At this juncture Brooke appeared to speak for herself, and, after she had cleaned the paint from her fingers with turpentine, the shrewd old farmer and the warm-hearted young enthusiast walked side by side down the cross-road, skirting the hay-field, now growing green around the moist edges. The meadowlarks were soaring and singing, the first white butterflies fluttered in the sun, and down from the garden wafted an odour that tells of spring in every quarter of the globe, the perfume of the little white English violets. These nestled in sociable tufts under the protection of the leafless bushes of crimson and damask roses in the garden that Great-granny West had planted,—violets whose ancestors had doubtless come overseas in company with the Sign of the Fox and the Goose.
The unploughed corn-field lay to the right of the cross-road, and to reach it they were obliged to skirt a small field of fall-sown rye that was bounded by the roadway. As they picked their way along the stubbly edge, between which and the stone fence ran one of those little brooks of the hill countries that brawl and rush along in spring and autumn, but shrink away and keep their silence in summer heat and winter cold alike, Brooke paused once or twice to look upon her River Kingdom, which, after the rain and freshet of a week past, was now showing the first real signs of life. Dun and gray were still the prevailing hues of the river woods, except where a ruddy or golden glow lying on the tree-tops told of swamp maples or willows. The hemlocks on the rocky banks looked rusty and winter-worn, not having yet donned their curved-tipped new feathers. The marsh meadows, thickly studded with ponds by the overflow, alone showed solid green, and glittered with the sunlit emerald leaves of the arums, that had now risen above and concealed their ill-smelling mottled red blossoms.
Here and there on the hillsides the columns of pearl-gray smoke, wafted straight skyward, showed both the location of cultivated land where litter and brush were burning, and also that the wind was in abeyance, and the sun once more in power. The sky wore a misty veil over the blue, and the Moosatuk, rushing, foaming, and overleaping itself in its spring-running seaward, drew more from the ground for colours than of the sky reflections. Now and again an uprooted tree would be swept by, turning and stretching its bare arms upward, as if giving signals of distress, and then a log would plunge along, striking against the submerged rocks, rearing, and plunging again like a gigantic water snake.
Yes, in deed and in truth, life had returned to the River Kingdom at the sound of the voice of the waters, and yet throughout all the wide expanse the only human touch was in the field below, where a man, who cast a Titan’s shadow behind him, was driving a plough into the deep, cool soil, slowly shattering the stubbly hillocks of last year’s corn. Calmly he worked, but with finality. The reins that guided the horses hung loose about his neck, for he only made use of them at the turnings, while the motive power seemed to come less from the horses than from the shoulders of the man who kept the ploughshare true in its course.
Brooke Lawton stood spellbound. For the first time she saw and comprehended the most primitive labour of primitive man, and it appealed to every sense of her body,—the mental, spiritual, physical,—appealed to her as had the freshly baked loaves, by its symbolism as well as directness, for beneath the leavening development of generations, side by side with the temperament for music expressed in rhythm and colour defined by pigments, walked another Brooke, the primitive woman.
Ah! if she could but fix and paint the scene as she felt it! Instantly the ploughman stood as the rightful ruler of the River Kingdom, and dominated it. It was not the personality of the man, for she had not yet seen his face, merely his fitness to his surroundings. Enoch Fenton’s voice broke the spell: “A slow worker, as I told your ma (I put in my mare with your horse, it’s too heavy for one), but that don’t signify in share farmin’; you won’t hev to watch out sharp until the harvestin’, and then I’ll help you out. If you was left to yourself, you might fare like that pretty city Widder Harris, down to the Forks; she let old Ed Terry keep her cow fer half the milk. Firstly the cow was dry, and Mis’ didn’t get any of course; time went along, and the cow calved, and after a week Mis’ Harris went across lots with her kettle fer her milk.
“‘There’s no milk due you,’ said old Terry, chuckling. ‘How’s that?’ says she, mad-like, ‘I’m to get half, and I saw you take in a full pail this morning.’ ‘That’s all true,’ says he, ‘half comes to me, and your half goes to the calf!’
“Not that I expect this chap is that kind; he’s sort o’ mild and solemn, that’s why I chose you a foreigner; the native is often overcrafty to work with green women folks that ain’t had the picklin’ experience gives. There’s fellers round here would sell you cold storage eggs for settin’ as quick as not. I know ’em, and bein’s you’re a friend o’ Dr. Russell, wife and I feel a charge to look after you a spell. Now ’f it was Keith, she’s different—no cold storage eggs for her! Do you hear when the weddin’s coming off? That’s the only bargain of hers I mistrust. The sharpest women on general trading most allers slips up on matrimony. I’ve often said to ma, when it comes to matrimony, I think the Lord loves and favours women best that, when they sets their mind on a poor sinful man, jest closes their eyes, and topples right into marriage without bargaining.
“Old Terry was a corker! ’twas he that was mowin’ fer me one day, and I says at the nooning, ‘Will you take rum and water, or cider?’ Says he, ‘As the rum’s handiest, I’ll take that while you’re drawin’ the cider!’
“Hi there, Henry! Henry! halt at the turn!” he called to the ploughman as they reached the field edge. “It’s good he understands English, and speaks it only a little back-handed. What’s his other name? Let’s see—Petersen? no that was the one that wanted a steady job. Yes, I remember, it’s Maarten,—they spell it with double a where he comes from.