OHIO
THE QUEEN OF THE SWAMP
Time, 1846
OnChristmas Day a large congregation poured from George’s Chapel into the early dusk. Quarterly meeting, which for a week had drawn together, not only the neighborhood, but people from Millersport, Basil, and even Kirkersville, closed that afternoon. The presiding elder and his assistants were wrapping up their throats and joking with each other, for the occasion had been blessed with converts and a fairly liberal collection.
These men must ride on around the circuit, risking health, and accepting whatever fell to their lot, yet nothing checked their flow of spirits. The only solemn person near the group was Mr. Warner, a local preacher and exhorter, who habitually prayed with a war-whoop, and kept the young peopletittering at his pompous phrases. His father, an aged apparition, tottering on a stick, was circulating genially to shake every hand, known or unknown, and inquire, toothlessly, “Hi-ya! hi-ya! how’s your consarn?” which being interpreted meant, “How are you, how are you, how’s your concern?” (in religion).
Women clustered together near the red-hot stove, exclaiming to each other, as their work-worn palms met, “Hoddy-do, Mis’ Waddell, does your family keep well?” and “Law! Mis’ Davis, it’s good for sore eyes to see you out to meetin’ once more!” “Yes, I been kept close all fall, but I told him it wouldn’t do, we must come to big meetin’.” “It’s been a good time. One o’ my boys,” the speaker pressing her neighbor’s hand, “was gathered in, and I have my suspicions the other’s touched.” “Yes, there’s more under conviction than’ll own to it.”
They made excuses to each other for neglecting neighborly duties in the past, butpromised, now such good sleighin’ had set in, to go more. One had had whooping-cough in her family, another a teething baby, and not a few had been very busy getting the butchering done and making sausage. The men-folks were also constantly hauling with the teams.
Warm Christian feeling pervaded the whole separating assembly, even the young girls greeting each other with unusual affection. The young men drove their conveyances up to the door, exchanging merry remarks; there were many fine horses, and some of the sleighs were painted, but the general vehicle was a wagon-bed, stuffed with straw and comforters, and running on two short sleds called “bobs.”
Theophilus Gill’s sleigh was of this pattern, and he intended to drive the young folks to Macauley’s. His spirited team pranced so that he stood up to control it, though at full height Theophilus Gill was but a little fellow. He had, however, a strong black beard.
“How many goin’ in our load, Theoph?” inquired Philip Welchammer, resting one foot on the forward runner.
“’Bout ten couple. Mart, he’s got to take his mother home, so he won’t be along.”
“You feel like as if you could spare him?”
“I always ken. Now, don’t you go to cut me out if I try to engage her company for Sunday night.”
“Oh, you and Mart fer it,” said Philip. “I ain’t fer cuttin’ neither of ye out. But Persilla Thompson’s a pretty girl.”
“She’s the Queen of the Swamp,” said little Gill, with emphasis.
Priscilla at this moment stepped down from the chapel threshold into the snow, to wait for her party. Philip brought her to the sled and Gill insisted on placing her in a warm and sheltered place just behind the driver’s bench, which he had specially prepared for her.
“Macauley’s is makin’ a big house-warmin’this Chris’mas,” remarked Priscilla’s little suitor to her. “They’s four tables full of old folks to their turkey-roast, and the young folks all invited in the evenin’. I reckon the old lady’s doin’ it for Mart. She’s bound for him to marry that Miller girl, some says.”
Priscilla replied, with pleasant nonchalance, she reckoned so. She did not look at Mart Macauley at all, but she saw him watching her while he untied his bay filly, and held its head until his mother finished talking with her dinner guests.
He had loved Priscilla Thompson when she was a little girl with black plaits of hair hanging down her linsey back. In those days he gave her a bead purse, and whipped all her tormentors. When she began to be a big girl he shyly courted her, stopping his plough by the fence if he saw her coming, and dropping in of a Sunday night to see her brother, whom he despised, and who had since married and left him without excuse for his visits. When she got a certificateand went into the Kemmerer neighborhood to teach school, with her clothes neatly packed in a large wicker basket, he had no peace of mind all summer. He had himself been to Worthington to college, but in all his experience saw no one to compare with her. Wherever he saw her, so modest and lovely in manner, he cherished the ground her shoes rested on. The cold air gave her a bright color, which the depth and length of her bonnet could not conceal. She wore a wadded alpaca cloak and cloak cape, and Martin’s memory showed him how trimly under these her delaine dress was coat-sleeved to her arm and pointed at her waist.
Mrs. Macauley, climbing into her own sleigh, could take no exceptions to Priscilla Thompson’s manner or appearance, though she would have done so gladly for the benefit of her favorite son. Mrs. Macauley disliked the Thompsons. Her husband before his death objected to them. She thought little Theophilus Gill the best match in theneighborhood for Priscilla Thompson. Her own large light-haired son was too dutiful to marry without her consent. She was educating him to be a doctor; the younger boys could work the farm under her direction. She expected Martin to do his family credit by looking higher than the Thompsons.
Priscilla, on her part, held Mrs. Macauley in secret aversion. She felt sorry for Martin’s younger brothers and sisters, who were all obliged to stand in a row and take pills or tincture before breakfast. Mrs. Macauley was too high-handed and all-prevailing. Priscilla’s disposition was cheerful, but that Ohio region known as the Swamp could not escape the tinge of the period, and at that date the extremely feminine woman with a bias toward melancholy was the standard. Mrs. Macauley was so mannish that Priscilla thought her fully entitled to the tufts of beard in her moles.
The young people crowded merrily into Theophilus Gill’s sled. They all knew howmatters stood between the Macauleys and Thompsons. The Thompsons, excepting Priscilla, who was a reticent girl, talked about the Macauleys, and the Macauleys held their heads rather high, excepting Mart; but he thought the world of his mother. The girls suspected Priscilla was going to-night because her staying away would make talk. Some of them believed Theophilus Gill would get her, and others thought things might take a turn so that she would marry Mart Macauley after all.
There was a day when she would have given half her life to go to Macauley’s, but stayed away. That was when Martin broke his collar-bone racing his bay filly. Nobody knew that she hid in her father’s field corn-crib all that day. Yet it was not an occasion for extravagant fears. Mrs. Macauley was the best nurse in Fairfield County, and soon had her son mended to perfection.
A few flakes of snow fell on Gill’s load, and made it all the merrier. No joke couldfail to strike fire at once on the steel-clear air, and many a time-honored one was repeated by the young men as their fathers before them had repeated it, and enjoyed by the girls as their mothers had enjoyed it.
Philip Welchammer was pitied for having his arm out of place, and Nora Waddell, discovering it at that instant around her, told him tartly thereisfolks that their room’s better than their comp’ny. Upon this he genially retorted that she never made no such fuss when they were out sleigh-ridin’ alone; and Nora glowed in her red merino hood while the laugh turned upon her.
Then a girl’s voice, to cover her confusion, started a thrilling old revival hymn, and the load poured its bass and treble through the lines. Darkness approached as near as the white world would allow. The triumphant strain echoed among treetops and stirred emotion in Priscilla.
“There, there on eagles’ wings I soar,And sense and sin are felt no more.There heaven comes down our souls to greet,And glory crowns the Mercy Seat—And glo-ry crowns the Mer-cy Seat.”
“There, there on eagles’ wings I soar,And sense and sin are felt no more.There heaven comes down our souls to greet,And glory crowns the Mercy Seat—And glo-ry crowns the Mer-cy Seat.”
“There, there on eagles’ wings I soar,
And sense and sin are felt no more.
There heaven comes down our souls to greet,
And glory crowns the Mercy Seat—
And glo-ry crowns the Mer-cy Seat.”
The road was bounded by that distinctively American fence, the rail, or stake-and-ridered, showing drifts of snow in its angles, and white lines like illuminations along the top of every lichened rail. The sled flew over corduroy spaces now deeply bedded. On each side the trees rose out of frozen pools, from which they seemed to conduct a glazed coating upward, for every twig glinted icily through the dusk. In spring-time, when the Feeder and creek rose out of banks, acres of this swamp lay under water, with moss scum and rotting leaves at the top and bottom.
Priscilla found always in these woods a solemn beauty. Her wildest dream was of living deep in their summer shade with an unnamed person, and sitting on the doorstep at nightfall, her hand locked in his. The amber lights, the cry of tree-frog and locust, the mysterious snap of twigs, thereverberating bark of a dog, the ceaseless motion of water under a foot-log, all gave her delight. One spring she worked in her father’s sugar-camp. A bark shelter that they passed reminded her of it, of collecting the sugar-water, watching the bubbling kettles, and dropping the wax on snow, of stirring-off, which was such a festival, and at the same time such a miracle, for you could feel the hardening wax grain to sugar on your tongue.
Theophilus Gill turned his horses from the road, and drove through a gap into the woods.
“What are you doin’ that for?” exclaimed John Davis, who loved a horse, like every good Ohio man, but was always ready to sacrifice it to his comfort or speed.
Theophilus explained there was a bad bit of road ahead, and the circuit through the woods might be better.
If he dreaded cutting his team’s ankles, the danger was not lessened by this choiceof routes. For after some easy progress and much winding among saplings and jarring against stumps, they descended to a seldom-used bridge across the Feeder, standing like an island in a frozen lake. Theophilus Gill drew up his horses. There was not room in which to turn back, and the occupants of the sled rose with some apprehension.
Nora Waddell said she would never go over that bridge. Theophilus observed doubtfully he’d risk gettin’ the team across, but mebby some of the boys had better walk over and lighten the load.
Everybody alighted except the driver, who cautiously, and reassuring his snorting horses, moved across the ice and up the bridge. It shook under their tread to such a degree that nearly all the party resolved to trust the ice in preference, and pushed their tracks carefully upon the snow-covered Feeder. Besides Nora Waddell, Philip Welchammer took under his charge Mary Thompson, Priscilla’s flighty young sister,who was barely fifteen and in short dresses, but so headstrong that she would go into company whenever Priscilla did. Starts and exclamations were finally blended into a general outcry, for the ice gave way, and several figures disappeared to their very necks. Then the young men who had landed were prompt in action, while some of the girls showed courage and pioneer swiftness of resource. Philip and his two companions were pulled out, and huddled, dripping, into the sled, all available covering being piled upon them. Everybody scrambled in, and Theophilus, restraining his horses, asked, in an excited shout, if they were all in. Mary Thompson, through her chattering teeth, retorted, “Of course all of us were in, and if he did not mean to kill us entirely, he’d better whip up and get to some fireplace.”
Thus reproached, and by the Swamp Queen’s sister, the young man drove with such zeal that his horses ran away, and were restrained from tearing the vehicleto bits against logs and fences only by his utmost strength and horsemanship.
Thus the party came like a whirlwind up the open lane to Macauley’s, and were hurried into the three-story house, while Macauley’s boys led the horses away to a barn of similar magnitude, where long rows of stalls and shining flanks were discernible by lantern-light.
No less than three fireplaces had blazing logs piled to the very chimney throats. Sarah Macauley conducted the girls upstairs to the best room, from which opened a bedchamber where they laid off their wraps. The young men found a similar haven on the other side of the staircase. And it was pleasant to hear the logs snap while frost lay so thick on the two upper porches which were let into the sides of the house.
Macauleys were very well off indeed. The estate consisted of fifteen thousand dollars cash, besides a couple of farms, and the largest homestead in the township. Mr.Macauley had accumulated all this, after breaking up twice during his career, paying security debts. Nearly all the floors were carpeted in home-made stripe or hit-or-miss, and the best beds reared backs as lofty and imposing as the backs of elephants.
Numbers of young women, arrived before this party, were basking in the best room, their hair and collars smoothed, and their eyes taking keen neighborly notes while the hum of conversation went on. Miss Miller from Millersport was there, and appeared a worthy rival for Priscilla Thompson. She had pink cheeks, and pretty brown hair on a low, delicate forehead, these charms being distractingly set in an all-wool blue merino dress and ribbon headdress to match. Miss Miller possessed two thousand dollars in her own right, and would come in for all her father’s property when he died. Besides, she had attended select school in Lancaster, and some said she was so fine she would cut a bean in two rather than lift the whole of it on the point of her knife to her very pretty mouth.
Mrs. Macauley lost not an instant in dosing her drenched guests with hot whiskey and ginger stew. Other raiment was provided for them. When all the young people had arrived and warmed themselves, they were to descend to the dining-room, one of the largest apartments ever seen in those days, supported by a row of posts across the centre, and floored by oak as smooth as glass. The name of kitchen would have fitted it as well, for here the family cooked. One of those new-fashioned iron machines called stoves stood beside the fireplace, having a pipe to carry its smoke into the chimney. But Mrs. Macauley often said it was not half as much use to her as the Dutch ovens she always baked in, over the coals.
A line of chairs waited around the sides of the dining-room. The pantry, opening at one end, half revealed stacks of Christmas provisions on shelves.
But there was to be no such godless amusement as dancing. The young peoplewould frolic and play plays with kissing penalties, which could by no means corrupt them as much as joining hands and jumping to the tune of a fiddle.
Groups were already descending to the dining-room, and Mary Thompson struggled hard to hook one of Sarah Macauley’s dresses over her stouter waist.
“Your sister didn’t come?” remarked Sarah politely, in the modulated voice that her mother trained.
“Yes, she did,” exclaimed Mary. “She was along with the load. Why, where is Persill?”
This inquiry at once became general. Priscilla was nowhere in the house. The panic-stricken company could not remember seeing her since crossing the Feeder. They all thought she returned to the sled with them. John Davis was sure he helped her in.
Theophilus Gill, turning livid around the edges of his beard, said the horses might have gone to Jericho for all of him, andhe’d ’tended to Persilla Thompson himself if he had known the rest of the boys wasn’t goin’ to. Priscilla’s sister began to cry aloud, and such young ladies as did not accompany her gazed at each other in pale apprehension. But Mrs. Macauley came sternly to the front. She would not allow Mary Thompson to proclaim that Priscilla was drowned, and Theoph Gill had done it, and she forbade the party falling into a panic.
Her son Martin had his filly and sleigh ready, and while she snatched blankets and brandy, she marshaled forth such young men to form a separate search party as seemed suitable in her eyes. Mrs. Macauley would not have Priscilla Thompson drowned in the Feeder, and left strict orders on her own offspring against any such impression—which the whole company obeyed. Then she got into the sleigh, and Mart galloped his filly.
He made but one remark to his mother during this ride.
“If she’d come along with us asIwanted her to, this wouldn’t have happened, mother!”
His face showed ghastly through the dark, and his husky voice jarred the breast of the woman who bore him.
The sleigh and the sled containing the young men both stopped at that unused bridge standing in the midst of the Feeder. They all called Priscilla’s name, the winter night’s stillness magnifying the sound. And for reply they had a void of silence.
Mart was for dropping into the hole and searching under the ice, but his mother sternly restrained him. She sent the young men down stream, and she walked across the bridge with her son, separating from him afterward that they might search the woods in different directions.
Down the Feeder, men’s voices raised melancholy echoes—“Persilla! Hoo-o-o, Persil-la! Persilla Thompson!”
The solemn winter woods could not daunt Mrs. Macauley. She gave no nervous startat twigs snapping under the snow-crust, but searched large spaces with vigor. It did hurt her to hear Mart calling the girl in such a tone, and to remember what he had said to his mother. In those days people weighed their words, and every sentence meant something. Martin’s slight reproach to Mrs. Macauley was the first he had ever uttered.
Treading among naked saplings, with now and then a ghostly pawpaw leaf rustling against her face, she came to the bark sugar-house, and met Mart at its open side, carrying Priscilla in his arms. Priscilla was too terrified and exhausted to speak aloud, having crept out of the Feeder as far as this shelter. Icicles hung to her clothing, and she had lost her bonnet and cloak cape. She clung around Mrs. Macauley’s neck, crying like a baby, and very unlike the dignified young woman that her small circle had always considered her. Perhaps this softness had its effect on a nature bent on commanding and protecting.
In half an hour the young folks at Macauley’s knew that Mart’s mother brought Priscilla home on her lap, wrapped in blankets, and dosed with brandy every few rods. The searchers in the sled, arriving but little later, said Priscilla must have been clear under the ice by the looks of it where she crept out. But the Feeder was so shallow right there that she could walk on the bottom.
All festivity remained suspended while the hostess, like some mysterious medicine-woman, worked over her patient. A few groups in the dining-room played “fist’ock,” and other very mild sitting diversions which could be suspended in an instant, the players looking up with concern to receive the latest bulletin from Priscilla.
But she recovered so rapidly that every spirit rose, as did the general opinion of Mrs. Macauley’s skill. John Davis remarked staidly to Darius Macauley that he believed Darius’s mother knew more about doctorin’ horses, even, than most of thehorse doctors in the country, but Darius replied with some grimness, she wasn’t settin’ up for that.
Finally Priscilla was able to come downstairs, holding to Mart’s arm, and helped on the other side by his mother, and everybody said they entered the dining-room like a bridal couple about to stand up, for she was pale and handsome enough to be a bride, and he looked scared and anxious enough to be a groom. Priscilla made the effort to come down, not only because Mrs. Macauley considered her sufficiently restored to do so, but also because she did not want to check the merriment of the party.
They put her in a large chair against one of the central posts, and Sarah Macauley, as soon as she could catch breath for surprise, exclaimed, loud enough to be heard by all around her, though fortunately not by the head of the family:—
“Why, mother! you’ve put that flowered silk dress on her that father brought you from Philadelphia when he went over themountains with a drove of horses! You said you was goin’ to save that for the oldest son’s wife.”
The guests near Sarah looked significantly at each other, and Miss Miller, being among them, tossed her head and tittered.
“Anybody who wasanxiousto marry into your family,” she remarked to Sarah, “ought to fall sick and send for your mother, and give her all the trouble in the world. That’s the surest way to get her consent.”
Miss Miller pursed her lips. She wanted to correct any impression that she had favored Mart Macauley, and at the same time utter a few strictures.
“Yes, mother’s a good nurse,” said Sarah innocently.
“She’ll nurseyou,” whispered Darius, with a warning nudge, “when she hears what you said about that flowered silk.”
“Don’t tell her,” begged his sister. “I’ll do your share of the milkin’ all the rest of the week, if you won’t.”
“Well,” assented Darius provisionally, “mebby I won’t.”
The flowered silk had been constructed for Mrs. Macauley when she was much less matronly in shape than on this Christmas night, and by reason of being put away so long had got into fashion again. It was so rich and thick that it was famed through the neighborhood as being able to stand by itself, but, having retired to lavender and camphor, was not expected forth any more until the occasion of Mart Macauley’s infair dinner.
Priscilla never looked so pretty as she did on this Christmas night. She took no part in the plays, but they sold pawns over her head, and the penalties she inflicted were considered brilliant.
“Heavy, heavy, what hangs over your head!” said John Davis, the seller, holding Miss Miller’s real gold ring. Her father had tried that ring with aquafortis before he allowed her to buy it of the peddler.
“Is it fine or superfine?” inquired Priscilla.
“Superfine,” said John, pulling his neckerchief with an air. “What must be done to redeem it?”
“Let the owner make a charade.”
This sent Miss Miller, with assistants, giggling into the pantry. And a grand charade they exhibited, for Miss Miller had picked up such things among the Lancaster young people, and was not sorry to show her knowledge. First the actors came in supporting each other and weeping aloud. In their second act there were several dumb weddings, and in their third the weddings were repeated with a change of partners. After long guessing, everybody was struck with admiration to discover that the word was Bal-ti-more.
Then John sold Martin’s big handkerchief over Priscilla’s head, informing her it was fine only. And the possessor was bid to bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one he loved best, which Martin did, perambulating about the room in a long search, but coming back to Priscilla inevery instance, covering her with confusion, and exciting the company to hilarity.
Mrs. Macauley having discreetly retired, they played “London Bridge is swept away,” furnishing the music with their own voices. The figures and changes made it very similar to the “Virginia Reel,” and Mrs. Macauley would have thought it sounded like a dance had she not known “London Bridge,” to be an innocent marching play.
Supper was served at ten o’clock, with plates and white-handled knives and forks held upon the knee, this variety of refreshment being called a lap supper. The Macauley genius for cookery shone resplendent. Such cold meats and pickles and spiced breads, such coffee (made at a neighboring house in a wash-boiler, by Mrs. Macauley, just before she retired), such varieties of cake and pie, such metheglin and root beer, flowed upon the guests as only Macauleys knew how to make and brew.
“You don’t seem to be havin’ as good a time as the rest,” observed Philip Welchammerto Theophilus Gill, when the plates were being collected, and his plate retained a pile of scarcely touched dainties.
“Oh, I’m gittin’ along, I’m gittin’ along,” said Theophilus.
“You ’pear kind o’ sober.”
“Well, ’twas a scare,” apologized Theophilus.
“But that’s all over now.”
“Yes, it’s all over,” assented the black-bearded lover, with a sigh. And plucking up animation, he added, “Mart has kind o’ took the bit in his teeth, hain’t he?”
“He has that. It’s a match now, if Persilla’s a mind to have him. The old lady, she’s turned round and set herself that way too. I shouldn’t be surprised if the’s an infair to this house by next Chris’mas.”
“No, neither would I,” said Theophilus, shaking his head, and making a grimace as if the action hurt him. He had a stirring, money-making disposition, while Mart Macauley’s tastes were those of a student, and he thought himself as good a match. Butthere was no accounting for the tricks of fate.
Philip laughed in a heartening and sympathetic fashion.
“I reckon the’ won’t be no chance for you next Sunday night, nor any other Sunday night this year, now,” he said.
“Mebby not,” said Theophilus. “But if Mart Macauley gits her, he gits the Queen of the Swamp, sure as you’re born. She’ll always be that, come what will.”