THANKFUL BLOSSOM(感恩花开)

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THANKFUL BLOSSOM

by BRET HARTE

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

The time was the year of grace 1779; the locality, Morristown, New

Jersey.

It was bitterly cold. A northeasterly wind had been stiffening the

mud of the morning's thaw into a rigid record of that day's wayfaring on

the Baskingridge road. The hoof-prints of cavalry, the deep ruts left by

baggage-wagons, and the deeper channels worn by artillery, lay stark and

cold in the waning light of an April day. There were icicles on the fences,

a rime of silver on the windward bark of maples, and occasional bare spots

on the rocky protuberances of the road, as if Nature had worn herself out

at the knees and elbows through long waiting for the tardy spring. A few

leaves disinterred by the thaw became crisp again, and rustled in the wind,

making the summer a thing so remote that all human hope and conjecture

fled before them.

Here and there the wayside fences and walls were broken down or

dismantled; and beyond them fields of snow downtrodden and discolored,

and strewn with fragments of leather, camp equipage, harness, and cast-off

clothing, showed traces of the recent encampment and congregation of

men. On some there were still standing the ruins of rudely constructed

cabins, or the semblance of fortification equally rude and incomplete. A

fox stealing along a half-filled ditch, a wolf slinking behind an earthwork,

typified the human abandonment and desolation.

One by one the faint sunset tints faded from the sky; the far-off crests

of the Orange hills grew darker; the nearer files of pines on the Whatnong

Mountain became a mere black background; and, with the coming-on of

night, came too an icy silence that seemed to stiffen and arrest the very

wind itself. The crisp leaves no longer rustled; the waving whips of alder

and willow snapped no longer; the icicles no longer dropped a cold

fruitage from barren branch and spray; and the roadside trees relapsed into

stony quiet, so that the sound of horse's hoofs breaking through the thin,

dull, lustreless films of ice that patched the furrowed road, might have

been heard by the nearest Continental picket a mile away.

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

Either a knowledge of this, or the difficulties of the road, evidently

irritated the viewless horseman. Long before he became visible, his

voice was heard in half-suppressed objurgation of the road, of his beast, of

the country folk, and the country generally. "Steady, you jade!" "Jump,

you devil, jump!" "Curse the road, and the beggarly farmers that durst

not mend it!" And then the moving bulk of horse and rider suddenly

arose above the hill, floundered and splashed, and then as suddenly

disappeared, and the rattling hoof-beats ceased.

The stranger had turned into a deserted lane still cushioned with

untrodden snow. A stone wall on one hand--in better keeping and

condition than the boundary monuments of the outlying fields-- bespoke

protection and exclusiveness. Half-way up the lane the rider checked his

speed, and, dismounting, tied his horse to a wayside sapling. This done,

he went cautiously forward toward the end of the lane, and a farm-house

from whose gable window a light twinkled through the deepening night.

Suddenly he stopped, hesitated, and uttered an impatient ejaculation.

The light had disappeared. He turned sharply on his heel, and retraced

his steps until opposite a farm-shed that stood a few paces from the wall.

Hard by, a large elm cast the gaunt shadow of its leafless limbs on the wall

and surrounding snow. The stranger stepped into this shadow, and at

once seemed to become a part of its trembling intricacies.

At the present moment it was certainly a bleak place for a tryst. There

was snow yet clinging to the trunk of the tree, and a film of ice on its bark;

the adjacent wall was slippery with frost, and fringed with icicles. Yet in

all there was a ludicrous suggestion of some sentiment past and

unseasonable: several dislodged stones of the wall were so disposed as to

form a bench and seats, and under the elm-tree's film of ice could still be

seen carved on its bark the effigy of a heart, divers initials, and the legend,

"Thine Forever."

The stranger, however, kept his eyes fixed only on the farm-shed and

the open field beside it. Five minutes passed in fruitless expectancy.

Ten minutes! And then the rising moon slowly lifted herself over the

black range of the Orange hills, and looked at him, blushing a little, as if

the appointment were her own.

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

The face and figure thus illuminated were those of a strongly built,

handsome man of thirty, so soldierly in bearing that it needed not the buff

epaulets and facings to show his captain's rank in the Continental army.

Yet there was something in his facial expression that contradicted the

manliness of his presence,--an irritation and querulousness that were

inconsistent with his size and strength. This fretfulness increased as the

moments went by without sign or motion in the faintly lit field beyond,

until, in peevish exasperation, he began to kick the nearer stones against

the wall.

"Moo-oo-w!"

The soldier started. Not that he was frightened, nor that he had failed

to recognize in these prolonged syllables the deep-chested, half-drowsy

low of a cow, but that it was so near him--evidently just beside the wall.

If an object so bulky could have approached him so near without his

knowledge, might not she--

"Moo-oo!"

He drew nearer the wall cautiously. "So, Cushy! Mooly! Come

up, Bossy!" he said persuasively. "Moo"--but here the low unexpectedly

broke down, and ended in a very human and rather musical little laugh.

"Thankful!" exclaimed the soldier, echoing the laugh a trifle uneasily

and affectedly as a hooded little head arose above the wall.

"Well," replied the figure, supporting a prettily rounded chin on her

hands, as she laid her elbows complacently on the wall,--"well, what did

you expect? Did you want me to stand here all night, while you skulked

moonstruck under a tree? Or did you look for me to call you by name?

did you expect me to shout out, 'Capt. Allan Brewster--'"

"Thankful, hush!"

"Capt. Allan Brewster of the Connecticut Contingent," continued the

girl, with an affected raising of a low, pathetic voice that was, however,

inaudible beyond the tree. "Capt. Brewster, behold me,-- your obleeged

and humble servant and sweetheart to command."

Capt. Brewster succeeded, after a slight skirmish at the wall, in

possessing himself of the girl's hand; at which; although still struggling,

she relented slightly.

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

"It isn't every lad that I'd low for," she said, with an affected pout, "and

there may be others that would not take it amiss; though there be fine

ladies enough at the assembly halls at Morristown as might think it

hoydenish?"

"Nonsense, love," said the captain, who had by this time mounted the

wall, and encircled the girl's waist with his arm. "Nonsense! you startled

me only. But," he added, suddenly taking her round chin in his hand, and

turning her face toward the moon with an uneasy half-suspicion, "why did

you take that light from the window? What has happened?"

"We had unexpected guests, sweetheart," said Thankful: "the count just

arrived."

"That infernal Hessian!" He stopped, and gazed questioningly into

her face. The moon looked upon her at the same time: the face was as

sweet, as placid, as truthful, as her own. Possibly these two inconstants

understood each other.

"Nay, Allan, he is not a Hessian, but an exiled gentleman from

abroad,--a nobleman--"

"There are no noblemen now," sniffed the trooper contemptuously.

"Congress has so decreed it. All men are born free and equal."

"But they are not, Allan," said Thankful, with a pretty trouble in her

brows: "even cows are not born equal. Is yon calf that was dropped last

night by Brindle the equal of my red heifer whose mother come by herself

in a ship from Surrey? Do they look equal?"

"Titles are but breath," said Capt. Brewster doggedly. There was an

ominous pause.

"Nay, there is one nobleman left," said Thankful; "and he is my own,--

my nature's nobleman!"

Capt. Brewster did not reply. From certain arch gestures and

wreathed smiles with which this forward young woman accompanied her

statement, it would seem to be implied that the gentleman who stood

before her was the nobleman alluded to. At least, he so accepted it, and

embraced her closely, her arms and part of her mantle clinging around his

neck. In this attitude they remained quiet for some moments, slightly

rocking from side to side like a metronome; a movement, I fancy,

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

peculiarly bucolic, pastoral, and idyllic, and as such, I wot, observed by

Theocritus and Virgil.

At these supreme moments weak woman usually keeps her wits about

her much better than your superior reasoning masculine animal; and, while

the gallant captain was losing himself upon her perfect lips, Miss Thankful

distinctly heard the farm-gate click, and otherwise noticed that the moon

was getting high and obtrusive. She half released herself from the

captain's arms, thoughtfully and tenderly--but firmly. "Tell me all about

yourself, Allan dear," she said quietly, making room for him on the wall,--

"all, everything."

She turned upon him her beautiful eyes,--eyes habitually earnest and

even grave in expression, yet holding in their brave brown depths a sweet,

childlike reliance and dependency; eyes with a certain tender, deprecating

droop in the brown-fringed lids, and yet eyes that seemed to say to every

man who looked upon them, "I am truthful: be frank with me." Indeed, I

am convinced there is not one of my impressible sex, who, looking in

those pleading eyes, would not have perjured himself on the spot rather

than have disappointed their fair owner.

Capt. Brewster's mouth resumed its old expression of discontent.

"Everything is growing worse, Thankful, and the cause is lost.

Congress does nothing, and Washington is not the man for the crisis.

Instead of marching to Philadelphia, and forcing that wretched rabble of

Hancock and Adams at the point of the bayonet, he writes letters."

"A dignified, formal old fool," interrupted Mistress Thankful

indignantly; "and look at his wife! Didn't Mistress Ford and Mistress

Baily, ay, and the best blood of Morris County, go down to his

Excellency's in their finest bibs and tuckers, and didn't they find my lady

in a pinafore doing chores? Vastly polite treatment, indeed! As if the

whole world didn't know that the general was taken by surprise when my

lady came riding up from Virginia with all those fine cavaliers, just to see

what his Excellency was doing at these assembly balls. And fine doings,

I dare say."

"This is but idle gossip, Thankful," said Capt. Brewster with the

faintest appearance of self-consciousness; "the assembly balls are

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

conceived by the general to strengthen the confidence of the townsfolk,

and mitigate the rigors of the winter encampment. I go there myself

rarely: I have but little taste for junketing and gavotting, with my country

in such need. No, Thankful! What we want is a leader; and the men of

Connecticut feel it keenly. If I have been spoken of in that regard,"

added the captain with a slight inflation of his manly breast, "it is because

they know of my sacrifices,--because as New England yeomen they know

my devotion to the cause. They know of my suffering--"

The bright face that looked into his was suddenly afire with womanly

sympathy, the pretty brow was knit, the sweet eyes overflowed with

tenderness. "Forgive me, Allan. I forgot-- perhaps, love--perhaps,

dearest, you are hungry now."

"No, not now," replied Captain Brewster, with gloomy stoicism; "yet,"

he added, "it is nearly a week since I have tasted meat."

"I--I--brought a few things with me," continued the girl, with a certain

hesitating timidity. She reached down, and produced a basket from the

shadow of the wall. "These chickens"--she held up a pair of pullets--"the

commander-in-chief himself could not buy: I kept them for MY

commander! And this pot of marmalade, which I know my Allan loves,

is the same I put up last summer. I thought [very tenderly] you might

like a piece of that bacon you liked so once, dear. Ah, sweetheart, shall

we ever sit down to our little board? Shall we ever see the end of this

awful war? Don't you think, dear [very pleadingly], it would be best to

give it up? King George is not such a very bad man, is he? I've thought,

sweetheart [very confidently], that mayhap you and he might make it all

up without the aid of those Washingtons, who do nothing but starve one to

death. And if the king only knew you, Allan,--should see you as I do,

sweetheart,--he'd do just as you say."

During this speech she handed him the several articles alluded to; and

he received them, storing them away in such receptacles of his clothing as

were convenient--with this notable difference, that with HER the act was

graceful and picturesque: with him there was a ludicrousness of suggestion

that his broad shoulders and uniform only heightened.

"I think not of myself, lass," he said, putting the eggs in his pocket,

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

and buttoning the chickens within his martial breast. "I think not of

myself, and perhaps I often spare that counsel which is but little heeded.

But I have a duty to my men--to Connecticut. [He here tied the marmalade

up in his handkerchief.] I confess I have sometimes thought I might,

under provocation, be driven to extreme measures for the good of the

cause. I make no pretence to leadership, but--"

"With you at the head of the army," broke in Thankful enthusiastically,

"peace would be declared within a fortnight."

There is no flattery, however outrageous, that a man will not accept

from the woman whom he believes loves him. He will perhaps doubt its

influence in the colder judgment of mankind; but he will consider that this

poor creature, at least, understands him, and in some vague way represents

the eternal but unrecognized verities. And when this is voiced by lips that

are young and warm and red, it is somehow quite as convincing as the

bloodless, remoter utterance of posterity.

Wherefore the trooper complacently buttoned the compliment over his

chest with the pullets.

"I think you must go now, Allan," she said, looking at him with that

pseudo-maternal air which the youngest of women sometimes assume to

their lovers, as if the doll had suddenly changed sex, and grown to man's

estate. "You must go now, dear; for it may so chance that father is

considering my absence overmuch. You will come again a' Wednesday,

sweetheart; and you will not go to the assemblies, nor visit Mistress Judith,

nor take any girl pick-a- back again on your black horse; and you will let

me know when you are hungry?"

She turned her brown eyes lovingly, yet with a certain pretty trouble in

the brow, and such a searching, pleading inquiry in her glance, that the

captain kissed her at once. Then came the final embrace, performed by

the captain in a half-perfunctory, quiet manner, with a due regard for the

friable nature of part of his provisions. Satisfying himself of the integrity

of the eggs by feeling for them in his pocket, he waved a military salute

with the other hand to Miss Thankful, and was gone. A few minutes later

the sound of his horse's hoofs rang sharply from the icy hillside.

But, as he reached the summit, two horsemen wheeled suddenly from

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

the shadow of the roadside, and bade him halt.

"Capt. Brewster, if this moon does not deceive me?" queried the

foremost stranger with grave civility.

"The same. Major Van Zandt, I calculate?" returned Brewster

querulously.

"Your calculation is quite right. I regret Capt. Brewster, that it is my

duty to inform you that you are under arrest."

"By whose orders?"

"The commander-in-chief's."

"For what?"

"Mutinous conduct, and disrespect of your superior officers."

The sword that Capt. Brewster had drawn at the sudden appearance of

the strangers quivered for a moment in his strong hand. Then, sharply

striking it across the pommel of his saddle, he snapped it in twain, and cast

the pieces at the feet of the speaker.

"Go on," he said doggedly.

"Capt. Brewster," said Major Van Zandt, with infinite gravity, "it is not

for me to point out the danger to you of this outspoken emotion, except

practically in its effect upon the rations you have in your pocket. If I

mistake not, they have suffered equally with your steel. Forward,

march!"

Capt. Brewster looked down, and then dropped to the rear, as the

discased yolks of Mistress Thankful's most precious gift slid slowly and

pensively over his horse's flanks to the ground.

Mistress Thankful remained at the wall until her lover had

disappeared. Then she turned, a mere lissom shadow in that uncertain

light, and glided under the eaves of the shed, and thence from tree to tree

of the orchard, lingering a moment under each as a trout lingers in the

shadow of the bank in passing a shallow, and so reached the farmhouse

and the kitchen door, where she entered. Thence by a back staircase she

slipped to her own bower, from whose window half an hour before she

had taken the signalling light. This she lit again and placed upon a chest of

THANKFUL BLOSSOM

drawers; and, taking off her hood and a shapeless sleeveless mantle she

had worn, went to the mirror, and proceeded to re-adjust a high horn comb

that had been somewhat displaced by the captain's arm, and otherwise

after the fashion of her sex to remove all traces of a previous lover. It may

be here observed that a man is very apt to come from the smallest

encounter with his dulcinea distrait, bored, or shame- faced; to forget that

his cravat is awry, or that a long blond hair is adhering to his button. But

as to Mademoiselle--well, looking at Miss Pussy's sleek paws and spotless

face, would you ever know that she had been at the cream-jug?

Thankful was, I think, satisfied with her appearance. Small doubt but

she had reason for it. And yet her gown was a mere slip of flowered

chintz, gathered at the neck, and falling at an angle of fifteen degrees to

within an inch of a short petticoat of gray flannel. But so surely is the

complete mould of symmetry indicated in the poise or line of any single

member, that looking at the erect carriage of her graceful brown head, or

below to the curves that were lost in her shapely ankles, or the little feet

that hid themselves in the broad-buckled shoes, you knew that the rest was

as genuine and beautiful.

Mistress Thankful, after a pause, opened the door, and listened. Then

she softly slipped down the back staircase to the front hall. It was dark; but

the door of the "company-room," or parlor, was faintly indicated by the

light that streamed beneath it. She stood still for a moment hesitatingly,

when suddenly a hand grasped her own, and half led, half dragged her,

into the sitting-room opposite. It was dark. There was a momentary

fumbling for the tinder-box and flint, a muttered oath over one or two

impeding articles of furniture, and Thankful laughed. And then the light

was lit; and her father, a gray wrinkled man of sixty, still holding her hand,

stood before her.

"You have been out, mistress!"

"I have," said Thankful.

"And not alone," growled the old man angrily.

"No," said Mistress Thankful, with a smile that began in the corners of

her brown eyes, ran down into the dimpled curves of her mouth, and

finally ended in the sudden revelation of her white teeth,--"no, not alone."

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THANKFULBLOSSOM1THANKFULBLOSSOMbyBRETHARTETHANKFULBLOSSOM2IThetimewastheyearofgrace1779;thelocality,Morristown,NewJersey.Itwasbitterlycold.Anortheasterlywindhadbeenstiffeningthemudofthemorning'sthawintoarigidrecordofthatday'swayfaringontheBaskingridgeroad.Thehoof-printsofcavalry,thedeeprutsleftbybag...

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