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The Roof Tree. Charles Buck
Читать онлайн.Название The Roof Tree
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Автор произведения Charles Buck
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Public Domain
The pack train upon which the little community depended for needed supplies had been long overdue, and at Caleb's side as he stood in front of his house looking anxiously east was his daughter Dorothy, grown tall and pliantly straight as a lifted lance.
Her dark eyes and heavy hair, the poise of her head, her gracious sweetness and gentle courage were, to her father, all powerful reminders of the woman whom he had loved first and last – this girl's mother. For a moment he turned away his head.
"Some day," he said, abruptly, "if Providence permits it, I purpose to set a fitting stone here at her head."
"Meanwhile – if we can't raise a stone," the girl's voice came soft and vibrant, "we can do something else. We can plant a tree."
"A tree!" exclaimed the man, almost irritably. "It sometimes seems to me that we are being strangled to death by trees! They conceal our enemies – they choke us under their blankets of wet and shadow."
But Dorothy shook her head in resolute dissent.
"Those are just trees of the forest," she said, whimsically reverting to the old class distinction. "This will be a manor-house tree planted and tended by loving hands. It will throw shade over a sacred spot." Her eyes began to glow with the growth of her conception.
"Don't you remember how dearly Mother loved the great walnut tree that shaded the veranda at home? She would sit gazing out over the river, then up into its branches – dreaming happy things. She used to tell me that she found my fairy stories there among its leaves – and there was always a smile on her lips then."
The spring was abundantly young and where the distances lengthened they lay in violet dreams.
"Don't you remember?" repeated the girl, but Caleb Parish looked suddenly away. His ear had caught a distant sound of tinkling pony bells drifting down wind and he said devoutly, "Thank God, the pack train is coming."
It was an hour later when the loaded horses came into view herded by fagged woodsmen and piloted by Peter Doane, who strode silently, tirelessly, at their head. But with Peter walked another young man of different stamp – a young man who had never been here before.
Like his fellows he wore the backwoodsman's garb, but unlike them his tan was of newer wind-burning. Unlike them, too, he bowed with a ceremony foreign to the wilderness and swept his coonskin cap clear of his head.
"This man," announced Peter, brusquely, "gives the name of Kenneth Thornton and hears a message for Captain Parish!"
The young stranger smiled, and his engaging face was quickened with the flash of white teeth. A dark lock of hair fell over his forehead and his firm chin was deeply cleft.
"I have the honour of bearing a letter from your brother, Sir," he said, "and one from General Washington himself."
Peter Doane looked on, and when he saw Dorothy's eyes encounter those of the stranger and her lashes droop and her cheeks flush pink, he turned on his heel and with the stiffness of an affronted Indian strode silently away.
"This letter from General Washington," said Caleb Parish, looking up from his reading, "informs me that you have already served creditably with our troops in the east and that you are now desirous to cast your lot with us here. I welcome you, Sir."
Kenneth Thornton was swift to learn and when he went abroad with hunting parties or to swing the axe in the clearings, his stern and exacting task-masters found no fault with his strength or spirit.
Their ardent and humourless democracy detected in him no taint of the patronizing or supercilious, and if he was new to the backwoods, he paid his arrears of knowledge with the ready coin of eagerness.
So Kenneth Thornton was speedily accepted into full brotherhood and became a favourite. The cheery peal of his laugh and his even cordiality opened an easy road to popularity and confidence.
Thornton had been schooled in England until the war clouds lowered, and as he talked of his boyish days there, and of the sights and festivities of London town, he found in Caleb Parish and his daughter receptive listeners, but in young Doane a stiff-necked monument of wordless resentment.
One summer night when the skies had spilt day-long torrents of rain and the sun had set red with the woods still sobbing and chill, a great fire roared on Caleb Parish's hearth. Before it sat the householder with his daughter and Kenneth Thornton; as usual, too, silent and morose yet stubbornly present, was Peter Doane.
Oddly enough they were talking of the minuet, and Kenneth rose to illustrate a step and bow that he had seen used in England.
Suddenly the girl came to her feet and faced him with a curtsey.
Kenneth Thornton bent low from the waist, and, with a stately gesture, carried her fingers to his lips.
"Now, my lord," she commanded, "show the newest steps that they dance at court."
"Your humble servant, Mistress Dorothy," he replied, gravely.
Then they both laughed, and Caleb Parish was divided between smile and tears – but Peter Doane glowered and sat rigid, thinking of freshly reared barriers that democracy should have levelled.
CHAPTER IV
A week later Dorothy led Kenneth Thornton and Peter Doane to a place where beside a huge boulder a "spring-branch" gushed into a natural basin of stone. The ferns grew thick there, and the moss lay deep and green, but over the spot, with branches spreading nobly and its head high-reared, stood an ancient walnut and in the narrow circle of open ground at its base grew a young tree perhaps three feet tall.
"I want to move that baby tree," said Dorothy, and now her voice became vibrant, "to a place where, when it has grown tall, it can stand as a monument over my mother's grave."
She paused, and the two young men offered no comment. Each was watching the glow in her eyes and feeling that, to her, this ceremony meant something more than the mere setting out of a random seedling.
"It will stand guard over our home," she went on, and her eyes took on an almost dreamy far-awayness. "It will be shade in summer and a reminder of coming spring in winter. It will look down on people as they live and die – and are born. At last," she concluded, "when I come to die myself, I want to be buried under it, too."
When the young walnut had been lifted clear and its roots packed with some of its own native earth Kenneth Thornton started away carrying it in advance while Dorothy and Peter followed.
But before they came to the open space young Doane stopped on the path and barred the girl's way. "Dorothy," he began, awkwardly, and with painful embarrassment, "I've got something thet must needs be said – an' I don't rightly know how to say it."
She looked up into his set face and smiled.
"Can I help you say it?" she inquired, and he burst out passionately, "Until he come, you seemed to like me. Now you don't think of nobody else but jest him … and I hates him."
"If it's hatred you want to talk about," she said, reproachfully, "I don't think I can help you after all."
"Hatred of him," he hastened to explain. "I've done lived in the woods – an' I ain't never learned pretty graces … but I can't live without you, an' if he comes betwixt us…"
The girl raised a hand.
"Peter," she said, slowly, "we've been good friends, you and I. I want to go on being good friends with you … but that's all I can say."
"And him," demanded the young man, with white cheeks and passion-shaken voice, "what of him?"
"He asked me an hour ago," she answered, frankly. "We're going to be married."
The face of the backwoodsman worked spasmodically for a moment with an agitation against which his stoic training was no defense. When his passion permitted speech he said briefly, "I wishes ye joy of him – damn him!"
Then he wheeled and disappeared in the tangle.
"I'm