The golden shower that the old butternut sent down upon the queer roof
outside the city, was the nearest approach to the real thing the house
ever saw, for though it had had its day with very grand people, they
had all died or moved away long ago, and left it to grow shabby and
old-fashioned as it might, until at last the city had bought it for a
very small sum, and established within its walls the few old people
and strays that the authorities were bound to support. So now it was
nothing more nor less than the city almshouse, and the strip of land
running back from it to the road behind, was called the poor-farm,
though it seemed rather as an odd sort of compliment to the paupers,
(boarders they preferred to be called,) than as a statement of fact,
for there was only room to raise such vegetables as were needed for
daily use in the summer, and the potatoes and great yellow pumpkins
that were stored away for winter-days.
But old Ben, who had the care of the garden, such as it was, was proud
enough of his charge, and would have ruffled up in a moment at any one
who dared to call it small.
Ben had seen better days himself, as well as the old house, and had
kept many a rich man’s grounds and conservatories in hand; but after
all, was not a garden a garden wherever it was, and had not the good
Lord called himself a husbandman, and said that he walked in the garden
of his spices?
So when Ben found himself sick and unable to stir from his little room,
just as all the winter things were ready to be brought in, it fretted
and troubled him terribly for a few days, but at last he grew quiet.
They might wait, he said; he was waiting himself till the Husbandman
should see fit to bring him in. He did not have to wait long; and when
the matron saw that he was really gone, she seemed to hear the words he
had repeated so many times ringing in her ears.
“Waiting! Dear, dear, and what else are we all doing? What are any of
us doing here but to wait?” she had said to old Sue on the morning when
they saw that harvest-time had come for Ben at last.
Sue had nodded assent, and a queer little bit of humanity, half
standing, half sitting, quite unnoticed, in one of the queer old
windows, had nodded too, but not for himself. He could not suppose she
meant to include him.
“All but me!” he added to himself; that was what he always said, and
somehow it never did seem as if anything was intended for him. The
women had not noticed him, partly because he was so small, his great,
dreamy eyes looking over at them from a point hardly higher than the
window-sill, and partly because no one ever noticed Creepy further than
to speak a kind word, or to manage some little thing that he thought
might go towards his comfort. He came and went as he liked, but so
noiselessly that the gaze of his great eyes, devouring everything from
one corner to another, made the new-comers start, until they were used
to it, and found out at last that it was only “the poor crooked thing,”
as Mrs. Ganderby the matron called him--the stray child with the
crooked back, whom no one had ever claimed or ever would.
No one ever asked any work of Creepy, and indeed it seemed doubtful
whether anything would ever be found for those white hands, so like a
baby’s in their powerless touch; and it was not always certain, after
all, that one would meet him here or there about the house. There
were days and weeks together when he was only able to sit where some
one placed his chair; in summer oftenest under the shade of the old
butternut, and in winter by some one of the queer little windows where
the sun could lie the longest. Old Enoch had made the chair for him,
and a most remarkable specimen of handicraft it was.
“Does credit to your head and heart, Enoch,” said the doctor when he
saw it.
Enoch took off his hat and made the best bow his rheumatism would
allow; but pleasant as it was to receive a compliment from the doctor,
even that could not add to his pride in his work.
“Thanks,” he said. “In course I ought to know my business, for ’twas
the best master-workman in the country round I was ’prenticed to, and
’twas more than forty year my work was called a match to his, far and
near, and would have been yet to this day, if a fall from the big
steeple hadn’t brought me down to stiff joints for the rest of my old
age. Ben had a great deal to say about gardening, to be sure, but what
good would people get out of potatoes to put in their mouths if they
had not a shelter over their heads? I should like to ask. And Ben was
always making it such a thing to remember that the blessed Lord called
himself a husbandman when He was here; but was He not a carpenter
first and foremost, and before he even talked a word about sowing seed?”
Ah! “blessed Lord” indeed! Who else could have made poverty and work
seem sweet?
So there sat Creepy, always looking and listening, never saying
anything about the pain in his crooked little back, even when it was at
the worst; never saying much about anything, in fact, only nodding and
smiling quietly while he listened to the rest. Except, to be sure, the
one little thing that he was always saying, the same that he had said
in Ben’s room; but even that was almost always whispered to himself.
“All but me!”
And indeed it did not seem that many things were intended to include
Creepy. The other paupers had their times of getting new clothing
allowed, but it was never considered necessary for Creepy; the matron
always found some portion of some cast-off garment that had resisted
wear and tear sufficiently to be brought round again, by her devices,
into the right size and shape for “the poor crooked thing,” as she
always called him; “it took such a scrap,” she used to say, “though
dear knows it had been a precious job to worry out a pattern for such a
back and shoulders. She didn’t know whose wit and patience would ever
have done it but her own.”
And when the census-taker came, Creepy sat in his hollow chair, and
fixed his great dark eyes upon them both, while she gave the names of
Enoch and Sue, and the twenty or more, older or younger, who made up
the list of their companions.
“And so that’s all, is it?” said the census-taker.
“That’s all,” replied the matron.
“That’s all,” repeated Creepy, nodding, “all but me.”
“Now may Heaven forgive me,” exclaimed the matron, as passing through
the old porch she caught sight of Creepy, “if I did not speak the
truth; but who would ever have thought of the poor crooked thing, and
more than all, of giving such a name as that to go and be printed
before all the world, which no one knows who gave it to him, more than
where he came from himself, may the good Lord have pity upon him.”
She bustled on in too much haste to let her conscience smite her very
deeply, for there was a stir in the almshouse that morning. It was one
of the glorious golden days in October, and from time immemorial it had
been the custom of the house, once in the year, for every one, old and
young, to get work out of the way, don their best clothes, and set off
in a triumphant march still farther out beyond the city, out to the
great belt of yellow woods that lay just on the border of the bay. And
there they would rustle about in the fallen leaves like children, and
fill up the emptied lunch-baskets with nuts for the winter evenings,
and never come back till the golden light of afternoon began to
falter, and it was time to get home before twilight damp should fall
on rheumatic bones. And this was the morning for them, this time. But
they never had been so late getting off. The census-taker had hindered
the matron until she declared at last when he was really gone she was
in such a toss she hardly knew which way to turn first; and then they
missed Ben who had always been such a dependence and it seemed as if
something was all wrong, going without him for the first time.
But they were off at last, and Creepy watched them until the last
figure disappeared under some yellow trees that stood at the corner of
the road. It was Sue, and she was just taking Enoch’s lunch-basket out
of his hand.
“Give it to me, man,” she said, “are you forgetting all about that lame
shoulder? ’Twill be stiffer than a rusty hinge to-morrow.”
“It’s you who are forgetting,” said Enoch. “You might remember that you
are five years older than any one of us, and that your feet will be
failing you before we reach the next turn.”
“And isn’t this the very day of the year for forgetting?” answered Sue.
“We always forget on this day even that we are paupers, for are not the
soft breeze and the blue hills and the crystal air around us the good
Lord’s, and has he not given all his creatures a share in them alike?”
“What a thing it must be,” Creepy sat thinking to himself, “to move so
light and free as they do, and to go so far. It seems as though they
were all melted into gold, passing under those trees, and that’s the
last I see of them.”
The last he saw of Sue and the rest, but what came pushing out from
under the gold, and nearing the almshouse so fast that Creepy saw
it plainer and plainer every moment? A jet-black horse and a light
chaise--Creepy knew them in an instant. It was the city physician’s
chaise, Dr. Thorndyke’s, and had stood at the almshouse door a few
moments every day while Ben was sick.
The matron saw him too.
“Now whom can he have been visiting on that road?” she said to herself.
“Dear knows, there’s no house beyond us within the city limits but the
Jellerbys’ and the Diffendorffers’. And now he’s hurrying back for dear
life to folks of more importance.”
Very much mistaken was Mrs. Ganderby for once. So far from hurrying
back “for dear life,” the horse’s pace was slackened as it drew near
the almshouse, and just as it reached the gate, was drawn up with a
short rein.
“Now may all that’s good deliver us!” exclaimed the matron, pulling
her apron-strings into a hopeless knot, in her hurry to get it off.
“Who does he think is dying or ready to die in the house to-day, that
he must needs come unawares upon respectable housekeepers on the one
morning in the year when there’s excuse if everything is not in its
place as early as others. It’s none but a young doctor, surely, who has
time to call when he is not sent for.”
It was of no use; the knot would not be untied, and the doctor could
not be kept waiting, so Mrs. Ganderby proceeded to open the door,
smoothing her apron and her temper as she went, until the doctor
suspected nothing out of the way with either. And, indeed, it would
have been hard to keep any vexation in one’s soul, when fairly face to
face with Dr. Thorndyke, his own was so full of friendly greeting and
good cheer; and, moreover, there was something in the hearty, vigorous
way he was setting out in his own life that was positively refreshing,
and made one feel he must certainly be the man to attack any of the
numerous ills that might beset their own.
“Good-morning, Mrs. Ganderby,” said the doctor, “you wont take it amiss
that I have come this time without being sent for, I hope.”
“O dear, no, sir; I’m sure it’s only too great a compliment that you
should take a moment from all you have to think of. I’m only sorry our
people have all gone off to-day for a tramp to the woods, that I dare
say seems foolish enough to any one who has more range of pleasures;
but however that may be, they’re all gone, and there’s no one at home
but myself, nor no one could be more pleased to see you, sir; walk in,
I beg.”
“All gone,” repeated the doctor, a shade coming on his face. “Thank
you; but did you say they were all gone?”
“All but me,” nodded Creepy, from where he sat under the big tree,
sharing with wondering eyes and ears in the excitement of the doctor’s
visit; but no one noticed him.
“Gone for a day in the woods, sir,” said Mrs. Ganderby apologetically;
“it seems childish for people of the age and infirmities of most of
them; but it’s a rare day, sir, which it’s also a way of the house to
get away once or twice in the year.”
“You don’t mean to say that the lame child, the little cripple I have
seen here, has gone for a walk like that?”
“What, Creepy! Dear heart, the poor crooked thing couldn’t make his
feet serve him out of sight down the road, which it’s a strange thing I
never can seem to recollect mentioning him with the rest, although it
certainly isn’t from any want of pity for the child that Heaven hasn’t
seen fit to give a body like other people.”
“Then he is at home,” said the doctor, quite himself again; “and where
shall I find him, Mrs. Ganderby? It is rather early in the day to
detain a housekeeper, and I presume he may be quite at leisure.”
“Why certainly, sir; it’s little else than leisure the poor thing
has, sitting from morning till night in his chair, which, if you have
leisure enough to spare him a few moments, it may be a great blessing
to him, I am sure. He’s just there, sir, under the big butternut, and
if you’ll have the goodness to come in, I’ll bring him in a moment.”
“No, no,” said the doctor, discovering Creepy for the first time; “I’ll
go to him,” and with a few rapid steps down the gravel walk, he was at
Creepy’s side, leaving Mrs. Ganderby to declare at her leisure that
“wonders never would cease, though if the doctor had the goodness in
his heart, and the time on his hands to look after the poor crooked
thing, there was no one who needed it more; which it was not at all
probable that any one could do anything for the like of him, however.”