“ ‘I AM AFIRE WITH THIRST,’ SHE CRIED.”“ ‘I AM AFIRE WITH THIRST,’ SHE CRIED.”
might drink water and drink water and never quench their thirst. Peggy was reputed quite harmless.
“You haven’t seen Peter, have you?” she cooed, suddenly.
“No,” replied Matt, with a fresh, nervous thrill. “But this is not a night for you to be out and about. It’s bitter cold.”
“It’s bitter cold,” she repeated, “bitter cold for an old man like you, but not for a girl like me, loved by the handsomest young fellow in the Province; the heart within me keeps me warm, always warm and thirsty. Give me more water.”
“No, you’ve hed ’nough,” said Matt. “It’s a shame your folks don’t look arter you better.”
“Look after me! They’re all up at the ball, the heartless creatures; but I saw the weddings, both of them, in spite of them all, and I think it’s high time Peter came back from the sugaring toourwedding, and I’ve come to tell him so. This is the spot he used to sugar at. Are you sure you haven’t seen him? You are his partner; confess, now,” she wound up, cajolingly, turning her lovely face towards his troubled gaze.
“Can’t you see I’m only a boy?” he replied.
“Nonsense. You’re not a boy. Boys always call after me and pull my shawl. I know all the boys.”
Matt felt the moisture gathering afresh under his eyelids.
“What’s your name, then?” she went on, sweetly.
“Matt,” he murmured.
“Ah, mad!” she cried, in ecstasy. “We are cousins—I knew it! That’s what they call me.”
Her wild eyes shone in the firelight. The boy shuddered.
“Not mad, but Matt!” he corrected her.
“Ah, yes, Mad Matt! Cousins! Mad Peggy—Mad Matt!”
“I’m not mad,” he protested, feebly.
“Yes, yes, you are!” she cried, passionately. “I can see it in your face. And yet you won’t give me a cup of water.”
“You’ve drunk ’nough,” said the boy, soothingly.
“Oh, what lovely little devils,” she exclaimed, catching sight of the wall decorations. “Doyousee devils, too? Didn’t I say we were cousins? Why, there’s one of the bridegrooms—ha! ha! ha! I guess he didn’t show the cloven hoof this morning.”
“Which is the bridegroom?” asked Matt, piqued into curiosity.
“There—there he is! There is the boy!” She pointed to the best portrait of Bully Preep. “Healways called after me, the little devil.”
Matt’s heart beat excitedly, his face crimsoned. But his strange visitor’s next words threw him back into uneasy chaos.
“Oh, but everybody is saying how scandalous it is! with his wife only six months in her grave. Look how long Peter and I have waited. Most of the girls in the village get engaged half a dozen times; they don’t know what love is, they don’t know anything, they’ve got no education. But I’ve only been engaged once, and I’m so thirsty. And you’ve got her too, the little angel! Everybody is saying how hard it is for her! And yet they all go to the ball. May they dance till they drop, the hypocrites!”
“What are you sayin’?” faltered Matt. “Hard for Ruth Hailey? Why, she’s only a little girl.”
“She isn’t a little girl. Little girls run after me. I know all the little girls. She’s a little angel! Just as you’ve pictured her. Give me some more water.”
This time Matt surrendered the dipper to her.
“Thank you, Cousin Matt,” she said, and drank feverishly. But seeing that she was about to dip again, he placed himself between her and the barrel. She turned away with a marvellously dexterous movement considering her cumbrous foot-gear, and dipped the ladle into the seething caldron instead. But Matt seized her arm and stayed her from extracting the dipper.
“You’ll scald yourself,” he said.
“Let go my arm,” she cried, threateningly. “How dare you touch me—you are not Peter!”
“You mustn’t drink any more.”
“You are very cruel!” she moaned. “Who is that sleeping there? Perhaps it is Peter. I will wake him up; he will give me water. I am so thirsty.” She moaned and crooned over the three-legged caldron, stirring the sap feebly with the ladle in her efforts to wrest herself free, and the white steam curledabout her face, and gave her the air of a young, beautiful witch bent over a caldron. Matt forgot everything except that he would like to make a picture of her as she appeared now.
“You’d best go to sleep,” he said at last, awakening to a remembrance of the strange situation. “There’s my bed—those fir-boughs—you kin lie down there till the mornin’, and I’ll cover you with my blanket.”
“I want water,” she crooned.
“You kin’t get it,” said Matt.
“Then may the curse light on you and yours,” she cried, stirring the sap more fiercely in her struggle, while the vapor and the wood smoke rose in denser volumes around her. “May you thirst and thirst, and never be satisfied! And that is to be your fate, Cousin Matt. I read it in your face, in your eyes. Never to quench your thirst—never, never, never! To thirst and thirst and thirst for everything, and never to be satisfied, never to have anything you want. Mad Matt and Mad Peggy—cousins, you and I! Ha! ha! ha!” Her laugh of malicious glee made the boy’s blood run cold. From without came the answering screech of a wild-cat.
“Lie down and rest!” repeated Matt, imperatively.
“What! stay here with you? No, no, no, Cousin Matt. I know what you want. You want to paint me and put me on the wall among the devils! No, no, I must be off to find Peter. I shall stay with him in his cabin.”
Her grip of the dipper relaxed; it reeled against the side of the pot. She turned away, and Matt let go her arm and watched her, spellbound. She drew the thick dun shawl over her head, again veiling the glory of the golden hair, and almost brought the edges together over her sad beautiful face, so that the eyes alone shone out with unearthly radiance. Then she moved slowly towards the door and thrust it open, and the wind came in, and filled the entire cabin with heavy, acrid smoke, which got into Matt’s eyes and throat, and woke even the Indian boy, who sat up choking and rubbing his black, beady eyes.
“Dam door shuttum!” he cried, with unusual vehemence.
The words broke Matt’s spell. He rushed to the door, but his smarting eyes could detect no gray-shawled figure glidingamong the gray trunks. He closed the door, wondering if he had been dreaming.
“ ‘Tain’t your turn yet, Tommy,” he said, waving away the smoke with his hand, and Tommy fell back asleep, as if mesmerized. Matt was as relieved at not having to explain as at Tommy’s momentary wakefulness, which had braced him against the superstitious awe that had been invading him while the mad beauty cursed him with that sweet voice of hers that no anger could make harsh. He thought of the apparition with pity, mingled with a thrill of solemn adoration; she had for him the beauty and wildness of the elemental, like the sky or the sea. And yet she had left in him other feelings—not only the doubt of her reality, but an uneasy stirring of apprehensions. Was there nothing but insane babble in this talk of Ruth Hailey and Abner Preep? A fear he could not define weighed at his heart. Even if he had been dreaming, if he had drowsed over the fire—as he must in any case have done not to have heard the scrape and clatter of snow-shoes entering—the dream portended something evil. But, no! it was not a dream. Assuredly the sap in the barrel had sunk to a lower level. With a new thought he lit a resinous bough and slipped out quickly and examined the dry stiff snow. The double trail of departing snow-shoes was manifest, meandering among the bark dishes and irregularly intersecting the trail of arrival. The radiant moonlight falling through the thin bare maple-boughs made his torch superfluous, except in the fuscous glade of leafy evergreens, along which he followed the giant footmarks for some little distance. He paused, leaning against a tall hemlock. Doubt was impossible. He had really entertained a visitor. Not seldom in former years had he entertained visitors who came to camp out for the night, which they made uproarious. But never had his hut sheltered so strange a guest. He was moved at the thought of her drifting across the wastes of snow like some fallen spirit. He looked up and abstractedly watched a crow sleeping with its head under its wing on the top of the hemlock, then his vision wandered to the flashing streamers of northern light, and, higher still, to those keen depths of frosty sky where the stars stood beautiful, and they drew up histhoughts yearningly to the infinite spaces. Something cried within him for he knew not what—save that it was very great and very majestic and very beautiful, mystically blending the luminousness of light and color with the scent of flowers and the troubled sweetness of music; and at the back of his dim, delicious craving for it was a haunting certainty that he would never reach up to it, never, never. The prophecy of mad Peggy recurred to the boy like a cutting blast of wind. Was it true, then, that he would thirst and thirst, and nothing ever quench his thirst? He held up his torch yearningly to the stars, while the night moaned around him, and the flaring pinewood cast a grotesque shadow of him on the pure white snow, an uncouth image that danced and leered as in mockery.
Assoon as he could get away next morning Matt drew on his oversocks and started for home, racked by indefinite fears. He had not troubled to rouse Tommy to take his watch, for he knew he himself would not sleep a wink, and it seemed a pity to disturb so deep and healthy a slumber; so he bustled about to blur his thoughts, and had breakfast ready an hour after sunrise, which his anxiety did not prevent him from observing. To see sky and forest take fire in gradual glory was an ecstasy transcending the apprehensions of the moment.
Tommy had asked no questions during the morning meal, and made no complaints about Matt’s failure to rouse him; but on being apprised of his companion’s intended journey, he had pointed to the scanty wood-pile—a reminder that had delayed Matt by a couple of hours spent in felling and chopping up a straddle or two. But at last he got away, Tommy undertaking, in a minimum of monosyllables, to attend to everything else. Matt felt afresh the strength and stability of Tommy. Tommy was like Sprat—firm, faithful, and uninquisitive.
He had five miles of clogged walking before him, but he made fairly good progress, for he was unencumbered by snow-shoes, having a light step and an instinct for hollows and drifts, and his oversocks, which reached beyond the knee, kept out the snow when he trod deep. The freshness and buoyancy of the morning dispelled his alarm; dread was impossible under that wonderful blue sky. But as he got deeper and deeper into the recesses under thick boughs that shut out the living blue with dead gray, and took the sparkle out of the snow, his gloom returned, and lasted till he was nearly at his journey’s end, when the road caught the sunlight again just as the thought of home flooded his soul. And soon a bend brought the goal in sight. There it was, the dear old house, standing back from the road, in the midst of its little clearing, the sun shining on its bleached clapboards, the black window-sashes standing out fantastically against the white panes, opaque with frosty designs. The smoke curled tranquilly from the chimney towards the overarching azure, making the home seem a living creature whose breath was thus condensed to visibility. It seemed months since he had left it, yet it was absolutely unchanged. And then he heard the cock crow from the rear, and his last fears vanished like evil spirits of the night, and a wave of pleasurable anticipation bore him to the porch.
He opened the door—no one ever fastened doors by day, for burglars came only in the milder form of peddlers, and other visitors were accustomed to stable their horses and take their seats at the board without ceremony or warning. It was not far from noon, but he heard no sounds about the house, except the crowing of the cock, which continued, and brought up to memory a grotesque and long-obliterated image of his mother holding on to the leg of a soaring hawk that had picked up a chicken. He listened for the lowing of Daisy; then, remembering she was dead and salted, he moved forward into the passage. But he found nobody in the living-room. There was not even a fire. The clumsy spinning-wheel stood silent. The table was bare and tidy; the chairs were neatly ranged. He ran into the kitchen—it radiated bleaker desolation. Matt fought against the cold chill that was gathering at his heart. Of course therewould be nobody at home. Harriet was sewing somewhere, most of the children were at school; and his mother, instead of leaving the baby in the kitchen with one of them, must have taken it with her to her work. And yet it was all very depressing and very disappointing. Then he remembered, with a fresh shock, the smoke he had seen curling from the roof, and for an instant he was oppressed by a sense of the uncanny. An atmosphere of horror seemed to brood over the house. But the recollection of a proverb of Deacon Hailey’s, “There’s no smoke without fire, hey?” uttered in a moment of unusual articulateness, brought back common-sense. He ran up to the bedrooms, but there was not even a stove, except in his mother’s room—a room tapestried with texts worked in Berlin wool on perforated card-board—where the bed had not been made, and where there were traces of extinct logs. Immeasurably puzzled, and wondering if the smoke had been an optical illusion, he returned to the living-room. There was only one room he had not gone into—the best room—and when he at last recollected the existence of it he did not immediately enter it. Only visitors had the enjoyment of this room and the privilege of sitting gingerly on its cane chairs and surveying its papered walls; and, in the absence of the family, there could be no reception in progress. When, for the sake of logical exhaustiveness, he did approach the door, it was listlessly and with a certain constraint, amounting to awe. His nostrils already scented the magnificent mustiness of its atmosphere. He opened the door with noiseless reverence. Then he stood rigid, like one turned to stone by the sight of Medusa’s head. It was indeed a head that petrified him—or, rather, two heads, one pressed against the other. Though he had only a back view of them, he knew them both. The lank black hair was Bully Preep’s, the long auburn-brown tresses were Harriet Strang’s. A fire had been lighted, regardless of the polish of the Franklin stove and the severity of its fancy scroll-work and ornamental urn; and before this fire his sister sat on Abner’s knee, and Abner sat on a cane chair, tilting it with a familiarity that hovered on contempt. The treble shock was too great. Matt was dumb and sick and cold, though red-hot thoughts hurtledin his brain. What! The skunk had sneaked in during his mother’s absence, and it was thus that Harriet did the honors!
He struggled to get his voice back. “Harriet!” he cried, in raucous remonstrance.
Harriet gave a little shriek and turned her head. The color fled from her soft cheeks as she caught sight of her outraged junior, then the blush returned in fuller crimson. Matt fixed her with a stern, imperious eye.
“What are you doin’ in the best room?” was the phrase that leaped to his angry lips.
Abner turned on him a face of smiling friendship.
“The best thing,” he replied, gayly.
“How dare you kiss my sister?” thundered Matt.
“Don’t be a fool, Matt!” said Abner, amiably. “She isn’t on’y your sister—she’s my wife.”
“Your wife!” breathed Matt.
“Yes, don’t be streaked, dear. We were married yesterday.” And Harriet disentangled herself from Abner and ran to throw her arms round Matt. But the boy repulsed her with a commanding gesture.
“Don’t come near me!” he cried, huskily. “Where’s mother? Does she know?”
“Oh, Matt!” cried Harriet, reproachfully, “d’you think I’d marry without her consent!”
“I call it rael mean, anyways,” he cried, tears of vexation getting into his eyes and his voice, “to take advantage of a feller like that, jest because his back’s turned!”
“Waal, we won’t do it agen!” cried Abner, with unshakable good-humor. “See here, Matt,” and he rose, too, revealing the slight tendency to crookedness of lower limb that offended the exigent eye of his mother-in-law, “let’s be pals. You were allus a spunky little chap, and I liked you from the day you stood up agin me and blacked my eye, though you had to jump up a’most to reach it. I was a beast in them thar days, but I raelly ain’t now, thanks to Harriet—God bless her! I know you don’t like my legs,” he added, with a flash of humor, “but there’s on’y two of ’em, anyways.”
“An’ thet’s two too many, you crawlin’ reptile,” retorted Matt. Then, turning to Harriet, he went on in slow, measured accents, “And is this—chap—goin’ to—live here?”
“He is so,” retorted Harriet.
“Then,” said Matt, with ominous calm—”then you won’t hev me here, thet’s all.”
“Of course we won’t,” said Harriet, with a pleasant laugh. “You’ll live with mother.”
“With mother?” repeated Matt, staring.
“Yes; down to Deacon Hailey’s.”
“Hes mother gone to live to Deacon Hailey’s?” he asked, excitedly.
“You bet!” put in Abner, grinning genially.
“What—altogether?” exclaimed Matt. The world seemed going round as it did in the geography books.
“I guess so.”
“I won’t hev it!” cried Matt, agitatedly. “I won’t hev her slavin’ like a nigger. It was bad enough afore, when she hed to go there every day. But now she’s naught but a servant. It’s a shame, I do declare. An’ you, Harriet!” he said, turning fiercely on her again; “ain’t you ’shamed o’ yourself, drivin’ mother out of house and home?”
“No,” said Harriet, stoutly.
The laughter that lurked about her mouth filled him with a trembling presentiment of the truth.
“Don’t you understand?” said Abner, kindly. “Your mother’s been and gone and married the deacon, and a good thing for all o’ you, I do allow.”
“You’re a liar!” hissed the boy. The world spun round more fiercely.
Abner shrugged his shoulders good-temperedly.
“You see, it was all arranged in a hurry, Matt,” said Harriet, deprecatingly. “An’ mother thought we’d best get it all over, an’ so we were both married yesterday, an’ we thought it a pity to bother you to come all the way. But you hevn’t finished, hev you? Where’s the sugar?”
“An’ a nice scandal, I vow!” he cried, furiously. “Everybody is talkin’ ’bout it.”
“Oh come, Matt, thet’s a good un,” laughed Abner. “Why, you’ve heerd nuthin’ ’bout it.”
“Oh, hevn’t I?” returned Matt, with sullen mysteriousness. “I don’t know thet everybody went there an’ everybody said it was a shame. Oh no; I’m blind and deaf, thet’s what I am.”
“Don’t make such a touse, Matt,” said Harriet, putting her hair behind her ears with some calmness. “Don’t you see things air ever so much better? I’ve got a man to support me,” and she put her arms lovingly round Abner’s neck, as if supporting him, “an’ mother’ll be quite a lady, not a servant, as you were silly ’nough to allow, an’ you won’t hev to work so hard. An’ I’ll tell you what, Matt, you shall come here sometimes an’ draw your picters, an’ mother won’t know.”
But Matt clinched his teeth. The bait was tempting, but unfortunately it reminded him of his obedience to his mother the night before, when in deference to her views he had denied himself the joy of Tommy’s pipe. Oh, how he had been duped and bamboozled! At the very hour his inner eye had seen her toiling, sorrowful at her spinning-wheel, she was frolicking at her wedding-ball in gay attire. A vast self-compassion softened his indignation and raw misery. He turned his back on the newly-married couple, and strode from the house, lest they should misinterpret his tears. But the tears did not come—anger rekindling evaporated them unshed. What right had the deacon to steal his mother without even asking him? And how ignoble of his mother to forget his father thus! He figured Ruth Hailey replacing himself by another boy merely because he was dead. It seemed sacrilege. And yet no doubt Ruth was as bad as the rest of her sex. Had she not submitted tamely to the supplanting of her dead mother—nay, was she not a necessary accomplice in the conspiracy to keep him ignorant of the double marriage? Then he had a vague remembrance that he had once heard she was not originally the deacon’s daughter, but only the late Mrs. Hailey’s, which somehow seemed to exonerate her from the full burden of his doings. Still, she had unquestionably been sly.
His feet had turned instinctively back towards the lonelyforest. No, he would not go and live with the deacon, not even though it brought Ruth within daily proximity. His attitude towards the deacon had never been cordial—nay, the auditory strain upon him when “Ole Hey” spoke to him had gone far towards making him antipathetic. It seemed monstrous that such an old mumbler should have been deemed fit to replace the cheery sailor who had gone down wrapped in his flag. No, Matt at least would have none of him. Life under his roof would be a discord of jarring memories. He would go back to his hut and live in the wood. He would shoot enough to live upon, and there, alone and self-sufficient and free as its denizens, he would pass his life painting and sketching. Or, if he wanted society, he would seek that of the Indian, the simple, noble Indian, and pitch his lot with his for a time or forever. Or perhaps Tommy would stay with him—Tommy who was deep without being wily, and restful without being dull. What a pity Billy was disabled; they might have seceded together, but fate had separated them, not his will.
The five miles were longer now, and the sky had grown a shade colder, but he trod the gloomiest paths unchilled. His heart was hot with revolt. As he came to the little open space round the hut a curious phenomenon arrested his attention. There was no smoke curling above the chimney-hole. A problem—the exact reverse of that which had greeted him at the other terminus of his journey—clamored for solution. Surely Tommy had not let the fire go out! He hastened his steps, and saw that the door stood wide open on its leather hinges, projecting outwards into the forest. Outside, too, empty birch-bark troughs were scattered about in lieu of being piled up neatly. The air of desolation sobered him like a cold douche. He was frightened. He had not even courage to dwell on the thought of what foreboding whispered. But perhaps Tommy had only gone to sleep again, and forgotten about the fire. With a gleam of hope he ran to the entrance, then leaped back with a wild thrill, and slammed the door to and put his back to it and stood palpitating, restrained only by excitement from breaking down in childish tears. The interior of the hut had been transformed as by enchantment. Of barrels, axes, ironware,provender, even of his rude paints, there was not a trace, though the birch-bark picture exhibition was undisturbed. The birch-boughs were littered over the floor. There was no Tommy. But in the centre of the cabin, where the fire had been, lay a matted bear, voluptuously curled up on the warm ashes, and licking the mellifluous soil, which was syrup-sodden by drops that had fallen from the sap-pot. The beautiful sunshine had lured the animal from its winter sleeping-chamber, famished after its long fast.
It was a moment Matt never forgot; one of those moments that age and imbitter. As he stood with squared shoulders against the rough, battened door, that was built of stout slabs, he shook from head to foot with mingled emotions. Numb misery alternated with burning flashes of righteous indignation against humanity, red and white. And with it all was a stirring of the hunter’s instinct—an itching to shoot the creature on the other side of the door—which aggravated his vexation by the reminder that even his gun had been stolen. It eased him a little to let his mind dwell on the prospect of potting such glorious game; but first of all he must run Tommy to earth. Tommy could not have gone far, burdened as he would be with the spoil.
The broken-hearted boy moved stealthily from the door and pushed up a small trunk that he had cut down that morning, but not yet chopped up. With some difficulty he raised this and propped it against the door, which, being already latched, could not easily be burst open by the bear. The creature was, moreover, likely to resume its winter nap in the snug, sweet quarters in which it found itself. Having thus trapped his bear, Matt started off by a cross-cut in the direction of the Indian encampment, to which he presumed Tommy would naturally have returned full-handed. But he had not gone a hundred yards before he called himself a fool, and ran back. In his agitation he had forgotten to note the trail of the sled in which Tommy must have drawn off the things. This he now discovered ran quite in the opposite direction, and was complicated not only by Tommy’s footmarks, but by a man’s. Whither had Tommy decamped? The day seemed made up ofsurprises and puzzles. However, there was everything to gain, or rather regain, by following the dusky young impostor and the accomplice who had helped him to draw the heavy sled. Matt discovered that the trail led towards Long Village, two and a half miles off, and instantly it flashed upon him that Tommy had gone there to dispose of the things. He quickened his pace, and in less than half an hour strode into a truer solution of the mystery, for suddenly he found himself amid dogs grubbing in the sunshine and swaddled pappooses swinging on the poles of birch-bark wigwams, and perceived that the vagrant Micmacs had shifted their encampment during the fortnight. Tommy’s knowledge of the migration argued secret correspondence, unless a tribal tempter had visited him accidentally during Matt’s absence—which seemed rather improbable.
Matt’s soul was aflame with wrath and resentment. He rushed about among the wigwams, unceremoniously peering behind the blankets that overhung the doorways, which were partly blocked by spruce boughs arranged to spring back and forth. Bow-legged, round-shouldered, dumpy men, with complexions of grayish copper, squatting cross-legged on fir boughs before the central fire, smoked on unresentful, a few ejaculating sullenly, “Kogwa pawotumun?” (“What is your wish?”) Their faces had nothing of the American hatchet-shape; they would have been round but for the angularity of the jaw, and Chinese but for the eyes, which did not slant upward, but were beady and wide apart. The cheek-bones were high, the nose was of a negro flatness, and the straight black hair was long and matted. In attire the men had an air of shabby civilization, which went ill with the blankets and skins overwrapping the white men’s leavings. Near the door—in the quarter of less distinction—sitting with feet twisted round to one side, one under the other, as befits the inferior sex—were women good-looking but greasy, who wore shawls and blankets over their kerchiefed heads, and necklaces of blue beads twinkling against their olive throats, and smoked as gravely as their lords. But Tommy was invisible. Nor could Matt see anything of the stolen goods. But in one tent he found Tommy’s father, and, discourteously omitting the “Kwa” of greeting, plied him with indignant questions in a mixture of bad English and worse Indian.
Tommy’s father understood little and knew nothing. He did not invite the visitor into the tent, but smoked on peacefully and whittled a shaving, and Matt’s admiration of the red man’s taciturnity died a painful death. Had Tommy’s father not even seen Tommy? No; Tommy’s father had not seen Tommy for half a moon, and the smoke curled peacefully round Tommy’s father’s greasy head. Never had the unspeakable uncleanliness of the picturesque figure struck Matt as it did now. He moved away with heavy heart and heavy footstep, and interviewed other Indians, equally dingy and equally reticent; even the squaws kept the secret.
Matt went back in despairing anger and poured out his passion in a flood of remonstrance upon the unwashed head of Tommy’s father; he pointed to the trail of the sled that drew up at Tommy’s father’s tent, he reasoned, he threatened, he clinched his fist and stamped his foot; and Tommy’s father smoked the pipe of peace and whittled the shaving. The Indian held the stick on his knee and drew the knife towards himself, unlike the white man, who cuts away from himself. It was a crooked knife, with a notch for the thumb in the handle. Matt’s spirit oozed away before its imperturbable movement to and fro. He felt sick and faint; he became vaguely conscious that he had eaten nothing since breakfast. Then he remembered the bear waiting in the cabin—waiting to be killed. With a happy thought he informed Tommy’s father that he had trapped a bear and could conduct him to the spot, and Tommy’s father instantly began to understand him better; and when Matt proceeded to offer him the beast in exchange for the stolen goods, the Micmac betrayed a complete comprehension of the offer, and with a courteous exclamation of “Up-chelase,” invited him into the furthermost and most honorable portion of the tent. He even rose and held colloquy with some of his brethren gathered round. A bear was a valuable property—dead. His snout alone was worth five dollars, when presented as a death certificate to a grateful government, anxious to extinguish him.These five dollars were a great consideration to a tribe paid mainly in kind, and hard pushed to find coin for the annual remission of sin at the hands of the priests. The bear’s skin would fetch four or five dollars more; while its three or four hundred pounds of flesh would set up the larder for the season. As a result of the native council, Tommy’s father informed Matt that he had just learned Tommy had been seen that morning, but that he had hauled the sled past the encampment on his way to Long Village to sell the freight (which nobody had suspected was not his own property, the much dam thief). He had, however, left a gun with a boy friend, and if Matt was content to swop the bear for this, he could have it. Matt, fuming at his own helplessness, consented. The gun was accordingly produced; Matt recognized his old friend, but Tommy’s father explained in easy pantomime that when bear was dead boy would get gun, and not before; and he handed it to a blanketless by-stander, who had evidently bartered external heat for internal fire-water. Then, shouldering his own gun, he motioned to Matt to lead the way. The little procession of three set forth, the second Indian prudently providing himself with a flat, wide sledge. The afternoon was waning, the blue overhead had lost in luminousness, leaving the coloring of the earth more vivid. But the shifting of nature’s kaleidoscope had ceased to interest Matt; humanity occupied him exclusively, and the evil that was done under the sun. Man or woman, white or red, they were all alike—a skulking, shifty breed. It was not only he that had been betrayed; it was truth, it was honor. Were these things, then, merely lip-babble?
On their arrival at the hut Matt explained the position. He was about to remove the log that braced up the door, but Tommy’s father pulled him violently back, and gestured that it was much more convenient to shoot the animal through the chimney-hole. Matt felt a qualm of disgust and remorse. It seemed cowardly to give the poor beast that had taken refuge in his hut no chance. He leaned sullenly against the door, feeling almost like one who had betrayed the laws of hospitality, and conscious, moreover, of a strange savage sympathy with the bear in its strife with humanity. His last respect for thenoble red man vanished when the two Micmacs clambered upon the low-pitched roof. They uttered “ughs” of satisfaction as they peeped over the great square hole and perceived their prey asleep. After some amiable banter of the animal they began to put their guns into position. But Tommy’s father insisted on having the glory of the deed, since he was paying for the bear with Matt’s gun, and his rival ungraciously yielded. In his cocksureness, however, Tommy’s father merely hit the bear’s shoulder. The creature started up with a fierce growl, and began biting savagely at the bleeding wound. Excited by his failure and the brute’s leap up, Tommy’s father leaned more over the hole for his second shot; but his companion, exclaiming that it was his turn now, pushed him back, and strove to get his body in front. Tommy’s father, who was now effervescing with excitement, thrust himself more forward still, and in his zeal succeeded so well that he suddenly found himself flying head-foremost into the hut, while the gun went off at random. The bullet missed, but the man struck the obfuscated creature with a thud, ricochetted off its back, and lay prostrate on the branch-strewn floor.
The sound of the fall, the explosion, the cry of dismay from the roof, informed Matt of what had happened. In a flash his sympathy went back to man. He cried to the other Indian to shoot, but the latter’s arm was shaking, and the bear, after a few seconds of bewilderment, had risen on its hind legs and stood over the fallen man growling fiercely, so that the Micmac was afraid of hitting his friend. Matt reached up impatiently for his gun, which the Micmac readily handed to him in unforeseen violation of orders, and Matt, overthrowing the door-prop with the butt end, lifted the latch and dashed in. Tommy’s father was already in the bear’s grip, the infuriated animal’s elastic fore-paws beginning to press horribly upon his ribs. Matt clapped the barrel of the gun to the bear’s ear; then he was overswept by a fearsome doubt lest the gun had been unloaded since it had left his hands. But his suspense was short. He pressed the trigger; there was a ringing explosion, and the creature bounded into the air, relaxing its hold of the Indian, upon whom it fell again in its death-agony. Matt, aided by theother Micmac, who hurried in, grunting, disentangled Tommy’s father from the writhing heap, and found him bruised and breathless, but practically uninjured. Tommy’s father vowed eternal gratitude to his rescuer, and said his life was henceforward at Matt’s disposal. The boy curtly asked for his property instead, whereupon the Indian shook his head and shrugged his shoulders in token of impotence. Rolling the bear over with a prod of his contemptuous foot, he produced his knife and started scalping and skinning the dead enemy, while his brother-in-arms lit some boughs, and cut a juicy steak from the carcass and set it to broil. The warmth was grateful, for the shadows were fast gathering and the hyperborean hours returning. A covey of bob-whites whirred past, and the weird note of a hoot-owl was borne on the bleak air.
The Indians offered the boy “a cut from the joint,” and he refused sulkily—a deadly insult in normal circumstances. But the keen pangs of hunger and the delicious odor of the meat weakened him, and a later invitation to join the squatting diners found him ravenously responsive, though he felt he had bartered away his righteous indignation for a mess of pottage. During the meal his guests or his hosts (he knew not which they were) betrayed considerable interest in his mural decorations, which they evidently regarded as symptoms of a relapse from Christianity, and they were astonished, too, at his refusal to quaff more than a mouthful or two of their rum—the coarse concoction locally nicknamed “rot-gut.” While Matt, who had started last, was still eating from the birch-bark dish he had utilized for the purpose, Tommy’s father lit his after-dinner pipe, and, having taken a few whiffs, passed it on to his companion, who in turn held out to Matt the long, reedy stem with its feather ornaments.
The offer sent a thrill through the boy’s whole being. All his grievances ascended afresh from the red stone bowl and mingled with the fragrant smoke. How good, how obedient he had been! And all for what? A lump gathered in his throat, so that he could not swallow his bit of bear. He nodded assent, his heart throbbing with defiant manhood, and motioned to the Micmac to place the pipe beside his dish till hewas ready for it. The two Indians then hauled the carcass athwart the sledge hastily, for night had come on as though shed from the starless sky, and they called to Matt to come along, but Matt shouted back that he did not intend to accompany them. He no longer craved to cast in his lot with the red man. Yet he went to the door of his tent to watch his fellow-hunters disappear among the sombre groves, and a deeper dusk seemed to fall on the landscape when the very rustle of their passage died away. But as he turned in again and fastened up the door, his heart leaped up afresh with the leaping flames. The sense of absolute solitude became exultation—a keen, bitter joy. Here was his home; he had no other. He had parted company with humanity forever.
He reseated himself on a little pile of fir boughs in his deserted home, that was naked but for the wall-pictures—the least comforting of all possible salvage, since they were the only things Tommy had not thought worth stealing. As Matt sat brooding, darker patches on the soil, and spots upon some of those pictures, caught his eye. He saw they were of blood. In one place there was quite a little pool which had not yet sunk into the earth or evaporated. He touched it curiously with his finger, and wiped away the stain against a leaf. Then with a sudden thought he curled a piece of bark and scooped up the blood into his birchen dish, as a possible color, murmuring, gleefully:
“ ‘Who caught his blood?’‘I,’ said the fish,‘With my little dish,I caught his blood.’ ”
“ ‘Who caught his blood?’‘I,’ said the fish,‘With my little dish,I caught his blood.’ ”
“ ‘Who caught his blood?’‘I,’ said the fish,‘With my little dish,I caught his blood.’ ”
In moving the “little dish” he laid bare Tommy’s father’s calumet, forgotten. He took it up. How the universe had changed since last he held a pipe in his hand—only last night! Again he heard the howl of a wild-cat, and he looked round involuntarily, as if expecting to find Mad Peggy at his elbow. But he had no sense of awe just now—though he had barred his door inhospitably against further bears—only the voluptuousness of liberty and loneliness, the healthy after-glow of satisfied appetite, and the gayety born of flaming logs and acouple of mouthfuls of fire-water. The Water-Drinker’s prophecy seemed peculiarly inept in view of the pipe he held in his hand. With tremulous anticipation of more than mortal rapture he relit it. The sensation was unexpectedly pungent, but Matt puffed away steadily in hope and trust that this was merely the verdict of an unaccustomed palate, and he found a vast compensatory pleasure in his ability to make the thing work, to send the delicate wreaths into the air as ably as any Micmac or deacon of them all.
But soon even this pleasure began to be swamped by a wave of less agreeable sensation, and Matt, puzzled and chagrined, after a gallant stand, threw down the calumet, and hastened into the cold air with palpitating heart and splitting head, and there, in the maple wood, Bruin was avenged. That night, despite his vigil of the night before, Matt Strang vainly endeavored to close his eyes upon an unsatisfactory world.
Thelong, endless years, crowded with petty episodes and uniformities, and moving like a cumbrous, creeping train that stops at every station, flash like an express past the eye of memory. Yet it is these unrecorded minutiæ of monotonous months that color the fabric of our future lives, eating into our souls like a slow acid. When, in after years, Matt Strang’s youth defiled before him, the panorama seemed more varied than when he was living the scenes in all their daily detail of dull routine, and when, whatever their superficial differences, they were all linked for him by an underlying unity of toil and aspiration.
First came his apprenticeship in Cattermole’s saw-mill, at the opposite outskirt of the forest, twenty miles from Cobequid. For, though he early tired of savagery, as a blind-alley on the road to picture-painting, he refused, in the dogged pride of hisboyish heart, to return to his folks, contenting himself with informing them of his whereabouts and of his intention to apprentice himself (with or without their consent). Labor being so scarce that year, Deacon Hailey drove over in great haste to offer him a loving home. Matt, who happened to be in the house, which was only parted from the mill-stream by a large vegetable-garden, saw through a window the deacon’s buggy arrive at the garden-path, and the deacon himself alight to open the wooden gate. The boy’s resentment flamed afresh, and it was supplemented by dread of the deacon’s inarticulate conversation. He fled to Mrs. Cattermole in the kitchen.
She was a shrewish, angular person, economical of everything save angry breath. A black silk cap with prim bows and ribbons sat severely on her head, and a thread-net confined her hair. Cattermole, a simple, religious, hen-pecked creature, had gone to the village store to trade off butter.
“There’s Ole Hey coming!” cried Matt, breathlessly.
“Kin’t you speak quietly?” thundered Mrs. Cattermole. “You made my heart jump like a frog. You don’t mean Ole Hey from Cobequid, the man es you said married your mother?”
“Yes, thet’s the skunk. I reckon he’s come to take me back.”
Mrs. Cattermole’s eyes flashed angrily. “Well, I swan! But you’ve promised to bide with us.”
“Thet’s so. I wouldn’t go back fur Captain Kidd’s treasure! I won’t see him.”
“I’ll tell him you’re gone away.”
“No,” said Matt, sturdily. “I wrote that I was goin’ to be ’prenticed here, and there ain’t any call for lies. Tell him I’m in the kitchen and I won’t come out, and I don’t want to hev anythin’ to do with him. See!”
“Well, set there and mind the cradle, and I’ll jest give him slockdologee. You uns allow you’re considerable smart, Cobequid way, but I reckon he’s struck the wrong track this time.”
Matt grinned joyously. “Spunk up to him, ma’am!” he cried, with stirring reminiscences of fights at McTavit’s. “Walk into him full split!”
“You mind the baby, young man. There won’t be no touseat all. He don’t set foot in my kitchen, and there’s an end of it.”
Mrs. Cattermole greeted the deacon politely, and informed him that the lad he was inquiring after was sulking in the kitchen, and that he refused to receive his visitor on any account. The deacon sighed unctuously with an air of patient martyrdom. Matt’s obduracy heightened his estimate of the lad’s value as a gratuitous field-worker, and sharpened his sense of being robbed of what small dowry Mrs. Strang had brought him.
“The boy is dreadful set agin me,” he complained. “But, es I told his poor mother, if you let a boy run wild, wild he runs, hey? Anyways, it ain’t fur me to fail in lovin’-kindness. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, ain’t the gospelwe’recalled upon to practise. I allus thinks there’s no sort o’ use in bein’ a Christian on Sundays and a heathen on week-days.”
“No, thet thar ain’t,” Mrs. Cattermole assented, amiably.
“Even to beasts a man kin be a Christian, hey? I reckon I’d better wait in your kitchen an’ give the mare a rest. IfI’ve come on a fool’s errand, thet ain’t a reason my ole nag should suffer, hey?”
Mrs. Cattermole, seeing the outworks taken, directed the deacon, by a flank movement, into the parlor, as alone befitting his dignity. To Matt this parlor, far finer than the best room at home, was a chamber of awe, but also of attraction, for its walls were hung with sober Bible prints. Mrs. Cattermole stood there among her splendors with her back to the door, partly for defensive purposes, partly so as not to depreciate one of the hair-cloth chairs by sitting down. It was enough for one day that her guest sat solidly on the rocking-chair of honor.
“We’ve been hevin’ too much soft weather, Mrs. Cattermole, arter all thet heavy snow.”
“Yes, I’m afeard the dam will go out,” responded Mrs. Cattermole, gloomily.
They discussed the disastrous thaw of a few years back, with a vivid remembrance of the vegetables and dairy produce spoiled in the flooded cellars.
“But it’s the Lord’s will,” summed up the deacon. “It ain’t any use heapin’ up worldly treasure, I allus thinks.”
“Thet’s a fact.” Mrs. Cattermole shook her head in sad acquiescence.
“Heaven’s the only safe place to lay up your goods, hey? So I guess I’m just goin’ to forgive thet durned boy all the anxiety he’s giv his poor mother an’ me, an’ take him back right along.”
“Oh, but I guess you ain’t,” said Mrs. Cattermole. “We’ve promised to take him on here.”
“We’ll let you off thet thar promise, Mrs. Cattermole. We ain’t folks as allus wants to hold people tight to every onthinkin’ word. An’ you won’t be the loser hardly, for the lad ain’t worth a tin pint to mortal man. He’s a dreamy do-nuthin’, an’ the worry he’s been to his poor mother you’ve no idee—allus wastin’ the Lord’s hours, unbeknown to her, in scrawlin’ picters an’ smutchin’ boards with colors.”
“I reckon he’ll come in handy in our paint-shop, then.”
The deacon shook his head, as if pitying her bubble delusions.
“He ain’t smart, an’ he ain’t good-tempered. You see for yourself how grouty he is to the best friend a boy ever hed.”
“He ain’t smart, I know. Thet’s why we ain’t goin’ to pay him no wages.”
The deacon chawed his quid and swayed in silent discomfiture.
“Ah, it’s his poor mother I’m thinkin’ of,” he said, after a while. “She’s thet delicate she’d kinder worry if he was to—a mother’s heart, hey? If ’twas my boy, I’d be proper glad to see him in the han’s of sech a hard-workin’, God-fearin’ couple.”
“You hedn’t ought to talk to me,” said Mrs. Cattermole, softening. “Father’d be terrible ugly if I was to settle anythin’ while he was to the store.”
“And if he wouldn’t it’s a pity. Wives, obey your husbands, hey? But there ain’t no call for hurry. More haste less speed, I allus thinks. But I don’t want to keep you from your occupations. There air some visitors who forgit folks kin’t afford to keep more’n one Sunday a week, hey? Sorter devil’s darnin’-needles flyin’ into your ear—they worry you, and they don’t do themselves no good. So don’t you take no notice of me. I’ll jest talk to Matt to fill up the time.”
Mrs. Cattermole straightened herself against the door. “He won’t listen; he’s too mad.”
“I reckon I could tone him down some.”
“Guess not. He’s too sot—he won’t come in.”
“I ain’t proud. I’ll go to him. True pride is in doin’ what’s right, I allus thinks. Some folks kin’t see the difference between true pride an’ false pride. I’ll go to the kitchen.”
“I’d rayther you didn’t, deacon. It’s all in a clutter.”
The conversation drooped. The deacon’s mouth moved in mere chawing. Swallowing his quid in deference to the parlor, he cut himself a new chunk.
“You’ve heerd about the doctor, Mrs. Cattermole?” he began again.
“I dunno es I hev.”
“What! Not heerd about our doctor es was said to practise the Black Art?”
“Oh, the sorcerer es lives on the ole wood-road. My brother who drives the stage was tellin’ me ’bout it. He sets spirits turnin’ tables, tellin’ the future, an’ nobody’ll go past his house arter dark.”
“Ah, but the elders called on him last week,” said the deacon. “Of course we couldn’t hev him in the vestry. An’ he explained to the committee thet sperrits or devils ain’t got nuthin’ to do with it.”
“Lan’ sakes! An’ you believed him?”
“Waal, my motto is allus believe your fellow-critters. An evil mind sees a lookin’-glass everyways, hey? He jest showed us how to make a table turn and answer questions. He says it’s no more wonderful than turnin’ a grindstone.”
“I guess he’s pulled the wool over the eyes o’ the Church,” said Mrs. Cattermole, sceptically.
“Not hardly! He turned thet thar table in broad daylight with the Bible open upon it, to show thet Satan didn’t hev a look in.”
“The Bible on it! ’Pears to me terrible ongodly.”
“Ongodly! Why, you an’ me kin do it—two pillars o’ the Church! I guess the Evil One couldn’t come nighus, hey?”
“I dunno es it would turn if you an’ me was to do it.”
“You bet! It told me ’bout the future world, an’ my poor Susan’s Christian name, an’ how much to ast for my upland hay.”
“Good lan’!” cried Mrs. Cattermole. “An’ would it tell me whether my sister is through her sickness yet?”
“You may depend!”
“My! Thet’s jest great!” And Mrs. Cattermole eagerly inquired how one set about interrogating the oracle.
The deacon explained, adding that the parlor table would not do. It must be a rough deal table.
“Ah, the kitchin table,” said Mrs. Cattermole, walking into the elaborately laid trap.
“I dunno,” said the deacon, shaking his head. “Air you sure it ain’t too large for us to span around?”
“We could let the flaps down.”
The deacon chawed reflectively.
“Waal, it might,” he said, cautiously, at last. “There ain’t no harm in tryin’. We hedn’t ought to give up anythin’ without tryin’, I allus thinks. One never knows, hey?”
“I kinder think we ought to try,” said Mrs. Cattermole.
The deacon rose ponderously, and followed his guide into the kitchen.
“Why, there’s Matt!” he cried, in astonished accents. “Good-day, sonny.”
Matt strained his ears, but pursed his lips and rocked the cradle in violent impassivity. The deacon was uneasy at the boy’s sullen resentment. He could not understand open enemies.
“How’s your health, hey?” he asked, affectionately.
“Oh, I’m hunky dory,” said Matt, in off-hand school-boy slang.
“I’m considerable glad you’ve found a good place with rael Christians, Matt. I on’y hope you’ve made up your mind to work hard an’ turn over a new leaf. It’s never too late to mend, I allus thinks. You’re growin’ a young man, now; no more picter-makin’, hey? If it warn’t that you air so moony an’ lay-abed I’d give you a chanst on my own land, with pocket-money into the bargain, hey, an’ p’raps a pair o’ store shoes fur a Chrismus-box.”
A flame shot from Mrs. Cattermole’s now-opened eyes. She shut the cellar door with a vicious bang, but ere she could speak Matt cried out, “I wouldn’t come, not fur five shillin’s a week!”
“An’ who wants you to come fur money? What is money, hey? Is it health? Is it happiness? No, no, sonny. If money was any use, my poor Susan would hev been alive to this day. You’ll know better when you’re my age.”
He spat out now, directing the stream into the sink under the big wooden pump.
“Don’t worry ’bout him,” interposed Mrs. Cattermole. “Here’s the table.”
Deacon Hailey waved a rebuking palm. “Dooty afore pleasure, Mrs. Cattermole. See here, sonny, I’ve been talkin’ with Mrs. Cattermole ’bout you. She’s promised me to be a mother to you, Heaven bless her! But I kin’t forget you’ve got a mother o’ your own.”
“She ain’t my mother now, she’s Ruth’s mother,” said Matt, half divining the mumble of words.
“She’s mother to both o’ you. A large heart, thet’s what she’s got. An’ if she’s Ruth’s mother, then I’m your father, hey? An’ it ain’t right of you to disobey your father and mother. But young folks nowadays treats the commandments like old boots,” and the deacon sighed, as if in sympathy with the sorrows of a neglected decalogue.
“I’ve got no father an’ no mother,” said Matt. “An’ I’m goin’ to be a picture-painter soon es I kin. I won’t doanything else, thet’s flat. An’ when I’m bigger I’m goin’ to write to my uncle Matt and see if he kin sell my pictures fur me. If you was to drag me back by force, I’d escape into the woods. An’ I’d work my way to London to be handy my uncle Matt. I reckon he takes in ’prentices same es the boss here. So you jest tell my mother I’m done with her, see! I don’t want to hear any more ’bout it.”
His face resumed its set expression, and his rocking foot its violence.
The deacon cast a reproachful, irate glance at Mrs. Cattermole.
“Did I tell you a lie when I said he warn’t worth thet thar?”he vociferated, snatching the tin dipper from the water-bucket. The noise disturbed the baby, which began to whimper feebly. Matt turned his chair’s back on the deacon and gazed studiously towards the wood-house in the yard. The deacon’s face grew apoplectic. He seemed about to throw the dipper at the back of Matt’s head, but mastering himself he let it fall with a splash, and said, quietly: “I guess you won’t hev me to blame if he turns out all belly an’ no han’s. Some folks’d say I’m offerin’ you a smart, likely young man, with his heart in the wood-pile. But thet’s not Deacon Hailey’s way. He makes a pint of tellin’ the bad pints. He’s a man you could swap a horse with, hey? I tell you, Mrs. Cattermole, thet durned boy is all moonshine an’ viciousness, stuffed with conceit from floor to ridge-piece. Picters, picters, picters, is all he thinks about! Amoosin’ himself—thet’s his idee of life in this vale of tears. I reckon he thinks he’s goin’ to strike Captain Kidd’s treasure. But, arter all, he ain’tyourburden. I’ve giv his poor mother a home, an’ I ain’t the man to grudge bite an’ sup to her boy. So even now I don’t mind lettin’ you off. He’s my crost, and I’ve got to bear him. ’Tain’t no use bein’ a Christian only in church, hey?”
“I guess I’m a Christian, too,” said Mrs. Cattermole. “So I must bear with the poor lad an’ train him up some in the way he should go. An’ then there’s father. You’re a rael saint, deacon, but I sorter think where heaven is consarned father ’ud like a look-in es well. So let’s say no more ’bout it. Now, then, deacon, the table’s waitin’!”
He ignored the patient piece of furniture. “Waal, don’t blame me any if the buckwheat turns out bad,” he shouted, losing his self-control again, and spurting out his nicotian fluid at the stove like an angry cuttle-fish.
“Thet’s so,” acquiesced Mrs. Cattermole, quietly. “Now, then, Deacon Hailey, jest you set there.” She had taken a chair and placed her hands on the table.
“Hush!” said the deacon. “Don’t you see thet thar young un wakin’ up? The tarnation boy hes been shakin’ him like an earthquake. I didn’t know es you kep’ your baby in the kitchin or I wouldn’t hev troubled to come. When thet thar table kinder began to dance and jump, you wouldn’t thank mefur rousin’ the innocent baby, hey? Sleep, sleep, thet’s what a baby wants! A baby kin’t hev too much sleep an’ a grown-up person kin’t hev too little, hey? They’re a lazy slinky lot, the young men o’ the Province, sleepin’ with their mouths open, expectin’ johnny-cakes to fall into ’em. I wonder this young man here don’t get into a cradle hisself. He’d be es much use to his fellow-critters es makin’ picters, I do allow. This life’s a battle, I allus thinks, an’ star-gazin’ ain’t the way to sight the enemy, hey? I reckon I’ll git back now, Mrs. Cattermole. There’s ’nough time been wasted over thet limb of Satan. Jest you tell Cattermole what I say ’bout him, an’ if ever you git durned sick an’ tired feedin’ an onthankful lazybones, es you’re bound to git, sure es skunks, jest you remember Deacon Hailey is the Christian you’re lookin’ fur. An’ don’t you forgit it!” And very solemnly he strode without.
Mrs. Cattermole lifted her hands and brought them down again on the table with a thump. “The tarnation ole fox!” she cried, “tryin’ to bamboozle me with tales ’bout turnin’ tables. ’Tain’t likely es a table is goin’ to dance of itself, an’ tell me ’bout Maria’s sickness. Jest you come here, Matt, an’ lay your hands alongside o’ mine. What’s thet you’re doin’?”
For Matt had begun pensively adorning the hood of the cradle by means of a burned stick he had pulled from the stove.
“It’s on’y Ole Hey,” he said, reddening.
“Jest you leave off makin’ fun o’ your elders an’ betters,” she said, sharply. “There’ll be plenty of work fur you in the paint-shop.”
There was plenty of work, Matt found, in numerous other directions, too. Many more things than mechanical wood-cutting did the boy practise at Cattermole’s saw-mill. To begin with, Mrs. Cattermole’s apprehensions were justified and the spring freshets swept away the dam, and so Matt was set to work hauling brushwood and gravel and logs to build up a kind of breast-work. Cattermole was really a house-joiner and house-builder, so Matt acquired cabinet-making, decoration, and house-building. His farming and cattle-rearing experience was also considerably enlarged. He milked the cows, looked after fourstage-horses (driven by Mrs. Cattermole’s brother) and thirty-six sheep, cut firewood, cleared out barns, turned churns, hoed potatoes, mowed hay, fed fowls and pigs, and rocked the cradle, and, in the interval of running the circular and up-and-down saws in the mill, worked in the paint-shop at the back, graining and scrolling the furniture and ornamenting it with roses and other gorgeous flowers, sometimes even with landscapes. This was his only opportunity of making pictures, for recreation hours he had none. He rose at four in the morning and went to bed at ten at night. His wages were his food and clothes, both left off.
Mrs. Cattermole made his garments out of her husband’s out-worn wardrobe, itself of gray homespun.
But the hours in the paint-shop threw their aroma over all the others and made them livable.
And Cattermole, though a hard was not a harsh taskmaster, and had gentle flashes of jest when Mrs. Cattermole was out of ear-shot. And, though winter was long, yet there were seasons of delicious sunshine, when the blueberries ripened on the flats, or the apples waxed rosy in the orchard; when the air thrilled with the song of birds, and the dawn was golden.
In one of these seasons of hope he wrote to his uncle of his father’s death and his own existence, and Cattermole paid the postage; an ingenuous letter full of the pathetic, almost incredible ignorance of obscure and sequestered youth, and inquiring what chances there would be for him to reap fortune by painting pictures in London. He addressed the letter—with vague recollection of something in his school reading-book—to Mr. Matthew Strang, Painter, National Gallery, London.
It was not an ill-written letter nor an ill-spelt. Here and there the orthography was original, but in the main McTavit had been not ineffectual, and there were fewer traces of illiteracy about the epistle than might have been imagined from Matt’s talk. But in Matt’s mind the written and the spoken were kept as distinct as printed type and the manuscript alphabet; they ran on parallel lines that never met, and that “Amur’can” should be spelled “American” seemed no more contradictory than that “throo” should be spelled “through.” The grammarhe had used in scholastic exercises was not for everyday wear; it was of a ceremonious dignity that suited with the stateliness of epistolary communication. Alas! For all the carefulness of the composition, his uncle of the National Gallery gave no sign.
Matt’s suspense and sorrow dwindled at last into resignation, for he had come to a renewed sense of religion. As Mrs. Strang would have put it, he had found grace. There were a few pious books and tracts about the Cattermole establishment, to devour in stolen snatches or by bartering sleep for reading, and among these dusty treasures he lighted onThe Pilgrim’s Progress, with quaint wood-cuts. In the moral fervor with which the dramatic allegory informed him Matt felt wickedness an impossibility henceforward; his future life stretched before him white, fleckless, unstainable. Meanness or falsehood or viciousness could never touch his soul. How curiously people must be constituted who could knowingly prefer evil, when good thrilled one with such rapture, bathed one in such peace! Already he felt the beatitude of the New Jerusalem. The pictures he painted should begood, please God. They should exhibit the baseness of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, castigate the town of Carnal Policy; he would uplift the eyes of the wicked to the contemplation of the Shining Ones. Though, after all, he began to ask himself, could any picture equal Bunyan’s book? Was not a book immeasurably the better medium of expression? The suspicion was strengthened by the reading of a dime novel which his mistress’s brother, the stage-driver, had left lying about. It was the first unadulterated novel he had read, and the sensational episodes stirred his blood, his new-born religious enthusiasm died. He loved Mike the Bush-ranger, who was the hero of the novel. Action, strong, self-dependent action, a big personality—there lay the admirable in life. The Christians and Hopefuls were pale-blooded figures after all, and unreal at that. In actual life one only came across mimics who used their language: the Deacon Haileys or the Abner Preeps, to whom even thieving Tommy were preferable. No wonder Mike had been driven to bush-ranging! What a pity he himself had not remained in his forest hut, rebel against humanity, king ofthe woods! Ah! and how inadequate was paint to express the fulness of life; the medium was too childishly simple. At most one could fix a single scene, a single incident, and that only in its outside aspect. Books palpitated with motion and emotion. He set to work to write a dime novel, stealing an hour from his scanty night. He made but slow progress, though he began with an exciting episode about a white boy besieged in his log-hut by a party of Indians, and saved by the sudden advent of a couple of bears. The words he wrote down seemed a paltry rendition of his thought and inner vision, they were tame and scant of syllable. He discovered that his literary palette was even more pitiful than his pictorial. Still he labored on, for the goal was grand. And, despite his mental divorce between pronunciation and orthography, his spoken English improved imperceptibly through all this contact with literature.
Then one wonderful day—to be marked with a white stone and yet also with a black—he received a letter from England. All his artistic ambition flamed up furiously again as he broke the seal: