Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

by Nancy Huston Banks

Sidney paused for a moment at the gate after dropping the loop of string over the post, and looked up at the little window in the loft.

"It would, I reckon, be better to let your Uncle Watty sleep as long as he likes. He's kinder out of the way up there, and better off asleep than awake, poor soul, when he hasn't got any red cedar to whittle. I noticed yesterday that he had whittled up his last stick. He never knows what to do with himself when he's out of cedar. I'll try to get him some. Maybe old lady Gordon's black gardener Enoch Cotton will fetch some from the woods, if I promise to knit him a pair of socks."

An expression flitted over Doris's face, telling her thoughts. Sidney, seeing it, felt in duty bound to rebuke it.

"Now, Doris—mind what I say—as young folks do old folks, so other young folks will do them when their turn comes. I never knew it to fail. We all get what we give, no more, no less. It always works even in the end, though it may not seem so as we go along. See that your Uncle Watty's breakfast is real nice and hot. Make him some milk toast out of Mrs. Alexander's salt-rising—if it's too hard for his gums. Old lady Gordon said she would have Eunice fetch me a bucket of milk every day. You won't forget?"

Doris again said "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" in the proper place, listening throughout with the greatest attention and respect, and trying very hard not to think about the book-muslin party coat.

Sidney twitched the string which held the gate to the post, to make sure that it was firmly tied. "That crumpled-horn of Colonel Fielding's could pick a lock with her horns. Now remember about Uncle Watty. He's had a hard time, poor old man, ever since his leg was broken. If Dr. Alexander had been here, it would have been different. I should just like to give that fool of a travelling doctor a piece of my mind. Him a-pretending to know what he was about, and a-setting your poor Uncle Watty's broken leg east and west, instead of north and south!"

Doris's cheek dimpled, but she answered dutifully as before. She had her own opinion as to how much the latitude or longitude of Uncle Watty's left leg had to do with his general disability. She could remember him before the leg was broken, and she had never known him to do anything except whittle a stick of red cedar. Youth, at its gentlest, is apt to be hard in its judgment of age's shortcomings. Doris knew how good her mother was as she watched her walking down the big road, with her long, free, swinging stride, with her sunbonnet on the back of her head, and her knitting-needles flashing in the sun. But she wondered if there were no other way. She hated to see her set out on these rounds, she had hated it ever since she could remember, and had gone on hating it as vehemently as it was in her gentle nature to hate anything. The mother never had been able to make Doris see from her own point of view, and Doris had never been able to make her mother understand the intensity of her own sensitiveness, or the soreness of her silent pride. Many a day, as Doris sat sewing beside the window in seeming contentment, she was restlessly seeking some means of escape; almost continually she was trying to find a way to lift the burden from her mother—striving to see something wholly different that she herself might do. Going back to her book-muslin on that morning, she was wondering whether Mrs. Watson or Mrs. Alexander might not need some needle-work done. Perhaps she could earn a little money in that way, and they could live on very little. But hers was not a brooding disposition, and she was soon singing over the old party coat. Then the school bell reminded her that the children's faces and hands must be washed before they went to school; and by the time they were sent off down the big road, Uncle Watty was ready for his breakfast. Doris carried out her mother's directions to the letter. She poured his coffee, and sat respectfully waiting until he had finished eating, and then she washed the dishes, and put them away.

Returning to her seat by the window, she glanced now and then at Uncle Watty, who had seated himself under the blossoming plum tree to enjoy a leisurely, luxurious pipe of tobacco, having recently swapped a butter paddle, which he had whittled out of red cedar, for a fine old "hand" of the precious weed. It was, however, most unusual for Uncle Watty's whittling to assume any useful shape, or, indeed, any shape at all. Every morning, except Sunday, he hobbled off down the big road, to take his seat before the store door on an empty goods-box, with his pocket-knife and his stick of red cedar, ready for whittling. Year after year, the box and Uncle Watty were always in the same spot, moving only to follow the sun in winter and the shade in summer; and the heap of red cedar shavings always grew steadily, ever undisturbed save as the winds scattered them, and the rains beat them into the earth. When Uncle Watty finally came hobbling around the corner of the house that day, and went away in the direction of the store, Doris looked after him, wondering—rather carelessly, and a little harshly, after the manner of the young and untried—what could be the meaning of an existence which left a trail of red cedar shavings as the sole mark of its path through life. But that perplexing thought also passed as the other had done. She began thinking of the dancing lessons, growing more and more absorbed in the darning of the party coat. She wished she knew whether Miss Judy had ever worn it to a real dancing party. She had never heard of one's being given in Oldfield, excepting of course the famous ball at the Fielding's, near the jail, on the night that the prisoner escaped; long, long before she was born. Most of the Oldfield people thought it a sin to dance. Miss Judy must have looked very pretty in the book-muslin. Doris laid it on her lap, and, turning to the window, gave the curtain an impatient toss, pushing it to one side. There was no use in keeping it half drawn when never a soul ever went by. And the sun was shining, almost with the warmth of midsummer, on this glorious May-day. When the spring was still farther advanced, when the leaves were larger on the two tall silver poplars standing beside the gate, lifting a shimmering white screen from the soft green earth to the softer blue sky; when the climbing roses, already blooming all over the snowy walls, were more thickly festooned; when the Italian honeysuckle hung its rich bronze garlands and its fragrant bloom from the very eaves of the mossy roof—then Doris might push the curtain farther back, but not before, no matter how brilliantly the sun shone or how entirely deserted the big road was. As Doris sat sewing and thinking, it seemed to her that her mother was unnecessarily strict. She had even thought it wrong to allow her to learn to dance. Miss Judy had found much difficulty in persuading her. However, she had consented at last, and presently Doris, all alone in the old house, began singing blithely, oblivious of everything except the anticipation of the dancing lessons and the pleasure of darning the party coat. The song was one of Allan Ramsay's, a languishing love-song which Miss Judy's mother had sung. But as Doris's thoughts danced to inaudible music, and her needle flew daintily in and out of the soft old muslin, the words and the tune soon tripped to a gayer measure than they had, perhaps, ever known before.

The birds, too, were lilting gayly on that perfect May morning. A couple of flycatchers were breakfasting in mid-air. It is impossible to conceive of a daintier way to satisfy hunger; as a Kentucky poet has said: "It is, apparently, all color and rhythm—with green boughs and violet sky for canopy, the pure air for a table—and in its midst the sweet bouquet of the woods." And the flycatcher was but one of many beautiful melodious creatures thronging between heaven and earth. Brown thrashers by twos and fours flitted back and forth across the big road, leaving one green wheat-field for another of still richer verdure. A happy pair of orioles, flashing orange and black, were darting—bright as flame and light as smoke—through the tallest silver poplar, building an air-castle almost as wonderful, and nearly as fragile, as those that young human lovers build. With the fetching of each fine fibre, the husband fairly turned upside down, and hung by his feet, while singing his pride and delight. The wife, more modestly happy, quietly rested her soft breast on the unstable nest—with all a woman's trust—as though the home were founded upon a rock, as all homes should be, and hung not by a frail thread at the hazardous tip of an unsteady bough as—alas!—so many homes do. It was steady enough just now, when love was new and the spring was mild, and only the southern breeze stirred the white-lined leaves with a silken rustle. The soft cooing of the unseen doves sounded far off. The bees merely murmured among the honeysuckle blooms. The humming-bird, which was raying rubies and emeralds from the hearts of the roses, came and went as softly as the south wind.

Doris smiled at the sylvan housekeeping of the orioles, which she watched for awhile, letting her sewing rest on her lap. But tiring soon of the little drama of the silver poplar, as we always tire of the happiness of others, the girl's eyes wandered wistfully through the fragrant loneliness to the wooded hills which gently folded the drowsy village. The trees, delicately green, almost silver gray, in their tender foliage, were still fringed by the snow of the dogwood, and the misty beauty of the red buds; and the cool, leafy vistas, sloping gently down toward the village, met the sea of blossoming orchards, breaking in wide, deep waves of pink and white foam at the foot of the hills. But Doris had seen those same trees, and hillsides, and orchards every May-time of her eighteen years, and sameness, however grateful to older eyes, has never a great charm for youth.