A Lantern in Her Hand Read online

  “Which one is Mother going to give me?”

  “I don’t know. She aren’t going to give ’em to us until our wedding days. Of course, Janet didn’t get hers on her wedding day because she got married out here in Blackhawk County before we come, but Mother’ll give it to her to-morrow when we get there.”

  “Go on . . . you’re forgetting the end of the story.”

  “Oh, well, you know it anyway. When Father got back to Liverpool he heard all about the money and the property being lost, and the things being sold, and he never even went to Aberdeen but sent for Mother and all five of us children to come to Liverpool and we all crossed the ocean. I were seven and I can remember just as well . . . and when we got to New York, you were born.”

  Abbie breathed a sigh of relief. It was a welcome respite after a narrow escape. With every telling of the story, almost it seemed for a time that she was not to be born.

  “Now tell about the painting of Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie that hung on the landing of the stairway in the great hall.” Abbie rolled the magic words from her lips in delicious anticipation. This was the part she liked the best of all.

  “Well . . . it were beauteous. It were in a great heavy gold frame . . . and as big as life. I can remember it just as well. In the picture she were young, you know . . .”

  “And beautiful . . .” prompted Abbie.

  “And beautiful. She had reddish-brown hair like yours . . . and she were standing by a kind-of . . . a table-thing, and she had on a velvet dress that swept down and around her . . . and she had a hat in her hand with a plume . . .”

  “A flowing white plume,” corrected Abbie.

  “A flowing white plume,” repeated the more matter-of-fact Isabelle. “And she had pretty hands and long slender fingers that tapered at the ends.”

  Abbie held her hands up to the opening of the canvas on the wagon and peered at them in the moonlight. The fingers were long and slender and they tapered at the ends. She sighed with satisfaction, and slipped them under the old patched quilt.

  “And nobody knows what become of the picture?” It was half statement, half question, as though from the vast fund of information which Isabelle possessed, she might, some day, suddenly remember what had become of the picture.

  “No. It were sold at the roup. I don’t know who got it.”

  Abbie sighed again, but not with satisfaction. Of all the beautiful things that were sold, she felt that she could have missed seeing any of them with better grace than the portrait. In her immature way, she resented the sale more than any other thing,—the passing of the lovely lady into other hands. Jewels, money, furniture,—they seemed lifeless, inanimate things beside the picture of the woman who was flesh of her flesh. It ought to have been saved. It was their own grandmother who stood there forever inside the heavy gold frame, in the dark velvet dress that swept around her,—and with the flowing white plume—and the long slender fingers that tapered at the ends.

  “Well, I wish we had it here with us, Belle. We could have it all wrapped up in quilts in the wagon . . . and then some day out in Blackhawk County when we get rich, we could build us a grand house with a wide curving stairway and hang the picture on the landing . . . and everybody that come . . .”

  “Abbie! Belle!” A voice came suddenly from the other wagon. “Sure’n you’re the talkers. Settle yoursel’s now. We want to get a good early start by sunup.”

  Abbie started. From a dreamy journey into the fields of romance she had been drawn back to the prosaic world of reality by her mother’s voice. She could not quite reconcile good fat Mother with the romantic figure of the pretty girl at the well, picking a rose for an aristocratic gentleman. But then, Mother was almost an old woman, now,—thirty-seven.

  Abbie turned to the opening in the canvas cover and looked out again at the night. Yellow-white, the moon rose higher over the dark clumps of trees. A thousand stars, looking down, paled at its rising. An owl gave its mournful call. The smell of burning maple boughs came from the fire. A wolf howled in the distance so that James got up and took out the other gun from the wagon. There was a constant tick-tacking in the timber,—all the little night creatures at their work. It was queer how it all hurt you,—how the odor of the night, the silver sheen of the moon, the moist feeling of the dew, the whispering of the night breeze, how, somewhere down in your throat it hurt you. It was sad, too, that this evening would never come again. The night winds were blowing it away. You could not stop the winds and you could not stop Time. It went on and on,—and on. To-morrow night would come and the moon would look down on this same spot,—the trees and the grass, the wagon-tracks and the dead campfire. But she would not be here. Her heart swelled with an emotion which she could not name. Tears came to her eyes. The telling of the story always brought that same feeling.

  “Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie,” she said it over until it took upon itself the cadence of a melody, the rhythm of a poem. “I shall be like her,” she thought. “I have hair like her now and hands like her. I shall be lovely. And I shall do wonderful things . . . sing before big audiences and paint pictures inside of gold frames and write things in a book.” She wondered how you got things put in a book. There were some books in one of the wooden chests over in the other wagon. A man with a long name that began S-h-a-k-e-s . . . had made some of them. They had been Father’s. Mother didn’t read them. She didn’t read anything but her Bible. Even that was hard for her, so that she read the same verses over and over. Yes, she would be like Father and Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie, not like Mother’s family with their cottage on the side of the hill and their dark shawls over their heads. She would be rich and lovely . . . with a velvet dress and a long sweeping plume . . . under the moon . . . and the night wind, . . . that felt of your body with its long . . . slender fingers . . . that tapered at the ends . . .

  Abbie Mackenzie slept,—little Abbie Mackenzie, with the mixture of the two strains of blood,—with the stout body of the O’Conners and the slender hands of the Mackenzies,—with the O’Conner sturdiness and the Mackenzie refinement. And she is to need them both,—the physical attributes of the peasant and the mental ones of the aristocrat,—the warm heart of the Irish and the steadfastness of the Scotch. Yes, Abbie Mackenzie is to need them both in the eighty years she is to live,—courage and love,—a song upon her lips and a lantern in her hand.

  CHAPTER II

  The sun, shining through the propped-up canvas of the wagon, wakened Abbie. Wide-eyed, she looked out through the aperture upon the same setting of the night before. But now it was changed. The child lived a life in each of two distinct worlds and it is not possible to say which one she most enjoyed. One of them was made of moonbeams and star-dust, of night winds and cloud fancies, of aristocratic gentlemen and lovely ladies. The other was the equally pleasant one of boiled potatoes and salt pork, of games with Basil and Mary, of riding a-top old Buck or picking wild flowers at the edge of the timber.

  Just now the prosaic world of everyday seemed the more attractive of the two. James had replenished the night fire and Mother was cooking breakfast, with the odor of frying pork and corn-cakes strong on the air. The team of horses and the oxen were eating close by, the horses guzzling their grain noisily, the oxen chewing slowly and stolidly.

  Maggie O’Conner Mackenzie was a heavy, dumpy woman, her body the shape of a pudding-bag tied in the middle. One shawl was wrapped around the shapeless figure and a smaller one, over her head, was knotted under her fat chin. Strands of heavy black hair showed around the edges of the head-shawl, and the face enclosed in its folds was round and smooth, fat and placid. Only her dark Irish eyes, the color of the blue-black waters at Kilkee, and a dimple in the middle of her rolling chin, gave a touch of reality to the old romance of the peasant girl.

  This was the last day of the journey which had been of three weeks’ duration. (Six decades later James Mackenzie was to make the journey back with a grandson in one day.)

  Breakfast over, the little cavalcade set out
with much noisy chatter,—reminders not to forget this or that.

  “Did ye put out the last o’ the fire, Dennie?”

  “Fasten that buckle on Whitey’s bridle, Belle.”

  The mother drove the horse team,—James, the oxen. Walking along beside the latter, James’ boyish “Gee” or “Haw” or “Whoa How” rang out with valiant attempts to make the notes stentorian. Buck was a red and white animal, Boy a brindle. As they walked, they swung their huge heads rhythmically from side to side, the brass buttons a-top their horns shining in the morning sun. Almost at the first rod’s length of the journey little Basil had to stop the procession to change from one wagon to the other. Belle rode on the seat with her mother, but, because it was early and cool, Abbie, Mary and Dennie walked behind, darting off the trail to gather Mayflowers or wild Bouncing-Bets. Sometimes they jumped over the young rosin-weeds and wild blue phlox and occasionally they caught on the back of the wagon, clutching onto the household goods and swinging their feet off the ground for a few moments.

  About nine, they forded a stream. The oxen ahead crossed slowly, lumberingly, with many stops in that foolish, stolid way they had. When they were across, Mother Mackenzie drove her team into the creek bed. As the horses were going up the bank, one of them stumbled, crowding against its mate. There was a creaking, and backing, a shouting and a tipping. One sack of flour began tailing slowly, and then another and another. Eight sacks of flour, pushing against each other, slipped slowly into the water like fat, clumsy, old men, reluctant to wet their feet.

  Maggie Mackenzie was out and managing her horses by way of their bridles, while James, running back from his own wagon, assisted in bringing order out of the catastrophe. Then some one called excitedly, “Look out for the bedding,” and two great pillows started floating down stream with majestic motion, as though the geese from which their contents had been plucked, were suddenly coming to life.

  “Och!” And “Och!” The mother wrung her hands in distress. Eight sacks of flour and two pillows were a fortune.

  Abbie and Dennie and little Basil, their laughter high with excitement, all ran along the side of the creek bed after the pillows. In the meantime, James and Belle were wading into the stream and pulling out the sacks. To the mother the disaster seemed more than she could bear. “Och! If I ever get there,” said Maggie O’Conner Mackenzie, “sure ’n’ I’ll never l’ave the spot.” Sure, and she never did. Many years later she died a quarter of a mile from the place where she first stepped out of the wagon.

  When the last sack was retrieved, the entire family, with much dire foreboding, crowded around James, who was opening a sack to see how the contents fared. It was as though the whole of life’s future hung on the outcome. To their extreme relief the wet flour had formed but a thin paste, which, with a few moments drying in the sun, now high and hot, would form a crust and keep the precious contents unharmed.

  In spite of the delay the family reached the settlement on the Cedar River by the middle of the afternoon and stopped near the log cabin of Tom Graves, the man whom the older sister Janet had come out to marry. Janet, herself, hearing the creaking of the wagons, came hurrying down the grassy trail to meet them, a three-weeks-old baby in her arms. The baby was something by way of surprise to the entire group of relatives, his arrival having taken place after the family had started westward.

  Maggie O’Conner Mackenzie, with much clucking and chirping and adjustment of clothing, welcomed her first grandchild.

  “Sure ’n’ he’s the big one. How did ye get along? Is he good? Did ye have a doctor or a neighbor woman?”

  Janet answered them all even while her mother was still talking. Oh, yes, there was a doctor,—Doc Matthews over at town. Cedar Falls was quite a place. It had a saw-mill and a hotel and a store, a dozen log cabins, and a few frames ones. The school-house had the only tower bell in the state. For pay Tom was to haul in a load of wood for the doctor’s office stove,—he had a two-roomed house, part log and part frame.

  The oxen behind them slathered and snorted. There was the smell in the air of newly-cut chips. The woods back of the cabin looked thick and impenetrable beyond the short arrows of the sun. And then Tom Graves, himself, came out of the timber, his ax, the insignia of the fight, on his shoulder.

  “Here is my mother, Tom, and this is Belle and that one is Mary. And that boy is James and this one Dennie and here’s little Basil. And over there with the reddish-brown hair is Abbie,—we almost forgot her.”

  So much was to be said, and all at once. “We’ve got a house all ready for you, Mother. It was Grandpa Deal’s sheep shed. The Deals have been here for three years, but they’ve moved down farther on the prairie now in a fine big log house, and you can have this until you get your own cabin done. We’ve cleaned it all out for you and hung a thick quilt over the opening, and if it storms you can come in with us.”

  And so Maggie O’Conner Mackenzie, who had lived in the great Aberdeen town house and on the two Scotch country estates, was to make her bed now in a sheep shed.

  Every one turned in to help with the settling. From the wagons they took out the walnut bedsteads and the bedding and the highboy. They brought in the heavy, cumbersome guns and the powder-horn and the splint-bottom chairs. Maggie Mackenzie brought in her flat-iron into which one put glowing hickory embers through an iron door, and she hung up the iron tallow-lamp with a home-spun wick hanging over the side like a tongue hanging grotesquely from the side of a mouth. If she could have foreseen that two granddaughters, Mrs. Harrison Scannell Rhodes and Mrs. Frederick Hamilton Baker, were going to stage a polite but intensive campaign over which one could have the old tallow-lamp in her sun parlor, a half century later, she would have shaken her fat sides with laughter.

  Everything was out of the wagon now,—everything but one. Abbie, standing in the grassy trail in front of the old sheep shed, was watching for it. On tiptoe there in her ankle-length starched dress, her red-brown hair wound around her head and tucked into a snood, she was the picture of watchful waiting. She might have been carved in marble as “Expectancy.”

  “Let me! Let me!” she called, when her mother was bringing out the calf-skin-covered box from under the wagon seat.

  “If ye’ll carry it carefu’.”

  No need to caution Abbie to be careful. In a warm feeling of pleasure over the temporary possession, she clasped her arms around its hairy sides and the “M.OC.” initials formed by nail-heads.

  Inside the box lay all the accouterments of another life. In its skin-covered depths was all the equipment of an entirely different world. They were symbols of things in life to come. They represented the future in which she would some day live. She got down on her knees on the dirt floor, with its earthy odor, and pushed the little chest into the far, dark corner under her mother’s bed. Lovingly and lingeringly she relinquished her hold upon it. For a few moments she saw herself in that future, her red-brown hair in curls, over her shoulders a white silk shawl with roses in the corners, its folds held together with a lavender breastpin. There was a string of pearls around her neck, and she was waving a jeweled fan with long, white fingers that tapered at the ends. There was soft music playing. She came out on a high stage ready to sing. Lovely ladies and courtly men were clapping their hands. Some of them stood up. She smiled at them and waved her jeweled fan. . . .

  “Abbie . . . Abbie . . . where are you?” Quite suddenly, the gorgeous trappings fell away. She was back in the everyday world, hearing loud voices calling her.

  “Abbie!. . .” The voices were raised high in fright. She scrambled out backward from under the bed.

  “Abbie . . . Abbie . . .” Dennis and Mary were running toward her, their faces white with fear. “The Indians are coming. A man here on horseback says the Indians are coming down the river.”

  Abbie scrambled back under the bed and brought out the hairy chest in her arms. Not to any wild and heathenish Indian was Abbie Mackenzie intending to relinquish the only tangible tie that bound her to
the lovely lady.

  CHAPTER III

  In the midst of the hurry and confusion and fright, Abbie gathered that they were all to get back into the wagons and “go down to Grandpa Deal’s,” wherever that was.

  Everything that could be handled easily was thrown into the wagons. Janet rolled a fresh batch of bread and raised doughnuts into a homespun tablecloth. Tom tied old Whitey to the back of his wagon and put her new calf in the end of the box so she could see her offspring and not bellow for it. Abbie clutched the hairy chest in protecting arms. The cavalcade started lumberingly down the river road. Through the dark timber they drove, over spongy moist leaves, past thickets of sumac and hazel-brush, their hearts pounding in alarm, their bodies tense with fear, every tree the potential hiding place of an Indian.

  Out of the cool river road and onto the hot, flat prairie they came as suddenly as one opens a door upon a bright, heated room. For two miles they drove over the faintly marked prairie trail, coming then to another wooded section and to the largest house in the community,—a big log structure which looked palatial to Abbie’s eyes after Tom Graves’ one-roomed cabin and the sheep shed.