THE FLIGHT OF BETSEY LANE
by Sarah Orne Jewett
I.
One windy morning in May, three old women sat together near an open
window in the shed chamber of Byfleet Poor-house. The wind was from
the northwest, but their window faced the southeast, and they were
only visited by an occasional pleasant waft of fresh air. They were
close together, knee to knee, picking over a bushel of beans, and
commanding a view of the dandelion-starred, green yard below, and of
the winding, sandy road that led to the village, two miles away. Some
captive bees were scolding among the cobwebs of the rafters overhead,
or thumping against the upper panes of glass; two calves were bawling
from the barnyard, where some of the men were at work loading a
dump-cart and shouting as if every one were deaf. There was a
cheerful feeling of activity, and even an air of comfort, about
the Byfleet Poor-house. Almost every one was possessed of a most
interesting past, though there was less to be said about the future.
The inmates were by no means distressed or unhappy; many of them
retired to this shelter only for the winter season, and would go out
presently, some to begin such work as they could still do, others
to live in their own small houses; old age had impoverished most of
them by limiting their power of endurance; but far from lamenting
the fact that they were town charges, they rather liked the change
and excitement of a winter residence on the poor-farm. There was a
sharp-faced, hard-worked young widow with seven children, who was an
exception to the general level of society, because she deplored the
change in her fortunes. The older women regarded her with suspicion,
and were apt to talk about her in moments like this, when they
happened to sit together at their work.
The three bean-pickers were dressed alike in stout brown ginghams,
checked by a white line, and all wore great faded aprons of blue
drilling, with sufficient pockets convenient to the right hand. Miss
Peggy Bond was a very small, belligerent-looking person, who wore a
huge pair of steel-bowed spectacles, holding her sharp chin well up
in air, as if to supplement an inadequate nose. She was more than
half blind, but the spectacles seemed to face upward instead of square
ahead, as if their wearer were always on the sharp lookout for birds.
Miss Bond had suffered much personal damage from time to time, because
she never took heed where she planted her feet, and so was always
tripping and stubbing her bruised way through the world. She had
fallen down hatchways and cellarways, and stepped composedly into deep
ditches and pasture brooks; but she was proud of stating that she was
upsighted, and so was her father before her. At the poor-house, where
an unusual malady was considered a distinction, upsightedness was
looked upon as a most honorable infirmity. Plain rheumatism, such as
afflicted Aunt Lavina Dow, whose twisted hands found even this light
work difficult and tiresome,--plain rheumatism was something of
every-day occurrence, and nobody cared to hear about it. Poor Peggy
was a meek and friendly soul, who never put herself forward; she was
just like other folks, as she always loved to say, but Mrs. Lavina
Dow was a different sort of person altogether, of great dignity and,
occasionally, almost aggressive behavior. The time had been when she
could do a good day's work with anybody: but for many years now she
had not left the town-farm, being too badly crippled to work; she had
no relations or friends to visit, but from an innate love of authority
she could not submit to being one of those who are forgotten by the
world. Mrs. Dow was the hostess and social lawgiver here, where she
remembered every inmate and every item of interest for nearly forty
years, besides an immense amount of town history and biography for
three or four generations back.
She was the dear friend of the third woman, Betsey Lane; together they
led thought and opinion--chiefly opinion--and held sway, not only over
Byfleet Poor-farm, but also the selectmen and all others in authority.
Betsey Lane had spent most of her life as aid-in-general to the
respected household of old General Thornton. She had been much trusted
and valued, and, at the breaking up of that once large and flourishing
family, she had been left in good circumstances, what with legacies
and her own comfortable savings; but by sad misfortune and lavish
generosity everything had been scattered, and after much illness,
which ended in a stiffened arm and more uncertainty, the good soul
had sensibly decided that it was easier for the whole town to support
her than for a part of it. She had always hoped to see something of
the world before she died; she came of an adventurous, seafaring
stock, but had never made a longer journey than to the towns of
Danby and Northville, thirty miles away.
They were all old women; but Betsey Lane, who was sixty-nine, and
looked much older, was the youngest. Peggy Bond was far on in the
seventies, and Mrs. Dow was at least ten years older. She made a
great secret of her years; and as she sometimes spoke of events
prior to the Revolution with the assertion of having been an
eye-witness, she naturally wore an air of vast antiquity. Her
tales were an inexpressible delight to Betsey Lane, who felt
younger by twenty years because her friend and comrade was so
unconscious of chronological limitations.
The bushel basket of cranberry beans was within easy reach, and each
of the pickers had filled her lap from it again and again. The shed
chamber was not an unpleasant place in which to sit at work, with its
traces of seed corn hanging from the brown cross-beams, its spare
churns, and dusty loom, and rickety wool-wheels, and a few bits of
old furniture. In one far corner was a wide board of dismal use and
suggestion, and close beside it an old cradle. There was a battered
chest of drawers where the keeper of the poor-house kept his
garden-seeds, with the withered remains of three seed cucumbers
ornamenting the top. Nothing beautiful could be discovered, nothing
interesting, but there was something usable and homely about the
place. It was the favorite and untroubled bower of the bean-pickers,
to which they might retreat unmolested from the public apartments
of this rustic institution.
Betsey Lane blew away the chaff from her handful of beans. The spring
breeze blew the chaff back again, and sifted it over her face and
shoulders. She rubbed it out of her eyes impatiently, and happened
to notice old Peggy holding her own handful high, as if it were an
oblation, and turning her queer, up-tilted head this way and that,
to look at the beans sharply, as if she were first cousin to a hen.
"There, Miss Bond, 'tis kind of botherin' work for you, ain't it?"
Betsey inquired compassionately.
"I feel to enjoy it, anything that I can do my own way so," responded
Peggy. "I like to do my part. Ain't that old Mis' Fales comin' up
the road? It sounds like her step."
The others looked, but they were not far-sighted, and for a moment
Peggy had the advantage. Mrs. Fales was not a favorite.
"I hope she ain't comin' here to put up this spring. I guess she
won't now, it's gettin' so late," said Betsey Lane. "She likes
to go rovin' soon as the roads is settled."
"'Tis Mis' Fales!" said Peggy Bond, listening with solemn anxiety.
"There, do let's pray her by!"
"I guess she's headin' for her cousin's folks up Beech Hill way,"
said Betsey presently. "If she'd left her daughter's this mornin',
she'd have got just about as far as this. I kind o' wish she had
stepped in just to pass the time o' day, long's she wa'n't going
to make no stop."
There was a silence as to further speech in the shed chamber; and
even the calves were quiet in the barnyard. The men had all gone
away to the field where corn-planting was going on. The beans
clicked steadily into the wooden measure at the pickers' feet.
Betsey Lane began to sing a hymn, and the others joined in as
best they might, like autumnal crickets; their voices were sharp
and cracked, with now and then a few low notes of plaintive tone.
Betsey herself could sing pretty well, but the others could only
make a kind of accompaniment. Their voices ceased altogether at
the higher notes.
"Oh my! I wish I had the means to go to the Centennial," mourned
Betsey Lane, stopping so suddenly that the others had to go on
croaking and shrilling without her for a moment before they could
stop. "It seems to me as if I can't die happy 'less I do," she
added; "I ain't never seen nothin' of the world, an' here I be."
"What if you was as old as I be?" suggested Mrs. Dow pompously.
"You've got time enough yet, Betsey; don't you go an' despair. I
knowed of a woman that went clean round the world four times when she
was past eighty, an' enjoyed herself real well. Her folks followed the
sea; she had three sons an' a daughter married,--all shipmasters, and
she'd been with her own husband when they was young. She was left a
widder early, and fetched up her family herself,--a real stirrin',
smart woman. After they'd got married off, an' settled, an' was doing
well, she come to be lonesome; and first she tried to stick it out
alone, but she wa'n't one that could; an' she got a notion she hadn't
nothin' before her but her last sickness, and she wa'n't a person
that enjoyed havin' other folks do for her. So one on her boys--I
guess 'twas the oldest--said he was going to take her to sea; there
was ample room, an' he was sailin' a good time o' year for the Cape o'
Good Hope an' way up to some o' them tea-ports in the Chiny Seas. She
was all high to go, but it made a sight o' talk at her age; an' the
minister made it a subject o' prayer the last Sunday, and all the
folks took a last leave; but she said to some she'd fetch 'em home
something real pritty, and so did. An' then they come home t'other
way, round the Horn, an' she done so well, an' was such a sight o'
company, the other child'n was jealous, an' she promised she'd go a
v'y'ge long o' each on 'em. She was as sprightly a person as ever I
see; an' could speak well o' what she'd seen."
"Did she die to sea?" asked Peggy, with interest.
"No, she died to home between v'y'ges, or she'd gone to sea again. I
was to her funeral. She liked her son George's ship the best; 'twas
the one she was going on to Callao. They said the men aboard all
called her 'gran'ma'am,' an' she kep' 'em mended up, an' would go
below and tend to 'em if they was sick. She might 'a' been alive
an' enjoyin' of herself a good many years but for the kick of a cow;
'twas a new cow out of a drove, a dreadful unruly beast."
Mrs. Dow stopped for breath, and reached down for a new supply of
beans; her empty apron was gray with soft chaff. Betsey Lane, still
pondering on the Centennial, began to sing another verse of her hymn,
and again the old women joined her. At this moment some strangers came
driving round into the yard from the front of the house. The turf was
soft, and our friends did not hear the horses' steps. Their voices
cracked and quavered; it was a funny little concert, and a lady in
an open carriage just below listened with sympathy and amusement.
II.
"Betsey! Betsey! Miss Lane!" a voice called eagerly at the foot of
the stairs that led up from the shed. "Betsey! There's a lady here
wants to see you right away."
Betsey was dazed with excitement, like a country child who knows the
rare pleasure of being called out of school. "Lor', I ain't fit to
go down, be I?" she faltered, looking anxiously at her friends; but
Peggy was gazing even nearer to the zenith than usual, in her excited
effort to see down into the yard, and Mrs. Dow only nodded somewhat
jealously, and said that she guessed 'twas nobody would do her any
harm. She rose ponderously, while Betsey hesitated, being, as they
would have said, all of a twitter. "It is a lady, certain," Mrs. Dow
assured her; "'tain't often there's a lady comes here."
"While there was any of Mis' Gen'ral Thornton's folks left, I wa'n't
without visits from the gentry," said Betsey Lane, turning back
proudly at the head of the stairs, with a touch of old-world pride
and sense of high station. Then she disappeared, and closed the door
behind her at the stair-foot with a decision quite unwelcome to the
friends above.
"She needn't 'a' been so dreadful 'fraid anybody was goin' to listen.
I guess we've got folks to ride an' see us, or had once, if we hain't
now," said Miss Peggy Bond, plaintively.
"I expect 't was only the wind shoved it to," said Aunt Lavina.
"Betsey is one that gits flustered easier than some. I wish 'twas
somebody to take her off an' give her a kind of a good time; she's
young to settle down 'long of old folks like us. Betsey's got a
notion o' rovin' such as ain't my natur', but I should like to see
her satisfied. She'd been a very understandin' person, if she had
the advantages that some does."
"'Tis so," said Peggy Bond, tilting her chin high. "I suppose you
can't hear nothin' they're saying? I feel my hearin' ain't up to
whar it was. I can hear things close to me well as ever; but there,
hearin' ain't everything; 'tain't as if we lived where there was
more goin' on to hear. Seems to me them folks is stoppin' a good
while."
"They surely be," agreed Lavina Dow.
"I expect it's somethin' particular. There ain't none of the Thornton
folks left, except one o' the gran'darters, an' I've often heard
Betsey remark that she should never see her more, for she lives to
London. Strange how folks feels contented in them strayaway places
off to the ends of the airth."
The flies and bees were buzzing against the hot windowpanes; the
handfuls of beans were clicking into the brown wooden measure. A bird
came and perched on the windowsill, and then flitted away toward the
blue sky. Below, in the yard, Betsey Lane stood talking with the lady.
She had put her blue drilling apron over her head, and her face was
shining with delight.
"Lor', dear," she said, for at least the third time, "I remember ye
when I first see ye; an awful pritty baby you was, an' they all said
you looked just like the old gen'ral. Be you goin' back to foreign
parts right away?"
"Yes, I'm going back; you know that all my children are there. I wish
I could take you with me for a visit," said the charming young guest.
"I'm going to carry over some of the pictures and furniture from the
old house; I didn't care half so much for them when I was younger as
I do now. Perhaps next summer we shall all come over for a while. I
should like to see my girls and boys playing under the pines."
"I wish you re'lly was livin' to the old place," said Betsey Lane. Her
imagination was not swift; she needed time to think over all that was
being told her, and she could not fancy the two strange houses across
the sea. The old Thornton house was to her mind the most delightful
and elegant in the world.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Mrs. Strafford
kindly,--"anything that I can do for you myself, before I go away? I
shall be writing to you, and sending some pictures of the children,
and you must let me know how you are getting on."
"Yes, there is one thing, darlin'. If you could stop in the village
an' pick me out a pritty, little, small lookin'-glass, that I can keep
for my own an' have to remember you by. 'Tain't that I want to set me
above the rest o' the folks, but I was always used to havin' my own
when I was to your grandma's. There's very nice folks here, some on
'em, and I'm better off than if I was able to keep house; but sence
you ask me, that's the only thing I feel cropin' about. What be you
goin' right back for? ain't you goin' to see the great fair to
Pheladelphy, that everybody talks about?"
"No," said Mrs. Strafford, laughing at this eager and almost
convicting question. "No; I'm going back next week. If I were, I
believe that I should take you with me. Good-by, dear old Betsey;
you make me feel as if I were a little girl again; you look just
the same."
For full five minutes the old woman stood out in the sunshine, dazed
with delight, and majestic with a sense of her own consequence. She
held something tight in her hand, without thinking what it might be;
but just as the friendly mistress of the poor-farm came out to hear
the news, she tucked the roll of money into the bosom of her brown
gingham dress. "'Twas my dear Mis' Katy Strafford," she turned to say
proudly. "She come way over from London; she's been sick; they thought
the voyage would do her good. She said most the first thing she had
on her mind was to come an' find me, and see how I was, an' if I was
comfortable; an' now she's goin' right back. She's got two splendid
houses; an' said how she wished I was there to look after things,--she
remembered I was always her gran'ma's right hand. Oh, it does so
carry me back, to see her! Seems if all the rest on 'em must be there
together to the old house. There, I must go right up an' tell Mis' Dow
an' Peggy."
"Dinner's all ready; I was just goin' to blow the horn for the
men-folks," said the keeper's wife. "They'll be right down. I expect
you've got along smart with them beans,--all three of you together;"
but Betsey's mind roved so high and so far at that moment that no
achievements of bean-picking could lure it back.
III.
The long table in the great kitchen soon gathered its company of
waifs and strays,--creatures of improvidence and misfortune, and the
irreparable victims of old age. The dinner was satisfactory, and
there was not much delay for conversation. Peggy Bond and Mrs. Dow
and Betsey Lane always sat together at one end, with an air of putting
the rest of the company below the salt. Betsey was still flushed
with excitement; in fact, she could not eat as much as usual, and she
looked up from time to time expectantly, as if she were likely to be
asked to speak of her guest; but everybody was hungry, and even Mrs.
Dow broke in upon some attempted confidences by asking inopportunely
for a second potato. There were nearly twenty at the table, counting
the keeper and his wife and two children, noisy little persons who
had come from school with the small flock belonging to the poor widow,
who sat just opposite our friends. She finished her dinner before
any one else, and pushed her chair back; she always helped with the
housework,--a thin, sorry, bad-tempered-looking poor soul, whom grief
had sharpened instead of softening. "I expect you feel too fine to
set with common folks," she said enviously to Betsey.
"Here I be a-settin'," responded Betsey calmly. "I don' know's I
behave more unbecomin' than usual." Betsey prided herself upon her
good and proper manners; but the rest of the company, who would have
liked to hear the bit of morning news, were now defrauded of that
pleasure. The wrong note had been struck; there was a silence after
the clatter of knives and plates, and one by one the cheerful town
charges disappeared. The bean-picking had been finished, and there
was a call for any of the women who felt like planting corn; so Peggy
Bond, who could follow the line of hills pretty fairly, and Betsey
herself, who was still equal to anybody at that work, and Mrs. Dow,
all went out to the field together. Aunt Lavina labored slowly up
the yard, carrying a light splint-bottomed kitchen chair and her
knitting-work, and sat near the stone wall on a gentle rise, where she
could see the pond and the green country, and exchange a word with her
friends as they came and went up and down the rows. Betsey vouchsafed
a word now and then about Mrs. Strafford, but you would have thought
that she had been suddenly elevated to Mrs. Strafford's own cares and
the responsibilities attending them, and had little in common with her
old associates. Mrs. Dow and Peggy knew well that these high-feeling
times never lasted long, and so they waited with as much patience as
they could muster. They were by no means without that true tact which
is only another word for unselfish sympathy.
The strip of corn land ran along the side of a great field; at the
upper end of it was a field-corner thicket of young maples and walnut
saplings, the children of a great nut-tree that marked the boundary.
Once, when Betsey Lane found herself alone near this shelter at the
end of her row, the other planters having lagged behind beyond the
rising ground, she looked stealthily about, and then put her hand
inside her gown, and for the first time took out the money that
Mrs. Strafford had given her. She turned it over and over with an
astonished look: there were new bank-bills for a hundred dollars.
Betsey gave a funny little shrug of her shoulders, came out of the
bushes, and took a step or two on the narrow edge of turf, as if she
were going to dance; then she hastily tucked away her treasure, and
stepped discreetly down into the soft harrowed and hoed land, and
began to drop corn again, five kernels to a hill. She had seen the
top of Peggy Bond's head over the knoll, and now Peggy herself came
entirely into view, gazing upward to the skies, and stumbling more
or less, but counting the corn by touch and twisting her head about
anxiously to gain advantage over her uncertain vision. Betsey made a
friendly, inarticulate little sound as they passed; she was thinking
that somebody said once that Peggy's eyesight might be remedied if
she could go to Boston to the hospital; but that was so remote and
impossible an undertaking that no one had ever taken the first step.
Betsey Lane's brown old face suddenly worked with excitement, but
in a moment more she regained her usual firm expression, and spoke
carelessly to Peggy as she turned and came alongside.
The high spring wind of the morning had quite fallen; it was a lovely
May afternoon. The woods about the field to the northward were full
of birds, and the young leaves scarcely hid the solemn shapes of a
company of crows that patiently attended the corn-planting. Two of the
men had finished their hoeing, and were busy with the construction of
a scarecrow; they knelt in the furrows, chuckling, and looking over
some forlorn, discarded garments. It was a time-honored custom to make
the scarecrow resemble one of the poor-house family; and this year
they intended to have Mrs. Lavina Dow protect the field in effigy;
last year it was the counterfeit of Betsey Lane who stood on guard,
with an easily recognized quilted hood and the remains of a valued
shawl that one of the calves had found airing on a fence and chewed to
pieces. Behind the men was the foundation for this rustic attempt at
statuary,--an upright stake and bar in the form of a cross. This stood
on the highest part of the field; and as the men knelt near it, and
the quaint figures of the corn-planters went and came, the scene gave
a curious suggestion of foreign life. It was not like New England; the
presence of the rude cross appealed strangely to the imagination.
IV.
Life flowed so smoothly, for the most part, at the Byfleet Boor-farm,
that nobody knew what to make, later in the summer, of a strange
disappearance. All the elder inmates were familiar with illness and
death, and the poor pomp of a town-pauper's funeral. The comings and
goings and the various misfortunes of those who composed this strange
family, related only through its disasters, hardly served for the
excitement and talk of a single day. Now that the June days were at
their longest, the old people were sure to wake earlier than ever; but
one morning, to the astonishment of every one, Betsey Lane's bed was
empty; the sheets and blankets, which were her own, and guarded with
jealous care, were carefully folded and placed on a chair not too near
the window, and Betsey had flown. Nobody had heard her go down the
creaking stairs. The kitchen door was unlocked, and the old watchdog
lay on the step outside in the early sunshine, wagging his tail and
looking wise, as if he were left on guard and meant to keep the
fugitive's secret.
"Never knowed her to do nothin' afore 'thout talking it over a
fortnight, and paradin' off when we could all see her," ventured
a spiteful voice. "Guess we can wait till night to hear 'bout it."
Mrs. Dow looked sorrowful and shook her head. "Betsey had an aunt
on her mother's side that went and drownded of herself; she was a
pritty-appearing woman as ever you see."
"Perhaps she's gone to spend the day with Decker's folks," suggested
Peggy Bond. "She always takes an extra early start; she was speakin'
lately o' going up their way;" but Mrs. Dow shook her head with a most
melancholy look. "I'm impressed that something's befell her," she
insisted. "I heard her a-groanin' in her sleep. I was wakeful the
forepart o' the night,--'tis very unusual with me, too."
"'Twa'n't like Betsey not to leave us any word," said the other old
friend, with more resentment than melancholy. They sat together almost
in silence that morning in the shed chamber. Mrs. Dow was sorting and
cutting rags, and Peggy braided them into long ropes, to be made into
mats at a later date. If they had only known where Betsey Lane had
gone, they might have talked about it until dinner-time at noon; but
failing this new subject, they could take no interest in any of their
old ones. Out in the field the corn was well up, and the men were
hoeing. It was a hot morning in the shed chamber, and the woolen rags
were dusty and hot to handle.
V.
Byfleet people knew each other well, and when this mysteriously absent
person did not return to the town-farm at the end of a week, public
interest became much excited; and presently it was ascertained that
Betsey Lane was neither making a visit to her friends the Deckers
on Birch Hill, nor to any nearer acquaintances; in fact, she had
disappeared altogether from her wonted haunts. Nobody remembered to
have seen her pass, hers had been such an early flitting; and when
somebody thought of her having gone away by train, he was laughed at
for forgetting that the earliest morning train from South Byfleet,
the nearest station, did not start until long after eight o'clock;
and if Betsey had designed to be one of the passengers, she would have
started along the road at seven, and been seen and known of all women.
There was not a kitchen in that part of Byfleet that did not have
windows toward the road. Conversation rarely left the level of the
neighborhood gossip: to see Betsey Lane, in her best clothes, at that
hour in the morning, would have been the signal for much exercise of
imagination; but as day after day went by without news, the curiosity
of those who knew her best turned slowly into fear, and at last Peggy
Bond again gave utterance to the belief that Betsey had either gone
out in the early morning and put an end to her life, or that she had
gone to the Centennial. Some of the people at table were moved to
loud laughter,--it was at supper-time on a Sunday night,--but others
listened with great interest.
"She never'd put on her good clothes to drownd herself," said the
widow. "She might have thought 'twas good as takin' 'em with her,
though. Old folks has wandered off an' got lost in the woods afore
now."
Mrs. Dow and Peggy resented this impertinent remark, but deigned
to take no notice of the speaker. "She wouldn't have wore her best
clothes to the Centennial, would she?" mildly inquired Peggy, bobbing
her head toward the ceiling. "'Twould be a shame to spoil your best
things in such a place. An' I don't know of her havin' any money;
there's the end o' that."
"You're bad as old Mis' Bland, that used to live neighbor to our
folks," said one of the old men. "She was dreadful precise; an' she
so begretched to wear a good alapaca dress that was left to her,
that it hung in a press forty year, an' baited the moths at last."
"I often seen Mis' Bland a-goin' in to meetin' when I was a young
girl," said Peggy Bond approvingly. "She was a good-appearin' woman,
an' she left property."
"Wish she'd left it to me, then," said the poor soul opposite,
glancing at her pathetic row of children: but it was not good manners
at the farm to deplore one's situation, and Mrs. Dow and Peggy only
frowned. "Where do you suppose Betsey can be?" said Mrs. Dow, for the
twentieth time. "She didn't have no money. I know she ain't gone far,
if it's so that she's yet alive. She's b'en real pinched all the
spring."
"Perhaps that lady that come one day give her some," the keeper's wife
suggested mildly.
"Then Betsey would have told me," said Mrs. Dow, with injured dignity.
VI.
On the morning of her disappearance, Betsey rose even before the pewee
and the English sparrow, and dressed herself quietly, though with
trembling hands, and stole out of the kitchen door like a plunderless
thief. The old dog licked her hand and looked at her anxiously; the
tortoise-shell cat rubbed against her best gown, and trotted away
up the yard, then she turned anxiously and came after the old woman,
following faithfully until she had to be driven back. Betsey was used
to long country excursions afoot. She dearly loved the early morning;
and finding that there was no dew to trouble her, she began to follow
pasture paths and short cuts across the fields, surprising here and
there a flock of sleepy sheep, or a startled calf that rustled out
from the bushes. The birds were pecking their breakfast from bush and
turf; and hardly any of the wild inhabitants of that rural world were
enough alarmed by her presence to do more than flutter away if they
chanced to be in her path. She stepped along, light-footed and eager
as a girl, dressed in her neat old straw bonnet and black gown, and
carrying a few belongings in her best bundle-handkerchief, one that
her only brother had brought home from the East Indies fifty years
before. There was an old crow perched as sentinel on a small, dead
pine-tree, where he could warn friends who were pulling up the
sprouted corn in a field close by; but he only gave a contemptuous
caw as the adventurer appeared, and she shook her bundle at him in
revenge, and laughed to see him so clumsy as he tried to keep his
footing on the twigs.
"Yes, I be," she assured him. "I'm a-goin' to Pheladelphy, to the
Centennial, same's other folks. I'd jest as soon tell ye's not, old
crow;" and Betsey laughed aloud in pleased content with herself and
her daring, as she walked along. She had only two miles to go to the
station at South Byfleet, and she felt for the money now and then,
and found it safe enough. She took great pride in the success of her
escape, and especially in the long concealment of her wealth. Not a
night had passed since Mrs. Strafford's visit that she had not slept
with the roll of money under her pillow by night, and buttoned safe
inside her dress by day. She knew that everybody would offer advice
and even commands about the spending or saving of it; and she brooked
no interference.
The last mile of the foot-path to South Byfleet was along the railway
track; and Betsey began to feel in haste, though it was still nearly
two hours to train time. She looked anxiously forward and back along
the rails every few minutes, for fear of being run over; and at last
she caught sight of an engine that was apparently coming toward her,
and took flight into the woods before she could gather courage to
follow the path again. The freight train proved to be at a standstill,
waiting at a turnout; and some of the men were straying about, eating
their early breakfast comfortably in this time of leisure. As the old
woman came up to them, she stopped too, for a moment of rest and
conversation.
"Where be ye goin'?" she asked pleasantly; and they told her. It was
to the town where she had to change cars and take the great through
train; a point of geography which she had learned from evening talks
between the men at the farm.
"What'll ye carry me there for?"
"We don't run no passenger cars," said one of the young fellows,
laughing. "What makes you in such a hurry?"
"I'm startin' for Pheladelphy, an' it's a gre't ways to go."
"So't is; but you're consid'able early, if you're makin' for the
eight-forty train. See here! you haven't got a needle an' thread
'long of you in that bundle, have you? If you'll sew me on a couple
o' buttons, I'll give ye a free ride. I'm in a sight o' distress,
an' none o' the fellows is provided with as much as a bent pin."
"You poor boy! I'll have you seen to, in half a minute. I'm troubled
with a stiff arm, but I'll do the best I can."
The obliging Betsey seated herself stiffly on the slope of the
embankment, and found her thread and needle with utmost haste. Two
of the train-men stood by and watched the careful stitches, and even
offered her a place as spare brakeman, so that they might keep her
near; and Betsey took the offer with considerable seriousness, only
thinking it necessary to assure them that she was getting most too old
to be out in all weathers. An express went by like an earthquake, and
she was presently hoisted on board an empty box-car by two of her new
and flattering acquaintances, and found herself before noon at the end
of the first stage of her journey, without having spent a cent, and
furnished with any amount of thrifty advice. One of the young men,
being compassionate of her unprotected state as a traveler, advised
her to find out the widow of an uncle of his in Philadelphia, saying
despairingly that he couldn't tell her just how to find the house; but
Miss Betsey Lane said that she had an English tongue in her head, and
should be sure to find whatever she was looking for. This unexpected
incident of the freight train was the reason why everybody about the
South Byfleet station insisted that no such person had taken passage
by the regular train that same morning, and why there were those who
persuaded themselves that Miss Betsey Lane was probably lying at the
bottom of the poor-farm pond.
VII.
"Land sakes!" said Miss Betsey Lane, as she watched a Turkish person
parading by in his red fez, "I call the Centennial somethin' like
the day o' judgment! I wish I was goin' to stop a month, but I dare
say 'twould be the death o' my poor old bones."
She was leaning against the barrier of a patent pop-corn
establishment, which had given her a sudden reminder of home, and of
the winter nights when the sharp-kerneled little red and yellow ears
were brought out, and Old Uncle Eph Flanders sat by the kitchen stove,
and solemnly filled a great wooden chopping-tray for the refreshment
of the company. She had wandered and loitered and looked until
her eyes and head had grown numb and unreceptive; but it is only
unimaginative persons who can be really astonished. The imagination
can always outrun the possible and actual sights and sounds of the
world; and this plain old body from Byfleet rarely found anything rich
and splendid enough to surprise her. She saw the wonders of the West
and the splendors of the East with equal calmness and satisfaction;
she had always known that there was an amazing world outside the
boundaries of Byfleet. There was a piece of paper in her pocket on
which was marked, in her clumsy handwriting, "If Betsey Lane should
meet with accident, notify the selectmen of Byfleet;" but having made
this slight provision for the future, she had thrown herself boldly
into the sea of strangers, and then had made the joyful discovery
that friends were to be found at every turn.
There was something delightfully companionable about Betsey; she had a
way of suddenly looking up over her big spectacles with a reassuring
and expectant smile, as if you were going to speak to her, and you
generally did. She must have found out where hundreds of people came
from, and whom they had left at home, and what they thought of the
great show, as she sat on a bench to rest, or leaned over the railings
where free luncheons were afforded by the makers of hot waffles and
molasses candy and fried potatoes; and there was not a night when she
did not return to her lodgings with a pocket crammed with samples of
spool cotton and nobody knows what. She had already collected small
presents for almost everybody she knew at home, and she was such a
pleasant, beaming old country body, so unmistakably appreciative and
interested, that nobody ever thought of wishing that she would move
on. Nearly all the busy people of the Exhibition called her either
Aunty or Grandma at once, and made little pleasures for her as best
they could. She was a delightful contrast to the indifferent, stupid
crowd that drifted along, with eyes fixed at the same level, and
seeing, even on that level, nothing for fifty feet at a time. "What be
you making here, dear?" Betsey Lane would ask joyfully, and the most
perfunctory guardian hastened to explain. She squandered money as
she had never had the pleasure of doing before, and this hastened
the day when she must return to Byfleet. She was always inquiring
if there were any spectacle-sellers at hand, and received occasional
directions; but it was a difficult place for her to find her way about
in, and the very last day of her stay arrived before she found an
exhibitor of the desired sort, an oculist and instrument-maker.
"I called to get some specs for a friend that's upsighted," she
gravely informed the salesman, to his extreme amusement. "She's
dreadful troubled, and jerks her head up like a hen a-drinkin'.
She's got a blur a-growin' an' spreadin', an' sometimes she can
see out to one side on't, and more times she can't."
"Cataracts," said a middle-aged gentleman at her side; and Betsey
Lane turned to regard him with approval and curiosity.
"'Tis Miss Peggy Bond I was mentioning, of Byfleet Poor-farm," she
explained. "I count on gettin' some glasses to relieve her trouble,
if there's any to be found."
"Glasses won't do her any good," said the stranger. "Suppose you come
and sit down on this bench, and tell me all about it. First, where is
Byfleet?" and Betsey gave the directions at length.
"I thought so," said the surgeon. "How old is this friend of yours?"
Betsey cleared her throat decisively, and smoothed her gown over her
knees as if it were an apron; then she turned to take a good look at
her new acquaintance as they sat on the rustic bench together. "Who be
you, sir, I should like to know?" she asked, in a friendly tone.
"My name's Dunster."
"I take it you're a doctor," continued Betsey, as if they had
overtaken each other walking from Byfleet to South Byfleet on a
summer morning.
"I'm a doctor; part of one at least," said he. "I know more or less
about eyes; and I spend my summers down on the shore at the mouth of
your river; some day I'll come up and look at this person. How old
is she?"
"Peggy Bond is one that never tells her age; 'tain't come quite up
to where she'll begin to brag of it, you see," explained Betsey
reluctantly; "but I know her to be nigh to seventy-six, one way or
t'other. Her an' Mrs. Mary Ann Chick was same year's child'n, and
Peggy knows I know it, an' two or three times when we've be'n in the
buryin'-ground where Mary Ann lays an' has her dates right on her
headstone, I couldn't bring Peggy to take no sort o' notice. I will
say she makes, at times, a convenience of being upsighted. But there,
I feel for her,--everybody does; it keeps her stubbin' an' trippin'
against everything, beakin' and gazin' up the way she has to."
"Yes, yes," said the doctor, whose eyes were twinkling. "I'll come and
look after her, with your town doctor, this summer,--some time in the
last of July or first of August."
"You'll find occupation," said Betsey, not without an air of
patronage. "Most of us to the Byfleet Farm has got our ails, now I
tell ye. You ain't got no bitters that'll take a dozen years right
off an ol' lady's shoulders?"
The busy man smiled pleasantly, and shook his head as he went away.
"Dunster," said Betsey to herself, soberly committing the new name
to her sound memory. "Yes, I mustn't forget to speak of him to the
doctor, as he directed. I do' know now as Peggy would vally herself
quite so much accordin' to, if she had her eyes fixed same as other
folks. I expect there wouldn't been a smarter woman in town, though,
if she'd had a proper chance. Now I've done what I set to do for her,
I do believe, an' 'twa'n't glasses, neither. I'll git her a pritty
little shawl with that money I laid aside. Peggy Bond ain't got a
pritty shawl. I always wanted to have a real good time, an' now I'm
havin' it."
VIII.
Two or three days later, two pathetic figures might have been seen
crossing the slopes of the poor-farm field, toward the low shores
of Byfield pond. It was early in the morning, and the stubble of the
lately mown grass was wet with rain and hindering to old feet. Peggy
Bond was more blundering and liable to stray in the wrong direction
than usual; it was one of the days when she could hardly see at all.
Aunt Lavina Dow was unusually clumsy of movement, and stiff in the
joints; she had not been so far from the house for three years. The
morning breeze filled the gathers of her wide gingham skirt, and
aggravated the size of her unwieldy figure. She supported herself
with a stick, and trusted beside to the fragile support of Peggy's
arm. They were talking together in whispers.
"Oh, my sakes!" exclaimed Peggy, moving her small head from side to
side. "Hear you wheeze, Mis' Dow! This may be the death o' you; there,
do go slow! You set here on the sidehill, an' le' me go try if I can
see."
"It needs more eyesight than you've got," said Mrs. Dow, panting
between the words. "Oh! to think how spry I was in my young days, an'
here I be now, the full of a door, an' all my complaints so aggravated
by my size. 'T is hard! 'tis hard! but I'm a-doin' of all this for
pore Betsey's sake. I know they've all laughed, but I look to see her
ris' to the top o' the pond this day,--'tis just nine days since she
departed; an' say what they may, I know she hove herself in. It run in
her family; Betsey had an aunt that done just so, an' she ain't be'n
like herself, a-broodin' an' hivin' away alone, an' nothin' to say to
you an' me that was always sich good company all together. Somethin'
sprung her mind, now I tell ye, Mis' Bond."
"I feel to hope we sha'n't find her, I must say," faltered Peggy. It
was plain that Mrs. Dow was the captain of this doleful expedition. "I
guess she ain't never thought o' drowndin' of herself, Mis' Dow; she's
gone off a-visitin' way over to the other side o' South Byfleet; some
thinks she's gone to the Centennial even now!"
"She hadn't no proper means, I tell ye," wheezed Mrs. Dow indignantly;
"an' if you prefer that others should find her floatin' to the top
this day, instid of us that's her best friends, you can step back to
the house."
They walked on in aggrieved silence. Peggy Bond trembled with
excitement, but her companion's firm grasp never wavered, and so they
came to the narrow, gravelly margin and stood still. Peggy tried in
vain to see the glittering water and the pond-lilies that starred
it; she knew that they must be there; once, years ago, she had caught
fleeting glimpses of them, and she never forgot what she had once
seen. The clear blue sky overhead, the dark pine-woods beyond the
pond, were all clearly pictured in her mind. "Can't you see nothin'?"
she faltered; "I believe I'm wuss'n upsighted this day. I'm going to
be blind."
"No," said Lavina Dow solemnly; "no, there ain't nothin' whatever,
Peggy. I hope to mercy she ain't"--
"Why, whoever'd expected to find you 'way out here!" exclaimed a brisk
and cheerful voice. There stood Betsey Lane herself, close behind
them, having just emerged from a thicket of alders that grew close by.
She was following the short way homeward from the railroad.
"Why, what's the matter, Mis' Dow? You ain't overdoin', be ye? an'
Peggy's all of a flutter. What in the name o' natur' ails ye?"
"There ain't nothin' the matter, as I knows on," responded the leader
of this fruitless expedition. "We only thought we'd take a stroll this
pleasant mornin'," she added, with sublime self-possession. "Where've
you be'n, Betsey Lane?"
"To Pheladelphy, ma'am," said Betsey, looking quite young and gay, and
wearing a townish and unfamiliar air that upheld her words. "All ought
to go that can; why, you feel's if you'd be'n all round the world. I
guess I've got enough to think of and tell ye for the rest o' my days.
I've always wanted to go somewheres. I wish you'd be'n there, I do so.
I've talked with folks from Chiny an' the back o' Pennsylvany; and I
see folks way from Australy that 'peared as well as anybody; an' I see
how they made spool cotton, an' sights o' other things; an' I spoke
with a doctor that lives down to the beach in the summer, an' he
offered to come up 'long in the first of August, an' see what he can
do for Peggy's eyesight. There was di'monds there as big as pigeon's
eggs; an' I met with Mis' Abby Fletcher from South Byfleet depot; an'
there was hogs there that weighed risin' thirteen hunderd"--
"I want to know," said Mrs. Lavina Dow and Peggy Bond, together.
"Well, 'twas a great exper'ence for a person," added Lavina, turning
ponderously, in spite of herself, to give a last wistful look at the
smiling waters of the pond.
"I don't know how soon I be goin' to settle down," proclaimed the
rustic sister of Sindbad. "What's for the good o' one's for the good
of all. You just wait till we're setting together up in the old shed
chamber! You know, my dear Mis' Katy Strafford give me a han'some
present o' money that day she come to see me; and I'd be'n a-dreamin'
by night an' day o' seein' that Centennial; and when I come to think
on't I felt sure somebody ought to go from this neighborhood, if 'twas
only for the good o' the rest; and I thought I'd better be the one.
I wa'n't goin' to ask the selec'men neither. I've come back with
one-thirty-five in money, and I see everything there, an' I fetched ye
all a little somethin'; but I'm full o' dust now, an' pretty nigh beat
out. I never see a place more friendly than Pheladelphy; but 't ain't
natural to a Byfleet person to be always walkin' on a level. There,
now, Peggy, you take my bundle-handkercher and the basket, and let
Mis' Dow sag on to me. I 'll git her along twice as easy."
With this the small elderly company set forth triumphant toward the
poor-house, across the wide green field.
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