Viola Gwyn

George Barr Mccutcheon

Informations

• Publié par: chowyog
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 30
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Viola Gwyn, by
George Barr McCutcheon (#11 in our series by
George Barr McCutcheon)
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be
sure to check the copyright laws for your country
before downloading or redistributing this or any
other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when
viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not
remove it. Do not change or edit the header
without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other
information about the eBook and Project
Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and
restrictions in how the file may be used. You can
also find out about how to make a donation to
Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla
Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By
Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands
of Volunteers!*****
Title: Viola GwynAuthor: George Barr McCutcheon
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6013] [Yes, we
are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on October 16, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK, VIOLA GWYN ***
Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading
Team.
[Illustration: "I shall get married when and where I
please,—and to whom I please, Mr. Gwynne."]
VIOLA GWYN
BY George Barr McCutcheonCONTENTS
PROLOGUE—THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER
I SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT II THE STRANGE
YOUNG WOMAN III SOMETHING ABOUT
CLOTHES, AND MEN, AND CATS IV VIOLA
GWYN V REFLECTIONS AND AN ENCOUNTER
VI BARRY LAPELLE VII THE END OF THE LONG
ROAD VIII RACHEL CARTER IX BROTHER AND
SISTER X MOTHER AND DAUGHTER XI A
ROADSIDE MEETING XII ISAAC STAIN
APPEARS BY NIGHT XIII THE GRACIOUS
ENEMY XIV A MAN FROM DOWN THE RIVER XV
THE LANDING OF THE "PAUL REVERE" XVI
CONCERNING TEMPESTS AND INDIANS XVII
REVELATIONS XVIII RACHEL DELIVERS A
MESSAGE XIX LAPELLE SHOWS HIS TEETH XX
THE BLOW XXI THE AFFAIR AT HAWK'S CABIN
XXII THE PRISONERS XXIII CHALLENGE AND
RETORT XXIV IN AN UPSTAIRS ROOM XXV
MINDA CARTER XXVI THE FLIGHT OF MARTIN
HAWK XXVII THE TRIAL OF MOLL HAWK XXVIII
THE TRYSTING PLACE OF THOUGHTS XXIX
THE ENDINGPROLOGUE
THE BEGINNING
Kenneth Gwynne was five years old when his
father ran away with
Rachel Carter, a widow. This was in the spring of
1812, and in
the fall his mother died. His grandparents brought
him up to hate
Rachel Carter, an evil woman.
She was his mother's friend and she had slain her
with the viper's tooth. From the day that his
questioning intelligence seized upon the truth that
had been so carefully withheld from him by his
broken-hearted mother and those who spoke
behind the hand when he was near,—from that day
he hated Rachel Carter with all his hot and
outraged heart. He came to think of her as the
embodiment of all that was evil,—for those were
the days when there was no middle-ground for sin
and women were either white or scarlet.
He rejoiced in the belief that in good time Rachel
Carter would come to roast in the everlasting fires
of hell, grovelling and wailing at the feet of Satan,
the while his lovely mother looked down upon her
in pity,—even then he wondered if such a thing
were possible,—from her seat beside God in His
Heaven. He had no doubts about this. Hell andheaven were real to him, and all sinners went
below. On the other hand, his father would be
permitted to repent and would instantly go to
heaven. It was inconceivable that his big, strong,
well-beloved father should go to the bad place. But
Mrs. Carter would! Nothing could save her! God
would not pay any attention to her if she tried to
repent; He would know it was only "make-believe" if
she got down on her knees and prayed for
forgiveness. He was convinced that Rachel Carter
could not fool God. Besides, would not his mother
be there to remind Him in case He could not
exactly remember what Rachel Carter had done?
And were there not dozens of good, honest people
in the village who would probably be in Heaven by
that time and ready to stand before the throne and
bear witness that she was a bad woman?
No, Rachel Carter could never get into Heaven. He
was glad. No matter if the Scriptures did say all
that about the sinner who repents, he did not
believe that God would let her in. He supported this
belief by the profoundly childish contention that if
God let EVERYBODY in, then there would be no
use having a hell at all. What was the use of being
good all your life if the bad people could get into
Heaven at the last minute by telling God they were
sorry and never would do anything bad again as
long as they lived? And was not God the wisest
Being in all the world? He knew EVERYTHING! He
knew all about Rachel Carter. She would go to the
bad place and stay there forever, even after the
"resurrection" and the end of the world by fire in
1883, a calamity to which he looked forward withgrave concern and no little trepidation at the
thoughtful age of six.
At first they told him his father had gone off as a
soldier to fight against the Indians and the British.
He knew that a war was going on. Men with guns
were drilling in the pasture up beyond his
grandfather's house, and there was talk of Indian
"massacrees," and Simon Girty's warriors, and
British red-coats, and the awful things that
happened to little boys who disobeyed their elders
and went swimming, or berrying, or told even the
teeniest kind of fibs. He overheard his grandfather
and the neighbours discussing a battle on Lake
Erie, and rejoiced with them over the report of a
great victory for "our side." Vaguely he had
grasped the news of a horrible battle on the
Tippecanoe River, far away in the wilderness to the
north and west, in which millions of Indians were
slain, and he wondered how many of them his
father had killed with his rifle,—a weapon so big
and long that he came less than half way up the
barrel when he stood beside it.
His father was a great shot. Everybody said so. He
could kill wild turkeys a million miles away as easy
as rolling off a log, and deer, and catamounts, and
squirrels, and herons, and everything. So his father
must have killed heaps of Indians and red-coats
and renegades.
He put this daily question to his mother: "How
many do you s'pose
Pa has killed by this time, Ma?"And then, in the fall, his mother went away and left
him. They did not tell him she had gone to the war.
He would not have believed them if they had, for
she was too sick to go. She had been in bed for a
long, long time; the doctor came to see her every
day, and finally the preacher. He hated both of
them, especially the latter, who prayed so loudly
and so vehemently that his mother must have
been terribly disturbed. Why should every one
caution him to be quiet and not make a noise
because it disturbed mother, and yet say nothing
when that old preacher went right into her room
and yelled same as he always did in church? He
was very bitter about it, and longed for his father to
come home with his rifle and shoot everybody,
including his grandfather who had "switched" him
severely and unjustly because he threw stones at
Parson Hook's saddle horse while the good man
was offering up petitions from the sick room.
He went to the "burying," and was more impressed
by the fact that nearly all of the men who rode or
drove to the graveyard down in the "hollow" carried
rifles and pistols than he was by the strange
solemnity of the occasion, for, while he realized in
a vague, mistrustful way that his mother was to be
put under the ground, his trust clung resolutely to
God's promise, accepted in its most literal sense,
that the dead shall rise again and that "ye shall be
born again." That was what the preacher said,—
and he had cried a little when the streaming-eyed
clergyman took him on his knee and whispered
that all was well with his dear mother and that he
would meet her one day in that beautiful landbeyond the River.
He was very lonely after that. His "granny" tucked
him in his big feather bed every night, and listened
to his little prayer, but she was not the same as
mother. She did not kiss him in the same way, nor
did her hand feel like mother's when she smoothed
his rumpled hair or buttoned his flannel nightgown
about his neck or closed his eyes playfully with her
fingers before she went away with the candle. Yet
he adored her. She was sweet and gentle, she told
such wonderful fairy tales to him, and she always
smiled at him. He wondered a great deal. Why was
it that she did not FEEL the same as mother? He
was deeply puzzled. Was it because her hair was
grey?
His grandfather lived in the biggest house in town.
It had an "upstairs,"—a real "upstairs,"—not just an
attic. And his grandfather wa