Chapter 9 No.9

Mat. "He is of a rustical cut, I know not how; he doth not carry himself like a gentleman of fashion." Wet. "Oh, Mr. Matthew, that's a grace peculiar but to a few." EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR.

The 'big bedroom,' which belonged to the strangers by right of usage, opened from the kitchen; with another door upon the tiny entry-way once described. It had a fireplace, at present full of green pine bushes; a very clean bed covered with patchwork; the plainest of chairs and a table; and a little bit of carpet on one spot of the floor; the rest was painted. One little window looked to the south; another to the east; the woodwork, of doors and windows, exceeding homely and unpainted. An extraordinary gay satin toilet-cushion; and over it a little looking-glass, surrounded and surmounted with more than an equal surface of dark carved wooden framing.

It was to this unwonted prospect that the early June sun opened the young ladies' eyes the next morning. Elizabeth had surveyed it quietly a few minutes, when a little rustling of the patchwork called her attention to the shaking shoulders of her companion. Miss Cadwallader's pretty face lay back on the pillow, her eyes shut tight, and her open mouth expressing all the ecstatic delight that could be expressed without sound.

"What is the matter?" said Elizabeth.

Her cousin only laughed the harder and clapped her hands over her eyes, as if quite beyond control of herself. Elizabeth did not ask again.

"Isn't this a funny place we've come to!" said Miss

Cadwallader at last, relapsing.

"I don't see anything very laughable," said Elizabeth.

"But isn't it a quizzical place?"

"I dare say. Every place is."

"Pshaw! don't be obstinate, - when you think just as I do."

"I never did yet, about anything," said Elizabeth.

"Well, how do you like eating in a room with a great dresser of tin dishes on one side and the fire where your meat was cooked on the other? - in June?"

"I didn't see the tin dishes; and there wasn't any fire, of consequence."

"But did you ever see such a gallant old farmer? Isn't he comical? didn't he keep it up?"

"Not better than you did," said Elizabeth.

"But isn't he comical?"

"No; neither comical nor old. I thought you seemed to like him very well."

"O, one must do something. La! you aren't going to get up yet?"

But Elizabeth was already at the south window and had it open. Early it was; the sun not more than half an hour high, and taking his work coolly, like one who meant to do a great deal before the day was ended. A faint dewy sparkle on the grass and the sweetbriars; the song sparrows giving good-morrow to each other and tuning their throats for the day; and a few wood thrushes now and then telling of their shyer and rarer neighbourhood. The river was asleep, it seemed, it lay so still.

"Lizzie! - you ought to be in bed yet these two hours - I shall tell Mr. Haye, if you don't take care of yourself."

"Have the goodness to go to sleep, and let me and Mr. Haye take care of each other," said the girl dryly.

Her cousin looked at her a minute, and then turning her eyes from the light, obeyed her first request and went fast asleep.

A little while after the door opened and Elizabeth stood in the kitchen. It was already in beautiful order. She could sec the big dresser now, but the tin and crockery and almost the wooden shelves shone, they were so clean. And they shone in the light of an opposite fire; but though the second of June, the air so early in the morning was very fresh; Elizabeth found it pleasant to take her stand on the hearth, near the warm blaze. And while she stood there, first came in Karen and put on the big iron tea-kettle; and then came Mrs. Landholm with a table-cloth and began to set the table. Elizabeth looked alternately at her and at the tea-kettle; both almost equally strange; she rather took a fancy to both. Certainly to the former. Her gown was spare, shewing that means were so, and her cap was the plainest of muslin caps, without lace or bedecking; yet in the quiet ordering of gown and cap and the neat hair, a quiet and ordered mind was almost confessed; and not many glances at the calm mouth and grave brow and thoughtful eye, would make the opinion good. It was a very comfortable home picture, Elizabeth thought, in a different line of life from that she was accustomed to, - the farmer's wife and the tea-kettle, the dresser and the breakfast table, and the wooden kitchen floor and the stone hearth. She did not know what a contrast she made in it; her dainty little figure, very nicely dressed, standing on the flag-stones before the fire. Mrs. Landholm felt it, and doubted.

"How do you like the place, Miss Haye?" she ventured.

To her surprise the answer was an energetic, "Very much."

"Then you are not afraid of living in a farm-house?"

"If I don't like living in it, I'll live out of it," said Elizabeth, returning a very dignified answer to Winthrop's 'good-morning' as he passed through the kitchen.

"Are you going down to Cowslip's mill, Governor?" said Mrs.

Landholm.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You will lose your breakfast."

"I must take the turn of the tide. Never mind breakfast."

"Going down after my trunks?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll go too. Wait a minute!"

And she was in her room before a word could be said.

"But Miss Haye," said Mrs. Landholm, as she came out with bonnet and shawl, "you won't go without your breakfast? It will be ready long before you can get back."

"Breakfast can wait."

"But you will want it."

"No - I don't care if I do."

And down she ran to the rocks, followed by Asahel.

There was a singular still sweetness in the early summer morning on the water. The air seemed to have twice the life it had the evening before; the light was fair, beyond words to tell. Here its fresh gilding was upon a mountain slope; there it stretched in a long misty beam athwart a deep valley; it touched the broken points of rock, and glanced on the river, and seemed to make merry with the birds; fresh, gladsome and pure as their song. No token of man's busy life yet in the air; the birds had it. Only over Shahweetah valley, and from Mr. Underhill's chimney on the other side of the river, and from Sam Doolittle's in the bay, thin wreaths of blue smoke slowly went up, telling that there, - and there, - and there, - man was getting ready for his day's work, and woman had begun hers! Only those, and the soft stroke of Winthrop's oars; but to Elizabeth that seemed only play. She sat perfectly still, her eye varying from their regular dip to the sunny rocks of the headland, to the coloured mountain heads, the trees, the river, the curling smoke, - and back again to the oars; with a grave, intent, deep notice-taking. The water was neither for nor against them now; and with its light load and its good oars the boat flew. Diver's Rock was passed; then they got out of the sunshine into the cool shadow of the eastern shore below the bay, and fell down the river fast to the mill. Not a word was spoken by anybody till they got there.

Nor then by Elizabeth, till she saw Mr. Cowslip and Winthrop bringing her trunks and boxes to the boat-side.

"Hollo! you've got live cargo too, Governor," said the old miller. "That aint fair, - Mornin'! - The box is safe."

"Are you going to put those things in here?" said Elizabeth.

"Sartain," said Mr. Cowslip; - "book-box and all."

"But they'll be too much for the boat?"

"Not at all," said Winthrop; "it was only because the tide was so low last night - there wasn't water enough in the bay. I am not going in the bay this morning."

"No," said Mr. Cowslip, - "tide's just settin' up along shore - you can keep along the edge of the flats."

"You have load enough without them. Don't put 'em in here, sir!" Elizabeth exclaimed; - "let them go in the other boat - your boat - you said you had a boat - it's at home now, isn't it?"

"Sartain," said Mr. Cowslip, "it's to hum, so it can start off again as soon as you like. My boy Hild can fetch up the things for you - if you think it's worth while to have it cost you a dollar."

"I don't care what it costs," said Elizabeth. "Send 'em up right away, and I'll pay for it."

So Winthrop dropped into his place again, and lightly and swiftly as before the boat went on her way back towards the blue smoke that curled up over Shahweetah; and Elizabeth's eyes again roved silently and enjoyingly from one thing to another. But they returned oftener to the oars, and rested there, and at last when they were about half way home, she said,

"I want to learn how to manage an oar - will you let me take one and try?"

Winthrop helped her to change her seat and put an oar into her hand, and gave her directions. The first attempts took effect upon nothing but Asahel's face, which gave witness to his amusement; and perhaps Winthrop's dress, which was largely splashed in the course of a few minutes. But Elizabeth did not seem to heed or care for either; she was intent upon the great problem of making her oar feel the water; and as gravely, if not quite so coolly, as Winthrop's instructions were delivered, she worked at her oar to follow them. A few random strokes, which did not seem to discriminate very justly between water and air, and then her oar had got hold of the water and was telling, though irregularly and fitfully, upon the boat. The difficulty was mastered; and she pulled with might and main for half the rest of the way home; Winthrop having nothing to do with his one oar but to keep the two sides of the boat together, till her arm was tired.

"Next time I'll take both oars," she said with a face of great satisfaction as she put herself back in her old seat. Asahel thought it would cure her of wearing pale cheeks, but he did not venture to make any remark.

Rose was waiting for them, sitting crouched discontentedly on the rocks.

"It's eight o'clock!" - said she, - "and I'm as hungry as a bear!"

"So am I," said Elizabeth springing ashore.

"What have you been doing? - keeping breakfast waiting this age?"

"I never saw any thing so delicious in all my life," said

Elizabeth emphatically, before condescending to say what.

"I shall tell Mr. Haye you are beginning a flirtation already," whispered Miss Cadwallader laughing as they went up to the house.

But the cheek of the other at that became like a thunder- cloud. She turned her back upon her cousin and walked from her to the house, with a step as fine and firm as that of the Belvidere Apollo and a figure like a young pine tree. Rufus, who met her at the door, was astounded with a salutation such as a queen might bestow on a discarded courtier; but by the time the little lady came to the table she had got back her usual air.

"Well, how do you like boating before breakfast?" said Mr

Landholm.

"Very much," Elizabeth said.

"I don't like it very much," said he, "for I ought to have mowed half an acre by this time, instead of being here at my bread and butter."

"It was not my fault, sir."

"No, no; it's all right, I am glad you went. I should have taken my breakfast and been off, long ago; but I waited out of pure civility to you, to see how you did. 'Pon my word, I think you have gained half a pound of flesh already."

"She looks a great deal better," said Asahel.

Elizabeth laughed a little, but entered into no discussion of the subject.

After breakfast the trunks arrived and the young ladies were busy; and two or three days passed quietly in getting wonted.

"Mr. Landholm," said Miss Cadwallader, a few mornings after, "will you do one thing for me?"

"A great many, Miss Rose," he said, stopping with his hands on his knees as he was about to leave the table, and looking at her attentively.

"I want you to send somebody to shew me where the strawberries are."

"Strawberries! Do you want to go and pick strawberries?"

"To be sure I do. That's what I came here for."

"Strawberries, eh," said Mr. Landholm. "Well, I guess you'll have to wait a little. There aint a soul that can go with you this morning. Besides, I don't believe there are any ripe yet."

"O yes there are, papa!" said Asahel.

"I guess Bright Spot's full of them," said Mrs. Landholm.

"Bright Spot!" said the farmer. "Well, we must be all off to the hay-field. You see, there's some grass, Miss Rose, standing ready to be cut, that can't wait; so you'll have to."

"What if it wasn't cut?" said Miss Cadwallader pouting.

"What if it wasn't cut! - then the cattle would have nothing to eat next winter, and that would be worse than your wanting strawberries. No - I'll tell you, - It'll be a fine afternoon; and you keep yourself quiet, out of the sun, till it gets towards evening; and I'll contrive to spare one of the boys to go with you. The strawberries will be all the riper, and you can get as many as you want in an hour or two."

So upon that the party scattered, and the house was deserted to the 'women-folks;' with the exception of little Asahel; and even he was despatched in a few hours to the field with the dinner of his father and brothers. The girls betook themselves to their room, and wore out the long day as they could.

It grew to the tempting time of the afternoon.

"Here they are!" said Rose who sat at the east window. "Now for it! That farmer is a very good man. I really didn't expect it."

"They?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes - both the 'boys,' as the farmer calls them."

"I should think one might have been enough," said Elizabeth.

"Well, there's no harm in having two. Isn't the eldest one handsome?"

"I don't know."

"You do know."

"I don't! for I haven't thought about it."

"Do you have to think before you can tell whether a person is handsome?"

"Yes; - before I can tell whether I think he is."

"Well, look at him, - I tell you he has the most splendid eyes."

"Rose Cadwallader!" said her cousin laying down her book, "what is it to you or me if all the farmer's sons in the land have splendid eyes?"

Elizabeth's eyebrows said it was very little to her.

"I like to look at a handsome face anywhere," said Rose pouting. "Come - will you."

Elizabeth did come, but with a very uncompromising set of the said eyebrows.

It appeared that everybody was going strawberrying, except Mrs. Landholm and Winthrop; at least the former had not her bonnet on, and the latter was not in the company at all. The children found this out and raised a cry of dismay, which was changed into a cry of entreaty as Winthrop came in. Winthrop was going after fish. But Winifred got hold of his hand, and Asahel withstood him with arguments; and at last Mrs. Landholm put in her gentle word, that strawberries would de just as well as fish, and better. So Winthrop put up his fishing-rod and shouldered the oars, and armed with baskets of all sizes the whole party trooped after him.

In the boat Elizabeth might have had a good opportunity to act upon her cousin's request; for Rufus sat in the stern with them and talked, while Winthrop handled the oars. But Rufus and her cousin had the talk all to themselves; Elizabeth held off from it, and gave her eyes to nothing but the river and the hills.

They crossed the river, going a little up, to a tiny green valley just at the water's edge. On every side but the river it was sheltered and shut in by woody walls nigh two hundred feet in height. The bottom of the valley was a fine greensward, only sprinkled with trees; while from the edge of it the virgin forest rose steeply to the first height, and then following the broken ground stretched away up to the top of the neighbouring mountains. From the valley bottom, however, nothing of these could be seen; nothing was to be seen but its own leafy walls and the blue sky above them.

"Is this the place where we are to find strawberries?" said

Miss Cadwallader.

"This is the place," said Rufus; "this is Bright Spot, from time out of mind the place for strawberries; nobody ever comes here but to pick them. The vines cover the ground."

"The sun won't be on it long," said Elizabeth; "I don't see why you call it Bright Spot."

"You won't often see a brighter spot when the sun is on it," said Winthrop. "It gets in the shadow of Wut-a-qut-o once in a while."

"The grass is kept very fresh here," said Rufus. "But the strawberry vines are all over in it."

So it was proved. The valley was not a smooth level as it had looked from the river, but broken into little waves and hollows of ground; in parts, near the woods, a good deal strewn with loose rocks and grown with low clumpy bushes of different species of cornus, and buckthorn, and sweetbriar. In these nooks and hollows, and indeed over the whole surface of the ground the vines ran thick, and the berries, huge, rich and rare, pretended to hide themselves, while the whole air was alive with their sweetness.

The party landed and scattered with cries of delight far and near over the valley. Even Elizabeth's composure gave way. For a little while they did nothing but scatter; to sit still and pick was impossible; for the novelty and richness of the store seemed made for the eye as much as for anything else, and be the berries never so red in one place they seemed redder in another. Winthrop and Asahel, however, were soon steadily at work, and then little Winifred; and after a time Miss Cadwallader found that the berries were good for more than to look at, and Rufus had less trouble to keep in her neighbourhood. But it was a good while before Elizabeth began to pick either for lip or basket; she stood on the viney knolls, and looked, and smelled the air, and searched with her eye the openings in the luxuriant foliage that walled in the valley. At last, making a review of the living members of the picture, the young lady bethought herself, and set to work with great steadiness to cover the bottom of her basket.

In the course of this business, moving hither and thither as the bunches of red fruit tempted her, and without raising an eye beyond them, she was picking close to one of the parties before she knew whom she was near; and as they were in like ignorance she heard Asahel say,

"I wish Rufus would pick - he does nothing but eat, ever since he came; he and Miss Rose."

"You don't expect her to pick for you, do you?" said Winthrop.

"She might just as well as for me to pick for her," said

Asahel.

"Do you think we'll get enough for mamma, Governor?" said little Winifred in a very sweet, and a little anxious, voice.

"We'll try," said her brother.

"O you've got a great parcel! - but I have only so many, -

Governor?"

"There's more where those came from, Winnie."

"Here are some to help," said Elizabeth coming up and emptying her own strawberries into the little girl's basket. Winifred looked down at the fresh supply and up into the young lady's face, and then gave her an "Oh thank you!" of such frank pleasure and astonishment that Elizabeth's energies were at once nerved. But first of all she went to see what Miss Cadwallader was about.

Miss Cadwallader was squatting in a nest of strawberries, with red finger-ends.

"Rose - how many have you picked?"

"I haven't the least idea. Aren't they splendid?"

"Haven't you any in your basket?"

"Basket? - no, - where is my basket?" said she looking round.

"No, to be sure I haven't. I don't want any basket."

"Why don't you help?"

"Help? I've been helping myself, till I'm tired. Come here and sit down, Bess. Aren't they splendid? Don't you want to rest?"

"No."

Miss Rose, however, quitted the strawberries and placed herself on a rock.

"Where's my helper? - O yonder, - somebody's got hold of him. Lizzie, - who'd have thought we should be so well off for beaux here in the mountains?"

The other's brow and lip changed, but she stood silent.

"They don't act like farmer's sons, do they? I never should have guessed it if I had seen them anywhere else. Look, Lizzie, - now isn't he handsome? I never saw such eyes."

Elizabeth did not look, but she spoke, and the words lacked no point that lips could give them.

"I am thankful, Rose, that my head does not run upon the things that yours does!"

"What does yours run upon then?" said Rose pouting. "The other one, I suppose. That's the one you were helping with your strawberries just now. I dont think it is the wisest thing Mr. Haye has ever done, to send you and me here; - it's a pity there wasn't somebody to warn him."

"Rose!" - said the other, and her eyes seemed to lighten, one to the other, as she spoke, - "you know I don't like such talk - I detest and despise it! - it is utterly beneath me. You may indulge in all the nonsense you please, and descend to what you please; - but please to understand, I will not hear it."

Miss Cadwallader's eye fairly gave way under the lightning. Elizabeth's words were delivered with an intensity that kept them quiet, though with the last degree of clear utterance; and turning, as Rufus came up, she gave him a glare of her dark brown eyes that astonished him, and made off with a quick step to a part of the field where she could pick strawberries at a distance from everybody. She picked them somehow by instinct; she did not know what she was doing; her face rivalled their red bunches; and she picked with a kind of fury. That being the only way she had of venting her indignation, she threw it into her basket along with the strawberries. She hadn't worked so hard the whole afternoon. She edged away from the rest towards a wild corner, where amid rocks and bushes the strawberry vines spread rich and rank and the berries were larger and finer than any she had seen. She was determined to have a fine basketful for Winifred.

But she was unused to such stooping and steady work, and as she cooled down she grew very tired. She was in a rough grown place and she mounted on a rock and stood up to rest herself and look.

Pretty - pretty, it was. It was almost time to go home, for the sun was out of their strawberry patch and the woody walls were a few shades deeper coloured than they had been; while over the river, on the other side, the steep rocks of the home point sent back a warm glow yet. The hills beyond them stood in the sun, and in close contrast was the little deep green patch of fore-ground, lit up with the white or the gay dresses of the strawberry pickers. The sweet river, a bit of it, in the middle of the picture, half in sunshine, half in shade. It was like a little nest of fairy-land; so laughed the sunshine, so dwelt the shade, in this spot and in that one. Elizabeth stood fast. It was bewitching to the eyes. And while she looked, the shadow of Wut-a-qut-o was creeping over the river, and now ready to take off the warm browns of the rocky point.

She was thinking it was bewitching, and drinking it in, when she felt two hands clasp her by the waist, and suddenly, swiftly, without a word of warning, she was swung off, clear to another rock about two yards distant, and there set down, "all standing." In bewildered astonishment, that only waited to become indignation, she turned to see whom she was to be angry with. Nobody was near her but Winthrop, and he had disappeared behind the rock on which she had just been standing. Elizabeth was not precisely in a mood for cool judgment; she stood like an offended brood-hen, with ruffled feathers, waiting to fly at the first likely offender. The rest of the party began to draw near.

"Come Lizzie, we're going home," said her cousin.

"I am not," said Elizabeth.

"Why?"

"Because I am not ready."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing - only I am not ready."

"The sun's out of Bright Spot now, Miss Haye," said Rufus, with a somewhat mischievous play of feature.

Elizabeth was deaf.

"Winthrop has killed a rattlesnake!" exclaimed Asahel from the rock; - "Winthrop has killed a rattlesnake!"

And Winthrop came round the bushes bringing his trophy; a large snake that counted nine rattles. They all pressed round, as near as they dared, to look and admire; all but Elizabeth, who stood on her rock and did not stir.

"Where was it? where was it?" -

"When I first saw him, he was curled up on the rock very near to Miss Haye, but he slid down among the bushes before I could catch him. We must take care when we come here now, for the mate must be somewhere."

"I'll never come here again," said Miss Cadwallader. "O come! - let us go!"

"Did you move me?" said Elizabeth, with the air of a judge putting a query.

Winthrop looked up, and answered yes.

"Why didn't you ask me to move myself?"

"I would," said Winthrop calmly, - "if I could have got word to the snake to keep quiet."

Elizabeth did not know precisely what to say; her cousin was looking in astonishment, and she saw the corners of Rufus's mouth twitching; she shut her lips resolutely and followed the party to the boat.

The talking and laughing was general among them on the way home, with all but her; she was thinking. She even forgot her strawberries for little Winifred, which she meant to have given her in full view of her cousin. She held her basket on her lap, and looked at the water and didn't see the sunset.

The sun's proper setting was not to be seen, for he went down far behind Wut-a-qut-o. Wut-a-qut-o's shade was all over the river and had mounted near to the top of the opposite hills; but from peak to peak of them the sunlight glittered still, and overhead the sun threw down broad remembrancers of where he was and where he had been. The low hills in the distant north were all in sunlight; as the little boat pulled over the river they were lost behind the point of Shahweetah, and the last ray was gone from the last mountain ridge in view. Cool shadows and lights were over the land, a flood of beauty overhead in the sky.

It was agreed on all hands that they had been very successful; and little Winifred openly rejoiced over the quantity they had brought home for 'mother'; but still Elizabeth did not add her store, and had nothing to say. When they got to the landing- place, she would stay on the rocks to see how the boat was made fast. Winifred ran up to the house with her basket, Miss Cadwallader went to get ready for supper, Rufus followed in her steps. Asahel and Elizabeth stayed in the sunset glow to see Winthrop finish his part of the work; and then they walked up together. Elizabeth kept her position on one side of the oars, but seemed as moody as ever, till they were about half way from the rocks; then suddenly she looked up into Winthrop's face and said,

"Thank you. I ought to have said it before."

He bowed a little and smiled, in a way that set Elizabeth a thinking. It was not like a common farmer's boy. It spoke him as quiet in his own standing as she was in hers; and yet he certainly had come home that day in his shirt sleeves, and with his mower's jacket over his arm? It was very odd.

"What was it you said that strawberry-place was in the shadow of sometimes?"

"Wut-a-qut-o?"

"What's that?"

"The big mountain over there. This was in the shadow of it a little while ago."

"What a queer name! What does it mean?"

"It is Indian. I have heard that it means, the whole name, - 'He that catches the clouds.'"

"That is beautiful! -"

"You must be tremendously strong," she added presently, as if not satisfied that she had said enough, - "for you lifted me as if I had been no more than a featherweight."

"You did not seem much more," he said.

"Strong! -" said Asahel -

But Elizabeth escaped from Asahel's exposition of the subject, into her room.

She had regained her good-humour, and everybody at the table said she had improved fifty per cent. since her coming to Shahweetah. Which opinion Mr. Haye confirmed when he came a day or two afterward.