Milly told me she was prayin' that Sam would be kept from goin' to
town. But right after supper Sam says, 'I'm goin' to town to-morrow,
Milly. Make your arrangements for goin' with me--you and the
children--and we'll get an early start.'
[Illustration: "'THE GLASS BROKE INTO A HUNDRED PIECES.'"
_Page 229._]
"Milly said she couldn't sleep much that night, and she prayed that it
might pour down rain, or somethin' would happen to keep Sam at home.
But the sun come up clear, and there was nothin' to do but dress and
go to town with Sam. She said Sam took particular pains with himself,
put on his Sunday clothes, and shaved and combed and brushed his hair
till he looked more like his old self than he'd looked since he took
to drinkin'. She said the road to town never had seemed so short and
she kept hopin' somethin' would happen to send Sam back home, but
nothin' happened, and when they struck the Square, Sam went right down
Main Street right in the direction of the coffee house. Milly said her
heart give a jump and she shook all over like she was havin' a chill,
but she didn't say a word, because she knew if Sam had made up his
mind to drink that day, she couldn't stop him. And sure enough he went
on and stopped right in front of the coffee house. The barkeeper was
standin' in the door, and Sam called out to him and says, 'Fix me up a
glass o' that old Bourbon the way I like it and bring it out here to
me.' And the barkeeper went in and fixed it up and come out with it,
smilin' as a basket o' chips, and handed it to Sam.
"Sam had his purse out and says he, 'How much is the glass worth?' And
the barkeeper says, 'About five cents, I reckon.' And Sam handed over
the money for the drink and the glass, and then he held the glass up
and looked at it, and he put his face down and smelled it, and then he
put it to his lips like he intended to drink it, and then he turned
around to Milly and says, 'Look here, Milly!' and he dashed it down in
the gutter, and the glass broke into a hundred pieces, and the whiskey
spattered on the horse's hoofs and the barkeeper's shoes. Milly said
Sam was as white as a ghost and shakin' as hard as she was, and he
nodded to the barkeeper and says he, 'That's my last drink.' And then
he turned around and drove up the street towards the Square.
"Milly said she was so thankful he hadn't touched the whiskey that she
begun cryin' for joy, but still she didn't know whether that was his
last drink or not, he'd broken so many promises to her before. And Sam
seemed to know what was in her mind, for he says to her, 'Milly, do
you believe me or not?' And Milly said all at once she thought o' that
text o' scripture that says, 'For by grace are ye saved through
faith.' And she thought o' Sam the day her Father come to take her
home and how he kept sayin', 'Keep on believin' in me, Milly, and your
faith'll save me.' And she laid her hand on Sam's knee and says she,
'Yes, Sam, I do believe you.' And the minute she spoke the word, she
said it looked like a stone rolled away from her heart, and she felt
in her soul that she'd come to the end of her trouble, and the world
appeared to be made over and made new. When they got to the Square Sam
handed her a roll o' bills and says he, 'Now go and buy yourself and
the children some Christmas gifts, while I lay in the groceries we
need, and then we'll meet at the drug store and go home whenever
you're ready to go.'
"Milly said she took the money and bought things for the children, but
when she begun to look in the windows and the show cases for
somethin' for herself, she couldn't see a thing that would make her
any happier than she was, so she put the rest o' the money in the
waist of her dress and when Sam met her in front o' the drug store she
handed it to him and says she, 'I've bought the children some things,
but there's no use wastin' money on a woman who's got everything on
earth she wants.' So she wouldn't let Sam buy her a thing that
Christmas, and yet, she said she felt as if she owned the whole earth.
"And, honey, when Sam dashed that glass o' whiskey to the ground and
said that was his last drink, he told the truth, and if he'd been the
chief of sinners there couldn't 'a' been more rejoicin' over him as
the time went by, and everybody in Goshen begun to feel sure that he'd
quit for good. Parson Page said somethin' to him one day about the
grace of God savin' him. And Sam shook his head and says he, 'No,
Parson, I'm certain God's too honest to want credit that don't belong
to him, and in the matter of my quittin' drink, it wasn't the grace of
God that stopped me, it was the grace of my wife, Milly.' And Doctor
Pendleton was standin' by and says he, 'Yes, all Sam needed was a
great moral uplift. The grace of God might have given it, but,' says
he, 'in a case like his there's no lever like a woman's love.'
"But I never got through wonderin' over the way Milly bore with Sam in
the days when he was walkin' the downward path and it looked like
nothin' could stop him. Human nature is a curious thing, child. You
may think you know a person so well that you can tell exactly what
he'll do, if a certain thing happens; but many and many time I've
found myself mistaken about folks I'd known all my life, and it was
that way with Milly. Milly was high-tempered and quick-spoken, and if
anybody had asked me how Milly would act if Sam took to drinkin', I'd
'a' said at once, 'Why, she'd leave him that quick.' But she didn't;
she was as patient with him as any mother ever was with her son. She'd
put him to bed and wait on him, and when he'd come to himself she'd
never say a word about what had happened, and I reckon it was her
grace that saved him.
"And, it's another curious thing, child," she continued, "how two
people'll live together for years and years and never know how much
they love each other. Milly told me that when Sam burst out cryin' and
said he didn't know she cared that much for him, it come over her all
at once that she must 'a' been a mighty poor sort o' wife to him, for
him not to know she loved him well enough to stay with him through
thick and thin. But I reckon it's that way with most married folks.
They jog along together, and they have their ups and downs, and may be
they think many a time they don't love each other like they did when
they first married, but jest let a trouble come up, and they'll find
out that all the love they used to have is there yet, and more
besides.
"I ricollect Parson Page sayin' once that love and money was alike in
one respect, they'd both draw interest, and I reckon many a married
couple's richer than they think they are."
To find our treasure of love greater than we had dared to dream--what
rarer joy has earth? And when the poor derelict soul clung to his wife
and found in her a help sufficient for his needs, his was a rapture
not less profound than that of the poet-husband when he opened the
sonnets in which a woman's soul had poured itself, counting the ways
and measuring the depth and the height of her wifely love.
Aunt Jane pushed her spectacles up on her forehead, folded her hands,
and leaned back in her chair, lost in the reverie that generally
followed the telling of a story, while I gazed at the tremulous fire
light, and felt the cord of human sympathy drawing me closer to the
people of her day and time.
As an artist finishes a picture, and then goes lovingly back to
strengthen a line or deepen a tint, so every story told by Aunt Jane
made more vivid to me her portraits of these men and women who were
the friends of her youth. I had known Sam, the jovial, careless,
sceptical one; Milly, quick of temper, sharp of tongue, swift to act
and swift to repent--just a plain farmer and a plain farmer's wife.
But by the light of this tale of triumph I saw them again. Sam, the
man who met and vanquished the dragon of thirst, Milly, the woman
whose love was strong enough to hold and redeem; and in my thought
each rises to heroic stature and stands touched forevermore "with
something of an angel light." For it is not battles that drench the
earth with the blood of her sons, but these unchronicled victories of
the spirit that lift man from the clod to the star and make him even
greater than the angels.
VIII
IN WAR TIME
[Illustration]
VIII
IN WAR TIME
The sun that morning had touched the gold of the daffodils with
promise of a clear day; but before it was half way to its meridian
hour, the air grew chill, the wind veered suddenly to the northeast,
the sky darkened angrily, and out of the clouds, like white petals
from some celestial orchard, came a flurry of great, soft snow flakes
that rested for a moment on the young grass and the golden daffodils
and then dissolved into a gentle dew, to be gathered again into the
chalice of the air and given back to the earth as an April shower.
There was a strange, bewildering beauty in the scene. The tender,
delicate foliage of early spring was on every bough, the long wands of
peach trees were pink with bloom, daffodils and hyacinths sprang at
our feet, and we looked at leaf and flower through a storm of snow
flakes that ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and with a brightening
sky and a warmer wind it was April again.
Aunt Jane drew a long breath of delight.
"Well, child," she said, "there's always somethin' new to be seen in
this world of ours. Old as I am, I never did see exactly such a sight
as this, and maybe it'll be a life time as long as mine before anybody
sees it again. Such big, soft lookin' flakes o' snow! It looks like
they'd be warm if you touched 'em, and fallin' all over the flowers
and young grass. Why, it's the prettiest sight I ever did see." And,
with a lingering look at the sky and the earth, Aunt Jane turned away
and went back to the work of cleaning out a closet in the front room,
a task preliminary to the spring cleaning that was to come a little
later. There was a pile of boxes and bundles on the floor, and she was
drawing strange things from the depth of the closet.
"Some o' these days," she remarked, "there'll be a house-cleanin' in
this house, and I won't be here. I'll be lyin' out in the old buryin'
ground along-side of Abram; and my children and grandchildren, they'll
be goin' through the closet and the bureau drawers like I'm doin'
to-day, and every time I clean house, thinks I to myself: 'I'll make
their work jest as light as I can;' so I git rid of all the rubbish,
burn it up or give it away to somebody that can use it. But after all
my burnin' and givin', I reckon there'll be a plenty of useless things
left behind me. Here's this Shaker bonnet; now what's the use o'
savin' such a thing? But every time I look at it I think o' Friend
Fanny Lacy and the rest o' the old Shakers, whose like we'll never see
again, and somehow I keep holdin' on to it."
She thrust her hand into the bonnet, and holding it off, regarded it
with a look of deep affection. The straw was yellow with age, and the
lining and strings were faded and time-stained; but looking at it she
saw the Shakers in shining garments, going through the streets of the
old town, in the days when the spirit of Mother Ann burned in the
souls of her followers and the blessing of heaven rested on
Shakertown.
Sighing gently, she laid the precious relic aside and took up the song
she was singing when I called her to the porch to see the April
snow-storm. It was Byrom's "Divine Pastoral:"
The Lord is my shepherd, my guardian and guide;
Whatsoever I want he will kindly provide,
Ever since I was born, it is he that hath crowned
The life that he gave me with blessings all round.
. . . . . . . .
Thro' my tenderest years, with as tender a care,
My soul like a lamb in his bosom he bare;
To the brook he would lead me, whene'er I had need
And point out the pasture where best I might feed.
. . . . . . . .
The Lord is my shepherd; what then shall I fear?
What danger can frighten me whilst he is near?
Not when the time calls me to walk through the vale
Of the Shadow of Death shall my heart ever fail;
Tho' afraid, of myself, to pursue the dark way
Thy rod and thy staff be my comfort and stay,
For I know by thy guidance, when once it is past,
To a fountain of life it will lead me at last.
She sang it to the cheerful tune of Hinton, as oft before when Parson
Page had given it out from the pulpit of Goshen church, and she and
Abram sat side by side singing from the weather-beaten hymnal that lay
now near the Bible on the centre-table. I took it up and turned its
yellow pages, wondering at the queer "buckwheat" notes and reading the
names of the old church music, "Federal Street," whose tones beat the
air like the wing of a tired and home-sick angel; "Windham," that
holds in its minor strains the melancholy wails of an autumn wind;
"Brattle Street," whose rich full chords are like a confession of
faith,--all those old tunes that have grown richer and sweeter by
carrying heavenward on the wings of song the devotion of worshipping
souls.
Suddenly Aunt Jane's voice ceased in the middle of a word. I looked
up. She was sitting motionless, holding in her hand a piece of rusty
iron and gazing at it with tragic eyes. As she gazed, that which had
been its sheath fell from it in flakes, and there before us, wasted to
half its size by the dampness of years, was the dull ghost of a
bayonet that once had glittered in the sun's rays on many a southern
battle field.
"It's that old bayonet," she said, slowly and sadly. "I ricollect the
day Abram plowed it up and brought it to the house. The soldiers
camped all around our place durin' the war, and to this day you can't
run a furrow without turnin' up a minie-ball or an old canteen or
somethin' o' the sort to carry you back to war times and make your
heart ache for days to come."
She ran her finger slowly down the bayonet, laying it against the
point, while the lines in her face deepened under the shadow of bitter
memories.
"To think," she said at last, "that human bein's made in the image o'
God, men and brothers, would make a thing like this to use against
each other! The longer I live, child, the stranger that war seems to
me. I couldn't understand it before it come nor while it was goin' on,
and now, after all these years, it's jest as mysterious as it ever
was. You know it begun in the spring, the war did, and there's a
certain kind o' spring wind and the way the air smells that takes me
back to the day when the news come to Goshen that Fort Sumter'd been
fired on; and if I was to live to be as old as Methuselah, I don't
reckon there'd ever be a spring that wouldn't bring back the spring of
'61.
"The comin' of war is a curious thing, child. You know how it is when
you're sittin' in the house or on the porch of a summer's day doin'
some piece o' work and thinkin' about nothin' but that work, and the
sun'll be shinin' out doors and everything pretty and peaceful, and
all at once you'll look up and notice that it's gittin' dark, and
you'll hear a little thunder away off yonder in the hills, and before
you're ready for it, why the storm's broke and the rain's beatin' in
at the windows and doors and the wind's blowin' through the house and
carryin' everything before it. Well, that's the way the war come.
You've seen the seal o' this State, haven't you, child?--two men
standin' together holdin' each other's hands, and the motto around
'em: 'United we stand; divided we fall.' Well, that's jest the way it
was in Kentucky before the war come and sp'iled it all. Kentuckians
stood together and loved each other, and nobody ever thought they
could be divided. But all of a sudden a change come over everybody.
Folks that'd been friendly all their lives stopped speakin' to each
other; if two neighbors come together and stopped to talk, there'd be
high words between 'em, and they'd both be mad when they parted. Out
in our neighborhood, instead o' talkin' about the weather and the
crops and folks' health and the sermon they'd heard Sunday and the
weddin's that were goin' to be, why, it was nothin' but slavery and
secession and union and States' rights, and it looked like there was a
two-edged sword in every house.
"Father was mighty fond o' readin'. He took two or three papers, and
every Sunday mornin' and on their way back home from town the
neighbors'd drop in and hear the news; and any time you'd pass his
house you'd see a porch full o' men listenin' to Father readin' a
speech that somebody'd made in Congress or in the legislature, and
Mother, she'd leave her work and come to the door every now and then
and listen and, maybe, put in a word.
"I ricollect hearin' Father talk about Crittenden's big speech, the
one made in Congress when he was tryin' to head off the war. Father
thought pretty near as much of Crittenden as he did of Clay. There
never was a speech o' Crittenden's that he didn't read, and he'd say,
'I'd rather handle words like that man does than to be the King of
England; and,' says he, 'it's all jest like he says; Kentucky will
stand by the Union and die by the Union.' Says he, 'She couldn't do
otherwise without goin' back on her own word, and that word's cyarved
in stone too. There it is,' says he, 'on the block o' marble that we
sent to help build the monument at Washington:
"'The first state to enter the union will be the last to leave it.'
"Says he, 'We can't go back on that word.'
"And then he turns around to Mother and says he, 'Deborah, what do you
think about it?' I can see Mother now. She'd been fryin' some meat,
and she turned around with the fork in her hand and looked at Father a
minute before she answered him, and says she, 'What's the use in
askin' me what I think? I'm nothin' but a woman, and what a woman
thinks is of mighty little importance.' Says she, 'You men have got
this thing in your own hands, and us women, we'll have to put up with
whatever comes.'
"I'll never forgit the day Father come from town with the speech that
Crittenden made at Lexin'ton right after Fort Sumter'd been taken. It
was April, and jest such a day as this, the flowers all comin' up and
the sky blue and the bees hummin' around the water maples, and it
didn't look as if there could be such a thing as a war comin'. I was
at Mother's that day helpin' her take a quilt out o' the frame.
Father come in, and old Uncle Haley Pearson, my great-uncle, with
him, and they set down on the porch and Father read the speech out
loud, stoppin' every now and then to explain somethin' to Uncle Haley,
and when he got through Uncle Haley says: 'Well, as near as I can make
it out, Crittenden wants us to stand still betwixt the North and the
South and try to make 'em keep the peace; and if we can't do that,
we're to get on the fence and stay there and watch the fight.' And
Father says, 'Yes, that appears to be about the meanin' o' what I've
been readin'.' Says he, 'Maybe I don't rightly understand it all,
there's so many big words in it, but that's about what I make out of
it.'
"Uncle Haley was leanin' over with both hands on his cane, and he
shook his head right slow and says he, 'It appears to me that
Crittenden ain't as well acquainted with Kentuckians as he might be,
and him a Kentuckian and a Senator too.' Says he, 'There ain't a man,
or a woman or a child or a yeller dog in Kentucky but what's on one
side or the other, and you might as well put two game roosters in the
same pen and tell 'em not to fight as to start up a war betwixt the
North and the South and tell Kentucky to keep out of it.'
"And Uncle Haley was right about it. The legislature met the very next
month and they said jest what Crittenden said, that Kentucky mustn't
take sides. But when it come to the p'int o' goin' to the war or
stayin' at home and lookin' on, out o' every hundred Kentucky men old
enough to go to the war ninety of 'em went on one side or the other.
That's the way Kentucky stays out of a fight, honey. I've heard Father
say that the war cost Kentucky thirty thousand lives. But that's jest
the soldiers; and if you go to countin' the lives that was lost in any
war you can't stop with the soldiers. There's my mother; she never saw
a battle-field, but the war killed her the same as it did my two
brothers."
Here Aunt Jane removed her glasses and leaned back in her chair. By
these signs I knew there was to be a digression in the course of the
story.
"I wish I could make you see jest what kind of a woman Mother was,"
she said thoughtfully. "Every generation's different appearin' from
the one that comes before it and the one that comes after it. I'm my
mother's own child. Folks used to say I had Mother's eyes and Mother's
hair, but I'm a mighty different woman from Mother. And my daughters
are jest as different from me, and as for my granddaughters, why, you
wouldn't know they was any kin to me. I'm a plain old woman and my
granddaughters are fine ladies. My grandmother, you know, was the old
pioneer stock, and Mother was her oldest child, and she was somethin'
like the pioneer women herself. I ricollect when I was at that meetin'
of clubs in Lexin'ton, the time I went to see Henrietta, one lady got
up and said that a woman ought to be somethin' besides a mother. I
reckon that's right for this day and generation, but if you'll go back
to my mother's day and my grandmother's day, you'll find that if a
woman was a mother then, she didn't have time to be anything else.
Bringin' a family o' children into the world and takin' care of 'em,
cookin' for 'em, sewin' for 'em and spinnin' and weavin' the cloth for
their clothes--that's the way Mother did. She was jest a mother, but
that was enough. You know that Bible text, 'Greater love hath no man
than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.' I always think
o' that text when I think o' the old-time mothers; they had to give up
their lives for their children.
"Mother's name was Deborah, and I always thought that name suited her.
She was taller and stronger than the common run o' women, and Father
used to laugh and say he believed she was half sister o' the Deborah
in the Bible, the one that judged Israel, and that was 'A mother in
Israel.' Father always looked up to Mother and asked her advice about
things, and, as for us children, Mother's word was our law. She ruled
us and judged us like the Deborah in the Bible, but I can look back
now and see that there never was any love greater than my mother's
love for her children. Of course a mother, if she's the right kind of
a mother, will love all her children jest because they're hers. But
then, over and above that sort o' love, she'll love each one on
account o' somethin' that it is or somethin' that it does, and that
way every child has a different sort o' love, and maybe one child'll
have a little bit more love than the rest. We always accused Mother of
bein' partial to my two brothers, Jonathan and David, and Mother never
denied it. She'd laugh and say, 'Well, what if I am? The rest of you
ain't mistreated, are you?' And when I ricollect how brother David and
brother Jonathan looked and what kind o' men they were, I can't blame
Mother for bein' a little prouder and a little fonder o' them than she
was o' the rest of us. Mother always called 'em her twins, because
there was jest a little over a year betwixt 'em and mighty little
difference in their size. David was the oldest, and Mother named him
for her father; and when Jonathan was born she said, 'Now, I've got a
Jonathan for my David. And,' says she, 'Maybe they'll be good boys and
love each other like David and Jonathan did.' You ricollect what the
Bible says: 'The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David; and
Jonathan loved him as his own soul,' and when Jonathan was killed you
ricollect how David said, 'Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the
love of woman.'
"And sure enough, child, that's the way it was with my two brothers.
Their souls appeared to be knit together, and they loved each other
with a love 'passin' the love of woman.'
"The rest of us children used to fall out now and then, like children
will, even when they love each other, but David and Jonathan--why,
there never was a cross word or hard feelin' between 'em, and it was
the prettiest sight in the world to see them two boys walkin' together
holdin' each other's hands and laughin' and talkin' like sweethearts.
I ricollect once they was sittin' on a bench readin' out o' the same
book, and Mother looked at 'em awhile, and says she to Father, 'Do
you reckon there's anything in this world that can ever come betwixt
David and Jonathan?' And Father he laughed, and says he, 'Yes, there's
one thing that can come betwixt any two men God ever made.' And Mother
says, 'What is it?' And Father laughed again--he always liked to tease
Mother--and says he, 'Why, a woman, of course.' Says he, 'Jest let
them two boys fall in love with the same woman and that'll put a stop
to all this David and Jonathan business.'