Annie Proulx - Barkskins

“George,” said Jan, “it is necessary to the business to have a trained legal mind among us. You will have a good income and in later years you can see the world in a more comfortable manner than you would before the mast. Only ask Bernard what that life is like.”

He had, in fact, talked with Uncle Bernard, who froze his bone marrow with stories of typhoons, men overboard, the paralyzing Doldrums, the boredom, the eternal work, the noisome ports, the capricious cruelty of captains. George Pickering Duke was dissuaded and took his adventure in books.

Bernard spoke to Joab Hitchbone, young Piet standing with them. “Old Forgeron would have taken joy in knowing the day started with good weather.” Hitchbone sucked at his cup of syllabub. “And how goes your pitch production? Do you still travel down to the pinewoods in the Carolinas?”

Bernard made a wry face. “Oh no. I have ever preferred the Québec end of the business. We still operate logging enterprises in the north. As for Carolina, young Piet here”—Bernard touched his nephew’s shoulder—“took on that responsibility. He works two hundred black slaves and our pitch and tar are best quality. We’ve done well despite England’s punitive laws.”

“I return to the plantation in several days’ time,” said young Piet. The older men ignored him.

“Forgeron,” said old Hitchbone, “a good man, but you know — he had some strange ideas. His outlook remained both French and English, surely an uncomfortable mixture.”

Bernard’s eyebrows rose. “Perhaps you do not know that Forgeron was born in Ostende, not France. He encouraged our father to deal with the Low Countries. Father always said that Hollanders had an innate sense of landforms. That was a talent, he said, that made good timberland lookers such as Forgeron.”

But old Hitchbone went on. “He deplored wholesale cutting, those who felled trees but took only the trunks and burned the rest. He had a frugal mind.”

“Oh, he was ever a leading spirit in controversies,” Bernard said. “I well remember his sentiments. He believed that men, when confronted with a vast plenitude of anything, feel an irresistible urge to take it all, then to smash and destroy what they cannot use.”

Old Hitchbone peered at him. “Hah! As we might descend on our host’s table, gobble the dainties, then shiver the cups and plates on the hearth?”

“Few of us feel that urge, I trust,” said Bernard.

“I meant it as an example of Forgeron’s thinking. Better you remember your Bible: ‘And God said replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and every living thing that moveth, and every green tree and herb.’ Of course, here in New England there is such bounty of every wild resource that there is no limit to the assets, whether fish or furs or land or forests.”

Bernard did not correct Hitchbone’s misquotes; the old man was known for twisting scripture to suit his intent.

“Then perhaps, with all this bounty, you will explain the shortage of firewood in Boston and its ever-rising price? A good thing for Duke and Sons, but driving some inhabitants away from the city.”

Old Hitchbone refused to be drawn; he examined the low level of syllabub in his cup. “The Indans. That is our problem. The Indans do not use land correctly because of their raw roaming and hunting. As the Bible tells us, it is a duty to use land. And there is so much here that one can do what one wishes and then move on. You cannot make the Indans understand that the correct use is to clear, till, plant and harvest, to raise domestic stock, to mine or make timber. In a nutshell, they are uncivilized. And un-Christian.”

Bernard dipped his head, not wishing a quarrel, but thought to himself that King Philip’s War had not come about through some vague whim of the Indians. They had fought like rabid dogs to keep their lands and they had lost. Why was hunting and plucking berries not considered as use of the land? But he kept this question to himself. “Well, sir, although Forgeron scalped Indians for the bounty, he also had Indian friends. And he once or twice remarked that the reason New France did not prosper was because of the fur trade, which pulled all the able men away from the settlements and thereby cost a great deal in enterprise and development.”

“There may be something in that,” said old Hitchbone. “But I might advance popishness being their great pitfall. And their low population for all that they breed like mice.”

Bernard ignored this and went on. “He was ever a man of contradictions. He urged Duquet et Fils to keep a hand in the fur trade — which we have done in a small way. He thought that if a certain military triumph occurred, trade could revive.”

“They say the Ohio valley is stuffed with beavers. If the English are successful in seizing New France — the inevitable triumph you avoid naming — that trade might become lucrative once more.”

“Yes, Forgeron said much on various points which did not always make him agreeable company. One felt extremely nervous near him, not only because he attracted lightning and high winds. And yet he himself did more to drive down the forest and the Indans than anyone else.”

“And so in him we see the double nature of man quite revealed.”

“He profited in many ways,” said Hitchbone, who had himself profited in those ways.

“I only saw our father angry with him one time. They were speaking of the Wentworths and Forgeron had the temerity to tell Father that he — Father — could never hope to become one of the merchant aristocracy. That the Wentworths had connections with the English peerage and knew well how to move in those exalted circles. By my God, Father flew into a fury.”

Hitchbone smiled, returned to the Wentworths. “I remember what your father used to say about old Wentworth. ‘His foot shall slide in due time.’ Deuteronomy.”

Bernard laughed. “It ain’t yet slid. A wily and unscrupulous man.”

“Forgeron amassed considerable wealth, but I was always surprised that he lived as a wild Indan on game and maize. His was a lonely life.” He lowered his voice. “I wonder who will inherit his properties.”

Bernard’s eyebrows rose. He ignored the question. No doubt everyone in the room was squirming with curiosity to know Forgeron’s bequests, not the usual tiresome accounts of linens, laying hens and chairs, but his timberland holdings. “Perhaps not so lonely. I have heard he had a dozen Indian consorts. May I fetch you another dollop of syllabub?”

“My dears,” said Birgit, striding up to them, “the syllabub is quite finished. Do try the maple cream cakes. Piet, dear boy, come with me instead of standing here like a fence listening to these old fogies mumble. There is a gentleman I think you would like to know.” Joab Hitchbone thought once more that she had an especially sweet and gentle voice, the voice of an innocent girl, not the tough old matron she looked.

• • •

While the Indian slaves cleared the table the women followed Mercy into the second parlor, where there were turkey-work chairs with the look of wooden animals, four or five small tables scattered among them like waterholes. The women sat in front of the fire sipping China tea and laughing over rumors that the pope worshiper Duc de Richelieu had invited dinner guests to dine in the nude. “And,” said Birgit, “we have heard that after his spring ‘success’—if we may call it that — over the English at Port Mahon, his chef invented a sumptuous dressing of olive oil and egg yolk. The duke called it ‘ mahonnaise. ’ ” They made some wordplay over the juxtaposition of nude diners and dressed viands.

“The table looked brilliantly handsome tonight, dear Mercy,” said Birgit.