The Pioneers

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “Our poverty would not permit us to pay for two passages,” said the youth, with the extraordinary emotion with which he ever alluded to the degraded state of his family; “I was left in the Province to wait for his return, and when the sad news of his loss reached me, I was nearly penniless.”

  “And what didst thou, boy?” asked Marmaduke in a faltering voice.

  “I took my passage here in search of my grandfather; for I well knew that his resources were gone, with the half pay of my father. On reaching his abode, I learnt that he had left it in secret; though the reluctant hireling, who had deserted him in his poverty, owned to my urgent entreaties that he believed he had been carried away by an old man who had formerly been his servant. I knew at once it was Natty, for my father often——”

  “Was Natty a servant of thy grandfather?” exclaimed the Judge.

  “Of that, too, were you ignorant?” said the youth, in evident surprise.

  “How should I know it? I never met the Major, nor was the name of Bumppo ever mentioned to me. I knew him only as a man of the woods, and one who lived by hunting. Such men are too common to excite surprise.”

  “He was reared in the family of my grandfather; served him for many years during their campaigns at the west, where he became attached to the woods; and he was left here as a kind of locum tenens on the lands that old Mohegan (whose life my grandfather once saved) induced the Delawares to grant to him, when they admitted him as an honorary member of their tribe.”

  “This, then, is thy Indian blood?”

  “I have no other,” said Edwards, smiling;—“Major Effingham was adopted as the son of Mohegan, who at that time was the greatest man in his nation; and my father, who visited those people when a boy, received the name of the Eagle from them on account of the shape of his face, as I understand. They have extended his title to me. I have no other Indian blood or breeding; though I have seen the hour, Judge Temple, when I could wish that such had been my lineage and education.”

  “Proceed with thy tale,” said Marmaduke.

  “I have but little more to say, sir. I followed to the lake where I had so often been told that Natty dwelt, and found him maintaining his old master in secret; for even he could not bear to exhibit to the world, in his poverty and dotage, a man whom a whole people once looked up to with respect.”

  “And what did you?”

  “What did I! I spent my last money in purchasing a rifle, clad myself in a coarse garb, and learned to be a hunter by the side of Leatherstocking. You know the rest, Judge Temple.”

  “Ant vere vast olt Fritz Hartmann?” said the German reproachfully. “Didst never hear a name as of olt Fritz Hartmann from ter mout of ter fader, lat?”

  “I may have been mistaken, gentlemen,” returned the youth; “but I had pride and could not submit to such an exposure as this day even has reluctantly brought to light. I had plans that might have been visionary; but, should my parent survive till autumn, I purposed taking him with me to the city, where we have distant relatives who must have learnt to forget the Tory by this time. He decays rapidly,” he continued, mournfully, “and must soon lie by the side of old Mohegan.”

  The air being pure and the day fine, the party continued conversing on the rock, until the wheels of Judge Temple’s carriage were heard clattering up the side of the mountain, during which time the conversation was maintained with deep interest, each moment clearing up some doubtful action and lessening the antipathy of the youth to Marmaduke. He no longer objected to the removal of his grandfather, who displayed a childish pleasure when he found himself seated once more in a carriage. When placed in the ample hall of the mansion house, the eyes of the aged veteran turned slowly to the objects in the apartment, and a look like the dawn of intellect would, for moments, flit across his features when he invariably offered some useless courtesies to those near him, wandering painfully in his subjects. The exercise and the change soon produced an exhaustion that caused them to remove him to his bed, where he lay for hours, evidently sensible of the change in his comforts and exhibiting that mortifying picture of human nature which too plainly shows that the propensities of the animal continue even after the nobler part of the creature appears to have vanished.

  Until his parent was placed comfortably in bed, with Natty seated at his side, Effingham did not quit him. He then obeyed a summons to the library of the Judge, where he found the latter, with Major Hartmann, waiting for him.

  “Read this paper, Oliver,” said Marmaduke to him, as he entered, “and thou wilt find that, so far from intending thy family wrong during life, it has been my care to see that justice should be done at even a later day.”

  The youth took the paper, which his first glance told him was the will of the Judge. Hurried and agitated as he was, he discovered that the date corresponded with the time of the unusual depression of Marmaduke. As he proceeded, his eyes began to moisten, and the hand which held the instrument shook violently.

  The will commenced with the usual forms, spun out by the ingenuity of Mr. Van der School; but after this subject was fairly exhausted, the pen of Marmaduke became plainly visible. In clear, distinct, manly, and even eloquent language, he recounted his obligations to Colonel Effingham, the nature of their connection, and the circumstances in which they separated. He then proceeded to relate the motives of his long silence, mentioning, however, large sums that he had forwarded to his friend, which had been returned with the letters unopened. After this, he spoke of his search for the grandfather, who had unaccountably disappeared, and his fears that the direct heir of the trust was buried in the ocean with his father.

  After, in short, recounting in a clear narrative the events which our readers must now be able to connect, he proceeded to make a fair and exact statement of the sums left in his care by Colonel Effingham. A devise of his whole estate to certain responsible trustees followed; to hold the same for the benefit, in equal moieties, of his daughter, on one part, and of Oliver Effingham, formerly a major in the army of Great Britain, and of his son, Edward Effingham, and of his son, Edward Oliver Effingham, or to the survivor of them, and the descendants of such survivor, forever, on the other part. The trust was to endure until 1810, when, if no person appeared or could be found after sufficient notice to claim the moiety so devised, then a certain sum, calculating the principal and interest of his debt to Colonel Effingham, was to be paid to the heirs at law of the Effingham family, and the bulk of his estate was to be conveyed in fee to his daughter, or her heirs.

  The tears fell from the eyes of the young man, as he read this undeniable testimony of the good faith of Marmaduke, and his bewildered gaze was still fastened on the paper when a voice that thrilled on every nerve spoke near him, saying:

  “Do you yet doubt us, Oliver?”

  “I have never doubted you!” cried the youth, recovering his recollection and his voice, as he sprang to seize the hand of Elizabeth. “No, not one moment has my faith in you wavered.”

  “And my father——”

  “God bless him!”

  “I thank thee, my son,” said the Judge, exchanging a warm pressure of the hand with the youth; “but we have both erred; thou hast been too hasty, and I have been too slow. One half of my estates shall be thine as soon as they can be conveyed to thee; and if what my suspicions tell me be true, I suppose the other must follow speedily.” He took the hand which he held, and united it with that of his daughter, and motioned towards the door to the Major.

  “I telt you vat, gal?” said the old German, good-humoredly. “If I vast as I vast ven I servit mit his grandfader on ter lakes, ter lazy tog shouldn’t vin ter prize as for nottin.”

  “Come, come, old Fritz,” said the Judge; “you are seventy, not seventeen; Richard waits for you with a bowl of eggnog, in the hall.”

  “Richart! Ter duyvel!” exclaimed the other, hastening out of the room. “He makes ter nog ast for ter horse. I vilt show ter Sheriff mit my own hants! Ter duyvel! I pelieve he sweetens mit ter yankee me
lasses!”

  Marmaduke smiled and nodded affectionately at the young couple and closed the door after them. If any of our readers expect that we are going to open it again, for their gratification, they are mistaken.

  The tête-à-tête continued for a very unreasonable time; how long we shall not say; but it was ended by six o’clock in the evening, for at that hour Monsieur Le Quoi made his appearance agreeably to the appointment of the preceding day and claimed the ear of Miss Temple. He was admitted, when he made an offer of his hand, with much suavity, together with his “amis beeg and leet’, his pe‘re, his me‘re, and his sucreboosh.” Elizabeth might possibly have previously entered into some embarrassing and binding engagements with Oliver, for she declined the tender of all, in terms as polite, though perhaps a little more decided, than those in which they were made.

  The Frenchman soon joined the German and the Sheriff in the hall, who compelled him to take a seat with them at the table, where, by the aid of punch, wine, and eggnog, they soon extracted from the complaisant Monsieur Le Quoi the nature of his visit. It was evident that he had made the offer as a duty which a well-bred man owed to a lady in such a retired place, before he left the country, and that his feelings were but very little, if at all, interested in the matter. After a few potations, the waggish pair persuaded the exhilarated Frenchman that there was an inexcusable partiality in offering to one lady and not extending a similar courtesy to another. Consequently, about nine, Monsieur Le Quoi sallied forth to the rectory on a similar mission to Miss Grant, which proved as successful as his first effort in love.

  When he returned to the mansion house, at ten, Richard and the Major were still seated at the table. They attempted to persuade the Gaul, as the Sheriff called him, that he should next try Remarkable Pettibone. But, though stimulated by mental excitement and wine, two hours of abstruse logic were thrown away on this subject; for he declined their advice, with a pertinacity truly astonishing in so polite a man.

  When Benjamin lighted Monsieur Le Quoi from the door, he said, at parting:

  “If so be, Mounsheer, you’d run alongside Mistress Prettybones, as the Squire Dickens was bidding ye, ’tis my notion you’d have been grappled; in which case, d’ye see, you mought have been troubled in swinging clear again in a handsome manner; for tho’f Miss ’Lizzy and the parson’s young’un be tidy little vessels, that shoot by a body on a wind, Mistress Remarkable is sum’mat of a galiot fashion; when you once takes ’em in tow, they doesn’t like to be cast off again.”

  CHAPTER XLI

  Yes, sweep ye on!—We will not leave,

  For them who triumph those who grieve.

  With that armada gay

  Be laughter loud, and jocund shout—

  —But with that skiff

  Abides the minstrel tale.

  LORD OF THE ISLES

  THE events of our tale carry us through the summer; and after making nearly the circle of the year, we must conclude our labors in the delightful month of October. Many important incidents had, however, occurred in the intervening period; a few of which it may be necessary to recount.

  The two principal were the marriage of Oliver and Elizabeth and the death of Major Effingham. They both took place early in September, and the former preceded the latter only a few days. The old man passed away like the last glimmering of a taper; and though his death cast a melancholy over the family, grief could not follow such an end.

  One of the chief concerns of Marmaduke was to reconcile the even conduct of a magistrate with the course that his feelings dictated to the criminals. The day succeeding the discovery at the cave, however, Natty and Benjamin re-entered the jail peaceably, where they continued, well fed and comfortable, until the return of an express to Albany, who brought the Governor’s pardon to the Leatherstocking. In the meantime, proper means were employed to satisfy Hiram for the assaults on his person; and on the same day, the two comrades issued together into society again, with their characters not at all affected by the imprisonment.

  Mr. Doolittle began to discover that neither architecture nor his law was quite suitable to the growing wealth and intelligence of the settlement; and after exacting the last cent that was attainable in his compromises, to use the language of the country, he “pulled up stakes,” and proceeded further west, scattering his professional science and legal learning through the land; vestiges of both of which are to be discovered there even to the present hour.

  Poor Jotham, whose life paid the forfeiture of his folly, acknowledged before he died that his reasons for believing in a mine were extracted from the lips of a sibyl, who, by looking in a magic glass, was enabled to discover the hidden treasures of the earth. Such superstition was frequent in the new settlements; and after the first surprise was over, the better part of the community forgot the subject. But, at the same time that it removed from the breast of Richard a lingering suspicion of the acts of the three hunters, it conveyed a mortifying lesson to him which brought many quiet hours, in future, to his cousin Marmaduke. It may be remembered that the Sheriff confidently pronounced this to be no “visionary” scheme, and that word was enough to shut his lips at any time within the next ten years.

  Monsieur Le Quoi, who has been introduced to our readers, because no picture of that country would be faithful without some such character, found the island of Martinique, and his “sucreboosh,” in possession of the English; but Marmaduke and his family were much gratified in soon hearing that he had returned to his bureau, in Paris; where he afterwards issued yearly bulletins of his happiness and of his gratitude to his friends in America.

  With this brief explanation, we must return to our narrative. Let the American reader imagine one of our mildest October mornings, when the sun seems a ball of silvery fire, and the elasticity of the air is felt while it is inhaled, imparting vigor and life to the whole system—the weather, neither too warm nor too cold, but of that happy temperature which stirs the blood, without bringing the lassitude of spring. It was on such a morning, about the middle of the month, that Oliver entered the hall where Elizabeth was issuing her usual orders for the day, and requested her to join him in a short excursion to the lake side. The tender melancholy in the manner of her husband caught the attention of Elizabeth, who instantly abandoned her concerns, threw a light shawl across her shoulders, and concealing her raven hair under a gypsy, she took his arm and submitted herself, without a question, to his guidance. They crossed the bridge and had turned from the highway, along the margin of the lake, before a word was exchanged. Elizabeth well knew, by the direction, the object of the walk and respected the feelings of her companion too much to indulge in untimely conversation. But when they gained the open fields, and her eye roamed over the placid lake, covered with wild fowl already journeying from the great northern waters to seek a warmer sun, but lingering to play in the limpid sheet of the Otsego, and to the sides of the mountain, which were gay with the thousand dyes of autumn, as if to grace their bridal, the swelling heart of the young wife burst out in speech.

  “This is not a time for silence, Oliver!” she said, clinging more fondly to his arm. “Everything in nature seems to speak the praises of the Creator; why should we, who have so much to be grateful for, be silent?”

  “Speak on!” said her husband, smiling. “I love the sounds of your voice. You must anticipate our errand hither. I have told you my plans: how do you like them?”

  “I must first see them,” returned his wife. “But I have had my plans, too; it is time I should begin to divulge them.”

  “You! It is something for the comfort of my old friend Natty, I know.”

  “Certainly of Natty; but we have other friends besides the Leatherstocking to serve. Do you forget Louisa and her father?”

  “No, surely; have I not given one of the best farms in the county to the good divine. As for Louisa, I should wish you to keep her always near us.”

  “You do!” said Elizabeth, slightly compressing her lips; “but poor Louisa may have oth
er views for herself; she may wish to follow my example and marry.”

  “I don’t think it,” said Effingham, musing a moment;

  “I really don’t know any one hereabouts good enough for her.”

  “Perhaps not here; but there are other places besides Templeton and other churches besides ‘New St. Paul’s.’ ”

  “Churches, Elizabeth! You would not wish to lose Mr. Grant, surely! Though simple, he is an excellent man. I shall never find another who has half the veneration for my orthodoxy. You would humble me from a saint to a very common sinner.”

  “It must be done, sir,” returned the lady, with a half-concealed smile, “though it degrades you from an angel to a man.”

  “But you forget the farm.”

  “He can lease it, as others do. Besides, would you have a clergyman toil in the fields?”

  “Where can he go? You forget Louisa.”

  “No, I do not forget Louisa,” said Elizabeth, again compressing her beautiful lips. “You know, Effingham, that my father has told you that I ruled him and that I should rule you. I am now about to exert my power.”

  “Anything, anything, dear Elizabeth, but not at the expense of us all; not at the expense of your friend.”

  “How do you know, sir, that it will be so much at the expense of my friend?” said the lady, fixing her eyes with a searching look on his countenance, where they met only the unsuspecting expression of manly regret.

  “How do I know it? Why, it is natural that she should regret us.”

  “It is our duty to struggle with our natural feelings,” returned the lady; “and there is but little cause to fear that such a spirit as Louisa’s will not effect it.”

  “But what is your plan?”

  “Listen, and you shall know. My father has procured a call for Mr. Grant to one of the towns on the Hudson, where he can live more at his ease than in journeying through these woods; where he can spend the evening of his life in comfort and quiet; and where his daughter may meet with such society, and form such a connection, as may be proper for one of her years and character.”