The next day, Saturday, was my birthday. I celebrated it by a heavy
cold, with a bursting headache, and chills chasing each other down my
back. I went out to the cow-barn with the two men before daylight,
as usual, but felt so bad that I had to come back to the house before
milking was half over. The moment M’rye saw me, I was ordered on to the
sick-list.
The Beech homestead was a good place to be sick in. Both M’rye and Janey
had a talent in the way of fixing up tasty little dishes for invalids,
and otherwise ministering to their comfort, which year after year went
a-begging, simply because all the men-folk kept so well. Therefore, when
the rare opportunity did arrive, they made the most of it. I had my feet
and legs put into a bucket of hot water, and wrapped round with burdock
leaves. Janey prepared for my breakfast some soft toast--not the insipid
and common milk-toast--but each golden-brown slice treated separately on
a plate, first moistened with scalding water, then peppered, salted, and
buttered, with a little cold milk on top of all. I ate this
sumptuous breakfast at my leisure, ensconced in M’rye’s big cushioned
rocking-chair, with my feet and legs, well tucked up in a blanket-shawl,
stretched out on another chair, comfortably near the stove.
It was taken for granted that I had caught my cold out around the
bonfire the previous evening--and this conviction threw a sort of
patriotic glamour about my illness, at least in my own mind.
The bonfire had been a famous success. Though there was a trifle of rain
in the air, the barrels and mossy discarded old fence-rails burned like
pitch-pine, and when Hurley and I threw on armfuls of brush, the sparks
burst up with a roar into a flaming column which we felt must be visible
all over our side of Dearborn County. At all events, there was no doubt
about its being seen and understood down at the Corners, for presently
our enemies there started an answering bonfire, which glowed from time
to time with such a peculiarly concentrated radiance that Abner said
Lee Watkins must have given them some of his kerosene-oil barrels. The
thought of such a sacrifice as this on the part of the postmaster rather
disturbed Abner’s mind, raising, as it did, the hideous suggestion that
possibly later returns might have altered the election results. But when
Hurley and I dragged forward and tipped over into the blaze the whole
side of an old abandoned corn-crib, and heaped dry brush on top of that,
till the very sky seemed afire above us, and the stubblefields down
the hill-side were all ruddy in the light, Abner confessed himself
reassured. Our enthusiasm was so great that it was nearly ten o’clock
before we went to bed, having first put the fire pretty well out, lest a
rising wind during the night should scatter sparks and work mischief.
I had all these splendid things to think of next day, along with my
headache and the shivering spine, and they tipped the balance toward
satisfaction. Shortly after breakfast M’rye made a flaxseed poultice and
muffled it flabbily about my neck, and brought me also some boneset-tea
to drink. There was a debate in the air as between castor-oil and senna,
fragments of which were borne in to me when the kitchen door was
open. The Underwood girl alarmed me by steadily insisting that her
sister-in-law always broke up sick-headaches with a mustard-plaster put
raw on the back of the neck. Every once in a while one of them would
come in and address to me the stereotyped formula: “Feel any better?”
and I as invariably answered, “No.” In reality, though, I was lazily
comfortable all the time, with Lossing’s “Field-Book of the War of 1812”
lying open on my lap, to look at when I felt inclined. This book was not
nearly so interesting as the one about the Revolution, but a grandfather
of mine had marched as a soldier up to Sackett’s Harbor in the later
war, though he did not seem to have had any fighting to do after he got
there, and in my serious moods I always felt it my duty to read about
his war instead of the other.
So the day passed along, and dusk began to gather in the living-room.
The men were off outdoors somewhere, and the girls were churning in the
butter-room. M’rye had come in with her mending, and sat on the opposite
side of the stove, at intervals casting glances over its flat top to
satisfy herself that my poultice had not sagged down from its proper
place, and that I was in other respects doing as well as could be
expected.
Conversation between us was hardly to be thought of, even if I had not
been so drowsily indolent. M’rye was not a talker, and preferred always
to sit in silence, listening to others, or, better still, going on
at her work with no sounds at all to disturb her thoughts. These long
periods of meditation, and the sedate gaze of her black, penetrating
eyes, gave me the feeling that she must be much wiser than other women,
who could not keep still at all, but gabbled everything the moment it
came into their heads.
We had sat thus for a long, long time, until I began to wonder how she
could sew in the waning light, when all at once, without lifting her
eyes from her work, she spoke to me.
“D’ you know where Ni Hagadorn’s gone to?” she asked me, in a measured,
impressive voice.
“He--he--told me he was a-goin’ away,” I made answer, with weak
evasiveness.
“But where? Down South?” She looked up, as I hesitated, and flashed that
darkling glance of hers at me. “Out with it!” she commanded. “Tell me
the truth!”
Thus adjured, I promptly admitted that Ni had said he was going South,
and could work his way somehow. “He’s gone, you know,” I added, after a
pause, “to try and find--that is, to hunt around after--”
“Yes, I know,” said M’rye, sententiously, and another long silence
ensued.
She rose after a time, and went out into the kitchen, returning with the
lighted lamp. She set this on the table, putting the shade down on one
side so that the light should not hurt my eyes, and resumed her
mending. The yellow glow thus falling upon her gave to her dark, severe,
high-featured face a duskier effect than ever. It occurred to me that
Molly Brant, that mysteriously fascinating and bloody Mohawk queen who
left such an awful reddened mark upon the history of her native Valley,
must have been like our M’rye. My mind began sleepily to clothe the
farmer’s wife in blankets and chains of wampum, with eagles’ feathers
in her raven hair, and then to drift vaguely off over the threshold of
Indian dreamland, when suddenly, with a start, I became conscious that
some unexpected person had entered the room by the veranda-door behind
me.
The rush of cold air from without had awakened me and told me of the
entrance. A glance at M’rye’s face revealed the rest. She was staring
at the newcomer with a dumfounded expression of countenance, her mouth
half-open with sheer surprise. Still staring, she rose and tilted the
lampshade in yet another direction, so that the light was thrown upon
the stranger. At this I turned in my chair to look.
It was Esther Hagadorn who had come in!
There was a moment’s awkward silence, and then the school-teacher began
hurriedly to speak. “I saw you were alone from the veranda--I was so
nervous it never occurred to me to rap--the curtains being up--I--I
walked straight in.”
As if in comment upon this statement, M’rye marched across the room, and
pulled down both curtains over the veranda windows. With her hand still
upon the cord of the second shade, she turned and again dumbly surveyed
her visitor.
Esther flushed visibly at this reception, and had to choke down the
first words that came to her lips. Then she went on better: “I hope
you’ll excuse my rudeness. I really did forget to rap. I came upon very
special business. Is Ab--Mr. Beech at home?”
“Won’t you sit down?” said M’rye, with a glum effort at civility. “I
expect him in presently.”
The school-ma’am, displaying some diffidence, seated herself in the
nearest chair, and gazed at the wall-paper with intentness. She had
never seemed to notice me at all--indeed had spoken of seeing M’rye
alone through the window--and now I coughed, and stirred to readjust my
poultice, but she did not look my way. M’rye had gone back to her chair
by the stove, and taken up her mending again.
“You’d better lay off your things. You won’t feel ’em when you go
out,” she remarked, after an embarrassing period of silence, investing
the formal phrases with chilling intention.
Esther made a fumbling motion at the loop of her big mink cape, but did
not unfasten it.
“I--I don’t know _what_ you think of me,” she began, at last, and then
nervously halted.
“Mebbe it’s just as well you don’t,” said M’rye, significantly, darning
away with long sweeps of her arm, and bending attentively over her
stocking and ball.
“I can understand your feeling hard,” Esther went on, still eyeing the
sprawling blue figures on the wall, and plucking with her fingers at
the furry tails on her cape. “And--I _am_ to blame, _some_, I can see
now--but it didn’t seem so, _then_, to either of us.”
“It ain’t no affair of mine,” remarked M’rye, when the pause came, “but
if that’s your business with Abner, you won’t make much by waitin’. Of
course it’s nothing to me, one way or t’other.”
Not another word was exchanged for a long time. From where I sat I could
see the girl’s lips tremble, as she looked steadfastly into the wall. I
felt certain that M’rye was darning the same place over and over again,
so furiously did she keep her needle flying.
All at once she looked up angrily. “Well,” she said, in loud, bitter
tones: “Why not out with what you’ve come to say, ’n’ be done with it?
You’ve heard something, _I_ know!”
Esther shook her head. “No, Mrs. Beech,” she said, with a piteous quaver
in her voice, “I--I haven’t heard anything!”
The sound of her own broken utterances seemed to affect her deeply. Her
eyes filled with tears, and she hastily got out a handkerchief from her
muff, and began drying them. She could not keep from sobbing aloud a
little.
M’rye deliberately took another stocking from the heap in the basket,
fitted it over the ball, and began a fresh task--all without a glance at
the weeping girl.
Thus the two women still sat, when Janey came in to lay the table for
supper. She lifted the lamp off to spread the cloth, and put it on
again; she brought in plates and knives and spoons, and arranged them in
their accustomed places--all the while furtively regarding Miss Hagadorn
with an incredulous surprise. When she had quite finished she went over
to her mistress and, bending low, whispered so that we could all hear
quite distinctly: “Is _she_ goin’ to stay to supper?”
M’rye hesitated, but Esther lifted her head and put down the
handkerchief instantly. “Oh, no!” she said, eagerly: “don’t think of it!
I must hurry home as soon as I’ve seen Mr. Beech.” Janey went out with
an obvious air of relief.
Presently there was a sound of heavy boots out in the kitchen being
thrown on to the floor, and then Abner came in. He halted in the
doorway, his massive form seeming to completely fill it, and devoted a
moment or so taking in the novel spectacle of a neighbor under his roof.
Then he advanced, walking obliquely till he could see distinctly
the face of the visitor. It stands to reason that he must have been
surprised, but he gave no sign of it.
“How d’ do, Miss,” he said, with grave politeness, coming up and
offering her his big hand.
Esther rose abruptly, peony-red with pleasurable confusion, and took the
hand stretched out to her. “How d’ do, Mr. Beech,” she responded with
eagerness, “I--I came up to see you--a--about something that’s very
pressing.”
“It’s blowing up quite a gale outside,” the farmer remarked, evidently
to gain time the while he scanned her face in a solemn, thoughtful way,
noting, I doubt not, the swollen eyelids and stains of tears, and trying
to guess her errand. “Shouldn’t wonder if we had a foot o’ snow before
morning.”
The school-teacher seemed in doubt how best to begin what she had to
say, so that Abner had time, after he lifted his inquiring gaze from
her, to run a master’s eye over the table.
“Have Janey lay another place!” he said, with authoritative brevity.
As M’rye rose to obey, Esther broke forth: “Oh, no, please don’t! Thank
you so much, Mr. Beech--but really I can’t stop--truly, I mustn’t think
of it.”
The farmer merely nodded a confirmation of his order to M’rye, who
hastened out to the kitchen.
“It’ll be there for ye, anyway,” he said. “Now set down again, please.”
It was all as if he was the one who had the news to tell, so naturally
did he take command of the situation. The girl seated herself, and the
farmer drew up his arm-chair and planted himself before her, keeping his
stockinged feet under the rungs for politeness’ sake.
“Now, Miss,” he began, just making it civilly plain that he preferred
not to utter her hated paternal name, “I don’t know no more’n a babe
unborn what’s brought you here. I’m sure, from what I know of ye, that
you wouldn’t come to this house jest for the sake of comin’, or to argy
things that can’t be, an’ mustn’t be, argied. In one sense, we ain’t
friends of yours here, and there’s a heap o’ things that you an’ me
don’t want to talk about, because they’d only lead to bad feelin’, an’
so we’ll leave ’em all severely alone. But in another way, I’ve
always had a liking for you. You’re a smart girl, an’ a scholar into the
bargain, an’ there ain’t so many o’ that sort knockin’ around in these
parts that a man like myself, who’s fond o’ books an’ learnin’, wants
to be unfriendly to them there is. So now you can figure out pretty well
where the chalk line lays, and we’ll walk on it.”
Esther nodded her head. “Yes, I understand,” she remarked, and seemed
not to dislike what Abner had said.
“That being so, what is it?” the farmer asked, with his hands on his
knees.
“Well, Mr. Beech,” the school-teacher began, noting with a swift
side-glance that M’rye had returned, and was herself rearranging the
table. “I don’t think you can have heard it, but some important news
has come in during the day. There seems to be different stories, but the
gist of them is that a number of the leading Union generals have been
discovered to be traitors, and McClellan has been dismissed from his
place at the head of the army, and ordered to return to his home in New
Jersey under arrest, and they say others are to be treated in the same
way, and Fath--_some_ people think it will be a hanging matter, and--”
Abner waved all this aside with a motion of his hand. “It don’t amount
to a hill o’ beans,” he said, placidly. “It’s jest spite, because we
licked ’em at the elections. Don’t you worry your head about _that!_”
Esther was not reassured. “That isn’t all,” she went on, nervously.
“They say there’s been discovered a big conspiracy, with secret
sympathizers all over the North.”
“Pooh!” commented Abner. “We’ve heer’n tell o’ that before!”
“All over the North,” she continued, “with the intention of bringing
across infected clothes from Canada, and spreading the small-pox among
us, and--”
The farmer laughed outright; a laugh embittered by contempt. “What
cock-’n’-bull story’ll be hatched next!” he said. “You don’t mean to say
you--a girl with a head on her shoulders like _you_--give ear to such
tomfoolery as that! Come, now, honest Injin, do you mean to tell me
_you_ believe all this?”
“It don’t so much matter, Mr. Beech,” the girl replied, raising her face
to his, and speaking more confidently--“it don’t matter at all what I
believe. I’m talking of what they believe down at the Corners.”
“The Corners be jiggered!” exclaimed Abner, politely, but with emphasis.
Esther rose from the chair. “Mr. Beech,” she declared, impressively;
“they’re coming up here to-night! That bonfire of yours made ’em mad.
It’s no matter how I learned it--it wasn’t from father--I don’t know
that he knows anything about it, but they’re coming _here!_ and--and
Heaven only knows what they’re going to do when they get here!”
The farmer rose also, his huge figure towering above that of the girl,
as he looked down at her over his beard. He no longer dissembled his
stockinged feet. After a moment’s pause he said: “So that’s what you
came to tell me, eh?”
The school-ma’am nodded her head. “I couldn’t bear not to,” she
explained, simply.
“Well, I’m obleeged to ye!” Abner remarked, with gravity. “Whatever
comes of it, I’m obleeged to ye!”
He turned at this, and walked slowly out into the kitchen, leaving the
door open behind him. “Pull on your boots again!” we heard him say,
presumably to Hurley. In a minute or two he returned, with his own boots
on, and bearing over his arm the old double-barrelled shot-gun which
always hung above the kitchen mantel-piece. In his hands he had two
shot-flasks, the little tobacco-bag full of buckshot, and a powder-horn.
He laid these on the open shelf of the bookcase, and, after fitting
fresh caps on the nipples, put the gun beside them.
“I’d be all the more sot on your stayin’ to supper,” he remarked,
looking again at Esther, “only if there _should_ be any unpleasantness,
why, I’d hate like sin to have you mixed up in it. You see how I’m
placed.”
Esther did not hesitate a moment. She walked over to where M’rye stood
by the table replenishing the butter-plate. “I’d be very glad indeed to
stay, Mr. Beech,” she said, with winning frankness, “if I may.”
“There’s the place laid for you,” commented M’rye, impassively. Then,
catching her husband’s eye, she added the perfunctory assurance, “You’re
entirely welcome.”
Hurley and the girls came in now, and all except me took their seats
about the table. Both Abner and the Irishman had their coats on, out
of compliment to company. M’rye brought over a thick slice of fresh
buttered bread with brown sugar on it, and a cup of weak tea, and put
them beside me on a chair. Then the evening meal went forward, the
farmer talking in a fragmentary way about the crops and the weather.
Save for an occasional response from our visitor, the rest maintained
silence. The Underwood girl could not keep her fearful eyes from the
gun lying on the bookcase, and protested that she had no appetite,
but Hurley ate vigorously, and had a smile on his wrinkled and swarthy
little face.
The wind outside whistled shrilly at the windows, rattling the shutters,
and trying its force in explosive blasts which seemed to rock the house
on its stone foundations. Once or twice it shook the veranda door with
such violence that the folk at the table instinctively lifted their
heads, thinking some one was there.
Then, all at once, above the confusion of the storm’s noises, we heard a
voice rise, high and clear, crying:
“_Smoke the damned Copperhead out!_”