THE LAST SONG OF THE ROBIN.
“Susan, I can see that old farm now in my mind’s eye,—the country road, the guide-post on which was printed ‘20 Miles to Boston.’ I can see the painted tavern, and the dark pond where the mysterious travellers were killed. I can fancy hubbly oak-trees; the way-side orchard; the corner under the trees where the white avens bloomed; the balm bed, the red-pepper patch, the lilac-bushes, and the bouncing-bet. I can hear conquiddles, as we called the bobolinks, as they used to fly and sing in the windward meadows; red-winged blackbirds in the woodland pastures; martin birds under the eaves; and the first song of the robin as he came out of the woods, like the dove from Noah’s Ark, to see if the dry land had appeared. And, Susan, I can hear the last song of the robin.”
The old man’s eye looked over the great prairie, which spread out before him like a sea.
“It didn’t look like that, Susan, where the sun rises and sets in the same corn-field, and the rain-plover cries, and all is so wide, wide, wide.
“Susan, I’ve been thinking. I never told you much about my twin sister, who lives on the old farm now on the North River, in Massachusetts. She’s seventy-five years old, come yesterday. I’ve had a letter from her. She’s in trouble, Susan. I feel that I ought to go to her, old as I am. I do, Susan.”
“You are too old, grandpa.”
“The old place is about to be sold at auction. She says so in the letter, written in the same hand that we used to write together when we sat side by side on the wooden bench at school. She says that the poorhouse will soon be her home, but that there is One coming round soon who will settle all things. She means, Susan—Well, you know who it is that soon comes round and settles all things when a person passes the shadow of seventy years. I am able to go, Susan, and I must go. Somehow I can feel invisible hands pushing me like, as of the old folk, and I have dreamed twice of the last song of the robin.
“What was that? Well, well, the robins used to sing their last songs in the Indian-summer weather, before they went to their covers in the deep woods for the long winter. It was peculiarsome like. It was when the apples and leaves were falling, leaving bare the nests in the trees; after the wild-geese had flown over, and the partridges had begun to fly. I’ve heard ’em many a time. I would like to hear them once more, as I used to hear, them among the red trees by the old cranberry meadows. You may think me queer, Susan, and haunted like; but I long to see that old slanting roof just once more, and my twin sister, who was rocked in the same cradle with me, and is now in sorrow, and to hear that last song of the robin. It seems as though at times I could hear that now.”
He listened. There was a murmur of the wind in the cottonwood-trees.
“It is comin’ Thanksgiving, Susan. It makes me think of the folks and times that are gone; of the succotash, pandowdy, and puddings, and pumpkin pies. There never was no such days anywhere like those, and my hungry heart aches to spend one more Thanksgiving with my sister Susan. The last one I spent there was sort of queer. The old minister he ate of all the dishes in the kitchen before the table was set, and then there were so many of them that it made him heavy like, and he fell asleep saying grace, and we sat there feeling awkward like, and the victuals all got cold. Oh, how I would like to talk over those old times with Susan, my old sister Susan!
“And, Susan, my little granddaughter, I hid some letters behind a board in the haunted garret under the candle-poles, and there’s going to be a vendue, and I want to see them once again. That was more than fifty years ago.
THE POST OFFICE.
“Haunted garret? Such a place seems queer to you, does it, Susan? We have no haunted garrets here out West. All the old houses and farms in the Cape towns had their ghost-stories, and a family couldn’t have amounted to much who hadn’t been followed by a ghost sometime.”
It was near sunset. Like a high arch of glory rose the red light in the western air,—liquid rubies and gold. Against the sunset stood the black outlines of some Lombardy poplars and cottonwood-trees, and under the trees were three graves.
The old man’s face turned towards the graves. He sat musing for a time in deep thought. The wind rippled through the faded leaves, and scattered them about the graves.
“Susan!”
“Well, grandpa?”
“Susan!”
“Yes, I hear. What is it? Grandpa, I was thinking of the haunted garret.”
“Your grandmother and I brought those trees here. They were twigs then, and she was a bride. I brought her here some years after I took my claim. Now her grave is there, and the graves of two of our own little ones. I shall come back again. You and my sister Susan are all that is left me now,—just old Susan and young Susan. She needs me. He will take care of you. If I live a week, I am going to rocky old New England once more. I hear voices calling me sometimes, and then there drifts into the air that last song of the robin, peculiarsome like.”
“What were the letters you hid behind the board, grandpa?”
“In the haunted garret?”
“Yes.”
“I may tell you sometime. It is a long story. It was in the garret where I once saw the ghost of old Rachel, who ground red peppers with a calash over her head. They used to hear her wandering about at night in the herb-room, pounding, pounding, pounding with a pestle. What times those were!”
“I, too, would like to see the old house, and my great-aunt, and eat a Thanksgiving dinner with some of the good old families. What do you say, grandpa?”
“You would? Well, you may go too. You’ll hear them, all those ghost-stories and wonder-tales, right where they happened.”
The girl’s face brightened up with pleasure, followed by a doubtful shadow, as of ghostly thoughts. She was still thinking of the haunted garret.
The old man sat dreaming again. He at last said, “Susan!”
“Yes.”
“Susan!”
“Yes, I am listening.”
“I have a secret for you.”
“Yes? Let me hear.”
“We will not let the folks know that we are coming. We will meet ’em as strangers like. Old Susan will not know me—likely not. Not know me? and we were born on the same day and rocked in the same cradle. It takes two to be happy always, and I used to be happy with her.”
The girl sat thinking.
“Grandpa!”
But the old man’s mind was in New England now. He was listening in dreams to his sister’s voice, and perhaps the last song of the robin.
“Grandpa!”
“Yes, Susan.”
“Why could we not bring her back with us?”
“The old well is there, and the walls and the rooms where the folks all were married and died. We could not bring her back. There are some things that money cannot do. We might bring her body back; only that, Susan.”
“But those things are to be sold?”
“Yes; but they are there.”
“And we will be there too, on Thanksgiving Day.”
“Yes; under the old roof on which I used to hear the rain fall in the warm summer eves.”
The old man’s face contracted and turned away. He was crying.
“I have not cried before for years, Susan. Sing me that old song that your mother used to sing when you was a baby. They called it ‘Ben Bolt.’”
A piano stood in one corner of the room, and over it soon floated the words of the haunting song:
“Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,
Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown?”
At the words,
“In the old church-yard by the orchard, Ben Bolt,
In the valley so sweet and so low,”
the old man bent over his cane, and great tears again ran down his cheeks.
“I used to sing, Susan, and play the violin in the old house at home. Father made me promise not to take that with me. He said it would hinder me. He meant well.”
Susan sang:
“But of all the boys that were schoolmates then,
There is left but you and me.”
Then there fell a silence, and the western twilight deepened, and the walls of the sun seemed melting down.
“Thank you, my girl. That reminds me of the old times and the last song of the robin.”
They sat in silence, save that the west winds rustled amid the withering leaves of the old cottonwoods.
One cool day in September Susan alighted from her horse after a long ride over the prairie. She was met at the door by her grandfather.
“I’ve brought you another letter from the old home,” she said. “It is in aunt’s hand, and I think that she is in very great trouble. See! it is blotted.”
The old man put on his spectacles, and held the letter close to his eyes. “Yes, she is in trouble, you may depend. I knew how it would be. Her hand shook when she wrote that. Let me open it.”
He sat down on the rude piazza and read the letter, rocking at times nervously.
“Yes, she is in deep trouble, sure enough, Susan. We must go. I haven’t done just right, Susan, by your aunt; I haven’t, now. When I was young, I used to climb trees, and so hide from her and leave her, and she used to cry. I can see her now. I do feel as though I had been climbing a tree all of my life and hiding and leaving her. It didn’t add to the stature of Zaccheus to climb a tree, but it did add to his reputation. So it is with me, Susan. I’ve gained some property by immigrating here to the prairies, but I am Zaccheus still, and I hear a voice calling me to come down. That’s the way we used to talk in the old New England times, in figures like, when I thought the tree-tops reached clear up to the sky.”
“What does aunt write, grandpa?”
“The old place is going to be sold by vendue, and the debts will take all—all.”
“What is a vendue?”
“Oh, it’s like this. When property people lose almost all they have, and can’t pay their mortgages, then comes the sheriff, and after him a man whom we call an auctioneer, and the auctioneer cries ‘Going, going, gone,’ and when he gets through there’s not so much as a birch broom left.”
The old man rocked uneasily.
“It’s my fault, Susan. I want to tell you, though I do it to my shame, what a woman your old aunt is. She always put a person’s feeling above money. You see, it was this way: I had a fever to go West, and to marry, and Susan she wanted to marry a young farmer who owned an old Cape farm. But one of us had to stay with the folks. She was tender-hearted, Susan was, and she used to love me more than her own life,—she always loved others more than herself,—and one day, under the apple-trees, she said to me, ‘Martin,’ said she, ‘you may go West, and I’ll live with father and mother.’ When I came to be propounded for the Church, my conscience troubled me so that I made a covenant with myself that I would always be true to my twin sister Susan. And I nailed that covenant behind a board in the garret. And now I am going back to find it, and to keep it. Just hear this letter. She says:—
“‘Mother’s long sickness caused the mortgage, and the interest on it grew. Now they are going to sell the old place at vendue, and I’ll have to go to the poorhouse, or else live on the church, which is poor. Even my Thanksgiving turkeys will be sold.’
“Did you hear that, Susan? I remember how we used to go together hunting turkeys’ nests when, we were young. A turkey is a sly bird, and hides her nest, and always goes an opposite way when she starts for her nest. How we used to follow the turkeys slyly amid the dews, wild roses, and laurels, so as to find their nests! And now even her turkeys are to be sold! Susan, I feel as though I hadn’t done as I ought to. I must go back East, and I will do the right thing in the end. I will keep the covenant. It was Susan that gave me a chance in life. I can hear the old folks that are dead callin’, ‘Come home, come home;’ seems as though I could.”
“Grandfather, have you any spare money?”
“What makes you ask that, child?”
“Couldn’t you buy the old place and give it to her?”
“To Susan? To Susan? Why, bless your heart, that’s just what I’ve just been thinking! If I ought to—and a man ought to do what he ought, or he’ll feel just as he hadn’t ought to, and I feel that way now. No, Susan, none of those auction-attending folks shall eat my sister Susan’s turkeys this year. We’ll get ready and go. You never saw the sea, did you?”
“No; nor old houses with ghost-rooms. It all seems like a story.”
“Nor rocks, nor walls, nor great apple-orchards, nor woods of old oak-trees?”
“No, nor a Thanksgiving—a real true one, grandpa.”
“Well, child, you shall see a real old New England Thanksgiving this year, and I think it will be one well worth seeing. We’ll roast those turkeys ourselves. They’re saying ‘quit, quit’ to the mortgage now. I’m going to keep my covenant. It makes me happy to think of it. But, as I said, we will not let them know that we are coming. And, Susan, Susan, you maybe will hear that last song of the robin.”
MANUFACTURES BUILDING AND ELECTRIC FOUNTAIN.
The old man paced the piazza, and hummed, in a broken voice,—
“How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to view;
The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wildwood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew!
“I used to know the man that made that song,” he said. “He was a son of a Revolutionary soldier who lived at Scituate. He went to live in New York. Strange that people will go to live so far away! I used to hear the boys sing it during the war,” he added, absently, “when they would get Thanksgiving boxes from home. Seems as though I could hear it now in the air: there are some songs that haunt one’s heart, Susan: it seems as though I could hear it far away. Listen!”
He listened. The prairie air was still. He heard the song, but Susan—she did not hear. The wind rippled through the dry leaves of the cottonwoods over the three graves.
There are probably no roads in our country that are so legend-haunted as those between Boston and Plymouth. The making of those roads by the Massachusetts and Plymouth Bay colonies was the first map of the nation. The men who built them, and guarded them by heavy stone walls, were the descendants of some of the best families of England, whose soul-training had led them to place principle above wealth, pleasure, or fame. On their simple rural farms they lived, attended the church and the folkmote, as the town meeting may be called, and they made the latter the pattern of all future republics.
Their farms, with the gray stone walls, cool wells, and great elms, retaining their names, still remain. The purple swallows come to them as of old in the spring-time, and the ospreys, or fishing-hawks, drift over at noon, wheeling in the sun. The partridge and quail may still be found in the woodlands and woodland pastures, and a few woodpeckers may still be heard tapping the trees.
The byways in their seclusion are even more poetic than the main highways. The wild grape and clematis there cover the sinking walls. The ancient graveyards are there, and their slate stones, with their curious death’s-heads and virtuous poetry, still may be seen zigzagging as it were among the bright sumachs. The slanting roofs are covered with moss, and the great barn doors open to the sea.
It was down this way that the old man Martin Marlowe and his granddaughter rode in one of the last stage-coaches that ever passed down the winding roads by the sea,—past the homes of the two Presidents Adams, past the church of the eloquent Henry Ware, past the old Scituate farm, where Woodworth lived, who wrote “The Old Oaken Bucket,” to a once famous but now forgotten neighborhood on the North River, where a thousand ships had been built, and among them the one which first entered the Columbia River of Oregon, and that gave the river its name. The old Winslow place was near, as were the green farms on the Marshfield meadows, where Daniel Webster came to live, and the Winslow reservation, where live the last of the Wampanoags.
The old man seemed dwelling in the past as the stage rattled along.
“There are not many of them left now,” he said to Susan. “How I shall miss seeing my old friends! All that a man can have in this world is his friends, and when they go his world is gone.”
He looked out on the great elms, which were flaming with color, and dropping their leaves in golden showers. The weather was warm and the air had a swampy smell.
The old man began to tell the legends of the old houses and places as they passed along.
“Susan, there’s where old Parson White used to live in the Indian days. His house stood in the meadow; there’s the chimney there yet—see?—down by the alder-bushes. He preached nigh on to seventy year, and he lived to be ninety. He preached to the Indians in Eliot’s time, when old Waban was living. One day a good Indian came to him, as I’ve hearn the old folks tell, and said to him, ‘Matthew—Mark—Luke—John—Jonah.’ And the tall parson talked to him about his soul and redemption and heaven, and then gave him a mug of cider to encourage him in his inquiries. It did. He came again, and the minister was busy writing one of his long sermons that turned the hour-glass twice. ‘Matthew—Mark—Luke—John—Jonah,’ said the Indian. But the parson’s mind was in the skies now. So the poor Indian repeated over the Scripture names again; but the parson’s mind was absent, thinking,—Parson White was great on thinking. Then the Indian pounded with his walking-stick, making a great noise after each name, and especially after ‘Jonah.’ That brought the old parson down from his Jacob’s ladder. ‘What do you mean?’ he shouted, rising up like a steeple. ‘Cider!’ said the Indian, and the poor parson dropped his face. He was discouraged, Susan.”
The stage stopped here and there at the country stores, about whose doors hung woollens for winter wear, and on the wooden steps of which were barrels of apples, onions, and potatoes.
One of the saddest sights on a New England byway is a dead church, with its broken tower and silent bell, in some neighborhood where the “boys” have nearly all gone to the cities and the West. The coach rolled by such a one, with its briery graveyard and broken wall. The old man saw it, and his memory of boyhood legends revived again.
“Susan—Susan—Parson White preached his last sermon there. It is boarded up now. See the old bell that used to make the hills echo! Parson White had gone eighty then; almost ninety he must have been.
“It was a Sunday morning in balm-breathing June, with the wild roses blooming, and the orioles singing, and the bobolinks toppling in the clover. The windows were open, and the shadows of the elms fell across them. The communion-table was spread in front of the tall pulpit, which was hung with silk curtains under the sounding-board. Parson White, he went up the pulpit stairs and began to pray. The old folks used to say that they never heard such a prayer as that. He seemed to be looking into heaven. Suddenly he stopped. There was a long silence. The church was so still you might have heard the chippering of the wrens in the old trees. He said then: ‘The horsemen of Israel, and the chariots thereof,’ Then he was silent again, and then he seemed talking to himself, and said, in a low voice:—
“‘My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this,
And sit and sing herself away
To everlasting bliss.’
He did not move again. Never. He lay there on the pulpit, his face encircled in the arms of his long black robe, and resting on the Bible. The deacons went up to him softly. He was dead.”
The old man dropped his head in silence for a time. The coach rolled on its dusty way over the red and russet leaves that were falling in the sun.
Little Susan was dreaming too,—of old Susan and haunted rooms and the fairy-like day of Thanksgiving.
“Susan—Susan—we are near the old farm,” said the old man, starting. “There’s the gable just over the savin-trees,—there, with the woodbine on it, where the martin-boxes used to be. Many’s the time I’ve looked out of that window. I was young then, Susan; we do not live twice in this world.”
A strange sound fell on the Western girl’s ears.
“Going! going! How much am I offered for the old family cradle? Fifty cents? Fifty cents am I offered for the old family cradle? Fifty cents for this old oak cradle? One generation has slept in it, and it is good for another. Fifty cents am I offered?”
The old man listened a moment, then thrust his head out of the coach-door, and said to the driver: “Hurry up! I want to bid on that cradle.”
The driver cracked his whip. The coach rolled by a thin grove of trees that partly hid the yard from the way, and a strange scene was brought to view. A crowd of people, young and old, were gathered around an old gray farmhouse with an open door. There were vehicles of almost all kinds about the place, with the horses hitched to the trees. In the yard in front of the door was the furniture of the house, and on a high chair stood the tall form of a country auctioneer, crying the articles for sale in the singsong tone of the old travelling preachers,—a tone that must be first heard to be imitated.
In the doorway, close by a great stone step, sat an old woman in a white cap and calico dress, and a handkerchief crossed over her breast. She was watching the sale. Her face was beautiful in its serenity, hope, and trust. Faith was written in it. She seemed to have a soul that had a life above all changes.
“Is that aunt?” said Susan.
“My girl, I do not know. It looks like her. Does she look like me?”
The stage stopped. The driver called to the auctioneer: “Hold on! Here’s a man that wants to bid on that cradle.”
The auctioneer ceased his singsong, and all eyes were turned on the old man and the girl alighting from the stage. No one knew them.
“Now we are all ready,” began the auctioneer again. “The old oak cradle. How much am I offered for the old oak cradle? Fifty cents am I offered for the oak cradle? Some good people have been rocked in this old cradle, and it is good enough yet. Fifty cents. Seventy-five? Yes, the old gentleman who has just arrived bids seventy-five. Eighty—do I hear it? Eighty now for the old oak cradle? There were many prayers made over that old oak cradle. S-e-v-e-n-t-ee-five! Eighty—do I hear it? Are you all done? S-e-v-e-n-t-ee-five! Going, going, going! Once, do I hear the eighty? Twice, do I hear the eighty? Three times—third and last call—do I hear the eighty? Gone—to—What is your name, stranger?”
“Cash,” said the old man, with a quivering lip, as he passed through the crowd, followed by the wondering girl.
“Sold to Cash,” said the auctioneer. “What have we here? The little oak chair for the child at the table. Are you all ready to bid for the little oak chair for the child at the table? It is as old as the family, and as good as new. Look at it,—the little oak chair for the child at the table,—how much am I offered? Here is another—two of them. How much am I offered for them both?”
THE FORESTRY BUILDING.
The old man Marlowe and Susan take a seat on the great stone step, close to the feet of the serene old woman. Marlowe looks into her face.
Her lip quivered.
“You bought that cradle,” said she. “Were you ever here before?”
“Yes, many years ago. I used to know your father.”
“You did!—and my mother, too?”
“Yes; they were good people.”
“They are buried over there, under the savin-bushes,” said the old woman. “I was rocked in that there cradle, and my twin brother, who went out West. I wish that he could have had that cradle. I think of him all the time of late. He and a little granddaughter are all that’s left. The auctioneer spoke true—he did; there’s been many a prayer made over that cradle, and now it is gone out of the family. I’ve prayed that it might not be so. It will all be right by-and-by. The Lord is tedious, but He’s sure. I almost lose my faith sometimes, and I can hardly keep back my tears now. Why did you come here, stranger?”
“To spend Thanksgiving. I used to live in this town.”
“Have you any relations here?”
“Yes, a sister. I came to visit her, and I want to buy some of the old furniture; it looks so natural.”
“There’s to be no more Thanksgivings for me in this world. Stranger, it does seem rather hard. I’ve always been industrious, and have done my best. Stranger, it is hard when a poor lone woman like me, that never did any one harm, can neither die nor live. Did you ever have any trouble, stranger? You have? Then you do feel for me, don’t you? The Lord forgive me!”
The voice of the auctioneer rang out, “How much am I offered?”
“Fifty cents,” says old Marlowe, looking at the two chairs as the auctioneer held one up in either hand.
“Fifty cents for two family chairs for children at the table. Oak—good as ever—fifty cents! Going, going, going, at fifty cents. Is that all? Fifty cents? Do I hear sixty? Sixty—do I hear it? Going, going; once—do I hear it? Twice—do I hear it? Three times—do I hear it? Are you all done? Fifty cents. Sold to—What shall I call you, stranger?”
“Cash,” said the old man.
“Cash again,” said the auctioneer.
The old woman touches Marlowe on the shoulder: “Have you any children?”
“No, my good woman. Only my grandchild here.”
“What is her name?”
“Susan.”
“That is my name, stranger. My twin brother and I used to sit in those chairs. I wish I were able to save some of these things for him. It is hard, isn’t it, stranger? But you and I will never be young again. The withered stalk never blooms any more. I’ve ’most got through.”
She looked out over the sunny fields in the last glow of the Indian-summer days.
“Stranger, you came home to spend Thanksgiving. I’ll have my next Thanksgiving in a better world than this. I did hope to see my twin brother once more, but that can never be. The sun that goes down will find me a burden to the world. There’s the old clock; they’re going to sell that, too. It struck on the day that I was born, and at all the weddings and funerals and Thanksgiving days. Are you going to buy that, too? I wish you would. I have a good feeling for you,—somehow I’m drawn towards you. I feel as though you felt for me. I’ve wound that clock myself nigh on to sixty years.”
“The old eight-day clock comes next. Many a day that clock has seen, and it is good yet. How much am I offered for the old family clock? Start it, some one. I’ll give five dollars for it myself.”
“Six,” said the old man on the door-step.
“Are you going to buy that, too?” said old Susan. “I’m proper glad to hear ye bid on that. How many times I’ve heard it strike one at the family funerals, and then seen the minister rise beside the coffin and say, ‘Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.’ I used to hear it strike one at night, when I watched with my twin brother Martin, who went West, in the weeks and weeks when he laid between life and death with the typhus fever. I wish that he could be here to-day.
“Stranger, do you know of what I’ve been thinkin’? Of course you don’t. I’ve just been wishing like, dreaming like, that brother Martin would come here, as you have come, and would bid off the old farm, and that I might die here at last in peace—where they all died. I’ve been dreamin’ just that dream. It comes to me. Oh, what a Thanksgiving this old heart would have, could such a dream as that come true!”
“Six dollars I am offered. Six, six, six. Going, going, going. Do I hear seven?”
“Seven,” bid a neighbor.
“Seven—do I hear ten? Seven dollars am I offered. Yes, once eight, and nine. Do I hear ten? Ten, ten, ten—do I hear it?”
“Ten,” said the old man on the step.
“Ten I am offered. Do I hear the twelve? Ten, ten, ten. Going, going, going, at ten dollars. Once—do I hear it? Twice—do I hear it? Third and last call. Going at ten dollars, to—”
“Cash,” said the old man.
“Stranger,” said the auctioneer, “what shall we do with these things that you have bought?”
The crowd gathered densely about the door-step to hear the reply.
“You may leave them right where they are. I have a good use for them.”
The parlor looking-glass was next offered. The old man on the step bought that also. Then the old empty parrot-cage, and he bought that.
“I’m glad that you have bought the lookin’-glass,” said old Susan. “What if all the faces that have looked into it could appear again! What if I could see there my father and mother young again—and Martin! What does make me think so much of Martin of late? Seems as though sometimes he was hoverin’ around me. There, they are going to sell the Concord musket and the dinner-horn! How many times I’ve blown that old horn just at twelve o’clock, to call the folks to dinner! Martin learned me how to blow it when he was a boy. We used to blow a sea-shell at first.”
The sale continued without any regard to the order of the value of the articles,—the parlor furniture, old school-books and almanacs, china and pewter mugs. The old man on the step bought them all.
Mysterious looks began to pass from one to another of the country folks. Why was the quiet old man buying all those things? What was he going to do with them? Would he buy the house and farm? Had he any interest in the poor old woman who was watching him now with straining nerves and intense interest?
After the sale of the furniture the auctioneer said: “We will next offer the house and farm. The old woman will show you the deeds. There is no encumbrance on the property. We will stop the sale for an hour. Then you will be ready for the finish. Stranger, where shall we put all these things that you have been buying?”
“I’ll tell you later; I’m not ready to answer yet. Never mind me—don’t crowd around me, friends. I’m an honest man. Go and take your lunches under the trees.”
There was a jingle of bells on the clear bright air. The bread-cart man was coming. The people bought gingerbread and bunns, and lounged under the cool trees in a spot of ground where stood a large and a small grindstone, and overhead hung scythes and corn-knives. There was a buzzing of voices, and talking in a suppressed tone, and great inquiry about the stranger who simply called himself “Cash,” and who was purchasing everything.
The old woman now tried to find out the secret of the stranger’s interest in these things.
“You and I must be about the same age,” she said.
“Yes,” said the old man; “the same suns have lighted us both. They used to tell a ghost-story about the chambers here. My girl has often asked me about them. Did you ever see anything strange upstairs?”
“No; but I found, just before the auction, some papers hidden behind a board. They read mighty curious, and were signed with what the writing said was blood.”
“You don’t say?” said the old man, starting. “What were they?”
“It was a covenant that some one had made with the Lord. I think that it was Martin’s. Seemed as though his father asked him to make it. It promised many things. There was one thing in it that made me write to him. Whoever made it promised to be faithful to me. The signature was faded. It was made on the day that the writer was propounded for church.”
Martin Marlowe’s face fell. Had he been true to that covenant that he remembered so vividly?
“Say, stranger,” said old Susan, “I hope you will excuse me; but what may your name be?”
“Never mind my family history now. I will tell you later more about myself. What was the story about the haunted chamber? Tell it to my girl here.”
“About Rachel, who raised red peppers, and used to appear with a calash over her head?”
“Yes. That ghost was the terror of all the children and hired people. Rachel was an old maiden lady. She used to have charge of the balm bed, the sage bed, and the pepper bed, and the dried apples and red peppers, and sold them to get money for the church and her clothes. She ground the red peppers in the garret, and to keep the pepper dust from burning out her eyes, she used a calash, which was a great bonnet, with whalebone ribs, that stood up from the head all around as though it were hung on the air, and over the calash she wore a long green veil. She put over her body a long white nightgown; and when we went up to the top of the garret stairs to see her pound, she looked kind of awful and scary, like a picture in the old ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ When I heard that she had come back to haunt the old herb-room in the garret, and I pictured in my mind how she used to look, it fairly made my flesh creep. Of all ghosts I wouldn’t have liked to see old Rachel with her calash like a shay’s top and her pound, pound, pound. She used to punish me when I was a boy by snapping her thumb and finger on the top of my head. I remember it all as though it were yesterday. I once went up to the herb-room to get some—”
ENTRANCE TO EGYPTIAN THEATRE, STREET IN CAIRO.
“Not herbs, my good friend,” said Susan.
“No; some preserves or cake. They used to keep the goodies there, and I had been going there pretty often in a quiet way, when I felt, just as I was bending over the marmalade-jar, a snap on the top of my head, and I looked up suddenly, and there was the most awful sight that I ever saw,—old Rachael herself, in her white nightgown, calash, and all. I scooted after the first glance, and rolled over and over down the first flight of stairs, and leaped down the second. No barn or chimney swift could have gone quicker. I didn’t sleep much for a long time after that, and I never dared to tell the story, because I was at the marmalade-jar when she appeared. I never told it to anybody until after I went away.
“I used to lay awake until morning, and when I heard the wings of the swallows in the chimney my heart would beat like a trip-hammer, for I thought it was old Rachael and her pepper-mill. When the fowls crowed for day I would feel safe again, for no ghost ever could appear after the cock crew in the morning, so the old folks said. Susan, what do you think that ghost was?”
“Oh, my good friend, how can I tell it now? I think—oh, I know it was poor old grandmother! She scared Martin once in that way to keep him—oh, how can I say it?—to keep him from getting at her plum-cake.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me so, and told me never to tell.”
The two looked at each other.
“That accounts for it. I always thought it was kind o’ strange that they should have whalebone calashes in another world.”
“Stranger, how familiar you seem to be with this old place, the swallows in the chimney and all! You say you used to know our folks. Any relation?”
“I used to work for your father.”
“Did ye?”
The two looked at each other—after fifty years.
“Somehow I almost feel related,” said old Susan.
The shining hour of noon was now passed. The auctioneer rang his bell.
“Are you ready for the sale of the farm? Thirty acres and the house and buildings. Clear deed. How much am I offered? Some one start the farm. Been in the same family one hundred and thirty years. How much am I offered?”
“Five hundred dollars,” said a well-to-do-looking farmer named Pool.
“Five hundred dollars. Do I hear the six? Five hundred dollars am I offered. Do I hear the six? Five hundred dollars.”
“Six,” bid another.
“Seven,” another.
“Eight.”
“Nine.”
“Nine hundred dollars I am offered. Do I hear the thousand? Nine hundred dollars. Nine, nine, nine. Going, going, nine hundred dollars. One thousand—do I hear it? Nine hundred dollars. Are you all done? Going, going—”
“One thousand dollars.”
The voice came from the old man on the step. Old Susan rocked violently, and appeared greatly agitated. The people gathered in a close mass around the door-step, all eyes fixed upon the venerable stranger.
“One thousand dollars. Do I hear eleven hundred? One thousand dollars am I offered. Going, going, going. Once, twice, third and last call, going, going, going, for one thousand dollars. The hammer is about to fall. One th-o-u-s-a-n-d dollars. Sold.”
There was a deep silence that followed the fall of the hammer.
“Gone,” said the old woman, and she threw her apron over her white head and bent over, adding: “I am homeless now. I never thought to see a day like this.”
“What is to be done with these things?” asked the auctioneer.
The old man rises. His girl stands up beside him.
“Susan,” said he.
Old Susan uncovered her pitiful face.
“Susan, what will you have done with these things? I have bought them for you.”
Susan stops her rocking. She looks dazed. Her face is upturned, and her blue eye looks piercingly into the eye of the tall old man.
“I would have you have them. You do pity me, don’t you? It will do me good to think that you have them. You have spoken to me kindly.”
“The furniture shall all be brought back into the house again,” says the quiet old man. “The cradle, clock, and looking-glass shall all be placed where they were before.”
“To whom are the papers to be made out?” asks the auctioneer.
“My good friend, we shall need no new deeds. The old ones will do. I used to know the family when I was a boy, and Susan’s father and mother did much for me. To-morrow is Thanksgiving, and I shall spend it here. I’m going to be good to Susan for the old folks’ sake.”
He bends over old Susan. She sits like one dead. He takes her withered hand, stoops down and kisses her, and says,—
“I’ll let the place to her.”
There was a silence in the air that Indian-summer afternoon, and for many minutes the silence was unbroken. A woodpecker tapped a hollow tree at last, and a sea-bird on wide wings went screaming by.
“Let the place to me?” says old Susan. “Stranger, you are good, like one sent forth out of the doors of heaven, but I have no money. I must be plain, stranger. I have no money, and how are these old hands to earn any? Look at them. Their work is done.”
She bends her gray head.
“Stranger, I want to say something to you in private. I have something on my soul, and it troubles me. They have kept back a part of the price.”
“What?”
“The neighbors, some of them, the Brewster boys, they’ve driven away my Thanksgiving turkeys.”
“Why, my good woman?”
“So that the auctioneer should not sell them. The neighbors said that my Thanksgiving turkeys should not be sold. Now that was kind in ’em, wasn’t it? But it wasn’t quite right. I’ve always done just the thing that I thought to be right. My motto has been, ‘I will be what I ought to be.’ I’m poor, stranger, but, except the turkeys, my conscience is clear. My folks were all good people, as you know, if you used to work here when a boy, notwithstanding that grandmother used to keep the children away from the herb-room with old Rachel’s gown and calash. Now, stranger, what would you do? The folks here wouldn’t like it if I were to tell the auctioneer; they’re too good to me. But I must tell now; I must be honest, stranger. You are so good to me. I don’t understand it. It is all a wonderment; but the Lord will make it plain. Seems as though I was dreaming.”
She looks out over the hills, which are flaming with autumn glows. She starts.
“Stranger, there’s one other thing that I want to tell you. There’s another thing that I’ve kept back. But that is honest. My twin brother Martin had a violin, and he left it here. I’ve felt that it isn’t theirs; it’s his. He used to sing in the church over there. You may see the steeple now. And he used to play on the violin.”
There was a new movement among the people in the yard. One of the neighbors came up to the steps.
“It’s too bad, Susan; they’ve found those turkeys. The dog scented ’em out, and he’s driving ’em home. It is too bad; they might have left ye a Thanksgiving dinner.”
There was great gobbling in the hillside pasture. A flock of turkeys, one of which was white, was half running and half flying towards the house, followed by the auctioneer’s dog. One of the gobblers had lost his tail feathers, and he flew up in a zigzag way, and alighted in a maple-tree. Another turkey followed him, flying heavily and clumsily, and crying, almost like a human voice, “Quit! quit!”
“Stranger,” said old Susan, “seems’s though that turkey spoke, as Balaam’s turkey, if he had one, might have done. Stranger, I raised them turkeys myself, and I hoped that I might have one myself; and that perhaps—I dreamed of it, stranger—perhaps my twin brother Martin, who went out West, might be here, and that we might have one of them for Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll buy the turkeys for you.”
“You—well, you are proper good. But I don’t understand these things. I’ve never been used to receiving anything from strangers, though the neighbors have always been good to me. They tried not to have the farm sold, but it was the law. Stranger, it had to be—it was the law.”
The auctioneer mounted the bench again, rang his bell, and swung his hammer.
“There’s one thing we’ve overlooked. Hear, all! Here are the things that everybody wants. Turkeys—to-morrow is Thanksgiving. A fine lot of fat turkeys, and a white one. Just look at that fat old gobbler up in that tree! One seldom sees a finer bird than that. And look at that hen-turkey—”
“Quit! quit!” exclaimed the beautiful bird, in great astonishment, on seeing all eyes turned towards her.
“That’s the mother turkey,” said old Susan. “She’s lost her family before. She is a cosset turkey. I raised her in the chimney-corner. She is used to coming into the house to be fed.”
“How much am I offered for this fine lot of turkeys? Just a dozen of them. Twelve dollars. I am offered twelve dollars. Do I hear the thirteen? Twelve dollars, twelve dollars. Thirteen—thirteen I am offered. Thirteen—fourteen. Fifteen—do I hear it? Fourteen dollars. Going, going, going. Once, do I hear it? Twice, do I hear it? Third and last call—f-o-u-r-t-e-e-n dollars.”
He lifted his hammer.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen dollars—fifteen I am offered. Going, going, going, for fifteen dollars. Are you all done? Going for fifteen dollars to—”
“Martin Marlowe,” said the old man in a firm voice.
He stood up and uncovered his white head. Old Susan’s form dropped together as though she had been smitten. She buried her face in her lap, and sobbed as she used to do in childhood.
The neighbors gather silently around the door-step, among the myrtles and bouncing-bet. Some are whispering, some laughing, and a few are crying.
“Susan,” says the old man, “get me my violin.”
The old woman sent for the instrument, and the old man saw that it had not been wholly out of use. He tuned it, and lifted it into the air. “Susan, we used to sing together in church, over there. What did we use to say on Thanksgiving days?
“I remember, neighbors. I’m going to play that hymn. My voice is almost gone, but I want you to sing it with me.”
He lifts the bow. “Tune—‘Hamburg.’”
The music floated out on the mellow autumn air, the violin playing as in the old church days. Before the people ran the river to the sea. The air was still; nature seemed listening.
“God is the Refuge of His saints
When storms of sharp distress invade;
Ere we can offer our complaints,
Behold Him present with His aid.
“Let mountains from their seats be hurled
Down to the deep and buried there,
Convulsions shake the solid world,
Our faith shall never yield to fear.
“Loud may the troubled ocean roar,
In sacred peace our souls abide,
While every nation, every shore,
Trembles and dreads the swelling tide.
“There is a stream whose gentle flow
Supplies the city of our God,
Life, love, and joy still gliding through,
And watering our divine abode.
“That sacred stream, thy Holy Word,
Our grief allays, our fear controls;
Sweet peace thy promises afford,
And give new strength to fainting souls.
“Zion enjoys her Monarch’s love,
Secure against a threatening hour;
Nor can her firm foundation move,
Built on His truth, and armed with power.”
“Now sing the Doxology!” He lifted his bow again. People turn aside their faces to hide their tears. Then the strains of thanksgiving rose up under the glimmering trees. And old Susan stood up and sung.
It is near sunset now. The red sky shines through the skeleton limbs of the still trees. The crows are cawing afar over a dead corn-field. The jaws are calling in the savin-bushes. Old Susan looks into her brother’s face. She takes little Susan by the hand.
A bird comes flying through the air out of the woods and alights on the top of an elm. It has a red breast, which shines in the sunset. It lifts its brown wings joyfully and begins to sing.
It was the last song of the robin.[1]
[1]This story is used by permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers. I wrote it originally for the Thanksgiving number of “Harper’s Weekly,” 1893.
ELECTRICITY AND MINES BUILDINGS.
CHAPTER II.
THE STORY OF THE OPENING OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.
SINGLE member of the Folk Lore Society was in Chicago at the opening of the Exposition. He returned a few days after the event. It was one of the plans of this Society to have its members give accounts of the new places they visited, and a meeting was called on the return of this fortunate member to hear him relate the story of the May Day opening of the Fair.
The story[2] increased the interest among the members in Mr. Marlowe’s visit. What suggestions might not Mr. Marlowe have to make?
[2]This account was written by Mr. C. A. Stephens for the “Youth’s Companion.”