by Willa Cather
“Have you got a license, Canute?”
“No, I don’t want a license. I want to be married.”
“But I can’t marry you without a license, man. It would not be legal.”
A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian’s eye. “I want you to come over to my house to marry me to Lena Yensen.”
“No, I can’t, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like this, and my rheumatism is bad tonight.”
“Then if you will not go I must take you,” said Canute with a sigh.
He took down the preacher’s bearskin coat and bade him put it on while he hitched up his buggy. He went out and closed the door softly after him. Presently he returned and found the frightened minister crouching before the fire with his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his big muffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As he tucked the buffalo robes around him he said: “Your horse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this storm. I will lead him.”
The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shivering with the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the wind, he could see the horse struggling through the snow with the man plodding steadily beside him. Again the blowing snow would hide them from him altogether. He had no idea where they were or what direction they were going. He felt as though he were being whirled away in the heart of the storm, and he said all the prayers he knew. But at last the long four miles were over, and Canute set him down in the snow while he unlocked the door. He saw the bride sitting by the fire with her eyes red and swollen as though she had been weeping. Canute placed a huge chair for him, and said roughly,—
“Warm yourself.”
Lena began to cry and moan afresh, begging the minister to take her home. He looked helplessly at Canute. Canute said simply,—
“If you are warm now, you can marry us.”
“My daughter, do you take this step of your own free will?” asked the minister in a trembling voice.
“No sir, I don’t, and it is disgraceful he should force me into it! I won’t marry him.”
“Then, Canute, I cannot marry you,” said the minister, standing as straight as his rheumatic limbs would let him.
“Are you ready to marry us now, sir?” said Canute, laying one iron hand on his stooped shoulder. The little preacher was a good man, but like most men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror of physical suffering, although he had known so much of it. So with many qualms of conscience he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening with his head bent reverently and his hands folded on his breast. When the little man had prayed and said amen, Canute began bundling him up again.
“I will take you home, now,” he said as he carried him out and placed him in his buggy, and started off with him through the fury of the storm, floundering among the snow drifts that brought even the giant himself to his knees.
After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She was not of a particularly sensitive temperament, and had little pride beyond that of vanity. After the first bitter anger wore itself out, she felt nothing more than a healthy sense of humiliation and defeat. She had no inclination to run away, for she was married now, and in her eyes that was final and all rebellion was useless. She knew nothing about a license, but she knew that a preacher married folks. She consoled herself by thinking that she had always intended to marry Canute some day, any way.
She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she got up and began to look about her. She had heard queer tales about the inside of Canute’s shanty, and her curiosity soon got the better of her rage. One of the first things she noticed was the new black suit of clothes hanging on the wall. She was dull, but it did not take a vain woman long to interpret anything so decidedly flattering, and she was pleased in spite of herself. As she looked through the cupboard, the general air of neglect and discomfort made her pity the man who lived there.
“Poor fellow, no wonder he wants to get married to get somebody to wash up his dishes. Batchin’s pretty hard on a man.”
It is easy to pity when once one’s vanity has been tickled. She looked at the window sill and gave a little shudder and wondered if the man were crazy. Then she sat down again and sat a long time wondering what her Dick and Ole would do.
“It is queer Dick didn’t come right over after me. He surely came, for he would have left town before the storm began and he might just as well come right on as go back. If he’d hurried he would have gotten here before the preacher came. I suppose he was afraid to come, for he knew Canuteson could pound him to jelly, the coward!” Her eyes flashed angrily.
The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. It was an uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the window sills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou’s white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look at it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snake skins whose death rattle sounded every time the wind jarred the door.
“Canute, Canute!” she screamed in terror.
Outside the door she heard a heavy sound as of a big dog getting up and shaking himself. The door opened and Canute stood before her, white as a snow drift.
“What is it?” he asked kindly.
“I am cold,” she faltered.
He went out and got an armful of wood and a basket of cobs and filled the stove. Then he went out and lay in the snow before the door. Presently he heard her calling again.
“What is it?” he said, sitting up.
“I’m so lonesome, I’m afraid to stay in here all alone.”
“I will go over and get your mother.” And he got up.
“She won’t come.”
“I’ll bring her,” said Canute grimly.
“No, no. I don’t want her, she will scold all the time.”
“Well, I will bring your father.”
She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up to the keyhole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speak before, so low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear her.
“I don’t want him either, Canute,—I’d rather have you.”
For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a groan. With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw Canute stretched in the snow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the door step.
A NIGHT AT GREENWAY COURT.
I, Richard Morgan, of the town of Winchester, county of Frederick, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, having been asked by my friend Josiah Goodrich, who purports making a history of this valley, to set down all I know concerning the death of M. Philip Marie Maurepas, a gentleman, it seems, of considerable importance in his own country, will proceed to do so briefly and with what little skill I am master of.
The incident which I am about to relate occurred in my early youth, but so deeply did it fix itself upon my memory that the details are as clear as though it had happened but yesterday. Indeed, of all the stirring events that have happened in my time, those nights spent at Greenway Court in my youth stand out most boldly in my memory. It was, I think, one evening late in October, in the year 1752, that my Lord Fairfax sent his man over to my father’s house at Winchester to say that on the morrow his master desired my company at the Court. My father, a prosperous tobacco merchant, greatly regretted that I should be brought up in a new country, so far from the world of polite letters and
social accomplishments, and contrived that I should pass much of my leisure in the company of one of the most gracious gentlemen and foremost scholars of his time, Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Accordingly, I was not surprised at my lord’s summons. Late in the afternoon of the following day I rode over to the Court, and was first shown into my lord’s private office, where for some time we discussed my lord’s suit, then pending with the sons of Joist Hite, concerning certain lands beyond the Blue Ridge, then held by them, which my lord claimed through the extension of his grant from the crown. Our business being dispatched, he said:
“Come, Richard, in the hall I will present you to some gentlemen who will entertain you until supper time. There is a Frenchman stopping here, M. Maurepas, a gentleman of most engaging conversation. The Viscount Chillingham you will not meet until later, as he has gone out with the hounds.”
We crossed the yard and entered the hall where the table was already laid with my lord’s silver platters and thin glass goblets, which never ceased to delight me when I dined with him, and though since, in London, I have drunk wine at a king’s table, I have seen none finer. At the end of the room by the fire place sat two men over their cards. One was a clergyman, whom I had met before, the other a tall spare gentleman whom my lord introduced as M. Philip Marie Maurepas. As I sat down, the gentleman addressed me in excellent English. The bright firelight gave me an excellent opportunity for observing this man, which I did, for with us strangers were too few not to be of especial interest, and in a way their very appearance spoke to us of an older world beyond the seas for which the hearts of all of us still hungered.
He was, as I have said, a tall man, narrow chested and with unusually long arms. His forehead was high and his chin sharp, his skin was dark, tanned, as I later learned, by his long service in the Indes. He had a pair of restless black eyes and thin lips shaded by a dark mustache. His hair was coal black and grew long upon his shoulders; later I noticed that it was slightly touched with gray. His dress had once been fine, but had seen considerable service and was somewhat the worse for the weather. He wore breeches of dark blue velvet and leather leggins. His shirt and vest were of dark red and had once been worked with gold.
In his belt he wore a long knife with a slender blade and a handle of gold curiously worked in the form of a serpent, with eyes of pure red stones which sparkled mightily in the firelight. I must confess that in the very appearance of this man there was something that both interested and attracted me, and I fell to wondering what strange sights those keen eyes of his had looked upon.
“M. Maurepas intends spending the winter in our wilderness, Richard, and I fear he will find that our woods offer a cold welcome to a stranger.”
“Well, my lord, all the more to my taste. Having seen how hot the world can be, I am willing to see how cold.”
“To see that, sir,” said I, “you should go to Quebeck where I have been with trappers. There I have thrown a cup full of water in the air and seen it descend solid ice.”
“I fear it will be cold enough here for my present attire,” said he laughing, “yet it may be that I will taste the air of Quebeck before quitting this wilderness of yours.”
My lord then excused himself and withdrew, leaving me alone with the gentlemen.
“Come join me in a game of hazard, Master Morgan; it is yet half an hour until supper time,” said the clergyman, who had little thought for anything but his cards and his dinner.
“And I will look at the portraits; you have fleeced me quite enough for one day, good brother of the Church. I have nothing left but my diamond that I cut from the hand of a dead Rajpoot, finger and all, and it is a lucky stone, and I have no mind to lose it.”
“With your permission, M. Maurepas, I will look at the portraits with you, as I have no mind to play tonight; besides I think this is the hour for Mr. Courtney’s devotions,” said I, for I had no liking for the fat churchman. He, like so many of my lord’s guests, was in a sense a refugee from justice; having fallen into disgrace with the heads of the English church, he had fled to our country and sought out Lord Fairfax, whose door was closed against no man. He had been there then three months, dwelling in shameful idleness, one of that band of renegades who continually ate at my lord’s table and hunted with his dogs and devoured his substance, waiting for some turn of fortune, like the suitors in the halls of Penelope. So we left the clergyman counting his gains and repaired to the other end of the hall, where, above the mahogany book cases, the portraits hung. Of these there were a considerable number, and I told the Frenchman the names of as many as I knew. There was my lord’s father and mother, and his younger brother, to whom he had given his English estate. There was his late majesty George I., and old Firnando Fairfax. Hanging under the dark picture of the king he had deposed and yet loved was Firnando’s son, fighting Thomas Fairfax, third Lord and Baron of Cameron, the great leader of the commoners with Cromwell, who rode after Charles at Heyworth Moore and thrust the people’s petition in the indignant monarch’s saddle bow; who defeated the king’s forces at Naseby, and after Charles was delivered over to the commissioners of Parliament, met him at Nottingham and kissed his fallen sovereign’s hand, refusing to sit in judgment over God’s anointed.
Among these pictures there was one upon which I had often gazed in wonderment. It was the portrait of a lady, holding in her hand a white lily. Some heavy instrument had been thrust through the canvass, marring the face beyond all recognition, but the masses of powdered hair, and throat and arms were enough to testify to the beauty of the original. The hands especially were of surpassing loveliness, and the thumb was ornamented with a single emerald, as though to call attention to its singular perfection. The costume was the court dress of the then present reign, and with the eagerness of youthful imagination I had often fancied that could that picture speak it might tell something of that upon which all men wondered; why, in the prime of his manhood and success at court, Lord Fairfax had left home and country, friends, and all that men hold dear, renounced the gay society in which he had shone and his favorite pursuit of letters, and buried himself in the North American wilderness. Upon this canvas the Frenchman’s eye was soon fixed.
“And this?” he asked.
“I do not know, sir; of that my lord has never told me.”
“Well, let me see; what is a man’s memory good for, if not for such things? I must have seen those hands before, and that coronet.”
He looked at it closely and then stood back and looked at it from a distance. Suddenly an exclamation broke from him, and a sharp light flashed over his features.
“Ah, I thought so! So your lord has never told you of this, parbleau, il a beaucoup de cause! Look you, my boy, that emerald is the only beautiful thing that ever came out of Herrenhausen—that, and she who wears it. Perhaps you will see that emerald, too, some day; how many and how various they will yet be, God alone knows. How long, O Lord, how long? as your countrymen say.”
So bitter was his manner that I was half afraid, yet had a mind to question him, when my lord returned. He brought with him a young man of an appearance by no means distinguished, yet kindly and affable, whom he introduced as the Viscount Chillingham.
“You’ve a good country here, Master Norton, and better sport than we, for all our game laws. Hang laws, I say, they’re naught but a trouble to them that make ’em and them that break ’em, and its little good they do any of us. My lord, you must sell me your deer hound, Fanny, I want to take her home with me, and show ’em what your dogs are made of over here.”
“You are right welcome to her, or any of the pack.”
At this juncture my lord’s housekeeper, Mistress Crawford, brought in the silver candlesticks, and the servants smoking dishes of bear’s meat and venison, and many another delicacy for which my lord’s table was famous, besides French wines and preserved cherries from his old estates in England.
The viscount flung himself into his chair, still flushed from his chase after the hounds, and stretched his long limbs.
“This is a man’s life you have here, my lord. I tell you, you do well to be away from London now; it’s as dull there as Mr. Courtney’s church without its spiritual pastor.”
The clergyman lifted his eyes from his venison long enough to remark slyly, “Or as Hampton Court without its cleverest gamester,” at which the young man reddened under his fresh coat of tan, for he had been forced to leave England because of some gaming scandal which cast grave doubts upon his personal honor.
The talk drifted to the death of the queen of Denmark, the king’s last visit to Hanover, and various matters of court gossip. Of these the gentlemen spoke freely, more freely, perhaps, than they would have dared do at home. As I have said, my lord’s guests were too often gentlemen who had left dark histories behind them, and had fled into the wilds where law was scarce more than a name and man had to contend only with the savage condition of nature, and a strong arm stood in better stead than a tender conscience. I have met many a strange man at Greenway Court, men who had cheated at play, men who had failed in great political plots, men who fled from a debtor’s prison, and men charged with treason, and with a price upon their heads. For in some respects Lord Fairfax was a strangely conservative man, slow to judge and slow to anger, having seen much of the world, and thinking its conditions hard and its temptations heavy, deeming, I believe, all humanity more sinned against than sinning. And yet I have seldom known his confidence to be misplaced or his trust to be ill repaid. Whatever of information I may have acquired in my youth, I owe to the conversation of these men, for about my lord’s board exiles and outlaws of all nations gathered, and unfolded in the friendly solitude of the wilderness plots and intrigues then scarce known in Europe.