ESTHER'S VISIT
The next day, Saturday, was my birthday. I celebrated it by a heavy
cold, with a bursting headache and chills chasing each other down my
back. I went out to the cow-barn with the two men before daylight, as
usual, but felt so bad that I had to come back to the house before
milking was half over. The moment M'rye saw me, I was ordered on to the
sick-list.
The Beech homestead was a good place to be sick in. Both M'rye and
Janey had a talent in the way of fixing up tasty little dishes for
invalids, and otherwise ministering to their comfort, which year after
year went a-begging, simply because all the men-folk kept so well.
Therefore, when the rare opportunity did arrive, they made the most of
it. I had my feet and legs put into a bucket of hot water, and wrapped
round with burdock leaves. Janey prepared for my breakfast some soft
toast—not the insipid and common milk-toast—but each golden-brown slice
treated separately on a plate, first moistened with scalding water,
then peppered, salted, and buttered, with a little cold milk on top of
all. I ate this sumptuous breakfast at my leisure, ensconced in M'rye's
big cushioned rocking-chair, with my feet and legs, well tucked up in
a blanket-shawl, stretched out on another chair, comfortably near the
stove.
It was taken for granted that I had caught my cold out around the
bonfire the previous evening—and this conviction threw a sort of
patriotic glamour about my illness, at least in my own mind.
The bonfire had been a famous success. Though there was a trifle of
rain in the air, the barrels and mossy discarded old fence-rails burned
like pitch-pine, and when Hurley and I threw on armfuls of brush, the
sparks burst up with a roar into a flaming column which we felt must be
visible all over our side of Dearborn County. At all events, there was
no doubt about its being seen and understood down at the Corners, for
presently our enemies there started an answering bonfire, which glowed
from time to time with such a peculiarly concentrated radiance that
Abner said Lee Watkins must have given them some of his kerosene-oil
barrels. The thought of such a sacrifice as this on the part of the
postmaster rather disturbed Abner's mind, raising, as it did, the
hideous suggestion that possibly later returns might have altered the
election results. But when Hurley and I dragged forward and tipped over
into the blaze the whole side of an old abandoned corn-crib, and heaped
dry brush on top of that, till the very sky seemed afire above us, and
the stubble-fields down the hill-side were all ruddy in the light,
Abner confessed himself reassured. Our enthusiasm was so great that it
was nearly ten o'clock before we went to bed, having first put the fire
pretty well out, lest a rising wind during the night should scatter
sparks and work mischief.
I had all these splendid things to think of next day, along with
my headache and the shivering spine, and they tipped the balance
toward satisfaction. Shortly after breakfast M'rye made a flaxseed
poultice and muffled it flabbily about my neck, and brought me also
some boneset-tea to drink. There was a debate in the air as between
castor-oil and senna, fragments of which were borne in to me when
the kitchen door was open. The Underwood girl alarmed me by steadily
insisting that her sister-in-law always broke up sick-headaches with
a mustard-plaster put raw on the back of the neck. Every once in a
while one of them would come in and address to me the stereotyped
formula: “Feel any better?” and I as invariably answered, “No.” In
reality, though, I was lazily comfortable all the time, with Lossing's
“Field-Book of the War of 1812” lying open on my lap, to look at when I
felt inclined. This book was not nearly so interesting as the one about
the Revolution, but a grandfather of mine had marched as a soldier up
to Sackett's Harbor in the later war, though he did not seem to have
had any fighting to do after he got there, and in my serious moods I
always felt it my duty to read about his war instead of the other.
So the day passed along, and dusk began to gather in the living-room.
The men were off outdoors somewhere, and the girls were churning in
the butter-room. M'rye had come in with her mending, and sat on the
opposite side of the stove, at intervals casting glances over its flat
top to satisfy herself that my poultice had not sagged down from its
proper place, and that I was in other respects doing as well as could
be expected.
Conversation between us was hardly to be thought of, even if I had not
been so drowsily indolent. M'rye was not a talker, and preferred always
to sit in silence, listening to others, or, better still, going on at
her work with no sounds at all to disturb her thoughts. These long
periods of meditation, and the sedate gaze of her black, penetrating
eyes, gave me the feeling that she must be much wiser than other women,
who could not keep still at all, but gabbled everything the moment it
came into their heads.
We had sat thus for a long, long time, until I began to wonder how she
could sew in the waning light, when all at once, without lifting her
eyes from her work, she spoke to me.
“D' you know where Ni Hagadorn's gone to?” she asked me, in a measured,
impressive voice.
“He—he—told me he was a-goin' away,” I made answer, with weak
evasiveness.
“But where? Down South?” She looked up, as I hesitated, and flashed
that darkling glance of hers at me. “Out with it!” she commanded. “Tell
me the truth!”
Thus adjured, I promptly admitted that Ni had said he was going South,
and could work his way somehow. “He's gone, you know,” I added, after a
pause, “to try and find—that is, to hunt around after—”
“Yes, I know,” said M'rye, sententiously, and another long silence
ensued.
She rose after a time, and went out into the kitchen, returning with
the lighted lamp. She set this on the table, putting the shade down
on one side so that the light should not hurt my eyes, and resumed
her mending. The yellow glow thus falling upon her gave to her dark,
severe, high-featured face a duskier effect than ever. It occurred to
me that Molly Brant, that mysteriously fascinating and bloody Mohawk
queen who left such an awful reddened mark upon the history of her
native Valley, must have been like our M'rye. My mind began sleepily
to clothe the farmer's wife in blankets and chains of wampum, with
eagles' feathers in her raven hair, and then to drift vaguely off over
the threshold of Indian dreamland, when suddenly, with a start, I
became conscious that some unexpected person had entered the room by
the veranda-door behind me.
The rush of cold air from without had awakened me and told me of the
entrance. A glance at M'rye's face revealed the rest. She was staring
at the newcomer with a dumfounded expression of countenance, her mouth
half-open with sheer surprise. Still staring, she rose and tilted the
lamp-shade in yet another direction, so that the light was thrown upon
the stranger. At this I turned in my chair to look.
It was Esther Hagadorn who had come in!
There was a moment's awkward silence, and then the school-teacher
began hurriedly to speak. “I saw you were alone from the veranda—I was
so nervous, it never occurred to me to rap—the curtains being up—I—I
walked straight in.”
As if in comment upon this statement, M'rye marched across the room,
and pulled down both curtains over the veranda windows. With her hand
still upon the cord of the second shade, she turned and again dumbly
surveyed her visitor.
Esther flushed visibly at this reception, and had to choke down the
first words that came to her lips. Then she went on better: “I hope
you'll excuse my rudeness. I really did forget to rap. I came upon very
special business. Is Ab—Mr. Beech at home?”
“Won't you sit down?” said M'rye, with a glum effort at civility. “I
expect him in presently.”
The school-ma'am, displaying some diffidence, seated herself in the
nearest chair, and gazed at the wall-paper with intentness. She had
never seemed to notice me at all—indeed had spoken of seeing M'rye
alone through the window—and I now coughed, and stirred to readjust my
poultice, but she did not look my way. M'rye had gone back to her chair
by the stove, and taken up her mending again.
“You'd better lay off your things. You won't feel 'em when you go out,”
she remarked, after an embarrassing period of silence, investing the
formal phrases with chilling intention.
Esther made a fumbling motion at the loop of her big mink cape, but
did not unfasten it.
“I—I don't know _what_ you think of me,” she began, at last, and then
nervously halted.
“Mebbe it's just as well you don't,” said M'rye, significantly, darning
away with long sweeps of her arm, and bending attentively over her
stocking and ball.
“I can understand your feeling hard,” Esther went on, still eying the
sprawling blue figures on the wall, and plucking with her fingers at
the furry tails on her cape. “And—I _am_ to blame, _some_, I can see
now—but it didn't seem so, _then_, to either of us.”
“It ain't no affair of mine,” remarked M'rye, when the pause came, “but
if that's your business with Abner, you won't make much by waitin'. Of
course it's nothing to me, one way or t'other.”
Not another word was exchanged for a long time. From where I sat I
could see the girl's lips tremble, as she looked steadfastly into the
wall. I felt certain that M'rye was darning the same place over and
over again, so furiously did she keep her needle flying.
All at once she looked up angrily. “Well,” she said, in loud, bitter
tones: “Why not out with what you've come to say, 'n' be done with it?
You've heard something, _I_ know!”
Esther shook her head. “No, Mrs. Beech,” she said, with a piteous
quaver in her voice, “I—I haven't heard anything!”
The sound of her own broken utterances seemed to affect her deeply. Her
eyes filled with tears, and she hastily got out a handkerchief from her
muff, and began drying them. She could not keep from sobbing aloud a
little.
M'rye deliberately took another stocking from the heap in the basket,
fitted it over the ball, and began a fresh task—all without a glance at
the weeping girl.
Thus the two women still sat, when Janey came in to lay the table for
supper. She lifted the lamp off to spread the cloth, and put it on
again; she brought in plates and knives and spoons, and arranged them
in their accustomed places—all the while furtively regarding Miss
Hagadorn with an incredulous surprise. When she had quite finished she
went over to her mistress and, bending low, whispered so that we could
all hear quite distinctly: “Is _she_ goin' to stay to supper?”
M'rye hesitated, but Esther lifted her head and put down the
handkerchief instantly. “Oh, no!” she said, eagerly: “don't think of
it! I must hurry home as soon as I've seen Mr. Beech.” Janey went out
with an obvious air of relief.
Presently there was a sound of heavy boots out in the kitchen being
thrown on to the floor, and then Abner came in. He halted in the
doorway, his massive form seeming to completely fill it, and devoted a
moment or so to taking in the novel spectacle of a neighbor under his
roof. Then he advanced, walking obliquely till he could see distinctly
the face of the visitor. It stands to reason that he must have been
surprised, but he gave no sign of it.
“How d' do, Miss,” he said, with grave politeness, coming up and
offering her his big hand.
Esther rose abruptly, peony-red with pleasurable confusion, and took
the hand stretched out to her. “How d' do, Mr. Beech,” she responded
with eagerness, “I—I came up to see you—a—about something that's very
pressing.”
“It's blowing up quite a gale outside,” the farmer remarked, evidently
to gain time the while he scanned her face in a solemn, thoughtful
way, noting, I doubt not, the swollen eyelids and stains of tears, and
trying to guess her errand. “Shouldn't wonder if we had a foot o' snow
before morning.”
The school-teacher seemed in doubt how best to begin what she had to
say, so that Abner had time, after he lifted his inquiring gaze from
her, to run a master's eye over the table.
“Have Janey lay another place!” he said, with authoritative brevity.
As M'rye rose to obey, Esther broke forth: “Oh, no, please don't! Thank
you so much, Mr. Beech—but really I can't stop—truly, I mustn't think
of it.”
The farmer merely nodded a confirmation of his order to M'rye, who
hastened out to the kitchen.
“It'll be there for ye, anyway,” he said. “Now set down again, please.”
It was all as if he was the one who had the news to tell, so naturally
did he take command of the situation. The girl seated herself, and the
farmer drew up his armchair and planted himself before her, keeping
his stockinged feet under the rungs for politeness' sake.
“Now, Miss,” he began, just making it civilly plain that he preferred
not to utter her hated paternal name, “I don't know no more'n a babe
unborn what's brought you here. I'm sure, from what I know of ye, that
you wouldn't come to this house jest for the sake of comin', or to argy
things that can't be, an' mustn't be, argied. In one sense, we ain't
friends of yours here, and there's a heap o' things that you an' me
don't want to talk about, because they'd only lead to bad feelin', an'
so we'll leave 'em all severely alone. But in another way, I've always
had a liking for you. You're a smart girl, an' a scholar into the
bargain, an' there ain't so many o' that sort knockin' around in these
parts that a man like myself, who's fond o' books an' learnin', wants
to be unfriendly to them there is. So now you can figure out pretty
well where the chalk line lays, and we'll walk on it.”
Esther nodded her head. “Yes, I understand,” she remarked, and seemed
not to dislike what Abner had said.
“That being so, what is it?” the farmer asked, with his hands on his
knees.
“Well, Mr. Beech,” the school-teacher began, noting with a swift
side-glance that M'rye had returned, and was herself rearranging the
table. “I don't think you can have heard it, but some important news
has come in during the day. There seems to be different stories, but
the gist of them is that a number of the leading Union generals have
been discovered to be traitors, and McClellan has been dismissed from
his place at the head of the army, and ordered to return to his home
in New Jersey under arrest, and they say others are to be treated in
the same way, and Fath—_some_ people think it will be a hanging matter,
and—”
Abner waved all this aside with a motion of his hand. “It don't amount
to a hill o' beans,” he said, placidly. “It's jest spite, because we
licked 'em at the elections. Don't you worry your head about _that_!”
Esther was not reassured. “That isn't all,” she went on, nervously.
“They say there's been discovered a big conspiracy, with secret
sympathizers all over the North.”
“Pooh!” commented Abner. “We've heer'n tell o' that before!”
“All over the North,” she continued, “with the intention of bringing
across infected clothes from Canada, and spreading the small-pox among
us, and—”
The farmer laughed outright; a laugh embittered by contempt. “What
cock-'n'-bull story'll be hatched next!” he said. “You don't mean to
say you—a girl with a head on her shoulders like _you_—give ear to such
tomfoolery as that! Come, now, honest Injin, do you mean to tell me
_you_ believe all this?”
“It don't so much matter, Mr. Beech,” the girl replied, raising her
face to his, and speaking more confidently—“it don't matter at all what
I believe. I'm talking of what they believe down at the Corners.”
“The Corners be jiggered!” exclaimed Abner, politely, but with emphasis.
Esther rose from the chair. “Mr. Beech,” she declared, impressively;
“they're coming up here to-night! That bonfire of yours made 'em mad.
It's no matter how I learned it—it wasn't from father—I don't know that
he knows anything about it, but they're coming _here_! and—and Heaven
only knows what they're going to do when they get here!”
The farmer rose also, his huge figure towering above that of the girl,
as he looked down at her over his beard. He no longer dissembled his
stockinged-feet. After a moment's pause he said: “So that's what you
came to tell me, eh?”
The school-ma'am nodded her head. “I couldn't bear not to,” she
explained, simply.
“Well, I'm obleeged to ye!” Abner remarked, with gravity. “Whatever
comes of it, I'm obleeged to ye!”
He turned at this, and walked slowly out into the kitchen, leaving the
door open behind him. “Pull on your boots again!” we heard him say,
presumably to Hurley. In a minute or two he returned, with his own
boots on, and bearing over his arm the old double-barrelled shot-gun
which always hung above the kitchen mantel-piece. In his hands he
had two shot-flasks, the little tobacco-bag full of buckshot, and a
powder-horn. He laid these on the open shelf of the bookcase, and,
after fitting fresh caps on the nipples put the gun beside them.
“I'd be all the more sot on your stayin' to supper,” he remarked,
looking again at Esther, “only if there _should_ be any
unpleasantness, why, I'd hate like sin to have you mixed up in it. You
see how I'm placed.”
Esther did not hesitate a moment. She walked over to where M'rye stood
by the table replenishing the butter-plate. “I'd be very glad indeed to
stay, Mr. Beech,” she said, with winning frankness, “if I may.”
“There's the place laid for you,” commented M'rye, impassively. Then,
catching her husband's eye, she added the perfunctory assurance “You're
entirely welcome.”
Hurley and the girls came in now, and all except me took their seats
about the table. Both Abner and the Irishman had their coats on, out
of compliment to company. M'rye brought over a thick slice of fresh
buttered bread with brown sugar on it, and a cup of weak tea, and put
them beside me on a chair. Then the evening meal went forward, the
farmer talking in a fragmentary way about the crops and the weather.
Save for an occasional response from our visitor, the rest maintained
silence. The Underwood girl could not keep her fearful eyes from the
gun lying on the bookcase, and protested that she had no appetite, but
Hurley ate vigorously, and had a smile on his wrinkled and swarthy
little face.
The wind outside whistled shrilly at the windows, rattling the
shutters, and trying its force in explosive blasts which seemed to
rock the house on its stone foundations. Once or twice it shook
the veranda-door with such violence that the folk at the table
instinctively lifted their heads, thinking someone was there.
Then, all at once, above the confusion of the storm's noises, we heard
a voice rise, high and clear, crying:
“_Smoke the damned Copperhead out!_”