ALLIES.
The question concluding the preceding chapter of this history took more
than a moment or so to answer, as the reader may suppose. Open-mouthed,
as well as open-eared, with their packages, one by one, dropped
heedlessly in the grassy path that led up from the little dock, “Obed
Probasco and Loreta his wife” halted before Philip, still ejaculating,
questioning, and with their astonishment of one kind giving place to
that of another as Philip proceeded with his story. He leaned against
the fence and, talking now with one, now the other, related his strange
experience. The amazed New England couple turned and looked into each
other’s eyes at every few sentences, with many a “My gracious me!” “Did
ever any body hear the like?” “You don’t mean that you”――did so and so;
and by Obed’s frequent “Well, this beats all creation, fur as I know
it!” Even Touchtone’s anxiety and their curiosity as to Gerald could
not retard their eagerness to learn all the facts.
The couple bore every appearance of homely thrift and simplicity of
character; of being, in short, precisely the kind of people Touchtone
had hoped. It is, perhaps, needless to say that Philip’s narrative
was only of the circumstances since the hour of departure from the
_Old Province_. Mr. Belmont and his persecution he left till a more
convenient season.
“An’ you mean to tell me that that poor boy an’ you have been shut up
here two days? No other soul about the place? An’ he sick on your hands
half the time?” gasped the distressed Mrs. Obed.
“That’s just what I mean,” replied Touchtone.
“Never heard such an astonishin’ story in my life,” repeated Probasco.
“What would you ’a’ done, though, if you hadn’t brought up here? Well,
it stumps me; that’s all.”
“The hand of the Lord’s in it, no mistake!” declared Mrs. Obed. “I
can’t say how welcome you’ve been to any thing an’ to every thing of
ours that the old house there’s got inside it. You couldn’t ’a’ better
pleased me an’ my husband here, Mr. Tombstone――I mean Mr. Touchtone――I
b’lieve you said that was your name, didn’t you?――than by just makin’
free of every blessed corner of it. But dear, dear! If I’d only been to
home.”
“Yes, it’s queer luck! Wife an’ I’ve both been over on shore. We had
to go across to Chantico to the funeral of a nephew of ours, that died
very sudden. We stuck fast there by my bein’ sick. The very time that
such a thing as this came straight up to our doors!”
“Queer luck?” repeated the farmer’s wife. “You’d better just say queer
Providence, Obed! It’s been awful unhandy for you, Mr. Touchtone――made
things so much harder for you an’ the little boy. But I guess if
Providence could save you both bein’ dashed overboard with those poor
souls in that boat, he could help you to get along with a lot o’ my
stale stuff to eat, an’ not a hand to help you to any thing better.
Our house wide open, was it? Well, I don’t know where you’d ’a’ got
in if’t been us left it last! But,” she continued, turning in sudden
vexation to her husband, “that’s the very identical good-bye time old
Murtagh’ll play us such a trick! After all his straight up an’ down
promises that he’d never leave the place one minute! An’ the cow, too!”
“Yes, I’ve had enough of Murtagh,” assented the farmer, sharply, “an’
I guess we’ll find the obligations on our side, sir. Murtagh’s a man
we’ve had on the place to help us, an’ he don’t appear to have no more
responsibleness than a grasshopper, let alone his drinking. Wife an’
I’ve been in a worry the hull time we was obliged to stay across the
strait. But we didn’t look for his acting this way.”
It appeared that the derelict Murtagh had indeed been left in charge
by his master; and that that neglectful hireling of the household must
have scarcely waited for his employers’ backs to be turned than he had
betaken himself to his own little skiff and gone off shoreward, too.
“Most likely, on one of his regular high old sprees!” surmised the
exasperated farmer. “This is the end of Pat Murtagh’s working for me!”
“Well, come, come, don’t let’s stand another minute here,” said Mrs.
Probasco, realizing that the necessary explanations on both sides were
finished; “that boy you’ve got with you mustn’t be left alone. Perhaps
he’s not so sick as you think. I hope he’s been asleep while we’ve been
puttin’ you through such a long catechism. Let’s all hurry, to make
up for it. Obed, don’t you rattle that gate; an’ do you take off your
boots before you get to the kitchen door. Thanky, Mr. Touchtone, let
them things lay just where they be; there’s nobody to steal ’em, you
know. Come along, quick, both of you.”
Leaving Obed to deprive his feet of their squeaky new coverings, Philip
and Mrs. Probasco stepped lightly toward the kitchen and on tiptoe drew
near the bedroom door.
Sure enough, Gerald’s slumber was profound. The kind-hearted woman
followed Touchtone to the bedside in curiosity and pity. She beheld the
face of this other of her two uninvited guests with a great stir in her
motherly heart and a quick admiration of Gerald’s strange and just now
singularly pathetic beauty. With a woman’s soft fingers she ventured
to touch his skin, and with intent ear she listened to the sleeper’s
breathing.
“He’s better than he was, I guess,” she said in a hushed voice to
Philip. “His skin’s damp, an’ he breathes in a good deal healthier way
than I expected. Fever’s gone down as soon as it came up, I dare say.
How han’some he is!――a reg’lar picture. From New York, did you say?”
Obed looked in at the door in anxious interest. “You stay here with him
while I fly around and get things sort of settled and more ready for
whatever’s best for us to do.” She glided out, closing the door after
her. Smothered sounds, that now and then came from behind it, hinted to
Philip as he sat that the flying around had begun to some purpose.
Excellent Mrs. Probasco! Whatever may have been the sentiments of your
housekeeper’s heart at such a delayed home-coming and such a finding of
your entire domestic establishment taken possession of by boys, and not
only an asylum, but a hospital, all at once on your hands――whatever the
amusement or vexation at the general upsetting of order on each side,
you kept it all to yourself! She darted softly about. “Time enough for
talk, by and by,” she said, sharply, to Obed, who was accustomed to act
pretty much as she commanded. “Then we’ll talk. We know plenty to start
right at. We must just take care of these boys as well as we can, till
they’re ready to leave us an’ go ahead on their journey. An’, by the
way, Mr. Touchtone says they’d ought to get some sort of word to their
friends right away, just as soon as we see how that boy is when he
wakes. Of course they’d ought! So I advise you, after you been over the
place, an’ done up all those chores old Murtagh’s kindly left for you,
to get the boat ready for early to-morrow morning, when you can hurry
over to Chantico.”
Obed hastened off, his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes exchanged for his
every-day array, and disappeared down the garden with the chickens
trooping after him in joyful expectancy; Mrs. Probasco kept at work,
now and then slipping in to consult Touchtone or calling him to her.
Daylight began to wane. Gerald slept on, occasionally appearing to
be just on the point of awakening, but always drifting back into
sounder sleep again. Numerous, and with many hurried and whispered
paragraphs of further explanation and questions and answers, were the
interviews between Philip and his bustling hostess during the remnant
of time before candle-light. With its windows and doors wide open,
and the smell of supper coming appetizingly from the kitchen, and with
a general sense of human occupation about it, the old dwelling was
already like a different place from its former mysterious self. The dog
(“You _will_ call him Towzer, but his real name’s Jock,” Mrs. Probasco
protested) trotted about. Upper rooms were unsealed, and Touchtone
stared about them, meeting nothing to excite his curiosity except one
or two quaint and battered pieces of furniture that seemed in keeping
with the old house rather than with any modern inmates.
And before long came history, bit by bit, from Mrs. Probasco or Obed.
As Philip had expected, the farm and premises on Chantico Island were
not owned, but rented, by them――had been so for many years, through an
agent.
The dignified, isolated old dwelling, half farm-house, half mansion,
still belonged in a family line once distinguished in the county for
wealth and social position――the Jennisons. Other people might live in
it, but it was always haunted by the atmosphere of stately earlier days
and aristocratic occupants.
Who were, or had been, the Jennisons? Great had they been once, in that
part of the State. Early Jennisons had bought the island and named it
“Jennison’s Island,” in Revolutionary days. One famous grandfather had
built the mansion and fitted it with fine old-fashioned furnishings,
and loved it, and lived and died in it. In his day this ancient roof
had sheltered many a guest of famous name. Under it gay levees had
come off, and sumptuous dinners and country merry-makings, and lively
weddings and solemn funerals. Two of the belles in the family line
had been the very “Mary Abigail” and “Sarah Amanda” who had stitched
those yellowed samplers on the wall. They had died, grandmothers both,
long ago. And of all the Jennison estate was left to-day only this
single lonely corner of it, the island, its very name changed on the
government maps by some State maneuver. Furthermore, to bear the family
name and own the scattered remnants of this world’s goods left to its
credit, there was now only a single representative, one Wentworth
Jennison, according to Mrs. Probasco’s reserved account, an erratic
and wandering man, who seldom set his foot near the home of his
ancestors――once or twice a year, perhaps; then not again for another
two or three seasons. He allowed an old lawyer at Chantico to lease
island, farm, and house to the Probascos. They paid their modest rent
and kept the mansion from destruction. They had long been its tenants.
Of course, the connection between these details became clearer in his
later talks with the good farmer’s wife; but Philip gathered enough in
her scraps of explanation that afternoon and evening to interest his
boyish love of romance and novelty and to fill his heart with gratitude
for this hospitable situation.
Just before supper-time Gerald awoke.
“Philip,” he called, “Philip! where have you gone?”
Touchtone hastened in from the kitchen. A few sentences with the sick
boy gave him a delightful sense of relief. It was quite confirmed
during the next half hour. Gerald’s fever had almost departed. He was
told the good news of the Probascos’ return. On the first sight of his
sympathetic hostess he “took to her” (so she expressed it), “as if we’d
never done nothing but spend our hull lives in this same old house.”
Obed was permitted by his vigilant spouse to come in and hold the
boy’s slender hand in his for a few moments and speak his few kindly
words of welcome and help. The invalid’s appetite that had developed
was rewarded with a dainty supper, and he was made comfortable in
fresh sheets. “O, I guess he’s all right, an’ doing splendidly, Mr.
Touchtone,” Mrs. Probasco declared. “We wont give him a chance to get
real sick, between us.”
“What kind people they are!” Gerald said, softly, to Touchtone, just
as he was dropping off into a fresh doze, with the clink of Mrs.
Probasco’s dishes and the murmur of her conference with Obed making a
homely lullaby from the adjoining room.
“Yes, the kindest sort,” assented Touchtone. “Go to sleep, old man,
and dream about them and every thing else that is pleasant. I’ll add a
postscript to these letters, to bring them down to the latest minute.”
“O, yes, now you can. Did you write papa?”
“I have written papa and every body. Mr. Probasco is going to get
up early to-morrow morning, and either take me over with these to
Chantico or else carry them alone. So, you see, we are fairly started
toward getting back to civilization and our friends again. The suspense
all around will soon be over.”
“We’ve been through a good deal together, haven’t we? And in such a
little while.”
“We certainly have,” said Touchtone, half seriously, half smiling.
Gerald slept. Philip added a few lines to his letters, and, now that
their situation was so happily determined, his anxiety for their being
dispatched came upon him with double force. Not an hour longer must
needlessly intervene.
It was impossible for him to guess what conclusion Mr. Marcy and
Gerald’s father could have or could not have arrived at by this.
According to Probasco’s account there had been plenty in all the
newspapers about the steamer――“Folks had done nothing else but read
an’ talk about it”――although Obed’s “plaguey turn o’ the wust sort o’
rheumatism” had kept himself, his wife, and their Chantico relatives
in too much excitement for reading news, to say nothing of the funeral
at the house. In his last writing Philip told Mr. Marcy and Mr. Saxton
that within as few hours as possible for Gerald and himself to leave
the Probascos they would go to Chantico, and thence down to Knoxport.
There they would wait for instructions from one or the other gentleman.
In view of the absolute ignorance of affairs it seemed to Philip unwise
to hurry straight back to New York by railroad, and much less advisable
to think of continuing their Halifax journey, of course. There was
a chance, too, that at this very minute Mr. Saxton, Mr. Marcy, or
both, were lingering in Knoxport, hoping for news from some quarter,
unwilling to quit the point nearest to the late accident.
Fortunately, he did not know that a body declared to be his own,
drowned and disfigured, had been duly “identified” days before by a
coroner’s jury, and that the fate of the boat had been decided by every
opinion brought to bear on it, and that, while he sat there writing,
Mr. Marcy, with as heavy a heart as a man can ever bear in his breast,
was packing his own and Mr. Saxton’s valises and preparing to fairly
drag away the distracted father from the Knoxport House on the journey
that he hoped might quiet his friend’s nerves, and for which Marcy had
generously suspended all his own affairs.
The letters sealed, Philip felt more at rest. As the evening wore on,
more excited than tired, he and Mrs. Probasco and Obed sat within
ear-shot of the sick-room. In low voices they went into new particulars
on both sides, discussed his plans for himself and Gerald together, and
weighed this and that. Hospitable, shrewd, warm-hearted folk! Could
you and your charge, Philip, have fallen into more tender or more
willing hands? How interested they became in the life at the Ossokosee
that had made this friendship begin, and in the thousand little or
greater incidents which had perfected it and so suddenly laid such
responsibilities on Touchtone’s shoulders! How carefully both, the
man by silence, the good woman by tactful turns of the conversation,
avoided intruding on matters that they surely would have relished
understanding better, but into which they would not pry!
It seemed beautiful to Mrs. Probasco’s inmost heart, which one already
will have divined was nothing like as unromantic as her features, this
friendship between these two lads, this devotion of the elder lad to
the younger.
“There never was any thing prettier than the way you an’ him have been
keeping together,” she ventured once to remark, ungrammatically but
earnestly. “It’s like a book.”
“But there never was any body else like Gerald――in or out of a book,”
Touchtone answered, simply, blushing. For if facts were on his lips his
inner sentiments, as a general thing, were not.
“Well, I only hope that you’ll have a long life together without no
kind of quarrels between you, nor troubles after these, my lad,” said
Obed, stroking the dog’s head as Towzer lay beside his chair. “You’ve
begun to make friendship the way it’d ought to be made, an’ as it’s
grown older it’d ought to be of a kind that aint common in this part o’
the world, so far as I’ve had opportunity to jedge.”
“I hope so, too,” responded Touchtone, soberly. Yes, and he believed
it. His “old head on young shoulders” for one moment pictured in
flashing succession years to come at Gerald’s side, himself his best
friend ever, to companion and care for him. Or, would the future bring
differences, quarrels, a breaking apart for them, and only thorns from
this now newly planted vineyard, as happened to so many other pairs
of friends in this strange world? Only fate knew, and only time could
decide.
Bed-hour came. Philip proposed to hold to his lounge; so it was
more comfortably made up for rest, under Mrs. Probasco’s care, than
before. Obed was to start for Chantico after the early breakfast. At
first Philip decided that it was best he should go with him; but he
concluded to curb his impatience and not be absent all day from Gerald.
The letters and telegrams lay ready to be forwarded; Obed understood
precisely what he was to do.
They said good-night. Philip lay awake a half hour or so. He was
restless. Uncertainty after uncertainty and step by step of the
unsolved equation of Gerald’s and his situation filled his brain. He
thought and planned, and heard the wind that had all at once risen blow
furiously about the house. His final thought was that it had begun to
rain pretty hard.
But his dismay and that of the Probascos when they met the next morning
cannot briefly be described. A great gale was raging. The sea was a
wild, mad, terrible creature, heaving itself in black tumult in the
drenching and cold storm. The channel between the island and vanished
coast was a raging body of water that no ordinary boat could safely
hope to traverse. It was not a storm, but an equinoctial tempest.
Obed, with as much regret as honesty, declared he could not think of
attempting a passage to Chantico. Letters, telegrams, every sort of
communication, must wait until the elements were lulled.
“Another day lost!” cried Philip to himself, impatiently. He walked
up and down Gerald’s room in chafing, impotent anxiety. Gerald was
so much better that Mrs. Probasco declared danger of further illness
ended. He roved languidly about the house with the farmer’s wife, in
more contentment than Philip had hoped the boy could be kept in. But it
made his own concern come home to him heavily. Obed and he counseled
and watched the sea and storm. There was nothing else to do. The
gale’s fury increased in the afternoon, and, worse still, the coming
of the early and deep darkness of the evening found it undiminished in
violence.