as matters were now running so swimmingly with us, ethel invited an old school friend of hers to come and pay us a visit.
miss paxton, “cherry,” as most of her friends call her, is an unusually talented woman. she can draw very well indeed, and she can play the piano in an almost professional way. tall and slender, with a facial animation that is almost beauty, she is a general favorite by virtue of her buoyant spirits and readiness for whatever is going on.
when minerva heard that she was coming up she clapped her hands and said,
“my-oh-my! i’m glad to hear she’s comin’. now we will have music.”
she meant piano music, for miss paxton did not sing. but we had no piano.
i had not thought it worth while to get one, because ethel, while very fond of music and with a cultivated taste for it, is not able to play. her father thought that so many people now-a-days play the piano badly, that it was just as well not to play it at all, and he would never hear of her taking lessons.
as miss paxton was only going to be up a week, it did not seem to be worth while sending to springfield for a piano. i did not know at the time that there was a wareroom in egerton.
we talked it over, ethel and i, and we came to the conclusion that we would help cherry to enjoy herself without music—unless she should show an unexpected predilection for the accordeon, in which case we had no doubt that minerva would lend her her instrument.
cherry was coming on a saturday, and we were to drive to egerton to meet her.
friday afternoon we went to call on mrs. hartlett, an old lady, who was in her hundredth year, and in almost complete possession of her faculties.
i feel that i owe it to mrs. hartlett to give some account of our visit to her, although the real object of this chapter is to tell what was happening during our absence from home.
mrs. hartlett was a widow, her husband having died eighty-one years before.
“just think of it, philip,” said ethel, as we began to descend the little hill at the foot of which mrs. hartlett lived with a granddaughter, a woman verging on sixty years, and almost as old looking as her grandmother.
“just think of it; for the best part of her life mrs. hartlett has had a young husband.”
“what do you mean?” said i, not at once seeing her drift.
“why, the memory of her husband is that of a young man. they said he was only twenty-two when he died, and for over eighty years she has had that picture in her memory.”
“it’s probably kept her young,” said i.
we found her sitting outside of her door under a grape arbour, knitting. her face was thin and her cheek bones high and the skin was drawn tightly, but its colour had a reminiscence of the rosy shade that had (so tradition said) made her a beauty “in the days when madison was president.”
she was erect, and despite a slight trembling of her frame, she looked strong.
“we thought we’d come and see you and bring you some sweet peas,” said ethel.
“it is very good of you,” said she, in a voice which though cracked had a pleasant ring of sincerity in it. “you are the vernons, are you not?”
i was surprised that so old a soul should be enough interested in things to know who transient summer people were, but i suppose it was that very interest in things that had kept her faculties unimpaired.
as i looked at her i felt proud of new england. perfectly self-possessed, abundantly able to hold her own in conversation, respected by all and self-respecting, she was a type of that native cultivation that made the hill towns a source of strength to the nation, before the coming of steam cars that drew the young men and maidens from the hills and sent them forth to carry new england traditions to the west.
“yes, so you’ve heard of us.”
“oh, yes, the young people come in and keep me informed of all passing matters,” said she, talking slowly and evidently choosing her words with care.
“pray be seated,” said she quaintly, and we took seats under the pleasant grape arbour.
suddenly a canary, whose cage hung in the centre of the arbour, burst into a roulade that had something of the bubbling ecstacy of a bobolink’s note.
mrs. hartlett looked up at him and smiled.
“he is a source of comfort to me,” said she. “he sings as long as the sun shines. last winter he was mute for upwards of a week, and i feared that i was going to lose him, but it was only that he was moulting. when his new coat had come he began singing again and in spite of the fact that he has no mate he is happy.”
two mateless creatures and both of them happy. it’s all in the temperament.
“how do you like it up on these hills?” said mrs. hartlett.
“very much,” said ethel. “it is so quiet and there are so few houses that it’s a pleasant contrast to our noisy, busy new york life.”
“child, i remember when this was a busy community, too,” said the old lady. “when i was a young lady of eighteen, we had a singing school here and dr. lowell mason used to come from boston every two weeks to teach us, and there were two hundred young people of both sexes who gathered in the seminary to learn of him.”
“you had a seminary here?” said i, astonished, for the district school of the present day is the only school in the neighbourhood, and it does not accommodate more than twenty-five.
“indeed we did; a seminary and a college for chirurgeons. dr. hadley was the best chirurgeon of his time and young men from all over new england used to come here to learn of him. times have changed, but if the houses have fallen away and the people gone the country has grown more beautiful.”
“how do you pass the time?”
“with my magazines and my young friends. i have taken littell’s living age and the atlantic ever since they started, and they keep me abreast of the times, and the young people are very good. two years ago they clubbed together and gave me a cabinet organ. i cannot play it myself; my fingers are too stiff, but the young folks come in and play me the old tunes i knew when i was a girl—‘drink to me only with thine eyes,’ and many others that are never heard now, i suspect. mr. and mrs. hayden are especially kind in coming to sing to me but all the young people are very thoughtful.”
it was not until later that i realized that the “young people” she had specified were considerably over fifty. but she was right. youth is a relative term.
“do you walk about much?”
“when my rheumatism permits of walking. my knees are somewhat rheumatic but it is no more than i might reasonably expect at my great age. i shall be one hundred years old on the 16th of september next if the lord spares me.”
there was a gleam of pride in her eyes as she said this. she was striving for a goal.
we rose to go soon after, fearing that we might tire her if we stayed too long.
“oh, don’t go yet,” said she, half rising and putting out her mitted hand. “you have barely come. i want that you should see my cat. i am quite proud of my cat. she was given to me by a play actor who spent last summer here. i was brought up to consider play acting an abomination to the lord but we live and learn and this gentleman was an honest, god-fearing man although he has been a play actor ever since his youth. i cannot recall his name. names have a way of going from one. it is one of the defects of age with which we must be patient.
“pussy, pussy,” said she, calling in falsetto.
whether in answer to the call or merely because her independence decided that it was time for her to come out and stroll about i cannot say but at that minute a most magnificent angora jumped heavily from a chair in the sitting room (as i saw from my seat under the arbour) and walked out to us. she walked over to ethel and sniffed her dress and passed her by. then she came to me and sniffed my trouser leg and arching her back she rubbed against me and began to purr in tremendous fashion, quite like a young lion.
the old lady laughed cheerily.
“she always shows a penchant for gentlemen,” said she. “you never will guess her name. the play actor named her.”
“lady macbeth?” said i, quite at a venture.
“why, my sakes,” said mrs. hartlett. “you are right. you must be a yankee. you know we are said to be able to guess almost anything.”
“well, if i’m not a yankee born i’m one in spirit. my ancestors came from connecticut.”
“the ‘land of steady habits.’ stop, macbeth. don’t let her sharpen her claws in that fashion. i call her macbeth half the time although she has a much better character than macbeth had.”
“so you read shakespeare?” said i.
“i never did until in recent years. the pastor we had a few years back, in ’65, i think it was, told me that there was much in him that would repay me and i have found it so. i sometimes think that we of the last century were narrow. it came about from our isolation. the easier modes of getting about have made us better acquainted with our world neighbours.”
i signalled to ethel and we again rose.
“do you feel that you must go?” said mrs. hartlett. “i thank you for coming and i am sorry that i cannot offer you something in the way of refreshment but my granddaughter has gone to town and i find that it does not do for me to try to handle cups and saucers and glasses for my old wrists are tired of service and they play me strange tricks.”
we shook hands with the old lady and as we came away she said:
“when you can find nothing better worth doing come and see me.”
“well, she is the real thing,” said i as we got out of hearing.
“ninety-nine years young and growing younger every year. think of her hobnobbing with a play actor. i wonder who he was.”
“why, but aren’t actors all right?” asked ethel.
“yes, they are if they are, but you don’t know what it meant for her, brought up as she had been, to acknowledge that an actor might be a good man. it showed great independence of mind.”
“what poise she had,” said ethel.
“she could stand before kings.”
“and the kings might well feel honoured.”
we walked slowly back as ethel was trying to see how many kinds of wild flowers she could pick. mrs. dana’s book had had an effect upon her she had not anticipated and i was afraid that she was going to become a botanist and talk about pistils and stamens, and things.
i believe she had picked twenty-five different “weeds,” as the farmers thereabouts called them, when she stopped and stood erect and listened.
“where’s that piano?”
“is it a piano,” said i, not willing to believe the evidence of my ears. we were about ten rods from our house and there is not another house nearer than a quarter of a mile and no piano within a half mile.
“it certainly is a piano and in our house,” said she.
what we had heard were preliminary chords and now to a bang-bang accompaniment we heard the pleasing lyric, “hannah, won’t you open that door,” and recognized the voice as that of james.
“first a crimson rambler and now a piano,” said i. “i suppose he planted a few keys and the piano sprang up quickly.”
“well, what does it mean?”
“it means,” said i, “that, however it may have happened, we have a piano in the house and cherry can play when she comes.”
we now noticed wheel tracks, some of them on our lawn and we knew that james had not worked a miracle but that the piano had come to the house by very human agencies. a broken plant showed where a horse’s hoof had toyed with it.
our appearance on the path was the signal for the music to stop and minerva came to the door perfectly radiant.
“it’s come, ma’am. the pianner has come,” said she, her eyes dancing with delight.
“well, who sent it?” said i.
james had come out.
“where did the piano come from, james?”
“i do’no’, sir,” said he. “i found it here when i come up to the house.”
“why, it come in a wagon,” said minerva.
she looked me in the eye and then she gave one of her chuckles.
“say, mist. vernon, didn’ you order it?”
“no,” said i.
she clapped her hands rapturously. “then you can thank me for it, mist. vernon and we’ll have music when miss cherry comes. i half knowed he didn’t mean it for here but i wanted it.”
“what do you mean, minerva? tell us what happened.”
“why, it was this way. i was moppin’ de kitchen an’ i see a man pass the winder, an’ i thought maybe it was tramps, an’ i clinched the mop an’ got ready to run, an’ a man comes to the back-kitchen door an’ asks where he’s to put the pianner.
“‘what pianner?’ says i. ‘why, the on’y pianner we’ve brought,’ says he, ‘for mr. werner.’”
“‘vernon,’ says i. ‘well, vernon,’ says he, ‘where’ll i put it,’ says he, and i says, ‘right in the parlour,’ and i walked thoo to show him, and he went out to the other man an’ they unstrapped it an’ like to ha’ broke the porch floor gettin’ it in, an’ they set it up an’ unlocked it an’ then they gev me the recippy to sign an’ it was written on it, ‘mr. h. werner,’ but i thought as long as the pianner was up an’ you’d like it i wouldn’t tell ’em they’d made a mistake, an’ i signed the recippy an’ they drove off.”
i looked at ethel.
“it’s fate,” said she.
“do you know where it came from?” said i to minerva.
“no, sir. from that away.”
“oh, there’s only one place,” spoke up james: “it came from hill’s in egerton. he rents ’em.”
it was a time when quick thought would be a good thing. “james,” said i, “you go right down to hill’s and tell him that he sent a piano to me by mistake but that i want to keep it, and that he’d better send another to the werner’s before they make a kick about it.”
“won’t we have fun when cherry comes?” said ethel after the others had gone and we stood looking at the case that had the potentiality of so much pleasure in it.
“minerva is a treasure,” said i.
