The Land of Long Ago Part 6

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IV

AUNT JANE GOES A-VISITING

"Yes," said Aunt Jane, "I've been up to Lexin'ton to see Henrietta, and I jest got home day before yesterday. Set down, child, and I'll tell you all about it."

The old lady's eyes were sparkling with happiness, a faint flush was in her cheeks, and she looked as if she had drunk from that fount that all are seeking and that none has ever found.

"Henrietta's been wantin' me to visit her for many a year back," she went on; "but I've been puttin' it off, one way or another, like old folks always do when young folks wants 'em to do anything that's for their good. But you see I've lived right here in this old house pretty near all my life, and takin' me up and carryin' me to off to Lexin'ton was jest about like takin' up that old ellum-tree out yonder and carryin' it over and settin' it out in another county. You've got to be mighty keerful how you move old folks around. However, I've been and come back again, and I ain't any the worse for it, and Henrietta's satisfied because she's had her way. Henrietta used to live in Danville, you know, but Archibald--that's her husband--sold out and moved to Lexin'ton about a year ago, and he's built her a house the like o' which never was seen in the blue-gra.s.s region, so they say.

And as soon as they moved into it, Henrietta wrote to me and says, 'Grandma, I'm not goin' to ask you to come to see me. But next week Archibald and I will be down, and we're goin' to take you home with us whether you want to go or not.'"

Aunt Jane's laugh had a ring of pride, for the love of this favorite grandchild was very dear to her.

"And, honey," she said confidentially, "that was the only thing that made me go. If Henrietta had kept on jest askin' me to come to see her, I'd 'a' kept on holdin' back. I know Henrietta loves me, but whenever she'd say anything about me goin' to see her, I'd think to myself, 'Now, Henrietta's jest askin' me because she thinks I'll feel bad if she don't; and, like as not, if I was to go up there amongst all her fine friends, she'd be ashamed of me.' But when she said she was comin' to take me back with her, I says to myself, 'I'll go, for I know Henrietta wants me.'

"Henrietta was mightily afraid the ride on the cyars would tire me out; but I don't reckon goin' to heaven'll be any easier and pleasanter to me than goin' to Lexin'ton that June day. It looked like everything was fixed to suit me. The weather was jest the kind I like, and the seats in the cyar was as comfortable as any chair I ever set in, and I jest leaned back and looked out o' the winder and thought about the times when I'd ride to town with father, when I was a little child, and father'd take care of me and p'int out the sights to me like Henrietta and Archibald did that day.

"I reckon Kentuckians are the biggest fools in the world over their own State. Sam Amos used to say if you'd set a born-and-bred Kentuckian down in the Gyarden of Eden he'd begin to brag about his farm over in the blue-gra.s.s; and you jest ride from here to Lexin'ton about the first o' June, what Abram used to call 'clover and blue-gra.s.s time,' and if you are a Kentuckian, you'll thank G.o.d, and if you ain't a Kentuckian, you'll wish you was.

"There's a heap of good to be got out of travelin', honey. One thing is, I won't have to go back thirty or forty years to find somethin' to talk about when you come to see me. Even if I hadn't seen Henrietta or Henrietta's home, the things I saw on the way from here to Lexin'ton will keep me talkin' the rest o' my days and make me happier jest to think of 'em. Such farms and hills and trees and orchards, and such level corn-fields, oat-fields and pretty rollin' land in between 'em I know can't be seen anywhere but in Kentucky.

"I couldn't help thinkin' of old man Mose Elrod. His farm j'ined the Amos farm, and a better piece o' land you couldn't 'a' found; but he had a cousin down in Texas, and the cousin kept writin' to him about the soil o' Texas and the climate o' Texas and the money there was to be made there, till finally old man Mose got the Texas fever and sold out and moved down in the neighborhood o' San Antonio. Every now and then he'd write home, and from what he said we judged he was prosperin' and feelin' contented in his new home; but in about a year and a half here he come, walkin' in and takin' the neighbors by surprise. He went all over the neighborhood shakin' hands and tellin'

folks how glad he was to be back again. Says he, 'I've been homesick night and day for eighteen months, and all the money in Texas couldn't keep me away from Kentucky any longer.'

"He said he set up all night on the cyars so's the conductor would tell him when he got on Kentucky soil, and the nearer he got home the happier he got, and when the brakeman hollered, 'Muldraughs Hill!' he jumped up, threw up his hat, and hollered, 'Glory! Hallelujah!' Of course the pa.s.sengers was skeered, and one man says, 'Search him and see if he's got any weapons on him,' and the conductor come runnin'

up, and old man Mose says, 'I haven't got any weapons, conductor, and I'm not drunk nor crazy, but I've been down in Texas for a year and a half, and I'm jest happy over gittin' back home.' And the conductor says: 'Well, that's excuse enough for anything. Holler as loud as you please; you sha'n't be put off the train.'

"The old man said he could 'a' stood it if there'd been any k.n.o.bs or hills or big trees. But he said that prairie land nearly run him crazy, especially in the evenin'. He said he'd watch the sun goin'

down like a ball o' fire away off across that level prairie, and he'd think about how the sunset looked in Kentucky, with old Pilot k.n.o.b and Prewitt's k.n.o.b loomin' up on the horizon, and he'd drop his head in his hands and cry like a baby.

"And talkin' about sunsets, child, reminds me of a picture in Henrietta's parlor. There never was anything like the inside o'

Henrietta's home. Her and Archibald went all over Europe when they was first married, and everywhere they went they gethered up pictures and marble images and such things, and whichever way you'd turn there was somethin' to look at that you never'd seen before. And when you've been livin' all your life in a house like this old farmhouse o' mine, it gives you a curious sort o' feelin' to be set down all at once in a place like Henrietta's. Why, for two or three days I hardly knew the name of anything I was eatin' or drinkin' or lookin' at or walkin' on or settin' on, and when I try to ricollect the different rooms, I git 'em all mixed up. But there's one thing that's jest as clear as day in my mind, and that is the picture I'm tellin' you about. The name of it was 'The Angelus.' Now ain't that a pretty name?--'The Angelus.' Why, it sounds jest like music. The minute I come across it, I stopped still in front of it and looked and looked and looked. And says I, 'Child, this picture makes me feel like sayin' my prayers.' And Henrietta laughed, and says she, 'Grandma, that's jest what the people in the picture are doin'.' And she said that over yonder in France, in some o' the places out in the country, places pretty much like our Goshen neighborhood, I reckon, they was in the habit o' ringin' the church bells at sundown, and when people heard the bells, they'd stop whatever they was doin' and say their prayers. And she told me all about the man that painted 'The Angelus,' how poor he was, and how folks laughed at his pictures, and wouldn't buy 'em because he painted things jest as they was, plain and natural. She said her picture was a copy of the one he painted, and when she saw how much I liked it, she says, 'Grandma, I'm goin' to get you a copy of "The Angelus,"' and I says, 'No, child, I ain't one o' the kind that has to have a picture o' the folks and the things they love. I've got that picture right in my old brain, and all I have to do to see it is jest to shut my eyes and it'll come--the sunset and the field and the two people prayin'

and the bell,--I'll hear that, too, ringin' jest like the old bell that used to ring in Goshen church.' Every day I'd go into the parlor at Henrietta's about the time the sun'd be goin' down, and I'd look first at the sunset in the sky and then at the sunset in the picture, and I couldn't tell which was the prettiest.

"Uncle Jim Matthews used to say that every church bell said, 'Get up, get up, and go to church!' And in them days people minded the church bell. But nowadays it looks like the only bells folks pays any attention to is the breakfast-bell and the dinner-bell and the supper-bell. And I've been thinkin', honey, what a blessed thing it would be, if, all over the world, folks could hear a bell ringin' at sundown and callin' on everybody to stop their work or their pleasure and fold their hands for a minute and pray. Why, the prayers would go up to heaven like the birds flyin' home to their nests, and jest think how many wrong things would be stopped. If a murderer was liftin' his hand, that bell would be like a voice from the sky, sayin', 'Thou shalt not kill.' If a husband and wife was quarrelin', and they heard the Angelus, and stopped to pray, why, maybe, after they'd prayed they'd kiss and make up. Yes, child, the Angelus would do a heap o'

good. But if anybody's once looked at the picture, they won't need the bell. I know I'll never see the sun settin' behind them k.n.o.bs over yonder that I won't think o' that picture, and whatever I'm doin' I'll have to stop and fold my hands and bow my head, the same as I used to do when Parson Page'd stand up in the old Goshen church and say, 'Let us pray.'

"Here's a picture o' Henrietta's house, child. I knew I couldn't tell folks about it so's they'd have any idea o' what it was, so I brought this picture." And she handed me a photograph of one of those modern palaces which, under the spells of the two master magicians, Art and Wealth, are springing up on the soil of the New South to replace the worn-out mansions of ante-bellum days.

"When I looked at Henrietta's house," continued Aunt Jane, "I thought o' what Uncle Billy Bascom used to say. Uncle Billy's the kind that can't enjoy this world for thinkin' about the next one. He's spent his life preparin' for death, and it looks like it hurts him to see anybody gittin' any pleasure out o' the things o' this world. Every time any o' the Goshen folks'd put up a house that was a little bit better than what Uncle Billy'd been used to, he'd shake his head and say, 'Yes, Lord; folks can make theirselves so comfortable here on this earth that they won't have a thought about gittin' a clear t.i.tle to a mansion in the skies.'

"And that house o' Henrietta's was enough to make anybody forget about their mansion in the skies. Henrietta's havin' her heaven now, and she'll have it hereafter, and Archibald, too. For the 'cares o' the world and the deceitfulness o' riches' hasn't choked any o' the good seed that's been sown in their hearts. How many young folks do you reckon would think o' comin' down here and takin' a old woman like me home with 'em, and treatin' her like a queen, and showin' her all the sights in a place like Lexin'ton?

"Archibald named 'em all over to me, and Henrietta says, 'Now where do you want to go first, grandma?' And I says: 'I want to see Henry Clay's house. Take me there first, and I don't care whether I see any o' the rest o' the sights or not.' So the next day Henrietta took me to Ashland, the place where Henry Clay had lived, and I saw the bed he slept in and the table he wrote on and the inkstand and the pen he used. And I says to myself, 'I'm in Henry Clay's home. Henry Clay!--the man I used to hear my father talk about when I was a young gyirl--the man that'd rather be in the right than to be President.'

And I ricollected the time Henry Clay spoke in town and father went to hear him, and when he got back home, mother asked him what kind of a man Henry Clay was. And father says, says he, 'Henry Clay ain't a man'; and mother laughed (she was used to father's way o' talkin'), and says she, 'Well, if he ain't a man, what is he?' And father studied a minute, and then he says, 'Do you ricollect the tongues o'

fire that descended on the apostles on the day of Pentecost?' Says he, 'If one o' them tongues o' fire was put in the body of a man, that'd be Henry Clay.' Says he, 'He stands up and runs his eye over the crowd, and from that minute he's got every man there right in the holler of his hand, and he does jest what he pleases with 'em; and if he looks any particular man in the face, that man'll feel like he's in the presence of his Maker.'

"Father never got over Clay not bein' President; and whenever anybody'd talk about it, he'd shake his head and say, 'There's somethin' wrong with the times when a man like Henry Clay can't git the Presidency.'

"Now, here I am, child, 'way back in Henry Clay's time, when I set out to tell you about my visit to Henrietta's. That wanderin' o' the mind is a pretty good sign of old age, I reckon, but I 'most always manage to ricollect where I started from and where I'm goin' to.

"Well, as soon as I got to feelin' at home Henrietta says, 'Now, grandma, I'm goin' to give you a reception and introduce you to my friends.' And I says: 'Honey, you'd better not do that. You know I'm jest a old-fashioned woman, and maybe I wouldn't know how to behave at a reception.' And Henrietta laughed, and says she, 'All in the world you have to do, grandma, is to shake hands with the people and be glad to see 'em.'

"And, sure enough, it was jest that way. Everybody was smilin' and sayin' they was glad to see me, and that reception was pretty much like shakin' hands with your neighbors after prayer-meetin' and church, only there was more of 'em.

"I started to wear my black alpaca to the reception, but Henrietta says, 'No, grandma, I've had a dress made especially for you.' Jest wait a minute, honey, and I'll get that dress."

And when she appeared a moment later her face wore the radiant look of a girl who displays her first party costume, or a bride her wedding-gown. Over her arm hung the reception gown of soft, black China silk, with plain full skirt and shirred waist. There were ruffles of point lace in the full sleeves, and she held up the point-lace cap and fichu that completed the costume.

"To think o' me wearin' such clothes," said Aunt Jane exultingly. "And the curious part of it was, child, that I hadn't had these things on five minutes, till I felt like they belonged to me, and it seemed as if I'd been wearin' lace and silk all my life. And Henrietta stood off and looked at me, and says she, 'Grandma, you look exactly like a family portrait.' And when Archibald come home after the reception, he says, says he, 'We ought to have grandma's picture painted in that dress.' And Henrietta says, 'Yes; and I want another picture of grandma in her old purple calico dress and gingham ap.r.o.n, settin' in that old high-back rockin'-chair with one of her patchwork quilts over her lap.' Says she, 'That's the way I remember seein' grandma when I was a little gyirl, and that's the way _I_ want her picture taken.'"

She paused to shake out the l.u.s.trous silk and spread the fichu over it that I might see the delicate pattern of the lace.

"I started to leave this dress at Henrietta's," she observed, "for I knew I wouldn't have use for such clothes as these down here on the farm, but Henrietta folded 'em up and put 'em in my trunk, and she said I had to wear 'em every Sunday evenin' and sit out on the porch and think about her and Archibald. And then, child, when I die they can bury me in this dress." And her cheerful smile told me that if death had held any terrors for Aunt Jane, those terrors would be largely a.s.suaged by the thought of going to her long rest in point lace and silk. Nigh on to eighty years, "but yet a woman!"

"Now what was the next thing I went to? Oh, yes! the Brownin' Club.

Two or three days after the reception, Henrietta says to me, 'Grandma, the Brownin' Club meets with me this evenin', and I want you to put on your silk dress and come down to the parlor and listen to our papers.'

And she told me who Brownin' was, and said she was goin' to read a paper on his home life.

"Well, I thought to myself that there wasn't much hope o' me understandin' anything I'd hear at that Brownin' Club, but of course I was glad to dress up again in my silk dress and my lace, and to please Henrietta I went down into the parlor and listened to the readin'.

First, a young lady read a paper about the 'Message of Brownin'.' She said every poet had a message to give to the world jest like the prophets in Old-Testament times, and I gethered from her paper that Brownin' was a man that always looked on the bright side and believed that things was goin' to come right in the end; and towards the last she read some mighty pretty verses. I wish I could ricollect 'em all.

It was somethin' about the spring o' the year and the mornin' and the dew like pearls and the birds flyin'. The words was jest like a picture of a spring mornin', and the last of it was, 'G.o.d's in his heaven--all's right with the world!' That's jest as true as anything in the Bible, and it sounds like it might 'a' come out o' the Bible, don't it, child?

"Then another lady read some o' Brownin's poetry, 'Pary--' somethin'

or other."

"Paracelsus," I suggested.

"That's it," said Aunt Jane, "but I ain't a bit wiser than I was before, for I never did find out whether that was the name of a man or a woman or a town or a river or what. I set and listened, and every now and then it'd seem like there was somethin' that I could understand, but before I could lay hold of it here'd come a lot o' big words that I never heard tell of before, and, I declare to goodness, my old brains got tired tryin' to git some sense out o' that poetry.

Why, it was jest like tryin' to read at night by the light o' the fire. The fire'll blaze up, and you'll see everything plain for a minute, and then it'll die down, and there you are in the dark again.

"Well, when the lady got through readin' the poetry, she said she was goin' to read her interpretation of it. I ricollected how Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dream and Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and I says to myself, 'Now, I'll find out all about it.' But bless your life, child, the poetry was hard enough to understand, but the interpretation was a heap harder; and I says to myself, 'Brownin's poetry never was intended for a old woman like me.' And I jest leaned back in my chair and looked at the hats and the bonnets the ladies had on. Pretty clothes always was one o' my weak points, and will be till I die, I reckon. When I was a child father used to question us children about the sermon when we got home from church. I never could tell much about it, except the text, and I ricollect hearin' mother say to him one Sunday, 'If Jane could jest remember as much about the sermon as she remembers about the hats and bonnets, we could have her ordained to preach.'

"There was one hat I saw at the Brownin' Club that I'll ricollect as long as I ricollect 'The Angelus.' It was made out o' white lace and trimmed with pink roses that made me think o' the roses in my weddin'-bonnet, only they was buds and these was full-blown ones, so full-blown that it looked like they was ready to shatter and fall if the wind blew on 'em, and so natural you could almost smell 'em. I declare, that hat made me wish I was a young gyirl again.

"Then Henrietta read her paper, and it was jest as pretty a story as ever I listened to; about him fallin' in love with that sick woman that hadn't walked a step for years, and how he married her against her father's will, and took her 'way off to Florence, the same place where Henrietta and Archibald went when they was in Europe, and where Henrietta got that quilt pattern for me. And she told how kind he was to her, and how he'd git up in the mornin' and gether roses and put 'em by her bed so they'd be the first things she'd look at when she opened her eyes. And thinks I to myself, 'Most men wants a woman that can cook for 'em and sew for 'em and clean up after 'em, and Brownin'

must 'a' been a mighty good man to marry a woman that couldn't do anything for him but jest love him.' Somehow I can't git the thought o' Brownin' out o' my head. He must 'a' been mighty different from the common run o' men, and his life don't need interpretin' like his poetry does.

"Maybe you wonder, honey, how a old woman like me could enjoy bein' at a Brownin' Club, and I reckon I was as much out o' place as mother's old spinnin'-wheel that Henrietta had in one corner of her parlor along with all that fine furniture and the fine things she'd brought from Europe. But, then, I couldn't feel a bit bad, for there set Henrietta, my child's child; she had everything I hadn't had, and I jest laughed to myself, and thinks I, 'I'm livin' again in my children and my grandchildren, and I ain't missed a thing.'"

Aunt Jane paused for breath and leaned back in her chair, smiling and smoothing down her gingham ap.r.o.n. I waited in silence, for I knew that the near memories of her visit to her beloved grandchild were as vivid and interesting to her as the far memories of girlhood and young womanhood, and the tide of recollections would soon flow again.

"Well, the next thing we went to was a big meetin' of women from all sorts o' clubs. When Henrietta told me what it was, I says to myself, 'Now, I'll see if what Uncle Billy Bascom told me is the truth or not.' Uncle Billy'd been sent up to the legislature twice from our district, and when I heard he'd been elected the second time, I couldn't help thinkin' about what Sam Amos used to say, that when folks got tired seein' a man around and wanted to git shed of him a while, they always sent him to the legislature. That's about the way it was with Uncle Billy.

"Me and Uncle Billy has always been good friends, and after he got back home he come around to see me, and when we'd shook hands and inquired about each other's health, he looked me right in the face and says he, 'Jane, I've been to Sodom and Gomorrah.' And says I, 'Uncle Billy, that's about the hardest thing ever I heard said about a Kentucky legislature, and I've heard some pretty hard things in my day and time.' And says he: 'No, Jane; you misunderstand me. I ain't referrin' to the legislature; the legislature's all right.' Says he: 'We set sixty days and drawed our pay regular, and we pa.s.sed pretty nigh a hundred bills, and might 'a' pa.s.sed that many more if we'd kept on settin'; but as the const.i.tution don't permit us to set longer, why, of course, we had to adjourn and come on home, leavin' a good deal o' business unfinished. No,' says he, 'it ain't the legislature I'm talkin' about, it's the women, the women.' Says he: 'There was a time when it was some pleasure for a man to go up to the legislature.