same year; and Mandy set down and cried and worried and wondered what on earth she was goin’ to do, and the farm went to wrack and the children turned out bad, and she had to live with her son-in-law in her old age. But Mary, she got up and went to work, and made everybody about her work, too; and she managed the farm better’n it ever had been managed before, and the boys all come up steady, hard-workin’ men, and there wasn’t a woman in the county better fixed up than Mary Harris. Things is predestined to come to us, honey, but we’re jest as free as air to make what we please out of ’em. And when it comes to puttin’ the pieces together, there’s another time when we’re free. You don’t trust to luck for the caliker to put your quilt together with; you go to the store and pick it out yourself, any color you like. There’s folks that always looks on the bright side and makes the best of everything, and that’s like puttin’ your quilt together with blue or pink or white or some other pretty color; and there’s folks that never see anything but the dark side, and always lookin’ for trouble, and treasurin’ it up after they git it, and they’re puttin’ their lives together with black, jest like you would put a quilt together with some dark, ugly color. You can spoil the prettiest quilt pieces that ever was made jest by puttin’ ’em together with the wrong color, and the best sort o’ life is miserable if you don’t look at things right and think about ’em right.
‘Then there’s another thing. I’ve seen folks piece and piece, but when it come to puttin’ the blocks together and quiltin’ and linin’ it, they’d give out; and that’s like folks that do a little here and a little there, but their lives ain’t of much use after all, any more’n a lot o’ loose pieces o’ patchwork. And then while you’re livin’ your life, it looks pretty much like a jumble o’ quilt pieces before they’re put together; but when you git through with it, or pretty nigh through, as I am now, you’ll see the use and the purpose of everything in it. Everything’ll 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 Jane’s attention to this lack.
‘Child,’ she said, ‘I used to say there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do if I made up my mind to it. But I hadn’t seen a “crazy quilt” then. The first one I ever seen was up at Danville at Mary Frances’, and Henrietta says, “Now, grandma, you’ve got to make a crazy quilt; you’ve 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 she’d 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, they’d 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.
‘I’ve 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. That’s the discouragin’ thing about a woman’s 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, she’d lie down and die right then and there. I’ve always had the name o’ bein’ a good housekeeper, but when I’m dead and gone there ain’t anybody goin’ to think o’ the floors I’ve swept, and the tables I’ve scrubbed, and the old clothes I’ve patched, and the stockin’s I’ve darned. Abram might ’a’ remembered it, but he ain’t here. But when one o’ my grandchildren or great-grandchildren sees one o’ these quilts, they’ll think about Aunt Jane, and, wherever I am then, I’ll know I ain’t forgotten.
‘I reckon everybody wants to leave somethin’ behind that’ll last after they’re dead and gone. It don’t look like it’s 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 ain’t so. They go, and maybe they do rest, but their works stay right here, unless they’re the sort that don’t 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 I’ve got to leave behind me is jest these quilts, and sometimes, when I’m settin’ here, workin’ with my caliker and gingham pieces, I’ll finish off a block, and I laugh and say to myself, “Well, here’s 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 ain’t many things that’ll last longer’n a quilt. Why, I’ve got a blue and white counterpane that my mother’s mother spun and wove, and there ain’t a sign o’ givin’ out in it yet. I’m 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 wouldn’t sleep under such a counterpane as that.” And says she, “No, but I’d hang it up over my parlor door for a—”’
‘Portière?[89]’ I suggested, as Aunt Jane hesitated for the unaccustomed word.
‘That’s it, child. Somehow I can’t ricollect these new-fangled words, any more’n I can understand these new-fangled ways. Who’d ever ’a’ thought that folks’d go to stringin’ up bed-coverin’s in their doors? And says I to Janie, “You can hang your great-grandmother’s counterpane up in your parlor door if you want to, but,” says I, “don’t 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 I’d 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 Jane’s ‘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[90] 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
portière – heavy curtains hung in a doorway
Marseilles – a city and port in southern France on the Mediterranean Sea, founded 2,500 years ago
