The gray house of the quarries

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Chapter I

" Susanna ! Susanna ! "

The patter of running footsteps sounded lightly on the uncarpeted stairs.

" Here I am, grandma ! "

An anxious query sharpened the spectacled eyes regarding the midget, who now stood looking far up towards a motherly chin lying in treble folds upon a capacious bosom.

" Where have you been ? "

" Up garret. I found some great big books on a shelf — K-K-nickerbocker Magazines. I have been reading out of them about Dr. K-Knipperhausen."

" Well, well, never mind the reading, as long as you are safe ! I was afraid you had fallen into the brook or down the ledges or something."

"0 grandma!" and a laugh, with the music of the thrush in it, gurgled from her throat. " I do love you so, dear grandma," she added, with an amused, maternal accent, trying to clasp her arms around the old lady, her little hands clenching the long blue and white check apron, her curly head snuggling against unsuppressed proportions so voluminous that it was in danger of an eclipse. Suddenly she sprang away.

"Can I go back?"

"Half an hour — just half an hour! It is nearly dinner time."

" All right ! " and away she fled — up a basement flight of dark, narrow stairs, out into a great square, windowy parlor, thence up a second box staircase; and behold her in her beloved attic — the typical country attic of fifty years ago.

There was a window at either end, from which she had studied the views with the *" long, long thoughts " of childhood; and to her awakening and active mind, the moods they induced were as varied as those suggested by New York and London to the imaginative child of to-day. The north window was the bedtime one, for near it stood a ponderous, disused loom converted into a bed. In this spacious enclosure of feathery softness she would sit alone, night after night, a diminutive, white-clad figure, alternately looking out of the window at the upward slope of an apple orchard, the tops of whose bunchy trees made green beds, to her fancy as comfortable as her own, or reading " Peep o' Day," or " Pilgrim's Progress," until the balmy sleep of an innocent, fearless heart overtook her, descending sweetly from the misty, darkening corners of the attic and the wide, wide world of the orchard. The south window just above the stairs was the daytiiue one. Here she would stand on tiptoe, her slender arms folded on the sill, her small body leaning far out, her steady gaze following the highway till it was lost in the distance, or climbing the steep bent of the fields to where they joined the forests sweeping to the Catskills. The south window caught the sunlight, alluring it in golden streaks across the bare floor.

As the sun rose higher, the attic odors concentrated. The spicy scent of the cedar shingles mingled with those of pennyroyal and catnip hanging from the heavy rafters dovetailed together and fastened with oak pins. Bunches of sage, swinging in the breeze, sifted a delicate blue-gray powder over the floor, suggestive to susceptible olfactory nerves of turkey dressing and roast sparerib. The wasps, exhilarated by the joys of heat and light, came out in swarms from their nests in the peaked roof and hummed in and out of that south window, belying their reputation to Susanna; for they never stung her, while their song and rhythmic movements fed her fancy. There was only one object in the attic to qualify her pleasure — a small, brass-studded hair trunk, containing various ancestral belongings. Once she had knelt beside it while it was opened ; and, fixed in her memory forever after for the solemnities of reverie, was the regimental suit of a colonial major, and the hat, bullet-pierced, of a captain in the Pequot War. She had held, in her own hands, belts and sashes, shoe buckles and snuff-boxes, the property of one of the early provincial governors, and these relics, in the impressionable child, awoke those uncanny sensations which haunt older persons when musing long upon the past.

But, usually, she did not think of the trunk far back under the eaves, and if there were unknown depths or boxes, or unexplored shelves, so much the better.

The Knickerbockers, this day, had proved a glorious find ; the wonder was, that she had not discovered them earlier.

As she came bounding up the steps, she cast a satisfied look at the unpromising row of leathery volumes. They seemed to give meaning to the smile lurking about the mouth of a plaster bust of Henry Clay standing on the very end of the shelf and just above her head, as she sat down on the top step, under the breezy window, to continue the story of Dolph Heyliger.

One slender little leg was crossed over the other knee. The heavy book was laid flat open on her lap, her round bead, with its shock of curly chestnut hair through which shone a glint of gold, was bent over the volume and her eager eyes followed the story, when —

" Skwie, skwie, skwie — "

Down went the book, face upward, and springing to her feet, she turned with a knowing smile to a small stove placed for the summer in the attic. Kneeling in front of it, and cautiously opening the door below the grate, she looked in. On a comfortable litter lay three new-bom mice, white, hairless, and scrawny.

"O mousies, mousies, I'se so glad to see you, I is," — taking one little thing caressingly in her hand. " But you mustn't cry, or grandma will find you, she will. You must keep quiet, and I will bring you some cheese and — "

" Skwie, skwie — ''

" Sh I " putting the mouse reprovingly back and .sticking her mouth close to the opening. " You'll be drownded, just as sure as you live, you will. Grandma is very good, the kindest, goodest grandma, but she doesn't like wee mousies — "

"Susanna!"

" Grandma's calling me. I must go to dinner. Don't say another word and I'll bring you uj) something nice — I will — I will ! Good by, good by ! " With a skip and a jump, she bounded past the forgotten book, down the stairs, and into the big, sunny living-room.

At one end of it, opposite the door, the upper half of which swung open, revealing the view and admitting the locust-scented air, stood the table, offering one course of promiscuous plenty.

The other members of the family were already in their places, and she stole to her seat next her grandmother, quickly bobbing her head while grace was said in a voice tremulous with great age.

Fortunately for Susanna, the blessing was brief. Her eyes wandered with youthful yet critical hunger over the array of food. A pan of baked beans, from which a crisp end of pork showed, stood in front of Mrs. Dutton. Back of it were smoking dishes of potatoes and greens. A plate of hot biscuits and another of butter, dewy and yellow, were in the centre. At the lower end of the table, a rhubarb pie and some quince preserves completed a meal which the child's summarizing observation pronounced satisfactory.

"I wouldn't eat the pork, father. I boiled a couple of eggs for you," and Mrs. Dutton, taking the eggs from a covered bowl of hot water, handed them coaxingly to a venerable man who for form's sake presided at one end of the table.

Susanna noticed the veins meandering in indigo lines and the sinews standing up like whip-cords on the trembling hand extended for the eggs. Doubling her own little fist in her lap, she made a comparison ; but there was no resemblance except a tentacular one, and presently forgetting everything but the merits of the feast, she proceeded to regale an appetite luxurious in its heterogeneous demands.

" Banma," said a balmy little voice, " if you want to know what to get for my brekfus to-morrow, you can give me some yeggs, too."

The old lady reared her head in benevolent astonishment.

It was Susanna's little sister Janey who spoke, a child with the ethereal languid beauty haunting to a motherly heart There was a fine, delicate pink bloom in her round cheeks; her small hainds were plump; but something in the almost translucent whiteness of her skin, the large sweet seriousness of her gaze, and in the very look of the flaxen locks lying in heavy, irregular curls over her head, spoke of some unknown heavenly maturity.

** Would Janey like a yegg this minute ? " inquired Mrs. Dutton, presently, as though a sub-conscious impulse compelled her to indulgence against her will.

A beaming, matronly smile invested Janey's small features with amusing dignity, while she answered most amiably, " Brekf us will do, banma."

"Does your dimier taste good, daughter?" and the old lady turned solicitously to the only remaining member of the family. *^ Do try and eat," she added, noticing tlie untouched plate. " You are going to get well. But you must eat! Drink your milk, Maggie, do, please do!"

" Don't worry about me, mother. I will take care of myself."

Janey looked up and stroked the thin cheek with her little hand.

"The beans is splendid, mamma," said Susanna, encouragingly, whose round body, in a plain waist of purple calico, looked stuffed.

"You and I will have to eat for the whole family, Susanna," said her grandmother.

The child laughed, holding out a firm hand for a generous piece of pie proffered her.

" Merciful," said the aged man, now for the first time acting as if conscious of his whereabouts, " the mice kept running up and down the walls of my room all night. Have you set the traps lately ? "

Susanna stirred uneasily. A tremulous sentiment hovered about her mouth.

"No, father, I haven't. There does seem to be so much for one pair of hands to do ! But I mean to, and I will. — Don't you think you could eat a piece of pie, Maggie ? "

The invalid shook her head while trying to stop coughing long enough to answer, a smile like Janey's lighting up her large, sunken, hazel eyes.

" Well, if no one wants any more dinner, I'll set the traps while I think of it. Come, Susanna, come and put the cheese on the hooks and take the traps up garret."

"I hasn't seen any mousies* tracks over the floor — oh, for ever so long ! " she replied dramatically.

"They are shy, mice are. There's that stove; I expect, if I examined it, I should And it alive."

" Why don't you go up and see, Merciful ? " inquired the old man.

^' O grandma," and Susanna now laid repressive hands on Mrs. Merciful Dutton, " you'll fall down-stairs, if you go right after dinner."

Mrs. Dutton glanced at her with a gleam of suspicion. " I guess I'd better go," and she hurried into the cellai-, opening off the living-room, Susanna reluctantly following.

" Put the traps in your apron, child."

" I'm afraid you'll fall, grandma," said the little girl, half-way up the first flight.

"You are too afraid, Susanna. I dare say you are nursing another colony of mice — are you?" and she turned around as thev emerged from the dark staircase into the sunshine of tne parlor.

" I haven't fed any little mousie a single thing — not since you drownded the last ones. I think it's wicked to drown mousies and cats, I do ! " She stared reproachfully and solemnly at Mrs. Dutton.

" Ah, child, when you are as old as " — she hesitated. What right had she to cast the shadow of necessity, of the mute competition for a living forever going on between man and beast, across this sensitive, affectionate nature epitomizing the Merciful of sixty years ago ? Instead, she continued, " You don't want the mice to keep your grandfather awake, do you ? "

With the contradictoriness of childhood seeing itself at an advantage, Susanna replied, " He isn't my grandpa. My grandpa was big and strong."

" So he was, child, the finest, strongest man that ever lived -•and he was taken! "

"I wish my great-grandfather was tooken instead. Why wasn't he, grandma ? "

*" The Lord forgive us both," was all the reply vouchsafed.

The second flight of stairs was ascended with much heaving and puffing on Mrs. Dutton^s part, and with the wiping away of a prophetic tear on Susanna's.

" Yes, just what I expected ! " was the exclamation, as, side by side, a big white head and a little chestnut one were bent low before the stove. " It seems only yesterday that I had this to do."

"O grandma, couldn't you let them live? You must have drownded a hundred already. Grandma, I believe you have killed a thousand mousies, I do ! " and Susanna began to cry.

" Get your book, your Knickerbocker, and don't watch me," said the old lady, in whom years and experience had failed to dry the springs of sympathy.

But this she refused to do, for, side by side with her humanity, there lurked in the nature of her healthy childhood an aesthetic curiosity closely akin to the enjoyment of suffering. The attic was a pleasanter place to play in because of the generations of mice that had filed before her. The chickens and turkeys she had helped eat had none the less flavor because she had stood by -and wrung her hands when their heads were chopped off. Her kitten was more interesting because it was lame. Thus was she adjusting herself, even while weeping, to the ever-shifting conditions of gain and loss called life.

Following Mrs. Dutton down-stairs, she sauntered behind, intent on being a witness to the tragedy, but ready for other diversion.

It was a sweet, wide world into which they stepped from the gray house set close upon the highway. North and south, as far as the eye could reach, extended the road, dazzling white in the June sunshine, and showing various turns and bumps where it accommodated itself to the slaty nature of the soil. Not a dwelling was in sight, although near ones were possible, because of the undulating country. No vehicle of any description disturbed the air, vibrating with heat. Through the early mornings, indeed, the solitude was enlivened by teams laden with flagging going to the Hudson. Thefr return in the late afternoons, wagons and men powdered with the dust of the deeply cut roads, made a dial for the fanners and an opportunity for Susanna to spring, by the help of a ready hand, to the sheep-skin spread across the middle of a heavy buckboard, bent low yrith its ever-recurring weight. On such a seat, her short legs dangling in emulous competition with the lank ones of Eben Van Tassel, in whose sunburnt hands the reins were held loosely while the weary horses fairly crept along, she stole many a ride aa far as the farm boundary, and with her thoughts or speech busy with those distant quarries from which the slate was hauled. To her, there was but one business on earth that took men out into the great world, and that business was not the cutting of the huge stones from their virgin beds in the foot-hills of the mountains, nor their sale in far-away cities, but their transportation past her home, on, on, out of sight, to the splendid river which she only rarely saw.

Opposite the house, on the other side of the road, was a row of locusts, and on this brilliant day the delicate green beauty of their leaves shimmered amid clusters of white flowers with golden-brown heads swaying in the breeze and filling the air with a bee's paradise of scent.

Intent on discharging her responsibility, and with her observation effectually obscured by a sunbonnet, Mrs. Dutton crossed to a narrow grass-bordered path leading under the trees towards the creek. But Susanna, bareheaded, with eyes in every direction, at once discovered Peter Vroom kicking his way through the dust and advancing like Venus, in a cloud, although his circumambient atmosphere had rifts sufficient to at once disclose his identity.

Running to meet him, and ambitiously imitative, she started a rival swirl in motion as she came near.

" Come to the back of the house," said Peter ; " I've got something," and he slapped his pocket knowingly.

She cast an uncertain look in the direction of the creek, for the mice were still tugging at her heart and her love of the spectacular. But Peter's offer containing the higher charm of the unknown, the dust-clouds joined company and the children disappeared.

'< Let's climb up here," he said, suiting the action to the word and mounting the top rail of a worm-fence.

Susanna burst the buttons from her waist in the quickness of her ascent.

Peter sat in profound silence, his companion, meanwhile, feeding on her imagination. Finally, unable to control herself longer, she gave him a thrust, exclaiming, " Tell me quick, or I'll go in the house."

" Hold on, hold on," said Peter, coolly, but fumbling in his pocket. ^'I promised to learn you to smoke, didn't I?"

" Yes," in tones of mingled terror and delight.

" And you promised me, honor fair, didn't yon, you'd keep it from your grandma — didn't you ? "

" Aw, well, if you're goin' to back down, I'll go home. You're nothiii' but a gurl, anyway, and so you're a coward. I always knowed it, and now I see it."

"I isn't, Pete! I'll keep my word — but grandma — she says AhJ^^s ™^ ^^^ ^ book, and so I have to tell her the tAi^hen she asks. But she won't ask," added Su8anna,^Bfloriously. " Have you got the pipes ? "

" I've got what's better," he replied, drawing from his pocket two pieces of dried grape vine which he proceeded to whittle into shape. '^ A man has to begin on grape vines. It would make him too sick to start off with a pipe."

" Of course ! " she agreed, knowingly.

The cigars being finished, he struck a brimstone match on the fence ; the fumes set her to coughing.

" Goosie ! " he exclaimed.

She suppressed her choking, her eyes full of tears with the effort

He handed her the lighted grape vine. " Draw your breath 'way in, but don't swaller, or you'll choke agin. See me ! "

He sat with his shoulders hunched into his neck, his chin up, and with his freckled face and short nose made a picture of pugnacious comfort.

" I can do that ! See me, now ! "

And do it she did, so superlatively well that Peter, jealous of his art, cried, "Aw, you! You've ben acheatin', you have! Who learned you to smoke afore me ? Hev you let NicliLgtorm learn you ? "

" No, Pete, I hasn't lelrned from anybody but you."

" This ain't the first time you've smoked, Susanna Kildare, this ain't ! "

"Yes, it is, Pete — it is! Perhaps I couldn't smoke as well again."

"Well, I'll try you. If you do, Til know youVe cheated/'

She began a second time, and lo and behold! the smoke wouldn't draw well.

" Nevey mind," now said Peter, encouragingly. " See me ! " He puffed out his cheeks, he swelled his little chest, he sent rings of smoke one after the other — and meanwhile her grape vine had gone out.

" It's beautif TjJ, Pete, beautiful ! Who learned yon ? "

"Oh, I learned myself, I did! Try again, now, Susanna."

Her pride having been wounded, she refused. But she kept praising him, and when a softness crept into his cold eyes, she smiled in a motherly way.

" Susanna ! "

" It's grandma. I must go."

" Don't you tell I " warned Peter.

She shook her curly head, scrambled backward down the fence, and, running through the thicket of locusts which had screened them from view, disappeared.

■it

Chapter II

The Duttons' neighbors, the Storms, were early astir the next morning. They were a thrifty Dutch family, going to b^ at twilight in the summer, in order to be ready for ^ikk beginning at three o'clock.

BeautifuHvk red cows, with shadings of black about the fetlocHfhick, and ears, were in the barnyard waiting to be milked. Streaked ones like those of Jacob's successful breeding afforded a suggestion of circus gayety. Broad-hipped, full-breasted, benignant-eyed brown ones stood chewing the cud and flicking off the flies, and two straight-back, plump ones, of a breed new to the region, and so the favorites, were already being relieved of their rich burden.

The chime of the creamy spurts against the sides of the brightly scoured pails was music to Saskia and Nicholas Storm, who, in order to obtain a better grasp of the udders, sat well tipped forward and half-astride of their low stools.

The sun had not yet risen, but the east was gorgeous with pink and golden white pennons. The tall hickories in front cff the homestead rustled in the fresh breeze, and from the meadow near by ascended a grassy perfume.

Saskia was a girl with a melon-shaped face, a thin nose flaring outward at the point, and prominent, yellowishgreen eyes streaked like gooseberries. Her light brown hair, parted in the middle, was plaited intQ numerous little braids, pinned in a broad wad at the back of her head. She had a long flat chest, over which a calico gown seemed to be rivalling the skin in tightness. Her countenance wore a clear, determined look with something of the primitive, pastoral simplicity and straightforwardness characteristic of the late Byzantine madonnas. As her fingers squeezed and relaxed the udders, there was a play of bone and muscle in her wiry arms, bare to the elbows, not unpleasant to a lover of physical strength.

"I'm afraid you ain't milked the strippin's thorough from thet cow, Nick," she said, as the boy tipped his stool straight and gave the animal a pat which made it undulate with an easy, contented gait to one side. " The cream's in the strippin's, an' the butter's in the cream, an' the money's in the butter."

"Try her yourself, an' see," he said, sitting down in front of another cow. " Hist, Gush." The patient creature set her foot farther back, and the rhythmical, alternating thud began anew.

"Thar ain't eny smoke a-comin' out o' the Dutton chimbly yet," and Nicholas Storm's paji^ blue eyes squinted in the effort to see. "I'd likefif know the feelin' o' sleep at four o'clock of a summer m^^nin'."

" It'd be a lazy feelin' in a strong boy like you. Ef the Duttons'd ben early risers, they might a ben more forehanded. Shdr,- Gush, sho-o ! " and Saskia soothingly patted the nervous cow she had just begun to milk. " Thar's the loom. What use doos they make o' thet ? Turned inter a bed ! An' thar's the quarries — two on 'em — es fine es eny in these parts — an lef jes' es Mr. Kildare lef 'em when he died. An' thar's the butter," she added, with a climax in her tone, " et up es fast es it's made ! "

"Woll," replied Nicholas, in an indolent, meditative way, " thar's somethin' in ther f ashin o' livin' thet there ain't in ourn. Ef I go inter the Dutton house on a rainy day, 1 jes' feel es if the sun wus a-shinin'. It gives me a good kind of a warm feelin'."

" As we're on the aidge o' summer, I'd advise you to stay away till frost," and she gave him a look half of contempt, half of amusement. "Here, let me hev thet cow ! I can't trust you fer the last end o' the milkin'. Ef I warn't here to watch you, we'd come out'n the little end o' the horn on market days. I've set my heart on carry in' thirty pound o' butter to town ev'ry week this summer."

" You do your work, an' I'll do mine," said Nicholas, resolutely. "This cow's milked clean dry, an' I don't need you to tell me so." There was neither anger nor vexation in his tone.

" Two blickies of es fine milk es you'd see eny where, ain't they?" said Saskia, pacifically, glancing at the result of his efforts as she went to her last cow.

He threw his head slightly back as if needing no assurance of the virtue of his labor^ and presently they were milking in unison.

" There ! " The young woman rose, stretched out her arms, and then, stooping, lifted a heavy pail in either hand, and started to the milk-house, a low stone room built over a running brook.

When she had turned the corner of the bam, a sudden gentleness suffused Nicholas' face. He put his hand over his brow and peered in the direction of the Dutton house. The smoke was rising from the chimney now. He uttered a short sigh, half of longing, half of relief, and) picking up his pails, followed Saskia to the milk-house.

Meanwhile, there was a kind of needless, but cheerful, bustle going on in the kitchen, where Mrs. Storm was preparing breakfast. The smoke and savory odor of nam frying filled the room one moment, while the breeze, the next second, swept them through the windows open at both ends of the room. At such intervals there came a pervasive smell from the table, suggestive to the uninitiated of unutterable disintegration, but more fragrant tfttn flowers to the sturdy, native knickerbocker. It was the perfume of a home-made cheese in a high state of ferment. To Nicholas and Saskia, returning from the dairy, these odors of ham and cheese, mingled with the heavier one of rye-bread, opened vistas of Epicurean enjoyment.

The breakfast table set out in the middle of the great kitchen, the floor of which was now banded with sunshine, might have provoked to hunger more fastidious appetites. The cloth, spun of domestic flax, hung in thick, well-ironed folds over the sides. On that June morning, when the sun was early kindling the air with fervent heat, the Delft ware of bluest white enamel and darkest blue looked cool, and to an imaginative observer, its mandarins and pagodas, its saints and sinners, might have seemed more edifying than journeys to the Orient and long family prayers.

As Nicholas stepped across the threshold, it was to hear his father renew a theme of never-failing importance to Saskia.

" They ain't our kind. They don't improve the pruppertjr and they won't sell. An' their ways an' habits are f iirnn and calkilated to make wimmin uneasy and fussy."

" I never spected to see Maggie alive till now," replied Mrs. Storm, irrelevantly, in a sympathetic voice. ^^ March is sech a month fer people to go off in. It seemed as if them winds, this spring, would blow the breath out of her body. I knowed all the time she was shortlived, when folks wus a-sayin' what a purty complexion an' what shinin' eyes. Too much beauty's wuser'n eny. Here, Nicholas, here's your breakfas'," placing before him a big plate filled with food and a glass of her own brew of beer.

He was a tall, awkward fellow, but with a kind of native dignity. He nodded, and an affectionate glance shot between them as he pulled out the tall, brown, wooden chair, and sat down astride of it, the sole of each heavy shoe visible as he rested his weight on his toes.

" Eat es fast es you kin, my son. We must git beforehand with the work. It's goin' to be a pipin' day. What's thet you wus a-sayin' to Saskia about the Duttons, faather ? "

" I wus a-sayin' I begrudged 'em thet plateau 'cross Ae road from ther house. It's an oncommon sitiwation. Ef I hed it, the fust thing IVl do, I'd cut down thet 'ere row of locuses ; then, 'sted o' lettin' half the ground run to grass, I'd plant the hull plot with garden truck. It's a nateral medder, with a good, deep, black soil, — an' with thet 'ere creek jes' at the fut o' it, no drouth c'd dry it up."

" It's my opinion, faather, you'll git it," said Saskia. "Whenever I go across to see how Mrs. Kildare is, I keep an eye open, an' I know, plentiful es they all aire with welcome, they're hard pushed. They don't jjertend to sell enything. They ain't sent a pound o' butter to market sence November. They ain't got no poultry to speak of. They ain't a-farmin' 'cept in a hand-to-mouth way. An' if ther ain't no money a-comin' in, they've got to go to the wall."

" How do you know they ain't got no money arcomin' in ? " asked Nicholas, resentfully, turning in his chair to Saski;i. who was patting and sliakin.ir the pillows she was about to pile on a high bed standing in a recess of the living-room.