It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley smoothed the
last wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred of corn-husk
from the spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on the
window-sill, removed all signs of murder with a moist towel, and before
running down to breakfast cast a frowning look at her pincushion.
Almira, otherwise “Mite,” Shapley had been in her room the afternoon
before and disturbed with her careless hand the pattern of Rose's pins.
They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese cross; and if, while
she was extricating one from her clothing, there had been an alarm
of fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in the
design, at the risk of losing her life.
Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning
sunshine with her. The old people had already engaged in differences of
opinion, but they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence.
There were the usual last things to be done for breakfast, offices that
belonged to her as her grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday's
soda biscuits out of the steamer where they were warming and softening;
brought an apple pie and a plate of seed cakes from the pantry; settled
the coffee with a piece of dried fish skin and an egg shell; and
transferred some fried potatoes from the spider to a covered dish.
“Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out,” she said, as she
began buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.
“Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything! The butcher
says he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for critters
to kill, but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of a
week. He ain't a real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose,
don't button that dickey clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport
starched collars in this life on account o' you and your gran'mother
bein' so chock full o' style; but I hope to the Lord I shan't have to
wear 'em in another world!”
“You won't,” his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, “or if
you do, they'll wilt with the heat.”
Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neckcloth about
the old man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled knowingly
back at her as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread near the
open kitchen door. She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be feared,
a wasted one, for there was no one present to observe her clean pink
calico and the still more subtle note struck in the green ribbon which
was tied round her throat,--the ribbon that formed a sort of calyx, out
of which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh and radiant as if it
had bloomed that morning.
“Give me my coffee turrible quick,” said Mr. Wiley; “I must be down to
the bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam.”
“I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days,” remarked
his spouse, testily.
“'T ain't me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood,” replied the old
man. “The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up
jest like Rose's jack-straws; I never see 'em so turrible ricked up in
all my exper'ence; an' Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a
jam than Cooper's cow. Turrible sot in his ways, too; can't take a
mite of advice. I was tellin' him how to go to work on that bung that's
formed between the gre't gray rock an' the shore,--the awfullest place
to bung that there is between this an' Biddeford,--and says he: 'Look
here, I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned
if I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no
river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the
Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land
I hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry
an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up
strife. There's some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year
out, as if there wa'n't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije
Dennett's one of 'em, when it comes to river-drivin'.”
“There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own
business,” observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a
soda biscuit with her fork.
“Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade,” responded
her husband loftily. “If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you
are,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought,
as a Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right track,
though it's always a turrible risky thing to do.” Rose's grandfather was
called, by the irreverent younger generation, sometimes “Turrible Wiley”
and sometimes “Old Kennebec,” because of the frequency with which these
words appeared in his conversation. There were not wanting those of late
who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too obvious to mention. After
a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless life, he had, at
seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line between fact and fancy,
and drew on his imagination to such an extent that he almost staggered
himself when he began to indulge in reminiscence. He was a feature of
the Edgewood “drive,” being always present during the five or six days
that it was in progress, sometimes sitting on the river-bank, sometimes
leaning over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the butt-end of
a huge log, but always chewing tobacco and expectorating to incredible
distances as he criticized and damned impartially all the expedients in
use at the particular moment.
“I want to stay down by the river this afternoon,” said Rose. “Ever
so many of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If
grandpa will leave the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to
them at noon, and bring the dishes back in time to wash them before
supper.”
“I suppose you can go, if the rest do,” said her grandmother, “though
it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there
was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin'
at the river in them days; there was n't time.”
“But it's such fun to watch the logs!” Rose exclaimed. “Next to dancing,
the greatest fun in the world.”
“'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too,”
was the grandmother's reply. “Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home
yesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks
says Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed
consid'able proud of him; an' I guess it is the first time he ever stood
anywheres but at the foot. I tell you when these fifty-five new doctors
git scattered over the country there'll be consid'able many folks
keepin' house under ground. Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufe
an' Steve Waterman. That'll make one more to play in the river.”
“Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit,” allowed Mr. Wiley,
“but Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible
reckless, too. He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man
that's lived on the Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any
turrible chances on the Saco.”
“He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm,” objected Mrs. Wiley.
“His hay is all in,” Rose spoke up quickly, “and he only helps on the
river when the farm work is n't pressing. Besides, though it's all play
to him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day.”
“He don't keer about the two and a half,” said her grandfather. “He jest
can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first
moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me--”
“The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an'
never will suit you,” remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption
received no comment: such mistaken views of his character were too
frequent to make any impression.
“As I was sayin', Rose,” he continued, “when we first moved here from
Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was little
boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn,
consid'able older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death
stealin' away to the mill to ride on the 'carriage,' 'side o' the log
that was bein' sawed, hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin'
back 'most into the jaws o' the machinery.”
“He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young one,”
remarked Mrs. Wiley; “and I don't see as all the 'cademy education
his father throwed away on him has changed him much.” And with this
observation she rose from the table and went to the sink.
“Steve ain't nobody's fool,” dissented the old man; “but he's kind o'
daft about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in
the brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin'
up stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cai'late Mis'
Waterman died consid'able afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out
the winders and seein' her boys slippin' between the logs an' gittin'
their daily dousin'. She could n't understand it, an' there's a heap o'
things women-folks never do an' never can understand,--jest because they
_air_ women-folks.”
“One o' the things is men, I s'pose,” interrupted Mrs. Wiley.
“Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands,” assented Old Kennebec;
“howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never take in,
an' that's sport. Steve does river-drivin' as he would horse-racin' or
tiger-shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy. When
he was about twelve to fifteen, he used to help the river-drivers spring
and fall, reg'lar. He could n't do nothin' but shin up an' down the
rocks after hammers an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible
pleased with his job. 'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them
days,--Stepanfetchit Waterman.”
“Good name for him yet,” came in acid tones from the sink. “He's still
steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now.”
“I'm not driving anybody, that I know of,” answered Rose, with
heightened color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.
“Then, when he graduated from errants,” went on the crafty old man, who
knew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, “Steve used to
get seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can call
this here silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there
an' send it afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks,
and tidy up the banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any
kind of a boss, an' hed be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a
turrible smart driver, Steve would.”
“He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him,” prophesied Mrs. Wiley;
“specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as ridin'
logs from his house down to ourn, dark nights.”
“Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pigpen last month, 'pears to me
you might have a good word for him now an' then, mother,” remarked Old
Kennebec, reaching for his second piece of pie.
“I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pigpen, no more'n I was by Jed Towle's
hencoop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's shed-steps. If
you hed ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's beaux would n't hev
to do their courtin' with carpenters' tools.”
“It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother,
not the motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeck
folks' motives too turrible close.”
“Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says,”
interposed Rose, to change the subject; “but I tell him that a horse
does n't revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is
going forwards.”
“Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit,” said Mr. Wiley.
“There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller to
let the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whiz
down like arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side
o' that there flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop
in a dead faint when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd
some folks, not without you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an'
drop 'em in the falls; I've rid logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the
Kennebec an' never lost my head. I remember well the year o' the gre't
freshet, I rid a log from--”
“There, there, father, that'll do,” said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. “I'll
put the cream in the churn, an' you jest work off' some o' your steam by
bringin' the butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don't
do no good to brag afore your own women-folks; work goes consid'able
better'n stories at every place 'cept the loafers' bench at the tavern.”
And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfully
in his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, before
long, one could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to his
favorite “churning tune” of
Broad is the road that leads to death,
And thousands walk together there;
But Wisdom shows a narrow path,
With here and there a traveler.