"This was the time the Divil was goin' through Athlone," John McQuade
announced, giving the explanation before the fact.
"I remember," Wardwell agreed politely. "He went through 'in standing
leaps.'"
McQuade and Jimmie were telling lies in a corner of the sugar house.
It was the first "sugaring off" of the season. McQuade's three sons
and two hired men had been in the camp ten days now, breaking roads
through the settling snow, scalding out sap buckets and boiling pans,
and tapping trees. Jimmie and Augusta, in wonder and ignorance, had
watched the men going from tree to tree with augers, boring out a hole
in each, into which they drove the wooden spout, and hung the tin
bucket beneath. They stood among the bare trees on a southerly slope of
the hills where the late March sun of a lovely morning beat warm and
strong, and they saw a miracle.
Neither of them had more than half believed that sap would actually run
from trees that stood stark and apparently dead. But, as they stood
there feeling the drawing warmth of the sun in their own veins, it
happened. In the breathless hush of the morning a single drop from a
tree near them struck upon the resounding bottom of the dry bucket like
the stroke of a little bell. It was a signal.
Up and down the sunny slope another and another and a hundred other
echoes of the little bell rang out until the many sounds merged
themselves into a single tinkling chorus, and the sap of earth was
running free!
Mother nature was not dead. She had slept, and now she was stirring to
feed the hungry world. Jimmie and Augusta looked at each other half
shyly, as though they had spied upon a Mystery.
That was four days ago, and since then, all day long, the deliberate,
unworried oxen had wallowed belly deep through the melting snow, only
approximately responsive to excited shouts of "jee" and "haw," dragging
on the rough low sledges the hogsheads into which the men emptied the
buckets of sap from the trees. Night and day the great brick furnace
that ran full length down the middle of the sugar house had roared.
Jimmie and Augusta had kept open fire in the front of it during the
bitterest of the winter, and Jimmie had many times complained that
his back was broken carrying wood for it. But where he had carried
armfuls, the furnace now demanded cords. It raced and danced and
panted in a furious race with the running sap, for the sap must be
boiled down to syrup almost as fast as it ran.
Already they had seen the dark, thick syrup poured into the cans and
sealed. And having eaten of it, Jimmie and Augusta, used to the article
that is sold in bottles in our cities as pure maple syrup, wondered
what must become of this kind which they had now tasted. For certainly
nobody that they had ever known had been rich enough to buy any of it.
But they had seen what they were told were the best batches of the
syrup put aside for the "sugaring off." The term meant nothing to
either of them, for they had never heard of it before. But the constant
reference to it and the careful timing of everything that went on in
the camp with a sole regard for this event soon made them look towards
it as eagerly as if they had been a sugar hungry boy and girl in the
camp waiting for nothing but the great day.
Today McQuade had come for the event. And with him had come Fan
McQuade, his wife. She was a tall, slender woman, unmistakably a
daughter of women who a hundred years ago and more trailed from Vermont
over into our North Country. There was strength and unspent beauty in
her face, and in spite of the argument of her three mighty sons she
seemed entirely too young to be a mate for John McQuade. Her face was
grave and there was a thrifty tidiness about her person and her speech
that made you wonder how she had ever come to marry a man like McQuade.
Of course, twenty years after the fact, you have the same wonder as to
why almost any woman married her particular man. And most of them will
tell you, in what they think are moments of truth telling, that they
quarreled with the right man, and just took this one for spite. All
of which is probably just as true--and no more so--as it is true that
distant fields are greener than the ones we are treading now.
But Augusta did wonder, on sight, how this grave faced woman had
given herself to the happy-go-lucky young greenhorn that John McQuade
probably had been twenty-five years ago. She wondered, until she heard
Fan McQuade laugh. It was a surprised, and surprising, burst of pure
merriment, beginning with a startled chuckle and ringing out into a
clear peal of sheer joy in fun. Then Augusta understood it all. This
girl of a sober race was not herself a fun maker, but she loved to
be made laugh. McQuade had made her laugh. And he had then blarneyed
his way into her heart, past religious and racial and temperamental
differences and barriers that would have stopped a thoughtful man.
However, Augusta reflected, it must have been well with them, for
McQuade was still able to make his Fan laugh. She laughed now as she
overheard the unfolding of McQuade's tale to Jimmie.
"The Divil was lookin' for a man by the name of Barney McGonigle,"
McQuade stated gravely, while Wardwell listened with the professional
interest and envy of a brother artist.
"Now, this man McGonigle, as I understand it, was a man with a
weakness. 'Twas known that he tasted spirits. He had been drunk for two
weeks. At the latter end of that time, as luck would have it, he was a
little bit wide of his bearings. He wandered into an Orange Lodge.
"The stairway going up to the Lodge room was guarded with a drawn
sword, of course. But McGonigle came _down_. He'd been resting on the
roof of the place.
"When McGonigle came in the Lodge was on its feet and they were in the
solemn act of repeating three times: 'To hell with the Pope.'
"There was some little excitement when McGonigle came in without
knockin', and he was fairly on his way to being thrown through the
window before the Grand Master could rap for order.
"There was but one of two things to be done. Either McGonigle must be
killed outright. Or he must repeat: 'To hell with the Pope,' as they
did.
"McGonigle bein' an agreeable man be nature, an' his principles bein'
far demoralized in drink, agreed to say it.
"Had they watched him closer they might have seen that he stopped a
little before the last word.
"But, after all, McGonigle was a good neighbor, and, barrin' the
Seventeenth of March an' the Twelvth of July, a good friend. Along with
that, he was the only journeyman farrier in the town. I misdoubt they
were only too glad to have him say it any way at all, and be rid of him.
"When McGonigle came down past the drawn sword into the sunshine he was
thirsty, for water. He went down to the lough, thinkin' to drink at
least the half of it.
"In the middle of the first dhrink, the Divil leapt down to the brink
of the lough and stood forninst McGonigle.
"'A word with you, Misther McGonigle,' says the Divil, polite, but firm.
"McGonigle lifted one eye from his dhrinkin' and saw the Divil
confrontin him in the shape of a big black horse with saddle and
stirrups on him, but no bridle.
"'I need me breath for me dhrinkin',' says McGonigle.
"'Nevertheless,' says the Divil.
"'Gluggle, gluggle, gluggle,' says McGonigle, taking another pull at
the lough.
"With that, the Divil lost his temper, an' he stamped an' he lepped
till he shook the whole town, an' he shook all the impudence out of
poor McGonigle.
"'Get on me back,' commands the Divil.
"An' poor McGonigle, with the courage of the whiskey dead in him, an
his belly squishin' full o' lake water, had no more gumption than to do
as he was bid.
"Then it was that the Divil went bumping through Athlone in standin'
lepps, as you've heard. He was tryin' to frighten McGonigle, for he was
not sure whether he had him truly in his power.
"'Ye said it,' accused the Divil, boundin' high around a sharp corner.
"'I said what?' demands McGonigle circumstantial. He knew right well
that the Divil would never dare repeat the Orangemen's invocation.
For McGonigle in his sober moments was a well read man, and, with a
moderate amount of dhrink in him, he was a theologian.
"'Come now, Barney me boy,' says the Divil, wheedlin' snarefully, 'ye
said it, an' ye know ye said it, an' I know ye said it. So where's the
use o' denyin'?'
"'I said,' says McGonigle, speakin' careful an' precise--'To be sure I
said part of it under me breath, but I said it--I said: 'To hell with
the _Anti_-pope'.'
"Now the Anti-pope, as you must know," McQuade explained, "the
Anti-pope was the Divil himself.
"Then there _was_ a too-ru! The Divil was that mad that he stood still
and lepped straight up an' down. An' he was so enraged at McGonigle
that he got his foot up into the stirrup beside McGonigle's, as though
he was tryin' to come up at him.
"'Glory be!' says McGonigle, lookin' down between prayers. 'Look at the
Omadhon tryin' to get on his own back!'
"But, as McGonigle looked down he saw things. He was an expert farrier,
an' he knew that that was no proper foot for a right horse. And, at
this point, he was enough of a theologian to remember that once a man
sees the Divil's cloven hoof he is not lost yet.
"An still the Divil raged, an' stamped, an' struggled with his foot up
in the stirrup.
"'That'll do,' says McGonigle, polite but hasty, as he threw his leg
free over the saddle, to jump. 'There's no room here for two. If
_you're_ goin' to get _on_, _I'm_ goin' to get _off_!'"
The youngest of the McQuade boys came and laid a pan of clean
packed snow on the table in front of his mother. This was part of
the essential rites of the sugaring off. The boys had, of course,
barometers and modern polarization tests which told them scientifically
when the heavy syrup, the concentration of many boilings of sap, was
sufficiently boiled down so that when allowed to cool rapidly it
would solidify into a clear brittle cake with a polarization of over
ninety-five. Fan McQuade believed in all these things as fully as did
her sons. She lived with her boys and never allowed anything in their
business, or in new ways of doing old work, to get beyond her. But
she--and they too--still trusted her own test as to when a boiling of
sugar was ready to set properly.
So, when their thermometer and barometer showed them that the proper
point of condensation had been reached, the boys came with a dipper
and poured the boiling sugar before her on the smooth surface of the
pan of snow. Then they stood gravely around and watched while the long
criss-crossed tendrills of sugar which had been made in the pouring
hardened over the face of the snow.
Fan McQuade took a little white paddle of polished maple, as hard
almost as a piece of steel, and began tapping gently at the hardening,
waxy bars of sugar. As the thin tendrils of sugar stiffened into long
crystals she struck harder, and they could hear a ringing from them
like the twang of distant skates on ice. Then, as the sugar hardened to
full brittleness the bars began to break stiffly under her sharp blows,
and then to crack and snap and fly apart like live things.
Fan McQuade and her three sons nodded together in solemn appreciation.
Science and tradition were for once agreed. They had caught the perfect
boiling off point. And the boys rushed away to pour off the contents of
the huge boiling pan into the cooling tins.
Now it was McQuade's time to bestir himself as host.
From the dark outside he brought in other pans of clean frozen snow,
which he had carefully prepared against this moment. He laid the pans
and paddles about the table and inviting everybody to choose a pan of
snow he went to bring the wax syrup. To the unitiated it looked like a
bare banquet, a pan of snow and a paddle. But the eating of "wax" is
the one feast that requires neither condiment nor foil.
"This," said McQuade, settling himself behind a huge pan of wax, "is
the one time when I can understand this making of sugar. All the rest
of the year I think of these groves of idle trees,--there's nothing
in the world so idle as a maple tree--and every one of them worth a
pocketful of money, and I wonder at Fan's lack of business sense. Why
doesn't she cut the timber down?"
He spoke of her impersonally, as though she might have been, perhaps, a
neighbor at home in the next county.
"But," he concluded, "when I sit down with a pan of wax in me arms
I can understand it all. She keeps the trees doing nothing the year
'round just to furnish her her pan of wax. And, like the good Yankee
that she is, she has all the better of the bargain, at that."
"Hear him!" his wife retorted. "And if I dared to have as much as
one live tree of these groves cut down he'd go crazy. I think he's a
heathen pagan. I think he comes up in the summer to worship in the
groves like the old people did in the Bible."
"They were high thinkin' people, I take it," said McQuade, ready for
contention. "But the times were against them."
"I wonder," said Fan McQuade slyly. "Or were they leaving behind a good
hard job of haying or something when they ran off up into the groves
for their sacrifices?"
"That's right!" complained McQuade. "Go on and tell all the neighbors
about me and disgrace me! These two young people don't think bad enough
about me. The first time they laid eyes on me they thought I was a bank
robber, at the very politest."
Augusta and Jimmie laughed happily over the memory of that amazing
evening when they had first seen McQuade, and Augusta was starting
to tell Mrs. McQuade about their awakening the morning after, while
at the same time she was mechanically prodding about in the snow
with her paddle to pick up more wax. She looked down, surprised and
disbelieving. McQuade had given her a helping of wax so big that she
had not believed that she could eat a quarter of it. And, without
thinking or stopping, she had eaten up every bit of it. _And she was
hungry for more._
She looked up in horror, and exclaimed confusedly:
"I beg everybody's pardon. I never piggied anything up so in my life!"
"Don't apologize, dear," said Fan McQuade, smiling down into Augusta's
burning face. "We'd've been disappointed if you hadn't done just as you
did. I always distrust people who don't forget themselves when they
first eat sugar wax. I think there must be something wrong with them."
Wardwell, who had done exactly as his wife had done, had not even the
grace to look guilty. With deliberate optimism, he was making a hopeful
estimate on how many times he could repeat the performance.
McQuade was in no wise perturbed.
"Take breath, and we'll begin again fair. It's the one thing," he
explained, as he started away to bring more, "that you can take too
much of to-night, and wake up wantin' more in the mornin'."
On his way to the fire he was stopped by the sound of singing from
outside. A loud, defiant voice broke in above the panting of the
furnace, inquiring lustily:
"_Where, Oh, where, are the vi-shuns of morning?_"
A determined knocking on the door punctuated the song. And then the
voice answered its own question laconically:
"_Gone like the flow-ers that bloom in the Spring time._"
"Jethniah Gamblin's warble!" exclaimed McQuade gleefully, skipping
to the door. The door had to be kept bolted on account of the heavy
draught of the furnace, so, when McQuade opened it quickly, the stout
figure of the postmaster was fairly propelled toward the middle of the
floor, while his hat, blown from his head by the force of the draught,
made a bee line for the bottom door of the furnace. Wardwell sprang to
the rescue, but the old man, with a whoop and a most surprising show of
agility, swooped down on the hat as it was about disappearing into the
furnace and came up jamming it triumphantly upon his head.
"Just like a post in the mud!" he announced.
McQuade came back from his struggle with the door, and made him welcome.
"Sit in, Jethniah, sit in. Ye know the folks here, and yer as welcome
as the flowers ye were sing-songin' about."
Jethniah said "How-dye-do" to everybody and found a place for himself
beside Wardwell.
He said nothing, nor was anyone tactless enough to ask him, as to what
desperate or devious means he had used in accomplishing his liberty for
the evening. But, as he settled his short, fat arms around the pan of
snow which McQuade had brought him, there was apparent around his mouth
a fine cat-and-canary smile that had its own meaning for every one of
his observers.
"I just smelt the sugaring, and invited myself," he explained
officially to Fan McQuade.
"I'm sure we would have missed you sincerely," said the hostess
earnestly. "But I think John trusted your instincts, for I'm pretty
sure he was expecting you to-night."
McQuade came back and criss-crossed everybody's pan of snow with a
generous helping of wax, providing a double portion for Jethniah that
he might overtake the others.
In the midst of his busy eating, Jethniah was seen to stop and reach
hastily into an inner pocket.
"Never tell us you've forgot it!" said McQuade in evident alarm.
"Safe as a hollow tooth!" proclaimed Jethniah, withdrawing his hand,
reassured, and beginning afresh at his wax. "Just like a post in the
mud!"
Augusta and Wardwell looked at each other, guessing what it might be
that was as safe as if hidden in a hollow tooth. But they did not ask,
knowing that, whatever it was, it would be better to wait and find out
at the proper time.
The fact in the matter was not that Jethniah had feared that he had
forgotten something. He was afraid that he had been robbed.
Jethniah Gamblin had a vice. It was not a secret vice. But it was the
more persuasive, insidious and devastating in that it was encouraged
and abetted by the entire community.
During official hours Jethniah was a faithful servant of the People of
the United States, and during the same hours he was an honest weigher
of sugar and sundries. But when, at eight o'clock in the evening, he
had put out the lights and had, in the dark, taken the postage stamps
from their place in the drawer and hidden them in an old rubber boot
that stood in a corner, Jethniah reverted to the pursuit of his vice.
Jethniah, to say the worst at once, was a leader in song. Wherever
there was a gathering of any sort, within possible walking distance,
there was Mr. Gamblin to be found in the midst of it. It had to be
within walking distance, for many ignominious failures had taught
Jethniah that he could not hitch up a horse and drive out of the
barn without arousing deadly and effective opposition to his going.
So, Jethniah's goings were on foot, with celerity, and without
announcement. But go he did, usually. And he was always welcome,
because, at the very first hand, the event of his coming or not coming
gave an immediate sporting interest to the party. Where people in other
less favored communities had to get through the early, dragging moments
of every social function talking about the weather and fussing awkardly
until the crowd came, the gatherings within Jethniah's range were put
at ease immediately by the common interest in the question of whether
or not the Postmaster would be able to make his escape from home, and
attend. Wagers on the matter were posted freely, with the prevailing
odds in Jethniah's favor, this partly through sympathy but largely
through faith based on Jethniah's past performances.
Then, when he did appear, he was questioned anxiously as to whether he
had brought his tuning fork safe with him. For there had been occasions
in local history when Jethniah had arrived at a party without this
badge of his calling and authority. On these occasions Mr. Gamblin had
explained that he had "somehow missed" the tuning fork. But everybody
knew better. Mr. Gamblin had been robbed, temporarily.
In the winter evenings of his young manhood Jethniah had taught
singing school in school-houses among the hills. But he had long since
given up the professional side of his art, and now devoted himself
whole-heartedly to the cultivation and encouragement of song, for
song's pure sake.
So, whether it was a wedding anniversary or the aftermath of a quilting
or a husking bee or an honest country dance with no excuse whatever,
Jethniah and his tuning fork were in demand. For when the riotous edge
of the merry-making was dulled people wanted to sing. The songs were
mostly sad ones, for people generally get more enjoyment out of sad
songs, and there are more of them; but when Jethniah stood up and drew
forth his tuning fork, carefully and critically testing it by snapping
it with his finger nail, his face grave as that of a very priest of
music, his stout old body swaying to the tune that was already humming
in his head, he was in those moments a great man.
That men and women loved Jethniah and encouraged him heartily in his
weakness is not to be wondered at. For it is a singular fact that,
whereas few persons can persuade themselves that they are beautiful, or
profoundly wise, or inordinately brave, and only a very few extremely
happy folks can delude themselves into believing that they are all
three, yet practically all people in their secret hearts believe that
they can sing, or, what is the same thing, that they _could_ sing if
they were encouraged.
Thus Jethniah, who in the long years had given up the exacting and
critical attitude of the teacher and had developed a broad charity in
art which looked only to the spirit and good will of the performance,
encouraged and gave license to the craving that lies deep in all men's
souls, to lift up their heads and howl. Men and women, who, left to
themselves, would no more have dared try to sing than they would have
attempted to walk a tight rope, shouted themselves hoarse and happy
under Jethniah's all-condoning tuning fork.
When McQuade had hoped devoutly that Mr. Gamblin had not forgotten it,
he referred, of course, to the justly celebrated tuning fork. Now when
Jethniah had eaten all the wax that McQuade could press upon him, and
when everyone else had stopped from sheer inability to proceed, McQuade
was anxious for further festivities.
But Jethniah was unwontedly reluctant about starting a singing match.
He felt half afraid to get upon his feet for he was aware that the
centre of gravity in his short, round body had been shifted by the
quantities of sugar which he had eaten so that, standing, he would
have been in the state which Physics calls _unstable equilibrium_, and
his stomach was so full that, for certain physiological reasons, he was
afraid to strain his diaphragm with the effort of singing. He had had a
brisk walk against a stiff, cold wind, and the warm, full condition of
his stomach and the heated air of the cabin combined to throw a heavy
lethargy over him. Jethniah at that point would have given a great deal
to be allowed to take a short nap. But McQuade was for immediate action.
"Never tell us ye left your music at home on the piano rack! Ye did
not, for ye couldn't, unless ye were to leave your head there too. For
it's in that round head o' yours that ye carry the finest ripertor of
good tunes and words with them of any man in the country. There's not a
postmaster in all these great United States that has the songs an' the
music in him that ye have," McQuade cajoled.
"It's right hard on the voice," complained Jethniah, standing on
professional grounds, "to sing after heavy eatin'."
"Eatin'?" said McQuade contemptuously. "I don't call that eatin' at
all. We'll _eat_ after we've had a song or two. You'll sing, an' I'll
sing, an' we'll all sing. Out with the tunin' fork!"
"Can't you tell a few lies, till we get our breath?" Jethniah suggested
weakly.
"No. We'll have all the night to tell stories in after the girls are in
bed. Now we'll sing," McQuade announced mercilessly.
Jethniah brought out the tuning fork reluctantly, snapping it
critically and holding it up to his ear and listening doubtfully to the
tone. He seemed to be artistically dissatisfied with the instrument and
to be very hopeless as to the success of the whole project of singing.
The truth was that he knew he was not in good fettle for singing and he
was nervous about Wardwell and Augusta because they were, after all,
strangers, and they might laugh.
But when McQuade had cleared away the pans of snow, Jethniah stretched
himself as far as he dared and began to take an interest. He struck the
tuning fork on the table several times, and as he listened his face
became each time a little more hopeful.
Finally he caught the tone satisfactorily and announced, with a rising
sweep of his free hand:
"_Oh He Hum Ha-a-a-ah_," crescendo, and holding the last note while he
beamed and nodded hopefully around his audience.
"We will sing 'John Brown's Body' first," Jethniah announced. He arose
manfully and smote the tuning fork sharply on the table. And again he
gave the key note, this time with authority and confidence.
"All sing!"
It was rather a straggling performance, for the boys and men working
around the fires came along two or three notes behind the leaders, and
McQuade and Wardwell were so full of sugar that they could hardly do
more than grunt. But when Jethniah heard Augusta's voice with him he
took mighty heart and together they carried it through to a triumph.
Jethniah now awoke to the possibilities of the occasion. He had come
here primarily to eat sugar. But in the prospect of a brilliant singing
affair he was willing to forget even the first sugar eating of the
season. If only he had not eaten quite so much already!
He next called for "Annie Laurie," and when that went through to a
decided success, Jethniah was so carried that he insisted on rendering
the "Kerry Dancers," which he had learned on Sundays spent fishing with
McQuade.
And McQuade returned the compliment in a way that went to Mr. Gamblin's
heart.
"Jethniah," he reminisced, in the pause that followed their latest
effort, "d' ye mind the day we were fishin' the Racquette away below
Forked Lake, and ye made a little song all out of your own head and
sang it for me?"
"Does seem to me now," said Jethniah hesitating. McQuade was the best
of friends, but he was an inveterate joker and Jethniah was always a
little afraid of his humor when there was company. "But I can't just
think right now. What about it?" he inquired cautiously. He remembered
the little song very well. He had been humming it to himself ever since
that day last summer when he had sung it for McQuade, but he had never
had the hardihood to bring it out and teach it to people as his own
composition. Jethniah was a kindly man, and easily hurt; and in this
matter he had all of the fledgling author's fear of ridicule.
"Then it's me that remembers," said McQuade, triumphantly pulling
a wallet from his hip pocket. From the wallet he drew out a little
account book and found in it the page for which he looked. He handed
it, open, to Jethniah, saying:
"There it's for you now. I copied it fair that day an' told you it
ought to be in print. Let's hear it now, Jethniah, and we'll all learn
it and give it a rousin' send off. Sing up, man! Sing up!"
Mr. Gamblin took the little book and began adjusting his spectacles
to his kindling eyes. He was so proud and so pleased with McQuade's
graceful thought that his hand shook as he held the little book up to
the light of a lantern. Of course he knew the words by heart, but not
for worlds would he have foregone the heady delight of reading his own
work as it had been copied by some one who had thought well of it. It
was almost as good as if he had actually seen it in print.
Finally he turned to McQuade and looked up at him over the rims of the
spectacles. There was a misty dimness in the kindly, honest old eyes as
he silently thanked his friend.
"Sing up, man. Sing up--Or I'll howl it meself!" blustered McQuade.
Jethniah began to hum, and then to sing tentatively. But his enthusiasm
quickly mounted above his shyness, and grasping the tuning fork in a
stout hand he brought it down sharply on the table. Then taking the
fresh tone boldly and beating time with McQuade's little book in one
hand and the tuning fork in the other, he struck bravely into his
little song.
Sang Jethniah:
"Get up with the sun in the _morn_-ing,
Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.
Lie low in your bed till the _noon_-time,
Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.
"Work hard till the end like a _good_ man,
Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.
Come fishing and sing till the _sun_-down,
Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.
"Who picks out my work for the _Long_ Day,
Tell Him I want to do _both_ things.
Tell Him I want to do _both_ things."
Never did poet and songster have a happier audience for his maiden
effort, for before he had gotten to the second verse they were joining
him in the refrain and assuring him _that_ that was a beautiful thing.
And when it was finished McQuade led round after round of applause,
while the boys roared and cheered around the fires.
"Again!" shouted McQuade. "Let us hear it again, till we learn it, an'
we'll sing the roof off with it."
Again Jethniah smote the table with the tuning fork and sang now as
though he would burst his stout old heart. And then they all stood
about him, the boys towering and blackened like young Vulcans from
their work among the fires, and Jethniah led a triumph that roared
above the panting of the fires and shook the rafters of the solid old
cabin. It was the supreme moment of Jethniah's life. And McQuade, whose
heart was big for his friend's glory--and who dearly loved a racket
anyway--wanted to fill that moment to the very brim. Again and again
they had to sing through the song, until, in very pity for Jethniah,
Fan McQuade put a partial stop upon the performance.
"Are you trying to save sugar by making your guests sing all night,"
she said pointedly to her husband.
McQuade apologized loudly and ran for the snow pans. They sat down
again, and, to Wardwell's astonished delight and to Augusta's dismay,
they found that their appetite for wax was practically undulled.
But Augusta soon saw that Fan McQuade was very tired--she and McQuade,
since sun-rise, had driven fifty miles over the most frightful of
roads--and Augusta herself was glad to have this as an excuse for
pleading that she and Mrs. McQuade be allowed to retire to their beds
in the little camp house, for she knew that as long as she stayed she
would inevitably eat more sugar, and, in spite of McQuade's assurances,
she was afraid of the consequences.
As McQuade had predicted, they told lies after the "girls" were gone to
bed. But it was evident that the singing was not neglected. For, ever
and again during the night, Augusta, dozing lightly in her hammock,
was awakened to listen sleepily to Jethniah's pleasant philosophy of a
future in which he would like to be up and doing and be dozing abed,
be working and loafing, all at the same time.
Augusta and Wardwell long remembered this night. It was not that it
was marked by any occurrence vital to themselves. It was merely the
first night since they had come out upon the road that they had been
separated. But it was full of new experiences for them, and somehow
it seemed to mark an epoch, to put an end to one thing and to begin
another.
McQuade and his Fan left the next day, already anxious to be at home,
for Spring on the big dairy farm that was their home was a busy and
important time.
Other parties, invited by the McQuade boys, and some that were not
invited, came to eat sugar. But Jimmie and Augusta did not join in any
of these festivities. Augusta knew that few people had Mr. Gamblin's
ready sympathy or McQuade's big, hearty understanding. She did not care
to be stared at and questioned as the curiosity that had come into
the country in a gypsy wagon and had lived so strangely all winter
in the sugar camp. She had learned that a sparsely settled country
neighborhood is the most inquisitive and imaginative community in the
world. And while she had laughed with Wardwell over the strange stories
that were told, and believed, to account for their presence here, yet
she did not propose to put herself upon exhibition.
The sugar season was over quickly, for the sap runs only in the brief
period while the frost is actually leaving the ground, and it was a
matter only of days until the men were hurriedly gathering the buckets
and scalding them out and scouring the boiling pans to be stored away
for the year under the rafters of the big cabin. Then they loaded
their ox carts with the golden garnering of their hard work and drove
shouting away down roads that were mere wallows of soft snow and mud.
Augusta and Jimmie turned gladly back to the freedom and the quiet
of their work. It had been a most wonderful winter for them. There
must, in the actual constitution of human nature, have been times
when they were both horribly lonesome, when they must have longed for
something to happen or for the sight of a new face. But there was very
little that was petty or unforgiving in either of them, and love,
which came deeper and sweeter to them with every turning day, with
growing understanding of each other, with little unthought, unstudied
kindnesses, love blessed them with a happiness that was almost fearful.
Their work, too,--for they squabbled desperately over it at
times--furnished a ready ground wire to conduct off the too high
tension of living so closely and solely with each other. That
amazing book, which had been written by a method that had nothing
but originality to commend it, had come along so surprisingly that
Wardwell, always a grudging critic of his own work, had walked around
in violent alternations of feeling. At one moment he was confident that
the work was fine, and ten minutes later he would be attacked by a
sickening distrust that, after all, they must be "kidding themselves."
Augusta's faith had never wavered. She knew that the book was at all
times as good as Jimmie's best, and she wanted nothing more than that.
Measured in written words, her own part in it was not great. But
Wardwell knew that, from the moment she had come into it, the soul of
the book was Augusta's own spirit in it.
When it was finished and Jimmie had waded down through breast-deep
January drifts to the railroad station to mail the manuscript, and had
come back with empty hands, Augusta sat down and cried bitterly. She
had gotten to so love the book that, toward the end, every physical
touch that she gave it was a caress. And now that it was gone it seemed
almost as though a little fledgling boy of theirs had been driven out
into a cold, blustering world to make his way alone.
But Jimmie was crafty in waiting, and wise in ways to disappoint
disappointment.
"Don't let them see that we're anxious, darling," he counselled warily.
"Let's just keep saying that we don't care a rap, and that we expect
it to be rejected anyway. Then maybe it'll get by." He had all of an
Ethiopian's superstition that the little gods of mischief were always
watching around to snatch away the thing on which one set his heart too
openly.
"We'll get right to work on something else," he said, holding Augusta
curled up in his lap and petting her, "and pretend that we've forgotten
all about it." He remembered grim, waiting days in the past when he had
listened to the postman's whistle and had not dared to go down like a
man to see what the mail had brought him, but had peeped shame-faced
down the stairs at the hall table where the letters were piled, always
expecting to see the thick neat packet of manuscript that meant another
hope rejected.
Now it was all different, for he had another to think of. And his
anxiety was not for the outcome itself so much as it was to save
Augusta from the bitterness of a first crushing disappointment. The
best that they could expect--he tried to tell her--was that the book
might be considered, and, perhaps, if they could make the changes that
the publisher would be sure to want, might be finally accepted. But, in
any case, it would be at least a year before the book would bring them
anything, either advertising or reputation or money, or anything else.
In the very first place they must begin to write some things that might
be quickly turned into money. They must do some short stories at once.
He had some, Jimmie said, which had been bumping around in his head all
the time while he had been busy with the book. Now he would round them
up and put them to work. They must make some money right away.
If Augusta wondered at his sudden anxiety about money, she did not ask
questions. She was not incurious, but she never pried. She knew that he
was sensitive about money, and that he was becoming more so. But she
did not know of any new reason for his hurry to make money. She had
known vaguely that he must have borrowed money that time when he had
bought Donahue back for her, but she knew that he would not wish to be
questioned on the matter, and she had refrained from speculating on it.
Wardwell was beginning to know that, in that time, he had done
something that in the nature of things was altogether wrong. He did not
know just why it was so very wrong. But he knew that it was beginning
to bother him a great deal. And, in a man's foolish way of only seeing
one thing, he believed that if he could only get money now it would set
the whole thing right.
They had gone to work then, gravely pretending to have forgotten all
about the ship that had gone to sea. And, to an extent, they did forget
it. For Jimmie had some very good ideas for short stories and he fell
to work upon them with an energy that surprised himself. And Augusta
at first pecking diffidently at the typewriter, and then striking
boldly for herself into untried waters, found herself at the end of
three days almost hopelessly bewildered and drifting. Her story, which
had seemed so easy and simple in the starting, would not go forward.
And for three days more she sat futilely writing pages which she knew
she would presently tear up. Jimmie sat by and at times he grinned
sympathetically, but he offered no help, except to threaten to take
Augusta out and roll her in the snow if she persisted in sitting too
long and closely at the typewriter. Then, when she was almost ready to
cry in despair, the story began somehow to move, and almost before she
knew what was happening it ran out to a triumphant conclusion that she
had hardly dreamed of.
It was a beautiful little story, wind bitten, sun sweet, like Augusta's
own self. And Jimmie knew that it was true work. Though she begged him
to re-write it for her as he had done with what she had composed for
the book, Jimmie would not touch it. He showed her a few places where
her lack of training to the trade had left defects in construction.
And when she had copied in her own corrections he took the story and
addressed it and carried it proudly down to the railroad station.
After that their waiting and anxiety was all for the fate of Augusta's
little story. And when, a full week before there was any reasonable
hope for an answer from it, Wardwell went down to the station and
actually brought home an acceptance and a check for it, they forgot
everything and danced and capered about the fire in Indian glee.
"I shall now," said Jimmie comfortably, sitting down as the excitement
subsided a little, "devote myself to the instruction of an appreciative
future generation. I'll write for posterity, while my wife writes for
bread and bacon."
But Augusta was not there to hear. She had taken the check and run out
through the snow, to show it to Donahue.
From that time on through the winter Jimmie's weekly journeyings
down to the station were an event. They had agreed to avoid the use
of Jethniah's much nearer post office, not because they had anything
to conceal from their old friend but because they did not wish to be
discussed by the inevitable winter gossips who sat on Jethniah's nail
kegs and pilfered his soda crackers, so they had mail only once in the
week. And every week now there was something to be hoped for, some
manuscript to be heard from which they both said aloud would probably
come back rejected, but which in their secret hearts they both thought
"might stick," as Jimmie sometimes diffidently phrased it. For Augusta
had fallen into Jimmie's way of never voicing the highest hope, lest
a jealous power should hear and blast it. And they were for all the
world like a pair of old fashioned New England parents who would never
dare boast about their offspring, for that would mean that the children
would surely come to some bad end.
They were so busy, and so happy in the varying ups and downs of hopes,
disappointments and realizations, that when the letter came saying that
the publishers were pleased with Wardwell's book and that, if agreeable
to him, they would forward him a contract for its publication on the
usual royalty basis, it hardly caused any more than the usual weekly
excitement. It did not, in fact, reach up to half the importance of
Augusta's first little check.
Wardwell was not disappointed, for he had not expected any other
proposal than this one that had been made for the book. But he was not
exactly satisfied. He would have much preferred to try to get a cash
offer for the manuscript. For he was still sensitive to the thought
that Augusta had spent on account of him all the little money that had
been left from her mother, and that she was now, even though they had
both begun to earn some money, practically penniless. He thought that
he could not feel right again until he had been able to put into her
hands at least the amount of money which she had had in the beginning.
It was a little, unworthy way of looking at the matter, compared
with the unthought, whole-hearted way in which Augusta had done the
thing--and Wardwell knew this. But Jimmie was not, in these days,
seeing things with his usual clear vision.
There was another matter--a matter that had been hanging over him since
the day when he had telegraphed for money to buy back Donahue--which
was hanging over him and spoiling his imagination and his insight.
However, there was nothing that he could do except to work on as
rapidly as he could.
Now that the noisy interruption of the sugaring had passed they turned
back happily to the habits of their work--if indeed their ways of doing
things could be called habits, for they worked or played or ate, or did
none of these things, very much as the spirit of the moment suggested.
They had been obliged to take Mr. Gamblin into their confidence, for
the checks which had been coming were of no practical use to them here,
and it was necessary to have a banker.
"Checks" said Jethniah, when Jimmie had shown him the first of their
earnings and had asked him to deposit them. "I thought all checks had
Boynton & Bailey's name on 'em, and was to pay the farmers for milk."
"You needn't cash them now you know, Mr. Gamblin. If you'll just let
them go through your bank down in Tupper, why, you can give us the
money any time after they've gone through and so you can't be taking
any risk at all."
"Risk!" Jethniah grumbled. "Who said risk? I wouldn't know this here
Eagle Publishing Coe from Adam's pet hyena if I met them both face to
face, an' this here Bank of Manhattan may be an ingrowin' hole in the
ground for all I know. But you've writ your name on the back of one
of these checks and your wife's writ hers on t'other. An' that says
they're good. So they're good.
"That's me, every time. Just like a post in the mud."
He gave his trousers a premonitory heave, as if to advise them of what
was going to happen. And striking down deep into the right fore pocket
he pulled forth a good roll of bills and began to count.
"But say?" he queried, in a gentle, wondering tone that invited
confidence. "Don't you honestly have to do _any_ work at all--just
write down things--and have them send you checks?"
"Not another thing," Jimmie asserted stoutly.
"Gosh all Fish 'ooks!" Jethniah exploded admiringly. "Why don't
everybody do it!"
"I don't know," said Wardwell solemnly. "I've always wondered."
As the weeks drew on into the opening Spring, Augusta, sensitive always
as a poplar leaf, began to feel that from somewhere a crisis was
impending upon them. There was no tangible thing that could be a source
of apprehension to them. The question of money, which had once been
terrible for them, was now happily resolving itself into the simplest
incidental of their work. Jimmie, she was at last sure, could for the
rest of his life laugh at the threat of the disease which had driven
them out upon the road. The Winter, which had indeed been formidable
for them, was past; and for the Summer, which would be coming before
very long, they would be as comfortable and as nicely situated as they
could wish. They were welcome to stay on here. Or, if they were tired
of the solitude and the closeness of the life, they knew that they
could now easily earn as much as they needed to live nicely in almost
any place.
Materially, it was plain, nothing could threaten them. For they were
now as independent as it is possible for two people to be on this
earth, where the price of living must always be paid in some kind.
Even what is called independent wealth could not have made them more
free than they were, because, with that, they would have more things to
fear than they now had.
But Augusta well knew that this presentiment, which came treacherously
stealing upon her in the dreaming moments when her spirit was wandering
alone and unguarded in that border land where dreams and good stories
come from, was not warning her against any material happening.
With a prescience as cruel as eye-sight could have been, she knew that
this thing would strike at her heart. And, her heart could only be hurt
through Jimmie.
Long ago she had foreseen and trembled at this day when love would make
a coward of her. And although many times in the year past she had been
able to believe that Jimmie loved her truly, the way a man chooses
his girl and wants her, and not from any prompting of duty or mere
affection, yet the fact remained, unescapable and unanswerable: _they
had not started fair_.
She had taken Jimmie at his word, when pity, and probably affection,
and a pretty childish attractiveness, had prompted him to ask her to
marry him. But, even then, she had known that it was not fair, for,
even then, though neither of them would have believed this, she had
been a woman while he was an impulsive boy.
It was true that even in that time she had loved him with a love which
he would not have believed her capable of even guessing at. But that
made no difference. Jimmie had not been free. Nothing that had since
passed had altered that fact. And Augusta had cruelly whipped herself
into believing, that even if Jimmie had not cared for her in any way,
his quick heart and his kindness for her mother and herself would have
made him do just what he had done in the circumstances. (She was able
to believe this because she knew that she herself, at that time, would
have married the most repulsive man in the world if it had been a
necessary condition for getting her mother out of the madhouse.)
All this had lain away covered in her mind through the months of
happiness and well being and hopeful, heart-filling work. But it was
inevitable, as she had always known, that it would one day come forth
and stalk upon her.
The outward signs that the peace of her mind and the safety of her love
were being threatened were indeed very slight. Jimmie was restless.
Something was troubling him, that much she knew. Once or twice she
had felt that he was on the point of speaking out, but the moment had
passed and had left her with the dizzy, sinking feeling of a threat
suspended.
Sometimes she was able to lull the feeling of foreboding evil by the
thought that it was merely the Spring. Everything about them was
restless and stirring and shooting forth buds and blades, and all the
little rivers of life were running full. It was only to be expected
that they themselves, coming out of the close, storm bound life of the
Winter, should feel a stirring of unrest, an urge of discontent and
energy, towards something new.
Also, she knew that their reading of the war in Europe had been having
an unsettling effect upon both of them. In the days of last Summer and
Fall, when Jimmie's health was her single thought and when he himself
was still subject to recurrent days of feverishness during which the
doings of the world lost their interest for him, the first news of
the world's tragedy had come dribbling to them through occasional old
newspapers borrowed from Mr. Gamblin's store, and it had hardly aroused
in them anything more than a puzzled and only half believing wonder.
Belgium was mutilated--But Jimmie's temperature must be watched.
Later, however, when the shadow was definitely lifted from Wardwell's
life, they began to follow the war with an avidity that was
proportional to their detachment from the diversions and worries which
took up the thoughts of other people more normally situated. They
subscribed for a New York daily paper, and when Jimmie came home from
the station with a week's papers in a bundle they sat down and devoured
them eagerly.
Augusta, all pity and eager partisanship for the innocent and for the
right, was disappointed in Jimmie. He, being half boy and whole writing
man, thought only of the noise and the whole whaling wonder of the
thing, and she wondered that he could take it all so impartially. But
now there came a May day when Jimmie came home with his bundle of mail
and tramped heavily into the room, without speaking.
He walked over to where she sat at the typewriter. Before her, over the
machine, he spread a paper and laid his hand on the broad headlines.
They told of the Lusitania horror.
After a little he leaned over her shoulder, as she read in silence, and
pointed down a column of the known dead to the name of a man--a writing
man--whom he had loved.
He walked slowly over to the table in the corner and dropped the mail
quietly. Augusta stole a look at him as he stood there, leaning over
slightly, brooding, his big hands, rough and red from work and wind,
knuckled down hard on the bare table.
She was struck by a sense of something missing. The boyishness was gone
from Jimmie's face. And, with a little shiver, she knew that she would
never see it again. Her playboy had vanished. She was looking at a man
who had hardened into a mold within the hour.
She had never seen Jimmie angry, for he had practically no temper. And
he was not angry now, in any ordinary sense of the word. His face was
no study. It was plain, and ugly with a single emotion. The emotion was
as plain, and as old, as blood--revenge.
But Augusta knew that it was not the restlessness of Spring that
threatened her. And she knew that not even the sullen restiveness of a
call of blood could hurt in the way that she was going to be hurt.
She was a woman. And she knew that only through a woman could she be
wounded to her heart's depth. That strange prescience, that border land
insight which had come to her in other times, and had sometimes been
kind to her and sometimes cruel, had lately been turning up pictures
to her mind. And although she had not admitted them to her ordinary,
self-controlled consciousness, yet fragments of them always remained,
and in spite of her will to dissolve them she found them becoming more
and more clearly parts of a composite picture of a woman--the tall,
black woman whom she had seen that day when the Irish gypsy girl had
forced the cards into her hands.
Now this was all in spite of her will. Her good sense, as she called
it, fought these things down again and again. She would not let herself
be morbid. And yet, all the time, her soul was summoning courage
against the blow. When she should know that Jimmie wanted to go from
her, she must make him free. That had been in the bond from the
beginning. She herself had put it in the vow of her marriage.
On a morning just beyond the middle of May when the plum trees were all
in white blossom, which, as all the world knows, is the one elect time
for brook fishing, Jimmie went fishing.
Augusta stayed at home with the avowed, and honest, intention of fixing
a dress. Their clothes had stood the rough wear remarkably well. But,
as good clothes will do, now that they were beginning to go they
seemed to give out everywhere at once.
But Augusta never took any pleasure in fixing her own clothes. So by
the time she had taken down her good dress and looked it over, and had
poked tentatively at several slightly worn places in it, she decided
that it was Jimmie's wardrobe that really needed attention.
His one fair coat was not at all what it should be. And she knew there
was a rip under the right armhole. She must do that first. She would
give it a thorough beating and cleaning and let it hang a while in
the sweetening sun. The first thing was to clean out the pockets and
turn them wrong side out. He always carried such truck in his pockets!
Cigarette papers, loose matches--it was a miracle that he didn't burn
himself up, improvised lead sinkers, stubs of lead pencils, a few loose
cartridges, letters from publishers, scraps and pieces that had once
been white paper and had had parts of stories written on them. She
shucked them all out on the table and stood looking down at them with
some of the consternation and wonder with which a young mother looks at
the amazing contents of her boy's trouser pockets.
Long afterwards it came to Augusta as one of the bitterest things of
all that her blow should have come upon her in what might have been the
way of cheap and tawdry melodrama. She might have been a snooping wife
going jealously through her husband's pockets.
She stood there a long time staring down at a letter that, of its own
power it seemed, stood out apart and separated from all the rest. She
did not touch the letter. There was no power in her, nor no wish, to
turn a page of it. It had no envelope. And it had, with insensate
malice, spread out the whole of its front page to her eye.
It was a love letter, one link of a chain of established correspondence
between a woman and Jimmie Wardwell.
After the first, heart-withering look at the page which gave her this
complete, all-embracing intelligence, Augusta did not read. She stood
staring dumbly, and then, still keeping her eyes helplessly on the
page, she began to back, step by step, cowering away from it.
Creeping backward still, she came against the chair on which she had
thrown her dress. Her hand went out mechanically and she grasped the
dress, just where she had stuck the forgotten needle in it.
The pain of the piercing needle mercifully took her eyes away from that
letter. She pulled the needle from where it had stuck in the palm of
her hand, and mechanically brought the hurt up to her lips.
Then she looked at the dress. What was it doing there?
Oh yes! She remembered. She was going away. She had always known that
she was going away. Now it was the time.
She took the dress and carried it over behind the little curtain of her
hammock bed.
When she was ready to go, she sat down at the typewriter and wrote a
line in the middle of a clean sheet of paper.
She was not herself, of course; and we do not know just what was
passing in her mind. But she wrote:
_We may not live together. We shall not die apart._
As she rose from the typewriter she looked again, because she could not
help it, at the letter, and in the lower part of the page that lay open
before her she saw clearly the words "your Jean."
She did not need these words to tell her what she already knew, that
the letter was from the woman with whom Jimmie had promised to have
nothing to do. For she had already seen, in the first moment, a flash
of the woman's dark, handsome, discontented face.
But the written words, the written claim, roused in her a swelling,
choking anger.
She would not go away! She would stay and _fight_ that women to the
death for her love!
Yet all the time she knew that she would go. It was inevitable, as her
heart had always somehow told her that this hour would inevitably come.
Except for his broken promise--That was unanswerable--she had no heart
to blame Jimmie. She would not go in anger. In her heart she had sworn
that, if this day should come, she would free him completely, and
without bitterness.
She was going.
Her love was spoiled, tarnished; another had touched it. She could
never again have the glory of it. Dear heart of life, how beautiful it
had been! And she must go, lest in her weakness she should grovel and
bring that one beautiful thing of life down into dust with her.
As she passed the stable, Donahue whinnied lovingly at the sound of her
step. But she dared not stop. For she knew that if she stopped now,
and broke down and cried with her pet and friend, the miserable end
would be that she would run to where Jimmie was and throw herself on
her knees to him and beg weakly for his love. And--the shame of it!--he
would talk, and talk, and talk, and in the end she would live on with
him, to hate herself and him.
So her eyes were dry and her little shoulders bravely set as she
trudged on down through the fringe of trees and into the brook path.
She did not know the cross-cuts by which Jimmie went to the station
every week--Oh yes, Jimmie went to the station every week!--but she
knew the direction fairly well. She would find it. She did not know
how many trains there were in the day, but she was quite sure that
there would be one before she could be missed and overtaken. Jimmie had
gone fishing for the day.
Now this last thing one would rather not tell. Studied design could
not have found anything quite so cruel to have done to her. It is, in
fact, left for accident and blind, silly coincidence to furnish the
most terrible thrusts of life. When Augusta came, still dry-eyed and
hurrying, down the dusty road to the little station, she saw a man
going away from the station and starting across the fields. He did not
see her.
It was Jimmie. He had not gone fishing.