HIGH WATER AT YARDLEY
Ten years have passed away.
The sturdy little fellow in knee-trousers is a lad of seventeen, big
and strong for his age; Tod is three years older, and the two are still
inseparable. The brave commander of the pirate ship is now a
full-fledged fisherman and his father's main dependence. Archie is
again his chief henchman, and the two spend many a morning in Tod's
boat when the blue-fish are running. Old Fogarty does not mind it; he
rather likes it, and Mother Fogarty is always happier when the two are
together.
"If one of 'em gits overboard," she said one day to her husband,
"t'other kin save him."
"Save him! Well, I guess!" he replied. "Salt water skims off Archie
same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n you
kin a can buoy."
The boy has never forgotten Scootsy's epithet, although he has never
spoken of it to his mother--no one knows her now by any other name. She
thought the episode had passed out of his mind, but she did not know
everything that lay in the boy's heart. He and Tod had discussed it
time and again, and had wondered over his own name and that of his
nameless father, as boys wonder, but they had come to no conclusion. No
one in the village could tell them, for no one ever knew. He had asked
the doctor, but had only received a curious answer.
"What difference does it make, son, when you have such a mother? You
have brought her only honor, and the world loves her the better because
of you. Let it rest until she tells you; it will only hurt her heart if
you ask her now."
The doctor had already planned out the boy's future; he was to be sent
to Philadelphia to study medicine when his schooling was over, and was
then to come into his office and later on succeed to his practice.
Captain Holt would have none of it.
"He don't want to saw off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out
when he heard of it. "He wants to git ready to take a ship 'round Cape
Horn. If I had my way I'd send him some'er's where he could learn
navigation, and that's in the fo'c's'le of a merchantman. Give him a
year or two before the mast. I made that mistake with Bart--he loafed
round here too long and when he did git a chance he was too old."
Report had it that the captain was going to leave the lad his money,
and had therefore a right to speak; but no one knew. He was
closer-mouthed than ever, though not so gruff and ugly as he used to
be; Archie had softened him, they said, taking the place of that boy of
his he "druv out to die a good many years ago."
Jane's mind wavered. Neither profession suited her. She would sacrifice
anything she had for the boy provided they left him with her.
Philadelphia was miles away, and she would see him but seldom. The sea
she shrank from and dreaded. She had crossed it twice, and both times
with an aching heart. She feared, too, its treachery and cruelty. The
waves that curled and died on Barnegat beach--messengers from across
the sea--brought only tidings fraught with suffering.
Archie had no preferences--none yet. His future was too far off to
trouble him much. Nor did anything else worry him.
One warm September day Archie turned into Yardley gate, his so'wester
still on his head framing his handsome, rosy face; his loose jacket
open at the throat, the tarpaulins over his arm. He had been outside
the inlet with Tod--since daybreak, in fact--fishing for bass and
weakfish.
Jane had been waiting for him for hours. She held an open letter in her
hand, and her face was happier, Archie thought as he approached her,
than he had seen it for months.
There are times in all lives when suddenly and without warning, those
who have been growing quietly by our side impress their new development
upon us. We look at them in full assurance that the timid glance of the
child will be returned, and are astounded to find instead the calm gaze
of the man; or we stretch out our hand to help the faltering step and
touch a muscle that could lead a host. Such changes are like the
breaking of the dawn; so gradual has been their coming that the full
sun of maturity is up and away flooding the world with beauty and light
before we can recall the degrees by which it rose.
Jane realized this--and for the first time--as she looked at Archie
swinging through the gate, waving his hat as he strode toward her. She
saw that the sailor had begun to assert itself. He walked with an easy
swing, his broad shoulders--almost as broad as the captain's and twice
as hard--thrown back, his head up, his blue eyes and white teeth
laughing out of a face brown and ruddy with the sun and wind, his
throat and neck bare except for the silk handkerchief--one of
Tod's--wound loosely about it; a man really, strong and tough, with
hard sinews and capable thighs, back, and wrists--the kind of sailorman
that could wear tarpaulins or broadcloth at his pleasure and never lose
place in either station.
In this rude awakening Jane's heart-strings tightened. She became
suddenly conscious that the Cobden look had faded out of him; Lucy's
eyes and hair were his, and so was her rounded chin, with its dimple,
but there was nothing else about him that recalled either her own
father or any other Cobden she remembered. As he came near enough for
her to look into his eyes she began to wonder how he would impress
Lucy, what side of his nature would she love best--his courage and
strength or his tenderness?
The sound of his voice shouting her name recalled her to herself, and a
thrill of pride illumined her happy face like a burst of sunlight as he
tossed his tarpaulins on the grass and put his strong arms about her.
"Mother, dear! forty black bass, eleven weakfish, and half a barrel of
small fry--what do you think of that?"
"Splendid, Archie. Tod must be proud as a peacock. But look at this!"
and she held up the letter. "Who do you think it's from? Guess now,"
and she locked one arm through his, and the two strolled back to the
house.
"Guess now!" she repeated, holding the letter behind her back. The two
were often like lovers together.
"Let me see," he coaxed. "What kind of a stamp has it got?"
"Never you mind about the stamp."
"Uncle John--and it's about my going to Philadelphia."
Jane laughed. "Uncle John never saw it."
"Then it's from--Oh, you tell me, mother!"
"No--guess. Think of everybody you ever heard of. Those you have seen
and those you--"
"Oh, I know--Aunt Lucy."
"Yes, and she's coming home. Home, Archie, think of it, after all these
years!"
"Well, that's bully! She won't know me, will she? I never saw her, did
I?"
"Yes, when you were a little fellow." It was difficult to keep the
tremor out of her voice.
"Will she bring any dukes and high daddies with her?"
"No," laughed Jane, "only her little daughter Ellen, the sweetest
little girl you ever saw, she writes."
"How old is she?"
He had slipped his arm around his mother's waist now and the two were
"toeing it" up the path, he stopping every few feet to root a pebble
from its bed. The coming of the aunt was not a great event in his life.
"Just seven her last birthday."
"All right, she's big enough. We'll take her out and teach her to fish.
Hello, granny!" and the boy loosened his arm as he darted up the steps
toward Martha. "Got the finest mess of fish coming up here in a little
while you ever laid your eyes on," he shouted, catching the old nurse's
cap from her head and clapping it upon his own, roaring with laughter,
as he fled in the direction of the kitchen.
Jane joined in the merriment and, moving a chair from the hall, took
her seat on the porch to await the boy's return. She was too happy to
busy herself about the house or to think of any of her outside duties.
Doctor John would not be in until the afternoon, and so she would
occupy herself in thinking out plans to make her sister's home-coming a
joyous one.
As she looked down over the garden as far as the two big gate-posts
standing like grim sentinels beneath the wide branches of the hemlocks,
and saw how few changes had taken place in the old home since her girl
sister had left it, her heart thrilled with joy. Nothing really was
different; the same mass of tangled rose-vines climbed over the
porch--now quite to the top of the big roof, but still the same dear
old vines that Lucy had loved in her childhood; the same honeysuckle
hid the posts; the same box bordered the paths. The house was just as
she left it; her bedroom had really never been touched. What few
changes had taken place she would not miss. Meg would not run out to
meet her, and Rex was under a stone that the doctor had placed over his
grave; nor would Ann Gossaway peer out of her eyrie of a window and
follow her with her eyes as she drove by; her tongue was quiet at last,
and she and her old mother lay side by side in the graveyard. Doctor
John had exhausted his skill upon them both, and Martha, who had
forgiven her enemy, had sat by her bedside until the end, but nothing
had availed. Mrs. Cavendish was dead, of course, but she did not think
Lucy would care very much. She and Doctor John had nursed her for
months until the end came, and had then laid her away near the
apple-trees she was so fond of. But most of the faithful hearts who had
loved her were still beating, and all were ready with a hearty welcome.
Archie was the one thing new--new to Lucy. And yet she had no fear
either for him or for Lucy. When she saw him she would love him, and
when she had known him a week she would never be separated from him
again. The long absence could not have wiped out all remembrance of the
boy, nor would the new child crowd him from her heart.
When Doctor John sprang from his gig (the custom of his daily visits
had never been broken) she could hardly wait until he tied his
horse--poor Bess had long since given out--to tell him the joyful news.
He listened gravely, his face lighting up at her happiness. He was glad
for Jane and said so frankly, but the situation did not please him. He
at heart really dreaded the effect of Lucy's companionship on the woman
he loved. Although it had been years since he had seen her, he had
followed her career, especially since her marriage, with the greatest
interest and with the closest attention. He had never forgotten, nor
had he forgiven her long silence of two years after her marriage,
during which time she had never written Jane a line, nor had he ever
ceased to remember Jane's unhappiness over it. Jane had explained it
all to him on the ground that Lucy was offended because she had opposed
the marriage, but the doctor knew differently. Nor had he ceased to
remember the other letters which followed, and how true a story they
told of Lucy's daily life and ambitions. He could almost recall the
wording of one of them. "My husband is too ill," it had said, "to go
south with me, and so I will run down to Rome for a month or so, for I
really need the change." And a later one, written since his death, in
which she wrote of her winter in Paris and at Monte Carlo, and "how
good my mother-in-law is to take care of Ellen." This last letter to
her sister, just received--the one he then held in his hand, and which
gave Jane such joy, and which he was then reading as carefully as if it
had been a prescription--was to his analytical mind like all the rest
of its predecessors. One sentence sent a slight curl to his lips. "I
cannot stay away any longer from my precious sister," it said, "and am
coming back to the home I adore. I have no one to love me, now that my
dear husband is dead, but you and my darling Ellen."
The news of Lucy's expected return spread rapidly. Old Martha in her
joy was the mouthpiece. She gave the details out at church the Sunday
morning following the arrival of Lucy's letter. She was almost too ill
to venture out, but she made the effort, stopping the worshippers as
they came down the board walk; telling each one of the good news, the
tears streaming down her face. To the children and the younger
generation the announcement made but little difference; some of them
had never heard that Miss Jane had a sister, and others only that she
lived abroad. Their mothers knew, of course, and so did the older men,
and all were pleased over the news. Those of them who remembered the
happy, joyous girl with her merry eyes and ringing laugh were ready to
give her a hearty welcome; they felt complimented that the
distinguished lady--fifteen years' residence abroad and a rich husband
had gained her this position--should be willing to exchange the great
Paris for the simple life of Warehold. It touched their civic pride.
Great preparations were accordingly made. Billy Tatham's successor (his
son)--in his best open carriage--was drawn up at the station, and
Lucy's drive through the village with some of her numerous boxes
covered with foreign labels piled on the seat beside the young man--who
insisted on driving Lucy and the child himself--was more like the
arrival of a princess revisiting her estates than anything else. Martha
and Archie and Jane filled the carriage, with little Ellen on Archie's
lap, and more than one neighbor ran out of the house and waved to them
as they drove through the long village street and turned into the gate.
Archie threw his arms around Lucy when he saw her, and in his open,
impetuous way called her his "dear aunty," telling her how glad he was
that she had come to keep his good mother from getting so sad at times,
and adding that she and granny had not slept for days before she came,
so eager were they to see her. And Lucy kissed him in return, but with
a different throb at her heart. She felt a thrill when she saw how
handsome and strong he was, and for an instant there flashed through
her a feeling of pride that he was her own flesh and blood. Then there
had come a sudden revulsion, strangling every emotion but the one of
aversion--an aversion so overpowering that she turned suddenly and
catching Ellen in her arms kissed her with so lavish a display of
affection that those at the station who witnessed the episode had only
praise for the mother's devotion. Jane saw the kiss Lucy had given
Archie, and a cry of joy welled up in her heart, but she lost the
shadow that followed. My lady of Paris was too tactful for that.
Her old room was all ready. Jane, with Martha helping, had spent days
in its preparation. White dimity curtains starched stiff as a petticoat
had been hung at the windows; a new lace cover spread on the little
mahogany, brass-mounted dressing-table--her great grandmother's, in
fact--with its tiny swinging mirror and the two drawers (Martha
remembered when her bairn was just high enough to look into the
mirror), and pots of fresh flowers placed on the long table on which
her hooks used to rest. Two easy-chairs had also been brought up from
the sitting-room below, covered with new chintz and tied with blue
ribbons, and, more wonderful still, a candle-box had been covered with
cretonne and studded with brass tacks by the aid of Martha's stiff
fingers that her bairn might have a place in which to put her dainty
shoes and slippers.
When the trunks had been carried upstairs and Martha with her own hands
had opened my lady's gorgeous blue morocco dressing-case with its
bottles capped with gold and its brushes and fittings emblazoned with
cupids swinging in garlands of roses, the poor woman's astonishment
knew no bounds. The many scents and perfumes, the dainty boxes, big and
little, holding various powders--one a red paste which the old nurse
thought must be a salve, but about which, it is needless to say, she
was greatly mistaken--as well as a rabbit's foot smirched with rouge
(this she determined to wash at once), and a tiny box of court-plaster
cut in half moons. So many things, in fact, did the dear old nurse pull
from this wonderful bag that the modest little bureau could not hold
half of them, and the big table had to be brought up and swept of its
plants and belongings.
The various cosmetics and their uses were especial objects of comment.
"Did ye break one of the bottles, darlin'?" she asked, sniffing at a
peculiar perfume which seemed to permeate everything. "Some of 'em must
have smashed; it's awful strong everywhere--smell that"--and she held
out a bit of lace which she had taken from the case, a dressing-sacque
that Lucy had used on the steamer.
Lucy laughed. "And you don't like it? How funny, you dear old thing!
That was made specially for me; no one else in Paris has a drop."
And then the dresses! Particularly the one she was to wear the first
night--a dress flounced and furbelowed and of a creamy white (she still
wore mourning--delicate purples shading to white--the exact tone for a
husband six months dead). And the filmy dressing-gowns, and, more
wonderful than all, the puff of smoke she was to sleep in, held
together by a band of violet ribbon; to say nothing of the dainty
slippers bound about with swan's-down, and the marvellous hats, endless
silk stockings of mauve, white, and black, and long and short gloves.
In all her life Martha had never seen or heard of such things. The room
was filled with them and the two big closets crammed to overflowing,
and yet a dozen trunks were not yet unpacked, including the two small
boxes holding little Ellen's clothes.
The night was one long to be remembered. Everyone said the Manor House
had not been so gay for years. And they were all there--all her old
friends and many of Jane's new ones, who for years had looked on Lucy
as one too far above them in station to be spoken of except with bated
breath.
The intimates of the house came early. Doctor John first, with his
grave manner and low voice--so perfectly dressed and quiet: Lucy
thought she had never seen his equal in bearing and demeanor, nor one
so distinguished-looking--not in any circle in Europe; and Uncle
Ephraim, grown fat and gouty, leaning on a cane, but still hearty and
wholesome, and overjoyed to see her; and Pastor Dellenbaugh--his hair
was snow-white now--and his complacent and unruffled wife; and the
others, including Captain Holt, who came in late. It was almost a
repetition of that other home-coming years before, when they had
gathered to greet her, then a happy, joyous girl just out of school.
Lucy in their honor wore the dress that had so astonished Martha, and a
diamond-studded ornament which she took from her jewel-case and
fastened in her hair. The dress followed the wonderful curves of her
beautiful body in all its dimpled plumpness and the jewel set off to
perfection the fresh, oval face, laughing blue eyes--wet forget-me-nots
were the nearest their color--piquant, upturned nose and saucy mouth.
The color of the gown, too, harmonized both with the delicate pink of
her cheeks and with the tones of her rather too full throat showing
above the string of pearls that clasped it.
Jane wore a simple gray silk gown which followed closely the slender
and almost attenuated lines of her figure. This gown the doctor always
loved because, as he told her, it expressed so perfectly the simplicity
of her mind and life. Her only jewels were her deep, thoughtful eyes,
and these, to-night, were brilliant with joy over her sister's return.
As Jane moved about welcoming her guests the doctor, whose eyes rarely
left her face, became conscious that at no time in their lives had the
contrast between the two sisters been greater.
One, a butterfly of thirty-eight, living only in the glow of the
sunlight, radiant in plumage, alighting first on one flower and then on
another, but always on flowers, never on weeds; gathering such honey as
suited her taste; never resting where she might by any chance be
compelled to use her feet, but always poised in air; a woman, rich,
brilliant, and beautiful, and--here was the key-note of her
life--always, year in and year out, warmed by somebody's admiration,
whose she didn't much mind nor care, so that it gratified her pride and
relieved her of ennui. The other--and this one he loved with his whole
soul--a woman of forty-six, with a profound belief in her creeds;
quixotic sometimes in her standards, but always sincere; devoted to her
traditions, to her friends and to her duty; unselfish, tender-hearted,
and self-sacrificing; whose feet, though often tired and bleeding, had
always trodden the earth.
As Lucy greeted first one neighbor and then another, sometimes with one
hand, sometimes with two, offering her cheek now and then to some old
friend who had known her as a child, Jane's heart swelled with
something of the pride she used to have when Lucy was a girl. Her
beautiful sister, she saw, had lost none of the graciousness of her old
manner, nor of her tact in making her guests feel perfectly at home.
Jane noticed, too--and this was new to her--a certain well-bred
condescension, so delicately managed as never to be offensive--more the
air of a woman accustomed to many sorts and conditions of men and
women, and who chose to be agreeable as much to please herself as to
please her guests.
And yet with all this poise of manner and condescending graciousness,
there would now and then dart from Lucy's eyes a quick, searching
glance of inquiry, as she tried to read her guests' thoughts, followed
by a relieved look on her own face as she satisfied herself that no
whisper of her past had ever reached them. These glances Jane never
caught.
Doctor John was most cordial in his greeting and talked to her a long
time about some portions of Europe, particularly a certain cafe in
Dresden where he used to dine, and another in Paris frequented by the
beau monde. She answered him quite frankly, telling him of some of her
own experiences in both places, quite forgetting that she was giving
him glimpses of her own life while away--glimpses which she had kept
carefully concealed from Jane or Martha. She was conscious, however,
after he had left her of a certain uncomfortable feeling quivering
through her as his clear, steadfast eyes looked into hers, he listened,
and yet she thought she detected his brain working behind his steadfast
gaze. It was as if he was searching for some hidden disease. "He knows
something," she said to herself, when the doctor moved to let someone
else take his place. "How much I can't tell. I'll get it all out of
sister."
Blunt and bluff Captain Holt, white-whiskered and white-haired now, but
strong and hearty, gave her another and a different shock. What his
first words would be when they met and how she would avoid discussing
the subject uppermost in their minds if, in his rough way, he insisted
on talking about it, was one of the things that had worried her greatly
when she decided to come home, for there was never any doubt in her
mind as to his knowledge. But she misjudged the captain, as had a great
many others who never looked beneath the rugged bark covering his heart
of oak.
"I'm glad you've come at last," he said gravely, hardly touching her
hand in welcome, "you ought to have been here before. Jane's got a fine
lad of her own that she's bringin' up; when you know him ye'll like
him."
She did not look at him when she answered, but a certain feeling of
relief crept over her. She saw that the captain had buried the past and
intended never to revive it.
The stern look on his face only gave way when little Ellen came to him
of her own accord and climbing up into his lap said in her broken
English that she heard he was a great captain and that she wanted him
to tell her some stories like her good papa used to tell her. "He was
gray like you," she said, "and big," and she measured the size with her
plump little arms that showed out of her dainty French dress.
With Doctor John and Captain Holt out of the way Lucy's mind was at
rest. "Nobody else round about Yardley except these two knows," she
kept saying to herself with a bound of relief, "and for these I don't
care. The doctor is Jane's slave, and the captain is evidently wise
enough not to uncover skeletons locked up in his own closet."
These things settled in her mind, my lady gave herself up to whatever
enjoyment, compatible with her rapidly fading mourning, the simple
surroundings afforded, taking her cue from the conditions that
confronted her and ordering her conduct accordingly and along these
lines: Archie was her adopted nephew, the son of an old friend of
Jane's, and one whom she would love dearly, as, in fact, she would
anybody else whom Jane had brought up; she herself was a gracious widow
of large means recovering from a great sorrow; one who had given up the
delights of foreign courts to spend some time among her dear people who
had loved her as a child. Here for a time would she bring up and
educate her daughter.
"To be once more at home, and in dear old Warehold, too!" she had said
with upraised Madonna-like eyes and clasped hands to a group of women
who were hanging on every word that dropped from her pretty lips. "Do
you know what that is to me? There is hardly a day I have not longed
for it. Pray, forgive me if I do not come to see you as often as I
would, but I really hate to be an hour outside of the four walls of my
precious home."