Family Treasure

I

WHAT to take, and what to leave, out of twenty years of housekeeping? Four hundred dollars’ worth of home furnishings was n’t much to take — even when you priced things, as honestly as you knew how, in accordance with secondhand values. The referee in bankruptcy had been reasonable, if he did keep his hat on in the house. He had barely glanced at the neatly typed list that Nancy and Curtis had made out so punctiliously, and stuffed it carelessly in his pocket. He had gone through the house, into each room, and looked over the furniture with a practised eye. At the attic door he had paused for a brief scrutiny of boxes and trunks, the children’s little chairs and table, a few ‘mission’ pieces, left over from their first housekeeping, which Nancy had never quite liked to get rid of.

‘There’s nothing here of any real value, except to us,’ she had told him. ‘Old clothes, letters, and papers — you know the kind of thing that goes into an attic. My wedding dress, the babies’ shoes —

‘Just take any of this stuff you like,’ he had told her.

It had been hot on the third floor. Perhaps that had been why, for the first time in their tour of inspection, he had taken off his hat. But for the first time, too, he had given her a really friendly, human look — here at the attic door.

What to take, and what to leave? Or rather, what to destroy, since you could n’t leave things like these for strangers. A five-room flat in the city would n’t hold a great deal. Storage was too expensive. Everything else was packed, and ready to go, of what they were taking with them. The sale of all the other things would be held on Friday. Wednesday afternoon found Nancy in the last and hottest corner of her attic, smudged and weary, sitting cross-legged on the floor before a sturdy, small green chest.

Glumly she lifted the cover. It was all very well to keep up a pretense of gayety before Curtis and the children; to sustain, for their sakes, the fairy tale of the great adventure. But beginning over again, at their age, was no frolic. Giving up college for Jim; taking Nan out of that lovely school; leaving the house they had built to live and to die in; nothing left, after the smash-up, of all they had saved for, and planned and hoped.

She knew what the little green chest held — her grandmother’s letters. No time now to go carefully through them, as she had always thought to do some day. Take them, or burn them? That was the question. And why take them? Her own past with Curtis would never come again. No more garden and tennis court. No more riding and country club. The new job that Curtis had found promised little for the future, though of course work of any kind, in 1033, was something to be grateful for. As for this older past,— even the part of it which she had shared when she had been taken, one of three orphaned children, into her grandmother’s heart and home, — what had it, now, to do with her? She had married early, and been swiftly caught up into other interests, another life. What could her grandmother, that lovely lady in soft gray silk, whose crisp lace cap had lain so smoothly on neatly parted silver hair, possibly have to say, after all these years, to a granddaughter with a shingled haircut? The gap between them widened as Nancy lit a cigarette at the flame of the candle by whose light she had cleaned her attic. Curiously, almost coldly, she lifted and untied the first neat package, labeled, in slim, faded writing, ‘ 1837-1845.’

II

How these earliest letters, written from Illinois to relatives in New York State, had ever come back to the little green chest, she could n’t imagine. Her grandmother, a child of nine when the trip was made, must have been the family scribe. Dimly she remembered that her great-grandfather had lost everything he had in the East, and come West to seek another fortune. The first letter told, in an uncertain child’s writing, of a long, slow journey by canal boat to Buffalo, and of crossing Lake Michigan in a sailing ship. ‘There was a storm and great waves. But I was not sick, nor afraid.’

Then on from Chicago by wagon to Bloomingdale, Illinois. ‘We laughed, because the black dust of the prairie made us look like runaway slaves.’ And in Bloomingdale, ‘We sleep five in a bed, and under a good roof, though it belongs to another man.’ Jim and Nan, even in a city apartment, would have a bed apiece. . . .

Ma says that I must send the letter, as she is very occupied. She says to tell you that she knows, already, the complexion of this country. It is a bilious country, with no trees to break the thunder, no hills to soften the lightning, and a wind to blow the hair off our heads. But we take the bitter with the sweet. We have had fever and ague, and the prairie itch. Ma brewed the wahoo weed for medicine. It was bitter. And now, through a merciful providence, we are all in good health. . . .

Pa and the boys are building a snug little house. You ask what we have to eat. We have prairie chicken and deer. They are as thick as sheep and poultry about your yard. Ma tried out the tallow from four creatures in one week, and we dipped a hundred and eighty candles in the fall. Pa drives across the fence tops when the snow is deep and frozen hard, to see sick people. . . . We have been on a sleigh ride, in a pleasure sleigh. We put a wagon box on a sled. It was fine, slipping across the snow by the bright moonlight. . . . Pa has written an acrostic, made from my name, which I send to you:—

Well, she had lived to enrich herself with graces, and had shone, to the last, in every circle. Were the hardships of those early days in any way responsible for the fact that she had met the changes of ninety years without losing her joy of living? Nancy had asked her, once, if she would like to go back and do it all over again. Her answer had been instant and eager: ‘Every day of it. Every minute, from the beginning to the end. My bed of lilies of the valley, out in Bloomingdale, more than paid me for all the pain I have ever suffered in my life.’

A pioneer doctor’s daughter, a country judge’s wife, who had brought eleven children into the world, seen nine of them grow to manhood and womanhood, and lost three of these before she died. What had life given her, that her zest was still so keen — at ninety?

Sometime in those last months she must have gone through the accumulated letters of ninety years and sorted out the most precious, arranging them carefully in this strong, small chest, with the earliest ones on top so that whoever found and read them might follow the story from beginning to end. The next packet, labeled carefully (1845-1847), began, as the first one had ended, with verse.

‘Able, kind, and good,’ thought Nancy. Well, Curtis was all three. But her grandfather’s eyes had been keenly blue, under hair that she remembered as white, but that had, she knew, been blond. Was this an earlier romance, of which she had never heard? Or girlish artfulness? Someone, at any rate, had read the verses and answered them the very next day: —

Love letters followed. Nancy turned them over tenderly. Some day she must read them with care. Last of all, in this chapter, was a brief note in a stronger, masculine hand.

To Hiram Hitchcock Cody, Esquire
Bloomingdale, 1847
DEAR SIR,
I received your communication with emotions not to be described, and not at all to be appreciated except by a person in similar circumstances. For the friendly, ingenuous, and affectionate manner in which it was written, please accept my kind regards. I can with pleasure inform you that I am not disposed to throw any obstacle in the way of the expressed wishes of yourself and my daughter; and your addresses, paid in an honorable and reputable manner, are not objected to. Allow me to say that I know how to appreciate the embarrassments incident to subjects of this nature. You may divest yourself of them, and confer with me verbally with ease and freedom. If agreeable to you, I shall at any time be pleased with such an interview. With kind wishes for your present and future felicity, I am
Yours respectfully,
PARKER SEDGWICK

III

Brittle old pages, slightly browned at the edges. Delicate, spidery writing. Dated and folded and laid away, to be sent to her after her grandmother’s death, and stored in the attic till she found time for them. No time, to-day, to read the whole story. Just a glimpse, here and there, of its unfolding. Hiram, the first clerk of a new county, admitted to the bar, practising law, elected county judge, sent as delegate to the State Constitutional Convention, judge of the Fourth Judicial Circuit. For Philomela, twenty-two unbroken years of babies. All but one of the nine who lived had graduated from college. Someone, it seemed, had always been away, at school or on a visit, and her grandmother had saved, from each year, a few of the family letters. It was all here — the life she would have liked to live over again, from the beginning to the end. Church sociables and singing schools, candy pulls and amateur theatricals, Fourth of July picnics and Commencement orations. Making their own fun, Nancy thought, out of the materials at hand. Always the need to make both ends meet. Always some way contrived to do it. Two older daughters teaching elocution, music, and kindergarten, each taking a little sister to dress and care for. A promising oldest son dying before most of his promises came true. A younger daughter studying Greek in secret, because an older brother — her own father, Nancy realized — thought the classics unsuitable for women. Only Grandmother knew. And only Grandmother could have known the reason for this, dated 1870:—

Dear Boy, the only silver lining to this cloud is Principle. My life will be a failure if I do not succeed in impressing this on my boys’ hearts. Perhaps I have depended too much on my own efforts. Only God can give the strength that leads a young man resolutely to turn away from temptation. . . . You are talented and capable, but your talent will profit you nothing without virtue and truth. You are young. You can be what you will. ‘The steadfast mind all obstacles defies.’

Another was dated ‘Sabbath, early.’

Nervous and wakeful, I could not sleep, so thought I would arise and write to you. That great, but expensive comfort, my nice coal stove, made it a pleasant thing to do. I was sorry you were kept away from church, in Springfield, for want of a frontispiece, when I had packed it in your hat box, and it was there all the time.

Here the writing changed, and a girlish scrawl had written, ‘Why, why this absence? Fly to thy home, sweet man!’ But Philomela had taken up the story in the next line.

Of course, after I had written a few minutes, the children woke up, and while I was getting breakfast Minnie sat down at my desk to continue this letter in a style I suppose she thought more suitable. In Sunday School this morning Mr. Cunningham prayed God to ‘ Raise you above all bribery and corruption.’ The children resented it.

In answer, Hiram had written: —

I will never attend the Legislature again until I can afford to have you with me. And the more I see, the more I am of the opinion that the people’s business would be better attended to if the members’ wives were here to attend to them. And the public would be the gainer by paying their expenses. I must stop, for the more I write the more homesick I become. Take good care of yourself and of the dear children, and be careful of the fires. God bless you, and good night.

The candle was burning low, guttering in its saucer. The little chest was almost empty — most of the packages still untied. More verses caught Nancy’s eye, dated, in Philomela’s hand, ‘Our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary, New Year’s Eve, 1883. Read aloud at the supper table, amid smiles, tears and tumultuous applause.’ On this occasion Hiram had presented Philomela with a ring, of ' pearls and a ruby,’ and in rhyme had enjoined her

‘Bless her heart,’ thought Nancy, ‘it never did grow old.’ Her last spoken words, Nancy remembered, had been, ‘The Americans can do it.’ She had died during the World War. IV

Was it fate, or just coincidence, that the last letter of all had never been mailed, and that it should be addressed to ‘My granddaughter, Nancy’? She remembered the day it must have been written. They had all of them gone home to spend Sunday, bringing the great-grandchildren, and Jim had carried in an armful of roses. It had been the gayest kind of family party, with Grandmother, as always, the centre of the gayety.

Dear heart [the letter began, in the wellremembered writing, wonderfully firm for ninety years], as I saw the pink rosebuds on your hat vanishing through the door I seemed to feel, all at once, how separated your life now is from mine, and I thought of it all the evening. If I should live a hundred years I shall never forget the darling picture of the dear baby standing there holding the roses, like a miniature man. Oh, the day was too brief! I am anxious about your cold. Do not neglect it. I thought yesterday, when your father’s three children sat at the table, how proud he would have been of them. ‘Woman’s lot’ is on you, but you will meet it bravely. Take care of your treasure. What can a great-grandmother, standing on the farthest edge of the stage of life, say to you who are climbing the first steps? Only welcome, dear heart. It may be a way of conflict and struggle. But I hope it will not. I hope it will be a flowery way. And at any rate I hope you will see only the flowers, ignoring the poisonous weeds, fixing your eyes steadfastly on the good, and so come to where I stand now. So hoping, I can only say ‘Hail and farewell.’ Love and peace be with you every day.

‘Love and peace,’ thought Nancy. One could keep these, surely, no matter what else was gone. Philomela had kept them. The old America she helped to build had fallen on strange days, but there were new frontiers — the Americans could do it.

‘Listen, Mom,’ said Jim, appearing suddenly at the attic door, ‘Dad and I have finished burning all that old rubbish you did n’t want to leave. The truck’s about ready to start. Is there anything else here that has to go?’

‘Only this little green chest,’ said Nancy, rising to her stiffened knees. ‘Help me to tie it up, Jim. It goes wherever we go. What do you suppose I found in it? The family treasure.’

Skeptically Jim regarded the neat packages as she tucked the last of them away.

‘Looks like junk to me,’ he said. ‘Bet it won’t take me to college.’ But he grinned at her, and lifted it with respect.

‘Yes, it will,’ said Nancy, and smiled back at him by candlelight. ‘There are things in this box that will take us all, Jimmy, just anywhere we want to go. Capital, to begin all over with. Your inheritance.’