Fessenden was so preoccupied that even the voices and laughter of
girls did not attract his attention for some moments. He was inserting
the little nickel troughs called spiles into the trees of the maple
orchard, and hanging the red buckets beneath to catch the sap. Dolf
was in the sugar shanty nearby, scouring out the vats, for the boiling
would begin to-morrow, and maple-sugar was an industry from which the
Nettlebecks derived a yearly income of several hundred dollars. This
year Fessenden, who was now seventeen and tired of being a farm-hand,
had stipulated that he was to work on shares, arguing that if he did
two-thirds of the work he was entitled to at least one-third of the
profits. Nettlebeck, after some demur, and a long growl over his pipe
one evening, capitulated when young Abbott threatened to stake off a
claim on government land and in partnership with Jeff Hunter build his
own vats. Fessenden was feeling much elated over his rise in life,
and his imagination was running riot in a great future to which sugar
should be the stepping-stone--he had recently read several articles
on self-made men in magazines sent to Morris--when his house of cards
came tumbling down, and the future financier rose from the ruins, a
blushing, shivering, gibbering swain.
“This here is Grace Morton, Fess,” remarked the dry young voice of
Mamie Hunter. “She’s come to stay with me a spell. Lives down to
Malone, and ain’t very well.”
During this elaborate introduction Fessenden was gazing into the
soft black eyes of the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Her hair was
dark, her features fragile and regular; she wore a black frock and a
red-peaked cap, red about her throat and tiny waist. Her complexion
was sickly, her figure might have been that of the last woman, but
Fessenden saw no defects. Neither did he recognize the vacant, the
utterly commonplace mind that looked from that sweet unchanging
face. She was a little beauty in her way, and wholly unlike the
buxom rough-handed girls of his district; there pervaded her that
neutral refinement which nature has lavished with such a curious
lack of discrimination upon all classes in the United States; and to
Fessenden, who had never seen even a village, she seemed city-bred and
fashionable. She blushed under his devouring gaze, and then she looked
like a wild rose of the woods; one barrier fell. She raised her eyes
and glanced vaguely round.
“I’ve never seen the sap running before,” she remarked. “It looks real
nice. Is it sweet like what we eat on cakes?”
“You goose!” exclaimed Miss Hunter. “It’s got to be boiled down
first--the water boiled out of it; not that it’s so bad now.”
Fessenden had produced a tin cup and filled it with the running liquid.
“Will you taste it?” he asked hoarsely.
She took the cup from him, and their fingers met. He trembled. She did
not, and tasted the sap daintily. “Well, I like it,” she announced.
“It’s real refreshing, and we had a long walk over here. I never walked
so far before, and I’m all tuckered out. I guess I’ll sit down.”
Fessenden hastily cleared off a log, and regretted that he had no coat
to fling upon it--for obvious reasons he could not remove his sweater.
She seated herself with the fastidious little manner which pervaded
her personality, and Miss Hunter, remarking that she guessed she was
not wanted, strolled off to call on Christina. Fessenden, humbly
craving permission, seated himself beside the beauty from Malone,
regardless of the sap that was flowing from the punctured trees which
still awaited spile and bucket. They talked disconnectedly of various
things, no one of which could Fessenden recall later. Her remarks were
pleasant and meaningless and she was utterly unmoved. She thought
this young mountaineer very handsome and clever-looking, and she had
a faint romantic preference for tall men; but her poor little body
was not destined for reproduction, and her brain was too small for
imagination and sentiment. She was vain and liked attention, but she
was without guile, and as she had no immediate reason for marrying, her
mother keeping a small store comfortably, she encouraged no one of her
admirers, while accepting the homage of several as a matter of course.
The wild tempest in Fessenden she could not have understood with the
aid of a miracle.
“Is this your first visit to the woods?” asked Fessenden, who wondered
dully why he was so stupid; he could think of nothing to say to this
divine creature, and words, as a rule, came to him almost as rapidly as
thoughts.
“No, I’ve never been before. I always wanted to.” Her voice was sweet
and thin; it was only when she raised it that it escaped through her
nose. To the infatuated Fessenden it sounded like the rilling of one of
the minor streams in the woods.
“I hope you’ll stay a long while.”
“I guess I will. Most of our folks’ve died of consumption, and I’ve had
a hackin’ kind of cough. But I guess I’ll get over it here. I’m better
already.”
If there was a mutter of protest from the race in Fessenden’s depths he
let it pass unheeded. His suddenly conceived and violent passion needed
but the lash of pity to transform him from the individual into the
type, tumultuous with sentimental desire; the instinct of the strong to
protect the beloved weak, keen and quick; pouring into a flimsy shell
such an ideal as man knows only in his dreams--the determination to
possess this inestimable treasure though the world stood still and the
angels warned through brazen trumpets.
“I hope this log isn’t damp,” he said anxiously. “I’d better fetch you
something from the house to sit on.”
“Oh, I’d be afraid to stay here alone, and I can’t walk another step.
It’s bad enough to walk home. I guess this log’s all right. Have you
ever been to Malone?”
“Never!” Fessenden for the first time realized his rude wild state.
“I’ve never been twenty miles from here.”
“My! you are a country bumpkin. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings,”
she added contritely as Fessenden’s sunburnt face assumed a purple hue.
“I’m always saying silly things. You mustn’t mind me. The boys always
say I just rattle out anything that comes into my head, and they don’t
mind a bit.”
“I’m sure I don’t either,” said Fessenden quickly; he was determined
to equal the Maloner in insensibility. “I should think”--he blundered
somehow through his first compliment--“that anything you said would be
about right.”
“Well, that’s what they tell me,” she replied complacently. “You can
get me another cup of that sap if you like.”
Fessenden held the cup to her mouth, which was thin and curved
and scarlet. Then, partly because his emotions were rendering him
speechless, partly because he was fired with the primitive desire
of the male to show off before the female, he swung his axe to his
shoulder and muttered that he guessed he’d better cut down a tree; he
was wasting too much time.
His axe he always carried with him. It occupied a place in his
affections second to his canoe, and preceding a more lukewarm passion
for his gun. In a moment Miss Grace Morton, of Malone, was admiring a
lithe strong back, the supple free action of two brawny arms as the axe
swung as easily as a switch, cutting straight and deep at every stroke.
The old tree was quickly brought to earth, and Fessenden leaned on his
axe and dared once more to look into the soft eyes beneath the red cap.
“It was time that old tree came down,” he remarked huskily, yet with
a fair assumption of indifference. “It hasn’t given any sap for two
years, and has been bothering the other trees.”
“Bothering? You talk as if trees was people.”
“Well, they are in a way--that is, they’ve often seemed alive to me.”
“My! You ain’t crazy, are you?”
Fessenden laughed, and a term of endearment ran close to the tip of his
tongue. “People who live much alone have odd fancies. But that doesn’t
mean they’re crazy.”
“I guess they’re crazy enough if they’re too different. But you look
real sensible. I presume you’re all right.”
She looked adorable in her feminine attempt to console him, and
Fessenden wheeled about and swung the axe victoriously into a fruitful
maple. This time the young lady was bored. She preferred conversation,
and this mountain stripling certainly was handsomer than the Malone
small-fry who worshipped at her shrine.
She coughed pleasantly but imperiously, and as Fessenden turned quickly
the sun blazed full upon her, covering her bright hair with little
golden sparks. Her eyes looked babyish and wistful; she had one of
those mouths that quiver when pouting. The poor little creature was the
more dangerous for being quite natural and sincere. She had neither the
brains nor the energy for coquetry, and even to youths of some slight
experience she seemed as perfect as she was pretty.
Fessenden threw aside his axe. “Let’s go down to the lake,” he said,
with brutal abruptness. “It’s not far, and I’ll row you and Mamie
home--here she comes.”
He strode on ahead, and when the girls reached the shore he had one
of the boats drawn up to the landing. He rowed with such swift strong
strokes that the light craft fairly flew up the lake.
“My, Fess!” remarked Mamie Hunter. “You appear to be in a hurry--must
have wasted time after I left you.”
“Of course the trees have to be spiled, but Miss Morton was too tired
to walk home. You shouldn’t have brought her such a distance the first
time.”
“She didn’t calculate on finding a nurse ready made; she’s real
fortunate. Perhaps you’ll come over and carry her next time.”
“I should like to.” He smiled protectingly into the impassive expectant
eyes; even in the throes he was the lordly male. Moreover, pride had
shaken him into a temporary possession of his senses. “What do you
think of our scenery?” he asked Miss Morton.
“It’s real pretty.”
“Pretty? Beautiful, I should call it.”
“Yes, I guess beautiful suits it better.” If he had applied to it
erudite and foreign adjectives she would have assented as amiably.
“Fess is a crank,” advised Mamie. “You mustn’t mind anything he raves
over. You’ll be the next thing, I suppose--he’ll find it quite a
relief after so much brain work.” Mamie was an admirer and disciple of
Christina, besides possessing a quick and observing eye of her own. She
had a long, investigating nose, and no beauty whatever; but with the
boys, whom she treated villanously, she was the most popular girl in
the district.
“Have you read much?” asked Fessenden of his divinity, ignoring Mamie.
“Oh yes.”
“What? Shakespeare? History? Biographies?”
“I guess so. I always forget people’s names that write things.”
And even then the rosy halo swirled unrent. Fessenden returned home
and viciously punctured his trees. At supper he was so incoherent that
Christina arose and felt his pulse. He passed the greater part of the
night wandering in the woods. During the ensuing fortnight he spent
every evening at the Hunters’. Several times the girls came to the
sugar shanty where he was boiling, and he rowed them home in the dusk.
He lived aloft with the gods and the goddesses, one of whom was Grace,
who gradually assumed heroic proportions. It mattered not that every
interview betrayed her paucity the more pitifully; it mattered not that
he never once struck fire in that meagre breast, that never once did
her brain respond to the confidences, the ambitions, the aspirations
he poured into her puzzled and ofttimes weary ear. He no longer loved
Grace, little as he realized that world-old fact; he loved the ideal
it was her limited destiny to quicken in his imagination. The great
forces rushing through his veins and thumping in his brain had nothing
in common with mere facts and girls. They were having their first
innings, and not even grateful to the cause. Nothing in the vagaries
of nature is more inexplicable than nine-tenths of what, for want of a
better name, is called love. It is a wanton waste of good energy and a
lamentable waste of spiritual forces; for the passion moves the victim
to all sorts of unselfish impulses, exalted emotion, and even religion,
all of which, in the reaction when delusion is over, are finely
scorned. That love which is composed of an instinct for companionship,
and a complete honesty of emotions, and is lacking in sentimentalism
and the tragic note, delays its arrival, to people of ardent
imagination, until so late that they must have much richness of nature
and large recuperative powers to dismiss into the past the memory of
all they have spent. The theory that the blind passion of youth springs
from the relentless instinct of reproduction is true only in part, for
some of the maddest passions are inspired by anæmic and useless women,
and the earth has its full measure of sickly children. If Nature has
any well-defined plan she has as yet hesitated to reveal it, and it
is probable that she is still amusing herself in her laboratory. Most
love would appear to be a momentary fever of the imagination to which
the body responds, and the soul, always struggling for utterance, tries
its wings, flies a little span, and flatters the brain: when a man is
in love then is he most pleased with himself; he never imagined that
for heights and depths, within an apparently trite exterior, he was
so remarkable a being; and until the wave recedes he bestows a like
approval on the chance object who, in the prettiness of her hour, or by
some trick of manner, bulged his ego into grander proportions.
Considering the issues, it was fortunate in many respects that
Fessenden had the inevitable attack so early in life.
He was subjected to an unmerciful chaffing, to the most sarcastic
achievements of Christina’s tongue, and to more than one crude remark
by Mr. Nettlebeck; in subject the eternal damnation tendency of
young fools to fall in love with a bigger fool than themselves--in
this case as useless a bit of furniture as ever littered the earth.
Morris for a time ignored the episode, but after Fessenden, who
scorned his tormentors, overflowed one day in the presence of the
polite philosopher, and announced that he intended to marry as soon
as he had a maple-grove of his own--college had no further charms for
him--the tutor and Nettlebeck had a long and meaning conference. At
its conclusion Morris spent an hour in composition, the farmer hitched
up his buckboard and, in spite of the pressing duties of the season,
drove thirty miles to the station and gave the letter to an obliging
conductor to post in New York. Nettlebeck, not many days later, took a
trip which lasted nearly a week.
X
Fessenden, who had long since proposed to Grace and been listlessly
accepted, started as usual for the Hunters’ one evening, striking
through the woods. The moon illuminated the recesses, in which the
snow still lingered, and Fessenden strode along, idealizing even that
beautiful forest; for would it not, in another hour, shelter two
divinely selected beings? He still trod the upper ether, but even in
that rarefied atmosphere he experienced a slight chill as he saw Jeff
Hunter hastening towards him through the romantic reaches.
Jeff, who under Fessenden’s training had acquired a direct and
uncompromising method of speech, wasted no time in coming to the point.
“I’ve got bad news for you,” he announced. “Grace’s gone, and she won’t
come back, neither.”
Fessenden, who had a confused sense that he was tumbling through space,
merely stared at Jeff, who continued:
“Her ma came this morning and yanked her off--said she’d have no
such nonsense with a girl who was not strong enough to darn her own
stockings, let alone getten’ married. Grace cried, of course--all girls
do whenever they get an excuse--but soon dried up when her ma said
she’d take her out West and show her something of the world. Grace
told me to tell you she guessed it was all right, she hadn’t felt much
like getten’ married, anyway; she’d only said yes because it wouldn’t
have been any use to say no; and the old lady told me to tell you
that it was no sort of use to follow her, for she was coverin’ up her
tracks--she’s a tartar, that one, and I guess you needn’t cry that
you ain’t goin’ to have her for a mother-in-law; and I guess she’s
got enough money to go ’s fur ’s she likes--she told me she’d be five
hundred miles away before night. As for Grace, Fess, she ain’t worth
one of the ribs in _Pocahontas_--that’s the reason I didn’t warn you
this morning.”
“Good-night,” said Fessenden.
The blood had rushed to his head. It remained there and confused him,
until, after a brief sleep, he awoke next morning; then he burst in
upon the astonished Morris and raged like a madman. He smashed a window
and two chairs, vowed that he would walk to the West, that he knew
Grace loved him, and that if she did not he had no use for life anyway.
Morris brought him partly to his senses by the ironic method, to which
Fessenden was peculiarly susceptible, and then suggested that he put a
sandwich in his pocket and spend the day in the woods.
“When you are a rational being once more I shall be glad to see you
again and talk it over. I sincerely hope I may be able to help you
in some way. But we all have to go through this, my boy. It is as
inevitable as the phenomenon of man and woman itself, and must be taken
as philosophically as the ills of the flesh, which under the proper
diffusion of scientific knowledge will be obviated in time. It is to be
hoped that puppy-love will prove an equally amenable microbe. Now take
to the woods and think like a man.”
Fessenden took to the woods, but the time was not yet come when he
could think like a man. Calf-love has furnished the mills of the wits
since the first pen impaled the emotions; but it may be a hideous
experience to youths in whom are the makings of strong and passionate
men. The academic standard arbitrarily established by our literary
powers has given the world an entirely false idea of the American
temperament, which, in its masculine half, at least, is excitable and
sentimental. It is their capacity for intense and powerful emotion,
making them in mob capable of the maddest excesses of enthusiasm, which
is the deep indestructible bond of unity in the American race; that has
saved it from passing off long since in fireworks; that, when it has
found the courage and acquired the brain-power to struggle through its
artificial envelope, will permit it to become as great as it now thinks
it is.
Poor Fessenden had not yet reached the analytical stage. He went out
into the forest and suffered horribly. He wept and raved, and believed
that so far as he was concerned the world had reached its finish. For
the time he was primeval man balked of the first woman; later, when
the acute stage had passed, and imagination had returned, every fine
impulse and need of his nature which had leaped to assertion under the
quickening process of idealized woman seemed to have withered out of
him under the sudden blight. He felt shorn, impoverished, hopeless;
worse than all, helpless. To pursue would be less than folly. Only
a fortune and a detective could have found the indifferent girl,
hidden in the skirts of a determined mother; and he had not a penny.
The little he made beyond what Nettlebeck charged him for his board
went, after the replenishment of his rough wardrobe, to New York for
books. His helplessness degraded his manhood, added to the sum of
his miseries. He stood two days of this mental hell, during which he
ate little and slept less, and then he shouldered his axe and put a
sandwich in his pocket.
“I’m going over to the river to get a job driving logs,” he said to
Nettlebeck. “I’ve had fourteen years of this, and I’d like a change for
a week or two. When the logging is over I’ll come home.”
The river was twelve miles distant. Ten minutes after he had started on
his tramp through the forest he heard a shout behind him. He answered
mechanically, and a moment later was joined by Dolf.
“I thought I’d come along,” panted the younger Nettlebeck. “I ain’t
seen drivin’ for six years or so, and it’s good exercise; you have to
jump so lively.”
Fessenden shrugged his shoulders ungraciously, and declined
conversation, but even here he did not recognize the ever-watchful
spirit of his father. Nevertheless the thought of that sympathetic
parent spontaneously occurred to him. He was the one person to whom he
could have spoken, but he remembered his fiercely reacting pride at
the age of thirteen; moreover, he was bound to respect his father’s
mandate of complete separation. He had puzzled deeply over the motive
which had prompted this decision in a proud and affectionate parent,
but had finally put the question aside, as so far beyond his limited
experience that he had better apply his inquiring mind elsewhere. He
had perfect faith in both the wisdom and the love of his father, in
spite of occasional outbursts of disappointment, and although the kind
firm hand that guided his destinies and smoothed his path without
weakening his spirit was too well covered to attract his attention,
some spiritual emanation from it kept his heart from closing and the
bitterness of neglect from entering his soul.
They reached the river in three hours, hearing from the forest the
roar of the dam, the loud shouts of the men. On their side the woods
grew down to the stream, but on the heights opposite and far beyond
hundreds of virgin trees had been sacrificed that the people of New
York might have their daily news. The gates had just been opened,
the river was foaming and racing over the rocks, its surface already
crowded with long sections of tree-trunks, while others were rolling
down the hill. The boss was short of men, and Fessenden and Dolf were
employed at once, for the logs were already becoming jammed. Fessenden
had watched “driving” many times, and, jumping from log to log to avoid
crushing his feet, while at the same time he pried refractory logs into
position and relieved jams, he was soon so deeply occupied learning
his new trade, to say nothing of preserving his bones, that Grace lay
down among the memories. His passion for proving himself the best man
replaced the other, and applying all his intelligence to the task, he
was very soon the most expert driver on the river. This elated him and
sent consoling rays through the dark recesses of his soul. At night
he was so tired that, after the evening meal--a repetition of the two
preceding ones of pork, beans, bread, and coffee--he was asleep before
he had settled himself in his bunk; and although his spirit may have
wept over the hearse in the back alleys of his memory, for he awoke
depressed and rebellious, he sprang out of bed at once, ate his beans
with a relish, and went to work.
As he tramped home at night two weeks later, he informed himself that
he was cured, and when he reached his own comfortable bed he slept
until late on the following day; moreover, he enjoyed Christina’s
savory dinner with a relish which, as a rule, associates only with
an untroubled mind. Then he went for a stroll through his favorite
haunts of the forest--a guilty sense of disloyalty had led him to
avoid _Pocahontas_ since the day he met Grace--and it all came back.
As it rushed upon him, as he realized that he was still in bondage,
he trembled in panic. The horror of returning into the torments of a
fortnight since was as strong as the overwhelming passion itself. He
ran back to the house, the blood pounding in his head, and searched the
shelf over Fritz Nettlebeck’s desk, where letters for the household and
neighbors awaited the leisurely claimant.
There was nothing for him; and then he realized that, subconsciously,
he had expected Grace to defy her mother and write to him--had believed
the separation to be a matter of a few weeks; that the time would come
when her demand would be as imperative as his own. He leaped up the
stairs to his room and rummaged among the papers on his table; there
were fragments of exercises in five languages, dead and alive, brief
studies of public men, but there was no letter, even from his father.
He returned to the forest, his hands and knees trembling, his brain
whirling, his panic increasing, muttering vague phrases, filled with
terror of the future, confusion, a mad desire for annihilation. Then,
as his ego reached its depths and grovelled there, he straightened
himself suddenly and, flinging his fist against a tree, exclaimed:
“By God, what slavery!” What he had seen of religion as expressed by
itinerant and ignorant preachers had left him cold, but he had entire
faith in some great force pervading the Universe, although he did not
think it worth while to apply a name to it. He bethought himself of
this force, and by a violent effort put himself in relation with it,
demanding imperiously that some of its strength should pass into him
and relieve him from this intolerable state of slavery. His prayer
was answered so quickly that for a moment he stood as dazed as if he
had been transferred abruptly to another planet. Then he shrugged his
shoulders, laughed at his recent self, went down to the lake, and
took _Pocahontas_ out for a long, confidential, and somewhat cynical
conversation.
He half expected that the obsession would return, but it did not, even
when, missing his agonies, he endeavored to evoke their ghosts. Finally
he sat down and wrote a long letter to his father.
“It has taught me two things,” he concluded: “the advisability of
keeping a tight hold on the bulk of your energies until you are sure of
having found the right woman, and the danger of praying for strength
to annihilate unless you are quite sure you are not making a mistake.
In this case it was all right, but she might have been the one woman;
there might have been merely a misunderstanding, and the result would
have been the same. I dragged the strength from out there into myself
and blasted the thing to the roots. I am convinced that I can evoke
that strength whenever I will, but it rather frightens me to think that
I might have made this discovery at the wrong time.”