by Unknown
Then Gil cried out, “Look, there’s smoke!”
She saw it feebly beginning to rise from the chimney. Somehow it made the rain seem drearier than ever. She wanted to say, “Oh, let’s go home.” But then, in a saving moment, she took hold of herself. For better or worse she had married him, she was out of reach of home; it would have to be her business to change the looks of the place.
They came up to the door, the cart creaking in the rain. The door opened. A rawboned gray-haired woman, in a faded, dirty calico dress that had been blue once upon a time, was holding a basket with two pinks in it. She looked completely taken aback.
“Why, Gil,” she said. “You surely did surprise me. I was figuring to get the place ready for you. I’d only lit the fire and was going to set these pinks out by the door.”
Gil held out his hands to help Lana down.
“You go inside,” he said. “I’ll unload. This is Mrs. Weaver, Lana.”
The woman opened her arms and clasped Lana, without letting go the pinks.
“My God,” she said. “I’m surely glad to see you. I’ve heard enough about you, Lord He knows it. But you’re even prettier than Gil let on!”
2
DEERFIELD (1776)
1. The Peacock’s Feather
A small haystack stood beside the shed. That was one of the great advantages of the Martins’ place-the fact that part of it was already open land and covered with swamp grass. Most people, opening new land, had to let their cattle browse for what they could find in winter, having barely enough corn leaves to subsist their horses on. “We could keep two teams on the natural grass in that old beaver fly,” Gil said more than once, “if we could afford to buy that many horses.” They had harvested the hay together, Gil mowing and Lana raking, and both pitching it onto the cart through a week of dry breezy weather. Her father had taught her a little about thatching and she had put in two days’ work on the stack. Though it looked to her a bungling kind of job compared to the work her father did, Gil swore that there was no better-looking stack between Schenectady and the Indian country.
But everything she did seemed to please him. The way she had fixed the cabin over, arranged their scanty furniture to make the place look, he said, as if they’d lived in it for years. The way she sanded the floor every morning; and the little cotton curtains she made for the two windows, stringing them on cord. It had been exciting, after that first gloomy day of their arrival, to unpack the two trunks and the boxes from the cart. Gil had had no idea of all the things in them. “You brought a complete outfit,” he said. She felt a little shy, replying, “I told Mother there wasn’t any sense in me bringing a lot of clothes, and such things. I told her I’d rather have the money spent in house things.”
The cabin lost its dreariness when they had the dresser set up against the wall beside the fireplace, with its dishes laid out on the shelves. It was one her father had made of pine in his young married days, with scalloped mouldings, but it had been put by upstairs years before when he brought home the maple cupboard he bought in Caughnawaga. It had seemed like an old and clumsy piece. When Lana asked for it, her mother had been glad to let it go. But now, in its new place, the dresser looked impressively handsome. It gave Lana a comforting feeling to see it there, and to think that her father and mother must have admired it together in their first house.
On its shelves she placed her brown earthenware plates, the baking dish, and the six glasses from Albany. On the top shelf out of harm’s way she put the Bible and the white china teapot that had been her Grandmother Lana’s, and the peacock’s feather that her mother had given her out of the cluster of six, so that she should have a reminder of home always in sight. War on sea or land could not affect its fantastical colors.
When Mrs. Weaver saw it first, she held up both her hands and marveled stridently.
“It’s like the feather off an angel’s wing. You say it come from an actual bird?”
“Oh, yes,” said Lana.
“What might such a bird be called?”
“A peacock, Mrs. Weaver.”
“Think of that!” exclaimed Mrs. Weaver. “I wonder what he looks like.”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Would they be wing feathers, do you suppose?”
“My mother had an uncle who went to sea,” said Lana modestly. “He said it was off the peacock’s tail. Mother inherited them. She has five at home.”
“You certainly know a lot,” Mrs. Weaver said admiringly.
Mrs. Weaver made Lana feel very proud. She examined all the other fixings of the cabin with a new respect; she went upstairs into the loft and sat upon the bed, bouncing a little.
“That’s a dandy bed,” she said.
“Mother made it for me. It’s all genuine white goose.”
“God! Imagine! I ain’t seen a genuine white goose since I come up here. Your Ma must have been a knowing person, Mrs. Martin.”
She tried the spinning wheel, saying it ran nice but felt a little light for a woman like herself. “I’ll bet, though, that a dancey body like yourself would get a first-rate tone out of it.”
But what inevitably attracted her was the peacock’s feather. She stopped again before it, holding her hands before her petticoat, tight down against her legs. Her curving nose looked rigid with the wonder of it. Her kindly mouth was hushed. Her gray eyes shone. Beside her Lana looked small and young and frail.
“My,” said Mrs. Weaver. “I’ll have to tell George about it right away.”
As a result, George Weaver came at noon, a bulky, square-faced man, with solid wrists and a deliberate way of talking. He stood before the feather, breathing loudly through his nose, for quite a while, before he turned to Lana and Gil.
“A man could hardly paint a thing like that,” he said, pointing to the heart-shape in the eye. He shook his head. “No, sir, not hardly. You’ve married yourself quite a girl, Gil.”
His slow, good-humored eyes fixed themselves on Lana with respect. “Would you mind showing that thing to John and Cobus sometime, ma’am?”
“Why, I’d be glad,” said Lana.
“I’ll send them over sometime, then,” he said.
“You ought to tell Demooth,” Mrs. Weaver said. “I’d like to have his Missis look at that. Maybe she won’t feel so fine and mighty.”
“Now Emmy,” said her husband in his slow fashion. “She ain’t so bad. It’s just the way she talks.”
Mrs. Weaver snorted.
“Anyways,” she said, “if you stand there admiring all day you won’t get any dinner to eat.”
They went outside, Gil and Lana following them to the door.
“You come over anytime you’re mind to,” Mrs. Weaver said to Lana.
“Thank you, Mrs. Weaver. I’m pretty busy right now, but I’d like to later on.”
“Everybody’s busy settling a new house,” Mrs. Weaver nodded.
The two Martins watched their neighbors move off down the cart track: the faded calico hanging limp down the woman’s straight, vigorous back; the man’s woolen shirt drawn tight over his round shoulders.
“They’re nice people, Gil,” said Lana.
He agreed.
“They’re plain,” he said, “but they’re good neighbors.”
Word of the peacock’s feather got round Deerfield in a day. First John and Cobus Weaver came to see it. Gil was finishing his last hoeing of the corn and Lana was boiling clothes in the iron kettle at the outdoor fireplace. They stared at her curiously, rather as if they expected to see the feather sprouting on her.
John, fourteen years old, was spokesman for the pair.
“Are you Mrs. Martin?” he asked.
Lana nodded cheerfully. Their freckled faces were very sober. They examined her from head to toe. Cobus, who gave promise of his father’s beamy build, rubbed the calves of his scratched, bitten legs together; but John stood upright on both feet, his hands behind his back, his shirt and trousers parting company to show his belly button, a
nd stared frankly.
“Pa said you had a feather you’d be willing to show us.”
“Yes, if you want to see it. Come inside.”
She wrung the water from her hands and led them in. They did not say a word, but stood side by side, and stared, but when they left they thanked her with gravity and marched solemnly down the cart track to the woods. Just as they reached the brush she heard them yell, and looking up she saw them running home with all their might.
The Realls came over in a mass: Mrs. Reall, a talkative woman, dressed in a French red short gown, though her face was almost colorless and her hair light faded brown; and Mr. Reall, a sly-looking meaching man, if ever Lana had seen one, carrying the youngest child in his arms. The other seven trailed behind in a gradation of age and size to the three-year-old, who was barely able to keep up. They had a rascally look about them, and they swarmed all over the cabin, chattering back and forth as if the Martins had never been.
The children wished to take the feather down, but Gil was good-hu- moredly firm about that. “They might break it,” he said, “even without meaning to.”
“That’s the truth,” Mrs. Reall said tolerantly to Lana. “There ain’t a thing they won’t break or destroy some way, if they get a-hold of it. You know the way children act.”
The youngest child, on Christian Reall’s lap, began to bawl, and she snatched it from him, opened up her blouse, and started nursing it. Throughout the rest of the visit, the child continued nursing, puffing and sucking away, even when Mrs. Reall went upstairs to examine the bed.
“My, my,” she said, surreptitiously lifting the coverlet to feel the blankets, “you surely have nice things. I used to myself, before I got to bearing children.” She shifted the baby to the other breast and led the way downstairs. “You and Gilly will have to come on over to our place next Sunday,” she invited. “Most generally Kitty reads us Bible Sundays. Weavers come, and sometimes Mark Demooth. Missis come once, but the children seemed to bother her. She ain’t been in two years.” She whispered significantly, “Kitty, he’s a great reader. Reads as loud as any parson. You’d be surprised, the meaching kind of a man he looks.”
They went away like a tailing swarm of bees, or like a bunch of rabbits, as Gil said. “Reall’s religious,” he said to Lana. “But they’re just like rabbits, all of them, the way they breed, and run around.”
“Nobody seems to like Mrs. Demooth,” Lana said. “What’s she like?”
“She’s all right, I guess,” said Gil. “But he married her somewhere down near Schenectady. Her folks had money. I guess she don’t like it up here much. And Mark being a captain in the militia, she likes to tend her place.”
Mrs. Demooth did not arrive for several days. When she did come for her call,-she emphasized the fact that she was calling Lana had been helping Gil clear brush.
Mrs. Demooth made her feel conscious of her heat and soiledness. The woman carried a parasol against the sun, a faded thing, ridiculous to see in the woods, and she wore a white cap on her hair. She bent her head when Lana invited her in from the heat and perched herself on their one chair, beside the hearth, while Lana sat on a low stool across from her.
“It’s real nice of you to come and see me,” Lana said, anxious to be polite.
“Don’t say so,” said Mrs. Demooth. She dabbed her face with a small handkerchief. “I meant to come much sooner. I would surely have come. But you know how it is. I have to watch that hired girl of mine during wash days. I declare sometimes I think it’s more work having hired help than doing the work yourself.”
Lana, who was tired and hot, and cross with herself, felt like saying, “Oh, indeed, Mrs. Demooth.” But she nodded instead.
“That’s a real nice teapot, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Demooth. “What is it, Wedgwood?”
“I don’t know,” said Lana. “It’s white chinaware, I think.”
And it was Mrs. Demooth who said, “Oh, indeed.” Her voice made Lana bristle; she flushed all the way to her eyes and bit her lip.
Mrs. Demooth was looking round her.
“You’ve got one of those feathers, I see,” she said, pointing at the peacock’s feather with her parasol. “We used to have a bunch of them at home, but it was terrible the way they collected the dust.”
Lana only stared at her, and after a moment more Mrs. Demooth rose.
“You’re tired,” she said kindly. “Do you like it up here, Mrs. Martin?”
“Yes; why?”
“I suppose one’s bound to when one’s just married. But it was dreary for me, coming here. These cabins. We’ve lined ours with boards, anyway. That helps. But one gets so tired of the woods; first they’re so still you hear yourself breathing; then at night there’s all the noise the frogs, the bugs. It’s terrible.” Her voice broke for an instant, and her thin and sullen face puckered so childishly that for an instant Lana could feel sorry for her. “And now there’s this awful war. My folks were King’s people. I don’t understand what everything’s about. And now Mark’s a downright Whig, on the Committee, captain of the militia. He ought to know, I suppose. But I feel so terrible when he’s away. He says there’s chance of the army coming down against us from the west. He talks about our moving down to Herkimer. Of course Mr. Butler wouldn’t do anything to me, but the Indians you can’t ever tell about what they’ll do. Every time Mark goes to a meeting, I’m left alone. …”
Her voice trailed off.
“Yes,” said Lana, finally. “It must be lonesome. But I guess there’s nothing a woman can do about it.” She tried to shift the woman’s thoughts. “Nobody’s got a right to be taxed,” she said, “without their say-so.”
“Probably not,” said Mrs. Demooth. “I don’t know, I’m sure. It don’t seem right-the price of tea, I mean.”
She halted in the door.
“I’m sure,” she said over her shoulder, “that some real tea would be a tonic to you. You must come and visit with me and have some. You must really, Mrs. Martin. It’s such a pleasure to me to have found one woman up here I can talk to.”
“Thank you,” said Lana in a muffled voice.
“And, my dear girl,” continued Mrs. Demooth. “You shouldn’t work so hard in the fields. That’s a man’s job. They bring us here and shut us up here. And I say they ought to do their own work. You’re overtired. Over-wrought. Remember. Come and see me.”
She went out.
When Gil came in to see why Lana had not returned, he found her hunched upon her knees and sobbing.
“What’s the matter?” he asked irresolutely from the door. “Did she turn nasty on you?”
Lana looked up at him with wet eyes.
“She said I hadn’t ought to work with you. She said I got too tired.”
“Maybe she’s right,” he said doubtfully. “If you wasn’t tired you wouldn’t be crying now.” He looked defensive. “I said you hadn’t ought to come out with me to-day. Brushing’s the hardest work there is.”
“I don’t care,” said Lana. “I’m strong. I want to work. I want to be out with you. It’s all there is to do.” She looked round her contemptuously. “This place,” she said scornfully, “why, a little girl could mind it in half a morning.” Her eyes traveled over Gil’s uneasy face and fell upon the feather. “Oh, Gil. She said it was an awful thing for collecting dust!”
In a vague way, Gil understood. He clumsily put his arm over her shoulders and kissed her.
“Gil!” she said. “I could have bitten her. I like it here. I love being here with you. I’m not afraid when I’ve got work to do.”
“Why,” he said, “what’s there to be afraid of anyway? I’m looking out for you, ain’t I?”
“I don’t know, Gil. Not Indians. I don’t know.”
Their eyes met, and they smiled.
“I guess I am just mad, Gil. I thought it was so fine in here till she came in.” She wiped her nose. “I can’t imagine. I ain’t been homesick hardly at all. I been busy trying to be useful.”
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“You’ve helped fine. I guess it was that woman. No doubt Mark’s told her muster day will be next week.”
He stared through the window at the green, shadowed edge of the woods.
“Muster day?” asked Lana.
“Yes. The four of us has to go down and drill with our company at Schuyler. I never thought of it before.”
“You have to go?”
“Yes,” he said. “The fine’s five shilling if you don’t turn up. I can’t afford to pay that. I guess I’ll go down and see the captain tomorrow about it.”
2. Captain Demooth
Next morning Gilbert Martin walked down to see Demooth. Though they had no children, the Demooths lived in a double cabin. It was big enough to have the air of a house, perhaps because they had let in so many glass sashes, even in the gable ends of the loft. Inside, also, it was boarded with pine. A kitchen on the ground floor, and a sitting room, where the captain had his desk of mahogany wood; a hall between that joined the two halves of the cabin it seemed like a manor in the woods.
A small separate cabin housed his farm hand, Clem Coppernol, a can-tankerous elderly man, who lived by himself.
“Where’s Demooth?” asked Gil, meeting Coppernol in the cornfield.
Coppernol raised up from feeling of a squash and pointed his thumb.
“Writing letters in the office,” he said.
Gil went to the house.
Mrs. Demooth had not yet appeared, and Nancy, the hired girl, with a long braid down her back and big stupid blue eyes, was clearing the breakfast dishes.
“Morning, Mr. Martin,” she said, rolling her eyes towards Gil, and then immediately roUing them away. “You want him? He’s inside.”
Gil thanked her and crossed the big kitchen with its bricked-in hearth, went down the short hall that connected the two halves of the house, where he saw with envy Demooth’s rifle and shotgun hung on deerhorns, each with its powder flask and shot pouch, and tapped on the door of the sitting room.