Produced by Al Haines
FASHIONING A PIPE.
"He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep, cool bed of the river.
* * * * * *
"Hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard, bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf, indeed,
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
In holes as he sat by the river.
'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan,
... 'The only way since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
... Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."
--MRS. BARRETT BROWNING.
[Illustration: Title page]
JUDITH MOORE;
OR,
FASHIONING A PIPE.
BY
JOANNA E. WOOD.
Author of "The Untempered Wind," etc.
TORONTO:
THE ONTARIO PUBLISHING CO., Limited
1898.
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, by THE ONTARIO PUBLISHING
Co., Limited, at the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa.
JUDITH MOORE.
CHAPTER I.
"Behold a sower went forth to sow."
Andrew Cutler, with his graceful and melancholy red Irish setter at his
heels, walked swiftly across his fields to the "clearing" one morning
late in spring.
He was clad in the traditional blue jeans of the countryman, and wore
neither coat nor vest; a leathern belt was drawn about his middle. His
shirt, open a bit at the throat, and guiltless of collar and tie,
displayed a neck such as we see modelled in old bronzes, and of much
the same colour; for Andrew Cutler was tanned to the point of being
swart. His head had a somewhat backward pose, expressive of an
independence almost over-accentuated.
His hair was cropped short, and was of a sun-burnt brown, like his long
moustache. His eyes were blue-grey, that softened to hazel or hardened
to the hue of steel. His nose was aquiline, with the little flattened
plateau on the bridge that we call "Spanish." His chin was strong--the
chin of a man who "manlike, would have his way."
Mother Nature must laugh in her sleeve at the descriptive names we tack
to her models. This man so completely satisfied the appellation
"aristocratic," that, with the stubbornness of a much-humoured word, it
persists in suggesting itself as the best vehicle to describe this
young farmer, and indeed the combination would be entirely to the
advantage of the adjective, which is often seen in poor company. A
veritable rustic Antinous he was, with broad chest, slim, lithe loins,
and muscles strong as steel. Slung athwart his shoulder was a sack of
coarse brown canvas that bulged with a heavy load; but he strode on,
his balance undisturbed, and presently he stood upon the verge of the
clearing. This was simply a part of the woodland that Andrew was
taking under cultivation. A somewhat unpromising piece it looked, with
its stubborn stumps standing irregularly amid the broken furrows--(for
it had been ploughed, in such fashion as ploughing may be done when one
has to twist around stumps, over stones, and tear through long strong
roots).
Andrew remembered the ploughing, as he walked across to begin his
sowing, like the good farmer that he was, at the end-rigg. Here was
the stump that had resisted gunpowder, leverage and fire, and that now
was being tortured by saltpetre, charged in a deep augur hole. Well,
it had been a right brave old tree, but the saltpetre would win to the
stout oaken heart yet. It was perhaps a step in the right direction,
this clearing of the woodland, but all progress seems cruel at first.
Here--as he passed over what seemed a particularly smooth bit--the
great stone lay hidden that had broken his ploughshare off with a
crash, and sent him flying from between the plough-stilts. He would
remember that stone for some time! So doubtless would good old Bess,
whose patient brown shoulders had borne the brunt of the shock.
Ploughing a field is like ploughing the sea--one needs must have a
chart of each to steer safely. That more formidable sea, "whose waves
are years," has no chart. Next winter would see the uprooting of all
these stumps, and the felling of more trees beyond. Next spring the
plough would pass straight from end to end, and the seed-drill would
sow the space which now he was about to sow in the old classic
fashion--as they sowed, in intervals of stormy peace, the grain after
the wooden ploughs on the Swiss hillsides; as Ulysses sowed the salt
upon the seashore; as the sowers sowed the seed in the far-off East, as
has been handed down to us in a matchless allegory.
He began his task, hand and foot moving in rhythm, and cadenced by the
sharp swish, swish of the grain as it left his hand, spreading fan-wise
over the soil. It takes a strong wrist and a peculiar "knack" to sow
grain well by hand; he had both.
The dog followed him for a couple of ridges, but, besides the ploughed
ground being distasteful to him (for he was a dainty dog and
fastidious), the buckwheat hit him in the eyes, and his master paid no
heed to him, a combination of circumstances not be borne; hence, he
shortly betook himself to the woodland, where he raised a beautiful
little wild rabbit and coursed after it, until with a final kick of its
furry heels it landed safe beneath a great pile of black walnut logs,
built up criss-cross fashion to mellow for the market. Rufus (named
from "William the Red, surnamed Rufus") returned to his master, not
dejectedly, but with a melancholy contempt for rabbits that would not
"run it out," but took shelter in a sneaking way where they could not
be come at.
By this time Andrew was well on with his work. The sack beneath his
arm was growing limp, he himself was warm. He paused as a bird flew up
from a turned sod at his feet, and a little search showed the simple
nest of a grey-bird--open to the sun and rain, built guilelessly,
without defence of strategy or strength.
There is something amiss with the man or woman whose heart is not
touched by a bird's nest--the daintiest possible epitome of love, and
home, and honest work, and self-sacrificing patience. Andrew had
thrashed many a boy for robbing birds' nests, and had discharged a man
in the stress of haying because he knocked down the clay nests of the
swallows from beneath the granary eaves with a long pole. Now he bent
above this nest with curious-tender eyes, touching the spotted eggs
lightly whilst the bird, whose breast had left them warm, flitted to
and fro upon the furrows. He remained but a moment (the bird's anxiety
was cruel) then, fixing the spot in his memory that he might avoid it
in the harrowing, he was about to go on his way, when his ears were
assailed by a succession of the sweetest sounds he had ever heard--note
after note of purest melody, flung forth unsyllabled, full-throated to
the air, inarticulate but eloquent. Again and again it came, liquid,
rich, and with that pathos which perfection always touches.
At first he could not fix the direction from whence it came. It was as
if the heavens above had opened and showered down music upon his heart
as he had flung forth the seed upon the earth: and indeed there were
two sowings that morning and from each harvests were garnered--first
the bloom and then the fruit thereof. But as he listened longer he
knew it issued from the wood before him. At the first note some
impulse made him snatch off his old felt hat, and he stood there,
bareheaded in the sunshine, as one might stand to whom had come the
pang of inspiration.
The singer was voicing no composition, only uttering isolated notes, or
short _crescendos_, terminating in notes of exquisite beauty, but
leaving a sense of incompleteness that was so intense us to be almost a
physical pain to him--only forgotten when the next utterance robbed him
of retrospect and filled him with hope. Any one who has heard a
perfect singer practising, knows the sensation. In such fashion the
unseen sirens sang, and men willingly risked death to touch the lips
that had been parted by such melodious breath.
Andrew still stood, and at last silence fell--a silence he hardly
comprehended at first, so filled was it with the dream of sound that
had passed, so instinct with expectation: but it forced itself upon
him, and then suddenly round him there sounded all the commonplace
noises of life--the croaking of a tree toad, the buzzing of a chance
fly, the far-off shouting of men, and the sounds of birds--all that had
been deadened to his ear by the magic of that voice.
A voice--then whence?
In two strides he was over the ploughed ground and in the woods. He
searched through and through it in vain. He looked from its borders at
his own far-off farm-house among its trees, at the gables of the
village of Ovid clustering together, at the tin on the Baptist Church
spire glistening in the midst, at the long low Morris homestead that
nestled in a little hollow beyond his wood: but all was as usual,
nothing new, nothing strange. No angel's glistening wing was to be
seen anywhere.
Andrew's grain was spent, but the clearing was not yet all sown. So he
went home leaving his task unfinished. From one thing to another was
the rule of his busy life. He gave a cheery word or two to his aunt,
Miss Myers, who kept house for him, and then he was off to town with a
waggon load of implements to be mended in time for the summer work.
That night a group of typical Ovidians were gathered in the kitchen of
old Sam Symmons' house.
Sam Symmons lived in a frame house, just at the foot of the incline
which led into the village from the north. Like many of the houses of
Ovid, his was distinctly typical of its owner. A new house was such a
rare thing in Ovid, that the old ones had time to assimilate the
characters of their possessors, and to assume an individuality denied
to the factors of a more rapidly growing place.
Old Sam's house was a tumble-down, rakish, brave-looking old house,
with shutters erstwhile painted green. They had once given the whole
house quite an air, but their painful lapses in the way of broken
slats, and uneven or lost hinges, now superimposed upon it a look of
indecision. One of the weather-boards at the south corner was loose
and, freed from the nails' restraint, bent outward, as though beckoning
the gazer in. It was a hospitable old house, but wary, too, the ornate
tin tops of the rain troughs round the roof giving it a knowing look.
The native clematis grew better over the weather-beaten gable than
anywhere else in Ovid, and the Provence roses, without any care
whatever, bloomed better.
It was as if the house and its environs were making a gallant but
losing light against encroaching time and adverse circumstances. So it
was with old Sam.
He was an old man. Long before, when Canada's farmers were more than
prosperous, when foreign wars kept the price of food grains high, when
the soil was virgin and unexhausted, when the military spirit still
animated the country, when regulars were in barracks at the nearest
town, when every able man was an eager volunteer, when to drink heavily
and swear deeply upon all occasions marked the man of ease, when the
ladies danced in buckled shoes and _chéne taffetas_, and were
worshipped with chivalrous courtesy and high-flown _sobriquets_--in
those days old Sam Symmons had been known as "Gallant Sam Symmons," and
had been welcomed by many high in the land.
He had ever been first in a fight, the last upright at the table, a gay
dancer and a courtly flirt. But now he was glad to get an audience of
tolerant villagers to listen to his old tales. For instead of
garnering his money he spent it freely, having ever a generous heart
and open hand, and of late years he had fallen upon evil times, and
gone steadily down hill. Now he had only a strip of barren acres
heavily mortgaged. He married late in life the daughter of a country
doctor.
They had one child, a girl, whose mother died when she was four years
old. Sam christened his daughter Susanna Matilda.
In the days of his youth--oh, the halcyon time--these two names had
been the names of the hour. The Mabels, Lilys and Rubys of to-day were
yet unborn.
Susanna Waring had been the belle of the county, and her lovers were
willing to stake their honour upon her pre-eminence.
Matilda Buchanan had been called "The Rose of Canada," and when the
Consul, her father, returned to England, she footed it bravely at the
Court of St. James. She married a nobleman there.
They were long dead, these two beauties. Matilda Buchanan had left all
her pomp, and Susanna Waring had passed away from all her unhappiness,
for she married an officer who treated her brutally. Well, well, old
Sam Symmons, gallant Sam Symmons then, had danced with both of them,
had kissed Miss Waring's hand in a minuet, and knocked a man down for
saying Matilda Buchanan rouged.
She did--they all did in those days--but it was not for the profane
lips of man to say so. Thus Sam christened his daughter Susanna
Matilda, and felt he had done his duty by her.
After his wife's death, her cousin, a good enough woman in a negative
sort of way, kept house for him, and brought up the little girl. When
Susanna was eighteen, this woman died; so Sam and his daughter were
left alone.
As has been said, quite a crowd was gathered in old Sam's kitchen that
night in the last week of May. There was Sam himself, Jack Mackinnon
(a neighbour's hired man and the most noted liar in Ovid), Hiram Green,
Oscar Randall, and Susanna. It may be said here that throughout Ovid
and its environs Susanna's proper name was a dead letter. She was "Sam
Symmons' Suse" to all and sundry. The Ovidian mind was not prone to
poetry: still, this alliterative name seemed to have charms for it, and
perhaps the poetical element in Ovid only required developing: and it
may be that the sibilant triune name found favour because it chimed to
some dormant vein of poesy, unsuspected even by its possessors.
The occasion calling forth the conclave in Symmons' kitchen was simply
that his old mare was very sick; in fact, dying, as all save Sam
thought. As every man in Ovid prided himself upon his knowledge of
veterinary science, the whole community stirred when it was spread
abroad that there was an equine patient to practise upon.
Oscar Randall took the dim lantern from the table and went out. He
returned, and all awaited his opinion.
"Well, Os?" said Jack Mackinnon.
"If that was my horse--which she ain't, of course--I'd shoot her," said
Oscar, deliberately.
"Shoot her!" said Jack Mackinnon: "shoot her! Don't you do it, Mister
Symmons. Why, there was old Mr. Pierson wot I worked for in Essex, he
had an old mare, most dreadful old and most terrible sick--sick for
months. One day we drawed her out in a field, to die easy and so's
she'd be easy to bury. Well, by George! she got up, and old Mr.
Pen--him wot I worked for as has the dairy farm--he came along, and he
says to Mr. Pierson, says he, 'Wot'll you take for the mare?'
'Twenty-five dollars,' says the old man. 'She's my mare, then,' says
Mr Pen; 'I'll give you my note for her.' So Mr. Pen took her home and
drove her in his milk-cart: and that spring he sold her two colts for a
hundred dollars apiece, and in the fall he got two hundred dollars for
a little black one; and Mr. Ellis, wot keeps tavern, he bought another
pair of 'em in winter, and gave a sorrel horse and a double cutter for
'em. I tell you, she was a good old mare that, and we drug her out to
die at old Mr. Pierson's, wot I worked for in Essex, and old Mr. Pen,
wot keeps the dairy farm, he came along, and says, 'Wot'll you take for
the mare?' And--"
"Oh, shut up! Draw it mild, Jack," said Oscar, irascibly.
"Sam," said Hiram Green, slowly, "have you tried Epsom salts? and
ginger? and saltpetre? and sweet spirits of nitre? and rye? and
asafoetida? and bled her? and given her a bran-mash? and tried
turpentine and salt?"
"Yes," said Sam, "I have, and she's no better."
"Now, Sam," said Green, impressively, "did you give her a 'Black's
Condition Powder'?"
"No, I didn't," said Sam.
"I thought so," said Green, significantly.
"Do you keep them in the store?" queried Oscar Randall, aggressively.
He felt aggrieved with Hiram, having himself intended to ask about the
sweet nitre and turpentine.
"Do you keep them?" he asked again.
"Yes, I do," admitted Hiram, "and I've brought one along in case Sam
should like to try it."
This rather crushed Oscar's insinuation as to Hiram's business policy
in suggesting this remedy, so he sat silent, while old Sam and Hiram
Green went out to administer the powder.
Jack Mackinnon, to whom silence was impossible, with the freedom of
equality prevalent in Ovid, turned to where Suse sat making rick-rack.
"Wot are you making, Miss Suse?" he began, and without waiting for a
reply, continued: "There was Adah Harris, daughter of old man Harris,
wot was a carpenter and had a market garden, wot I worked for in Essex,
and she was always a-doing things. She was busy every blessed minute,
and I tell you she _was_ smart; she married Henry Haynes wot kept a
blacksmith's shop, wot I worked for: and when I left there, I left my
clothes be, till I got a job, and when I went back after 'em, there was
a new shirt, and two paper collars in a box, and my mother's picture
gone. Now I knowed pretty clost to where them things went--and I'll
have 'em back if I have to steal 'em. Why I thought no end of mother's
picture, it was took standing; I wouldn't have lost that picture for a
fifty-cent piece, and there 'twas gone and my new shirt and two collars
I'd only had two months. I left them at Henry Haynes' wot married Adah
Harris. Old man Harris went carpentering and kept a market garden,
but, pshaw! Talk about squashes, why we growed one squash there took
three men to get it into the waggon, and then we rolled it up a
board--why squashes--" but just then Hiram and old Sam came in. Old
Sam blew the long-lit lantern out.
"Well, father?" Suse asked.
"She's dead," said Sam.
"Dead's a door nail," added Hiram.
"No!" said Jack, with exaggerated incredulity.
"You don't say!" said Oscar, in a tone which betrayed a distinct
conflict between self-satisfaction and proper sympathy. He could not
resist adding in a lower key, "I seen as much."
Soon the trio of visitors departed. Old Sam was smoking a last pipe
when a knock came to the door. He opened it to find Andrew Cutler
without.
"What's this I hear about your mare?" he asked. "Is she dead?"
"Yes--couldn't seem to do anything for her," said old Sam, and brave as
he was, his tone was somewhat disheartened.
"Well, it's too bad, she was a good beast. Better have my little bay
till you look about for another," said Andrew.
Old Sam's face lightened. "I'll be glad to," he answered. "There's
the orchard field to plough and I'm behindhand already, but"--his old
pride forbidding him to accept too eagerly--"don't you need him?"
"No, not a bit," said Andrew. "Indeed, I'll be glad if you take him
awhile. He's getting above himself."
"Well, I'll come along for him in the morning, then," said Sam,
relieved. "What have you been doing to-day?"
"Sowing buckwheat in the clearing, and went to town with some mending,"
replied Andrew. "I'm just getting home."
"How does the clearing look?" asked Sam. "Free of water?"
"Yes, it's in good condition."
"Hiram Green says that there's a boarder up to the Morris place. Did
you see anything of it?"
"Man or woman?" asked Andrew, with sudden interest.
"Hiram didn't say. I took it was a man." (Andrew's heart sank.)
"Suse, did Hiram Green say 'twas a man or a woman had come to board
with old Mrs. Morris?"
"He didn't say," called Suse from an inner room.
"Well, it's a lonely place to choose, isn't it?" said Andrew.
"Good-night, Mr. Symmons."
"Good-night, good-night. Thank you kindly," said old Sam.
The old mare was buried next day in one of Sam's barren fields.
"Did you get the shoes off her?" Mr. Horne asked as he encountered old
Sam returning from the obsequies with an earthy spade over his rounding
shoulders.
"No, I didn't," said Sam.
"Did you save her tail to make a fly brush?" queried Mr. Horne.
"No," answered old Sam. "I never thought of it."
"Did you skin her?" asked his questioner bending over. "Did you skin
her?"
"No," said Sam, thoroughly humiliated.
"Well," said Mr. Horne with exuberant sarcasm, as he shook his reins
over his team of fat Clydesdales, "It's well you can afford such waste.
I couldn't."