Laura Richards - Grandmother

She was a slip of a girl when first she came to the village; slender and delicate, with soft brown hair blowing about her soft face. Those who saw her coming down the street beside Grandfather Merion thought he had brought back one of his grandnieces with him from the west for a visit; it was known that he had been out there, and he had been away all summer.

Anne Peace and her mother looked up from their sewing as the pair went by; Grandfather Merion walking slow and stately with his ivory-headed stick and his great three-cornered hat, the last one left in the village, his kind wise smile greeting the neighbors as he met them; and beside him this tall slender maiden in her light print gown that the wind was tossing about, as it tossed the brown cloud of hair about her cheeks.

“Look, mother!” said Anne Peace. “She is for all the world like a windflower, so pretty and slim. Who is it, think?”

“Some of his western kin, I s’pose,” said Widow Peace. “She is a pretty piece. See if she’s got the new back, Anne; I was wishful some stranger would come to town to show us how it looked.”

“Land, Mother,” said Anne; “her gown’s nothing but calico, and might have come out of the Ark, looks ’s though; not but what ’tis pretty on her. Real graceful! There! see her look up at him, just as sweet! I expect she is his grandniece, likely. There they go in ’t the gate, and he’s left it open, and the hens’ll get out. Rachel won’t like that! She keeps her hens real careful.”

“She fusses ’em most to death!” said Mrs. Peace. “If I was a hen I should go raving distracted if Rachel Merion had the rearin’ of me. Why, Anne! why, look at Rachel this minute, runnin’ down the garden path. She looks as if something was after her. My sakes! she’s comin’ in here. What in the – ”

Rachel Merion, a tall handsome young woman with a general effect of black and red about her, came out of her door and down the path like an arrow shot from a bow. At one dash she reached the gate and paused to flash a furious look back at the house; with a second dash she was across the road, and in another instant she stood in Mrs. Peace’s sitting-room, quivering like a bowstring.

“Mis’ Peace!” she cried. “Anne! he’s done it! he has! he has, I tell you! I’ll go crazy or drown myself; I will! I will!”

She began beating the air with her hands and screaming in short breathless gasps. Mrs. Peace looked calmly at her over her spectacles.

“There, Rachel!” she said. “You are in a takin’, aren’t you? Set down a spell, till you feel quieter, and then tell us about it.”

Anne, seeing the girl past speech, rose quietly, and taking her hand, forced her to sit down; then taking a bowl of water from the table, wet her brow and head repeatedly, speaking low and soothingly the while: “There, Rachel! there! You’re better now, aren’t you? Take a long breath, and count ten slowly; there! there!”

The angry girl took a deep breath and then another; soon the power of speech returned, and broke out in a torrent.

“I always knew he would!” she cried. “I’ve looked for it ever since Mother was cold in her grave and before, you know I have, Anne Peace. I looked for it with Aunt ’Melia till I routed her out of the house, and I looked for it with Mis’ Wiley till I sent her flying. I wish’t now I’d let ’em alone, both of ’em. I’d sooner he’d married ’em both, and been a Turk and done with it, instead of this.”

Mrs. Peace looked over her spectacles with mild severity.

“Rachel Merion,” she said, “what are you talking about? If it’s your grandfather, why then I tell you plain, that is no proper way for you to talk. What has happened? speak out plain!”

“He’s married!” Rachel fairly shrieked. “Married to a girl of eighteen, and brought her back to sit over me and order me about in my own house. I’ll teach ’em! I’ll let ’em see if I’m going to be bossed round by a brown calico rag doll. They’ll find me dead on the threshold first.”

“ Married! ” cried Mrs. Peace and Anne. “Oh, Rachel! it can’t be. You can’t have understood him. It’s one of his grandnieces, I expect, your Aunt Sophia’s daughter. She settled out west, I’ve always heard.”

“I tell you he’s married!” cried Rachel. “Didn’t he tell me so? didn’t he lead her in by the hand (she was scared, I’ll say that for her; she’d better be!) and say ‘Rachel, here’s my wife! here’s your little grandmother that’s come to be a playmate for you.’ Little grandmother! that’s what I’ll call her, I guess. Let her be a grandmother, and sit in the chimney corner and smoke a cob pipe and wear a cap tied under her chin. But if ever she dares to sit in my chair, I’ll kill her and myself too. Oh, Mis’ Peace, I wish I was dead! I wish everybody was dead.”

So that was how Grandmother came by her name. It seems strange that it should have been first given as a taunt.

And while Rachel was raving and weeping, and the good Peaces, who tried to live up to their name, were soothing her with quiet and comfortable words, Grandmother was standing in the middle of the great Merion kitchen, with her hands folded before her in the light pretty way she had, listening to Grandfather; and while she listened she looked to and fro with shy startled glances, and seemed to sway lightly from side to side, as if a breath would move her; she was like a windflower, as Anne Peace said.

“You mustn’t mind Rachel,” Grandfather was saying, as he filled his long pipe and settled himself in his great chair. “She is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth; where it listeth. She has grown up motherless – like yourself, my dear, but with a difference; with a difference; neither your grandmother – I would say, neither my wife nor I have ever governed her enough. She has rather governed me, being of that disposition; of that disposition. Yes! But she is a fine girl, and I hope you will be good friends. This is the kitchen, where we mostly sit in summer, for coolness, you see; Rachel cooks mostly in the back kitchen in summer. That is the sitting-room beyond, which you will find pleasant in cooler weather. That is the pantry door, and that one opens on the cellar stairs. Comfortable, all very comfortable. I hope you will be happy, my dear. Do you think you will be happy?”

He looked at her with a shade of anxiety in his cheerful eyes, and waited for her reply.

“Oh – yes!” said Grandmother, with a flutter in her voice that told of a sob somewhere near. “Yes, sir, if – if she will not always be angry. Will she always, do you think?”

“No! No!” said Grandfather; “very soon, very soon, we’ll all be comfortable, all be comfortable. Just don’t mind her, my dear. Let her be, and she’ll come round.”

He nodded wisely with his kind grave smile. By and by he bade her go out in the garden and gather a posy for herself; and then he took his hat and stepped across the road to Widow Peace’s.

Grandmother started obediently, but when she came to the garden door she stopped and looked out with wide startled eyes. Rachel in her scarlet dress was down on her knees in the poppy bed, the pride of her heart, and was plucking up the poppies in furious haste, dragging them up by the roots and trampling them under her feet.

“It seemed the only thing to do!” said Grandfather Merion, absently. “Wild parts, Susan; wild parts, ma’am! Her parents dead, as I told you, and the child left with the innkeeper’s wife, who was not – not a person fitted to bring up a young girl; no other woman – at least none of suitable character near. It seemed clearly my duty to bring the child away. Then – my search led me into mining camps, and often I had to be off alone among the mountains, as a rumor came from here or there – the marriage bond was a protection, you see; yes, I was clear as to my duty. But I confess I forgot about Rachel, Susan, and Rachel is so ungoverned! I fear she will not – a – not be subject to my wife – whose name is Pity, by the way, Susan; a quaint name; she is a very good child. I am sure you and little Annie will be good to her.”