I went into my chamber and laid me down on my trundle bed.
I was contented. I no longer seemed to burn for the girl. Also, I knew she burned for no man. A vast sense of relief spread over me like a soft garment, warming and soothing me.
And so, pleasantly passed my sick passion for the Scottish girl; and pleasantly I fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXIII
WINTER AND SPRING
Snow came as it comes to us in the Northland — a blinding fall, heavy and monotonous — and in forty-eight hours the Johnstown Road was blocked.
Followed a day of dazzling sunshine and intense cold, which set our timbers cracking; and the snow, like finest flour, creaked under our snow-shoes.
All the universe had turned to blue and silver; and the Vlaie Water ran fathomless purple between its unstained snows. But that night the clouds returned and winds grew warmer, and soon the skies opened with feathery white volleys, and the big, thick flakes stormed down again, obliterating alike the work of nature and of man.
Summer House was covered to the veranda eaves. We made shovels and cleared the roofs and broke paths to stable and well.
Here, between dazzling ramparts, we lived and moved and had our being, week after week; and every new snow-storm piled higher our palisades and buried the whole land under one vast white pall.
Vlaie Water froze three feet solid; fierce winds piled the ice with gigantic drifts so that no man could mark the course of the creeks any more; and a vast white desolation stretched away to the mountains, broken only by naked hard-wood forests or by the interminable ocean of the pines weighted deep with snow.
Only when a crust came were we at any pains to set a watch against a war party from the Canadas. But none arrived; no signal smoke stained the peaks; nothing living stirred on that dead white waste save those little grey and whining birds which creep all day up and down tree-trunks, or a sudden gusty flight of snow-birds, which suddenly arrive from nowhere and are gone as suddenly.
Once a white owl with yellow eyes sat upon the ridge-pole of our barn; but our pullets were safe within, and Penelope drove him away with snowballs.
The deer yarded on Maxon; lynx-tracks circled our house and barn, and we sometimes heard old tassel-ears a-miauling on the Stacking Ridge.
And, toward the end of February, there were two panthers that left huge cat-prints across the drifts on the Johnstown Road; but they took no toll of our sheep, which were safe in a stone fold, though the oaken door to it bore marks of teeth and claws, where the pumas had striven hard to break in and do murder.
Save when a crust formed and we took our turns on guard, my Indian rolled himself in bear-furs by the kitchen oven, and like a bear he slept there until hunger awoke him long enough to gorge for another stretch of sleep.
Nick and I took axes to the woods and drew logs on a sledge to split for fire use. Our tasks, too, kept us busy feeding our live creatures, fetching water, keeping paths open, and fishing through the ice.
In idler intervals we carved devices upon our powder-horns, cured deer-skins in the Oneida fashion, boiled pitch and mended our canoe, fashioned paddles, poles, and shafts for fish-spears, strung snow-shoes, built a fine sledge out of ash and hickory, and made Kaya draw us on the crust.
So, all day, each was busy with tasks and duties, and had little leisure left for that dull restlessness which, in idle people, is the root of all the mischief they devise to do.
Penelope mended our clothing and knitted mittens and jerkins. All house-work and cooking she accomplished, and milked and churned and cared for the pullets. Also, she dipped candles and moulded bullets from the lead bars I found in the gun-room. And when our deer-skins were cured and softened, she made for us soft wallets, sacks, and pouches, and sewed upon them bright beads in the Oneida fashion, from the pack of trade beads in Sir William’s gun-room. She sewed upon every accoutrement a design done in scarlet beads, showing a picture of a little red foot.
Lord, but we meant to emerge from our snows in brave fashion, come spring-tide; for now our deer-skin garments were splendid with beads, and our fringes were green and purple. Also, Nick had trapped it some when opportunity offered, setting his line from Summer House along Vlaie Water to Howell’s house, thence across the frozen Drowned Lands to the Stacking Ridge, and from there back over the Spring Pool, and thence down-creek to the Sacandaga, where Fish House stood with its glazed windows empty as a blind man’s eyes.
He had, by March, a fine pack of peltry; and of these we cured and used sufficient muskrat to sew us blankets, and made a mantle of otter for Penelope and a hood and muff to match.
For ourselves we made us caps out of black mink, and sewed all together by our dip-lights in the red firelight, where apples slowly sizzled with the rich, sweet perfume I love to smell.
Sometimes Nick played upon his fife; and sometimes we all told stories and roasted chestnuts. Nick had more stories and more imagination than had I, and a livelier wit in the telling of tales. But chiefly I was willing to hear Penelope when she told us of her childhood in France, and how folk lived in that warm and sweet country, and what were their daily customs.
Also, she sang sometimes children’s songs of France, and other pretty ballads, mostly concerning love. For the French occupy themselves chiefly with love and cooking and the fine arts, I judge, and know how to make an art of eating, also. For there in France every meal is a ceremony; but in this land we eat not for the pleasurable taste which, in savory food, delights and tempts, but we eat swiftly and carelessly and chiefly to stay our hunger.
Yet, at times, food smacks smartly to my tongue; as when at Christmas tide I shot a great wild turkey on the Stacking Ridge; and when Penelope basted it in the kitchen my mouth watered as I sniffed the door-crack.
And again, gone stale with soupaan and jerked meat and fish soused or dried with salt, Nick shot a yearling buck near our barn at daylight; and the savour of his cooking filled all with pleasure.
Upon the New Year we made a feast and had a bottle of Sir William’s port, another of Madeira, a punch of spirits, and three pewters of buttery ale.
Lord! there was a New Year. And first, not daring to give drink to my Saguenay, we fed him till he was gorged, and so rolled him in a pile of furs till he slept by the oven below. Then we set twenty dips afire by the chimney, and filled it up with dry logs.... I am sorry we had so little sense; for I was something fuddled, and sang ballads — which I can not — and Nick would dance, which he did by himself; and his hornpipes and pigeon-wings and shuffles and war-dances made my head spin and my heavy eyes desire to cross.
Penelope’s cheeks burned, and she fanned and fanned her with a turkey wing and laughed to see Nick caper and to hear the piteous squalling which was my way of singing.
But she complained that the dip-lights danced and that the floor behaved in strange fashion, running like ripples on Vlaie Water in a west wind.
She had sipped but one glass of Sir William’s port, but I think it was a glass too much; for the wine made her so hot, so she vowed, that her body was all one ardent coal, and so presently she pulled the hair-pegs from her hair and let it down and shook it out in the firelight till it flashed like a golden scarf flung about her.
Her pannier basque of rose silk — gift of Claudia and made in France — she presently slipped out of, leaving her in her petticoat and folded like a Quakeress in her crossed foulard, and her white arms as bare as her neck.
Which innocently concerned her not a whit, nor had she any more thought of her throat’s loveliness than she had of herself in her shift that morning at Bowman’s.
She sat cooling her face with the turkey-wing fan and watching Nick’s contre-dancing — his own candle-cast shadow on the wall dancing vis-à-vis — and she laughed and laughed, a-fanning there, like a child delighted by the antics of two older brothers, while Nick whirled on moccasined feet in his mad career, and I fifed windily to time his gambolading.
Then we played country games, but she would not kiss
us as forfeit, defending her lips and vowing that no man should ever again take that toll of her.
Which contented me, though I remonstrated; and I was glad that Nick should not cheapen her lips though it cost me the same privilege. For we played “Swallow! Swallow!” and I guessed correctly how many apple pips she held in her hand when she sang:
“Who can count the swallow’s eggs? Try it, Master Nimble-legs! Climb and find a swallow’s nest, Count the eggs beneath her breast, Take an egg and leave the rest And kiss the maid you love the best!”
But it was her hand only we might kiss, and but one finger at that — the smallest — for, says she, “John Drogue hath said it, and I am mistress of Summer House! What I choose to give — or forgive — is of my proper choice.... And I do not choose to be kissed by any man whether he wears silk puce or deer-skin shirt!”
But the devil prompted me to remember Steve Watts, and my countenance changed.
“Do you bar regimentals?” I asked, forcing a wry smile.
She knew what was in my mind, for jealousy grinned at her out of my every feature; and she came toward me and laid her light hand upon my arm.
“Or red coat or blue, my lord,” she said, her smile fading to a glimmer, “men have had of me my last complaisance. Are you not content? You taught me, sir.”
“If he taught you that a kiss is folly, he taught you more folly than is in a thousand kisses!” cries Nick. “Why,” said he, turning on me, “you pitiful, sober-faced, broad-brimmed spoil-sport!” says he, “what are lips made for, you meddlesome ass, and be damned to you!”
Instantly we were in clinch like two bears; and we wrestled and strained and swayed there, panting and nigh stifled with our laughter, till we fell with a crash that shook the house and set the bottles clinking; and there thrashed like a pair o’ pups till I got his shoulders flat.
But it was nothing — he being the younger — and he leaped up and fell to treading an Oneida battle-dance, while Penelope and I did beat upon the table, singing:
“Ha-wa-sa-say! Hah! Ha-wa-sa-say—”
till the door opened and there stands my Saguenay, bleary-eyed, sleep-muddled, but his benumbed brain responsive to the thumping cadence of the old scalp-song.
But I pushed him down stairs ere he had sniffed a lung-full of our punch, having no mind to face a drink-mad Indian that night or any other.
So I went below and piled the furs upon him and waited till he snored before I left him to his hibernation.
Such childishness! Who would believe it of us that were no longer children! And all alone there in a little house amid a vast and wintry wilderness, where no living thing stirred abroad save the white hare’s ghost in the starlight, and the shadow of the lean, weird beast that tracked her.
Well, if we conducted like children we were as light-minded and as innocent. There was in our behaviour no lesser levity; in our mirth no grossness; in our jests and stories no license of the times nor any country coarseness in our speech.
Nor, in me, now remained aught of that sick-heart jealousy nor sentimental disorder which lately had seized me and upset my sense and reason.
My sentiments concerning Penelope seemed very clear to me now; — a warm liking; a chivalrous desire for her well-being and happiness; a pride that I had been, in some measure, the instrument which had awakened her to her own prerogatives in a world whose laws are made by men.
And if, on such an occasion as this, she gave us her countenance and even frolicked with us, there was a new and clearer note in her laughter, a swifter confidence in her smile, and, in voice and look and movement, a subtle and shy authority which had not been there in the inexperienced and candid child whose heart seemed bewildered when assaulted, and whose lips, undefended, rendered them to the first marauder.
I said as much, one day, to Nick.
“You’ve turned the child’s head,” said he, “with your kingly benefactions. You have but to woo her if you want her to wife.”
“Wife!” said I, scared o’ the very word. “What the devil shall I do with a wife, who am contented as I am? Also, it is not in her mind, nor in mine, who now are pleasant friends and comrades.... Also,” I added, “love is a disorder and begets a brood of jealousies to plague a man to death! I am calm and contented. I am enamoured of no woman, and do not desire to be so.... Although, when I pass thirty, and possess estates, doubtless I shall desire an heir.”
“And go a-hunting a mother for this same heir among the gilt-hats of New York,” said Nick. “Which is your destiny, John Drogue, for like seeks like, and a yeoman is born, not made; — and wears his rings in his ears — —”
“Have done!” said I impatiently. “I am of the soil! I love it! I love plowed land and corn and the smell of stables! I love my log house and my glebe and the smell of English grass!”
“But a servant is a servant, John Drogue, and the mistress of your roof shall have walked in silk before she ever puts on homespun and pattens for love of you! Lord, man! I am I, and you are you! And we mate not with the same breed o’ birds. No! For mine shall be a ground-chick of sober hue and feather; and your sweetheart shall have bright wings and own the air for a home.
“That is already written: ‘each after its kind.’ So God send you your rainbow lady from the clouds, and give you a pretty heir in due event; and as for me, if I guess right, my mate to be hath never fluttered higher than her garret nor worn a shred of silk till she sews her wedding dress!”
On the last day of March maple sap ran.
Nick and I set out that day to seek a sugar-bush for the new mistress of Summer House.
Snow was soft and our snow-shoes scarce bore us, but we floundered along the hard woods, and presently discovered a grove of stately maples.
All that day we were busy in the barn making buckets out o’ staves stored there; and on the first day of April we waded the softening snow to the new sugar-bush, tapped the trees, set our spouts and buckets, and also drew thither a kettle and dry wood against future need.
I remember that the day was clear and warm, where, in the sun, the barn doors stood open and the chickens ventured out to scratch about, where the sun had melted the snow.
All day long our cock was a-crowing and a-courting; the south wind came warm with spring and fluttered the wash which Penelope was hanging out to dry and whiten under soft, blue skies.
In pattens she tripped about the slushy yard, her thick, bright hair pegged loosely, and her child’s bosom and arms as white as the snow she stepped on.
Save only for my Saguenay, who stood on the veranda roof, resting upon his rifle, the scene was sweet and peaceful. Sheep bleated in yard and fold; cattle lowed in their manger; our cock’s full-throated challenge rang out under sunny skies; and everywhere the blue air was murmurous with the voice of rills running from the melting snows like mountain brooks.
On Vlaie Water the ice rotted awash; and already black crows were walking there, and I could see them busily searching the dead and yellow sedge, from where I sat hooping my sap-buckets and softly whistling to myself.
Nick made a snowball and flung it at me, but I dodged it. Then Penelope made another and aimed it at me so truly that the soft lump covered my cap and shoulders with snow.
But her quick peal of laughter was checked when I sprang up to chasten her, and she fled on her pattens, but I caught her around the corner of the house under the lilacs.
“You should be trussed up and trounced like any child,” said I, holding her with one hand whilst I scraped out snow from my neck with t’other.
At that she bent and flung a handful of snow over me; and I seized her, bent her back, and scrubbed her face till it was pink.
Choked with snow and laughter, we swayed together, breathless, she still defiant and snatching up snow to fling over me.
“You truss me up!” she panted. “Do you think you are more than a boy to use me as a father or a husband only has the right?”
“You little minx!” said I, when I had spat out a mo
uthful of snow, “is not anyone free to trounce a child! — —”
At that I slipped, or she tripped me; into a drift I went, and she pounced on me and sat astride with a cry of triumph.
“Now,” says she, “I shall take your scalp, my fine friend”; and twisted one hand in my hair.
“Hiu-u! Kou-ee!” she cried, “a scalp taken means war to the end! Do you cry me mercy, John Drogue?”
I struggled, but the snow was soft and I sank the deeper, and could not unseat her.
“I drown in snow,” said I. “Get up, you jade!”
“Jade!” cries she, and stopped my mouth with snow.
I struggled in vain; under her clinging weight the soft snow engulfed and held me like a very quicksand. I looked up at her and she laughed down at me.
“Do you yield you, John Drogue?”
“It seems I must. But wait! — —”
“You threaten!”
“No! Do you mean to drown me, you vixen!”
“You engage not to seek revenge?”
“I do so.”
“Why? Because you love me tenderly?”
“Yes,” said I, half choked. “Let me up, you plague of Egypt!”
“That is not a loving speech, John Drogue. Do you love me or no?”
“Yes, I do, — you little, — —”
“Little what?”
“Object of my heart’s desire!” I fairly yelled. “I am like to smother here! — —”
“This is All Fools’ Day,” says she, sick with laughter to see me mad and at her mercy. “Therefore, you must tell me lies, not truths. Tell me a pretty lie, — quickly! — else I scrub your features!”
After a helpless heave or two I lay still.
“You say you love me tenderly. That is a lie, John Drogue — it being All Fools’ Day. So you shall vow, instead, that you hate me. Come, then!”
“I hate you!” said I, licking the snow from my lips.
“Passionately?”
I looked up at her where deep in the snow, under the lilacs, I lay, my arms spread and her two hands pinning my wrists. She was flushed with laughter and I saw the devils o’ mischief watching me deep in her dark eyes.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 994