The time of year was April; the place was a small farming town in New
Hampshire, remote from any railroad. One by one the lights had been
blown out in the scattered houses near Miss Tempy Dent’s; but as her
neighbors took a last look out-of-doors, their eyes turned with
instinctive curiosity toward the old house, where a lamp burned
steadily. They gave a little sigh. “Poor Miss Tempy!” said more than one
bereft acquaintance; for the good woman lay dead in her north chamber,
and the light was a watcher’s light. The funeral was set for the next
day, at one o’clock.
The watchers were two of the oldest friends, Mrs. Crowe and Sarah Ann
Binson. They were sitting in the kitchen, because it seemed less awesome
than the unused best room, and they beguiled the long hours by steady
conversation. One would think that neither topics nor opinions would
hold out, at that rate, all through the long spring night; but there was
a certain degree of excitement just then, and the two women had risen to
an unusual level of expressiveness and confidence. Each had already told
the other more than one fact that she had determined to keep secret;
they were again and again tempted into statements that either would have
found impossible by daylight. Mrs. Crowe was knitting a blue yarn
stocking for her husband; the foot was already so long that it seemed as
if she must have forgotten to narrow it at the proper time. Mrs. Crowe
knew exactly what she was about, however; she was of a much cooler
disposition than Sister Binson, who made futile attempts at some sewing,
only to drop her work into her lap whenever the talk was most engaging.
Their faces were interesting,—of the dry, shrewd, quick-witted New
England type, with thin hair twisted neatly back out of the way. Mrs.
Crowe could look vague and benignant, and Miss Binson was, to quote her
neighbors, a little too sharp-set; but the world knew that she had need
to be, with the load she must carry of supporting an inefficient widowed
sister and six unpromising and unwilling nieces and nephews. The eldest
boy was at last placed with a good man to learn the mason’s trade. Sarah
Ann Binson, for all her sharp, anxious aspect, never defended herself,
when her sister whined and fretted. She was told every week of her life
that the poor children never would have had to lift a finger if their
father had lived, and yet she had kept her steadfast way with the little
farm, and patiently taught the young people many useful things, for
which, as everybody said, they would live to thank her. However
pleasureless her life appeared to outward view, it was brimful of
pleasure to herself.
Mrs. Crowe, on the contrary, was well to do, her husband being a rich
farmer and an easy-going man. She was a stingy woman, but for all that
she looked kindly; and when she gave away anything, or lifted a finger
to help anybody, it was thought a great piece of beneficence, and a
compliment, indeed, which the recipient accepted with twice as much
gratitude as double the gift that came from a poorer and more generous
acquaintance. Everybody liked to be on good terms with Mrs. Crowe.
Socially she stood much higher than Sarah Ann Binson. They were both old
schoolmates and friends of Temperance Dent, who had asked them, one day,
not long before she died, if they would not come together and look after
the house, and manage everything, when she was gone. She may have had
some hope that they might become closer friends in this period of
intimate partnership, and that the richer woman might better understand
the burdens of the poorer. They had not kept the house the night before;
they were too weary with the care of their old friend, whom they had not
left until all was over.
There was a brook which ran down the hillside very near the house, and
the sound of it was much louder than usual. When there was silence in
the kitchen, the busy stream had a strange insistence in its wild voice,
as if it tried to make the watchers understand something that related to
the past.
“I declare, I can’t begin to sorrow for Tempy yet. I am so glad to have
her at rest,” whispered Mrs. Crowe. “It is strange to set here without
her, but I can’t make it clear that she has gone. I feel as if she had
got easy and dropped off to sleep, and I’m more scared about waking her
up than knowing any other feeling.”
“Yes,” said Sarah Ann, “It’s just like that, ain’t it? But I tell you we
are goin’ to miss her worse than we expect. She’s helped me through with
many a trial, has Temperance. I ain’t the only one who says the same,
neither.”
These words were spoken as if there were a third person listening;
somebody beside Mrs. Crowe. The watchers could not rid their minds of
the feeling that they were being watched themselves. The spring wind
whistled in the window crack, now and then, and buffeted the little
house in a gusty way that had a sort of companionable effect. Yet, on
the whole, it was a very still night, and the watchers spoke in a
half-whisper.
“She was the freest-handed woman that ever I knew,” said Mrs. Crowe,
decidedly. “According to her means, she gave away more than anybody. I
used to tell her ’t wa’n’t right. I used really to be afraid that she
went without too much, for we have a duty to ourselves.”
Sister Binson looked up in a half-amused, unconscious way, and then
recollected herself.
Mrs. Crowe met her look with a serious face. “It ain’t so easy for me to
give as it is for some,” she said simply, but with an effort which was
made possible only by the occasion. “I should like to say, while Tempy
is laying here yet in her own house, that she has been a constant lesson
to me. Folks are too kind, and shame me with thanks for what I do. I
ain’t such a generous woman as poor Tempy was, for all she had nothin’
to do with, as one may say.”
Sarah Binson was much moved at this confession, and was even pained and
touched by the unexpected humility. “You have a good many calls on
you”—she began, and then left her kind little compliment half finished.
“Yes, yes, but I’ve got means enough. My disposition’s more of a cross
to me as I grow older, and I made up my mind this morning that Tempy’s
example should be my pattern henceforth.” She began to knit faster than
ever.
“’Tain’t no use to get morbid: that’s what Tempy used to say herself,”
said Sarah Ann, after a minute’s silence. “Ain’t it strange to say ‘used
to say’?” and her own voice choked a little. “She never did like to hear
folks git goin’ about themselves.”
“’Twas only because they’re apt to do it so as other folks will say’t
wasn’t so, an’ praise ’em up,” humbly replied Mrs. Crowe, “and that
ain’t my object. There wa’n’t a child but what Tempy set herself to work
to see what she could do to please it. One time my brother’s folks had
been stopping here in the summer, from Massachusetts. The children was
all little, and they broke up a sight of toys, and left ’em when they
were going away. Tempy come right up after they rode by, to see if she
couldn’t help me set the house to rights, and she caught me just as I
was going to fling some of the clutter into the stove. I was kind of
tired out, starting ’em off in season. ‘Oh, give me them!’ says she,
real pleading; and she wropped ’em up and took ’em home with her when
she went, and she mended ’em up and stuck ’em together, and made some
young one or other happy with every blessed one. You’d thought I’d done
her the biggest favor. ‘No thanks to me. I should ha’ burnt ’em, Tempy,’
says I.”
“Some of ’em came to our house, I know,” said Miss Binson. “She’d take a
lot o’ trouble to please a child, ’stead o’ shoving of it out o’ the
way, like the rest of us when we’re drove.”
“I can tell you the biggest thing she ever done, and I don’t know ’s
there’s anybody left but me to tell it. I don’t want it forgot,” Sarah
Binson went on, looking up at the clock to see how the night was going.
“It was that pretty-looking Trevor girl, who taught the Corners school,
and married so well afterwards, out in New York State. You remember her,
I dare say?”
“Certain,” said Mrs. Crowe, with an air of interest.
“She was a splendid scholar, folks said, and give the school a great
start; but she’d overdone herself getting her education, and working to
pay for it, and she all broke down one spring, and Tempy made her come
and stop with her a while,—you remember that? Well, she had an uncle,
her mother’s brother, out in Chicago, who was well off and friendly, and
used to write to Lizzie Trevor, and I dare say make her some presents;
but he was a lively, driving man, and didn’t take time to stop and think
about his folks. He hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl. Poor
Lizzie was so pale and weakly that she just got through the term o’
school. She looked as if she was just going straight off in a decline.
Tempy, she cosseted her up a while, and then, next thing folks knew, she
was tellin’ round how Miss Trevor had gone to see her uncle, and meant
to visit Niagary Falls on the way, and stop over night. Now I happened
to know, in ways I won’t dwell on to explain, that the poor girl was in
debt for her schoolin’ when she come here, and her last quarter’s pay
had just squared it off at last, and left her without a cent ahead,
hardly; but it had fretted her thinking of it, so she paid it all; those
might have dunned her that she owed it to. An’ I taxed Tempy about the
girl’s goin’ off on such a journey till she owned up, rather’n have
Lizzie blamed, that she’d given her sixty dollars, same’s if she was
rolling in riches, and sent her off to have a good rest and vacation.”
“Sixty dollars!” exclaimed Mrs. Crowe. “Tempy only had ninety dollars a
year that came in to her; rest of her livin’ she got by helpin’ about,
with what she raised off this little piece o’ ground, sand one side an’
clay the other. An’ how often I’ve heard her tell, years ago, that she’d
rather see Niagary than any other sight in the world!”
The women looked at each other in silence; the magnitude of the generous
sacrifice was almost too great for their comprehension.
“She was just poor enough to do that!” declared Mrs. Crowe at last, in
an abandonment of feeling. “Say what you may, I feel humbled to the
dust,” and her companion ventured to say nothing. She never had given
away sixty dollars at once, but it was simply because she never had it
to give. It came to her very lips to say in explanation, “Tempy was so
situated;” but she checked herself in time, for she would not betray her
own loyal guarding of a dependent household.
“Folks say a great deal of generosity, and this one’s being
public-sperited, and that one free-handed about giving,” said Mrs.
Crowe, who was a little nervous in the silence. “I suppose we can’t tell
the sorrow it would be to some folks not to give, same’s ’twould be to
me not to save. I seem kind of made for that, as if ’twas what I’d got
to do. I should feel sights better about it if I could make it evident
what I was savin’ for. If I had a child, now, Sarah Ann,” and her voice
was a little husky,—“if I had a child, I should think I was heapin’ of
it up because he was the one trained by the Lord to scatter it again for
good. But here’s Mr. Crowe and me, we can’t do anything with money, and
both of us like to keep things same ’s they’ve always been. Now
Priscilla Dance was talking away like a mill-clapper, week before last.
She’d think I would go right off and get one o’ them new-fashioned
gilt-and-white papers for the best room, and some new furniture, an’ a
marble-top table. And I looked at her, all struck up. ‘Why,’ says I,
‘Priscilla, that nice old velvet paper ain’t hurt a mite. I shouldn’t
feel ’twas my best room without it. Dan’el says ’tis the first thing he
can remember rubbin’ his little baby fingers on to it, and how splendid
he thought them red roses was.’ I maintain,” continued Mrs. Crowe
stoutly, “that folks wastes sights o’ good money doin’ just such foolish
things. Tearin’ out the insides o’ meetin’-houses, and fixin’ the pews
different; ’twas good enough as ’twas with mendin’; then times come, an’
they want to put it all back same ’s ’twas before.”
This touched upon an exciting subject to active members of that parish.
Miss Binson and Mrs. Crowe belonged to opposite parties, and had at one
time come as near hard feelings as they could, and yet escape them. Each
hastened to speak of other things and to show her untouched
friendliness.
“I do agree with you,” said Sister Binson, “that few of us know what use
to make of money, beyond every-day necessities. You’ve seen more o’ the
world than I have, and know what’s expected. When it comes to taste and
judgment about such things, I ought to defer to others;” and with this
modest avowal the critical moment passed when there might have been an
improper discussion.
In the silence that followed, the fact of their presence in a house of
death grew more clear than before. There was something disturbing in the
noise of a mouse gnawing at the dry boards of a closet wall near by.
Both the watchers looked up anxiously at the clock; it was almost the
middle of the night, and the whole world seemed to have left them alone
with their solemn duty. Only the brook was awake.
“Perhaps we might give a look upstairs now,” whispered Mrs. Crowe, as if
she hoped to hear some reason against their going just then to the
chamber of death; but Sister Binson rose, with a serious and yet
satisfied countenance, and lifted the small lamp from the table. She was
much more used to watching than Mrs. Crowe, and much less affected by
it. They opened the door into a small entry with a steep stairway; they
climbed the creaking stairs, and entered the cold upper room on tiptoe.
Mrs. Crowe’s heart began to beat very fast as the lamp was put on a high
bureau, and made long, fixed shadows about the walls. She went
hesitatingly toward the solemn shape under its white drapery, and felt a
sense of remonstrance as Sarah Ann gently, but in a business-like way,
turned back the thin sheet.
“Seems to me she looks pleasanter and pleasanter,” whispered Sarah Ann
Binson impulsively, as they gazed at the white face with its wonderful
smile. “To-morrow ’twill all have faded out. I do believe they kind of
wake up a day or two after they die, and it’s then they go.” She
replaced the light covering, and they both turned quickly away; there
was a chill in this upper room.
“’Tis a great thing for anybody to have got through, ain’t it?” said
Mrs. Crowe softly, as she began to go down the stairs on tiptoe. The
warm air from the kitchen beneath met them with a sense of welcome and
shelter.
“I don’ know why it is, but I feel as near again to Tempy down here as I
do up there,” replied Sister Binson. “I feel as if the air was full of
her, kind of. I can sense things, now and then, that she seems to say.
Now I never was one to take up with no nonsense of sperits and such, but
I declare I felt as if she told me just now to put some more wood into
the stove.”
Mrs. Crowe preserved a gloomy silence. She had suspected before this
that her companion was of a weaker and more credulous disposition than
herself. “’Tis a great thing to have got through,” she repeated,
ignoring definitely all that had last been said. “I suppose you know as
well as I that Tempy was one that always feared death. Well, it’s all
put behind her now; she knows what ’tis.” Mrs. Crowe gave a little sigh,
and Sister Binson’s quick sympathies were stirred toward this other old
friend, who also dreaded the great change.
“I’d never like to forgit almost those last words Tempy spoke plain to
me,” she said gently, like the comforter she truly was. “She looked up
at me once or twice, that last afternoon after I come to set by her, and
let Mis’ Owen go home; and I says, ‘Can I do anything to ease you,
Tempy?’ and the tears come into my eyes so I couldn’t see what kind of a
nod she give me. ‘No, Sarah Ann, you can’t, dear,’ says she; and then
she got her breath again, and says she, looking at me real meanin’, ‘I’m
only a-gettin’ sleepier and sleepier; that’s all there is,’ says she,
and smiled up at me kind of wishful, and shut her eyes. I knew well
enough all she meant. She’d been lookin’ out for a chance to tell me,
and I don’ know ’s she ever said much afterwards.”
Mrs. Crowe was not knitting; she had been listening too eagerly. “Yes,
’twill be a comfort to think of that sometimes,” she said, in
acknowledgment.
“I know that old Dr. Prince said once, in evenin’ meetin’, that he’d
watched by many a dyin’ bed, as we well knew, and enough o’ his sick
folks had been scared o’ dyin’ their whole lives through; but when they
come to the last, he’d never seen one but was willin’, and most were
glad, to go. ‘’Tis as natural as bein’ born or livin’ on,’ he said. I
don’t know what had moved him to speak that night. You know he wa’n’t in
the habit of it, and ’twas the monthly concert of prayer for foreign
missions anyways,” said Sarah Ann; “but ’twas a great stay to the mind
to listen to his words of experience.”
“There never was a better man,” responded Mrs. Crowe, in a really
cheerful tone. She had recovered from her feeling of nervous dread, the
kitchen was so comfortable with lamplight and firelight; and just then
the old clock began to tell the hour of twelve with leisurely whirring
strokes.
Sister Binson laid aside her work, and rose quickly and went to the
cupboard. “We’d better take a little to eat,” she explained. “The night
will go fast after this. I want to know if you went and made some o’
your nice cupcake, while you was home to-day?” she asked, in a pleased
tone; and Mrs. Crowe acknowledged such a gratifying piece of
thoughtfulness for this humble friend who denied herself all luxuries.
Sarah Ann brewed a generous cup of tea, and the watchers drew their
chairs up to the table presently, and quelled their hunger with good
country appetites. Sister Binson put a spoon into a small, old-fashioned
glass of preserved quince, and passed it to her friend. She was most
familiar with the house, and played the part of hostess. “Spread some o’
this on your bread and butter,” she said to Mrs. Crowe. “Tempy wanted me
to use some three or four times, but I never felt to. I know she’d like
to have us comfortable now, and would urge us to make a good supper,
poor dear.”
“What excellent preserves she did make!” mourned Mrs. Crowe. “None of us
has got her light hand at doin’ things tasty. She made the most o’
everything, too. Now, she only had that one old quince-tree down in the
far corner of the piece, but she’d go out in the spring and tend to it,
and look at it so pleasant, and kind of expect the old thorny thing into
bloomin’.”
“She was just the same with folks,” said Sarah Ann. “And she’d never git
more ’n a little apernful o’ quinces, but she’d have every mite o’
goodness out o’ those, and set the glasses up onto her best-room closet
shelf, _so_ pleased. ‘T wa’n’t but a week ago to-morrow mornin’ I
fetched her a little taste o’ jelly in a teaspoon; and she says ‘Thank
ye,’ and took it, an’ the minute she tasted it she looked up at me as
worried as could be. ‘Oh, I don’t want to eat that,’ says she. ‘I always
keep that in case o’ sickness.’ ‘You’re goin’ to have the good o’ one
tumbler yourself,’ says I. ‘I’d just like to know who’s sick now, if you
ain’t!’ An’ she couldn’t help laughin’, I spoke up so smart. Oh, dear
me, how I shall miss talkin’ over things with her! She always sensed
things, and got just the p’int you meant.”
“She didn’t begin to age until two or three years ago, did she?” asked
Mrs. Crowe. “I never saw anybody keep her looks as Tempy did. She looked
young long after I begun to feel like an old woman. The doctor used to
say ’twas her young heart, and I don’t know but what he was right. How
she did do for other folks! There was one spell she wasn’t at home a day
to a fortnight. She got most of her livin’ so, and that made her own
potatoes and things last her through. None o’ the young folks could get
married without her, and all the old ones was disappointed if she wa’n’t
round when they was down with sickness and had to go. An’ cleanin’, or
tailorin’ for boys, or rug-hookin’,—there was nothin’ but what she could
do as handy as most. ‘I do love to work,’—ain’t you heard her say that
twenty times a week?”
Sarah Ann Binson nodded, and began to clear away the empty plates. “We
may want a taste o’ somethin’ more towards mornin’,” she said. “There’s
plenty in the closet here; and in case some comes from a distance to the
funeral, we’ll have a little table spread after we get back to the
house.”
“Yes, I was busy all the mornin’. I’ve cooked up a sight o’ things to
bring over,” said Mrs. Crowe. “I felt ’twas the last I could do for
her.”
They drew their chairs near the stove again, and took up their work.
Sister Binson’s rocking-chair creaked as she rocked; the brook sounded
louder than ever. It was more lonely when nobody spoke, and presently
Mrs. Crowe returned to her thoughts of growing old.
“Yes, Tempy aged all of a sudden. I remember I asked her if she felt as
well as common, one day, and she laughed at me good. There, when Mr.
Crowe begun to look old, I couldn’t help feeling as if somethin’ ailed
him, and like as not ’twas somethin’ he was goin’ to git right over, and
I dosed him for it stiddy, half of one summer.”
“How many things we shall be wanting to ask Tempy!” exclaimed Sarah Ann
Binson, after a long pause. “I can’t make up my mind to doin’ without
her. I wish folks could come back just once, and tell us how ’tis where
they’ve gone. Seems then we could do without ’em better.”
The brook hurried on, the wind blew about the house now and then; the
house itself was a silent place, and the supper, the warm fire, and an
absence of any new topics for conversation made the watchers drowsy.
Sister Binson closed her eyes first, to rest them for a minute; and Mrs.
Crowe glanced at her compassionately, with a new sympathy for the
hard-worked little woman. She made up her mind to let Sarah Ann have a
good rest, while she kept watch alone; but in a few minutes her own
knitting was dropped, and she, too, fell asleep. Overhead, the pale
shape of Tempy Dent, the outworn body of that generous, loving-hearted,
simple soul, slept on also in its white raiment. Perhaps Tempy herself
stood near, and saw her own life and its surroundings with new
understanding. Perhaps she herself was the only watcher.
Later, by some hours, Sarah Ann Binson woke with a start. There was a
pale light of dawn outside the small windows. Inside the kitchen, the
lamp burned dim. Mrs. Crowe awoke, too.
“I think Tempy’d be the first to say ’twas just as well we both had some
rest,” she said, not without a guilty feeling.
Her companion went to the outer door, and opened it wide. The fresh air
was none too cold, and the brook’s voice was not nearly so loud as it
had been in the midnight darkness. She could see the shapes of the
hills, and the great shadows that lay across the lower country. The east
was fast growing bright.
“’Twill be a beautiful day for the funeral,” she said, and turned again,
with a sigh, to follow Mrs. Crowe up the stairs.