The Burial of the Guns
by Thomas Nelson Page
To My Wife
Contents
My Cousin Fanny
The Burial of the Guns
The Gray Jacket of "No. 4"
Miss Dangerlie's Roses
How the Captain made Christmas
Little Darby
My Cousin Fanny
We do not keep Christmas now as we used to do in old Hanover.
We have not time for it, and it does not seem like the same thing.
Christmas, however, always brings up to me my cousin Fanny;
I suppose because she always was so foolish about Christmas.
My cousin Fanny was an old maid; indeed, to follow St. Paul's turn of phrase,
she was an old maid of the old maids. No one who saw her a moment
could have doubted it. Old maids have from most people a feeling rather akin
to pity -- a hard
heritage. They very often have this feeling from the young.
This must be the hardest part of all -- to see around them friends,
each "a happy mother of children," little ones responding to affection
with the sweet caresses of
childhood,
whilst any advances that they,
their aunts or cousins, may make are met with
indifference or condescension.
My cousin Fanny was no
exception. She was as proud as Lucifer;
yet she went through life -- the part that I knew of --
bearing the pity
of the great majority of the people who knew her.
She lived at an old place called "Woodside", which had been in the family
for a great many years; indeed, ever since before the Revolution.
The
neighborhood dated back to the time of the colony,
and Woodside was one of the old places. My cousin Fanny's grandmother
had stood in the door of her
chamber with her large
scissors in her hand,
and defied Tarleton's red-coated troopers to touch the basket
of old communion-plate which she had hung on her arm.
The house was a large brick
edifice, with a pyramidal roof, covered with moss,
small windows, porticos with pillars somewhat out of
repair, a big, high hall,
and a
staircase wide enough to drive a gig up it if it could have turned
the corners. A grove of great forest oaks and poplars
densely shaded it,
and made it look rather
gloomy; and the garden, with the old graveyard
covered with periwinkle at one end, was almost in front, while the side
of the wood -- a primeval forest, from which the place took its name --
came up so close as to form a strong, dark
background. During the war
the place, like most others in that
neighborhood, suffered greatly,
and only a sudden
exhibition of spirit on Cousin Fanny's part saved it
from a worse fate. After the war it went down; the fields were poor,
and grew up in briers and sassafras, and the house was too large
and out of
repair to keep from decay, the
ownership of it being divided
between Cousin Fanny and other members of the family. Cousin Fanny had
no means
whatever, so that it soon was in a bad condition.
The rest of the family, as they grew up, went off, compelled by necessity
to seek some means of
livelihood, and would have taken Cousin Fanny too if she
would have gone; but she would not go. They did all they could for her,
but she preferred to hang around the old place, and to do what she could
with her "mammy", and "old Stephen", her mammy's husband, who alone remained
in the quarters. She lived in a part of the house, locking up the rest,
and from time to time visited among her friends and relatives,
who always received her hospitably. She had an old piece of a mare
(which I think she had bought from Stephen), with one eye, three legs,
and no mane or tail to speak of, and on which she lavished,
without the least
perceptible result, care enough to have kept a stable
in condition. In a freak of humor she named this animal "Fashion",
after a noted racer of the old times, which had been raised in the county,
and had
beaten the famous Boston in a great race. She always spoke of "Fash"
with a tone of real
tenderness in her voice, and looked after her,
and discussed her ailments, which were always numerous, as if she had been
a
delicate child. Mounted on this beast, with her bags and bundles,
and shawls and
umbrella, and a long stick or pole, she used occasionally
to make the tour of the
neighborhood, and was always really welcomed;
because,
notwithstanding the trouble she gave, she always stirred things up.
As was said once, you could no more have remained dull where she was
than you could have dozed with a chinkapin-burr down your back.
Her
retort was that a chinkapin-burr might be used to rouse people
from a lethargy (she had an old maid's tongue). By the younger members
of the family she was always welcomed, because she furnished so much fun.
She nearly always fetched some little thing to her host -- not her
hostess --
a fowl, or a pat of butter from her one old cow, or something of the kind,
because, she said, "Abigail had established the
precedent, and she was
`a woman of good understanding' -- she understood that feeding and flattery
were the way to win men." She would sometimes have a chicken in a basket
hung on the off pummel of her old
saddle, because at times she fancied
she could not eat anything but chicken soup, and she did "not wish to
give trouble." She used to give trouble enough; for it generally turned out
that she had heard some one was sick in the
neighborhood,
and she wanted the soup carried to her. I remember how mad Joe got
because she made him go with her to carry a
bucket of soup
to old Mrs. Ronquist.
Cousin Fanny had the marks of an old maid. She was thin ("scrawny" we used
to call her, though I remember now she was quite erect until she grew feeble);
her features were fine; her nose was very straight; her hair was brown;
and her eyes, which were dark, were weak, so that she had often to wear
a green shade. She used to say herself that they were "bad eyes".
They had been so ever since the time when she was a young girl,
and there had been a very bad attack of
scarlet fever at her home,
and she had caught it. I think she caught a bad cold with it --
sitting up nursing some of the younger children, perhaps --
and it had settled in her eyes. She was always very
liable to cold.
I believe she had a lover then or about that time; but her mother had died
not long before, and she had some notion of duty to the children,
and so discarded him. Of course, as every one said, she'd much better
have married him. I do not suppose he ever could have addressed her.
She never would admit that he did, which did not look much like it.
She was once
spoken of in my presence as "a sore-eyed old maid" --
I have forgotten who said it. Yet I can now recall occasions when her eyes,
being "better", appeared
unusually soft, and, had she not been an old maid,
would sometimes have been beautiful -- as, for
instance, occasionally,
when she was playing at the piano in the evenings before the candles
were lighted. I
recollect particularly once when she was singing
an old French love-song. Another time was when on a certain occasion
some one was talking about marriages and the reasons which led to
or prevented them. She sat quite still and silent, looking out of the window,
with her thin hands resting in her lap. Her head was turned away
from most of the people, but I was sitting where I could see her,
and the light of the evening sky was on her face. It made her look very soft.
She lifted up her eyes, and looked far off toward the horizon.
I remember it recalled to me, young as I was, the speech I had heard some one
once make when I was a little boy, and which I had thought so
ridiculous,
that "when she was young, before she caught that cold, she was
almost beautiful." There was an expression on her face that made me think
she ought always to sit looking out of the window at the evening sky.
I believe she had brought me some apples that day when she came,
and that made me feel kindly toward her. The light on her hair
gave it a
reddish look, quite
auburn. Presently, she
withdrew her eyes
from the sky, and let them fall into her lap with a sort of long,
sighing
breath, and slowly interlaced her fingers. The next second
some one jocularly fired this question at her: "Well, Cousin Fanny,
give us your views," and her expression changed back to that which
she
ordinarily wore.
"Oh, my views, like other people's, vary from my practice," she said.
"It is not views, but experiences, which are
valuable in life.
When I shall have been married twice I will tell you."
"While there's life there's hope, eh?" hazarded some one;
for teasing an old maid, in any way, was held
perfectly legitimate.
"Yes, indeed," and she left the room, smiling, and went up-stairs.
This was one of the occasions when her eyes looked well. There were others
that I remember, as sometimes when she was in church; sometimes when
she was playing with little children; and now and then when,
as on that evening, she was sitting still, gazing out of the window.
But usually her eyes were weak, and she wore the green shade,
which gave her face a
peculiar pallor, making her look old,
and giving her a pained,
invalid expression.
Her dress was one of her
peculiarities. Perhaps it was because
she made her clothes herself, without being able to see very well.
I suppose she did not have much to dress on. I know she used to
turn her dresses, and change them around several times. When she had
any money she used to squander it, buying dresses for Scroggs's girls
or for some one else. She was always scrupulously neat,
being quite old-maidish. She said that
cleanliness was next to godliness
in a man, and in a woman it was on a par with it. I remember once
seeing a picture of her as a young girl, as young as Kitty,
dressed in a soft white dress, with her hair down over her ears,
and some flowers in her dress -- that is, it was said to be she;
but I did not believe it. To be sure, the flowers looked like it.
She always would stick flowers or leaves in her dress, which was thought
quite
ridiculous. The idea of associating flowers with an old maid!
It was as hard as believing she ever was the young girl. It was not,
however, her dress, old and often queer and ill-made as it used to be,
that was the chief
grievance against her. There was a much stronger ground
of
complaint; she had NERVES! The word used to be strung out
in pronouncing it, with a curve of the lips, as "ner-erves".
I don't remember that she herself ever mentioned them;
that was the exasperating part of it. She would never say a word;
she would just close her thin lips tight, and wear a sort of ill look,
as if she were in
actual pain. She used to go up-stairs, and shut the door
and windows tight, and go to bed, and have mustard-plasters on her temples
and the back of her neck; and when she came down, after a day or two,
she would have bright red spots burnt on her temples and neck,
and would look ill. Of course it was very hard not to be exasperated at this.
Then she would creep about as if merely stepping jarred her;
would put on a heavy blue veil, and wrap her head up in a shawl,
and feel along by the chairs till she got to a seat, and drop back in it,
gasping. Why, I have even seen her sit in the room, all swathed up,
and with an old parasol over her head to keep out the light,
or some such
nonsense, as we used to think. It was too
ridiculous to us,
and we boys used to walk heavily and
stumble over chairs -- "accidentally",
of course -- just to make her jump. Sometimes she would even start up
and cry out. We had the incontestable proof that it was all "put on";
for if you began to talk to her, and got her interested,
she would forget all about her ailments, and would run on and talk and laugh
for an hour, until she suddenly remembered, and sank back again
in her shawls and pains.
She knew a great deal. In fact, I recall now that she seemed to know
more than any woman I have ever been thrown with, and if she had not been
an old maid, I am bound to admit that her conversation would have been
the most entertaining I ever knew. She lived in a sort of atmosphere
of
romance and
literature; the old writers and their characters
were as real to her as we were, and she used to talk about them to us
whenever we would let her. Of course, when it came from an old maid,
it made a difference. She was not only easily the best French
scholarin our region, where the ladies all knew more or less of French,
but she was an excellent Latin
scholar, which was much less common.
I have often lain down before the fire when I was
learning my Latin lesson,
and read to her, line by line, Caesar or Ovid or Cicero, as the book
might be, and had her render it into English almost as fast as I read.
Indeed, I have even seen Horace read to her as she sat
in the old rocking-chair after one of her headaches, with her eyes bandaged,
and her head swathed in veils and shawls, and she would turn it into
not only proper English, but English with a glow and color and rhythm
that gave the very life of the odes. This was an exercise we boys all liked
and often engaged in -- Frank, and Joe, and Doug, and I, and even old Blinky
-- for, as she used to admit herself, she was always worrying us
to read to her (I believe I read all of Scott's novels to her).
Of course this
translation helped us as well as gratified her.