might if I'd had my wits about me. Should you jest as soon trust me for
some Thanksgivin' things?"
"Certain," replied Jonathan. "Clean out the store, if you want. Your
credit's good." He, too, felt the beguilement of the time.
"I want some things," repeated Lucy Ann, with determination. "Some
cinnamon an' some mace--there! I'll tell you, while you weigh."
It seemed to her that she was buying the spice islands of the world; and
though the money lay at home in her drawer, honestly ready to pay, the
recklessness of credit gave her an added joy. The store had its market,
also, at Thanksgiving time, and she bargained for a turkey. It could be
sent her, the day before, by some of the neighbors. When she left the
counter, her arms and her little basket were filled with bundles. Joshua
Marden was glad to take them.
"No, I won't ride," said Lucy Ann. "Much obliged to _you_. Jest leave
the things inside the fence. I'd ruther walk. I don't git out any too
often."
She took her way home along the brown road, stepping lightly and
swiftly, and full of busy thoughts. Flocks of birds went whirring by
over the yellowed fields. Lucy Ann could have called out to them, in
joyous understanding, they looked so free. She, too, seemed to be flying
on the wings of a fortunate wind.
All that week she scrubbed and regulated, and took a thousand capable
steps as briskly as those who work for the home-coming of those they
love. The neighbors dropped in, one after another, to ask where she was
going to spend Thanksgiving. Some of them said, "Won't you pass the day
with us?" but Lucy Ann replied blithely:--
"Oh, John's invited me there!"
All that week, too, she answered letters, in her cramped and careful
hand; for cousins had bidden her to the feast. Over the letters she had
many a troubled pause, for one cousin lived near Ezra, and had to be
told that John had invited her; and to three others, dangerously within
hail of each, she made her excuse a turncoat, to fit the time. Duplicity
in black and white did hurt her a good deal, and she sometimes stopped,
in the midst of her slow transcription, to look up piteously and say
aloud:--
"I hope I shall be forgiven!" But by the time the stamp was on, and the
pencil ruling erased, her heart was light again. If she had sinned, she
was finding the path intoxicatingly pleasant.
Through all the days before the festival, no house exhaled a sweeter
savor than this little one on the green. Lucy Ann did her miniature
cooking with great seriousness and care. She seemed to be dwelling in a
sacred isolation, yet not altogether alone, but with her mother and all
their bygone years. Standing at her table, mixing and tasting, she
recalled stories her mother had told her, until, at moments, it seemed
as if she not only lived her own life, but some previous one, through
that being whose blood ran with hers. She was realizing that ineffable
sense of possession born out of knowledge that the enduring part of a
personality is ours forever, and that love is an unquenched fire, fed by
memory as well as hope.
On Thanksgiving morning, Lucy Ann lay in bed a little later, because
that had been the family custom. Then she rose to her exquisite house,
and got breakfast ready, according to the unswerving programme of the
day. Fried chicken and mince pie: she had had them as a child, and now
they were scrupulously prepared. After breakfast, she sat down in the
sunshine, and watched the people go by to service in Tiverton Church.
Lucy Ann would have liked going, too; but there would be inconvenient
questioning, as there always must be when we meet our kind. She would
stay undisturbed in her seclusion, keeping her festival alone. The
morning was still young when she put her turkey in the oven, and made
the vegetables ready. Lucy Ann was not very fond of vegetables, but
there had to be just so many--onions, turnips, and squash baked with
molasses--for her mother was a Cape woman, preserving the traditions of
dear Cape dishes. All that forenoon, the little house throbbed with a
curious sense of expectancy. Lucy Ann was preparing so many things that
it seemed as if somebody must surely keep her company; but when
dinner-time struck, and she was still alone, there came no lull in her
anticipation. Peace abode with her, and wrought its own fair work. She
ate her dinner slowly, with meditation and a thankful heart. She did not
need to hear the minister's careful catalogue of mercies received. She
was at home; that was enough.
After dinner, when she had done up the work, and left the kitchen
without spot or stain, she went upstairs, and took out her mother's
beautiful silk poplin, the one saved for great occasions, and only left
behind because she had chosen to be buried in her wedding gown. Lucy Ann
put it on with careful hands, and then laid about her neck the wrought
collar she had selected the day before. She looked at herself in the
glass, and arranged a gray curl with anxious scrutiny. No girl adorning
for her bridal could have examined every fold and line with a more
tender care. She stood there a long, long moment, and approved herself.
"It's a wonder," she said reverently. "It's the greatest mercy anybody
ever had."
The afternoon waned, though not swiftly; for Time does not always gallop
when happiness pursues. Lucy Ann could almost hear the gliding of his
rhythmic feet. She did the things set aside for festivals, or the days
when we have company. She looked over the photograph album, and turned
the pages of the "Ladies' Wreath." When she opened the case containing
that old daguerreotype, she scanned it with a little distasteful smile,
and then glanced up at her own image in the glass, nodding her head in
thankful peace. She was the enduring portrait. In herself, she might
even see her mother grow very old. So the hours slipped on into dusk,
and she sat there with her dream, knowing, though it was only a dream,
how sane it was, and good. When wheels came rattling into the yard, she
awoke with a start, and John's voice, calling to her in an inexplicable
alarm, did not disturb her. She had had her day. Not all the family
fates could take it from her now. John kept calling, even while his wife
and children were climbing down, unaided, from the great carryall. His
voice proclaimed its own story, and Lucy Ann heard it with surprise.
"Lucy! Lucy Ann!" he cried. "You here? You show yourself, if you're all
right."
Before they reached the front door, Lucy Ann had opened it and stood
there, gently welcoming.
"Yes, here I be," said she. "Come right in, all of ye. Why, if that
ain't Ezra, too, an' his folks, turnin' into the lane. When 'd you plan
it?"
"Plan it! we didn't plan it!" said Mary testily. She put her hand on
Lucy Ann's shoulder, to give her a little shake; but, feeling mother's
poplin, she forbore.
Lucy Ann retreated before them into the house, and they all trooped in
after her. Ezra's family, too, were crowding in at the doorway; and the
brothers, who had paused only to hitch the horses, filled up the way
behind. Mary, by a just self-election, was always the one to speak.
"I declare, Lucy!" cried she, "if ever I could be tried with you, I
should be now. Here we thought you was at Ezra's, an' Ezra's folks
thought you was with us; an' if we hadn't harnessed up, an' drove over
there in the afternoon, for a kind of a surprise party, we should ha'
gone to bed thinkin' you was somewhere, safe an' sound. An' here you've
been, all day long, in this lonesome house!"
"You let me git a light," said Lucy Ann calmly. "You be takin' off your
things, an' se' down." She began lighting the tall astral lamp on the
table, and its prisms danced and swung. Lucy Ann's delicate hand did not
tremble; and when the flame burned up through the shining chimney, more
than one started, at seeing how exactly she resembled grandma, in the
days when old Mrs. Cummings had ruled her own house. Perhaps it was the
royalty of the poplin that enwrapped her; but Lucy Ann looked very
capable of holding her own. She was facing them all, one hand resting on
the table, and a little smile flickering over her face.
"I s'pose I was a poor miserable creatur' to git out of it that way,"
said she. "If I'd felt as I do now, I needn't ha' done it. I could ha'
spoke up. But then it seemed as if there wa'n't no other way. I jest
wanted my Thanksgivin' in my own home, an' so I throwed you off the
track the best way I could. I dunno's I lied. I dunno whether I did or
not; but I guess, anyway, I shall be forgiven for it."
Ezra spoke first: "Well, if you didn't want to come"--
"Want to come!" broke in John. "Of course she don't want to come! She
wants to stay in her own home, an' call her soul her own--don't you,
Lucy?"
Lucy Ann glanced at him with her quick, grateful smile.
"I'm goin' to, now," she said gently, and they knew she meant it.
But, looking about among them, Lucy Ann was conscious of a little hurt
unhealed; she had thrown their kindness back.
"I guess I can't tell exactly how it is," she began hesitatingly; "but
you see my home's my own, jest as yours is. You couldn't any of you go
round cousinin', without feelin' you was tore up by the roots. You've
all been real good to me, wantin' me to come, an' I s'pose I should make
an awful towse if I never was asked; but now I've got all my visitin'
done up, cousins an' all, an' I'm goin' to be to home a spell. An' I do
admire to have company," added Lucy Ann, a bright smile breaking over
her face. "Mother did, you know, an' I guess I take arter her. Now you
lay off your things, an' I'll put the kettle on. I've got more pies 'n
you could shake a stick at, an' there's a whole loaf o' fruit-cake, a
year old."
Mary, taking off her shawl, wiped her eyes surreptitiously on a corner
of it, and Abby whispered to her husband, "Dear creatur'!" John and Ezra
turned, by one consent, to put the horses in the barn; and the children,
conscious that some mysterious affair had been settled, threw themselves
into the occasion with an irresponsible delight. The room became at once
vocal with talk and laughter, and Lucy Ann felt, with a swelling heart,
what a happy universe it is where so many bridges lie between this
world and that unknown state we call the next. But no moment of that
evening was half so sweet to her as the one when little John, the
youngest child of all, crept up to her and pulled at her poplin skirt,
until she bent down to hear.
"Grandma," said he, "when 'd you get well?"
THE EXPERIENCE OF HANNAH PRIME
Tiverton Hollow had occasionally an evening meeting; this came about
naturally whenever religious zeal burned high, or when the congregation
felt, with some uneasiness, that it had remained too long aloof from
spiritual things. To-night, the schoolhouse had been designated for an
assembling place, and the neighborhood trooped thither, animated by an
excited importance, and doing justice to the greatness of the occasion
by "dressing up." Farmers had laid aside their ordinary mood, with
overalls and jumpers, and donned an uncomfortable solemnity, an enforced
attitude of theological reflection, with their stocks. Wives had urged
their patient fingers into cotton gloves, and in cashmere shawls, and
bonnets retrimmed with reference to this year's style, pressed into the
uncomfortable chairs, and folded their hands upon the desks before them
in a sweet seriousness not unmingled with the desire of thriftily
completing a duty no less exigent than pickle-making, or the work of
spring and fall. Last came the boys, clattering with awkward haste over
the dusty floor which had known the touch of their bare feet on other
days. They looked about the room with some awe and a puzzled acceptance
of its being the same, yet not the same. It was their own. There were
the maps of North and South America; the yellowed evergreens, relic of
"Last Day," still festooned the windows, and an intricate "sum," there
explained to the uncomprehending admiration of the village fathers,
still adorned the blackboard. Yet the room had strangely transformed
itself into an alien temple, invaded by theology and the breath of an
unknown world. But though sobered, they were not cast down; for the
occasion was enlivened, in their case, by a heaven-defying profligacy of
intent. Every one of them knew that Sammy Forbes had in his pocket a
pack of cards, which he meant to drop, by wicked but careless design,
just when Deacon Pitts led in prayer, and that Tom Drake was master of a
concealed pea-shooter, which he had sworn, with all the asseverations
held sacred by boys, to use at some dramatic moment. All the band were
aware that neither of these daring deeds would be done. The prospective
actors themselves knew it; but it was a darling joy to contemplate the
remote possibility thereof.
Deacon Pitts opened the meeting, reminding his neighbors how precious a
privilege it is for two or three to be gathered together. His companion
had not been able to come. (The entire neighborhood knew that Mrs.
Pitts had been laid low by an attack of erysipelas, and that she was, at
the moment, in a dark bedroom at home, helpless under elderblow.)
"She lays there on a bed of pain," said the deacon. "But she says to me,
'You go. Better the house o' mournin' than the house o' feastin',' she
says. Oh, my friends! what can be more blessed than the counsel of an
aged and feeble companion?"
The deacon sat down, and Tom Drake, his finger on the pea-shooter,
assured himself, in acute mental triumph, that he had almost done it
that time.
Then followed certain incidents eminently pleasing to the boys. To their
unbounded relief, Sarah Frances Giles rose to speak, weeping as she
began. She always wept at prayer meeting, though at the very moment of
asserting her joy that she cherished a hope, and her gratitude that she
was so nearly at an end of this earthly pilgrimage and ready to take her
stand on the sea of glass mingled with fire. The boys reveled in her
testimony. They were in a state of bitter uneasiness before she rose,
and gnawed with a consuming impatience until she began to cry. Then they
wondered if she could possibly leave out the sea of glass; and when it
duly came, they gave a sigh of satiated bliss and sank into acquiescence
in whatever might happen. This was a rich occasion to their souls, for
Silas Marden, who was seldom moved by the spirit, fell upon his knees to
pray; but at the same unlucky instant, his sister-in-law, for whom he
cherished an unbounded scorn, rose (being "nigh-eyed" and ignorant of
his priority) and began to speak. For a moment, the two held on
together, "neck and neck," as the happy boys afterward remembered, and
then Silas got up, dusted his knees, and sat down, not to rise again at
any spiritual call. "An' a madder man you never see," cried all the
Hollow next day, in shocked but gleeful memory.
Taking it all in all, the meeting had thus far mirrored others of its
class. If the droning experiences were devoid of all human passion, it
was chiefly because they had to be expressed in the phrases of strict
theological usage. There was an unspoken agreement that feelings of this
sort should be described in a certain way. They were not the affairs of
the hearth and market; they were matters pertaining to that awful entity
called the soul, and must be dressed in the fine linen which she had
herself elected to wear.
Suddenly, in a wearisome pause, when minds had begun to stray toward the
hayfield and to-morrow's churning, the door was pushed open, and the
Widow Prime walked in. She was quite unused to seeking her kind, and the
little assembly at once awoke, under the stimulus of surprise. They
knew quite well where she had been walking: to Sudleigh Jail, to visit
her only son, lying there for the third time, not, as usual, for
drunkenness, but for house-breaking. She was a wiry woman, a mass of
muscles animated by an eager energy. Her very hands seemed knotted with
clenching themselves in nervous spasms. Her eyes were black, seeking,
and passionate, and her face had been scored by fine wrinkles, the marks
of anxiety and grief. Her chocolate calico was very clean, and her
palm-leaf shawl and black bonnet were decent in their poverty. The vague
excitement created by her coming continued in a rustling like that of
leaves. The troubles of Hannah Prime's life had been very bitter--so
bitter that she had, as Deacon Pitts once said, after undertaking her
conversion, turned from "me and the house of God." A quickening thought
sprang up now in the little assembly that she was "under conviction,"
and that it had become the present duty of every professor to lead her
to the throne of grace. This was an exigency for which none were
prepared. At so strenuous a challenge, the old conventional ways of
speech fell down and collapsed before them, like creatures filled with
air. Who should minister to one set outside their own comfortable lives
by bitter sorrow and wounded pride? What could they offer a woman who
had, in one way or another, sworn to curse God and die? It was Deacon
Pitts who spoke, but in a tone hushed to the key of the unexpected.
"Has any one an experience to offer? Will any brother or sister lead in
prayer?"
The silence was growing into a thing to be recognized and conquered,
when, to the wonder of her neighbors, Hannah Prime herself rose. She
looked slowly about the room, gazing into every face as if to challenge
an honest understanding. Then she began speaking in a low voice thrilled
by an emotion not yet explained. Unused to expressing herself in public,
she seemed to be feeling her way. The silence, pride, endurance, which
had been her armor for many years, were no longer apparent; she had
thrown down all her defenses with a grave composure, as if life suddenly
summoned her to higher issues.
"I dunno's I've got an experience to offer," she said. "I dunno's it's
religion. I dunno what 't is. Mebbe you'd say it don't belong to a
meetin'. But when I come by an' see you all settin' here, it come over
me I'd like to tell somebody. Two weeks ago I was most crazy"--She
paused of necessity, for something broke in her voice.
"That's the afternoon Jim was took," whispered a woman to her neighbor.
Hannah Prime went on.
"I jest as soon tell it now. I can tell ye all together what I couldn't
say to one on ye alone; an' if anybody speaks to me about it
arterwards, they'll wish they hadn't. I was all by myself in the house.
I set down in my clock-room, about three in the arternoon, an' there I
set. I didn't git no supper. I couldn't. I set there an' heard the clock
tick. Byme-by it struck seven, an' that waked me up. I thought I'd gone
crazy. The figgers on the wall-paper provoked me most to death; an' that
red-an'-white tidy I made, the winter I was laid up, seemed to be
talkin' out loud. I got up an' run outdoor jest as fast as I could go. I
run out behind the house an' down the cart-path to that pile o' rocks
that overlooks the lake; an' there I got out o' breath an' dropped down
on a big rock. An' there I set, jest as still as I'd been settin' when I
was in the house."
Here a little girl stirred in her seat, and her mother leaned forward
and shook her, with alarming energy. "I never was so hard with Mary L.
afore," she explained the next day, "but I was as nervous as a witch. I
thought, if I heard a pin drop, I should scream."
"I dunno how long I set there," went on Hannah Prime, "but byme-by it
begun to come over me how still the lake was. 'Twas like glass; an' way
over where it runs in 'tween them islands, it burnt like fire. Then I
looked up a little further, to see what kind of a sky there was. 'T was
light green, with clouds in it, all fire, an' it begun to seem to me as
if it was a kind o' land an' water up there--like our'n, on'y not
solid. I set there an' looked at it; an' I picked out islands, an'
ma'sh-land, an' p'ints running out into the yeller-green sea. An'
everything grew stiller an' stiller. The loons struck up, down on the
lake, with that kind of a lonesome whinner; but that on'y made the rest
of it seem quieter. An' it begun to grow dark all 'round me. I dunno's I
ever noticed before jest how the dark comes. It sifted down like snow,
on'y you couldn't see it. Well, I set there, an' I tried to keep stiller
an' stiller, like everything else. Seemed as if I must. An' pretty soon
I knew suthin' was walkin' towards me over the lot. I kep' my eyes on
the sky; for I knew 'twould break suthin' if I turned my head, an' I
felt as if I couldn't bear to. An' It come walkin', walkin', without
takin' any steps or makin' any noise, till It come right up 'side o' me
an' stood still. I didn't turn round. I knew I mustn't. I dunno whether
It touched me; I dunno whether It said anything--but I know It made me a
new creatur'. I knew then I shouldn't be afraid o' things no more--nor
sorry. I found out 't was all right. 'I'm glad I'm alive,' I said. 'I'm
thankful!' Seemed to me I'd been dead for the last twenty year. I'd come
alive.
"An' so I set there an' held my breath, for fear 'twould go. I dunno how
long, but the moon riz up over my left shoulder, an' the sky begun to
fade. An' then it come over me 'twas goin'. I knew 'twas terrible tender
of me, an' sorry, an' lovin', an' so I says, 'Don't you mind; I won't
forgit!' An' then It went. But that broke suthin', an' I turned an' see
my own shadder on the grass; an' I thought I see another, 'side of it.
Somehow that scairt me, an' I jumped up an' whipped it home without
lookin' behind me. Now that's my experience," said Hannah Prime, looking
her neighbors again in the face, with dauntless eyes. "I dunno what
'twas, but it's goin' to last. I ain't afraid no more, an' I ain't goin'
to be. There ain't nuthin' to worry about. Everything's bigger'n we
think." She folded her shawl more closely about her and moved toward the
door. There she again turned to her neighbors.
"Good-night!" she said, and was gone.
They sat quite still until the tread of her feet had ceased its beating
on the dusty road. Then, by one consent, they rose and moved slowly out.
There was no prayer that night, and "Lord dismiss us" was not sung.
HONEY AND MYRRH
The neighborhood, the township, and the world had been snowed in. Snow
drifted the road in hills and hollows, and hung in little eddying
wreaths, where the wind took it, on the pasture slopes. It made solid
banks in the dooryards, and buried the stone walls out of sight. The
lacework of its fantasy became daintily apparent in the conceits with
which it broidered over all the common objects familiar in homely lives.
The pump, in yards where that had supplanted the old-fashioned curb,
wore a heavy mob-cap. The vane on the barn was delicately sifted over,
and the top of every picket in the high front-yard fence had a fluffy
peak. But it was chiefly in the woods that the rapture and flavor of the
time ran riot in making beauty. There every fir branch swayed under a
tuft of white, and the brown refuse of the year was all hidden away.
That morning, no one in Tiverton Hollow had gone out of the house, save
to shovel paths and do the necessary chores. The road lay untouched
until ten o'clock, when a selectman gave notice that it was an occasion
for "breakin' out," by starting with his team, and gathering oxen by
the way until a conquering procession ground through the drifts, the men
shoveling at intervals where the snow lay deepest, the oxen walking
swayingly, head to the earth, and the faint wreath of their breath
ascending and cooling on the air. It was "high times" in Tiverton Hollow
when a road needed opening; some idea of the old primitive way of
battling with the untouched forces of nature roused the people to an
exhilaration dashed by no uncertainty of victory.