Across the Years
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
The Giving Thanks of Cyrus and Huldah
For two months Cyrus Gregg and his wife Huldah had not spoken to each other, yet all the while they had lived under the same roof, driven to church side by side, and attended various festivities and church prayer-meetings together.
The cause of the quarrel had been an insignificant something that speedily lost itself in the torrent of angry words that burst from the lips of the irate husband and wife, until by night it would have been difficult for either the man or the woman to tell exactly what had been the first point of difference. By that time, however, the quarrel had assumed such proportions that it loomed in their lives larger than anything else; and each had vowed never to speak to the other until that other had made the advance.
On both sides they came of a stubborn race, and from the first it was a battle royally fought. The night of the quarrel Cyrus betook himself in solitary state to the “spare-room” over the parlor. After that he slept on a makeshift bed that he had prepared for himself in the shed-chamber, hitherto sacred to trunks, dried corn, and cobwebs.
For a month the two sat opposite to each other and partook of Huldah’s excellent cooking; then one day the woman found at her plate a piece--of brown paper on which had been scrawled:
If I ain’t worth speakin’ to I ain’t worth cookin’ for. Hereafter I’ll take care of myself.
A day later came the retort. Cyrus found it tucked under the shed-chamber door.
Huldah’s note showed her “schooling.” It was well written, carefully spelled, and enclosed in a square white envelope.
Sir [it ran stiffly]: I shall be obliged if you do not chop any more wood for me. Hereafter I shall use the oil stove. HULDAH PENDLETON GREGG.
Cyrus choked, and peered at the name with suddenly blurred eyes: the “Huldah Pendleton” was fiercely black and distinct; the “Gregg” was so faint it could scarcely be discerned.
“Why, it’s ‘most like a d’vorce!” he shivered.
If it had not been so pitiful, it would have been ludicrous--what followed. Day after day, in one corner of the kitchen, an old man boiled his potatoes and fried his unappetizing eggs over a dusty, unblacked stove; in the other corner an old woman baked and brewed over a shining idol of brass and black enamel--and always the baking and brewing carried to the nostrils of the hungry man across the room the aroma of some dainty that was a particular favorite of his own.
The man whistled, and the woman hummed--at times; but they did not talk, except when some neighbor came in; and then they both talked very loud and very fast--to the neighbor. On this one point were Cyrus Gregg and his wife Huldah agreed; under no circumstances whatever must any gossiping outsider know.
One by one the weeks had passed. It was November now, and very cold. Outdoors a dull gray sky and a dull brown earth combined into a dismal hopelessness. Indoors the dull monotony of a two-months-old quarrel and a growing heartache made a combination that carried even less of cheer.
Huldah never hummed now, and Cyrus seldom whistled; yet neither was one whit nearer speaking. Each saw this, and, curiously enough, was pleased. In fact, it was just here that, in spite of the heartache, each found an odd satisfaction.
“By sugar--but she’s a spunky one!” Cyrus would chuckle admiringly, as he discovered some new evidence of his wife’s shrewdness in obtaining what she wanted with yet no spoken word.
“There isn’t another man in town who could do it--and stick to it!” exulted Huldah proudly, her eyes on her husband’s form, bent over his egg-frying at the other side of the room.
Not only the cause of the quarrel, but almost the quarrel itself, had now long since been forgotten; in fact, to both Cyrus and his wife it had come to be a sort of game in which each player watched the other’s progress with fully as much interest as he did his own. And yet, with it all there was the heartache; for the question came to them at times with sickening force--just when and how could it possibly end?
It was at about this time that each began to worry about the other. Huldah shuddered at the changeless fried eggs and boiled potatoes; and Cyrus ordered a heavy storm window for the room where Huldah slept alone. Huldah slyly left a new apple pie almost under her husband’s nose one day, and Cyrus slipped a five-dollar bill beneath his wife’s napkin ring. When both pie and greenback remained untouched, Huldah cried, and Cyrus said, “Gosh darn it!” three times in succession behind the woodshed door.
A week before Thanksgiving a letter came from the married daughter, and another from the married son. They were good letters, kind and loving; and each closed with a suggestion that all go home at Thanksgiving for a family reunion.
Huldah read the letters eagerly, but at their close she frowned and looked anxious. In a moment she had passed them to Cyrus with a toss of her head. Five minutes later Cyrus had flung them back with these words trailing across one of the envelopes:
Write um. Tell um we are sick--dead--gone away--anything! Only don’t let um come. A if we wanted to Thanksgive!
Huldah answered the letters that night. She, too, wrote kindly and lovingly; but at the end she said that much as she and father would like to see them, it did not seem wise to undertake to entertain such a family gathering just now. It would be better to postpone it.
Both Huldah and Cyrus hoped that this would end the subject of Thanksgiving; but it did not. The very next day Cyrus encountered neighbor Wiley in the village store. Wiley’s round red face shone like the full moon.
“Well, well, Cy, what ye doin’ down your way Thanksgivin’--eh?” he queried.
Cyrus stiffened; but before he could answer he discovered that Wiley had asked the question, not for information, but as a mere introduction to a recital of his own plans.
“We’re doin’ great things,” announced the man. “Sam an’ Jennie an’ the hull kit on ‘em’s comin’ home an’ bring all the chicks. Tell ye what, Cy, we be a-Thanksgivin’ this year! Ain’t nothin’ like a good old fam’ly reunion, when ye come right down to it.”
“Yes, I know,” said Cyrus gloomily. “But we--we ain’t doin’ much this year.”
A day later came Huldah’s turn. She had taken some calf’s-foot jelly to Mrs. Taylor in the little house at the foot of the hill. The Widow Taylor was crying.
“You see, it’s Thanksgiving!” she sobbed, in answer to Huldah’s dismayed questions.
“Thanksgiving!”
“Yes. And last year I had--him!”
Huldah sighed, and murmured something comforting, appropriate; but almost at once she stopped, for the woman had turned searching eyes upon her.
“Huldah Gregg, do you appreciate Cyrus?”
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