"It was Peboan, the winter!
From his eyes the tears were flowing
As from melting lakes the streamlets,
And his body shrunk and dwindled
As the shouting sun ascended;
And the young man saw before him,
On the hearth-stone of the wigwam,
Where the fire had smoked and smouldered,
Saw the earliest flower of spring-time,
Saw the miskodeed in blossom.
Thus it was that in that Northland
Came the spring with all its splendor,
All its birds and all its blossoms,
All its flowers and leaves and grasses."
--LONGFELLOW. _The Song of Hiawatha._
On this Northern border Spring came late--came late, but in splendor.
She sent forward no couriers, no hints in the forest, no premonitions on
the winds. All at once she was there herself. Not a shy maid, timid,
pallid, hesitating, and turning back, but a full-blooming goddess and
woman. One might almost say that she was not Spring at all, but Summer.
The weeks called spring farther southward showed here but the shrinking
and fading of winter. First the snow crumbled to fine dry grayish
powder; then the ice grew porous and became honeycombed, and it was no
longer safe to cross the Straits; then the first birds came; then the
far-off smoke of a steamer could be seen above the point, and the
village wakened. In the same day the winter went and the summer came.
On the highest point of the island were the remains of an old
earth-work, crowned by a little surveyor's station, like an arbor on
stilts, which was reached by the aid of a ladder. Anne liked to go up
there on the first spring day, climb the ice-coated rounds, and,
standing on the dry old snow that covered the floor, gaze off toward the
south and east, where people and cities were, and the spring; then
toward the north, where there was still only fast-bound ice and snow
stretching away over thousands of miles of almost unknown country, the
great wild northland called British America, traversed by the hunters
and trappers of the Hudson Bay Company--vast empire ruled by private
hands, a government within a government, its line of forts and posts
extending from James Bay to the Little Slave, from the Saskatchewan
northward to the Polar Sea. In the early afternoon she stood there now,
having made her way up to the height with some difficulty, for the
ice-crust was broken, and she was obliged to wade knee-deep through some
of the drifts, and go round others that were over her head, leaving a
trail behind her as crooked as a child's through a clover field.
Reaching the plateau on the summit at last, and avoiding the hidden pits
of the old earth-work, she climbed the icy ladder, and stood on the
white floor again with delight, brushing from her woollen skirt and
leggings the dry snow which still clung to them. The sun was so bright
and the air so exhilarating that she pushed back her little fur cap, and
drew a long breath of enjoyment. Everything below was still
white-covered--the island and village, the Straits and the mainland; but
coming round the eastern point four propellers could be seen floundering
in the loosened ice, heaving the porous cakes aside, butting with their
sharp high bows, and then backing briskly to get headway to start
forward again, thus breaking slowly a passageway for themselves, and
churning the black water behind until it boiled white as soap-suds as
the floating ice closed over it. Now one boat, finding by chance a
weakened spot, floundered through it without pause, and came out
triumphantly some distance in advance of the rest; then another, wakened
to new exertions by this sight, put on all steam, and went pounding
along with a crashing sound until her bows were on a line with the
first. The two boats left behind now started together with much
splashing and sputtering, and veering toward the shore, with the hope
of finding a new weak place in the floe, ran against hard ice with a
thud, and stopped short; then there was much backing out and floundering
round, the engines panting and the little bells ringing wildly, until
the old channel was reached, where they rested awhile, and then made
another beginning. These manœuvres were repeated over and over again,
the passengers and crew of each boat laughing and chaffing each other as
they passed and repassed in the slow pounding race. It had happened more
than once that these first steamers had been frozen in after reaching
the Straits, and had been obliged to spend several days in company fast
bound in the ice. Then the passengers and crews visited each other,
climbing down the sides of the steamers and walking across. At that
early season the passengers were seldom pleasure-travellers, and
therefore they endured the delay philosophically. It is only the real
pleasure-traveller who has not one hour to spare.
The steamers Anne now watched were the first from below. The lower lakes
were clear; it was only this northern Strait that still held the ice
together, and kept the fleets at bay on the east and on the west.
White-winged vessels, pioneers of the summer squadron, waited without
while the propellers turned their knife-bladed bows into the ice, and
cut a pathway through. Then word went down that the Straits were open,
all the freshwater fleet set sail, the lights were lit again in the
light-houses, and the fishing stations and lonely little wood docks came
to life.
"How delightful it is!" said Anne, aloud.
There are times when a person, although alone, does utter a sentence or
two, that is, thinks aloud; but such times are rare. And such sentences,
also, are short--exclamations. The long soliloquies of the stage, so
convenient in the elucidation of plot, do not occur in real life, where
we are left to guess at our neighbor's motives, untaught by so much as a
syllable. How fortunate for Dora's chances of happiness could she but
overhear that Alonzo thinks her a sweet, bigoted little fool, but wants
that very influence to keep him straight, nothing less than the intense
convictions of a limited intelligence and small experience in life being
of any use in sweeping him over with a rush by means of his feelings
alone, which is what he is hoping for. Having worn out all the pleasure
there is to be had in this world, he has now a mind to try for the next.
What an escape for young Conrad to learn from Honoria's own passionate
soliloquy that she is marrying him from bitterest rage against Manuel,
and that those tones and looks that have made him happy are second-hand
wares, which she flings from her voice and eyes with desperate scorn!
Still, we must believe that Nature knows what she is about; and she has
not as yet taught us to think aloud.
But sometimes, when the air is peculiarly exhilarating, when a distant
mountain grows purple and gold tipped as the sun goes down behind it,
sometimes when we see the wide ocean suddenly, or come upon a bed of
violets, we utter an exclamation as the bird sings: we hardly know we
have spoken.
"Yes, it _is_ delightful," said some one below, replying to the girl's
sentence.
It was Rast, who had come across the plateau unseen, and was now
standing on the old bastion of the fort beneath her. Anne smiled, then
turned as if to descend.
"Wait; I am coming up," said Rast.
"But it is time to go home."
"Apparently it was not time until I came," said the youth, swinging
himself up without the aid of the ladder, and standing by her side.
"What are you looking at? Those steamers?"
"Yes, and the spring, and the air."
"You can not see the air."
"But I can feel it; it is delicious. I wonder, if we should go far away,
Rast, and see tropical skies, slow rivers, great white lilies, and
palms, whether they would seem more beautiful than this?"
"Of course they would; and we are going some day. We are not intending
to stay here on this island all our lives, I hope."
"But it is our home, and I love it. I love this water and these woods, I
love the flash of the light-houses, and the rushing sound the vessels
make sweeping by at night under full sail, close in shore."
"The island is well enough in its way, but there are other places; and
I, for one, mean to see the world," said young Pronando, taking off his
cap, throwing it up, and catching it like a ball.
"Yes, you will see the world," answered Anne; "but I shall stay here.
You must write and tell me all about it."
"Of course," said Rast, sending the cap up twice as high, and catching
it with unerring hand. Then he stopped his play, and said, suddenly,
"Will you care very much when I am gone away?"
"Yes," said Anne; "I shall be very lonely."
"But shall you care?" said the youth, insistently. "You have so little
feeling, Annet; you are always cold."
"I shall be colder still if we stay here any longer," said the girl,
turning to descend. Rast followed her, and they crossed the plateau
together.
"How much shall you care?" he repeated. "You never say things out,
Annet. You are like a stone."
[Illustration: "AND IT ENDED IN THEIR RACING DOWN TOGETHER."]
"Then throw me away," answered the girl, lightly. But there was a
moisture in her eyes and a slight tremor in her voice which Rast
understood, or, rather, thought he understood. He took her hand and
pressed it warmly; the two fur gloves made the action awkward, but he
would not loosen his hold. His spirits rose, and he began to laugh, and
to drag his companion along at a rapid pace. They reached the edge of
the hill, and the steep descent opened before them; the girl's
remonstrances were in vain, and it ended in their racing down together
at a break-neck pace, reaching the bottom, laughing and breathless, like
two school-children. They were now on the second plateau, the level
proper of the island above the cliffs, which, high and precipitous on
three sides, sank down gradually to the southwestern shore, so that
one might land there, and drag a cannon up to the old earth work on the
summit--a feat once performed by British soldiers in the days when the
powers of the Old World were still fighting with each other for the New.
How quaint they now seem, those ancient proclamations and documents with
which a Spanish king grandly meted out this country from Maine to
Florida, an English queen divided the same with sweeping patents from
East to West, and a French monarch, following after, regranted the whole
virgin soil on which the banners of France were to be planted with
solemn Christian ceremony! They all took possession; they all planted
banners. Some of the brass plates they buried are turned up occasionally
at the present day by the farmer's plough, and, wiping his forehead, he
stops to spell out their high-sounding words, while his sunburned boys
look curiously over his shoulder. A place in the county museum is all
they are worth now.
Anne Douglas and Rast went through the fort grounds and down the hill
path, instead of going round by the road. The fort ladies, sitting by
their low windows, saw them, and commented.
"That girl does not appreciate young Pronando," said Mrs. Cromer. "I
doubt if she even sees his beauty."
"Perhaps it is just as well that she does not," replied Mrs. Rankin,
"for he must go away and live his life, of course; have his adventures."
"Why not she also?" said Mrs. Bryden, smiling.
"In the first place, she has no choice; she is tied down here. In the
second, she is a good sort of girl, without imagination or enthusiasm.
Her idea of life is to marry, have meat three times a week, fish three
times, lights out at ten o'clock, and, by way of literature, Miss
Edgeworth's novels and Macaulay's _History of England_."
"And a very good idea," said Mrs. Bryden.
"Certainly, only one can not call that adventures."
"But even such girls come upon adventures sometimes," said Mrs. Cromer.
"Yes, when they have beauty. Their beauty seems often to have an
extraordinary power over the most poetical and imaginative men, too,
strange as it may appear. But Anne Douglas has none of it."
"How you all misunderstand her!" said a voice from the little
dining-room opening into the parlor, its doorway screened by a curtain.
"Ah, doctor, are you there?" said Mrs. Bryden. "We should not have said
a word if we had known it."
"Yes, madam, I am here--with the colonel; but it is only this moment
that I have lifted my head to listen to your conversation, and I remain
filled with astonishment, as usual, at the obtuseness manifested by your
sex regarding each other."
"Hear! hear!" said the colonel.
"Anne Douglas," continued the chaplain, clearing his throat, and
beginning in a high chanting voice, which they all knew well, having
heard it declaiming on various subjects during long snow-bound winter
evenings, "is a most unusual girl."
"Oh, come in here, doctor, and take a seat; it will be hard work to say
it all through that doorway," called Mrs. Bryden.
"No, madam, I will not sit down," said the chaplain, appearing under the
curtain, his brown wig awry, his finger impressively pointed. "I will
simply say this, namely, that as to Anne Douglas, you are all mistaken."
"And who is to be the judge between us?"
"The future, madam."
"Very well; we will leave it to the future, then," said Mrs. Bryden,
skillfully evading the expected oration.
"We may safely do that, madam--safely indeed; the only difficulty is
that we may not live to see it."
"Oh, a woman's future is always near at hand, doctor. Besides, we are
not so very old ourselves."
"True, madam--happily true for all the eyes that rest upon you.
Nevertheless, the other side, I opine, is likewise true, namely, that
Anne Douglas is very young."
"She is sixteen; and I myself am only twenty," said Mrs. Rankin.
"With due respect, ladies, I must mention that not one of you was ever
in her life so young as Anne Douglas at the present moment."
"What in the world do you mean, doctor?"
"What I say. I can see you all as children in my mind's eye," continued
the chaplain, unflinchingly; "pretty, bright, precocious little
creatures, finely finished, finely dressed, quick-witted, graceful, and
bewitching. But at that age Anne Douglas was a--"
"Well, what?"
"A mollusk," said the chaplain, bringing out the word emphatically.
"And what is she now, doctor?"
"A promise."
"To be magnificently fulfilled in the future?"
"That depends upon fate, madam; or rather circumstances."
"For my part, I would rather be fulfilled, although not perhaps
magnificently, than remain even the most glorious promise," said Mrs.
Rankin, laughing.
The fort ladies liked the old chaplain, and endured his long monologues
by adding to them running accompaniments of their own. To bright society
women there is nothing so unendurable as long arguments or dissertations
on one subject. Whether from want of mental training, or from impatience
of delay, they are unwilling to follow any one line of thought for more
than a minute or two; they love to skim at random, to light and fly away
again, to hover, to poise, and then dart upward into space like so many
humming-birds. Listen to a circle of them sitting chatting over their
embroidery round the fire or on a piazza; no man with a thoroughly
masculine mind can follow them in their mental dartings hither and
thither. He has just brought his thoughts to bear upon a subject, and is
collecting what he is going to say, when, behold! they are miles away,
and he would be considered stupid to attempt to bring them back. His
mental processes are slow and lumbering compared with theirs. And when,
once in a while, a woman appears who likes to search out a subject, she
finds herself out of place and bewildered too, often a target for the
quick tongues and light ridicule of her companions. If she likes to
generalize, she is lost. Her companions never wish to generalize; they
want to know not the general view of a subject, but what Mrs. Blank or
Mr. Star thinks of it. Parents, if you have a daughter of this kind, see
that she spends in her youth a good portion of every day with the most
volatile swift-tongued maidens you can find; otherwise you leave her
without the current coin of the realm in which she must live and die,
and no matter if she be fairly a gold mine herself, her wealth is
unavailable.
Spring burst upon the island with sudden glory; the maples showed all at
once a thousand perfect little leaflets, the rings of the juniper
brightened, the wild larches beckoned with their long green fingers from
the height. The ice was gone, the snow was gone, no one knew whither;
the Straits were dotted with white sails. Bluebells appeared, swinging
on their hair-like stems where late the icicles hung, and every little
Indian farm set to work with vigor, knowing that the time was short. The
soldiers from the fort dug in the military garden under the cliff,
turning up the mould in long ridges, and pausing to hang up their coats
on the old stockade with a finely important air of heat: it was so long
since they had been too warm! The little village was broad awake now;
there was shipping at the piers again, and a demand for white-fish; all
the fishing-boats were out, and their half-breed crews hard at work. The
violins hung unused on the walls of the little cabins that faced the
west, for the winter was ended, and the husbands and lovers were off on
the water: the summer was their time for toil.
And now came the parting. Rast was to leave the island, and enter the
Western college which Dr. Gaston had selected for him. The chaplain
would have sent the boy over to England at once to his own _alma mater_
had it been possible; but it was not possible, and the good man knew
little or nothing of the degree of excellence possessed by American
colleges, East or West. Harvard and Yale and old Columbia would not have
believed this; yet it was true.
Rast was in high spirits; the brilliant world seemed opening before him.
Everything in his life was as he wished it to be; and he was not
disturbed by any realization that this was a rare condition of affairs
which might never occur again. He was young, buoyant, and beautiful;
everybody liked him, and he liked everybody. He was going to set sail
into his far bright future, and he would find, probably, an island of
silver and diamonds, with peacocks walking slowly about spreading their
gorgeous feathers, and pleasure-boats at hand with silken sails and
golden oars. It was not identically this that he dreamed, but things
equally shining and unattainable--that is, to such a nature as his. The
silver and diamond islands are there, but by a law of equalization only
hard-featured prosaic men attain them and take possession, forming
thereafterward a lasting contrast to their own surroundings, which then
goes into the other scale, and amuses forever the poverty-stricken poets
who, in their poor old boats, with ragged canvas and some small ballast
of guitars and lutes, sail by, eating their crusts and laughing at them.
"I shall not go one step, even now, unless you promise to write
regularly, Annet," said Rast, the evening before his departure, as they
stood together on the old piazza of the Agency watching for the lights
of the steamer which was to carry him away.
"Of course I shall write, Rast; once a week always."
"No; I wish no set times fixed. You are simply to promise that you will
immediately answer every letter _I_ write."
"I will answer; but as to the time--I may not always be able--"
"You may if you choose; and I will not go unless you promise," said
Rast, with irritation. "Do you want to spoil everything, my education
and all my future? I would not be so selfish, Annet, if I were you. What
is it I ask? A trifle. I have no father, no mother, no sister; only you.
I am going away for the first time in my life, and you grudge me a
letter!"
"Not a letter, Rast, but a promise; lest I might not be able to fulfill
it. I only meant that something might happen in the house which would
keep me from answering within the hour, and then my promise would be
broken. I will always answer as soon as I can."
"You will not fail me, then?"
The girl held out her hand and clasped his with a warm, honest pressure;
he turned and looked at her in the starlight. "God bless you for your
dear sincere eyes!" he said. "The devil himself would believe you."
"I hope he would," said Anne, smiling.
What with Miss Lois's Calvinism, and the terrific picture of his Satanic
Majesty at the death-bed of the wicked in the old Catholic church, the
two, as children, had often talked about the devil and his
characteristics, Rast being sure that some day he should see him. Miss
Lois, overhearing this, agreed with the lad dryly, much to Anne's
dismay.
"What is the use of the devil?" she had once demanded.
"To punish the wicked," answered Miss Lois.
"Does he enjoy it?"
"I suppose he does."
"Then he must be very wicked himself?"
"He is."
"Who created him?"
"You know as well as I do, Anne. God created him, of course."
"Well," said the child, after a silence, going as usual to the root of
the matter, "I don't think _I_ should have made him at all if I couldn't
have made him better."
The next morning the sun rose as usual, but Rast was gone. Anne felt a
loneliness she had never felt before in all her life. For Rast had been
her companion; hardly a day had passed without his step on the piazza,
his voice in the hall, a walk with him or a sail; and always, whether at
home or abroad, the constant accompaniment of his suggestions, his
fault-findings, his teachings, his teasings, his grumblings, his
laughter and merry nonsense, the whole made bearable--nay, even
pleasant--by the affection that lay underneath. Anne Douglas's nature
was faithful to an extraordinary degree, faithful to its promises, its
duties, its love; but it was an intuitive faithfulness, which never
thought about itself at all. Those persons who are in the habit of
explaining voluminously to themselves and everybody else the lines of
argument, the struggles, and triumphant conclusions reached by their
various virtues, would have considered this girl's mind but a poor dull
thing, for Anne never analyzed herself at all. She had never lived for
herself or in herself, and it was that which gave the tinge of coldness
that was noticed in her. For warm-heartedness generally begins at home,
and those who are warm to others are warmer to themselves; it is but the
overflow.
Meantime young Pronando, sailing southward, felt his spirits rise with
every shining mile. Loneliness is crowded out of the mind of the one who
goes by the myriad images of travel; it is the one who stays who
suffers. But there was much to be done at the Agency. The boys grew out
of their clothes, the old furniture fell to pieces, and the father
seemed more lost to the present with every day and hour. He gave less
and less attention to the wants of the household, and at last Anne and
Miss Lois together managed everything without troubling him even by a
question. For strange patience have loving women ever had with dreamers
like William Douglas--men who, viewed by the eyes of the world, are
useless and incompetent; tears are shed over their graves oftentimes
long after the successful are forgotten. For personally there is a
sweetness and gentleness in their natures which make them very dear to
the women who love them. The successful man, perhaps, would not care for
such love, which is half devotion, half protection; the successful man
wishes to domineer. But as he grows old he notices that Jane is always
quiet when the peach-trees are in bloom, and that gray-haired sister
Catherine always bends down her head and weeps silently whenever the
choir sings "Rockingham"; and then he remembers who it was that died
when the peach-trees showed their blossoms, and who it was who went
about humming "Rockingham," and understands. Yet always with a slow
surprise, and a wonder at women's ways, since both the men were, to his
idea, failures in the world and their generation.
Any other woman of Miss Lois's age and strict prudence, having general
charge of the Douglas household, would have required from Anne long ago
that she should ask her father plainly what were his resources and his
income. To a cent were all the affairs of the church-house regulated and
balanced; Miss Lois would have been unhappy at the end of the week if a
penny remained unaccounted for. Yet she said nothing to the daughter,
nothing to the father, although noticing all the time that the small
provision was no larger, while the boys grew like reeds, and the time
was at hand when more must be done for them. William Douglas's way was
to give Anne at the beginning of each week a certain sum. This he had
done as far back as his daughter could remember, and she had spent it
under the direction of Miss Lois. Now, being older, she laid it out
without much advice from her mentor, but began to feel troubled because
it did not go as far. "It goes as far," said Miss Lois, "but the boys
have gone farther."
"Poor little fellows! they must eat."
"And they must work."
"But what can they do at their age, Miss Lois?"
"Form habits," replied the New England woman, sternly. "In my opinion
the crying evil of the country to-day is that the boys are not trained;
educated, I grant you, but not trained--trained as they were when times
were simpler, and the rod in use. Parents are too ambitious; the
mechanic wishes to make his sons merchants, the merchant wishes to make
his gentlemen; but, while educating them and pushing them forward, the
parents forget the homely habits of patient labor, strict veracity in
thought and action, and stern self-denials which have given _them_ their
measure of success, and so between the two stools the poor boys fall to
the ground. It is my opinion," added Miss Lois, decisively, "that,
whether you want to build the Capitol at Washington or a red barn, you
must first have a firm foundation."
"Yes, I know," replied Anne. "And I _do_ try to control them."
"Oh, General Putnam! _you_ try!" said Miss Lois. "Why, you spoil them
like babies."
Anne always gave up the point when Miss Lois reverted to Putnam. This
Revolutionary hero, now principally known, like Romulus, by a wolf
story, was the old maid's glory and remote ancestor, and helped her over
occasional necessities for strong expressions with ancestral kindness.
She felt like reverting to him more than once that summer, because, Rast
having gone, there was less of a whirlwind of out-door life, of pleasure
in the woods and on the water, and the plain bare state of things stood
clearly revealed. Anne fell behind every month with the household
expenses in spite of all her efforts, and every month Miss Lois herself
made up the deficiency. The boys were larger, and careless. The old
house yawned itself apart. Of necessity the gap between the income and
the expenditure must grow wider and wider. Anne did not realize this,
but Miss Lois did. The young girl thought each month that she must have
been unusually extravagant; she counted in some item as an extra expense
which would not occur again, gave up something for herself, and began
anew with fresh hope. On almost all subjects Miss Lois had the smallest
amount of patience for what she called blindness, but on this she was
silent. Now and then her eyes would follow Anne's father with a troubled
gaze; but if he looked toward her or spoke, she at once assumed her
usual brisk manner, and was even more cheerful than usual. Thus, the
mentor being silent, the family drifted on.
The short Northern summer, with its intense sunshine and its cool
nights, was now upon them. Fire crackled upon the hearth of the Agency
sitting-room in the early morning, but it died out about ten o'clock,
and from that time until five in the afternoon the heat and the
brightness were peculiarly brilliant and intense. It seemed as though
the white cliffs must take fire and smoulder in places where they were
without trees to cover them; to climb up and sit there was to feel the
earth burning under you, and to be penetrated with a sun-bath of rays
beating straight down through the clear air like white shafts. And yet
there was nothing resembling the lowland heats in this atmosphere, for
all the time a breeze blew, ruffling the Straits, and bearing the
vessels swiftly on to the east and the west on long tacks, making the
leaves in the woods flutter on their branchlets, and keeping the
wild-brier bushes, growing on angles and points of the cliff, stretched
out like long whip-cords wreathed in pink and green. There was nothing,
too, of the stillness of the lowlands, for always one could hear the
rustling and laughing of the forest, and the wash of the water on the
pebbly beach. There were seldom any clouds in the summer sky, and those
that were there were never of that soft, high-piled white downiness that
belongs to summer clouds farther south. They came up in the west at
evening in time for the sunset, or they lay along the east in the early
morning, but they did not drift over the zenith in white laziness at
noontide, or come together violently in sudden thunder-storms. They were
sober clouds of quiet hue, and they seemed to know that they were not to
have a prominent place in the summer procession of night, noon, and
morning in that Northern sky, as though there was a law that the sun
should have uninterrupted sway during the short season allotted to him.
Anne walked in the woods as usual, but not far. Rast was gone. Rast
always hurried everybody; left alone, she wandered slowly through the
aisles of the arbor vitæ on the southern heights. The close ranks of
these trees hardly made what is called a grove, for the flat green plats
of foliage rose straight into the air, and did not arch or mingle with
each other; a person walking there could always see the open sky above.
But so dense was the thickness on each side that though the little paths
with which the wood was intersected often ran close to each other,
sometimes side by side, persons following them had no suspicion of each
other's presence unless their voices betrayed them. In the hot sun the
trees exhaled a strong aromatic fragrance, and as the currents of air
did not penetrate their low green-walled aisles, it rested there,
although up above everything was dancing along--butterflies, petals of
the brier, waifs and strays from the forest, borne lakeward on the
strong breeze. The atmosphere in these paths was so hot, still, and
aromatic that now and then Anne loved to go there and steep herself in
it. She used to tell Miss Lois that it made her feel as though she was
an Egyptian princess who had been swathed in precious gums and spices
for a thousand years.
Over on the other side of the island grew the great pines. These had two
deeply worn Indian trails leading through them from north to south, not
aimless, wandering little paths like those through the arbor vitæ, but
one straight track from the village to the western shore, and another
leading down to the spring on the beach. The cliffs on whose summit
these pines grew were high and precipitous, overlooking deep water; a
vessel could have sailed by so near the shore that a pebble thrown from
above would have dropped upon her deck. With one arm round an old trunk,
Anne often sat on the edge of these cliffs, looking down through the
western pass. She had never felt any desire to leave the island, save
that sometimes she had vague dreams of the tropics--visions of
palm-trees and white lilies, the Pyramids and minarets, as fantastic as
her dreams of Shakspeare. But she loved the island and the island trees;
she loved the wild larches, the tall spires of the spruces bossed with
lighter green, the gray pines, and the rings of the juniper. She had a
peculiar feeling about trees. When she was a little girl she used to
whisper to them how much she loved them, and even now she felt that they
noticed her. Several times since these recent beginnings of care she had
turned back and gone over part of the path a second time, because she
felt that she had not been as observant as usual of her old friends, and
that they would be grieved by the inattention. But this she never told.
There was, however, less and less time for walking in the woods; there
was much to do at home, and she was faithful in doing it: every spring
of the little household machinery felt her hand upon it, keeping it in
order. The clothes she made for Tita and the boys, the dinners she
provided from scanty materials, the locks and latches she improvised,
the paint she mixed and applied, the cheerfulness and spirit with which
she labored on day after day, were evidences of a great courage and
unselfishness; and if the garments were not always successful as regards
shape, nor the dinners always good, she was not disheartened, but bore
the fault-findings cheerfully, promising to do better another time. For
they all found fault with her, the boys loudly, Tita quietly, but with a
calm pertinacity that always gained its little point. Even Miss Lois
thought sometimes that Anne was careless, and told her so. For Miss Lois
never concealed her light under a bushel. The New England woman believed
that household labor held the first place among a woman's duties and
privileges; and if the housekeeper spent fourteen hours out of the
twenty-four in her task, she was but fulfilling her destiny as her
Creator had intended. Anne was careless in the matter of piece-bags,
having only two, whereas four, for linen and cotton, colors and black
materials, were, as every one knew, absolutely necessary. There was also
the systematic halving of sheets and resewing them at the first signs of
wear somewhat neglected, and also a particularity as to the saving of
string. Even the vaguely lost, thought-wandering father, too, finding
that his comforts diminished, spoke of it, not with complaint so much as
surprise; and then the daughter restored what he had missed at any
sacrifice. All this was done without the recognition by anybody that it
was much to do. Anne did not think of it in that way, and no one thought
for her. For they were all so accustomed to her strong, cheerful spirit
that they took what she did as a matter of course. Dr. Gaston understood
something of the life led at the Agency; but he too had fallen into a
way of resting upon the girl. She took a rapid survey of his small
housekeeping whenever she came up to his cottage for a lesson, which was
not as often now as formerly, owing to her manifold home duties. But
Père Michaux shook his head. He believed that all should live their
lives, and that one should not be a slave to others; that the young
should be young, and that some natural simple pleasure should be put
into each twenty-four hours. To all his flock he preached this doctrine.
They might be poor, but children should be made happy; they might be
poor, but youth should not be overwhelmed with the elders' cares; they
might be poor, but they could have family love round the poorest
hearthstone; and there was always time for a little pleasure, if they
would seek it simply and moderately. The fine robust old man lived in an
atmosphere above the subtleties of his leaner brethren in cities farther
southward, and he was left untrammelled in his water diocese. Privileges
are allowed to scouts preceding the army in an Indian country, because
it is not every man who can be a scout. Not but that the old priest
understood the mysteries, the introverted gaze, and indwelling thoughts
that belong to one side of his religion; they were a part of his
experience, and he knew their beauty and their dangers. They were good
for some minds, he said; but it was a strange fact, which he had proved
more than once during the long course of his ministry, that the minds
which needed them the least loved them the most dearly, revelled in
them, and clung to them with pertinacity, in spite of his efforts to
turn them into more practical channels.
In all his broad parish he had no penitent so long-winded, exhaustive,
and self-centred as little Tita. He took excellent care of the child,
was very patient with her small ceremonies and solemnities, tried gently
to lead her aright, and, with rare wisdom, in her own way, not his. But
through it all, in his frequent visits to the Agency, and in the visits
of the Douglas family to the hermitage, his real interest was centred in
the Protestant sister, the tall unconscious young girl who had not yet,
as he said to himself, begun to live. He shook his head often as he
thought of her. "In France, even in England, she would be guarded," he
said to himself; "but here! It is an excellent country, this America of
theirs, for the pioneer, the New-Englander, the adventurer, and the
farmer; but for a girl like Anne? No." And then, if Anne was present,
and happened to meet his eye, she smiled back so frankly that he forgot
his fears. "After all, I suppose there are hundreds of such girls in
this country of theirs," he admitted, in a grumbling way, to his French
mind, "coming up like flowers everywhere, without any guardianship at
all. But it is all wrong, all wrong."
The priest generally placed America as a nation in the hands of
possessive pronouns of the third person plural; it was a safe way of
avoiding responsibility, and of being as scornful, without offending any
one, as he pleased. One must have some outlet.
The summer wore on. Rast wrote frequently, and Anne, writing the first
letters of her life in reply, found that she liked to write. She saved
in her memory all kinds of things to tell him: about their favorite
trees, about the birds that had nests in the garden that season, about
the fishermen and their luck, about the unusual quantity of raspberries
on the mainland, about the boys, about Tita. Something, too, about Bacon
and Sir Thomas Browne, selections from whose volumes she was now reading
under the direction of the chaplain. But she never put down any of her
own thoughts, opinions, or feelings: her letters were curious examples
of purely impersonal objective writing. Egotism, the under-current of
most long letters as of most long conversations also, the telling of how
this or that was due to us, affected us, was regarded by us, was
prophesied, was commended, was objected to, was feared, was thoroughly
understood, was held in restraint, was despised or scorned by us, and
all our opinions on the subject, which, however important in itself, we
present always surrounded by a large indefinite aureola of our own
personality--this was entirely wanting in Anne Douglas's letters and
conversation. Perhaps if she had had a girl friend of her own age she
might have exchanged with her those little confidences, speculations,
and fancies which are the first steps toward independent thought, those
mazy whispered discussions in which girls delight, the beginnings of
poetry and romance, the beginnings, in fact, of their own personal
individual consciousness and life. But she had only Rast, and that was
not the same thing. Rast always took the lead; and he had so many
opinions of his own that there was no time to discuss, or even inquire
about, hers.
In the mean time young Pronando was growing into manhood at the rate of
a year in a month. His handsome face, fine bearing, generous ways, and
incessant activity both of limb and brain gave him a leader's place
among the Western students, who studied well, were careless in dress and
manner, spent their money, according to the Western fashion, like
princes, and had a peculiar dry humor of their own, delivered with
lantern-jawed solemnity.
Young Pronando's preparation for college had been far better than that
of most of his companions, owing to Dr. Gaston's care. The boy
apprehended with great rapidity--apprehended perhaps more than he
comprehended: he did not take the time to comprehend. He floated lightly
down the stream of college life. His comrades liked him; the young
Western professors, quick, unceremonious, practical men, were constantly
running against little rocks which showed a better training than their
own, and were therefore shy about finding fault with him; and the old
president, an Eastern man, listened furtively to his Oxford
pronunciation of Greek, and sighed in spite of himself and his large
salary, hating the new bare white-painted flourishing institution over
which he presided with a fresher hatred--the hatred of an exile. For
there was not a tree on the college grounds: Young America always cuts
down all his trees as a first step toward civilization; then, after an
interregnum, when all the kings of the forest have been laid low, he
sets out small saplings in whitewashed tree-boxes, and watches and tends
them with fervor.
Rast learned rapidly--more things than one. The school for girls, which,
singularly enough, in American towns, is always found flourishing close
under the walls of a college, on the excellent and heroic principle,
perhaps, of resisting temptation rather than fleeing from it, was
situated here at convenient distance for a variety of strict rules on
both sides, which gave interest and excitement to the day. Every
morning Miss Corinna Haws and her sister girded themselves for the
contest with fresh-rubbed spectacles and vigilance, and every morning
the girls eluded them; that is, some of the girls, namely, Louise Ray
and Kate and Fanny Meadows, cousins, rivals, and beauties of the Western
river-country type, where the full life and languor of the South have
fused somewhat the old inherited New England delicacy and fragile
contours. These three young girls were all interested in handsome Rast
in their fanciful, innocent, sentimental way. They glanced at him
furtively in church on Sunday; they took walks of miles to catch a
distant glimpse of him; but they would have run away like frightened
fawns if he had approached nearer. They wrote notes which they never
sent, but carried in their pockets for days; they had deep secrets to
tell each other about how they had heard that somebody had told somebody
else that the Juniors were going to play ball that afternoon in Payne's
meadow, and that if they could only persuade Miss Miriam to go round by
the hill, they could see them, and not so very far off either, only two
wheat fields and the river between. Miss Miriam was the second Miss
Haws, good-tempered and--near-sighted.
That the three girls were interested in one and the same person was part
of the pleasure of the affair; each would have considered it a very
dreary amusement to be interested all alone. The event of the summer,
the comet of that season's sky, was an invitation to a small party in
the town, where it was understood that young Pronando, with five or six
of his companions, would be present. Miss Haws accepted occasional
invitations for her pupils, marshalling them in a bevy, herself robed in
pea-green silk, like an ancient mermaid: she said that it gave them
dignity. It did. The stern dignity and silence almost solemn displayed
by Rast's three worshippers when they found themselves actually in the
same room with him were something preternatural. They moved stiffly, as
if their elbows and ankles were out of joint; they spoke to each other
cautiously in the lowest whispers, with their under jaws rigid, and a
difficulty with their labials; they moved their eyes carefully
everywhere save toward the point where he was standing, yet knew exactly
where he was every moment of the time. When he approached the quadrille
which was formed in one corner by Miss Haws's young ladies, dancing
virginally by themselves, they squeezed each others' hands convulsively
when they passed in "ladies' chain," in token of the great fact that he
was looking on. When, after the dance, they walked up and down in the
hall, arm in arm, they trod upon each other's slippers as sympathetic
perception of the intensity of his presence on the stairs. What an
evening! How crowded full of emotions! Yet the outward appearance was
simply that of three shy, awkward girls in white muslin, keeping close
together, and as far as possible from a handsome, gay-hearted,
fast-talking youth who never once noticed them. O the imaginative,
happy, shy fancies of foolish school-girls! It is a question whether the
real love which comes later ever yields that wild, fairy-like romance
which these early attachments exhale; the very element of reality
weights it down, and makes it less heavenly fair.
At the end of the summer Rast had acquired a deep experience in life (so
he thought), a downy little golden mustache, and a better opinion of
himself than ever. The world is very kind to a handsome boy of frank and
spirited bearing, one who looks as though he intended to mount and ride
to victory. The proud vigor of such a youth is pleasant to tired eyes;
he is so sure he will succeed! And most persons older, although knowing
the world better and not so sure, give him as he passes a smile and
friendly word, and wish him godspeed. It is not quite fair, perhaps, to
other youths of equal merit but another bearing, yet Nature orders it
so. The handsome, strong, confident boy who looks her in the face with
daring courage wins from her always a fine starting-place in the race of
life, which seems to advance him far beyond his companions. Seems; but
the end is far away.
Rast did not return to the island during the summer vacation; Dr. Gaston
wished him to continue his studies with a tutor, and as the little
college town was now radiant with a mild summer gayety, the young man
was willing to remain. He wrote to Anne frequently, giving abstracts of
his life, lists of little events like statistics in a report. He did
this regularly, and omitted nothing, for the letters were his
conscience. When they were once written and sent, however, off he went
to new pleasures. It must be added as well that he always sought the
post-office eagerly for Anne's replies, and placed them in his pocket
with satisfaction. They were sometimes unread, or half read, for days,
awaiting a convenient season, but they were there.
Anne's letters were long, they were pleasant, they were never
exciting--the very kind to keep; like friends who last a lifetime, but
who never give us one quickened pulse. Alone in his room, or stretched
on the grass under a tree, reading them, Rast felt himself strongly
carried back to his old life on the island, and he did not resist the
feeling. His plans for the future were as yet vague, but Anne was always
a part of his dream.
But this youth lived so vigorously and fully and happily in the present
that there was not much time for the future and for dreams. He seldom
thought. What other people thought, he felt.