OLD KENNEBEC
It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley smoothed thelast wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred of corn-huskfrom the spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on thewindow-sill, removed all signs of murder with a moist towel, and beforerunning down to breakfast cast a frowning look at her pincushion.Almira, otherwise "Mite," Shapley had been in her room the afternoonbefore and disturbed with her careless hand the pattern of Rose's pins.They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese cross; and if, whileshe was extricating one from her clothing, there had been an alarm offire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in thedesign, at the risk of losing her life.
Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morningsunshine with her. The old people had already engaged in differences ofopinion, but they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence. Therewere the usual last things to be done for breakfast, offices thatbelonged to her as her grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday'ssoda biscuits out of the steamer where they were warming and softening;brought an apple pie and a plate of seed cakes from the pantry; settledthe coffee with a piece of dried fish skin and an egg shell; andtransferred some fried potatoes from the spider to a covered dish.
"Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as shebegan buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.
"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything! The butchersays he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for crittersto kill, but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of aweek. He ain't a real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose,don't button that dickey clean through my epperdummis! I have to sportstarched collars in this life on account o' you and your gran'motherbein' so chock full o' style; but I hope to the Lord I shan't have towear 'em in another world!"
"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or ifyou do, they'll wilt with the heat."
Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neck-cloth aboutthe old man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled knowinglyback at her as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread near theopen kitchen door. She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be feared, awasted one, for there was no one present to observe her clean pinkcalico and the still more subtle note struck in the green ribbon whichwas tied round her throat,--the ribbon that formed a sort of calyx, outof which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh and radiant as if ithad bloomed that morning.
"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down thebridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."
"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarkedhis spouse, testily.
"'Taint me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man."The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up jestlike Rose's jackstraws; I never see'em so turrible ricked up in all myexper'ence; an' Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a jam thanCooper's cow. Turrible sot in his ways, too; can't take a mite ofadvice. I was tellin' him how to go to work on that bung that's formedbetween the gre't gray rock an' the shore,--the awfullest place to bungthat there is between this an' Biddeford,--and says he: 'Look here,I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned ifI'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no river,'says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the Kennebec.''Pity you hedn't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I hed,' saysI. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an' sarcusticthat I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There'ssome folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if therewan't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of'em, when it comes to river drivin'."
"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their ownbusiness," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared asoda-biscuit with her fork.
"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded herhusband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what youare,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought,as a Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right track, thoughit's always a turrible risky thing to do."
Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger generation,sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and sometimes "Old Kennebec," because of thefrequency with which these words appeared in his conversation. Therewere not wanting those of late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasonstoo obvious to mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, anduseless life, he had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing linebetween fact and fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an extentthat he almost staggered himself when he began to indulge inreminiscence. He was a feature of the Edgewood "drive," being alwayspresent during the five or six days that it was in progress, sometimessitting on the river-bank, sometimes leaning over the bridge, sometimesreclining against the butt-end of a huge log, but always chewingtobacco and expectorating to incredible distances as he criticized anddamned impartially all the expedients in use at the particular moment.
"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever somany of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. Ifgrandpa will leave the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch tothem at noon, and bring the dishes back in time to wash them beforesupper."
"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "thoughit's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl therewas no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin'at the river in them days; there wasn't time."
"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to dancing,the greatest fun in the world."
"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too,"was the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got homeyesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brookssays Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemedconsid'able proud of him; an' I guess it is the first time he ever stoodanywheres but at the foot. I tell you when these fifty-five new doctorsgit scattered over the country there'll be consid'able many folkskeepin' house under ground. Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufean' Steve Waterman. That'll make one more to play in the river."
"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr. Wiley, "butSteve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible reckless,too. He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man that's livedon the Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any turriblechances on the Saco."
"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.
"HE'S A TURRIBLE SMART DRIVER"]
"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on theriver when the farm work isn't pressing. Besides, though it's all playto him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day."
"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He jestcan't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I firstmoved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me"--
"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an' neverwill suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruptionreceived no comment: such mistaken views of his character were toofrequent to make any impression.
"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here fromGard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was littleboys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn,consid'able older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to deathstealin' away to the mill to ride on the 'carriage,' 'side o' the logthat was bein' sawed, hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin'back 'most into the jaws o' the machinery."
"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young one,"remarked Mrs. Wiley; "and I don't see as all the 'cademy education hisfather throwed away on him has changed him much." And with thisobservation she rose from the table and went to the sink.
> "Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o'daft about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams inthe brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin'up stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cal'late Mis'Waterman died consid'able afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' outthe winders and seein' her boys slippin' between the logs an' gittin'their daily dousin'. She couldn't understand it, an' there's a heap o'things women-folks never do an' never can understand,--jest because theyair women-folks."
"One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley.
"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old Kennebec;"howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never take in,an' that's sport. Steve does river drivin' as he would horseracin' ortiger-shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy.When he was about twelve or fifteen, he used to help the river-driversspring and fall, reg'lar. He couldn't do nothin' but shin up an' downthe rocks after hammers an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turriblepleased with his job. 'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him themdays,--Stephanfetchit Waterman."
"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's stillsteppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now."
"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, withheightened color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.
"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, whoknew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to getseventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can callthis here silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' therean' send it afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks,and tidy up the banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed anykind of a boss, an' hed be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made aturrible smart driver, Steve would."
"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him," prophesied Mrs.Wiley; "'specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness asridin' logs from his house down to ourn, dark nights."
"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pig pen last month, 'pears to meyou might have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked OldKennebec, reaching for his second piece of pie.
"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pig pen, no more'n I was by JedTowle's hen coop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard'sshed-steps. If you hed ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose'sbeaux wouldn't hev to do their courtin' with carpenters' tools."
"It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother,not the motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeckfolks' motives too turrible close."
"Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says,"interposed Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him that a horsedoesn't revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it isgoing forwards."
"Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr. Wiley."There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller tolet the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whizdown like arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the sideo' that there flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em dropin a dead faint when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drowndsome folks, not without you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an'drop 'em in the falls; I 've rid logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' theKennebec an' never lost my head. I remember well the year o' the gre'tfreshet, I rid a log from"--
"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. "I'llput the cream in the churn, an' you jest work off some o' your steam bybringin' the butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don't dono good to brag afore your own women-folks; work goes consid'ablebetter'n stories at every place 'cept the loafers' bench at thetavern."
And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfullyin his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, beforelong, one could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to hisfavorite "churning tune" of--
Broad is the road that leads to death, And thousands walk together there; But Wisdom shows a narrow path, With here and there a traveler.