One windy morning in May, three old women sat together near an open
window in the shed chamber of Byfleet Poor-house. The wind was from the
northwest, but their window faced the southeast, and they were only
visited by an occasional pleasant waft of fresh air. They were close
together, knee to knee, picking over a bushel of beans, and commanding a
view of the dandelion-starred, green yard below, and of the winding,
sandy road that led to the village, two miles away. Some captive bees
were scolding among the cobwebs of the rafters overhead, or thumping
against the upper panes of glass; two calves were bawling from the
barnyard, where some of the men were at work loading a dump-cart and
shouting as if every one were deaf. There was a cheerful feeling of
activity, and even an air of comfort, about the Byfleet Poor-house.
Almost every one was possessed of a most interesting past, though there
was less to be said about the future. The inmates were by no means
distressed or unhappy; many of them retired to this shelter only for the
winter season, and would go out presently, some to begin such work as
they could still do, others to live in their own small houses; old age
had impoverished most of them by limiting their power of endurance; but
far from lamenting the fact that they were town charges, they rather
liked the change and excitement of a winter residence on the poor-farm.
There was a sharp-faced, hard-worked young widow with seven children,
who was an exception to the general level of society, because she
deplored the change in her fortunes. The older women regarded her with
suspicion, and were apt to talk about her in moments like this, when
they happened to sit together at their work.
The three bean-pickers were dressed alike in stout brown ginghams,
checked by a white line, and all wore great faded aprons of blue
drilling, with sufficient pockets convenient to the right hand. Miss
Peggy Bond was a very small, belligerent-looking person, who wore a huge
pair of steel-bowed spectacles, holding her sharp chin well up in air,
as if to supplement an inadequate nose. She was more than half blind,
but the spectacles seemed to face upward instead of square ahead, as if
their wearer were always on the sharp lookout for birds. Miss Bond had
suffered much personal damage from time to time, because she never took
heed where she planted her feet, and so was always tripping and stubbing
her bruised way through the world. She had fallen down hatchways and
cellarways, and stepped composedly into deep ditches and pasture brooks;
but she was proud of stating that she was upsighted, and so was her
father before her. At the poor-house, where an unusual malady was
considered a distinction, upsightedness was looked upon as a most
honorable infirmity. Plain rheumatism, such as afflicted Aunt Lavina
Dow, whose twisted hands found even this light work difficult and
tiresome,—plain rheumatism was something of every-day occurrence, and
nobody cared to hear about it. Poor Peggy was a meek and friendly soul,
who never put herself forward; she was just like other folks, as she
always loved to say, but Mrs. Lavina Dow was a different sort of person
altogether, of great dignity and, occasionally, almost aggressive
behavior. The time had been when she could do a good day’s work with
anybody: but for many years now she had not left the town-farm, being
too badly crippled to work; she had no relations or friends to visit,
but from an innate love of authority she could not submit to being one
of those who are forgotten by the world. Mrs. Dow was the hostess and
social lawgiver here, where she remembered every inmate and every item
of interest for nearly forty years, besides an immense amount of town
history and biography for three or four generations back.
She was the dear friend of the third woman, Betsey Lane; together they
led thought and opinion—chiefly opinion—and held sway, not only over
Byfleet Poor-farm, but also the selectmen and all others in authority.
Betsey Lane had spent most of her life as aid-in-general to the
respected household of old General Thornton. She had been much trusted
and valued, and, at the breaking up of that once large and flourishing
family, she had been left in good circumstances, what with legacies and
her own comfortable savings; but by sad misfortune and lavish generosity
everything had been scattered, and after much illness, which ended in a
stiffened arm and more uncertainty, the good soul had sensibly decided
that it was easier for the whole town to support her than for a part of
it. She had always hoped to see something of the world before she died;
she came of an adventurous, seafaring stock, but had never made a longer
journey than to the towns of Danby and Northville, thirty miles away.
They were all old women; but Betsey Lane, who was sixty-nine, and looked
much older, was the youngest. Peggy Bond was far on in the seventies,
and Mrs. Dow was at least ten years older. She made a great secret of
her years; and as she sometimes spoke of events prior to the Revolution
with the assertion of having been an eye-witness, she naturally wore an
air of vast antiquity. Her tales were an inexpressible delight to Betsey
Lane, who felt younger by twenty years because her friend and comrade
was so unconscious of chronological limitations.
The bushel basket of cranberry beans was within easy reach, and each of
the pickers had filled her lap from it again and again. The shed chamber
was not an unpleasant place in which to sit at work, with its traces of
seed corn hanging from the brown crossbeams, its spare churns, and dusty
loom, and rickety wool-wheels, and a few bits of old furniture. In one
far corner was a wide board of dismal use and suggestion, and close
beside it an old cradle. There was a battered chest of drawers where the
keeper of the poor-house kept his garden-seeds, with the withered
remains of three seed cucumbers ornamenting the top. Nothing beautiful
could be discovered, nothing interesting, but there was something usable
and homely about the place. It was the favorite and untroubled bower of
the bean-pickers, to which they might retreat unmolested from the public
apartments of this rustic institution.
Betsey Lane blew away the chaff from her handful of beans. The spring
breeze blew the chaff back again, and sifted it over her face and
shoulders. She rubbed it out of her eyes impatiently, and happened to
notice old Peggy holding her own handful high, as if it were an
oblation, and turning her queer, up-tilted head this way and that, to
look at the beans sharply, as if she were first cousin to a hen.
“There, Miss Bond, ’tis kind of botherin’ work for you, ain’t it?”
Betsey inquired compassionately.
“I feel to enjoy it, anything that I can do my own way so,” responded
Peggy. “I like to do my part. Ain’t that old Mis’ Fales comin’ up the
road? It sounds like her step.”
The others looked, but they were not farsighted, and for a moment Peggy
had the advantage. Mrs. Fales was not a favorite.
“I hope she ain’t comin’ here to put up this spring. I guess she won’t
now, it’s gettin’ so late,” said Betsey Lane. “She likes to go rovin’
soon as the roads is settled.”
“’Tis Mis’ Fales!” said Peggy Bond, listening with solemn anxiety.
“There, do let’s pray her by!”
“I guess she’s headin’ for her cousin’s folks up Beech Hill way,” said
Betsey presently. “If she’d left her daughter’s this mornin’, she’d have
got just about as far as this. I kind o’ wish she had stepped in just to
pass the time o’ day, long’s she wa’n’t going to make no stop.”
There was a silence as to further speech in the shed chamber; and even
the calves were quiet in the barnyard. The men had all gone away to the
field where corn-planting was going on. The beans clicked steadily into
the wooden measure at the pickers’ feet. Betsey Lane began to sing a
hymn, and the others joined in as best they might, like autumnal
crickets; their voices were sharp and cracked, with now and then a few
low notes of plaintive tone. Betsey herself could sing pretty well, but
the others could only make a kind of accompaniment. Their voices ceased
altogether at the higher notes.
“Oh my! I wish I had the means to go to the Centennial,” mourned Betsey
Lane, stopping so suddenly that the others had to go on croaking and
shrilling without her for a moment before they could stop. “It seems to
me as if I can’t die happy ‘less I do,” she added; “I ain’t never seen
nothin’ of the world, an’ here I be.”
“What if you was as old as I be?” suggested Mrs. Dow pompously. “You’ve
got time enough yet, Betsey; don’t you go an’ despair. I knowed of a
woman that went clean round the world four times when she was past
eighty, an’ enjoyed herself real well. Her folks followed the sea; she
had three sons an’ a daughter married,—all shipmasters, and she’d been
with her own husband when they was young. She was left a widder early,
and fetched up her family herself,—a real stirrin’, smart woman. After
they’d got married off, an’ settled, an’ was doing well, she come to be
lonesome; and first she tried to stick it out alone, but she wa’n’t one
that could; an’ she got a notion she hadn’t nothin’ before her but her
last sickness, and she wa’n’t a person that enjoyed havin’ other folks
do for her. So one on her boys—I guess ’twas the oldest—said he was
going to take her to sea; there was ample room, an’ he was sailin’ a
good time o’ year for the Cape o’ Good Hope an’ way up to some o’ them
tea-ports in the Chiny Seas. She was all high to go, but it made a sight
o’ talk at her age; an’ the minister made it a subject o’ prayer the
last Sunday, and all the folks took a last leave; but she said to some
she’d fetch ’em home something real pritty, and so did. An’ then they
come home t’other way, round the Horn, an’ she done so well, an’ was
such a sight o’ company, the other child’n was jealous, an’ she promised
she’d go a v’y’ge long o’ each on ’em. She was as sprightly a person as
ever I see; an’ could speak well o’ what she’d seen.”
“Did she die to sea?” asked Peggy, with interest.
“No, she died to home between v’y’ges, or she’d gone to sea again. I was
to her funeral. She liked her son George’s ship the best; ’twas the one
she was going on to Callao. They said the men aboard all called her
‘gran’ma’am,’ an’ she kep’ ’em mended up, an’ would go below and tend to
’em if they was sick. She might ‘a’ been alive an’ enjoyin’ of herself a
good many years but for the kick of a cow; ’twas a new cow out of a
drove, a dreadful unruly beast.”
Mrs. Dow stopped for breath, and reached down for a new supply of beans;
her empty apron was gray with soft chaff. Betsey Lane, still pondering
on the Centennial, began to sing another verse of her hymn, and again
the old women joined her. At this moment some strangers came driving
round into the yard from the front of the house. The turf was soft, and
our friends did not hear the horses’ steps. Their voices cracked and
quavered; it was a funny little concert, and a lady in an open carriage
just below listened with sympathy and amusement.