William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
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it's no good your trying to get out of it that way," retorted the beauty. "There he comes now! I'm really in love with him, you know," she said, as Kinney opened the door and came hulking forward.
Nobody said anything at once, but Bartley laughed finally, and ventured, "Well, I'll propose for you to Kinney."
"Oh, I dare say!" cried the beauty, with a lively effort of wit. "Mr. Kinney, I have fallen in love with your camp, d' ye know?" she added, as Kinney drew near, "and I'm beggin' Mr. Willett to let me come and live here among you."
"Well, ma'am," said Kinney, a little abashed at this proposition, "you couldn't do a better thing for your health, I guess."
The proprietor of The Boston Events turned about, and began to look over the arrangements of the interior; the other ladies went with him, conversing, in low tones. "These must be the places where the men sleep," they said, gazing at the bunks.
"We must get Kinney to explain things to us," said Mr. Willett a little restlessly.
Mrs. Macallister jumped briskly to her feet. "Oh, yes, do, Mr. Willett, make him explain everything! I've been tryin' to coax it out of him, but he's such a tease!"
Kinney looked very sheepish in this character, and Mrs. Macallister hooked Bartley to her side for the tour of the interior. "I can't let you away from me, Mr. Hubbard; your friend's so satirical, I'm afraid of him. Only fancy, Mr. Willett! He's been talkin' to me about brain foods! I know he's makin' fun of me; and it isn't kind, is it, Mr. Hubbard?"
She did not give the least notice to the things that the others looked at, or to Kinney's modest lecture upon the manners and customs of the loggers. She kept a little apart with Bartley, and plied him with bravadoes, with pouts, with little cries of suspense. In the midst of this he heard Mr. Willett saying, "You ought to get some one to come and write about this for your paper, Witherby." But Mrs. Macallister was also saying something, with a significant turn of her floating eyes, and the thing that concerned Bartley, if he were to make his way among the newspapers in Boston, slipped from his grasp like the idea which we try to seize in a dream. She made sure of him for the drive to the place which they visited to see the men felling the trees, by inviting him to a seat at her side in the sleigh; this crowded the others, but she insisted, and they all gave way, as people must, to the caprices of a pretty woman. Her coquetries united British wilfulness to American nonchalance, and seemed to have been graduated to the appreciation of garrison and St. Lawrence River steamboat and watering-place society. The Willett ladies had already found it necessary to explain to the Witherby ladies that they had met her the summer before at the sea-side, and that she had stopped at Portland on her way to England; they did not know her very well, but some friends of theirs did; and their father had asked her to come with them to the camp. They added that the Canadian ladies seemed to expect the gentlemen to be a great deal more attentive than ours were. They had known as little what to do with Mr. Macallister's small-talk and compliments as his wife's audacities, but they did not view Bartley's responsiveness with pleasure. If Mrs. Macallister's arts were not subtle, as Bartley even in the intoxication of her preference could not keep from seeing, still, in his mood, it was consoling to be singled out by her; it meant that even in a logging-camp he was recognizable by any person of fashion as a good-looking, well-dressed man of the world. It embittered him the more against Marcia, while, in some sort, it vindicated him to himself.
The early winter sunset was beginning to tinge the snow with crimson, when the party started back to camp, where Kinney was to give them supper; he had it greatly on his conscience that they should have a good time, and he promoted it as far as hot mince-pie and newly fried doughnuts would go. He also opened a few canned goods, as he called some very exclusive sardines and peaches, and he made an entirely fresh pot of tea, and a pan of soda-biscuit. Mrs. Macallister made remarks across her plate which were for Bartley alone; and Kinney, who was seriously waiting upon his guests, refused to respond to Bartley's joking reference to himself of some questions and comments of hers.
After supper, when the loggers had withdrawn to the other end of the long hut, she called out to Kinney, "Oh, do tell them to smoke: we shall not mind it at all, I assure you. Can't some of them do something? Sing or dance?"
Kinney unbent a little at this. "There's a first-class clog-dancer among them; but he's a little stuck up, and I don't know as you could get him to dance," he said in a low tone.
"What a bloated aristocrat!" cried the lady. "Then the only thing is for us to dance first. Can they play?"
"One of 'em can whistle like a bird,—he can whistle like a whole band," answered Kinney, warming. "And of course the Kanucks can fiddle."
"And what are Kanucks? Is that what you call us Canadians?"
"Well, ma'am, it aint quite the thing to do," said Kinney, penitently.
"It isn't at all the thing to do! Which are the Kanucks?"
She rose, and went forward with Kinney, in her spoiled way, and addressed a swarthy, gleaming-eyed young logger in French. He answered with a smile that showed all his white teeth, and turned to one of his comrades; then the two rose, and got violins out of the bunks, and came forward. Others of their race joined them, but the Yankees hung gloomily back; they clearly did not like these liberties, this patronage.
"I shall have your clog-dancer on his feet yet, Mr. Kinney," said Mrs. Macallister, as she came back to her place.
The Canadians began to play and sing those gay, gay airs of old France which they have kept unsaddened through all the dark events that have changed the popular mood of the mother country; they have matched words to them in celebration of their life on the great rivers and in the vast forests of the North, and in these blithe barcaroles and hunting-songs breathes the joyous spirit of a France that knows neither doubt nor care,—France untouched by Revolution or Napoleonic wars; some of the airs still keep the very words that came over seas with them two hundred years ago. The transition to the dance was quick and inevitable; a dozen slim young fellows were gliding about behind the players, pounding the hard earthen floor, and singing in time.
"Oh, come, come!" cried the beauty, rising and stamping impatiently with her little foot, "suppose we dance, too."
She pulled Bartley forward by the hand; her husband followed with the taller Miss Willett; two of the Canadians, at the instance of Mrs. Macallister, came forward and politely asked the honor of the other young ladies' hands in the dance; their temper was infectious, and the cotillon was in full life before their partners had time to wonder at their consent. Mrs. Macallister could sing some of the Canadian songs; her voice, clear and fresh, rang through those of the men, while in at the window, thrown open for air, came the wild cries of the forest,—the wail of a catamount, and the solemn hooting of a distant owl.
"Isn't it jolly good fun?" she demanded, when the figure was finished; and now Kinney went up to the first-class clog-dancer, and prevailed with him to show his skill. He seemed to comply on condition that the whistler should furnish the music; he came forward with a bashful hauteur, bridling stiffly like a girl, and struck into the laborious and monotonous jig which is, perhaps, our national dance. He was exquisitely shaped, and as he danced he suppled more and more, while the whistler warbled a wilder and swifter strain, and kept time with his hands. There was something that stirred the blood in the fury of the strain and dance. When it was done, Mrs. Macallister caught off her cap and ran round among the spectators to make them pay; she excused no one, and she gave the money to Kinney, telling him to get his loggers something to keep the cold out.
"I should say whiskey, if I were in the Canadian bush," she suggested.
"Well, I guess we sha'n't say anything of that sort in this camp," said Kinney.
She turned upon Bartley, "I know Mr. Hubbard is dying to do something. Do something, Mr. Hubbard!" Bartley looked up in surprise at this interpretation of his tacit wish to distinguish himself before her. "Come, sing us some of your student songs."
Bartley's vanity had confided the fact of his college training to her, and he was really thinking just then that he would like to give them a serio-comic song,