Hills of the Shatemuc Part 110

"It is August, Winnie," was all Winthrop's remark.

The front of the house was shut up; they went round. Old Anderese was cutting wood at the back of the house; but without stopping to enlighten him, Winthrop pa.s.sed on and led Winnie into the kitchen. There the kitchen fire was burning as of yore, and on the hearth before it stood Karen, stooping down to oversee her cooking breakfast. At Winthrop's voice she started and turned. She looked at them; and then came a long and prolonged "Oh! --" of most mingled and varied tone and expression; hands and eyes keeping it company.

"Karen, we have come to see you."

In perfect silence she shook the hand of each, and then sat down and threw her ap.r.o.n over her face. Winnie stood still and sobbed; Winthrop walked off.

"Oh, dear," said the old woman presently rising and coming up to Winnie, -- "what's made ye come to see me again? What did you come for, dear?"

The tone was wondering and caressing, and rejoicing, all in a breath. Winnie dried her eyes and answered as well as she could.

"Why we wanted to see the old place again, Karen, and to see you; and Governor thought it would do me good to be in the country a little while; and he couldn't come before, and so we have come up now to stay a few days. And we've brought things to eat, so you needn't be troubled about that."

"Ye needn't," said old Karen. "Anderese and me'd find something for you to eat, in all the wide country -- do ye think we wouldn't? And how are you, dear," said she scanning Winnie's pale face; -- "are ye ever yet any stronger?"

Winnie shook her head smiling and answered, "Not much."

"I see ye ain't. Well -- ye're the Lord's child. He'll do what he will with his own. Where did ye come from, dear?"

"Up from Mr. Cowslip's mill," said Winnie. "We came in his sloop last night."

"The sloop!" said Karen. "Why then ye haven't had anything to eat! -- and what was I thinking of! Sit down, dear -- take your own chair, till I get the other room fit for ye; and you shall have breakfast jus' so soon I can make it. Where's the Governor gone to?"

He came in; and Karen's face grew bright at the sight of him.

All the while she was getting the breakfast he stood talking with her; and all the while, her old face kept the broad gleam of delight that had come into it with his entering the kitchen. With what zeal that breakfast was cooked for him; with what pleasure it was served. And while they were eating it, Karen sat in the chimney corner and looked at them, and talked.

"And isn't the place sold then, Governor?"

"Not yet, Karen -- in a few weeks it will be."

"And who's goin' to buy it?"

"I don't know."

"And ye ain't goin' fur to buy it yourself?"

"No Karen -- I am not rich enough to keep a country house."

"You had ought to have it," said Karen. "It don't belong to n.o.body else but you. And you don't know who's a goin' to have it, Governor?"

"I don't know."

"'Tain't likely they'll let the old woman stay in her corner, whoever they'll be," said Karen. "Well -- 'tain't fur now to the end, -- and then I'll get a better place where they won't turn me out. I wish I was there, Governor."

"'There' will be better at the end of your way, Karen, than at any other time."

"Ay -- O I know it, dear; but I get so impatient, days, -- I want to be gone. It's better waiting."

"Perhaps you'll have something yet to do for us, Karen," said Winnie.

"Ye're too fur off," said the old woman. "Karen's done all she can for ye when she's took care of ye this time. But I'll find what I have to do -- and I'll do it -- and then I'll go!" -- she said, with a curious modulation of the tones of her voice that came near some of the Methodist airs in which she delighted.

"Governor'll take care o' you, Winnie; and the Lord'll take care o' him!"

Both brother and sister smiled a little at Karen's arrangement of things; but neither contradicted her.

"And how do you manage here, Karen, all alone? -- do you keep comfortable?"

"I'm comfortable, Mr. Winthrop," she said with half a smile; -- "I have lived comfortable all my life. I seem to see Mis'

Landholm round now, times, jus' like she used to be; and I know we'll be soon all together again. I think o' that when I'm dreary."

She was a singular old figure, as she sat in the corner there with her head a little on one side, leaning her cheek on her finger, and with the quick change of energetic life and subdued patience in her manner.

"Don't get any dinner for us, Karen," said Winthrop as they rose from table. "We have enough for dinner in our basket."

"Ye must take it back again to Mannahatta," said Karen. "Ye'r dinner'll be ready -- roast chickens and new potatoes and huckleberry pie -- the chickens are just fat, and ye never see nicer potatoes this time o' year; and Anderese don't pick very fast, but he'll have huckleberries enough home for you to eat all the ways ye like. And milk I know ye like'm with, Governor."

"Give me the basket then, Karen, and I'll furnish the huckleberries."

"He'll do it -- Anderese'll get 'em, Mr. Winthrop, -- not you."

"Give me the basket! -- I would rather do it, Karen. Anderese has got to dig the potatoes."

"O yes, and we'll go out and spend the morning in the woods, won't we, Governor?" said his sister.

The basket and Winnie were ready together and the brother and sister struck off into the woods to the north of the house.

They had to cross but a little piece of level ground and suns.h.i.+ne and they were under the shade of the evergreens which skirted all the home valley. The ground as soon became uneven and rocky, broken into little heights and hollows, and strewn all over with a bedding of stones, large and small; except where narrow foot-tracks or cowpaths wound along the mimic ravines or gently climbed the hilly ridges. Among these stones and sharing the soil with them, uprose the cedars, pines, hemlocks, and a pretty intermingling of deciduous trees; not of very tall or vigorous growth, for the land favoured them not, but elegant and picturesque in varied and sweet degree.

That it pleased those eyes to which it had been long familiar, and long strange, was in no measure.

Leaving the beaten paths, the brother and sister turned to the right of the first little ravine they had entered, just where a large boulder crowned with a tuft of ferns marked the spot, and toiled up a very rough and steep rising. Winthrop's help was needed here to enable Winnie to keep footing at all, much more to make her way to the top. There were steep descents of ground, spread with dead pine leaves, a pretty red-brown carpeting most dainty to the eyes but very unsure to the foot; -- there were sharp turns in the rocky way, with huge granitic obstacles before and around them; -- Winnie could not keep on her feet without Winthrop's strong arm; although in many a rough pitch and steep rise of the way, young hickories and oaks lent their aid to her hand that was free. Mosses and lichens, brown and black with the summer's heat, clothed the rocks and dressed out their barrenness; green tufts of fern nodded in many a nook, and kept their greenness still; and huckleberry bushes were on every hand, in every spare place, and standing full of the unreaped black and blue harvest. And in the very path, under their feet, sprang many an una.s.suming little green plant, that in the Spring had lifted its head in glorious beauty with some delicate crown of a flower. A stranger would have made nothing of them; but Winnie and Winthrop knew them all, crowned or uncrowned.

"It's pretty hard getting up here, Governor -- I guess I haven't grown strong since I was here last; and these old yellow pines are so rotten I am afraid to take hold of anything -- but your hand. It's good you are sure-footed. O look at the Solomon's Seal -- don't you wish it was in flower!"

"If it was, we shouldn't have any huckleberries," said her brother.

"There's a fine parcel of them, isn't there, Winthrop? O let's stop and pick these -- there are nice ones -- and let me rest."

Winnie sat down to breathe, with her arm round the trunk of a pine tree, drinking in everything with her eyes, while that cl.u.s.ter of bushes was stripped of its most promising berries; and then a few steps more brought Winthrop and Winnie to the top of the height.

Greater barrenness of soil, or greater exposure to storms, or both causes together, had left this hill-top comparatively bare; and a few cedars that had lived and died there had been cut away by the axe, for firewood; making a still further clearance. But the shallow soil everywhere supported a covering of short gra.s.s or more luxuriant mosses; and enough cedars yet made good their hold of life and standing, to overshadow pretty well the whole ground; leaving the eye unchecked in its upward or downward rovings. The height was about two hundred feet above the level of the river, and seemed to stand in mid-channel, Shahweetah thrusting itself out between the north and southerly courses of the stream, and obliging it to bend for a little s.p.a.ce at a sharp angle to the West. The north and south reaches, and the bend were all commanded by the height, together with the whole western sh.o.r.e and southern and south-eastern hills. To the northwest was Wut-a-qut-o, seen almost from the water's edge to the top; but the out-jutting woods of Shahweetah impinged upon the mountain's base, and cut the line of the river there to the eye. But north there was no obstruction. The low foreground of woods over which the hill-top looked, served but as a base to the picture, a setting on the hither side. Beyond it the Shatemuc rolled down from the north in uninterrupted view, the guardian hills, Wut-a-qut-o and its companions, standing on either side; and beyond them, far beyond, was the low western sh.o.r.e of the river sweeping round to the right, where the river made another angle, shewing its soft tints; and some faint and clear blue mountains still further off, the extreme distance of all. But what varied colouring, -- what fresh lights and shades, -- what sweet contrast of fair blue sky and fair blue river, -- the one, earth's motion; the other, heaven's rest; what deep and bright greens in the foreground, and what shadowy, faint, cloud-like, tints of those far off mountains. The soft north wind that had greeted the travellers in the early morning, was blowing yet, soft and warm; it flickered the leaves of the oaks and chestnuts with a lazy summer stir; white sails spotted the broad bosom of the Shatemuc and came down with summer gentleness from the upper reaches of the river. And here and there a cloud floated over; and now and then a locust sang his monotone; and another soft breath of the North wind said that it was August; and the gra.s.shoppers down in the dell said yes, it was.

Winnie sat or lay down under the trees, and there Winthrop left her for a while; when he came back it was with flushed face and crisped hair and a basket full of berries. He threw himself down on the ground beside Winnie, threw his hat off on the other side, and gave her the basket. Winnie set it down again, after a word of comment, and her head took its wonted place of rest with a little smothered sigh.

"How do you feel, Winnie?" said her brother, pa.s.sing his hand gently over her cheek.

"O I feel very well," said Winnie. "But Governor, I wish you could keep all this! --"

"I couldn't live here and in Mannahatta too, Winnie."

"But Governor, you don't mean always to live in Mannahatta, do you? -- and nowhere else?"