over a Sunday and his wife for a week’s visit. When she came, of a
Saturday after dusk, I found, as Evan had said, that one moment she was
tender and almost piteously feminine, so that I was impelled to take her
in my arms as I would a child, while in a moment of animation, a flush
would mantle her cheeks, too thin for her years, the gray eyes would
flash, little bright glints play about her hair, until she was, indeed,
like a bundle of lithe, live wires.
At such moments, Terry’s laughing eyes would grow grave, and the banter,
which was one of his charms, die on his lips; that she was restless and
he apprehensive even through the spell of strong affection, there was no
doubt, and on Monday, when Terry left her with me, there was something
appealing in his glance and the grip he gave my hand.
The day was fairly pleasant out-of-doors in that a frozen crust made
good walking, and, arm in arm, Mrs. Terry and I explored my haunts; I
pointed to the stakes and trellises where the garden had been and would
be again, and for a moment we sat upon the seat where the “Mother Tree”
had been and looked down the walk that had bordered that first garden of
the long ago. Would she understand from these bare outlines the why of
it, the voiceless potency of that which bound me?
If she did she said nothing until afternoon, when I took her to my attic
corner, and building a log fire in the Franklin stove, drew the dumpy
old lounge before it and called the dogs to soothe us with their sleepy
influence.
At first Mrs. Terry sat upright, hands clasped about her knees, gazing
at the fire, and breathing quickly.
“How I love that,” she said; “we have not had these fires since I left
the ranch, and I’ve often slept out by one as high as the wall when
we’ve been on camping trips.”
Then gradually her breath came slower and more evenly, and she dropped
back half against the sweet clover pillows and half against my shoulder.
“When we looked over that rolling icy field beyond the garden this
morning, with the dazzling light on the snow, just as it is at home, and
I shut my eyes, I could see the ranch, and Uncle Sandy and the boys, and
fat Mrs. Malone, the housekeeper, so plainly that I almost put out my
hand to touch them. There’s something queer about March; lots of the
range cattle get through almost until spring and then give out, and the
boys that have held out well all winter often go nearly blind of a
sudden. I guess it’s because by March you’ve braced up and stood all you
can of winter, and because it’s called spring, you lose nerve and can’t
pull the strap up another hole for a fresh grip.”
Then with a sudden movement, burying her face in my shoulder, she half
whispered: “That’s the way it is with me; ever since I left the ranch,
I’ve kept myself braced so that Terry should not know how homesick I
feel. At first I thought it would pass, then I thought if I had a place
where I could strike root the pain might wear away, and so I’ve hunted
and hunted, but now, to-day, coming here and feeling some one else’s
home feeling, but from outside, it’s like March snow to my eyes, I can’t
bear it; there’s not another inch to pull up and the saddle girths are
slipping, slipping under me, and there’s no help. I must go back!
“I was born in March, I met Terry in March, the next March we were
married, and now, oh, Mrs. Evan, unless you can help me and hold me, we
shall part, Terry and I, for no fault, and I shall go back to Uncle
Sandy in March! No, don’t look at me so hardly, I can feel your eyes
right through my hair: you, who have always been at home, can’t judge
me. It isn’t that I don’t love Terry better than any one else, but the
earth loves you, too, and sometimes it won’t let go. I could not know it
would be so until I came away; no one could. Some day it will all be
changed, this coming of a man and taking the woman away; he will come to
her and stay, for home is more to the one who stays in to keep it.”
As she leaned close to me, I could feel the beating of her heart and
with it another sound, a sort of feeble echo as it were. Then I gathered
her up and held her close, and told her of those two first years and of
my own separation from home and country.
“But after that you came back,” she cried, “and Terry can’t go back with
me; we thrashed that out in the beginning, for even Uncle Sandy said
there was no opening for a lawyer in a grazing country, because every
one settles their own disputes quick, unless they are big enough for the
government to butt in, and anyway a lawyer isn’t popular. Well, at last,
thank God, I’ve found some one to understand it, some one who has lived
through that feeling that pulls you back to where you started.” And Mrs.
Terry, clasping her arms around my neck, fell to crying, not
passionately, but comfortably, that blessed outlet that Nature has given
us women in compensation for much pain we may not avoid.
Gradually the sobs stopped, she was asleep. So, laying her carefully
back on the pillows and covering her with an old afghan, I left her to
the dreams bred by the singing of the firewood accompanied by a little,
whistling snore from Peter, the old hound.
* * * * *
The morning of the sale at the Dearborn farm was mild, as though March
was preparing to go out like a lamb that scented green pastures. Two
days of rain had washed the snow from the open places, and though the
roads ran mud, yet it was the mud of promise.
We made an early start, that Mrs. Terry might have a chance to see the
few bits of old furniture likely to attract one who had no association
with the family or place; for the Dearborns were of the plain Yankee
stock that, aside from a few heirlooms kept most of the time behind
drawn blinds, had furnishings of the plainest sort. There was a good
tall clock with a ship atop of the pendulum sailing toward a port it
never reached, a handsome claw-footed table of mahogany, a chest of
drawers, and a dozen chairs of the same wood, patterned diversely, a
four-post bed, carved with some skill, a Davenport sofa with carved
ends, a hooded cradle, a low-boy, and a work table with heavy brass
handles. The silver table ware, worn thin by use, was of a slender
pattern, the ends of the handles of spoons and forks being abruptly
angled; while of china, outside of the modern ware in daily use, there
was a tea-set of Lowestoft with its odd small-necked tea-caddy and
helmet cream-pitcher, and a more complete service of blue and white
India porcelain.
A bevy of neighbours and one or two dealers, including old Pop Tucker,
were buzzing about these things, but what seemed to attract Mrs. Terry
far more, were the pitiful little personal articles that belonged
intimately to the life of Sallie Dearborn, and that she had never
doubted would pass either to her own kin, or, if worthless, be destroyed
instead of being exposed for criticism and sale, as the law ordains in
the settling of an estate where no friendly hand intervenes.
Worn table-linen tied into bundles, underclothing, much darned
stockings, shoes, a well-worn Bible filled with little memory markers
bearing names and dates, a book filled with household recipes copied in
a stiff, exact handwriting, and lastly, resting on the seat of a
chintz-covered chair, as if its owner had left it there for a brief
moment while she went to other tasks, was a deep work-basket, big as a
peck measure. The inside pockets of this basket were filled with spools,
needle-cases, tapes and all such gear; the outside bags held bits of
half-finished work, and knitting, the rusty needles sticking from a ball
of home-dyed blue-gray yarn, just as they had been laid away; while a
thimble of an odd pineapple pattern hung on the top of a long darning
needle that occupied the middle of the pincushion.
“This is simply cruel,” whispered Mrs. Terry, the electric wire look
reappearing as she rumpled her hair and held the basket close to her as
if to protect it. “There is nothing in this basket worth a nickel,
unless that dingy thimble is gold, and to have it put up and sold to
some one of those old cats yonder, who have been going about pinching
and smelling everything, not that they mean to buy, but just to see, as
that one with the green porcupine topknot in her hat said a minute ago,
‘what dear Sallie had that set her up so.’
“A lot of a woman’s secrets drop into her work-basket, and mix up with
her pens and writing things when she’s alone, and it’s wicked to sell
any of these things. I’m going to buy this basket, Mrs. Evan, and wrap
it up in a pink paper and bury it if you’ll lend me a spade and the
ground isn’t frozen too hard; if not, I’ll burn it.
“I mean to buy that old Bible, too, with all the births and deaths
written in. The porcupine woman said she would buy it if it didn’t bring
over a dollar, because she hadn’t had a chance to ‘leaf it over well’
and there were dates in it she wanted to write out and there might be
letters tucked in somewhere! From what I’ve overheard, Miss Sallie must
have had a lover fifty or sixty years ago, who went away, and as no one
ever knew why, her friends’ children are still curious about the
matter.”
Mr. Hanks’ vigorous pounding on the table in the kitchen, and the
ringing of a bell, gathered about him an audience of nearly one hundred
people, and the selling began, room by room; for, to save confusion, the
large pieces of furniture were sold where they stood.
During the morning the sale dragged, the dealers had everything their
own way, and in spite of Mr. Hanks’ pathetic reminiscences concerning
each article, from an old pew stove to a five-cent factory-made wooden
spoon, the derelicts that did not receive a single bid would have filled
a wagon. The afternoon session began in the best room, wherein was the
four-poster, the cradle, a good mirror, the work-basket and the tall
desk, the fate of which was contained in Miss Sallie’s letter to father.
As we stood in the doorway, a flood of sunlight, coming in through the
small, iridescent window-panes, gilded the dust that lay upon everything
and lent warmth to the quaint buff wall-paper, festooned with loops of
bright flowers and birds of paradise; a brave paper in its day and one
that had faded with dignity.
“I don’t know quite what there is about this room,” whispered Mrs.
Terry, “but bare as it is and cold, it seems familiar and somehow more
homelike to me than any other I have ever seen; I wonder could I have
lived in it in dreams?”
Before I could answer, one of the swift changes passed over her, and
stepping forward, she said in the perfectly clear, unemotional voice of
a business man, “Mr. Hanks, as it is growing late and I must go, would
you object to selling the contents of this room as it stands? Wall-paper
and all, if it is possible to get it off?” I was amazed and a little
worried, for I knew nothing of the length of Mrs. Terry’s purse.
The country folks gasped and whispered among themselves; they did not
wish to be cheated out of a moment’s excitement. The dealers began a
series of mental calculations, but no real objection being made, Mr.
Hanks stroked his chin a moment, muttered something about its being
possible that the wall paper being fastened to the house might be real
estate, and then said, “The bed must be a separate lot, the desk as is
known is not for the sale, but the rest of the fittings I will put up in
bulk ‘as is,’ madam, which is a learned and professional term you must
know for the way they seem to be to the casual eye, not what perhaps the
brush of fancy might paint them.”
The green porcupine lady shut her mouth with the snap of a turtle,
murmuring something about the widow’s mite being disdained, as she saw
that both the Bible, and the basket containing the thimble that was
suspected of being gold, would vanish from her horizon.
Of course I was in no way responsible for Mrs. Terry, yet for one who
confessed to being on the eve of running away, to buy a wagon load of
furniture seemed hardly rational. When, ten minutes later, Mr. Hanks,
after selling the bed and contents of the room for one hundred and fifty
dollars, was fairly beaming at his success, and I realized that the
furniture must be removed within two days, my heart sank.
Not so Mrs. Terry’s; after giving Hanks a very substantial deposit upon
her purchase, she tucked the Bible under one arm, and hugging the basket
to her breast, made ready to go.
That evening, after supper, she spread Bible, basket, and herself upon
the rug before the den fire and began examining the contents of the old
work-basket as a child does a picture puzzle, saying naïvely, “It’s no
harm to look at the things before I bury them,” whereat Evan heaved a
sigh, and I knew that he was mentally weighing the stability of Terry
Donelly’s marriage, though at the same time his eyes twinkled with
amusement.
“See,” she continued, “here’s a finished sock wrapped up in paper with
something peppery, and the other is all done but a bit of the tip of the
toe. I think I’ll finish it if I can get the rust off the needles; yes,
it rubs off and the rug polishes them nicely,—there seems to be enough
yarn on the ball to finish the toe, though it’s rather mothy; it looks
ages old. Can I knit? Oh, yes, I used to knit long stockings for Uncle
Sandy out of heather yarn. I knit a pair of golf stockings for Terry
last fall, but one foot was shorter than the other, and he said it
always drew up his big toe and distracted his attention when he was
‘putting.’”
“That carries me back a long way,” said father, who had come across the
hall, newspaper in hand, for a little visit and to exchange cigars with
Evan, a nightly custom, as he watched Mrs. Terry knitting in the
firelight. “When I was a young fellow, not only the old folks, but all
the country-bred girls learned to knit as soon as their skirts went down
and their hair was put up. Then, when the attentions of one of the young
men who took them to and from meeting and singing-school were recognized
as serious, when he became ‘steady company’ and privileged to sit in the
best room and hold the skein of yarn for her to wind, the girl with many
blushes would ask him to write his name with hers on a bit of paper,
which folded up, made the centre of a ball of yarn from which she
straightway began to knit _Him_ a pair of socks to prove her
housewifery.”
“What a well-packed idea!” cried Mrs. Terry, rising to her knees, “and
perhaps, who knows, the name brought good luck and helped her get both
feet alike!”
“I’m not sure about that,” laughed father, “but I do remember that there
was a lot of curiosity about those papers and sometimes a girl would
steal her rival’s knitting ball to find whose name was inside, and feuds
came of it that were worse than tangled yarn.”
“Do you suppose there could possibly be a paper in this ball?” Mrs.
Terry cried suddenly, as she squeezed it tight; “it isn’t all yarn,
there’s something inside and it isn’t a spool. No, I won’t unwind it,
I’ll knit this last inch out,” and the fingers flew, while it seemed as
though her strange hair stretched out to look, and pulling away from its
pins fairly danced in the firelight.
As the stocking ate up the yarn, I found myself getting nearer to Mrs.
Terry, father drew his chair close, and Evan leaned against the
fireplace.
“Why are we all so breathlessly interested?” I asked, addressing the
ball of yarn as much as anything.
“Because,” answered father, “of the possibility of unearthing romance,
and twist, distort, and disguise it as we will, simple love is the most
interesting thing to every one of us.”
“Last round,” called Evan, who was watching so closely that Mrs. Terry’s
fingers trembled nervously.
The row was finished and bound off, though the rotten yarn had to be
pieced three times in the process; then she began to unwind the wisp
that remained. Yes, there was a piece of paper inside, brittle and
yellow.
Slowly she opened it, for it threatened to tear in shreds, and read in
an awestruck voice, “‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all my
days. March the 20th, 1842. Sarah Dearborn and Richard Morland’!”
* * * * *
“Richard Morland was my mother’s father!” she said, scarcely above a
whisper; “how did his name come here, Dr. Russell?”
Father held the paper to the lamp, scarcely less excited than Mrs.
Terry, who stood with clasped hands and a strange, searching expression
in her eyes as they followed him.
“Richard Morland, yes, that is the name,” said father, making sure of
every letter. “He once taught school at the old centre village. It was
before my time, but it is a matter of record, and some of the old people
still speak of him. As I remember the story, the school-teacher always
boarded at the Dearborn farm.”
“Then my grandfather once lived in the house where we were, to-day, and
probably slept in the four-posted bed and saw the parrots perched in the
flowers on the wall the first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Terry said
slowly, turning her back to the room and speaking, as it were, to the
fire.
“It is very strange, because when I went into the room, it did not seem
new to me. I, too, must sleep in the great bed and wake up with the
sunshine on that old, old paper.”
“It is a pity that it couldn’t be taken off the wall so that all the
fittings might be kept together,” I said thoughtlessly. But the young
woman wheeled around swiftly, and putting a hand on either of my
shoulders held me off, at the same time that her expression drew me
close.
“That paper shall never come off,” she said. “If grandpa had married
Miss Sallie, she would have been my grandmother and I should have
belonged in the Dearborn homestead. It’s too late for that now, but I’m
going to buy the place and manage it that way. Don’t you see, Mrs. Evan?
I’ve found my reason, the reason that I wanted to make me stay somewhere
until I had taken root and couldn’t get away. Then perhaps I may find
out something more from the old place to make me hug it tighter. Anyway,
the south pasture is just the place to turn out horses.
“Don’t you think, Dr. Russell, that they might be willing to sell before
next week? Please may I use the telephone? I’ll call up Terry, he will
be so relieved! And then I must get to work and find out why Miss Sallie
wasn’t my grandmother.”
* * * * *
Now the time had come for father to open Miss Sallie’s letter, which
said that—the desk and its contents were to become the property of the
owner of the house!
“The desk and all the wall-papers Miss Sallie chose for the
refurnishings!” cried Mrs. Terry; “it’s actually like having some one to
share the responsibility of it all. Ah, you see, Mrs. Evan, I told you
that dreary old March is my lucky month; another thirty days and it
might have been too late.”
The day that the deed was transferred, father handed Mrs. Terry the key
of the old secretary. Whispering to me, “I don’t want even Terry to come
up yet, only you must be with me when I open it, for you understand,”
she literally pulled me up the narrow stairs.
Dragging up the big arm-chair, she seated herself in it and turned the
key slowly in the creaking lock. As the flap fell back, revealing a row
of pigeon-holes and two shallow drawers, she whispered, “I don’t know
exactly whether I’m opening a treasure chest or a grave!”
After some hesitation, she pulled out a drawer and took from it a bundle
of yellow papers, folded lengthwise and tied with a faded blue ribbon.
“‘Letters from R. M. to S. D., preserved to show my kin how good a man
their foolish aunt lost through thinking that land could weigh in the
balance with love,’” read Mrs. Terry, reddening deeply; “and here is a
picture of grandpa cut from black paper, and a queer curl of hair. Ah,
_now_ I see where my inquisitive hair comes from.
“‘A letter of advice to my kin if they think to marry, and a request.’”
Mrs. Terry read this slowly to herself, saying as she did so, “I hope
she wants something I can do for her.”
There was a long silence, so long that I looked up rather anxiously at
last.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She wants grandpa’s name to be given to the first child that is born in
this house,” said Mrs. Terry, in an awestruck tone, “and that seems to
me like a loaf and fish miracle, for I was _so_ afraid that Terry would
want to call him for his own people, and his father’s name was Patrick
Dennis! Oh, how nice it is to have even a might-have-been grandmother to
shoulder such responsibilities!” And once more she threw herself into my
arms as she had done the afternoon in the attic, peeping over my
shoulder at the hooded mahogany cradle into which the beams of the
victorious snow-quelling March sun were shining.
“Something seems to have turned up, or else we have all gone
snow-blind,” said Evan that night.
IV
THE IMMIGRANTS
=APRIL=—THE GOOSE MOON
It was early in April, an hour before sunset. The keen wind that blew
down through the valley, sweeping the forge pond into little ripples,
was tinkling with spring sounds,—wayside voices of robin, meadow-lark,
purple finch, and cheery song sparrow; the red-wing’s good-night
blending with the piping of the marsh frogs; music of little brooks
newly born of melted ice and spring rain on the rocky hillsides; here
and there the chime of cow bells worn by Peter Salop’s rambling herd
returning from their first day’s browsing in the brush lots,—all
blended into the steady rhythm of the water as it fell in an unbroken
sheet from the pond’s edge upon the rocks below.
Spring rushed toward the ear that evening more swiftly than to the eye.
There were yellow tassels of fragrant spice-bush in moist warm hollows,
echoing in tint the winter-flowering witch-hazel; wands of glistening
willow outlined the waterways, and the red glow of life lay upon the
swamp maples; but only the eyes of the wise might hope to find the
hiding-places of the white and rathe blue hepaticas, or the nooks deep
in the hemlock woods where the wax-pink arbutus distilled fragrance from
the leaf mould.
As the sun slowly vanished behind the long chain of hills beyond the
Moosatuck, the warmth of the first spring day swiftly followed, and soon
the sky was barred with the dull red-purple and citron that promised
unwelcome frosts.
In all the countryside but two people were to be seen out-of-doors or in
any way seemingly conscious of the evening’s beauty, and these were
alien born; Peter Salop, the owner of the pond, mill, and forge, and
Ivan Gronski, his hired helper. Peter was English born, a portly and
comfortable man of sixty odd, who, having come over in his youth, had
made a little money by city trade. Once upon a time he had gone home
again to pick up the old life for middle-aged rest, but though the land
was there, the people that made the life had vanished. Now coming for
the second time, he had settled in our hill country near his sons, and
because he was born in a mill, a mill he must own, and, because as a boy
he had loved to creep into a neighbour’s forge and watch the molten
metal take shape, a forge he must have, even though its work was no more
ambitious than turning scrap iron into cheap ploughs and third-grade
tools.
Among other traditions that he brought with him and never seemed to have
lost in his forty years of city trading, was a love for the sound of cow
bells, the sight of sheep grazing on the rough hillsides where they were
almost indistinguishable from the rocks, the sight and smell of snowy
“May” or Hawthorn, big bushes of which grew in his house yard, a love of
lying prone on green grass, hands behind head to watch the sky, and an
intense respect for the game laws. It was this latter quality that had
begun an intimacy between Peter and Evan, and together they had formed
an alliance to put down the trapping, ferreting, and snaring among the
hills, about which the country lad, native by a few generations, has no
conscience.
Wild geese had been flying these two weeks, and Peter Salop was minded
that if a flock dropped to rest and feed on his pond, there should be
none lacking in their onward flight. Moreover, with the wild-fowl in
mind, he never cut the heavy-seeded marsh grasses and sedges that grew
in the pond’s backwater, and had scattered wild rice until it had become
naturalized. So now Peter paced up and down the highway that skirted his
property on the west, hands behind back, his eyes first resting upon the
pond that, here and there, glistened silver-like between the meshed
alders that hedged it like coin within a knitted purse, then sweeping
the road up which either the mail man or the home-coming cattle might at
any time be expected.