 | CHAPTER XXIV. Dollars and cents |  |
24. CHAPTER XXIV.
O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.
Cowper.
IT was October—with all the peaceful fairness of its blue
skies, and all the frosty stillness of its nights; and the
dainty colouring of its woodland that might have vied with
the Lorius at Daisy Lea. Nor woodland alone; for while
the lawn and sheltered hill-side were yet green and unfrostbitten,
there was many an acre that shewed brown from the
recent ploughing, and many a field where, despite Mr. Carvill's
prohibition, his Suidœ yet gleaned among the yellow
stubble. The locusts had long forsaken the great maple
before our house, and in their stead a few katy-dids began
to sing as soon after sunrise as they could get warm enough.
Poor things! their slow doubtful “ka-ty-did!” told of cold
weather: my father said it quite made his heart ache;
though as we laughingly reminded him, it was not many
weeks since he would have drowned them all in the Red
Sea if he could. As for the dapper little brown crickets,
they were facing life bravely; as cheery and hopeful in
chirp and gait as if they were nothing daunted by the white
frost—nothing doubtful of spending a most agreeable underground
winter,—they prepared for it daily. The spring
birds had forsaken us, and now came visiters—a flock of
robins to breakfast on our lawn, or a little band of ruby-crowned
wrens to take a night's lodging in our evergreens.
Sometimes too, the sky would be speckled with crows, in
numbers that distanced all arithmetic,—whirling, cawing
and clamouring as in debate when to go south; or perhaps
as to which should go and which stay,—for we were never
without some black representatives in our feathered congress.
sulky looking butcher-bird; and then another set of strangers
that kept me puzzling and wishing for Audubon.
Well it was such weather; and Mr. Howard sat looking
out at the artemisias and alyssum and xeranthemums, that
with the help of mignionette and a late rose or two, kept
up their end of the world's progress; and the lake was but
another sapphire set in a gold ring of autumn woods; and
the wind like nothing in the world but sighs—for the past,
for the future—indefinite sighs that come from a heart too
full, of it doesn't know what; and my father looking out at
all this, drew one breath that was but too definite, and said,
“There seems to be no end of weariness and vexation!”
“Is anything new the matter, papa?” said Kate.
“Why nothing new as to its being weariness and vexation—I
have got a further development of the same.”
“About what, papa?”
“It's not worth while to trouble you all with it,” was the
somewhat gloomy reply.
“Yes it is,” said Kate,—“if you fold up a black sheet of
paper it will look very dark indeed; but open and hold it
before our faces papa, it won't be more than grey at the
most, and who knows what bright specks may appear?”
My father smiled. “Well,” he said, “it would be a
dark sheet indeed that your faces couldn't light up. This is
not anything so very bad, neither, if it didn't come on top
of everything else. But that man Curtis who bought the
farm near Wiamee and has been living on it ever since,
now says that he can't pay for it, nor even rent for the time
he has been in.”
“Is this Mr. McLoon's doing?” said my stepmother.
“No, I think not, for I had talked with Curtis, and he
was quite willing to take my word about the title. But
he's very poor he says—I think every man is—and has lost
something somehow, and really cannot pay. So that place
is still unsold, with a considerable loss of rent.”
“But why don't you make him pay, papa?” said Kate,
for my stepmother sat silently looking at the little fire
which sighed and flickered like our waning fortunes.
“Haven't you the law on your side?”
“Ay! and there it may stay. The law is an excellent
to be played upon poor flesh and blood that has lost its
wall of defence. I have suffered enough myself, to feel for
others. Curtis told me I might send a sheriff to his house,
and make what I could by the means, and that he shouldn't
blame me; but I never would visit troubles upon a man's
family—I never could; nor upon himself in that way. Let
him keep his home if he has nothing else to keep!—hard if
losses and law-officers must invade even there! It makes
no difference how Curtis has behaved—his wife and children
would feel the want of furniture none the less because it
went by his misconduct. I never should sleep another
night in peace, if I thought I had deprived that poor little
dwelling of a single comfort.”
I saw the big tears glistening in my stepmother's eyes,
and her look spoke a pleasure far beyond gold's bestowing,
as she said,
“Surely poverty is not always hardening!”
“I don't know,” said my father, shaking his head—“I
think I'm pretty hard sometimes; but a man must melt a
little among such sunbeams. You were quite right Katie
—the black sheet has faded,—faded so much that I can
even seem to see written on it old Philip Henry's trustful
saying—`there is no must be without a needs be.' Ah
one's eyes get sadly blinded sometimes! But we'll struggle
on a little longer, and maybe win through yet.”
“When will that suit with Mr. McLoon come on?” said
Mrs. Howard.
“I'm sure I don't know,—there it is again; if one could
but have things decided one way or another, there'd be
some comfort in it. But patience, patience!
Why wilt thou now give place to fear?
How canst thou want if he provide?—
Or lose thy way with such a guide?'
with thee.'”
“Come children,” he said after a pause, “brighten up!
Aren't you going out this fine day? take Andy and go pick
up butternuts.”
“What for papa?” said Kate smiling.
“What for? exercise and fresh air. Get them child-fashion
if you can't any other way. Such weather ought
to tempt everybody out.”
“Suppose it should tempt you, papa.”
“It must tempt me in another direction, Gracie. I
must go and see if Squire Brown has any spare hay, and
then to ask Squire Suydam to let me have his oxen for a
day or two. I have a great mind to tell Barrington to
buy me a yoke.”
“Better not,” said Mrs. Howard, “you won't want them
much this winter, and hay is so dear.”
“Dear enough!—if I live to see another season, I'll stay
at home and mind my own haying. I might as well have
had a pitchfork for overseer as that man McKee.”
“I would get rid of him,” said Mrs. Howard.
“Can't, my dear. I couldn't turn him away at this season,
or at least if I did, it would be hard to get another.
O he'll do well enough for the winter—I daresay he means
to do right.”
“You wouldn't dare say it, if you could once see him
work when you are away—or rather not work,” said my
stepmother; “and I'm afraid he'll make Andy as idle as
himself. If I were you I would send him off, and teach
Andy to do what is needful. Get Mr. Suydam to send
some one with the oxen, and I presume Mr. Carvill would
let you have Ezra for a day or two.”
“I presume I sha'n't ask him. If ever I am rich enough
I'll have Ezra for good,—I haven't had a bit of comfort
since he went away; and as to the rest I'll see.”
“But papa,” said Kate, “won't you try to get somebody
else? some new man for the winter? McKee is a mere old
woman.”
Now among Mr. Howard's peculiarities was that of not
taking female testimony with regard to man or man's
doings—a kind of Salic law of evidence. So in reply to
Kate's request he only laughed and said,
“Don't libel your sex, my dear—I should be sorry to
think all old women were like Adam McKee. But as I
told you before, I'll see about it.”
My father went off, and Kate and I assumed bonnets and
baskets, and with Andy for escort began to thread the
Threading it was: the path being sometimes a slight wearing
of the rock moss, sometimes a channel-like passage
between stones and trees; while the eye caught intuitively
those trifling way-marks which the understanding could
scarce perceive.
The trees hung full of their late honours; and now and
then as we walked, a crimson dogwood leaf, or one of
bright yellow from some maple, fluttered reluctantly down:
loth to quit its free waving station for the low ground,
already gay with such trophies. The asters were luxuriant
in bloom and variety: the small white flowers of some,
and the thick purple clusters of others, forming a bright
contrast to the bending golden-rods and erect ladies' tresses.
Wintergreens carpeted the ground in spots, loaded with
their carmine berries; and bunches of other small fruit—
red, white, blue, and purple, hung from cahosh and buckthorn
and creeper. Here and there beneath a tall chestnut
the open burrs showed that fingers or paws had been
busy; while away on the top of some that were exceeding
straight and slim, a profusion of well-filled green pricklers
seemed to mock us with just a peep of their brown
contents. Whatever could climb that slippery unbroken
bark, must be more akin to cats and squirrels than was
even Andy.
“How can you ever find the cows in these thick woods?”
said Kate.
Every morning I sees where they goes, and then I goes
after them,” said Andy displaying his whole set of teeth at
the perfectness of the reply. “But see, Miss Kate, there's
the chestnuts sure! Och whillastrew! how will I get into
it!”
And with an insane desire to ascend one of the tall
chestnuts, Andy pressed every member into the service,
and began to climb—not on all-fours but on all inches.
“Andy! come down!” said Kate. “You will fall and
break your neck.”
“Sure and it's meself wouldn't do that thing,” said
Andy, whose limbs were beginning to assume a downward
movement that could not be checked, and which soon
brought him to the ground with no further damage than
knee.
“Never mind the chestnuts,” said Kate.
“Och, they'll be all on the ground hereafter,” was the
philosophical reply as Andy examined his hands. “Then
for a tree that had no holt to it, that same was mighty
rough!”
“Did you hurt your hands,” said I.
“Troth and I did not, Miss—that is I did, but it's little it
hurts me itself.”
We rambled on, gleaning after the squirrels, and sometimes
wishing that their purveyance had been delayed a
little; but then again we saw such a picture of rural felicity
in a fur coat, that there was nothing for it but to wish him
health and happiness,—or as Andy said “success to you!
and why wouldn't you be afther throwing us down a few!”
Chestnuts were not to be had, but at length we came to
an old butternut whose white and brown branches stretched
their leafless length in the warm glow of a golden hickory.
Aloft there was neither fruit nor foliage; but snugly embedded
in the long grass and fallen leaves the greenish-yellow
nuts lay in great abundance, and were to be had for
the gathering.
“Be sure I can asy get them!” said Andy, as with a
most grasping disposition he threw himself upon the butternuts;
and “be sure” we did; and pretty little green heaps
soon arose in all directions.
Leaving Andy to transfer these to his basket, and to refresh
himself with cracking and eating, Kate and I sat
down upon a lichened rock, and took in our refreshment at
eye and ear. Behind the bit of woodland where we had
been nutting was a long stretch of forest trees, with so
thick a sprinkling of silver pines, that it went by the name
of the pine wood. But it was not an old forest, half a
century being perhaps the most that had rolled on since
some of the trees were hid in acorns and cones, and others
had sprung up from the trunk of some fallen ancestor.
Before us lay a strip of greensward strewed with the yellow
butternut leaves; then came a clump of cedars festooned
with the Virginia creeper in its scarlet dress, and the cat-briar
boasting no ornament but its dark blue berries and
feathery tufts of brake, and lively green beds of moss,
lured the eye on to where the western horn of the lake lay
glimmering and sparkling in the soft light. A black-cap
or two and a belated song-sparrow, joined issue with a
cock whose hearty crow came to us pleasantly from Mr.
Carvill's barnyard, and made the stillness perfect.
“How very lovely it is!” said Kate, with that half sigh
that comes from the hidden recesses of enjoyment.
“But it's getting so hazy—just look,—the air was as
clear as possible when we sat down here, and now it is oh
how blue.”
“We often have hazy weather in October,” replied Kate.
“Yes, it is blue enough, the whole landscape seems melting
away into dream-land. I shouldn't wonder if I got
there myself, with such a lullaby atmosphere around me.”
“There's more than lullaby in the air,” said I laughing—
“it makes me very wide awake. I don't think that's haze
—it looks much more like smoke, and smells like it too,”
and jumping up I carefully scanned the sky. There was
nothing suspicious in the appearance of south, east or
west; but away to the north the blue heaven had as it
were the shadow of a golden cloud,—so slight that we
thought at first it was only a cloud; but something in the
light curl of its outline, together with its steady ascent,
soon told the truth: it was surely smoke, and from our
woods.
Hastily we went back to Andy, guided by the monotonous
tap of his stone hammer; and then walked home at a
rate which would have left gay leaves and busy squirrels
unnoticed, even had our minds been free. But Mr. Howard
was yet away. What was to be done? We stood
debating the point round the two pleasant-looking loaves of
bread that were baking at the kitchen fire, feeling as we had
often done before, that woman is very powerless out of her
own sphere; and that with so large a place and no one to
take care of it, we were in the same predicament as the
Vicar of Wakefield's picture,—“we wondered how we
should get out—we wondered still more how we had ever
got in!”
“Squire to home Mrs. Howard?” said a very unfeminine
kitchen door.
“How do you do Mr. Barrington?” said my stepmother
with a brightening face: “we have not seen you in a great
while.”
“Thank'e ma'am, I'm pretty smart—'tain't my fault
neither,” said Ezra in reply to her last remark, “but a
body can't be every place. Squire too deep to be spoke to,
ma'am?”
“O he's gone to Mr. Suydam's,” said Mrs. Howard.
“That's just what he oughtn't to ha' done,” said Ezra
with a tone of some vexation.
“But he'll be back soon.”
“You tell him then ma'am to start for the pine wood as
tight as he kin put: some o' them 'ere guns has gone off in
the wrong place, and the trees is a burning like seventy-five.”
“Is that where the fire came from!” cried I. “And why
in the world did Mr. Carvill go into our woods?”
“It beats me to guess why he does anything,” said Ezra:
“I s'pose Washington might ha' telled—I kint. But the
woods is afire and no mistake.”
“I'll tell Mr. Howard as soon as he comes,” said my
stepmother.
But Ezra still kept his stand.
“The Squire never kin put 'em out himself,” said he
ruminating; “and Mr. Carvill” (Ezra never dignified him
with the title of Squire,) “is in a takin to know where to
ketch patridges—I reckon he'll just have to find out—it
goes agin my conscience to let them woods burn. But the
Squire had better come too ma'am—there won't be a hand
too much,” he said aloud.
“And will you help him?” said Mrs. Howard with an
immediate feeling of relief. “O I should be so much
obliged to you!”
“There ain't nobody in the world I'd sooner help,” said
Ezra, “and there's some folks I wouldn't nigh so soon.”
And with one expressive little nod of his head towards
that point of the compass where Mr. Carvill was supposed
to be, Mr. Barrington strode off in the direction of the pine
wood; admonishing Andy the while to “walk up smart.”
with him Adam McKee; so we were left to guard ourselves
and the house, and to gather such comfort or discomfort
as we could, from the columns of smoke, their
size and drift, and from the gradual westing of the sun;
which promised no indefinite length of daylight for the
labourers.
We had talked it all over for the twentieth time, and the
loaves of bread stood brown and cooling upon the table,
when Mrs. Howard suddenly exclaimed,
“They'll be all starved! your father hasn't had a thing
to eat since breakfast, and he's been on his feet the whole
time.”
“And the men can't have gone home to dinner,” said I.
“O let's take them something mamma! I should like it so
much.”
To think was to do; and in a little while we had fastened
up the house, and with basket and cup and pail were on our
way to the pine wood. The road led us to a cleared field
at its very edge; the forest now spurning the open ground
with a rude bluff, and now meeting it half way on a slope
of gradually increasing smoothness. Here the fire had
been left to take its course till checked by the greensward:
we could hear it distinctly as it ran along among the dry
leaves and undergrowth with the rustle of a snake, and now
and then with a quick short sound like the same creature
lapping to quench his thirst; while a low, unbroken roar
seemed to bring tidings from all parts of the burning district.
Tidings of the fire—not those that we wanted. In
vain we listened for some other sound—there was not even
a chirp: the birds had all flown off in dismay, and the hot
breath that came in our faces told of no living presence.
We called—no one answered,—there was no labourer there
save the fire. And again that same feeling of powerlessness,
with a touch of fear, crept over us.
“Mamma,” said I, “if you will let me go further down
the road, perhaps I shall find them, and then I will come
back and let you know. You can rest here nicely till then
—you are so very tired.”
Mrs. Howard hesitated, but at last gave her consent upon
condition of Kate's bearing me company, and we set forth
was but a half-made one—little more in effect than a broad
wood path, but the free access of sun and air had kept it
grassy and free from dry leaves. As yet the fire was on
only one side, and even there had not come down the hill
which rose abruptly from the very road-side: all along the
ridge we heard and saw its progress. Now and then a shoot
of flame would leap into the branches of some dead pine,
and little inverted cones of smoke went up from many a
damp or half-burnt pile of leaves. Still no sign of any one,
and uncomfortable recollections of falling trees and suffocating
smoke began to strengthen in my mind. We walked
on, then came in sight of Adam McKee, sitting on a stone
and carelessly waving his cedar-bush extinguisher.
“Where is papa?” said Kate.
“I dinna ken Miss.”
“Where's Mr. Barrington?”
“I dinna ken,” was again the reply. “The maister said
to bide here and tent the fire till he'd come.”
Again we went forward, then turned and walked back.
“Why child you need not look frightened,” said Kate;
“don't you suppose papa knows enough to take care of
himself?”
“But if he should have got tired and faint, as he sometimes
does?”
“Not at all likely—and then there's Ezra. O here comes
mamma to meet us.”
A short consultation determined us to go together as far
down the road as we could, until stopped by the young
growth of trees and bushes which were fast concealing the
unfinished work of so many dollars. Again we reached
Adam, and having given him a drink of milk went on and
on. Long, and wearily and worriedly: still the road
bounded the fire; still were blackened trees, and burning
stumps and smoke, our only companions. We stood and
called.
“Hollo!” came from the distance.
We went on joyfully—then stopped disappointed. “Is
that you, Ezra?” called Kate.
“I used to think so,” replied Mr. Barrington, as he came
down the ridge bush in hand. “I reckon I ain't quite myself
'ud say I was somebody else!”
We were very near saying so too.
“Where is Mr. Howard?” said my stepmother.
“Land knows! ma'am—he's choking himself some place,
I calculate. If Mr. Carvill was one o' them 'ere spouts of
smoke, I'd walk into him in arnest, and put him out in a
way he ain't been used to!” and stimulated by this idea,
Ezra gave furious blows with his cedar bush upon one or
two mimic volcanos, whose underground fires seemed
spreading.
“That had ought to be the Squire,” he said presently,
standing up and pointing down the road to a tall advancing
figure,—“'tain't as handsome as a pictur neither, but it's
dreadful like him.”
“Dreadful like him” it was,—coat off, face and shirt
black with smoke and the handy-work of charred twigs, a
tall cedar in his hand—my father looked like a figure from
the Hartz mountains.
“O papa!” said I, “you are tired out!”
“Pretty near it. There's no stopping this fire,—we may
as well just keep it from crossing the road, and where it
has got hold, let it burn. Don't you think so Mr. Barrington?”
Ezra took a comprehensive view of the hopelessly long
line of smoke, and then gave my father a keen glance of
his eye that made words quite needless.
“But stop and eat something first,” said Mrs. Howard:
“the fire won't get down here for a while yet.”
My father took off his gloves, and first calling to Andy
and McKee, he threw himself down on the grass and opened
the basket.
“I don't know,” said Ezra, looking at his hands as Kate
offered him a sandwich, “my wife says ashes is clean dirt,
but I'd like to hear what she'd call t'other! However it
ain't no use to starve upon manners;” and he too sat down,
remarking that it was “as cheap sitting as standing.”
Certainly if our little group was unceremonious it was
picturesque; for effect varies with circumstances, and
that degree of roughness and irregularity which finds no
place within doors, is often the very point of a scene without.
singled out by the eye (at least by mine) with particular
pleasure; and in this case it may be questioned whether
water and soap would have improved our general appearance.
As Carlyle says of some troop, “singly you might
have likened them to Don Quixote; in mass, they were
highly dignified;” and the smoke had at least the art to
throw an air of congruity over what might otherwise have
been deemed irregular. For Mr. Barrington, without presuming
to take a seat by the Squire, had yet placed himself
within speaking distance, and their meal was agreeably
diversified with scraps of conversation. The two others
sat further off, muttering forth information and remarks
with that low, uninterrupted murmur which an American
would seldom choose to assume, if he could: Andy's face
never losing sight of the lunch basket, and expanding most
benignly whenever that was opened. As for us—if they
had been in Sunday or even the usual week-day trim, of
course we should have stood aloof; but being men in the
last degree of smokiness and fatigue, it was equally of
course that we should complete the picture and hand them
refreshments.
My father looked in the basket and saw it was empty,
save one sandwich; with a smile he gave that to his next
neighbour, took a drink of milk himself instead, and then
prepared for business.
“The best thing we can do,” said he, “is to fire the leaves
at the foot of this hill, and then the flames will run up and
leave the road, and we may leave it too, and go home.”
He caught up a forked stick, and going to a burning
heap, brought thence enough combustion for his purpose,
and they were soon fairly set to work to meet the fire half
way. As my father had said, the flames ran up the hill,
but now and then some slight conductor of dry leaves carried
fire across the road, in spite of their vigilance.
“Andy!” shouted my father, and pointing to a whiff of
smoke on the unburnt side, “there is fire under that hemlock.”
“Show me the bush sir, till I squench it,” said Andy,
running up to him and away from the smoke, and holding
out his hand for my father's extinguisher.
“Get your own bush,” said my father a little impatiently,
“I can't leave this pine tree for a minute—what
have you done with it?”
“It's up beyont,” said Andy looking dubious and innocent.
“'Tain't the only thing I'd like to see there,” said Mr.
Barrington,—“get it, can't ye? and be spry,—the bush 'll
show itself afore long, or I'm mistaken. Now Mr. Howard,
you just sit down sir, if it's all the same to you—I'll
take what knocking up 'll answer for both on us.”
“I believe I have got about enough,” said my father,
“but I don't know that I am more tired than the rest of
you.”
“There's some of us ha'n't got enough, by a long jump,”
said Ezra with a scornful glance at the Scotchman, who
was giving the fire the gentlest of admonitions. “Here
you, Adam McKee! just see to that smoke yonder—Andy
won't be back this side of Christmas—and I'll take a turn
at this cedar. Come, step round, or the fire 'll be to many
for us yet.”
McKee moved off accordingly; but so little satisfactory
was his handling of the smoke, that Mr. Barrington muttered,
“If t'other Adam didn't have more sense, Job couldn't
ha' stood him!”
And now the edge fire of the road gradually burned
itself out, leaving the scorched undergrowth, and heaps of
blackened leaves and twigs, and trees with a charred stripe
or band to tell of its work. On the other side of that
narrow passage all was fresh and green among the pines,
and the few deciduous trees were unspoiled of their lively
hangings. The sidelong glances of the sun fell on them,
giving and taking loveliness, while the burnt region was in
the shade of evening as well as of desolation. The excitement
and wild beauty of the fire were all gone, except in
the few places where it had mastered some pine or hemlock,
and still wreathed them with flame and smoke to their very
branch-ends.
It was all safe at last, and when everything had been
once more inspected, and all possible communication
between the green and the dry cut off, we went home;
words.
“'Tain't any obligation that a chicken couldn't stand
under,” he said. “My gracious! I should ha' got sich a
combing from the old woman if I'd been up to doing anything
else! And besides,” added Mr. Barrington with a
near approach to a smile, “I'm afeerd I was a leetle too
glad to spile somebody's dancing, for want of a fiddler.”
| CHAPTER XXIV. Dollars and cents | |