woods. There were high white-birch poles holding up
thick tangles of hop-vines, and at the side there were sunflowers
straggling about as if they had come up from seed scattered by the
wind. Some of them were close together, as if they were whispering to
each other; and their big, yellow faces were all turned toward the
front of the house, where people were already collected as if there
were a funeral.
"It's the auction," said Georgie with great satisfaction. "I heard 'em
talking about it down at the shore this morning. There's 'Lisha Downs
now. He started off just before we did. That's his fish-cart over by
the well."
"What is going to be sold?" said I.
"All the stuff," said Georgie, as if he were much pleased. "She's
going off up to Boston with her son."
"I think we had better stop," said I, for I saw Mrs. 'Lisha Downs, who
was one of my acquaintances at the shore, and I wished to see what was
going on, besides giving Georgie a chance at the festivities. So we
tied the horse, and went toward the house, and I found several people
whom I knew a little. Mrs. Downs shook hands with me as formally as if
we had not talked for some time as I went by her house to the shore,
just after breakfast. She presented me to several of her friends with
whom she had been talking as I came up. "Let me make you acquainted,"
she said; and every time I bowed she bowed too, unconsciously, and
seemed a little ill at ease and embarrassed, but luckily the ceremony
was soon over. "I thought I would stop for a few minutes," said I by
way of apology. "I didn't know why the people were here until Georgie
told me."
"She's going to move up to Boston 'long of her son," said one of the
women, who looked very pleasant and very tired. "I think myself it's a
bad plan to pull old folks up by the roots. There's a niece o' hers
that would have been glad to stop with her, and do for the old lady.
But John, he's very high-handed, and wants it his way, and he says his
mother sha'n't live in no such a place as this. He makes a sight o'
money. He's got out a patent, and they say he's just bought a new
house that cost him eleven thousand dollars. But old Mis' Wallis,
she's wonted here; and she was telling of me yesterday she was only
going to please John. He says he wants her up there, where she'll be
more comfortable, and see something."
"He means well," said another woman whom I did not know; "but folks
about here never thought no great of his judgment. He's put up some
splendid stones in the burying-lot to his father and his sister
Miranda that died. I used to go to school 'long of Miranda. She'd have
been pleased to go to Boston; she was that kind. But there! mother was
saying last night, what if his business took a turn, and he lost every
thing! Mother's took it dreadfully to heart; she and Mis' Wallis was
always mates as long ago as they can recollect."
It was evident that the old widow was both pitied and envied by her
friends on account of her bettered fortunes, and they came up to speak
to her with more or less seriousness, as befitted the occasion. She
looked at me with great curiosity, but Mrs. Downs told her who I was,
and I had a sudden instinct to say how sorry I was for her, but I was
afraid it might appear intrusive on so short an acquaintance. She was
a thin old soul who looked as if she had had a good deal of trouble in
her day, and as if she had been very poor and very anxious. "Yes,"
said she to some one who had come from a distance, "it does come hard
to go off. Home is home, and I seem to hate to sell off my things; but
I suppose they would look queer up to Boston. John Bays says I won't
have no idea of the house until I see it;" and she looked proud and
important for a minute, but, as some one brought an old chair out at
the door, her face fell again. "Oh, dear!" said she, "I should like to
keep that! it belonged to my mother. It's most wore out anyway. I
guess I'll let somebody keep it for me;" and she hurried off
despairingly to find her son, while we went into the house.
There is so little to interest the people who live on those quiet,
secluded farms, that an event of this kind gives great pleasure. I
know they have not done talking yet about the sale, of the bargains
that were made, or the goods that brought more than they were worth.
And then the women had the chance of going all about the house, and
committing every detail of its furnishings to their tenacious
memories. It is a curiosity one grows more and more willing to pardon,
for there is so little to amuse them in every-day life. I wonder if
any one has not often been struck, as I have, by the sadness and
hopelessness which seems to overshadow many of the people who live on
the lonely farms in the outskirts of small New-England villages. It is
most noticeable among the elderly women. Their talk is very cheerless,
and they have a morbid interest in sicknesses and deaths; they tell
each other long stories about such things; they are very forlorn; they
dwell persistently upon any troubles which they have; and their petty
disputes with each other have a tragic hold upon their thoughts,
sometimes being handed down from one generation to the next. Is it
because their world is so small, and life affords so little amusement
and pleasure, and is at best such a dreary round of the dullest
housekeeping? There is a lack of real merriment, and the fun is an
odd, rough way of joking; it is a stupid, heavy sort of fun, though
there is much of a certain quaint humor, and once in a while a flash
of wit. I came upon a short, stout old sister in one room, making all
the effort she possibly could to see what was on the upper shelves of
a closet. We were the only persons there, and she looked longingly at
a convenient chair, and I know she wished I would go away. But my
heart suddenly went out toward an old dark-green Delft bowl which I
saw, and I asked her if she would be kind enough to let me take it, as
if I thought she were there for the purpose. "I'll bring you a chair,"
said I; and she said, "Certain, dear." And I helped her up, and I'm
sure she had the good look she had coveted while I took the bowl to
the window. It was badly cracked, and had been mended with putty; but
the rich, dull color of it was exquisite. One often comes across a
beautiful old stray bit of china in such a place as this, and I
imagined it filled with apple-blossoms or wild roses. Mrs. Wallis
wished to give it to me, she said it wasn't good for any thing; and,
finding she did not care for it, I bought it; and now it is perched
high in my room, with the cracks discreetly turned to the wall. "Seems
to me she never had thrown away nothing," said my friend, whom I found
still standing on the chair when I came back. "Here's some pieces of a
pitcher: I wonder when she broke it! I've heard her say it was one her
grandmother give her, though. The old lady bought it to a vandoo down
at old Mis' Walton Peters's after she died, so Mis' Wallis said. I
guess I'll speak to her, and see if she wants every thing sold that's
here."
There was a very great pathos to me about this old home. It must have
been a hard place to get a living in, both for men and women, with its
wretched farming-land, and the house itself so cold and thin and worn
out. I could understand that the son was in a hurry to get his mother
away from it. I was sure that the boyhood he had spent there must have
been uncomfortable, and that he did not look back to it with much
pleasure. There is an immense contrast between even a moderately
comfortable city house and such a place as this. No wonder that he
remembered the bitter cold mornings, the frost and chill, and the
dark, and the hard work, and wished his mother to leave them all
behind, as he had done! He did not care for the few plain bits of
furniture; why should he? and he had been away so long, that he had
lost his interest in the neighbors. Perhaps this might come back to
him again as he grew older; but now he moved about among them, in his
handsome but somewhat flashy clothes, with a look that told me he felt
conscious of his superior station in life. I did not altogether like
his looks, though somebody said admiringly, as he went by, "They say
he's worth as much as thirty thousand dollars a'ready. He's smart as a
whip." But, while I did not wonder at the son's wishing his mother to
go away, I also did not wonder at her being unwilling to leave the
dull little house where she had spent so much of her life. I was
afraid no other house in the world would ever seem like home to her:
she was a part of the old place; she had worn the doors smooth by the
touch of her hands, and she had scrubbed the floors, and walked over
them, until the knots stood up high in the pine boards. The old clock
had been unscrewed from the wall, and stood on a table; and when I
heard its loud and anxious tick, my first thought was one of pity for
the poor thing, for fear it might be homesick, like its mistress. When
I went out again, I was very sorry for old Mrs. Wallis; she looked so
worried and excited, and as if this new turn of affairs in her life
was too strange and unnatural; it bewildered her, and she could not
understand it; she only knew every thing was going to be different.
Georgie was by himself, as usual, looking grave and intent. He had
gone aloft on the wheel of a clumsy great ox-cart in which some of the
men had come to the auction, and he was looking over people's heads,
and seeing every thing that was sold. I saw he was not ready to come
away, so I was not in a hurry. I heard Mrs. Wallis say to one of her
friends, "You just go in and take that rug with the flowers on't, and
go and put it in your wagon. It's right beside my chist that's packed
ready to go. John told me to give away any thing I had a mind to. He
don't care nothing about the money. I hooked that rug four year ago;
it's most new; the red of the roses was made out of a dress of
Miranda's. I kept it a good while after she died; but it was no use to
let it lay. I've given a good deal to my sister Stiles: she was over
here helping me yesterday. There! it's all come upon me so sudden! I
s'pose I shall wish, after I get away, that I had done things
different; but, after I knew the farm was goin' to be sold, I didn't
seem to realize I was goin' to break up, until John came, day before
yesterday."
She was very friendly with me, when I said I should think she would be
sorry to go away; but she seemed glad to find I had been in Boston a
great deal, and that I was not at all unhappy there. "But I suppose
you have folks there," said she, "though I never supposed they was so
sociable as they be here, and I ain't one that's easy to make
acquaintance. It's different with young folks; and then in case
o'sickness I should hate to have strange folks round me. It seems as
if I never set so much by the old place as I do now I'm goin' away. I
used to wish 'he' would sell, and move over to the Port, it was such
hard work getting along when the child'n was small. And there's one of
my boys that run away to sea, and never was heard from. I've always
thought he might come back, though everybody give him up years ago. I
can't help thinking what if he should come back, and find I wa'n't
here! There! I'm glad to please John: he sets everything by me, and I
s'pose he thinks he's going to make a spry young woman of me. Well,
it's natural. Every thing looks fair to him, and he thinks he can have
the world just as he wants it; but _I_ know it's a world o' change,--a
world o' change and loss. And, you see, I shall have to go to a
strange meetin' up there.--Why, Mis' Sands! I am pleased to see you.
How did you get word?" And then Mrs. Wallis made another careful
apology for moving away. She seemed to be so afraid some one would
think she had not been satisfied with the neighborhood.
The auctioneer was a disagreeable-looking man, with a most unpleasant
voice, which gave me a sense of discomfort, the little old house and
its surroundings seemed so grave and silent and lonely. It was like
having all the noise and confusion on a Sunday. The house was so shut
in by the trees, that the only outlook to the world beyond was a
narrow gap in the pines, through which one could see the sea, bright,
blue and warm with sunshine, that summer day.
There was something wistful about the place, as there must have been
about the people who had lived there; yet, hungry and unsatisfied as
her life might have been in many ways, the poor old woman dreaded the
change.
The thought flashed through my mind that we all have more or less of
this same feeling about leaving this world for a better one. We have
the certainty that we shall be a great deal happier in heaven; but we
cling despairingly to the familiar things of this life. God pity the
people who find it so hard to believe what he says, and who are afraid
to die, and are afraid of the things they do not understand! I kept
thinking over and over of what Mrs. Wallis had said: 'A world of
change and loss!' What should we do if we did not have God's love to
make up for it, and if we did not know something of heaven already?
It seemed very doleful that everybody should look on the dark side of
the Widow Wallis's flitting, and I tried to suggest to her some of the
pleasures and advantages of it, once when I had a chance. And indeed
she was proud enough to be going away with her rich son; it was not
like selling her goods because she was too poor to keep the old home
any longer. I hoped the son would always be prosperous, and that the
son's wife would always be kind, and not be ashamed of her, or think
she was in the way. But I am afraid it may be a somewhat uneasy
idleness, and that there will not be much beside her knitting-work to
remind her of the old routine. She will even miss going back and
forward from the old well in storm and sunshine; she will miss looking
after the chickens, and her slow walks about the little place, or out
to a neighbor's for a bit of gossip, with the old brown checked
handkerchief over her head; and when the few homely, faithful old
flowers come up next year by the doorstep, there will be nobody to
care any thing about them.
I said good-by, and got into the wagon, and Georgie clambered in after
me with a look of great importance, and we drove away. He was very
talkative; the unusual excitement of the day was not without its
effect. He had a good deal to tell me about the people I had seen,
though I had to ask a good many questions.
"Who was the thin old fellow, with the black coat, faded yellow-green
on the shoulders, who was talking to Skipper Downs about the
dog-fish?"
"That's old Cap'n Abiah Lane," said Georgie; "lives over toward Little
Beach,--him that was cast away in the fog in a dory down to the Banks
once; like to have starved to death before he got picked up. I've
heard him tell all about it. Don't look as if he'd ever had enough to
eat since!" said the boy grimly. "He used to come over a good deal
last winter, and go out after cod 'long o' father and me. His boats
all went adrift in the big storm in November, and he never heard
nothing about 'em; guess they got stove against the rocks."
We had still more than three miles to drive over a lonely part of the
road, where there was scarcely a house, and where the woods had been
cut off more or less, so there was nothing to be seen but the uneven
ground, which was not fit for even a pasture yet. But it was not
without a beauty of its own; for the little hills and hollows were
covered thick with brakes and ferns and bushes, and in the swamps the
cat-tails and all the rushes were growing in stiff and stately ranks,
so green and tall; while the birds flew up, or skimmed across them as
we went by. It was like a town of birds, there were so many. It is
strange how one is always coming upon families and neighborhoods of
wild creatures in the unsettled country places; it is so much like
one's going on longer journeys about the world, and finding town after
town with its own interests, each so sufficient for itself.
We struck the edge of the farming-land again, after a while, and I saw
three great pines that had been born to good luck in this world, since
they had sprouted in good soil, and had been left to grow as fast as
they pleased. They lifted their heads proudly against the blue sky,
these rich trees, and I admired them as much as they could have
expected. They must have been a landmark for many miles to the
westward, for they grew on high land, and they could pity, from a
distance, any number of their poor relations who were just able to
keep body and soul together, and had grown up thin and hungry in
crowded woods. But, though their lower branches might snap and crackle
at a touch, their tops were brave and green, and they kept up
appearances, at any rate; these poorer pines.
Georgie pointed out his aunts' house to me, after a while. It was not
half so forlorn-looking as the others, for there were so many flowers
in bloom about it of the gayest kind, and a little yellow-and-white
dog came down the road to bark at us; but his manner was such that it
seemed like an unusually cordial welcome rather than an indignant
repulse. I noticed four jolly old apple-trees near by, which looked as
if they might be the last of a once flourishing orchard. They were
standing in a row, in exactly the same position, with their heads
thrown gayly back, as if they were all dancing in an old-fashioned
reel; and, after the forward and back, one might expect them to turn
partners gallantly. I laughed aloud when I caught sight of them: there
was something very funny in their looks, so jovial and whole-hearted,
with a sober, cheerful pleasure, as if they gave their whole minds to
it. It was like some old gentlemen and ladies who catch the spirit of
the thing, and dance with the rest at a Christmas party.
Miss Hannah West first looked out of the window, and then came to meet
us, looking as if she were glad to see us. Georgie had nothing
whatever to say; but, after I had followed his aunt into the house, he
began to work like a beaver at once, as if it were any thing but a
friendly visit that could be given up to such trifles as conversation,
or as if he were any thing but a boy. He brought the fish and lobsters
into the outer kitchen, though I was afraid our loitering at the
auction must have cost them their first freshness; and then he carried
the axe to the wood-pile, and began to chop up the small white-pine
sticks and brush which form the summer fire-wood at the
farm-houses,--crow-sticks and underbrush, a good deal of it,--but it
makes a hot little blaze while it lasts.
I had not seen Miss Cynthia West, the younger sister, before, and I
found the two women very unlike. Miss Hannah was evidently the capable
business-member of the household, and she had a loud voice, and went
about as if she were in a hurry. Poor Cynthia! I saw at first that she
was one of the faded-looking country-women who have a hard time, and
who, if they had grown up in the midst of a more luxurious way of
living, would have been frail and delicate and refined, and entirely
lady-like. But, as it was, she was somewhat in the shadow of her
sister, and felt as if she were not of very much use or consequence in
the world, I have no doubt. She showed me some pretty picture-frames
she had made out of pine-cones and hemlock-cones and alder-burs; but
her chief glory and pride was a silly little model of a house, in
perforated card-board, which she had cut and worked after a pattern
that came in a magazine. It must have cost her a great deal of work;
but it partly satisfied her great longing for pretty things, and for
the daintiness and art that she had an instinct toward, and never had
known. It stood on the best-room table, with a few books, which I
suppose she had read over and over again; and in the room, beside,
were green paper curtains with a landscape on the outside, and some
chairs ranged stiffly against the walls, some shells, and an ostrich's
egg, with a ship drawn on it, on the mantel-shelf, and ever so many
rugs on the floor, of most ambitious designs, which they had made in
winter. I know the making of them had been a great pleasure to Miss
Cynthia, and I was sure it was she who had taken care of the garden,
and was always at much pains to get seeds and slips in the spring.
She told me how much they had wished that Georgie had come to live
with them after his mother died. It would have been very handy for
them to have him in winter too; but it was no use trying to get him
away from his father; and neither of them were contented if they were
out of sight of the sea. "He's a dreadful odd boy, and so old for his
years. Hannah, she says he's older now than I be," and she blushed a
little as she looked up at me; while for a moment the tears came into
my eyes, as I thought of this poor, plain woman, who had such a
capacity for enjoyment, and whose life had been so dull, and far apart
from the pleasures and satisfactions which had made so much of my own
life. It seemed to me as if I had had a great deal more than I
deserved, while this poor soul was almost beggared. I seemed to know
all about her life in a flash, and pitied her from the bottom of my
heart. Yet I suppose she would not have changed places with me for any
thing, or with anybody else, for that matter.
Miss Cynthia had a good deal to say about her mother, who had been a
schoolmate of Mrs. Wallis's--I had been telling them what I could
about the auction. She told me that she had died the spring before,
and said how much they missed her; and Hannah broke in upon her
regrets in her brusque, downright way: "I should have liked to kep'
her if she'd lived to be a hundred, but I don't wish her back. She'd
had considerable many strokes, and she couldn't help herself much of
any. She'd got to be rising eighty, and her mind was a good deal
broke," she added conclusively, after a short silence; while Cynthia
looked sorrowfully out of the window, and we heard the sound of
Georgie's axe at the other side of the house, and the wild, sweet
whistle of a bird that flew overhead. I suppose one of the sisters was
just as sorry as the other in reality.
"Now I want you and Georgie to stop and have some tea. I'll get it
good and early," said Hannah, starting suddenly from her chair, and
beginning to bustle about again, after she had asked me about some
people at home whom she knew. "Cynthy! Perhaps she'd like to walk
round out doors a spell. It's breezing up, and it'll be cooler than it
is in the house.--No: you needn't think I shall be put out by your
stopping; but you'll have to take us just as we be. Georgie always
calculates to stop when he comes up. I guess he's made off for the
woods. I see him go across the lot a few minutes ago."
So Cynthia put on a discouraged-looking gingham sun-bonnet, which
drooped over her face, and gave her a more appealing look than ever,
and we went over to the pine-woods, which were beautiful that day. She
showed me a little waterfall made by a brook that came over a high
ledge of rock covered with moss, and here and there tufts of fresh
green ferns. It grew late in the afternoon, and it was pleasant there
in the shade, with the noise of the brook and the wind in the pines,
that sounded like the sea. The wood-thrushes began to sing,--and who
could have better music?
Miss Cynthia told me that it always made her think of once when she
was a little girl to hear the thrushes. She had run away, and fallen
into the ma'sh; and her mother had sent her to bed quick as she got
home, though it was only four o'clock. And she was so ashamed, because
there was company there,--some of her father's folks from over to
Eliot; and then she heard the thrushes begin to call after a while,
and she thought they were talking about her, and they knew she had
been whipped and sent to bed. "I'd been gone all day since morning. I
had a great way of straying off in the woods," said she. "I suppose
mother was put to it when she see me coming in, all bog-mud, right
before the company."