“I’ll do the refreshments. I’ll roast corn and make coffee. I’ll be audience and call for more.”
“Ah, yes! Encore! Encore! The artists must always be very much praised––very much––so have I heard, to make them content. It is Sir Kildene who will be the great artist, and you must cry ‘Encore,’ and honor him greatly with such calls. Then will we have the pleasure to hear many stories from him. Ah, I like to hear them.”
It was a strange life for Harry King, this odd mixture of finest culture and high-bred delicacy of manner, with what appeared to be a total absence of self-seeking and a simple enjoyment of everyday work. He found Amalia one morning on her knees scrubbing the cabin floor, and for the moment it shocked him. When they were out on the plains 310 camping and living as best they could, he felt it to be the natural consequence of their necessities when he saw her washing their clothes and making the best of their difficulties by doing hard things with her own hands, but now that they were living in a civilized way, he could not bear to see her, or her mother, doing the rough work. Amalia only laughed at him. “See how fine we make all things. If I will not serve for making clean the house, why am I? Is not?”
“It doesn’t make any difference what you do, you are always beautiful.”
“Ah, Mr. ’Arry, you must say those compliments only in the French. It is no language, the English, for those fine eloquences.”
“No, I don’t seem to be able to say anything I mean, in French. It’s always a sort of make-believe talk with me. Our whole life here seems a sort of dream,––as if we were living in some wonderful bubble that will suddenly burst one day, and leave us floating alone in space, with nothing anywhere to rest on.”
“No, no, you are mistake. Here is this floor, very real, and dirt on it to be washed away,––from your boots, also very real, is not? Go away, Mr. ’Arry, but come to-night in your fine clothing, for we have our fête. Mamma has finish her beautiful new dress, and we will be gay. Is good to be sometimes joyful, is not? We have here no care, only to make happy together, and if we cannot do that, all is somber.”
And that evening indeed, Amalia had her “fête.” Larry told his best stories, and Harry was persuaded to tell them a little of his life as a soldier, and to sing a camp song. More than this he would not do, but he brought out something 311 he had been reserving with pride, a few little nuggets of gold. During the weeks he had worked he had found little, until the last few days, but happening to strike a vein of ore, richer than any Larry had ever found, the two men were greatly elated, and had determined to interest the women by melting some of it out of the quartz in which it was bedded, and turning out for each a golden bullet in Larry’s mold.
They heaped hard wood in the fireplace and the cabin was lighted most gloriously. While they waited for the red coals to melt the gold, Amalia took her violin and played and sang. It was nearly time for the rigor of the winter to abate, but still a high wind was blowing, and the fine snow was piling and drifting about the cabin, and even sifting through the chinks around the window and door, but the storm only made the brightness and warmth within more delightful.
When Larry drew his crucible from the coals and poured the tiny glowing stream into his molds, Amalia cried out with joy. “How that is beautiful! How wonderful to dig such beauty from the dark ground down in the black earth! Ah, mamma, look!”