HOW SHE WENT VISITING
IT was after Rachel’s marriage that Grandmother first began to go about
in the village. Till then she had always kept pretty much within the
four walls of the Merion garden, and people thought she was proud,
until they came to know her. But now a restlessness seemed to come
over her, and she was away from home a good deal. She did not go to
“circles” and meetings—one would as soon have expected to see a white
birch walk into the vestry—nor did she make what we loved to call
“society calls;” but she found out the people who were sick or sad
or lonely—the Peaces always knew—and she went to them, sometimes
with Anne to introduce her, oftener alone, making some errand, taking
a flower, or a pot of jelly or the like. Old Aunt Betsy Taggart was
living then, the white old woman who had taken to her bed so long ago
that none of us young folks ever knew why she had done it. Indeed,
I think Anne and I rather supposed she had always been there—grew
there, perhaps, like some strange old white flower. She was the most
independent old soul, Aunt Betsy. It seemed terrible for her to live
there alone, but it was the only way she would live. Her niece, Hepsy
Babbage, came in morning and evening, and “did for” the old lady,
but she was not allowed to stay more than an hour at a time. “My soul
is my own,” Aunt Betsy used to say, “and I like to be able to call it
so, my dear!” Hepsy was a great talker, certainly; and Aunt Betsy did
her own cooking over a lamp that stood on the table by her bed, and
actually made her own butter in a little churn that Wilbur Babbage made
for her the winter before he died. (Anne Peace never would let me say
that Wilbur was talked to death, but she could not prevent her mother’s
saying so.)
Well, Grandmother and Aunt Betsy took to each other from the first
moment, and never a week passed that Grandmother did not spend an
afternoon with the old lady and take tea. Aunt Betsy seemed to know all
about her at once, which Anne and I never did, though we adored her.
“Come here, child!” she said when she came in with Anne, the first
time. “I’ve heard of you, and I’m glad to see you. Come and let me have
a look at you!” She took Grandmother’s hand in hers, and the two looked
at each other, a long quiet look. “Ah!” said Aunt Betsy at last. “Yes,
I see. The upper and the nether millstone, my child!”
Grandmother nodded simply; then in a moment she began to talk about the
flowers she had brought, and how Anne had helped her pick them, and
what a comfort Anne and her mother were to her.
“Such good neighbors!” she said. “Such dear, good, kind, neighbors!
This place is so full of good people, Miss Taggart.”
“They call me Aunt Betsy,” said the old lady, “and they call you
Grandmother, I’m told.”
“Yes,” said Grandmother laughing; “that is my name, isn’t it, Anne?”
Anne says that she had really forgotten that she had ever had any other
name.
“We shall be friends, you and I!” said Aunt Betsy; “and you will find
good people wherever you look for them, my dear.”
“Oh, yes, surely!” said Grandmother; and they looked at each other
again, that quiet understanding look.
I don’t suppose Anne was very much younger than Grandmother, but she
felt a whole lifetime between them, and worshipped the older girl with
a very real worship. Grandmother took it sweetly and quietly, as she
took everything. When Anne brought some offering, the first bride-rose
from her bush, or a delicate cake, or a sunset-colored jelly in a glass
bowl, Grandmother would thank her affectionately, and admire the gift,
and then would say, “But it is too pretty for any well person, my dear.
Let us take it quickly to little Kitty who is so suffering with her
measles! or to poor old Mr. Peavy, whose rheumatism is bad this week.”
Anne confessed to me that she sometimes wanted to say, “But I made it
for you, Grandmother, not for Mr. Peavy!” but I have often thought that
Anne was in a manner serving an apprenticeship to Grandmother, and
making ready, all unawares, for the life of love and sacrifice that she
too was to lead.
Another of Grandmother’s friends was Parker Patton. He was bedridden,
too—I think we were rather proud of our two stationary (I cannot say
helpless) people; he had fallen from a haystack—a strong man he was,
in the prime and pride of life—and injured his spine so that he could
never walk again.
He was not a pleasant man, most people thought; he had a crabbed,
knotty disposition, and who can wonder at it? The first time
Grandmother went to see him he snapped at her, like some strong surly
old dog.
“Who are you?” he said, bending his bushy eyebrows over his bright dark
eyes. “Who is it?” to his wife, who was hovering with anxious civility.
“Gran’ther Merion’s widder? humph! you don’t look like a fool, but no
more did he. What ye want, hey?”
“Oh, father!” said poor Mrs. Patton. “Don’t talk so! Mis’ Merion’s come
to visit with you a spell. I’m sure she’s real—”
“Get out!” said Parker. “Get out of the room, d’ye hear?”
The poor timid soul backed out, murmuring some apology to the visitor,
whom she expected to follow her; but Grandmother stood still, looking
at him with her quiet sweet eyes.
“You can follow her!” said Parker. “She likes to see company; I don’t!
I speak plain, and say what I mean.”
“I’ll go very soon!” said Grandmother. “I’d like to stay a few minutes;
may I?”
“If I’m to be made a show of,” growled the cross old man, “I shall
charge admission same as any other show. Think it’s worth a quarter to
see a man with a broken back? If you do you can stay.”
“I haven’t a quarter,” said Grandmother, “but it’s worth something to
sit down in this comfortable chair. Were you ever at sea, Mr. Patton?”
“Ya-a-ow!” snarled Mr. Patton. It sounded almost as much like “no” as
“yes,” but Grandmother did not heed it much. She had dropped lightly
into the chair, and was looking at a picture that hung opposite the
bed; a colored lithograph of a ship under full sail. The workmanship
was rough and poor, but the waves were alive, and the ship moved.
“I like that!” said Grandmother softly. “I never saw the sea, but I
knew a sailor once.” She began to sing very softly, hardly above her
breath.
“There were two gallant ships
Put out to sea.
Sing high, sing low, and so sailed we.
The one was Prince of Luther and the other Prince of Wales;
Sailing down along the coast of the high Barbarie;
Sailing down along the coast of the high Barbarie.”
“Who taught you that?” growled Parker Patton.
“A sailor; his name was Neddard, Neddard Prowst. He came—” The sick
man started up on his elbows.
“Neddard Prowst! he was a shipmate of mine; we sailed together three
years, and if I hadn’t come ashore like a grass-fool we might be
sailing yet. Where did you see Neddard, young woman?”
“In the mountains. He came ashore; he thought he would like mining, but
he didn’t. He was always longing for the sea.”
“Ah! I’ll lay my cargo he was. All seamen have their foolish times. I
thought I was tired of the sea; all I wanted in the world was to lay
under a tree and eat apples, day after day. Well—here I lay, and serve
me right. What about Neddard, young woman?”
“He was very good to me,” she said. “He liked me to sit with him when
he was sick; he died a little before I came here. He taught me all the
songs. Do you remember, now, this one?
“Hilo, heylo,
Tom was a merry boy,
Hilo, heylo,
Run before the wind!
Heave to, my jolly Jacky,
Pipe all for grog and baccy,
Hilo, heylo,
Run before the wind!”
“Ay! many’s the time! did he learn you ‘Madagascar’? hey, what?”
Grandmother, for all reply, sang again:
“Up anchor, ’bout ship, and off to Madagascar!
Cheerily, oh, cheerily, you hear the boat-swain call.
Don’t you ship a Portagee, nor don’t you ship a Lascar,
Nor don’t you ship a Chinaman, the worst of them all!
“Up foresail, out jib, and off to Madagascar,
Call to Mother Carey for to keep her chicks at home.
Ship me next to Martinique, or ship me to Alaska,
But Polly’s got my heart at anchor, ne’er to roam.”
By and by when poor Mrs. Patton ventured to put her timid head inside
the door, she kept it there, too astonished to move.
Parker lay back on his pillows with a look such as she had not seen for
many a long day. His thin hands were beating time on the coverlet, and
he and Grandmother were singing together:
“Silver and gold in the Lowlands, Lowlands,
Silver and gold in the Lowlands low;
On the quay so shady
I met a pretty lady,
She stole away my heart in the Lowlands low.
“Di’monds and pearls in the Lowlands, Lowlands,
Di’monds and pearls in the Lowlands low;
Daddy was a tailor,
But I will die a sailor,
And bury me my heart in the Low lands low!”
When the song was finished the old sailor looked up and saw his wife
gaping in the doorway.
“Great bobstays! ‘Liza,” he said, “Ain’t you got a drop of cider for
Mis’ Merion to wet her throat with? You’d let her sing herself dry as
pop-corn, I believe, and never stir a finger.”
“Oh, _Mr._ Patton!” said the poor woman, and went to fetch the cider, a
great content shining in her face. It was a good day when her husband
said “Great bobstays!”
Meantime Grandmother was not much missed at the Farm. Manuel indeed
seemed more at ease when she was not there; he did not look at her much
in these days, nor speak to her except when need was. She never seemed
to notice, but was quiet and cheerful as she always had been.
As for Rachel, she saw nothing, heard nothing, but Manuel. She seemed
all day in a kind of breathless dream of joy. But she meant to be good
to Grandmother. She was glad that Grandmother had given up her room
to them, and taken the little back one; she gloried in sitting at the
head of the table once more, and ruling all like a queen. Manuel said
she was a queen; “Queen Poppy” he used to call her; and Rachel thought
it quite true; if only she had had the luck to be born a princess, and
Manuel a prince! Yes, she meant to be good to Grandmother.
“Why, Grandmother,” she said one day at table, “your hair is beginning
to turn! Look, Manuel! see the white hairs!”
Manuel looked, and his face darkened, but he said nothing.
“I declare,” said Rachel, “that’s queer enough. I’d like to know what
care you have, Grandmother, to turn your hair gray. I expect it’s not
having any that’s done it.”
“Yes, Rachel,” said Grandmother; “perhaps that is it.”