Grandpa, as I have said, was impatient and irascible; he was easily moved to profanity; but he was a man of probity of life and character and a hater of shams. His sense of humour was keen, also his sense of justice. He was a mason by trade; had built the brick church in the town, the old Academy, and a few other fine old brick buildings standing there to-day. I used to look upon these with pride, saying to myself, “Grandpa built that—and that”; though, since my earliest recollection, he had not worked at his trade. He led an active life up to his eighty-sixth year about his village farm, with his cows and his pigs, and his haying in the low-lying meadows. I can see him now riding his black horse, straight and sturdy, on his way to the pasture with the cows. Often they were wayward and the boys in the street would annoy him. I used to feel chagrined beyond words when I heard him swearing at the cows, or at the boys, and saw him brandishing his whip in the air. Mother felt the same. I could detect a look of relief on her face those days when Grandpa rode peaceably by with the cows.
Grandma was not pious, she was a saint. Though a church member, she seldom went to church. Toiling from morning till night, she endured hardship, harshness, and pain with a sweet reasonableness that endeared her to all. Grandpa’s impatience and shouting never provoked complaints from her. She seemed to think his quick temper and deafness excused him.
In contrast to her hard workaday life I was always dreaming of the romance of Grandma’s early days. Filling in related facts with fancies, I pored over her early picture with its quaint arrangement of gown and hair, rejoicing in traces of her girlish beauty. I liked her quaint name, Eunice (a cousin of hers, a courtly old gentleman, used to call her Eu-ni’-ce—that was beautiful, but Grandpa uncompromisingly pronounced it Eu’-nis); I liked the names of her sisters, too—Thankful, Peace, and Nancy.
In retrospect I mourned with my great-grandfather Albro when he lost his young wife and had to scatter his baby girls among their relatives. Near neighbours, John Gear and wife, had begged for little Eunice, then less than two years old. Though he let them take her, he had refused their repeated requests to adopt her. But one morning the neighbours were astonished to find the Gear house dismantled and deserted, the couple having stolen away in the night. They were bound to have that child. No trace of them could be obtained. That was in 1813. They easily escaped detection, though for years the poor father inquired diligently of chance strangers and travellers for news of the fugitives.
The Gears journeyed to a distant county. Eunice was reared in ignorance of her real parentage. Even when she married, her foster parents were loth to let her leave them. Her own home and children soon claimed all her thoughts, and she lived on unaware of the tragedy in the life of her father.
There was a certain youth, Otis Sprague, to whom Grandma had been attached before marrying Grandpa; at least, she went to parties with him. (I can’t tell just how much of this is my own romancing, but I convinced myself he was a disappointed suitor.) He left home in the early years after Grandma’s marriage, journeying to Washington county, the home of his ancestors. (I used to make believe he left because he could not bear to see Grandma the wife of another.) Visiting among his kindred, he came upon his uncle, my great-grandfather. As usual, the old man inquired of the traveller what parts he had come from, and then ventured, “Did you ever chance to meet a man, Gear—John Gear?”
“John Gear? Why, yes—there’s a John Gear lives in our place. I know him well.”
I could see the old man trembling with joy—the long-expected answer come at last! Faltering as he tried to frame the next question, he hesitated so long the young man thought him a little daft:
“And did you—has he—is there—did you ever hear tell of Eunice—a child with big blue eyes and”—then he broke off, afraid to question further—she might be dead, or, if living, must be a woman now.
Otis had his own reasons, I was confident, for remembering Eunice. He knew just how those wistful blue eyes looked, and how the soft brown hair waved over her forehead. Seeing at once that this meant more to the old man than he could express, Otis answered the unasked questions; told him there had been a Eunice Gear, eldest daughter of John Gear (for the childless couple had later had children born to them). She had married a young mason a few years ago—Crandall by name—quick tempered, but a good fellow; they had two babies when he came away, and he guessed there was another one a-coming. Yes, he went to school with her—took her to a party once.