Essential Novelists - Harold Frederic. Frederic Harold
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white and green, and he's been having a sort of fandango out there—a house-warming, I take it. Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."
I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and began to find comfort of mind again.
My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then, or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with:
"Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs and toads?"
This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended.
I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his. This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck, and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine——
Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the nights of my life!
At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly, enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark; but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and, judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party, I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them in any disguise.
I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival—for which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads together—but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact, they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I learned afterward.
All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation.
And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on both sides.
Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for people nowadays.
But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained. Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father. Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's. It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall—an ambitious enough name, surely, for a forest fishing-cottage.
Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms, while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down.
I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear. They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep, nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies' boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there.
It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly cover of his simple middle life.
If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of me, for I did not notice it.
I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion, fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail, this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr. Stewart was evidently