Thankful Blossom
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THANKFUL BLOSSOM
by BRET HARTE
I
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.
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.
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.
"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, 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
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, 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
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.
II
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 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."
"With whom?" asked the old man, gradually weakening under her
strong, saucy presence.
"Well, father," said Thankful, taking a seat on a table, and
swinging her little feet somewhat ostentatiously toward him, "I was
with Capt. Allan Brewster of the Connecticut Contingent."
"That man?"
"That man!"
"I forbid you seeing him again."
Thankful gripped the table with a hand on each side of her, to
emphasize the statement, and swinging her feet replied,--
"I shall see him as often as I like, father."
"Thankful Blossom!"
"Abner Blossom!"
"I see you know not," said Mr. Blossom, abandoning the severely
paternal mandatory air for one of confidential disclosure, "I see
you know not his reputation. He is accused of inciting his
regiment to revolt,--of being a traitor to the cause."
"And since when, Abner Blossom, have YOU felt such concern for the
cause? Since you refused to sell supplies to the Continental
commissary, except at double profits? since you told me you were
glad I had not polities like Mistress Ford--"
"Hush!" said the father, motioning to the parlor.
"Hush," echoed Thankful indignantly. "I won't be hushed!
Everybody says 'Hush' to me. The count says 'Hush!' Allan says
'Hush!' You say 'Hush!' I'm a-weary of this hushing. Ah, if
there was a man who didn't say it to me!" and Mistress Thankful
lifted her fine eyes to the ceiling.
"You are unwise, Thankful,--foolish, indiscreet. That is why you
require much monition."
Thankful swung her feet in silence for a few moments, then suddenly
leaped from the table, and, seizing the old man by the lapels of
his coat, fixed her eyes upon him, and said suspiciously. "Why did
you keep me from going in the company-room? Why did you bring me
in here?"
Blossom senior was staggered for a moment. "Because, you know, the
count--"
"And you were afraid the count should know I had a sweetheart?
Well, I'll go in and tell him now," she said, marching toward the
door.
"Then, why did you not tell him when you slipped out an hour ago?
eh, lass?" queried the old man, grasping her hand. "But 'tis all
one, Thankful: 'twas not for him I stopped you. There is a young
spark with him,--ay, came even as you left, lass,--a likely young
gallant; and he and the count are jabbering away in their own
lingo, a kind of Italian, belike; eh, Thankful?"
"I know not," she said thoughtfully. "Which way came the other?"
In fact, a fear that this young stranger might have witnessed the
captain's embrace began to creep over her.
"From town, my lass."
Thankful turned to her father as if she had been waiting a reply to
a long-asked question: "Well?"
"Were it not well to put on a few furbelows and a tucker?" queried
the old man. "'Tis a gallant young spark; none of your country
folk."
"No," said Thankful, with the promptness of a woman who was looking
her best, and knew it. And the old man, looking at her, accepted
her judgment, and without another word led her to the parlor door,
and, opening it, said briefly, "My daughter, Mistress Thankful
Blossom."
With the opening of the door came the sound of earnest voices that
instantly ceased upon the appearance of Mistress Thankful. Two
gentlemen lolling before the fire arose instantly, and one came
forward with an air of familiar yet respectful recognition.
"Nay, this is far too great happiness, Mistress Thankful," he said,
with a strongly marked foreign accent, and a still more strongly
marked foreign manner. "I have been in despair, and my friend
here, the Baron Pomposo, likewise."
The slightest trace of a smile, and the swiftest of reproachful
glances, lit up the dark face of the baron as he bowed low in the
introduction. Thankful dropped the courtesy of the period,--i. e.,
a duck, with semicircular sweep of the right foot forward. But the
right foot was so pretty, and the grace of the little figure so
perfect, that the baron raised his eyes from the foot to the face
in serious admiration. In the one rapid feminine glance she had
given him, she had seen that he was handsome; in the second, which
she could not help from his protracted silence, she saw that his
beauty centred in his girlish, half fawn-like dark eyes.
"The baron," explained Mr. Blossom, rubbing his hands together as
if through mere friction he was trying to impart a warmth to the
reception which his hard face discountenanced,--"the baron visits
us under discouragement. He comes from far countries. It is the
custom of gentlefolk of--of foreign extraction to wander through
strange lands, commenting upon the habits and doings of the
peoples. He will find in Jersey," continued Mr. Blossom,
apparently appealing to Thankful, yet really evading her
contemptuous glance, "a hard-working yeomanry, ever ready to
welcome the stranger, and account to him, penny for penny, for all
his necessary expenditure; for which purpose, in these troublous
times, he will provide for himself gold or other moneys not
affected by these local disturbances."
"He will find, good friend Blossom," said the baron in a rapid,
voluble way, utterly at variance with the soft, quiet gravity of
his eyes, "Beauty, Grace, Accom-plishment, and--eh--Santa Maria,
what shall I say?" He turned appealingly to the count.
"Virtue," nodded the count.
"Truly, Birtoo! all in the fair lady of thees countries. Ah,
believe me, honest friend Blossom, there is mooch more in thees
than in thoss!"
So much of this speech was addressed to Mistress Thankful, that she
had to show at least one dimple in reply, albeit her brows were
slightly knit, and she had turned upon the speaker her honest,
questioning eyes.