WYNADOTTÉ (Unabridged). Джеймс Фенимор Купер

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СКАЧАТЬ tables. There were cellarets—the captain being a connoisseur in wines—bureaus, secretaries, beaufets, and other similar articles, that had been collected in the course of twenty years’ housekeeping, and scattered at different posts, were collected, and brought hither by means of sledges, and the facilities of the water-courses. Fashion had little to do with furniture, in that simple age, when the son did not hesitate to wear even the clothes of the father, years and years after the tailor had taken leave of them. Massive old furniture, in particular, lasted for generations, and our matron now saw many articles that had belonged to her grandfather assembled beneath the first roof that she could ever strictly call her own.

      Mrs. Willoughby took a survey of the offices last. Here she found, already established, the two Plinies, with Mari’, the sister of the elder Pliny, Bess, the wife of the younger, and Mony—alias Desdemona—a collateral of the race, by ties and affinities that garter-king-at-arms could not have traced genealogically; since he would have been puzzled to say whether the woman was the cousin, or aunt, or step-daughter of Mari’, or all three. All the women were hard at work, Bess singing in a voice that reached the adjoining forest. Mari’—this name was pronounced with a strong emphasis on the last syllable, or like Maria, without the final vowel—Mari’ was the head of the kitchen, even Pliny the elder standing in salutary dread of her authority; and her orders to her brother and nephew were pouring forth, in an English that was divided into three categories; the Anglo-Saxon, the Low Dutch, and the Guinea dialect; a medley that rendered her discourse a droll assemblage of the vulgar and the classical.

      “Here, niggers,” she cried, “why you don’t jump about like Paus dance? Ebbery t’ing want a hand, and some want a foot. Plate to wash, crockery to open, water to b’ile, dem knife to clean, and not’ing missed. Lord, here’s a madam, and ‘e whole kitchen in a diffusion.”

      “Well, Mari’,” exclaimed the captain, good-naturedly, “here you are, scolding away as if you had been in the place these six months, and knew all its faults and weaknesses.”

      “Can’t help a scold, master, in sich a time as dis—come away from dem plates, you Great Smash, and let a proper hand take hold on ‘em.”

      Here we ought to say, that captain Willoughby had christened Bess by the sobriquet of Great Smash, on account of her size, which fell little short of two hundred, estimated in pounds, and a certain facility she possessed in destroying crockery, while ‘Mony went by the milder appellation of “Little Smash;” not that bowls or plates fared any better in her hands, but because she weighed only one hundred and eighty.

      “Dis is what I tell ‘em, master,” continued Mari’, in a remonstrating, argumentative sort of a tone, with dogmatism and respect singularly mingled in her manner—“Dis, massa, just what I tell ‘em all. I tell ‘em, says I, this is Hunter Knoll, and not Allbonny—here no store—no place to buy t’ing if you break ‘em; no good woman who know ebbery t’ing, to tell you where to find t’ing, if you lose him. If dere was only good woman, dat somet’ing; but no fortun’-teller out here in de bushes—no, no—when a silber spoon go, here, he go for good and all—Goody, massy”—staring at something in the court—“what he call dat, sa?”

      “That—oh! that is only an Indian hunter I keep about me, to bring us game—you’ll never have an empty spit, Mari’, as long as he is with us. Fear nothing; he will not harm you. His name is Nick.”

      “De Ole Nick, massa?”

      “No, only Saucy Nick. The fellow is a little slovenly to-day in his appearance, and you see he has brought already several partridges, besides a rabbit. We shall have venison, in the season.”

      Here all the negroes, after staring at Nick, quite a minute, set up a loud shout, laughing as if the Tuscarora had been created for their special amusement. Although the captain was somewhat of a martinet in his domestic discipline, it had ever altogether exceeded his authority, or his art, to prevent these bursts of merriment; and he led his wife away from the din, leaving Mari’, Great Smash, and Little Smash, with the two Plinies, in ecstasies at their own uproar. Burst succeeded burst, until the Indian walked away, in offended dignity.

      Such was the commencement of the domestication of the Willoughbys at the Hutted Knoll. The plan of our tale does not require us to follow them minutely for, the few succeeding years, though some further explanation may be necessary to show why this settlement varied a little from the ordinary course.

      That very season, or, in the summer of 1765, Mrs. Willoughby inherited some real estate in Albany, by the death of an uncle, as well as a few thousand pounds currency, in ready money. This addition to his fortune made the captain exceedingly comfortable; or, for that day, rich; and it left him to act his pleasure as related to his lands. Situated as these last were, so remote from other settlements as to render highways, for some time, hopeless, he saw no use in endeavouring to anticipate the natural order of things. It would only create embarrassment to raise produce that could not be sent to market; and he well knew that a population of any amount could not exist, in quiet, without the usual attendants of buying and selling. Then it suited his own taste to be the commander-in-chief of an isolated establishment like this; and he was content to live in abundance, on his flats, feeding his people, his cattle, and even his hogs to satiety, and having wherewithal to send away the occasional adventurer, who entered his clearing, contented and happy.

      Thus it was that he neither sold nor leased. No person dwelt on his land who was not a direct dependant, or hireling, and all that the earth yielded he could call his own. Nothing was sent abroad for sale but cattle. Every year, a small drove of fat beeves and milch cows found their way through the forest to Albany, and the proceeds returned in the shape of foreign supplies. The rents, and the interests on bonds, were left to accumulate, or were applied to aid Robert in obtaining a new step in the army. Lands began to be granted nearer and nearer to his own, and here and there some old officer like himself, or a solitary farmer, began to cut away the wilderness; but none in his immediate vicinity.

      Still the captain did not live altogether as a hermit. He visited Edmeston of Mount Edmeston, a neighbour less than fifty miles distant; was occasionally seen at Johnson Hall, with Sir William; or at the bachelor establishment of Sir John, on the Mohawk; and once or twice he so far overcame his indolence, as to consent to serve as a member for a new county, that was called Tryon, after a ruling governor.

      Chapter IV

       Table of Contents

      Hail! sober evening! Thee the harass’d brain

       And aching heart with fond orisons greet;

       The respite thou of toil; the balm of pain;

       To thoughtful mind the hour for musing meet,

       ‘Tis then the sage from forth his lone retreat,

       The rolling universe around espies;

       ‘Tis then the bard may hold communion sweet

       With lovely shapes unkenned by grosser eyes,

       And quick perception comes of finer mysteries.

      —Sands

      In the preceding chapter we closed the minuter narrative with a scene at the Hut, in the spring of 1765. We must now advance the time just ten years, opening, anew, in the month of May, 1775. This, it is scarcely necessary to tell the reader, is bringing him at once up to the earliest days of the revolution. The contest which preceded that СКАЧАТЬ