Susan Warner - Hills of the Shatemuc

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"What _can_ you do, Winthrop?"

He did not answer again, and she looked up and looked into his
face.

"Can you take God for your God? and give your heart and your
life, -- all the knowledge you will ever get and all the power
it will ever give you, -- to be used for him?"

"For him, mamma? --"

"In doing his work -- in doing his pleasure?"

"Mamma -- I am not a Christian," he said hesitatingly and his
eye falling.

"And now you know what a Christian is. Till you can do this,
you do nothing. Till you are Christ's after this whole-hearted
fashion you are not mine as I wish to see you, -- you are not
mine for ever, -- my boy -- my dear Winthrop --" she said, again
putting her arm round him and bowing her face to his breast.

Did he ever forget the moment her head lay there? the moment
when his arms held the dearest earthly thing life ever had for
him? It was a quiet moment; she was not crying; no tears had
been dropped at all throughout their conversation; and when
she raised her face it was to kiss him quietly, -- but twice,
on his lips and on his cheek, -- and bid him good night. But
his soul was full of one meaning, as he shut his little
bedroom door, -- that that face should never be paler or more
care-worn for anything of his doing; -- that he would give up
anything, he would never go from home, sooner than grieve her
heart in a feather's weight; nay, that rather than grieve her,
he would _become a Christian_.

CHAPTER IV.

A lonely dwelling, where the shore
Is shadowed with rocks, and cypresses
Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies,
And with their shadows the clear depths below.
SHELLEY.

The winter was a long one to the separated family. Quietly won
through, and busily. The father in the distant legislature;
the brother away at his studies; and the two or three lonely
people at home; -- each in his place was earnestly and
constantly at work. No doubt Mr. Landholm had more time to
play than the rest of them, and his business cares did not
press quite so heavily; for he wrote home of gay dinings-out,
and familiar intercourse with this and that member of the
Senate and Assembly, and hospitable houses that were open to
him in Vantassel, where he had pleasant friends and pleasant
times. But the home cares were upon him even then; he told how
he longed for the Session to be over, that he might be with
his family; he sent dear love to little Winifred and Asahel,
and postscripts of fatherly charges to Winthrop, recommending
to him particularly the care of the young cattle and to go on
dressing the flax. And Winthrop, through the long winter, had
taken care of the cattle and dressed the flax in the same
spirit with which he shut his bedroom door that night; a
little calmer, not a whit the less strong.

He filled father's and brother's place -- his mother knew how
well. Sam Doolittle knew, for he declared "there wa'n't a
stake in the fences that wa'n't looked after, as smart as if
the old chap was to hum." The grain was threshed as duly as
ever, though a boy of sixteen had to stand in the shoes of a
man of forty. Perhaps Sam and Anderese wrought better than
their wont, in shame or in admiration. Karen never had so good
a woodpile, Mrs. Landholm's meal bags were never better looked
after; and little Winifred and Asahel never wanted their rides
in the snow, nor had more nuts cracked o' nights; though they
had only one tired brother at home instead of two fresh ones.
Truth to tell, however, one ride from Winthrop would at any
time content them better than two rides from Will. Winthrop
never allowed that he was tired, and never seemed so; but his
mother and Karen were resolved that tired he must be.

"He had pretty strength to begin with," Karen said; "that was
a good thing; and he seemed to keep it up too; he was shootin'
over everything."

If Winthrop kept his old plans of self-aggrandizement, it was
at the bottom of his heart; he looked and acted nothing but
the farmer, all those months. There was a little visit from
Rufus too, at mid-winter, which must have wakened the spirit
of other things, if it had been at all laid to sleep. But if
it waked it kept still. It did not so much as shew itself.
Unless indirectly.

"What have you been doing all to-day, Governor?" said his
little sister, meeting him with joyful arms as he came in one
dark February evening.

"What have _you_ been about all day?" said her brother, taking
her up to his shoulder. "Cold isn't it? Have you got some
supper for me?"

"No, _I_ hav'n't, --" said the little girl. "Mamma! -- Governor
wants his supper!"

"Hush, hush. Governor's not in a hurry."

"Where have you been all day?" she repeated, putting her
little hand upon his cold face with a sort of tender
consideration.

"In the snow, and out of it."

"What were you doing in the snow?"

"Walking."

"Was it cold?"

"Stinging."

"_What_ was stinging?"

"Why, the cold!"

She laughed a little, and went on stroking his face.

"What were you doing when you wa'n't in the snow?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Tell me!"

"I was scutching flax."

"What is that?"

"Why, don't you know? -- didn't you see me beating flax in the
barn the other day? -- beating it upon a board, with a bat? --
that was scutching."

"That day when mamma said, -- mamma said, you were working too
hard?"

"I think it is very likely."

"I thought we were done dressing flax?" remarked Asahel.

"_We!_ -- well, I suppose you have, for this season."

"Well, ain't you done dressing flax?"

"No, sir."

"I thought you said the flax was all done, Winthrop?" said his
mother.

"My father's is all done, ma'am."

"And yet you have been dressing flax to-day?" said Asahel;
while his mother looked.

"Mamma," said Winthrop, "I wish Asahel was a little older. --
He would be a help."

"Who have you been working for?" said the child.

"For myself."

"Where have you been, Winthrop?" said his mother in a lower
tone of inquiry.

"I have been over the mountain, mamma, -- to Mr. Upshur's."

"Dressing flax?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you have come over the mountain to-night?"

"Yes, mother."

She stooped in silence to the fire to take up her tea-pot; but
Asahel exclaimed,

"It ain't right, mamma, is it, for Winthrop to be dressing
flax for anybody else?"

"What's the wrong?" said his brother.

"Is it, mamma?"

But mamma was silent.

"What's the wrong?" repeated Winthrop.

"Because you ought to be doing your own business."

"Never did, if I didn't to-day," Winthrop remarked as he came
to the table.

"For shame Asahel!" put in little Winifred with her childish
voice; -- "_you_ don't know. Governor always is right."

It was a very cold February, and it was a very bleak walk over
the mountain; but Winthrop took it many a time. His mother now
and then said when she saw him come in or go out, "Don't
overtry yourself, my son! --" but he answered her always with
his usual composure, or with one of those deep breaking-up
looks which acknowledged only her care -- not the need for it.
As Karen said, "he had a pretty strength to begin with;" and
it was so well begun that all the exposure and hardship served
rather to its development and maturing.

The snow melted from off the hills, and the winter blasts came
more fitfully, and were changed for soft south airs between
times. There was an end to dressing flax. The spring work was
opening; and Winthrop had enough to do without working on his
own score. Then Mr. Landholm came home; and the energies of
both the one and the other were fully taxed, at the plough and
the harrow, in the barnyard and in the forest, where in all
the want of Rufus made a great gap. Mrs. Landholm had more
reason now to distress herself, and distressed herself
accordingly, but it was of no use. Winthrop wrought early and
late, and threw himself into the gap with a desperate ardour
that meant -- his mother knew what.

They all wrought cheerfully and with good heart, for they were
together again; and the missing one was only thought of as a
stimulus to exertion, or its reward. Letters came from Rufus,
which were read and read, and though not much talked about,
secretly served the whole family for dessert at their dinner
and for sweetmeats to their tea. Letters which shewed that the
father's end was gaining, that the son's purpose was
accomplishing; Rufus would be a man! They were not very
frequent, for they avoided the post-office to save expense,
and came by a chance hand now and then; -- "Favoured by Mr.
Upshur," -- or, "By Uncle Absalom." They were written on great
uncouth sheets of letter-paper, yellow and coarse; but the
handwriting grew bold and firm, and the words and the thoughts
were changing faster yet, from the rude and narrow mind of the
boy, to the polish and the spread of knowledge. Perhaps the
letters might be boyish yet, in another contrast; but the home
circle could not see it; and if they could, certainly the
change already made was so swift as shewed a great readiness
for more. Mr. Landholm said little about these letters; read
them sometimes to Mr. Upshur, read them many times to himself;
and for his family, his face at those times was comment
enough.

"Well! --" he said one day, as he folded up one of the uncouth
great sheets and laid it on the table, -- "the man that could
write _that_, was never made to hoe corn -- that's certain."

Winthrop heard it.

At midsummer Rufus came home for a little. He brought news. He
had got into the good graces of an uncle, a brother of his
father's, who lived at Little River, a town in the interior,
forty miles off. This gentleman, himself a farmer extremely
well to do in the world, and with a small family, had invited
Rufus to come to his house and carry on his studies there. The
invitation was pressed, and accepted, as it would be the means
of a great saving of outlay; and Rufus came home in the
interval to see them all, and refit himself for the winter
campaign.

No doubt he was changed and improved, like his letters; and
fond eyes said that fond hopes had not been mistaken. If they
looked on him once with pride, they did now with a sort of
insensible wonder. His whole air was that of a different
nature, not at all from affectation, but by the necessity of
the case; and as noble and graceful as nature intended him to
be, they delightedly confessed that he was. Perhaps by the
same necessity, _his_ view of things was altered a little, as
their view of him; a little unconscious change, it might be;
that nobody quarrelled with except the children; but certain
it is that Winifred did not draw up to him, and Asahel stood
in great doubt.

"Mamma," said he one day, "I wish Rufus would pull off his
fine clothes and help Winthrop."

"Fine clothes, my dear!" said his mother; "I don't think your
brother's clothes are very fine; I wish they were finer. Do
you call patches fine?"

"But anyhow they are better than Winthrop's?"

"Certainly -- when Winthrop is at his work."

"Well, the other day he said they were too good for him to
help Winthrop load the cart; and I think he should pull them
off!"

"Did Winthrop ask him?"

"No; but he knew he was going to do it."

"Rufus must take care of his clothes, or he wouldn't be fit to
go to Little River, you know."

"Then he ought to take them off," said Asahel.

"He did cut wood with Winthrop all yesterday."

Asahel sat still in the corner, looking uncomfortable.

"Where are they now, mamma?"

"Here they are," said Mrs. Landholm, as Rufus and Winthrop
opened the door.

The former met both pair of eyes directed to him, and
instantly asked,

"What are you talking of?"

"Asahel don't understand why you are not more of a farmer,
when you are in a farmhouse."

"Asahel had better mind his own business," was the somewhat
sharp retort; and Rufus pulled a lock of the little boy's hair
in a manner to convey a very decided notion of his judgment.
Asahel, resenting this handling, or touched by it, slipped off
his chair and took himself out of the room.

"He thinks you ought to take off your fine clothes and help
Winthrop more than you do," said his mother, going on with a
shirt she was ironing.

"Fine clothes!" said the other with a very expressive breath,
-- "I shall feel fine when I get that on, mother. Is that
mine?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't Karen do that?"

"No," said Mrs. Landholm, as she put down her iron and took a
hot one. The tone said, "Yes -- but not well enough."

He stood watching her neat work.

"I am ashamed of myself, mother, when I look at you."

"Why?"

"Because I don't deserve to have you do this for me."

She looked up and gave him one of her grave clear glances, and
said,

"_Will_ you deserve it, Will?"

He stood with full eyes and hushed tongue by her table, for
the space of five minutes. Then spoke with a change of tone.

"Well, I'm going down to help Winthrop catch some fish for
supper; and you sha'n't cook 'em, mamma, nor Karen neither.
Karen's cooking is not perfection. By the by, there's one
thing more I do want, -- and confoundedly too, -- a pair of
boots; -- I really don't know how to do without them."

"Boots?" -- said his mother, in an accent that sounded a little
dismayful.

"Yes. -- I can get capital ones at Asphodel -- really stylish
ones -- for five dollars; -- boots that would last me handsome a
great while; and that's a third less than I should have to
give anywhere else, -- for such boots. You see I shall want
them at Little River -- I shall be thrown more in the way of
seeing people -- there's a great deal of society there. I don't
see that I can get along without them."

His mother was going on with her ironing.

"I don't know," she said, as her iron made passes up and down,
-- "I don't know whether you can have them or not."

"I know," said Winthrop. "But I don't see the sense of getting
them at Asphodel."

"Because I tell you they are two dollars and a half cheaper."

"And how much more will it cost you to go round by the way of
Asphodel than to go straight to Little River?"

"I don't know," said the other, half careless, half
displeased; -- "I really haven't calculated."

"Well, if you can get them for five dollars," said Winthrop,
"you shall have them. I can lend you so much as that."

"How did you come by it?" said his brother looking at him
curiously.

"I didn't come by it at all."

"Where did it come from?"

"Made it."

"How?"

"What do you want to know for? I beat it out of some raw
flax."

"And carried it over the mountain, through the snow, winter
nights," added his mother.

"You didn't know you were doing it for me," Rufus said
laughing as he took the money his brother handed him. But it
was a laugh assumed to hide some feeling. "Well, it shall get
back to you again somehow, Winthrop. Come -- are we ready for
this piscatory excursion?"

"For what?" said his mother.

"A Latin word, my dear mother, which I lately picked up
somewhere."

"Why not use English?" said his mother.

A general little laugh, to which many an unexpressed thought
and feeling went, broke up the conference; and the two fishers
set forth on their errand; Rufus carrying the basket and
fishing-poles, and Winthrop's shoulder bearing the oars. As
they went down in front of the house, little Winifred ran out.

"Governor, mayn't I go?"

"No!" said Rufus.

"We are going to Point Bluff, Winnie," said Winthrop stopping
to kiss her, -- "and I am afraid you would roll off on one side
while I was pulling up a fish on the other."

She stood still, and looked after her two brothers as they
went down to the water.

The house stood in a tiny little valley, a little basin in the
rocks, girdled about on all sides with low craggy heights
covered with evergreens. On all sides but one. To the south
the view opened full upon the river, a sharp angle of which
lay there in a nook like a mountain lake; its further course
hid behind a headland of the western shore; and only the bend
and a little bit before the bend could be seen from the
valley. The level spot about the house gave perhaps half an
acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the
grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held
their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted
themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in
native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar
as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should
be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet
wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by
that nature alone had to do there. Cedars, as soon as the
bottom land was cleared, stood the denizens of the soil on
every side, lifting their soft heads into the sky. Little else
was to be seen. Here and there, a little further off, the
lighter green of an oak shewed itself, or the tufts of a
yellow pine; but near at hand the cedars held the ground,
thick pyramids or cones of green, from the very soil, smooth
and tapered as if a shears had been there; but only nature had
managed it. They hid all else that they could; but the grey
rocks peeped under, and peeped through, and here and there
broke their ranks with a huge wall or ledge of granite, where
no tree could stand. The cedars had climbed round to the top
and went on again above the ledge, more mingled there with
deciduous trees, and losing the exceeding beauty of their
supremacy in the valley. In the valley it was not unshared;
for the Virginia creeper and cat-briar mounted and flung their
arms about them, and the wild grape-vines took wild
possession; and in the day of their glory they challenged the
bystander to admire anything without them. But the day of
their glory was not now; it came when Autumn called them to
shew themselves; and Autumn's messenger was far off. The
cedars had it, and the roses, and the eglantine, under
Summer's rule.

It was in the prime of summer when the two fishers went down
to their boat. The valley level was but a few feet above the
river; on that side, with a more scattering growth of cedars,
the rocks and the greensward gently let themselves down to the
edge of the water. The little dory was moored between two
uprising heads of granite just off the shore. Stepping from
rock to rock the brothers reached her. Rufus placed himself in
the stern with the fishing tackle, and Winthrop pushed off.

There was not a stir in the air; there was not a ripple on the
water, except those which the oars made, and the long widening
mark of disturbance the little boat left behind it. Still --
still, -- surely it was Summer's siesta; the very birds were
still; but it was not the oppressive rest before a
thunderstorm, only the pleasant hush of a summer's day. The
very air seemed blue -- blue against the mountains, and kept
back the sun's fierceness with its light shield; and even the
eye was bid to rest, the distant landscape was so hidden under
the same blue.

No distant landscape was to be seen, until they had rowed for
several minutes. Winthrop had turned to the north and was
coasting the promontory edge, which in that direction
stretched along for more than a quarter of a mile. It
stretched west as well as north, and the river's course beyond
it was in a north-easterly line; so that keeping close under
the shore as they were, the up view could not be had till the
point was turned. First they passed the rock-bound shore which
fenced in the home valley; then for a space the rocks and the
heights fell back and several acres of arable ground edged the
river, cut in two by a small belt of woods. These acres were
not used except for grazing cattle; the first field was
occupied with a grove of cylindrical cedars; in the second a
soft growth of young pines sloped up towards the height; the
ground there rising fast to a very bluff and precipitous range
which ended the promontory, and pushed the river boldly into a
curve, as abrupt almost as the one it took in an opposite
direction a quarter of a mile below. Here the shore was bold
and beautiful. The sheer rock sprang up two hundred feet from
the very bosom of the river, a smooth perpendicular wall;
sometimes broken with a fissure and an out-jutting ledge, in
other parts only roughened with lichens; then breaking away
into a more irregular and wood-lined shore; but with this
variety keeping its bold front to the river for many an oar's
length. Probably as bold and more deep below the surface, for
in this place was the strength of the channel. The down tides
rushed by here furiously; but it was still water now, and the
little boat went smoothly and quietly on, the sound of the
oars echoing back in sharp quick return from the rock. It was
all that was heard; the silence had made those in the boat
silent; nothing but the dip of the oars and that quick mockery
of the rowlocks from the wall said that anything was moving.

But as they crept thus along the foot of the precipice, the
other shore was unfolding itself. One huge mountain had been
all along in sight, over against them, raising its towering
head straight up some fourteen hundred feet from the water's
edge; green, in the thick luxuriance of summer's clothing,
except where here and there a blank precipice of many hundred
feet shewed the solid stone. Now the fellow mountain, close
beyond, came rapidly in view, and, as the point of the
promontory was gained, the whole broad north scene opened upon
the eye. Two hills of equal height on the east shore looked
over the river at their neighbours. Above them, on both
shores, the land fell, and at the distance of about eight
miles curved round to the east in an amphitheatre of low
hills. There the river formed a sort of inland sea, and from
thence swept down queen-like between its royal handmaids on
the right hand and on the left, till it reached the promontory
point. This low distant shore and water was now masked with
blue, and only the nearer highlands shewed under the mask
their fine outlines, and the Shatemuc its smooth face.

At the point of the promontory the rocky wall broke down to a
low easy shore, which stretched off easterly in a straight
line for half a mile, to the bottom of what was called the
north bay. Just beyond the point, a rounded mass of granite
pushed itself into the water out of reach of the trees and
shewed itself summer and winter barefacedly. This rock was
known at certain states of the tide to be in the way of the
white mackerel. Winthrop made fast his little skiff between it
and the shore, and climbing upon the rock, he and Rufus sat
down and fell to work; for to play they had not come hither,
but to catch their supper.

The spirit of silence seemed to have possessed them both, for
with very few words they left the boat and took their places,
and with no words at all for some time the hooks were baited
and the lines thrown. Profound stillness -- and then the
flutter of a poor little fish as he struggled out of his
element, or the stir made by one of the fishers in reaching
after the bait-basket -- and then all was still again. The
lines drooped motionless in the water; the eyes of the fishers
wandered off to the distant blue, and then came back to their
bobbing corks. Thinking, both the young men undoubtedly were,
for it could not have been the mackerel that called such grave
contemplation into their faces.

"It's confoundedly hot!" said Rufus at length very
expressively.

His brother seemed amused.

"What are you laughing at?" said Rufus a little sharply.

"Nothing -- I was thinking you had been in the shade lately.
We've got 'most enough, I guess."

"Shade! -- I wish there was such a thing. This is a pretty
place though, if it wasn't August, -- and if one was doing
anything but sitting on a rock fishing."

"Isn't it better than Asphodel?" said Winthrop.

"Asphodel! -- When are you going to get away from here,
Winthrop?"

"I don't know."

"Has anything been done about it?"

"No."

"It is time, Winthrop."

Winthrop was silent.

"We must manage it somehow. You ought not to be fishing here
any longer. I want you to get on the way."

"Ay -- I must wait awhile," said the other with a sigh. "I
shall go -- that's all I know, but I can't see a bit ahead. I'm
round there under the point now, and there's a big headland in
the way that hides the up view."

Again the eyes of the fishers were fixed on their corks,
gravely, and in the case of Rufus with a somewhat disturbed
look.

"I wish I was clear of the headlands too," said he after a
short silence; "and there's one standing right across my way
now."

"What's that?"

"Books."

"Books?" said Winthrop.

"Yes -- books which I haven't got."

"Books!" said his brother in astonishment.

"Yes --why?"

"I thought you said _boots_," the other remarked simply, as he
disengaged a fish from the hook.

"Well," said Rufus sharply, "what then? what if I did? Can't a
man want to furnish both ends of his house at once?"

"I have heard of a man in his sleep getting himself turned
about with his head in the place of his feet. I thought he was
dreaming."

"You may have your five dollars again, if you think them ill-
bestowed," said the other putting his hand in his pocket; --
"There they are! -- I don't want them -- I will find a way to
stand on my own legs -- with boots or without, as the case may
be."