Rose O’ the River(河上玫瑰)

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2024-12-26 1 0 274.92KB 75 页 5.9玖币

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Rose O' the River

by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Rose O' the River

THE PINE AND THE ROSE

It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his

dip in the river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the alder-

bushes where he had made his morning toilet.

An early ablution of his sort was not the custom of the farmers along

the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a stone's throw

from the water, and there was a clear, deep swimming-hole in the Willow

Cove that would have tempted the busiest man, or the least cleanly, in

York County. Then, too, Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared,

schooled on its very brink, never happy unless he were on it, or in it, or

beside it, or at least within sight or sound of it.

The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him, left

him cold in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won his heart.

It was just big enough to love. It was full of charms and changes, of

varying moods and sudden surprises. Its voice stole in upon his ear with

a melody far sweeter and more subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it

was not without strength, and when it was swollen with the freshets of the

spring and brimming with the bounty of its sister streams, it could dash

and roar, boom and crash, with the best of them.

Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the sunrise,

with the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the sweet loveliness of

the summer landscape.

And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song,

creating and nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path. Cradled

in the heart of a great mountain-range, it pursued its gleaming way, here

lying silent in glassy lakes, there rushing into tinkling little falls, foaming

great falls, and thundering cataracts. Scores of bridges spanned its width,

but no steamers flurried its crystal depths. Here and there a rough little

rowboat, tethered to a willow, rocked to and fro in some quiet bend of the

shore. Here the silver gleam of a rising perch, chub, or trout caught the

eye; there a pickerel lay rigid in the clear water, a fish carved in stone:

here eels coiled in the muddy bottom of some pool; and there, under the

deep shadows of the rocks, lay fat, sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise,

Rose O' the River

quite untempted by, and wholly superior to, the rural fisherman's worm.

The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; it flowed along

banks green with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; it fell tempestuously

over darns and fought its way between rocky cliffs crowned with stately

firs. It rolled past forests of pine and hemlock and spruce, now gentle,

now terrible; for there is said to be an Indian curse upon the Saco,

whereby, with every great sun, the child of a paleface shall be drawn into

its cruel depths. Lashed into fury by the stony reefs that impeded its

progress, the river looked now sapphire, now gold, now white, now leaden

gray; but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its appointed way to the sea.

After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with a morning draught of

beauty, Stephen went in from the porch and, pausing at the stairway, called

in stentorian tones: "Get up and eat your breakfast, Rufus! The boys

will be picking the side jams today, and I'm going down to work on the

logs. If you come along, bring your own pick-pole and peavey." Then,

going to the kitchen pantry, he collected, from the various shelves, a

pitcher of milk, a loaf of bread, half an apple-pie, and a bowl of

blueberries, and, with the easy methods of a household unswayed by

feminine rule, moved toward a seat under an apple-tree and took his

morning meal in great apparent content. Having finished, and washed

his dishes with much more thoroughness than is common to

unsuperintended man, and having given Rufus the second call to breakfast

with the vigor and acrimony that usually marks that unpleasant

performance, he strode to a high point on the river-bank and, shading his

eyes with his hand, gazed steadily down stream.

Patches of green fodder and blossoming potatoes melted into soft

fields that had been lately mown, and there were glimpses of tasseling

corn rising high to catch the sun. Far, far down on the opposite bank of

the river was the hint of a brown roof, and the tip of a chimney that sent a

slender wisp of smoke into the clear air. Beyond this, and farther back

from the water, the trees apparently hid a cluster of other chimneys, for

thin spirals of smoke ascended here and there. The little brown roof

could never have revealed itself to any but a lover's eye; and that discerned

something even smaller, something like a pinkish speck, that moved hither

Rose O' the River

and thither on a piece of greensward that sloped to the waterside.

"She's up!" Stephen exclaimed under his breath, his eyes shining, his

lips smiling. His voice had a note of hushed exaltation about it, as if

"she," whoever she might be, had, in condescending to rise, conferred a

priceless boon upon a waiting universe. If she were indeed a "up" (so

his tone implied), then the day, somewhat falsely heralded by the sunrise,

had really begun, and the human race might pursue its appointed tasks,

inspired and uplifted by the consciousness of her existence. It might

properly be grateful for the fact of her birth; that she had grown to

woman's estate; and, above all, that, in common with the sun, the lark, the

morning-glory, and other beautiful things of the early day, she was up and

about her lovely, cheery, heart-warming business.

The handful of chimneys and the smoke spirals rising here and there

among the trees on the river-bank belonged to what was known as the

Brier Neighborhood. There were only a few houses in all, scattered

along a side road leading from the river up to Liberty Centre. There were

no great signs of thrift or prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the only one

near the water, was neat and well cared for, and Nature had done her best

to conceal man's indolence, poverty, or neglect.

Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as the fences.

Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and over all the stone walls,

as well as on every heap of rocks by the wayside, prickly blackberry vines

ran and clambered and clung, yielding fruit and thorns impartially to the

neighborhood children.

The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side of

the river was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the Edgewood

side. As there was another of her name on Brigadier Hill, the Edgewood

minister called one of them the climbing Rose and the other the brier Rose,

or sometimes Rose of the river. She was well named, the pinkish speck.

She had not only some of the sweetest attributes of the wild rose, but the

parallel might have been extended as far as the thorns, for she had

wounded her scores,--hearts, be it understood, not hands. The wounding

was, on the whole, very innocently done; and if fault could be imputed

anywhere, it might rightly have been laid at the door of the kind powers

Rose O' the River

who had made her what she was, since the smile that blesses a single heart

is always destined to break many more.

She had not a single silk gown, but she had what is far better, a figure

to show off a cotton one. Not a brooch nor a pair of earrings was

numbered among her possessions, but any ordinary gems would have

looked rather dull and trivial when compelled to undergo comparison with

her bright eyes. As to her hair, the local milliner declared it impossible for

Rose Wiley to get an unbecoming hat; that on one occasion, being in a

frolicsome mood, Rose had tried on all the headgear in the village

emporium,-- children's gingham "Shakers," mourning bonnets for aged

dames, men's haying hats and visored caps,--and she proved superior to

every test, looking as pretty as a pink in the best ones and simply ravishing

in the worst. In fact, she had been so fashioned and finished by Nature

that, had she been set on a revolving pedestal in a show-window, the

bystanders would have exclaimed, as each new charm came into view:

"Look at her waist!" "See her shoulders!" "And her neck and chin!"

"And her hair!" While the children, gazing with raptured admiration,

would have shrieked, in unison, "I choose her for mine."

All this is as much as to say that Rose of the river was a beauty, yet it

quite fails to explain, nevertheless, the secret of her power. When she

looked her worst the spell was as potent as when she looked her best.

Hidden away somewhere was a vital spark which warmed every one who

came in contact with it. Her lovely little person was a trifle below

medium height, and it might as well be confessed that her soul, on the

morning when Stephen Waterman saw her hanging out the clothes on the

river bank, was not large enough to be at all out of proportion; but when

eyes and dimples, lips and cheeks, enslave the onlooker, the soul is seldom

subjected to a close or critical scrutiny. Besides, Rose Wiley was a nice

girl, neat as wax, energetic, merry, amiable, economical. She was a

dutiful granddaughter to two of the most irritating old people in the county;

she never patronized her pug-nosed, pasty-faced girl friends; she made

wonderful pies and doughnuts; and besides, small souls, if they are of the

right sort, sometimes have a way of growing, to the discomfiture of cynics

and the gratification of the angels.

Rose O' the River

So, on one bank of the river grew the brier rose, a fragile thing,

swaying on a slender stalk and looking at its pretty reflection in the water;

and on the other a sturdy pine tree, well rooted against wind and storm.

And the sturdy pine yearned for the wild rose; and the rose, so far as it

knew, yearned for nothing at all, certainly not for rugged pine trees

standing tall and grim in rocky soil. If, in its present stage of development,

it gravitated toward anything in particular, it would have been a well-

dressed white birch growing on an irreproachable lawn.

And the river, now deep, now shallow, now smooth, now tumultuous,

now sparkling in sunshine, now gloomy under clouds, rolled on to the

engulfing sea. It could not stop to concern itself with the petty comedies

and tragedies that were being enacted along its shores, else it would never

have reached its destination. Only last night, under a full moon, there

had been pairs of lovers leaning over the rails of all the bridges along its

course; but that was a common sight, like that of the ardent couples sitting

on its shady banks these summer days, looking only into each other's eyes,

but exclaiming about the beauty of the water. Lovers would come and go,

sometimes reappearing with successive installments of loves in a way

wholly mysterious to the river. Meantime it had its own work to do and

must be about it, for the side jams were to be broken and the boom "let

out" at the Edgewood bridge.

Rose O' the River

OLD KENNEBEC

It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley

smoothed the last wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred

of corn-husk from the spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on

the window-sill, removed all signs of murder with a moist towel, and

before running down to breakfast cast a frowning look at her pincushion.

Almira, otherwise "Mite," Shapley had been in her room the afternoon

before and disturbed with her careless hand the pattern of Rose's pins.

They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese cross; and if, while

she was extricating one from her clothing, there had been an alarm of fire,

Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in the design, at the

risk of losing her life.

Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning

sunshine with her. The old people had already engaged in differences of

opinion, but they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence.

There were the usual last things to be done for breakfast, offices that

belonged to her as her grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday's soda

biscuits out of the steamer where they were warming and softening;

brought an apple pie and a plate of seed cakes from the pantry; settled the

coffee with a piece of dried fish skin and an egg shell; and transferred

some fried potatoes from the spider to a covered dish.

"Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as she

began buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.

"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything!

The butcher says he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for

critters to kill, but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of a

week. He ain't a real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose,

don't button that dickey clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport

starched collars in this life on account o' you and your gran'mother bein' so

chock full o' style; but I hope to the Lord I shan't have to wear 'em in

another world!"

"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or if

you do, they'll wilt with the heat."

Rose O' the River

Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neck-cloth

about the old man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled

knowingly back at her as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread

near the open kitchen door. She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be

feared, a wasted one, for there was no one present to observe her clean

pink calico and the still more subtle note struck in the green ribbon which

was tied round her throat,--the ribbon that formed a sort of calyx, out of

which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh and radiant as if it had

bloomed that morning.

"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down

the bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."

"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked

his spouse, testily.

"'Taint me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man.

"The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up jest like

Rose's jackstraws; I never see'em so turrible ricked up in all my exper'ence;

an' Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a jam than Cooper's cow.

Turrible sot in his ways, too; can't take a mite of advice. I was tellin' him

how to go to work on that bung that's formed between the gre't gray rock

an' the shore,--the awfullest place to bung that there is between this an'

Biddeford,--and says he: 'Look here, I've be'n boss on this river for

twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned if I'm goin' to be taught my business by

any man!' 'This ain't no river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd

ever lived on the Kennebec.' 'Pity you hedn't stayed on it,' says he. 'I

wish to the land I hed,'says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so

turrible spry an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir

up strife. There's some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out,

as if there wan't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's

one of 'em, when it comes to river drivin'."

"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own

business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a soda-

biscuit with her fork.

"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded her

husband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you are,--

Rose O' the River

partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought, as a

Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right track, though it's

always a turrible risky thing to do."

Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger generation,

sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and sometimes "Old Kennebec," because of

the frequency with which these words appeared in his conversation.

There were not wanting those of late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for

reasons too obvious to mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful,

and useless life, he had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line

between fact and fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an extent that

he almost staggered himself when he began to indulge in reminiscence.

He was a feature of the Edgewood "drive," being always present during

the five or six days that it was in progress, sometimes sitting on the river-

bank, sometimes leaning over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the

butt-end of a huge log, but always chewing tobacco and expectorating to

incredible distances as he criticized and damned impartially all the

expedients in use at the particular moment.

"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever so

many of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If grandpa

will leave the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to them at noon, and

bring the dishes back in time to wash them before supper."

"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though

it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there

was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin'

at the river in them days; there wasn't time."

"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to

dancing, the greatest fun in the world."

"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too,"

was the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home

yesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks says

Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed consid'able proud

of him; an' I guess it is the first time he ever stood anywheres but at the

foot. I tell you when these fifty-five new doctors git scattered over the

country there'll be consid'able many folks keepin' house under ground.

Rose O' the River

Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufe an' Steve Waterman. That'll

make one more to play in the river."

"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr.Wiley, "but

Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible reckless, too.

He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man that's lived on the

Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any turrible chances on the

Saco."

"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.

"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on the

river when the farm work isn't pressing. Besides, though it's all play to

him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day."

"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He

jest can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first

moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me"--

"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an'

never will suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption

received no comment: such mistaken views of his character were too

frequent to make any impression.

"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here from

Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was little

boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn,

consid'able older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death

stealin' away to the mill to ride on the 'carriage,''side o' the log that was

bein' sawed, hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin' back 'most

into the jaws o' the machinery."

"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young

one," remarked Mrs. Wiley; " and I don't see as all the 'cademy education

his father throwed away on him has changed him much." And with this

observation she rose from the table and went to the sink.

"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o'

daft about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in the

brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin' up stickins

an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cal'late Mis' Waterman died

consid'able afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out the winders and

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RoseO'theRiver1RoseO'theRiverbyKateDouglasWigginRoseO'theRiver2THEPINEANDTHEROSEItwasnotlongaftersunrise,andStephenWaterman,freshfromhisdipintheriver,hadscrambledupthehillsidefromthehutinthealder-busheswherehehadmadehismorningtoilet.Anearlyablutionofhissortwasnotthecustomofthefarmersalongthebanksoft...

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