them, it was bounded on the western side by the river and the mill-pond
that always held the sunset reflections until the twilight absorbed
them, while the old red mill with its moss-mottled roof focussed the
view. Toward the north and east the meadows ran slantwise up a hillside,
where, dotted here and there like grazing sheep, you could see the
stones of the burying-ground, where the inhabitants of the glen took
their final rest, as if their friends had left them as near heaven as
possible, and safe from the floods that used once to sweep the valley.
To the south the road ran tolerably straight for three miles down to
Glen Village itself.
The interior of the house differed but slightly from others of its
class, and that difference consisted in the greater genuineness of its
fittings. Evidently the woman who presided over it appreciated relative
values, for the sitting-room had glowing crimson curtains and a fire of
logs in place of the usual “air-tight,” while in one corner, in the
location usually chosen for the inevitable asthmatic parlour organ,
stood an upright piano. On the table was a comfortable litter of books
and papers.
By the window, looking down the road, stood Margaret Tolford. At the
first glance there was nothing striking about her personality. Medium in
height and colouring, her slight frame was wrapped in a soft white shawl
that gave her a fragile air. At a second glance the deep gray eyes, that
looked from under a brow narrowed by a quantity of smooth, coal-black
hair, were magnetic in their intelligent wonder. Her eyes said, “There
is much that I would understand, but I cannot;” whereas a shallower
nature would have thought, “I am misunderstood!”
The wind whistled in the chimney, and the _pud, pud_, of a heavy
flatiron came from the kitchen, with snatches of inharmonious song, as
the thick-lipped Polack who was the “help” pummelled the towels and
folded them at angles that would have distracted a mathematician. In
fact, this very Polack was one of Margaret’s lesser problems, a sort of
necessary evil who, in summer, bareheaded and barefooted, pervaded the
premises, but having with her gay neckerchief a certain sort of
picturesque fitness, which, when brought nearer, booted and confined to
the winter kitchen, became an eyesore. Other farmers’ daughters did the
cooking and the lighter work, and only had a woman to help with the
washing.
Margaret had never done manual labour; her mother, dead now two years,
had stood between this only child and all hardship, and coaxed the
Deacon to send her to a collegiate school when her playdays were over.
In the summer holidays she was petted and caressed and kept from soiling
her hands, and when at eighteen she was coming home for good to mingle
as an equal with her parents and learn her part in life, her mother
died, and her father closed the one tender spot in his stern heart
around his daughter. So she lived shut up within herself, craving a more
intellectual companionship than the neighbourhood furnished, and
starving unconsciously for demonstrative affection.
Tolford was a silent sort of man, who had been so thoroughly understood
by his wife that she seemed to know his unvoiced wishes. Because he
showed so few signs of an affection that would have won a hearty
response from Margaret, he failed to comprehend the difference between a
deeply reserved nature and physical weakness, to which cause he laid her
abstraction. His love for her, therefore, took the schooltime form of
shielding her from work. He liked to hear her play hymns on Sunday
evenings, and was very proud to have her train the children of the
Sunday School in their carols, but it never occurred to him to ask her
advice in any of his plans, or expect aid from her. She stood apart, not
understanding the love her mother had drawn from the stern, lonely man,
and while he excused her reserve, and told the neighbours she was
delicate and peaky, her only ailment lay in lack of motive.
* * * * *
It grew dark, and points of light appeared here and there in the
landscape; an icy slip of a moon pierced the driving clouds. Margaret
drew the curtains and sat down by the fire, its light sending a glow to
her usually colourless face. A brisk, though heavy, footstep came along
the entry from the kitchen, and Ezra Tolford opened the door, and,
stopping a moment to adjust his eyes to the fitful light, went toward
the fire, rubbing his hands. Margaret immediately arose and, pushing a
rocking-chair towards him, prepared to light the lamp.
“Never mind that now, daughter,” he said; “sit down, I want to talk a
bit. You know I said I’d get a hired man to ‘piece out’ with the work?
Well, he’s come!”
The Deacon was, in reality, fairly well educated, but since his wife’s
death (she had kept him to her standard, for she had been a
schoolmistress) his English had relapsed into localisms, and, besides
this, at the present moment he seemed ill at ease. Margaret merely
understood the announcement as a roundabout question as to whether any
accommodations were prepared for the man, and said: “The shed bedroom is
just as Hans Schmidt left it last fall; I suppose a bed could be made up
now, and Zella can clean the room to-morrow, but it will be very cold
unless you give him a stove.”
“Well—er—you see,” said the Deacon, “I don’t suppose that room will
do,—em!—hem! You see in the beginning he is to live with me without
wages, and—” here the Deacon came to an embarrassed standstill, and
Margaret broke in,—“Without wages! If he is as poor as that, he will
scarcely object to the shed room without a fire for the night!” She did
not say this because she was at all mean or hard-hearted, but from her
experience of the servant question, any one who was willing to work for
nothing must either be utterly worthless or bereft of reason.
“Not at all, not at all, daughter! You see, the man is not a common
workman, but may buy the Hill Farm some day as a home for his sister,
and wants me to teach him to grow small fruits, and learn the way of
things here while he gets it to rights. I’ve contracted with him for a
year—” and as Margaret did not reply, he continued, “You know Peter
Svenson, the carpenter, who went home to Denmark last summer to see his
folks? Well, he brought this young man back with him. Peter knows all
about him, and says he is perfectly honest and speaks good English, but
is close-mouthed, and doesn’t like to talk of his affairs, because his
family used to be well fixed, but now they are all dead but one sister.
He has a few thousand dollars and is going to make a home and bring her
over in a year.
“Peter says he can play a fiddle, but isn’t used to hard work, and
advised me not to pay him money, but to offer to show him how I work my
farm and give him his board for his services.” Then the Deacon
continued, giving the account of Gurth that the garrulous carpenter had
pieced together to cover his lack of real knowledge. As Margaret still
said nothing, he added:—
“Now I think the attic east room might be straightened up,—it won’t
take long, and it can be bettered to-morrow.”
Instantly Margaret was divided between extreme wonderment at this
strange arrangement on her father’s part, and fierce resentment at the
intrusion of a stranger in the house,—a man who was and was not a
servant, who must necessarily eat with them, who would not perhaps leave
the room when the meal was finished.
If Margaret had a decided eccentricity, it was her positive resentment
of male society, and she bore the reputation of being proud, because,
when the village swains drove up in their newly washed buggies with bows
of ribbon tied to the whip handles, and with self-satisfied glances
asked her to take a drive, the usual rural compliment, she invariably
declined, and their irate mothers settled that she either must be in a
decline, experiencing religion, or else, woful thought, “engaged to some
fellow Northampton way,” where she had been to school.
The truth was that she had, through a wide range of reading and no
experience, built up a well-nigh impossible ideal, half mediæval
heroism, half modern, intellectual refinement, that was irreconcilable
with the type of men with whom she came in contact.
Margaret was thoroughly accustomed to her father’s silent mood and
considered him by far (as he was) the best-informed man she knew. He was
also fond of reading, not only subscribed to a daily paper, but several
weeklies and magazines, and always allowed her to buy any book she
fancied, so that their winter evenings, when Margaret read aloud, were
comfortably sociable, and sympathetic. It was no wonder, therefore, that
she resented the presence of a stranger, and it was with rather a
lowering brow that she followed her father to the kitchen.
Deacon Tolford went in first, and said abruptly, but in a tone that
Margaret knew was meant to be cordial: “Daughter, this is Gurth Waldsen,
who is going to help me out this year; we want to make him feel so much
at home that he’ll settle in Glen Village. You’d better tell Zella to
hurry supper; I guess we are both of us hungry.”
Margaret added some ordinary words of greeting before she looked at the
figure who rose from the settle back of the stove and bowed, without
offering to shake hands, as a native would have done. Then she raised
her eyes and saw the tall, easy figure with the golden-tipped hair and
beard, his dreamy gray eyes looking at her with a directness that was
not curious, but almost as of pleading for mercy, while the
mouse-coloured corduroy suit that Waldsen wore brought out the clearness
of his skin in a degree that was almost startling.
“I hope that I put you not to great trouble,” he said in his soft
baritone. “If you will tell me where I may place my things, I can
arrange all myself.” The English was musical, and doubly so from the
slight hesitation and accent.
What passed through Margaret’s brain she never clearly realized, but she
heard her voice as from a long distance asking him to follow her
upstairs, and found herself lighting a lamp, and leading the way.
It was strange that she had never noticed before how dreary the attic
was. She merely indicated the room, saying that he might leave his
things there, and to-morrow he could bring up firewood, while to-night
she would give him an extra supply of bedding. As she left, Gurth looked
after her and at the bare room, and shivered, but the room seemed less
cold to him than the woman. There was no reason that he should expect
her to be cordial; doubtless she would have preferred a field hand to
whom she need not speak.
He realized that his very disappointment grew from the lack of proper
comprehension of his present position. “Oh, Andrea! Andrea! for one
sight of her sweet, sympathetic face, one touch only!” A harsh, clanging
bell from below waked him to the fact that if he wanted water to wash
his hands, he must bring it up himself; he looked at them dubiously,
smoothed his hair, flipped off his clothes with his handkerchief, and
went down.
He hoped that he might be allowed to eat his meals in the kitchen; it
would indicate his position more clearly, and he should be less lonely
than with constrained companionship. This was not to be. As he passed
the dining room door, he saw a table laid for three, at which Ezra
Tolford was already sitting, wrapped in a gaily figured dressing-gown,
and collarless, as was his habit when either at ease or at work. He was
reading a paper which was propped against a pitcher, and he barely
raised his eyes as he asked Gurth to be seated.
Margaret came in with a coffee-pot and a plate of biscuits. She had
thrown off her shawl, and her crimson cashmere waist accentuated the
depth of her eyes. Gurth unconsciously arose and drew out her chair,
waited until she was seated, and pushed it in again. It was a very
simple and ordinary act of courtesy, and done as a matter of course
without the slightest manner of conferring a favour. Margaret coloured
at this hitherto unknown civility, but said “Thank you” as if she were
quite accustomed to it, while the Deacon did not notice it at all.
The meal began in silence, but the Deacon finished his paper with the
first cup of coffee, and began to discuss the affairs of the farm in a
businesslike manner. The ice-cutting must begin to-morrow, it was quite
clear, for the last snowstorm had been dry and had drifted away from the
pond.
Had Waldsen ever cut ice? No! Well, he could superintend the weighing of
it, then. Could he milk? No! The hay must be transferred from the left
side of the great barn to the right, as the supports were giving way,
and Peter Svenson, the carpenter, must come and straighten them, as well
as do some tinkering at the mill. Squire Black at the village needed two
tons of hay, so that much could be carted in next morning.
Waldsen fortunately was thoroughly familiar with horses, and was a good
deal of a carpenter, having always had a fancy for such work, and, when
a boy, he had for amusement built an arbour for his mother in the garden
of her country-house. He was able to volunteer to repair the barn and
mill, if the Deacon had the necessary tools. The Deacon was too keen to
show his surprise, but accepted the offer, and said it would come handy
to have some patching up done before it came time to clear the land. He
could manage the cows and the mill, if Gurth took charge of the horses
and the chores.
The Deacon, having finished his meal, shook the crumbs from a fold of
the tablecloth of which he made a sort of apron in his lap, and left the
table. Margaret followed him, and Waldsen, hesitating a moment, went to
the back entry and began to collect his possessions, taking his violin
case and a small box first. When he returned for his trunk, the Deacon
appeared, and, as a matter of course, helped him carry it upstairs. The
trunk was very heavy, being half full of books. Then the two men went
out to feed the horses; the sharp, dry snow blew in like powdered flint
when they opened the door, and made rainbows about the lantern as they
went down the path.
After the table was clear, Margaret took up the paper, read for a few
moments, then dropped it suddenly and went into the kitchen. Zella, who
was knitting a skirt of scarlet yarn, seemed very sulky and angry when
Margaret bade her take some wood to the attic bedroom. “I no carry for
hired man,” was her rejoinder. “You will take the wood up to-night,”
said Margaret, in the quiet, decided tone that was habitual to her;
“to-morrow he will carry it himself.” In a short time a fire was started
in the old, open-fronted wood stove, that sent a welcome glow across the
long, low room with its deeply recessed dormer windows. The furniture
consisted of an old-fashioned four-posted bedstead and some
spindle-backed chairs, discarded long ago from the lower rooms, an old
chest of drawers and a table, while a row of wooden pegs behind the
chimney did duty as a closet.
Going to the adjoining lumber room, Margaret pulled open a long trunk
and took a chintz quilt, some curtains that had originally belonged to
the old bed, and three or four carpet rugs. These she dragged into the
attic, and then brought from a downstairs room a large rocking-chair,
covered with Turkey red, and a blue china bowl and pitcher. The last man
who had slept in the attic had washed at the pump. In a few minutes the
bare room looked quite habitable, and Margaret returned to her
newspaper.
In perhaps half an hour her father returned, and she heard Waldsen’s
steps going up the creaking back stairs.
“Well, daughter, quite a figure of a man, isn’t he? I know you don’t
like to have men folks about, but you see this arrangement will
advantage me greatly. If I can sell him the Hill Farm, it will be so
much clear gain, besides being a bargain for him, for it’s running down
and needs lots of tinkering. And if we get a good neighbour there, it
won’t be so lonesome for you when I go over town. I can arrange with him
for half-time work in the growing season, so he can get his fruit
running. I’ll sell that place for three thousand dollars—and three
thousand dollars in hand,—why, Margaret, you might go to Europe next
summer with Judge Martin’s folks! He told me yesterday they expected to
take a tour, and that if I’d let you go, you’d be good company for
Elizabeth. What do you say to that, daughter?”
Going to him and sitting on the arm of his chair, she hid her face on
his shoulder, a childish habit of hers, and said: “Dear old dad, I
should want you to go with me, and then, besides, it is all so
uncertain. This man may not really want to buy a place, or he may have
no money, or—or, a great many things may not be true!”
“No, no, child! the man is all right, he wants to have a home of his own
by next Christmas. There is some reason why his sister cannot come until
then. I like to keep you with me, but my little girl is too lonely; she
must see more company, and if she’s too wise and too proud for the folks
about home, why, this place isn’t the whole world.”
Meanwhile Waldsen was sitting on his trunk in the attic room in an
attitude of dejection. Then, as the fire flickered, he saw the change
that had been wrought. Not great in fact, but in the womanly touch, and
he was comforted. Taking from his pocket the little case containing
Andrea’s portrait, he placed it on the chest of drawers, and, after
closing the door, took out his violin.
Margaret and her father were playing their nightly game of backgammon
when she started, dropped her checkers with a rattle, and grasped his
arm. The Deacon looked up in surprise, and then, as he heard a far-away
strain of music that seemed to come from the chimney, said, “Don’t be
scared, daughter, it’s only the young man playing his fiddle!” But
somehow neither father nor daughter cared to continue their game, and a
moment later Margaret opened the door of the sitting-room and one at the
foot of the stairs, and stood there listening, in spite of the cold air
that swept down. Accustomed at most to the trick playing of travelling
concert troupes, who visited the next town, this expressive legato music
was a revelation to Margaret, and stirred her silent nature to untested
depths. The first theme was pleading and wholly unknown to her, but
presently the air changed to the song she had taught the children during
the last Christmas season; through it she heard two voices singing,—the
violin and the man.
“Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel.
“Hither page and stand by me
If thou know’st it telling
Yonder peasant, who is he
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Hymn tunes,” said Deacon Tolford, pursing his mouth in a satisfied way.
“I forgot to ask him if he is a church member. Perhaps he might help out
at the Endeavour Concert next month.” But Margaret, shaking her head
impatiently, stood with her finger on her lips.
The Tolford household was more cheerful after Waldsen’s coming. Not that
he intruded upon the Deacon and his daughter, merely talking a few
minutes after meals, perhaps, and then going to his attic, but little by
little the mutual strangeness wore off. Though Waldsen fulfilled to the
letter the work that he had engaged to do, he found that it was
impossible to keep up the illusion of being a mere labourer, and
reconciled himself from the fact that in other farming families the
steady male “help” stands placed on a different footing with the
household, from the transient field hands who come and go with the crops
and seasons. Farmer Elliott’s “help” was his brother-in-law, and Farmer
Bryce’s, his wife’s cousin.
The Deacon looked at the whole matter from a commercial standpoint. Here
was a likely young man who, though he was unused to many kinds of manual
labour, eked out his lack of knowledge with extreme willingness, and
asked no wages other than instruction. At the same time he was a
prospective purchaser of a house that had been difficult to sell. That
was the beginning and end of the matter. That Waldsen was rarely
intelligent, and added to their home life, was also an advantage, but
secondary.
Every day Gurth held Margaret’s chair, and placed it at the table; there
was no longer any restraint between them. He saw in her a sweet, womanly
nature, whose best part was evidently held in check, owing to the
peculiarities of the community in which she lived, which he could not
fathom in spite of freedom from all prejudice. He admitted the beauty of
purpose with which she clung to her ideals, but could not help
contrasting her reserve with Andrea’s spontaneous cheerfulness, her love
of everything that grew from the ground and every bird that flew, while
Margaret seemed but half conscious of the natural beauties that
surrounded her.
Waldsen was most contented when employed at the mill. Birds that braved
the winter gathered about it for scraps of grain. Nuthatches pried under
the mossy shingles, meadow-larks stalked solemnly in the stubbly grass
for sweepings, and robins fed upon the berries of many bushes that
hedged the pond. Wild geese rested there, and for days at a time flocks
of ducks would pass and pause for shelter, and owls roosted nightly in
the mill loft, making hearty meals of mice. Many a time he saw the quail
coveys far up on the hill running about among the gravestones, and he
put a sheaf of rye there for them, and it waved its shadowy pinions
above the snow, as if saying to the silent community, “I, too, have
slept in the ground; have courage!”
Another sheaf he fastened over the mill door, and, seeing it, the Deacon
lectured him upon the folly of gathering a lot of birds that must be
shot or scared away in berry season, saying, “It’s all very well now,
but if you encourage them, where will the profit be when all the biggest
berries are bird marked?”
Gurth felt like answering, “I will let the birds have them all, so long
as they come to me.” But then, where would be the bread for Andrea? He
felt beauty so keenly that he could not bear to harness Nature and drive
her like a cart-horse for his profit. His needs and his desires were
almost irreconcilable, and the consciousness of it well-nigh appalled
him. He could not change his temperament in the least degree; even his
experiment of passing for a labourer was partly frustrated; he might
possibly have masqueraded as a wandering musician, but he began to feel
his incapacity for material toil.
Margaret all this time lived in a waking dream; unknown to herself, all
the pent-up forces of her affection had crystallized about this
stranger. His natural courtesy seemed to her a gentle personal tribute;
the mystery he allowed to surround him (being wholly unconscious of the
version of his story the carpenter had told), and his poetic
personality, made him seem like some one she had met in an old romance.
Then the music, too, for often now in the evening he brought his violin
and accompanied her when she sang or played, giving her new
understanding, while he corrected the hardness of her method so
tactfully that she did not realize it. Lending her new music,
substituting the “Songs without Words” for the hackneyed “Airs with
Variations,” and teaching her German and Danish ballads, that lent
themselves to her rich contralto voice.
Margaret became a different creature, and rare glints of red touched her
cheeks. The Deacon accounted for this arousing in the pleasure she
anticipated in going abroad if the Hill Farm was sold. He was so
thoroughly convinced of her indifference to men, that he was blind to
the awakening of her heart.
Margaret noticed with pleasure the various details and changes in
Waldsen’s attic, where she went occasionally to dust, and thought that
they betokened contentment. The room was no longer bare, festoons of
ground pine hung from the rafters and canopied the windows, a half-dozen
home-made cages filled the dormer nearest the stove, and sheltered a
collection of wild birds rescued from cold and hunger, which chirped
from them merrily, while a little screech-owl blinked sleepily from a
perch in the corner. Books lay on the table and filled a rough shelf
under the eaves. Writing implements and paper also lay about, and traces
of bold, irregular characters were on the big sheets of blotting-paper.
It was Andrea’s picture, however, that interested Margaret more than
anything. She looked at it day after day, trying to trace a resemblance
to Gurth. One day she kissed the lips, and then, suddenly remembering
that _he_ might also do this, fled precipitately to her room, and,
locking the door, stayed until dark, when she went down to supper with
her face flushed, and a nervous air. So nervous was she that her hand
trembled until she almost dropped the cup that she was passing to her
father. Gurth grasped it, and thus their hands met for the first time.
IV