University of Virginia Library

32. FOREST LIFE.

32. CHAPTER XXXII.

A year and a half had elapsed since the abstraction
of the grapes, and the skin had grown over
Seymour's knuckles, and also the bark over certain
letters which he had carved in very high places on
some of Mr. Hay's forest-trees; and, sympathetically
perhaps, a suitable covering over the wounds
made in his heart by the scornful eyes of the unconscious
Caroline. His figure had changed its
proportions, as if by a wire-drawing process, since
what it had gained in length was evidently subtracted
from its breadth. The potato redness of
his cheeks had subsided into a more presentable
complexion, and his teeth were whiter than ever,
while the yawns which used to exhibit them unseasonably
had given place to a tolerable flow of
conversation, scarcely tinctured by mauvaise honte.

In short, considering that he was endowed with a
good share of common sense, he was really a handsome
young man. Not but some moss was still
discoverable. It takes a good while to rub off
inborn rusticity, especially when there is much
force of character. The soft are more easily
moulded.

Seymour had spent this interval in the most sedulous
application;—such application as few young
men exhibit, except those who have been denied
the opportunity of acquiring knowledge until they
have learned to feel keenly their own deficiencies.

It was by such effort that he had managed to
make one year's time, under the best instruction in
one of our Western cities, do the work of three at
least; and the result was, that on his return home,
his father, a sturdy stickler for republican simplicity,
and one of that numerous class who think republicans
ought to be rough and coarse, thought Seymour
“a leetle too slick” for his liking. Not that
our young friend was the least of a dandy. What
he had seen of that sort during his city campaign
had but served to deepen that contempt for effeminacy
which is the heritage of every true son of the
forest. But his manners were extremely quiet;—
he no longer gave a certain twang to his parts of
speech, without which no language is considered
strictly classical among us; and he had learned to
require conveniences for washing and dressing in
his own room instead of sharing the family basin

and comb in the kitchen. Besides all this he dressed
with a strict neatness which was supposed to indicate
an incipient inclination to “stick up;” and
he evinced decided objections to taking his turn at
milking the twenty cows that came lowing into
his father's barn-yard at sunset. These were bad
signs.

However, when the old man found that in more
important business Seymour was far more competent
than before, and especially when he observed the
clerkly skill and neatness with which he could use
the pen, (an accomplishment but too rare in the
neighborhood,) his respect for his son increased very
rapidly, and he began to think it quite time “to
set him off a farm of his own, and try if he could
put so much larnin' to any real use.”

These eighteen months, so important to Seymour,
his scarce-remembered flame, Caroline Hay, had
spent in New York, perhaps less profitably. She
had gone to the city by invitation of a dear aunt,
her father's sister, a member of the society of
Friends;—childless, and longing for the cheering
companionship of the young. Mr. Hay was scarcely
willing to see his daughter depart for the gay
city, even under such guardianship as that of his
meek and pious sister. He feared that the fascinations
of polished life—the very comforts and conveniences
of the domestic arrangements she would
enjoy—would cause her to look with cold eyes on
her Western home, rude and laborious as that must

ever be by comparison. Still, the pleadings of Mrs.
Tennett, of Mrs. Hay, and, above all, of Caroline
herself, overcame his better judgment, and he gave
his reluctant consent to the visit.

For some time Mrs. Tennett's letters were full
of her niece's improvement, both in point of health
and of the various studies to which she had directed
her attention. She could not say enough
of her unvarying sweetness of temper,—of her
docility,—of her willingness to abide by the plain
and quiet style of her aunt's house and company.

“Caroline,” she would say, “is so lovable,—
so exactly what I could wish for a daughter, that I
could almost be selfish enough, my dear brother,
to ask her of thee for a life-long comfort. With
four sweet girls left, would it be too much?”

But gradually, and by degrees almost imperceptible
to any but a parent's watchful heart, the good
aunt's letters had assumed a different tone. Caroline
had become very healthy and blooming, and
went out a good deal. She had become acquainted
with “a number of world's people,” so wrote her
kind and scrupulous guardian; and her father was
given to know that dress was much more in requisition
than formerly by frequent requests for
money from Caroline herself.

Then Mrs. Tennett felt obliged to mention that
her niece was receiving the attentions of a young
man whose gay exterior and plausible address
seemed to please her more than her aunt could

think safe, since the gentleman, though only an
employé in a public office, yet carried the air and
indulged in the expenses of a man of fortune.
After this followed a silence of unusual length.

Come we now to a cold evening in May, the west
yet red with the last sun-gleam, while the north
and east were heavy with clouds driven on by a
bleak and damp wind. A storm was evidently in
prospect, yet Mr. Hay, well wrapped, mounted
Hourglass for a ride to the post-office, three miles
distant. Many times had he done the same, hoping
for a letter from Caroline, now the theme of many
an anxious thought, and as he went, he resolved,
should he be as unsuccessful now as before, he
would write requesting her immediate return, so
strong a hold had the idea of impending ill taken
of his mind.

But this evening, so soon as he could succeed
in approaching the counter at the post-office, a
counter that served as well for the dispensation
of “bitters” and tobacco as of letters, he received
a letter in the hand-writing of his sister. It was
closely written and carefully crossed, yet there
stood Mr. Hay,—elbowed and shoved,—amid all
the din of spelling out newspapers, higgling about
postage, and anxious but ineffectual efforts to get
letters without paying for them—until he had
read it quite through, by the dim rays of the one
greasy lamp which shed its oil and a modicum of
light from a beam over his head.

This done, he mounted Hourglass again, and
striking off at a brisk trot in the teeth of a sleety
shower, he stinted not nor staid till he drew bridle
at his own door. It is not difficult to guess the
purport of Mrs. Tennett's letter. She was about
to return her fair charge to her father, with some
fears that the invitation so kindly intended had not
been productive of unmixed good.

“Any news from Caroline, father?” said several
voices.

“Yes, a letter from your aunt,” said Mr. Hay;
less cheerily than usual.

“What is the matter, father?—Isn't she well?”

“Oh yes! quite well; she is coming home.”

Much joy was expressed by the young folks,
and Mrs. Hay, though she shared her husband's
anxiety, could think of nothing now but the happiness
of once more embracing the long absent object
of so much care. Seymour, who, though no longer
an inmate, was a frequent guest at Mr. Hay's, and
who now sat by Mrs. Hay's work-table helping
one of the little girls on a “hard” sum she had
brought home from school, began to ask himself
seriously whether he felt pleased or otherwise at
the expected return of a young lady who had
shown him so little favor in his chrysalis state,
and who was now, probably,

Before he had time even to debate the question,

much less to decide it, a carriage drove up to
the door,—there was a slight bustle in the hall, and
the object of the thoughts of all present entered the
room, radiant in beauty, all smiles and tears, and
almost overcome with the joy of seeing once more
the beloved home and its circle of happy faces. She
was followed by a Quaker lady and gentleman
whom she introduced as friends of her aunt, who
had placed her under their care;—Mr. and Mrs.
Thurston Caroline called them; they would have
given themselves out in plainer style.

The warm greetings were said, and Miss Hay's
fashionable courtesy to Mr. Bullitt accomplished,
with scarce a suspicion on her part that the well-looking
young man before her could be the yawning
hero of the snapping-turtle. The Friends (exceedingly
polite and well-bred people, by the by) received
due welcome on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Hay,
and were much urged to remain for the night.

“We must decline your kindness,” said Mr.
Thurston, with but little of the formality supposed
by those, who do not know them, to belong to the
members of his society; “my wife has set her
heart on seeing her sister to-night if it may be. I
think Joseph Ellingham's is but a few miles beyond
this?”

“Ellingham's! Ellingham's!” repeated more
than one voice, as if unconsciously, while each
looked to each as if in perplexity.

Mr. Thurston noticed at once the changed expression
of countenance on all around him.

“You have heard evil of Joseph or his family, I
fear,” said he, hesitatingly, and with some emotion.

“The road is very bad,” said Mr. Hay, “and the
night stormy;—wouldn't it be better to wait till
morning?”

“If it be only the road and the storm,” said Mr.
Thurston,—“our driver is well acquainted with
your roads, and if there is no other difficulty—but
I fear from thy aspect, friend Hay, that there may
be—”

“There is,” said Mr. Hay, kindly, taking Mr.
Thurston's hand, “there is, my good friend. Our
neighbor Mr. Ellingham has met with a great loss
—the greatest—he is a lonely man.”

“My sister!” said or rather sighed Mrs. Thurston,
as she sank back, covering her face with her
hands and weeping abundantly, but in silence,
while her husband's sympathies, though evidently
much excited, were repressed as by a powerful
effort.

“And when was this?” said Mr. Thurston, after
a long pause, during which nothing was heard but
the stifled sobbing of his wife.

“Three weeks since,” was the reply.

“And how? Thou hast heard of course.”

“By a dreadful accident—by fire,” said Mr.
Hay, in a whisper.

“By fire! alas! alas!” said the poor lady, whose
watchful grief had caught the sound; and now no
longer able to exercise the strict control at which
she had aimed, she fell on her knees on the floor,
mingling her heart-wrung sobs with prayers and
incoherent and bitter lamentations.

“Lydia!” said her husband, “my dear Lydia,
recollect thyself;” and as he bent over her, his tears
dropped fast upon her smooth cap; “our Heavenly
Father doeth all things well! we are allowed to
mourn, but we must not murmur.”

And when the mourner accepted his offered assistance,
and meekly suffered herself to be raised from
the floor and placed on the sofa, she wept in silence,
and seemed to suppress forcibly the passionate grief
into which she had at first been surprised. And
she might have observed that of the circle whose
smiling faces had brightened the fireside, none
remained to witness her distress except Mr. and
Mrs. Hay and Caroline, the rest having, with a
delicacy not unknown in the woods, retired silently
to another room.

Few words were required to tell the particulars
of a casualty but too common where the country
is thinly inhabited, and the dwellings built with
little precaution against fire. The result is not
often so fatal, but when a fire occurs during the
night, children may perish by families without a
possibility of rescue.

Some two or three broad stones for the hearth,

and one or two more for the back of the chimney,
are usually the only parts of a log-house not made
of wood; the parts adjacent to the fire and the
chimney itself being all of oak, the latter slightly
covered within with clay. When this chimney
takes fire, as it is very apt to do in spots where the
clay has crumbled off, the loft where the children
usually sleep may be all in flames before the inmates
of the lower room are aware.

In this case nothing was ever known but that
Mr. Ellingham, returning home late in the evening,
after a short absence, found his two little daughters
crying in the wood, and learned from them that
the light which he saw at some distance proceeded
not as he supposed from a brush-heap, but from his
own dwelling. When he reached the spot a blazing
ruin was all that remained. The poor babes
said, mother had brought them out, and then went
back, and did not come any more.

It is not surprising that Mrs. Thurston, learning
that Mr. Ellingham was provided with another
dwelling, still desired to proceed at once. To see
the dear motherless infants would be at least a
melancholy satisfaction. And Seymour, learning
this from Mrs. Hay, offered to be their guide
through the woods,—an offer which was thankfully
accepted, as the road was newly cut and
abounding in stumps and fallen trees.