 | CHAPTER III.
MY GRANDMOTHER. Oldtown folks |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
MY GRANDMOTHER.
“NOW, Horace,” said my mother, “you must run right
up to your grandfather's, and tell your grandmother to
come down and stay with us to-night; and you and Bill must
stay there.”
Bill, my brother, was a year or two older than I was; far
more healthy, and consequently, perhaps, far more noisy. At
any rate, my mother was generally only too glad to give her consent
to his going anywhere of a leisure afternoon which would
keep him out of the house, while I was always retained as her
own special waiter and messenger.
My father had a partiality for me, because I was early an apt
reader, and was fond of the quiet of his study and his books.
He used to take pride and pleasure in hearing me read, which I
did with more fluency and understanding than many children of
twice my age; and thus it happened that, while Bill was off
roaming in the woods this sunny autumn afternoon, I was the
attendant and waiter in the sick-room. My little soul was oppressed
and sorrowful, and so the message that sent me to my
grandmother was a very welcome one, for my grandmother was,
in my view, a tower of strength and deliverance. My mother
was, as I have said, a frail, mournful, little, discouraged woman;
but my grandmother belonged to that tribe of strong-backed,
energetic, martial mothers in Israel, who brought to our life in
America the vigorous bone and muscle and hearty blood of the
yeomanry of Old England. She was a valiant old soul, who
fearlessly took any bull in life by the horns, and was ready to
shake him into decorum.
My grandfather, a well-to-do farmer, was one of the chief
magnates of the village, and carried on a large farm and certain
mills at the other end of it. The great old-fashioned farm-house
cottage, right on the banks of that brown, sparkling, clear stream
I have spoken of.
My grandfather was a serene, moderate, quiet man, upward of
sixty, with an affable word and a smile for everybody, — a man
of easy habits, never discomposed, and never in a hurry, — who
had a comfortable faith that somehow or other the affairs of this
world in general, and his own in particular, would turn out all
right, without much seeing to on his part.
My grandmother, on the contrary, was one of those wide-awake,
earnest, active natures, whose days were hardly ever long
enough for all that she felt needed to be done and attended to.
She had very positive opinions on every subject, and was not at
all backward in the forcible and vigorous expression of them;
and evidently considering the apostolic gift of exhortation as
having come straight down to her, she failed not to use it for the
benefit of all whom it might concern.
Oldtown had in many respects a peculiar sort of society. The
Indian tribe that once had been settled in its vicinity had left
upon the place the tradition of a sort of wandering, gypsy, tramping
life, so that there was in the town an unusual number of that
roving, uncertain class of people, who are always falling into
want, and needing to be helped, hanging like a tattered fringe on
the thrifty and well-kept petticoat of New England society.
The traditions of tenderness, pity, and indulgence which the
apostle Eliot had inwrought into the people of his day in regard
to the Indians, had descended through all the families, and given
to that roving people certain established rights in every household,
which in those days no one ever thought of disowning. The
wandering Indian was never denied a good meal, a seat by the
kitchen fire, a mug of cider, and a bed in the barn. My grandfather,
out of his ample apple-orchard, always made one hogshead
of cider which was called the Indian hogshead, and which was
known to be always on tap for them; and my grandmother not
only gave them food, but more than once would provide them with
blankets, and allow them to lie down and sleep by her great
kitchen fire. In those days New England was such a well-watched,
general tone of its society, that in the rural villages no one ever
locked the house doors of a night. I have lain awake many a
night hearing the notes of the whippoorwills and the frogs, and
listening to the sighing of the breeze, as it came through the great
wide-open front-door of the house, and swept up the staircase.
Nobody ever thought of being afraid that the tramper whom he
left asleep on the kitchen floor would rouse up in the night and
rob the house. In fact, the poor vagrants were themselves tolerably
innocent, not being guilty of very many sins darker than
occasional drunkenness and habitual unthrift. They were a
simple, silly, jolly set of rovers, partly Indian and partly whites
who had fallen into Indian habits, who told stories, made baskets,
drank cider, and raised puppies, of which they generally carried
a supply in their wanderings, and from which came forth in due
time an ample supply of those yellow dogs of old, one of whom
was a standing member of every well-regulated New England
family. Your yellow dog had an important part to act in life, as
much as any of his masters. He lay in the kitchen door and
barked properly at everything that went by. He went out with
the children when they went roving in the woods Saturday afternoon,
and was always on hand with a sober face to patter on his
four solemn paws behind the farm-wagon as it went to meeting
of a Sunday morning. And in meeting, who can say what an
infinite fund of consolation their yellow, honest faces and great,
soft eyes were to the children tired of the sermon, but greatly
consoled by getting a sly opportunity to stroke Bose's yellow
back? How many little eyes twinkled sympathetically through
the slats of the high-backed pews, as the tick of their paws up
and down the broad aisle announced that they were treating
themselves to that meditative locomotion allowed to good dogs
in sermon-time!
Surrounded by just such a community as I have described, my
grandmother's gifts never became rusty for want of exercise.
Somebody always needed straightening up and attending to.
Somebody was to be exhorted, rebuked, or admonished, with all
long-suffering and doctrine; and it was cheering to behold, after
results on her disciples, how hale and vigorous her faith yet remained
in the power of talking to people. She seemed to consider
that evil-doers fell into sins and evils of all sorts merely
for want of somebody to talk to them, and would fly at some
poor, idle, loafing, shiftless object who staggered past her house
from the tavern, with the same earnestness and zeal for the
fortieth time as if she had not exhorted him vainly for the
thirty-nine before.
In fact, on this very Saturday afternoon, as I was coming down
the hill, whence I could see the mill and farm-house, I caught
sight of her standing in the door, with cap-border erect, and vigorous
gesticulation, upbraiding a poor miserable dog commonly
called Uncle Eph, who stood swaying on the bridge, holding
himself up by the rails with drunken gravity, only answering her
expostulations by shaking his trembling fist at her, irreverently
replying in every pause of her expostulation, “You — darned —
old sheep you!”
“I do wonder now, mother, that you can't let Uncle Eph alone,”
said my Aunt Lois, who was washing up the kitchen floor behind
her. “What earthly good does it do to be talking to him? He
always has drank, and always will.”
“I can't help it,” quoth my grandmother; “it 's a shame to
him, and his wife lying there down with rheumatism. I don't
see how folks can do so.”
“And I don't see as it 's any of our business,” said Aunt Lois.
“What is it to us? We are not our brother's keeper.”
“Well, it was Cain that said that to begin with,” said my
grandmother; “and I think it 's the spirit of Cain not to care
what becomes of our neighbors!”
“I can't help it if it is. I don't see the use of fussing and
caring about what you can't help. But there comes Horace
Holyoke, to be sure. I suppose, mother, you 're sent for; I 've
been expecting it all along. — Stand still there!” she called to
me as I approached the door, “and don't come in to track my
floor.”
I stood without the door, therefore, and delivered my message;
adjoining the kitchen, to make herself ready to go. I stood
without the door, humbly waiting Aunt Lois's permission to enter
the house.
“Well,” said Aunt Lois, “I suppose we 've got to have both
boys down here to-night. They 've got to come here, I suppose,
and we may as well have 'em first as last. It 's just what I told
Susy, when she would marry Horace Holyoke. I saw it just as
plain as I see it now, that we should have to take care of 'em.
It 's aggravating, because Susy neglected her opportunities. She
might have been Mrs. Captain Shawmut, and had her carriage
and horses, if she 'd only been a mind to.”
“But,” said my Aunt Keziah, who sat by the chimney, knitting,
— “but if she could n't love Captain Shawmut, and did love
Horace Holyoke —”
“Fiddlestick about that. Susy would 'a' loved him well enough
if she 'd 'a' married him. She 'd 'a' loved anybody that she married
well enough, — she 's one of the kind; and he 's turned out a
very rich man, just as I told her. Susy was the only handsome
one in our family, and she might have done something with herself
if she 'd had sense.”
“For my part,” said Aunt Keziah, “I can't blame people for
following their hearts. I never saw the money yet that would 'a'
tempted me to marry the man I did n't love.”
Poor Aunt Keziah had the reputation of being, on the whole,
about the homeliest woman in Oldtown. She was fat and ill-shapen
and clumsy, with a pale, greenish tinge to her complexion,
watery, whitish-blue eyes, very rough thin hair, and ragged,
scrubby eyebrows. Nature had been peculiarly unkind to her;
but far within her ill-favored body she had the most exalted and
romantic conceptions. She was fond of reading Young's Night
Thoughts, Mrs. Rowe's Meditations, and Sir Charles Grandison,
and always came out strong on the immaterial and sentimental
side of every question. She had the most exalted ideas of a
lofty, disinterested devotion, which she, poor soul! kept always
simmering on a secret altar, ready to bestow on some ideal hero,
if ever he should call for it. But, alas! her want of external
behind a hedge of ragged and unsightly thorns.
She had been my mother's aid and confidante in her love
affair, and was therefore regarded with a suppressed displeasure
by Aunt Lois, who rejoined, smartly: “I don't think, Kezzy,
that you are likely to be tempted with offers of any sort; but
Susy did have 'em, — plenty of 'em, — and took Horace Holyoke
when she might 'a' done better. Consequence is, we 've
got to take her and her children home and take care of 'em.
It 's just our luck. Your poor folks are the ones that are
sure to have children, — the less they have to give 'em, the
more they have. I think, for my part, that people that can't
provide for children ought not to have 'em. Susy 's no more
fit to bring up those boys than a white kitten. There never
was a great deal to Susy,” added Aunt Lois, reflectively, as,
having finished the ablution of the floor, she took the dish of
white sand to sand it.
“Well, for my part,” said Aunt Kezzy, “I don't blame Susy a
mite. Horace Holyoke was a handsome man, and the Holyokes
are a good family. Why, his grandfather was a minister, and
Horace certainly was a man of talents. Parson Lothrop said, if
he 'd 'a' had early advantages, there were few men would have
surpassed him. If he 'd only been able to go to college.”
“And why was n't he able to go to college? Because he must
needs get married. Now, when people set out to do a thing, I
like to see 'em do it. If he 'd a let Susy alone and gone to college,
I dare say he might have been distinguished, and all that.
I would n't have had the least objection. But no, nothing would
do but he must get married, and have two boys, and then study
himself into his grave, and leave 'em to us to take care of.”
“Well now, Lois,” said my grandmother, coming out with her
bonnet on, and her gold-headed cane in her hand, “if I were you,
I would n't talk so. What do you always want to fight Providence
for?”
“Providence!” said my Aunt Lois, with a sniff. “I don't
call it Providence. I guess, if folks would behave themselves,
Providence would let them alone.”
“Why, everything is ordered and foreordained,” said Aunt
Keziah.
“Besides that,” said my grandmother, setting down her stick
hard on the floor, “there 's no use in such talk, Lois. What 's
done 's done; and if the Lord let it be done, we may. We can't
always make people do as we would. There 's no use in being
dragged through the world like a dog under a cart, hanging back
and yelping. What we must do, we may as well do willingly, —
as well walk as be dragged. Now we 've got Susy and her
children to take care of, and let 's do it. They 've got to come
here, and they shall come, — should come if there were forty-eleven
more of 'em than there be, — so now you just shut up.”
“Who said they should n't come?” said Aunt Lois. “I want
to know now if I have n't moved out of the front room and gone
into the little back chamber, and scoured up every inch of that
front-room chamber on my hands and knees, and brought down
the old trundle-bed out of the garret and cleaned it up, on purpose
to be all ready for Susy and those children. If I have n't
worked hard for them, I 'd like to have any one tell me; and I
don't see, for my part, why I should be scolded.”
“She was n't scolding you, Lois,” said Aunt Keziah, pacifically.
“She was, too; and I never open my mouth,” said Lois, in an
aggrieved tone, “that you all don't come down on me. I 'm sure
I don't see the harm of wishing Susy had married a man that
could 'a' provided for her; but some folks feel so rich, nothing
comes amiss with 'em. I suppose we are able to send both boys
to college, and keep 'em like gentlemen, are n't we?”
My grandmother had not had the benefit of this last volley, as
she prudently left the house the moment she had delivered herself
of her reproof to Aunt Lois.
I was listening at the door with a troubled spirit. Gathering
from the conversation that my father and mother, somehow, had
been improperly conducted people, and that I and my brother
Bill had no business to have been born, and that our presence on
the earth was, somehow or other, of the nature of an impertinence,
making everybody a vast deal of trouble. I could not bear
distance, I ran after her as fast as my little bare feet could patter,
and seized fast hold of her gown with the same feeling that
makes a chicken run under a hen.
“Why, Horace,” said my grandmother, “why did n't you stay
down at the house?”
“I did n't want to, grandma; please let me go with you.”
“You must n't mind Aunt Lois's talk, — she means well.”
I snuffled and persisted, and so had my own way, for my grandmother
was as soft-hearted to children as any of the meekest of
the tribe who bear that revered name; and so she did n't mind
it that I slid back into the shadows of my father's room, under
cover of her ample skirts, and sat down disconsolate in a dark
corner.
My grandmother brought to the sick-room a heavier responsibility
than any mere earthly interest could have laid on her.
With all her soul, which was a very large one, she was an earnest
Puritan Calvinist. She had been nourished in the sayings
and traditions of the Mathers and the Eliots, and all the first
generation of the saints who had possessed Massachusetts. To
these she had added the earnest study of the writings of Edwards
and Bellamy, and others of those brave old thinkers who had
broken up the crust of formalism and mechanical piety that was
rapidly forming over the New England mind.
My remembrances of her are always as a reader. In her
private chamber was always a table covered with books; and
though performing personally the greater share of the labors of a
large family, she never failed to have her quiet hour every afternoon
for reading. History and biography she delighted in, but
she followed with a keen relish the mazes of theology.
During the days of my father's health and vigor, he had one
of those erratic, combative minds that delight in running logical
tilts against received opinions, and was skilled in finding the
weak point in all assertions. My grandmother, who believed
with heart and soul and life-blood everything that she believed
at all, had more than once been worsted by him in arguments
where her inconsiderate heat outran her logic. These remembrances
sickness, and she had more than once earnestly sought to bring
him to her ways of thinking, — ways which to her view were
the only possible or safe ones; but during his illness he had put
such conversation from him with the quick, irritable impatience
of a sore and wounded spirit.
On some natures theology operates as a subtle poison; and the
New England theology in particular, with its intense clearness, its
sharp-cut crystalline edges and needles of thought, has had in a
peculiar degree the power of lacerating the nerves of the soul,
and producing strange states of morbid horror and repulsion. The
great unanswerable questions which must perplex every thinking
soul that awakes to consciousness in this life are there posed with
the severest and most appalling distinctness. These awful questions
underlie all religions, — they belong as much to Deism as
to the strictest orthodoxy, — in fact, they are a part of human
perception and consciousness, since it cannot be denied that
Nature in her teaching is a more tremendous and inexorable
Calvinist than the Cambridge Platform or any other platform
that ever was invented.
But in New England society, where all poetic forms, all the
draperies and accessories of religious ritual, have been rigidly and
unsparingly retrenched, there was nothing between the soul and
these austere and terrible problems; it was constantly and
severely brought face to face with their infinite mystery. When
my grandmother came into the room, it was with an evident and
deep emotion working in her strong but plain features. She
came up to the bed and grasped my father's had earnestly.
“Well, mother,” he said, “my time is come, and I have sent
for you to put Susy and the children into your hands.”
“I 'll take 'em and welcome, — you know that,” said my
grandmother heartily.
“God bless you, mother, — I do know it,” he said; “but do
have a special eye on poor little Horace. He has just my passion
for books and study; and if he could be helped to get an
education, he might do what I have failed to do. I leave him
my books, — you will try and help him, mother?”
“Yes, my son, I will; but O my son, my son!” she added
with trembling eagerness, “how is it with you now? Are you
prepared for this great change?”
“Mother,” he said in a solemn voice, yet speaking with a great
effort, “no sane man ever comes to my age, and to this place
where I lie, without thinking a great deal on all these things. I
have thought, — God knows how earnestly, — but I cannot talk
of it. We see through a glass darkly here. There perhaps we
shall see clearly. You must be content to leave me where I
leave myself, — in the hands of my Creator. He can do no
wrong”
| CHAPTER III.
MY GRANDMOTHER. Oldtown folks | |