They buried the broken body of Teddy Barnes in a little oak grove on the
lower plateau, and the dead leaves on the branches soughed in gentle
requiem to the words:
"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," as they fell from the clergyman's lips.
With serious faces soldiers stood around the open grave. Earth dropped
upon the coffin. The boom of guns echoed over forest and lake, and then,
as the sounds died away, the shrill note of the bugle told of a spirit
that had gone too soon to the God who gave it. The funeral service was
ended.
"My men," said the deep voice of the Colonel as he glanced at the faces
around him. "This sad duty is over. We have buried a comrade who fell,
not fighting in battle, but doing his duty; and in his burial we have
given him the honors due the bravest soldier when struck down at the
cannon's mouth.
"But, my men, we do not live for the dead, but for the living. We are
still practically without shelter, and though it is Sunday, I must bid
you work with might and main. Every man must be at his post. The
quarters for the officers, and barracks for the men, must be built and
have the shingles on before the rain comes. Otherwise we must face
disaster. So I ask you to disband until after dinner, and then, at one
o'clock sharp, your work must begin again."
Standing around the grave of their comrade the two companies of the
100th sent up a rousing cheer for their Colonel, and then, scattering,
each man went where he listed.
"That Colonel of yours is well named," said Latimer to Helen in the
afternoon, as he entered the little coop of the _Bumble Bee_, where she
was writing. "He's got a mighty good headpiece. Those fellows of his
work like niggers when he tells 'em to."
"And should they not?" she asked, looking up from her folder.
"Of course, it's their duty, and all that, but I've often seen fellows
shirk right again orders the moment the captain's back was turned."
"Perhaps they didn't have the right kind of a captain."
"That's about it," returned Latimer, nodding his head. "Though it's not
their regular dooty, and it's Sunday, them sojers are workin' like all
possessed--one lot sawin' an' choppin' an' splittin' an'
haulin'--t'other lot havin' a reg'lar raisin' bee. They'll have the
walls o' both them housen up by night, or my name ain't Latimer."
"I don't think Sir George would have the men working that way to-day if
it were not necessary," said Helen, seriously; but she remembered a note
in her diary, written in the days of their long march.
"It's necessary, sure enough, or they wouldn't have a shingle laid
before the flood comes. But the funny part of it is that the boys should
put on their best lick to-day. I reckon that speech of the Colonel's did
the bizness. If I'd been one of them, I'd ha' done my best, too."
For some time Latimer stood beside the little stove without further
comment, and Helen resumed her writing.
"Say, Mrs. Manning!" he exclaimed at last. "Do you think the Colonel has
any idee how the war's going? In a week or two the snow'll be all gone,
an' the ice broke up, an' to me it 'pears like he must be 'specting the
Yankee ships up to the bay here, or he wouldn't be buildin' a fort."
"You should ask the Colonel," replied Helen, diplomatically. "I can't
tell you, perhaps he can. But about our buildings, the sooner they go up
the better. This terrible winter seems to have lasted a year at least."
"Golly, no. It has just been the ordinaire. Still, I'll be glad to have
it open up an' get my boat out agin. Do you know it's jess bootiful out
yon' on the water when the spring comes. The hull east side of the bay
is chuck full o' islands, and they're as purty as a pictur. There are
thousands of 'em, little bits of fellows and great big ones, scattered
up and down like lambs on a pasture field or hickory nuts in the woods.
An' then they're all covered wi' bushes and trees like. What I've seen
of 'em allus looked like the place my old mother told of, where the
fairies lived, and, by jove, nobody but fairies could live there,
anyway, for they're nothin' but solid rock, the hull kit of 'em."
"Now you're talking sense for the fust time," said Mrs. Latimer, from
the other side of the cribbed little room. "It's one o' the most
dangerous lakes you could find anywheres. Nawthing but rocks, rocks,
rocks, an' many a boat goes to smash on 'em every year, an' no tellin'
how many lives are lost, for they never come back to tell the story."
"I didn't say they warn't dangerous," returned Latimer, sagely holding
his head to one side. "I jess said they was bootiful, and so they is. It
ain't every one can tell a purty thing when they see it; and more than
that," he added sententiously, "the bay is prolific."
"Of what?" his wife asked in supreme contempt.
"Why," he replied in disgust, "of fishes."
"Awh!" she interjected.
"I don't think there's a place on the lakes where the fishin's as good
as Georgian Bay. There's whitefish an' salmon trout, an' bass, an'
pickerel, an' sturgeon, an' muskilonge, 'an goodness knows how many
others. Oh, you can talk as you like, but when the sun is settin' in
big gold flashes--green islands all around you--clear water, still as
glass, beneath you--an' then the bass catchin' your hook as fast as you
throw it in, life's jest about worth livin'!"
"Ned's on one of his tangents again," said Mrs. Latimer, with a shrug.
"If the _Bumble Bee_ ever gets stranded on the rocks it'll teach him
sense, but nothin' else will."
"Don't be hard on a fellow, Meg," replied the man good-naturedly.
"Many's the time the _Bumble Bee's_ taken in fish by the bushel, an' she
never got stranded on the rocks yet; please God, she never will. She can
run agin the wind as fast as any smack I know of, an' I guess Ned
Latimer understands her gearings."
"It was runnin' her gearings put us in this blessed hole, I reckon.'
"We might have been wuss off. Lots o' firewood, lots o' fish and
venison, friendly Injuns for neighbors, an' not so terribly cold after
all, even if we was friz up in the ice."
And the philosophical skipper went off to take another look at the
progress of the "Raisin'."
"Latimer's allus easy goin' and onreasonable," said the wife, as she
watched him through the little window, while he ascended the hill.
"It must have been hard for you to spend the winter locked in here,"
said Helen. She felt like reconciling the incongruities between the
ill-mated pair, "but I shouldn't think Mr. Latimer an unreasonable man.
He may have made a mistake in letting his boat drift into the bay so
late in the season. Still, he has made it comfortable for you, and I
wonder what I could have done if your homelike schooner had not been
here, with a kind hostess in it to welcome me."
"I suppose things is never so bad as they might be," said Mrs. Latimer,
her face relaxing a little. "And I'm glad to do something for ye--even
if it ain't much."
Again Helen was startled. It was when the hardness wore off the woman's
face that the forgotten expression came back again. She had surely seen
it before, and the softened tone seemed familiar. Could she trace it
back through the years to the days of her childhood? It could not be
black-eyed Susan, who pinched her when she cried, and threatened to
pinch harder if she told? This woman's eyes were grey. Nor red-headed
Molly, who in her afternoon walk invariably left her with her mother to
be stuffed with black toffy, while she went off to gossip with the
barber's son? Her hair was too black ever to have been red. Nor the maid
who frightened her with ghost stories. Nor the namby-pamby one who
cuddled her with kisses and called her beatific names, until in childish
indignation she wrathfully rebelled.
All these in rapid movement of memory were set aside, but the more she
thought, the more convinced she became that in the big medley of
domestic servitors of the long past, this woman somewhere played her
part. But the cobwebs were lifting. She would find her soon.
"You have not always lived on the lakes, Mrs. Latimer?" she asked at
last.
"I never did till I married Latimer."
"And before that?" said Helen.
"I was from New York; but that's ten year ago, and Latimer was a British
subject."
"And did you never cross the ocean? One would think that, living so much
on the water, you would be sure to go over the sea."
"So I have, mum, so I have. I went over twenty year ago come June as
servant to a New York lady and stayed there for a year, but I didn't
like it, so I come home agin."
"Twenty years ago. And did you live for some time in South London, near
the Thames?"
"Yes I did," answered the woman, with a start.
"And worked as nursemaid for Mrs. Brandon, of Russell Street, near
Battersea Park?"
"Good gracious alive, yes! Did you know her? Be you--"
"Yes, I am little Helen Brandon, the child you put straddle-legged
around your neck to run a race with another nurse-girl from Henley
Street, at the other end of the row."
"Land sake! Be you that child? Who'd a'thought it! An' then to meet you
here out in the wilds o' the wilderness!" The woman rose, and, with
flushed and agitated face, came towards her.
Helen extended both hands, and Mrs. Latimer grasped them within her own.
"It was rough play, and weren't the square thing to do, I reckon; still,
I don't think I hurt you, child."
"You didn't hurt me much, but I was terribly afraid you might fall. If I
remember right, the other little girl screamed frantically at the last."
"And well she might," returned the woman with a grin, "for Ann did the
very thing you were afraid of. She stumbled and rolled over, and I won
the race."
"I must have been sadly frightened, for I remember crying over it in my
little bed that night, and my mother insisted upon knowing the cause--so
I told her--and I never saw you afterwards."
"Oh, she gave me my _conge_ next morning, but I didn't care, for I had
decided to come back to the States as soon as that month's work was up."
"You did not take another place, then?"
"No; I sailed on the next ship, and then worked out in New York until I
came across Latimer--and was fool enough to marry him."
"I hope you don't regret it."
"Humph! don't I? But I'm glad to know who you are. There won't be no
more races, but I'll do all I can for you, an' help you to fix things,
too, when they get your house built. I took an awful fancy to you when
you was a kid, even if I was a leetle rough."
"I felt sure I knew you from the first," said Helen earnestly. "I must
again thank you for your kindness, and I am sure we shall be very good
friends."
"It is just a joy to see you when I think it out. The long ago is only
like yesterday. Just to think that the first white woman's face I should
see in four months should be that of the little rosy-faced darling that
I dangled in my arms and round my neck twenty long year ago. Ah, there
comes Latimer agin!" And her face hardened. "What does he want now, I
wonder? Why can't he let us be?"