"Wassamequin, Nashoonon, and Massaconomet did voluntarily submit
themselves to the English, and promise to be willing from time to
time to be instructed in the knowledge of God. Being asked not to
do any unnecessary work on the Sabbath day, they answered, 'It is
easy to them; they have not much to do on any day, and can well
take rest on that day as any other.' So then we, causing them to
understand the articles, and all the ten commandments of God, and
they freely assenting to all, they were solemnly received; and the
Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and their
dinner; and to them and their men, every one of them, a cup of sack
at their departure. So they took leave, and went
away."--_Massachusetts Colonial Records._
Dr. Gaston sat in his library, studying a chess problem. His clerical
coat was old and spotted, his table was of rough wood, the floor
uncarpeted; by right, Poverty should have made herself prominent there.
But she did not. Perhaps she liked the old chaplain, who showed a fine,
amply built person under her reign, with florid complexion, bright blue
eyes, and a curly brown wig--very different in aspect from her usual
lean and dismal retinue; perhaps, also, she stopped here herself to warm
her cold heart now and then in the hot, bright, crowded little room,
which was hers by right, although she did not claim it, enjoying it,
however, as a miserly money-lender enjoys the fine house over which he
holds a mortgage, rubbing his hands exultingly, as, clad in his thin old
coat, he walks by. Certainly the plastering had dropped from the walls
here and there; there was no furniture save the tables and shelves made
by the island carpenter, and one old leathern arm-chair, the parson's
own, a miracle of comfort, age, and hanging leather tatters. But on the
shelves and on the tables, on the floor and on the broad window-sills,
were books; they reached the ceiling on the shelves; they wainscoted the
walls to the height of several feet all round the room; small volumes
were piled on the narrow mantel as far up as they could go without
toppling over, and the tables were loaded also. Aisles were kept open
leading to the door, to the windows, and to the hearth, where the ragged
arm-chair stood, and where there was a small parade-ground of open
floor; but everywhere else the printed thoughts held sway. The old
fire-place was large and deep, and here burned night and day, throughout
the winter, a fire which made the whole room bright; add to this the
sunshine streaming through the broad, low, uncurtained windows, and you
have the secret of the cheerfulness in the very face of a barren lack of
everything we are accustomed to call comfort.
The Reverend James Gaston was an Englishman by birth. On coming to
America he had accepted a chaplaincy in the army, with the intention of
resigning it as soon as he had become sufficiently familiar with the
ways of the Church in this country to feel at ease in a parish. But
years had passed, and he was a chaplain still; for evidently the country
parishes were not regulated according to his home ideas, the rector's
authority--yes, even the tenure of his rectorship--being dependent upon
the chance wills and fancies of his people. Here was no dignity, no time
for pleasant classical studies, and no approval of them; on the
contrary, a continuous going out to tea, and a fear of offending, it
might be, a warden's wife, who very likely had been brought up a
Dissenter. The Reverend James Gaston therefore preferred the government
for a master.
Dr. Gaston held the office of post chaplain, having been, on
application, selected by the council of administration. He had no
military rank, but as there happened to be quarters to spare, a cottage
was assigned to him, and as he had had the good fortune to be liked and
respected by all the officers who had succeeded each other on the little
island, his position, unlike that of some of his brethren, was
endurable, and even comfortable. He had been a widower for many years;
he had never cared to marry again, but had long ago recovered his
cheerfulness, and had brought up, intellectually at least, two children
whom he loved as if they had been his own--the boy Erastus Pronando, and
Anne Douglas. The children returned his affection heartily, and made a
great happiness in his lonely life. The girl was his good scholar, the
boy his bad one; yet the teacher was severe with Anne, and indulgent to
the boy. If any one had asked the reason, perhaps he would have said
that girls were docile by nature, whereas boys, having more temptations,
required more lenity; or perhaps that girls who, owing to the
constitution of society, never advanced far in their studies, should
have all the incitement of severity while those studies lasted, whereas
boys, who are to go abroad in the world and learn from life, need no
such severity. But the real truth lay deeper than this, and the chaplain
himself was partly conscious of it; he felt that the foundations must be
laid accurately and deeply in a nature like that possessed by this young
girl.
"Good-morning, uncle," said Anne, entering and putting down her Latin
books (as children they had adopted the fashion of calling their teacher
"uncle"). "Was your coffee good this morning?"
"Ah, well, so-so, child, so-so," replied the chaplain, hardly aroused
yet from his problem.
"Then I must go out and speak to--to--what is this one's name, uncle?"
"Her name is--here, I have it written down--Mrs. Evelina Crangall," said
the chaplain, reading aloud from his note-book, in a slow, sober voice.
Evidently it was a matter of moment to him to keep that name well in his
mind.
Public opinion required that Dr. Gaston should employ a Protestant
servant; no one else was obliged to conform, but the congregation felt
that a stand must be made somewhere, and they made it, like a chalk
line, at the parson's threshold. Now it was very well known that there
were no Protestants belonging to the class of servants on the island who
could cook at all, that talent being confined to the French
quarter-breeds and to occasional Irish soldiers' wives, none of them
Protestants. The poor parson's cooking was passed from one incompetent
hand to another--lake-sailors' wives, wandering emigrants, moneyless
forlorn females left by steamers, belonging to that strange floating
population that goes forever travelling up and down the land, without
apparent motive save a vague El-Dorado hope whose very conception would
be impossible in any other country save this. Mrs. Evelina Crangall was
a hollow-chested woman with faded blue eyes, one prominent front tooth,
scanty light hair, and for a form a lattice-work of bones. She
preserved, however, a somewhat warlike aspect in her limp calico, and
maintained that she thoroughly understood the making of coffee, but that
she was accustomed to the use of a French coffee-pot. Anne, answering
serenely that no French coffee-pot could be obtained in that kitchen,
went to work and explained the whole process from the beginning, the
woman meanwhile surveying her with suspicion, which gradually gave way
before the firm but pleasant manner. With a long list of kindred
Evelinas, Anne had had dealings before. Sometimes her teachings effected
a change for the better, sometimes they did not, but in any case the
Evelinas seldom remained long. They were wanderers by nature, and had
sudden desires to visit San Francisco, or to "go down the river to
Newerleens." This morning, while making her explanation, Anne made
coffee too. It was a delicious cupful which she carried back with her
into the library, and the chaplain, far away in the chess country, came
down to earth immediately in order to drink it. Then they opened the
Latin books, and Anne translated her page of Livy, her page of Cicero,
and recited her rules correctly. She liked Latin; its exactness suited
her. Mrs. Bryden was wrong when she said that the girl studied Greek.
Dr. Gaston had longed to teach her that golden tongue, but here William
Douglas had interfered. "Teach her Latin if you like, but not Greek," he
said. "It would injure the child--make what is called a blue-stocking of
her, I suppose--and it is my duty to stand between her and injury."
"Ah! ah! you want to make a belle of her, do you?" said the cheery
chaplain.
[Illustration: "AS SHE BENT OVER THE OLD VOLUME."]
"I said it was my duty; I did not say it was my wish," replied the
moody father. "If I could have my wish, Anne should never know what a
lover is all her life long."
"What! you do not wish to have her marry, then? There are happy
marriages. Come, Douglas, don't be morbid."
"I know what men are. And you and I are no better."
"But she may love."
"Ah! there it is; she may. And that is what I meant when I said that it
was my duty to keep her from making herself positively unattractive."
"Greek need not do that," said Dr. Gaston, shortly.
"It need not, but it does. Let me ask you one question: did you ever
fall in love, or come anywhere near falling in love, with a girl who
understood Greek?"
"That is because only the homely ones take to it," replied the chaplain,
fencing a little.
But Anne was not taught Greek. After Cicero she took up algebra, then
astronomy. After that she read aloud from a ponderous Shakspeare, and
the old man corrected her accentuation, and questioned her on the
meanings. A number of the grand old plays the girl knew almost entirely
by heart; they had been her reading-books from childhood. The
down-pouring light of the vivid morning sunshine and the up-coming white
glare of the ice below met and shone full upon her face and figure as
she bent over the old volume laid open on the table before her, one hand
supporting her brow, the other resting on the yellow page. Her hands
were firm, white, and beautifully shaped--strong hands, generous hands,
faithful hands; not the little, idle, characterless, faithless palms so
common in America, small, dainty, delicate, and shapeless, coming from a
composite origin. Her thick hair, brown as a mellowed chestnut, with a
gleam of dark red where the light touched it, like the red of November
oak leaves, was, as usual, in her way, the heavy braids breaking from
the coil at the back of her head, one by one, as she read on through
_Hamlet_. At last impatiently she drew out the comb, and they all fell
down over her shoulders, and left her in momentary peace.
The lesson was nearly over when Rast Pronando appeared; he was to enter
college--a Western college on one of the lower lakes--early in the
spring, and that prospect made the chaplain's lessons seem dull to him.
"Very likely they will not teach at all as he does; I shall do much
better if I go over the text-books by myself," he said, confidentially,
to Anne. "I do not want to appear old-fashioned, you know."
"Is it unpleasant to be old-fashioned? I should think the old fashions
would be sure to be the good ones," said the girl. "But I do not want
you to go so far beyond me, Rast; we have always been even until now.
Will you think _me_ old-fashioned too when you come back?"
"Oh no; you will always be Anne. I can predict you exactly at twenty,
and even thirty: there is no doubt about _you_."
"But shall I be old-fashioned?"
"Well, perhaps; but we don't mind it in women. All the goddesses were
old-fashioned, especially Diana. _You_ are Diana."
"Diana, a huntress. She loved Endymion, who was always asleep," said
Anne, quoting from her school-girl mythology.
This morning Rast had dropped in to read a little Greek with his old
master, and to walk home with Anne. The girl hurried through her
_Hamlet_, and then yielded the place to him. It was a three-legged
stool, the only companion the arm-chair had, and it was the seat for the
reciting scholar; the one who was studying sat in a niche on the
window-seat at a little distance. Anne, retreating to this niche, began
to rebraid her hair.
"But she, within--within--singing with enchanting tone, enchanting
voice, wove with a--with a golden shuttle the sparkling web," read Rast,
looking up and dreamily watching the brown strands taking their place in
the long braid. Anne saw his look, and hurried her weaving. The girl had
thought all her life that her hair was ugly because it was so heavy, and
neither black nor gold in hue; and Rast, following her opinion, had
thought so too: she had told him it was, many a time. It was
characteristic of her nature that while as a child she had admired her
companion's spirited, handsome face and curling golden locks, she had
never feared lest he might not return her affection because she happened
to be ugly; she drew no comparisons. But she had often discussed the
subject of beauty with him. "I should like to be beautiful," she said;
"like that girl at the fort last summer."
"Pooh! it doesn't make much difference," answered Rast, magnanimously.
"I shall always like you."
"That is because you are so generous, dear."
"Perhaps it is," answered the boy.
This was two years before, when they were fourteen and fifteen years
old; at sixteen and seventeen they had advanced but little in their
ideas of life and of each other. Still, there was a slight change, for
Anne now hurried the braiding; it hurt her a little that Rast should
gaze so steadily at the rough, ugly hair.
When the Greek was finished they said good-by to the chaplain, and left
the cottage together. As they crossed the inner parade-ground, taking
the snow path which led toward the entrance grating, and which was kept
shovelled out by the soldiers, the snow walls on each side rising to
their chins, Rast suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Annet, I have thought of
something! I am going to take you down the fort hill on a sled. Now you
need not object, because I shall do it in any case, although we _are_
grown up, and I _am_ going to college. Probably it will be the last
time. I shall borrow Bert Bryden's sled. Come along."
All the boy in him was awake; he seized Anne's wrist, and dragged her
through first one cross-path, then another, until at last they reached
the commandant's door. From the windows their heads had been visible,
turning and crossing above the heaped-up snow. "Rast, and Anne Douglas,"
said Mrs. Bryden, recognizing the girl's fur cap and the youth's golden
hair. She tapped on the window, and signed to them to enter without
ceremony. "What is it, Rast? Good-morning, Anne; what a color you have,
child!"
"Rast has been making me run," said Anne, smiling, and coming toward
the hearth, where the fort ladies were sitting together sewing, and
rather lugubriously recalling Christmas times in their old Eastern
homes.
"Throw off your cloak," said Mrs. Cromer, "else you will take cold when
you go out again."
"We shall only stay a moment," answered Anne.
The cloak was of strong dark blue woollen cloth, closely fitted to the
figure, with a small cape; it reached from her throat to her ankles, and
was met and completed by fur boots, fur gloves, and a little fur cap.
The rough plain costume was becoming to the vigorous girl. "It tones her
down," thought the lieutenant's wife; "she really looks quite well."
In the mean while Rast had gone across to the dining-room to find Bert
Bryden, the commandant's son, and borrow his sled.
"And you're really going to take Miss Douglas down the hill!" said the
boy. "Hurrah! I'll look out of the side window and see. What fun! Such a
big girl to go sliding!"
Anne was a big girl to go; but Rast was not to be withstood. She would
not get on the sled at the door, as he wished, but followed him out
through the sally-port, and round to the top of the long steep fort
hill, whose snowy slippery road-track was hardly used at all during the
winter, save by coasters, and those few in number, for the village boys,
French and half-breeds, did not view the snow as an amusement, or
toiling up hill as a recreation. The two little boys at the fort, and
what Scotch and New England blood there was in the town, held a monopoly
of the coasting.
"There they go!" cried Bert, from his perch on the deep window-seat
overlooking the frozen Straits and the village below. "Mamma, you must
let me take you down now; you are not so big as Miss Douglas."
Mrs. Bryden, a slender little woman, laughed. "Fancy the colonel's
horror," she said, "if he should see me sliding down that hill! And yet
it looks as if it might be rather stirring," she added, watching the
flying sled and its load. The sled, of island manufacture, was large
and sledge-like; it carried two comfortably. Anne held on by Rast's
shoulders, sitting behind him, while he guided the flying craft. Down
they glided, darted, faster and faster, losing all sense of everything
after a while save speed. Reaching the village street at last, they flew
across it, and out on the icy pier beyond, where Rast by a skillful
manœuvre stopped the sled on the very verge. The fort ladies were all at
the windows now, watching.
"How dangerous!" said Mrs. Bryden, forgetting her admiration of a moment
before with a mother's irrelevant rapidity. "Albert, let me never see or
hear of your sliding on that pier; another inch, and they would have
gone over, down on the broken ice below!"
"I couldn't do it, mamma, even if I tried," replied Master Albert,
regretfully; "I always tumble off the sled at the street, or else run
into one of the warehouses. Only Rast Pronando can steer across
slanting, and out on that pier."
"I am very glad to hear it," replied Mrs. Bryden; "but your father must
also give you his positive commands on the subject. I had no idea that
the pier was ever attempted."
"And it is not, mamma, except by Rast," said the boy. "Can't I try it
when I am as old as he is?"
"Hear the child!" said Mrs. Cromer, going back to her seat by the fire;
"one would suppose he expected to stay here all his life. Do you not
know, Bert, that we are only here for a little while--a year or two?
Before you are eighteen months older very likely you will find yourself
out on the plains. What a life it is!"
The fort ladies all sighed. It was a habit they had. They drew the
dreariest pictures of their surroundings and privations in their letters
homeward, and really believed them, theoretically. In truth, there were
some privations; but would any one of them have exchanged army life for
civilian? To the last, thorough army ladies retain their ways; you
recognize them even when retired to private and perhaps more prosperous
life. Cosmopolitans, they do not sink into the ruts of small-town life;
they are never provincial. They take the world easily, having a
pleasant, generous taste for its pleasures, and making light of the
burdens that fall to their share. All little local rules and ways are
nothing to them: neither here nor anywhere are they to remain long. With
this habit and manner they keep up a vast amount of general
cheeriness--vast indeed, when one considers how small the incomes
sometimes are. But if small, they are also sure.
"Rast Pronando is too old for such frolics, I think," said Mrs. Rankin,
the lieutenant's wife, beginning another seam in the new dress for her
baby.
"He goes to college in the spring; that will quiet him," said Mrs.
Bryden.
"What will he do afterward? Is he to live here? At this end of the
world--this jumping-off place?"
"I suppose so; he has always lived here. But he belongs, you know, to
the old Philadelphia family of the same name, the Peter Pronandos."
"Does he? How strange! How did he come here?"
"He was born here: Dr. Gaston told me his history. It seems that the
boy's father was a wild younger son of the second Peter, grandson, of
course, of the original Peter, from whom the family derive all their
greatness--_and_ money. This Peter the third, only his name was not
Peter, but John (the eldest sons were the Peters), wandered away from
home, and came up here, where his father's name was well known among the
directors of the Fur Company. John Pronando, who must have been of very
different fibre from the rest of the family, liked the wild life of the
border, and even went off on one or two long expeditions to the Red
River of the North and the Upper Missouri after furs with the hunters of
the Company. His father then offered him a position here which would
carry with it authority, but he curtly refused, saying that he had no
taste for a desk and pen like Peter. Peter was his brother, who had
begun dutifully at an early age his life-long task of taking care of the
large accumulation of land which makes the family so rich. Peter was the
good boy always. Father Peter was naturally angry with John, and
inclined even then to cross his name off the family list of heirs; this,
however, was not really done until the prodigal crowned his long course
of misdeeds by marrying the pretty daughter of a Scotchman, who held one
of the smaller clerkships in the Company's warehouses here--only a grade
above the hunters themselves. This was the end. Almost anything else
might have been forgiven save a marriage of that kind. If John Pronando
had selected the daughter of a flat-boat man on the Ohio River, or of a
Pennsylvania mountain wagoner, they might have accepted her--at a
distance--and made the best of her. But a person from the rank and file
of their own Fur Company--it was as though a colonel should marry the
daughter of a common soldier in his own regiment: yes, worse, for
nothing can equal the Pronando pride. From that day John Pronando was
simply forgotten--so they said. His mother was dead, so it may have been
true. A small sum was settled upon him, and a will was carefully drawn
up forever excluding him and the heirs he might have from any share in
the estate. John did not appear to mind this, but lived on merrily
enough for some years afterward, until his sweet little wife died; then
he seemed to lose his strength suddenly, and soon followed her, leaving
this one boy, Erastus, named after the maternal grandfather, with his
usual careless disregard of what would be for his advantage. The boy has
been brought up by our good chaplain, although he lives with a family
down in the village; the doctor has husbanded what money there was
carefully, and there is enough to send him through college, and to start
him in life in some way. A good education he considered the best
investment of all."
"In a fresh-water college?" said Mrs. Cromer, raising her eyebrows.
"Why not, for a fresh-water boy? He will always live in the West."
"He is so handsome," said Mrs. Rankin, "that he might go Eastward,
captivate his relatives, and win his way back into the family again."
"He does not know anything about his family," said the colonel's wife.
"Then some one ought to tell him."
"Why? Simply for the money? No: let him lead his own life out here, and
make his own way," said Mrs. Bryden, warmly.
"What a radical you are, Jane!"
"No, not a radical; but I have seen two or three of the younger
Pronandos, of the fourth generation, I mean, and whenever I think of
their dead eyes, and lifeless, weary manner, I feel like doing what I
can to keep Rast away from them."
"But the boy must live his life, Jane. These very Pronandos whom you
describe will probably be sober and staid at fifty: the Pronandos always
are. And Rast, after all, is one of them."
"But not like them. _He_ would go to ruin, he has so much more
imagination than they have."
"And less stability?"
"Well, no; less epicureanism, perhaps. It is the solid good things of
life that bring the Pronandos back, after they have indulged in youthful
wildness: they have no taste for husks."
Then the colonel came in, and, soon after, the sewing circle broke up,
Mrs. Cromer and Mrs. Rankin returning to their quarters in the other
cottages through the walled snow-paths. The little fort was perched on
the brow of the cliff, overlooking the village and harbor; the windows
of the stone cottages which formed the officers' quarters commanded an
uninterrupted view of blue water in summer, and white ice fields in
winter, as far as the eye could reach. It could hardly have withstood a
bombardment; its walls and block-houses, erected as a defense against
the Indians, required constant propping and new foundation-work to keep
them within the requirements of safety, not to speak of military
dignity. But the soldiers had nothing else to do, and, on the whole, the
fort looked well, especially from the water, crowning the green height
with buttressed majesty. During eight months of the year the officers
played chess and checkers, and the men played fox-and-geese. The
remaining four months, which comprised all there was of spring, summer,
and autumn, were filled full of out-door work and enjoyment; summer
visitors came, and the United States uniform took its conquering place,
as usual, among the dancers, at the picnics, and on the fast-sailing
fishing-boats which did duty as yachts, skimming over the clear water in
whose depths fish could be seen swimming forty feet below. These same
fish were caught and eaten--the large lake trout, and the delicate
white-fish, aristocrat of the freshwater seas; three-quarters of the
population were fishermen, and the whole town drew its food from the
deep. The business had broadened, too, as the Prairie States became more
thickly settled, namely, the salting and packing for sale of these
fresh-water fish. Barrels stood on the piers, and brisk agents, with
pencils behind their ears, stirred the slow-moving villagers into
activity, as the man with a pole stirs up the bears. Fur-bearing animals
had had their day; it was now the turn of the creatures of the deep.
"Let us stop at the church-house a moment and see Miss Lois," said Rast,
as, dragging the empty sled behind him, he walked by Anne's side through
the village street toward the Agency.
"I am afraid I have not time, Rast."
"Make it, then. Come, Annet, don't be ill-natured. And, besides, you
ought to see that I go there, for I have not called upon Miss Lois this
year."
"As this year only began last week, you are not so very far behind,"
said the girl, smiling. "Why can you not go and see Miss Lois alone?"
"I should be welcome, at any rate; _she_ adores me."
"Does she, indeed!"
"Yes, Miss Douglas, she does. She pretends otherwise, but that is always
the way with women. Oh! I know the world."
"You are only one year older than I am."
"In actual time, perhaps; but twenty years older in knowledge."
"What will you be, then, when you come back from college? An old man?"
"By no means; for _I_ shall stay where I am. But in the mean time you
will catch up with me."
Handsome Rast had passed through his novitiate, so he thought. His
knowledge of the world was derived partly from Lieutenant Walters, who,
although fresh from West Point, was still several years older than young
Pronando, and patronized him accordingly, and partly from a slender,
low-voiced Miss Carew, who was thirty, but appeared twenty, after the
manner of slender yellow-white blondes who have never possessed any
rose-tints, having always been willowy and amber-colored. Miss Carew
sailed, for a summer's amusement through the Great Lakes of the West;
and then returned Eastward with the opinion that they were but so many
raw, blank, inland oceans, without sensations or local coloring enough
to rouse her. The week on the island, which was an epoch in Rast's life,
had held for her but languid interest; yet even the languid work of a
master-hand has finish and power, and Rast was melancholy and silent for
fifteen days after the enchantress had departed. Then he wrote to her
one or two wild letters, and received no answer; then he grew bitter.
Then Walters came, with his cadet's deep experience in life, and the
youth learned from him, and re-appeared on the surface again with a
tinge of cynicism which filled Anne with wonder. For he had never told
her the story of the summer; it was almost the only event in his life
which she had not shared. But it was not that he feared to tell her,
they were as frank with each other as two children; it was because he
thought she would not understand it.
"I do not like Mr. Walters," she said, one day.
"He was very much liked at the Point, I assure you," said Rast, with
significant emphasis. "By the ladies, I mean, who come there in the
summer."
"How could they like him, with that important, egotistical air?"
"But it is to conquer him they like," said Tita, looking up from her
corner.
"Hear the child!" said Rast, laughing. "Are _you_ going to conquer,
Tita?"
"Yes," said Tita, stroking the cat which shared the corner with her--a
soft coated yellow pussy that was generally sleepy and quiet, but which
had, nevertheless, at times, extraordinary fits of galloping round in a
circle, and tearing the bark from the trees as though she was
possessed--an eccentricity of character which the boys attributed to the
direct influence of Satan.
Miss Lois lived in the church-house. It was an ugly house; but then, as
is often said of a plain woman, "so good!" It did not leak or rattle, or
fall down or smoke, or lean or sag, as did most of the other houses in
the village, in regard to their shingles, their shutters, their
chimneys, their side walls, and their roof-trees. It stood straightly
and squarely on its stone foundation, and every board, nail and latch
was in its proper position. Years before, missionaries had been sent
from New England to work among the Indians of this neighborhood, who had
obtained their ideas of Christianity, up to that time, solely from the
Roman Catholic priests, who had succeeded each other in an unbroken line
from that adventurous Jesuit, the first explorer of these inland seas,
Father Marquette. The Presbyterians came, established their mission,
built a meeting-house, a school-house, and a house for their pastor, the
buildings being as solid as their belief. Money was collected for this
enterprise from all over New England, that old-time, devout,
self-sacrificing community whose sternness and faith were equal; tall
spare men came westward to teach the Indians, earnest women with bright
steadfast eyes and lath-like forms were their aiders, wives, and
companions. Among these came Miss Lois--then young Lois
Hinsdale--carried Westward by an aunt whose missionary zeal was burning
splendidly up an empty chimney which might have been filled with family
loves and cares, but was not: shall we say better filled? The
missionaries worked faithfully; but, as the Indians soon moved further
westward, the results of their efforts can not be statistically
estimated now, or the accounts balanced.
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian," is a remark that crystallizes
the floating opinion of the border. But a border population has not a
missionary spirit. New England, having long ago chased out, shot down,
and exterminated all her own Indians, had become peaceful and pious, and
did not agree with these Western carriers of shot-guns. Still, when
there were no more Indians to come to this island school, it was of
necessity closed, no matter which side was right. There were still
numbers of Chippewas living on the other islands and on the mainland;
but they belonged to the Roman Catholic faith, and were under the
control of Père Michaux.
The Protestant church--a square New England meeting-house, with steeple
and bell--was kept open during another year; but the congregation grew
so small that at last knowledge of the true state of affairs reached the
New England purses, and it was decided that the minister in charge
should close this mission, and go southward to a more promising field
among the prairie settlers of Illinois. All the teachers connected with
the Indian school had departed before this--all save Miss Lois and her
aunt; for Priscilla Hinsdale, stricken down by her own intense energy,
which had consumed her as an inward fire, was now confined to her bed,
partially paralyzed. The New England woman had sold her farm, and put
almost all her little store of money into island property. "I shall live
and die here," she had said; "I have found my life-work." But her work
went away from her; her class of promising squaws departed with their
pappooses and their braves, and left her scholarless.
"With all the blessed religious privileges they have here, besides other
advantages, I can not at all understand it--I can not understand it,"
she repeated many times, especially to Sandy Forbes, an old Scotchman
and fervent singer of psalms.
"Aweel, aweel, Miss Priscilla, I donnot suppose ye can," replied Sandy,
with a momentary twinkle in his old eyes.
While still hesitating over her future course, illness struck down the
old maid, and her life-work was at last decided for her: it was merely
to lie in bed, motionless, winter and summer, with folded hands and
whatever resignation she was able to muster. Niece Lois, hitherto a
satellite, now assumed the leadership. This would seem a simple enough
charge, the household of two women, poor in purse, in a remote village
on a Northern frontier. But exotics of any kind require nursing and
vigilance, and the Hinsdale household was an exotic. Miss Priscilla
required that every collar should be starched in the New England
fashion, that every curtain should fall in New England folds, that every
dish on the table should be of New England origin, and that every clock
should tick with New England accuracy. Lois had known no other training;
and remembering as she did also the ways of the old home among the New
Hampshire hills with a child's fidelity and affection, she went even
beyond her aunt in faithfulness to her ideal; and although the elder
woman had long been dead, the niece never varied the habits or altered
the rules of the house which was now hers alone.
"A little New England homestead strangely set up here on this far
Western island," William Douglas had said.
The church house, as the villagers named it, was built by the
Presbyterian missionaries, many of them laboring with their own hands at
the good work, seeing, no doubt, files of Indian converts rising up in
another world to call them blessed. When it came into the hands of Miss
Priscilla, it came, therefore, ready-made as to New England ideas of
rooms and closets, and only required a new application of white and
green paint to become for her an appropriate and rectangular bower. It
stood near the closed meeting-house, whose steeple threw a slow-moving
shadow across its garden, like a great sun-dial, all day. Miss Lois had
charge of the key of the meeting-house, and often she unlocked its door,
went in, and walked up and down the aisle, as if to revive the memories
of the past. She remembered the faith and sure hope that used to fill
the empty spaces, and shook her head and sighed. Then she upbraided
herself for sighing, and sang in her thin husky voice softly a verse or
two of one of their old psalms by way of reparation. She sent an annual
report of the condition of the building to the Presbyterian Board of
Missions, but in it said nothing of the small repairs for which her own
purse paid. Was it a silent way of making amends to the old walls for
having deserted their tenets?
"Cod-fish balls for breakfast on Sunday morning, of course," said Miss
Lois, "and fried hasty-pudding. On Wednesdays a boiled dinner. Pies on
Tuesdays and Saturdays."
The pins stood in straight rows on her pincushion; three times each week
every room in the house was swept, and the floors as well as the
furniture dusted. Beans were baked in an earthen pot on Saturday night,
and sweet-cake was made on Thursday. Rast Pronando often dropped in to
tea on Thursday. Winter or summer, through scarcity or plenty, Miss Lois
never varied her established routine, thereby setting an example, she
said, to the idle and shiftless. And certainly she was a faithful
guide-post, continually pointing out an industrious and systematic way,
which, however, to the end of time, no French-blooded, French-hearted
person will ever travel, unless dragged by force. The villagers
preferred their lake trout to Miss Lois's salt cod-fish, their savory
stews and soups to her corned beef, their tartines to her corn-meal
puddings, and their eau-de-vie to her green tea; they loved their
disorder and their comfort; her bar soap and scrubbing-brush were a
horror to their eyes. They washed the household clothes two or three
times a year: was not that enough? Of what use the endless labor of this
sharp-nosed woman with glasses over her eyes at the church-house? Were
not, perhaps, the glasses the consequences of such toil? And her figure
of a long leanness also?
The element of real heroism, however, came into Miss Lois's life in her
persistent effort to employ Indian servants. The old mission had been
established for their conversion and education; any descendant of that
mission, therefore, should continue to the utmost of her ability the
beneficent work. The meeting-house was closed, the school-house
abandoned, she could reach the native race by no other influence save
personal; that personal influence, then, she would use. Through long
years had she persisted, through long years would she continue to
persist. A succession of Chippewa squaws broke, stole, and skirmished
their way through her kitchen with various degrees of success, generally
in the end departing suddenly at night with whatever booty they could
lay their hands on. It is but justice to add, however, that this was not
much, a rigid system of keys and excellent locks prevailing in the
well-watched household. Miss Lois's conscience would not allow her to
employ half-breeds, who were sometimes endurable servants; duty
required, she said, that she should have full-blooded natives. And she
had them. She always began to teach them the alphabet within three days
after their arrival, and the spectacle of a tearful, freshly caught
Indian girl, very wretched in her calico dress and white apron, worn out
with the ways of the kettles and brasses, dejected over the fish-balls,
and appalled by the pudding, standing confronted by a large alphabet on
the well-scoured table, and Miss Lois by her side with a pointer, was
frequent and even regular in its occurrence, the only change being in
the personality of the learners. No one of them had ever gone through
the letters; but Miss Lois was not discouraged. Patiently she began over
again--she was always beginning over again. And in the mean time she was
often obliged not only to do almost all the household work with her own
hands, but to do it twice over in order to instruct the new-comer. By
the unwritten law of public opinion, Dr. Gaston was obliged to employ
only Protestant servants; by the unwritten law of her own conscience,
Miss Lois was obliged to employ only Indians. But in truth she did not
employ them so much as they employed her.
Miss Lois received her young friends in the sitting-room. There was a
parlor with Brussels carpet and hair-cloth sofa across the hall, but its
blinds were closed, and its shades drawn down. The parlor of
middle-class households in the cold climate of the Northern States
generally is a consecrated apartment, with the chill atmosphere and much
of the solemnity of a tomb. It may be called the high altar of the
careful housewife; but even here her sense of cleanliness and dustless
perfection is such that she keeps it cold. No sacred fire burns, no
cheerful ministry is allowed; everything is silent and veiled. The
apartment is of no earthly use--nor heavenly, save perhaps for ghosts.
But take it away, and the housewife is miserable; leave it, and she
lives on contentedly in her sitting-room all the year round, knowing it
is _there_.
Miss Lois's sitting-room was cheery; it had a rag-carpet, a bright fire,
and double-glass panes instead of the heavy woollen curtains which the
villagers hung over their windows in the winter--curtains that kept out
the cold, but also the light. Miss Lois's curtains were of white dimity
with knotted fringe, and her walls were freshly whitewashed. Her framed
sampler, and a memorial picture done with pen and ink, representing two
weeping-willows overshadowing a tombstone, ornamented the high
mantel-piece, and there were also two gayly colored china jars filled
with dried rose-leaves. They were only wild-brier roses; the real roses,
as she called them, grew but reluctantly in this Northern air. Miss Lois
never loved the wild ones as she had loved the old-fashioned
cinnamon-scented pink and damask roses of her youth, but she gathered
and dried these leaves of the brier from habit. There was also hanging
on the wall a looking-glass tilted forward at such an angle that the
looker-in could see only his feet, with a steep ascent of carpet going
up hill behind him. This looking-glass possessed a brightly hued picture
at the top, divided into two compartments, on one side a lovely lady
with a large bonnet modestly concealing her face, very bare shoulders,
leg-of-mutton sleeves, and a bag hanging on her arm; on the other old
Father Time, scythe in hand, as if he was intended as a warning to the
lovely lady that minutes were rapid and his stroke sure.
"Why do you keep your glass tilted forward so far that we can not look
in it, Miss Lois?" Rast had once asked.
Miss Lois did it from habit. But she answered: "To keep silly girls from
looking at themselves while they are pretending to talk to me. They say
something, and then raise their eyes quickly to see how they looked
when they said it. I have known them keep a smile or a particular
expression half a minute while they studied the effect--ridiculous
calves!"
"Calves have lovely eyes sometimes," said Rast.
"Did I say the girls were ugly, Master Pert? But the homely girls look
too."
"Perhaps to see how they can improve themselves."
"Perhaps," said the old maid, dryly. "Pity they never learn!"
In the sitting-room was a high chest of drawers, an old clock, a
chintz-covered settle, and two deep narrow old rocking-chairs, intended
evidently for scant skirts; on an especial table was the family Bible,
containing the record of the Hinsdale family from the date of the
arrival of the _Mayflower_. Miss Lois's prayer-book was not there; it
was up stairs in a bureau drawer. It did not seem to belong to the
old-time furniture of the rooms below, nor to the Hinsdale Bible.
The story of Miss Lois's change from the Puritan to the Episcopal ritual
might to-day fill a volume if written by one of those brooding,
self-searching woman-minds of New England--those unconscious, earnest
egotists who bring forth poetry beautiful sometimes to inspiration, but
always purely subjective. And if in such a volume the feelings, the
arguments, and the change were all represented as sincere,
conscientious, and prayerful, they would be represented with entire
truth. Nevertheless, so complex are the influences which move our lives,
and so deep the under-powers which we ourselves may not always
recognize, that it could be safely added by a man of the world as a
comment that Lois Hinsdale would never have felt these changes, these
doubts, these conflicts, if William Douglas had not been of another
creed. For in those days Douglas had a creed--the creed of his young
bride.
"Miss Hinsdale, we have come to offer you our New-Year's good wishes,"
said Rast, taking off his cap and making a ceremonious bow. "Our
equipage will wait outside. How charming is your apartment, madam! And
yourself--how Minerva-like the gleam of the eye, the motion of the hand,
which--"
"Which made the pies now cooling in the pantry, Rast Pronando, to whose
fragrance, I presume, I owe the honor of this visit."
"Not for myself, dear madam, but for Anne. She has already confided to
me that she feels a certain sinking sensation that absolutely requires
the strengthening influence of pie."
Anne laughed. "Are you going to stay long?" she asked, still standing at
the doorway.
"Certainly," replied Rast, seating himself in one of the narrow
rocking-chairs; "I have a number of subjects to discuss with our dear
Miss Lois."
"Then I will leave you here, for Tita is waiting for me. I have promised
to take them all over to Père Michaux's house this afternoon."
Miss Lois groaned--two short abrupt groans on different keys.
"Have you? Then I'm going too," said Rast, rising.
"Oh no, Rast; please do not," said the girl, earnestly. "When you go, it
is quite a different thing--a frolic always."
"And why not?" said Rast.
"Because the children go for religious instruction, as you well know; it
is their faith, and I feel that I ought to give them such opportunities
as I can to learn what it means."
"It means mummery!" said Miss Lois, loudly and sternly.
Anne glanced toward her old friend, but stood her ground firmly. "I must
take them," she said; "I promised I would do so as long as they were
children, and under my care. When they are older they can choose for
themselves."
"To whom did you make that promise, Anne Douglas?"
"To Père Michaux."
"And you call yourself a Protestant!"
"Yes; but I hope to keep a promise too, dear Miss Lois."
"Why was it ever made?"
"Père Michaux required it, and--father allowed it."
Miss Lois rubbed her forehead, settled her spectacles with her first and
third fingers, shook her head briskly once or twice to see if they were
firmly in place, and then went on with her knitting. What William
Douglas allowed, how could she disallow?
Rast, standing by Anne's side putting on his fur gloves, showed no
disposition to yield.
"Please do not come, Rast," said the girl again, laying her hand on his
arm.
"I shall go to take care of you."
"It is not necessary; we have old Antoine and his dogs, and the boys are
to have a sled of their own. We shall be at home before dark, I think,
and if not, the moon to-night is full."
"But I shall go," said Rast.
"Nonsense!" said Miss Lois. "Of course you will not go; Anne is right.
You romp and make mischief with those children always. Behave now, and
you shall come back this evening, and Anne shall come too, and we will
have apples and nuts and gingerbread, and Anne shall recite."
"Will you, Annet? I will yield if you promise."
"If I must, I must," said Anne, reluctantly.
"Go, then, proud maid; speed upon your errand. And in the mean time,
Miss Lois, something fragrant and spicy in the way of a reward _now_
would not come amiss, and then some music."
Among the possessions which Miss Lois had inherited from her aunt was a
small piano. The elder Miss Hinsdale, sent into the world with an almost
Italian love of music, found herself unable to repress it even in cold
New England; turning it, therefore, into the channel of the few stunted
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs of the day, she indulged it in a
cramped fashion, like a full-flowing stream shut off and made to turn a
mill. When the missionary spirit seized her in its fiery whirlwind, she
bargained with it mentally that her piano should be included; she
represented to the doubting elder that it would be an instrument of
great power among the savages, and that even David himself accompanied
the psalms with a well-stringed harp. The elder still doubted; he liked
a tuning-fork; and besides, the money which Miss Priscilla would pay for
the transportation of "the instrument" was greatly needed for boots for
the young men. But as Miss Priscilla was a free agent, and quite
determined, he finally decided, like many another leader, to allow what
he could not prevent, and the piano came. It was a small, old-fashioned
instrument, which had been kept in tune by Dr. Douglas, and through long
years the inner life of Miss Lois, her hopes, aspirations, and
disappointments, had found expression through its keys. It was a curious
sight to see the old maid sitting at her piano alone on a stormy
evening, the doors all closed, the shutters locked, no one stirring in
the church-house save herself. Her playing was old-fashioned, her hands
stiff; she could not improvise, and the range of the music she knew was
small and narrow, yet unconsciously it served to her all the purposes of
emotional expression. When she was sad, she played "China"; when she was
hopeful, "Coronation." She made the bass heavy in dejection, and played
the air in octaves when cheerful. She played only when she was entirely
alone. The old piano was the only confidant of the hidden remains of
youthful feeling buried in her heart.
[Illustration: LOIS HINSDALE.]
Rast played on the piano and the violin in an untrained fashion of his
own, and Anne sang; they often had small concerts in Miss Lois's parlor.
But a greater entertainment lay in Anne's recitations. These were all
from Shakspeare. Not in vain had the chaplain kept her tied to its pages
year after year; she had learned, almost unconsciously, as it were,
large portions of the immortal text by heart, and had formed her own
ideals of the characters, who were to her real persons, although as
different from flesh-and-blood people as are the phantoms of a dream.
They were like spirits who came at her call, and lent her their
personality; she could identify herself with them for the time being so
completely, throw herself into the bodies and minds she had
constructed for them so entirely, that the effect was startling, and all
the more so because her conceptions of the characters were girlish and
utterly different from those that have ruled the dramatic stage for
generations. Her ideas of Juliet, of Ophelia, of Rosalind, and Cleopatra
were her own, and she never varied them; the very earnestness of her
personations made the effect all the more extraordinary. Dr. Gaston had
never heard these recitations of his pupil; William Douglas had never
heard them; either of these men could have corrected her errors and
explained to her her mistakes. She herself thought them too trifling for
their notice; it was only a way she had of amusing herself. Even Rast,
her playmate, found it out by chance, coming upon her among the cedars
one day when she was Ophelia, and overhearing her speak several lines
before she saw him; he immediately constituted himself an audience of
one, with, however, the peremptory manners of a throng, and demanded to
hear all she knew. Poor Anne! the great plays of the world had been her
fairy tales; she knew no others. She went through her personations
timidly, the wild forest her background, the open air and blue Straits
her scenery. The audience found fault, but, on the whole, enjoyed the
performance, and demanded frequent repetitions. After a while Miss Lois
was admitted into the secret, and disapproved, and was curious, and
listened, and shook her head, but ended by liking the portraitures,
which were in truth as fantastic as phantasmagoria. Miss Lois had never
seen a play or read a novel in her life. For some time the forest
continued Anne's theatre, and more than once Miss Lois had taken
afternoon walks, for which her conscience troubled her: she could not
decide whether it was right or wrong. But winter came, and gradually it
grew into a habit that Anne should recite at the church-house now and
then, the Indian servant who happened to be at that time the occupant of
the kitchen being sent carefully away for the evening, in order that her
eye should not be guiltily glued to the key-hole during the exciting
visits of Ophelia and Juliet. Anne was always reluctant to give these
recitations now that she had an audience. "Out in the woods," she said,
"I had only the trees and the silence. I never thought of myself at
all."
"But Miss Lois and I are as handsome as trees; and as to silence, we
never say a word," replied Rast. "Come, Annet, you know you like it."
"Yes; in--in one way I do."
"Then let us take that way," said Rast.