Then theres another thing. Ive seen folks piece and piece, but when it come to puttin the blocks together and quiltin and linin it, theyd give out; and thats like folks that do a little here and a little there, but their lives aint of much use after all, any moren a lot o loose pieces o patchwork. And then while youre livin your life, it looks pretty much like a jumble o quilt pieces before theyre put together; but when you git through with it, or pretty nigh through, as I am now, youll see the use and the purpose of everything in it. Everythingll be in its right place jest like the squares in this four-patch, and one piece may be pretty and another one ugly, but it all looks right when you see it finished and joined together.
Did I say that every pattern was represented? No, there was one notable omission. Not a single crazy quilt was there in the collection. I called Aunt Janes attention to this lack.
Child, she said, I used to say there wasnt anything I couldnt do if I made up my mind to it. But I hadnt seen a crazy quilt then. The first one I ever seen was up at Danville at Mary Frances, and Henrietta says, Now, grandma, youve got to make a crazy quilt; youve made every other sort that ever was heard of. And she brought me the pieces and showed me how to baste em on the square, and said shed work the fancy stitches around em for me. Well, I set there all the mornin tryin to fix up that square, and the more I tried, the uglier and crookeder the thing looked. And finally I says: Here, child, take your pieces. If I was to make this the way you want me to, theyd be a crazy quilt and a crazy woman, too.
Aunt Jane was laying the folded quilts in neat piles here and there about the room. There was a look of unspeakable satisfaction on her face the look of the creator who sees his completed work and pronounces it good.
Ive been a hard worker all my life, she said, seating herself and folding her hands restfully, but most all my work has been the kind that perishes with the usin, as the Bible says. Thats the discouragin thing about a womans work. Milly Amos used to say that if a woman was to see all the dishes that she had to wash before she died, piled up before her in one pile, shed lie down and die right then and there. Ive always had the name o bein a good housekeeper, but when Im dead and gone there aint anybody goin to think o the floors Ive swept, and the tables Ive scrubbed, and the old clothes Ive patched, and the stockins Ive darned. Abram might a remembered it, but he aint here. But when one o my grandchildren or great-grandchildren sees one o these quilts, theyll think about Aunt Jane, and, wherever I am then, Ill know I aint forgotten.
I reckon everybody wants to leave somethin behind thatll last after theyre dead and gone. It dont look like its worth while to live unless you can do that. The Bible says folks rest from their labors, and their works do follow them, but that aint so. They go, and maybe they do rest, but their works stay right here, unless theyre the sort that dont outlast the usin. Now, some folks has money to build monuments with great, tall, marble pillars, with angels on top of em, like you see in Cave Hill and them big city buryin-grounds. And some folks can build churches and schools and hospitals to keep folks in mind of em, but all the work Ive got to leave behind me is jest these quilts, and sometimes, when Im settin here, workin with my caliker and gingham pieces, Ill finish off a block, and I laugh and say to myself, Well, heres another stone for the monument.
I reckon you think, child, that a caliker or a worsted quilt is a curious sort of a monument bout as perishable as the sweepin and scrubbin and mendin. But if folks values things rightly, and knows how to take care of em, there aint many things thatll last longern a quilt. Why, Ive got a blue and white counterpane that my mothers mother spun and wove, and there aint a sign o givin out in it yet. Im goin to will that to my granddaughter that lives in Danville, Mary Frances oldest child. She was down here last summer, and I was lookin over my things and packin em away, and she happened to see that counterpane and says she, Grandma, I want you to will me that. And says I: What do you want with that old thing, honey? You know you wouldnt sleep under such a counterpane as that. And says she, No, but Id hang it up over my parlor door for a
Portière[26]? I suggested, as Aunt Jane hesitated for the unaccustomed word.
Thats it, child. Somehow I cant ricollect these new-fangled words, any moren I can understand these new-fangled ways. Whod ever a thought that folksd go to stringin up bed-coverins in their doors? And says I to Janie, You can hang your great-grandmothers counterpane up in your parlor door if you want to, but, says I, dont you ever make a door-curtain out o one o my quilts. But la! the way things turn around, if I was to come back fifty years from now, like as not Id find em usin my quilts for window-curtains or door-mats.
We both laughed, and there rose in my mind a picture of a twentieth-century house decorated with Aunt Janes nine-patches and rising suns. How could the dear old woman know that the same esthetic sense that had drawn from their obscurity the white and blue counterpanes of colonial days would forever protect her loved quilts from such a desecration as she feared? As she lifted a pair of quilts from a chair nearby, I caught sight of a pure white spread in striking contrast with the many-hued patchwork.
Where did you get that Marseilles[27] spread, Aunt Jane? I asked, pointing to it. Aunt Jane lifted it and laid it on my lap without a word. Evidently she thought that here was something that could speak for itself. It was two layers of snowy cotton cloth thinly lined with cotton, and elaborately quilted into a perfect imitation of a Marseilles counterpane. The pattern was a tracery of roses, buds, and leaves, very much conventionalized, but still recognizable for the things they were. The stitches were fairylike, and altogether it might have covered the bed of a queen.
I made every stitch o that spread the year before me and Abram was married, she said. I put it on my bed when we went to housekeepin; it was on the bed when Abram died, and when I die I want em to cover me with it. There was a life-history in the simple words. I thought of Desdemona[28] and her bridal sheets, and I did not offer to help Aunt Jane as she folded this quilt.
I reckon you think, she resumed presently, that Im a mean, stingy old creetur not to give Janie the counterpane now, instead o hoardin it up, and all these quilts too, and keepin folks waitin for em till I die. But, honey, it aint all selfishness. Id give away my best dress or my best bonnet or an acre o ground to anybody that needed em moren I did; but these quilts Why, it looks like my whole life was sewed up in em, and I aint goin to part with em while life lasts.
There was a ring of passionate eagerness in the old voice, and she fell to putting away her treasures as if the suggestion of losing them had made her fearful of their safety.
I looked again at the heap of quilts. An hour ago they had been patchwork, and nothing more. But now! The old womans words had wrought a transformation in the homely mass of calico and silk and worsted. Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history, biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love, and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the souls longing for earthly immortality.
I reckon you think, she resumed presently, that Im a mean, stingy old creetur not to give Janie the counterpane now, instead o hoardin it up, and all these quilts too, and keepin folks waitin for em till I die. But, honey, it aint all selfishness. Id give away my best dress or my best bonnet or an acre o ground to anybody that needed em moren I did; but these quilts Why, it looks like my whole life was sewed up in em, and I aint goin to part with em while life lasts.
There was a ring of passionate eagerness in the old voice, and she fell to putting away her treasures as if the suggestion of losing them had made her fearful of their safety.
I looked again at the heap of quilts. An hour ago they had been patchwork, and nothing more. But now! The old womans words had wrought a transformation in the homely mass of calico and silk and worsted. Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history, biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love, and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the souls longing for earthly immortality.
No wonder the wrinkled fingers smoothed them as reverently as we handle the garments of the dead.
Kate Chopin
Maame Pelagie
I
When the war began, there stood on an imposing mansion of red brick, shaped like the Pantheon[29]. A grove of majestic live-oaks surrounded it.
Thirty years later, only the thick walls were standing, with the dull red brick showing here and there through a matted growth of clinging vines. The huge round pillars were intact; so to some extent was the stone flagging of hall and portico. There had been no home so stately along the whole stretch of Cote Joyeuse. Everyone knew that, as they knew it had cost Philippe Valmet sixty thousand dollars to build, away back in 1840. No one was in danger of forgetting that fact, so long as his daughter Pelagie survived. She was a queenly, white-haired woman of fifty. Maame Pelagie, they called her, though she was unmarried, as was her sister Pauline, a child in Maame Pelagies eyes; a child of thirty-five.
The two lived alone in a three-roomed cabin, almost within the shadow of the ruin. They lived for a dream, for Maame Pelagies dream, which was to rebuild the old home.
It would be pitiful to tell how their days were spent to accomplish this end; how the dollars had been saved for thirty years and the picayunes hoarded; and yet, not half enough gathered! But Maame Pelagie felt sure of twenty years of life before her, and counted upon as many more for her sister. And what could not come to pass in twenty in forty years?