3stalwarts (20 page)

They walked down to Mrs. McKlennar’s farm on a Sunday. The river had opened, spring was in the air. That spring of 1777 had come with a rush. One night when Gil and Lana were going to bed they had seen mist over the river ice. And before moonset in the early morning, they had been awakened by the breaking of the ice. It had cracked first in one long traveling report that carried eastward nearly to the falls.

In the morning the whole valley had changed. The air had been soft and moist; and the rising sun, a red ball on the misty hills, already warm. But the wonder, after the long silence of the snow, had been the sound of water. Water was everywhere. It was flowing in its accustomed channel of the river, dark and soiled against the white banks, but catching a red glitter on the rift below the ford. It came across the low land with a steady seeping sound, overflowing the frozen marshes and putting long lakes in the sleigh ruts. And everywhere on the dark slopes of the hills arched yellow falls burst downward.

Gil and Lana dressed themselves carefully, he in his good black jersey coat, and she in her striped blue and white short gown and striped petticoat. She wore her shawl over her head, but she had a white cap on her black hair, and to Gil she seemed unexpectedly dainty as she walked beside him, for all her muddy feet, and carried her chintz pocket before her, almost with demureness. He kept looking down at her, as if in the soft air he had rediscovered the girl in her body, and she looked to him too fine and gentle for a hired help.

In Lana must have run some inheritance from the old Palatine persecu-tions. The history of her race was one of oppression and of the struggle to survive against it. It was that which made the Palatines strong-through suffering they had preserved their personal independence.

So now, instead of arguing with Gil, she let him take his own way, contenting herself with the presence of spring, the steady drip of trees, the shimmer of the water, the scent of earth unfettered of the snow, and the clear infinity of the April sky. It was good to be walking so, beside Gil. It was the first time all winter, except when they had gone to church. Through her own contentedness she softened his resentment, and they were walking almost peaceably when they first saw the McKlennar farm.

The land lay prettily for a small farm, bordering both sides of the Kingsroad, its back against the sudden rise of river hills, its front upon the river. At a single glance the eye could comprehend the system of the land. The pasture went along the river on a long low round that carried above flood water. Enough willows grew there to give shade. The great trees spread wider, and their branches to-day lifted their upthrusting twigs like brassy arrows against the violet shadows on the southern hills.

Behind the pasture the fields lay level to the plough, rich black bottom land. In spite of himself, Gil felt his heart swelling when he saw them, with an ache for Deerfield. This land had been worked for many years. And there was a good hay bottom, with bluejoint in the wet and a sod that looked like English grass in the higher portions. He could see that the fences had been well set up.

Gil found himself eagerly searching out the farm buildings. What he saw was even better than he had supposed. The house he let pass; it was a stone-walled house, with a piazza facing the road. Behind it in a slope of ground was a farm barn of hewn logs, laid up with plaster joints and a pine shingle roof. The very look of it was warm.

But Lana was looking past the barn to the small house that stood to the right of the springhouse. It also was built of hewn logs, but she could tell by the way it sat above the ground that it had a board floor laid on actual sills. And in front of the door, in the sunny place, were reddish-orange fowls busily prospecting in the dirt.

“Gil!” she cried. “They keep poultry.”

Now she began to be afraid that Gil would shy off from the place, that he wouldn’t like the woman of the place, or that the woman of the place would not like them. She closed her lips tight, and she said a small prayer in her heart, and she dared not look ahead.

When she did look up again, it was because a woman’s voice had roused her.

“Good morning. Is your name Martin?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gil was saying.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Mrs. McKlennar.

From her appearance there, Lana would never have supposed that she was gentry. Her boots were muddy, the tops of them showing plainly underneath her petticoat, which Mrs. McKlennar had pinned up all around, nearly to her knees. Her hair she wore clubbed up at the back of her head in a string net that looked as if some birds had put it together in a hurry. She looked hot and she smelled of her stable.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly meeting Lana’s gaze. “I’m hot and I smell and I look like the devil and I’m mad as well. Every time I lift a fork of cow manure I am reminded of that damn man of mine. He sneaked out of here without so much as a word. The first I knew of it was the freshened heifer bellowing in the barn. I thought he was drunk and I went down to haul him out of bed. I don’t mind a man having his likker, Martin, but if he doesn’t do his work he can go somewhere else. The quicker the better, for him.”

She snorted like a bell mare and stamped her feet as she went up the steps.

“Come inside.”

She led them into the kitchen of her house, a lovely place, to Lana’s eyes. The stone walls had been sheathed in wide pine paneling and painted a snuff brown. Overhead the beams were painted black with bright red under-sides. Mrs. McKlennar sat on one settle. She pointed to the other, and Gil and Lana sat down side by side.

“Now,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “you’re here on business. Let’s get down to it. I want a man. Demooth says you need a job. Is that so?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re a passable farmer?”

“I had my own place.”

“I heard about it being burned. Too bad. Well, it’s an ill wind. And it’s neither here nor there. Mark wouldn’t have sent you here if you hadn’t known something about it. I don’t do much farming. Just keep up the meadows and feed my stock. I’m a widow woman. My husband was Captain Barnabas McKlennar. He was with Abercrombie. I may as well say I’ve had army life all my life, and I expect to get an order obeyed when I give it. Whether you like it or not. Is that understood?”

Gil flushed. “If I take your pay, I’ll do the best I can.”

“Well, I don’t want you coming around afterwards and complaining. How much do you want?”

“I’ve never worked for anyone else,” Gil said. “What did you expect to pay?”

“Well, I asked Mr. Demooth and he suggested forty-five pounds a year, with the house, with the wood, and with the food. It’s not a big wage, but if you work well you’ll have a good home here. Besides, if your wife can sew, I’ll pay her for sewing for me. Can you sew, what’s your name?”

“Lana.”

“That’s a nickname. Magdelana, I suppose.”

Lana nodded, blushing.

“Well,” said Mrs. McKlennar tartly, “can you sew, Magdelana?”

“Yes,” said Lana.

“Would you do sewing for me?”

“I’d like to,” Lana said shyly.

“That’s understood. I hate to sew. I hate housework, so I do the barn myself and let Daisy, my nigger, do the cooking. I took care of my husband, but now he’s gone I’ll do as I like. I’ve got a long nose, Martin, and I poke it where I like. You may think I’m a nuisance.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Gil, at a loss for what to say.

“A nuisance?” she said sharply.

Gil flushed.

“I hadn’t meant it.” Then, meeting the glitter in her eye, he couldn’t help but grin. “But I guess I’ll think so if you do.”

Lana’s heart contracted. She looked quickly towards Mrs. McKlennar and was surprised to find the woman’s bold stare fixed upon herself. For a moment the face seemed more horselike than ever. Then the weathered cheeks twitched a little, Mrs. McKlennar put a large hand to Lana’s hair and gave it a pat, as she would have patted a dog’s head.

However, her voice was uncompromising.

“Your thoughts are your own property, Martin. But keep them to yourself when they arise. And don’t presume on your good looks.”

“No, ma’am,” said Gil.

Lana sighed. She could tell that Gil was amused, that he had made up his mind.

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “you’d like to see your house?” She glanced at Lana and lifted her voice. “Would you, Magdelana?”

Lana bestirred her senses. “Yes,” she said timidly.

Mrs. McKlennar snorted, rose, and led them out the back door. As she did so, she said, “I’ll expect you to use the back door when you want to ask me for anything. I don’t want muck tracked through my kitchen. I track enough myself.”

A stout negress in a bright bandana watched them from the woodshed. But Mrs. McKlennar ignored her, and walked with hard-heeled strides towards the little house.

“It’s a mess. McLonis never cleared out. A single man. You’ll have a sight of work here, Magdelana. But there’s water running through a puncheon, a good spring. Have you got bedding?”

“Most of our things were burned,” said Gil.

“Well, I’ll help you out with a bed.” She opened the door. “It’s a good chimney, and it’s a dry house.”

The inside surfaces of the logs were mellowed. Mrs. McKlennar stalked to the middle of the floor and stood there. “You’ve got a good-sized bedroom upstairs. It’s light and airy. It’s the original house. Barney was possessed to build the stone one, but I always fancied this house. I lived here a good many years.”

Lana looked round her. It was a good chimney, the kind that would be easy to cook at. It had an oven. It made her think of her mother’s oven. She turned to look at Gil.

“It’s a nice house,” she said softly.

“I’m glad you’ve sense enough to see it. Well, as for me, you can consider the job yours. It’s up to you, now, Martin.” She paused. “Maybe you’d like to ask some questions.”

Gil said, “Yes. I’m in Mr. Demooth’s company. If the militia gets called, and I go out with it, will I get paid my wages?”

“Fortunes of war.” Mrs. McKlennar nodded. “I’ll expect Mrs. Martin to do the milking.”

“I will,” Lana said eagerly.

“There’s another thing.” Gil spoke hesitantly.

“Yes?” Mrs. McKlennar was gruff.

“I’d have to know if you were in the right party.”

“A woman hasn’t got political opinions. I run my farm. And I’ll shoot the daylights out of anybody, British or American, that thinks he can come here monkeying with my business. Does that satisfy you?”

Gil said, “Yes,” quite seriously.

“Then maybe you’d like to talk it over.”

“That ain’t necessary, Mrs. McKlennar. We’ll do the best we can for you. I like the farm. And you’ll find my wife useful, I guess.”

Mrs. McKlennar grinned.

“That’s fine.” She held her hand out like a man. “When can you move in?”

‘Tomorrow. I’ve got a mare.”

“You can keep her here.”

Lana said, “Would it be all right for me to mind the chickens, ma’am?”

“Chickens?”

“Yes. I used to mind them at home. I missed them up in the woods.”

The widow snorted.

The people had sat down. Now they bowed themselves forward. The pews stopped creaking. Inside Herkimer Church, there was no sound at all but the sudden cracking of the Reverend Mr. Rozencrantz’s knees as he got down from his chair, buttoned his coat, and folded his hands in front of him; and through the open windows the tread of military boots upon the sentry walk of the surrounding fort sounded like the impersonal slow laborious ticking of a clock.

Mr. Rozencrantz was a well-advised man, who knew as well as anyone did that to hold his congregation a preacher must give them something to talk about on their way home. Hell and damnation didn’t get far when followed by a Sunday dinner.

In the forefront of the church, high up, in the shadow of the sounding board, he knelt— his white hair hanging to the collar of his shirt, his thin face, his high arched nose, his eyelids stretching tight over his eyeballs as he closed his eyes, the easy mobility of his colorless lips forming themselves for the first word:—

“O Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, hear us, we beseech Thee, answer our prayers and bring succor and guidance and consolation according to the needs of those we are about to bring to Thy divine notice.”

The domine’s stertorous breathing punctuated the pause. He gathered himself visibly, raised up his voice again, and then let it get to business.

“O Almighty God, we are thinking right now of Mary Marte Wolla-ber. She is just fifteen years old, but she is going with one of the soldiers at Fort Dayton. He is a Massachusetts man, O God, and it has come to my attention that he is married in the town of Hingham. I have had her father and mother talk to her, I have talked to her my-self, but she won’t pay attention. We ask Thy help, God Almighty, in bringing her back to the path of virtue, from which, we believe, she has strayed pretty far.

“O Almighty God, You have brought us an early spring, keep off the frosts until the fruit is set. O Lord, the English codlin Nicholas Herkimer has grafted onto his Indian apple tree has bloomed this year.

May it bear fruit. It is a wonderful example of Thy ways, and worth our going to see, and Nicholas Herkimer will show it to anybody. Also, God Almighty, our Heavenly Father, we return thanks for the good lambing we have had this year, particularly Joe Bellinger, who has had eleven couples lambed from his twelve ewes, which is a record in this county.

“O Almighty God, we ask Thy compassion and aid for all of us who are in sickness. We ask it for Petey Paris, who got the flux real bad on Saturday. His Uncle Isaac Paris sent the news up to us and asks our prayers and says that he has got in a new supply of calicos, French reds, broadcloths, Russias, fancy hank’chers, some new hats and heavy boots, scythes and grindstones.

“O Almighty God, give comfort to the following women, both expecting mighty quick, especially Hilda Fox, who is only sixteen next July and getting close to her time. It is her first. And also for Josina Casler, who is due the end of this month.”

The domine halted once more, let go a strong breath, and resumed:—