Across the Years
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
The Bridge Across the Years
John was expected on the five o’clock stage. Mrs. John had been there three days now, and John’s father and mother were almost packed up--so Mrs. John said. The auction would be to-morrow at nine o’clock, and with John there to see that things “hustled”--which last was really unnecessary to mention, for John’s very presence meant “hustle”--with John there, then, the whole thing ought to be over by one o’clock, and they off in season to ‘catch the afternoon express.
And what a time it had been--those three days!
Mrs. John, resting in the big chair on the front porch, thought of those days with complacency--that they were over. Grandpa and Grandma Burton, hovering over old treasures in the attic, thought of them with terrified dismay--that they had ever begun.
I am coming up on Tuesday [Mrs. John had written]. We have been thinking for some time that you and father ought not to be left alone up there on the farm any longer. Now don’t worry about the packing. I shall bring Marie, and you won’t have to lift your finger. John will come Thursday night, and be there for the auction on Friday. By that time we shall have picked out what is worth saving, and everything will be ready for him to take matters in hand. I think he has already written to the auctioneer, so tell father to give himself no uneasiness on that score.
John says he thinks we can have you back here with us by Friday night, or Saturday at the latest. You know John’s way, so you may be sure there will be no tiresome delay. Your rooms here will be all ready before I leave, so that part will be all right.
This may seem a bit sudden to you, but you know we have always told you that the time was surely coming when you couldn’t live alone any longer. John thinks it has come now; and, as I said before, you know John, so, after all, you won’t be surprised at his going right ahead with things. We shall do everything possible to make you comfortable, and I am sure you will be very happy here.
Good-bye, then, until Tuesday. With love to both of you.
Edith.
That had been the beginning. To Grandpa and Grandma Burton it had come like a thunderclap on a clear day. They had known, to be sure, that son John frowned a little at their lonely life; but that there should come this sudden transplanting, this ruthless twisting and tearing up of roots that for sixty years had been burrowing deeper and deeper--it was almost beyond one’s comprehension.
And there was the auction!
“We shan’t need that, anyway,” Grandma Burton had said at once. “What few things we don’t want to keep I shall give away. An auction, indeed! Pray, what have we to sell?”
“Hm-m! To be sure, to be sure,” her husband had murmured; but his face was troubled, and later he had said, apologetically: “You see, Hannah, there’s the farm things. We don’t need them.”
On Tuesday night Mrs. John and the somewhat awesome Maria--to whom Grandpa and Grandma Burton never could learn not to curtsy--arrived; and almost at once Grandma Burton discovered that not only “farm things,” but such precious treasures as the hair wreath and the parlor--set were auctionable. In fact, everything the house contained, except their clothing and a few crayon portraits, seemed to be in the same category.
“But, mother, dear,” Mrs. John had returned, with a laugh, in response to Grandma Burton’s horrified remonstrances, “just wait until you see your rooms, and how full they are of beautiful things, and then you’ll understand.”
“But they won’t be--these,” the old voice had quavered.
And Mrs. John had laughed again, and had patted her mother-in-law’s cheek, and had echoed-but with a different shade of meaning--”No, they certainly won’t be these!”
In the attic now, on a worn black trunk, sat the little old man, and down on the floor before an antiquated cradle knelt his wife.
“They was all rocked in it, Seth,” she was saying, --”John and the twins and my two little girls; and now there ain’t any one left only John--and the cradle.”
“I know, Hannah, but you ain’t usin’ that nowadays, so you don’t really need it,” comforted the old man. “But there’s my big chair now-- seems as though we jest oughter take that. Why, there ain’t a day goes by that I don’t set in it!”
“But John’s wife says there’s better ones there, Seth,” soothed the old woman in her turn, “as much as four or five of ‘em right in our rooms.”
“So she did, so she did!” murmured the man. “I’m an ongrateful thing; so I be.” There was a long pause. The old man drummed with his fingers on the trunk and watched a cloud sail across the skylight. The woman gently swung the cradle to and fro. “If only they wan’t goin’ ter be--sold!” she choked, after a time. “I like ter know that they’re where I can look at ‘em, an’ feel of ‘em, an’--an’ remember things. Now there’s them quilts with all my dress pieces in ‘em--a piece of most every dress I’ve had since I was a girl; an’ there’s that hair wreath--seems as if I jest couldn’t let that go, Seth. Why, there’s your hair, an’ John’s, an’ some of the twins’, an’--”
“There, there, dear; now I jest wouldn’t fret,” cut in the old man quickly. “Like enough when you get used ter them other things on the wall you’ll like ‘em even better than the hair wreath. John’s wife says she’s taken lots of pains an’ fixed ‘em up with pictures an’ curtains an’ everythin’ nice,” went on Seth, talking very fast. “Why, Hannah, it’s you that’s bein’ ongrateful now, dear!”
“So ‘tis, so ‘tis, Seth, an’ it ain’t right an’ I know it. I ain’t a-goin’ ter do so no more; now see!” And she bravely turned her back on the cradle and walked, head erect, toward the attic stairs.
John came at five o’clock. He engulfed the little old man and the little old woman in a bearlike hug, and breezily demanded what they had been doing to themselves to make them look so forlorn. In the very next breath, however, he answered his own question, and declared it was because they had been living all cooped up alone so long--so it was; and that it was high time it was stopped, and that he had come to do it! Whereupon the old man and the old woman smiled bravely and told each other what a good, good son they had, to be sure!
Friday dawned clear, and not too warm--an ideal auction-day. Long before nine o’clock the yard was full of teams and the house of people. Among them all, however, there was no sign of the bent old man and the erect little old woman, the owners of the property to be sold. John and Mrs. John were not a little disturbed--they had lost their father and mother.
Nine o’clock came, and with it began the strident call of the auctioneer. Men laughed and joked over their bids, and women looked on and gossiped, adding a bid of their own now and then. Everywhere was the son of the house, and things went through with a rush. Upstairs, in the darkest corner of the attic--which had been cleared of goods--sat, hand in hand on an old packing-box, a little old man and a little old woman who winced and shrank together every time the “Going, going, gone!” floated up to them from the yard below.
At half-past one the last wagon rumbled out of the yard, and five minutes later Mrs. John gave a relieved cry.
“Oh, there you are! Why, mother, father, where have you been?”
There was no reply. The old man choked back a cough and bent to flick a bit of dust from his coat. The old woman turned and crept away, her erect little figure looking suddenly bent and old.
“Why, what--” began John, as his father, too, turned away. “Why, Edith, you don’t suppose--” He stopped with a helpless frown.
“Perfectly natural, my dear, perfectly natural,” returned Mrs. John lightly. “We’ll get them away immediately. It’ll be all right when once they are started.”
Some hours later a very tired old man and a still more tired old woman crept into a pair of sumptuous, canopy-topped twin beds. There was only one remark.
“Why, Seth, mine ain’t feathers a mite! Is yours?”
There was no reply. Tired nature had triumphed--Seth was asleep.
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