DECEMBER—THE MOON OF SNOWSHOES I
“Good King Wenceslas looked out,
???On the feast of Stephen,
?When the snow lay round about,
???Deep and crisp and even!”
sang the violin with pathetic accent, and then stopped abruptly, as the player dropped the bow and pressed his face against the window. The stars shone from the cold blue of a cloudless sky; below lay the city ablaze with light. It was a Danish city, and the player was a Dane, but when a violin sings, it speaks to each one in his own language. Bells pealing from a neighbouring church took up the same carol of Christmastide, and young voices echoed it faintly from within the doors of many homes.
On that Christmas night, two young women were drilling childish voices in the singing of the same tune. These women had never met, or either even dreamed of the other’s existence, yet a current, as actual as the sound-waves of the music, at that moment began to draw them together, the player of the violin, Gurth Waldsen, being the unconscious medium.
Waldsen looked from the window at the outlines of the palace across the water, its ramparts twinkling with lights that looked like reflections of the brilliant winter stars, but his thoughts did not follow his sight. In a few days he would be an exile from both home and country, and though the leaving was wholly voluntary, yet the past and present struggled together. A visionary in many respects, refusing to understand social classification as read by his family, he had, in his mother’s eyes, capped the climax of his folly on his graduation from the University by refusing a diplomatic career, insisting upon earning his bread literally by the sweat of his brow, and betrothing himself to a pretty, modest, blue-eyed girl of a near-by village,—“A girl of the people,” his mother called her, for though she had been carefully reared, her father, a poor pastor, had been taken from his peasant brothers and educated for the ministry because he was both docile and fragile.
Waldsen’s mother was the controlling power of the family. His father, long since dead, had been a dreamer, a musician, and something of a poet, whose wife had married him in a fit of girlish romance, and then lived to scorn him for his lack of ambition and reproach herself for marrying beneath her. Her only son should make no such mistake; she would oversee at least his social education, but she completely overlooked the matter of heredity.
So little Gurth grew up with only one parent. At ten the boy was tall and undeveloped, with a shock of strange golden-brown hair that he shook back as he played the violin, his greatest pleasure; but at twenty-two he was a slender man with a gold-tipped beard, straight nose, and blue-gray eyes, that looked at and through what he saw, all his features being softened by his father’s dreamy temperament.
Mrs. Waldsen, therefore, set her face against the marriage with the bitterness of her disappointment stung to fury by the memory of her own past. If she loved her son, it was for her own gratification, not for his, and now, as her world was beginning to talk of him, his bearing and gentle accomplishments, should she allow him to be taken from her?
Gurth had waited several months after the first rebuff, hoping that time would mend matters. Andrea could not marry yet; she was the foster-mother to four small brothers, and managed the little household for her overworked and underpaid father, but in another year Theresa, the younger sister, would be able to take her place. Time, however, did nothing but rivet Mrs. Waldsen’s decision, and in the interval the knowledge of her treatment of his father came to Gurth, and he knew then that argument was hopeless. He had some money of his own, though merely a trifling legacy from an uncle, and his last interview with his mother brought to an end all idea of remaining in Denmark. This was what he was fighting alone in his study that Christmas night, when, turning to his violin for sympathy, it sang the half-sad carol that Andrea had been teaching her little brothers the last time that he supped with her.
Gurth now regretted the time that had passed in temporizing, in drifting. To-night would end it all, and freed, as far as possible for a man to free himself, he would carry out in detail a plan of life that had often before vaguely offered him escape—not merely liberty to marry as he pleased, but also release from the particular social conditions into which he was born, that had at all times cramped him. He loved Nature and his fellow-men, in a genuine and wholesome fashion, but with the institution called Society, as it existed about him, he seemed pre-natally at war.
Putting aside what he had been, he chose to go as an emigrant, elbow to elbow with labourers; going to gain a living from the soil by his own toil, to try if the strength of body in him matched the strength of intention. He meant to follow an outdoor life, and thus make a home for Andrea, wearing the path a little before he let her willing feet tread it with him.
As he looked about his rooms he almost smiled at his few possessions. Some long shelves of books, a rack of music, a few pelt rugs, a high-post bed behind an alcove curtain, chairs, a long oak table upon the end of which stood a great bird-cage, while half a dozen smaller ones hung by the window. A porcelain stove stood under the mantel-shelf, and above it was a litter of pipes and broken foils, while on one corner, in a little place apart, shrine-like and surrounded by growing ivy, the portrait of a young girl looked at him. It was merely a photograph taken with the crude art of a provincial town, but the stiff posing could not mar the charm of the face, and Gurth looked longingly. Leaving the window he moved slowly toward it until, resting his elbows on the shelf, he touched her lips with his, and then started at the unconscious act. To see her once more, to-morrow, Stephen’s Day, and then go away! His heart and its primitive instinct whispered, “Marry her—take her with you!” What he considered his reason said,—“Where to? It is winter; the sea is deep and wide, the journey long. Make the home; wait for spring!” Ah, this was one of the many matters in which what is called impulse would have been wiser because the more direct of the two. It was morning before Gurth had thought the matter to a conclusion, and the streets had slept and were waking again before he threw himself upon the bed, still dressed.
He spent the following day in destroying papers and in writing letters to a friend or two. He had the equivalent of about five thousand dollars, to begin life with, and he resolved to hoard the money as carefully as if he were indeed a peasant starting for the New World. This money represented the land, the home; his own brain and hands must do the rest. A trunk of books, his violin, some of his plainest clothes, were all that he would take; a rough coat and a fur cap must be bought to supplement his wardrobe.
The bullfinch by the window piped gaily, and the chaffinches in the cages with fantastic dormers chirped in reply, reminding him of their necessities, and, after feeding them, he unhooked their cages and, fastening them, covered them and prepared to go out. He had promised Andrea that he would be with her for supper. It was already five o’clock, and the Clausens lived far outside the city, an hour’s sharp driving on the Klampenborg road, and the sleigh that he had ordered was waiting. Packing the cages under the fur robes, he started the horse at a brisk pace. It seemed already, so powerful is imagination, as if this decision had given him a greater sense of liberty.
In a long, low-studded room, whose polished board floor was relieved by a few squares of bright carpet, two young girls were preparing the supper table. The youngest was at an age when her closely braided hair lacked the dignity of being put up, and her skirts were still a few inches from the ground. She was squarely built, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and rosy with good nature. She held a large loaf, beautifully light and baked evenly brown, which she was regarding with great glee. “Lift it, Andrea!” she cried. “See how light it is, and how sweet it smells! Now that my baking is as good as yours, you can be married, for you know that father said a year ago you could not marry until I baked good bread!” and Theresa laughed teasingly. Andrea, so addressed, looked at the loaf carefully, then silently kissed the face that was smiling above it. She was half a head taller than her sister, with an oval face surrounded by thick, smooth, bright golden hair that was parted and braided in two wide bands and coiled around her head. Her cheek-bones, a trifle high for good proportion, were relieved by great, dark-blue eyes, with jet-black lashes; the chin was firm, the mouth not small but opening over long white teeth. The indescribable charm of the face came from the eyes. The kiss was the only answer that she gave her sister, who rattled on from one theme to another as she brought in the different dishes, occasionally joining in with the four little boys who were singing carols in a group around a battered piano at the other end of the room, mingling their shrill voices with the pastor’s tenor.
“Mark my footsteps, good my page,
???Tread thou in them boldly:
?Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
???Freeze thy blood less coldly!”
Gurth paused on the threshold an instant listening to the singing, then entered without knocking. The little boys rushed to hang about him and explore his pockets, and the pastor and Theresa welcomed him warmly. It was Andrea alone who saw a change in his whole demeanour, and wondered at the bird-cages. The evening meal was soon eaten, and the boys went to the kitchen with the toys that Gurth had brought them; the pastor, scenting something, sat erect in his arm-chair, all forgetful of his pipe and expectant of some news, while Theresa hung over him. Gurth stood by the stove, nervous and uncertain how to begin.
Andrea went to him, and, putting her hand through his arm, said quietly, but with an infinite tenderness in her voice, “You are going away, dearest, and you have brought your birds for me to keep for you.”
It was as if her voice smoothed away his fears and perplexities, so all four together they discussed the situation without reserve.
Gurth, forgetting his prudent plans, begged the pastor to marry them then, or at the latest in a few days, when the necessary legalities could be complied with, so that he might leave Andrea as his wife. Upon this point the pastor was obdurate. His practical instinct, born partly of the peasant suspicion of another class, and partly of hard experience, forbade this. Among his parishioners many a wedding had taken place on the eve of parting, and the husband had been swallowed up in that vast new world, while the poor girl at home waited in vain, not knowing whether she was wife or widow.
He liked Gurth in a way, but he was sadly disappointed in his failure to reconcile his mother to the marriage, and, while he believed him sincere at present, he did not know how the separation might affect either of the young people; so he insisted upon delay. If Gurth had established himself by the next Christmas, he might return and marry. If not—well, there were other men who, under the circumstances, would be more suitable for Andrea, though he did not voice his opinion. In reality he had no romance in his nature, and he disbelieved in unequal marriages, especially if money was not coupled with the rank.
If, after a year’s trial, Gurth was in a position to come for Andrea,—well and good,—but further than that the pastor could be neither coaxed nor driven.
Moreover, he allowed them little privacy for saying good-by.
“I know how to work, and I like it, but you must learn how,” Andrea whispered, as she clung to him. “But I will be ready, Gurth, and, more, if you can’t return, I will go to you!” This understanding was their farewell.
His mother, when she found that he had gone, laughingly told her friends that Gurth had a foolish love affair, and, taking her advice, he had gone away to travel it off.
II
There is nothing that tends so to destroy the conceit of a man little used to the sea, as an ocean voyage in midwinter, especially if it is made on board an emigrant ship. On a good liner he may prop up his flimsy importance in a dozen ways, from feeing stewards to bring him six meals a day while he lies in his berth, to pulling himself together and wearing the distinction of being the only cabin passenger at table during a furious squall. But on an emigrant ship it is impossible to veil or soften stern reality.
Gurth had chosen this way of travel that he might more quickly realize his changed circumstances. For two weeks or perhaps three he must live in this community. Previously he had a theoretical knowledge of the conditions that surround and make poverty. Now for the first time he saw the reality. His first thought was of the wonderful patience of these people; the next conviction was of their unconquered hope.
A dozen perhaps had settled homes in America and had returned to their native land merely to visit, but the multitude were going, they were not quite sure where, to earn their bread, they did not know how. Doubts did not trouble them, their pink pasteboard tickets seemed the pledge of landing somewhere, and as for the rest, they were used to uncertainty.
The fourth day out, a day when a mild streak and a few hours’ sunshine brought all the grotesque animated bundles of clothes from their berths, Gurth took his violin and, without ado, began to play a native ballad, and then another. Silently the people grouped about him, some stealing below to coax up a comrade who was ill.
The intensely earnest look on their faces stimulated him, and he played on and on, grading his music from grave to gay, to suit each in turn, until at last, feeling his wrist failing, he made the national hymn a final effort. Scarcely had the tune taken form than a chorus rose, at first swaying and uncertain, and then gaining power and steadiness, until the last word was reached. The men rubbed their eyes with the backs of horny hands, and women hugged him, and before he realized the situation, one stolid, square-faced man, who had virtually declined to talk to him the day before, was passing around his peaked fur cap to receive a ready shower of small coin, which Gurth could not refuse. So thus he earned his first money. By his violin and its speech, which, however exquisite, no man feels above him, he was admitted to the freemasonry of his companions.
A carpenter who had been home to see his old parents asked Gurth where he was going to settle, and then he realized that he did not know, save what his port was, and that he did not wish to locate far from the sea, nor in a sultry climate. The carpenter drew from him such scant outline of his schemes as he wished to tell—his plan of buying a farm, after he had learned the country’s ways. This man told him about the village where he lived, which was near a New England town whose railways offered a market for small fruits, and he advised Gurth to work for his board and lodging with one of the numerous fruit-growers until he learned the craft, saying that as he spoke English well, Waldsen might earn a trifle above his board, but that a man who had never done hard work was not worth much.
III
It was a bitterly cold winter; the wind swept fiercely through the cut between Sunset and Rocky hills, rushing down the main street at Glen Village, separating the neighbours on either side more effectively than drifts of snow could have done. However deep, there is something cheerful and exhilarating about snow. Children think that it is sent for their special amusement; the shy young man, who drives his sweetheart over to the “Social” in the next village, needs no excuse for putting his arm around her, for light sleighs have been known to upset suddenly without the slightest warning. The old folks are cheerful in their reminiscences of just such episodes, and compare each storm with some long-remembered one in the thirties, noting always the frail and inferior wearing quality of modern snow.
But Wintry Wind is the most exasperating and prying of nature’s messengers, whose mission is the uncovering of weaknesses in all things animate and inanimate. It soon discovers if your eyes are sensitive, your hat a size too small, that you are subject to rheumatism, that your breath is short when you walk uphill, and that your knees bend as you go down, and so turns your cloak over your head like an extinguisher. It knows precisely which shingle lacks a nail, and will lay bare spots calculated to make obstinate leaks. It also spies out the blind whose catch is loose, the gate with one hinge, the elm that is split in the crotch, and the particular chimney flue that leads to the room where your most important relation (who suffers from bronchitis) is being entertained at tea, and it gauges accurately which article on the clothes-line you value the most.
It was this sort of weather, combined with his daughter Margaret’s delicate health, that made Ezra Tolford, living at the Glen Mill, for which the village was named, resolve to have a hired man.
Now Ezra Tolford had many titles to local distinction. He was Deacon of the First Church, and his parents had been zealous before him, his grandfather having had the hardihood to fly to the woods with the church plate on the approach of the British in 1779, thereby risking his life via wild beasts, Hessians, and exposure,—a fact that is brought up in every local historical discourse to this day. Incidentally it might be mentioned that the plucky ancestor (owing to fright and darkness) was never able afterwards to locate the marshy spot where the precious metal was buried; this fact, however, is usually omitted.
Ezra was also Judge of Probate, thanks to a fragmentary law course taken in days when a fond mother had pinched and saved that her only boy might “make his mark.” Thirdly, he was the owner of the best mill on the Pequotuck. A mill that, in spite of the sale of flour and meal at the village store, kept its wheel going five days out of seven during nine months of the year, sawing wood when no one wished flour, and turning out middlings for the cattle when the stacks grew low. So swift was the river that ice very seldom silenced the song the old wheel hummed as it worked.
Lastly, by wise drainage the deacon had turned a dozen acres of protected meadow-land, heretofore regarded as next to useless, into one of the thriftiest fruit farms in southern New England.
All these things made Ezra’s daughter Margaret of special importance in many eyes besides his own, and it was for her sake that he resolved to have a man to hook up the team for her, when he was busy in the mill or away in the village, and do a thousand and one little errands that the sturdier daughters of his neighbours accomplished for themselves.
The Mill House, as it was called, stood on a hill between the Pequotuck and a little brook that, curving, joined the river below the dam. It was a placid-looking white house of a style of architecture that might be called New England Restored. It had been Colonial, but a modern bay-window, a piazza, and a lean-to in the rear had hybridized it; yet it still possessed a dignity never seen in the rural interpretations of the Queen Anne villa.
This particular house had a very attractive outlook. Raised well above them, it was bounded on the western side by the river and the mill-pond that always held the sunset reflections until the twilight absorbed them, while the old red mill with its moss-mottled roof focussed the view. Toward the north and east the meadows ran slantwise up a hillside, where, dotted here and there like grazing sheep, you could see the stones of the burying-ground, where the inhabitants of the glen took their final rest, as if their friends had left them as near heaven as possible, and safe from the floods that used once to sweep the valley. To the south the road ran tolerably straight for three miles down to Glen Village itself.
The interior of the house differed but slightly from others of its class, and that difference consisted in the greater genuineness of its fittings. Evidently the woman who presided over it appreciated relative values, for the sitting-room had glowing crimson curtains and a fire of logs in place of the usual “air-tight,” while in one corner, in the location usually chosen for the inevitable asthmatic parlour organ, stood an upright piano. On the table was a comfortable litter of books and papers.
By the window, looking down the road, stood Margaret Tolford. At the first glance there was nothing striking about her personality. Medium in height and colouring, her slight frame was wrapped in a soft white shawl that gave her a fragile air. At a second glance the deep gray eyes, that looked from under a brow narrowed by a quantity of smooth, coal-black hair, were magnetic in their intelligent wonder. Her eyes said, “There is much that I would understand, but I cannot;” whereas a shallower nature would have thought, “I am misunderstood!”
The wind whistled in the chimney, and the pud, pud, of a heavy flatiron came from the kitchen, with snatches of inharmonious song, as the thick-lipped Polack who was the “help” pummelled the towels and folded them at angles that would have distracted a mathematician. In fact, this very Polack was one of Margaret’s lesser problems, a sort of necessary evil who, in summer, bareheaded and barefooted, pervaded the premises, but having with her gay neckerchief a certain sort of picturesque fitness, which, when brought nearer, booted and confined to the winter kitchen, became an eyesore. Other farmers’ daughters did the cooking and the lighter work, and only had a woman to help with the washing.
Margaret had never done manual labour; her mother, dead now two years, had stood between this only child and all hardship, and coaxed the Deacon to send her to a collegiate school when her playdays were over. In the summer holidays she was petted and caressed and kept from soiling her hands, and when at eighteen she was coming home for good to mingle as an equal with her parents and learn her part in life, her mother died, and her father closed the one tender spot in his stern heart around his daughter. So she lived shut up within herself, craving a more intellectual companionship than the neighbourhood furnished, and starving unconsciously for demonstrative affection.
Tolford was a silent sort of man, who had been so thoroughly understood by his wife that she seemed to know his unvoiced wishes. Because he showed so few signs of an affection that would have won a hearty response from Margaret, he failed to comprehend the difference between a deeply reserved nature and physical weakness, to which cause he laid her abstraction. His love for her, therefore, took the schooltime form of shielding her from work. He liked to hear her play hymns on Sunday evenings, and was very proud to have her train the children of the Sunday School in their carols, but it never occurred to him to ask her advice in any of his plans, or expect aid from her. She stood apart, not understanding the love her mother had drawn from the stern, lonely man, and while he excused her reserve, and told the neighbours she was delicate and peaky, her only ailment lay in lack of motive.
It grew dark, and points of light appeared here and there in the landscape; an icy slip of a moon pierced the driving clouds. Margaret drew the curtains and sat down by the fire, its light sending a glow to her usually colourless face. A brisk, though heavy, footstep came along the entry from the kitchen, and Ezra Tolford opened the door, and, stopping a moment to adjust his eyes to the fitful light, went toward the fire, rubbing his hands. Margaret immediately arose and, pushing a rocking-chair towards him, prepared to light the lamp.
“Never mind that now, daughter,” he said; “sit down, I want to talk a bit. You know I said I’d get a hired man to ‘piece out’ with the work? Well, he’s come!”
The Deacon was, in reality, fairly well educated, but since his wife’s death (she had kept him to her standard, for she had been a schoolmistress) his English had relapsed into localisms, and, besides this, at the present moment he seemed ill at ease. Margaret merely understood the announcement as a roundabout question as to whether any accommodations were prepared for the man, and said: “The shed bedroom is just as Hans Schmidt left it last fall; I suppose a bed could be made up now, and Zella can clean the room to-morrow, but it will be very cold unless you give him a stove.”
“Well—er—you see,” said the Deacon, “I don’t suppose that room will do,—em!—hem! You see in the beginning he is to live with me without wages, and—” here the Deacon came to an embarrassed standstill, and Margaret broke in,—“Without wages! If he is as poor as that, he will scarcely object to the shed room without a fire for the night!” She did not say this because she was at all mean or hard-hearted, but from her experience of the servant question, any one who was willing to work for nothing must either be utterly worthless or bereft of reason.
“Not at all, not at all, daughter! You see, the man is not a common workman, but may buy the Hill Farm some day as a home for his sister, and wants me to teach him to grow small fruits, and learn the way of things here while he gets it to rights. I’ve contracted with him for a year—” and as Margaret did not reply, he continued, “You know Peter Svenson, the carpenter, who went home to Denmark last summer to see his folks? Well, he brought this young man back with him. Peter knows all about him, and says he is perfectly honest and speaks good English, but is close-mouthed, and doesn’t like to talk of his affairs, because his family used to be well fixed, but now they are all dead but one sister. He has a few thousand dollars and is going to make a home and bring her over in a year.
“Peter says he can play a fiddle, but isn’t used to hard work, and advised me not to pay him money, but to offer to show him how I work my farm and give him his board for his services.” Then the Deacon continued, giving the account of Gurth that the garrulous carpenter had pieced together to cover his lack of real knowledge. As Margaret still said nothing, he added:—
“Now I think the attic east room might be straightened up,—it won’t take long, and it can be bettered to-morrow.”
Instantly Margaret was divided between extreme wonderment at this strange arrangement on her father’s part, and fierce resentment at the intrusion of a stranger in the house,—a man who was and was not a servant, who must necessarily eat with them, who would not perhaps leave the room when the meal was finished.
If Margaret had a decided eccentricity, it was her positive resentment of male society, and she bore the reputation of being proud, because, when the village swains drove up in their newly washed buggies with bows of ribbon tied to the whip handles, and with self-satisfied glances asked her to take a drive, the usual rural compliment, she invariably declined, and their irate mothers settled that she either must be in a decline, experiencing religion, or else, woful thought, “engaged to some fellow Northampton way,” where she had been to school.
The truth was that she had, through a wide range of reading and no experience, built up a well-nigh impossible ideal, half medi?val heroism, half modern, intellectual refinement, that was irreconcilable with the type of men with whom she came in contact.
Margaret was thoroughly accustomed to her father’s silent mood and considered him by far (as he was) the best-informed man she knew. He was also fond of reading, not only subscribed to a daily paper, but several weeklies and magazines, and always allowed her to buy any book she fancied, so that their winter evenings, when Margaret read aloud, were comfortably sociable, and sympathetic. It was no wonder, therefore, that she resented the presence of a stranger, and it was with rather a lowering brow that she followed her father to the kitchen.
Deacon Tolford went in first, and said abruptly, but in a tone that Margaret knew was meant to be cordial: “Daughter, this is Gurth Waldsen, who is going to help me out this year; we want to make him feel so much at home that he’ll settle in Glen Village. You’d better tell Zella to hurry supper; I guess we are both of us hungry.”
Margaret added some ordinary words of greeting before she looked at the figure who rose from the settle back of the stove and bowed, without offering to shake hands, as a native would have done. Then she raised her eyes and saw the tall, easy figure with the golden-tipped hair and beard, his dreamy gray eyes looking at her with a directness that was not curious, but almost as of pleading for mercy, while the mouse-coloured corduroy suit that Waldsen wore brought out the clearness of his skin in a degree that was almost startling.
“I hope that I put you not to great trouble,” he said in his soft baritone. “If you will tell me where I may place my things, I can arrange all myself.” The English was musical, and doubly so from the slight hesitation and accent.
What passed through Margaret’s brain she never clearly realized, but she heard her voice as from a long distance asking him to follow her upstairs, and found herself lighting a lamp, and leading the way.
It was strange that she had never noticed before how dreary the attic was. She merely indicated the room, saying that he might leave his things there, and to-morrow he could bring up firewood, while to-night she would give him an extra supply of bedding. As she left, Gurth looked after her and at the bare room, and shivered, but the room seemed less cold to him than the woman. There was no reason that he should expect her to be cordial; doubtless she would have preferred a field hand to whom she need not speak.
He realized that his very disappointment grew from the lack of proper comprehension of his present position. “Oh, Andrea! Andrea! for one sight of her sweet, sympathetic face, one touch only!” A harsh, clanging bell from below waked him to the fact that if he wanted water to wash his hands, he must bring it up himself; he looked at them dubiously, smoothed his hair, flipped off his clothes with his handkerchief, and went down.
He hoped that he might be allowed to eat his meals in the kitchen; it would indicate his position more clearly, and he should be less lonely than with constrained companionship. This was not to be. As he passed the dining room door, he saw a table laid for three, at which Ezra Tolford was already sitting, wrapped in a gaily figured dressing-gown, and collarless, as was his habit when either at ease or at work. He was reading a paper which was propped against a pitcher, and he barely raised his eyes as he asked Gurth to be seated.
Margaret came in with a coffee-pot and a plate of biscuits. She had thrown off her shawl, and her crimson cashmere waist accentuated the depth of her eyes. Gurth unconsciously arose and drew out her chair, waited until she was seated, and pushed it in again. It was a very simple and ordinary act of courtesy, and done as a matter of course without the slightest manner of conferring a favour. Margaret coloured at this hitherto unknown civility, but said “Thank you” as if she were quite accustomed to it, while the Deacon did not notice it at all.
The meal began in silence, but the Deacon finished his paper with the first cup of coffee, and began to discuss the affairs of the farm in a businesslike manner. The ice-cutting must begin to-morrow, it was quite clear, for the last snowstorm had been dry and had drifted away from the pond.
Had Waldsen ever cut ice? No! Well, he could superintend the weighing of it, then. Could he milk? No! The hay must be transferred from the left side of the great barn to the right, as the supports were giving way, and Peter Svenson, the carpenter, must come and straighten them, as well as do some tinkering at the mill. Squire Black at the village needed two tons of hay, so that much could be carted in next morning.
Waldsen fortunately was thoroughly familiar with horses, and was a good deal of a carpenter, having always had a fancy for such work, and, when a boy, he had for amusement built an arbour for his mother in the garden of her country-house. He was able to volunteer to repair the barn and mill, if the Deacon had the necessary tools. The Deacon was too keen to show his surprise, but accepted the offer, and said it would come handy to have some patching up done before it came time to clear the land. He could manage the cows and the mill, if Gurth took charge of the horses and the chores.
The Deacon, having finished his meal, shook the crumbs from a fold of the tablecloth of which he made a sort of apron in his lap, and left the table. Margaret followed him, and Waldsen, hesitating a moment, went to the back entry and began to collect his possessions, taking his violin case and a small box first. When he returned for his trunk, the Deacon appeared, and, as a matter of course, helped him carry it upstairs. The trunk was very heavy, being half full of books. Then the two men went out to feed the horses; the sharp, dry snow blew in like powdered flint when they opened the door, and made rainbows about the lantern as they went down the path.
After the table was clear, Margaret took up the paper, read for a few moments, then dropped it suddenly and went into the kitchen. Zella, who was knitting a skirt of scarlet yarn, seemed very sulky and angry when Margaret bade her take some wood to the attic bedroom. “I no carry for hired man,” was her rejoinder. “You will take the wood up to-night,” said Margaret, in the quiet, decided tone that was habitual to her; “to-morrow he will carry it himself.” In a short time a fire was started in the old, open-fronted wood stove, that sent a welcome glow across the long, low room with its deeply recessed dormer windows. The furniture consisted of an old-fashioned four-posted bedstead and some spindle-backed chairs, discarded long ago from the lower rooms, an old chest of drawers and a table, while a row of wooden pegs behind the chimney did duty as a closet.
Going to the adjoining lumber room, Margaret pulled open a long trunk and took a chintz quilt, some curtains that had originally belonged to the old bed, and three or four carpet rugs. These she dragged into the attic, and then brought from a downstairs room a large rocking-chair, covered with Turkey red, and a blue china bowl and pitcher. The last man who had slept in the attic had washed at the pump. In a few minutes the bare room looked quite habitable, and Margaret returned to her newspaper.
In perhaps half an hour her father returned, and she heard Waldsen’s steps going up the creaking back stairs.
“Well, daughter, quite a figure of a man, isn’t he? I know you don’t like to have men folks about, but you see this arrangement will advantage me greatly. If I can sell him the Hill Farm, it will be so much clear gain, besides being a bargain for him, for it’s running down and needs lots of tinkering. And if we get a good neighbour there, it won’t be so lonesome for you when I go over town. I can arrange with him for half-time work in the growing season, so he can get his fruit running. I’ll sell that place for three thousand dollars—and three thousand dollars in hand,—why, Margaret, you might go to Europe next summer with Judge Martin’s folks! He told me yesterday they expected to take a tour, and that if I’d let you go, you’d be good company for Elizabeth. What do you say to that, daughter?”
Going to him and sitting on the arm of his chair, she hid her face on his shoulder, a childish habit of hers, and said: “Dear old dad, I should want you to go with me, and then, besides, it is all so uncertain. This man may not really want to buy a place, or he may have no money, or—or, a great many things may not be true!”
“No, no, child! the man is all right, he wants to have a home of his own by next Christmas. There is some reason why his sister cannot come until then. I like to keep you with me, but my little girl is too lonely; she must see more company, and if she’s too wise and too proud for the folks about home, why, this place isn’t the whole world.”
Meanwhile Waldsen was sitting on his trunk in the attic room in an attitude of dejection. Then, as the fire flickered, he saw the change that had been wrought. Not great in fact, but in the womanly touch, and he was comforted. Taking from his pocket the little case containing Andrea’s portrait, he placed it on the chest of drawers, and, after closing the door, took out his violin.
Margaret and her father were playing their nightly game of backgammon when she started, dropped her checkers with a rattle, and grasped his arm. The Deacon looked up in surprise, and then, as he heard a far-away strain of music that seemed to come from the chimney, said, “Don’t be scared, daughter, it’s only the young man playing his fiddle!” But somehow neither father nor daughter cared to continue their game, and a moment later Margaret opened the door of the sitting-room and one at the foot of the stairs, and stood there listening, in spite of the cold air that swept down. Accustomed at most to the trick playing of travelling concert troupes, who visited the next town, this expressive legato music was a revelation to Margaret, and stirred her silent nature to untested depths. The first theme was pleading and wholly unknown to her, but presently the air changed to the song she had taught the children during the last Christmas season; through it she heard two voices singing,—the violin and the man.
“Brightly shone the moon that night
???Though the frost was cruel
?When a poor man came in sight
???Gathering winter fuel.
 
“Hither page and stand by me
???If thou know’st it telling
?Yonder peasant, who is he
???Where and what his dwelling?”
“Hymn tunes,” said Deacon Tolford, pursing his mouth in a satisfied way. “I forgot to ask him if he is a church member. Perhaps he might help out at the Endeavour Concert next month.” But Margaret, shaking her head impatiently, stood with her finger on her lips.
The Tolford household was more cheerful after Waldsen’s coming. Not that he intruded upon the Deacon and his daughter, merely talking a few minutes after meals, perhaps, and then going to his attic, but little by little the mutual strangeness wore off. Though Waldsen fulfilled to the letter the work that he had engaged to do, he found that it was impossible to keep up the illusion of being a mere labourer, and reconciled himself from the fact that in other farming families the steady male “help” stands placed on a different footing with the household, from the transient field hands who come and go with the crops and seasons. Farmer Elliott’s “help” was his brother-in-law, and Farmer Bryce’s, his wife’s cousin.
The Deacon looked at the whole matter from a commercial standpoint. Here was a likely young man who, though he was unused to many kinds of manual labour, eked out his lack of knowledge with extreme willingness, and asked no wages other than instruction. At the same time he was a prospective purchaser of a house that had been difficult to sell. That was the beginning and end of the matter. That Waldsen was rarely intelligent, and added to their home life, was also an advantage, but secondary.
Every day Gurth held Margaret’s chair, and placed it at the table; there was no longer any restraint between them. He saw in her a sweet, womanly nature, whose best part was evidently held in check, owing to the peculiarities of the community in which she lived, which he could not fathom in spite of freedom from all prejudice. He admitted the beauty of purpose with which she clung to her ideals, but could not help contrasting her reserve with Andrea’s spontaneous cheerfulness, her love of everything that grew from the ground and every bird that flew, while Margaret seemed but half conscious of the natural beauties that surrounded her.
Waldsen was most contented when employed at the mill. Birds that braved the winter gathered about it for scraps of grain. Nuthatches pried under the mossy shingles, meadow-larks stalked solemnly in the stubbly grass for sweepings, and robins fed upon the berries of many bushes that hedged the pond. Wild geese rested there, and for days at a time flocks of ducks would pass and pause for shelter, and owls roosted nightly in the mill loft, making hearty meals of mice. Many a time he saw the quail coveys far up on the hill running about among the gravestones, and he put a sheaf of rye there for them, and it waved its shadowy pinions above the snow, as if saying to the silent community, “I, too, have slept in the ground; have courage!”
Another sheaf he fastened over the mill door, and, seeing it, the Deacon lectured him upon the folly of gathering a lot of birds that must be shot or scared away in berry season, saying, “It’s all very well now, but if you encourage them, where will the profit be when all the biggest berries are bird marked?”
Gurth felt like answering, “I will let the birds have them all, so long as they come to me.” But then, where would be the bread for Andrea? He felt beauty so keenly that he could not bear to harness Nature and drive her like a cart-horse for his profit. His needs and his desires were almost irreconcilable, and the consciousness of it well-nigh appalled him. He could not change his temperament in the least degree; even his experiment of passing for a labourer was partly frustrated; he might possibly have masqueraded as a wandering musician, but he began to feel his incapacity for material toil.
Margaret all this time lived in a waking dream; unknown to herself, all the pent-up forces of her affection had crystallized about this stranger. His natural courtesy seemed to her a gentle personal tribute; the mystery he allowed to surround him (being wholly unconscious of the version of his story the carpenter had told), and his poetic personality, made him seem like some one she had met in an old romance. Then the music, too, for often now in the evening he brought his violin and accompanied her when she sang or played, giving her new understanding, while he corrected the hardness of her method so tactfully that she did not realize it. Lending her new music, substituting the “Songs without Words” for the hackneyed “Airs with Variations,” and teaching her German and Danish ballads, that lent themselves to her rich contralto voice.
Margaret became a different creature, and rare glints of red touched her cheeks. The Deacon accounted for this arousing in the pleasure she anticipated in going abroad if the Hill Farm was sold. He was so thoroughly convinced of her indifference to men, that he was blind to the awakening of her heart.
Margaret noticed with pleasure the various details and changes in Waldsen’s attic, where she went occasionally to dust, and thought that they betokened contentment. The room was no longer bare, festoons of ground pine hung from the rafters and canopied the windows, a half-dozen home-made cages filled the dormer nearest the stove, and sheltered a collection of wild birds rescued from cold and hunger, which chirped from them merrily, while a little screech-owl blinked sleepily from a perch in the corner. Books lay on the table and filled a rough shelf under the eaves. Writing implements and paper also lay about, and traces of bold, irregular characters were on the big sheets of blotting-paper.
It was Andrea’s picture, however, that interested Margaret more than anything. She looked at it day after day, trying to trace a resemblance to Gurth. One day she kissed the lips, and then, suddenly remembering that he might also do this, fled precipitately to her room, and, locking the door, stayed until dark, when she went down to supper with her face flushed, and a nervous air. So nervous was she that her hand trembled until she almost dropped the cup that she was passing to her father. Gurth grasped it, and thus their hands met for the first time.
IV
The last of February a southerly rain inaugurated the spring thaw. Great cakes of ice came down the river, and barricaded the mill. Then a cold snap followed, and the trees hung thick with fantastic icicles. In the morning the Deacon, Gurth, and several neighbours went up the stream to dislodge, with long poles, cakes of ice that were wedged threateningly between trees, and after dinner, when the two men had been talking of the caprices of the storm, the Deacon said: “It’s worth walking up to the Hill Farm, daughter, to see the ice on those white pines, but you must mind your footing. Waldsen’s going up there to shovel off the shed roof, and he’ll be glad to beau you, I know.”
Margaret blushed painfully, but Gurth, totally missing the significance of the word, said, in his precise language, that he was about to ask Miss Margaret, but feared she could not walk so far. So Margaret brought her coat, trimmed with a neck-band and cuffs of fur, and, drawing a dark red tam-o’-shanter over her black hair, set off with Waldsen.
As the Deacon watched them go down the road, dark and fair, slender and tall, both talking with animation, he suddenly gave a long whistle, for an idea, born of the word he had just used, flashed across his matter-of-fact mind, and he said aloud,—“Well, I never! Well, I never! She shan’t find her old dad a spoil sport, anyhow! I’ve my doubts if he’ll ever make out with farming, but I suspect he comes of good folks, and there’s a good living at the mill, and Margaret’s my only one!” Then he smiled contentedly to himself. The Deacon had loved his wife with a sentiment that was regarded as a weakness by his neighbours, and he was prepared to enjoy the courtship of his only daughter and forward it by all the innocent local ruses. Yes, he would even make errands to town, and at the last moment send Waldsen to drive Margaret in his stead.
The couple crossed the bridge and climbed the steep river bank towards the Hill Farm. Waldsen was in high spirits and hummed and whistled as they struggled and slipped along, steadying Margaret every few steps. Happiness and the bracing air had given her a clear colour, and her eyes were sparkling—she was a different being from the pale, silent girl of two months ago. The mail-carrier, who met them at the cross-roads and handed Gurth some letters, thought what a fine couple they made, and immediately started his opinion as a rumour around the community.
Margaret walked about outside the little brown house, while her companion freed the roof from its weight of ice. Her own home was in sight across the river, and at the left was a lovely strip of hill country that rose and fell until it merged with the horizon. She was so absorbed in the view that she did not realize when the shovelling was finished, until Waldsen stood close beside ............