The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction

by Sarah Orne Jewett

  Marilla listened for a time with more or less interest, but at last she took one of her school-books, with slight ostentation, and went over to study by the lamp. Mrs. Hender had brought her knitting-work, a blue woolen stocking, out of a drawer, and sat down serene and unruffled, prepared to keep awake as late as possible. She was a woman who had kept her youthful looks through the difficulties of farm life as few women can, and this added to her guest’s sense of homelikeness and pleasure. There was something that he felt to be sisterly and comfortable in her strong figure; he even noticed the little plaid woolen shawl that she wore about her shoulders. Dear, uncomplaining heart of Abby Hender! The appealing friendliness of the good woman made no demands except to be allowed to help and to serve everybody who came in her way.

  Now began in good earnest the talk of old times, and what had become of this and that old schoolmate; how one family had come to want and another to wealth. The changes and losses and wind-falls of good fortune in that rural neighborhood were made tragedy and comedy by turns in Abby Hender’s dramatic speech. She grew younger and more entertaining hour by hour, and beguiled the grave Senator into confidential talk of national affairs. He had much to say, to which she listened with rare sympathy and intelligence. She astonished him by her comprehension of difficult questions of the day, and by her simple good sense. Marilla grew hopelessly sleepy, and departed, but neither of them turned to notice her as she lingered a moment at the door to say good-night. When the immediate subjects of conversation were fully discussed, however, there was an unexpected interval of silence, and, after making sure that her knitting stitches counted exactly right, Abby Hender cast a questioning glance at the Senator to see if he had it in mind to go to bed. She was reluctant to end her evening so soon, but determined to act the part of considerate hostess. The guest was as wide awake as ever: eleven o’clock was the best part of his evening.

  “Cider?” he suggested, with an expectant smile, and Abby Hender was on her feet in a moment. When she had brought a pitcher from the pantry, he took a candle from the high shelf and led the way.

  “To think of your remembering our old cellar candlestick all these years!” laughed the pleased woman, as she followed him down the steep stairway, and then laughed still more at his delight in the familiar look of the place.

  “Unchanged as the pyramids!” he said. “I suppose those pound sweetings that used to be in that farthest bin were eaten up months ago?”

  It was plain to see that the household stores were waning low, as befitted the time of year, but there was still enough in the old cellar. Care and thrift and gratitude made the poor farmhouse a rich place. This woman of real ability had spent her strength from youth to age, and had lavished as much industry and power of organization in her narrow sphere as would have made her famous in a wider one. Joseph Laneway could not help sighing as he thought of it. How many things this good friend had missed, and yet how much she had been able to win that makes everywhere the very best of life! Poor and early widowed, there must have been a constant battle with poverty on that stony Harran farm, whose owners had been pitied even in his early boyhood, when the best of farming life was none too easy. But Abby Hender had always been one of the leaders of the town.

  “Now, before we sit down again, I want you to step into my best room. Perhaps you won’t have time in the morning, and I’ve got something to show you,” she said persuasively.

  It was a plain, old-fashioned best room, with a look of pleasantness in spite of the spring chill and the stiffness of the best chairs. They lingered before the picture of Mrs. Hender’s soldier son, a poor work of a poorer artist in crayons, but the spirit of the young face shone out appealingly. Then they crossed the room and stood before some bookshelves, and Abby Hender’s face brightened into a beaming smile of triumph.

  “You didn’t expect we should have all those books, now, did you, Joe Laneway?” she asked.

  He shook his head soberly, and leaned forward to read the titles. There were no very new ones, as if times had been hard of late; almost every volume was either history, or biography, or travel. Their owner had reached out of her own narrow boundaries into other lives and into far countries. He recognized with gratitude two or three congressional books that he had sent her when he first went to Washington, and there was a life of himself, written from a partisan point of view, and issued in one of his most exciting campaigns; the sight of it touched him to the heart, and then she opened it, and showed him the three or four letters that he had written her,—one, in boyish handwriting, describing his adventures on his first Western journey.

  “There are a hundred and six volumes now,” announced the proud owner of such a library. “I lend ’em all I can, or most of them would look better. I have had to wait a good while for some, and some weren’t what I expected ’em to be, but most of ’em ’s as good books as there is in the world. I’ve never been so situated that it seemed best for me to indulge in a daily paper, and I don’t know but it’s just as well; but stories were never any great of a temptation. I know pretty well what’s goin’ on about me, and I can make that do. Real life’s interestin’ enough for me.”

  Mr. Laneway was still looking over the books. His heart smote him for not being thoughtful; he knew well enough that the overflow of his own library would have been delightful to this self-denying, eager-minded soul. “I’ve been a very busy man all my life, Abby,” he said impulsively, as if she waited for some apology for his forgetfulness, “but I’ll see to it now that you have what you want to read. I don’t mean to lose hold of your advice on state matters.” They both laughed, and he added, “I’ve always thought of you, if I haven’t shown it.”

  “There’s more time to read than there used to be; I’ve had what was best for me,” answered the woman gently, with a grateful look on her face, as she turned to glance at her old friend. “Marilla takes hold wonderfully and helps me with the work. In the long winter evenings you can’t think what a treat a new book is. I wouldn’t change places with the queen.”

  They had come back to the kitchen, and she stood before the cupboard, reaching high for two old gayly striped crockery mugs. There were some doughnuts and cheese at hand; their early supper seemed quite forgotten. The kitchen was warm, and they had talked themselves thirsty and hungry; but with what an unexpected tang the cider freshened their throats! Mrs. Hender had picked the apples herself that went to the press; they were all chosen from the old russet treedu and the gnarly, red-cheeked, ungrafted fruit that grew along the lane. The flavor made one think of frosty autumn mornings on high hillsides, of north winds and sunny skies. “It ’livens one to the heart,” as Mrs. Hender remarked proudly, when the Senator tried to praise it as much as it deserved, and finally gave a cheerful laugh, such as he had not laughed for many a day.

  “Why, it seems like drinking the month of October,” he told her; and at this the hostess reached over, protesting that the striped mug was too narrow to hold what it ought, and filled it up again.

  “Oh, Joe Laneway, to think that I see you at last, after all these years!” she said. “How rich I shall feel with this evening to live over! I’ve always wanted to see somebody that I’d read about, and now I’ve got that to remember; but I’ve always known I should see you again, and I believe ’t was the Lord’s will.”

  Early the next morning they said good-by. The early breakfast had to be hurried, and Marilla was to drive Mr. Laneway to the station, three miles away. It was Saturday morning, and she was free from school.

  Mr. Laneway strolled down the lane before breakfast was ready, and came back with a little bunch of pink anemones in his hand. Marilla thought that he meant to give them to her, but he laid them beside her grandmother’s plate. “You mustn’t put those in your desk,” he said with a smile, and Abby Hender blushed like a girl.

  “I’ve got those others now, dried and put away somewhere in one of my books,” she said quietly, and Marilla wondered what they meant.

  The two old friend
s shook hands warmly at parting. “I wish you could have stayed another day, so I could have had the minister come and see you,” urged Mrs. Hender regretfully.

  “You couldn’t have done any more for me. I have had the best visit in the world,” he answered, a little shaken, and holding her hand a moment longer, while Marilla sat, young and impatient, in the high wagon. “You’re a dear good woman, Abby. Sometimes when things have gone wrong I’ve been sorry that I ever had to leave Winby.”

  The woman’s clear eyes looked straight into his; then fell. “You wouldn’t have done everything you have for the country,” she said.

  “Give me a kiss; we’re getting to be old folks now,” said the General; and they kissed each other gravely.

  A moment later Abby Hender stood alone in her dooryard, watching and waving her hand again and again, while the wagon rattled away down the lane and turned into the highroad.

  Two hours after Marilla returned from the station, and rushed into the kitchen.

  “Grandma!” she exclaimed, “you never did see such a crowd in Winby as there was at the depot! Everybody in town had got word about General Laneway, and they were pushing up to shake hands, and cheering same as at election, and the cars waited much as ten minutes, and all the folks was lookin’ out of the windows, and came out on the platforms when they heard who it was. Folks say that he’d been to see the selectmen yesterday before he came to school, and he’s goin’ to build an elegant town hall, and have the names put up in it of all the Winby men that went to the war.” Marilla sank into a chair, flushed with excitement. “Everybody was asking me about his being here last night and what he said to the school. I wished that you’d gone down to the depot instead of me.”

  “I had the best part of anybody,” said Mrs. Hender, smiling and going on with her Saturday morning work. “I’m real glad they showed him proper respect,” she added a moment afterward, but her voice faltered.

  “Why, you ain’t been cryin’, grandma?” asked the girl. “I guess you’re tired. You had a real good time, now, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, dear heart!” said Abby Hender. “ ’T ain’t pleasant to be growin’ old, that’s all. I couldn’t help noticin’ his age as he rode away. I’ve always been lookin’ forward to seein’ him again, an’ now it’s all over.”

  DECORATION DAY

  I

  A WEEK BEFORE THE thirtieth of May,11 three friends—John Stover and Henry Merrill and Asa Brown—happened to meet on Saturday evening at Barton’s store at the Plains. They were ready to enjoy this idle hour after a busy week. After long easterly rains, the sun had at last come out bright and clear, and all the Barlow farmers had been planting. There was even a good deal of ploughing left to be done, the season was so backward.

  The three middle-aged men were old friends. They had been school-fellows, and when they were hardly out of their boyhood the war came on, and they enlisted in the same company, on the same day, and happened to march away elbow to elbow. Then came the great experience of a great war, and the years that followed their return from the South had come to each almost alike. These men might have been members of the same rustic household, they knew each other’s history so well.

  They were sitting on a low wooden bench at the left of the store door as you went in. People were coming and going on their Saturday night errands,—the post-office was in Barton’s store,—but the friends talked on eagerly, without being interrupted, except by an occasional nod of recognition. They appeared to take no notice at all of the neighbors whom they saw oftenest. It was a most beautiful evening; the two great elms were almost half in leaf over the blacksmith’s shop which stood across the wide road. Farther along were two small old-fashioned houses and the old white church, with its pretty belfry of four arched sides and a tiny dome at the top. The large cockerel on the vane was pointing a little south of west, and there was still light enough to make it shine bravely against the deep blue eastern sky. On the western side of the road, near the store, were the parsonage and the storekeeper’s modern house, which had a French roof and some attempt at decoration, which the long-established Barlow people called gingerbread-work, and regarded with mingled pride and disdain. These buildings made the tiny village called Barlow Plains. They stood in the middle of a long narrow strip of level ground. They were islanded by green fields and pastures. There were hills beyond; the mountains themselves seemed very near. Scattered about on the hill slopes were farmhouses, which stood so far apart, with their clusters of out-buildings, that each looked lonely, and the pine woods above seemed to besiege them all. It was lighter on the uplands than it was in the valley, where the three men sat on their bench, with their backs to the store and the western sky.

  “Well, here we be ’most into June, an’ I ’ain’t got a bush-bean above ground,” lamented Henry Merrill.

  “Your land’s always late, ain’t it? But you always catch up with the rest on us,” Asa Brown consoled him. “I’ve often observed that your land, though early planted, was late to sprout. I view it there’s a good week’s difference betwixt me an’ Stover an’ your folks, but come first o’ July we all even up.”

  “ ’T is just so,” said John Stover, taking his pipe out of his mouth, as if he had a good deal more to say, and then replacing it, as if he had changed his mind.

  “Made it extry hard having that long wet spell. Can’t none on us take no day off this season,” said Asa Brown; but nobody thought it worth his while to respond to such evident truth.

  “Next Saturday ’ll be the thirtieth o’ May—that’s Decoration Day, ain’t it?—come round again. Lord! how the years slip by after you git to be forty-five an’ along there!” said Asa again. “I s’pose some o’ our folks’ll go over to Alton to see the procession, same ’s usual. I’ve got to git one o’ them small flags to stick on our Joel’s grave, an’ Mis’ Dexter always counts on havin’ some for Harrison’s lot. I calculate to get ’em somehow. I must make time to ride over, but I don’t know where the time ’s comin’ from out o’ next week. I wish the women folks would tend to them things. There’s the spot where Eb Munson an’ John Tighe lays in the poor-farm lot, an’ I did mean certain to buy flags for ’em last year an’ year before, but I went an’ forgot it. I’d like to have folks that rode by notice ’em for once, if they was town paupers. Eb Munson was as darin’ a man as ever stepped out to tuck o’ drum.”dv

  “So he was,” said John Stover, taking his pipe with decision and knocking out the ashes. “Drink was his ruin; but I wan’t one that could be harsh with Eb, no matter what he done. He worked hard long ’s he could, too; but he wan’t like a sound man, an’ I think he took somethin’ first not so much ’cause he loved it, but to kind of keep his strength up so ’s he could work, an’ then, all of a sudden, rum clinched with him an’ threw him. Eb was talkin’ ’long o’ me one day when he was about half full, an’ says he, right out, ‘I wouldn’t have fell to this state,’ says he, ‘if I’d had me a home an’ a little fam’ly; but it don’t make no difference to nobody, and it’s the best comfort I seem to have, an’ I ain’t goin’ to do without it. I’m ailin’ all the time,’ says he, ‘an’ if I keep middlin’ full, I make out to hold my own an’ to keep along o’ my work.’ I pitied Eb. I says to him, ‘You ain’t goin’ to bring no disgrace on us old army boys, be you, Eb?’ an’ he says no, he wan’t. I think if he’d lived to get one o’ them big fat pensions, he’d had it easier. Eight dollars a month paid his board, while he’d pick up what cheap work he could, an’ then he got so that decent folks didn’t seem to want the bother of him, an’ so he come on the town.”

  “There was somethin’ else to it,” said Henry Merrill soberly. “Drink come natural to him, ’t was born in him, I expect, an’ there wan’t nobody that could turn the divil out same ’s they did in Scriptur’.dw His father an’ his gran’father was drinkin’ men; but they was kind-hearted an’ good neighbors, an’ never set out to wrong nobody. ’T was the custom to drink in their day; folks was colder an’ liv
ed poorer in early times, an’ that’s how most of ’em kept a-goin’. But what stove Eb all up was his disapp’intment with Marthy Peck—her forsakin’ of him an’ marryin’ old John Down whilst Eb was off to war. I’ve always laid it up ag’inst her.”

  “So ’ve I,” said Asa Brown. “She didn’t use the poor fellow right. I guess she was full as well off, but it’s one thing to show judgment, an’ another thing to have heart.”

  There was a long pause; the subject was too familiar to need further comment.

  “There ain’t no public sperit here in Barlow,” announced Asa Brown, with decision. “I don’t s’pose we could ever get up anything for Decoration Day. I’ve felt kind of ’shamed, but it always comes in a busy time; ’t wan’t no time to have it, anyway, right in late plantin’.”

  “ ’T ain’t no use to look for public sperit ’less you’ve got some yourself,” observed John Stover soberly; but something had pleased him in the discouraged suggestion. “Perhaps we could mark the day this year. It comes on a Saturday; that ain’t nigh so bad as bein’ in the middle of the week.”

  Nobody made any answer, and presently he went on,—

  “There was a time along back when folks was too nigh the war-time to give much thought to the bigness of it. The best fellows was them that had stayed to home an’ worked their trades an’ laid up money; but I don’t know ’s it’s so now.”

  “Yes, the fellows that stayed at home got all the fat places, an’ when we come back we felt dreadful behind the times,” grumbled Asa Brown. “I remember how ’t was.”

  “They begun to call us heroes an’ old stick-in-the-mud just about the same time,” resumed Stover, with a chuckle. “We wa’n’t no hand for strippin’ woodland nor even tradin’ hosses them first few years. I don’ know why ’t was we were so beat out. The best most on us could do was to sag right on to the old folks. Father he never wanted me to go to the war,—’t was partly his Quaker breed,dx—an’ he used to be dreadful mortified with the way I hung round down here to the store an’ loafed round a-talkin’ about when I was out South, an’ arguin’ with folks that didn’t know nothin’, about what the generals done. There! I see me now just as he see me then; but after I had my boy-strut out, I took holt o’ the old farm ’long o’ father, an’ I’ve made it bounce. Look at them old meadows an’ see the herd’s grass that come off of ’em last year! I ain’t ashamed o’ my place now, if I did go to the war.”