THE RETURN
JACK wrote back to Marlborough from Jamestown, and again from Yorktown
just before he sailed—letters full of homesickness and of longing.
Perhaps the most unhappy hours of his life were those one or two when,
from the poop-deck of the great ship, he saw the bluffs of Yorktown
fall further and further astern while, one after another, the great
square sails high overhead burst out to the swift cold wind that
hummed away to the eastward, driving the water in white-capped ridges
before it. He sensed nothing of the windy glory of that morning; he
was so full of the heavy weight of his melancholy that he could not
stand still for a minute, but walked up and down, up and down the deck
continually, his soul full to overflowing with that deep, yearning
passion of homesickness. A number of passengers—two ladies—one young
and one old—and half a dozen gentlemen also stood gazing out at the
shore as it fell away behind; yet it seemed to Jack that, in spite of
such companionship, he was more alone than ever he had been in all of
his life before.
How different were those other feelings when, six weeks later, he stood
with his fellow passengers (now grown into so many intimate friends)
and watched the distant cliff-walls of England rising up, ever higher
and higher, out of the ocean! Even six weeks of time may cure those
pangs of homesickness and of love-longings in a young and wholesome
heart.
The week that followed was one of such continued bustle and change that
no part of it had time to really come close enough to him to be firmly
united to his life. The Thames; the journey from Gravesend; London, its
different people and different scenes; the long northward journey in
the coach—all these were mere broken fragments of events without any
coherency of ordinary sequence. Then at last he was at Grampton.
It was a fine and stately old place, with an air of quality such as he
had never known before—a great brick house, of old King James’s day,
with long wings and ivy-covered gables; with halls and passageways,
with wide terraced lawn, with gardens and deeply-wooded park.
That first moment of his arrival, he felt singularly lonely as he stood
in the great wainscoted hall, looking about him at the pictures on the
walls, the bits of armor, the stag’s antlers, the tall, stiff, carved
furniture. It was all ever so much greater and grander than he had
anticipated, and he felt himself altogether out of place and a stranger
in it. Then his uncle came hurrying to meet him and gave him a very
kind and hearty welcome to Grampton.
He had been settled in England for over a month before he heard from
Virginia. Then there came a great packet of letters all together; a
fat, bulky letter from Colonel Parker, one from Madam Parker, one from
Lieutenant Maynard, and a very long letter from Nelly Parker.
He held this last for a long time in his hands before he opened it,
recognizing, as he sat there, how greatly the keenness of that old
sweet passion had become dulled and blunted even in this short time. He
felt a sort of shame that it should be so, not knowing that it always
is thus.
It is a long time before one can get used to that strange time-wearing
that so rubs the keen, sharp outline of passion into the dim and
indistinct formlessness of mere memories; sometimes we grow gray before
we recognize that it must be so, and even then we wonder why it should
be.
Then he opened her letter and read it.
“We have had a great deal of company for the last two weeks,” said
a fragment of the letter. “There was an aunt Polly from the eastern
shore of the bay who brought my three cosins with her. And then my
uncle James came afterward with my other cosin, a boy of thirteen and
mightily spoiled, who will talk at table and give his opinion to my
father, who, as you know, can bare no man’s opinion but his own, much
less a boy’s of thirteen. But my cosins are dear, sweet girls whom I
have not seen for nigh four years,” and so on and so on. “The ‘Lyme,’
hath come back from Jamaca, too, and so Mr. Maynard was here and
brought two young gentlemen who are cadits along with him. You know
them very well, for they are Master Delliplace and Master Monk. And
so everything very gay. Well, I am gay, too, and do enjoy myself, but
indeed think oftener than I choose to tell you of some one a great ways
off in England.” And here Jack felt a strong yearning toward the writer
of the innocent, inconsequent words. There seemed to be a tender pathos
even in the misspelling here and there. Continuing, the letter said:
“Indeed and indeed I was truly sorry that I did not wake to see you go
away, for so I did entend to do, and so I ment to tell you I would do.
And indeed I could have boxed Cloe’s ears that she did not wake me, for
so she promised to do. But she did not wake herself, so how could she
wake me? I did not wake for a good long time after the boat had gone,
and when I waked the boat was way down the river at the bend. Alack!
I could have cried my eyes out. Do you beleve that? Well, I did cry,
and that not a little, for I was so sorry to have you gone that I could
have cried my eyes out for a week.” Toward the end of the letter she
said: “I had nigh forgot to tell you that my poor uncle Richard is
reported dead. He was in Jamaca, and Mr. Maynard says he was shott, but
how, he could not tell. So now the Roost is to be sold, and ’tis likely
that papa will buy it. Yesterday he said to mama, ‘What a fine thing it
would be if Jack could buy the Roost and come back to us again,’ for
indeed it is a fine plantation. And oh, I wish you could buy the Roost.”
After Jack had finished reading the letter he sat thinking a long time.
Would he ever go back to Virginia again? As he sat there, he felt a
sudden longing for it—its warm wildness, its pine woods, its wide
stretches of inland waters—and while the feeling was strong within
him, he sat down and wrote to her. “It is all very fine here”—he
said, “a great, grand house, with a wide park of trees, and a lawn
with terraces and stone steps, and a great garden all laid out in
patterns and scrolls, with box bushes and hedges trimmed into shapes of
peacocks and round balls and what not.” And so on in a page or so of
description. “My uncle is as kind as ever he can be, only—I will tell
you this in secret—he will drink too much wine at dinner, and then
sometimes is cross. Well, he is a dear, good, kind man, and almost like
a father to me. My Aunt Diana is kind to me, too, and my cousins—dear,
good, sweet girls—do all they can to make me happy. Yet I always think
of Virginia, and more than all else, when I am thinking of it, do I
think of one who stood with me at the window the last day I was there,
and wish I were there to see her again. Ay, sometimes I would give all
I have in the world if I could only be back again.” It was a great
pleasure for him to write this, and as he wrote it his heart warmed and
thrilled again. “Indeed, I did look for you that morning I went away,”
he wrote, “for I hoped to say good-by to you again when there was no
one by to hear me say it. But you did not come, and I went away so sad
and broken-hearted that I could almost have cried. I was so sad that I
would have given all the world to be back again.
“My uncle,” he wrote, “intends that I shall go to Cambridge College,
and so I study all day long with a tutor. But methinks I am slow and
dull at learning, excepting Latin and Greek, which my poor father
taught me when I was a boy, and which I know nigh as well as my tutor
himself. That I know perhaps in some places better than he. But yet,
if I could help it, I would not go to Cambridge College, but would go
back to Virginia again. Yet what can I do? It is four years, now, till
I come of age and enter into mine own, and then I can come and go as I
please. Do you not believe that it will please me to go straight back
to Virginia?”
He sat for a little while thinking, and then he wrote, “Whom, think
you, I saw a short while ago?—whom but Israel Hands, who hath come
back to England again. He found me out where I was living, and came
here begging. I did not know him at first, for he hath grown a great,
long beard. He limps with the knee, which he says is all stiff like
solid bone, and that he can only bend it—as indeed he showed me—a
tiny bit. He hath grown mightily poor and is in want. My uncle was
prodigiously interested in him, and would have him up in his cabinet
to talk with him, after he had something to eat and some beer in the
buttery. I gave him some money, and he went away happy. My uncle’s man
said that he was drinking down in the village that night, and so, I
suppose, spent all the money I gave him,—poor wretch.”
Then, thinking of another matter, he wrote: “I do not think I told
you aught of my cousin Edward. He is my uncle’s son, and is in the
Guards—a great, tall, handsome gentleman, who was here a while since
and was very kind to me; only he would forever tease me by calling me
his cousin the pirate, and would ask me to show him my pardon before he
would own me. But of course you must understand all this in jest.”
* * * * *
Jack was twenty years of age when his uncle Hezekiah died. The old man
left a great fortune of over thirty thousand pounds, a part of which
was invested in a large tract of land in Virginia. The next year Jack
left college, and the year after, in the following summer, took passage
to America to look after his property and to have it properly surveyed.
Colonel Parker, who had been the active agent in the purchase of the
land, invited him to come directly to Marlborough, and Jack gladly
accepted the invitation.
It seemed very wonderful to behold with the living eyes those old
familiar places once more. It was almost like stepping back from the
living present into a dim and far-away fragment of the beautiful past.
The very schooner that met him at Jamestown—how familiar it was! It
seemed to him that he remembered every turn of the scrollwork in the
little cabin.
They passed by the old Roost early in the morning. It stood out clear
and clean in the bright light, and Jack stood upon deck gazing, gazing
at it.
How full of associations it all was! and yet the place was very much
changed. The roof had been newly repaired, the house painted, and the
old stables were replaced with new outbuildings. The sharp outlines of
the old house and the two tall chimneys were, however, exactly as he
remembered them.
Turning, he could just see the houses at Bullock’s Landing on the other
side of the river; and, looking at the far-distant cluster of wooden
hovels, he almost lived over again the circumstances of that night of
his escape from his master.
It was after midday when the brick chimneys of Marlborough showed in
the distance across the wide, bright river above the trees, and it was
maybe two or three o’clock when he stepped ashore at the well-known
landing-wharf.
He saw that there was quite a company gathered on the lawn in front of
the house as he walked up from the landing along the familiar path. And
how familiar it all was—just exactly as he remembered it, only now, to
his riper knowledge, the great house appeared to have shrunk in size,
and to have become more bare and angular than he remembered it to have
been. The company upon the lawn had turned their faces toward him as
he came. They evidently had not seen the approach of the schooner. He
saw Colonel Parker at once and Madam Parker, but he did not see Nelly
Parker until she arose from among the others as he drew near. She
had changed very little, except that her slender, girlish figure had
rounded out into the greater fullness of womanhood. Jack was looking
straight at her, but he had seen that Harry Oliver was there also.
“Papa!—mamma!” she cried out, “t’is Jack!” And then she ran to meet
him, reaching out her hands and grasping both of his. Then, in an
instant, all was a general disturbance of voices and of coming forward.
Colonel Parker wrung Jack’s hand again and again, and Madam Parker
almost cried, giving him, not her hand, but her cheek to kiss.
“I hope Mr. Ballister will remember me,” said Harry Oliver.
“Indeed, yes,” said Jack, “I’m not likely to forget you,” and he took
the hand that was offered.
He saw in the brief moment of hand-shaking that Oliver had not improved
in his appearance. His face had begun to show a white, puffy look,
as though of dissipation, and there was a certain looseness about his
dress that Jack had not remembered. In his memory he had an image
of Harry Oliver as of a perfectly fine gentleman, and he wondered
passively whether the change that he now beheld was in the other or in
himself.
That night was full of a singular redundancy of happiness—one of those
periods of pellucid contentment which lies in after times so sweet a
center in the memory of other things. The room he occupied was the very
one that had been his before he went away to England; and as he lay
there in the warm, mellow darkness, wide awake, listening to the myriad
sounds of night that came in through the open window, and as he thought
of Eleanor Parker, and that he was now again with her, to see her and
to be near her for a month, he seemed to be wrapped all about with a
balm of the perfect joy of peacefulness.
That month was the happiest of all his life, for in it Nelly Parker
promised to be his wife. It had merged into lovely early autumn
weather, and the katydids were in full song, and in the happy
after-memories of those four blissful weeks, the note of the little
green singing things was always present in recollections of mellow
evenings when he and she would sit out in front of the house, listening
to the rasping notes answering one another from the black clumps of
foliage; of other times when he would lie awake in his room, not
sleeping for thinking of her, his heart full to overflowing with
happiness, and that same rasping iteration sounding ceaselessly
here—there—louder—more distant, in through the open window. Never
afterward did he hear the katydids singing at night without a recurrent
echoing vibration of happiness flowing into his heart. For so, year
by year, as the seasons come, do such little things of the heavenly
Father’s beautiful world of nature bring back to the soul an echo of
some part of that divine hymn that has been sung,—of joy, of tender
sorrow, of bliss fulfilled, of grief that is past,—a sound, a touch
from out the past, setting the finely-drawn heart-cords to quivering
and ringing with an answering pang of passion that age does not always
dull—that time does not always cause to become stilled.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The pirate captain had really only twenty-five men aboard of his
sloop at the time of the battle.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
—Obvious errors were corrected.