SEED-TIME
The day after Big Mack's funeral, Ranald was busy polishing Lizette's
glossy skin, before the stable door. This was his favorite remedy for
gloomy thoughts, and Ranald was full of gloomy thoughts to-day. His
father, though going about the house, was still weak, and worse than
all, was fretting in his weakness. He was oppressed with the terrible
fear that he would never again be able to do a man's work, and Ranald
knew from the dark look in his father's face that day and night the
desire for vengeance was gnawing at his heart, and Ranald also knew
something of the bitterness of this desire from the fierce longing that
lay deep in his own. Some day, when his fingers would be feeling for
LeNoir's throat, he would drink long and fully that sweet draught of
vengeance. He knew, too, that it added to the bitterness in his father's
heart to know that, in the spring's work that every warm day was
bringing nearer, he could take no part; and that was partly the cause of
Ranald's gloom. With the slow-moving oxen, he could hardly hope to get
the seed in in time, and they needed the crop this year if ever they
did, for last year's interest on the mortgage was still unpaid and the
next installment was nearly due.
As he was putting the finishing touches upon Lisette's satin skin,
Yankee drove up to the yard with his Fox horse and buckboard. His box
was strapped on behind, and his blankets, rolled up in a bundle, filled
the seat beside him.
“Mornin',” he called to Ranald. “Purty fine shine, that, and purty
fine mare, all round,” he continued, walking about Lisette and noting
admiringly her beautiful proportions.
“Purty fine beast,” he said, in a low tone, running his hands down her
legs. “Guess you wouldn't care to part with that mare?”
“No,” said Ranald, shortly; but as he spoke his heart sank within him.
“Ought to fetch a fairly good figure,” continued Yankee, meditatively.
“Le's see. She's from La Roque's Lisette, ain't she? Ought to have some
speed.” He untied Lisette's halter. “Take her down in the yard yonder,”
he said to Ranald.
Ranald threw the halter over Lisette's neck, sprang on her back, and
sent her down the lane at a good smart pace. At the bottom of the lane
he wheeled her, and riding low upon her neck, came back to the barn like
a whirlwind.
“By jings!” exclaimed Yankee, surprised out of his lazy drawl; “she's
got it, you bet your last brick. See here, boy, there's money into that
animal. Thought I would like to have her for my buckboard, but I have
got an onfortunit conscience that won't let me do up any partner, so I
guess I can't make any offer.”
Ranald stood beside Lisette, his arm thrown over her beautiful neck, and
his hand fondling her gently about the ears. “I will not sell her.” His
voice was low and fierce, and all the more so because he knew that
was just what he would do, and his heart was sick with the pain of the
thought.
“I say,” said Yankee, suddenly, “cudn't bunk me in your loft, cud you!
Can't stand the town. Too close.”
The confining limitations of the Twentieth, that metropolitan center of
some dozen buildings, including the sawmill and blacksmith shop, were
too trying for Yankee's nervous system.
“Yes, indeed,” said Ranald, heartily. “We will be very glad to have you,
and it will be the very best thing for father.”
“S'pose old Fox cud nibble round the brule,” continued Yankee, nodding
his head toward his sorrel horse. “Don't think I will do much drivin'
machine business. Rather slow.” Yankee spent the summer months selling
sewing-machines and new patent churns.
“There's plenty of pasture,” said Ranald, “and Fox will soon make
friends with Lisette. She is very kind, whatever.”
“Ain't ever hitched her, have you?” said Yankee.
“No.”
“Well, might hitch her up some day. Guess you wudn't hurt the
buckboard.”
“Not likely,” said Ranald, looking at the old, ramshackle affair.
“Used to drive some myself,” said Yankee. But to this idea Ranald did
not take kindly.
Yankee stood for a few moments looking down the lane and over the
fields, and then, turning to Ranald, said, “Guess it's about ready to
begin plowin'. Got quite a lot of it to do, too, ain't you?”
“Yes,” said Ranald, “I was thinking I would be beginning to-morrow.”
“Purty slow business with the oxen. How would it do to hitch up Lisette
and old Fox yonder?”
Then Ranald understood the purpose of Yankee's visit.
“I would be very glad,” said Ranald, a great load lifting from his
heart. “I was afraid of the work with only the oxen.” And then, after
a pause, he added, “What did you mean about buying Lisette?” He was
anxious to have that point settled.
“I said what I meant,” answered Yankee. “I thought perhaps you would
rather have the money than the colt; but I tell you what, I hain't got
money enough to put into that bird, and don't you talk selling to any
one till we see her gait hitched up. But I guess a little of the plow
won't hurt for a few weeks or so.”
Next day Lisette left behind her forever the free, happy days of
colthood. At first Ranald was unwilling to trust her to any other hands
than his own, but when he saw how skillfully and gently Yankee handled
her, soothing her while he harnessed and hitched her up, he recognized
that she was safer with Yankee than with himself, and allowed him to
have the reins.
They spent the morning driving up and down the lane with Lisette and
Fox hitched to the stone-boat. The colt had been kindly treated from
her earliest days, and consequently knew nothing of fear. She stepped
daintily beside old Fox, fretting and chafing in the harness, but
without thought of any violent objection. In the afternoon the colt
was put through her morning experience, with the variation that the
stone-boat was piled up with a fairly heavy load of earth and stone. And
about noon the day following, Lisette was turning her furrow with all
the steadiness of a horse twice her age.
Before two weeks were over, Yankee, with the horses, and Ranald, with
the oxen, had finished the plowing, and in another ten days the fields
lay smooth and black, with the seed harrowed safely in, waiting for the
rain.
Yankee's visit had been a godsend, not only to Ranald with his work,
but also to Macdonald Dubh. He would talk to the grim, silent man by the
hour, after the day's work was done, far into the night, till at length
he managed to draw from him the secret of his misery.
“I will never be a man again,” he said, bitterly, to Yankee. “And there
is the farm all to pay for. I have put it off too long and now it is too
late, and it is all because of that--that--brute beast of a Frenchman.”
“Mean cuss!” ejaculated Yankee.
“And I am saying,” continued Macdonald Dubh, opening his heart still
further, “I am saying, it was no fair fight, whatever. I could whip him
with one hand. It was when I was pulling out Big Mack, poor fellow, from
under the heap, that he took me unawares.”
“That's so,” assented Yankee. “Blamed lowdown trick.”
“And, oh, I will be praying God to give me strength just to meet him!
I will ask no more. But,” he added, in bitter despair, “there is no use
for me to pray. Strength will come to me no more.”
“Well,” said Yankee, brightly, “needn't worry about that varmint. He
ain't worth it, anyhow.”
“Aye, he is not worth it, indeed, and that is the man who has brought me
to this.” That was the bitter part to Macdonald Dubh. A man he despised
had beaten him.
“Now look here,” said Yankee, “course I ain't much good at this, but
if you will just quit worryin', I'll undertake to settle this little
account with Mr. LeNware.”
“And what good would that be to me?” said Macdonald Dubh. “It is myself
that wants to meet him.” It was not so much the destruction of LeNoir
that he desired as that he should have the destroying of him. While
he cherished this feeling in his heart, it was not strange that the
minister in his visits found Black Hugh unapproachable, and concluded
that he was in a state of settled “hardness of heart.” His wife knew
better, but even she dared not approach Macdonald Dubh on that subject,
which had not been mentioned between them since the morning he had
opened his heart to her. The dark, haggard, gloomy face haunted her. She
longed to help him to peace. It was this that sent her to his brother,
Macdonald Bhain, to whom she told as much of the story as she thought
wise.
“I am afraid he will never come to peace with God until he comes to
peace with this man,” she said, sadly, “and it is a bitter load that he
is carrying with him.”
“I will talk with him,” answered Macdonald Bhain, and at the end of the
week he took his way across to his brother's home.
He found him down in the brule, where he spent most of his days toiling
hard with his ax, in spite of the earnest entreaties of Ranald. He was
butting a big tree that the fire had laid prone, but the ax was falling
with the stroke of a weak man.
As he finished his cut, his brother called to him, “That is no work for
you, Hugh; that is no work for a man who has been for six weeks in his
bed.”
“It is work that must be done, however,” Black Hugh answered, bitterly.
“Give me the ax,” said Macdonald Bhain. He mounted the tree as his
brother stepped down, and swung his ax deep into the wood with a mighty
blow. Then he remembered, and stopped. He would not add to his brother's
bitterness by an exhibition of his mighty, unshaken strength. He stuck
the ax into the log, and standing up, looked over the brule. “It is a
fine bit of ground, Hugh, and will raise a good crop of potatoes.”
“Aye,” said Macdonald Dubh, sadly. “It has lain like this for three
years, and ought to have been cleared long ago, if I had been doing my
duty.”
“Indeed, it will burn all the better for that,” said his brother,
cheerfully. “And as for the potatoes, there is a bit of my clearing that
Ranald might as well use.”
But Black Hugh shook his head. “Ranald will use no man's clearing but
his own,” he said. “I am afraid he has got too much of his father in him
for his own good.”
Macdonald Bhain glanced at his brother's face with a look of mingled
pity and admiration. “Ah,” he said, “Hugh, it's a proud man you are.
Macdonalds have plenty of that, whatever, and we come by it good enough.
Do you remember at home, when our father”--and he went off into a
reminiscence of their boyhood days, talking in gentle, kindly, loving
tones, till the shadow began to lift from his brother's face, and he,
too, began to talk. They spoke of their father, who had always been to
them a kind of hero; and of their mother, who had lived, and toiled, and
suffered for her family with uncomplaining patience.
“She was a good woman,” said Macdonald Bhain, with a note of tenderness
in his voice. “And it was the hard load she had to bear, and I would to
God she were living now, that I might make up to her something of what
she suffered for me.”
“And I am thankful to God,” said his brother, bitterly, “that she is
not here to see me now, for it would but add to the heavy burden I often
laid upon her.”
“You will not be saying that,” said Macdonald Bhain. “But I am saying
that the Lord will be honored in you yet.”
“Indeed, there is not much for me,” said his brother, gloomily, “but the
sick-bed and six feet or more of the damp earth.”
“Hugh, man,” said his brother, hastily, “you must not be talking like
that. It is not the speech of a brave man. It is the speech of a man
that is beaten in his fight.”
“Beaten!” echoed his brother, with a kind of cry. “You have said the
word. Beaten it is, and by a man that is no equal of mine. You know
that,” he said, appealing, almost anxiously, to his brother. “You know
that well. You know that I am brought to this”--he held up his gaunt,
bony hands--“by a man that is no equal of mine, and I will never be
able to look him in the face and say as much to him. But if the Almighty
would send him to hell, I would be following him there.”
“Whisht, Hugh,” said Macdonald Bhain, in a voice of awe. “It is a
terrible word you have said, and may the Lord forgive you.”
“Forgive me!” echoed his brother, in a kind of frenzy. “Indeed, he will
not be doing that. Did not the minister's wife tell me as much?”
“No, no,” said his brother. “She would not be saying that.”
“Indeed, that is her very word,” said Black Hugh.
“She could not say that,” said his brother, “for it is not the Word of
God.”
“Indeed,” replied Black Hugh, like a man who had thought it all out,
“she would be reading it out of the Book to me that unless I would be
forgiving, that--that--” he paused, not being able to find a word, but
went on--“then I need not hope to be forgiven my own self.”
“Yes, yes. That is true,” assented Macdonald Bhain. “But, by the grace
of God, you will forgive, and you will be forgiven.”
“Forgive!” cried Black Hugh, his face convulsed with passion. “Hear
me!”--he raised his hand to heaven.--“If I ever forgive--”
But his brother caught his arm and drew it down swiftly, saying:
“Whisht, man. Don't tempt the Almighty.” Then he added, “You would not
be shutting yourself out from the presence of the Lord and from the
presence of those he has taken to himself?”
His brother stood silent a few moments, his hard, dark face swept with a
storm of emotions. Then he said, brokenly: “It is not for me, I doubt.”
But his brother caught him by the arm and said to him, “Hear me, Hugh.
It is for you.”
They walked on in silence till they were near the house. Ranald and
Yankee were driving their teams into the yard.
“That is a fine lad,” said Macdonald Bhain, pointing to Ranald.
“Aye,” said his brother; “it is a pity he has not a better chance. He
is great for his books, but he has no chance whatever, and he will be a
bowed man before he has cleared this farm and paid the debt on it.”
“Never you fear,” said his brother. “Ranald will do well. But, man, what
a size he is!”
“He is that,” said his father, proudly. “He is as big as his father, and
I doubt some day he may be as good a man as his uncle.”
“God grant he may be a better!” said Macdonald Bhain, reverently.
“If he be as good,” said his brother, kindly, “I will be content; but I
will not be here to see it.”
“Whisht, man,” said his brother, hastily. “You are not to speak such
things, nor have them in your mind.”
“Ah,” said Macdonald Dubh, sadly, “my day is not far off, and that I
know right well.”
Macdonald Bhain flung his arm hastily round his brother's shoulder. “Do
not speak like that, Hugh,” he said, his voice breaking suddenly. And
then he drew away his arm as if ashamed of his emotion, and said, with
kindly dignity, “Please God, you will see many days yet, and see your
boy come to honor among men.”
But Black Hugh only shook his head in silence.
Before they came to the door, Macdonald Bhain said, with seeming
indifference, “You have not been to church since you got up, Hugh. You
will be going to-morrow, if it is a fine day?”
“It is too long a walk, I doubt,” answered his brother.
“That it is, but Yankee will drive you in his buckboard,” said Macdonald
Bhain.
“In the buckboard?” said Macdonald Dubh. “And, indeed, I was never in a
buckboard in my life.”
“It is not too late to begin to-morrow,” said his brother, “and it will
do you good.”
“I doubt that,” said Black Hugh, gloomily. “The church will not be doing
me much good any more.”
“Do not say such a thing; and Yankee will drive you in his buckboard
to-morrow.”
His brother did not promise, but next day the congregation received a
shock of surprise to see Macdonald Dubh walk down the aisle to his place
in the church. And through all the days of the spring and summer his
place was never empty; and though the shadow never lifted from his face,
the minister's wife felt comforted about him, and waited for the day of
his deliverance.