That had been the beginning. To Grandpa and Grandma Burton it had come
like a thunderclap on a clear day. They had known, to be sure, that son
John frowned a little at their lonely life; but that there should come
this sudden transplanting, this ruthless twisting and tearing up of
roots that for sixty years had been burrowing deeper and deeper--it was
almost beyond one's comprehension.
And there was the auction!
"We shan't need that, anyway," Grandma Burton had said at once. "What
few things we don't want to keep I shall give away. An auction, indeed!
Pray, what have we to sell?"
"Hm-m! To be sure, to be sure," her husband had murmured; but his face
was troubled, and later he had said, apologetically: "You see, Hannah,
there's the farm things. We don't need them."
On Tuesday night Mrs. John and the somewhat awesome Maria--to whom
Grandpa and Grandma Burton never could learn not to curtsy--arrived; and
almost at once Grandma Burton discovered that not only "farm things,"
but such precious treasures as the hair wreath and the parlor--set were
auctionable. In fact, everything the house contained, except their
clothing and a few crayon portraits, seemed to be in the same category.
"But, mother, dear," Mrs. John had returned, with a laugh, in response
to Grandma Burton's horrified remonstrances, "just wait until you see
your rooms, and how full they are of beautiful things, and then you'll
understand."
"But they won't be--these," the old voice had quavered.
And Mrs. John had laughed again, and had patted her mother-in-law's
cheek, and had echoed-but with a different shade of meaning--"No, they
certainly won't be these!"
In the attic now, on a worn black trunk, sat the little old man, and
down on the floor before an antiquated cradle knelt his wife.
"They was all rocked in it, Seth," she was saying,--"John and the twins
and my two little girls; and now there ain't any one left only John--and
the cradle."
"I know, Hannah, but you ain't _usin'_ that nowadays, so you don't
really need it," comforted the old man. "But there's my big chair
now--seems as though we jest oughter take that. Why, there ain't a day
goes by that I don't set in it!"
"But John's wife says there's better ones there, Seth," soothed the old
woman in her turn, "as much as four or five of 'em right in our rooms."
"So she did, so she did!" murmured the man. "I'm an ongrateful thing; so
I be." There was a long pause. The old man drummed with his fingers on
the trunk and watched a cloud sail across the skylight. The woman gently
swung the cradle to and fro. "If only they wan't goin' ter be--sold!"
she choked, after a time. "I like ter know that they're where I can look
at 'em, an' feel of 'em, an'--an' remember things. Now there's them
quilts with all my dress pieces in 'em--a piece of most every dress I've
had since I was a girl; an' there's that hair wreath--seems as if I jest
couldn't let that go, Seth. Why, there's your hair, an' John's, an' some
of the twins', an'--"
"There, there, dear; now I jest wouldn't fret," cut in the old man
quickly. "Like enough when you get used ter them other things on the
wall you'll like 'em even better than the hair wreath. John's wife says
she's taken lots of pains an' fixed 'em up with pictures an' curtains
an' everythin' nice," went on Seth, talking very fast. "Why, Hannah,
it's you that's bein' ongrateful now, dear!"
"So 'tis, so 'tis, Seth, an' it ain't right an' I know it. I ain't
a-goin' ter do so no more; now see!" And she bravely turned her back on
the cradle and walked, head erect, toward the attic stairs.
John came at five o'clock. He engulfed the little old man and the little
old woman in a bearlike hug, and breezily demanded what they had been
doing to themselves to make them look so forlorn. In the very next
breath, however, he answered his own question, and declared it was
because they had been living all cooped up alone so long--so it was; and
that it was high time it was stopped, and that he had come to do it!
Whereupon the old man and the old woman smiled bravely and told each
other what a good, good son they had, to be sure!
Friday dawned clear, and not too warm--an ideal auction-day. Long before
nine o'clock the yard was full of teams and the house of people. Among
them all, however, there was no sign of the bent old man and the erect
little old woman, the owners of the property to be sold. John and Mrs.
John were not a little disturbed--they had lost their father and mother.
Nine o'clock came, and with it began the strident call of the
auctioneer. Men laughed and joked over their bids, and women looked on
and gossiped, adding a bid of their own now and then. Everywhere was the
son of the house, and things went through with a rush. Upstairs, in the
darkest corner of the attic--which had been cleared of goods--sat, hand
in hand on an old packing-box, a little old man and a little old woman
who winced and shrank together every time the "Going, going, gone!"
floated up to them from the yard below.
At half-past one the last wagon rumbled out of the yard, and five
minutes later Mrs. John gave a relieved cry.
"Oh, there you are! Why, mother, father, where _have_ you been?"
There was no reply. The old man choked back a cough and bent to flick a
bit of dust from his coat. The old woman turned and crept away, her
erect little figure looking suddenly bent and old.
"Why, what--" began John, as his father, too, turned away. "Why, Edith,
you don't suppose--" He stopped with a helpless frown.
"Perfectly natural, my dear, perfectly natural," returned Mrs. John
lightly. "We'll get them away immediately. It'll be all right when once
they are started."
Some hours later a very tired old man and a still more tired old woman
crept into a pair of sumptuous, canopy-topped twin beds. There was only
one remark.
"Why, Seth, mine ain't feathers a mite! Is yours?"
There was no reply. Tired nature had triumphed--Seth was asleep.
They made a brave fight, those two. They told themselves that the chairs
were easier, the carpets softer, and the pictures prettier than those
that had gone under the hammer that day as they sat hand in hand in the
attic. They assured each other that the unaccustomed richness of window
and bed hangings and the profusion of strange vases and statuettes did
not make them afraid to stir lest they soil or break something. They
insisted to each other that they were not homesick, and that they were
perfectly satisfied as they were. And yet--
When no one was looking Grandpa Burton tried chair after chair, and
wondered why there was only one particular chair in the whole world that
just exactly "fitted;" and when the twilight hour came Grandma Burton
wondered what she would give to be able just to sit by the old cradle
and talk with the past.
* * * * *
The newspapers said it was a most marvelous escape for the whole family.
They gave a detailed account of how the beautiful residence of the
Honorable John Burton, with all its costly furnishings, had burned to
the ground, and of how the entire family was saved, making special
mention of the honorable gentleman's aged father and mother. No one was
injured, fortunately, and the family had taken up a temporary residence
in the nearest hotel. It was understood that Mr. Burton would begin
rebuilding at once.
The newspapers were right--Mr. Burton did begin rebuilding at once; in
fact, the ashes of the Burton mansion were not cold before John Burton
began to interview architects and contractors.
"It'll be 'way ahead of the old one," he confided to his wife
enthusiastically.
Mrs. John sighed.
"I know, dear," she began plaintively; "but, don't you see? it won't be
the same--it can't be. Why, some of those things we've had ever since we
were married. They seemed a part of me, John. I was used to them. I had
grown up with some of them--those candlesticks of mamma's, for instance,
that she had when I was a bit of a baby. Do you think money can buy
another pair that--that were _hers_?" And Mrs. John burst into
tears.
"Come, come, dear," protested her husband, with a hasty caress and a
nervous glance at the clock--he was due at the bank in ten minutes.
"Don't fret about what can't be helped; besides"-and he laughed
whimsically--"you must look out or you'll be getting as bad as mother
over her hair wreath!" And with another hasty pat on her shoulder he was
gone.
Mrs. John suddenly stopped her crying. She lowered her handkerchief and
stared fixedly at an old print on the wall opposite. The hotel--though
strictly modern in cuisine and management--was an old one, and prided
itself on the quaintness of its old-time furnishings. Just what the
print represented Mrs. John could not have told, though her eyes did not
swerve from its face for five long minutes. What she did see was a
silent, dismantled farmhouse, and a little old man and a little old
woman with drawn faces and dumb lips.
Was it possible? Had she, indeed, been so blind?
Mrs. John rose to her feet, bathed her eyes, straightened her neck-bow,
and crossed the hall to Grandma Burton's room.
"Well, mother, and how are you getting along?" she asked cheerily.
"Jest as nice as can be, daughter,--and ain't this room pretty?"
returned the little old woman eagerly. "Do you know, it seems kind of
natural like; mebbe it's because of that chair there. Seth says it's
almost like his at home."
It was a good beginning, and Mrs. John made the most of it. Under her
skillful guidance Grandma Burton, in less than five minutes, had gone
from the chair to the old clock which her father used to wind, and from
the clock to the bureau where she kept the dead twins' little white
shoes and bonnets. She told, too, of the cherished parlor chairs and
marble-topped table, and of how she and father had saved and saved for
years to buy them; and even now, as she talked, her voice rang with
pride of possession--though only for a moment; it shook then with the
remembrance of loss.
There was no complaint, it is true, no audible longing for lost
treasures. There was only the unwonted joy of pouring into sympathetic
ears the story of things loved and lost--things the very mention of
which brought sweet faint echoes of voices long since silent.
"There, there," broke off the little old woman at last, "how I am
runnin' on! But, somehow, somethin' set me to talkin' ter-day. Mebbe't
was that chair that's like yer father's," she hazarded.
"Maybe it was," agreed Mrs. John quietly, as she rose to her feet.
The new house came on apace. In a wonderfully short time John Burton
began to urge his wife to see about rugs and hangings. It was then that
Mrs. John called him to one side and said a few hurried but very earnest
words--words that made the Honorable John open wide his eyes.
"But, Edith," he remonstrated, "are you crazy? It simply couldn't be
done! The things are scattered over half a dozen townships; besides, I
haven't the least idea where the auctioneer's list is--if I saved it at
all."
"Never mind, dear; I may try, surely," begged Mrs. John. And her husband
laughed and reached for his check-book.
"Try? Of course you may try! And here's this by way of wishing you good
luck," he finished, as he handed her an oblong bit of paper that would
go far toward smoothing the most difficult of ways.
"You dear!" cried Mrs. John. "And now I'm going to work."
It was at about this time that Mrs. John went away. The children were at
college and boarding-school; John was absorbed in business and
house-building, and Grandpa and Grandma Burton were contented and well
cared for. There really seemed to be no reason why Mrs. John should not
go away, if she wished--and she apparently did wish. It was at about
this time, too, that certain Vermont villages--one of which was the
Honorable John Burton's birthplace--were stirred to sudden interest and
action. A persistent, smiling-faced woman had dropped into their
midst--a woman who drove from house to house, and who, in every case,
left behind her a sworn ally and friend, pledged to serve her cause.
Little by little, in an unused room in the village hotel there began to
accumulate a motley collection--a clock, a marble-topped table, a
cradle, a patchwork quilt, a bureau, a hair wreath, a chair worn with
age and use. And as this collection grew in size and fame, only that
family which could not add to it counted itself abused and unfortunate,
so great was the spell that the persistent, smiling-faced woman had cast
about her.
Just before the Burton house was finished Mrs. John came back to town.
She had to hurry a little about the last of the decorations and
furnishings to make up for lost time; but there came a day when the
place was pronounced ready for occupancy.
It was then that Mrs. John hurried into Grandpa and Grandma Burton's
rooms at the hotel.
"Come, dears," she said gayly. "The house is all ready, and we're going
home."
"Done? So soon?" faltered Grandma Burton, who had not been told very
much concerning the new home's progress. "Why, how quick they have built
it!"
There was a note of regret in the tremulous old voice, but Mrs. John did
not seem to notice. The old man, too, rose from his chair with a long
sigh--and again Mrs. John did not seem to notice.
* * * * *
"Yes, dearie, yes, it's all very nice and fine," said Grandma Burton
wearily, half an hour later as she trudged through the sumptuous parlors
and halls of the new house; "but, if you don't mind, I guess I'll go to
my room, daughter. I'm tired--turrible tired."
Up the stairs and along the hall trailed the little procession--Mrs.
John, John, the bent old man, and the little old woman. At the end of
the hall Mrs. John paused a moment, then flung the door wide open.
There was a gasp and a quick step forward; then came the sudden
illumination of two wrinkled old faces.
"John! Edith!"--it was a cry of mingled joy and wonder.
There was no reply. Mrs. John had closed the door and left them there
with their treasures.