Summerfield Part 15

"But he got away from the law," said Colwell.

"Not the living law, let me tell you," answered Fabens. "Not away from G.o.d's law written on his heart, and threading the bone and marrow of his being. To get away from that law, he had first to escape the reach of G.o.d's hand, and run away from his own body and spirit. That was not so easy a feat, Mr. Colwell.

"For the sake of our good social law, it may have been the person's duty to drag the poor man to light, and give him open justice; but he probably judged in that case, that the social law was better served and guarded in its spirit, if not in its letter, than if the offender had been exposed and imprisoned, to be let loose again with vengeance against the law, and against mankind.

"I venture to a.s.sert that the treatment cured the error, and the borrower will not violate the law again; while he might have run riot in open crime, had he been openly dealt with. The majesty of the law then was vindicated, and the injury done the system was repaired.

"And all that while he was amenable to G.o.d's living law traced all over and around his heart; and supposing he runs abroad and treads the green earth, and tastes the free air, and sees the bright sky; he is a prisoner still if he lives, and has not risen in goodness beyond sight of his sin; his body is his prison, his veins bind him down and his nerves bar him in. He senses his punishment keenly; it cuts to the quick, and he grieves, and trembles and gasps, whenever his fault comes to mind. Let him run at large; that law of G.o.d will follow him, watching with eyes from which no night can hide him; scourging with whips from which no shield defends."

"Squire Fabens is a very forgiving man," said Mrs. t.e.e.zle. "He's _very_ forgiving, and I think he's right."

"I claim no merit for that," said Fabens. "It is easy and right to forgive others. G.o.d himself forgives very freely. But the man has one enemy who may never forgive him in this world, and may not forgive him at Judgment till long after G.o.d has forgiven him. Though this will depend somewhat on his indolence or diligence in cultivating goodness and truth. That enemy is himself, and self-forgiveness is the most difficult, as it is the last to obtain."

"That may be all so, but I'd a given him _some_, I swanny, if I had a ketched him in my grainery," said Colwell.

"I never see it in Fabens's light afore," interrupted t.e.e.zle.

"Nor I," "nor I," added others; and the discussion ended.

Then a song was called for, and Colwell sang the 'Tea Song;' and f.a.n.n.y Fabens sang the 'Whippoorwill,' and the very air attended, to hear the happy girl, and the insects were hushed to silence, and the moon leaned and listened, and the woods and the lake bandied back and to the chorus, and repeated, and prolonged her full and silvery sounds.

Then they talked old times over, and rehea.r.s.ed a few personal histories, while the yellow corn glistened in rising hills before them.

Mr. Waldron related scenes he witnessed at Bennington and Saratoga, and told of the Captain's commission and forty dollars in silver, he received for taking six Hessians at the battle of Trenton. Troffater wanted to tell what his father did in the Revolution, but he had not courage to speak; and perhaps if he had, some one would have hinted the current tradition, that his father was a cowboy, and stole cattle from the Americans, and drove and sold them to the British, and then stole them from the British and drove them back again. The conversation soon turned on the settlement, and the history of the oldest inhabitants.

"I tell ye what, they were rather tough times after all," said Uncle Walter. "I remember when I cut the first tree on my farm, and stuck the first stake for my shanty. I had come a good ways from home, and it was going on night, and the wolves howled in hearing, and I begun to feel dubious. Uncle Waldron heard me chopping, and come, and took me home to his little hemlock hut. Remember it, Uncle Mose? I slep on the softest corner of your black muck-floor, and you said I snored like an alligator."

"The Stringers kept bachelors-hall, they say, over on the Owasco Flats, and baked nine crusts to one jonny cake," added Colwell.

"O, my stars!" cried Nancy Nimblet, "that must have been long before we came here; and, pray tell, Mr. Colwell, how they managed their dough."

"Why, they wet their pounded corn in water (there was no mill in these parts then), tossed up a hunker of a loaf, laid it down on a flat stone by the fire, and baked a crust, then peeled it off and eat it, while another was bakin', and so on to the ninth crust of the same smokin'

cake."

"And it was thought a scrumtious kind of a thing to visit the gals in our buff-leather breeches in them days," said Colwell.

"O, the _buff_ breeches came long after that," said Fabens. "We had grown quite civilized and fashionable when we wore the yellow buffs.

Besides, in those times there were not many girls in the country to visit. But if the times were tough, they gave us a great deal of comfort. I came here with my axe on my shoulder; I cut the first tree on my farm, too, and paid for my farm, chopping for others. I made my first bedstead. There was an auger in the settlement--it was yours, Uncle Walter, and I borrowed that and framed me a bedstead of maple saplings, and laced in elm-bark in lieu of a cord, and it gave me many pleasant sleeps.

"After a while, I wanted a carriage of some kind to bring in my grain, and draw away my ashes. So I blocked off the wheels with my axe, from the b.u.t.t of a black oak tree, and backed home boards for a box, three miles, from the nearest saw-mill. It did me good service, and I sold it for a price when I bought my first wagon. But we all took a world of comfort; and what was pleasanter work than putting up log heaps and brush heaps in the cool of the night, and seeing them blaze again on our clean sweet fallows?"

"A feast on bear's meat and metheglin, at Aunt Polly's," cried Colwell.

"Picking bushels of wild strawberries, big as your thumb," added Mrs.

Colwell.

"And going four miles to raisins," added Thomas t.e.e.zle.

"And five miles to weddins, once in a while," added Mrs. t.e.e.zle.

"To those very times we are indebted," said Fabens; "to its tugging labors and hard privations, its trials, and griefs, we are indebted for much of the fulness of heart, and breadth of character we now possess, and the comforts we are taking on our handsome farms. We took muscle and might from nature; we rounded out our life; we learned to shift for ourselves, and feel for our neighbors; and the earth crowned our labors with such harvests, we grew hopeful and brave. We all of us learned things that cannot be found in books. Books have their value, and it is very great. They teach us to take the hip-lock of nature, and lead us cross-lots to success; they increase and elevate the pleasures of our vocation; a taste for them, is itself a blessing that sweetens our leisure hours, attracts us from temptations, and will gladden our old age. But of the two, a large and wise experience is better, and comes well before them."

As he concluded these words, the hour of the clock was told, and the company were served to warm pumpkin-pie, that was a luxury to taste, and refreshment to remember. Then the young people had a play and a dance on the green, and the old people exchanged good wishes, and all went their ways, leaving the Fabenses happier for that reunion of neighborly hearts, than for the multiplied piles of corn they left glowing in the moonlight.

XXII.

GEORGE LUDLOW AND ALMON FRISBIE.

George Ludlow was introduced in a former chapter; Mrs. Fabens and her daughter discussed his character and life. They spoke of him as poor, and dependent on his own hands for a living for the family; as despised by certain young people in Summerfield who happened to stand above need; and yet as manly and capable; a lover of nature and books. I need say nothing of his person, except that he was homely to a stranger and handsome to a friend. I need say little more of his past history than this; he had labored for Fabens for a few weeks, and now a mutual regard quite ripened to affection, was rising between him and f.a.n.n.y.

George well knew her worth and happy fortune; he remembered that he was poor in what the world called riches; yet, possessing a manly self-respect, he considered himself as made in no way inferior on account of his poverty; and observing that she reciprocated freely any regard he gave her, he had the boldness at last to declare his affection, and intimate the happiness it would pour into his heart and life, some day to possess her as his wife; and it was not in her will, nor in that of her parents, to return one word of discouragement; although it was an opinion of theirs, to which he freely responded, that the final decision should be deliberately weighed, and the union set over to a time at which they would be better prepared for a happy bridal and a happy life.

But the impressions left by Fairbanks on the mind of Fabens, after the conversation in the harvest field, tended only to strengthen the Squire in the opinion that his wife had misjudged the gentlemanly merchant; and to elevate Fairbanks the more in his confidence and esteem. And returning to the house that evening, f.a.n.n.y remarked to her mother, that she must have judged, too hastily: "for much as I have tasked my powers of discernment," said she, "I cannot detect the first design or word, which would lead me to suspect that Mr. Fairbanks is deceptive. True, he rather addresses himself to one's self-esteem, and is open, and ardent for a comparative stranger; but it must be a manly way of his, which he forgets to hold in reserve; and I believe he is a gentleman.

I am sure, too, mother, that I have not allowed myself to feel flattered by his words; nor could I ever regard him as nearer than a friend. A true friend to us I believe he is. A face expressing so much open goodness; a bearing so instinctively affable, could not belong to a bad man."

Fairbanks was too clear-sighted not to read and know the hearts with which he was making acquaintance; and his well-considered plans suffered nothing for want of diligence on his part, in being brought to a fulfilment. Nor did he stand or act alone.

Almon Frisbie was his clerk and confidant, and talked of a friendship that began long before they left the Hudson; and he was prompt at any moment to receive his counsels in sacred trust, and go on all his errands. He was ardent and unreserved in expressing his love for Fairbanks; and Fairbanks was free and fond in the good things he said of Frisbie; and the people of Summerfield were very happy with such valued acquisitions to their society; and enjoyed the pleasantest hours whenever they numbered the merchant and clerk among their guests.

Promptly at the time agreed on, Frisbie came with the money to pay for the delivered wheat-crop; paid the entire sum in Spanish milled dollars; and spent an agreeable evening, discussing character, hearing Fabens's history from before the time of his settlement there; and giving incidents of his own life, and his adventures and experiences, with Fairbanks.

It was a pleasant hour. This was the second winter they were enjoying their new house, and the change and contrast could not be forgotten.

The new house stood on a gentle eminence, a quarter of a mile from the road, and within a distant view of the lake, which was beautiful in summer. There was a fine selection of all the forest trees that once flourished on the farm, in front of the house, which had been transplanted there twelve years before, in preparation of shade and beauty for the dooryard; and though their verdant honors had been shed in autumn, they reminded the hearts within of their guardian presence, by the whisperings of love they blent with the winter blast.

The house was a high story and a half, and stood thirty-five by thirty on the ground. It had a north room and south room, with bedrooms attached; it had four chambers, two large and two small, above; and a kitchen, a tea-room, and wood-house in the rear. It was painted white without, with a coal-black border on the tops of the chimneys, and had blinds of Paris green. It had white walls and oak-grained doors and casings in the south room, and white walls, doors and casings in the north room. The north room was f.a.n.n.y's, and the spare bed was spread with a blue and white carpet-coverlet, spun with her own hand, and woven in Auburn prison; and it was hung with snow-white curtains, which she spun and wove. She had a stove in the north room, and a fire-board behind, covered with trees, watered with a silver lake, and stocked with a herd of deer, three of which were drinking from the lake.

In the south room was another bed; and that was hung with checkered curtains; and there was an ample fireplace; and that was the family room. There sat the company when Frisbie made his call.

Fabens was advanced in life, and yet he looked young, as if time had taken a ten years' rest. Mrs. Fabens had grown round and robust; but had not shed her blooms; while f.a.n.n.y had become perfectly straight, and her hair was two shades darker; her eyes had still more l.u.s.tre; her countenance still more life, and her voice still more music; while her step was more elastic, and her form was more nature.

A prodigal walnut fire glowed gloriously before them; b.u.t.ternuts and chestnuts were tasted, and a large dish of rosy Spitzenbergs pa.s.sed around; and while Fabens and Frisbie kept up a running talk, Mrs.

Fabens and f.a.n.n.y enjoyed the hour, as one sat knitting fringe-mittens in the corner, and the other plied her dexterous needle piecing a bed-quilt in snow-b.a.l.l.s by the stand; and seeming to contend with the walnut fire, which should give forth the liveliest, warming smile, and fill up all the room with the most comfort, joy, and peace.

"Yes, I have known Fairbanks, known him like a brother, since we were little boys at school," said Frisbie. "We began our A B C's together, when Mary Sanford taught school; and I remember we said, 'A,' 'B,' 'C,'

'D,' and so on, in a loud voice, both at a time. And that Mary Sanford--you did not know her, did you, Squire? She taught in the same district five years; and it was said, she impressed much of her own n.o.ble heart on her pupils (though of this, perhaps, it does not become _me_ to speak;) but she married a false villain at last, and now she lives poor and deserted, they say, away out on the White Woman's Tract, beyond the Genesee river, with a family of children to support.

"And my heart has ached for many lovely girls who have thrown themselves away to such scoundrels. Her husband was brought up in the neighborhood too, and everybody thought George Lowry was a very pink of virtue. That made it seem so strange. Well, as I was going to say, Fairbanks always seemed a brother to me; and if there could be any fault in his treatment, he has trusted me too largely, and given me to share too many of his gifts and gains. But there, you never saw such a fellow in your life!"

"In what particular?" asked Fabens; while Mrs. Fabens took a quicker rock in her chair and scratched her forehead with her knitting needle; and f.a.n.n.y paused from her piecing to hear.

"I mean in his confidence in men, and his free-heartedness, giving away what he has. He would share his last crust with an enemy, and he is so up and down honest himself, he believes the whole world honest and pure also."

"But he seems to be a good judge of character," said Fabens, "and I should think he would not be often deceived. I see he notices heads and dispositions pretty narrowly."

"He _is often_ deceived," said Frisbie, "and he has met losses and crosses enough to make a few of his black hairs turn white. But I tell him it's owing to his putting too much confidence in men. He thinks everybody is honest because he is. His mother used to tell him, when he was a little boy, that he would always be poor, he was so confiding and free-hearted."

"There is a good deal in that," said Fabens, "and it is very true, as I have found it. Men that can be trusted most, are commonly most trusting, while the false and guilty are always on the lookout for rogues. How is Fairbanks' business now? He has met no losses in Summerfield, I hope."