where aunt Mary Ellen was standing just where he had left her. She had
her glasses off, and she looked at Isabel with a smile so vivid that the
girl caught her breath, and wondered within herself how aunt Mary Ellen
had looked when she was young.
"Isabel," said she, "you come here and give me a corner of your apron to
wipe my glasses. I guess it's drier 'n my handkerchief."
HORN O' THE MOON
If you drive along Tiverton Street, and then turn to the left, down the
Gully Road, you journey, for the space of a mile or so, through a
bewildering succession of damp greenery, with noisy brooks singing songs
below you, on either side, and the treetops on the level with your
horse's feet. Few among the older inhabitants ever take this drive, save
from necessity, because it is conceded that the dampness there is
enough, even in summer, to "give you your death o' cold;" and as for the
young, to them the place wears an eerie look, with its miniature
suggestion of impassable gulfs and roaring torrents. Yet no youth
reaches his majority without exploring the Gully. He who goes alone is
the more a hero; but even he had best leave two or three trusty comrades
reasonably near, not only to listen, should he call, but to stand his
witnesses when he afterwards declares where he has been. It is a
fearsome thing to explore that lower stratum of this round world, so
close to the rushing brook that it drowns your thoughts, though not your
apprehensions, and to go slipping about over wet boulders and among
dripping ferns; but your fears are fears of the spirit. They are
inherited qualms. You shiver because your grandfathers and fathers and
uncles have shivered there before you. If you are very brave indeed, and
naught but the topmost round of destiny will content you, possibly you
penetrate still further into green abysses, and come upon the pool
where, tradition says, an ancient trout has his impregnable habitation.
Apparently, nobody questions that the life of a trout may be
indefinitely prolonged, under the proper conditions of a retired dusk;
and the same fish that served our grandfathers for a legend now enlivens
our childish days. When you meet a youngster, ostentatiously setting
forth for the Gully Road, with bait-box and pole, you need not ask where
he is going; though if you have any human sympathy in the pride of life,
you will not deny him his answer:--
"Down to have a try for the old trout!"
The pool has been still for many years. Not within the memory of aged
men has the trout turned fin or flashed a speckled side; but he is to
this day an historical present. He has lived, and therefore he lives
always.
Those who do not pause upon the Gully Road, but keep straight on into
the open, will come into the old highway leading up and up to Horn o'
the Moon. It is an unshaded, gravelly track, pointing duly up-hill for
three long miles; and it has become a sober way to most of us, in this
generation: for we never take it unless we go on the solemn errand of
getting Mary Dunbar, that famous nurse, to care for our sick or dead.
There is a tradition that a summer visitor once hired a "shay," and
drove, all by herself, up to Horn o' the Moon, drawn on by the elusive
splendor of its name. But she met such a dissuading flood of comment by
the way as to startle her into the state of mind commonly associated
with the Gully Road. Farmers, haying in the field, came forward, to lean
on the fence, and call excitedly,--
"Where ye goin'?"
"Horn o' the Moon," replied she, having learned in Tiverton the value of
succinct replies.
"Who's sick?"
"Nobody."
"Got any folks up there?"
"No. Going to see the place."
The effect of this varied. Some looked in amazement; one ventured to
say, "Well, that's the beater!" and another dropped into the cabalistic
remark which cannot be defined, but which has its due significance,
"Well, you _must_ be sent for!" The result of all this running
commentary was such that, when the visitor reached the top of the hill
where Horn o' the Moon lies, encircled by other lesser heights, she was
stricken by its exceeding desolation, and had no heart to cast more than
a glance at the noble view below. She turned her horse, and trotted,
recklessly and with many stumblings, down again into friendly Tiverton.
Horn o' the Moon is unique in its melancholy. It has so few trees, and
those of so meagre and wind-swept a nature, that it might as well be
entirely bald. No apples grow there; and in the autumn, the inhabitants
make a concerted sally down into Tiverton Street, to purchase their
winter stock, such of them as can afford it. The poorer folk--and they
are all poor enough--buy windfalls, and string them to dry; and so
common is dried-apple-pie among them that, when a Tivertonian finds this
makeshift appearing too frequently on his table, he has only to remark,
"I should think this was Horn o' the Moon!" and it disappears, to return
no more until the slur is somewhat outworn.
There is very little grass at the top of the lonely height, and that of
a husky, whispering sort, in thin ribbons that flutter low little songs
in the breeze. They never cease; for, at Horn o' the Moon, there is
always a wind blowing, differing in quality with the season. Sometimes
it is a sighing wind from other heights, happier in that they are sweet
with firs. Sometimes it is exasperating enough to make the March
breezes below seem tender; then it tosses about in snatching gusts,
buffeting, and slapping, and excoriating him who stands in its way.
Somehow, all the peculiarities of Horn o' the Moon seem referable, in a
mysterious fashion, to the wind. The people speak in high, strenuous
voices, striving to hold their own against its wicked strength. Most of
them are deaf. Is that because the air beats ceaselessly against the
porches of their ears? They are a stunted race; for they have grown into
the habit of holding the head low, and plunging forward against that
battling element. Even the fowl at Horn o' the Moon are not of the
ordinary sort. Their feathers grow the wrong way, standing up in a
ragged and disorderly fashion; and they, too, have the effect of having
been blown about and disarranged, until nature yielded, and agreed to
their permanent roughness.
Moreover, all the people are old or middle-aged and possibly that is
why, again, the settlement is so desolate. It is a disgrace for us below
to marry with Horn o' the Mooners, though they are a sober folk; and now
it happens that everybody up there is the cousin of everybody else. The
race is dying out, we say, as if we considered it a distinct species;
and we agree that it would have been wiped away long ago, by weight of
its own eccentricity, had not Mary Dunbar been the making of it. She is
the one righteous among many. She is the good nurse whom we all go to
seek, in our times of trouble, and she perpetually saves her city from
the odium of the world.
Mary was born in Tiverton Street. We are glad to remember that, we who
condemn by the wholesale, and are assured that no good can come out of
Nazareth. When she was a girl of eighteen, her father and mother died;
and she fell into a state of spiritual exaltation, wherein she dreamed
dreams, and had periods of retirement within her house, communing with
other intelligences. We said Mary had lost her mind; but that was
difficult to believe, since no more wholesome type of womanhood had ever
walked our streets. She was very tall, built on the lines of a beauty
transcending our meagre strain. Nobody approved of those broad shoulders
and magnificent arms. We said it was a shame for any girl to be so
overgrown; yet our eyes followed her, delighted by the harmony of line
and action. Then we whispered that she was as big as a moose, and that,
if we had such arms, we never'd go out without a shawl. Her "mittins"
must be wide enough for any man!
Mary did everything perfectly. She walked as if she went to meet the
morning, and must salute it worthily. She carried a weight as a goddess
might bear the infant Bacchus; and her small head, poised upon that
round throat, wore the crown of simplicity, and not of pride. But we
only told how strong she was, and how much she could lift. We loved
Mary, but sensibility had to shrink from those great proportions and
that elemental strength.
One snowy morning, Mary's spiritual vision called her out of our midst,
to which she never came back save as we needed her. The world was very
white that day, when she rose, in her still house, dressed herself
hastily, and roused a neighbor, begging him to harness, and drive her up
to Horn o' the Moon. Folks were sick there, with nobody to take care of
them. The neighbor reasoned, and then refused, as one might deny a
person, however beloved, who lives by the intuitions of an unseen world.
Mary went home again, and, as he believed, to stay. But she had not
hesitated in her allegiance to the heavenly voice. Somehow, through the
blinding snow and unbroken road, she ploughed her way up to Horn o' the
Moon, where she found an epidemic of diphtheria; and there she stayed.
We marveled over her guessing how keenly she was needed; but since she
never explained, it began to be noised abroad that some wandering
peddler told her. That accounted for everything and Mary had no time for
talk. She was too busy, watching with the sick, and going about from
house to house, cooking delicate gruels and broiling chicken for those
who were getting well. It is said that she even did the barn work, and
milked the cows, during that tragic time. We were not surprised. Mary
was a great worker, and she was fond of "creatur's."
Whether she came to care for these stolid people on the height, or
whether the vision counseled her, Mary gave up her house in the village,
and bought a little old dwelling under an overhanging hillside, at Horn
o' the Moon. It was a nest built into the rock, its back sitting snugly
there. The dark came down upon it quickly. In winter, the sun was gone
from the little parlor as early as three o'clock; but Mary did not mind.
That house was her temporary shell; she only slept in it in the
intervals of hurrying away, with blessed feet, to tend the sick, and
hold the dying in untiring arms. I shall never forget how, one morning,
I saw her come out of the door, and stand silent, looking toward the
rosy east. There was the dawn, and there was she, its priestess, while
all around her slept. I should not have been surprised had her lips,
parted already in a mysterious smile, opened still further in a
prophetic chanting to the sun. But Mary saw me, and the alert, answering
look of one who is a messenger flashed swiftly over her face. She
advanced like the leader of a triumphal procession.
"Anybody want me?" she called. "I'll get my bunnit."
It was when she was twenty, and not more than settled in the little
house at Horn o' the Moon, that her story came to her. The Veaseys were
her neighbors, perhaps five doors away; and one summer morning, Johnnie
Veasey came home from sea. He brought no money, no coral from foreign
parts, nor news of grapes in Eshcol. He simply came empty-handed, as he
always did, bearing only, to vouch for his wanderings, a tanned face,
and the bright, red-brown eyes that had surely looked on things we never
saw. Adam Veasey, his brother, had been paralyzed for years. He sat all
day in the chimney corner, looking at his shaking hands, and telling how
wide a swathe he could cut before he was afflicted. Mattie, Adam's wife,
had long dealt with the problem of an unsupported existence. She had
turned into a flitting little creature with eager eyes, who made it her
business to prey upon a more prosperous world. Mattie never went about
without a large extra pocket attached to her waist; into this, she could
slip a few carrots, a couple of doughnuts, or even a loaf of bread. She
laid a lenient tax upon the neighbors and the town below. Was there a
frying of doughnuts at Horn o' the Moon? No sooner had the odor risen
upon the air, than Mattie stood on the spot, dumbly insistent on her
toll. Her very clothes smelled of food; and it was said that, in
fly-time, it was a sight to see her walk abroad, because of the hordes
of insects settling here and there on her odoriferous gown. When Johnnie
Veasey appeared, Mattie's soul rose in arms. Their golden chance had
come at last.
"You got paid off?" she asked him, three minutes after his arrival, and
Johnnie owned, with the cheerfulness of those rich only in hope, that he
did get paid, and lost it all, the first night on shore. He got into the
wrong boarding-house, he said. It was the old number, but new folks.
Mattie acquiesced, with a sigh. He would make his visit and go again,
and, that time, perhaps fortune might attend him. So she went over to
old Mrs. Hardy's, to borrow a "riz loaf," and the wanderer was feasted,
according to her little best.
Johnnie stayed, and Horn o' the Moon roused itself, finding that he had
brought the antipodes with him. He was the teller of tales. He described
what he had seen, and then, by easy transitions, what others had known
and he had only heard, until the intelligence of these stunted,
wind-blown creatures, on their island hill, took fire; and every man
vowed he wished he had gone to sea, before it was too late, or even to
California, when the gold craze was on. Johnnie had the tongue of the
improvisator, and he loved a listener. He liked to sit out on a log, in
the sparse shadow of the one little grove the hill possessed, and, with
the whispering leaves above him tattling uncomprehended sayings brought
them by the wind, gather the old men about him, and talk them blind. As
he sat there, Mary came walking swiftly by, a basket in her hand.
Johnnie came bolt upright, and took off his cap. He looked amazingly
young and fine, and Mary blushed as she went by.
"Who's that?" asked Johnnie of the village fathers.
"That's only Mary Dunbar. Guess you ain't been here sence she moved up."
Johnnie watched her walking away, for the rhythm of her motion attracted
him. He did not think her pretty; no one ever thought that.
It happened, then, that he spent two or three evenings at the Hardys',
where Mary went, every night, to rub grandmother and put her to bed; and
while she sat there in the darkened room, soothing the old woman for her
dreary vigil, she heard his golden tales of people in strange lands. It
seemed very wonderful to Mary. She had not dreamed there were such lands
in all the world; and when she hurried home, it was to hunt out her old
geography, and read it until after midnight. She followed rivers to
their sources, and dwelt upon mountains with amazing names. She was
seeing the earth and its fullness, and her heart beat fast.
Next day she went away for a long case, giving only one little sigh in
the going, to the certainty that, when she came back, Johnnie Veasey
would be off on another voyage to lands beyond the sea. Mary was not of
the sort who cry for the moon just because they have seen it. She had
simply begun to read a fairy tale, and somebody had taken it away from
her and put it high on the shelf. But on the very first morning after
her return, when she rose early, longing for the blissful air of her own
bleak solitude, Mattie Veasey stood there at her door. Mary had but one
first question for every comer:--
"Anybody sick?"
"You let me step in," answered Mattie, a determined foot on the sill. "I
want to tell you how things stand."
It was evident that Mattie was going on a journey. She was an exposition
of the domestic resources of Horn o' the Moon. Her dress came to the
tops of her boots. It was the plaid belonging to Stella Hardy, who had
died in her teens. It hooked behind; but that was no matter, for the
enveloping shawl, belonging to old Mrs. Titcomb, concealed that youthful
eccentricity. Her shoes--congress, with world-weary elastics at the
side--were her own, inherited from an aunt; and her bonnet was a rusty
black, with a mourning veil. There was, at that time, but one new
bonnet at Horn o' the Moon, and its owner had sighed, when Mattie
proposed for it, brazenly saying that she guessed nobody'd want anything
that set so fur back. Whereupon the suppliant sought out Mrs. Pillsbury,
whose mourning headgear, bought in a brief season of prosperity, nine
years before, had become, in a manner, village property. It was as duly
in public requisition as the hearse; and its owner cherished a
melancholy pride in this official state. She never felt as if she owned
it,--only that she was the keeper of a sacred trust; and Mattie, in
asking for it, knew that she demanded no more than her due, as a citizen
should. It was an impersonal matter between her and the bonnet; and
though she should wear it on a secular errand, the veil did not signify.
She knew everybody else knew whose bonnet it was; and that if anybody
supposed she had met with a loss, they had only to ask, and she to
answer. So, in the consciousness of an armor calculated to meet the
world, she skillfully brought her congress boots into Mary's kitchen,
and sat down, her worn little hands clasped under the shawl.
"You've just got home," said she. "I s'pose you ain't heard what's
happened to Johnnie?"
Mary rose, a hand upon her chair.
"No! no! He don't want no nussin'. You set down. I can't talk so--ready
to jump an' run. My! how good that tea does smell!"
Mary brought a cup, and placed it at her hand, with the deft manner of
those who have learned to serve. Mattie sugared it, and tasted, and
sugared again.
"My! how good that is!" she repeated. "You don't steep it to rags, as
some folks do. I have to, we're so nigh the wind. Well, you hadn't been
gone long before Johnnie had a kind of a fall. 'T wa'n't much of a one,
neither,--down the ledge. I dunno how he done it--he climbs like a
cat--seems as if the Old Boy was in it--but half his body he can't move.
Palsy, I s'pose; numb, not shakin', like Adam's."
Mary listened gravely, her hands on her knees.
"How long's he been so?"
"Nigh on to five weeks."
"Had the doctor?"
"Yes, we called in that herb-man over to Saltash, an' he says there
ain't no chance for him. He's goin' to be like Adam, only wuss. An'
I've been down to the Poor Farm, to tell 'em they've got to take him
in." Her little hands worked; her eager eyes ate their way into the
heart. Mary could see exactly how she had had her way with the
selectmen. "I told 'em they'd got to," she repeated. "He ain't got no
money, an' we ain't got nuthin', an' have two paraletics on my hands I
can't. So they told me they'd give me word to-day; an' I'm goin' down
to settle it. I'm in hopes they'll bring me back, an' take him along
down."
"Yes," answered Mary gravely. "Yes."
"Well, now I've come to the beginnin' o' my story." Mattie took that
last delicious sip of tea at the bottom of the cup. "He's layin' in bed,
an' Adam's settin' by the stove; an' I wanted to know if you wouldn't
run in, long towards noon, an' warm up suthin' for 'em."
"Yes, indeed," said Mary Dunbar. "I'll be there."
She rose, and Mattie, albeit she dearly loved to gossip, felt that she
must rise, too, and be on her way. She tried to amplify on what she had
already said, but Mary did not seem to be listening; so, treading
carefully, lest the dust and dew beset her precious shoes, she took her
way down the hill, like a busy little ant, born to scurry and gather.
Mary looked hastily about the room, to see if its perfect order needed a
farewell touch; and then she drank her cup of tea, and stepped out into
the morning. The air was fresh and sweet. She wore no shawl, and the
wind lifted the little brown rings on her forehead, and curled them
closer. Mary held a hand upon them, and hurried on. She had no more
thought of appearances than a woman in a desert land, or in the desert
made by lack of praise; for she knew no one looked at her. To be clean
and swift was all her life demanded.
Adam sat by the stove, where the ashes were still warm. It was not a day
for fires, but he loved his accustomed corner. He was a middle-aged man,
old with the suffering which is not of years, and the pathos of his
stricken state hung about him, from his unkempt beard to the dusty black
clothing which had been the Tiverton minister's outworn suit. One would
have said he belonged to the generation before his brother.
"That you, Mary?" he asked, in his shaking voice. "Now, ain't that good?
Come to set a spell?"
"Where is he?" responded Mary, in a swift breathlessness quite new to
her.
"In there. We put up a bed in the clock-room."
It was the unfinished part of the house. The Veaseys had always meant to
plaster, but that consummation was still afar. The laths showed
meagrely; it was a skeleton of a room,--and, sunken in the high
feather-bed between the two windows, lay Johnnie Veasey, his buoyancy
all gone, his face quite piteous to see, now that its tan had faded.
Mary went up to the bed-side, and laid one cool, strong hand upon his
wrist. His eyes sought her with a wild entreaty; but she knew, although
he seemed to suffer, that this was the misery of delirium, and not the
conscious mind. Adam had come trembling to the door, and stood there,
one hand beating its perpetual tattoo upon the wall. Mary looked up at
him with that abstracted gaze with which we weigh and judge.
"He's feverish," said she. "Mattie didn't tell me that. How long's he
been so?"
"I dunno. I guess a matter o' two days."
"Two days?"
"Well, it might be off an' on ever sence he fell." Adam was helpless. He
depended upon Mattie, and Mattie was not there.
"What did the doctor leave?"
Adam looked about him. "'T was the herb doctor," he said. "He had her
steep some trade in a bowl."
Mary Dunbar drew her hand away, and walked two or three times up and
down the bare, bleak room. The seeking eyes were following her. She knew
how little their distended agony might mean; but nevertheless they
carried an entreaty. They leaned upon her, as the world, her sick world,
was wont to lean. Mary was, in many things, a child; but her attitude
had grown to be maternal. Suddenly she turned to Adam, where he stood,
shaking and hesitating, in the doorway.
"You goin' to send him off?"
"'Pears as if that's the only way," shuffled Adam.
"To-day?"
"Well, I dunno's they'll come"--
Mary walked past him, her mind assured.
"There, that'll do," said she. "You set down in your corner. I'll be
back byme-by."
She hurried out into the bleak world which was her home, and, at that
moment, it looked very fair and new. The birds were singing, loudly as
they ever sang up here where there were few leaves to nest in. Mary
stopped an instant to listen, and lifted her face wordlessly to the
clear blue sky. It seemed as if she had been given a gift. There, before
one of the houses, she called aloud, with a long, lingering note,
"Jacob!" and Jacob Pease rose from his milking-stool, and came forward.
Jacob was tall and snuff-colored, a widower of three years' standing.
There was a theory that he wanted Mary, and lacked the courage to ask
her.
"That you, Mary Dunbar?" said he. "Anything on hand?"
"I want you to come and help me lift," answered Mary.
Jacob set down his milk pail, and followed her into the Veaseys'
kitchen. She drew out the tin basin, and filled it at the sink.
"Wash your hands," said she. "Adam, you set where you generally do.
You'll be in the way."
Jacob followed her into the sick-room, and Adam weakly shuffled in
behind.
"For the land's sake!" he began, but Mary was at the head of the bed,
and Jacob at the foot.
"I'll carry his shoulders," she said, in the voice that admits no demur.
"You take his feet and legs. Sort o' fold the feather-bed up round him,
or we never shall get him through the door."
"Which way?" asked Jacob, still entirely at rest on a greater mind.
"Out!" commanded Mary,--"out the front door."
Adam, in describing that dramatic moment, always declared that nobody
but Mary Dunbar could have engineered a feather-bed through the narrow
passage, without sticking midway. He recalled an incident of his boyhood
when, in the Titcomb fire, the whole family had spent every available
instant before the falling of the roof, in trying to push the
second-best bed through the attic window, only to leave it there to
burn. But Mary Dunbar took her patient through the doorway as Napoleon
marched over the Alps; she went with him down the road toward her own
little house under the hill. Only then did Adam, still shuffling on
behind, collect his intelligence sufficiently to shout after her,--
"Mary, what under the sun be you doin' of? What you want me to tell
Mattie? S'pose she brings the selec'men, Mary Dunbar!"