that day. He talked about the weather and the birds and the trees and
the flowers, and p'inted out things along the way, but she never
opened her mouth till dinner-time. They stopped by a spring to eat
their dinner, and Henry watered the horse and fixed the check-rein
so's he could graze, and then he set down some little distance away
from her, and she opened the basket. She said of course she couldn't
be mean enough to sit there and eat by herself, so she told him to
come and have some dinner. And he come over and set down beside her,
and she waited on him, and they drank out o' the same cup, and
Emmeline said you could hear the spring drippin' and the birds and
the squirrels chirpin' and chatterin' in the trees; and every now and
then a pretty leaf'd come flutterin' down and fall in the spring or on
her lap, and Henry talked so kind and pleasant that Emmeline said she
got to thinkin' how happy she'd be if it wasn't for that little silk
shirt, and she'd 'a' give anything she had if she'd jest kept out o'
Henry's trunk. And when they'd got through eatin', Henry took hold of
her hand and says he, 'Emmeline, can't you trust me a little bit?' And
she jerked away from him and begun getherin' up the provisions and
foldin' the napkins. And Henry says, 'Well, pretty soon we'll be at
mother's. Maybe she can set matters right.' And they got in the buggy
and started again, and Emmeline said the nearer they got to Henry's
home the worse she felt, and finally she broke down and begun to cry,
and she cried for three miles right straight along.
"It was about sunset, and Henry kept tellin' her to cheer up and look
at the pretty clouds and the light comin' through the red-and-yeller
sugar-maples and the beech-trees. She said he was mighty cheerful
himself, and it made her mad to see how easy he was takin' it. When
they got within sight o' the house Henry says, 'Now dry your eyes,
Emmeline, or mother'll think you ain't glad to see her. She goin' to
be mighty glad to see you.' Old man Sanford and his wife, honey, was a
couple that thought more o' their daughters-in-law than they did o'
their own children. They'd had nine sons and never had a gyirl-child,
and they'd always wanted one, and the old man used to look at the boys
and say, 'Well, your mother and me didn't want this many boys, but you
children would be boys, and now you've got to make up for the
disapp'intment you've been to your parents by bringin' us in some
nice, pretty daughters-in-law.' And every time one o' the boys got
married the old man, he'd say, 'Well, my daughters are comin' at
last,' and the old lady used to say that her daughters-in-law paid her
for all the trouble her sons had been to her.
"It was milkin'-time when they drove in at the big gate, and the old
lady was jest startin' out with her quart cup and her bucket. Henry
hollered, 'Howdy, mother!' and she dropped the milk things and run to
meet 'em, and Emmeline said she never had such a welcome in her life.
The old lady didn't take any notice o' Henry. She jest hugged and
kissed Emmeline and pretty near carried her into the house. Then she
took notice of how Emmeline had been cryin', and she turned around to
Henry and says she, 'Henry Sanford, what have you been doin' to this
poor child to make her cry? It speaks mighty poorly of you to have
your wife cryin' this soon in your married life.' And Henry put his
hand in his coat pocket and pulled out a little bundle and handed it
to his mother and says he, 'Mother, I want you to tell Emmeline whose
this is.' And the old lady opened the bundle and says she, 'Henry
Sanford, what do you mean by pokin' this old shirt at me when I want
to be makin' the acquaintance o' my new daughter-in-law?' And Henry
says, 'If you'll tell Emmeline all about this shirt, mother, it'll
stop her cryin'.' Emmeline said the old lady put on her specs and
looked at 'em both as if she thought they might be losin' their senses
and says she, 'Well, honey, I don't see what this old shirt has to do
with your cryin', but I can mighty soon tell you about it. It's one of
a half a dozen that Henry's father didn't have any better sense than
to buy five or six years ago when he was layin' in a stock o' summer
goods. ("Old man Sanford run a country store, child, along with his
farmin'," interpolated Aunt Jane.) And,' says she, 'after they'd
stayed in the store three or four seasons I took 'em and wore 'em to
keep 'em from bein' a dead loss. And when Henry come out o' the army
he was half naked and more'n half dead, betwixt the Yankees and the
chills and fever, and I put these shirts on him to protect his chest.'
"Well, Emmeline said as soon as the old lady begun talkin', her heart
got as light as a feather, and she felt like a thousand pounds had
been lifted off of her mind. But she said she looked around at Henry,
and he was watchin' to see how she'd take it, and all at once he burst
out laughin', and that made her mad again, and she thought about all
the trouble she'd been through, and she begun cry in' again and says
she, 'Oh! why didn't you tell me that? Why didn't you tell me?'
Emmeline said Henry's mother come over and put her arms around her and
says she, 'Henry Sanford, what prank have you been playin' on your
wife? Tell me this minute.' And Henry begun explainin' things and
tryin' to smooth it over, and I reckon he thought his mother'd see the
joke jest like he did, but she didn't. She looked at Henry over her
spectacles mighty stern and says she, 'Henry, I've always been afeard
you didn't have your full share o' punishment whilst you were growin'
up, bein' the youngest child, and if it wasn't that you're a married
man I'd certainly give you one o' the whippin's you missed when you
were a boy.' And Henry says, 'Well, maybe I ought to be punished for
not tellin' Emmeline, but I jest thought I'd play a joke on her, and
if Emmeline had only had a little confidence in me it wouldn't 'a'
worried her the way it did.' And old lady Sanford, she says,
'Confidence! Confidence! There's jest one person I put my confidence
in, and that's Almighty God.' Says she, 'If a man's crippled in both
feet, and the front door and the back door's locked, and I've got both
my eyes on him, I may make out to trust him a minute or two, but
that's about all.' Says she, 'Of course a woman ought to trust her
husband; but that don't mean that she's got to shut her eyes and her
ears and throw away her common sense.' Says she, 'Emmeline don't know
as much about you as your father knows about that old roan mare he
bought day before yesterday. A man's jest like a horse,' says she;
'you've got to break him in and learn all his gaits and tricks before
there's any safety or pleasure travelin' with him. Here you ain't been
married to Emmeline a month yet, and you talk about her havin'
confidence in you!' Says she, 'I've been married to your father
forty-five years this comin' January, and I've never seen cause to
doubt him, but if I was to find another woman's gyarment amongst his
clothes I'd leave him that quick.'
"And about this time old man Sanford come in, and when he'd shook
hands with Henry and hugged and kissed Emmeline he begun to take
notice of how she'd been cryin', and the old lady she told him the
whole story, and, bless your life, the old man was madder'n she was.
He turned around to Henry and says he, mighty stern and solemn, 'Son,
I feel that you've disgraced your raisin'.' Says he, 'A man that'll
cause a woman to shed an unnecessary tear is worse'n a brute, and here
you've let Emmeline cry her pretty eyes out over nothin' right at the
beginnin' of her married life. If you treat her this way now, how'll
it be ten years from now?' And then he patted Emmeline on the shoulder
and says he, 'Never mind, daughter, if Henry don't treat you right,
you stay here with pappy and mammy and be their little gyirl. Henry
always was the black sheep o' the flock, anyhow.'
"And at that Emmeline jumped up and run over to Henry and threw her
arms around his neck and says she, 'You sha'n't talk that way about
Henry. He's not a black sheep, either. He's the best man in the
world, and it's all my fault and I'll never mistrust him again as long
as I live.' And then Henry broke down and cried, and the old man and
the old lady they cried, and they all hugged and kissed each other,
and such a makin' up you never did see. And in two or three days here
Henry and Emmeline come ridin' back home and lookin' like a
sure-enough bride and groom. Emmeline said they went over the same
road, but everything seemed different; the birds sung sweeter, the sun
shone brighter, and the leaves were prettier, for you know, honey, the
way a thing looks depends more on people's minds than it does on their
eyes. They stopped at the same spring to eat their dinner, and
Emmeline said she promised Henry she'd never mistrust him again, and
he promised her he'd never play any more jokes on her. I reckon they
both must 'a' kept their promise, for from that time on there never
was a more peaceable, well-contented married couple than Emmeline and
Henry. Emmeline used to say that she did all her cryin' durin' her
honeymoon and Henry'd never caused her to shed a tear since.
"Nobody ever would 'a' known about her findin' the shirt and leavin'
her husband if she hadn't told it herself, for the old folks on both
sides felt so ashamed o' Henry and Emmeline for the way they'd acted
that they never would 'a' told it. But Emmeline told Milly Amos and
Milly told Sam, and the first thing you knew everybody in Goshen was
laughin' over Emmeline leavin' her husband, and everybody was
disputin' about which was in the right and which was in the wrong. I
ricollect Sam Amos sayin' that any woman that went rummagin' around in
a man's trunk deserved to find trouble, and his sympathies was all
with Henry; and Milly said Henry ought to 'a' told Emmeline whose
shirt it was and not kept her grievin' and worryin' all that time. And
Sam says, 'Yes, he ought to 'a' told her, but if he had 'a' told her
it wouldn't 'a' helped matters, for she wasn't in a frame o' mind to
believe him.' Says he, 'You women are always suspicionin' a man, and
if you come across a piece of circumstantial evidence you'll convict
him on that and hang him in spite of all he can say for himself.'
"I ricollect our Mite Society got to talkin' one day about husbands
and wives leavin' each other, and whether it was ever right or lawful
for married folks to part and marry again. Maria Petty says, says she,
'There's some things that every woman's called on to stand, and
there's some things that no woman ought to stand.' And Sally Ann
says, 'Yes, and as long as you women think you have to stand things,
you'll have things to stand.' And Milly Amos says, 'A husband and a
wife can part when there's no children, but,' says she, 'if they've
had children, you might put the husband on one side o' the world and
the wife on the other and they're husband and wife still, for there's
the children holdin' 'em together.' I ricollect everybody had a
different opinion, and the longer we talked the further we got from
any sort of agreement about it."
And as it was in Goshen so was it in Athens when Plato wrote and
taught, and so it is to-day wherever human wisdom offers its varying
solutions to this problem of the ages.
"What do you think about it, Aunt Jane?" I asked.
Aunt Jane was silent. Intuitively she felt the magnitude of the
question. We had laughed over the comedy of her story, but its rustic
scenery had shifted, and we were standing now in the tragic presence
of a social sphinx, whose mystery calls for baffled silence rather
than confident speech.
"Well, honey," she said at last, thoughtfully and hesitatingly, "if
folks could only love each other the way me and Abram did, they'll
never want to part; and of course if they love each other they'll
trust each other; and if the love and the trust runs short, why, then
they ought to be patient and try to bear with each other's failin's.
But, as Maria Petty used to say, there's some things that no woman is
called on to bear, and no man, either, for that matter, and if married
folks feel that they can't stand livin' together I ain't the one to
judge 'em, for I never had anything to stand, and happy folks oughtn't
to judge the folks that's unhappy. It does look like to me that if the
husbands and wives in Goshen could stay married anybody could, but
maybe I don't know. And when a person gits all twisted and turned so's
they can't tell what's right and what's wrong, why, it ain't time for
passin' judgment and givin' opinions, and I reckon I'll jest have to
fall back on that text o' Scripture that says all things are workin'
together for good. Not some things, honey, but 'all things.' Did you
ever think o' that? The things you want and the things you don't want;
the things you complain about and the things you rejoice about; the
things you laugh over and the things you cry over--all of 'em workin',
not against each other, but together, and all workin' for good. I
ricollect hearin' a sermon once on that very passage o' Scripture.
The preacher said that that text was like a sea without a shore; its
meanin' was as wide and as deep as the love of God, and if we could
only take it in and believe it, we'd never have any fears or any
misgivin's again. And then, there's that verse o' Brownin's that says
God's in his heaven and everything's right with the world. So I
reckon, in spite of all this marryin' and partin' and marryin' again,
the world's in safe hands and movin' on in the right way."
Aunt Jane was smiling now, for on these winged words of apostle and
poet her soul had risen into its native atmosphere of serene faith,
casting upon the shoulders of Omnipotence the burden of world-sorrow
and world-sin that only Omnipotence can lift and bear.
VI
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
[Illustration]
VI
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
It was the time of the blooming of the wistaria. Over in fair Japan
the imperial purple clusters were drooping over the roofs of the
tea-gardens and the walls of the Emperor's palace, and here in Aunt
Jane's garden they hung from the rickety trellis that barely supported
the weight of the royal flowers.
Aunt Jane gazed at them with worshipful eyes.
"It's been fifty years this spring," she said, "since I planted that
vine. It took it five years to come into bloomin', so I've seen it
bloom forty-five times; and every time I see it, it looks prettier to
me. I took a root of it along with me when I went to Lexin'ton to
visit Henrietta, and the gyardener planted it by the front porch so's
it could run up the big pillars--that's the difference betwixt my
gyarden and Henrietta's. She has a gyardener to plant her flowers, and
I do my own plantin'. I can't help believin' that I have more pleasure
out o' my old-fashioned gyarden than she has out o' her fine new one.
Flowers that somebody else plants and 'tends to are jest like children
that somebody else nurses and raises. I raise my flowers like I raised
my children, and I reckon that that's why I love 'em so. It's a
curious thing, child, the hold that flowers and trees has on human
bein's. You can move into a house and set up your furniture and live
there twenty years, and as long as you don't do any plantin', you
won't mind changin' your house any more'n you'd mind changin' your
dress. But you jest plant a rose-bush or a honey-suckle and then start
to move, and it'll look like every root o' that bush is holdin' you to
the place, and if you go, you'll want to take your flowers with you
jest like grandmother took her rose when she moved from old
Virginia to new Kentucky."
[Illustration: "IT WAS THE TIME OF THE BLOOMING OF THE
WISTARIA."
_Page 173._]
She paused to look again at the splendor of grace and color that
spring had brought to the old garden. No wonder we have patience to
tread the ice-bound path through the winter when we know that things
like this lie at the end. A delicate, reverent wind arose, the long,
rich tassels of bloom yielded themselves to its touch and swayed to
and fro like majesty acknowledging homage, while, bolder than the
wind, a mob of democratic bees hummed nonchalantly in the august
presence and gathered honey as if a wistaria were no more than a
country clover field.
"Henrietta was tellin' me," continued Aunt Jane, "that over yonder in
Japan when the cherry trees and this vine blooms, everybody takes a
holiday and turns out and enjoys the flowers and the sunshine, and I
says to Henrietta, 'That's no new thing to me, honey, I've been doin'
that all my life.' I like housekeepin' as well as anybody, but when
spring comes and the flowers begin bloomin', a house can't hold me.
There's one time o' the year about the middle o' May, when it's all I
can do to keep myself inside the house long enough to do the cookin'
and wash the dishes. I ricollect the first spring after I was married
there was one day when Abram said that he had bread and butter and
pinks for breakfast, and bread and butter and roses for dinner, and
bread and butter and honeysuckles for supper. You know the Bible says,
'Let your moderation be known unto all men,' and I always tried to be
moderate about housekeepin'. Sam Amos used to say that women kept
house for two reasons: one was to please themselves and the other was
to displease the men. Says he, 'The Bible says we come from the dirt
and we're goin' back to the dirt, so why can't we live in the dirt and
say nothin' about it?' Says he, 'Give me three meals a day and a
comfortable place to sleep in, and let me be able to lay my hands on
my clothes when I want 'em, and that's housekeepin' enough for me.' I
reckon most men's pretty much like Sam; and seein' how little a man
cares about havin' a house kept, it looks like it's foolish for women
to spend so much o' their time sweepin' and keepin' things in order.
Mother used to think I took housekeepin' too easy. I ricollect once
she was spendin' the day with me and I let a dish fall, a mighty
pretty china bowl with pink roses on it, and she begun sayin' what a
pity it was, and how keerless I must 'a' been to let it slip out o'
my hands, and I jest laughed and picked up the pieces and says I,
'Dishes and promises are made to break. There's a time app'inted for
every dish to break, jest as there is for every person to die, and
this bowl's time had come.' And Mother, she laughed, and says she,
'Well, Jane, you'll never die of the housekeepin' disease.' And I
wouldn't be surprised, child, if my gyardenin' and my easy goin' ways
wasn't the reason why I'm here to-day watchin' my flowers grow instead
o' bein' out yonder in the old buryin' ground with Hannah Crawford and
the rest o' the Goshen women. Hannah took her housekeepin' like Amos
Matthews took his religion, and that was what broke her down and
carried her off before her time."
Clouds were floating across the sun and a delicate shadow lay over the
flower-beds around us. Aunt Jane's eyes were on the distant hills
beyond the budding orchard trees, and I saw with delight that she was
in the garden but not of it. A few moments ago the present beauty of
the wistaria had possessed her, but now she was living in another
spring.
"Dr. Pendleton used to tell Hannah that her name ought to 'a' been
Martha, because she was troubled about many things," continued Aunt
Jane; "and it was her takin' trouble over things that come near
throwin' her off her balance, back yonder in '54, the year we had the
big drouth. Maybe you've heard your grandmother tell about it, child.
Parson Page used to say there was nothin' like a drouth for makin'
people feel their dependence on a higher power, and I reckon more
prayers went up to heaven that summer than'd gone up for many a year,
and folks prayed then that never had prayed before. A time like that
is mighty hard on man and beast. The heavens were brass and the earth
cast iron jest like the Bible says. Every livin' thing was parched up
and I ricollect Sam Amos sayin' that, with the cistern and the spring
dry and the river a mile and a half away, for once in his life he
found it easier to be godly than to be clean.
"Well, about the time when everything was at its worst, we had a
strange preacher to fill the pulpit o' Goshen church, and he preached
a sermon that none of us ever forgot. There's two kinds of preachers,
child, the New Testament preachers and the Old Testament preachers.
Parson Page was the New Testament kind. Sam Amos used to say that
Parson Page's sermons never interfered with anybody's Sunday evenin'
nap. But the minute I laid eyes on the new preacher, I says to myself,
'We're goin' to have an Old Testament sermon, this day,' and sure
enough we did. He was a tall, thin man, with the blackest eyes and
hair you ever saw and a mouth that looked like he'd never smiled in
his life, and when he walked up into the pulpit you'd 'a' thought he
was one o' the old prophets come to warn men of judgment to come. He
read the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, that chapter that's all about
judgments and punishments; and then he turned over to Leviticus and
read a chapter there about the same things, and then he picked out two
texts from these chapters. One was, 'Thou shalt give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning
for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.' And the other one
was, 'And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath done,
so shall it be done to him. Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for
tooth.'
"Well, honey, the sermon he preached from them two texts was somethin'
terrible. He begun by sayin' that the kingdom of God was a kingdom of
justice; that every sin brought its own punishment with it, and there
was no escapin' it. He said God had fixed the penalty for every sin
committed by every sinner; we couldn't always tell what the punishment
would be, one sinner would be punished one way and another sinner
another way, and one would have his punishment right at once, and the
other might not have his for a good many years, but it was sure to
come at last. He never said a word about the blood of Christ, and the
only time he brought up the New Testament was when he told about
Christ sayin' that we had to pay the uttermost farthing.
"Now, of course, child, all o' this is in the Bible, and it must be
true. But then, there's other texts that's jest as true and a heap
more comfortin', and if Parson Page had been preachin' that day, he'd
'a' taken a text about forgiveness and atonement, but maybe we
wouldn't 'a' remembered that as long as we remembered the other
preacher's sermon. I ricollect when meetin' broke everybody appeared
to be laborin' under a sense o' sin, and instead o' shakin' hands and
talkin' awhile as we generally did, we all went home as quick as we
could. Uncle Jim Mathews said it took him a week to git over the
effects o' that sermon, and Sam Amos says, 'I thought I was doin'
right in lettin' that shiftless tenant o' mine off from payin' his
year's rent, I felt so sorry for his wife and children; but,' says he,
'in strict justice and accordin' to this "eye for an eye" doctrine, I
ought to hold him to his contract and make him pay.'
"Well, it wasn't long after this till we begun to hear curious tales
about the Crawford farm. Abram come in one day and says he, 'Jane, I
never have believed in ghosts and spirits, but upon my soul,' says he,
'Miles Crawford's been tellin' me some things that make me think maybe
there's such a thing after all.' And he went on to tell how Miles had
had his straw stacks pulled down, and the fodder scattered all over
the barn floor, and his tools carried off and hid in fence corners,
and his bags o' seed spilled around, and he couldn't tell when it was
done nor who did it. Of course the talk spread all over the
neighborhood, and every week there'd be some new happening till folks
begun to say the place was ha'nted and nobody liked to pass it after
dark.