“And so, Peter, you won’t even consider of the business?” said Mr. John
Brown, buttoning his surtout over the snug rotundity of his person and
drawing on his gloves. “You positively refuse to let me have this crazy
old house, and the land under and adjoining, at the price named?”
“Neither at that, nor treble the sum,” responded the gaunt, grizzled
and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. “The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must
find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my
estate with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid
new mansion over the cellar of the old house.”
“Pho, Peter!” cried Mr. Brown as he opened the kitchen door; “content
yourself with building castles in the air, where house-lots are cheaper
than on earth, to say nothing of the cost of bricks and mortar. Such
foundations are solid enough for your edifices, while this underneath
us is just the thing for mine; and so we may both be suited. What say
you, again?”
“Precisely what I said before, Mr. Brown,” answered Peter Goldthwaite.
“And, as for castles in the air, mine may not be as magnificent as that
sort of architecture, but perhaps as substantial, Mr. Brown, as the
very respectable brick block with dry-goods stores, tailors’ shops and
banking-rooms on the lower floor, and lawyers’ offices in the second
story, which you are so anxious to substitute.”
“And the cost, Peter? Eh?” said Mr. Brown as he withdrew in something
of a pet. “That, I suppose, will be provided for off-hand by drawing a
check on Bubble Bank?”
John Brown and Peter Goldthwaite had been jointly known to the
commercial world between twenty and thirty years before under the firm
of Goldthwaite & Brown; which copartnership, however, was speedily
dissolved by the natural incongruity of its constituent parts. Since
that event, John Brown, with exactly the qualities of a thousand other
John Browns, and by just such plodding methods as they used, had
prospered wonderfully and become one of the wealthiest John Browns on
earth. Peter Goldthwaite, on the contrary, after innumerable schemes
which ought to have collected all the coin and paper currency of the
country into his coffers, was as needy a gentleman as ever wore a patch
upon his elbow. The contrast between him and his former partner may be
briefly marked, for Brown never reckoned upon luck, yet always had it,
while Peter made luck the main condition of his projects, and always
missed it. While the means held out his speculations had been
magnificent, but were chiefly confined of late years to such small
business as adventures in the lottery. Once he had gone on a
gold-gathering expedition somewhere to the South, and ingeniously
contrived to empty his pockets more thoroughly than ever, while others,
doubtless, were filling theirs with native bullion by the handful. More
recently he had expended a legacy of a thousand or two of dollars in
purchasing Mexican scrip, and thereby became the proprietor of a
province; which, however, so far as Peter could find out, was situated
where he might have had an empire for the same money—in the clouds.
From a search after this valuable real estate Peter returned so gaunt
and threadbare that on reaching New England the scarecrows in the
corn-fields beckoned to him as he passed by. “They did but flutter in
the wind,” quoth Peter Goldthwaite. No, Peter, they beckoned, for the
scarecrows knew their brother.
At the period of our story his whole visible income would not have paid
the tax of the old mansion in which we find him. It was one of those
rusty, moss-grown, many-peaked wooden houses which are scattered about
the streets of our elder towns, with a beetle-browed second story
projecting over the foundation, as if it frowned at the novelty around
it. This old paternal edifice, needy as he was, and though, being
centrally situated on the principal street of the town, it would have
brought him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own reasons for
never parting with, either by auction or private sale. There seemed,
indeed, to be a fatality that connected him with his birthplace; for,
often as he had stood on the verge of ruin, and standing there even
now, he had not yet taken the step beyond it which would have compelled
him to surrender the house to his creditors. So here he dwelt with bad
luck till good should come.
Here, then, in his kitchen—the only room where a spark of fire took off
the chill of a November evening—poor Peter Goldthwaite had just been
visited by his rich old partner. At the close of their interview,
Peter, with rather a mortified look, glanced downward at his dress,
parts of which appeared as ancient as the days of Goldthwaite & Brown.
His upper garment was a mixed surtout, woefully faded, and patched with
newer stuff on each elbow; beneath this he wore a threadbare black
coat, some of the silk buttons of which had been replaced with others
of a different pattern; and, lastly, though he lacked not a pair of
gray pantaloons, they were very shabby ones, and had been partially
turned brown by the frequent toasting of Peter’s shins before a scanty
fire. Peter’s person was in keeping with his goodly apparel.
Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked and lean-bodied, he was the
perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and empty hopes
till he could neither live on such unwholesome trash nor stomach more
substantial food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite, crack-brained
simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very brilliant figure
in the world had he employed his imagination in the airy business of
poetry instead of making it a demon of mischief in mercantile pursuits.
After all, he was no bad fellow, but as harmless as a child, and as
honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman which Nature meant
him for, as an irregular life and depressed circumstances will permit
any man to be.
As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth looking round at the
disconsolate old kitchen his eyes began to kindle with the illumination
of an enthusiasm that never long deserted him. He raised his hand,
clenched it and smote it energetically against the smoky panel over the
fireplace.
“The time is come,” said he; “with such a treasure at command, it were
folly to be a poor man any longer. Tomorrow morning I will begin with
the garret, nor desist till I have torn the house down.”
Deep in the chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a little
old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter
Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were
ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel
petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid upward of
sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that same
chimney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter’s grandfather
had taken her from the almshouse. She had no friend but Peter, nor
Peter any friend but Tabitha; so long as Peter might have a shelter for
his own head, Tabitha would know where to shelter hers, or, being
homeless elsewhere, she would take her master by the hand and bring him
to her native home, the almshouse. Should it ever be necessary, she
loved him well enough to feed him with her last morsel and clothe him
with her under-petticoat. But Tabitha was a queer old woman, and,
though never infected with Peter’s flightiness, had become so
accustomed to his freaks and follies that she viewed them all as
matters of course. Hearing him threaten to tear the house down, she
looked quietly up from her work.
“Best leave the kitchen till the last, Mr. Peter,” said she.
“The sooner we have it all down, the better,” said Peter Goldthwaite.
“I am tired to death of living in this cold, dark, windy, smoky,
creaking, groaning, dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man
when we get into my splendid brick mansion, as, please Heaven, we shall
by this time next autumn. You shall have a room on the sunny side, old
Tabby, finished and furnished as best may suit your own notions.”
“I should like it pretty much such a room as this kitchen,” answered
Tabitha. “It will never be like home to me till the chimney-corner gets
as black with smoke as this, and that won’t be these hundred years. How
much do you mean to lay out on the house, Mr. Peter?”
“What is that to the purpose?” exclaimed Peter, loftily. “Did not my
great-grand-uncle, Peter Goldthwaite, who died seventy years ago, and
whose namesake I am, leave treasure enough to build twenty such?”
“I can’t say but he did, Mr. Peter,” said Tabitha, threading her
needle.
Tabitha well understood that Peter had reference to an immense hoard of
the precious metals which was said to exist somewhere in the cellar or
walls, or under the floors, or in some concealed closet or other
out-of-the-way nook of the old house. This wealth, according to
tradition, had been accumulated by a former Peter Goldthwaite whose
character seems to have borne a remarkable similitude to that of the
Peter of our story. Like him, he was a wild projector, seeking to heap
up gold by the bushel and the cart-load instead of scraping it together
coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too, his projects had almost
invariably failed, and, but for the magnificent success of the final
one, would have left him with hardly a coat and pair of breeches to his
gaunt and grizzled person. Reports were various as to the nature of his
fortunate speculation, one intimating that the ancient Peter had made
the gold by alchemy; another, that he had conjured it out of people’s
pockets by the black art; and a third—still more unaccountable—that the
devil had given him free access to the old provincial treasury. It was
affirmed, however, that some secret impediment had debarred him from
the enjoyment of his riches, and that he had a motive for concealing
them from his heir, or, at any rate, had died without disclosing the
place of deposit. The present Peter’s father had faith enough in the
story to cause the cellar to be dug over. Peter himself chose to
consider the legend as an indisputable truth, and amid his many
troubles had this one consolation—that, should all other resources
fail, he might build up his fortunes by tearing his house down. Yet,
unless he felt a lurking distrust of the golden tale, it is difficult
to account for his permitting the paternal roof to stand so long, since
he had never yet seen the moment when his predecessor’s treasure would
not have found plenty of room in his own strong-box. But now was the
crisis. Should he delay the search a little longer, the house would
pass from the lineal heir, and with it the vast heap of gold, to remain
in its burial-place till the ruin of the aged walls should discover it
to strangers of a future generation.
“Yes,” cried Peter Goldthwaite, again; “to-morrow I will set about it.”
The deeper he looked at the matter, the more certain of success grew
Peter. His spirits were naturally so elastic that even now, in the
blasted autumn of his age, he could often compete with the springtime
gayety of other people. Enlivened by his brightening prospects, he
began to caper about the kitchen like a hobgoblin, with the queerest
antics of his lean limbs and gesticulations of his starved features.
Nay, in the exuberance of his feelings, he seized both of Tabitha’s
hands and danced the old lady across the floor till the oddity of her
rheumatic motions set him into a roar of laughter, which was echoed
back from the rooms and chambers, as if Peter Goldthwaite were laughing
in every one. Finally, he bounded upward, almost out of sight, into the
smoke that clouded the roof of the kitchen, and, alighting safely on
the floor again, endeavored to resume his customary gravity.
“To-morrow, at sunrise,” he repeated, taking his lamp to retire to bed,
“I’ll see whether this treasure be hid in the wall of the garret.”
“And, as we’re out of wood, Mr. Peter,” said Tabitha, puffing and
panting with her late gymnastics, “as fast as you tear the house down
I’ll make a fire with the pieces.”
Gorgeous that night were the dreams of Peter Goldthwaite. At one time
he was turning a ponderous key in an iron door not unlike the door of a
sepulchre, but which, being opened, disclosed a vault heaped up with
gold coin as plentifully as golden corn in a granary. There were chased
goblets, also, and tureens, salvers, dinner-dishes and dish-covers of
gold or silver-gilt, besides chains and other jewels, incalculably
rich, though tarnished with the damps of the vault; for, of all the
wealth that was irrevocably lost to man, whether buried in the earth or
sunken in the sea, Peter Goldthwaite had found it in this one
treasure-place. Anon he had returned to the old house as poor as ever,
and was received at the door by the gaunt and grizzled figure of a man
whom he might have mistaken for himself, only that his garments were of
a much elder fashion. But the house, without losing its former aspect,
had been changed into a palace of the precious metals. The floors,
walls and ceilings were of burnished silver; the doors, the
window-frames, the cornices, the balustrades and the steps of the
staircase, of pure gold; and silver, with gold bottoms, were the
chairs, and gold, standing on silver legs, the high chests of drawers,
and silver the bedsteads, with blankets of woven gold and sheets of
silver tissue. The house had evidently been transmuted by a single
touch, for it retained all the marks that Peter remembered, but in gold
or silver instead of wood, and the initials of his name—which when a
boy he had cut in the wooden door-post—remained as deep in the pillar
of gold. A happy man would have been Peter Goldthwaite except for a
certain ocular deception which, whenever he glanced backward, caused
the house to darken from its glittering magnificence into the sordid
gloom of yesterday.
Up betimes rose Peter, seized an axe, hammer and saw which he had
placed by his bedside, and hied him to the garret. It was but scantily
lighted up as yet by the frosty fragments of a sunbeam which began to
glimmer through the almost opaque bull-eyes of the window. A moralizer
might find abundant themes for his speculative and impracticable wisdom
in a garret. There is the limbo of departed fashions, aged trifles of a
day and whatever was valuable only to one generation of men, and which
passed to the garret when that generation passed to the grave—not for
safekeeping, but to be out of the way. Peter saw piles of yellow and
musty account-books in parchment covers, wherein creditors long dead
and buried had written the names of dead and buried debtors in ink now
so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible. He found
old moth-eaten garments, all in rags and tatters, or Peter would have
put them on. Here was a naked and rusty sword—not a sword of service,
but a gentleman’s small French rapier—which had never left its scabbard
till it lost it. Here were canes of twenty different sorts, but no
gold-headed ones, and shoebuckles of various pattern and material, but
not silver nor set with precious stones. Here was a large box full of
shoes with high heels and peaked toes. Here, on a shelf, were a
multitude of phials half filled with old apothecary’s stuff which, when
the other half had done its business on Peter’s ancestors, had been
brought hither from the death-chamber. Here—not to give a longer
inventory of articles that will never be put up at auction—was the
fragment of a full-length looking-glass which by the dust and dimness
of its surface made the picture of these old things look older than the
reality. When Peter, not knowing that there was a mirror there, caught
the faint traces of his own figure, he partly imagined that the former
Peter Goldthwaite had come back either to assist or impede his search
for the hidden wealth. And at that moment a strange notion glimmered
through his brain that he was the identical Peter who had concealed the
gold, and ought to know whereabout it lay. This, however, he had
unaccountably forgotten.
“Well, Mr. Peter!” cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs. “Have you torn
the house down enough to heat the teakettle?”
“Not yet, old Tabby,” answered Peter, “but that’s soon done, as you
shall see.” With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe, and laid
about him so vigorously that the dust flew, the boards crashed, and in
a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish.
“We shall get our winter’s wood cheap,” quoth Tabitha.
The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat down all before him,
smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers, unclenching spike-nails,
ripping and tearing away boards, with a tremendous racket from morning
till night. He took care, however, to leave the outside shell of the
house untouched, so that the neighbors might not suspect what was going
on.
Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made him happy while it
lasted, had Peter been happier than now. Perhaps, after all, there was
something in Peter Goldthwaite’s turn of mind which brought him an
inward recompense for all the external evil that it caused. If he were
poor, ill-clad, even hungry and exposed, as it were, to be utterly
annihilated by a precipice of impending ruin, yet only his body
remained in these miserable circumstances, while his aspiring soul
enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity. It was his nature to be
always young, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so. Gray
hairs were nothing—no, nor wrinkles nor infirmity; he might look old,
indeed, and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old figure
much the worse for wear, but the true, the essential Peter was a young
man of high hopes just entering on the world. At the kindling of each
new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes.
It rose exulting now. Having lived thus long—not too long, but just to
the right age—a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender dreams, he
resolved, so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light, to go
a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town. What heart could
resist him? Happy Peter Goldthwaite!
Every evening—as Peter had long absented himself from his former
lounging-places at insurance offices, news-rooms, and book-stores, and
as the honor of his company was seldom requested in private circles—he
and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen hearth. This was
always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his day’s labor. As the
foundation of the fire there would be a goodly-sized back-log of red
oak, which after being sheltered from rain or damp above a century
still hissed with the heat and distilled streams of water from each
end, as if the tree had been cut down within a week or two. Next there
were large sticks, sound, black and heavy, which had lost the principle
of decay and were indestructible except by fire, wherein they glowed
like red-hot bars of iron. On this solid basis Tabitha would rear a
lighter structure, composed of the splinters of door-panels, ornamented
mouldings, and such quick combustibles, which caught like straw and
threw a brilliant blaze high up the spacious flue, making its sooty
sides visible almost to the chimney-top. Meantime, the gloom of the old
kitchen would be chased out of the cobwebbed corners and away from the
dusky cross-beams overhead, and driven nobody could tell whither, while
Peter smiled like a gladsome man and Tabitha seemed a picture of
comfortable age. All this, of course, was but an emblem of the bright
fortune which the destruction of the house would shed upon its
occupants.
While the dry pine was flaming and crackling like an irregular
discharge of fairy-musketry, Peter sat looking and listening in a
pleasant state of excitement; but when the brief blaze and uproar were
succeeded by the dark-red glow, the substantial heat and the deep
singing sound which were to last throughout the evening, his humor
became talkative. One night—the hundredth time—he teased Tabitha to
tell him something new about his great-granduncle.
“You have been sitting in that chimney-corner fifty-five years, old
Tabby, and must have heard many a tradition about him,” said Peter.
“Did not you tell me that when you first came to the house there was an
old woman sitting where you sit now who had been housekeeper to the
famous Peter Goldthwaite?”
“So there was, Mr. Peter,” answered Tabitha, “and she was near about a
hundred years old. She used to say that she and old Peter Goldthwaite
had often spent a sociable evening by the kitchen fire—pretty much as
you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter.”
“The old fellow must have resembled me in more points than one,” said
Peter, complacently, “or he never would have grown so rich. But
methinks he might have invested the money better than he did. No
interest! nothing but good security! and the house to be torn down to
come at it! What made him hide it so snug, Tabby?”
“Because he could not spend it,” said Tabitha, “for as often as he went
to unlock the chest the Old Scratch came behind and caught his arm. The
money, they say, was paid Peter out of his purse, and he wanted Peter
to give him a deed of this house and land, which Peter swore he would
not do.”
“Just as I swore to John Brown, my old partner,” remarked Peter. “But
this is all nonsense, Tabby; I don’t believe the story.”
“Well, it may not be just the truth,” said Tabitha, “for some folks say
that Peter did make over the house to the Old Scratch, and that’s the
reason it has always been so unlucky to them that lived in it. And as
soon as Peter had given him the deed the chest flew open, and Peter
caught up a handful of the gold. But, lo and behold! there was nothing
in his fist but a parcel of old rags.”
“Hold your tongue, you silly old Tabby!” cried Peter, in great wrath.
“They were as good golden guineas as ever bore the effigies of the king
of England. It seems as if I could recollect the whole circumstance,
and how I, or old Peter, or whoever it was, thrust in my hand, or his
hand, and drew it out all of a blaze with gold. Old rags indeed!”
But it was not an old woman’s legend that would discourage Peter
Goldthwaite. All night long he slept among pleasant dreams, and awoke
at daylight with a joyous throb of the heart which few are fortunate
enough to feel beyond their boyhood. Day after day he labored hard
without wasting a moment except at meal-times, when Tabitha summoned
him to the pork and cabbage, or such other sustenance as she had picked
up or Providence had sent them. Being a truly pious man, Peter never
failed to ask a blessing—if the food were none of the best, then so
much the more earnestly, as it was more needed—nor to return thanks, if
the dinner had been scanty, yet for the good appetite which was better
than a sick stomach at a feast. Then did he hurry back to his toil, and
in a moment was lost to sight in a cloud of dust from the old walls,
though sufficiently perceptible to the ear by the clatter which he
raised in the midst of it.
How enviable is the consciousness of being usefully employed! Nothing
troubled Peter, or nothing but those phantoms of the mind which seem
like vague recollections, yet have also the aspect of presentiments. He
often paused with his axe uplifted in the air, and said to himself,
“Peter Goldthwaite, did you never strike this blow before?” or “Peter,
what need of tearing the whole house down? Think a little while, and
you will remember where the gold is hidden.” Days and weeks passed on,
however, without any remarkable discovery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean
gray rat peeped forth at the lean gray man, wondering what devil had
got into the old house, which had always been so peaceable till now.
And occasionally Peter sympathized with the sorrows of a female mouse
who had brought five or six pretty, little, soft and delicate young
ones into the world just in time to see them crushed by its ruin. But
as yet no treasure.
By this time, Peter, being as determined as fate and as diligent as
time, had made an end with the uppermost regions and got down to the
second story, where he was busy in one of the front chambers. It had
formerly been the state-bedchamber, and was honored by tradition as the
sleeping-apartment of Governor Dudley and many other eminent guests.
The furniture was gone. There were remnants of faded and tattered
paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare wall ornamented with charcoal
sketches, chiefly of people’s heads in profile. These being specimens
of Peter’s youthful genius, it went more to his heart to obliterate
them than if they had been pictures on a church wall by Michael Angelo.
One sketch, however, and that the best one, affected him differently.
It represented a ragged man partly supporting himself on a spade and
bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with one hand extended
to grasp something that he had found. But close behind him, with a
fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure with horns, a tufted
tail and a cloven hoof.
“Avaunt, Satan!” cried Peter. “The man shall have his gold.” Uplifting
his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the head as not
only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the whole
scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite through the
plaster and laths and discovered a cavity.
“Mercy on us, Mr. Peter! Are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch?”
said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the dinner-pot.
Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of
the wall, and laid open a small closet or cupboard on one side of the
fireplace, about breast-high from the ground. It contained nothing but
a brass lamp covered with verdigris, and a dusty piece of parchment.
While Peter inspected the latter, Tabitha seized the lamp and began to
rub it with her apron.
“There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha,” said Peter. “It is not
Aladdin’s lamp, though I take it to be a token of as much luck. Look
here, Tabby!”
Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her nose, which was
saddled with a pair of iron-bound spectacles. But no sooner had she
begun to puzzle over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding
both her hands against her sides.
“You can’t make a fool of the old woman,” cried she. “This is your own
handwriting, Mr. Peter, the same as in the letter you sent me from
Mexico.”
“There is certainly a considerable resemblance,” said Peter, again
examining the parchment. “But you know yourself, Tabby, that this
closet must have been plastered up before you came to the house or I
came into the world. No; this is old Peter Goldthwaite’s writing. These
columns of pounds, shillings and pence are his figures, denoting the
amount of the treasure, and this, at the bottom, is doubtless a
reference to the place of concealment. But the ink has either faded or
peeled off, so that it is absolutely illegible. What a pity!”
“Well, this lamp is as good as new. That’s some comfort,” said Tabitha.
“A lamp!” thought Peter. “That indicates light on my researches.”
For the present Peter felt more inclined to ponder on this discovery
than to resume his labors. After Tabitha had gone down stairs he stood
poring over the parchment at one of the front windows, which was so
obscured with dust that the sun could barely throw an uncertain shadow
of the casement across the floor. Peter forced it open and looked out
upon the great street of the town, while the sun looked in at his old
house. The air, though mild, and even warm, thrilled Peter as with a
dash of water.
It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the
housetops, but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops,
which sparkled downward through the sunshine with the noise of a summer
shower beneath the eaves. Along the street the trodden snow was as hard
and solid as a pavement of white marble, and had not yet grown moist in
the spring-like temperature. But when Peter thrust forth his head, he
saw that the inhabitants, if not the town, were already thawed out by
this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter weather. It gladdened
him—a gladness with a sigh breathing through it—to see the stream of
ladies gliding along the slippery sidewalks with their red cheeks set
off by quilted hoods, boas and sable capes like roses amidst a new kind
of foliage. The sleigh bells jingled to and fro continually, sometimes
announcing the arrival of a sleigh from Vermont laden with the frozen
bodies of porkers or sheep, and perhaps a deer or two; sometimes, of a
regular marketman with chickens, geese and turkeys, comprising the
whole colony of a barn-yard; and sometimes, of a farmer and his dame
who had come to town partly for the ride, partly to go a-shopping and
partly for the sale of some eggs and butter. This couple rode in an
old-fashioned square sleigh which had served them twenty winters and
stood twenty summers in the sun beside their door. Now a gentleman and
lady skimmed the snow in an elegant car shaped somewhat like a
cockle-shell; now a stage-sleigh with its cloth curtains thrust aside
to admit the sun dashed rapidly down the street, whirling in and out
among the vehicles that obstructed its passage; now came round a corner
the similitude of Noah’s ark on runners, being an immense open sleigh
with seats for fifty people and drawn by a dozen horses. This spacious
receptacle was populous with merry maids and merry bachelors, merry
girls and boys and merry old folks, all alive with fun and grinning to
the full width of their mouths. They kept up a buzz of babbling voices
and low laughter, and sometimes burst into a deep, joyous shout which
the spectators answered with three cheers, while a gang of roguish boys
let drive their snow-balls right among the pleasure-party. The sleigh
passed on, and when concealed by a bend of the street was still audible
by a distant cry of merriment.
Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was constituted by all
these accessories—the bright sun, the flashing water-drops, the
gleaming snow, the cheerful multitude, the variety of rapid vehicles
and the jingle-jangle of merry bells which made the heart dance to
their music. Nothing dismal was to be seen except that peaked piece of
antiquity Peter Goldthwaite’s house, which might well look sad
externally, since such a terrible consumption was preying on its
insides. And Peter’s gaunt figure, half visible in the projecting
second story, was worthy of his house.
“Peter! How goes it, friend Peter?” cried a voice across the street as
Peter was drawing in his head. “Look out here, Peter!”
Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite
sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his furred cloak thrown open,
disclosing a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the
attention of the whole town to Peter Goldthwaite’s window, and to the
dusty scarecrow which appeared at it.
“I say, Peter!” cried Mr. Brown, again; “what the devil are you about
there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are repairing
the old house, I suppose, making a new one of it? Eh?”
“Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown,” replied Peter. “If I make
it new, it will be new inside and out, from the cellar upward.”
“Had not you better let me take the job?” said Mr. Brown,
significantly.
“Not yet,” answered Peter, hastily shutting the window; for ever since
he had been in search of the treasure he hated to have people stare at
him.
As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the
secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter’s
visage with precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid
chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had
probably worn when he gloried in the building of a strong house for a
home to many generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very
dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal, too, in contrast with
the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse into
the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which
the world kept itself cheerful and prosperous by social pleasures and
an intercourse of business, while he in seclusion was pursuing an
object that might possibly be a phantasm by a method which most people
would call madness. It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of
life that each person rectifies his mind by other minds and squares his
conduct to that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in
eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had exposed himself to this influence
by merely looking out of the window. For a while he doubted whether
there were any hidden chest of gold, and in that case whether it was so
exceedingly wise to tear the house down only to be convinced of its
non-existence.
But this was momentary. Peter the Destroyer resumed the task which Fate
had assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In the
course of his search he met with many things that are usually found in
the ruins of an old house, and also with some that are not. What seemed
most to the purpose was a rusty key which had been thrust into a chink
of the wall, with a wooden label appended to the handle, bearing the
initials “P.G.” Another singular discovery was that of a bottle of wine
walled up in an old oven. A tradition ran in the family that Peter’s
grandfather, a jovial officer in the old French war, had set aside many
dozens of the precious liquor for the benefit of topers then unborn.
Peter needed no cordial to sustain his hopes, and therefore kept the
wine to gladden his success. Many half-pence did he pick up that had
been lost through the cracks of the floor, and some few Spanish coins,
and the half of a broken sixpence which had doubtless been a
love-token. There was likewise a silver coronation medal of George III.
But old Peter Goldthwaite’s strong-box fled from one dark corner to
another, or otherwise eluded the second Peter’s clutches till, should
he seek much farther, he must burrow into the earth.
We will not follow him in his triumphant progress step by step. Suffice
it that Peter worked like a steam-engine and finished in that one
winter the job which all the former inhabitants of the house, with time
and the elements to aid them, had only half done in a century. Except
the kitchen, every room and chamber was now gutted. The house was
nothing but a shell, the apparition of a house, as unreal as the
painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect rind of a great
cheese in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till it was a cheese no
more. And Peter was the mouse.
What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burnt up, for she wisely
considered that without a house they should need no wood to warm it,
and therefore economy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said
to have dissolved in smoke and flown up among the clouds through the
great black flue of the kitchen chimney. It was an admirable parallel
to the feat of the man who jumped down his own throat.
On the night between the last day of winter and the first of spring
every chink and cranny had been ransacked except within the precincts
of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had
set in some hours before, and was still driven and tossed about the
atmosphere by a real hurricane which fought against the house as if the
prince of the air in person were putting the final stroke to Peter’s
labors. The framework being so much weakened and the inward props
removed, it would have been no marvel if in some stronger wrestle of
the blast the rotten walls of the edifice and all the peaked roofs had
come crashing down upon the owner’s head. He, however, was careless of
the peril, but as wild and restless as the night itself, or as the
flame that quivered up the chimney at each roar of the tempestuous
wind.
“The wine, Tabitha,” he cried—“my grandfather’s rich old wine! We will
drink it now.”
Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-corner and
placed the bottle before Peter, close beside the old brass lamp which
had likewise been the prize of his researches. Peter held it before his
eyes, and, looking through the liquid medium, beheld the kitchen
illuminated with a golden glory which also enveloped Tabitha and gilded
her silver hair and converted her mean garments into robes of queenly
splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream.
“Mr. Peter,” remarked Tabitha, “must the wine be drunk before the money
is found?”
“The money _is_ found!” exclaimed Peter, with a sort of fierceness.
“The chest is within my reach; I will not sleep till I have turned this
key in the rusty lock. But first of all let us drink.”
There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of the bottle
with old Peter Goldthwaite’s rusty key, and decapitated the sealed cork
at a single blow. He then filled two little china teacups which Tabitha
had brought from the cupboard. So clear and brilliant was this aged
wine that it shone within the cups and rendered the sprig of scarlet
flowers at the bottom of each more distinctly visible than when there
had been no wine there. Its rich and delicate perfume wasted itself
round the kitchen.
“Drink, Tabitha!” cried Peter. “Blessings on the honest old fellow who
set aside this good liquor for you and me! And here’s to Peter
Goldthwaite’s memory!”
“And good cause have we to remember him,” quoth Tabitha as she drank.
How many years, and through what changes of fortune and various
calamity, had that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to be
quaffed at last by two such boon-companions! A portion of the happiness
of a former age had been kept for them, and was now set free in a crowd
of rejoicing visions to sport amid the storm and desolation of the
present time. Until they have finished the bottle we must turn our eyes
elsewhere.
It so chanced that on this stormy night Mr. John Brown found himself
ill at ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair by the glowing grate of
anthracite which heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good
sort of a man, and kind and pitiful whenever the misfortunes of others
happened to reach his heart through the padded vest of his own
prosperity. This evening he had thought much about his old partner,
Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries and continual ill-luck, the
poverty of his dwelling at Mr. Brown’s last visit, and Peter’s crazed
and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at the window.
“Poor fellow!” thought Mr. John Brown. “Poor crack-brained Peter
Goldthwaite! For old acquaintance’ sake I ought to have taken care that
he was comfortable this rough winter.” These feelings grew so powerful
that, in spite of the inclement weather, he resolved to visit Peter
Goldthwaite immediately.
The strength of the impulse was really singular. Every shriek of the
blast seemed a summons, or would have seemed so had Mr. Brown been
accustomed to hear the echoes of his own fancy in the wind. Much amazed
at such active benevolence, he huddled himself in his cloak, muffled
his throat and ears in comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus
fortified, bade defiance to the tempest. But the powers of the air had
rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown was just weathering the corner
by Peter Goldthwaite’s house when the hurricane caught him off his
feet, tossed him face downward into a snow-bank and proceeded to bury
his protuberant part beneath fresh drifts. There seemed little hope of
his reappearance earlier than the next thaw. At the same moment his hat
was snatched away and whirled aloft into some far-distant region whence
no tidings have as yet returned.
Nevertheless Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a passage through the
snow-drift, and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered
onward to Peter’s door. There was such a creaking and groaning and
rattling, and such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice
that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He
therefore entered without ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen.
His intrusion even there was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with
their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest which apparently
they had just dragged from a cavity or concealed closet on the left
side of the chimney. By the lamp in the old woman’s hand Mr. Brown saw
that the chest was barred and clamped with iron, strengthened with iron
plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit receptacle in
which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants of
another.
Peter Goldthwaite was inserting a key into the lock.
“Oh, Tabitha,” cried he, with tremulous rapture, “how shall I endure
the effulgence? The gold!—the bright, bright gold! Methinks I can
remember my last glance at it just as the iron-plated lid fell down.
And ever since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in secret and
gathering its splendor against this glorious moment. It will flash upon
us like the noonday sun.”
“Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter!” said Tabitha, with somewhat less
patience than usual. “But, for mercy’s sake, do turn the key!”
And with a strong effort of both hands Peter did force the rusty key
through the intricacies of the rusty lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean time,
had drawn near and thrust his eager visage between those of the other
two at the instant that Peter threw up the lid. No sudden blaze
illuminated the kitchen.
“What’s here?” exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her spectacles and holding
the lamp over the open chest. “Old Peter Goldthwaite’s hoard of old
rags!”
“Pretty much so, Tabby,” said Mr. Brown, lifting a handful of the
treasure.
Oh what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter Goldthwaite raised
to scare himself out of his scanty wits withal! Here was the semblance
of an incalculable sum, enough to purchase the whole town and build
every street anew, but which, vast as it was, no sane man would have
given a solid sixpence for. What, then, in sober earnest, were the
delusive treasures of the chest? Why, here were old provincial bills of
credit and treasury notes and bills of land-banks, and all other
bubbles of the sort, from the first issue—above a century and a half
ago—down nearly to the Revolution. Bills of a thousand pounds were
intermixed with parchment pennies, and worth no more than they.
“And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure!” said John Brown.
“Your namesake, Peter, was something like yourself; and when the
provincial currency had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per cent, he
bought it up in expectation of a rise. I have heard my grandfather say
that old Peter gave his father a mortgage of this very house and land
to raise cash for his silly project. But the currency kept sinking till
nobody would take it as a gift, and there was old Peter Goldthwaite,
like Peter the second, with thousands in his strong-box and hardly a
coat to his back. He went mad upon the strength of it. But never mind,
Peter; it is just the sort of capital for building castles in the air.”
“The house will be down about our ears,” cried Tabitha as the wind
shook it with increasing violence.
“Let it fall,” said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself upon
the chest.
“No, no, my old friend Peter!” said John Brown. “I have house-room for
you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of treasure. To-morrow we
will try to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house; real
estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty handsome price.”
“And I,” observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving spirits, “have a
plan for laying out the cash to great advantage.”
“Why, as to that,” muttered John Brown to himself, “we must apply to
the next court for a guardian to take care of the solid cash; and if
Peter insists upon speculating, he may do it to his heart’s content
with old Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure.”