 | CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CAPTAIN'S PURCHASE. The shadow of Moloch mountain |  |
24. CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CAPTAIN'S PURCHASE.
“All ready, Jacob?”
“Yes, ma'am, all ready,” said Jacob, who
was adjusting an inverted soap-box upon the
middle of his ox-sled, and covering it with a
warmly-lined buffalo-robe.
“There, that's for you to set on,” said he,
when all was ready.
“How charming! I expected to stand up
and hold on to one of the stakes,” laughed
Beatrice, seating herself upon her extempore
throne, and looking more than ever lovely,
with the bright color of the frosty morning
upon cheek and lip, and her eyes sparkling
like sunbeams beneath the brim of the little
round hat whose black plumes contrasted so
charmingly with the gold-brown braids they
shaded.
So dimly perceived Jacob, standing a moment
beside the sled, to draw on his blue and
white mittens, patriotically fringed with red,
Mrs. Barstow's handiwork; but Jacob would
have thought it unpardonably “sarcy” to have
intimated his admiration in the most distant
manner, and so went silently forward to his
oxen's heads, and with a jerk and a creak the
sled started, cutting its way through the
softened snow with a dull, crunching sound,
quite different from the crisp crackle of midwinter
drifts, or the sharp creak made by
passing over a snow-road in the coldest and
heaviest of frozen weather.
“Where are you cutting wood now?” asked
Miss Wansted, when, after piloting his team
into the road, Jacob stepped upon the sled
and stood there, Colossus-like.
“I've been cutting up to the Captain's Purchase.
I a'n't cutting now—I'm hauling. You
wouldn't have wanted to go and see me chop
all day, I reckon,” said Jacob, with a laugh.
“All I've got to do now is to load up and
turn right round. We'll be home to dinner.”
Beatrice did not reply. A sudden cloud
had come over both face and mood, and she
sat looking straight before her with wide,
sad eyes.
The Captain's Purchase, a tract of wood
called to-day, although tradition has no story
to tell of either captain or purchase—not so
much as the name of the one, or the price of the
other—the Captain's Purchase was the place
where the May-flowers bloomed earliest, the
lovely, pink-flushed, odorous Epigœa repens,
which a perverse world will call trailing arbutus,
and thither to gather them had she
gone with Marston Brent in the sweet days
that were no more.
“No more, no more forever,” whispered
Beatrice, her sad eyes searching field and
wood and sky for a contradiction to the
mournful prophecy, and finding none. And
then pressing in at the door thus set ajar
came trooping the memories she had believed
at rest—memories of tender words, of loving
looks, of sweet hopes, and half-formed plans
of life, of all the joy that might have been,
and now should never be. And whose fault
that it should never be? “Not mine,” said the
girl's softened heart. “For did I not humble
myself, and give up all for love of him? Did
I not even ask him to let me come to him in the
home he had chosen?” “And,” asked Pride,
“what did he say? Did he not thrust me back
and refuse the love I offered him, and hold me
to my word in my own despite? And is it for
such a man that I am mourning now, and
feeling that because he is lost, all else is valuless?
O shame, shame! that any woman
should so forget woman's value! If Marston
Brent cared more for his own will than for
me, I care more for those late leaves whirling
to the ground than for Marston Brent.”
And wrenching herself away from even
memory of him, Beatrice turned to her companion,
who, softly whistling and holding to
one of the stakes of the ox-sled, viewed the
rapidly clouding skies with a speculative eye.
“Going to have a change o' weather, sudden,”
said Jacob, perceiving that Miss Wansted
was ready for conversation.
“More snow?” asked she languidly.
“I guess more like we shall have rain.
The air's most too soft for snow. Rain 'll
play the very old mischief with the goin',
there's such a heft o' snow on the ground.”
“Yes. I am afraid it would prevent my
aunt's party to-morrow,” said Beatrice, raising
her eyes to the soft white clouds fast
shutting out the blue of heaven.
“Quiltin'-bee, a'n't it?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“They'll come fast enough, women-folks
will,” said Jacob, laughing a little, and rolling
his eyes quizzically upon the face of his companion.
“You see they don't stir about so
much as men-folks, and toward the end o'
winter they get so sort o' stalled stopping in
the house, that they'd go anywhere's for a
change. I declare I think sometimes, if Old
Nick was to give a tea-party on top of Moloch
Mountain in Febooary, he'd get as many to
set down as he'd find cups and saucers for.
You'll see there won't no one stop away from
the bee to-morrer, rain or shine, except them
as can't get their men-folks to bring 'em, and
can't hitch on to no one else's team.”
“Why, Jacob, it isn't a bit polite to me to
make fun of women-folks,” said Beatrice with
dancing eyes.
“Land o' Goshen, ma'am, I don't mean you
when I talk about women-folks. You're altogether
different,” said Jacob gravely; and,
after considering the point, added:
“You see, ma'am, you've had advantages,
and been round, and haven't had to buckle
to't, and work for a living, same as they
have; and I don't see, for my part, why a
woman, if she has advantages, and improves
'em, a'n't ekil to men—some men.”
“Why, yes—some men, as you say, Jacob;
and, Jacob, I'm very much obliged to you for
your favorable opinion, and will present you
with a vote of thanks in behalf of the rest of
the sisterhood; and the first woman's-rights
convention that I attend I will nominate you
as chairman. And now, Jacob, I want to
know how much of the Captain's Purchase
you have cut over this winter, and what the
wood is worth a cord, and how much you
have hauled to market, and how much home,
and how much remains upon the ground.”
“Well, that's a good many questions to
answer all to once,” said Jacob, scratching his
head beneath his fur-cap, and glancing a little
uneasily at the sparkling and satirical face
upraised toward him.
“However, I'll try: I've cut well on to three
acres of the Purchase, and have corded up
about a hundred cord, may be a hundred and
a quarter, and —”
“How much is that to each acre, Jacob?”
“Each acre? Well, it's about — about—
why say forty cord to each acre.”
“Oh! no, Jacob! A third of a hundred is not
forty, and a third of a hundred and twenty-five
is more than forty.”
“I said about that; forty's nigh enough,”
said Jacob with dignity.
And Beatrice pursued her inquiries, the
smile she banished from her lips dancing in
her eyes:
“Well, how much is it worth a cord,
Jacob?”
“Why, that's accordin' as how the wood
is. First-rate hard wood, white-oak, with a
sprinklin' o' walnut 's worth six dollars, and
pine's worth four, and oak-trash's worth two,
and pine-trash's worth one.”
“And if the hundred or a hundred and a
quarter cords you've cut this winter are about
equally divided into those four kinds, how
much are they all worth?” asked Beatrice
demurely.
But a dim suspicion that he was being unfairly
dealt by entered with the question into
Jacob's brain, and, after a moment's consideration,
he replied dryly:
“That sum's in Green leaf's first part, a'n't
it? We'll drive round by the school-house
coming home, and I'll get my little brother to
do it for you.”
“Thank you, Jacob; but I don't think you
need your little brother to help you through,”
said Beatrice, laughing so heartily at her own
expense that even the sensitive pride of the
New-England yeoman, the most sensitive of
all mankind, was soothed, and Jacob joined
in the laugh.
“Here we be at the Captain's Purchase,”
said he, jumping off the sled, and throwing
down some bars closing the entrance to a
wood road, deep embowered in greenery when
Beatrice last beheld it, and though the scene
was “now changed to winter frore,” it held
too close a likeness to that she so well remembered
to be denied at least its moment of
silent recognition. So, Beatrice, her face suddenly
pale and still, sat silent, fighting down
those memories laid but now, and again arisen,
until Jacob halted his oxen at the edge of a
large clearing covered with corded piles of
wood, while the ground between was strewn
with limbs and leaves, and splinters and
chips, as a battle-field with the smaller relies
of the strife, after the bodies have been removed.
“Guess you'd better get off now, ma'am,”
said he very kindly, for the honest fellow had
noted the sudden change in his companion's
mood, and attributed it to mortification at his
rebuff.
“I'm a going to turn the team in among the
brush, and it'll be awful jolty, and then ag'in
I've got to begin to load right away. Sorry to
disturb you.”
“Oh! not at all, Jacob; don't apologize,”
said Beatrice absently; and, accepting Jacob's
offered hand, she stepped lightly to the ground,
and stood looking about her, while the man
arranged the box and buffalo robe close beside
her.
“There, you can set right down again, and
make believe you're riding,” said he soothingly.
“Or, if you'd rather, you can walk
about a little. There a'n't much to see in the
woods this time o' year, but maybe you can
find some checkerberries where the snow has
melted off, or maybe a squirrel-hole with
some nuts in it. I'll be as quick as I can.”
“Oh! don't trouble about me, Jacob,” replied
Beatrice, rousing herself with an effort; “I
am used to the woods, and know how to amuse
myself, winter or summer. I shall run about
and get warm while you are loading, unless
you want my help.”
“Your help, ma'am! Lord love you, no,”
laughed Jacob, picking up his ox-goad, and
bawling directions to his team, Calvin and
he said he would make those two eminent
personages draw together somehow.
Left to herself, Beatrice strolled along the
road, until, having crossed the clearing, it
struck into the woods at the other side, and
so soon as she was out of sight, perched herself
upon the stump of a monster pine, and
stood like a statue upon its pedestal, admiring
the scene before her, and resolutely banishing
once more all thoughts but those connected
with it. From her position, near the top of a
high hill, she commanded the valley below,
with its little frozen pond, where in summer
bloomed the whitest lilies ever known, and
around whose margin grew the sweet, white
swamp azalia, and its rarer rose-colored sister,
and as she saw the spot, Beatrice remembered
the great bouquets that she had received—
No, that memory was among the forbidden,
and she turned to admire, instead, the smoke-like
tracery of the birch-trees fringing the border
of the swamp below the chestnut wood—
the chestnut wood where she had nutted many
a day in those by-gone years; and Beatrice,
stepping impatiently from her pedestal, hastened
on through the wood, intent only now
upon escape from that army of phantoms
which environed her.
She saw no longer the strange, still beauty
of the winter woods, forgot to note the soft
shades of color upon twig, and trunk, and
clinging withered leaves, the beauty of form,
hidden in summer, and now displayed so
vividly, as the naked tree-tops cut the sky,
and long arcades lengthened through the
forest, impenetrable to the eye in summertime.
The saucy squirrel crossed her path,
or stood chattering upon the branches close
above her head; the rabbit peered from his
burrow, with round, startled eyes; the partridge
rose with startling whir-r-r-r from almost
beneath her feet; the fox, stealing
through the coverts of the wood, peered at
her from beneath sheltering twigs—but Beatrice
heard not, saw not, felt only that the
past was present still, and that the future held
no hope of forgetfulness.
| CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CAPTAIN'S PURCHASE. The shadow of Moloch mountain | |