CHAPTER III.
"If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows that thou wouldst forget;
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills; no tears
Dim the sweet looks that nature wears."
The village of Ovid lay in a valley hollowed out of an otherwise level country into a shallow basin. It called those who dwelt to the north of it, Mountain Hayseeds; and those to the south of it, Swamp Angels—compliments returned in kind, for the youths of the sections thus flattered by Ovidian attention always referred to the villagers as Ovid Idiots.
For the most part the houses in Ovid clustered closely together. Some few of them were scattered half way up the sloping hill-sides, but these dwellings were all built facing the village proper, and besides being absurdly fore-shortened always wore a deprecating look as if mutely conscious of their invidious positions. These hills of Ovid were not very formidable, and from a short distance off, say, from Andrew Cutler's clearing, one could see over their crests the gables of the village.
There were but two long streets in the village, denominated the Front Street and the Back Street.
Upon the Front Street stood the two churches, facing each other, being, however, only in physical juxtaposition, for spiritually they were as far as the poles apart. The one was a Methodist Church, and bore high above its door the inscription, Eva Methodist Church, A.D. 1860. This legend must once have been very glaring, seemingly jet black upon a white surface, but some painter, well disposed to mankind evidently, had swept his brush laden with white paint over this inscription. The result was grateful to the eye, even if it did give rise to some uncertainty as to what the words actually were. Great truths often come home to one intuitively; perhaps that is how every one knew what was writ above that door.
The Baptist Church was stone, and bore only a date, 1854 A.D., but it rejoiced in a tin-clad spire that glimmered gayly in the sunlight or shone cold and chill beneath the wintry moon.
Between these two churches and the members thereof there was no animosity, but there was a "feeling." A "feeling" is one of those intangible, elusive things, of which no acceptable definition can be given; but every new-comer to Ovid grew into that "feeling" before he had been there a week. Perhaps some perception of this peculiar condition may be gathered by considering the various improvements which took place in the two churches during one autumn in Ovid.
They were inaugurated by Hiram Green, who presented a stone tie-post to the Methodist Church. Hiram kept the village grocery store, and had accepted six stone tie-posts in lieu of certain goods supplied to the boarding-house at the stone quarries. The boarding-house keeper had taken them in default of cash from his quarryman boarders. Hiram erected three of the posts before his shop door, at such short distances from each other that it precluded the tying up of more than two horses at a time, and then only to the end posts and facing each other. Having adorned the path before his house with two others, he, at the instigation of his wife, presented the sixth to the Methodist Church. This post was adorned with an iron ring at the top and a somewhat frisky damsel in rude carving on the side.
It was a matter of grave consideration whether this carving should be turned to the street or towards the sidewalk, it being debatable in which position she would do the most harm. She was finally turned towards the street, upon the reasonable supposition that persons driving past would pass more swiftly than persons walking; hence, their exposure to evil would be briefer. To further mitigate the demoralizing effect of this bit of stonework, Solomon Ware took a chisel and carefully obliterated the outlines of the figure, missing only one foot, which, in terpsichorean fashion, pointed skyward in a meaningless, disjointed way from a chaos of chisel marks.
The week following, the Baptists put up two wooden tie-posts, each surmounted by an iron horse's head.
Two weeks later a block of wooden steps appeared beside the stone tie-post, to facilitate those driving to church in alighting from, or mounting to, their conveyances. This was on Wednesday. By the Sunday following, its duplicate stood between the wooden tie-posts, with the additional glory of drab paint.
A month later a new fence encircled the Methodist temple, and the Baptist sanctuary was re-shingled.
As the autumn advanced the Methodist Church had sheds for its horses erected in the rear of the church. Ere the first snow flew, the Baptist Church was similarly adorned, and its shed rejoiced in elaborate scroll work brackets at the dividing posts.
In November the Baptists held a series of revival meetings, and the Methodists commenced a weekly service of song. At New Year's the Methodists raised their pastor's salary fifty dollars a year. In February the Baptists held a memorial service, and had four ministers preach upon one Sunday. It is true, as Hester Green took occasion to remark, that two of them were only students, but the Baptist Church had vindicated the priority of its establishment, and rested on its laurels,—besides the spring work was coming on.
The speech of the Ovidians was not in any sense a dialect peculiar to themselves. There were, of course, certain words and phrases which were regular stand-bys, and from which no Ovidian speech was free. For example, when an Ovidian was out of conversational matter, he did not let the talk die away, or the argument fall to pieces whilst waiting for the tardy ideas of his friends to evolve themselves. Far from it. He simply said, in a tone suitable to the occasion, "Well, it beats all!" Closer scrutiny will reveal the resources of this phrase. Did an Ovidian attend a funeral? Then this expression formed the chief staple of his conversation, and its enunciation ran the gamut of emotion, from grief to amazement. Did an Ovidian hear a more than usually spicy piece of gossip? Then he ejaculated the same phrase in a tone of scandalized enjoyment. Was a subject upon which he could not, or would not, give a direct opinion under discussion? Then this non-committal formula answered admirably, entailing no after responsibility upon the speaker, and yet giving him a pleasant sense of conversational duty properly performed.
There were a few idioms, also, dear to the Ovidian mind. To be "ambitious" meant simply to be energetic; to be "big feeling," "stuck up," or "toney," meant to be proud (in the sense of despising one's neighbours); to "conjure," with the accent strongly upon the first syllable, meant to think over a thing.
Apart, however, from a dozen or two of these lingual idiosyncrasies, the Ovidian speech was the ordinary English of Canadian rural districts, delivered in a peculiar drawling, nasal style, with a clinging to the last syllable of a word and the last word of a sentence. The only interest Ovidians had, apart from Ovid and the dwellers therein, was in watching the progress of the world, as shown by the trend of Canadian politics; and as Ovid they had always with them, and the world only when the weekly papers came in, it was natural they should know Ovid best—and they did. Every one's pet hobby, every one's worst weakness, every one's ambition, every one's circumstances, everyone's antipathies, every one's preferences, every one's record and family record—all this was known and well known, aye, even to the third generation back.
But of all Ovidians none knew so much of his fellows' history as did old Sam Symmons. The one attribute that assured Sam a welcome wherever he went, was his knowledge of the generation passed away, the fathers of the present Ovidians: not that his stories were flattering (far from it), but they were never ill-natured, at least upon Sam's part. It was true they were illustrative of the weak points of their heroes rather than their virtues, but then Sam did not make history; he only repeated it, and he was very impartial. So where a dozen Ovidians were gathered together, there Sam would be in the midst.
There was a perilous stimulus about their anticipation. He was sure to evolve some personal reminiscence from the chaotic mass of his old memories, and each of the expectant auditors felt that his forebears might be the subject of it. When Sam did choose a victim, and plunged into some old tale about his grandfather or father, then all the others drew in their breath with swift enjoyment of the various points of the story. There was something Druidical and bard-like in this oral handing down of history, and it differed from more pretentious history in one respect. Sam's stories might be oft-repeated, but he never altered a syllable, never deepened the shading to suit some different element in his audience, never swerved from the first intent of the recital, never slurred the truth to let any one off lightly. Perhaps the reason Sam's stories preserved their identity so well was because they were tacitly copyrighted; no one ever tried to tell them but himself, and indeed they would not have sounded the same from other lips, for Sam spoke of the past as one having authority.
The loss of his old mare was quite a serious one to Sam, and he went about a shade more irresolute than he was before. Poor old Sam! He had had so many blows, big and little, from fate, that it is not to be wondered at if he did become a little haphazard in his methods of work and business.
It is hardly worth while making plans when some evil chance seems to thwart them every time; even if one works till his stiff old limbs are trembling with fatigue, it doesn't seem to make much headway against adverse circumstances; and when fate buffets down even the strongest guard, how can one poor old man fend off its blows? But if his brave old heart was shaken a little within him, Sam still turned a resolute face to the foe. The week after the mare's death, and before he had got used to the blind horse he had bought to replace her, he found his way to Hiram Green's store.
The talk turned on drinking.
"Yes," said Sam, "there's many a way of drinking"—in a reminiscent tone—"many a way! When I was young, there were three brothers with their three wives, doing settlement duty on a grant of land given one of the officers, in Bruce County. Well, they were fine big fellows, and their wives were big, strapping, healthy women. Strong, too, they were, and had good judgment. Why, one of them went one morning to the wood-pile to get some wood, and when she came back there was a wolf, lean and hungry (for it had been a bitter winter), standing over the cradle where her baby lay. Now, what did she do? Run away and yowl? Not she. Hit it a clip with a billet of wood, and killed it where it stood. Well, the lads used to drive off forty miles with an ox team for provisions, and each would bring his keg of rye back with him; but the women always drank more than their share, and it got to be that there was mostly no meals ready when the lads got back from felling the timber. So the lads hit on the plan of tying the kegs to the roof, where the women could not get at them, and they went away well pleased with themselves. But they were finely taken down when they got back, for the women shot holes in the kegs, and caught the whiskey in a washtub. Yes, yes, there's many a way of drinking. There was your wife's grand-uncle, now"—suddenly becoming personal in his memory, and addressing Hiram—"'twas when he was running for reeve the first time, and he came into Fossil's tavern, and not seeing James Lawson, the younger, and me, where we sat on the settle by the door, he went up to the bar to get a drink. He called for whiskey. He had his drink and laid down the five cents to pay for it. Now, 'twas his way to fill his glass very full, and Fossil, being a close man, was very grouty at that. So, out of the five cents, he pushed back a penny. 'Here,' says he, 'is your change, Mr. Mowbray. I don't charge as much wholesale as I do for single drinks.' Your wife's grand-uncle did not like that. 'Twas just before the polling day when he got overtaken in liquor one night at old Squire Fraser's. 'Twas a bright moonlight night, and some of the lads going home late, also, heard a noise at the village pump, which, coming at, they saw was your wife's grand-uncle, pulling at the pump-handle, and saying, with many oaths, 'Come home, Jack: come home. There will be a sore broil for thee if Mrs. Mowbray see thee. Come home, Jack: come home.' To which persuasion he put many threats and moral advisements to Jack to cease from liquor. Jack was his nephew, a quiet youth, being bred to the pulpit. Well, the boys got hold of both these tales, and when the voting came on, they would seize at anything, a tree, a post, or the fence, when your wife's grand-uncle came by, and, straining at it manfully, would beseech Jack to come home, using many moral persuasions and many oaths also, as he had done to the pump, and feigning to weep sore over the stubbornness of Jack's heart. Then they would say, 'Come home, Jack, and I'll buy thee a drink wholesale at good, generous Master Fossil's.' Yes, yes"—Sam's voice began to weaken—"yes, there's many a way of drinking."
There was a pause. No one ever commented upon Sam's stories; there was no need. To deprecate them would be to stir up, who knew what, of oblique reflection upon one's ancestors. For any of those not immediately interested to interfere would be to invite Sam's attention to their cases.
"Did you hear that the school-teacher leaves next week?" asked Hiram.
"No. Why?" asked Jack Mackinnon, glad of a chance of hearing his own voice.
"Because he says he can't afford to keep himself here and his wife in Toronto on three hundred a year."
"Then he'd better get," said old Mrs. Slick, as she took the packet of cream of tartar Hiram was weighing. "He'd better get." She hobbled out, giving malevolent sniffs at the thought of the teacher's extravagant ideas.
"Yes, he's going," continued Hiram. "He's going, and there's a school meeting to-morrow."
Andrew Cutler, Hiram Green and Ben Braddon were school trustees, and it had occurred to each of them that Sam Symmons' Suse would be sure to apply for the position. She held a county certificate permitting her to teach for three years.
"I wonder," Andrew said that morning to his aunt, Miss Hannah Myers, "I wonder if Suse will know enough to apply for the place."
"Not she! too empty-headed," said Miss Myers, briskly. "I'll go down this afternoon and tell her what I think of her, and make her apply."
"Do," said Andrew, heartily.
Andrew liked old Sam, and he was a special favourite of the old man's. Many a long story of election fights and tricks, secrets Sam kept even yet, of how votes had been gained and lost, many tales of drinking bouts and more gallant adventures, did old Sam retell for Andrew's benefit.
Andrew was not at all worried by Miss Myers' brusqueness of speech. He knew how kind she was to everybody in her own vinegary way. Tall, angular, hatchet-faced and sharp-tongued, Hannah Myers had a heart full of love for every living creature that needed help, only, 'the beggar at her door had first abuse and then a shilling.'
And how well the tramps knew the way up to that quaint old kitchen door, with the uneven flag-stones set in a little court-yard round it! A table always covered with glistening tin milk-pans stood outside, and many a good meal had the gentlemen of the road had off that table; scolded vigorously by Miss Myers whilst they ate, the tirade only interrupted by sudden journeys she made to find perhaps a pair of socks, a shirt, or something else she saw they needed: now and then a surly tramp would answer her back, and she would laugh at him in her grim way and say, "Hear the man! Why, don't you see, I like to scold as much as you like to eat; so if you enjoy the one, why mayn't I the other?" Upon one memorable occasion an ungrateful tramp, (and however much he may be idealized nowadays, there are instances of the ingratitude of tramps) attempted to impose upon her, thinking her alone. He had, unfortunately for him, reckoned without his host. Andrew suddenly appeared upon the scene, seized his trampship by the most convenient portion of his attire, and dropped him with quiet, but forcible, precision into a somewhat unappetizing duck pond near by, giving him at the same time a picturesque, but somewhat profane, bit of advice. The fellow took himself off, and Andrew turned his attention to poor Miss Hannah, who was quivering and trembling and crying as the meekest and mildest woman might do. Miss Myers' tongue was a deception, and, as a matter of fact, that and her vinegary aspect were the only defences she had against imposition, for whilst always vaunting her hard-heartedness, she was, in reality, the most gullible of women.
She never could resist a pedlar: she always bought their trashy wares. And once, she never forgot it, she burdened herself with a lot of cheap brassy hairpins and extraordinary glass breast pins. That purchase fairly haunted her. Get rid of it she couldn't. Did she try to burn it? Some one came and caught her. Did she intend to throw it away? She did not dare, she knew some one would find it. She did manage finally to find a watery hiding-place for it in the horse pond. Even then its meretricious sparkle assailed her from the mud when the pond went dry. She related this to Judith Moore, and told her with all soberness that she should always pity a murderer trying to get rid of the corpse.
As Mrs. Morris had told Judith, Miss Myers was of U. E. Loyalist stock. She might have added that the Cutlers were also. Both families had been given grants of land in Canada. The property in the Myers family had been divided and sub-divided amongst a big family connection. Miss Myers had a little fifty-acre farm as her share of it; it lay some fifteen miles from Ovid.
Andrew's farm at Ovid had descended to him through his father and grandfather, old Captain Cutler, the stern old fighter whose sword, with its woven crimson sash, hung in the hall of Andrew's house, with some quaint old pistols and a clumsy musket, relics from Canadian battle fields. Besides the property in Ovid, Andrew owned another fine farm and a wide stretch of woodland in Muskoka. These properties accrued to him through the death of some of his father's relatives. So Andrew was very well off, in a modest way. The Muskoka property bore much fine timber, and an enthusiastic "prospector" assailed Andrew, month in and month out, with tales of the "indications" of minerals he had found beneath the ferns and mosses of his Muskoka woods. But Andrew was content with them as they were, with the trees growing solemnly upward, aspiring to the blue: the wandering streams, a network of silver tracery, starred here and there by broad discs where one widened to a little placid lake or where two or more streams, meeting, gushed together. The sound of their soft confluence and the soughing of the wind, that without moving the leaves seemed ever to sigh between the tree trunks, blent into a soft sensation, half sound, half stir, something perceived nowhere but in the woods, seeming indeed as if there we were very close to Nature's sweet and beautiful breast, hearing in this mysterious pulsation the beating of her kindly heart.
Andrew had grown to be in very close touch with Nature during many solitary weeks spent in hunting: in long tramps through the Muskoka woods, shooting the fawn-coloured deers, and the wild fowl that nested in the tiny lakes; and in many a long night when he lay perdu watching for lynx, forgetting his quest in the marvel of the stars, or in wakeful watches, seeing the resinous camp-fire die down to embers and hearing the shrill laughing of the loon, the weird wail of the lynx, the cry of the great owl or the call of the coon. Andrew was past-master of all woodland lore. He had hunted Muskoka through and through. Many a wild duck's breast and fox's mask, and many a pair of antlers proved his prowess.
Besides, he had spent many a winter in northern Quebec, snow-shoeing over its silent white wastes upon the traces of moose; the intense cold parching his throat, his half-breed guide padding* along at his side; sometimes faring royally upon juicy steaks and birds, broiled as only hunters can broil—not scorched, yet savoured with fire; sometimes upon a long trail with a bit of frozen bacon in one pocket and a lump of frozen bread in the other, gnawing a morsel off each with care, so that he might not break off his moustache which was frozen in a solid mass with the moisture of his breath.
* "Padding" is a term applied by hunters to the silent flat-footed gait of Indian guides.
Andrew often heard people say that one did not feel the intense cold in these northern regions; he always longed to have them there and let them try it. He had felt pretty cold up there, only he never remembered the time when he couldn't hold his gun with naked hands. That, though, as every one knows, is the mark of a mighty Nimrod. So soon as his half-breed guide discovered this, he grunted out a guttural prophecy that the shoot would be good.
Strange mixtures these guides were; the combination of French suavity and redskin cunning being a continual wonder to Andrew, accustomed as he was to less complex types.
This man who slept sometimes rolled close in the same blankets with him for warmth, whose woodcraft made his less intuitive knowledge seem absolute ignorance, whose judgment in matters of the chase was almost flawless, whose strength and agility would not have shamed a Greek—this man cooked his meals, washed the dishes, waited upon him deferentially, and was not to be persuaded to eat at the same time. In the chase, a hero; in the camp, a slave.
What tramps those were through the silent solitudes of these untrodden woods! What moments had been his, when, leaving his guide preparing the camp for the night, Andrew had gained some high ridge, and pausing, looked far across the peaks of graduated hills, clad in sombre cedars weighted down with snow, white, silent, yet instinct with that mystery which presses upon us pleading for elucidation, and never so strongly as when we are alone with the unblotted world before us, away from the signs of man's desecration. There is something very pitiful in that mute appeal of nature to be understood—like some sweet woman, smitten into a spell of suffering silence, till such time as the magic word shall release her. A word she knows, yet cannot, of her own power, speak. What magical mysteries shall not be revealed when speech is restored to her! And how her eyes plead and accuse at once! Of a verity, having ears we hear not: truly, having eyes to see, yet are we blind!
For there is some great open secret surely in the universe, that being deciphered will set all our jangling dreams in chime. It is about us, around us, above us; the tiniest leaf tells it, the stars of heaven proclaim it, the water manifests it and the earth declares it, and yet we do not see it. When we do, it will be some simple vital principle that we have breathed with the breath of our lips, and handled with the familiar fingers of the flesh. We will be so unable to conceive of the world moving on in ignorance of it, that all the wisdom of the ages past will seem but as the howling of wolves in waste places, or at best, as the babbling of children that play with dry sand, now letting it slip through their fingers, leaving them with empty hands, now getting it in their eyes to torture them, or treading on it with vague discomfort and unease.
We have all seen these childish puzzles with hidden faces concealed in the traceries. How hard it is to find these faces, although we know they are there! And yet, when found, it is impossible to see anything else in the picture. They obtrude themselves upon us, and what was formerly the picture becomes now only the background for what at first it completely concealed. So everything will but subserve to show us how palpable the great Central Truth has always been if we could but find it, and some one will. So let us go on bravely, each resolving "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." There is indeed within us some spark of the Divine Fire. Let it but once flame fairly up and we shall be gods indeed, moving in the glory of our own transfiguration.
There is no destiny too great for man.
* * * * * *
The northern stars are very clear and cold, the northern skies are very blue and chill, the snowy plains are places meant for thought, and in the silence of those scenes the soul awakes.
Andrew bore away with him some reflex of their austerity and intensity, which tempered his mind as the steel is strengthened.
His mother's story had been a sad one. She was Miss Myers' elder sister—Isabella Myers; very like Miss Myers yet very unlike; with all those resemblances which pronounce two near of kin, yet all those variations of the type which constitute the difference between beauty and every-day flesh and blood.
Isabella had been engaged to a minister's son named Harkness. He was a young man who justified in every respect the many pleasing proverbs about ministers' sons: yet, in spite of all, had a leal heart, a handsome form and face, a tender touch, and a personal magnetism that enabled him to wring an unwilling consent out of stern old Abraham Myers to his betrothal with his daughter Isabella.
These two young folk worshipped each other, and the wedding day was set. Isabella was to wear a white taffeta frock and white thread mitts. But troublous times had come to Canada. Young Harkness went to the war. Isabella and he had a sad, sad parting, for the imaginative girl was fey of her fate, and clung to him till his heart melted within him. And as he rode away with a long tress of her dark hair on his breast, it was not the sunshine alone that made his eyes so bright and his vision so uncertain.
It was but a puny affray that in the history of the world's wars, but it does not take big battles to make men brave and women's hearts ache. The dark braid had hardly warmed in its place before it was soaked with the blood of the heart on which it lay. The real Isabella Myers died then, too. But a pale apathetic woman in her shape and semblance still went wearily on her way.
Ten years later they married her to Andrew Cutler, a man considerably older than herself, and as her father said, "of the old true blue stock." She gave him a boy and died, well rid of the world. Miss Hannah Myers came to keep house for her brother-in-law. She brought up the baby and took charge of the little hide-covered chest which was full of the books ("poetry books and such," Miss Myers called them) that young Harkness had given Isabella long before. Andrew Cutler lived on after his wife's death to a good old age, being killed at last by falling through the trap-door in his hay-loft. Then Andrew was head of his house.
As Andrew grew up, he developed such a strange resemblance to one long dead, that sometimes, when a movement, gesture, or expression of his brought it more clearly to Miss Myers' eyes, she felt an eerie thrill creep over her. She described the sensation as "cold chills." For it was not a resemblance to his father, or his grandfather, or even to his mother (although he resembled her, too), but he imaged forth the brave, handsome, devil-may-care lover of his mother's girlhood, he who had died ten years before Andrew's birth. Surely the image of that long-lost lover had been deeply graven on that broken heart.
"The Cutler house on the hill," as the villagers described it, was quite a pretentious one in its way. Old Captain Cutler, he of the sword and sash, had not been penniless, by any means, when he left the United States, although he left behind him much valuable property. So when the Canadian Government made him a generous grant, he promptly spent his money in building a house. Now, the forebears of this Captain Cutler had come from England, and many a tale his grandfather had told him of the old farm homestead there, of the garden with brick-paven walks, and brick-built walls upon which grew the espaliered fruit, of the old sun-dial beside the larch tree, and the oaken beams that traversed the plaster of the ceilings, of the flagged kitchen, and the big fire-places. So here on the hill-top overlooking the valley, where later Ovid was to be built, Captain Cutler erected his house, a big stone one with oaken floors, stairways and doors, with heavy rafters of the same sturdy growth, a wide-flagged kitchen, and a hall sheathed in wood half way to the roof, with huge open fire-places. He put a brick wall about his gardens, and over it trained the sprawling branches of currant bushes—red ones, and white and black. Later on, hop vines had been planted here and there along the wall; still later, a row of grape vines had superseded them, and clad the old bricks with fresh festoons of leaves. This made, when the grapes were ripe, a beautiful Bacchanal arabesque of purple fruit and brown stem, twisted tendril and green leaf.
He laid down narrow brick walks, too, and by them planted horse-chestnut trees. He put a sun-dial up, a grey stone column with a round top, whereon was rudely carven the symbols of the hours and a lob-sided hour-glass; for lack of a larch tree he filched a linden from the hill-side.
The garden took in the level plateau on top of the hill, and some of the slope upon the side farthest from Ovid. The hill-side next the village was laden with lindens, which in spring were covered in blossom. Old Captain Cutler sent to England for English ox-heart cherry trees, and for boxwood, and for hawthorns to plant hedges.
The cherry trees flourished and perpetuated themselves in generations of younger trees, the box grew and multiplied, but the hawthorn hedges were failures. All that remained of them was a few scattered hawthorns that had long outgrown the status of the hedge row, and become old gnarled trees.
Miss Myers was very proud of her flower garden, which was a mass of circular, oval and diamond-shaped flower beds, bordered by box, spaced off by narrow bricked walks. There were honeysuckles growing over old-fashioned wooden trellises; and roses, crown imperials and lemon lilies; huge clumps of peonies, pink, white and the common crimson; clove pinks and thyme; lilies of the valley and violets, with bushes of rosemary and patches of balm; spotted tiger lilies, and a fragrant white lily called the day lily; little shrubs of the pink flowering almond, "snow on the mountain," "mist on the hill" and acacia shrubs. And beside these, many more old-fashioned perennial plants, like queen of the meadow and thrift; and every summer Andrew brought her heliotropes, and scented geraniums, and mignonette from town.
The barns were away down at the foot of the hill. Andrew's men usually all lived in the village, unless he happened to have hired strangers for the stress of harvest or haying, or in winter time when they were needed about the house.
Miss Myers, as the village phrased it, "kep' help regular," and often had up old Mrs. Greer from the village, for there was a deal of work to be done in that house.
For the rest, Andrew was a practical farmer; it had not occurred to him that he did not need to work so hard, and the active life did him no harm. He was up at daylight in summer, and by candle-light in winter.
He ploughed, sowed, reaped and threshed his grain. And when at the threshings he sat at the head of the long table, lined on each side with men "feeding like horses, when you hear them feed," he looked like some young chief among his serfs, albeit he wore blue jeans and flannel shirts as they did.
He did not know himself to be so different from his neighbours as he was, only he never seemed to contemplate marrying one of their women, and he pitied them. For they did not recognize the pathos of their own narrow lives. They did not see their surroundings as he did—the beauties of the skies above, and of the earth beneath, and the marvel and mystery of the water.
Andrew could not have said this was what made him pity them, for he was one of the inarticulate ones, whose speech is shackled; one of those, too, who know their own limitations in this way, and feel their fetters. At times they seemed to weigh his spirit down.