Poganuc People

One of these resorts was furnished by the third garret of the house, which had been finished off into an arched room and occupied by her father as a study. High above all the noise of the house, with a window commanding a view of Poganuc Lake and its girdle of steel-blue pines, this room had to her the air of a refuge and sanctuary. Its walls were set round from floor to ceiling with the friendly, quiet faces of books, and there stood her father's great writing-chair, on one arm of which lay open always his "Cruden's Concordance" and his Bible. Here Dolly loved to retreat and niche herself down in a quiet corner, with her favorite books around her. She had a kind of sheltered, satisfied feeling as she thus sat and watched her father writing, turning his books, and speaking from time to time to himself in a loud, earnest whisper. She vaguely felt that he was about some holy and mysterious work above her little comprehension, and she was careful never to disturb him by question or remark.

The books ranged around filled her, too, with a solemn awe. There on the lower shelves were great enormous folios, on whose backs she spelled in black letters, "Lightfooti Opera," a title whereat she marveled, considering the bulk of the volumes. And overhead, grouped along in friendly and sociable rows, were books of all sorts and sizes and bindings, the titles to which she had read so often that she knew them by heart. "Bell's Sermons," "Bonnett's Inquiries," "Bogue's Essays," "Toplady on Predestination," "Boston's Fourfold State," "Law's Serious Call," and other works of that kind she had looked over wistfully, day after day, without getting even a hope of something interesting out of them. The thought that her father could read and could understand things like these filled her with a vague awe, and she wondered if ever she should be old enough to know what it was all about. But there was one of her father's books which proved a mine of wealth to her. It was a happy hour when he brought home and set up in his book-case Cotton Mather's "Magnalia," in a new edition of two volumes. What wonderful stories these! and stories, too, about her own country, stories that made her feel that the very ground she trod on was consecrated by some special dealing of God's providence.

When the good Doctor related how a plague that had wasted the Indian tribes had prepared the room for the Pilgrim Fathers to settle undisturbed, she felt nowise doubtful of his application of the text, "He drave out the heathen and planted them."

But who shall describe the large-eyed, breathless wonder with which she read stories of witchcraft, with its weird marvels of mysterious voices heard in lonely places, of awful visitations that had overtaken sinners, and immediate deliverances that had come in answer to the prayers of God's saints? Then, too, the stories of Indian wars and captivities, when the war-whoop had sounded at midnight, and little children like her had awakened to find the house beset with legions of devils, who set fire to the dwellings and carried the people off through dreary snow and ice to Canada. No Jewish maiden ever grew up with a more earnest faith that she belonged to a consecrated race, a people especially called and chosen of God for some great work on earth. Her faith in every word of the marvels related in this book was full as great as the dear old credulous Dr. Cotton Mather could have desired.

But the mysterious areas of the parsonage were not exhausted with its three garrets. Under the whole house in all its divisions spread a great cavernous cellar, where were murky rooms and dark passages explored only by the light of candles. There were rows of bins, in which were stored the apples of every name and race harvested in autumn from the family orchard: Pearmains, Greenings, Seek-no-furthers, Bristers, Pippins, Golden Sweets, and other forgotten kinds, had each its separate bin, to which the children at all times had free access. There, too, was a long row of cider barrels, from whence, in the hour of their early sweetness, Dolly had delighted to suck the cider through straws for that purpose carefully selected and provided.

Not without a certain awe was her descent into this shadowy Avernus, generally under the protecting wing of Nabby or one of the older boys. Sometimes, with the perverse spirit which moves the male nature to tyrannize over the weaker members, they would agonize her by running beyond her into the darker chambers of the cellar, and sending thence Indian war-whoops and yells which struck terror to her soul, and even mingled their horrors with her dreams.

But there was one class of tenants whose influence and presence in the house must not be omitted – and that was the rats.

They had taken formal possession of the parsonage, grown, bred, and multiplied, and become ancient there, in spite of traps or cats or anything that could be devised against them.

The family cat in Dolly's day, having taken a dispassionate survey of the situation, had given up the matter in despair, and set herself quietly to attending to her own family concerns, as a sensible cat should. She selected the Doctor's pamphlet closet as her special domestic retreat. Here she made her lair in a heap of old sermons, whence, from time to time, she led forth coveys of well-educated, theological kittens, who, like their mother, gazed on the rats with respectful curiosity, and ran no imprudent risks. Consequently, the rats had a glorious time in the old parsonage. Dolly, going up the kitchen stairs into the back garret, as she did on her way bedward, would see them sitting easy and dégagés on the corners of boxes and bins, with their tails hanging gracefully down, engaged in making meals on the corn or oats. They ramped all night on the floor of the highest garret over her sleeping room, apparently busy in hopping with ears of corn across the garret and then rolling them down between the beams to their nests below. Sometimes Dolly heard them gnawing and sawing behind the very wainscot of her bed as if they had set up a carpenter's shop there, and she shrunk apprehensively for fear they were coming through into her bed. Then there were battles and skirmishes and squealings and fightings, and at times it would appear as if whole detachments of rats rolled in an avalanche down the walls with the corn they had been stealing. And when the mighty winter winds of Poganuc Mountain were out, and rumbled and thundered, roaring and tumbling down this chimney, rattling all the windows and creaking all the doors, while the beams of the house wrenched and groaned like a ship at sea, and the house seemed to shake on its very foundations, – then the uproar among the rats grew higher and jollier, and, with all put together, it is not surprising that sometimes Dolly put the bed-clothes over her head in fear, or ran and jumped into Nabby's warm arms for protection.

We have dwelt thus long on the old parsonage because it was a silent influence, every day fashioning the sensitive, imaginative little soul that was growing up in its own sphere of loneliness there.

For Mrs. Cushing had, besides Dolly, other children who engaged her thoughts and care. The eldest a son, studying for the ministry; the second a daughter, married and settled in a distant part of the state; another son working as teacher to pay his past college expenses; another son in college, whose bills, clothing, books, and necessary expenses formed constant items of thought, study, and correspondence; so that, with the two boys in the academy and our little Dolly, she had heart and hands full, and small time to watch all the fancies and dreams that drifted through that little head as clouds through summer skies. Satisfied that the child was healthy, and that there was no positive danger or harm to be fallen into, she dismissed her from her thoughts, except in the way of general supervision.

Yet every day, as the little maiden grew, some quaint, original touch was put to the forming character by these surroundings.

As to Dolly's father, he was a worthy representative of that wise and strong Connecticut clergy that had the wisdom immediately to face a change in the growth of society, to lay down gracefully a species of power they could no longer wield, and to take up and exercise, and strengthen themselves in, a kind of power that could never be taken from them. Privileged orders of society are often obstructionists, because they do not know, in the day of it, the things that belong to their peace.

The Connecticut and New England clergy did not thus err. When the theocracy had passed away, they spent no time lamenting it. They let the cocked hat, gold-headed cane, gown and bands go down stream; they let all laws protecting their order go by; and addressed themselves simply to the work of leading their people, as men with men, only by seeking to be stronger, wiser, and better men. To know more, to have more faith in the Invisible and Eternal, to be able to argue more logically to convince and to persuade – these were now their ambition. Dr. Cushing was foremost in this new crusade of earnestness. He determined to preach more and preach better than ever he had done before, and consequently in his wide parish, which covered a square of about ten miles, he was every day preaching, visiting, attending prayer-meetings. Often his wife was with him, and this gave Dolly many hours when she was free to follow her own little pursuits, and to pick up at the chimney-corner some of the traditionary lore of the period.

CHAPTER XVII.

SPRING AND SUMMER COME AT LAST

But at last – at last – spring did come at Poganuc! This marvel and mystery of the new creation did finally take place there every year, in spite of every appearance to the contrary. Long after the blue-bird that had sung the first promise had gone back into his own celestial ether, the promise that he sang was fulfilled.

Like those sweet, foreseeing spirits, that on high, bare tree-tops of human thought pour forth songs of hope in advance of their age and time, our blue-bird was gifted with the sure spirit of prophecy; and, though the winds were angry and loud, though snows lay piled and deep for long weeks after, though ice and frost and hail armed themselves in embattled forces, yet the sun behind them all kept shining and shining, every day longer and longer, every day drawing nearer and nearer, till the snows passed away like a bad dream, and the brooks woke up and began to laugh and gurgle, and the ice went out of the ponds. Then the pussy-willows threw out their soft catkins, and the ferns came up with their woolly hoods on, like prudent old house mothers, looking to see if it was yet time to unroll their tender greens, and the white blossoms of the shad-blow and the tremulous tags of the birches and alders shook themselves gaily out in the woods. Then under brown rustling leaf-banks came the white waxy shells of the trailing arbutus with its pink buds, fair as a winter's dawn on snow; then the blue and white hepaticas opened their eyes, and cold, sweet white violets starred the moist edges of water courses, and great blue violets opened large eyes in the shadows, and the white and crimson trilliums unfurled under the flickering lace-work shadows of the yet leafless woods; the red columbine waved its bells from the rocks, and great tufts of golden cowslips fringed the borders of the brooks. Then came in flocks the delicate wind-flower family: anemones, starry white, and the crow foot, with its pink outer shell, and the spotted adder's tongue, with its waving yellow bells of blossom. Then, too, the honest, great green leaves of the old skunk cabbage, most refreshing to the eye in its hardy, succulent greenness, though an abomination to the nose of the ill-informed who should be tempted to gather them. In a few weeks the woods, late so frozen – hopelessly-buried in snow drifts – were full of a thousand beauties and delicacies of life and motion, and flowers bloomed on every hand. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth."

And, not least, the opening season had set free the imprisoned children; and Dolly and the boys, with Spring at their heels, had followed the courses of the brooks and the rippling brown shallows of Poganuc River for many a blissful hour, and the parsonage had every where been decorated with tumblers and tea-cups holding floral offerings of things beautiful at the time they were gathered, but becoming rather a matter of trial to the eye of exact housekeeping. Yet both Mrs. Cushing and Nabby had a soft heart for Dolly's flowers, sharing themselves the general sense of joy for the yearly deliverance of which they were the signs and seals. And so the work of renewing the face of the earth went on from step to step. The forest hills around Poganuc first grew misty with a gentle haze of pink and lilac, which in time changed to green and then to greener shades, till at last the full-clothed hills stood forth in the joy of re-creation, and, as of old, "all the trees of the field clapped their hands."

Poganuc in its summer dress was a beautiful place. Its main street had a row of dignified white houses, with deep door-yards and large side-gardens, where the great scarlet peony flamed forth, where were generous tufts of white lilies, with tall spires of saintly blossoms, and yellow lilies with their faint sweet perfume, and all the good old orthodox flowers of stately family and valid pretensions. In all the door-yards and along the grassy streets on either side were overshadowing, long-branching trees, forming a roof of verdure, a green upper world from whose recesses birds dropped down their songs in languages unknown to us mortals. Who shall interpret what is meant by the sweet jargon of robin and oriole and bobolink, with their endless reiterations? Something wiser, perhaps, than we dream of in our lower life here.

Not a bit, however, did Hiel Jones trouble his head on this subject as he came in on his high stage seat in lordly style on the evening of the third of July. Far other cares were in Hiel's head, for to-morrow was the glorious Fourth – the only really secular fête known to the Yankee mind – and a great celebration thereof had been resolved on by the magnates of Poganuc, and Hiel was captain of the "Poganuc Rangers" – a flourishing militia company which was to be the ornament of the forthcoming celebration.

It had been agreed for that time to drop all political distinctions. Federalists and Democrats, Town Hill folk and outside folk, were all of one mind and spirit to make this a celebration worthy of Poganuc Center and the great cause of American Independence. A veritable cannon had been hauled up upon the village green and fired once or twice to relieve the bursting impatience of the boys and men who had helped put it there. The flag with its stars and stripes was already waving from the top of the Court-house, and a platform was being put up in the Meeting-house, and people were running this way and that, and standing in house-doors, and talking with each other over fences, in a way that showed that something was impending.

Hiel sprang from his box, and, after attending to his horses, speedily appeared on the green to see to things – for how could the celebration to-morrow be properly presented without Hiel's counsels?

"Look here, now, boys," he said to the group assembled around the cannon, "don't be a burnin' out yer powder. Keep it for to-morrow. Let her be now; ye don't want to keep bangin' and bangin' afore the time. To-morrow mornin' we'll let 'er rip bright and early, and wake all the folks. Clear out, now, and go home to yer suppers, and don't be a blowin' yerselves up with powder so that ye can't see the show to-morrow."

Hiel then proceeded into the Meeting-house and criticised proceedings there.

"Look here, Jake, you jest stretch that air carpet a leetle forrard; ye see, ye want the most out in front where't shows; back there, why, the chairs and table 'll kiver it; it ain't so much matter. Wonder now ef them air boards is firm? Wouldn't do, lettin' on 'em all down into the pews in the midst on't. Look here, Seth Chickering, ye need another prop under there; ye hain't calkerlated for the heft o' them fellers – governors and colonels and ministers weighs putty heavy, and there ain't no glory in a gineral smash-up, and we're a goin' in for glory to-morrow; we're goin' to sarve it out clear, and no mistake."

Hiel was a general favorite; his word of criticism was duly accepted, and things were pretty comfortably adjusted to his mind when he went home to eat his supper and try on his regimentals.

The dry, hard, colorless life of a Yankee boy in those days found some relief in the periods called "training-days," when the militia assembled in uniform and marched and drilled to the sound of fife and drum. Hiel had expended quite a round sum upon his uniform and was not insensible to the transformation which it wrought in his personal appearance.

The widow Jones kept his gold-laced cocked-hat, his bright gold epaulets, his whole soldier suit in fact, enveloped in many papers and napkins, and locked away in one of her most sacred recesses; but it was with pride that she gave him up the key, and when he came out before her, all in full array, her soul was inly uplifted. Her son was a hero in her eyes.

"It's all right, Mother, I believe," said Hiel, surveying himself first over one shoulder and then the other, and consulting the looking-glass fringed with gilt knobs that hung in the widow's "keeping-room."

"Yes, indeed, Hiel, it's all right. I've kep' camphor gum with it to keep out the moths, and wrapped it up to save the gold, and I don't see that it's a grain altered since it came home new. It's just as new as ever 'twas."

Hiel may be pardoned for smiling somewhat complacently on the image in the glass – which certainly was that of a very comely youth – and when he reflected that Nabby would to-morrow see him at the head of his company his heart swelled with a secret exultation. It is not alone the privilege of the fair sex to know when things are becoming to them, and Hiel knew when he looked well, as surely as if any one had told him. He gave himself a patronizing wink and whistled a strain of "Yankee Doodle" as he turned away from the glass, perhaps justly confiding in the immemorial power which military trappings have always exercised over the female heart.

It was with reluctance that he laid aside the fascinating costume, and set himself to brightening up here and there a spot upon his sword-hilt or blade that called for an extra touch.

"We must have breakfast early to-morrow, Mother; the boys will be here by sunrise."

"Never you fear," said the widow. "I've got everything ready, and we'll be all through by that time; but it's as well to get to bed now."

And so in a few minutes more the candles were out and only the sound of the frogs and the whippoorwills broke the stillness of the cottage. Long before the nine o'clock bell rung Hiel and his mother were happy in the land of dreams.

In the parsonage, too, there had been an effort of discipline to produce the needed stillness and early hours called for by to-morrow's exactions.

The boys, who had assisted at the dragging in of the cannon and heard its first reverberation, were in a most inflammatory state of patriotism, longing wildly for gunpowder. In those days no fire-crackers or other vents of the kind had been provided for the relief of boys under pressure of excitement, and so they were forced to become explosive material themselves, and the walls of the parsonage rang with the sound. Dolly also was flying wildly around, asking Nabby questions about to-morrow and running away before she got her answer, to listen to some new outburst from the boys.

Nabby, however, had her own very decisive ways of putting things, and settled matters at last by putting her to bed, saying as she did so, "Now, Dolly Cushing, you just shut up. You are crazier than a bobolink, and if you don't be still and go to sleep I won't touch to take you with me to see the trainers to-morrow. Your ma said you might go with me if you'd be good; so you just shut up and go to sleep;" and Dolly shut her eyes hard and tried to obey.

We shall not say that there were not some corresponding movements before the glass on the part of Nabby before retiring. It certainly came into her head to try on her bonnet, which had been thriftily re-trimmed and re-arranged for summer use since the time of that sleigh-ride with Hiel. Moreover, she chose out her gown and sorted a knot of ribbons to go with it. "I suppose," she said to herself, "all the girls will be making fools of themselves about Hiel Jones to-morrow, but I ain't a going to." Nevertheless, she thought there was no harm in looking as well as she could.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DOLLY'S "FOURTH."

Bang! went the cannon on the green, just as the first red streak appeared over Poganuc hills, and open flew Dolly's great blue eyes. Every boy in town was out of bed as if he had been fired out of a pop-gun, and into his clothes and out on the green with a celerity scarcely short of the miraculous. Dolly's little toilet took more time; but she, too, was soon out upon the scene with her curls in a wild, unbrushed tangle, her little breast swelling and beating with a great enthusiasm for General Washington and liberty and her country, all of which were somehow to be illustrated and honored that day in Poganuc.

As the first rays of the rising sun struck the stars and stripes floating over the Court-house, and the sound of distant drum and fife announced the coming in of the Poganuc Rangers, Dolly was so excited that she burst into tears.

"What in the world are you crying for, Dolly?" said Bill rather impatiently. "I don't see any thing to cry about."

"I can't help it, Will," said Dolly, wiping her eyes, "it's so glorious!"

"If that isn't just like a girl!" said Bill. Contempt could go no farther, and Dolly retreated abashed. She was a girl – there was no help for that; but for this one day she envied the boys – the happy boys who might some day grow up and fight for their country, and do something glorious like General Washington. Meanwhile, from mouth to mouth, every one was giving in advance an idea of what the splendors of the day were to be.

"I tell ye," said Abe Bowles, "this 'ere's goin' to be a reel slam-bang, this 'ere is. Colonel Davenport is a goin' to review the troops, and wear the very same uniform he wore at Long Island.

"Yes," said Liph Kingsley, "and old Cæsar's goin' to wear his uniform and wait on the colonel. Tell ye what, the old snowball is on his high heels this morning – got a suit of the colonel's old uniform. Won't he strut and show his ivories!"

"Hulloa, boys, there's going to be a sham fight; Hiel told me so," said Bob Cushing. "Some are going to be British and some Americans, and the Americans are going to whip the British and make 'em run."

"Tell ye what," said Jake Freeman, "there'll be a bangin' and poppin'! won't there, boys!"

"Oh," said Dolly, who irrepressibly was following her brothers into the throng, "they won't really shoot anybody, will they?"

"Oh no, they'll only fire powder, of course," said Bill majestically, "don't you know that?"

Dolly was rebuked and relieved at once.

"I say, boys," said Nabby, appearing suddenly among the throng, "your ma says you must come right home to breakfast this minit; and you, Dolly Cushing, what are you out here for, round among the fellers like a tom-boy? Come right home."

"Why, Nabby, I wanted to see!" pleaded Dolly.

"Oh yes, you're allers up to everything and into everything, and your hair not brushed nor nothin'. You'll see it all in good time – come right away. Don't be a-lookin' at them trainers, now," she added, giving herself, however, a good observing glance to where across the green a knot of the Poganuc Rangers were collecting, and where Hiel, in full glory of his uniform, with his gold epaulets and cocked hat, was as busy and impressive as became the situation.

"Oh, Nabby, do look; there's Hiel," cried Dolly.

"Yes, yes; I see plain enough there's Hiel," said Nabby; "he thinks he's mighty grand, I suppose. He'll be conceiteder'n ever, I expect."

Just at that moment Hiel, recognizing Nabby, took off his gold-laced hat and bowed with a graceful flourish.

Nabby returned a patronizing little nod, and either the morning dawn, or the recent heat of the kitchen fire, or something, flushed her cheeks. It was to be remarked in evidence of the presence of mind that distinguishes the female sex that, though she had been sent out on a hurried errand to call the children, yet she had on her best bonnet, and every curl of her hair had evidently been carefully and properly attended to that morning.