Resilience forged in the wild: When a fractured home compels a search for alternative order

“ The conviction of being outraged in my person came upon me mightily, and snatching the wholesome lancet I turned its spring upon the doctor. He yelled. I leaped through the door like a deer, and ran barefooted, the loose robe curdling above my knees. I had the fleetest foot among the Indian racers, and was going to throw the garment away for the pure joy of feeling the air slide past my naked body, when I saw the girl and poppet baby who had looked at me during my first consciousness. They were sitting on a blanket under the trees of De Chaumont's park, which deepened into wilderness. ”

“ My sister-in-law told me to see after the horses.
I was always going up into the hall
And running down again to the parlour.
My tears fell like rain.
In the morning they sent me to draw water,
I didn't get back till night-fall.
My hands were all sore
And I had no shoes.
I walked the cold earth
Treading on thorns and brambles.
As I stopped to pull out the thorns,
How bitter my heart was!
My tears fell and fell
And I went on sobbing and sobbing.
In winter I have no great-coat;
Nor in summer, thin clothes.
It is no pleasure to be alive. ”

“ Black and red squirrels were busy among the trees, garnering their winter’s food. They worked noisily, chattering and scolding. They were a busy little body of workers, and they could not afford to pay much attention to the wood-nymph whom they had become accustomed to see in their kingdom. The old-time restfulness and happiness had stolen back to the heart of the girl. Her great eyes were alive with life and joy, and she passed on, humming a merry tune to herself, drinking in the golden beauty, the songs, and the scents of nature. ”

“ Never try to sway a man through his love for you, never——” She broke off, to go with a quick, light step up to her daughter and look deep into her wondering eyes. “I had a great love in my keeping, my dear, and I broke it,” she said. “To remind me of that I put a scar upon my body. Oh, Joan, my little girl, grown-up Joan whom I shall never see again, don't let it ever come to me that by my wild life I put a scar on your soul!” ”

“ He would marry a girl who knew nothing of his secret—for Kate was intensely aware that he would never again willingly confess himself—he would marry a girl who trusted him and leaned on him, as she, Kate Orme—the earlier Kate Orme—had done but two days since! And with this deception between them their child would be born: born to an inheritance of secret weakness, a vice of the moral fibre, as it might be born with some hidden physical taint which would destroy it before the cause could be detected. ”

“ There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; ”

“ Every Bushwhacker’s home had a jug of whiskey in it—usually under the bed,—a dog on the doorstep, and sheep, pigs, and cattle in the barnyard. These barnyards had tall rail-fences around them. In the winter months the wolves sometimes tried to scale the fences, and bears tried to dig beneath them. Then the dog would bark and the man would come out with his long brown rifle, and besides bear-steak for breakfast next morning there would be a pelt for the Bushwhacker.
And so the years passed, and the Bushwhackers lived their simple, happy lives and found life good. ”

“ He knew the haunts of the brown and black bears, the gray wolves, and the wary deer. He knew just what part of the clear, deep creek the gamey bass or great maskilonge would be lying in wait for some unsuspecting minnow, and he could land the biggest and gamest of them, too. Many a glorious summer morning’s sport did he have drifting down the creek in his canoe and out on the white bosom of Rond Eau Bay, trolling for bass. Boy loved those beautiful mornings of the summer season when the air was all alive with birds and their voices. ”

“ Boy plunged down the path and into the wood. A shaggy dog, snoozing beside the ash-leach, watched him furtively from half-closed eyes. When Boy’s figure disappeared behind the slope the dog arose, shook himself, and with stiffened muscles trailed his master stealthily.
Deep into the woods, Boy paused before a small grove of baby maples. Beneath their spreading branches stood a playhouse built of rough bark and twigs. He and Gloss had built this house; she, girl-like, to play at mimic life therein; he, boy-like, that she might own her little joy. ”

“ The most forgiving of earthly things,
I often cling to my deadly foe;
And, spite of the cruellest flirts and flings,
Arise by the force that has cast me low.
When beauty has trodden me under foot,
I've quietly risen, her face to seek,—
Embraced her forehead, and calmly put
Myself to rest in her dimpled cheek.
I've ridden to war on the soldier's plume;
But startled and sprung, at the wild affray,—
The sights of horror—of fire and fume;
And fled on the wings of the wind away.
I've visited courts, and been ushered in
By the proudest guest of the stately scene ”

“ I better loved to sit by her knee, and listen to her sad soft song, than to chase the fairest butterfly that lay like a gem on the roses I delighted to water. But my mother's voice grew feeble, and darkness settled on her eyes; her lip was pale and parched, and when I hung on her neck, she told me she was sick and faint, and wept: she would lie for hours on the mat, and an old woman who came to see us sometimes, said she was dying. Dying!—I knew not what she meant, but I felt sad, very sad, and went and lay down by my mother ”

“ But as the son’s wife grew more accustomed she grew more plain in speech and more complaining and courtesy dropped from her. She often said now where others heard her or when the women sat together about some door in the sun and sewed in company or had some gathering such as women love, then she said, “What I shall do when children come I do not know, seeing how I have to sew for all these in the house now. My mother grows old and I know it is my duty to do for her and be her eyes and hands and feet and all she needs. ”

“ I wad hae weised him till a seat, but the moment I luikit at him, awa’ he ran. He’s unco cheenged though, sin’ the first time I saw him.”
Since he lost Phemy, fear had been slaying him. No one knew where he slept; but in the daytime he haunted the streets, judging them safer than the fields or woods. The moment any one accosted him, however, he fled like the wind. He had “no art to find the mind’s construction in the face;” and not knowing whom to trust, he distrusted all. Humanity was good in his eyes, but there was no man. The vision of Miss Horn was like the dayspring from on high to him ”

“ Why, you’ll remember there wa’nt no loggin’ done that winter, and the wolves starved to death in the timber. Deer, too, and turkey, and I guess thar wa’nt no visitin’ done much either, and give my life if thar was one dance in the whole Bushwhackers’ Place. Why, it got cold and stayed cold, and Joseph, our cat, friz stiff on the ladder when he was climbin’ to the loft of the barn. And every sign p’ints to jest sech another winter comin’.”
“It looks as though winter was here to stay, all right,” observed Peeler, “and we’re like to have a hard one, too. The rats are buildin’ deep and strong.” ”

“ If Earth was the mother, Nature was the grandmother, equally beloved and loving. Nothing that came from her hands was uninteresting; each and every of her children found a true and faithful brother in Mr. Beecher, to whom in turn they showed that trust and confidence that opened up to him such glorious visions, such secrets, full of exquisite beauty, vouchsafed to but few among mankind. ”

“ Gabe, the heaviest of the hounds, had closed on the wolf which had first sprung. Hallibut heard the snapping of bones—then a number of other wolves hurled themselves forward. He could hear the dogs snarling as they fought, and he lent his voice to their encouragement.
“Easy, Gabe,” he shouted; “Nell, girl, easy now. Lead ’em into the open. Don’t let ’em get you in the thick timber.”
Hallibut had placed another cap on the nipple of his rifle, and as the struggling mass surged back into the charred space he fired into it point-blank. A wild howl told that a wolf had been hit. ”

“ Sometimes a dream of golden summer came to bestir the soul of giant beech or tall maple, and its heart, waking to life, would shiver its icy manacles with a mighty crash, only to leave it wounded and shivering, a maimed thing into which spring would breathe her healing balm after a little while. From the dead face of the bay the creek twisted, a blue vein betwixt gray lifeless rushes, and all of nature’s great playground rested lonely and forsaken. ”

“ The blinds were drawn again on the ugly side of things, and life was resumed on the usual assumption that no such side existed. Kate knew only that a darkness had crossed her sky and left it as unclouded as before.
Was it, perhaps, she now asked herself, the very lifting of the cloud—remote, unthreatening as it had been—which gave such new serenity to her heaven? It was horrible to think that one’s deepest security was a mere sense of escape—that happiness was no more than a reprieve. The perversity of such ideas was emphasized by Peyton’s approach. ”

“ What if she, who had had so exquisite a vision of wifehood, should reconstruct from its ruins this vision of protecting maternity—if her love for her lover should be, not lost, but transformed, enlarged, into this passion of charity for his race? ”