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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Master; a Novel," Israel Zangwill dives into the intricate world of art, culture, and existential reverie through the lens of its protagonist, an artist grappling with the complexities of ambition and identity. Written in an evocative and lyrical prose style, Zangwill's narrative intertwines elements of realism with philosophical introspection, illuminating the tensions between personal aspiration and societal expectations during the early 20th century. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing society, the novel reflects the dilemmas confronted by artists striving for authenticity in a commodified world, revealing the struggles of genius and the quest for recognition in a competitive artistic milieu. Israel Zangwill, a prominent figure in the social and literary landscape of his time, was deeply influenced by his Jewish heritage and experiences as an immigrant in England. His insights into the conflicts faced by those straddling multiple cultures resonate throughout "The Master," showcasing Zangwill's commitment to exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the nature of creativity. His career as a playwright, novelist, and social activist informs the depth and complexity of the novel's characters and themes, drawing from both personal experience and broader cultural narratives. This novel is a must-read for anyone interested in the interplay between art and the human condition, offering a profound exploration of the artist's psyche. Zangwill's ability to weave together personal introspection and societal critique makes "The Master" a remarkable contribution to the canon of literary works addressing the artist's struggle. Readers will find themselves captivated by the nuanced portrayal of ambition and creativity, rendering it essential for scholars and enthusiasts of modernist literature. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Master; a Novel
Table of Contents
Introduction
A brilliant striver learns that mastery of a craft is not the same as mastery of consequence, conscience, or the volatile community that bestows acclaim, and the struggle to shape a work of art—or a life—reveals how triumph can harden into a test of integrity, how admiration can turn into pressure, and how the very drive that elevates a person can imperil the connections that make achievement meaningful, until the pursuit of perfection becomes a reckoning with responsibility, the audience becomes a tribunal, and the word master names both a pinnacle and a perilous role to inhabit.
The Master; a Novel by Israel Zangwill belongs to the tradition of the social and psychological novel, engaging questions of ambition, influence, and the ethics of success. Zangwill, a prominent British writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was known for combining sharp social observation with humane insight. In this book, he channels those strengths into a study of power as it gathers around talent. While avoiding melodrama, the narrative probes the currents that swirl about a figure labeled exceptional, examining how public life and private resolve intersect in a modern society alert to celebrity and skeptical of authority.
Without disclosing its turns, the premise centers on a commanding personality whose gifts attract disciples, detractors, and dilemmas. Zangwill traces the widening orbit around this figure—the expectations that accumulate, the compromises proposed, the values tested—so that readers experience the tension between creating and being created by public desire. The storytelling balances close character study with broader social perspective, offering a novel that is reflective without losing momentum and vivid without courting sensationalism. The result is an immersive, thinker’s drama: an exploration of what it means to lead, to be followed, and to remain oneself under the bright, altering light of attention.
Key themes emerge with clarity and resonance. The book scrutinizes the costs of excellence: time, solitude, and the risk that a vocation may eclipse all else. It asks what any community is entitled to demand from its paragons and what a paragon may rightly withhold. It weighs ideals against realities, testing whether purity of purpose can survive the entanglements of admiration, patronage, and rivalry. Above all, it considers the ethics of influence—how guiding others shapes the guide, how charisma can inspire and distort, and how a conscience navigates the gap between private conviction and the roles that society insists upon.
Readers encounter a voice that is incisive yet sympathetic, alert to irony but generous toward human frailty. Zangwill’s prose, attentive to social nuance, often builds arguments through scene and character rather than declamation, allowing tensions to surface in dialogue and situation. The mood alternates between satiric brightness and sober reflection, mirroring the protagonist’s ascent and the reckonings it provokes. This blend invites a dual experience: intellectual engagement with ideas of leadership and authenticity, and emotional investment in the delicate ties of loyalty, gratitude, and love that both sustain and threaten a life dedicated to high purpose.
Though firmly a work of fiction, the novel converses with its cultural moment, when modern publics were learning to organize around personalities and institutions sought to harness exceptional ability. Zangwill situates individual striving within that environment, attentive to how class expectations, moral rhetoric, and the marketplace shape reputations. The Master; a Novel thus reads as both a portrait of a singular figure and a study of the social forces that canonize, commodify, and contest greatness. In doing so, it offers not a simple cautionary tale, but a nuanced inquiry into the responsibilities that accompany power earned through talent.
Contemporary readers may find the book strikingly relevant in an age of pervasive visibility, in which acclaim can arrive swiftly and the burden of example weighs heavily. It speaks to artists, professionals, and anyone tempted by big aims, asking what integrity demands when success complicates one’s first intentions. It also offers a compelling reading experience: richly observant, ethically searching, and alive to the bittersweet texture of achievement. Entering The Master; a Novel is to accept a conversation about purpose and consequence, and to consider, with bracing candor, how to balance the call of excellence with the claims of a shared human world.
Synopsis
Israel Zangwill’s The Master; a Novel follows the life of a gifted creator whose single-minded pursuit of excellence shapes his relationships, fortunes, and public standing. Set primarily in late nineteenth-century London with forays to continental Europe, the narrative opens on the protagonist’s early promise and the first signs of a vocation that resists conventional paths. Family expectations and practical concerns contrast with his vision, establishing the central tension between livelihood and art. Early mentors, casual friends, and curious onlookers observe the emergence of talent, while the protagonist begins to grasp how acclaim, misunderstanding, and necessity will continually press upon his ambitions.
The opening chapters trace formative years marked by disciplined study and the intoxicating freedom of bohemian circles. Initial recognition arrives in small but telling ways: a public notice, a private compliment, an invitation to present work among established figures. Yet early praise is mixed, and the protagonist learns the fickleness of opinion alongside the thrill of being seen. Zangwill presents the process of labor—its routines and doubts—without romance, underscoring how skill advances incrementally. The protagonist resolves to pursue a standard he defines as mastery, accepting that progress may cost comfort, approval, and the security that companions and family urge him to value.
As opportunities widen, patronage enters the story. A powerful supporter offers resources and visibility, but also conditions that subtly redirect the protagonist’s choices. The allure of stability and the pressure to produce on schedule begin to shape his methods. Social scenes—salons, dinners, and studio visits—bring him into contact with figures who admire, advise, or gently coerce. Two contrasting relationships complicate his life: one promises companionship founded on sympathy for his calling, the other embodies a steady domestic ideal. The protagonist’s responses remain measured, as he weighs whether attachment, however sincere, can coexist with the demands of his evolving standard.
A period abroad expands the narrative’s scope. In Europe’s artistic centers, the protagonist studies older traditions and contemporary movements, recognizing both their discipline and their compromises. He experiments with form and scale, attempting a more ambitious project that tests his technical reach. Financial strain sharpens his decisions, prompting careful calculations about commissions and materials. Correspondence with friends and supporters reveals a widening gap between their pragmatic counsel and his insistence on exacting methods. Zangwill’s pacing here mirrors the protagonist’s internal calibration, alternating between exhilaration at new influences and sober reassessment of what should be preserved from his original vision.
On returning, the protagonist reenters a competitive scene that has evolved in his absence. Fashions have shifted, and so have expectations surrounding success. He secures a workspace and refines his routines, aiming to translate lessons learned abroad into a distinctive voice. Yet personal commitments press forward, and he must navigate promises made, hopes raised, and the time-consuming intricacies of daily life. The novel emphasizes negotiations—between patrons and peers, between love and labor—without declaring a final hierarchy. The protagonist’s resolve hardens, but Zangwill keeps immediate outcomes uncertain, preserving for the reader the tension that attends each choice and its possible ramifications.
A rivalry intensifies the central conflict. A contemporary of the protagonist embodies a popular approach that garners swift sales and gratifying notice. Public debates about authenticity, originality, and audience flare in reviews and gossip, filtering back into private anxieties. The protagonist’s latest work, conceived under pressure, becomes a test case: can principle withstand market demands and the impatience of those who invest time, money, and emotion in his progress? A misstep—whether logistical, interpretive, or social—threatens to overshadow the work itself. Zangwill structures the episodes to clarify stakes while withholding definitive judgment, emphasizing the uncertainty that shadows even the most disciplined efforts.
The crucial presentations arrive amid heightened anticipation. Reception proves uneven: measured praise from some quarters; skepticism, even derision, from others. The instability of public favor exposes dependencies the protagonist had hoped to avoid. Support wavers, and practical consequences follow. A confidant counsels strategic concessions; another encourages steadfastness. The protagonist considers adjunct paths—teaching, collaboration, or institutional affiliation—that might secure means without sacrificing ends. Throughout, the narrative stresses the iterative nature of mastery: setbacks do not negate progress but demand recalibration. Meanwhile, personal ties hold, fray, or transform under the same pressures, their future contingent on how the protagonist defines success.
In the later chapters, an opportunity arises that promises security if he will realign his practice with prevailing taste. The offer sharpens the novel’s long-standing questions: Is mastery a public title conferred by acclaim, or a private measure of fidelity to one’s highest standard? The protagonist undertakes a culminating project that distills his methods and ideals, working under conditions that test endurance and conviction. Relationships reach critical points, with mutual claims weighed against the time and solitude creation requires. Zangwill focuses on process and consequence rather than sensational turns, framing the outcome as the logical result of choices made across the narrative.
The novel closes with a clear statement of its governing idea: mastery involves costs that cannot be wholly avoided or delegated. Without disclosing final specifics, Zangwill’s ending affirms that the protagonist’s path—whether crowned by recognition or shadowed by neglect—derives from his uncompromising definition of what work should be. The book’s message is less prescriptive than clarifying: art, labor, and life jostle within limits set by temperament, circumstance, and time. By tracing the protagonist’s decisions in sequence, The Master; a Novel presents a concise portrait of vocation under pressure, leaving readers with a measured understanding of its demands and possibilities.
Historical Context
The Master is set in late-Victorian Britain, with its core scenes unfolding in London’s burgeoning cultural districts between the 1880s and the turn of the century. The city’s West End theatres, concert rooms, galleries, and publishers’ offices form the professional arena, while the East End and new suburbs supply the social backdrop of class contrast and aspiration. Empire-era prosperity mingles with urban overcrowding, and modern transport and mass journalism accelerate reputations and scandals. Zangwill situates his characters within this dense metropolis, where patronage, critics, and institutions can crown or crush a career, and where the imagination competes constantly with market demand.
By the 1890s London had become the emblem of the Second Industrial Revolution. The metropolis grew from about 3.2 million inhabitants (1861) to 4.5 million (1891) and over 6.5 million (1901). Railways, the Underground, telegraphy, and the penny post compressed distance, while cheap newspapers such as the Daily Mail (founded 1896) amplified celebrity and controversy. These forces created a vast audience for culture but also bound the arts to commerce, advertising, and ticket sales. The novel mirrors this environment in its insistence that genius must navigate managers, reviewers, and syndicates, dramatizing how urban modernity turns inspiration into a negotiated commodity.
A decisive feature of the period was the expansion of metropolitan cultural infrastructure. The Royal Albert Hall opened in 1871, symbolizing a state-and-philanthropic drive to make performance central to national life. Queen’s Hall followed in 1893 on Langham Place; from 1895 its Promenade Concerts under Robert Newman and Henry Wood cultivated large, mixed audiences and a repertoire balancing novelty with accessibility. In the theatre, long-established houses such as Drury Lane and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (rebuilt 1858), coexisted with West End venues, while the Savoy Theatre (opened 1881) and the D’Oyly Carte enterprise showed how electric lighting, managerial professionalism, and branding could shape popular taste. Visual culture underwent parallel institutionalization. The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition remained the prestige gateway, but alternative spaces such as the Grosvenor Gallery (1877) and the New Gallery (1888) challenged gatekeeping, and the National Gallery of British Art—soon known as the Tate Gallery—opened at Millbank in 1897 through the sugar magnate Henry Tate’s philanthropy, shifting the geography of canon formation. Dealers like Thomas Agnew & Sons, critics writing in the Athenaeum and the Saturday Review, and circulating clubs mediated reputations. Public controversies, including the Whistler–Ruskin libel case (1878), underscored the legal and financial stakes of criticism. The book reflects this ecosystem by portraying how a career depends upon premieres, exhibitions, and access to patrons and venues; a single acceptance or rejection by a gallery, conductor, or manager can alter destiny. Its scenes of rehearsals, salons, and launches echo the era’s interplay between elite sponsorship and mass audiences, showing how institutional corridors, not only private studios, determined whether the “master” would be heard or seen at all.
Victorian educational reform reshaped artistic and professional pathways. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 created school boards; attendance became compulsory in 1880, fees were effectively abolished in 1891, and leaving ages were raised in 1893 and 1899. Technical training expanded under the Technical Instruction Act (1889). For the arts, the National Training School for Music (1876) and the Royal College of Music (1882, under George Grove) professionalized musical instruction; the Royal Academy of Music and the South Kensington system—evolving into the Royal College of Art by 1896—structured visual education. The novel connects to this meritocratic promise, depicting scholarships, examinations, and juries that open doors while enforcing institutional norms.
Mass immigration after the pogroms of 1881 and the May Laws of 1882 brought between 120,000 and 150,000 Jews to Britain by 1914, many settling in London’s Whitechapel, Spitalfields, and Stepney. They formed dense networks of tailoring workshops, benefit societies, and Yiddish press, altering the city’s social fabric and provoking debates on poverty and assimilation that culminated in the Aliens Act of 1905. Zangwill, himself Anglo-Jewish, wrote from intimate knowledge of these districts. Even when The Master focuses on broader artistic circles, its sensitivity to outsiders’ status, accent, and address mirrors the era’s negotiations over belonging, patronage, and the cultural legitimacy of newcomers.
Gender politics framed creative possibility. The Married Women’s Property Acts (1870, 1882) expanded women’s economic rights; higher education advanced with Girton (1869) and Newnham (1871) at Cambridge and with women admitted to the Slade School of Fine Art (from 1871) and the Royal Academy Schools. Organized suffrage strengthened through the NUWSS (1897) and, later, the WSPU (1903). In theatre and music, star actresses and performers navigated respectability codes and managerial control. The book resonates with these conditions by depicting talented women as collaborators, patrons, or rivals constrained by propriety and access, illustrating how gendered expectations shaped careers and critical reception.
Moral regulation and public scandal affected cultural life. Theatres operated under the Lord Chamberlain’s licensing powers (Theatres Act 1843), and obscenity law (1857) and blasphemy prosecutions policed expression. The 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde intensified scrutiny of bohemian circles and reinforced a climate of prudence among patrons and managers. Anxieties about “degeneration,” popularized by Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1892; English 1895), cast avant-garde art as pathological. The novel reflects these pressures through its wariness of notoriety: characters weigh the risks of subject matter, public behavior, and association, revealing how reputations could be undone as quickly by scandal as by aesthetic failure.
The book functions as a social critique by exposing how cultural prestige is produced by class, capital, and conformity. It indicts a system in which gatekeepers—editors, impresarios, dealers—translate talent into value while filtering out voices marked by poverty, foreignness, or gender. The narrative dissects the bargain between patronage and independence, portraying compromise as the price of survival and showing how censorship, respectability, and jingoistic taste discipline imagination. By juxtaposing salons with slums and rehearsal rooms with ticket lines, it reveals the inequities that underwrote late-Victorian success, offering a pointed commentary on the market’s power to shape what a nation sees and hears.
The Master; a Novel
ILLUSTRATIONS
ââTHERE!â SAID OLIVE, PUFFING OUT A THIN CLOUDâ
Frontispiece
âHE PLACED HIMSELF WITH HIS BACK TO THE DOORâ
Facingp.
12
ââI AM AFIRE WITH THIRST,â SHE CRIEDâ
â
64
ââLORâ BLESS YOU, SIR,â SAID SHE, âIâM NOT WORRYINâ ABOUT THE RENTââ
â
226
ââGOOD-NIGHT,â SHE SAID, SOFTLYâ
â
290
âMATT DINED WITH HERBERT AT A LITTLE TABLEâ
â
338
âALL WAS VERY STILL, SAVE FOR THE ETERNAL MONOTONE OF THE SEAâ
â
424
âSOMETHING IN THE SCENE THRILLED HIM WITH A SENSE OF RESTFUL KINSHIPâ
â
516
THE MASTER
PROEM
Despite its long stretch of winter, in which May might wed December in no incompatible union, âtwas a happy soil, this Acadia[1], a country of good air and great spaces; two-thirds of the size of Scotland, with a population that could be packed away in a corner of Glasgow; a land of green forests and rosy cheeks; a land of milk and molasses; a land of little hills and great harbors, of rich valleys and lovely lakes, of overflowing rivers and oversurging tides that, with all their menace, did but fertilize the meadows with red silt and alluvial mud; a land over which France and England might well bicker when first they met oversea; a land which, if it never reached the restless energy of the States, never retained the Old World atmosphere that long lingered over New England villages; save here and there in some rare Acadian settlement that dreamed out its life in peace and prayer among its willow-trees and in the shadows of its orchards.
At Minudie, at Clare in Annapolis County, where the goodly apples grew, lay such fragments of old France, simple communities shutting out the world and time, marrying their own, tilling their good dyke land, and picking up the shad that the retreating tide left on the exposed flats; listening to the Angelus, and baring their heads as some Church procession passed through the drowsy streets. They had escaped the Great Expulsion[2], nor had joined in the exodus of âEvangeline,â and, sprinkled about the country, were compatriots of theirs who had drifted back when the times grew more sedate; but for the most part it was the Saxon that profited by the labors of the pioneer Gaul, repairing the tumble-down farms and the dilapidated dykes, possessing himself of embanked marsh lands, and replanting the plum-trees and the quinces his predecessor had naturalized. For the revolt of the States against Britain sent thousands of American loyalists flocking into this âNew Scotland,â which thus became a colony of âNew England.â Scots themselves flowed in from auld Scotland, and the German came to sink himself in the Briton, and a band of Irish adventurers, under the swashbuckling Colonel McNutt, arrived with a grant of a million acres that they were not destined to occupy. The Acadian repose had fled forever. The sparse Indian hastened to make himself scarcer, conscious there was no place for him in the new order, and disappearing deliciously in hogsheads of rum. The virgin greenwood rang with axes, startling the bear and the moose. Crash! Down went pine and beech, hemlock and maple, their stumps alone left to rot and enrich the fields. Crash!—thud! The weasel grew warier, the astonished musquash vanished in eddying circles. Bridges began to span the rivers where the beaver built its dams in happy unconsciousness of the tall cylinder that was about to crown civilization. The caribou and the silver fox pressed inland to save their skins. The snare was set in the wild-wood, and the crack of the musket followed the ring of the axe. The mackerel and the herring sought destruction in shoals, and the seines brimmed over with salmon and alewives and gaspereux. The wild land that had bloomed with golden-rod and violets was tamed with crops, and plump sheep and fat oxen pastured where the wild strawberry vine had trailed or the bull-frog had croaked under the alders. A sturdy, ingenious race the fathers of the new settlement, loving work almost as much as they feared God; turning their hand to anything, and opening it wide to the stranger. They raised their own houses, and fashioned their own tools, and shod their own horses, and later built their own vessels, and even sailed them to the great markets laden with the produce of their own fields and the timber from their own saw-mills. There were women in this workaday paradise—shapely, gentle creatures, whose hands alone were rough with field and house-work; women who span and sang when the winter night-winds whistled round the settlement. The dramas of love and grief began to play themselves out where the raccoon and the chickadee had fleeted the golden hours in careless living. Children came to make the rafters habitable, and Death to sanctify them with memories. The air grew human with the smoke of hearths, the forest with legends and histories. And as houses grew into homes and villages into townships, Church and State arose where only Faith and Freedom had been.
The sons and heirs of the fathers did not always cling to the tradition of piety and perseverance. The âBluenoseâ grew apathetic, content with the fatness of the day; or, if he exerted himself, it was too often to best a neighbor. The great magnets of New York and Boston drew off or drew back all that was iron in the race.
And amid these homely emotions of yeomen, amid the crude pieties or impieties of homespun souls, amid this sane hearty intercourse with realities or this torpor of sluggish spirits, was born ever and anon a gleam of fantasy, of imagination: bizarre, transfiguring, touching things with the glamour of dream. Blind instincts—blinder still in their loneliness—yearned towards light; beautiful emotions stirred in dumb souls, emotions that mayhap turned to morbid passion in the silence and solitude of the woods, where character may grow crabbed and gnarled, as well as sound and straight. For whereas to most of these human creatures, begirt by the glory of sea and forest, the miracles of sunrise and sunset were only the familiar indications of a celestial timepiece[1q], and the starry heaven was but a leaky ceiling in their earthly habitation, there was here and there an eye keen to note the play of light and shade and color, the glint of wave and the sparkle of hoar-frost and the spume of tossing seas; the gracious fairness of cloud and bird and blossom, the magic of sunlit sails in the offing, the witchery of white winters, and all the changing wonder of the woods; a soul with scanty self-consciousness at best, yet haply absorbing Nature, to give it back one day as Art.
Ah, but to see the world with other eyes than oneâs fellows, yet express the vision of oneâs race, its subconscious sense of beauty, is not all a covetable dower.
The islands of Acadia are riddled with pits, where men have burrowed for Captain Kiddâs Treasure and found nothing but holes. The deeper they delved the deeper holes they found. Whoso with blood and tears would dig Art out of his soul may lavish his golden prime in pursuit of emptiness, or, striking treasure, find only fairy gold, so that when his eye is purged of the spell of morning, he sees his hand is full of withered leaves.
Book I—CHAPTER ISOLITUDE
âMatt, Matt, whatâs thet thar noise?â
Matt opened his eyes vaguely, shaking off his younger brotherâs frantic clutch.
âItâs onây the frost,â he murmured, closing his eyes again. âGo to sleep, Billy.â
Since the sled accident that had crippled him for life, Billy was full of nervous terrors, and the night had been charged with mysterious noises. Within the lonely wooden house weather-boards and beams cracked; without, twigs snapped and branches crashed; at times Billy heard reports as loud as pistol-shots. One of these shots meant the bursting of the wash-basin on the bedroom bench, Matt having forgotten to empty its contents, which had expanded into ice.
Matt curled himself up more comfortably and almost covered his face with the blanket, for the cold in the stoveless attic was acute. In the gray half-light the rough beams and the quilts glistened with frozen breaths. The little square window-panes were thickly frosted, and below the crumbling rime was a thin layer of ice left from the day before, solid up to the sashes, and leaving no infinitesimal dot of clear glass, for there was nothing to thaw it except such heat as might radiate through the bricks of the square chimney that came all the way from the cellar through the centre of the flooring to pop its head through the shingled roof.
âMatt!â Billy was nudging his brother in the ribs again.
âHullo!â grumbled the boy.
âThet thar ainât the frost. Hark!â
ââTis, I tell ye. Donât you hear the pop, pop, pop?â
âNot thet; tâother down-stairs.â
âOh, thetâs the wind, I reckon.â
âNo; itâs some âun screaminâ!â
Matt raised himself on his elbow, and listened.
âWhy, you gooney, itâs onây mother rowinâ Harriet,â he said, reassuringly, and snuggled up again between the blankets.
The winter, though yet young, had already achieved a reputation. Blustrous north winds had driven inland, felling the trees like lumbermen. In the Annapolis Basin myriads of herrings, surprised by Jack Frost before their migratory instinct awoke, had been found frozen in the weirs, and the great salt tides overflowing the high dykes had been congealed into a chocolate sea that, when the liquid water beneath ran back through the sluices, lay solid on the marshes. By the shores of the Basin of Minas sea-birds flapped ghostlike over amber ice-cakes, whose mud-streaks under the kiss of the sun blushed like dragonâs blood.
Snow had fallen heavily, whitening the âevergreenâ hemlocks, and through the shapeless landscape half-buried oxen had toiled to clear the blurred roads bordered by snow-drifts, till the three familiar tracks of hoofs and sleigh-runners came in sight again. The stage to Truro ploughed its way along, with only dead freight on its roof and a furred animal or two, vaguely human, shivering inside. Sometimes the mail had to travel by horse, and sometimes it altogether disappointed Billy and his brothers and sisters of the excitement of its passage; for the stage road ran by the small clearing, in the centre of which their house and barn had been built—a primitive gabled house, like a Noahâs ark, ugliness unadorned, and a cheap log barn of the âlean-toâ type, with its cracks corked with moss, and a roof of slabs.
Jack Frost might stop the mail, but he could not stop the gayeties of the season. âWooden frolicsâ and quilting-parties and candy-pullings and infares and Baptist revival-meetings had been as frequent as ever; and part of Mattâs enjoyment of his couch was a delicious sense of oversleeping himself legitimately, for even his mother could hardly expect him to build the fire at five when he had only returned from Deacon Haileyâs âmuddinâ frolicâ at two. He saw himself coasting down the white slopes in his hand-sled, watching the wavering radiance of the northern lights that paled the moon and the stars, and wishing his mother would not spoil the after-glow of the nightâs pleasure and the poetic silence of the woods by grumbling about his grown-up sister Harriet, who had deserted them for an earlier escort home. He felt himself well rewarded for his afternoonâs labor in loading marsh mud for the top-dressing of Deacon Haileyâs fields; and a sudden remembrance of how his mother had been rewarded for helping Mrs. Hailey to prepare the feast made him nudge Billy in his turn.
âCheer up, Billy. Weâve brought back a basket oâ goodies: thereâs plum-cake, doughnuts—â
âItâs gettinâ worst,â said Billy. âHark!â
Matt mumbled impatiently and redirected his thoughts to the âmuddinâ frolic.â The images of the night swept before him with almost the vividness of actuality; he lost himself in memories as though they were realities, and every now and then a dash of sleep streaked these waking visions with the fantasy of dream.
âMy, how the fiddle shrieks!â runs the boyâs reminiscence. âWhy donât ole Jupe do his tuninâ to home, the pesky nigger? Weâre all waitinâ for the reel—the âfoursâ are all made up; Ruth Hailey and me hev took the floor. Ruth looks jest great with thet white frock anâ the pink sash, thetâs a fact. Hooray!—âThe Devil among the Tailors!â—La, lalla, lalla, lalla, lalla, flip-flop!â He hears the big winter top-boots thwack the threshing-floor. Keep it up! Whoop! Faster! Ever faster! Oh, the joy of life!
Now he is swinging Ruth in his arms. Oh, the merry-go-round! The long rows of candles pinned by forks to the barn walls are guttering in the wind of the movement; the horses tied to their mangers neigh in excitement; from between their stanchions the mild-eyed cows gaze at the dancers, perking their naïve noses and tranquilly chewing the cud. A bat, thawed out of his winter nap by the heat of the temporary stove, flutters drowsily about the candles; and the odors of the stable and of the packed hay mingle with the scents of the ball-room. Mattâs exhaustive eye, though never long off pretty Ruthâs face, takes in even the grains of wheat that gild many a tousled head of swain or lass as the shaking of the beams dislodges the unthreshed kernels in the mow under the eaves, and, keener even than the eye of his collie, Sprat, notes the mice that dart from their holes to seize the fallen drops of tallow. But perhaps Sprat is only lazy, for he will not vacate his uncomfortable snuggery under the stove, though he has to shift his carcass incessantly to escape the jets of tobacco-juice constantly squirted in his direction. It serves him right, thinks his young master, for persisting in coming, though, for the matter of that, the creature, having superintended the mud-hauling, has more right to be present than Bully Preep. âWonder why sister Harriet lets him dance with her so ofân!â the panorama of his thought proceeds. âWhat kin she see in the skunk, fur lanâ sakes? I told her âbout the way he bully-ragged me when he was boss oâ the school and I was a teeny shaver. But she donât seem to care a snap. Girls are queer critters, thetâs a fact. He used to put a chip on my shoulder, anâ egg the fellers on to flick it off. But, gosh! didnât I hit him a lick when he pulled little Ruthâs hair? Heâd a black eye, thetâs a fact, though he givâ me two, anâ mother anâ teacher âud a givâ me one more apiece, but there warnât no more left. I took it out in picters though, I guess. My! didnât ole McTavitâs face jest look reedicâlous when he discovered Bully Preep in the fly-leaf of every readinâ-book. Thetâs jest how mother is glarinâ at Harriet this moment. Pop! pop! pop! What a lot oâ ginger-beer anâ spruce-beer Deacon Hailey is openinâ! Pop! pop! pop! He donât seem to notice them thar black bottles oâ rum. Heâs âtarnal cute, is ole Hey. Seems like heâs talkinâ to mother. Wonder how she kin understand him. He allus talks as if his mouth was full oâ words—but itâs onây tobacco, I reckon. Pop! pop! pop! Thetâs what I allus hear him say, windinâ up with a âHeyâ—anâ it does rile me some to refuse pumpkin-pie, not knowinâ heâs invitinâ me to anythinâ but hay. I âspect motherâs heerd him talk considerable, just es Iâve heerd the jays anâ the woodpeckers; though she kinât tell one from tâother, I vow, through beinâ raised at Halifax. Thunderation! thetâs never her dancinâ with ole Hey! My stars, whatâll her elders say? Well, I wow! She is backslidinâ. Ah, she recollecks! She pulls up, her face is like a beet. Ole Hey is argufyinâ, but she hangs back in her traces. I reckon she kinder thinks sheâs kicked over the dashboard this time. Ah, heâs gone and taken Harriet for a pardner instead; heâll like sister better, I guess. By gum! Heâs kickinâ up his heels like a colt when it fust feels the crupper. I do declare Marm Hailey is lookinâ pesky ugly âbout it. Sheâs a mighty handsome critter, anyways. Pity she kinât wear her hat with the black feather indoors—she does look jest spliffinâ when she drives her horses through the snow. Whoop! Keep it up! Sling it out, ole Jupe! More rosin. Yankee doodle, keep it up, Yankee doodle dandy! Go it, you cripples; Iâll hold your crutches! Why, thereâs Billy dancinâ with the crutch I made him!â he tells himself as his vision merges in dream. âPop! pop! pop! How his crutch thumps the floor! Poor Billy! Fancy hevinâ to hop through life on thet thar crutch, like a robin on one leg! Or shall I hev to make him a longer one when heâs growed up? Mebbe he wonât grow up—mebbe heâll allus be the identical same size; and when heâs an ole man heâll be the right size again, anâ the crutchâll onây be a sorter stick. I wish I hed a stick to make this durned cow keep quiet—I kinât milk her! So! so! Daisy! Ole Jupeâs music ainât for four-legged critters to dance to! My! whatâs thet nonsense âbout a cow? Why, Iâm dreaminâ. Whoa, there! Give her a tickler in the ribs, Billy. Hullo! look out! hereâs father come back from sea! Quick, Billy, chuck your crutch in the hay-mow. Kinât you stand straighter nor that? Unkink your leg, or fatherâll never take you out to be a pirate. Fancy a pirate on a crutch! It was my fault, father, for fixinâ up thet thar fandango, but motherâs lambasted me aâready, anâ she wanted to shoot herself. But it donât matter to you, father—youâre allus away aâmost, anâ Billyâs crutch kinât get into your eye like it does into motherâs. She was afeared to write to you âbout it. Thetâs onây Billy in a fit—you see, Daisy kicked him, and they couldnât fix his leg back proper; it donât fit, so he hes fits now anâ then. Heâll never be a pirate now. Drive the crutch deeper into the ice, Charley; steady there with the long pole. The iron pin goes into the crutch, Billy; donât get off the ashes, youâll slide under the sled. Now, then, is the rope right? Jump on the sled, you girls and fellers! Round with the pole! Whoop! Hooray! Ainât she scootinâ jest! Let her rip! Pop! Snap! Geewiglets! The ropeâs give! Donât jump off, Billy, I tell you; youâll kill yourself! Stick in your toes anâ donât yowl; weâll slacken at the dykes. Look at Ruth—she donât scream. Thunderation! Weâre goinâ over into the river! Hold tight, you uns! Bang! Smash! Weâre on the ice-cakes! Is thet you thetâs screaminâ, Billy? You ainât hurt, I tell you—donât yowl—you gooney—donât—â
But it was not Billyâs voice that he heard screaming when the films of sleep really cleared away. The little cripple was nestling close up to him with the same panic-stricken air as when they rode that flying sled together. This time it was impossible to mistake their motherâs voice for the wind—it rose clearly in hysterical vituperation.
âAnâ you orter be âshamed oâ yourself, I do declare, goinâ home all alone in a sleigh with a young man—in the dead oâ night, too!â
âThere were more nor ourn on the road; and since Abner Preep was perlite enough—â
âYes, anâ you didnât think oâ me on the road oncet, I bet! If young Preep wanted to do the perlite, heâdâ aâ took me in his fatherâs sleigh, not a wholesome young gal.â
âBut I was tarâd out with dancinâ eâen aâmost, and you onây—â
âDonât you talk about my dancinâ, you blabbinâ young slummix! Jest keep your eye on your Preeps with their bow-legs anâ their pigeon-toes.â
âHis legs is es straight es yourn, anyhow.â
âPâraps youâll say thet Iâve got Injun blood next. Look at his round shoulders and his lanky hair—heâs a Micmac, thetâs what he is. He onây wants a few baskets and butter-tubs to make him look nateral. Ugh! I kin smell spruce every time I think on him.â
âItâs you that hev hed too much spruce-beer, hey?â
âYou sassy minx! Folks hev no right to bring eyesores into the world. Iâd rather stab you than see you livinâ with Abner Preep. Itâs a squaw he wants, thetâs a fact, not a wife!â
âIâd rather stab myself than go on livinâ with you.â
For a moment or two Matt listened in silent torture. The frequency of these episodes had made him resigned, but not callous. Now Harrietâs sobs were added to the horror of the altercation, and Matt fancied he heard a sound of scuffling. He jumped out of bed in an agony of alarm. He pulled on his trousers, caught up his coat, and slipped it on as he flew barefoot down the rough wooden stairs, with his woollen braces dangling behind him.
In the narrow icy passage at the foot of the stairs, in the bleak light from the row of little crusted panes on either side of the door, he found his mother and sister, their rubber-cased shoes half-buried in snow that had drifted in under the door. Mrs. Strang was fully dressed in her âfrolickinââ costume, which at that period included a crinoline; she wore an astrakhan sacque, reaching to the knees, and a small poke-bonnet, plentifully beribboned, blooming with artificial flowers within and without, and tied under the chin by broad, black, watered bands. Round her neck was a fringed afghan, or home-knit muffler. She was a tall, dark, voluptuously-built woman, with blazing black eyes and handsome features of a somewhat Gallic cast, for she came of old Huguenot stock. She stood now drawing on her mittens in terrible silence, her bosom heaving, her nostrils quivering. Harriet was nearer the door, flushed and panting and sobbing, a well-developed auburn blonde of sixteen, her hair dishevelled, her bodice unhooked, a strange contrast to the otherâs primness.
âWhere you goinâ?â she said, tremulously, as she barred her motherâs way with her body.
âIâm goinâ to drownd myself,â answered her mother, carefully smoothing out her right mitten.
âNonsense, mother,â broke in Matt. âYou kinât go out—itâs snowinâ.â
He brushed past the pair and placed himself with his back to the door, his heart beating painfully. His motherâs mad threats were familiar enough, yet they never ceased to terrify. Some day she might really do something desperate. Who knew?
âIâm goinâ to drownd myself,â repeated Mrs. Strang, carefully winding the muffler round her head.
She made a step towards the door, sweeping the limp Harriet roughly behind her.
âYou kinât get out,â Matt said, firmly. âWhy, you hevnât hed breakfast yet.â
âWhat do I want oâ breakfus? Your sister is breakfus ânough for me. Clear out oâ the way.â
âDonât you let her go, Matt!â cried Harriet. âIâll quit instead.â
âYou!â exclaimed her mother, turning fiercely upon her, while her eyes spat fire. âYou are young and wholesome—the world is afore you. You were not brought from a great town to be buried in a wilderness. Marry your Preeps anâ your Micmacs, and nurse your pappooses. God has cursed me with froward children anâ a cripple, anâ a husband that goes gallivantinâ onchristianly about the world with never a thought for his âmortal soul, anâ the Lord has doomed me to worship Him in the wrong church. Mother yourselves; I throw up the position.â
âIs it my fault if father hesnât wrote you lately?â cried Harriet. âIs it my fault if thereâs no Baptist church to Cobequid village?â
âShut your mouth, you brazen hussy! Youâve drove your mother to her death! Stand out oâ my way, Matthew; donât you disobey my dyinâ requesâ.â
âI shaânât,â said the boy, squaring his shoulders firmly against the door. âWhere kin you drownd yourself? The pondâs froze anâ the tideâs out.â
He could think of no other argument for the moment, and he had an incongruous vision of her sliding down to the river on her stomach, as the boys often did, down the steep, reddish-brown slopes of greasy mud, or sinking into a squash-hole like an errant horse.
âHE PLACED HIMSELF WITH HIS BACK TO THE DOORâ
âWhy, thereâs onây mud-flats,â he added.
âIâll wait on the mud-flats fur the merciful tide.â She fastened her bonnet-strings firmly.
âThe river is full of ice,â he urged.
âThere will be room fur me,â she answered. Then, with a sudden exclamation of dismay, âMy God! youâve got no shoes and socks on! Youâll ketch your death. Go up-stairs dâreckly.â
âNo,â replied Matt, becoming conscious for the first time of a cold wave creeping up his spinal marrow. âIâll ketch my death, then,â and he sneezed vehemently.
âPut on your shoes anâ socks dâreckly, you wretched boy. You know what a bother I hed with you last time.â
He shook his head, conscious of a trump card.
âDâye hear me! Put on your shoes and socks!â
âTake off your bonnet anâ sacque,â retorted Matt, clinching his fists.
âPut on your shoes anâ socks![2q]â repeated his mother.
âTake off your bonnet anâ sacque, anâ Iâll put on my shoes anâ socks.â
They stood glaring defiance at each other, like a pair of duellists, their breaths rising in the frosty air like the smoke of pistols—these two grotesque figures in the gray light of the bleak passage, the tall, fierce brunette, in her flowery bonnet and astrakhan sacque, and the small, shivering, sneezing boy, in his patched homespun coat, with his trailing braces and bare feet. They heard Harrietâs teeth chatter in the silence.
âGo back to bed, you young varmint[3],â said Matt, suddenly catching sight of Billyâs white face and gray night-gown on the landing above. âYouâll ketch your death.â
There was a scurrying sound from above, a fleeting glimpse of other little night-gowned figures. Matt and his mother still confronted each other warily. And then the situation was broken up by the near approach of sleigh-bells. They stopped slowly, mingling their jangling with the creak of runners sliding over frosty snow, then the scrunch of heavy boots travelled across the clearing. Harriet flushed in modest alarm and fled up-stairs. Mrs. Strang hastily retreated into the kitchen, and for one brief moment Matt breathed freely, till, hearing the click of the door-latch, he scented gunpowder. He dashed towards the door and pressed the thumb-latch, but it was fastened from within.
âHarriet!â he gasped, âthe gun! the gun!â
He beat at the door, his imagination seeing through it. His loaded gun was resting on the wooden hooks fastened to the beam in the ceiling. He heard his mother mount a chair; he tried to break open the door, but could not. The chances of getting round by the back way flashed into his mind, only to be dismissed as quickly. There was no time—in breathless agony he waited the report of the gun. Crash! A strange, unexpected sound smote his ears—he heard the thud of his motherâs body striking the floor. She had stabbed herself, then, instead. Half mad with excitement and terror, he backed to the end of the passage, took a running leap, and dashed with his mightiest momentum against the frail battened door. Off flew the catch, open flew the door with Matt in pursuit, and it was all the boy could do to avoid tumbling over his mother, who sat on the floor among the ruins of a chair, rubbing her shins, her bonnet slightly disarranged, and the gun, still loaded, demurely on its perch. What had happened was obvious; some of the little Strang mice, taking advantage of the catâs absence at the âmuddinâ frolic,â had had a frolic on their own account, turning the chair into a sled, and binding up its speedily-broken leg to deceive the maternal eye. It might have supported a sitter; under Mrs. Strangâs feet it had collapsed ere her hand could grasp the gun.
âThe pesky young varmints!â she exclaimed, full of this new grievance. âThey might hev crippled me fur life. Always a-tearinâ anâ a-rampaginâ anâ a-ruinatinâ. I kinât keep two sticks together. Itâs ânough to make a body throw up the position.â
The sound of the butt-end of a whip battering the front-door brought her to her feet with a bound. She began dusting herself hastily with her hand.
âWell, whatâre you gawkinâ at?â she inquired. âKinât you go anâ unbar the door, âstead oâ standinâ there like a stuck pig?â
Matt knew the symptoms of volcanic extinction; without further parley he ran to the door and took down the beechen bar. The visitor was âole Hey,â who drove the mail. The deacon[5] came in, powdered as from his own grist-mill, and added the snow of his top-boots to the drift in the hall. There were leather-faced mittens on his hands, ear-laps on his cap, tied under the chin, a black muffler, hoary with frost from his breath, round his neck and mouth, and an outer coat of buffalo-skin swathing his body down to his ankles, so that all that was visible of him was a little inner circle of red face with frosted eyebrows.
Mrs. Strang stood ready in the hall with a genial smile, and Matt, his heart grown lighter, returned to the kitchen, extracted the family foot-gear from under the stove, where it had been placed to thaw, and putting on his own still-sodden top-boots, he set about shaving whittlings and collecting kindlings to build the fire.
âHere we are again, hey!â cried the deacon, as heartily as his perpetual, colossal quid would permit.
âDo tell! is it really you?â replied Mrs. Strang, with her pleasant smile.
âYes—dooty is dooty, I allus thinks,â he said, spitting into the snow-drift and flicking the snow over the tobacco-juice with his whip. âWhatever Deacon Haileyâs hand finds to do he does fust-rate—thetâs a fact. It donât seem so long a while since you and me were shakinâ our heels in the Sir Roger. Nay, donât look so peaked—thereâs nuthinâ to make such a touse about. You air a particâler Baptist, hey? Anâ I guess you kinder allowed Deacon Hailey would be late with the mail, hey? But heâs es spry es if heâd gone to bed with the fowls. You wonât find the beat of him among the young fellers nowadays—thetâs so. Theyâre a lazy, slinky lot; and es for doinâ their dooty to their country or their neighbor—â
âHev you brought me a letter?â interrupted Mrs. Strang, anxiously.
âI guess—but youâre goinâ out airly?â
âI allowed Iâd walk over to the village to see if it hed come.â
âOh, but it ainât the one you expecâ.â
âNo?â she faltered.
âI guess not. Thetâs why I brought it myself. I kinder scented it was suthinâ special, and so I reckoned Iâd save you the trouble of trudginâ to the post-office. Deacon Hailey ainât the man to spare himself trouble to obleege a fellow-critter. Do es youâd be done by, hey?â The deacon never lost an opportunity of pointing the moral of a position. Perhaps his sermonizing tendency was due to his habit of expounding the Sunday texts at a weekly meeting, or perhaps his weekly exposition was due to his sermonizing tendency.
âThank you.â Mrs. Strang extended her hand for the letter. He produced it slowly, apparently from up the sleeve of his top-most coat, a wet, forlorn-looking epistle, addressed in a sprawling hand. Mrs. Strang turned it about, puzzled.
âPâraps itâs from Uncle Matt,â ejaculated Matt, appearing suddenly at the kitchen door.
âYouâve got Uncle Matt on the brain,â said Mrs. Strang. âItâs a Halifax[6] stamp.â She could not understand it; her own family rarely wrote to her, and there was no hand of theirs in the address. Deacon Hailey lingered on, apparently prepared, in his consideration for others, to listen to the contents of his âfellow-critterâsâ letter.
âAh, sonny,â he said to Matt, âonly jest turned out, and not slicked up yet. When I was your age I hed done my dayâs chores afore the day hed begun. No wonder the Province is so âtarnally behindhand, hey?â
âThetâs so,â Matt murmured. Pop! pop! pop! was all that he heard, so that ole Heyâs moral exhortations left him neither a better nor a wiser boy.
Mrs. Strang still held the letter in her hand, apparently having become indifferent to it. Ole Hey did not know she was waiting for him to go, so that she might put on her spectacles and read it. She never wore her spectacles in public, any more than she wore her nightcap. Both seemed to her to belong to the privacies of the inner life, and glasses in particular made an old woman of one before oneâs time. If she had worn out her eyes with needle-work and tears, that was not her neighborsâ business.
The deacon, with no sign of impatience, elaborately unbuttoned his outer buffalo-skin, then the overcoat beneath that, and the coat under that, and then, pulling up the edge of his cardigan that fitted tightly over his waistcoats, he toilsomely thrust his horny paw into his breeches-pocket and hauled out a fig of âblack-jack.â Then he slowly produced from the other pocket a small tool-chest in the guise of a pocket-knife, and proceeded to cut the tobacco with one of the instruments.
âCome here, sonny!â he cried.
âThe deacon wants you,â said Mrs. Strang.
Matt moved forward into the passage, wondering. Ole Hey solemnly held up the wedge of black-jack he had cut, and when Mattâs eye was well fixed on it he dislodged the old âchawâ from his cheek with contortions of the mouth, and blew it out with portentous gravity. Lastly, he replaced it by the wedge of âblack-jack,â mouthed and moulded the new quid conscientiously between tongue and teeth, and passed the ball into his right cheek.
âThetâs the way to succeed in life, sonny. Never throw away dirty afore you got clean, hey?â
Poor Matt, unconscious of the lesson, waited inquiringly and deferentially, but the deacon was finished, and turned again to his mother.
âI âspect it âll be from some of the folks to home, mebbe.â
âMebbe,â replied Mrs. Strang, longing for solitude and spectacles.
âWhen did you last hear from the boss?â
âHe was in the South Seas, the captân, sellinâ beads to the savages. Heâd a done better to preach âem the Word, I do allow.â
âAh, you kinât expect godliness from sailors,â said the deacon. âItâs in the sea es the devil spreads his nets, thetâs a fact.â
âThe Apostles were fishermen,â Mrs. Strang reminded him.
âYes; but fishers ainât sailors, Mrs. Strang. Itâs in furrin parts that the devil lurks, and the further a man goes from his family the nearer he goes to the devil, hey?â
Mrs. Strang winced. âBut heâs gittinâ our way now,â she protested, unguardedly. âHeâs cominâ South with a freight.â
âAh, joined the blockade-runners[8], hey?â
Mrs. Strang bit her lip and flushed. âI donât kear,â the deacon said, reassuringly. âI donât see why Nova Scotia should go solid for the North. Whatâs the North done for Nova Scotia âcept ruin us with their protection dooties, gol durn âem. They wonât have slaves, hey? Ainât we their slaves? Donât they skin us es clean es a bear does a sheep? Ainât they allus on the lookout to snap up the Province? But I never talk politics. If the North and South want to cut each otherâs throats, thatâs not our consarn. Mind your own business, I allus thinks, hey? And if your boss kin make a good spec by provisioninâ the Southerners, youâll be a plaguy sight better off, I vow. And so will I—for, you know, I shall hev to call in the mortgage unless you fork out thet thar interest purty slick. Thereâs no underhandedness about Deacon Hailey. He gives you fair warninâ.â
âDârectly the letter comes you shall have it—Iâve often told you so.â
âMebbe thetâll be his letter, after all—put his thumb out, I guess, and borrowed another fellerâs, hey?â
âNo—heâd be nowhere near Halifax,â said Mrs. Strang, her feverish curiosity mounting momently. âDonât them thar sleigh-bells play a tune! I guess your horses air gettinâ kinder restless.â
âWell—thereâs nuthinâ I kin do for you to Cobequid Village[4]?â he said, lingeringly.
Mrs. Strang shook her head. âThank you, I guess not.â
âYou wouldnât kear to write an answer now—Iâd be tolerable pleased to post it for you down thar. Allus study your fellow-critters, I allus thinks.â
âNo, thank you.â
Deacon Hailey spat deliberately on the floor.
âEr—you got to home safe this morninâ?â
âYes, thank you. We all come together, me and Harriet and Matt. âTwere a lovely walk in the moonlight, with the Aurora Borealis[7] a-quiverinâ and a-flushinâ on the northern horizon.â
âA-h-h,â said the deacon slowly, and rather puzzled. âA roarer! Hey?â
At this moment a sudden stampede of hoofs and a mad jangling of bells were heard without. With a âDurn them beasts!â the deacon breathlessly turned tail and fled in pursuit of the mail-sleigh, mounting it over the luggage-rack. When he had turned the corner, Mattâs grinning face emerged from behind the snow-capped stump of a juniper.
âI reckon I fetched him thet time,â he said, throwing away the remaining snowball, as he hastened gleefully inside to partake of the contents of the letter.
He found his mother sitting on the old settle in the kitchen, her spectacled face gray as the sand on the floor, her head bowed on her bosom. One limp hand held the crumpled letter. She reminded him of a drooping foxglove. The room had a heart of fire now, the stove in the centre glowed rosily with rock-maple brands, but somehow it struck a colder chill to Mattâs blood than before.
âFatherâs drownded,â his mother breathed.
âHeâll never know âbout Billy now,â he thought, with a gleam of relief.
Mrs. Strang began to wring her mittened hands silently, and the letter fluttered from between her fingers. Matt made a dart at it, and read as follows:
Dear Marm,—Donât take on but ime sorrie to tell you that the Cap is a gone goose we run the block kade oust slick but the 2 time we was took by them allfird Yanks we reckkend to bluff âem in the fog but about six bells a skwad of friggets bore down on us sudden like ole nick the cap he sees he was hemd in on a lee shoar and he swears them lubberly northers shanât have his ship not if he goes to Davy Jones his loker he lufs her sharp up into the wind and sings out lower the longbote boys and while the shot was tearin and crashin through the riggin he springs to the hall-yards and hauls down the cullers then jumps through the lazzaret into the store room kicks the head of a carsk of ile in clinches a bit of oakem dips it in the ile and touches a match to it and drops it on the deck into the runin ile and then runs for it hisself jumps into the bote safe with the cullers and we sheer off into the fog mufflin our oars with our caps and afore that tarnation flame bust out to show where we were we warnt there but we heard the everlastin fools poundin away at the poor old innocent Sally Bell till your poor boss dear marm he larfs and ses he shipmets ses he look at good old Sally sheâs stickin out her yellow tongue at em and grinnin at the dam goonies beg pardon marm but that was his way he never larfed no more for wed disremembered the cumpess and drifted outer the fog into a skwall and the night was comin on and we drov blind on a reef and capsized but we all struck out for shore and allowed the cap was setting sale the same way as the rest on us but when we reached the harbor the cap he warnt at the helm and a shipmet ses ses he as how he would swim with that air bundle of cullers that was still under his arm and they tangelled round his legs and sorter dragged him under and kep him down like sea-weed and now dear marm he lays in the Gulf of Mexiker kinder rapped in a shroud and gone aloft I was the fust mate and a better officer I never wish to sine with for tho he did sware till all was blue his hart was like an unborn babbys and wishing you a merry Christmas and God keep you and the young orfuns and giv you a happy new year dear marm you deserve it.
ime yours to command,
Hoska Cuddy (Mate).
p s.—i would have writ erlier, but i couldnât get your address till i worked my way to Halifax and saw the owners scuse me not puttin this in a black onwellop i calclated to brake it eesy.
Matt hastily took in the gist of the letter, then stood folding it carefully, at a loss what to say to the image of grief rocking on the settle. From the barn behind came the lowing of Daisy—half protestation, half astonishment at the unpunctuality of her breakfast. Matt found a momentary relief in pitying the cow. Then his motherâs voice burst out afresh.
âMy poor Davie,â she moaned. âCut off afore you could repent, too deep down fur me to kiss your dead lips. I hevnât even got a likeness oâ you; you never would be took. I shall never see your face again on airth, and I misdoubt if Iâll meet you in heaven.â
âOf course you will—he saved his flag,â said Matt, with shining eyes.
His mother shook her head, and set the roses on her bonnet nodding gayly to the leaping flame. âYour father was born a Sandemanian,â she sighed.
âWhat is thet?â said Matt.
âDonât ask me; there air things boys mustnât know. And youâve seen in the letter âbout his profane langwidge. I never wouldâve run off with him; all my folks were agen it, and a sore time Iâve hed in the wilderness âway back from my beautiful city. But it was Godâs finger. I pricked the Bible fur a verse, anâ it came: âAnâ they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel.ââ
She nodded and muttered, âAnâ I was his angel,â and the roses trembled in the firelight. âIf you were a good boy, Matt,â she broke off, âyouâd know where thet thar varse come from.â
âHednât I better tell Harriet?â he asked.
âActs, chapter eleven, verse fifteen,â muttered his mother. âIt was the finger of God. Whatâs thet you say âbout Harriet? Ainât she finished tittivatinâ herself yet—with her father layinâ dead, too?â She got up and walked to the foot of the stairs. âHarriet!â she shrieked.
Harriet dashed down the stairs, neat and pretty.
