SUSAN TONGS[P]ByEthel Parton
ByEthel Parton
The author says of Susan that she “was a sociable soul, if occasionally a bit difficult�—and we welcome her to our gathering of patriotic heroes and heroines.
The author says of Susan that she “was a sociable soul, if occasionally a bit difficult�—and we welcome her to our gathering of patriotic heroes and heroines.
THE lower half-door of the Thurrell house side porch was closed because Susan Tong’s ball of yarn, which was always slipping from her vast and rotund knees, had a way of hopping down the steps if the door were left open. Because the garden-path sloped, the ball, if once started, would roll far beyond even the longest reach of the odd implement with twin handles at one end, flat nippers at the other, and a middle length of extensible iron latticework, which had earned Susan, properly the Widow Thurrell, the name by which she was commonly known. But the upper half of the broad, green-painted door was set wide to the streaming sunshine of a mild October afternoon of 1776.
Just within the door showed the chintz back, gay with red-patterned palm-leaves, of the huge armchair in which sat Susan Tongs herself, her smooth bands of red hair just showing beneath her cap, her small, light eyes lifted from her work to the golden autumnal landscape,her triple chin descending upon a snowy amplitude of kerchief, and a pair of long steel needles clicking in her two fat hands.
Susan possessed two distinctions: she was the fattest person in the village, and she was the only fat person in it who had not an easy-going disposition. Too unwieldy for many years past to move about upon her little feet and weak ankles without the assistance of her crutch-handled staff, her utmost exertion was to cross the road to the meeting-house on Sundays; week-days she spent in her chair, directing the household tasks of her pretty niece, Tamsine, who did not have a very easy life of it.
Susan Thurrell, everybody said, had been notably brisk and light of foot in her youth, and the burden of flesh which had come upon her in later life was particularly unwelcome, and far from being accompanied by a corresponding increase in mental grace. She was certainly very exacting.
Just what her weight was no one knew; her own guess was “nigh about two hundred and fifty,� but there were many who vowed it was three hundred if it was a pound.
A mottled hen which had somehow got into the garden patch caught Susan’s eye, and a shadow of anger overcast her wide face. The creature was clucking its way, followed by a lone chicken, directly toward her favorite bed of sweet herbs. She shouted a husky “Shoo,� but without effect; then she caught up her “lazy man’s tongs,� which lay near.
Quickly compressing the handles, she shot the tip out to its farthest extent and picked up with it a crust of bread fallen from the dinner-table and overlooked, for Tamsey, the orderly caretaker, had been called away in haste that day to a sick neighbor. This crust she flung at the invader. The hen squawked and ran, but presently returned to peck cheerfully at the missile.
Still wheezing from the exertion of a rapid movement, Susan uttered a grunt of disgust, and with lazy-tongs still in hand glanced about for something else to throw. As she turned to look behind her chair she saw, at the far end of the room, leaning against the mantelpiece to which he seemed to cling for support, a young man, scarcely more than a boy, very pale and breathing heavily, and with a queerly mingled look of courage and terror in his eyes.
“Othniel Purdie!� she cried. “What are you doing in my kitchen?�
He only panted, and she stared at him in amazement fast deepening to suspicion.
“Why ain’t you with General Washington?� she demanded. “What are you back here in Norley for? Folks said you’d run away to join the army. Don’t you know there’s a British camp at the other end of the town, and British officers quartered at Parson Hackett’s and Marchant Cole’s? What are you here for?—and looking scared as a hunted rabbit! I never liked you, and I won’t have you hanging around my niece, Tamsey; but I do hope to Providence you’ve notdeserted. I couldn’t bear to think any Norley boy would do that. Speak up, can’t you? What are you here for?�
“I haven’t deserted,� the young fellow managed to say, “and I know well enough the place is full of redcoats. They want me, and I’m afraid they’ll get me, and it’s all up if they do.�
“Want you? What for?� She looked at him again, and between her heavy cheeks and the overhanging roll of her eyebrows a gleam of fiery intelligence came into her two little gray-blue eyes, small and hard and wise, like an elephant’s.
“Where’s your uniform? What are you holding to the front of your shirt for? Have you papers there? Despatches? Are you trying to steal through the lines? That’s the same as spying, isn’t it? Good mercy, you’ll be hanged; of course you will!�
He had not needed to answer any of her quick questions in words; she took the answer from his eyes without waiting, and scolded on: “And I suppose you stopped here for a sight of Tamsey, but she’s away and you won’t see her, and glad I am of that. The zanies boys are! You’d better slip away quick and hide till dark; there’s a place in the shed loft where nobody——�
He interrupted her. “I can’t get there. I can’t go any farther. I’ve sprained my ankle and I fainted twice getting here the back way from Royd’s wood-lot, where I dodged them and they lost me. But they haven’t given it up, and I heard them say they’d searchevery house in the village. But this was the only place I could get away to, and so I came. I can’t go any farther; I’ll faint again if I try. I thought maybe Tamsey’d hide me. I know you don’t like me, Mrs. Thurrell, but I thought you’d let her, when it was life and death—and there are the papers——�
“Give them to me,� said Susan.
“Here—I know you’ll take good care of them, at any rate, and you’ll send them on by a safe hand if I’m taken, won’t you, Mrs. Thurrell?�
“Mmm!� grunted Susan. “Twist them up and toss them in the woodbox there with the kindlings—it’s in plain sight and won’t be thought of. Now we’ve got to hurry—hurry—hurry, if we’re going to save that neck of yours; and, land, what a poor pair we are for hurrying!�
Laughing fiercely, and gripping the arms of her seat, Susan had risen painfully as she talked, and now, supporting herself on her staff, stood up and shoved the great chair a little to one side. A trap-door showed in the floor where it had stood, and she explained quickly that the kitchen had been a later addition to the house; that the main cellar did not extend beneath it, but that there was below a small, square pit for storage, large enough to conceal a man at need.
Then, crying to Othniel to catch, she tossed him her crutch-stick, and leaning heavily upon it, he crossed the room to her side. Directing him to lean on the chair, she resumed her staff, and, reversing it, hooked open thetrap-door with the crutch end, and signed to him to descend.
He hesitated. “They’ll find it,� he said; “it’s in plain sight as soon as your chair is moved. If I must be caught, I’d rather be caught above ground than hauled out of a hole, like a woodchuck.�
“You go down,� said Susan grimly, “I’m going to put that chair back and sit in it; and move it they don’t neither, not if they’re the whole British army!�
He lowered himself to the edge and slipped down, wincing and biting his lips as he curled up in the little square space, adjusting his injured ankle in his hand. For a moment his clear eyes looked up to Susan’s with gratitude and appeal; then the lid closed. He heard shoving and shuffling and the settling of a heavy weight in place overhead, and after that the swift and steady click of knitting-needles.
A young English officer, accompanied by a sergeant and four soldiers, coming briskly up the garden-path not ten minutes later, found Susan Tongs knitting as usual, just within her doorway. She scarcely glanced up while the officer, a youngster hardly older than Othniel, briefly stated his errand and demanded admittance; but when he had concluded, she shot him an indignant look.
“Search my house!� she cried. “Do you suppose I want your soldiers’ dirty fingers poking in my linen-chest and overhauling my gowns and petticoats, all to find a good-for-nothing lad that’s been forbid the placethis two years? Ask any of the neighbors what were the last words I had with Othniel Purdie, and whether he’s likely to be hiding here or not—ask ’em! I don’t believe you even think he’s here. I believe it’s an excuse to steal my property and drink my cider. How should he be here? Last folks heard, he was off to General Washington—God bless him——�
“What! What!� cried the young officer, lifting his eyebrows and laughing. Susan set her teeth and clicked her needles hard. “We hear there’s a pretty niece of yours, who’s not so hard on the young man,� he went on; “and since you’re so frankly a rebel yourself, Mrs. Tongs, you’ll admit it’s not a bad guess that she may have coaxed you into protecting even a lover you don’t like, when he’s doing spy’s work for your admired General Washington. I shall certainly search the house.�
“My name is Mrs. Thurrell, young man; it’s only old friends and neighbors who may call me ‘Susan Tongs,’� answered Susan dryly. “And no coaxing of my silly niece, Tamsey—not if she coaxed from now till judgment—should drive me to harboring any lad against my will. I do as I please in my own house. But she’s a soft thing, and young, and it’s possible she might have slyed him in by the back way, if he’s really in town and hiding; you see I sit here all day, and could little tell what went on in the rest of the house.
“The notion of Othniel Purdie stowed away in secret in cupboard or closet of mine pleases me no more thanit does you,� she scolded on; “so on second thoughts you may search and welcome, provided only you look well after your men and see there’s no mauling of my quilts and calicoes—manners, sir, manners! Would you shove by a woman, hat cocked, on her own threshold, when she has bidden you to come in? Keep back, or come properly!� for the young lieutenant, impatient of further talk, had started to push past Susan, whose great chair and person almost blocked the way, and had made a sign to a soldier as if commanding him to assist in removing the obstacle.
But before the soldier could mount the steps, and quick as the officer’s hand touched her chair, Susan had snatched up her lazy-tongs—there was a snap, a glint of shining dark metal, and the nippers clicked together within an inch of his ear. He uttered a dismayed oath and leaped backward down the low steps, where he would have fallen had not the grinning soldier caught him in his arms.
Recovering himself, he cried, furiously, “Put down that pistol!�
Susan smiled a grandmotherly smile and gently shook her head.
The soldier’s grin broadened. “’Twa’n’t a pistol, sir,� he explained respectfully. “I don’t know what it was; but ’twa’n’t a pistol.�
“Let me pass!� said the officer, reassured but mortified, and springing again up the steps. “Move aside and let me pass, woman!�
“Woman, and an old woman,� answered Susan serenely, “and surely you may pass, for I told you so. But a woman of my weight moves slowly, and it behooves a young gentleman to show patience. I will be treated civilly under my own roof; and I won’t budge an inch for a swaggering boy with his hat on—there!� she continued, as he thrust roughly by, squeezed nearly flat between the armchair and the door-jamb, “there’s for your impudence!�
This time her aim was better, and the tongs snicked sharply together with the tip of his queue between them, with the result that, as he pushed on and Susan held fast, his head was sharply jerked, and his gilt-laced hat fell off at her feet. With a leisurely closing of the nippers, Susan picked it up and put it on the table.
“You can have it again when you go,� she said soothingly, as if speaking to a fretful child. “And will you ask your man there to go round to the other door? As you have just found, young sir, this door’s scarcely wide enough for two, when I am one of them, and he is stouter than you.�
For a moment, red and angry, the young fellow glared upon her fiercely; but she met his look with one so steady, placid, and grandmotherly, yet with a glimmer of humor in it, too, that his wrath suddenly vanished in a burst of boyish laughter. He signed to the soldier to go round to the back door, as the others had already done, and held out his hand for Susan’s lazy-tongs, which he played with curiously, snapping and nippingwith them at the air, while he directed the elaborate search of the lower rooms. Then they all went upstairs together, and heavy feet were heard clumping through the bedrooms for a long time. At last the stairs creaked, and they descended.
“Did your soldiers handle my linen?� asked Susan eagerly, with a face of deep, housewifely anxiety. “I suppose they have tumbled the whole chestful out in a heap.�
“No, indeed—we’ve scarcely shaken out the lavender,� the lieutenant answered, smiling pleasantly; adding, with a glance of mock terror at the tongs, “May I have my hat?�
“Let your sergeant go to the pantry first, if you please. I can’t wait on you myself, but there are doughnuts and a jug of sweet cider on the shelf, at your service,� she replied hospitably, and as it was the last house of the village, and they had no further searching to do, they accepted the modest treat gratefully, and the four soldiers gathered, munching and sipping, around the kitchen fire in most friendly fashion.
No shadow of suspicion remained, but the mischievous young commander lifted his mug, and saying, “This is for the pull you gave my hair, Mrs. Thurrell, and no punishment at that if you were a properly loyal subject,� he drank to the king’s health.
“Pour out a mug for me, too, sergeant,� demanded Susan, with sparkling eyes; but as the man tipped the pitcher to obey, his officer stopped him.
“No, no!� he cried, laughing and waving it aside. “She will drink to General Washington!�
“Yes, that she would, young sir!� said Susan Tongs.
Next day, with his precious despatches rescued from the woodbox and his ankle much better, Othniel escaped in a patriotic neighbor’s load of hay. After the war ended he married Tamsey, with no opposition from Susan, whose temper softened with time, and who, ever after having saved him, lavished upon him an affection as great as her former dislike.
Indeed, it was a joke in the household—for they shared one home—that Aunt Susan was never cross now unless Tamsey forgot to give her husband his favorite kind of cake for supper, or left a rent in his coat unmended longer then five minutes after he took it off! Then there was a tempest. But Tamsey was so fond both of Othniel and Susan Tongs that she could let it rage about her quite untroubled, duteously veiling her amusement, and listening with an air of meek respect until it spent itself, and peace returned.