“SUSAN.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2443, 6 March 1909, Page 11 (Supplement)

“SUSAN.”

“I don’t believe -she can airn the salt to her porridge,” said Widow Martha Pillsbury. - She stood with her bands on her hips and scowled meditatively as she looked at the girl,"who stood ,as it .were,, on trial. “I can knit,” said Susan.

“Do, for massy sakes, hold your tongue, child!” cried Widow Pillsbury, irritably. “If you’ve said you could knit once, you have said it twenty-five times in five minutes. There’s something to be done besides knittin’, I guess. ■ Look at your hands 1”

Susan held up her hands with a pathetic readiness and looked at them. “I can knit,” she said again. Widow Pillsbury shook her head impatiently.' “There is no doubt that the girl comes on this town,” said Squire Mayhew, magisterially, and Deacon Eaton and Capt. Cephas White nodded with sober assent.

There was quite a party in Capt. White’s kitchen. Widow Martha Pillsbury, with the town poor —three old women, four old men and the girls. Susan Dix—steod before Squire Mayhew, Deacon Eaton, Capt. White and Mrs White, - who was tending a boiling pot over the fire. ■> There was no regular almshouse in the town of Whitfield, and Widow Pillsbury boarded the town poor for a small stipend, to be eked out by their labor.

She was popularly supposed to make quite a lucrative business of it; for under her. shrewd management these miserable, trembling old .people did all tlie work on her farm. The old men milked, tended the garden like live scarecrows and mowed in straggling rows. The old women churned, washed the milk pans and did other little jobs indoors.

Widow Pillsbury had never refused a new recruit to her decrepit corps, but now she looked askance at Susan Dix.

Susan was about sixteen years old and tall and slender. Her poor blue homespun petticoat draped her awkward limbs scantily; her Tagged little homespun blanket was drawn tightly over her shoulders and her feet were almost out of her cowhide shoes. She stood holding up her hands before them all.

The hands- had been badly burned when she was .a child and allowed to heal without proper care. They were useless for nearly all practical purposes, but Susan moved the -forefinger on the right one bravely. “I can knit,” she said again. There was the sweet, thoughtless laugh of a child about her mouth, hut her blue eyes were vacant. “I don’t keer nothin’ about knittin’,” said Widow Pillsbury. “We can’t afford to wear many stockin’s to our house; we’ve got to go barefoot. I don’t b’lieve she can do 'anythin’ worth doin’ with them hands; ail’ more than that, she’s simple.”

“I can knit,” Susan remarked again.

She suddenly began to knit an imaginary stocking with imaginary needles, as if to prove the truth of her assertion.

“Do keep still, for massy sakes!” sniffed Widow Pillsbury.

Squire Mayhew, Deacon Eaton and Capt. Cephas White, the three selectmen of Whitfield, looked at each other helplessly, then at Susan. She gravely knitted on in pantomime, the most forlorn pauper of them all, unable to gain footing in an almshouse; tossed like a worthless thing from one village to another, from Braintree to Stoughton, from Stoughton to Whitfield,, her claim to charity in each disputed, she did not seem to realise it.

Capt. Cephas White’s wife Betsy turned away from her boiling kettle. Sho was a small woman with a stern and weary face.

“Can you knit stockin’e?” she asked Susan.

Susan smiled and nodded. “Can you seam an’ narrer an’ slip an’ bind?”

Susan nodded again...,Her eyes gleamed, Capt.- White's wife went across tho room to a cupboard and took out of it a great blue yarn stocking with-knitting~needles in it. “Here!” she said, peremptorily.: “This is dono down to tho heel; now if you can knit, jus’ knit.” Susan seized upon the stocking with a little cry of joy. All in the room watched her while she knitted. Mrs Betsy White stood sharply observant at her elbow. Presently she looked' around at rer husband.

. “She can.'knit stockin’s,” paid she, 1 decisively. “She’s set that heel as' well as I could. I’m goin’ to- keep, her. I’ve got seven boys to knit for besides you, an’ I’ve got tho rheumatiz; in my hand.” Then she turned to Susan. •" Y ':

“Take off your blanket an’ set down an’ keep on with that stockin , she; commanded. ' -- •Susan took off her blanket obediently a nd sat down on a little stool which: her new mistress indicated with a ivavo of her hand. ' Then she.(knitted on And on. Widow Prllslmry and the town poor went away and presently the three selectmen also, after settling upon the amount to be allowed bythe town to Capt. White for Susan’s board. -

[ Susan was well cared for. She had plenty.to eat and went as comfortably clad, as any; girl of her age in Whitfield. Mrs White once sent her to school, but the attempt to teach her proved vain. Her knitting work, 1 the ’mysteries of heel and toe, • of seaming and narrowing, seemed to liavo exhausted all her slender ‘ mental power, if indeed her-mind had been capable of acquiring other knowledge. As some little black cricket might have sat on Capt. Cephas White s hearth, working its rasping fiddle, always in one note, and key, so poor Susan sat there, always knitting. Some times, indeed, Mrs White would bid her put her warm blanket over ber head and go out to coast downhill, or slide in the ice, -and she would obey readily enough, but she always carried her knitting with her; Susan had no mates of her own age, but among younger girls, and children stio was quite a favorite. .Her smil ing docility made amends for her lack of wisdom.

She was always 'ready to drag the rudo-sled uphill after the coast .and always ready to toil at a parting run across the ice of Mattapog pond, holding a long stick, to the other end of which children, clung and slid.

But .always hr the intervals of such sport she knitted. She knitted, stand, ing to take breath on the crest of the snowy hill;, she knitted resting a moment on the opposite shore of Mattapog, under the shadow of its dark evergreens. '

Gradually her faithfulness to her occupation gained her a title as fitting in its way as the squire’s or tlio parson’s. Everybody in Whitfield called her “Knitting Susan.” “That’s Knitting Susan,” people would explain to some stranger from Stoughton or Braintree, peering wohderingly around the wing of a dusty “shay” at the girl going knitting down' the street of Whitfield. There was among the village people ■a theory, scouted by some and entertained doubtfully by others, that Susan, /when knitting, was “more like other folks.” It was evident to al!,nevertheless, that her smile was not so broad and wavering, • that her blue eyes had become steadier and her whole expression more concentrated.

“Sometimes when she’s on tho heel I ask her questions an’ she answers as sensible as anybody.,” Mrs White would say, half defiantly. She was sometimes inclined to bo resentful when Susan was called “simple.” Tho first Sabbath on which Susan attended service in the Whitfield meeting house with Capt. White, las wife Betsy -and his seven sons she produced a great excitement by calmly taking her knitting from her pocket and falling to work. Susan knitted through “foreordination” without interference, although there were heads craning towards the White pew and eyes, some amused and some scandalized, observing tho desecration of the place and the day.

“Put that knittin’ work into your pocket,” ordered Mrs White, quite pale with wrath and horror. And Susan obeyed; but the earnest look with which she had watched the parson expounding the doctrine of foreordinution faded immediately. The innocent, wild smile came again, her eyes wandering aimlessly. A little while after tho tithing man had tiptoed back down the -aisle Susan again knitted, by this time in her skillful pantomime; and here eyes were again fixed upon the parson. The poke bonnet turned 'and Mrs White nudged her sharply. Susan stopped and hid her hands in her lap, but soon the pantomime recommenced. The tithing man again came forward, but his influence was brief. Susan knitted persistently on her invisible stocking and tried to concentrate her poor mind upon “effectual -falling.”

Capt. White and his wife had long conferences with the parson and deacons over the matter.

“The whole of it is, she can’t seem to sense the doctrines unless she’s either knittin’ or makin’ believe knit,” said Mrs White.

One Christmas afternoon, two years from.the time of her coming to White, field ,Mrs Whito sent her to Squire Mayhew’s with rome finished stockings. Susan carried thorn in a bag on her arm, but sho knitted another stocking as she went along. Tho weather had been very mild all day; the water hacl dripped from the eaves, the snowbanks had settled and the fields'looked like white honeycomb. The ice on Mattapog pond showed watery patches. As Susan walked on, knitting, sho heard a great shout of children: -“Hullo, Knittin’ Susan 1 Hullo !” “Hullo!” Susan called back, with ready merriment. - Tim children came plunging out of the birch growth on the shore of the pond. There rwere four littlo girls One of them was Dorothy Mayhew,; the squire’s daughter. - Her face was like a rose in the hood of her scarlet cloak.; her voice was sweet and: imperious. . . 1 “Drag us across the pond, Knitting Susan!” sho demanded. Susan looked at them doubtfully, ■her fingers clicking the needles. The children all raised a clamor of appeal, their soft, radiant faces smiling. up into liers. ■ . ■'-'■ “Mebbo pond break through,” said Susan, , shaking her head in a trouhled way.. ■.' / , * : ’ rA “No, it won’t, it wonit!”.; pleaded little Dorothy Mayhew. She danced

tip and down-like a redbird. A “It won’t! It won’t!”. echoed thoother children. Susan still looked doubtful, but she had always thought tho children very wise and she yielded. The evergreen trees on tho .opposito shore, of Mattapog. pond stood out bleaker against a paler sky when thelittle expedition started.- Susan hold the long birch pole in her misshapen Jiands, which had good; power of grasp in them, and the four children clung to tho pole, sliding on their heavy shoes. . ' . . .A" ■

■Susan tugged on as fast as she was able over the clear spaces of ice, straining forward with sidewise jerks, and at last they had nearly reached .the opposite shoro in safety. They could hear tho sweet roar of the one great piuo in the midst of the low spruce trees. Suddenly Susan was aware of a stretch of water between them and the shore. Sho was in. advneo of the others by the length of the birch pole. There was ample timo for her to jump, but she stopped short. ;

“Pond’s breakup', in?” she shouted, in her rude, untrained voice. “Pond’s bi-eakin’ ini Jump! Jump! Jump!” She seized the frightened, children one after another and pushed them 'toward the edge of the ice, calling out': “Jump! Jump!” She fairly forced them over. Little Dorothy Mayhew was last and sho shrunk back, crying. The fissure was q'uite wide. Susan .raised the birch pole threateningly over her pretty head as if to strike.

“Jump!” she screamed. “Or I’ll whip, whip, whip !” And little Dorothy jumped in a pa»iic and cleared the water safely, although she fell flat on the other side and was dragged up by her sobbing comrades.

But after that there was no chance for Susan. The space of deep, dark water was far too wide to be cleared. Dorothy’s jump had caused the ice to recede farther,

The little ones huddled together on tho shore, straining their i;«?cfvS toward Susan, and besought her vainly to come. .

But Susan stood now on a small island of icc, with wide, deep water all around her. Mattapog pond had broken up after tho long January thaw. She nodded smilingly to the little ones on tho shore. Then they saw- hei take her knitting work out of her pocket and begin to knit. She paid no more hood to the wailing children. It was as if poor Susan was trying to collect her simple wits to meet death, as she had tried to collect them in the meeting house, with the thundering of the stern .puritan doctrines in her ears. " ' It was a half-hour after that before Squire Mayhew. came and took the crying children homo by the road on his ox sled, and it was noon of the next day before Knitting Susan was taken tenderly out of Mattapog pond. And by night the tale had spread over the whole village of' Whitefield how she had been found with her knitting work fast in her poor hands, which had been faithful even in death to their one task. And although it .was many years ago, the tale still lives there.