University of Virginia Library

1. I.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOLDEN WEDDING.

OLD lady Dracutt, bent with years and trouble, in
black cloak and hood, walked home from meeting,
with slow steps, leaning on her cane. Old man Dracutt
followed her from the porch, took the opposite side of the
street, passed her on the way, opened the gate before her,
and let it slam back, almost in her face, as she came up.

This little scene, or something like it, happened nearly
every Sunday in their lives, and the observant world
was getting used to it. Elderly people, watching it now
for twenty years or more, had learned to look on and make
no other comment than, “Well, it 's just like old man
Dracutt” (or old lady Dracutt, as the case might be);
“they 're crotchety, and what 's the use of talking?”

Not so the younger portion of the community, represented
on this occasion by Miss Emma Welford, who, passing
with her little flock of brothers and sisters, — just as the
old ploughshare, sagging on its short chain fastened to a
stake, jerked the gate violently together again, — said compassionately,
“Why could n't he have had the kindness to
hold it open till she had gone through?” While even the
hard-featured ploughshare seemed, in her pure eyes, to look
ashamed of its part in the transaction.

Old man Dracutt, not bent at all by his troubles (he appeared

to bear the burden of life on his head, and to have
been crushed together by it considerably in the jaws and
shoulders, getting thereby that stubborn build of body
and set expression of face), — old man Dracutt trudged on,
and disappeared in the lonely old house, while his wife was
still feebly fumbling with the gate. Ah me! how little we
know what the effect of a casual kind look or word of ours
may be sometimes? Old lady Dracutt took hold of the
post instead of the gate, and tried to pull it open that
way, — very absurdly, to be sure, but you would hardly
have laughed at her if you had seen the cause. The poor
old creature was blind with tears. The great sorrow of
her life had never given her a moist eye; she was proud,
and strong, and obstinate to endure misery and wrong;
that tough, dry stock unkindness could bend and wither,
but not soften or break; and yet a compassionating glance
out of a young girl's eyes, the pitying tones of a sweet
voice, could melt her in an instant.

She got the gate open soon, with Emma's help, (“Thank
you, dear child,” said she,) and entered the house, where
she found her husband settling down in his low, square,
straight-backed, old oak arm-chair, by the kitchen stove.
A newspaper rustled on his trembling knees, while he
took from a black leathern case a pair of steel-bowed spectacles,
and set them astride his nose, which also appeared
to have been crushed a little, and pushed well down over
his broad mouth and chin by the aforesaid burden.

She put away her cloak and hood in a dark closet (from
which they seldom emerged, except for Sundays and funerals,
when they came out saturated with gloom, and almost
conscious, it seemed, of the solemn use they served), and
presently sat down in her chair (neither had ever, probably,
for years, sat in the other's chair), with an ancient, sallow-leaved,
well-worn Bible on her lap. Both clad in rusty

black; he so compressed and grim, and she so crooked
and withered; he with bald crown shining in the light,
over shaggy gray ear-locks; she with iron-gray hair (once
black tresses) hidden under her cap of yellow lace, —
there they sat, and warmed their bodies, if not their
hearts, by the stove between them; neither ever looking
at the other, nor ever speaking more than if each had
been alone.

And each was alone; for what is bodily presence where
souls are estranged? This was the anniversary of their
marriage; did they think of it? For half a century they
had lived together, and to-day they might have celebrated
their golden wedding.

Fifty years ago this December evening, full of youth
and hope and love, they joined their hands, with trust and
solemn vows, and began the journey of life, which looked
so beautiful before them. The storm and rainbow of a
real little romance had given interest to their courtship
and marriage. Jonathan had been off teaching school
somewhere, and on his return had found his darling little
Jane engaged to be married. They had always been
attached to each other from their early childhood, when
they played little husband and wife, and kept house together,
with clam-shells for dishes, and acorns for cups and
saucers, under a board, laid across a corner of the garden
fence, for a house. Growing bashful as they grew older,
that sweet play ceased; but at school they dressed and
behaved each for the eyes of the other, and were always
the best of friends, except that their frequent causeless
quarrels showed that there was something warmer, perhaps,
than friendship in their attachment. He was stern,
exacting, and reticent; she was pert and wayward and
pouting; and so it happened that they never came to a
perfect understanding about the future, until he returned

home, and found her just going to marry her big cousin
Jim. Ah! then what a time they had of it! what sleepless
nights, what haggard days, what torments of passion
and despair! He learned, when about to lose her forever,
that he could not possibly live without her; that the
sight of the sky and the earth would not be endurable to
him for a day, when all hope of her was gone. And being
a fellow of tremendous will when aroused, you may be
sure he did not sit down and sulk over his sorrow. Becoming
suddenly convinced that it was a terrible sin for
cousins to intermarry, — though he had seen cousins do so
before, and had not thought of the sin at all (a personal
interest in such questions sometimes makes a man awfully
moral in his feelings all at once), — he determined to save
her from its commission, and himself, at the same time,
from life-long misery; and set to work, in that matter of
life and death, with characteristic energy. And she —
why, she had never discovered he cared so much for her;
why had n't he told her so before it was too late? or why
did he make her wretched by telling her now? In short,
the more selfish lover swept everything before him; and
the more generous one said, “If you really prefer him
to me, Jane, I don't wish to hold you; I give you up.”
Even having the good grace to be present, a cheerful
guest, at that famous wedding.

The old man's newspaper slipped from his hand, the old
lady's dim eyes wandered from the broad Bible page to the
stove-hearth, and there they sat and mused, while the dull
December evening darkened around them. One could
almost hope, out of pity for them, that they did not think
of those earlier days. How could they bear to think of
them? Dear child, whose bright eyes are now following
these lines, when the summer of your life has burned out,
and hope after hope has faded on the cold hearth of old

age, can you bear, think you, to sit, in the long winter
twilight, looking at the ashes? O the ashes, the ashes!
What a story of bounding sap, and green leaves, and
boughs waving in sun and breeze, they might tell, if they
had language! This is the tragedy of life, with the slow,
black, silent curtain descending upon the scene.

It is all the more a tragedy when the actors feel, as these
two must have felt, that they are the authors of their own
unhappiness. If Jonathan and Jane had been as humble
as they were proud, if they had treated each other tenderly,
using love and forbearance toward each other, all
their days, this desolation could never have come upon them.
Destiny is a tree that grows from seeds in our own hearts.

The first few years of their married life had been happy;
but family cares increased, while their patience under
them did not increase. What trifles they allowed to vex
them! — trifles, surely, when compared with the greatness
and glory of love. They could better have afforded to lose
everything else than to lose this, if they had only known
it! They had the New England vice of excessive industry.
Happiness they buried in hard work. They saved the
pennies of life, and lost its jewel. The bitter and cruel
things they could say to each other, after a while, must
have amazed and shamed even themselves when they
paused to reflect. I don't know which was most to blame,
but it was she who said to him, in the midst of a violent
altercation (this was when they had children grown up
and married), “Jonathan Dracutt, I wish you would never
speak to me again as long as you live!”

He started back, looked at her for a moment in silence,
then turned away.

“Tell her I take her at her word,” said he to their
daughter Elizabeth; “but she must never speak to
me!”

“I never will,” said Jane.

That was twelve years ago, and they had not spoken to
each other since.

Nobody, not even themselves, though they were quite
in earnest at the time, could have expected that their
unnatural silence would last so long. Children and friends
remonstrated, but in vain.

“She has told me never to speak to her, and, unless
she takes back that word, I shall abide by it,” said Jonathan.

“I 'll take it back when he asks my forgiveness for what
provoked me to it, — he was so unjust!” said Jane; which,
of course, he would never do.

He ask forgiveness! Not even if he knew he was
wrong.

“Then it is just as well,” said she.

“Yes,” he replied, through an interpreter, “there is
more peace in the house, now her tongue is quiet.”

And this was he who had once believed that life would
not be, in any degree, tolerable to him without her.

Pride and resentment kept both from speaking at first,
and this reserve became, in the course of time, a settled
habit. It gave rise, necessarily, to many inconveniences,
and sometimes to a ludicrous situation. If a pedler
called and found them alone, he was sure to be amazed
and puzzled to hear them communicate with each other
through himself: “Ask him for some money,” “Tell her
to git ye some dinner”; and to go away, perhaps, imagining
he had been dealing with insane people. Yet the habit
grew at length to fit them so easily that visitors were
known to stop at the house, converse pleasantly with
them, in the presence of their children, and afterward
depart without discovering the peculiarity of the old
couple. They did not even make direct signs to each

other, like dumb persons; though, perhaps, if she wanted
sugar from the grocery, she would set out the empty
bucket where he would see it, and he, if he wished his
coat mended, would lay it, rags uppermost, across a chair.

One comprehends more easily how he could continue to
live so, than how she could, with her woman's heart. But
she knew him to be implacable as fate, and had, I suppose,
no notion of humbling herself to plead for a reconciliation
which he might not grant. Or, perhaps, when her heart
swelled with the memories of happier days, and yearned
again for the love it had lost, the recollection of his harshness
and injustice rolled back the stone upon it; for she,
too, was one who found it hard to forget a wrong.

The wonder was that they should continue to live together.
But children, as children so often do, prevented a
separation at first; and when the last of these married and
removed to the far West, they had an idol of a grandchild
left, the only son of their only son, who was dead. The
boy had lost his mother, too, so that his grandparents now
stood to him in the place of parents also. In him all
their affections centred, and toward him even the old
grandfather, who had always been stern enough with his
own children, was sometimes (as is sometimes the way with
grandfathers) foolishly weak and indulgent.