CHAPTER VIII—A PAIR OF CALLS
Among the honors which came to Ruel Saxon with advancing years there was probably none which he valued more than his position, well recognized in the community, as keeper of the best fund of stories of the olden time, and referee-in-chief on all debated points of local history. There were plenty of old people in Esterly, some even who had reached the patriarchal age in which he himself so gloried, but there was no other with a memory like his, none with so unique a gift for setting out the past event in warmth and color. The gift was his own, but the memory was in part at least that of some who had gone before.
It had been the old man’s fortune in his youth to be the constant companion of a grandfather who, like himself, was a local authority; a deaf man, who relied much on the boy’s clear voice and quick attention for intercourse with his fellows. Perhaps the service had been irksome sometimes to the boy, but it had its reward for him now; for his grandfather’s experiences and his own blended in his thought as one continuous whole, and covered a space of time no other memory in the town could match.
The time was not yet when every rural village of New England had its historical society, but the recovery of the past was becoming a fad in the cities, and families who valued themselves on their standing were waking up to the importance of making sure of their ancestors. A letter from some gatherer of ancient facts, making requisition on Ruel Saxon’s knowledge, was not uncommon now, and more than once a caller had stopped at the farmhouse hoping to gain help from him in tracing some obscure branch of a family tree.
The person bent on such an errand was so commonly of serious and elderly aspect that the extremely stylish young man who rode into the yard one afternoon was not suspected by the girls, who saw him from the parlor, of belonging to this class. Kate, who was nearest the window, was quite excited by the appearance of a gentleman on horseback. She had not seen one before since she left home, and the horse itself was as interesting as the rider.
“I’ll wager anything that’s a blooded Kentucky,” she said, craning her neck for a fuller view. “My, but isn’t she a beauty? I’ll have a good look at her if his highness gets down. Wouldn’t I like to call out, ‘Light, and come in, stranger!’” she added under her breath. “Stella, who is he? He must be some admirer of yours.”
“Never saw him before,” said Stella, who was eying him with as much curiosity as Kate. “I’ll tell you what, he must be a connoisseur in art and has heard of my Breton Peasant. Ha! With that horse and that riding costume I shall charge him a hundred and fifty.”
By this time the young man had reached the hitching post and jumped down from the saddle. He patted his horse’s neck when he had adjusted the hitching rein, flicked the dust from his riding boots with his gold-handled whip, and proceeded toward the door.
“You go, Kate,” whispered Stella, who was drawing Greenaway figures with pen and ink on a set of table doilies, and Kate was not loath.
“Is Deacon Saxon at home?” inquired the young man in a pleasant voice.
“I think so. Will you come in?” responded Kate.
“It isn’t the Breton Peasant after all,” murmured Stella to Esther. “I wonder if it can be an ancestor.” She arranged the doilies with a quick artistic touch, and rose as the young man entered the room.
He had presented Kate with a small engraved card, and though it was a new discovery for her that gentlemen ever carried such things, she used it as if to the manner born.
“Mr. Philip Hadley, Miss Saxon and Miss Northmore,” she announced easily, and Stella added, with a pretty bow, “And, Mr. Hadley, Miss Kate Northmore.”
The young man looked bewildered. In search of a country deacon of advanced years, at an old-fashioned farmhouse, to be ushered into one of the most attractive of parlors, with three charming young ladies in possession, was enough to bewilder. But he rose to the surprise gracefully in another moment.
“I must apologize for intruding myself in this way,” he said, “but I have heard that Deacon Saxon is quite an authority on Esterly antiquities, and I wanted to see him on a little matter of inquiry.”
“He will be delighted to talk with you. You may be sure of it,” said Stella.
It was only a minute before the old gentleman appeared, walking in his nimblest manner from his own room, whither Kate had gone in search of him. She had put him in possession of his caller’s name, and he extended his hand with an air of welcome and curiosity combined.
“Hadley? Did you say your name was Hadley? Well, I’m pleased to see you.”
“I’m very pleased to see you, sir,” said the young man, bowing with a deference of manner which was peculiarly pleasing. “I’m taking a liberty in calling on you, I’m well aware of it, but it’s the penalty one pays for having a reputation like yours. People say you know everything that ever happened in Esterly, and as I’m looking up our family history a little, I thought perhaps you could help me. I confess though,” he added with a smile, “I expected to see a much older person.”
“Older than eighty-eight?” quoth Ruel Saxon. “I was born in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-one, and if I live till the twenty-first day of next June I shall be eighty-nine.”
He was too much pleased with the young man’s errand, and himself as the person appealed to, to pause for a compliment at this point, and added briskly, “I shall be glad to tell you anything I know. ’Tisn’t many young men that go to the old men to inquire about things that are past. They did in Bible times. In fact, they were commanded to: ‘Ask thy father and he will show thee, thy elders and they will tell thee.’ That’s what it says; but they don’t do it much nowadays.”
“They have more books to go to now, you know, grandfather,” said Stella, glancing from the figure she was drawing, a charming little maid in a sunbonnet, and incidentally holding it up as she spoke.
“Yes, too many of ’em,” said her grandfather, rather grimly. “They’d go to the old folks more if they couldn’t get the printed stuff so easy.”
“But, grandfather,” exclaimed Esther, “the young people can’t all go to the old people who know the stories. Kate and I didn’t have you, for instance, till a few weeks ago.”
Her grandfather’s face relaxed, and Mr. Philip Hadley looked amused.
“But Deacon Saxon is right,” he said, turning to the young ladies. “It’s a much more delightful thing to hear a story from one who has been a part of it, or remembers those who were, than to get it from the printed page. I fancy the spirit of a thing is much better preserved by oral tradition than by cold print. You remember Sir Walter attributed a good deal of his enthusiasm for Scottish history to the tales of his grandmother. I see you have a charming sketch of Abbotsford,” he added, glancing at a picture on the wall opposite, and from there with a questioning look to Stella.
She gave a pleased nod. “We were sketching in Scotland, a party of us, last summer,” she said.
“Were you?” exclaimed the young man. “I was tramping on the Border myself.”
Perhaps he would have liked to defer his consultation with the old gentleman long enough for a chat with the young lady, but the former was impatient for it now. He had been scrutinizing his caller’s face for the last few moments with sharp attention.
“You say your name is Hadley. Are you any relation to the Hadleys that used to live in our town? There was quite a family of ’em here fifty years ago.”
“I think I am,” said the young man, smiling. “My father was born in Esterly, but moved away before his remembrance. Perhaps you knew my grandfather, Moses Hadley.”
“I knew of him,” said the old gentleman, nodding; “but our family never had much to do with the Hadleys, for they lived on the other side of town. They were good respectable folks,” he added in a ruminating tone; “didn’t care any great about schooling, I guess, but they were master hands for making money. I’ve heard one of ’em made a great fortune somewhere out West. He sent a handsome subscription to our soldiers’ monument.”
The young man, who had flushed distinctly during part of this speech, looked relieved at its conclusion. “That must have been my Uncle Nathan,” he said. “My father went into business in Boston.” Perhaps it was by way of foot-note to the remark about his ancestors’ lack of zeal for learning that he added carelessly: “I remember my cousin came to Esterly once to see your monument. We were in Harvard together at the time.”
The remark was lost on the old gentleman. He was pursuing his own train of recollection now. “I knew your grandmother’s folks better ’n I did your grandfather’s,” he said. “Moses Hadley married Mercy Bridgewood, and the Bridgewoods and our folks neighbored a good deal.”
“Did they?” exclaimed the young man, with a quick eagerness in his voice. “It was the Bridgewood line that I came to see you about. Did you ever hear of Jabez Bridgewood?”
“Jabez Bridgewood!” exclaimed Ruel Saxon. “What, old Jabe that used to live on Cony Hill? Why, sartin, sartin! He ’n’ my grandfather were great cronies. I’ve heard my mother say more ’n once, when she saw him coming across the fields: ‘Girls, we may as well plan for an extra one to supper. There’s Jabe Bridgewood, and he ’n’ your grandfather’ll set an’ talk till all’s blue. There’ll be no getting rid of him.’”
The young man colored again, and this time the girls did too. But they might have spared their blushes. The old gentleman was serenely unconscious of having said anything to call them out, and was pursuing his subject now under a full head of delighted reminiscence.
“He was an uncommon bright man, old Jabez Bridgewood; sort o’ crotchety and queer, but chuck full of ideas, and ready to stand up for ’em agin anybody. He was pretty quick-tempered, too, when anybody riled him up. My grandfather’s told me more ’n once about a row he got into with Peleg Wright; and the beginning of it was right here in this room. You see, Peleg was a regular Tory, though he didn’t let out fair ’n’ square where he stood; and Jabez he was hot on the other side, right from the start.”
A gleam of amused recollection came into his eyes as he added: “They used to tell about a contrivance he had on the hill to pepper the British with, if they should happen to come marching along his road. It was a young sapling that he bent down and loaded with stones and hitched a rope to, so he could jerk it up and let fly at a moment’s notice. They called it ‘Bridgewood’s Battery,’ but I guess he never used it. He was firing that old flint-lock gun of his instead. He was one of the minute-men, you know.
“But about that fuss with Peleg Wright. I don’ know just what ’twas Peleg said. He was sitting here talking with Jabe ’n’ my grandfather, getting hold of everything he could, I guess; and he said something about our duty to the king that stirred Jabe up so that he just bent down and scooped up a handful o’ sand—you know they had the floors sanded in those days, instead of having carpets on ’em—and flung it right square into Peleg’s face.”
“Shocking!” exclaimed Mr. Hadley, laughing. “Is that the sort of manners my great-great-grandfather had? I’m ashamed of him.”
“Well, there was a good many that thought he hadn’t or’ to have done it,” admitted the old gentleman, “but I don’t know. Peleg was a terrible mean-spirited, deceiving sort of cretur. It came out afterwards that ’twas he that put the British on the track of some gunpowder our folks had stored up; and sometimes I’ve kind o’ thought it served him right. The Bible says, ‘Bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel,’ and I don’ know but your grandfather was just fulfilling scripture when he gave it to him.”
“Do you suppose he thought of that verse when he did it?” said Mr. Hadley, laughing more heartily than before.
“Mebbe he didn’t,” said the deacon; “but there’s been plenty of scripture fulfilled without folks knowing it. Well, naturally it made Peleg pretty mad, ’specially when folks twitted him ’bout it; and a day or two afterward he pitched on Jabez down town, and I guess it’s more ’n likely one of ’em would have got hurt if folks hadn’t separated ’em. Jabez wrote some verses about it afterward, and I remember my grandfather telling me one of ’em was:—
“‘Old Tory Wright with me did fight,
Designing me to kill;
But over me did not obtain
To gain his cursèd will.’”
“So he was a poet, too!” exclaimed Mr. Hadley.
“Bless you, yes,” said Ruel Saxon. “When he warn’t contriving something or other, he was always making up verses. I’ve seen ’em scribbled with chalk all over his house. It was a little house without any paint on it, and when it got so full it wouldn’t hold any more he’d rub ’em out and put on some fresh ones. Paper warn’t as plenty in those days as it is now, specially not with Jabez.”
“Do you remember any more of his verses?” asked Mr. Hadley, who was evidently a good deal impressed with this ancestor of his, in spite of his lack of that economic turn of mind which had so distinguished the other side of his house.
“I don’ know as I do,” said the old gentleman, “though I guess I could think up some of ’em if I tried. Oh, Jabez Bridgewood was a good deal of a character. He could do anything he set his hand to, and I never did see anybody that knew as much about things outdoors as he did. He was like Solomon, and spoke of the trees, ‘from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall’; and when it came to the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, and the creeping things, it seemed as if he knew ’em all, though some folks did think he spent too much time watching ’em, for the good of his family.”
“Why, he must have been a real genius, a Thoreau sort of man,” exclaimed Esther, who had been listening with rapt attention, as she always did when her grandfather told a story. “Grandpa, won’t you show me some day where his little house stood, and the tree he loaded with stones to fire at the British?”
“And please let me go, too,” said Mr. Hadley, glancing at the girl, and catching her quick responsive smile at her grandfather; “I should like it immensely.”
“Why, to be sure, I should like it myself,” said Deacon Saxon, promptly; “though there ain’t anything there now but dirt and rocks. And I’ll take you round by the old burying-ground and show you his grave, and the grave of my great-grandfather, John Saxon, that was killed by the Indians, if you want me to.”
They had it settled in another minute, with Stella in the plan too. Mr. Hadley was to call again in a few days, and they were all to take the trip together. And then the young man stayed a little longer, not talking of his ancestors now, but of things more modern; of Scotland with Stella; of her impressions of New England with Esther; and with the old gentleman of the summer home in a neighboring town, which the Hadleys had lately purchased. It seemed he had ridden over from there to-day. There was no chance to talk with Kate of anything. She had disappeared long ago.
“I’m afraid you’ll think I’ve inherited the staying qualities of my great-great-grandfather,” he said, rising at last. “Really, I don’t wonder he found it hard to get away from here.” And then he bowed himself out with renewed expressions of gratitude for the information he had received, and of delight in that trip that was coming.
“A most estimable young man,” said Ruel Saxon, when he had ridden away.
“I think he’s the most agreeable young man I ever saw,” said Esther, warmly, and Stella added, “Quite au fait; but I mean to find out the next time he comes whether he really knows anything about art.”
From Mr. Philip Hadley to Miss Katharine Saxon was a far cry, but the latter had a genius for supplying contrasts, and she furnished one at that moment by appearing suddenly at the door. Aunt Elsie, who had been picking raspberries in the garden, was with her.
“Well, Katharine,” exclaimed her brother, hastening to meet her, “’pears to me you’re getting pretty smart to come walking all the way from your house this hot day.”
“I always had the name of being smart, Ruel,” said the old lady, seating herself, and proceeding with much vigor to use a feather fan made of a partridge tail, which hung at her belt; “but I shouldn’t have taken the trouble to show it by walking up here to-day if I hadn’t had an errand. Mary ’Liza wants to go home for a couple o’ days—her sister’s going to get married—and I s’pose I or’ to have somebody in the house with me. Not that I’m ’fraid of anything,” she added, “but I s’pose there’d be a terrible to-do in the town if I should mind my own business and die in my bed some night without putting anybody to any trouble about it. So I thought, long ’s you’ve got so many folks up here just now, I’d see if one of the girls was a mind to come down and stay with me.”
She had been facing her brother as she talked, but she turned toward Esther with the last words.
The girl’s face lighted with an instant pleasure. “Let me come, Aunt Katharine,” she said. “I should like to, dearly.”
There was a gleam of satisfaction in Aunt Katharine’s eyes. “I’d be much obleeged to you to do it,” she said promptly.
“But Aunt Katharine,” exclaimed Aunt Elsie, “don’t you think you’d better come here and stay with us? We should like to have you, and it’s a long time since you slept in your old room.”
“I don’t care anything particular about old rooms,” said Miss Saxon. “I’m beholden to you, Elsie; but I’d rather be in my own house, long ’s I can have somebody with me.”
“I s’pose you’ve got Solomon Ridgeway there yet,” observed her brother, maliciously. “You don’t seem to count much on him, but mebbe you’re afraid of robbers, with all his jewellery in the house.”
She took no notice of the sarcasm. “Solomon’s been gone ’most a week,” she said. “Took a notion he wanted to be back at the farm again.”
“So he’s gone back to the poor’us, has he?” said the old gentleman. “Well, it’s the place for him, poor afflicted cretur!”
She threw up her head with the quick impatient motion. “Dreadful ’flicted, Ruel,” she said. “He’s a leetle the happiest man I know.”
“Hm,” grunted her brother; “happy because he hain’t got sense enough to know his own situation. He thinks he’s rich, when all he’s got wouldn’t buy him a week’s victuals and a suit o’ clothes.”
Miss Saxon’s eyes narrowed to the hawk-like expression which was common in her controversies with her brother. “Oh, he’s crazy, of course,” she said, with an inexpressible dryness in her voice; “thinks he’s rich when he’s poor! But you didn’t call Squire Ethan crazy when he had so much money he didn’t know what to do with it, and was so ’fraid he’d come to want that he dassn’t give a cent of it away, or let his own folks have enough to live on.”
“I ain’t excusing Squire Ethan,” said the deacon, bridling. “He made a god of his money, and he’ll be held responsible for it. But Solomon Ridgeway ain’t half witted. He’s been crack-brained for the last forty years, and you know it.”
The coolness of her manner increased with his rising heat. “Oh, Solomon’s daft, Ruel,” she said in her politest manner. “We won’t argy about that. A man must be daft that takes his wife’s death so hard it eeny most kills him, and he stays single all the rest of his life. A man that had full sense would be courting some other woman inside a year.”
The deacon’s eyes kindled. “You talk like one of the foolish women, Katharine,” he said sharply. “A man ain’t compelled to stay single all the rest of his days because the Lord’s seen fit to take away his wife. The Bible says it ain’t good for man to be alone, and ‘whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.’”
She laughed her thin mocking laugh. “And the more he has of ’em the better, I s’pose! You don’t happen to remember, do you, any place where it says she that finds a husband finds a good thing?”
Apparently the exact verse was not at hand, but Ruel Saxon was prepared without it. “There are some things that folks with common sense are s’posed to know without being told,” he said tartly.
The words had come so fast from both sides that even Aunt Elsie had not been able to interpose till this moment. She seized the pause now with hurrying eagerness. “Aunt Katharine,” she said, “here you are sitting all this time with your bonnet on. You must take it off and stay to supper with us.”
The old woman rose and untied the strings. “Thank ye kindly, Elsie,” she said; “I b’lieve I will.”
CHAPTER IX—A GLIMPSE FROM THE INSIDE
In the cool of the day Aunt Katharine and Esther walked together across the fields to the little house on the county road. The sunset was throbbing itself out above the hills in a glory of crimson and gold, and the girl’s face seemed to have caught the shining as she moved tranquilly toward it.
In the doorway of the barn Tom and Kate watched them go, and exchanged comments with their usual frankness. It was their favorite place for discussion—that and the wood-pile—and few were the subjects of current interest which did not receive a tossing back and forth at their hands when the day’s work was done.
“TOM AND KATE WATCHED THEM GO.”
“That’s an uncommon queer thing for Aunt Katharine to do,” observed Tom. “When she’s been left alone before she’s always got one of the Riley girls to stay there and paid her for doing it. She must have taken a shine to Esther. Maybe she thinks she can work her round to some of her notions.”
Kate shook her head. “Esther isn’t her sort of person at all,” she said. “Aunt Katharine would take somebody that’s strong-minded like herself if she wanted a follower in those things.”
Tom flicked a kernel of corn at a swallow that swooped down from a beam above his head, and remarked carelessly, “Maybe strong-minded folks had rather have those that ain’t so strong-minded to work on.”
There was something in this that gave a passing uneasiness to the look in Kate’s black eyes. She was silent a moment, then said with emphasis, “Well, I’ll risk Esther Northmore;” and a minute later, oddly enough, she was talking of Morton Elwell, and wondering what he found to do now that wheat harvest and haying were over at home.
“If he’s out of a job I wish he’d come round this way,” observed Tom. “We need another hand in our meadow, and we’d set him to work right off.”
“And supply him with a scythe to work with, I suppose,” said Kate, scornfully. “I imagine Mort Elwell! He rides a mowing machine when he cuts grass.”
“Well, he couldn’t ride it in our meadow,” retorted Tom. “There isn’t a Hoosier on top of the ground that could do it. I don’t care how smart he is.” (He had been tantalized at frequent intervals ever since Kate’s coming by accounts of Morton Elwell’s smartness.) “A scythe is the only thing that’ll work in a place like that.”
“Out our way they wouldn’t have such a place,” said Kate, loftily. “They’d put in tile and drain it, if they were going to use the ground at all.”
“A nice job they’d have of it,” grunted Tom; and then he remarked incidentally: “I heard Esther tell Stella the other day that our meadow was the prettiest place she ever saw. They were sitting by the brook, and she said it made her sick to think how your creek at home looked, all so brown and muddy.”
This was a manifest digression, but Tom had a genius for that, and a quotation from Esther bearing on the attractions of New England was a missile he never failed to use, when it came to his hand in discussion with Kate. She looked annoyed for a minute. There was no denying that the creek at home was a sorry-looking stream beside that beautiful meadow brook, with its clear pebbly bottom. But she recovered herself in another moment.
“Oh, your brook is pretty, of course,” she said graciously, “but it’s all in the way you look at it. For my part I don’t mind having a good rich brown in the color of ours. It shows that the land isn’t all rocks; that there’s something in it soft enough to wash down.”
Tom whistled. He was used to Kate now, and never really expected to have the last word. Returning to the subject of the hay-making, he remarked: “Grandfather was down there for a while this afternoon, to show us how fast we ought to work, I suppose—you ought to have seen him bring down the swath—but he couldn’t keep it up very long, and made an errand to the house; a good thing he did, too, or he’d have missed that call that tickled him so. I say, that fellow must have been a regular swell for all you girls to be so taken with him.”
“Who said I was taken with him?” demanded Kate. “It was his horse I fell in love with.”
“Well, the others were, if you weren’t,” persisted Tom. “Esther seemed to think she never saw such a young man.”
“She’s seen some that are a good deal nicer,” said Kate, with emphasis, and then she added rather irritably: “I shouldn’t think a fellow could have much to do who spends his time running round to find out what his great-great-grandfather did. For my part I don’t take much stock in that sort of thing.”
And on this point they were in perfect agreement. Tom, like Kate, had no great use for ancestors.
Meanwhile the shadows lengthened, and the two slow figures moving across the fields reached the end of their walk. That the days to be spent with Aunt Katharine would seem rather long, Esther fully expected. Yet she had wanted them. She had been honest when she said to Stella at parting: “Don’t pity me. I really like it!” and she wondered at the incredulous look with which her cousin had regarded her. With all there was of taste and artistic feeling in common between these two, there was something in Esther, something of seriousness and warmth, which the other partly lacked.
Possibly the girl expected—as Stella had warned her—that the old woman would at once mount the hobby, which she was supposed to keep always saddled and bridled, as soon as they were fairly in the house together, but as a matter of fact, Aunt Katharine did nothing of the kind. She talked, as they sat in the twilight, of Esther herself, of her work at school, and the things she enjoyed most in this summer visit, and then of Esther’s mother, recalling incidents of her childhood, and speaking of her ways and traits with an appreciation that filled the girl with surprise and delight.
“Your mother might have done something out of the common,” she said as she ended. “She was made larger than most folks, and with all her soft ways, she had more courage. She might have had a great influence. I always said it.”
“Mother has a good deal of influence now,” said Esther, smiling. “Father says there isn’t a lady in our town whose opinions count for as much as hers.”
“Of course, of course,” said the old woman, with a note of impatience creeping into her voice; “and the upshot of it is that she makes old ways that are wrong seem right, because she, with all her faculties, manages to make the best of ’em. She might have done better than that, if she’d seen.”
And then she rose suddenly and lighted a lamp. “I always have a chapter before I go to bed,” she said. “You might read it to-night.”
Esther was surprised. She had somehow gained the impression, in Aunt Katharine’s talks with her brother, that she held the scriptures rather lightly, but apparently this was wrong. “What shall I read?” she asked, going to the stand on which lay the Bible, a large and very old one.
“Read me that chapter about Judith,” she said, “how she delivered her people out of the hand of Holofernes, and all the city stood up and blessed her.”
Esther sat for a moment with a puzzled face, her finger between the leaves of the book. “Is that in Judges?” she asked, with a vague remembrance of a prophetess who led Israel to battle.
The old woman lifted her eyebrows. “Oh, that is in the Apocrypha,” she said. “Well, if you don’t know about Judith you mustn’t begin at the end of her story. Read me about Deborah; that’s a good place.”
There was no sweeter sleep under the stars that night than came to Esther. She had thought with some foreboding of a feather bed, but it was the best of hair mattresses that Aunt Katharine provided. Even the high-post bedstead, with draperies of ancient pattern, which she had really hoped for, was wanting. There was nothing to prevent the air which came through the wide east window, full of woodsy odors and the droning of happy insects, from coming straight to her pillow.
There was indeed nothing in the room to recall the fashions of the past except the coverlet, wrought in mazy figures tufted of crocheting cotton, and a round silk pincushion mounted on a standard of glass, which standard suggested former service as part of a lamp. Aunt Katharine had as little care to preserve the customs of her foremothers as their ways of thinking. She had told the girl to rise when she felt like it; but in the early morning Esther found herself wide awake, and the sound of stirring below brought her quickly to her feet.
Aunt Katharine was busy about the stove when she entered the kitchen, and the sight of her niece in her clean work-apron evidently pleased her. They took a cup of tea with a fresh egg and a slice of toast at the kitchen table, and Esther tried to recall her dream of the night before for the entertainment of the other. “It must have been reading about Deborah that put it into my head,” she said. “I thought I was living all by myself in a house that was under a great oak tree, and all sorts of people were coming to me on all sorts of errands, and finally I was going out with a great company of them to battle, but I don’t know what the battle was about, or how it came out,” she ended lightly. “I think the dream must have broken off when I heard you moving about down here.”
“Dreams are queer things,” said Aunt Katharine, who had been listening with attention.
“Of course I don’t believe in them,” Esther made haste to say, “but Aunt Milly always insisted that the first dream you had when you slept in a strange place meant something. I’m sure it meant something to sleep in such a lovely room, and rest as sweetly as I did,” she added, with an affectionate smile at the old lady.
Miss Katharine Saxon had long prided herself on a complete indifference to any blandishments of words or manner on the part of her fellow-creatures. It wasn’t what people said, nor how they said it, but the principles they lived up to, that constituted a claim to her regard, as she often declared; but she fell a victim as easily as scores had done before her to the pretty tactful ways of Esther Northmore and her gift for saying pleasant things. Not in years had she been as warm, as open, and confiding as during that visit. In the entertainment of her niece she made no mistake. She let her help in the housework and watched with pleasure while she darned a tablecloth. She was studying the girl, with genuine liking to guide the study.
And Esther, for her part, was watching her Aunt Katharine with growing regard and sympathy. It was a surprise at first, to note the solicitude with which she inquired after the sick child of Patrick Riley, the Irishman who carried on her farm, and came night and morning to attend to her chores; and the girl was not prepared for the almost maternal interest with which the old woman looked after the dumb creatures on her place.
On the subject which she was known to have most at heart—the wrongs of her sex—she said nothing for a while, and Esther was too mindful of those old griefs in her life to provoke the theme. It came casually, the second day, as they sat seeding raisins in the kitchen. A boy had brought a pail of berries to the door, but she refused them. An hour later a girl came with a similar errand, and without hesitating she made the purchase.
“I hope you didn’t change your mind on my account,” said Esther, when the child was gone, remembering apologetically something she had said in the interval about her own liking for huckleberries. “With all the fruit you have I’m sure we didn’t need them.”
Miss Saxon smiled. “I didn’t change my mind,” she said. “I thought some girl would be along, and so I waited.”
The boy’s face had looked eager, and Esther felt rather sorry for him. “Don’t you suppose he needed the money as much as she did?” she asked rather timidly.
“Mebbe he needed it more,” said Aunt Katharine. “The Billingses are worse off than the Esteys, but that ain’t the p’int. It’s a good thing for a girl to be earning money. It’s worth something to her to make a few cents, and know it’s her own. That’s what the girls need more ’n anything else, and I always help ’em every chance I get.”
Esther pondered for a minute without speaking. The old woman’s eyes had taken on a look of deep seriousness. “That’s the root of all the trouble,” she said almost fiercely, “this notion that the women must be forever dependent on the men, and take what’s given ’em and be thankful, without trying to do for themselves. I tell you it was never meant that one half of the world should hang on the other half, and look to ’em for the shelter over their heads, and the food they eat, and the clothes they wear. It degrades ’em both.”
Esther stopped seeding raisins and looked at her aunt in astonishment. An arraignment of the existing order of things such as she had not heard before was suggested here. Perhaps the very blankness of her expression appealed more than any protest to the old woman. The defiance went out of her voice, and it was almost a pleading tone in which she went on:—
“Don’t you see what comes of it? Don’t you see? It makes the girls think they must get married so ’s to have a home and somebody to support ’em, and then they plan ’n’ contrive—they ’n’ their mothers with ’em—how to catch a husband.” She shut her lips hard, as if her loathing of the thing were too great for utterance, then went on: “But small blame to ’em, I say, if that’s the only thing a woman’s fit for; small blame to ’em if they won’t let her choose her work for herself and live by it, without calling shame on her for doing it. It’s a little better now—thank God and the women that have been brave enough to go ahead in the face of it!—but I’ve seen the day when an old maid was looked on as something almost out of nature. ‘Let a girl dance in the pig’s trough,’ if her younger sister gets married before her. Let her own she’s disgraced, and be done with it. That’s the old saying, and the spirit of it ain’t all dead yet. It never will be till women are as free as men to do whatever thing is in ’em to do, and make the most of it.”
Her face had grown white as she talked, and the color had paled a little even in Esther’s. “Oh,” she said, “I’ve thought of that, too. I’ve hated it when people talked as if there was nothing for girls but to get married.” The color came back with a quick flush as she added: “I’d rather die than be scheming about that myself; but what can you do? Boys always talk about the work they mean to follow. People would think there was something wrong with them, if they didn’t; but if girls say anything—I did try once to talk about what I could do to earn my own living, but father acted as if I was somehow reflecting on him, and mother—though I’m sure she understood me better—seemed worried and troubled.”
“That’s it, that’s it!” said Aunt Katharine, bitterly. “Even those that say a woman’s got a right to choose, say under their breath that she’ll never be happy if it’s anything but getting married. I tell you it’s finding your own work and doing it that makes people happy, and that’s a law for women as much as men.”
“But if you knew your work!” said Esther, piteously. “It seems to me there are very few girls who have anything special they can do.”
“That’s no more true of girls than ’tis of boys,” said Aunt Katharine. “We should find something for one as well as for the other, something they could work at, if we settled it once for all that they had the same right and need. But we’ve got to start with that idea right from the beginning.”
After that, during the time which remained of the visit, the talk came often into the circle of this thought. Sometimes Miss Saxon talked of the wrongs of women, of their inequality before the law, and of the tyranny of men, with a bitterness before which the girl shrank, but the very vehemence of the other’s belief carried her with it, and through it all one thing grew more and more clear to her. It was not hatred of men, but love of her own sex, which lay at the bottom of Katharine Saxon’s defiance of the social order. The longing to help women, to lift them into what seemed to her a larger, freer living, had laid hold of her wholly, and held her in the white heat of its consuming passion.
Once, when she had been speaking of the struggle which lay before any woman confronted with the problem of supporting a family, Esther said softly: “Grandpa told me about you one night, Aunt Katharine; how you gave up everything and worked so hard to help your sister when she came home with her children. I thought that was grand.”
The old woman did not speak for a moment, then she said, with a singular lack of emotion in her voice: “Poor Nancy! Yes, I thought then ’twas my duty to do what I did, and mebbe ’twas; but sometimes I’ve thought—Nancy and her girls were only a han’ful out of the many—sometimes I’ve thought mebbe I might have done more good if I’d been fighting for ’em all. I gave the best fifteen years of my life to that old spinning-wheel, and scarcely looked out of my corner.” And then the lines of her face stiffened as she added: “But I had my reward. I was saved from marrying—marrying Levi Dodge.”
The scorn in her voice as she said the last words was indescribable. For a while neither of them spoke. Then Esther said, leaning toward the other, her heart in her eyes, and her breath coming quick, “Aunt Katharine, wouldn’t you have women marry at all?”
She threw up her head with the quick, impatient movement which Esther had come to know so well. “They might all marry and welcome,” she said,—“it’s the Lord’s way to preserve the race,—if only we could get rid of the notions that folks have joined onto it to spoil it.”
And then the note that was not of defiance, but pleading, came back to her voice, as she added: “But I’d have some of the women that see stay free from it till we’ve worked this thing out, and made a fair chance for those that come after us; I’d have ’em show that the world has some interests for women outside of their own homes, and some work they can do besides waiting on their husbands and children; I’d have ’em show that a woman ain’t afraid nor ashamed to walk without leaning; and I’d have ’em keep their eyes open to see what’s going on. I’d have ’em hold themselves clear of the danger of being blinded even by love to the things that need doing.”
No doubt there was much that was wholly vague to Esther Northmore in the vision of service which lay before the mind of Katharine Saxon. But the thought of some renunciation for the sake of others—some work, unselfish and lasting—what generous young soul has not at moments felt the thrill of it? Their eyes met in a glow of sympathy, if not of full understanding, and the clock ticked solemnly in a stillness which, for a minute, neither of them could break.
It was a light step at the open door which suddenly drew their attention. Kate was coming briskly up the walk with a letter in her hand.
“It’s from home,” she said, as Esther rose to meet her, “and I thought you ought to have it.”
She noticed the look of exaltation on her sister’s face, and something she had never seen before in Aunt Katharine’s. Her efforts at conversation met with little response. She was conscious of some atmosphere surrounding these two which she herself could not penetrate, and she was glad to slip away at the end of a very short call.
“They must have been talking about something awfully serious,” she said to Tom afterward. “They looked as solemn as a pair of owls. I hope that girl of Aunt Katharine’s will come home when she said she would. For my part, I think Esther’s stayed there long enough.”
CHAPTER X—SOME BITS OF POETRY
Aunt Katharine’s maid of all work did not outstay her leave of absence, and at evening of the third day Esther came home to her grandfather’s. She insisted that she had had a good time, and strongly resented being regarded as a martyr who had sacrificed herself to a painful cause.
“Why, Aunt Katharine made it delightful for me,” she said, “and I liked her better and better all the time I stayed.”
“I hope she didn’t win you over to all her notions, especially that prejudice against getting married,” said Stella, with a laugh.
“She certainly didn’t argue me out of the belief that life might be worth living if one happened to stay single,” returned Esther, and though she said it lightly, the look in her eyes was sober.
But they did not talk long of Aunt Katharine. There was something of livelier interest to be discussed now. It had been the plan from the first that sometime during the summer they should visit Boston with Stella. The summer was wearing away, and it was time for the plan to mature. Moreover, a letter had come from a cousin, who had a cottage for the season at Nahant, inviting them all to spend a week with her there.
Kate was in raptures, and Stella was mapping out a fortnight’s touring which should include a circuit of pleasures, Boston and the seashore, with Concord and Cambridge, and perhaps Old Plymouth, thrown in. It was all delightful to think of. For the next few days their minds were full of it, and in the midst came that pleasant trip which had been planned with Mr. Philip Hadley.
He was punctual to his engagement, and appeared early on the appointed afternoon. But he was not on horseback now. He was in a stylish top buggy, behind a pair of high-stepping bays. Ruel Saxon had planned to take the two girls with him in the family carriage—Kate had other plans for the afternoon—but Mr. Hadley’s buggy changed all that.
“If one of the young ladies will ride with me I shall be delighted,” he said, glancing with a smile at Esther, who happened to be the only one of them in the room at the moment.
She returned the smile, then turning to her grandfather, settled the arrangement in just the right way. “Grandfather,” she said, “we must let Stella go with Mr. Hadley. That will be nice for them both, and then you and I will go together. I don’t want to be selfish, but I shan’t be here much longer, you know, and must make the most of my chances for riding with you.”
The old gentleman looked gratified, and Mr. Hadley smiled again. As for Stella, there was no doubt of her satisfaction with the arrangement when she came in a minute later. She was looking exceedingly stylish in a pale green dress, with hat and parasol to match, and quite the figure to sit with Mr. Hadley behind those handsome bays.
It was a perfect afternoon, and a light rain the night before had laid the dust in the country roads. It was the least frequented of them all, a track which was hardly more than a cart-path which led by the old Bridgewood place, and they tied their horses to a rail fence and climbed on foot to the top of the sharp knoll on which the house once had stood. There was no trace of it now. The walls on which their eccentric owner had once hung his verses in the wind had long ago dropped away, and the very stones of its foundation had been removed out of their place.
Even the tree which had been part of his “battery”—if indeed it survived the experience—could not be distinguished now in the thick grove of maple and chestnut and birch which covered the place. Only the view from the hilltop remained unchanged, and this, as Stella declared, sitting breathless at the end of the climb, justified the owner’s choice of a dwelling-spot, and must have inspired his muse.
From there to the old burying-ground was by a winding way, for Ruel Saxon was in historic mood, and guided his party past the lake haunted by the memory of conjuring Jane, who had been drowned there as a witch long, long ago; past the meadow where a little party of the early settlers, busy with making hay one summer afternoon, had fallen victims to the tomahawks of the Indians; and past the rock where Whitefield, shut out from the churches, had preached one Sabbath day to a crowd of spell-bound and weeping people.
Sometimes he drew Dobbin to the side of the road, and giving the buggy space beside him, paused while he set out the event which the scene called up with vivid description and trenchant comment. He was no mean chaperon in guiding others over the track of the past, and this afternoon he was at his best.
The old burying-ground lay on the edge of a pine wood, on the outskirts of the village. It was more than half a century since the sod had been disturbed, and grass and daisies possessed the paths which once lay plain between mounds which years had smoothed to almost the common level. There had been no encroachment of a growing town upon its borders to break its quiet with the noise and hurry of a strenuous life. It lay, an utter quietness, in the beauty of the summer afternoon, a spot in which it was impossible not to feel that a great peace must have infolded those whose bodies had mouldered to dust in its tranquil keeping.
Yet perhaps Esther was the only one of the little company who felt the pensive influence of the place, and she had never stood before in an old New England burying-ground. Even she did not keep it long, for Ruel Saxon was full of a bustling eagerness to find the graves they had come to seek, and the quaintness of the mortuary devices and inscriptions on the low gray stones soon claimed her whole attention.
“Your great-great-grandfather made up a good many of these epitaphs,” observed the old gentleman to Mr. Hadley. “He was a wonderful hand for that. Folks were always going to him when their relations died—those that wanted anything except verses of scripture under the names. Here’s his own grave now!” he exclaimed, pausing in his rapid searching, and not a little pleased with himself that he had so quickly found a spot which he had not seen in many years:—
“‘Sacred to the memory of
JABEZ BRIDGEWOOD.
Born Aug. 1, 1735—died Nov. 12, 1810.’
“That’s his stone, and no mistake.”
Mr. Hadley was bending over it now. Below the inscription which the old man had read were four lines which the creeping moss had almost obliterated. He took a knife from his pocket and scraped a few words.
“Ah,” he said, lifting his head, “there is evidently one he didn’t write:—
“‘Oh Friends, seek not his merits to disclose,
Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.’”
“No,” said Ruel Saxon, who did not recognize the slightly changed familiar lines, “he didn’t write that. But he picked it out, and left word in writing to have it put on his stone. I remember hearing my grandfather talk about it. Some folks thought ’twas queer he didn’t write his own epitaph. It always tickled him so when he got a chance to do it for other folks.”
“Poor man,” said Mr. Hadley, with a smile, “it was probably his only chance of publication. Think what that must have meant to him! But I’m glad he recognized a superior poet. It’s a mark of greatness.”
They separated a little now, moving about among the headstones, and reading, as they could, the old inscriptions. Some of them were provocative of an amusement which must have its way even in this hallowed spot.
There was one which ran:—
“Here lies, cut down like unripe fruit,
Ye son of Mr. Jonas Boot,
And Mrs. Jemima Boot his wife named Jonathan.”
“I rather hope my ancestor didn’t write that,” said Mr. Hadley. Then, noting the date of the said Jonathan’s death, 1748, he added, with a shake of his head, “But he might; it’s possible, if his poetic genius blossomed early.”
There was another close by which Stella was reading now. It was inscribed to a girl of sixteen:—
“Too good for earth, God in His love,
Took her to dwell with saints above.”
“Poor little thing!” she said, under her breath. “I wonder if she liked living with the saints half as well as with her own girl friends. It’s to be hoped that she found some there.”
There was dignity in one over which Esther was bending now:—
“Let not ye dead forgotten lye,
Lest men forget that they must die;”
and a touch of real tenderness was in the one which stood beside it under the name of a little child:—
“She faltered by the wayside,
And the angels took her home.”
But this, which came next, was not so felicitous:—
“God took him to His Heavenly home,
No more this weary world to roam.”
This, to a babe of six months, certainly indicated a paucity of rhymes on the part of the composer, and Mr. Hadley pointed in triumph to a year marked on the little gray slab which plainly antedated his ancestor.
But the stone which by the consent of all was pronounced the most unique was inscribed to Keziah, a “beloved wife who put on immortality” at the age of thirty-five. Below the name and date was carved an emblem suggestive of a chrysalis, with the words, “Keziah as she was;” and under this appeared the head of a cherub, with the wings of a butterfly sprouting from its swollen cheeks, and the words, “Keziah as she is.”
Stella hovered around this for some time in convulsed admiration. “I’m so glad there were artists as well as poets in those days,” she said; and then she added, with a levity she could not repress, “it reminds one for all the world of the advertisements, ‘Before and after taking.’”
There was another erected to the memory of a wife which called forth almost as much admiration. The virtues of the deceased were set forth with unusual fulness, and the record of her long services to society, the church, and her family, ended with the words, “She lived with her husband sixty years, and died in the hope of a better life.”
Even Deacon Saxon chuckled over this, and then added, “I don’t b’lieve my sister Katharine ever heard of that, or she’d have thrown it up to me before this.”
It was queer what oddities of thought and expression had got themselves cut in some of these stones, and there were commonplaces which occurred over and over:—
“Friends nor physicians could not save
This loving ——”
Was father, mother, husband, the needed title? Alas, all were easily supplied, and then followed the inevitable “from the grave.”
There was one with a harsh creditor accent, before which light-hearted readers could hardly help shrinking a little:—
“Death is a debt to Nature due,
I’ve paid it now, and so must you.”
But there was another, carved more than once, which might well cause a deeper shudder. It ran:—
“Beneath this stone Death’s prisoner lies,
Ye stone shall move, ye prisoner rise,
When Jesus, with Almighty word,
Calls his dead Saints to meet their Lord.”
“Dreadful theology, don’t you think?” Mr. Hadley said, turning with a little shiver to the girls, and their grandfather added his assent to theirs with emphasis. “Yes, Jesus hasn’t got any dead saints. They or’ to have remembered what He said Himself, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
But by far the greater number of these ancient headstones were marked with texts of scripture, and however mirth might be provoked by sentiment or phrase from other sources, the simple dignity of the book of books always brought back seriousness and reminded on what word the hearts of men had leaned, through the long generations, to endure the old, old sorrow of death. The faith of the fathers, not their fashions, was the thought which one must bear away in the end from such a spot.
They had paused longest by the graves of Ruel Saxon’s people, and again as they left the place he lingered for a moment by the low gray line of stones. “They were God-fearing men and women, all of them,” he said, with tender reverence in his voice; then, lifting his face, he added, with inexpressible pride and solemnity:—
“My boast is not that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth,
But higher far my proud pretensions rise—
The son of parents passed into the skies.”
That was the last word spoken before they let down the bars in the old stone wall and made their way back to their horses. Possibly the young man, who was so anxious to establish his family record, may have caught, at that moment, a new thought of ancestral honors.
It had been a full afternoon, and it was a late one when they reached the farmhouse. Mr. Hadley would have mounted to his buggy at once after helping Stella down, but the deacon interposed.
“Why, it’s high time for supper,” he said, “and you mustn’t drive back to Hartridge without having a bite to eat, you or your horses either.”
“Of course not,” said Stella, cordially. “We count on your staying to supper.” And then she added archly, “I really think you ought, for the sake of your great-great-grandfather.”
“Whom your great-great-grandmother could never get rid of?” he replied, laughing. “I’m not sure but on his account I ought to go, to convince you that his descendants at least can turn their backs on pleasure.”
But he did not insist on doing it, and it is extremely doubtful whether Jabez Bridgewood ever enjoyed a meal under the old roof more than Philip Hadley enjoyed the one that followed. The fact was, both Stella and her mother had foreseen that the delays and digressions of the old gentleman in showing his party around would consume the afternoon, and bring the young man back at about this time. They had conferred carefully as to the setting of the table in the best old-fashioned china, with a pretty mingling of Stella’s hand-painted pieces; the menu had been settled to a nicety in advance, and the delicate French salad, which Mr. Hadley pronounced the best he had ever tasted, had been compounded by Stella herself before leaving the house.
Tom and Kate, who were just in from a tramp to a distant pasture, had their places with the others. Tom had objected at first to sitting down with “the nabob,” as he called their guest, but Kate’s persuasions and his own curiosity finally overcame him.
The meal was a social one. The girls talked of their intended outing, and Mr. Hadley, who was much interested, made some capital suggestions.
Then a question or two drew him out in regard to his own summer, and he talked quite charmingly of a yachting trip in July. There was a plan for the White Mountains early in September. He had succeeded better than usual in killing time this summer, he said; to which he added gracefully, that he believed no other day of it had been as pleasant as this which was just ending.
This brought them back to the excursion of the afternoon, and Esther in particular grew quite eloquent over the delights of it.
“That’s what it is to live in an old country,” she said wistfully. “You feel as if you belonged to the past as well as the present when you stand in the places where the things you’ve read of really happened. I think it’s beautiful to have historic associations.”
There was an approving murmur over this sentiment, but Kate did not join in it. There was no mistaking its implied suggestion of a point in which New England had the advantage over her native state. She might possibly have let it pass if Tom had not had the indiscretion at that moment to press her foot under the table. Up to this point her part in the conversation had been mostly questions, but now she advanced an opinion boldly.
“Well, I must say I never wanted to live in an old country on that account,” she said. “I remember when mother used to read Child’s History of England to us, I was always glad that our country began later, and that we didn’t have those cruel times, when people were beheaded for nothing, and princes’ eyes put out by their wicked uncles, in our history at all. Those things you’ve been hearing about this afternoon—there wasn’t anything very beautiful about some of them. That poor old thing they drowned—I don’t suppose she was any more a witch than I am. And that rock where Whitefield preached—it was a mean bigoted thing to keep him out of the churches, and I should think good people would be ashamed every time they looked at the rock.”
There was silence for a minute when she ended. Then Mr. Hadley said, with a smile, “In other words, if you have historic associations at all, you want those of the very best sort.” To which he added, lifting his eyebrows a trifle, “I presume you wouldn’t object to Bunker Hill and Lexington!”
Kate took a swallow of water before speaking. Then she said with dignity: “I have never regarded Bunker Hill and Lexington as local affairs. I think they belong to the whole country!”
Mr. Hadley made her a bow across the table. “Capital!” he said. “I surrender.”
“If you knew how my cousin Kate stands up for everything connected with her own part of the country, you’d surrender in advance any attempt to impress her with the beauties of ours,” said Stella, laughing. “Talk of loyalty to one’s home!”
“Well, you certainly have a remarkably fine section of country out your way,” said Mr. Hadley, graciously. “My father was there buying grain one summer, and I remember he came back perfectly enthusiastic over everything except the ague, which he brought home with him, and had hard work to get rid of. I suppose you’ll admit that you do have some chills and fever lying round in your low lands.”
“Oh, people have to have something,” said Kate, carelessly, “but ague isn’t the worst thing that ever was. People very seldom die of it, and it’s really the most interesting disease in the world. I could give you a list as long as my arm of the ingenious ways country people have of curing it; and some of them are perfectly fascinating, they’re so queer. You ought to hear my father talk about ague.”
There was an explosion of laughter at this. “Kate,” cried Stella, “you’re as bad as the old woman who was challenged to find a good quality in his Satanic majesty, and immediately said there was nothing like his perseverance. But really, if one must discuss chills and fever, don’t you think they’re a little, just a little plebeian?”
“Oh,” said Kate, “anything’s plebeian—if you’ve a mind to call it so—that keeps people moping and ailing. But there are lots of things more ‘ornary’ than chills. It was when they were all coming down with them, don’t you know, that Mark Tapley found the first chance he ever had to be ‘jolly’ when ’twas really a credit to him!”
The laughter took a note of applause now from Mr. Hadley. “Miss Saxon,” he exclaimed, turning to Stella, “don’t let’s press her any further; she’s positively making a classic of the ague. If she says much more, we shall all be wanting to go out there for the express purpose of getting it.”
“But ten chances to one you wouldn’t get it, if you did,” said Kate. “As a matter of fact, we don’t have much of it nowadays. It was part of the newness of the country, and draining the land has carried most of it off.”
There was nothing to be said to this. She was in possession of the field at both ends, and they retreated from the subject with a last volley of laughter.
After supper Tom told Kate confidentially that she had “done ’em up in good style. Though I’ll warrant,” he added severely, “that you’d brag as much as anybody if you had some of the old places we have out your way.” And then he observed that the nabob wasn’t half bad. He didn’t know as ’twas strange that the girls had taken such a fancy to him.
As it happened, Esther was thinking of him at that very moment. She had just finished reading a letter from Morton Elwell,—a letter written, as he happened to mention, before five one morning of a day that was to be full of work. How well she knew that it was one of many—days that followed each other without break or pause save for the Sabbath’s rest! And then she thought of Mr. Philip Hadley with his summer devices for “killing time.” She wondered why life should be so easy for some, so strenuous for others; and, for the first time, she thought of it with a sort of resentment that Morton Elwell should work so hard and have no summer pleasuring.