AUNT LOUISA
If I had only known, when I opened the long-closed door of the past, how
fondly I should linger around the old familiar haunts, I am sure that I
never should have taken a look back. I intended only to set down the few
events that connect me with to-day. I did not know that the child was
alien to the man, and that the world in which he lived was not the gray
old world I know, but a bright green spot where the sun shone and the
birds sang all day long, and the passing cloud left its shower only to
make the landscape fairer and brighter than before.
And here, once more, while all reluctantly I was about to turn the bolt
on that other world, comes a long-forgotten scene, and a host of
memories that clamor for a place in the pages of my book. I cannot
imagine why they come, or what relation they bear to the important
events of a living world. I had thought them as dead as the tenants of
the oldest and most forgotten grave that had long since lost its
headstone and was only a sunken spot in the old churchyard.
But there is the picture on my mind,—so clear and strong that I can
hardly think the scientists tell the truth when they say that our bodies
are made entirely new every seven years. I am still a child at the
district school. The day is over, and I have come back down the long
white country road to the little home. My older brother and sister have
come from school with me. As we open the front gate we have an instinct
that there is “company in the house”; how we know, I cannot tell,—but
our childish vision has caught some sign that tells us the family is not
alone.
“Company” always brought mixed emotions to the boy. We never were quite
sure whether we liked it or not. We had more and better things for
supper than when we were alone; we had more things like pie and cake and
preserves and cheese, and we did not have to eat so much of the things
we liked less, such as bread-and-butter and potatoes and mush and milk.
Then, too, we were not so likely to get scolded when strangers were
around. I remember that I used to get some of the boys to go home with
me, when I had done something wrong that I feared had been found out and
would get me into trouble; and we often took some of the children home
with us when we wanted to ask permission to do something or go
somewhere,—or, better still, we got them to ask for us. These things, of
course, were set down on the good side of having company.
But, on the other hand, we always had a clean tablecloth, and had to be
much more particular about the way we ate. We had to make more use of
our knives and forks and spoons, and less of our fingers; and we always
had to put on our boots, and wash our faces and hands, and have our hair
combed before we could go in to supper, or even into the front room
where the company was. And when we spoke we had to say “Yes, sir,” and
“No, sir,” and “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am.” And we were not supposed
to ask for anything at the table a second time; and if anything was
passed around the second time and came to us, we were not to take it,
but pass it on as though we already had enough. And we were always to
say “Please” and “Thank you,” and such useless words,—just as though we
said them every day of our lives. Sometimes, of course, we would forget,
and ask for something without stopping to say “Please,” and then our
mother would look sharply at us, as if she would do something to us when
the company was gone, and then she would ask us in the sweetest way if
we had not forgotten something, and we would have to begin all over and
say “Please.”
Well, I remember that on this particular evening we all went round to
the back door, for we knew there was company in the house; and when we
went into the kitchen, our mother told us to be very still, and to wash
our feet and put on our stockings and shoes, for Aunt Louisa was there.
We asked how long she was going to stay; and she said she was not quite
sure, but probably at least until after supper.
None of us liked Aunt Louisa. She was old, and had reddish false hair,
and was fat, and took snuff, and talked a great deal. She belonged to
the United Presbyterian church, and went every Sunday, and sat in a pew
clear up in front and a little on one side. Father and mother did not
like her, though they were nice to her when she came to visit them, and
sometimes they went to visit her. They said she came to see what she
could find to talk about and then would go and tell it to the neighbors;
and for this reason we must be very careful when she was there.
Aunt Louisa was a “widow woman,” as she always said; her husband had
been killed by a horse many years before. She used often to tell us all
about how it happened, and it took her a long while to tell it, and my
father said that each time it took her longer than before. She had a
little house down a lane about three-quarters of a mile away, and a few
acres of ground which her husband had left her; and she used to visit a
great deal, calling on all the neighbors in regular turn, a good deal
like the school-teacher who boarded around.
I remember that we had a nice clean tablecloth and a good supper the
night she came, and we all got along well at the table. We said “Please”
every time, and our mother never once had to look at us. After supper we
went into the parlor for a visit with Aunt Louisa. This must have been
only a little while before my mother’s death; for I can see her plainer
that night than at any other time. I wish I could remember the tones of
her voice; but their faintest echo has entirely passed away, and I am
not sure I should know them if they were spoken in my ear. Her face,
too, seems hidden by a mist, and is faded and indistinct. Yet there she
sits in her little sewing-chair, rocking back and forth, with her needle
in her hand and her basket on her lap. Poor woman! she was busy every
minute, and I suppose she never would have had a chance to rest if she
had not gone up to the churchyard for her last long sleep when we were
all so young.
Aunt Louisa has brought her work; she is knitting a long woollen
stocking, and the yarn is white. She puts on her glasses, unwinds the
stocking, pulls her long steel needles out of the ball of yarn and
throws it on the floor; then she begins to knit. The knitting seems to
help her to talk; for as she moves the needles back and forth, she never
for a moment stops talking or lacks a single word. Something is said
that reminds her of her husband, and she tells us of his death: “It was
nearly thirty years ago. He went out to the barn to hitch up the colt.
The colt was one that Truman had just got that summer. He traded a pair
of oxen for it, to a man over in Johnston, but I disremember his name.
It was a tall rangy colt, almost as black as coal, but with a white
stripe on its nose and white hind feet. He was going out to draw in a
load of hay from the bottom meadow. It was a little late in the season,
but the spring had been dry, and it had rained almost all the summer,
and he hadn’t had a chance to get in his hay any sooner. He was doing
his work that year alone, for his hired man had left because his father
died, and it was so late in the season that he thought he would get on
alone for the rest of the year.” I do not yet know how her husband was
really killed, although she told us about it so many times, stopping
often to sigh and take a pinch of snuff, and wipe her nose and eyes with
a large red and black handkerchief. She said she had never felt like
marrying since, and that she had no consolation but her religion.
After she had finished the story of her husband’s death, she began to
tell us about the neighbors. She seemed especially interested in some
man who lived alone in the village and who had done something terrible;
I cannot now tell what it was, and in fact I hardly understood then what
she meant. But she said she had been talking with Deacon Cole and with
Squire Allen, and they thought it was a burning shame that the men folks
didn’t do something about it—that Squire Allen had told her there was no
law that could touch him, but she thought if the men had any spirit they
would go there some night and rotten-egg him and ride him on a rail and
drum him out of town. I cannot remember that my mother said anything
about the matter, but she seemed to agree, and Aunt Louisa kept on
talking until it was almost nine o’clock; then she said she thought it
was about time for her to go home. My mother said a few words about her
staying overnight, but Aunt Louisa said she ought to go “so as to be
there early in the morning.” I know I thought at the time that my mother
did not urge her very much, and that if she had, Aunt Louisa would most
likely have stayed. Then my father told my older brother and me to get a
lantern and go home with her. Of course there was nothing else to do.
All along the road she kept talking of the terrible things the man had
done, and how she thought the men and boys of the village ought to do
something about it.
A few nights afterwards I heard that something was to happen in the
town. I cannot now remember how I heard, but at any rate I went to bed,
and took care not to go to sleep. About midnight my brother and I got up
and went to the public square. Twenty or thirty men and boys had
gathered at the flag-pole. I did not know all their names, but I knew
there were some of the best people in the place. I am certain I saw
Deacon Cole, and I know that we went over to Squire Allen’s
carriage-house and got a large plank which he had told the crowd they
might have. The men had sticks and stones and eggs, and we all went to
the man’s house. When we reached the fence, we opened the gate and went
inside and began throwing stones and sticks at the house and through the
windows; and we broke in the front door with Squire Allen’s plank. All
the men and boys hooted and jeered with the greatest glee. I can still
remember seeing a half-dressed man run out of the back door of the
house, down the garden path, to get away. I can never forget his scared
white face as he passed me in the gloom. After breaking all the doors
and windows, we went back home and went to bed, thinking we had done
something brave and noble, and helped the morals of the town.
The next day little knots of people gathered around the house and in the
streets and on the square, to talk about the “raid.” Nearly all of them
agreed that we had done exactly right. There were only a few people, and
those by no means the best citizens, who raised the faintest objection
to what had been done.
Aunt Louisa was radiant. She made her tour of the neighborhood and told
how she approved of the bravery of the men and boys. She said that after
this everyone would know that Farmington was a moral town.
The hunted man died a year or so afterwards, and someone bought him a
lonely grave on the outskirts of the churchyard where he could not
possibly harm anyone who lay slumbering there, and then they buried him
in the ground without regret. There was much discussion as to whether or
not he should have a Christian funeral; but finally the old preacher
decided that the ways of the Lord were past finding out, and the
question should be left to Him to settle, and that he would preach a
regular sermon, just as he did for all the rest.
When it came Aunt Louisa’s turn for a funeral, the whole town was in
mourning. The choir practised the night before the funeral, so they
might sing their very best, and the preacher never spoke so feelingly
before. All the people in the room cried as if she were their dearest
friend. Then they took her to the little graveyard and lowered her
gently down beside Truman. Everyone said it was a “beautiful funeral.”
In a few months a fine monument was placed on the little lot,—one almost
as grand as Squire Allen’s. She left no children, and in her will she
provided that all the property should be taken for the funeral and for a
monument, except a small bequest to foreign missions.