A Gathering of Days

by Joan W. Blos

  I saw today that the lower field, the one that borders the road to the North, is filled with laden bushes. The birds, at least, have enjoyed our absence! However, we need not be envious—the berries have lately come in thickly and are sufficient for all.

  I won at spelling today.

  Thursday, August 18, 1831

  Last night, early, we had our storm. Afterwards Father related the story of the Old Man of the Sea. There’s no one can tell a tale any better; tho’ I know it well I felt actual chills at his final recital of the fatal verse:

  Man of the sea, come listen to me!

  For Alice my wife, the Plague of my life

  Has sent me to beg—a boon of thee!

  Silence followed the story’s end—the part when they are poor again, she having wished too high. In secret did I remember, then, that I myself had oft longed for wealth without the dint of labour. I am glad to have been set right by Father’s gentle instruction, the which I perceived in the tale.

  “And did that happen in Holderness, when you were a boy?”

  Every one laughed aloud at poor Matty, and she rushed to the house.

  Daniel arose from where he sat and quickly followed her in. I heard his voice through the open door, “Do not mind that they laughed at you; when I was small I too believed in the truth of that story. But being a boy of Boston then, I thought it happened there!”

  Cassie is dead. It happened while she slept. I—Saturday. August the 20th. 1831.

  XV

  Monday

  I, Matty, and Sophy were among the twelve girls who were chosen to be in the funeral. All of us were dressed in white. We had wild flowers (the same I had picked!) in great torn armsful to carry. Josh and Zedidiah were there—Josh in a jacket too small for him—and all the Preston children.

  The church bell filled the air with sound as we walked toward the cemetery. The day was so bright, and the sky so clear, it seemed to enjoin us to praise. Yet no one was there whose eyes were dry; even the men were weeping.

  They say Cassie’s father has composed the verse under which she will rest. It is to be a full four lines, and she should have no less:

  She lived among us for a while

  And brought joy where she went.

  We thought she was a gift of God

  But learned she was but lent.

  Ever since I heard it first the tolling words repeat. I think they are so beautiful: “But learned she was but lent.” I shall remember Cassie for ever—and shall strive to be good and kind, as she was, for her sake.

  Thursday, August 25, 1831

  We are much deprived of Mammann. She is often at Shipmans’ now, to help out as she can. She is almost unnaturally calm; nor, since that day, has doubt or question been heard to cross her lips. Father, I know, and Uncle Edw. have asked Mr. Shipman can they help. But this he firmly refuses.

  Resolutely, yesterday, Aunt Lucy carried out her lovely frocks—saving not a single one—to be converted to mourning clothes by means of the great dye pot. Such delicate muslins, both sprigged and plain! How well I remember when she first came, and all of us, yes Cassie too!, took such pleasure in their intricate cut or—what matters it now.

  “I do not know how they do it,” says Mammann. “He, Emma, all of them quiet; all of them so resigned.”

  One time Father tried to explain, to say that, country life being hard, country folk must learn to accept else they will surely be broken. Today, however, he only sighed. “I know,” he said, “I know.”

  Friday, August 26

  Merely a week ago Cassie still lived! Had I known how few her hours—

  Perhaps ’tis better, after all, that our last parting was filled with joy, confident of the morrow.

  Saturday, August 27, 1831

  We should . . . remember our departed friends only to imitate their virtues; and not to pine away with useless sorrow.

  Our speller, last page.

  I try to be guided by these words. But I am ever mindful of Cassie; and, thinking of her, must grieve. Sophy, too, remembers. Today she said, “Remember that day when we all walked home together and I made Cassie promise to stay? How selfish I was and so unknowing, and now she’s so very—so gone from us all.”

  “No!” I protested. “More with us than ever, for she lives in our thoughts and love.” But that was only something to say. My heart knew Sophy right.

  Later today, going after our cow, I passed the Shipmans’ house. My eye flew up of its own accord to find the window, Cassie’s window, that I once knew so well. I scarce could believe she was there no more, and never again would answer to me when I called her name from the road! There, by that ledge, we had sat so often, exchanging small, fond, secret thoughts and what foolish confessions.

  Mrs. Shipman says that on that morning, when they first knew that Cassie was gone, her face was entirely peaceful. The lips, which never would speak again, were parted in a smile. Therefore, Cassie’s mother says, we must also trusting be, proving thus our enduring love, and equal in our faith.

  Meanwhile, Mammann awaits the stage and hopes for her book’s arrival. “Suppose,” she says, “it is somewhere told how to combat such illness? Then ought we not inform ourselves against another occasion?”

  Mammann, Mrs. Shipman, both of them wise—yet each proposing such variant ways to confront this loss. What would my own mother have said, who did not smile with her dying breath; and whom shall I believe?

  Friday, September 2, 1831

  Today as I sat over my book, drawing flowers and curling ferns tho’ I should have worked at my letters, David appeared at our door. I thought perhaps he had come for Dan’l, But no, this was a different errand: he’d brought such lime as we would need for preserving our eggs for the Winter. He was to tell us they’d more than enough, and would be glad to share it.

  Some have whispered that Mrs. Shipman, for all that Mammann has become a friend, took unkindly M.’s poor regard for the doctor attending Cassie. I think that this not the case, and now this kindness proves it.

  The errand accomplished, D. did not leave but watched me as I picked up my pen and resumed my sketching.

  “That’s pretty, Cath,” he said after a bit. Then taking the pen direct from my hand, he drew the dear inquisitive mouse which now peers at my daisies. I did not know he was thus inclined; only that Cassie was not “artistic,” as she used to say of me.

  Sunday, September 4, 1831

  This morning’s sermon reminded us that great though our grief and suffering be, others have suffered more. It is just five years since the Wiley Slide, which was made the case in point. Father, after we supped last night, recalled the tragedy.

  The year was 1826, and on the mountains hereabouts there had been disturbances and troubling slides of rocks. Most concerned were those like the Wileys whose farms were perched on Crawford Notch where the mountain side climbs steeply.

  On this particular afternoon the ominous rumble of distant boulders warned of avalanche. No one knows for certain what happened, or at what moment the Wileys decided to flee the imperiled house. Alas for the frailty of those persons; they perished one and all.

  Their would-be rescuers found them there—caught as they were by rock and stone which coursed across once fertile fields destroying all they met. They say that some of them clutched in their hands such small possessions as they’d hoped to save: a book, a portrait, a doll.

  As for the house they had lately left, it was perfectly saved! At that moment the avalanche had parted, roaring down on either side, neither breaking the window glass nor unhinging the gate.

  Although the rescuers lost all hope, still they entered in to the house and its ghastly silence. As if that silence itself would speak, the Bible lay open on the table presenting a text which Father now found and read aloud to us:

  The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave his voice; . . . then the channels of the waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at Thy rebuke, O Lord, at the b
last of the breath of Thy nostrils.

  Daniel, at the sound of this, broke into sobs, strange, racking boy’s sobs, and stumbled from the room. I then remembered what I’ve cruelly forgot, being turned in upon myself: he loved Cassie too.

  Monday, September 5, 1831

  While the washday kettles boiled this morning I took time to assist Mammann in tying up our herbs. Earlier we had picked them over, assorting them as to kind. Tansy we had in goodly amount, and pepper—and spearmint both. (She especially favours a peppermint tea, strongly brewed to settle the stomach, or when we are looking peaked.) Also we had our sassafrass roots, and comfrey from the garden.

  Later, Asa and David came by to visit with Dan’l a while. They three have grown rather closer together, and some times will let me join with them, now that Cassie’s gone.

  XVI

  Tuesday, September 6, 1831

  I have fallen far behind on my stints of piecing. Mammann said I might not do else but put more time to sewing.

  “Has it a name, this quilt of yours?” David asked today.

  “Mariner’s Compass,” I quickly replied, demonstrating the pattern. “Mammann had planned to make such a quilt before she came to us.” Then I told them, as she’d told me, the story of its meaning.

  “But how would it avail,” Asa asked, “with the quilt in Boston and the sailor on the sea?”

  “O, come now, Asa, ’tis not meant so!” But I laughed, despite myself, and so did the others who heard.

  All at once it came to me: this was the first we had laughed aloud since it happened since Cassie died.

  Wednesday, September 7, 1831

  Today Matty played with her dolls! She had not done so in ever so long; there were some I had quite forgotten, to whom I apologized. They had got in such disarray! We dressed them out as best we could; even Mammann sat down with us, and improvised a tiny bonnet from a dimity scrap.

  I remember when I used to play, every day & for hours and hours. But that was long ago, of course, when I was very small.

  Thursday, September 8, 1831

  The kittens are finding their way about, having grown quite large. I came on the white one in the field, already hunting alone! It has wonderful jade green eyes, and is quick and cunning.

  Monday, September 12, 1831

  Father very weary tonight; an ancient injury causes him pain, but he will do nothing about it. We know that he was determined—and is—to complete the haying before he slacks his pace.

  “There are more of us now, to house and feed. And goodness knows,” this to Mammann, “you’ve risked enough in coming here—” He did not finish the thought.

  I wonder does he think some times, of the one with whom long ago he began this house? Certainly I, ‘midst the mourning of Cassie, was reminded of those other dark days—when the bed room mirror was turned to the wall and I woke one morning to the smell of cut wood and two new-made coffins. Hers a was so large, and the baby’s so small, and both of them in the house.

  Tuesday, September 13, 1831

  Tonight we learned there has been a revolt of Negro slaves in the South. The Boston papers tell of nothing else. Many people were cruelly murdered, including women & children. Most of the slaves have been taken and shot. The leaders, Nat Turner the chiefest of these, are secured in jail.

  It happened on August 21, the day after Cassie died. Strange, that one speaks of these deaths and slayings and is not disposed to tears. Yet each of those who perished there was to some other one dear.

  Mammann says we mourn all deaths with each particular grief. Are we then with those strangers joined whose lives, names, faces are veiled from us yet whose griefs we share? Is this what Mr. Garrison meant when he penned the motto: “our countrymen all mankind?” I think once more of the Wiley Slide. How can what we call Providence so oft, so cruelly, deprive?

  Wednesday, September 14, 1831

  More on the Insurrection.

  Uncle Jack has today obtained the newest Liberator. Of the recent slave rebellion Mr. Garrison there records that “what was prophesied in January has now become a bloody reality.” The Editor states, as could he not, that the killings were a dreadful event. Nevertheless, concerning the raiders, he believes “[they] deserve no more censure than the Greeks in destroying the Turks, or the Poles in exterminating the Russians, or our fathers in slaughtering the British.”

  To read in this way of the War of Independence was shocking to us all. Mammann said that she’d no more have that paper in this house.

  There was a hurricane in Port-au-Prince. Seven hundred died.

  Thursday

  Talk occasioned by the slaves’ revolt continues unabated. Many now favour the establishment of a new Negro separate nation, it to be called Liberia and in Africa. Opposition, as might be expected, comes largely from the Southern owners of the large plantations. They are dependent upon the Blacks for free & diligent labour. The reasons put forth are various, some of them humane. They say, for example, the slaves are ill-prepared, being by now dependent on their masters for so much of their care. Also, some slaves have no wish to go; and shall they be deported even against their will? ’Twould be as cruel as the situation which first brought them here!

  Father, for all this, says he approves of the resettlement movement. Uncle Jack, to our surprize, quite fervently disagrees. It seems to him that Southerners, having the greater connection with Negroes, ought to know better what’s good for them than we Yankee farmers.

  In my mind I am now quite certain. The fugitive was a run-away slave, and could have been no other.

  Friday, September 16, 1831

  Haying, mowing, gathering in! Daniel works hard, along side of Father, and declares he sincerely looks forward to the resumption of school.

  Father accepts this good humouredly. “I told you we’d make a farm boy of him and must be that we’ve done so!”

  “How is that?” Mammann inquires, looking up from her work.

  “I never knew a farm boy yet who’d not trade hay-fork for quill and ink at this particular season!”

  Saturday, September 17, 1831

  Last night we had scarce retired when a display of Northern lights called us from our beds. It was a most impressive display, being very especially clear tho’ rather less in colour than others we have seen. At their height the lights spanned the sky, flinging great arcs of shimmering light clear to the Western horizon! Then their nature utterly changed and, like a gossamer veil or curtain, they gently rippled and undulated across their entire range.

  We must have watched an hour or more before they began to dim. Whereat we knew our weariness and once again bid all good night, and soon as I blow my candle out, I know sweet sleep will discover me, and I welcome him.

  Monday, September 19, 1831

  We hear that Aunt Lucy’s marriage date, delayed because of Cassie’s death, is now again put forward. Teacher Holt has accepted a position (“I should think he would,” our father approves) at the boys’ academy down to Exeter. Aunt Lucy and he are in haste to remove, that they may establish themselves before the Autumn term.

  ’Tis Aunt Lucy’s wish to be married here, where joy and love and sorrow have come, each of them in turn. The Shipmans have consented, tho’ were opposed at first.

  Tuesday, September 20, 1831

  Mammann disciplined Matty today, M. having protested a favour that Mammann had asked. It was Mammann’s contention that, “You must learn to like the doing of that which we like you to do. Glad submission of the will,” she explained, “is the obedience that proves control. I do not, mean you merely to comply. Reflect, accept, obey!”

  How I used to struggle with Matty, and on this account. Discipline of will, not relinquishment, is the lesson’s desired end. How hard this is for each to learn, and how necessary.

  Tomorrow Sophy will leave for Lowell. Mammann has said we may walk to the bridge, there to observe her departure, and to wish her good speed.

  XVII

  Wednesday, September 21, 18
31

  With many a tear did we wave Sophy off, she who mounted the stage steps bravely, two days past the end of the term and scarce more since her birthday. Many a keepsake was presented to her. But I observed she had pinned to her bodice a tiny ring of braided hair; Asa’s by the colour.

  I had not known how dear you had become. Dear Sophy! I wish you well.

  Thursday, September 22

  Aunt Lucy’s wedding will take place on Sunday; sooner than we thought! Mammann once asked will I wear the bonnet which she sent from Boston and which is still untried. I would like to do it, to please her; but cannot, will not, won’t.

  The Sabbath and a Wedding!

  Aunt Lucy’s marriage was celebrated on this very day! Scarcely any were gathered there who’d not been present short weeks ago when Cassie was laid to rest. All the Shipmans were dressed in black—save Aunt Lucy in bridal white, to which some gave poor comment.

  I wore my Sunday-best printed muslin, and a brooch, once my own mother’s, to fasten up the throat. Father wore his wedding jacket—very handsome, I must say—as was Mammann, her hand on his arm, in her dark green silk.

  The ceremony was very brief—truly I think we have never been so short a time in church!

  Some item of business having been forgotten, scarce had the newly-wed pair gone off, but that they returned! Cheers, jeers, and laughter greeted them, and Mr. Perkins called out, “Had enough already?”

  “No, sir!” Uncle E. shot back. “But after so fine a wedding trip I thought to try another!”

  Aunt Lucy blushed most prettily; and this time when they started off we knew they were gone to stay.

  Thursday, September 29, 1831

  Today, through the post, came a packet to me labelled in the same crude hand that once had spoken a run-away’s need, to which our quilt had answered.