"Can you make out what the child means?" said Douglas, as his elder daughter entered the study early on Christmas morning to renew the fire and set the apartment in order for the day. As he spoke he held Tita's epistle hopelessly before him, and scanned the zig-zag lines.
"She wants some ribbons for her hair," said Anne, making out the words over his shoulder. "Poor little thing! she is so proud of her hair, and all the other girls have bright ribbons. But I can not make ribbons," she added, regretfully, as though she found herself wanting in a needful accomplishment. "Think of her faith in Santa Klaus, old as she is, and her writing to ask him! But there is ribbon in the house, after all," she added, suddenly, her face brightening. "Miss Lois gave me some last month; I had forgotten it. That will be the very thing for Tita; she has not even seen it."
(But has she not, thou unsuspicious elder sister?)
"Do not rob yourself, child," said the father, wearily casting his eyes over the slip of paper again. "What spelling! The English is bad, but the French worse."
"That is because she has no French teacher, papa; and you know I do not allow her to speak the islandpatois, lest it should corrupt the little she knows."
"But she does speak it; she always talkspatoiswhen she is alone with me."
"Does she?" said Anne, in astonishment. "I had no idea of that. Butyoumight correct her, papa."
"I can never correct her in any way," replied Douglas, gloomily; and then Anne, seeing that he was on the threshold of one of his dark moods, lighted his pipe, stirred the fire into a cheery blaze, and went out to get a cup of coffee for him. For the Irish soldier's wife was already at work in the kitchen, having been to mass in the cold gray dawn, down on her two knees on the hard floor, repentant for all her sins, and refulgently content in the absolution which wiped out the old score (and left place for a new one). After taking in the coffee, Anne ran up to her own room, brought down the ribbon, and placed it in Tita's stocking; she then made up the fire with light-wood, and set about decorating the walls with wreaths of evergreen as the patter of the little boys' feet was heard on the old stairway. The breakfast table was noisy that morning. Tita had inspected her ribbons demurely, and wondered how Santa Klaus knew her favorite colors so well. Anne glanced toward her father,and smiled; but the father's face showed doubt, and did not respond. While they were still at the table the door opened, and a tall figure entered, muffled in furs. "Miss Lois!" cried the boys. "Hurrah! See our presents, Miss Lois." They danced round her while she removed her wrappings, and kept up such a noise that no one could speak. Miss Lois, viewed without her cloak and hood, was a tall, angular woman, past middle age, with sharp features, thin brown hair tinged with gray, and pale blue eyes shielded by spectacles. She kissed Anne first with evident affection, and afterward the children with business-like promptitude; then she shook hands with William Douglas. "I wish you a happy Christmas, doctor," she said.
"Thank you, Lois," said Douglas, holding her hand in his an instant or two longer than usual.
A faint color rose in Miss Lois's cheeks. When she was young she had one of those exquisitely delicate complexions which seem to belong to some parts of New England; even now color would rise unexpectedly in her cheeks, much to her annoyance: she wondered why wrinkles did not keep it down. But New England knows her own. The creamy skins of the South, with their brown shadows under the eyes, the rich colors of the West, even the calm white complexions that are bred and long retained in cities, all fade before this faint healthy bloom on old New England's cheeks, like winter-apples.
Miss Lois inspected the boys' presents with exact attention, and added some gifts of her own, which filled the room with a more jubilant uproar than before. Tita, in the mean while, remained quietly seated at the table, eating her breakfast; she took very small mouthfuls, and never hurried herself. She said she liked to taste things, and that only snapping dogs, like the boys, for instance, gulped their food in a mass.
"I gave her the ribbons; do not say anything," whispered Anne, in Miss Lois's ear, as she saw the spectacled eyes turning toward Tita's corner. Miss Lois frowned, and put back into her pocket a small parcel she was takingout. She had forgiven Dr. Douglas the existence of the boys, but she never could forgive the existence of Tita.
Once Anne had asked about Angélique. "I was but a child when she died, Miss Lois," said she, "so my recollection of her may not be accurate; but I know that I thought her very beautiful. Does Tita look like her?"
"Angélique Lafontaine was beautiful—in her way," replied Miss Lois. "I do not say that I admire that way, mind you."
"And Tita?"
"Tita is hideous."
"Oh, Miss Lois!"
"She is, child. She is dwarfish, black, and sly."
"I do not think she is sly," replied Anne, with heat. "And although she is dark and small, still, sometimes—"
"That, for your beauty of 'sometimes!'" said Miss Lois, snapping her fingers. "Give me a girl who is pretty in the morning as well as by candle-light, one who has a nice, white, well-born, down-East face, and none of your Western-border mongrelosities!"
But this last phrase she uttered under her breath. She was ever mindful of Anne's tender love for her father, and the severity with which she herself, as a contemporary, had judged him was never revealed to the child.
At half past ten the Douglas family were all in their places in the little fort chapel. It was a bright but bitterly cold day, and the members of the small congregation came enveloped in shaggy furs like bears, shedding their skins at the door, where they lay in a pile near the stove, ready for the return homeward. The military trappings of the officers brightened the upper benches, the uniforms of the common soldiers filled the space behind; on the side benches sat the few Protestants of the village, denominational prejudices unknown or forgotten in this far-away spot in the wilderness. The chaplain, the Reverend James Gaston—a man who lived in peace with all the world, with Père Michaux, the Catholic priest, and William Douglas, the deist—gazed round upon his flock with a benignant air, which brightened into affection as Anne's voice took up the song of the angels, singing,amid the ice and snow of a new world, the strain the shepherds heard on the plains of Palestine.
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men," sang Anne, with all her young heart. And Miss Lois, sitting with folded hands, and head held stiffly erect, saw her wreath in the place of honor over the altar, and was touched first with pride and then with a slight feeling of awe. She did not believe that one part of the church was more sacred than another—she could not; but being a High-Church Episcopalian now, she said to herself that she ought to; she even had appalling visions of herself, sometimes, going as far as Rome. But the old spirit of Calvinism was still on the ground, ready for many a wrestling match yet; and stronger than all else were the old associations connected with the square white meeting-house of her youth, which held their place undisturbed down below all these upper currents of a new faith. William Douglas was also a New-Englander, brought up strictly in the creed of his fathers; but as Miss Lois's change of creed was owing to a change of position, as some Northern birds turn their snow-color to a darker hue when taken away from arctic regions, so his was one purely of mind, owing to nothing but the processes of thought within him. He had drifted away from all creeds, save in one article: he believed in a Creator. To this great Creator's praise, and in worship of Him, he now poured forth his harmonies, the purest homage he could offer, "unless," he thought, "Anne is a living homage as she stands here beside me. But no, she is a soul by herself; she has her own life to live, her own worship to offer; I must not call her mine. That she is my daughter is naught to me save a great blessing. I can love her with a human father's love, and thank God for her affection. But that is all."
So he played his sweetest music, and Miss Lois fervently prayed, and made no mistake in the order of her prayers. She liked to have a vocal part in the service. It was a pleasure to herself to hear her own voice lifted up, even as a miserable sinner; for at home in the old white meeting-house all expression had been denied to her, thesmall outlet of the Psalms being of little avail to a person who could not sing. This dumbness stifled her, and she had often said to herself that the men would never have endured it either if they had not had the prayer-meetings as a safety-valve. The three boys were penned in at Miss Lois's side, within reach of her tapping finger. They had decided to attend service on account of the evergreens and Anne's singing, although they, as well as Tita, belonged in reality to the flock of Father Michaux. Anne never interfered with this division of the family; she considered it the one tie which bound the children to the memory of their mother; but Miss Lois shook her head over it, and sighed ominously. The boys were, in fact, three little heathen; but Tita was a devout Roman Catholic, and observed all the feast and fast days of the Church, to the not infrequent disturbance of the young mistress of the household, to whom a feast-day was oftentimes an occasion bristling with difficulty. But to-day, in honor of Christmas, the usual frugal dinner had been made a banquet indeed, by the united efforts of Anne and Miss Lois; and when they took their seats at the table which stood in the sitting-room, all felt that it held an abundance fit even for the old fur-trading days, Miss Lois herself having finally succumbed to that island standard of comparison. After the dinner was over, while they were sitting round the fire sipping coffee—the ambrosia of the Northern gods, who find some difficulty in keeping themselves warm—a tap at the door was heard, and a tall youth entered, a youth who was a vivid personification of early manhood in its brightest form. The warm air was stirred by the little rush of cold that came in with him, and the dreamy and drowsy eyes round the fire awoke as they rested upon him.
"The worldisalive, then, outside, after all," said Miss Lois, briskly straightening herself in her chair, and taking out her knitting. "How do you do, Erastus?"
But her greeting was drowned by the noise of the boys, who had been asleep together on the rug in a tangled knot, like three young bears, but now, broadly awake again, were jumping round the new-comer, displayingtheir gifts and demanding admiration. Disentangling himself from them with a skill which showed a long experience in their modes of twisting, the young man made his way up to Anne, and, with a smile and bow to Dr. Douglas and Miss Lois, sat down by her side.
"You were not at church this morning," said the girl, looking at him rather gravely, but giving him her hand.
"No, I was not; but a merry Christmas all the same, Annet," answered the youth, throwing back his golden head with careless grace. At this moment Tita came forward from her furry corner, where she had been lying with her head on her arm, half asleep, and seated herself in the red light of the fire, gazing into the blaze with soft indifference. Her dark woollen dress was brightened by the ribbons which circled her little waist and knotted themselves at the ends of the long braids of her hair. She had a string of yellow beads round her neck, and on her feet the little slippers which Anne had fashioned for her with so much care. Her brown hands lay crossed on her lap, and her small but bold-featured profile looked more delicate than usual, outlined in relief like a little cameo against the flame. The visitor's eyes rested upon her for a moment, and then turned back to Anne. "There is to be a dance to-night down in one of the old warehouses," he said, "and I want you to go."
"A dance!" cried the boys; "thenweare going too. It is Christmas night, and we know how to dance. See here." And they sprang out into the centre of the room, and began a figure, not without a certain wild grace of its own, keeping time to the shrill whistling of Gabriel, who was the fifer and leader of the band.
Miss Lois put down her knitting, and disapproved, for the old training was still strong in her; then she remembered that these were things of the past, shook her head at herself, sighed, and resumed it again.
"Of course you will go," said the visitor.
"I do not know that Icango, Rast," replied Anne, turning toward her father, as if to see what he thought.
"Yes, go," said Douglas—"go, Annet." He hardly ever used this name, which the children had given totheir elder sister—a name that was not the French "Annette," but, like the rest of the islandpatois, a mispronunciation—"An´net," with the accent on the first syllable. "It is Christmas night," said Douglas, with a faint interest on his faded face; "I should like it to be a pleasant recollection for you, Annet."
The young girl went to him; he kissed her, and then rose to go to his study; but Tita's eyes held him, and he paused.
"Willyougo, Miss Lois?" said Anne.
"Oh no, child," replied the old maid, primly, adjusting her spectacles.
"But you must go, Miss Lois, and dance with me," said Rast, springing up and seizing her hands.
"Fie, Erastus! for shame! Let me go," said Miss Lois, as he tried to draw her to her feet. He still bent over her, but she tapped his cheek with her knitting-needles, and told him to sit down and behave himself.
"I won't, unless you promise to go with us," he said.
"Why should you not go, Lois?" said Douglas, still standing at the door. "The boys want to go, and some one must be with them to keep them in order."
"Why, doctor, imagine me at a dancing party!" said Miss Lois, the peach-like color rising in her thin cheeks again.
"It is different here, Lois; everybody goes."
"Yes; even old Mrs. Kendig," said Tita, softly.
Miss Lois looked sharply at her; old Mrs. Kendig was fat, toothless, and seventy, and the active, spare New England woman felt a sudden wrath at the implied comparison. Griselda was not tried upon the subject of her age, or we might have had a different legend. But Tita looked as idly calm as a summer morning, and Miss Lois turned away, as she had turned a hundred times before, uncertain between intention and simple chance.
"Very well, then, I will go," she said. "How you bother me, Erastus!"
"No, I don't," said the youth, releasing her. "You know you like me, Miss Lois; you know you do."
"Brazen-face!" said Miss Lois, pushing him away. But any one could see that she did like him.
"Of course I may go, father?" said Tita, without stirring, but looking at him steadily.
"I suppose so," he answered, slowly; "that is, if Erastus will take care of you."
"Will you take care of me, Erastus?" asked the soft voice.
"Don't be absurd, Tita; of course he will," said Miss Lois, shortly. "He will see to you as well as to the other children."
And then Douglas turned and left the room.
Erastus, or Rast, as he was called, went back to his place beside Anne. He was a remarkably handsome youth of seventeen, with bright blue eyes, golden hair, a fine spirited outline, laughing mouth, and impetuous, quick movements; tall as a young sapling, his figure was almost too slender for its height, but so light and elastic that one forgave the fault, and forgot it in one look at the mobile face, still boyish in spite of the maturity given by the hard cold life of the North.
"Why have we not heard of this dance before, Erastus?" asked Miss Lois, ever mindful and tenacious of a dignity of position which no one disputed, but which was none the less to her a subject of constant and belligerent watchfulness—one by which she gauged the bow of the shop-keeper, the nod of the passing islander, the salute of the little half-breed boys who had fish to sell, and even the guttural ejaculations of the Chippewas who came to her door offering potatoes and Indian sugar.
"Because it was suggested only a few hours ago, up at the fort. I was dining with Dr. Gaston, and Walters came across from the commandant's cottage and told me. Since then I have been hard at work with them, decorating and lighting the ball-room."
"Which one of the old shells have you taken?" asked Miss Lois. "I hope the roof will not come down on our heads."
"We have Larrabee's; that has the best floor. And as to coming down on our heads, those old warehousesare stronger than you imagine, Miss Lois. Have you never noticed their great beams?"
"I have noticed their toppling fronts and their slanting sides, their bulgings out and their leanings in," replied Miss Lois, nodding her head emphatically.
"The leaning tower of Pisa, you know, is pronounced stronger than other towers that stand erect," said Rast. "That old brown shell of Larrabee's is jointed together so strongly that I venture to predict it will outlive us all. We might be glad of such joints ourselves, Miss Lois."
"If it will only not come down on our heads to-night, that is all I ask of its joints," replied Miss Lois.
Soon after seven o'clock the ball opened: darkness had already lain over the island for nearly three hours, and the evening seemed well advanced.
"Oh, Tita!" said Anne, as the child stepped out of her long cloak and stood revealed, clad in a fantastic short skirt of black cloth barred with scarlet, and a little scarlet bodice, "that dress is too thin, and besides—"
"She looks like a circus-rider," said Miss Lois, in dismay. "Why did you allow it, Anne?"
"I knew nothing of it," replied the elder sister, with a distressed expression on her face, but, as usual, not reproving Tita. "It is the little fancy dress the fort ladies made for her last summer when they had tableaux. It is too late to go back now; she must wear it, I suppose; perhaps in the crowd it will not be noticed."
Tita, unmoved, had walked meanwhile over to the hearth, and sitting down on the floor before the fire, was taking off her snow-boots and donning her new slippers, apparently unconscious of remark.
The scene was a striking one, or would have been such to a stranger. The lower floor of the warehouse had been swept and hastily garnished with evergreens and all the flags the little fort could muster; at each end on a broad hearth a great fire of logs roared up the old chimney, and helped to light the room, a soldier standing guard beside it, and keeping up the flame by throwing on wood every now and then from the heap in the corner near by. Candles were ranged along the walls, and lanternshung from the beams above; all that the island could do in the way of illumination had been done. The result was a picturesque mingling of light and shade as the dancers came into the ruddy gleam of the fires and passed out again, now seen for a moment in the paler ray of a candle farther down the hall, now lost in the shadows which everywhere swept across the great brown room from side to side, like broad-winged ghosts resting in mid-air and looking down upon the revels. The music came from six French fiddlers, four young, gayly dressed fellows, and two grizzled, withered old men, and they played the tunes of the century before, and played them with all their might and main. The little fort, a one-company post, was not entitled to a band; but there were, as usual, one or two German musicians among the enlisted men, and these now stood near the French fiddlers and watched them with slow curiosity, fingering now and then in imagination the great brass instruments which were to them the keys of melody, and dreaming over again the happy days when they, too, played "with the band." But the six French fiddlers cared nothing for the Germans; they held themselves far above the common soldiers of the fort, and despised alike their cropped hair, their ideas, their uniforms, and the strict rules they were obliged to obey. They fiddled away with their eyes cast up to the dark beams above, and their tunes rang out in that shrill, sustained, clinging treble which no instrument save a violin can give. The entire upper circle of society was present, and a sprinkling of the second; for the young officers cared more for dancing than for etiquette, and a pretty young French girl was in their minds of more consequence than even the five Misses Macdougall with all their blood, which must have been, however, of a thin, although, of course, precious, quality, since between the whole five there seemed scarcely enough for one. The five were there, however, in green plaided delaines with broad lace collars and large flat shell-cameo breastpins with scroll-work settings: they presented an imposing appearance to the eyes of all. The father of these ladies, long at rest fromhis ledgers, was in his day a prominent resident official of the Fur Company; his five maiden daughters lived on in the old house, and occupied themselves principally in remembering him. Miss Lois seated herself beside these acknowledged heads of society, and felt that she was in her proper sphere. The dance-music troubled her ears, but she endured it manfully.
"A gay scene," she observed, gazing through her spectacles.
The five Misses Macdougall bowed acquiescence, and said that it was fairly gay; indeed, rather too gay, owing to more of a mingling than they approved; but nothing, ah! nothing, to the magnificent entertainments of times past, which had often been described to them by their respected parent. (They never seemed to have had but one.)
"Of course you will dance, Anne?" said Rast Pronando.
She smiled an assent, and they were soon among the dancers. Tita, left alone, followed them with her eyes as they passed out of the fire-light and were lost in the crowd and the sweeping shadows. Then she made her way, close to the wall, down to the other end of the long room, where the commandant's wife and the fort ladies sat in state, keeping up the dignity of what might be called the military end of the apartment. Here she sought the brightest light she could find, and placed herself in it carelessly, and as though by chance, to watch the dancers.
"Look at that child," said the captain's wife. "What an odd little thing it is!"
"It is Tita Douglas, Anne's little sister," said Mrs. Bryden, the wife of the commandant. "I am surprised they allowed her to come in that tableau dress. Her mother was a French girl, I believe. Dr. Douglas, you know, came to the island originally as surgeon of the post."
"There is Anne now, and dancing with young Pronando, of course," said the wife of one of the lieutenants.
"Dr. Gaston thinks there is no one like Anne Douglas,"observed Mrs. Bryden. "He has educated her almost entirely; taught her Latin and Greek, and all sorts of things. Her father is a musical genius, you know, and in one way the girl knows all about music; in another, nothing at all. Do you think she is pretty, Mrs. Cromer?"
Mrs. Cromer thought "Not at all; too large, and—unformed in every way."
"I sometimes wonder, though, why she is not pretty," said Mrs. Bryden, in a musing tone. "She ought to be."
"I never knew but one girl of that size and style who was pretty, and she had had every possible advantage of culture, society, and foreign travel; wore always the most elaborately plain costumes—works of art, in a Greek sort of way; said little; but sat or stood about in statuesque attitudes that made you feel thin and insignificant, and glad you had all your clothes on," said Mrs. Cromer.
"And was this girl pretty?"
"She was simply superb," said the captain's wife. "But do look at young Pronando. How handsome he is to-night!"
"An Apollo Belvedere," said the wife of the lieutenant, who, having rashly allowed herself to spend a summer at West Point, was now living in the consequences.
But although the military element presided like a court circle at one end of the room, and the five Misses Macdougall and Miss Lois like an element of first families at the other, the intervening space was well filled with a motley assemblage—lithe young girls with sparkling black eyes and French vivacity, matrons with a shade more of brown in their complexions, and withered old grandams who sat on benches along the walls, and looked on with a calm dignity of silence which never came from Saxon blood. Intermingled were youths of rougher aspect but of fine mercurial temperaments, who danced with all their hearts as well as bodies, and kept exact time with the music, throwing in fancy steps from pure love of it as they whirled lightly down the hall with their laughing partners. There were a few young men of Scotch descentpresent also, clerks in the shops, and superintendents of the fisheries which now formed the only business of the once thriving frontier village. These were considered by island parents of the better class desirable suitors for their daughters—far preferable to the young officers who succeeded each other rapidly at the little fort, with attachments delightful, but as transitory as themselves. It was noticeable, however, that the daughters thought otherwise. Near the doorway in the shadow a crowd of Indians had gathered, while almost all of the common soldiers from the fort, on one pretext or another, were in the hall, attending to the fires and lights, or acting as self-appointed police. Even Chaplain Gaston looked in for a moment, and staid an hour; and later in the evening the tall form of Père Michaux appeared, clad in a furred mantle, a black silk cap crowning his silver hair. Tita immediately left her place and went to meet him, bending her head with an air of deep reverence.
"See the child—how theatrical!" said Mrs. Cromer.
"Yes. Still, the Romanists do believe in all kinds of amusements, and even ask a blessing on it," said the lieutenant's wife.
"It was not that—it was the little air and attitude of devoutness that I meant. See the puss now!"
But the puss was triumphant at last. One of the younger officers had noted her solemn little salutation in front of the priest, and now approached to ask her to dance, curious to see what manner of child this small creature could be. In another moment she was whirling down the hall with him, her dark face flushed, her eyes radiant, her dancing exquisitely light and exact. She passed Anne and Rast with a sparkling glance, her small breast throbbing with a swell of satisfied vanity that almost stopped her breath.
"There is Tita," said the elder sister, rather anxiously. "I hope Mr. Walters will not spoil her with his flattery."
"There is no danger; she is not pretty enough," answered Rast.
A flush rose in Anne's face. "You do not like my little sister," she said.
"Oh, I do not dislike her," said Rast. "I could not dislike anything that belonged toyou," he added, in a lower tone.
She smiled as he bent his handsome head toward her to say this. She was fond of Rast; he had been her daily companion through all her life; she scarcely remembered anything in which he was not concerned, from her first baby walk in the woods back of the fort, her first ride in a dog-sledge on the ice, to yesterday's consultation over the chapel evergreens.
The six French fiddlers played on; they knew not fatigue. In imagination they had danced every dance. Tita was taken out on the floor several times by the officers, who were amused by her little airs and her small elfish face: she glowed with triumph. Anne had but few invitations, save from Rast; but as his were continuous, she danced all the evening. At midnight Miss Lois and the Misses Macdougall formally rose, and the fort ladies sent for their wrappings: the ball, as far as the first circle was concerned, was ended. But long afterward the sound of the fiddles was still heard, and it was surmised that the second circle was having its turn, possibly not without a sprinkling of the third also.
"Wassamequin, Nashoonon, and Massaconomet did voluntarily submit themselves to the English, and promise to be willing from time to time to be instructed in the knowledge of God. Being asked not to do any unnecessary work on the Sabbath day, they answered, 'It is easy to them; they have not much to do on any day, and can well take rest on that day as any other.' So then we, causing them to understand the articles, and all the ten commandments of God, and they freely assenting to all, they were solemnly received; and the Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and their dinner; and to them and their men, every one of them, a cup of sack at their departure. So they took leave, and went away."—Massachusetts Colonial Records.
"Wassamequin, Nashoonon, and Massaconomet did voluntarily submit themselves to the English, and promise to be willing from time to time to be instructed in the knowledge of God. Being asked not to do any unnecessary work on the Sabbath day, they answered, 'It is easy to them; they have not much to do on any day, and can well take rest on that day as any other.' So then we, causing them to understand the articles, and all the ten commandments of God, and they freely assenting to all, they were solemnly received; and the Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and their dinner; and to them and their men, every one of them, a cup of sack at their departure. So they took leave, and went away."—Massachusetts Colonial Records.
Dr. Gaston sat in his library, studying a chess problem. His clerical coat was old and spotted, his table was of rough wood, the floor uncarpeted; by right, Poverty should have made herself prominent there. But she did not. Perhaps she liked the old chaplain, who showed a fine, amply built person under her reign, with florid complexion, bright blue eyes, and a curly brown wig—very different in aspect from her usual lean and dismal retinue; perhaps, also, she stopped here herself to warm her cold heart now and then in the hot, bright, crowded little room, which was hers by right, although she did not claim it, enjoying it, however, as a miserly money-lender enjoys the fine house over which he holds a mortgage, rubbing his hands exultingly, as, clad in his thin old coat, he walks by. Certainly the plastering had dropped from the walls here and there; there was no furniture save the tables and shelves made by the island carpenter, and one old leathern arm-chair, the parson's own, a miracle of comfort, age, and hanging leather tatters. But on the shelves and on the tables, on the floor and on the broad window-sills, were books; they reached the ceiling on the shelves; they wainscoted the walls to the height of severalfeet all round the room; small volumes were piled on the narrow mantel as far up as they could go without toppling over, and the tables were loaded also. Aisles were kept open leading to the door, to the windows, and to the hearth, where the ragged arm-chair stood, and where there was a small parade-ground of open floor; but everywhere else the printed thoughts held sway. The old fire-place was large and deep, and here burned night and day, throughout the winter, a fire which made the whole room bright; add to this the sunshine streaming through the broad, low, uncurtained windows, and you have the secret of the cheerfulness in the very face of a barren lack of everything we are accustomed to call comfort.
The Reverend James Gaston was an Englishman by birth. On coming to America he had accepted a chaplaincy in the army, with the intention of resigning it as soon as he had become sufficiently familiar with the ways of the Church in this country to feel at ease in a parish. But years had passed, and he was a chaplain still; for evidently the country parishes were not regulated according to his home ideas, the rector's authority—yes, even the tenure of his rectorship—being dependent upon the chance wills and fancies of his people. Here was no dignity, no time for pleasant classical studies, and no approval of them; on the contrary, a continuous going out to tea, and a fear of offending, it might be, a warden's wife, who very likely had been brought up a Dissenter. The Reverend James Gaston therefore preferred the government for a master.
Dr. Gaston held the office of post chaplain, having been, on application, selected by the council of administration. He had no military rank, but as there happened to be quarters to spare, a cottage was assigned to him, and as he had had the good fortune to be liked and respected by all the officers who had succeeded each other on the little island, his position, unlike that of some of his brethren, was endurable, and even comfortable. He had been a widower for many years; he had never cared to marry again, but had long ago recovered his cheerfulness, and had brought up, intellectually at least, two childrenwhom he loved as if they had been his own—the boy Erastus Pronando, and Anne Douglas. The children returned his affection heartily, and made a great happiness in his lonely life. The girl was his good scholar, the boy his bad one; yet the teacher was severe with Anne, and indulgent to the boy. If any one had asked the reason, perhaps he would have said that girls were docile by nature, whereas boys, having more temptations, required more lenity; or perhaps that girls who, owing to the constitution of society, never advanced far in their studies, should have all the incitement of severity while those studies lasted, whereas boys, who are to go abroad in the world and learn from life, need no such severity. But the real truth lay deeper than this, and the chaplain himself was partly conscious of it; he felt that the foundations must be laid accurately and deeply in a nature like that possessed by this young girl.
"Good-morning, uncle," said Anne, entering and putting down her Latin books (as children they had adopted the fashion of calling their teacher "uncle"). "Was your coffee good this morning?"
"Ah, well, so-so, child, so-so," replied the chaplain, hardly aroused yet from his problem.
"Then I must go out and speak to—to—what is this one's name, uncle?"
"Her name is—here, I have it written down—Mrs. Evelina Crangall," said the chaplain, reading aloud from his note-book, in a slow, sober voice. Evidently it was a matter of moment to him to keep that name well in his mind.
Public opinion required that Dr. Gaston should employ a Protestant servant; no one else was obliged to conform, but the congregation felt that a stand must be made somewhere, and they made it, like a chalk line, at the parson's threshold. Now it was very well known that there were no Protestants belonging to the class of servants on the island who could cook at all, that talent being confined to the French quarter-breeds and to occasional Irish soldiers' wives, none of them Protestants. The poor parson's cooking was passed from one incompetent handto another—lake-sailors' wives, wandering emigrants, moneyless forlorn females left by steamers, belonging to that strange floating population that goes forever travelling up and down the land, without apparent motive save a vague El-Dorado hope whose very conception would be impossible in any other country save this. Mrs. Evelina Crangall was a hollow-chested woman with faded blue eyes, one prominent front tooth, scanty light hair, and for a form a lattice-work of bones. She preserved, however, a somewhat warlike aspect in her limp calico, and maintained that she thoroughly understood the making of coffee, but that she was accustomed to the use of a French coffee-pot. Anne, answering serenely that no French coffee-pot could be obtained in that kitchen, went to work and explained the whole process from the beginning, the woman meanwhile surveying her with suspicion, which gradually gave way before the firm but pleasant manner. With a long list of kindred Evelinas, Anne had had dealings before. Sometimes her teachings effected a change for the better, sometimes they did not, but in any case the Evelinas seldom remained long. They were wanderers by nature, and had sudden desires to visit San Francisco, or to "go down the river to Newerleens." This morning, while making her explanation, Anne made coffee too. It was a delicious cupful which she carried back with her into the library, and the chaplain, far away in the chess country, came down to earth immediately in order to drink it. Then they opened the Latin books, and Anne translated her page of Livy, her page of Cicero, and recited her rules correctly. She liked Latin; its exactness suited her. Mrs. Bryden was wrong when she said that the girl studied Greek. Dr. Gaston had longed to teach her that golden tongue, but here William Douglas had interfered. "Teach her Latin if you like, but not Greek," he said. "It would injure the child—make what is called a blue-stocking of her, I suppose—and it is my duty to stand between her and injury."
"Ah! ah! you want to make a belle of her, do you?" said the cheery chaplain.
"AS SHE BENT OVER THE OLD VOLUME.""AS SHE BENT OVER THE OLD VOLUME."
"I said it was my duty; I did not say it was my wish,"replied the moody father. "If I could have my wish, Anne should never know what a lover is all her life long."
"What! you do not wish to have her marry, then? There are happy marriages. Come, Douglas, don't be morbid."
"I know what men are. And you and I are no better."
"But she may love."
"Ah! there it is; she may. And that is what I meant when I said that it was my duty to keep her from making herself positively unattractive."
"Greek need not do that," said Dr. Gaston, shortly.
"It need not, but it does. Let me ask you one question: did you ever fall in love, or come anywhere near falling in love, with a girl who understood Greek?"
"That is because only the homely ones take to it," replied the chaplain, fencing a little.
But Anne was not taught Greek. After Cicero she took up algebra, then astronomy. After that she read aloud from a ponderous Shakspeare, and the old man corrected her accentuation, and questioned her on the meanings. A number of the grand old plays the girl knew almost entirely by heart; they had been her reading-books from childhood. The down-pouring light of the vivid morning sunshine and the up-coming white glare of the ice below met and shone full upon her face and figure as she bent over the old volume laid open on the table before her, one hand supporting her brow, the other resting on the yellow page. Her hands were firm, white, and beautifully shaped—strong hands, generous hands, faithful hands; not the little, idle, characterless, faithless palms so common in America, small, dainty, delicate, and shapeless, coming from a composite origin. Her thick hair, brown as a mellowed chestnut, with a gleam of dark red where the light touched it, like the red of November oak leaves, was, as usual, in her way, the heavy braids breaking from the coil at the back of her head, one by one, as she read on throughHamlet. At last impatiently she drew out the comb, and they all fell down over her shoulders, and left her in momentary peace.
The lesson was nearly over when Rast Pronando appeared; he was to enter college—a Western college on one of the lower lakes—early in the spring, and that prospect made the chaplain's lessons seem dull to him. "Very likely they will not teach at all as he does; I shall do much better if I go over the text-books by myself," he said, confidentially, to Anne. "I do not want to appear old-fashioned, you know."
"Is it unpleasant to be old-fashioned? I should think the old fashions would be sure to be the good ones," said the girl. "But I do not want you to go so far beyond me, Rast; we have always been even until now. Will you thinkmeold-fashioned too when you come back?"
"Oh no; you will always be Anne. I can predict you exactly at twenty, and even thirty: there is no doubt aboutyou."
"But shall I be old-fashioned?"
"Well, perhaps; but we don't mind it in women. All the goddesses were old-fashioned, especially Diana.Youare Diana."
"Diana, a huntress. She loved Endymion, who was always asleep," said Anne, quoting from her school-girl mythology.
This morning Rast had dropped in to read a little Greek with his old master, and to walk home with Anne. The girl hurried through herHamlet, and then yielded the place to him. It was a three-legged stool, the only companion the arm-chair had, and it was the seat for the reciting scholar; the one who was studying sat in a niche on the window-seat at a little distance. Anne, retreating to this niche, began to rebraid her hair.
"But she, within—within—singing with enchanting tone, enchanting voice, wove with a—with a golden shuttle the sparkling web," read Rast, looking up and dreamily watching the brown strands taking their place in the long braid. Anne saw his look, and hurried her weaving. The girl had thought all her life that her hair was ugly because it was so heavy, and neither black nor gold in hue; and Rast, following her opinion, had thought so too: she had told him it was, many a time. It was characteristicof her nature that while as a child she had admired her companion's spirited, handsome face and curling golden locks, she had never feared lest he might not return her affection because she happened to be ugly; she drew no comparisons. But she had often discussed the subject of beauty with him. "I should like to be beautiful," she said; "like that girl at the fort last summer."
"Pooh! it doesn't make much difference," answered Rast, magnanimously. "I shall always like you."
"That is because you are so generous, dear."
"Perhaps it is," answered the boy.
This was two years before, when they were fourteen and fifteen years old; at sixteen and seventeen they had advanced but little in their ideas of life and of each other. Still, there was a slight change, for Anne now hurried the braiding; it hurt her a little that Rast should gaze so steadily at the rough, ugly hair.
When the Greek was finished they said good-by to the chaplain, and left the cottage together. As they crossed the inner parade-ground, taking the snow path which led toward the entrance grating, and which was kept shovelled out by the soldiers, the snow walls on each side rising to their chins, Rast suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Annet, I have thought of something! I am going to take you down the fort hill on a sled. Now you need not object, because I shall do it in any case, although wearegrown up, and Iamgoing to college. Probably it will be the last time. I shall borrow Bert Bryden's sled. Come along."
All the boy in him was awake; he seized Anne's wrist, and dragged her through first one cross-path, then another, until at last they reached the commandant's door. From the windows their heads had been visible, turning and crossing above the heaped-up snow. "Rast, and Anne Douglas," said Mrs. Bryden, recognizing the girl's fur cap and the youth's golden hair. She tapped on the window, and signed to them to enter without ceremony. "What is it, Rast? Good-morning, Anne; what a color you have, child!"
"Rast has been making me run," said Anne, smiling,and coming toward the hearth, where the fort ladies were sitting together sewing, and rather lugubriously recalling Christmas times in their old Eastern homes.
"Throw off your cloak," said Mrs. Cromer, "else you will take cold when you go out again."
"We shall only stay a moment," answered Anne.
The cloak was of strong dark blue woollen cloth, closely fitted to the figure, with a small cape; it reached from her throat to her ankles, and was met and completed by fur boots, fur gloves, and a little fur cap. The rough plain costume was becoming to the vigorous girl. "It tones her down," thought the lieutenant's wife; "she really looks quite well."
In the mean while Rast had gone across to the dining-room to find Bert Bryden, the commandant's son, and borrow his sled.
"And you're really going to take Miss Douglas down the hill!" said the boy. "Hurrah! I'll look out of the side window and see. What fun! Such a big girl to go sliding!"
Anne was a big girl to go; but Rast was not to be withstood. She would not get on the sled at the door, as he wished, but followed him out through the sally-port, and round to the top of the long steep fort hill, whose snowy slippery road-track was hardly used at all during the winter, save by coasters, and those few in number, for the village boys, French and half-breeds, did not view the snow as an amusement, or toiling up hill as a recreation. The two little boys at the fort, and what Scotch and New England blood there was in the town, held a monopoly of the coasting.
"There they go!" cried Bert, from his perch on the deep window-seat overlooking the frozen Straits and the village below. "Mamma, you must let me take you down now; you are not so big as Miss Douglas."
Mrs. Bryden, a slender little woman, laughed. "Fancy the colonel's horror," she said, "if he should see me sliding down that hill! And yet it looks as if it might be rather stirring," she added, watching the flying sled and its load. The sled, of island manufacture, was large andsledge-like; it carried two comfortably. Anne held on by Rast's shoulders, sitting behind him, while he guided the flying craft. Down they glided, darted, faster and faster, losing all sense of everything after a while save speed. Reaching the village street at last, they flew across it, and out on the icy pier beyond, where Rast by a skillful manœuvre stopped the sled on the very verge. The fort ladies were all at the windows now, watching.
"How dangerous!" said Mrs. Bryden, forgetting her admiration of a moment before with a mother's irrelevant rapidity. "Albert, let me never see or hear of your sliding on that pier; another inch, and they would have gone over, down on the broken ice below!"
"I couldn't do it, mamma, even if I tried," replied Master Albert, regretfully; "I always tumble off the sled at the street, or else run into one of the warehouses. Only Rast Pronando can steer across slanting, and out on that pier."
"I am very glad to hear it," replied Mrs. Bryden; "but your father must also give you his positive commands on the subject. I had no idea that the pier was ever attempted."
"And it is not, mamma, except by Rast," said the boy. "Can't I try it when I am as old as he is?"
"Hear the child!" said Mrs. Cromer, going back to her seat by the fire; "one would suppose he expected to stay here all his life. Do you not know, Bert, that we are only here for a little while—a year or two? Before you are eighteen months older very likely you will find yourself out on the plains. What a life it is!"
The fort ladies all sighed. It was a habit they had. They drew the dreariest pictures of their surroundings and privations in their letters homeward, and really believed them, theoretically. In truth, there were some privations; but would any one of them have exchanged army life for civilian? To the last, thorough army ladies retain their ways; you recognize them even when retired to private and perhaps more prosperous life. Cosmopolitans, they do not sink into the ruts of small-town life; they are never provincial. They take the world easily, having a pleasant,generous taste for its pleasures, and making light of the burdens that fall to their share. All little local rules and ways are nothing to them: neither here nor anywhere are they to remain long. With this habit and manner they keep up a vast amount of general cheeriness—vast indeed, when one considers how small the incomes sometimes are. But if small, they are also sure.
"Rast Pronando is too old for such frolics, I think," said Mrs. Rankin, the lieutenant's wife, beginning another seam in the new dress for her baby.
"He goes to college in the spring; that will quiet him," said Mrs. Bryden.
"What will he do afterward? Is he to live here? At this end of the world—this jumping-off place?"
"I suppose so; he has always lived here. But he belongs, you know, to the old Philadelphia family of the same name, the Peter Pronandos."
"Does he? How strange! How did he come here?"
"He was born here: Dr. Gaston told me his history. It seems that the boy's father was a wild younger son of the second Peter, grandson, of course, of the original Peter, from whom the family derive all their greatness—andmoney. This Peter the third, only his name was not Peter, but John (the eldest sons were the Peters), wandered away from home, and came up here, where his father's name was well known among the directors of the Fur Company. John Pronando, who must have been of very different fibre from the rest of the family, liked the wild life of the border, and even went off on one or two long expeditions to the Red River of the North and the Upper Missouri after furs with the hunters of the Company. His father then offered him a position here which would carry with it authority, but he curtly refused, saying that he had no taste for a desk and pen like Peter. Peter was his brother, who had begun dutifully at an early age his life-long task of taking care of the large accumulation of land which makes the family so rich. Peter was the good boy always. Father Peter was naturally angry with John, and inclined even then to cross his name off the family list of heirs; this, however, was not reallydone until the prodigal crowned his long course of misdeeds by marrying the pretty daughter of a Scotchman, who held one of the smaller clerkships in the Company's warehouses here—only a grade above the hunters themselves. This was the end. Almost anything else might have been forgiven save a marriage of that kind. If John Pronando had selected the daughter of a flat-boat man on the Ohio River, or of a Pennsylvania mountain wagoner, they might have accepted her—at a distance—and made the best of her. But a person from the rank and file of their own Fur Company—it was as though a colonel should marry the daughter of a common soldier in his own regiment: yes, worse, for nothing can equal the Pronando pride. From that day John Pronando was simply forgotten—so they said. His mother was dead, so it may have been true. A small sum was settled upon him, and a will was carefully drawn up forever excluding him and the heirs he might have from any share in the estate. John did not appear to mind this, but lived on merrily enough for some years afterward, until his sweet little wife died; then he seemed to lose his strength suddenly, and soon followed her, leaving this one boy, Erastus, named after the maternal grandfather, with his usual careless disregard of what would be for his advantage. The boy has been brought up by our good chaplain, although he lives with a family down in the village; the doctor has husbanded what money there was carefully, and there is enough to send him through college, and to start him in life in some way. A good education he considered the best investment of all."
"In a fresh-water college?" said Mrs. Cromer, raising her eyebrows.
"Why not, for a fresh-water boy? He will always live in the West."
"He is so handsome," said Mrs. Rankin, "that he might go Eastward, captivate his relatives, and win his way back into the family again."
"He does not know anything about his family," said the colonel's wife.
"Then some one ought to tell him."
"Why? Simply for the money? No: let him lead his own life out here, and make his own way," said Mrs. Bryden, warmly.
"What a radical you are, Jane!"
"No, not a radical; but I have seen two or three of the younger Pronandos, of the fourth generation, I mean, and whenever I think of their dead eyes, and lifeless, weary manner, I feel like doing what I can to keep Rast away from them."
"But the boy must live his life, Jane. These very Pronandos whom you describe will probably be sober and staid at fifty: the Pronandos always are. And Rast, after all, is one of them."
"But not like them.Hewould go to ruin, he has so much more imagination than they have."
"And less stability?"
"Well, no; less epicureanism, perhaps. It is the solid good things of life that bring the Pronandos back, after they have indulged in youthful wildness: they have no taste for husks."
Then the colonel came in, and, soon after, the sewing circle broke up, Mrs. Cromer and Mrs. Rankin returning to their quarters in the other cottages through the walled snow-paths. The little fort was perched on the brow of the cliff, overlooking the village and harbor; the windows of the stone cottages which formed the officers' quarters commanded an uninterrupted view of blue water in summer, and white ice fields in winter, as far as the eye could reach. It could hardly have withstood a bombardment; its walls and block-houses, erected as a defense against the Indians, required constant propping and new foundation-work to keep them within the requirements of safety, not to speak of military dignity. But the soldiers had nothing else to do, and, on the whole, the fort looked well, especially from the water, crowning the green height with buttressed majesty. During eight months of the year the officers played chess and checkers, and the men played fox-and-geese. The remaining four months, which comprised all there was of spring, summer, and autumn, were filled full of out-door work and enjoyment;summer visitors came, and the United States uniform took its conquering place, as usual, among the dancers, at the picnics, and on the fast-sailing fishing-boats which did duty as yachts, skimming over the clear water in whose depths fish could be seen swimming forty feet below. These same fish were caught and eaten—the large lake trout, and the delicate white-fish, aristocrat of the freshwater seas; three-quarters of the population were fishermen, and the whole town drew its food from the deep. The business had broadened, too, as the Prairie States became more thickly settled, namely, the salting and packing for sale of these fresh-water fish. Barrels stood on the piers, and brisk agents, with pencils behind their ears, stirred the slow-moving villagers into activity, as the man with a pole stirs up the bears. Fur-bearing animals had had their day; it was now the turn of the creatures of the deep.
"Let us stop at the church-house a moment and see Miss Lois," said Rast, as, dragging the empty sled behind him, he walked by Anne's side through the village street toward the Agency.
"I am afraid I have not time, Rast."
"Make it, then. Come, Annet, don't be ill-natured. And, besides, you ought to see that I go there, for I have not called upon Miss Lois this year."
"As this year only began last week, you are not so very far behind," said the girl, smiling. "Why can you not go and see Miss Lois alone?"
"I should be welcome, at any rate;sheadores me."
"Does she, indeed!"
"Yes, Miss Douglas, she does. She pretends otherwise, but that is always the way with women. Oh! I know the world."
"You are only one year older than I am."
"In actual time, perhaps; but twenty years older in knowledge."
"What will you be, then, when you come back from college? An old man?"
"By no means; forIshall stay where I am. But in the mean time you will catch up with me."
Handsome Rast had passed through his novitiate, so he thought. His knowledge of the world was derived partly from Lieutenant Walters, who, although fresh from West Point, was still several years older than young Pronando, and patronized him accordingly, and partly from a slender, low-voiced Miss Carew, who was thirty, but appeared twenty, after the manner of slender yellow-white blondes who have never possessed any rose-tints, having always been willowy and amber-colored. Miss Carew sailed, for a summer's amusement through the Great Lakes of the West; and then returned Eastward with the opinion that they were but so many raw, blank, inland oceans, without sensations or local coloring enough to rouse her. The week on the island, which was an epoch in Rast's life, had held for her but languid interest; yet even the languid work of a master-hand has finish and power, and Rast was melancholy and silent for fifteen days after the enchantress had departed. Then he wrote to her one or two wild letters, and received no answer; then he grew bitter. Then Walters came, with his cadet's deep experience in life, and the youth learned from him, and re-appeared on the surface again with a tinge of cynicism which filled Anne with wonder. For he had never told her the story of the summer; it was almost the only event in his life which she had not shared. But it was not that he feared to tell her, they were as frank with each other as two children; it was because he thought she would not understand it.
"I do not like Mr. Walters," she said, one day.
"He was very much liked at the Point, I assure you," said Rast, with significant emphasis. "By the ladies, I mean, who come there in the summer."
"How could they like him, with that important, egotistical air?"
"But it is to conquer him they like," said Tita, looking up from her corner.
"Hear the child!" said Rast, laughing. "Areyougoing to conquer, Tita?"
"Yes," said Tita, stroking the cat which shared the cornerwith her—a soft coated yellow pussy that was generally sleepy and quiet, but which had, nevertheless, at times, extraordinary fits of galloping round in a circle, and tearing the bark from the trees as though she was possessed—an eccentricity of character which the boys attributed to the direct influence of Satan.
Miss Lois lived in the church-house. It was an ugly house; but then, as is often said of a plain woman, "so good!" It did not leak or rattle, or fall down or smoke, or lean or sag, as did most of the other houses in the village, in regard to their shingles, their shutters, their chimneys, their side walls, and their roof-trees. It stood straightly and squarely on its stone foundation, and every board, nail and latch was in its proper position. Years before, missionaries had been sent from New England to work among the Indians of this neighborhood, who had obtained their ideas of Christianity, up to that time, solely from the Roman Catholic priests, who had succeeded each other in an unbroken line from that adventurous Jesuit, the first explorer of these inland seas, Father Marquette. The Presbyterians came, established their mission, built a meeting-house, a school-house, and a house for their pastor, the buildings being as solid as their belief. Money was collected for this enterprise from all over New England, that old-time, devout, self-sacrificing community whose sternness and faith were equal; tall spare men came westward to teach the Indians, earnest women with bright steadfast eyes and lath-like forms were their aiders, wives, and companions. Among these came Miss Lois—then young Lois Hinsdale—carried Westward by an aunt whose missionary zeal was burning splendidly up an empty chimney which might have been filled with family loves and cares, but was not: shall we say better filled? The missionaries worked faithfully; but, as the Indians soon moved further westward, the results of their efforts can not be statistically estimated now, or the accounts balanced.
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian," is a remark that crystallizes the floating opinion of the border. But a border population has not a missionary spirit.New England, having long ago chased out, shot down, and exterminated all her own Indians, had become peaceful and pious, and did not agree with these Western carriers of shot-guns. Still, when there were no more Indians to come to this island school, it was of necessity closed, no matter which side was right. There were still numbers of Chippewas living on the other islands and on the mainland; but they belonged to the Roman Catholic faith, and were under the control of Père Michaux.
The Protestant church—a square New England meeting-house, with steeple and bell—was kept open during another year; but the congregation grew so small that at last knowledge of the true state of affairs reached the New England purses, and it was decided that the minister in charge should close this mission, and go southward to a more promising field among the prairie settlers of Illinois. All the teachers connected with the Indian school had departed before this—all save Miss Lois and her aunt; for Priscilla Hinsdale, stricken down by her own intense energy, which had consumed her as an inward fire, was now confined to her bed, partially paralyzed. The New England woman had sold her farm, and put almost all her little store of money into island property. "I shall live and die here," she had said; "I have found my life-work." But her work went away from her; her class of promising squaws departed with their pappooses and their braves, and left her scholarless.
"With all the blessed religious privileges they have here, besides other advantages, I can not at all understand it—I can not understand it," she repeated many times, especially to Sandy Forbes, an old Scotchman and fervent singer of psalms.
"Aweel, aweel, Miss Priscilla, I donnot suppose ye can," replied Sandy, with a momentary twinkle in his old eyes.
While still hesitating over her future course, illness struck down the old maid, and her life-work was at last decided for her: it was merely to lie in bed, motionless, winter and summer, with folded hands and whateverresignation she was able to muster. Niece Lois, hitherto a satellite, now assumed the leadership. This would seem a simple enough charge, the household of two women, poor in purse, in a remote village on a Northern frontier. But exotics of any kind require nursing and vigilance, and the Hinsdale household was an exotic. Miss Priscilla required that every collar should be starched in the New England fashion, that every curtain should fall in New England folds, that every dish on the table should be of New England origin, and that every clock should tick with New England accuracy. Lois had known no other training; and remembering as she did also the ways of the old home among the New Hampshire hills with a child's fidelity and affection, she went even beyond her aunt in faithfulness to her ideal; and although the elder woman had long been dead, the niece never varied the habits or altered the rules of the house which was now hers alone.
"A little New England homestead strangely set up here on this far Western island," William Douglas had said.
The church house, as the villagers named it, was built by the Presbyterian missionaries, many of them laboring with their own hands at the good work, seeing, no doubt, files of Indian converts rising up in another world to call them blessed. When it came into the hands of Miss Priscilla, it came, therefore, ready-made as to New England ideas of rooms and closets, and only required a new application of white and green paint to become for her an appropriate and rectangular bower. It stood near the closed meeting-house, whose steeple threw a slow-moving shadow across its garden, like a great sun-dial, all day. Miss Lois had charge of the key of the meeting-house, and often she unlocked its door, went in, and walked up and down the aisle, as if to revive the memories of the past. She remembered the faith and sure hope that used to fill the empty spaces, and shook her head and sighed. Then she upbraided herself for sighing, and sang in her thin husky voice softly a verse or two of one of their old psalms by way of reparation. She sent an annual report of thecondition of the building to the Presbyterian Board of Missions, but in it said nothing of the small repairs for which her own purse paid. Was it a silent way of making amends to the old walls for having deserted their tenets?
"Cod-fish balls for breakfast on Sunday morning, of course," said Miss Lois, "and fried hasty-pudding. On Wednesdays a boiled dinner. Pies on Tuesdays and Saturdays."
The pins stood in straight rows on her pincushion; three times each week every room in the house was swept, and the floors as well as the furniture dusted. Beans were baked in an earthen pot on Saturday night, and sweet-cake was made on Thursday. Rast Pronando often dropped in to tea on Thursday. Winter or summer, through scarcity or plenty, Miss Lois never varied her established routine, thereby setting an example, she said, to the idle and shiftless. And certainly she was a faithful guide-post, continually pointing out an industrious and systematic way, which, however, to the end of time, no French-blooded, French-hearted person will ever travel, unless dragged by force. The villagers preferred their lake trout to Miss Lois's salt cod-fish, their savory stews and soups to her corned beef, their tartines to her corn-meal puddings, and their eau-de-vie to her green tea; they loved their disorder and their comfort; her bar soap and scrubbing-brush were a horror to their eyes. They washed the household clothes two or three times a year: was not that enough? Of what use the endless labor of this sharp-nosed woman with glasses over her eyes at the church-house? Were not, perhaps, the glasses the consequences of such toil? And her figure of a long leanness also?
The element of real heroism, however, came into Miss Lois's life in her persistent effort to employ Indian servants. The old mission had been established for their conversion and education; any descendant of that mission, therefore, should continue to the utmost of her ability the beneficent work. The meeting-house was closed, the school-house abandoned, she could reach the native raceby no other influence save personal; that personal influence, then, she would use. Through long years had she persisted, through long years would she continue to persist. A succession of Chippewa squaws broke, stole, and skirmished their way through her kitchen with various degrees of success, generally in the end departing suddenly at night with whatever booty they could lay their hands on. It is but justice to add, however, that this was not much, a rigid system of keys and excellent locks prevailing in the well-watched household. Miss Lois's conscience would not allow her to employ half-breeds, who were sometimes endurable servants; duty required, she said, that she should have full-blooded natives. And she had them. She always began to teach them the alphabet within three days after their arrival, and the spectacle of a tearful, freshly caught Indian girl, very wretched in her calico dress and white apron, worn out with the ways of the kettles and brasses, dejected over the fish-balls, and appalled by the pudding, standing confronted by a large alphabet on the well-scoured table, and Miss Lois by her side with a pointer, was frequent and even regular in its occurrence, the only change being in the personality of the learners. No one of them had ever gone through the letters; but Miss Lois was not discouraged. Patiently she began over again—she was always beginning over again. And in the mean time she was often obliged not only to do almost all the household work with her own hands, but to do it twice over in order to instruct the new-comer. By the unwritten law of public opinion, Dr. Gaston was obliged to employ only Protestant servants; by the unwritten law of her own conscience, Miss Lois was obliged to employ only Indians. But in truth she did not employ them so much as they employed her.
Miss Lois received her young friends in the sitting-room. There was a parlor with Brussels carpet and hair-cloth sofa across the hall, but its blinds were closed, and its shades drawn down. The parlor of middle-class households in the cold climate of the Northern States generally is a consecrated apartment, with the chill atmosphere and much of the solemnity of a tomb. It maybe called the high altar of the careful housewife; but even here her sense of cleanliness and dustless perfection is such that she keeps it cold. No sacred fire burns, no cheerful ministry is allowed; everything is silent and veiled. The apartment is of no earthly use—nor heavenly, save perhaps for ghosts. But take it away, and the housewife is miserable; leave it, and she lives on contentedly in her sitting-room all the year round, knowing it isthere.
Miss Lois's sitting-room was cheery; it had a rag-carpet, a bright fire, and double-glass panes instead of the heavy woollen curtains which the villagers hung over their windows in the winter—curtains that kept out the cold, but also the light. Miss Lois's curtains were of white dimity with knotted fringe, and her walls were freshly whitewashed. Her framed sampler, and a memorial picture done with pen and ink, representing two weeping-willows overshadowing a tombstone, ornamented the high mantel-piece, and there were also two gayly colored china jars filled with dried rose-leaves. They were only wild-brier roses; the real roses, as she called them, grew but reluctantly in this Northern air. Miss Lois never loved the wild ones as she had loved the old-fashioned cinnamon-scented pink and damask roses of her youth, but she gathered and dried these leaves of the brier from habit. There was also hanging on the wall a looking-glass tilted forward at such an angle that the looker-in could see only his feet, with a steep ascent of carpet going up hill behind him. This looking-glass possessed a brightly hued picture at the top, divided into two compartments, on one side a lovely lady with a large bonnet modestly concealing her face, very bare shoulders, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and a bag hanging on her arm; on the other old Father Time, scythe in hand, as if he was intended as a warning to the lovely lady that minutes were rapid and his stroke sure.
"Why do you keep your glass tilted forward so far that we can not look in it, Miss Lois?" Rast had once asked.
Miss Lois did it from habit. But she answered: "To keep silly girls from looking at themselves while they are pretending to talk to me. They say something, and thenraise their eyes quickly to see how they looked when they said it. I have known them keep a smile or a particular expression half a minute while they studied the effect—ridiculous calves!"
"Calves have lovely eyes sometimes," said Rast.
"Did I say the girls were ugly, Master Pert? But the homely girls look too."
"Perhaps to see how they can improve themselves."
"Perhaps," said the old maid, dryly. "Pity they never learn!"
In the sitting-room was a high chest of drawers, an old clock, a chintz-covered settle, and two deep narrow old rocking-chairs, intended evidently for scant skirts; on an especial table was the family Bible, containing the record of the Hinsdale family from the date of the arrival of theMayflower. Miss Lois's prayer-book was not there; it was up stairs in a bureau drawer. It did not seem to belong to the old-time furniture of the rooms below, nor to the Hinsdale Bible.
The story of Miss Lois's change from the Puritan to the Episcopal ritual might to-day fill a volume if written by one of those brooding, self-searching woman-minds of New England—those unconscious, earnest egotists who bring forth poetry beautiful sometimes to inspiration, but always purely subjective. And if in such a volume the feelings, the arguments, and the change were all represented as sincere, conscientious, and prayerful, they would be represented with entire truth. Nevertheless, so complex are the influences which move our lives, and so deep the under-powers which we ourselves may not always recognize, that it could be safely added by a man of the world as a comment that Lois Hinsdale would never have felt these changes, these doubts, these conflicts, if William Douglas had not been of another creed. For in those days Douglas had a creed—the creed of his young bride.