The next day, Saturday, was my birthday. I celebrated it by a heavy cold, with a bursting headache and chills chasing each other down my back. I went out to the cow-barn with the two men before daylight, as usual, but felt so bad that I had to come back to the house before milking was half over. The moment M'rye saw me, I was ordered on to the sick-list.
The Beech homestead was a good place to be sick in. Both M'rye and Janey had a talent in the way of fixing up tasty little dishes for invalids, and otherwise ministering to their comfort, which year after year went a-begging, simply because all the men-folk kept so well. Therefore, when the rare opportunity did arrive, they made the most of it. I had my feet and legs put into a bucket of hot water, and wrapped round with burdock leaves. Janey prepared for mybreakfast some soft toast—not the insipid and common milk-toast—but each golden-brown slice treated separately on a plate, first moistened with scalding water, then peppered, salted, and buttered, with a little cold milk on top of all. I ate this sumptuous breakfast at my leisure, ensconced in M'rye's big cushioned rocking-chair, with my feet and legs, well tucked up in a blanket-shawl, stretched out on another chair, comfortably near the stove.
It was taken for granted that I had caught my cold out around the bonfire the previous evening—and this conviction threw a sort of patriotic glamour about my illness, at least in my own mind.
The bonfire had been a famous success. Though there was a trifle of rain in the air, the barrels and mossy discarded old fence-rails burned like pitch-pine, and when Hurley and I threw on armfuls of brush, the sparks burst up with a roar into a flaming column which we felt must be visible all over our side of Dearborn County. At all events, there was no doubt about its being seen and understood down at the Corners, for presently our enemies there started an answeringbonfire, which glowed from time to time with such a peculiarly concentrated radiance that Abner said Lee Watkins must have given them some of his kerosene-oil barrels. The thought of such a sacrifice as this on the part of the postmaster rather disturbed Abner's mind, raising, as it did, the hideous suggestion that possibly later returns might have altered the election results. But when Hurley and I dragged forward and tipped over into the blaze the whole side of an old abandoned corn-crib, and heaped dry brush on top of that, till the very sky seemed afire above us, and the stubble-fields down the hill-side were all ruddy in the light, Abner confessed himself reassured. Our enthusiasm was so great that it was nearly ten o'clock before we went to bed, having first put the fire pretty well out, lest a rising wind during the night should scatter sparks and work mischief.
I had all these splendid things to think of next day, along with my headache and the shivering spine, and they tipped the balance toward satisfaction. Shortly after breakfast M'rye made a flaxseed poultice and muffled it flabbily about my neck, and brought mealso some boneset-tea to drink. There was a debate in the air as between castor-oil and senna, fragments of which were borne in to me when the kitchen door was open. The Underwood girl alarmed me by steadily insisting that her sister-in-law always broke up sick-headaches with a mustard-plaster put raw on the back of the neck. Every once in a while one of them would come in and address to me the stereotyped formula: “Feel any better?” and I as invariably answered, “No.” In reality, though, I was lazily comfortable all the time, with Lossing's “Field-Book of the War of 1812” lying open on my lap, to look at when I felt inclined. This book was not nearly so interesting as the one about the Revolution, but a grandfather of mine had marched as a soldier up to Sackett's Harbor in the later war, though he did not seem to have had any fighting to do after he got there, and in my serious moods I always felt it my duty to read about his war instead of the other.
So the day passed along, and dusk began to gather in the living-room. The men were off outdoors somewhere, and the girls were churning in the butter-room. M'rye hadcome in with her mending, and sat on the opposite side of the stove, at intervals casting glances over its flat top to satisfy herself that my poultice had not sagged down from its proper place, and that I was in other respects doing as well as could be expected.
Conversation between us was hardly to be thought of, even if I had not been so drowsily indolent. M'rye was not a talker, and preferred always to sit in silence, listening to others, or, better still, going on at her work with no sounds at all to disturb her thoughts. These long periods of meditation, and the sedate gaze of her black, penetrating eyes, gave me the feeling that she must be much wiser than other women, who could not keep still at all, but gabbled everything the moment it came into their heads.
We had sat thus for a long, long time, until I began to wonder how she could sew in the waning light, when all at once, without lifting her eyes from her work, she spoke to me.
“D' you know where Ni Hagadorn's gone to?” she asked me, in a measured, impressive voice.
“He—he—told me he was a-goin' away,” I made answer, with weak evasiveness.
“But where? Down South?” She looked up, as I hesitated, and flashed that darkling glance of hers at me. “Out with it!” she commanded. “Tell me the truth!”
Thus adjured, I promptly admitted that Ni had said he was going South, and could work his way somehow. “He's gone, you know,” I added, after a pause, “to try and find—that is, to hunt around after—”
“Yes, I know,” said M'rye, sententiously, and another long silence ensued.
She rose after a time, and went out into the kitchen, returning with the lighted lamp. She set this on the table, putting the shade down on one side so that the light should not hurt my eyes, and resumed her mending. The yellow glow thus falling upon her gave to her dark, severe, high-featured face a duskier effect than ever. It occurred to me that Molly Brant, that mysteriously fascinating and bloody Mohawk queen who left such an awful reddened mark upon the history of her native Valley, must have been like our M'rye. My mind began sleepily to clothe the farmer's wife in blankets and chains ofwampum, with eagles' feathers in her raven hair, and then to drift vaguely off over the threshold of Indian dreamland, when suddenly, with a start, I became conscious that some unexpected person had entered the room by the veranda-door behind me.
The rush of cold air from without had awakened me and told me of the entrance. A glance at M'rye's face revealed the rest. She was staring at the newcomer with a dumfounded expression of countenance, her mouth half-open with sheer surprise. Still staring, she rose and tilted the lamp-shade in yet another direction, so that the light was thrown upon the stranger. At this I turned in my chair to look.
It was Esther Hagadorn who had come in!
There was a moment's awkward silence, and then the school-teacher began hurriedly to speak. “I saw you were alone from the veranda—I was so nervous, it never occurred to me to rap—the curtains being up—I—I walked straight in.”
As if in comment upon this statement, M'rye marched across the room, and pulled down both curtains over the veranda windows. With her hand still upon the cordof the second shade, she turned and again dumbly surveyed her visitor.
Esther flushed visibly at this reception, and had to choke down the first words that came to her lips. Then she went on better: “I hope you'll excuse my rudeness. I really did forget to rap. I came upon very special business. Is Ab—Mr. Beech at home?”
“Won't you sit down?” said M'rye, with a glum effort at civility. “I expect him in presently.”
The school-ma'am, displaying some diffidence, seated herself in the nearest chair, and gazed at the wall-paper with intentness. She had never seemed to notice me at all—indeed had spoken of seeing M'rye alone through the window—and I now coughed, and stirred to readjust my poultice, but she did not look my way. M'rye had gone back to her chair by the stove, and taken up her mending again.
“You'd better lay off your things. You won't feel 'em when you go out,” she remarked, after an embarrassing period of silence, investing the formal phrases with chilling intention.
Esther made a fumbling motion at the loopof her big mink cape, but did not unfasten it.
“I—I don't knowwhatyou think of me,” she began, at last, and then nervously halted.
“Mebbe it's just as well you don't,” said M'rye, significantly, darning away with long sweeps of her arm, and bending attentively over her stocking and ball.
“I can understand your feeling hard,” Esther went on, still eying the sprawling blue figures on the wall, and plucking with her fingers at the furry tails on her cape. “And—Iamto blame,some, I can see now—but it didn't seem so,then, to either of us.”
“It ain't no affair of mine,” remarked M'rye, when the pause came, “but if that's your business with Abner, you won't make much by waitin'. Of course it's nothing to me, one way or t'other.”
Not another word was exchanged for a long time. From where I sat I could see the girl's lips tremble, as she looked steadfastly into the wall. I felt certain that M'rye was darning the same place over and over again, so furiously did she keep her needle flying.
All at once she looked up angrily. “Well,” she said, in loud, bitter tones:“Why not out with what you've come to say, 'n' be done with it? You've heard something,Iknow!”
Esther shook her head. “No, Mrs. Beech,” she said, with a piteous quaver in her voice, “I—I haven't heard anything!”
The sound of her own broken utterances seemed to affect her deeply. Her eyes filled with tears, and she hastily got out a handkerchief from her muff, and began drying them. She could not keep from sobbing aloud a little.
M'rye deliberately took another stocking from the heap in the basket, fitted it over the ball, and began a fresh task—all without a glance at the weeping girl.
Thus the two women still sat, when Janey came in to lay the table for supper. She lifted the lamp off to spread the cloth, and put it on again; she brought in plates and knives and spoons, and arranged them in their accustomed places—all the while furtively regarding Miss Hagadorn with an incredulous surprise. When she had quite finished she went over to her mistress and, bending low, whispered so that we could all hear quite distinctly:“Isshegoin' to stay to supper?”
M'rye hesitated, but Esther lifted her head and put down the handkerchief instantly. “Oh, no!” she said, eagerly: “don't think of it! I must hurry home as soon as I've seen Mr. Beech.” Janey went out with an obvious air of relief.
Presently there was a sound of heavy boots out in the kitchen being thrown on to the floor, and then Abner came in. He halted in the doorway, his massive form seeming to completely fill it, and devoted a moment or so to taking in the novel spectacle of a neighbor under his roof. Then he advanced, walking obliquely till he could see distinctly the face of the visitor. It stands to reason that he must have been surprised, but he gave no sign of it.
“How d' do, Miss,” he said, with grave politeness, coming up and offering her his big hand.
Esther rose abruptly, peony-red with pleasurable confusion, and took the hand stretched out to her. “How d' do, Mr. Beech,” she responded with eagerness, “I—I came up to see you—a—about something that's very pressing.”
“It's blowing up quite a gale outside,” thefarmer remarked, evidently to gain time the while he scanned her face in a solemn, thoughtful way, noting, I doubt not, the swollen eyelids and stains of tears, and trying to guess her errand. “Shouldn't wonder if we had a foot o' snow before morning.”
The school-teacher seemed in doubt how best to begin what she had to say, so that Abner had time, after he lifted his inquiring gaze from her, to run a master's eye over the table.
“Have Janey lay another place!” he said, with authoritative brevity.
As M'rye rose to obey, Esther broke forth: “Oh, no, please don't! Thank you so much, Mr. Beech—but really I can't stop—truly, I mustn't think of it.”
The farmer merely nodded a confirmation of his order to M'rye, who hastened out to the kitchen.
“It'll be there for ye, anyway,” he said. “Now set down again, please.”
It was all as if he was the one who had the news to tell, so naturally did he take command of the situation. The girl seated herself, and the farmer drew up his armchair and planted himself before her, keeping hisstockinged feet under the rungs for politeness' sake.
“Now, Miss,” he began, just making it civilly plain that he preferred not to utter her hated paternal name, “I don't know no more'n a babe unborn what's brought you here. I'm sure, from what I know of ye, that you wouldn't come to this house jest for the sake of comin', or to argy things that can't be, an' mustn't be, argied. In one sense, we ain't friends of yours here, and there's a heap o' things that you an' me don't want to talk about, because they'd only lead to bad feelin', an' so we'll leave 'em all severely alone. But in another way, I've always had a liking for you. You're a smart girl, an' a scholar into the bargain, an' there ain't so many o' that sort knockin' around in these parts that a man like myself, who's fond o' books an' learnin', wants to be unfriendly to them there is. So now you can figure out pretty well where the chalk line lays, and we'll walk on it.”
Esther nodded her head. “Yes, I understand,” she remarked, and seemed not to dislike what Abner had said.
“That being so, what is it?” the farmer asked, with his hands on his knees.
“Well, Mr. Beech,” the school-teacher began, noting with a swift side-glance that M'rye had returned, and was herself rearranging the table. “I don't think you can have heard it, but some important news has come in during the day. There seems to be different stories, but the gist of them is that a number of the leading Union generals have been discovered to be traitors, and McClellan has been dismissed from his place at the head of the army, and ordered to return to his home in New Jersey under arrest, and they say others are to be treated in the same way, and Fath—somepeople think it will be a hanging matter, and—”
Abner waved all this aside with a motion of his hand. “It don't amount to a hill o' beans,” he said, placidly. “It's jest spite, because we licked 'em at the elections. Don't you worry your head aboutthat!”
Esther was not reassured. “That isn't all,” she went on, nervously. “They say there's been discovered a big conspiracy, with secret sympathizers all over the North.”
“Pooh!” commented Abner. “We've heer'n tell o' that before!”
“All over the North,” she continued,“with the intention of bringing across infected clothes from Canada, and spreading the small-pox among us, and—”
The farmer laughed outright; a laugh embittered by contempt. “What cock-'n'-bull story'll be hatched next!” he said. “You don't mean to say you—a girl with a head on her shoulders likeyou—give ear to such tomfoolery as that! Come, now, honest Injin, do you mean to tell meyoubelieve all this?”
“It don't so much matter, Mr. Beech,” the girl replied, raising her face to his, and speaking more confidently—“it don't matter at all what I believe. I'm talking of what they believe down at the Corners.”
“The Corners be jiggered!” exclaimed Abner, politely, but with emphasis.
Esther rose from the chair. “Mr. Beech,” she declared, impressively; “they're coming up here to-night! That bonfire of yours made 'em mad. It's no matter how I learned it—it wasn't from father—I don't know that he knows anything about it, but they're cominghere! and—and Heaven only knows what they're going to do when they get here!”
The farmer rose also, his huge figure towering above that of the girl, as he lookeddown at her over his beard. He no longer dissembled his stockinged-feet. After a moment's pause he said: “So that's what you came to tell me, eh?”
The school-ma'am nodded her head. “I couldn't bear not to,” she explained, simply.
“Well, I'm obleeged to ye!” Abner remarked, with gravity. “Whatever comes of it, I'm obleeged to ye!”
He turned at this, and walked slowly out into the kitchen, leaving the door open behind him. “Pull on your boots again!” we heard him say, presumably to Hurley. In a minute or two he returned, with his own boots on, and bearing over his arm the old double-barrelled shot-gun which always hung above the kitchen mantel-piece. In his hands he had two shot-flasks, the little tobacco-bag full of buckshot, and a powder-horn. He laid these on the open shelf of the bookcase, and, after fitting fresh caps on the nipples put the gun beside them.
“I'd be all the more sot on your stayin' to supper,” he remarked, looking again at Esther,“only if thereshouldbe any unpleasantness, why, I'd hate like sin to have you mixed up in it. You see how I'm placed.”
Esther did not hesitate a moment. She walked over to where M'rye stood by the table replenishing the butter-plate. “I'd be very glad indeed to stay, Mr. Beech,” she said, with winning frankness, “if I may.”
“There's the place laid for you,” commented M'rye, impassively. Then, catching her husband's eye, she added the perfunctory assurance “You're entirely welcome.”
Hurley and the girls came in now, and all except me took their seats about the table. Both Abner and the Irishman had their coats on, out of compliment to company. M'rye brought over a thick slice of fresh buttered bread with brown sugar on it, and a cup of weak tea, and put them beside me on a chair. Then the evening meal went forward, the farmer talking in a fragmentary way about the crops and the weather. Save for an occasional response from our visitor, the rest maintained silence. The Underwood girl could not keep her fearful eyes from the gun lying on the bookcase, and protested that she had no appetite, but Hurley ate vigorously, and had a smile on his wrinkled and swarthy little face.
The wind outside whistled shrilly at thewindows, rattling the shutters, and trying its force in explosive blasts which seemed to rock the house on its stone foundations. Once or twice it shook the veranda-door with such violence that the folk at the table instinctively lifted their heads, thinking someone was there.
Then, all at once, above the confusion of the storm's noises, we heard a voice rise, high and clear, crying:
“Smoke the damned Copperhead out!”
“That was Roselle Upman that hollered,” remarked Janey Wilcox, breaking the agitated silence which had fallen upon the supper table. “You can tell it's him because he's had all his front teeth pulled out.”
“I wasn't born in the woods to be skeert by an owl!” replied Abner, with a great show of tranquillity, helping himself to another slice of bread. “Miss, you ain't half makin' out a supper!”
But this bravado could not maintain itself. In another minute there came a loud chorus of angry yells, heightened at its finish by two or three pistol shots. Then Abner pushed back his chair and rose slowly to his feet, and the rest sprang up all around the table.
“Hurley,” said the farmer, speaking as deliberately as he knew how, doubtless with the idea of reassuring the others,“you go out into the kitchen with the women folks, an' bar the woodshed door, an' bring in the axe with you to stan' guard over the kitchen door. I'll look out for this part o' the house myself.”
“I want to stay in here with you, Abner,” said M'rye.
“No, you go out with the others!” commanded the master with firmness, and so they all filed out with no hint whatever of me. The shadow of the lamp-shade had cut me off altogether from their thoughts.
Perhaps it is not surprising that my recollections of what now ensued should lack definiteness and sequence. The truth is, that my terror at my own predicament, sitting there with no covering for my feet and calves but the burdock leaves and that absurd shawl, swamped everything else in my mind. Still, I do remember some of it.
Abner strode across to the bookcase and took up the gun, his big thumb resting determinedly on the hammers. Then he marched to the door, threw it wide open, and planted himself on the threshold, looking out into the darkness.
“What's your business here, whoever you are?” he called out, in deep defiant tones.
“We've come to take you an' Paddy out for a little ride on a rail!” answered the same shrill, mocking voice we had heard at first. Then others took up the hostile chorus. “We've got some pitch a-heatin' round in the back yard!” “You won't catch cold; there's plenty o' feathers!” “Tell the Irishman here's some more ears for him to chaw on!” “Come out an' take your Copperhead medicine!”
There were yet other cries which the howling wind tore up into inarticulate fragments, and then a scattering volley of cheers, again emphasized by pistol-shots. While the crack of these still chilled my blood, a more than usually violent gust swooped round Abner's burly figure, and blew out the lamp.
Terrifying as the first instant of utter darkness was, the second was recognizable as a relief. I at once threw myself out of the chair, and crept along back of the stove to where my stockings and boots had been put to dry. These I hastened, with much trembling awkwardness, to pull on, taking pains to keep the big square old stove between me and that open veranda door.
“Guess we won't take no ride to-night!” I heard Abner roar out, after the shouting had for the moment died away.
“You got to have one!” came back the original voice. “It's needful for your complaint!”
“I've got somethin' here that'll fityourcomplaint!” bellowed the farmer, raising his gun. “Take warnin'—the first cuss that sets foot on this stoop, I'll bore a four-inch hole clean through him. I've got squirrel shot, an' I've got buck-shot, an' there's plenty more behind—so take your choice!”
There were a good many derisive answering yells and hoots, and someone again fired a pistol in the air, but nobody offered to come up on the veranda.
Emboldened by this, I stole across the room now to one of the windows, and lifting a corner of the shade, strove to look out. At first there was nothing whatever to be seen in the utter blackness. Then I made out some faint reddish sort of diffused light in the upper air, which barely sufficed to indicate the presence of some score or more dark figures out in the direction of the pump. Evidently theyhadbuilt a fire around in theback yard, as they said—probably starting it there so that its light might not disclose their identity.
This looked as if they really meant to tar-and-feather Abner and Hurley. The expression was familiar enough to my ears, and, from pictures in stray illustrated weeklies that found their way to the Corners, I had gathered some general notion of the procedure involved. The victim was stripped, I knew, and daubed over with hot melted pitch; then a pillow-case of feathers was emptied over him, and he was forced astride a fence-rail, which the rabble hoisted on their shoulders and ran about with. But my fancy balked at and refused the task of imagining Abner Beech in this humiliating posture. At least it was clear to my mind that a good many fierce and bloody things would happen first.
Apparently this had become clear to the throng outside as well. Whole minutes had gone by, and still no one mounted the veranda to seek close quarters with the farmer—who stood braced with his legs wide apart, bare-headed and erect, the wind blowing his huge beard sidewise over his shoulder.
“Well! ain't none o' you a-comin'?” he called out at last, with impatient sarcasm. “Thought you was so sot on takin' me out an' havin' some fun with me!” After a brief pause, another taunt occurred to him. “Why, even the niggers you're so in love with,” he shouted, “they ain't such dod-rotted cowards as you be!”
A general movement was discernible among the shadowy forms outside. I thought for the instant that it meant a swarming attack upon the veranda. But no! suddenly it had grown much lighter, and the mob was moving away toward the rear of the house. The men were shouting things to one another, but the wind for the moment was at such a turbulent pitch that all their words were drowned. The reddened light waxed brighter still—and now there was nobody to be seen at all from the window.
“Hurry here! Mr. Beech!We're all afire!” cried a frightened voice in the room behind me.
It may be guessed how I turned.
The kitchen door was open, and the figure of a woman stood on the threshold, indefinitely black against a strange yellowish-drab half light which framed it. This woman—one knew from the voice that it was Esther Hagadorn—seemed to be wringing her hands.
“Hurry! Hurry!” she cried again, and I could see now that the little passage was full of gray luminous smoke, which was drifting past her into the living-room. Even as I looked, it had half obscured her form, and was rolling in, in waves.
Abner had heard her, and strode across the room now, gun still in hand, into the thick of the smoke, pushing Esther before him and shutting the kitchen door with a bang as he passed through. I put in a terrified minute or two alone in the dark, amazed and half-benumbed by the confused sounds that at first came from the kitchen, and by the horrible suspense, when a still more sinister silence ensued. Then there rose a loud crackling noise, like the incessant popping of some giant variety of corn. The door burst open again, and M'rye's tall form seemed literally flung into the room by the sweeping volume of dense smoke which poured in. She pulled the door to behind her—then gave a snarl of excited emotionat seeing me by the dusky reddened radiance which began forcing its way from outside through the holland window shades.
“Light the lamp, you gump!” she commanded, breathlessly, and fell with fierce concentration upon the task of dragging furniture out from the bed-room. I helped her in a frantic, bewildered fashion, after I had lighted the lamp, which flared and smoked without its shade, as we toiled. M'rye seemed all at once to have the strength of a dozen men. She swung the ponderous chest of drawers out end on end; she fairly lifted the still bigger bookcase, after I had hustled the books out on to the table; she swept off the bedding, slashed the cords, and jerked the bed-posts and side-pieces out of their connecting sockets with furious energy, till it seemed as if both rooms must have been dismantled in less time than I have taken to tell of it.
The crackling overhead had swollen now to a wrathful roar, rising above the gusty voices of the wind. The noise, the heat, the smoke, and terror of it all made me sick and faint. I grew dizzy, and did foolish things in an aimless way, fumbling about amongthe stuff M'rye was hurling forth. Then all at once her darkling, smoke-wrapped figure shot up to an enormous height, the lamp began to go round, and I felt myself with nothing but space under my feet, plunging downward with awful velocity, surrounded by whirling skies full of stars.
There was a black night-sky overhead when I came to my senses again, with flecks of snow in the cold air on my face. The wind had fallen, everything was as still as death, and someone was carrying me in his arms. I tried to lift my head.
“Aisy now!” came Hurley's admonitory voice, close to my ear. “We'll be there in a minyut.”
“No—I'm all right—let me down,” I urged. He set me on my feet, and I looked amazedly about me.
The red-brown front of our larger hay-barn loomed in a faint unnatural light, at close quarters, upon my first inquiring gaze. The big sliding doors were open, and the slanting wagon-bridge running down from their threshold was piled high with chairs, bedding, crockery, milk-pans, clothing—the jumbledremnants of our household gods. Turning, I looked across the yard upon what was left of the Beech homestead—a glare of cherry light glowing above a fiery hole in the ground.
Strangely enough this glare seemed to perpetuate in its outlines the shape and dimensions of the vanished house. It was as if the house were still there, but transmuted from joists and clap-boards and shingles, into an illuminated and impalpable ghost of itself. There was a weird effect of transparency about it. Through the spectral bulk of red light I could see the naked and gnarled apple-trees in the home-orchard on the further side; and I remembered at once that painful and striking parallel of Scrooge gazing through the re-edified body of Jacob Marley, and beholding the buttons at the back of his coat. It all seemed some monstrous dream.
But no, here the others were. Janey Wilcox and the Underwood girl had come out from the barn, and were carrying in more things. I perceived now that there was a candle burning inside, and presently Esther Hagadorn was to be seen. Hurley had disappeared, and so I went up the sloping platform to join the women—noting with weaksurprise that my knees seemed to have acquired new double joints and behaved as if they were going in the other direction. I stumbled clumsily once I was inside the barn, and sat down with great abruptness on a milking-stool, leaning my head back against the hay-mow, and conscious of entire indifference as to whether school kept or not.
Again it was like some half-waking vision—the feeble light of the candle losing itself upon the broad high walls of new hay; the huge shadows in the rafters overhead; the women-folk silently moving about, fixing up on the barn floor some pitiful imitation, poor souls, of the home that had been swept off the face of the earth, and outside, through the wide sprawling doors, the dying away effulgence of the embers of our roof-tree lingering in the air of the winter night.
Abner Beech came in presently, with the gun in one hand, and a blackened and outlandish-looking object in the other, which turned out to be the big pink sea-shell that used to decorate the parlor mantel. He held it up for M'rye to see, with a grave, tired smile on his face.
“We got it out, after all—just by the skin of our teeth,” he said, and Hurley, behind him, confirmed this by an eloquent grimace.
M'rye's black eyes snapped and sparkled as she lifted the candle and saw what this something was. Then she boldly put up her face and kissed her husband with a resounding smack. Truly it was a night of surprises.
“That's about the only thing I had to call my own when I was married,” she offered in explanation of her fervor, speaking to the company at large. Then she added in a lower tone, to Esther: “Heused to play with it for hours at a stretch—when he was a baby.”
“'Member how he used to hold it up to his ear, eh, mother?” asked Abner, softly.
M'rye nodded her head, and then put her apron up to her eyes for a brief moment. When she lowered it, we saw an unaccustomed smile mellowing her hard-set, swarthy face.
The candle light flashed upon a tear on her cheek that the apron had missed.
“I guess Idoremember!” she said, with a voice full of tenderness.
Then Esther's hand stole into M'rye's and the two women stood together before Abner,erect and with beaming countenances, and he smiled upon them both.
It seemed that we were all much happier in our minds, now that our house had been burned down over our heads.
Some time during the night, I was awakened by the mice frisking through the hay about my ears. My head was aching again, and I could not get back into sleep. Besides, Hurley was snoring mercilessly.
We two had chosen for our resting-place the little mow of half a load or so, which had not been stowed away above, but lay ready for present use over by the side-door opening on the cow-yard. Temporary beds had been spread for the women with fresh straw and blankets at the further end of the central threshing-floor. Abner himself had taken one of the rescued ticks and a quilt over to the other end, and stretched his ponderous length out across the big doors, with the gun by his side. No one had, of course, dreamed of undressing.
Only a few minutes of wakefulness sufficed to throw me into a desperate state of fidgets.The hay seemed full of strange creeping noises. The whole big barn echoed with the boisterous ticking of the old eight-day clock which had been saved from the wreck of the kitchen, and which M'rye had set going again on the seat of the democrat wagon. And then Hurley!
I began to be convinced, now, that I was coming down with a great spell of sickness—perhaps even “the fever.” Yes, it undoubtedly was the fever. I could feel it in my bones, which now started up queer prickly sensations on novel lines, quite as if they were somebody else's bones instead. My breathing, indeed, left a good deal to be desired from the true fever standpoint. It was not nearly so rapid or convulsive as I understood that the breathing of a genuine fever victim ought to be. But that, no doubt, would come soon enough—nay! was it not already coming? I thought, upon examination, that I did breathe more swiftly than before. And oh! that Hurley!
As noiselessly as possible I made my way, half-rolling, half-sliding, off the hay, and got on my feet on the floor. It was pitch dark, but I could feel along the old disused stanchion-rowto the corner; thence it was plain sailing over to where Abner was sleeping by the big front doors. I would not dream of rousing him if he was in truth asleep, but it would be something to be nigh him, in case the fever should take a fatal turn before morning. I would just cuddle down on the floor near to him, and await events.
When I had turned the corner, it surprised me greatly to see ahead of me, over at the front of the barn, the reflection of a light. Creeping along toward it, I came out upon Abner, seated with his back against one of the doors, looking over an account-book by the aid of a lantern perched on a box at his side. He had stood the frame of an old bobsleigh on end close by, and hung a horse-blanket over it, so that the light might not disturb the women-folk at the other end of the barn. The gun lay on the floor beside him.
He looked up at my approach, and regarded me with something, I fancied, of disapprobation in his habitually grave expression.
“Well, old seventy-six, what's the matter with you?” he asked, keeping his voice down to make as little noise as possible.
I answered in the same cautious tones that I was feeling bad. Had any encouragement suggested itself in the farmer's mien, I was prepared to overwhelm him with a relation of my symptoms in detail. But he shook his head instead.
“You'll have to wait till morning, to be sick,” he said—“that is, to get 'tended to. I don't know anything about such things, an' I wouldn't wake M'rye up now for a whole baker's dozen o' you chaps.” Seeing my face fall at this sweeping declaration, he proceeded to modify it in a kindlier tone. “Now you just lay down again, sonny,” he added, “an' you'll be to sleep in no time, an' in the morning M'rye'll fix up something for ye. This ain't no fit time for white folks to be belly-achin' around.”
“I kind o' thought I'd feel better if I was sleeping over here near you,” I ventured now to explain, and his nod was my warrant for tiptoeing across to the heap of disorganized furniture, and getting out some blankets and a comforter, which I arranged in the corner a few yards away and simply rolled myself up in, with my face turned away from the light. It was better over here than withHurley, and though that prompt sleep which the farmer had promised did not come, I at least was drowsily conscious of an improved physical condition.
Perhaps I drifted off more than half-way into dreamland, for it was with a start that all at once I heard someone close by talking with Abner.
“I saw you were up, Mr. Beech”—it was Esther Hagadorn who spoke—“and I don't seem able to sleep, and I thought, if you didn't mind, I'd come over here.”
“Why, of course,” the farmer responded. “Just bring up a chair there, an' sit down. That's it—wrap the shawl around you good. It's a cold night—snowin' hard outside.”
Both had spoken in muffled tones, so as not to disturb the others. This same dominant notion of keeping still deterred me from turning over, in order to be able to see them. I expected to hear them discuss my illness, but they never referred to it. Instead, there was what seemed a long silence. Then the school-ma'am spoke.
“I can't begin to tell you,” she said,“how glad I am that you and your wife aren't a bit cast down by the—the calamity.”
“No,” came back Abner's voice, buoyant even in its half-whisper, “we're all right. I've be'n sort o' figurin' up here, an' they ain't much real harm done. I'm insured pretty well. Of course, this bein' obleeged to camp out in a hay-barn might be improved on, but then it's a change—somethin' out o' the ordinary rut—an' it'll do us good. I'll have the carpenters over from Juno Mills in the forenoon, an' if they push things, we can have a roof over us again before Christmas. It could be done even sooner, p'raps, only they ain't any neighbors to helpmewith a raisin' bee. They're willin' enough to burn my house down, though. However, I don't want them not an atom more'n they want me.”
There was no trace of anger in his voice. He spoke like one contemplating the unalterable conditions of life.
“Did they really, do you believe,setit on fire?” Esther asked, intently.
“No,Ithink it caught from that fool-fire they started around back of the house, to heat their fool tar by. The wind was blowing a regular gale, you know. Janey Wilcox, she will have it that that Roselle Upman set it on purpose. But then, she don't like him—an' I can't blame her much, for that matter. Once Otis Barnum was seein' her home from singin' school, an' when he was goin' back alone this Roselle Upman waylaid him in the dark, an' pitched onto him, an' broke his collar-bone. I always thought it puffed Janey up some, this bein' fought over like that, but it made her mad to have Otis hurt on her account, an' then nothing come of it. I wouldn't a' minded pepperin' Roselle's legs a trifle, if I'd had a barrel loaded, say, with birdshot. He's a nuisance to the whole neighborhood. He kicks up a fight at every dance he goes to, all winter long, an' hangs around the taverns day in an' day out, inducin' young men to drink an' loaf. I thought a fellow like him 'd be sure to go off to the war, an' so good riddance; but no! darned if the coward don't go an' get his front teeth pulled, so 't he can't bite ca'tridges, an' jest stay around, a worse nuisance than ever! I'd half forgive that miserable war if it—only took off the—the right men.”
“Mr. Beech,” said Esther, in low fervent tones, measuring each word as it fell,“you and I, we must forgive that war together!”
I seemed to feel the farmer shaking his head. He said nothing in reply.
“I'm beginning to understand how you've felt about it all along,” the girl went on, after a pause. “I knew the fault must be in my ignorance, that our opinions of plain right and plain wrong should be such poles apart. I got a school-friend of mine, whose father is your way of thinking, to send me all the papers that came to their house, and I've been going through them religiously—whenever I could be quite alone. I don't say I don't think you're wrong, because Ido, but I am getting to understand how you should believe yourself to be right.”
She paused as if expecting a reply, but Abner only said, “Go on,” after some hesitation, and she went on:
“Now take the neighbors all about here—”
“Excuseme!” broke in the farmer. “I guess if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. They're too rich for my blood.”
“Take these very neighbors,” pursued Esther, with gentle determination.“Something must be very wrong indeed when they behave to you the way they do. Why I know that even now, right down in their hearts, they recognize that you're far and away the best man in Agrippa. Why, I remember, Mr. Beech, when I first applied, and you were school-commissioner, and you sat there through the examination—why, you were the only one whose opinion I gave a rap for. When you praised me, why, I was prouder of it than if you had been a Regent of the University. And I tell you, everybody all around here feels at bottom just as I do.”
“They take a dummed curious way o' showin' it, then,” commented Abner, roundly.
“It isn'tthatthey're trying to show at all,” said Esther. “They feel that other things are more important. They're all wrought up over the war. How could it be otherwise when almost everyone of them has got a brother, or a father, or—or—a son—down there in the South, and every day brings news that some of these have been shot dead, and more still wounded and crippled, and others—others, that God only knowswhathas become of them—oh, how can they help feeling that way? I don't know that I ought to say it—” the school-ma'am stopped to catch her breath, and hesitated,then went on—“but yes, you'll understand menow—there was a time here, not so long ago, Mr. Beech, when I downright hated you—you and M'rye both!”
This was important enough to turn over for. I flopped as unostentatiously as possible, and neither of them gave any sign of having noted my presence. The farmer sat with his back against the door, the quilt drawn up to his waist, his head bent in silent meditation. His whole profile was in deep shadow from where I lay—darkly massive and powerful and solemn. Esther was watching him with all her eyes, leaning forward from her chair, the lantern-light full upon her eager face.
“M'rye an' I don't lay ourselves out to be specially bad folks, as folks go,” the farmer said at last, by way of deprecation. “We've got our faults, of course, like the rest, but—”
“No,” interrupted Esther, with a half-tearful smile in her eyes. “You only pretend to have faults. You really haven't got any at all.”
The shadowed outline of Abner's face softened. “Why, thatisa fault itself, ain't it?” he said, as if pleased with his logical acuteness.
The crowing of some foolish rooster, grown tired of waiting for the belated November daylight, fell upon the silence from one of the buildings near by.
Abner Beech rose to his feet with ponderous slowness, pushing the bedclothes aside with his boot, and stood beside Esther's chair. He laid his big hand on her shoulder with a patriarchal gesture.
“Come now,” he said, gently, “you go back to bed, like a good girl, an' get some sleep. It'll be all right.”
The girl rose in turn, bearing her shoulder so that the fatherly hand might still remain upon it. “Truly?” she asked, with a new light upon her pale face.
“Yes—truly!” Abner replied, gravely nodding his head.
Esther took the hand from her shoulder, and shook it in both of hers. “Good-night again, then,” she said, and turned to go.
Suddenly there resounded the loud rapping of a stick on the barn-door, close by my head.
Abner squared his huge shoulders and threw a downright glance at the gun on the floor.
“Well?” he called out.
“Is my da'ater inside there?”
We all knew that thin, high-pitched, querulous voice. It was old “Jee” Hagadorn who was outside.
Abner and Esther stood for a bewildered minute, staring at the rough unpainted boards through which this astonishing inquiry had come. I scrambled to my feet and kicked aside the tick and blankets. Whatever else happened, it did not seem likely that there was any more sleeping to be done. Then the farmer strode forward and dragged one of the doors back on its squeaking rollers. Some snow fell in upon his boots from the ridge that had formed against it over night. Save for a vaguely faint snow-light in the air, it was still dark.
“Yes, she's here,” said Abner, with his hand on the open door.
“Then I'd like to know—” the invisible Jee began excitedly shouting from without.
“Sh-h! You'll wake everybody up!” the farmer interposed.“Come inside, so that I can shut the door.”
“Never under your roof!” came back the shrill hostile voice. “I swore I never would, and I won't!”
“You'd have to take a crowbar to get under my roof,” returned Abner, grimly conscious of a certain humor in the thought. “What's left of it is layin' over yonder in what used to be the cellar. So you needn't stand on ceremony onthataccount. I ain't got no house now, so't your oath ain't bindin'. Besides, the Bible says, ‘Swear not at all!’”
A momentary silence ensued; then Abner rattled the door on its wheels. “Well, what are you goin' to do?” he asked, impatiently. “I can't keep this door open all night, freezin' everybody to death. If you won't come in, you'll have to stay out!” and again there was an ominous creaking of the rollers.
“I want my da'ater!” insisted Jehoiada, vehemently. “I stan' on a father's rights.”
“A father ain't got no more right to make a fool of himself than anybody else,” replied Abner, gravely.“What kind of a time o' night is this, with the snow knee-deep, for a girl to be out o' doors? She's all right here, with my women-folks, an' I'll bring her down with the cutter in the mornin'—that is, if she wants to come. An' now, once for all, will you step inside or not?”
Esther had taken up the lantern and advanced with it now to the open door. “Come in, father,” she said, in tones which seemed to be authoritative. “They've been very kind to me. Come in!”
Then, to my surprise, the lean and scrawny figure of the cooper emerged from the darkness, and stepping high over the snow, entered the barn, Abner sending the door to behind him with a mighty sweep of the arm.
Old Hagadorn came in grumbling under his breath, and stamping the snow from his feet with sullen kicks. He bore a sledge-stake in one of his mittened hands. A worsted comforter was wrapped around his neck and ears and partially over his conical-peaked cap. He rubbed his long thin nose against his mitten and blinked sulkily at the lantern and the girl who held it.
“So here you be!” he said at last, in vexed tones. “An' me traipsin' around in the snow the best part of the night lookin' for you!”
“See here, father,” said Esther, speaking in a measured, deliberate way,“we won't talk about that at all. If a thousand times worse things had happened to both of us than have, it still wouldn't be worth mentioning compared with what has befallen these good people here. They've been attacked by a mob of rowdies and loafers, and had their house and home burned down over their heads and been driven to take refuge here in this barn of a winter's night. They've shared their shelter with me and been kindness itself, and now that you're here, if you can't think of anything pleasant to say to them, if I were you I'd say nothing at all.”
This was plain talk, but it seemed to produce a satisfactory effect upon Jehoiada. He unwound his comforter enough to liberate his straggling sandy beard and took off his mittens. After a moment or two he seated himself in the chair, with a murmured “I'm jest about tuckered out,” in apology for the action. He did, in truth, present a woeful picture of fatigue and physical feebleness, now that we saw him in repose. The bones seemed ready to start through the parchment-like skin on his gaunt cheeks, and his eyes glowed with an unhealthy fire, as he sat, breathing hard and staring at the jumbled heaps of furniture on the floor.
Esther had put the lantern again on the box and drawn forward a chair for Abner, but the farmer declined it with a wave of the hand and continued to stand in the background, looking his ancient enemy over from head to foot with a meditative gaze. Jehoiada grew visibly nervous under this inspection; he fidgeted on his chair and then fell to coughing—a dry, rasping cough which had an evil sound, and which he seemed to make the worse by fumbling aimlessly at the button that held the overcoat collar round his throat.
At last Abner walked slowly over to the shadowed masses of piled-up household things and lifted out one of the drawers that had been taken from the framework of the bureau and brought over with their contents. Apparently it was not the right one, for he dragged aside a good many objects to get at another, and rummaged about in this for several minutes. Then he came out again into the small segment of the lantern's radiance with a pair of long thick woolen stockings of his own in his hand.
“You better pull off them wet boots an' draw these on,” he said, addressing Hagadorn, but looking fixedly just over his head.“It won't do that cough o' yours no good, settin' around with wet feet.”
The cooper looked in a puzzled way at the huge butternut-yarn stockings held out under his nose, but he seemed too much taken aback to speak or to offer to touch them.
“Yes, father!” said Esther, with quite an air of command. “You know what that cough means,” and straightway Hagadorn lifted one of his feet to his knee and started tugging at the boot-heel in a desultory way. He desisted after a few half-hearted attempts, and began coughing again, this time more distressingly than ever.
His daughter sprang forward to help him, but Abner pushed her aside, put the stockings under his arm, and himself undertook the job. He did not bend his back overmuch, but hoisted Jee's foot well in the air and pulled.
“Brace your foot agi'n mine an' hold on to the chair!” he ordered, sharply, for the first effect of his herculean pull had been to nearly drag the cooper to the floor. He went at it more gently now, easing the soaked leather up and down over the instep until theboots were off. He looked furtively at the bottoms of these before he tossed them aside, noting, no doubt, as I did, how old and broken and run down at the heel they were. Jee himself peeled off the drenched stockings, and they too were flimsy old things, darned and mended almost out of their original color.
These facts served only to deepen my existing low opinion of Hagadorn, but they appeared to affect Abner Beech differently. He stood by and watched the cooper dry his feet and then draw on the warm dry hose over his shrunken shanks, with almost a friendly interest. Then he shoved along one of the blankets across the floor to Hagadorn's chair that he might wrap his feet in it.
“That's it,” he said, approvingly. “They ain't no means o' building a fire here right now, but as luck would have it we'd jest set up an old kitchen stove in the little cow-barn to warm up gruel for the ca'aves with, an' the first thing we'll do'll be to rig it up in here to cook breakfast by, an' then we'll dry them boots o' yourn in no time. You go an' pour some oats into 'em now,” Abner added, turning to me.“And you might as well call Hurley. We've got considerable to do, an' daylight's breakin'.”
The Irishman lay on his back where I had left him, still snoring tempestuously. As a rule he was a light sleeper, but this time I had to shake him again and again before he understood that it was morning. I opened the side-door, and sure enough, the day had begun. The clouds had cleared away. The sky was still ashen gray overhead, but the light from the horizon, added to the whiteness of the unaccustomed snow, rendered it quite easy to see one's way about inside. I went to the oat-bin.
Hurley, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, regarded me and my task with curiosity. “An' is it a stovepipe for a measure ye have?” he asked.
“No; it's one of Jee Hagadorn's boots,” I replied. “I'm filling 'em so't they'll swell when they're dry in'.”
He slid down off the hay as if someone had pushed him. “What's that ye say? Haggydorn?OuldHaggydorn?” he demanded.
I nodded assent. “Yes, he's inside with Abner,” I explained.“An' he's got on Abner's stockin's, an' it looks like he's goin' to stay to breakfast.”
Hurley opened his mouth in sheer surprise and gazed at me with hanging jaw and round eyes.
“'Tis the fever that's on ye,” he said, at last. “Ye're wandherin' in yer mind!”
“You just go in and see for yourself,” I replied, and Hurley promptly took me at my word.
He came back presently, turning the corner of the stanchions in a depressed and rambling way, quite at variance with his accustomed swinging gait. He hung his head, too, and shook it over and over again perplexedly.
“Abner 'n' me'll be bringin' in the stove,” he said. “'Tis not fit for you to go out wid that sickness on ye.”
“Well, anyway,” I retorted, “you see I wasn't wanderin' much in my mind.”
Hurley shook his head again. “Well, then,” he began, lapsing into deep brogue and speaking rapidly, “I've meself seen the woman wid the head of a horse on her in the lake forninst the Three Castles, an' me sister's first man, sure he broke down the ditch round-about the Danes' fort on Dunkelly, an'a foine grand young man, small for his strength an' wid a red cap on his head, flew out an' wint up in the sky, an' whin he related it up comes Father Forrest to him in the potaties, an' says he, ‘I do be suprised wid you, O'Driscoll, for to be relatin' such loies.’ ‘I'll take me Bible oat' on 'em!’ says he. ‘'Tis your imagination!’ says the priest. ‘No imagination at all!’ says O'Driscoll; ‘sure, I saw it wid dese two eyes, as plain as I'm lookin' at your riverence, an' a far grander sight it was too!’ An' me own mother, faith, manny's the toime I've seen her makin' up dhrops for the yellow sicknest wid woodlice, an' sayin' Hail Marys over 'em, an' thim same 'ud cure annything from sore teeth to a wooden leg for moiles round. But, saints help me! I never seen the loikes o'this! Haggydorn is it?OuldHaggydorn!Huh!”
Then the Irishman, still with a dejected air, started off across the yard through the snow to the cow-barns, mumbling to himself as he went.
I had heard Abner's heavy tread coming along the stanchions toward me, but now all at once it stopped. The farmer's wife had followedhim into the passage, and he had halted to speak with her.
“They ain't no two ways about it, mother,” he expostulated. “We jest got to put the best face on it we kin, an' act civil, an' pass the time o' day as if nothing'd ever happened atween us. He'll be goin' the first thing after breakfast.”
“Oh! I ain't agoin' to sass him, or say anything uncivil,” M'rye broke in, reassuringly. “What I mean is, I dont want to come into the for'ard end of the barn at all. They ain't no need of it. I kin cook the breakfast in back, and Janey kin fetch it for'ard for yeh, an' nobody need say anythin', or be any the wiser.”
“Yes, I know,” argued Abner, “but there's the looks o' the thing,Isay, if you're goin' to do a thing, why, do it right up to the handle, or else don't do it at all. An' then there's the girl to consider, andherfeelin's.”
“Dunno't her feelin's are such a pesky sight more importance than other folkses,” remarked M'rye, callously.
This unaccustomed recalcitrancy seemed to take Abner aback. He moved a few steps forward, so that he became visible from whereI stood, then halted again and turned, his shoulders rounded, his hands clasped behind his back. I could see him regarding M'rye from under his broad hat-brim with a gaze at once dubious and severe.
“I ain't much in the habit o' hearin' you talk this way to me, mother,” he said at last, with grave depth of tones and significant deliberation.
“Well, I can't help it, Abner!” rejoined M'rye, bursting forth in vehement utterance, all the more excited from the necessity she felt of keeping it out of hearing of the unwelcome guest. “I don't want to do anything to aggravate you, or go contrary to your notions, but with even the willin'est pack-horse there is such a thing as pilin' it on too thick. I can stan' bein' burnt out o' house 'n' home, an' seein' pretty nigh every rag an' stick I had in the world go kitin' up the chimney, an' campin' out here in a barn—My Glory, yes!—an' as much more on top o' that, but, I tell you flat-footed, I can't stomach Jee Hagadorn, an' Iwon't!”
Abner continued to contemplate the revolted M'rye with displeased amazement written all over his face. Once or twice Ithought he was going to speak, but nothing came of it. He only looked and looked, as if he had the greatest difficulty in crediting what he saw.
Finally, with a deep-chested sigh, he turned again. “I s'pose this is still more or less of a free country,” he said. “If you're sot on it, I can't hender you,” and he began walking once more toward me.
M'rye followed him out and put a hand on his arm. “Don't go off like that, Abner!” she adjured him. “Youknowthere ain't nothin' in this whole wide world I wouldn't do to please you—if Icould! But this thing jest goes ag'in' my grain. It's the way folks are made. It's your nater to be forgivin' an' do good to them that despitefully use you.”
“No, it ain't!” declared Abner, vigorously. “No, sirree! ‘Hold fast’ is my nater. I stan' out ag'in' my enemies till the last cow comes home. But when they come wadin' in through the snow, with their feet soppin' wet, an' coughin' fit to turn themselves inside out, an' their daughter is there, an' you've sort o' made it up with her, an' we're all campin' out in a barn, don't you see—”
“No, I can't see it,” replied M'rye, regretfulbut firm. “They always said we Ramswells had Injun blood in us somewhere. An' when I get an Injun streak on me, right down in the marrow o' my bones, why, you musn't blame me—or feel hard if—if I—”
“No-o,” said Abner, with reluctant conviction, “I s'pose not. I dare say you're actin' accordin' to your lights. An' besides, he'll be goin' the first thing after breakfast.”
“An' you ain't mad, Abner?” pleaded M'rye, almost tremulously, as if frightened at the dimensions of the victory she had won.
“Why, bless your heart, no,” answered the farmer, with a glaring simulation of easy-mindedness. “No—that's all right, mother!”
Then with long heavy-footed strides the farmer marched past me and out into the cow-yard.