UNDER A BARK SLANT
The weeks that followed were rare ones for Margaret and Oliver.
They painted all day and every day.
The little school-children posed for them, and so did the prim
school-mistress, a girl of eighteen in spectacles with hair cut short
in the neck. And old Jonathan Gordon, the fisherman, posed, too, with a
string of trout in one hand and a long pole cut from a sapling in the
other. And once our two young comrades painted the mill-dam and the
mill--Oliver doing the first and Margaret the last; and Baker, the
miller, caught them at it, and insisted in all sincerity that some of
the money which the pictures brought must come to him, if the report
were true that painters did get money for pictures. "It's my mill,
ain't it?--and I ain't give no permission to take no part of it away.
Hev I?"
They climbed the ravines, Margaret carrying the luncheon and Oliver the
sketch-traps; they built fires of birch-bark and roasted potatoes, or
made tea in the little earthen pot that Mrs. Taft loaned her. Or they
waited for the stage in the early morning, and went half a dozen miles
down the valley to paint some waterfall Oliver had seen the day he
drove up with Marvin, or a particular glimpse of Moose Hillock from the
covered bridge, or various shady nooks and sunlit vistas that remained
fastened in Oliver's mind, and the memory of which made him unhappy
until Margaret could enjoy them, too.
The fact that he and a woman whom he had known but a little while were
roaming the woods together, quite as a brother and sister might have
done, never occurred to him. If it had it would have made no
difference, nor could he have understood why any barrier should have
been put up between them. He had been taking care of girls in that same
way all his life. Every woman was a sister to him so far as his
reverent protection over her went. The traditions of Kennedy Square had
taught him this.
As the joyous weeks flew by, even the slight reserve which had marked
their earlier intercourse began to wear off. It was "Oliver" and
"Margaret" now, and even "Ollie" and "Madge" when they forgot
themselves and each other in their work.
To Margaret this free and happy life together seemed natural enough.
She had decided on the day of their first meeting that Oliver's
interest in her was due wholly to his love of companionship, and not
because of any special liking he might feel for her. Had she not seen
him quite as cordial and as friendly to the men he knew? Satisfied on
this point, Oliver began to take the place of a brother, or cousin, or
some friend of her youth who loved another woman, perhaps, and was,
therefore, safe against all contingencies, while she gave herself up to
the enjoyment of that rare luxury--the rarest that comes to a
woman--daily association with a man who could be big and strong and
sympathetic, and yet ask nothing in return for what she gave him but
her companionship and confidence.
In the joy of this new intercourse, and with his habit of trusting
implicitly everyone whom he loved--man, woman, or child--Oliver, long
before the first month was over, had emptied his heart to Margaret as
completely as he had ever done to Miss Clendenning. He had told her of
Sue and of Miss Lavinia's boudoir, and of Mr. Crocker and his pictures;
and of his poor father's struggles and his dear mother's determination
to send him from home--not about the mortgage, that was his mother's
secret, not his own--and of the great receptions given by his Uncle
Tilghman, and of all the other wonderful doings in Kennedy Square.
She had listened at first in astonishment, and then with impatience.
Many of the things that seemed so important to him were valueless in
her more practical eyes. Instead of a regime which ennobled those who
enjoyed its privileges, she saw only a slavish devotion to worn-out
traditions, and a clannish provincialism which proved to her all the
more clearly the narrow-mindedness of the people who sustained and
defended them. So far as she could judge, the qualities that she deemed
necessary in the make-up of a robust life, instinct with purpose and
accomplishment, seemed to be entirely lacking in Kennedy Square
formulas. She saw, too, with a certain undefined pain, that Oliver's
mind had been greatly warped by these influences. Mrs. Horn's
domination over him, strange to say, greatly disturbed her; why, she
could not tell. "She must be a proud, aristocratic woman," she had said
to herself after one of Oliver's outbursts of enthusiasm over his
mother; "wedded to patrician customs and with no consideration for
anyone outside of her class."
And yet none of these doubts and criticisms made the summer days less
enjoyable.
One bright, beautiful morning when the sky was a turquoise, the air a
breath of heaven, and the brooks could be heard laughing clear out on
the main road, Oliver and Margaret, who had been separated for some
days while she paid a visit to her family at home, started to find a
camp that Hank had built the winter before as a refuge while he was
hunting deer. They had reached a point in the forest where two paths
met, when Margaret's quick ear caught the sound of a human voice, and
she stopped to listen.
"Quick--" she cried--"get behind these spruces, or he will see us and
stop singing. It's old Mr. Burton. He is such a dear! He spends his
summers here. I often meet him and he always bows to me so politely,
although he doesn't know me."
A man of sixty--bare-headed, dressed in a gray suit, with his collar
and coat over his arm and hands filled with wild-flowers, was passing
leisurely along, singing at the top of his voice. Once he stopped, and,
bending over, picked a bunch of mountain-berries which he tucked into a
buttonhole of his flannel shirt, just before disappearing in a turn of
the path.
Oliver looked after him for a moment. He had caught the look of sweet
serenity on the idler's face, and the air of joyousness that seemed to
linger behind him like a perfume, and it filled him with delight.
"There, Margaret! that's what I call a happy man. I'll wager you he has
never done anything all his life but that which he loved to do--just
lives out here and throws his heart wide open for every beautiful thing
that can crowd into it. That's the kind of a man I want to be. Oh! I'm
so glad I saw him."
Margaret was silent. She was walking ahead, her staff in her hand; the
fallen trunks and heavy under-brush making it difficult for them to
walk abreast.
"Do you think that he never had to work, to be able to enjoy himself as
he does?" she asked over her shoulder, with a toss of her head.
"Perhaps--but he loved what he was doing."
"No, he didn't--he hated it--hated it all his life." The tone carried a
touch of defiance that was new to Oliver. He stepped quickly after her,
with a sudden desire to look into her face. Ten minutes, at least, had
passed during which he had seen only the back of her head.
Margaret heard his step behind her and quickened her own. Something was
disturbing the joyousness of our young Diana this lovely summer morning.
"What did the old fellow do for a living, Margaret?" Oliver called,
still trying to keep up with Margaret's springing step.
"Sold lard and provisions, and over the counter, too," she answered,
with a note almost of exultation in her voice (she was thinking of Mrs.
Horn and Kennedy Square). "Mrs. Taft knows him and used to send him her
bacon. He retired rich some years ago, and now he can sing all day if
he wants to."
It was Oliver's turn to be silent. The tones of Margaret's voice had
hurt him. For some minutes he made no reply. Then wheeling suddenly he
sprang over a moss-covered trunk that blocked her path, stepped in
front of her, and laid his hand on her shoulder.
"Not offended, Margaret, are you?" he asked, looking earnestly into her
eyes.
"No--what nonsense! Of course not. Why do you ask?"
"Well, somehow you spoke as if you were."
"No, I didn't; I only said how dear Mr. Burton was, and he IS. How
silly you are! Come--we will be late for the camp."
They both walked on in silence, now, he ahead this time, brushing aside
the thick undergrowth that blocked the path.
The exultant tones in her voice which had hurt her companion, and which
had escaped her unconsciously, still rang in her own ears. She felt
ashamed of the outburst now as she watched him cutting the branches
ahead of her, and thought how gentle and tender he had always been to
her and how watchful over her comfort. She wondered at the cause of her
frequent discontent. Then, like an evil spirit that would not down,
there arose in her mind, as she walked on, the picture she had formed
of Kennedy Square. She thought of his mother's imperious nature
absorbing all the love of his heart and inspiring and guiding his every
action and emotion; of the unpractical father--a dreamer and an
enthusiast, the worst possible example he could have; of the false
standards and class distinctions which had warped his early life and
which were still dominating him. With an abrupt gesture of impatience
she stood still in the path and looked down upon the ground. An angry
flush suffused her face.
"What a stupid fool you are, Margaret Grant," she burst out
impatiently. "What are Kennedy Square and the whole Horn family to you?"
Oliver's halloo brought her to consciousness.
"Here's that slant, Margaret--oh, such a lovely spot! Hurry up."
"The slant" had been built between two great trees and stood on a
little mound of earth surrounded by beds of velvety green moss--huge
green winding sheets, under which lay the bodies of many giant pines
and hemlocks. The shelter was made of bark and bedded down with boughs
of sweet-balsam. Outside, on a birch sapling, supported by two forked
sticks, hung a rusty kettle. Beneath the rude spit, half-hidden by the
growth of the summer, lay the embers of the abandoned camp-fires that
had warmed and comforted Hank and his companions the preceding winter.
Oliver raked the charred embers from under the tangled vines that hid
them, while Margaret peeled the bark from a silver-birch for kindling.
Soon a curl of blue smoke mounted heavenward, hung suspended over the
tree-tops, and then drifted away in scarfs of silver haze dimming the
forms of the giant trunks.
Our young enthusiast watched the Diaz of a wood interior turn slowly
into a Corot, and with a cry of delight was about to unstrap his own
and Margaret's sketching-kits, when the sun was suddenly blotted out by
a heavy cloud, and the quick gloom of a mountain-storm chilling the
sunlit vista to a dull slate gray settled over the forest. Oliver
walked over to the brook for a better view of the sky, and came back
bounding over the moss-covered logs as he ran. There was not a moment
to lose if they would escape being drenched to the skin.
The outlook was really serious. Old Bald Face had not only lost his
smile--a marvelously happy one with the early sun upon his wrinkled
countenance--but he had put on his judgment-cap of gray clouds and had
begun to thunder out his disapproval of everything about him. Moose
Hillock evidently heard the challenge, for he was answering back in the
murky darkness. Soon a cold, raw wind, which had been asleep in the
hills for weeks, awoke with a snarl and started down the gorge. Then
the little leaves began to quiver, the big trees to groan, in their
anxiety not knowing what the will of the wind would be, and the merry
little waves that had chased each other all the morning over the sunny
shallows of the brook, grew ashy pale as they looked up into the angry
face of the Storm-God, and fled shivering to the shore.
Oliver whipped out his knife, stripped the heavy outer bark from a
white birch, and before the dashing rain could catch up with the wind,
had repaired the slant so as to make it water-tight--Hank had taught
him this--then he started another great fire in front of the slant and
threw fresh balsam boughs on the bed that had rested Hank's tired
limbs, and he and Margaret crept in and were secure.
The equanimity of Margaret's temper, temporarily disturbed by her vivid
misconception of Kennedy Square, was restored. The dry shelter, the
warm fire, the sense of escape from the elements, all filled her heart
with gladness. Never since the day she met him on the bridge had she
been so happy. Again, as when Oliver championed her in the old Academy
school-room, there stole over her a vague sense of pleasure in being
protected.
"Isn't it jolly!" she said as she sat hunched up beside him. "I'm as
dry as a bone, not a drop on me."
Oliver was even more buoyant. There was something irresistibly cosey
and comfortable in the shelter which he had provided for her--something
of warmth and companionship and rest. But more intensely enjoyable than
all was the thought that he was taking care of a woman for the first
time in his life, as it seemed to him. And in a house of his own
making, and in a place, too, of his own choosing, surrounded by the big
trees that he loved. He had even outwitted the elements--the wind and
the rain and the chill--in her defence. Old Moose Hillock could bellow
now and White Face roar, and the wind and rain vent their wrath, but
Margaret, close beside him, would still be warm and dry and safe.
By this time she had hung her tam-o'-shanter and jacket on a nail that
she had found in the bark over her head, and was arranging her hair.
"It's just like life, Oliver, isn't it?" she said, as she tightened the
coil in her neck. "All we want, after all, is a place to get into out
of the storm and wet, not a big place, either."
"What kind of a place?" He was on his knees digging a little trench
with his knife, piling up the moist earth in miniature embankments, so
that the dripping from the roof would not spatter this Princess of his
whom he had saved from the tempest outside.
"Oh, any kind of a place if you have people you're fond of. I'd love a
real studio somewhere, and a few things hung about--some old Delft and
one or two bits of stuff--and somebody to take care of me."
Oliver shifted his pipe in his mouth and looked up. Would she, with all
her independence, really like to have someone take care of her? He had
seen no evidence of it.
"Who?" he asked. He had never heard her mention anybody's name--but
then she had not told him everything;
He had dropped his eyes again, finishing the drain and flattening the
boughs under her, to make the seat the easier.
"Oh, some old woman, perhaps, like dear old Mrs. Mulligan." There was
no coquetry in her tone. She was speaking truthfully out of her heart.
"Anything more?" Oliver's voice had lost its buoyancy now. The pipe was
upside down, the ashes falling on his shirt.
"Yes--lots of portraits to paint."
"And a medal at the Salon?" asked Oliver, brushing off the waste of his
pipe from his coat-sleeve.
"Yes, I don't mind, if my pictures deserve it," and she looked at him
quizzically, while a sudden flash of humor lightened up her face. "What
would you want, Mr. Happy-go-lucky, if you had your wish?"
"I, Madge, dear?" he exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of tenderness,
raising his body erect and looking earnestly into her eyes, which were
now within a hand's breadth of his own. She winced a little, but it did
not offend her, nor did she move an inch. "Oh, I don't know what I
want. What I want, I suppose, is what I shall never have, little girl."
She wasn't his little girl, or anybody else's, she thought to
herself--she was firmly convinced of that fact. It was only one of his
terms of endearment. He had them for everybody--even for Hank and for
Mrs. Taft--whom he called "Taffy," and who loved to hear him say it,
and she old enough to be his grandmother! She stole a look into his
face. There was a cloud over it, a slight knitting of the brows, and a
pained expression about the mouth that were new to her.
"I'd like to be a painter," he continued, "but mother would never
consent." As he spoke, he sank back from her slowly, his knees still
bent under him. Then he added, with a sigh, "She wouldn't think it
respectable. Anything but a painter, she says."
Margaret looked out through the forest and watched a woodpecker at work
on the dry side of a hollow trunk, the side protected from the driving
rain.
"And you would give up your career because she wants it? How do you
know she's right about it? And who's to suffer if she's wrong? Be a
painter, Oliver, if you want to! Your mother can't coddle you up
forever! No mother should. Do what you can do best, and to please
yourself, not somebody else," and then she laughed lightly as if to
break the force of her words.
Oliver looked at her in indignation that anyone--even Margaret--should
speak so of his mother. It was the first time in all his life that he
had heard her name mentioned without the profound reverence it
deserved. Then a sense of the injustice of her words took possession of
him, as the solemn compact he had made with his mother not to be a
burden on her while the mortgage was unpaid, rose in his mind. This
thought and Margaret's laugh softened any hurt her words had given him,
although the lesson that they were intended to teach lingered in his
memory for many days thereafter.
"You would not talk that way, Madge, if you knew my dear mother," he
said, quietly. "There is nothing in her life she loves better than me.
She doesn't want me to be a painter because--" He stopped, fearing she
might not understand his answer.
"Go on--why not?" The laugh had faded out of her voice now, and a tone
almost of defiance had taken its place.
"She says it is not the profession of a gentleman," he answered, sadly.
"I do not agree with her, but she thinks so, and nothing can shake her."
"If those are her opinions, I wonder what she would think of ME?" There
was a slight irritation in her voice--somehow she always became
irritable when Oliver spoke of his mother. She was ashamed of it, but
it was true.
All his anger was gone now. Whatever opinion the world might have on
any number of things there could be but one opinion of Madge. "She
would LOVE you, little girl," he burst out as he laid his hand on her
arm--the first time he had ever touched her with any show of affection.
"You'd make her love you. She never saw anybody like you before, and
she never will. That you are an artist wouldn't make any difference.
It's not the same with you. You're a woman."
The girl's eyes again sought the woodpecker. It was stabbing away with
all its might, driving its beak far into the yielding bark. It seemed
in some way to represent her own mood. After a moment's thought she
said thoughtfully as she rested her head on the edge of the slant:
"Ollie, what is a gentleman?" She knew, she thought, but she wanted him
to define it.
"My father is one," he said, positively, "--and so is yours," and he
looked inquiringly into her face.
"That depends on your standard. I don't know your father, but I do
mine, and from what you have told me about yours I think they are about
as different as two men can be. Answer my question--what is a
gentleman?" She was leaning over a little, and tucking a chip under her
toes to keep the water away from her shoes. Her eyes sought his again.
"A gentleman, Madge--why, you know what a gentleman is. He is a man
well born, well educated, and well bred. That's the standard at
home--at least, that's my mother's. Father's standard is the same, only
he puts it in a different way. He says a gentleman is a man who
tolerates other people's mistakes and who sympathizes with other
people's troubles."
"Anything else?" She was searching his face now. There were some things
she wanted to settle in her own mind.
"I don't think of anything else, Madge, dear--do you?" He was really
dismissing the question. His thoughts were on something else--the way
her hair curled from under her worsted cap and the way her pink ears
nestled close to her head, especially the little indents at each corner
of her mouth. He liked their modelling.
"And so according to your mother's and father's ideas, and those of all
your aristocratic people at home, Hank here could not be a gentleman if
he tried?"
The idea was new to Oliver. He had become conscious now. What had
gotten into Margaret to-day!
"Hank?--no, certainly not. How could he?"
"By BEING a gentleman, Mr. Aristocrat. Not in clothes, mind you--nor
money, nor furniture, nor wines, nor carriages, but in HEART. Think a
moment, Ollie," and her eyes snapped. "Hank finds a robin that has
tumbled out of its nest, and spends half a day putting it back. Hank
follows you up the brook and sees you try to throw a fly into a pool,
and he knows just how awkwardly you do it, for he's the best fisherman
in the woods--and yet you never see a smile cross his face, nor does he
ever speak of it behind your back--not even to me. Hank walks across
Moose Hillock to find old Jonathan Gordon to tell him he has some big
trout in Loon Pond, so that the old man can have the fun of catching
them and selling them afterward to the new hotel in the Notch. He has
walked twenty-four miles when he gets back. Do these things make Hank a
gentleman, or not?"
"Then you don't believe in Sir Walter Raleigh, Miss Democrat, simply
because he was a lord?"
"Yes--but I always thought he wore his old cloak that day on purpose,
so he could be made an earl." And a ripple of laughter escaped her lips.
Oliver laughed too, sprang to his feet, and held out his hands so as to
lift her up. None of these fine-drawn distinctions really interested
him--certainly not on this day, when he was so happy. Why, he wondered,
should she want to discuss theories and beliefs and creeds, with the
beautiful forest all about and the sky breaking overhead?
"Well, you've walked over mine many a time, Miss Queen Elizabeth, and
you haven't decorated me yet, nor made me an earl nor anything else for
it, and I'm not going to forgive you either," and he rose to his feet.
"Look! Madge, look!" he cried, and sprang out into the path, pointing
to the sunshine bursting through the trees--the storm had passed as
suddenly as it had come. "Isn't it glorious! Come here quick! Don't
wait a minute. I should try to get that with Naples yellow and a little
chrome--what do you think?" he asked when she stood beside him, half
closing his eyes, to get the effect the better.
Margaret looked at him curiously for a moment. She did not answer. "I
cannot fasten his mind on anything in which I am interested," she said
to herself, with a sigh, "nor shall I ever overcome these prejudices
which seem to be part of his very life."
She paused a moment and an expression of pain passed over her face.
"Pale cadmium would be better," she said, quietly, with a touch of
indifference in her tone, and led the way out of the forest to the main
road.