Chapter 42

THE MILL-PRIVILEGE.

Meanwhile the noonday dinner at Davidson's bee progressed merrily. The mighty maskelongé disappeared piecemeal, simultaneously with a profusion of veal and venison pies, legs and sides of pork, raspberry tarts, huge dishes of potatoes and hot buns, trays of strawberries, and other legitimate backwoods fare; served and eaten all at the same time, with an aboriginal disregard of courses. After much wriggling and scheming--for he could not do the smallest thing in a straightforward manner--Zack Bunting had edged himself beside Mr. Wynn the elder; who, to please his good friend Davidson, occupied what he magnificently termed the vice-chair, being a stout high stool of rough red pine; and Zack slouched beside him, his small cunning eyes glancing sidelong occasionally from his tin platter to the noble upright figure of the old gentleman.

'What's in the wind now?' quoth Robert to himself, at the other end of the board, as he surveyed this contrast of personages. Looking down the lines of hungry labourers for Nim's duplicate face, it was absent, though he had seen it a-field. Andy's was 343 also wanting, and with it the hilarity which radiated from him upon surrounding company. Not having the key of the position, Robert failed to connect these absences, although just then they were being connected in a very marked manner at Cedar Creek.

Zack wanted to speak on a particular subject to his lofty neighbour, but somehow it stuck in his throat. His usual audacity was at fault. Mr. Wynn had never seemed so inaccessible, though in reality he was making an effort to be unusually bland to a person he disliked. For the first time in his existence, cringing Zack feared the face of mortal man.

'Spell o' warm weather, squire, ain't it, rayther? I wor jest a sayin' to Silas Duff here that I never want to see no better day for loggin', I don't.'

'It is indeed beautifully fine,' answered Mr. Wynn, who was generally called in the neighbourhood 'the squire,' a sort of compliment to his patriarchal and magisterial position. 'I hope our friend Davidson will have his work cleared off satisfactorily before dark.'

'Oh, no fear, squire, no fear, I guess. There's good teams a-field. Them cattle druv by my lad Nim are the finest in the township, I reckon.'

'Indeed!' quoth Mr. Wynn, who just knew an ox from an ass.

''Tain't a losin' game to keep a store in the bush, ef you be a smart man,' observed Zack, with a leer, after a few minutes' devotion to the contents of his tin plate. By this adjective 'smart' is to be understood 'sharp, overreaching'--in fact, a cleverness verging upon safe dishonesty. 'I guess it's the high road to bein' worth some punkins, ef a feller has sense to invest his money well.'

'I daresay,' rejoined Mr. Wynn vaguely, looking down on the mean crooked face.

'Fact, squire, downright fact. Now, I don't mind tellin' _you_, squire,' lowering his voice to a whisper, 'that I've cleared a hundred per cent. on some sales in my time; an' the money hain't been idle since, you may b'lieve. Thar! that's sharp tradin', I guess?'

'Yes, sir, very sharp indeed.' Mr. Wynn's face by no means reflected the Yankee's smile. But Zack saw in his gravity only a closer attention to the important subject of gain.

'I've shares in a big bank in New York, that returns me fifteen per cent.--every copper of it: an' I've two of the best farms in the township--that's countin' Daisy Burn, whar I'll foreclose some day soon, I guess.'

'You are a prosperous man, as you calculate prosperity, Mr. Bunting.'

'I guess I ain't nothin' else' answered the storekeeper, with satisfaction. 'But I kin tell you, squire, that my lad Nim is 'tarnal 'cute too, an' he'll be worth lookin' arter as a husband, he will.'

Still with an unsuspicious effort at cordiality, Mr. Wynn answered, 'I suppose so.'

'He might get gals in plenty, but he has a genteel taste, has Nim: the gal to please Nim must be thorough genteel. Now, what would you say, squire'--an unaccountable faint-heartedness seized Uncle Zack at this juncture, and he coughed a hesitation.

'Well, sir!' For the old gentleman began to suspect towards what he was drifting, but rejected the suspicion as too wild and improbable.

'Wal, the fact is, squire, Nim will have the two farms, an' the store, an' the bank shares--of course not all that till I die, but Daisy Burn at once: an'--an'--he's in a 'tarnal everlastin' state about your daughter Linda, the purtiest gal in the township, I guess.'

Mr. Wynn rose from his seat, his usually pale countenance deeply flushed. What! his moss-rose Linda--as often in a fond moment he named her--his pretty Linda, thought of in connection with this vulgar, cheating storekeeper's vulgar son? 'Sir, how dare you?' were all the words his lips framed, when Robert, beholding the scene from the other end of the board, came to the rescue.

'The fellow has been drinking,' was the most charitable construction Mr. Wynn could put upon Zack's astounding proposition. His dignity was cruelly outraged. 'Baiting the trap with his hateful knavish gains!' cried Linda's father. 'This is the result of the democracy of bush-life; the indiscriminate association with all classes of people that's forced on one. Any low fellow that pleases may ask your daughter in marriage!'

Robert walked up and down with him outside the building. Though sufficiently indignant himself, he tried to calm his father. 'Don't make the affair more public by immediate withdrawal,' he advised. 'Stay an hour or so longer at the bee, for appearance' sake. It's hardly likely the fellow will attempt to address you again, at least on that subject.' So the old gentleman very impatiently watched the log heaps piling, and the teams straining, and the 'grog-bos' going his rounds, for a while longer.

We left Andy Callaghan over his victim, with a flourishing shillelagh. Having spun him round, he stirred him up again with a few sharp taps; and it must be confessed that Nim showed very little fight for a man of his magnitude, but sneaked over the fence after a minute's bravado.

'Och, but it's myself that 'ud like to be batin' ye!' groaned Andy for the second time, most sincerely. 'Only I'm afeard if I began I wouldn't know how to lave off, 'twould be so pleasant, ye owdacious villain. Ha! ye'd throw the stick at me, would ye?' and Mr. Callaghan was across the fence in a twinkling. Whereupon Nim fairly turned tail, and fled ignominiously, after having ineffectually discharged a piece of timber, javelin-wise, at his enemy.

A loud peal of laughter, in a very masculine key, broke upon Andy's ear. It proceeded from the usually undemonstrative maiden Liberia, who was bringing a pail of water from the creek when her path was crossed by the flying pair. From that hour the tides of her feminine heart set in favour of the conqueror.

'Troth, an' I may as well let ye have the benefit of yer heels, ye mortal spalpeen,' said Andy, reining himself in. 'An' it's the father of a good thrashin' I could give ye for yer impidence. To think o' Miss Linda, that's one of the ould auncient Wynns of Dunore since Adam was a boy! I donno why I didn't pound him into smithereens when I had him so 'andy on the flat of his back--only for Miss Linda, the darlin' crathur, telling me not. Sure there isn't a peeler in the whole counthry, nor a jail neither, for a thousand mile. Now I wondher, av it was a thing I did bate him black an' blue, whose business would it be to 'rest me; an' is it before the masther I'd be brought to coort?'

Cogitating thus, and chewing the cud on the end of his sapling, Andy returned homewards leisurely. His young mistress was nowhere to be seen; so he picked up the hoe and finished her strawberry bed; and when he saw the elder Mr. Wynn approaching, he quietly walked off to Davidson's and took his place among the hive again, as if nothing had happened. Nor did the faithful fellow ever allude to the episode--with a rare delicacy judging that the young lady would prefer silence--except once that Robert asked him what had brought him to Cedar Creek so opportunely.

'Why, thin, didn't I know what the vagabone wanted, lavin' the bee 'athout his dinner, an' goin' down this road, afther me lookin' at him this twel'month dressing himself out in all the colours of neckties that ever was in the rainbow, an' saunterin' about the place every Sunday in particler, an' starin' at her purty face as impident as if he was her aqual. Often I'd ha' given me best shute of clothes to pluck the two tails off his coat; an' he struttin' up to Daisy Burn, when she and Miss Armytage tached the little childher there; an' Miss Linda thinkin' no more of him than if a snake was watchin' her out ov the bushes. But, moreover, I heerd him an' his old schemer of a father whispering at the bee: "Do you go down to herself," said Zack, "an' I'll spake to the squire." "Sure, my lad," thinks I, "if you do you'll have company along wid you;" so I dogged him every step of the way.'

Which explains Andy's interposition.

Robert Wynn, when his wrath at the Buntings' presumption subsided, had gloomy anticipations that this would prove the beginning of an irreconcilable feud, making the neighbourhood very disagreeable. But not so. A week afterwards, while he stood watching the workmen building the dam for the projected mill, he heard the well-known drawl at his elbow, and turning, beheld the unabashed Zack. He had duly weighed matters for and against, and found that the squire was too powerful for a pleasant quarrel, and too big to injure with impunity.

'Wal, Robert, so yer raisin' a sawmill!' he had uttered in a tone of no agreeable surprise. Mr. Wynn pointed to Davidson, and left _him_ to settle that point of rivalry.

'We wull divide the custom o' the country, neebor Zack,' quoth the other.

'I don't deny that you have an elegant mill-privilege here; but I guess that's all you'll have. Whar's grist to come from, or lumber? D'ye think they'll pass the four roads at the "Corner," whar my mill stands handy?'

'Room eneugh i' the warld for baith o' us,' nodded Davidson; 'a' room eneugh in Canada for a million ither mills, freend.' And he walked down the sloping bank to assist at the dam.

This last--a blow at the pocket--seemed to affect Zack far more than that other blow at the intangible essence, his family honour. He could see his son Nim set off for the back settlements of Iowa without a pang; for it is in vulgar Yankee nature to fling abroad the sons and daughters of a house far and wide into the waters of the world, to make their own way, to sink or swim as happens. But the new sawmill came between him and his rest. Before winter the machinery had been noisily at work for many a day; with huge beams walking up to the saw, and getting perpetually sliced into clean fresh boards; with an intermittent shooting of slabs and sawdust into the creek. 'Most eloquent music' did it discourse to Robert's ears, whose dream of a settlement was thus fulfilling, in that the essential requisite, lumber for dwelling-houses, was being prepared.