IX
Fessenden was so preoccupied that even the voices and laughter of girls did not attract his attention for some moments. He was inserting the little nickel troughs called spiles into the trees of the maple orchard, and hanging the red buckets beneath to catch the sap. Dolf was in the sugar shanty nearby, scouring out the vats, for the boiling would begin to-morrow, and maple-sugar was an industry from which the Nettlebecks derived a yearly income of several hundred dollars. This year Fessenden, who was now seventeen and tired of being a farm-hand, had stipulated that he was to work on shares, arguing that if he did two-thirds of the work he was entitled to at least one-third of the profits. Nettlebeck, after some demur, and a long growl over his pipe one evening, capitulated when young Abbott threatened to stake off a claim on government land and in partnership with Jeff Hunter build his own vats. Fessenden was feeling much elated over his rise in life, and his imagination was running riot in a great future to which sugar should be the stepping-stone—he had recently read several articles on self-made men in magazines sent to Morris—when his house of cards came tumbling down, and the future financier rose from the ruins, a blushing, shivering, gibbering swain.
“This here is Grace Morton, Fess,” remarked the dry young voice of Mamie Hunter. “She’s come to staywith me a spell. Lives down to Malone, and ain’t very well.”
During this elaborate introduction Fessenden was gazing into the soft black eyes of the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Her hair was dark, her features fragile and regular; she wore a black frock and a red-peaked cap, red about her throat and tiny waist. Her complexion was sickly, her figure might have been that of the last woman, but Fessenden saw no defects. Neither did he recognize the vacant, the utterly commonplace mind that looked from that sweet unchanging face. She was a little beauty in her way, and wholly unlike the buxom rough-handed girls of his district; there pervaded her that neutral refinement which nature has lavished with such a curious lack of discrimination upon all classes in the United States; and to Fessenden, who had never seen even a village, she seemed city-bred and fashionable. She blushed under his devouring gaze, and then she looked like a wild rose of the woods; one barrier fell. She raised her eyes and glanced vaguely round.
“I’ve never seen the sap running before,” she remarked. “It looks real nice. Is it sweet like what we eat on cakes?”
“You goose!” exclaimed Miss Hunter. “It’s got to be boiled down first—the water boiled out of it; not that it’s so bad now.”
Fessenden had produced a tin cup and filled it with the running liquid. “Will you taste it?” he asked hoarsely.
She took the cup from him, and their fingers met. He trembled. She did not, and tasted the sap daintily. “Well, I like it,” she announced. “It’s real refreshing, and we had a long walk over here. I never walked so far before, and I’m all tuckered out. I guess I’ll sit down.”
Fessenden hastily cleared off a log, and regretted that he had no coat to fling upon it—for obvious reasons he could not remove his sweater. She seated herself with the fastidious little manner which pervaded her personality, and Miss Hunter, remarking that she guessed she was not wanted, strolled off to call on Christina. Fessenden, humbly craving permission, seated himself beside the beauty from Malone, regardless of the sap that was flowing from the punctured trees which still awaited spile and bucket. They talked disconnectedly of various things, no one of which could Fessenden recall later. Her remarks were pleasant and meaningless and she was utterly unmoved. She thought this young mountaineer very handsome and clever-looking, and she had a faint romantic preference for tall men; but her poor little body was not destined for reproduction, and her brain was too small for imagination and sentiment. She was vain and liked attention, but she was without guile, and as she had no immediate reason for marrying, her mother keeping a small store comfortably, she encouraged no one of her admirers, while accepting the homage of several as a matter of course. The wild tempest in Fessenden she could not have understood with the aid of a miracle.
“Is this your first visit to the woods?” asked Fessenden, who wondered dully why he was so stupid; he could think of nothing to say to this divine creature, and words, as a rule, came to him almost as rapidly as thoughts.
“No, I’ve never been before. I always wanted to.” Her voice was sweet and thin; it was only when she raised it that it escaped through her nose. To the infatuated Fessenden it sounded like the rilling of one of the minor streams in the woods.
“I hope you’ll stay a long while.”
“I guess I will. Most of our folks’ve died of consumption, and I’ve had a hackin’ kind of cough. But I guess I’ll get over it here. I’m better already.”
If there was a mutter of protest from the race in Fessenden’s depths he let it pass unheeded. His suddenly conceived and violent passion needed but the lash of pity to transform him from the individual into the type, tumultuous with sentimental desire; the instinct of the strong to protect the beloved weak, keen and quick; pouring into a flimsy shell such an ideal as man knows only in his dreams—the determination to possess this inestimable treasure though the world stood still and the angels warned through brazen trumpets.
“I hope this log isn’t damp,” he said anxiously. “I’d better fetch you something from the house to sit on.”
“Oh, I’d be afraid to stay here alone, and I can’t walk another step. It’s bad enough to walk home. I guess this log’s all right. Have you ever been to Malone?”
“Never!” Fessenden for the first time realized his rude wild state. “I’ve never been twenty miles from here.”
“My! you are a country bumpkin. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings,” she added contritely as Fessenden’s sunburnt face assumed a purple hue. “I’m always saying silly things. You mustn’t mind me. The boys always say I just rattle out anything that comes into my head, and they don’t mind a bit.”
“I’m sure I don’t either,” said Fessenden quickly; he was determined to equal the Maloner in insensibility. “I should think”—he blundered somehow through his first compliment—“that anything you said would be about right.”
“Well, that’s what they tell me,” she replied complacently. “You can get me another cup of that sap if you like.”
Fessenden held the cup to her mouth, which was thin and curved and scarlet. Then, partly because his emotions were rendering him speechless, partly because he was fired with the primitive desire of the male to show off before the female, he swung his axe to his shoulder and muttered that he guessed he’d better cut down a tree; he was wasting too much time.
His axe he always carried with him. It occupied a place in his affections second to his canoe, and preceding a more lukewarm passion for his gun. In a moment Miss Grace Morton, of Malone, was admiring a lithe strong back, the supple free action of two brawny arms as the axe swung as easily as a switch, cutting straight and deep at every stroke. The old tree was quickly brought to earth, and Fessenden leaned on his axe and dared once more to look into the soft eyes beneath the red cap.
“It was time that old tree came down,” he remarked huskily, yet with a fair assumption of indifference. “It hasn’t given any sap for two years, and has been bothering the other trees.”
“Bothering? You talk as if trees was people.”
“Well, they are in a way—that is, they’ve often seemed alive to me.”
“My! You ain’t crazy, are you?”
Fessenden laughed, and a term of endearment ran close to the tip of his tongue. “People who live much alone have odd fancies. But that doesn’t mean they’re crazy.”
“I guess they’re crazy enough if they’re too different. But you look real sensible. I presume you’re all right.”
She looked adorable in her feminine attempt to console him, and Fessenden wheeled about and swung the axe victoriously into a fruitful maple. This time the young lady was bored. She preferred conversation, and thismountain stripling certainly was handsomer than the Malone small-fry who worshipped at her shrine.
She coughed pleasantly but imperiously, and as Fessenden turned quickly the sun blazed full upon her, covering her bright hair with little golden sparks. Her eyes looked babyish and wistful; she had one of those mouths that quiver when pouting. The poor little creature was the more dangerous for being quite natural and sincere. She had neither the brains nor the energy for coquetry, and even to youths of some slight experience she seemed as perfect as she was pretty.
Fessenden threw aside his axe. “Let’s go down to the lake,” he said, with brutal abruptness. “It’s not far, and I’ll row you and Mamie home—here she comes.”
He strode on ahead, and when the girls reached the shore he had one of the boats drawn up to the landing. He rowed with such swift strong strokes that the light craft fairly flew up the lake.
“My, Fess!” remarked Mamie Hunter. “You appear to be in a hurry—must have wasted time after I left you.”
“Of course the trees have to be spiled, but Miss Morton was too tired to walk home. You shouldn’t have brought her such a distance the first time.”
“She didn’t calculate on finding a nurse ready made; she’s real fortunate. Perhaps you’ll come over and carry her next time.”
“I should like to.” He smiled protectingly into the impassive expectant eyes; even in the throes he was the lordly male. Moreover, pride had shaken him into a temporary possession of his senses. “What do you think of our scenery?” he asked Miss Morton.
“It’s real pretty.”
“Pretty? Beautiful, I should call it.”
“Yes, I guess beautiful suits it better.” If he hadapplied to it erudite and foreign adjectives she would have assented as amiably.
“Fess is a crank,” advised Mamie. “You mustn’t mind anything he raves over. You’ll be the next thing, I suppose—he’ll find it quite a relief after so much brain work.” Mamie was an admirer and disciple of Christina, besides possessing a quick and observing eye of her own. She had a long, investigating nose, and no beauty whatever; but with the boys, whom she treated villanously, she was the most popular girl in the district.
“Have you read much?” asked Fessenden of his divinity, ignoring Mamie.
“Oh yes.”
“What? Shakespeare? History? Biographies?”
“I guess so. I always forget people’s names that write things.”
And even then the rosy halo swirled unrent. Fessenden returned home and viciously punctured his trees. At supper he was so incoherent that Christina arose and felt his pulse. He passed the greater part of the night wandering in the woods. During the ensuing fortnight he spent every evening at the Hunters’. Several times the girls came to the sugar shanty where he was boiling, and he rowed them home in the dusk. He lived aloft with the gods and the goddesses, one of whom was Grace, who gradually assumed heroic proportions. It mattered not that every interview betrayed her paucity the more pitifully; it mattered not that he never once struck fire in that meagre breast, that never once did her brain respond to the confidences, the ambitions, the aspirations he poured into her puzzled and ofttimes weary ear. He no longer loved Grace, little as he realized that world-old fact; he loved the ideal it was her limited destiny to quicken in his imagination. The great forces rushing through his veins and thumping in his brain had nothingin common with mere facts and girls. They were having their first innings, and not even grateful to the cause. Nothing in the vagaries of nature is more inexplicable than nine-tenths of what, for want of a better name, is called love. It is a wanton waste of good energy and a lamentable waste of spiritual forces; for the passion moves the victim to all sorts of unselfish impulses, exalted emotion, and even religion, all of which, in the reaction when delusion is over, are finely scorned. That love which is composed of an instinct for companionship, and a complete honesty of emotions, and is lacking in sentimentalism and the tragic note, delays its arrival, to people of ardent imagination, until so late that they must have much richness of nature and large recuperative powers to dismiss into the past the memory of all they have spent. The theory that the blind passion of youth springs from the relentless instinct of reproduction is true only in part, for some of the maddest passions are inspired by anæmic and useless women, and the earth has its full measure of sickly children. If Nature has any well-defined plan she has as yet hesitated to reveal it, and it is probable that she is still amusing herself in her laboratory. Most love would appear to be a momentary fever of the imagination to which the body responds, and the soul, always struggling for utterance, tries its wings, flies a little span, and flatters the brain: when a man is in love then is he most pleased with himself; he never imagined that for heights and depths, within an apparently trite exterior, he was so remarkable a being; and until the wave recedes he bestows a like approval on the chance object who, in the prettiness of her hour, or by some trick of manner, bulged his ego into grander proportions.
Considering the issues, it was fortunate in many respects that Fessenden had the inevitable attack so early in life.
He was subjected to an unmerciful chaffing, to the most sarcastic achievements of Christina’s tongue, and to more than one crude remark by Mr. Nettlebeck; in subject the eternal damnation tendency of young fools to fall in love with a bigger fool than themselves—in this case as useless a bit of furniture as ever littered the earth. Morris for a time ignored the episode, but after Fessenden, who scorned his tormentors, overflowed one day in the presence of the polite philosopher, and announced that he intended to marry as soon as he had a maple-grove of his own—college had no further charms for him—the tutor and Nettlebeck had a long and meaning conference. At its conclusion Morris spent an hour in composition, the farmer hitched up his buckboard and, in spite of the pressing duties of the season, drove thirty miles to the station and gave the letter to an obliging conductor to post in New York. Nettlebeck, not many days later, took a trip which lasted nearly a week.