CHAPTER I

Abbie Mackenzie was old Abbie Deal’s maiden name. And because the first
eight years of her life were interesting only to her family, we shall
skip over them as lightly as Abbie herself used to skip a hoop on the
high, crack-filled sidewalks in the little village of Chicago, which
stood at the side of a lake where the bulrushes grew.

We find her then, at eight, in the year 1854, camping at night on the
edge of some timberland just off the beaten trail between Dubuque and
the new home in Blackhawk County, Iowa, to which the little family was
bound.

Abbie and a big sister of fifteen, Isabelle, were curled up together
under two old patchwork quilts in one of the wagons. Another sister,
Mary, and a little brother, Basil, were in the other wagon with their
mother. Sixteen-year-old James and eleven-year-old Dennie, the men of
the party, were sleeping near the oxen, so that the warmth of the
animals’ bodies would keep them warm.

Because she had propped up a small section of the wagon’s canvas cover,
Abbie could see out into the night. The darkness was a heavy, animate
thing. It hung thickly about the wagon, vaguely weird, remotely
fearsome. It seemed to see and hear and feel. It looked at Abbie with
its stirs, heard her whispered words with its tree-leaves, felt of her
warm little body with its cool breeze fingers. Something about the queer
closeness of it almost frightened her. Something about the hushed
silence of it made her think of her father who had died two years
before. She summoned a picture of him into her mind, now,—recalling the
paleness of his long, thin face, the neatness of his neckcloth, the
gentle courtesy of his manner. Thinking of him so, she punched Isabelle
with an active elbow. “Belle, tell me about Father and Mother.”

The big girl was a little impatient. “I’ve told you everything I
remember.”

“Tell it again.”

“I should think you’d get tired of hearing the same thing.”

“Oh, I _never_ do.”

“Well . . . Father were what they call an aristocrat. He lived in
Aberdeen, Scotland, and his folks, the Mackenzies, had a town house and
two country houses. He belonged to the landed gentry.”

“What’s landed gentry?”

“It means he were a gentleman and didn’t have to work.”

“Will James and Dennie be gentlemen?”

“Of course not. We lost all our money.”

“Tell how we lost it.” Abbie settled herself with complacence. There was
an element of satisfaction in having had such a foreign substance at one
time, even if it was long before her birth.

“Well . . . Father were a young man and never had to do nothing but
enjoy hisself, and he were out one day following the hare and hounds
. . .”

“Tell about that.”

“That’s hunting . . . a pack of hounds after a rabbit . . . and he got
away from the rest of them and were lost.”

“The rabbit?”

“No, dunce-cap, . . . you know I mean father. And he come to a peasant’s
cottage.”

“What’s peasant?”

“Awful poor people that have to work. But don’t stop me every minute. I
always forget where I were. Well . . . and he wanted a drink. And a
sixteen-year-old peasant girl come out of the house. They were Irish,
but I guess they were working for some folks in Scotland. Anyway it were
Mother and she got a drink for him . . . were pulling up the rope and he
took the rope and pulled it up hisself. Just think! A _gentleman_ . . .
and Mother were sixteen . . . just _one_ year older than me. Abbie, do
you suppose there’ll be an aristocratic landed gentleman out in
Blackhawk County where we’re going?”

“No . . . I don’t think so. Go on.”

“Well, Mother were pretty . . . Irish girls about _always_ are . . . and
there were a rosebush and Father asked her for a rose and she pulled one
for him. Abbie, don’t you tell anybody, but I’ve got a little rosebush
done up in a wet rag in the wagon and I’m going to plant it out in
Blackhawk County.”

“Ho! Ho! It takes years and years for a rosebush to grow big enough to
have flowers to pull off for a-_ris_ . . . for a-_rist_ . . . for
gentlemen. Go on.”

“Anyway, Father took his rose and went away and the next day he come
back.”

“Were he lost again?”

“No, dunce-cap! He come back to see Mother a-purpose. And he come other
days, even after that, and they would walk over the heather hills
together.”

“What’s feather hills?”

“Not feather! _Heather!_ . . . a little kind of weedy grass. And all the
neighbors shook their heads and said they’d seen _that_ thing happen
before from the gentry . . . and . . .” Isabelle whispered solemnly,
“_no good ever come of it_.”

“What did they say that for?”

“I can’t tell you now. You wouldn’t understand. When you’re as old as
me, you will. But just the same, Father _did_ marry her and took her to
Aberdeen to the big Mackenzie house. Mother wore her best dress and her
best head-shawl, but even then, all fixed up that nice way, the
Mackenzies didn’t like her. Father’s mother were Isabelle
Anders-Mackenzie and she were awful proud and I hate her for not liking
Mother. I hate her so bad that I’m sorry I’m named for her. If Mother
would let me, I’d change it to Rosamond. I read about a Rosamond and she
. . .”

“Go on about her . . . not _you_.”

“Well . . . she were ashamed of Mother, but she had to take her in
because she were Father’s wife, and she dressed her up grand and tried
to make her different. But when Mother would go back to see her folks,
she’d put on her peasant dress and wear her shawl on her head and slip
away. And Sundays when the Mackenzies would go to the kirk . . .”

“What’s kirk?”

“Church. Where were I? Oh . . . the aristocrats set down below and the
peasants all set up in the loft . . .”

“Like a hay loft?”

“No. Stop interrupting, or I won’t tell you one thing more. And Mother
wouldn’t leave her folks, the O’Conners, so Father went and set with
them and the Mackenzies were just _sick_ with shame. Then Grandfather
Mackenzie died, and a long time afterward . . . after Janet and James
and Mary and Dennie and I were all born, Grandmother Isabelle
Anders-Mackenzie . . .”

“I just _admire_ to hear that name . . .”

“There you go again. Now I’m through telling it.”

“Please . . . I won’t stop you again.”

“Well . . . Grandmother died, too. Then Father come to America on a
sailing vessel, just for a pleasure trip, and he were gone so long and
folks thought he weren’t coming back at all . . . and Mother cried
something terrible . . . and Father had signed a note for a man . . .”

“What’s signed a . . .? Oh, . . . go on.”

“And it made him lose all his money. Men come and put cards up on the
house and stables while he were gone and the signs said there were going
to be a roup there.”

“What’s . . .? Go on.”

“A roup’s an auction sale. There were fifteen saddle-horses in the
stables, but after the roup cards went up Mother were not allowed to
touch one on account of the law, and so her and James and Janet walked
twenty-seven miles to have her father and mother come and bid in some of
her things. She’s got ’em yet in that little wooden chest with calf-skin
all over it. It’s in the other wagon and I know just what’s in it
because I saw ’em. There’s a white silk shawl with big solid roses in
the corners . . . all _four_ corners . . . and a jeweled fan . . . and a
breast-pin with lavender sets and a string of pearls. There are just as
many things as there are girls in our family and Mother says each girl
are to have one for a keepsake. I know which one I want . . . the silk
shawl. I tried it on once when Mother were gone and I looked a lot like
the painting of Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie that hung up on the landing of
the stairway in the great hall. Course, you understand, Abbie, I never
said I hated her _looks_ . . .”

“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.