WYNADOTTÉ (Unabridged). Джеймс Фенимор КуперЧитать онлайн книгу.
seventeen or eighteen muskets and rifles on an emergency. No tribe would dare commence hostilities, in a time of general peace, and so near the settlements too; and, as to stragglers, who might indeed murder to rob, we are so strong, ourselves, that we may sleep in peace, so far as they are concerned.”
“One never knows that, dearest Hugh. A marauding party of half-a-dozen might prove too much for many times their own number, when unprepared. I do hope you will have the gates hung, at least; should the girls come here, in the autumn, I could not sleep without hanging the gates.”
“Fear nothing, love,” said the captain, kissing his wife with manly tenderness. “As for Beulah and Maud, let them come when they please; we shall always have a welcome for them, and no place can be safer than under their father’s eyes.”
“I care not so much for myself, Hugh, but do not let the gates be forgotten until the girls come.”
“Everything shall be done as you desire, wife of mine, though it will be a hard job to get two such confounded heavy loads of wood on their hinges. We must take some day when everybody is at home, and everybody willing to work. Saturday next, I intend to have a review; and, once a month, the year round, there will be a muster, when all the arms are to be cleaned and loaded, and orders given how to act in case of an alarm. An old soldier would be disgraced to allow himself to be run down by mere vagabonds. My pride is concerned, and you may sleep in peace.”
“Yes, do, dearest Hugh.”—Then the matron proceeded through the rooms, expressing her satisfaction at the care which had been had for her comfort, in her own rooms in particular.
Sooth to say, the interior of the hut presented that odd contrast between civilization and rude expedients, which so frequently occurs on an American frontier, where persons educated in refinement often find themselves brought in close collision with savage life. Carpets, in America, and in the year of our Lord 1765, were not quite as much a matter of course in domestic economy, as they are to-day. Still they were to be found, though it was rare, indeed, that they covered more than the centre of the room. One of these great essentials, without which no place can appear comfortable in a cold climate, was spread on the floor of Mrs. Willoughby’s parlour—a room that served for both eating and as a sala, the Knight’s Hall of the Hut, measuring twenty by twenty-four feet—though in fact this carpet concealed exactly two-thirds of the white clean plank. Then the chairs were massive and even rich, while one might see his face in the dark mahogany of the tables. There were cellarets—the captain being a connoisseur in wines—bureaus, secretaries, beaufets, and other similar articles, that had been collected in the course of twenty years’ housekeeping, and scattered at different posts, were collected, and brought hither by means of sledges, and the facilities of the water-courses. Fashion had little to do with furniture, in that simple age, when the son did not hesitate to wear even the clothes of the father, years and years after the tailor had taken leave of them. Massive old furniture, in particular, lasted for generations, and our matron now saw many articles that had belonged to her grandfather assembled beneath the first roof that she could ever strictly call her own.
Mrs. Willoughby took a survey of the offices last. Here she found, already established, the two Plinies, with Mari’, the sister of the elder Pliny, Bess, the wife of the younger, and Mony—alias Desdemona—a collateral of the race, by ties and affinities that garter-king-at-arms could not have traced genealogically; since he would have been puzzled to say whether the woman was the cousin, or aunt, or step-daughter of Mari’, or all three. All the women were hard at work, Bess singing in a voice that reached the adjoining forest. Mari’—this name was pronounced with a strong emphasis on the last syllable, or like Maria, without the final vowel—Mari’ was the head of the kitchen, even Pliny the elder standing in salutary dread of her authority; and her orders to her brother and nephew were pouring forth, in an English that was divided into three categories; the Anglo-Saxon, the Low Dutch, and the Guinea dialect; a medley that rendered her discourse a droll assemblage of the vulgar and the classical.
“Here, niggers,” she cried, “why you don’t jump about like Paus dance? Ebbery t’ing want a hand, and some want a foot. Plate to wash, crockery to open, water to b’ile, dem knife to clean, and not’ing missed. Lord, here’s a madam, and ‘e whole kitchen in a diffusion.”
“Well, Mari’,” exclaimed the captain, good-naturedly, “here you are, scolding away as if you had been in the place these six months, and knew all its faults and weaknesses.”
“Can’t help a scold, master, in sich a time as dis—come away from dem plates, you Great Smash, and let a proper hand take hold on ‘em.”
Here we ought to say, that captain Willoughby had christened Bess by the sobriquet of Great Smash, on account of her size, which fell little short of two hundred, estimated in pounds, and a certain facility she possessed in destroying crockery, while ‘Mony went by the milder appellation of “Little Smash;” not that bowls or plates fared any better in her hands, but because she weighed only one hundred and eighty.
“Dis is what I tell ‘em, master,” continued Mari’, in a remonstrating, argumentative sort of a tone, with dogmatism and respect singularly mingled in her manner—“Dis, massa, just what I tell ‘em all. I tell ‘em, says I, this is Hunter Knoll, and not Allbonny—here no store—no place to buy t’ing if you break ‘em; no good woman who know ebbery t’ing, to tell you where to find t’ing, if you lose him. If dere was only good woman, dat somet’ing; but no fortun’-teller out here in de bushes—no, no—when a silber spoon go, here, he go for good and all—Goody, massy”—staring at something in the court—“what he call dat, sa?”
“That—oh! that is only an Indian hunter I keep about me, to bring us game—you’ll never have an empty spit, Mari’, as long as he is with us. Fear nothing; he will not harm you. His name is Nick.”
“De Ole Nick, massa?”
“No, only Saucy Nick. The fellow is a little slovenly to-day in his appearance, and you see he has brought already several partridges, besides a rabbit. We shall have venison, in the season.”
Here all the negroes, after staring at Nick, quite a minute, set up a loud shout, laughing as if the Tuscarora had been created for their special amusement. Although the captain was somewhat of a martinet in his domestic discipline, it had ever altogether exceeded his authority, or his art, to prevent these bursts of merriment; and he led his wife away from the din, leaving Mari’, Great Smash, and Little Smash, with the two Plinies, in ecstasies at their own uproar. Burst succeeded burst, until the Indian walked away, in offended dignity.
Such was the commencement of the domestication of the Willoughbys at the Hutted Knoll. The plan of our tale does not require us to follow them minutely for, the few succeeding years, though some further explanation may be necessary to show why this settlement varied a little from the ordinary course.
That very season, or, in the summer of 1765, Mrs. Willoughby inherited some real estate in Albany, by the death of an uncle, as well as a few thousand pounds currency, in ready money. This addition to his fortune made the captain exceedingly comfortable; or, for that day, rich; and it left him to act his pleasure as related to his lands. Situated as these last were, so remote from other settlements as to render highways, for some time, hopeless, he saw no use in endeavouring to anticipate the natural order of things. It would only create embarrassment to raise produce that could not be sent to market; and he well knew that a population of any amount could not exist, in quiet, without the usual attendants of buying and selling. Then it suited his own taste to be the commander-in-chief of an isolated establishment like this; and he was content to live in abundance, on his flats, feeding his people, his cattle, and even his hogs to satiety, and having wherewithal to send away the occasional adventurer, who entered his clearing, contented and happy.
Thus it was that he neither sold nor leased. No person dwelt on his land who was not a direct dependant, or hireling, and all that the earth yielded he could call his own. Nothing was sent abroad for sale but cattle. Every year, a small drove of fat beeves and milch cows found their way through the forest to Albany, and the proceeds returned in the shape of foreign