A Kind Of Kingdom

It was a mid-June day, the very balmiest day of the sweetest month of the New-England summer. All that foreign poets say of May, in our northern land must be applied to June. The boisterous winds that rage in March, the cold nights that undo all that warm April days have done, the chilling rain blown from the east upon Aguish May, are all past. All the scars of winter are healed, and the conflicts of the spring have issued in a perfect victory, for whose celebration the leaves shakе out their ample folds, and the flowеrs lift up their banners in every field, and through the forests. Their enemy is destroyed. Frosts are dead, and flowers are jubilant. It would seem that this day of Rose’s visit to Alice Cathcart, was, above all other June days, transcendent in mild glory. Never were the blue heavens deeper and bluer. Never were clouds softer, or sailing in white islands with more tranquil errands. They did not troop with that stern and brilliant march that they seem to have in October days, as if they mustered, far away, to some call unheard of men, for battle or for vengeance of storms; but they moved gently, as if they carried in their plushy depths sleeping infants, and serenely swaying them, rocked their slumbers into sleep, in a peace high above earthly sounds, and higher even than dreams can fly. But what foolish creatures birds are! They saw nothing of all this beauty, or else they would not have filled the air with such a racket. Blue-birds whispered their brief syllable of music; the meadow lark, who wears a black heart upon its yellow breast, as if all the year it had a sorrow incurable, wailed out its wild, sweet dirge. Robins, plump and familiar, called and sung, in sober jollity, from every orchard, from gardens and fields, from skirts of bushes, and the edges of the forest—our most familiar and sweetest singing summer birds. I wrong the sparrow, which begins earlier, sings more constantly, and holds out longer than the thrush—singing its exquisite strain, faulty only in that it is too short, till summer is almost over, till the sun burns the grass, till flocks are silent, till the locusts and the crickets come. No wonder Rose caught her breath, as a song-sparrow broke out in its tenderest strain right above her head, while they were passing a garden edged with trees, and then clapped her little hands, as if asking for more. Who has not done the like, or felt like doing it? But Pete, on whose shoulders Rose sat with about as much tax upon his strength as an epaulette imposes upon a soldier’s shoulder, strided on, to get clear of town and the outskirts, and reach the brook, where he left the road and sought, if not a nearer, yet a pleasanter way, across lots, to ’Biah Cathcart’s. Pete was entirely happy. He had Rose on his shoulder, who sat perked up there with all a queen’s joy, and none of her cares. Without knowing why, she felt the influences of the day; and feelings which, later in life, would assume definite form, and submit themselves to reason and analysis, now sent up within her vague and gentle influences, which might be likened to the air about her, filled with sweet exhalations from the ground, and odors from the woods, and sounds of every kind. But Pete, himself only an overgrown child, was, if possible, happier yet. Blindly along his nerves crept something of the atmospheric influences, stirring, it is probable, no such nascent poetic influences as thrilled the charming little nosegay of a child on his shoulder, but which, in him, were developed in ways of which Rose was quite unconscious. The venatorial instinct seems in undeveloped men to be the rude germ of that which, in civilized men, grows into scientific wisdom. Persons of fine organization, but without education, are often far more quick to discern, and far more in sympathy with, the instincts and habits of animals than wiser men are. There is a political economy of the woods and fields, as well as of cities and towns—an animal economy as well as a civic economy. Men utterly devoid of the knowledge of property, production, wages, rents or values of any kind, have a clear insight of squirrels, foxes, marmots, fish and birds, in all their varieties. Pete seemed to know before experience, what every wild creature would do, and had also, apparently, a fascination over them. To what else could be referred the almost utter tameness to him of creatures shy and wild to all others? The quail would not rise, but ran before him as it is known to do before the horse. A partridge would not fly from its nest, and seemed sure that Pete would respect its domesticity. Squirrels ran down the trees, jumped and pranced along the ground, barking and jerking their tails, as if saying among themselves, “Oh, it is nobody but Pete,” and went on with their frolics in conscious security. There was a league of peace between him and all creatures. This did not exclude his rights of snaring and fishing; for how could he claim a place in the human family, if he had no right to destroy life? But it is probable that Pete was regarded by the animal kingdom as a kind of fate, or Providence, and that when he saw fit to take birds or fishes, it was eminently proper that birds and fishes should be resigned to depart without questioning his wisdom or kindness. Rex, a Newfoundland dog, that seemed to be another Pete running on all fours, seemed this day to be in ecstatic state. He got out of town with only a few capers. But, his sobriety was all a pretence; scarcely had he reached the open country before he was scouring the pastures, and rousing up the old cows to great excitement in defence of their calves, while two or three brood mares with pokes on, their colts footing it fleetly in advance of them, disappeared over the hill. “Come back, Rex! you nigger you! Come here, you liar you! Ye said you would behave if I’d let you come.” Rex, with his red tongue out, came at once to his senses, and trotted behind Pete, as if he had never dreamed of an irregularity. But a little further on, over a bit of round hill, fed a few dozen sheep, and he could no more help going off into them, than a gunn can when a spark lights on the powder. In one half minute there was not a sheep to be seen. If they had been blown away by the wind, as leaves are, they could hardly have made such expedition as when Rex suddenly appeared among them. “Hup! Hup! Rex, you villain! Come down! Come down, you rogue!” Almost before the sentence was finished, Rex, with a look of the most undisturbed good nature, came over the wall like a grasshopper, leaping first and looking afterwards; and, as the wall stood upon the crest of a bank, no sooner had he cleared it than he performed a summersault, and rolled down in a manner of which any dignified dog should have been ashamed, but at which Rose laughed till she almost fell off her roost. Rex seemed really penitent, and might have finished the journey with credit, if Widow Hubbard had not kept geese. The moment he rang up the little hill which overlooks the brook, he saw them. Slipping through the bushes and over the fence, in a twinkling the whole flock were in a whirl. Some rushed for the water, some tumbled over, all were screaming and trumpeting, and several having got wing, flew squawking for a hundred rods, and came down from sheer inability to keep up. But long before they alighed, Rex had let all alone, and stretched away up the brook to take a smell and a scratch at a woodchuck’s hole which never failed to throw him into a paroxysm of excitement since the day that he ran a marmot into it. The great, succulent leaves of the skunk’s cabbage were fully expanded. In places where the brook spread out into a kind of marsh, cowslips were blazing in clumps of yellow, and as they came near the open edge of the woods, spring flowers in great variety bloomed in endless profusion. By the time that Rose had reached the same point, Rex, his ardor abated, sat on his haunches, panting, his red tongue hanging out, and the utmost propriety stamped on every feature. How little are dogs to be trusted! This decorum is not skin deep. You would think him a judge. His thoughts run upon duty, moderation, propriety! If you believe it, just let a red squirrel, or a chipmunk, put its nose out of the wall, and see! Rose would dismount for a few flowers which she espied. Then she must needs be put on the top of the stone wall, next the bar post, where she could look along the brook valley on the other side. Here the little queen took on airs, and sent her Ethiop to get her some moss, or for a sprig from yonder bush, or for some white pebbles out of the brook, for a few rushes out of the bog, for some partridge-berry vines from the edge of the wood. Around her straw gipsy bonnet she had arranged a coronet of leaves and vines and flowers, with a skill that showed how well already she had learned of her father the secret things which flowers tell to all who have their senses exercised to understand the secret lore of Nature! From her lap full of various treasure, Rose looked along the winding brook, along the narrow, level meadow, which stretched far inland, along the jutting edges of the forest, to the far off blue hills. She forgot where she was. The scene grew shadowy and fantastic. Already, before she knew the words by which men express it, Nature was teaching her something of the Infinite. The visible was leading her to the invisible, and she saw dimly, or felt, the power of the world to come! Of old, God spoke, in watches of the night, to young Samuel sleeping in the Tabernacle. And still God speaks to the young in the greater Tabernacle of Nature, calling them with voices or influences which, if understood, would reveal strange and deep things, well worthy to be known. Pete was sprawled upon the ground, watching a petty ant-hill and its little fiery swarm, and was coaxing the ants to crawl on his black hand, when rose summoned him to resume the journey. They came to the pine woods in which winds always seemed to Rose to be moaning and sighing, where melancholy birds cried: “Cree-ah, cree-ah,” with so sad a tone, that Rose could have cried for them. Through this strip of pine, smelling fragrant of resin, upon the cast off and dead leaves that never more rustle, but cover the ground with soundless carpet, Pete strided, stopping only to point up to a crow’s nest. Then they came to a hardwood grove, full of wild azaleas and kalmias. Partridges nested in the part that ran round the side of the hill, and Pete knew where, but had no time now, for it was already between ine and ten. But he must needs show Rose a hole where flying squirrels lived, and stopped in one little open glade to let her see the red squirrels run, and to listen if they might hear the wood-thrush sing. They might have heard it; for they had hardly cleared the grove before it filled the woods with its solitary ecstasy. Rex knew the ground, and though there were endless temptations in the swamp yonder, and quails on the edge of the wood, and partridges among the thick underbrush under the ledge, and infinite delight all round, yet his tender heart knew that he was drawing near to Spark, a black and tan terrier, now only separated from him by the width of a field. As Rex came over the wall into the door yard, Spark let forth such a stream of barking and yelling that it seemed as if the heat of his rage had melted the separate notes into a molten solution of bark, which terminated as suddenly as it began, when Rex came trotting up, proud as a lion, carry [sic] his ridged tail straight up in the air like a banner. They ran round each other with the most familiar smellings, and finally broke away together in a rush down the yard, rolling over and wrestling and racing, until suddenly Spark remembered that he had something hid under the barn—a rat, or perhaps a weasel, or who knows, it may have been a—whatever that is which a dog is thinking of when he rushes off to poke his nose through each chink, and peep in at every hole, and smell around the whole circumference of the barn and its sheds! The appearance of Rex vaulting over the wall was the signal that Rose was near. Alice had been waiting impatiently, and good Rachel Cathcart, who filled the whole house with her presence, and yet seldom spoke, and then not above a melodious whisper, had she said what she felt, would have owned that the day was a little brighter for Rose’s coming; and so when Rex’s black muzzle came over the wall, and set off Spark, every body ran to the door, and Alice, with her black hair shining in the sun and hanging down her shoulders, shaded her eyes with her hand, and watched on tip-toe. First came a little bit of color, which sunk again, but at a step nearer showed a face in it, and a second after a great, good-natured black visage was rising over the wall, and Pete sailed up to the door, giggling and gurgling, as was his manner of salutation. Pete gave Rose a toss, and she, light as a bird and springy as a squirrel, alit by Alice’s side, and each of them disappeared in the other’s arms, in a sort of general mixture of kissing and caressing. Aunt Rachel—Rose always called her aunt—stood looking at them as if, for a moment, all the world looked bright, and children, at least, had a right to be happy. And now, what were the girls to do? Do?—the morning was not long enough for their pressing necessities! First, they ran to Alice’s room, and, with much confidential and low talk, inspected some, I know not what, treasure—may be a new cap,—perhaps a doll,—possibly a baby’s bed or bureau,—and it may be a whole suit of doll’s apparel! There was a session up garret, which was general play-room, and where all sorts of stow-aways and good-for-somethings—crippled chairs, dilapidated bureaus, old fire-fenders, and boxes of various patterns, give endless room for rummaging. If they find any thing, well and good; if they do not, they make it all up, saying: “Oh, Rose, what if she should open that drawer, and then you should see a gold bird, and he should jump out and fly up on that clothes-line, and begin to sing!” etc. But Rose, to-day, was to see more substantial things; for it was the cheese-day, and Aunt Rachel’s cheeses, like every thing from her hands, admitted of no rivalry. Already the curd was formed; but Rose was called to see it broken up, salted, drained, and pressed. With wonder she inspected the cheese-room, where some two score cheeses, of various ages, lay ranged upon the successive shelves. “These are old,” said Alice, pointing to the topmost row; “these are going to market; and these are not cured yet; we have to turn and rub them every day.” Which operation Rose gravely essayed to perform under Aunt Rachel’s direction. Nothing could long detain the children from the only city of a child’s desire—a huge, old-fashioned barn! There is something in its homely simplicity, in its negligence, that puts them at ease. No carpets hold them in caution; no furniture lords it over the freedom of their motions. No valetudinarians or nervous people are incommoded by their noise. It is a very castle of liberty to them! They are unwatched and untutored. They are their own masters. Mice squeak and quarrel in the bins and barrels. The old cat is roused by the symptoms, and lies alert, crouched, or glides eagerly in and out searching for her prey. Swallows fly in and twitter up and down about their nests plastered under the ridge-pole. Flocks of hens come to the door, look in first with one eye, and then with the other,—each one calling “Cut-cut-cuttarkut!” or else suppressing in her throat some remark not prudent to utter! To-day, both doors, wide and high, stood wide open, leaving the floor clear through to the sunshine and fresh air. One mow was empty, waiting for the new crop of hay soon to be cut. The other side yet held many tons, and furnished a spot for jumping and frolicking. With a wild outcry a hen flies off her nest. One would think she had been threatened, attacked, and every right rudely invaded! Instead of that she has only laid an egg! Many of her superiors make all the noise without an egg. The children run for it,—they search for others,—and, oh! joy of excitements, find a new nest, with ten eggs in it! They bear their treasure and triumph of discovery to the house with exultation. They race back again for their sport. Their bonnets are gone, their cheeks are flushed,—every thing is mirthful,—they laugh at the gate, and laugh at the hens, and laugh at Spark, who is just now seized with the conviction that there is a rat somewhere, and who is running wildly, all a-tremble with excitement and fairly screaming with fury at the dastardly rat, who has not the rat-hood to come forth and show himself openly, but meanly takes advantage of his hole! They peer into the root-cellar, and look timid,—it is so very dark, and a foul, damp air and smell of old roots send them away. The grain-room is more attractive. They measure oats, and climb up on the slippery ears of unshelled corn, which slide them down as fast as they scramble up. They get into the buggy, and lay the whip upon imaginary horses, and jounce up and down upon the springy seats, as if the road was very rough or the speed very great. The well, too, calls them. It is an old-fashioned well, dug so many years ago that every body has forgotten when. It is very deep—they peer over, and look down, and can see nothing; and that is always very terrible when one is looking into darkness; and both run away, and then laugh because they run. It is noon. Ah, how clear the sky! How sweet the air! How full of clover smell—great red clover, which spreads out just below, whole acres, and has drawn hither bees from every direction, and made them greedy with delight! And now the horn blows. It is dinner time—twelve o’clock. “There is father!” cries Alice, and runs for him, and Rose hard after, and both get kissed for their pains, and one is mounted on one shoulder and one on the other—while Barton Cathcart, in tow pantaloons, barefoot, tanned, all but his eyes and hair, which are black as night, walks briskly, to let the girls see that ten years old can keep step with full-grown men. And papa Cathcart must wash his great head and tan-colored neck and short hair all over—and Barton Cathcart must wash his soiled hands and tanned face—and Rose and Alice must wash their red faces and white hands! The dinner was in the great kitchen to-day. Not that there was not a dining-room, which served also for the sitting-room. But now was the busy time, and the old kitchen was so large and pleasant, and it was so much easier for Mrs. Cathcart to do the work, there being only a girl to help her. The doors stood wide open, and the windows stood wide open, and before long mouths were open too. The potatoes could not contain themselves, but in the goodness of their hearts had split open with benevolence, and lay in the dish like sacks of meal ripped open and spilling. The meat smelled so good!—even the dogs could not wait. Rex, with the most beseeching eagerness, licked his chops, and Spark whined and trembled, and half-barked, as much as to say, “I can’t stand it much longer.” They all ate—the two hired men ate, and the man that hired them ate, and the boys ate and the girls, and even the dogs ate, snapping the morsels and scraps from time to time flung to them, and swallowing them so suddenly, that it was as if they had been flung down a well. Where was Pete? Gone back to town to tell the Doctor and Mrs. Wentworth that Rose would stay all night, and that Pete was to come back with some fish-spears, and that a party would be formed to go out to Broad Brook that night to spear suckers. Pete mounted the colt,—a horse ten years old, but which was still called the colt. The “young horse” was nearly fifteen. Indeed, the team horses were only seven and eight years old, and the “colt” and “young horse” were the veterans. On his bare back Pete sat astraddle, his long legs nearly sweeping the ground, and both horse and rider being of one mind, the journey was not long, nor was the return so delayed but that Pete arrived in ample time to secure his dinner.