Kitabı oku: «The Bay State Monthly. Volume 1, No. 1, January, 1884», sayfa 4

ONE SUMMER. A REMINISCENCE

BY ANNIE WENTWORTH BAER

It was a beautiful morning in June. The sun was just peeping through the pines fringing the eastern horizon; fleecy mists were rising, like "ghosts of the valley," from every brook and low place in field and pasture, betokening a warm, fair day. As I opened the heavy front door of Mr. Wetherell's old gambrel-roofed house, and stepped out onto the large flat stone at the door-sill, every blade of grass was glistening with dew-drops; such a sweetness pervaded the air as one only realizes when the dew is on the grass and bushes. At my right, close to the door-stone, a large bush of southern-wood, or man's-first-love, was growing; just beyond it and under the "middle-room" windows two large, white-rose bushes were bending beneath the weight of a multitude of roses and buds. A large yellow-rose bush claimed the left, and spread itself over the ground. Single red roses were standing guard at the corner of the house. A rod or more below the front door the garden fence stood and looked as if it had been standing for many a year. It was made of palings, pointed; I should think it was five feet high. The posts had begun to lean into the garden and the palings were covered with a short green moss, which seemed soft and growing in the dew. The old gate swung itself to after me with a bang, and I noticed that a string with a brick fastened to it and tied to the gate at one end, and twisted around a stake driven into the ground a few feet from the gate, was the cause of its closing so quickly. Red-cherry trees loaded with small green cherries were growing on one side of the garden; purple-plum trees skirted the other side; and I knew full well how two months later those creased, mouldy-looking plums would be found hiding in the short, green grass beneath the trees.

Peach-trees were leaning over the fence in the southeast corner; a long row of red-currant bushes ran through the middle of the garden; English gooseberry bushes threw out their prickly branches laden with round, woolly fruit at the north end. Rows of hyssop, rue, saffron, and sage, and beds of lettuce, pepper-grass, and cives, all had their place in this old-fashioned garden. In the southwest corner an immense black-currant bush was growing on both sides of the fence. Out in the field below the garden two Bell-pear trees, as large as elms, were bending their branches, loaded with fruit, a luscious promise for the autumn-time. A button-pear tree, just beyond, was making up in quantity what its fruit lacked in quality.

While I was exploring this well-cultivated spot, Mrs. Wetherell called me to breakfast. The kitchen was a large room, running across one end of the house; it had four windows in it, two east and two west. All this space was filled with the fragrance of coffee and cornmeal bannocks.

Mrs. Wetherell said: "I don't know as you will like your coffee sweetened in the pot, but I always make ours so."

I assured her I should.

During breakfast Mr. Wetherell passed me some cheese, and I asked Mrs. Wetherell if she made cheese.

"Not this month," she replied, "in July and August I shall. I am packing butter now."

"Do you think you are going to be contented back here?—you won't see as much going on as you do at home," Mr. Wetherell asked me.

"O, yes," I answered; "I expect to enjoy myself very much."

Samanthy, the daughter, now well advanced in life, seemed very solemn and said very little. I wondered if she were sick, or unhappy. A little later in the day, while I was watching Mrs. Wetherell salt a churning of butter in the back porch, she said to me: "You mustn't mind Samanthy, she isn't quite right in her head: a good many years ago she had a sad blow." She hesitated; I disliked to ask her what it was, so I said "Poor woman!" "Yes," said her mother, "she is a poor soul. She was expecting to be married to Eben Johnson, a young man who worked on our new barn. She got acquainted with him then, and after a year or so they were promised. Eben was a good fellow, a j'iner by trade. He lived in the village. In the fall before they would have been married, in the spring, he had typhoid fever, and they sent for Samanthy. She went and took care of him three weeks, and then he died. She came home, and seemed like one in a maze. After a little while she was took with the fever, and liked to died, and my two girls, Margaret and Frances, both had it and died with it. Samanthy has never been the same since she got well. Her health has been good, but her mind is weak." I had noticed that Mrs. Wetherell seemed very much broken in health and spirits, and after hearing this story I did not wonder that the blows of Providence had weakened her hold on life.

Samanthy was very shy of me at first, but after a few days she would talk in her disjointed way with me.

One morning I was out in the well-house. The well was very deep, and by leaning over the curb, and by putting one's arms around one's head, one could see the stars mirrored in the bottom of the dark old well. Samanthy came out for some water, while I was star-gazing in this way. She said: "What you lost?"

"O, nothing. I am only looking at the stars."

Samanthy looked as if she thought I might be more profitably engaged. I took hold of the handle of the windlass, swung off the great oaken bucket, and watched it descend its often-traveled course, bumping against the wet, slippery rocks with which the well was stoned.

Samanthy said: "You can't pull that up; it's heavy."

"Let me try," I said. "I never drew water with a windlass."

I had a much harder task than I supposed, but succeeded in swinging the bucket onto the platform of the curb, and turned the water into Samanthy's pail. I never asked permission to draw another bucketful.

I noticed below the well a large mound, grass-grown, with an apple-tree growing on its very top. I wondered how it came there, and one day asked Mr. Wetherell.

He said: "That's where we threw the rocks and gravel out of the well fifty years ago; we never moved it. It grassed over, and the apple-tree came up there; it bears a striped apple, crisp and sour."

I thought, What a freak of Nature! and I wished that many more piles of rubbish might be transformed into such a pretty spot as this.

Below the mound stood the old hollow tree; its trunk was low and very large, one side had rotted away, leaving it nearly hollow. Still there was trunk enough left for the sap to run up; and every year it was loaded with fruit.

Close by the path across the field to the road stood the Pang apple-tree. This tree was named Pang because a dog by that name was sleeping his last sleep beneath the tree. He was much beloved by the family. I thought, What a pretty place to be buried in! and a living monument to mark his grave. From the stories I heard of Pang, I know he must have been a fine dog, and I should have liked to have known him.

Just back of the house stood the cider-house. At this season of the year the wood for summer use was stored there, but in autumn all the neighbors brought their apples, and ground them into cider. Samanthy told me how she used to clean the cider nuts with a shingle; this was when she was small.

She said: "A cousin of mine, living at Beech Ridge, got his arm caught while cleaning the pummy out, and ground it all up. After that father was afraid for we children to do it."

Back of the building I saw thousands of little apple-trees, growing from the pomace which was shoveled out there year after year.

The loft, over the part where the cider-mill was, was the corn-house. I went up over the wide plank stairs and looked around.

Traces of snapping-corn and of white-pudding corn were hanging over a pole at one end. A large chest, filled with different kinds of beans, stood at one side. On the plates which supported the rafters, marks made in this wise—[Symbol: Tally mark of 5]—told of the bushels of corn carried up there and spread on the clean, white floor.

These marks had been made by many hands, and I wondered where they were now. Some undoubtedly were sleeping the

 
"Sleep that knows not breaking:
Morn of toil, nor night of waking."
 

Others, perhaps, were making their mark somewhere else.

"Independence Day," as Mr. Wetherell called it, was observed in a very liberal manner on the farm. A lamb was slaughtered, green peas were picked, and a plum-pudding made.

Lemonade, made of sparkling spring water, was a common drink. Mr. Wetherell told me how his father always kept the day. He brought out the large blue punchbowl and square cut-glass decanters, which his father used on such occasions.

The next morning after the Fourth, I started out through the field for the pasture. The grass was tall, and it waved gently in the morning breeze. The whiteweed and clover sent forth an agreeable perfume. In the low ground buttercups were shining like gold dollars, sprinkled through the tall herdsgrass. Yellow-weed, the farmer's scourge, held up its brown and yellow head in defiance.

On a knoll, a little before I reached the graveyard, I passed over a piece of ground where the winter had killed the grass roots. Here I found sorrel, cinque-foil, and a few bunches of blue-eyed grass growing. Nature seemed to try to conceal the barrenness of the spot with beauty. It was a grave, decorated.

Off to my right, in a piece of rank grass, where branches of dock had sprung up, bobolinks were swinging the pale, green sprays, filling the air with melody. "Bobolink, bobolink, spirk, spank, spink, chee, chee, chee!"

I knew that "Mrs. Robert of Lincoln" was sitting contentedly on her little round nest, under a tuft of grass, very near the sweet singer. I paused at the graveyard, and looked over the wall. I read: "Margaret and Frances Wetherell, daughters of John and Hannah Wetherell, aged 18 and 20 years." I knew these were the girls who had died of the fever; a twin gravestone had been put up to their graves. Another stone told of a little girl, two and a half years old—Catherine. I reckoned up the date, and had she been living, she would have been over forty years old. Many other stones stood there, but I left them without reading the inscriptions, and hastened on to the pines.

I stepped over the low wall between the field and pasture and walked down by the brook until I came to the Stony Bridge. This I crossed and followed up on the broad wheelpath. The pines smelled so sweet: the grass was short and green: everything seemed calm and cool. I sat down by a large Norway pine and watched the birds. Right below me I saw a fox-hole, with the entrance so barricaded with sticks and stones, that I felt very sure poor Reynard must have been captured unless he dug out somewhere else. I began to walk around. Six or seven feet to the south of the besieged door, I discovered another entrance. I don't know whether some animal was still living in the old house, or no: but this hole looked as if it were used. A little pine grew in front, a juniper made its roof and spread its fine branches over the door, squaw vines and checkerberry leaves grew on either side.

I walked on in the wheelpath. On the north side many tall Norway pines were growing, with white pines scattered here and there. Crimson polygalas were carpeting the ground in open spaces; pale anemones and delicate star-flowers were still blooming under the protection of small pines; wild strawberries were blossoming in cold places; and I wondered when they would fruit.

Finally I came to an open field, or what looked like land that had been cultivated. Hosts of bluets and plots of mouse-ear everlasting, had taken possession of the land. Small pines were scattered here and there, like settlers in a new country. Junipers were creeping stealthily in, as if expecting the axe. There were traces of where a fence had run along. I concluded that this was years ago a field, but now the cows roamed over it at will.

Going around in the edge of the woods I came to four pines growing from one root; two grew on each side close together, and left a fine seat between the pairs. I sat down there, and felt thankful that I was living, and that my abiding-place was among the granite hills of New England.

Soon I saw something move a few rods beyond me in the woods. I looked again and saw the finest woodchuck I ever saw. He stood in a listening attitude. I suppose he had heard me, but had not seen me. His fur was yellow and brown mixed; his nose and feet were black; his countenance was expressive of lively concern. He disappeared and I left my sylvan seat, and walked up where the woodchuck had been standing. I found his home and numerous little tracks around the door. I hastened off, because I feared my presence would worry him.

I knew it must be near noontime, so I began to retrace my way. I walked up through the pasture and passed the "Great Ledge." This ledge was on the side of a steep hill. One side of it was perpendicular thirty feet. It was covered with crisp, gray moss. In the chinks and crannies on the top, short grass was growing in little bunches.

As I followed down in the lane which led from the pasture to the cow-yard, striped squirrels were playfully skipping through the dilapidated wall, coming out, and disappearing; sitting down and putting their forefeet up to their faces as if they were convulsed with laughter to think how the old black-and-white cat had gone to sleep lying on the wall in the sun, only a few rods below them.

Dinner was ready, as I expected. I told Mrs. Wetherell of my walk over the Stony Bridge.

"Yes," she said. "Years ago, when I kept geese, one night I went out to feed them and I found that they hadn't come. I knew something must be the matter. I started for the brook. When I got out on the hill by the graveyard, I heard the gander making an awful noise. I hurried on, and, when I got to the corner of the field, I found a fox jumping at the old gander as he was walking back and forth in front of the geese and goslings. I screeched and the fox run. The geese came right up to me. I was pretty pleased to save them. I had two geese and thirteen goslings beside the gander."

I said: "Is that a ledge out in the field where sumachs and birches are growing?"

Mrs. Wetherell said: "Yes; and that piece of ground is where Father Wetherell raised the last piece of flax. I don't suppose you ever saw any growing?"

"No," I said. "Only in gardens. A field must be very handsome."

"Yes, the flower is a bluish purple, with a little yellow dot in the middle."

I asked her when they cut it.

"O, they never cut it; they pulled it after the seeds got ripe; then they would beat the seeds out of the pods. These pods look like little varnished balls. When the seed was out, the flax was laid in a wet place in the field for weeks; occasionally the men would turn it over. When it was well rotted they dried it and put it up in the barn until March. Then Father Wetherell would take it down and brake it in the brake. After that he would swingle it over a swingling-board, with a long knife; then he made it into hands of flax. The women used to take it next and comb it through a flax-comb; this got out all the shives and tow. There was a tow which came out when it was swingled, called swingle tow. Mother Wetherell said that, years before, when she was young she used to use this to make meal-bags and under-bedticks of. But I never used any of it."

I asked her how they used the flax after it was combed.

"Then it was wound onto the distaff."

"What was that?" Mrs. Wetherell smiled at my ignorance, but proceeded kindly to explain.

"A distaff was made of a small pine top. They peeled off the bark, and when it was dry, tied down the ends, and put the other end onto the standard of the wheel. Then they would commence and wind on the flax. A hand of flax would fill it. I used to be a pretty good hand to spin tow on a big wheel, but I never could spin linen very even. Old Aunt Joanna used to spin linen thread; and Mother Wetherell used to buy great skeins of her. She said it was cheaper to buy than to spend so much time spinning."

Mrs. Wetherell told me that I should go up in the garret and see the wheels and all the old machinery used so long ago.

That evening I asked Mr. Wetherell: "Has there ever been a field beyond the pines?"

"Yes," he said: "Father cleared that piece nigh onto eighty year ago. We always called it 'the field back of the pines.' When father got old, and I kinder took the lead, I said we better turn that field out into the paster. He felt bad about it at first, but when I told him how much work it was to haul the manure over there, and the crops back, he gave in. Them Norrerway pines are marster old; I s'pose they'd stood there a hundred and fifty year."

I felt a thrill of pity for the old man, now at rest. He must have been nearly at the base of life's western slope, when he rescued those few acres from the forest. The little field was his pride, I think it ought to have been left, while he lived.

One morning when Lucy, as Mrs. Wetherell called her, was washing at the farm, she said to me: "Did you ever have your fortin told?" I answered, "No."

"Well," she said, "I dunno as I b'lieve all they say, but some can tell pretty well. Did you ever try any projects?"

"No. How is that done?" I asked.

"O! there's ever so many! One is, you pick two of them big thistles 'fore they are bloomed out, then you name 'em and put 'em under your piller; the one that blooms out fust will be the one you will marry. 'Nuther one is to walk down cellar at twelve o'clock at night, backwards, with a looking-glass in your hand. You will see your man's face in the glass. But there! I don't know as its best to act so. You know how Foster got sarved?"

"No. How was it?"

"Why! Didn't you never hear? Well, Foster told the Devil if he would let him do and have all he wanted for so many year, when the time was out, he would give himself, soul and body, to the Devil. He signed the writing with his blood; Foster carried on a putty high hand, folks was afear'd of him. When the time was up, the Devil came: I guess they had a tough battle. Folks said they never heard such screams, and in the morning his legs and arms was found scattered all over the cowyard."

I recognized in this tragic story, Marlowe's Faustus. I was much amused at Lucy's rendering.

A few weeks afterwards she told me how the house where she lived was haunted. I asked her, "Who haunts it?"

"Why!" she said, "it's a woman. She walks up and down them old stairs, dressed in white, looking so sorrowfullike, I know there must have been foul play. And then such noises as we hear overhead! My man says that it's rats. Rats! I know better!"

I thought that Lucy wanted to believe in ghosts, so I didn't try to reason with her,—

 
"For a man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still."
 

Lucy was quite an old woman; and I used to think that washing was too hard work for her; but she seemed very happy. All the while she was rubbing the clothes over the wooden washboard, or wringing them out with her hands, she would be singing old-fashioned songs, such as Jimmy and Nancy, Auld Robin Gray, and another one beginning "In Springfield mountain there did dwell." It was very sad!

These songs were chanted, all in one tune. If the words had not been quaint, and suggestive of a century or more ago, I think the entertainment would have been monotonous,

Lucy brought the news of the neighborhood. One morning she came in, and said: "John King's folks thinks an awful sight of themselves, sence Calline has been off. She has sot herself up marsterly. They have gone to work now and painted all the trays and paint-kags they can find red, and filled them with one thing another, and set them round the house. No good will come of that! When you see every thing painted red, look out for war; it's a sure sign."

One evening late in summer, when I came in from a walk through the fields, I found in the back porch all the implements for cheese-making. Mrs. Wetherell said: "It's too warm to make butter, now dog-days have come in, so I am going to make cheese."

That night all the milk was strained into the large tub. The next morning this milk was stirred and the morning's milk strained into it. Then Mrs. Wetherell warmed a kettleful and poured into the tub, and tried it with her finger to see if it was warm enough. She said: "My rennet is rather weak, so I have to use considerable."

After she had turned the rennet in, she laid the cheese-tongs across the tub, and spread a homespun tablecloth over it, and looking up to me, she said: "In an hour or so that will come."

I made it my business, when the hour was out, to be back in the porch. Mrs. Wetherell was stirring up the thick white curd, and dipping out the pale green whey, with a little wooden dish. After she had "weighed it," she mixed in salt thoroughly. She asked me to hand her her cheese-hoop and cloth, which were lying on the table behind me. She put one end of the cloth into the hoop and commenced filling it with curd, pressing it down with her hand. When it was nearly full she slipped up the hoop a little: "to give it a chance to press," she said. After this, she put the cheese between two cheese-boards, in the press, and began to turn the windlass-like machine, to bring the weights down.

"Now," said she, "I shall let this stay in press all day, then I shall put it in pickle for twenty-four hours. The next night I shall rub it dry with a towel, and put it up in the cheese-room. Now comes the tug-o'-war! I have to watch them close to keep the flies out."

The forerunners of autumn had already touched the hillsides, and my thoughts were turning homeward, when one Saturday morning Mr. Wetherell came in and said: "Miss Douglass, don't you want to ride up to the paster? I'm going up to salt the steers."

Mrs. Wetherell hastened to add: "Yes, you go; you hain't had a ride since you been here. Old Darby ain't fast, but he's good."

Eagerly I accepted the invitation, and in a few minutes we set off.

Darby was a great strong white horse, with minute brown spots all over him. Mr. Wetherell told me stories of all the people, as Darby shuffled by their houses, raising a big cloud of dust.

When we came to a sandy stretch of road, Mr. Wetherell said: "This is what we call the Plains. Here is where we used to have May trainings, years and years ago. Once they had a sham-fight, and I thought I should have died a-laughing. I was nothing but a boy. We always thought so much of the gingerbread we got at training; I used to save my money to spend on that day. Once, when I was about thirteen year old, a passel of us boys got together to talk over training. Jim Barrows said that old Miss Hammet (she lived over behind the hill there) had got a cake baked, with plums in it, for training, and was going to have five cents a slice for it. He said: 'Now, if the rest of you will go into the house and talk with her, I will climb into the foreroom window, and hook the cake out of the three-cornered cupboard.' We all agreed. I went in, and commenced to talk with the old woman; some of the boys leaned up against the door that opened into the foreroom. After a little while we went out and met Jim, down by the spring, and we ate the cake. Some way a-nother it didn't taste so good as we expected. There was an awful outscreech when she found it out. Jim was a mighty smart fellar. He married a girl from Cranberry Medder, and they went down East. I have heard that they were doing fust-rate."

After riding for some time through low, woody places, where the grass grew on each side of the horse's track, we came to the main traveled road. Thistles were blooming and going to seed, all on one stock. Flax-birds were flying among them filling the air with their sweet notes. Soon we turned into a lane, and came to the pasture-bars, Mr. Wetherell said: "You stay here with Darby, and I will drive the steers up to the bars, and salt them."

I got out of the wagon, and unchecked Darby's head, and led him up to a plot of white clover, to get a lunch. Nature seemed to have made an uneven distribution of foretop and fetlock in Darby's case, his foretop was so scanty and his fetlocks so heavy. A fringe of long hairs stood out on his forelegs from his body to his feet, giving him quite a savage look. As I looked down at his large flat feet, I felt glad that he didn't have to travel over macadamized roads.

I sat down on some logs which were lying at one side, and listened to the worms sawing away, under the bark.

Soon Mr. Wetherell came back with the steers, and dropped the salt down in spots. We watched them lick it up.

I asked Mr. Wetherell why those logs were left there.

"O, Bascom is a poor, shiftless kind of a critter. I s'pose the snow went off before he got ready to haul them to the mill; but if he had peeled them in June or July, they would have been all right; but now they will be about sp'iled by the worms."

Mr. Wetherell got Darby turned around after much backing and getting up, for the lane was narrow, and we started homeward.

As we rode slowly along, Mr. Wetherell asked me: "Have you ever been to the beach?"

I told him, "Yes, and I enjoyed it."

He said: "I always liked to go, but Mis' Wetherell has a dread of the water, ever since her brother Judson was drowned."

"Was he a sailor?" I asked.

"Yes, he was a sea-capt'n. He married a Philadelphy woman, and they sailed in the brig Florilla. She was wrecked on the coast of Ireland. She run on a rock, and broke her in two amidships. Her cargo was cotton, the bales floated in ashore, and formed a bridge for a second or so. The first mate and one of the sailors ran in on this bridge, but the next wave took them out and scattered them, and there was no way to save the rest. Judson and his wife, and all the crew, except the mate and one sailor, were all drowned. The mate stayed there for some time, and buried the bodies which washed ashore. He found Judson's body first, and had most given up finding his wife's, when one day she washed into a little cove, and he buried them side by side. He came here to our house, and told us all about it. It was awful. It completely upsot Mis' Wetherell. Her health has been poor for a good many year. She has bad neuralgy spells."

"Come, Darby, get up! you are slower than a growth of white oaks."

After several vigorous jerks, Darby started off at a long, swinging gait, and we soon reached home.

Only once more did I watch the sun go down behind the western hills, lighting them up with a flood of crimson light; while a tender, subdued gleam rested for a moment on the eastern summits, like the gentle kiss a mother gives her babe, when she slips him off her arm to have his nap.