Presently I left the lower fields, and took a path that led higher, where I could look beyond the village to the northern country mountain-ward. Here the sweet fern grew, thick and fragrant, and I also found myself heedlessly treading on pennyroyal. Near by, in a field corner, I long ago made a most comfortable seat by putting a stray piece of board and bit of rail across the angle of the fences. I have spent many a delightful hour there, in the shade and shelter of a young pitch-pine and a wild-cherry tree, with a lovely outlook toward the village, just far enough away beyond the green slopes and tall elms of the lower meadows. But that day I still had the feeling of being outward bound, and did not turn aside nor linger. The high pasture land grew more and more enticing.
I stopped to pick some blackberries that twinkled at me like beads among their dry vines, and two or three yellow-birds fluttered up from the leaves of a thistle, and then came back again, as if they had complacently discovered that I was only an overgrown yellow-bird, in strange disguise but perfectly harmless. They made me feel as if I were an intruder, though they did not offer to peck at me, and we parted company very soon. It was good to stand at last on the great shoulder of the hill. The wind was coming in from the sea, there was a fine fragrance from the pines, and the air grew sweeter every moment. I took new pleasure in the thought that in a piece of wild pasture land like this one may get closest to Nature, and subsist upon what she gives of her own free will. There have been no drudging, heavy-shod ploughmen to overturn the soil, and vex it into yielding artificial crops. Here one has to take just what Nature is pleased to give, whether one is a yellow-bird or a human being. It is very good entertainment for a summer wayfarer, and I am asking my reader now to share the winter provision which I harvested that day. Let us hope that the small birds are also faring well after their fashion, but I give them an anxious thought while the snow goes hurrying in long waves across the buried fields, this windy winter night.
I next went farther down the hill, and got a drink of fresh cool water from the brook, and pulled a tender sheaf of sweet flag beside it. The mossy old fence just beyond was the last barrier between me and the pasture which had sent an invisible messenger earlier in the day, but I saw that somebody else had come first to the rendezvous: there was a brown gingham cape-bonnet and a sprigged shoulder-shawl bobbing up and down, a little way off among the junipers. I had taken such uncommon pleasure in being alone that I instantly felt a sense of disappointment; then a warm glow of pleasant satisfaction rebuked my selfishness. This could be no one but dear old Mrs. Goodsoe, the friend of my childhood and fond dependence of my maturer years. I had not seen her for many weeks, but here she was, out on one of her famous campaigns for herbs, or perhaps just returning from a blueberrying expedition. I approached with care, so as not to startle the gingham bonnet; but she heard the rustle of the bushes against my dress, and looked up quickly, as she knelt, bending over the turf. In that position she was hardly taller than the luxuriant junipers themselves.
“I’m a-gittin’ in my mulleins,” she said briskly, “an’ I’ve been thinking o’ you these twenty times since I come out o’ the house. I begun to believe you must ha’ forgot me at last.”
“I have been away from home,” I explained. “Why don’t you get in your pennyroyal too? There’s a great plantation of it beyond the next fence but one.”
“Pennyr’yal!” repeated the dear little old woman, with an air of compassion for inferior knowledge; “’t ain’t the right time, darlin’. Pennyr’yal’s too rank now. But for mulleins this day is prime. I’ve got a dreadful graspin’ fit for ‘em this year; seems if I must be goin’ to need ‘em extry. I feel like the squirrels must when they know a hard winter’s comin’.” And Mrs. Goodsoe bent over her work again, while I stood by and watched her carefully cut the best full-grown leaves with a clumsy pair of scissors, which might have served through at least half a century of herb-gathering. They were fastened to her apron-strings by a long piece of list.
“I’m going to take my jack-knife and help you,” I suggested, with some fear of refusal. “I just passed a flourishing family of six or seven heads that must have been growing on purpose for you.”
“Now be keerful, dear heart,” was the anxious response; “choose ‘em well. There’s odds in mulleins same’s there is in angels. Take a plant that’s all run up to stalk, and there ain’t but little goodness in the leaves. This one I’m at now must ha’ been stepped on by some creatur’ and blighted of its bloom, and the leaves is han’some! When I was small I used to have a notion that Adam an’ Eve must a took mulleins fer their winter wear. Ain’t they just like flannel, for all the world? I’ve had experience, and I know there’s plenty of sickness might be saved to folks if they’d quit horse-radish and such fiery, exasperating things, and use mullein drarves in proper season. Now I shall spread these an’ dry ‘em nice on my spare floor in the garrit, an’ come to steam ‘em for use along in the winter there’ll be the vally of the whole summer’s goodness in ’em, sartin.” And she snipped away with the dull scissors, while I listened respectfully, and took great pains to have my part of the harvest present a good appearance.
“This is most too dry a head,” she added presently, a little out of breath. “There! I can tell you there’s win’rows o’ young doctors, bilin’ over with book-larnin’, that is truly ignorant of what to do for the sick, or how to p’int out those paths that well people foller toward sickness. Book-fools I call ’em, them young men, an’ some on ’em never ’ll live to know much better, if they git to be Methuselahs. In my time every middle-aged woman, who had brought up a family, had some proper ideas o’ dealin’ with complaints. I won’t say but there was some fools amongst them, but I’d rather take my chances, unless they’d forsook herbs and gone to dealin’ with patent stuff. Now my mother really did sense the use of herbs and roots. I never see anybody that come up to her. She was a meek-looking woman, but very understandin’, mother was.”
“Then that’s where you learned so much yourself, Mrs. Goodsoe,” I ventured to say.
“Bless your heart, I don’t hold a candle to her; ’t is but little I can recall of what she used to say. No, her l’arnin’ died with her,” said my friend, in a self-depreciating tone. “Why, there was as many as twenty kinds of roots alone that she used to keep by her, that I forget the use of; an’ I’m sure I shouldn’t know where to find the most of ’em, any. There was an herb”—airb, she called it—“an herb called masterwort, that she used to get way from Pennsylvany; and she used to think everything of noble-liverwort, but I never could seem to get the right effects from it as she could. Though I don’t know as she ever really did use masterwort where somethin’ else wouldn’t a served. She had a cousin married out in Pennsylvany that used to take pains to get it to her every year or two, and so she felt ’t was important to have it. Some set more by such things as come from a distance, but I rec’lect mother always used to maintain that folks was meant to be doctored with the stuff that grew right about ‘em; ’t was sufficient, an’ so ordered. That was before the whole population took to livin’ on wheels, the way they do now. ’T was never my idee that we was meant to know what’s goin’ on all over the world to once. There’s goin’ to be some sort of a set-back one o’ these days, with these telegraphs an’ things, an’ letters comin’ every hand’s turn, and folks leavin’ their proper work to answer ‘em. I may not live to see it. ’T was allowed to be difficult for folks to git about in old times, or to git word across the country, and they stood in their lot an’ place, and weren’t all just alike, either, same as pine-spills.”
We were kneeling side by side now, as if in penitence for the march of progress, but we laughed as we turned to look at each other.
“Do you think it did much good when everybody brewed a cracked quart mug of herb-tea?” I asked, walking away on my knees to a new mullein.
“I’ve always lifted my voice against the practice, far’s I could,” declared Mrs. Goodsoe; “an’ I won’t deal out none o
’ the herbs I save for no such nonsense. There was three houses along our road,—I call no names,—where you couldn’t go into the livin’ room without findin’ a mess o’ herb-tea drorin’ on the stove or side o’ the fireplace, winter or summer, sick or well. One was thoroughwut, one would be camomile, and the other, like as not, yellow dock; but they all used to put in a little new rum to git out the goodness, or keep it from spilin’.” (Mrs. Goodsoe favored me with a knowing smile.) “Land, how mother used to laugh! But, poor creaturs, they had to work hard, and I guess it never done ‘em a mite o’ harm; they was all good herbs. I wish you could hear the quawkin’ there used to be when they was indulged with a real case o’ sickness. Everybody would collect from far an’ near; you’d see ’em coming along the road and across the pastures then; everybody clamorin’ that nothin’ wouldn’t do no kind o’ good but her choice o’ teas or drarves to the feet. I wonder there was a babe lived to grow up in the whole lower part o’ the town; an’ if nothin’ else ‘peared to ail ‘em, word was passed about that ’t was likely Mis’ So-and-So’s last young one was goin’ to be foolish. Land, how they’d gather! I know one day the doctor come to Widder Peck’s and the house was crammed so ’t he could scercely git inside the door; and he says, just as polite, ‘Do send for some of the neighbors!’ as if there wa’n’t a soul to turn to, right or left. You’d ought to seen ’em begin to scatter.”
“But don’t you think the cars and telegraphs have given people more to interest them, Mrs. Goodsoe? Don’t you believe people’s lives were narrower then, and more taken up with little things?” I asked, unwisely, being a product of modern times.
“Not one mite, dear,” said my companion stoutly. “There was as big thoughts then as there is now; these times was born o’them. The difference is in folks themselves; but now, instead o’ doin’ their own housekeepin’ and watchin’ their own neighbors,—though that was carried to excess,—they git word that a niece’s child is ailin’ the other side o’ Massachusetts, and they drop everything and git on their best clothes, and off they jiggit in the cars. ’T is a bad sign when folks wears out their best clothes faster ’n they do their every-day ones. The other side o’ Massachusetts has got to look after itself by rights. An’ besides that, Sunday-keepin’ ’s all gone out o’ fashion. Some lays it to one thing an’ some another, but some o’ them old ministers that folks are all a-sighin’ for did preach a lot o’ stuff that wa’n’t nothin’ but chaff; ’t wa’n’t the word o’ God out o’ either Old Testament or New. But everybody went to meetin’ and heard it, and come home, and was set to fightin’ with their next door neighbor over it. Now I’m a believer, and I try to live a Christian life, but I’d as soon hear a surveyor’s book read out, figgers an’ all, as try to get any simple truth out o’ most sermons. It’s them as is most to blame.”
“What was the matter that day at Widow Peck’s?” I hastened to ask, for I knew by experience that the good, clear-minded soul beside me was apt to grow unduly vexed and distressed when she contemplated the state of religious teaching.
“Why, there wa’n’t nothin’ the matter, only a gal o’ Miss Peck’s had met with a dis’pintment and had gone into sceechin’ fits. ’T was a rovin’ creatur’ that had come along hayin’ time, and he’d gone off an’ forsook her betwixt two days; nobody ever knew what become of him. Them Pecks was ‘Good Lord, anybody!’ kind o’ gals, and took up with whoever they could get. One of ‘em married Heron, the Irishman; they lived in that little house that was burnt this summer, over on the edge o’ the plains. He was a good-hearted creatur’, with a laughin’ eye and a clever word for everybody. He was the first Irishman that ever came this way, and we was all for gettin’ a look at him, when he first used to go by. Mother’s folks was what they call Scotch-Irish, though; there was an old race of ’em settled about here. They could foretell events, some on ’em, and had the second sight. I know folks used to say mother’s grandmother had them gifts, but mother was never free to speak about it to us. She remembered her well, too.”
“I suppose that you mean old Jim Heron, who was such a famous fiddler? I asked with great interest, for I am always delighted to know more about that rustic hero, parochial Orpheus that he must have been!
“Now, dear heart, I suppose you don’t remember him, do you?” replied Mrs. Goodsoe, earnestly. “Fiddle! He’d about break your heart with them tunes of his, or else set your heels flying up the floor in a jig, though you was minister o’ the First Parish and all wound up for a funeral prayer. I tell ye there ain’t no tunes sounds like them used to. It used to seem to me summer nights when I was comin’ along the plains road, and he set by the window playin’, as if there was a bewitched human creatur’ in that old red fiddle o’ his. He could make it sound just like a woman’s voice tellin’ somethin’ over and over, as if folks could help her out o’ her sorrows if she could only make ‘em understand. I’ve set by the stone-wall and cried as if my heart was broke, and dear knows it wa’n’t in them days. How he would twirl off them jigs and dance tunes! He used to make somethin’ han’some out of ‘em in fall an’ winter, playin’ at huskins and dancin’ parties; but he was unstiddy by spells, as he got along in years, and never knew what it was to be forehanded. Everybody felt bad when he died; you couldn’t help likin’ the creatur’. He’d got the gift—that’s all you could say about it.
“There was a Mis’ Jerry Foss, that lived over by the brook bridge, on the plains road, that had lost her husband early, and was left with three child’n. She set the world by ‘em, and was a real pleasant, ambitious little woman, and was workin’ on as best she could with that little farm, when there come a rage o’ scarlet fever, and her boy and two girls was swept off and laid dead within the same week. Every one o’ the neighbors did what they could, but she’d had no sleep since they was taken sick, and after the funeral she set there just like a piece o’ marble, and would only shake her head when you spoke to her. They all thought her reason would go; and ’t would certain, if she couldn’t have shed tears. An’ one o’ the neighbors—’t was like mother’s sense, but it might have been somebody else—spoke o’ Jim Heron. Mother an’ one or two o’ the women that knew her best was in the house with her. ’T was right in the edge o’ the woods and some of us younger ones was over by the wall on the other side of the road where there was a couple of old willows,—I remember just how the brook damp felt; and we kept quiet ’s we could, and some other folks come along down the road, and stood waitin’ on the little bridge, hopin’ somebody’d come out, I suppose, and they’d git news. Everybody was wrought up, and felt a good deal for her, you know. By an’ by Jim Heron come stealin’ right out o’ the shadows an’ set down on the doorstep, an’ ’t was a good while before we heard a sound; then, oh, dear me! ’t was what the whole neighborhood felt for that mother all spoke in the notes, an’ they told me afterwards that Mis’ Foss’s face changed in a minute, and she come right over an’ got into my mother’s lap,—she was a little woman,—an’ laid her head down, and there she cried herself into a blessed sleep. After awhile one o’ the other women stole out an’ told the folks, and we all went home. He only played that one tune.
“But there!” resumed Mrs. Goodsoe, after a silence, during which my eyes were filled with tears. “His wife always complained that the fiddle made her nervous. She never ‘peared to think nothin’ o’ poor Heron after she’d once got him.”
“That’s often the way,” said I, with harsh cynicism, though I had no guilty person in my mind at the moment; and we went straying off, not very far apart, up through the pasture. Mrs. Goodsoe cautioned me that we must not get so far off that we could not get back the same day. The sunshine began to feel very hot on our backs, and we both turned toward the shade. We had already collected a large bundle of mullein leaves, which were carefully laid into a clean, calico apron, held together by the four corners, and proudly carried by me, though my companion regarded them with anxious eyes. We sat down together at the edge of the pine woods, and Mrs.
Goodsoe proceeded to fan herself with her limp cape-bonnet.
“I declare, how hot it is! The east wind’s all gone again,” she said. “It felt so cool this forenoon that I overburdened myself with as thick a petticoat as any I’ve got. I’m despri’t afeared of having a chill, now that I ain’t so young as once. I hate to be housed up.”
“It’s only August, after all,” I assured her unnecessarily, confirming my statement by taking two peaches out of my pocket, and laying them side by side on the brown pine needles between us.
“Dear sakes alive!” exclaimed the old lady, with evident pleasure. “Where did you get them, now? Doesn’t anything taste twice better out-o’ -doors? I ain’t had such a peach for years. Do le’s keep the stones, an’ I’ll plant ‘em; it only takes four year for a peach pit to come to bearing, an’ I guess I’m good for four year, ‘thout I meet with some accident.”
I could not help agreeing, or taking a fond look at the thin little figure, and her wrinkled brown face and kind, twinkling eyes. She looked as if she had properly dried herself, by mistake, with some of her mullein leaves, and was likely to keep her goodness, and to last the longer in consequence. There never was a truer, simple-hearted soul made out of the old-fashioned country dust than Mrs. Goodsoe. I thought, as I looked away from her across the wide country, that nobody was left in any of the farmhouses so original, so full of rural wisdom and reminiscence, so really able and dependable, as she. And nobody had made better use of her time in a world foolish enough to sometimes undervalue medicinal herbs.
A White Heron and Other Stories Page 8