Queechy by Susan Warner

S >> Susan Warner >> Queechy

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61

"I believe uncle Rolf wants to have an American to go with this man,"
said Fleda.

Seth said nothing, but Fleda understood the shake of his head as he
reached over after a pickle.

"Are you going to keep a dairy, Fleda?" said her aunt.

"I don't know, ma'am;--I haven't heard anything about it."

"Does Mrs. Rossitur know anything about country affairs?"

"No--nothing," Fleda said, her heart sinking perceptibly with every
new question.

"She hasn't any cows yet?"

_She_!--any cows!--But Fleda only said they had not come; she believed
they were coming.

"What help has she got?"

"Two women--Irishwomen," said Fleda.

"Mother you'll have to take hold and learn her," said Mr. Plumfield.

"Teach _her_?" cried Fleda, repelling the idea;--"aunt Lucy? she cannot do
anything--she isn't strong enough;--not anything of that kind."

"What did she come here for?" said Seth.

"You know," said his mother, "that Mr. Rossitur's circumstances obliged
him to quit New York."

"Ay, but that ain't my question. A man had better keep his fingers off
anything he can't live by. A farm's one thing or t'other, just as it's
worked. The land won't grow specie--it must be fetched out of it. Is Mr.
Rossitur a smart man?"

"Very," Fleda said, "about everything but farming."

"Well if he'll put himself to school maybe, he'll learn," Seth concluded
as he finished his breakfast and went off. Fleda rose too, and was
standing thoughtfully by the fire, when aunt Miriam came up and put her
arms round her. Fleda's eyes sparkled again.

"You're not changed--you're the same little Fleda," she said.

"Not quite so little," said Fleda smiling.

"Not quite so little, but my own darling. The world hasn't spoiled
thee yet."

"I hope not, aunt Miriam."

"You have remembered your mother's prayer, Fleda?"

"Always!"--

How tenderly aunt Miriam's hand was passed over the bowed head,--how
fondly she pressed her. And Fleda's answer was as fond.

"I wanted to bring Hugh up to see you, aunt Miriam, with me, but he
couldn't come. You will like Hugh. He is so good!"

"I will come down and see him," said aunt Miriam; and then she went to
look after her oven's doings. Fleda stood by, amused to see the quantities
of nice things that were rummaged out of it. They did not look like Mrs.
Renney's work, but she knew from old experience that they were good.

"How early you must have been up, to put these things in," said Fleda.

"Put them in! yes, and make them. These were all made this morning,
Fleda."

"This morning!--before breakfast! Why the sun was only just rising when I
set out to come up the hill; and I wasn't long coming, aunt Miriam."

"To be sure; that's the way to get things done. Before breakfast!--What
time do you breakfast, Fleda?"

"Not till eight or nine o'clock."

"Eight or nine!--_Here?_"

"There hasn't been any change made yet, and I don't suppose there will be.
Uncle Rolf is always up early, but he can't bear to have breakfast early."

Aunt Miriam's face showed what she thought; and Fleda went away with all
its gravity and doubt settled like lead upon her heart. Though she had one
of the identical apple pies in her hands, which aunt Miriam had quietly
said was "for her and Hugh," and though a pleasant savour of old times was
about it, Fleda could not get up again the bright feeling with which she
had come up the hill. There was a miserable misgiving at heart. It would
work off in time.

It had begun to work off, when at the foot of the hill she met her uncle.
He was coming after her to ask Mr. Plumfield about the desideratum of a
Yankee. Fleda put her pie in safety behind a rock, and turned back with
him, and aunt Miriam told them the way to Seth's ploughing ground.

A pleasant word or two had get Fleda's spirits a bounding again, and the
walk was delightful. Truly the leaves were not on the trees, but it was
April, and they soon would be; there was promise in the light, and hope in
the air, and everything smelt of the country and spring-time. The soft
tread of the sod, that her foot had not felt for so long,--the fresh look
of the newly-turned earth,--here and there the brilliance of a field of
winter grain,--and that nameless beauty of the budding trees, that the
full luxuriance of summer can never equal,--Fleda's heart was springing
for sympathy. And to her, with whom association was everywhere so strong,
there was in it all a shadowy presence of her grandfather, with whom she
had so often seen the spring-time bless those same hills and fields long
ago. She walked on in silence, as her manner commonly was when deeply
pleased; there were hardly two persons to whom she would speak her mind
freely then. Mr. Kossitur had his own thoughts.

"Can anything equal the spring-time!" she burst forth at length.

Her uncle looked at her and smiled. "Perhaps not; but it is one thing,"
said he sighing, "for taste to enjoy and another thing for calculation
to improve."

"But one can do both, can't one?" said Fleda brightly.

"I don't know," said he sighing again. "Hardly."

Fleda knew he was mistaken and thought the sighs out of place. But they
reached her; and she had hardly condemned them before they set her off
upon a long train of excuses for him, and she had wrought herself into
quite a fit of tenderness by the time they reached her cousin.

They found him on a gentle side-hill, with two other men and teams, both
of whom were stepping away in different parts of the field. Mr. Plumfield
was just about setting off to work his way to the other side of the lot
when they came up with him.

Fleda was not ashamed of her aunt Miriam's son, even before such critical
eyes as those of her uncle. Farmer-like as were his dress and air, they
shewed him nevertheless a well-built, fine-looking man, with the
independent bearing of one who has never recognised any but mental or
moral superiority. His face might have been called handsome; there was at
least manliness in every line of it; and his excellent dark eye shewed an
equal mingling of kindness and acute common sense. Let Mr. Plumfield wear
what clothes he would one felt obliged to follow Burns' notable example
and pay respect to the _man_ that was in them.

"A fine day, sir," he remarked to Mr. Rossitur after they had
shaken hands.

"Yes, and I will not interrupt you but a minute. Mr. Plumfield, I am in
want of hands,--hands for this very business you are about,
ploughing,--and Fleda says you know everybody; so I have come to ask if
you can direct me."

"Heads or hands, do you want?" said Seth, clearing his boot-sole from some
superfluous soil upon the share of his plough.

"Why both, to tell you the truth. I want hands, and teams, for that
matter, for I have only two, and I suppose there is no time to be lost.
And I want very much to get a person thoroughly acquainted with the
business to go along with my man. He is an Irishman, and I am afraid not
very well accustomed to the ways of doing things here."

"Like enough," said Seth;--"and the worst of 'em is you can't learn 'em."

"Well!--can you help me?"

"Mr. Douglass!"--said Seth, raising his voice to speak to one of his
assistants who was approaching them,--"Mr. Douglass!--you're holding that
'ere plough a little too obleekly for my grounds."

"Very good, Mr. Plumfield!" said the person called upon, with a quick
accent that intimated, "If you don't know what is best it is not my
affair!"--the voice very peculiar, seeming to come from no lower than the
top of his throat, with a guttural roll of the words.

"Is that Earl Douglass?" said Fleda.

"You remember him?" said her cousin smiling. "He's just where he was, and
his wife too.--Well Mr. Rossitur, 'tain't very easy to find what you want
just at this season, when most folks have their hands full and help is all
taken up. I'll see if I can't come down and give you a lift myself with
the ploughing, for a day or two, as I'm pretty beforehand with the spring,
but you'll want more than that. I ain't sure--I haven't more hands than
I'll want myself, but I think it is possible Squire Springer may spare you
one of his'n. He ain't taking in any new land this year, and he's got
things pretty snug; I guess he don't care to do any more than
common--anyhow you might try. You know where uncle Joshua lives, Fleda?
Well Philetus--what now?"

They had been slowly walking along the fence towards the furthest of Mr.
Plumfield's coadjutors, upon whom his eye had been curiously fixed as he
was speaking; a young man who was an excellent sample of what is called
"the raw material." He had just come to a sudden stop in the midst of the
furrow when his employer called to him; and he answered somewhat
lack-a-daisically,

"Why I've broke this here clevis--I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing,
and it broke right in teu!"

"What do you s'pose'll be done now?" said Mr. Plumfield gravely going up
to examine the fracture.

"Well 'twa'n't none of my doings," said the young man. "I ha'n't touched
anything nor nothing--and the mean thing broke right in teu. 'Tain't so
handy as the old kind o' plough, by a long jump."

"You go 'long down to the house and ask my mother for a new clevis; and
talk about ploughs when you know how to hold 'em," said Mr. Plumfield.

"It don't look so difficult a matter," said Mr. Rossitur,--"but I am a
novice myself. What is the principal thing to be attended to in ploughing,
Mr. Plumfield?"

There was a twinkle in Seth's eye, as he looked down upon a piece of straw
he was breaking to bits, which Fleda, who could see, interpreted
thoroughly.

"Well," said he, looking up,--"the breadth of the stitches and the width
and depth of the farrow must be regulated according to the nature of the
soil and the lay of the ground, and what you're ploughing for;--there's
stubble ploughing, and breaking up old lays, and ploughing for fallow
crops, and ribbing, where the land has been some years in grass,--and so
on; and the plough must be geared accordingly, and so as not to take too
much land nor go out of the land; and after that the best part of the work
is to guide the plough right and run the furrows straight and even."

He spoke with the most impenetrable gravity, while Mr. Rossitur looked
blank and puzzled. Fleda could hardly keep her countenance.

"That row of poles," said Mr. Rossitur presently,--"are they to guide you
in running the furrow straight?"

"Yes sir--they are to mark out the crown of the stitch. I keep 'em right
between the horses and plough 'em down one after another. It's a kind of
way country folks play at ninepins," said Seth, with a glance half
inquisitive, half sly, at his questioner.

Mr. Rossitur asked no more. Fleda felt a little uneasy again. It was
rather a longish walk to uncle Joshua's, and hardly a word spoken on
either side.

The old gentleman was "to hum;" and while Fleda went back into some remote
part of the house to see "aunt Syra," Mr. Rossitur set forth his errand.

"Well,--and so you're looking for help, eh?" said uncle Joshua when he had
heard him through.

"Yes sir,--I want help."

"And a team too?"

"So I have said, sir," Mr. Rossitur answered rather shortly. "Can you
supply me?"

"Well,--I don't know as I can," said the old man, rubbing his hands slowly
over his knees.--"You ha'n't got much done yet, I s'pose?"

"Nothing. I came the day before yesterday."

"Land's in rather poor condition in some parts, ain't it?"

"I really am not able to say, sir,--till I have seen it."

"It ought to be," said the old gentleman shaking his head,--the fellow
that was there last didn't do right by it--he worked the land too hard,
and didn't put on it anywhere near what he had ought to--I guess you'll
find it pretty poor in some places. He was trying to get all he could
out of it, I s'pose. There's a good deal of fencing to be done too,
ain't there?"

"All that there was, sir,--I have done none since I came."

"Seth Plumfield got through ploughing yet?"

"We found him at it."

"Ay, he's a smart man. What are you going to do, Mr. Rossitur, with that
piece of marsh land that lies off to the south-east of the barn, beyond
the meadow, between the hills? I had just sich another, and I"--

"Before I do anything with the wet land, Mr. ---- I am so unhappy as to
have forgotten your name?--"

"Springer, sir," said the old gentleman,--"Springer--Joshua Springer. That
is my name, sir."

"Mr. Springer, before I do anything with the wet land I should like to
have something growing on the dry; and as that is the present matter in
hand will you be so good as to let me know whether I can have your
assistance."

"Well I don't know,--" said the old gentleman; "there ain't anybody to
send but my boy Lucas, and I don't know whether he would make up his mind
to go or not."

"Well sir!"--said Mr. Rossitur rising,--"in that case I will bid you good
morning. I am sorry to have given you the trouble."

"Stop," said the old man,--"stop a bit. Just sit down--I'll go in and see
about it."

Mr. Rossitur sat down, and uncle Joshua left him to go into the kitchen
and consult his wife, without whose counsel, of late years especially, he
rarely did anything. They never varied in opinion, but aunt Syra's wits
supplied the steel edge to his heavy metal.

"I don't know but Lucas would as leave go as not," the old gentleman
remarked on coming back from this sharpening process,--"and I can make out
to spare him, I guess. You calculate to keep him, I s'pose?"

"Until this press is over; and perhaps longer, if I find he can do
what I want."

"You'll find him pretty handy at a' most anything; but I mean,--I s'pose
he'll get his victuals with you."

"I have made no arrangements of the kind," said Mr. Rossitur controlling
with some effort his rebelling muscles. "Donohan is boarded somewhere
else, and for the present it will be best for all in my employ to follow
the same plan."

"Very good," said uncle Joshua, "it makes no difference,--only of
course in that case it is worth more, when a man has to find himself
and his team."

"Whatever it is worth I am quite ready to pay, sir."

"Very good! You and Lucas can agree about that. He'll be along in
the morning."

So they parted; and Fleda understood the impatient quick step with which
her uncle got over the ground.

"Is that man a brother of your grandfather?"

"No sir--Oh no! only his brother-in-law. My grandmother was his sister,
but they weren't in the least like each other."

"I should think they could not," said Mr. Rossitur.

"Oh they were not!" Fleda repeated. "I have always heard that."

After paying her respects to aunt Syra in the kitchen she had come back
time enough to hear the end of the discourse in the parlour, and had felt
its full teaching. Doubts returned, and her spirits were sobered again.
Not another word was spoken till they reached home; when Fleda seized upon
Hugh and went off to the rock after her forsaken pie.

"Have you succeeded!' asked Mrs. Rossitur while they were gone.

"Yes--that is, a cousin has kindly consented to come and help me."

"A cousin!" said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Ay,--we're in a nest of cousins."

"In a _what_, Mr. Rossitur?"

"In a nest of cousins; and I had rather be in a nest of rooks. I wonder if
I shall be expected to ask my ploughmen to dinner! Every second man is a
cousin, and the rest are uncles."

Chapter XIX.

Whilst skies are blue and bright.
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou--and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep.

Shelley.

The days of summer flew by, for the most part lightly, over the heads of
Hugh and Fleda. The farm was little to them but a place of pretty and
picturesque doings and the scene of nameless delights by wood and stream,
in all which, all that summer, Fleda rejoiced; pulling Hugh along with her
even when sometimes he would rather have been poring over his books at
home. She laughingly said it was good for him; and one half at least of
every fine day their feet were abroad. They knew nothing practically of
the dairy but that it was an inexhaustible source of the sweetest milk and
butter, and indirectly of the richest custards and syllabubs. The flock of
sheep that now and then came in sight running over the hill-side, were to
them only an image of pastoral beauty and a soft link with the beauty of
the past. The two children took the very cream of country life. The books
they had left were read with greater eagerness than ever. When the weather
was "too lovely to stay in the house," Shakspeare or Massillon or Sully or
the "Curiosities of Literature" or "Corinne" or Milner's Church History,
for Fleda's reading was as miscellaneous as ever, was enjoyed under the
flutter of leaves and along with the rippling of the mountain spring;
whilst King curled himself up on the skirt of his mistress's gown and
slept for company; hardly more thoughtless and fearless of harm than his
two companions. Now and then Fleda opened her eyes to see that her uncle
was moody and not like himself, and that her aunt's gentle face was
clouded in consequence; and she could not sometimes help the suspicion
that he was not making a farmer of himself; but the next summer wind would
blow these thoughts away, or the next look of her flowers would put them
out of her head. The whole courtyard in front of the house had been given
up to her peculiar use as a flower-garden, and there she and Hugh made
themselves very busy.

But the summer-time came to an end.

It was a November morning, and Fleda had been doing some of the last jobs
in her flower-beds. She was coming in with spirits as bright as her
cheeks, when her aunt's attitude and look, more than usually spiritless,
suddenly checked them. Fleda gave her a hopeful kiss and asked for the
explanation.

"How bright you look, darling!" said her aunt, stroking her cheek.

"Yes, but you don't, aunt Lucy. What has happened?"

"Mary and Jane are going away."

"Going away!--What for?"

"They are tired of the place--don't like it, I suppose."

"Very foolish of them! Well, aunt Lucy, what matter? we can get plenty
more in their room."

"Not from the city--not possible; they would not come at this time of
year."

"Sure?--Well, then here we can at any rate."

"Here! But what sort of persons shall we get here? And your
uncle--just think!"--

"O but I think we can manage," said Fleda. "When do Mary and Jane
want to go?"

"Immediately!--to-morrow--they are not willing to wait till we can get
somebody. Think of it!"

"Well let them go," said Fleda,--"the sooner the better."

"Yes, and I am sure I don't want to keep them; but--" and Mrs. Rossitur
wrung her hands--"I haven't money enough to pay them quite,--and they
won't go without it."

Fleda felt shocked--so much that she could not help looking it.

"But can't uncle Rolf give it you?"

Mrs. Rossitur shook her head. "I have asked him."

"How much is wanting?"

"Twenty-five. Think of his not being able to give me that!"--Mrs.
Rossitur burst into tears.

"Now don't, aunt Lucy!"--said Fleda, guarding well her own
composure;--"you know he has had a great deal to spend upon the farm and
paying men, and all, and it is no wonder that he should be a little short
just now,--now cheer up!--we can get along with this anyhow."

"I asked him," said Mrs. Rossitur through her tears, "when he would be
able to give it to me; and he told me he didn't know!--"

Fleda ventured no reply but some of the tenderest caresses that lips and
arms could give; and then sprang away and in three minutes was at her
aunt's side again.

"Look here, aunt Lucy," said she gently,--"here is twenty dollars, if you
can manage the five."

"Where did you get this?" Mrs. Rossitur exclaimed.

"I got it honestly. It is mine, aunt Lucy," said Fleda smiling. "Uncle
Orrin gave me some money just before we came away, to do what I liked
with; and I haven't wanted to do anything with it till now."

But this seemed to hurt Mrs. Rossitur more than all the rest. Leaning her
head forward upon Fleda's breast and clasping her arms about her she cried
worse tears than Fleda had seen her shed. If it had not been for the
emergency Fleda would have broken down utterly too.

"That it should have come to this!--I can't take it, dear Fleda!"--

"Yes you must, aunt Lucy," said Fleda soothingly. "I couldn't do anything
else with it that would give me so much pleasure. I don't want it--it
would lie in my drawer till I don't know when. We'll let these people be
off as soon as they please. Don't take it so--uncle Rolf will have money
again--only just now he is out, I suppose--and we'll get somebody else in
the kitchen that will do nicely--you see if we don't."

Mrs. Rossitur's embrace said what words were powerless to say.

"But I don't know how we're to find any one here in the country--I don't
know who'll go to look--I am sure your uncle won't want to,--and Hugh
wouldn't know--"

"I'll go," said Fleda cheerfully;--"Hugh and I. We can do famously--if
you'll trust me. I won't promise to bring home a French cook."

"No indeed--we must take what we can get. But you can get no one to-day,
and they will be off by the morning's coach--what shall we do
to-morrow,--for dinner? Your uncle--"

"I'll get dinner," said Fleda caressing her;--"I'll take all that on
myself. It sha'n't be a bad dinner either. Uncle Rolf will like what I do
for him I dare say. Now cheer up, aunt Lucy!--do--that's all I ask of you.
Won't you?--for me?"

She longed to speak a word of that quiet hope with which in every trouble
she secretly comforted herself--she wanted to whisper the words that were
that moment in her own mind, "Truly I know that it shall be well with them
that fear God;"--but her natural reserve and timidity kept her lips shut;
to her grief.

The women were paid off and dismissed and departed in the next day's coach
from Montepoole. Fleda stood at the front door to see them go, with a
curious sense that there was an empty house at her back, and indeed upon
her back. And in spite of all the cheeriness of her tone to her aunt, she
was not without some shadowy feeling that soberer times might be coming
upon them.

"What is to be done now?" said Hugh close beside her.

"O we are going to get somebody else," said Fleda.

"Where?"

"I don't know!--You and I are going to find out."

"You and I!--"

"Yes. We are going out after dinner, Hugh dear," said she turning her
bright merry face towards him,--"to pick up somebody."

Linking her arm within his she went back to the deserted kitchen premises
to see how her promise about taking Mary's place was to be fulfilled.

"Do you know where to look?" said Hugh.

"I've a notion;--but the first thing is dinner, that uncle Rolf mayn't
think the world is turning topsy turvy. There is nothing at all here,
Hugh!--nothing in the world but bread--it's a blessing there is that.
Uncle Rolf will have to be satisfied with a coffee dinner to-day, and I'll
make him the most superb omelette--that my skill is equal to! Hugh dear,
you shall set the table.--You don't know how?--then you shall make the
toast, and I will set it the first thing of all. You perceive it is well
to know how to do everything, Mr. Hugh Rossitur."

"Where did you learn to make omelettes?" said Hugh with laughing
admiration, as Fleda bared two pretty arms and ran about the very
impersonation of good-humoured activity. The table was set; the coffee was
making; and she had him established at the fire with two great plates, a
pile of slices of bread, and a toasting-iron.

"Where? Oh don't you remember the days of Mrs. Renney? I have seen Emile
make them. And by dint of trying to teach Mary this summer I have taught
myself. There is no knowing, you see, what a person may come to."

"I wonder what father would say if he knew you had made all the coffee
this summer!"

"That is an unnecessary speculation, my dear Hugh, as I have no intention
of telling him. But see!--that is the way with speculators! 'While they go
on refining'--the toast burns!"

The coffee and the omelette and the toast and Mr. Rossitur's favourite
French salad, were served with beautiful accuracy; and he was quite
satisfied. But aunt Lucy looked sadly at Fleda's flushed face and saw that
her appetite seemed to have gone off in the steam of her preparations.
Fleda had a kind of heart-feast however which answered as well.

Hugh harnessed the little wagon, for no one was at hand to do it, and he
and Fleda set off as early as possible after dinner. Fleda's thoughts had
turned to her old acquaintance Cynthia Gall, who she knew was out of
employment and staying at home somewhere near Montepoole. They got the
exact direction from aunt Miriam who approved of her plan.

It was a pleasant peaceful drive they had. They never were alone together,
they two, but vexations seemed to lose their power or be forgotten; and an
atmosphere of quietness gather about them, the natural element of both
hearts. It might refuse its presence to one, but the attraction of both
together was too strong to be resisted.

Miss Cynthia's present abode was in an out of the way place, and a good
distance off; they were some time in reaching it. The barest-looking and
dingiest of houses, set plump in a green field, without one softening or
home-like touch from any home-feeling within; not a flower, not a shrub,
not an out-house, not a tree near. One would have thought it a deserted
house, but that a thin wreath of smoke lazily stole up from one of the
brown chimneys; and graceful as that was it took nothing from the hard
stern barrenness below which told of a worse poverty than that of paint
and glazing.