Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

by Nancy Huston Banks

In another moment she remembered, and forthwith did what she could to soothe the little Frenchman's deeply wounded feelings. She turned away her head as her grandson drew near, and put up the turkey-wing fan to hide the smile which she could not control, when her gaze chanced to meet his as he looked on, a silent and interested spectator of the scene.

"Why, Mister Beauchamp," she said, quite gravely, as soon as she could speak at all, "I am amazed at your thinking that I meant any disrespect to your relations. How in the world could you think such a thing? I give you my word of honor, that I have always believed the Bonapartes to be the only human beings ever created expressly to rule over the French."

Monsieur had begun to soften almost as soon as the mistress had begun to explain, and by the time the explanation was finished, he was fairly beaming with delight. One hand was already holding his hat, but the other was free, and this he now laid upon his heart, bringing his small heels together in a most impressive bow. And then, smiling and quite happy again, he picked up the rejected joint of mutton and carried it back to the cart very cheerfully indeed. The turning over of its contents was accordingly resumed for some time longer, until old lady Gordon consented at last to allow the butcher to leave a large roast. She shouted after him, nevertheless, as he rattled away; telling him at the top of her strong voice that he need not think that she would take another piece as tough and lean as this piece was; that he need have no such expectation the next time he came round.

She told Lynn the story of the Frenchman when the young man had entered the room in which she always sat and, with her permission, had thrown himself down on the couch under the window. But she could not answer his question about Monsieur Beauchamp immediately, because Eunice, the fat black cook, chanced to come in just at that moment for a consultation over the dinner, and the meals in old lady Gordon's house were always the subjects of very grave consideration, requiring a considerable length of time.

While the mistress and the cook were thus conferring, the young man gazed carelessly, and yet curiously, around this large low room in which his grandmother lived, and had spent the greater part of her life; and in which his father had been born. The low ceiling had been covered with canvas years before, but the original white of the canvas had long since turned to a smoky brown. The walls, which had never been plastered, were also covered with canvas, and afterward had been hung with old-fashioned wall-paper in hunting scenes. These had faded into a general effect of hazy dimness, but Lynn's keen young eyes made out the hunters, the hounds, and the game, as he lay idle with his long arms under his handsome dark head, wondering what sort of man his grandfather had been. He had heard it said that rooms are like the people who live in them, and, recalling the saying, he wondered again whether this room was now as it used to be in his grandfather's time. There stood his grandfather's secretary in one corner, still filled with papers, just as he must have left it. The bed in the opposite corner must also have stood in the same place for many a year. It had been a very stately edifice, a magnificent structure, in its day. It even yet upheld a heavy tester of faded crimson damask, gathered to the centre under a great golden star of tarnished splendor. It had evidently once been of imposing height, and it was still of unusual width, but it had lost something of its height with age, as human beings do. It had been much too high for old lady Gordon to climb into and out of, as easily as she liked, when she began to grow stouter and more indolent, and it was not her way to submit to any inconvenience which she could avoid. So that the thick mahogany legs of the grand old bed had been sawed off by degrees—as old lady Gordon's ease required—till it now squatted under its big, dusty red tester like some absurd turbaned old Turk. Lynn smiled as he looked at it, letting his gaze wander on to the tall chest of drawers, to the high-backed split-bottomed chairs, to a great oaken chest at the foot of the bed—to all the homely, comfortable, unbeautiful things.

Looking at his grandmother, who was still absorbed in the consultation with the cook, the young man suddenly felt how like her face his own was; feeling it with the curiously mingled uneasiness and satisfaction which come to most of us when we recognize ancestral traits in our own spirits, our own minds, or our own bodies. She was a large, tall old woman, still handsome and even shapely, despite her many years and her great weight. Her chin was square and her forehead broad, yet her grandson was somehow pleased to think that his own chin was more delicately rounded, and that his forehead was higher than hers while not less broad, and that his mouth was clearer cut. Still, the strong likeness was there, in every one of the features of their two faces and most of all in their eyes—long, large, deep, thick-lashed, heavy-browed, and as black as human eyes ever are; and now as old lady Gordon turned her head, the young man saw with a kind of shock that his grandmother's eyes were almost as young, too, as his own. For young eyes in an old face are not a pleasant sight to see. It seems better for the ageless, unwearied spirit, thus looking out, to have grown old with the wearied body, so that both together may be ready for the Rest.

Old lady Gordon noticed her grandson's gaze, as soon as Eunice had gone from the room, and recognized the admiration which partly occupied his thoughts. She accordingly smiled at him, settling comfortably back in her broad, low rocking-chair. She wore a loose flowing wrapper of fine white muslin, as she always did in warm weather. In the winter she always wore the same garment made of fine white wool, covering it with a long black cloak on the rare occasions upon which she left the house during cold weather. It was a most unusual dress and one of peculiar distinction, but old lady Gordon took neither of these facts into the slightest account. She wore the fine white muslin in the summer because it was cooler than anything else; and she wore the white wool in the winter for the reason that, while warm and soft, it would wash with less trouble than colored stuffs, when she dropped things on it at the table, as she did at almost every meal. It is, perhaps, often just as well that we cannot know the causes which bring about many pleasing and even poetic results. Old lady Gordon's servants, especially Dilsey the washerwoman, held opinions somewhat different from hers concerning the greater convenience of constantly wearing white in winter as well as in summer. But old lady Gordon never took that into account either; neither that nor anything whatsoever that ever touched her own comfort at all adversely.

"Come and hand me my bag, I want a cough-drop," she said to Lynn that day, yawning. "It's too far round on the back of the chair for me to reach it."

Lynn sprang to serve her and handed her the bag. It was the first time that he had seen it; that is to say, it was the first time that he had really observed the bag; he must, of course, have seen it, since no one ever saw old lady Gordon without it. During the day it always hung on the back of the chair in which she sat when not at the table; when she sat at the table it always hung on the knob of the dining-room chair. Through the night it always swung from the post of her bed close to her hand. When she drove out in her ancient coach the bag went with her. And a wonderful bag it was! There were many more things in it than mere cough-drops. There were various other sorts of drops—drops for the gouty pain which sometimes assailed old lady Gordon's toe, and drops of good old brandy for cramp after over-eating. And there were candles and matches, all ready for lighting if she should chance to grow wakeful through the night, and always plenty of novels; and numerous simple toilet articles, such as a hairbrush and comb, together with biscuits and hair-oil and tea-cakes and handkerchiefs and an occasional piece of pie. It would indeed be hard to think of anything that old lady Gordon could have needed or desired, during the day or the night; or even have fancied that she wanted, without finding it ready to her hand in that wonderful bag. There was a hand-bell in it, too, though the bell usually lay at the very bottom of the bag, under everything else, because there was hardly ever any occasion for ringing it. The bag was a very gradual evolution, like most complete inventions. Old lady Gordon herself had given a good deal of thought for a good many years to the bringing of it to its ultimate state of perfection; and Eunice the cook and Patsey the housemaid had both concentrated their attention upon it more and more as the mistress's wants and demands increased; until it had now become so comprehensive that Eunice rarely had to be summoned out of her cabin, at midnight, to give old lady Gordon a lunch; and Patsey was able, as a rule, to sleep the whole night through on her pallet in the passage outside the mistress's door; no matter whether that lady might suddenly crave refreshment, or whether several kinds of drops might be needed in consequence of a too hearty supper.

When old lady Gordon had taken the cough-drops out of the bag, and Lynn had replaced it on the back of her chair, within easier reach, she answered his question, which he had almost forgotten in his wondering observation of the bag.