Kitabı oku: «A Little Girl in Old Pittsburg», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XI
THE WOOF OF DAILY THINGS
"Dilly, you're not worth shucks since you came back!" exclaimed the boy in a severely upbraiding tone. "You don't do nothin' as you used, you just sit and moon. Do you want to go back to that old man? I sh'd think you'd been awful dull."
"Do you talk that way at school?"
"Oh, well, a fellow needn't be so fussy at home."
"What would you like me to do? You are off with the boys – "
"That's because you're no good. You don't run races nor climb trees nor wade in the brook to catch frogs, nor jump – I'll bet you don't know how to jump any more. And you were a staver!"
"Girls leave off those things. And you are a good deal younger, and ought to have a boy's good times. I must sew and spin and help keep house and work in the garden to take care of the flowers and learn to cook."
"My! I wouldn't be a girl for anything! Dilly, who will you marry?"
Her face was scarlet. Must a girl marry? She understood now the drift of the talk she had unwittingly overheard. And her cheek burned thinking that she had been offered and declined.
"I'm not going to marry any one in a good while," she returned gravely.
"Tim Garvin asked me – " he looked at her hesitatingly.
"Well?"
"If he might come round. He thinks you sing like a mocking bird. And he says he likes yellow hair. I don't. I wish yours was black and that you had red cheeks and that you'd laugh real loud, and want to play games."
"There are plenty of little girls, Felix, who are ready for any sort of fun."
He spun round on his heel and went off. It had been one of the resplendent early autumn days with a breath of summer in the air and the richness of all ripening things. The call of the wood thrush came softly through the trees with a lingering delicious tenderness. She sat on a large boulder nearly at the foot of a great sycamore tree. She used to have a play-house here. What had changed her so? She did not want to go back to Philadelphia. She would never want to see Mr. Bartram again. In a way she was content. Her father loved her very much, it was a stronger love in one way, a man's love, though her mother was tender and planning a nice future for her.
She did not understand that it was the dawning of womanhood, the opening of a new, strange life different from what had gone before. There was a sort of delicious mystery about it and she stood in tremulous awe. It was going to bring her something that she half dreaded, half desired.
She had gone down by the schoolhouse one afternoon. They had built a new one, really quite smart, and now they had taken off an hour of the last session. The children were out at play, racing, screaming, wrestling, here playing ring around a rosy, here London bridge is falling down, here a boy chasing a girl and kissing her roughly, she slapping his face and being kissed half a dozen times more. Had she ever been one of this boisterous, romping group?
The French blood had brought in more refinement, like the Quaker element. And she had been rather diffident. At home they were more delicate, while they had too much good breeding and kindliness to hold themselves much above their neighbors.
The marriage of Janie Byerly was quite an event. It took place at ten in the morning and there was a great wedding cake with slices for the girls to dream on. Then they went down to the boat in a procession and there was a merry time as the boat made ready to push out. Rice had not come in yet, but old shoes were there in abundance.
There were other marriages and the little girl went to them because she did not want to slight her old companions. Some of the couples set up housekeeping in a two-roomed cabin and the new wife went on with her spinning or weaving and some of them were quite expert at tailoring. There was plenty of work getting ready for winter.
Tim Garvin had been as good as his word and came on Sunday evening. Daffodil sheltered herself behind her father's protecting wing. They talked of the whiskey question, of the Ohio trade, and then there was a lagging, rather embarrassing time. Four elderly people sat around – they generally retired and gave the young folks a chance, but it was Daffodil who disappeared first. And Tim did not make a second attempt.
The Langdale boys had better luck in establishing friendliness. Ned came over in high feather one afternoon. Daffodil was practising a rather intricate piece of lace making. He looked manly and proud. He was tall and well filled out, very well looking.
"I hope you'll all congratulate me," he began in a buoyant tone. "I've enlisted. I'm going to live up at the Fort and begin soldier life in earnest."
"And I do most heartily wish you success," declared grandmere, her eyes lighting up with a kind of admiration at the manly face in the pride of youth. "We shall need soldiers many a day yet, though I hope the worst is over. Still the Indians are treacherous and stubborn."
"And we may have another fight on our hands;" laughing. "For we are not going to be ridden over rough shod."
"But you must belong to the government side now."
"I suppose so;" flushing.
The delinquent distillers had been summoned to Philadelphia and had refused to go.
"This is our very living," declared grandad, who was one of the most fiery insurgents. "Then they will tax our grain, our crops of all kinds. A king could do no worse! What did I tell you about these men! Why, we'll have to emigrate t'other side of the Mississippi and start a new town. That's all we get for our labor and hard work."
"I ought to have waited until this thing was settled," Ned said rather ruefully, studying Daffodil's face. "But I had hard work to coax father, and when he consented I rushed off at once. He thinks there's going to be fortunes in this iron business, and Archie won't be worth shucks at it. He hates it as much as I do, but he's all for books, and getting his living by his brains. Maybe he'll be a lawyer."
Daffodil flushed. She held Archie's secret.
"You don't like it," Ned began when he had persuaded her to walk a little way with him. "You said once you didn't like soldiering. Yet it is a noble profession, and I'm not going to stay down at the bottom of the line."
"No," with a sweet reluctance as if she was sorry to admit it. "It seems cruel to me, why men should like to kill each other."
"They don't like it in the way of enjoyment, but do their duty. And they are for the protection of the homes, the women and children. We may have another Indian raid; we have some" – then he paused, he was going to say, "some French to clear out," but refrained. The French still held some desirable western points.
"Father talks of the war occasionally, and mother shivers and says – 'My heart would have broken if I had known that!' And to be away three years or more, never knowing if one was alive!"
No, she wouldn't do for a soldier's wife. And Archie had prefigured himself a bachelor; he really had nothing to fear there, only would she not take more interest in his brother? There were other young fellows in the town, but not many of her kind. Well, he would wait – she seemed quite like a child yet.
Somehow she had not made the same impression as she had in Philadelphia. No one praised her hair or her beautiful complexion or her grace in dancing. It did not hurt her exactly, but she felt sorry she could not please as readily. Only – she did not care for that kind of florid approbation.
Grandmere looked up from her work when they had gone out. "He is a fine lad," she commented. "And they are of a good family. Daffodil is nearing sixteen. Though there doesn't seem much need of soldiers – it is a noble profession. It seems just the thing for him."
"She is such a child yet. I don't know how we could spare her. And her father is so fond of her."
Mrs. Bradin had a rather coveting regard for the young man. And a pretty girl like Daffodil should not hang on hand.
Ned Langdale made friends easily at the Fort. And during the second month, on account of a little misbehavior in the ranks, he was advanced to the sergeantship.
Meanwhile feeling ran higher and higher. Those who understood that the power of the general government must be the law of the land were compelled to keep silence lest they should make matters worse. Even the clergy were forced to hold their peace. Processes were served and thrown into the fire or torn to bits. Then the government interfered and troops were ordered out.
Bernard Carrick had tried to keep his father within bounds. It did not do to protest openly, but he felt the government should be obeyed, or Pittsburg would be the loser. Bradford and several others ordered the troops to march to Braddock's field, and then to Pittsburg. The town was all astir and in deadly terror lest if the insurgents could not rule they would ruin. But after all it was a bloodless revolution. Governor Mifflin, after a temperate explanation, softening some of the apparently arbitrary points, commanded the insurgents to disperse. Breckenridge thought it safest to give good words rather than powder and balls. So they marched through the town in excellent order and came out on the plains of the Monogahela where the talking was softened with libations of whiskey, and a better understanding prevailed, the large distillers giving in to the majesty of the law.
Some of the still disgruntled insurgents set fire to several barns, but no special damage was done. And thus ended the year's turmoil and business went on with renewed vigor. There was also an influx of people, some to settle, others from curiosity. But the West was awakening a new interest and calling for immigrants.
Mrs. Janie Sanders came back with glowing accounts of the town on the Ohio. And now trade was fairly established by the line of boats. And from there down to New Orleans continual traffic was established.
The older log houses were disappearing or turned into kitchens with a finer exterior in front. People began to laugh at the old times when there was much less than a thousand inhabitants.
And though Bernard Carrick still called his daughter "Little Girl," she was quite grown up with a slim lissome figure and her golden hair was scarcely a shade darker. She was past sixteen, and yet she had never had a lover. Young men dropped in of a Sunday afternoon or evening, but she seemed to act as if they were her father's guests. After two or three attempts they dropped out again.
Archie had gone to Philadelphia for a year at a preparatory school, then was to enter college. Ned now was first lieutenant, having been promoted for bravery and foresight in warding off an Indian sortie that might have been a rather serious matter.
The little girl had vanished with the old Pittsburg. She hardly knew herself in these days. Something seemed to touch her with a magic wand. She was full of joy with all things of the outside world, and the spring and the early summer, nature seemed to speak in all manner of wooing tongues and she answered. She took long walks in the woods and came home with strange new flowers. There was not much to read, it was not a season of intellectuality but a busy, thrifty time laying the foundation for the great city of industry and prosperity that was to be.
Barbe Carrick made pretty garments with fine needlework and lace and laid them by in an old oaken chest. Grandmere was sometimes a little impatient over the dreaming child. Another year was going and she had counted on Daffodil being married before the next generation of girls came to the fore. Plain ones, loud, awkward ones were married and had a jollification. Some of them at twenty had three or four children.
She was very sweet, charming and helpful. Grandad had taken the "knuckling down," as he called it, rather hard, but it seemed as if the tax and more came back in increased sales. He was very fond of small Sandy, now a fast-growing boy, but there was a different love for Daffodil, who looked over his accounts, read the paper to him, and listened to his stories as well as his complaints.
"I wish it wasn't so much the fashion for girls to marry," he said one day to Norah. "I don't know how we could spare Dilly."
"And keep her an old maid!" with scorn in her voice. "But it's queer! One would think lovers would buzz about her like bees."
Now and then there came a letter from Philadelphia that she answered with a good long one, yet she wondered afterward what she found to say. That visit seemed such a long, long while ago, almost in another life. And Mistress Betty Wharton had married and gone to Paris, as her husband was connected with the embassy. There were many questions yet to settle.
"Don't you want to go over to the Fort with me, Daffodil?" her father asked one afternoon. He had a fondness for Lieutenant Langdale, and not the slightest objection to him as a future son-in-law.
"Oh, yes," eagerly, and joined him, smiling under the great hat with its flaring front filled in with gathered silk, her white frock short enough to show the trim ankles and dainty feet, and her green silk parasol that had come from Philadelphia that very spring. She generally wore her hair in curls, though it was cut much shorter in the front and arranged not unlike more modern finger puffs. A very pretty girl of the refined type.
Fort Pitt was then in all its glory though the old block house of Colonel Bouquet was still standing, up Duquesne way, and there were soldiers strolling about and a few officers in uniform.
Langdale was on duty somewhere. Captain Forbes came to greet them.
"You'll find the general in his office, Mr. Carrick. May I take charge of Miss Carrick, meanwhile?"
"Yes, I shall be glad to have you."
Captain Forbes was a Philadelphian, so they were not at loss for conversation. Here two or three men were in earnest discussion, there one deeply interested in a book, who touched his cap without looking up. In a shady corner two men were playing chess, one a civilian, the other a young private.
"Well, Hugh, how goes it?" asked the captain.
"Why, I am not discouraged;" laughing and bowing to Daffodil.
"He is going to make a good, careful player, and I think a fine soldier."
"Allow me – Mr. Andsdell, Miss Carrick."
There had come with General Lee and his body of soldiers sent to quell the insurgents, a number of citizens out of curiosity to see the place. Among them a young Englishman, who had been in the country several years seeking his fortune and having various successes. He had tried the stage at Williamsburg, Virginia, and won not a little applause. He was an agreeable well-mannered person and always had excellent luck at cards without being a regular gamester. He made no secret of belonging to a titled family, but being a younger son with four lives between him and the succession he had come to America to try his fortune. Yet even in this new world fortunes were not so easily found or made.
Daffodil watched them with interest. M. de Ronville had played it with an elderly friend.
"You have seen it before?" Andsdell asked, raising his eyes and meeting the interested ones.
"Oh, yes; in Philadelphia. I spent a few months there."
Her voice had a charm. She seemed indeed not an ordinary girl.
"I have been there part of the last year. I was much interested."
He kept a wary eye on the young fellow's moves.
Once he said – "No, don't do that; think."
The other thought to some purpose and smiled.
"You are improving."
A flush of pleasure lighted the boyish face.
"Check," said Andsdell presently. "I had half a mind to let you win, but you made two wrong moves."
The young man glanced at his watch. "Now I must go and drill," he exclaimed. "Can we say to-morrow afternoon again?"
"With pleasure;" smiling readily.
He bowed himself away. Andsdell rose.
"I wonder if I might join your walk? I have met a Mr. Carrick – "
"That was my father likely. Grandfather is quite an old man."
"And figured in the – what shall we call it —émeute?"
Captain Forbes laughed. "That was about it. Yet at one time I was a good deal afraid there would be a fierce struggle. Better counsels prevailed, however. When the army arrived those who had not really dared to say the government was right so far as obedience was concerned came out on the right side. A thousand or so soldiers carried weight," with a half sarcastic laugh.
Andsdell stole furtive glances at the girl the other side of Forbes. What a graceful, spirited walk she had; just what one would expect with that well poised figure.
Then she stopped suddenly and the captain paused in his talk as she half turned.
"There's father," she exclaimed with a smile that Andsdell thought enchanting.
He had met the Englishman before and greeted him politely. After a little talk he slipped his daughter's arm through his and said mostly to her – "I am ready now."
She made her adieu with a kind of nonchalant grace in which there was not a particle of coquetry. He followed her with his eyes until they had turned the corner of the bastion. Then again he saw her as they were going out.
"I should think that girl would have half the men in the town at her feet," he said.
"Oh, Miss Carrick?" as if he was not quite certain. Then with a half smile – "Do you think so? Well, she hasn't."
"She is very lovely."
"In a certain way, yes. I believe our people like more color, more dash and spirit. We are not up on a very high round, pioneers seldom are. It takes a generation or so to do the hard work, then comes the embellishment. They are rather dignified and have some French ways. An old grandfather, the fourth generation back, might have stood for a portrait of the grand Marquis. It is on the mother's side."
"She doesn't favor the French."
"No, but the boy does, a bright, handsome fellow, wild as a deer and full of pranks. It will be hard to tell what race we do favor most. A hundred years hence we will be going back with a sort of pride, hunting up ancestors. At present there is too much to do."
Andsdell went his way presently. He was comfortably well lodged. He had a bountiful supper and then he went out for a walk. There was a young moon over in the west just light enough to bring out the silvery beech trunks and touch the tips of the grasses. The woodthrush still gave his long sweet call at intervals. This path led into the town. He would not go that way. He wished he knew just where these Carricks lived. He fancied her sitting on the porch drinking in the loveliness of the evening.
How absurd! He had seen pretty girls before, danced with them, flirted with them. There were the imperious belles of Virginia, who bewitched a man's fancy in one evening. There were the fair seductive maids of Philadelphia, and so far he had not been specially impressed with the girls of this town. A crowd were coming this way – he heard the strident laughter and loud voices, so he stepped aside.
Dilly was not sitting out in the fragrant air, but trying to explain a lesson to Felix. Neither did she give one thought to the young Englishman. She was glad in her inmost heart that Ned Langdale had been engaged elsewhere. Something in his eyes troubled her. She did not want to make him unhappy. She hated to be cold and distant to her friend, yet when she warmed a little he seemed to take so much for granted that she did not feel inclined to grant. Why couldn't one be satisfied with friendship? Occasionally she heard from Archie. They were eager, ambitious letters and she always read them aloud.
But if there could come any warmer interest Archie never would be content with this busy, bustling, working town, and then they would lose her. Every day she grew dearer to the mother. Geoffrey Andsdell decided he did not like the place very well either. He could not be winning money all the time from the garrison, and no business opening had been really thrust upon him, though he felt it was high time he turned his attention to the fact of making an honest living. He had wasted four years since he left England. It would be folly to return, and when that thought crossed his mind he bit his lip and an ugly look settled in his eyes. He had come to the New World to forget all that.
Yes, he would go back to Philadelphia. There were genteel opportunities there, and he was not a dullard if he had not been business bred.
He was asking a little advice of Mrs. Forbes as they had been sauntering about the hills that were showing bits of autumnal scenery and scattering the fragrance of all ripening things on the air. The jocund song of the birds had settled into a sort of leisurely sweetness, their summer work was done, nest building and caring for the young was over with for the season, and they could review their losses and gains. Somewhere along the stream that wound in and out a great frog boomed hoarsely and the younger ones had lost their fine soprano in trying to emulate him. Insects of all kinds were shrilling and whirring, yet underneath it all there was a curious stillness.
Then a human voice broke on their ear singing a merry Irish lilt.
"Oh, that's Daffodil Carrick. I could tell her voice from fifty others. It is never loud but it carries so distinctly. Let's see where she is."
They turned into the wider path zigzagging through the woods. Yes, there she sat on the limb of a tree she had bent down and was gently swaying to and fro. Her sun-bonnet was held by the strings serving to drive troublesome insects away. Her golden hair clustered about her temples in rings and then floated off by the motion of the swinging, a lovely bewildering cloud. She did not notice them at first; then she sprang up, her face a delicate rosy tint.
"Oh, Mrs. Forbes! And – Mr. Andsdell!"
She looked a startled woodland nymph. He thought he had never seen a more lovely picture.
"Are you having a nice time to yourself in your parlor among the hills? Can't we sit down and share it with you? I am tired. We have been rambling up hill and down dale."
A great hollow tree had fallen some time and Mrs. Forbes seated herself waving her hand to Mr. Andsdell, who looked a little uncertain.
"Oh, yes," Daffodil said. "I have been roaming around also. It is just the day for it. Now the sun comes out and tints everything, then it is shade and a beautiful gray green."
"You were singing," he said, thinking what compliment would not be too ornate. Out here in the woods with nature and truth one could not use flattery.
"Yes." She laughed softly a sound that was enchanting. "When I was little I was a devout believer in fairies. Grandfather Carrick's second wife came from Ireland when she was fifteen, and she knew the most charming stories. You know there are stories that seem true and hers did. I used to feel sure they would come and dance in the grass. That was the song little Eileen sang, and they carried her off, but they couldn't keep her because she wore a cross that had been put round her neck when she was christened."
"And did you want to be carried off?" he asked.
"Yes, I think I did. But I had a cross that I made of beads and named them after the saints. We are not Catholics, but Huguenots. I took my cross out in the woods with me, but the fairies never came."
"There is a great deal of really beautiful faith about those things," said Mrs. Forbes. "And some of the Indian legends as well. Old Watersee has stores of them. Some one ought to collect the best of them. Fairy stories go all over the world, I think, in different guise. They are the delight of our early lives. It's sad to lose that childhood faith."
"Oh, I don't want to lose it all," Daffodil said earnestly. "I just say to myself it might have been true somewhere."
Then they branched off into other matters. The sky grew grayer and the wind moaned through the trees, shaking down a cloud of ripe leaves.
"Is it going to rain?" asked Andsdell.
"I think it will storm by to-morrow, but not now. You see, evening is coming on. We might go down;" tentatively, not sure she was the one to propose it.
The path was beautiful, winding in and out, sometimes over the pile of richest moss, then stirring up the fragrance of pennyroyal. But the streets and houses began to appear.
Barbe Carrick sat on the porch waiting for her daughter, always feeling a little anxious if she loitered, though these woods were free from stragglers. She came to meet them now, she knew Mrs. Forbes and invited them to rest awhile, and they cheerfully accepted. Then she went for some cake and grapes and brought some foaming spruce beer. Even grandmere came out to meet the guests. Andsdell was delighted and praised everything and Mrs. Bradin said with her fine French courtesy – "You must come again."
"I shall be most happy to," he replied.
They finished their walk almost in silence. Andsdell was recalling the many charms of the young girl. Mrs. Forbes was looking upon him in the light of a lover. She could understand that the ordinary young man of the town could not make much headway with Daffodil Carrick. There were some nice men in the garrison, but after all – And it was high time Daffodil had a lover. All women are matchmakers by instinct and delight in pairing off young folks. She was a happy wife herself, but she recalled the fact that the girl was not in love with soldiers.
