"I hope there are few such knaves on the Ravensnest estate as to wish anything of the sort. But, let me hear an explanation of your charge against the Chainbearer. I have no great concern for my own rights in the patent that I claim."
The woman had the audacity, or the frankness, to draw a long, regretful sigh, as it might be, in my very face. That sigh expressed her regrets that I had not taken part with the crown in the last struggle; in which case, I do suppose, she and Tinkum would have contrived to squat on one of the farms of Ravensnest. Having sighed, however, the landlady did not disdain to answer.
"As for the Chainbearer, the simple truth is this," she said. "Tinkum hired him to run a line between some betterments we had bought, and some that had been bought by a neighbor of our'n. This was long afore the war, and when titles were scarcer than they're gettin' to be now, some of the landlords living across the water. Well, what do you think the old fellow did, major? He first asked for our deeds, and we showed them to him; as good and lawful warrantees as was ever printed and filled up by a 'squire. He then set to work, all by himself, jobbing the whull survey, as it might be, and a prettier line was never run, as far as he went, which was about half-way. I thought it would make etarnel peace atween us and our neighbor, for it had been etarnel war afore that, for three whull years; sometimes with clubs, and sometimes with axes, and once with scythes. But, somehow—I never know'd how—but somehow, old Andries found out that the man who deeded to us had no deed to himself, or no mortal right to the land, any more than that sucking pig you see at the door there; when he gi'n right up, refusing to carry out another link, or p'int another needle, he did! Warn't that being cross-grained and wilful! No, there's no dependence to be put on the Chainbearer."
"Wilful in the cause of right, as glorious old Andries always is! I love and honor him all the better for it."
"La! Do you love and honor sich a one as him! Well, I should have expected suthin' else from sich a gentleman as you! I'd no idee Major Littlepage could honor an old, worn-out chainbearer, and he a man that couldn't get up in the world, too, when he had hands and feet, all on 'em together on some of the very best rounds of the ladder! Why, I judge that even Tinkum would have gone ahead, if he had been born with sich a chance."
"Andries has been a captain in my own regiment, it is true, and was once my superior officer; but he served for his country's sake, and not for his own. Have you seen him lately?"
"That we have! He passed here about a twelvemonth ago, with his whull party, on their way to squat on your own land, or I'm mistaken. There was the Chainbearer himself, two helpers, Dus and young Malbone."
"Young who?" I asked, with an interest that induced the woman to turn her keen, sunken, but sharp gray eyes, intently on me.
"Young Malbone, I said; Dus's brother, and the youngster who does all old Andries's 'rithmetic. I suppose you know as well as I do, that the Chainbearer can't calkerlate any more than a wild goose, and not half as well as a crow. For that matter, I've known crows that, in plantin' time, would measure a field in half the number of minutes that the state surveyor would be hours at it."
"This young Malbone, then, is the Chainbearer's nephew? And he it is who does the surveying?"
"He does the 'rithmetic part, and he is a brother of old Andries's niece. I know'd the Coejemans when I was a gal, and I've known the Malbones longer than I want to know them."
"Have you any fault to find with the family, that you speak thus of them?"
"Nothin' but their desperate pride, which makes them think themselves so much better than everybody else; yet, they tell me, Dus and all on 'em are just as poor as I am myself."
"Perhaps you mistake their feeling, good woman; a thing I think the more probable, as you seem to fancy money the source of their pride, at the very moment you deny their having any. Money is a thing on which few persons of cultivated minds pride themselves. The purse-proud are, almost invariably, the vulgar and ignorant."
No doubt this was a moral thrown away with such an auditor; but I was provoked; and when a man is provoked, he is not always wise. The answer showed the effect it had produced.
"I don't pretend to know how that is; but if it isn't pride, what is it that makes Dus Malbone so different from my da'ters? She'd no more think of being like one on 'em, scouring about the lots, riding bare-backed, and scampering through the neighborhood, than you'd think of cooking my dinner—that she wouldn't."
Poor Mrs. Tinkum—or, as she would have been apt to call herself, Miss Tinkum! She had betrayed one of the commonest weaknesses of human nature, in thus imputing pride to the Chainbearer's niece because the latter behaved differently from her and hers. How many persons in this good republic of ours judge their neighbors on precisely the same principle; inferring something unsuitable, because it seems to reflect on their own behavior! But by this time, I had got to hear the name of Dus with some interest, and I felt disposed to push the subject further.
"Miss Malbone, then," I said, "does not ride bare-back?"
"La! major, what in natur' puts it into your head to call the gal Miss Malbone! There's no Miss Malbone living sin' her own mother died."
"Well, Dus Malbone, I mean; she is above riding bare-backed?"
"That she is; even a pillion would be hardly grand enough for her, allowing her own brother to use the saddle."
"Her own brother! This young surveyor, then, is Dus's brother?"
"Sort o', and sort o' not, like. They had the same father, but different mothers."
"That explains it; I never heard the Chainbearer speak of any nephew, and it seems the young man is not related to him at all—he is the half-brother of his niece."
"Why can't that niece behave like other young women? that's the question I ask. My girls hasn't as much pride as would be good for 'em, not they! If a body wants to borrow an article over at the Nest, and that's seven miles off, the whull way in the woods, just name it to Poll, and she'd jump on an ox, if there warn't a hoss, and away she'd go a'ter it, with no more bit of a saddle, and may be nothin' but a halter, like a deer! Give me Poll, afore all the gals I know, for ar'nds?"
By this time, disrelish for vulgarity was getting the better of curiosity; and my dinner of fried pork being done, I was willing to drop the discourse. I had learned enough of Andries and his party to satisfy my curiosity, and Jaap was patiently waiting to succeed me at the table. Throwing down the amount of the bill, I took a fowling-piece, with which we always travelled in those days, bade Mrs. Tinkum good-day, ordered the black and the wagoner to follow with the team as soon as ready, and went on toward my own property on foot.
In a very few minutes I was quite beyond the Tinkum betterments, and fairly in the forest again. It happened that the title to a large tract of land adjoining Ravensnest was in dispute, and no attempt at a serious settlement had ever been made on it. Some one had "squatted" at this spot, to enjoy the advantage of selling rum to those who went and came between my own people and the inner country; and the place had changed hands half a dozen times, by fraudulent, or at least, by worthless sales, from one squatter to another. Around the house, by this time a decaying pile of logs, time had done a part of the work of the settler, and aided by that powerful servant but fearful master, fire, had given to the small clearing somewhat of the air of civilized cultivation. The moment these narrow limits were passed, however, the traveller entered the virgin forest, with no other sign of man around him than what was offered in the little worked and little travelled road. The highway was not much indebted to the labors of man for any facilities it afforded the traveller. The trees had been cut out of it, it is true, but their roots had not been extracted, and time had done more toward destroying them than the axe or the pick. Time had done a good deal, however, and the inequalities were getting to be smooth under the hoof and wheel.