The portrait. A romance of Cuyahoga Valley

Chapter I. The Prophecy

A ll the short rain}^ autumn day, with his bare brown feet, and scant,worn and soiled roundabout and pants, had he been walking and runing through the muddy roads and by-waj s, down through Shalersville to Ravenna, and finally back to Freedom, and so across the woods home. Ilis poor faded mother had been suddenly taken worse toward morning of that day, and he had hastil}" cut and carried in some wood, and, after a scant breakfast, had hurried off for the doctor, lie had gone b^^ wa}^ of one of the neighbors, and asked that some one would go and stay until he returned, and was ofl*. He would give the doctor his five mink-skins, that he had caught that fall, along the Cu^^ahoga, and would do without a new preceptor and spelling-book. Now, wear}’, famished and disheartened, as the early night deepened in the leafless trees, he hurried towards home, with an unusual depression and foreboding. He Qad failed to meet the doctor, and had only left word

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for him at his residence, and the places where his patients lived. All the day he had carried over his long and lonely road a sad, undefined presentiment.

It was already quite dark as he hastened on. lie was familiar with all the forest paths, and could traverse the woods anywhere without a trail, and with a sense of absolute security. As he approached the little clearing, he ran forward and climbed upon the decaying brush-fence that marked its uncertain limits, and paused a moment to look at the log hovel but a few rods distant — the only home he could remember — with its leak}^ roof, and decaying walls, slowly lapsing to ruin.

No window was on the side of his approach, and lie could detect no smoke escaping from tlie blackened opening at one end of the low roof. As he passed around to the front, he stopped to listen at the low door of rough boards that hung on rude wooden hinges. No sound reached him ; and with a trembling hand he pulled the string and pushed the door open, into the single, dark,^ silent room.

“ Ma,” he called out in an eager, distressed voice, with the tears unconsciously escaping from his eyes. A moan answered him from one corner.

“ Oh, ma, I didn’t find the doctor at Hines’s, and I went clear to Ravenna, and they told me he had gone up to see old Mis Roper at the centre of Nelson ; and I went there, and he had gone home b}- wa}" of Randolph, and I missed him, — I hurried fast as I could. Has pa been home? ” Another moan was his answer.

“Oh, ma! are you worse?” An undistinguishable murmur was all he heard in reply.

THE PROPHECY.

“ Where’s John? Has nobody been here?” faintly. He went to the broken stone hearth of the jambless fireplace, and found the shortened wooden poker, and stirred open the ashes, which disclosed the glowing remains of the charred back-log. Upon the coals he put some pieces of hickory bark, and soon a crackling flame leaped up and revealed the wretched room, with its two or three broken chairs and wooden stools, — its ricket^^, rough table standing by the poor thin bed, upon which lay the weak and suffering woman.

The boy again approached the bed, and was frightened by the change in the face, disclosed by the ruddy light of the fire.

“ Ma ! ma ! ” said he, in hushed and awed voice. The heavy eyes opened, and the face was with an effort turned towards him. “Fred, is it 3"ou? — I feared you wouldn’t come — I wanted — to tell ye — ye — I — I — ain’t yer mother, Fred — I — ”

“ Ma ! ” with a low cry of anguish, and a look in his great innocent eyes like that with which a young fawn would receive a death-blow from its dam. .

“ No matter,” said the exhausted woman, “ yer an angel to me.”

“ May I love you, ma? May I love little Johnny?” in a low, plaintive voice. The poor woman moaned again, and tears ran over her faded face, and broken murmurs died on her drawn and shrivelled lips. At last she said ;

“Fred, put yer fingers on my eyes for a little — so — and he stood with his fingers lightty resting on the closed lids, and listening to the slow, low breathing. Slower it came, and then, — it did not come again.

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The child listened with a great awe, and a gi’eat palloi came into his face, and what next occurred he never knew.

A plaintive cry from John, lying by the side of the silent, imbreathing form, aroused him, as a little soiled face, and head with tangled flaxen hair, started up.

“ Hush ! hush, John ! ” said Fred, taking him from the ragged bed-clothes. “ Hush ! don’t cr}’.” Something in his manner seemed to awe the child, who stood half naked in the strong light, looking frightened at the elder, and then turning towards the bed, cried out : “ Ma, ma ; Don wants micky — Don wants micky.”

“ Hush, hush, John ! she won’t hear j^ou.” And going to a shelf he found a pewter basin, from which he poured some milk into a battered cup, and gave the hungry child ; to whom he also gave the remains of a johnn3"-cake. He then drew from under the bed a small truckle-bed, and placed the appeased and sleepy John carefully among its tattered coverings, where he subsided into quiet sleep.

The bo}’, used to these offices for the j'ounger, and doing the scanty chores about their wretched home, mechanically replenished the fire, and put two or three things in their places, all the time with a dumb, benumbed feeling, aroused by the words : “ I’m not j^er mother.” He was too 3'oung to reason, or reflect, or think ; he could only feel that the world was torn from him ; that his mother was not his, that “ little Johnny” did not belong to him, and that he must go away, — but not to-night ; for they would want him. Then he went on his tip-toes towards the bed, and began to realize, in his childish way, the awful thing that had happened.

THE PROPHECY.

He was not afraid of the rigid form, that was dear and tender to him ; but it was the shadow}^, unknown thing, Death, and it was there, and he shrunk away a little from it ; and going out, he brought in more wood and i)laced it about the fire to diy. Then with a gourd shell he brought fresh water from the spring ; and remembering that he was very hungrj’, drank the remainder of the milk, and thought he would bake a johnny-cake ; but when he found that there would not be more than meal enough for a cake for breakfast, he gathered up a few dry crumbs, and contented himself with them.

He remembered that when his sister died, two years ago, they placed a clean wet cloth over her face ; and ransacking a small chest, from which the lid had been broken, he found a white rag, which having moistened, he carefully and reverently spread over the face of the dead. Then replenishing the fire, he removed his clothes, and lying down by little John, twice or thrice uttered, with folded hands, the little pra3'er his mother had taught him ; and with a hazy numbness of heart, he went to sleep ; Avhile the strong fire-light, leaping up the open chimne3'-wa3’, for a time lit up the wretched room, glinted the white covering on the face of the dead, and pla3^ed lovingly upon the features of the sleeping boys, — one round and chubb3^ with the flaxen locks of infancy, and the other dark and beautiful, with long black eyelashes fringing his brown cheek, and his striking, but prematurely old, face framed in tangled masses of dark damp hair. The rain subsided into sprinkles, and the fitful wind was sinking to little gusts that pla3^ed among the few

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belated leaves which still clung to the trees without Within, the fire burned out and the brands fell apart, throwing, from time to time, a sudden llame which filled the room with ghostly shadows, and then subsided to a red glow, that gave color and warmth to everything, until that, too, faded out. An e}’ e that could look bc*- yond the gross and material world, might have seen the sordid room luminous with a beautifying radiance, in the light of which soft and tender fingers w^ere removing the harsh and bitter lines of earth and suffering from the face of the dead, and bestowing upon the mouth the sweet, indescribable smile of serene and beautiful death ; while loving forms were bending over and kissing the e3"elids of the sleeping children, and leaving on the brow of the dark one a wreath of mingled light and shadow. Had this sight met the eyes of a seer, he would have prophesied of suffering and final triumph. Was it martyrdom in this world, and crowning in the next? The wreath was very like a garland, and its^ roses had the hue of earth.

Chapter II. Morning And Mourning

ORNING came, and its sunshine lay ri(;h and warm through all the narrow but beautiful valley of the Cu3'ahoga, whose scarcely tinged waters, escaping from the Welchfield marshes, plunged through the rocky barrier known as ‘‘ the Rapids,’* and sweeping southerly' along the eastern border of Mantua, turned its vehement current, swollen with the autumn rains, south-westerly'. Below the bend of the river, on its southerly' bank, and a few rods distant, stood the solitary cabin mentioned above.

Silent and lonely' under the gilding sun, with its rude door and patched and botched window, and all its wretchedness brought out from the night, in strong relief, as the level rays illuminated it. Two or three acres of cleared ground, with little signs of cultivation, and bearing a thrifty eclectic crop of thistles, mullen, dock and burdock, surrounded it, with a little imperfectly' paled patch, in which were a few weed-choked vegetables, ripened and shrivelled by the late autumn, without a pig or hen, cow, or even a dog to relieve tlie squalid desolation of the place. A pathway led down to the river, where, attached to a little tree, with a bark painter, floated Fred’s half-filled little dug-

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out. Another path led up from a clearing a little below, along which, with an unsteady step, a slouched, rough-looking man, with bloated face, blood-shot e3’es, half-covered with tatters, and the wreck of an old straw hat, broken down on one side of his matted hair, was straggling up. The face ma^" have been good once, but no traces of 3"outhful freshness or purit3^ remained. An unsuccessful effort to troll the refrain of a low drinking song, empWed the small surplus of faculties not used in keeping his feet, as he came through the belt of woods into the field surrounding the hut, but was hopelessly abandoned, as, with a seemingl3" infirm purpose, he approached — not his home — but the place where he sometimes got sober. He was evidentl3' recovering from a long and exhausting debauch, and his eye still had the dull, uncertain swimming of inebriation. He reached and steadied himself on the rotting wooden step, in front of the door, at which for a moment he stared with an earnest intensit3’, as if to remove an3^ lingering doubt of its identit3' ; then, with a muttered ejaculation, he dashed the door open, and partially stumbling, stepped and reeled over the deca3'ed door-sill. Recovering himself, and resting witn one hand on the door, he sent his stupid stare about the now well-lighted hovel. His swimming e3'es stopped on the covered face at one end of the wretched bed. “ What the hell ! — hullo, old woman ! — I say ; ye sleep with 3’er — yer — night-cap over yer e3'es, eh?” Making a step forward, he snatched the cloth from the dead white face, which for a moment struck even his obscured and staggering faculties. The noisy entrance of the drunken man awakened the children ;

MORNING AND MOURNING.

when Fred, with his e3’^es staring wide, like those of a timid wild animal, into which in a moment came something of the instinctive courage of the brute, sprang between the man and the bed, and, with all his force, pushed him back. “You shall not touch her! 3’’ou shall not touch her 1 ” he cried ; “ she said she was not my mother, and 3'ou shall not touch her ! ” As if, somehow, this declaration released him from all respect for the person of the intruder. The man turned and gazed at the defiant boy with uncomprehending amazement, while John, who was aroused to the cr^dng stage, put up a dolorous wail. Beginning to be sobered by the unwontedness around him, the still dazed man looked wonderingly about, — even a drunken man could not fail to identify the place. Presently he again approached Fred, and in a low confidential tone, as if to assure him that he was somehow on his side, if he only knew where that was, — “I saj’, Fred, eh ; old feller, 3"er know, what is^t ? ** The bo3’*s 01113^ answer was a dumb gesture toward the bed.

“ Eh ! come now, tell a feller ; can’t yc?**

“ She is dead ! ” with his lip quivering and tears welling into his e3^es.

“ No ; yer don’t come that on me ! ” when his eye again fell on the ghastl3^, changeless face. Something in its immovable rigidit3’, its stark pallor, seemed to strike his returning senses, and he dashed his soiled hand over his bleared, rheumy e3"es, and slowly, and with a doubting reverence, approached the bed, when the wasted and sharp outline of tlic features, with the uuopening eyes and still bosom, impressed upon the wretched man that he stood in the presence

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of his dead wife. When that idea had fully mastered him, — “I say, Fred, when d’ this 3’er’appen?” in a low, hollow w^hisper.

“ Last night,” said Fred, giving w^a3% in sobs of bo}"- ish agon}", for the first time.

John, wdio had tumbled out of his nest of reeking rags, came toddling to the bedside. “ Ma ! rna ! ma ! ” in his piping w’ail. So the three miserable beings — the unknowing John, the just comprehending, sobering fatlier, ready to fight or cry, as a feather might incline, and the utterly overcome older child, severed from the w"orld by their poverty, squalor and wretchedness — united in their abandoned and desolate cries over the finally extinguished spark that had shed a ray of warmth upon them, — the broken band that had feebly united them to home and a bare existence.

Their grief was interrupted by the entrance of the neighbor below, who, although poor, had occasionally looked upon them with a cheery face and a little help, and who remembered that he had seen none of them for two or three days. Surprised and shocked, he aroused the now nearly sobered man, and hurried him off to call the neighbors to his assistance, wdiile he helped to huddle the scanty clothes upon the children, intending to take tliem to his house, a half mile below. Fred refused to leave his mother alone, and when induced to go, he wet and replaced the cloth over her face ; and the w"ondering neighbor, acting upon the suggestion, drew the soiled sheet over the w'oman’s head, and hurried the children away.

Chapter III. Alone

N the second day after her death, the remains of the poor woman were put away, with decent and tender respect. In that far-off time, of log-cabins, scattered along the rough highways, of small, rude, stumpy fields, of ox-sleds and heavy carts, of coarse fare, of flax breaks, hatchels, spinning-wheels, handlooms, and fulling mills ; of tow cloth for summer, and butternut fulled cloth for winter ; of cow-hide boots and fox-skin caps, — the “ forehanded” were not much better off than the poor. A community of fortune and interest, a common struggle for subsistence with tlie rugged stubbornness of even a kindly nature in the wilderness, when the coming of a new settler was an event of public importance, and the raising of a loghouse a sort of holiday, forbade much real suffering, and toil-roughened hands were ready to do the needed kindness to the unfortunate and aflfticted.

The actual condition of the Wardens, made known at the death of the poor woman, was a surprise, and created almost a horror. What could now be done, was done for them. A coffin was prepared, a preacher was procured, and a large concourse assembled from

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the nearest settlements ; a very respectable procession followed the remains, borne by tlic men, to their quiet resting-place.

Warden, sobered and decent, Fred, with an extemporized suit and cow-hide shoes, and little Johmi}^, with his clarified face and combed hair, led between his father and elder brother, as the sole mourners, were the objects of much comment and commiseration.

Fred, who went about in a benumbed and dazed sort of a wa}^, came in for the largest share of notice. Living in the woods with his mother, and seldom associating with other boys, and tall for his age, his manner was shy ; and, accustomed to the solitude of the forest, and loneliness of the river, he was growing up thoughtful and taciturn. As well as he was capable, he had turned over in his mind the words of the d3’ing woman, that she was not his mother. He remembered to have heard it said* that persons, when d3dng, were often out of their heads, and he thought that these disturbing words might have been spoken in that condition ; so he went over and over with this subject, and then tried to think of what was going on around him.

As a group of women stood a little apart, looking at the filling of the grave, — “ Did 3^011 ever hear o’ such a thing? Old Mis Pettibone said that he went mor’n twent3" mile for the doctor, and got back jest ’afore his mother died, and he’n the baby’s there all livin’ alone at the time ; an’ that he must a closed ’er eyes, an’ put a wet cloth on ’er face, and him not mor’n ’levin year old ! ”

“Not mor’n nine,” was the answer. “His folks

ALONE.

came here *boiit six year ago ; and Mis Warden told Mis Jones that Fred was three year old, then.”

“Du tell ! ” and the low-voiced women relapsed into admiring silence, as they intently watched the unconscious boy, now as impassive in his grief as a young Indian.

“ What a time she must a’ had, all her life. Sam allers away, an’ when to hum never sober, and never doin’ nothin’, and Mis Blair said there warn’t a blessed thing in tlie house, but a little mustj^ meal ; an’ how on airth them children lived, mortal sakes only knows.”

The grave was filled, and the broken turf replaced, the simple ceremony ended, and the saddened neighbors dispersed homeward. At the entrance to the burying-place, a kind woman, who had taken charge of little Johnny, resumed possession of him, and placing him in the box of a lumber wagon, drove away ; while Fred, who relinquished his hand, stood with his great, innocent, tender eyes, full of mute sadness, staring after him, and thought, for the moment, that he must turn back in the twilight, and go alone to the deserted hut by the river ; then he turned again, as if undecided, to the fresh mound of broken earth that hid his mother. At this moment, a man who had attentively and kindly observed him approached, and holding out his hand, — “You are going home with me to-night,” he said, speaking in a voice so gentle and tender, that the poor child looked up in wonder. The face was a good, strong, homelj^, manly face, now all aglow with a tender smile, and with moisture in the kindly gray eyes.

Fred had never met such a look before, and at once 2

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held out both his hands to his new friend. As thej turned into the highway, another younger, slender, thin-faced, but kindl}’^ man, joined them, and took Fred’s other hand, which he held with a grasp almost painful. Thus between them the}" led him eastward, to the Maryfield Corners, and so north on the state road, along which they proceeded for a half mile, and then turned off to the east.

“I understand,” said the younger man, as they walked along, “ that this young man is quite a trapper, and I don’t know but a hunter also.”

“Indeed! Is this the boy that caught tlic otter? How was that? Is your name Jake?” asked the elder.

“ Fred,” was the answer.

“ How was it about the otter? ” No answer.

“ Uncle Bill asks you about catching an otter,” said the younger, kindly.

“ The otter? Oh 1 ” as if awakening, “ he broke the trap and got away.” It was evident that his thoughts were elsewhere.

“ Poor boy ! ” said Uncle Bill ; “ he is overcome and worn out; sha’n’t I carry you?” very kindly. “You are not so heavy as a buck.”

“ Oh, I can walk ! ” cried the boy, aroused partly by the unwonted kindness of their voices, and as much by a wish to appear manly. Not many rods east of the state road, they reached Uncle Bill’s residence, one of the few framed houses that then indicated one of the better-to-do. The younger of the two men left them at the gate, and Fred was tenderly received by a kind, matronly woman, who, with a young man and a

ALONE.

.19 boy, about Fred’s age, constituted the household. Fred seemed to have been expected, and he was soon seated with his kind host at a table covered by a clean white cloth, and with more and better dishes than he could remember ever to have seen. A tender, smoking venison steak was placed before him ; and when his supper was finished, with a bowl of milk, he was taken into the best room, more sumptuously furnished than he had dreamed of, and sank, wonderingl3*, into the bed, and into a slumber deeper than dreams, and longer than the night.

Chapter IV. What Was Said About It

ATE in the evening, at the new yellow store at the

Corners, several men dropped in, — Uncle Bill Skinner and Fenton, just mentioned ; Sim Shelden, from the Carman neighborhood, and others ; and naturally the talk turned upon the funeral and the AVardens.

“ Brother James had rather a tight fit to bring *er in, eh — Uncle Bill?” asked one.

Rather. He left it a leetle in doubt, whether the water had been efficaciousl}^ applied, — so that if Elder Rider should happen to be there when she arrives, he will make a point against the poor thing. You see they don’t hold just alike, on all the vital points."'

“ I think,” said Fenton, with the broad accent of his Irish origin, “ that if brother James should put in Sam •by way of mitigation of damages, as the law3’ers call ’t, he’d carry his case.”

“ Sam’s not a bad fellow nat’rally,” said another.

“He was anything but a good husband,” rejoined Fenton, with warmth, “ to leave that poor woman to die alone with those starving children Free as grace is during a revival, none was ever wasted on him. Why, in that old hovel there warn’t enough to draw a mouse, — the flies had deserted it.”

WHAT WAS SAID ABOUT IT.

“Where do ye s’pose Sam is to-night?” asked one.

“ Down at Green’s, drinking that stuff, — one drop of which will kill sixteen old rats,” answered Fenton. “ He loafed off that wa^", from his wife’s grave.”

“ There ought to be something done to break up that place,” said Shelden.

“What can be done?” asked Uncle Bill. “He’s rich and cunnin’, and sly and shrewd, and deep and still.”

“ Yes, he ’stils and brews too, and has a devil of a g^ng about him, and will meet 3^011 all the time as smooth, and plausible, and polite, and soft as a basket of chips,” said another.

“Where did he come from?” asked Shelden, “and how did he make his money ? ”

“ The devil onlj" knows,” answered Fenton. “ He came from the South somewhere. He brought up a good team, looked coarse and rough, can’t read or write, as you know, rented the old tavern stand over there, and then bought it, and bought other land ; brought a deed for a good deal with him, and has slipt and slid, and worried and wriggled along, nobodj" can tell how, till I heard Squire Foster say he was the richest man in Portage Count3^”

“ Did Warden come with him? ”

“ No, I think he came a few months later,” said Uncle Bill. “ There must be some sort of relation or connection between them ; for Sam built that shantj^ over across the river on Green’s land, and Green’s sister used to go over there once in a while. I never knew much about ’em.”

“No wonder Green’s wife died,” remarked Fenton ;

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“ such a husband, or such a son as Jake, would either be too much for any woman, and no one could stand both.”

“ I never heard anything specific against Green,” said Shelden, “ except that he has a gang about him.”

“ No, nor I,” said Uncle Bill ; “ but the atmosphere is bad about him ; you don’t feel easy in his presence ; and if he laughs, nobody laughs with him ; such men ain’t healthy.”

“What will become of the children?” asked Shelden. “ There’s two or three, ain’t there? ”

“ One died a year or two ago,” said Fenton. “ Mrs. Jones has taken the ^^oungest, and the oldest is at Mr. Skinner’s.”

“ Do you know, Fenton,” said the latter, “ that as I sat lookin’ at ’em this afternoon, Sam, with his fiorid, bloated face, and red ej-es, and the freckled, roundfaced, tow-headed little one, and remembered the pale, fiaxen-haired mother, and then looked at Fred, tall and dark, with his splendid eyes and well-cut features, it ’peared to me that he belonged to another race ? ”

“ Of course he does,” said Fenton, decidedly ; “ there’s blood and raee in that boy, you may depend upon that ; )"Ou can see it in his motions. Row Lewis said that he treed a wild cat, off in back of Sam’s house, about a month ago, and got a ball stuck in his rifle, and that this boy came to him, and staid, and watched the cat till he went down to Giles’s shop, and fixed the gun, and went back and shot it. He said the boy never thought of being afraid of it.”

“ IIow old is he?” asked’ SheMen.

WHAT WAS SAID ABOUT IT.

“ I can’t tell,” said Uncle Bill ; “ nine or ten or leven — maybe twelve.”

“ What will become of him ? ” asked the practical Shelden.

“ I don’t know ; I was so taken with him this afternoon, that I told Sam I would take him home with me, till he could see what he could do.”

You’d better keep him,” said Fenton, decidedly.

“I would, willingly,” said Uncle Bill, “if his father would let me have him. The notion has somehow got into my head,” lowering his voice, “ that Green is in some way interested in this bo}'.”

The three men looked silently at each other for a moment, and Shelden gave a low whistle.

“The devil!” exclaimed Fenton; “the boy is no more like Green than a j^oung eagle is like a thieving old owl.”

“There are other things besides blood. We shall see,” quietly replied Uncle Bill.

Chapter V

green’s tavern and its landlord.

UST below, on the south-east corner, fronting on the State Road, stood Green’s Hotel, an extensive rambling collection of buildings, composed partly of hewed or squared logs, partly of round logs, and to which had been added, within three or four years, a new, and, for the time, spacious two story framed building, neatly finished and painted. Near these were extensive sheds, and partly in the rear, roorn}^, well-built barns and stables. The whole place bore the appearance of being much frequented. The bar-room was in the block part, — a large, low, and unattractive room ; and on the night after the funeral it was diml}" lighted, and deserted by its usual frequenters.

In an inner room, also diml}^ lighted, was the proprietor, a tall, muscular, heavy built, heavy shouldered, heav}" headed, heavy browed, rough fefatured man, his small, quick, deep set, hard, round blue e3ms peering stealthily" out from his overhanging eymbrows, with florid face, and scanty light hair. Although a heavy" man, he was walking up and down the room with a light feline step, and occasionally" dropping his head on one side, as if to listen for his own foot-fall, or to see if he could hear what his thoughts were.