First harvests

A MAN’S grand life, says someone, is a dream of his youth realized in and by his later years; what then shall we say of a woman’s? Think not on this; but let your soul answer. The answer should be there, in the hearts of all; but whether it comes from memory, from things now half forgotten, or from within, or from some birth-dream had in childhood, who shall say? Yet is it there; like a child’s dream of a star; happy he whose manhood sees the star, its dream not yet departed. And all of us have fancied women so, at some time in our lives; have we never known one such? For but one such is enough, mother, bride, or daughter. Some slight girl whose maidenhood was a sweet bloom, like Mary’s lily in the Temple; and then we may have lost sight or knowledge of her, for a time. And then perhaps we have met some other woman, some old woman, with white hairs; not the same, of course, and yet it seems as if we could have pieced together their two lives and make them like one brook, that we have known in places only, which brings soft fields and flowers. And be sure that there was in between some womanhood, some mother’s life, not known save to her sons and God, not preached in meetings and conventions; deep hidden in some human fireside, like the brook that makes so green a summer wood—Such lives are white and shining, like a dream of God’s made real on the earth.

And all the world seems thirst, and lust, and envy, and desire; the fires of heaven are put out, and all men struggling, trampling, for the colored stones of earth; and yet such blooms do come upon it. But they blossom stilly, like silent lilies born above the meadow-mire. White and pure they shine, and breathe in heaven’s sunlight, and give out heaven’s fragrance, borne each upon its slender stem above the blind, black bog.

The day after this, Gracie had an errand, up in a little town beyond the hills. Arthur asked that he might go there with her; then they both might ride instead of driving. So they started, after luncheon; the new brown leaves lay crisp beneath their feet, and the light that flooded the valley was like yellow wine. Their way lay up over the hills to the eastward, and then, cresting their summits, along a rambling grass-grown road, between the crumbling stone walls and old unpainted farmhouses. What paint the farmers had to spare, they put upon the barns; a poor powdery stuff, weak in oil, and leaving but a brushing as of red earth upon the seasoned boards; the windows of the farmhouses looked out forlornly upon the fields already lonely, grim and unrelieved by any curtain. The places where gardens had been used to be, were common for the hens; along the fences for a hundred yards on either side of every house was a littering of chips where the wood-piles had been, but the piles were scant this year, and of half-grown birch; the reason was easy to see, for the great hills rolled off around them denuded of timber, save here and there a new growth of scrub oak. Beside each house the old well stood, its sweep pointing to the sky, but now disused and replaced by a patent log-pump, painted a garish blue.

Arthur rode very close to Gracie to-day; there was an exhilarating space and sweep to the free wind that brought bright color to their cheeks, and their clear eyes sparkled as their glances soared far over the brown downs and rested with delight upon the distant sky-line. There is something about our New England uplands like the barren worn-out plains of Old Castile; yet these two might have stood for a youth and future that one cannot hope from Spain.

They came out from the table-land down into a combe that had been worn for itself by a little stream now dry; as they ambled down the winding grass-grown way, the trees began again about them, oak and pines, then firs; a house or two was passed, and then a little school-house, the houses boarded up, and the school-house closed. They came down upon the turnpike, which had come by the longer way, around the hills; here was a bit of a village, a blacksmith’s house, a country store and an old hotel. The weather-worn wood of these seemed older than any thatched and plastered cottage in old England.

Gracie’s pensioners lived in a little house close by, the blacksmith’s wife and her six children; she had some medicine for them, and Arthur a few newspapers. While Gracie went to see them, Arthur led the horses to the inn; there was a swinging sign of George Washington over the door, which the pride of each successive owner had kept well varnished ever since the memorable night when he had stopped there,—though nothing else about the place was in repair. No one came to the door as Arthur walked up, and he tied his horses to a well-nibbled rail, and went in. There was a long bare entry leading from the front door, with a row of doors; each with a tin sign above it, “office,” “dining-room,” “ball-room” (now half obliterated), and “bar.” Arthur opened the last one, and went in.

There was a high black stove with a hard-coal fire, in the centre of the room; around it on the floor a square wooden tray, filled with sand. The walls were covered with gay posters, a cattle show, an advertisement of melodeons, of a horse stolen, of an auction sale of a farm, farming utensils, a horse and cow, many sleighs and wagons and some household furniture. An old man sat in one corner, in carpet-slippers, with a newspaper, and a look upon him as if he had not been out-doors that day.

“Well, Lem?” said Arthur, “business quiet, eh?”

“There ain’t much business, Mr. Holyoke,” said the hotel-keeper, without changing his position, “’xcept what’s in here.” And he pointed to the bar, and the pitcher of water, and the row of tumblers behind it.

“I want you to give my horses a feed,” said Arthur, “we came over from Great Barrington.”

“Came over from Barrington, did ye?” said he. “And what’s the news in town?” And without waiting for an answer, the old man rose and hobbled to the side door. “Mike!” he cried, “Mike!” There was no answer. “I guess the feller must ha’ gone to Lee,” he added, grumbling. “There’s a cattle show there, to-day.”

“Let me go,” said Arthur; “I’ll look after them.”

“You’ll find the feed in the bin,” said the inn-keeper, relapsing into his stuffed chair, with a sigh of relief.

“And what’s the news from your son, Mr. Hitchcock?” said Arthur, when he came back.

“Lem’s still out in Ioway,” said Mr. Hitchcock. “There ain’t much call for a young feller of sperit to be loafin’ around here. I brought him up for the business; but I guess the old place’ll have to keep itself after I am gone.”

“Still at your old books, Mr. Hitchcock, I see,” said Arthur, taking up a well-worn copy of Tom Paine. “Why, I didn’t know you read French!” And Arthur turned over with interest the leaves of a book the other had just laid down; it was a volume of Voltaire.

“I l’arned it when I was a b’y in college. Perhaps ye didn’t know as I was a college-bred man?”

“I might have known it,” said Arthur. “But you didn’t send Lem there?”

“No,” said the other, shortly. And then, with a chuckle, “They’ve pretty much all come to my way of thinking, now. D’ye notice the old meetin’-house as ye came along? They’ve had to shut it up, ye know. Have a cigar?” And Mr. Hitchcock brought two suspicious looking weeds out of a gayly pictured box, and extended one to Arthur. The latter took one, knowing the old man would be mortally offended if this rite of hospitality were passed by.

“Whose house was that I saw boarded up?” said Arthur, for the sake of something to say.

“What!” said the old man, “ain’t ye heard? That’s Uncle Sam Wolcott’s. The old man was livin’ there with his daughter and her little b’y.” And Hitchcock took a comfortable pull at his cigar.

“Yes,” said Arthur, “I remember now.”

“The child’s dead,” said he.

“What?” said Arthur. “Dead?”

Hitchcock nodded assent. “Killed him, ye know.”

“Killed him? who—”

“The grandfather—Samuel Wolcott. Killed him with an axe, Sunday week. Them air gospel folks got him crazy.”

The old man spoke with a sort of grim satisfaction, and Arthur looked at him in amazement. “Great heavens! you don’t mean to say he murdered him? Where’s the mother?”

“Lucky for her she warn’t there at the time, I guess. Fust time I ever knew o’ church doing a critter any good.”

“But where is she now?”

Hitchcock waved his hand in the direction of the biggest poster, “Farm for Sale.” “Gone back to her husband’s folks, I guess. And when she come back, she found old Wolcott a-hangin’ to a rafter in his barn.”

“But what possible motive—” began Arthur aghast. “Had he no other family?”

“He had a sister—I never heard what became o’ her. She married a feller by the name of Starbuck, from New London way, an’ I mistrust he turned out bad. I guess the old man got kinder disperited. An’ then the gospel folks—But he was the last of the old Wolcott family, an’ they was gret folks in their day. So they put him an’ the infant in the family tomb, and sealed it up.”

Arthur looked at the old hotel-keeper, and then out at the empty street. Gracie was coming along under the elm-trees, the yellow leaves falling about her in the autumn wind. “I must be going,” said he.

“Have a little something hot, before ye go?”

“No,” said Arthur, “thanks, I guess not.” And he made haste to get away, feeling the spirit of the place come over him like a pall.

“Well, good-bye?” said the other. “Always glad to see ye. But we’ve all got to come to it. Some day, ye’ll find me hanging to the beam up there, I expect.” Heedless of which gloomy prognostication, Arthur made haste to get to the stable and brought out the horses. They mounted, and rode some time in silence.

“Did Mr. Hitchcock tell you?” said Gracie with a shudder.

Arthur nodded. Something in the terror of the place brought out his love the stronger, as he looked at her, the tears in her deep gray eyes. “I wonder that we had not heard of it,” said he; “but these places are so out of the world.”

“Poor man, I have so often wondered if we could do nothing for him,” said she. “I went there once; but he almost ordered me out of the house.”

“Hitchcock says it was some religious mania,” said Arthur.

“He never went to church when I knew him,” said Gracie. “He cared most for his sister; and I think her husband turned out ill. Poor people, does it not seem cruel they cannot be taught to live? They could be so happy here, in this lovely country, if they only knew.”

“We are happy, are we not, dear?” said Arthur.

“Yes, Arthur. It almost seems wrong—” and Gracie looked out over the hills ahead of them, where the sun was already low in the sky.

“Are we going home, now?”

“I want to stop a moment at the Kellys—that Irish family, you know.”

Instinctively, they had taken another road back, leaving the old meeting-house and the now ended homestead on the right; and as they came up on the brow of the first hill, they passed a large wooden cross, painted freshly, with a gilt circle and the mystic letters I. N. R. I. in the centre. A short distance beyond this was a square old-fashioned farm-house, with a fine old doorway, needing paint like all the other houses. But the yard was full of pigs and hens and chickens; and about the door a half-score tow-headed children were playing. These ran up to Gracie as they rode up. “Mother’s in the kitchen,” said the biggest of the girls, putting a finger in her mouth. The boys stood still, and stared at them, abashed.

Gracie went in; and Arthur stood and looked about him. The fields were already stubble; but lit up with yellow piles of squashes; a noise of cattle came from the rambling old stable; and behind the house was a low peat-meadow, fresh-ditched and being drained. The healthy Irish stock had grown luxuriantly, where the older line was dying out. Gracie came out, smiling. “She is a nice old body, Mrs. Kelly,” said she. “And now, for home!” and they put their horses at the gallop, and were soon up on the bare downs again. And Arthur, like a man, began to plead his suit once more.