VIII
IN WAR TIME[ToC]
The sun that morning had touched the gold of the daffodils with promise of a clear day; but before it was half way to its meridian hour, the air grew chill, the wind veered suddenly to the northeast, the sky darkened angrily, and out of the clouds, like white petals from some celestial orchard, came a flurry of great, soft snow flakes that rested for a moment on the young grass and the golden daffodils and then dissolved into a gentle dew, to be gathered again into the chalice of the air and given back to the earth as an April shower.
There was a strange, bewildering beauty in the scene. The tender, delicate foliage of early spring was on every bough, the long wands of peach trees were pink with bloom, daffodils and hyacinths sprang at our feet, and we looked at leaf and flower through a storm of snow flakes that ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and with a brightening sky and a warmer wind it was April again.
Aunt Jane drew a long breath of delight.
"Well, child," she said, "there's always somethin' new to be seen in this world of ours. Old as I am, I never did see exactly such a sight as this, and maybe it'll be a life time as long as mine before anybody sees it again. Such big, soft lookin' flakes o' snow! It looks like they'd be warm if you touched 'em, and fallin' all over the flowers and young grass. Why, it's the prettiest sight I ever did see." And, with a lingering look at the sky and the earth, Aunt Jane turned away and went back to the work of cleaning out a closet in the front room, a task preliminary to the spring cleaning that was to come a little later. There was a pile of boxes and bundles on the floor, and she was drawing strange things from the depth of the closet.
"Some o' these days," she remarked, "there'll be a house-cleanin' in this house, and I won't be here. I'll be lyin' out in the old buryin' ground along-side of Abram; and my children and grandchildren, they'll be goin' through the closet and the bureau drawers like I'm doin' to-day, and every time I clean house, thinks I to myself: 'I'll make their work jest as light as I can;' so I git rid of all the rubbish, burn it up or give it away to somebody that can use it. But after all my burnin' and givin', I reckon there'll be a plenty of useless things left behind me. Here's this Shaker bonnet; now what's the use o' savin' such a thing? But every time I look at it I think o' Friend Fanny Lacy and the rest o' the old Shakers, whose like we'll never see again, and somehow I keep holdin' on to it."
She thrust her hand into the bonnet, and holding it off, regarded it with a look of deep affection. The straw was yellow with age, and the lining and strings were faded and time-stained; but looking at it she saw the Shakers in shining garments, going through the streets of the old town, in the days when the spirit of Mother Ann burned in the souls of her followers and the blessing of heaven rested on Shakertown.
Sighing gently, she laid the precious relic aside and took up the song she was singing when I called her to the porch to see the April snow-storm. It was Byrom's "Divine Pastoral:"