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89 pages

English

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When Squire Gunn and his wife died, within three months of each other, and Hetty their only child was left alone in the big farmhouse, everybody said, Well, now Hetty Gunn'll have to make up her mind to marry somebody. And it certainly looked as if she must. What could be lonelier than the position of a woman thirty-five years of age sole possessor of a great stone house, half a dozen barns and out-buildings, herds of cattle, and a farm of five hundred acres? The place was known as Gunn's, far and wide. It had been a rich and prosperous farm ever since the days of the first Squire Gunn, Hetty's grandfather. He was one of Massachusetts' earliest militia-men, and had a leg shot off at Lexington. To the old man's dying day he used to grow red in the face whenever he told the story, and bring his fist down hard on the table, with Damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals; and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819907565
Langue	English

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I.
When Squire Gunn and his wife died, within threemonths of each other, and Hetty their only child was left alone inthe big farmhouse, everybody said, "Well, now Hetty Gunn'll have tomake up her mind to marry somebody." And it certainly looked as ifshe must. What could be lonelier than the position of a womanthirty-five years of age sole possessor of a great stone house,half a dozen barns and out-buildings, herds of cattle, and a farmof five hundred acres? The place was known as "Gunn's," far andwide. It had been a rich and prosperous farm ever since the days ofthe first Squire Gunn, Hetty's grandfather. He was one ofMassachusetts' earliest militia-men, and had a leg shot off atLexington. To the old man's dying day he used to grow red in theface whenever he told the story, and bring his fist down hard onthe table, with "Damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for:'twas the not having another chance at those damned Britishrascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on thefloor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliestrecollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted,irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual andunfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left off and thewooden leg began, and if, when the wooden leg stumped so loud andhard on the floor, it did not hurt the flesh leg at the other end,puzzled little Hetty's head for many a long hour. Her grandfather'sfrequent and comic references to the honest old wooden pin did notdiminish her perplexities. He was something of a wag, the oldSquire; and nothing came handier to him, in the way of a joke, thana joke at his own expense. When he was eighty years old, he had astroke of paralysis: he lived six years after that; but he couldnot walk about the farm any longer. He used to sit in a bigcane-bottomed chair close to the fireplace, in winter, and under abig lilac-bush, at the north-east corner of the house, in summer.He kept a stout iron-tipped cane by his side: in the winter, heused it to poke the fire with; in the summer, to rap the hens andchickens which he used to lure round his chair by handfuls of cornand oats. Sometimes he would tap the end of the wooden leg withthis cane, and say, laughingly, "Ha! ha! think of a leg like that'sbeing paralyzed, if you please. Isn't that a joke? It's just asparalyzed as the other: damn those British rascals." And only a fewhours before he died, he said to his son: "Look here, Abe, you puton my grave-stone, – 'Here lies Abraham Gunn, all but one leg.'What do you suppose one-legged men're going to do in theresurrection, hey, Abe? I'll ask the parson if he comes in thisafternoon," he added. But, when the parson came, the brave, merryeyes were shut for ever, and the old hero had gone to a new world,on which he no doubt entered as resolutely and cheerily as he hadgone through nearly a century of this. These glimpses of the oldSquire's characteristics are not out of place here, although hehimself has no place in our story, having been dead and buried formore than twenty years before the story begins. But he lived againin his granddaughter Hetty. How much of her offhand, comic, sturdy,resolute, disinterested nature came to her by direct inheritancefrom his blood, and how much was absorbed as she might haveabsorbed it from any one she loved and associated with, it isimpossible to tell. But by one process or the other, or by both,Hetty Gunn was, as all the country people round about said, "Justthe old Squire over again," and if they sometimes added, as it mustbe owned they did, "It's a thousand pities she wasn't a boy," therewas, in this reflection on the Creator, no reflection on Hetty'swomanliness: it was rather on the accepted theory and sphere ofwoman's activities and manifestations. Nobody in this world couldhave a tenderer heart than Hetty: this also she had inherited orlearned from her grandfather. Many a day the two had spent togetherin nursing a sick or maimed chicken, or a half-frozen lamb, even awoodchuck that had got its leg broken in a trap was not an outcastto them; and as for beggars and tramps, not one passed "Gunn's,"from June till October, that was not hailed by the old squire fromunder his lilac-bush, and fed by Hetty. Plenty of sarcastic andwholesome advice the old gentleman gave them, while they sat on theground eating; and every word of it sank into Hetty's wide-openears and sensible soul, developing in her a very rare sort of thingwhich, for want of a better name, we might call common-sensesympathy. To this sturdy common-sense barrier against thesentimental side of sympathy with other people's sufferings, Hettyadded an equally sturdy, and she would have said common-sense,fortitude in bearing her own. This invaluable trait she owedlargely to her grandfather's wooden leg. Before she could speakplain, she had already made his cheerful way of bearing thediscomfort and annoyance of that queer leg her own standard ofpatience and equanimity. Nothing that ever happened to her, nopain, no deprivation, seemed half so dreadful as a wooden leg. Sheused to stretch out her own fat, chubby, little legs, and look fromthem to her grandfather's. Then she would timidly touch the woodentip which rested on the floor, and look up in her grandfather'sface, and say, "Poor Grandpa!" "Pshaw! pshaw! child," he wouldreply, "that's nothing. It does almost as well to walk on, andthat's all legs are for. I'd have had forty legs shot off ratherthan not have helped drive out those damned British rascals."
Not even for sake of Hetty's young ears could theold Squire mention the British rascals without his favoriteexpletive. Here, also, came in another lesson which sank deep intoHetty's heart. It was for his country that her grandfather had lostthat leg, and would have gladly lost forty, if he had had so manyto lose, not for himself; for something which he loved better thanhimself: this was distinct in Hetty Gunn's comprehension before shewas twelve years old, and it was a most important force in thegrowth of her nature. No one can estimate the results on acharacter of these slow absorptions, these unconscious biases, fromdaily contact. All precepts, all religions, are insignificantagencies by their side. They are like sun and soil to a plant: theymake a moral climate in which certain things are sure to grow, andcertain other things are sure to die; as sure as it is that orchidsand pineapples thrive in the tropics, and would die in NewEngland.
When old Squire Gunn was buried, all the villageswithin twenty miles turned out to his funeral. He was the lastrevolutionary hero of the county. An oration was delivered in themeeting-house; and the brass band of Welbury played "My country,'tis of thee," all the way from the meeting-house to the graveyardgate. After the grave was filled up, guns were fired above it, andthe Welbury village choir sang an anthem. The crowd, the music, thefiring of guns, produced an ineffaceable impression upon Hetty'smind. While her grandfather's body lay in the house, she had weptinconsolably. But as soon as the funeral services began, her tearsstopped; her eyes grew large and bright with excitement; she heldher head erect; a noble exaltation and pride shone on her features;she gazed upon the faces of the people with a composure and dignitywhich were unchildlike. No emperor's daughter in Rome could haveborne herself, at the burial of her most illustrious ancestor, moregrandly and yet more modestly than did little Hetty Gunn, agedtwelve, at the burial of this unfamed Massachusetts revolutionarysoldier: and well she might; for a greater than royal inheritancehad come to her from him. The echoes of the farewell shots whichwere fired over the old man's grave were never to die out ofHetty's ears. Child, girl, woman, she was to hear them always:signal guns of her life, they meant courage, cheerfulness,self-sacrifice.
Of Hetty's father, the "young Squire," as to the dayof his death he was called by the older people in Welbury, and ofHetty's mother, his wife, it is not needful to say much here. Theyoung Squire was a lazy, affectionate man to whom the good thingsof life had come without his taking any trouble for them: even hiswife had been more than half wooed for him by his doting father;and there were those who said that pretty Mrs. Gunn had been quiteas much in love with the old Squire, old as he was, as with theyoung one; but that was only an idle village sneer. The youngSquire and his wife loved each other devotedly, and their onlychild, Hetty, with an unreasoning and unreasonable affection whichwould have been the ruin of her, if she had been any thing else butwhat she was, "the old Squire over again." As it was, the onlyeffect of this overweening affection, on their part, was to producea slow reversal of some of the ordinary relations between parentsand children. As Hetty grew into womanhood, she grew more and moreto have a sense of responsibility for her father's and mother'shappiness. She was the most filially docile of creatures, andobeyed like a baby, grown woman as she was. It was strange to hearand to see. "Hetty, bring me my overcoat," her father would say toher in her thirty-fifth year, exactly as he would have said it inher twelfth; and she would spring with the same alacrity and thesame look of pleasure at being of use. But there was a filialservice which she rendered to her parents much deeper than thesesurface obediences and attentions. They were but dimly conscious ofit; and yet, had it been taken away from them, they had found theirlives blighted indeed. She was the link between them and theoutside world. She brought merriment, cheer, hearty friendlinessinto the house. She was the good comrade of every young woman andevery young man in Welbury; and she compelled them all to bring acertain half-filial affection and attention to her father andmother. The best tribute to what she had accomplished in thisdirection was in the fact, that