shock, and went right off sudden yisterday forenoon. I'm about now
tendin' to the funeral 'rangements. She's be'n extry smart, they say,
all winter,--out to meetin' last Sabbath; never enjoyed herself so
complete as she has this past month. She'd be'n a very hard-workin'
woman. Her folks was glad to have her there, and give her every
attention. The place here never was good for nothin'. The old
gen'leman,--uncle, you know,--he wore hisself out tryin' to make a
livin' off from it."
There was an ostentatious sympathy and half-suppressed excitement from
bad news which were quite lost upon us, and we did not linger to hear
much more. It seemed to me as if I had known Mrs. Peet better than any
one else had known her. I had counted upon seeing her again, and
hearing her own account of Shrewsbury life, its pleasures and its
limitations. I wondered what had become of the cat and the contents of
the faded bundle-handkerchief.
THE TAKING OF CAPTAIN BALL.
I.
There was a natural disinclination to the cares of housekeeping in the
mind of Captain Ball, and he would have left the sea much earlier in
life if he had not liked much better to live on board ship. A man was
his own master there, and meddlesome neighbors and parsons and tearful
women-folks could be made to keep their distance. But as years went
on, and the extremes of weather produced much affliction in the shape
of rheumatism, this, and the decline of the merchant service, and the
degeneracy of common seamen, forced Captain Ball to come ashore for
good. He regretted that he could no longer follow the sea, and, in
spite of many alleviations, grumbled at his hard fate. He might have
been condemned to an inland town, but in reality his house was within
sight of tide-water, and he found plenty of companionship in the
decayed seaport where he had been born and bred. There were several
retired shipmasters who closely approached his own rank and dignity.
They all gave other excuses than that of old age and infirmity for
being out of business, took a sober satisfaction in their eleven
o'clock bitters, and discussed the shipping list of the morning paper
with far more interest than the political or general news of the other
columns.
While Captain Asaph Ball was away on his long voyages he had left his
house in charge of an elder sister, who was joint owner. She was a
grim old person, very stern in matters of sectarian opinion, and the
captain recognized in his heart of hearts that she alone was his
superior officer. He endeavored to placate her with generous offerings
of tea and camel's-hair scarfs and East Indian sweetmeats, not to
speak of unnecessary and sometimes very beautiful china for the
parties that she never gave, and handsome dress patterns with which
she scorned to decorate her sinful shape of clay. She pinched herself
to the verge of want in order to send large sums of money to the
missionaries, but she saved the captain's money for him against the
time when his willful lavishness and improvidence might find him a
poor man. She was always looking forward to the days when he would be
aged and forlorn, that burly seafaring brother of hers. She loved to
remind him of his latter end, and in writing her long letters that
were to reach him in foreign ports, she told little of the
neighborhood news and results of voyages, but bewailed, in page after
page, his sad condition of impenitence and the shortness of time. The
captain would rather have faced a mutinous crew any day than his
sister's solemn statements of this sort, but he loyally read them
through with heavy sighs, and worked himself into his best broadcloth
suit, at least once while he lay in port, to go to church on Sunday,
out of good New England habit and respect to her opinions. It was not
his sister's principles but her phrases that the captain failed to
comprehend. Sometimes when he returned to his ship he took pains to
write a letter to dear sister Ann, and to casually mention the fact of
his attendance upon public worship, and even to recall the text and
purport of the sermon. He was apt to fall asleep in his humble place
at the very back of the church, and his report of the services would
have puzzled a far less keen theologian than Miss Ann Ball. In fact
these poor makeshifts of religious interest did not deceive her, and
the captain had an uneasy consciousness that, to use his own
expression, the thicker he laid on the words, the quicker she saw
through them. And somehow or other that manly straightforwardness and
honesty of his, that free-handed generosity, that true unselfishness
which made him stick by his ship when the crew had run away from a
poor black cook who was taken down with the yellow-fever, which made
him nurse the frightened beggar as tenderly as a woman, and bring him
back to life, and send him packing afterward with plenty of money in
his pocket--all these fine traits that made Captain Ball respected in
every port where his loud voice and clumsy figure and bronzed face
were known, seemed to count for nothing with the stern sister. At
least her younger brother thought so. But when, a few years after he
came ashore for good, she died and left him alone in the neat old
white house, which his instinctive good taste and his father's before
him had made a museum of East Indian treasures, he found all his
letters stored away with loving care after they had been read and
reread into tatters, and among her papers such touching expressions of
love and pride and longing for his soul's good, that poor Captain
Asaph broke down altogether and cried like a school-boy. She had saved
every line of newspaper which even mentioned his ships' names. She had
loved him deeply in the repressed New England fashion, that under a
gray and forbidding crust of manner, like a chilled lava bed, hides
glowing fires of loyalty and devotion.
Sister Ann was a princess among housekeepers, and for some time after
her death the captain was a piteous mourner indeed. No growing
school-boy could be more shy and miserable in the presence of women
than he, though nobody had a readier friendliness or more off-hand
sailor ways among men. The few intimate family friends who came to his
assistance at the time of his sister's illness and death added untold
misery to the gloomy situation. Yet he received the minister with
outspoken gratitude in spite of that worthy man's trepidation.
Everybody said that poor Captain Ball looked as if his heart was
broken. "I tell ye I feel as if I was tied in a bag of fleas," said
the distressed mariner, and his pastor turned away to cough, hoping to
hide the smile that would come. "Widders an' old maids, they're busier
than the divil in a gale o' wind," grumbled the captain. "Poor Ann,
she was worth every one of 'em lashed together, and here you find me
with a head-wind every way I try to steer." The minister was a man at
any rate; his very presence was a protection.
Some wretched days went by while Captain Ball tried to keep his lonely
house with the assistance of one Silas Jenkins, who had made several
voyages with him as cook, but they soon proved that the best of
sailors may make the worst of housekeepers. Life looked darker and
darker, and when, one morning, Silas inadvertently overheated and
warped the new cooking stove, which had been the pride of Miss Ball's
heart, the breakfastless captain dismissed him in a fit of blind rage.
The captain was first cross and then abject when he went hungry, and
in this latter stage was ready to abase himself enough to recall Widow
Sparks, his sister's lieutenant, who lived close by in Ropewalk Lane,
forgetting that he had driven her into calling him an old hog two days
after the funeral. He groaned aloud as he thought of her, but reached
for his hat and cane, when there came a gentle feminine rap at the
door.
"Let 'em knock!" grumbled the captain, angrily, but after a moment's
reflection, he scowled and went and lifted the latch.
There stood upon the doorstep a middle-aged woman, with a pleasant
though determined face. The captain scowled again, but involuntarily
opened his fore-door a little wider.
"Capt'in Asaph Ball, I presume?"
"The same," answered the captain.
"I've been told, sir, that you need a housekeeper, owing to recent
affliction."
There was a squally moment of resistance in the old sailor's breast,
but circumstances seemed to be wrecking him on a lee shore. Down came
his flag on the run.
"I can't say but what I do, ma'am," and with lofty courtesy, such as
an admiral should use to his foe of equal rank, the master of the
house signified that his guest might enter. When they were seated
opposite each other in the desolate sitting-room he felt himself the
weaker human being of the two. Five years earlier, and he would have
put to sea before the week's end, if only to gain the poor freedom of
a coastwise lime schooner.
"Well, speak up, can't ye?" he said, trying to laugh. "Tell me what's
the tax, and how much you can take hold and do, without coming to me
for orders every hand's turn o' the day. I've had Silas Jinkins here,
one o' my old ship's cooks; he served well at sea, and I thought he
had some head; but we've been beat, I tell ye, and you'll find some
work to put things ship-shape. He's gitting in years, that's the
trouble; I oughtn't to have called on him," said Captain Ball, anxious
to maintain even so poorly the dignity of his sex.
"I like your looks; you seem a good steady hand, with no nonsense
about ye." He cast a shy glance at his companion, and would not have
believed that any woman could have come to the house a stranger, and
have given him such an immediate feeling of confidence and relief.
"I'll tell ye what's about the worst of the matter," and the captain
pulled a letter out of his deep coat pocket. His feelings had been
pent up too long. At the sight of the pretty handwriting and
aggravatingly soft-spoken sentences, Asaph Ball was forced to
inconsiderate speech. The would-be housekeeper pushed back her
rocking-chair as he began, and tucked her feet under, beside settling
her bonnet a little, as if she were close-reefed and anchored to ride
out the gale.
"I'm in most need of an able person," he roared, "on account of this
letter's settin' me adrift about knowing what to do. 'T is from a gal
that wants to come and make her home here. Land sakes alive, puts
herself right forrard! I don't want her, _an' I won't have her_. She
may be a great-niece; I don't say she ain't; but what should I do with
one o' them jiggetin' gals about? In the name o' reason, why should I
be set out o' my course? I'm left at the mercy o' you women-folks,"
and the captain got stiffly to his feet. "If you've had experience,
an' think you can do for me, why, stop an' try, an' I'll be much
obleeged to ye. You'll find me a good provider, and we'll let one
another alone, and get along some way or 'nother."
The captain's voice fairly broke; he had been speaking as if to a
brother man; he was tired out and perplexed. His sister Ann had saved
him so many petty trials, and now she was gone. The poor man had
watched her suffer and seen her die, and he was as tender-hearted and
as lonely as a child, however he might bluster. Even such infrequent
matters as family letters had been left to his busy sister. It
happened that they had inherited a feud with an elder half-brother's
family in the West, though the captain was well aware of the existence
of this forth-putting great-niece, who had been craftily named for
Miss Ann Ball, and so gained a precarious hold on her affections; but
to harbor one of the race was to consent to the whole. Captain Ball
was not a man to bring down upon himself an army of interferers and
plunderers, and he now threw down the poor girl's well-meant letter
with an outrageous expression of his feelings. Then he felt a silly
weakness, and hastened to wipe his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief.
"I've been beat, I tell ye," he said brokenly.
There was a look of apparent sympathy, mingled with victory, on the
housekeeper's face. Perhaps she had known some other old sailor of the
same make, for she rose and turned her face aside to look out of the
window until the captain's long upper lip had time to draw itself
straight and stern again. Plainly she was a woman of experience and
discretion.
"I'll take my shawl and bunnit right off, sir," she said, in a
considerate little voice. "I see a-plenty to do; there'll be time
enough after I get you your dinner to see to havin' my trunk here; but
it needn't stay a day longer than you give the word."
"That's clever," said the captain. "I'll step right down street and
get us a good fish, an' you can fry it or make us a chowder, just
which you see fit. It now wants a little of eleven"--and an air of
pleased anticipation lighted his face--"I must be on my way."
"If it's all the same to you, I guess we don't want no company till we
get to rights a little. You're kind of tired out, sir," said the
housekeeper, feelingly. "By-and-by you can have the young girl come
an' make you a visit, and either let her go or keep her, 'cordin' as
seems fit. I may not turn out to suit."
"What may I call you, ma'am?" inquired Captain Ball. "Mis' French? Not
one o' them Fleet Street Frenches?" (suspiciously). "Oh, come from
Massachusetts way!" (with relief).
"I was stopping with some friends that had a letter from some o' the
minister's folks here, and they told how bad off you was," said
Mrs. French, modestly. "I was out of employment, an' I said to myself
that I should feel real happy to go and do for that Captain Ball. He
knows what he wants, and I know what I want, and no flummery."
"You know somethin' o' life, I do declare," and the captain fairly
beamed. "I never was called a hard man at sea, but I like to give my
orders, and have folks foller 'em. If it was women-folks that wrote,
they may have set me forth more 'n ordinary. I had every widder and
single woman in town here while Ann lay dead, and my natural feelin's
were all worked up. I see 'em dressed up and smirkin' and settin'
their nets to ketch me when I was in an extremity. I wouldn't give a
kentle o' sp'iled fish for the whole on 'em. I ain't a marryin' man,
there's once for all for ye," and the old sailor stepped toward the
door with some temper.
"Ef you'll write to the young woman, sir, just to put off comin' for a
couple or three weeks," suggested Mrs. French.
"_This afternoon, ma'am_," said the captain, as if it were the ay, ay,
sir, of an able seaman who sprang to his duty of reefing the
main-topsail.
Captain Ball walked down to the fish shop with stately steps and
measured taps of his heavy cane. He stopped on the way, a little
belated, and assured two or three retired ship-masters that he had
manned the old brig complete at last; he even gave a handsome wink of
his left eye over the edge of a glass, and pronounced his morning grog
to be A No. 1, prime.
Mrs. French picked up her gown at each side with thumb and finger, and
swept the captain a low courtesy behind his back as he went away; then
she turned up the aforesaid gown and sought for one of the lamented
Miss Ann Ball's calico aprons, and if ever a New England woman did a
morning's work in an hour, it was this same Mrs. French.
"'T ain't every one knows how to make what I call a chowder," said the
captain, pleased and replete, as he leaned back in his chair after
dinner. "Mis' French, you shall have everything to do with, an' I
ain't no kitchen colonel myself to bother ye."
There was a new subject for gossip in that seaport town. More than one
woman had felt herself to be a fitting helpmate for the captain, and
was confident that if time had been allowed, she could have made sure
of even such wary game as he. When a stranger stepped in and occupied
the ground at once, it gave nobody a fair chance, and Mrs. French was
recognized as a presuming adventuress by all disappointed aspirants
for the captain's hand. The captain was afraid at times that
Mrs. French carried almost too many guns, but she made him so
comfortable that she kept the upper hand, and at last he was conscious
of little objection to whatever this able housekeeper proposed. Her
only intimate friends were the minister and his wife, and the captain
himself was so won over to familiarity by the kindness of his pastor
in the time of affliction, that when after some weeks Mrs. French
invited the good people to tea, Captain Ball sat manfully at the foot
of his table, and listened with no small pleasure to the delighted
exclamations of the parson's wife over his store of china and glass.
There was a little feeling of guilt when he remembered how many times
in his sister's day he had evaded such pleasant social occasions by
complaint of inward malady, or by staying boldly among the wharves
until long past supper-time, and forcing good Miss Ann to as many
anxious excuses as if her brother's cranky ways were not as well known
to the guests as to herself.
II.
Mrs. Captain Topliff and Miss Miranda Hull were sitting together one
late summer afternoon in Mrs. Topliff's south chamber. They were at
work upon a black dress which was to be made over, and each sat by a
front window with the blinds carefully set ajar.
"This is a real handy room to sew in," said Miranda, who had come
early after dinner for a good long afternoon. "You git the light as
long as there is any; and I do like a straw carpet; I don't feel's if
I made so much work scatterin' pieces."
"Don't you have no concern about pieces," answered Mrs. Topliff,
amiably. "I was precious glad to get you right on the sudden so. You
see, I counted on my other dress lasting me till winter, and sort of
put this by to do at a leisure time. I knew 't wa'n't fit to wear as
't was. Anyway, I've done dealin' with Stover; he told me, lookin' me
right in the eye, that it was as good a wearin' piece o' goods as he
had in the store. 'T was a real cheat; you can put your finger right
through it."
"You've got some wear but of it," ventured Miranda, meekly, bending
over her work. "I made it up quite a spell ago, I know. Six or seven
years, ain't it, Mis' Topliff?"
"Yes, to be sure," replied Mrs. Topliff, with suppressed indignation;
"but this we're to work on I had before the Centennial. I know I
wouldn't take it to Philadelphy because 't was too good. An' the first
two or three years of a dress don't count. You know how 't is; you
just wear 'em to meetin' a pleasant Sunday, or to a funeral, p'r'aps,
an' keep 'em in a safe cluset meanwhiles."
"Goods don't wear as 't used to," agreed Miranda; "but 't is all the
better for my trade. Land! there's some dresses in this town I'm sick
o' bein' called on to make good's new. Now I call you reasonable about
such things, but there's some I could name"--Miss Hull at this point
put several pins into her mouth, as if to guard a secret.
Mrs. Topliff looked up with interest. "I always thought Ann Ball was
the meanest woman about such expense. She always looked respectable
too, and I s'pose she 'd said the heathen was gittin' the good o' what
she saved. She must have given away hundreds o' dollars in that
direction."
"She left plenty too, and I s'pose Cap'n Asaph's Mis' French will get
the good of it now," said Miranda through the pins. "Seems to me he's
gittin' caught in spite of himself. Old vain creatur', he seemed to
think all the women-folks in town was in love with him."
"Some was," answered Mrs. Topliff. "I think any woman that needed a
home would naturally think 't was a good chance." She thought that
Miranda had indulged high hopes, but wished to ignore them now.
"Some that had a home seemed inclined to bestow their affections, I
observed," retorted the dressmaker, who had lost her little property
by unfortunate investment, but would not be called homeless by
Mrs. Topliff. Everybody knew that the widow had set herself down
valiantly to besiege the enemy; but after this passage at arms between
the friends they went on amiably with their conversation.
"Seems to me the minister and Mis' Calvinn are dreadful intimate at
the Cap'n's. I wonder if the Cap'n's goin' to give as much to the
heathen as his sister did?" said Mrs. Topliff, presently.
"I understood he told the minister that none o' the heathen was wuth
it that ever he see," replied Miranda in a pinless voice at last. "Mr.
Calvinn only laughed; he knows the Cap'n's ways. But I shouldn't
thought Asaph Ball would have let his hired help set out and ask
company to tea just four weeks from the day his only sister was laid
away. 'T wa'n't feelin'."
"That Mis' French wanted to get the minister's folks to back her up,
don't you understand?" was Mrs. Topliff's comment. "I should think the
Calvinns wouldn't want to be so free and easy with a woman from nobody
knows where. She runs in and out o' the parsonage any time o' day, as
Ann Ball never took it upon her to do. Ann liked Mis' Calvinn, but she
always had to go through with just so much, and be formal with
everybody."
"I'll tell you something that exasperated _me_," confided the
disappointed Miranda. "That night they was there to tea, Mis' Calvinn
was praising up a handsome flowered china bowl that was on the table,
with some new kind of a fancy jelly in it, and the Cap'n told her to
take it along when she went home, if she wanted to, speakin' right out
thoughtless, as men do; and that Mis' French chirped up, 'Yes, I'm
glad; you ought to have somethin' to remember the cap'n's sister by,'
says she. Can't you hear just how up an' comin' it was?"
"I can so," said Mrs. Topliff. "I see that bowl myself on Miss
Calvinn's card-table, when I was makin' a call there day before
yesterday. I wondered how she come by it. 'Tis an elegant bowl. Ann
must have set the world by it, poor thing. Wonder if he ain't goin' to
give remembrances to those that knew his sister ever since they can
remember? Mirandy Hull, that Mis' French is a fox!"
"'T was Widow Sparks gave me the particulars," continued Mrs. Topliff.
"She declared at first that never would she step foot inside his doors
again, but I always thought the cap'n put up with a good deal. Her
husband's havin' been killed in one o' his ships by a fall when he was
full o' liquor, and her bein' there so much to help Ann, and their
havin' provided for her all these years one way an' another, didn't
give her the right to undertake the housekeepin' and direction o'
everything soon as Ann died. She dressed up as if 't was for meetin',
and 'tended the front door, and saw the folks that came. You'd thought
she was ma'am of everything; and to hear her talk up to the cap'n! I
thought I should die o' laughing when he blowed out at her. You know
how he gives them great whoos when he's put about. 'Go below, can't
ye, till your watch's called,' says he, same's 't was aboard ship; but
there! everybody knew he was all broke down, and everything tried him.
But to see her flounce out o' that back door!"
"'T was the evenin' after the funeral," Miranda said, presently. "I
was there, too, you may rec'lect, seeing what I could do. The cap'n
thought I was the proper one to look after her things, and guard
against moths. He said there wa'n't no haste, but I knew better, an'
told him I'd brought some camphire right with me. Well, did you git
anything further out o' Mis' Sparks?"
"That French woman made all up with her, and Mis' Sparks swallowed her
resentment. She's a good-feelin', ignorant kind o' woman, an' she
needed the money bad," answered Mrs. Topliff. "If you'll never repeat,
I'll tell you somethin' that'll make your eyes stick out, Miranda."
Miranda promised, and filled her mouth with pins preparatory to proper
silence.
"You know the Balls had a half-brother that went off out West
somewhere in New York State years ago. I don't remember him, but he
brought up a family, and some of 'em came here an' made visits. Ann
used to get letters from 'em sometimes, she's told me, and I dare say
used to do for 'em. Well, Mis' Sparks says that there was a smart
young Miss Ball, niece, or great-niece o' the cap'n, wrote on and
wanted to come an' live with him for the sake o' the home--his own
blood and kin, you see, and very needy--and Mis' Sparks heard 'em talk
about her, and that wicked, low, offscourin' has got round Asaph Ball
till he's consented to put the pore girl off. You see, she wants to
contrive time to make him marry her, and then she'll do as she pleases
about his folks. Now ain't it a shame? When I see her parade up the
broad aisle, I want to stick out my tongue at her--I do so, right in
meetin'. If the cap'n's goin' to have a shock within a year, I could
wish it might be soon, to disappoint such a woman. Who is she, anyway?
She makes me think o' some carr'on bird pouncin' down on us right out
o' the air." Mrs. Topliff sniffed and jerked about in her chair,
having worked herself into a fine fit of temper.