THE FURRIN WOMAN

THE new doctor from the new town on the new railroad came not only once, but many times to call upon Marcia Haddon, seriously ill at Granny Williams’ home. A high fever held her by the time she had arrived in the night after that terrible day upon the river. By the next day delirium had its will of her. The kindly inhabitants called it “chills and fever.” It was a chilled heart, a fevered mind.

Granny Williams was wholly contemptuous of the new doctor, or of any doctor. It was Joslin who insisted that the old-woman remedies should not be trusted, who sent for the only modern physician thus far known in that portion of the world. The presence of the latter was accepted only grudgingly by Granny Williams, who insisted that camomile and boneset was all the “furrin woman” needed. But the new doctor, himself a voice in the wilderness, was a young man who understood many things.

When after many days his patient had worn out the fever and showed certain signs of convalescence, she lay a long time with mind apparently a blank, inquiring nothing as to her surroundings, and equally incurious in regard to herself.

“Where is he?” she asked at length, upon one day when Joslin had come to find how she was progressing. She had come, weakly, to look forward to these daily visits, although often she did not speak to him at all.

“We cared for him,” answered he. “When you are well enough we’ll show you. We sent out a man with a telegram. We have word for you.”

She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Poor boy,” she said, “poor boy! Well, it’s over for him. I wish it were for me.” For the time she did not speak further.

But slowly, under inexorable nature’s rule, the duty of living came forward to her consciousness, insistent, imperative. Marcia Haddon, little by little, undertook once more to knit the raveled sleeve. The strangeness of her new surroundings proved of itself a benefit. The faces that she saw about her, kindly as they were, were faces as of another world. Those who attended her spoke a language which at first she scarcely understood. For days she lay and looked at them with not even a smile upon her face to thank them, passive, incurious, but after a time observing and questioning.

“She’s powerful weak,” said old Granny Williams to a neighbor, shaking her head now and then. “Them furrin women kain’t stand nothin’. To look at her ye’d think she was the one that got drownded in the Narrers, not him.

“They say he was moughty rich,” she continued. “They say he owned all the land acrosst the river from here, an’ him an’ his Company owns half of Hell-fer-Sartin, an’ most on Newfound. Well, I reckon it won’t do him no sight of good right now—nor her neither, onlessen she gets pearter right soon. If she hain’t better in a week or so, we’d e’en about as well measure her.”

But they did not measure Marcia Haddon for her grave clothes. She began again to take up the affairs of life. She found the sympathy of all these people of a very gentle sort. The secretiveness and the apathy of the Cumberlands, taking life as it came, were extended to the stranger as well. But all her life it had been Marcia Haddon’s trait to observe rather than to talk; and for a long time she only observed—and pondered what she saw.

These strange people—how poor they were, How very poor! Their furniture was mostly made by hand—these chairs, their legs stubbed by an age of wear on the puncheon floors, went back a generation or more. She rested in a corded bed, made of walnut in rude mountain workmanship. The table upon which she saw daily meals served was hewn out by a local carpenter. The spinning wheel whose whirring she heard in another room was, as Granny Williams assured her, made by her own father in an earlier time. “An’ she’s a good wheel,” added the old woman. “I kin run her all day an’ she’ll never onct throw her band.” The little flax wheel with its more strident hum also was an heirloom carefully preserved.

And all these people were so busy, so under the constant necessity of individual, personal labor. The skeining and the hanking of yarns, the winding of bobbins for the looms, the repair of the loom sleighs by the ancient who made a specialty in such matters—all these things spoke of a day entirely foreign to all the experience of Marcia Haddon, who, born into easy circumstances, in another country, never had known real labor.

There was no cook-stove in Granny Williams’ house—the old pot-hooks at the fireside, the crane and its pendent hooks, the heavy cast-iron oven, the brass kettles, an infrequent copper vessel of this sort or that—all these went back to another day. The “furrin woman” for the first time in her life saw what was the responsibility of a home, saw first the beauty of personal industry.

Time was coming on now for the hoeing of the corn planted on these steep hillsides. From her window Marcia Haddon could see women working along with the men, children as well. And then Granny Williams would tell her of her own young wifehood, when with her husband she had started in to clear their farm, and had helped in digging out the stumps and in logging up the felled trees for the burning. She spoke with pride of granddaughters of her own able to do as good a day at the hoe as “ary man.”

“I’ve got a hundred and twenty-two children an’ grandchildren,” said Granny Williams with much pride, “or else it’s two hundred and twenty-six—I don’t remember which. I could have tolt it all right a while back, but someone made off with my fam’ly stick—I had it all notched on a stick. Ever’ time a grandbaby was borned I cut a notch on that stick, an’ I lef’ it out at the woodshed. I reckon somebody taken it fer a poker. How many children have ye got, Ma’am?”

“None,” said Marcia Haddon.

Granny Williams looked at her with pity, but made no comment, for this thing, to her so deplorable and indeed so disgraceful, was not to be mentioned in reproach.

Humoring the sick woman, she contented herself with showing the many articles about the house which she herself had made with her own hands—counterpanes and quilts, cloth woven on her own hand-loom. There were a few things which she declared must have come “acrosst the mountings”; that is to say, they must have been brought in by her ancestors in the first migration over the Appalachians. A book or two—strangely enough, an old Latin grammar—remained of these belongings.

“I kain’t read in none of ‘em,” admitted Granny Williams. “Some of my folks mought have been able to onct, but none of us kin read or write.

“Do ye reckon, Ma’am,” she added, “that when the railroad comes we’ll be able to buy calico an’ jeans in the stores? Hit’s powerful slow weavin’ cloth, though I will say it wears longer’n anything what ye kin buy.... How old was ye when ye first begun to spin, Ma’am?”

“I never did,” said Marcia Haddon. “I can’t even knit.”

“Well, ‘pears like ye must be powerful triflin’,” said Granny Williams candidly, plying her own needles with renewed zeal at the moment.

Marcia Haddon looked at her suddenly. “I believe you’re right, Granny!” said she.

“That new railroad,” resumed the old lady, presently, “hit’s a-goin’ to change a power of things in these valleys. I always said that if it actual come in here, I was a-goin’ to take one ride on it if it kilt me. Plenty of our folks is a-skeered to go on the railroad keers. Now, thar was Preacher Bonnell—he went Outside, an’ he taken a ride on them railroad keers, an’ it liken to been the eend on him. He tolt us all about it when he come back.

“Preacher Bonnell was a-ridin’ along in the keers with his haid outen the winder, an’ he seen a place bigger’n a house, a regular black hole in the side of the hill, an’ the engyne an’ all them keers a-headin’ right straight fer it. He knowed in a minute the Devil had a holt of the engyne, an’ that this here was the Bottomless Pit whar he was a-goin’ to take all them people. Preacher Bonnell, he up an’ give one whoop, an’ off he jumped. He rolled down on the bank more’n fifty feet, an’ when he come to be looked up, an’ thar wasn’t nary sign of the engyne or them keers! They had went right inter the Pit, like he had knowed they would. Preacher Bonnell, he said it war a leadin’ to him nuvver to go on no more railroad keers. He says something about that every sermon he preaches nowadays. He warns us all agin them keers. I don’t see how ye ever had the heart, Ma’am, to ride on them things, weak an’ triflin’ as ye seem mostly. Fact is, what made ye come in here anyways, Ma’am?”

“It was my husband—you know he was one of the officers of the Company that owns so much land around here. I had met Mr. Joslin before. He went to New York with us two years ago.”

“Well, ye’ll see a moughty big building up on yon hill, Ma’am,” said Granny Williams with pride. “Davy, he’s a-buildin’ it. Hit sartin is bigger’n arything ye ever seen in New York. Hit’s bigger’n ary church house ever was knowed in these mountings. I reckon it was part of the boarding they had in that load of lumber they brung yore man in on.

“But Davy,” she went on, “he’s changed a heap, these last two years. Used to be as natteral fer him to swear as to take a drink—an’ in buildin’ a house swearin’ comes natteral to ary man. But thar hain’t nary man heerd Davy Joslin say one cuss word sence he come back from the North. All the trouble he’s had with his wife, too—— Ye know about his wife?”

“I knew he was married.”

“He was, an’ he hain’t,” said Granny Williams. “Well, Meliss’, she tuk an’ up an’ went over to the railroad an’ seen the new lawyer that’s come in thar, an’ last term of co’te she got her a divorce—that’s what she done. That was a few weeks ago, while ye was sick.”

“Divorce? He didn’t tell me——”

“That must of been a right interestin’ term of co’te, Ma’am. Thar was only two men kilt, an’ this here one divorce—but it’s the fust divorce ever knowed in this country. They say he didn’t make no furse at all about her leavin’ of him. Somebody was a-tellin’ me that that leaves her free to marry agin if she wants to, or him either. Nuvver was such a thing knowed in these mountings afore, fur as I can tell—there shorely wasn’t nuvver such a thing knowed among my people, nor my dad’s people, nor my mammy’s neither.

“Of course, they didn’t have no children—er only leastways two puny ones, that died. An’ ye said ye never had no children at all, Ma’am?”

“No,” said Marcia Haddon, her face flushed.

“Well, ye look to me right triflin’,” said Granny Williams with calm candor. “Ye kain’t knit, ye kain’t spin, an’ I reckon ye couldn’t hoe corn noways. Maybe the Lord knows His business—what could a womern like ye do with children if she had ‘em?

“I was merried when I was sixteen year an’ eight month old,” she ran on. “I had eighteen children that lived, an’ three that died. Like I said, I could of tolt ye how many grandchildren I had in all, ef someone hadn’t been so keerless with that air countin’ stick of mine.

“Air ye goin’ to merry agin arter a while maybe?” she added. “Some does.” She spoke in a wholly matter-of-fact way.

“You mustn’t talk to me about such things, Granny,” said Marcia Haddon, a faint flush still on her cheek.

“How comes I mustn’t?” rejoined Granny. “Hain’t yore man dead?”

“I know you mean it well”—Marcia Haddon reached out a hand to the gnarled hand of the old woman who sat close by. “All my life—it’s been so different, that’s all.”

“Davy tolt us something about them things,” said the old woman gravely. “I’m content to live right here the way we always done—leastways, I will be if I ever git to take jest one ride on them railroad keers.”

“Yes, they’ll come through here before long,” said Marcia Haddon. “I’m not sure I’m glad—usually when a railroad comes into a new country it changes it so much.”

“Hit’s had changes a-plenty already, seems to me,” said Granny. “Thar hain’t been a killin’ in here fer two year; sence the big meetin’ down at the mill house nobody’s been ridin’ fer nobody else, an’ nobody layin’ out—the old fam’ly diffikilties seemed to jest come to stop right suddent. An’ as fer liquor—why, of course ye know here, Ma’am, everybody makes his own liquor, as much as he wants. An’ now ye kain’t hardly git a bottle of liquor in lessen four er five hours, an’ I declar’, ye have to look around a heap to find that! How come that? Well, it was Davy Joslin done that—him an’ his school. Like ye, I dunno if I’m glad er not.”

“He’s a good man,” said her listener vaguely.

“Yes, an’ odd as Adam’s off ox. Kain’t nobody explain Davy noways. While ago, couple of year back, he was called to be a preacher. Then he goes Outside fer a couple of year, an’ comes back, an’—ye never seen sech a change in no human man in all yer borned life, Ma’am—his clothes is different, he walks different, an’ he talks different. Kain’t hardly nobody understand him no more. But he hain’t done preached onct! But everybody knows that if Davy says he’s a-goin’ to run that school, it’ll run, some time.

“Ye see,” she went on, “accordin’ to Davy’s count, it’s the Lord that does things.”

“Maybe he’s right,” said Marcia Haddon slowly. “Which one of us shall say?”

“Well,” said Granny Williams after a while, thrusting her needles through her ball of yarn, “Ef I was ye, I wouldn’t bother much about nothin’ fer a time yit. Ye got plenty of money anyways—yore man was plumb rich, accordin’ to all I hear. Like enough he done lef ye a thousand dollar, Ma’am? Davy’s tolt me about how ye an’ him lived. But ontel ye git ready to go home, Ma’am, ye’re welcome here, jest as welcome as the flowers, an’ as long as ye like.

“When ye kin begin to walk around a bit,” she concluded, “we’ll take ye an’ show ye whar we buried yore man. Hit’s up in the old buryin’ ground on the hill—my folks is buried thar, an’ my daddy’s folks, years an’ years back, an’ plenty of others—fifty or maybe a hundred year, fer’s I kin tell. Hit’s right qu’ite an’ purty up thar.”