CHAPTER III.
FATHER AND SON.
It is not likely that anything whatever remains standing now of theWhipple house. It must be a dozen years ago that I shot a blacksquirrel as it whisked its way along over the ridge-beam which had oncebeen Asa Whipple's roof-tree; and the place then was in ruins. Therafters had fallen in; what was left of the sides were dry-rotten undera mask of microscopic silver-gray moss. Tangled masses of wild-brierand lichens surrounded its base, and pushed their way in through theopen, dismantled doorway.
Even at that time, the road which once led past the house had falleninto disuse. I suppose that to-day it would be as hard to find thehouse under the briers as to trace the ancient highway beneath thecarpet of grass and sorrel.
Even during the war, when human beings thought of it as a home, theWhipple place was a pretty poor sort of habitation. The lowliest ofElisha Teachout's live-stock were considerably better housed and bettersheltered from the weather than old Asa and his son Mose.
The house, as I remember it, used to interest me because it was soobviously a remainder from the days when the district round about wasstill a veritable part of the Adirondacks. Whether Asa built it orinherited it from his father, a Revolutionary soldier who took up hisland-patent in these primitive parts, I never knew. It looked oldenough, though, to have been erected by Hendrik Hudson himself.
There must have been a sawmill on the creek at the time, however, forit was not a log house but a frame building, with broad planks nailedroughly to its sides, and the joinings of these covered over withweather-strips.
The frames of the door and the two front windows also came from thismill, wherever it was; the window on the north side was of rudeconstruction, and was evidently the work of some person not greatlyskilled in the use of carpenters' tools; perhaps it was made by old Asahimself.
There was a legend that the roof had once been shingled; in my time itwas made of flattened breadths of spruce bark, which must have leakedsadly in rainy seasons. There was no cellar under the house, but arough lean-to woodshed at the back served to shelter any overflow ofpossessions which might trouble the Whipples. This lean-to was givenover chiefly to traps, fishpoles, netting gear, and the like.
There was a barn, but it was roofless and long since disused.
I dare say the original Revolutionary Whipple aimed at being a farmer,like the rest of his neighbors. Like the others, he cleared his land,got in his crops, built a barn for his cattle and produce, and ran uprail fences. Perhaps he even prospered thus, as prosperity was measuredin those lean, toilsome times.
But either in his day, or when his son Asa was a comparatively youngman, the hand of fate was laid on the Whipple place. The black mosscame!
Strong and intelligent farmers, with capital behind them, cansuccessfully fight and chase off nowadays, they say, this sinisterscourge of the thin-soiled northern farm lands on the forests edges.But forty years ago, and even much later, it was a common saying thatwhen the moss came, the man must go.
Asa Whipple did not go. He let farming go instead. When the moss hadseized upon pasture and meadow alike, nothing was simpler than to sellthe cows, and allow the barn to fall to pieces. Much better than takinganxious thought about the farm, it suited Asa to turn to the woods--thekindly, lazy, mysteriously tempting woods.
Here were no back-aching ploughs and scythes, no laborious hoeing ofcorn and grubbing for roots, and painful wrestling with rain anddrought and frost--and worst of all, the moss--for pitiful coppers.Here instead were luscious trout for the hook, and otter, mink, andeven an occasional beaver for the trap; here in the greenwood, to thetrained hunter, was spread a never-ending banquet of rare and toothsomemeats, from the game birds, the raccoon, and the squirrel, up to thefleet-heeled deer and the black bear, lounging his clumsy way throughthe undergrowth.
Like father, like son. Time came, indeed, when the woods were no longerwhat they had been, and when the influence of advancing civilizationcompelled Mose to eke out a scanty living for his father and himself byhiring out a week or two now and then during busy seasons on the farmsroundabout.
He did this as seldom as he could, however, and he never pretended thathe liked to do it at all.
Of their own land, the Whipples for years had cultivated only agarden-patch close about the house, and this in so luke-warm a fashionthat the net results--some potatoes, a little sweet corn, a fewpumpkins, and so on--never by any chance saw them through the winter.
Why they did not sell this unproductive land to Elisha Teachout, whoevidently wanted it, instead of borrowing money from him on it to paytaxes for it, I could never understand. Very likely they did not try toexplain it to themselves.
But it was the fact, nevertheless, that in July of 1863 they owed Mr.Teachout something over three hundred dollars in accrued interest uponthe mortgages he held, and that to prevent his foreclosing and evictingthem from the house, Mose Whipple went to the war as Teachout'ssubstitute.
This year of 1863 had still a week of life before it on the morning inquestion--when Mose returned from the war.
He had made across the stiff-crusted level wastes of snow fromTeachout's straight as the bee's flight, even before the dawn began tobreak. He had heard the talk in the barn about the certainty of hiscapture, but it made little impression on his mind. It did not evenoccur to him that the matter concerned him. What had stirred him wasJob Parshall's roundabout and reluctant admission that all was notright with the old man.
He had waited only a few minutes in the haymow after Job had gone tothe farm-house before the temptation to be off again toward homemastered him. It was silly to linger here for food when the goal was soclose at hand.
He took a couple of English turnips from one of the fodder bins to eaton the way, and let himself cautiously out by the rear door of thecow-barn.
It was still quite dark and bitterly cold, but he started briskly off.After he had left the barnyard an idea occurred to him. His fathermight be perishing of hunger! He turned and bent his steps back acrossthe yard to the hen-house, opened the door, and crept in. A cacklingmurmur fell upon the darkened silence, rising all at once into a harshand strident squawking, then ceasing abruptly.
Mose emerged upon the instant, shut and hooked the door, and started torun, stuffing a big, limp and shapeless object into his coat pocket.
When he had rapped upon and rattled vigorously for a third time thewindow on the north side of the house he had journeyed so far andrisked so much to return to, Mose was conscious of a heavy, suddensinking of the heart. That was the bedroom window; how was it hisfather had not heard him?
He knocked once more, more loudly than before, and bent his head tolisten. No answer came.
After a minute's waiting he walked around to the front of the house. Inthe broad daylight which had spread itself now over the whitelandscape, he noticed something he had missed before. There had been nopath cut through from the house to the road. The frozen drifts laypacked as they had fallen upon the doorsill. There was no mark offootsteps save his own. The window-panes were opaque with frost.
Mose tried the latch. It yielded readily, and he entered. The lightinside was so dim, after the morning glow on the snow without, that itwas hard at first to make out the room, familiar as it was to him.Apparently there was no one there.
A curious change of some sort there had been, though. Mose shut thedoor and walked across to the stove, instinctively holding his handsover it. So dull a semblance of warmth radiated up from the griddlesthat he put a finger on the metal. It was only blood-warm.
Some one had left a fire here an hour ago. Where was his father? Whathad happened?
Then Mose saw what it was that had at the outset vaguely puzzled him.The straw tick had been brought from the bed in the other room andspread there on the floor behind the stove. It was covered with beddingand old clothes, and under these--
In a flash Mose was on his knees beside the improvised bed, and hadpushed away the coverings at the top. There was disclosed bef
ore himthe head of a man asleep--a head which he scarcely recognized at firstsight, so profuse and dishevelled were its masses of white hair andbeard, so pinched to ghastliness the waxen features.
"He is dead!" Mose heard himself say aloud, in a voice that sounded notat all his own.
But no; there was warmth, and a feeble flicker of pulse at the shrunkenwrist which he instinctively fumbled for under the bedclothes.
"Father! Father!" Mose called, bending till his lips touched the whitehair. "Wake up! I've come back! it's me--Mose!"
The faintest stir of life passed over the corpse-like face, and old Asaopened his eyes. It did not seem as though he saw his son, or anythingelse. His whitened lips moved, emitting some husky, unintelligiblesounds. Mose, stooping still lower, strained his ears to piece togetherthese terrible words:--
"Starved--many days--don't tell Mose!"
With a cry of rage and horror Mose sprang to his feet. The things to bedone mapped themselves, in the stress of this awful situation, withlightning swiftness before his brain. He strode to the woodshed doorand opened it. Two sides of the old lean-to were gone, and the snow wasdrifted thick across the floor.
Mose realized that the shed had gone for fuel, and in another minute hehad torn down half the roof, and was crushing the boards to splintersunder his heels.
With the same fierce haste he started the fire blazing again; got outan old frying-pan from under the snow, and put it, filled with ice tobe melted into water, on one of the open griddle holes; hacked theremaining turnip into slices, and then began at the fowl, stripping thefeathers off in handfuls, and dismembering it as fast as he cleared theskin from joint to joint, filling the rusty old pan to the brim.
Even as he worked thus, and after the water was steaming, and the rudestew under way, he kept an eager and apprehensive eye upon the bedbehind the stove. No token of life was forthcoming.
He could not hear his father breathe, even when he bent over him; butno doubt that was on account of the prodigious spluttering andcrackling which the fire kept up. Through the other griddle hole hecontinually thrust in fresh, dry kindlings to swell the blaze.
He had learned some new things about cooking in the army--among othersthe value of a pot-lid in hurrying forward the stew. He looked aboutfor a cover for the frying-pan. There was no such thing in the house,but he found in the shed an old sheet-iron snow-shovel, and made theblade of this serve, with a nail-hole punched through it to let out thesteam.
In his researches he was glad to run upon some salt, because it wouldhelp toward making the mess on the stove palatable. But it would not beeasy to tell with what emotions he discovered that there was absolutelynot another eatable thing in the house.
The room had grown decently warm again, under the influence of theroaring fire, and now it began to be filled with what Mose believed tobe a most delicious odor.
The conviction, though to any one else it might well have seemedunwarranted, was pardonable in Mose perhaps, for he himself had tastedhis last warm meal nearly sixty hours before.
He munched the turnip peelings almost contentedly as he recalled thisfact. Perhaps there would be some of the stew left, after the old manhad eaten his fill. If not, there were parts of the fowl which couldstill be utilized.
An absurd sort of fantasy--a kind of foolish day-dream--began all atonce to rise before him. He seemed to see himself eating the whole ofthat glorious stew, lingering with all his soul over the luxury of eachpiping-hot mouthful, and giving his father none at all.
This visionary thing grew so upon him, so gripped and enthralled hismind, that it made him dizzy and faint to put it away from him. When, afew minutes later, the smell of burning warned him that the cooking wasdone, and he lifted the pan from the stove, this brutal temptationrushed savagely at him again. He set the pan on the table, and walkedaway, not daring to lift the cover.
There were two or three old plates on the shelf, and a tea-cup. Mosegot them all down, and arrayed them on the table, with such cutlery andspoons as he could find. He made a motion then to take off theimprovised lid from the frying-pan, but once more drew back. It was asif he could not trust himself.
He knelt by the bedside again, now, and putting his arm under hisfather's neck sought to raise him to a more upright posture. Old Asaopened his eyes as before, and made an effort to whisper something, buthe lay an almost inert weight in his son's arms.
Mose swung the tick round, propped the end of it up against the walland raised his father into a half-sitting posture.
In this position the old man's face took on a sudden expression ofinterest and reviving intelligence. He had begun to smell the savor ofthe food.
Looking upon that pallid, vacant, starved face, and wasted, helplessform, Mose, starving himself, felt strong enough to defy the mostappetizing stew in the world. He took off the cover with decision, anddipped the tea-cup up half full of the smoking contents. It was toohot, evidently, to be given to the old man at once, and it was alsovery thick.
Mose took it out to the dismantled woodshed, and spooned in snow untilit seemed of the right temperature and consistency. He dipped a littlefinger into it to further satisfy himself, but he would not even lickthat finger afterward. It was too dangerous to think about.
Mose fed his father as a mother might a baby--watching solicitously tosee that he did not eat too fast or choke himself. After the firstcupful, he brought a chair to sit in, and held the tick against hisknee while old Asa, leaning more lightly upon it, helped himself.
There was a little left at last for Mose, and he swallowed it gravely,with a portentous rush of sensations within, but keeping up as best hecould an indifferent exterior. It left him still hungry, but he hadmuch more important things to dwell upon than that.
The meal worked wonders upon the old man. The combined influences offood and warmth seemed for a few minutes to send him off to sleepagain.
Mose sat looking down upon him in silence, and noting that somethinglike color was stealing back into his face.
All at once, however, Asa Whipple sat upright, lifted his hands tobrush back the hair from his forehead, and, turning his face up to lookat his son, smiled. There was no lack of comprehension in his gaze. Hehad regained his tongue as well. He patted Mose's knee as he spoke.
"Mose," he said, in a voice strangely altered and aged, but clearenough, "I'm kind o' 'shamed to tell it, but I'd laid down here just togo to sleep for good. I thought for quite a spell there, after you comein, that I was dreaming--sort o' out o' my head, you know."
"How did you come to let yourself down like this, dad?" was the onlyreply Mose had at hand.
"Rheumatiz," Asa explained. "It laid me up--I couldn't git around, an'nobody come near me. I ain't seen a soul since the big snowfall--up'ardsof a fortnight. But--but it's all right now, ain't it, Mose? An' tothink o' your comin' home here like this, right in the nick o' time.How did you come to git off, Mose?"
For answer there fell the crunching sound of footsteps on the crustedsnow outside, then of a loud, peremptory knock on the door.