Part 15

“And then we went downstairs to get out the fruit-cake and the brandied peaches; for the minister married them in our parlor that afternoon.”

One day old Mr. Morgan, the one-armed Civil War veteran, took me along with him, to get out of the buckboard and open gates, on the back road along the river. He was going up to a hill pasture to salt his sheep. It took forever to get there, because his horse was so slow, and he had time to tell me a great many stories. This was one of them: “When I was a boy at school, I worked at Aunt Almera Canfield’s doing chores night and morning. I remember how she used to loosen herself up in the morning. She was terribly rheumaticky, but she wouldn’t give in to it. Every morning she’d be all stiffened up so she couldn’t stand up straight, nor hardly move her legs at all; but she’d get herself dressed somehow, and then two of her sons came in to help her get started. She’d make them take hold of her, one on each side, and walk her around the room. It was awful to hear how she’d yell out--yell as though they were killing her! And then they’d stop, the sweat on their faces to see how it hurt her, and then she’d yell at them to go on, go on, _she_ hadn’t asked them to stop! They were over sixty, both of them, with grandchildren themselves, but they didn’t dare not do what she said, and they’d walk her round again. She’d kick her poor legs out in front of her hard, to get the joints limbered up, and holler with the pain, and kick them out again, till by and by she’d get so she could go by herself, and she’d be all right for the day. I tell you, I often think of that. Yes, lots of times, it comes back to me.”

Up in the sheep pasture, as we sat to rest the horse, he told me this: “I always thought Aunt Almera knew all about the John Brown raid before most folks did--maybe she sent some money to help him. She wasn’t a bit surprised, anyhow, when she heard of it, and all through the whole business she never thought of another thing, nor let anybody else. He was caught--any of us that lived in that house those days will never forget a one of those dates--and put in jail on the 9th of October, and his trial lasted until the 31st. Aunt Almera made us get together in the evenings, me and the hired girl and one of her grandsons and her daughter, all the family, and she’d read aloud to us out of the ‘Tribune’ about what had happened that day at his trial. I never saw her so worked up about anything--just like ashes her old face was, and her voice like cold steel. We got as excited about it as she did, all of us, especially her grandson, that was about my age. The day of his execution--December 2d, it was--Aunt Almera came at dawn to wake me up. ‘Put on your clothes,’ says she, ‘and go over to the church and begin to toll the bell.’ I didn’t need to ask her what for, either. I’ll never forget how awful she looked to me.

“Well, we tolled the bell all day long, one or the other of the family, never stopped a minute. You never heard anything so like death. All day long that slow, deep clang--and then a stillness--and then _clang!_ again. I could hear it in my head for days afterwards. Folks came in from all around to find out what it meant, and Aunt Almera called them all into her parlor--she sat there all day and never ate a mouthful of food--and _told_ them what it meant, so they couldn’t ever get the sound of her voice out of their ears. Between times she’d read out of the Bible to whoever was there, ‘Avenge thou thy cause, O Lord God of battles,’ and ‘It is time for thee, O Lord, to lay to thy hand, for they have destroyed thy law,’ and ‘Let there be no man to pity them; nor to have compassion of their fatherless children.’ It was the darndest thing to hear her!

“You’d better believe when Abraham Lincoln sent out the first call for men there wasn’t a boy of military age in our town that didn’t enlist!”

An aged cousin had just died, and as we sat downstairs talking with the doctor, he said to my aunt, who had been taking care of the sick woman: “She took it hard! She took it hard!”

They both frowned, and my aunt looked rather sick. Then the doctor said, “Not much like your grandmother, do you remember?”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said my aunt, her face quivering, her eyes misty, her lips smiling.

The doctor explained to me: “Your great-grandmother was an old, old woman before she ever was really sick at all, except for rheumatism. And then she had a stroke of paralysis that left her right side dead. She lived four days that way--the only days she’d spent in bed in years, since she was a young woman, I suppose. Her mind wasn’t very clear, she couldn’t talk so that we could understand her, and I don’t think she rightly knew anybody after her stroke. I guess she went back, ’way back, for we saw from what she did that she thought she had a little baby with her. I suppose she thought she was a young mother again, and that was why she was in bed. We used to see her spread out her arm, very gentle and slow, the only arm she could move, so’s to make a hollow place for a little head, and then she’d lie there, so satisfied and peaceful, looking up at the ceiling with a smile in her eyes, as if she felt a little warm, breathing creature there beside her. And sometimes she’d half wake up and stretch out her hand and seem to stroke the baby’s head or snuggle it up closer to her, and then she’d give a long sigh of comfort to find it there, and drop off to sleep again, smiling. And she’d always remember, even in her sleep, to keep her arm curved around so there’d be room for the baby; and even in her sleep her face had that shining new-mother look--that old wrinkled face, with that look on it! I’ve seen lots of death-beds, but I never--” he stopped for a moment.

“Why, at the very last--do you remember?”--he went on to my aunt, “I thought she was asleep, but as I moved a chair she opened her eyes quickly, looked down as if to see whether I had wakened the baby, and looked at me, to warn me to be quiet, her fingers at her lips. ‘Sh!’ she whispered.

“And that was the way she died.”