 | CHAPTER XV.
IN THE WOODS The shadow of Moloch mountain |  |
15. CHAPTER XV.
IN THE WOODS
“There, Zilpah, this is home—the best
that I have to offer, at any rate. Are you
sorry you came?”
So spoke Marston Brent, throwing open the
door of a rude log cabin buried in the heart
of a hemlock forest, many miles from any
town, village, or even hamlet, and connected
with the haunts of man only by the capricious
unreliable of rivers. From the Ford, as the
highest point of sloop navigation upon this
stream is called, Brent had transported his
family and his chattels in two stout wagons
drawn by oxen, who now stood panting before
the log-house in the waning of a September
day.
“Well, I don't know as I be,” said Zilpah
cautiously, and pausing to look well about her
before she made reply. “Looks kind o' woodsy,
don't it?”
“Yes; that we must expect in a logging-camp;
but the trees just about the house are
cut away, you see,” said Marston, with an effort
at cheerful speech.
“Hm! That was so's to get something to
make the house of, I expect,” replied Zilpah
coolly. “It's a reg'lar log-cabin, a'n't it?”
“Yes; I told you it was.”
“I know it, Mr. Brent, I know it; I a'n't
complaining — don't you think it; only it
looks kind o' cur'us to any one that's always
lived amongst folks; now don't it?”
“I suppose so,” said Marston, smiling, as he
remembered the seclusion of Milvor, where
Zilpah had been born and bred; and then he
added gayly:
“Well, we must make company for each
other, Zilpah. Come into the house, won't
you? And, Richard, you must explain matters
a little as to where we are to get fuel, water,
and such matters. You know we are new
to this way of life.”
Richard, a veteran logger, who, having
spent the previous winter at Wahtahree, in
the employ of Mr. Mills, had been selected as
the fittest cicerone of the new proprietor,
came forward at the summons, saying with a
grin:
“As for fuel, Cap'n, why there's enough of
that all about, I should say; and as for water,
there's a spring right down there, and the
boys might fetch some in this bucket when
the cattle have done eating their meal out'n it.
There's a first-rate cook-stove in the shanty,
and I'll get the pork-barrel unloaded right
away. I expect she knows how to fry pork
and bile potaters, don't she? That's logger's
fare, mostly.”
“I guess I know as much as that, young
man, and I know better than to get water for
folks and feed critters in the same bucket.
Paul Freeman, you get a pail out of Mr.
Brent's goods. There's one there that won't
pizen, as I expect,” said Zilpah, with so much
dignity that Brent was fain to turn away to
hide a smile, and Richard grinned from ear to
ear as he led the way into the cabin, or shanty,
as the building would be styled in forest
parlance.
This consisted of two rooms and a closet
upon the lower floor, and a loft above, furnished
with wooden boxes or bunks filled with
hay, in which the wood-cutters were expected
to sleep. The outer room, into which opened
the principal door, was furnished with a long
table extending down the middle, with a
bench at either side, all of evident home manufacture,
and more solid than elegant; two or
three stools, and a smaller movable table, set
in front of the wide, open fireplace. This was
the dining and sitting room of the family,
while the smaller one behind it served as
kitchen and scullery. The closet was set apart
as Zilpah's bedroom, and Richard, Paul and
his brother, and the lumbermen, when they
should arrive, were quartered in the loft. For
his own use, Brent reserved a small room in
an adjacent building designed as a store-house,
and thither had his personal belongings transported
as they were unloaded.
Such articles of household gear as Zilpah
declared indispensable, Brent had purchased at
their last stopping-place, and the list had finally
lengthened so far that the great ox-wagon
engaged to transport them had almost proved
insufficient, and the old housekeeper, watching
her master's face during the process of
loading, expected every moment to see some
precious article discarded, or some favorite
scheme upset by loss of its material elements.
But Brent, like other men of his large, strong
nature, was ever over-indulgent to the weak
and helpless under his control, and although
Richard grumbled, and his assistant teamster
swore, Zilpah was not mulcted of pot or pan,
bread-tray, clothes-horse, or rubbing-board,
and Brent arranged all difficulties by hiring a
second yoke of oxen to accompany them to the
end of their journey.
These, her household gods, the old woman
now received at the hands of Paul, who was
unloading the wagon, and arranged them upon
the shelves, hooks, and walls of her new home
with much satisfaction.
“There, now, that looks something like!”
exclaimed she, as Brent returned to the shanty,
after superintending the ordering of his
own room. “Look at here, Mr. Marston, and
Milvor over again? Recollect our coffee-pot
to home? Wa'n't it the moral of this'n?”
“I should think so. Yes, they look very
home-like and housewifely, Zilpah. But
what!—a warming-pan!”
“Well, yes, Mr. Marston,” replied the old
woman, a little sheepishly; “you see a warming-pan
is dreadful handy in case of sickness;
and there's no knowing what might happen
to any of us, away off here in the woods, away
from doctors so.”
“But where did you get it?” asked Brent,
suppressing a smile.
“Why, don't you remember, while I was
trading with that tinman, you and he went
off to look at some kind of ox-tackle he'd been
getting up, and whilst you were gone, I sort
o' prowled round in the back-shop and peeked
into the cellar-way and the loft—not for no
harm, only to see what sort o' things he'd got
stowed away; and then I see this warming-pan,
and it looked so sort o' home-like—you
see, my folks had one when I was a small
girl, and I rec'lect my mother warming my
bed over when I'd got a bad cold—and so I
thought you wouldn't care, Marston, and I
just tucked it into the things that was sot off
for us, and didn't say nothing about it.”
“But did the man know it? There was no
such item in the bill,” said Marston, taking a
note-book from his pocket, and selecting a paper
to which the man of stoves had affixed
not only his name, but several of the black
“thumb-marks” which our illiterate ancestors
used in place of signatures.
“No, it is not in the bill,” added Brent severely,
as he refolded the document.
“Oh! well, dearie, if it isn't, it's no fault of
your'n,” said Zilpah in some confusion, and
making a great rattling among her pots and
pans. “He might have seed it if he'd looked,
I'm sure. It a'n't a thing I could hide in my
pooket.”
“But the articles were all noted down as
they were selected, and the shopman put
them into the wagon while his master made
out the bill. You have stolen this warming-pan,
Zilpah, and under cover of my name too,”
exclaimed Brent indignantly.
Whereupon, Zilpah, dropping the tin basin
and dipper from her hands, threw her apron
over her head and broke into violent weeping,
mingled with protestations of immaculate innocence
and wounded feeling at such unde
served suspicion from one whom she had regarded
`all the same as her own boy.”
Brent looked on for a moment in the helpless
and absurd way in which a man always
contemplates a weeping woman whom circumstances
or her own will do not permit of
his taking in his arms and kissing, and then
he strode out of the house, and stood vacantly
staring at the gloomy autumnal prospect.
And this, he thought, was his home and his
life. These petty and sordid cares within the
house were to be his relief from the exhaustive
labor without, from which he did not
shrink. No companionship, no sympathy,
no contact with a gentle and more delicate organization
to soothe away the asperities of his
daily life.
“Beatrice was right,” muttered he at last.
“It is no place for her. I am glad she did not
come.”
But the idea of regretting his own choice,
of reconsidering a decision deliberately made,
never crossed the mind of this man, whose nature,
ardent and impressionable as heated
lava, like hardened lava retained forever the
impressions so made. Nor was it in him to
devote many moments to repining, or, indeed,
to reverie of any sort; and before Zilpah, cautiously
peeping from her kitchen to ascertain
his whereabouts, had hidden the obnoxious
warming-pan in her own bedroom, Brent
had thrown off his coat and was helping his
man to move some of the heavier articles of
their load, and to stable the oxen, and the
horse he had provided for his personal use.
He was still engaged in this manner when a
timid voice at his elbow pronounced his name.
He turned and found the boy Willy watching
him attentively.
“Well, my little man, what is it?” asked he
good-naturedly.
“Zilpah sent me to tell you that supper
is ready,” said the child.
“I will come. And how do you like the
woods and our fine log-house, Willy?”
“Very much indeed, sir. Do people ever
come here?” asked the child, glancing timidly
around him.
“People? No, indeed,” replied Brent with
a short laugh. “Except my gang of lumbermen,
who will be along next week, I suppose
we may not see a human being before the
spring. We are pretty well `out of humanity's
reach,' as poor Selkirk has it. You won't
be lonesome, will you?”
“Oh! no, sir. I am very glad indeed that people
won't come,” said the boy, raising his
large dark eyes to Brent's face with an expression
of confidence and reliance that went
to his heart.
“I don't think any body would hurt you if
they did come, Willy,” said he kindly. “Not
if I was about, at any rate.”
“I know it, sir, and I should like to keep
where you are all the time if I could.”
“What, stay with me rather than Paul?”
asked Brent laughing, and a little surprised.
“Yes, sir. You are the biggest, and besides,
you are the master here. Richard says you
are the boss, and that the boss can do any
thing he likes in a logging-camp, and every
one has to mind him, or else he can almost
murder them.”
Brent laughed aloud.
“Richard would make a despotism of our
encampment, and a tyrant of me,” said he.
“And so you want to keep where I am, do
you, my boy?”
“Yes, sir,” said Willy, looking once more
about him before he entered the house.
| CHAPTER XV.
IN THE WOODS The shadow of Moloch mountain | |