Part 1 (1/2)

A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties.

by Charles Major.

CHAPTER I

ON THE HEART OF THE HEARTH

A strenuous sense of justice is the most disturbing of all virtues, and those persons in whom it predominates are usually as disagreeable as they are good. Any one who a.s.sumes the high plane of ”justice to all, and confusion to sinners,” may easily gain a reputation for goodness simply by doing nothing bad. Look wise and heavenward, frown severely but regretfully upon others' faults, and the world will whisper, ”Ah, how good he is!” And you will be good--as the sinless, p.r.i.c.kly pear. If the virtues of omission const.i.tute saints.h.i.+p, and from a study of the calendar one might so conclude, seek your corona by the way of justice.

For myself, I would rather be a layman with a few active virtues and a small sin or two, than a sternly just saint without a fault. Breed virtue in others by giving them something to forgive. Conceive, if you can, the unutterable horror of life in this world without a few blessed human faults. He who sins not at all, cannot easily find reason to forgive; and to forgive those who trespa.s.s against us, is one of the sweetest benedictions of life. I have known many persons who built their moral structure upon the single rock of justice; but they all bred wretchedness among those who loved them, and made life harder because they did not die young.

One woman of that sort, I knew,--Mrs. Margarita Bays. To her face, or in the presence of those who might repeat my words, I of course called her ”Mrs. Bays”; but when I felt safe in so doing, I called her the ”Chief Justice”--a t.i.tle conferred by my friend, Billy Little. Later happenings in her life caused Little to christen her ”my Lady Jeffreys,” a sobriquet bestowed upon her because of the manner in which she treated her daughter, whose name was also Margarita.

The daughter, because she was as sweet as the wild rose, and as gentle as the soft spring sun, received from her friends the affectionate diminutive of Rita. And so I shall name her in this history.

Had not Rita been so gentle, yielding, and submissive, or had her father, Tom Bays,--husband to the Chief Justice,--been more combative and less amenable to the corroding influences of henpeck, I doubt if Madam Bays would ever have attained a dignity beyond that of ”a.s.sociate Justice.” That strong sense of domineering virtue which belongs to the truly just must be fed, and it waxes fat on an easy-going husband and a loving, tender daughter.

In the Bays home, the mother's righteous sense of justice and duty, which applied itself relentlessly upon husband and daughter, became the weakest sort of indulgence when dealing with the only son and heir.

Without being vicious, Tom, Jr., was what the negroes called ”jes' clean triflin',” and dominated his mother with an inherited club of inborn selfishness. Before Tom's selfishness, Justice threw away her scales and became maudlin sentiment.

I have been intimately acquainted with the Bays family ever since they came to Blue River settlement from North Carolina, and I am going to tell you the story of the sweetest, gentlest nature G.o.d has ever given me to know--Rita Bays. I warn you there will be no heroics in this history, no palaces, no grand people--nothing but human nature, the forests, and a few very simple country folk indeed.

Rita was a babe in arms when her father, her mother, and her six-year-old brother Tom moved from North Carolina in two great ”schooner” wagons, and in the year '20 or '21 settled upon Blue River, near the centre of a wilderness that had just been christened ”Indiana.”

The father of Tom Bays had been a North Carolina planter of considerable wealth and culture; but when the old gentleman died there were eight sons and two daughters among whom his estate was to be divided, and some of them had to choose between moving west and facing the terrors of battle with nature in the wilderness, and remaining in North Carolina to become ”poor white trash.” Tom Bays, Sr., had married Margarita, daughter of a pompous North Carolinian, Judge Anselm Fisher. Whether he was a real judge, or simply a ”Kentucky judge,” I cannot say; but he was a man of good standing, and his daughter was not the woman to endure the loss of caste at home. If compelled to step down from the social position into which she had been born, the step must be taken among strangers, that part at least of her humiliation might be avoided.

With a heart full of sorrow and determination, Madam Bays, who even then had begun to manifest rare genius for leaders.h.i.+p, loaded two ”schooners”

with her household goods, her husband, her son, and her daughter, and started northwest with the laudable purpose of losing herself in the wilderness. They carried with them their inheritance, a small bag of gold, and with it they purchased from the government a quarter-section--one hundred and sixty acres--of land, at five s.h.i.+llings per acre. The land on Blue was as rich and fertile as any the world could furnish; but for miles upon miles it was covered with black forests, almost impenetrable to man, and was infested by wild beasts and Indians. Here madam and her husband began their long battle with the hardest of foes--nature; and that battle, the terrors of which no one can know who has not fought it, doubtless did much to harden the small portion of human tenderness with which G.o.d had originally endowed her. They built their log-cabin on the east bank of Blue River, one mile north of the town of the same name.

The river was spoken of simply as Blue.

Artistic beauty is not usually considered an attribute of log-cabins; but I can testify to the beauty of many that stood upon the banks of Blue,--among them the house of Bays. The main building consisted of two ground-floor rooms, each with a front door and a half-story room above.

A clapboard-covered porch extended across the entire front of the house, which faced westward toward Blue. Back of the main building was a one-story kitchen, and adjoining each ground-floor room was a huge chimney, built of small logs four to six inches in diameter. These chimneys, thickly plastered on the inside with clay, were built with a large opening at the top, and widened downward to the fireplace, which was eight or ten feet square, and nearly as high as the low ceiling of the room. The purpose of these generous dimensions was to prevent the wooden chimney from burning. The fire, while the chimney was new, was built in the centre of the enormous hearth that the flames might not touch the walls, but after a time the heat burnt the clay to the hardness of brick, and the fire was then built against the back wall. By pointing up the cracks, and adding a coat of clay now and then, the walls soon became entirely fireproof, and a fire might safely be kindled that would defy Boreas in his bitterest zero mood. An open wood fire is always cheering; so our humble folk of the wilderness, having little else to cheer them during the long winter evenings, were mindful to be prodigal in the matter of fuel, and often burned a cord of wood between candle-light and bedtime on one of their enormous hearths. A cord of wood is better than a play for cheerfulness, and a six-foot back-log will make more mirth than Dan Rice himself ever created. Economy did not enter into the question, for wood was nature's chief weapon against her enemies, the settlers; and the question was not how to save, but how to burn it.

To this place Rita first opened the eyes of her mind. The girl's earliest memories were of the cozy log-cabin upon the banks of the limpid, gurgling creek. Green in her memory, in each sense of the word, was the soft blue-gra.s.s lawn, that sloped gently a hundred yards from the cabin, built upon a little rise in the bottom land, down to the water's edge. Often when she was a child, and I a man well toward middle life, did I play with the enchanting little elf upon the blue-gra.s.s lawn, and drink the waters of perennial youth at the fountain of her sweet babyhood. Vividly I remember the white-skinned sycamores, the gracefully drooping elms, and the sweet-scented honey-locust that grew about the cabin and embowered it in leafy glory. Even at this long distance of time, when June is abroad, if I catch the odor of locust blossoms, my mind and heart travel back on the wings of a moment, and I hear the buzzing of the wild bees, the song of the meadow-lark, the whistle of bob-white, and the gurgling of the creek--all blended into one sweet refrain like the mingling tones of a perfect orchestra by the soft-voiced babble of my wee girl-baby friend. I close my eyes, and see the house amid the hollyhocks and trees, a thin line of blue smoke curling lazily from the kitchen chimney and floating away over the deep, black forest to the north and east. I see the maples languidly turning the white side of their leaves to catch the south wind's balmy breath, and I see by my side a fate-charged, tiny tot, dabbling in the water, mocking the songs of the birds, and ever turning her face, with its great brown wistful eyes, to catch the breath of destiny and to hear the sad dread hum of the future. But my old chum Billy Little was the child's especial friend.

In those good times there was another child, a boy, Diccon Bright, who often came down from his cabin home a mile up river to play with Rita on the blue-gra.s.s lawn in summer, or to sit with her on the hearth log in winter. In cold weather the hearth log was kept on one side of the hearth, well within the fireplace itself, ready for use when needed. It gloried in three names, all of which were redolent of home. It was called the ”hearth log” because it was kept upon the hearth; the ”waiting log” because it was waiting to take the place of the log that was burning, and the ”ciphering log” because the children sat upon it in the evening firelight to do their ”ciphering”--a general term used to designate any sort of preparation for the morrow's lesson. In those times arithmetic was the chief study, and from it the acquisition of all branches of knowledge took the name of ciphering.

Diccon--where on earth his parents got the name, I cannot tell--was four or five years older than Rita. He was a manly boy, and when my little friend could hardly lisp his name she would run to him with the unerring instinct of childhood and nestle in his arms or cling to his helpful finger. The little fellow was so st.u.r.dy, strong, and brave, and his dark gray eyes were so steadfast and true, that she feared no evil from him, though ordinarily she was a timid child. She would sit by him on the ciphering log during the long winter evenings, and the boy, the girl, and the fire were the best of friends, and had glorious times together on the heart of the cheery hearth. The north wind might blow, the snow might snow, and the cold might freeze, Rita, Dic, and the fire cared not a straw.

”I want no better mirror, my little sweetheart,” he would say, ”than your brown eyes; no prettier color than your rosy cheeks and glossy black hair, and no truer friend than your loving little heart.” And the fire crackled its entire approval.

”Very well, Dic,” she would reply, laughing with delight, ”if you really want them, you may have them; they are all yours.” And the fire smiled rosily, beaming its benediction.

”But what will your father and mother say and Tom?” asked Dic.

”We'll not tell them,” replied this tiny piece of Eve; and the fire almost choked itself with spluttering laughter. So, with the fire as a witness, the compact was made and remade many times, until she thought she belonged to Dic and gloried in her little heart because of it.

Diccon and Rita's brother, Tom, even during their early childhood, when they were hardly half so tall as the guns they carried, were companion knights in the great wars waged by the settlers against the wild beasts of the forests, and many a bear, wolf, wildcat, and deer fell before the prowess of small Sir Diccon la Valorous and little Sir Thomas de Triflin'. Out of their slaughter grew friends.h.i.+p, and for many years Sir Thomas was a frequent guest upon the ciphering log of Sir Diccon, and Sir Diccon spent many winter evenings on the hearth at Castle Bays.

As the long years of childhood pa.s.sed, Dic began to visit the Bays home more frequently than Tom visited the Brights'. I do not know whether this change was owing to the increasing age of the boys, or--but Rita was growing older and prettier every day, and you know that may have had something to do with Dic's visits.

Dic had another boy friend--an old boy, of thirty-five or more--whose name was William Little. He was known generally as Billy Little, and it pleased the little fellow to be so called, ”Because,” said he, ”persons give the diminutive to fools and those whom they love; and I know I am not a fool.” The sweetest words in the German language are their home diminutives. It is difficult to love a man whom one _must_ call Thomas.