Part 27 (1/2)

She was the dear friend of the third woman, Betsey Lane; together they led thought and opinion--chiefly opinion--and held sway, not only over Byfleet Poor-farm, but also the selectmen and all others in authority.

Betsey Lane had spent most of her life as aid-in-general to the respected household of old General Thornton. She had been much trusted and valued, and, at the breaking up of that once large and flouris.h.i.+ng family, she had been left in good circ.u.mstances, what with legacies and her own comfortable savings; but by sad misfortune and lavish generosity everything had been scattered, and after much illness, which ended in a stiffened arm and more uncertainty, the good soul had sensibly decided that it was easier for the whole town to support her than for a part of it. She had always hoped to see something of the world before she died; she came of an adventurous, seafaring stock, but had never made a longer journey than to the towns of Danby and Northville, thirty miles away.

They were all old women; but Betsey Lane, who was sixty-nine, and looked much older, was the youngest. Peggy Bond was far on in the seventies, and Mrs. Dow was at least ten years older. She made a great secret of her years; and as she sometimes spoke of events prior to the Revolution with the a.s.sertion of having been an eye-witness, she naturally wore an air of vast antiquity. Her tales were an inexpressible delight to Betsey Lane, who felt younger by twenty years because her friend and comrade was so unconscious of chronological limitations.

The bushel basket of cranberry beans was within easy reach, and each of the pickers had filled her lap from it again and again. The shed chamber was not an unpleasant place in which to sit at work, with its traces of seed corn hanging from the brown cross-beams, its spare churns, and dusty loom, and rickety wool-wheels, and a few bits of old furniture. In one far corner was a wide board of dismal use and suggestion, and close beside it an old cradle. There was a battered chest of drawers where the keeper of the poor-house kept his garden-seeds, with the withered remains of three seed cuc.u.mbers ornamenting the top. Nothing beautiful could be discovered, nothing interesting, but there was something usable and homely about the place. It was the favorite and untroubled bower of the bean-pickers, to which they might retreat unmolested from the public apartments of this rustic inst.i.tution.

Betsey Lane blew away the chaff from her handful of beans. The spring breeze blew the chaff back again, and sifted it over her face and shoulders. She rubbed it out of her eyes impatiently, and happened to notice old Peggy holding her own handful high, as if it were an oblation, and turning her queer, up-tilted head this way and that, to look at the beans sharply, as if she were first cousin to a hen.

”There, Miss Bond, 'tis kind of botherin' work for you, ain't it?”

Betsey inquired compa.s.sionately.

”I feel to enjoy it, anything that I can do my own way so,” responded Peggy. ”I like to do my part. Ain't that old Mis' Fales comin' up the road? It sounds like her step.”

The others looked, but they were not far-sighted, and for a moment Peggy had the advantage. Mrs. Fales was not a favorite.

”I hope she ain't comin' here to put up this spring. I guess she won't now, it's gettin' so late,” said Betsey Lane. ”She likes to go rovin'

soon as the roads is settled.”

”'Tis Mis' Fales!” said Peggy Bond, listening with solemn anxiety.

”There, do let's pray her by!”

”I guess she's headin' for her cousin's folks up Beech Hill way,” said Betsey presently. ”If she'd left her daughter's this mornin', she'd have got just about as far as this. I kind o' wish she had stepped in just to pa.s.s the time o' day, long's she wa'n't going to make no stop.”

There was a silence as to further speech in the shed chamber; and even the calves were quiet in the barnyard. The men had all gone away to the field where corn-planting was going on. The beans clicked steadily into the wooden measure at the pickers' feet. Betsey Lane began to sing a hymn, and the others joined in as best they might, like autumnal crickets; their voices were sharp and cracked, with now and then a few low notes of plaintive tone. Betsey herself could sing pretty well, but the others could only make a kind of accompaniment.

Their voices ceased altogether at the higher notes.

”Oh my! I wish I had the means to go to the Centennial,” mourned Betsey Lane, stopping so suddenly that the others had to go on croaking and shrilling without her for a moment before they could stop. ”It seems to me as if I can't die happy 'less I do,” she added; ”I ain't never seen nothin' of the world, an' here I be.”

”What if you was as old as I be?” suggested Mrs. Dow pompously.

”You've got time enough yet, Betsey; don't you go an' despair. I knowed of a woman that went clean round the world four times when she was past eighty, an' enjoyed herself real well. Her folks followed the sea; she had three sons an' a daughter married,--all s.h.i.+pmasters, and she'd been with her own husband when they was young. She was left a widder early, and fetched up her family herself,--a real stirrin', smart woman. After they'd got married off, an' settled, an' was doing well, she come to be lonesome; and first she tried to stick it out alone, but she wa'n't one that could; an' she got a notion she hadn't nothin' before her but her last sickness, and she wa'n't a person that enjoyed havin' other folks do for her. So one on her boys--I guess 'twas the oldest--said he was going to take her to sea; there was ample room, an' he was sailin' a good time o' year for the Cape o'

Good Hope an' way up to some o' them tea-ports in the Chiny Seas. She was all high to go, but it made a sight o' talk at her age; an' the minister made it a subject o' prayer the last Sunday, and all the folks took a last leave; but she said to some she'd fetch 'em home something real pritty, and so did. An' then they come home t'other way, round the Horn, an' she done so well, an' was such a sight o'

company, the other child'n was jealous, an' she promised she'd go a v'y'ge long o' each on 'em. She was as sprightly a person as ever I see; an' could speak well o' what she'd seen.”

”Did she die to sea?” asked Peggy, with interest.

”No, she died to home between v'y'ges, or she'd gone to sea again. I was to her funeral. She liked her son George's s.h.i.+p the best; 'twas the one she was going on to Callao. They said the men aboard all called her 'gran'ma'am,' an' she kep' 'em mended up, an' would go below and tend to 'em if they was sick. She might 'a' been alive an'

enjoyin' of herself a good many years but for the kick of a cow; 'twas a new cow out of a drove, a dreadful unruly beast.”

Mrs. Dow stopped for breath, and reached down for a new supply of beans; her empty ap.r.o.n was gray with soft chaff. Betsey Lane, still pondering on the Centennial, began to sing another verse of her hymn, and again the old women joined her. At this moment some strangers came driving round into the yard from the front of the house. The turf was soft, and our friends did not hear the horses' steps. Their voices cracked and quavered; it was a funny little concert, and a lady in an open carriage just below listened with sympathy and amus.e.m.e.nt.

II.

”Betsey! Betsey! Miss Lane!” a voice called eagerly at the foot of the stairs that led up from the shed. ”Betsey! There's a lady here wants to see you right away.”

Betsey was dazed with excitement, like a country child who knows the rare pleasure of being called out of school. ”Lor', I ain't fit to go down, be I?” she faltered, looking anxiously at her friends; but Peggy was gazing even nearer to the zenith than usual, in her excited effort to see down into the yard, and Mrs. Dow only nodded somewhat jealously, and said that she guessed 'twas n.o.body would do her any harm. She rose ponderously, while Betsey hesitated, being, as they would have said, all of a twitter. ”It is a lady, certain,” Mrs. Dow a.s.sured her; ”'tain't often there's a lady comes here.”

”While there was any of Mis' Gen'ral Thornton's folks left, I wa'n't without visits from the gentry,” said Betsey Lane, turning back proudly at the head of the stairs, with a touch of old-world pride and sense of high station. Then she disappeared, and closed the door behind her at the stair-foot with a decision quite unwelcome to the friends above.

”She needn't 'a' been so dreadful 'fraid anybody was goin' to listen.